2023-06-26 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - The Longevity Experts - Why We Don't Have to Age & How to Fight Aging: Difference between revisions

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    * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlq1Zy9YDT0&ab_channel=TheLongevityExperts
    {{YouTubeVideo
    * Length: 33:01
    | YouTubeID = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlq1Zy9YDT0&ab_channel=TheLongevityExperts
    | Length = 33:01
    | Interviewee = Dr. David Sinclair
    | Interviewer =
    | Summary =
    }}


    == Transcript ==
    == Transcript ==
    thank you
    === Intro ===
     
    {| style="padding-top: 1em;"
    [Music]
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 0:00
     
    | thank you [Music]
    I've heard you say that there's no
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 0:26
    biological law that says we have to age
    | I've heard you say that there's no biological law that says we have to age which is which is a pretty radical
     
    |-
    which is which is a pretty radical
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 0:33
     
    | statement break that down for us a bit we tend to think that what we see is inevitable and it used to be the case
    statement break that down for us a bit
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 0:39
    we tend to think that what we see is
    | for the speed of humans on the planet we used to think that horseback was the fastest humans could
     
    |-
    inevitable and it used to be the case
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 0:46
     
    | go we used to think that when you got an infection from a splinter that went gangrenous that was the end of that limb
    for the speed of humans on the planet we
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 0:53
    used to think that
    | or death we used to think that childbirth was always going to be potentially lethal uh these things we we
     
    |-
    horseback was the fastest humans could
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:00
     
    | used to think were inevitable now we're in a world where I'm trying to let the world know that aging is no longer
    go we used to think that when you got an
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:07
    infection from a splinter that went
    | inevitable um and in I'm a biologist I'm a geneticist at Harvard where I've been
     
    |-
    gangrenous that was the end of that limb
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:13
     
    | studying this for close to 30 years now and there's been no evidence from my lab
    or death we used to think that
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:18
    childbirth was always going to be
    | or any lab around the world that has found evidence of any mechanism that tells us
     
    |-
    potentially lethal uh these things we we
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:24
     
    | that we must age there are processes that we've identified that happen over time but we found that those are highly
    used to think were inevitable now we're
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:30
    in a world where I'm trying to let the
    | malleable we can slow them down and even in the last few years almost completely completely reset the system and reverse
     
    |-
    world know that aging is no longer
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:38
     
    | aging and so I I challenge anyone to correct me when I say that aging is not
    inevitable
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:45
    um and in I'm a biologist I'm a
    | inevitable and also that there is a limit to human
     
    |-
    geneticist at Harvard where I've been
    | style="min-width:4em; color: grey; text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; vertical-align: top;" | 1:50
     
    | lifespan where's the evidence for that there are plenty of species that live a lot longer than we do and genetically
    studying this for close to 30 years now
    |-
     
    | style="min-width:4em;
    and there's been no evidence from my lab
     
    or any lab around the world that has
     
    found
     
    evidence of any mechanism that tells us
     
    that we must age there are processes
     
    that we've identified that happen over
     
    time but we found that those are highly
     
    malleable we can slow them down and even
     
    in the last few years almost completely
     
    completely reset the system and reverse
     
    aging and so I I challenge anyone to
     
    correct me when I say that aging is not
     
    inevitable
     
    and also that there is a limit to human
     
    lifespan where's the evidence for that
     
    there are plenty of species that live a
     
    lot longer than we do and genetically
     
    they're not that different from us
     
    and with the technology that we have
     
    today like let's say we stop developing
     
    technology today what do you think the
     
    upper limit is of how long people can
     
    live
     
    well with today's technology uh if you
     
    have the means I actually think we're
     
    pretty close to being able to prevent
     
    most cancers and heart disease and
     
    diabetes so those major killers are
     
    already largely preventable and I'm
     
    including things like DNA tests for
     
    cancer and MRI scans so yeah not
     
    everyone can afford those yet but
     
    shortly they hopefully will be able to
     
    so if we stop technology right now I
     
    think that
     
    with a good diet and that knowledge and
     
    lifestyle
     
    the average person could probably make
     
    it to 95. you know there are plenty
     
    people who don't have the the knowledge
     
    or the means to do the right thing and
     
    that's one of the things that I'm doing
     
    is education but I think that we're
     
    about to completely blow past human uh
     
    longevity expectations and history of
     
    longevity so right now people who don't
     
    look after themselves bring the average
     
    down there's covert there's drug
     
    addiction uh that brings the average
     
    down across the planet especially in the
     
    US and so the average is almost 80 years
     
    old here but those people who
     
    um look after their bodies from an early
     
    age and do the right things and live
     
    long enough to to be able to reap the
     
    benefits of today's technology
     
    um not even the future ones
     
    um can expect to live into their 90s my
     
    father looked after himself late in life
     
    and he's now 84 and as healthy as he's
     
    ever been in his whole life so these are
     
    the this is what people can expect now
     
    even with today's knowledge and
     
    technology
     
    and where do you think like where where
     
    you said we're kind of like at the point
     
    we're hitting some of these
     
    breakthroughs what are the big
     
    breakthroughs that have to happen to go
     
    from let's say people living into their
     
    90s to people living into their 150s
     
    well they're happening in real time
     
    actually uh every week there's another
     
    breakthrough in aging research it's it
     
    was a slow field when I started in yeast
     
    cells we were excited to make a yeast
     
    Cell live 30 longer that's 1995
     
    technology
     
    uh things are happening at a rapid Pace
     
    we've got the discovery that there's a
     
    backup copy of Youth in every cell in
     
    the body that can be tapped into where
     
    curing my lab and companies that I've
     
    started and others that are competing
     
    with mine or at least uh friendly
     
    competition uh are showing that that
     
    it's not that difficult to reverse the
     
    age of an animal
     
    um we've done this in mice many times
     
    now it's not that difficult a high
     
    school student could do it with the
     
    knowledge that we have now
     
    um we're at the point where we're
     
    awaiting uh next week we'll announce
     
    results in monkeys for age reversal
     
    we're curing blindness using this
     
    technology out of my lab so we you know
     
    I would say that the Wright brothers are
     
    flying already do we have Commercial Air
     
    flight do we have a Concord yet no but
     
    we know it's possible to fly so it's
     
    really not a question of of uh if
     
    anymore it's just a question of when
     
    these Technologies become widely
     
    available
     
    so what's gonna what has to happen we
     
    need to figure out a safe way to
     
    reprogram tissues in the body and
     
    eventually the whole body uh
     
    we already have done some clinical
     
    trials in my companies we have positive
     
    human data that shows that we can slow
     
    down and reverse some aspects of Aging
     
    biochemistry and the body can be
     
    reversed such as cholesterol levels
     
    blood pressure these are all doable with
     
    today's technology out of my lab there's
     
    a new technology which is even better
     
    than that which is a little a little bit
     
    behind that we haven't gone into humans
     
    but we are in monkeys as I mentioned
     
    that in the next two years will treat
     
    our first patient it'll be uh to cure
     
    blindness
     
    um and so you know the answer really is
     
    that I think we've already made a lot of
     
    the breakthroughs that can extend human
     
    lifespan by decades
     
    um getting to 150 I don't think those
     
    breakthroughs are that far away given
     
    how fast the field is going right now
     
    the investment in the billions of
     
    dollars into not just Labs but in
     
    particular industry that has virgin just
     
    since our paper in 2020 showing that age
     
    reversal is safe age reversal is
     
    possible
     
    so I'm I'm 49 and let's say relatively
     
    healthy like what what what's a
     
    prediction and have have some money I
     
    can spend on some of these things what's
     
    a prediction for the average person like
     
    me like how how long is somebody like me
     
    going to live do you think yeah I think
     
    you need to throw away any uh
     
    preconceived ideas by looking at your
     
    parents and certainly your grandparents
     
    uh we are going to live very different
     
    lives we're actually approaching a big
     
    inflection point for those who are alive
     
    when these Technologies come on board in
     
    the next decade
     
    um so the point is if you know you're
     
    young uh or but some people who are in
     
    their 70s 80s and 90s
     
    you got to stick around do your best to
     
    live as healthy as possible seek the
     
    best medical care
     
    uh get scanned if you if you want to
     
    detect cancer invest in your health is
     
    the point you know you can invest in
     
    coffee every morning from a certain
     
    store down the road or you can invest
     
    that same money and afford an MRI scan
     
    for cancer so stay alive for yourself at
     
    your age uh things are going to happen
     
     

    Latest revision as of 02:54, 15 September 2023



    Transcript

    Intro

    0:00 thank you [Music]
    0:26 I've heard you say that there's no biological law that says we have to age which is which is a pretty radical
    0:33 statement break that down for us a bit we tend to think that what we see is inevitable and it used to be the case
    0:39 for the speed of humans on the planet we used to think that horseback was the fastest humans could
    0:46 go we used to think that when you got an infection from a splinter that went gangrenous that was the end of that limb
    0:53 or death we used to think that childbirth was always going to be potentially lethal uh these things we we
    1:00 used to think were inevitable now we're in a world where I'm trying to let the world know that aging is no longer
    1:07 inevitable um and in I'm a biologist I'm a geneticist at Harvard where I've been
    1:13 studying this for close to 30 years now and there's been no evidence from my lab
    1:18 or any lab around the world that has found evidence of any mechanism that tells us
    1:24 that we must age there are processes that we've identified that happen over time but we found that those are highly
    1:30 malleable we can slow them down and even in the last few years almost completely completely reset the system and reverse
    1:38 aging and so I I challenge anyone to correct me when I say that aging is not
    1:45 inevitable and also that there is a limit to human
    1:50 lifespan where's the evidence for that there are plenty of species that live a lot longer than we do and genetically
    1:56 they're not that different from us and with the technology that we have today like let's say we stop developing

    How long can we live

    2:03 technology today what do you think the upper limit is of how long people can live
    2:08 well with today's technology uh if you have the means I actually think we're
    2:13 pretty close to being able to prevent most cancers and heart disease and diabetes so those major killers are
    2:19 already largely preventable and I'm including things like DNA tests for
    2:25 cancer and MRI scans so yeah not everyone can afford those yet but shortly they hopefully will be able to
    2:32 so if we stop technology right now I think that with a good diet and that knowledge and
    2:38 lifestyle the average person could probably make it to 95. you know there are plenty
    2:43 people who don't have the the knowledge or the means to do the right thing and that's one of the things that I'm doing
    2:49 is education but I think that we're about to completely blow past human uh
    2:57 longevity expectations and history of longevity so right now people who don't
    3:03 look after themselves bring the average down there's covert there's drug addiction uh that brings the average
    3:08 down across the planet especially in the US and so the average is almost 80 years
    3:13 old here but those people who um look after their bodies from an early
    3:18 age and do the right things and live long enough to to be able to reap the benefits of today's technology
    3:25 um not even the future ones um can expect to live into their 90s my
    3:31 father looked after himself late in life and he's now 84 and as healthy as he's ever been in his whole life so these are
    3:37 the this is what people can expect now even with today's knowledge and technology and where do you think like where where

    The big breakthroughs

    3:45 you said we're kind of like at the point we're hitting some of these breakthroughs what are the big breakthroughs that have to happen to go
    3:52 from let's say people living into their 90s to people living into their 150s
    3:58 well they're happening in real time actually uh every week there's another breakthrough in aging research it's it
    4:04 was a slow field when I started in yeast cells we were excited to make a yeast Cell live 30 longer that's 1995
    4:11 technology uh things are happening at a rapid Pace we've got the discovery that there's a
    4:16 backup copy of Youth in every cell in the body that can be tapped into where curing my lab and companies that I've
    4:24 started and others that are competing with mine or at least uh friendly competition uh are showing that that
    4:31 it's not that difficult to reverse the age of an animal um we've done this in mice many times
    4:37 now it's not that difficult a high school student could do it with the knowledge that we have now
    4:42 um we're at the point where we're awaiting uh next week we'll announce results in monkeys for age reversal
    4:49 we're curing blindness using this technology out of my lab so we you know I would say that the Wright brothers are
    4:56 flying already do we have Commercial Air flight do we have a Concord yet no but
    5:01 we know it's possible to fly so it's really not a question of of uh if anymore it's just a question of when
    5:07 these Technologies become widely available so what's gonna what has to happen we need to figure out a safe way to
    5:13 reprogram tissues in the body and eventually the whole body uh we already have done some clinical
    5:19 trials in my companies we have positive human data that shows that we can slow down and reverse some aspects of Aging
    5:26 biochemistry and the body can be reversed such as cholesterol levels blood pressure these are all doable with
    5:32 today's technology out of my lab there's a new technology which is even better than that which is a little a little bit
    5:40 behind that we haven't gone into humans but we are in monkeys as I mentioned that in the next two years will treat
    5:46 our first patient it'll be uh to cure blindness
    5:52 um and so you know the answer really is that I think we've already made a lot of the breakthroughs that can extend human
    5:58 lifespan by decades um getting to 150 I don't think those breakthroughs are that far away given
    6:04 how fast the field is going right now the investment in the billions of dollars into not just Labs but in
    6:11 particular industry that has virgin just since our paper in 2020 showing that age
    6:17 reversal is safe age reversal is possible so I'm I'm 49 and let's say relatively

    How long will I live

    6:23 healthy like what what what's a prediction and have have some money I can spend on some of these things what's
    6:30 a prediction for the average person like me like how how long is somebody like me going to live do you think yeah I think
    6:37 you need to throw away any uh preconceived ideas by looking at your parents and certainly your grandparents
    6:42 uh we are going to live very different lives we're actually approaching a big inflection point for those who are alive
    6:47 when these Technologies come on board in the next decade um so the point is if you know you're
    6:52 young uh or but some people who are in their 70s 80s and 90s
    6:58 you got to stick around do your best to live as healthy as possible seek the best medical care
    7:03 uh get scanned if you if you want to detect cancer invest in your health is
    7:08 the point you know you can invest in coffee every morning from a certain store down the road or you can invest
    7:14 that same money and afford an MRI scan for cancer so stay alive for yourself at
    7:20 your age uh things are going to happen rapidly by the time you're my age I'm now almost 54. uh the technology
    7:27 hopefully will be here that you can be prescribed in medicine uh to not just
    7:32 slow down aging but reverse parts of your body for for age Eyes Ears uh
    7:39 probably other parts of the body and uh and certainly within our lifetimes we're
    7:44 going to see a dramatic change not just in what we can do to the body which I believe is going to be reset multiple
    7:50 times but the approach of medicine the approach right now of medicine and doctors around the world typically is
    7:56 well come see me when you get old and sick and and then I'll treat you yeah
    8:01 well that's waiting till the end stages of 8 aging cause problems we call them diseases but they're really the
    8:07 manifestations of this process called Aging which we Now understand is a universal process across the body in the
    8:12 same same process and different tissues that we call Alzheimer's and diabetes and heart disease these are all the end
    8:18 products of this same process of information loss in the body which we call aging and uh those diseases are
    8:26 currently tackled at the end of life we need to tackle them uh early and doctors
    8:31 will have the attitude and it's happening right now thanks in part two people have read my book and
    8:37 and the wave of longevity science they're looking at patients now some of the leading doctors and saying we can
    8:45 treat aging itself we can start early we could take someone in their 40s and use
    8:50 today's knowledge technology to prevent that process or at least prevent it um for another decade or two and when you
    8:57 do that then what happens is you stay healthier for much longer and that's going to be a big shift as well it's not
    9:03 just technology it's the approach of medicine as well and you mentioned these like things like getting MRI scans and

    MRI scans

    9:09 some of these other kind of like tasks to do early detection on things and one
    9:15 of the and I I recently got a MRI scan which I thought was very very helpful full body MRI scan but I can imagine for
    9:22 certain people um there's going to be a lot of false positives with these things and there's going to be other types of things to get
    9:29 people to worry and the stress of some of these early detections may not outweigh like knowing about it like how
    9:36 do you think about that or is it like hey okay if you happen to be a more neurotic person you have to work on that
    9:42 first or how do you think about when you're when you're when you're advising friends to do these things
    9:48 um yeah I think that that's a big mistake and I've heard a lot of people say that and particularly doctors
    9:54 um I think that that's that's misguided for the following reason there are plenty of
    9:59 tests that we do on pregnant women for children looking at the risk of say
    10:05 having um a child with Down syndrome yep it's not proof but it's evidence that we
    10:10 might want to follow up um same truth is true for these MRI scans
    10:15 someone who's young uh like the two of us I regardless as relatively young we want to get a baseline reading of what
    10:22 do we look like now and then compare that every year and see what changes it's the changes that are
    10:28 important you don't go in necessarily like the Deltas every year every two years or something like that yeah and
    10:35 it's no longer just a doctor looking comparing before and after there's AI systems already commercially available
    10:41 that allow a machine to say oh that part of your body just changed in the last
    10:46 year let's take a look at that or monitor it a little more closely maybe you want to come in for a scan every six
    10:52 months to keep an eye on that you know it's not all about a waiting till you see a tumor it's about knowing how your
    10:59 body's changing and getting ahead of that and it's not just cancer that you see with these scans you're looking at changes in your prostate size your gut
    11:05 health your bone health your brain health your blood vessels all of these things are important to monitor changes
    11:11 of and get ahead of it before it actually becomes a disease now I'm having Brian Johnson on the
    11:17 podcast soon he's trying to spend a couple million dollars a year to reduce his biological age you're an avid
    11:24 tracker of your own biomarkers do you have like an official kind of
    11:30 figure for your own biological age and how does one even like determine that
    11:35 well there are lots of ways um a very simple one is if you cross your legs and sit on the floor how easy is it for you
    11:41 to stand up without touching the floor if you can do that you're you're doing well uh someone middle age typically has
    11:48 to push themselves off with one hand and if you're in your 80s you might need to get onto one knee that's easy
    11:54 um but that's not very accurate the real data comes from blood tests or cheek swabs what I've been doing for now a
    12:01 dozen years is monitoring my blood work I don't do it that often I'm not like Brian where I'm doing uh you know lots
    12:07 of different tests and taking lots of supplements but I do believe that without measuring anything you're Flying
    12:13 Blind like driving a car without a dashboard nobody would do that uh who's saying
    12:18 um and so take some blood tests there are some ways to do that you can ask your doctor or go to some of the commercially available
    12:24 tracking sites I've been an investor and an advisor to inside tracker for many
    12:30 years um and they've been looking at my blood work and they and I together developed an algorithm to estimate one's
    12:37 biological age using that and according to that test I'm in the top two percent
    12:43 of people of my age for youthfulness I'm about 10 years younger based on that than my actual age so I'm 43. there are
    12:50 other tests there's DNA methylation tests I launched a company recently called Telehealth which is for testing
    12:56 epigenetic age which is measuring your DNA uh chemical changes and so there are
    13:02 a variety of ways there's no one test to rule them all I'd like to do those two kind of tests to give me an idea of how
    13:08 I'm doing but most importantly it's about looking at the changes and see how you're doing and trying to correct those
    13:14 errors or non-optimal numbers that can occur over time and you want to adjust things you want to be scientific about
    13:20 it to me it comes naturally of course I'm a scientist um so you measure a change measure again
    13:26 that's the the way to go about life I think and optimize your body and often
    13:31 I'm asked you know tell me what to do Professor just tell me what pill should I take now there are some rough rules
    13:37 but really everybody's different everyone has a different genetics different background different lifestyle
    13:42 different history different parents different environment and so you need to monitor yourself but I agree you know
    13:49 it's not easy to do what Brian does there's no way everyone can afford it let alone spend as much time on it but
    13:54 for very little money you know investment like giving up a cup of coffee or the money that it would take
    14:01 to have a Year's worth of those coffees you can spend that on your own health and you'll reap much greater Awards or
    14:07 rewards than you'd get from drinking a cup of coffee and if you can afford it do both thank you

    Hot Cold

    14:12 yep now I I read your book lifespan I took extensive notes and actually changed a lot of my own behavior and
    14:19 would love to dive into a couple things one things that you got into in the book was this kind of idea of hot cold
    14:26 um and I I had a little trouble just following the science of that even though I now do it because it's fun
    14:32 um why why is this kind of hot cold combination good yeah so the big breakthrough
    14:39 um well one of the big breakthroughs in the field that I was fortunate to be part of in the 1990s was the discovery
    14:45 of longevity genes and they exist in all life forms except viruses uh and uh and
    14:51 viruses hijacked them to infect us so that's you know still important there but yeah these longevity genes exist in
    14:58 yeast and plants that's also important plants that we eat have longevity
    15:03 activating molecules uh but really the point is that these longevity genes we discovered in the early 2000s respond to
    15:10 biological adversity sometimes we call it stress but I don't think stress is the right word because it invokes
    15:17 psychological stress which is not what we're talking about we're talking about cells and tissues and organs
    15:22 sensing that the food supply or the environment or having to run away from a
    15:29 saber-toothed tiger or an invading Army is dangerous and without danger our
    15:34 bodies are complacent we don't like to waste energy so we put our energy into building fat and uh and at the expense
    15:42 of getting older um and and staying young so that the
    15:47 problem really is that our society is built to make us feel comfortable and take away any perceived threats to our
    15:54 survival we don't have to go hungry most of us we don't have to run if we don't want to even our suitcases have wheels
    16:00 on them we go up elevators and our body says perfect great I don't need to put energy
    16:06 into activating longevity genes and they don't and what we end up with is early
    16:12 aging rapid aging diabetes heart disease as a result of the lifestyle that we have which is an abundance rather than
    16:19 an adversity memetic as we call it as I like to call it and so hot and cold those are similar as exercise and
    16:27 fasting are that they invoke this defense response adversity pneumatics
    16:32 and so you can do that so it's really about just it's about the stress yeah um and it's a it's a very uh and and

    Fasting

    16:39 doing hot and cold or doing like interval trainings or or um you know doing some sort of
    16:45 um some sort of fasting type of thing it's a very low risk way of of stressing
    16:51 your body right well you can always overdo it if you stay in a sauna all day you're probably not going to reap the benefits
    16:57 or if you freeze your body parts same with exercise you can overdo it and fasting of course if you don't eat for a
    17:04 month it's probably not going to be good either so you know you can always go too far but the concept is called hormesis
    17:09 which is what really doesn't kill you makes you live longer and and that's what I recommend people live by is that
    17:16 don't listen to the marketing uh from companies that want you to eat as much
    17:21 as possible and snack between meals listen to your body listen to me hopefully and others like me like you
    17:26 know bars alive my good friend who say that you want to put your body in a state where it it feels like it's
    17:33 working or feels like it needs something and food and exercise and hot and cold are the best examples of that

    Interval Training

    17:43 on the interval training side is it uh obviously the stress is probably a
    17:49 really good thing what else is why what is the other big reasons for this kind of like interval workouts and why
    17:55 they're better yeah well it's the shock to the system um most of what we've learned is that
    18:02 you can you can eat as much as you want during one meal but then you you taper
    18:07 it off during the day uh same with exercise you can sit around but but then
    18:13 you want to put your body into a hypoxic state where you're panting and cannot carry out a conversation and it's mixing
    18:20 it up it's it's the contrast between relaxation and the hormesis the the
    18:26 adversity it's not so much the constant adversity which we know constant adversity is not as good as mixing it up
    18:32 athletes know this uh people who train their brain know this um and it's it's
    18:38 so that's the good news is you don't always have to be running on a treadmill slowly or walking to get the benefits
    18:44 you can just push yourself hard for 15 minutes three times a week and get really great benefits same with heat
    18:50 same with cold do it shock the body get out and do something else yeah one minute cold shower or whatever
    18:56 just something crazy yeah you know I will freely admit that I'm pretty lazy I I try to be a role
    19:03 model as best I can but um I often snack um because I'm stressed I often don't exercise in fact I rarely
    19:10 exercise like I should um but I do know the science and I do think that um doing a little bit goes a long way

    Cured Meats

    19:17 now one thing you um on the diet side you you advised cured meats like cold
    19:22 cuts and bacon like why is that oh well there's a lot of science about
    19:28 uh nitrogenous uh compounds so those nitrates
    19:34 um are damaging of to DNA and there are two problems with damaging your DNA one
    19:40 is that it'll cause mutations to your genome which is the digital information in the body and that's a cancer type of
    19:46 thing cancer is the main readout of that we used to think it was also aging but actually there's more and more research
    19:51 saying that it's the other type of information in the body that's more important for aging which is the epigenome The Regulators of the the
    19:59 genes um and that's what we are manipulating in my lab to control the aging process
    20:04 forward and backwards and so when you take nitrogenous compounds what you're doing is breaking chromosomes
    20:09 um and that we've shown leads to aging because the body has to react to fix that DNA and in doing so it eventually
    20:17 loses the ability to regulate the DNA itself okay got it now you're you're a big fan

    NMN

    20:24 of nmn and before I read your book I had never even heard of nmn why why is that
    20:31 good well now we're talking about research uh from my lab in the early 2000s we found
    20:36 that the sirtuin longevity genes that we've my team and well I should say my mentors team Lenny guarante uh
    20:43 discovered certain so let me tell you about sirtuins these are seven genes in our body some of us have better versions
    20:49 than others and in general it's it's found that they protect the body against diseases ranging from um Alzheimer's to
    20:56 diabetes now these genes are get Switched Off over time the the main role is to make enzymes
    21:02 that tell the body how to survive during adversity so when you're exercising and dieting and in sauna they come on
    21:09 protect the body but the problem is as we get older they become less active and one of the biggest problems is that for
    21:17 their activity they require a a little molecule in the body a very abundant one
    21:22 called NAD NAD is required for life it's involved in chemical reactions but it's
    21:28 also used as a sensor for the body of adversity when we have no adversity we're eating a lot and
    21:34 sitting around NAD levels go down that's true as we get older as well so a 50 year old has half
    21:40 the levels of a 20 year old for NAD um and what we like to do is to boost the
    21:48 levels of NAD back up to youthful levels and mimic exercise mimic dieting or even enhance those modalities now we've even
    21:56 got um human clinical trial data I was mentioning one of my companies has done clinical trials already for the last few
    22:02 years and by raising NAD levels we can actually improve human health and we hope that this will be a drug one day to
    22:08 treat diseases ranging from kidney failure to even covid-19 survival
    22:15 so what about nmn well nmn is a precursor that the body uses to make NAD and by ingesting nmn we've shown in
    22:22 humans that you can raise your NAD Levels by about two to three-fold um and that's beneficial uh in humans
    22:29 based on clinical studies um you know when I say I'm a fan you know I'm not selling the stuff a lot of
    22:34 companies claim that I'm involved with uh selling it that's not true I spend
    22:40 fair amount of legal fees on trying to stop that um but yeah any NAD boosters as they're
    22:47 called seem to be really beneficial I take nmn um and I've been doing so for probably about eight to ten years and uh
    22:54 so far so good I've only seen benefits some people ask about and so basically you're saying the goal is to increase

    Benefits

    23:01 your NAD um one way to do that is through exercise you know you can do that by
    23:07 fasting sauna um but there's this other way to do it is to take this nmn
    23:13 um essentially it's a softball elements and you and and that can also boost your NAD
    23:19 uh yes that's what the science is saying and others have shown to improve six minute walk so it's being used for
    23:25 performance uh endurance and overall health it's not proving that it extends
    23:30 lifespan in fact we've only just recently found it extensor mouse's lifespan and haven't published that yet
    23:35 so it's early days we still have a lot to go on or to do at least but other
    23:41 side effects for taking it or their um or does doing one thing make it
    23:47 harder to do something else or it doesn't seem to be I mean mice in mice there's a couple of studies in some
    23:53 rare cases of genetically inbred mice that don't have an immune system uh that
    23:59 they there's hints that cancer might spread slightly more frequently in a very small
    24:05 study but these are mice that are in bread and have no immune system so it's still full steam ahead with human
    24:12 clinical trials there's been no Adverse Events in any of the patients that have been tested um or the subjects I should call them
    24:19 um and yeah so I'm I'm not yet ready to say that there's any known uh or at
    24:24 least uh tangible provable risks that uh you know I want to be the first person to know if there's a risk because yeah
    24:30 football takes it my friends and family take it I take it um so I'm not I'm not selling it I just
    24:36 want to know the science but I do know that my father is too old to wait till 100 proof that this extends lifespan you
    24:43 and I are getting to that point where we can't wait um and so that's really what I'm doing is I'm educating the public about the
    24:50 risks and rewards there are a couple of male studies that I want to point out but you know all weight up I think that
    24:58 the risk right now for me and my family is it's worth taking that risk until
    25:03 until further notice now you also take Metformin um and um and

    Metformin

    25:12 um like I don't even know how to pronounce it but sorry oh it was virtual where's virtual yeah yeah
    25:18 um and you know uh and often I'll you know when I talk to my doctor he's like well I feel like you know maybe you're a
    25:25 bit too young to take metformin and I mean yeah I I often encourage my patients who are let's say 60 or over
    25:31 but it has some side effects and that it makes it a little bit less likely to build muscle mass and stuff like that
    25:37 like how do you weigh some of those things uh well let's start with when should you
    25:42 start um I had a a real um heart to heart with my doctor when I was 29. I had super high cholesterol
    25:49 levels and he said I don't want to put you on a medicine because you're too young and I said dude
    25:56 it I don't want to wait till I get heart disease to go on a medicine get put on me put it on put me on it now
    26:03 so I've I've always been of the philosophy that it doesn't matter what age somebody is
    26:09 you treat everybody the same way you know within reason of course 20 year olds are a bit young for this kind of stuff but if you're in your 30s and you
    26:16 want to uh prevent heart disease prevent diabetes I think that it's perfectly
    26:23 fine uh under Dr supervision taking medicines that will prevent disease especially when does these medicines are
    26:30 extremely safe you do it under doctor Supervision in case there's a problem but with metformin for example and
    26:35 certainly Resveratrol very very very rare that somebody uh gets so sick that
    26:41 it's a problem and it's it's always reversible as well you just stop taking it if you get sick so these are risks I
    26:47 think are worth taking I don't prescribe anything I don't even recommend anything publicly so I would say talk to your
    26:53 doctor you know it's if they say you're too young I would keep fighting it I would show
    26:59 you your data and if if you want there's always alternative doctors um I just I think that the the argument
    27:05 that when you're young it's too early I you know there's a there's a at least I

    Building muscle mass

    27:11 heard that there's this trade-off of like okay it's hard to build muscle mass building muscle mass is very important
    27:16 as you get older um and so um and so you know so you have to figure
    27:22 the trade well it's frustrating to me as a scientist that
    27:28 when somebody says something in public or someone a podcast just says it's a problem it becomes locked into the
    27:35 Public's Consciousness and unfortunately nobody ever goes back and reads the actual paper that this
    27:41 came from and that that was also true for the women's health initiative and breast cancer people still believe that
    27:48 HRT causes breast cancer and uh that turns out it doesn't same for metformin
    27:53 and exercise when you look at the data uh and it's really easy to see it's not
    27:58 difficult you can look at it the graph that says there's a difference uh first of all is being manipulated in a way
    28:04 that is deceiving they cut off the y-axis so that you're just seeing the very tippy top of the bars and the
    28:10 actual difference is about five percent um and it turns out that that five percent is almost certainly due to
    28:18 people just not doing the extra couple of reps in the exercise because they feel a bit more tired so what's the
    28:24 solution well if you don't mind having muscles that are five percent smaller then no big deal those muscles
    28:31 are just as strong and healthier um and have less inflammation I don't care if my muscles are still 95
    28:38 there I'm not trying to win any contests for a bodybuilding but I can also I can
    28:45 avoid metformin on days I work out no big deal or force myself to do a couple more reps when I feel tired that's all
    28:51 it is I wouldn't say that that's a reason not to take Metformin there are other reasons such as gastric uh
    28:57 gastrointestinal issues that's more of a an issue but I think it the point here that I want to make is
    29:03 make sure that the science is true and the data that you're getting is true don't just believe pundits or even uh
    29:09 you know doctors who are saying this stuff try to go to the paper read it or listen to scientists who do read papers
    29:16 and also just measure yourself do it under Dr supervision make sure that it's not harming you make sure you feel fine
    29:22 and then by all means in my view it's worth starting in your 40s to maximize
    29:27 your lifespan because we're aging every day it doesn't just begin after the age of 50 or 60.
    29:33 now initially I was actually kind of skeptical to the idea that like big subsets of the population would adopt
    29:39 any of these anti-aging Lifestyles but then I saw a couple of studies that say 10 of Americans are already intermittent
    29:46 fasting every single day over 25 percent have already tried it maybe intermittent
    29:51 fasting is is not the best one to measure because it's kind of easy to do you just kind of skip breakfast and so
    29:57 it's kind of a simple relatively simple thing to do but how optimistic that you actually will see widespread Behavior
    30:04 changes well we are in in the midst of a revolution in people's wellness and how
    30:12 active they are in their own health pandemic was a major wake-up call to
    30:17 people who stared in the mirror and saw their own mortality and then there was a boom in home testing because people
    30:24 didn't want to go into doctor's offices for obvious reasons and so it's becoming also easier for people to take home
    30:30 tests now we don't want people you know going rogue and testing themselves and
    30:36 trying to interpret themselves with chat gpt4 and Beyond I don't think that's the
    30:41 only solution I think there's a risk that we won't have enough doctor supervision and some people overdo it
    30:48 there's always that risk so there's a caution here I do think though that there's a place for people taking their
    30:54 own health into their own hands you can't always be supervised by your doctor when you're at a restaurant
    30:59 people do need to realize that most of what affects their health in the future is up to them not their doctor and what
    31:06 you do every day in your life Echoes for decades and that changing a lifestyle
    31:13 is as important if not more important than the medicines you will take and that's why I think that this revolution
    31:19 that we're seeing in the population not just in the US but around the world is a great thing and
    31:27 will only become more prevalent and in 20 years it'll be the majority of people will will be on board with monitoring on
    31:35 health it's going to get easier and easier with devices as well cheaper and cheaper and we'll look back at
    31:42 two years ago when almost nobody did this and think that going to your doctor once a year for an annual checkup and
    31:48 having the doctor bang in your knees and cough uh will will send medieval in fact even to us today it seems medieval
    31:56 yeah it's in the intermittent fasting one it's while it's you know maybe uh 10
    32:01 of the population it seems like it's it's probably closer to 40 percent of my friends oh yeah and
    32:07 um and one I think one of the reasons is well besides the fact that it's relatively easy to do
    32:13 um it's maybe one of the easiest ones to to to to to do of of all the of all the things that people prescribe
    32:20 um it's also also pretty easy to to at least for people to believe that has low
    32:26 harm um and because if you say to somebody stop eating meat or something like that
    32:32 first of all I think that's hard for people to do because they they love they might love their meat and second they may they may show you 40 studies of how
    32:39 that actually could do harm to them um whereas and so uh so it's it's kind
    32:45 of like this both things that come in of why people may change behaviors
    32:51 yeah absolutely and everybody's different some people like hot and cold therapy some people don't um yeah sizes
    32:57 for some it's not for me although I know it's important to do