Who wants to live forever?
Imagine a world where world leaders and billionaires double their age spans. The Don’t Die movement is raising eyebrows.
Living forever is a hot topic among the rich, famous, and powerful.
As they walked and chatted during the recent military parade in Beijing, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and China’s Xi Jinping were caught on microphone discussing how they could live to 150 years old.
Putin suggested that repeated organ transplants might even mean that people live forever.
Xi, who is 72, told Putin, “Earlier, people rarely lived to 70 – but these days, at 70 years you are still a child.”
The Russian president, also 72, replied, “With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted, and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality.”
Kim, just 41, did not speak during the discussion, “but smiled as he listened intently”, according to news reports.
The world leaders are not alone in contemplating immortality.
Bryan Johnson founded the payments company Braintree. In 2013, Braintree was acquired by PayPal, netting Johnson a reported $300 million.
Since then, he’s been making and pumping money into his Don’t Die movement and what he’s selling as “Project Blueprint”, an anti-ageing program designed to help him live, if not forever, then significantly longer than most imagine possible.
ABC radio’s specialist research medical expert and host of the Health Report program, Dr Norman Swan, has put the project under the microscope and we’ll read his conclusions a little later. But first, what’s the blueprint?
It’s a list of highly regimented lifestyle and health routines and interventions including:
Hyper-specific food intake (2,250 calories per day, broken down into specific amounts of protein, fat, and carbs)
50-plus vitamins, minerals, and supplements
Comprehensive exercise routines
Regimented sleep routines
Red light therapy
Blood testing
Edgier things such as a gene therapy not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and only available in Honduras and Dubai, and creepier things like receiving a plasma transfusion from his teenage son.
The Health Report recently devoted time to analysing Johnson’s health regime, saying there’s little need to go as far as him because we are already living longer and better than ever before.
“So, unless something bad happens to you, a lot of people, particularly if you’re middle class and well educated and you’ve got money in your pocket, you're going to live to your 90s and hit your 90s in pretty good shape,” Dr Swan said on the program.
“So, it’s already happening... through better diet, more exercise, not smoking, and so on.”
Dr Swan also described Johnson’s “obsession” with nocturnal erections. According to some reports, he gives his penis electric shocks, and he takes Tadalafil (Cialis), which is in the same family of drugs as Viagra.
Johnson argues it increases blood flow and maybe improves other parameters of ageing as well. Dr Swan is sceptical but admits one study from Britain suggests that sex does promote healthy longevity.
Johnson is also on Metformin, a diabetes drug, and Dr Swan says there is some evidence that it slows down some of the aspects of biological ageing.
While some of Johnson’s food, supplement, exercise, and sleep routines meet with Dr Swan’s approval, the broadcaster is sceptical about “the biggest headline grabber”: Johnson injecting himself with his son’s plasma, which is the fluid around blood cells.
Is there any scientific basis for this?
Dr Swan: “There’s a little bit, but it’s a confusing area. Initially the idea scientifically was (if you can call it science) that young people, young animals, have some sort of thing in their blood which is the elixir of youth. And therefore if you give the blood of a younger person to an older person, they are going to be rejuvenated.
However, experiments where older people have received a control substance – saline –measures of ageing also seemed to slow down.
“… what's going on here is probably a dilution of the toxic substances from senescent cells. These are cells that don't properly die, they hang around, they produce toxic substances which are thought to promote ageing and other problems,” dr Swan explained
Eat less, live longer?
There is research that suggests eating less can help you live longer, but Dr Swan cautions the results come from animal experiments where a 30% decrease in calories led to a 30% increase in lifespan in animals.
“It's not proven in humans and it’s not proven in real life, because your immune system might be affected, you might be more susceptible to infection, all sorts of things may happen which haven't been fully tested,” he said.
He cautioned such a diet could lead to eating disorders or disordered eating, which could be deadly.
Dr Swan’s key objection to Johnson’s blueprint is that it has no medical or scientific basis, apart from being an experiment on himself.
“ … he's doing so much you haven’t got a clue what’s going to work, because he is calorie restricted by 10%, he’s doing a lot of exercise, and it’s likely that if he gets any benefits, those things alone are probably doing it. But then he’s taking all this other stuff.”
And that, according to the doctor leads to the body getting confused about what it's actually having and pushing back.
“But what Johnson and others are doing is high doses of lots of stuff, lots of different things, and they will interact with each other, the body will react to them, and it just may be counterproductive.”
Good health
Dr Swan’s advice is to ignore Johnson in favour of the proven benefits of following established health advice.
“In the end if you eat an unprocessed diet, if you watch your calories so that you’re not consuming more calories than you need, and you’re having reasonably intense exercise, which is both aerobic and strength based, and you don’t smoke, you are going to live younger longer.
“Question is, will you live younger and longer as much as Bryan Johnson? Well, you might, because who knows what he’s taking that might kill him sooner.
Asked, “Is Bryan Johnson going to never die?”, Dr Swan replied, “No. As much as I wish him good luck, he’s going to die just like the rest of us. The question is, when and in what shape, and whether he’s going to be happy.”
Related reading: ABC, Bryan Johnson, AFR
Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Consult a healthcare professional about any health concerns or before making any changes to your medication, diet, or exercise routine.
Photo: Office of the President of the Russian Federation (Creative Commons licence)
