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, cold plunges, the supposed benefits of low-angle morning sunlight, continuous glucose monitors for non-diabetics, box breathing, the proposed benefits of rapamycin (a drug originally used in organ transplants being adapted for longevity), and countless restrictive diets that range from avoiding seed oils to becoming aware of the “hidden dangers” in fruits and vegetables to shunning nearly everything but meat.
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 $135 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 has long shown 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 published 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 that 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 in the journal 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 followed over 700 men 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 that 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 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 has 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” and “Master of Change,” and a co-founder of the newsletter “The Growth Equation.”
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