Three Not-So-Bad Things on Aging and Longevity
A Weekly Newsletter
There’s no denying it: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. A pandemic, climate change, inflation, war, political discord—the list goes on. Here at the Longevity Project, we understand that bad news can be enough to take years off your life, so we want to do our part (however small) to balance the scales.
At the end of the day, though, we’re realists. Good news is hard to come by, no matter how hard you look. So we’ll aim a little lower and without further ado, we are pleased to share our first weekly newsletter: Three Not-So-Bad Things on Longevity and Aging. Feel free to share with others and send us items you want to see included. With some luck, you will see this newsletter (and some more not so bad news) every Wednesday.
Subscribe below to stay up-to-date on all the latest newsletter releases!
MAY 7, 2025
And the second annual Healthy Aging conference is a wrap. Almost 900 in person and virtual attendees joined health luminaries such as Deepak Chopra, Elissa Epel, Chip Conley, and many more to discuss the latest research and most useful information on how to live a longer, healthier life. This year’s theme of “Mind and Body” led us to explore not only nutrition, fitness, and sleep, but also mindfulness, purpose, spirituality, social connection, and cognitive health.
There is far more than can be summed up in three bullets, but we’re always game to give it a try:
1. Live a Balanced Life.
Perhaps it’s a little surprising that experts who have dedicated their professional lives to studying fitness, nutrition, and healthy aging might also emphasize the value of life balance, and even guilty pleasures. We would say that Dalia Perelman, a research dietician at Stanford, confessed her love for pizza, but it wasn’t really a confession – it was a declaration that life for her really wouldn’t be worth living without pleasures like pizza. The exercise panel, after detailing an astonishing list of exercise options and routines, urged everyone to find just one or two movements that fit your needs and schedule, and allow you to start building good habits around it. As Elissa Epel told the audience, “Keeping an infrastructure of the day, a routine, is critical. It is the foundation that allows our body and mind to relax— having these stacked rituals.”
She wasn’t at the conference, but all this reminds us of what Laura Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, recently said about erstwhile immortalist Bryan Johnson: "I often want to put my arm around Bryan Johnson's shoulder," Carstensen says, "…and say, 'bless your heart. Honey, go have a hamburger. I mean, go do something.'"
Hamburgers…pizzas…we can get used to this.
2. Don't Fall For The Hype.
Many speakers at the conference enjoyed a little bit of myth busting, but probably no one with more enthusiasm than Jamie Zeitzer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and an expert on sleep. Jamie had a field day with it: sleep wearables are basically useless; melatonin has very little impact (except as a placebo); and blue light is no different than any other light.
What should you do to improve your sleep? It’s highly individualized, but try to get outside light during the day, optimally in the late afternoon, to reset your circadian rhythm. And try to find ways to relax in the hours between dinner and bed. It can be yoga or meditation, watching television or reading, but try to find things that calm you and relieve the stress of the day. Avoid caffeine after dinner. And be sure to avoid scrolling – not because of the blue light – but because many apps like Netflix and Instagram (as we can personally attest) are engineered to addict and excite you.
And to quote Dr. Zeitzer: “Don’t worry too much about sleep – it doesn’t improve with harder work.”
3. And There Were Plenty of Tips.
Too many to catalogue but among our favorites:
From fitness expert Juliet Starrett of www.thereadystate.com, sit on the floor for 30 minutes a day. Good for stretching, forces you to get up and down, and it’s great for your hips and lower back.
Lots of tips on how to enhance social connections. From Chip Conley: reach out to someone who you haven’t texted in a long time. From Steven Crane and BJ Fogg: how to turn an acquaintance into a friend - “When 'let's get coffee' is mentioned, text that person the same day & set up specifics” - and how to turn a friend into the inner circle: “Come up with a flattering nickname for that person. Use it often.”
And turn up the heat. Ashley Mason, a psychologist at the University of California San Francisco, shared astonishing research about the impact of using heat (such as sauna), to treat depression. Early testing has shown great potential for using whole body hypothermia combined with cognitive behavioral therapy to treat serious cases of depression. It’s research that has foundations in everything from Native American sweat lodges to Finnish saunas. But it’s not easy, since as Ashley Mason said, “If you think about our modern world, we’ve edited a lot of meaningful thermal stress out of our lives.” But there are options if you want to get out of your temperature-controlled world: Ashley recommends taking a schvitz at your gym or bring 40 of your closest friends to the giant sauna at Alchemy Springs in San Francisco.
Shameless Self Promotion #1.
And keep up to date on the latest healthy aging developments by subscribing to the Lifestyle Medicine Newsletter. And stay tuned here for updates on Healthy Aging 2026.
Check out our archived posts here: