Define “extend lifespan” are we talking about extending it beyond the human genetic limit of 120 years or are we talking about extending it beyond the “average” statistical lifespan?
To me the word lifespan is pretty much meaningless.
I prefer health span as we currently have no way to extend lifespan beyond 120 so I prefer to focus on maintaining health over the time I have left to live. That time is based on statistics.
In Canada the statistical lifespan is 83.1
In the US the statistical lifespan is 79.3
As far as the epigenetic markers not being helpful in managing health span, I could not agree more. They don’t mean a lot compared to other tests that do matter and are actionable.
But epigenetic testing does provide insight into other aspects of health, some of which are actionable.
The Dunedin PACE test doesn’t provide actionable input but statistically it appears to indicate overall mortality risk. Combine that with “regular” tests and you have a bit better picture of what may be influencing your health span 
I do know that what I’ve been doing over the past 5 years has improved all my typical blood tests and at the same time improved my Dunedin PACE results.
The best part is I can share my Dunedin PACE without revealing my personal health history. Although as a Canadian sharing personal health history is not as big a deal as it is for Americans. Universal health care doesn’t care about my history
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I would agree that the correct target is healthspan. I am quite happy with compressed morbidity as a concept. Realistically, however, an extended healthspan is likely to have an extended lifespan.
However, I have stopped spending money on methylation tests.
They don’t to me provide any actionable information and I think there is a danger of targeting something like DunedinPACE when it is not clear what it actually means.
Bryan Johnson targets DunedinPACE. However, he does not take Rapamycin.
Much that we can discuss dosing strategies with Rapamycin it does appear to be a useful tool to improve mitochondrial efficiency.
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Dr.Bart
#535
“I am aging slower than anyone in the world”
Given that that a tiny fraction of the world population (.000000001%) is participating in the age olympics nonsense, that’s quite a bold statement.
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If he is aging that slowly why does he need to use botox.
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And really it doesn’t matter because the maximum lifespan ever achieved was only 122 years (excluding myths like the 2XX year old Chinese man or biblical figures).
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AnUser
#538
You had to deal with a lot of infectious disease in the past though from water, living quarters, food, etc. Inhibiting mTOR via gene mutations doesn’t help with that.
Tangentially related:
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The same when he said he has the cleanest plasma in world… Last friday when I donate mine the nurse was happy about the color and texture of it. It was fat-free and “really beautiful” she said. I like Bryan Johnson be he definitely have an ego problem. Bro is not a god.
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I don’t think he does. His testing regimen is very extensive, this is just one that is easy to share and gamifies the process. Not only that but it’s readily accessible and it’s a managed process for all who want to participate. Gives people an apples to apples thing
The $2M he supposedly spends annually is mostly on testing and since the D_Pace done quarterly is about $1k a year, his other tests are providing the “real” guidance.
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Dr.Bart
#541
If we could ever do an life time closed lab experiment where we have a small human community living in biosphere type of sterile environment, where we can control the air quality, water quality, food etc and choose human subjects with genetic longevity predisposition and observe their offspring from birth to death. And somehow offset the mental issues associated with captivity. Maybe then we could figure out the true human lifespan. Lab mice live almost twice as long as wild mice, so it is possible than under right conditions we could get higher numbers for humans.
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If you understand the elastin problem, then you will know the maximum human life span is 120 regardless of living in a bubble.
Until that puzzle is solved everything being done is about health span, not lifespan.
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I think the ECM can be maintained
I think it’s just marketing, to be honest. Bold claims to get attention.
As for epigenetic tests, it’s a super interesting concept to have an actual biomarker that we can track, but right now I personally put little weight in them. Maybe in the next 10 years we’ll have something which is more reliable.
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The ECM is not 1 thing, elastin is one of the components.
Collagens, Elastin, Fibronectin, Laminins, Tenascins, Growth factors, and MMPs
All the other factors in the ECM are or seem to be addressable.
The extracellular matrix: Structure, composition, age-related differences, tools for analysis and applications for tissue engineering - PMC .
On top of that elastin is present in organs and structures that cannot function without elastin.
Elastin is an extracellular matrix protein and is most abundant in tissues where elasticity is of major importance, such as blood vessels (50% of dry weight), elastic ligaments (70% of dry weight), lungs (30% of dry weight) and skin (2–4% of dry weight)
Role of elastic fiber degradation in disease pathogenesis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925443923000728
Elastin is complex and the mechanism that makes it shuts off at puberty. Elastin has a 70 year half-life and if it was made continually we would be a ball of rubber
Repair of elastin is a challenging problem. One cannot just add elastin to a tissue and hope for improvement, as the precise structure, amount, and interactions with other components of the extracellular matrix are all important. The only realistic approach is to guide cells into performing the same work of elastic depositition that occurred in early life. This is not a solved problem, as it is quite possible to trigger behavior that leads to unhelpful or even harmful elastin deposition, in which the structure and amounts are incorrect. Regulatory networks must be clearly identified and then manipulated in the right ways.
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I think the ECM can be maintained including elastin.
The science seems to disagree with that idea.
If you do figure out how to restore elastin and can prove it, you will be a billionaire in no time Let me know when you can provide the solution as I’d be one of your first investors
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Dr.Bart
#548
Whatever research was done on elastin, it was NOT done in a controlled setting in humans. You cannot establish the actual in-vivo half life of Elastin WITHOUT controlled human studies and since we cannot put humans in a lab for the entire life we just don’t know. History of science is full of premature absolutist statements that were disproven later.
The earth is flat… Copernicus… not really.
The Newtonian laws of physics are absolute and cannot be broken… Einstein… well, it’s more complicated than that.
Here is one company working on this problem.
https://elastin-biosciences.com/
Elastin has been studied extensively and the half life is not in dispute in any of the papers I’ve read. How it’s formed, when it’s formed, what breaks it down, how to protect it, why there is currently no solution to this problem are also well established. I’ve provided a number of references related to this problem.
This is not an unknown issue, it’s been studied for 70 plus years. There are hundreds of papers on it.
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The ecm depends on elastin, collagen, hyalronic acid and some others in order to suppress cancer formation. The question is, at what levels does the lack of elastin no longer support life? At the age of 140 you should only have 25% elastin left but can you survive on less?
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Dr.Bart
#552
Again, how many of the life-span studies on Elastin were in-vivo studies in humans in a controlled laboratory setting ?
This is not an unknown issue, it’s been studied for 70 plus years. There are hundreds of papers on it.
That’s a poor argument. Alzheimer’s dementia was studied for 124 years and there are thousands of papers on it… and the scientists still don’t know what is causing it…(it’s not amyloid plaques).
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