#157: 𦾠The Biggest Longevity Biohack is Vaccines
300 Years of Progress Led Vaccines to Quietly Become the Greatest Biohack Ever Invented
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One of the reasons I started this newsletter is that during the pandemic, I would get a lot of calls from my friends and family asking me health related questions, like...
What is COVID?
How does an mRNA vaccine work?
And when I would explain the science to them, they told me I should explain it that way to more people.
Iâve never covered vaccines in Ninaâs Notes, and as the northern hemisphere heads into cold & flu season, I had some questions come up about vaccines again.
So letâs talk about it.
P.S. I recorded this one and itâs up on my youtube channel, watch it here:
đŹ In this note:
𦾠The Biggest Longevity Biohack Is Vaccines
đ The Witches of El Paso
âĄď¸ The Oatmealâs Take on AI Art
#157: The Biggest Longevity Biohack is Vaccines
I recently learned something that I need to share with all of you.
Itâs about the COVID vaccines.
As you all remember, when we were in the middle of the pandemic, the media and information about the COVID vaccines was not always the most clear.
For the first time ever, the public was watching the scientific method unfold in real time.
We saw scientists learn, experiment, fail, and repeat until we made discoveries about the virus and were able to create a vaccine.
Now, here is the thing that surprised me.
When we think of vaccines, we think of the ones that have eradicated a disease like the polio vaccine, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, the list goes on.
So a lot of the public thought that when we developed a COVID vaccine, the goal was eradication.
I have to admit, I thought this too. (I canât be alone!)
But when the vaccines came out and many of us were vaccinated, we still got COVID.
The thought wasâŚthe vaccine doesnât work. We failed.
But eradication was not the goal.
The goal was to ease the burden on urgent cares and hospitals.
The goal was to keep people out of the hospital beds.
And the vaccine did that.
The first time I got COVID, my case was super mild.
That was because the vaccine worked.
My immune system was prepared to fight the virus, and I felt like I had a mild fever and was ill for a few days.
Of course mentally, I thought - oh man! I still got COVID even though I got the vaccine. This isnât working.
And I was wrong.
Eradication was not the goal of the COVID vaccine.
The goal was to keep the virus from spreading.
Things could have been much worse without it.
The COVID vaccine served its intended purpose, which was offering strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death.
The goal was misunderstood by the public and even misunderstood by scientists like me.
And if I was confused with the way information was presented by the media, Iâm sure people without a background in science felt even more confused, and didnât know who to trust.
What worries me now is that this has raised a lot of disbelief in the scientific community that has also spiraled into a greater rise in the anti-vaccine movement.
Vaccines are Our #1 Longevity Biohack
Vaccines represent the single most impactful medical intervention for extending human lifespan and healthspan.
While biohacking focuses on optimization techniques like intermittent fasting, supplements, and cold exposure, vaccination offers an unparalleled return on investment.
Vaccines have prevented an estimated 154 million deaths over 50 years (1974-2024) with minimal individual effort.
Vaccines protect us from 14 vaccine-preventable diseases.
For every life saved with a vaccine, an average of 66 years of full health were gained.
Talk about a hack!
How Vaccines Contributed to Life Expectancy
The longevity communityâs goal is to extend human lifespan, also known as, extending human life expectancy.
Vaccines are one of the most concrete examples we have of interventions that increase human lifespan.
In the 20th century, life expectancy increased from ~32 years to ~80 years in developed countries.
Vaccines have made a substantial contribution to this 48-year increase in addition to sanitation, better nutrition and antibiotics.
Even with these improved living conditions, vaccines have still been described as âthe medical intervention with the greatest beneficial impact on human health and longevity.â
Furthermore, due to vaccines, infant deaths have halved since 1974.
Children under 10 have a 40% greater chance of living to their next birthday thanks to vaccination.
Vaccines Have the Best Effort-to-Impact Ratio on Longevity
Most common biohacks require on-going commitment.
Intermittent fasting is a daily commitment with a minimal impact on longevity.
Cold and hot exposure requires a daily or weekly practice, and we are still researching the impact on longevity.
Supplements like resveratrol and NAD+ are expensive, have mixed evidence and still to be proven longevity benefits.
The âSet it and Forget itâ Biohack
When it comes to biohacks, vaccines take only a minute of your time as an investment.
Of course youâll need additional boosters, but that is also just minutes out of your life.
The financial burden is often nothing, as most vaccines are free or low-cost in countries with national vaccination programs.
And there is a proven impact with decades of data.
Vaccines Help Raise the Longevity of the Community
With herd immunity, we only require 95% of the population to be vaccinated for measles in order to protect those who cannot get the vaccine.
For polio, herd immunity is even stronger, protecting the vulnerable populations who cannot be vaccinated with only 80% vaccination requirement of the population.
When we have herd immunity, we protect entire communities, including infants too young for vaccination, immunocompromised individuals (think about people going through chemotherapy or those with autoimmune diseases), and we protect the elderly with weakened immune systems.
Modern Vaccine Science
Some of you may have heard of âinfection immunityâ. This means exposure to the live, wild virus.
Exposure to a live virus is high risk.
It can lead to severe suffering from the illness, spreading the illness to others, long-term effects and hospitalization.
This is technology that was used back in the 1700s.
Mostly used for smallpox, where people were deliberately infected with material from smallpox scabs or pustules.
This method still resulted in 1-2% death, back then.
You may have heard that âinfection immunityâ is better because it is ânatural.â
Natural does not mean safer.
We have improved technology to improve safety.
Vaccines train your immune system without the stress.
It is guided, safe and smart.
We have several different types of vaccines that scientists have developed over the last 300 years to improve safety and be able to target a wider range of viruses, bacteria and pathogens.
One is âlive attenuated vaccinesâ
When we make live attenuated vaccines, we grow viruses or bacteria in the lab to make them weaker and less dangerous.
This allows us to generate strong and lasting immunity without safety concerns of the wild virus.
For these vaccines, scientists only use permanently weakened viruses from the lab.
Diseases that use live attenuated vaccines are measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), chicken pox, nasal influenza, rotavirus, yellow fever, tuberculosis and typhoid.
Another type are âinactivated vaccinesâ
These are viruses or bacteria that have been killed to make a vaccine.
Dead viruses or bacteria still create a strong immune response.
These vaccines are safer for vulnerable populations like immunocompromised people, or the elderly.
Diseases that have vaccines made from dead viruses or bacteria include inactivated polio virus (ipv), Hepatitis A, Rabies virus, some flu vaccines and Pertussis.
The technology gets even better.
Scientists have improved vaccine development so much that we donât even need to use the whole bacteria or virus to create a strong response from our immune system.
We can also make vaccines from just a part of the virus.
These are called subunit vaccines.
These vaccines use a specific part of the virus or bacteria (such as a purified protein, or a protein from the pathogen produced in the lab) to generate an immune response.
A subunit vaccine is like giving your immune system a âwanted posterâ with a criminalâs face, rather than bringing in the whole criminal.
Your security guards (immune cells) learn to recognize the bad guy from an image of his face, without any risk of having to meet the criminal in real life.
When the real threat shows up, your immune system recognizes that face instantly and springs into action to protect you from infection.
Subunit vaccines often have fewer side effects because the whole virus, or bacteria, is not present in the vaccine.
These types of vaccines are very useful for viruses like influenza or COVID-19 because these viruses mutate very quickly.
Itâs easier to update a subunit vaccine that contains only part of the virus, rather than a vaccine that is designed for the whole virus - when the virus changes.
Diseases that have subunit vaccines include Novavax COVID-19 vaccine, Hepatitis B, some influenza vaccines and HPV (human papilloma virus).
Conjugate Vaccines
In these vaccines, a piece of protein is connected to a polysaccharide (a sugar).
Most vaccines produce robust B-cell responses and produce antibodies.
Conjugate vaccines help to build a powerful adaptive immune response, which means producing T-cells to respond.
T-cells only respond to protein, so by connecting the protein of a virus, bacteria or other pathogen, it triggers your immune system to produce both B-cells and T-cells.
Conjugate vaccines are mostly used for bacterial infections.
Diseases that have conjugate vaccines for them include: Haemophilus Influenza type b (Hib), Pneumonia and Meningitis.
mRNA Vaccines
These are the latest advancement in vaccine development.
Early foundational research started in 1961 when it was discovered that mRNA is the messenger molecule carrying genetic instructions.
This led to the early hypothesis that if you could deliver mRNA into cells, they could produce any protein you wanted.
In the 1990s, researchers injected mRNA into mice and proved that mRNA could work as a therapeutic in living animals.
In 2005, Katalin KarikĂł and Drew Weissman discovered that nucleoside-modified mRNA (specifically replacing uridine with pseudouridine) dramatically reduced the innate immune response to synthetic mRNA, a key breakthrough that made mRNA vaccines feasible in humans.
In 2013, Moderna led the first mRNA vaccine trial against flu virus in animals. Results were promising, but more development was needed for human use.
By late 2019, mRNA vaccine technology had been studied for 30 years, and been tested on thousands of people across various diseases like rabies, zika virus, seasonal influenza and CMV (cytomegalovirus), and proved safe.
Then we saw in real time why COVID vaccines were developed so quickly.
Leveraging decades of prior research, researchers were able to leverage the platform technology to swap in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein sequence into the vaccine.
Fueled with massive funding from Operation Warp Speed and global investment, companies were able to start manufacturing before the vaccine was approved - taking on a financial risk, but not a safety risk.
Large trials were able to be run quickly due to the large number of active cases.
And COVID vaccines were given regulatory priority where reviews were expedited but not given shortcuts.
This meant we had the first COVID vaccines within 12 months.
SoâŚHow Do mRNA Vaccines Work?
The mRNA carries the instructions to make a specific protein from the pathogen (virus, bacteria or other pathogen).
It is then encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (basically a suitcase made of fat particles).
Then this capsule is delivered into a cell, where the mRNA instructs our cells to make the Spike protein of the COVID virus.
Our bodies recognize that spike protein as foreign, and mount an attack on it with our immune system.
Why mRNA Vaccines are Such a Breakthrough
mRNA is very versatile.
The vaccines can be easily changed when viruses have variants because all we need to do is sequence the DNA of the new virus, and we can quickly learn the mRNA sequence which will make a protein that we can train our immune system to fight against.
Scientists can also easily adapt mRNA vaccines to other systems, like cancer and other deathly diseases.
These are many types of vaccines, and all have been carefully designed and tested to be optimal for the specific virus, bacteria or pathogen they are intended to treat.
Read more about the history of vaccines here.
The Simple Truth About Vaccines
When I look at all the biohacks Iâve tried over the years, the supplements, the fasting protocols, the cold plunges, the sleep trackers, none of them come close to the proven impact of vaccines.
154 million lives saved.
66 years of healthy life gained per person.
These arenât theoretical benefits or trending wellness claims.
This is documented, decades-long evidence of what actually works to extend human life.
Yet here I am in Portugal, struggling to get a simple flu and COVID vaccine because Iâm under 65 and theyâre not part of the national vaccination program for my age group.
Itâs frustrating, honestly.
We live in a time where people will spend hundreds of euros on longevity supplements with questionable evidence, invest in expensive biohacking devices, and meticulously track every metric of their health.
But the single most cost-effective longevity intervention isnât easily accessible to everyone who wants it.
Iâm actively working to get these vaccines because I understand what the data shows: vaccination is preventative medicine at its finest.
Itâs not about waiting until Iâm in a high-risk category.
Itâs about protecting myself and my community now.
The COVID vaccine confusion taught us an important lesson: clear communication matters.
The goal was protection from severe illness and death.
And it worked.
But that misunderstanding has had lasting consequences.
Itâs fueled vaccine hesitancy.
Itâs made people distrust the very interventions that have saved more lives than any other medical advancement in history.
My Challenge to the Longevity Community
If youâre serious about extending your lifespan and healthspan, start with the foundation: get vaccinated.
Check your vaccination status.
Get your boosters.
Donât wait until youâre in a high-risk group.
This is the biohack with the strongest evidence, the lowest effort, and the highest return on investment we have.
And if you canât easily access vaccines where you live, like me dealing with Portugalâs system, advocate for better access.
Push for policies that make preventative medicine available to everyone, not just the aging and the elderly.
The best longevity intervention isnât expensive.
It isnât complicated.
It isnât exclusive.
Itâs a vaccine.
And after 300 years of scientific advancement, billions of doses administered safely, and 154 million lives saved, we have the proof.
Now we just need people to trust the evidence.
Have Any Questions?
Drop them in the comments or DM me.
I read them all.
đ Book of the Week
The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo
Rating: â â â ââ
It really took me a long time to get into The Witches of El Paso, even though the main character and I share a name - Nena (although with different spelling).
The story follows Nena, a woman living on the border between the spiritual and the ordinary, both geographically, in El Paso, and emotionally, between her past and present selves.
The book weaves between two timelines: Nena as a young girl growing up in a deeply religious community, and Nena as an adult grappling with loss, motherhood, and the resurfacing of old powers she doesnât fully understand.
I struggled quite a bit with the shifting timelines, I found it hard to follow the transitions, and Iâm not entirely sure why. Something about the writing style made it difficult for me to stay grounded in each timeline.
That said, around 75% of the way through, the story finally clicked for me.
Only once Nena had her first real witchy experience in the convent, Marta channels her witch energy, and we reach the reunion with Rosa, Nenaâs daughter, I started to feel more connected to the plot and could follow the rhythm of the storytelling.
Overall, The Witches of El Paso is a layered novel that rewards patience, but for me, it never fully cast its spell.
âĄď¸ Check This Out
The oatmealâs take on AI art.
You know what, I agree.
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