And you may already have some in your medicine cabinet right now…
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325mg can increase life span by 43%
Hey, Matt Cook here, and I’ve been studying substances that extend life.
There are many such substances — including metformin and deprenyl.
But in this newsletter I want to address probably the greatest lifespan-extender of all — aspirin.
A little aspirin has numerous positive outcomes in the long-term for humans. (Of course, you always want to check with your doctor before taking aspirin.)
When longevity experiments compared metformin to aspirin – aspirin came out on top.
The experiments were carried out at McMaster University in Canada. The findings were published in the journal AGE.
Longevity research starts with small animals – and this investigation was done using house crickets.
The researchers compared longevity and other relevant factors in house crickets given aspirin, metformin, or no treatment.
“We examined the impact of aspirin and metformin on the life history of the cricket.”
Metformin increases longevity in insects (though it’s unlikely to do so in humans).
The researchers found that aspirin increased longevity too.
“Both ‘treatments’ significantly increased survivorship and maximum lifespan.”
Metformin increases longevity by 38%.
Aspirin increased longevity by 43%.
The combination of both treatments was less effective leading to an increase in longevity of only 20%.
But by far the most effective agent in increasing longevity was low-dose aspirin.
A lower dose of aspirin more than doubled lifespan.
“Increases in general survivorship were even more pronounced with a low-dose aspirin which yielded a longevity of 234%.”
In these experiments, low-dose aspirin is vastly superior to the highly praised metformin.
But there are costs. Animals given lifetime metformin had reduced growth rates of 60% compared to animals not given any treatment!
“Metformin strongly reduced growth rates of both genders.”
Aspirin slightly reduces the early growth rate of female crickets – and increases the growth rate of males.
“Aspirin only slightly reduces the growth rate of females and slightly increases the growth rate of males.”
Animals given both treatments were slower to mature – but this effect was much greater in animals given metformin.
“Both ‘treatments’ delayed maturation age but metformin had a greater impact (140%) than aspirin (118%).”
There was very little cost to life extension provided by low-dose aspirin.
“Crickets maturing in low-dose aspirin showed no evidence of a trade-off between maturation, mass and life extension.”
Even in females given low-dose aspirin, by the time they were 100 days old, their initial slow growth issues had reversed.
“By 100 days of age, aspirin-treated females were significantly larger than controls.”
The reigning paradigm of longevity research is to starve yourself to live longer. Eat less, live longer!
And of course, if you eat less over the course of a lifetime you will be much smaller.
But this research completely contradicts that…
The longest living animals (taking low-dose aspirin) were the largest – eating the most food.
“Unlike the reigning dietary restriction paradigms, low asked and conformed to a paradigm of eat more, live longer.”
I have written about the numerous metabolic problems caused by metformin before…
…and this research underlines just a few of those issues.
“Agents like metformin may derive significant trade-offs with life extension.”
This research shows that low-dose aspirin may be one of the most promising ways to increase healthy lifespan.
“Health and longevity benefits may be obtained with less cost by agents like aspirin that regulate general protective pathways.”
In humans, low-dose aspirin is between 80 and 300mg per day.
Aspirin is a relatively safe substance which protects against many chronic diseases.
People taking blood thinners do need to be cautious with aspirin.
Aspirin is also blood thinner, and could cause synergistic effects leading to bleeding.
