You Say Lifespan, I Say Healthspan. The Swell Score Can Settle This

A movie producer named Gary Binkow (Finding Neverland, The Nanny Diaries, V/H/S, etc.) stopped in for a routine physical, at whose conclusion his doctor blandly recommended a preemptive cholesterol med. “I was prescribed Lipitor,” Binkow says with a puzzled half grin. “It was so easy for my doctor to say, ‘…Look, you’re very early and your heart scan says only 5% – but you should just get on the Lipitor.’” Binkow is a witty, relaxed guy with a charmingly tilted smile, backswept relaxed guy hair, and an amused, unhurried manner. Still. There was mild umbrage. “I’m like, no – I don’t want to get on ‘the Lipitor.’” 

This seemingly unremarkable exchange heralded the start of a personal revolution for Binkow – a journey to the peer-reviewed frontiers of personal wellness, and a life-project called The Longevity Lab by Swell Score. To be clear, this “project” is a largish, austerely-appointed room with a door at 5036 Carpinteria Ave. Longevity Lab is a retail space, yes. Is it a vitamin shop with impulse buy stress relief squeezies at checkout? Nope. 

Binkow is doing something next level, something that will change the self-care space. The Swell Score, of which Binkow is CEO, hosts a commercial web site. The brick-and-mortar Longevity Lab is meant as a sort of flesh and blood complement to the site, a means of engaging interpersonally with people who are not familiar with the naturopathic space. “A personal connection in a storefront allows us to have that conversation, but I’m not sure people are as passionate about it as I am…”

It’s said there is no more fiercely dedicated acolyte than the newish convert.Gary Binkow fits that bill and has gone to great lengths to innovate a new model of wellness transparency, one that likely means the end of fence-sitting and the beginning of wisdom. Binkow may be CEO of a “Wellness” business, but he is not jittery about using the ‘S’ word in conversation.

“We’re not trying to do a money grab or a land grab. I’m just excited to talk to people in person – to discuss wellness and products that actually work; and why we think this works versus snake oil products that are not worth your money. It’s not just about selling products and supplements. We want to be a community, one that welcomes people to come in to see if they can find more realistic answers and solutions.”

Choose Your Span

While longevity has long been the elusive grail of humankind, it’s not clear if we are actually attracted to the idea of living three hundred years or simply repelled by the glum alternative. Whatever the case, Binkow puts a fine point on it, dropping the name of a change agent in his life and describing his Road to Damascus moment. “What version of 80 do you want to be?” he asks. “Look, I don’t necessarily want to live to be a hundred. I worked for Dr. Valter Longo at USC and he helped me understand this. He inspired me.” 

Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize, Longo discovered and thoroughly explicated (coincident with a Japanese scientist on the same trail) a process called autophagy – in which the body’s cells, confronted with starvation – or fasting, in a practical application – busily start repairing themselves by taking out the cellular garbage. The body in crisis renews itself. 

Valter Longo is Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences at USC, and Director of the USC Longevity Institute. By the time he was working for Dr. Longo, Binkow had hopped off the Hollywood tilt-a-whirl and was building his portfolio as a renowned content strategist. His time with Longo – one of Time magazine’s 50 most influential people in health care (2018) – began as a content creation gig but became a sort of informal apprenticeship. With teachings.

“Dr. Longo hired me to help him get the word out,” Binkow says, momentarily burying the lead. Here it comes now. “He taught me that there are so many things we can do to live longer, but it’s actually about healthspan, not lifespan.” Meaning? “Do you want to be playing pickleball and tennis and traveling and playing with your grandkids and being vibrant? Or do you want to be bound to a wheelchair? There are many people – like the biohackers – focused on ‘I want to live to 120’. But what version of that life do you want?” Binkow sits back in his chair. “I’m focused on all of us getting the most out of our healthiest years.”

Health and Wellness and the Lab

“Health” is a foursquare word. Yeah, if you’ve got it, you’ve got everything (as the old saying goes). But “health” is – traditionally – a benign but vaguely threatening noun; a doctor’s variable judgement over which we have little agency. 

Today’s “wellness” has largely supplanted “health” as the default signifier of self-managed physical soundness, and not a moment too soon. Binkow, though, is no wrench-wielding iconoclast. 

“I’m not a radical like [Muppet pioneer, iatrophobe, and sepsis victim] Jim Henson. I’m not going to never see a doctor or never take a pill,” Binkow says. “There’s a great place for traditional western medicine. If I break my arm, I’m going to go to a hospital. If I have cancer, I’m not going to treat it with ashwagandha.” 

A sensibly arranged marriage of western and traditional medicine offers a base-covering yin and yang. “Modern western medicine is increasingly more accepting of these ideas. We’re getting to this holistic health place where we all work together and look at root cause medicine, as opposed to treating the symptoms after the fact.”

Our medical institutions are indeed coming around to the holistic wellness model. Hospitals associated with Johns Hopkins, Yale, Duke University, and other highly respected research centers actively promote so-called alternative therapies. Today, science is assiduously drilling into the mechanisms of the found plant medicines whose field testing by hunched iron age humans in ragged deerskin set the bar eons ago – and today informs our ironed-smock pharma. 

The National Institutes of Health boast some 6,400 peer-reviewed papers on the efficacies of milk thistle, for instance; never mind the 65,000 or so papers on lemon balm’s healing properties. The scholarly, data-jammed paperwork on “naturopathy” will test your skepticism, and then your patience. Binkow is determined to reframe the conversation. 

Gatekeeping

“We want to be one of the most trusted wellness destinations,” Binkow says, and has laboriously built a model that dovetails into that trust. The Swell Score website is a curated marketplace of the best, purest, and most highly rated naturopathic solutions that exist, representing an array of blue-chip providers with names like Under Luna, BiOptimizers, RiseWell, and Austin Air Systems. “We found the best brands,” Binkow says. “Ironically, a lot of these are smaller brands. Not ironically, most of them are female-led brands, because often these entrepreneurs are moms that have kids, and they’re more focused on environmental toxins and what they buy.” 

The Swell Score’s panel of experts and clinicians (bios and credentials at theswellscore.com) thoroughly vet prospective brand candidates. “We’ve also leveraged AI and built our own scanning model to look at any ingredients,” Binkow says. “We have over 80,000 chemicals on our list.” Supplements, light therapy mats, organic mattresses, air and water purifiers; the Longevity Lab and accompanying website are snake-oil free, and provably so. Binkow’s project is to “regulate” the largely unregulated supplement and wellness space, making available the best of the best of the best.

On October 31 – two days before the Lab’s Grand Opening on November 2 – stop in for a look at what Gary Binkow has built. There will be Somatic Healing and a Qigong session. What the hell is a Qigong session? You’ll see. Timid observing from across the room is allowed and encouraged.

And the name? Swell Score? Is it a gee-whiz throwback to a more innocent time? “It’s a portmanteau,” Binkow says hesitantly. “The science of wellness. Swell.” I express surprise and delight. The man is pleased. “There – ya see, Jeff?” he says in his best Archie Bunker. “I’m smart, too!” 

Visit The Longevity Lab by Swell Score (5036 Carpinteria Ave.) on Thursday, October 31, from 11 – 2 pm to see what the lab has in store