Scaling Laws in Longevity & Aging | Dr. Geoffrey West, Author of book Scale

Live Longer World Podcast #26

Live Longer World Podcast #26 has been released

My guest today is Dr. Geoffrey West, the author of the bestselling book Scale, the Universal Laws of Life, Growth and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies.

He is a physicist who got fascinated by the field of aging and longevity and asked the question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. So in today's episode, we dive into his research on the scaling laws in biology and longevity.

[If you are a premium subscriber, you can also read the transcript of the episode below]

To all Americans, happy Independence Day in advance and enjoy the celebratory weekend!

Best, Aastha

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Time Stamps:

0:00 Intro

1:35 Context on Dr. West's book Scale

9:00 Networks in biology & cities

22:50 Scaling laws in longevity

32:33 Upper limit to human age?

39:08 Quantifying Caloric restriction

41:52 Metabolism & Body temperature

49:05 Scaling laws in age-related damage

56:35 Scaling body sizes across species

1:01:38 Scaling laws in drug dosage (LSD & Elephants)

1:11:06 Drug dosage in children (Tylenol & babies)

1:13:44 Vaccine dosage scaling laws

1:17:51 Sleep & Aging in different organisms

1:31:22 Early stimulation for child development

1:36:35 Fasting, meal frequency & digestive time

1:39:10 Sleep demands with work & physical activity

1:43:40: Scaling laws in cities, companies & universities

2:02:00 Outro

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Premium Subscriber Transcript:

[00:00:00] Aastha: Hi everyone. This is Aastha and welcome to another episode of the Live Longer World Podcast. I know I've been a little quiet lately, so it feels fantastic to be back. I got really interested in the alternative education space in the last year, which is part of the reason this podcast was on a bit of a break and also as a personal update.

I got married earlier this year. It was a wonderful, time, and I just think it's a very beautiful bond. Anyhow, that's it for personal updates and going forward, I hope to release more episodes this year and beyond, so please stay tuned. Without further ado, let's get into today's episode.

[00:00:40] Aastha: My guest today is Dr. Geoffrey West, the author of the bestselling book Scale, the Universal Laws of Life Growth and Death in Organisms, cities and Companies. He is a physicist who got fascinated by the field of aging and longevity and asked the question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. So in today's episode, we dive into his research on the scaling laws in biology and longevity.

Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

[00:01:09] Aastha: Alright, hi Dr. West and welcome to the Live Longer World Podcast.

Dr. Geoffrey West: Thank you Aastha for inviting me. I look forward to our conversation.

Aastha: I'm very excited for our conversation as well. I read your book the Scale and I think it's fascinating cause you touch upon a lot of different topics, which is scaling laws across aging, longevity, death, cities and companies as well.

[00:01:35] Aastha: So it's quite a wide range of topics. Can you provide some context for the listeners on what your book is about and what are these scaling laws that you discuss?

[00:01:46] Dr. Geoffrey West: Yeah yes, it's hard to do that in a very short few sentences, but roughly speaking, the original idea of the book was to present a way of thinking about these highly complex systems.

[00:02:00] Dr. Geoffrey West: Systems that are continually evolving and adapting, contain huge numbers of components have emergent laws and so on. And much of my feeling is much of the 21st century will be more and more oriented towards really trying to understand these systems and it's a daunting problem.

[00:02:26] Dr. Geoffrey West: But one of the things that is so extraordinary about them, and that's what is the central focus of the book, and that's why it's called scale, is that despite their extraordinary complexity and despite the fact that they are always evolving and adapting, and therefore they're historically contingent, nevertheless, when you plot.