Growing Younger with Sergey Young and his new book.
And what I’m excited about looking into my wiser years.
Doesn’t it make your life kind of boring? To work on this longevity health goal, not having fun every day like everyone else?
I think a lot of people never felt what it’s like, when you wake up every morning full of energy and enthusiasm, ready to go, ready to change the world, with a huge smile on your face for no specific reason and with absolute confidence you can do anything, you can push through any challenge, whatever curve ball life throws at you.
You see, longevity in 50 years also feels damn good TODAY!
Eating deliciously prepared flavorful healthy food, being active, having fun sweating while dancing or roller-blading like there’s no tomorrow, feeling absolutely fabulous in your own body because it shines from inside out with vitality — I don’t see how it can be boring, and why I’d want to sacrifice THIS for alcohol and junk food that might feel good for a brief moment, stealing the quality of my life for hours, days and decades ahead? Making me wanna stay in familiar comfort zone, where nothing new and truly interesting is happening?
What’s good for longevity — feels awesome today!
*Except for my 42-hour weekly fasts maybe, I can’t say it’s the most exciting thing I’m looking forward to!
“The Science and Technology of Growing Young” by Sergey Young.
Having read this book about what’s possible now, what’s gonna be possible in the future — I got a bit more excited about my fasting today! I plan to live a very LOOOOOOOOONG life! Because why not? Wouldn’t you want to see how amazing the world becomes in 100 years? What YOU can do given another 100 years? Doesn’t this thought about the possibilities ignite your curiosity with excitement?
But… I don’t want to get old, disabled, barely able to take care of myself, barely moving, with life becoming more dull with every year passing.
But… We don’t have to!
That’s what seems to be happening now — our biology, technology, health care revolution are happening with accelerating pace as I’m typing this.
We are getting better at gathering data about what’s happening inside of our bodies — wearable devices, DNA and microbiome testing, advanced blood testing, continuous monitoring of our “inside data” like blood glucose monitors, or step counting, or heart rate and heart rate variability tracking, our sleep quality, blood oxygen levels — more and more markers of our health are measured. And it’s just a very beginning. Soon — our hydration status, underwear to measure body fat, toothbrush that analyzes our saliva to learn about our microbiome or fertility status — nobody knows what yet to come, it’s getting harder and harder to predict what’s possible, or to be more precise what’s impossible.
We are getting better at analyzing all the data coming in with the help of AI (artificial intelligence), at predicting what can happen, at providing simple actionable very personalized solutions based on that data, solutions that we can monitor as they happen, solutions that change lives of individuals today, preventing heart attacks, strokes, managing auto-immune conditions, allowing people living decades more — it’s all happening as you are reading this.
You might say, well, the data is good, but who’s gonna listen to, pay attention to all that noise?
What if/when we have our personal AI health advisor who’s gonna give us simple advice from what to choose from a menu in front of us to what scenic route we should take home after dinner to get the number of steps we need to maximize fuel utilization and keep our metabolism running at its best — with enough data, personalized touch, and just-at-the-right moment personalized nudges we might just do it.
Pick up Sergey’s book and you’ll discover how we are advancing at DNA editing, managing non-treatable prior diseases, allowing people to have great quality of life, when they could have been dead, if they were born just 10 years ago. Most probably, there’s gonna be no untreatable cancers, and at some point we’ll figure out how to “help our genes” to keep us younger longer. More alive than ever before!
What’s to come?
Stem cells therapy to help our bodies to restore tissues and organs, to restore function of our body to its full capacity. Technological solutions to replace old and/or non-functioning parts of our bodies, or to clean up cellular “mess” inside of us — “Eventually, you may be able to maintain your body just like you maintain your car”, Sergey writes. We are yet to find out what’s possible, how it’s all gonna work. One thing is for sure — it’ll only get crazier-better for all of us.
“Eventually, you may be able to maintain your body just like you maintain your car”
Imagine a world where everything that bothers you physically isn’t an issue anymore? Not now, not later? Wouldn’t you want to live as long as possible? Exploring the world, maybe other planets, discovering new passions and things you can learn every decade of your life? Isn’t this exciting?
With some wild, hard-to-imagine and deeply-personalized combination of lifestyle/dietary choices advised/made-easy/delivered by our personal AI health advisor, DNA, stem-cells and better-drugs therapies and interventions — we’ll get to live in a world where suffering and disease are a choice, where opportunities to learn, to advance to experience are endless!
Wouldn’t you want to live in this future?
Isn’t it worth the “sacrifice” of a few drinks and sugary foods along with too many late-and-poor-sleep nights?
Why sacrifice, if all these developments are coming you might ask? Isn’t everything gonna be fixed for us?
The less damage you have — the more chances you have to see all these developments coming true in your lifetime, the easier it’s gonna be to fix you.
And, it feels so much better to live in a body that functions well today!
Luckily, Sergey’s book also covers that — with a chapter on 10 habits and choices to make now to take advantage of what’s coming and what’s already here!
1. You better check yourself section covers the importance of testing our health data more often, in a way we can afford be that bathroom scales, smart watch or regular microbiome, blood biomarkers and DNA testing. The earlier we find out what’s going wrong in our body, the more chances we have to correct and reverse it.
2. Quit your bad habits gives us data to inspire a change of 3 habits — smoking, drinking alcohol and consuming sugary and other suboptimal foods, that have been shown to decrease the quality of our health and life the more we do them.
3. Don’t do dumb things helps us to develop a more long-term perspective, choosing behaviors, that can potentially endanger our life, more carefully. Drinking and doing dumb things, like trying to conquer Mount Fuji in our street clothes, dropping dead in the process (that did happen to a real person) — might not be worth it. Or sky-diving and other extreme sports — if you love it, do it, but ask yourself, “Do I really want it that much, that I’m ready to die doing it?”
4. Eat early, eat less often tells us about all the shown benefits of restricting the “when” of our diet. Overeating isn’t good, it doesn’t matter what we eat. And controlling the timing and the frequency of our meals is a simple way of controlling the volume of what we eat. And it does seem that our digestive system needs some recovery time just like any other organ, recovery and clean-up that are only possible while we don’t eat.
5. Let food be thy medicine reminds us that poor diet indeed matters, “driving noncommunicable diseases worldwide, killing at least eleven million people every year.” Sergey shares his favorite recommendations that he lives by — drink more water, avoid processed food, eat more plants, reduce animal foods, eat healthy fats, go organic.
6. Supplement your nutrition invites us to explore how already today we can improve our nutrition, improve our health, fitness and vitality by simply adding a couple of pills and potions, choosing the quality wisely. (It surprises me personally how few people take a simple good quality multi-vitamin, even though we’ve known for a century now that supplements do help to prevent loss of function in the future, and they do help to improve how we feel today in such a powerful way!)
7. Get on up! — kicks our butt into action! Movement might not be the best way to lose weight, but it is certainly one of the most researched and effective ways to improve the quality of one’s life and fitness, mental health and attitude to life every day. And all it takes is moving more often, not becoming a CrossFit or gym junkie, as you might think.
8. Make sleep your superpower asks us to forget about “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” badge of honor, and get an extra hour of sleep instead more often when we need it, because, as it turns out, sleep improves absolutely every aspect of our physical and mental wellbeing, making alive time so much more productive, exciting and fulfilling. There’s a ton of research on how to sleep better out there you can benefit from tonight — from changes we can do to our environment (dark, cool and quiet), to our behavior and routines (no alcohol before bed, mindful caffeine consumption, winding down rituals).
9. Mindfulness over matter awakens our more mindful selves, reminding us that mental hygiene, stress management, our attitude — it all affects our physical selves down to our DNA, how our life feels, it affects us no less (probably more) than what we decided to put on our plates.
10. Think and grow young evokes new kind of thinking about our age, because what we think, what we feel matters. It changes how we age, it changes how we live today. Preventing loneliness by building strong social connections, grateful attitude, sense of purpose and meaning — for some “weird” reason it seems to be really great for longevity of our physical and non-physical selves.
I invite you to apply as many tips as you can from this last chapter and your doubtful and concerned attitude towards longevity just might take a 180-degree turn, and you’ll start glowing with increased enthusiasm for living longer, younger, today and decades… or maybe centuries into our exciting future!
To conclude today’s longevity blog inspired by Sergey’s book, I’d like to ask you, dear reader, to, for a moment, forget about your concerns about the future where we all get to live longer — possible issues with environment, population numbers, genetic enhancements, inequality, pollution, food shortage, taxes and pensions… — and remember the fact, that when problem arise, we tend to rise to the occasion and solve them, when we come together, when we put our head and resources together for our common good, our common bright future.
Look back 10 years ago, look at our lives today. I don’t know about you but living longer, feeling better, being able to travel, to talk to my mom on video, Siberia to beaches of Mexico, through a device that fits into my palm, writing this blog while waiting for my groceries to be delivered to my door, while Elon Musk sends non-astronauts to International Space Station… that feels pretty damn extraordinary to me! I can’t wait to live to see what’s possible for me and for all of us in this future, where we get to grow younger!
🙂THANK YOU FOR READING!
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