What do molecular hydrogen, nutrient drips, and a cocktail of supplements have in common? They are all part of the Fountain of Youth quest as people “biohack” their lives in the name of longevity.
Optimizing your biology, or biohacking, is often seen as “skirting along the edges of science, and sometimes safety, to outlive us all,” Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent, says in his podcast Chasing Life as he explores whether it’s “biohacking or BS.”
“People will go through extraordinary lengths with the hope, the simple hope, of living longer,” Gupta says in his podcast. “Some people are going to put a lot more effort into this than most.” He added on CNN This Morning that if “you did everything right” you can live up to 115. But how do we get that added 35 years beyond the current life expectancy?
We know exercise, a healthy diet, and optimal sleep can help prevent illness and may contribute to a longer life span, but biohacking has become a more extreme approach. Some biohacking tactics, like exchanging plasma with younger people, are not recommended by the FDA nor approved for the purpose of reverse aging.
“Does any of this actually work? How do you measure success? And most importantly, might they do more harm than good?” he asks. Unfortunately, the answers are murky because research verifying these hacks (how long someone lives) takes a literal lifetime to vet.
“The mother of all of those diseases”
Dr. Nir Barzilai, the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says there are ways to “target aging before it starts” by preventing age-related diseases perpetuated by the breakdown of cells as we age.
“This is my mission. It's to cure aging,” he tells Gupta on his podcast. While he also notes there are only short-term studies around the effects of certain biohacking methods like fasting, research has shown that the diabetes drug metformin can address the hallmarks of aging, like inflammation and cell deterioration, he says. He is keen on expanding access to the medication.
“If we can target the biology of aging…then we stop not one disease and not two disease[s], but all those diseases of aging—the cancer, the diabetes, the cardiovascular disease, the dementia,” he says. “Aging is the mother of all those diseases.”
Barzilai adds: “What we are trying to do is to remove those senescent cells." Senescent cells no longer multiply, but instead of dying off, they release chemicals that can cause inflammation. "We know in animals that if we remove those senescent cells in aging models, they get much, much healthier. And each one of those hallmarks will be another story that I can tell you.”
He says there are three main ways to biohack when addressing the hallmarks of aging: the Dorian Gray, the Peter Pan, and the Wolverine. Dorian Gray slows the aging process for people who are older, while Wolverine reverses aging, and Peter Pan inhibits aging. (Barzilai explains that if people in their twenties measure the hallmarks of aging every couple of months, they can “erase some of the epigenetics of aging.”)
“There's a need to solve aging for everyone and to increase the health span,” he tells Gupta. “For me, it's not a science fiction. It's a total science now.”
For others Gupta spoke with, there’s another way to look at it. Rather than biohacking, they’re interested in other ways to extend health span that are backed by more extensive research, like getting enough sleep, hugging loved ones, and limiting screen time.
It’s also important to have a goal for living a healthier, longer life.
“How will me getting older and living healthy longer really impact the people and the world around me?” Gupta says. “I know I've thought about this a lot, especially as my three teenage daughters continuously grow older. What can we all do to try and get a leg up?”
