Longevity & healthspan
The Foundation Stack
The 90%. Everything that actually moves the needle, in the order to build it.
For: Everyone, before anything else. If you build one stack, build this one.
Not a pile of pills — a sequence. Measure the numbers that predict your decades, stabilize sleep, train, fix the food pattern, and only then add the two supplements worth the shelf space. Nothing here is exotic, and that's the point.
Every other stack in this guide is a variation on this one. That’s not a marketing line — it’s the structure. The interventions here account for the overwhelming majority of the healthspan you can actually influence, and none of them are secrets. Sleep, food, movement, and a couple of numbers you should know. The reason people skip it isn’t that it’s hard to understand; it’s that it’s boring, and boring doesn’t sell.
The order matters as much as the list. Measure first — ApoB and blood pressure are cheap, symptomless, and decision-changing, and they quietly write your cardiovascular future over decades. Then stabilize sleep, because a bad night contaminates every other signal: hunger, training, mood, even your glucose readings. Then train — an aerobic base is the single best predictor of a long life you can change, and two strength sessions defend the muscle and metabolic health you’ll want in forty years. Then the food pattern, which has the widest reach of anything here.
Only after all of that does a supplement earn a place, and the honest list is short: creatine, always; vitamin D and omega-3 only if a test or your diet actually justifies them. Everything above this — the peptides, the frontier molecules, the clever Rx — is a rounding error until this stack is genuinely in place. Build this one, keep it for years, and you’ve done more than any bottle in the tiers above can promise.
The protocol
The backbone
Does the work. Build these first.- Nutrition Foundations B
A mostly-whole-food pattern with ~25–30 g fiber and enough protein, at an energy intake matched to your goal.
- Sleep Foundations A
7+ hours, a consistent wake time, morning light, a caffeine cutoff, and an apnea screen if you snore or wake unrefreshed.
- Aerobic base Foundations A
Mostly easy Zone 2 volume most weeks, topped with one or two harder sessions.
- Strength Foundations A
Two sessions a week covering push, pull, squat/hinge, and carry — progressive load.
- Protein Foundations B
Around 1.6 g/kg/day if you train, spread across a few meals.
- ApoB / LDL Heart & Metabolic A
Measure it (or LDL-C). Lower and earlier is better; act on it with a clinician if it's high.
- Blood pressure Heart & Metabolic A
Know your number from several proper readings; keep it near 120/80, lifestyle first.
- Alcohol Foundations B
Less is better. Keep it out of any sleep or training experiment.
The lever here is subtraction, not addition.
Worth adding
A real, evidence-backed boost on top of the base.- Creatine Supplements A
3–5 g/day of plain monohydrate, any time, indefinitely.
Build it in this order
- 1 Measure the numbers that predict your decades — ApoB, blood pressure, A1c — so you know where you actually stand.
- 2 Stabilize sleep first. It makes every other change legible instead of noisy.
- 3 Add training: an easy aerobic base plus two strength sessions a week.
- 4 Fix the food pattern and hit a protein target you can repeat.
- 5 Only now add creatine — and vitamin D or omega-3 only if a test or your diet justifies it.
What to skip
- Reaching for supplements before sleep, training, and food are actually handled.
- Chasing frontier compounds while a foundation is still shaky.
- Treating a wearable's nightly score as a reason to change the plan every morning.