Jamie Martin

Welcome to Life Time Talks in our series on performance and longevity with MIORA. I’m Jamie Martin and I’m here with Jim LaValle. He is the chief science officer with Life Time, a longtime clinical pharmacist, the co-chair of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, and the Chair of the International Peptide Society. Hi, Jim, it’s good to be back with you.

Jim LaValle

I know it seems like it’s ages.

Jamie Martin

Nice one there. Aging, aging, aging. What have you been up to lately?

Jim LaValle

It’s been a lot. Obviously continuing to do a lot of education around MIORA, our performance health and longevity centers, as well as a pretty cool trip to Europe — I climbed up to the Swiss Alps, collected botanicals, went into the lab and did some research. That was pretty fun. And then I’ve got a couple of books coming out in the next six months. So never a dull moment.

Jamie Martin

Yeah. Never a dull moment in your life, I don’t think. Well, we’re back with our series. We’re going to be talking about all things performance and longevity. And today, as our first episode of the season, we’re grounding ourselves in what performance aging actually is. Because there are so many messages out there right now about how to age well, how to optimize our daily habits and perform at our best. But it can get confusing. There’s a lot of talk about biohacking and stacking and all of these things. What we really want to do is set the groundwork for where we’re at at Life Time with performance aging. So let’s kick off there. How would you define performance aging?

Jim LaValle

Yeah, it’s a great question because I think there’s a lot of confusion out there. But the best way to describe it is where your health span meets your lifespan. Meaning that throughout your life, whatever stage you’re at, you feel well, you move well, you can engage in your daily activities, you’re a participant in family and social networks and community. That’s performance aging. There are tactics to get there, but in the end, that’s really what we’re looking for — how can we feel our best for as long as we can?

Jamie Martin

Yep. And do the things we love, spend time with the people we care about, and not feel like we’re suffering through it — ideally, right? You often say that vitality in aging is a right, something we all deserve.

Jim LaValle

Absolutely. It’s super important to understand that you — as an individual — are the one empowered to claim that right to feeling healthy and vital. But nobody’s going to do it for you. Don’t look for it in a magic injection. Don’t look for it in a magic pill. Yes, there are valuable tools that have their place. But it really all starts with your attitude toward your health and the actions you take consistently, day to day, that build the foundation for a terrific health span.

Jamie Martin

Yep. And you kind of alluded to this already — the tricks, the hacks, all of these things. But what is one of the biggest misconceptions you see people operating under when it comes to optimizing their health as they age?

Jim LaValle

There are a couple of things, I think. One is that it’s not about how many things you do or how hard you do them — it’s understanding what the right amount is. And that changes as you age. Maybe you need bioidentical hormones because you’ve turned 55 or 60, for whatever reason. But it’s really not about optimizing in the abstract. I love the word optimizing, but I really like to think about how do you keep your body in balance as you’re aging — so it’s not overstimulated and not falling behind. That’s the first step.

And then the other thing — and this is starting to come out in social media now — I’ve always stuck to the core tenets of aging. You can’t escape lab values that, if they’re heading in the wrong direction, are going to accelerate your aging. And a lot of times in what I call the biohacking community, there’s a lack of attention to the foundational things. People get drawn to the cool, hip procedures or products and assume that will make up for not addressing the basics. That’s why I’ve always tried to emphasize — whether with individuals or the ten thousand providers a year I train — you can’t miss the foundation. Build that first, then layer all the cool things on top.

Jamie Martin

Yeah. And that leads right into it. We know those foundational elements are lifestyle strategies — exercise, a healthy diet, quality sleep, stress management. What else would you consider foundational, regardless of who you are?

Jim LaValle

Yeah. I mean, proper hydration is important. Getting enough sleep is important. But I also think it’s about how you manage your day. A lot of people today are just under constant sympathetic stress — sympathetic dominant, adrenaline surging, the nervous system in a state of excitation. And that leads to accelerated aging. They’ve pretty much shown that. We’re going to talk about this in a future episode, but when researchers looked at people from ages 60 to 100, the people who had this excitation phenomenon in their nervous system died significantly younger.

Jamie Martin

Okay, define excitation for us. What might that look like on a physiological level?

Jim LaValle

On a physiologic level, it means being in fight-or-flight too much. Maybe your resting heart rate is elevated, your blood pressure is slightly elevated, maybe you’re waking up in the middle of the night thinking about what you have to do the next day. All of those things and more can point to it. You can measure it with things like heart rate variability and other tools, but the reality is that we’re meant to wake up in the morning and wind down at night. Our body goes through a circadian rhythm, and all our hormones are dictated by that rhythm.

With performance aging, a lot of it has to do with restoring circadian balance. What do I use to get a restful sleep? How do I have an appropriate awakening response in the morning so I’m alert and ready to go? And then how does that awakening response gradually drop through the day so I’m prepared for the next night? That influences everything from your sex hormones to your blood sugar, your detox cycles — it all comes together.

So performance aging is about empowering yourself to take control of your body, your operating system. Not everybody may reach for doing ten out of ten things, and that’s okay. Do what you can do.

Jamie Martin

Well, and that actually leads me right into something we hear a lot: I’ve got to make changes, I’ve got to do X, Y, Z, I’m going to stack it all up. But when it really comes down to it, sometimes less is more when it comes to getting started. Why do you think that applies?

Jim LaValle

I think less is more because it develops habits. But the one thing I’d say is it’s important to pick the right habits to start with — ones where you can feel a difference quicker. Because nothing works better to establish the next thing you want to tackle than having the first thing be a win. Like, wow, I feel better. I’m sleeping seven hours. My mornings are better. This is fantastic. What’s the next thing I want to do? Maybe I can start getting a walk in. And then from there, I know resistance training is important for aging. It’s that gradual progression.

Now, I’ll admit — I’m the kind of person that if you tell me one, two, three, X, Y, Z, I’m going to ask where’s Q, P, and four, five, six. I want it all. Give it to me and I’ll do it. But for a lot of people, life is busy. And what happens is we sometimes go, yeah, I know I should do this — and then we put it off. And that’s where the compounding effects really take hold. I know I’m not sleeping enough. I know I’m not hydrating well. I know I’m not exercising. I’m not eating right. Those things compound and take us further from performance aging.

Jamie Martin

Yep, that makes total sense. And along with doing one habit at a time, we’re also seeing a lot of mixing and matching with products, supplements, peptides, all those things. How can doing too much actually be counterproductive or less helpful than you might think — even if you feel like you’re doing all the right things?

Jim LaValle

Yeah. I think it depends on where you’re at. If you’re battling a significant crisis, sometimes people do need more work to overcome an issue — but that’s with guidance, with someone helping you identify step one, then step two once some healing has happened. And then we get to a point where someone feels good. Okay, we’ve moved out of feeling poorly. What are your goals now? Is it a longevity approach? Is it more performance? Do you want to work out harder? Because working out harder means you have to recover better, and that changes what you might need.

But without a doubt, I find a lot of times — especially in today’s social media world — people are doing more things randomly rather than being thoughtful about what the right first step is. I really think you need guidance for that. That’s what’s great about when someone walks into a Life Time. You’ve got healthcare professionals, trainers, yoga, everything you could think of to help you create those steps in an organized way.

Jamie Martin

And it goes back to something we talk about a lot at Life Time: knowing yourself. Understanding where you actually are. That means lab testing, knowing your biomarkers, even things like your active metabolic assessment — knowing your optimal heart rate zones before you jump into a routine. Having that data to make informed, realistic decisions that are actually practical for you.

Jim LaValle

In an ideal world, yes — that’s exactly what everybody would do. Because you want to know where you’re at in order to know where you’re going. I always say: what’s important is where am I at today? What are my labs saying? What is my plan? And then when I enact the plan — did it change things? Am I better? Am I seeing results?

Because so many people try. They really do. And they don’t get where they need to be, and that discourages them. Like, what’s the use? I got up, I exercised, and I don’t feel any different except more sore. And that’s what you want to help people move through — be successful in their program. I’ve always focused on making a positive change in someone in the first 30 days.

Jamie Martin

Yeah.

Jim LaValle

And sometimes that’s not so easy depending on how complicated things are. But I think for most people, with good planning, they start to see results.

Jamie Martin

Right. And when they start to see results, it creates a new baseline — a new starting point from which they keep moving forward. Goals shift over time as your body changes, as you age. How you did things five years ago isn’t how you’re going to do them five years from now.

Jim LaValle

You know, it’s interesting. I’m solidly in my forty-second year in this field — over four decades. And I think the last ten years I’ve really come to appreciate: what actually happens as you age, and how do you stay on top of it? Do I need to worry about looking like a twenty-year-old, or do I need to worry about looking like a really healthy sixty-six-year-old?

I made a decided decision: I want to look like a healthy sixty-six-year-old. I look at my recovery scores, my heart rate variability. I make sure I’m not overtraining, because that’s my weak spot — I love to overtrain, which is not good. I’ve had to discipline myself there. Diet was always easier for me because of my family history of diabetes. But we all have those little niches we need to be aware of. That’s my weak spot, and I pay attention to it.

And it changes decade to decade — whether it’s what your labs show as you’re aging, or catching something early that’s already skewing in the wrong direction so it doesn’t become a bigger problem in the next decade. Because that’s how things happen. Things don’t happen overnight. They happen over time. And they’re influenced by your environment, your social structure, your lifestyle choices around eating, exercise, and sleep. But your health also started in your mother’s womb. From genetics to epigenetics, all of those things matter.

Jamie Martin

Yep. It’s never one thing. And as you all always say, our body is a system of systems. What affects one thing has a trickle-down effect. Nothing happens in isolation.

Jim LaValle

Yeah. That used to be considered folly when I first started writing about it in the early eighties. It was like — your glucose is your pancreas, your pancreas is your glucose, right here, that’s it. But now, through systems biology medicine, we know everything’s connected. You’re one body with networks that develop patterns. People with diabetes tend to develop heart disease, dementia, kidney disease — there’s a pattern. People with autoimmunity find their gut is off too, and they wonder how they got there. It’s all connected.

And I’ll say — I wake up every morning loving what I’m doing, finding all this research and continuing to push it forward. And I just think: can I get another fifty years of this? Because it’s that much fun.

Jamie Martin

Yeah. Keep going. Let’s keep going. I want to talk for a second about something we touched on — lifestyle habits, environment, social connection, nutrition, activity, all of these things. But what role do you think more intangible things play — things people might describe as ethereal, like a sense of meaning, purpose, connection? What role does that play in performance aging?

Jim LaValle

Well, if you look at the Blue Zones, the one commonality across all of them was a continued sense of meaning, purpose, and connection to the community as people aged. They all had different diets, which I think is interesting. Now, granted — if you wanted to pick a diet out of a hat, a Mediterranean diet is a pretty healthy baseline, especially when you’re actually living in the Mediterranean, where you walk a lot more and the pace of life is slower. But you still have to skew it based on individual needs.

That said, the most important aspect is a sense of belonging. A sense of commitment. A sense of: I still have worth, there’s a reason I’m getting up today. And I think we’ve lost that. I really have. I know it’s important that we keep talking about it. There are some interesting communities and senior centers starting to drive that sense of community again. There’s a lot more community-based living versus what they used to look like. I think we’re getting there. I hope we are.

Jamie Martin

So how do we bring more joy and love and passion into all of this? Because those things light us up — and I’d hope that helps dial down some of that fight-or-flight and excitation we talked about.

Jim LaValle

Without a doubt. When you’re able to genuinely grab a sense of joy, a sense of commitment to things, responsibility to others, service — all of that brings together what I’d call a positive neural network firing. It’s the thought of: I’m not under duress, I’m not alone, I do have people who love me and who I love, I do feel part of a community, I am contributing. All of that is super important.

And I don’t consider that ethereal — I consider it foundational. Over my lifetime, I’ve had to learn how to be more tolerant, more accepting, more baseline empathetic. Because you don’t know what the person who’s angry in the grocery store in front of you has been through — their day, their year, their life. Not that you want to endorse it, but you should have that empathy and understanding. It’s super important.

Jamie Martin

It comes down to common humanity. We’re all just trying to do our best, most of the time. So I’m going to switch gears for just a second, because we’re hearing a ton right now about peptides. We’re going to do a whole deep dive into the evolution of peptides in a future episode. But we do want to touch on this: as we think about habits and the things we layer on top of foundational practices, we don’t want to conflate supplements and peptides as the same thing. Why shouldn’t we treat peptides as foundational nutrients?

Jim LaValle

That’s a great question because there are different categories. There are peptides in food. There are peptides that get processed from food and become very concentrated — that’s one category. Then there are peptides that fall more into the medication category. Insulin is a peptide. Thymosin Alpha-1 is a peptide. Vyleesi for women is a peptide. PT-141 is a peptide.

So you have essential nutrients — amino acids, vitamins, minerals — those things. Then you have nutraceuticals, things like CoQ10 or spermidine, nutrients derived from foods or cofactors for the way your body works. And then you have peptides, which are made by your body. They’ve been around a long time, and more are coming into the market — GLP-1s being the most popular right now. But you’ll see more and more because your body recognizes them as signals it’s already familiar with. They’re not just a drug suppressing something. Peptides are trying to send a counter measuring signal — working to stop a bad switch that got turned on, or reactivate something that got suppressed.

As you age, for example, you don’t release growth hormone the way you used to, even though you have plenty of it in your pituitary. Peptides can help with that. And if you’re under a lot of stress, you could be 30 years old and that process is already being switched off. So understanding the different classes of peptides and where they apply is key.

Jamie Martin

Okay, we’re going to deep dive on that in an upcoming episode — so tune in for that. But thinking about all of these options, which can sometimes feel paralyzing — how do we make healthy aging strategies actually fit into our lives? We don’t want it to be all-or-nothing or obsessive. How do we make it work?

Jim LaValle

Well, the first thing you need to do to build that plan is get an annual blood test — at a minimum. I personally prefer people doing them twice a year because a lot can happen in six months. I like people to look at patterns: what’s brewing in your chemistry, and if you already have something, is it getting better with the actions you’re taking?

Part of figuring out what habits to start with has to do with what matters most to you right now. If someone already sleeps well, we don’t need to touch that. Are they terrible at drinking water? Well, that’s not actually that hard to change — if you put water in a cup or container right next to you, you tend to drink it.

It gets more difficult if you’re under a stressful life — maybe you’re a single parent, caring for a child with special needs, or you’re in that sandwich generation caring for aging parents while still raising kids at home. I experienced that myself. So how do you carve out time for yourself? What I try to do with people is this: a lot of times, programs ask you to take an hour. And people say, I don’t have an hour. Okay — what time do you have? Do you have five minutes? Ten? Where can we start to make a difference? Let’s pick that window and agree to it. And then as you start to feel the difference, people naturally start making more time for themselves.

I think the time piece is the most important. Obviously making healthier food choices matters — and it’s not always easy, given that our food supply doesn’t have the nutrient density it used to, with hybridization and pesticide concerns and all of that. But you can do a lot with your diet when you get intentional. The number one thing I see holding people back, though, is time management.

Jamie Martin

Yeah. How do you find the time, block it off, whatever the strategy is for you? So okay — we’re going to be diving into a lot of topics this coming season. We’re getting into how different systems are affected — the brain, different organs. We’ll talk peptides, more about GLP-1s. Is there any particular topic you’re especially excited about?

Jim LaValle

I mean, all of it is exciting. When we sat down and planned this season, we were on fire. But I think going deeper into the nervous system as a vital sign is something I’m really excited about. People are wearing wearables constantly now, and they’re not really understanding what the data means or how important it is. It’s incredibly important to understand your vital signs — blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, HRV, heart rate recovery. I’m excited about that because I think we have a lot of people wearing a lot of stuff and not necessarily knowing what to do with it or what it means.

Jamie Martin

Right, how to make sense of all of it. All right — so we’re going to deep dive into that. I’m excited for this season. If people want to learn more about MIORA, they can visit miora.lifetime.life. Podcasts are at experiencelife.life. And yeah, let’s go — we’ve got a lot to talk about. Thanks, Jim.