#386 My Evidence Based Longevity Routine

Siim Land (0:00)

Longevity by definition is having a long life and staying alive. However, most people can't achieve their longevity potential because they die to different chronic diseases like heart disease or cancer in their 60s and 70s. The centenarians who live to 100 get the same diseases as everyone else, but they get them 10 to 20 years later. So, living longer mostly comes down to avoiding the chronic diseases that would kill you prematurely. I call this the longevity leap.

Over the past 10 years, I've been working on my longevity in a preventive way, to make sure that I don't die prematurely like my grandfather, who passed away to colorectal cancer at the age of 36 That's why in this video, I'm going to outline my full evidence-based longevity routine. You will also hear commentary from two professors and researchers of aging, Dr. Matt Caberlane and Dr. Michael Lustgarden.

Matt Caberlane (0:50)

There's really no question that aging and longevity are modifiable in humans. And I think we can see that most obviously through what we know about lifestyle and the effect on age-related disease and health span.

Michael Lustgarten (1:05)

If we know the biochemistry of youth and then see which interventions, diet, exercise, body weight, calorie intake, etc. can keep our biomarkers youthful, how much extra life expectancy can we get?

Siim Land (1:16)

You can check out all the studies and references in the blog post that are left in the description below.

This is the short version of my routine. If you want me to release the longer, more in-depth version of this routine, then make sure you click a like, subscribe, and watch until the end. Let's begin with one of the main goals of a healthy diet, which is maintaining optimal body composition.

Matt Caberlane (1:36)

We know that things like obesity and diabetes can accelerate the age-related risk for a whole bunch of functional declines in diseases and shorten lifespan.

Siim Land (1:47)

An obese person has about 5 to 20 years shorter life expectancy. So to make the longevity leap and not die prematurely, you have to make sure that you're not overweight and obese.

One accurate way to assess your metabolic health and disease risk is to look at your waist to hip ratio. People with more weight around the midsection are at the higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and premature death than those who carry it around the hips and thighs. You calculate your waist to hip ratio by taking your waist circumference and dividing it by your hip circumference. The lowest risk of heart disease is seen with a waist to hip ratio below 0.95 for men and 0.8 for women. With a waist to hip ratio above 1 for men and 0.86 for women, you would see the highest risk. My waist circumference is quite low, only 80 centimeters, and my waist to hip ratio is less than 0.83. That puts me in the lowest risk category possible.

Next, let's cover the most researched method of extending lifespan in animals. It's calorie restriction.

Matt Caberlane (2:50)

A reduction in caloric intake, in particular in mice and rats, of starting around 20% all the way up to about 60% reduction. And I'm just talking calories across the board can lead to an increase in lifespan and apparently an improvement in health span. And what I mean by that is the animals seem to be protected against a whole host of age-related diseases and functional declines.

Siim Land (3:11)

Calorie restriction, extending human lifespan, is obviously very limited because it's very hard to do long-term calorie restrictions in calorie restriction studies.

Matt Caberlane (3:18)

The real answer is we don't know at this point whether caloric restriction slows aging, increases lifespan and health span on average in people.

Siim Land (3:26)

We do have a few randomized clinical trials on humans finding that calorie restriction improves multiple cardiometabolic risk factors, even in young, non-obese adults.

I think that based on the current evidence, you don't need to adhere to a specific calorie-restricted diet to live longer. You just have to make sure that you don't become overweight and obese, and being in a calorie deficit is obviously crucial and important to weight loss and maintaining a good body composition. My own calorie intake falls somewhere between 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day. This is what keeps my body fat percentage around 10% year-round, while still being able to build muscle and strength. One of the proposed methods of gaining the benefits of calorie restriction without actually having to do it is intermittent fasting, also called time-restricted eating. Research about time-restricted eating has found that it can improve markers of metabolic health, such as blood sugar levels, triglycerides, waist circumference, and cholesterol in obese, as well as non-obese individuals.