Hey Doc,
This one is landing later than usual. We had four great conversations today with the longevitydocs™ community. Yes, on a Sunday. Friends matter.
It reminded me of something we rarely say to each other. We spend our days caring for patients, and the hours usually come out of our families and ourselves. Take a minute this week to look at where you are. The med student you once were would not have imagined it.
Doctors are human. We carry our own challenges, and health issues in our own families. Most of us bury them, because our job is to care for people and to look strong while doing it. To my colleagues out there: it’s OK not to be strong all the time. Take time for yourself and your family, and enjoy the road you’re on. You made it through med school, residency, hospital life, maybe running a private practice. Your patients need you healthy and rested.
As always, happy Sunday evening!
Dr. David Luu, Founder, longevitydocs™
Longevity Medicine Needs a New Type of School
On Saturday, October 24, we host our sixth Mastermind in New York. It is a physicians-only gathering in longevity medicine.
When we ran the first one in 2024, we still had to explain what longevity medicine meant. This week The New York Times reported on it going mainstream, with health systems adopting it. Physicians now ask a different question: how do I practice it, and where do I learn?
This week I’ve talked to a family physician in Turkey, finishing her mandatory year of rural service, asks how to build a solid clinical foundation before she opens her practice. A cardiac surgeon in the UK wants to keep operating and also see patients years before they need surgery. An internist in New Jersey, three years into his own practice and still doing hospitalist shifts, wants the structure to train the providers who work for him.
Three specialties, one goal: get where they want to go, in medicine and in life. That is why I say every doctor is a longevity doctor. Your specialty decides where you start.
None of them can go back to school for four years. All of them need to keep learning, and all of them ask where to find their people.
Medical school gave us our friends and our degree. It trained us at the bench and in the library, then the formal learning stopped while the science kept moving. Longevity medicine is practiced in clinic, with real patients, while the evidence is still arriving. Textbooks take years to catch up, so the school it needs has to move faster than the books: taught by physicians who practice the discipline every day, and updated in real time as new research lands. It has to last your whole career and fit a physician's life. Watch, read or listen, with your community or on your own, whenever you have time, and get the same teaching wherever you live and whatever your time zone.
Introducing Mastermind 2.0, and it starts Saturday.
From this edition on, every physician talk becomes a course taught by its faculty member, online with the slides, full transcript and audio version. An on-demand school for longevity medicine, built by physicians for physicians.
When you attend, you leave with the room and the library. You can return to a lecture anytime. A physician in rural Turkey gets the same teaching as the one in the front row in Manhattan. Our mission is to democratize longevity medicine, and this is how we make it practical.
Certified Longevity Doctors can open the library now in the longevitydocs.ai app.
Here is your first look:
Every Mastermind also gets its own chat group in our app, so you meet the other physicians before you arrive and keep talking after you leave.
Many of you told us CME credit would make a difference. We are working toward CME accreditation for selected courses; credit is not yet available. We will share details once confirmed.
The room stays at the center of it. The people you meet here become the friend you call about a hard case, the mentor who has already made the mistakes, the partner you open a clinic with.
Courses and Faculty
A full day on Skin, Bone and Muscle, from the science of aging and regeneration to patient selection, clinical protocols and emerging therapies.
Skin Regeneration: Stem Cells, Secretomes and Exosomes · Saranya Wyles, MD, PhD
Gerotherapeutics for Skin, Muscle and Bone: The Pipeline · James Peyer, PhD
Cellular Therapies: How Cell Products Are Made · Robert Hariri, MD, PhD
Topical Rapamycin and Rapalogs in Skin Longevity · Doris Day, MD
The Aging Face: Biomarkers and Protocols · Amanda Hill, MD
The GLP-1 Tax: Muscle and Bone on Incretin Therapy · Elizabeth Yurth, MD
Bone Loss: Screening, Markers and Sequencing · Catherine Johnson, MD, MSCP
Hormonal Transition and Collagen Loss · Neely Khan, MD, MS, FAAD
Energy-Based Devices: Current Protocols · Dan Belkin, MD
Procedure Parameters and Pigment Risk Across Skin Types · Naana Boakye, MD, MPH, FAAD
Biostimulators, Polynucleotides and Growth Factors · Kay Durairaj, MD, FACS
Community
The courses are only part of why we come together. You get twenty-four hours to meet your people, compare notes and find the physicians you will keep learning and building with.
We begin with a welcome reception on Friday, October 23. On Saturday we share breakfast, a full day of learning and lunch at Convene, 101 Park Avenue, then take the conversation to dinner at Zuma.
Come with a clinical question or a practice idea you are still working out, and you will find colleagues who understand what you are trying to build. Many practices in our community began as a conversation over a Mastermind lunch.
In-person attendance is reserved for physicians, and the room is capped. Virtual tickets are available on the same page.
RESEARCH · NEW STUDIES
Hearing aid use tracked with 9% lower mortality in pooled cohorts
Pooled data on 13,851 adults from Australia, Iceland and the US, replicated in 50,277 Norwegians, linked measured hearing loss to higher mortality, rising to a hazard ratio of 1.55 for moderate loss. Current hearing aid users had a 9% lower risk of death (HR 0.91, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.99). Observational, and hearing aid users tend to be wealthier and healthier, but an audiogram is cheap and belongs in a longevity baseline (Lancet Healthy Longevity).
RESEARCH · BIOLOGY OF AGING
Ovaries keep remodeling for decades after menopause, 28-ovary study finds
A Buck Institute and Northwestern proteomics study of 28 ovaries from women aged 50 to 75 quantified 5,812 proteins and found 117 that differed between women in their 70s and their 50s, shifting toward inflammation, complement and matrix remodeling. The postmenopausal ovary looks like active tissue. Small and cross-sectional, so advice on removing ovaries at hysterectomy stays the same for now (Aging Cell).
RESEARCH · NEW STUDIES
ARB users had more brown fat across 101,243 cancer PET scans
An AI read of PET/CT scans at Memorial Sloan Kettering found active brown fat in 8.8% of patients, more often in those taking losartan (OR 1.36) or valsartan (OR 1.52). SSRIs and beta blockers tracked with less. Losartan switched on brown fat cells in mice and cell culture, at concentrations above typical blood levels. Nobody should switch blood pressure drugs on this, but it is one small point for an ARB when the choice is open (Nature).
DIAGNOSTICS · BIOMARKERS
p-tau217 blood levels ran lower in Asian, Black and Hispanic adults
Screening data from 15,612 cognitively normal adults in the AHEAD 3-45 prevention trials showed lower plasma %p-tau217 in Asian, Black and Hispanic participants. The link to amyloid PET held across racial groups, which supports a blood test before PET, but differed by Hispanic ethnicity. A result near the cutoff deserves more caution, with APOE status in the interpretation (JAMA Neurology).
Buzz in the Chat
Tiers or a base membership? How physicians price concierge care
A member drafting concierge membership tiers with AI asked for real-world input before taking the plan to health counsel. “Feeling kinda stuck,” she wrote.
The first answer reframed the question: skip tiers, set one base price that covers a defined set of labs and visits, and price everything else as an add-on. Another member backed it up. “You want the decision to be: do I sign up or not? Versus which tier. A confused mind says no.” A physician who started with three tiers said moving to a single baseline membership made administration much easier.
On price, the answers ranged. “Think of a number that you’re uncomfortable asking for. Then double it,” one joked, before admitting he priced at the market median. Another went 20% above median, between direct primary care and full concierge. A third warned against overthinking: “Better to pick a number, and just start,” adding that patients telling you others charge more is the most useful data point you’ll get.
Most keep legacy patients at or near their original price, as thanks to the people who took a chance on them early. One has raised prices only slightly over eight years: “Not a single patient has complained because they see how expensive everything else is around them.”
Apply for membership (physicians only)
Longevity Doctor of the Week
Dr. Christine Shanahan - Washington, D.C., USA
Christine Shanahan, MD, is a board-certified internist at Vivaz Wellness by DermUtopia and a practicing hospitalist in Washington, D.C. In 2012 she co-founded DermUtopia, a teledermatology practice built to widen access to dermatologic care. She trained at the University of Virginia, and her longevity practice covers cardiometabolic prevention, hormone and menopause care, and GLP-1 programs.
Calendar
Longevitydocs Events
Oct 24 · Skin, Bone & Muscle Mastermind
New York, Convene, 101 Park Avenue. One day, physicians only: the clinical triad, new diagnostics, the GLP-1 tax and advanced protocols. From $499. Get tickets
Nov 7 · Tables: West Palm Beach
Private dinner for physicians on starting and growing a concierge longevity practice. Apply
Nov 8 · Tables: Miami
Same conversation, Miami. Apply
Nov 18 · Rooms with Dr. Abid Husain
Online, 12 to 12:30 pm ET. Join
Dec 2 · Rooms with Dr. Hillary Lin
Online, 12 to 12:30 pm ET. Join
Dec 11 · Tables: Las Vegas
Private dinner. Apply
Feb 6, 2027 · Mastermind, New York
Program and venue to be announced.
Jun 9 to 11, 2027 · longevitydocs™ Summit, Cannes
Palais des Festivals. The flagship gathering of longevity medicine. From $450. Get tickets
Missed one? Replays of the Peptides, Hormones and AI & Tech Masterminds are on demand. Watch
DIAGNOSTICS
FDA panel backs Galleri safety, splits 6-4 on effectiveness
FDA’s advisers voted 10 to 0 on safety but split on effectiveness for the $949 multi-cancer blood test, which finds about 1 in 3 cancers within a year. Offer it alongside guideline screening, never instead of it, and have a plan ready for a positive result.
POLICY
FDA sends an interim peptide compounding policy to White House review
A policy that could open 503A pharmacy access to peptides such as BPC-157 is under review, though no text or peptide list is public yet. Retatrutide stays off limits: outside a Lilly trial, there is no legal supply.
THERAPEUTICS
Remote GLP-1 program: 15.5% weight loss in 8,127 women
A UK digital tirzepatide program with home labs, weekly video check-ins and refill gates kept 91.4% of women on treatment at six months. It’s observational and self-pay, and its safety came from structured protocols, not from less oversight.
TECHNOLOGY · AI IN MEDICINE
AI summaries sent before visits shortened consults in a 300-patient RCT
Patients who read a checked AI summary of their records before a first visit had 25-minute consults instead of 33 and rated the conversation higher. It was one center and one specialty, but it’s an easy pilot for lab-heavy first visits.
Every doctor should be a longevity doctor
longevitydocs™ is the intelligence network for longevity medicine. 1,000+ physicians in 68 countries.
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