For how we live.
Losing the ability to walk is a turning point in later life. In a large randomised trial, structured activity cut the rate of major mobility disability — evidence that movement protects independence, read honestly.
A large treadmill cohort found the least-fit adults had about five times the death rate of the fittest — a bigger risk than coronary disease, smoking or diabetes. But it measures a state, not a lever.
A harmonised meta-analysis of over a million adults found high sitting time raised mortality — but about 60 to 75 minutes a day of activity erased that risk. Being inactive, not the chair itself, did most of the damage.
The idea that anti-ageing advances will soon add more than a year of life for every year that passes is popular in longevity circles. National death records point the other way.
A protein named after a Greek fate slows ageing in mice and sharpens memory in old monkeys. In people the evidence is a gene variant you are born with, not a treatment.
For 70 years the idea that oxidative damage drives ageing justified a supplement industry. Large randomised trials found antioxidant pills do not extend life, and some raise mortality.
The only long randomised trial of calorie restriction in non-obese adults improved cardiometabolic risk and modestly slowed one measure of biological ageing. Participants never hit the 25% target.
The dream was 'compression of morbidity' — sickness squeezed into a short window before death. Across 183 countries the healthspan–lifespan gap instead grew to 9.6 years, and to 12.4 in the US.
Five-day fasting cycles improve risk markers and one 'biological age' estimate in small trials. No human study has yet shown the diet prevents disease or extends life.
No pill in the anti-ageing market has mortality data like physical activity. The largest cohorts show most of the benefit arrives at half the recommended dose, and more brings diminishing returns.
Very long life carries real genetic signals — the APOE gene most robustly, FOXO3 in some populations. But pedigree studies put the true heritability of human lifespan well below 10%.
Two large cohorts link purpose in life to lower mortality and lower Alzheimer's risk. Whether purpose protects health, or health sustains purpose, is what the studies cannot fully separate.