When it is and isn’t worth taking risks

Risk is built into every activity – even a simple walk. You can slip, fall, twist your ankle. Does that mean we should give up walking? Of course not.

A sedentary lifestyle is one of the most powerful risk factors for:

• metabolic diseases,
• cardiovascular diseases,
• depression and anxiety disorders,
• back pain and musculoskeletal problems,
• loss of function and independence.

This is the safety paradox: the more you try to “avoid risk” by being inactive, the more you increase the real threat to your health. Giving up movement may feel safe, but in practice it is one of the riskiest choices you can make.

In longevity, the goal is not to avoid risk, but to manage risk wisely. It helps to think in terms of net risk – comparing potential harms with potential gains.

When assessing an intervention, it is worth asking yourself a few questions:

1. What is the probability of harm?

   Example: how often does strength training lead to injury when technique is good and progression is appropriate? Answer: very rarely.

2. How severe would that harm be?

   A sprained joint is very different from complications after aggressive pharmacological or gene therapy.

3. Is the harm reversible?

   Can the potential consequences be fully reversed, or are you risking permanent damage?

4. How large are the possible benefits?

   Are we talking about a slight “tuning” of parameters, or about a real reduction in the risk of heart attack, stroke or dementia?

Examples:

• Aerobic training – low risk, enormous benefits, easy to scale the load.
• Strength training – moderate risk with poor technique, minimal with good technique – but huge benefits for bones, muscles and metabolism.
• Sauna – low risk (in healthy people), very good cardiovascular and metabolic benefits.
• Gene therapies or experimental pharmacological protocols – high or very high risk, potentially large benefits, but often only in specific, extreme cases.

In practice, the foundations of longevity are almost guaranteed investments: minimal risk, enormous health return. They include:

• Sleep – the most regenerating “intervention” in the world; it affects hormones, immunity, metabolism and the brain.
• Diet – to a huge extent shapes the risk of metabolic, cardiovascular and cancer diseases.
• Strength and cardio training – the best-studied interventions that truly extend life and preserve independence.
• Mental health and stress regulation – without this, no physical intervention will last long.
• Moderate, sensible supplementation – as support, not a substitute for the foundations.

The greatest risk is not that you start doing these things. The greatest risk is not doing them. Lack of sleep, lack of movement, terrible diet and chronic stress are not a “neutral lifestyle” – they are systematic shortening of both the length and quality of life.

As you move to the next levels of the Longevity Investment Strategy, you encounter interventions that are:

• more advanced,
• more often experimental,
• requiring close medical supervision.

These include, among others:

• gene therapies,
• advanced off-label pharmacology,
• cell therapies,
• experimental protocols tested on small groups.

Here the risk can be:

• serious,
• partially or completely irreversible,
• difficult to estimate because long-term data are lacking.

Typical mistakes:

• Overloading in training – injury, break, regression instead of progress.
• Biohacking without foundations – effects close to zero, but real risk of complications and burnout.
• Progressing too fast (more, harder, more often, without a plan) – the body does not keep up with adaptation, and the risk of injuries, pain and loss of motivation increases.

In each of these cases, the risk is not adequate to the gain. It is like investing huge sums of money in a very speculative asset while ignoring stable, predictable investments right next to you.

The most dangerous “intervention” is… no intervention.

Consequences of inaction:

• accelerated biological ageing,
• sarcopenia and osteopenia (loss of muscle and bone density),
• insulin resistance, diabetes, metabolic syndrome,
• depression, anxiety, burnout, decreased quality of life,
• higher risk of premature death.

It sounds brutal, but this is how it is: sofa + bag of chips + chronic sleep deprivation is in practice a riskier “strategy” than reasonable strength and cardio training.

Here is a set of simple rules that dramatically reduce risk in most interventions:

• Technique > load – in strength training, the biggest source of injuries is technical error, not the weight itself.
• Recovery as an insurance policy – lack of sleep means lack of adaptation, and lack of adaptation = injuries and burnout.
• Gradual progression – small, systematic increases in load give the highest return at the lowest risk.
• Listening to signals from your body – pain is information, not an ego challenge. Joint pain ≠ good “muscle burn”.
• A physiotherapist as a protocol partner – it is better to consult too early than too late.
• Minimal effective risk – choose those interventions that give the maximum possible gain at the lowest possible risk.

Before any new intervention, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Do I have the foundations in place?

   If you do not sleep, do not move and eat poorly, you are not ready for advanced risk.

2. What are the potential benefits?

   Is this about a real change in health, or just a cosmetic improvement of a biomarker?

3. How large are the potential harms?

   Is the worst-case scenario mild discomfort, or real, lasting damage?

4. Do the benefits outweigh the risk?

   And not just in theory, but taking into account your situation, age, health history and capacity.

5. Can I control or reduce the risk?

   Can I start with a lower dose, lighter load, shorter exposure?

You can also use a simple 0–3 risk scale:

• 0 – minimal risk: sleep, walking, a basic healthy diet.
• 1 – low risk: sensible strength training, cardio, sauna in a healthy person.
• 2 – moderate risk: advanced supplementation, intense cold exposure, long fasts in inexperienced people.
• 3 – high risk: experimental therapies, aggressive pharmacology, protocols without solid data.

Risk cannot be eliminated. What you can do is manage it consciously.

• The foundations (sleep, diet, movement, stress, relationships) – low risk, huge return.
• Advanced interventions – higher risk, sometimes high reward, but only for those who have a solid foundation and know what they are doing.
• Lack of action – the greatest risk of all, because it leads directly to disease, loss of function and shortened life.

A smart longevity strategy is not about avoiding risk, but about consciously calculating and managing it so that you maximise your chances of a long, healthy and capable life.