What 105,000 Lives Taught Us About Longevity ⋆ AI of the week ⋆ Unlearning Creativity

Thing 1 - What 105,000 Lives Taught Us About Longevity

When it comes to aging well, most people think it's all about luck. But a 30-year study tracking over 105,000 people says otherwise.

Researchers from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study followed participants for three decades, assessing their dietary habits and overall health. By analyzing adherence to different dietary patterns and comparing health outcomes, they uncovered key insights into how what you eat shapes how you age.

The study evaluated 8 dietary patterns to see which supported the best odds of reaching 70 years of age or older without chronic diseases, while maintaining cognitive, physical, and mental health.

The Winner: The Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI)

• People with the highest adherence to this plant-forward diet were 86% more likely to age healthily.
• When researchers shifted the goalpost to 75 years old, AHEI followers had 2.24x greater odds of thriving.

The Common Denominators for Longevity

• More Fruits & Vegetables: Leafy greens, berries, and tomatoes stood out.
• Whole Grains & Legumes: Fiber is your friend.
• Healthy Fats: Olive oil, nuts, and polyunsaturated fats.
• Low-Fat Dairy: Beneficial without the drawbacks of full-fat versions.

The Foods That Cut Your Odds

• Red and Processed Meats
• Sugary Beverages
• Trans Fats and Excess Sodium
• Ultraprocessed Foods

In fact, people who ate the most ultraprocessed foods were 32% less likely to age well.

The Takeaway

You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. Start by swapping in more veggies, reducing sugary drinks, and trading butter for olive oil. Small changes add up over decades - either direction.

The road to longevity is paved with every bite you take. Which swap will you make this week?

Thing 2 - AI of the week

• OpenAI's GPT-4o image generation takes the cake this week
  It's absolutely amazing and it's the reason why your timeline was filled with Ghibli/Anime images this week.
• Google dropped Gemini 2.5 Pro Exp. That thing RIPS!
  This model topped the benchmarks straight away.
• Figure introduced natural walking for their humanoid. Trained in a virtual environment, transferred to the real hardware.
  The comments on the video are gold 😂

• OpenAI's GPT-4o got an another update in ChatGPT!
  Better at following detailed instructions
  Improved capability to tackle complex technical and coding problems
  Improved intuition and creativity

Thing 3 - Unlearning Creativity

In the 1960s, a creative performance researcher named George Land conducted a study of 1,600 five-year-olds and 98 percent of the children scored in the “highly creative” range. Dr. Land re-tested each subject during five year increments. When the same children were 10-years-old, only 30 percent scored in the highly creative range. This number dropped to 12 percent by age 15 and just 2 percent by age 25. As the children grew into adults they effectively had the creativity trained out of them. In the words of Dr. Land, “non-creative behavior is learned.”

- James Clear

It's time to update the software your brain is running on. What steps should your reasoning go through to give you the best outcome?

Cheers, Zvonimir