The blueprint for a longer life, looking younger and reducing your biological age, by world’s top longevity scientists who reveal drugs, cheap supplements, tests and strategies they’re using themselves

You can’t hold back time, but scientists believe they may finally be able to slow down ageing. In a revolutionary new field, geroscience, they are testing drugs designed to prevent age-related diseases, helping people live healthier – for longer.

Ageing drives almost every major illness because as we get older, ageing cells accumulate damage and leak inflammatory chemicals, while the body becomes less able to repair itself. This significantly increases the chances of disease such as cancer, dementia and heart problems.

In a potentially major development, researchers at biotech company Mabwell have started the first human tests of a drug that blocks interleukin-11 (IL-11), a molecule that increases in our bodies as we age.

In younger people levels spike briefly during illness. But with advancing age, immune system cells start pumping out IL-11 all the time, so the ‘emergency’ response never properly winds down, leading to chronic inflammation, damaging organs such as the heart, lungs and muscles.

Research has shown that raised IL-11 levels are linked to more aggressive breast, bowel, and lung cancers and lowered survival rates, for example.

But a 2024 study in Nature found that a new molecule, code-named 9MW3811, which blocks IL-11, extended the lifespan of older mice prone to age-related cancers by about a quarter and reduced the number and severity of age-related cancers.

And its wider potential for longevity explains why Calico Life Sciences – which is focused on anti-ageing therapies and is owned by the parent company of Google – recently signed an exclusive US licensing deal for the drug.

It’s far from the only drug being investigated for anti-ageing properties.

GLP-1s such as semaglutide (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) were developed for diabetes and weight loss, but may slow age-related diseases.

A study in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2023 found that semaglutide reduced heart attacks and strokes by 20 per cent in people with obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Crucially, only about a third of this benefit came from weight loss – suggesting the drug has other protective effects, such as reducing inflammation. Analyses have found the drugs also reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Professor Stephen Austad, a biology of ageing researcher at the University of Alabama, is so convinced by advances in geroscience that he believes the first person to reach 150 is already alive.

He is ‘most optimistic about GLP-1 drugs’ to help achieve this, he told Nature in November.

Of course, it could be years before drugs are prescribed sole for their longevity benefits. But what about the geroscientists themselves, the experts, what are they doing to add healthy years to their own lives?

As they told Good Health, the evidence-based steps they’re taking aren’t just about the obvious things such as increasing exercise or stopping smoking (although that matters, too).

For instance, Matt Kaeberlein, a professor of the biology of ageing at the University of Washington, who runs his own ‘healthspan medicine’ company, Optispan – takes a cholesterol-lowering drug evolocumab (brand name Repatha) even though he doesn’t officially have high cholesterol, as well as empagliflozin, a drug for people with type 2 diabetes and heart failure. It helps the kidneys flush excess sugar from the blood.

Professor Kaeberlein has slightly raised blood sugar within the healthy range, but says ‘there is good evidence that improving insulin sensitivity [how well the body controls blood sugar] even within the normal range is associated with reduced mortality – so it makes sense to me to be proactive and not wait until I develop diabetes’.

He adds: ‘There is also evidence from mice studies that that SGLT2 inhibitors [such as empagliflozin] slow aging and reduced mortality.’

He also takes a small daily dose of lithium – a mineral used to treat bipolar disorder, describing the evidence as ‘intriguing and compelling’.

‘I take 5mg lithium orotate each day,’ he says. ‘This is roughly equivalent to drinking 2-3 litres per day of very high-lithium drinking water and about 100-fold lower than psychiatric doses. Regions with high-lithium drinking water [in the UK, parts of Cornwall and the South West] are associated with lower dementia, depression and all-cause mortality.’

A study in Nature last year found that lithium reversed memory loss and cut Alzheimer’s-type brain changes in mice.

‘In my opinion, anyone concerned about dementia should discuss taking a low dose of lithium orotate [available over-the-counter] with their doctor.’

More controversially, he also takes rapamycin – a drug designed to stop organ transplant rejection that’s been found to slow ageing.

‘It is the most robust and reproducible molecule for slowing aging in laboratory animals, nothing else even comes close,’ says Professor Kaeberlein.

‘There’s early evidence that rapamycin can safely boost immune function and reduce multiple conditions associated with chronic inflammation.

The drug appears to work by making aged immune cells behave like younger ones – it’s been shown to boost older people’s response to vaccines, while animal studies show it cuts the risk of certain cancers, and reduces inflammation damage.

Rapamycin is also being studied for its potential to extend fertility in women – an ongoing trial at Columbia University suggests it could slow down ovarian ageing, raising the prospect that menopause could be delayed.

Professor Kaeberlein sees real promise for the drug, but while ‘a growing group of people will keep using rapamycin off-label for disease prevention’, to become a ‘blanket “anti-ageing” therapy [will] depend on how quickly we get quality clinical trial data’.

He says most people taking rapamycin for longevity take small doses, i.e. 3-6mg once a week (he takes 8mg).

Rapamycin was also taken by biohacker and entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, but he’s reportedly now come off it because the side-effects of prolonged used outweigh the benefits. But this perhaps highlights why you don’t get your longevity advice from a tech bro.

Professor Kaeberlein points out that ‘Bryan Johnson is not a scientist or a doctor. Not least he’s also taking 100-plus different things, so it is impossible to trace any particular biomarker movement [i.e. side-effects] to any one of those things.’

Professor Kaeberlein is equally clear about what he avoids.

He doesn’t, for example, take the anti-ageing supplements du jour which target NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) – a molecule found in every cell in the body and essential for converting food into energy and repairing damaged DNA. The claim is that these decline with age.

Supplements such as NR or NMN – claimed to boost NAD levels – are heavily marketed as anti-ageing pills on the High Street and on social media.

However, Professor Kaeberlein says: ‘NAD is overhyped – the human data doesn’t show convincing declines in NAD with age’. In any event, if you do want to raise NAD levels, plain vitamin B3 – available cheaply at pharmacies – works just as well, he says.

Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research and professor of medicine and genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, has spent decades studying people who reach 100 and their families to uncover what protects them.

First, the bad news: Professor Barzilai says if you were dealt a poor hand with your genes, no amount of age-limiting drugs or over-the-counter supplements are going to completely undo your genetic blueprint.

‘Fifty per cent of the men who live to 100 and 30 per cent of the women are smokers, and half of them are overweight or obese, and less than half are exercising moderately,’ he says.

‘They can say whatever they want is the secret for longevity,’ he adds, ‘but they can do all that because their genes protect them from ageing.’

But you can influence your biology – and yes, that means exercise, which Professor Barzilai does every day.

He says: ‘I use a Peloton bike four days a week and a treadmill two to three days a week. Flexibility every day. Upper and lower body work once or twice a week.’

He also takes the diabetes drug metformin – he doesn’t have the condition but uses it as a ‘gerotherapeutic’, a drug that prevents ageing.

Longevity researchers are studying metformin following large studies which found people with type 2 diabetes who take metformin also developed less cancer. And a study in older monkeys published in Cell in 2024 found that a year on metformin reduced their biological age (including the brain) by eight years. The drug works through multiple pathways – it improves how cells use insulin, reduces inflammation, and appears to slow cellular ageing.

‘I take 1,500mg of metformin every day [the standard daily dose is 2,000mg],’ says Professor Barzilai. (The drug is available for longevity if prescribed off label.)

He also fasts daily (eating only between noon and 8pm) as this has been shown to trigger autophagy, where cells remove and recycle damaged parts.

Professor Andrea Maier, co-director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore, believes anti-ageing starts with testing your individual biology – explaining: ‘You cannot meaningfully change what you don’t measure’.

She calls this gerodiagnostics, with blood tests for markers such as blood sugar and cholesterol, DEXA scans for bone mass as well as muscle, testing gut microbes – and epigenetic tests, which measure chemical tags on DNA that change with age, giving an estimate of a person’s biological age.

She emphasises these should be done through medical professionals, not DIY tests which often only measure one system.

Professor Maier focuses on three things. First, gut health.

‘The gut microbiome influences inflammation, metabolic flexibility [the body’s ability to switch between burning carbohydrates and fat for energy, to cope with stress and illness], immune resilience and even brain function.

‘These factors protect against age-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia.’ She adds that large studies show people with more diverse and stable microbiomes have lower inflammation and a healthier metabolism, both strongly linked to longer, healthier lives.

‘My own habits include predominantly whole-plant foods, fermented foods, and avoiding ultra-processed products.’

She adds: ‘Even minor shifts can improve inflammation, glucose control and overall resilience’ – this includes switching to a high-protein breakfast with eggs, Greek yoghurt, or beans before carbohydrates such as toast or cereal, to prevent blood sugar spikes. And add a fermented food of the day such as yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi or kombucha.

She also does ‘dual-task’ training – moving and thinking at the same time. This is emerging as one of the most important ideas in healthy ageing, and is based on decades of research showing that the brain’s ability to think and move at once declines with age, strongly linked to falls, loss of independence and dementia.

But this decline can be prevented. A review in The Journals of Gerontology in 2020 found that combining physical movement with mental tasks improved balance, walking speed and thinking and decision-making skills more than physical exercise alone.

‘It enhances the brain’s ability to form new connections between nerve cells and supports its capacity to adapt, learn and stay sharp,’ says Professor Maier.

She incorporates dual-task challenges into her daily routines – for example, walking while solving mental calculations, balancing exercises while naming categories or memorising sequences during physical tasks.

Her third priority is muscle strength. ‘Strength training is still the most underrated “gerotherapeutic”,’ she says. ‘I strength train – using weights – two times weekly, but I should do more.’

Loss of muscle with age is linked not just to falls and frailty, but to higher risks of cancer, dementia and early death. Professor Maier also aims for 8,000 steps daily as a minimum – if your step count is low set a rule: every TV commercial break take 50 steps.’

Other experts focus on calorie counting: Luigi Fontana, a professor of medicine and nutrition at the University of Sydney, has led many of the key human studies on calorie restriction, including a trial published in 2015 which found that when healthy adults reduced their calorie intake modestly (by about 12 per cent – for instance, going from 2,000 calories daily to 1,760 calories): after two years their bodies were biologically younger: inflammation fell, insulin sensitivity improved and blood pressure dropped.

Professor Fontana eats a Mediterranean-style diet and avoids ultra-processed foods. He also eats most of his food before lunch (‘your metabolism is more efficient at that time’) and five hours before he goes to bed.

But unlike others in the geroscience field, he avoids experimental drugs. ‘Rapamycin, metformin for healthy people, NAD boosters – all fascinating but all experimental,’ he says.

Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois Chicago, also keeps things simple.

‘Daily physical exercise is the equivalent of an oil and lube for your car,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to do it, but the machine operates better when you do.’

He does take vitamin D (2,000mg a day) – many older adults are deficient, raising the risk of falls, fractures and infections – and has regular check-ups. ‘Early detection pays off,’ he says.

Despite their different routines, these scientists agree on one thing: ageing can be slowed, but there are no miracle fixes – yet.

But as Professor Kaeberlein puts it: ‘The typical person can get ten to 15 years of healthy lifespan free from major disease and disability back through lifestyle modification and proactive healthcare.’