Humans have always been obsessed with extending their lives.

Fountains of youth, keys to immortality and promises of life after death are common place in the legend of history.

And it makes sense.

Because none of us wants to die.

But it’s not often we actually look at the other side.

In our desperate attempts to escape death, we often forget what it is we’re living for. Why we’re trying to extend our lives in the first place.

And for most people, life becomes a process of going on just for the sake of going on. Of continuing to live purely because you don’t want to die. And more often than not — life itself becomes a chore.

Because when going on becomes the goal, life becomes something that must happen. And so enjoying the little time you have in this life becomes impossible.

And the pursuit of longevity becomes fueled by your fear of death.

This is something you see everyday in the health and fitness space.

All the focus on going on and lengthening your life. No focus not he motivation behind it.

What people forget is this:

It doesn’t matter how long you live if you don’t enjoy it.

Because if you don’t have the energy, strength or mind to enjoy this shit — why put yourself through it. In other words. If you can’t kick ass into your 100’s — why bother getting there?

Any pursuit of longevity has to be one of performance as well.

Because it doesn’t matter how durable you are if you don’t have the biological resources to do anything with your life.

And it doesn’t matter how long you live unless you enjoy it.

Before we begin

This letter will be a bit longer than usual.

But it will be one well worth your time. And if I’ve done my job, it will probably save you a lot of time, effort and as you’ll come to find — years of life.

So sit back, pull out your notepad and enjoy.

The Problem With Being Trapped In Survival

Most people are trapped in survival.

They are alive first and foremost, because they don’t want to die.

So when they do put effort into their health, it’s because they’re grimly reminded of their own mortality.

They see health only as a means of delaying death.

But what they can’t see is how the same perspective also forfeits their entire lives.

Because by being terrified of losing your life in the future, you forget that you have it right now.

And you forget to make the most out of it while it’s here.

This is the problem with only pursuing longevity:

Life becomes a process of going on just for the sake of going on.

You’re constantly looking over your shoulder, fearing that distantly approaching darkness.

But because you’re only pursuing health out of fear and a fantasy of a better tomorrow — it becomes a chore and a drag.

Taking care of your health becomes another 9 - 5 you desperately want to avoid. And so you do.

You put off eating healthy because you still have decades of life left.

You skip workouts because you think it won’t affect you for another 10 years.

You drink that 4th cup of coffee because you can just be better tomorrow right?

But you don’t.

It will.

And you won’t.

When you pursue longevity purely for the sake of going on, you ironically sabotage your ability to do so.

Because you separate it from your current experience. And so it stops being real. It becomes too easy for your mind to just explain away its bad habits.

When you out of fear conform to the latest health dogma, it becomes your solemn duty — not something you want to do. And so eventually, you don’t.

Furthermore, when you’re trapped in your imaginary future, you forget that your life exists right now. And because you only see health as an investment in your future, you never care to improve your well being in the present.

But as you’re carefully watching the arrival of the future, it never does.

And one day you wake up and realize that the now has become future — and you’re still miserable.

You never cared to improve your current experience because you were so focused on the future. But the now turned into the future without you realizing. And you didn’t enjoy any of it.

You’re now much older than before. But your experience of life is still as empty. You still don’t have the energy you want, you still can’t use your mind and body as you’d like to and moving through life is still as gray as it’s always been.

In trying to extend your life, you missed it.

When you only invest in your future experience, you miss the point of it.

Because life exists right now.  And if you don’t enjoy the now, you won’t enjoy the future. And if you don’t enjoy your life, why would you fight so hard to extend it?

If you think you want to live longer — you’re WRONG.

Because you don’t want to just live a long time. You want it to be a time worth living.

And if you’re going to extend your life, it also needs to be a life worth extending. It needs to be a long life, only after it is a good life. In other words, only after you’ve mastered the present can you look into the future.

Because if you don’t, you end up pursuing longevity at the expense of the very thing you were doing it for.

You sacrifice your life for the pursuit that was meant to enhance it.

You become trapped in living for tomorrow and lose sight of the bigger picture. You forget that the only point of health is to make your experience of life better, fuller and more enjoyable right now. Not just brute forcing your body to go on living.

You don’t acknowledge the importance of having the energy to do your work. And the lack of fulfillment makes you depressed and miserable.

You don’t think about making time for socializing and connecting with your favorite people. And you become isolated and lose one of the true joys in life.

True longevity can’t entirely sacrifice the now for the future. True longevity can’t ignore performance.

Because a life you can’t fully live isn’t one worth extending.

A life without energy and motivation is one you’re dreading to wake up to every morning.

And a life without any physicality is one were you feel constraint and trapped.

In the old mythical story, Tithonus was granted eternal life by Zeus as an answer to his wishes. But having failed to mention the small detail of eternal youth as a complimentary— he soon became a withered and unrecognizable version of his past self.

He did indeed live a long time, but it was certainly not a good time.

So before we get into extending your life, let’s talk about extending your youth first.

The Thing You’ve Been Chasing Your Entire Life

If you’re going to live a long time — it needs to be one worth living.

So if you want to build a longevity protocol for yourself — it has to involve performance.

Because that is you move through and enjoy life. That is how you make your life worth living.

It’s:

How you create the work only you can create.

How you become more open minded and find ways to help mankind.

How you produce and sustain the highest feeling this life can offer.

The point of longevity should be to extend the amount of time and intensity you can enjoy the experience of life.

That was a mouthful (but you know, mentally)

And so it has to come after having mastered performance, enjoyment and the present moment.

When you look at longevity only as a means to delay death, it starts to steer your whole life. And when you’re desperately trying to avoid death, you become trapped by it.

But when you accept it— you’re liberated from it. When you stop obsessing over the future and start fueling your performance right now, you’re able to live with peace from mind and actually enjoy this experience.

We love to beat up on everyday life. We often think of it as a collection of chores and boring, repetitive routines. An endless series of sacrificing for the future.

But it’s in the every day your life really is. It’s not the vacation you think you’re working for. But it is in the everyday that your life is. And it is there the only true enjoyment can come from.

And furthermore, the only thing you truly care about is the now. More precisely, the feelings you have right now.

A list of things you don’t care about:

• Sex

• Fame

• Money

• Success

• Relationships

What you really care about is how those things make you feel.

Because having a future is useless if when you get there — you don’t have the energy or presence to be there.

Because if what you truly care about is the quality of the feeling you have right now — then daydreaming about the future is arbitrary. Because the thing you’re after doesn’t exist tomorrow. It exists only now.

And the feeling you’re after is called many things. Happiness, fulfillment, meaning, flow, etc.

But at the end of the day — it’s all peace.

The feeling of everything making sense. When your mind goes quiet and all concepts of future and past disappears. The feeling that all is right. When there is nowhere to be and nothing to do. In other words, the feeling of freedom.

But it doesn’t mean that the goal of life is to sit cross legged in a cave.

Because when you’re living daily life from a place of peace, it becomes something else…

You’ve probably heard about ”the flow state”.

It’s a state of mind that appears when you’re perfectly balance between order and chaos. When your skills perfectly match the level of challenge and you merge with the activity. You’re free of the turmoils of the mind and the world just makes sense.

And flow is what happens when peace is in motion.

So if the point of life is to enjoy it, and if enjoyment means finding peace— then the point of longevity is simply to sustain that feeling of for as long as possible. In other words, to make your life as flow as possible. As we talk about in “the ultimate goal of life is flow (how to turn life into play)”.

Only after we’ve created the necessities for the feeling of flow and piece, should we work to extend our lives.

And while flow is something that happens inside your mind (as we’ve talked about before), it’s not disconnected from your biology. The state requires a lot of neural chemicals and giant amounts of energy.

And that energy is supplied through your health.

True health isn’t only longevity — it’s performance.

It’s not simply to delay the inevitable and irrevocable nothingness heading your way. But to create the resources to supercharge and enjoy the something that’s here now.

And of course you need to think about the future. You need to structure what you’re doing in a way to avoid unnecessary suffering tomorrow (as Jordan Peterson would say).

But you should also do it in a way so that you can always enjoy the present. Because if you can’t, what’s the point of having a future?

If the journey by itself isn’t worth it, why bother?

Because when you arrive, you’ll just want to go some place else. Because you’re not looking for a destination, you’re looking for a higher experience of life. It’s the journey, the now and the feeling of flow that matters.

My point is that you shouldn’t constantly hate where you are in life. Because that’s just the stupidest thing you can do. It’s literally the way to fail at life.

Because if your whole life is an obsessive need to arrive, a constant gazing over the present moment, you lose the thing you’ve been seeking your entire life.

The feeling of peace, tranquility and conscious order that only exists right here and right now.

And the way you do that is by switching how you look at health.

By starting to see it as something that benefits you here and now. Not as some investment in an made up future.

As for other benefits, this will make you actually stick to your habits and protocols. Because you’re doing it for the feeling you’re experiencing right now.

You go on that walk not just because it will improve your mobility as you get older. But because you know that you will get a huge increase in energy you can use for so many worthwhile things.

When your focus of health shifts to the present moment, you create the resources to master daily life:

• The motivation to do your best work

• The energy to fuel enjoy your workouts

• The calmness to really connect with people

And when you solve for life performance you inevitably solve for longevity as well.

When you have the energy to do your best work

When you actually have the time to socialize

When you have the motivation to explore the world

You become more fulfilled, peaceful and happy. And decrease harmful stress chemicals like cortisol and tachikynin in the process. Which only extends your life.

Only once you’re able to enjoy the present moment, can you go about extending it.

So let’s explore how you can do both.

Battling The 4 Horsemen Of Death

I’m gonna borrow this concept from Peter Attia.

And a lot of what I will talk about here are insight from his book ”outlive”. But I will also tie in a lot of ’new age’ performative health science and tools you probably haven’t heard of as well.

There are 4 leading causes of death in the modern world:

• Cancer

• Heart disease

• Alzheimer’s disease

• Metabolic dysfunction

(The 4 horsemen)

So if our goal is to extend and supercharge life, we need to:

1. Tackle each one

2. Fix and improve the underlying system

Because we don’t want to get stuck treating the symptom rather than the cause (as we talked about in the last letter).

And we don’t want to just avoid death (even though that’s great). We want to supercharge the underlying system. So that we go from a minus to a plus. Not just cancel out at zero (because that’s again how life becomes a drag).

That is why I’ll primarily focus on lifestyle medicine. Because first off, you don’t want to live life on drugs (even thought they can be helpful).

And second, a drug only cures you of your sickness, it doesn’t increase your level of health.

That is why lifestyle will always reign supreme when it comes to health (until we learn to safely code our own DNA that lol)

Note: These subjects are deep and need a lot of elaboration. I won’t be able do every one of them justice here. But I will give you the distilled key insight for how they work and what you can do in your daily life.

With that out of the way, let’s get into building your personal longevity protocol.

1. Metabolic Dysfunction

Your life is a process of channeling the energy of the Universe.

You’re constantly transforming chemical energy into movement, thought and experiences.

So the quality of your metabolism will determine the quality of your life.

Out of all disease prevention you can do, this is the most important thing to get right.

Because your metabolic health plays such a vital role in every process of your body, because it’s what creates the necessities for staying alive. It’s what creates the energy you need.

And because it is so fundamental, whenever a major disease pops up — you can often trace it back to your metabolic health acting up.

An example is how obesity is just a symptom of poor metabolic health

To bring in some statistics, having a poor metabolic health makes you 3 times more likely to die from anything. Those aren’t great odds.

And if you want to fuel your present experience, focusing on your metabolic health is the way to go:

• It’s how you get the mental energy and motivation to pursue the things you think are worthwhile.

• It’s how you build improve your physique and appearance, making you more confident in your own skin

• It’s how you make every part of experience more vibrant and brighter. You can really feel your emotions, you can really see sights and truly acknowledge the intrinsics of the sounds all around you.

So that’s what we’ll start with.

We talked all about metabolic health for losing fat in the last letter. So this will be more focused on the longevity and performance side of the coin.

And there are 3 main points you need to understand:

1. AMPK

When it comes to energy and life, this protein complex is your best friend.

Really.

• It builds fresh and new mitochondria

• It up-regulates your cells’ repair functions (autophagy)

• It sends signals to channel more fuel to your mitochondria

By stimulating autophagy, your cells repair themselves instead of blindly dividing. This causes less DNA damage, oxidative stress and much slower aging. Muy bien.

With more mitochondria you’re creating more energy to fuel whatever it is you want to do with your life.

And with more fuel getting channeled to your mitochondria — you’re actually using the energy you’re eating (and not storing it as fat).

And so the key to both longevity and performance is to promote the activity of this protein.

Here are 4 tools that does just that:

• Doing your cardio stresses your mitochondria to the point of activating AMPK. It does this as an adaptation to be able to handle the respiratory burden cardiovascular exercise puts on your cells. Aim for 180 minutes a week of zone 2 cardio and get in some HIIT and SIT as well. (We talk a lot more about this in the letter ”why you’re never ready (or have the energy to workout)”).

• Intermittent fasting activates AMPK in order to switch from burning glucose to fat for energy. You could also do full day fasts but it’s not something I would recommend. Because of the fact that you often lose all your energy and with it — your will to live. I usually do 12 - 14 hours a day. Usually 8pm to 10 am.

• Eating more polyphenols increases the activity of AMPK. I don’t know what else to say. You can find polyphenols in teas, coffee, berries and cocoa (to name a few).

• Cold exposure has been found to up regulate the activity of AMPK. So don’t skip your cold shower and make it a point to jump into freezing lakes in spring and autumn.

Note: In previous letters we’ve discussed the role fructose can play on your metabolism. But with new research, the claim that fructose from fruit, honey and natural sugar is decreasing AMPK and making you fat is continuously losing balance. It may be wise to cut out processed and refined fructose but you don’t have to fear the natural occurring type (honey, fruit, berries). Read this letter for more clarity.

Because this letter is slowly approaching the length of a novel.

2. Insulin Sensitivity

Insulin sensitivity is probably the best measure for metabolic health.

It’s essentially a measure of how well your body handles the energy you consume (which is also a good definition of your metabolic health).

But to understand the importance of this, let’s quickly go over what insulin does.

The job of insulin is basically to store away glucose in your cells. Think of blowing air into a balloon. In this analogy, your lungs are insulin, the air is glucose and the ballon is the cell.

The more insulin sensitive you are, the less insulin is required to put the glucose into your cells (the less you have to strain to blow in air).

The less insulin sensitive you are, the more insulin is required to put the glucose into the cells (the harder you have to strain).

And if you reach a high enough degree of insulin resistance, you can’t shuffle anymore glucose into your cells.

What happens is that your blood glucose goes through the roof (AKA type 2 diabetes) and the excess energy is stored as fat in a panic. But it’s often not just regular old belly fat. It’s often something much worse — visceral fat.

Visceral fat is the fat in between your organs. And when it grows too large, fat droplets can spill over and impede the functions of your organs. Perpetuating the spiral of insulin resistance, diabetes and eventually ending in death.

To put it simply:

The more insulin sensitive you are, the more efficiently you can use energy and live your life.

The more insulin resistant you are, the more you have to fight to use energy you’re consuming and live your life.

Being insulin resistant will also impair your immune system and your body’s ability to heal itself.

This is crucial. Because if you don’t fix this, the chances of having your life claimed by the other horsemen diseases go through the roof (about 12 times to be exact).

This is why metabolic health is the first one we’re tackling. Because without a well functioning energy system and healing ability — nothing else matters (you’ll see how this connects to all other horsemen later)

As an example, diabetics who are usually insulin resistant have impaired healing abilities. Which is why they can end up having to amputate limbs and so forth.

This topic alone could be a 4000 page book. But I’m supposed to make this short and actionable.

So cement this in your head (if you haven’t already):

• Insulin Sensitive = Good

• Insulin Resistant = Bad

So how do you become more insulin sensitive?

Here’s a list of the most bang for your buck strategies:

• Intensively exercise. The key is to deplete your glycogen stores regularly. This will make empty your muscle cells of glucose and make it easier for insulin to do its job. This can be done with either strength training close to failure or intense cardiovascular exercise like HIIT or SIT. But I’m favoring strength training a bit more. Because with larger muscles you have more ability to dispense of the glucose you’re eating, resulting in higher insulin sensitivity. In other words, go to the gym if you care about your life (see ”how to build more muscle (and meaning in life)”. Resources for accelerating muscle growth is also in the making.

• Intermittently fast. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned this already. But you can dramatically change the quality of your life by cutting out food 2 hours before and after bed. When you fast, you deplete your glycogen stores, achieving about the same effect as that of exercise. Which means that you become more insulin sensitive.

• Reduce stress. Cortisol converts subcutaneous fat into visceral fat. This further increases insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction as small fat droplets ”break into ” your organs and cells. There are many ways of mitigating stress and it’s important not just for physical but mental well being as well. I go over this in detail in the letter ”the only obstacle is your mind (how to eliminate stress and anxiety)”.

• Avoid seed oils. Be honest. Is this really such a surprise? Seed oils have been found to impair liver function, cause oxidative stress and eventually lead directly to insulin resistance. Mice fed seed oils develop strong insulin resistant in just a matter of weeks. So if you’re not already avoiding seed oils like the plague… this is your sign.

This letter is already too long.

So if you were sitting and waiting for more ways to unlock your metabolism — I’m sorry to disappoint you.

But we talk extensively about how to do that in the letter: ”Read this if you want to stay 12% bodyfat permanently (and till enjoy food & life)”.

Go read that one after you’re done with this.

Alright.

Now, let’s take on the next horsemen.

2. Heart Disease

17.9 million people die from heart disease every year.

And the most terrifying part is that it often comes out of nowhere.

Even otherwise completely healthy people can walk round with a 2 year countdown to a life threatening heart failure.

In other words, the problem is that there are no symptoms of heart disease except heart disease.

If someone dies of a heart attack, we know that that person had some kind of heart disease. But 1 minute before, he was a completely healthy individual.

In other words, the time to treat heart disease is before you have heart disease.

But before we get there, let’s understand how this devastating disease comes about.

The Villain Origin Story

As you’re going through life, you’re accumulating damage to your arteries.

If you’re unlucky, specific fat carrying proteins called ”ApoB” can get stuck inside your damaged endothelium (the inside of your blood vessels). If you’re even more unlucky, these particles can become oxidized and get the immune system into action.

Your immune systems sends macrophages that engulfs these proteins but get stuck in the endothelium in the process. As more macrophages accumulate, they create something resembling a white mass.

This is what is known as a fatty streak. And to try and hold back the damage, your body will create a matrix around the fatty streak which becomes the cap of your artery plack.

These are the most dangerous kinds of placks.

Because first, they don’t show up on regular calcium scans. So there are no way of detecting them.

And 2nd, they can detach from the endothelium and begin flowing freely through your blood.

This is where the real danger begins. Because as this time bomb flows around inside your arteries it can cause blood clots or move to your heart — effectively stopping it. Not great.

So to stop this potentially lethal outbreak, your body goes to its last resort.

It calcifies your plack. It’s kind of like pouring cement over Chernobyl. You’re glad it’s there, but it tells you there has been some damage.

When this process continues over years, the placks grow larger and obstructs your blood flow. Finally, it can clog your entire artery. Resulting in pretty much sudden death. Not that great either.

The entire process could have gone on for years. But without doing extraneous tests and calcium scans, you would be none the wiser. And so the best way to treat heart disease is ironically before you have heart disease.

In other words, we need to engage in preventative methods.

The most effective and important tool for this will aways be exercise. Because your cardiovascular health depends on doing your damn cardio. Keep this in mind as you’re reading through the tools down below.

There are 3 things that I think are the most worth doing:

1. Fix Your Blood Pressure

The reason your arteries get damaged is because of blood pressure.

When you’re forcing liters of blood through sensitive structures like blood vessels at meters per second — there will be some damage.

This is probably why atherosclerosis is only found in arteries. Not in veins. Because of the fact that blood pressure is much higher in arteries. Which leads to a higher potential for damage to the endothelium.

So logically, if we want less damage to the endothelium (and less heart disease) — we want a reasonably low blood pressure.

But because we’re also concerned with performance, it’s not simply about lowering your blood pressure. Because to live, breathe and move through life you’re going to pump a lot of blood through your arteries.

So the thing we’re concerned about is more about the constant pressure rather than the pressure created by living. Also known as ”diastolic blood pressure”. This is the pressure that’s always there even when you’re heart isn’t beating.

This was in other words a very roundabout way of saying that we want to decrease unnecessary damage to your endothelium.

And there are a few ways of going about this:

• Stress relief. When you’re stressed, your blood vessels contract and your heart speeds up. This increases your blood pressure. Takin time to relax is important for so many other things but especially when it comes to blood pressure. Some examples are: sauna, meditation, natural sugars (or see ”how to eliminate stress and anxiety”)

• Boosting nitric oxide levels will improve your body’s ability to dilate your blood vessels. This decreases diastolic blood pressure and allows you to get blood and oxygen to the right places when you need it to. Get it through citrus fruits, exercise, not using mouthwash, beets, L - Citruline.

• Manage your caffeine intake. Caffeine constricts your blood vessel due to the increased stress response. But as it is part of so many peoples’ performance routines, you should aim to use it wisely instead (see ”the 10 caffeine commandments”)

• Drink loads of water (especially with sodium). This has been shown to decrease the heightened blood pressure spike you get from consuming a lot of salt. I like to do this by drinking a pot of herbal tea in the morning.

• Fixing your low quality sleep (see ”sleep is the art of dying” & ”how intelligent people use sleep”)

• Get more potassium in your diet. Potassium regulates your sodium balance (look up the sodium potassium channel). So make sure you’re getting enough.

2. Healing Your Arteries

Not having a high blood pressure is important.

But it can only go so low before your life becomes a state of hibernation and you can’t get out of bed.

If you’re alive you will have pressure in your arteries.

And so there will always be some damage to your endothelium.

The key isn’t to get rid of the damage. Because it’s literally impossible. The key is to increase your body’s ability to heal.

And here are some of the most effective tools for that:

• Bingeing on antioxidants decreases the chances of LDL getting oxidized, leading to less plack build up. It also improves your blood vessels ability to heal themselves. I think the best ways of getting these are through fruits and berries (or green tea if you’re feeling fancy).

• EPC maxing increases the number of growth and repair promoting cells inside your blood vessels (Endothelial Progenitor Cells). Some ways of increasing these are through intense exercise, getting antioxidants and experimenting with adding olive oil to your diet.

• Cut out alcohol completely. There is no reason for ingesting alcohol. You don’t need it to ”let loose” or ”be yourself”. Go do some inner work and quit drinking literal poison. You can learn to build state without it. Alcohol messes up just about everything in your body including your blood vessels. One example is how it decreases nitric oxide production which up regulates your diastolic blood pressure. No bueno.

3. Blood Lipids

This is a touchy subject.

Does LDL (the bad cholesterol) cause Atherosclerosis?

It would definitely seem so at first glance. I mean, they are always at the scene of the crime. And higher levels of LDL is indeed associated with higher levels of atherosclerosis.

But it doesn’t explain everything.

If LDL was the only cause, we would see atherosclerosis in veins as well. Which we don’t.

Meaning, LDL is necessary for atherosclerosis, but it’s NOT sufficient.

For it to develop, there probably has to already be some damage to the endothelium. Which is what we see in arteries where blood pressure is much higher. And as a growing body of evidence have shown, LDL is actually a part of the immune system.

And so one hypothesis is that LDL in atherosclerosis, is actually there in order to help heal the wound to the artery. But because of impaired wound healing (potentially due to insulin resistance and poor metabolic health) the LDL and other immune particles (macrophages) get stuck in an oxidized mess due to factors like chronic inflammation and high oxidative stress.

My point is, things aren’t fully clear.

And a lot of studies are under way that will hopefully bring some clarity to this debate.

But in the meantime, if you’re worried about having too high of an LDL, you could experiment with olive oil. This increases LDL receptors in your liver which basically ”eats up” more LDL particles and decreases the levels in the blood. Think of it as a vacuum cleaner.

What could be problematic is that oleic acid have some potential negative effects on metabolic health (which we went over in the last letter). But again, things are not as clear as would be preferable.

So until the research is here:

Try to keep your LDL levels in check, potentially by limiting saturated fats and eating more monounsaturated fats (never poly-unsaturated-fats. AKA PUFA. AKA the mortal enemy).

Now let’s get into the most feared horsemen disease.

3. Cancer

Cancer is tricky.

Because we just know so little about it.

It’s commonly thought of as a set of random gene mutations making your cells evil. For whatever reason they just won’t stop growing and become a parasite eventually killing its host — you.

And so the common treatment has always been to just get rid of the damn thing. By either surgery or chemotherapy.

But surgery isn’t always successful and chemotherapy often does more harm than good.

People are suspended for days and days at the end of tubes. Injected with all kinds of cell poison and losing most of what makes life worth living in the process. And after all this torment, even if the cancer is said to have gone into remission — more often than not, it comes back a few years later. And the emotional and physical pain has to be endured all over again.

The methods for treating cancer are out right cruel. But in modern medicine, it’s about the only way of  treatment. Once the cancer has gotten severe enough, there aren’t really any other options.

But the modern way of looking at cancer generally leaves out some important points. It is so determined on cancer being the result of a series of random gene mutations that it leaves out 2 important questions:

• How does your cells become so mutated

• Why doesn’t your immune system recognize the cancerous cells

In other words, the modern way of treating cancer (and all diseases) are too symptomatic.

It’s too much of: ”oh you have cancer? Let’s kill it” and too little of: ”Oh you have cancer? Let’s kill it. But let’s also try to understand what lifestyle factors led to this predicament”.

What I’m trying to say is:

There is most likely a deeper cause of cancer. But as of today, we just don’t have enough data.

So until things are more clear, I think every medical professional will agree on the 2 rules of cancer.

1. Don’t Get Cancer

This is self explanatory.

But you should still do everything in your power not to get cancer.

Which basically means:

• Improve your immune system

• Avoid unnecessary DNA damage

To be a bit more specific:

• Fix your gut. Your body’s ability to detect and kill cancerous cells is dependent on your immune system. And your immune system is directly dependent on the health of your gut. So make sure it’s in good shape (as we talk about in the letter ”you’re leaving your future to chance (by not fixing this biological circuit)).

• Lead a healthy lifestyle. This is pretty much self explanatory. Exercise, sleep, eat well, the whole thing. Go read my other letters for more information on this.

• Lower your inflammation. Chronically high inflammation weakens your immune system and can cause damage to your DNA. Making it a perfect opportunity for cancer to do its work. This has a lot to do with your gut health and diet. Avoid seed oils, gut disruptors and too processed sugar.

• Fix your metabolism. A poor metabolic health causes a lot of inflammation and may lead to an acidic cell environment making it easier for cancer to take place.

• Avoid carcinogens and mutagens. Don’t smoke, avoid microplastics, don’t stay out in the sun until your skin falls off (see how to use the sun for a fuller life), avoid high amounts of alkaloids (nightshades, potatoes, peppers).

2. Catch It As Soon As Possible

So you didn’t follow the first rule…

Fine.

You’re not screwed yet.

The earlier you catch a tumor the easier it is to deal with it. Because as cancer spreads and becomes systemic, the cells can take refugee in your other organs. And when the central tumor is removed, or the majority of cells killed — the refugee cancer cells are still alive and cause the growth of a new cancer.

In other words, if you do get cancer — catch it before it gets out of hand.

And the best way to do this is with regular check ups.

Here are some ’general’ guidelines for when, what and how often:

• Lung cancer: Yearly low does CT scans after the age of 40

• Prostate cancer: PSA blood test every 2-4 years after age 45.

• Colon cancer: Colonoscopy every 3 years after the age of 40. If caught early, this type of cancer is very easy to remove. Which is why high frequency testing is key.

• Breast cancer: Mammogram every 2-3 years after the age of 40.

Note: I’m not your doctor. And none of this is medical advice. This is just to bring you some insights you should explore on your own. Because at the end of the day, not even your doctor is your doctor. You are.

Another thing to think about if you do happen to get cancer is the ketogenic diet. Because cancerous cells have such high glucose metabolisms, having a diet that doesn’t increase your insulin has been shown to be effective at battling cancer coupled with other treatments like chemotherapy and surgery.

But remember that it’s medicinal. Not dietitional (as we talked about in the letter on sugar).

4. Neurodegenerative Disease

Most people would rather die than lose their minds.

And it’s understandable.

Because your mind is all you have. It’s all you’ve ever had. And losing that is the same as losing yourself. It’s losing your ego and consciousness.

You end up turning into a mechanical and lifeless being merely resembling your former self. Which is a thought just too horrifying for most people to bear.

Neurodegenerative diseases are scary.

Because it’s like dying before you actually die.

I’ve had several people in my family having to suffer through this. I remember my grandmother slowly fading away until she just wasn’t there anymore. She was just the woman who needed taking care of. It gives me chills just thinking about it.

If you want to scare yourself even further, there is an album by the caretakers called ”everywhere at the end of time”. Which is a music project to simulate what if feels like to have dementia. It’s really fucking spooky.

There is no question that neurodegenerative disease is something to avoid.

You want to keep your mind until your last breath. You want to be able to recognize the world, offer yourself to other people and appreciate existence until the light goes. Because what else is there to life?

But before we get to making our minds degenerative proof, we need to first understand what this disease is.

A Biologically Cluttered Mind

You can think of Alzheimer’s as your brain losing the ability to clean up after itself.

That is at least the common view of it.

When Alzheimer’s begin to set in, you begin accumulating a lot of 2 proteins:

• Beta amyloid

• Tau

Beta amyloid is forms clusters around your neurons, worsening the connection between them.

Tau are proteins that accumulate inside your neurons. And as they increase in numbers, they begin to interweave and tie knots around one another. This of course worsens your neurons ability to function at all.

Normally, your brain has cells that go around cleaning up these proteins. But for whatever reason the balance of cleaning and cluttering becomes disturbed in Alzheimer’s.

Other contributing factors are limited oxygen and nutrient delivery through the blood. If the brain doesn’t get enough glucose and oxygen, it begins atrophying (shrinking). Not good.

The accumulation of these proteins cause chronic inflammation in the brain. And eventually, leads to your neurons losing the ability to communicate at all.

This is what we want to avoid.

The risk factors for Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases are highly genetic. But there could be a lot of other factors contributing as well.

So how do we stop this?

Here is the list:

1. Improve blood flow. With a greater blood flow, your brain has more energy for cleaning up and taking care of itself. It also gets access to the nutrients and glucose it needs to keep up its activity. Some ways of doing these are: walking around on all four, stretching, sprints, bodybuilding style workouts 3x a week, calisthenics, increase nitric oxide, sauna 3x a week, cold exposure and limit caffeine.

2. Get good carbohydrates. The brain needs glucose. Period. But the source can either destroy you or fuel you. The wise choice: raw honey, raw milk, fruits and berries. Sweet potatoes and rice usually works for most people as well.

3. BDNF maxing.  BDNF is your brain’s growth factor. It’s pretty much fertilizer for your brain. It improves cognitive function, memory, mood, builds new brain cells, strengthens axons, improves sleep quality and protects against neurodegenerative disease. Some ways of maxing the amounts in your body: Stress relief (see the letter on stress), CARDIO (180 minutes zone 2 a week), sunlight (see the letter on photosynthesis) and socializing.

4. Pursue more myelin. The connection between neurons are insulated by a fat structure called myelin. The more myelin you have, the faster your neurons can function and the better you brain can function. It also becomes more protected from amyloid placks and neurodegenerative disease in general. Myelin is built the more a certain neural pathway is activated. So here are some ways of increasing it: Learn a musical instrument, strength train with dumbbells or bodyweight, learn a difficult creative skill (like persuasive writing) and consciously try to be more articulated in conversations.

Note: I want to mention the ketogenic diet as it has been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. But it’s most likely due to the anti-inflammatory properties being FLOODED with cortisol has. And that comes with its own sets of problems. Which ironically includes accelerated aging (but we’ve already talked about this).

Immortality Cells

In biology there is a concept called ”non senescence”.

It means biological immortality. It’s an animals ability to regenerate to the extent that it becomes essentially immortal.

An example of this is the hydra.

If you cut it in half, not only will it regenerate. But a completely new animal will form from the cut off piece. If you cut it into 50 different pieces, you will find 50 new animal sin the matter of days.

The secret to its powers?

A LOT of stem cells.

These are the undifferentiated cells in the body that can become any cell that is required. It’s something that all animals have. Some more than others.

And it’s the degeneration of these cells that is the main cause of genetic aging. If you could preserve your stem cells forever — you wouldn’t age — you would literally be immortal (even though that comes with a whole new set of problems).

We haven’t fully figured out how to transfer this power to ourselves. But there are things you can do to increase the number and efficiency of the stem cells you do have.

You can move up on the spectrum of immortality.

And here is how:

• Fasting

• Sleeping

• Sunlight

• Exercise

• Cold & heat

I won’t go too much into all this but I thought it was at least worth mentioning.

Now let’s tie the knot on this novel

Tying The Knot

Longevity shouldn’t be pursued from a place of being trapped in survival.

It shouldn’t come from a place of fear. Because that is how you get trapped in going on just for the sake of going on. And life becomes a drag.

The true perspective on longevity is performance.

And only after you’ve solved that can you work to extend your life.

Only after you’ve made it a good life should you work to make it a long one.

You need to structure your lifestyle and diet in a way that both avoids the 4 horsemen but also increases the vibrancy of your life.

So to summarize…

How to live to 100+ (and still kick ass):

1. Metabolic health: Pursue AMPK activation and become more insulin sensitive. Intensively exercise, avoid seed oils and intermittently fast.

2. Heart disease: Improve your cardiovascular health and increase your artery healing ability. Do more cardio, eat antioxidants and lower your stress.

3. Cancer: Don’t get cancer. If you do, catch it as early as possible. Lead a healthy lifestyle and get regular screening.

4. Neurodegenerative disease: Improve blood flow, increase myelin, promote BDNF and decrease inflammation. Do even more cardio, learn difficult skills, eat even more antioxidants and avoid inflammatory food.

This letter was looong.

And if you’ve read this far — I appreciate you.

You also have a 99% percentile attention span.

But with that my friends, I’ll see you in the next one.

Subscribe to the newsletter (if you haven’t already) and enjoy the rest of your week.

Adios.

- Simon