A 64-year-old grandmother of 11 who has followed the same simple health regimen for decades is leading millionaire health obsessives in an anti-ageing contest called the Rejuvenation Olympics.
Amy Hardison has placed as high as fourth in the global online competition, which tracks the longevity metrics of thousands of contestants, some of whom dub themselves “biohackers” and go to extreme and expensive lengths to extend their lifespans.
But unlike many in the rapidly growing and ultra-competitive anti-ageing movement, Hardison has no interest in trying to live for ever. Hardison, an author and motivational speaker from Mesa, Arizona, says she has been health-conscious since she was a teenager but has never been one for dietary or exercise fads.
For 50 years, she has clocked up an hour of aerobic exercise each day, either on a cross-trainer machine or by swimming laps of her home swimming pool. She follows this with short bursts of higher intensity weight training and stretching, with the regular exercise helping ward off muscle loss and insomnia associated with ageing.
While exercising, she listens to audiobooks on the history of the Second World War, biographies and novels. “That’s really important to me, to have my mind engaged and stretching and learning,” she said.
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Then there is the genetic lottery. Hardison’s parents were fit, active people who lived into their nineties.
Her mother died at 90 after a long slow decline with dementia and her father also suffered cognitive decline and died at 94 after suffering several strokes. “I look at that and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to live super long. I don’t want to live to 130’,” she said, adding she hoped to live for another 20 years or so.
Hardison had never taken supplements until her son-in-law suggested she join a trial for Novos. Through the trial, she agreed to provide her bloodwork to the Rejuvenation Olympics, an online competition launched in 2023 where participants vie to slow their biological clock and “win by never crossing the finish line”.
It showed that Hardison is ageing at a rate of 0.74 of a year per chronological year, according to epigenetic DNA tests that measure changes in an individual’s genes.
With this Hardison was placed in fourth on the leaderboard, ahead even of Bryan Johnson, the competition’s co-founder who spends $2 million a year attempting to biohack his body into regaining its youth.
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Competitors vary their diet and physical activity to try to achieve gains, and can retest their age as often as they like to measure progress. Anyone can enter the contest by purchasing two blood tests for $795 that measure a person’s biological age and how fast they are ageing at a cellular level.
Last year Johnson, 46, infused himself with his teenage son’s plasma, and recently had 300 million stem cells into his bones and joints to improve his mineral density.
“I just kind of giggled,” Hardison said of learning she was ahead of millionaire biohackers 20 years her junior. “It was pretty ironic that I even did it because I’ve never been into taking vitamins and supplements.”
Hardison has bounced around the leaderboard top ten and is now in 13th place, ahead of dozens of “longevity enthusiasts”, scientists, authors and entrepreneurs. Not that she is too bothered — she is not sending new blood samples, so her competition ageing rate will remain frozen at 0.76.
Hardison’s best piece of advice for living a long, healthy life is to find purpose and make meaningful connections. For years she has stuck to a simple diet plan that revolves around home-cooked food, plenty of fruit and vegetables and not forgoing treats.
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She typically starts the day with a glass of chocolate milk and homemade bread, and will have a large salad packed with chicken, nuts, berries and leafy greens for lunch or dinner. She rarely dines out but always has a taste of something sweet for dessert, so long as it is under 100 calories.
“We eat healthy but not ‘extreme healthy’,” she said. She makes time to have dinner for her four adult children whenever possible. “I have paid attention to my diet and exercise my whole life so that a lot of times people will say to me, ‘oh, you’re so thin. I’m sure you’ve never had to worry about weight’. And I thought ‘only my whole life’. But after you do it for a decade or two, it just becomes what you love to do. It’s not hard work.”
She still takes a $160 cocktail of anti-ageing supplements including magnesium, l-theanine, ginger and fisetin.
In an age when billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are investing heavily in anti-ageing research, Hardison said she was comfortable with growing old.
“My philosophy is just to find what works for you, something that you can do day in, day out that becomes a part of you versus something that you’re always forcing yourself to do,” she said. “And then love your life, embrace the richness and the adventure of growing old. It’s like every day you get older is a new adventure you’ve never done. So enjoy that, the changes that you go through, just see it as an adventure.
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“I’m not going to resist falling apart because that’s just setting me up for disappointment. Why do I want to resist something that is inevitable?”
The science around longevity is continually evolving, but according to the Stanford University Project For Longevity, the seven pillars of a healthy long life are movement and exercise, healthful nutrition, restorative sleep, stress management, social connection, cognitive enhancement, and gratitude and reflection.
Hardison’s long-term approach has been simple: eat healthily, exercise consistently and love what life brings. “I’m not trying to get away from being old because I think this is the best time of life ever,” she said. “You get to enjoy the richness of a life well lived, the joy of the relationships you’ve built with your family and your friends.”
