As English mathematician and philosopher AN Whitehead remarked, “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” If we were to expand this concept to our lifespan, and how we’ve been extending it over the last few decades, it’s safe to say some considerable leaps have been made for our civilization. A 2022 estimate by the United Nations (UN) puts the number of centenarians across the world at around 593 000, and projects there will be 3.7 million centenarians living by 2050. At the same time, longevity has succeeded in developing a science of its own, albeit an unconventional one at times. Some even believe we’re on the brink of ending aging entirely. This is where longevity escape velocity or LEV as it is referred to come in.
Longevity Escape Velocity and Cell Rejuvenation
The concept of Longevity Escape Velocity or LEV, is gaining momentum. In case you are unsure of what this is exactly, a report by Business Insider summed it up this way. “Eternal youth-seekers and investors alike are getting increasingly excited about a concept called “Longevity Escape Velocity.”
Adding further, Business Insider says, “Longevity escape velocity suggests, similarly, that at some point in the not-too-distant future people will be able to escape the debilitating pull of death — and live indefinitely. Longevity escape velocity is our ticket to immortality. If only science could figure out how to cash it in.”
Aging science’s Aubrey De Grey has been talking up LEV for years
This hypothetical idea borrows its name from “escape velocity,” the basic physics principle which states that objects can, at a certain speed, defy gravity’s pull.One of the notions making headlines in this regard is longevity escape velocity (LEV). It asserts that, as we improve our understanding of how to keep rejuvenating our cells, we’ll succeed at improving the quality of our life at a rate faster than we’re aging, thus staying ahead of the curve.”
In his book Ending Aging, Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey explains that, with the improvement of treatment strategies and technologies, life expectancy at each age increases slightly every year. Currently, over a year’s worth of research is needed to manage each additional year of expected life. When this ratio is reversed, we achieve longevity escape velocity, and life expectancy is increased faster than one year per one year of research.
While De Grey is credited with coining the term, the concept has been part of the life-extension community since at least the 1970s. Backers of this theory say that, given enough ambition, money and assistance from AI, humanity will soon come to the point where aging will be entirely optional. Given the rapid advances in aging science, they’re becoming more hopeful each year.
Harvard geneticist George Church has discussed the possibility that we could reach this point in our lifetime. Sourav Sinha, head of strategy at the Longevity Vision Fund, agreed with this concept during a recent panel discussion on age-related diseases, where it was suggested that, under the right conditions, LEV could be here in a couple of decades.
The Dublin Longevity Declaration
At the end of 2023, a growing number of researchers in the field of anti-aging science signed on to what is being called the Dublin Longevity Declaration. According to a release, this declaration calls on governments, funding agencies and the public to accelerate their support for the “promising interventional ideas that exist today to fight age-related suffering and disease, and for the generation and exploration of more such ideas”. The declaration says that trying to improve aging the old-school way – by going after one disease at a time – is “overly pragmatic” and taking too much time.
De Grey is one of 50 leading longevity scientists who signed the declaration, which expressed a consensus from longevity scientists that aging isn’t inevitable, and that there are early scientific results suggesting that an individual’s biological age is modifiable.
“Everyone knows aging is bad, everyone says it’s bad, but nobody does anything about it,” De Grey said at the time. “Like bad weather – people are stuck in the assumption that nothing can be done, even if we try. We wanted to put that assumption to rest.”
Silicon Valley weighs in on the concept of longevity
The race to live forever is no longer restricted to the esteemed laboratories of the world’s leading universities and research institutions.
Silicon Valley billionaires have started turning their sights to the promise of eternal youth. And, while there’s no shortage of Silicon Valley millionaires in the race to longevity, Bryan Johnson has arguably led the charge for the last few years. Since 2021, the biohacker and tech executive has been spending $2 million every year to closely monitor his health and measure his body processes to the finest detail – all for reversing his aging process through a program he named Project Blueprint.
“Many people believe that anti-aging, the fountain-of-youth radical type, is decades, if not centuries, away (if ever), and will arrive in the form of a magic pill,” he states in a Medium article. “Blueprint is a stock ticker of sorts that will reveal, through the tracking of my biological versus chronological age, the status of today’s anti-aging science (even if an N=1 for now). With my world-class team of doctors, researchers and clinicians, if I am able to reverse my measured biological age by 1.01 years for every one year that passes, that is evidence that we have reached the first stage of aging escape velocity, where life expectancy increases faster than passed time.”
Longevity Escape Velocity and the quest to live forever
“Each month my team and I publicly journal our efforts, similar to how explorers Lewis & Clark and Ernest Shackleton chronicled their adventures. Thus far, we have produced some exciting results. For example, we increased my HRV to 54ms, up from 37ms (Whoop 14-day average RMSSD deep sleep 5 min), in five months. This is equivalent to reducing sympathetic nervous system vagal nerve tone biomarker biological age from 54 to 39.6. We also reversed oral age (pocket depth) by 17 years in 120 days (see August notes), without surgical intervention.”
“For every measurement and intervention process, we identify literature that establishes an age reference range. We then identify gold-standard randomized controlled trial (RCT) scientific evidence to reverse the age marker, and began trailing interventions. We partner with local practitioners, custom compounded pharmacies and other partners, and iterate on our novel approaches. In September, my oral age reversal progress plateaued. We are now reassessing this next phase of age reversal gains.”
Johnson believes his strict routine has already borne fruit. His website states that he, at the legal age of 46, has the maximum heart rate of a 37-year-old and the lung capacity of an 18-year-old.
In addition to eating a rotation of the same three vegan meals (mostly a variation of nuts, seeds, berries, lentils, vegetables and roots), he spends an hour every day exercising and swallows around 111 pills daily. He estimates that he spends about $44.91 a day on food and $11.24 a day on supplements.
Brian Johnson (featured in the main photo here), also takes his skincare seriously, applying around seven different creams daily, containing vitamins C, E, B3, ferulic acid and azelaic acid, as well as a 0.% tretinoin topical cream. Notably, he cleanses with CeraVe’s Acne Control Cleanser and its SPF30 moisturizer. In addition, he has a weekly acid peel, microneedling, laser therapy, micro-Botox injections for pore shrinkage, and collagen stimulation injections. Fat injections (from a donor, because he doesn’t have sufficient body fat to use his own) are also administered regularly.
Testing, testing, testing
Looking at DNA methylation tests, he claims he has successfully reversed his epigenetic age by 5.1 years.
Unsurprisingly, he has also developed a lifestyle business from this longevity mission. On his Blueprint website, you can buy supplements, prepackaged meals and extra-virgin olive oil, nut butter and smoothie powders.
In an interview with The New York Times, Johnson said he didn’t care what present-day people thought of him. “I’m more interested in what people of the 25th century think of me,” he said. “The majority of opinions now represent the past.”
He asks the question: what if you could maintain near-perfect health longevity without spending your precious energy thinking about and managing it?
“While this idea might sound scary at first, this leveling up has been happening for a very long time. Hand-stitch to the loom, wagons/horses to the combustion engine, the abacus to computers. These things normalize over time and then we can’t imagine life without them. While that level of capability is likely a ways off, it’s not too far off that we can’t aspire towards it and make it a top priority.”
SuperAgers living longer, but not better
The fact is, despite all the attention around the concept of longevity, immortality, or simply just living beyond 100, it’s controversial, even among scientists.
According to gerontologist Thomas Perls, who has been involved in one of the world’s most extensive studies of centenarians, the idea doesn’t hold water. Talking to Insider, he said he supports investors donating money towards fighting age-related issues, such as Alzheimer’s, finding cures, or discovering new ways to delay diseases. But, considering we’ve yet to understand how to allow our elderly to live in reliably good health, he considers pursuing the ending of aging a waste of time and energy.
“These billionaires, of course, they’ve seen: if you throw enough money at a particular problem, you solve it,” Perls said. Instead, he advises spending the time gaining a better understanding of why SuperAgers continue to outlive others with good cognitive and physical health.
“We want to do what we can do to delay, or even avoid, aging-related diseases that may increase life expectancy or lifespan longevity a little bit for people. But in no way do I think that’s going to lead to the notion of living forever.”
The bottom line
The quest for immortality is not new. However, the concept of longevity escape velocity is gaining momentum as more money is thrown into the global aging pot. It’s not inconceivable that we may soon reach a point where aging is optional. The believers of LEV are convinced that achieving this state just requires enough ambition and money — plus maybe some AI. Says Business Insider,
“While LEV is only a theory for now, its backers contend that it could be a reality in not too many decades, given the rapid advances in aging science. As we get better at rejuvenating our cells, we will be able to improve the quality of our lives so exponentially that people will be increasing their life expectancy faster than they’re living, thus approaching a near-immortal state, or so the theory goes.”
It’s all very fascinating if you are keen to live as long as you can, or are wondering how others are going to. And while there is a lot of effort and money going into longevity escape velocity for now we are simply not there yet.
Main photo credit: Bryan Johnson on Instagram
Read more on Longevity’s futuristic thinkers and doers here
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Kenneth Scott: The 81 Year Old Longevity Biohacker With A Biological Age of 18
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