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Life extension conference decompression
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.
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.
Re: Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk
Re: Fish Oil Increases IBD, Colon Cancer Risk