What is currently realistic – can we reach Death Escape Velocity?

We are living through one of the most groundbreaking moments in the history of science. What 20–30 years ago seemed unattainable is now becoming reality, and the pace of change is growing faster than ever before.

The most important catalyst of this acceleration is the rapid development of artificial intelligence, which not only makes existing scientific processes more efficient, but fundamentally changes how we conduct research, analyse data, design therapies and search for new drugs.

Until recently, biology and medicine were progressing through slow, linear discoveries. Today, AI analyses trillions of data points, identifies new relationships, predicts how drugs will work, accelerates research on proteins, helps design health interventions and provides diagnostic tools that previously existed only in theory.

As a result, science is beginning to develop exponentially, and we are witnessing more and more breakthroughs — both in clinical medicine and in research on the processes of ageing.

This opens the door to a concept that until recently was reserved for futurists.

The concept of escape velocity from death describes the moment when our ability to slow down and repair ageing processes grows faster than our body actually ages.

In other words — if each year science provided us with tools that extended our healthy life by more than one additional year lost to ageing, then:

→ we could live long enough to experience further breakthroughs that extend our life even more.

If this process were repeated, we could theoretically reach a situation in which death from biological causes becomes extremely rare and we are able to maintain good health much longer than today’s maxima.

This sounds futuristic, but it is worth noticing a few things:

• the pace of medical progress is increasing,
• AI is accelerating research exponentially,
• we have increasingly better population data and biomarkers,
• regenerative medicine is making huge advances (stem cells, gene therapies, gene editing),
• diagnostic technologies detect diseases much earlier than before,
• we are trying to influence the ageing process itself, not just treat its consequences.

For many researchers, this is not pure fantasy, but a realistic direction for science over the coming decades.

Although the concept of “escape velocity from death” (longevity escape velocity) triggers emotions and extreme opinions, one thing is certain: we are living in an absolutely breakthrough moment in the history of medicine, biology and health sciences.

For the first time, we are observing at scale people in their 60s, 70s and 80s+ who not only live longer, but also maintain fitness, capacity and mental clarity that previous generations could only dream of.

This phenomenon — although still new — gives us two important conclusions:

Today’s projections of lifespan, healthspan or rate of ageing are based on epidemiological data from the past — often collected 20, 30 or even 50 years ago.

Which means that they describe:

• people who did not strength train,
• people who did not monitor metabolic health,
• people who did not use structured sleep protocols,
• people who did not supplement the things we now know actually work,
• people who did not have access to advanced diagnostics,
• people who had no idea about mitochondrial health, autophagy, metabolic resilience or zone training.

In other words:

the statistics on which today’s science of lifespan is based describe a world that no longer exists — and people who did not do 1% of what you are going to do.

It is only in the last 5–10 years that we have seen the emergence of the first generation of people consciously using advanced health protocols:

• strength and interval training,
• carefully planned sleep,
• supplementation based on biomarkers,
• stable glycaemia and metabolic health,
• zone 2, mobility work, VO₂max optimisation,
• comprehensive blood, hormone and mitochondrial diagnostics,
• CGM, wearables, advanced performance testing.

This is the first generation in history that is truly playing the longevity game “for real”.

That is why we will only discover the real potential of the human body in a dozen or a few dozen years, when this generation reaches senior age.

We still do not know exactly where the upper limit of human capability lies — but everything suggests it is much higher than anyone thought.

This is not theory. We are already seeing a phenomenon that should change how we think about the future.

In hundreds of studies and thousands of real-world examples, we observe:

• 70-year-olds with VO₂max of 40–50 ml/kg/min,
• 60-year-olds deadlifting 150 kg,
• 80-year-olds with the body of a 40-year-old,
• people after 60 reducing their biological age by 10–20 years,
• people after 50 setting personal records in running and triathlons,
• seniors with more muscle mass than many 30-year-olds.

These are not freak exceptions — this is a trend.

And this leads to a conclusion:

Your decisions today determine whether you end up in the statistics from 50 years ago — or in the statistics that have not been written yet.

Twenty years ago, the dominant belief was:

“Ageing is an irreversible process. You can only hope to get lucky.”

Today we know that this is not true.

In numerous studies — both clinical and population-based — we see that:

• ageing can be slowed,
• some of its aspects can be halted,
• selected biological markers can be partially reversed (e.g. metabolic health, mitochondrial function, VO₂max, muscle strength, bone density).

Most importantly:

the longer you maintain a high level of health and fitness, the higher your chances of living long enough to see medical breakthroughs — and those breakthroughs may not only slow ageing, but partially reverse it.

This is the greatest asymmetric advantage of this game.

Your task is to keep your body and brain in good enough condition for long enough to benefit from future technologies:

• mitochondrial therapies,
• drugs that modulate ageing,
• regenerative therapies,
• cellular medicine,
• protein and RNA engineering,
• genome editing,
• proteomics and epigenetics,
• advanced methods of slowing ageing.

Regardless of whether humanity actually reaches “escape velocity from death”, one thing is certain:

The best decision you can make is to take maximal care of your health now.

The longer you maintain good physical, metabolic, cognitive and emotional condition, the higher your chances of benefiting from medical breakthroughs that are still to come.

By taking care of your body and your biological capital:

• you extend your healthy life already today,
• you increase your chances of accessing future therapies,

This is not a science-fiction vision. It is a strategy that already works — and in the coming years its effectiveness will only grow.