The Longevity Trap

Why the Obsessive Pursuit of Health Is Making Us Sick - and How to Actually Live Well

Published by Prometheus
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About the Book

What if the obsessive pursuit of health is itself making us sick? The global wellness economy is booming: biometric wearables, longevity podcasts, and biohacking influencers peddling supplements, cold plunges, and five-figure drug regimens. The pursuit of health and longevity has never been more complicated or more expensive.

In this bracing, research-backed book, Dr. Loree Pinnavaia, a functional medicine clinician, and Ben Dubin, a healthcare venture capitalist and recovering biohacker, dismantle the longevity-industrial complex. Across movement, sleep, nutrition, and stress, The Longevity Trap shows that some of the most powerful interventions are also the simplest—and that the habits most consistently associated with longer, healthier lives are ones humans have practiced for millennia. Their goal isn't to shame anyone for wanting to be healthy. It's to offer a grounded framework so that your time, money, and attention go toward what actually works.

Drawing on real-life stories from the exam room and the boardroom, insider analysis, and rigorous scientific research, the authors show that exercise, sleep, and social belonging are the keys to a healthy life. Yet the longevity industry keeps selling the opposite lesson: that your health is too complex to manage without endless testing, tracking, and tweaking. Sleep is reduced to a nightly performance test, eating is engineered into anxiety and isolation, movement is turned into punishment, and health becomes a discipline that quietly erodes relationships and joy. In fact, the stress of chasing optimization may itself be accelerating the aging you're trying to slow.

At the heart of the book is a deeper conviction: the foundations of a long, healthy life should be available to everyone, not packaged as luxury products that require wealth, elite clinics, and the stamina for constant self-surveillance. The Longevity Trap is your escape plan and your permission slip: stop chasing a longer life and start living the one you have.

About the Authors

Product Details

  • Publisher: Prometheus (January 19, 2027)
  • Length: 278 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781493036004

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Raves and Reviews

“The Longevity Trap offers a much-needed antidote to the endless stream of new, hyped products claimed to extend and ‘optimize’ human life. Using science-based evidence, wisdom, and compassion, Dubin and Pinnavaia present a solid case that sleep, exercise, eating sensibly, and being socially connected are still the best ways to add years to our lives as well as life to our years.” 

– Daniel Lieberman, author of Fed Up and Exercised

“The Longevity Trap demonstrates how you can promote your own optimal health and longevity easily on your own by incorporating friends, sleep, real food, activity, and purpose into your daily life.  Forget the Longevity-Industrial Complex. If you are looking for health advice that will bring you joy, comfort, reassurance, and optimism, this is the book for you. It sure is for me.” 

– Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, emerita, New York University, and author of What to Eat Now

"Luckily, it turns out that a life well lived may be the best path to a long life. The Longevity Trap is a marvelous guide to health through living well.” 

– Tim O'Reilly, founder and former CEO of O'Reilly Media

“The Longevity Trap places longevity where it belongs - with whole living human beings. The authors’ holistic approach presents a convincing case that longevity cannot be disconnected from an individual’s sense of purpose, social connection, and relevance. The good news is that the keys to living a long and healthy life are in the hands of every individual. No pill or device can substitute for personal commitment to betterment. The Longevity Trap makes the science relevant and practical for readers.” 

– Robert Lee Kilpatrick, PhD, Partner, Technology Vision Group LLC

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