Dr. Will Cole On Why You're Aging Faster Than You Think, The Habits That Keep You Young & How To Live Longer

Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine expert and New York Times bestselling author, returned to The Bossticks to discuss his new book Heal Your Cells, co-authored with Dr. Josh Axe. The conversation centered on why people are aging faster than they realize, the cellular mechanisms behind it, and what can be done to slow the process down. Cole grounded his advice in both research and clinical experience, having seen tens of thousands of patients over sixteen years.

The Data on Accelerated Aging

Cole opened with a striking statistic: a 2023 Stanford study found that one in five Americans over 50 has at least one organ aging more rapidly than the rest of their body. When brain cells aged faster, the risk of neurodegenerative issues like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's increased by 80%. When heart cells aged faster, the risk of heart attack, stroke, or heart failure more than doubled. Even more concerning, a study published in Nature in summer 2024 showed that people born after 1965—especially millennials and those born in the 1990s—are aging more rapidly at the same chronological age than previous generations. This helps explain why autoimmune problems, early puberty, and pre-diabetes are appearing in younger populations. Cole emphasized that this isn't an organ problem per se; it's a cellular problem. Cells become dysregulated, or "exdifferentiated," as Harvard's David Sincl