Bryan Johnson: The #1 Longevity Secret You Can Start Doing Today

We associate aging with outward signs like wrinkles. But external changes are only a small part of a complex biological process. Understanding how aging works—and how to influence it—has been one of medicine's greatest challenges. Now, a breakthrough discovery by Stanford scientists that our organs age at different rates may help doctors create a personalized approach to treating age-related conditions.

Most people believe that mental and physical deterioration go hand in hand with aging. They assume that, with every year that passes, they’ll look and feel older, suffer more aches and pains, and become more susceptible to debilitating diseases that nudge them closer to death.

Entrepreneur, Silicon Valley investor, and best-selling author Dave Asprey argues that you can grow older in years and extend your lifespan without suffering these ill effects. In Super Human, he draws on advancements in anti-aging science to explore ways to slow down and reverse the aging process, optimize your mental and physical health, and extend your lifespan.

This guide explores Asprey’s advice for improving your health now while ensuring you live a longer, healthier, and more youthful life in the future. Additionally, we’ll expand on each of his ideas with research, advice, and actionable ideas from health practitioners and longevity specialists.

Why do people get sick and die from old age, while some other organisms don’t? Is there a way to prevent aging in humans, or even to reverse it? In Jellyfish Age Backwards, biotech researcher Nicklas Brendborg uses Turritopsis dohrnii—the immortal jellyfish—as an entry point to explore the latest research on longevity. Brendborg weaves together cutting-edge science, evolutionary biology, and practical insights about diet, exercise, and lifestyle factors to explore how people can live the longest and healthiest lives possible.

In this guide, we’ll present two competing theories about why we suffer the effects of old age. We’ll then discuss various anti-aging strategies, including lifestyle changes and medical interventions. Our commentary will provide background information and scientific research that supports (or opposes) Brendborg’s assertions. We’ll also compare this book with other prominent anti-aging guides, like David Sinclair’s Lifespan. Finally, we’ll provide some actionable ideas to help you extend your life and enhance your health.

In Sleep Smarter, Shawn Stevenson asserts that high-quality sleep is the key to a healthier body, sharper mind, and overall increased quality of life. He provides a wide array of practical suggestions to help us achieve a good night’s sleep, incorporating nutrition, exercise, sleep habits, and aspects of our environment.

Stevenson is an educator, author, and professional nutritionist in the health and wellness field. He hosts the nutrition and fitness podcast “The Model Health Show” and also wrote Eat Smarter, a cookbook designed to help families eat healthier.

In this guide, we’ll explore the importance of sleep, the role of circadian rhythms, the impact of your sleep environment, and the unexpected benefits of sweet potatoes. In our commentary, we’ll explore more of the science behind why these strategies work, as well as some caveats when the research has produced mixed results.

In today’s hustle culture, many people think the only way to live a productive and rewarding life is to work as hard as possible. This idea is so ingrained in our culture that many work to the point of near-constant exhaustion, sacrificing their mental and physical health. But according to business strategist Greg McKeown, there’s an easier way to get the most out of your time and effort. In Effortless, he expands on this one simple truth: Achieving your goals doesn’t have to be so hard. By simply taking the easiest path, we can be healthier, happier, and more productive.

In our guide, we’ll lay out McKeown’s argument that the easiest path to success is the most viable, and we’ll provide actionable advice on how to implement this idea into your daily life. We’ll also further explore McKeown’s main points by comparing and contrasting them to other ideas in books on productivity and happiness.

In Rest Is Resistance, theologist and activist Tricia Hersey reframes the act of resting as a powerful tool for healing and social justice. Half call to action and half how-to guide, this book promotes rest as a way to reclaim your life from an exploitative and dehumanizing culture that values productivity over people’s well-being.

We’ll begin this guide by explaining why modern culture is harmful both physically and psychologically, and how it indoctrinates people to work themselves to death. We’ll then discuss the idea that rest is not just good for you, but is also an act of direct resistance against this toxic culture. Finally, we’ll review some of Hersey’s suggestions about how to rest in a healthy and restorative way.

Our commentary will further explore the roots and present-day manifestations of grind culture. We’ll also provide some data to highlight the impacts this culture has on people’s physical and mental health. Finally, we’ll suggest some actionables to help you begin healing.

In today’s “hustle culture,” many workers end up ruining their lives in their attempts to get ahead in their careers. They sacrifice the time and energy they should be spending on their lives outside of work. In It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson contend that there’s a better way to work: By establishing more reasonable, sustainable goals and business practices, companies can create a healthy, relaxed work culture that radically improves employees’ lives.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to build an organization employees would be thrilled to work for, without compromising profitability. We’ll detail the three qualifications to look for when scouting for any potential hire and explain why it’s vital to give your employees time to work in private. In our commentary, we’ll provide counterpoints from books such as No Rules Rules and The Cold Start Problem. Additionally, we’ll supplement Fried and Hansson’s productivity-related advice with ideas from books like Deep Work and Indistractable.

For all of recorded history, people have seen aging as an inevitable fact of life. Biologist and geneticist David Sinclair disagrees: He believes that old age is a deadly disease, and he’s dedicated his life to curing it.

Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard University. He argues that it’s not only possible—but inevitable—that we’ll learn to overcome the aging process. New medicines and technologies will increase our maximum lifespan and years of health until eventually humans won’t have a maximum lifespan—we’ll stay young and healthy forever.

In Lifespan, Sinclair discusses why aging happens, how we can prevent it, and how we might create a world where nobody has to die of old age. This guide explains Sinclair’s ideas and provides background information to make complex biological concepts more accessible to the average reader.

For millennia, humans struggled with three serious problems—famine, plagues, and war—which led to the deaths of millions of people and to the rise and fall of global empires. People coped with these problems and answered life's questions with religion. However, in the modern era, we no longer rely on prayer—we’ve mostly overcome these three problems through the development of technology and medical knowledge.

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, envisions a future in which technology replaces humanist ideals and liberal government. Dissecting the concepts of religion, immortality, and technology, Harari argues that the world of the future may be run by advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence, not human beings.

Even though we’re all human, most of us don’t understand what drives people (including ourselves) to feel and behave the way we do. In The Laws of Human Nature, author Robert Greene looks at several laws that explain, among other things, why we self-sabotage, behave differently in groups, and want the wrong things.

Armed with the knowledge of these fundamentals of human nature, you can manage toxic people, become more empathetic, make people like you, and control your own nature.