Three Not-So-Bad Things on Aging and Longevity
A Weekly Newsletter
There’s no denying it: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. A pandemic, climate change, inflation, war, political discord—the list goes on. Here at the Longevity Project, we understand that bad news can be enough to take years off your life, so we want to do our part (however small) to balance the scales.
At the end of the day, though, we’re realists. Good news is hard to come by, no matter how hard you look. So we’ll aim a little lower and without further ado, we are pleased to share our first weekly newsletter: Three Not-So-Bad Things on Longevity and Aging. Feel free to share with others and send us items you want to see included. With some luck, you will see this newsletter (and some more not so bad news) every Wednesday.
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march 4, 2026
1. Maybe We Should All Have Neuron Reveal Parties.
The scientific insight of the week: the key to healthy cognitive aging may be neurogenesis - the brain’s ability to sprout new neurons as we age. That’s the findings of a new study from the University of Illinois Chicago, which took a very up close and personal look at brain health among aging populations.
The backdrop to all this is a long-running debate in scientific circles as to whether an aging brain can produce new neurons. It was long assumed that the neurons we are born with would be all the neurons that we are going to get, but that view was challenged in the late 1990s and has been the subject of a back-and-forth debate ever since.
For this study, the researchers looked at donated brain tissue for evidence of neurogenesis. The tissue came from five groups: eight healthy young adults, aged between 20 and 40; eight healthy agers, aged between 60 and 93; six superagers, aged between 86 and 100; six individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's pathology, aged between 80 and 94; and 10 individuals with an Alzheimer's diagnosis, aged between 70 and 93.
The results? The superagers had nearly twice the amount of immature (new) neurons as the eight healthy agers, and just as importantly, those who had Alzheimer’s and those showing early evidence of Alzheimer's both had significant deficits in young neurons.
It’s strong evidence that neurogenesis is either a direct cause or at least a strong indicator of cognitive health. We can’t tell you whether you have a healthy dose of immature neurons or not – we think we would have to cut your brain open to find out – but the study does open the prospect of further research to identify new therapies for boosting neurogenesis and better understanding of the possible environmental and life style conditions that impact neurogenesis.
Shameless Self Promotion #1.
And if environment supports neurogenesis, we would bet that the residents of 2Life Communities are just bursting with new neurons. In today’s episode of Century Lives: The Home Stretch, we are looking at the growing challenges of providing supportive housing for low-income seniors. In this country, there is simply not enough affordable housing suitable for seniors, and often what does exist lacks sufficient resources to provide the services that support health and well-being. But 2Life is a model for what attractive, safe, engaging, and even joyous living can and should look like for our aging population. Travel to Boston with us to find out how they do it.
2. It's Probably Better For Your Baby Neurons If You Put That Phone Away.
And we’re not doing a great job on that. A new poll from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has found that 86% of U.S. adults report using their phone or tablet to view the news before they go to bed. Half of all adults use a screen in bed every day, and more than a quarter admit they prioritize screen time over getting the recommended seven hours of sleep.
It’s a bad idea: Doomscrolling can cause anxiety, elevated blood pressure, headaches, low appetite, and poor sleep hygiene. And it can also lead to “popcorn brain,” which, though we love a good handful of Orville Redenbacher’s, we can assure you is not a good thing.
Oddly, the majority of doomscrollers don’t recognize the impact the practice may have on their sleep. Thirty-eight percent report that doomscrolling does impact their sleep negatively, but the rest of the respondents were either neutral, reporting that it slightly improved their sleep, or even, for 10%, that doomscrolling significantly improved the quality of their sleep. That’s a bit hard to credit, given all the wars, incendiary political rhetoric, and the disturbing tidal wave of celebrity breakups already this year. But hey, maybe that’s the popcorn brain talking.
3. Some Day We Hope To Say Goodbye To All Of Our Baby Neurons With Quiet Dignity.
Which seems to be the trend: a study led by researchers from Boston University have found a profound change in the ways that Americans deal with end-of-life issues.
In a study of Medicare patients in the period 2011 – 2023, the researchers reviewed data from more than 10 million ICU admissions and found that, even as overall death rates held steady, more patients were choosing comfort-focused care over prolonged life-sustaining treatment. Long term stays in ICU’s declined, as did prolonged use of life support systems. Instead, hospice use increased (though only from 6% to 7%), and use of palliative care and the use of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders roughly doubled. The researchers attributed these significant shifts largely to changing societal attitudes and increased focus on patient goals.
Ultimately, this appears to be a movement to align medical practices more carefully with patients' goals and a new emphasis on dignity, comfort, and choice in the final chapters of life.
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