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#ThrivebyWHX: How attitude and physiology play a key role in longevity
At the start of his talk at Thrive by WHX in Cape Town, ReadyRoom CEO and medical doctor, Dr Costa Kapnias, conducted a brief study on the attendees. He asked willing participants to imagine biting into a lemon. Surprisingly, they felt more saliva in their mouths at just the thought of it. "From a single thought that became a visualisation, it became an actual physiological response where you actually made more saliva...That tells you how powerful thoughts actually are," he says.
3 Sep 2025
Image credit: Liliana Drew on Pexels
Kapnias first got thinking about the role of attitude in longevity when he conducted a biological age test on South African golfing legend Gary Player, which revealed he was 60 (when he was around 75 at the time).
Contrary to being pleased with a 15-year younger result, Player denied the scan's results, saying that it was way off; he felt 45.
Kapnias says it's all about your attitude.
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Saying that while we have no power over the past or the future, we can impact the present. "All the past gives us is pain, and all the future gives us is fear. So we've only got today, and that's where longevity starts, in my opinion, in how we live our lives today."
At ReadyRoom, Kapnias says they look at your heart, your mitochondrial energy and your brain. He says that "interestingly, when you teach people heart brain coherence, how to think and how to feel...their physiology improves dramatically."
Worringly, he warns that when testing business executives and even employees at companies like Mercedes-Benz, he finds that about 80% of them are in fight-or-flight mode post-Covid. A trend mirrored in school children.
This is where mindfulness comes in. "If you're in fight-flight, you're defending physiologically. That's how your brain is going to work. That is accelerated energy, that's disease, and you don't want to live like that.
"When you sort that out, you're already on the path to having more energy and less illness."
Case in point, Kapnias shares that when doing studies on rheumatoid arthritis in the United States, they shared breathwork, mindfulness, grounding, and plant-based eating, as well as connecting with nature, with one group, while the other group continued with only their medication.
Within six months, the group with the tools were using much less medication, had fewer clinical outbreaks and hospitalisations, and were doing much better by just managing physiology.
He says that "knowing your physiology helps you to be present in your body, because the solutions are not out there. Solutions are in here (in your body)."
Adding that this kind of assessment validates how people feel, which, in turn, allows them to make a choice.
Concluding, he says that it doesn't take a lot, and he sees massive differences by just teaching people to breathe. When they come back in a week or two, their physiology has already started improving. "So change your physiology. You'll change your life."
About Maroefah Smith
After studying media and writing at the University of Cape Town, Maroefah dived head-first into publishing. Going on to write more than 50 pieces in digital (Bizcommunity) and print media (Seventeen Magazine). While her primary interests are beauty and fashion, she is incredibly adaptable and can take on any topic - from AI to zoology.
