You’ve seen that guy around the deer camp. The one who in one breath tells you about his great-grandkids, and the next tells you about the elk hunt he just finished in the mountains of Wyoming. He’s hunting game at an age when a lot of people can’t even chew game. And you think to yourself, “I hope I’m like him at that age.”
Chances are your super-senior hunting buddy isn’t superhuman. He’s probably a regular guy who, when he was your age, started setting himself up for a lifetime in the outdoors by embracing the pillars of longevity.
Longevity doesn’t just mean living longer. It’s about staying healthy and maintaining your fitness so you can continue to do the things you love even as you age. For hunters, that means maintaining the strength, mobility and endurance required to keep pursuing game into your later years. We spoke to Dr. Gregory Alfred to discover the 5 pillars of longevity that could help keep you hunting well into your 70s and beyond.
Meet the Expert: Dr. Gregory Alfred
As Director of The Biohack Lab, Dr. Gregory Alfred is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician with over 18 years of experience and a deep passion for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, longevity, and personalized medicine. He completed his training at NYU-Mount Sinai and USC, including specialized work at the Catalina Island Hyperbaric Chamber.
The Pillars Of Longevity
Longevity has become a big buzzword over the past couple of years, led by biohacking tech CEOs espousing expensive, insane-sounding treatments. But the foundations of longevity are mostly things you can do at home.
“It’s tempting for people to want to get in hyperbaric chambers, do stem cells, red light panels, et cetera,” says Dr. Gregory Alfred, medical director at The Biohack Lab in Miami. “But before they do that, they need to address the foundation.”
Dr. Alfred broke longevity down into five basic pillars:
- Diet
- Exercise
- Sleep
- Supplements and Molecules
- Social Connections.
Here's his top tips on how to maximize each one.
Pillar 1: Diet
“I definitely avoid the dogmatic approach to diet,” he says. “It’s just protein, calorie balance and avoiding processed foods, too much alcohol and refined sugar. Once you’ve got those basics, fill in the diet you like.”
He says the Mediterranean Diet, one that’s mostly plant-based with emphasis on fish, beans, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, is the best for longevity. He also stressed the importance of getting enough Omega-3 fatty acids. And do you know what’s especially high in omega-3s? Venison, elk and fatty fish like salmon. So, your freezer is already a good first step.
Pillar 2: Exercise
Hiking through mountains and carrying your kills is certainly a workout, but it’s not necessarily enough to keep you hunting into your 70s.
“Figure out what you want to do in the last decade of your life and work backward,” Dr. Alfred suggests, designing functional workouts aimed at those goals.
Hunting, for example, should include lower-body work like lunges, squats and walking on an incline with a weighted vest. It should also include core and stability work so your shots still go straight.
“Once you’ve got (the basics), you can start saying, OK, let’s train to get your VO2 Max up, or work on mobility, let’s work on posterior chain,” he says. “But put in the time in a way you like, because nothing’s going to stick if you hate it. The key is just being active every day.”
Pillar 3: Sleep
The old, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” ethos has gone out of fashion the more we learn about sleep. And staying up until 2 a.m. telling hunting stories when you’ve got to be in a blind before sunrise is a good way to ensure you’re not hunting for life.
“The biggest thing is sleep hygiene,” he says. “What are you doing around your sleep to set yourself up for good sleep? There’s this 3-2-1 rule: No food for three hours, no stress-related things for two hours, no screens for the last hour.”
Beyond 3-2-1, Dr. Alfred says there are a lot of low-tech, cool things people can do that cost no money and set themselves up for good sleep.
- Take a hot shower right before bed. Temperature drop is one of the body’s biggest signals to get into deep sleep.
- Make sure the bed is just for sleeping. No TV, no phones, not even books.
- Be consistent. Try and sleep the same number of hours every night. “Making up” for lost sleep just makes the problem worse, jet-lagging your body so it never establishes a circadian rhythm.
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Pillar 4: Vitamins, Minerals And Molecules
The internet is flooded with advice on supplements, peptides, hormones and other molecules you can put in your body to live longer. Dr. Alfred agrees that many of them are beneficial, but most people don’t need that much to increase their health span.
The basics everyone can benefit from include a multivitamin with methylated B vitamins; omega-3 fatty acids, creatine and peptides, with a caveat.
“They’ve gotten this connotation of a fad, but it’s the same as talking about protein or hormones or cholesterol,” Dr. Alfred says. “There’s some cool ones out there, but it’s definitely more niche. They’re more like pruning the leaves of the tree.”
While he said there’s no hard-and-fast guideline for caffeine, understanding how you metabolize it is the first step.
“There are different ways people metabolize coffee. If you’re a slow metabolizer, that means 12 hours for half that caffeine to be out of your system,” he says. “People say they can have coffee and still fall asleep, but when I dig into their sleep, they’re not getting the deep sleep, the restorative sleep.”
He adds that alcohol in moderation is OK, too.
“People used to make the red wine (is healthy) argument, but I think there’s no real evidence for that,” he says. “But you can certainly make an argument for what it does for your social connections. It’s when you’re self-medicating—that’s when you have to be more aware.”
Pillar 5: Social Connections and Mental Health
While any outdoorsman with a solid hunting crew isn’t lacking for social connections, Dr. Alfred said friendly relationships are only half the equation when it comes to mental health.
“If all you’ve done is the nutrition, the exercise, the sleep, but you haven’t addressed this elephant in your emotional health room … a lot of this stuff can manifest as disease,” he says. “I think everyone would benefit from tuning in with themselves more and being honest. So, find somebody that you’re fully authentic with, who you have full trust in, who you can talk to. That could be a therapist, your friend, it could be your lover, whatever.”
And while Dr. Alfred certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from visiting the Biohack Lab, he stresses that these foundations are essential before moving on to any high-tech longevity treatments.
“You can sprinkle in all the other things that get a lot of attention, that people spend thousands of dollars on. But I think that’s the leaves on the tree,” he says. “You have to deal with the soil, the fertilizer and the health of the roots before you start to mess with some of these other things.”
