Feb 7, 2026 · 10 min read

What the Longevity Experts Don't Tell You

I’ve been reading Titan, Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller, and I was struck by how seriously the man took his health. Here was the richest person on earth, dedicating enormous energy to the project of living longer. It got me thinking about the modern longevity movement — the researchers, biohackers, and doctors who have devoted their lives to helping us live better, longer, and more meaningfully.

I went looking for the common threads. What habits, principles, and practices unite history’s most prominent longevity figures? What can we learn from them?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

Lesson 1: Chew Your Liquids

John D. Rockefeller famously believed that every bite of food should be chewed exactly ten times before swallowing. This included liquids, which he would swirl around in his mouth with the discipline of a man who had once monopolised American oil. He would still be eating thirty minutes after his dinner guests had finished, and then insisted everyone remain at the table for another hour to promote digestion.¹

To pass the time, he played a competitive card game called Numerica. As a devout Baptist, he couldn’t use playing cards, so he had special square counters manufactured. He practiced so obsessively that he almost always won, awarding himself a dime and giving each loser a nickel.²

The lesson here is clear: consistency is everything. Find your protocol and stick to it, even if — especially if — no one else at the table understands what you’re doing.

Lesson 2: Surround Yourself with the Right Medical Professionals

Rockefeller’s personal physician, Dr. Hamilton F. Biggar, practiced homeopathy.³ Harvard’s president at the time, Charles Eliot, privately told Rockefeller’s advisor that most Harvard doctors considered Biggar incompetent. A charlatan with a good bedside manner, they said.

Rockefeller didn’t care. He kept Biggar for decades. The richest man in the world, with access to any medical expertise money could buy, chose to stay with the doctor who made him feel good about chewing his milk.

There’s a lesson in that loyalty. When you find a practitioner who truly aligns with your health philosophy, hold onto them. The credentials matter less than the relationship.⁴

Lesson 3: Optimise Everything — and I Mean Everything

Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur behind Project Blueprint, spends roughly $2 million per year on his anti-aging protocol. He takes over 100 supplements daily, cannot eat after 11am, and goes to bed at 8:30pm. These are the basics.

The more advanced work involves full blood plasma exchanges — removing all blood from the body, separating the plasma, and replacing it with albumin. Before arriving at this protocol, Johnson tried injecting blood plasma donated by his teenage son. He stopped when the data showed no measurable benefit.⁵

Johnson has also pioneered rigorous tracking of male sexual health as a longevity biomarker. He publicly shares his nighttime erection data, measured by a specialised wearable device, and has compared his results directly with those of his 19-year-old son Talmage. His commentary on the comparison: “Raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright.”⁶

The lesson: you cannot improve what you do not measure. Even — perhaps especially — the things other people might not think to measure.

Lesson 4: Build a Network

Peter Attia built one of the most successful longevity practices in the world. His book Outlive was a bestseller. His podcast has millions of listeners. His company, Early Medical, charges over $100,000 a year for concierge longevity medicine. He was, until very recently, a CBS News contributor.⁷

A key ingredient in Attia’s rise was relationship-building. He understood that access to powerful, well-connected people could open doors that credentials alone could not. In his own words, earlier in his career he “had little exposure to prominent people, and that level of access was novel.”⁸

By his own account, he actively cultivated a relationship with one particularly well-connected figure in New York, meeting approximately seven or eight times at this person’s Manhattan residence between 2014 and 2019. He wrote in one email: “You know the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”⁹

Attia also provided medical guidance to this contact, despite the contact not being a formal patient. When asked whether this person was interested in living longer, Attia reportedly quipped: “solely for the ladies, of course.”¹⁰

The lesson: network aggressively. Get yourself in rooms you wouldn’t normally be in. The connections you build early in your career can define your trajectory — though they can occasionally redefine it, too.

Lesson 5: Invest in Cutting-Edge Research

Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist behind PayPal and Palantir, has long been a champion of longevity science. He has publicly expressed interest in parabiosis — the practice of transfusing oneself with the blood of young people — calling it “really interesting” and noting that the science had been “strangely under-explored.”¹¹

Thiel funds longevity research generously and has taken human growth hormones and investigated extreme calorie restriction for personal use. He understands that transformative breakthroughs require bold bets.

One can only admire his willingness to invest in the frontiers of science, wherever that takes him.¹²

Lesson 6: Believe in Yourself

Perhaps the most inspiring longevity lesson from Rockefeller is the simplest: he believed, deeply and religiously, that his health protocols worked. His doctor was a homeopath. His dietary science was largely nonsense. He ate orange peel before breakfast because he thought it was medicinal. He drank “special cultured milk” and believed celery calmed the nerves.

He lived to 97. Average life expectancy at his death in 1937 was 60.

His father, William Rockefeller Sr. — a con man, bigamist, and all-round scoundrel — lived to 95. His grandson David, who did not chew his liquids as far as we know, lived to 101.¹³

The lesson: sometimes the protocol matters less than the conviction. Or the genetics.

In Closing

The longevity field is full of brilliant, dedicated people pushing the boundaries of human health. Their commitment is extraordinary. Their sacrifices are real.

And if the last few weeks have taught us anything, it’s that the quest to live forever reveals more about a person’s character than almost anything else.¹⁴

He was a follower of Horace Fletcher, known as “The Great Masticator,” who argued food should be chewed until liquefied. Fletcher also believed his system could cure alcoholism, anaemia, appendicitis, and insanity. Medical experts of the time called it a “chew-chew cult.” Rockefeller was all in. ↩
To be clear, this is the man who orchestrated the Standard Oil monopoly. According to his biographer, he “entered willingly into a staggering amount of corruption.” But the square counters and the dimes — that’s what I want you to focus on. ↩
Homeopathy (my favorite “pathy”): the practice of diluting substances to the point where not a single molecule remains, and believing this makes the medicine stronger. Rockefeller had roughly $900 million in 1913 dollars. He chose this. ↩
Rockefeller also reportedly employed wet nurses for human breast milk in his later years, though he denied it. He did confirm drinking large amounts of “fresh milk” and “special cultured milk,” believing it was “an excellent food for the nerves.” Whatever gets you to 97. ↩
The FDA has stated that such transfusions are “without benefit and may be harmful.” Johnson’s own data agreed. He moved on to total plasma exchange, describing the pivot as an “upgrade.” The son’s blood, having served its purpose in the content calendar, was retired. ↩
Johnson has also undergone shockwave therapy to his penis three times a week — rated “9.5 out of 10” for pain at the tip — followed by Botox injections to his penis, and ultrasound measurements of penile blood flow. He shares all of this openly because, as he has explained, “people want their penis to work. They want to feel great, and they want to look great.” His Netflix documentary is called Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever. Bryan, if it’s any comfort, parts of you will live forever on the internet whether you want them to or not. ↩
Past tense doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Following the release of the Epstein files on January 30, 2026, CBS pulled his 60 Minutes segment, AG1 dropped him as an advisor, and he stepped down from David Protein. His name appeared over 1,700 times in the files. ↩
This is from Attia’s own statement posted to X on February 3, 2026. The “prominent person” was Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019. ↩
Also from the files: “I go into JE withdrawal when I don’t see him.” Also from the files: an email with the subject line “Got a fresh shipment.” Attia says this referred to bottles of metformin. Epstein replied “me too” with a redacted photo. Attia responded: “Please tell me you found that picture online… bastard.” ↩
In a separate email, Attia wrote: “P***y is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.” This was the man Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow endorsed as a health authority. He has since issued what he called an apology for things that were “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible.” ↩
Thiel’s venture capital firm accepted $40 million in investment from Jeffrey Epstein. The pair corresponded for years. Epstein even invited Thiel to his private island. Thiel says he never went. He also bankrolled the lawsuit that destroyed Gawker Media — which happened to be the outlet reporting on his blood transfusion habits. Unrelated, presumably. ↩
Aubrey de Grey, another prominent figure in longevity research, predicted the first human to live 1,000 years is already alive. He was fired from his own SENS Research Foundation in 2021 after an independent investigation confirmed he had sexually harassed two young women in the field, one of whom was 17 when he began pursuing her. He told another she had “a responsibility to have sex with SENS donors” to encourage their financial contributions. He then started a new longevity foundation. The field, it seems, has excellent regenerative properties — at least for careers. ↩
David Rockefeller was also the subject of a persistent and entirely debunked rumour that he had seven heart transplants. He did not. He did, however, maintain a personal Rolodex of 150,000 contacts that filled an entire room, befriend Henry Kissinger and various foreign autocrats, and receive extensive CIA briefings. His hobby was collecting beetles. He collected them from childhood until his death at 101. I find the beetles genuinely endearing. ↩
I should mention that Bryan Johnson’s appearance in the Epstein files amounts to a single Zoom call in 2017, arranged through a third party. He says he immediately told the mutual contact that Epstein “seemed like a very dark person” and never spoke to him again. This is materially different from the other connections described above, and fairness requires saying so. His erection data, however, I stand by as remarkable. ↩