People who surround you
That’s just too obvious. People who surround you do matter. In terms of life extension too.
Why? Let me just give you some examples. Your colleague, who always brings donuts to the office, is your greatest enemy. Sorry, but your beloved grandma with her family cheesecake recipe is too.
Those two crazy friends of yours, who literally packed your stuff, bought you a ticket and forced into that snowboarding trip eight years ago, gave you one more such needed chance to love sport again. It worked. Now you have this healthy blush every snow season.
You don’t have any friends to go out with? That’s just too bad. You have fewer chances to meet someone. And we all know how depression increases brain aging. Also, a meta-analysis of over 200 studies found that people with strong social relationships had an improved survival of about 50%. This was seen across age, irrespective of sex or health status.
An online forum you recently joined is full of people challenging each other in biology knowledge. You started to read more. You’d definitely buy this supplement your doctor’s prescribed, but now you won’t. You know better. Money’s safe and you’re on to starting a diet instead. It has much better chances to actually work. At least it’s scientifically proven.
Your friends can be all that funny and cool and seductive when it comes to pizza&bear&movie night. Or they can take you out on a hiking trip. You can surround yourself with charming slackers, creative at finding excuses for not being into sports. Or get acquainted with scientists, who might need your help, but in return, you would ask for a piece of advice from them.
People around you can motivate, demotivate or even define your lifestyle. They can make everything easier or impossible.
You probably knew all that.
But what you might not know is that uniting with people, who have similar interests and/or similar biomedical parameters can literally help science. That will help you later. And science is our only hope.
How exactly does uniting help?
First, when your data is drawn together, it starts to matter. It becomes valuable for data scientists. Not so big data turns into Big Data.
Second (and that’s what OL project is mostly about), as a group of people, you can actually initiate a clinical trial of your own. Initiate, sponsor and even help with your own work.
Third, the very fact, that there’s a notable group of people fighting with their aging on a scientific basis, but with a new non-commercial community approach, is a statement itself. This will help create a social request for a cure against aging.
We encourage you to stick to smart people, passionate about their health and serious about a scientific approach to it. We believe that community energy or patients’ energy (and yes, we are all patients, when it comes to aging) might be a piece of a puzzle we’ve been missing all this time.
