Longevity Treatments - Snake Oil or Breakthrough? John Newman & Mahtab Jafari

The longevity industry is booming. Influencers are promoting this and that as promoting healthy aging, longevity, and healthspan, and it's hard for us, much less our patients, to make sense of it.  To be sure, we should always start by recommending exercise, nutritious foods, good sleep habits, and meaningful social interaction.  We wanted to go beyond that to talk about the promise and potential and risks/harms of "biohacks."

Today we talk with Mahtab Jafari, PharmD, and John Newman, MD, PhD, and to discuss:

• How we clinicians should think about this movement, knowing many of our patients (and ourselves) also prize living as long as we can as healthy as we can, and at the same time acknowledge that a high quality of life, growth, and a meaningful life are possible with support in states of disability or dementia.

• How animal models can leading to promising therapeutics but must be tested in humans

• What it takes for a drug to obtain approval for longevity or healthspan indications when we cannot realistically wait around 40 years for a result

• We ask them to rate the evidence for many treatment on the scale of very promising, meh, or snake oil/avoid, including creatine, metformin, GLP1, SGLT2i, NAD+, testosterone/estrogen, red light therapy, rapamycin, and rodeola rosea.

And I get to sing Wake Me Up by Avicii - an uplifting song with lyrics that could have multiple meanings - makes you think!

-Alex Smith