Tag Archives: Longevity

Uploading Our Consciousness

May 19, 2023 tremendousblog 1 Comment

The year is 2166. I am 180 years old and my body is beginning to fail. Time to upload my memories.

Advancements in biology could soon have us living much longer than ever before. But even if our bodies can’t reach immortality, perhaps our minds can.

Imagine a future in which an LLM trains on everything we see, do or say.

It reads all my blog posts. It hears me comfort a friend after a breakup.

My life is the training data.

In time, it would begin to reason and speak like me. The better the model and the more data it digests, the closer to me it would become.

After it had some time to practice, I could sit down alongside it. You could ask me a question then ask FrankGPT the same question.

When there are differences, we correct FrankGPT. Soon, the answers would be the same.

What we’ve created is a model of my consciousness.

And if it knows what I know, sees what I’ve seen, and thinks what I think — is it not me?

Perhaps uploading our consciousness sounds fanciful.

But even today, a startup called Rewind can record all your online activity. You can then ask the AI questions, simulating a perfect memory.

Attach this to the AR headset Apple is about to release, then pipe the data into GPT-4. You now have a basic model of consciousness.

If this is possible with 2023 technology, what will be possible in 2166?

Not everyone wants to live forever. But I do — and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

Existing as a consciousness on a chip is not the same as our current life. But it could be a fascinating and rewarding existence.

From our position in the cloud, we could watch humans with bodies conquer the most remote parts of the solar system. And in time, maybe they’d even figure out how to get us a new body.

If I’m lucky, my next one might even have hair!

Do you want to upload your consciousness? Leave a comment and let us know!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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Business, Health, Science, Technology

Reversing Aging in Primates

April 25, 2023 tremendousblog Leave a comment

Researchers have reversed some signs of aging in mice. But it had never been done in primates — until now.

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Age reversal works in primates to restore vision. Announced by my collaborator Dr. Bruce Ksander & @lifebiosciences. Next up: age reversal in humans.
How’s that @elonmusk? 🚀https://t.co/qLCixcbPE0 1/10… pic.twitter.com/ZQUxz5Rymb
— David Sinclair (@davidasinclair) April 24, 2023

In what appears to be a major scientific breakthrough, Life Biosciences presented results showing the reversal of damage to the eye in non-human primates. From Life Bio’s press release:

Life Bio’s lead platform reprograms the epigenome of older animals to resemble that of younger animals via expression of three Yamanaka factors, Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, collectively known as OSK. The approach partially reprograms cells to resemble a more youthful state while retaining their original cellular identity. Previous data from Life Bio and academic researchers, which were also presented at ARVO 2023, have shown that treatment with OSK reverses retinal aging and restores vision in old mice in a mouse model of glaucoma. Now, with the data presented today at ARVO, the company has demonstrated restoration of visual function and increased nerve axon survival in [a non-human primate] model that mimics human NAION deficits in retinal ganglion cells.

The researchers intentionally damaged the eyes of primates with lasers. Gruesome, I know.

Then, they gave a series of injections that used Yamanaka factors to reprogram the cells, reversing the damage.

Similar eye problems can occur in humans, often associated with age. If researchers can reverse them in non-human primates, perhaps humans are next.

Professor David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School co-founded Life Bio. Sinclair’s lab did something similar in mice, published in Nature in 2020.

The recent Life Bio results are a corporate press release, not a peer reviewed study. But given this team’s track record, I’d bet the publication is coming any day now.

Consider the path of this research. First it’s in a test tube, then a mouse, then a monkey.
We’re getting closer and closer to humans.

Of course, this result is only about eyes. But if a few injections can fix that, what else can they fix?

Moreover, we’re seeing rapid progress on two fronts: genetics and AI. Where might this lead?

Perhaps in the near future, humans will live to be 250 years old. Throughout our lifetimes, we’ll be 100X more capable, thanks to our AI assistants.

And when medicine can no longer keep us going, we upload our consciousness to our preferred cloud provider and, in a sense, live forever.

That’s a future I look forward to.

What do you think is the future of longevity? Leave a comment and let us know!

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Photo: “Close-Up of the Human Eye – Primer plano del ojo humano” by Hugo Quintero is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Health

Fasting for a 53 Pound Weight Loss

April 21, 2023 tremendousblog 1 Comment

Did anyone not get fat during COVID?

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I know I did. With snacking one of the few activities still permissible by law, I ballooned up to 219 pounds by the summer of 2021.

Little things show you it’s gone too far.

Bending over to tie my shoes was no picnic. Ahh….picnics….

I knew I had to make a change. And while moderation can be a tough balance, you know what’s pretty simple?

Eating nothing.

I experimented with various fasting schedules until I found one that resulted in weight loss, week after week.

Here’s how I did it:

Schedule

Sunday: Skip breakfast and eat dinner only. (I’m not really into lunch.)

Monday: Fast all day.

Tuesday: Eat a normal, moderate diet.

Wednesday: Same.

Thursday: Fast all day.

Friday: Cheat day!

I eat as much as I want all day, including my favorite foods. Cookies, ice cream, chips, you name it.

But those foods are off limits the rest of the week.

Consuming a lot of calories one day per week can keep your metabolism high. It tells your body not to go into “starvation mode” and expend as little energy as possible to survive.

After all, the feast is coming!

I find including a cheat day makes it much easier for me to eat healthy the rest of the week.

It’s not that I can never have cookies. Just not until Friday.

Saturday: Eat a normal, moderate diet.

Workouts

I also work out five times a week. I generally do 4 cardio sessions of 30 minutes each and a strength session of about 30 minutes.

I try to put as many workouts as I can on fast days. Fasting and cardio together may improve longevity.

Electrolyte Supplementation

The key to fasting is keeping electrolyte levels in a healthy range. When your electrolytes get low, your life sucks.

You’re tired, your muscles ache, and your heart can race. Just trust me, it’s not pleasant.

So I never fast without electrolyte supplementation. I like to consume 4-6 eight ounce glasses of electrolyte replacement drink per day.

I usually buy a powdered electrolyte mix from Dollar General, which works great. I’ve also had good results with Liquid IV and Pedialyte.

Isn’t Fasting Dangerous?

Actually, fasting has a ton of health benefits.

In addition to weight loss, you can improve insulin resistance and immune response. You may even live longer too!

But of course, everyone’s body is different. Discussing it with your doctor is always a good idea.

Wrap-Up

If you’re getting chubby, you probably have a hard time with portion sizes. I do too!

That’s the magical thing about fasting. Portion sizes are easy.

Zero!

You also have a ton of free time to work, enjoy the outdoors, and pursue hobbies. It’s amazing how time consuming cooking, eating, and clean-up can be.

If you give it a shot, let me know how it goes! And when your fast is over, get one of these. 🙂

Have you tried fasting? Why or why not?

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Business, Science, Technology

Can A Scientific Dream Team End Aging?

February 3, 2022 tremendousblog Leave a comment

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No one wants to get old. But how can we stop and even reverse aging?

Perhaps a Dream Team of the world’s greatest scientists. And a whole lot of money.

Well, that just became a reality.

For those of us who follow venture capital, the news hit like a bomb. Previously unknown Altos Labs burst onto the scene with a $3 billion seed round, likely the largest early stage fundraise in history.

To put that in perspective, a typical seed round is more like $1-3 million.

Altos will be putting that money in the hands of some of the world’s top scientists.

Noted antiaging researchers like Izpisúa Belmonte and Alejandro Ocampo are on board. Nobel Laureates Shinya Yamanaka and Jennifer Doudna have also joined as advisers.

Altos has promised salaries over $1 million, generous research budgets, and autonomy. Plus, no more constant grant writing.

So can aging be reversed? New findings suggest it may be possible.

Just last September, researchers succeeded in reversing aging in mouse hearts using Shinya Yamanaka’s Yamanaka Factors:

…after two and a half decades of fitful starts and abandoned leads, Braun and a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute showed that they could reprogram heart cells in mice and get the animals to regenerate cardiac tissue after a heart attack. The breakthrough, published in Science, adds new evidence that it will eventually be possible to help patients recover muscle lost in heart attacks and gives another boon to anti-aging researchers who want to one day apply these rejuvenation techniques across much of the body.

Heart cells are some of the hardest to reprogram. If scientists can do this, what else can they accomplish?

David Sinclair at Harvard reversed aging in mouse eyes the year before. The pace of these breakthroughs seems to be increasing.

Any investor in startups always asks the founder “why now?” Why is now the right time to raise this money and build this business?

Altos has a very compelling “why now.”

The foundation for reversing aging has been laid by Yamanaka and others. Scientists worldwide are building on it rapidly, coming up with cure after cure for previously untreatable diseases.

I’m itching to see what Altos can accomplish. Best of luck to their incredible team!

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I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy!

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Health, Science

What Is the Ideal Amount of Exercise?

February 1, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

Above: Me sucking wind after a tough workout.

We often hear what the minimum amount of exercise we need is, but what amount of exercise is actually optimal? At what point have we reaped all the benefits exercise has to offer, and possibly even gone over the edge into damaging overtraining?

With the largest snowstorm in years lashing my apartment today, I thought it was as good a time as any to try to find an answer.

The federal government recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week. This establishes a useful lower bound we definitely shouldn’t dip below, but a highly cited study in JAMA Internal Medicine finds that you can get further longevity benefits by exercising a lot more:

the longevity benefit threshold appears to be approximately 3 to 5 times the recommended physical activity minimum

So, in order to be sure to get the maximum longevity benefit, you need to do five times the minimum recommended level of exercise. 5x the minimum recommended level would be 1 hour 47 minutes of moderate activity daily or 54 minutes of vigorous activity daily.

Furthermore, the study found no danger from exercising even more than what it takes to get the full longevity benefit:

there does not appear to be an elevated mortality risk with LTPA [leisure time physical activity] levels as high as 10 or more times the recommended minimum.

Looking at the differences between moderate and vigorous activity, I also wondered if one is better than the other. There doesn’t seem to be solid data to say that either moderate or vigorous activity is superior from a health perspective:

comprehensive reviews of the literature on physical activity and mortality report that overall volume of physical activity is associated with lower mortality risk but report mixed findings on the relative contributions of moderate- vs vigorous-intensity activities

So am I doing enough? Looking at the pedometer app on my phone, I’ve averaged 2.75 hours per day of walking (moderate intensity exercise) over the past year. I also do about 3-4 hours a week of vigorous exercise (yoga and strength training, mostly), so about 30 min daily.

So, I seem to be comfortably above the level needed to get the maximum longevity benefit. That said, counterintuitively, I sometimes find my mood is a little lower on days I don’t do vigorous activity. (You think you’d be happy for a rest day, but maybe not!) Just because I’m at the maximum amount of exercise to produce longevity benefits doesn’t mean that more exercise might not produce other benefits in terms of mental health, athletic ability, appearance, etc.

Since there appears to be no harm from even very high levels of activity, I may add another vigorous workout (likely yoga or calistenics) to my routine some weeks, depending on my schedule and desires at the time.

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Health, Science

New Research Identifies the Key Causes of Aging

January 29, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

Dr. Jeremy Walston, Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the study

I just read an interesting new study identifying the biggest causes of aging. The authors gathered a panel of leading experts on health and aging and asked them what the biggest risk factors are for failing health as the years go by. Here’s what they found:

Experts identified 13 factors predisposing to or clinically manifesting AACD [accelerated aging and cellular decline]. Among these, chronic diseases, obesity, and unfavorable genetic background were considered as the most important.
Early detection of accelerated aging and cellular decline (AACD): A
consensus statement

None of the risk factors will shock you, but seeing all the key risks laid out in order of importance can really help guide our decision making:

One risk stood out above all:

smoking was consistently viewed as the most prominent risk factor

So if you’re smoking, definitely consider quitting! I recently shared how I put down the cigarettes 6 years ago. Hopefully my experience can help.

These risks mostly boil down to either what you put into your body or what you do with your body. Here’s how I try to mitigate these risks:

Sleeping 8-9 hours a night
Exercising at least 4 times a week, in addition to walking at least 4 miles every day
Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and avoiding too many processed foods
Meditating most days, generally for 10-20 minutes

Although I did, incongruously, read this article while eating some potato chips, so there’s room for improvement! 🙂 Have a great weekend everyone!

Health, Life

How I Quit Smoking

January 7, 2021 tremendousblog 1 Comment

Six years ago, I did something people say is almost impossible. I quit smoking, and I haven’t touched tobacco since.

Here’s a secret: it’s very, very possible.

I smoked about a pack a day of cigarettes for over 7 years, and as I was about to get married, I thought about how I had to prioritize my health now that someone else would be depending on me. What’s more, I knew all the disastrous health impacts, and wanted to quit eventually anyhow. But I had always pushed that date conveniently into the future.

Until January 20, 2015. That was the quit date I set for myself. In the two weeks prior to quitting, I reduced my consumption from about a pack a day (20 cigarettes) to 10. I maintained that for a week, and found it fairly easy. This was based on the concept of drug tapering, which I learned about working in medical organizations as a software consultant. I had tried Chantix in the past, a prescription drug designed to help you quit smoking, but I found the taper more effective.

A week later (January 13), I reduced that to five cigarettes a day. That’s when things got interesting. I experienced a degree of nicotine withdrawal and cravings, but I could still have a few cigarettes per day, which helped salve the wound.

When January 20 came along, I was actually looking forward to quitting. I had already gone through a lot of the withdrawal. And I was looking forward to the benefits of not having to go outside in the cold to smoke and not incinerating money, among others.

I remember tossing away that final cigarette, a Camel Turkish Gold, on a cold day and heading back upstairs. I was done. And although I expected to feel dread, I actually felt glad, if a little whistful.

Within 3 days, I felt my brain and body functioning better. It felt like oxygen was actually hitting my system for the first time in years! I felt exhilaration and energy, which is something not many people mention when quitting smoking. If you can make it through those first 3 days, there’s likely a big payoff waiting.

Nearly 6 years later, I’m able to do things I could never have done before. When I sprint up stairs or hike up a mountain or do a hardcore strength training session, I think to myself that my lungs could’ve never withstood this before. I’m also not a slave to a habit that has me going outside every few minutes in any weather, desperately counting the hours until I can get off an airplane, and scurrying to convenience stores for the next fix.

The reality is, if you are ready to quit, and you make a plan and stick to it, it’s really not that hard. Imagine yourself sitting on the couch all day watching TV, gut sticking out, eating Doritos and cake. If you’re quitting smoking, and you didn’t smoke that day, that day was a 100%, unqualified success! How often can you say that about such an unproductive day? You see, the bar is set very low: just don’t do this one thing.

On the 20th, I plan to take myself out for a nice dinner. Whatever it costs will be a fraction of what cigarettes would have. And more importantly, I have a longer and healthier life to look forward to.

Tremendous

Tag Archives: Longevity

Uploading Our Consciousness

Reversing Aging in Primates

Fasting for a 53 Pound Weight Loss

Can A Scientific Dream Team End Aging?

What Is the Ideal Amount of Exercise?

New Research Identifies the Key Causes of Aging

How I Quit Smoking

An angel investor's take on life and business