Oh yes, you have tuned into the Body and Soul podcast cat Healthy Ish with Felicity Harley. Now, we have been talking a bit on this podcast about longevity lately, but when we came across Nick Angerer's approach, we felt you needed to hear about it too, because it's a little bit different from the rest. Now. Nick is founder of a Longer Life, co founder of Sage Women's Health. He's our triathlete and holds a PhD. He joins us from Iron Bay today to discuss his concept of a
longevity strategy. Have you got one? If you do like what you hear from Nick, tune into Extra Healthy Ish, where we talk about all things tech and tests and longevity habits. Yes, we do a big deep dive into longevity. You can catch that wherever you get your podcasts. Nick, nice to have you on Healthy Ish. How's your day being.
I'm having a beautiful, wonderful sunny day up here in Byron Bay.
I have no complaints, a white rubbedy and hay Byron. It's just, you know, it's just heaven up there.
It is heaven up here. I love it.
I try to explain to people back home in the US how good it is and I don't think words ever do it justice.
No, No, you're right, you have to be there to experience it and live it, and no doubt it is helping boost your longevity. Tell us why the interest in longevity?
Yes, so thanks Felicity.
My interest in longevity stems from quite a personal story that I actually just got finished sharing at the Healthy Aging Summit in Brisbane just last Friday, and it's about a cancer journey. So, when my son was born during air insection, my wife was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and she had to have two very significant surgeries over a few different years to put that fully
in remission. And at the same time, in the same few months, I had two of my close friends also get diagnosed with cancer, so that was three people in there late twenties for me, as my son's being born welcomed into the world of understanding our mortality, and that made me become, after I've made it through all that,
become quite interested in preventative health screening. So I did a real deep dive on preventative health screening and really asking the question, why do we have so much technology available to us, yet we still have this surprise, you have stage four cancer type diagnosis happening to so many people.
And so I actually was researching the technologies that are available for us to catch cancer at a very early stage, and I found that not only was that technology quite advanced already, but that the primary barrier to its uptake was a lack of awareness of it and a demand for that type of service.
So I started.
Blogging about it in response, and as I did that, I got deeper and deeper into this whole realm of longevity, finding that it's not just cancer early early stage cancer.
Diagnoses that we can now accomplish, but.
We can do much much more, even actually understanding the aging process itself, and that it's the primary driver for the risk factor for all of these.
Diseases that end up killing us.
And that since we're starting to understand what aging is and why it happens, in fact, we are now learning it's possible to slow, possibly halt, and maybe even reverse aspects of aging in the very very near future. So I've become very fascinated with the broader topic of longevity through that journey.
How's he wife, by the way she is?
She?
Well, Now, we were fortunate to be married for ten years, we're no longer married. We do a great job teaming up together in my son's life, and she's alive and well. We have modern medical technology here to thank for that.
Yeah, absolutely, especially for your son. So has a mom, So he has a mom around. Now, talk to me about your whole longevity strategy, because out of this has grown this big idea of Okay, now we can go about boosting a longevity.
Well.
As I went through that journey of discovering all these amazing technologies that we have to detect disease early, I also was fascinated by this whole aspect of longevity and aging as a bigger story. Finding the technologies that have emerged in that space got me quite excited as well. But then then I began to realize that I felt a bit overwhelmed. I didn't know where to start. There's all these amazing things I can be doing. I can get a full body MRI, I can get my genome sequenced,
I can get all sorts of specialized tests done. But I only have so much money and time and energy. So I didn't know where to start. And this is where I came up with the concept of having a longevity strategy at a longer Life dot com.
At my business and Longer Life.
There's this four part framework that I'm encouraging people to work with in order to go on their longevity journey. And the second part of that is strategy. And the reason you need a strategy is because it's overwhelming. There are innumerable options for you to invest your money into. Anyone who gets into health and wellness and scrolls on Instagram knows they could blow their whole monthly budget with just a few purchases.
In this space. And we need to learn.
To be very targeted strategic with our longevity efforts. So this concept of a longevity strategy, as I go through on the website is about starting with understanding your risk, your risk for developing age related diseases, and so we can actually look at what diseases are grandparents, our parents, brothers, sisters,
related aunts and uncles have developed. It's called doing a family health history as a free and fairly easy starting point to get an idea of what diseases we could be at risk for, and we could start thinking years ahead on how we can modify our lifestyle or engage with what I call longevity technologies in a strategic way to get ahead of those diseases and potentially avoid them altogether.
So longevity strategy is getting rid of the overwhelm, it's looking at where you should start, and it's targeting your resources at the most effective actions that you can start taking.
Now, I think you made some really important points there. One, longevity doesn't have to cost a lot of money. And I think you know, often we see the you know, Brian Johnson's and the likes spending millions in trying to increase their lifespan. But that simple having a longevity strategy. And I really like this idea. I haven't heard this concept before. Is a great place we can all start
for free just by asking. I mean many of us probably haven't even asked our brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, Okay, what's your health like? What have you suffered from? I mean, we kind of know, but to actually write it down even is just one step further in helping us develop a lifestyle around this.
That's right, felicity, and that's right, that's exactly right.
And it is free, which there's one of the reasons I start there, because it is accessible to anyone who wants to try that, and we actually have an example form that you can download on the website, but there's many other versions of that. You can work with your GP to do that. You can work with many health
practitioners to do that. In fact, I went to a very fancy, very expensive longevity health clinic in the United States twice I've gone now, and the first thing I did when I went there was fill out a family health history. So it's beginning of your longevity strategy and your longevity journey, so you know what to think about and how to get ahead of it.
I mean, there are some other factors as to it, which you might go into in Extra Healthy Ish, But before we go, tell us a bit about visiting that longevity clinic and what are some of your weekly habits to boost your longevity that you perhaps picked out when you were over there or that you do now.
You've given me the most excellent lead into the actual outcome from visiting this amazing health nucleus. It was called from a company called Health Human Longevity, Inc. In San Diego, California, and I spent thousands of dollars to go get a full body MRI full genome sequencing complete blood panel, balance testing, heart health checks, brain and cardiac MRIs, amazing technology. What's the number one thing I walked away with from that visit?
Nick?
You need to exercise more. I need to get more heart pumping aerobic fitness. Walked away knowing that I had to figure that out. I had to figure that out, and that meant I needed to boil down the elements of what it means to have a longevity fitness effort, the components of that. And really it's about finding something you love to do that's exercise related and finding some wonderful people to do it with so that you keep doing it and set yourself some goals.
And so when.
You ask about my weekly strategy in the longevity space and what am I doing each week, the most important thing that I'm doing, the most important, even more important than what I'm eating, I believe, is the high level of physical activity that I undertake.
So I'm a triathlete.
I'm riding, I'm running, I'm swimming, and I'm doing strength training, balance training and jumping around working on all those explosive type two muscle fibers to keep them young and youthful so that I can stay as mobile and as robust and healthy for as long as I can, because exercise is the best thing we can do for our longevity.
Yeah, absolutely, Nick, thank you for coming on Healthy.
Is my pleasure.
Make sure you tune into Extra Healthy Is too, where Nick talks about the best tech tests and lifestyle habits to optimize your longevity. You can catch that wherever. Get your podcasts.