Five Proven Paths to Longer, Healthier Living

The internet is loud about longevity—cryotherapy, peptides, young-blood transfusions, and glossy gadgets promising more years with fewer wrinkles. We take a quieter, sharper route: the five fundamentals with the strongest evidence for living longer and feeling better now. No pricey routines. No silver bullets. Just clear steps you can act on today.

We start with food and fasting, laying out how whole foods, fiber, protein, and omega-3s support metabolic health and how simple overnight fasts can nudge insulin sensitivity and cellular cleanup without wrecking your routine. From there, we map a realistic movement plan that pairs cardio for heart and brain benefits with resistance training to defend the most precious tissue in aging—skeletal muscle. You’ll get benchmarks to hit, flexible ways to structure the week, and practical examples that fit real life.

Then we protect the engine with sleep: seven to nine hours, consistent timing, and smart wind-downs that improve mood, immunity, and recovery. We dig into stress as a biological accelerant and share fast, repeatable tools—breathwork, meditation, prayer, gratitude—that measurably shift your resilience. Finally, we put relationships and purpose at the center, drawing on long-term studies showing that connection and meaning outperform wealth and status as predictors of healthspan. Along the way, we separate science from hype on supplements, cold exposure, hyperbaric sessions, and other trending biohacks—what may help, what’s unproven, and where to focus your time.

Walk away with a grounded playbook: eat whole foods, move daily, sleep well, lower stress, and stay connected to people and purpose. If this resonates, subscribe, leave a quick review, and share it with someone who wants to feel younger, stronger, and healthier. What’s the one habit you’ll start today?

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Chapters

• 0:45 Setting The Longevity Question
• 1:59 The Five Evidence-Based Pillars
• 3:39 Pillar One: Nutrition & Fasting
• 7:43 Pillar Two: Exercise & Movement
• 10:16 Pillar Three: Sleep Optimization
• 10:53 Pillar Four: Stress & Mental Health
• 13:09 Pillar Five: Relationships & Purpose
• 15:22 Debunking Costly Biohacks
• 18:41 Tech Temptations vs. Daily Basics

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Welcome back to Living a Full Life podcast. I'm Dr. Enrico Dolcecori. And today we're diving into one of the hottest topics online right now: longevity hacks. From biohacking gadgets to exotic supplements, everyone seems to be searching for the fountain of youth. But what's actually backed by science? And what's just expensive hype? And most importantly, what can you start doing today to live not just longer, but healthier? That's exactly what Living a Full Life Podcast is all about. How do we maintain the health that was given to us for as long as possible? It's called maintenance and preventative health care. And that's really the hack that's been around for thousands of years. How do we maintain that? Otherwise, everything else is really just hype. But let's dive into what longevity trending is all about. And maybe you've seen it across social media, maybe you've seen the biohacking stuff, maybe you have questions. There's been a high rise in social media conversations about anti-aging, biohacking, and wellness optimization. And well, every time I scoff and roll my eyes as I scroll by, I thought maybe, hey, maybe this would be a great podcast for our listeners to hear out. Billionaires are pouring billions of dollars into anti-aging research. You've seen some of them on social media, and they're actually doing it behind the scenes. They have been for a long time. The good news, there are proven strategies for living longer with better quality of life. And most do not cost a fortune, which is great news for all of us. And you know me, evidence-based backed literature that I want to go over is five points here that have been proven over and over and over again through the literature for dozens of years, that these are the longevity hacks. You know, I hate the word hacks. There is no hacks. These are the truths behind longevity and all the blue zones that we talked about in a couple podcasts and all of the longevity podcasts I've talked about, and even had special guests on the podcast about longevity and anti-aging. This stuff is all about the top research-based stuff that you need to know and implement in order to increase your chances of living a long and healthy life. That's all it's all about. I think health is more important than longevity. Living a healthy life is then you can do anything you want. That's what health is. Health is a miraculous gift that to have, to be able to do all the things that you want. We take it for granted every single day, chasing all the other things in our life. But we wake up relatively healthy each day, minimal pain, maybe no pain at all, being able to do everything you want to. You can pick up a basketball and start playing with your kids if you wanted to. That's a blessing. That's a gift. And we take it for granted all the time. But if we want to preserve this, this is the podcast for you. Number one, number one on the list for sure: nutrition and fasting. Diet's rich in whole foods, whole foods, plants, lean proteins, and omega-3s lower the risk of chronic disease. So maintaining health is also called preventative health. We want to prevent any type of chronic illness to maintain our health. That's what it's all about. So we have to think preventatively and maintenance-wise, what we need to do. So eating a diet rich in whole foods helps prevent many, many chronic illnesses. Fasting has great literature behind it. It makes sense. If you think of think of a paleolithic type of uh evolution that we've had, um, I took anthropology and and and sciences and all that. I minored in anthropology. So as we go through that lineage of time over the last 10,000 years and how we've evolved, we've evolved overeating, uh, not overeating. We've evolved over time eating from the earth, animals and plants. And if you think about it, you'd had to wait for harvest sometimes, you'd had to wait for game to go out and hunt sometimes, maybe days. So having the three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that's a luxury that we've developed over time. But that wasn't how we were developed. And in growing ingrained in our DNA, we may have gone time without food. We might have gone 16 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours without food. We may have grazed on something, maybe found a berry patch or something and eaten some of that or some plants or some roots. But to find the next game or the next fig tree populated with tons of figs that we could eat or apples or whatever it may be, um, that took time to find. So fasting is ingrained in our DNA as humans, that intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating improves insulin sensitivity and cellular repair. It creates a stage of autophagy, which means automatic eating of the body. So your body breaks down lackluster cells, weak cells, and replenishes them with healthy cells. So it has a regenerative effect, it has a cleansing effect, it has a lot of gut effects as well. And for us, what we want to try is maybe start with a 12-hour fast. Maybe finish dinner at 6:30 p.m. and then don't eat breakfast until 6 or 7 a.m. the next day. So the overnight fast, the 12 to 14 hour fast, is the easiest way to start teaching your body, hey, let's let's watch the clock on when we eat and start on there. Then you can try 16-hour fast, 18-hour fast where you skip breakfast. And you can try these for two or three days in a row. It doesn't have to be continuous forever. And see how you feel. When you give your gut a chance to repair, it's amazing the effects that can happen from that. But longevity studies have shown that intermittent fasting or breaking from eating continuously actually improves our lifespan because you slow down peristolysis, you slow or you give your gut a break from digestion. That makes sense. Think of it as like a machine in a factory, constantly producing like a coal factory or an energy factory, constantly producing energy. It's breaking down the coal, it's burning it, it's producing energy for us. Nuclear power, hydro, coal. I'm just giving you an example. Coal, we burn it down. It's constantly being fed. Coal is constantly going into the machines, constantly being burnt for energy, and your gut's doing that for you all the time, breaking down the food you eat and giving you energy, breaking down the food you eat and giving you energy. What if we could turn off the boilers for a little bit and be like, hey, machines, here's a break. That gives them a chance to cool down, heal up, and then get turned back on and produce more energy the next time you eat. So think about that in that way and how beneficial that can be. Imagine running your engine on your car constantly all the time, and you never parked it in the garage. That engine will break down, the mileage will add up quite quickly, the car will break down quite quickly, and instead of lasting you 20 years, the Ferrari may break down in 10. And you wonder why longevity isn't there. It makes sense if you think of it simplistically. Number two on the list, and these are ranks from the number one to number five, all important, but we got to start with nutrition. Number two is exercise and movement. All blue zones showed constant movement in their in their population. Regular exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and certain cancers, almost many cancers, to be honest with you. Uh, both strength training and cardio are critical for longevity. So when we think of strength training and cardio, think of it again paleolithically. Think about it on the farm, moving machines, moving heavy stuff, moving bales of hay, moving um digging trenches, digging uh crops, uh planting seeds, pulling roots, moving tree stumps. Um, think about that. Like that's our resistance training. And it's the constant walking across the fields, back and forth, doing things. It was constant walking. That was cardio and that was resistance training, pulling and pushing. Now we have gyms and we kind of push shit quite a lot at the gyms. We get on the cardio machines for an hour, we do these ridiculous uh assault bike stuff, we do ellipticals, we do uh incline treadmills, which is aggressive, and then on our joints, and then we do like heavy weights. We're lifting like these perfectly round barbells. Where is that in nature? Where is there a barbell in nature or a straight metal pipe in nature? They're usually branches that are bent and roots that are hard to get out of the ground. Those are not functional exercises, but the constant resistance exercise and the constant cardio exercise can help us with overall exercise. So I'm not knocking it, I'm just telling you, we don't have to go for the bench press record or lifting super heavy weights. We just need some resistance on that weight, and repetition is fantastic for lean muscle mass development and maintenance as we get older. And the cardio is great for cardiovascular health. So both together, wonderful exercise combination. You can rotate those four days a week. You do two strength training, two cardio days, and that's a great week and go for daily walks. Um, aim for 150 minutes of moderate activity and two strength sessions weekly. Break those down in any way you want. You can do two 45-minute um workouts, you can do uh two 60-minute workouts, you can do three 45-minute workouts, any way you want. But it's actually that accumulation of time of resistance, of doing 150 minutes of resistance a week that shows in the literature to be the tipping point of uh benefit, the benefit versus risk. The benefits start after 150 minutes. Anything less than that had lower benefit, but still had benefits than doing nothing, than being sanitary. So that's great for exercise. Number three, sleep optimization. Sleep is the only chance we have to repair. So poor sleep is linked to a shorter lifespan, obesity, mood disorders, and poor immunity. People get chronically sick because from colds and flus because of poor sleep over time. Sleep is when your brain detoxes, your memory consolidates, and your hormones regulate. So really important to get seven to nine hours per night. Keep a consistent sleepslash wake schedule and avoid screens one hour before bed in order to set yourself up properly for bedtime and sleep. Number four, stress reduction and mental health. And it directly impacts our mental health. So the science shows that chronic stress accelerates aging by shortening shortening the telomeres. These are the protective caps on our DNA. And what it does is shortens them, which shortens their lifespan. So we turn over cells a little bit quicker. And we can only produce so many cells in our lifetime. So the longer we can keep cells, the longer we can keep regeneration processes, the longer our lifespan. That's one theory out there. It's been in the DNA study since the 1960s on telomeres and what their effect is. And they found a correlation that with shorter telomeres, people lived less longer, and people with longer telomeres lived longer. That was in the blue zone studies as well, and some other villages studies across the world as well. So telomeres are interesting, but that happens. We shorten our telomeres because of stress, chronic stress, physical, mental, emotional, and mental stress will shorten those telomeres. So practices like mindfulness, prayer, meditation, breathing exercise, and gratitude improve resilience in ourselves. It's been shown. Spiritual, spiritual studies have shown that prayer can be a healing effect. And then when they looked at it, they saw white blood cell and immune function increase. They saw actual markers in the blood increase through prayer and meditative states, where we go in with gratitude or gratefulness or thankfulness. And what that does is actually changes our not our DNA itself, but changes the way the DNA works. And our telomeres actually go up, uh stay within a constant length. And they even showed telomere studies in there as well. There's some Japanese studies that are fascinating on that. So your action step for this is to start with five to ten minutes of daily breathing or gratitude journaling, or even just the meditative state or a prayer state every day, starting, it could be just an attitude of gratitude, right? We call it five minutes of just having an attitude of gratitude. Seen those cool videos of like the five-year-old girl standing in front of the mirror. I am strong, I am smart, I am capable. And they have their affirmations, and it's a beautiful way to start the day that gets you all pumped up. Number five, relationships and purpose. Maybe the most important thing, having a purpose is the meaning of life. But number five on this list from evidence-based research, but still very important. The science shows from Harvard studies of adult development, the longest study of unhappiness that was ever done found that social connections and having a sense of purpose are stronger predictors of longevity than wealth or fame. Not surprising, but very interesting that the social connections, that the meaningful social connections through our life gave us a purpose to stay alive. It makes sense. It totally makes sense. If they if you're people need you, you need to be around. If people don't need you, well, that's pretty miserable, isn't it? Doesn't make it makes a lot of sense. So that's why parents are usually a little bit happier long term. Depends what stage in parenting you're in you're in right now. If you got teenagers, you're probably in the valley of your happiness right now. But if you got empty nesters or you got toddlers, you're probably in that peak of happiness, knowing that you've raised healthy kids and they're out on their own conquering the college or their world or their careers, or you got toddlers that are just bringing a smile on your face each and every day. Family, the internet, the inter interconnected family makes a huge difference. But what about our other social connections like friends and groups and friendships? Those are the ones getting up. When you look at blue zones like the Sardinia in Italy, the villages in Japan, um uh Costa Rica, and and the parts of the blue zones, all these people had daily habit, habitual rituals, like daily events where they went and just sat down, had a coffee with the same group of friends. Usually old men would sit down with other old men friends. They've been friends for like 60 years, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and chat for 45 minutes, maybe it was an hour and a half, who knows? And they would do that. And other people have connective groups or things that they looked forward to. Even the California group uh would look for look forward to bingo nights, bowling nights, all those kinds of things that brought them together as friends. So relationships and purpose make a huge step on longevity as well. And we need to understand that as well. Very cool stuff there. So, what's hype with social media? And that's what I wanted to tackle today. Those are the five things you need to walk away with on this podcast. But the hype that you're seeing with the billionaires and social media and all these hacks is that expensive supplements with little proven effect, like NMN, NAD plus boosters, exotic peptides, they're promising but not conclusive. We don't have the research showing any longevity improvements at all on any of the things that I talked about: immune function, uh telomere productivity, telomere lifespan. None of the stuff is adding up to show any effects on the things that we know up to this point are longevity factors. So save your money on a lot of this false fame stuff that's going out there. Extreme biohacks. Well, cryotherapy was fun for a while, wasn't it? Well, that's going out the window. I just heard a guy at the gym. He's like, I'm opening up my little health and wellness uh location spa. I'm like, right now, what do you what are you doing? It's like cryotherapy. And in my head, I'm like, well, you're going bankrupt. Um, because people are going away from this stuff. I mean, it was a fad freezing your body for five minutes. Minimal effects, not affecting telomere health, helping brown fat and and cellular uh processes, there is effects to it that are good. They're little things you can add. If you work out, you eat well, you do all the right things, and you're covering, you know, 90% of the bases. Doing a cold plunge on top of that may give you that extra edge, get you to push an extra 10 pounds on the bench press, maybe maybe help you like recover better, more of an athletic thing. But as far as longevity, not yet there. It's not proven. Um, cryotherapy chambers, hyperbaric oxygen, blood transfusions from young donors. All of this stuff is out there on the internet right now. Hyperbaric, getting that oxygen helps the body heal faster. Um, wound therapy and um even brain activity, getting more oxygen in the body is great. Even cancer patients getting in a hyperbaric chamber and pumping more and oxygen deeper into the cells um has shown being being a great cancer fighter, a great brain activator, and wound healing. I know that for a fact. So I'm not knocking these things, but when we talk about longevity, should you be sitting in a hyperbaric chamber one hour every day? I don't know. Would you would can you use your life for an hour doing something else uh and enjoying your life? Probably. Blood transfusions from young donors. I mean, this has been happening for hundreds of years. Some gruesome stories from human history around the world about how young they're taking this blood and putting it into or drinking it. Um, now it's transfusion. But again, there's a billionaire that was doing transfusions with his uh 16-year-old son and uh documenting uh blood work and stuff, interesting stuff, but again, marginal improvements on that. Technology is exciting too, but the fundamentals still matter most, and it's the five things I told you there right there. So be curious, uh, listen to all the cool stuff coming up with AI and tech devices and all this stuff. Keep an open ear. But the basics that I told you about have been proven up to today to be the most important things for not only just living longer, but having a healthy life. I mean, just maintaining the health that you have. So they're basics that you should be doing every day, not only to just live longer, but to enjoy today, enjoy the present. And that's that's the cool stuff about that. To live longer, don't chase the latest gimmicks. Instead, master the basics. Eat whole foods, move daily, sleep well, reduce stress, and stay connected to people and purpose. Those are the true longevity hacks that are proven, powerful, and within your control. So that's what I want you to walk away with this week. Stay healthy, stay well. Thanks for joining me on Living a Full Life Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend who's looking to feel younger, stronger, and healthier. And remember, longevity isn't about living forever, it's about living fully every day you're given.