Doctors Weigh In on the Longevity Boom
Athletech News speaks with three doctors to explore what truly promotes a long, healthy life
People in the United States are more unhealthy than ever. Over 100 million Americans suffer from preventable chronic illness, and around 70 percent are overweight or obese, according to data from the U.S. government.
Against this grim landscape, there’s some hope that things are beginning to change. Longevity – the science of aging gracefully, or slowing down the aging process altogether – has emerged as a popular movement, driven in part by people’s collective health awakening following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Longevity-focused podcasts and social media clips have become exceedingly popular, while wellness centers offering everything from GLP-1 weight loss drugs to IV drips to cold plunge tubs have sprung up across the country.
Medical professionals, though, have varying opinions on the longevity movement – some are all-in, some praise the end goal while questioning the methods that proponents of the movement claim will unlock the key to a long, healthy life, and other physicians view the movement with downright skepticism, dubious of entrepreneurs and marketers they see as out to make a quick buck rather than promote healthy living.
Athletech News spoke with three doctors whose work is helping to shape the field of longevity and healthspan, either directly or indirectly, to get their perspectives on what it takes to live a long, healthy life in our modern world.
Note: The following information is based on the perspectives and expertise of three medical professionals. Other medical professionals may have different views on the opinions and statements expressed below.
Dr. Frank Lipman Embraces Longevity But Preaches the Fundamentals
Dr. Frank Lipman, a pioneer of the functional medicine movement and a New York Times Bestselling author on aging, is all-in on longevity.
Dr. Lipman has effectively shifted the concentration of his decades-old practice at Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City to focus specifically on longevity medicine, which he describes as a “subspecialty” of functional medicine. The Eleven Eleven Wellness Center now offers a comprehensive, membership-based program designed to help patients optimize their health, slow down the aging process and increase their healthspan.
For an annual fee, members receive genetic testing, biological age testing and an extensive set of blood biomarker tests, including a lipid and heart panel, hormones, nutrients, inflammatory markers, cellular senescence markers, metabolic markers, plasmalogens, phospholipids and intracellular NAD levels. These are all analyzed by Dr. Lipman and his team of practitioners, who then provide personalized supplement, nutrition, exercise, hormone and peptide recommendations. Members also get unlimited access to Dr. Lipman and his team for support, recommendations and check-ups, along with access to InBody machines, Shiftwave masks and One Mind brain-mapping tech.
Despite his practice’s hands-on approach, Dr. Lipman is quick to point out that when it comes to longevity, the basics are still the most important.
“The foundation to me is always how you eat, when you eat, your sleep, your exercise – not only just aerobic, you also need to start strength training – and stress reduction,” Dr. Lipman told Athletech News. “I’m a big fan of time-restricted eating, especially as you get into your 40s.”
Dr. Lipman isn’t against tools like infrared sauna and cold plunge, but he views them as supplementary pieces to add on top of an already solid health and wellness routine rather than foundational pieces by themselves.
“Cold plunges and saunas are great, but they’re not as important as the aspects we need to pay a lot of attention to as we get older, which are heart disease and preventing plaque buildup, preventing insulin and glucose from going up, and preventing cognitive problems,” he explained. “I’m all for biohacks, but if you ignore the more important issues of what’s going on in your body, you’re sort of missing the point. I see people who pay more attention to getting their cold plunge every day than getting a proper check-up.”
Overall, despite chronic disease running rampant in America, Dr. Lipman is excited and encouraged by society’s increased interest in longevity.
“People come into my office now knowing much more than they did even a few years ago,” he noted. “One thing that’s probably changed the most is people, mainly men – women have always been more aware of their health – in their 40s and 50s coming in to optimize their health, which wasn’t happening before.”
Dr. Casey Means Thinks We’ve Got It All Backwards
Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-trained physician and co-founder of metabolic health company Levels, says most people are “missing the forest for the trees” when it comes to health and longevity, mainly due to the wellness industry’s focus on profit and products over foundational solutions.
“The most disruptive truth that needs to be brought to the forefront is that it’s actually very simple and very straightforward to be healthy,” Dr. Means told ATN.
“Most of the chronic diseases and chronic symptoms facing the U.S. — essentially, all the top killers of Americans today – are rooted in the same thing, which is metabolic dysfunction,” she explained. “The reason we’re becoming very metabolically dysfunctional in this country is because the world we’re living in today, the environment that our bodies exist in, is almost universally damaging to our mitochondria, which make energy in ourselves.”
Dr. Means points out that while more Americans are participating in fitness than ever before, obesity rates have increased over the last two and a half decades.
“50% of Americans go on a diet every year, gym memberships doubled since the year 2000, and during that rate, obesity has gone up 10%,” she noted.
Dr. Means emphasizes eating unprocessed, clean food, walking more, lifting weights, managing emotional health and stress, and getting sufficient sleep and sunshine, as well as reducing exposure to blue light late at night, and removing synthetic, chemical-laden cleaning products as key actions people can take. Tracking basic biomarkers, such as fasting glucose, can also be helpful.
Interestingly, Dr. Means views the trend of GLP-1 weight loss drugs as alarming, not because the drugs don’t work, but because they’re essentially putting a band-aid over the real problem, which is many Americans’ unhealthy lifestyles and living environments.
“It’s a very dark trend that is essentially trying to gaslight Americans to believe that health is found in a weekly injection for life and not from changing the environment that is so obviously crushing our ability to be healthy,” she said. “If you had a sick fish in a fish tank filled with dirty polluted water, you obviously would not inject that fish every week for the rest of its life. You would change out the water.”
For Dr. Michael Greger, a Plant-Based Diet Is the Key
Dr. Michael Greger, a physician, New York Times Bestselling author on nutrition and founder of NutritionFacts.org, advocates for a plant-based diet rich in fruits, vegetables and legumes as the key to longevity.
While Dr. Greger notes that there are certain things people should add to their diets as they get older, such as foods rich in spermidine or other age-fighting nutrients, the basics apply at any age.
“If there were just three things I could add to people’s diet it would be berries, the healthiest fruits; cruciferous, dark and green leafy vegetables, the healthiest vegetables; and legumes – beans, split peas, chickpeas or lentils,” Dr. Greger said. “If there were just three things I could remove, it would be trans fats, which are partially hydrogenated vegetable oils; processed meat, bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meat and sausage, which cause colorectal cancer, the number one cancer killer among non-smokers; and ‘liquid candy,’ or soda. We shouldn’t be drinking sugar water.”
Dr. Greger also believes that when it comes to nutrition, extreme personalization isn’t necessary, despite what some high-priced brands would have you believe.
“Personalized nutrition, personalized medicine, most of it is just scammy nonsense,” he said, noting that, except for some individual genetic differences like allergies and intolerances, the ideal human diet is mostly the same for everyone.
“There are certain small individual differences – some people digest lactose better than others, some people metabolize caffeine better than others, but it’s not like some foods are good for some people and bad for others,” he explained. “When you go to the zoo, there’s the baboon diet. It’s not like, ‘Fred the baboon has one diet and Sally the baboon (has another). There’s (an ideal) diet for that species that tends to be better for them. And it’s the same thing with the human species.”
While other fundamentals like proper sleep, exercise and stress reduction are obviously important, Dr. Greger believes what we eat is the most important factor in determining how long we live, and our quality of life as we age.
“The single most important thing for the health and wellbeing of yourself and your family is what you eat,” Dr. Greger said, adding that abstaining from smoking and exercise come second and third on that list, respectively.
This article originally ran in the The Business of Prevention, Recovery & Longevity Report 2024. Download the report now to read more insights into how fitness and wellness brands are making strides in key markets.