The Secret to a Longer Life? Don’t Ask These Dead Longevity Researchers

Several years ago, a geologist named Anatoli Brouchkov harvested some bacteria that had survived in the Arctic permafrost for eons. When the bacteria was injected into female mice, the compound seemed to extend their youth. Though Dr. Brouchkov is neither female nor a mouse, he wondered whether it could slow his own aging — and ate some of it.

When I pointed out that this might have been a terrible idea, he giggled. “I was just curious,” he said. His attitude was: If you have found some prehistoric microbes, how could you not put them in your mouth?

In the field of anti-aging and longevity research, self-experiments are all the rage. Valter Longo, director of the University of Southern California Longevity Institute, undertakes multiday fasts. Other scientists are dosing themselves with the diabetes drug metformin, believing it may help protect their cells from wear and tear. Charles Brenner, a biochemist, has drunk milk laced with high doses of nicotinamide riboside, a type of vitamin B that might defend against aging.

And many of us are imitating them. The longevity scientists have their own fan bases — groupies and wannabes trying to replicate esoteric laboratory regimens at home. There are online forums devoted to Dr. Brenner’s research on which people share data on how the vitamin affects everything from their blood pressure to their poop. Dr. Longo’s dietary program, ProLon, sells kits with teeny-weeny meals.

I’m susceptible to this kind of thinking myself — I fast for more than 12 hours a day, in homage to the findings of Satchidananda Panda at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Sometimes it seems as though everyone I know is adding a new supplement to their diet or subtracting a food group or component like gluten. We all want the same thing: to believe we have the power to stave off the ravages of old age...

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