A group of researchers has been building of model of aging, correlating the onset risk of the many diseases of aging (heart disease, cancers, dementias, organ failures, etc.) with with the now known increase of senescent cells as we age. When they tweek the variables in this postulated relationship appropriately, they find that the model is quite accurate. The abstract of the study explains this better than I would attempt:

“Age‐related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, and osteoarthritis have universal features: Their incidence rises exponentially with age with a slope of 6–8% per year and decreases at very old ages. There is no conceptual model which explains these features in so many diverse diseases in terms of a single shared biological factor. Here, we develop such a model, and test it using a nationwide medical record dataset on the incidence of nearly 1000 diseases over 50 million life‐years, which we provide as a resource. The model explains incidence using the accumulation of senescent cells, damaged cells that cause inflammation and reduce regeneration, whose level rise stochastically with age. The exponential rise and late drop in incidence are captured by two parameters for each disease: the susceptible fraction of the population and the threshold concentration of senescent cells that causes disease onset. We propose a physiological mechanism for the threshold concentration for several disease classes, including an etiology for diseases of unknown origin such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and osteoarthritis. The model can be used to design optimal treatments that remove senescent cells, suggesting that treatment starting at old age can sharply reduce the incidence of all age‐related diseases, and thus increase the healthspan.”

There you have it! Perhaps you will rush to read the entire study at: https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.13314. But here is the crux of the matter: periodically killing off accumulated senescent cells will delay the onset of most of the known diseases of aging, or at least push them out in time so we can have more fun and less pain for a much longer life. Not all bad!

While we wait for the drug industry to come up with drugs that actually work well, I (and many other self-experimenters) have been using natural supplements to attempt the same. Last time I used a month’s supply of Life Extension Theaflavins (30 caps), with Their Bio-Fisetin (30 caps), along with Senolyfe’s Quercetin Phytosome 500 (60 caps) and took them in three days: 2 + 2 + 4 respectively, 5 times/day on an empty stomach; so, upon awakening, about 11:00 AM, about 3:00 PM, about 8:00 PM and just before pulling up the covers about 11:00. This time I felt it: I felt like I had the flu two days later and felt tired for several days, presumably because I was excreting lots of toxic dead stuff. I generally feel quite healthy, more like I was in my 50s instead of my 80s, but that is a pretty subjective evaluation, not proof that I am suddenly younger. I still hurt in some places I did before the senolytic experiment, but I plan to do this again in March, Jun, and September, so I will report further on this.

To your Greater Health and Fitness,

Frank