Place emotional health as a foundational priority, potentially even above other longevity tactics, because without it, the benefits of other interventions may be diminished or irrelevant.
Prioritize improving various aspects of healthspan (physical, cognitive, emotional, relationships) as this approach is believed to achieve three-quarters of the benefits towards optimizing lifespan, even without directly targeting specific diseases.
Define a ‘centenarian decathlon’ – a list of physical activities and daily living tasks you want to be able to perform at the end of your life – and train consistently for those specific goals.
Break down your centenarian decathlon goals into specific physical requirements, assess your current performance against these, and proactively increase your current performance to counteract predicted age-related decline and meet future targets.
Prioritize exercise as the most impactful intervention for improving both lifespan and healthspan, second only to addressing severe emotional health issues.
Develop foundational stability, including motor control, coordination, force dissipation/reception, and balance, as these are crucial for functional movement and often deficient.
Build and maintain strength and power, recognizing that power declines quickly with age but is essential for functional movement.
Train for cardiorespiratory fitness by developing both aerobic efficiency (maximum fat oxidation/all-day pace) and VO2 max (peak aerobic output).
Prioritize maintaining proper energy balance (total caloric intake) as the single most important nutritional factor for overall health.
Ensure adequate protein intake, aiming for approximately 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight daily, as protein requirements are less flexible than carbohydrates or fats and increase with age.
Actively prevent metabolic diseases (like fatty liver, type 2 diabetes) as they significantly amplify the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Reduce the number of ApoB particles in your body to prevent atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, as higher ApoB levels increase the risk of plaque formation in artery walls.
Protect your endothelium by avoiding smoking, managing blood pressure, and addressing metabolic conditions like insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, and type 2 diabetes.
Prioritize adequate sleep, as even short-term deprivation severely impairs cognition, physical performance, metabolic health (e.g., insulin resistance), and appetite.
Avoid smoking and prevent obesity to reduce your risk of developing many types of cancer.
Implement interventions that reduce the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (e.g., better metabolic health, lower ApoB, lower blood pressure, not smoking) to also lower your risk of dementia.
Build cognitive and movement reserves to increase resilience against the effects of neurodegenerative conditions.
Adopt a Medicine 3.0 approach, focusing on preventing chronic disease early and aggressively, and tailoring therapies to individuals, to reduce the need for Medicine 2.0 interventions later in life.
If feeling overwhelmed by longevity information, choose one area (e.g., sleep) where you feel confident you can achieve success and start there.
Begin taking steps towards health and longevity at any age, as it is never too late to make improvements.
Assess your nutritional state by evaluating body fat (subcutaneous, visceral), muscle mass, and metabolic health (glucose disposal) to determine if you are overnourished, undernourished, adequately muscled, or metabolically unhealthy.
If you are overnourished (overweight or obese), focus on strategies to reduce your overall caloric intake.
Reduce caloric intake directly by consciously eating less food overall, regardless of specific food types or timing.
Implement dietary restriction by removing specific foods or food groups from your diet, understanding that greater restriction tends to lead to more effective caloric reduction.
Practice time-restricted eating by limiting your eating window, as a narrower window increases the likelihood of achieving a caloric deficit.
Establish a consistent sleep schedule by going to bed and waking up at the same time daily.
Optimize your sleep environment by making your bedroom as dark and cold as possible.
Avoid stimulating or upsetting activities like work and social media for two hours before bedtime.
Refrain from eating or consuming alcohol for three hours before going to bed to improve sleep quality.
View drugs and supplements as tools to be used strategically, rather than as universal solutions or things to be entirely avoided.
Before taking any exogenous molecule (drug or supplement), clearly define whether its purpose is to lengthen lifespan or improve a specific aspect of healthspan (physical, cognitive, emotional health).
Research the safety and efficacy data for any drug or supplement, prioritizing human data and assessing the relevance of animal studies.
For supplements, investigate the purity and accuracy of labeling to ensure the product contains what it claims and is free of unwanted substances.
Apply a rigorous filter of questions (purpose, safety, efficacy, purity) to every drug or supplement before deciding to use it.
Actively work on improving emotional health, as it can improve with age, unlike physical and cognitive health which predictably decline.
Recognize that your emotional health, despite past experiences, is modifiable and can be actively improved.
Actively manage stress, cultivate happiness, and foster strong relationships, as these factors are epidemiologically linked to a longer lifespan.
Engage in early and aggressive screening for cancer to detect it at stages where treatment is more effective.
Reduce inflammation through broad lifestyle interventions, specifically focusing on nutrition, sleep, and exercise.
Consider additional factors like pollution, radical temperature exposure, and accident avoidance as part of a comprehensive longevity strategy.
If starting a health regimen later in life, begin slowly, make concessions, and prioritize injury prevention.
When discussing longevity, clarify the definition being used to ensure shared understanding.
Refer to the detailed show notes for deeper dives into topics covered in the podcast.
Share this specific podcast episode with friends new to longevity topics as a foundational introduction.
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