Welcome to the Centenarian Path

Hi, I'm Morgan, and I'm an aspiring Centenarian. I think we are living at a time in human history where we will see rapid development of both science and technology enabling people to live longer. With the acceleration and AI and its applications in the biomedical field, we're seeing longevity research progress more quickly than ever before.

Couple this with a change in attitude and lifestyles and I am confident that Centenarians will move far above 0.03% of the population, in our lifetime.

I'm inspired by people like David Sinclair at Harvard who has dedicated his life to understanding the science behind aging, and the ways in which we can change this, not in the future, but now. David sees aging not as a way of life, but instead as a disease:

“I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, everything we know about human health will be fundamentally changed.” (David Sinclair)

Along with massive scientific breakthroughs, those of us who want to follow the Centenarian path also can start to think of simple things, well within our control, that are important to take into account today. I'm talking about completely eliminating things like alcohol, which is categorized as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning it is a known cause of cancer, in the same category as tobacco and asbestos.

There are also things we can all do to prepare for being able the things we'd like to do well into our 90's like going for hikes and riding a bike. In places like Okinawa, Japan, which has a disproportionately high number of Centenarians compared to just about anywhere else in the world, it's not uncommon to see people in their 90's biking around. To be able to have our bodies still do this in our 90's, we have to start thinking about how we treat our bodies earlier in life. The reality is, if you're planning on living to the average age that most people make it to, then you can keep doing the things that most people do.

But for me, and a growing number of people, we don't want the average, we want twenty years beyond the average, which means living twenty years longer than most people. To do this, we have to understand what people who did beat the odds do differently from the average person, and how science can help us get an edge in an entirely new way than anyone ever has before.

Of course, there are no guarantees. Genetics plays a major role in how long you'll likely live, and yes, I mean major.

Longevity of human life is heritable from 20% to 40% in the modern human populations [3]. Survival into extremely long ages is a characteristic clustered in families [4]. Better immune systems, metabolic health such as enhanced insulin sensitivity [5], lipid metabolism leading to healthy levels of plasma lipids [6], and delay or ability to avoid age related diseases has also been observed in the longevous families. (Source - Scientific American)

So while many of us might do everything we can do live to 100 (or beyond), that might just not be possible. On the flip side, doing everything we can to live to 100 does give us a better chance of extending our life, and if that means we'd live a year or two longer, and be happier and healthier in our 80's, then it's worth it.

Before I end my first post on here, it's probably important for me to note that I am not a scientist, or a biologist, and nope, I have no medical background or training whatsoever. I'm an Engineer, a Software Engineer, so most, okay all, of my training is meaningless in this field. Everything you read in my newsletter will be based strictly on what I am learning from scientists, and biologists, and medical experts and I will always cite sources for everything I share on here. At the end of the day, I'm learning alongside you, and I hope with sharing what I learn we can, together, chart a path towards a life, longer than most, where a bike ride at 95 doesn't sound crazy, instead, it just sounds like a normal Tuesday.

Thanks for reading and may you live long and prosper 🖖