I remember there being a lot of noise a few years ago about resveratrol, and how red wine (but only of a certain grape) was the secret to long life. What happens if you make the wrong decision and go all in, drinking wine and gobbling grape seeds, while it turns about to be something else entirely and you missed the boat? There’s no end to it, especially as there are only two real solutions that work, extreme caloric restriction and young blood transfusions(i.e a personal “blood boy”, humorously depicted in HBO’s Silicon Valley).
If genuinely interested and not being tongue in cheek, there are a number of drugs and pathways that can be targeted to (in theory) extend lifespan in mammals. So as others have said- it may be that future therapies include a concoction of drugs and interventions to effectively increase lifespan in humans. If you’re curious about the subject Dr. David Sinclair does a lot content around this. He’s a researcher in the longevity field. He’s a little out there in terms of his personal beliefs but he does provide a lot of inform and context around all the current hot topics in longevity research.
Whenever these immortality drugs come up, I always envision some kind of old, rich guy who dedicated his life to becoming rich, finding out that all that money won't buy you a second youth when it's already too late to do all the things he wanted to do. Multi millionaires getting rich, forgetting to live, and then focusing their wealth on a pipe dream of living long enough to spend all their money.
Ever since the first days of medicine, people have sought to prolong life. I think the entire quest is misguided and a waste of the medical field's resources; finding the cure for cancer and other horrible diseases should have priority on making some chosen few live to 100.
Even if the drug does work on humans without making life worse through side effects, I think the end result will be quite dystopic. You end up with a drug the rich can afford quite handily, while the poor will need to work their asses off for decades longer. Unless the drug is free, this will only serve benefit the top 1% of the planet and the pharmaceutical companies selling these drugs. As mankind struggles to accept mortality, the pool of workers will grow, led by drug companies telling them just a few decades years of hard work will surely make them rich.
Extreme caloric restriction reduces lifespan, but there does seem to be a sweet spot of restriction that lengthens it.
None of these things are proven in humans however and we don’t really know the side effects. Do they give you dementia? Do they make you dumb? Unlikely, but we just don’t know.
