05/06/22
In the longevity space there are these concepts called “Lifespan” and “Healthspan”. Lifespan, as you might guess, is a measure in age of how long you live. But that doesn’t capture the whole picture — when a survey asked if they would want to live past 100 years old, 48% of respondents said it depended on the quality of life. After all, many people question whether they’d want to live at all if they were condemned to life in a bed. With this concern in mind, the term “Healthspan” was coined to measure the number of those years that are physically healthful enough to enjoy normal daily life. So, the goal of mainstream longevity research is to maximize these two concepts.
I’m big into longevity. I’m big into the nutritional biochemistry, metabolism, and pharmacology. However, I’m also big into beer. I’m big into lemon tart and pizza.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of living to 125, with most if not all of those years being healthy and able. But, for the reasons above (see pizza and beer) these two concepts alone don’t capture the whole picture still. If I was really optimizing for Healthspan and Lifespan, I would not be eating any amount of lemon tart or drinking any IPAs. So personally, I think there’s a little bit of a tradeoff of these first two metrics based on a third… consider this my formal advocation for another metric, called Funspan.
We love science: Mendelian Randomization, epidemiology, randomized control trials... you know the stuff — couldn’t base our health decisions on anything else. So, let’s take a look at the numbers. For sake of simplicity and relevance to me, I will of course be using slices of pizza as a variable.
It’s simple math, really. More total fun is had in a life with pizza.
As you can see, my fun highs and lows are a little more exaggerated than they are without pizza. That’s because I’m human, and can have a case of pizza regret if I eat a whole pie and feel like shit. Notice that life with pizza is still always more fun than without.
So pizza might take a few years off my life, but there are a few things I do to blunt the unhealthiness of it. Sometimes I’ll do a hard workout before to empty my glycogen stores and create a metabolic sink for the carbs. Maybe I’ll even run a little extra the next day or drink lemon juice to lower the negative postprandial glycemic and metabolic effects. But anyway, part of the reason why I try to eat healthy 80% of the time is to gain that metabolic flexibility to indulge, so I don’t feel badly to just enjoy.
An important hypothesis on the Funspan is that it is undeniably universal, and everyone’s Funspan is a little different. For me, pizza (a few times a month in NYC) is usually non-negotiable, but potato chips I can go without indefinitely. For Peter Attia (a MD whose diet is the most longevity-adhering I’ve heard of), indulgent desserts are worth it a few times a year. So, it’s not about if you apply the principles of the Funspan, but more about when, how much, and with which foods/activities.
In the future, maybe I’ll talk more about where I draw lines, where I give myself room, and what foods and activities are worth it for me (hint: lemon tart is in).
Oh, yeah, and you can pass me by with that cauliflower crust stuff. Yuck.
- Jack
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