An independent research institute studying healthspan and lifespan in the South Asian context — translating the world's most rigorous longevity science into the realities of the Indian genome, plate, climate, and culture.
Twelve numbers that describe the state of healthspan in 1.4 billion Indians today. Drawn from the ICMR-INDIAB national survey, the Lancet, the WHO, the Air Quality Life Index, and the National Cancer Registry Programme.
India's average life expectancy in 2024 — against a high-income world average of 81.
The gap between Kerala (highest) and Chhattisgarh (lowest) — a decade of life lost to geography alone.
India has the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing diabetic population, affecting 11.4% of adults.
Adults with prediabetes — a population larger than Russia, sitting one inflection away from full disease.
Indians with hypertension (35.5%). Seven of every eight remain uncontrolled.
Adults with abdominal obesity (39.5%) — the metabolically dangerous Asian Indian fat distribution.
Of the world's heart disease burden carried by Indians — despite being only 18% of the global population.
Of all heart attacks in Indian men occur before age fifty. A quarter before forty.
National prevalence of dyslipidaemia — the silent precursor to cardiovascular events.
Of all deaths in India now caused by non-communicable disease — and rising.
Lost from the average Indian lifespan to PM2.5 air pollution. Up to 9.7 years for Delhi residents.
Projected new annual cancer cases in India by 2045 — a 70% rise on today's 1.46 million incidence.
Two decades of metabolic research have established that South Asian bodies are not smaller versions of European bodies. They are differently composed — and differently at risk. Understanding the phenotype is the foundation of every protocol that follows.
The Indian body, on average, carries more fat and less muscle than the global norm at any given Body Mass Index. This pattern — first formally described as the "thin-fat" or Asian Indian phenotype — explains why our bodies develop diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome at weights and waistlines that would be considered safe in Europe or America.
The mechanism is now well characterised. South Asians have a relatively limited capacity to store fat where it is metabolically harmless: in subcutaneous tissue around the hips and thighs. When dietary energy exceeds that limit, the surplus "overflows" into ectopic depots — visceral fat around the organs, fatty infiltration of the liver, the pancreas, the heart. Visceral adiposity, more than total body weight, is what drives insulin resistance and inflammatory disease.
This is why the WHO Asia-Pacific guidelines define overweight at a BMI of 23 for South Asians (versus 25 globally) and obesity at 25 (versus 30). It is why an Indian woman with a 32-inch waist and an Indian man with a 36-inch waist already meet the threshold for abdominal obesity — and why screening that uses Western cutoffs systematically misses the disease in our population.
The phenotype begins early. Indian newborns already have proportionally less lean mass and more body fat than European newborns of the same weight. Genetics play a role, but the picture is shaped by maternal nutrition, generational undernourishment, and the rapid energy-rich transition of the modern Indian diet. Longevity in India therefore cannot be addressed without addressing the body that lives it.
Indians develop diabetes at lower BMIs. Heart attacks at younger ages. Vitamin deficiencies the West has never heard of. And yet every longevity protocol we read was written for somebody else's body.
Diabetes risk begins at a BMI of 23, not 25 — and severe risk by 27.
Waist circumference, not weight, is the most accurate single screening number.
Visceral fat, fatty liver, and fatty pancreas are present in many "lean" Indians.
Resistance training matters more for Indians than for most populations — muscle is protective.
Cardiovascular events arrive 5–10 years earlier than in matched Western peers.
Standard global protocols under-screen, under-diagnose, and under-treat the Indian patient.
Every recommendation, protocol, and clinical intervention from this Institute is organised under one of seven pillars — each adapted from global longevity science to the body, plate, climate, and culture of India.
Why the dal-rice-roti staple is, on average, 30 grams of protein short of what the Indian body requires daily. The case for re-engineering the thali around protein adequacy, glycaemic load, and micronutrient density — without abandoning what makes Indian food extraordinary.
VO₂max, Zone 2 endurance, and resistance training adapted for Indian bodies — and a serious reckoning with why the daily walking, climbing, and squatting of pre-modern Indian life was sufficient until urbanisation removed it.
Sixty-one percent of urban Indians now sleep fewer than seven hours a night. The metabolic, cognitive, and longevity costs are measurable in HbA1c and hsCRP. Protocols that survive Indian heat, light, and household density.
From cortisol to community: how chronic stress shows up in Indian biomarkers — and what twenty centuries of indigenous practice (pranayama, dhyana, the Indian rhythm of fasting and feasting) already taught us, before we mostly stopped doing it.
PM2.5 air pollution is shortening Indian lifespans by an estimated 5.3 years on average — 9.7 years in Delhi. Realistic mitigation for those who cannot simply move: indoor air, dietary antioxidants, exposure timing, lung capacity.
The standard annual Indian health checkup misses what matters most. The expanded panel — ApoB, Lp(a), HOMA-IR, hsCRP, ferritin, B12, Vitamin D, HbA1c, fasting insulin — that every Indian over thirty should run. Why, what, and how often.
Loneliness is now an established mortality risk equal to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. What the multi-generational Indian household did right, what urban India is rapidly forgetting, and how to engineer connection back into a longevity practice.
The Longevity Institute India is founded and led by Dr. Deepika Krishna — physician, functional-medicine practitioner, author, TEDx speaker, and one of India's most consequential voices in the new science of healthspan.
Dr. Krishna's medical practice began in 2004, with a single observation that has shaped twenty years of work since: that conventional Indian medicine was excellent at treating disease once it arrived — and almost completely silent on how to prevent it from arriving in the first place. That gap became her career.
She built Longevity & Beyond Clinics (L&B), an integrative practice now serving patients across India, where functional medicine, advanced diagnostics, gut microbiome analysis, and nutrigenomic testing are used not to manage symptoms but to find their root cause. She founded Immunosciences, India's first doctor-led nutraceutical brand, built on the principle that the supplements an Indian body needs are not the supplements being marketed to it. She has served, for over a decade, as a director of the ICI Hospital and Cancer Healer Centre, working alongside oncology patients in the most consequential moments of their lives.
"True wellness isn't a product you purchase. It is a conscious rebellion against shortcuts, symptom-chasing, and superficial fixes. My mission is to bring people back to the roots of their health — through science, self-awareness, and sustainable strategy."
— Dr. Deepika Krishna, New Delhi · 2026Her debut book, Health Cocktail, became an India #1 best-seller — a no-fluff reckoning with the misinformation that defines mainstream wellness, written for the Indian reader. She is a TEDx speaker. She received the 2022 Achievers Award for Trusted Name in Nutraceuticals & Wellness. She has worked, by her own count, with more than 37,000 patients.
The Longevity Institute India is the work she always intended to build: a non-commercial, research-first vehicle for translating the global science of longevity into something the Indian body can actually use. Independent of supplement sales, clinic enrolment, or any commercial pressure — this Institute is the open-source counterpart to the rest of her practice. The library, the research, the protocols, the data are free. The mission is generational.
India in 2026 has 1.4 billion people, an average life expectancy of 72.5 years, and a non-communicable disease epidemic that claims two-thirds of all deaths — many of them decades before they should arrive. We carry sixty percent of the world's cardiovascular disease burden in eighteen percent of its population. We are the diabetes capital of Asia and approaching the cancer capital of it.
And yet the science of how to slow biological ageing, compress morbidity, and extend the healthy years of human life has, in this last decade, advanced more rapidly than at any point in history. The protocols exist. The data exists. The mechanisms are increasingly understood.
None of it has been written for us.
The Longevity Institute India exists for a single, generational ambition: that by 2050, the average Indian will live ten years longer, in measurably better health, than the average Indian does today. That cardiovascular disease will arrive a decade later than it does now. That diabetes will be screened before it manifests, not after. That every Indian over thirty will know their ApoB, their HbA1c, and their VO₂max as routinely as they know their height. That longevity will not be a privilege of the urban affluent — but a public good, available to a farmer in Bihar, a teacher in Tamil Nadu, a grandmother in Manipur.
This is not a clinic. It is not a brand. It is a piece of public infrastructure — open, independent, and free — for the science of how Indians can age well.
Every report, dataset, and protocol the Institute publishes will be free, citable, and reproducible. No paywall, no email-gate.
Original work — not translated Western consensus — on the South Asian body, plate, environment, and life.
Plain-language education for the citizen, technical depth for the clinician — published in the same place, in the same week.
Unaffiliated with any pharmaceutical, supplement manufacturer, or insurance entity. Conflicts disclosed in full.
A growing archive of long-form research essays, field notes, and clinical protocols. Published weekly. Citation-grade. Free, forever.
The thin-fat phenotype, visceral adiposity, and twenty years of South Asian metabolic research — synthesised into the practical threshold that every Indian clinician should be screening at, and most still aren't.
Field notes from the state with India's highest life expectancy. What the diet, the daily movement, the matrilineal social fabric, and the ninety-year-olds doing yoga at five a.m. all have in common.
ApoB, Lp(a), HOMA-IR, hsCRP, ferritin, B12, vitamin D, HbA1c, fasting insulin. A two-thousand-rupee panel that, run annually after age thirty, would change the trajectory of millions of lives.
The Indian plate is not nutritionally neutral. A clinical case for protein-forward, glycaemic-controlled, micronutrient-dense Indian eating — preserving culture without preserving disease.
What the latest Air Quality Life Index data tells us about pollution and Indian lifespan — and what realistically works for those who can't move out of the Gangetic plain.
Why sixty-one percent of urban India is now sleep-deprived, what it costs us metabolically, and a sleep protocol designed for the Indian heat, the Indian household, and the Indian work week.
The flagship annual report. Once a year, the Institute will publish a 132-page synthesis of every meaningful study — Indian or applicable to Indians — released in the previous twelve months. Charts. Citations. Plain-language summaries. The Lancet, Nature Medicine, Indian Journal of Medical Research, ICMR, NCRP, AQLI, all read for you.
It is the document we wish had existed for us. It will exist now, for the next generation of Indian clinicians, journalists, policy-makers, and citizens who want to know — in one place, citation-grade — how the country's bodies are actually doing.
The Longevity Institute India was founded on a single observation: that the most rigorous, exciting science of our generation — the science of healthspan, of biological ageing, of compressed morbidity — has been written almost entirely for bodies, lives, and clinical contexts that are not ours. Translating it for India is not a marketing exercise. It is a research project, a public-education project, and a generational responsibility.
The Institute exists to translate, contextualise, and where necessary, originate. Our work spans peer-reviewed synthesis, longitudinal field research, clinician partnerships, public education, and an open library of protocols and tools. Our methodology privileges Indian-population studies wherever they exist; where they don't, we extrapolate cautiously and say so plainly.
We are independent. We accept no funding from pharmaceutical or supplement manufacturers. We sell no products. Our writing is free. Our datasets are open. Our editorial standards are public, and our conflicts — past, present, and potential — are fully disclosed on this site. The Institute is funded by Dr. Krishna's personal commitment, by a small founding donor circle, and over time by reader-members who choose to support the work.
This is, finally, a bet on India. A bet that the country that is now the world's most populous, fastest-growing, and youngest economy can also become — if we choose to — the country that pioneers what longevity science looks like outside the West. We think it can. We think it must.
A non-exhaustive list of the primary studies behind the data and claims on this page. Every figure cited on the Institute is traceable. Click through to read the original work.
Metabolic non-communicable disease health report of India: the ICMR-INDIAB-17 national cross-sectional study.
Anjana RM et al. · Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 2023 · thelancet.com
Air Quality Life Index Annual Update 2025 — India.
Energy Policy Institute, University of Chicago · aqli.epic.uchicago.edu
Cancer incidence estimates for 2022 & projection for 2025: National Cancer Registry Programme, India.
Mathur P et al. · Indian J Med Res · ijmr.org.in
High prevalence of metabolic obesity in India: ICMR-INDIAB-23.
Anjana RM et al. · Indian J Med Res, 2025 · ijmr.org.in
Why might South Asians be so susceptible to central obesity? The adipose tissue overflow hypothesis.
Sniderman AD, Bhopal R, Prabhakaran D et al. · Int J Epidemiology · 2007
Risk Factors for Early Myocardial Infarction in South Asians vs Other Countries.
Joshi P, Islam S, Pais P et al. · JAMA, 2007;297(3) · jamanetwork.com
Subnational estimates of life expectancy at birth in India: NFHS & SRS data.
Yadav PK, Yadav S · BMC Public Health, 2024
Vitamin D deficiency in India: Prevalence, Causalities and Interventions.
Aparna P et al. · J Family Med Prim Care · NIH Archive
Burden of Vitamin D, B12 & Folic Acid Deficiencies in Aging Rural India (SANSCOG).
Sundarakumar JS et al. · Frontiers in Public Health, 2021
The burden of mental disorders across the states of India: GBD Study 1990–2017.
Sagar R et al. · Lancet Psychiatry, 2020
Premature Coronary Artery Disease in Indians and its Associated Risk Factors.
Prabhakaran D et al. · Vasc Health Risk Manag
An independent research institute studying healthspan and lifespan in the South Asian context. Founded by Dr. Deepika Krishna. Open work. Open data. Free, forever.