I’ve been reading Dr. Joe Dispenza’s magnum opus, “Becoming Supernatural,” which encourages the reader as its central proposition to adopt the mindset that thoughts, upstream of feelings, heavily influence reality and, in fact, can create it.
A lot of it comes off as very New Age to my well-hardened, skeptical 21st-century Western mind, which I very much inherited from people I used to admire and many I still do — such as Christopher Hitchens, H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, et al. — but I am diligent about suspending disbelief in the pursuit of giving it the college try and finding out how true the claim is that reality is a malleable construct of the mind.
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In the opening chapter, Dispenza cites the story of a Chinese man of the 18th century reputed to have lived beyond 200 years — which sounds crazy on its face. But strangely, his story was widely reported contemporaneously in various Western outlets like the New York Times.
Via Wikipedia (emphasis added):
Whereas Li Ching-Yuen himself claimed to have been born in 1736, Wu Chung-Chieh, a professor of the Chengdu University, asserted that Li was born in 1677: according to a 1930 New York Times article, Wu discovered Imperial Chinese government records from 1827 congratulating Li on his 150th birthday, and further documents later congratulating him on his 200th birthday in 1877. In 1928, a New York Times correspondent wrote that many of the old men in Li's neighborhood asserted that their grandfathers knew him when they were boys, and that he at that time was a grown man.
A correspondent of The New York Times reported that "many who have seen him recently declare that his facial appearance is no different from that of persons two centuries his junior." Gerontological researchers have called his age claim "fantastical" and also noted that his age at death, 256 years, was chosen as a multiple of 8, which is considered good luck in China. Additionally, the connection of Li's age to his spiritual practices has been pointed to; researchers perceived that "these types of things [the myth that certain philosophies or religious practices allow a person to live to extreme old age] are most common in the Far East".
One of Li's disciples, the Taijiquan Master Da Liu, told of his master's story: when 130 years old Master Li encountered in the mountains an older hermit, over 500 years old, who taught him Baguazhang and a set of Qigong with breathing instructions, movements training coordinated with specific sounds, and dietary recommendations. Da Liu reports that his master said that his longevity "is due to the fact that he performed the exercises every day – regularly, correctly, and with sincerity – for 120 years."
How old Li Ching-Yuen actually was is obviously up for dispute.
But the account, however fantastical, does open the door for a broader conversation about what the upper limit of human longevity really is, especially in an era of unprecedented knowledge and technology.
Harvard genetics professor David Sinclair — widely marketed as the figurehead of the “longevity” movement — has, for instance, claimed to reverse his biological age through a combination of supplements like resveratrol and metformin (originally a diabetes drug), avoiding sugar, and intermittent fasting.
Via Fortune Well (emphasis added):
David Sinclair keeps a relatively strict daily schedule to stay healthy, which includes green matcha tea, polyphenols in a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt in the morning, and an occasional bite of 80% dark chocolate…
He doesn’t exercise every day nor sleep more than six hours a night usually, he tells GQ in a recent interview (standard guidelines recommend between seven to nine hours of sleep each night and 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week).
Still, he says his regimen has helped him stay biologically 10 years younger than his age—underscoring a modern phenomenon called reverse aging by combating age-related disease and decline.
Is aging a disease? A growing movement categorizes it as such, whereas it was once considered the natural and inevitable product of time.
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Via The Lancet (emphasis added):
What are the advantages of classifying ageing as a pathogenic process? Advanced age increases the risk of developing multiple non-communicable diseases. It is also often accompanied by a loss of intrinsic physiological reserve and decreased resilience to external stressors. If ageing can be viewed as a pathological process, then it allows researchers to look at the pathophysiological mechanisms of ageing itself with a view to finding targetable mechanisms of action that slow the rate of ageing. This is based on preclinical data showing that ageing is, at least in part, a genetically encoded process conserved across species. Strikingly, many of the identified pathways of interest or note in preclinical ageing research have also been implicated in age-related disease pathogenesis—eg, cancers and diabetes.
Consequently, there is a strong argument that by targeting ageing pathways we could potentially strike at the source of multiple seemingly unrelated diseases. Advocates of this position believe that such a focus would improve people's healthspans (the interval of life which is largely unaffected by disease) and, in addition, is likely to prolong lifespan as a consequence of removing or delaying the commencement of potentially fatal endogenous diseases.
Before we get into quantitative judgments about how to stop or reverse aging, the first question has to be: Can aging actually be measured objectively?
If so, what are the metrics?
Via Cell (medical journal) (emphasis added):
Aging is driven by hallmarks fulfilling the following three premises: (1) their age-associated manifestation, (2) the acceleration of aging by experimentally accentuating them, and (3) the opportunity to decelerate, stop, or reverse aging by therapeutic interventions on them. We propose the following twelve hallmarks of aging: genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, loss of proteostasis, disabled macroautophagy, deregulated nutrient-sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, altered intercellular communication, chronic inflammation, and dysbiosis. These hallmarks are interconnected among each other, as well as to the recently proposed hallmarks of health, which include organizational features of spatial compartmentalization, maintenance of homeostasis, and adequate responses to stress.
At least some of those metrics can be positively influenced with lifestyle changes, diet, and sometimes targeted supplementation. For example, telomeres — the protective endcaps on DNA — are shown to be lengthened through exercise.
Via UCSF (emphasis added):
A small pilot study shows for the first time that changes in diet, exercise, stress management and social support may result in longer telomeres, the parts of chromosomes that affect aging.
It is the first controlled trial to show that any intervention might lengthen telomeres over time…
Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that affect how quickly cells age. They are combinations of DNA and protein that protect the ends of chromosomes and help them remain stable. As they become shorter, and as their structural integrity weakens, the cells age and die quicker.
In recent years, shorter telomeres have become associated with a broad range of aging-related diseases, including many forms of cancer, stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis and diabetes.
For five years, the researchers followed 35 men with localized, early-stage prostate cancer to explore the relationship between comprehensive lifestyle changes, and telomere length and telomerase activity. All the men were engaged in active surveillance, which involves closely monitoring a patient’s condition through screening and biopsies.
Ten of the patients embarked on lifestyle changes that included: a plant-based diet (high in fruits, vegetables and unrefined grains, and low in fat and refined carbohydrates); moderate exercise (walking 30 minutes a day, six days a week); stress reduction (gentle yoga-based stretching, breathing, meditation). They also participated in weekly group support.
They were compared to the other 25 study participants who were not asked to make major lifestyle changes.
The group that made the lifestyle changes experienced a “significant” increase in telomere length of approximately 10 percent. Further, the more people changed their behavior by adhering to the recommended lifestyle program, the more dramatic their improvements in telomere length, the scientists learned.
As medical technology advances, the ability to manipulate telomeres and all of the hallmarks of aging will presumably get exponentially easier and cheaper.
But, finally, supposing it’s possible to actually reverse aging and live forever or something closer to forever, is doing so the moral thing to do? Were humans designed to live and die? Is morality an essential part of humanity?
I don’t have the hubris to pretend to have an answer to those questions.
That sounds like a question best posed to God. Or, failing that, “Star Trek” writers.
