Ask a Longevity Doctor |Ep. 1| The levels of Longevity

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Ask a Longevity doctor is a new show, hosted by me, Chris Curwen, where I discuss all things longevity, health and aging with our friend and colleague Dr. Oliver Zolman.

You can keep up-to-date with the newest episodes by subscribing to the Gowing Life youtube channel.

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In this episode we talk about Oliver’s three levels of longevity. This is a framework made to integrate all evidence-based longevity therapies into a single protocol.

The protocol provides the maximum theoretical chance of reaching age 100+ in good health compared to any other health protocol globally.

Here is what we talked about:

Question 1: What is the very first step in implementing the longevity levels into our own lives?

Oliver: It is important to sit down and analyse your own life from the perspective of longevity level 1, being honest with yourself where you are achieving or failing at each of the levels. Go and print out the slide of longevity level 1 from my website and figure out which of the subcategories you are falling behind most at. For instance, if you are a smoker, this is what you should try to tackle first.

Question 2: Does the age at which we start to implement the longevity levels contribute to how much of an impact they will have on my lifespan?

Oliver: Yes essentially the younger the better, even as a child! But still get benefits at age 90+ explain different ages

Question 3: What would you say to those people who say they just don’t have the time or the money to try to carry out these changes in lifestyle?

Oliver: For time: 1) I can make it easier for you, giving you the knowledge, time savings tips, making it enjoyable, social and feel supported etc.; 2) once its a habit it becomes timeless 3) a lot of them do not take a lot of time… you save a lot of time from not smoking 4) you save time by living longer and healthier! Money: people generally save money 2) there are ways to go get food cheaper and still be super healthy, e.g. bulk buying, or paying online or using cheaper shops etc

Question 4: When will some of the interventions we see in longevity level 3 start to become a more regular part of everyday life for the general public?

Oliver: So level 3 interventions have actually been a regular part of life for 70 years now, bone marrow transplants (which is the easiest stem cell therapy to do hence it was invented first) and also arguably all cancer therapies ever done are level 3 therapies, as cancer is a root cause aging pathology, and loss of stem cells (i.e. you need a bone marrow transplant) is a root cause of aging. So yeah, its been around for 70 years already, super mainstream. Cancer used to be accepted and inevitable and seen as part of normal aging, the same thing will happen for the other 9 categories of aging pathology, we think its normal to lose all our stem cells, but in the future this will be seen as negligence.

Question 5: Have you had experience of taking individuals through the levels?

Oliver: Yes, currently 5 or so individuals, including myself. Its not scalable beyond maybe 100 people with me consulting alone, so there are 2 options that I am pursuing: longevity.school online course and software that will essential me a robot me for people that want to go through the levels and 2) training clinicians in person (online) and via a clinician focused online course. This way the scaling can easily service 100 million people + in theory.

Question 6: Are GP’s and clinicians expected to keep up-to-date with the latest research in the world of longevity and geroscience?

Yes, in UK and USA consultant/attending clinicians have to complete CPD, revalidation, CME, can choose further specialties, and read papers or attend conferences for fun too. All these methods provide insights in age-related-disease management. Online courses for clinicians will grow exponentially this decade, including virtual reality training. Longevity School for Clinicians will bridge any gaps in knowledge between standard care and this new evidence based care model that can enhance outcomes, partly because clinciians dont have time to provide 30 minute consults to every patient in the world every week. I think once you hit 30 minutes a week or every other week, good things can happen in terms of behaviour change, deep understanding, and optimising biomarkers. The only way to achieve this realistically is online courses and AI-clinicians – hopefully this decade we will have the kurzweil 2029 turing test AI that might provide a better experience for AI clinicians, rather than the voiceless chatbots we have today.