Health Guru Says He Reversed His Biological Age By 17 Years — The Three Daily Habits He Credits
Ushindi Namegabe | CanvaWould you stick laser lights up your nostrils if it helped you live longer? What about sitting on energy-emitting tables when you do your work? Or perhaps you would be comfortable wearing weird masks that helped you exhale slowly while you run? Personal trainer, triathlete, and leading expert in bio-hacking, Ben Greenfield would.
These are just a few of the many weird things Greenfield does to help him live longer. He believes in the marriage of ancestral wisdom with modern science to decode longevity. And his efforts have paid off. Greenfield tests his telomere lengths which helps indicate the age of your body. At the chronological age of 34 when he first started doing all of this, His biological age was 37. After a year, his biological age had dropped to 36.
By the time he was 36, his biological age had dropped to 20 years. Yes, you read that right. Overall, he reversed his age by 17 years in 3 years. Naturally, I was stunned. I began to follow him everywhere. After a year, I’ve learned a lot about longevity and overall health from him. I want to share some of his easy-to-follow advice on longevity. All of what I share below has been adapted from his book Boundless and a few of his interviews.
Health guru Ben Greenfield says he reversed his biological age by 17 years, and here are the habits he credits:
1. He made changes to his diet
Avoid vegetable oils: You’ve heard this before, but Greenfield explains why they’re so horrible. The fats in these oils comprise the cell membranes of the cells in your body. Hence, if your vegetable oil consumption is too high, it’s decreasing the health of every single cell in your body (especially the brain). To avoid this, replace vegetable oils like sunflower oil with olive oil and other options.
Optimize your coffee: Many people drink coffee every day. But that coffee slowly depletes our brain of excitatory neurotransmitters in the long term. To avoid this, Greenfield suggests that we add 100mg of Theanine to our coffees. If you’re not that much into supplements like me, he says that Tulsi extract (a plant) can help achieve the same effect.
Fix leaky brain: Our brains have blood-brain barriers that protect them from toxins. However, with age, those barriers become incompetent. To counteract this, Greenfield suggests cold exposure to the head area. A daily cold shower or head dips into cold water is a good way to do that. If you want to take it to the next level, you can even try his hot-cold contrast shower.
Practice box-breathing: It’s a breathing exercise where you simply inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and repeat. Check out this cool animation walkthrough. During box breathing as well as breathing throughout the day, he suggests that we engage in deep belly breathing instead of shallow chest breathing. It just means that your belly should move while you breathe.
Seek sunlight: Due to our work, we’re often stuck indoors. More so due to the pandemic. Add to the fact that we’re often up late at night working or scrolling through our phones, and we have messed up circadian rhythms. To counteract this, Greenfield suggests that we spend some time every morning to get some sun exposure.
2. He made changes to his fitness
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Try the strike, stroll, and shiver: Excess fat on the body leads to inflammation, and that decreases longevity. This technique by Greenfield is his best advice to lose fat. Just drink a cup of black coffee in a fasted state and wait 10–15 minutes. Then, do 20–25 minutes of easy aerobic exercise like brisk walking or a yoga session. Finish it off with a 2–5 minute cold shower. Even I do this every day, and I’ve lost a lot of fat due to this!
Control your glycemic variability: Greenfield says that controlling glycemic variability is perhaps the most important thing to live longer. And the easiest way to do that? Just do 30 seconds of exercise like burpees, squats, or jumping jacks before meals to optimize glycemic variability due to that meal. Yes! Less exercise at a higher frequency can make you healthier, a study confirmed. Combine this with 10 minutes of walking post-meal, and you get the best out of that meal.
Eat real food: We all have a pretty good idea of what food is healthy and what isn’t. Greenfield suggests that we try to eat real food — not food that is made up of tons of ingredients. Besides that, he suggests adding wild plants, colored veggies, and fruits to our diets. He also suggests chewing our food well to improve glycemic control and avoid a lot of red meat.
Understand the concept of 'earthing': When our body comes in contact with Earth, the free radicals and toxins in our body get neutralized. Research has suggested that earthing acts as a powerful antioxidant and helps in improving deep sleep. Sadly, we don’t walk barefoot anymore. To get the benefits of earthing, try to walk barefoot for a few minutes if you visit a nearby park or invest in some earthing equipment that’s available in the market.
Strive for low-level physical activity all day long: Due to rising health awareness, people are signing up for gyms. We’re really careful about getting that 1 hour of workout every day. However, Greenfield suggests that to live longer and healthily, it’s better if we care more about low-level physical activity all day long. According to him, we should slowly work up to 13–15,000 steps a day instead of sitting around all day.
3. He made changes to his emotional health
Find purpose: All longevity articles talk about purpose because it’s necessary to feed your soul. However, Greenfield takes it one step further by saying that we should write down a sentence that conveys our purpose, have it memorized, and read it every day. His purpose is to empower people to live more adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling lives. I wrote down mine as well — I want to help people use mindfulness to induce inner revolutions. What’s yours?
Practice gratefulness: How does gratefulness help you live longer? In his book, The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton shares how our emotions can alter the physiology of our body down to our DNA expression. This suggests that positive emotions — especially gratefulness — can help us live longer. Research has shown it can also lead to happier lives.
Go after oxytocin: In an age where we’re experiencing a dopamine addiction, it’s paramount that we take care of our oxytocin balance. Oxytocin is the love hormone. Work is necessary, yes. But make time for love and friendships. Call an old friend and meet him. Make more time for your spouse and kids. In the end, that’s what life is really about.
Experiment with sound healing: Sound healing — for instance, binaural beats — is a great way to induce positive thoughts and an overall calmer state of mind. It even helps in inducing deep sleep and a focused mind. One of Greenfield's favorite applications for sound healing are Brain.FM and Slipstream.
Greenfield does the wildest stuff in his quest for longevity. But we may not have to go to such extremes. Longevity is within our grasp if we’re able to focus on just a few key principles that he shares through his books and interviews.
- We can learn to optimize our brain function by something as simple as switching vegetable oils for healthier options, getting a cold shower every day, or trying out five minutes of box breathing per day.
- We can take care of our bodies by simply doing 30 seconds of exercise before meals, eating healthier, being mildly active all day long, and reconnecting with the earth.
- We can enhance our spirit by living purposefully, being grateful, making time for love, and using sound to induce a positive state of mind.
Akshad Singi, M.D., has been published in Better Humans, Mind Cafe, and more.
