The board
5 levels, 1 map
3 progressive levels, the Bridge of Prevention running across all of them, and a final move. It is the same shape as the map in the book. Open any level to see what is inside it.
Catch it early, and everything else has time to work
Don’t die of something stupid — from something preventable, or from years of choices you already knew about. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes and dementia rarely arrive loudly; by the time you can feel them, the easy years are behind you. Prevention needs no prescription, only attention and the nerve to look before anything hurts. It is the one level that works for everybody today, and it is what keeps you in the game long enough for everything else on this map to reach you.
Open any part of this level to see what is in it.
01Measure
10 things
You cannot act on something you have never looked at. Bloods, imaging, fitness and the eye — a picture of where your body actually is, rather than how it feels.
- Biomarkers of ageing
- Deep blood panels
- MRI
- CT
- DEXA
- VO2 max
- Strength testing
- Retina scan
- AI diagnostics
- Early detection
Biological age and the epigenetic clocks
2 watches on a table. One counts birthdays and cannot be argued with. The other counts wear, and it can be running fast or slow.
You have a 53% chance of having something significant.
He said that to my face, in San Diego, with my own results in front of him. It is the figure from their own clinic — of the people who come in for a full workup feeling perfectly well, more than half turn out to be carrying something they know nothing about. Screening everybody is a real argument among doctors, and I am not settling it here. It is why I go and get scanned.
Show another quote — Joanna Bensz
This was my first question when I started the Longevity Clinic. What is a healthy human, and what are the parameters we should take for a healthy person?
That question is harder than it sounds, and it is the reason this level exists. Ordinary medicine has a very precise definition of disease and almost none of health, so it can tell you what is wrong and not how you are doing. Joanna had to start a clinic to go looking for the answer.
02Genomics & microbiome
4 things
What you inherited, and what lives in you. Both move your odds, both are readable now, and neither is a verdict — they tell you where to aim.
- Whole-genome sequencing
- Genetic risk analysis
- Microbiome testing
- Risk, not just disease
The gut microbiome
A garden you did not plant and cannot see, which feeds you back. While it is varied it looks after the wall between your gut and your blood. When it thins, that wall leaks a little, and the immune system spends its life mildly annoyed.
Also one of the 12 hallmarks of ageing — 12 · Dysbiosis03Mind & body checks
5 things
Memory, mood, hormones, skin, heart. The checks people put off precisely because nothing hurts yet.
- Cognitive tests
- Psychological tests
- Hormonal panels
- Skin checks
- Heart checks
Chronic inflammation
A fire that never quite goes out. You do not feel it day to day, which is exactly why it does so much damage over decades.
Also one of the 12 hallmarks of ageing — 11 · Chronic inflammation04Act early
4 things
A test you do nothing with is a receipt. A steady cadence, a team who know your history, and treating a risk while it is still only a risk.
- Regular checkups on a set cadence
- An experienced team at a longevity clinic
- Act on the recommendations you are given
- Treat the risk before it becomes the disease