The Truth About Health and Longevity: Focusing on What Really Matters

2024-07-14 14:35:29

The other day, someone at my gym came up to me and lamented that he could spend almost every hour of his life implementing the many viral recommendations on health and longevity popular with internet influencers and podcasters, and you’d feel like you’re falling behind.

He referred to a complex and often contradictory menu “biohacks” (shortcuts to improve our biology, each lacking scientific rigor) and “protocols” (very specific areas of exercise, sleep and nutrition). In this era of the quest for eternal youth, there are supplements, green powders, cold drops, the supposed benefits of low-angle morning sunlight, continuous glucose monitoring for non-diabetics, box breathing, the supposed benefits of rapamycin (originally a drug. used in organ transplants that are being adapted for longevity) and numerous restrictive diets from avoiding seed oils to Be aware of the “hidden dangers” of fruit and vegetables, by avoiding almost everything except meat.

While the obsession with health and longevity has long haunted humanity, this latest version is fueled by an ecosystem where influencers and podcasts profit from our attention and pursuit of health through sponsorships that get from supplement companies , sleep trackers and other pseudoscientific wellness products. In 2016, the global supplement market It was 135,000 million dollars. Today he has shot up to $250 billion. That figure is expected to reach nearly $310 billion over the next four years.

Some of these interventions have limited uses, while others have limited uses, both absurd and downright harmful. It’s a shame that people waste their money and energy on these things, and even more so because The key to a longer and healthier life is not a mystery.

Research has long shown that five basic lifestyle behaviors are detrimental to health and longevity: exercise regularly, eat a nutritious diet, avoid smoking, limit alcohol consumption, and maintain meaningful relationships.

This is simple, a little boring and more difficult to make profitable than fad supplements, complicated theories and new gadgets, but it is what really works.

Regular exercise is one of the keys to longevity (Infobae production image)

For a basic 2017 study published in the journal Health Affairs, researchers analyzed data dating back to the 1990s from more than 14,000 American men and women aged 50 and older. They found that non-smokers in their 50s who drank alcohol moderately and were not obese could expect to live, on average, seven years longer than their peers who did not have these characteristics share with them. The average life expectancy of women with this lifestyle triad was 89 years. For men, it was almost 86 years. By tracking age-related disabilities, such as problems walking, bathing or getting out of bed, the researchers found that of those seven extra years, six usually got off without a disability.

The role of relationships in longevity was examined in a meta-analysis published in 2023 in the journal The Nature of Human Behavior which included more than two million adults. ​​​​The researchers found that at any age there is a 14 percent increased risk of premature death associated with loneliness and a 32 percent increased risk of premature death associated with social isolation.

Maintaining a relationship isn’t just about living longer, it’s also about living well. he A study of development in adults at Harvard more than 700 men followed starting in 1938, later incorporating their spouses and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the first group. Director and associate director of the study, Robert Waldinger y Mark Schultzexplained in The Atlantic last year that they reached “a simple and profound conclusion: good relationships lead to health and happiness.”

Still, the promise of the online health and longevity movement is overwhelming. Much of its appeal is a fantasy and a desire for control: if you follow all these routines and regimens and take all these supplements, you will live forever and never get old or sick. But accidents happen. Random cellular mutations also occur that trigger fatal cancers. And yet the fantasy of controlled longevity persists.

Over the last ten years, I have studied brilliantly and worked with some of the best athletes in the world. What makes a great professional or Olympic athlete is getting up at 5 am to take a cold nap and look at the sun. Rather, greatness comes from focusing on the fundamentals of the craft, executing those fundamentals with relentless consistency over years (if not decades), adopting the right mindset , and surround yourself with the right people. Genetics also helps.

Health concerns have increased dramatically in recent years. The vast amount of content on the internet about the search for perfect biomarkers and immortality has a lot to do with it. And it also creates an opposite problem: there is a real danger in focusing so much on extending the number of years we live that we can neglect life in those years. This is as true for a 50-year-old on Instagram as it is for a 16-year-old on TikTok.

So, perhaps the best protocol for living a good, long, full and productive life is to focus on the things that really matter and not stress about the rest. If life is fragile and short, you have no time to waste.

© The New York Times 2024