Good morning. It’s Tuesday, October 15th.

In today’s email:

• Learn: Peak Lifespan

• Think: Hall of Fame Career

• Laugh: Chicken is Chicken

• In the News: TikTok Knew

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Stat of the Day

Expected maximum human life expectancy from researcher S. Jay Olshansky. To be more specific it’s 90 for women and only 84 for men. (source)

Learn

Peak Lifespan

In 1900, the average lifespan was 47.3 years. 120 years later it was 78.7 years.

A new study shows how the 19th and 20th centuries were marked by what’s called “radical life extension.” Globally, we were basically adding 3 years of extended life expectancy every decade.

Most of this was due to medical advancement in germ theory (e.g., washing hands at hospitals) and preventing/curing infectious diseases. The biggest gains were from preventing death at childbirth or the first 5-10 years of life.

But while average life expectancy was always up and to the right - in the last 20 years it’s started to slow down.

This makes sense because while people are, on average, living longer - very few people still live to 100 or beyond. Meaning that even if we get past these deaths early in life, there seems to be a mathematical and biological limit to how long humans can survive.

The study suggests that there’s a peak average lifespan of women living to about 89 and men to 83.

Here’s the crazy part - even if everyone makes it to their 50th birthday, it wouldn’t really change how long we collectively live. Getting rid of all death for the first 50 years only changes lifespan for women to reach 90 and men to 84.

So what does this mean for all the hype around people like Bryan Johnson and other biohackers convinced we can live to 150 or even reverse aging?

The reason we’ve increased lifespan so much is that we prevented infectious disease. But to continue that trajectory something needs to dramatically change with our biology to prevent not just disease, but aging overall.

Even the futurist Aubrey de Grey - who argues against the hypothesis of this study - suggests that future will require cell and gene therapies that today’s models can’t predict. In other words, there will have to be some “breakthrough” in order to change the results of this study.

Our Perspective

One of the key points in this study is that the U.S. is actually an outlier from other countries - lifespan extension has slowed the most and even stopped (this is before COVID).

This shows that there still is variability that we can control based on technology, medical access, or disease that exists right now. 

Mortality (aside from accidents, violence, etc) comes down to three categories:

Infectious Disease —> Chronic Disease —> Aging

In the U.S. specifically, we’ve pretty much conquered infectious disease (not 100%, but for the most part). But chronic disease has taken hold and now accounts for the majority of total death:

• #1 is heart disease

• #2 is cancer

• #3 is respiratory disease

• #4 is brain disease

Underlying all of these is metabolic dysfunction.

These diseases are all correlated with aging.

But it seems that they can be paused until the body begins to slow from aging itself - thereby slightly extending lifespan, but much more importantly keeping us healthy until the very end.

We can be in the top 5-10% who become centenarians (live to 100).

But even if our lifespan is 88 or 95 - the key is to be as fit and active for as long as possible and to not live with a debilitating disease.

So while the biohackers work on pausing aging, it’s on us to pause chronic disease.

Our health & longevity are absolutely in our control - it’s up to us what we decide to do with that power.

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Think

Hall of Fame Career

When asked how he sustained greatness across his 22 years in the NBA - Vince Carter (see his crazy highlight reel) replied -

What would make it a hall of fame life for you? What are you willing to do?

Laugh

Chicken is Chicken

The sequel to the original SNL George Washington skit (see Part 1 HERE) with Nate Bargatze.

H&L in the News

TikTok Cover-Up: A lawsuit from 13 states and DC has uncovered documents that TikTok knew that significant usage causes “negative mental health effects, including "loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety." No kidding. (NPR)

Love Chinese Food?: Here’s a guide for how to order take-out without sacrificing your health when you call up DoorDash for that order of Kung Pao Chicken. (Levels Health)

That’s Really Fast: Ruth Chepng’etich ran 2:09:56 in the Chicago Marathon - breaking the world record by over two minutes. Not only that - her first 13.1 miles was the 5th fastest ever half marathon. Oh and then she ran another 13.1 miles after that. (Let’s Run)

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We’re 40-something dads that felt our bodies and minds start to slow down and we’re not ready for that. We found too much information on every subject. So we started Thrive25 to transform what we’ve learned into something useful for the rest of us to spend just 5 min a day to optimize our health & longevity.

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