My year-long quest to live forever

What is a life well lived? A big question, and one I am presently pondering from a prone position, naked but for my underpants, which have been lowered on one side to liberate my left bum cheek. Or glute, as the BMI monitors call it, unromantically. I am posed diagonally across an expertly made bed, inert as if poleaxed. Seen from above, I imagine I resemble a crime-scene corpse in a cheap film noir. Is this a case of death by misadventure? An accidental overdose? Or do we suspect foul play? 

In any case, I apologise for the unappetising image. At least you don’t have to gaze upon me in real life, like the nurse preparing to administer my antioxidant injection. It has to be the left bum cheek into which she sinks her hypodermic for the simple reason that she jabbed my right bum cheek yesterday. This is the sequel: Bum Cheek – The Final Reckoning.

Our scene is playing out in a spotless suite on the fifth floor of a modern building in the picturesque lakeside town of Montreux, Switzerland. Fixtures and fittings are snow-white, like the mountaintops in the distance. There is an air of cleanliness and quiet efficiency that you might accurately describe as clinical. Accurately, since this is a clinic. 

And I’m not dead. Not yet. In fact, I’m here to find out if I can delay that inevitability for as long as possible without going full blockbuster villain and sinking my teeth into the scenery, so starved am I of my habitual intake of stimulants.

I have reached day five of the Master Detox programme at Clinique La Prairie, among the world’s leading and longest- established facilities in what we might, with only a slight wince, describe as the longevity “space”. It’s Thursday afternoon. Since Saturday not a sniff of alcohol, not a grain of sugar, not a morsel of meat or animal product (no dairy, no fats), not a molecule of artificial sweeteners or preservatives and no gluten has entered my bloodstream. Instead I have ingested a cornucopia of foaming potions and moussed nutrients.

On my first day at CLP I was put on a liquid diet. Not the one I’m used to. Strictly juice. Curcuma Healing; Moringa Booster; Antioxidant Flare. These were supplemented by further boosters. And morning and afternoon drops, which I am still obediently adding to my herbal infusions. Each night before bed I was given two “neutracenical” pills to help me sleep.

I have chewed and swallowed “edamame chawan mushi with shiitake, ginger, radish and buckwheat”; “Paimpol coco bean fricassee with fine herbs and tomatoes”; and, my favourite, “iced plant salad crystallinum with salicornia and iodin tofu cloud.” All this washed down with CLP’s signature hydrogen water.

On my third night I was subjected to a “non-invasive internal cleansing of the intestine”. Meaning I drank a large bottle of laxative. It worked.

I also had a “chi nei tsang” massage, in which my internal organs were rearranged by a woman kneading my stomach like dough. 

I have been stretched and pummelled. Rubbed and smoothed. Chilled and heated. Peeled and exfoliated. I have had consultations with a doctor, a nutritionist, an aesthetician, a dentist, a trainer and a breathing teacher. I have submitted to a “body composition analysis” and two fitness assessments. I have practised aerial yoga. 

I have given blood, urine and stool samples. 

I have passed a heavy metal test. (The substance, not a pop trivia quiz, though I fancy I might have aced that too.)

This is the first in a series of reports for HTSI on my misadventures in longevity and – not gonna lie, as my daughter says – I have cheated already. Yesterday afternoon, I made a break for it and went for a jog along the promenade that hugs tight to the curves of Lake Geneva, like leggings to a yogini. I passed a mini-mart. I stopped and bought a vape. (Vuse, strawberry ice.) I puffed away at it for 20 minutes, on a bench by a local landmark: the statue of Freddie Mercury, the rock star who made Montreux his second home.

I felt none of the illicit thrill I once would have enjoyed at such petty rule-breaking. Instead, I felt like a fraud. Is there a more pathetic sight than a greying dad in gaudy running gear, perspiring heavily while sucking surreptitiously on a noxious plastic dummy? In the rain. Would passers-by not be appalled to know that this man had been flown all the way here for his health, only to fall at the first as soon as he leaves the confines of the clinic?

Then again, as Freddie Mercury sang, “Who wants to live forever?” 

Another big question. 

How much fun is one willing to forgo in a bid to prolong one’s life? How many pleasures, toxic or otherwise, must we sacrifice in the pursuit of a contented senescence? What’s the ROI on giving up your morning flat white, cutting out your evening glass(es) of Sauvignon Blanc, just saying no to steak frites?

We are frequently told that life is short. Is it, though? I wonder if, without the above, life might feel very long indeed. In spending so much time trying not to die, we might forget to live. It is said that time is the ultimate luxury. For me, the ultimate luxury might be a cold beer on a hot day. Might I not swap six months of advanced decrepitude for that?

And from the cheap seats the familiar cry goes up: my grandmother was breaking the filters off her Lambert & Butlers well into her 80s, necking G&Ts and cackling like a pirate! So was mine. But of my other grandparents, two died in their 50s and the other was seen off by a heart attack in his early 70s. Am I prepared to take that chance? Are you?

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The word “longevity” is currently being used to sell face creams and herbal remedies and dietary supplements and fitness equipment. The global market is projected to be worth £33tn by 2026. As with all wellness-industry innovations, the term is vulnerable to abuse by woo-woo pseudo-scientists, amateur biohackers and snake oil salespeople promising instant immortality for a modest monthly subscription.

Contrary to popular belief – and to be fair, the term is misleading in this context – longevity is not necessarily about making you live longer. Or it’s not only about making you live longer. It’s about helping you live healthier, so that if you do live longer, you will also live better.

At Clinique La Prairie they base their pursuit of longevity on four pillars: Medical Care, Nutrition, Movement and Wellbeing. Over the coming months, I’m going to have a go at changing my approach to all of those – without completely forswearing all pleasure. On a hot day, I’ll have a cold beer. And then at the end we’ll see if it’s made any difference to my odds of long-term survival. Or, rather, to my odds of slowing the ageing process, so that I can remain vital in my declining years.

The idea that I should be the FT’s longevity lab rat was not mine. Like an anti-ageing elixir poured into a chipped mug, the notion was decanted directly from the brain of the editor of HTSI over a recent lunch. An act of charity, and an act of mischief. 

Charity because after 14 years as a glossy magazine honcho myself, I recently hung up my editing boots – bespoke, cashmere-lined – and I think she was concerned I needed a project to keep me out of the pub. Mischief because I have not by any stretch lived a life of delayed gratification. Self-denial is as alien to me as Yoda. I am the best person to do this because I am the worst person to do this. 

I don’t think you need to know every detail I shared with the medics at Clinique La Prairie as they assessed my current health and fitness. But step four of the 12 taken by the acknowledged addict requires those in recovery to “make a searching and fearless” personal inventory.

Here goes:

• Alcohol Yes, very much so. At least a couple of glasses of wine every day, and sometimes more than a couple. I am not an alcoholic. But based on my week on the wagon in Switzerland, I accept that I am “alcohol-dependent”. 

• Drugs Shall we say that in my younger days, like the great American musician John Prine, I sometimes wore an illegal smile? (“It don’t cost very much, but it lasts a long while.”) 

• Smoking I am addicted to nicotine and have been since I was 15. I stubbed out the cigs for good a couple of years ago and replaced them with vapes. Better, but still colossally stupid. And not a great look for a man of my seniority (I’m 52).

• Caffeine I am addicted to coffee. I had a headache for the duration of my time in Montreux – the consequence, I was assured, of abruptly cutting off my espresso supply.

• Diet A disaster. I eat red meat in some form every other day, on average. I could murder a burger right now. I love fried food. My last meal before I left for Switzerland was at J Sheekey, in Covent Garden: fish and chips. I am addicted to sugar. My love of snacking is so well advertised that, when I left my magazine job in March, among my presents was a biscuit tin. I eat too much processed food: too many crisps, too much chocolate, not enough fruit and vegetables. I don’t drink enough water.

• Fitness Unless you count freaky dancing – I do, but medical science is slow to catch up with the chemical generation – I did no exercise of any kind until I turned 40. At which point, motivated by vanity alone, I began to work out with a trainer, and to run a couple of times each week. I also – temporarily, it turned out – gave up smoking and cut down on carbs. That all hit a wall in 2022, when I slipped a disc in my back. Surgery fixed it but left me with bouts of sciatica that I treat twice weekly with Pilates. 

• Medication I take statins for cholesterol, as well as additional medication (Ezetimibe, Inclisiran) because my fatty lipids are the result of genetic rather than lifestyle factors. (Lifestyle factors: ain’t that your favourite euphemism?) I take a daily aspirin to thin the blood. All pretty standard stuff, I think, for a man of my age, background and inclinations. 

On my first day in Switzerland I underwent a biologic and metabolic assessment. This measures glycans (the level of chronic inflammation and immune health), ceramides (a marker for cardiovascular health), genetic predispositions, and DNA microbiota (the bacteria in the gut). 

The results, which I awaited with trepidation bordering on blind panic, were encouraging. I’ve hardly lived the life of Keith Richards – I’m a spoilt journalist, not a buccaneering rock star – but given my capacity for indulgence, I’m in pretty good health.

Despite the medication, my LDL stats are still sub-optimal. The prescription: more exercise, to “increase high-density lipoprotein”. My sodium level could use some attention: less salt, more water. My uric acid score is a little high: charcuterie is off the menu. The doctor, a twinkly man with salt and pepper stubble, suggested I consider a vitamin D supplement. And he pretty much forbade me to even look at a croissant for as long as I live. (Duration TBC.)

On to the physical exams.

My “physique rating”, measuring “visceral fat” and muscle mass, pronounced me “healthy”. All metrics were at “acceptable” or “average” levels. In fact, I have the “body composition” of a man of 45, seven years my junior. Get in! Maybe a pint and a packet of pork scratchings to toast my continued good health? Maybe not, says the doc. An average man of 45 still has much to do to stay fit. And, anyway, who wants to be average? 

So I’m in decent condition but not in great shape. I have a modest paunch and what my erstwhile colleague Will Self once described – in print, if you please – as “incipient jowls”. That was a few years back; I accept they may now be more fully realised. The CLP aesthetician picked up on this: apparently, I’m a good candidate for a Focused Ultrasound treatment on my jawline, such as it is, and I could use some Coolsculpting on my abdomen. Charming. 

I think I’ll swerve the beauty treatments and stick to the four pillars.

When I have mentioned to friends that I’m working on this story, at least half of them – an unscientific sample, granted – have referred to the megarich super-crank Bryan Johnson, subject of the grimly compelling Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever. Am I, like Johnson, they wonder, going to attempt to “neutralise ageing” by waking at 4.30am to work out, swallowing more than 100 pills daily and exchanging my tired old blood for the “young plasma” of my son?

No, I’m not. I don’t have the time, the money, or the desire. And Oscar Bilmes (aged 12) doesn’t like needles; I asked, he demurred.

Johnson is trying to cheat death. It sometimes seems that, like Liam Gallagher (in this only), he wants to live forever. That’s his business. It’s literally his business: he is a wellness entrepreneur and investor. 

There’s no guarantee I’ll live longer as a result of following CLP’s advice. It’s impossible to know how long I’d live if I carry on as I have been, and even if I were to switch to Johnsonian levels of self-control (and self-absorption), we can’t know exactly what effect that would have. I might be run over by an autonomous taxi – and so might Bryan Johnson – before this story even makes it into print. Which would be inconvenient although, as I pointed out to the HTSI editors, it would make for an eye-catching headline: “Longevity Columnist Dead at 52: Witnesses Confirm He Didn’t See it Coming.”

Over lunch in Montreux, Simone Gibertoni, the CEO of Clinique La Prairie, assured me that his clinic could not and would not guarantee long life for its clients – that’s beyond even the dapper Gibertoni. What they do is identify risk factors and areas for improvement. Each patient is given a specific programme, tailor-made for them, based on factors both genetic and epigenetic. (Genetic is the hand that fate deals you; epigenetic is how you play that hand.)

You’re not paying £18,000-plus just to be told to put down your sausage sandwich and get back on the treadmill. Gibertoni stressed the fact that a week in Montreux was not a cure-all. Some visitors have serious long-term health issues – it’s a hospital, after all – while others are here for spoiling spa treatments in a picturesque setting. Some come – he was looking at me here, but in a kindly way – for an annual purge and imagine they can return to their sybaritic lifestyles safe in the knowledge that they’ve done their bit for better health. That’s not how it works. (Damn.)  

“If you live long enough,” said another Simone (de Beauvoir), “you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.” I don’t know it that’s correct. I haven’t lived long enough yet to find out. 

“Eat grass, walk around,” says the twinkly medic at our final consultation. Sounds easy. But if you’ve spent close to 40 years, as I have, indolently filling your gob with Monster Munch, Marlboro Lights and cheap European lager, contemplating a future of kale, kombucha and vigorous exercise is sobering – literally sobering.

Like an antioxidant shot, personal transformation is a pain in the bum. But, as with growing old, it’s probably better than the alternative. 

How healthy is your lifestyle? Take our quiz and join Alex Bilmes on his quest at the Longevity Project at ft.com/the longevityproject