You're listening to Well Now Slate's podcast on health and wellness.

I'm Kepeda Patel.

And I'm Maya Feller.

So Kavita, you know, most people who come to my practice, they're looking for guidance on nutrition because they want like this really reliable way to improve their health.

And for some, that simply means addressing health problems that already exist.

Things like diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease.

But for a handful of those who really already have achieved that what I would refer to as baseline health,

their ultimate objective is to increase longevity and live past what we would conventionally refer to as baseline health, their ultimate objective is to increase longevity and live

past what we would conventionally refer to as a normal lifespan. They have leaned into this idea

of biohacking, really getting to the core of life, long, health, and wellness, and some of them even

have this goal of living past 100.

God help me to live past 100, Maya. It's a very interesting goal and it actually becomes kind of

something where there are countless studies and also some Netflix specials and some other

specials dedicated to looking at how people who live past 100 or communities where people

have lived into their

80s, 90s, even hundreds, and have been well. What is common amongst those communities and

characteristics of these centenarians? And several studies, including a study in 2021 by the

United Nations, looked at basically that the share of the years of their lives free of all the diseases

and chronic illnesses that you and I come to know, I hate to say it, as day-to-day work.

And so there are so many both developed and developing nations that are all asking for

time to focus on just thinking about healthy aging. But it's even more

interesting because I personally find, like, well, so when do we start thinking about aging?

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