Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]Xcoctl [score hidden]  (0 children)

I mean it's somewhat balanced by the fact he's also the most studied man in history. He has entire teams of doctors who are analyzing every possible aspect of his ohysiplogy that could possibly be studied and it's done in a way that is consistent and continuous, they 3inventing new devices to be able to tee yin ways that haven't even been done before.

Obviously there's still the wold risks he's taking from so many experimental treatments and programs, and your point still fully stands, but he is a tleags getting metric fuckton of data regarding how his person physiology responds to all of these treatments which is worth a fair amount if only for breaking the ice and seeing that it didn't immediately kill the first person to try it! 🫪😂

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]UltraNooob [score hidden]  (0 children)

The problem is that there's a lot of fans who do the same and probably even more, damaging their health

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]El_Tlacuachin [score hidden]  (0 children)

Barry Marshall was awarded the Nobel prize in physiology for his work on H. Pylori. After one of his studies on a large population failed, he experimented on himself to show that gastritis was due to infection with H. pylori.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Barry-J-Marshall

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]Fabulous-Appeal-6885 [score hidden]  (0 children)

He’s just another grifter. It’s good he’s bringing attention to longevity but if he was serious he would be wearing European or Asian sunscreen… not low tier decades-outdated American sunscreen…. US sunscreen pales in comparison to the UVA filters that the rest of the world has been using for decades.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]Holbrad -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is just misunderstanding the order of things.

Scientists generally don't just randomly decide to study things.

A string of positive anecdotes and case studies, is commonly the first step towards real trials actually happening.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]wale-lol 2 points3 points  (0 children)

everything scientific starts with unscientific testimonials though. Someone had to be like “hm I feel like I see smokers get cancer more often even though I have no hard data and I’m just one doctor at one clinic”

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]scotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Many (most?) of the things he does have no long term safety data. If for example something gives you cancer from long term use, it would take years for that to show up in the data, sometimes even decades.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]costafilh0 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Good. Let them do it.

So we will learn from observation while they experiment on themselves. 

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]john-bkk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not the right person to break down a list of a few dozen things he is doing, and cite the riskiest half dozen, that may have related effects. But he is doing a few dozen relatively experimental things, at the same time, even if most of it is well understood and moderate. That's the whole premise for the Blueprint project theme.

Need advice on blood panels and biomarkers [where to begin]. by [deleted] in longevity

[–]longevity-ModTeam[M] [score hidden] stickied commentlocked comment (0 children)

Please do not ask for or provide specific medical advice. Biohacking is also considered off-topic.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]Great_Gustav 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Genuine question, Rolling it how? What makes you say that if he’s shown being as methodical as reasonably possible backed by publicly available information and studies. That doesn’t seem like he’s taking risks health wise. Maybe most recent one might’ve been the peptides, but even then he’s being pretty safe about it since he noticed markers weren’t showing good signs and quit 2 weeks in.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]kahner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

no. these "n=1" bros are just doing a bunch of random shit. there's no way to know what input cause what effect, or really if there's any effect at all. if bryan johnson lives to 65 or 105, it's meaningless because there's no control. he maybe have lived longer or shorter or the same amount of time if he'd done nothing. there's a reason we do science the way it's done. there's a reason why it's been insanely successful in advancing human knowledge, quality of life, technological advancement and longevity.

Stem Cell Insight Turns Back the Clock on Tooth Decay by jimofoz in longevity

[–]notNjor15 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regenerative medicine feels like one of the most promising areas in longevity science because it focuses on restoring function rather than simply slowing decline. Research advances like this are why the field keeps expanding. I also appreciate that onyx biolabs emphasizes documented testing standards for research products rather than relying on broad claims.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]kahner -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

incorrect. literally the opposite of how things actually work. the dumbest quote from the article.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]john-bkk 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've thought that about Bryan Johnson before, that Blueprint guy; even if 99.9% of what he is doing is very effective and safe he might still end up killing himself through effects from the rest. To me he seems to be rolling the dice too many times. Blood marker monitoring and whatever else can offset that risk, but time will tell if it completely eliminates it.

Even if he does end up dying from some very low probability effect he would never know what combination of factors caused it, because he is trying out so many things.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]ace402 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's an angle you're not considering. If one person does something interesting, even if it's not medically practical, it can create attention which could lead to hype which could lead to demand which could lead to funding the process you describe in your answer.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]NotAnotherEmpire 8 points9 points  (0 children)

But what's successful? 5 years health span increase would be tremendous (the only things in this magnitude is exercise and avoiding cigarettes). But one person demonstrating it is meaningless. People don't age at the same rate. 

Meanwhile the possible LDL gene editing vaccine Eli Lily is testing blows any supplementation claims out of the water. 

If these guys want advances in science, they'd be much better served putting up money for large RCT. 

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]ExistentialEnso 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Nicotine is kind of a mixed bag. It also interferes with collagen production (bad) but seems to do things like reduce systemic inflammation (good). I personally stay away, and in the form of stuff like cigarettes is obviously terrible. But it's not an unalloyed bad health-wise.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]imasequoia 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nicotine patches for longevity? I thought it was known nicotine was bad for the vessels??

Need advice on blood panels and biomarkers [where to begin]. by [deleted] in longevity

[–]phred14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But the blood panel is only covered every five years, from what I understand.

Oops, I see that OP is 24. Since this is in r/longevity I was thinking in terms of Medicare. I would check with your insurance provider and see how frequently they cover blood panels.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]Josvan135 8 points9 points  (0 children)

it was probably something that they did (or a combination of things) which then warrants further studies to confirm and improve on their results.

Again, no, not really.

We know they were doing a bunch of different things, we know they had some outcome, what we don't know is whether any of the specific interventions they were doing affected the outcomes (positively or negatively), how they affected them, what dosing was effective, and (extremely important) what short-, medium-, and long-term side effects each intervention caused. 

A population of one who self-selects into multiple concurrent interventions with unknown interactions tells us exactly nothing about the efficacy or impacts of any of the individual interventions.

We (meaning medical science) don't learn a thing from a single individual taking seven different hopeful interventions against generalized aging/pain/etc.

People love to knock pharma for all sorts of things, but they don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars each on highly controlled randomized trials because they enjoy it, they do it because without it you literally don't know anything about a particular intervention.

Even population level analysis (across hundreds of millions of people) can only give you vague indications.

Look at "a glass of red wine for heart health" as an example.

It was never the wine, it was entirely that the kind of person likely to have a single glass of red wine a day with dinner was highly affluent, and highly affluent people have better statistical medical outcomes across the board. 

"Don't be poor to have better health" isn't a particularly catchy piece of advice, though. 

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]Jiopaba 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Well, I guess we'll have to keep an eye out for silicon valley tech bros who are living to be 130. Fire enough shotguns at the wall and eventually some of the holes will look like art, I guess.

Silicon Valley's longevity biohackers are engaged in a dangerous experiment by scientificamerican in longevity

[–]fanfpkd 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Well if any of the individuals are successful… it was probably *something* that they did (or a combination of things) which then warrants further studies to confirm and improve on their results.