Biohacking and Longevity “Tech”

The miracle drug? The ultimate “biohack”. The best “longevity medicine”. It has been sitting there all along.

Want a Longer Life? Try Righteousness

We spend billions trying not to die.

Supplements. Wearables. Cold plunges. Continuous glucose monitors. Hyperbaric chambers. Rapamycin. NAD+. Special diets. Biological-age tests.

Silicon Valley has effectively declared war on ageing.

But buried within an Islamic teaching and Jewish teaching transmitted almost fourteen centuries ago is an astonishingly different prescription for longevity:

“Nothing turns back the Decree except supplication, and nothing increases the lifespan except righteousness.”

— Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, Jamiʿ al-Tirmidhi 2139 (Sunnah)

The Arabic word is al-birr. Let’s analyse it together.

It does not simply mean performing religious rituals. Birr carries the larger sense of righteousness, goodness, dutifulness and moral conduct.

Although this Hadith is sometimes classified as weak, But the idea does not stand or fall on that narration. (Sunnah)

A closely related statement is found in Sahih Muslim, one of Sunni Islam’s strongest canonical collections:

Whoever wishes for his provision to be expanded and his lifespan lengthened should maintain his ties of kinship.

— Sahih Muslim 2557b (Sunnah)

Al-Tirmidhi also records that maintaining family relationships brings affection within the family, increases wealth (see Dua at the end) and increases lifespan. (Sunnah)

Now something becomes interesting.

The Islamic longevity prescription begins not with a molecule.

It begins with how you live with other human beings.

In my last article, I explained how the work of thankfulness is a “miracle drug” and built into the architecture of Muslim living. There is enough evidence that thankfulness changes biochemistry and therefore we can plausibly say (and this needs qualification because experts can elucidate the full chain properly, it’s outside my remit) – it may have an impact on gene expression and overall physiological health.

What If Longevity Is Social?

Modern medicine understandably focuses heavily on the body.

Blood pressure matters.

Smoking matters.

Exercise matters.

Sleep matters.

Diet matters.

Yet human beings are not solitary biological machines.

We are social organisms.

One of the landmark studies in this field examined 148 studies involving 308,849 people. Researchers found that people with stronger social relationships had roughly a 50% greater likelihood of survival during the periods studied than those with weaker relationships. (PLOS)

This tells us something profound. Relationships are not merely sentimental additions to health. They appear to be part of health.

Longevity science is rediscovering the importance of something religions have insisted upon for millennia:

Do not live alone inside yourself.

The Strange Wisdom of Silat al-Rahm

Islam calls maintaining family bonds silat al-Rahm.

The Arabic word raḥm (رَحِم) means the womb, and by extension the bonds of kinship that originate from it. Strikingly, Al-Raḥmān — The Most Merciful — is one of the Beautiful Names of Allah, the Asmāʾ al-Ḥusnā. The Qur’an explicitly names Allah as Al-Raḥmān and says that “to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names.” (Qur’an 59:22–24) The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ also taught that Allah has ninety-nine Names, and that whoever properly enumerates and knows them will enter Paradise. (Sahih Muslim 2677a)

A beautiful Hadith Qudsi makes the connection between Al-Raḥmān and raḥm explicit. The Prophet ﷺ reported that Allah said:

“I am Ar-Raḥmān, and this is the raḥim. I have derived its name from My Name. Whoever maintains it, I shall maintain him; and whoever cuts it off, I shall cut him off.”

— Sunan Abi Dawud 1694, graded Sahih by al-Albani. (Sunnah) (Sahih al-Bukhari 5988) (Sunnah)

There is an important distinction here between the Qur’an, Hadith Qudsi and  Hadith. Muslims understand the Qur’an to be the literal Word of God, in both meaning and wording. A Hadith Qudsi is a statement in which the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ reports a meaning attributed directly to Allah, but it is not part of the Qur’an. Hadith more generally record the Prophet’s ﷺ sayings, actions, approvals and teachings.

For a Jewish readership, a very rough analogy may help: the Qur’an occupies the scriptural position, somewhat as the Torah does within Judaism, while the vast Hadith tradition has some functional resemblance to the wider rabbinic tradition in preserving explanation, law, ethics and lived practice. The comparison should not be pushed too far, however: Hadith Qudsi or Hadith do not correspond neatly to the Talmud.

The linguistic connection itself is beautiful: mercy, womb and kinship are bound together in the language of revelation. Human beings first encounter mercy through dependence on another human body, and Islam turns the preservation of those relationships into a sacred obligation.

It means maintaining relations with parents, siblings, children and extended family—not simply when those relationships are convenient.

And here the Prophetic statement becomes psychologically fascinating.

Keeping family relationships requires precisely the behaviours that modern life often corrodes:

forgiveness,

patience,

visiting,

giving,

calling,

listening,

restraining anger,

overcoming pride,

helping people when there is no immediate financial return.

These behaviours create community.

Community creates social support.

Social support buffers adversity.

The precise biological mechanisms remain complex, but social relationships can affect behaviour, stress responses, mental health and access to practical support.

Righteousness constructs the ecology in which healthier human beings live.

Lifespan Versus Life

The Qur’an makes an even more subtle promise:

Whoever does righteousness, male or female, while believing, “We will surely cause them to live a good life.”

— Qur’an 16:97 (Quran)

Notice the wording.

Not merely a long life.

A good life.

Ibn Kathir records several early interpretations of hayatan tayyibah—the “good life”—including lawful provision, contentment and happiness, concluding that the expression encompasses these meanings. (Quran.com)

This distinction matters enormously.

Modern longevity culture can become obsessed with extending the horizontal axis:

More years.

Revelation asks about the vertical axis:

What is inside those years?

Peace?

Purpose?

Family?

Service?

Gratitude?

Or simply another decade of anxiety about dying?

Purpose May Matter Too

Modern epidemiology again provides an intriguing parallel.

A 2019 study in JAMA Network Open followed 6,985 adults over 50 and found that having a stronger sense of purpose in life was significantly associated with lower all-cause mortality. The researchers were careful: observational research cannot automatically establish that purpose itself causes longer life.

But their conclusion was striking enough that they suggested life purpose might be a modifiable health factor worth investigating further. (JAMA Network)

Religion gives purpose almost by definition.

You are not merely metabolising until death.

You have duties.

People to care for.

Wrongs to repair.

Knowledge to acquire.

Charity to give.

Prayers to perform.

Children to teach.

Neighbours to help.

A reason to wake up tomorrow.

Purpose is one of righteousness’s biological shadows.

Faith, Community and Mortality

Another extraordinary study followed 74,534 women in the Nurses’ Health Study.

Women attending religious services more than once weekly had a 33% lower adjusted risk of all-cause mortality during follow-up than women who never attended.

The researchers identified social support, lower smoking, fewer depressive symptoms and greater optimism as potential mediating factors. Importantly, this was observational evidence: it does not prove that attendance itself magically prevents death. (JAMA Network)

But again the pattern is intriguing.

Religion packages together several things longevity researchers repeatedly encounter:

community,

meaning,

behavioural restraint,

hope,

ritual,

social support,

gratitude,

service.

Perhaps we have artificially separated concepts that the human organism experiences together.

The Torah Says Something Remarkably Similar

For Jewish readers, none of this should sound entirely foreign.

Proverbs states:

“The fear of GOD prolongs life, while the years of the wicked will be shortened.”

— Proverbs 10:27 (Sefaria)

The parallel with the Islamic tradition is striking.

Two Abrahamic traditions, transmitted through different textual histories, both preserve the idea that moral-spiritual life and length of days are somehow connected.

The claim is better understood as a direction of life.

Certain ways of living tend toward integration.

Others tend toward disintegration.

The Anti-Longevity Lifestyle

Consider the opposite of birr.

Sever your family relationships.

Remain angry.

Carry grudges for decades.

Lie habitually.

Live without purpose.

Destroy trust.

Become isolated.

Abuse substances.

Never forgive.

Treat every relationship transactionally.

Stay permanently outraged.

We would hardly be surprised if such a life carried biological costs.

Yet modern longevity culture sometimes behaves as if a person can optimise every biomarker while leaving character untouched.

Perfect LDL.

Perfect VO2 max.

Perfect glucose.

No friends.

No forgiveness.

No purpose.

No God.

The Longevity Stack We Forgot

So by all means exercise.

Eat sensibly.

Do not smoke.

Sleep properly.

Control hypertension.

See your doctor.

There is nothing especially spiritual about ignoring evidence-based medicine.

But perhaps the longevity stack needs several additional entries:

Call your parents.

Repair the relationship with your sibling.

Give charity.

Visit someone lonely.

Forgive where forgiveness is possible.

Pray.

Cultivate purpose.

Be useful to other people and kind where you can.

Jewish Rabbis often talk of Ger Toshav, those would apply to Muslims living in Israel.

The Qur’an says:

“Surely in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find comfort.”

— Qur’an 13:28 (Quran.com)

Modern science can measure cortisol, cardiovascular risk, social integration and mortality.

It cannot measure barakah.

Religion cannot legitimately turn every epidemiological association into proof of revelation.

We should keep those categories intellectually honest.

But sometimes two different maps point surprisingly toward the same landscape.

One says:

social connection, meaning and supportive community are associated with longer survival.

The other says:

maintain your family bonds, live righteously, remember God—and you may find both length and goodness in life.

Perhaps longevity is not simply the art of preventing death.

Perhaps it is the art of constructing a life worth extending.

And perhaps the oldest anti-ageing advice remains among the hardest:

Be good.

Bonus :- Dua guaranteed to be answered. The below is a Dua which is reported in Sahih Hadith to be guaranteed to be answered. This is the “Macy’s or John Lewis sale” :- (link here).

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) heard a man saying: O Allah, I ask Thee, I bear witness that there is no god but Thou, the One, He to Whom men repair, Who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and to Whom no one is equal, and he said: You have supplicated Allah using His Greatest Name, when asked with this name He gives, and when supplicated by this name he answers.

Footnote :- For anyone seriously looking to convert to Islam, and understanding the correct “Islamic position” with regards to Jews and Christians – please visit a mosque and ask a Imam, A Hafiz (someone who has memorised the Quran) & Alim (who has foundational knowledge of Hadith). Very simply, Islam is the last covenant, and failing to adhere to it is an individual responsibility which condemns one to hell permanently. The distinction is, this is a matter of “belief”, and a personal relationship between a person and their creator. This doesn’t stop people from living nicely with each other without strife, bloodshed, and war. This is the “main problem” we are facing in today’s world. Your belief is your business – and the only way to “update it” is to “share information” – not start fighting. Any belief system a person holds should be confident enough to withstand questioning. And I am extremely content with my belief in Islam. I believe every reader has the “right” to know this in plain language without distortion otherwise I won’t be doing “justice” to the topic by “sugar-coating” or be “honest” to the readers. Like science, if we truly believe God’s laws in religion are immutable as his laws are in physics, chemistry and biology – not sharing this is “robbing” them of a “vital piece of knowledge”, and more importantly, I would be held to account on the day of judgement for it. It stems from a sincere wish for wellbeing for all people. While I remain hesitant to even say this, because it’s not always seen as “socially acceptable” – I think it is should be more acceptable than some “world leaders” talking about “nuking entire countries” or openly talking about “killing entire civilisations”. I am as again just a very simple seeker of knowledge, sharing my multi-disciplinary views from psychology, computing and very basic religious knowledge. The simple intent is not to see religion as “arcane”, “outdated”, “not relevant” in today’s world – while the NFL or IPL or whatever new “TikTok trend” catches our imagination and attention. I highly recommend Nouman Ali Khan.