2024-03-19 13:15:25
A short distance from the main train station, there is a cafe with a style that would fit more in sunny California or Bali. You don’t notice it from the outside because you have to go through a narrow passage first. The only hint is a sign with the name Healthy Longevity Café and a logo familiar to Star Trek fans. On the green background is Mr. Spock’s greeting: “Live long and prosper.” And that’s what this cafe is all about.
The atmosphere of the cafe is pleasant. It’s a small jungle where you don’t have to worry about a monkey jumping on your neck. On the contrary, the interior full of plants is intended to help visitors calm their minds and relax. In addition, there is circadian lighting in the Healthy Longevity Café premises, which changes during the day and thus supports the natural biological rhythms of a person.
“At first, seventy to eighty percent of our customers were tourists. Now it’s fifty to fifty,” says manager Zdeněk Wimmer, who was at the birth of the timeless cafe. In essence, it is a startup project whose goal is to bring the field of longevity, i.e. the extension of the active age of human life, closer to the wider public.
Menu according to longevity experts
Everything you eat in a cafe will have some positive effect on your health. To stimulate the body, they have Booster coffee, i.e. espresso with oat milk, MCT oil, clarified butter, medicinal chaga mushroom and cinnamon. Someone might raise an eyebrow at this kind of coffee preparation, but biohackers will not be surprised, but rather pleased.
The menu, which nutritionists helped put together, also features several superfood-packed lattes. For example, Green Matcha Latte, whose main ingredient is Japanese matcha, known for its high concentration of antioxidants that support the immune system and protect against aging.
Beetroot Cacao Latte, on the other hand, contains beetroot powder, which is rich in nitrogen and iron, which supports blood health and the cardiovascular system. However, the customer can have special supplements added to the drinks according to what his body needs. Whether to “kick” or calm down.
Although it is a cafe, it also functions as a restaurant. For lunch, he offers a variety of Buddha bowls (a dish also known as the Buddha bowl or bowl of abundance). Among other superfoods, this dish includes kimchi. The traditional Korean side dish is rich in probiotics, which nourish the intestinal microbiome and thus support immunity and digestion.
They do not serve alcohol in the cafe. The exception is the wines from the Greek island of Ikaria, which is known for its inhabitants living to a very old age. If you want to know more about this island and the wine, watch the documentary How to Live to be 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix.
What is your biological age?
The cafe is only a fraction of what Czech entrepreneur and popularizer of scientific progress Petr Šrámek stands for. His Longevitytech.fund invests in the world’s best start-ups that focus on longevity. In addition to the cafe in the Czech Republic, he runs the Healthy Longevity Clinic, where experts in preventive medicine work. However, only really mobile clients can afford the services there, the prices of complete examinations are in the order of hundreds of thousands of crowns. Healthy Longevity Café offers more affordable diagnostic examinations. For many, even those will be a somewhat larger investment.
On the first floor of the cafe, there is a Longevity Lab, where those interested can find out their true biological age, genetic predispositions, stress level, and what nutrients and supplements their body really needs. The nutritional and medical team guides the applicant through the entire process from the initial consultation to the final evaluation of the change at the end of the program.
“Our team helps everyone individually set up a healthier lifestyle. Ideally, the program should work for those who are not doing much for themselves yet, but people who are already working on their health come and are interested in what more they can do for themselves, ” says Wimmer. This is also confirmed by nutritional therapist Ivana Pražanová, who also works at the Thomayer Hospital. According to her, mainly motivated individuals are interested in consultations and diagnostic tests at the Longevity Lab.
Various accessories are also associated with longevity. However, there is no universal recipe. We all need something different. It is clearly useful to know that our body processes vitamin D or a specific food more poorly.
Exercise in a cafe
On the first floor of the café, interested parties can also try the Carol bike, a modern exercise bike controlled by artificial intelligence. “During ten minutes of exercise, which includes two short sprints of twenty seconds each, you will achieve the same results as forty-five minutes of moderate intensity exercise,” says the manager of the cafe, noting that they have customers who come to exercise regularly. You don’t even sweat during such sports, so you don’t need to take a shower after exercising.
There are certainly many people who may think that the concept of such a cafe already works somewhere abroad and has been transferred to the Czech Republic, but the opposite is true. Healthy Longevity Café is a project that Petr Šrámek is testing in Prague and plans to export it to Florida, where the Czech entrepreneur also operates. You can’t live forever, but you can live longer and healthier.