Longevity Assessment: Community

The Equinox Longevity Assessment is a nine-part series designed to provide members with evidence-based tools to measure and benchmark their fitness age, and provide training guidance to optimize performance. Developed with Michael Crandall, CSCS, a Tier X Coach at Equinox, the full program can be accessed here.

Social fitness should be just as big of a priority as physical fitness in your longevity roadmap. Humans are naturally social. But the modern digital era has made it easy to live behind a screen and fall into patterns of isolation, to the point that loneliness has emerged as a U.S. public health crisis. 

According to the National Institute on Aging, the health risks of prolonged isolation are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Social isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a person’s life span by as many as 15 years. The risks are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality, such as alcohol consumption and smoking, and exceed the influence of other risk factors like physical inactivity and obesity.