Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know that there are four longevity hacks that cost you no money.
The good thing about these hacks is that they’re the lowest hanging fruit with the highest impact.
It’s way less sexy than things you’ve probably seen me talk about before, like peptides. But these are more important.
Table of Contents
Hack 1: Proper Sleep
A study of 172,000 adults showed that you could live up to two to five years longer if you got adequate sleep.
There are some really important things that happen in our health when we sleep.
Your brain and the tissues around the brain physically clean the cerebral spinal fluid, which is the fluid that bathes the brain and the spinal cord and removes toxins.
If you don’t do this on a regular basis, these toxins build up in the cerebral spinal fluid and have a negative impact on your brain and your brain’s function.
Your brain affects everything about your health and how you function. We’re all functioning in a society that’s geared towards not getting the rest and recovery that we really need for our health. So you absolutely have to prioritize this and make a conscious effort to get to bed.
Try to do that around the same time every night and really try to have a goal of eight hours of sleep.
The last thing I’d say about this is that sleep trackers are fantastic tools.
I use one, but don’t get wrapped up in the minutiae. Use a sleep tracker as a guide to help you get regular sleep, not as a diagnostic tool that stresses you out.
Hack 2: Community and Connection
Lifeline Community and connection is another thing that a lot of people find hard to make actionable.
But if you’re happy and you have a positive outlook on yourself and the things around you, that’s highly likely not just to extend your life, but to significantly improve the quality of your life as well.
There’s very good data to support this, so it may be one of the most important things that you do for your health.
According to Blue Zone Research, knowing your purpose can add up to seven years of lifespan. Feeling like you belong can give you up to 14 years, and committing to a life partner, investing in children, and keeping parents close can add up to three years.
There’s definitely some humor you might be able to find in that if you feel like you found yourself with the wrong partner, but the sense of community, connection, and purpose is probably why this guy can slam Cokes and eat McDonald’s regularly and is happy and healthy in his 90s.
Hack 3: Exercise and Nutrition
I say this is the hardest to achieve because community connection can be hard to make actionable. When I work with my clients, I try to tie this to the next most important things, which are exercise and nutrition.
I find that if you can find your thing, whatever your thing is, that’s the way to tie together the community connection and sense of belonging and the positive mental outlook with other like-minded people.
For me, I find my connection doing jiu-jitsu. Other people find it doing CrossFit or any number of other activities like tennis, cycling groups, running groups, dance, and other group activities.
It’s not necessary, but it’s really nice if these community-based activities are physically related because then you’re hitting two birds with one stone.
If your community is involved in a more sedentary activity, that’s okay, but then you need to make a conscious effort and find the additional time and structure to get the exercise that’s crucial for your health and longevity.
People that engage in physical activity and maintain muscle mass find that there are significant health benefits that result.
Hack 4: Fasting
If there is one thing that you could implement today that’s relatively easy to do, totally free, and gives you significant long-term health benefits, it would be to incorporate fasting into your regular annual regimen.
The fasting I’m talking about is at least a three-day calorie-restricted fast, which is very different from time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting. Prolonged fasting not only triggers autophagy, which is the process of breaking down cells in your body that are often cells that are in pre-diseased or diseased states, but prolonged fasting also activates a complement of genes that have significant beneficial and protective health effects.
The only way to turn these genes on is through prolonged fasting. Fasting is something that I recommend you get professional advice to be able to do safely and effectively. But a good way to do this at home is by using Prolon, which is a protocol that’s been scientifically researched and developed so that people can implement prolonged fasting at home safely.
Conclusion
These are all foundational components of a longevity plan that together can increase your health span and lifespan as well as help you avoid chronic disease.
Start implementing these four hacks today and watch your health transform.
If you have any questions, send me an email. Or better yet, schedule an appointment with me to see if I’m the right doctor for you.