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Humanity is on the cusp of an exciting longevity revolution

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Humanity is on the cusp of an exciting longevity revolution

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Turfly

Besides the obvious (sleep, nutrition, exercise), what are the best ways we can keep ourselves healthy, both mentally and physically, to ensure we get more years and that all those extra years can we useful, fruitful ones? What are the most promising pharma or therapeutic products in the pipeline (or available now) for longevity?

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11yr ago

Hunter

@tymrtn Tissue engineering is the most advanced tech that is already helping a select number of people. Bladders, tracheas, vaginas, skin, and even parts of fingers have already been regrown for patients using their own stem cells (therefore no rejection). Heart valves, lung tissue, etc aren't too far behind. Gene therapy is starting to look pretty good now too with the development of a new editing technique called crispr cas9. Once we can safely re-write our own code, there's a lot of repair that can be done.

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11yr ago

Turfly

@soniaarrison so... will we be able to grow whole new bodies and just transplant our brains? (I think this was the idea behind the movie The Island)

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11yr ago

Turfly

@soniaarrison any supplements or nutrients that seem to be particularly promising? I believe Ray Kurzweil was taking upwards of 150 of them a day for a while there...

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11yr ago

Hunter

@tymrtn The Island was a bit disturbing because it posited taking a clone's life in order to save the original human. With regenerative medicine, there will hopefully be no need to leave your original body -- just keep repairing it like a vintage car.

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11yr ago

Hunter

@tymrtn I honestly don't think scientists know enough about supplements (let alone the personalized part of it) to make good recommendations. It's an area that could use a lot more funding and research. And, of course, we are now learning how important the microbiome is to that area.

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11yr ago

VentureBeat Insight

When I was born, there were around 3.5 billion people on Earth. There are now twice as many. If the "can haves" of the world continue to live longer, won't we accelerate the already worrying resource issues being faced today, and cause a bigger divide between them and those that can't elongate their lifespans?

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11yr ago

Hunter

@therealsjr This is probably the most serious issue around longevity -- the divide between the haves and the have nots. There is already a big divide between life expectancy in rich countries (almost 90 years) vs poor countries (around 49 years). We know that the rich always get access to new tech before the poor, so that could make the gap widen. The question, then, that really matters, is how long before the tech rolls out to everyone?

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11yr ago

VentureBeat Insight

@soniaarrison I'd suggest longer than most people think. Take the humble phone, for example. It took us from its invention in the late 1800's until only a few years ago to reach 75% of an ever-growing World population - the mobile phone being the accelerant in this case. Although technology adoption has improved and increased in pace with every generation, it still takes a lot longer than commonly understood for any new technology to become widespread and mainstream. Going to read your book with great interest - thanks for this excellent AMA.

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11yr ago

Hunter

@therealsjr It's true that the cell phone took a long time from invention to commercialization (there were regulatory/legal barriers, I believe). If you look at how long it took for the cell phone to roll out once it was commercialized, it was faster than electricity, the telephone, or the personal computer. And then the Internet rolled out even faster than the cell phone. So, to some, it looks like tech is now rolling out faster as time goes on. I'm not sure biotech will fit on that line exactly -- it's up for debate about whether it is like the other information technologies.

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11yr ago

Backchannel

@soniaarrison @therealsjr Sonia do you worry about overpopulation? or what big concerns do you have?

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11yr ago

VentureBeat Insight

@soniaarrison I think you're right. I also believe that a number of moral, etical, regulatory, and cultural barriers will impede biotechnology too. We've already seen some of that with stem cell research, for example.

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11yr ago

Rich Roll Podcast 197 - Jesse Itzler

There is a great quote from Seneca: "It's not that we have a short time to live, it's that we waste a lot of it." All the people I see talking about living forever and obsessing about health seem to just take for granted that quantity is the most important variable. I'm not sure it's as self-evident as they think it is. If you gave the average person 25 more years, wouldn't Parkinson's Law just come into play? I'm not so sure they or anyone would be that much more fulfilled or happy. I guess I'm not convinced it would change that much about humans.

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11yr ago

Hunter

@ryanholiday Longer healthspans will mean more time to do everything: invent, play, hang out with family, and – yes – waste time, if one desires. Not everyone uses their time wisely now, and in the future, when people have longer and healthier lives, that will be true as well. BUT a lot of people won’t waste their time and they will be the ones to benefit most from longer lives.

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11yr ago

Hyper

Thanks so much for joining us today! I am fascinated does the potential for humanity to greatly extend our lifespan scare you and worry you in terms of sustainability? Excluding Elon Musk's plan to move to Mars, what solutions can be found for a massively over populated planet? Would love to hear your thoughts? Thanks so much again! Harry

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11yr ago

Hunter

@harrystebbings What? You don’t want to move to Mars? Joking. The population question is a good one. It’s unclear what will happen to population as people live longer lives. I’m not convinced that overpopulation is imminent. The most important thing to keep in mind is that population growth comes more from births than from a slowing of death rate. By 2050, fertility rates (FR) are expected to decline from 2.55 children per woman today to 2.02 children per woman for all women in the world, including those in developing countries (you need 2.1 for growth). But let’s say FR stayed somewhat where it is today. There was an interesting study from U Chicago scholars that showed that even if humans became immortal and never died, Sweden’s population would only increase by 22 percent over 100 years. That’s definitely an increase, but not as big as you might have expected.

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11yr ago

Product Hunt

Hi Sonia! I'm wondering how long the average person is likely to live? How much is that going to change in next 10 yrs?

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11yr ago

Hunter

@lejlahunts It's extremely difficult to predict how quickly health extending technologies will hit mass market, so that makes it difficult to predict how quickly life expectancy will climb. Historically, world life expectancy has more than doubled over the past two centuries. The next doubling will happen faster than that.

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11yr ago

Product Hunt

Hi Sonia, the thought of dying scares me. I try not to think about it because it's an inevitability that does me no good to worry about, other than eating well and looking both ways crossing the road. The thought of living too long, scares me even more. I have seen the debilitating effect growing old with a body that starts to slowly fail you can do, and living like that frightens me even more than going before I think I am ready. What are the main things that scare you about an ageing population and about personally living well into old age?

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11yr ago

Hunter

@ems_hodge I agree that getting frail is bad (no matter what your age). That’s why it’s so important for us (as a society) to focus on creating technologies and therapies (regenerative medicine, personalized medicine, gene therapy), that can help everyone be healthier for longer periods of time. I channel my anxiety over this into action that can help us move forward on the ‘repairing humans’ front. You could do the same. :)

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11yr ago

NotionMetrics

Thanks for doing this Sonia. For a male, now in their mid-twenties, maintaining a healthy lifestyle - what do you think the chances are of this person living to be 100? 150?

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11yr ago

Hunter

@brentsum I think the chances of living beyond 100 are extremely good. And the longer you live, the more time there is for tech to advance, so then the more chance you have of living longer. Escape velocity.

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11yr ago

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