Life extension conference decompression

[mattbell]

The Life Extension Conference last weekend was an overwhelmingly large pile of information, much of it contradictory.  One of the most amusing parts was watching a panel of five experts offer advice on what supplements to take.  I've spent much of today sorting through the material from the conference and doing follow-up research to validate it.

Here's a high-level picture of what was talked about at the conference:

- The conference was attended by people (including me) who believe that the right approach to health and longevity is a proactive one; it makes sense to take action while you are young and healthy instead of waiting for your body and mind to deteriorate before doing anything.
- Testing is important.  By taking blood tests, you can determine if you are getting enough of various vitamins and minerals, keeping inflammation and stress down, maintaining a proper hormone balance etc. 
- Diet is very important, and has broad-reaching impacts on longevity and the rate of aging. 
- Physical and mental health are very tightly linked. 
- There are a lot of new devices coming out that let you automatically track various metrics of performance, like calories burned, movement, sleep quality, stress levels etc.
- Meditation now has a lot of solid research backing up its effectiveness at reducing stress, improving cardiovascular health, reducing chronic inflammation, improving mental focus, and other measures of health.  Apparently as little as 5-10 minutes of meditation a day can have an impact.
- It's worth getting detailed baseline physical and mental health data on yourself now so that you can detect changes as you get older.  This data also lets you run self-experiments and see the results.  The self-experimentation approach is especially good when trying to deal with diffuse conditions that have a range of possible causes, such as insomnia, allergies, anxiety, and depression.

As for the panel of nutrition experts, the only things they could agree on (and perhaps the only advice worth following without lots of research) were:
- Take fish oil supplements
- Take 2000IU of Vitamin D a day (almost everyone is deficient)
- Take probiotics (food or pill)

The panel did have a near-consensus that people should take Deprenyl, a relatively unknown drug that appears to halt or reverse age-related brain decline.  The drug, which is typically prescribed for Parkinson's disease, acts on a variety of neurotransmitters.

I've got several posts worth of information to sort out.  I also need to write up my talk. 

Comments

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

if anything great and new and interesting was said on cheap and effective biofeedback techniques you can teach yourself and implement on your own i'd be really eager to read about them.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

What kind of biofeedback? Is quantitative measurement important?

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

oh definitely not THAT specific, i would think, though if it were possible, let's say, with various android/iphone apps that would be cool. i'm thinking biofeedback for migraine control, heart rate, anxiety or panic attacks, asthma attacks, enforcing sleep or meditative/hypnotic states, or even the type that would be used on patients with mild tourette's or asperger's to help them get better control over their own behaviors.

things like that.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Someone recently figured out a clever hack for android phones that lets you take heart rate using the built-in camera and flash (since the two are next to one another). You put your thumb over the camera and flash, and the system looks for changes in brightness. Now it's only a matter of time before someone does an anxiety-reducing / meditation app that monitors heart rate variability and provides feedback.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

it'd be awesome if everything would work as one giant "body" hack, even without external devices. i tell my blood vessels in my brain to dilate, and they dilate, relieving the pressure from the migraine, etc.

[ferrouswheel.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing your learnings.

My stack has involved fish oil and choline as a base for the last 5 years, but other things vary. I also intentionally vary the amounts each day to avoid my body getting passive about expected amount (I have no evidence to back this up, but it's inspired by paleo type diets and fast days).

I will probably put more time into researching supplements, including low-level steroids, as I reach the male hump in my 30s when testosterone (among many other hormones) begin to decline.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's worth getting your hormone levels tested before mucking around with them. That will probably run you $300 or so, but it's worth it to know what you're doing. Hormone therapy is kind of like government subsidies -- it can have unintended consequences.

I do think your intuition about varying amounts is probably good.

[pumapreysize.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an interesting weekend. I trust that you've probably seen this from back in Feb, as it's one interesting way of organizing some of the info that you're talking about: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

Look forward to reading more about your talk.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Ooh... I like version 2 -- it has the conditions listed when you mouse over.

[thio.livejournal.com]

As always, fantastic info. Thanks for update!

Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk

[ruchira s. datta (from livejournal.com)]

http://www.foodproductdesign.com/news/2010/10/fish-oil-increases-ibd-colon-cancer-risk.aspx

Whoever said "fish oil" was probably being lazy--I suspect they meant "omega-3's".

Re: Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk

[ruchira s. datta (from livejournal.com)]

By the way, it's rather odd that the article I linked didn't make any mention of getting omega-3 from other sources, but instead suggested dosage limits on omega-3 as if omega-3 and fish oil were equivalent.

Re: Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they did mean Omega-3s. It's actually kind of tricky. There are three different Omega 3s, ALA, DHA, and EPA. Flax oil is only ALA, fish oil extract is more EPA/DHA. This is important since a lot of people can't convert ALA to DHA and EPA.

As for the increased risk of colon cancer, I can't get at the article, but I'm curious about the quantity the mice were consuming, and what the equivalent human dosage would be. Lots of supplements have an optimal range, where getting either too much or too little is bad.
(For this reason I always cringe a bit when I hear people say they're taking, say 50,000 IU of Vitamin D a day. People just tend to assume more of a good thing is even better.)

Re: Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk

[apneet jolly (from livejournal.com)]

They probably mean 50,000 IU a week - this seems to be the standard dose that physicians prescribe.

Re: Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

That's still 7000 IU a day. This is why I'm excited about the blood testing for Vitamin D levels -- then I can eliminate the guesswork.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Matt,

I also had some similar take-aways from the conference. I've been chatting with coworkers about how the main take-aways were to take Omega 3 supplements and Vitamin D supplements. That meditation for as little as 5 minutes a day can have huge health benefits. That mice missing some important nutrients have tests that are similar to irradiated mice, so that means that nutrition is very very important. You truly are what you eat. Of course in the past I've justified eating expensively and "well" sometimes because I say that what I eat is largely going back into the cells of my body and well frankly I'm worth it! :)

Omega 3:

Some attendee (but not necessarily a speaker at the conference) recommended Nordic Naturals for their Omega 3 supplements.

I seem to recall taking notes about the DHA / EPA ratio for Omega 3 and everyone had said that if you could you would want to take a supplement that had a higher ratio of DHA to EPA. More than one person said that you wanted the DHA to EPA ratio of DHA to be greater than 1.

Do you know how much Omega 3 is recommended to everyone a day? I remember one speaker recommending 3g of Omega 3 a day.

Vitamin D:

It seemed like they suggested around 1000-2000IU for vitamin D a day (but of course they suggested that everyone take the 25 Hdroxy vitamin D test just to make sure with you wanting target range result in the 50-80 range).

Looking up information on Vitamin D, there appears to be D2 and D3. Do you know of a ratio that is recommended for those?

They also seemed to mention magnesium as well, but I don't recall hearing a particular dosage recommendation for this, just that people deficient in Vitamin D are also typically magnesium deficient as well. Mostly because I think people might take or get too much calcium, so there needs to be a balance between calcium and Vitamin D + magnesium.

Other supplements:

For the eyes they recommended lutein and zeaxanthin, and that lutein at least had a higher rate of absorption in humans as compared to Vitamin A.

Other nutrition questions:

So I realized at the conference that they mentioned over and over again that you should avoid high fructose corn syrup especially and sugar in general, but I also noticed that noone really mentioned sodium and if there are any ideal water intake suggestions. Are these just things that are just that plain obvious that they don't need to mention them? Like how sodium/salt is bad and of course you should make sure to drink 8 glasses of water?

And my action items?

I haven't done too many, but I have been drinking more green tea. I need to do more research into the Omega-3 and Vitamin D supplements, buy them and start taking them. And I'd like to craft an exercise regimen that works for me. It sounds like you don't have to exercise a crazy number of hours a week as long as you are doing some of the more efficient (but not necessarily fun) kind of exercise like interval training, strength training, and some cardio. Also I would love to throw some regular yoga/meditation into the mix. I've definitely noticed in myself that I get much bitchier when I don't get enough regular yoga in my life.

Let me know if you find any supplements that you think are good and I'll let you know if I do start taking some of these on a regular basis.

Helen

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

First, I'll say that I'm no expert on this stuff. You should really do your own research.

Omega-3: 3g a day is a lot. Naively, I'd recommend sticking to the doses recommended on the labels, which usually come to about 500mg a day of each EPA and DHA. I recall reading a study that there is diminished benefit beyond 500mg, and I recall another study of mice that found that very high levels can lead to an increase in cancer risk. Re: EPA/DHA ratios, I'd recommend looking up what ratio is typical for actual fish... it is what we evolved to eat.

Re: sodium and water... I've heard contradictory things about sodium, but one thing Ive heard that makes intuitive sense is that you can make up for having more sodium by drinking more water. Drinking lots of water is generally a good idea anyway.

[integreillumine.livejournal.com]

Hey Helen,
D3 is generally considered far better (bioavailable). Just google D3 vs D2.

People disagree on EPA:DHA ratios; it depends on what you're treating. EPA is more for heart/joint, DHA more for brain/mood. 2:1 seems to be a common one at higher levels.

Some level of salt is good/super-important, we just often eat too much with processed foods. (Same goes for saturated fat.)

I have an old email on sups I'll send you if you like.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

I've done some research on deprenyl in the past, I wouldn't call it unknown in the life extension community. But I don't think it's worth taking until you are 40+.