Longevity
The Seven Secrets of Getting Old While Staying Young
Science’s Top 5 Secrets to Long and Healthy Life — Plus 2 Bonus Tips
I hope I die before I get old — Pete Townsend, 1965
I hope I’m old before I die — Robbie Williams, 1997
The first person to turn one hundred and fifty has already been born — David A. Sinclair, 2019
Pop culture shows how society’s view on age has changed. Pete Townsend and The Who couldn’t find anything worse than getting old. Thirty years later, Robbie Williams was afraid to not live long enough (to spend his fortune, I guess).
Another twenty years later, we’re more listening to TEDx speeches than to rock concerts. And scientists like David A. Sinclair have achieved rock-star status. Why? They promise us a long AND healthy life.
Growing old and staying healthy sounds better than Pete’s ‘die young!’ and Robbie’s ‘die old!’. At least for someone who was born when The Who were rocking the concert halls.
David Sinclair — the Prophet of the Young Old
First, who is David A. Sinclair? You’re interested in longevity and haven’t stumbled across Sinclair yet? You’ve must have some wrong browser settings. David A. Sinclair is a Professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. At his institute, he grouped some of the brightest minds of our times around himself. The kind of international whizz-kids who want to get to the bottom of the phenomenon of aging in the most diverse ways. And who have already pushed it very far back in some impressive cases — albeit with laboratory mice and threadworms.
Sinclair’s bestselling book “Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don’t Have To” (New York, 2019) addresses the fact that aging is not inevitable. “The first human to live to be a hundred and fifty years old has already been born,” Sinclair claims. He explains how we can grow old and stay healthy with simple rules of conduct — and a little chemistry. His central thesis: getting old is nothing more than a disease. A disease that is even easier to treat than cancer.
Why do we age — and how can we delay it?
Let’s leave aside the philosophical, economical, ecological, social aspects of a longer lifespan. (Sinclair by no means omits them in his book.) Let’s concentrate on WHY we age at all — and HOW we delay aging. Can we manage to live to be ninety, a hundred, a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty? And stay healthy and fit and not vegetate bedridden in a nursing home?
According to David A. Sinclair, aging is a symptom of the self-replication and repair mechanisms of our genome (DNA) wearing out. The problem is more about the epigenome, the structure in which our genome is wrapped, than the DNA itself. The epigenome determines which of our genes will take effect and which will not. Some genes are needed to repair errors in the replication process of the DNA. The epigenome acts like the conductor of a big symphonic orchestra or a movie director.
Your genetic information wears out
The problem is: While the DNA is built like a computer file — in the computer world we would say “digital” — the epigenome is rather an “analog” medium. Thus, the copying process in our cells is far from being as simple and infallible as the digital copying process of, say, an mp3 file.
DNA consists of four bases that occur in specific pairings (instead of simple ones and zeros in digital binary code). To make it even more complex, our DNA consists of 3.2 billion base pairs. They have to be copied and replaced all the time. Every time a cell dies and has to be replaced by a new one. Or, when we go to the gym and want to build a few hundred million new muscle cells in our biceps. Trillions of base pairs — letters of a user’s manual — have to be copied in a proper way. Else, the new cell will not be viable or will mutate. Copying a digital music file from your streaming platform to your cell phone is easy. It’s much more likely for something to go wrong during the cell replication process.
The reason behind this high error rate is the complexity mentioned above. Furthermore, environmental influences such as radiation or toxins destroy cells and stress the replication process. If too many things go wrong during cell replication, the conductor, your epigenome, gets overwhelmed. The information about which cell has to be built, which genes have which functions, and which cells have to be repaired when and where exactly, becomes fuzzy. Some information is lost altogether. Remember, the epigenome is a rather analog medium — which already has a few years under its belt.
You and your body will become a faint echo of your past — you grow old
This process has been going on since the warm summer evening when your father’s sperm fused with your mother’s egg. The cell carousel has been spinning since that second without a single stop. It’s like you wanted to repair a broken digital copy of a song by replacing the missing pieces in its binary code. You use the music stored on an old cassette tape to get the missing information. Only that the tape has been played too many times past the player’s pickups and grilled a few times on the car’s dashboard. Hard enough to reach the quality of the digital original.
Now, you duplicate this (already bad) signal further in an analog way and repeat and repeat and repeat. Eventually, nothing can be heard except a distant muffled reverberation. The ninety-year-old you behaves to your twenty-year-old you like this reverberation to the original recording.
How can we turn back the clock?
How can the right genes be reactivated to work at the right time? Is there a way to repair the repair mechanism? Can we make the replication process more faithful to the original, can we try to help the genome make better copies of our DNA? This is the core of the research of David A. Sinclair and his colleagues.
Good news: There is a lot you can do.
Wonderful news: Sinclair has it all lined out in his book.
Fantastic news: the bottom line is here in this article.
Not so good news: None of the methods are proven by studies with human beings — but there are many on the way.
And, the mechanisms are complex. If you really want to understand the details better, you should pick up Sinclair’s book. Or study molecular biology.
Let’s break it down for John and Jane Doe (or Daniel Cramer).
The DOs and the DONTs to long and healthy life
Here are the FIVE DOs and DONT’s according to David A. Sinclair to get your epigenome and thus proper cell replication back on track.
1. Move
Of course, a daily walk with the dog is better than just sitting on the couch. But, according to Sinclair, only strenuous exercise has a rejuvenating effect. You can tell that a workout is strenuous by the fact that you can’t speak a sentence without gasping for air. In numbers: Your cardio-vascular system should run on 70 to 85% of your maximum heart rate. And it should be brought to this performance five times a week.
Takeaways:
Go for a run and do some sprints. Go (mountain) biking. Set the rowing machine to maximum resistance. Do burpees. Jump rope. Download (and use) that HITT calisthenics app. Swim a few lengths at full speed … get the motor running once a day!
2. Freeze
The power of the cold is the new multivitamin pill. Whether you are a believer in the Wim Hof method. Or wait for the Cryo-Studio on Upper Eastside to reopen after Covid — soon everyone will have realized how healthy low temperatures are. According to Sinclair, mitochondriae produced and stored in brown (rather than white) fat tissue have a life-prolonging effect. This brown fat is formed when the body has to cope with the cold, ideally together with exercise.”
Takeaways:
Take cold showers. Take walks or short runs in just a tee and shorts. Turn down your thermostat. Jump into the lake earlier and later in the year than others.
3. Eat
You are what you eat. We all know that nutrition is the key to our health. Or the road to perdition. What we stuff into ourselves leads to all kinds of diseases of civilization, and eventually, to an early death. The list of possible consequences of our eating and drinking habits is long. Caries, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2, high blood pressure, overweight and obesity, gout, allergies, certain cancers rank on top.
Sinclair doesn’t just pay attention to what he eats (vegetables, ideally “stressed” ones from organic and small farm production) and what he doesn’t (animal protein, sugar, flour). But the key to living longer is in regular mild malnutrition, aka slight hunger. Mild malnutrition (not: starvation!) boosts cell renewal.
Good news: if you replace animal sources of protein (meat, pork) with plant sources, you also achieve a mild crisis mode of the body. This is because most plants contain only a few amino acids each, while animal proteins offer complex amino acid combinations. The body reacts to the simpler amino acid combinations similar to light hunger. It sets up defense mechanisms that cause cell rejuvenation.
Takeaways:
You get older the better AND the less you eat.
(a) Eat better. No sugar, little pasta and bread. Get rid of beef and pork (and animal-sourced protein shakes, bodybuilders!). Add plants in all forms, especially legumes. Buy stressed veggies. The ones having been in touch with real sun and cold. Attention: fruit often has too much sugar!
(b) Eat less. Count calories. Get used to feeling a little hungry. Skip one or two meals per day. Try intermittent fasting.
4. Avoid
Avoid harmful environmental influences, e.g. radiation, wherever possible. Radiation destroys the DNA inside the cells and thus it has to be repaired. And during the repair process … see above. Sinclair relates in his book that he as a frequent flyer (pre Covid-19) doesn’t want to exacerbate his in-flight radiation exposure with that of the X-ray machines at passenger screening. So he has himself patted down whenever possible. He also avoids UV radiation (aka sun) and tries to limit X-ray and CT examinations to a bare minimum.
Takeaways:
Get a pat-down at the airport instead of an X-ray. Avoid unnecessary flights. Avoid unnecessary X-ray examinations and CT scans. Get out of the sun.
5. Add
David A. Sinclair holds a doctorate in molecular genetics and biochemistry. He is also involved in companies that research pharmaceuticals for longer life. No wonder he attributes almost magical powers to some active ingredients. These agents mainly influence the sirtuins, protein-modifying enzymes. The enzyme group of sirtuins organizes the repair of damaged DNA and mediates cell communication. They could strengthen cell defense and cut cell decay. It is already known that the enzyme group is stimulated by nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD, or NAD+). The coenzyme is involved in over 500 enzyme activities and is essential for survival. The NAD level decreases with age in every cell of the body.
Here is not enough space to explain these modes of action here. It is all very detailed in Sinclair’s book. The role of sirtuines and NAD+ biosynthesis in regulation of lifespan is seen as central — not only by David A. Sinclair.
There are three central substances (I call them magic potions). They are supposed to stimulate the sirtuins and NAD. They are called Resveratrol, Metformin and NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide). With a big disclaimer* that these substances have not yet been conclusively studied in human trials, that there are no proven preparations, and side effects cannot be ruled out, Sinclair describes his own consumption in his book:
“Every morning 1g (1,000mg) NMN, 1g Resveratrol, 1g Metformin.”
Note the following details about Sinclair’s three “magic potions”:
- Resveratrol is sold as a dietary supplement in the U.S. and European countries.
- Metformin is a prescription drug in most countries, well-proven against type 2 diabetes. It is not prescribed against aging (since aging is not yet considered a disease in any country in the world). You will need to find your own way to get a metformin prescription if you do not have type 2 diabetes. Ask your doctor.
- NMN (or similar: NR) is not approved as a medicinal product. In some countries, it is marketed as a dietary supplement, but in others it is marketed only as a “chemical”.
Is that all there is? No, of course not. Sinclair confesses he also takes some of the usual suspects:
“Also, a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 milligrams of Aspirin every evening.”
Takeaways:
Stop! Before you leave this page and hastily place an online order: read more about these agents! Prefer reputable publications over lurid and dubious sales offers on the web. You will dive into the multi-billion-dollar market of nutritional supplements. The profiteers of people’s desire to live longer have been practicing their golden craft for ages. Be on your guard.
When will we finally reach 100?
As for me, in October 2067. I think my chances are not too bad to celebrate my hundredth birthday at a summer party. (In 2067, summer extends into the second half of October on the Northern hemisphere, that’s for sure.) Surrounded by my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Sitting upright, eating by myself without assistance, taking a little spin in the park after the meal. Without having to lean on a walker.
Will it be like that? Most likely, if research, which is still very young, continues at high speed. Harward University alone has three similarly highly qualified laboratories to Professor Sinclair’s. Every major medical school in the U.S. maintains such departments. Research for longer, healthier lives is being done not only in the labs of universities and pharmaceutical companies. Also, some California tech companies finance longevity spin-offs.
Living longer in a healthy way is starting to become an innovative industry. It will speed up. Living an athletic but cold and often hungry life, spiced up with a few supplements soon will seem like a drastic treatment from medieval times. There is so much happening in genetic engineering, cancer therapy and replacement technology. It would be almost improbable if you and I didn’t at least scratch the triple-digit mark.
Ah yes, I promised you more than cold, little food and pills! Here come my two bonus rules for a long life.
The two bonus tips to a long and healthy life
Admittedly, both are boring and not very rock’n’roll.
6. Quit smoking
Today. Now. I can’t imagine a smoker reading this article. If you still smoke, forget everything written up there. You’ll have killed yourself by 75. Ok, 80 latest, if you’re lucky as hell. You know it. Cigarette smoke contains up to 12,000 different chemical compounds. Most of them are toxic, carcinogenic and narcotic. The same is true for e-cigarettes and other substitutes (now sue me, Philip Morris).
Takeaways:
Nicotine kills eight million people every year, says the WHO. There are tons of studies that prove smoking will reduce your lifespan dramatically.
7. Stop drinking
Or cut back dramatically. Even though cutting back is usually not a good (re)solution. (See my recent article on it).
What does “cutting back dramatically” mean? My response in anecdotal form is what a woman with a drinking problem reported in one of my favorite podcasts (you need to understand German). Her husband manages to ask for that one special craft beer in a restaurant for an aperitif — and when it’s out, he just orders a soda.
That’s what I call unaddicted. If you can cut back on your alcohol cravings that much, then ok, ego te absolvo. But if all you can think about on Wednesday is ‘please finally make it Friday’. And if you have to drink two to eight beers more after that first one on Friday night, then you’d better quit. Why?
Because recent research shows that alcohol can cause cancer even in small doses (like a glass of wine and less). And because alcohol drunk in larger quantities is bound to cause damage. It’s a cell poison and neurotoxin. We pour the stuff into our cars. “E” in “E10” stands for ethanol — this is the stuff 13% of your next bottle of Chateau de Migraine is made of.
Takeaways:
Alcohol has a good chance of killing you. According to the WHO, it kills three million people worldwide every year. By comparison, road traffic costs 1.2 million lives annually. (There will certainly be an intersection between the two groups.)
Bottom line: 5+2=seven secrets
How to expand your healthspan together with your lifespan?
Move. Freeze. Eat better and less often. Avoid radiation. Add NAD+ accelerators. Quit smoking and drinking.
Write me if you like or dislike this article. And correct me, please. My email is hello@danielcramer.rocks
*I adhere to this disclaimer. Just as I explicitly state that I am neither a medical doctor nor trained in any medical profession. I am just a layman reporting what I have read. I am not recommending anything (other than quitting smoking and drastically limiting drinking).
