Ending Aging – by Dr. Aubrey de Grey

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We know about how to slow aging. We know about diet, exercise, sleep, intermittent fasting, and other lifestyle tweaks to make. But how much can we turn back the clock, according to science?

Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s foundational principle is simple: the body is a biological machine, and aging is fundamentally an engineering problem.

He then outlines the key parts to that problem: the princple ways in which cells (and DNA) get damaged, and what we need to do about that in each case. Car tires get damaged over time; our approach is to replace them within a certain period of time so that they don’t blow out. In the body, it’s a bit similar with cells so that we don’t get cancer, for example.

The book goes into detail regards each of the seven main ways we accumulate this damage, and highlights avenues of research looking to prevent it, and in at least some cases, the measures already available to so.

Bottom line: if you want a hard science overview of actual rejuvenation research in biogerontology, this is a book that presents that comprehensively, without assuming prior knowledge.

Click here to check out Ending Aging and never stop learning!

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  • How To Out-Cheat “Cheat Days”

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    Out-Cheating “Cheat Days” (Or Even Just “Cheat Meals”)

    If you are in the habit of eating healthily, the idea of a “cheat day” probably isn’t appealing—because you simply don’t crave junk food; it’s not what your gut is used to.

    Nevertheless, sometimes cheat days, or at least cheat meals, choose us rather than the other way around. If your social group is having a pizza night or meeting up at the burger bar, probably you’re going to be having a meal that’s not ideal.

    So, what to do about it?

    Well, first of all, relax. If it really is an exception and not a regular occurrence, it’s not going to have a big health impact. Assuming that your basic dietary requirements are taken care of (e.g. free from allergens as necessary, vegan/vegetarian if that’s appropriate for you, adhering to any religious restrictions that are important to you, etc), then you’re going to have a good time, which is what scientists call a “pro-social activity” and is not a terrible thing.

    See also: Is Fast Food Really All That Bad? ← answer: yes it is, but the harm is cumulative and won’t all happen the instant you take a bite of a chicken nugget

    Think positive

    No, not in the “think positive thoughts” sense (though feel free, if that’s your thing), but rather: focus on adding things rather than subtracting things.

    It’s said:

    It’s not the calories in your food that make the biggest impact on your health; it’s the food in your calories❞e

    …and that’s generally true. The same goes for “bad things” in the food, e.g. added sugar, salt, seed oils, etc. They really are bad! But, in this case you’re going to be eating them and they’re going to be nearly impossible to avoid in the social scenarios we described. So, forget that sunk treasure, and instead, add nutrients.

    10almonds tip: added nutrients remain added nutrients, even if the sources were not glowing with health-appeal and/or you ate them alongside something unhealthy:

    • Those breaded garlic mushrooms are still full of magnesium and fiber and ergothioneine.
    • The chili-and-mint peas that came as an overpriced optional side-dish with your burger are still full of protein, fiber, and a stack of polyphenols.

    …and so on. And, the more time you spend eating those things, the less time you spend eating the real empty-calorie foods.

    Fix the flaw

    We set out to offer this guide without arguing for abstemiousness or making healthy substitutions, because we assume you knew already that you can not eat things, and as for substitutions, often they are not practical, especially if dining out or ordering in.

    Also, sometimes even when home-cooking something unhealthy, taking the bad ingredient out takes some of the joy out with it.

    Writers example: I once incorrectly tried to solve the fat conundrum of my favorite shchi (recipe here) by trying purely steaming the vegetables instead of my usual frying/sautéing them, and let’s just say, that errant-and-swiftly-abandoned version got recorded in my nutrition-tracker app as “sad shchi”.

    So instead, fix the flaw by countering it if possible:

    • The meal is devoid of fiber? Preload with some dried figs (you can never have too many dried figs in your pantry)
    • The meal is high in saturated fat? Enjoy fiber before/during/after, per what’s convenient for you. Fiber helps clear out excess cholesterol, which is usually the main issue with saturated fat.
    • The meal is salty? Double down on your hydration before, during, and after. If that sounds like a chore, then remember, it’s more fun than getting bloated (which results, counterintuitively, from dehydration—because your body detects the salt, and panics and tries to retain as much water as possible to restore homeostasis, resulting in bloating) and hypertensive (which results from the combination of the blood having too much salt and too little water, and cells retaining too much water and pressing inwards because it is the cells themselves that are bloated). So, tending to your hydration can help mitigate all of the above.
    • The meal is full of high-GI carbs? Preload with fiber, enjoy the carbs together with fats, and have something acidic (e.g. some kind of vinegar, or citrus fruit) with it if that’s a reasonable option. Yes, this does mean that a Whiskey Sour is better for your blood sugars than an Old Fashioned, by the way, and/but no, it doesn’t make either of them healthy.
    • The meal is inflammatory? Doing all of the above things will help, as will eating it slowly/mindfully, which latter makes it less of a shock to your system.

    See also: How To Get More Nutrition From The Same Food

    Enjoy!

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  • How To *Really* Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

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    The Healthiest Habit-Building

    Why was that book “Atomic Habits” called that? It wasn’t just because it’s a catchy title…

    Habits are—much like atoms—things that are almost imperceptibly small, yet when stacked, they make up the substance of many much larger and more obvious things, and also contain an immense amount of potential power.

    About that power…

    Habits are the “compound interest” of natural human life. Every action we take, every decision we make, makes our life (often imperceptibly) better or worse. But getting even just 1% better or 1% worse at something every day? That’s going to not just add up over time… It’ll actively compound over time.

    Habits will snowball one way or the other, good or bad. So, we want to control that snowball so that it works for us rather than against us.

    Thus, we need to choose habits that are helpful to us, rather than those that are harmful to us. Top examples include:

    • Making healthy food choices rather than unhealthy ones
    • Moving our body regularly rather than being sedentary
    • Having a good bedtime/morning routine rather than a daily chaotic blur
    • Learning constantly rather than digging into old beliefs out of habit
    • Forging healthy relationships rather than isolating ourselves

    We all know that to make a habit stick, we need to practice it regularly, with opinions varying on how long it takes for something to become habit. Some say 21 days; some say 66. The number isn’t the important part!

    What is important

    You will never get to day 66, much less will you get to day 366, if you don’t first get to day 6 (New Year’s Resolutions, anyone?).

    So in the early days especially, when the habit is most likely to get dropped, it’s critical to make the habit as easy as possible to form.

    That means:

    • The habit should be made as pleasant as possible
      • (e.g. by making modifications to it if it’s not already intrinsically pleasant)
    • The habit should take under 2 minutes to do at first
      • (no matter if it takes longer than 2 minutes to be useful; it’ll never be useful if you don’t first get it to stick, so make your initial commitment only 2 minutes, just to get in the habit)
    • The habit should have cues to remind you
      • (as it’s not habit yet, you will need to either set a reminder on your phone, or leave a visual reminder, such as your workout clothes laid out ready for you in the morning, or a bowl of fruit in plain view where you spend a lot of time)

    What gets measured, gets done

    Streaks are a great way to do this. Habit-tracking apps help. Marks on a calendar or in a journal are also totally fine.

    What can help especially, and that a lot of people don’t do, is to have a system of regular personal reviews—like a work “performance review”, but for oneself and one’s own life.

    Set a reminder or write on the calendar / in your diary, to review monthly, or weekly if you prefer, such things as:

    • How am I doing in the areas of life that are important to me?
      • Have a list of the areas of life that are important to you, by the way, and genuinely reflect on each of them, e.g:
        • Health
        • Finances
        • Relationships
        • Learning
        • Sleep
        • Etc
    • What is working for me, and what isn’t working for me?
    • What will I do better in this next month/week?

    …and then do it!

    Good luck, and may it all stack up in your favor!

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  • The Non-Alcoholic Drinker – by James Ellison

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    A mere few decades ago, it was often considered antisocial not to smoke. These days, it’s antisocial if you do. The same social change is starting to happen now with alcohol—Millennials are drinking much less than they did in decades past, and Gen Z are hardly drinking at all.

    The author, himself a Baby Boomer, champions the cause of mindful, and/but joyful, abstemiousness. Which latter two words don’t often go together, but in this case, he really has put in a lot of work to make non-alcoholic drinking as exciting, fun, and sophisticated as alcoholic drinking always marketed itself to be.

    The mocktail recipes in this book are an order of magnitude better than any others this reviewer has encountered before, and did you know they have non-alcoholic bitters now? As in, the cocktail ingredient. Nor is it the only non-alcoholic botanical used, and the ingredients in general are as varied and flavorful, if not sometimes more so, than many that get used in alcoholic mixes.

    This book is a very far cry from “rum and coke without the rum”, and instead will have you excited to go ingredient-shopping, and even more excited when you find out how great non-alcoholic things can taste if given the right attention.

    As a convenient extra touch, all the ingredients he mentions are available from Amazon, which takes away the fear of “ok, but where do I get…” when it comes to getting things in.

    The book does cover things besides just the recipes themselves though, and also talks the reader through navigating non-alcoholism when friends of your own age (unless you’re one of our younger readers) are probably mostly still partying with alcohol.

    Really, the biggest value of this book is the recipes, though.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to entertain with sophistication and grace and/but not with alcohol, or even just take up a fun new healthy hobby, this book is by far the best book on non-alcoholic mixology that this reviewer has seen to date.

    Click here to check out The Non-Alcoholic Drinker, and get mixing non-alcoholically!

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  • Artichoke vs Brussels Sprouts – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing artichoke to Brussels sprouts, we picked the sprouts.

    Why?

    Finally, a vegetable that beats artichoke—after it previously beat heart-of-palm, asparagus, and even cabbage! It was still close though, which is impressive for artichoke, considering what a nutritional powerhouse Brussels sprouts are:

    In terms of macros, the only meaningful difference is that artichoke has slightly more carbs and fiber, so artichoke gets the most marginal of nominal wins in this category.

    In the category of vitamins, however, artichoke has more of vitamins B3, B9, and choline, while Brussels sprouts have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C, E, and K, giving sprouts the clear victory here, especially with much higher margins of difference (e.g. 58x more vitamin A, as well as 7x more vitamin C, and 10x more vitamin K).

    When it comes to minerals, artichoke has more copper, magnesium, phosphorus, and zinc, while Brussels sprouts have more iron, manganese, potassium, and selenium, resulting in a 4:4 tie, and the small margins of difference are mostly comparable, with the exception that sprouts have 8x more selenium. So, Brussels sprouts win this category very marginally on that tie-breaker.

    Adding up the sections we see that macros and minerals gave a small win each to artichoke and sprouts respectively, while the vitamins category was an overwhelming win for sprouts, so—with this deciding factor in mind—sprouts win the day today.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc

    Enjoy!

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  • Amid Wildfire Trauma, L.A. County Dispatches Mental Health Workers to Evacuees

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    PASADENA, Calif. — As Fernando Ramirez drove to work the day after the Eaton Fire erupted, smoke darkened the sky, ash and embers rained onto his windshield, and the air smelled of melting rubber and plastic.

    He pulled to the side of the road and cried at the sight of residents trying to save their homes.

    “I could see people standing on the roof, watering it, trying to protect it from the fire, and they just looked so hopeless,” said Ramirez, a community outreach worker with the Pasadena Public Health Department.

    That evening, the 49-year-old volunteered for a 14-hour shift at the city’s evacuation center, as did colleagues who had also been activated for emergency medical duty. Running on adrenaline and little sleep after finding shelter for homeless people all day, Ramirez spent the night circulating among more than a thousand evacuees, offering wellness checks, companionship, and hope to those who looked distressed.

    Local health departments, such as Ramirez’s, have become a key part of governments’ response to wildfires, floods, and other extreme weather events, which scientists say are becoming more intense and frequent due to climate change. The emotional toll of fleeing and possibly losing a home can help cause or exacerbate mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, and substance use, according to health and climate experts.

    Wildfires have become a recurring experience for many Angelenos, making it difficult for people to feel safe in their home or able to go about daily living, said Lisa Wong, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. However, with each extreme weather event, the county has improved its support for evacuees, she said.

    For instance, Wong said the county deployed a team of mental health workers trained to comfort evacuees without retraumatizing them, including by avoiding asking questions likely to bring up painful memories. The department has also learned to better track people’s health needs and redirect those who may find massive evacuation settings uncomfortable to other shelters or interim housing, Wong said. In those first days, the biggest goal is often to reduce people’s anxiety by providing them with information.

    “We’ve learned that right when a crisis happens, people don’t necessarily want to talk about mental health,” said Wong, who staffed the evacuation site Jan. 8 with nine colleagues.

    Instead, she and her team deliver a message of support: “This is really bad right now, but you’re not going to do this alone. We have a whole system set up for recovery too. Once you get past the initial shock of what happened — initial housing needs, medication needs, all those things — then there’s this whole pathway to recovery that we set up.”

    The convention center in downtown Pasadena, which normally hosts home shows, comic cons, and trade shows, was transformed into an evacuation site with hundreds of cots. It was one of at least 13 shelters opened to serve more than 200,000 residents under evacuation orders.

    The January wildfires have burned an estimated 64 square miles — an area larger than the city of Paris — and destroyed at least 12,300 buildings since they started Jan. 7. AccuWeather estimates the region will likely face more than $250 billion in economic losses from the blazes, surpassing the estimates from the state’s record-breaking 2020 wildfire season.

    Lisa Patel, executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, said she’s most concerned about low-income residents, who are less likely to access mental health support.

    “There was a mental health crisis even before the pandemic,” said Patel, who is also a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine, referring to the covid-19 pandemic. “The pandemic made it worse. Now you lace in all of this climate change and these disasters into a health care system that isn’t set up to care for the people that already have mental health illness.”

    Early research suggests exposure to large amounts of wildfire smoke can damage the brain and increase the risk of developing anxiety, she added.

    At the Pasadena Convention Center, Elaine Santiago sat on a cot in a hallway as volunteers pulled wagons loaded with soup, sandwiches, bottled water, and other necessities.

    Santiago said she drew comfort from being at the Pasadena evacuation center, knowing that she wasn’t alone in the tragedy.

    “It sort of gives me a sense of peace at times,” Santiago said. “Maybe that’s weird. We’re all experiencing this together.”

    She had been celebrating her 78th birthday with family when she fled her home in the small city of Sierra Madre, east of Pasadena. As she watched flames whip around her neighborhood, she, along with children and grandkids, scrambled to secure their dogs in crates and grabbed important documents before they left.

    The widower had leaned on her husband in past emergencies, and now she felt lost.

    “I did feel helpless,” Santiago said. “I figured I’m the head of the household; I should know what to do. But I didn’t know.”

    Donny McCullough, who sat on a neighboring green cot draped in a Red Cross blanket, had fled his Pasadena home with his family early on the morning of Jan. 8. Without power at home, the 68-year-old stayed up listening for updates on a battery-powered radio. His eyes remained red from smoke irritation hours later.

    “I had my wife and two daughters, and I was trying not to show fear, so I quietly, inside, was like, ‘Oh my God,’” said McCullough, a music producer and writer. “I’m driving away, looking at the house, wondering if it’s going to be the last time I’m going to see it.”

    He saved his master recording from a seven-year music project, but he left behind his studio with all his other work from a four-decade career in music.

    Not all evacuees arrived with family. Some came searching for loved ones. That’s one of the hardest parts of his shift, Ramirez said. The community outreach worker helped walk people around the building, cot by cot.

    A week in, at least two dozen people had been killed in the wildfires.

    The work takes a toll on disaster relief workers too. Ramirez said many feared losing their homes in the fires and some already had. He attends therapy weekly, which he said helps him manage his emotions.

    At the evacuation center, Ramirez described being on autopilot.

    “Some of us react differently. I tend to go into fight mode,” Ramirez said. “I react. I run towards the fire. I run towards personal service. Then once that passes, that’s when my trauma catches up with me.”

    Need help? Los Angeles County residents in need of support can call the county’s mental health helpline at 1-800-854-7771. The national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 988, is also available for those who’d like to speak with someone confidentially, free of charge.

    This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. 

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • 6 Lifestyle Factors To Measurably Reduce Biological Age

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    Julie Gibson Clark competes on a global leaderboard of people actively fighting aging (including billionaire Bryan Johnson, who is famously very focused on such). She’s currently ahead of him on that leaderboard, so what’s she doing?

    Top tips

    We’ll not keep the six factors a mystery; they are:

    • Exercise: her weekly exercise includes VO2 Max training, strength training, balance work, and low-intensity cardio. She exercises outdoors on Saturdays and takes rest days on Fridays and Sundays.
    • Diet: she follows a 16-hour intermittent fasting schedule (eating between 09:00–17:00), consumes a clean omnivore diet with an emphasis on vegetables and adequate protein, and avoids junk food.
    • Brain: she meditates for 20 minutes daily, prioritizes mental health, and ensures sufficient quality sleep, helped by morning sunlight exposure and time in nature.
    • Hormesis: she engages in 20-minute sauna sessions followed by cold showers four times per week to support recovery and longevity.
    • Supplements: she takes longevity supplements and bioidentical hormones to optimize her health and aging process.
    • Testing: she regularly monitors her biological age and health markers through various tests, including DEXA scans, VO2 Max tests, lipid panels, and epigenetic aging clocks, allowing her to adjust her routine accordingly.

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

    Take care!

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