The Truth About The Icons of Longevity

Should we overlook the accusations?

Welcome to a fortnightly newsletter for those in the second half of life who want to remain positive and optimistic in the face of the changes ageing brings. I’ve spent the last 30 years, over the age of 45, following the science of living a healthier life, mentally and physically, and putting it into practice. It’s paid off because I’m fit, well and fully engaged with a busy life, and I’m still learning. I share this knowledge in posts, podcasts and sometimes, videos. Subscribe to my newsletter for access to them.

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

Don’t we all want to live a long but healthy life? Scientists have been working on it, and we, the public, are benefiting from their findings. It is an ongoing project, but we already have much information to help us be healthier and fitter as we age.

The average lifespan has almost doubled over the last century due to various factors, including improved nutrition, hygiene, medicine, science and economics. It stalled, though, in the last decade or so, due to gross inequality in the wealthy countries.

Social media has been instrumental in increasing the interest in longevity, with older adults promoting their healthier lifestyle, thanks to science, looking younger than the stereotypes for their age, and discussing their busy active lives.

Learning from science how to be healthy has been my focus for the last thirty years. During lockdown, I wrote and self-published a book on how I used the results of research studies to guide me to my seventies. In my own research, I found several names who were foremost in advising about longevity. Three of them have faced fierce criticism for different reasons and had their integrity questioned.

Dr David Sinclair is a professor at Harvard Medical School and co-director of its Paul F Glen Centre for Biology of Aging Research. He is a big hitter in the field of longevity and has written a book about his findings Lifespan Why We Age And Why We Don’t Have To, which climbed to number 11 on the New York Times’s bestseller list in 2019.

A fellow scientist accused him of making non-evidence-based statements in this book and another stated he had made false claims in a press release about a pet food he is involved in selling. There have been other criticisms of his assertion about the efficacy of resveratrol, which he promotes as a supplement.

A Facebook group, set up for Dr Sinclair’s fans, changed its name and dropped the connection with him when Dr Brad Stanfield, a New Zealand doctor, published videos on YouTube criticising Sinclair for his claims about resveratrol.

I joined the group because I was interested in what people wanted to know about ageing, and what they were told. Many discussed supplements and were happy to spend huge amounts of money on them.

The Blue Zones are very well-known for their long-living residents and their lifestyles. Dan Beuttner, a journalist, founded the Blue Zones to research the best practices in health and longevity. In Beuttner’s book The Blue Zones 9 Lessons for Living Longer, he explains how he and his researchers settled on the five “longevity hot spots” which they named the Blue Zones because they placed a blue pin on their map each time they located an area that fitted the criteria they were looking for.

There has been criticism from various quarters of the record-keeping of birth certificates in some of these areas, and even accusations of fraud with fake birth certificates. Buettner rebutted this criticism with the strenuous assertion that he personally checked each area’s registration system. A leading scientist has also stated that the longevity claims are based on bad data and unscientific measurements.

Professor Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He has become well-known for his long podcasts and YouTube videos on various topics supported by scientific studies researching lifestyle and the body. Sponsors support his podcasts and videos which are free to listeners and viewers. As a result, he has grown a huge audience and has become wealthy, apparently. He is extremely influential, with over six million Instagram followers and more than five million YouTube subscribers.

Huberman has recently been in the news for his private life, having been accused by a girlfriend of infidelity on some scale. There’s also been criticism of his credentials, accusing him of over-hyping his connection to Stanford University. There’s no doubt, he has helped bring longevity science to the forefront and is highly trusted by his massive following.

Should we discredit someone’s work for how they behave in their personal life? Andrew Huberman gives a great deal to the world by sharing the science of improving our lives for free, making his money through sponsors and social media. Yes, he’s behaved abominably to the women in his life, but does this cancel the good he does, or does his deception spill over into his work?

It reminds me of the old dilemma with art and artists. For example, Caravaggio, the famous 16th-century Italian artist, seems to have been a bit of a rabble-rouser. He had a very questionable lifestyle and killed a man who died after a botched castration by the artist; rumour has it, through jealousy over a woman.

He ran from his crime and seems to have got away with it, though there’s some controversy about his eventual death. Did he die of natural causes or was he killed by the family of his victim? Despite his criminal lifestyle, Caravaggio made quite a name for himself with his popular paintings and seemed to be forgiven by the art world for his bad boy behaviour.

There is the argument that you should separate the work from its creator, but sometimes it’s a difficult ask. The English artist Eric Gill was a 20th-century printmaker, much admired by my ex-husband who loves book illustrations created through printmaking and wood engravings, and has even produced some himself.

Gill was a skilled artist, but he had an extremely dark side. He was a sexual predator with apparently no moral compass. This affected our view of his work. How could we look at it with approving eyes, knowing the inhumane sexual proclivities of the artist?

Artists and scientists are human and can be cursed with all the frailties of mortals, like everyone else. How much are we willing to overlook for aesthetic pleasure and freely given knowledge? That’s something we each have to decide for ourselves. Though, it’s highly disappointing when scientists bring science into disrepute.

Comments:

What do you think about creators and their work? Should we ignore their lifestyle choices if we admire their work?

Do you have a favourite artist or scientist who has questionable values?

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