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THE KEY TO LONGEVITY IS BORING  
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Brad Stulberg
July 11, 2024
New York Times
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_ It follows from reputable studies of longevity that the best
protocol for living a good, long, fulfilled and productive life is to
focus on nailing what actually matters, and then not stress about the
rest _

Fruit, by marcia-oc (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

The other day, someone at my gym approached me and lamented that he
could spend nearly every waking hour of his life executing the
countless viral health and longevity recommendations popularized by
internet influencers and podcast hosts, and he’d still feel that he
is falling behind.

He was alluding to a complicated and often contradictory menu of
“biohacks” (shortcuts for improving our biology, all of which lack
scientific rigor) and “protocols” (highly specific regimens for
exercise, sleep and nutrition). In this era’s search for eternal
youth, there are supplements, green powders
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plunges [[link removed]], the supposed
benefits of low-angle morning sunlight
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glucose monitors [[link removed]] for
non-diabetics, box breathing
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benefits of rapamycin
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drug originally used in organ transplants being adapted for
longevity), and countless restrictive diets that range from avoiding
seed oils
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becoming aware of the “hidden dangers” in fruits and vegetables
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shunning nearly everything but meat
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While obsessions with health and longevity have long dogged humanity,
this latest version is intensified by an ecosystem in which
influencers and podcasters profit from our attention and quest for
health by getting sponsorships from supplement companies, sleep
trackers and other pseudoscientific wellness products. In 2016 the
global supplement market amounted to
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billion. Today it’s ballooned to $250 billion. That figure is
projected to hit nearly $310 billion within the next four years.

Some of these interventions have limited uses, while others range from
the absurd to the truly harmful. It’s a shame that people are
spending their money and energy on such things — even more so
because the key to a longer, healthier life is no mystery.

Research [[link removed]] has
long shown [[link removed]] that health and
longevity come down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors:
exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes,
limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.

This stuff is simple, somewhat boring and harder to make money off of
than trendy supplements, complex-sounding theories and new gadgets —
but it’s what actually works.

For a landmark 2017 study
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in the journal Health Affairs, researchers analyzed data dating back
to the 1990s of more than 14,000 American men and women starting at
the age of 50. They found
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50-year-old nonsmokers who drank alcohol in moderation and who were
not obese could expect to live, on average, seven years longer than
their peers who did not share these traits. The average life
expectancy for women living this trio of lifestyle behaviors was just
shy of 89 years. For men, it was nearly 86 years. By tracking
disabilities associated with aging, such as_ _trouble walking,
bathing and getting out of bed, researchers found that of those seven
additional years, six were typically disability-free.

The role of relationships in longevity was examined in a 2023
meta-analysis published
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Nature Human Behavior that included more than two million adults.
Researchers found that at any given age, there is a 14 percent higher
risk of dying early associated with loneliness and a 32 percent higher
risk of dying early associated with social isolation.

Maintaining relationships is not only about living longer, but also
about living well. The Harvard Study of Adult Development
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beginning in 1938, later incorporating their spouses, and, more
recently, over 1,300 descendants of the first group. The study’s
director and associate director, Robert Waldinger and Marc
Schulz, explained in The Atlantic last year
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they came to a “simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships
lead to health and happiness.”

Still, the dangled promises of the internet health and longevity
movement are tempting. A large part of its appeal is the fantasy of,
and desire for, control: If you just do all of these routines and
regimens and take all these supplements, then you’ll live forever
and never grow old or become ill. But accidents happen. So, too, do
random cell mutations that precipitate fatal cancers. And yet the
fantasy of controlled longevity persists.

Over the last decade, I have studied
[[link removed]] excellence, and I’ve worked
with some of the world’s best performers in the process. What makes
a professional athlete or an Olympian great is not waking up at 5 a.m.
to cold plunge and gaze at the sun. Rather, greatness is a result of
focusing on the fundamentals of a respective craft, executing those
fundamentals with relentless consistency for years (if not decades),
adopting the right mind-sets, and surrounding yourself with the right
people. The right genetics also help.

Health anxiety
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risen greatly over the last few decades. The deluge of online content
about chasing perfect biomarkers and immortality plays a role in that.
And it also offers a contradictory problem: There is a real danger in
focusing so much on extending the number of years in our lives that we
neglect to focus on the life in those years. This is as true for the
50-year-old on Instagram as it is for a 16-year-old on TikTok.

It follows that perhaps the best protocol for living a good, long,
fulfilled and productive life is to focus on nailing what actually
matters, and then not stress about the rest. If your concern is that
life is fragile and short, you simply don’t have time to waste.

_Brad Stulberg is a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of
Michigan Graduate School of Public Health, the author of “The
Practice of Groundedness”
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newsletter “The Growth Equation
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