The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday | Hacker News Reader

The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

nytimes.com

77 pointsojbyrne58 comments

He doesn’t count calories or believe in extreme caloric restriction as a way to extend life.

Not only has caloric restriction been shown to work in mammals (including primates), but it has known mechanisms of action. That's some hefty evidence to ignore.

But he does believe that excess weight is a sure way to abbreviate it, and reprimands friends, acquaintances and even strangers who are heavy.

The latest studies (http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/293/15/1861.abstract) show underweight and obese people have higher mortality in old age. The mildly overweight need not worry.

Sure, the rinds and peels — which he explains by saying that the parts of fruits most directly sun-kissed are bound to harbor the most energy — may be a little strange.

This makes it clear he has no idea what he's talking about.

This is interesting, however. Let's think about it for a minute.

    - Caloric restriction has been shown to work. Caloric
    restriction would most likely result in individuals
    being at least slightly underweight.
    - Underweight have higher mortality in the old age.
    Mildly overweight need not worry.

So how does that work together?

Practically nobody does CR. The underweight people in the study likely had diseases or nutrient absorption problems.

Practically nobody does CR

Fair enough. I personally wouldn't even try CR - I don't have enough willpower to be slightly hungry for the rest of my life. I'm trying to incorporate some Intermittent Fasting in my life though, since it has some similar benefits.

Caloric restriction requires you to eat food that is denser in nutrients. Many who don't eat much do so because they're poor and can't afford enough food, let alone food that is denser in nutrients. That is why, on average, those with lower body weights have lower mortality. Those who assiduously follow a CR diet rich in nutrients may live longer, but they must be a tiny slice of the pie.

>> He doesn’t count calories or believe in extreme caloric restriction as a way to extend life.

Not only has caloric restriction been shown to work in mammals (including primates), but it has known mechanisms of action. That's some hefty evidence to ignore.

Well, at 87, it's a bit late to start calorie restriction, anyways.

> This makes it clear he has no idea what he's talking about.

I propose that we check on him on his 125th birthday to find out. If he's dead, then you're right. If he's alive, then you're wrong.

That isn't how science works.

On the contrary. The outer shell/skin of any live aerobic organism is most exposed to oxidative stress (21% O compared to cells inside the body -3%) hence the anti-oxidant defenses are most expressed exactly there. They are also most exposed to solar radiation ("sun-kissed") which makes perfect sense when you review the most active antioxidants -dark-green leafy veggies and dark-colored berries (anthocyanin). Calorie Restriction works by inducing NO (AMPK) and lowering core body temperature thus reducing the inflammatory impact of exogenous agents- nutrients,viruses,environmental stressors etc and also by reducing the endogenous thermogenic hormones (insulin, leptin, estrogen,norepinephrine etc.

Indeed, he speaks so loudly at times, and in such a declamatory manner, that it cows people, who sometimes assume they’ve angered him. “When I open my mouth,” he noted, “the room rings.”

“I’ll match wits with anybody,” he says. “I don’t care if they have the top degree in the world.” He notes that everyone on his research campus’s board is a Ph.D. or an M.D. But he, the high-school dropout, presides over the meetings.

This guy must be fun to work for...

Sounds like he's got tiger blood.

“I never have anything go wrong,” he said later. “Never have a backache. Never have a headache. Never have anything else.”

I guess his doctors are too kind to tell him that he's senile as hell.

"If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer" -- Clement Freud (died aged 84).

Some folks are just healthier. It's a single data point. Who knows if it has anything to do with his diet? Staying fit and avoiding tobacco are proven to extend life. His specific dietary restrictions? Meh, who knows?

My grandmother lived to 95, and was very healthy into her early ninties. Her diet, while generally good, made plenty of room for curries and lager, and she liked to get pretty sloshed on her birthdays. Single data points: Useless.

It is interesting that him, and other rich men like Kurzweil are choosing plant-base diets instead of the Taubes, paleo crowd-pushed meat and fat diets.

They can't be both right.

My bet is that neither is right...

Eat when you're hungry. Stop when you're full. Laugh often. Play (physically) more than occasionally. Drink and be merry. Stop worrying. You'll live forever.

And even if you only live a short while, it's better than living a boring life for a slightly longer while.

Sadly it is not so simple for an increasingly large number of people suffering from diabetes, obesity, arterial and heart diseases.

They are looking for solutions to get healthy so they can enjoy life in the ways you are presenting.

So far the 2 main camps claiming to have the solution to everything are pushing 2 completely opposed strategies, none of them seemingly more proven than the other...

Sufficient exercise can reverse or minimize many of those diseases you mention.

Except that the more you exercise, the more your body hungers for more calories. The homeostasis theory of the body makes far more sense than the current thermodynamic view of eating; that change in weight is equal to what you eat minus what you burn.

If you exercise more, you burn more of course. Supposing that your body has no idea how much energy its consuming, and thus the 'what you eat' part of the equation is independent of the 'what you burn' is simply ridiculous.

Those diseases, the diseases of western civilization wont go away by simply exercising more. Exercise more, you eat more, you don't lose your fat weight, you won't reverse those diseases.

Except that carefully controlled studies have failed to support your claim that sufficient (whatever that is) exercise can reverse or minimize most of those diseases.

Neither of you have provided any evidence to support your assertions. I don't understand how either of you can have positive karma scores.

As the very overweight will attest, "hungry" and "full" are very subjective terms. Eating when they are hungry is what got them into their present state. Laughing won't do much about it, nor will acquiring a drinking problem. Stopping worrying about it leads to the troll-fest of pro-fat discussion boards.

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....

That's one camp, sure. Taubes strongly refutes it.

Why can't they both be right?

We're omnivores. I would be surprised if there weren't multiple diets that led to health.

The two are wildly opposing, blaming each other for all the modern life diseases.

It's not impossible to be both right, given a sufficiently diverse human genotype pool, but rather hard to imagine really.

Then look to the things are a similar in both diets. Both avoid sugar and processed foods. Both push to one extreme either high fat/low card or high carb/low fat levels. Not to mention things like lowering your stress levels.

They could both be right that their diets are healthy. They could not both be right that the other side's diet is poison.

The list of things they eat could be right, but the arguments behind them wrong.

What if they're both right, but not for the same population? It doesn't sound unreasonable that different people with different metabolisms would benefit from different diets.

I don't think that the paleo crowd is really pushing a high fat and meat diet like you say. Taubes' views could almost be more easily lumped in with those of Atkins followers than of paleo eaters. Different people have different feelings about it but in general paleo eating is more centrally about eliminating the consumption of processed sugars, excessive sodium, gluten, and lactose. Vegetables and fruits make up a significant portion of the diet and eating leaner game meats and fish is usually encouraged over the more fatty factory farm meats. The idea is basically just that things that have relatively recently become cornerstones of our diet, whether due to technological advances or otherwise, might not be so good for us because we didn't evolve with exposure to anything like them. It comes down to making choices like having an orange instead of a bowl of ice cream, some roasted asparagus instead of a buttery dinner roll, or a nice cut of rabbit instead of a 70% lean hamburger with melted cheese. That seems like a fairly reasonable stance on diet to me, regardless of whether or not you buy the evolutionary rationale.

Such articles put me in mind of Jack LaLanne, who by most accounts did everything (that he knew of) right in terms of exercise and diet.

He lived to 96 ... his brother Norman LaLanne lived to 97.

“I went back in my mind: what am I not eating enough of?” he told me. Definitely not fruits and vegetables: he crams as many as 20 of them, including pulverized banana peels and the ground-up rinds of oranges, into the smoothies he drinks two to three times a day

Wait, banana peels?

Well, it's not like they're toxic... Have you seen the movie K-Pax?

Have you seen Back to the Future?

I would expect banana peels to be quite toxic on average. Lots of pesticides, and unless you live in a place where bananas grow, who knows what they do to the bananas to prepare them for shipping.

Wouldn't organic bananas avoid that?

I wouldn't count on it, as there are varying definitions of organic.

A few pesticides are quite toxic to humans. Most aren't. There are some (e.g. cypermethrin) with no known lethal dose in humans.

Though they apparently are radioactive! :)

I like the "Banana Equivalent Dose" measurement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

Haven't you heard, it's all about whole foods.

Whenever a thread comes up about someone taking a sincere interest in nutrition and making difficult sacrifices to try to enjoy a better life, you start to see people come out and mock it and make jokes and assert a certain "well I'm having more fun" type superiority.

Well, I'm not so sure about that. Most of the people I know who work to live really healthy have the guts to go counter-cultural/counter-mainstream in other ways too. They live good lives filled with adventure, have lots of fun, live healthier, and on average die later. Smoking is cool - I used to love good tobacco. Red meat is amazing. I used to love good steaks. But funny enough, the net pleasure you have after quitting that stuff doesn't really go down. It's hard to do, but you really do live better across the board if you're willing to put in the initial willpower and sacrifices.

I'm not so sure if I agree with what you're saying. I have few vices. I cook everything from scratch, don't smoke, rarely eat red meat and have a very nutritious diet. My main vices are a lack of exercise and alcohol (as I like to make cocktails, learn new ones and experiment I probably drink more of them than most).

Exercising more would probably give me more enjoyment, but at the opportunity cost of what I'm doing instead. Cutting out alcohol will no doubt extend my life (after all, alcohol is a fairly poisonous chemical to start off with) cutting it out would reduce the net pleasure I get not just from drinking cocktails, but introducing new ones to others and watching the pleasure they get from experiencing them.

You can't consistently make great cocktails if you're teetotal anymore than you can consistently cook incredible meat dishes if you're vegetarian as there's no direct feedback mechanism.

I'm not saying that the net pleasure doesn't go down in all cases, but there are definitely some. I'm sure giving up mountain climbing can extend life, but there's a drop in pleasure for a mountain climber too.

> You can't consistently make great cocktails if you're teetotal

Of course you can, just don't swallow.

Being fit and feeling good about myself is a better feeling than anything I have derived from food. I love me some delicious food, but not at the expense of my health.

Living to 125 would be exceptional, but not all that incredible when you consider that the longest living woman on record lived to 122.5.

And that she quit smoking at 120! A beautiful case study for those who see causation in correlation.

Obviously, smoking causes death!

/troll

But in this particular case it looks like stopping smoking causes death. Smoked to 120, stopped, died at 122.5.

I think for most people, if these extreme measures brought them another 50 years it may be worth the effort of being perfectly disciplined. But even if he is onto something, which may think they are using conflicting methods, it's probably going to buy him an extra few years over just being healthy without being obsessive.

One might even suspect that obsessing over your heath so much is actually unhealthy...

A few doctors are starting to use the term orthorexia to describe the obsession some people have with "eating right".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthorexia_nervosa

These questions unfortunately remind me of a few people I know:

* Does their diet make it difficult for them to eat anywhere but at home, distancing them from family and friends?

* Has the quality of their life decreased as the quality of their diet increased?

It's easy to keep that discipline when your a billionaire!

is he contributing to SENS?

Cool read, it reminds me of this post by James Altucher on "How to Live Forever", some great tips in there - http://jamesaltucher.com/2010/11/how-to-live-forever/

single page http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06murdock-t.html?...

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