
If This Doesn't Work, I'm Screwed
Posted July 10, 2026
James Altucher
Here's something I don't tell many people.
My father had glaucoma. So did my uncle. My grandmother. My great-grandmother. Probably her mother too, back far enough that nobody bothered writing it down.
Glaucoma is what happens when the eye ages badly. It takes your vision slowly and it never gives it back. Once you lose it, it's gone. Forever. That's the one thing everybody in medicine agrees on.
Last time I got tested, they had to run it twice. It was close. I'm now older than every relative of mine was when they first got it. Maybe I dodged it. Maybe I'm just running late.
So when David Sinclair came on my podcast and said he's about to reverse aging in a human eye, I'm not listening as a podcast host.
I'm listening as a guy who expects to go blind.
We first talked back in 2019, when his book Lifespan came out. That book changed how I live. I started taking supplements. I got serious about intermittent fasting. I started guarding my sleep like it was money.
And every time David came on the show after that, I asked the same question—when does aging actually reverse? When does this stop being a mouse thing and become a me thing?
This time he had an answer.
But before I go there, a quick investor’s note:
The bigger idea
Glaucoma is a symptom. David says the real disease is the aging underneath it, and the same goes for Alzheimer's, ALS, heart disease.
A young body fights those off. An old one can't. So make the tissue young again and let the body cure itself.
And when you do, it’s a miracle.
David said they took old mice with dementia and rewound their brains, and the mice started remembering things from their youth.
The memories were never erased. They were just locked in a room the old brain couldn't open.
When can I get it
Three to four years for the eye, if the FDA fast-tracks it. Liver is close. Then lungs, kidneys, joints. The dream is a pill you swallow instead of an injection.
And his lab has already moved past Yamanaka factors—an AI-designed molecule that does the same rewind, cheaper and safer, with a first human maybe in 2026.
Why this one hit me
I'm going to get glaucoma. Statistically I have no business dodging it.
My only real hope is that David fixes the thing that fixes it before it comes for me.
He told me to come see the lab in Boston. I'm going. And I'll have him back the day the trial reads out.
In the meantime, go listen to the full podcast. We even talk about all of the supplements I’m taking.