My daily routine for wellness, health span

Matt Kaeberlein got into studying the science of longevity “by accident,” he says.

Kaeberlein is the founder and former director of the Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute at the University of Washington, and the co-founder and CEO of a health tech startup called Optispan. Throughout his career, he’s published hundreds of research papers, including many about aging.

In 1998, as a graduate student studying biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kaeberlein attended a biology professor’s lecture about genetics and its connection to longevity, he says. “I was in my late 20s, so aging wasn’t personal yet, but the complexity of the biology just really resonated with me. It seemed like an important problem,” says Kaeberlein, 54.

Kaeberlein joined the professor, Leonard Guarente, in his lab and decided to conduct his graduate research on longevity. “Now, much of my attention is focused on individual people and learning how we can have a positive impact on people’s health span,” says Kaeberlein.

A health span — similar to a lifespan — is defined as how long you live without conditions that can hinder your quality of life, like chronic pain and dementia, Alan Cohen, an associate professor at the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University, told CNBC Make It in December 2022.

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Despite researching longevity for decades, Kaeberlein “didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about” applying his research to his own habits and lifestyle until he started experiencing lower energy levels and aches and pains in his 40s and early 50s, he says.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, Kaeberlein decided to “become really intentional about improving my lifestyle factors,” including his nutrition, exercise, sleep and sense of social connection, he says. Around the same time, he transitioned from academia into entrepreneurship — co-founding Optispan, which advertises personalized longevity-focused medical care for its clients, in September 2023.

Here, Kaeberlein discusses how he’s changed his personal routines in an attempt to improve his longevity and health span. (Always consult with your primary care physician before making any changes to your own routines that could impact your health.)

You want a diversity of movement, meaning some consistent, low-intensity [physical activity] — what some people call “zone two exercise,” where you’re raising your heart rate regularly. Optimally, you do something at a low level every day. Maybe that’s just walking outside.

I’ll do about 30 minutes on a bike or elliptical in the morning. Or if it’s nice out, go outside for a walk with my wife. I don’t do that every day, but most days. I think many people can relate to this: I have a better day if I’m active early in the morning.

I try to do resistance training four times a week. I split up the workouts by body parts. I don’t think there’s a magic formula, you just got to get into the gym and do it. You can do body weight if that’s better for you. I’ve always liked lifting heavy weights, so that’s what I do. Most people probably [don’t recognize] how important it is to build and maintain muscle mass going into your 40s [and older].

And then the high-intensity [workouts]. Again, it’s about finding something that works for you. What works really well for my wife and I is, there’s a set of 135 stairs in a nearby town, about 15 minutes from our house. Usually once a week, we’ll go to the stairs, rain or shine, and go up and down 10 to 15 times. We listen to music and do it together.

How about brain health? Do you do anything specifically to try to keep your brain sharp?

Learning new things is one really great way to “exercise your brain.” I think with my job, I don’t need to find ways to learn new things. I’m always reading and learning and trying to understand new trends in the space.

Part of this is about figuring out a way to stimulate your brain that you find enjoyable, and that brings you energy. It’s very similar to physical exercise in the sense that if you feel like this is a huge burden and you don’t want to do it, you’re not going to stick with it in the long run.

I try to go to bed at a pretty regular time, at least on weekdays. I get up at 4:30 a.m., and my wife and I typically go to bed around 9:00 to 9:30 p.m. I try to get seven to eight hours of good quality sleep a night.

Longevity experts often talk about the importance of “social fitness,” maintaining friendships and connecting with other people. What’s your social fitness like?

The “connection” pillar is the one that I think is the weakest for me. I’m very fortunate to have a strong marriage, and that has been the most important relationship, along with my kids, for most of my adult life.

I’ve tried to make intentional efforts to have periodic and consistent time with friends outside of my family. Taking time to go have coffee with friends once a month, if possible. Really trying to prioritize key relationships, making sure they’re being nurtured by consistent touch points.

I wasn’t [always] somebody who would typically strike up a conversation with a stranger in the elevator, but I’m much more open to those kinds of micro-interactions on a daily basis 1771932279. When you have a really positive conversation with somebody who you’ve never met before, that brings energy and you feel good afterwards. Or if you see somebody who could use a helping hand, even if it’s just taking their bag down on the airplane, or holding the door open.

Trying to have those kinds of positive interactions and being intentional about it has been beneficial for me.

Let’s talk about your daily diet. Are there any foods that you eat either more or less to improve your health and wellness?

I make a dedicated, intentional effort to largely avoid processed foods like chips and breakfast cereal, [especially ones] that have added sugars. I have really learned to love salads. If somebody told me 10 years ago, you’re going to have a choice between super nachos or a steak salad at a Mexican restaurant, and you’re going to pick the steak salad, I would have been like, “You’re crazy.” But I do that today.

I eat a lot of yogurt. I pay attention to protein, and probably get about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. And I get a lot of fiber, usually about 60 to 80 grams of fiber a day, [including] a lot from vegetables.

One thing I like, and I’m waiting to see [more research on it] because it almost seems too good to be true, is Keto bread. It typically has 10 to 12 grams of fiber per slice. One of my go-to meals is an avocado sandwich with Keto bread. Sometimes I’ll put some lean turkey in there. It’s got a bunch of fiber, a bunch of protein and healthy fats.

I always end with this question because I think it’s interesting to see what longevity experts are looking into these days: What are you reading?

A lot of what I read is either the primary literature or other types of articles related to health and wellness.

One of the areas that I’m doing a deep dive on right now is peptides, and really trying to understand where a lot of them come from. What data do we have around different peptides that are being prescribed? How do they work? How likely are they to be beneficial? How dangerous are they potentially going to be?

I’m really trying to separate the signal from the noise because I get asked about it a lot, and I want to make sure that I really have a good understanding.

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