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Wellness Wednesday for December 27, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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The same thing keeps being suggested:

  • Propensity to live an extremely long life (longer than 90, certainly than 100) is almost entirely genetic. If your family mostly checks out at 80 it’s unlikely going full Bryan Johnson is going to get you to 100.
  • Regular checkups can help avoid unexpected but curable conditions that can lead to not reaching your genetic life expectancy (most historic examples of these like appendicitis and pregnancy are no longer major issues in developed countries, and others like diabetes and breast cancer can usually be managed/treated to allow for many additional years of life).
  • Healthy lifestyles do nothing to raise your genetic ‘cap’, although they might improve your quality of life (range of movement, ability to play with the grandkids, to go on walks, to attract the opposite sex etc).
  • Extremely unhealthy lifestyles can lower your life expectancy because of eg. medical complications of morbid obesity.

Regular checkups can help avoid unexpected but curable conditions that can lead to not reaching your genetic life expectancy (most historic examples of these like appendicitis and pregnancy are no longer major issues in developed countries, and others like diabetes and breast cancer can usually be managed/treated to allow for many additional years of life).

colon cancer screening is a big one. lots of middle-aged ppl dying from this now.

What are latest thoughts on when the begin screening and how frequently to repeat? My physician thinks we shouldn't start earlier than 45 and I feel like he'd laugh if I suggested every 5 years.

I have used Cologuard even few years, at my doctor's recommendation.

Depends heavily on family history and other risks, but 45 is the new standard.

Propensity to live an extremely long life (longer than 90, certainly than 100) is almost entirely genetic. If your family mostly checks out at 80 it’s unlikely going full Bryan Johnson is going to get you to 100.

I'll admit a fairly huge part of my skepticism of study results like this is because I assume the world is full of haters who don't want Bryan Johnson (and other longevity types who rub like 50% of the population the wrong way) to succeed in living longer: https://twitter.com/bryan_johnson/status/1727742379522949433

The guy just reads like a fitness influencer for nerds