I wake up and usually journal for a while, taking some meditative time. Then I’ll work out in the gym — weight training and cardio — and then have a protein shake. I put a bunch of stuff in there including creatine, which is shown to be really helpful not only with muscle building but also cognitive health. Other nutritional supplements I think are important are omega 3, vitamin D, curcumin and oral nicotinamide mononucleotide.
Then I have a sauna and a cold plunge most days. I have a wellness studio in my garage, with a hyperbaric chamber, a Pulsed Electromagnetic Fieldmat, laser robotherapy and a HYPOXI machine, so I play around with those.
There are lots of interesting developments in longevity. There has been a lot of research around Klotho, which is emerging as a potential therapeutic gene therapy, stem cells, plasmapheresis and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.
You can reverse your biological age just through the basics, however. I reversed mine by four years in two years. The last time I checked my biological age was 39, through a methylation test. Right now, most people could probably live to 100 if they applied all the science.
Most of the medicines today focus on symptom-based treatment. If you have a disease, they give you a drug and you have surgery. Functional medicine, by contrast, is a framework of scientific wellness. In order to have a healthy lifespan, a number of things are necessary: it’s what you eat, it’s exercise, it’s getting adequate sleep, it’s managing stress — and then there’s a whole set of other additional therapies that can help activate the body’s own healing system.
There are built-in longevity switches, I call them, in the body. There are many ways to activate them that most people don’t understand. You go to your regular doctor and ask them to help you get healthier and they reply: come back when you have a disease. That’s really unfortunate because what we’re now learning is that the human body has this immense capacity for healing and repair.
We live in a coddled environment. Temperatures are always 16 degrees, we always have an abundance of food, we don’t have to move our bodies and we don’t have any stresses — historically humans had to deal with all kinds of physiological stresses, hot and cold and hunger.
If you fast for a few days you activate a longevity switch. It’s called autophagy — it’s a bit like a self-cleaning oven. You have these Pac-man like lysosomes that chew up all the old proteins and recycle them.
I do not eat a very inflammatory diet. Three things I always pick up at the grocery store are olive oil, small fish like sardines, herring and mackerel, and cruciferous vegetables. I’ve found a diet of nuts and seeds and vegetables and fruit and protein and olive oil really helps with the microbiome and resets your insulin signalling. Elevated insulin levels drive most ageing; they cause cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes, infertility and mental health issues. When you cut out all the crap and ultra-processed food, you increase longevity.
I definitely don’t drink. I might have a tequila once a month, but there’s no safe amount of alcohol.
Sleep is critical. It’s repair time. I try to get eight hours of sleep and go to bed and wake up at the same time, but it’s not easy.
I have a lot of relationships, a lot of community. Your close friends — not social media — are a key part of longevity.
Dr Mark Hyman leads the RoseBar Longevity Clinic at Six Senses Ibiza. A one-night stay starts at £552 based on two sharing, breakfast included, sixsenses.com
