DEATH DEFIER

In 2015, Canadian professor, researcher and writer Timothy Caulfield took a deep dive into the recesses of pop culture, from celebrity health gossip to Goop, in his award-winning book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? Now, as lifespans continually increase, the 54-yearold shines a light on the fad diets, detoxes, genetic tests and other methods humans turn to in an effort to stave off mortality in A User’s Guide to Cheating Death – a six-part series set to air on VisionTV (a ZoomerMedia property).

“Now that we are living longer, we want to live better, too. We call it cheating death, but I think a lot of it really is about living a healthy life,” Caulfield says from his Alberta home. “Something I think that has been emphasized over the last couple of decades is our obsession with youth, and that’s not necessarily the healthiest trend.”

In true fashion, Caulfield goes beyond just talk, dipping his toe into various fountains of youth methods himself – from detoxes to a frigid cryotherapy session – though he did draw a line in the sand. “The colonic,” he snickers. “I wasn’t going to do that.”

So what does Caulfield, who suggests we keep an open mind when it comes to health regimens, believe is the basic blueprint for cheating death as long as possible?

“You don’t smoke, you get real exercise, you eat real food, you sleep, you try to maintain a healthy weight and you love someone,” he says. “That’s the magic. Everything else is kind of noise.” —MC