"Longevity chiselers": 4 Friday thoughts
Super agers | advice on a 3-generation European vacation | 2 upcoming podcasts
In this Fun Friday short post, four brief explorations of thoughts that came to mind while doing the dishes this week.
1 | Longevity chiselers and anti-aging charlatans
When I launched AGING with STRENGTH almost nine months ago, it didn’t take the YouTube algorithm very long to feed me a steady diet of Andrew Huberman videos discussing the notion that aging is a disease that can “halted.” By casually infusing his plain English explanations with just enough scientific jargon, Huberman, a Stanford neuroscientist, often asserts unproven theories as fact. He also has a financial stake in products and services he recommends, though he doesn’t often disclose them.
Huberman appears to be what I call a longevity chiseler:
lon·gev·i·ty chis·el·er, n. a person of significant influence or professional stature who promotes unsubstantiated scientific theories for financial gain, often unacknowledged.
Huberman is chummy with another longevity chiseler, David Sinclair, a Harvard geneticist who once claimed, falsely, that he and his colleagues had figured out how to reverse aging in dogs. Together, they exemplify the art of scientific misinformation.
The market for preventive wellness, supplements, diagnostics and related healthspan-extending interventions is expected to surpass $8.5 trillion by 2030. With that much money in play, expect a growing number of longevity chiselers and anti-aging charlatans to pop up on your YouTube feed, too.
2 | A European vacation with my mom and daughter
Next week will be a big one for me: I’m taking my 82-year-old mom and 9-year-old daughter to Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria, for an three-generation, train-based European vacation.
This will be the first and likely the last time we three travel together, so I’m looking forward to this experience, and especially the privilege of watching mom and daughter have their own European travel experience, together and individually.
I’m betting many of you have done something similar with parent and child together on a vacation or extended outing, so I’m asking for advice: What do I need to know that I’m not anticipating? Any helpful thoughts welcome.
3 | Becoming a “super ager,” Part 2: don’t sleep too much
Last week, I mentioned I’d interviewed Dr. Eric Topol, one of the world’s leading medical researchers and author of “Super Agers.” Here’s another interesting finding from the book: regularly getting more than 7-8 hours of sleep a night is associated with a 12-percent greater risk of cardiovascular disease.
If you have a few hours to spare, here’s the research behind that statistic.
I’ll write a full post about my 70-minute interview with Dr. Topol. After I return from Europe, most likely.
4 | Two upcoming podcasts you’ll want to watch or hear
In the next two weeks, I’ll also publish edited versions of video conversations with two people who have a lot to say about different aspects of aging with strength, with some surprise moments: