As discussed at length here, aging is a natural, spontaneous, and progressive process. It happens to everyone simply as a byproduct of being alive. However, it can be somewhat counteracted and delayed if I am just aggressive enough with it.
My objective is to strike a decent balance between longevity and vitality (as unfortunately, longevity and vitality are sometimes at odds – for example, caloric restriction). I personally do not care about maximum life span extension as this comes with quality of life tradeoffs I am not willing to make (e.g., living a sheltered life, food obsession, etc.).
Said in other words, my objective is rather to live better than to live longer. If I can add a healthy decade or so to my life that would obviously be great too.
I employ a multitude of different strategies, each targeting one or more aspects of the aging process from a different angle. Each strategies employs a number of tactics.
Half of solving the longevity equation comes down to delaying (or avoiding) chronic disease that currently kill about 80% of people in industrialized nations.
Then there are a couple of “general strategies” aimed at prolonging health span.
- Hormone Optimization for Longevity
- Optimizing Metabolic Health
- Reducing the Activity of the mTOR Pathway
- Eliminating Senescent Cells
- Lowering Inflammation
- Maintaining Healthy Bones & Muscles
- Optimizing Organ Health
- Avoiding Toxins & Minimizing Infections
- Optimizing Mental Health
- What Genetic Tests Told Me About My Longevity
Biology is chaos and due to the interconnectedness of bodily processes, there is necessarily some overlap between both strategies as well as tactics. For example, decreasing the activity of the mTOR pathway or keeping hormones at youthful levels will also help with counteracting inflammation, neurodegeneration, atherosclerosis, and deterioration of the musculoskeletal system.
A word on prevention
Once centenarians get cancer or heart disease they die at about the same rate as normal mortals. The difference is that they get these diseases one to two decades later. Therefore, if I want to live longer and better than average, I have to delay the onset of these chronic diseases.
Unfortunately, most healthcare systems in industrialized nations are geared towards helping people when there is a problem but not to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. As Dr. Peter Attia nicely put it, we live in a sick-care system but not so much a system of health care. In most modern sick care systems only about 1-3% of the total budget is spent on prevention.
Unlike with a car, I cannot replace the most crucial, shortest-half-life parts of my body such as the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, or the musculoskeletal system. Deleterious changes start accumulating long before they become evident. Therefore, ideally, treatment is started at the pre-pre-disease state.
Longevity is similar to investing. For maximum gains, I need to start as early as possible. Analogously, deleterious changes accumulate long (decades) before they become clinically evident and relevant. Therefore, longevity is largely about prevention. And almost by definition, prevention entails intervention.
However, many people I know are against intervening, which many assume is “bad” per se. Specifically, everything synthetic (pharmaceutical) has a connotation of “evil” (whereas “herbal” stuff usually does not).
Given intervention is done prudently, I argue that an individual who intervenes smartly is overall net better off than someone who does not use the fruits of modern medicine at all. I discuss this and other guiding principles in more detail here.
Everything has risks and side effects but so has not doing anything at all.
For example, let’s consider cardiovascular disease, which will roughly kill half of us. Atherosclerosis is a systemic condition of the arterial system and the first signs of it (fatty streaks) appear already in the first decade of life. It is unavoidable and progressive in everyone. Without intervention, I and everyone I know and love will get it eventually no matter how healthy they seem to be on the outside.
However, the rate of its progression can be slowed drastically by early intervention (prevention). And as so often, the risk of doing something must be weighed against the risk of doing nothing.
My Longevity Protocol (Long & Technical Version)
This article is part of a much larger post describing my complete longevity blueprint. For my full protocol, read here.
Longevity Protocols
- My General Longevity Framework
- My Most Likely Cause of Death – My Protocol for Fighting Atherosclerosis
- The Ultimate Frontier – My Protocol for Fighting Cancer
- My Protocol for Fighting Dementia – What I Do To Keep Brain Health Optimal
- My Approach to Hormone Optimization for Longevity
- Crucially Important & Underrated – My Protocol for Optimizing Metabolic Health
- What Is All the Fuss About mTOR?! – Why (and How) I Reduce the Activity of the mTOR Pathway
- Eliminating Zombie Cells – My Protocol for Fighting Senescent Cells
- Burning to Death – My Protocol for Lowering Inflammation
- My Physical Fitness Protocol
- My Protocol For Optimizing Organ Health
- Avoiding Toxins & Minimizing Infections
- My Protocol For Optimizing Mental Health
- What Genetic Tests Told Me About My Longevity
- Side Effects of My Longevity Protocol
Disclaimer
The content on this website represents the opinion and personal experience of the author and does not constitute medical advice. The author does not endorse the use of supplements, pharmaceutical drugs, or hormones without a doctor’s supervision. The content presented is exclusively for informational and entertainment purposes. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on the internet.