BY Sonya Collins – Fortune
At 67 years old, Dr. Nir Barzilai looks about the same as, if not younger than, he did 10 years ago. It’s apparent in side-by-side photographs, and it’s what most people who know him say. Barzilai lives a healthy lifestyle. He exercises every day, eats right, and practices intermittent fasting.
He’s also been taking the diabetes drug metformin off label for 10 years. He has never been diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes—the conditions for which the drug is approved and prescribed—but takes it for a different off-label reason.
“We know that it targets aging,” said Barzilai, who is a professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and director of the American Federation for Aging Research.
“People on metformin have 30% lower rates of almost every kind of cancer. It delays cognitive decline. Even people with diabetes who are obese and have more disease to start with but are on metformin have lower mortality rates than people without diabetes who aren’t on the drug.”
