El_Mac, you didn't address what you're actively doing now, that's what I'm really curious about in this thread. I don't think waiting for magic-bullet(s) is very proactive.
IMO, merely taking care of one's own health
is essentially waiting for a magic-bullet on this issue. That said, I agree that taking care of your own health is wise. I monitor my diet quite aggressively, though I don't follow calorie restriction. I endeavour to eat no simple carbs, to eat 8 servings of vegetable/fruit per day, balance salt and fibre intake, and avoid transfats. get an average of 30 min of aerobic exercise, some strength exercise, and work on manual cognition (i.e., physical skills). Additionally, I try to keep up-to-date on nutritional tweaking, and so I take salmon oil and vitamin D as a supplement. I also regularly ingest tomato paste, because I like the data on HDL. I don't take resveratrol. It's a potential nutraceutical, but I'm waiting for better data.
But I'm much more proactive than 'waiting for a magic bullet'. Like I said, I believe that the cure for aging is inevitable, unless we derail ecologically. For this reason, I try to think about my footprint, and try to reduce my footprint as well as helping educate others. I monitor ecological science as a leisure activity, so that I can aid this front in minor ways. Additionally, the 'magic bullet' is likely to have a cost, and so I am fairly frugal with an eye on investment and savings. I'd like to be able to afford whatever treatments that I need. So money, health, and ecology is how I increase the likelihood that a magic bullet will be available before I need it.
In addition to trying to be available for the treatments, I am pro-actively trying to actually speed the research. This is why I am so often asking people to help, and create synergies and their own contributions. Remember, I'm trying to save my friends and loved ones too. I can only really increase their odds by helping move the discovery dates
forward. My calorie restriction won't help my parents or my wife's parents.
My efforts to speed the research have been compounding. In early days, I donated my own money to medical research & ecology charities. I assisted in setting up early SENS-based experiments, using my own time and money. I ran folding@home. But that's before I doubled-down on my contributions.
Since then, I've aggressively increased my biological and neuroscientific knowledge, using university-level resources. I currently try to consume scientific information not only professionally, but as a leisure activity. I just finished a contract for a medical research NGO in which I applied my skills at a significant discount to the market value of my worth, because I was trying to move the field forward. I have volunteered to participate in 5 scientific studies, and keep an eye out for more. I am currently working for a biotech startup (again, at a significant discount, but (I'll admit) a significant potential upside on my investment). For the last 4 years, I have been volunteering to tutor graduate students (in the biological fields) between 4-10 hours a week.
It's hard to make a perceptible contribution. However, the enormity of any contribution is astounding. If humanity speeds the development of the 'cure for aging' by one week, that would save almost a million lives. The more people who help, the more potential synergies are available. The earlier the generation of any research, the faster it can be integrated into a system that shows compounding interest. This is why I am so often asking for more help. There're lots and lots of ways to help. And there're lots of loved ones I want to see saved.
/thesis
