0:00 Humans have doubled average life expectancy over the last two centuries, but the ceiling,
0:05 it hasn't budged.
0:06 >> Our maximum you human lifespan is 15 years.
0:11 This is statistics.
0:13 >> But is that about to change?
0:15 >> I've spent the past few months speaking to the pioneers who aren't just
0:18 trying to push the limit on human lifespan.
0:21 They want to eliminate it entirely.
0:23 >> It will be a blink of an eye
0:25 that we will go from we're all dead to wow. maybe not.
0:30 >> And I even went to a longevity clinic to find out how long
0:33 I might live.
0:34 They told me that about 15% of people who go through this array of
0:38 testing find something that they need to do something about immediately.
0:42 My father died last year, almost exactly 1 year ago, from pancreatic cancer.
0:47 So, this is a very personal journey for me, and I'm feeling definitely lightheaded.
0:51 So, why is it almost impossible to live past 115?
0:56 And will anyone alive today be the first to escape death?
1:03 >> And then you said, "Do you like these?"
1:05 >> It's hard to grasp just how much Helen Glover has beaten the odds.
1:10 >> I don't have any friend that's over 90.
1:14 >> Helen outlived her husband.
1:15 >> I was married to him for 82 wonderful years.
1:19 No, I'm sorry.
1:20 85.
1:21 >> And two of her sons.
1:23 And I saw him lying in
1:24 that bed with his eyes shut
1:26 and I said,
1:29 "Mama's here."
1:30 He was 82 when he died.
1:32 >> Once you reach about age 30,
1:34 your chance of dying doubles roughly every 8 years.
1:36 And you see that across populations from poor countries to wealthy countries.
1:40 It doesn't matter.
1:41 >> That's called the Gumpert's law.
1:43 It was first described in 1825
1:46 and it remains one of the most robust facts in human biology until today.
1:52 At birth, the chance of dying within the next year is relatively high.
1:56 That's the impact of infant mortality.
1:59 But after that first year, the risk falls dramatically.
2:02 And for decades, this line increases only gradually.
2:06 Then something important happens.
2:08 The risk of death goes from linear to exponential.
2:11 And this is where we see the Gumpert's law in action.
2:14 After age 30, mortality risk doubles every 8 years.
2:19 Then by age 105, the chance of dying basically flattens out around 50%.
2:24 Basically a coin toss every year.
2:27 And that rate of infant mortality may have seemed high at half a percent.
2:31 But throughout most of human history, it was much much higher, about 30%.
2:37 That means one in three children died within their first year.
2:40 That all started to change radically over the course of Helen's lifespan.
2:44 What happened in those 150 years is we did a lot of prevention.
2:51 We cleaned the water, we built sewers, we have vaccination.
2:56 So a lot of those prevention allow us to get older and older.
3:00 Helen was born in 1917,
3:02 a time when one in 10 babies didn't survive until their first birthday.
3:06 Children died by the millions from diseases we now treat with a 5-day course
3:10 of antibiotics.
3:12 There wasn't even a polio vaccine until Helen was almost 40.
3:15 Helen managed to hit age 100,
3:17 avoiding the top two age- related killers that take out half of us,
3:21 cancer and heart disease.
3:22 And now at 108, she's active and sharp as attack.
3:26 >> I'm setting you up if I do that.
3:30 >> Uh-oh.
3:30 >> I better not do that.
3:32 >> Not only they leave long, they leave healthy.
3:35 They are they get disease 30 years after their children get diseases.
3:39 Helen did have a fall a few years ago and that required brain surgery.
3:43 Since then, she's had to use a walker.
3:45 But here's the thing.
3:46 Helen didn't try to live so long.
3:48 She just did.
3:49 >> In the past 100 years,
3:51 did you do anything special in terms of your diet, your health, your routine?
3:58 >> I don't think so.
3:59 I My, you know, my parents, my father made good money.
4:03 We always had a cook and ate well and didn't do anything special.
4:10 >> Studies have shown that the higher you go up on the longevity curve,
4:14 the less individual habits matter.
4:17 Exactly how much remains an area of debate.
4:20 Jean Calman set the world record when she died at 122 years old.
4:25 She famously drank red wine, enjoyed dark chocolate, and smoked until age 117.
4:33 One recent study showed
4:34 that once you account for random things like accidents
4:37 and infections,
4:38 up to half of how long we live comes down to inheritance.
4:43 So the current theory is
4:44 that super aers carry dozens
4:47 if not hundreds of small genetic advantages
4:50 that together delay the things
4:52 that kill the rest of us.
4:54 So if the reason that Helen Glover lived so long is half luck,
4:58 what can I do to live longer?
5:00 I went to California to find out.
5:05 Okay, here we are.
5:07 Bye, Whimo.
5:09 Human Longevity is located in Silicon Valley, right near the San Francisco airport.
5:13 It's one of the first clinics in America to offer a suite of tests
5:17 under one roof that together paint a highresolution picture of your current health
5:20 and future risks.
5:22 >> Good morning.
5:22 >> Good morning.
5:23 Yes, that's me.
5:24 Thank you so much.
5:25 >> Nice to meet you.
5:26 >> You too.
5:26 >> First one.
5:28 >> All right.
5:28 >> The largest one.
5:28 >> Wow.
5:29 Thank you.
5:29 They put me in this large sort of conference room where you can get
5:32 comfortable,
5:33 get situated.
5:34 They told me that about 1 in 10 clients find something from this testing,
5:38 like a tumor, that they need to act on immediately.
5:41 However, this level of insight comes with a steep price tag,
5:44 often ranging from $8,000 to $20,000 for a full workup.
5:49 And before I share the rest of this experience,
5:51 please know that we didn't get this service for free.
5:53 I paid a special discounted media rate.
5:55 So, what we're going to be doing next is I'm going to be taking
5:58 you with me to do um the rest of the stuff like like I
6:01 mentioned vitals,
6:02 EKG, and body blood draw.
6:04 I did want to mention there's a urine cup in the restroom.
6:06 We want you to start voiding the first couple of drops into the toilet
6:09 and then you're going to hold the stream,
6:10 open the wipe that's next there, next to the cup,
6:13 clean the opening of the urine track,
6:14 and then proceed with the rest of the collection into the cup.
6:17 >> So, you have to stop.
6:19 >> Yes.
6:20 Start.
6:20 >> Yes.
6:21 >> That might be the hardest thing I have to do today.
6:24 The day got going with pretty standard stuff.
6:26 Blood pressure, temperature, pulse check.
6:28 Did you just film that I I'm wearing two pairs of socks.
6:32 All right, that might not make the final cut.
6:35 Then I stood on an inbody machine.
6:37 >> Do not talk or move during the test.
6:40 >> Which measures body composition for the record is 246.
6:44 That's my weight.
6:45 >> Next up, the EKG.
6:47 Then I did a few tests that aren't part of a normal checkup.
6:50 Ah, >> that one hurt.
6:54 This machine measured calcification in my arteries.
6:57 The echo cardiogram checked my heart function
7:00 and the DEXA scan measured my bone density.
7:05 >> And I see your all nose.
7:06 Just want to make sure you're not wearing any medication patches, glucose monitors,
7:09 insulin pumps.
7:10 >> The test that took the longest was the full body MRI.
7:14 >> Is that comfortable?
7:15 >> Yes.
7:15 >> Okay, great.
7:16 All right, you ready?
7:17 >> I'm ready.
7:18 >> All right, we're going to get started.
7:21 And the hardest part was the blood draw.
7:23 >> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11.
7:26 About to give 15 vials of blood drawn from my arm.
7:30 And um see how I feel after that.
7:33 By the way, if you like what you see,
7:35 don't forget to like and subscribe.
7:36 Business Insider YouTube.
7:38 After that much blood loss, I started to feel laded.
7:42 The champagne of apple juice.
7:45 But it's a small price to pay for the information I'll get back about
7:49 my future health.
7:50 This lavender vial here is the one that's going to go for the genomic
7:54 sequencing.
7:54 All you need is one vial to get like a full profile of a
7:58 lot of the things
7:59 that um I'll be finding out,
8:01 you know, including how you metabolize coffee
8:03 and alcohol and how you metabolize different drugs in addition to I think you
8:09 know your risk factors for other diseases.
8:14 It took about 3 weeks to get my initial results back from human longevity.
8:19 Over the nearly hour-long call with Dr.
8:21 Pearson, I learned a ton of new information,
8:24 but I'm just covering the biggest revelations here.
8:26 The whole body MRI looked clean.
8:29 So did the liquid biopsy,
8:31 which is also known
8:32 as a grail test
8:33 that tests for over 50 kinds of cancers.
8:36 >> Your weight was 246 lb.
8:39 >> Technically, I'm obese.
8:40 Of those 246 lbs, 58 lbs were fat.
8:45 That gives you a 23.6% body fat.
8:50 >> On the other hand, I'm also very muscular.
8:52 >> Your skeletal muscle index is actually very, very good.
8:56 Skeletal muscle index or SMI is your weight in kilogram of muscle divided by
9:04 your body surface area.
9:05 Your score was 9.8, close to 10.
9:09 That's very, very high for a man, almost in the elite athlete category.
9:13 >> My genetic tests were ready after about 3 months,
9:16 and I'm happy to report that I have no additional risk for cancer.
9:20 >> Again, we didn't find anything for you, which is absolutely great.
9:24 >> I have an elevated risk for two neurological diseases.
9:28 >> You have one copy of ApoE3 and one copy of APOE4.
9:33 So your lifetime risk for Alzheimer's is just like slightly increased compared to the
9:38 general population.
9:39 >> I will just say
9:40 that my initial reaction to this is somewhat alarmed
9:44 because that means that there's a one in4 chance
9:46 that I will get dementia.
9:48 >> So for Parkinson's disease, you're in the 99th percentile for that.
9:53 Your risk is up to 2.7 times higher than that.
9:58 >> Wow.
9:59 So, your lifetime risk is about 2.7%.
10:03 How do we feel about that?
10:05 >> Uh, not great.
10:06 Finally, a piece of good news.
10:08 I have one of the genes that contributes to longevity.
10:11 >> This FOX3 gene we think could be related to a person's likelihood of
10:15 living past the age of 90
10:17 or older.
10:18 Some people who are like super aers had certain changes in this gene.
10:22 You have one of those changes,
10:24 which is why it says you're likely to live to the age of 90
10:26 or older,
10:27 which is great.
10:28 >> Yeah.
10:28 I my my my my maternal grandfather lived to be 98.
10:32 I want to show you something.
10:34 This is a photo of my grandparents.
10:35 That's Grandpa Dan who I'm named after.
10:38 And this is a picture of him around age 94 95 climbing to the
10:44 top of a Mayan pyramid in Guatemala.
10:46 And this is a photo from another trip we took where he's climbing to
10:50 the tallest point in the Gopagos Islands.
10:52 So according to my genetic test results and looking at my family history,
10:57 on the one hand,
10:58 I have some things stacked in my favor to live a long life.
11:02 On the other hand, cancer took out my dad before his 73rd birthday,
11:07 and that's very recent for me.
11:08 So now that I know these things,
11:11 what can I actually do to make a difference on the rest of my
11:14 life?
11:15 It turns out that part of the answer is already on the shelf at
11:18 my local pharmacy.
11:19 Okay, side note.
11:20 I'm not getting the actual drugs right now, just the packaging.
11:23 Okay, so I'm not getting free longevity drugs that aren't prescribed for me.
11:27 Just want to be clear.
11:28 >> Thank you so much, Rita.
11:29 >> Have a wonderful day.
11:30 Be well.
11:38 >> We actually have four FDA approved longevity drug.
11:42 Although you might not know that we have that, but we do.
11:46 None of these drugs were designed to slow aging.
11:49 Each one was invented to treat something else
11:51 and the longevity benefits were discovered after the fact.
11:55 The cleanest example is metformin.
11:57 It started out as a folk remedy.
11:59 It's an extract of the French lilac in the 1920s and 1950s in Europe.
12:05 People notice that if you take this extract, it can treat arthritis,
12:09 it can prevent flu, you know, maybe malaria, lots of other things.
12:13 But also they've noticed
12:15 that people with who are taking these drugs
12:18 and if they have diabetes,
12:19 it lowers glucose.
12:21 But now after decades of prescribing it to treat type 2 diabetes,
12:25 researchers have something they never could have built from scratch.
12:28 A huge pool of data to make decisions about public health.
12:33 People on metformin had less cardiovascular disease.
12:35 They have less cognitive decline in Alzheimer.
12:37 They have less cancers.
12:39 And they die less.
12:40 Their mortalities decrease.
12:41 That pattern, a drug prescribed to treat one thing
12:44 and then outperforming on other health measures,
12:47 is not unique to metformin.
12:50 Researchers have at least three more.
12:52 First is a a a class of drug that's called SGLT2 inhibitor.
12:59 They they were meant for diabetes
13:02 and in diabetics and non-diabetic patient they prevent renal disease,
13:09 cardiovascular disease and overall mortality.
13:12 Another drug is osteoporotic drugs in a class that called a tedronate.
13:18 Women who take a tedronate and get to ICU, they don't die.
13:23 Really fascinating fascinating drug.
13:27 And the and the fourth one is ompic right
13:30 which are the GLP-1 agonist.
13:33 >> It turns out
13:33 that edidronate is actually discontinued in some places in favor of better drugs to
13:38 treat osteoporosis.
13:40 And recent research has brought into question whether
13:43 or not metformin has the longevity benefits originally thought.
13:47 In any case, even the experts say that for someone my age,
13:51 taking metformin isn't such a good idea.
13:53 >> Metformin is not good for young people.
13:56 It decreased their growth hormone level
13:57 which is good when you're young
13:59 and not good when you're old.
14:00 It decrease in men the testosterone sometimes.
14:03 It prevents them to get their muscle to be as big if they exercise.
14:09 So this is not a drug for young.
14:12 This is a drug for somebody who starts to have this breakdown of aging.
14:17 So here's the kicker.
14:18 None of these drugs will get you to 115. they might get you to
14:22 90 in better shape than you otherwise would be.
14:25 >> I'm not talking about people living forever.
14:27 I'm talking, you know, maybe a 5% increase in lifespan,
14:30 maybe a 10% increase in lifespan.
14:32 That that's kind of what I'm thinking.
14:33 And I do think that's certainly feasible in the next few decades.
14:36 >> There really is no supplement
14:38 that has been convincingly shown to improve health span
14:42 or longevity um in people.
14:45 >> What about other treatments like peptides or NAD,
14:47 which is an injectable that I've actually tried before?
14:50 It's not that those things can't make you feel better or that they're dangerous.
14:54 It's just that there isn't enough long-term data to say definitively
14:58 that they can extend human life.
15:00 >> Supplements everybody can can buy
15:03 and we don't know what what's in there
15:04 and we don't know
15:05 if it's safe and we don't know how it interacts with other drugs.
15:14 So if drugs are only moderately effective at extending human life,
15:18 what does science say actually works for every one of us?
15:26 Before we talk about drugs, we can optimize or maximize four things.
15:32 Our exercise, our diet, the sleep, and social connectivity.
15:38 Take a look at these senior athletes
15:40 and you'll see how healthy habits set the course for their golden years.
15:43 >> I've always exercised, >> okay?
15:45 >> Even as a young person, I always and even before I swam,
15:49 I went to the gym cuz there at levy on 23rd and FDR,
15:56 they had classes and I would go there in the morning.
15:59 >> Basically, I've always been an athlete ever since I was a kid.
16:02 You know, I really enjoyed playing.
16:04 You know, back in the day, we used to play sandbot football, basketball, soccer.
16:09 >> Here's what the science says.
16:11 V2 max is one of the best predictors of overall cause of mortality.
16:16 In other words, if you have a higher V2 max,
16:19 you're less likely to die than somebody who has a lower V2 max.
16:23 According to my Whoop, my V2 max is 44.
16:26 The average score for men is 35 to 40.
16:29 Brian Johnson brags about his elite score of over 64,
16:32 the highest ever reported at 101, belongs to Christian Blumenfelt, a worldclass triathlete.
16:39 The good news is
16:40 that V2 max can be improved by alternating highintensity workouts combined with lowintensity steadystate
16:46 cardio.
16:46 After age 40, strength training becomes a non-negotiable.
16:50 That's because you lose up to 1% of your muscle mass every year after
16:53 that.
16:54 It turns out that grip strength is actually a really good indicator of how
16:58 long you'll live.
16:59 It's not about the strength in your hands.
17:01 It's that this test is a proxy for your overall strength
17:05 that you'll need to be aging healthfully.
17:08 I got this one on Amazon.
17:09 And the way that it works is first you tell the strength trainer
17:13 if you're male or female.
17:15 Then you put in your age, and I'm going to put in 39.
17:18 Okay?
17:18 And then you hit start.
17:20 So, let's let's see what I score right now.
17:25 >> >> Oh, not too bad.
17:26 So, this says the score was 65 kg,
17:28 and that's considered strong for a male who's 39 years old.
17:32 Studies have shown that for each 5 kg drop in grip strength,
17:37 it leads to a 16% increase in all cause mortality.
17:41 In other words, the weaker your grip,
17:43 the more likely you are to die young.
17:45 When it comes to diet,
17:46 caloric restriction has been shown to extend the lifespan in more organisms,
17:52 from mice to yeast to worms, than any other intervention.
17:57 And many studies indicate
17:58 that incorporating whole foods instead of processed foods leads to better health outcomes.
18:04 Here's what Tom, the 80-year-old powerlter, eats.
18:07 >> The diet that I follow is low in added sugars, low in saturated fats.
18:13 >> >> What that translates into is limiting fast food.
18:17 >> Insufficient sleep is one of the strongest mortality predictors we can do something about.
18:22 Since getting my results back from human longevity,
18:25 this is the main thing I started taking seriously.
18:27 I got a Whoop to measure sleep scores
18:29 and this red light therapy thing to help me wind down.
18:32 I even met the guy who invented it.
18:34 I'm here with the doctor.
18:35 The doctor's in the house.
18:36 Are you doctor?
18:37 >> Uh, well, I have a PhD, but not in medical science.
18:40 I have a co-founder with a medical doctor.
18:42 Okay, good enough.
18:43 So, now I try to be in bed every night by 10 p.m.
18:45 In the short term, prioritizing sleep has been the most beneficial change I made.
18:50 Studies suggest the mortality risk from loneliness is comparable to smoking up to 15
18:54 cigarettes a day.
18:55 Helen's life centered around her faith community.
18:58 >> When I grew up, I taught vacation Bible school when I was a teenager.
19:03 I was a Sunday school organist and I was secretary of the upper league.
19:07 So, I grew up in the church >>
19:09 and data consistently shows
19:10 that married individuals outlive their single counterparts.
19:14 So, exercise, diet, sleep, and social connection,
19:17 these seemingly basic things have the biggest impacts.
19:20 So, even if I spend the rest of my life doing all the things
19:23 we've discussed so far,
19:25 I should have a long and healthy life.
19:27 But if that's my goal,
19:28 how can I measure if these behaviors are making an impact?
19:34 You've probably heard this term pace of aging.
19:37 And what that means is that in my case,
19:40 I'm turning 40 later this year.
19:42 But based on my biometrics, my Whoop calculates my age as 35.
19:48 So, how does that work?
19:51 >> My name is Steve Hvath.
19:52 I'm the inventor of the epigenetic clock, which measures aging.
19:57 As we age, chemical tags called methyl groups attached to our DNA in predictable
20:02 patterns,
20:03 turning genes on or off.
20:04 Horvath's breakthrough was an algorithm
20:07 that reads methylation and estimates a person's age from almost any tissue in the
20:12 body to within a few years.
20:14 A UCLA colleague handed Horvath a data set gathered from sets of twins to
20:19 answer an entirely different question.
20:22 Can genetics determine sexual orientation?
20:26 Horvath has a twin brother who's gay.
20:28 So he decided to look at the data >>
20:30 and so I was very interested in
20:32 that topic for personal reasons
20:35 and um analyzed his data set this methylation data set
20:39 and saw no signal whatsoever for homosexuality.
20:44 Then I just said let me see whether there's an aging effect.
20:48 And um the rest is history because the minute I looked for aging effects,
20:53 I was really blown away at the very strong signal for aging.
20:57 Today, anyone can find out their biological age.
21:00 Dozens of tests claim to measure it using saliva
21:03 and blood samples or by combining other metrics.
21:06 My Whoop actually calculates my age at around 35,
21:10 which is 4 years younger than I am now.
21:12 And then I took the labs
21:13 that I got from human longevity
21:14 and plugged them into this online calculator called the Bortz blood age calculator.
21:20 And this came up with my age as 35.6.
21:23 So you could see that even with these age calculators,
21:25 there's a little bit of variance in the results you get.
21:28 The science on this remains squishy,
21:30 but some people believe
21:31 that they can keep their pace of age low enough to actually escape death.
21:35 There's this concept called longevity escape velocity.
21:39 that today for every year
21:40 that you're alive,
21:41 science is extending your life for about a third of the year.
21:44 And there'll be some point in the future
21:46 that for every year
21:46 that you're alive,
21:47 science is extending your life for more than a year.
21:50 And when we reach that, that concept is longevity escape velocity.
21:54 You know, the point is it's not 50 years away.
21:57 It's the next, you know, 15 to 20 years away.
22:00 And some people have turned that quest into a kind of sport.
22:06 The Longevity Cup is a year-long competition to lower biological age.
22:11 And these three winners each took home a cash prize.
22:14 The reason why it needs to exist is
22:17 because I believe we might have a chance to achieve longevity escape velocity through
22:24 competitions rather than other kinds of work.
22:29 >> Are you talking about literally not dying?
22:32 Yes, I am talking about literally not dying. >> 53-year-old Michael Lustgarden won first
22:39 place.
22:39 He reduced his biological age by 22.1 years.
22:43 >> I have more than 60 blood tests overall over that 10ear span,
22:47 and I also test eight times per year.
22:49 >> Michael documents his routine on his website and YouTube channel in extreme detail.
22:54 He eats one big meal each day,
22:55 and his body weight workouts focus on mobility.
22:58 >> The question is, how deep do you want to go down the rabbit
23:00 hole after that?
23:01 You've got to know the what's under the hood stuff, cells, proteins, metabolites, etc.
23:05 These longevity athletes do take supplements.
23:08 >> Possibly the most recommended one and research one is creatine.
23:13 So, I would perhaps take that or recommend that.
23:16 >> But I was surprised to find out
23:17 that they aren't shelling out a huge amount every month. >> $100 a month,
23:22 maximum 200, no more.
23:25 So, this is not out of reach.
23:28 Definitely not in the developed world. for an average person.
23:32 >> But there's one man who's already spent millions of dollars in his quest
23:37 to achieve immortality.
23:38 Meet the final boss of longevity, Brian Johnson.
23:44 You've probably already seen some of Brian's extreme habits online.
23:47 >> Yeah.
23:47 A lot of people perceive my endeavor to be like this crazy rich guy
23:52 doing weird things.
23:53 And hopefully what I can explain to you today is actually what we're doing
23:56 is very practical.
23:58 My colleague Hillary Brick tooured his high-tech home in 2024.
24:02 >> We try to have perfect air, perfect water, and perfect light.
24:06 Yeah, like it is a pharmacy in here.
24:08 Everything you see in here is either measuring something or doing a therapy.
24:12 >> Brian rotates his mostly vegetarian meals and has experimented with hundreds of supplements.
24:18 >> This is a morning drink.
24:19 This is uh Blueprint Longevity Mix and it has 20 capsules into one drink.
24:23 So, give it a go.
24:24 >> Okay.
24:25 It smells kind of like Tang.
24:26 He works out every day
24:28 and his home gym is filled with expensive recovery devices.
24:31 >> Like sauna has really good evidence.
24:33 Like there's a very good basis to start.
24:36 Same with hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
24:38 >> Brian is ruthless about getting into bed at the same time every day.
24:42 But some of his stunts have caused cringe-worthy reactions online like taking blood plasma
24:47 from his son and
24:48 then injecting his plasma into his father.
24:51 Like I never imagined in my entire life this kind of relationship with my
24:55 child >> or posting about intimate moments with his girlfriend.
24:59 Brian tweeted this on April 29th.
25:02 Just gave Kate oral sex.
25:04 Good night everyone.
25:06 This is her vaginal microbiome report. 100 out of 100 score.
25:10 Top 1% of all vaginas.
25:13 Okay, I think we've had enough of this.
25:15 But I guess that's the price you pay to become the internet's most famous
25:18 longevity biohacker. you're you're a lot more in your face,
25:21 you know, with some of the stuff you're putting out there.
25:23 Um, was that a conscious effort or was it because you took shrooms?
25:30 >> Yeah.
25:31 I mean, um, this this whole thing has been play.
25:35 I started this as a scientific experiment
25:37 and then like it just we just kind of messed around like,
25:41 you know, I I started posting nudes.
25:43 You know, I I live streamed shrooms.
25:45 I'm going to be doing 5 MO DMT in the next week
25:48 and a half.
25:48 Oh boy.
25:49 Now Brian's offering his $2 million protocol to others at a discount. $1 million
25:55 to access all the treatments he does.
25:57 We have a ton of takers.
25:58 Yeah.
25:58 In fact, we have more people who we can accommodate.
26:01 >> Brian's 48 years old,
26:02 but he told us he's got the skin of someone in their late 20s
26:05 and the heart and lungs of an 18-year-old.
26:07 So, when does he think he'll achieve longevity escape velocity?
26:11 I mean, I think I I said that we would achieve it by 2039,
26:15 where we we would achieve biological escape immortality,
26:18 where one year of time would pass and I would stay the same age.
26:21 >> But longevity scientists don't seem to be on board with this idea.
26:26 According to others in the longevity space,
26:28 Brian could be popularizing treatments
26:30 that at best have no effect
26:32 and at worst cause actual harm.
26:35 >> Nothing is proven yet. people um take this interventions without understanding what can
26:41 be the long-term consequences of uh of these interventions.
26:46 I wouldn't suggest anyone to try it on yourself.
26:50 >> First of all, Brian is a data set of one.
26:52 He only experiments on himself.
26:54 To be fair, he does discontinue doing things that don't have measurable health impacts.
26:59 But that's not how public health research really works.
27:02 The FDA approved drugs we talked about earlier use data collected from thousands of
27:07 people over decades.
27:08 Also, don't forget that Brian's selling his own line of supplements.
27:12 In fact, the Academy of Longevity Scientists are struggling to separate themselves from influencers
27:17 like Brian.
27:18 For me, as the
27:19 as the president of the academy
27:20 that has all those people who are doing geroscience research,
27:24 on one hand, I have to come and say I'm really excited.
27:29 I mean, the here is now.
27:30 We kind of have lots of data.
27:32 On the other hand, there is a lot of noise.
27:35 The more we have progress in the science, the more noise there is.
27:38 And that's not science at all.
27:40 If somebody comes and say we could leave right now to be 150 years,
27:46 that's that you cannot say it.
27:48 But there are new technologies that could reverse aging.
27:52 And even the most conservative scientists have to admit they show promise.
27:56 And these therapies target the most basic building blocks of life. 20 years ago,
28:04 a Japanese scientist named Shina Yamanaka made a discovery that could change medicine forever.
28:09 >> And Yamanaka discovered
28:11 that just turning on four genes would be enough to take any fully grown
28:17 adult cell all the way back to pluropotent stem cell,
28:22 which is the stem cell that could make any kind of tissue.
28:24 These four genes are now known as the Yamanaka factors.
28:28 He won the Nobel Prize for his research in 2012.
28:30 But researchers soon discovered that reversing aging comes with risks.
28:34 Two of the factors are anko genes and that means when they're overexpressed,
28:40 they help the cell to become proliferative dividing without limit.
28:45 Uh so there is always in this reprogramming there's always this cancer risk
28:51 that people have to worry about
28:53 and people are trying to get around it by asking can we reprogram them
28:58 transiently just give a little burst of the Yamanaka factors turn them on
29:03 and then figure out how to turn them off.
29:06 It took another decade to start to tackle that hazard.
29:08 In 2016, Spanish scientist Tuan Carlos Is Pisua Belmonte showed
29:13 that briefly activating Yamanaka factors in mice could partially reverse signs of aging
29:18 and extend life.
29:20 The treatment targeted the animals epigenetics.
29:22 If DNA is the hardware,
29:24 epigenetics is the software that tells the genes when to turn on,
29:28 when to stay silent, and what kind of cell to become.
29:31 Over time, those software instructions begin to break down.
29:34 when you h a lot of epigenetic signature to turn ging on is is
29:40 not as good as it was
29:42 when you were young.
29:43 So the east pisua experiments reset some of the epigenetic changes
29:47 that accumulate over time without fully turning the cells back into stem cells.
29:51 >> And the idea is if you do it transiently, you minimize the cancer risk.
29:55 If I hadn't seen the papers that came out in the last few years,
29:59 I would have thought this was a a relatively far-fetched idea for aging.
30:04 >> And now companies like the Jeff Bezos backed Altos Labs are trying to
30:07 commercialize this technology.
30:09 A number of others are going from a skin cell to an induced puropotent
30:15 stem cell,
30:16 growing these stem cells to a large amount, differentiating them into a liver,
30:20 and then growing you a liver based on your genetic code.
30:24 Now, here's the reality check.
30:26 In January 2026, the FDA cleared the first ever human trial of a reprogramming
30:31 therapy,
30:32 Life Biosciences ER 100, a gene therapy for two age- related diseases, glaucoma,
30:39 and a rarer condition called NA.
30:42 It uses three of the four Yamanaka factors with the cancer linked one deliberately
30:47 left out.
30:47 I >> mean, the eye is essentially nervous system tissue,
30:50 the optic nerve and so on.
30:52 So those things I think uh
30:54 if they worked could be real a real benefit.
30:58 >> But scale matters.
31:00 This is roughly 18 patients, two eye diseases,
31:02 and it's designed only to test whether the therapy is safe,
31:06 not whether it reverses aging.
31:08 Still, it doesn't mean it might not one day take off.
31:11 For example, in 50 years, you when you'll be 20,
31:14 you'll come and get a treatment, maybe an IV treatment,
31:18 and we'll erase the aging from your cells,
31:23 and maybe you'll be able to pass 115.
31:26 But this is not the science that we have now.
31:30 So, now we've arrived at the biggest question.
31:33 If everything we've discussed so far, lucky genes, good habits, drugs,
31:37 and emerging cell therapies can't guarantee that we live past 115,
31:42 what about the sci-fi idea of freezing our bodies to wake up in the
31:46 future?
31:47 >> One of the things
31:47 that you get really excited about
31:49 when diving into the field of cryopreservation is you realize
31:52 that this technology has already been in use over for over 40 years on
31:56 human tissues and cells.
31:57 So, cryopreservation isn't purely theoretical.
32:00 It's just that scaling from an embryo to a full human body is an
32:03 engineering challenge of a completely different order.
32:06 >> We know how to freeze things, you know, that's easy,
32:08 but bringing it back is the hard part.
32:11 >> Here's how one company that actually freezes people does it.
32:14 Freezing means ice crystals.
32:16 They destroy the tissue and nothing would work after if you freeze it.
32:20 So we do what is called cryopreservation
32:24 or the technical term is a vitrification using a a so-called cryoprotective agent
32:29 which is pretty much a a medical grade antifreeze bring the tissue to a
32:33 vitrified state which you can think of
32:35 as as a glass like amorphous state it's a fluid
32:39 but the viscosity is
32:40 so tremendously high that nothing moves anymore.
32:43 The trick here is that at with that technology you can preserve tissue,
32:48 organs or whole organisms including humans for pretty much indefinite time frames.
32:54 It doesn't matter if it's 10 years
32:55 or 20 or 100
32:56 or even a thousand years.
32:58 So cryop preservation I think the best way to think about it is to
33:02 think as as a stop gap measure
33:04 as a bridging technology.
33:05 Even the people selling this technology can't guarantee it.
33:08 That is the what is called the aspirational goal of the scientific research.
33:14 So aspirational goals don't mean they're going to happen.
33:17 And there's one more frontier worth visiting before we close.
33:21 If we could slow or stop the physical decline of the body,
33:24 what about preserving the mind outside of it?
33:27 Researchers claim to have simulated the brain of a fruitly on a laptop.
33:32 That's an exciting development until you realize
33:34 that a human brain has 600,000 times more neurons.
33:39 So something like the Sanjunapro episode of Black Mirror where people can upload their
33:43 consciousness after they die to a server,
33:46 that's still squarely in the realm of science fiction for now.
33:51 Okay, so now you've met super centinarians and scientists,
33:55 longevity athletes and futurists who are trying to live long enough to let AI
34:00 solve death. my entire project is about AI.
34:04 And so obviously it it it seems as though it's about health.
34:09 It's not.
34:10 If you go forward in time to the year 2500
34:13 and you're there with intelligence at
34:15 that time,
34:15 whether it's human AI or some version of combination,
34:18 and they are looking back at this time and place, our century,
34:22 and they're saying what happened in the 21st century,
34:26 they'll I think they'll say two things.
34:28 One is that's when homo sapiens gave birth to super intelligence.
34:32 And two, that's when that's when homo sapiens figured out they wouldn't die.
34:35 >> But let's take a minute to think about what might happen
34:38 if everyone actually lived past 100.
34:40 A Pew Research Center survey found
34:42 that over half of Americans said slowing the aging process would be bad for
34:46 society.
34:47 Americans who reach age 65 today can expect to live nearly 20 additional years
34:52 on average with women living longer.
34:54 At the same time,
34:56 the fraction of life spent with four or more serious conditions hasn't decreased.
35:01 It's actually slightly increased.
35:03 In other words, we're living more years
35:05 and possibly a greater fraction of those in poor health.
35:08 Our current retirement and health care systems are already a ticking time bomb.
35:12 What we see families on trajectory for is a pretty significant shortfall of anywhere
35:18 between hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars
35:21 if we don't plan
35:22 if they don't plan for their aging trajectory now.
35:26 >> So if more people live even longer,
35:28 the way we take care of the elderly will require a complete overhaul.
35:32 >> There must be new insurance plans, new pension plans, elderly care.
35:37 That's a more than a trillion dollar industry overall.
35:41 And right now, the richest Americans live approximately 15 years longer than the poorest.
35:47 A gap that widened between 2001 and 2014.
35:51 Unless treatments become as cheap and generic as statins,
35:54 longevity advances could create two permanent classes of humans.
36:01 This is my dad's grave.
36:04 And uh it's the first time I'm seeing it in person. being here,
36:08 coming to a place like this, remembering my father, um,
36:12 makes you realize this is where we're all headed.
36:15 And maybe that's the point
36:17 that when we know we have a limited time on this planet
36:21 that we try to make the most of it.
36:23 So, is there a possibility
36:25 that in the future not everyone will end up in a place like this?
36:29 Maybe.
36:30 But even if that is possible, the question is, is it a good idea?
36:35 Who gets that extra time?
36:37 And what does it mean for the rest of us?
36:39 Me personally, I'm okay with knowing that my time is limited,
36:44 not knowing exactly how much we have, and just enjoying the ride.
