The author of `Super Agers ” Eric Topol shares how to feel 50 to 80

The cardiologist Eric Topol is one of the main medical researchers in the world. Founder of the Research SCRIPPS Translational Institute of Jolla, California, Dr. Topol is also the author of a new New York Times book“Super agers: an approach based on evidence of longevity”.

I recently sat down with Topol to discuss the ideas of his book on the slowdown or the backtracking, our aging clocks to look more like Super Agers – or to whom he calls “wells” – people who live well in the 80s and 90s without any disease or chronic disease.

A global answer to this question requires reading his book, written for a profane audience curious about the last scientific (and future) breakthroughs in longevity medicine. But in our an hour conversation, Topol discussed several things to do and not to do for anyone looking to make 80 the new 50.

1. Make: Strengthen your immune system

If there is a main thesis in Topol’s book, it is because healthy aging depends on a strong immune system, which can defend itself against diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other chronic conditions. “I don’t stop telling myself this old thing about the economy:” It’s the immune system, stupid “, you know?” Topol told me. “Because it’s really the case.”

He suggests focusing on habits that support and strengthen immune health:

• The regular training of strength and resistance built solid immune systems and is the best way to extend lifespan and, above all, health.
• Keep a Mediterranean style diet that maximizes whole foods, colorful vegetables, lean meats, olive oil and minimum dairy products, and minimizes ultra-tangle food.
• Get a deep and restorative – crucial sleep to support your body’s immune function.
• Maintain so -called “lifestyle +” factors, such as spending time in nature, avoiding environmental pollution such as plastics transmitted by food and airborne toxins, and the maintenance of solid friendships and a regular social calendar.

I will go further in some of these specific strategies, such as sleep and nutrition, below. But the common denominator supports a robust immune function, said Topol.

“We should undergo immune system tests as we age,” he said, “because that is why aging can hurt us.”

2. Do not: limit your medical care to what your insurance covers

Most of the health insurance programs provided by employers only cover minimum annual tests to assess basic heart health and disease risks, cholesterol and hormonal health. “Standard medicine is missing, leaving too many unresolved questions about the risk of a person,” said Topol. “Simply do the tests according to a person’s risk; the yield is much higher.”

It recommends a few specific tests at a lower cost to help customize medical care and guide preventive strategies that can help report the potential risks of disease that most tests covered in insurance do not do so:

• Polygenic risk scores (PR): often costing less than $ 50, these tests provide validated risk estimates for current cancers (for example, prostate, breast, lung, melanoma, melanoma) and other diseases. Use this test alongside other health data, such as family history and routine blood tests, to provide a more complete risk assessment.
• Dexa scans: generally costing less than $ 100, it is a relatively inexpensive and useful tool for monitoring body composition changes, such as muscle and fat, or older adults concerned with muscle loss.
• Sequencing your genome: for around $ 200, this process can help determine cancers, if necessary, to which you could be the most predisposed. This is a test that you have to pass once, for life for life. With actions: Unfortunately, most of the data validated data for the risk of genomic cancer are still for people of European ancestry only.

3. Make: Nourish your “intestinal brain axis”

In “Super Agers”, Topol writes at length on bidirectional communication between intestinal hormones and the brain, and calls it criticism of a healthy immune function. Intestinal hormones are chemical messengers manufactured by special cells in the digestive tract that helps control digestive functions. They communicate with the brain through the blood circulation and the vagus nerve, which crosses the throat and the vocal cords and connects the intestine and the brain.

“I am quite well convinced now that the story of the intestinal hormone is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen in medical intervention,” he told me. “Because intestinal hormones speak to the immune system and they speak to the brain, which is control of the mission of the immune system.”

“It’s not just the microbiome, it is hormonal intestine production,” he said. “The path of a person’s brain and healthy aging, it will probably be by their intestine.”

Here’s how to feed bidirectional communication along the so-called intestinal axis:

• Maintain a strong and diversified intestinal microbiome: consume a variety of whole foods (meat, cereals, legumes, dark green vegetables) and minimize ultra-treble foods (that is to say all that with a long list of ingredients that you cannot pronounce). Foods with active macrobiotic cultures such as yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and kombucha are ideal for building healthy and various intestinal bacteria.
• Stimulate and strengthen your vagus nerve. Care for this via deep breathing exercises that engage the diaphragm. Singing, buzzing, laughter and even gargling stimulate the vagus nerve, and exposure to cold water can activate it and improve its tone.

4. Do not: sleep too little – or too much

We all know that taking enough sleep is essential for health and in particular health aging, and many doctors rightly call the chronic lack of chronic sleep of the Americans a public health crisis. But there is another side in the history of sleep, said Topol, admitting his own surprise: according to many clinical researchFor people at the end of the thirties and more, it was associated with more than seven to eight hours of sleep at higher risk of mortality, he said.

“The main conclusion was that around seven hours is the optimal duration of sleep,” he wrote in his book. “Each one -hour increase of one night of the duration of sleep greater than this threshold of seven to eight hours is associated with a risk of total cardiovascular from seven to eight to 12%.”

To improve the sleep function, Topol recommends maintaining a coherent schedule at bedtime and awakening, and avoiding eating or drinking alcohol for a few hours before sleep.

5. Do: Use AI to answer health questions in health – but with caution

The convergence of AI with the progress of biomedical data – such as genomics, microbiome analysis and digital health surveillance – create a transformative force which can radically improve the prediction of diseases, prevention and personalized care, told me Topol.

For consumers, AI is a powerful tool, he said, which can still be roughly wrong, sometimes. So, with caution and vigilance for the “hallucinations” of the AI ​​which provide incorrect information, here is how you can use it to help you age with force:

• Take advantage of personal health data: consider nourishing AI public applications such as Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google) and Perplexity your anonymized data from portable devices, mobile health applications and home test kits for real -time comments and personalized recommendations. Maintaining appropriate digital confidentiality means a personal identification cleaning of information such as your name, address and social security number from all the documents you download on AI platforms. (Suppose the personal identification of data that you provide an AI system can be captured by the company that owns it.)
• Make AI your personal food and drinks analyst: the more you can make yourself specific to the foods you consume and to what extent AI can give you a precise idea of ​​how your diet is balanced compared to nutritional standards. I did this and I received revealing comments. Always ask the AI ​​system what nutrition standards he uses and do not be afraid to challenge the results that do not seem correct. (Some AI can be good to admit when it is bad.)
• Ask the AI ​​non -technical explanations for emerging trends in longevity, treatments and scientific breakthroughs. For example, ask perplexity: “Why are doctors so enthusiastic about GLP-1 now?” What he answers could surprise you.