The longevity industry pretends it is selling health. In reality, of course, it is selling fear of death. My grandfather never “worked on longevity”. He just lived. And this year he will celebrate his 101st birthday.
He was 99. He was playing table tennis and he did not want to lose. My dad knew that very well, so he let him play. Then came one wrong step and a broken leg. I personally thought that was the end. That I would never again see my grandfather enjoying life. Luckily, I was wrong. A few months later he celebrated his hundredth birthday – and he was dancing on the dance floor.
It is important to say that my grandfather has never heard the word “biohacking”. And the fact that somewhere out there people are spending thousands of dollars on longevity protocols, biomarkers and life optimisation could not interest him less. He certainly does not think that this is the path to a long and content life.
An old‑school approach
My grandfather was born in 1926. He experienced the Second World War on the German side. He has been a widower for more than half a century. He lives alone in an apartment in Hamburg. And he regularly goes to sunbathe at an FKK – a nudist beach. Yes, at 100. Naked, on the beach and full of joy. Is there a better metaphor for a man who lived his whole life authentically, without unnecessary crutches?
Modern humans have lost their relationship to ordinary life. Twenty‑year‑olds today track their sleep quality more carefully than people once chose a life partner. At no time in history have we known more about the human body. And yet we have probably never been more anxious about the fact that we are ageing.
The crazy boom of the longevity business
In the meantime, longevity has become a huge business. Among all fashionable wellness disciplines, longevity is breaking records – and this is far from over. According to Oliver Wyman, the longevity market is set to grow by 300% over the next decade. To illustrate the scale: in 2013 there were fewer than a hundred longevity clinics worldwide. Today there are thousands.
Fascination with a long life is, of course, nothing new. What is new is the way we think about it. In the past, people wanted to live well; today they want to live as long as possible and hope it amounts to the same thing. We have learned to maximise comfort and minimise discomfort. But we forget that it is precisely discomfort that often builds our resilience.
Extreme methods in the name of longevity
No one embodies this trend better than Bryan Johnson. A tech billionaire who has turned his life into a public experiment – and built a multimillion‑dollar business on top of it. Every morning, Johnson swallows dozens of pills and measures more than a hundred biomarkers. In 2023 he had a litre of blood transfused from his seventeen‑year‑old son. All in the name of longevity. His annual routine costs two million dollars, and his protocol, supplements and thirty‑five‑dollar olive oil have become products that people buy around the world. Yet the results are, at best, anecdotal. It is a case study of one person – the lowest rung on the ladder of scientific evidence.
Johnson is not an exception. He is a symptom. He is not the first to try something like this. Back in 1923, American doctor John Brinkley sold goat testicles for 750 dollars as a guaranteed cure for ageing. He became a millionaire – until he lost his licence. The methods have changed, but the logic is the same. Fear of ageing is something you can monetise.
Can you buy longevity, or do you have to earn it?
People often forget that the path to a long and high‑quality life does not have to run through expensive supplements or endless hours in the gym. Our breathless effort to live a “high‑performance lifestyle” is often just another layer of pressure we put on ourselves.
We have apps to help us sleep better, other apps to reduce stress. We even download apps to help us meditate. And yet a delayed train or a badly written email can still throw us off balance. The longevity industry sells optimisation, metrics and the promise that if you do everything “right”, you will live longer.
But there is another image of longevity. Much less technological and much less loud. American researcher and writer Dan Buettner spent years studying places where people live to an exceptionally old age. He calls them “blue zones”. These regions include, for example, Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, the Greek island of Ikaria and parts of Costa Rica.
At first glance, these places have nothing in common with what we now call the longevity industry. No protocols. No biomarkers. No optimisation dashboards. And yet people there live longer than elsewhere.
“Blue zones” without miracle solutions
When Buettner studied these communities, he did not discover a secret recipe. What he found was simply the opposite of our current obsession with control. People there did not “work out” – they just moved. On top of that, they worked with their hands, ate modestly and lived in a slow, repetitive, calm rhythm.
And they also had people around them who cared about them. Family, neighbours, community. Strong social ties that keep a person anchored even in old age. These ties create a sense of belonging and reinforce one’s sense of importance in the community, even at an advanced age.
Maybe it can be done completely differently…
Just like with biohacking, my grandfather has never heard of blue zones. Yet he arrived, on his own, at simple principles that helped him reach a hundred. And without realising it, he was effectively building up his resilience in a holistic way. His recipe is simple and a bit boring – and perhaps that is precisely why it works.
My grandfather’s guide to longevity consists of four things: movement, mind, community, moderation. None of the ingredients is secret, and none of them is expensive. But all of them require something the longevity industry does not and cannot sell: time. You do not build a community over a weekend. Exercise habits do not take shape in a month. And an active mind? You work on that for decades. The trust of neighbours, a name people recognise at the local club, a routine that holds you even when life does not go well – all of that emerges slowly and quietly, without notifications and without apps to measure it. My grandfather is a hundred years old. He found the time for all of this.
The four pillars of my grandfather’s longevity
His first pillar is movement – though not in the way today’s longevity industry imagines it. He only started doing sports actively after fifty, and he jumped straight into explosive disciplines: tennis and squash. When he turned eighty, he switched to table tennis, which he plays to this day. At home he added a simple routine – a few exercises with a stick, no heavy weights – and a daily walk. He never ran marathons. Going outside was enough.
The second pillar is the mind. He reads every day – not because he has to, but because he wants to. He belongs to a generation that does not use a mobile phone, and that may actually be an advantage. No doomscrolling, no notifications – just books, the TV news and a genuine interest in what is happening in the world. At a time when an average person reaches for their phone a hundred times a day, my grandfather’s approach is quietly revolutionary.
The third pillar is community, and in my view it is the most important one. My grandfather has been living in the same place for more than half a century. Everyone knows him, and he knows them. The same shop, the same restaurant, the same club. He lives in a big city, but he has little need to leave his neighbourhood because everything he needs is there. Above all, there are people who are a natural part of his daily life and know how he is doing without having to ask.
Moderation rounds out his longevity concept naturally. It is simply about measure. About having one beer, not ten. One square of chocolate, not a kilo. Eating until you are pleasantly satisfied, not stuffed; drinking until you are pleasantly relaxed, not drunk – as the old saying would put it.
Back to the old, simple advice
My grandfather’s example is backed up by science – just with a different vocabulary. Gary Small, a psychiatrist at the UCLA Longevity Center, says the most reliable ways to protect the brain are pieces of advice most people would probably dismiss as unoriginal: movement, sleep, social contact.
No supplement can replace that. Peter Attia, one of the most influential longevity doctors, puts it even more directly in his book Outlive: “It is not enough to live long. What matters is how long you live well – with a functional body, a clear mind and the ability to do the things you love. Everything else is just extending a number.”
It sounds so simple. And maybe it is.
Last year I thought it was the end for my grandfather. He lost all his pillars at once. No walks, no club, no nudist beach, no ping‑pong. He was confined to a bed. And yet he did not break.
I spent a long time thinking about why. And then it dawned on me that resilience does not work like an insurance policy you can just take out. It is built differently. Every walk he has taken in the last fifty years. Every book, every conversation at the table, every glass of wine shared with people who care about him. None of these things, taken alone, sounds like preparation for a crisis. But together they form something that cannot be bought or simulated: a reservoir you can draw on even when everything else is taken away from you. My grandfather spent a lifetime building that reservoir, without knowing he would one day need it.
A few months later he celebrated his hundredth birthday on his feet. I could hardly believe my eyes. I see him now, dancing on the floor, contentedly sipping his beer and once again looking forward to his next naked sunbathing session.