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I stand in a safe room with several hundred people in the London Truman brewery, shaking all our hands over our heads, heading for the end of another day in Sxsw.
I will not lie – I had hoped that something like it would happen at some point of the week. Strange and offbeat moments like this really separate a fun conference from a boring conference. This particular moment is a mini -jet of a “rave of longevity” – an event style that appears in the world, managed by those who believe that music, movement and connection can have an impact on our health and our happiness in the long term.
“Genetics is a very small determinant of health – other factors are more important,” said Tina Brown, a social entrepreneur and a systems architect who co -founded the rave of longevity, told us a few minutes earlier. “The joy of life is a really powerful motivator.”
The idea of living longer and in better health is nothing new, but the science of aging is now better understood than ever, and methods to reduce the often substantial gap between our lifespan and the duration where we are able to remain healthy (known as the duration of health) are increasingly accessible. I have long been skeptical about the idea of investing a lot of time and money to try to live longer – but it may be because I supposed that it was not for people like me.
In 2017, I interviewed The entrepreneur of billionaire technology Bryan Johnson about his mission to level everyone, including himself, by setting up flea in our brain so that we can compete with AI. This conversation haunted me over the years. Even if I collapsed for me biohacking (I have a hand in hand to perform basic tasks linked to smartphones), I would plead for a cautious approach.
Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson talks about taking extreme measures in the name of longevity.
Since then, the name of Johnson has become synonymous with taking extreme measures to reverse aging and prolonging his life – among them, injecting the blood of his 17 -year -old son in his 47 -year -old body (he has since stopped this practice in favor of “the total exchange of plasma”). The quest for longevity is often associated with the Biohacker billionaires boys from Silicon Valley like Johnson and the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, which makes him alienating and inaccessible.
This is why in Sxsw London, I was curious to see not one but two entirely female panels discussing reverse aging and the extent of our health laments. The panels did not engage in the type of anti-aging rhetoric with whom I grew up, which requires that women do everything in their power to stay young and beautiful. Even if, like the Canadian actress Katherine Ryan joked during one of the signs, women should avoid stress while remaining single, because “it makes you ugly, married to a loser”.
The new science of aging
Ryan organizes a podcast called What’s My Age again ?, In which she interviews celebrities who have undergone tests to determine their biological age as a starting point to discuss their own relationship with aging.
Women of celebrities, perhaps more than any of us, live inside a vanity pressure cooker, where their appearance is constantly judged. It is fair to say that a wave of famous women, from Kardashians to Meghan Trainor, expressed all the many steps they have taken to reverse their aging.
Aside from the cosmetic advantages, the advantages of health and quality of life often make the most convincing case for the continuation of longevity. With more women with babies later, they want to maintain their young energy to be present, active parents, said Ryan. In addition, for many of us, there is a significant difference between the number of years that make up our lifespan and the number of years that we remain healthy. But many believe that this gap is ours for the fence.
“The biological age of a person and chronological age often does not correspond,” said Nichola Conlon, a molecular biologist and CEO of the Nuchido health aging society, which is a frequent guest on the Ryan podcast. “Everyone is associated with a number … This kind of importance no longer matters.”
Katherine Ryan, on the left, and Nichola Conlon in Sxsw London.
In the past, scientists thought that the way we age was a fixed process determined almost entirely by our genetics. This is no longer the case (as confirmed by several Studies evaluated by peers This confirmation of aging is influenced by several factors). “Aging is a malleable process, as we find,” said Brown. Science evolves quickly, and there is even a Xprize HealthspanOffering $ 101 million to all those who can find a solution to drop 10 to 20 years off.
We already know that aging is influenced by various factors, in addition to genetics – largely how we live our lives. As such, it is important that we try to understand our body and treat them well, which is a fairly universal advice.
“You can live healthier at the ripe age if you stop following the general guidelines and follow your data instead,” said Deepti Agarwal, a doctor specializing in healthy aging, during a panel to assess the duration of health during the lifespan.
This approach, known as precision medicine, recommends a tailor -made approach, rather than a large health size. He removes a lot from the conjecture of medicine, but is not without his criticism.
Longevity, but only for some selected?
The transfer of responsibility for aging to the individual can reduce support for public health measures, said Timothy Caulfield, professor and research director at the Health Law Institute of the University of Alberta, not speaking to Sxsw, but on the Atlantic How to challenge the death podcast (A deep dive, I would recommend if you want to know more).
All this stresses very well that you control your own longevity if you have time, money and resources to take care of yourself, he said. But this is simply not the case for many people, which means that trying to prolong the longevity has the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities. He added that it also sends the message to people that “if you don’t do it, you fail”.
It also creates a space for the well-being industry to use people’s anxieties by selling them products according to affirmations adjacent to the summary sciences which are not necessarily supported by a set of robust evidence, said Caulfield.
There is an important conversation to have equal access to longevity treatments as it becomes more common, said Cat Wiles, founder and CSO of the Spark Marketing Agency, which appeared in the panel alongside Ryan and Conlon. “We are already starting to see signs of warning on inequalities,” she said. Age racks can increase among the rich elite, but in poorer areas, the reverse is often true.
Private health companies already give people who can afford IT tools to improve their health, and it would be worrying to think that insurance premiums could be linked to your organic age, added Wiles.
Conlon has hope, however, that we will reach a point where longevity medicine is so affordable that it will become “contrary to ethics” for doctors so as not to help you slow down or reverse your aging. Many most extreme measures taken by billionaire biohackers – Johnson’s blood exchange, for example – will probably remain inaccessible (as well as not very recommendable) for most of us. The same thing might not be true of other solutions.
Nuchido, the Société de Conlon, made Nad more supplementswhich are popular among celebrities and have evidence to support their use of anti-aging, although they are the subject of in progress.
During the panel of the health period, Tamsin Lewis, a doctor who founded the wellgevity of the deraction company, said that the intravenous NADs are not the answer to slow down your aging rate. It will slow down your finances, however. Instead, she and the other women in her panel advocated to prioritize cheaper interventions.
What really works?
This may not be what you want to hear if you are ready to throw money into the problem, but the best scientific evidence that we currently owe to support healthy aging and longevity are obvious solutions: we must prioritize nutrition, sun exposure, movement and construction of the muscle.
“We wear this meat jacket, but it is really a scaffolding for our longevity,” said Lewis. “It protects our brain, our bones, our hips, our sleep and our blood sugar.”
Other key factors include sleeping enough, minimizing stress, maximizing resilience and strengthening our emotional and mental health.
“The movement of longevity has bogged down in biohacking bros,” said Nikolina Glauc, co -founder and CEO of glycanage, a company that uses biomarkers to detect the disease on the molecular level. The greatest thing that has made a difference for her in her own quest to prolong her life is psychotherapy, she added.
While Lewis finishes the session with Breathwork and the mini rave, I feel like I was on a whole trip through the culture of longevity. I feel skeptical about some of the costly reverse aging options that I have encountered, which are a bit like a culture of well-being exploiting dressed in a dubious science. I also worry about unequal access to reverse aging solutions and social and public health impacts.
At the same time, I feel supported by some of the current research, in particular by what Brown calls “connection science”, which it explores through dance, music and the community.
“In the end, humans must be with other people,” she said. Of all the advice I have received, I feel the easiest to follow – and even if it does not end the stopwatch for me, it will keep me at least healthy and happy for the duration of my lifespan.
