ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO, Mark Bouris was sitting at his father’s house on a Saturday morning with “four generations of Bouris boys” – his father, himself, one of his sons, and one of his grandsons. It was in that moment that he realised he wanted to have the same experience as his father and someday sit down with his own great grandchildren. “I thought to myself, I’ve got to get to the same point as my dad, so I can do the things he gets to do,” he says today, during a chat with Men’s Health.
Bouris’ father would tragically pass away less than six months later, but he left a mark on his son. Bouris ran the calculations and found that if he’s going to stick around for his great grandchildren, he needs to live to be 100. “That’s why I started my ‘Project 100’ series,” he says. “I started asking myself questions around what I want to be able to do when I’m 100. I’m probably not going to want to do bench press at that age, but I will want to be able to pick up my grandkids, or great grandkids. That means I’m going to need to be able to squat 20 kilos. I will want to run around with these kids, so I need to be able to run 50 to 100 metres. It’s really changed my focus.”
The focus, for Bouris, isn’t just to live longer, but to be healthy for life and increase his healthspan. “I don’t know if I can necessarily influence my lifespan,” he laments. “There’s a lot of genetics involved in that sort of stuff, and luck, but I can optimise my health so that I’m healthy for longer.”
To do so, Bouris is prioritising his energy levels. “As you get older, you notice that there are various cliffs in the ageing process. The cliffs get closer together and the fall between the cliffs becomes more substantial,” he explains. “One of the biggest changes is a drop in energy. And if you don’t have energy, you just can’t keep up with anybody. You get left behind.”
Bouris has become a longevity ambassador for Melrose FutureLab and has started taking the brand’s NMN supplement – the first of its kind to be TGA-approved in Australia.
NMN, or Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, has proven something of a revelation in longevity circles as research has highlighted its crucial role in energy production. NMN enhances levels NAD+, a coenzyme responsible for cellular energy production, general health and wellbeing, and the maintenance of a healthy nervous system. The problem is, NAD+ levels naturally decline with age. FutureLab’s NMN supplementation formula is designed to combat this by supporting NAD+ levels in the body.
“Once I started to study the process of energy, I realised how important NMN is,” Bouris says. “I wasn’t sure I was getting enough of it out of my diet – you never know with your diet because so many things are immeasurable – so an NMN supplement became quite important to me. It’s something that is absolutely worth taking – especially from a company that knows what the hell they’re doing.”
Not one to take a supplement just for the sake of it, Bouris was drawn to NMN by the scientific evidence backing it. “I want to know what the science of this stuff is,” he says. “I want to know why I need NMN, I want to know why NAD+ is important and how it fits into the mitochondrial process.”
That’s also why he was drawn to Melrose FutureLab. “FutureLab are very scientific in their approach,” Bouris says. “There are a lot of supplement companies that don’t have any science behind them, they just import stuff, repackage it and sell it to you. FutureLab isn’t like that.”
In addition to his supplement regimen, Bouris’ discipline and adherence to a strict routine is well known. He still exercises almost every day (“sometimes twice a day”), doing weight training, cardio and jiu-jitsu “for mobility”. It’s the routine of a much younger man, but as Bouris explains, “My cadence hasn’t changed, how I measure, manage and monitor my training has changed.”
Bouris makes use of a fitness wearable, which he uses to monitor his heart rate zones during workouts, as well as his sleep and recovery processes. “It can effectively tell me, Mark, you’ve gone too hard for too many days,” he says. “In which case the next day, I might just go for a walk for an hour and a half and that will be my exercise for the day.”
The 69-year-old asserts that when it comes to prioritising longevity, it’s never too late to start. But conversely, his advice to young people in regard to future-proofing themselves is “Don’t wait.”
“Don’t look at your father or your grandfather and think that you can wait until you’re 60, just because they were alright at 60,” Bouris says. “Build a strategy, which might mean stop drinking piss, going to bed earlier or making simple changes. Whatever it is, the earlier you start the better.”
Melrose FutureLab’s NMN range is available now, exclusively through Chemist Warehouse and leading health food retailers. Shop the range here.
