Read the full transcript of board-certified emergency physician, expert speaker and certified coach Dr. Parker Hays’ talk titled “More Nows: An ER Doctors Prescription for Longevity” at TEDxBrevard, June 4, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
A Life-Changing Moment in the ER
Dr. Parker Hays: He was gripping both bed rails, leaning forward, gasping, and said, “Please, please find my brother. He understands me.” At least I think that’s what he said. It was difficult to understand him with a wet oxygen mask and that much shortness of breath.
In a career of crazy times, it was a crazy time to be in the emergency department. Strange new virus, halls full of patients, new information coming in all the time, lots of misinformation, political missteps, missteps by leaders, and oddly enough, the victims themselves were sometimes ostracized. He was a picture of 28-year-old health just a little while ago. But now he was stricken, alone in my ER, imploring me to do the one thing that was still so important to him: connect him to his people. So I tried my best.
Lessons from 33 Years in Emergency Medicine
I’ve had the privilege of being an emergency physician for 33 years. I’ve worked over 6,000 shifts here in the United States and abroad. What a classroom. I mean, my patients have taught me so many things. But today, I’m going to tell you what they have taught me about human longevity, which I submit is nothing short of the point of it in the first place.
Then we’re going to look at what science says actually works, what correlates with us living longer. We’ll combine these two concepts, and when we do, our way forward together will be undeniable.
The Revolution in Human Lifespan
Human lifespan is no longer thought of in a finite, fatalistic, when-it’s-my-time-it’s-my-time kind of way, but rather something over which we may wield some control.
And by historical standards, we have good reasons for thinking so. It took us tens of thousands of years to evolve to an average human life expectancy of about 30, but we’ve more than doubled it in just the last century or so.
And now, legitimate science says that we may not only just help young people survive, but we might actually be able to expand the envelope of human capability, what we could do. Legitimate scientists say things like a much greater percentage of children born today will become centenarians or hundred-year-old people, and maybe even the first person to be 140 or 150 is already alive.
Two major shifts have occurred. First, unprecedented levels of intellectual and monetary capital are being devoted to this question. By academia, by traditional institutions, yes, but also private industry. Google, $1.5 billion to build Calico Labs, a state-of-the-art facility devoted solely to human longevity.
And there’s the second shift. Now we’re studying aging as a thing to be reckoned with, to understand the biology of it, to treat it, maybe even reverse it, instead of just the resultant chronic illnesses that we all know about. We have our best minds working on it, and unreal resources to back them up.
What People Really Want When Time Is Running Out
But really, what’s the point? I mean, I’m an emergency doctor. To get you a bunch of thens, like some days, that would be really great. But I’m spending a lot of my time and energy just trying to get you some more right nows. But therein lies the instruction.
You see, when faced with the notion that their right nows might be ending, or at least limited, people reveal what they value, what’s really important to them. And I get to hear what they say when they think their lives are really in peril. And then with or without my help, they sometimes renew their lease on life.
People want what they really want when they think there’s not enough time left. And it’s a unifying concept. They don’t wax nostalgic or yearn for more time with their job, their money, their house, their car, even their art or their hobbies. They just want their people. Their social connection to humanity is what they have taught me again and again, is the point of longevity.
A Story from Abu Dhabi
I was on duty once, overnight shift, single coverage in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. A concerned neighbor flies up to the emergency department and drops off a man who looked a lot older than he probably was. He was dressed in the long white flowing garments characteristic of the region. And it wasn’t clear how coherent he was either. He kept saying the same word again and again. “Isha, Isha, Isha.”
Even my Jordanian nurse, Yusuf, my Arabic translator, was confused by what the man was trying to say or what he wanted. Yusuf concluded that the man was distraught because he hadn’t been able to complete the night prayer in Islam, Isha. And now it was early morning.
Well, the man wasn’t particularly responsive to us. We did our medical maneuvers and I got him admitted to hospital. Sometime later, a woman arrived who said she was his wife. Although she was completely covered in black, except for the thin slit where her eyes shone, he spied her in a distant doorway. And immediately his tiny, frail arms sprang out and apart. And he revealed not only what was so important to him, but also the conduit to his clarity and coherence. “Although her given name was something else, he calls me Isha,” she said.
Remember our first patient, young, previously healthy, now dying in a pandemic? Maybe you assume that patient had COVID-19. But I saw that patient over 30 years ago in the crowded hallway of an ER not that far from here. He had a strange new virus called HIV. The lessons remain the same.
As an aside, yes, I have practiced and somehow survived through a whole bunch of demics. Two big pandemics, a lot of epidemics, and a whole lot of academics. But people’s need to connect to their people to make life worth extending has never varied.
What Science Says Actually Works
Well, let’s look now at what works. What does science say actually correlates with us living longer? Well, first of all, it’s the genetic lottery, right? You either win or you don’t. Scientists suggest that maybe only 20 to 25% is contributed to by our genes. The rest, the lion’s share, is controllable lifestyle factors or emerging therapies for aging.
You know, longevity is not the easiest thing to study. It takes too long. A lot of claims are made, often by people who probably won’t be around long enough to be proven wrong. We have to depend on animal models, on studies of existing super-agers, the blue zone studies, the 90-plus study, and then attempt to reverse engineer them, or prospective or forward-looking human studies that follow a similar pattern and come down to a single statistic, all-cause mortality.
Take a big group of people, describe a whole bunch of factors about them, follow them for years and years, see who lives and dies. Draw conclusions to help the rest of us.
The Usual Suspects: Diet, Exercise, and More
Well, what are these factors, especially the powerful ones? I bet we can guess. It’s your diet. No, your sleep. Well, it’s not being obese or malnourished. It’s not smoking or not excessively drinking. It’s getting vaccinated regularly or getting a flu shot every year. It’s breathing clean air. It’s not dying from an overdose. Wait, what? Many times the number one cause of death for Americans under age 50.
Well, not so much of a spoiler alert. All these things have been shown to correlate with an increased human lifespan. We must be missing something more powerful.
Exercise. It’s got to be that. I’m a big fan. Movement is life, right? My great cousin Dodie, she lived to be 108, mobile on her farm to the triple digits. But, you know, this is a good reminder too that no single factor will always save you, even very powerful ones like exercise. We’ve had nice gymnasiums for a really long time. Unfortunately, this gymnasium was on the Titanic. Go with me here.
The Search for the Real Fountain of Youth
For centuries, people will try anything, even suspect or noxious stuff, if they think it will make them live longer. Do you think that if he had actually found a fountain of youth, that Ponce de Leon would have cared how it tasted, dipping his chalice into some Floridian swamp? No, no. “Eso es horrible.” He would have drunk it. A lot of us would have.
But despite our willingness to dabble or experiment with things that are dangerous, maybe we should be dipping our humble cup into whatever has been already shown to be most correlative.
The graph that I showed you before, it’s not an abstraction. It’s the results from a big meta-analysis, a grouping of 147 other studies on longevity, hundreds of thousands of patients, followed for years, lead author Julianne Holt-Lunstad. Well, what did it show? Here’s a hint. Every factor we’ve talked about so far is in the shaded area below the top. This stuff at the top, I want some of that. What is that?
In this study, in blue zone observations, in our own experience, one type of factor correlates most with actually living longer, strong social connections. In this study, two types. First, close relationships, your friends, your family, the people on whom you rely, in whom you trust, the people you want me to call when you’re sick in my ER. But secondly, and as importantly almost, the total volume of face-to-face, live, not online, human interactions that we have on a regular basis.
Wait, so I’m going to live longer if I talk to my postal carrier, mine’s name is Gerald, or the person who gave me my coffee this morning? Well, evidently it adds up, people. And in the words of Susan Pinker, psychologist and author, “it takes a village to raise a centenarian.”
The next time you’re having a conversation with someone with whom you strongly disagree, you can say, “oh, this insufferable fool,” or you can say, “well, at least he’s helping me live longer.” Decreased rates of heart disease, mental illness, dementia.
Witnessing the Life-Saving Power of People
I could dazzle you with data, but instead, let me just tell you about the number of people I have seen saved in the emergency department because they had some people from the gunshot gang member dumped out of a barely slowing car onto my ambulance bay in the middle of the night to the woman with a doting spouse of 62 years who knows all of her medicines and always trims her toes. People survive longer because other people help them.
The Magic Pill for Longevity
Nowadays, especially, I’m often asked, “hey, doc, I want to live a long time. Can I just take a pill?” Well, yeah, you can. And plenty of people are going to be ready to sell them to you, and some may help. In the future, some may help a lot. But ultimately, the magic pill for longevity may be the person sitting next to you or the people about whom you’re thinking right now.
Take this question. Now that you know its impact on your longevity, are you devoting the same attention, vigor, fastidiousness, concern to your human relationships that you are to your diet, your workouts, your cholesterol, or exactly which supplements to take?
I’ve been taught by thousands, and we are saying that the point of longevity is a person’s connection to their friends, their family, community, and the world. And yet science says the factor that correlates the most with actually attaining advanced ages is a person’s connection to their friends, family, community, and the world. It’s the same thing.
Immediately Actionable for Everyone
Best of all, it’s immediately actionable by everybody here, listening, learning, mentoring, motivating, empathizing, engaging with each of us in our infinite forms.
Another question for you. Why do you want to live a long time? Why would you want that for your children? Why am I so interested in longevity? I’m 60 years old. But my youngest child is 8. Yes, I am dumbfounded at how motivating this can be.
Doctor’s Orders: Care for Your Relationships Today
But we can’t miss the present in hopes of some future. Doctor’s orders. You must care for your human relationships and place in humanity today. And if you do, the future may be much longer than you think.
