Transcript of the audiocast
Greetings friends, I think this is my first AGING with STRENGTH audiocast this year, 10 months into 2026, a year that felt so bright and new just a few months ago and now feels like, let’s just get this over with already.
I’m Paul von Zielbauer. I thought it was time to check in with you all in this format, which can provide a little more personal intimacy and, I hope, a shared experience. I think a lot of us are experiencing similar challenges lately. And by lately, I mean the last few years. Maybe longer.
I’m talking about the TOO MUCH INFORMATION problem.
Too much information, runnin’ through my brain
Too much information, driving me insane
Those lyrics, from The Police, are from 45 years ago and we can only wish we had the information overload problems Sting felt when he wrote them — back in the relatively uncomplicated analog days of 1981. (Link to The Police tune here.)
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I thought it was important to talk about too much information now, in October 2026, because I hear the frustrations in so many of your voices — yes, yours, AGING with STRENGTH subscribers — at the paralysis by analysis caused by supplements, peptides, training programs, dietary regimes, intermittent fasting, ketogenics, senolytics, biogenics, Yamanaka factors, autophagy, mitophagy, apoptosis, proteostasis, cellular senescense, nonsensical cellulite, NAD+ boosters, anti-aging losers, NMN, nicotinamide riboside, rapamycin, metformin, urolithin A, spermidine, fisetin, quercetin, resveratrol, berberine, creatine, methylene blue, ethylene WHO CARES?, ketone esters, longevity jesters, mimetics, epigenetics, nutripharma-co-pathetics.
Where the bloody hell will it stop trying to turn us all into longevity sluts?
Chasing imaginary biological clocks through venture-backed longevity wormholes in search of a live-forever Neverland where doctors moonlight as influencers and grade your aging on a scale they invented to take money out of your pocket and put it into theirs.
Overkill, overview
Over my dead body
Over me, over you
Over everybody
But, there is another way.
I think it starts with restricting — not calories! — but rather the information we allow ourselves to consume, passively or proactively, and reuniting with the most powerful longevity influencer on the planet: your own body, mind and spirit. What do they need and want? How do they feel when you do the exercise routine that you’ve chosen for yourself, and that you want to do?
Going digitally naked
How much do you trust your body, brain and spirit to give you better feedback than your wearable or than the YouTube experts you subscribe to? What if you didn’t time exactly how fast you ran, or exactly how far you peddled, or how many minutes you spent in Stage 4 sleep last night?
What if you slept, and worked out, digitally naked? Like we all did 20 years ago.
I wrote recently about a choice I made … to stop wearing my Apple Watch on my right wrist and remove the Whoop band on my left wrist. Yes, they provide useful information to me sometimes. But after a while I had to ask: to what end? Are they giving me actionable information every day or addicting me to a semi-accurate information hamster wheel that has stopped serving my purposes?
The fact was, I knew roughly how many active calories each of my workouts burn…how many miles I need to walk to hit my arbitrary step-count goal. I knew when my sleep sucked and when it was sound.
Why did I need to keep telling my watch that I’m about to start walking, cycling or surfing?
My relationship to all those digital readouts felt reflexive and maybe even addictive. Like too much information, runnin’ through my brain.
I didn’t want to be addicted to technology that felt like a layer of abstraction between me and my body, mind and spirit.
I ditched the Apple Watch because I wanted to remove what had come to feel, after three years, like accumulated, unhelpful digital plaque. I had the data. Now it was time to tune back into myself, and what makes me feel strong, resilient, calm and creative.
What’s your “quality of health”?
“Quality of life” is a phrase we’re all familiar with. Recently I’ve started to think more about what I’ll call my “quality of health.”
Which is not a reference to how healthy I am but to how healthy my relationship to my health is.
When my quality of health rises or falls depending on how many steps my wearable device said I took today, or how flat my VO2 max monthly trendline is, it may be time to rethink my information inputs. If I’m walking in circles in my bedroom at 11pm staring at my Apple Watch because I need to burn 38 more calories to reach my arbitrary daily active calorie goal — well, my “quality of health” is probably not as high as I think it is.
My relationship to my health is, really, a relationship to my body and mind and spirit. How much do I trust those three things to give me good feedback? More than I trust a tech company’s watch? Or ring? Or GPS tracker?
Probably, yes.
That’s what I mean by “quality of health”: Trusting our bodies — which I’ve argued previously are not us; our bodies are not us! And perhaps you disagree with that.
But I hope you’ll consider the worth in reconnecting to yourself — your body, your mind, your spirit.
Digital plaque
Of course, if you’re at cardiovascular risk, obviously, wear the device that could save your life. My argument isn’t against using technology to improve our lives. It’s to notice when technology has turned into an abstraction layer — digital plaque — that attenuates instead of strengthens our understanding of our bodies, minds and spirit.
Because let’s face it, the people making the hardware and the social content we’re addicted to — to one extent or another — aren’t going to tell us it’s time to take a break, to rethink our relationships with our devices or our information overload. They want us to consume and clock more and more.
I’m just not sure our quality of health, which again is a reference to how healthy our relationship to our health is, always needs more external data. Maybe it needs more internal data.
Take it off. Take it all off….
Health, after 50, and now after 60, in my case — a number that still blows my mind — is I think more and more about feeling solid about how things are going for us. Body. Mind. Spirit. It’s not about discovering that new killer workout or short-chain amino acid. Sometimes — often — it’s not helpful to keep searching for new information, when new information is too much information.
Is it overkill, over me, over you, over everybody? If your answer is yes…Take it off. Take it all off.
Instead of being a digital native, think about going digitally naked. And whether it changes your own quality of health.
I’m Paul von Zielbauer. Thanks for listening.
