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Wei_Dai comments on Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity - Less Wrong
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It seems pretty easy to supplement with soy lecithin. Is there any reason not to do that?
Not particularly for choline other than my normal anti-processed-food-until-proven-otherwise heuristic, but eggs do also contain lots of b12, selenium, and a smaller amount of a ton of other nutrients.
Eggs are very high in methionine, though, and there's evidence that methionine restriction can increase both mean and maximum lifespan. Some very knowledgeable folk, like Michael Rae, have dropped eggs from their diet for this reason.
Thanks for the pointer, I am reading the rat and mice studies. So far the evidence seems weaker than the CR evidence, which is pretty bad.
Do you mean that the CR evidence is bad, or that it's bad that the evidence for methionine restriction is weaker?
"CR works in humans" evidence is bad. "CR works in primates" is bad. "CR works in mice" is shakier than it has been presented.
I don't think this is an accurate characterization of the state of the evidence. See here for a rigorous examination of the relevant issues.
Also, it seems inconsistent to dismiss the evidence for CR in humans as "bad" and yet praise intermittent fasting (IF), given that (1) IF has been studied much less extensively than CR, (2) IF hasn't generally shown health benefits comparable to those of CR, and (3) it is generally believed that the benefits that IF does confer are explained by its ability to mimic CR.
My praise for IF can not be based on longevity considerations because the evidence simply isn't there. It is based on shorter term considerations regarding blood markers that should lead to better health outcomes, as well as quality of life considerations.
I read the linked examination of various CR studies, if anything I am even more dubious than before. There are simply way too many free parameters in the studies that have been done so far for me to feel confident in their results. CR requires an extraordinary lifestyle change that induces some changes that seem quite bad (hormonal and immune system), it would take excellent evidence of benefit to be worth these downsides. The methionine evidence seems even more preliminary, and I'm not going to get rid of nutrient dense food items in my diet based on it until there is stronger evidence.
I'd specifically point to the "Diminishing returns hypothesis" section of the paper as representative of my impression across all studies so far.
We observe even better blood markers (and other biomarkers) on people doing CR. My point is that there is no relevant line of evidence that provides stronger support for IF than for CR. So it's hard to square your claim that the evidence for CR is bad with your praise for IF.
Upon reading your second paragraph, it now seems to me that you are actually using different evidential standards to assess these two dietary interventions, on the grounds that one (but presumably not the other) "requires an extraordinary lifestyle change". I think however that it's much clear to keep the evidential question ("does CR work?") separate from the practical question ("should I try CR?"), and use consistent evidential standards across the board. Once you reach a position about the degree to which the existing evidence supports the claim that CR has various health benefits, you can then proceed to tackle the issue of whether the benefits are worth the costs. And note that methionine restriction doesn't require anything remotely like the sacrifices required by CR, so we should clearly keep the two questions separate in this case.
No we don't, we see immunosupression, elevation of some stress markers, and sex hormones crashing. The stronger support for IF is that you can lead a normal life and meet all the usual criteria we use for assessing health. With CR we improve some markers for health at the cost of others and hope we have chosen the correct ones to downgrade in our estimation of effectiveness for longevity.
If I based lifestyle changes on studies with similar levels of evidence to methionine restriction, I would be pulling a Ray Kurzweil and taking dozens of supplements. Rat/mouse models should NOT inform lifestyle changes. Their purpose is to explore hypothesis space cheaply.