Is it possible to stay old? David Sinclair, the "Godfather of Anti-Aging", will help you live scientifically and sensibly until you are 100 or older.

Here are two simple tests to measure true biological age:

The first set is the push-up test. If you can still do more than 20 push-ups when you are over 45, you are in great shape.

Another set of tests is the SRT test, developed by Brazilian medical practitioners. In this test, you sit barefoot on the floor with your legs crossed and then lean forward quickly to see if you can stand up in one go.


While young people can easily do this, middle-aged people usually need to prop themselves up with the help of one hand, and older people often need to get down on one knee to stand up.

A study of people aged 51 to 80 years found that 157 of 159 people who died within 75 months did not perform well on the sit-to-stand test.

In the eyes of the public, ageing is a natural process and is inevitable.

1.Is ageing natural?

Although we always take ageing for granted, thinking in a different direction, could it be that when we can't explain something, we assume that it comes 'naturally'?

Just as in the late 1960s, when man could not identify the cause of cancer, fighting it was about fighting its symptoms, so all doctors could do was to remove as many tumours as possible and spend a lot of time allowing patients to put their afterlife in order.

And in Longevity, David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, gives his view, believing that "ageing is a disease, and a curable one at that".

Broadly speaking, the more frequently a cause appears on a death certificate, the more importance society will place on fighting it.

This is why heart disease, type 2 diabetes and dementia are the focus of research and interventional medicine, while ageing is not, even though it is the leading cause of all these diseases.

Separating ageing from disease confuses a truth about how we reach the end of life: it is important to figure out why a person falls off a cliff, and even more important to figure out what brought that person to the edge of the cliff.

In fact, David Sinclair, known as the "Godfather of Anti-Aging", is constantly researching and discussing this. In one of his talks, which included more than 400 scientists, policy makers and industry representatives from around the world, he began by asking: "How many people want to live to 120? He began by asking, "How many people want to live to be 120 years old?" A third of the audience raised their hands! He asked again, "How many people want to regain the vitality of their 20s?" This time, the whole room raised their hands! Immediately afterwards, he stated forcefully, "By studying ageing, it is possible for us not only to live longer, but more importantly, to live better."

And, with the exciting conclusion that humans could extend their life expectancy to 150 years before the century! He would say this from his own experience, and from the results of the research he has been doing.

2.Modifying the Yamanaka factor to "rejuvenate" rats

There are many modern anti-ageing theories, we often talk about antioxidants, eliminating free radicals and improving mitochondrial function, all of which have the effect of slowing down the ageing process.

Over the years, as research has become more advanced, it has delved into the biological cellular, molecular level.

In 2012 Professor Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medical Physiology for his work with iPs cells (induced pluripotent stem cells), which are able to differentiate into any type of cell in the human body, meaning that it is possible for humans to create their own organs from iPs cells.

The iPs cells were induced by introducing four transcription factors called Yamanaka factors into mouse cells, which means that the mature cells were reversed to the stage of embryonic stem cells, thus "rejuvenating" the cells.

But we also need to recognise the problem that adult cells, although they can be perfectly reset by the Yamanaka factor, also lose their individual imprint. They forget that they are blood, heart or skin cells and therefore lose the functions that they possess.

The most important drawback is that most of the animals involved in the Yamanaka Factor study have died of cancer.

So in order to find a safer alternative, Chinese scientist Wuancheng Lu, part of Sinclair's team, chose three of the four factors and transferred them into the AAV viral vector.

The vector is designed to deliver a modified Yamanaka factor, to damaged retinal ganglion cells in the posterior part of the eye of aged mice. After injection of the vector into the eye, the mice are fed antibiotics to promote the expression of the relevant genes.

Surprisingly, damaged neurons in the eyes of mice injected with the three cells were revitalised and even grew new axons or projected from the eyes into the brain.

Since then, Sinclair's team has also reversed muscle and brain ageing in mice, and is now working to rejuvenate the entire bodies of ageing mice.

3.5 Clinical Trials of the Super NAD+ precursor are ongoing.

In fact, Professor Sinclair has spent the last 20 years working in the field of anti-ageing, trying to reverse the years. And to some extent, he has done just that.

At the recently concluded Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference, David Sinclair, a professor at Harvard Medical School and known as the "Godfather of Anti-Aging", gave a fascinating talk on "New Ways to Delay and Reverse Aging", sharing his latest research findings and some of his unpublished data.


Sinclair began his talk by naming the theoretical basis of his research on ageing - the loss of epigenetic information that leads to ageing and related diseases.

He is therefore committed to slowing or even reversing ageing by targeting epigenetic modifiers, and cites a review published in Cell to summarise his main research directions.

In addition Professor Sinclair highlighted the important impact of NAD+ and a precursor substance called MIB-626.

"We found that upregulating the expression of SIRT1 or increasing the level of NAD+ in cells slowed down the reorganisation of the epigenome and prevented the loss of information about gene expression patterns.

"In addition, I would like to briefly introduce the super NAD+ precursor MIB-626, a polycrystalline form of NMN, which we hope will be able to treat not only ageing but also diseases caused by ageing."

"We have conducted many studies on the safety of MIB-626 over the past few years and currently have five clinical trials underway."

"According to some as yet unpublished clinical data, oral administration of 1,000mg of the substance daily for about 1 month resulted in a significant improvement in endurance and significant improvements in indicators such as lipids and cholesterol."

"We plan to explore the effects of NAD+ in humans over the next 12-24 months to see if it can reverse blindness caused by a variety of different diseases in humans."

Perhaps it is all these experimental results that have convinced Professor Sinclair that "although we can't go back to 20 at the moment, I'm optimistic that we've done it in mice and I can't think of any reason to stop us from doing it in humans."

From this we can believe that the future of longevity is a future we can all imagine, because it is a future we can reach.