Explaining Longevity Interventions

The longevity intervention landscape is louder than it has ever been. NAD+ precursors are on billboards. Rapamycin has moved from the clinical margins to the podcast mainstream. Metformin is discussed at dinner parties by adults who do not have diabetes. Senolytics are being sold as supplements before the human trials are complete. GLP-1 receptor agonists have gone from a niche diabetes and obesity intervention to a suspected longevity drug with an audience that keeps growing. Each of these interventions has serious biology behind it. Each also sits inside a marketing environment that is not honest about the state of the evidence.Explaining Longevity Interventions is volume five of The Longevity Code Series, and it opens with a framework, not a supplement. The first chapter is a five-question rubric for evaluating any longevity claim: What is the proposed mechanism? What does the animal model evidence show? What do the human trials actually show, and what were their endpoints? What is the safety profile? And what is being marketed on top of the evidence, versus what the evidence supports? A reader who works through those five questions on any intervention-one in this book or one that has not been invented yet-is protected from most of what the longevity marketplace is trying to sell them.Chapters then walk through the interventions with the strongest data behind them. NAD+ precursors, and the running debate between nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide. Rapamycin and mTOR inhibition, with an honest look at the dosing schedules being investigated for longevity indications versus the transplantation regimens the drug was originally developed for. Metformin and the TAME trial. Senolytics, and the biology of clearing the senescent cells that accumulate with age. GLP-1 receptor agonists, and the emerging longevity signals that make oncologists, cardiologists, and gerontologists watch the same drug class with the same interest. And the smaller-evidence-base candidates now attracting research attention: hyperbaric oxygen, plasma exchange, epigenetic reprogramming, and the frontier of the field.Each chapter walks through the mechanism, the animal-model evidence, the human trial data, the safety profile, and the honest state of what is known and unknown. Every claim is anchored in peer-reviewed evidence. The book is honest about where the enthusiasm has raced ahead of the trials.This book is not medical advice, and it is not a protocol. It is the foundation for every conversation the reader will have with a clinician about their own longevity plan. Read on when you are ready. The reader who understands the framework will never again mistake a marketing budget for a mechanism of action.