Think that I’d partially correct
I think muscle volume can help for strength too if trained well
And the there is other value to muscle than avoiding frailty, it also helps with metabolic health by being a natural sink for glucose
(Not sure how relationship works for bone density might be some between muscle volume there too)
So muscle volume can def be good to some extent, just didn’t agree with the way that Bicep framed it
All good points, but lets say we have as much processed food we want at very low cost. The body has a choice to turn it into fat, or muscle. If you have enough protein in there, it seems like the better choice is muscle.
Though even I pushed so hard I pulled a muscle apart last year, and I had a neighbor that tried to move (slide) a 2000 lb seed box and tore one of his forearm muscles loose. He required surgery. I told him I wasn’t strong enough to pull my muscles loose from my bones and he said to not try it.
So I guess having more muscle might mean needing bigger bones and better connective tissue.
I have heard from some credible sources that Minincircle must be a scam because what they say they are achieving is close to impossible. Here is a critisism that was written about them:
I personally haven’t read the criticism in any detail and gene therapies are not among my topics of exertise but I will say that I did meet some of the Minicircle people at a conference last year and I did see some red flags, so while I don’t want to be too quick to judge, It won’t surprise me if it is a scam.
In terms of “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer”, the current economic state in America, where the wealth gap gets ever wider.
If gene therapy significantly increases lifespan, the result will be the same, at least for a long time. Only now, the longevity gap between the rich and poor will continue to widen. Why? Because gene therapy will remain very expensive for a long time.
“The gap in life expectancy between the richest 1% and poorest 1% of individuals is 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women.”
That’s not as big of a gap as I expected.
Yeah, because the poorest are probably drinking too much and sleeping on the ground. I’d rather see the difference between the richest and median.
No one seems to have the latest info in light of rapamycin and other life-extending treatments.
Another search came up with this:(2016 May 13)
“In the United States, the median lifespan between the richest and poorest is 13.5 years, with the richest living to 85.8 years and the poorest living to 72.3 years. The gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest men is 15 years, and 10 years for women. The gap is growing rapidly, with the richest Americans gaining about 3 years in longevity between 2001 and 2014, while the poorest Americans saw no gains.”
“The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001–2014 - PMC)%20for%20women.”
I did a quick review of the document. I agree with many aspects of it. Others have reported that the Minicircle treatment only likely provides a few months worth of benefit. I’ve done some work with a plasmid-oriented gene therapy company and some techniques can get very good transfection levels and persistent results, but at the time (this is 15 years ago) it was episodic in its efficacy, so it wasn’t as consistent as you would want for a commercial product (I don’t ultimately know what ever happened with this technology, it was a spin-out from Stanford U.). I don’t have any details on the tech. that Minicircle is using today. We’ll see.
There definitely needs to be more transparency on the results if the company wants to become a success and grow. I have no idea if its a scam or just a moderately effective first effort in this area. Obviously, nobody who’s taken the Minicircle therapy is looking like the bull shown in the earlier post above.
I do wonder. And maybe I’m putting too much faith in this, but Bryan Johnson has tried it and unless his entire blueprint program is a carefully curated marketing scam then I’d say that his team had to believe that there was a measurable benefit and it was safe enough for him to try. He’s clearly not going to do anything that they perceive as harmful at least not in the short term. I know it’s a lot to infer, but I don’t think it’s a scam. It’s more likely a first generation and not particularly efficacious treatment.
You raise a good point, but while most of the things Bryan has tried are very safe, a much lower percentage is going to be effective, so I don’t think the fact that he tried it means it has a low chance of being a scam.
I’m not doubting the safety of the therapy but its effectiveness. It’s likely a pretty safe treatment. That is even more true if it’s not effective at all.
That’s the scam part. If they know it’s not significantly effective, but still sell it to gullible patients at a very high price under the assumption that it is, then that’s a scam.
It’s a tricky one because nobody really has the data for something like this, I’m sure as a first generation treatment it’s most likely ineffective if we compare it to what may come after. Bryan’s team must have thought there was a reasonable chance of it working to take the risk. It’s not just him making decisions. I suppose you could argue it’s a scam from a financial perspective, although it’s all relative. It’s crazy expensive if you’re a regular person, but anyone who can afford it probably doesn’t blink twice at the price tag. I haven’t seen their marketing materials, maybe they’re guaranteeing a thirty percent lifespan increase, in which case sure then it’s a scam. All that being said, this is a great way to test out these interventions rapidly in humans. The rich have always had access to the latest advances in technology, if it improves and it will inevitably come down in price and be more affordable.
Yes - I have to believe Oliver did some reasonable level of due diligence / research on the efficacy of the given plasmid approach to justify the risk.
But, on the other hand, Oliver is a young, quite newly-minted doctor (I think he’s 29 or 30 years old) and not a specialist in gene therapy, so he may have been easy to fool.
I’m sure they did. Bryan gave a talk in his home town about the experience and said he was trying to work with Minicircle to lower the price. He wants to offer the treatment to his blueprint followers. He mentioned he wanted to become the Costco of longevity. None of that proves anything, but it does seem to point to at least a ‘belief’ of efficacy. A healthy dose of skepticism is well warranted, but always good to keep an open mind
Bryan Johnson’s protocol is a bit of a magpie type protocol. I am someone quite willing to experiment, but this sort of experiment has quite a few unknown risks associated with it and I am not likely to try it unless they have a track record of people benefiting over a number of years.
This importantly is an intervention that aims to fix a consequence of aging, much like using Botox on wrinkles. With Botox we know it works, however.
As people know I am trying to work on fixing the causes rather than consequences.