Nobody ever tells me they want to live to 110.
We once ran in-depth interviews with our NoordCode customers. Almost nobody said they wanted to live longer. They wanted to keep doing what they do today, for as long as possible, and to be the same person in five years, and in fifteen.
The word I use for that is peakspan.
Peakspan is the part of your life when you are still at or near your best. Lifespan counts your years. Healthspan counts the years you stay free of serious disease. Peakspan sits inside healthspan. You can be free of disease and still not be able to do what you love.
Where the word comes from
I didn't invent it. It comes from Alex Zhavoronkov and his colleagues. They define it strictly: the ages at which you keep at least 90% of your peak function in a specific physical or cognitive system.
Most systems reach their maximum in early adulthood. So many of us spend most of our adult lives healthy, but already past our peak.
I use the word more broadly, because most people don't want to be athletes. To me it's your active lifespan: how long you can keep doing what you do now.
My parents show the difference better than any definition. Both reached ninety, and both had strong genes. My father lived less healthily, and in the last decade of his life he barely moved from his chair. He passed away last year.
My mother still lives on her own and doesn't take any medicine. In front of the television she does senior weightlifting, with the little weights. Every day she needs to walk or bike, and she complains when she can't go out.
She's a nice example of how I'd love to grow old.
Why I care about this
In 1999 I took an antimalarial drug before a trip to Cameroon. I came back with panic attacks and a constant pressure in my head, and for years I could work only about two hours a day. In 2008 a psychiatrist told me to learn to live with it.
So I started testing everything on myself, and after several years I had more in the tank than I'd had before Cameroon. Getting back to normal stopped being the question. Now I wanted to know how long I could keep feeling like this.
I'm 62 now and I go to the gym five times a week, though what I'm really training for is to keep hiking with my wife and out-driving my friends on the golf course.
Not everything declines
Fluid intelligence, like processing speed and working memory, peaks early. Crystallised intelligence, everything you've learnt, keeps rising into your forties and fifties. So mid-life brings some gains as well as losses.
A lot of the physical decline can also be slowed. I can't promise you a number, and I'm wary of anyone who does. We all decline, but you have more say in the speed than most people think.
Where to start
I work with five dials: sleep, nutrition, movement, mind and connection. To start, you only need these three steps:
Write down what you want to keep doing. Be specific. "Hike 15 kilometres at 70" beats "be healthy".
Score the five dials from one to ten. Your lowest score is where you start.
Change one small thing for a week. Notice what happens, then keep it or drop it.
If this gives you nothing but better sleep, that's fine.
The full method is in my book, More Good Years. Find out more.
Eduard de Wilde has tracked and tested his own biology since 2008. He founded NoordCode and Livehelfi, co-founded the Syntony Institute, and wrote More Good Years. He isn't a doctor, and he sells some of the products discussed in this field. This article is for information and isn't medical advice.
