Discussing with an expert how scientifically effective attempts to change human nature are
The publication under the headline “I am 32 years old and I spent $ 200 thousand on“biohacking”made a bombshell on social networks. Its author, businessman Sergei Fage (his fortune is estimated at $ 45 million), the creator of the Ostrovok and TokBox Internet services, spoke about the experiment that he set on himself. His goal is neither more nor less - eternal life. For the past 4-5 years, he has been changing his body using biotechnology. He spent about $ 200 thousand on this venture, the lion's share of which went to thousands of diagnostic tests and doctors' consultations. Every few days, he takes tests and studies a detailed picture of what is happening in his body. Being a healthy person, he takes dozens of different medications every day and, naturally, goes in for sports according to his own program.
The number of pills that Sergei Fage eats every day to achieve his goal. Photo: FACEBOOK. COM
- During this time, I lost fat from 26% of body weight to 10%, - Sergey describes the results of work on his body. - And the level of maximum oxygen consumption (this is one of the main indicators of physical form - Ed.) I am close to the indicators of Olympic medalists, although I do not load my body as they do … I suspect that even without radical technologies and just with my current regime, I I will live to be more than 120 years old. And with regenerative medicine, gene therapy, nanotechnology, by 2040-2050 there will be every opportunity to live forever.
Sergei Fage expects to live to be 120 years old.
However, Sergei Fage is concerned not only with questions of immortality: “Why am I doing all these strange things? I, like many others, want to be a more energetic and strong-willed person, less likely to fall into melancholy and be self-confident enough to calmly meet a beautiful girl in line at the supermarket. By changing your biochemistry, he says, you can create beneficial physical and mental states.
Sleep metrics by Sergei Fage from the Oura Ring app Photo: FACEBOOK. COM
“Before, I had a lot of problems,” Fage recalls. - I was nervous, insecure, sometimes introverted, had problems with being overweight, concentrating, mood swings, anger management, procrastination and other things that many of us face. What I am describing in this article helped to get rid of all this. Subjectively, I feel happier, calmer, more energetic. I became more confident and focused. And smart, if we mean by intelligence the applied ability to solve complex problems.
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Sugar is poison! In any form. Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
WHAT IS THE SERGEY METHOD?
Let's list the key points from a giant list of different tricks.
- The system consists of 6 blocks: sleep hygiene, proper nutrition, optimal exercise, medical tests, supplements and medications, meditation and work with a psychologist.
- The purpose of sleep is to spend a lot of time in REM and deep sleep phases. He sleeps with a special bracelet that tracks these parameters.
- Does not consume sugar, alcohol, semi-finished products and cheap food in any form. Practices 24-hour fasting.
- In the gym, he mainly trains his legs. This activates the largest muscles in the body - it has many more metabolic benefits than working with small muscles like the biceps.
- Encourages followers to sit less and buy a standing desk.
- Takes daily medications: metformin, lithium, modafinil, antidepressants, thyroid hormones, growth hormones, estrogen receptor blocker, phenibut.
- Monogamy is evil.
What do experts think about Sergei Fage's experiment? For a comment, we turned to Elena Milova, she is an anti-aging expert, a member of the Board of Directors of the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation. The Foundation is engaged in the development of biomedical technologies that enhance the healthy life of a person.
ANTI-AGING TABLET
Elena, to what extent is such a method of total health control expedient from a scientific point of view?
- At first glance, there are no particular contradictions here. He has quite an adequate idea of the latest developments in the field of "anti-aging". I see a very clear intersection with the research we are writing about.
For example?
- In particular, the notion that physical activity is a very important element of the strategy of maintaining health with age. We can even say roughly how many years of life sports will add to you: from 5 and above. It depends on how accurately the exercises are matched to the characteristics of the organism. Because people have genetic differences. For example, not all cartilage tissue of the joints allows jogging. Let's say my shock loads destroy joints very quickly. But instead of running, you can spin the bike, this also gives a good load on the large muscles, which, as Sergei quite rightly writes, give the maximum metabolic effect.
But is it reasonable for a healthy person to swallow such huge quantities of drugs every day that he lists?
- You know, I myself drink metformin (a means to lower blood sugar - Auth). I am not diabetic, I have naturally low blood sugar and am reasonably slim. That is, there is no objective need to take this medicine. But in 2014, an interesting study came out where it was shown that people with type 2 diabetes who took metformin lived longer than healthy people in the control group. This shocked the scientific world so much that scientists actively began to study the properties of metformin precisely as a means of prolonging life. Therefore, this drug really has a chance to become the world's first working anti-aging pill.
Healthy and wholesome food provides the key to longevity. Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
ETERNAL YOUTH OF THE RICH
The life extension program at this stage cost the author of the experiment $ 200,000. And this gives a new dimension to the abyss that separates the rich and the poor: some are destined for eternal youth, while others will live poorly and for a short time …
- To be honest, I am not very impressed by the idea of another split in society. But secondly, Sergei is not quite right about the cost. The list of medications and supplements he takes is perfectly accessible to the middle class. I myself am taking probably a dozen different drugs. Less, of course, than his, but it takes me about one and a half thousand rubles a month. Agree, anyone can afford it. And secondly, the most powerful tools, such as physical activity, are generally free. The most expensive thing it does is deep diagnostics. You won't save much there. But the only difference will be that wealthy people will be able to monitor their health every week. And representatives of the middle class will carry out such a diagnosis every three months. But all the same, the main parameters will be visible and this is a very useful material for building a personal life extension strategy.
Our long-liver conducts a comprehensive diagnosis of the body once every few days. Is there some obsession with this?
- What is the need for such diagnostics at all? If a person is taking a variety of medications or constantly introducing new dietary supplements, it is important to monitor exactly how they affect the body. Let's say you added more fish from a certain manufacturer to your diet - bang, your mercury level jumped! And you know for sure: most likely, the culprit is this fish, which was not previously in the diet, it is not useful for you. Or you injected, say, vitamin D: you need to monitor its blood and plasma levels to understand how your body processes it. Does it benefit in a given dosage or not? Or the same metformin - in people who take it, the level of vitamin B12 gradually decreases, so it must be constantly monitored while taking metformin and compensate for the deficit if it occurs. And if a person adheres, for example, to a vegetarian diet, this is even more important, because the risk of vitamin B12 deficiency is increased here, since we absorb it from animal products. Sergei began to measure the maximum parameters quite correctly. As soon as there was a new intervention in the body, he measured what had changed.
IS THE PURPOSE OF EXISTENCE - CARE FOR YOURSELF?
Do you know about similar experiments when a person drives himself into such a rigid framework? How did it end?
- In fact, such an approach was first proposed by the famous American futurist Ray Kurzweil. He cared little for his health until he was 35 years old. At this age, he learned that he had a genetic predisposition to developing the early form of type 2 diabetes. Kurzweil, as a scientist, understood that technologies would soon appear that would revolutionize the idea of / u200b / u200bthe possibilities of medicine. He decided that the main thing is to live up to this time. Ray went to the clinic, he underwent the maximum possible tests, and together with the doctor he worked out a special regimen that included taking hundreds of pills and supplements, intravenous infusion, red wine, green tea, etc. Kurzweil is now in his 70s, he has diabetes still no. And they say that even the gray hair on his head began to darken. Sergei Fage's approach is very similar to the Kurzweil story.
In your opinion, is it right from the point of view of life priorities - to make the main purpose of existence to take care of yourself? After all, judging by what he is doing, there is hardly time left for something else?
- It depends on how you organize this system. For example, I've learned to save the time I spend taking care of myself by just buying a pill box. It comes with an alarm clock that reminds you twice a day that it's time to take your pills. I stopped thinking about it, I fill the pillbox once every two weeks, I spend maybe 15 minutes on it. And pouring the pills into your palm and swallowing is a few seconds a day. And do not forget that the state of health is the basis of everything. For example, I see that the experimenter repeatedly mentions sex and I suspect that he takes great pleasure in communicating with the opposite sex. Why not stay healthy just for that?
IS IT WORTH FOR THE SAKE OF IMMORTALITY TO DEPRESS YOURSELF OF PLEASURES
But it seems to me that the mode of the day that he describes is the way of life of a lonely person. Sergei talks about sleep hygiene, but we know that a romantic evening with a beautiful lady is difficult to end when the alarm rings. He ruled out alcohol, but a glass of champagne is almost a must-have for a candlelit evening. Finally, as a result of sex, children appear who do not care about your lifestyle at all - they instantly sharpen it for themselves. Health is an important thing, but it is rather the currency with which we pay for career success, family happiness, for children and for loved ones
- I think this is also more a matter of organization. For a child who stands on his head all day, you can, after all, hire a nanny. By the way, this is not about going to bed on time every day, but about getting up at the same time. This is an important point. Now about alcohol. I would not say that people who follow an anti-aging lifestyle have definitely blacklisted alcohol. Several glasses of wine a week do not negatively affect life expectancy. But there is another point. Sergei is taking metformin in a therapeutic dose, but it is incompatible with alcohol.
And how do you like the idea that by controlling the biochemistry of the body, you can solve problems that belong to the field of mentality. He says: I take pills so as not to "slow down", flirting with women, to get rid of a bad mood, to become smarter …
- Everything is very interesting here! You may be aware that the same chemicals that are responsible for inflammation in the body are highly involved in regulating our mood. There is even such a concept - depression of the patient. This is when the emotional mood is constantly lowered in a person against the background of an inflammatory process in the body. Therefore, I do not see anything strange here. As for taking nootropic drugs that should support cognitive abilities: it may be too early to use such acceleration at the age of 30. Moreover, the key way to maintain cognitive health is physical activity, he already uses. But if there is a desire, then why not. Modafinil, which is mentioned in the article, was originally developed to help people cope with jetlag.which often fly from one time zone to another. True, it is banned in Russia, but in other countries it was allowed for sale, which means it is safe, as far as I understand it.
120 YEARS IS NOT THE LIMIT
How do we perceive such experiments on ourselves? How eccentric? Or is it a new idea of a healthy lifestyle, and over time many will live like this?
- This is a good example of popularizing new medical technologies. Now experts in the field of "anti-aging" are developing an information strategy on how to speak with the population about the reversal of aging. The reality is that at the moment, already in clinical trials (these are human trials), there are drugs that will significantly prolong the healthy period of life by curbing the key mechanisms of aging. Scientists have learned to extend the life of laboratory animals by 30-45%. People should know that we are on the verge of revolutionary change.
Sergei Fage is going to live up to at least 120 years. In your opinion, is this the maximum resource for which the human body is designed?
- The longest life was lived by the Frenchwoman Jeanne Kalman, her record of 122 years, 5 months and 14 days. It was believed that this is the age limit to which a person can live if he has a favorable genetic profile. But a couple of years ago, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn (she received the prize just for the discovery of the genetic mechanism of aging) said that modern biomedicine methods can extend human life up to 150 years. This pleasure will be expensive; things like gene therapy are expensive to manufacture at the moment. But over time, I hope they will become available to the broad masses of the population.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV