Longevity: Lifespan vs. Healthspan

Longevity can be broken down into two parts:

  1. Lifespan=how long you live in years

  2. Healthspan=how long you live healthfully

First, let’s tackle lifespan—

If you’ve survived to age 40, congrats!

Not only are you approaching some version of an anxiety-ridden midlife crisis (is that just me?) …

…we also now know that you have an about an 80% chance of dying from one of the following:

  1. Cancer

  2. Cardiovascular disease (e.g., heart attack)

  3. Cerebrovascular disease (e.g., stroke)

  4. Neurodegenerative disease (e.g., Alzheimer’s/dementia)

So if were focused on increasing our lifespan (i.e., living longer than we otherwise would have if we continued living like slobs)…

The objective needs to be:

*Delay the inevitable onset of those four things*

So, what’s the strategy?

  1. STOP doing the stuff that increases our risk of those things.

  2. START doing the stuff that decreases the risk of those things.

So, what is the stuff we need to do/not do?

Well, those are called the tactics. And I’m not gonna go into that here. But it’s something I’m constantly learning about and will be sharing in my not-awful newsletter and on social channels.

 

Now, let’s tackle healthspan—

Healthspan can be thought of as how many years you live that during which you are not physically decrepit or mentally demented.

Meaning, you could live to 100, but if you can get out of a chair by yourself for the last 15 years, or can’t remember your child’s name, what’s the GD point?

So my goal with healthspan could be described as … living as long as possible in a healthy way and as soon as I am decrepit I’d just like to die.

Now that I’ve put you in a good mood with that last sentence, let’s go a little deeper.

Physical health

Sarcopenia!

What a super fun word to say.

“Sar-coh-pee-nee-uh.”

See?

But that’s where the fun ends.

It’s actually the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass, quality, and strength associated with aging.

So like, yeah, we literally wither away as we age.

The good news?

It’s possible to slow that process.

How?

The easy answer is resistance training.

But it’s a bit more nuanced than be saying “lift weights”.

Because if your goal is to be a functional old person (which is my goal), there’s probably no reason to be trying to power clean 400 lbs and wildly throw heavy shit above your head. (it looks neat tho)

Do more of:

  • Basic pushing (e.g., push up)

  • Basic pulling (e.g., pull up)

  • Hip-hinging (e.g., goblet squats)

  • *With a high priority on stability.*

And less of:

  • Bicep curls

  • Overhead pressing

  • Crunches

  • Twisty-turny crazy sh*t

Mental health

A few things that cause mental health to decline:

  • Sleep deprivation

  • Stress

  • Exercise - What?? - I know right?

    • Specifically cardio.

    • Sounds weird, but you really want that BDNF flowin’ thru yo veins.

Anyway…

There’s like 8,000 more things we can be doing.

And I spend an ungodly amount of time reading/researching into this topic compared to how much I implement this information.

Something I’d like to change.

But for now that’s where I am.

I plan to share more and more of this stuff in my weekly newsletter if you are at all interested in this topic.