Living upto 100: Dream or reality?

A conversation with the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Decode Age, one of India's first longevity start-ups -- and certainly the most visible.

Patel is at the forefront of the longevity movement in India, still nascent but growing fast.

While most wealthy countries are laying down these protocols and prescriptions with relentless promise, in India, the longevity movement is nascent and just about taking off. According to 2024 data, the current life expectancy in India is 70.62 years, a 0.29% increase from 2023. In longevity science, we are in a spot of beginner’s moderation in all things tech. Darshit Patel is hopeful as well as cautious. He prefers not to use the term “biohacking” to describe what DecodeAge, set upon 2021, does—“because it is a hyped word, it just sounds fancy”. “If you use the right supplement at the right stage and right time, it is biohacking.” Patel says the biggest threat to longevity has always been diseases that are metabolic in nature: Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s, cardio-vascular diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, even cancer, where your body goes rogue after a particular age. In a majority of incidences, these diseases have ageing at the root of it. “So the hope is, if we control ageing in some way or the other, we are controlling many chronic diseases. What penicillin was to the infectious world, anti-ageing into the chronic diseases world.” Patel’s company undertakes an exhaustive list of blood tests based on medical history, age and disabilities or weaknesses and offers personalise treatments that could cost anywhere between Rs3000 and Rs10,000 for the basic therapies.Their NMN supplement, described in medical journals as a stable, and reliable activator of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and an anti-ageing molecule made famous by Hollywwod celebrities, is available to buy on Amazon for Rs2,999. Taken orally, NMN is rapidly absorbed and converted to NAD+. In numerous studies, supplementation with NMN has increased NAD+ biosynthesis, suppressed age-related adipose tissue inflammation, enhanced insulin secretion and insulin action, improved mitochondrial function, improved neuronal function in the brain, and more. DecodeAge focusses on the microbiome — the term for the combined genetic material of body’s microorganisms in a particular environment, a microbiome protects us against germs, breaks down food to release energy, and produces vitamins.

The above is an excerpt from a long-form piece by @TheSlowFix founder Sanjukta Sharma that recently appeared in Mint. Read here:

https://www.livemint.com/industry/decode-a...