Three Not-So-Bad Things on Aging and Longevity
A Weekly Newsletter
There’s no denying it: we are constantly bombarded with bad news. A pandemic, climate change, inflation, war, political discord—the list goes on. Here at the Longevity Project, we understand that bad news can be enough to take years off your life, so we want to do our part (however small) to balance the scales.
At the end of the day, though, we’re realists. Good news is hard to come by, no matter how hard you look. So we’ll aim a little lower and without further ado, we are pleased to share our first weekly newsletter: Three Not-So-Bad Things on Longevity and Aging. Feel free to share with others and send us items you want to see included. With some luck, you will see this newsletter (and some more not so bad news) every Wednesday.
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SEPTEMBER 17, 2025
1. It's a Better ROI than Purdue Pharma.
When McKinsey is not boosting the sales of OxyContin or bribing government officials, it’s doing some pretty fine work around aging.
A new report from the McKinsey Health Institute argues that every dollar invested in healthy aging could yield three dollars in economic and healthcare benefits across the U.S. McKinsey analyzed 18 different interventions to support healthy aging and found that each of the interventions would produce a positive return on investment, sometimes as high as 2400%.
The interventions range from supporting social participation to promoting wellness to investing in science and providing enhanced technology to older adults. All of them produce positive returns – both in terms of impact and economic return – with the highest rated intervention being “orchestrating volunteer-matching programs”, which had that 2400% ROI. That, along with supporting employment reentry and expanding continuing education programs, were part of an overall concept of increasing social participation.
Other high value ideas include investing in in-home medication reminder technology (760% return), improving housing affordability (700%) and, somewhat to our surprise, subsidizing defensive driving courses (1440%). You can read the results here.
Shameless Self Promotion #1.
Did McKinsey get a sneak peek at Healthy to 100? Most likely not, but the book dives deep into how other countries are doing exactly what McKinsey proposes: Italy on volunteering, Japan on work, and South Korea on lifelong learning. It’s not too late to beat McKinsey to the punch. The book comes out on October 7th, but you can preorder it here, and use code HEALTHY20 for 20% off.
2. Superstorm Sandy is Still Bad for Your Health.
When we total the costs of natural disasters, we tend to focus on the short term: deaths in the immediate aftermath and the economic damage caused by a storm, for instance. But it turns out, major events like Hurricane Sandy can have significant health impacts that don’t show up for years afterwards. These knock-on impacts are often highest for older adults who have fewer financial resources, less flexibility in their lives, and are uniquely susceptible to the impact of natural disasters.
A new study by researchers from Weill Cornell has found that older adults living in flooded areas of New Jersey were 5% more likely to develop heart disease than similarly situated individuals in neighboring, but less damaged, areas. The rate of heart disease stayed elevated for up to five years after the storm, according to an analysis of Medicare data from more than 121,000 people over age 65 across New Jersey, New York City, and Connecticut. By comparing flooded ZIP codes with nearby ones that stayed dry, they tracked higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure among those who stayed put after Sandy.
The impact of this finding is significant, given the spread of major storms into areas not previously susceptible to them, and the increase in an older, aging-in-place populations. It suggests, as the authors of the study wrote, that we should contemplate a change from an emergency management framework that focuses almost exclusively on responding to short term health impacts of storms to longer-term health support for impacted populations.
3. Exercise Snacking May Not Be as Fun as the Real Kind, But It's Got It's Upsides.
We’ve long been fans of snacking, both the Dorito’s kind and the exercise kind. The idea of exercise snacking – brief, intermittent periods of exercise at convenient times during the day – isn’t new, but recent research is revealing more specifics of how to maximize your exercise snacking and the benefits that it can deliver.
The new study analyzed 3,293 U.S. adults (average age ~51) who reported no structured exercise, using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2011–2014). Researchers measured short bursts of vigorous activity lasting up to one minute with wrist-worn accelerometers and examined how their frequency and duration related to all-cause mortality. They found that short bursts of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) were associated with meaningful health benefits – around five one-minute sessions per day was correlated with a 44% lower risk of all-cause mortality.
But what counts as VILPA? The underlying opportunity revolves around taking an activity that you are already doing and turning up the intensity dial for one minute. Taking a walk or a bike ride? Pick up the rate for a minute. Take a vigorous climb up a staircase instead of taking the elevator. Or drop and do 20 push-ups if the opportunity presents itself.
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