This article is adapted from a live health advisory session delivered to CI Mavericks members by Dr. Ted Harrison, a board-certified emergency medicine and regenerative medicine physician. This is Part 1, covering the evidence-based fundamentals. Part 2 will cover experimental and frontier therapies including the TRIMAX trial, Yamanaka factors, and engineered stem cells.
There's no point building a life you're proud of if your body gives out before you get to live it. That's not philosophy — it's math. And it's the reason CI Mavericks includes health advisory alongside strategic advisory. Because the people we work with aren't just building businesses and portfolios. They're building lives that need to last.
Dr. Ted Harrison put it simply in a recent session with our members: "It doesn't make any sense to work this hard if you're not around to enjoy the results."
What followed was a masterclass in evidence-based longevity — no hype, no miracle cures, just the science that works and the protocol to implement it. Here's what he laid out.
Aging Isn't Wear and Tear — It's a Program
The first thing Dr. Harrison corrected is the assumption that aging is just things breaking down over time. It's not. Aging is an evolutionary adaptation — a program written into your DNA. The World Health Organization has classified it as a disease.
The logic is ruthless: your genes need to be transferred from generation to generation for natural selection to work. Once you're past reproductive age, your body becomes — from a genetic perspective — a resource consumer competing with the next generation that already carries your genes. So your DNA is programmed to shut you down.
The mechanism is telomeres — the protective caps on the ends of your chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter. After roughly 50 divisions, the cell either self-destructs and recycles, or it becomes what Dr. Harrison calls a "zombie cell" — alive but non-functional, secreting proteins that convert neighboring cells into zombies as well. These accumulate over time, driving dysfunction across every system.
Aging, then, isn't one disease. It's a meta-disease — a disease of diseases — encompassing cardiovascular decline, cognitive deterioration, metabolic breakdown, immune dysfunction, and more. All ultimately traceable back to your DNA.
Two Strategies: Prevent the Break or Fix It After
Dr. Harrison framed the anti-aging approach around two strategies: prevent things from breaking, or fix them after they break. The Life Extension Foundation's "House of Wellness" model illustrates this as a building. At the foundation: diet, exercise, and sleep. On the first floor: primary care optimization, hormone balancing, and targeted supplementation.
The critical point: you cannot build the first floor without the foundation. Spending money on supplements and hormones while eating poorly, not exercising, and sleeping badly is wasting both time and money.
The Foundation: Diet, Exercise, and Sleep
Diet — Stop Eating Sugar
The single most impactful dietary change is eliminating carbohydrates. Not reducing — eliminating. Dr. Harrison was direct: carbs are killers.
The data supports this aggressively. The threshold for "safe" fasting blood sugar has dropped from 140 in the 1980s, to 100 in the 2000s, to 85 today. People with blood sugars that most doctors would call "normal" — under 100 — are still at significant risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disease.
The simplest implementation is what Dr. Harrison calls the "off-white diet": don't eat anything white. No bread, no potatoes, no rice, no pasta. The exception is cauliflower. Starch is just sugar molecules in chains — when you eat potatoes, you're eating sugar.
Moderate fats are essential, not harmful. The data is clear: polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats reduce mortality risk, while trans fats increase it dramatically. Saturated fats are roughly neutral. Protein intake should be moderate for younger adults and increased for older adults, as the body becomes less efficient at metabolizing it with age.
On alcohol: one drink per day doesn't move the needle significantly on cardiovascular or hypertension risk. Beyond that, risk rises exponentially. There is no completely safe amount, but the first seven drinks per week appear to carry minimal additional risk.
Exercise — The Minimum Effective Dose
Exercise benefits extend far beyond visible fitness. Dr. Harrison cited over 20 documented systemic benefits — many of them invisible — including cardiovascular, neurological, metabolic, and immune function improvements.
The consequences of not exercising are stark. Studies tracking exercisers versus non-exercisers from their teens showed that by age 70, non-exercisers had crossed the disability threshold — essentially wheelchair-bound — while exercisers remained functional into their 90s.
For older adults specifically, a Danish study of people over 65 found that only heavy resistance training — not moderate exercise — maintained muscle mass over a four-year follow-up period. Moderate exercise was essentially no better than no exercise for preserving lean muscle in the elderly.
Dr. Harrison's practical advice for compliance: schedule it like a job. Don't exercise when you have time — make time for exercise. After about six weeks, it becomes habit.
Sleep — The 7-Hour Sweet Spot
Sleep affects cognition, mental health, dementia risk, cardiovascular disease, and cancer risk. The data converges on a sweet spot of 7 to 8 hours per night. Less than that increases risk across every category. But so does more — oversleeping is associated with increased dementia risk and worse cognitive function.
Regularity matters as much as duration. Studies measuring sleep regularity index found that irregular sleep patterns increased all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease risk, and cancer risk — even when total sleep duration was adequate.
Level One: Optimization and Supplementation
Once the foundation is solid, Dr. Harrison outlined three Level One interventions with strong clinical evidence.
Hormone Balancing
Every major hormone peaks around age 30 and then declines. Testosterone in men drops roughly half a percent per year after 30. Estrogen in women holds steady until menopause (around 50), which is why women don't experience the same cardiovascular risk as men until later in life.
Testosterone isn't just about libido — it affects skin, liver, bone marrow, muscle, and brain function. Without it, maintaining muscle mass as you age becomes nearly impossible.
The critical caveat: hormone replacement must use bioidentical human hormones. Synthetic estrogens and horse-derived estrogens (used in many pharmaceutical products because human hormones aren't patentable) have been shown to cause cancer. Human bioidentical hormones do not carry this risk.
Metformin — The Anti-Aging Drug Hiding in Plain Sight
Metformin has been used as a diabetes drug for decades. It's cheap, generic, and generally side-effect free at anti-aging doses. Its mechanism of action extends far beyond blood sugar control — it affects virtually every system in the body.
The key mechanism for anti-aging purposes is its effect on mTOR, a protein that determines whether your body directs energy toward growth or toward maintenance and repair. After age 30, you don't need much growth — you need repair. But the standard Western diet, with its caloric abundance, pushes mTOR toward growth. Metformin pushes it back toward maintenance.
Published research shows that Metformin combined with testosterone significantly reduces cardiovascular disease in both men and women. The combination is what Dr. Harrison called "a winning team" for longevity.
NAD — The Cellular Energy Signal
NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is a naturally occurring molecule related to the B vitamins. It functions as a signaling molecule involved in hundreds of key reactions throughout the body, particularly energy metabolism. Like hormones, NAD levels decline with age, and supplementation helps maintain those reactions. NAD is available over the counter as a non-prescription supplement in two forms (NMN and NR).
The Protocol: What Dr. Harrison Actually Recommends
Level One: Get hormone levels tested (testosterone and/or estrogen). Work with your physician to determine if replacement is needed — bioidentical human hormones only. Metformin at 500–1,000 mg per day (physician supervised). NAD at 300–500 mg, twice daily.
Dr. Harrison emphasized that nothing in this protocol is expensive or exotic. It requires commitment and consistency, not wealth.
Coming in Part 2: The Frontier
The next session will cover the experimental edge of anti-aging science — including the TRIMAX trial (the first study to demonstrate actual reversal of human aging), Yamanaka factors (Nobel Prize-winning proteins that reprogram cellular aging at the DNA level), and Chinese research on genetically engineered stem cells that reversed aging in primate organs. Primate trials for Yamanaka factors began in late 2025, with human trials anticipated by 2027.
Stay tuned.
Recommended Reading: Super Agers by Eric Topol · Lifespan by David Sinclair · The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung · The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins