Longevity Intervention Classification Frameworks

Two complementary taxonomies for sorting longevity interventions before evaluating their evidence:

Huberman's four categories: (1) behavioral dos-and-don'ts, (2) calories/glucose/insulin/mTOR management, (3) targeting specific cellular pathways (e.g. NAD — see NAD Precursor Supplementation (NR, NMN, IV NAD)), and (4) 'kitchen sink' stacking of many interventions at once (e.g. Brian Johnson).

Attia's three categories (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive):

Essential behavioral factors — eating, sleeping, moving. Mandatory, not optional.
Exogenous molecules targeting specific disease processes — metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, PCSK9 inhibitors, statins, bempedoic acid.
Geroprotective molecules that target aging hallmarks directly — rapamycin and, per the ITP evidence, caloric restriction.

Sort any candidate intervention into one of these buckets to judge whether it addresses baseline survival behavior, a specific disease risk, or the aging process itself — and weigh the evidence bar accordingly (see Evaluating Nutrition & Fitness Evidence for the ITP/statistical-significance standard used to judge each bucket).

The Titanic analogy: emotional/mental health is the ship's heading (the dominant directional factor); sleep, exercise, and nutrition are the other essential pillars; supplement choices (like NAD precursors) are comparatively minor deck details ('lobster vs. steak') that matter far less than the overall direction. In modern society, living longer is mathematically equivalent to delaying the onset of chronic disease (cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, cancer, neurodegenerative, metabolic), since infection and childbirth complications are no longer primary mortality drivers — reinforcing why foundational behaviors dwarf any single supplement's impact.

Six-Question Supplement/Medication Evaluation Framework

An extension of this page's classification schemes, framed by Peter Attia for evaluating any exogenous molecule — medication or supplement — before deciding to keep taking it:

Does it correct a deficiency, or does it push levels to supranormal / supraphysiologic territory?
Is the goal lifespan or healthspan?
If lifespan: does it target a specific disease, or is it broadly geroprotective?
If healthspan: which apparatus does it serve — physical, cognitive, or emotional?
Does a biomarker exist to track its therapeutic window (so dosing can be personally titrated rather than protocol-based)?
Is its mechanism of action understood?

The walkthrough is capped by a risk-reward assessment — side-effect profile, effect size, confidence in the safety data, and supplement quality/sourcing — which sorts the molecule into a bucket like "low-risk, modest reward" (the bucket creatine lands in). Apply: run any supplement or medication on your own list through these six questions in order, ending with the risk-reward check, before deciding whether to keep it.

Two supporting mental models travel with this framework:

Bucket-of-exogenous-molecules audit — treat medications, supplements, and hormones as one undifferentiated inventory rather than assessing supplements as automatically lower-stakes than drugs.
Kidney-filtration / zero-base review — periodically "dump everything out" of that bucket and ask, item by item, what should actually be added back in, rather than defaulting to keeping what's already on the list.

This reuses the lifespan-vs-healthspan and disease-specific-vs-geroprotective axes already on this page, generalizing them from "longevity interventions" specifically to any exogenous molecule a person takes.

Из тем: Longevity Interventions