Hi gents,
Listen: I know that this SOUNDS like a good idea, and indeed, I proposed almost the exact same thing to the CR Society several years back: I'm sure that it would be picked up by a significant number of people and raise some cash, and maybe even bring in a few new members (come for the supplements -- stay for radical biomedical gerontology!). However, I suggest that there are very real dangers to this proposal. I am honored to be asked my input on formulating such a product, but I must respectfully decline, and I urge Imminst and its sister groups will not take it up with anyone else, either.
There are 2 parts to the proposal, and each has its own do-not-pass go problem:
a multi vitamin and nootropic mix with the main things supported around here, and then cap off 1 to 5 versions or so of this? [...]
Also, can you mix nootropics with supplements? Im not sure if Ive ever heard of such a mix. Seems like it should be a good seller. If it had a link to a web site that supports unlimited lifespans then I would promote it, buy it for people I know, etc..
First, if there's one message that I'd've hoped would have come out from the lecture notes etc that Maxwatt linked, and also my own (sorely out-of-date, but not radically inaccurate, and good as an example of the heuristic in action)
personal supplement regimen, it's that the whole concept of a supplement that everybody should be taking -- even a multivitamin, let alone wonking around with noots or exotics like pyridoxamine, lipoic acid, resveratrol, etc -- is a dangerous delusion that ignores both dietary and biochemical individuality. Even eating diets that are otherwise very healthy, almost everyone has a variety of mild deficiencies and imbalances in their day-to-day eating pattern, and the special strictures of a many 'health-food' diets tend to take away some of the wiggle room that people with
basically healthy but non-health-nut diets afford through variety. have to fill in gaps in their nutritional pattern. Moreover, people's understanding and characterization of their own diets tend to be quite mistaken: they come into their dietary habits by a lifelong mixture of culture, habit, availability, and taste that they've never deeply analyzed and haven't compared to any Platonic standard, with the result that they really don't know what they're eating or how it compares to average diets or dietary guidelines. Taking a generic 'multivitamin for all!' tends to
exaggerate, not correct, for these imbalances.
What should be happening is that each individual person should make the investment in dollars and time to at least periodically do what my fellow practitioners of Calorie restriction do every day, which is to record and quantitate everything you eat for a few typical days – not days when you're 'being good,' but a genuinely representative sample. If you don't have them already, pick up a set of measuring cups (for liquids and solids) and spoons; also spend some money on a digital food scale accurate to 1 gram (postal scales are an easier-to-find and usually less expensive route to the same end). When you make food for yourself, weigh or measure it out; when you eat pre-packaged foods, carefully record the relevant information; keep a PDA or small pad of paper with you, and carefully evaluate small snacks and drinks eaten out.
Plug all this information into nutritional software, such as Aaron Davidson and coworkers' excellent shareware program
CRON-O-Meter (on whose design I consulted) or the also-excellent
NutritionData.com. If a food isn't on the list, you can use the Command-F (or Food > New Food) function to enter information about it, from the package or online sources like The Daily Plate and Calorie King; Google searches for the food name plus "nutrition facts" or (calories protein calcium) are also often successful.
Then, figure out what you're actually missing (or getting in excess or in imbalance), and first try to fix the problem starting where it originates, by shifting your diet; then, plug in any remaining gaps with a pill for
that specific nutrient.
The only exception I would make: except for people running around half-naked at midday at low latitudes (ie, people who are Damned Fools about skin cancer), almost no one can meet their vitamin D needs from diet and sun exposure on a year-round basis. Take a supplement of 800-1000 IU/d, and a month or so later, get your 5-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25(OH)D3) tested, targeting 30 to 40 ng/mL (or, equivalently, 75-100 nmol/L); adjust and re-test as needed. And, it's worth saying, that even this is not an absolutely clear-cut case: all the clinical trials are in older, generally osteoporotic people (generally women), and none lasts more than 5 years or so; there's a case to be made (1) that young, healthy, calcium-replete people might, over the course of many decades of supplementation at the same doses, do themselves some actual harm. I judge the risks worth taking for myself; I'd be reluctant to endorse Imminst more or less putting the stuff in the water, with its imprimatur.
And, in any case, if you put a gun to my head and force me to suggest a multivitamin, I've already done it, of course: back in my former career, I formulated
this and an earlier (and, I'm sad to say, better) version of
this (tho' they have, happily, bumped down the selenium levels in response to new research, and do intend to also lower the folic acid); if you make me make a suggestion, it's that you take a half-dose of one or the other, plus extra vitamin D.
But I'd really prefer you leave your firearm in its holster and take out your food scales instead.
Now, problem number 2:
Either something non legally binding could be put on it like "As supported by the members of the Immortality Institute", or somebody could look into what legalities we would be getting into if it were called someting like, "Immortality Institute supplements and noontropics mix".
Some names I think would work great for helping spread the meme would be things like, "Immortality Institute, supplement and nootropic mix" and "Longevity Escape Velocity, helping acheive unlimited lifespans."
All of this implies the very dangerous and quite mistaken bromide that supplements are going to contribute to achieving unlimited lifespans, contribute to retarding aging, etc. Beyond the correction of frank deficiencies, there's no real evidence for that, and it tends to make people complacent about things that actually do have a chance of working (CR, SENS) on the basis that they think they have something in hand already (lots and lots of folks out there keep piping up on the boards to the effect that they don't have to bother with CR since they're taking resverarol, when (again) there is absolutely no credible evidence that resveratrol is a CR-mimetic, and the available evidence, though incomplete, weighs in
against it -- nothing personal, Anthony!).
There's also a very real danger of conflicts of interest once Imminst has our reputation or finances tied to a supplement (or, worse, line of supplements). Will people be ready to throw an inventory into the ocean and take refunds if some ingredient turns out to be probably toxic? What would we do in cases like
potential cancer-promoting effect of folic acid, or the
worries about supra-RDA intake of selenium? Would we discontinue massively revenue-generating formulations? How firm would we be in counselling people to take real care in formulating their regimens, and not just promote (by intent or ab silentio) everyone taking everything? What would we do with the already-difficult problem of controlling vendor spam and critiques of products, when they were
our products -- our formulations, our reputations, and our income -- on the line, under attack from competitors?
We'd also then lose a great deal of credibility with the non-radical-life-extension world, being caricatured as supplement-hawkers rather than a real, nonprofit advocacy and research organization; this would impair our ability to turn ourselves into a genuinely effective lobby for the cause, as I hope we will some day be. Just look at the debate and problems with even the name "Immortality Institute," and the internal debate it caused in recent times.
I'm sorry to say that LEF has stumbled across these triplines repeatedly in its history, and never fully righted itself, despite the core sincerity of the founders; I'd hate to see Imminst stuck in the same ethical quagmires.
I suggest that, attractive as it might sound, we shelve this idea, let people keep debating the issues as individuals on the Boards, but institutionally stick to our real knitting, to which we're only really beginning to get down in a serious way: Advocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans.
-Michael
1.
Calcium, vitamin D, and bone health: how much do adults need?John J.B. Anderson
Nutrition & Food Science, Volume: 39, Number: 4, Year: 2009, pp: 337-341
Edited by Michael, 17 August 2009 - 07:33 PM.
better wording + typo
