Longevity: ingredients and the evidence
Longevity has excellent vocabulary: autophagy, senolytics, NAD. It also has a gap that is easy to miss, between a mechanism in a lab and a result in a person.
This is the home for our longevity guides: the ingredients that keep turning up on labels and in headlines, and a lens for reading all of them. It is for anyone curious about what these words describe before deciding what to make of a product.
Where to start
- I keep meeting the vocabulary. Begin with Longevity: mechanisms versus human outcomes, then choose the ingredient that caught your eye.
- I have one ingredient in mind. Go straight to its guide below: spermidine, NMN and NAD, resveratrol, fisetin and quercetin, or CoQ10 and calcium AKG.
- I take medication. Read Supplements, herbs and medication: how to check a combination first, then the ingredient guide.
The guides, in reading order
- Longevity: mechanisms versus human outcomes: How do you read a longevity label as a mechanism rather than an outcome?
- Spermidine: why the longevity interest?: Where does the autophagy story come from, and what have food studies and supplement trials looked at?
- NMN and NAD: understand the relationship: How do NAD+, NMN, NR and niacin relate, and how do trial doses compare with EU limits?
- Resveratrol: the ingredient behind the headlines: Where did the headlines start, and what did mice and people actually show?
- Fisetin and quercetin: what does senolytic mean?: What does "senolytic" mean, and why do fisetin and quercetin have separate evidence?
- CoQ10 and calcium AKG: two different longevity conversations: Why are these two compounds separate conversations, one with randomised human trials and one with mostly mouse studies?
Before you buy anything
Newer ingredients are worth a novel-food check in your own country. Medicines, health conditions and planned surgery are a conversation for a pharmacist or doctor; the medication guide explains how to prepare for it.
Related guides and hubs
- How to read a supplement label (and a lab certificate): from the Buying and rules hub, for the portion and amounts behind any longevity product.
Last updated: 14 October 2026