Anti-Aging Hacks from Zora Benhamou: Fast, Eat, Relax, Sleep, Move, Learn

Zora Benhamou lives and breathes healthy aging. All of her healthy aging hacks fall into five health “pillars” very similar to the health tracking pillars built into LifeOmic’s new LIFE Extend app. They include sleep, relaxation, movement, brain health, healthy eating and fasting.

Zora grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from UCLA before setting off across the world to learn more about aging and longevity. For the past three years she has been living in Hong Kong, where she works as a certified health coach. She has lived in seven different countries and has traveled to a total of 50 different countries in her search for the symbolic fountain of youth.

“I have been studying aging for the last 27 years, writing, researching, interviewing, practicing and investigating scientific studies on aging and longevity,” Zora said. “I’ve held talks on body composition, nutrition, health and aging in Spain, Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. My biggest passion is learning more about aging and longevity while I travel. I enjoy sifting through studies and blogs to learn more about centenarians in the Blue Zones, but I find it even more satisfying to reach out to these people in person. I learn a lot more in my interviews and one-on-one conversations with those who are aging across the globe.”

As a certified health coach, Zora mostly helps people who want to lose weight, although she is increasingly passionate about a well-rounded approach to healthy aging. She is the founder of the anti-aging website HackMyAge.com, author of Eating for Longevity and creator of the Longevity Master Plan — a comprehensive online guide to looking and feeling younger than your biological age.

“Being healthy is about so much more than losing weight,” Zora said. “It’s just not cool or sexy to say, ‘Let’s get your sleep on!’ Sleep interventions don’t attract people to a health coach. But I’ve brought many of my clients around to considering a range of behaviors for healthy living and aging, from sleep, to meditation, to relaxation and stress management, to brain training.”

Zora has packaged her health coach training into an online program she calls the Longevity Master Plan. Included in the program are all the steps that Zora herself takes toward healthy aging. She encourages her clients to pick and choose the steps that work best for them and that they can fit into their lifestyle long-term.

“I’m finding more people in their early twenties and thirties who are really interested in healthy aging,” Zora said. “It really surprised me at first, but I think that young people are seeing more information out there about aging healthily, and they are seeing older people living amazing lives, still looking young and having lots of energy. I think they are curious, and now a little bit of research on Google can go a long way. If you are young and interested in healthy aging today, I think you have a really good chance at a long healthspan. And the more you practice health behaviors that can help delay aging early in life, the easier it becomes to turn these into habits.”

All of Zora’s Longevity Master Plan steps fall into five health “pillars” very similar to the health tracking pillars built into LifeOmic’s new LIFE Extend app. They include sleep, relaxation, movement, brain health, healthy eating and fasting. These health pillars aren’t totally separate, but rather work together in promoting health.

“I’ve been fascinated with the results I get with my clients who want to lose weight and get healthier when we focus on other areas outside of nutrition and exercise,” Zora said. “I travel to all corners of the world researching and learning from aging populations, from Bhutan to California, and bring what I learn back to my clients.”

Zora’s Story as an Anti-Aging Self-Experimenter

Any health behavior that Zora advises her clients try, such as intermittent fasting or meditation, she tries out for herself first.

“I should have gone into medicine or biology as a career,” Zora laughs. “Over the years I’ve read more books and scientific articles than I can count. I also love to just walk up to older people who look amazing and ask them what they do to stay looking so young. I ask them what they eat, what they do for exercise, and then I try to imitate them. Even as a kid I would literally walk up to anyone who looked amazing for their age and ask them what their secrets were. In my mind I took notes and did my best to practice their advice.”

Zora’s mother died young of breast cancer. Zora just assumed that she’d also develop breast cancer because she shared her mother’s genes. She started reading everything she could put her hands on to learn more about what contributes to a person getting cancer, and what a genetic predisposition means.

“I slowly started to realize that I could actually change my destiny,” Zora said. “There’s no guarantee, but I can stack the cards in my favor by living a healthy life. I want to be around to see my kids grow older, so I do everything I can to stay healthy.”

For example, not everyone who inherits a mutation in a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene will develop cancer — genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors also contribute to a person’s cancer risk. With the rise of genetic testing, people can also learn more about their risk of developing a hereditary cancer early in life and take preventative action.

“With this information, some people can really start living,” Zora said. “When I was young I was mostly focused on body image as a sign of health, but when my mother passed away from breast cancer when I was only 23 years old I became a lot more curious as to why a seemingly healthy person should die so early. I was obsessed with the belief that my programing would lead me to an early death. I learned later that genetics may be the loaded gun but lifestyle is the trigger.”