Why The “Healthmaxxing” Trap Is Anti-Life With Ramona And Andreas Römer

In this episode, Adiel Gorel speaks with longevity pioneers Ramona Roemer & Andreas Heigl. Their work focuses on regenerative medicine integrating emotional, cognitive, and wholistic lifestyle evaluations. They have spent over two decades working in personalized clinical practice with individuals and families globally. Their clinic combines advanced diagnostics and regenerative medicine. Their mission is to treat the human system as a complete whole instead of isolating individual symptoms. Their work critiques modern “optimization culture”—the habit of blindly stacking trackers, supplements, and protocols—advocating instead for biological coherence and personalized timing. Their book Unlongevity: Escaping Optimization Culture to Restore Health, Meaning, and a Life That Fits, was named a finalist in the 2026 International Book Awards.

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Why The “Healthmaxxing” Trap Is Anti-Life With Ramona And Andreas Römer

Simple Steps You Can Take To Create Thriving Instead Of Hustle Burnout

Why Perfect Health Metrics Aren’t Making Us Feel Any Better

It’s nice to be back with you again. It’s very exciting to have Ramona and Andreas with us. Welcome to the show, Ramona and Andreas.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

You are talking to me from boiling hot Switzerland, right?

Boiling hot Switzerland. Yes.

From Basel, Switzerland.

Right next to France and Germany.

Just to get our viewers started, maybe you guys can give us your background. What brought you to this point? Just to give the context.

Maybe I start?

You start, yes.

Ladies first. My name is Ramona. I would say that I describe myself as someone who’s always been curious about people. Over the years, I’ve become much less interested in the idea of perfect health and much more interested in what actually helps people feel well, live well, and enjoy their lives just the moment. Outside of work, I would say we’re pretty normal people. Three children, a dog, lots of driving to sports, and trying to keep everything in balance. I guess like everyone else, I would say.

I’m Andreas. I’ll probably describe myself as someone who likes observing patterns. I’ve always been fascinated by why exactly the same thing can work beautifully for one person and not at all for someone else. Otherwise, we’re not sitting at home talking about longevity all day long. We love sports, family life. You already mentioned good conversations. As everyone else, life is sometimes, well, wonderfully chaotic once you have three children and a dog.

One thing we repeatedly observed was that the people coming to us weren’t people who ignored their health. It’s actually quite the opposite. They were often incredibly thoughtful about their health. They read books, listen to podcasts, take in their supplements, follow all the advice they get, and yet they still feel tired. That’s what we observe. Overwhelmed, or well, simply not quite themselves. I don’t know if I can say it like that.

No, that’s right.

The people you’re talking about are the listeners of this show. Clearly, it’s almost by definition, if somebody is listening to this show, they are doing it because they want to learn more. They’re already doing a lot. They already got a lot of advice, and they’re following it. That is very fascinating. When I heard what you just said, the word that jumped into my mind was the word overtraining. Does that have anything to do with what you’re talking about?

Yes, it has. What we see is just a lack of, let’s say a missing coherence a lot of fragmentation in the field of medicine and people, also the guests who come to us for the first time, they do a lot of things because there are so many things out there, and every day something new is coming up and going, also through the media, and gets pushed as what’s important to do, which supplement to take.

Which by itself is not a bad thing. The individual one thing is good, but the problem is, as Andreas was saying, “It’s so fragmented.” It’s not playing together a lot of times what the people are doing. Maybe you’re also a musician.

I see the guitars in the background, so maybe we make a music analogy.

Exactly. That’s a very good analogy.

I’m practicing for a live show in two weeks. I’m going to be near Santa Barbara with a very good live band.

Nice. It’s very good. Maybe we’ll hear some tunes later on.

You can find me everywhere, on all the platforms. Just put my name.

That’s cool. Thank you.

Go check it out.

You definitely know the analogy, to say if you have, like, an orchestra, for example, and then everybody is a really good musician and everybody plays their own thing, it just does not work. It just creates noise, but it doesn’t really create a song or something in harmony. This is what we see a lot, that a lot of things are being done. If you only look at this one thing, it looks good, and it’s a good thing, but then it doesn’t work. With this whole thing together, it has to be in harmony.

It’s a little bit like playing in a band. You need the bass and the drums to be tight, and then you build up on it. It’s like you build another guitar on it, another rhythm guitar, another lead guitar, another synth. All in singularity maybe sounds great, but putting it together doesn’t work at all because it’s out of tune. It’s out of rhythm.

The Health Noise Trap: Why Stacking Protocols Creates Chaos

Actually, what you’re saying sounds to me like it’s coming at a very opportune time because most people in the world nowadays get up in the morning, they do what they do, and then they look at their phone. Whether they go to Facebook or they go to Instagram, which is also Facebook, I guess, or they go to even Google, at least. What I see, the algorithms know what you’re looking for, so in a few days, a few minutes maybe, the algorithms know, “This person is interested in fitness, wellness, nutrition, supplementation.”

You wake up in the morning, or at noon, whatever it is, you get bombarded with stuff. Let’s even assume for a second that everything you’re bombarded with is good. Nothing is bad. That’s a very tall assumption because it’s not true. Let’s even assume that’s basically what you’re talking about because I open up and somebody says, “Here is something you can do to strengthen your legs.” It’s very good advice. I said, “I’m going to do that.”

Two minutes later, here is something. By the time one day is over, one day I got 100 pieces of information. For a second, I’m assuming they’re all really good. I totally agree with you that if I try to implement those 100 pieces, instruments without the conductor for the orchestra. Many could step on each other. Many could create a process in the body that will be nullified by the next one. Supplements can step on each other. Basically, we need the conductor for the orchestra. Is that what you guys do?

Absolutely. This is one part of what we do, I would say.

I would also say maybe to take a step back. First of all, the objective would be that everybody can be the conductor themselves. It’s not necessary that someone has to come to us and we’re the only ones. Everybody needs to know their own body, needs to know what is good for me and what is not good for me, or what was good for me but now is not good anymore.

Exactly, because it really depends on where you stand in life. Maybe on a day listening to a heavy metal track is great, but maybe another day a chill-out track or a Beethoven sonata is better. It really depends on when and what to do.

I say a lot of things, sorry. What’s really important is that we start listening to our own bodies again. This is something you said before. Overtrained, we’re giving it everything. We outsource everything. We have the hope that somebody else is going to tell us what’s good for us. This is not what we would like, or what we try to educate the people that come to us to do is that they take a step back and listen to their own body. This is actually a difficult exercise. It’s not that easy because, first of all, we’re not used to listening to ourselves anymore. How does that work? That’s a big, complex task at first. This is actually what we would like to explain to everybody that you need to understand your own body first before you put something else on top of it.

What you just said is so true. It’s become very hard to listen to ourselves. Typically, it’s almost like somebody is trying to whisper something to you in a noisy environment. You do not hear the whisper. Finally, they take a megaphone, and they yell in your ear, and you hear it. The analogy in this case is let’s talk about age, only age. I’ll talk about gender in a second, which is also now there are some highlights on that. You used to train a certain way when you were 25. You could work yourself really hard. You could really overextend.

You heal very fast. Now you are 65, and you go back to the gym. You remember all of your routines from age 25. They try to whisper to you, maybe you should watch out, but you do not. You keep on, and then what’s the megaphone in your ear? Your shoulder gets hurt. Now you cannot exercise at all. You heard that one. You heard it, and it was clear. The trick probably is to hear it before your shoulder gets out.

Stop Outsourcing Your Health: Learning to Listen to Your Body

This is where we also say we do get a lot of signals, whatever that means to each individual. A lot of times we just do not pay attention to the signals because we put a lot more importance on everything that’s out there. What’s being told to us? That’s what I mean when we say we outsource a lot. We trust someone else more. If it’s on Instagram, if it’s on a podcast or whatever, we trust others more than we trust ourselves. This is why we go, and it needs to come to having a megaphone, as you said, or maybe sometimes run against the wall. Sometimes, unfortunately, it has to go that far until we say, is not right.

I only talked about one aspect, and that is age in my last example. It’s pretty understandable that you probably should not train at 65 the way you train at 25, even in terms of frequency, recuperation, intensity, and rest. Not the same, absolutely not the same. We see the World Cup now, and they say, “Lionel Messi just turned 39.” He just had his birthday last week. Ronaldo is 41. How can they even play? That’s only a 40-year-old person.

Already, everybody acknowledges that for a professional soccer player, this is old. In basketball, in the United States, you look at Steph Curry, LeBron James. Same age as Messi and Ronaldo. They are at the very end. Everybody knows that. Why do we know that they are at the end at 40, and here is somebody 70 going to the gym and just pretending that they’re 20? Makes no sense. That’s age. Now recently, there has been a lot of light being shone, I guess, on the issue of gender. There is a doctor, a female physician, who wrote a book, Women Are Not Small Men.

What she means to say is that a lot of the research, a lot of the studies, are done on men. Even when you go on Instagram and you get a great routine, is it made for men? For women, they are different. More and more, you can start to hear this notion that women are not small men. It’s different. Of course, we have a lot in common, but hormonally, for example, intermittent fasting is touted as very good and does a lot of great things for us. We know all the benefits. It turns out it works differently in males and females.

You have to also look at when you take nutrition. As an example, it’s not one size fits all. If you just do intermittent fasting, if there is a certain health concern that someone is suffering from, it actually is completely the opposite of being good. There’s so much that you need to take into consideration. The problem nowadays is just that people run so quickly into doing something without even having first answered the question, where am I today?

What does my body need, but can deal with it himself? What does my body try to work out, but it cannot, so it needs help? My body is working on something, but leave him alone. There are so many aspects that you have to consider, and what we just see over and over again is that nowadays, even though it’s called individual therapy, it’s still so much standardization and so much one-size-fits-all, which is just purely not the right way forward.

It even occurs to me, you said an individual, even if somebody, let’s say, subscribes to a gym and they say, “I’m going to take the extra step, and I’m going to hire a trainer.” You say, “That’s a good thing to try.” I think still a lot of the trainers have a one-size-fits-all mentality. Now granted when they work with individuals, if they tell them you should do a pull up, but they see, “No, it’s not okay. Fine.” They adjusted because obviously the guy or the girl can do a pull-up. Tell me where the two of you could come in, in the difference that you can make?

The Patient Advocate Model: Why Personal Context Beats Standardized Lab Values

We see ourselves a little bit as a patient advocate, because what we are doing in our clinic on a daily basis, maybe first to explain a little bit our concept, we are totally open to school medicine, to natural therapies, to frequency therapies, to all forms. It’s like, on the keyboard, we need to see which keys we need to push for which guest or which patient, what he or she needs.

That’s why a big part of our daily work is that we have this one-to-one relationship. We are in a way, running a boutique clinic. People come to us. They will never run into someone else because we need a lot of time to sit down first and understand the person, the person’s history, family history, all the medical history, and go through lots of reports that we get beforehand.

When you see nowadays, when you get like reports, the numbers say one thing. When you listen to the person’s story to understand what has happened before, what is your family history, all these talks that you have with a person, they give so much more light on the numbers, because that can explain so much. For example, we had a guest there last week, and she was told that she had a leaky gut. The thing was, there were certain parameters that were done from blood work, and one factor that’s really important in this case was really high.

When that lady came to us, we did again like this test. Before even seeing the result, we already heard her story that she was really having a tough year that was really stressful for her and that she went through a horrible personal experience, and all of that was basically leading to this leaky gut. When we saw the value that we took, although we had seen one that was done like three months ago, the value was completely okay again. If you just look at the number, everybody would have said, “Leaky gut, it’s a big problem.

She’s not allowed to X, Y, Z,” but putting it into the context of what actually has happened before, you could see that this was a peak that was there, which was really uncomfortable. It resolved if she was taking care of herself on an emotional level and was looking more into this emotional health instead of right away going and adjusting her complete dietary, etc. Just to maybe say it shortly, you need to understand what context that person is in before even trying to understand certain lab values, numbers, etc. That’s what’s really important.

You need to come up with solutions that fit the person. If you make up things where you already know this will not fly anyhow because maybe based on the schedule or anything he or she can do it for a week and then it’s done, that does not help.

To even strengthen what you’re saying, I still want to understand a little more about what you guys do exactly. I understood much more based on what you just said. Something that’s been happening is you talked about values and tests like blood tests, all kinds of other tests that we can take. You get the results of those tests, the printout or the file that you get highlights where you are outside of the norm. The norm is here, and you are here too low, too high. Here is what you need to do, who determines what the norm is? It’s a group of people wearing glasses, probably with a big belly, sitting in a room and arbitrarily almost deciding what the right thing is.

By the way, sometimes Again, so far, I’m assuming everything is pure, helpful and good. All the content is good. That’s not the case. For example, when they decided what the right amount of cholesterol is, that’s a very controversial issue because, as the years go by, cholesterol is not shown to be the enemy. Anyway, let’s say the number used to be this. If you are below this, it’s okay. The people with glasses and a big belly decided that how about we make it this?

Now millions of very healthy people, completely normal, are told, “Your cholesterol is too high. You need to take a statin.” Statin is a money machine. They say, “You need to take it for life.” Terrible side effects, only because the group of people with the big belly is set in an office and decided, maybe in conjunction with somebody from a pharmaceutical company, to lower the threshold. Same for sugar, blood sugar. Used to be 110, let’s make it 100. Now we have 100 million people who are not well. Let’s treat them with all kinds of drugs. It’s not only that you get so much input. Some of that input may have an agenda.

Connecting the Health Mosaic: Cutting Through Supplement and Medication Overload

That’s why there are people who need the statin, just to stick with your example and there are others who do not need it. This is also something that needs to be figured out when they’re with us. What we often see, especially when it comes to supplements, which we’re not against, depends on where you’re coming from, geographically. Some markets are really deeply into supplements, and they eat so many supplements every day that there’s so much noise in their blood work. Once you take it out, and then really step by step, what do you really need? Which amount and which quality, etc., and retest it. You can do a lot. This is really like surgery.

Also helpful if you have the experience of a practitioner, how much experience the practitioner has, because then he has seen some of the history of what used to be good, what is not good anymore. I think this know-how is needed to have very experienced practitioners that still understand what used to be once right and what is not considered right anymore. To question it, is that really making sense, or does that not make sense?

You need to connect the dots because just one lap value. You may need to connect them with other lap values, maybe how they fit together. It’s a mosaic that needs to be built, and in the end makes the picture.

The way you talked about how you work with the client or with the patient is the opposite of how it is in most of the Western world. You said we take our time. We take a lot of time. We ask about their life. We ask about how they are. You gave the example of the woman who had a hard year. The experience of most people who go to a physician, a doctor, an MD is the opposite. The MD is loaded with patients. Depending on the healthcare system in that city or country, they may need to see 20 to 30 patients a day. They have no time. There is no time to ask, “What was your year like?” There’s no time. You have this, “Here are the values here. Take this and come back to me.” It’s the opposite of taking time.

That’s the system. As you said, in the Western world, it has become like that. It’s not like the individual practitioners’ fault. It’s just the system they are put into. Even if they want to, even if they are passionate, it’s just not working out like that anymore. That’s for us where we said, “We’re going to provide this time.” Also, if you do not have this waiting room, that takes a lot of the pressure that you need to have the next person in. That’s a unique factor, which we understand is not possible for everyone. It’s just simple. It’s not doable.

Again, we’ve talked so far about tests and maybe medications and maybe not. I think you also talk about the way you move your body, exercise, workout, walk, run, lift, supplement. What do you do for those patients? How do you integrate it?

I would say the ones that come to us, they are already on a pretty tough regimen. They already have their structure. They wake up. You said that they right away take the phone. A lot of the ones that come to us, they go right away to the wristband to do the tracking, to see how deep I sleep. How did I do that? They go right away into this tracking. If we just take, for example, the CEOs or the ones that build a business, they, for example, are used to having a business plan at hand, or to do certain tasks. They have to work on projects, and they have to be very disciplined. They have to run their business.

The problem is that they also try to run their health like that. What they do not take into account is that there is one factor that is not easy to forecast, if you want to say so. It’s like your body is just not working the way you’re planning it to work. Even if science has progressed a lot, and it’s great. It’s wonderful what science has achieved over the years. It’s still a big question mark or a big block of not knowing exactly how the body completely works.

If you think you understand it, the body does one thing again, differently, and it pulls you off, and you just do not know why. That’s just like giving one example of how some people run their health. It just does not work like that. That’s also for us. We do not say, “You need to do sports, you need to do this and this is our protocol and please follow it.” You first have to understand, for that age, for the life phase they are in, what is actually still doing you good and what has come maybe to a place where it’s actually harmful to you or where it just wastes time and does not do squat for you.

Can you give a couple of examples of something that used to work but now is actually counterproductive?

Health Exhaustion Case Studies: When Managing Your Health Becomes the Problem

Maybe we can say, let’s take this woman again, another woman now. She’s like in her late 50s and came to us, and she was really intelligent about her health. She had her supplements organized in a weekly pill organizer and exercised every morning. She tracked her sleep. Had extensive blood work done twice that year. By every visible metric, she was doing what she was supposed to do, and it worked. For her, it worked. She had a very good life, very energetic for a couple of years. She added a few things here and there. What she heard was good. There came a time when the body just reacted completely differently. All of a sudden she felt exhausted. She couldn’t really concentrate at the meetings she was having anymore. What else did she say?

She felt tired, foggy.

There was pain in her body, and she didn’t really understand what it was coming from.

In total, she felt disconnected from herself.

When we sat with her and we started to really listen to what she was telling us, and not just to her labs, she discovered that she had been so busy managing her health that she had completely stopped enjoying life. The stress of doing everything right was the single biggest driver of her symptoms, I would say.

Her body itself was not broken. It was just exhausted by all the effort and constant management of her health.

What we did, we basically helped her simplify a few of her things we stripped back. Some of the things that she was doing were where we said, “This is actually not helping you anymore.” Within weeks, she contacted us again and she described herself as feeling like myself again for the first time in many years. At first you saw everything was going good. She was completely managing everything and then just dropped down to find out that she was over with what she was doing.

This is what we often see, this exhaustion from managing health and putting another layer on top, layer, stack everything and trying to manage this like you run your business.

Should I give another example?

Yes, please.

We worked with this man, he was in his late sixties and he had spent a decade in running a battle with aging. He had this thing, you cannot get older. Every new symptom for him was like an enemy needed to be defeated. Every biomarker that moved for him was like a crisis. He was like exhausting himself with vigilance and interventions. For him, luckily, and also for us to hear this, his wife was with him. She quietly told us that he used to be the most joyful person that she knew.

What shifted for him was not a new therapy. It was really a conversation about the time. What we did, we talked about the difference between fighting an agent and navigating it wisely. The body at 65 needs different things than it did with 40. That’s basically to your point when you said, “I was 25, someone can lift and lift and lift.” He turned 65 and still has us in a set. Things you can continue like that. No, it was really important for him to hear that the body is just different and needs different things at the age of 65 compared to when it was 40.

When we shifted his approach from this defeat of aging to support my body’s natural capacity at this stage of my life, his relationship with his health transformed. The interventions we use were actually simpler and fewer. It was not that we put on another complicated stack and another protocol, we took away things. The outcomes, they were better and his wife got her, I think she said she got her joyful husband back.

Navigating Aging Wisely: Shifting From Defeating the Body to Supporting It

It makes a lot of sense because once again, people make such a strong case for this new protocol on this new movement or this new supplement. You look at it and it makes so much sense. You stack it. The word stack is you stack it on top of it. In the West, there’s also this notion at least here in the United States for sure. More is better. More is not. I’m thinking about some of the old ways of life. They used to be homes with a porch. On the porch, there were like these chairs that you could, rocking chairs. A very reasonable activity used to be just sitting on the porch, rocking in the chair, looking at the field, doing nothing. Doing nothing is actually used to be considered a very good thing, doing nothing today is not looked upon very nicely by almost everyone.

That’s right. You’re totally right. What this case also shows is this rhythm, maybe again, the analogy to the music. You can put your full hand on the piano keys and play them all at the same time. That’s not the track. The rhythm is also important. When to do what?

I can totally see that. Also to think about the men in the late 60s, who were looking at aging as the enemy. It may not be something that people like to look at. Once again, LeBron James might not like that he’s going to be 42 very soon. He would have preferred to be 22 again, he is not going to be 22 again. All he can do is play within what he can do, maybe manage more rest, maybe not train as hard as the rest of the team, be ready for the games. For the guy who was in his late 60s, if you think about it logically, it’s very simple.

One day we’re going to die. That’s the nature of the cycle. One day is going to die. At what age is he going to die? We do not know that. Let’s assume 100. Just to pick a number. He cares about his health at 100. He’s now 69. Going to die in 31 years. Dying means a complete breakdown of the system. It’s gone. The system is completely broken down. If you are here today and you are running and walking and lifting and in 31 years, everything breaks down, you go in the ground. How is this going to happen in 31 years? Probably gradually. It’s logical. You’ve got to live with it and embrace it.

The thing is that people always live for something that is better. This is the whole optimization thinking as well. Instead of thinking, “Where am I now?” To enjoy the moment and to live in the moment, it’s always trying to achieve something that you’re thinking at the moment, it’s not good enough. I need to achieve this and then it’s better. You achieve it. Still the next thing comes and you’re still trying to go for the next best thing. This is where you never come to rest. Also, when you say you’re sitting on the porch, sitting in this rocking chair, this is actually a very quiet, peaceful moment, you will not reach it because of this optimization. Addiction, I call it now, you know, to say, “It’s still not good enough. It has to be better.”

The only way we can get people to sit quietly is if we tell them the story that if you do this meditation, it will optimize this and that’s, “I’m going to do the meditation.”

Yes. At first to be honest, I was the same, I mean I was in the same boat. I was always thinking, “What can I do better? What needs to become next?” When people tell me, “You need this meditation or you need this,” there’s many different ways of how you can get there. I needed to have a goal. I needed to have to be told, “If you’re going to do that, it’s going to do that.” I needed to be tricked to get there. Tricking is maybe not, does not sound nice for most people. I do not mind.

I was the person who needed to be tricked to achieve for me to achieve that means performance, but to get to the next step that I wanted to get to. I completely understand. It is sometimes a journey that’s also scary because we do not know what will come. Just hear it and it just sounds too simple. To sit still and be bored, that’s quite a very difficult task because your head is like spinning and there are so many thoughts. I’m being told I need to shut it up. The problem is that there’s always a certain way that someone gives you, and you think, “I haven’t achieved it, so I’m not good at it.”

Escaping Optimization Guilt: Finding Balance Amid Endless Advice

A very good example is this very show. We’ve been doing this podcast now for a little over four years. I think we have 165 episodes. Out of the 165 people from all over the world, many people have dedicated their life to a subject, maybe somebody is a professor in the university or a doctor and they did research on this particular point and they come on the show and they tell us this is very good for us to do. I listen and I ask a lot of probing questions and you cannot really find any fault. It’s good to do. Many things are good to do.

You see the rebounder here. Rebound, very good to do for the lymphatic system. It’s, like, very good to do. You say, “We had some breathing experts, very good to breathe through your nose.” You put a tape on your mouth at night and you’re okay, it’s very good to do. Many things are very good to do. Let’s say 150 things are very good to do. Let’s say I’m only doing 30. What am I guilty of all the time that I’m not doing 120 things that are very good to do?

That’s important. Also, on our side, that’s always important when someone comes. It’s not to say, “You have to do this instead of that.” It’s more to look at from all the 30 things you’re doing, there are some that serve you very well. There are some that just do not. If you do not do them, it does not mean that you will lose. It’s just that you need to give yourself a little bit of space. The thing is, we’re always asking a lot from our bodies too. Every time we do something in addition, our body is again, again, another thing.

If we think about if we would add something every day, our mind already goes like, “God, I know, I need to learn something new.” The body is not different. We do not ask our bodies anymore, “Are you actually ready for something on top of it?” Or “Would you like to be left alone?” This is what we see a lot of times. This is actually not where they consult their bodies because it’s so difficult for our generation. We have been conditioned that always someone tells us what’s good for us. Who are we that we think we can tell ourselves what’s good for ourselves?

It’s not only that. Going back to the World Cup. You’re looking at the games, including Switzerland, you’re looking at the games and every minute somebody falls down, their legs get entangled with somebody else’s legs. You just wonder how they’re going to even get up, let alone continue to play. There is a value and a valor that is put on, he is playing hurt for the team. The country is playing hurt. Same again, I go back to LeBron James, Steph Curry. They’re playing hurt. It’s so good. Basically playing hurt or pushing yourself more than you can, or even the weightlifting protocols. Do you go to failure? Listen to the word, to the word. The word is failure. How often do you want to fail? It’s just that, but there is something heroic about pushing too hard.

That’s also what we see that a lot of people try to mimic these role models. They have to do it to a certain extent because there’s a lot of money involved. What they do well, like LeBron James and Steph Curry, at that age, they need to listen to their body and scan their body really. Otherwise, they cannot play at that level in that age.

Also, they have the means. Both the team is very wealthy and the people themselves. They could spend a million or two a year massages and trainers and nutritionists and go in the cold and go in the heat. They optimize in those ways, although you yourself have said sometimes you optimize a little too much.

What we’re just saying from an optimization perspective, give yourself some space. Just try to stop for a moment and see what it is that I actually need.

Sometimes what we say, when you’re in doubt, zoom out, really zoom out and see and observe.

There’s one thing we did have a long sequence and we are still going to have some more about circadian biology and light and the effect of light on our health. It’s not a secret that we are bodies that were evolved to get photons from sunlight and it affects us at every level, the level of the skin, the level of the cell, the mitochondria. One of the things that some of the people say is as soon as you get up in the morning, before you do anything else, before you brush your teeth, before you have your coffee, anything, open the door, go outside, get some sunlight in your eyes.

That has a whole cascade of effects, the infrared. You’re talking about a lot of people that you meet, as you said, they get up in the morning, first thing they get the blue light of the phone into their eyes to check the app to see how they slept. Which actually causes damage to how they sleep the next night. If you didn’t get the natural sunlight, they got the app. They go to the gym, they work in all those LED lights. Again, chilling out in the sunlight, going back to the porch, not a bad idea, maybe.

Ditching Rigid Protocols to Reclaim Joy and Everyday Vitality

For sure. Sometimes it’s also good to maybe also do what you actually feel like doing without an agenda, without a protocol and just to say, “No, today I’m going to stay 20 minutes longer in bed.” I do not know. “I’m going to go get my coffee first,” or “I’m going to go, and maybe I need to eat this ice cream.” It’s very unhealthy to enjoy what we’re doing. We have a lot of people that come to us and ourselves, medical team, practitioners, and we are together not to a protocol, the healthiest, doing everything right and whatever. People always look at us and where we just say, “You need to enjoy your life.” If you stick with every protocol, what you should do, what you should not do and whatever, you’re really losing the happiness.

Every day there’s a new protocol.

You stack something else on it. For us, what we say, “If the doctor wants to smoke his cigarette or drink his wine, or we like the wine or whatever, do it and enjoy this moment.” You do a lot more to your body in a positive sense than when you’re trying to starve, when you’re trying to take everything away, when you’re trying to be so disciplined. As you said, if I have 31 more years, if you think about how I want to spend them, if I then sit with a hundred in the rock, if you sit the last days that you have in life, you sit in this rocking chair and you think about how I spend my life.

Do you want to sit with 80 still in the gym or hang out with your friends, have good conversations, really have a purpose in life.

If you look back and you say, “I was very disciplined, I did everything according to the books and this and this.” Would you like to look back and say, “I enjoyed the moment walking through the garden or spending time with my friends having this drink in the evening.” You have to decide what you want to do the last time you’re sitting in this rocking chair. What do you want to look back to? That’s sometimes the questions we ask the people. Sometimes it’s difficult to say, enjoy the moment. Everybody says, enjoy it. How? Y

There is even an extreme case. Somebody is in a restaurant. They generally do not drink a lot of wine because they look at wine as a glass of sugar and alcohol, but all the friends get a glass of wine. They do not want to be the odd person out. They get a glass of wine and they drink it and it tastes good with the food, everything. If they just do what you say, which is, “That was really nice. I was with my friends. What a nice experience.” They finish with the restaurant, they go, “Why did I have a glass? I’m so stupid.” Those two things are very different.

It has a huge effect on you, your body, and also your health. I have to say for the people that we see, because we see all kinds of people from all different backgrounds. You just see who is really satisfied with their life and who’s just trying to get to the next step. Although these people they have everything you can think of, you still see the difference of who’s just happy and enjoying with how it is and the ones trying to opt for the next best thing.

By the way, that is also true not only for health protocol and stacking procedures, but it’s also true for wealth and money. That’s where you could be worth $500 million and as you said, you’re working towards the next step because you want to be worth a billion. Why are you going to buy more shoes? I do not know. For some reason, you do not really need it in any way. Wait a second. It seems that a lot of the people who come to you are already disciplined achievers. What if somebody comes to you that was my who is not who is clearly way too sedentary and does not eat well? Is that a low hanging fruit or what happens in a case like that?

No, I would not say that this is you mean a low hanging fruit for our treatments.

Listen, you need to walk more.

It’s a different approach. You have those, for example, who are very disciplined. Tycoons from Asia, I give you one example, wanting to go for the next big thing, like reaching that next target. That was a lady with a husband where we’re basically having conversations like, “You have your kids studying somewhere else. Why do not you enjoy what you have and go travel the world, see the kids, and do this and do that.”

It’s a completely different discussion and a completely different way of working with the people that come to us. For the ones that have a health condition and where you say, this health condition needs to be solved before anything else can be looked at, then we go firsthand to that specific health concern. It really depends if I take that one lady who is very disciplined and not too many problems we go, we are more preventative in a way, but then also having completely different discussions with them. It really depends on where the people stand and how we start with the conversations.

Now you’re based in Switzerland. Do you work with people via Zoom or things like that?

Either they come to us for a few days or we also work via virtual meetings and one year programs or whatever. It really depends on what they are looking for.

The Unlongevity Framework: Resources and Next Steps for Personal Healing

What is a resource that people can know about relating to you? I assume there’s a website, right?

We know that not everybody can have the time or whatever to come to us and to see us. This is why every knowledge that we have put this in our book. The book is called Unlongevity: Escaping Optimization Culture to Restore Health, Meaning, and a Life That Fits.

Wait, let’s do it a little slower. You have a book, and the name of the book is Unlongevity.

Yes.

We can buy it anywhere that they sell books.

This will be launched on the 11th of August, 2026 in the US and you can buy it online then and also in bookstores. What we provide is we provide all the details, all the experience that we have put together within like two decades, what we have learned, what we have experienced and how we see someone should go about health.

What is your website?

It’s also Unlongevity.com.

Through the website, one can get in touch with you, maybe do an initial consultation. I do not know what your procedure is, but they can reach you from the website.

Maybe also one thing we put on the website is we put a little test, a diagnostic test, or, how do you say, like a compass on there to see where I am standing currently? What area should I be looking at immediately? That is independent of us. Everybody can check this themselves first and then get a better understanding. What am I doing? Am I missing out on something? Do I need further help? We suggest you go read the book and see if that resonates with you. You’re more than welcome to come get in contact with us.

Now, if somebody says, “No, I do not want to fly to Switzerland. It’s a little too heavy for me. I want to work out online.” Is that still going to be effective?

Yes. I would highly suggest first reading the book and seeing if that resonates with you. That’s basically reflecting us also in the book. If it does not reflect with you, no need to contact us. If it does reflect us, then you can have a further conversation.

Ramona and Andreas, delightful. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I hope to see you again in the future. Thanks a lot.

Thank you very much, Adiel.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Ramona and Andreas
• Ramona Roemer on LinkedIn
• Women Are Not Small Men
• Unlongevity: Escaping Optimization Culture to Restore Health, Meaning, and a Life That Fits

About Ramona Römer And Andreas Heigl

Ramona Römer and Andreas Heigl are the co-founders of VIMED CELL, a private clinic based in Switzerland and Germany, and the authors of Unlongevity: Escaping Optimization Culture to Restore Health, Meaning, and a Life That Fits.

For more than two decades, their work has evolved through highly individualized clinical practice and observation, working with individuals and families from around the world. Their approach brings together advanced diagnostics and regenerative medicine with a broader understanding of the cognitive, emotional, energetic, and purpose-related dimensions that influence long-term health.

Their work has led them to question the growing fragmentation and over-optimization of modern health and longevity culture and to explore a more individualized approach centered on coherence, discernment, timing, and understanding what genuinely belongs for each person.

Römer and Heigl have been featured in LEADERS Magazine, The Inscriber Magazine, and Weekly Minds, among other media and podcast appearances. Unlongevity was named a Finalist in the 2026 International Book Awards in the Health: Aging/50+ category. They are based in Basel, Switzerland, and work internationally.