Thank you for writing this article. I’m glad that this article was posted, because talking about life-extension is awesome.
The sections on diet, exercise, external causes of death (accidents), infectious diseases, medical care, money, and cryonics all seemed mostly on-track to me. I don’t know enough to properly comment on the sections on sitting and social and personality factors, but the content of these sections was a bit surprising to me.
There are a few claims you have made in this post that I definitely don’t agree with, however:
Alcohol increases risk of diseases for some people and decreases it for others.
I was under the impression that, even in the best-case scenarios, consumption of alcohol decreased one’s expected lifespan. Specifically, drinking 1 liter of wine is approximately equivalent to losing two micromorts from liver damage, as seen under the “Chronic risks” section of the linked article.
It’s unknown whether calorie restriction increases lifespan in humans or not
I think that CR is well established as a means of increasing human lifespans. To your credit, you do note some of the benefits of CR just after the text I’ve quoted.
There could be some risk of cell phone use being associated with cancer, but the evidence is not strong enough to be considered causal and needs to be investigated further.
I don’t believe that this concern is at all important enough to be included here.
As for the one source you did give, which was Wikipedia, it may have been referring to the average effect on expectancy, which, given the sizable frequencies of alcoholism and drunk driving, very well could be negative. Wikipedia gave two citations for the claim, but one of them wasn’t available. The other one was a brief mention on a powerpoint slide from Harvard that gave no further explanation. Ironically, I got my information on alcohol’s effect on death from Harvard as well.
I didn’t have particular sources in mind, but decent sources on all of these topics can be found with a quick search.
The risk from wine-drinking (2 micromorts per Liter) cited on Wikipedia was only due to cirrhosis of the liver; drunk driving would cause one to incur a greater risk of death than indicated by that estimate. I’m willing to believe that there are some narrow benefits of drinking alcohol, but it seems like the costs outweigh the benefits.
Regarding cell phones causing cancer, the Mayo Clinic post you linked to in the response to this comment makes it seem like the matter isn’t settled, despite there not being much evidence for cellphones causing cancer. (Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, given that there’s been enough studies done on the matter). Part of why I was previously (and still am) particularly skeptical about the ability of cellphones to cause cancer is because I can’t see any plausible mechanism for this being true—the highest energy radio waves don’t even have enough energy to break weaker-than-average hydrogen bonds, much less covalent bonds that would need to be damaged to mutate DNA.
Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve added a bit to my last paragraph in the mentioned post.
I’m not having tons of luck with quantitatively relating alcohol consumption with lifespan extension in a reliable and satisfying way that allows the risks vs. benefits of consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol to be compared. I’m going to give up on this for now, since it has the potential to become very time consuming.
All of the studies on CR I was able to find were in monkeys and other nonhuman animals, but there’s a proposed mechanism for CR’s positive effects on longevity—reduction of oxidative stress.
My understanding of the present consensus is that most doctors believe light drinking is slightly superior to not drinking, but both are vastly superior to heavy drinking.
On calorie restriction, there are a bunch of different methods being recommended of potentially useful calorie restriction. If you’re not knowledgeable enough to distinguish between them, then it doesn’t sound like you know enough in this area to consider the science well established. My own impression is that it is not well established. From a quick google search, the very first paper I came across states:
Whether prolonged CR increases life span (or improves biomarkers of aging) in humans is unknown.
The second paper I found is more recent (2011) and states:
It is difficult to definitively answer whether or not CR prolongs human life because of the ethical and logistical limitations of research design.
Given that G0W51 did provide references for his claims, I don’t consider it reasonable to claim he is in error without being able to provide sources yourself.
Thank you for writing this article. I’m glad that this article was posted, because talking about life-extension is awesome.
The sections on diet, exercise, external causes of death (accidents), infectious diseases, medical care, money, and cryonics all seemed mostly on-track to me. I don’t know enough to properly comment on the sections on sitting and social and personality factors, but the content of these sections was a bit surprising to me.
There are a few claims you have made in this post that I definitely don’t agree with, however:
I was under the impression that, even in the best-case scenarios, consumption of alcohol decreased one’s expected lifespan. Specifically, drinking 1 liter of wine is approximately equivalent to losing two micromorts from liver damage, as seen under the “Chronic risks” section of the linked article.
I think that CR is well established as a means of increasing human lifespans. To your credit, you do note some of the benefits of CR just after the text I’ve quoted.
I don’t believe that this concern is at all important enough to be included here.
Could you give sources for your claims?
As for the one source you did give, which was Wikipedia, it may have been referring to the average effect on expectancy, which, given the sizable frequencies of alcoholism and drunk driving, very well could be negative. Wikipedia gave two citations for the claim, but one of them wasn’t available. The other one was a brief mention on a powerpoint slide from Harvard that gave no further explanation. Ironically, I got my information on alcohol’s effect on death from Harvard as well.
I didn’t have particular sources in mind, but decent sources on all of these topics can be found with a quick search.
The risk from wine-drinking (2 micromorts per Liter) cited on Wikipedia was only due to cirrhosis of the liver; drunk driving would cause one to incur a greater risk of death than indicated by that estimate. I’m willing to believe that there are some narrow benefits of drinking alcohol, but it seems like the costs outweigh the benefits.
Regarding cell phones causing cancer, the Mayo Clinic post you linked to in the response to this comment makes it seem like the matter isn’t settled, despite there not being much evidence for cellphones causing cancer. (Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, given that there’s been enough studies done on the matter). Part of why I was previously (and still am) particularly skeptical about the ability of cellphones to cause cancer is because I can’t see any plausible mechanism for this being true—the highest energy radio waves don’t even have enough energy to break weaker-than-average hydrogen bonds, much less covalent bonds that would need to be damaged to mutate DNA.
I did more research, and the results I found support my statements on cellphones and alcohol.
Could you rephrase your last paragraph? It’s missing a word. :)
Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve added a bit to my last paragraph in the mentioned post.
I’m not having tons of luck with quantitatively relating alcohol consumption with lifespan extension in a reliable and satisfying way that allows the risks vs. benefits of consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol to be compared. I’m going to give up on this for now, since it has the potential to become very time consuming.
All of the studies on CR I was able to find were in monkeys and other nonhuman animals, but there’s a proposed mechanism for CR’s positive effects on longevity—reduction of oxidative stress.
My understanding of the present consensus is that most doctors believe light drinking is slightly superior to not drinking, but both are vastly superior to heavy drinking.
On calorie restriction, there are a bunch of different methods being recommended of potentially useful calorie restriction. If you’re not knowledgeable enough to distinguish between them, then it doesn’t sound like you know enough in this area to consider the science well established. My own impression is that it is not well established. From a quick google search, the very first paper I came across states:
The second paper I found is more recent (2011) and states:
Given that G0W51 did provide references for his claims, I don’t consider it reasonable to claim he is in error without being able to provide sources yourself.