Veritasium
6 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2019–2023
21:10 · 7.4M views · Dec 14, 2019
Veritasium presents David Sinclair's information theory of aging, which says aging is a loss of epigenetic information, and the evidence that aging can be slowed or reversed. It touches on stressors like fasting, exercise and cold exposure.
HN references it as the source of ideas like cold exposure and body stress for longevity, though some commenters criticize its claims as overreaching.
6 comments from Hacker News
Oh I was just borrowing your words for "longevity framework" aha. I've taken a look at your website, and it seems like you have a much more well-defined "framework" than I do, given your commitment to a healthy diet, regular physical exercise, etc. In fact, I wouldn't say I have a longevity framework at all. It's an interesting concept though, and I feel like I certainly could learn from you by establishing a more formal set of health-guidelines for myself, so thanks for the idea! I was first exposed to the idea of cold showers for better health in Veritasium's "How to Slow Aging (and even reverse it)" this video . The video isn't focused on cold showers exclusively, but he briefly touches upon it as a method of improving longevity. I figured that implementing cold showers into my daily routine should be a pretty easy task, because it doesn't add any extra work into my schedule--it's just replacing a small portion of my hot showers, which I should be minimizing anyway. And yeah, you're probably right about cold showers being less of a good idea in the evening. How often do you shower then? I can't bring myself to go to bed at night without feeling clean, but showering twice in a day also feels a bit time-consuming and excessive.
The one that I really couldn't stand was the "How to slow aging" one, in which he interviews a man, who in my opinion clearly had some sort of cosmetic surgery done on himself to appear younger. He talks about how to reverse aging in mice, and then randomly claims he actually reversed aging _in himself_.[0] For anyone following science in mice, this seems like an extremely huge red flag. That together with the cosmetic surgery and a clear financial incentive for the him to lie here, seeing as he is selling a book about it, was triggering just about every bullshit detecting neuron in my brain. Veritasium however seems perfectly fine with it, and still posted the video. I haven't ever seen anyone else bring this up, so if anyone wants to share their own hot take on this, I'd be interested to know :) [0] this video
From what I remember of Veritasium's video on ageing ( this video ) there is evidence to support the idea that various activities which are stressful for the body are good at slowing or even reversing ageing. They mentioned fasting, aerobic exercise, and exposure to cold temperatures, so it would make sense to me that saunas would work similarly.
veritasium has a video about this that basically says the same thing about stressing the body (e.g. expose yourself to cold, eat less protein, do strenuous exercise) : this video , extreme heat would probably also have the same effect
interesting that aligns with some of the theories brought up in this video this video The idea that our cells forget what they are supposed to be.