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Our Obsession With Longevity Could Actually Be Making Us Unwell

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Right now, longevity is all the rage and as we are gradually getting older as a population, we’re hoping to extend our lifetimes even further. It makes perfect sense, right?

Plus, most longevity advice can often be summarised into: eat healthy foods, exercise often and keep a healthy sleep schedule to reduce stress. All of this is great advice and we should be trying to implement it into our lives as much as possible!

However, there is a stage where a preoccupation with longevity is just a little too far and could be impacting your mental health and even the quality of your life as you lock into the quest for a longer life.

It’s called ‘longevity fixation syndrome’

While this isn’t an official diagnosis, experts at Paracelsus Recovery, a mental health clinic based in Zurich have found that an obsessive and unhealthy fixation on longevity is increasingly presenting as anxiety and stress, and even eating disorders with their patients.

Speaking to The Mirror, Jan Gerber, the founder and CEO of Paracelsus Recovery said: “We are seeing a growing number of people whose lives are being dominated by the fear of ageing and decline, so much so that we have identified it as a new condition, Longevity Fixation Syndrome,

“What starts as self‑care becomes obsessive self‑surveillance. The stress generated by this mindset can be so intense that it actively shortens lifespan rather than extending it.”

Gerber adds that “there is no longevity without good mental health.”

Additionally, Jason Wood, a former sufferer of this syndrome said to The Guardian that he believes that longevity obsession is closely aligned to orthorexia: a condition characterised by excessive interest in, concern about, or obsession with healthy food.

Wood says: “I believe many of the underlying factors and desired outcomes which fuel orthorexia are the same for longevity fixation syndrome. But with the latter, there are more variables you feel like you need to control, so even more anxiety.”

If any of this feels familiar to you, speak to your GP or leading eating disorder charity BEAT for support.

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The Nighttime Routine Scientists, Dentists, And Longevity Experts Swear By

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Longevity expert after longevity expert has said that the steps to a longer life are somewhat familiar, even boring; a good diet, enough sleep, and adequate physical activity are key.

But exciting research is happening within those. Which is why some scientists have advised on everything from when you eat your dinner to the best bedtime for better ageing.

Here, we’ll share some studies which might make your nighttime routine as conducive as possible for the best, and even most longevity-boosting, results:

Speaking to GQ, Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, said that the longest-living people he’s tracked stopped eating 12 hours before breakfast the following day.

That may be, he said, because digesting food may interrupt your sleep and could mean food is stored in a different way.

So, if you’re an eight-hour sleeper, that could mean you stop eating four hours before you sleep and have breakfast right away.

Or you could stop eating three hours before sleep and wait an hour after waking to have brekkie.

Gum disease has been linked to a range of health issues, from heart conditions to tooth loss, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and even depression.

We don’t know exactly whether worse gum health comes from people having preexisting health conditions, which can make looking after your teeth harder, or if they actually cause the problems to begin with.

But speaking to HuffPost UK, Dr Jenna Chimon, a cosmetic dentist at Long Island Veneers, explained that gums are “living tissue connected directly to your bloodstream… bacteria and the toxins they release create a constant state of inflammation”.

Low-grade chronic inflammation has been linked to faster ageing and worse health outcomes.

So while again, we still don’t know exactly in which direction the gum health/all-body health connection flows, experts reccomend flossing anyway ― worst case scenario, you’ll have happier gums.

A 2024 paper listed sleep regularity as a “stronger predictor of mortality” than even sleep duration.

That means that when you go to bed might be more important than how long you sleep when it comes to your risk of death, though having either way too much or way too little sleep is also linked to an increased risk of premature death in the same paper.

Speaking to HuffPost UK previously, registered dietician and longevity specialist Melanie Murphy Richter, who studied under longevity researcher Dr Valter Longo at the University of Southern California, said, “Sleep is one of the most powerful longevity tools we have, and timing matters.

“Going to bed between 10pm and midnight and waking with the sun supports circadian rhythms, hormone balance, and cellular repair – all critical for healthy ageing,” she added.

It is true that some of us have a later chronotype, or a natural “night owl” body clock.

But a 2024 study by Stanford researchers suggested that no matter your natural preference, sleeping after 1am was linked to worse ageing outcomes.

“To age healthily, individuals should start sleeping before 1am, despite chronobiological preferences,” they wrote.

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3 Longevity Myths An Expert Wants Us To Ignore

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Longevity seems to be the word of the moment, with the exciting potential for a longer, healthier life capturing the attention of millionaires and the Vatican alike.

But while the more extreme steps some take in the hopes of an unnaturally extended lifespan may grab headlines, expert after expert recommends simple steps: eat well, exercise, get enough sleep, and stay social.

Author and public health researcher Professor Devi Sridhar, whose longevity-focused book How Not To Die (Too Soon) is set to come out on 12 June, says even that doesn’t take it far enough.

“Have you ever questioned why, despite the avalanche of self-help books and optimisation hacks, we remain embroiled in multiple global health crises?” her book’s blurb reads.

“The stark reality is that we’ve been sold a monumental lie.”

HuffPost UK spoke to Professor Sridhar about some of those myths.

Myth #1: Your lifespan is completely in your hands

Professor Sridhar’s book focuses on how individual health tips “distract” us from the reality: our lifespan isn’t all in our control.

A Social Determinants Of Health paper found that “40% of an individual’s health is determined by socioeconomic factors such as education, occupation, or income,” compared to only 30% determined by lifestyle choices (such as not drinking or exercising).

So, she said, we should see government policy as a far more effective way to “significantly extend our lifespans” than the latest superfood.

Myth #2: Lifespans are getting longer across the board

As financial inequality booms, Professor Sridhar said some people may be left with shorter lives, despite healthcare improvements.

Life expectancy is “tightly linked to income,” she explained.

“The basic drivers of health are linked to resources – whether money, time, social networks, access to green space or leisure centres and gyms, nutritious food, and so increased inequality means the bottom quintile struggling to maintain existing life expectancy, or even going backwards.”

In England, the life expectancy for men in the most deprived areas is 73.5 years, compared with 83.2 years in the least deprived areas (where life expectancy has fallen over the past decade).

Earlier this year it was reported that the number of children living in poverty in the UK is at an all-time high (since records began in 2002). There are 4.45 million children living in a household of relative low income, according to the BBC.

Myth #3: You need to get everything just right to achieve a longer life

When it comes to health and longevity, the professor told us that “perfection is a myth”.

Let’s say you have a “nutritionally poor” day of eating, she said – “just make the next day different with more vegetables, fruits and grains, and [the] same with exercise.”

Speaking of which, the movement enthusiast said those who expend “mild to moderate effort (even weekend warriors who exercise just 1-2 times per week) get the bulk of the benefits” of working out.

“Same for diet. What are you eating 80% of the time?” she added.

“Basically, don’t make food or diet or sleep something to stress about. Stress is also implicated in dying too soon!”

Though we do have some control over our longevity, then, ignoring the impact of policy on our lifespan, assuming they’ll improve no matter what, and stressing too much about your individual one might not be the best way forward.

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Longevity Expert Said Women Should Be Able To Do 11 Push-Ups – And Experts Have Thoughts

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If you’re into podcasts, you’ve probably heard of the hugely popular Mel Robbins Podcast, which is currently the No. 1 podcast on Apple podcasts and is in the Top 10 podcasts on Spotify.

If you aren’t familiar, Robbins is a motivational author, speaker and podcast host who regularly talks about mental health topics such as anxiety, stress and confidence, as well as physical health topics such as disease prevention and women’s fitness.

Her podcast episodes often inspire lots of conversations and even lifestyle changes, and a March episode of the podcast was no different.

On the episode, podcast guest Dr. Vonda Wright, who is an orthopedic surgeon and longevity expert, shared with Robbins the weekly exercise regimen that all women should follow: It included walking a total of three hours each week (broken up over at least four days), lifting heavy weights at least twice a week, and learning “to lift your own bodyweight” — which according to Wright means all women should be able to do 11 push-ups. Robbins asked if those push-ups can be on your knees, and Wright replied “no.”

The 11 push-up idea quickly caught the attention of women across the country who took to social media to try the challenge. But do all women really need to be able to do 11 push-ups? Or are there better measures of fitness?

Below, trainers share their honest thoughts on this 11 push-up challenge:

No, all women should not be able to do 11 push-ups

According to Katie Gould, the founder of KG Strong, a strength-training gym in Philadelphia, the idea that all women should be able to do 11 push-ups likely comes from a 2019 study of 1,100 male firefighters that found that men who could do more than 40 push-ups had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to men who could do fewer than 10 push-ups.

“So, these findings aren’t really directly … applicable to women,” Gould noted.

Danielle Repetti, the founder and head coach at Iron and Mettle, a women’s strength training gym in San Francisco, agreed and said the 11 push-up number feels arbitrary.

Gould also questioned how fast people were doing the push-ups, which can make them easier to do, or if they were doing them with resistance, which can make them tougher, and if they even had proper form.

“If you’re doing three super slow push-ups, to me, I would say that that’s an even greater indicator of strength than doing 11 improper form fast push-ups,” Gould said.

“I’ve had clients that can bench press 100, 125 pounds, and they aren’t able to do 11 push-ups on their toes, and that doesn’t mean that they’re not strong, and it doesn’t really mean anything about them as people in a body,” Repetti said.

Both Repetti and Gould said there are many reasons why a fit, strong person can’t do a chest-to-floor push-up. Maybe they just had a baby, have wrist issues, have larger bodies or are older, Repetti said.

“I’m not going to ask them to do a full-range push-up. It doesn’t feel good, it hurts. So that’s not how we’re necessarily going to strengthen their upper body,” said Gould.

“We’re going to do single-arm floor press, or we’re going to do a plank and hold that. There’s so many other exercises that can build your upper body if a full-range hands-on-floor push-up isn’t accessible to you,” Gould noted.

Your strength goals should be personal and should make you feel good

While it’s important to have benchmarks when it comes to bettering your health and fitness, it doesn’t mean one across-the-board benchmark is right for everyone, noted Gould.

“Your personal goals are really going to be the determining factor for what your benchmark should be. Not everybody’s goal is going to be to do 11 push-ups,” Gould said.

“Strength goals should be personalised, and while push-ups are a really valuable measure of upper body and core strength, they’re not the only indicator of fitness, and they’re not a sole indicator of health conditions,” Gould added.

Plus, your strength goal shouldn’t make you feel bad. That will only discourage you from returning to a workout class or personal training session in the future.

“Any time we embark on a strength journey, I think it’s really important to feel good about your body while you’re doing it, and not look at it from the lens of ‘Oh, I failed and that means something about me and my body,’” Repetti added.

An 11 push-up challenge is a fast-track way to feel discouraged if you can’t hit the number.

Everyone expresses strength in different ways, and everyone has different places where they excel and where they struggle, Repetti said.

“If you go and do the push-ups and you can’t do it … I just really want women to know that doesn’t mean anything about you and your own strength,” Repetti noted.

In strength training, you’ll find the movements that you’re great at and not so great at. “It’s important that women don’t think of the push-up as being the end all be all,” Repetti added.

The most important strength training regimen is one you'll stick to.

Hiraman via Getty Images

The most important strength training regimen is one you’ll stick to.

But push-ups do have benefits when it comes to healthy aging and building strength

“So, push-ups work pretty much all the muscles in the upper body — chest shoulders, triceps, those are all parts of the horizontal pressing motion, and then push-ups also challenge our core,” Repetti said.

Push-ups benefit your posture, your functional strength, and can help with daily activities like lifting things, pushing things away, pulling yourself up and even boosts your bone density (which is crucial for women as they age and bone density drops), said Gould.

Push-ups can also help you have the strength to push yourself off the ground, whether you’re playing with your grandkids, your pets, or if you fall down, both experts said.

Like all strength training, push-ups can help you continue to do the things you want to do as you get older, such as move around your home, go up and down stairs, even dance.

“How you feel in 50 years is kind of dependent on some of the things you’re doing now,” Repetti said. “We really want to build as much strength as we can so that … we don’t have to be one of those people who are like, ‘Oh, I used to do that, and now I don’t anymore because my body doesn’t feel good when I do that.’”

If you do want to be able to do push-ups, there are steps you can take to get there

So, not being able to do a push-up (let alone 11) on your toes doesn’t mean anything about you or your fitness, but if you do have a goal to be able to do some push-ups, the trainers who spoke with HuffPost have some tips.

First, you can try to do push-ups on your knees, but Gould said she prefers an incline push-up as a way to build your upper body strength.

For this type of push-up, you’ll want to put your hands on an elevated surface like a bench or box, said Repetti. Or, you can even do it with your hands on your couch.

This way, you’re moving less of your body weight while still maintaining a push-up position. You can also see your progress as you move to lower and lower surfaces, said Gould, “and that is a big thing for me with my clients.”

These modifications allow you to “train the full range of motion and get the most out of learning that movement,” noted Repetti.

“So, once you strengthen some of those muscles, then the push-ups in and of themselves get easier,” Repetti said. “We want to essentially make the movement easier at first, so that our body can learn how to do it, and then slowly and gradually over time, make that movement more and more challenging.”

“I would consider a push-up on your toes one of the more challenging variations of the push-up,” Repetti said ― and noted that you can make a push-up even harder by adding weight.

“But, for most people, I think learning some of the easier variations and then slowly building up to push-ups on your toes is the best way to get better at push-ups,” she said.

And, if you find that you can’t hit 11 push-ups even with some additional training, that’s OK. There are other ways to get strong and stay strong – what matters most is that you find a sustainable strength regimen that makes you feel good and keeps you moving.

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I’m A Longevity Expert – This 30-Second Test May Reveal Your Risk Of Early Death

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In a recent episode of the ZOE podcast, Bryan Johnson – a man famous for trying pretty much every supposed longevity booster going – spoke with the gut health company’s co-founder Dr Tim Spector and CEO Jonathan Wolf.

Bryan said that his progress was being measured with a “few different modalities,” adding that it’s possible to “measure the biological age of the heart anatomically.”

Though many of the methods the controversial millionaire uses to track, preserve, and even try to reverse his body’s age are experimental, researchers have found that one of the metrics he uses – resting heart rate – really can be linked to mortality.

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How does resting heart rate affect longevity?

Harvard’s site says that measuring your resting heart rate, or the number of times your heart beats in a set period while you’re relaxed, is “one of the easiest, and maybe most effective” health markers we have.

Dr Jason Wasfy, director of quality and analytics at Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center, said: “A lower resting heart rate can mean a higher degree of physical fitness, which is associated with reduced rates of cardiac events like heart attacks”.

Meanwhile, a higher resting heart rate could belie an increased risk of cardiac risk “as the more beats your heart has to take eventually takes a toll on its overall function”.

A 2013 study found that men who had a resting heart rate between 81 and 90 had double the risk of premature death than those with a lower heart rate (50 bpm), while those with a resting heart rate above 90 had triple the risk.

With every 10 added beats per minute, they found, the likelihood of premature death upped by 16%.

What’s an ideal resting heart rate?

The British Heart Foundation says an ideal resting heart rate is between 60-100 BPM (beats per minute).

Sometimes, very fit people have a lower heart rate than 60 BPM. A lower resting heart rate warrants a GP visit if it’s accompanied by symptoms like dizziness, fainting, and fatigue.

Your heart rate can dip as low as 40 BPM when you sleep without any cause for cencern.

A heart rate over 100 BPM is too fast for most of us. See a doctor if you notice palpitations, dizziness, fatigue, or fainting.

How can I measure my resting heart rate?

It takes about 30 seconds to measure your resting heart rate. You just need to make sure you’re really, well, rested when you check it; soon after waking up is a great time to check your resting heart rate.

Put your index and middle fingers on your wrist or neck – anywhere you can feel a pulse.

Don’t use your thumb, because that has its own pulse.

Measure the beats across 30 seconds and then double it to get your beats per minute (BPM).

You should repeat it a few times to make sure your reading is accurate, making sure it’s not within an hour of either drinking caffeine or taking exercise (those elevate your heart rate).

For the most accurate stats, take your resting heart rate multiple times across that week at different times of day.

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