Stay Young 🌷
Three Things #139: October 6, 2024
Bryan Johnson calls it “don’t die.” I prefer “stay young” since the thought of immortality is less appealing to me, but it amounts to the same thing: there are specific things you can do today to increase your overall wellbeing and quality of life—and, yes, to increase your lifespan too.
Like Bryan I’m in my forties. I’m not getting any younger, but I feel healthier, stronger, and more energetic than ever. With a few notable exceptions (such as alcohol tolerance), I don’t feel my age, at least not yet. Last week, on three separate occasions, three different people guessed my age at 27. That made me laugh, and maybe my interlocutors were trying to flatter me, but I’m beginning to get the feeling that I might be on to something. I’m not sure exactly what that something is, but by sharing here what’s working for me I’m hoping we can figure it out together.
Thing #1: What Not to Do 🙅♂️
Let’s start with the things I don’t do. The short answer is: trust your instinct, and don’t do anything that feels too uncomfortable or too extreme. There’s a ridiculous amount of bad science, misinformation, and disinformation out there related to health, health products and services, and health interventions. As a result it can be dangerous if you try things without understanding the potential consequences, so when in doubt, abstain.
It’s also critically important to understand that what works well for one person could cause serious harm to another. All bodies are different and have different needs. I have friends—people I love, trust, and respect—who swear by a carnivorous diet. They swear that removing plants and vegetables from their diet brought serious diseases and conditions under control. Equally, I have many friends who swear by their vegan diets. If two sets of behaviors that are perfectly mutually exclusive work equally well for two different groups of people, by their own account, then this pretty much totally disproves the idea that health and wellness are one-size-fits-all. Quite the contrary. Consider this when you hear about the next miracle diet or fitness regime.
Speaking of personal choice, to be a little more specific, I’m personally not into nootropics or other supplements. Again: I have friends who take dozens of these every day and swear by them, but I prefer to keep things simple. I use some basic supplements including protein, vitamin D, and iron, and occasionally melatonin for sleep, and not much else. In general, my approach is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! In particular I’m conscious of becoming a member of the worried well, i.e., someone who’s generally healthy but imagines that I’m on the verge of becoming ill if not for this or that intervention.
Most of all, I try not to overly worry about the little things that are hard to control. I have a number of friends who are obsessed with avoiding seed oils, sunscreen, and/or microplastics—so much so that conversations on these topics often turn into heated, multi-day debates in some of the chat groups I’m a part of. My attitude is, You do you. If you care a lot about something and it works for you, great. But don’t try to control absolutely everything, because it’ll just cause unnecessary stress and anxiety.
Most importantly of all, pick one thing to work on at a time. Pick the one or two low hanging fruit that’ll have the biggest impact, and save the micro-optimizations for later. For me, the things I discuss below are much more impactful than seed oils, sunscreen, or microplastics. (I might eventually get to those things once I’ve got the big things under control.)
Another reason it’s important to work on one thing at a time is that it allows you to take the scientific approach: isolate variables and don’t change too many things at once, or too suddenly. If you change one thing and track the impact of that change for a few days or weeks, you have a pretty good sense of whether it’s working.
Speaking of tracking changes: this, too, is difficult. The simple truth is that we don’t yet have good ways to monitor many aspects of our health and wellness. Fitness trackers, sleep trackers, etc. help somewhat, but the metrics from different devices vary widely and they’re generally not very accurate, so don’t put too much stock in the results they produce. For this reason it’s better to track longitudinal results from a single device (i.e., see how the numbers change over time in relative terms).
I don’t recommend changing your diet and your sleep schedule and adding a new workout and meditation all at once. You may be tempted to take a “big bang” approach to health, and I understand the appeal of bundling big changes and beneficial activities. But you won’t know the impact of a single intervention without isolating those variables and changing one thing at a time.
Be patient. It generally takes weeks to months to fully see the impact of a big change. Health is a lifetime pursuit. Don’t rush it.
Thing #2: The Big Three 📌
Enough about what not to do, let’s talk about what does work. I’m currently focused on three things, and as far as I can tell, those three things seem to make all the difference in the world.
Keep in mind that I’m not a fitness guru, not even close. For most of my life I didn’t do any of these things, and for most of my life I wasn’t very healthy. My efforts to improve my health are pretty recent! I’ve gradually improved these things, and by extension my overall health. These things might work for you, too. (If you want advice from an expert, I recommend starting with Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint Protocol.)
The first of the Big Three is exercise. You could spend a lifetime developing the perfect cross training regimen, balancing aerobic and anaerobic exercise, targeting the right heart rate zones, working on strength, endurance, and flexibility, etc. Or you could just start exercising imperfectly.
In my opinion it doesn’t matter that much what form of exercise you do. The key thing is to spend around one active hour most days. That’s it! This might mean a brisk walk in the morning, or after dinner, or while in meetings. It might be jogging, yoga, tennis, or basketball. The main thing here is regularity. The point is to elevate your heart rate and put a little positive stress on your body every day.
I began exercising daily about ten years ago and it’s made a huge difference. My energy level is much higher than it used to be, and on days when I can’t exercise for whatever reason, my energy level dips. I start to feel my body deteriorating after just two or three days without exercise, so I prioritize working out while traveling, too.
This also allows me to work more productively! The most surprising thing for me about physical exercise is how it increases your mental energy, acuity, and focus, as well as your overall mood. It doesn’t matter how bad I’m feeling at the start of a workout. After an hour of running or lifting weights, I always feel much better. And I’m better able to focus on work after a workout.
The second of the Big Three is diet. As with everything else discussed here, it’s anything but one-size-fits-all. About the only universal advice I can offer is: eat in moderation, relative to your activity level. Focus on high quality protein first; everything else is secondary, and in particular, limit sugar. Get some veggies, and stay hydrated. But I can say confidently that improving your diet can and will have a massive impact on your overall wellness, happiness, and energy level. I’m consistently amazed how good I feel the day after I’ve eaten well.
This is particularly challenging for Americans since our food supply chain is apocalyptic. No one I know seems able to put their finger on precisely what or where the problem is, but I know from decades of personal experience that the more meals I prepare myself, the better I feel, and the more I eat out, the worse I feel. I also eat better and feel better when I’m abroad, especially in Europe. The problem with American food is some combination of too much sugar and empty calories, bad oils, and just generally low quality ingredients produced by an industrial food supply chain.
Meal planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. is a lot of work, and it can feel wasteful if you’re doing it for yourself rather than for a family. Unless you can afford a private chef, however, there really is no other way to eat fresh, healthy, clean food, at least not in this country. Recently I began cooking one healthy, hearty meal at home every day and I cannot overemphasize what a difference it’s made to my overall health and energy level.
The third of the Big Three is sleep. In many ways, sleep is the Final Boss of health. It’s something that everyone I know struggles with. If you want to be horrified, read the statistics on how much the average American sleeps. The bravado in Silicon Valley and Wall Street surrounding sleeping as few hours as possible doesn’t help. We’re literally taking years off our lives with this behavior.
As a society we’ve begun to understand a lot of the other factors that are contributing to our overall sorry state of health, such as sedentary lifestyles, high sugar diets, socioeconomic factors, and poor access to quality healthcare. We’ve only just begun to recognize that sleep is as big of a problem, and could have just as big of an impact on overall public health, as these other bogeymen.
Fixing your sleep is theoretically simple, and it entails a very short list of easy behaviors. Go to bed earlier and stay in bed longer. Filter blue light, limit light exposure overall, and don’t use electronic devices in the bedroom. Wind down an hour before bedtime with something like a book. Sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Eat your last meal a few hours before bedtime.
The problem is, these behaviors are extraordinarily difficult to commit to and to maintain. Work, travel, and any semblance of a social life make them borderline impossible. So does having kids. And I’m not sure I know anyone who actually doesn’t bring their phone to bed with them! On the rare occasions when I’m able to follow all or even most of this advice, I sleep like a charm. And sleep is probably the single biggest factor in my overall feeling of wellbeing. When I haven’t slept well, I feel terrible the next day regardless of diet and exercise. When I’m sleeping well, everything else just seems easy and bearable.
There are no shortcuts or cheat codes here. If you want to be healthy you need to work hard to make changes and improve your lifestyle, and like anything else, this requires prioritizing it and trading off other things. It might require training friends, colleagues, and family members to respect your sleep schedule and declining invitations to late dinners and parties. It might require traveling less to reduce jet lag and its effects. It might require sitting your kids down and explaining to them why sleep is so important, and why you as a family value it so much. Bryan Johnson is right when he says that the way to improve sleep is to reframe your identity as a “professional sleeper.”
My advice? Sleep well and the rest will follow.
Thing #3: Everything Else 🗃️
What other things am I talking about?
Honestly, if you’ve gotten this far, you can stop here and you’ll already be healthier than 99% of people, and you’ll be healthier than you’ve ever been before. Of course there’s always more to work on, and holistic wellbeing requires a more complete approach to health. It’s something that’s never really finished. It’s a lifetime pursuit.
Keep in mind that the “other things” here are even less universal than the previous advice, so take these with a grain of salt. More than anything, the point is that overall health and wellbeing requires a holistic, multifaceted approach that touches upon every area of your life. There have been periods of my life when I was exceptionally healthy physically, but not socially, and at times the opposite has also been true.
In my experience the goal here should be balance! In other words, it’s much better to be reasonably healthy across each dimension of health rather than being super healthy in some ways but super unhealthy in others. Why? Because the areas of poor health will drag you down and, ultimately, kill you. Here are some of the other areas I’ve focused on, in addition to the Big Three discussed above.
Hydration: I touched upon this above when talking about diet, but it’s worth mentioning again. I’m continually shocked by how little water most people drink, and by how many people only consume fluids with caffeine, sugar, or worse. I recommend buying a good water bottle and keeping it by your side at all times. Aim to empty it 2-3x per day. You should continually be drinking water, and you should need to pee at least once every two hours, if not once per hour. Back off a little in the 2-3 hours before bed. You’ll be amazed at what a difference hydration makes, especially at times when you’re more likely to be dehydrated: first thing in the morning, when traveling, and around a workout.
Light: Light is the single biggest, most important factor that impacts our internal clock. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get some light exposure early in the day, ideally shortly after you wake up: ideally outdoor, natural light. By the same token, it’s really important to start reducing light exposure in the hours leading up to bedtime. Filtering blue light late in the day helps; I know people who swear by blue light filtering glasses. I especially notice the impact of light when I travel. I can more or less completely avoid jetlag with lots of light exposure at the right time of day. Don’t wear sunglasses your first couple of days in a new timezone!
Social Interaction: No man is an island. I’ve done personal wellness retreats where I stayed in a cabin in the woods by myself and ate well, exercised, meditated, focused, and got a lot done: in other words, I was healthy by every other metric than social. After about two days, I begin to go absolutely crazy for human interaction, and virtual interaction doesn’t cut it. Everyone has a different ideal level of social engagement. Find yours, and make sure you have ample quality face time with friends, colleagues, and family members. If you’re an introvert like me, also make sure that you have plenty of time alone to recharge.
Nature: In the same way that we need contact with other humans to be happy and healthy, we also need contact with nature (and time away from the Internet). This can come in many forms. For many of us, it might just be a walk around the neighborhood or a local park. It could be a hike, a trek, a ski trip, or the beach. It’s important that this “touching grass” happen as often as possible, ideally every day and in any case no less often than once a week. Try to really go and immerse yourself in nature. It does wonders for stimulating the imagination, promoting creativity, and helping you work through hard problems The Japanese got it right when they came up with the idea of forest bathing. There’s something truly relaxing and calming about immersing yourself in nature, and feeling small.
Mental Health: This is another huge category that could easily fill a book. The best advice I can give on this topic, and what’s worked best for me, is the advice the Buddha gave. Spend some time reflecting on all of the things in your life that you spend mental energy on. Pay particular attention to your frame of mind, your conduct, your speech, your intentions, your livelihood, your degree of mindfulness, etc. Understand that, no matter what, you won’t achieve a degree of mental restfulness or wellbeing, and, therefore, that you can’t achieve complete health, without getting these things in order, too. This, too, is the pursuit of a lifetime.
I encourage you to put as many of these practices in place as you feel comfortable with, and I encourage you to gradually increase them as time and energy allow. You’ll need to experiment to figure out what works best, and in what doses. It’s a self-reinforcing, upward spiral: the more of them you do, the healthier you become, and the more energy and happiness you’ll have to work on the others. If you engage in even a subset of these things, know that you’ll already be healthier than most people ever will be, and that you’re on the right track to staying young.