2020.0927 - Health: Revisiting "Immortality" at age 35
My plan for increasing effective lifespan, aka health-span
Welcome to the first edition of the Mingdom Moment newsletter! For long time subscribers of the Mingdom Monthly newsletter, this is a rebrand to reflect the not-even-close-to-monthly nature of my posts.
“Moment” is a chance for me to write about what is most significant to me at the current moment. I'm writing to improve my writing, gain clarity on topics of interest to me, and to keep in touch with my close friends and family.
In this edition... I'm going to focus on the topic of health and longevity. This topic is near and dear my heart and cardiovascular system. I hope you enjoy and can benefit from this in some small way.
Health: Revisiting "Immortality" at age 35
If you were to ask me at any point in the last 15 years what my "goal in life" was, you'd probably hear some mention of "immortality" in my response. I'm not sure to what degree that answer would have been given in jest; I think I was mostly serious with one caveat: my younger self is less likely to take seriously or care deeply about mortality compared to my future self.
At 35, the world is more nuanced than my 20s. I feel much less invincible, I am more skeptical but still overall optimistic. Perhaps my optimism on the topic is simply tempered with better-adjusted expectations based on evidence. I have more first-hand evidence of aging as well as more time to gather evidence on human aging as a whole.
While I've always been interested in this topic, 2020 thus far has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride which rekindled my obsession:
February 28th: I had finally achieved the fitness goals set in August 2018... become a V6 climber and get bodyweight under 143lb. The weight goal is self-explanatory and trivial to measure. The climbing goal is based on my progress in 2019 to consistentlysendV6s and getting my first Stone Gardens V7. This was almost exactly a week before we started working from home due to COVID.
March 7th: the day Axon started WFH (Work From Home) lockdowns due to COVID. My main source of physical activity in climbing abruptly stopped.
July 5th: I broke my left foot on the last day of the July Fourth long weekend, while literally taking a walk in the park! Spent the next 8 weeks putting little to no weight on that foot. I'm still recovering from this today.
September 17th: My latest annual physical showed that I had LDL (aka the bad cholesterol) of 166 mg/dL. The normal range ends at 99mg/dL. While I've had higher than normal LDL before, this was by far a personal record.
During the COVID WFH period, I've let myself go on what was already a pretty loose diet; I've experienced bouts of stress and poor sleep. My life became largely sedentary. My weight hasn't gone up much, but that's probably only because I'm losing muscles at a faster rate than I'm gaining fat.
In contrast to my sedentary lifestyle, Xuxu has been killing it with her running and climbing training. She started to run in April and did her first half-marathon by August! I think her long legs definitely provided an unfair advantage though =P
All this to say that at this moment, my wellness & fitness is at an all-time low and the rate of decline feels drastic. This is the catalyst and wake-up call I need to seriously revisit what it takes to seriously get back to good health. First health, next fitness, then onward to immortality!
What's my current take on "immortality"?
It seems overwhelmingly unlikely that I will achieve biological immortality. Countless humans have sought immortality in the time past, no one has done it yet.
Global lifespan on average has increased drastically over the last century. However, most of this came from discoveries like antibiotics that affect average lifespan rather than max. So while I'm statistically more likely to reach age 90 than prior generations, nothing has moved the needle for going beyond 90.
I'm still optimistic. My optimism comes from the fact that I'm still pretty young and we might be on the horizon of breakthroughs. We are finally at a point where we understand the biological mechanism for aging, and more research and funding are going into this field than ever before.
So while I no longer think true biological immortality is achievable, there's a good chance still at catching the ride for breakthrough life-extension tech in the next 10 to 30 years. While there's little to no evidence that we can turn back the clock on aging (yet), we've made progress in both defining the clock and we understand pathways to slow down the clock.
How to slow down the biological clock? My plan so far...
My strategy for delaying mortality is based on two facts:
The vast majority of people (~80%) die from the following 4 causes:
Cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Disease of metabolism
Cancer
Alzheimer's or Dementia
Accidents, like a car crash or falling
Studies in centenarians have shown that the causes of mortality for centenarians are much the same as a normal person. The main difference is that the onset of chronic diseases is delayed by 10-20 years.
So the prominent theory on healthy aging thus far is that we can gain 20 years by delaying the onset of chronic diseases. This is great news for me as I'm someone with average genetics based on family history: I've not won the genetic lottery to have ancestors who are centenarians but also no history of early onset of chronic disease. My most likely cause of death as I age is cardiovascular disease, and the high cholesterol confirms this. The silver lining here is that we understand how to prevent cardiovascular diseases pretty well at this point, much better than cancer or Alzheimer's.
Hence, my primary goal is to get healthy and fit from a cardiovascular health perspective and increase general wellness to slow down aging for the next 30 years.
I'm not a health professional. My profession is in software engineering, specifically as an engineering manager. In my profession, there's a common pattern for planning against goals:
Identify the problem or goal and a set of metrics to measure it
Evaluate potential solutions, create an action plan, and start!
Measure again and iterate: repeat step 1 and 2
With this strategy in mind, my tactics are as follows:
While the above plan is highly individualized to me, the theory column should be more globally applicable. I've done a good amount of research on this over the last two months, mostly through following the works of David Sinclair and Peter Attia.
Ultimately, I'd like to develop better habits that I can stick with for the long term. So I'm deliberately not starting all the things at once. I just became able to walk again about a month ago, so the last month has been about getting my legs to be used to walking again. I also started a daily meditation practice a little over a month ago.
As I build up these habits, I hope to both feel better and show measurable improvements, definitely by my next blood test.
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
That’s it for this moment, thank you for reading! Would love any thoughts, feedback, or a random note from you all =)
Happiness >> immortality. Make sure you don't fall again - whatever the reason was.
Re: longevity - maybe also consider where you choose to live?
https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/interactives/whereyouliveaffectshowlongyoulive.html