Happy New Year to you, dear friends! I hope you had a lovely holiday and a joyful New Year, and are looking forward to 2026 with optimism. And there are plenty of reasons to stay optimistic, even in the midst of so much uncertainty.
I hope to generate more of that optimism for you by offering a few of the ‘150 Ways to Get to 100’ that we’ve just published in our January/February issue of our magazine What Doctors Don’t Tell You.
Here’s a sneak preview of just a few of those 150 ways to help reach a ripe old age.
I’m sure you know by now to eat a Mediterranean-type, low-GI diet (with liberal helpings of meat, fish, pulses and non-starchy vegetables), plus making your plate a rainbow of brightly colored vegetables. And you also know to minimize wheat, avoid processed food of all types, and make sure you’re getting plenty of good fats like olive, coconut or avocado oils.
And don’t forget mushrooms like maitake, reishi and lion’s mane, which help to protect against cancer.
But you may not know that Nrf2, or nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor 2, its gobbledygook formal name, is the body’s master switch for preventing aging and promoting detox. You can turn up the switch, the more you eat potent Nrf activators: cruciferous vegetables, avocados, berries, nuts and seeds, garlic and that all-purpose healer, turmeric. To stay young, make sure they are a staple.
And don’t stint on nitrate-rich foods. These foods help you maintain high levels of nitric oxide—which improve blood pressure and circulation – and all the rest of you.
Besides your greens, add beets, celery and artichoke to your diet. In fact, try drinking fresh beet juice, which has been shown to help ease arterial stiffness
Vinegar is an underrated superfood. Aside from its ability to fight inflammation, diabetes, microbes, tumors and hypertension and inflammation, vinegar also helps with weight loss.
If you are prone to high blood sugar, try adding a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to a bit of water and chugging it down 15 minutes before each meal.
Even if you are eating eating healthily, today’s food – even organic food – is devoid of many nutrients, so make sure you’re taking supplements. We’ve listed a bunch of the most important in our report, but here are a few biohacks you can try to counter aging and promote weight loss.
To stay young, don’t forget astaxanthin. This natural antioxidant, found in shrimp, salmon and crab, may help protect you from dementia, but it’s also useful for avoiding failing eyesight, wrinkles and sagging skin. Take it after a meal that includes healthy fats, like olive and flaxseed oil.
And instead of Ozempic, a number of supplements help you burn fat naturally, including green tea leaf extract, L-carnitine, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), malabar tamarind (Garcinia cambogia) and African mango (Irvingia gabonensis).
Of course, don’t overlook movement – walking is an amazing preventative. Just 4,400 steps a day lowers your risk of death from any cause (and 8000 steps a day doubles that lowering of risk). And do minimize the chemicals in your water and environment.
But physical suggestions are just half the battle. Possibly most important of all is psychic longevity – how you think, whom you connect with and what exactly you are living for.
Stay connected. If you don’t live with someone, join a group, any group with values or activities you believe in (but consider a Power of Eight® group). Groups of any sort will halve your chances of dying in 2026, according to Harvard research.
Stay curious. Seeking out the new activates the ‘seeking’ portion of the brain, which helps us to stay curious, engaged and purposeful and keeps our mind young.
Have a purpose, particularly of service. It’s the single most important element of a long and healthy life.
Cultivate optimism and joy, such as practicing gratitude, listening to music, empathizing and forgiving. Holding a grudge is the ‘bad boy’ of mental states, say psychologists – guaranteed to shorten your life.
And finally, cultivate a sense of spirituality. Kelly Turner, who wrote Radical Remission, about the 9 most common factors among ‘no-hoper’ cancer patients who survived against all odds was ‘deepening their connection to their spiritual and energetic core.’
Engaging in spiritual practices, experiencing a sense of oneness, and cultivating unconditional love, she says, act as powerful forces for healing.
And experiencing all that in a Power of Eight® group is one of the most potent and immediate mechanisms for connecting you to others and to a higher source.
The longevity of our subscribers speaks to the worth of these suggestions. We have been receiving many letters from subscribers who have followed us for 35 years and are now living healthily in their 90s.
To find out more about our report 150 Ways to Live to 100 click here.
