The billionaire who wants to live forever just admitted he has long covid. Specifically, covid wrecked his lungs. If you haven’t come across him, Bryan Johnson is a 46-year-old tech bro who cashed out a few years ago and now spends all his time trying not to die.
Your citation for aging caused by COVID is correct.
It is one of at least three mechanisms - epigenetic methylation. And it costs on average about 7 years of biological age per infection. So yes, avoiding this damnable virus is the single greatest life extension thing we all can do.
There is more.
The first observed impacts on aging are the cognitive decline from long COVID and the related organ damage. These are caused by the toxicity of the spike protein. Surgeons have noted repeated that patients who have had COVID look like they have organs that are far older than their chronological ages. Scientific studies suggest that this is the equivalent of about 10 years of biological aging per infection. And they are additive.
So again, the best thing to do to maximize life span is to never get infected. The second best thing to do is to never get infected AGAIN.
But it so much worse. The third and largest impact on accelerated againg by infection woth SARS-CoV-2 comes from truncation of the telomeres which cap our chromosomes. The length of our telomeres is inversely correlated to biological age. Our telomeres are longest as fetuses. With every cell division they shorten. It is a sort of countdown clock to death.
The length of our telomeres affects the function of our genes. It is one of the programmed mechanisms that controls age related changes. And when the tears become too short, during cell division chromosomes tend to cross-link and the end. When this happens our bodies identify the cells as defective and orders them to die. This is the wasting at end of life.
This study is the sentinel study that correlated the length of tears Covid infection.
what it suggests or shows, albeit with a small data set, is that there is a direct linear correlation between biological age and infection with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID), and changes in biological age.
However, this correlation does not intercept to zero. it just strongly that the worst impact is to the youngest members of the population. If this correlation is correct which it appears to be it implies that an infant infected and recovered from COVID becomes biologically 36 years old. This aging impact becomes less with increasing biological age.
There is no reason to believe or suspect of this correlation is to chronological age. Rather each infection and recovery increases the biological age, and that new biological age then becomes the basis for correlation with the next infection to the resulting biological age.
What this all means is that after three infections, no matter what age you start at, you are old, very very old. This has huge implications for individuals and more so for the population and society.
as we have had the pandemic ongoing for four years and most people have been infected at least 2 to 5 times, the impact of this aging is already locked into place. We now only await our bodies catching up to the aging impact which has already occurred. And then, to the impact on society at large. As you can imagine those will most probably be enormous.
And it appears that this is irreversible or largely irreversible. The harm has already been done.
However because our leaders and our experts so-called have decided to embark on a campaign of silence in order to get people back to work and shopping to "save the economy" we are continuing to accumulate even more damage which will further destroy society.
There is no solution to this problem, other than never being infected and never being infected again.
The next few years and decade will tell the tale. Do the genetic and epigenetic changes, and the biological damage to organs and brain truly correlate with age? We will soon know the answer to those questions.
I for one have chosen to be one of the survivors. How about you?
Are you saying that 60 year olds who have had three infections should be almost all dead as they are biologically ninety years old? This doesn't seem to tally with the mortality figures, in particular excess deaths. It also means I'm biologically 85 - so older than my mother.
However, there are a few things to bear in mind. These are my imperfect assessments in looking at the data. I am not a medical doctor. This is not and should not be used or though of as professional or medical advice. Specific cases and individuals need specific individual assessment by professionals.
First:
That damage has occurred does not mean you cannot do things to make it better. There are a lot of things to be done for specific issues, to reduce inflammation, to heal damage, to reverse methylation, and to lengthen telomeres.
The best answer of course is to avoid damage where ever and whenever possible, and to do those things anyway to improve health and hopefully extend life expectancy.
Second:
Our knowledge of how aging occurs is far from perfect. We have correlations . We have indications that the changes in methylation and truncation are not simply markers of age, but that they are involved in changes in biochemistry indicative of aging. I.e. that they are bidirectional, they both indicate age and influence biological age. But how true that is is uncertain.
Also, there is a spread in the data. It isn't a perfect or complete correlation. We can suspect that some particular amount of change corresponds to some particular amount if biological aging for a population of people on average. Not all will have the same impact. Some are less. Some are more. There are many factors that go into aging.
And though the correlations tell us a likely story about the whole body, there may be critical organs or systems which dominate and that we haven't figured out yet. That can make a large difference, So far, it seems that the markers do correlate. We won't know until a lot of people reach their ends of life that have been tracked.
Third:
For organ damage the answer is more immediately concerning. That comes from surgeons describing the conditions of real people's organs who have had COVID and later had surgery.
For someone aged 60, a lot of biological aging has already occurred. And though the correlations appear sound for populations as a whole, exactly how that impacts older folks individually is far less certain. Many people age 60 are biologically much older due to insults earlier in life or genetic differences Many are also biologically much younger.
If the data can be trusted, and if it means anything in my specific case, insults I had throughout life have left me 30 years younger than my physical age. The horrible impacts of my earlier life consumed those years. So maybe I get them back now. Individual cases are just that. Is that real. I may never know. Every day is a gift.
Fourth:
For the telomere truncation, the correlation from the data seems to reduce to zero change per infection about age 70. That is likely not true, and just an artifact of the randomness in real world data. But, it might be real. If so, I suspect that it only means that the telomeres have already been so shortened by life that it makes little difference any more.
Then too there is the issue there are many different things overlaying on one another. Which is dominant? And if the methylation and truncation impact age expression, is there a lag time until the body expresses that change? If so, how long is that? I haven't ween any data to clarify those questions, or to provide firm answers.
Unfortunately, the way science works is a bit like driving while only looking in the rear view mirrors. It tells us about the past. It can suggest the future, but it doesn't directly show it to us. When some big change like this pandemic comes along, it is like hitting a hard turn in the road. But because we are relying on the proven past to tell us what to do, there is a serious risk of running off the road or crashing into something.
We need to be looking instead at very imperfect indicators like these studies. They don't give us perfect answers or certainty, just a better set of hints. Using the driving analogy, they are like getting glimpses out if the side windows.
The data isn't showing what you say. The latest studies are instead indicating that epigegenetic factors such as DNA methylation are a better correlate of biological age than telomere length. It's a common error that just because something is easy to measure or understand then it's a more likely or viable explanation. It's the main method by which the alternative medicine industry makes a profit.
"Recent research findings, however, indicate that TL per se can only allow a rough estimate of aging rate and can hardly be regarded as a clinically important risk marker for age-related pathologies and mortality. Evidence is obtained that other indicators such as certain immune parameters, indices of epigenetic age, etc., could be stronger predictors of the health status and the risk of chronic disease." https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.630186/full
Thank you for the linked opinion. There is a lot of interesting information.
However you have entirely missed the point.
ALL of these indicators point to the same basic conclusion. COVID infections cause dramatic aging impacts. Every infection adds to the impacts of previous infections.
At this point in the pandemic, the average person has been infected multiple times (3 or more). By the least impactful estimate of aging of all of these indicators, this implies an average aging of 21 years or more. That is a dramatic 7 fold increase in the rate of aging by any measure. That makes 20 year olds 40 year olds, and 45 year olds into retirees.
By six years into the pandemic (two years from now), that converts 20 year olds into retirees!
And that is the least rapid aging correlate.
By the estimates reported by surgeons, we are already facing half our population now being biologically old.
Consider what that implies to the burden on our health care systems over the next several years. Consider too what that will do to the ability to work (especially to manual labor) and hence to productivity. That is directly correlated to financial and corporate performance, and societal well being.
It very much appears that the ostrich approach of shoving ones head in the ground and pretending the pandemic doesn’t exist - guarantees societal collapse. Big surprise there. Doh! That's a life lesson no one has ever encountered before.
All of the aging indicators are imperfect. Epigenetic indicators vary wildly in how well they correlate. Each is useful in different ways. Each is messy. But in the end, they are all telling the same basic story.
Evidence backed opinion isn't opinion. All of what you say requires real-world evidence. i.e. an excess of people dying prematurely from Covid associated causes during an extended post-pandemic period. Otherwise, it's just wild conjecture without any science to back it. What's worse, you're close to indulging in dogma - a skeptic's bête-noire. I'm going to end my contribution here.
Yes actually it is - opinion. Read the language of the authors. They themselves state it as opinion. More than this, as you note - there isn't hard proof yet. The best we have is correlations. We have reason to believe these correlations implicate function and then indicate that the markers are both showing age changes and affecting physiology to cause aging.
More than this you still are not getting it.
This is a problem in science in general. Waiting for confirmed and validated truth can be fatal when the real world impacts occur faster than the science can prove them. When this happens, we must be fleet enough of foot to recognize that and to shift our bases.
This means raising warnings and possibly and probably taking actions before we have anything close to certainty.
We have to assess the potential trajectories of events and impacts and then judge whether we can wait, or we must act.
Let us say you are standing with a bunch of kids in the middle of a crosswalk. You have the right of way and the walk light is on. A truck is hurtling toward you that does not have the right of way - blaring its horn. What do you do?
Stand there like a moron shouting - stop - I have the right of way? Ignore it, knowing you have the right of way? Or suspect that maybe, just maybe, though entirely unproven that the trucks brakes have failed and there is nothing the driver can do to prevent crushing you and your charges into the asphalt, and then both run and pull, exhort, shout to get the kids to flee from impending disaster?
You are effectively arguing out of ignorance to stand fast and to get you and your charges crushed.
We have sufficient indications from what we know of aging, organ damage and various indicators to at the very least warn everyone. This is through multiple lines of reasoning.
Instead of acting, experts everywhere have taken the precautionary act of shielding themselves and their careers from potential harm by staying silent. Worse, many have taken that as a personal direction of not acting even to protect themselves, their families, friends, coworkers and colleagues by taking any action at all.
That is in a word - DUMB.
For those of us who have spent a lifetime protecting people from hazards this is particularly troubling. It is an abrogation of duty to others.
Is the data perfect? Far from it. Is it absolute? Certainly not.
But what prey tell are the consequences from inaction based on the data we have? At the least - enormous individual and collective harm. At the worst - societal collapse.
Gee, do you think maybe that is worth mentioning it to someone? Better yet - shouting it at them?
The only way to avoid COVID is to be a hermit for the rest of your life (and even then you'll still get infected)
I know this because I've tried it, and have been infected.
However, you will get infected with far lower viral loads, which is good for recovery. I was able to recover from long COVID and sustain that recovery for over a year, because I was isolating from people. At the time of the recovery, I'd had at least 3 covid infections.
Also, it is an American government bioweapon from Fort Detrick. There is a slew of evidence that it didn't come from China.
I have never gotten COVID, however, I have been wearing an N95 mask since Day 1. I live in CA, so I already had a stockpile of masks for when we get fires here.
When I do see people, I ask them not to do anything too crazy like a high exposure event, etc. If they want to do that, just make sure it's 3 days before seeing me. If they don't want to do that, then they don't get to see me and I am 100% fine with not seeing a friend like that.
When we do meet up, I make sure they take a CUE test to catch any early or asymptomatic infections, and I've found most of my friends are too scared to unmask around me and risk accidentally infecting me. We ALWAYS sit outside and I space the seating out so we're not next to each other, so I do continue to socially distance.
I can still all of the things I used to, and I haven't gotten COVID. I may be one of the few in a mask now and may be one of the only ones in an N95 but I could give a fuck.
I add goggles for doctor's appointments, since hospitals and doctor's offices are one of the most likely spots I'd get infected. Again, never been infected.
I"m SEVERELY immunocompromised so when i sick it's Biblical. A cold will cost me 6-8 weeks of my life. The flu (which I caught every year until 2020) would cost me 10-16 weeks of my life.
I spent my entire life sick - constantly. Going from one virus to a secondary infection 100% of the time. Rarely getting a break on illnesses before catching something else. I was on antibiotics every month.
Since March 2020 when I started wearing an N95, I haven't been sick. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I was prescribed antibiotics. Probably January 2020 after catching something at a NYE party.
This has been the healthiest I've been in my entire life. Not a cold. Nothing. I wish doctors had recommended masking to me prior to COVID. It would have changed my life.
So, it is possible to not catch COVID. You just have to make sure you're wearing a fit-tested N95 mask when you're out in public with the infected masses. Fairly simple, actually.
EDIT: Since posting, CUE HEALTH has gone out of business, so we've switched to Metrix tests (98% accuracy) for the moment and have ordered PureLife (99% accuracy).
Yes, it requires great care and largely - isolation. That can't be changed so long as the government fails to inform and advise correctly. It won't be forever. With rising illness, disability and death there will come a time when things change dramatically. It won't be soon.
As to the virus coming from Ft. Detrick. That is nothing but conspiratorial nonsense. The virus arose naturally from recombination in bats in southern China / northern Thailand. Which is precisely where it or something very much like it was expected to come from.
Nah, it's from the US. Images of Google searches of pneumonia outbreaks across 2019 and 2018. There were none in 2018. Tons in 2019. Google later removed the hits from 2019.
No, it is not natural. It is a bioweapon that was funded and developed by the US government, and seeded in China at the Wuhan military games.
It is definitely linked to Ft. Detrick and Ft. Belvoir.
It is possibly linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is funded by the US government.
The culpability of China is an open question, the culpability of the US is a known fact.
Liberals are just as clueless as the conservatives. The vaccine can kill. The data is cooked. Masks work. It stays in the body for 2 years. It's a US bioweapon.
You'll forgive me for not taking you seriously, because your article directly contradicts my experience.
I had the best quality of life in my 30 years AFTER being infected by covid at least 3 times, and recovering through spatial isolation, antibiotics, and a few rounds of ivermectin (not the horse kind).
I then sustained this quality of life for over a year, working like a horse in the yard every day. Until I got reinfected again by a meeting I couldn't avoid.
It's a Neurological and Vascular Disease that causes immune system dysfunction. The acute phase of the infection can disable or kill you, but damn if that virus doesn't take up residence in the body and cause some fucking damage.
I have 3 close friends who have been completely disabled by COVID. The inflammation in their brains has left them with what I'd say sounds like early Dementia. I mean "Brain Fog" is a really nice way to sugar coat not being able to speak properly anymore or remember what you were saying CONSTANTLY while talking to people. Big yikes.
My primary care doctor of 12 years got COVID on the frontlines and died (before the vaccine).
And, I have quite a few extended family members that died in 2020 (before the vaccine).
And, quite a few friends have lost Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and siblings to COVID - all unvaxxed.
Evangelical Christians living in "red" areas of the country who thought Jesus would save them and they didn't need a vaccine. Praying (shockingly) did not save their lives.
They died young too! Leaving behind spouses and young kids. Doing GoFundMe campaigns to help their widows.
I had one friend whose unvaccinated family lost SIX members from one birthday party. Six! Including the woman of the hour whose birthday it was - she died 3 weeks after that party. Whoopsie.
60% of infections are asymptomatic, and you'd never know if you had it if you had not tested for COVID, obviously. So, you can not say you have never gotten COVID.
That's like saying you low cholesterol, but have never once had any bloodwork to test your HDL/LDL. Just bc you never tested your cholesterol doesn't mean you have healthy levels, lol.
If you are going out unmasked, gathering indoors, etc over the past 4 years - you've gotten COVID and it's eating away at some part of your body.
Ok, cool. I'll make sure to get all my health information from a facebook group doctor and substack and not the experts in virology, immunology, and public health. Sounds like a solid plan. I'll see ya there.
I KNEW he would end up with LC after seeing video of him out mixing it up with huge crowds. We’ve seen so many athletes struck with LC. Him being obsessive about his health, I knew he’d notice it right away.
I am not a physiologist, but a past professional triathlete. I still train at very intense levels but my workouts are shorter in time and distance. My maximal oxygen uptake puts me, an almost 71 year old man in with those in their twenties in average. That's average, no way can I keep up with younger trained athletes. Too, aerobic fitness is just part of the picture. My healing prowess, recovery times and quality of rest have diminished with my age. But I'll take being a geezer in good shape!.
Taking fitness as a proxy for age, there is no way that a 15% reduction in vital capacity can be offset in regards to his aims of a longer lifespan unless he plans for a virtual existence bedridden with mechanical assistance. Some life that will be!
He is also vaxxed up. If the spike protein is the issue, it doesn’t matter if it is breathed or injected. Did his LC start after his vaccinations with Moderna starting around April 21 2021 per his Twitter?
Suggesting that it is the spike protein that is the problem and either through injecting a vaccine that clearly DOES NOT stay in the injection site and can enter the blood stream if you don’t aspirate the shot or getting it naturally? Exposure to spike protein is exposure unless you can provide evidence contrary.
Wow this is very interesting. I have a sort of hobby interest in the science of aging and from the little that I know it's hard to say how covid will impact us population wise, but the preliminary scientific results that are out there (as Sam Thomas correctly points out) are not encouraging. It's particularly damning to see how we are failing young people. There were covid grifters like Balloux going on about how kids should get infected over and over with this virus to create population-level immunity and meanwhile it seems that everyone, except a small minority of well informed individuals (who are now outcast as hysterical, or unable to move on) has come round to this view.
I've come to terms with the fact that I probably will become a lot less old than my grandparents (who both became in their 90s) and I've been thinking about this for a while. Obviously age had its challenges for them, but it was nice to see them live good, long fulfilling lives, with only the last few months very difficult for my grandma, and for my grandpa he was fine basically until he got pneumonia in 2013 and died very suddenly after just one day.
and I also wrote a more technical piece on how paleoanthropology shows humans have managed to lengthen their lifespans by caring for older people, long before the advent of modern medicine, 30,000-100,000 years ago:
We should not strive for immortality. Death is not bad. It's good to make way for younger generations and see what they make of things. But it is nice to be able to become old. Natural aging is fine, helping people live longer by taking away things that kill us prematurely, like viruses, air pollution, warfare, car deaths, is I feel a moral duty. It's one we're badly failing.
If you mask with N95’s and limit the number of SARS2AIDS infections you get, you’ll be able watch humanity die. N95 masks are charged and trap particles with static electricity in between layers of mask.
See, thank you this dude is 57 he is not 46. You can tell just by looking at him and his rectangle torso that he is beyond the 40s. Men truly believe that they age gracefully, and they don’t. We can see it on them just like we can see it on women.
If he was really only 46 why was his sperm aged to 57? Because he’s not 46.
People go out to eat earlier and then they go home to play video games, stream and SLEEP.
Then they discussed that young people are obsessed with perceiving themselves as aging faster than older generations (of course the possibility of this actually being the case wasn’t discussed)
He DID mention this a long time ago, I clearly remember it.
You just missed it.
I obviously don't have a link, but he clearly did mention it either on twitter or in some of his videos that he had covid and that if affected his lungs.
Also: the guy is almost a billionare, supplements can make you a millionare, but probably not a billionare, so why would he be in it for the money?
Its Not for the money, it's for a following, their legacy ... the fame.
Why does Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk continue to work?
Obviously, it's not for the money ... it's for the recognition, the fame. You can quietly be a billionaire, or you can be like these guys & want to be talked about, go on podcasts, have a following, be invited to conferences as guest speakers, etc.
It's a type of celebrity culture w/in finance & tech.
Some people just like to work on stuff that they feel are aspirational. If "fame" would be what they want they'd do what Kim Kardiashian does, not build rockets or do nutrition and poke and prod themselves.
They are inspired by these things and see a benefit to them. But not fame.
Look what happens when you get famous: you get stalkers and need security 24/7, zero privacy.
You are confusing shameless promotion for outreach.
Also, just because many people in fintech do this doesn's mean that everyone is on it.
There is nothing wrong with promoting what you think is good.
But to say that everyone is in it just for "fame" is ridicoulous.
"How is that confusing to you?"
How is it confusing to you that some people geniounly want to create stuff?
"They literally do get famous from "building rockets or do nutrition."
That is a side effect of doing extreme things that are not seen elsewhere. It pulls attention, no matter if they want or don't want it. That doesn't mean they do that for attention.
I own an advertising and marketing agency. We have lots of fintech bros that we work with, and create their Digital Strategy for their "outreach" campaigns, lol. Quite a few say "Make me famous," no joke.
You're OBVIOUSLY super invested in them "just wanting outreach" or to get a "following."
There is plenty wrong with promoting what you think is good if there’s no evidence that it’s good and there is actual evidence to show harm. There is plenty wrong with grifting. It’s kind of gross that you would sit here defending it. Why? This rich man doesn’t care about you, you will never be like this rich man, why are you simping so hard for him?
The only reason I’ve heard of this guy is because of his weirdo vampire fetish with his son. He’s doing interviews that focus on him being a weirdo, clearly he’s chasing fame of some sort
I don’t believe this man is only 46 years old. Look at his torso, he has that rectangular body that people get between middle-aged and elderly years. This man is definitely well into his 50s based on the shape of his torso. Bet.
15% reduced lung capacity doesn’t necessarily equal long covid. A normal person without access to his level of medical care may not even be aware anything has changed.
If he is functionally the same as he was before COVID infection (which he seems to be) I wouldn’t say he has long covid.
See the thing with medical diagnosis and science is that it actually doesn’t go by vibes, by how you feel about your diminished capacity. Diminished capacity is diminished capacity even if you don’t notice. I’m quite sure the people with Covid brain damage that I’ve been dealing with out in the public don’t realize they can’t think right, they have no idea. They just keep messing up at their jobs. Your claim that they are doing their jobs just fine if they don’t notice their errors is delulu.
Did you miss the screenshot of the tweet from the billionaire that Nate included in the article saying his COVID infection diminished his lung capacity? This is what Nate is referring to. The billionaire is saying it's from COVID. And being a billionaire, I think he can afford good healthcare from doctors who understand and keep up with current research.
Your citation for aging caused by COVID is correct.
It is one of at least three mechanisms - epigenetic methylation. And it costs on average about 7 years of biological age per infection. So yes, avoiding this damnable virus is the single greatest life extension thing we all can do.
There is more.
The first observed impacts on aging are the cognitive decline from long COVID and the related organ damage. These are caused by the toxicity of the spike protein. Surgeons have noted repeated that patients who have had COVID look like they have organs that are far older than their chronological ages. Scientific studies suggest that this is the equivalent of about 10 years of biological aging per infection. And they are additive.
So again, the best thing to do to maximize life span is to never get infected. The second best thing to do is to never get infected AGAIN.
But it so much worse. The third and largest impact on accelerated againg by infection woth SARS-CoV-2 comes from truncation of the telomeres which cap our chromosomes. The length of our telomeres is inversely correlated to biological age. Our telomeres are longest as fetuses. With every cell division they shorten. It is a sort of countdown clock to death.
The length of our telomeres affects the function of our genes. It is one of the programmed mechanisms that controls age related changes. And when the tears become too short, during cell division chromosomes tend to cross-link and the end. When this happens our bodies identify the cells as defective and orders them to die. This is the wasting at end of life.
This study is the sentinel study that correlated the length of tears Covid infection.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34200325/
what it suggests or shows, albeit with a small data set, is that there is a direct linear correlation between biological age and infection with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID), and changes in biological age.
However, this correlation does not intercept to zero. it just strongly that the worst impact is to the youngest members of the population. If this correlation is correct which it appears to be it implies that an infant infected and recovered from COVID becomes biologically 36 years old. This aging impact becomes less with increasing biological age.
There is no reason to believe or suspect of this correlation is to chronological age. Rather each infection and recovery increases the biological age, and that new biological age then becomes the basis for correlation with the next infection to the resulting biological age.
What this all means is that after three infections, no matter what age you start at, you are old, very very old. This has huge implications for individuals and more so for the population and society.
as we have had the pandemic ongoing for four years and most people have been infected at least 2 to 5 times, the impact of this aging is already locked into place. We now only await our bodies catching up to the aging impact which has already occurred. And then, to the impact on society at large. As you can imagine those will most probably be enormous.
And it appears that this is irreversible or largely irreversible. The harm has already been done.
However because our leaders and our experts so-called have decided to embark on a campaign of silence in order to get people back to work and shopping to "save the economy" we are continuing to accumulate even more damage which will further destroy society.
There is no solution to this problem, other than never being infected and never being infected again.
The next few years and decade will tell the tale. Do the genetic and epigenetic changes, and the biological damage to organs and brain truly correlate with age? We will soon know the answer to those questions.
I for one have chosen to be one of the survivors. How about you?
How do you determine if you have Covid given the testing is faulty?
Are you saying that 60 year olds who have had three infections should be almost all dead as they are biologically ninety years old? This doesn't seem to tally with the mortality figures, in particular excess deaths. It also means I'm biologically 85 - so older than my mother.
I'm not saying that. The data is.
However, there are a few things to bear in mind. These are my imperfect assessments in looking at the data. I am not a medical doctor. This is not and should not be used or though of as professional or medical advice. Specific cases and individuals need specific individual assessment by professionals.
First:
That damage has occurred does not mean you cannot do things to make it better. There are a lot of things to be done for specific issues, to reduce inflammation, to heal damage, to reverse methylation, and to lengthen telomeres.
The best answer of course is to avoid damage where ever and whenever possible, and to do those things anyway to improve health and hopefully extend life expectancy.
Second:
Our knowledge of how aging occurs is far from perfect. We have correlations . We have indications that the changes in methylation and truncation are not simply markers of age, but that they are involved in changes in biochemistry indicative of aging. I.e. that they are bidirectional, they both indicate age and influence biological age. But how true that is is uncertain.
Also, there is a spread in the data. It isn't a perfect or complete correlation. We can suspect that some particular amount of change corresponds to some particular amount if biological aging for a population of people on average. Not all will have the same impact. Some are less. Some are more. There are many factors that go into aging.
And though the correlations tell us a likely story about the whole body, there may be critical organs or systems which dominate and that we haven't figured out yet. That can make a large difference, So far, it seems that the markers do correlate. We won't know until a lot of people reach their ends of life that have been tracked.
Third:
For organ damage the answer is more immediately concerning. That comes from surgeons describing the conditions of real people's organs who have had COVID and later had surgery.
For someone aged 60, a lot of biological aging has already occurred. And though the correlations appear sound for populations as a whole, exactly how that impacts older folks individually is far less certain. Many people age 60 are biologically much older due to insults earlier in life or genetic differences Many are also biologically much younger.
If the data can be trusted, and if it means anything in my specific case, insults I had throughout life have left me 30 years younger than my physical age. The horrible impacts of my earlier life consumed those years. So maybe I get them back now. Individual cases are just that. Is that real. I may never know. Every day is a gift.
Fourth:
For the telomere truncation, the correlation from the data seems to reduce to zero change per infection about age 70. That is likely not true, and just an artifact of the randomness in real world data. But, it might be real. If so, I suspect that it only means that the telomeres have already been so shortened by life that it makes little difference any more.
Then too there is the issue there are many different things overlaying on one another. Which is dominant? And if the methylation and truncation impact age expression, is there a lag time until the body expresses that change? If so, how long is that? I haven't ween any data to clarify those questions, or to provide firm answers.
Unfortunately, the way science works is a bit like driving while only looking in the rear view mirrors. It tells us about the past. It can suggest the future, but it doesn't directly show it to us. When some big change like this pandemic comes along, it is like hitting a hard turn in the road. But because we are relying on the proven past to tell us what to do, there is a serious risk of running off the road or crashing into something.
We need to be looking instead at very imperfect indicators like these studies. They don't give us perfect answers or certainty, just a better set of hints. Using the driving analogy, they are like getting glimpses out if the side windows.
The data isn't showing what you say. The latest studies are instead indicating that epigegenetic factors such as DNA methylation are a better correlate of biological age than telomere length. It's a common error that just because something is easy to measure or understand then it's a more likely or viable explanation. It's the main method by which the alternative medicine industry makes a profit.
"Recent research findings, however, indicate that TL per se can only allow a rough estimate of aging rate and can hardly be regarded as a clinically important risk marker for age-related pathologies and mortality. Evidence is obtained that other indicators such as certain immune parameters, indices of epigenetic age, etc., could be stronger predictors of the health status and the risk of chronic disease." https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.630186/full
Thank you for the linked opinion. There is a lot of interesting information.
However you have entirely missed the point.
ALL of these indicators point to the same basic conclusion. COVID infections cause dramatic aging impacts. Every infection adds to the impacts of previous infections.
At this point in the pandemic, the average person has been infected multiple times (3 or more). By the least impactful estimate of aging of all of these indicators, this implies an average aging of 21 years or more. That is a dramatic 7 fold increase in the rate of aging by any measure. That makes 20 year olds 40 year olds, and 45 year olds into retirees.
By six years into the pandemic (two years from now), that converts 20 year olds into retirees!
And that is the least rapid aging correlate.
By the estimates reported by surgeons, we are already facing half our population now being biologically old.
Consider what that implies to the burden on our health care systems over the next several years. Consider too what that will do to the ability to work (especially to manual labor) and hence to productivity. That is directly correlated to financial and corporate performance, and societal well being.
It very much appears that the ostrich approach of shoving ones head in the ground and pretending the pandemic doesn’t exist - guarantees societal collapse. Big surprise there. Doh! That's a life lesson no one has ever encountered before.
All of the aging indicators are imperfect. Epigenetic indicators vary wildly in how well they correlate. Each is useful in different ways. Each is messy. But in the end, they are all telling the same basic story.
Evidence backed opinion isn't opinion. All of what you say requires real-world evidence. i.e. an excess of people dying prematurely from Covid associated causes during an extended post-pandemic period. Otherwise, it's just wild conjecture without any science to back it. What's worse, you're close to indulging in dogma - a skeptic's bête-noire. I'm going to end my contribution here.
Yes actually it is - opinion. Read the language of the authors. They themselves state it as opinion. More than this, as you note - there isn't hard proof yet. The best we have is correlations. We have reason to believe these correlations implicate function and then indicate that the markers are both showing age changes and affecting physiology to cause aging.
More than this you still are not getting it.
This is a problem in science in general. Waiting for confirmed and validated truth can be fatal when the real world impacts occur faster than the science can prove them. When this happens, we must be fleet enough of foot to recognize that and to shift our bases.
This means raising warnings and possibly and probably taking actions before we have anything close to certainty.
We have to assess the potential trajectories of events and impacts and then judge whether we can wait, or we must act.
Let us say you are standing with a bunch of kids in the middle of a crosswalk. You have the right of way and the walk light is on. A truck is hurtling toward you that does not have the right of way - blaring its horn. What do you do?
Stand there like a moron shouting - stop - I have the right of way? Ignore it, knowing you have the right of way? Or suspect that maybe, just maybe, though entirely unproven that the trucks brakes have failed and there is nothing the driver can do to prevent crushing you and your charges into the asphalt, and then both run and pull, exhort, shout to get the kids to flee from impending disaster?
You are effectively arguing out of ignorance to stand fast and to get you and your charges crushed.
We have sufficient indications from what we know of aging, organ damage and various indicators to at the very least warn everyone. This is through multiple lines of reasoning.
Instead of acting, experts everywhere have taken the precautionary act of shielding themselves and their careers from potential harm by staying silent. Worse, many have taken that as a personal direction of not acting even to protect themselves, their families, friends, coworkers and colleagues by taking any action at all.
That is in a word - DUMB.
For those of us who have spent a lifetime protecting people from hazards this is particularly troubling. It is an abrogation of duty to others.
Is the data perfect? Far from it. Is it absolute? Certainly not.
But what prey tell are the consequences from inaction based on the data we have? At the least - enormous individual and collective harm. At the worst - societal collapse.
Gee, do you think maybe that is worth mentioning it to someone? Better yet - shouting it at them?
The only way to avoid COVID is to be a hermit for the rest of your life (and even then you'll still get infected)
I know this because I've tried it, and have been infected.
However, you will get infected with far lower viral loads, which is good for recovery. I was able to recover from long COVID and sustain that recovery for over a year, because I was isolating from people. At the time of the recovery, I'd had at least 3 covid infections.
Also, it is an American government bioweapon from Fort Detrick. There is a slew of evidence that it didn't come from China.
I have never gotten COVID, however, I have been wearing an N95 mask since Day 1. I live in CA, so I already had a stockpile of masks for when we get fires here.
When I do see people, I ask them not to do anything too crazy like a high exposure event, etc. If they want to do that, just make sure it's 3 days before seeing me. If they don't want to do that, then they don't get to see me and I am 100% fine with not seeing a friend like that.
When we do meet up, I make sure they take a CUE test to catch any early or asymptomatic infections, and I've found most of my friends are too scared to unmask around me and risk accidentally infecting me. We ALWAYS sit outside and I space the seating out so we're not next to each other, so I do continue to socially distance.
I can still all of the things I used to, and I haven't gotten COVID. I may be one of the few in a mask now and may be one of the only ones in an N95 but I could give a fuck.
I add goggles for doctor's appointments, since hospitals and doctor's offices are one of the most likely spots I'd get infected. Again, never been infected.
I"m SEVERELY immunocompromised so when i sick it's Biblical. A cold will cost me 6-8 weeks of my life. The flu (which I caught every year until 2020) would cost me 10-16 weeks of my life.
I spent my entire life sick - constantly. Going from one virus to a secondary infection 100% of the time. Rarely getting a break on illnesses before catching something else. I was on antibiotics every month.
Since March 2020 when I started wearing an N95, I haven't been sick. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I was prescribed antibiotics. Probably January 2020 after catching something at a NYE party.
This has been the healthiest I've been in my entire life. Not a cold. Nothing. I wish doctors had recommended masking to me prior to COVID. It would have changed my life.
So, it is possible to not catch COVID. You just have to make sure you're wearing a fit-tested N95 mask when you're out in public with the infected masses. Fairly simple, actually.
EDIT: Since posting, CUE HEALTH has gone out of business, so we've switched to Metrix tests (98% accuracy) for the moment and have ordered PureLife (99% accuracy).
Where do you get your masks?
I apologize for the delayed response. I just saw this in my notifications.
So, I order my 3M Aura masks via 3Ms store on Amazon. They are currently on sale!
I just bought a Pack of 440 3M Aura Masks for $59.
They're currently 91% off, which comes out to just .13 cents per mask.
Here's the info and link:
3M Aura Particulate Respirator 9205+, N95, Pack of 440 Disposable Respirators, Individually Wrapped, 3 Panel Flat Fold Design Allows for Facial Movements, Comfortable, NIOSH Approved
https://a.co/d/h7wJuQb
I am sorry you've had to go through that.
Yes, it requires great care and largely - isolation. That can't be changed so long as the government fails to inform and advise correctly. It won't be forever. With rising illness, disability and death there will come a time when things change dramatically. It won't be soon.
As to the virus coming from Ft. Detrick. That is nothing but conspiratorial nonsense. The virus arose naturally from recombination in bats in southern China / northern Thailand. Which is precisely where it or something very much like it was expected to come from.
Nah, it's from the US. Images of Google searches of pneumonia outbreaks across 2019 and 2018. There were none in 2018. Tons in 2019. Google later removed the hits from 2019.
https://imgur.com/a/CRwan3n
No, it is not natural. It is a bioweapon that was funded and developed by the US government, and seeded in China at the Wuhan military games.
It is definitely linked to Ft. Detrick and Ft. Belvoir.
It is possibly linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is funded by the US government.
The culpability of China is an open question, the culpability of the US is a known fact.
Liberals are just as clueless as the conservatives. The vaccine can kill. The data is cooked. Masks work. It stays in the body for 2 years. It's a US bioweapon.
Apologies. The comment went to the wring reply. Thank you fir the added informstion.
You'll forgive me for not taking you seriously, because your article directly contradicts my experience.
I had the best quality of life in my 30 years AFTER being infected by covid at least 3 times, and recovering through spatial isolation, antibiotics, and a few rounds of ivermectin (not the horse kind).
I then sustained this quality of life for over a year, working like a horse in the yard every day. Until I got reinfected again by a meeting I couldn't avoid.
You are not credible.
It's a Neurological and Vascular Disease that causes immune system dysfunction. The acute phase of the infection can disable or kill you, but damn if that virus doesn't take up residence in the body and cause some fucking damage.
I have 3 close friends who have been completely disabled by COVID. The inflammation in their brains has left them with what I'd say sounds like early Dementia. I mean "Brain Fog" is a really nice way to sugar coat not being able to speak properly anymore or remember what you were saying CONSTANTLY while talking to people. Big yikes.
My primary care doctor of 12 years got COVID on the frontlines and died (before the vaccine).
And, I have quite a few extended family members that died in 2020 (before the vaccine).
And, quite a few friends have lost Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, and siblings to COVID - all unvaxxed.
Evangelical Christians living in "red" areas of the country who thought Jesus would save them and they didn't need a vaccine. Praying (shockingly) did not save their lives.
They died young too! Leaving behind spouses and young kids. Doing GoFundMe campaigns to help their widows.
I had one friend whose unvaccinated family lost SIX members from one birthday party. Six! Including the woman of the hour whose birthday it was - she died 3 weeks after that party. Whoopsie.
60% of infections are asymptomatic, and you'd never know if you had it if you had not tested for COVID, obviously. So, you can not say you have never gotten COVID.
That's like saying you low cholesterol, but have never once had any bloodwork to test your HDL/LDL. Just bc you never tested your cholesterol doesn't mean you have healthy levels, lol.
If you are going out unmasked, gathering indoors, etc over the past 4 years - you've gotten COVID and it's eating away at some part of your body.
Good luck with that.
yeah, all my family members and friend's family members died from injectables that they DID not get.
Crazy how that happened.
Ok, cool. I'll make sure to get all my health information from a facebook group doctor and substack and not the experts in virology, immunology, and public health. Sounds like a solid plan. I'll see ya there.
I KNEW he would end up with LC after seeing video of him out mixing it up with huge crowds. We’ve seen so many athletes struck with LC. Him being obsessive about his health, I knew he’d notice it right away.
Too bad so sad.
Spot on! Thank you.
The reason he's silent about his long-COVID is because recognizing long-COVID would disrupt billionaire lifestyles.
Recognizing the dangers of COVID would disrupt everything the ruling class stands for.
Thankfully for them, the masses (both left and right) are making it extremely easy for them to continue the status quo
He rides a motorcycle and doesn't take Covid precautions. It's long been clear to me that his longevity plan was lacking in these regards.
I am not a physiologist, but a past professional triathlete. I still train at very intense levels but my workouts are shorter in time and distance. My maximal oxygen uptake puts me, an almost 71 year old man in with those in their twenties in average. That's average, no way can I keep up with younger trained athletes. Too, aerobic fitness is just part of the picture. My healing prowess, recovery times and quality of rest have diminished with my age. But I'll take being a geezer in good shape!.
Taking fitness as a proxy for age, there is no way that a 15% reduction in vital capacity can be offset in regards to his aims of a longer lifespan unless he plans for a virtual existence bedridden with mechanical assistance. Some life that will be!
He is also vaxxed up. If the spike protein is the issue, it doesn’t matter if it is breathed or injected. Did his LC start after his vaccinations with Moderna starting around April 21 2021 per his Twitter?
https://www.reddit.com/r/blueprint_/comments/15j6oq0/has_bryan_johnson_taken_covid_vaccine/
Wrong
What’s wrong?
Suggesting that it is the spike protein that is the problem and either through injecting a vaccine that clearly DOES NOT stay in the injection site and can enter the blood stream if you don’t aspirate the shot or getting it naturally? Exposure to spike protein is exposure unless you can provide evidence contrary.
Wow this is very interesting. I have a sort of hobby interest in the science of aging and from the little that I know it's hard to say how covid will impact us population wise, but the preliminary scientific results that are out there (as Sam Thomas correctly points out) are not encouraging. It's particularly damning to see how we are failing young people. There were covid grifters like Balloux going on about how kids should get infected over and over with this virus to create population-level immunity and meanwhile it seems that everyone, except a small minority of well informed individuals (who are now outcast as hysterical, or unable to move on) has come round to this view.
I've come to terms with the fact that I probably will become a lot less old than my grandparents (who both became in their 90s) and I've been thinking about this for a while. Obviously age had its challenges for them, but it was nice to see them live good, long fulfilling lives, with only the last few months very difficult for my grandma, and for my grandpa he was fine basically until he got pneumonia in 2013 and died very suddenly after just one day.
What do we miss out on, individually and as a society? Anyway, I wrote this piece https://helendecruz.substack.com/p/youve-got-to-live-your-life
and I also wrote a more technical piece on how paleoanthropology shows humans have managed to lengthen their lifespans by caring for older people, long before the advent of modern medicine, 30,000-100,000 years ago:
https://helendecruz.substack.com/p/the-good-of-becoming-old-human-life?utm_source=activity_item
We should not strive for immortality. Death is not bad. It's good to make way for younger generations and see what they make of things. But it is nice to be able to become old. Natural aging is fine, helping people live longer by taking away things that kill us prematurely, like viruses, air pollution, warfare, car deaths, is I feel a moral duty. It's one we're badly failing.
If you mask with N95’s and limit the number of SARS2AIDS infections you get, you’ll be able watch humanity die. N95 masks are charged and trap particles with static electricity in between layers of mask.
So this person reduced his sperm age from 57 to 42?
What impresses me more is how he reduced his maturity from that expected of an adult to that of the prepubescent.
See, thank you this dude is 57 he is not 46. You can tell just by looking at him and his rectangle torso that he is beyond the 40s. Men truly believe that they age gracefully, and they don’t. We can see it on them just like we can see it on women.
If he was really only 46 why was his sperm aged to 57? Because he’s not 46.
I just listened to a Swedish podcast with one of the Swedes based in California.
They discussed what Bloomberg recently called the „Introvert economy“: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-22/the-introverts-have-taken-over-the-us-economy
People go out to eat earlier and then they go home to play video games, stream and SLEEP.
Then they discussed that young people are obsessed with perceiving themselves as aging faster than older generations (of course the possibility of this actually being the case wasn’t discussed)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/style/gen-z-aging.html
and that drinking alcohol is being replaced by weed and mushrooms.
https://fortune.com/2024/02/03/dry-january-gen-z-millennials-cannabis/amp/
Still not mentioning covid … but isn‘t it on the tip of their tongues? Or is this hopium on my side?
He DID mention this a long time ago, I clearly remember it.
You just missed it.
I obviously don't have a link, but he clearly did mention it either on twitter or in some of his videos that he had covid and that if affected his lungs.
Also: the guy is almost a billionare, supplements can make you a millionare, but probably not a billionare, so why would he be in it for the money?
Its Not for the money, it's for a following, their legacy ... the fame.
Why does Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk continue to work?
Obviously, it's not for the money ... it's for the recognition, the fame. You can quietly be a billionaire, or you can be like these guys & want to be talked about, go on podcasts, have a following, be invited to conferences as guest speakers, etc.
It's a type of celebrity culture w/in finance & tech.
Disagree.
Some people just like to work on stuff that they feel are aspirational. If "fame" would be what they want they'd do what Kim Kardiashian does, not build rockets or do nutrition and poke and prod themselves.
They are inspired by these things and see a benefit to them. But not fame.
Look what happens when you get famous: you get stalkers and need security 24/7, zero privacy.
They literally do get famous from "building rockets or do nutrition."
The fintech, wellness industry, "how to be successful, "how to get rich" folk are not just sharing their stories for altruistic reasons.
They are literally marketing themselves & have PR teams. They have digital strategists to help them get more reach, more followers, subscribers, etc.
They are 100% promoting themselves & they're doing it for recognition & fame (certainly within their respective fields).
How is that confusing to you?
You are confusing shameless promotion for outreach.
Also, just because many people in fintech do this doesn's mean that everyone is on it.
There is nothing wrong with promoting what you think is good.
But to say that everyone is in it just for "fame" is ridicoulous.
"How is that confusing to you?"
How is it confusing to you that some people geniounly want to create stuff?
"They literally do get famous from "building rockets or do nutrition."
That is a side effect of doing extreme things that are not seen elsewhere. It pulls attention, no matter if they want or don't want it. That doesn't mean they do that for attention.
I own an advertising and marketing agency. We have lots of fintech bros that we work with, and create their Digital Strategy for their "outreach" campaigns, lol. Quite a few say "Make me famous," no joke.
You're OBVIOUSLY super invested in them "just wanting outreach" or to get a "following."
Mkay. Byeee.
There is plenty wrong with promoting what you think is good if there’s no evidence that it’s good and there is actual evidence to show harm. There is plenty wrong with grifting. It’s kind of gross that you would sit here defending it. Why? This rich man doesn’t care about you, you will never be like this rich man, why are you simping so hard for him?
The only reason I’ve heard of this guy is because of his weirdo vampire fetish with his son. He’s doing interviews that focus on him being a weirdo, clearly he’s chasing fame of some sort
Research his investments and you will soon figure out why he does not speak about COVID that much......
I appreciate his honesty
I don’t believe this man is only 46 years old. Look at his torso, he has that rectangular body that people get between middle-aged and elderly years. This man is definitely well into his 50s based on the shape of his torso. Bet.
15% reduced lung capacity doesn’t necessarily equal long covid. A normal person without access to his level of medical care may not even be aware anything has changed.
If he is functionally the same as he was before COVID infection (which he seems to be) I wouldn’t say he has long covid.
See the thing with medical diagnosis and science is that it actually doesn’t go by vibes, by how you feel about your diminished capacity. Diminished capacity is diminished capacity even if you don’t notice. I’m quite sure the people with Covid brain damage that I’ve been dealing with out in the public don’t realize they can’t think right, they have no idea. They just keep messing up at their jobs. Your claim that they are doing their jobs just fine if they don’t notice their errors is delulu.
See the thing with medical diagnosis is you can’t make it from tweets either (like this guy has done).
Did you miss the screenshot of the tweet from the billionaire that Nate included in the article saying his COVID infection diminished his lung capacity? This is what Nate is referring to. The billionaire is saying it's from COVID. And being a billionaire, I think he can afford good healthcare from doctors who understand and keep up with current research.