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.
The Clinician · Thriveology Health
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.
The Investor · Founding Partner, Health Gap Ventures
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.
A life in motion
We’ve been doing this for a long time.
Start lines, gyms, trails, dogs — and, since 2015, each other. Two people who have always liked to move, long before anyone called it longevity. A few photos from along the way.
Loree
Ben
Together
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.
We wrote this book with compassion, not judgment. We understand the trap because we have been in it.