Dr Filippo Ongaro: Space as an Accelerated Ageing Model, Health Span and the Behaviour Gap in Longevity

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign.

Speaker B: 00:00:05

Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves. My guest today on beyond longevity is Dr. Filippo Ongaro. Dr. Filippo has had a career that sounds almost cinematic.

Before he became one of Italy's early voices in longevity medicine, he was a doctor to astronauts at the European Space Agency. And that makes this conversation fascinating from the start because space does something extraordinary.

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To the human body.

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In microgravity, muscle, bone, and resilience can decline at alarming speed. Sleep, stress, nutrition, movement, isolation, and circadian rhythm are not side issues. They become central to survival and performance.

In many ways, space shows us what happens when the systems that keep us strong start to weaken, just like they do when we age, only much faster. For Dr. Filippo, that experience changed the direction of his career.

Almost eight years at esa, he moved into anti aging and functional medicine, becoming one of the early Italian doctors in the field. But he did not stop at medicine testing and protocols. He became interested in a harder, more human question.

Why do people often know exactly what they should do for their health and still not do it?

Together with his wife, Sonja, who also worked with astronauts at ESA with a focus on psychology and coaching, he built an approach that brings together medicine, mindset, behavior change, and a more practical, accessible view of longevity. In this conversation, we talk about astronauts, accelerated aging, muscle loss, and prevention.

We also talk about why the longevity industry can sometimes make health feel too complicated, and why the real challenge may not only be living longer, but learning how we want to age. Dr. Filippo is clear, practical, provocative, and refreshingly honest. He's not promising immortality. He's asking something much more useful.

How do we build the strength, habits, and purpose to live better for longer?

Speaker A: 00:02:53

Dr. Filippo, thank you so much for joining me today on Beyond Longevity. And before we even get into the Longevity, I have to start with a part of your story that I guess almost feels cinematic.

And I'm sure everybody asks you first about that. You were a medical doctor working with astronauts at the European Space Agency. How did that happen?

How did you get into the world, and why did you leave that world?

Speaker C: 00:03:22

Well, that's a good question. It happened, like many other things in life, a little bit by chance, I have to say.

Say I studied sports medicine after my medical doctor degree, and I was actually interested in performance improvement and enhancement. And I ended up working on a project at the Deutsche Sporto Schule in Cologne in Germany, one of the biggest sports science universities in Europe.

And the professor I was working with was a Consultant to the European Space Agency. So that's how I got involved. He asked me, would you be interested in working on a training program and a rehab program for crew members?

And I said, well, you know, I don't know much about crew members, but I. I'm happy to try it. Yeah. And that's how I started. And then the agency was looking for somebody for a medical doctor with my profile.

So they, at the end of this year, they asked me to. To stay. And so I ended up actually working almost eight years for the space agency. Why did I leave? That's a good question.

Well, because I like change and I like growth. So after about eight years, I had the impression that I learned the most of the things I could have learned in that environment.

And I said, it's interesting to move on. That's how I started my own entrepreneurial experience in anti aging and longevity medicine. Yeah, that was a. A big adventure. Very interesting.

But this space program beginning, it kind of branded me. You know, it gave me something special to be recognized for, but also something a little bit different in terms of the knowledge you develop there.

You know, the very practical and concrete approach. Yeah. So that's it in a nutshell.

Speaker A: 00:05:00

Yeah, in a, in a tiny nutshell, Because I'm sure you could go on and on. It must have been a very fascinating time.

Speaker B: 00:05:07

Space is often described as a kind.

Speaker A: 00:05:09

Of accelerated aging model. But when you were actually working with the astronauts, what did that mean in, in practical terms?

Speaker C: 00:05:18

Well, what is said is that six months in space equal more or less to about 10 years on Earth if you don't have a countermeasure program protecting you. So in reality, this is something that we almost never see in crew members because we try to avoid that.

But what is really very, very visible in working with astronauts is the impact of physical exercise and of course, also correct nutrition on the speed of aging. So you can really see, in a matter of some months, muscle loss, bone loss.

And from muscle and bone loss, an entire cascade of changes in terms of metabolism, endocrine changes, psychological changes. It's like operating with a lens. You know, you see these processes with a much stronger intensity.

So what you normally see in decades in people on Earth that you see in a couple of months in space. So this opens up your eyes in a way, and it forces you to become a little bit obsessed with things like physical exercise, for example.

You start realizing that it's not true that we lose muscles because we age, but we rather age because we lose muscles. And that if you do Exercise. The velocity of the aging process is going to change. So that's the main factor. Then you could add many other things.

I mean, living in space is complicated. Space is an environment that doesn't cooperate, of course. So you have radiation exposure, you have circadian rhythms, alterations.

You have food that is not fresh, food that you. You have on Earth that you are living with people that you don't choose in a confined environment. It's very noisy. It's.

It's kind of packed with equipment. And so there are a lot of factors that increase the stress levels. And as we all know, stress is one of the main accelerators of the aging process.

Speaker A: 00:07:14

It's actually quite funny. If somebody would have tuned in halfway of what you were saying, One could think you're talking about Earth at the moment.

Very crowded, the food we eat is not fresh, all these things. It's quite scary, you know, to think that it doesn't have to be like that on earth. But I think more and more, it is like that.

I also just wanted to pick up on something else that you said that I found quite interesting. You said for the astronauts, you had to develop a countermeasure program because you knew of all the adversities that would affect them.

I think we know of a lot of adversities that affect us on Earth already. Do you not think we should have a countermeasure program, you ask me?

Speaker C: 00:07:59

Absolutely. I agree 100% with you, with both of the things you said. The first one is, you're right.

Modern human beings are actually living a little bit like astronauts. If we compare our modern lifestyle with our ancient lifestyle, we are astronauts.

And I also agree that most of what happens with time and with the aging process, we. No, we don't understand everything yet, but we do know the main elements that play a role in the aging process.

So we definitely could have a personalized countermeasure program, which, by the way, is a little bit the essence of what longevity medicine is trying to propose to people. But in a way, there's a big difference. Astronauts are on a mission, so they do what they are told. They do what is needed to accomplish their mission.

And with us on Earth is a little bit different. That there's this huge value behavior gap that I think is one of the biggest topics we should be all working on.

So people, for sure, recognize the importance of health.

But there's a huge difference between this recognition on a theoretical level and what they are really willing to put in that in terms of work, you know, of time, of investment, so this is, I think, the biggest obstacle we have today in longevity medicine. It's not about discovering a new biomarker, learning more about some molecular mechanism. Yeah, of course that's important.

I'm not saying it's not important. And, and, and I welcome every new piece of knowledge that we can introduce. But the biggest problem we have today is this.

You know, if more people would be doing the basics, the world will be different. It's very simple. But the fact is that we are saying this to people, but people say, yeah, you know what? I don't have time. I have other priorities.

They are more urgent things because health is important, but it becomes urgent only when people lose it. And this is, I think, the real problem. We should be working on changing this mindset.

Speaker A: 00:09:53

The mindset of longevity, I know, is a big topic for you. You've spoken about it a lot, you've written about it a lot. But what does it mean in practice?

Speaker C: 00:10:01

Well, I think most people know how they don't want to age, but I think very few people know how they want to age. And this is also counterintuitive because a lot of the narrative and the storytelling around longevity is about not aging. I don't agree with that.

For me, it's knowing how you want to age and directing this trajectory. Not aging, to be very honest, today is more science fiction than science. Not aging, not dying. Yeah, it's all interesting, but we can't do it yet.

So for me, again, because I'm very concrete and pragmatic, for me that's, you know, it's a nice talk, but I'm not interested in that. The truth is, today we have a certain level of control on how we are going to age, and that's what we should focus on.

I think there's a lot of energy wasted on one side on discussing about things that today don't play a real role. Also making things a little more complicated than what they are.

You know, I work out since 40 years and sometimes when I listen to people, it sounds to me that if you don't have a PhD in muscular physiology, you're not able to train today. Now, it's unbelievable. Everything's so complicated. You should be thinking about 150 variables that you have to control and measure.

Come on, let's keep it a little easier because, you know, most people won't buy into this thing. Most people have other priorities. They don't live to be guinea pigs in an experiment. That's not their scope.

So I think, you know, making things a Little easier, making things a little simpler, going back to the basics and sticking to the idea of that it's behavioral change. The biggest problem we have today is it's not a knowledge gap, it's a behavioral gap, it's an application gap.

Especially because I don't think it's so interesting that a few biohackers are going to live to 120 or beat Jean Kalman and live to 130. I mean, at the end of the day, who cares? The real thing here is how do people that reach the age of 80, 85, 90, how fit are they? How sick are they?

This is the real challenge. You know, rest is interesting for newspapers, magazines, but it's not interesting for the majority of people.

Speaker A: 00:12:15

I think I couldn't agree with you more.

And I think it gives a lot of value to what you say, seeing that you have been in an environment that is highly controlled down to the minutia of everything. So I find it very interesting that someone like you says this out loud.

And I think it really needs to be heard because it's very easy for people who've never been in that world to say, oh, you need to test. And it's the most important thing. And every biomarker is vital.

And yet there's somebody like you, who's lived through it, who's done it, who's seen it, and who actually says, no, hold on, that is not the most important thing. But the mindset is, and it's the small things.

Speaker C: 00:12:59

I think this is very interesting. You know, of course, I'm not saying you shouldn't measure anything.

I think the key element here is you have to measure the minimum set of biomarkers that are in a way usable to change something concretely in your health trajectory. This is the real key.

And concerning astronauts, of course, they're super monitored people and a lot of the culture around space flight is controlling and monitoring stuff, of course. But then there are a lot of elements that you can control and measure. How do you measure the courage of an Astra?

So that's just something that you have to have the feeling that either you have it or you don't. But it's not something that you can measure test. And again, most people on don't live their life like health is my mission.

So if we continue to propose things that are super complicated, super expensive and invasive in your life, most of the people won't get involved in that. And this is exactly the problem I see in, in the longevity field today. You know, it's interesting for early adopters, for pioneers.

But it's not interesting for the mass market yet because it's too complicated. Again, the scope for most people is not to run medical testing, is to live.

And running medical tests should help me live better, not the other way around.

Speaker A: 00:14:24

Couple of things I wanted to pick up on, but something that's really interesting is you said about astronauts, they have a goal in mind and they know what they're working for. So they are obviously very self disciplined. Do you think self discipline is something people either have or don't have?

Or is it something that can be trained, you know, like a muscle?

Speaker C: 00:14:46

It's a mixture of these two things. But I don't think that self discipline is per se the key. Astronauts more than being self disciplined, they have a mission.

So in reality they are gratified by the mission they are living.

So self discipline is a consequence of this sense of scope and the gratification that comes with from the actions you have to put in place to reach that scope. So, you know, I think the problem is upstream. You cannot ask a motivation and self discipline if the scope is vague, foggy and not understood.

And this is what I'm saying. What is the scope of this whole thing?

Is it just living longer or telling people they might live longer because at the end nobody has a solution to how we could live longer? So it's all assumptions or is it helping people to find first the scope that is going to drive them, push them towards better behaviors?

I think the answer is obvious. One thing that I always say is if you want more time, first of all, you knew you need to know very well what you're going to do with that time.

And I think that this is something that is not very clear in this discussion. You know, it's all about gaining time. Yeah. And the first thing should be not wasting your time. That should be the first anti aging prolonge action.

Don't waste your time. But if you don't have a sense of scope, a sense of mission, it's going to be difficult to reach this.

So I think that self discipline is important, but it's kind of a consequence of something that is more complex than this and it's upstream. It's not something that I focus on in my coaching approach too much.

I rather focus on self discipline as a consequence of having clarified those elements that are upstream the process.

Speaker A: 00:16:40

We'll come to your coaching approach and all that it involves in a minute because it's incredibly fascinating the way you've set yourself up to help people Going back on the discipline and all that. And you clearly said that astronauts, they have a mission and that's why they know what they're doing it for.

Do you think the problem in today's world is that.

Do you think the problem in today's world is that people expect and want immediate results, immediate pleasure and obviously taking care of yourself is a long term project and not even to live longer, but even to live healthier when you 70, 80, whatever. Is that a major hindrance, do you think?

Speaker C: 00:17:23

Well, I think it is, absolutely. We're kind of hooked on immediate gratification in our society. And we know very well these are by now very old studies from the 60s.

We know very well that the capacity to delay gratification is a key element of a successful life. So it's also a key element of somebody that is capable of maintaining a certain level of health and fitness.

It's obvious you have to be able to say no to something that gives immediate pleasure because you imagine that there's some stronger level pleasure or benefit that will come from that saying no in that moment. And this is again counterintuitive for the human brain because we are evolutionary fine tuned to get immediate pleasure.

This problem is only a problem today in modern society, but it wasn't in ancient times when our brain actually emerged. So we are kind of programmed for looking for immediate pleasure and putting in second place what's going to happen in 10, 5, 20, 30 years.

So this has a lot to do.

You know, going a little bit back to the coaching approach to using the rational brain, the prefrontal cortex, to re educate the more instinctive parts of the brain. So after Kahneman, everybody speaks about system one, system two, not anymore about the reptilian brain or limbic brain and the neocortical brain.

But that doesn't really matter.

I mean, let's say using the rational brain to educate and keep a little under control, the instinctive brain, and this instinctive brain has a very, very strong tendency to look for immediate gratification every time that is possible. And the more tired you are, the more stressed you are.

If your nutrition is not okay, if your fitness levels are not okay, this all has an impact on the prefrontal cortex, which is a very energy consuming part of the brain. So it, it kind of switches off when you don't have enough energy in your body.

And when that part of the brain switches off, well then the automatic brain is taking control.

And this is the reason why it's so hard to keep your, I don't Know your food instincts under control late in the evening, and it's much easier to do that early in the morning. That's simply because you have more energy in the morning, you're rested and your rational brain is in control.

And in the evening, this becomes much, much more difficult. So I think that today, you know, neurobiology, neurosciences are providing a lot of insights in all this.

And we have to go beyond this thing, oh, I'm lazy, oh, I'm stupid, oh, I don't know that it's a little more complicated than this. It's really basic mechanism of how our brain works.

Speaker A: 00:20:09

I love that you break it down into such basic, but obviously, you know, vital points and ideas and ways to look at this. And again, especially coming from somebody who's been testing the latest and the greatest technologies and advances and all that.

That's why now I wanted to talk about what you are actually doing right now. But I don't want to miss out the steps in between because I think they're really, really important to how you got here. Your whole evolution.

You've left the European Space Agency and moved into the field of not longevity, I guess, as it was called then, but anti aging. You were certified in the US Tell us how that progressed a little bit.

Speaker C: 00:20:53

Well, yes, after I was exposed for several years to the space environment, I started to understand how relevant that experience was in terms of knowledge about aging. Already at that time, you know, it was clear how much the aging of the population in Western countries was becoming a topic of concern.

So people were speaking about that.

I noticed that in the US it was possible already at that time to follow some certification programs in anti aging medicine, functional medicine, regenerative medicine. So I did it all. And at a certain point I said, well, I think the world is ready for this type of approach.

So I left the space Agency and I opened an anti aging medicine center. And I was totally wrong. The world was not at all ready for that approach. So it was kind of difficult. This was a big place.

It was more than a thousand square meters, a lot of equipment, two gyms inside. But it was hard to make this whole thing really take off because people didn't really understand what we were proposing.

That's the moment in which I realized how powerful was my story with the space program.

Because once I started talking about that, then, you know, I started receiving interest from journalists, from TV shows, from radio shows, I started writing books. And that's how the whole thing started. Then after about 10 years of this, I came to another conclusion.

I saw with my own eyes that there was constantly a percentage of people that were able to apply these things on the long term, and it wasn't the majority.

And there was a very high percentage of people that were starting, but then falling back to the old habits, then, you know, showing up after four years. And I said, there's, there's something wrong here. It doesn't work. There's something off.

Because I'm married with a psychologist and my wife was also in the space program. She was working on the psychological part of the astronaut support.

We started thinking, well, what is missing here is exactly the sense of scope, the reason why, a strong motivation to act. And so that's when we started.

We, we already got certified as coaches before that, but we started thinking, well, maybe what is really missing is not more measurement, but it's more understanding of the emotional reasons why people don't do what they say they say, not I say they say is important. Apparently it's an incredible paradox. People say, yeah, my health is important. And then they go in a different direction.

This triggers your curiosity and you start saying, why is that? Are they all crazy? So that's why we move into this new dimension of coaching, education, events, personal growth, looking for the why.

And I'm not saying that we always find it because it's tough, but I think our experience in the last 10 years was very important to us. And for us to understand that measurement is important, but is only one piece for of the puzzle.

There's many more elements that need to fall in place in order for someone to really focus on health, longevity and fitness.

Speaker A: 00:23:57

I think you are once again a step ahead of the rest of the community because just as you were the first certainly Italian doctor to get an anti aging certification, I think you're again ahead of everyone else in the field of longevity by realizing that it's a much bigger issue. It's not just about getting a test and knowing where you stand.

I've had a few guests on that were thinking along the same lines, but I don't think they've yet implemented it the way you have.

Before we get onto that, I do want to again take a small step back and just ask you, when you founded one of the earliest anti aging medicine centers in Italy, what at that point was the problem you're trying to solve? And also what kind of people then, not now, but then, were coming to you and what were they looking for?

Were they looking for better performance or disease prevention or just to feel younger, look prettier?

Speaker C: 00:25:03

Well, that's a very, very interesting question. So my answer would be, when I started that project, I really thought, well, we are going to kind of solve aging. And who doesn't want that?

For me, it was kind of astonishing to see how difficult it was instead of five benches. But there were two elements on which I was totally wrong. The first one was, we're going to solve aging.

The science at that time gave us some indication that I think it did not really become so evident and true afterwards. You know, think about the genome project. We were at that time thinking, well, once we decode the DNA, everything is going to be clear.

Then we decoded the DNA. We understood the genes are far less than what we expected and that the problem is not the genes, but it's the genetics.

The second thing is I think I overestimated the interest of people in getting involved before they perceive from a physical and emotional perspective that they really need to do so. So addressing healthy people is a little bit like, you know, selling ice cream to, to an Eskimo. It's like, I don't feel I need you.

I'm healthy, I feel well, so why should I invest the time and money into this? So a couple of things happened which were kind of interesting.

The first one was that we started to have many more people with problems than what we thought.

So I understood that most of these people were looking for, I don't know what we could call today a functional approach to the health or an integrative approach, whatever you want to call it. But they were looking for a different way of, you know, addressing the difficulties they had.

And the second thing that I understood is the ones that really were ready to invest in this type of approach were the ones really looking for performance enhancement.

So the top managers, the people from movies, actors, CEOs, big entrepreneurs, which is kind of funny because in my mind, nothing has changed in these 20 years. It's exactly the same situation. This is why I'm saying I'm a little bit afraid that the mass market is not listening.

Because in reality, today it's exactly the same thing. We have people getting closer to, to this type of medicine because in reality, they don't get enough replies from traditional approaches.

And I'm not saying who's right, who is wrong. I'm.

This is just a fact that there are people that get closer to, let's say, functional medicine because they think it can address better certain type of problems.

And then you have, of course, this category of people that are looking for increase the performance, but not many other type of people got involved in this field yet. So that's why I'm saying why is that? And my answer is because things look too complicated, often too expensive.

And so that's not what the mass market is looking for, obviously. Or at least not yet.

Speaker A: 00:28:11

Or can afford for that matter.

Speaker C: 00:28:13

Exactly. Or can afford that for sure. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:28:16

Let's now speak about what you're doing right now because as I said before, you've gone through an amazing evolution and I think the one great thing about your work is you really see when to pivot and what works and what doesn't work. And a lot of people have that problem of not being able to pivot.

They think they have a great idea and the idea actually is great, but it's either the wrong time or the wrong place or whatever. So often people don't adapt. They're sure what they're doing is the right thing and the world will just come round to it.

And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

But as I said, what I love about your approach is that you know all the facts and you are actually correct in everything you've done and you're saying and you're promoting, but you realize you need sometimes a different angle to not even sell it to people, but to get to people and to get them to help themselves. So you and your wife now have pivoted from the traditional, even functional medicine.

Bit of somebody coming to you seeing what's wrong and helping them and supporting them. Because I think you've realized there is a gap in the market of a long term solution to actually help and support people.

So I don't want to talk about it because I know you can talk about it much better. But tell us what you are doing now that is different to how you've approached longevity previously.

Speaker C: 00:29:48

First of all, both me and my wife, we don't do anymore anything that has to do with clinical activity. So we don't see anyone one to one. I don't practice medicine anymore and she's not working as a psychologist anymore.

So that's already a big change, you know, and the reason was, and, and.

Speaker B: 00:30:06

Sorry, just, just to throw in, it's.

Speaker A: 00:30:08

Not because you don't believe in medicine, it's not because you know your doesn't believe psychology is not helpful.

Speaker C: 00:30:14

Not at all.

Speaker A: 00:30:14

It's really important. But I think you've found a better way to use your knowledge, is that.

Speaker C: 00:30:20

You're totally right and, and thanks for having added that. Actually in many, many ways we are trying with our presence to make people Understand they should go to a doctor, to a psychologist.

But we changed our focus because there are a couple of reasons actually.

Well, the first one is that in the years I have realized how powerful communication is, I had to decide am I going to invest most of my time in a one to one interaction, which is very valuable and as you say, I still believe in it, or am I going to use my communication capacity to reach many, many more people. And yeah, I chose obviously this solution.

I said, well, my task, my mission is to go beyond the one to one, beyond the consultation idea and try to move awareness in people at a bigger number, with more and more people, interacting with more and more people. And that I did through different ways, books, media, presence, but also with our video courses.

We, we had millions of people that followed our materials, our events. And of course the scope is completely different.

The scope of this is not a substitution to the medical or psychological approach, is something that comes earlier. It's an eye opener.

It's like saying I'm going to tell you the basic things you know about lifestyle, about what you're risking if you continue to go in that direction. And then I'm going to leave it to you, but you in a higher awareness state to decide what's the next step.

Since many, many years we also have an education program for health professionals, so for physicians, for nutritionists or physiotherapists, in which we try to give them stronger tools to convince people to change their habits.

And so it's really an education that is not focusing on giving you more knowledge about what you already know, but it's providing you a new operating system in which you become more capable of helping people to change habits, choices and lifestyle.

And then part of our work is also advisory and we work at this stage with much larger organizations, big insurance company, traditional healthcare players, and we help them make this transition towards longevity for their own staff sometimes, but sometimes also helping them develop new products, new services that go in that direction and those programs or services that at least theoretically can reach many, many more people than what I could reach by myself. So the reason of my change has always been how can I have more impact? How can I make the best of my capacity?

Is it sticking to the one to one idea or is it trying to gather more people and make them understand how important this topic is and push them towards organizations, clinics, insurances, whatever it is that can provide that type of services. So improving quality of life in time, health span, let's say.

Speaker A: 00:33:27

So who are the people that come to your platform Nowadays, is it the housewife that doesn't know what to do or the executive?

Speaker C: 00:33:35

Well, that's interesting because it did change a little bit. So, and that was also one of the reasons I said, well, then it means that it's the right direction.

Because if I compare what was happening when I was in the clinical activity to now, well, what happened is that we broadened our audience. So you're absolutely right.

Now it's not only the top manager or the one that has a lot of problems and wants a functional approach to complex health issues, but it's also somebody that is relatively healthy, but wants to just improve the approach to nutrition or to physical exercise or to stress reduction. And so when we changed our own approach, it resonated with a different type of audience, obviously.

Speaker A: 00:34:21

And I think that's also very important as a social service because I think a lot of the longevity medicine, the whole field is really aimed at the people that can afford it time wise, certainly money wise.

So if somebody comes to your platform and really doesn't have much time or money, you know, what can they take away that really helps them in their daily life?

Speaker C: 00:34:45

Well, they can take away at least a couple of things. One, let's say is education. And they can find tons of material. A lot of material is for free, some material you have to pay.

But what you pay for a course is obviously much, much less than what would you pay for a longevity checkup, let's say. Although again, it's a totally different thing. On one side you're going to towards a complete personalization of an intervention.

On the other side, you're just getting basic knowledge to understand what you can do by yourself. Okay, just that somebody doesn't get that wrong. So I know it's totally different, two totally different things.

And then what they can get is that we also supported the setup of projects in which maybe we are involved, but not as a active main partner. For example, we have a distributed project in many, many pharmacies in Italy that provide basic longevity services.

So they can help people, you know, understand a little bit more about the genetic predispositions, about which approach to food and nutrition, to physical exercise. We have developed something that makes the pharmacy the starting point of a process.

But then the person has consultations with the medical doctor, with the physical training expert, with the nutritionist, they can access laboratory testing.

And this is kind of a democratic approach to longevity because I, again, I understand it's not the full scope of everything that you could do, but it's a start and it's affordable for many more people, let's say.

Speaker A: 00:36:19

I really have to say I speak to a lot of people in the field and of course people often say yes, you know, the basic longevity things are free sleeping properly, doing some exercise and all this. And that is all correct.

But I think you are literally the first one to actually even say it himself that the way you approach the longevity market is a democratic one rather than inevitably being a premium product and you are offering your services obviously for a certain amount of money, but something that is affordable to a much bigger audience rather than just the super rich or the elite. And the way you do it should really be scaled up to, you know, to other countries, to other nations. You're doing this in Italy, obviously.

How much is the government or you know, the National Health Service, are they involved at all? Are they interested or not really?

Speaker C: 00:37:19

There is a much higher level of institutional interest towards everything we are talking about in the longevity field, that's for sure. I think that interest did not yet convert into concrete actions or participation to projects.

Okay, sometimes there's also, you know, a difficulty for institutional partners to really establish projects with private companies. But I see that increasing and it's also obvious because there is a need for all this. And, and again, one approach doesn't exclude the other.

You have BMW, Mercedes, Fiat, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Porsche. So you can just choose. I'm not saying that everybody has to go towards a more democratic approach to longevity.

What I'm saying is that I think that the mass market will have a little bit of a problem to approach the higher level of all this. And in the meantime, what shall we do? Just leave them there? So no, let's try to change whatever we can change and improve.

That's my opinion and I perfectly realize that there's much more than, than just changing, let's say, your lifestyle. But I would also add that everything that is on top of lifestyle change doesn't work if you don't start from your lifestyle.

And so yes, it's true you can do much more, but you can't skip that part. And that part can be certainly taught to many, many more people. That's what I'm saying. Then of course it might be not enough for.

And then they will also look for the physician, for the nutritionist, for the personal trainer, for the psychologist for an add on. But at least they have started something.

Speaker A: 00:38:57

I'm sure everybody will agree that there have to be different access points to whatever it is, like you said, to cars, to clothing you buy. Exactly. It's not one for all. Yep, but. And you very rightly says there has to be an entry level for people.

And I think until now there really aren't many options for a low entry into the field of longevity other than sleeping well and walking and whatever. So it's absolutely fascinating that you are offering that and that it can be offered.

And also, let's not forget, but you're not doing this as a charity, you're doing this as a proper business project, which I think is really important to say, because a lot of doctors and practitioners would maybe want to move into the functional medicine side, the longevity side. But on one hand they feel, you know, they're doctors, their ethos doesn't let them really make money on this or shouldn't that sort of thing.

Personally, I think that's the wrong way of looking at it. Everybody has to eat, everybody needs a roof over their head. So there has to be some commercialization of even health and medicine.

But I think you've done it in a way that is really admirable. And what advice would you give to practitioners that are still stuck in the old medicine model but want to move out of it?

Speaker C: 00:40:24

Typically, practitioners don't have an entrepreneurial approach. They usually, they have never been taught that for sure, and only a few go into that direction.

So develop the mindset of how do I set up something that people are ready to pay for? Because the first concept here, you're never forcing anyone to buy stuff they don't want.

There's nothing unethical about you're offering something that people decide freely, it's worth paying. This is the key question.

Then I would also add the market today is so complex and crowded that you need also to develop really some entrepreneurial skills to understand what is your unique selling proposition, how you brand yourself and your projects, how you position yourself. You know, and for example, concerning positioning, I personally feel that many are making a mistake because they are all going in the same direction.

And by the way, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of many longevity oriented projects that are making money, they are getting financed, but not many have a strong level of customers that are paying for the services yet. Maybe it's too early. I hope that this changes, but I also think that there are too many projects going in the same direction.

And so already the number of people that are ready to buy and pay for longevity medicine today is not huge or it's probably smaller than what we imagined. If then all the projects are positioned in the same pricing level with the same type of approach.

Obviously this is going to make the space even more crowded. So my suggestion would be, you really need to think out of the box and think, what's special about me?

What can I really bring in this market that others don't have? How can I build the services in a slightly different manner? How can I position those services at a different level of price?

How can I communicate these things in a different way? How can I attract a bigger audience that ready to listen to what I'm saying?

So there are several different elements that should be taken into account. And I think there's a huge potential in this field.

I honestly think, because I'm not pessimistic about the fact that sooner or later the mass market will get into this. I'm rather sure it will happen. But unfortunately I'm also sure that it might happen with many projects that we don't even see on the market yet.

And the ones that are on the market now are not really the ones that will satisfy the mass market. So that's my feeling. Maybe I'm wrong, nobody knows.

But I am seeing some elements that are convincing me that there's going to be another wave of projects that are addressing the mass market and that's really going to change the way we think about longevity health in our society. Not only for a few people, but for many, many more.

Speaker A: 00:43:23

I agree 100%. I agree with what you've said.

But do you think the reason why at the moment a lot of the longevity is still not organized properly is because it's sort of the wild west and there are no regulations and anybody can just bring any supplement to the market and make any longevity claims they want.

Speaker C: 00:43:43

Yeah, I don't know if it's because of this. What I see is that there's a very clear tendency to over promise. And most of the time over promise is connected to under delivery.

And I think that the market in the long run always rewards the ones that under promise and over deliver. The whole thing is about trust. Medicine is about trust. Healing is about trust.

And if we compromise this trust based relationship, because we over promise and because we over promise, we obviously are going to under deliver. Because if you over promise, you will under deliver.

If you promise eternal youth, if you promise immortality, if you promise aging reversal, if we would be a little more honest in focusing on the thing that we can really do today and trying to make those things more applicable for more people, I think we would probably see more successful projects. That's my idea. So I don't know if it has to do with really regulations or with the nature of the market.

That at the end, again, always rewards trust, you know, results and not the hype of how you're communicating something in that moment.

Speaker A: 00:44:58

Do we agree on the fact that longevity at the moment has a bit of a PR problem?

Speaker C: 00:45:03

Yeah, you could say so. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker A: 00:45:07

What do you think is the most uncomfortable truth about longevity that people just don't want to hear?

Speaker C: 00:45:14

Well, I would say that it is also connected to the PR problem, is that we should be able to tell people that we will age, we will also die, and there's no way out.

Speaker A: 00:45:26

And we have to pay taxes.

Speaker C: 00:45:27

We have to pay taxes. You know, I always thought you can build the longevity on the fear of death or you could build longevity on the joy of life.

And I think it's going to bring to very different projects. And what I have seen today, in my opinion, is too much towards the fear of death. And so it's like a sleeping pill, an axiolytic.

It's like I enter this environment in the hope that nothing bad will happen to me. And this is like walking on thin ice because we don't have the means to make that promise yet. I'm not even sure we will ever have.

So we should stick to the truth at the end. And the truth is always difficult to digest for people. So for sure there's gonna be less of, oh, my God, fantastic.

Yeah, I'm going to pay for this because I believe in it and whatever. No, it's gonna be much more. It's gonna be slower, softer, but it's gonna be more solid at the end. That's what I think.

Speaker A: 00:46:29

But do you not think people only change when they are a little bit afraid? Afraid of death or afraid of losing something or those kind of things?

You know, when we're cruising along and all is good and all is fine, Very few people change. Human nature doesn't like change. You know, you. You have a career that's going okay.

Very, very few people will say, ooh, let me take a risk and see what else is out there. You often only change careers when you have a terrible boss or whatever.

So how do we change that mentality that I think you, you rightly said should be more in the way of let's enjoy and continue for longer what we have, which is nice. Rather than do all these preventative measures in order not to die or to delay dying.

Speaker C: 00:47:16

You are right. And you know, we already discussed that earlier that for sure, it's not easy to Change people and fear is one reason to change.

But the problem is when you change because of fear, but you can't beat the reason of your fear, it's not going to work. You can change your job because you fear the environment you live in and you work in.

And that would mean that you're going to end up possibly in a new environment that you prefer. But if you would end up in an environment that is even worse, then you would realize that it didn't make any sense to start in the first place.

I'm not saying that fear cannot induce change.

Sometimes it is helpful, but in this case, you cannot sedate this type of fear because it's something that sooner or later that you'll have to accept and live with. So my point is, and this is why in coaching we work so much on identity.

So in reality, change works well when you support the development of a new form of identity that in a way includes also taking care of yourself. What we try to do with people goes exactly in that direction.

So it's not based the change process on fear, but it's trying to work on your own identity in order to make it possible that taking care of yourself is part of who you are. And it's not as difficult as people think, you know, and sometimes fear is a little part of it. In many cases it isn't.

It's more because you identify something that you want to go towards, not something that you want to escape from. It's a different way of framing and seeing the process. If you want, you can escape from something.

And what I'm saying, it's difficult to escape from something that you can't escape from. So you're going to live in an illusion. Or you can identify something that is emotionally positive for you that you want to go towards.

And then many things start making suddenly much more sense, including all the preventive procedures that are maybe useful to keep yourself in a certain shape for a longer time.

But again, if you don't have clear why you want to do that, and the only why you can find is to avoid having to think about death or disease or whatever, I don't think that that's going to solve the problem completely.

Certainly it's not going to improve anxiety, rather the opposite, because you'll do one thing thinking that's going to solve the problem, and then the next day you'll realize you didn't do the other thing.

So you'll start thinking, I need to do that as well to solve this problem and then another one, and then Another one, and then you're never going to stop. And in the meantime, your life has passed by. You know what I mean?

So the concept is, how do I find the balance between what I need to do, what is correct to do for keeping my health at an optimal level? I need to find out why I want to do it, and then I should not forget that in the meantime, I also have to live.

Speaker A: 00:50:23

Wow, that is so profound. And I have to say, again, if somebody was just listening to the answer you just gave, one wouldn't even know you're talking about longevity.

Because I think what you're saying makes sense to every aspect of life. Doesn't matter what angle you take, whether you're a mother dealing with teenagers or whatever that drive you crazy, or at work or this.

It's the mindset of you are in this and try and find the. The positives in it, I guess, which is super simple, really.

Speaker C: 00:50:53

Yes, it is super simple. Yes, you're right. It's super simple to. To talk about it. It's a little less simple to practice that.

But as I said, I also think it is not as difficult as most people think. At the end, it's moving away from fear and going towards courage. And we all know that courage is not the absence of fear, but is going beyond fear.

You know, so acting even when there is something that you really fear. And the driving factor of courage is again, the why is the scope, is the sense of mission.

If you don't have that, it's very difficult to find that energy.

Speaker A: 00:51:32

And one of the biggest points that a lot of people in the longevity field make is that a big reason for people to actually live longer is that they have a reason to live. You know, they find the why. And if you don't have the why, absolutely, there's not much point in living longer, truthfully.

Speaker C: 00:51:53

Really, if you really want more time, you have to have very clear in mind, what are you going to do with that time now? And for me, the, the beginning of the whole thing is don't waste the time you have. So we don't know how long we're going to live.

We don't have everything under control. We will never have everything under control.

And so the main responsibility for somebody in the longevity field is really to not waste time and live fully every possibly every moment. And then suddenly you realize that life becomes maybe not longer, but, but deeper, wider.

Speaker A: 00:52:29

You know, more fulfilled.

Speaker C: 00:52:31

Yeah, more fulfilled. Exactly. You know, there's a.

A phrase that I didn't know and I read a couple of days ago from an American comedian, George Carlin, that says life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Maybe we should remember that it's not just about how many heartbeats or days you live, but it's what actually happens during those days that counts more. And again, I'm not saying that we should not get involved. Quite the opposite.

I mean, I have been doing this for all my life, so I'm a strong supporter of everything that has to do with prevention. You know, I do a lot of tests myself, but it's just a way of interpreting this whole thing.

Speaker A: 00:53:12

It's really sort of coming back to basics, I think, in a lot of things. And while using the technology and advances we have nowadays, one doesn't exclude the other.

Where do you see the longevity markets heading in the real world, realistically? And where would you like it to head in the future?

Speaker C: 00:53:34

As I said, I think that the big question, Mike, is how is the mass market going to get involved into this? When and how? So what are they going to look for? And when is that going to happen?

And personally, I think that in the next, you know, 10 years, many, many more people are going to get involved in this thing. But for this to happen, the longevity market needs to be ready to offer the right services.

And I think that one key point is accessibility, affordability, and making things a little more simple. The direction I would like this thing to go towards is involving more and more young people.

So I think the future of this whole thing is not really linked to how many baby boomers or my generation. That's still important, of course. Yes, it is.

But the big change is going to happen when we start much earlier, when we start to involve, you know, teenagers, kids. And again, this is going to be mainly education, so it's going to be mainly lifestyle. It's going to be mainly avoiding big mistakes.

And then maybe get in this super personalized picture of how you function at a certain point in your life, possibly at the peak of your health, maybe when you are, you know, between 20 and 30, something like this.

And there, I would strongly say at that stage, it's going to be super helpful to go as deep as you can to get this picture really, really detailed, and then from there, have your personalized countermeasure program for the rest of your life and monitor how that works. So my dream, let's say it's in two stages.

The first stage is seeing the mass market get more involved, and the second stage is seeing Younger and younger generation understand these concepts and adopt a healthy lifestyle as soon as possible. That's going to make a big, big impact on the future of health. Really.

Speaker A: 00:55:31

You are so right with, really with everything you said, you know, it's kind mind boggling how in a way, you know, simple it is what you're saying. You know, the message you're trying to bring across is not something crazy and overhyped, you know, rather the contrary.

And yet the fact that I'm so blown away by it and you know, find this whole thing so in a way revolutionary is crazy in itself. We're so far away from it as a population, it's quite unbelievable.

Speaker C: 00:56:00

Well, you know, let's say that sometimes the simplest approach is the most powerful one. I'm not saying that this is the case, but you know, it's also a question of how do we want our society to be shaped in the future.

And increasing health span is going to solve a lot of problems. Increasing lifespan is not going to solve a lot of problems. Rather the opposite.

And I'm not saying that it shouldn't happen, but I'm just saying what we should focus on first is the health span problem. It's the compression of morbidity is really decreasing the duration of these 10, 15, 20 years that so many people live in bad health.

That is the priority for now. If then this is going to be coupled with an additional increase in lifespan, that's fantastic.

But before we have to solve this issue, otherwise it's simply unsustainable. It's not gonna work.

Speaker A: 00:56:52

A hundred percent true. So probably the market needs another, you know, rebranding from anti aging to going to longevity to, I don't know, healthegevity.

Speaker C: 00:57:01

Who knows, it could be that we need a different type of terminology. And I'm happy to see that more and more people are focusing on healthspan than only a few years ago.

This is already a good step and who knows which type of terminology we're going to have in a few years. But let's say the key concept is clear.

So it's focus on healthspan, don't over promise, over deliver, bring real value and try to develop services and products that can address different needs for different type of people. That's the key thing. So you will still have the super rich that want, you know, super luxury approach to longevity. That's fine. What is the problem?

Fantastic. But there's going to be also many, many people that will never be able to afford that that might be interested in living a little better.

Speaker A: 00:57:53

What a positive note to end on. Listen, Dr. Filippo, thank you so much. I have some rapid fire questions that I ask everyone at the end.

What's the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Speaker C: 00:58:06

My younger self? Oh, okay. Who?

The single piece of advice that I would give to myself is maybe go a little gentler because I never had a problem in pushing myself, but I might have had sometimes a problem to be a little kind with myself once in a while.

Speaker A: 00:58:26

I think that would be the advice I'd have to give myself too. Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life.

Speaker C: 00:58:33

Lifting weights.

Speaker A: 00:58:34

If you weren't in longevity science, what career would you have chosen?

Speaker C: 00:58:39

I don't know. Maybe a barman in a Caribbean island.

Speaker A: 00:58:43

That's a great answer.

Speaker C: 00:58:45

Well, you know, it's. It's kind of. I. I think I would always have been because I also am an entrepreneur.

But I think if I would have to say something very different would be something involved with fun. Because I truly think that fun is maybe the underestimated key to living a happier life. And, and maybe a longer one as well.

So I don't know what exactly it would be, but it would be something that has to do with having fun.

Speaker A: 00:59:09

What? Microdose habits, A five minute routine or small daily action yields outsized longevity benefits.

Speaker C: 00:59:17

Certainly meditation, mindfulness, breathing techniques. Everything that has to do with finding inner peace, you know, in a more and more chaotic world, I think is it's worthwhile trying.

Speaker A: 00:59:30

And what's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered? And is there any truth to it?

Speaker C: 00:59:35

Well, again, I think the craziest is really that we are not never gonna die.

I don't know if there's anybody really believing in that, but sometimes I hear people discussing about it and I don't know if they really realize what it would mean in terms of what would happen to our society. So I think the myth is really seeing constantly aging as an enemy.

Aging might turn out to be, from a scientific perspective, much more a compromise than an enemy. First of all, and maybe it's not even so bad as long as you can live with it and function with it. It's something that we should learn to.

Speaker A: 01:00:10

Accept that we have to accept.

Speaker C: 01:00:12

We have to. Yes.

Speaker A: 01:00:14

Listen, Dr. Filiper, thank you so much.

Speaker C: 01:00:16

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Speaker B: 01:00:18

My conversation with Dr. Philippa brings longevity back to real life. Yes.

He has worked in one of the most extraordinary medical environments imaginable with astronauts whose bodies are exposed to conditions most of us will never experience, but the lesson he draws from that world is surprisingly human. It is not that we need to live like biohackers.

It is not that we need to measure everything, test everything, and turn life into a permanent experiment. It is that the basics matter enormously and that they only work if we understand why we are doing them.

One of the strongest ideas in this episode is Dr. Filippo's point that astronauts have a mission. That mission gives meaning to the discipline. For the rest of us, the challenge is different.

We may say health is important, but unless we connect it to identity purpose in the life we actually want to build, the behavior often does not follow. That is why this conversation goes far beyond biomarkers, clinics and protocols. It is really about the gap between knowing and doing.

It is about the difference between wanting more years and knowing what we do with those years. And it is also about shifting longevity away from fear of death and towards what Dr. Filippo calls the joy of life.

His message is also an important correction to the current longevity market. The field may be exciting, but it risks becoming too complicated, too expensive and too focused on promises it cannot yet deliver.

Dr. Filippo's view is much more grounded focus on healthspan do not over promise, build trust, make prevention more accessible and help people start much earlier. And perhaps the most popular powerful takeaway is also the simplest if we want more time, we first have to stop wasting the time we already have.

Thank you for listening to Beyond Longevity.

If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow, share and join me next time as we continue exploring the science, medicine, business and human questions shaping longer, healthier lives.

Speaker A: 01:02:55

SA.