What is Longevity?
Picture yourself at 80. Not in a hospital bed — at home. Can you lift yourself out of a chair without help? Carry a bag of shopping from the car to the kitchen? Balance on one leg for ten seconds while you pull on a sock? The basic meaning of the word longevity is to have a long existence. We call this your ‘lifespan’ in the medical community. However, you may argue what is the point of a long existence if you are not able to live it well. The abilities and everyday tasks that you took for granted in your formative years quietly become more difficult and eventually disappear into your final decades of life. Recovering them is an almost impossible task.
Longevity has become a bit of a buzzword lately. More people seem to be talking about it than ever. For good reason too. Advancements in biotechnology, understanding of the human genome, ability to alter or silence genes completely through novel therapies - all reasons why it is reasonable to assume that many of you reading this blog may live long enough to see your 100th birthday. Wouldn’t you want to live these extra years in good health? The time in which you actually stay healthy is a newly coined term referred to as ‘healthspan’. I feel it is important not to confuse longevity with lifespan. Longevity is more than just living long enough to blow out another birthday candle. To me, longevity is about staying energetic, capable, and independent for as long as possible. More life in your years, not just more years in your life.
But how do we achieve this goal of living healthier for longer? You will likely have seen an increasing number of trends across your social media feeds in recent years. Cold plunges. Hyrox races. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers. Peptide therapy. No wonder people are feeling as confused as ever. We live in a world of endless information where social media has given amplification to voices who shout the loudest.
That’s where I come in…. I’m Jake, a pharmacist working inside the NHS. And I started Dose of Longevity because of something that bothered me for years behind the dispensary counter. We live within a reactionary healthcare system. We are excellent at treating illness but we lag behind other developed countries around the world in preventing ill-health. I’ve dispensed thousands of prescriptions for medications that the overwhelming majority of patients could have avoided in the first place.
This blog exists to give you the science, stripped of the noise, so you can make small, realistic changes that genuinely move the needle on how well you live. No miracle cures. No overhauls. Just evidence-based steps that will give you the tools and the knowledge to achieve a healthier you.
Why Everyone’s Talking About Longevity Right Now
Here's the thing: the world can feel pretty overwhelming these days. Housing prices are wild. The job market is uncertain. Global events seem out of control. Artificial intelligence is apparently going to replace you at some point in the near future. It's easy to feel like you're just along for the ride with no say in where you're going.
But your health? That's different. That's something you are capable of controlling. A path which you are able to carve out.
I believe this is why so many young people are getting serious about wellness and longevity. It explains the rise of the teetotal teen. The rise of the sourdough bloomer. The rise of the matcha latte. It's not about being obsessed with health or living in fear - it’s about agency and taking back control of your life in a world which feels so uncertain. Focusing on small, incremental steps that genuinely improve your health can give people the purpose and meaning that they are looking for. We are human - we thrive off personal and collective missions to drive towards. The reason to get out of bed in the morning. The science is there - everyday we are uncovering more answers into what makes us tick. People are engaged, people are curious and that human desire to strive for more is not going away.
Your Choices Today Shape Your Tomorrow
Here's a truth that might seem obvious but what you do in your 20s and 30s matters a lot for how you'll feel in your 40s and 50s. The lifestyle choices and habits you nail down in your 40s and 50s matters a lot to how you’ll feel in your 60s and 70s. It’s cumulative. Genetics plays a part. I won’t pretend otherwise, but the stars are not written. The actions you take today, compounded day by day over years and decades, will shape how well you live far more than the hand you were dealt.
Want to travel the world at 60? Hike with future grandkids? Keep playing five-a-side into your fifties? Stay independent and never rely on someone else for the basics? The foundation for all of that starts now.
And before the perfectionist in you panics: you don’t need to be perfect. I’m a big advocate for the 80:20 approach. Live and eat well 80% of the time so you can afford the 20% where choices are, let’s say, sub-optimal. Perfection is often the enemy of progress but it need not be if we live our lives with intent and accountability to the 80%. That Friday night takeaway is not the enemy. The enemy is waiting until something goes wrong before you start paying attention.
Let me introduce you to ‘The Formulary’
In pharmacy, a formulary is the list of treatments that have earned their place — backed by evidence, not marketing. Consider this my formulary for living well, based on the six pillars of lifestyle medicine set by the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BLSM). Everything comes back to these six things.
There’s a lot of noise in the longevity space but before you research the latest biohacking supplements or best-reviewed red light face mask - you need to first make sure you have nailed down these six basics.
I’ll be referring back to ‘The Formulary’ and explaining why each topic has earned its place via dedicated posts over the coming weeks and months, but until then here’s an overview for you to digest
Sleep
Previously dismissed as a period of inactivity, we now understand that sleep is one of the most active and critical processes your body runs. Your brain clears metabolic waste, your muscles repair, your immune system recalibrates. Think about it from an evolutionary perspective: sleep leaves you vulnerable, unaware, unable to hunt or forage. If it weren’t absolutely essential, natural selection would have removed it. Yet every species on earth does it.
Most adults need seven to nine hours. There are rare genetic variants that allow some people to function on less, but they affect a very small fraction of the population. [1] The rest of us who claim to be fine on less than five hours are borrowing from a debt we’ll eventually have to repay. From my own experience as a father, I know exactly how a sub-optimal night of sleep will leave me making unhealthier food choices throughout the day, mid-morning crashes and brainfog, less emotional resilience and prone to stress. You may be able to ‘’function’’ on less. But you certainly won’t be thriving.
Diet
You don’t need a perfect diet. You need a pretty good one, most of the time.
Focus on whole foods — things that look like they came from nature. The fewer ingredients on the back of the packet, the better, as a general rule. Now, I am not completely against ultra-processed foods. Did you know that canned baked beans would be considered an ultra-processed food? I am certainly not going to sit here and tell you to put the Heinz down. Baked beans rightfully remain an undisputed pillar of British cuisine. But the growing evidence around UPFs and health outcomes is hard to ignore, and I’ll be covering it properly in a future post.
Forget keto, carnivore, vegan — none of them are magic. If there’s a dietary pattern worth paying attention to, it’s the Mediterranean way of eating. Not because of any single nutrient, but because of the whole picture: seasonal vegetables, oily fish, wholegrains, pulses, and yes, the occasional glass of polyphenol-rich wine. And something that no macronutrient breakdown will ever capture — the way Mediterranean cultures treat food as a communal act. Discussions around the dinner table. Sourcing local ingredients. Laughter, joy, connection, presence.
Exercise
Humans were built to move. But we live in a society where movement is quickly becoming optional. Food arrives at our door, machines wash our clothes, we drive five minutes down the road when we could walk. Convenience and comfort deprives the human condition of the struggle and effort it needs to thrive.
The best exercise is whatever you’ll actually do consistently. But in an ideal world, you want both cardio (for your heart and lungs) and strength training (for your muscles and bones). I tell every patient who asks me the same thing: find something you actually enjoy and will stick to. That’s your baseline. Thirty minutes of movement on most days makes a measurable difference. It doesn’t need to be a gym. Walk, cycle, dance, play sports, chase your kids around the garden. Just move.
Stress Management
Chronic stress is the one most people underestimate. It’s a slow killer. Here’s the short version of what happens when your body stays in a stressed state for too long: your cortisol stays elevated, which suppresses your sex hormone production, [2] which tanks your energy and sex drive, which disrupts your sleep, which puts your body in a pro-inflammatory state, which weakens your immune system and accelerates ageing. [3] You can eat perfectly and train daily — if you’re perpetually stressed, you’re still doing damage.
The goal isn’t to eliminate stress. That’s impossible and, frankly, some stress is useful. The goal is to reduce it. I’ll be sharing practical, evidence-based approaches to this in a future post — not the “just meditate” advice you’ve heard a thousand times, but the things I’ve seen actually work for people with demanding jobs and limited free time.
Social Connection
Here's one that rarely makes the supplement ads or the fitness influencer reels because it’s not something that you can sell. Connection. Real, human, face-to-face connection. The kind you get from being sat face-to-face with someone laughing, interacting or even just sitting in silence. The presence of another human that you trust or who provides you comfort. You know the feeling - the kind that warms you to your bones.
Humans are social creatures. We are meant to co-exist within a community. The evidence for this is hard to argue with. Loneliness is an epidemic shortening our lifespans [4] and depriving the person of what it means to be human, to be loved, to be heard, to be seen.
Research undeniably shows that strong social ties and sense of belonging is associated with longer life. [4] And yet, we live in a world that is engineering connection out of our daily life at every opportunity - app based dating, self-checkouts instead of cashiers. Deliveries instead of shops. Emails instead of conversations.
As a pharmacist, I see the downstream consequences of isolation. I'll be exploring the science behind it in a future post, and what you can realistically do to protect against it.
Avoiding harmful substances
I debated whether to include this one, because it risks sounding preachy — and if you've read this far, you know that's not what I'm about. But I'd be doing you a disservice if I laid out a framework for living well and left out the single most modifiable risk factor sitting in most people's weekly routine.
Smoking is the obvious one. The evidence is so overwhelming and so universally accepted that I won't insult your intelligence by walking through it. If you smoke, you already know. I’ll be sharing the science, tools and the methods that actually help you give up for good.
Alcohol is the one that needs more nuance. I mentioned the Mediterranean glass of wine earlier, and I stand by the idea that moderate consumption within a social, food-centred context is a different beast to three bottles of Sauvignon Blanc across a lonely week. But the evidence has shifted in recent years, and the honest position is this: there is no level of alcohol consumption that the science considers completely risk-free. [5]
Recreational drugs, vaping, microplastics, environmental toxins - I will be exploring all of this in dedicated posts throughout the life of Dose of Longevity. Then it’s up to you to decide what trade-offs that you are willing to make.
You’re In Control
Longevity isn’t about perfection. You’re going to have late nights. You’re going to eat pizza. You’re going to skip workouts. That’s called being human, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
The point is that small, consistent choices compound over time. Think of it like interest on a savings account — except the account is your future body, and the returns are measured in years of independence, energy, and doing the things you love.
And here’s the best part, it’s never too late to start. Whether you’re 22 or 52, the choices you make this week matter. Your future self will thank you for paying attention to the one body you’ll ever have.
What Comes Next
This post is the starting line. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be going deep on each of the four pillars — sleep, diet, exercise, stress — with the clinical detail and practical steps that a surface-level overview can’t give you. I’ll also be tackling the trends, supplements, and headlines you keep seeing, and telling you honestly which ones are worth your time and which are noise.
If you want a monthly round-up of the best content I’ve produced, a few personal and professional anecdotes, and a no-nonsense debunk of a health product that’s been getting too much airtime, sign up to the newsletter below.
www.dose-of-longevity.kit.com
Pick one thing from this post and focus on it this week. Just one. Let me know on socials how you get on.
Until next time,
Jake
Dose of Longevity
References:
1 - He, Y. et al. The transcriptional repressor DEC2 regulates sleep length in mammals. Science. 2009. 14;325(5942):866-70
2 - Ranabir S, Reetu K.Stress and hormones Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2011. 15(1):18–22
3- Bauer ME. "The role of stress factors during aging of the immune system." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2008. 1153:139-152
4 - Fan, W. et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 90 cohort studies of social isolation, loneliness and mortality. Nature Human Behaviour. 2023.
5 - Anderson, BO. et al. Health and cancer risks associated with low levels of alcohol consumption. The Lancet Public Health, 2023. 8(1)
