LongeCity has long been a hotbed of information exchange and discussion about various methods of slowing or reversing the process of aging. An great number of supplements have been tried, exercise routines employed, and eating patterns explored.
Is it any of it working? Precious few people maintain a regular schedule of objective testing for health and aging biomarkers. Even fewer make those results public. LongeCity aims to change this state of affairs.
In order to foster a ‘citizen scientist’ culture of objective self-monitoring and knowledge sharing LongeCity is supporting efforts to run tests (assays) in its BASE programme, for aging biomarkers and in "N=1 experiments":
"Biomarkers of Aging Self Experimentation (BASE)"
This is our current flagship programme in this field. BASE’s goal is to better comprehend aging interventions over time and present this data in a useful way.
We are inviting participants to contribute age biomarker data alongside information about their lifestyle and nutrition.
To participate, anyone may complete the BASE Questionnaire anonymously. Qualifying participants may claim a partial reimbursement.
Results will be shared internally among participants, with a view towards generating an open source database.
The initiative is at an early stage - parameters are likely to change and we are very open to feedback.
⇒ https://www.longecity.org/base/
"Aging Biomarkers"
We all know that biologically and medically, people age at different rates.
Understanding why could be a key part in retarding or reversing aging. However,
measuring biological age is far more complicated than counting chronological
age. In recent years various new methods have been proposed.
In 2018
LongeCity started a programme supporting our Members in gaining experience with
these tests by granting a subsidy for procuring these tests from selected
service providers on the condition that the Members self-report the results and
their experiences ⇒ on our internal forum. (link)
We remain very interested in evaluating new biomarkers of aging. We will follow
the results of this initiative and support others like the ⇒ AGEMETER
tool.
"N=1 Experiments"
Since our founding, this site has attracted individuals who are impatient for the state of medical consensus to advance and are experimenting with supplements, techniques and experimental compounds.
This has many pitfalls: first and foremost the risk to the individual, the flavour of chasing ‘magic’ that has always tainted the life-extension field, along with the dreadful folly of ‘testimonials’; the risk of generating the flawed impression that taking life extending supplements must somehow be ‘felt’ quickly; a turning away from the principles of scientific equipoise and the hard truths of evidence-based medicine.
Nonetheless this self-experimentation goes on and has some aspects that are worth celebrating: the intensive and personalised engagement with scientific evidence; the assumption of individual responsibility for health and wellbeing; the ongoing adventure of discovery that would not be possible without plenty of risk-takers.
To be clear: Faced with these perspectives, LongeCity as an organisiation maintains absolute neutrality. We do not in any way encourage or promote self-experimentation, nor do we condemn and suppress evidence of it.
We do however, wish that some ‘self experiments’ were more responsibly planned, conducted, and reported with a view towards generating the most reliable dataset possible.
We have therefore set aside some potential funding to complement those experiments that have the potential to yield insights that could be of generalisable interest to the LongeCity community.
Generally, the scheme works as follows:
- An individual (the Subject) develops a supplement or other regimen based on an informed review of the literature, community advice and the available sources.
- The Subject develops a testing plan that assesses meaningful metabolic parameters at meaningful intervals.
- The Subject commences the regimen. The Subject pays for all supplies and the baseline test which must be published on LongeCity in annonymised form.
- LongeCity can be approached to pay for a subsequent test. This does not entail an endorsement of the experiment but simply a desire to further asses some of the safety and efficacy parameters in question.
If you want to participate in this initiative, please ⇒ contact us.
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