In this special birthday edition of the Optispan Podcast, host Matt reflects on his personal health and longevity journey as he turns 54. He shares the major lifestyle, dietary, and medical interventions that have had the biggest impact on his biological age and overall health over the past decade. Matt opens up about how leaving academia, reducing alcohol consumption, and optimizing hormone therapy have been transformative changes, significantly improving his quality of life, physical health, and stress levels.

A central theme of the episode is the outsized role of resistance training and consistent exercise in preserving body composition and function. Matt details how his five-year journey with strength training has paid off, especially once paired with nutritional optimization and hormonal support. He also explains his cardio routine, which is more casual and centered on enjoyment rather than strict structure, showing that flexibility can still yield health benefits when combined with consistency.

Matt offers a detailed look into his nutritional evolution—from experimenting with keto to now following a high-protein, high-fiber, whole-foods-based approach. He emphasizes practical tips like eliminating added sugars, reading food labels, and embracing healthy substitutions such as keto bread and no-sugar yogurts. His strategy focuses on sustainability over perfection, including occasional use of processed foods like protein bars without letting them dominate his diet.

He also categorizes interventions into tiers based on their perceived impact. High-impact tools include comprehensive diagnostics, tracking biomarkers, and working with a preventative medicine physician. In a secondary tier, he places rapamycin, creatine, and continuous glucose monitoring, which have provided value, though not on the same scale. Lower-tier or neutral-impact interventions include urolithin A, NR, DHEA, boron, and biological age/microbiome tests, which he found either ineffective or not actionable for his personal health.

The episode concludes with a powerful reminder of the role of relationships in long-term health. Matt credits his marriage and close personal connections as the most important contributors to his well-being. Looking forward, he shares plans to experiment with the TRIM protocol (targeting thymic regeneration) and the CLEARLY coronary imaging test. His overarching message is that aging should be proactive, not passive, and that it’s possible to be in better shape at 64 than 54—if you put in the effort and remain curious, consistent, and optimistic.

The journey towards prioritizing one's healthspan can be a circuitous path full of triumphs, setbacks and lessons. Challenges arise and old habits rear their ugly heads. Unforeseen obstacles test our resolve. The road is rarely linear and often leads us to unexpected places.

In this episode, Matt chats with former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer and one of our first Optispan Trailblazers Stuart McKee about Stuart's early forays into drugs, smoking, and alcohol consumption, how he stepped off the train to get his health (and life) in order, and how the healthcare system can shape our attitude to healthspan optimization, for better or for worse. Stuart shares his meticulous approach to finding the right primary care doctor, strategies for weight loss from an obese baseline, and experiences with clomid therapy. They also discuss the influence of mindset and external influence on our healthspan optimization trajectories.

Stuart is currently a Strategic Advisor to the software company Armada, where he collaborates with the executive team to identify opportunities, innovative solutions, and market priorities to drive awareness and growth for the company. He also serves as a substitute teacher for Washington's Northshore School District. He was previously Chief Operating Officer at the artificial intelligence and spatial analytics company Hayden AI and Chief Executive Officer of Optispan Geroscience LLC, a precursor to Optispan as it exists today. Stuart spent 16 years at Microsoft.

Check out the links below for further information and/or reading about some of the things we discussed in this podcast episode. Note that we do not necessarily endorse or agree with the content of these readings, but present them as supplementary material that may deepen your understanding of the topic after you listen to our podcast. This list is in no way exhaustive, but it’s a good start!

Why is it so challenging to find a primary care physician?

In the podcast, Stuart describes his selective search for the right primary care doctor. This blogpost details some of the reasons it may be hard to find a primary care provider: fewer people in the profession, high burnout rates, and challenges beyond the primary care provider's control, among others.

How to practically change your behaviors | Peter Attia & James Clear

This snippet of the Peter Attia Drive podcast features New York Times bestselling author James Clear, who wrote the book "Atomic Habits". Clear suggests focusing on displacing bad habits with better ones, and describes how it can sometimes take removing oneself from old environments to do this ("environment is like a form of gravity...it just pulls on you").

Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake

Ultra-processed foods such as cereals, breads, and packaged snacks—the foods one often finds in the middle aisles at the grocery store—may be to blame for a lot of the American obesity crisis and make up a big part of the "obesogenic environment" Stuart mentions in this episode. This study compared a group of adults receiving ultra-processed foods to a group receiving unprocessed foods. The group on the ultra-processed diet consumed more calories and gained more weight than the group on the unprocessed diet, despite both groups' meals being matched for calories, energy density, macronutrients, sugar, sodium, and fiber.


Effects of Testosterone Treatment in Older Men

This study found that a year-long course of testosterone treatment had moderate benefits on sexual function and mood in men over 65 years of age. The trial found no significant effects on physical function (as measured by six-minute walking distance) or vitality (as assessed by a scale measuring fatigue during daily activities). Testosterone therapy is still relatively poorly-understood and needs further study.