How to Reverse Aging and Live Younger: Lessons from Dr. Kavin Mistry

Dr Kavin Mistry on flipping the right switches, building health from the inside out and finding stillness

TL;DR

• Your genes aren't the whole story. Dr Mistry sees lifestyle as a set of switches you can turn on or off.
• Build health from the inside out: physical health first, then mental health, then purpose, then legacy.
• His morning routine is built on five S's: sun, soil, sleep, spinal alignment and sattvic food.
• A daily stillness practice, even two minutes to start, is the habit that's changed his life the most.

Introduction

Dr Kavin Mistry is a neuroradiologist and the author of Primal Health Design: 7 Key Paradigms to Reverse Biological Age. His job is reading scans, and as he put it, he sees right through people. Early in his career, he kept seeing 30 and 40-year-olds whose brains and bodies looked like they were 60 or 70. Then he'd see an 80-year-old whose brain looked 40, and he'd think, that person is doing something right.

That curiosity has deep roots. Kavin was born in India and has lived in 22 houses. Part of his childhood was spent in rural Tanzania, where his dad's work took the family. He picked up Swahili and spent time with a local tribe. Years later, while reading longevity research, he was shown a map of a tribe with very low rates of chronic disease, and realised it was the same tribe he'd lived alongside as a boy.

We covered why health is going backwards despite all the information we have, his inside-out model, his morning and evening routines, food, recovery and stillness.

This is general information from our conversation, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor before making changes to your health or medication.

Lesson 1: Genes aren't your destiny

Insight: Kavin talks about lifestyle as switches that either promote or degrade your health. He described a paper on epigenetic drift involving identical twins with a strong family history of Alzheimer's. One twin was diagnosed at 62. The other developed it at 83. Same genes, same predisposition, but roughly 20 years apart.

His point is that you're in the cockpit of your genome. If you have access to switches that keep you in a peak performance zone into your 80s and 90s, why wouldn't you flip them on?

He also pushed back on our reactive model of medicine, where we wait for the shoulder pain, get the MRI and then try to rehab the tear. By the time he reads that scan, he says, the damage is already done.

Action: Pick one habit you know is working against you and ask what the "on" switch would look like instead.

Outcome: You start seeing your health as something you shape every day, not something handed to you.

Lesson 2: Build your health from the inside out

Insight: Kavin's seven paradigms are layered. The first three, connection with earth, body and food, are about physical health. When those are right, he says, inflammation comes down, hormones improve, alignment gets better and energy goes up.

Only then do you move a layer out into mental health. People often want to jump straight to meditation, but he says that if you haven't slept and you're eating foods that drive inflammation, no instructor in the world will get you there.

The next layer is purpose. He referred to the Japanese idea of ikigai: something you love to do, that you're good at, that the world respects and that you can get paid for. He said people who find that alignment tend to have lower stress and better longevity, and they become more attractive to the people around them because they're heading somewhere.

The final layer only came to him after he lost both his parents within a short space of time. Looking through his dad's phone for photos for the funeral, he found just five pictures: his dad with Kavin's mum, the family, his brother's family, his work as a business leader and one of his religious places. For Kavin, that's the capstone. In the end, it comes down to the three to five things you leave behind.

Action: Write down the three to five things you'd want to leave behind. Then check whether your week reflects them.

Outcome: Your health habits have a reason behind them, which makes them easier to stick with.

Lesson 3: Start the day with the five S's

Insight: Kavin's morning routine is built on what he calls the big five S's:

• Sun: get sunlight early in the day.
• Soil: connect with the earth.
• Sleep: protect it, because the morning sets up the night.
• Spinal alignment: neck and lower back pain are some of the most common reasons people end up getting scanned.
• Sattvic food: an Ayurvedic term he uses to describe life-promoting food.

He does two simple things for alignment every morning. The first is a static hang. Thirty seconds is a good start, and he says the goal is to work up to about two minutes. The second is a deep, primal squat while his water warms up. In Tanzania, he saw elders resting, talking and preparing food in a squat the way we sit in a chair. I'm the same. If a group is standing around, I'm usually down in a squat.

Action: Tomorrow morning, get outside for some sunlight, then do a dead hang and sit in a deep squat for as long as is comfortable.

Outcome: Your spine, shoulders and hips get a daily reset before you sit down for the day.

Lesson 4: Protect your sleep in the evening

Insight: Kavin explained that moving and spending energy during the day builds sleep pressure, which makes it easier to fall asleep at night. So a good evening starts with an active day.

Then he says the job is not to undo all that good work. The big one is screens in the last hour before bed. Blue light can stop your melatonin from rising, and he'd ban the phone from the bed straight away. Staying asleep is a separate challenge. If you're waking at 2 or 3 am, he links that to anxiety and cortisol at bedtime. His own fix is conscious breathing before sleep.

He also told a story about a sleep webinar where he challenged people to choose one day in the next two weeks to be in bed by 9:30 pm. One woman messaged him afterwards to say she woke up naturally and felt like a different person, with far more energy and clarity. When people ask me which supplements they should take, I tell them to start with their sleep. Kavin agreed. Get the basics right first.

Action: Pick one night this week to be in bed by 9:30 pm, with your phone out of the bedroom.

Outcome: You get to feel the difference a full night's sleep makes.

Lesson 5: Recovery matters as much as the workout

Insight: A lot of people I work with stop moving the moment something niggles. Kavin agreed you still need to move, and pointed to grounding, connecting with the earth, as one of the primal practices he says can help reduce inflammation and support recovery. He didn't want to call these hacks, because they're simply what we were designed to do.

He also linked long hours of sitting to weaker glutes, which can change the angle of your walk and contribute to knee pain. And if you finish a great workout and then spend two days stressed, staying up late and eating inflammatory food, your body stays in fight-or-flight instead of building muscle.

Action: After your next workout, put as much thought into your recovery as you did into the session: sleep, food, getting outside and moving through the day.

Outcome: You get more out of the training you're already doing.

Lesson 6: Eat 80/20 and feed your gut

Insight: Kavin's two big takeaways on food were simple. First, whole foods support your mitochondria and energy. Second, your gut microbiome thrives on fibre, and fermented foods can help too.

He uses an 80/20 approach, both across the week and on the plate. Around 80% should be single-ingredient whole foods like greens, veggies and legumes. The other 20% can be whatever you like. Rather than three slices of pizza, you could have one slice and fill the rest of the plate with whole foods. Neither of us likes the word diet, because it suggests an end point.

Action: At your next meal, build the plate so roughly 80% is whole foods before you add anything else.

Outcome: You eat better without feeling like you're on a diet.

Lesson 7: Find stillness, even for two minutes

Insight: Kavin says most of us are playing ping-pong between regrets about the past and anxieties about the future, and missing the present in the process. He sees the brain as clay that you can mould every day.

You don't have to call it meditation. Start with two minutes of focused attention. Your mind will stray, and you bring it back. Tomorrow try five minutes, then ten. He says that over time you'll reach a point where it feels so good you want to stay longer. Movement can work too. Tai chi, or a set where you can't think about anything but the weight in your hands, can bring you into the present.

His own practice is 21 minutes a day, and he says it changes the rest of his day so dramatically that he can't skip it. It gives him a gap before he responds to people. I think it makes you a better listener, too, which matters in every relationship.

Action: Set a timer for two minutes today. Sit, breathe and bring your attention back each time it wanders.

Outcome: You start building the habit that Kavin says has had the biggest impact on his life.

Quick wins

• Get outside for morning sunlight.
• Do a static hang, starting at 30 seconds.
• Sit in a deep squat while the kettle boils.
• Keep your phone out of the bedroom.
• Try two minutes of stillness before bed.

Closing insight

When I asked Kavin for the one thing he'd want people to do, he said developing stillness. Combined with good sleep, he called it a duo that's unbelievable on many levels.

His bigger message is that you don't have to accept the average curve, where energy peaks around 30 to 35 and then declines. If you flip on the right switches, you might be able to flatten that curve and stay in peak performance much longer.

Connect with Dr Kavin Mistry

Find him on his website and Instagram, or grab Primal Health Design.

Listen to the full episode

The full conversation is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or press play at the top of this page.

Related episodes: Prescribing Lifestyle with Dr Avi Charlton and The Long Game with Jon Sabes