I don't think aging exists
Meaning I don't think there is any programmed aging in our DNA. And I think every human is capable of 'de-aging' by abiding by some basic principles.
Last night I was watching my favorite podcast, My First Million, and they get on the topic of Ed Thorp (click here for the video). Ed is a legendary mathematician turned gambler turned hedge fund manager.
He is 91 years old and looks amazing. Plus he still functions as if he was half his age.
And the thing about Ed is…. there’s plenty of folks like him. People that are in their 90’s or even past 100 and look and function as if they are half their age.
Meanwhile you will easily find millions of people in their 20’s whose health is falling apart to the point that you would think they are 70 or 80 years old.
So when a 20 year old can look and function like an 80 year old and an 80 year old can look and function like a 20 year old… what actually is aging?
What laws actually guide how it happens and how fast?
I don’t think there is any genetically programmed aging
Back many years ago I was in the Life Sciences school of Cornell University (which at the time was considered one of the strongest pre-med programs in the world). I took biology and evolution classes with fellow students that went on to go to places like Harvard Medical School and became doctors.
And since I was forced to take these biology classes, I began to get interested in them.
And even after I finished college I continued reading a fair bit on the topic. Books like “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins, etc.
One of the things I concluded from all of this reading was that they never found any programmed aging cycle in humans. At least nothing substantial that could be conclusively proven.
And so it begged the question… why did humans age?
And can the aging process be stopped or even reversed?
Now I think I have the answer… aging is a biomechanical process
So after my decade of experimentation on myself with these biomechanics relating to teeth I now feel very confident that I have the answer.
The answer is that what people call ‘aging’ is actually a physical breakdown process that is root caused in loss of dental height in the teeth.
Basically by grinding down your teeth, which is a natural fact as you get older, it triggers a biomechanical sequence that I explained in this article with my ‘balloon theory’ here:
And so the soft tissue of the skull ‘deflates’ crushing the skull, which crushes the brain and deranges not just your cranial bones but also your entire spine.
So essentially ‘aging’ is just really a set of physics that can happen at any age. Which explains so much about what we see in reality with some old people looking great and some young people looking awful.
I think exercise actually ages you FASTER
This is one of the kickers that I find so ironic…. I am pretty sure exercising ages you faster.
And therefore it is actually better in the long run to do very little exercise.
Now how did I conclude this?
Well.. basically I looked for people that had decent structure when they were younger but forced themselves to do a ton of exercise.
And I compared their velocity of aging against people that had similar ‘structure’ but did not do much exercising.
And I was consistently seeing the same pattern… the people that did less exercise ‘aged’ better.
Why? Well.. most likely because when you do more exercise you grind your teeth down faster.
Just go to the gym and start lifting weights and notice how many times you clench your teeth very hard compared to how often you do that when you’re just relaxing on the couch. A lot more!
Here is one classic example I like to point to of Marcus Luttrell, the Navy Seal about whom the movie “The Lone Survivor” was written.
When he was a SEAL he had a nice profile and good skull definition. Seven years later he’d lost his profile and angles of his face, despite still leading a pretty active exercise regime.
What happened between 2005 - 2012? Well he was a SEAL… and SEALs do a ton of exercise each day.
Is this a perfect example? No. But mind you that i’m following this pattern for 5+ years at least. And I actively try to disprove myself with each new example i see.
I am very confident that the aging process can be stopped and even reversed
So ever since a dentist drilled my back teeth relatively flat in 2014 (read here for that story), I have screwed myself up and then fixed it probably at least 3-4x.
And now i’m doing it for the last time as I finally fully understand it.
But each time I ‘screwed myself up’, I would basically say that it had all the same characteristics of aging. Meaning that:
I visibly looked aged with more wrinkles and less crisp angles on my face
My hair thinned and I got a bald spot
My cognitive & neurological function deteriorated significantly (i would say 50%+)
My energy got a lot worse (eg. now I work till 10 or 11pm whereas in 2020 i was completely spent at around 6pm)
On the flipside…each time I ‘fixed’ myself… I reversed all of these things.
Now if i’d only done it once, I honestly would not feel confident to conclude anything.
But when you do the same thing 3-4x in a ten year period and it repeats the same exact pattern each time… you start to feel pretty damn confident that what you’re observing is not some weird phenomenon.
But rather it is more likely a set of rules that replicate on any other human being who does the same thing.
So yeah… I consider myself a guinea pig… and I literally think it’s possible to look & function as if I’m in my 30’s till i’m 100+. I’m 47 now, so let’s see.