Robbie Bent used to structure his days around a rigorous routine. He took 10 different supplements, and worked out five times a week. He weighed his ground beef before cooking it, to track protein intake. Used red light bulbs in the evenings to improve sleep. And he spent – still spends – thousands of dollars regularly for elective medical tests, including MRIs, to screen for potential future health issues.
To outsiders, his approach might seem extreme. But in the world of longevity, where health and fitness enthusiasts go to intense – and often expensive – lengths to try to extend human life, Mr. Bent’s approach is downright relaxed. Search online for longevity and you’ll find tens of thousands of videos and podcasts dedicated to pushing the boundaries of technology, fitness and health in the pursuit of long life.
The goal for many is to lengthen “healthspan” (the period of life where we’re healthy), and yes, also lifespan – to live to 140, 160, even 180 years old.
At the most extreme end are the Silicon Valley billionaires. This includes entrepreneur David Asprey, who receives regular stem cell treatments and intravenous infusions in his quest to live until 180, and the tech exec Bryan Johnson, who takes 100 daily supplements and spends $2-million each year toward his goal, which is, simply: “Don’t Die.”
Dr. Peter Attia, a Toronto-born physician, podcaster and author, is one of the most dominant voices in the longevity influencer space.Sipa USA/Reuters
But in the world of longevity influencers, two figures have emerged as the dominant voices: Peter Attia, a Toronto-born, U.S.-based physician and podcaster whose book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity has sold over a million copies; and Andrew Huberman, the Stanford University neuroscientist and host of Huberman Labs, which has over 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
People around the world have adopted Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia’s “protocols” – longevity-speak for “routine.” They take supplements recommended by Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia. Exercise exactly as recommended by Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia. Eat (or fast) as recommended by Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia. Use fitness trackers, medical tests, cold plunges as recommended by Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia.
Many of them are men. The leaders of the movement are, with only a few exceptions, men. Many fixate, frequently, on the subject of masculinity. Increasing testosterone, for instance, is a common preoccupation. What these longevity influencers offer is a blueprint, a guide to living in a world that’s stressful, and fast-changing – a solution to vulnerability. They offer the feeling – or at least, illusion – of control.
“My life is stressful. I think life is more stressful now for everyone,” says Mr. Bent, a 40-year-old former investment banker and tech CEO.
He became fixated on longevity about a decade ago, at a particularly painful moment in his life. The startup he’d built in Toronto went bankrupt. He was drinking too much, and addicted to cocaine.
But then Mr. Bent discovered Vipassana meditation, which led to Ayahuasca retreats, which led to “life-hacking” podcasters such as Tim Ferriss, and ultimately, Mr. Huberman.
He was depressed, and found himself immediately drawn to the idea – the promise – that his brain, and body, could be fixed. That, through hard work and discipline, his mind and body could be conquered. Made stronger.
“It felt like playing a video game, where I could be a better person by being ‘optimal,’” he says.
It felt like, “If I can have a good routine, I’m going to be happier.” Not just happier, but better. Superhuman.
As long as humans have lived we’ve searched for the key to immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian poem recorded on clay tablets around 2100 BC, is believed to be the oldest written story in human civilization. It’s about the quest for eternal life.
Our history since is filled with stories about men and women trying, and failing, to find solutions for death – a fountain of youth that might turn back the clock of time. Pope Innocent VIII injected himself with the blood of children. Diane de Poitiers, a 16th-century mistress of King Henry II, drank gold.
Thanks to the huge advancements in science and medicine over the past century, humans are indeed now living longer. From 1921 to 2021, the average lifespan in Canada skyrocketed from 57 to 81 years.
What we see instead now is a rapidly aging population. Already, nearly one in five Canadians is over the age of 65. Canadians today are living a longer life. And, they hope, a healthier one too.
Before there was a longevity industry, there was wellness. Before Mr. Bent had ever heard of Andrew Huberman, Gwyneth Paltrow had built a $250-million empire called Goop that targeted (mostly women’s) anxieties and fears around health and aging, and sold her unique brand of aspiration and hope for a fix – an illusion of control.
Longevity might be considered Wellness 2.0. But here, the figures have traded softness and “self-care” for the language of science, tech and finance. These aren’t habits but “investments.” Not routines but “protocols.” Not habits but “biohacking,” and “optimization.”
In this world, lifestyle messages are packaged to fit traditionally masculine norms. There’s the thickly-muscled Dr. Attia, and Mr. Huberman, with his beard, fitted black T-shirts, and intense gaze. Here, it’s not only about feeling strong, but looking strong – performing strength by lifting heavy weights and running with rocks strapped to their back.
In this world, men – who, at least traditionally, have been shown to eschew weakness, and avoid asking for help – instead overcome vulnerability with work and restraint.
For instance, men are, on average, much less likely to visit doctors or schedule regular health screenings. A 2019 survey by the Cleveland Clinic found that 72 per cent of men in the U.S. would rather clean the bathroom than visit a doctor. Among the reasons cited for their avoidance? Embarrassment about asking for help, and a desire to appear tough.
Joel Wardinger, a 45-year-old corporate lawyer in Toronto goes for a run through Viewmount Park in North York as part of his daily workout routine.
Around the time of the pandemic, Mr. Wardinger was introduced to Dr. Attia’s podcast. He now does heavyweight workouts four times a week and uses a wearable sleep tracker, both recommended by Dr. Attia.
Both Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia appeal to this quest for male self-sufficiency. Their pitch is for prevention – action.
“Using what I call Medicine 3.0, we can prevent, or at least significantly delay the chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, dementia, and diabetes that kill most people today,” Dr. Attia wrote in an e-mail to The Globe.
This, he emphasized, means being pro-active: “screening much earlier in life for risk factors for heart disease and treating them, even if short-term risk is very low.”
Around the time Joel Wardinger, a 45-year-old corporate lawyer in Toronto, turned 40, he started to notice his body changing. He was getting, he says, “a dad bod.”
When Mr. Wardinger turned 40, he started to notice his body changing into a “a dad bod." It's one of the reasons he began to do health research and make lifestyle changes.
This coincided with the start of the pandemic. He was caught up in the anxiety of the time: washing his groceries, trying to balance four kids at home as a working parent, trying to research and wade through the oftentimes conflicting medical and lifestyle advice, trying to make the best decisions to keep his family healthy and safe.
Somewhere in the midst of all of this, his confidence in our health care system was shaken. “It’s incredibly confusing, all the stuff out there,” he says.
What he means is this: Our system is stressed. More than six million Canadians don’t have access to a regular family doctor. A recent survey by researchers at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital found that even those who have family doctors have a hard time getting access. Only about 35 per cent are able to get same or next-day appointments on urgent matters.
Family doctors simply don’t have the time – or even, the expertise – to offer the kind of individualized advice that a longevity podcaster might: What, exactly, to do, and when.
It’s a common sentiment among longevity enthusiasts. Many express a general distrust or disappointment in doctors, or in the public health care system. Members of one Attia Facebook fan group regularly complain about their doctors and of “outdated” methods. Others take that sentiment further, expressing a general distrust of governments, of mainstream media or even Big Pharma. This despite putting their full faith – sometimes, unquestioningly – behind their longevity gurus.
Mr. Wardinger was introduced, around the time of the pandemic, to Dr. Attia’s podcast.
“There’s a Jewish religious dictum,” he says. “It says ‘Make for yourself a rabbi.’ ”
So Mr. Wardinger, who is Jewish, chose Dr. Attia. He calls him, simply, “Peter.”
He does heavyweight workouts four times a week, as recommended by Peter. He uses a wearable sleep tracker that was once endorsed by Peter. He’s even having a sauna built in his home, to the tune of $13,000, because of Peter.
“This is all in blind subservience to Peter’s research, which I sometimes question,” he says. But he doesn’t have the time to do it himself. If he did, he’d eat better, exercise more. He recognizes the irony, even as he says it: “I just don’t have the time.”
Sachin Patel, too, found himself gradually disillusioned with the mainstream medical system.
In August of 2010, Mr. Patel and his pregnant wife rushed to hospital in Mississauga. Her water had broken. But at the hospital, there were complications. Doctors did an emergency C-section, but couldn’t stop the bleeding. They did an emergency hysterectomy. And then another surgery.
What should have been the most joyous time of Mr. Patel’s life was instead spent in frozen horror. He together with his wife had to mourn the sudden reality that their first child would also be their last. And they’d never even had a choice in the matter.
Fast-forward to today. Mr. Patel follows a strict longevity routine. He believes in the methods so strongly that he now runs a private health coaching business.
Every morning, he wakes up and drinks water with sea salt. He stands outside, barefoot, in the sun. He does weight training and wears a band around his chest to regulate his breath. He uses a “squatty potty” to lessen the strain in the restroom. He only uses linen bedding, to “accelerate wound healing.” Only wears natural fibres in his underwear, because, he says, polyester lowers testosterone.
“There’s not a lot of external factors in life that we can control,” he says. “But I feel empowered when I can decide what’s going into my body.”
Some of the basic principles prescribed by longevity figures such as Mr. Huberman and Dr. Attia are not entirely new, says Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health. At the core of their routines are foundational philosophies that you’ll hear in any doctor’s office. Exercise. Watch what you eat. Get a good night’s sleep.
But when it comes to some of the more specific claims – the so-called “biohacking” advice around supplements, cold plunges, or wearable health trackers, for instance, Dr. Sinha said the evidence sometimes comes up short.
What’s more, he said, the advice for frequent elective medical testing can do more harm than good. Routine screenings sometimes find medically insignificant tumours or nodules, “and all of a sudden,” he said, “it sends people down this rabbit hole of unnecessary investigations and therapies.” (Dr. Attia, in response, said “New ways of thinking often garner debate.”)
Timothy Caulfield researches the wellness and health industries, with a specific focus on how science is often exploited or misinterpreted to sell consumer products.Timothy Caulfield
Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, calls “biohacking” something else: “scienceploitation.” He researches the wellness and health industries, with a specific focus on how science is often exploited or misinterpreted to sell consumer products. When it comes to popular longevity figures, he said, the evidence behind their claims is often thin.
For example, Mr. Huberman “is very good at explaining the science, putting in appropriate caveats,” said Prof. Caulfield. “But you don’t come away thinking, ‘The evidence is really preliminary, the effect size is pretty small, I gotta be careful about the science,’” he said.
“The take-away, the gestalt of the episode is, ‘You should be doing this!’ ”
What follows are Prof. Caulfield’s assessments of Mr. Huberman’s protocols for longevity: 11 minutes of cold plunge each week in 10-15 degree Celsius water (“very little good, long-term clinical data”); 10 minutes of sunlight exposure each morning (“scientifically absurd”); red light therapy (“no evidence to support”), and 5 to 20 minutes of sauna three times a week (“very little data”).
Prof. Caulfield is careful to say that the advice isn’t necessarily wrong – just that the evidence provided isn’t strong. And almost invariably, he added, “they’re trying to sell something.”
With Mr. Huberman, it’s the various brands he endorses. Mr. Huberman’s sponsors, for instance, include AG1, a supplement brand; Plunge, which sells $12,000-cold plunge kits; and LMNT, an “electrolyte drink mix.” Mr. Huberman did not respond to interview requests from The Globe.
And then there’s the other elephant in the room. A longevity lifestyle like the ones many of these figures prescribe does not come cheap.
Dr. Attia argues that the lifestyle he recommends – “exercise, correct nutrition, adequate sleep, and healthy management of emotional health” – does not have to be expensive. “The biggest cost, he wrote in an e-mail, “is time, because these interventions can’t be put into a pill.”
Still, the recommendations he and Mr. Huberman give come with a hefty price tag: $3,200, for example, for a whole-body MRI scan. $400 for a sleep-tracking ring. The cost to subscribe to Dr. Attia’s personalized online program – which includes individualized advice, but not actual one-on-one medical treatment – is US$2,500.
In a country where more than 10 per cent of people are considered low income – where more than 20 per cent of the population doesn’t have regular access to healthy, nutritious food – such costs are, of course, prohibitive. And in a country that prides itself on universal health care as a foundational, fundamental principle, it can feel antithetical to our values – to our national identity, even – to pursue health of the individual so obsessively, or a better health available only to the very few.
Ultimately, Prof. Caulfield said, there’s very little control each of us has over our own longevity beyond what’s already well-known.
“Exercise. Don’t smoke. Eat a healthy diet. Sleep. Surround yourself with people you love,” he says.
“Everything else is luck.”
Robbie Bent regulates his breathing inside an ice bath. Mr. Bent became fixated on cold plunging while he was in addiction recovery about eight years ago.
Down the escalator of a Bloor Street condo building – next to an F45 studio, the Australian fitness studio part-owned by Mark Wahlberg, and on the other side of Jaybird, “a yoga-contemporary movement studio” where classes are conducted in pitch-dark – is Othership. It’s the business Mr. Bent has built out of his interest in longevity.
About eight years ago, as he was climbing out of addiction, Mr. Bent became fixated on cold plunging. So in 2022, along with a group of other wellness industry investors, he built the first location of Othership, in Toronto’s Entertainment District. The Yorkville location opened a year later.
It’s easier to explain what Othership isn’t. It’s not a nightclub, although between the pulsing music and amber lighting, it feels like one. It’s not a spa, despite the robes and the incense – Othership’s signature scent of four cedars. And it’s definitely not a gym.
What Othership calls itself is “a space for transformation.” It’s a studio devoted to sauna and cold-plunging – a staple of Mr. Huberman’s longevity routine. When Mr. Huberman visited Toronto last year, the team tried, without success, to have him visit.
It’s a Thursday morning, and Othership’s 9 a.m. “free flow” is about to begin, but Mr. Bent is running late.
A young woman who calls herself “Arkaya” (Sanskrit for “light,” though she later tells me her real name is Elly) comes over to offer some “sound medicine.” “Sound baths are about receiving frequency,” she said. “Sound medicine is about you being the frequency.”
He finally rushes in, apologizing. He’d mixed up the dates of our meeting. It’s been a stressful morning. He has a shaggy beard and wavy, shoulder-length hair. On his head is a little felt sauna hat embroidered with the Othership spaceship logo.
It’s actually been a stressful few months, he says, as he guides us through the sauna circuit – about 20 minutes in the heat before two minutes in the cold, as directed by Mr. Huberman.
He and his partners are on the verge of another aggressive expansion, opening their first U.S. location in Manhattan, he explains. So he’s in the process of moving his family – his wife and their 18-month-old son. They’ve also just learned that their nanny can’t get a visa for the U.S. And, crucially, because of the expansion, he’s running out of money. He’s considering having to put his house up for collateral.
But afterward – after the sweat of the sauna and the bracing shock of the ice-cold bath – he says he feels lighter.
In 2022, Mr. Bent and a group of other wellness industry investors built the first location of Othership, in Toronto’s Entertainment District.
In the Othership lounge, he explains how he’s moved away from his formerly rigid routine. In the years after he became sober – about eight years ago – he was deeply, deeply into longevity, he said. He listened to the podcasts, and joined a groupchat of longevity enthusiasts.
“Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman are like their gods,” he says.
But he doesn’t have the time for that any more. And he’s already moving on to what he’s convinced is the next thing. He’s convinced that social connection – humans being around other humans – might be the real solution.
And there he’s landed on an aspect of longevity where the science is overwhelming. Social connection – maintaining strong friendships and bonds – has been demonstrated many times over to increase our chances of living a long, healthy life.
It’s an aspect of health that, traditionally, women have done much better than men. It’s also one that’s often neglected by the longevity enthusiasts and their oftentimes-solitary protocols.
“Maybe,” says Mr. Bent, “the need is actually human connection.”
Another guest, a young man in his 20s with an earnest but goofy Cousin-Greg quality, approaches. He’s wearing a sauna hat too. He’d been looking to make some changes in his life recently, he tells Mr. Bent, and found Othership. He feels inspired.
A red circular light overhead casts a halo around Mr. Bent. The terracotta linens around him float gently, as though from a breeze. Mr. Bent is sitting a few steps higher, and the younger man gazes up, star-struck. As they speak, Mr. Bent rubs his beard and pushes his long hair behind his ears. He looks every part the prophet. Superhuman.
“You look healthy,” Mr. Bent says to the young man. They’re both smiling now. “Just fantastic.”
Improving our odds at living a long, healthy life doesn’t have to mean following a strict routine, experts say. It also doesn’t have to be expensive.
Here’s what experts agree on when it comes to increasing our chances of healthy aging.
Exercise
“We know that physical activity and exercise is very good for your health,” says Manuel Montero-Odasso, a geriatrician at St. Joseph’s Health Care in London, Ont., and president of the Canadian Geriatrics Society.
In terms of a specific routine, Dr. Montero-Odasso says it doesn’t have to be complicated: Physical activity for 30 to 45 minutes each day – ideally some kind of combination of aerobic and strength training – has been shown to be beneficial in improving everything from muscle mass (critical, given how quickly we lose muscle mass as we age) and balance, to cognitive ability.
Watching your heart health
Cardiovascular disease is still a leading cause of death in Canada, second only to cancer.
So managing your vascular risk factors – monitoring your blood pressure, going for an annual physical to check your cholesterol, and watching for diabetes – is imperative.
Lifestyle factors can also influence heart health, which is why doctors recommend avoiding smoking and high-sodium diets.
Some of these steps also help with managing a healthy weight, which is good for overall health, too – and longevity.
Staying active and social
“We do know that keeping your mind active and challenging your mind by doing new activities will delay or even prevent cognitive decline,” Dr. Montero-Odasso says.
Think of it like exercise for the brain, he says: Every time we learn something new, we challenge the brain. Challenges can come in many forms: anything from learning a new language, to learning how to dance, to playing an instrument.
Staying social and maintaining active social connections, too, is important, Dr. Montero-Odasso says. “When you’re social, and happy, and have a good network, that increases your longevity too.”