mbg Sustainability + Health Director
mbg Sustainability + Health Director
Emma Loewe is the Senior Sustainability Editor at mindbodygreen and the author of “Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us.”
Image by Jeff Way / Stocksy
October 11, 2023
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Want to live an active, engaged life into your 90s and beyond? Florence Comite, M.D., wants to help. The precision medicine doctor specializes in individual protocols for reversing disorders of aging and boosting life span. With a triple appointment in endocrinology and reproductive endocrinology, she’s also an expert on how hormones impact the longevity equation.
We were curious: What does a healthy aging expert wish she had started doing earlier to set herself up for success down the line? Here are the three things Comite thinks everybody in their 20s and beyond should prioritize—because you’re never too young (or too old) to set yourself up for a vibrant health span:
Sleep wasn’t the easiest thing for Comite to prioritize when she was in residency working 100-plus-hour weeks. These days, she makes up for lost time by treating sleep as a nonnegligible.
Since she started monitoring and improving her deep sleep and REM sleep using an Oura ring, she’s noticed a dramatic decrease in her biological age tests.
As for why sleep can have such a powerful effect on long-term health, Comite says part of it has to do with its impact on sugar cravings and insulin control. She points to one 2019 study that found that 62% of people with glucose levels in the prediabetes range were also likely to have poor sleep.
If you don’t get enough sleep—particularly deep sleep—your hormone levels can also go haywire. “It increases the risk significantly for age-related conditions like obesity, heart disease, hypertension, anxiety, and depression,” says Comite.
2.
Build a strong reserve of muscle
“Muscle to me is like the fountain of youth. It’s the key to longevity,” says Comite.
Unfortunately, we gradually lose all-important muscle starting around age 30, coinciding with the decrease of certain hormones like testosterone. “That’s why diabetes starts emerging in the 30s, 40s, and 50s—because we’re all losing muscle as our hormones are shifting,” Comite explains.
This means that building a strong reserve of lean muscle in your 20s—and maintaining it as you age—is paramount. Being well-muscled can help improve blood sugar control, reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke, and protect bone health. (Muscle is known as the organ of longevity for a reason!)
Comite notes that to build a strong reserve, you’ll need to do resistance training at least two to three times a week and eat enough protein to fuel muscle protein synthesis. You can quickly gauge your muscle health by doing a chair-rise test: Ideally, you’ll be able to lift yourself out of a chair without using your hands.
3.
Closely monitor blood sugar
The takeaway
As a precision medicine doctor with over four decades of experience, Florence Comite, M.D., knows what it takes to set the stage for longevity—and prioritizing sleep, doing resistance training, and monitoring blood sugar levels are her first lines of defense against diseases of aging. While living to be a super-ager requires some solid genetics and a dash of good luck, these are powerful things you can do to stack the cards in your favor.