We have a lifespan. That is, we are biological creatures and thus will eventually age and die. We only get so many years to live.

Apparently lots of folks don’t like that notion. This is America after all and we believe in more. We want bigger and better. Life, or lifespan, is just another commodity. It can be improved upon, just like a car or a computer. Lowe’s tells us to never stop improving and by golly that’s just what we are going to do!

I want to be healthy as I age. So I try to exercise, eat right, get a good night’s sleep, blah-blah-blah. I have no illusion that this will help me live LONGER. But I think I will live BETTER. It’s about the QUALITY of my remaining years, not the QUANTITY.

But this is America. We measure quantities. How much is your net worth? What is your IQ? How many miles did you run this week? These are easy questions with easy answers. Hard questions like “are you happy?” or “am I a good person?” require thought, and self-study. There are no easy answers when thinking about personal qualities, or character, or moral dilemmas. How do you measure a life?

Some scientists these days are getting as bad as the celebrity jock/Hollywood star-types who want to help us with our fitness and our nutrition. These people promote all sorts of health-enhancing, anti-aging bullshit. At this point there’s not much difference between Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop, or Tom Brady and his Method, or Harvard geneticist David Sinclair and his bestseller Lifespan.

All of them are preying on our fear of getting old.

It’s easy to dismiss Tom Brady and Gwyneth Paltrow because they are just famous rich folks and famous rich folks say and do a lot of stupid shit. But when a Harvard scientist jumps in things get more serious.

Unfortunately scientists can be just as full of it as anyone else! They are people, too. And science, as a career, does not generally lead to wealth and fame. That’s why TED talks and bestsellers are important to some scientists—it is usually their only shot at those two pillars of American Greatness (wealth and fame).

Go to any so-called “wellness” site and you’ll see a lot of pseudo-scientific babble surrounding the products. There’s a lot of hand-waving about “research-backed findings” and “new science” and other stuff trying to get you to believe that their stuff is “proven” to work. It’s all hokum. And when real scientists jump into the fray the gobbledygook gets even worse.

Check out Quicksilver Scientific. Their head guy (Dr. Shade!) looks like a legit chemist. He’s done work on mercury speciation (analysis of the different compounds of mercury and how they manifest themselves in the enviroment and in our bodies) and I’ve no doubt he knows quite a bit about metal toxicity.

But Quicksilver is not a health clinic or a research lab. It is a BUSINESS and they make money by selling chemical products. Longevity supplements are there, of course. My personal favorite—detox—is also well-represented. The whole detox thing is so silly. If you lack a liver and kidneys you ought to be concerned, but for those of us fortunate to have those working organs we can let our bodies do their natural detox thing and not waste money on nonsense treatments.

Now before some attorney sends this blog a Cease & Desist order, I’m not saying Quicksilver is quackery. But I will say it sure looks like quackery and sure sounds like quackery. (Your mileage may vary, of course.)

The supplement industry is big, reportedly worth $164 billion in 2022. That’s about the same amount of money we spent last year on credit card fees and interest.

Science has helped make our lives better and I suspect the scientific enterprise will continue to do so into the future. We will learn a lot more about health, nutrition, disease, aging, etc. etc. But people will continue to suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). People will still get conned by slick salesmen. People will continue to search for the elusive Fountain of Youth.

There isn’t one. Take care of your body the best you can. But take care of the heart and soul as well. The things that matter in life can’t be put on a graph and they don’t come out of test tubes. If you want a detox, detox your mind! Stop listening to quacks. All they offer is quicksilver, something shiny but slippery, and ultimately poisonous. You aren’t missing out.