Latest news with #MakeIt
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Health
- Time of India
Want to live longer? Forget expensive experiments; longevity doctor reveals simple secrets to a healthier, happier life
The Longevity Equation: Sweat, Sleep, Salad—and Social Connection Why Social Fitness May Be the Most Underrated Key to a Longer Life You Might Also Like: Stanford longevity expert reverses his age by 10 years with one radical lifestyle shift It's Not About Perfection The Real Secret? Consistency Over Complexity In a world obsessed with stories of Bryan Johnson's biohacking with high-tech health fixes, Dr. Avinish Reddy is bringing longevity back to the basics. His message is refreshingly clear: living a long, healthy life doesn't have to be complicated. After years of studying under world-renowned longevity expert Dr. Peter Attia and launching his own practice, Elevated Medical, in July 2024, Dr. Reddy has distilled the science of longevity into an accessible, holistic routine—one he practices to a report from CNBC Make It, with a framework that spans medicine, exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle, Dr. Reddy's philosophy is grounded in structure, consistency, and self-awareness rather than fads or extreme measures. His methods are not just for patients—they are part of his own lived the heart of Dr. Reddy's approach is movement. He splits his weekly workouts evenly between strength and cardiovascular training, not just for muscle or aesthetics but to boost VO₂ Max—an often-overlooked metric linked to better health span and life span. His cardio routine includes both low-intensity endurance and high-intensity intervals, a strategy shown to be deeply effective for heart and brain fitness is only one piece. Reddy also prioritizes brain health through a regimen of omega-3s and B vitamins, while engaging in mentally stimulating activities like racket sports. Table tennis, pickleball, and tennis aren't just hobbies—they're preventive tools in his longevity arsenal. Eventually, he plans to learn a language or an instrument, tapping into deeper neuroplastic many obsess over diet and sleep trackers, Reddy emphasizes something most wellness plans overlook: social connection. Citing the long-running Harvard study on happiness, he underscores that strong relationships—whether daily calls to his parents or reconnecting with old friends—are just as critical to longevity as exercise and also encourages community-based activities, like joining a local sports league, as a way to merge social bonding with physical activity. His patients, especially older ones, often seek recovery not to hit the gym again but to return to the social joys of golf groups or pickleball teams. That, he says, is the real it comes to food, Reddy believes less in chasing macros and more in correcting personal nutritional blind spots. For him, it's all about vegetables—making sure they're on his plate at every meal. He even uses a continuous glucose monitor annually to identify hidden dietary culprits that might spike his blood perhaps most surprising for a longevity doctor, his favorite book isn't about health—it's Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. It's a manifesto for living fully, not just longer. 'Longevity shouldn't come at the cost of living,' Reddy reflects. 'What's the point of making it to 100 if you never made the memories?'Dr. Reddy's life is a masterclass in sustainable living—not by perfection, but by thoughtful, balanced habits. His philosophy pushes back against extreme health culture. It's not about chasing the next miracle cure; it's about doing the basics well, every single anyone overwhelmed by the noise of the wellness industry, his message is a breath of fresh air: longevity isn't about making things harder—it's about living smarter.
CNBC
5 hours ago
- Health
- CNBC
Living a long, healthy life 'doesn't have to be that complicated,' longevity doctor says: These are his daily habits
Since 2022, Dr. Avinish Reddy has been studying longevity and teaching his patients how to structure their daily lives to stay in the best possible health. He also worked with world-renowned physician and researcher of longevity medicine Dr. Peter Attia for a little over a year before setting out on his own. In July 2024, Reddy launched his medical practice, Elevated Medical, where he focuses on "making sure my patients feel supported and tracking everything that I feel needs to be tracked daily," he tells CNBC Make It. Reddy thinks about his practice in four buckets: As a longevity doctor, Reddy makes it a point to incorporate the habits he suggests to patients into his own life — here's Make It: What are some of the practices you do to keep your own body healthy? I like to break down exercise into two simple buckets: 50% strength training, 50% cardiovascular training. For me, that's three days lifting weights in the gym, three days of cardiovascular training on a bike or a treadmill or whatever I want. I have this separate goal with cardiovascular training of increasing my VO2 Max, because studies show that it directly correlates with longevity and living a longer and better life. So, the three days of cardiovascular training, two of them are generally low-intensity, something from 45 minutes to an hour. And the third one, this is the one that increases your VO2 Max, is like three minutes of high-intensity cardiovascular exercise on, three minutes off. I try to do four or five cycles of that. What are some things you do for your brain and for your mental health? Brain health is definitely something that I prioritize a lot because I just feel like it's so scary to think about dementia and not being able to think the way that we think. There's a couple supplements I'd recommend, omega-3 supplementation, as well as B vitamins like B12, B9 and B6. The thing that's very overlooked, which I'll always say, is exercise. Regular exercise reduces the risk of dementia. And then there's specific activities that lower your risk for Parkinson's and dementia as well, including racket sports like table tennis and pickleball. Because they use hand-eye coordination. I play ping pong, pickleball and tennis. I have a two year old son, so I don't have that much time. But down the road, I'm planning on learning to play an instrument, or learning a language. I think that definitely uses a different part of the brain, so definitely helps reduce your risk of dementia as well. What's your social fitness like, and how do you keep up with it? As a longevity doctor, patients are always trying to optimize every aspect, whether it's work, exercise, diet or sleep. And I think social connection ends up falling to the bottom of the list. There's this Harvard study that's been going on for years, where they followed all these men over generations, and the ones that proved that they were the happiest and lived the longest had the strongest connections. I always think about that. In general, for me, it's making sure that I talk to my parents like every day. I don't live next to my parents anymore. I also keep in contact with my college roommates and friends. I think it's important to keep in contact with friends from college. But on top of that like joining a basketball league, some sort of community that keeps you active as well builds social connection. I see patients that are older and if they get hurt, their first reason for wanting to get back exercising is because they're like, "I want to go back and see my golf friends" or "I want to go join my pickleball league again, to see my friends." It just makes you realize that exercise doesn't have to be that complicated, and longevity doesn't have to be that complicated. What's your daily diet like, and what are some of the foods you eat for longevity specifically? In the past few years, I think people have been very focused on protein. And I think protein is definitely important, but for me it's pretty easy to get enough protein. So personally my focus is on getting vegetables. That's trying to make sure I eat a salad for lunch and throwing extra vegetables on my plate for dinner. Because that's probably where I'm lacking. People always focus on their strengths, like, "Oh, I lift this much weight. I'm going to lift more." But when you think about health, to focus on the things that you're worse at, or the things that you don't focus on, that's where you're going to see the biggest bang for your buck. With nutrition, it's just realizing where you're weak and trying to build that out. So for me, it's making sure I get enough vegetables. And I use a continuous glucose monitor once every year for a couple of weeks, just so that I can just see if there are any foods that are causing my blood sugar to spike and things. This is just a fun question. What are you currently reading? People are always surprised when I say this, but the book that I love is a book called "Die With Zero" by Bill Perkins. I've read it more than once. It's really like the books about optimizing your life and making the most of your time and experiences and memories. It's probably surprising for a longevity doctor to be thinking, "Oh, you want to make the most memories." But I think for me, it's not about trying to live the longest life. Of course, I want to live long, but I think it's important that we create memories and have great experiences. And that's why I try not to be too obsessive about any one thing. If you're trying to live perfectly, you're not going to be able to have all the experiences that you want. So I think the goal is to balance both and just be very consistent with sleep, exercise, diet and stuff when you're at home. To sum up, here's what Reddy does every day for a long, healthy and happy life: ,
CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Couple bought a homestead for $390,000, spent $13,000 on DIY renovations: Their No. 1 takeaway after a year on the land
In 2023, Sophie Hilaire Goldie, 37, and Rocky Goldie, 50, had just finished converting a friend's Home Depot shed into a tiny home and were ready to start looking for their own place together. "If it wasn't for meeting her, I probably would have ended up in a little shack," Rocky tells CNBC Make It. "I took a long way to get here but I wanted to be some type of homesteader when we met. She had the same vision and it's not common to meet somebody who does." "He also wanted to be living off the land and homesteading," Sophie adds. "But he didn't have this big grand vision of all these buildings. He just wanted something simple." The couple started their search on Zillow with a specific list of requirements that included "at least 10 acres of land" and located "deep in rural Kentucky." "We love old things and antiques, so we wanted a place with some history. We were actually looking for a fixer-upper that had some history, and we weren't really finding great stuff on Zillow," Sophie says. A local photographer connected the couple to a realtor who found them a 37.5-acre homestead for around $390,000. The property had two log cabins from the 1840s that had been combined to make one 2,200 square foot house — with four bedrooms and one bathroom — and one 200 square foot cabin and two barns. "I think I had been waiting my whole life to finally come home. There were elements of the shed that felt like that but this place, more than anything, felt right. I knew it would be the last time I was moving and where I'll spend the rest of my life," Sophie says. "I knew I wanted to put so much energy into these surrounding acres and this view. Finding home in Rocky and this home felt like I could finally let go of the burden I was carrying on trying to find a place." When the couple first visited the property, it was in pretty bad shape. There was poison ivy in the front yard, the sidewalk had cracks, and there was garbage everywhere. But Sophie felt optimistic. "I knew we were going to buy this house before we even stepped foot into it," she says. "I saw all of the promise. With me and my husband working on this place full time, in a few years we could transform this place." "I knew it looked terrible but I could see underneath all of it," she adds. Rocky was less sure but says he was swayed by his wife's enthusiasm. "I thought it was going to be a lot of work and that it was beautiful," he says. "Sophie was always talking about the pros and I was talking the cons, but she convinced me." "I think we balance each other out that way. I'm toxically optimistic and Rocky is pessimistic, but I knew there was no way we weren't going to live here," Sophie adds, laughing. Sophie and Rocky closed on the property in early 2024. The couple secured a 30-year mortgage with a minimum monthly payment of $1,790.18 and plan to pay it off in under five years. Since moving in a year ago, Sophie and Rocky have focused on doing renovations around the house and the property themselves. The couple estimates they've spent about $13,000 so far: $9,000 on tools and $4,000 on the interior of the house. That doesn't include the hundreds of hours the couple has spent doing things like clearing out old trees and bushes, getting rid of all the poison ivy on the property and getting rid of an infestation of brown recluse spiders — one of two spiders in North America with dangerous venom, the other being the Black Widow. Sophie says that when she looks back on the first year of living on the homestead, she splits it into two categories: the work and their mindset. "The first part of the year was a lot of clearing. This place was covered in trash and so it was a lot of trips to the dump. It was a lot of sorting through that stuff before we even took it to the dump. It was also the chaos of having way too many animals and that is completely my fault and I knew it, but I also couldn't stop myself," she says. "I think that first year was really hard and it's hard to even go back to that place but it was also so amazing and exciting. There was an endless amount of things to do, but it was all fun and exciting." Sophie and Rocky have also added new things to the grounds like a garden, many fruit and nut trees and over 30 animals, including chickens, a goat, guinea fowls and cats. On top of the additions to the grounds, the couple has also started renovations on the house, including redoing the kitchen, the bathroom and organizing the rooms throughout the house. The two are trying to set themselves up to be as self-sustainable as possible, too. They eat the eggs from the chickens in the barn and use the milk from the goat to make cheese, creamer, and to bake. The hope is to also use the material they get from the clearing to make their own hay. "We've got our own eggs. We've got fruit. This will be the first year that we will be canning, which I learned from one of our neighbors," Sophie says. "One of the rooms we're redoing to make it into a canning room, which is going to have who knows how many months worth of food ready to go." Now that the couple has been living on the property for a little over a year, Sophie says the most significant lesson she's learned is the impact a person can have on a piece of the planet. "We came here and now you can see how, as long as there are two people here working on this most of the time, you could take a place that was so neglected and change it," she says. "Now we see the rapid abundance of all the work we put into it. It makes you think so much more about the impact that we have on the planet, especially in stewarding this one piece of land. It's a big responsibility because you have a lot of power to do good or bad." For Rocky, the biggest lesson he's learned is who he is outside of his career. He served in the Marines for several years before transitioning to a career in maintenance, which spanned over 20 years. "He was so tied to that identity and when I told him to quit his job and homestead full-time, I saw the sirens going off in his head," Sophie says. "Since he quit, I ask every few months or so how he feels and every time his answer is the same, he forgot to even think about the fact that he quit his job." "It's ingrained into you in this culture that people identify themselves with their jobs. The job becomes your identity and even if you've got somewhat of a plan of how you want to live like we did, it was still scary to let go of that lifeline," Rocky says. "When I left, I thought I would probably sit back and think about what I would be doing at work today but it never happened. The only thought that I have now is why I didn't do it sooner." Sophie and Rocky have no plans of ever selling their property, and are excited to continue working on the homestead, growing Sophie's skincare company, Seoul + Soil, and sharing their journey on YouTube. "I look forward to the day when it's not all these huge projects and all the major stuff is one and then we're just sitting around dilly-dallying and doing our hobbies," Sophie says. "I always want to keep learning and eventually spend half of my day just sitting here doing a hobby." Similar to Sophie, Rocky looks forward to the time when he can simply enjoy his hobbies. "I love to read and learn something, so I would say my goal would be to get to the point where I could do day on, day off of reading, learn something and then go practically apply it the next day," Rocky says. "I sit and think about what my goal is but it's more of a feeling and I kind of already have that feeling where I can sit back and just feel at peace and there's nowhere else in the world I would rather be. I think I'm already at the destination." ,
CNBC
4 days ago
- Health
- CNBC
Bestselling author shares her No. 1 tip for raising mentally resilient kids: It's 'the single best thing you could do'
Your child is throwing a tantrum, and it's stressing you out. Perhaps they're afraid of the dark, so you avoid an outburst by offering them a spot in your bed — but now it's a bad habit they can't seem to break. Or your child feels uncomfortable in social settings, so you let them stay home, and now they can't make friends at school. Giving into your kids to avoid your own feelings of stress and anxiety does more harm than good in the long run, says bestselling author and personal growth expert Mel Robbins. It's a big mistake she made when raising her daughter, the 56-year-old said on a May 6 episode of "The Oprah Podcast." "I really screwed this up as a mother," said Robbins. "As a mother, I take full responsibility for making my child's anxiety a hundred times worse. The single best thing you could do for your daughter is to get control of and heal your anxiety."Robbins herself was an anxious child, and her now-adult daughter expressed similar tendencies as a young kid, she said — sleeping on her mother's bedroom floor for almost a year due to separation anxiety, for example. Telling her "no" resulted in a fuss, triggering Robbins' own anxiety, so she allowed it to happen for longer than she should've, she added. "You want to know what I taught my daughter by doing that? I taught her that you're not capable of facing something that's difficult," Robbins said. "She got to the point that she didn't want to go to school ... I couldn't leave and go anywhere." Learning how to overcome your own anxiety is the first step to helping your kids do the same, said Robbins. And teaching them how to be mentally resilient gives them a better chance of becoming successful as adults, some psychologists say. People may use several common-sense strategies to ward off stress: talking to a therapist or loved one, eating healthier and sleeping more, working out, writing in a journal. Other tactics may be less obvious, like sleeping with your phone in another room, Robbins noted. "You're checking emails and messages [as soon as you wake up] and you wonder why you're stressed out and exhausted," said Robbins. "You're not even out of bed, and you have put all this other stuff in your brain." Martha Beck, a Harvard University-trained sociologist, uses a process called KIST, or "kind internal self talk," she wrote for CNBC Make It in January. Imagine your anxiety as a small, furry animal and tell it, "You're OK," or "Everything's fine." Then, when you feel even the smallest shift in your anxiety, "offer yourself kind wishes" — say something like, "May you feel peaceful," Beck wrote. Finally, imagine tucking your anxiety into a cozy box and carrying it gently in a small bag slung over your shoulder, wrote Beck. Once your emotions are in check, you can more effectively talk to your child. Robbins suggested some potential language to use: "I know this is scary, I know this feels uncomfortable and I'm going to be by your side. But you are capable of facing this, honey." The calmer you are in your delivery, the more they'll believe it, Robbins said. ,
CNBC
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNBC
Taye Diggs: My sister's schizophrenia diagnosis changed our family—and how I handle my own anxiety: I 'follow her lead'
When award-winning actor Taye Diggs isn't on the big screen, he makes sure to show up for his family, especially his younger sister, Christian, 49, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her early 20s. "It's been a tumultuous journey, as you can imagine," Diggs, 54, tells CNBC Make It. "Watching her through support and love and patience, watching her kind of figure out how best to move forward with this diagnosis, has been just amazing." About 24 million people worldwide are affected by schizophrenia, according to the World Health Organization. The condition impacts how a person perceives reality and can cause hallucinations, disorganized thinking and drastic changes in behavior. In honor of World Schizophrenia Day, Diggs and his sister partnered with Bristol Myers Squibb for the Live Your PosSCZible campaign. "When I was first diagnosed, it was very shocking and a bit scary," Christian said in a video made to spread awareness about schizophrenia. "But of course, after receiving my diagnosis, I felt a little bit calmer about the whole thing, and I actually had hope because I could put a name on everything that was happening." Supporting his sister through her diagnosis and helping her to receive the care she needed caused Diggs to take a closer look at his own mental health. "I've learned a lot about myself, so much more about my sister, and so much more about schizophrenia," Diggs says. "Watching her monitor herself, and making sure that she doesn't drink a certain amount, and making sure she is very aware of the crowds that she's going to be exposed to, just watching her making those necessary adjustments has helped me kind of deal with my level of anxiety." When Diggs feels really anxious, he does deep breathing exercises and focuses on the present to ground himself, he says. "I have to remind myself to just let go," Diggs says. During a talent showcase the siblings hosted for the campaign earlier this month, he found himself getting anxious about how everything would turn out. "[My sister's example] helped me monitor myself and follow her lead," Diggs says. ,
