More exercise and less food to prolong life

Every year the most famous scientists in the world gather to take stock of longevity, exchange information and results of various research, and are convened by the Academy for Health & Lifespan Research (AHLR), now renamed Academy of Geroscience.  The 2026 conference was held earlier this year in Miami Florida, at Biltmore Hotel, and the 65 scientists convened were more or less divided on everything. The leading longevity experts agree on the overall goal (to extend life in good health and condition), but they are very divided on the priority mechanisms, the most promising therapies, and the realistic timeframe for results.

The first contrast concerns the limit to which we can reach, starting not from medicine but from statistics: the person who lived the longest in the history of humanity is called Jeanne Calment, who died at 122 years and 164 days. She was born on February 21, 1875 in Arles, France, and died on August 4, 1997.

The most optimistic scientists say that those who will reach 130 years of age have already been born, and therapies that act on the mechanisms of aging could change the mortality curve. The less optimistic, or pessimistic, have argued that, without a radical slowing of the biological processes ofaging, large increases in maximum life expectancy in the 21st century are unlikely. At the end of the conference, to give both sides the benefit of the doubt, the magnificent 65 each remained firm in their positions, but agreed that longevity studies, in any case, are useful for understanding the mechanisms by which we reach old age in good health. condizioni, and not with the state of mind of someone who can't wait to leave this world.

A second conflict concerns therapies, cures, and therefore the frontier of research to work on. Here too, if we think broadly, we can divide scientists into two groups: optimists and pessimists. Among those who see the future of longevity as bright are those who believe  that in the next 10–20 years we could have the first real “gerotherapies” capable of modifying the pace of aging. Of the opposite opinion, the skeptics for which many of the sector's promises are premature and the risk is to confuse promising research with already effective treatments, as well as reducing longevity studies to mere business opportunities.

Leading scientists are battling on both sides: leading the optimists is David Sinclair, who advocates a more interventionist view, focusing on the cellular and epigenetic mechanisms of aging. Leading the skeptical-pessimists, however, is scientist S. Jay Olshansky, who believes that advances in traditional medicine have already led to significant increases in life expectancy, and therefore achieving further enormous leaps would require profound modifications to the biology of aging, not just new treatments.

As for business, it's caused quite a stir (and hasn't been without criticism) when leaks about the highly mysterious activities of Altos Lab, a biotechnology company backed by figures like Jess Bezos and Yuri Milner, managed to raise a whopping three billion dollars overnight upon its launch in 2022 alone. With this endowment, and subsequent rounds of fundraising, Altos Lab has managed to attract the world's best cell biologists. And its project, scientifically very serious, focuses on a central idea in the biology of aging: regeneration of cellular health through the so-called cellular reprogrammingThe company says it aims to restore cellular health and resilience to combat age-related disease, damage, and disability.

And it is precisely over the language used to set the goals of longevity research that the latest clash among scientists has unfolded in Miami. On one side (the more optimistic) there is talk of "age reversal," emphasizing that the underlying goal is to raise the bar on life and extend it, with a focus on medicine and biology; on the other side (the pessimists or skeptics) are scientists who reduce the possible goals to the goal of better treating diseases, injuries, and disabilities that can shorten life. It's not hard to see how this conflict isn't merely lexical, but substantial, and will significantly impact longevity research in the coming years.

Between one discussion and another, the scientists, all equipped with Oura rings and Apple Watches during their walks to reach ten thousand steps daily, managed to converge, unanimously, on only one point: life is prolonged with intense physical activity, accompanied by a diet healthy and low in calories (needless to say, in this regard, the Mediterranean diet remains very fashionable). In a word: more sport and less food.

We do not know how many of the 65 scientists summoned to Miami were aware that, a few centuries before them, the doctors of the Salerno Medical School (developed between the 11th and 13th centuries) did not possess the modern knowledge of the biology of aging, but they had already elaborated an idea very close to the one today called preventive or lifestyle medicine: Your health and lifespan depend largely on how you live your daily life.

Their philosophy was based above all on "Salerno health regulation" (Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum), a set of precepts that recommended maintaining the body's balance through some fundamental elements, including physical exercise, which scientists of the time also included activities that involve the brain and the emotional field. Other things that today are suggested by all geriatricians in the world to live well in old age, whether short or long: cultivating relationships (some studies show that thefriendship"extends life"), never losing curiosity, and always caring for others, even to the point of healthy altruism. These are simple and clear ideas, which come before and after any scientific research, whether in biology or medicine.