Alexandra Carmichael

July 9, 2010

Here’s your chance to learn how to live longer, and save money too.

Christine Peterson is hosting the first Personalized Life Extension Conference, October 9-10 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. She is offering a $100 discount on the $275 registration price to all Quantified Self members who register with the discount code “QS”.

From the conference website:

Topics to be covered in lectures,
Q&A, and during meals and breaks
include:

Supplements: Should we be taking
resveratrol,
vitamin D3, fish oil, coenzyme Q10, acetyl-L-carnitine, melatonin, DHEA,
and many others? Benefits, costs, risks, and supplement advisors to
consider.

DNA testing: Costs
are coming down
fast. We can’t re-write our DNA (yet), but there is much that can be
done to “turn on” and “turn off” genes related to individual risks.

Telomere
protection: Getting your telomeres
measured, and techniques to protect them, from inexpensive to very
expensive. TA-65 is the latter; we’ll debate value and cost.

Finding
a life extension doctor: Very few physicians
are informed or even interested in anti-aging techniques. Let’s explore
how to find the ones who are.

Blood testing: If
you’re young and healthy, get
extensive blood work done now to get a baseline. If older, see where
you’re too low or too high and take corrective action — the “normal”
range accepted by the average doctor is almost certainly too broad.

Gadgets:
From low-end blood pressure readers and
Omron pedometer, to the mid-range Zeo sleep monitor, ShoulderFlex
massager, and emWave PC biofeedback, to the high-end UVB non-tanning
“tanning bed” for stimulating vitamin D production, we’ll look at which
equipment is safe and cost-effective.

Calorie restriction
and intermittent
fasting: It’s pretty clear these can delay the diseases of
aging. We’ll hear how hard or easy they are to carry out in real life.
“Mimics” of calorie restriction: We’ll consider whether any of these
are ready for prime time.

Inflammation: Increasingly seen as
central to the aging process, we’ll look at ways to measure and reduce
this damaging process throughout the body, from taking aspirin and
anti-inflammatory supplements to reducing abdominal fat and increasing
dietary fiber. C-reactive protein (CRP) monitoring can track progress.

Sleep: Quantity and quality of sleep is increasingly
being recognized as critically important; we’ll look at the factors
governing these and how to control them.

Stress reduction: Perhaps the most important single
factor to tackle, due to its connection to blood pressure and cortisol,
and yet a challenge to reduce given today’s lifestyles. Many approaches
can help –yoga, humor, meditation, sex, massage, vacations, moderate
exercise, downsizing, simplifying, reducing email frequency, and getting
off the computer one day a week.

Self-experimentation: Many longevity techniques
involve changing a parameter and tracking its effects. We’ll look at
designing such experiments, learning from the Quantified Self
experience.

Exercise: What types, what’s
the minimum, and (just as important) the maximum from a longevity
perspective, since overtraining can cause overly high cortisol levels.

Eating: A complex, controversial, and centrally
important topic for longevity — advice to take (not the USDA),
macronutrients, micronutrients, organic vs. standard, raw vs.
cooked, probiotics, what types of processing to avoid, specific “foods”
to avoid including high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated
oils, techniques for weight control and reduction, how to reduce the
time required. Specific foods to consider: curcumin, turmeric, cinnamon,
green tea, black tea, berries, dark chocolate, and stevia to replace
sugar.

Mood: Optimistic people live longer, it’s claimed.
We’ll look at mood-influencing supplements, techniques, and actions,
from SAMe, rhodiola and Prozac to the pursuit of love and intimacy:
married people and those in monogamous long-term relationships are said
to live longer.

Enhancement and brain function:
To figure out how to live longer, it would help to be smarter. Some of
us have tried mental “enhancers” such as Provigil or Ritalin; let’s
compare benefits and risks. We’ll look at supplements thought to
preserve brain function, such as galantamine.

Standards of information quality: Large double-blind
studies are not available for many longevity questions, and may never
be due to high costs and inability to patent existing nutrients and
practices. Yet health claims must still be evaluated, using less-ideal
data.

Common errors: A common mistake in life extension
news items is mistaking correlation for causation. Let’s examine how to
guard against this and related confusions, rampant in media reports and
even in some medical studies.