by Peacedog on Sat Dec 12, 2020 9:10 am
This is beyond the scope of this thread, but from what I've seen longevity in that territory (90+) is almost purely genetic. If you live over 100 years of age in the USA that is a three standard deviation shift in relation to mortality of the general population and occurs with roughly 1 in a 1000 people. It is purely a genetic driven event.
When dealing with geriatrics I've come around to the understanding that while many things exist that can shorten a lifespan, virtually nothing exists that is going to extend a lifespan past its genetic set point given state of the art medicine.
Many things do exist that can improve quality of life (exercise, diet, etc.). But ultimate lifespan not really.
Routine use of moxibustion, perhaps shih shui gung, some of the pharmacological interventions I've mentioned on other threads (rapamycin, metformin, and telmisartan) are the only things I've seen that have compelling anecdotal evidence of ANY extension of ultimate lifespan.
While use of exogenous hormones definitely improves quality of life over the short to mid-term the long term indications are generally negative. HRT in women definitely decreases lifespan through a massive increase in the incidence of cancer. In men, the almost immediate cessation of fertility is a big warning sign from a TCM perspective. This is reversible with short term, or cyclic, use, but is probably permanent if used over the long term (i.e. 10+ years).
Now if running TRT prevents obesity that would keep someone from dying early as a result of all of the problems obesity creates it might be worth it if the individual cannot bring themselves to control their body mass using diet. But this again is an example of something, i.e. obesity, shortening an individual's preprogrammed lifespan versus extending their lifespan past its genetically determined point.
AFA the shih shui gung crew is concerned all of these guys seem to have a variety of bad habits that should be shortening their lifespans. Mostly smoking, drinking and screwing around.
Anything is going to be anecdotal at this point as running a study is really beyond the scope of what is going on. But the consistency of observations is curious.
Last edited by
Peacedog on Sat Dec 12, 2020 9:34 am, edited 2 times in total.