17 Key Longevity Tips to Live Longer

Perhaps you came across the concept of “Blue Zones”, or the idea of super-centenarians—geographical pockets of the world’s longest-lived people.

Would you even want to live beyond age 110?

Most people reflexively say no.

But what if age 100 is the new 40?

If you could enjoy a high quality of life through your last days, that would change everything.

While genetics plays a role, you have tremendous control over your functional longevity. Regardless of what’s hard-coded into your DNA.

Here’s the best part…

It doesn’t need to be convoluted, difficult, or cost $2M per year. A couple of small tweaks make a radical difference.

In this article, you’ll learn practical tips, tricks, and biohacks to increase your health span and improve your overall well-being long-term.

Build Your Personalized High-Impact Longevity Plan

If you’ve consumed a lot of content related to longevity, you’re surely swimming in a sea of conflicting advice.

Each anti-aging guru proclaims their way of eating is the true universal diet. Or that their longevity supplement stack yields the best results. Both might be… for them.

But you have different genetics, epigenetics, lifestyle, and biological constitution. Not only is it likely that their tips won’t work for you, they may even backfire.

What you need is a custom plan. One that accounts for your uniqueness and real-world constraints. Tragically, there’s a kernel of true universality to some concepts preached by the longevity influencers. Just enough to sound intriguing and work for some… over the short term.

Then today’s latest science shifts, and all those theories go out the window.

I’ve studied longevity for many years and distilled many of the most powerful, universal tips from not only the longest-lived populations on Earth, but also from other perspectives.

By combining the understandings from ancient longevity sciences like Ayurveda and modern research, we can avoid those pitfalls and enjoy long-lasting benefits.

If you’d like some help, I’ve created a 14-day mini boot camp where I help you harness the highest-impact yet simple anti-aging tips. Over the two weeks, you can go from zero to knowing more than most of the “experts”.

And if you test your biological age, you’ll likely see an enormous improvement. All without massively uprooting your lifestyle or spending a small fortune on the latest biohacks. Take the longevity leap today.

Risk Reduction

We all know that smoking, drinking, and other unhealthy habits negatively impact us. The things we do regularly (especially daily) present some of the greatest opportunities for improvement.

Yes, certain centenarians in Blue Zones enjoy a glass of wine or two every day. But they’re often the exception and it’s entirely possible that they’d live longer or healthier without the alcohol. There’s no evidence that the habit causes their longevity.

So you’ll want to identify and eliminate these unhealthy habits hindering your progress.

To figure out where to focus, I like to do a simple lifestyle audit and grade unhealthy on two factors: magnitude and frequency.

If you smoke a cigarette every other week, the net damage of that pales compared to bingeing on a mountain of junk food late every night.

If social pressures or other reasons hold you back from quitting alcohol, for example, find suitable alternatives. I rarely drink but like the social component of it. So I put together a mega list of the top replacements for alcohol that still cause a pleasant buzz.

If you’re a smoker, look into one of these healthier alternatives to smoking. You can find better substitutes for almost any vice, but remember to also consider the trigger. That’ll help you locate and address the root cause.

To revisit the alcohol alternative, perhaps you drink to unwind after work. But if you go outside for a quick afternoon break, you may notice that your work-induced stress naturally declines to where you’re already relaxed when leaving work.

The other major component of risk reduction is to minimize the risk of random accidents and stupid dangers. I ride motorcycles and understand the major threat they pose to my longevity. But I’m also mindful and keenly aware of the surrounding traffic and people.

The longer you live, the greater the likelihood that the small things will take you out.

Alleviate Friction

When prioritizing longevity, most people dive straight into the fun stuff.

Certain common factors create biological friction that makes achieving your goals much harder.

These include:

• Bodily toxicity
• Stealth infections
• Poor oral health
• Gut dysfunction
• Mineral depletion
• Vitamin depletion
• Essential nutrient deficiencies

If you improve these biological needs, everything else works better.

The lowest-hanging fruit here is to ensure you consume adequate vitamins, minerals, and micro-nutrients.

While supplementation with a multivitamin seems like the perfect remedy, commercial multivitamin products have major downsides. I recommend starting with one of these top multi-mineral supplements instead.

Then, you want to consider taking regular trips to a (biological) dentist, getting annual blood work (you can do it from the comfort of your home), and optimizing your gut health.

By providing your body with ample raw materials, reducing your use and exposure to plastic, and minimizing endocrine-disrupting chemical use, your body will naturally rid itself of dangerous chemicals. But if you want further support, you can perform a scientific cellular detox.

Quantify & Qualify

You can only improve that which you track. Whether with technology or through analog methods.

I prefer technology since it can passively collect data in the background while you go about your life. Measuring all kinds of things that you otherwise couldn’t.

As a data scientist and health coach, I see wearables as powerful tools. The mere accountability, knowing that you’ll receive a score/rating for things like your stress, movement, sleep, recovery, etc, inspires action towards improvement. Regardless of how often you check (or don’t) the data.

Although the accuracy of sleep stage detection remains questionable, many other reported health markers are clinically validated and highly correlated with aging (and overall health).

Collected biomarkers like heart rate variability, respiratory rate, resting heart rate, blood oxygen, stress detection, circadian health, etc all highlight your areas of potential improvement.

I’ve used the Oura ring since 2017 (read my latest Oura V3 review). Over the last year, I’ve begun experimenting with the Apple Watch, and most recently a new ring I mentioned in my Ultrahuman ring review. They’re all helpful, but my go-to for most people is now the Ultrahuman ring.

Bulletproof These Systems

If we zoom out, two bodily systems drive much of the aging process.

By focusing on them earlier in life, you can theoretically dramatically improve your health span.

The two biological systems that cause aging:

• Energy
• Brain

Energy refers to your metabolism—the bodily system that converts convert inputs (foods, drinks, supplements) into cellular energy.

The vast majority of humans (95%) today are metabolically unhealthy. And metabolic function only declines with age. Meaning that you become less efficient at converting foods into energy. The result? Power-hungry organ systems starve for fuel, and your rate of aging speeds up.

What can you do about it?

Luckily, a lot of the foundational pillars of health also improve metabolic health. The highest impact strategies include consuming ample whole, unprocessed foods; movement; and getting enough sleep.

Brain health and function decline with age. All kinds of factors cause this, from hormone insensitivity to impaired nutrient delivery to the buildup of toxic plaques in the brain. Many of the biggest killers relate to brain issues.

Cognitive difficulties also hinder quality of life and healthspan dramatically. Brain training, nutrient optimization, and other techniques can help your brain thrive as you age. To build a resilient brain, check out these articles on the top “neurohacks”.

Optimize Your Nutrition

Nutrition for longevity isn’t what it seems.

You’ve probably heard that the longest-lived folks all follow plant-based diets. That they completely avoid meats and subsist mainly on legumes, bread, occasional seafood, and olive oil. An interesting yet inaccurate notion. One that doesn’t work for the vast majority of people.

More important than any diet dogma, however, are several principles:

• Choose organic and quality whole foods & produce
• Regularly enjoy fermented foods
• Consume gelatinous collagen-rich meats and seafood
• Consume soluble and insoluble fiber
• Get plenty of amino acids, minerals, and vitamins
• Prepare foods properly (soaking, sprouting, fermenting, etc) to reduce plant toxins/”anti-nutrients”
• Eat all three macros, to satiety

These nutritional principles form the simple backbone of any scientific longevity plan.

You can also add other things and supplements to help fill any gaps.

Real Superfoods

These days, the label of “superfood” has virtually no meaning. Greens powders claiming to have 100+ different magical ingredients in one minuscule scooper are more marketing than science.

But when you look through the published science, you’ll notice a pattern emerge. A smaller group of foods and substances appear to possess near-magical, human-health-transforming powers.

Some of my favorite real superfoods include:

• Coffee
• Tea
• Blueberries
• Spirulina & chlorella micro-algae
• Ginger
• Turmeric
• Dark chocolate (80% cacao or greater)
• Other herbs and spices

Study after study shows that these improve human health, slow biological aging, and extend health span [R].

Each of these contains potent bioactive substances that help reset and re-regulate human health. One sub-group of these in particular, “bioactive polyphenols”, shows tremendous promise.

In fact, just a single polyphenol derived from honey is currently being investigated for 40 different drugs. And there are at least 8,000 known substances in the polyphenol family.

Inhabitants of the world’s longevity hotspots tend to consume many standard deviations of these substances. Enjoy these superfoods liberally in your diet.

Daily Light Exposure

Thanks to health influencers, sun phobia is finally declining again.

Most discussions of sunlight mistakenly reduce the benefits to increased vitamin D levels. But light actually nourishes the body. The impact on your health depends on your location and the time you go outdoors.

Your body has a number of clocks that govern its function. Certain processes should only occur at particular times. These clocks naturally go out of sync, and light is one of the most powerful cues to re-align body clocks. Morning light exposure is key to proper clock functioning (also called circadian health).

Morning light also has a natural abundance of the red and infrared healing spectrums. You can only enjoy these benefits during the early morning and then again just before sunset. During these times, the lack of ultraviolet light means that you cannot get sunburnt either.

Exposure to light at night isn’t good as it hinders production of the sleep hormone, melatonin. Especially bright blue overhead light. The fewer opportunities your body has to repair, the faster the onset of disease. To master this, check out my guide to biohacking light exposure.

Cellular Power-up

Of the few things you may remember back from high school biology, one concept that may still stand out is mitochondria. Colloquially called “the powerhouse of the cell”. These provide all the cells, tissues, and organ systems with the energy required to do their jobs.

The slightest disturbance of these energy generators will manifest as virtually any symptom.

Whether your goal is optimal wellness, maximizing your healthspan, or performing at your peak with boundless energy, mitochondria play a large role. In fact, you can approximate someone’s health by looking at the state of their mitochondria.

That’s why biohackers devote incredible resources to optimizing mitochondrial health. What most don’t know, however, is that mitochondria have partners called peroxisomes. When this co-organ works well, it acts like an anti-aging factory.

You can take an omega-3 oil while fasting to trigger these peroxisomes to undergo cellular cleanup and work more efficiently. Berberine and another supplement called pterostilbene can further amplify these benefits.

The same common healthy lifestyle habits like regular movement, getting ample sleep, eating nutrient-dense foods, and managing stress also improve this duo.

Sealed & Healed

Experts sometimes call your gut your “second brain”. It’s that important. Inside your body, microbes outnumber your human cells by more than a factor of 10.

The state of your gut and gut microbiome determines your health. Put simply, it’s impossible to be healthy or live a long time with gut disturbances. Unfortunately, because of chemical exposures, modified foods, and the overuse of antibiotics, most humans today have some degree of gut dysfunction.

Even when you’re eating the cleanest foods, if you have gut issues, they’ll trigger inflammation, poor nutrient absorption, and unhealthy signaling. Each of these accelerates your rate of aging.

I recommend sealing and healing your gut.

First, provide your body with enough amino acids, minerals, and collagen. Avoid the most common gut disruptors, especially antibiotics. If you can handle it, dietary fiber drives your production of a highly protective substance called butyrate.

Adding a de-stressing practice into your routine can also make a difference.

To go deeper, read this article on biohacking your way to perfect gut health.

Amplified Fasting

Throughout history, humans naturally experienced periods of feast and famine. That was the norm.

The invention of refrigerators and global supply chains put an end to those cycles. Tipping the balance towards feasting all the time.

As a result, for the last decade, health researchers have advocated deliberately adding periodic fasts. Some claim…

It’s also one of the most common longevity protocols nearly universally recommended. Done wrong or in excess, however, it can cause more harm than good. Plus, if you’re going to do it, you might as well get the best possible results.

That’s where Joel Greene’s concept of amplified fasting comes in.

By doing a few things before a fast, such as consuming foraging foods and fiber, you prime your body to get the most out of each hour you spend without food.

Amplified fasting = more benefit + less downside.

Some of the other ways to get more benefits include:

• Using supplements like berberine that mimic the effects of fasting
• Intense exercise like sprints or deadlifts
• Immersion in cold water

Then, you’ll want to end your fast properly too. To understand how this all works and to implement it yourself, check out my ultimate guide to amplified fasting.

Create Your Stress Shield

Of all the stealth factors harming humans, stress ranks among the top.

You’ve probably heard the many health consequences of stress. If you’re like me, you may think… I’m not stressed, I already have a bunch of tools to manage it.

Well, there’s often an enormous gap between the stress you perceive and your overall biological stress. For example, on top of work or social stress, exercise and fasting are powerful stressors too. Here’s the issue.

A concept called “allostatic load” attempts to explain how too much of a good stress can still have negative effects.

You can think of allostatic load like a bucket. Each stress—good or bad—adds water to it. With too much stress, eventually that bucket overflows and you experience health symptoms. Over time, those symptoms turn into conditions.

Most people don’t know the water level inside their stress bucket. Modern technology and tools can reveal our allostatic load and help us improve. That way, you have room for the (conditionally) healthy stressors like exercise or fasting.

As the researchers studying a powerful group of molecules called bioregulator peptides remarked, fixing stress slows down your rate of biological aging faster than anything.

This guide to bioharmonizing your stress levels will arm you with everything you need.

Activate Your Regeneration

If you’re doing things right, you should spend about one-third of your life asleep.

Only while we sleep do thousands of repair and regeneration processes activate. Including all kinds of mechanisms that keep organs (i.e. your brain and cardiovascular system) healthy and functioning well.

Plus, this is the time cellular cleanup occurs, helping protect you against the accumulation of the wastes associated with dementia and decline. Improving your sleep is among the highest leverage, passive goals to have. Not just how long you sleep, but the quality of it too.

Some of my favorite ways to boost your sleep and recovery include:

• Build an evening routine: Entrain your circadian rhythm by going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. Insert a gap between your day and sleep by winding down with a bath, deep breathing practices, gentle movements, meditation, and avoiding mental stimulation (especially from tech).
• Create your wellness palace: Optimize your bedroom for sleep so that it’s minimally stimulating to your senses—dark, quiet, and set to a comfortable temperature. Avoid having wireless technologies close to your bed (nn-EMFs). Get a comfortable mattress, pillows, and bedding.
• Fix your lighting: Bright blue light (especially overhead) emitted by phones and computers will disrupt your melatonin levels and impair your sleep. Use blue light glasses, filters, or apps like IrisTech for protection. If you need light, dim, red light from a table lamp works best.
• Smart supplements: Tons of natural sleep aid supplements and ingredients can boost your quality and quantity. Better and safer than sleep drugs too. Things like magnesium, glycine, melatonin, full-spectrum hemp, certain essential oils, or herbal teas all help prepare the body for sleep.

Once you get your sleep environment optimized, subsequent sleep becomes a lot easier and more efficient.

By using the protocol outlined in this guide to biohacking your way to perfect sleep, I improved my average sleep score from the mid-60s to the 80s. I’m now healthier and sleeping better, even when I get fewer hours of sleep than before.

Get Moving

Movement is a primary cornerstone of longevity.

This isn’t about going to the gym and then sitting around the rest of the day. Overall movement matters more than structured exercise sessions (although I’d still recommend a mix of both!).

You won’t find sedentary humans in any of the world’s longest-lived populations. In fact, some show characteristics of optimal physical fitness despite not having an exercise routine. Regular movement and physical activity are also foundational to biohacking.

Some of the most important movement tips for longevity include:

• Move throughout the day: Regularly take breaks to go for walks, stretch, or vary your posture all throughout the day. Avoid sitting for over 90 minutes consecutively. If you need to be behind a desk, consider investing in an under-desk walking treadmill. Consider taking occasional short “exercise snacks”.
• Walk more: Walking is among the most underrated activities for your health and longevity. Although there’s no scientific basis for the age-old recommendation of walking 10,000 steps per day, it’s still a great target.
• Get passionate: Experiment to find the activities and exercises that you enjoy (so they don’t feel like work). Perhaps hiking, biking, resistance training, yoga, running, dancing, or team sports. The more you enjoy the activity, the more likely you’ll reap the benefits for life.
• Dose properly: Once you learn about the role of exercise, some folks immediately go to the other end of the spectrum. Too much intense exercise can be just as bad as none. Most people do best keeping it under an hour per day.

As any bodybuilder will tell you though, you can’t out exercise a poor diet, nor inadequate sleep.

Bioharmonize Your Environments

Everything that enters your body influences your health for better or worse.

So does the environment you surround yourself with. Your bedroom, your car, your office, your kitchen, etc.

24/7, 365, each space can either make you healthier or sicker. Another passive, easy opportunity is to optimize the environments in which you spend the most time.

Here are some things you can consider:

• Maximize healthy, natural lighting. Consider adding one of these top red light therapy panels to your space
• Check for mold
• Get an air filter
• Upgrade to filtered water
• Buy an Earthing/Grounding pad
• Reduce or protect against non-native EMFs (electrosmog)
• Swap artificial chemical fragrances with natural essential oils

And, of course, physically clean up your spaces.

Each of these small tweaks compounds over time to make a massive difference. Plus, except for keeping the room physically clean, the rest are onetime costs (energy-wise and financially).

As a side benefit, these environmental tweaks will make you more productive and feel mentally sharp.

Find Your Tribe

As just about every pop longevity article mentions, “Your social life affects your longevity”.

It’s one of the few factors that all aging experts agree matter.

But here’s the kicker…

Your perceived sense of community that matters most.

Someone who has just one extremely close friend can enjoy the same benefits as a popular governor of a large state. The way you feel about your social life matters more than any objective measure.

If you’re feeling like you want to improve this area, I suggest you check out the events in your local area. Go on to Meetup.com, Facebook Events, Eventbrite, or any of the other event platforms and choose any subject you’re interested in.

Here, you’ll immediately have that subject in common with all other attendees. Making friends will be easier. Bonus points for choosing a sport and checking off two things from this list at once.

If you don’t have any great in-person opportunities available, the next best option is surrounding yourself virtually with a like-minded tribe. That’s precisely why I’m building the exclusive online Outliyr Community. If you’re reading this article, that means you’re a great fit, and I’d love for you to join us!

Community is also why centenarians and the long-lived don’t live nomadic lifestyles. Building a community and establishing roots takes time. Whether you do it for the anti-aging benefits or just overall life satisfaction, the effort will be worth it!

Amplify With Biohacking Longevity Supplements

Most of the recent industry excitement centers on molecules and new therapies.

If you’ve already mastered the basics, you may consider adding biohacking supplements specifically designed to enhance your longevity.

Some of these ingredients look quite impressive from clinical research.

There are several categories of important products:

• Longevity nutrients
• All-in-one anti-aging supplements
• Mitochondrial enhancers
• Senolytic “zombie cell” destroyers
• Molecular hydrogen and Brown’s Gas
• Therapeutic peptides
• Longevity bioregulators

Nutrients like collagen peptides and certain amino acids like glycine and taurine are foundation supplements to consider for any longevity protocol. Then you have promising single ingredients like fisetin, apigenin, AKG, resveratrol, pterostilbene, NAD+ precursors, and many others.

I prefer to focus on getting the foundation nutrients like collagen, EAAs, and minerals. Then add a multi-ingredients-in-one product. Only then would I add additional substances to target particular systems or goals.

But supplementation gets complicated fast.

Longevity supplements can get confusing:

Are you wasting money?

Is there significant overlap (and also gaps) in the pathways the supplements activate?

Is the product making a difference?

What if you can simplify your life, take fewer products, and get better effects?

This is all possible, and it comes down to this…

A well-designed longevity stack.

Ideal formulations contain multiple ingredients. Each targets and improves different facets of biological aging.

Keeping you looking and feeling younger and performing optimally.

Together, a multi-supplement formula is more effective than the sum of the parts. This is called the entourage effect, and it’s best understood as the “1+1=3 effect”. And, this powerful ingredient biosynergy often comes with fewer side effects.

So I designed a simple “Longevity Upgrade Cheatsheet” to summarize the benefits of 30+ popular longevity supplements as well as provide my universal essentials. Download it here…

GET THE FREE CHEATSHEET NOW

Start Slowing the Aging Process

Influencers, experts, and gurus make the field of aging incredibly complicated and confusing.

Many of the folks with the longest healthspans know very little about all of this. Instead, they reverted to ancestral patterns that have unpinned biology since the dawn of humanity.

For them, that often means ditching modern technology and conveniences.

You don’t need to study all the pathways, mechanisms, and long scientific jargon to improve your healthspan. Nor do you need to live as a Luddite.

Biohacking is all about taking control of your biology.

If you implement these longevity biohacking tips today, your health will improve. Securing you not only a better future, but making you more capable in the present too. Helping you unlock (and live at) your full potential.

Better yet, instead of bio-“hacking”, use the principles of bioharmony. By working with your body, you help it work better and stay younger for longer.

If you enjoyed this article, please send it to a friend or share it on social media. You have so many ways to slow the aging process. Drop a comment below to let me know your top tips!