Can You Live To Be 120?
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Can You Live To Be 120?

We as a species have evolved a lot thanks to breakthroughs in medicine and technology. It won’t be long before we learn to unlock the potential of our body, enabling ourselves to live to 100 years or more.?

The pandemic was a starting point for many people to start taking their health and wellbeing seriously. I was a frontline worker during this time and got infected in the first wave, taking a long time to recover from my symptoms. This made me wonder what I really wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, and what would be my legacy. And so in late 2020, I launched my longevity science company Human Edge–through which, I developed biohacks to help individuals prolong their healthspan. We’re also developing an app, Mito, that can help individuals biohack their wellbeing and take control of their health. If you want to be a part of the select few to sample the Mito app, write to us at [email protected] to be a part of our testing cohort.

The State Of Disease

Chronic disease isn’t just for the aged anymore?
Dr. Marcus Ranney

The way we view disease changes every five decades. During World War II, we focused on infectious diseases and how to develop medicines to curb their spread and cure people. Fifty years later, we’re looking into the epidemic of non-communicable lifestyle diseases. I believe in the coming years our focus will be on optimizing health—not just to prevent a particular disease but to ensure that you are physically and mentally healthy, and younger than your chronological age.??

The world is still focusing on lifespan, i.e. the average number of years a person can live. In India, the current lifespan is about 70 years. My focus is on achieving healthspan, which not only includes living a long life, but also living a healthy, disease-free life as long as you can. For example, if life expectancy is 70, then chronic ailments should only occur at the end of life or not at all.?

However today, chronic diseases–especially lifestyle diseases are now affecting the young population, with many people getting afflicted in their 20s. Our life today is an amalgamation of high stress, poor eating patterns, lack of time to work out, pollution, lack of awareness of mental health issues, and so on.

Can You Stop Ageing?

Ageing that happens at a cellular level doesn’t need to happen in a sequential uniform pace
Dr. Marcus Ranney

If ageing is considered a central condition which manifests all other diseases, then can we delay aging and improve the healthspan of a person? And can we use technology to delay this natural process??

The answer is a resounding YES!?

We were taught that ageing is a natural occurrence of life. While that is true, getting chronic ailments is not. Everybody goes through ageing, but the rate at which you age is actually in your hands. There are genetic and environmental factors that can speed up the process of ageing or slow it down. What technology allows us to do is understand these processes better and take appropriate action.?

When we think of ageing, we start to describe the physical attributes of a person or their frailty. In reality, the aging process is actually determined at the cellular level. A person can have gray hair and wrinkles but still be healthier than a person who is half his/her age. On a cellular level there are a few things that help us determine the process of ageing, such as telomere reduction, mitochondrial dysfunction, dysregulation of protein synthesis, aggregation of protein clumps, and so on. You can now even test your biological age using saliva, phenotypic changes and blood analysis.?

What Can You Do To Live Till 120?

Now to answer the much-awaited question: ‘Can you live to 120?’

While this may seem improbable, I assure you it's not out of your reach. Whenever we talk about getting sick, we automatically blame our genes. What most people don’t know is that while faulty genes do cause chronic diseases, this genetic malfunction is only 20% of the reason for manifestation of ailments. The other 80% of the reason we succumb to diseases is because of our environment.? The debate surrounding nature (our genes) and nurture (our environment) points towards our environment influencing our genetic makeup and even changing it, resulting in chronic ailments.?

The key to prolong our healthspan, and thus live longer, lies in basic behavior modifications that can change our lifestyle and prime it for optimal health. These include:

  1. Proper sleep?
  2. Healthy diet?
  3. Regular exercise?
  4. Detoxifying your environment?
  5. Keeping a check on your mental health

These are also the pillars on which Human Edge functions, and our proprietary biohacks revolve around optimizing these five crucial components of good health.?

Another way to optimize health includes boosting mitochondrial function. In school you might have learnt that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Recent studies have shown us that mitochondria does more than just aiding energy production. Some of the key areas where mitochondria helps the body range from muscle contraction and nervous system function to cellular repair, protecting the DNA, healing, and even ageing and longevity.

As the mitochondrial efficiency of various cells diminish—like when the beta cells of the pancreas can't create energy to release insulin—diseases like diabetes start manifesting. When we optimize our mitochondria with lifestyle interventions, we not only enhance energy but reduce the chance of disease, but also improve healthspan.?

Another way to optimize our health is by practicing the ancient wisdom that has been passed down from centuries. For example, time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting has become very popular these days, and science has proven that it can help lose weight, detoxify the body, and improve healthspan. But did you know this was practiced in every culture long before modern medicine could prove its benefits? Like this there are other practices that are now long forgotten that allowed people to live a long and healthy life which was mostly disease free.

Get Started On Your Healthspan

If you’re wondering what else you can do to boost your health, understand it better, and how to lead a healthy life you can visit humanedge.co. I talked about all this and more with Sumedh Bilgi on his podcast The Sumedh Bilgi Podcast (Self Help Podcast). You can check it out here.


This newsletter is a part of our ongoing series.

Dainis Hirv

Sports fanatic. Obsessed with all things health, wellness and fitness.

2 年

We are moving the conversation from lifespan as a number to healthspan as a concept (think: how do you add health into your years). Loved and learned a lot. Thanks, Dr. Marcus Ranney.

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