We came to Los Angeles on July 27, 2025, from Europe and will be here for a month. I did not expect that I would be spending a lot of my time dealing with my teeth, eyes, and ears.

I have been asking myself, “Are we as old as our oldest parts?” The answer is a combination, I think, of both the average and the specific. If you have a bad back or knees and cannot walk, you will end up aging quickly. We need exercise.

In general, I am in excellent shape, but that does not mean that everything is working well. So I am deciding to replace the old parts when they are no longer working well, to the extent possible.

Below you will read about my journey. I will report back on how successful I am in doing this.

New Eyes

I decided to have a cataract consultation at the Maloney-Shamie-Hura Vision Institute in Westwood, Los Angeles. My consultation took 2 1/2 hours and was covered by Medicare. I was so impressed. I saw three specialists and had seven precision tests.

https://www.maloneyshamievision.com/

Over the last several months, I have been studying the options for lenses. There are many choices, and they all involve some kind of trade-off. That means getting really in touch with what is important. Selecting a lens is a lifelong decision. For me, that meant not only thinking about my life now but also trying to think about my life in the future.

I could just have a single-focal-point lens, which would mean having just one focal point. If that was far, I would need glasses for intermediate (like looking at my computer monitor) or reading. Right now I have progressive glasses which allow me to see far, intermediate, and near, but frankly this does not work so well. I have separate glasses for working with my computer, and I take off my glasses to read.

There are multifocal lenses that allow you to see far, intermediate, and near, but they have some issues. I decided to use extended-depth-of-focus (EDOF) lenses. EDOF lenses extend the range of clear vision, especially for far and intermediate distances. They can be set for far and intermediate or for intermediate and near. You can also mix the two eyes. I am going for far and intermediate, hoping that I will still be able to read my iPad and phone. I will probably have to use reading glasses to read a book, but I have not read a physical book in years. I use my iPad and will be able to increase the font size.

I have heard that in addition to being able to see better (I can no longer see well out of my right eye), colors are supposed to be much more vivid.

At age 80, about half of people either need cataract surgery or have already had it.

https://www.myalcon.com/professional/cataract-surgery/iols/clareon-vivity/

New Ears

I know from my work in longevity science that most people should be using hearing aids after they reach their mid-50s. Certainly by 65, most people struggle with hearing words in a noisy environment. I know that I have this problem. The reason this is relevant for longevity is that, because of problems in hearing, people become less socially active as they age. Social activity is essential for a long, healthy life and, in particular, cognitive function.

Hearing loss → communication difficulty → withdrawal → isolation → emotional & cognitive effects.

I am pretty extroverted, as any of you who know me will attest, but I have found myself reluctant to go to restaurants with friends because so many of them are very noisy. Now I will not have to be concerned with that. The hearing aid that I have chosen, the Phonak Audéo Infinio Sphere (Infinio family), features the DEEPSONIC™ chip — a dedicated deep neural network (DNN) used for AI speech-vs-noise separation, active only when there is a lot of background noise. It creates a cone of silence around the conversation area. I once wanted to design something like this, and I called it the conversation peace. It processes 7.7 billion operations per second, analyzing about 22 million sound samples every second. There is a second chip that does the normal work of a hearing aid.

https://www.phonak.com/en-us/hearing-devices/hearing-aids/audeo-sphere

This hearing aid can handle streaming audio (like from the phone or computer) as well as spoken audio. It is really expensive (more than $7,000 for my setup), but I think it is a great investment.

When I was learning Hebrew, I found the most difficult part was hearing spoken speech. I could read and write pretty well, but when I tried to speak Hebrew to someone, I found that I did not understand them. I thought it was because of my lack of knowledge (vocabulary and grammar), but it was likely because many consonants (s, sh, t, f, ch) live in the frequency domain where I hear poorly. I am finding the same thing as I try to learn Italian. This, in fact, is one of the main motivators for my decision. The other came from using the AirPods Pro, which have a hearing-aid feature. I found that when I use it in that mode, all the sound seems richer to me. That is because I am hearing the higher frequencies and therefore hear the harmonics and overtones.

I get my unit next week, and I am excited to try it out. There is a pretty comprehensive app, and I can select different modes. For instance, I will want a mode that is perfect for my piano playing.

New Teeth

I had a major surprise last week. I went in to have a routine teeth cleaning only to discover that I had three molars that were extremely infected. I was put on antibiotics right away because two of these were close to my sinuses, and if the infection moved into my sinuses it could end up in my brain. I had no symptoms, which evidently is the downside of having a very robust immune system.

The process of extracting them was pretty interesting. It took three hours. I received bone grafts. My blood was used in a machine (a centrifuge) that separated the blood into red blood cells, a platelet-rich layer, and plasma. It is the middle layer that is important for this treatment — often called platelet-rich fibrin (PRF). A membrane was placed over the gum (where the tooth had been), and this material and bone are mixed. Somehow my natural stem cells will be stimulated by this mixture to turn into bone.

This will allow me to have dental implants that will be very strong. It is also expensive, but I figure I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If I don’t, I won’t have needed the money; if I do, I’ll be glad I invested in a strong mouth

The Rebuilding Avram Miller

No matter how much I exercise, how well I eat, and sleep, I will age.  Our objective should be to live better and longer.  Science will certainly help us live longer but it is up to us to a large extent to increase our health span by our actions.