(clue: it’s not Brian Johnson’s 14-step routine)
Longevity isn’t found in a $2 million biohacking protocol or a cryotherapy chamber in Malibu. It’s not about injecting yourself with your son’s plasma or timing your meals down to the millisecond. The secret to aging gracefully, feeling deeply energised, and safeguarding your body against modern stressors? It’s in the small, unsexy habits that humans have relied on for centuries: before the age of synthetic vitamins and meal replacements.
Here are five of the most overlooked (but essential) practices for real, tangible longevity.
1. Keep your spine fluid
You're only as young as your spine is flexible. Truly.
Your spine isn't just a stack of bones. It houses the spinal cord, the central pathway for nerve signals that regulate everything from digestion to heart rate. When the spine is stiff or misaligned, nerve signals become impaired, leading to sluggish organ function, reduced coordination, and even hormonal imbalances.
A rigid spine doesn’t just make you feel old, it accelerates aging in tangible ways. Studies show that restricted spinal movement is linked to poor balance, weaker reflexes, and increased fall risk. In fact, reduced spinal flexibility has been associated with lower lung capacity, impaired circulation, and even cognitive decline. The less you move your spine, the more it locks up, creating a vicious cycle of stiffness and dysfunction.
Keeping your spine fluid and mobile ensures that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulates properly, delivering nutrients to the brain and spinal cord while removing metabolic waste.
Longevity rituals:
Treat your spine like a living, breathing structure, not a stiff pillar. Hang from a bar like a kid on a playground, letting gravity decompress your vertebrae. Roll on the floor, practice spinal waves, and flow through cat-cow stretches. Walk barefoot on uneven ground, letting the subtle shifts wake up the tiny stabilising muscles that keep you balanced and stop slouching. Seriously. Your nervous system will thank you.
2. Eat food that's still alive
Modern food is lifeless. Cooked, sterilised, and processed into oblivion, it’s missing the very thing that makes it nourishing: life itself.
Traditional cultures that live the longest, like the Swiss mountain dwellers, the Japanese, and the Inuit, have one thing in common: they consume foods that are raw, fermented, and enzyme-rich.
Enzymes are the spark plugs of life. Every cellular function: digestion, detoxification, energy production, depends on them. Raw and fermented foods come preloaded with enzymes, helping them digest themselves so your body doesn’t have to overcompensate. Take raw milk, for example, it contains lactase, the enzyme needed to break down lactose. This is why traditional societies thrived on raw dairy, while modern pasteurised milk often causes bloating and intolerance.
Over time, a diet high in cooked, enzyme-depleted foods can overwork the pancreas, drain metabolic energy, and contribute to fatigue, sluggish digestion, and chronic disease. In contrast, raw food, like raw dairy, meat, fruits, and fermented foods support digestion, regulate inflammation, and enhance nutrient absorption. Even more, enzyme rich foods provide protective antioxidants and phytonutrients that slow aging at a cellular level.
Longevity rituals
Swap pasteurised dairy for raw milk, aged cheeses, and kefir: living foods teeming with enzymes and probiotics that nourish digestion and strengthen immunity. Bring back the ancestral staples modern diets have forgotten: silky raw egg yolks, delicate carpaccio, and fresh raw liver. Let fermentation do the work for you: sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles. And don’t forget the simple gifts of nature: fresh fruits, raw honey, enzyme-rich and bursting with antioxidants that fuel the body at a cellular level. The more life your food holds, the more it gives back to you.
3. Get in the mountains, often
Most people breathe like they’re in a constant state of panic: shallow, rapid, and through their mouths. This isn’t just bad for stress levels; it disrupts oxygen delivery at a cellular level. The body needs carbon dioxide (CO₂) to properly release oxygen into the tissues, a principle known as the Bohr Effect. But modern humans over-breathe, dumping CO₂ too quickly, leading to poor circulation, metabolic sluggishness, and even higher stress hormones.
Life at altitude forces the body to become more efficient. The lower oxygen levels trigger higher red blood cell production, improved cardiovascular function, and stronger lung capacity. It’s why endurance athletes train in the mountains, it pushes their cells to work harder, making every breath more potent. Studies even show that people living above 1,500 meters tend to have lower rates of heart disease, obesity, and metabolic disorders.
The mountains don’t just change how you breathe. They change how you move. Hiking uphill strengthens the heart, improves mitochondrial function, and builds endurance. Every step at altitude is a workout, making the body more resilient. A potent antidote to the stagnation of city life, where movement is optional, breath is shallow, and energy slowly fades.
Longevity rituals
If you can, get to the mountains often, even short exposure can retrain your lungs, improve blood flow, and shift your entire physiology. If you’re stuck at sea level, simulate the effect: breathe slowly and through your nose, train your CO₂ tolerance with breath holds, and walk uphill whenever possible. Your body was built for altitude. It’s time to remind it.
4. Learn to say no before your body says it for you
Being agreeable might win you friends, but it can cost you your health. Chronic people-pleasing: suppressing your needs, swallowing your emotions, always saying yes, doesn’t just drain your energy. It rewires your nervous system for stress, and over time, that stress becomes disease.
Dr. Gabor Maté, in When the Body Says No, lays it out clearly: the body keeps score when we ignore our boundaries. The research backs it up: Type C personalities, the overly nice, conflict-avoidant, self-sacrificing types, are disproportionately represented among those with serious disease. One 10-year study even found that those who never expressed anger had a significantly higher risk of developing cancer than those who did.
The reason? Unprocessed stress doesn’t just disappear. it burrows into the body, fuelling inflammation, hormonal imbalances, and nervous system dysregulation.
The cultural conditioning to "be easygoing" and "never rock the boat" might seem harmless, but when saying yes to others means constantly saying no to yourself, the cost is steep.
Longevity rituals
Start treating your boundaries like a health practice. Say no without over-explaining or apologising. Give yourself permission to rest without guilt, express your emotions freely, and protect your energy like your life depends on it, because it does. Surround yourself with people who respect your no and step away from those who take advantage of your yes. Your nervous system wasn’t designed for constant overextension. Honour it, and it will keep you strong for life.
5. Protect your thyroid function (at all costs)
Thyroid = metabolic Spark. This small, butterfly-shaped gland in your neck controls the speed of your body’s engine, producing T3 and T4 hormones that regulate metabolism, energy production, and even brain function. When your thyroid is running optimally, you feel strong, warm, and mentally sharp. But when it slows down, a condition known as hypothyroidism, everything else follows.
Fatigue, weight gain, sluggish digestion, thinning hair, cold hands and feet, these aren’t just signs of aging. They’re symptoms of a thyroid running on empty. In fact, studies show that suboptimal thyroid function is linked to cognitive decline, higher cholesterol, and loss of muscle mass: all markers of premature aging. In essence, a poorly supported thyroid can make you feel decades older than you are.
Longevity rituals
Prioritise iodine-rich seafood, raw dairy, and pastured eggs, as iodine is the foundation of thyroid hormone production. Support hormone conversion with selenium-packed organ meats like liver and kidney, collagen-rich broths, and gelatine from slow-cooked meats. Fuel your metabolism with easily digestible carbs like ripe fruit, honey, and well-cooked roots, which prevent stress-induced thyroid suppression.
Eliminate the modern thyroid killers: polyunsaturated vegetable oils (PUFAs), soy, and excessive raw cruciferous vegetables, which interfere with hormone production and slow metabolic rate. And above all, don’t starve yourself: chronic fasting, extreme low-carb diets, and caloric restriction send danger signals to your body, downregulating thyroid output and pushing you into a sluggish, energy-conserving state.
6. Feed your brain with B-s
Your brain is one of the most energy-hungry organs in your body, and B vitamins are the fuel that keeps it running. They’re essential for neurotransmitter production, DNA repair, and protecting against cognitive decline. But one of their most overlooked roles? Regulating homocysteine, an amino acid that, when elevated, can damage blood vessels and accelerate brain aging.
Studies show that B vitamin deficiency is strongly linked to brain atrophy, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. In one notable two-year study, elderly individuals with mild cognitive impairment who took high-dose B₆, B₁₂, and folate saw their brain shrinkage slow by an astonishing 53%. In other words, ensuring adequate B vitamins could literally slow down brain aging.
The best sources of B vitamins aren’t found in a pill: they’re in organ meats, eggs, and animal-based foods, packed with bioavailable B₁₂, B₆, folate, and choline in the exact forms your brain can use. Just 100g of beef liver provides over 2,700% of your daily B₁₂ needs, along with critical nutrients for memory, cognition, and nerve function.
Longevity rituals
Feed your brain the way ancestral diets did: nose to tail. Make liver, kidney, and egg yolks a regular part of your diet for a direct, bioavailable source of B vitamins. Prioritise raw dairy and high-quality red meat, both rich in brain-boosting nutrients. Avoid fortified grains and synthetic B vitamins, which often come in poorly absorbed forms. And if you experience brain fog, memory lapses, or low energy, check your B₁₂ levels, your brain might be starving. Alzheimer’s and dementia don’t happen overnight. Protecting your brain starts now.
