Review: Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever, by Dave Asprey

Dave Asprey is famous (in some circles) as the guy who invented Bulletproof Coffee, which is both a concept and a business. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Asprey seems to be one of the first — if not the first — of a new breed of bio-hackers. As a young man he was quite sickly, showing many signs of premature ageing including arthritis. He decided to try out a few things — actually more than few things — which range from the reasonable to the completely bonkers. Some of these seemed to work. In this book, he has decided to share what he’s learned over two decades of using his own body as a guinea pig.

While the book seems to be evidence-based and heavily footnoted, Asprey is not a doctor and this is not credible medical advice. That doesn’t mean it’s not interesting: much of it is. The least-crazy things he suggests (like using a sleep monitor app on your phone, or taking Vitamin C supplements) are things I quickly adopted, at no risk to my health. Some of the later stuff is a bit too edgy for my taste.

I do however agree with his core idea that humans need not become decrepit in our 70s or 80s, and that we absolutely need to die by the age of 120. The ‘maybe’ in the title of his book shows that he’s not convinced that immortality is an option — and his own personal goal is a 50% increase over what is now believed possible. In other words, he wants to live to 180. I wish him luck, and I salute his optimism and ‘can-do’ spirit. I hope he’s right.