Reading list
Resources
Books, papers, and life-expectancy calculators worth your time.
Building a longevity practice starts with understanding the fundamentals. These resources span rigorous science, practical habits, and tools for estimating your healthspan.
Life expectancy calculators
Other calculators in this space take different approaches — lifestyle questionnaires, clinical blood markers, cardiovascular risk, or population statistics. They are useful benchmarks when comparing models and UX, even when their assumptions differ from ours. See our calculator comparison page for side-by-side estimates using the same profile inputs.
- Project Big Life – Life Expectancy Calculator — probably the closest competitor to our concept: life expectancy, “health age”, modifiable factors, and even an air-pollution component
- Living to 100 — a detailed 40-question longevity quiz covering family history, lifestyle, and health behaviours, with personalised feedback
- Blue Zones True Vitality Test — a fast, polished consumer experience estimating both life expectancy and years likely to remain healthy, with recommendations
- Healthy Life Expectancy Calculator, University of Connecticut — academic-style calculator combining demographics, education/income, fitness, health, diet, and lifestyle inputs
- Sharecare RealAge — a well-known biological-age assessment based on health habits, lifestyle, family history, and conditions; often accessed via employers or insurers
- PhenoAge Calculator by Andrew Steele — a useful benchmark for a more clinical “biological age” experience, calculated from routine blood-test data rather than lifestyle questions
- Australian Heart Foundation Heart Age Calculator — excellent reference for showing a single, understandable age metric tied to cardiovascular risk factors and clear next actions
- NHS Heart Age Calculator — another strong government-backed health-age model; it uses health inputs such as height, weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol, then gives improvement guidance
- Stats NZ “How long will I live?” — a useful New Zealand-specific baseline calculator using historical data and national population projections
- UK Office for National Statistics Life Expectancy Calculator — clean benchmark for population life expectancy and likelihood of reaching 100, but deliberately does not personalise for lifestyle or health
Foundational reads
- Outlive by Peter Attia: a practical framework for thinking about healthspan across exercise, nutrition, sleep, and emotional health
- Lifespan by David Sinclair: an accessible introduction to the biology of aging
- Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker: essential reading on sleep’s role in every system of the body
Habits over hacks
The longevity space is full of promising but unproven interventions. Focus first on the interventions with the strongest evidence: not smoking, regular movement, sufficient sleep, social connection, and a diet rich in whole foods.
Everything else is optimization on top of a solid foundation.
Podcasts and long-form explainers
- Huberman Lab publishes long-form discussions about sleep, fitness, and neuroscience. Episodes vary in evidential strength, so follow the linked papers and distinguish established guidance from emerging hypotheses.
- Peter Attia publishes detailed material on longevity medicine, exercise, and metabolic health. It is a useful source of questions and frameworks, but it should not substitute for advice from your own clinician.
These resources are included because they expose readers to different models and source material, not because Longtime endorses every recommendation they make.