You’re Not Aging Poorly. You’re Being Marketed To.
The Biggest Bang for Your Buck Is Still the Boring Stuff
Longevity is having a moment. Blood panels, wearables, peptides, cold plunges, biological age scores, and influencers telling you that unless you’re tracking 87 biomarkers and injecting something with a Greek name, you’re aging “wrong.”
Let’s be clear: Aging research is real. Aging is real. Longevity science is real.
But the longevity industry as it exists today is mostly noise, fear-based marketing, and expensive distraction from the things that actually work.
We have known how to extend healthspan for a long time, albeit not perfectly and certainly not indefinitely, but well enough to know the major factors:
Move your body
Build and maintain strength
Eat whole foods in appropriate amounts
Sleep
Manage stress
Stay socially connected
Avoid obvious self-destructive behavior
That’s not sexy, it doesn’t scale well, and it definitely doesn’t justify a $5,000 annual “protocol.”
So the industry turned longevity into a product and now there are endless influencers ready to pimp it. My favorite are the ones in their 20s and 30s teaching longevity protocols. Mother F@#$er, if you haven’t made it to 50 or past, don’t try to tell me how to do it. These people are selling you on the idea that aging is something you’re supposedly doing wrong.
One of the biggest tricks in the longevity space is convincing people that measuring something means they’re improving it. Step in line to get endless blood work, “biological age” calculators, and dashboards telling you your HRV dipped 6% and you should panic.
The truth is most biomarkers are correlational, not causal, many fluctuate day to day more than interventions change them, and very few are tied to long-term human outcome data.
You can track yourself into oblivion and still be weak, deconditioned, sleep-deprived, stressed, and under-recovered. This is not to say that health trackers are bad, just that most are unnecessary and time wasters. Many of my clients have a tough enough time lifting 2-3 days per week, doing cardio 3-5 days per week, and getting a solid 8 hours of sleep a night on top of already busy lifestyles that revolve around family and work commitments.
Supplements are not a substitute for healthy behavior.
Most supplements do nothing meaningful. Some offer some benefit, and others are promising but not proven long-term.
But according to the industry aging is a deficiency of something, this capsule can replace training, and you can “out-supplement” crappy food choices. Don’t worry if you skip your fruits and vegetables, just take this green powder that every podcaster is pimping for $100 a month.
If supplements worked the way they’re marketed, strength training would already be sold in pill form. It isn’t because you can’t shortcut adaptation. (Insert joke about Test and Tren here!)
Anti-aging is a lie. Sorry, but Father Time is undefeated. You have two options; age well or age poorly.
The anti-aging narrative trains people to fear wrinkles, obsess over lifespan, and outsource personal responsibility to experts, devices, pills, and protocols. Instead we should focus on building strength and increasing our physical capabilities. Longevity without strength is just a longer decline. Personally I’d rather be doing jiu-jitsu, pulling deadlifts, and playing my drums until I exit stage left than sitting in a rocker, but to each their own. If you live to 95 but can’t get off the floor, that’s not a win in my opinion.
Here’s what actually works for real humans, not in mice and not hypothetically.
1. Strength Training
Muscle is not just cosmetic.
Proper Strength Training
Builds muscle mass
Preserves independence
Reduces injury risk
Improves insulin sensitivity
Correlates strongly with lower all-cause mortality
If you’re not actively trying to get stronger or at least stay strong, you’re opting into decline.
2. Cardiorespiratory Fitness
Your heart and lungs don’t care about optimization trends.
They respond to:
Regular movement
Conditioning
Work that challenges your system
VO₂ max and work capacity matter far more than most people want to admit.
3. Good Nutrition
Not perfect, or dogmatic, and definitely not biohacked-I really F@#$ing hate that word.
Focus on
Eating enough protein (the BS around this ONE macronutrient alone could fill an entire novel)
Mostly whole foods
Reasonable portions
Proper hydration
Consistency over time
No supplement stack beats basic dietary competence. I honestly think Michael Pollan said it better than anyone, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
4. Sleep
Every longevity protocol collapses without it.
Poor sleep:
Accelerates aging
Increases injury risk
Disrupts hormones
Destroys recovery
You don’t need a ring to tell you that going to bed too late feels terrible.
5. Stress Management
Eliminating stress is impossible, but learning to manage it isn’t.
Try to:
Train hard without frying your nervous system
Recover without guilt
Create space to downshift regularly
Chronic stress ages you faster than almost anything, and no ice bath or cold plunge will fix a life of misery.
The longevity industry avoids this message because capable people don’t need much. Exercise, healthy nutrition, and good sleep are the things that have the greatest impact on our healthspan. You don’t need a watch or spreadsheet for this, you just need some discipline and prioritization. It is really tough to turn that into a recurring revenue model.
Remember, the industry doesn’t want you strong. It wants you forever optimizing.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s article and until next time, stay strong and healthy!
My grandfathers were examples of the two paths you can take. One had been fairly active earlier in his life, an athlete, but once adulthood, work, kids, responsibilities crept in, he stopped being active and didn't take care of himself too well, didn't eat great. He had some health issues, like an overactive gall bladder that went undiagnosed for a year leading him to waste away, but he lived another 7 years. I think he lived much longer than he cared to but his quality of life wasn't great especially after the gall bladder operation.
The other one developed diabetes in his 40s, but rather than take insulin, he controlled his blood sugar with his diet, ate lots of vegetables (and fruits when he could, he had quite the sweet tooth) and stayed very active. I remember coming home from class one day and finding him halfway up a tree trimming branches when he was about 78. He had to start taking insulin in the last couple years of his life because dementia had started to set in and his mobility suffered, but up until then he was in fairly good shape.
Both of them lived to their early 90s, but seeing the night and day difference really inspired me. I'm not 50 yet (will be in a few years though) but I already know what I want those later years to look like.
As always. Well said.