A new book · January 19, 2027 · Prometheus Books
You're doing everything right.
So why do you feel so wrong?
Clinician Dr. Loree Pinnavaia and healthcare investor Ben Dubin expose an uncomfortable truth: the longevity industry profits from complexity — but the research points to simplicity.
“Sleep, move, eat real food… Connect, find purpose, let go. Everything else is optional.”
The Longevity Trap · Dr. Loree Pinnavaia and Ben DubinThe premise
The pursuit of health became its own kind of sickness.
The supplements. The protocols. The tracking. The optimization. You've invested thousands of dollars and countless hours pursuing a longer life — and somewhere along the way, it became an exhausting, isolating, anxiety-filled project that leaves no room for actually living.
The interventions with the strongest evidence aren't expensive or cutting-edge. They're the practices humans have followed for millennia. The longest-lived people in the world don't optimize. They just live.
What actually works
The five fundamentals.
Decades of research keep pointing to the same handful of practices. None of them are proprietary. None of them are expensive. All of them are available to you right now.
Sleep
The unsexy superpower. The most powerful intervention is free — and feels wonderful.
Movement
Not exercise science. Just movement, woven through an ordinary day.
Real Food
Not nutritional biochemistry. Meals humans have shared for millennia.
Connection
The longevity factor nobody wants to optimize — and one of the most powerful.
Purpose
A reason to get up in the morning that no protocol can supply.
…then let go. The Subtraction Principle.
The boldest move isn't adding another protocol — it's subtracting the complexity that's crowding out your life. Every hour, every dollar, and every worry you reclaim goes back to the five fundamentals. And to living.
Two voices, one book
The investor and the clinician.
Ben and Loree came at the longevity trap from opposite sides — one as an engineer who approached his body like a system to be optimized, the other as a clinician who had spent years reading the actual research behind every intervention her patients were trying. Throughout the book, their alternating Ben's Take and Loree's Take commentaries let you see every claim from both sides of the industry.
“I've had my genome sequenced three times. I built color-coded spreadsheets comparing supplements. At my peak I took seventeen a morning — and I was miserable. I know this industry from the inside, because I helped fund it.”
“For over twenty years I've watched patients suffer — not from disease, but from the anxiety of trying to prevent it. The research behind most of what they were sold never said what the marketing claimed.”
The Longevity Trap Podcast
One claim per week. What's real, what's hype, what to actually do.
Launching October 2026. Every episode ends with a verdict — Green Light, Yellow Light, or Red Light — and something free you can do this week instead.
Stay in touch
The newsletter for people who want to live well without making it a full-time job.
Publication news, podcast episodes, and one simple, evidence-backed idea at a time. No supplements. No 30-step protocols. We promise.
Thank you — you're on the list.
The book
The Longevity Trap
Why the Obsessive Pursuit of Health Is Making Us Sick — and How to Actually Live Well
- Publisher
- Prometheus Books, an imprint of Globe Pequot
- Distribution
- Simon & Schuster
- On sale
- January 19, 2027
About the book
You're doing everything right. So why do you feel so wrong?
The supplements. The protocols. The tracking. The optimization. You've invested thousands of dollars and countless hours pursuing a longer life. But somewhere along the way, the pursuit of health became its own kind of sickness — an exhausting, isolating, anxiety-filled project that leaves no room for actually living.
Welcome to the longevity trap.
Functional medicine practitioner Dr. Loree Pinnavaia and healthcare investor Ben Dubin expose an uncomfortable truth: the longevity industry profits from complexity, but the research points to simplicity. The interventions with the strongest evidence aren't expensive or cutting-edge. They're the practices humans have followed for millennia — sleep, movement, real food, connection, purpose.
The longest-lived people in the world don't optimize. They just live.
The Longevity Trap is your permission to stop chasing and start living. Because the life you're trying to extend has been waiting for you all along.
Inside
A journey in twelve chapters.
From understanding the trap, through examining what matters, to finding a sustainable path forward — with Ben's Take and Loree's Take commentaries throughout.
- 1The Longevity Industrial Complex
- 2The Psychology of Optimization
- 3The Inconvenient Research
- 4Sleep — The Unsexy Superpower
- 5Movement — Not Exercise Science, Just Movement
- 6Real Food — Not Nutritional Biochemistry
- 7Connection — The Longevity Factor Nobody Wants to Optimize
- 8Stress and Purpose — What the Research Actually Shows
- 9The Anti-Aging Industry — Profiting from Fear
- 10The Path Forward — A Simpler Way
- 11Aging With Grace — Making Peace with Time
- 12Coming Home — The Life That Was Waiting All Along
Plus a Quick Reference Guide, Selected Bibliography and Recommended Sources, and an Afterword.
Who this book is for.
For anyone whose pursuit of health has cost them something important — time with loved ones, spontaneity, joy, peace of mind, the simple pleasure of living without constant calculation. If you want to be healthy but also want to be free, this book was written for you. With compassion, not judgment.
The companion workbook · Coming soon
Simple Longevity
A Workbook for Living Well, Not Just Living Longer
The Longevity Trap is the diagnosis. Simple Longevity is the prescription — assessments, reflections, action plans, and written permission slips for each of the five fundamentals.
Simple
Longevity
A workbook for living well, not just living longer
Pinnavaia · Dubin
The idea
If the book helped you see the cage, the workbook helps you walk out of it.
The Longevity Trap changes how you think about longevity. Simple Longevity changes how you live it. Together, they form a complete journey: from awareness to action to completion.
And it is designed to be completed — not consulted endlessly, not revisited obsessively. There's a graduation certificate at the end, and we mean it. Our measure of success is graduates, not subscribers.
How it's organized
Four parts. One journey.
Part One
Orientation
Where you are now — honest assessments before anything changes.
Part Two
The 5 Fundamentals
Sleep, movement, real food, connection, and purpose — each with assessments, action plans, and permission slips.
Part Three
Integration
Opening with making peace — then bringing it all together, navigating obstacles, and building a sustainable practice.
Part Four
Graduation
Reflection, review, commencement — and a certificate. Then you close the book and go live your life.
“Our job here is not to add to your life. It's to help you subtract.”
From Simple LongevityThe Longevity Trap Podcast · Launching October 2026
Cutting through the hype, so you can actually live well.
Two friends who've been inside the longevity industry — one as an investor, one as a clinician — look honestly at one claim every week, with curiosity, evidence, and humor. We tell you what's worth it, what isn't, and we never make you feel foolish for trying.
New episodes every Tuesday
Every episode ends with a verdict
Green light. Yellow light. Red light.
Green Light
The evidence is real, and it's worth your time. We show you the simplest way to do it — usually free or close to it.
Yellow Light
Interesting but unproven. If you enjoy it and can afford it, no harm done — here's exactly where the evidence gets thin.
Red Light
Probably not worth the money. We explain why the research doesn't support the claim — and what to do instead.
The format
One claim, both sides, thirty minutes.
Each week we take a single topic in the longevity space — a device, a supplement, a protocol, a promise — and walk it through the same honest sequence:
- The Buzz — what's being claimed
- Ben's Take — the industry view
- Loree's Take — the clinical view
- The Trap
- The Truth
- The Verdict
And every episode closes on the affirmative: something free or nearly free you can actually do this week.
First up
Early episodes.
Our Story
“We almost became the people we wrote this book to help.” How an engineer with seventeen morning supplements and a clinician who read the actual research found their way out.
Continuous Glucose Monitors
Is your blood sugar telling you something important — or just creating new anxiety? Ben wore a CGM for six months. Loree read what the research supports for non-diabetics.
Cold Plunges
“I have a very expensive ice bath in my garage. Loree, tell me it was worth it.” What the cold-exposure evidence actually shows.
Be there for episode one.
Join the newsletter and we'll let you know the moment the trailer drops.
Thank you — you're on the list.
About the authors
We almost became the very people we wrote this book to help.
Ben and Loree came to the longevity trap from opposite sides — the industry that builds and markets interventions, and the clinic where their real effects show up. Between them, they had purchased, tested, and tracked nearly every longevity device and drug on the market. They had been inside the machine, believers in its promises. And they both, eventually, found their way out.
Dr. Loree Pinnavaia
Dr. Loree Pinnavaia is a Doctor of Chiropractic and Functional Medicine Practitioner with over two decades of clinical experience. She has spent more than a thousand hours in advanced training with the Institute for Functional Medicine, educated healthcare professionals on clinical nutrition and hormone regulation, and built a practice dedicated to finding root causes rather than treating symptoms.
She is a member of the Institute for Functional Medicine and the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. Her patients have ranged from exhausted parents to professional athletes — and it was watching them suffer not from disease, but from the anxiety of trying to prevent it, that led her to this book.
Ben Dubin
Ben Dubin is a healthcare venture capitalist and founding partner of Health Gap Ventures. An engineer by training with an MBA from Harvard Business School, he spent years inside hardware and software companies before moving to the investing side — an unusual window into how the health and wellness industry actually works: how companies are built, how products are marketed, and how the gap between what research shows and what consumers are told is filled with hope and hype.
He is also a recovering optimizer. At his peak: seventeen supplements every morning, a sleep ring, a continuous glucose monitor, a cold plunge, and custom tracking databases he designed himself. The morning he realized he was trying to live forever — and was miserable — is where this book begins.
How this began
Two vantage points. One phenomenon.
Ben and Loree met in 2018 and finally compared notes in 2020 — and discovered they had been witnessing the same thing from different sides: intelligent, well-meaning people making themselves miserable, and often less healthy, in the desperate pursuit of living forever.
Together, they cover the longevity landscape from both directions: the industry that creates and markets interventions, and the clinical and research reality of what those interventions actually do.
Media & press
Working on a story about the longevity industry?
Dr. Loree Pinnavaia and Ben Dubin are available for interviews, podcast appearances, and speaking engagements — together or individually. One knows how longevity companies get built and funded. The other knows what happens when their products meet real patients.
Story angles
What Ben & Loree can speak to.
The industry that profits from complexity
The longevity economy has never been bigger — while the practices with the strongest evidence remain simple and largely free. How the incentives work, from someone who has funded the space.
Health is a right, not a luxury product
Longevity marketing targets the wealthy, but the trap reaches everyone — and the industry structurally excludes lower-income communities. Why the five fundamentals belong to everybody, regardless of income or zip code.
The psychology of optimization
When the pursuit of health becomes its own sickness: tracking anxiety, protocol perfectionism, and the relationships and joy that quietly erode along the way.
What the research actually shows
A clinician's view of the evidence behind popular interventions — where claims outrun the data, and where simple practices rival expensive ones.
The five fundamentals
Sleep, movement, real food, connection, and purpose — what the longest-lived populations actually do, and the permission to let the rest go.
Insider × clinician
A rare pairing for interviews: the venture capitalist who helped fund the industry and the functional medicine practitioner who treats its customers — often disagreeing, always with evidence.
For journalists
Boilerplate & fast facts.
The Longevity Trap: Why the Obsessive Pursuit of Health Is Making Us Sick — and How to Actually Live Well by Dr. Loree Pinnavaia and Ben Dubin argues that the longevity industry profits from complexity while the research points to simplicity — and that health and longevity are a fundamental right, not a luxury product. It publishes January 19, 2027 from Prometheus Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster.
- Title
- The Longevity Trap: Why the Obsessive Pursuit of Health Is Making Us Sick — and How to Actually Live Well
- Authors
- Dr. Loree Pinnavaia and Ben Dubin
- Publisher
- Prometheus Books, an imprint of Globe Pequot
- Distribution
- Simon & Schuster
- On sale
- January 19, 2027
- Companion works
- Simple Longevity workbook (forthcoming) · The Longevity Trap Podcast (launching October 2026)
Press & appearances
In the media.
Coverage, interviews, and appearances will be listed here as they publish. For advance copies and interview requests, write to press@longevitytrap.com.