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Age & Aging: What Can (And Can't) We Do About It?
Plus: compression for better circulation
The 10almonds Team
July 21, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Loading Screen Tip: plan as though you’ll live forever; love as though you might die tomorrow (that’s not a typo)
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Our chronological age is a function of how many times we’ve ridden our planet around the sun
Our biological age is a function of many, many factors. It’s tempting to want to boil it down to “the health of a 21-year-old”, but in reality, different parts of the very complex organism that is our body age in different ways at different rates
We can slow most if not all of these kinds of aging
We cannot currently halt any kind of aging
We can, however, reverse some of them!
This will not confer immortality, not yet even biological immortality (ie, we don’t age but can still get run over by the proverbial bus), but it can extend the “healthspan” we talked about yesterday—so that we can enjoy more happy healthy years without as few as possible of the difficulties of age-related decline.
See today’s main feature for more about this, and many things you can do!
Swollen feet, dizziness, and fatigue are all effects of poor circulation.
Today’s sponsor, TheRy, are offering compression leggings that make a big difference to this, giving comfort and support.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
Effects of Benzodiazepines on the Nervous System & Body
What do benzodiazepines do inside the human body? How do they affect the nervous system? Why are benzos' effects so severe and long-lasting for some people? Check out this animated short video to learn more:
🧓 MAIN FEATURE
How old do you want to be?
We asked you how old you are, and got an interesting spread of answers. This wasn’t too surprising; of course we have a general idea of who our readership is and we write accordingly.
What’s interesting is the gap for “40s”.
And, this wasn’t the case of a broken poll button, it’s something that crops up a lot in health-related sociological research. People who are most interested in taking extra care of their body are often:
Younger people full of optimism about maintaining this perfectly healthy body forever
Older people realizing “if I don’t want to suffer avoidable parts of age-related decline, now is the time to address these things”
In between, we often have a gap whereby people no longer have the optimism of youth, but do not yet feel the pressure of older age.
Which is not to say there aren’t 40-somethings who do care! Indeed, we know for a fact we have some subscribers in their 40s (and some in their 90s, too), just, they evidently didn’t vote in this poll.
Anyway, let’s bust some myths…
Aging is inevitable: True or False?
False, probably. That seems like a bold (and fortune-telling) claim, so let’s flip it to deconstruct it more logically:
Aging is, and always will be, unstoppable: True or False?
That has to be “False, probably”. To say “true” now sounds like an even bolder claim. Just like “the moon will always be out of reach”.
When CPR was first developed, first-aiders were arrested for “interfering with a corpse”.
Many diseases used to be death sentences that are now “take one of these in the morning”
If you think this is an appeal to distant history, HIV+ status was a death sentence in the 90s. Now it’s “take one of these in the morning”.
But, this is an appeal to the past, and that’s not always a guarantee of the future. Where does the science stand currently? How is the research and development doing on slowing, halting, reversing aging?
We can slow aging: True or False?
True! There’s a difference between chronological age (i.e., how much time has passed while we’ve been alive) and biological age (i.e., what our diverse markers of aging look like).
Biological age often gets talked about as a simplified number, but it’s more complex than that, as we can age in different ways at different rates, for example:
Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
Cellular markers or aging (e.g. telomere length)
…and more, but we only have so much room here
There are things we can do to slow most of those, including:
Good nutrition (e.g. collagen and lutein, to keep specific parts of the body functioning “like those of a younger person” ranging from the joints to the eyes and brain)
Anti-oxidant activity (e.g. eating anti-oxidant foods, supplementing with anti-oxidants or other things that mitigate oxidative stress, and avoiding foods that hasten oxidative stress which causes many kinds of aging)
Getting good sleep (not to be underestimated for its restorative importance)
Taking care of our mental health (especially: reducing stress)
Taking care of our mobility (prevention is better than cure!)
In the case of cognitive decline particularly, check out our previous article:
It’s too early to worry about… / It’s too late to do anything about… True or False?
False and False!
Many things that affect our health later in life are based on early-life choices and events. So it’s important for young people to take advantage of that. The earlier one adopts a healthy lifestyle, the better, because, and hold onto your hats for the shocker here: aging is cumulative.
However, that doesn’t mean that taking up healthy practices (or dropping unhealthy ones) is pointless later in life, even in one’s 70s and beyond!
Read about this and more from the National Institute of Aging:
We can halt aging: True or False?
False, for now at least. Our bodies are not statues; they are living organisms, constantly rebuilding themselves, constantly changing, every second of every day, for better or for worse. Every healthy or unhealthy choice you make, every beneficial or adverse experience you encounter, affects your body on a cellular level.
Your body never, ever, stops changing for as long as you live.
But…
We can reverse aging: True or False?
True! Contingently and with limitations, for now at least.
Remember what we said about your body constantly rebuilding itself? That goes for making itself better as well as making itself worse.
If yesterday you couldn’t touch your toes and today you can, congratulations, you just got younger by a biological marker of aging.
If you stopped drinking/smoking/eating a certain way last year, and this year your skin has fewer wrinkles, congratulations, you got younger by a biological marker of aging.
If you’ve been exercising and now your heart rate variability and VO2 max are better than last month, congratulations, you got younger by a biological marker aging.
If you took supplements that reduce and/or mitigate oxidative stress (e.g. resveratrol, CoQ10, l-theanine, etc), and you took up intermittent fasting, and now your telomeres are longer than they were six months ago, congratulations, you got younger by a biological marker of aging.
But those aren’t really being younger, we’ll still die when our time is up: True or False?
False and True, respectively.
Those kinds of things are really being younger, biologically. What else do you think being biologically younger is?
We may indeed die when our time is up, but (unless we suffer fatal accident or incident first) “when our time is up” is something that is decided mostly by the above factors.
Genetics—the closest thing we have to biological “fate”—accounts for only about 25% of our longevity-related health*.
Genes predispose, but they don’t predetermine.
(from the Journal of Immunity and Ageing)
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Is someone in your family expecting? Consider getting them these…
In pregnancy, there’s an extra risk of fluid retention and varicose veins, and these ARTG-assessed and TGA-listed compression leggings help protect against both.
Swollen feet, dizziness, and fatigue are all effects of poor circulation. Maintaining good blood flow—as these compression leggings assist— is also of course important for the unborn baby’s heath, too.
Some extra features:
Super-soft belly panel for optimum comfort and support
Easy on/off (they have ankle zips!)
They have pockets! Large, conveniently placed ones, at that.
PS: 10almonds subscribers can use code “10ALMONDS” to get a free pair of baby socks with your compression leggings purchase 🧦
Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🌍 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
Private equity ownership of healthcare associated with harmful impacts on costs and quality of care
New protein discovered in Alzheimer's brains could lead to better diagnosis and treatment
T-cells can be used to identify Type 1 Diabetes risk, study shows
Excessive drinking during the pandemic increased alcoholic liver disease death rates
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs that Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan—and What You Can Do Right Now - by Sergey Young
There are a lot of very optimistic works out there that promise the scientific breakthroughs that will occur very soon. Even amongst the hyperoptimistic transhumanism community, there is the joke of "where's my flying car?" Sometimes prefaced with "Hey Ray, quick question..." as a nod to (or sometimes, direct address to) Ray Kurzweil, the Google computer scientist and futurist.
So, how does this one measure up?
Our author, Sergey Young, is not a scientist, but an investor with fingers in many pies. Specifically, pies relating to preventative medicine and longevity. Does that make him an unreliable narrator? Not necessarily, but it means we need to at least bear that context in mind.
But, also, he's investing in those fields because he believes in them, and wants to benefit from them himself. In essense, he's putting his money where his mouth is. But, enough about the author. What of the book?
It's a whirlwind tour of the main areas of reseach and development, in the recent past, the present, and the near future. He talks about problems, and compelling solutions to problems.
If the book has a weak point, it's that it doesn't really talk about the problems to those solutions—that is, what can still go wrong. He's excited about what we can do, and it's somebody else's job to worry about pitfalls along the way.
As to the "and what you can do now?" We'll summarize:
Mediterranean diet, mostly plant-based
Get moderate exercise daily
Get good sleep
Don't drink or smoke
Get your personal health genomics data
Get regular medical check-ups
Look after your mental health too
Bottom line: this is a great primer on the various avenues of current anti-aging research and development, with discussion ranging from the the technological to the sociological. It has some health tips too, but the real meat of the work is the insight into the workings of the longevity industry.
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
May today see you well-prepared for the coming weekend,
The 10almonds Team