“Programmer’s Guide to Life Extension” is popular on GitHub: follow the code farmer and live 20 more years

Can you live up to 20 years longer by following the programmer to maintain health? !

Just recently, a project called “A Programmer’s Guide to Life Extension” became a huge hit on GitHub, racking up 5.5k stars in a few days.

The author of this project is himself a programmer.

In this life extension guide, various methods are strictly divided into three categories: input, output and context, each method has metrics and results that can be quantified.

This is not made up, according to the author, every step and method has a strict research basis——

Many of these methods are “extracted” based on the latest research in top journals such as Science, Nature, and The Lancet.

Compared to soaking wolfberry in a thermos cup, it is simply too hard-core. Is there any wood? !

Let’s see how to prolong life.

Programmer, how to prolong life?

Looking at this project, one of the key words around it is-

ACM.

But it’s not the ACM you think. Its full name is All-Cause Mortality, which is called all-cause mortality in Chinese.

(Even the keywords are very programmer-like)

All-cause mortality, strictly speaking, refers to the ratio of the total number of deaths caused by various causes to the population of the population in a certain period of time.

What this project has to do is to “beat down” this ACM among the programmers.

The main indicators referenced by the project authors are numerous literatures related to ACM.

But there are 2 points to note here:

The relationship between increasing life and ACM is nonlinear: here we assume DeltaLifeSpan=(1/(1-ACM)-1)*10

Variables cannot be simply superimposed: each variable does not conform to the assumption of independent and identical distribution

Therefore, the project author divided the work of “ACM down” into three more detailed categories, and named them:

Input, output and context.

Programmer’s life extension Dafa 1: Input, Input

The “input” here is like the Input in the program, but refers to the various factors that the programmer group ingests into the body from the outside world.

It mainly includes solid, liquid, gas, light and medicine.

Taking “solid” as an example, the author of the project will use a study published in a sub-journal of JAMA as an example:

The eight-year study showed that increasing red meat intake by at least half a serving per day, on average, increased ACM by 10%.

Eating two servings of red or processed meat (excluding poultry or fish) per week increased ACM by 3%.

Of course, in addition to the analysis of red and white meat, the project authors also listed other foods that people usually ingest to analyze the impact on ACM.

In summary:

Eating white meat: ACM can be reduced by 3%-11%

Vegetable and fruit-based ACM can be reduced by 17%-26%

Eat more spicy food: ACM can be reduced by 23%

Eat more nuts: ACM can be reduced by 4%-17%

Eat less egg yolk: If you eat 0.5 a day, ACM will increase by 7%

Moderate carbohydrates, eat more plant protein: ACM can be reduced by 10%

In addition to “eating”, what we “drink” usually affects ACM:

Drink coffee (-12%~-22% ACM), milk (-10%~-17% ACM), tea (-8%~15% ACM), less or no sweetened beverages (otherwise one cup per day) +7% ACM, +dopamine), abstain from drinking alcohol, or 100g per week (pure alcohol (g) = drink (ml) x alcohol concentration).

△ “Lancet” study: 1 catty of milk or yogurt a day reduces the risk of cardiovascular death by 23%

As for the gas, the first thing to solve is the problem of smoking.

In this regard, the author of the project found after researching the ACM literature:

Smoking increases ACM by 50% and shortens life expectancy by an average of 11 to 12 years.

On top of that, things like more sun exposure can reduce ACM by 40%.

In terms of drugs, such as metformin, diabetics can live an average of 3 years longer, multivitamins can reduce the risk of cancer by 8%, and spermidine and glucosamine can reduce ACM by 30%-60% and 39%, respectively.

Programmer’s life extension Dafa 2: Output, Output

Analogous to the above input, the output here refers to some activities of the programmers outside the body.

For example, in terms of exercise, according to a study conducted by 1.2 million people in The Lancet, just swinging the racket can reduce ACM by 47% if it can be maintained three times a week for 45-60 minutes each time.

And programmers have to brush their teeth, which will reduce ACM by 25%!

In addition, sleep is also an important factor in reducing ACM.

For example, a study by JAMA Network Open pointed to an association between sleep duration per night and all-cause mortality.

Specifically, sleeping 7 hours a day had the lowest all-cause mortality.

If it is best to sleep between 22-24 o’clock, going to bed early and going to bed late will increase ACM by 43% and 15% respectively.

Programmer’s life extension Dafa 3: Context, Context

Just like a piece of code that has external variables, this piece of code cannot run independently.

The same is true for the health of programmers, ACM will be affected by the external environment.

For example, studies have shown that pessimism is associated with ACM (though optimism is not protective).

Even the wealth gap and weight loss are closely related to ACM.

Of course, there is also the global outbreak of the new crown epidemic in recent years. A study by the Nature sub-journal shows that the (US) new crown mortality rate has reached about 1.5%, and the average life expectancy has decreased by 2 years.

…

Of course, the project authors also brought up the inadequacies of this work.

Because there are significant contradictory views between some literatures, such as the proportion of carbohydrate intake; there are also more controversial literatures, such as some people think that going to bed before 22 o’clock will cause 43% of ACM.

Therefore, the project authors also point out:

All literature suggests more correlation than causation.

Then the question arises:

Is the life extension guide reliable?

This guide is full of dry goods, and the serious attitude in the documentation makes people laugh.

But at the same time, it can’t escape the “rigor of programmers”-someone has raised a very important question:

Are the cited links credible?

After all, there are many “rumors” these days, and there are also many third-party articles.

So, we found the author of the project and had an in-depth exchange with him.

Author: read all the papers behind

The author of the project stated in our interviews and in answering questions from netizens that although some links are not in the original text, the content inside can be traced back to the source. He has read all the papers involved.

I also have to mention that, in order to cure rhinitis, he read no less than 40 to 50 papers spontaneously, including the European guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of sinusitis and nasal polyps, EPOS, etc.

It can be said that there are no less medical papers to read.

However, because such professional papers are very obscure to read and lack reading experience, the evidence in the project is presented in these easy-to-read articles.

Now, after everyone’s suggestions, he has been adding source documents one after another, and will also reveal the regular evaluation methods such as journal names, impact factors, and ratings in the future.

At the same time, everyone has also noticed that there are some studies with contradictory conclusions. As just mentioned, the authors have also marked them one by one.

As for contradictory research, he believes, it can be assessed on the basis of the quality of the research itself.

Because sometimes some studies are not completely contradictory. When the research time, research population, and experimental methods are different, the same topic will indeed yield different results.

The project goes back to childhood

It is very interesting to say that the author suddenly realized one day when he was a child: it turns out that one day he will leave the world.

This made him very sad, and at one point he cried to his parents.

It was this discovery that made him think at a young age that he must live longer in the future.

.

In the process of growing up, he had seen many “health regimens” that had no basis, including those instilled by his elders, so he came up with the idea of ​​quantifying the impact of various factors on all-cause mortality, and began to accumulate data over the years.

A few months ago, he shared these data on a small scale after participating in a technical community. Unexpectedly, it caused a very high praise rate, and people often found him asking for materials, so he simply opened it up.

Netizen: How to live longer with hair?

As soon as this project was put on GitHub where programmers gather, it rose by 1500+ stars in just one day.

On other platforms, there are many non-programmer netizens who will kindly pass it on to their fellow programmers.

Someone joked: Goal, action, analysis, input and output… When these keywords come out, it is simply life management dominated by OKR.

The author’s explanation is even more interesting: because the concept of human-in-the-loop is often heard recently, people in this document can be regarded as an Object, and people can be changed by modifying different inputs, outputs, and contexts.

(Yes, it’s programmers.)

Unfinished bugs, working overtime day and night… How to live longer is indeed a very important issue for this group.

However, it seems that everyone is not satisfied with this.

For example, in the Issues of the project, someone asked:

How to live longer with hair?

For programmers, hair is more important than anything else: if there is no hair, what is the use of this long life…

And not only to keep the hair, but also to look young.

That’s why someone asked:

“The author is big, are you interested in opening a How to look young?

After all, who knows what it’s like to be said to be in your twenties and eighties? (Wang Chai)

In short, if nothing else, this class of programmers is becoming more and more conscious—cooking, maintaining health, taking public exams, buying a house…all of which are clearly arranged.

And these comments, the author said that will be considered.

For example, he thought of “life extension pioneer” Harvard professor David Sinclai, and maybe after finding enough evidence, he can add his recipe.

And if there is enough data to support it, he will also add a dopamine scale.

Of course, “It’s more important to live longer and be happy”

The mysterious veil of the author is revealed here, yes, he is also a programmer himself, still very young, born in the 90s.

His name is Wu Chenglin. He graduated from Xiamen University with a major in computer science. He worked as a senior AI researcher at Tencent and was the youngest T3.3 senior employee in the department at that time.

There are not many projects on his GitHub homepage, but each of them has a lot of stars.

Some of you may have heard his name. He was included in Forbes 30 under 30 and Hurun’s 30 under 30 entrepreneurial leaders a few years ago.

Yes, he is now the CEO of a company.

This company is Deep Endowment, which mainly provides AI middle-end SaaS services in the form of AutoDL, and gathers a group of programmers from Tencent, Google, Baidu, Huawei and other companies.

Regarding this explosive project, Wu Chenglin said that it is not surprising.

He said that programmers’ eyes, nose, lumbar spine, spine, liver and other parts are more prone to problems.

Therefore, “directional testing and preventive testing are very important.” Of course, he also pointed out: “The core still has to have a higher insight into “health”.”

Now he basically lives according to these scales, mainly because he does not do enough exercise and sunbathing.

However, he will not ask himself to implement 100%, after all:

Living long and happy is more important than simply living long.

Finally, as a programmer, how do you think you can “extend your life”?

GitHub project address:

https://ift.tt/YaoQ4i0

Reference link:

[1] https://ift.tt/CBKpwHg

[2] https://ift.tt/wgXDAuz

[3] https://ift.tt/RniKh49.

[4]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2783717[5]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1112-0.pdf