How to live longer and build a business around longevity

Nineteen minutes into my interview with Mike Chan, CEO of House of Gaia, the Philippines’ first AI-powered longevity center, everything I thought I knew about health, wellness, and living longer changed.

I had always considered my lifestyle to be pretty healthy. I work out a few times a week and moderately control what I eat, thinking this would lead to a significantly longer life. “Fitter people generally will live longer,” Mr. Chan agreed before dropping the bomb, “by about three to five years, right? That’s very far from what we want. What you have to understand is fitness does not equal longevity.”

If you’re as shook as I was, read on to learn more about how to live longer — and how this lucrative business was born.

Through House of Gaia’s facilities primarily in Balesin, Batangas, as well as in Makati, Mike Chan is creating an “artificial blue zone,” similar to so-called blue zones in the world, where people live much longer than the rest of the global population. In these places, it’s not uncommon to live to 90 or 100. And, through a mix of preventive medicine, cutting edge regenerative therapies, and AI-powered longevity medicine, Mr. Chan seeks to replicate blue zones for his clientele in Batangas.

Can you, too, live to be 100? And what can you learn about putting up a business on the cutting edge of healthcare?

THE BUSINESS OF LONGEVITY
The founding of House of Gaia was a personal journey for Mike Chan. At the age of 47, he was a successful entrepreneur with three Lumiere aesthetic clinics, and considered “the poster boy for health and fitness” among his peers. He was also expecting a baby, and, encouraged by his wife to undergo a regular health check before becoming a father, he made a shocking discovery. He said, “I was already diabetic and my cholesterol was three times what was considered the safe upper limit.”

Not wanting to burden his young family with a sick father, he sought a solution. But there were no simple answers. He studied nutrition science at Stanford and read everything he could about aging, about preventive, longitudinal healthcare, and about new developments, such as stem cell research from Nobel-laureate Shinya Yamanaka.

Meanwhile, the pieces of Gaia — the business as well as its greater mission — came together during his work at Lumiere. When a friend and patient asked him why a treatment wasn’t as effective for her as it was for another friend, he realized the answer wasn’t in the realm of aesthetic medicine. The patient showed signs of diabetes, as well as obesity, and with these conditions, probably had difficulty healing.

“That was an ‘aha moment’ for me,” he said. “You fix the inside, you fix the outside.”

With this new approach, the clinic began to help its patients with overall wellness. He added, “And it got to a point where helping people become healthier became way more fulfilling than helping people look better.”

Upon discovering this mission — to help others live longer, richer, healthier lives — he founded House of Gaia. And today, in their clinics, they have a network of 12 longevity medicine partners from all over the world, from Croatia to the UK, Beijing and Singapore.

HOW TO LIVE LONGER
Driven by this purpose, Mr. Chan doesn’t identify as an entrepreneur, though perhaps unintentionally, he began by describing a consumer/market problem in the practice of medicine:

“Hospitals will treat acute conditions. So, when you say acute, it means right now. If you have hypertension, you go to a hospital. If you break your arm, you go to a hospital. If there’s a problem with me right now, can you fix it right now?”

This shortcoming of modern medicine has resulted in an increase in the need for general health and wellness. Where does House of Gaia fit into this?

“We are more on the preventive side and using AI,” he said.

“So, longevity medicine is AI-powered, data-driven medicine that targets human aging… It’s longitudinal care. You don’t want to be healthy just for a year. When we have our patients, we normally have them for life.”

WHAT HOUSE OF GAIA DOES
To achieve its promise of a longer life, House of Gaia employs what Mr. Chan describes as a four-step methodology.

The first step is diagnostics to provide customized healthcare that specifically addresses your individual needs. He explained, “First and foremost, is our baseline diagnostics. I look at you from head to toe, and I look at your weakest link.”

The second step involves making sure patients are disease-free — which is crucial as many people die before the age of 70 from diseases like cancer or heart disease, or disease-related complications, as is the case with diabetes.

He continued: “Once I have identified every weak link, particularly in disease, the next strategy is to build a body that is disease-free. If you have hypertension, I need to remove it. If you have diabetes, I need to remove it.”

The third step is all about extending your peak span, which is the number of years you can remain at 90% of your physical prime. Simply put, if you are strong, you can live longer. And extending your peak span is all about being stronger and enjoying a high quality of life for longer as well.

Finally, the fourth step is regenerative medicine. This cutting-edge approach to healthcare is one of the most exciting areas in medicine, and he predicts that in the next 20 years, many more treatments will be developed not just to slow aging but even to reverse it.

THE PASSION FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Even though Mr. Chan doesn’t identify as a businessman, he displays qualities that many entrepreneurs and business leaders believe are essential: providing solutions and passion.

Regarding providing solutions, he credits luck, but he also mentions how his clinic answers a need — displaying an astute capability in spotting opportunities. After all, don’t we all want to live longer? He said, “[House of Gaia] was born out of a need, and it just so happened that other people needed it as well, so I got lucky. I was at the right place at the right time.”

For Mike Chan, it always comes back to his passion and purpose. To other entrepreneurs, he says, “If you want to do something, do it with all of your heart, because the only way that I was able to get this much knowledge, it’s because I’m so passionate about it.”

RJ Ledesma (www.rjledesma.com) is a Hall of Fame Awardee for Best Male Host at the Aliw Awards, a multi-awarded serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and business mentor, podcaster, an Honorary Consul, and editor-in-chief of The Business Manual. Mr. Ledesma can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. The RJ Ledesma Podcast is available on Facebook, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcasts. Are there entrepreneurs you want Mr. Ledesma to interview? Let him know at

ledesma.rj@gmail.com.