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News and ideas worth your attention.
Four decades of writing on living long and living well, with 1,000+ posts on functional and longevity medicine.
451 written by Dr. Frank Lipman
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Oct 26, 2026 · Healthy AgingLow-Dose Naltrexone: A Surprising Tool for Pain, Inflammation and Autoimmune Conditions
Explore the potential benefits of low-dose naltrexone (LDN) for chronic pain, inflammation, autoimmune conditions, long COVID, and more—and what the research says so far.
Oct 19, 2026 · Health & WellnessMusic as Medicine: How Music Helps You Age Better
From sleep and stress to movement, memory and connection, discover how music may support brain health, cardiovascular function and healthy aging—and how to find the right beat for you.
Oct 12, 2026 · Healthy AgingStrong Bones, Longer Life: Why Bone Health Is Longevity Health
Bone health is essential for longevity. Learn how strength training, nutrition, hormones, screening and everyday habits can help preserve bone density, mobility and independence as you age.
Oct 5, 2026 · Healthy AgingThe Hidden Fluid Network Inside Your Body—and What It May Mean for Aging
Discover the interstitium, a body-wide network of fluid-filled spaces, and what emerging research may reveal about fascia, acupuncture, inflammation, and healthy aging.
Sep 28, 2026 · Healthy AgingBrush Better, Age Better: Tend Your Mouth Microbiome Now for Longevity Later
Discover how your oral microbiome and dental health may influence heart, brain and metabolic health—and why caring for your mouth matters for longevity.
Sep 21, 2026 · Healthy Aging7 Ways to Fight Frailty Before It Sneaks Up on You
Discover why frailty can begin earlier than you think and seven science-backed ways to protect strength, muscle, balance and resilience as you age.
Sep 14, 2026 · Healthy AgingKeep Dancing: Why Moving to Music Can Help You Age Better
Discover how dancing can support healthy aging by boosting brain health, mood, cardiovascular fitness, balance, social connection and longevity.
Sep 7, 2026 · Healthy AgingBeyond Blood Sugar: Why SGLT2 Inhibitors Have Longevity Scientists Excited
Explore the emerging science of SGLT2 inhibitors and longevity, from heart and kidney protection to their potential effects on inflammation, metabolism and healthy aging.
Aug 31, 2026 · Healthy AgingSauna Your Way to a Longer, Healthier and Happier Life
Discover the science-backed benefits of sauna bathing for longevity, heart and brain health, inflammation, recovery and sleep—and how often to sauna.
Aug 24, 2026 · Healthy Aging5 Reasons Why Kicking the Multitasking Habit Can Help You Age Better
Your brain was never designed to multitask. What we call multitasking is really rapid task-switching, and every switch comes at a cost, not just to productivity, but to memory, attention, stress levels, blood pressure, eating habits, and over time, the health of your nervous system. Healthy aging isn't built only on exercise, nutrition, and sleep. It's also shaped by thousands of small choices we make every day, including how we direct our attention. Protecting your focus may be one of the simplest and most overlooked investments you can make in the health of your future brain and body.
Aug 17, 2026 · Healthy AgingStealth Infections May Be Speeding Up Your Aging Process – Here's How to Push Back
Most of us think of aging as something that happens entirely inside the body—our cells wear out, our systems slow down, and disease gradually takes hold. But emerging science suggests a more unsettling reality: aging may be profoundly shaped by what enters us from the outside. Viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens don’t just cause infections and disappear. They can linger silently for years, fueling chronic inflammation, exhausting the immune system, disrupting metabolism, and accelerating the biological processes that drive aging. Scientists now believe these hidden microbial burdens may help explain why we age faster and become more vulnerable to heart disease, dementia, cancer, and frailty. The implications are both sobering and fascinating.
Aug 10, 2026 · NutritionThe Easiest Health Hack in Your Kitchen? 7 Little Seeds With Big Dividends
For some of us, the idea of overhauling your life to enhance your health and wellness can feel daunting, even overwhelming. My advice: break it down into manageable steps. What you eat, and how well you eat, is a big part of the road map. And here’s what I’ve learned after doing this for a long time: the most reliable nutritional “wins” rarely look dramatic. More often, they’re as simple as a spoonful of something small, tossed into a meal you were going to eat anyway. Seeds are a perfect example. For such tiny foods, they pack an extraordinary amount of nutritional firepower into a small package: fiber, unsaturated fats, plant protein, minerals and bioactive compounds that can help support healthy aging.
Aug 3, 2026 · Healthy AgingMeet Your Exposome: The Hidden Force That’s Shaping How Fast You Age
So, how’s your exposome? You know, the totality of everything outside your body that can impact it, from infectious pathogens and industrial chemicals to diet, exercise, chronic stress, and even loneliness. Whether we think about it or not, together, these exposures leave a measurable biological footprint that can influence how we age and our risk for chronic disease. New research suggests that this collection of everyday exposures may have a greater impact on longevity than the genetic risks we inherit. The message is both sobering and empowering: while we can't change the genes we were born with, many of the most important influences on our health are within our control. Here's what the emerging science of the exposome means—and where it matters most in everyday life.
Jul 27, 2026 · NutritionMy Go-To Green List: Ten Veggies That Do the Heavy Lifting for Your Health
“Let food by thy medicine, and medicine by thy food.” However you phrase it, it’s an excellent reminder not to get so caught up in meal timing regimens or the ins and outs of particular diets that we forget the most important thing, the food itself. And no type of food does a better job of keeping us intact and thriving than vegetables. But I can’t think of a richer, or more health and longevity-supporting haul of veggies than those of the green persuasion.
Jul 20, 2026 · Healthy AgingAging Isn’t Just Wear and Tear - It’s Dysregulation — and it’s Time You Tame It
There’s the sympathetic nervous system that puts the body in high alert mode—raises body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, respiration, the works—and primes us for action. And then the parasympathetic system cools everything down, letting the body reset and repair. Together they make up our “autonomic nervous system” that either controls or at least strongly influences the physiology that operates below the level of conscious awareness. If we’re young and healthy, the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems toggle back and forth almost effortlessly, responding to the day’s challenges and recharging at night. But as we get older, we tend to get stuck in high gear – the sympathetic system dominates – and we pay a price for that. The parts wear out; we generate more metabolic waste. We can’t sleep properly, compounding the damage. Net result: we age faster.
Jul 13, 2026 · NutritionThe Hidden Power of Resistant Starch—The Carb That Behaves Like Fiber
Though it may sounds strange, chilling foods like rice, potatoes, pasta, and even bread can transform some of their digestible starch into something called resistant starch—a form of carbohydrate that resists digestion and reaches the colon intact. There, it feeds beneficial gut bacteria, supports the microbiome, and may help improve blood sugar control, insulin sensitivity, and appetite regulation. In other words, yesterday’s leftovers might actually be better for you than a freshly cooked plate. Resistant starch offers a surprising twist in nutrition science: with a little kitchen chemistry, some everyday starches can become powerful allies for metabolic and gut health.
Jul 6, 2026 · Healthy AgingBeyond Resveratrol: The Surprising Second Act of Sirtuins
You may, or may not, have heard of sirtuins, a family of enzymes that influence the way our genes do their job of making the proteins that run our bodies. But I’d be willing to bet that most of my readers are familiar with resveratrol, the compound found in red wine. That’s because, about twenty years ago, the resveratrol/sirtuin story was front-page news. Since then, the excitement over resveratrol has cooled off somewhat. But, what’s taken its place is a more sophisticated conception of human aging, one that’s mediated by the balance between growth – new proteins, new tissues -- and cellular maintenance and repair.
Jun 29, 2026 · Health & WellnessCalm In A Capsule: What Ashwagandha Can Do For Body And Mind
Ashwagandha, a mainstay of traditional Ayurvedic Indian medicine has been prescribed for a few thousand years to treat physical and mental fatigue. And over the past decade or two, Western researchers have been measuring its benefits across multiple health domains: stress-reduction; mood; sleep; brain; hormones; even physical strength. Pretty impressive for a shrub (technical name: Withania somnifera) grown all over Asia, the Middle East and Africa, whose Sanskrit name, Ashwagandha, translates roughly to “smell of the horse.”
Jun 22, 2026 · Healthy Aging10 Thoughts on How to Tap into the Anti-Aging Power of a Truly Good Night’s Sleep
I like to think of sleep as the essential “backstage” human function. The audience is paying attention to what’s going on on-stage – sword fights, great romantic gestures – but backstage is where the real drama takes place as sets, props, costumes are assembled for the next scene. Ditto sleep. While we’re lights out, the brain, our stage manager, juggles the hormonal and metabolic machinery responsible for cellular cleaning, repair, rebuilding. That’s what’s required for the show to go on the next morning and, we hope, for many decades to come. Call it aging well. When sleep goes off the rails – I’m not talking about the occasional bad night but an entrenched pattern of insufficient or fragmented sleep – it throws off the balance of all those moving parts –and rapid aging kicks into high gear.
Jun 15, 2026 · NutritionAn Acquired Taste with Benefits: The Curious Case of Nattokinase, The Gut and Heart Helper
So, what is natto anyway? It’s a traditional Japanese food, made up of soybeans fermented with the Bacillus subtilis bacteria. To most Westerners, it tends to look less than appealing – a dollop of reddish brown, mushy beans stuck together in a stringy cheesy goo that a biochemist would describe as a chain of glutamine amino acids. And it’s aroma and taste? Well, that can take a little getting used to, but it’s well worth the effort when it comes to boosting your heart and gut health.
Jun 8, 2026 · Healthy AgingThe Melatonin–Mitochondria Connection: A New Key to Aging Better
Research indicates that melatonin and mitochondria are intertwined. For starters, most of the body’s melatonin supply is actually produced inside the mitochondria, think of it as the oil that keeps the car engine running smoothly. And with age, not only does that engine (mitochondria) put out less power, and generate more exhaust (metabolic waste), but the oil levels (melatonin) drop as well. That creates a vicious cycle that, with the passing of the decades, make us look and feel older, not to mention becoming more prone to chronic disease. But when we really understand what’s going on, we have the tools and the opportunity to start to push back.
Jun 1, 2026 · Healthy AgingDon't Just Live Longer. Stay at Your Peak Longer.
Longevity used to be a numbers game: he/she who lives longest, wins. But that idea is quietly fading. Today, the focus has shifted from sheer years to something more meaningful: how well those years are actually lived. First came “healthspan,” measuring life without disease. Useful, but incomplete. So, now’s the time to meet the spans, actually, the twelve individual “spans” – covering everything from energy to brain power to mobility to considerably more – which together, give us a clearer picture of our ‘peakspans’. By breaking it down to twelve, you’ll get sense of the breadth of our human physiology (and psychology), and how it can best be harnessed to add up to one long robust life.
May 25, 2026 · Healthy AgingYou Carry APOE4. Now What? A Practical Guide to Protecting Your Brain
APOE4 may raise your risk for Alzheimer’s, but it’s not a life sentence, but it is a signal to act. It is a marker for Alzheimer’s risk. It is not a crystal ball. Just because your test tells you that you’ve got one of the “4” variants doesn’t mean you’re fated to get AD. What it does tell you is that you’re running a greater-than-average risk and that means you need to be that much more diligent about healthy habits and lifestyle, which is a good idea for everybody, no matter what genes they were dealt. Here’s what you need to know.
May 18, 2026 · NutritionPolyphenols: The Edible Compounds to Help Your Body Age Smarter —Not Faster
Here’s a look at the promise and power of polyphenols, and why they’re worth your attention, that is, if living a longer, healthier life is on your radar.