TKS Session 8: Human Longevity
Two months into TKS and I’ve already done so much. It’s crazy what kind of progress you can make with the right determination and guidance. Next month is going to be something, because TKS’ program-within-the-program, Velocity, is going to begin. Basically, if you want to get the most out of TKS and you're going to put all the work in, then Velocity is for you. I want to make the most out of TKS and put in the work, so this Velocity program excites me! But once it actually begins next Saturday, I’ll cover more on it.
My intention for this session was to go in curious and come out with something that can be applied to my everyday life. What that means is at some point in my day, I can use what I’ve learned in this session. I’ll share what that is in the end.
To start off our session, we looked at the mindset of the week: Appreciation
We asked ourselves why appreciation is important and do we do enough of it in our daily lives. I think appreciation is important because it allows us to reflect on what we have and recognize that we have a lot compared to others who may have only the necessities, or not even that much. I don’t think we take enough time to appreciate because we allow our lives to get in the way and use it as an excuse. We are also surrounded by constant reminders of things we don’t have, and that can make us start to think about all the stuff we want and become bitter because we don’t have it. Sometimes it can be used as motivation, but it isn’t helpful when you don’t try to attain what you want but simply sulk around and complain. Appreciation can help remind us of all the great things we are lucky to have, and when you feel good about what you have, you genuinely feel happier and more thoughtful as you go about your day.
This session was about human longevity and the advancements we are making to get there. Before getting into all of it, we took a moment to look at human health span vs. human lifespan. Your lifespan is how long you can live, which is usually what we tend to focus on. But our health span is measuring how many of those years in our lifespan are healthy years. That’s what human longevity aims to increase.
There are a lot of people in the world obsessed with looking younger and feeling younger, but some even want to live longer. I knew beforehand that people were working to make us live to be 200, but I didn’t know how much time and research had actually been invested into this idea. We looked at some people and treatments that have become known for reversing the aging process.
One person who is pioneering human longevity is 47-year-old Bryan Johnson, who has been working at slowing down his aging process, actually aging slower than 99% of 20-year-olds. He’s been reversing his aging by tackling all aspects of his life like nutrition, exercise, sleep, and components of how his body functions with treatments/supplements. He founded his company Blueprint in 2020 to challenge the idea that death is inevitable. He’s been uploading all his data, routines, and products used in his project for free on Blueprint Protocol.
One treatment we looked at is called vampire facials. Vampire facials require you to give some of your blood so the plasma in it can be isolated and used for your treatment. The plasma is separated from the blood and injected into your face. The plasma promotes collagen production, and collagen prevents our skin from sagging or forming wrinkles. After doing a vampire facial, your face is left with natural-looking and vibrant results, tightened skin and absence of wrinkles, and improved skin tones. it also kicks starts your skin rejuvenation process.
After looking at some of the big research going on in human longevity, we were split into groups to research more on a different technology or science that is helping in human longevity.
Our group looked at how AI is assisting in human longevity. AI is mainly used for looking at data sets to analyze what statistics have proven to have effect on humans living longer and trying to maximize their potential. An example of a company using AI to help increase the human health span is rejuvenation AI. Rejuvenation AI is using AI to measure a patient’s different aging processes (how their heart ages, how their lungs age, their biological age, etc.) and creating a personalized plan with the help of their doctor to maintain optimal aging rates and levels based on what their body needs.
Other areas being used in human longevity include synthetic biology and genetic engineering of human longevity genes, stem cells, gene therapy to reset genes in cells to perform better, immunotherapies to combat the aging of the immune system, personalized medicine to be proactive to help care for your body specifically and create personalized treatments to help promote human longevity, phage therapy to combat immune diseases that are incurable with other treatments and increase longevity, and nanobots to be administered into your body and target specific areas in your body that can improve your longevity rate.
After looking at how these fields overlap with longevity and hearing about what others found out, we took a moment to look at some questions to consider before we signed off. We then chose one and wrote about our perspective on it. I chose the question: Should we increase the human lifespan?
Here’s my reflection:
Should we increase the human lifespan? You could look at this from many different angles (like from recourse accessibility, population, human capability, philosophical, etc.) but what interests me most is the tampering of nature. No matter how long you increase human longevity, whether by 20 years or 100 years, you are still tampering with how the human life evolves and progresses. There must be some underlying reason as to why humans, or anything that is natural, cannot live forever. If we tamper with our length of existence, who knows what kinds of impact we could have on our world or on our own bodies as time goes on or through generations. Maybe overtime our world can’t handle this new increased population change and the environment may die quicker. Maybe we don’t have the amount of resources necessary to provide for everyone, which could result in more people going into poverty or increased death rates because not everyone has food or shelter. Maybe our bodies were never made to live this long because if they did we may develop new conditions that we never had before and they may be harder to treat or manage, if they are manageable to begin with. Of course if we achieve natural forms of longevity because we live out our daily lives for the better (by eating healthier, exercising, etc.), that is still happening naturally and we haven’t actually tampered or changed anything, and we may actually reach a lengthened lifespan that was intended for us but we haven’t reached because of our unhealthy habits. There is a difference between trying to live longer and helping people with infections or diseases to live up to the natural lifespan and tampering to increase the natural lifespan. Developing these technologies to cure as many people as we can is important and necessary because lives are being taken away too early. But trying to increase the human lifespan for no actual reason besides wanting to live longer may create these unintended consequences we never had to face.
What I walked away with from this session was to take time to appreciate every day at some point. I used to take a moment to be grateful for what I have, but then I allowed life to get in the way and didn’t end up making time for it again. This mindset was a good reminder of how important gratefulness is and the benefits it can have on yourself and how you perform in your day.
To end off the session, we looked at what Velocity is and what that program consists of. I don’t want to spoil it so I’ll save it for when it begins, but I will share with you the requirement for joining.
I need to choose one of the three tasks and complete with proof by Friday:
Run a 10K
Complete my apply
Write and pitch a shark tank pitch
I want to complete my apply, which I already have planned out, by this Saturday.
October is coming to a close, and that means my October newsletter will be out soon, so be on the lookout for that. There will be much more content compared to my first newsletter so it’'ll be interesting. Can’t wait for next session, and can’t wait to see what’s coming this month!
Photo credit: https://herohealth.com/blog/aging/longevity/
