JANUARY 8 — Despite its intuitive importance, longevity studies remain a generally nascent area.
You don’t hear many experts talking as much about living longer lives as they do about, say, being fitter in general or losing weight or protecting ourselves from diseases or containing hospital costs and so on.
I certainly didn’t think much about this topic until three years ago when I watched Chris Hemsworth’s Disney+ series Limitless.
In between walking on a crane hanging from a skyscraper, fasting for four days and climbing up a 100-foot rope in the middle of Australia’s Blue Mountains, the Avengers star shared his desire and strategies to avoid diseases and stay alive until a very old age (see note 1).
In 2023, world-renowned longevity expert Peter Attia (who was also featured in the Hemsworth series) published his massive Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity (Harmony 2023), sparking a lot of discussion not least regarding his idea of Medicine 3.0 (where health and fitness are addressed very early thereby nipping chronic illnesses in the butt) as compared to Medicine 2.0 (where doctors mainly deal with illnesses only when patients begin manifesting symptoms).
Coincidentally, around this time, the Royal Society (or the UK’s National Academy of Sciences) began nominating longevity books for their annual Science Book Prize (see Note 2).
Long and short, within a few years, the field of longevity seems to have undergone a steep proliferation.
In line with this trend, Bryan Johnson — tech-billionaire founder of Braintree turned fitness and longevity “bio-hacker” — can be easily seen as the latest and most eccentric personality to jump on the bandwagon.
Johnson has been spending millions of dollars in an attempt to defy mortality and, as the sub-title of a recent Netflix documentary about him states, wants to live forever.
His organisation, Project Blueprint, is dedicated towards discovering or producing protocols, diets, therapies and all other kinds of approaches with the aim of ensuring that Johnson, well, never dies.
His daily regimen includes blue light-block filters, 16-18-hour fasts, six hours of exercise, 111 (!) pills.
He wears a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, collects his own stool samples, and sleeps with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his night-time erections.
He’s also trying (or have tried) gene therapy, plasma infusion-exchange therapy, stem cell infusion, rapamycin, lung rejuvenation, etc.
As if all this isn’t already “beyond the pale” enough, he’s also doing something I’m not even going to Google: Penis shockwave therapy.
Go figure.
The documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever (released on New Year’s day) showcases some of the above.
There are many segments where you see Johnson going through his daily routine, doing his exercises, taking his pills, drawing blood, going into an MRI machine and so on (see note 3).
Overall, this film came as a surprise because I was expecting 1.5 hours of lab and human guinea-pig stuff, but it’s really only 50-60 per cent of that with a surprising emphasis on personal failure, human connection, family, “what life is about”, etc.
Johnson’s journey towards longevity didn’t come easy. As mentioned earlier, he was very successful from his early business endeavour, yet it’s that very success which almost destroyed him, and it was sort of by becoming a longevity guinea-pig that Johnson managed to beat his work-induced depression, obesity and ruined relationships.
I wonder if this may resonate with many Malaysians. I mean, how many people do you know have or are currently over-working themselves (almost literally) to an early grave?
I know easily a dozen folks who spend almost all their time focused on their careers; they sacrifice sleep, exercise, friendships, etc. Don’t even mention healthy eating!
Perhaps, if nothing else, a film like Don’t Die can serve as a fascinating and weird mini wake-up call to any of us risking health in the future in pursuit of materialism in the present.
Alternatively, in an era of conformity in almost everything, the story of one guy pursuing immortality like he was founding a new religion can make an intriguing (if not entertaining) 1.5 hours.
Note 1: When I first watched that series, I immediately felt that Malaysians probably need to pay some attention to this sector. The numbers from our recent National Health & Morbidity Survey aren’t exactly encouraging: Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, sleep, depression, etc. figures are moving in the wrong direction.
Note 2: The nominations include Rose Ann Kenny’s Age-Proof: The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life (Blink, 2022), Niklas Brendborg’s Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature’s Secrets to Longevity (Hodder & Stoughton, 2022) and Venki Ramakrishnan’s Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (HarperCollins, 2023).
Note 3: After watching this documentary, I almost feel that longevity isn’t the primary focus of the film, it’s relationships. I suspect this film is really Bryan Johnson’s love letter to his son, Talmage. Johnson’s obsession with longevity is the medium, his relationship with his son (and how that is the #1 priority and hope for the future and to “repair” the past) is the message.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
