What do you do?

Since debuting on the rejuvenationolympics.com in 2nd place (I’m now 6th), I have fielded a lot of the same question. What do you do? Below I will list the different areas of my life I have changed over the years which I believe has helped me reduce my pace of aging. The test Rejuvenation Olympics uses is the DunedinPACE test, widely considered the best biological clock (to date). I started this journey back in 2016 when my analyst Will Granger and I wrote a paper on human longevity from an investment perspective at my hedge fund KIS Capital Partners.

Sleep

In 2018, I bought an Oura Ring and started monitoring my sleep. I’ve since swapped to a Whoop as I believe the data is more accurate. Oura helped build longitudinal data on my sleep that I have used to very slowly change behavior. I want to optimize for deep sleep. I dont really look at any other data sleep data. During deep sleep, your body is most efficient and healing itself. When I started tracking my sleep I was getting about 1 hour of deep sleep per night. I now get closer to 2 hours per night on average but I know how to get 2:30 deep sleep if I do everything perfectly. Everybody is different so finding what is good and bad for you is a personal journey. What do I do?

  • Exercise in the morning rather than in the evening. Evening exercise = minus 30mins deep sleep

  • Don’t eat red meat for dinner. Red meat for dinner = minus 30min deep sleep

  • Vegetarian dinner will actually add 20 min of deep sleep. I try to eat fish or chicken with dinner or vegetarian.

  • I can drink alcohol (3-4 drinks) and that won’t affect my deep so much. However, my genetics for Alcohol Metabolism are ALDH2 are rs671 G>A GG. I’m a high metaboliser of alcohol. My wife can’t have one drink without significant impact on deep sleep.

  • I try not to drink water before bed so I don’t have to get up during the night. I have a glass next to my bed for when I get up.

  • Do not use a screen for at least an hour before bed and a laptop screen for 2 hours before bed. Laptop screen before bed = minus 30min deep sleep

  • We use blue light blocking globes in our bedroom, reading lamps, children’s bedroom lamp.

  • You get more deep sleep before midnight so I try to get to bed early, asleep before 10pm.

  • I have a caffeine sensitivity CYP1A2 A>C CC so I don’t have any caffeine after 11am including no chocolate at night. I mostly never have caffeine.

Finally, I don’t obsess over this. I want to do this most of the time but I am relaxed about going to a party and knowing that I won’t be getting great sleep that night. If I can get 5/7 nights of great sleep a week, I think that’s a win.

Microbiome/Bloods

Since writing the longevity paper, I have had my microbiome checked once a year and my bloods about twice a year. These are the things I found out and changed.

  • My microbiome is very good. I’m very grateful for that. I don’t know why but it could be my diversity of diet.

  • My wife and spent 3 months in Mexico and on returning to Australia, I found out I had a parasite. I did a protocol to remove it, which unfortunately involved a heavy antibiotic, and thankfully got rid of it. My gut recovered very quickly and so far, so good.

  • My bloods consistently showed lower Vitamin Bs and I was intermittently supplementing B12 only to have it fall again by the next test. Then I found out that I have a gene expression for Vitamin B12 FUT2 Gly258Ser G>A GG which makes it very hard for my body to hold on to B12. I now take a daily, sublingual tablet, which has solved this issue.

  • My zinc levels were very low and I took zinc for a long time to try bring it back up, with some success.

  • I am a half carry of hemochromatosis, and my iron levels have always been at the top end of the accepted range. I recently started giving blood to bring the iron down, which had the positive effect of increasing zinc and copper. A win win win!

The key reason to get bloods done frequently, is to catch out of balance markers early. I investigate concerns early and rebalance quickly. Importantly, the accepted healthy range or band for blood results is the 97% of population levels. Your body’s optimal levels will be somewhere within that 97% range based on your genetics. A healthy level for a particular blood marker for you might be at 90%. If it suddenly comes in at 10%, the standard test will not flag this as out of range as it is withing the population range. But it is certainly something you want to investigate. Longitudinal data on bloods is very valuable.

Stress reduction

For me this was a change in career. I was the CIO of a hedge fund for 10 years. It was pretty hard to avoid stress living in a high adrenaline state. Changing career helped my base line stress reduce significantly. I was then able to notice stress much more easily. I immediately focus on stress reduction when I become aware of it. There are lots of techniques for stress reduction so I won’t go into it here. Lower stress also equals better sleep.

Caloric restriction

Again, there are lots of data, research and commentary online for this. It works for me so I do it. If your body doesn’t respond well to it, then don’t. I try and only eat twice a day with no snacking. My two meals are usually around 11:30am-midday and 5:30pm-6pm. That means I am not eating for 18 hours. By 11:30am I’m definitely ready for food and the early dinner helps my sleep. Again, if I can hit 5/7 days of this then I think it’s a win. I believe that resting your digestive system is very important. It has its own circadian rhythm and needs its sleep. Also, I feel like I have more energy in the mornings as my body is not digesting food.

Exercise

The best exercise is something you love doing. I soft sand run, play squash and tennis. Only this year did I start lifting in the gym. The goal is to have sufficent muscle mass when I reach 50. I do it with a personal trainer, because I really dont like the gym. I also live only in walkable neighborhoods.

DNA based supplements

I have taken a daily nutritional supplement for 6 or 7 years. For the first 5 years I used Daily Nutritional Support and recently I have oscillated with AG1.

  • I also have added DHA Omega 3 daily.

  • I take resveratrol daily.

  • I have done 100 days of 1g NMN each year for 4 years (and I don’t have a good scientific reason to cycle the 100 days only).

I took a DNA test which focussed on 6 main areas being Lipid metabolism, Methylation, Detoxification, Inflammation, Oxidative stress, Bone health and Insulin sensitivity. Importantly, with this data, I can target specific needs that my body has that would not be relevant to the population. I will list them here but they are probably of not much use to anyone but me. If you’re somewhat researched, you will be able to work out which of the 6 areas I need to focus on by the supplements below.

  • Vitamin B12 sublingual tablet 1000mg

  • MTHFR support

    • Riboflavin 5-phosphate sodium (Activated B2) 25 mg equiv. riboflavin 19.7 mg

    • Pyridoxal 5-phosphate monohydrate (P5P) 23.5 mg equiv. pyridoxine 15 mg

    • Calcium pantothenate (Vitamin B5) 196.5 mg equiv. pantothenic acid 180 mg

    • Nicotinamide (Vitamin B3) 130 mg

    • Thiamine hydrochloride (Vitamin B1) 63.6 mg equiv. thiamine 50 mg

    • Biotin 500 μg

  • Liposomal Glutathione 100mg

  • The Nitric Factor

    • L-arginine 3 g

    • Citrulline 1 g

    • Citric acid anhydrous 880 mg

    • Carnitine tartrate 500 mg

    • R,S-alpha lipoic acid 200 mg

    • Silicon dioxide 90 mg

    • Thaumatin 60 mg

  • Adalase

    • Riboflavin 5-phosphate sodium (Activated B2) 25 mg equiv. riboflavin 19.7 mg

    • Pyridoxal 5-phosphate monohydrate (P5P) 23.5 mg equiv. pyridoxine 15 mg

    • Calcium pantothenate (Vitamin B5) 196.5 mg equiv. pantothenic acid 180 mg

    • Nicotinamide (Vitamin B3) 130 mg

    • Thiamine hydrochloride (Vitamin B1) 63.6 mg equiv. thiamine 50 mg

    • Biotin 500 μg

  • UM Calm

    • Magnesium amino acid chelate 1739 mg equiv. magnesium 200 mg

    • Magnesium glycerophosphate 966 mg equiv. magnesium 100 mg

    • Calcium glycerophosphate 298.5 mg equiv. calcium 50 mg

    • Zinc amino acid chelate 35 mg equiv. zinc 7 mg

    • Myo-inositol 1 g

    • Taurine 500 mg

    • Choline bitartrate 300 mg

    • Glycine 250 mg

    • Camellia sinensis ext. 250 mg

    • Alpha casozepine enriched hydrolysed milk protein (Lacticum)

Finally, the only other medication I take is finasteride for my hair loss (and front running any prostate issues).

Mindset

Ill probably lose you with this one. I think the mind is much more powerful than we know. Most will agree. In clinical trials, placebo can have extraordinary results. It is why the FDA makes drug developers outperform placebo. A placebo tablet can generate  a significant effect solely from someone’s mind thinking they might be taking a drug.

Since I discovered the rate of technology change and the implications for human longevity, thanks to Peter Diamandis, I have believed that we will live much longer than 80 or 90 or 100. Peter encouraged us to set a living/life goal. Just like a financial goal. Mine is set at 140 years old. I believe I’m going to get there, though not just through what I listed above. I believe technology will solve a lot of age-related disease by solving aging. Whether you agree or not, I believe it. My mind has been telling my body for 8 years that I’m not getting old. I’m going to live a really long time and I’m still young. Does this have a physical effect? You tell me. I have some data to suggest it might.

Stop yourself saying ‘I’m getting old’. Your body will hear you.