Originally published in the Men's Health MVP Network, 2015. Illustrations and photo references by / for the author.
In high school, I had an art teacher that ate a meal of pills three times a day — literally a handful of pills, must've been 20 in there. He figured he would live to at least 120. We asked what would happen if he suddenly stopped taking them and he said his hair would probably fall out, then his fingernails, then he'd probably go blind and then die. Seemed like a high price to pay for a few extra years on a questionable planet surrounded by questionable people of dubious intent.
In college I embraced a newfound nihilistic / Dionysian philosophy and took on a Jim Morrison "I'm gonna get my kicks before the whole shitthouse goes up in flames!" (then expose yourself to a crowd of 50,000 people) attitude towards personal well-being. My chain-smoking roommate famously said, "Hey, if it looks good on the outside, it doesn't matter what's going on on the inside."
That all changed when I had my first daughter. They say daughters steal your beauty. That goes for dads as well as moms. I think the day after my daughter was born I rose from bed and all my hair stayed on the pillow. Since then, and combined with a desire to be a virile, ruddy and active dad healthfully bouncing his girls from school to gymnastics and ballet and birthday parties — always with a smile, never out of breath, or complaining — I've essentially gone through an entire pharmacy and two health food stores on a quest for the Ultimate Supplement.
Like Huey Lewis, I too want a drug that won't make me sick, crash my car, or feel three feet thick. I've spoken with everyone from my local health food store attendant, to my new age friends, alternative medicine adherents, allopathic and even interventionist physicians and neurotic parents, to my trainer at the gym, the owner of the gym, and some of my all-american wrestling buddies, to the New York Times Well Blog — and I tell you, I've gotten a different story from each and every one of them.
Resveratrol for a longer life, zinc for immunity, vitamin E was the ultimate antioxidant until a year or two ago that said it was worthless, same thing with fish and krill oil. Milk Thistle. Saw Palmetto. Polycosanol (espoused by none other than Tim Ferriss, the ultimate self-experimenter documentarian), probiotics, psyllium root, cayenne pepper for circulation, and boiling hot showers followed by a minute of freezing cold (as described by Tom Robbins as the secret to eternal life in his masterpiece Jitterbug Perfume).
I bought a juicer, a loose tea steeper, a coffee grinder expressly for flaxseed. (Which caused uncontrollable flatulence.) Superfoods and whole grains (which tasted like sawdust). I did three day fasts and liquid diets.
My buddy in show business said if you're gonna be on TV, eat salmon for three days leading up to it and your skin will have a healthy glow.
Looking back, this pursuit of the truth, of the secret, can only be viewed as an age old and widespread human folly dating back to Ponce de Leon and before, and not one to end anytime soon. It is natural to resist aging. And as long as people want to take up arms, there will be opportunists with swords at every tick of the clock.
But in these years of study and concern and resistance against aging, I think I took in enough information, ranging from pure hogwash to rigorously, scientifically derived rubbish to sort of glean some conventional wisdom on the subject, and I think it came from the handful of articles I read about the longest lived people in the world, which include Sardinians, Okinawans, and 7th Day Adventists out in California. Sure some diets are laden with legumes, red wine, fish, and olive oil and everyone does seem to value their work / life balance but have definite responsibilities and take pride and those. But the one real strong link across the board was community. People checking in on one another every day, if only to say hi or bring a legume or a glass of wine and have a chat. And a feeling that they are part of and integral to that community; as an elder, as a storyteller, as a grandparent.
So maybe forgo that hand full of supplements that might just be ground-up seashells for all you know, since most of them aren't FDA approved, and get yourself a good friend instead. It might actually keep you young way into your old age. That and 3-6 strong cups of Arabica coffee a day — can't be Robusto.