In this monologue, Dr. Molly Maloof reflects on her journey from early experiments with wearables—pedometers, continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), and heart‑rate‑variability (HRV) trackers—to a broader realization that social connection, attachment, and love are the most powerful determinants of health and longevity. She argues that social disconnection is more detrimental than smoking, obesity, or sedentary behavior, and that the current medical system focuses on treating illness rather than building resilience through relationships. Drawing on neuroscience, she explains the neurobiology of romantic love as an evolutionary reward system that promotes survival and gene propagation. Maloof describes her biotechnology company’s mission to develop “love drugs” that enhance bonding, heal sexual‑trauma‑induced dysfunction, and potentially reduce divorce and relationship resentment. She also outlines practical lifestyle pillars—consistent circadian rhythms, balanced nutrition (including phytonutrients), regular intense exercise, and vigilant monitoring of biomarkers such as blood sugar, stress, sleep, and HRV—as foundational for longevity. She highlights emerging technologies (next‑generation CGMs, HRV monitors) that will democratize biomarker‑driven behavior change, and expresses enthusiasm for psychedelics as tools to reprogram trauma‑laden attachment patterns. Finally, she emphasizes that humanity is wired for community; the pandemic’s forced isolation revealed that disconnection is not normal, and she calls for intentional connection to improve mental and physical health.
Chapters
You know, I was wearing a pedometer in medical school and my attendings were like, nobody pays for behavioral health. And I was wearing a CGM in 2014 and everybody was like, you don't need to wear a CGM unless you have diabetes. And then like I was using continuous heart rate variability monitoring on my clients. Everybody's like, well, stress is just part of life. What are you going to do about it? And I just really never listened to people for the most part. I also spent quite a lot of time with hippies. And so, I realized that there was this major role of relationships in health. You know, it was hanging out with the people at Esselen Institute that opened my eyes to, you know, really pursuing things that were completely out of the box, like stuff that you couldn't even talk about in mainstream society. And so, I got this really interesting balanced kind of worldview from these two worlds. It'd be great if the system actually gave you something for your money and cared about your health and really wanted you to live a long time, but they only really care if you get sick. And are broken. And that's what it's designed for. And so we really do need to see a new system emerge that's about building health and creating resilience and enhancing connection. And I'm hopefully gonna be a part of that. One of the biggest discoveries I made in my teaching at Stanford was like reading all this literature on longevity and realizing that relationship quality has a larger role in long-term health and happiness than any other factor. And social disconnection is actually worse for health than smoking, than obesity, and sedentary behavior. And so I was like, oh my God, I've been so focused on metabolism for so long. So I was just like, okay, well, why do people make such bad decisions with their health? Why, why do they cope with discomfort with food, right? Like, everybody can know the principles of mastering a healthy metabolism. But the vast majority of people won't do the things they need to do for optimal health. And the real question is why. And it always came down to their social conditioning and the way they were raised by their parents and the way that their parents raised them around food and the way that they had unresolved trauma and the way that people naturally, as a stress response, respond to fear with trying to gather calories. And it was like, oh, so What if we could actually just feel safer? And what would make us feel safer as a society? And like, what would make us live longer? And it was really just relationships at the end of the day. And I was like, why are we not doing more to optimize relationship quality? And why are relationships so hard for people? And it really— I got interested in attachment and love. Frankly, love is clearly this unbelievable force. It's a motivational force that basically gets us to spend more time together. Love is what brings us together. And I believe that we know very little about love. And we're just starting to dig into the neurobiology of love. So I got interested in specifically the neurobiology of romantic love and why we would have evolved this motivational force, like, what was it from, you know, what is this divine spark of life come from, you know, like, why do people come together and make children, and it really comes down to survival and reproduction, right? Like, the biological imperative is to get us to survive, and to pass on our genes. And so love is almost this reward system that's been created to get us to spend more time together in order to actually enhance our ability to live as long as possible. So there's this great paper called Love and Longevity. And it's all about the oxytocin hypothesis, which is like, we are like wired to connect, and disconnection and loneliness are the consequence of a society, frankly, that like hasn't prioritized social connection. And really what I believe is necessary for true longevity and really creating a life that's really meaningful and purposeful is our relationships. So I was like, well, why can't we actually enhance our relationships? My company is specifically a biotechnology company because what we're doing is we're essentially commercializing a pharmaceutical love potion. I mean, the substance creates a deep bond between people. And I believe that there's this concept of neuroenhancement of relationships.. And there's actually a couple ethicists who wrote a book called Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships. And we already have drugs that actually change the way that we connect, like hormones, for example, change the way we interact sexually. And SSRIs actually change our sexual function. So if we already have things that are already altering relationships, then why can't we live in a world where we can actually improve relationship quality and help really heal trauma, which is actually underneath a lot of relationship dysfunction. And so that's the first aim of the company is to figure out, can we help people who've experienced sexual trauma heal from the sexual dysfunction as a consequence of this trauma? And largely, it's because sexual trauma causes changes in the brain that actually change the way that you respond to the world. And you're in a state of hyperarousal, and not in a good way. It's actually the kind of hyperarousal cause a sympathetic nervous system overdrive. And then I'm also just interested in the neuroenhancement of love. Like, can we create longer lasting relationships through giving people medicine that creates deeper bonds? And could that prevent, you know, resentment from building? Could that prevent people from getting divorced? Could that actually reignite gray marriages that are just passionless with very little intimacy, and that are just commitments left over? Right? Like, can we take these marriages and can we revive them? And what would the world look like if we actually had these deeper bonds? And maybe this would actually get us to live longer because it looks like that people who have strong relationship bonds last about 10 years longer than people who don't. I don't think enough people even know their phytonutrient intake. So I actually give my clients a phytonutrient questionnaire, and it's a way for people to actually see like how many servings of fruits and vegetables are you actually eating? And most people are not getting 5 a day. And oftentimes if they are getting vegetables, it's green vegetables. So you really remember to eat the rainbow. Yeah. And that's something that I actually really hammer into all my clients is like, I know there's this whole world of people who are like, oh, carnivore people do not need plants. And I'm like, look, if your gut is so dysfunctional that you can only eat meat to function, then the problem is your gut dysfunction. And it's not that meat is the only answer. I'm really a big believer of going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time. And I think your body really likes it when you get consistent mealtimes as well. So I just believe if you can get your circadian rhythms in balance, if you can get your morning and evening routine dialed, and if you can get your fitness dialed and your nutrition dialed, then like everything is easier. And you just gotta pay attention to your biomarkers. You gotta pay attention to your blood sugar, to your stress, to your sleep, to your movement, to your intensity of your movement, making sure you get proper amounts of intense exercise in. And if you can do all those things, these are the basics. Most people don't even do the basics. Most people are just trying to supplement their way to better health. The fact that CGM is gonna be available to people very easily, very quickly, and just the data we're gonna be able to get from that is gonna be amazing. I personally know how to use CGM to optimize lifestyle, and sooner than later, people will be able to actually like learn all about how to use biomarkers to actually change behavior. There's a company called Hanu Health and they're gonna be coming out with like a really next generation heart rate variability monitor. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna be able to give you personalized recommendations. And like just by listening to my friend who runs the company's recommendations for optimizing my HRV, I literally raised it about 42 points, 44 points actually. And that was like height peak stress to now. And that was about 2 months. HRV is a major marker for longevity. And so you really got to keep track of your stress levels if you want to live a long time. I mean, I'm excited about psychedelics, you know, I'm excited about the idea that like, we might be able to reprogram minds from trauma. If I can heal from trauma, then anybody can. It's possible to actually change your brain. And it's possible to actually potentially change your attachment style. It's almost like the world of medicine kind of separates itself from the world of psychology and psychiatry a lot. But there's definitely a lot of research in just energy and how energy flows in a coherent or chaotic or rigid manner in different brains. We think our mind is our own and we think our mind is bound by our body, but our mind is beyond our body, actually. I mean, it's energy and information flow. And so when we are connecting with someone, there's energy and information flow exchanged and there's like a collective mind created. Being able to measure our interactions of the mind of two people interacting and the biometrics that are coming from two different bodies and being able to help people find more coherence through their relationships. If we could fix attachment and trauma and relationships, we would have far less disease and far less mental illness and far better quality of life. So this is a big part of medicine that I want to be a part of, and I want to dedicate the rest of my life to it. The pandemic has forced people into believing that disconnection is normalized, and disconnection is not a normal part of existence. We are totally meant to live in community and in tribes. So take every single opportunity you can to connect with people.
