5 Anti-Aging Nootropics that Scientists Believe May Defeat Death
| Ⓒ By Jonathan Roseland |
I'm not a doctor, medical professional, or trained therapist. I'm a researcher and pragmatic biohacking practitioner exercising free speech to share evidence as I find it. I make no claims. Please practice skepticism and rational critical thinking. You should consult a professional about any serious decisions that you might make about your health. Affiliate links in this article support Limitless Mindset - spend over $150 and you'll be eligible to join the Limitless Mindset Secret Society.
Nootropics are more than smart drugs, increasingly the science being done by leading anti-aging researchers is showing us that they are crucial pieces to the puzzle of longevity.
Defeating death may sound totally hyperbolic, a pipe dream of transhumanists. Are you going to live forever because of any one of these Nootropics? Probably not, but they contribute powerfully toward escape velocity longevity.
Ray Kurzweil subtitled a book Live Long Enough to Live Forever, and that's the goal here. Science has not yet unlocked the formula for immortality, but all the incentives are aligned for it to do so, it's not unrealistic to expect that in this century it will. If you can avoid being taken out by heart disease, cancer, cognitive decline (or an errant SUV!) for about the next 80 years, medicine will likely offer you the option to live as long as you want (if you can afford it).
These Nootropics do enhance the mind, but not by stimulating you like caffeine or spiking a particular neurotransmitter. They energize you simply by empowering the body to do what it does naturally. They feed your mitochondria, the fundamental energy generation mechanism of all life, what it needs to thrive and detox your body from the daily onslaught of toxins in the environment.
Carbon 60 Fullerenes
This is 60 carbon molecules arrayed symmetrically which is a super antioxidant.
In longevity clinical trials, it holds the distinction of extending lifespan by an unprecedented 90%, this was an animal trial in which it prevented the tumors that typically kill off the rats. Will it have the same effect in humans, extending lifespan from say 70 years to 133? We won't know until someone takes C60 from cradle to grave, but death has a formidable opponent in this beautiful little molecule!
The carbon molecule has a remarkable effect of chelating toxins in the body. It's such a powerful antioxidant that it can create a (temporarily unpleasant) Herxheimer reaction when it starts clawing a lot of toxins out of your deep tissues and they enter your bloodstream, so you want to start with a moderate lower dose, be mindful of how it's affecting you the first week on it and be patient with the detox process.
C60 is one of my favorite anti-aging supplements because unlike a lot of Nootropics it's not weird a tasting powder or another capsule that you have to remember to take, you consume it in tasty pure olive oil.
NMN/NR/NAD+
NAD supplementation is a hack for smarter genes. If you left all the lights in your house on all the time, you would be wasting a lot of electricity and have to change lightbulbs all the time. Similarly, our health really suffers when the epigenetic switches on our genes don't get switched on and off properly. That's just what the NAD molecule does, it's metabolized from Vitamin B3, NMN is the most bioavailable form that can be taken as a supplement.
The champion of NAD research is the Harvard anti-aging scientist and author Dr. David Sinclair, he did an interview with Joe Rogan discussing its important role in epigenetic function:
“You can think of resveratrol as the accelerator pedal for the sirtuin genes, and NMN as the fuel”
Dr. Philip Milgram, an addiction treatment practitioner proclaimed:
"NAD will turn out to be one of the greatest advances in medical science since Fleming invented penicillin."
Glutathione
Is recognized as the master antioxidant. Without getting too academic, antioxidants are crucial because as Aubrey De Grey is fond of saying...
"Breathing is bad for us."
Breathing (and eating and, well, pretty much everything else we do) produces a lot of errant molecules bouncing around in our cells generally wreaking havoc and eventually causing aging. Glutathione lends electrons to all these troublesome molecular interlopers allowing them to be cleaned up and washed out of the body. Imagine a big house full of a bunch of crazy little kids that are bouncing off the walls and tearing up the place, Glutathione is like the rich uncle who shows up and says Look, here's $10 for each of you. Go outside to play and let me get some peace and quiet here!
Like a lot of anti-aging supplements, you don't want just any old Glutathione, as it's not very bioavailable in many forms, you want either liposomal or the S-Acetyl form.
CoQ10
If you're in your late 30's or older this Nootropic should be on your biohacker RADAR (and hopefully in your cabinet). It is a darling of anti-aging researchers worldwide with over 100 human clinical trials in the past 5 years alone. Dr. Lee Know recently wrote a book summarizing the state of the art of mitochondria research. He holds CoQ10 in high esteem, writing...
I’m pretty sure few would willingly suffer through the host of degenerative diseases associated with dysfunctional mitochondria brought about by CoQ10 deficiency. I’m sure most readers would like to live their lives — whether long or short — in the best health possible. Thus, preventive use of CoQ10 could possibly start in our late thirties. (2467-2472)
Unfortunately, several forms of CoQ10 are quite useless (which doesn't stop your local pharmacy from selling them!). Dr. Know advises
Ubiquinol ( reduced CoQ10 ) seems to offer much better absorption than ubiquinone ( oxidized CoQ10), and water-soluble ( solubilized ) ubiquinol is even better absorbed. (2364-2368)
A few sources that meet this high standard...
The conclusion reached in the book is that Mitochondrial dysfunction is what underlies almost all common diseases of aging. Get your Mitochondria right and you can anticipate living as long as you want to in good health. CoQ10 is a quintessential hack for healthspan; you don't want to be the 89-year-old hobbling around a nursing home forgetting your grandchildren's names, you want to be a 109-year-old who can go hiking with your great-grandchildren.
SKQ1
SKQ1 is a smart antioxidant, it's a molecular tug that drags a molecule of the antioxidant PQQ directly into the mitochondria, which it has a magnetic affinity for.
Of these anti-aging tools, SKQ1 is the furthest out of the bleeding edge of innovation, currently, its only applications are in mitochondrial eyedrops (which I've used and do recommend, especially if you spend way too much time staring at computer screens) and a beautification skin cream. SKQ1 is the in process of clinical trials for approval by the FDA, I anticipate that in the coming years, we'll see some exciting anti-aging drugs and supplements developed using it.
You might be asking...
Which of these anti-aging Nootropics is the best? If you could only afford one which would it be?
Sorry, there's no simple answer to that. They all have different mechanisms, corresponding strengths, and are demonstrated to treat different health issues. Even if you're a millionaire, what I wouldn't do is order them all and take them altogether. When you stack a bunch of different things, the effects of an individual Nootropic get conflated with everything else. My recommendation is to try each of them alone for at least a month, that's usually the minimum amount of time needed for the effects of an anti-aging supplement to start to become apparent. The anti-aging Nootropics are powerful and effective, you should notice something after a month and perhaps sooner. Keep a journal about how you're feeling week-to-week and note...
- How you're sleeping
- How much energy you have
- Your general mood
- Any appetite change
- Any weight change
- Any change to your libido
- Improvements to your skin or hair
- Brain training scores (I recommend Dual-Back)
If you're willing to spend a little bit of time and track how these different supplements affect you over several months you'll figure out a few things that work for you. Once you know what to expect from a Nootropic you can experiment with stacking Nootropics.
If you have a limited budget, I would invest in the ones toward the top of the list because there seems to be a stronger alignment between what the science says and a meaningful abundance of anecdotal evidence from biohackers who have meticulously self-quantified and recorded the effects imbued by a Nootropic.
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