19 Longevity Industry Lies Used to Mislead You

(Even BILLIONAIRES Are Falling for It)

By Brenden Henry

Absolutely everyone in the longevity world is focused on the completely wrong things. Even billionaires like Jeff Bezos with Altos Labs, and people like Bryan Johnson, who are famous for trying to live forever, are completely missing the forest for the trees. And in this article I'll prove it. You see, the real control of aging comes from 12 master regulatory systems.

Aging is ultimately an organism-wide program and the key to reversing that aging is understanding that program and all its moving parts.

This program exists in all living beings and is finely tuned in a way that maintains ecosystem diversity and makes room for the offspring of a particular species in the ecosystem, without destabilizing entire food chains, which is what could happen if even one species were to live significantly shorter or longer than it does now. While we haven't actually figured out what this program is ENTIRELY, which would be the key to stopping aging altogether, what we do have is many different theories of aging.

Sinclair’s information theory of aging has a general idea that the main cause of aging is cells’ inability to read their own genetic information to retain their cell identity.

One of his arguments is that the genetic information isn’t lost but the access is simply lost. This is one of the same theories of aging being proposed by Jeff Bezos’ company Altos Labs, btw, with one researcher at his company, Ken Raj, exploring interventions in this area¹⁰.

source

But regardless of who proposes these certain theories, professor Vladimir Khavinson was the first one to state all of this decades earlier.

I don’t think they stole the idea from Khavinson, since they don’t even seem to know who he is or of his peptides, but it’s interesting they came to the same conclusion decades later and are researching strategies for the same underlying theory.

There are dozens of other theories of aging:

senescence, proteostasis loss, telomere attrition, genomic instability, mitochondrial decay, nutrient-sensing disruptions, stem cell exhaustion, DNA methylation drift ¹ and the list goes on. 

However, all of this becomes incredibly messy when you zoom out. Not because the theories are wrong, but because every single one of these “hallmarks” is downstream of something else. They’re consequences, not causes. And when you trace them back, they all converge on the same upstream failure points: 

epigenetic drift, DNA methylation changes, and chronic inflammatory noise.

If you want the full breakdown of these upstream regulators and a tool that instantly generates a protocol tailored to your biology across all 12, you can access the Biological Recode Engine™ Complete System here: https://cuttingedgelongevity.com/biological-recode-page.

Sure, epigenetic reprogramming is a prerequisite for certain anti-aging interventions. 

For example, MYOD, the master regulator of muscle formation, can’t rejuvenate muscle tissue if histones are deacetylated and chromatin, the structure that wraps our DNA, is locked down. 

The transcription sites are literally inaccessible. Same thing with NAD⁺ boosters, you get temporary metabolic improvements, but nothing fundamental shifts unless the upstream epigenetic architecture is corrected.

Another perfect example is TGF-β1.

It’s well-known that TGF-β1 rises with age. It’s inflammatory and destructive. And when researchers inhibited it in old mice using an ALK inhibitor plus oxytocin, lifespan and healthspan jumped dramatically: up to 73% extension ², with huge improvements in endurance, memory, and physical performance. 

But tgf beta 1 did not increase due to a lack of an alk inhibitor and oxytocin, rather, it occurred due to a collapse of hierarchical systems. And once you understand this you will never fall for another longevity influencer... I mean snake oil salesman... selling you snake oil.

While this might sound very technical to you, or even overwhelming, considering all of the pathways we must take a look at and address if we are serious about reversing aging, the CORE PRINCIPLE is to GO UPSTREAM, just as the core principle for disease-fixing itself is to reverse the biological changes which drive it at its core, rather than focus on symptoms of that bigger problem.

So we have many processes which are ultimately changing with aging and this also applies with any state of disease, decay, or even entropy of matter. What we see are the consequences of the passage of time. However, since we can’t stop time, we must look at what occurs with our biology first, which leads to the aging process and breakdown of structures. What we want to do is go as far upstream as we can and understand what causes or sets off a chain of reactions downstream.

While many so-called longevity experts are creating brands around hype and new discoveries and new studies, it’s really such a rudimentary view unless it relates to the 

12 pillars of age reversal, and even then, it often doesn’t have enough research backing it to support it over the great solutions I provide. I do understand people are always looking for the next best thing, and they want to talk and hype it up, but there are already fundamentals that are proven, that it all comes back to. Let me give you some examples.

Epigenetic reprogramming is what a lot of billionaire longevity labs are focusing on, including Altos Lab

and another company called NewLimit, who claims that reprogramming your biology can reduce the burden of disease,  including age-related diseases, and received 1.62b in funding to work on it. 

While they aren’t wrong, as epigenetics is important for sure, Khavinson peptides are the best and safest solution we have right now.

Even still, it’s just 1/12 pillars for longevity and age reversal.

Senescent cells are well known to be implicated in aging ².

In fact, in progeroid syndromes, such as Werner's, which results in high accumulation of senescent cells, there is accelerated aging and rapid death.

And in one study you won't hear anyone on the internet talking about, it’s been shown that by the age of 40, 30% of the total endothelial cells in people become senescent.

And this is bad because polyploid cells have extra sets of chromosomes and they can become tetraploid in the right environments ³, 

such as in high glucose conditions, and this can cause things like arterial plaques and calcifications, stiffening of the arteries, and heart disease.

So senescence is clearly an important thing to deal with, however, when it’s done the way Bryan Johnson did it with dasatanib and quercetin where he took it for a couple days monthly,

it can actually accelerate aging according to some DNA methylation clocks ⁴.

But I should note that dasatinib isn’t a gentle senolytic. It suppresses and stresses the hematopoietic system, and that alone absolutely distorts blood-based aging clocks. These tests assume a stable, healthy white-blood-cell population. When you hit the bone marrow with a cytotoxic drug, you’re no longer measuring baseline aging, you’re measuring an immune system under pharmacological stress. So some of the ‘age acceleration’ these clocks show may be a reflection of hematopoietic disruption rather than true organism-wide aging ⁵.

Regardless, I have presented my preferred solutions, that include more than one effective senolytic option in my Biological Recode System senolysis module.

But I want you to understand that even though you directly clear senescent cells, they can come back over time. It’s why some therapies advise for monthly administration, this is unnecessary with my approach, as when you have your entire biology aligned, senescence accumulation is slowed down drastically.

For instance, the immune system rejuvenation pillar in the Biological Recode System helps to prevent the accumulation of senescent cells by boosting NK-cells and T-cells. No surprise there, as thymus involution has been suggested to be a major driver behind senescent cell accumulation, and it makes complete sense.

There are lots of therapies being explored. There’s a doctor named Greg Fahy, who ran the TRIIM trials (Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) using growth hormone, DHEA, and metformin, and it did show success in trials at regenerating the active tissue within the thymus.

However, growth hormone has some side effects, especially in older individuals, as it can worsen metabolic function and cause insulin resistance and higher blood pressure. DHEA is there to get some of the same benefits with less side effects as it’s known to improve immune function in humans and it frees up IGF-1 by decreasing IGF binding proteins.

Well, the problem is that most older people have poor insulin sensitivity to begin with, and adding growth hormone is fueling that fire, so that’s why metformin is there.

By the way, side note: Bryan Johnson tried this as well and said HGH was catastrophic. However, he also said that his dose was .6 mg which is 1.8 international units 5 days per week. Then he said he was following the TRIIM trial and replicating it

However, he did not replicate it, as the trial used 0.015 mg/kg.

If Bryan was actually replicating the trial, and assuming his online-listed weight being approximately 74 kg, that would be 1.11 mg or 3.33 IU, which is far more than what he said he took. 

So that’s literally two examples now where Bryan and his team didn’t read studies correctly and If you stick around ill show you a third later. 

What I do agree with however is that the TRIIM trial isn’t the best way to go about it, for a reason that even goes beyond the side effects of HGH, and that is that while it did regenerate the thymus,

 it did nothing statistically significant for the bone marrow ⁶.

This is an example of incomplete immune system regeneration, as the bone marrow, which declines very rapidly to the point it is literally 30% of what it was at birth by the age of 70, leaves you more vulnerable to anemia, fatigue, infections, and impaired tissue repair.

And which also btw decreases your mesenchymal stem cells, the ones responsible for repairing muscle, bone, connective tissue, neurons, and myocardium,

and hematopoietic stem cells, the ones responsible for rebuilding the immune system, the blood and deep metabolic systems, because these cells can actually transform into red blood cells, white blood cells, lymphoid progenitor cells, which are key components of your immune system, which can actually travel to your thymus gland.

You know how normally if you want to get hematopoietic stem cells, ones which can transform into any lineage of blood cell, one option is to get ones from umbilical cord blood? Some people even receive cord blood infusions, which release exosomes, leukotrienes, and various interleukins such as IL-10, and other signaling molecules that can enhance the youthfulness of your own cells.

Well, the limitation is that those factors get diluted throughout your entire body after infusion. While Dr. Zhou is experimenting with removing a large percentage of a patient’s own immune cells and incubating them directly with cord blood, to create a “super-saturation” where the cells are exposed to a much denser, more youthful signaling environment before being reinfused back into your body the next day, this procedure is technically not available yet to the public. I also do not believe it’s more powerful than simply rejuvenating your own hematopoietic stem cells with the Biological Recode System, including its stem cell renewal pillar.

The reason for this is: once your own cells are infused back into your body, if your biological environment is not perfectly conditioned, those strengthened cells will very quickly fade back to their baseline. So the obvious question at this point becomes: why not just rejuvenate them above their baseline for longer while they are inside your body?

This is exactly what the stem cell renewal pillar in the Biological Recode System shows you how to do. But I want to stress that it works synergistically with the other pillars, such as immune system regeneration, including of the bone marrow, and overall just optimizing your biological environment so they can stay younger for longer.

The longevity industry is pretty sad. The best we can do right now is focus on the Biological Recode System’s 12 pillars of age reversal. There is some promise in gene therapy. However, not ANY gene therapy. I don’t see promise in follistatin for most people unless they have sarcopenia or severe muscle injuries, as inhibiting myostatin presents a problem for the heart in terms of potentially enlarging it. It should also be noted

that one renowned longevity researcher has shared with me how one particular figure selling and researching gene therapies has quite possibly faked biological age tests

 just to make them sound more attractive.

While klotho seems good, especially for APOE4 carriers who are at higher risk of Alzheimer's, or additionally have a klotho modifier SNP which can further increase risk, it’s not available quite yet at the time I’m making this video. In the meantime there are other promising strategies for increasing it, such as a certain peptide I cover in my Biological Recode System... but also exercise, yoga, etc.

Then there is personalized nanomedicine. We are sort of doing this already with genomic risk prevention and enhancement (gene analysis), where we analyze key genes that have the most robust data for causing disease. I want to stress that we exclude poor data and do not view SNPs in isolation but in combination. And only when the evidence reaches a specific threshold or there’s combined data when taking someone’s history, symptoms, and biomarker data, do we implement any countermeasures or prophylactic strategies to reduce risk of said diseases or problems.

Then we also have neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s as another example of how the longevity industry gets things wrong. What we have as a consequence of Alzheimer’s disease is an increased production of amyloid beta in the brain. But amyloid beta is not what causes Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer's disease has many moving parts, and some of the main drivers of it have just very recently been proven to be due to a central insulin resistance which drives dysfunctional astrocytes which starve neurons of energy, causing energy deficits which cause poor communication between neurons and oxidative stress which causes the little ends of our synapses known as spines to degenerate, which further impairs synaptogenesis between neurons and tau tangles to form due to the brain’s machinery not working properly.

However, there is also kynurenic acid which increases with age ⁷. But it increases due to an upregulation of IDO-1,

which becomes upregulated through central insulin resistance, and the result being the increase in kynurenic acid is a direct inhibitory effect on AMPA and NMDA receptors ⁸.

Treatments aimed at increasing AMPAR expression or cholinergic signaling in the brain, such as donepezil, are able to work to improve cognition in Alzheimer’s disease to an extent 

but they do nothing for the actual pathophysiology driving the disease, which is why I consider them to be a bandaid. Yet how many people do you actually hear talking about and wanting to treat the root causes?

And there are solutions that can help and have been shown to outperform traditional treatments like donepezil including cerebrolysin, 

pinealon, and vesugen being some good options. There’s a lot I can cover for you here such as how they restore structures in the brain like dendritic spines,

how they improve central insulin resistance, cognition, and bind to the APOE gene itself

to modulate its activity in a way that is beneficial for Alzheimer's disease, and likely extremely valuable for APOE4 carriers who are at highest risk of Alzheimer's disease, especially those who additionally have klotho modifiers associated with amplifying the effects of APOE4.

I used to try to bring attention to these and even send out press releases to big news companies where I showcase all the science, but they just send me a huge bill for them to even consider it, if any reply at all. This made me realize how the propagation of information is not controlled by effectiveness or the goodness in anyone’s heart but the flow of money. Which brings me into how all of these products that longevity experts are peddling are mostly just affiliate offers, which require them to promote and bend truths just for the sake of making some money because they have no real solutions to offer you in the first place and need to make a living too. I have now proven that most of these products are snake oil and that most longevity influencers are snake oil salesmen.

There are so many people who get excited to discuss things like BDNF in the brain, as if it actually means something, but supplying neurotrophic factors themselves such as BDNF have failed to provide benefits to the brain when supplied in several contexts including in cultured neurons, where they didn’t experience the same benefits and structural improvements as is seen with peptide cocktails such as cerebrolysin — such as preservation and extension of axon-like processes, even under degenerative conditions, or providing long-term functional improvements (like remaining months after stopping the intervention) cerebrolysin does.

This is because the benefits that occur from cerebrolysin, including the structural changes that brings, are related to the specific pathways that are activated in the brain (such as through major pathways like Sonic Hedgehog and downstream cascades), which collectively then lead to CREB and neurotrophic factors being released in a specific context. However, it’s not the neurotrophic factors themselves that are doing all the work. Rather, they are just a result that occurs downstream and that synergizes with the rest of the signaling like icing on the cake. The specific context of activation matters.

Therefore, cerebrolysin recreates the full downstream cascades necessary for actual regeneration.

It activates Sonic Hedgehog pathways, upregulates IGF-1 and IGF-2, enhances AMPA receptor trafficking and mGluR1/5 density, restores cerebral blood flow, improves and maintains NMDA and α7-nAChR receptors which naturally decline with age, by inhibiting all of the kynurenine aminotransferases (normally, kynurenic acid increases with age).

Cerebrolysin improves brain glucose metabolism via GLUT-1 enhancement, protects against glutamate and excitotoxicity via adenosine A1 receptor signaling which dampens presynaptic glutamate release, yet it does not increase fatigue or induce lethargy. In fact, it contains some orexin fragments which may be promoters of wakefulness.

It protects against neural losses and damage that occurs because of extreme conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, hyperthermia, ethanol, and sleep deprivation, as well as maintains cognition in those cases.

 It provides broad antioxidant, anti-apoptotic, anti-inflammatory, and pro-mitochondrial, myelination and repair mechanisms.

So let me ask you this: can you see the difference between a bandaid and a repair solution yet?

And just like with Alzheimer’s, the same pattern repeats across the entire longevity industry: misunderstanding mechanisms, misreading studies, and applying downstream band-aids.

Bryan Johnson, one of the most well-known longevity enthusiasts, also quit using rapamycin due to a host of side effects.

However, it should be noted that he was using a relatively high dose of rapamycin which would’ve put him into constant immunosuppression.

He also unfortunately misinterpreted a study where he said that it increased biological aging in 16 clocks when two different doses were tested. This was incorrect, as the low dose raised biological age in one out of 16 clocks, and the high dose raised it in two out of 16 clocks in the following study¹⁵.

And this brings me to another massive misunderstanding in the longevity space, the obsession with autophagy supplements based on worm studies.

There are those selling autophagy supplements  based on studies in worms not realizing the dosages they have chosen for such a thing produce adverse effects in humans…

Yet I’ve seen many high-end professionals fall for it and then I have to get them off it once they become a client because they have worsened biomarkers such as elevated homocysteine levels ⁹.

Let me explain. 1-methylnicotinamide is a metabolite of nicotinamide and is a mediator of high-dose niacin negatives, as it can use up SAMe as a methyl donor, produce SAH, and convert into homocysteine.

In fact, I even have seen NMN supplements cause this in some people in high doses, especially those with methylation constraints already.

This is why you see people taking these “autophagy boosters” and ending up with worsened biomarkers, inflammation, elevated oxidative stress, or metabolic dysfunction. Even the manufacturer of the supplement told people they could use a higher dose of it, which made it even worse for people, but better for the company’s wallets.

In the Biological Recode System autophagy module I provide you with superior options I’ve used with my 7-figure longevity clients that have been completely side-effect-free and effective, and they take your actual unique biology into account.

Oh, and this brings me to another huge area of misunderstanding in the longevity space, telomeres. People get excited about telomeres because some of the stuff we can do now sounds impressive. However, there are also some studies that are just flawed and get peddled around by popular longevity influencers who don’t understand the context of the study and hide important details you must know.

A perfect example of this is a Chinese-created drug known as hanagliflozin ¹⁰, meant to be a competitor to the popular SGLT2 inhibitors in the Western world such as canagliflozin, which has also made the top 10 longevity drugs tested by the Interventions Testing Program ¹¹. But what people don’t realize before getting so excited is that diabetics have shorter telomeres ¹²,

and reversing diabetes by reducing high glucose can give you back extra telomere length because they aren’t being damaged by chronically high glucose levels.

Once you realize this, it’s no longer exciting, but we had big-named influencers hype it up and get lots of views for covering the story, which just benefits Chinese pharmaceutical interests. Another thing that no one talks about is how they are measuring telomeres from cells in the blood which has to be replaced quickly, and measuring them alone is not an accurate representation of the telomeres of your other cells in your body. White blood cells adjust their telomeres as needed too. For instance, if you are unhealthy they will get shorter. If you optimize your entire biology by controlling the upstream pillars they will get longer. A small example of this was seen in the study with hanagliflozin in diabetics leading to longer telomeres of white blood cells.

All of these “telomere-extending” methods in a bottle that people are selling you, including some popular doctors who managed to get other doctors to promote their product (because they are all in on the snake oil), are a waste of your money. One brand sold by a renowned doctor even states that only their specific extract can work but not other extracts of the same ingredient can work. It’s ridiculous.

They use things like astragalus varieties, TA-65, cycloastragenol, and astragalosides, but these may just be provoking white blood cells to extend their telomeres earlier than they otherwise would. For instance, TA-65, the compound found in astragalus, is known to upregulate telomerase, the gene responsible for telomere lengthening ¹³.

In a vacuum this is not good or bad... I mean, telomerase can have benefits in some contexts but also increase risk of cancer in other contexts depending on the cell lineage. Unlike one naturally produced molecule within your own body that has been shown to extend telomeres and reduce rates of cancer and extend lifespan in large human studies, and which I cover in the Biological Recode System.

There are those selling mitochondrial test kits and new mitochondrial supplements. Oh yes, we do want to mention why the mitochondrial tests are ridiculous, as your mitochondria react to various signals present in the cells from changes in the blood on a regular basis, and getting a test kit that’s 1 drop of blood does nothing to tell you the mitochondria functioning or its environment except for in that one single snapshot and of your blood cells.

Also, we want to mention how some supplements that are peddled around as the holy grail for mitochondria, like urolithin A, which is found under many brand names, are actually mitophagy activators which, when overused, excessively used, can cause detriments like reduced mitochondria and ATP generation and even cell death. Both autophagy and mitophagy are important to modulate in a very controlled manner. Same is true with urolithin A.

But we need a comprehensive mitochondria improvement strategy to be in place that’s actually effective and not detrimental and that can reduce risk of all types of metabolic syndromes which can do wonders for protecting the heart and the brain.

And speaking of the brain, we should cover how if we want to have real neuroprotection and cognitive enhancement, we not only must act early, since loss of white matter can be seen on MRIs as early as 30, signifying loss of myelin, which is so important for fast synaptic transmission, but also that proactive optimization of metabolic health, heavy metal reductions, and restoration of gene transcriptions that are associated with improved brain function, along with early therapies that can directly interact with the APOE gene, which is especially relevant for APOE4 carriers including those with amplifier SNPs that further increase risk of Alzheimer’s, such as ones in the klotho modifiers, should be implemented proactively.

As well as controlling for epigenetic drift safely, not with HDAC inhibitors or Yamanaka factors that can be dangerous,

but through natural peptide-based methods are important. But even so, and with that addressed, it would be stupid to look at the brain as a closed loop, as your arteries and vasculature in the brain is another important area to address to reduce cognitive decline or even vascular dementia.

And that includes cardiometabolic health and optimization of any metabolic syndromes, 

which is why we have an entire pillar dedicated to it in the Biological Recode System. And the heart and brain also talk to each other through nervous system signaling. Do you see how each of these pillars work together to support one another and optimize hierarchical systems? Even the immune system pillar will help prevent certain autoimmune diseases which can be drivers of heart failure, and the mitochondrial optimization will improve heart function naturally as the heart is the tissue most dense in mitochondria in the entire body.

I mentioned earlier about TGF-β1 increases with age and reversal strategies extending lifespan in mice significantly. However, when you optimize these pillars you mitigate the TGF-β increase with aging. Think about if you have a problem occurring downstream, we can even imagine it’s a river. Say the water quality is bad and has far more bacteria than it should have. You can filter the water downstream, or you can travel upstream and find the animal that died in the river and remove it.

So when you really zoom out and look at everything I just showed you, you start to see the full picture. Every single thing the longevity industry obsesses over is mostly downstream noise, otherwise known as distraction from the real problem. Hardly any of what they talk about addresses the hierarchical systems that actually control the aging program. And that’s the real problem.

Aging is not caused by a single pathway you can poke with a supplement or a drug. It’s not caused by a single biomarker you can tweak. And while as much as having a single supplement to reverse aging would be nice, it’s just not the case, as aging is organism-wide. It’s a coordinated biological program that emerges from upstream regulatory systems, and unless you change those systems, nothing else matters.

This is why so many people keep getting disappointed. Why they keep chasing the next supplement, the next study, the next headline, the next influencer claiming they “found the molecule” or the “secret mechanism.” And then two months later they flip their stance again. Because they don’t actually understand the biology. They don’t understand mechanisms. They don’t understand the hierarchy.

And honestly… that’s why the longevity industry is collapsing under its own nonsense. It’s built on hype, affiliate deals, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, flawed models, and studies taken out of context. It’s not built on real biological understanding of the aging process as a whole.

But if you understand the upstream systems... the 12 master regulatory pillars that dictate everything else, then everything suddenly makes sense. You stop wasting time on downstream pathways and start changing the systems that actually control them.

This is exactly why I created the Biological Recode System and the 12 Pillars of Age Reversal. It’s the only longevity framework built to address age reversal. Check it out at the button below

To Rewriting Your Biology,
Brenden Henry
Former Biomedical Engineer
Founder of Peptide Science Institute &
CuttingEdgeLongevity