The Bro-ification of Longevity

Why Female Aging Demands Its Own Science

If you’ve spent any time scrolling through social media in the health and wellness space, you’ve likely seen them: the longevity bros. They’re often ripped, shirtless, hyper-optimized men in their 30s and 40s (or their millions of followers), preaching biohacking strategies, tracking every biomarker imaginable, and cycling through supplements with the intensity of a startup launch. They speak confidently, sometimes arrogantly, about aging “reversal,” rapamycin, cold plunges, glucose zones, fasting windows, sleep cycles, and testosterone optimization. And somewhere in the middle, if you’re lucky, you’ll hear them say it: they’re pro-HRT.

But that’s where the conversation usually stops.

They mention hormone replacement therapy for women as if it’s a checkbox on the longevity list, a quick nod before returning to the algorithms that were built for male bodies. What’s missing, glaringly, dangerously missing is any real acknowledgment of the biological complexity of female aging.

And frankly, it’s exhausting.

Because here’s the truth: female longevity is not just male longevity with a splash of estrogen. It is its own intricate, under-researched, and profoundly underserved landscape. And we cannot afford to keep being erased from the story of aging well.

What the Longevity Space Gets Wrong About Women

What most of the male-dominated longevity content fails to address is that women’s aging is hormonally distinct, multi-systemic, and deeply influenced by the abrupt endocrine shifts of menopause. We are not coasting gently into old age, we are dropping off a hormonal cliff. And that cliff affects everything: our bones, our brains, our hearts, our muscles, our fat distribution, our immune function, our sleep architecture, and yes, even our response to the very interventions the “optimized male” swears by.

Take cardiovascular disease, for example. The #1 killer of women. The risk accelerates post-menopause, not just because of age, but because estradiol loss changes vascular function, increases arterial stiffness, shifts lipid profiles, and alters inflammatory pathways. Or consider osteoporosis. Women can lose up to 20% of their bone mass in the five years surrounding their final menstrual period. No fasting window or magnesium protocol is reversing that.

The longevity bros rarely talk about that.

They don’t talk about how brain energy metabolism shifts when estrogen drops, how our glucose regulation changes, or how sarcopenia begins quietly in our 40s and picks up speed every year thereafter. They don’t talk about how HRT isn’t just about hot flashes; it’s about preserving tissue, maintaining metabolic flexibility, and protecting the architecture of long-term health.

They don’t talk about what happens when none of the tools work the same on our bodies anymore because they were never built for us to begin with.

What Female Longevity Actually Requires

True female longevity requires recognition of menopause as a pivotal, system-wide biological transition, not an afterthought. It requires better research, sex-specific clinical trials, hormone-literate care, and treatment plans that factor in the timing, type, and route of hormone therapy. It requires us to stop defining women’s health solely by reproduction and start understanding the decades that follow.

We need to stop asking women to "optimize" themselves using tools designed by and for men. Instead, we need to build a new model of aging, one that centers the female body, honors its transitions, and supports it with science, not slogans.

This is the new postmenopause. It’s not just survival beyond our reproductive years. It’s redefining what thriving looks like after 50, with strength, with cognition, with connection, with vitality. Not in spite of our hormones, but by understanding what happens when they decline—and what we can do about it.

I’m closely following the groundbreaking work of Dr. Vonda Wright and her new book Unbreakable, as well as the innovative research of Dr. Abbie Smith-Ryan in exercise physiology. These women are pushing the boundaries of what we know about aging, strength, and performance and they’re doing it with the female body in mind.

Lately, I’ve been thinking deeply about what true female longevity requires. While there’s no shortage of books on aging, most are grounded in a male-centric medical model that fails to account for the distinct biological transitions women experience, especially menopause. What we need is a new framework; one that recognizes menopause as a critical, system-wide shift. We need a model that includes hormone-informed care, sex-specific research, and personalized strategies to support women not just through midlife, but well beyond it.

We also need to stop asking women to optimize themselves using tools and metrics designed for men. Instead, we should be building a model of aging that centers the female experience, honors our transitions, and supports our health with science, not slogans.

To me, that’s the essence of the new postmenopause. Not just surviving past reproduction, but thriving with strength, cognition, connection, and vitality. Not in spite of our hormones, but by understanding what happens when they decline and what we can do about it.

I’m not anti-longevity. I’m anti one-size-fits-all. Female aging deserves its own blueprint. And I’m committed to helping shape it.