6 Lifestyle Factors To Measurably Reduce Biological Age
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Julie Gibson Clark competes on a global leaderboard of people actively fighting aging (including billionaire Bryan Johnson, who is famously very focused on such). She’s currently ahead of him on that leaderboard, so what’s she doing?
Top tips
We’ll not keep the six factors a mystery; they are:
- Exercise: her weekly exercise includes VO2 Max training, strength training, balance work, and low-intensity cardio. She exercises outdoors on Saturdays and takes rest days on Fridays and Sundays.
- Diet: she follows a 16-hour intermittent fasting schedule (eating between 09:00–17:00), consumes a clean omnivore diet with an emphasis on vegetables and adequate protein, and avoids junk food.
- Brain: she meditates for 20 minutes daily, prioritizes mental health, and ensures sufficient quality sleep, helped by morning sunlight exposure and time in nature.
- Hormesis: she engages in 20-minute sauna sessions followed by cold showers four times per week to support recovery and longevity.
- Supplements: she takes longevity supplements and bioidentical hormones to optimize her health and aging process.
- Testing: she regularly monitors her biological age and health markers through various tests, including DEXA scans, VO2 Max tests, lipid panels, and epigenetic aging clocks, allowing her to adjust her routine accordingly.
For more on all of these, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
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Peaches vs Plums – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing peaches to plums, we picked the peaches.
Why?
Both are great! But there is a clear winner out of these two botanically-similar fruits:
In terms of macronutrients they are very similar. Peaches have slightly more protein and plums have slightly more carbs, but the numbers are close enough to make no meaningful difference; they’re both mostly water.
They’re also not too far from each other in the category of vitamins; peaches have more of vitamins B2, B3, B5, E, and choline, while plums have more of vitamins B1, B6, B9, C, and K. They’re equal on vitamin A, by the way, and the vitamins they do differ in, differ by around the same margins, so this category is a clear tie.
When it comes to minerals, however, peaches win easily with more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. The two fruits are equal on calcium, and plum is not higher in any minerals.
While they already won easily because of the mineral situation, it should be noted that peaches also have the lower glycemic index. But honestly, plums are fine too; peaches are just even lower.
So: enjoy both, but if you’re going to pick one, peaches boast the most!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer
- Apricots vs Peaches – Which is Healthier?
- Dried Apricots vs Dried Prunes – Which is Healthier? (prunes are dried plums, usually partially rehydrated)
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10almonds Tells The Tea…
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Let’s Bust Some Myths!
It’s too late after puberty, hormones won’t change xyz
While yes, many adult trans people dearly wish they’d been able to medically transition before going through the “wrong” puberty, the truth is that a lot of changes will still occur later… even to “unchangeable” things like the skeleton.
The body is remaking itself throughout life, and hormones tell it how to do that. Some parts are just quicker or slower than others. Also: the skeleton is pulled-on constantly by our muscles, and in a battle of muscle vs bone, muscle will always win over time.
Examples of this include:
- trans men building bigger bones to support their bigger muscles
- trans women getting smaller, with wider hips and a pelvic tilt
Trans people have sporting advantages
Assuming at least a year’s cross-sex hormonal treatment, there is no useful advantage to being trans when engaging in a sport. There are small advantages and disadvantages (which goes for any person’s body, really). For example:
- Trans women will tend to be taller than cis women on average…
- …but that larger frame is now being powered by smaller muscles, because they shrink much quicker than the skeleton.
- Trans men taking T are the only athletes allowed to take testosterone…
- …but they will still often be smaller than their fellow male competitors, for example.
Read: Do Trans Women Athletes Have Advantages? (A rather balanced expert overview, which does also cover trans men)
There’s a trans population explosion; it’s a social contagion epidemic!
Source for figures: The Overall Rate Of Left-Handedness (Researchgate)
Left-handed people used to make up around 3% of the population… Until the 1920s, when that figure jumped sharply upwards, before plateauing at around 12% in around 1960, where it’s stayed since. What happened?! Simple, schools stopped forcing children to use their right hand.
Today, people ask for trans healthcare because they know it exists! Decades ago, it wasn’t such common knowledge.
The same explanation can be applied to other “population explosions” such as for autism and ADHD.
Fun fact: Mt. Everest was “discovered” in 1852, but scientists suspect it probably existed long before then! People whose ancestors were living on it long before 1852 also agree. Sometimes something exists for a long time, and only comes to wider public awareness later.
Transgender healthcare is too readily available, especially to children!
To believe some press outlets, you’d think:
- HRT is available from school vending machines,
- kids can get a walk-in top surgery at recess,
- and there’s an after-school sterilization club.
In reality, while availability varies from place to place, trans healthcare is heavily gatekept. Even adults have trouble getting it, often having to wait years and/or pay large sums of money… and get permission from a flock of doctors, psychologists, and the like. For those under the age of 18, it’s almost impossible in many places, even with parental support.
Puberty-blockers shouldn’t be given to teenagers, as the effects are irreversible
Quick question: who do you think should be given puberty-blockers? For whom do you think they were developed? Not adults, for sure! They were not developed for trans teens either, but for cis pre-teens with precocious puberty, to keep puberty at bay, to do it correctly later. Nobody argues they’re unsafe for much younger cis children, and only object when it’s trans teens.
They’re not only safe and reversible, but also self-reversing. Stop taking them, and the normally scheduled puberty promptly ensues by itself. For trans kids, the desired effect is to buy the kid time to make an informed and well-considered decision. After all, the effects of the wrong puberty are really difficult to undo!
A lot of people rush medical transition and regret it!
Trans people wish it could be rushed! It’s a lot harder to get gender-affirming care as a trans person, than it is to get the same (or comparable) care as a cis person. Yes, cis people get gender-affirming care, from hormones to surgeries, and have done for a long time.
As for regret… Medical transition has around a 1% regret rate. For comparison, hip replacement has a 4.8% regret rate and knee replacement has a 17.1% regret rate.
A medical procedure with a 99% success rate would generally be considered a miracle cure!
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This Book May Save Your Life – by Dr. Karan Rajan
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The title is a bold sell, but the book does include a lot of information about what can go wrong in your body, and how those things can be avoided.
What it’s not: a reiteration of Dr. Michael Greger’s “How Not To Die“. It’s not dense medical information, and it doesn’t cite papers at a rate of ten per page.
What it is: an easy-reading tour guide of the human body and its many quirks and foibles, and how we can leverage those to our benefit. On which note…
Hopefully, your insides will never see the light of day, but this author is a general surgeon and as such, is an experienced and well-qualified tour guide. Here, we learn about everything from the long and interesting journey through our gut, to the unique anatomical features and liabilities of the brain. From the bizarre oddities of the genitals, to things most people don’t know about the process of death.
The style of the book is very casual, with lots of short sections (almost mini chapters-within-chapters, really) making for very light reading—and certainly enjoyable reading too, unless you are inclined to squeamishness.
Bottom line: in honesty, the book is more informative than it is instructional, though it does contain the promised health tips too. With that in mind, it’s a very enjoyable and educational read, and we do recommend it.
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Entertaining Harissa Traybake
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No, it’s not entertaining in the sense that it will tell you jokes or perhaps dance for you, but rather: it can be easily prepared in advance, kept in the fridge for up to 3 days, and reheated when needed as part of a spread when entertaining, leaving you more time to spend with your houseguests.
Aside from its convenience, it is of course nutritious and delicious:
You will need
- 14 oz cherry tomatoes
- 2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed)
- 2 eggplants, cut into ¾” cubes
- 1 red onion, roughly chopped
- 1 bulb garlic
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp harissa paste
- 1 tbsp ras el-hanout
- 1 tsp MSG or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 400℉ / 200℃
2) Mix the onion, eggplant, and garlic (whole cloves; just peel them and put them in) with the olive oil in a mixing bowl, ensuring everything is coated evenly.
3) Add in 1 tbsp of the harissa paste, 1 tbsp of the ras-el hanout, and half of the MSG/salt, and again mix thoroughly to coat evenly.
4) Bake in the oven, in a walled tray, for about 30 minutes, giving things a stir/jiggle halfway through to ensure they cook evenly.
5) Add the cherry tomatoes to the tray, and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.
6) Mix the chickpeas with the other 1 tbsp of the harissa paste, the other 1 tbsp of the ras-el hanout, and the other half of the MSG/salt, and add to the tray, returning it to the oven for a final 10 minutes.
7) Serve hot, or set aside for later, refrigerating once cool enough to do so. When you do serve, we recommend serving with a yogurt, cucumber, and mint dip, and perhaps flatbreads (you can use our Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe):
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
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Overcoming Loneliness & Isolation
One of the biggest mental health threats that faces many of us as we get older is growing isolation, and the loneliness that can come with it. Family and friends thin out over the years, and getting out and about isn’t always as easy as it used to be for everyone.
Nor is youth a guaranteed protection against this—in today’s world of urban sprawl and nothing-is-walkable cities, in which access to social spaces such as cafés and the like means paying the rising costs with money that young people often don’t have… And that’s without getting started on how much the pandemic impacted an entire generation’s social environments (or lack thereof).
Why is this a problem?
Humans are, by evolution, social creatures. As individuals we may have something of a spectrum from introvert to extrovert, but as a species, we thrive in community. And we suffer, when we don’t have that.
What can we do about it?
We can start by recognizing our needs, such as they are, and identifying to what extent they are being met (or not).
- Some of us may be very comfortable with a lot of alone time—but need someone to talk to sometimes.
- Some of us may need near-constant company to feel at our best—and that’s fine too! We just need to plan accordingly.
In the former case, it’s important to remember that needing someone to talk to is not being a burden to them. Not only will our company probably enrich them too, but also, we are evolved to care for one another, and that itself can bring fulfilment to them as much as to you. But what if you don’t a friend to talk to?
- You might be surprised at who would be glad of you reaching out. Have a think through whom you know, and give it a go. This can be scary, because what if they reject us, or worse, they don’t reject us but silently resent us instead? Again, they probably won’t. Human connection requires taking risks and being vulnerable sometimes.
- If that’s not an option, there are services that can fill your need. For some, therapy might serve a dual purpose in this regard. For others, you might want to check out the list of (mostly free) resources at the bottom of this article
In the second case (that we need near-constant company to feel at our best) we probably need to look more at our overall lifestyle, and find ways to be part of a community. That can include:
- Living in a close-knit community (places with a lot of retirees in one place often have this; or younger folk might look at communal living/working spaces, for example)
- Getting involved in local groups (you can check out NextDoor.com or MeetUp.com for this)
- Volunteering for a charity (not only are acts of service generally fulfilling in and of themselves, but also, you will probably be working with other people of a charitable nature, and such people tend to make for good company!)
Need a little help?
There are many, many organizations that will love to help you (or anyone else) overcome loneliness and isolation.
Rather than list them all here and make this email very long by describing how each of them works, here’s a great compilation of resources:
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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100 Ways to Change Your Life – by Liz Moody
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Sometimes we crave changing things up, just to feel something new. This can result in anything from bad haircut decisions or impulsive purchases, to crashing and burning-out of a job, project, or relationship. It doesn’t have to be that way, though!
This book brings us (as the title suggest) 100 evidence-based ways of changing things up in a good way—small things that can make a big difference in many areas of life.
In terms of format, these are presented in 100 tiny chapters, each approximately 2 pages long (obviously it depends on the edition, but you get the idea). Great to read in any of at least three ways:
- Cover-to-cover
- One per day for 100 days
- Look up what you need on an ad hoc basis
Bottom line: even if you already do half of these things, the other half will each compound your health happiness one-by-one as you add them. This is a very enjoyable and practical book!
Click here to check out 100 Ways to Change Your Life, and level-up yours!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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