When I got to big school, I hit a wall with maths. We aren’t talking about the Turing level maths, or Ramanujan (who was one of the greatest genius of the 20th Century yet largely self-taught), Ada Lovelace or Euclid epic giant maths. Long division was intimidating. Grown up maths was anything beyond sums and it felt formidable and I was not a natural at it. I hate long division, I used to say, flouncing around, huffing as only a 13 year old can. I hate fractions. I hatetrigonometry. Uh! I hate maths. Would I have still been like that were I teenager today, or would I have just bellowed at Alexa, “Alexa, turn this really hard fraction into a percentage NOW!”
But actually, the sense of achievement I got from getting maths right, of understanding how to measure the angles on a triangle or use pythagorus theorem, all pretty basic bitch stuff, was greater perhaps because I struggled. Because it was hard. Doing hard things is good for us. Pretty sure I heard that on a Huberman podcast once.
On Sunday when the news about Wim Hof being a wifebeater came out, his history of spousal abuse and bullying and scaring his children, I had to sit myself down and have a word. Why had I once been so enchanted by his growly edicts to “Breathe motherfucker”? He couldn’t even properly explain the science behind his own method. He perforated his own bowel sitting on a jet of a (bum) f*cking municipal fountain. I mean, I knew that and still found him important and credible.
I wasn’t a Wim Hof devotee for long. Cold shower, breathwork, warming myself with a single tai chi pose (the horse, not chai tea) - I soon got over it. But I took something from it. It’s like a lot of things I am very enthusiastic about, it didn’t last long. I’m capricious, obsessed by the new, it’s why I’m quite suited to being a lifestyle journalist, chewing up the new trends like a puppy left on its own with a pillow. Find a new thing, tell other people about it, rip it up, make a mess, start again. And Hof’s thing was just one thing. He was a single issue, breathwork followed by cold.
Breathwork is good, but it’s not one size fits all. For a start, Hof’s hyperventilating breath protocol isn’t going to be great if you are an anxious person. The same goes for cold, it is a tonic if used correctly, for you, and could have some major health benefits over a lifetime, including protection against Alzheimers. In my multiple conversations with him and reading of his not very well written books, he sparked a curiosity that drove me to read on, listen to others. Without question, it is a tool. Don’t throw the blue baby out with Wim’s icey bathwater. There is science and it makes sense. I felt that it worked and in some ways that was also important, placebo is powerful. The cold is a beautiful thing. Adapting to it now will mean being more adept at thermoregulation when everyone else is twittering on about feeling the chill, or tossing and turning sweating and weeping about hit flushes. I’ve said it all before, countless time. But it needed to be unpacked, analysed, de-Guru’d, which I had done.
I was in fact my own guru. We should be our own gurus.
I am 55 now. As I like to repeat every time I write a Substack. I have grey hair. When I do a downward dog the skin on my thighs wrinkles and sags like, well like a pair of crappy old leggings that’s lost all the lycra. Collagen is lycra, old leggings are my legs. But with this sag and shrivelling comes experience. It is a good idea to do your own research, listen to smart people, explore credible evidence and weigh up the points of view. Because there will always be someone bellowing that you are wrong, or ready to agree and say you are right.
“Getting old is not for sissies.”
When we talk of doing hard things, we think, big sums and astrophysics. But getting old is hard too. I don’t know who first said the sissy quote, but I remember first hearing it a long time ago and thinking, cute quote. I got it, but thought to myself, one day that quote will not feel cute it will feel relevant. And that time is coming. I don’t feel like an actual old lady yet but we are at that point where multiple actions are required in order to head into the next decades able to take what life throws at you .
Yes, the hard maths thing I have been thinking about is that buzz word, longevity. Otherwise known as trying not to get decrepit, ill and dead.
💀
How long do I have is an abstract idea, but illness is not. I can’t get ill. Forget lifespan, I want healthspan. I NEED IT. You get me?! I have no pension. How will I pay the bills if I live to 95 (goals!) if I’m just sitting around incontinent (immediately does a few kegels) and deranged (breaks to do some exercise). Of course some aspects of our health are proper random, but an awful lot of it is down the line response to lifestyle.
In his best selling book Outlive, the v famous longevity doctor, Peter Attia, describes how he sets his new patients (who pay $150K to sit in front of him) a task, to think about what he calls the Centenarian Decathlon. It’s about visualising ten things they want to be able to do when they are 100 years old. The decathlon involves training for the physical tasks they want to be able to do in their proper old age. I've known some very dynamic and incredible oldsters. My Great Great Aunt Dizzy went on an icebreaker cruise to Antartica in her 90s.
My old age needs to be a dynamic one. A laugh. I wanna be robust, have a dog (maybe a faithful gentle lurcher and not a nutbag pod), a garden, stairs I don’t fall down, I’d like to still be swimming, still drinking good wine, I’d like to still be laughing because have you ever noticed a lot of older people don’t seem to experience much joy. My aunt is 90 and jolly cheerful she still walks her dog, with hiking poles and boots, through the Forest of Dean. My other aunt died a few months ago, in her 70s, and some time since she’d been out for a walk. It can go both ways…
I love the company of both. Increasingly, I have cool old people as my friends. I want to be like them, who people to want to hang out with and not be dragged kicking and screaming because, “look, she might die soon and she’s sad and lonely”. I’d like to still be able to do a handstand and not to have someone whsipering to a reluctant guest, “Look, just put a up with her for 30 minutes; that’ll be you one day and who knows she might leave you that diamond ring that you can break up and get turned into a pair of earrings.”
My decathlon needs to include a capacity for fun.
This longevity stuff is being spun as idiotic games for neurotic self-obsessed rich people with too much time on their hands who want to live forever. And some of it undoubtedly is this market, and some of it is a bit of a shill. But some of it isn’t. Some of it is really worth getting to grips with. The technology, the AI learning and the testing it employs is what the Labour Party are banking on saving the NHS. This is the future of medicine. Thinking about buzzwords like longevity and healthspan is for all of us.
Before anyone starts clucking about cost, Attia’s book, all 200,000 words of which I have read, in some places twice, boils largely down to this, ‘Get wise to your future health risks and act on them now. There are few shortcuts and to acquire health and longevity put in time and effort and live it, not just do it at the weekend or in January. Some pharmaceutical drugs for specific conditions have been shown to generally extend life and healthspan (statins/metformin/rapamycin/hrt). Supplements: meh. Thank you, good night. PS. Don’t forget your mental and emotional health.
Topline: lifestyle is the big fix for longevity and healthspan. Nice, affordable.
But what does ‘get wise to your future health risks and act on them now’ actually mean. How should we go about it?
It was time to sharpen that old maths pencil, stick my tongue out and do some longevity division. I think if we have ever been very ill, or very under the weather for more than a few days, we are aware of this fragility in us, in all of us, that will one day spell death. This has hit me hard in recent weeks. Regular paywall-leaping readers of this Substack will know that I have been grinding through a break up. Because of it, I have been more and more physically run down. Splitting up with my bf has been a simmering misery for months now, possibly years. The atmosphere in our shared home has sucked the life out of me. Being polite, tip-toeing around on eggshells so that this weird co-habitation sitch doesn’t get too toxic, feeling sad, sleeping on an uncomfortable sofa bed. That’s just the basic discomfort.
Then there’s the frets, small…The nice shiny fast car is going. What shall I replace it with? A 30 year old Fiat Uno? How much will I miss the surround sound stereo in the flash motor? And large…I am chronically underslept. The circles under my eyes are awful. Thank God I treated myself to a little visit with a doc a few months back. My face looks alright because of the cosmetic wonders of medicine. God knows, I will look like Skeletor when the filler runs out. And what if I have to leave Notting Hill, how will I cope? New handbag? Forget it!
And then there’s the two large hungry dogs that no one really wants to look after because they’re half pet half wild animal, I’ve got to do it all with them in tow. Or towing me, more accurately.
Non doggy people say, “Can you get rid of the difficult one?” I say to them, “I don’t know, can you get rid of that spoilt little cxnt, whatsitcalled, your youngest child?” At night and in the mornings these two are there, spooned either side of me. They also ensure I have to get up, have to go outside. Tommy Wood’s systems medicine breakdown of the benefits of dog ownership mean they are a wholesome health tonic, thought Tommy has never met my dogs. He may change his mind watching them hurtle towards the nearest motorway. No, they aren’t going. We’re in this together, we three. To misquote Jay Z, mo legs, mo problems.
“Oh, it’s going to be great. You will see.” People say that. And they are right. Bad relationships should end. And it will get better. I know that. In fact, it’s not even that bad. I can see that in an abstract sense a bit like I understood that old age isn’t for sissies when I was young. [FFS stop bleating on. Ed. That’s enough of the what will happen ifs]
Of course, sorry inner Ed.
You don’t need another grubby fingering of my first world frets selection box (like a box of Celebrations in all the flavours of poo my dogs roll in). They are just being tossed in with the maths memory to as ramblingly as possible set up, you’ll never guess what happens next.