now on bbc news — click: foreveryoung? from the moment we arrive on this planet, we are all heading in the same direction. i could come up with a date predicting when you would die. well, thanks, but maybe the way that the years play out isn't inevitable. so, how about the idea of being able to increase our health span — live the better years of our life for longer, till, like, we're a0 at 60. there is a 15—17 years of healthy life that is up for grab for all of us. we head to california to meet the scientists and founders

who want to make it a reality. ageing by itself is the largest risk factor for every single disease, this chronic disease of ageing, so by targeting it, you target all disease together. but how do we separate science from snake oil? the longevity industry is worth billions with hopes of delaying disease, extending our sprightly years and maybe even throwing in a few extra. i let a system of science and data run my body. it does a betterjob taking care of me than i can. maybe even our furry friends can be with us for longer. he sneezed in my face. and the things some people will do to stay young! push it out, push it out. you got this.

do you consider yourself a guinea pig? no, i don't! i consider myself to be an explorer on the frontiers, trying to find out what's possible. tech entrepreneur bryanjohnson is spending millions trying to turn back time on his body. i refer to myself as a professional rejuvenation athlete. it's a new sport i want to create. i'm not a bio—hacker, i'm not a health enthusiast, i am a professional rejuvenation athlete. i love it. working with a team of 30 scientists, his daily life is dictated by an extreme regime of fitness, diet, tablets, tracking and treatments. i'm chronologically 45 years old. biologically, i am a few hundred ages. my left ear is 64. my fitness test say i'm 18. my heart is 37.

my diaphragm strength is 18. and i playfully say i'm trying to become like an 18—year—old. my son is 17 and so, i always tease him and say, "when i grow younger, i want to be like you". where's he taking me? brilliant. wow! where to start in here? what's this? this is high frequency electromagnetic stimulation. we got this machine because we were trying to solve a problem. every night, i was getting up one time per night to go to the bathroom and when i do so — that's actually normal — but when i did so, it produced less quality sleep. of course. so, i wanted to see if i could get up zero times, so we got this machine to trial could we strengthen my pelvic floor and my bladder so that i wouldn't have to get up at night to go to the bathroom. do you want to try it out? do you want to just sit down? 0k. is it going to vibrate or something? so, it's actually — a lot of women use this after having babies to rebuild the strength

of their pelvic floor. a lot of some use kegel exercises. yeah. this is basically kegel, just through stimulation. right. i'm going to turn it on... 0k. ..and the feeling is going to be a little foreign and it might be shocking initially. 0k. zapping sound. oh, it's like pins and needles. it is sort of tickling but tickling in a quite hard, aggressive way. how long do you do it for? the session is 30 minutes. but actually, it's been successful. is this one of those devices that measures the age of yourskin? that's right. how's yours doing? we've made about 22 years of progress in reversing the age of my skin. it takes all these images of your face and you get about ten reports on pore size, uv spots, reds, browns. your skin is amazing — is this just from your regime or is there other help? other help, too — we have some lasers over there, which i'll show you. but there's no injections — that's just from everything in here? that's right. what do we have next? this is something that also

tells you the health of your cardiovascular system, so your age. it looks at advanced glycinate product in your skin. so, if you want to try it, you can put your arm on it and it will tell you your age. ideal score would be around two. right. so, i'm only a little bit too old for my age — it could be worse. what's next? 0k. this is an ultrasound machine, medical—grade. this is what you see in a hospital. are you having a baby? laughs. who knows with what you're getting up to already! what are you actually using it for? so, we look at the brain, the lungs, the heart, the pancreas, the prostate, tendons, ligaments — everything. it's really a useful technology to have in the clinic to do on a routine basis. how do you feeljust before you do any of this tracking? do you get a bit nervous, hopeful? do you have expectations? it is a game. some of my most happiest days are when we do these full measurement days. inaudible. that's a lot better! what is your motivation? are you doing this for yourself or for humanity?

when i was 21 years old, i decided that i wanted to spend my life doing something meaningful for the world and i didn't know what to do so i said, "i'm going to make a whole bunch of money "being an entrepreneur by the age of 30, then "i'll decide what to do". and so, for the past — since i sold my company, braintree venmo, i made $300 million and this question was what could i do that would matter in the year 2500? and right now, it could be ageing. if we slow the speed of ageing and even reverse it, it would change what it means to be human. do you think you are risking your health here? in all the things you're doing to protect it, do you think there's also some real risk? certainly, there's always risks. but there's potentially an argument that we are being more safe than anyone else because we have the rigour of measurement. whilst bryan signed his life away to experimentation, i visit the buck, the world's first institute for ageing research.

these scientists are working on drugs that they hope could delay age—related disease. so, here, i have two of my postdocs, margie and genesis. would you say there has been huge scientific advancement in this field recently, or is there just a sudden trend for investment and interest in it? the science has matured in terms of, you know, we've been doing this for close to 30 years, understanding the basic mechanism of ageing, number one. number two, the societal needs are there. you have a rapidly ageing population with an increasing burden of chronic diseases. this place is huge! this is one of about 20 labs! three, two, one — squeeze. it's notjust drugs and supplements being put through their paces here, though — it's also exercise. one... what kind of exercise,

how much, how often? aerobics, anaerobic, lifting weight, yoga, balance, swimming — which one of these interventions actually works the best? but one really important discovery in mice here was the ability to reduce what are called senescent cells. these zombie cells play a useful role throughout our lifetimes but as we age, we acquire many more and as they also lead to inflammation, that increased number ends up providing a hotbed for cancer and all sorts of disease. so, biotech companies are trying to create drugs that will reduce that cellular senescence. i'm adding my reagent to the eye tissue so that i can understand which types of cells are senescent.

unity is using this science and it's now achieved small early stage clinical trials for eye injections to treat macular degeneration — that's failing eyesight that glasses can't fix. we're able to stain the senescent cells purple, so i can visualise spatially within the eye where the senescent cells reside. once you get rid of one of these cells, it's gone. this would be a small number of treatments over a limited amount of time. one of the things we've started to see is that because the fda will not approve drugs just for anti—ageing, companies are looking for a specific problem to treat. alzheimer's disease is an important one, cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, liver diseases — all of these are diseases that are more prevalent as we get older and to the extent that they have a basis

of cellular senescence, these agents we're working on could have applicability in other disease areas. what have you got here? that looks like it's connected to an eye? so, yeah, we get normal eyes and diseased eyes. we process them into this wax—like substance, so that we can section the eye, a cross—section of it very thinly and put it on a microscope slide. here we are testing different drug candidates on our animal models. so, we test, in a diseased animal model, does our drug actually inhibit or get rid of it once it is already formed? a lot of mouse trials have not translated well into humans? we believe that it translates relatively well compared to maybe, like, a tumour of cells and a tumour ina human. quite creepy when you know what it is. yeah! i think it's quite cool! but maybe we're missing something. lifestyle is responsible for

about 93% of your longevity. only about 7% on your epigenetics, so you can't blame your parents. a lot of exercise, you know, some fasting, a lot of the good sleep, a lot of social connection, very little alcohol. try to spend at least 14 hours of your 24—hour day without ingesting any calories. this has profound effects on your metabolism, on many of the pathways. so, based on the data, i would predict that most people could live to 95 in good health if they did all of the things that we know will promote a healthy lifespan. but if they work, why do we need to be trying to deal with this bigger picture of senescence? senescence is still going to happen. hopefully, if you exercise, it's going to be delayed by 10, 15, 20 years. i don't mean to be saying that lifestyle interventions is all that needs to be done. there's a need for science for the future.

what's that thing that people do when they sit on the floor and try to get up without using their hands? whatever eric's been doing seems to be working. this is supposed to be some sort of sign of youth, isn't it? if you can stand up by not using your hands and just... how can anyone do that? pushing your feet down? how is that possible? how do you do that? i don't know! i think it means you're under 20 or something. exactly! i can't do it! i can't do it. thank you. snoring 0ur furry friends could get their paws on a life—extending pill first, though. # i love my dog to bits... you'll notice there are no great danes here, there are no large dogs here, and it's because they can have a lifespan of six, seven, eight, nine years — you know, almost half

of what a little guy like this could be expected to have and our hypothesis is that the short lifespan of big dogs is a disease. # he's my honey, sweetie, sugar canine # my number one pal... we are a senior dog rescue and when we take in dogs like a great dane, for instance, at five years old, they're already starting to age so much. it would be like a miracle cure if we could have some of our big dogs live longer and live as long as our small dogs. ms robinson, that's for you. there you go _ where are you at now with the trial? so, we're kicking off our big, pivotal study. we're trying to understand does our drug extend life span and quality of life? it's a preventative drug, inhibiting the protein that we believe drives big dogs to age fast. and if everything goes to plan, we'll hopefully have a drug on market in 2025.

if successful, loyal�*s drug could hasten the solution for humans as well. has there been any sort of scientific breakthrough that has made possible what you are trying to do? yeah, so the things that people don't realise is there have been hundreds of drugs that have shown lifespan extension, health span expansion in mice. the issue is that you can't develop a drug for people today for a purely logistical standpoint. right, like, if i gave you an ageing drug, it would be decades before i would know if you develop age—related diseases and decades before ifind out, you know, your eventual lifespan. so, dogs have similar diets to us, they live in the same environment and they also develop the same age—related diseases as we do, at approximately at the same kind of in our lifespan, so if a drug works in a dog, it is not i—to—i to work in a human but it's much more likely versus, we do a lot of research on mice and that does not translate at all. back to humans, and if we want to reduce the age that our body seems

rather than is, well, we need to find a way to measure it. i was really put through my paces with this test, assessing my baseline, then pushing me to my physical limit. was this really necessary? really nicejob. you got this! good job. thank you. what a relief to take that off! i've recovered, so how fit am i? you've done a really nicejob, nice test. at least i discovered at the end that i have a fitness age of 36 — that's seven years lower than my years. but there is an easier way — a few drops of blood and this scientist's invention, known as the epigenetic clock, can assess my biological age and possibly

the date of my demise. there is this grim age which is our best mortality risk predictor and, unfortunately, you are a little bit older than you should be. it says 49 years. that's unfortunate! it's very important to have a sense of humour when one looks at these reports. what about death? i could come up with a date almost predicting when you would die. when do you think it's going to occur, according to this? we don't give people this. but you know — you know the answer to that question? i have a way to calculate it, yeah. can you tell me? no, i won't, and the reason is things change, you know, people develop healthy habits or bad habits, you know, bad luck. so it's actually not very informative for you. you can't even tell me the likelihood of which illness it is, it is just that my body is ageing a bit faster? yes. i don't want to go

back to this, but it's a bit concerning. the question is really why. i want to tell you right away — we have a lot of good news for you. i wanted to start with the bad news. look at that, your female age is 36.5, seven years younger than expected. right, my biological age is 36, my chronological age is 43, and my disease risk is a lot higher than it should be. hmm. i won't worry too much, though. it's very early days for these tests. how about this one? in fact, i'm keeping my spirits up and i'm off to a longevity meet—up. so, are these brainy scientists living the longevity lifestyle? well, there are still unopened bottles of wine, so probably! here tonight we had a longevity friendly mix of food, seaweed and fish.

other parts of the industry haven't been quite so wholesome, though. for decades, there has been a lot of snake oil, a lot of miracle pills, the god pill, all of this stuff. and many have been desperate to believe. just ask this leading silicon valley doctor. i don't know why people want to gamble with their health. i understand gambling with your money. so if it is safe and not effective like a vitamin, some vitamins, then you are gambling with your money but if it is not proven safe, and it is not proven effective you are gambling with your health, and then there are people spending a lot of time doing these things and they are not living their life, they are living the version of their life to give themselves a future life, but what happens if that future life never materialises? the repurposing of current drugs may actually hold some promise to preventing age—related

disease, and some don't even want to wait for the clinical trials. especially in silicon valley amongst techies, it's hard to find somebody who isn't taking metformin, this diabetic drug, and these people are not diabetics and they are typically quite healthy, but they have seen some of the studies and even though it has not been approved as an anti—ageing drug, they are taking it, the same with others. so you have a lot of people who are going off book, who are going doctor shopping, looking for those doctors that will give them the pills that might be for something else but have shown an effect in extending life, at least in animals. i get asked by young men in their 405 — "should i take metformin?" and my first question is — are you ready to lose half of your testosterone? there are no medicines without side effects. the good news is with all these blood tests, breath tests, urine tests, there's wearables, there's apps, there are so many things

that track things. so if you really want to, like, if you are overweight and have high blood pressure, and you love your wine and your life, but you want a pill to make you live long, guess what? you can't stop the wind with your hands. and it's probably getting close to this lot�*s bedtime — they really value sleep. i want to wake up naturally, because your cortisol levels, which is your stress hormones, go down as you sleep and right when you wake up a spike. so, a lack of good sleep can disrupt them and, in turn, lead to unnecessary inflammation and a higher risk of disease. it's like inflam—ageing. so you want to do everything you can to decrease the inflation in your body. the pills and the supplements and the cryo and the hyperbarics and all this stuff, they tout it does that, but show me the measurements outside of people saying "i feel better".

because by the way, placebo, people feel better and i'm not saying that is placebo because there is a lot of interesting science in there. whether pills or procedures are proven or not, there are a whole lot of people who are really obsessed. does it sometimes seem a bit cult—y, this stuff? very cult like and i try to protect my people against that cult aspect. we try not to let it become that way. there's one issue that none of this can resolve, though. in the united states, the single biggest determinant of your life expectancy is your postcode, where you live. and so, that is a problem that cannot be engineered. 0nce drugs are developed, is that not going to further enhance the inequality, because who was going to get access the drugs and when? the model, the way it works, the drugs become available and if they actually are demonstrated to be valuable they become available

to insurance companies, and we expect the same thing to happen with all drugs that will be developed together. so, where does this leave us? there's exercise, but... exercise is hard, magic pills are easy. maybe one gives us six months, another gets a year, and you piece this together and we are living to the age of 85, 95, healthily. will the drugs come? there are a ton of companies who are trying to capitalise on this enthusiasm, raising a lot of money, but then you get to the very hard yards of actually science, bench science, putting something in a human body and actually having it work. and there are bigger questions over how we may need to work longer, the unexpected diseases that will emerge at these older ages, and our planet is already pretty busy.

first thing to consider is these changes that we are talking about are not going to happen tomorrow, they are going to be happening slowly, the same way we have doubled our lifespan over the past 150 years, and we've slowly adapted. as for brian... what has the reaction been from doctors and scientists to what you are doing? because i guess it has been kind of mixed. yeah, the reaction has been very mixed. i would say there are quite a few people who are excited that this is happening and it's a good blueprint for them. there's also been a colossal amount of hate, which i love — i love every bit of it. i think brian is a true pioneer. is there not a bit of a risk in what he is doing to himself? there is a concern. i mean, we will see what happens to him in the long term. so far his numbers look good, he claims to be extremely happy. i thihnk it's an interesting experiment for us to watch. mmm, delicious! the reality is that

we know a lot about the science of ageing. squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. but the big scientific breakthroughs just are not there yet, so i guess i come away from this feeling more than ever that it's so important to live your healthiest life, just maybe not quite to the extent of brianjohnson. lucky us, we exist. let's play the most fun games we can for as long as we can. hello there. after wet and windy weather for weeks on end, now it looks like the weather pattern could be changing through this month. now, we started the new year

with some sunshine across many parts of the country. already turning chilly in scotland where we've got those clearer skies, but towards the south—west of england, the clouds been rolling in, seen some rain coming in as well. you can see what's happening here on the earlier satellite picture. all this cloud is streaming up from the south—west, bringing yet more rain. and the winds are picking up, too, around that weather system. once that moves through, we've got another one following in behind. and those two combined could bring about two inches of rain, 50 millimetres of rain to england and wales and some flooding, too. we've got wet weather this evening across england and wales. moving clear of northern ireland heading into scotland — there may be some snow over the mountain tops here. clearer skies will follow for a while, but the rain returns into the south coast and the south—west by the end of the night, keeping temperatures up here. and by the end of the night in scotland, after an early frost in the east, temperatures will be lifting here. the wetter weather continues northwards up towards the northern isles where it will be windy. it's also going to be windy in southern parts of england, some gales, particularly along the south coast.

and we've got the spell of wet weather returning from the south—west from overnight across england and wales, maybe affecting northern ireland for a while. could turn a bit drier in the south of england in the afternoon, i3 or 14 degrees in those strong winds. bit of sunshine in between those areas of rain in scotland, but here temperatures will be lower. most of the wet weather, though, will be for england and wales. that will move away as we head into wednesday. we've still got some brisk winds in the north—east of scotland with a bit of rain. maybe the risk of some sleet and snow up towards shetland, won't be as windy across the south and generally on wednesday it's a day where we'll see some sunshine and some showers, particularly across wales and the south—west. temperatures though, looking quite healthy at eight to 12 degrees. now, things will turn colder by the end of the week. instead of low pressure that will bring wet and windy conditions, we're going to start to see high pressure building down from the north. that will leave us with a north—easterly breeze, introduce colder air and lead to some frost as well. but the weather pattern looks like changing after a few more days

of this wet and windy weather with an increased chance of high pressure really through the rest of the month, even. that will mean things are going to be drier, which is good news, but it will also turn a bit colder.

live from london. this is bbc news. a powerful earthquake strikes japan, destroying buildings and killing at least one person. thousands have fled their homes, spending the night in shelters. britain says it won't hesitate to act against rebels in yemen, targeting ships in the red sea. migrant boat crossings in the english channel drop by almost a third, but the figures are still some of the highest on record. and what it means for disney as the copyright expires on the earliest versions of mickey and minnie mouse. hello, i'm nicky schiller. we start injapan, where a powerful earthquake has struck the centre of the country, bringing down buildings and power lines. one person is known to have died, and several others are believed