Sobremesa(health) - Longevity: The Brain Lie
Somewhere between 7am runs, cold plunges and supplement stacks worth half your monthly rent, a billion-dollar industry made you a seductive promise: live longer, perform better, age backwards.
Bryan Johnson is spending $2 million a year and betting on algorithms to prove it's possible.
This industry borrowed a shiny word from science and serious experts, longevity, and turned it into an obsession. Today it's one of the most controversial words in health: worn thin by fear-mongering protocols and gurus with large microphones but few credentials, selling products that never had to survive contact with scientific evidence before hitting your inbox.
So serious experts have quietly started avoiding the word altogether, handing it over to those far less careful with it.
Which is a problem. Because underneath all the noise sits a real scientific question, an inconvenient reality the industry has every incentive to keep quiet: age is the single largest risk factor for cognitive decline. Buying extra decades for your body means nothing if your mind fails to make the trip.
The things that actually protect an aging brain? Unglamorous, nearly free, and impossible to package into a subscription box: blood pressure, sleep, hearing, movement, quality relationships, things most of us already know, but modern life makes quietly impossible to prioritise. None of that shifts units at €300 a month, which may explain the silence.
Our next guest at Sobremesa(health) doesn't stay quiet about it - he publishes on it in The Lancet.
Dr. Bryan Strange (yes, a neuroscientist called Dr. Strange) directs the Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and is one of the lead researchers of the Vallecas Project, tracking 1,200 healthy older adults year after year to detect the earliest signs of dementia long before symptoms appear. He also studies the opposite tail: superagers, octogenarians who retain the memory of people thirty years younger.
This edition of Sobremesa(health) sits where neuroscience, aging and the business of longevity meet. Expect to tackle questions like:
Why did a legitimate scientific concept become a punchline, and who moved into the space experts left empty?
Are superagers statistical anomalies, or do they hold a secret the rest of us can copy?
Is a longer life still a good deal if your mind doesn't come along for the ride?
Madrid, 23rd September.
🍷 The ticket includes 2 drinks and light snacks.
💡 Refund policy: Refunds are not available. If you choose not to come, you're welcome to sell your ticket in the Sobremesa(health) group or to a friend, just send us a quick message at +34 665 39 92 36 to let us know.