2022-12-29 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - Moonshots and Mindsets - Why Aging is a Disease With David Sinclair
- Interviewee: Dr. David Sinclair
- Interviewer: Peter H. Diamandis
Transcript
Intro
| 0:00 | this limit to human lifespan there is there is no biological limit of course there isn't we are the same stuff as a |
| 0:07 | whale that can live a lot longer than us this we're building the same stuff as as tortoises and pretty much the same stuff |
| 0:13 | as trees that live thousands of years it's a software problem I'm putting Greer on the line it's a software |
| 0:20 | problem and what's interesting about biology is that software encodes the ability to rebuild the hardware so we've |
| 0:27 | got to reset the software and when we do that in my lab we find that tissues regenerate in animals are organoids |
| 0:33 | which are many human organs regenerate they fix themselves and they function like they're new again so it's in my |
| 0:40 | view 99 a software problem and a massive transformative purpose is |
| 0:46 | what you're telling the world it's like this is who I am this is what I'm going to do this is the dent I'm going to make |
| 0:52 | in the universe hey David good morning good afternoon |
| 0:58 | how you doing pal ER hey good thanks how are you doing good I would normally ask you what you |
| 1:05 | have for breakfast or lunch but I know you skipped those yeah yeah I'm a struggling vegan uh I'm not always |
| 1:12 | successful but I do strive most of the time to skip those meals yeah as as do I |
| 1:18 | uh some you know but coffee is a mandatory the question is how much coffee but we'll get to that |
| 1:25 | conversation later so I want to talk about a conversation that you and I have and frankly you've championed to a large |
Is Aging A Disease?
| 1:32 | degree which is is aging a disease I just saw a Twitter poll uh recently that |
| 1:38 | you retweeted and I did too on that subject before we get there you know some of the facts that are at both our |
| 1:45 | fingertips that I think are are pretty crazy I just held my longevity Platinum trip and one of the things that was |
| 1:51 | shocking to me was uh that 70 of all heart attacks have no antecedents |
| 1:58 | there's no shortness breath there's no narrowing on Imaging it's just all of a |
| 2:05 | sudden you know someone literally dies from a heart attack from soft plaque |
| 2:10 | crazy right um just and the other the other facts uh you know at Fountain life we do full |
| 2:17 | body Imaging and coronary Imaging and in seemingly healthy adults what we're |
| 2:23 | finding is two percent of people have cancers they don't know about and two and a half percent of people have |
| 2:29 | aneurysms they don't know about uh and so it's interesting we're all optimists |
| 2:36 | about our health but yet we have very little insight uh I don't know how do |
| 2:42 | you think about that it's crazy I think of heart disease and cancer as um largely largely avoidable diseases |
| 2:48 | these days with with high technology you know the sort of things that Fountain |
| 2:53 | life are doing um and that's through genetic testing uh looking at the DNA circulating through |
| 3:00 | blood as well as new types of Imaging um and these sort of things that you and |
| 3:06 | I do which is extensive blood work on a regular basis but that's not able to be |
| 3:13 | reached by most people um and it you know it's right now it's it's a fair amount of somebody's salary |
| 3:19 | to do all that so it's it's it's not fair to me to say oh yeah just do this |
| 3:24 | it'll be fine uh but we are heading towards a world where uh we will know |
| 3:29 | much more about our bodies before we get sick and one of the things that I've rallied against is the old concept and |
| 3:36 | you're a trained MD you know this of of medicine thinking of treating disease |
| 3:43 | rather than treating the patient before they get disease and so that we have to shift from that mindset to take care of |
| 3:48 | people throughout their whole life before they get sick because what's driving most of these diseases including |
| 3:54 | sudden death uh from an infarction unstable plaque or even soft plaque is |
| 4:00 | the aging process itself and that's happening every day and depends on how we live our lifestyle and that's largely |
| 4:07 | slowable that the way we live our life will actually slow down the ticking of that clock in my lab here behind me we |
| 4:14 | are routinely measuring that clock in mice and in human sounds it's very clear that some people age much more slowly |
| 4:20 | than others and 80 of that effect is not genetic it's based on lifestyle |
| 4:25 | um just a personal note I I had one of my best friends die last week uh suddenly from a heart attack while he |
| 4:31 | was driving home um professor at Cornell and I've had |
| 4:37 | lost three people in the last couple of years very close to me for the same reason so yeah |
| 4:42 | we do need to take preventative action and measure things as best we can it'll only get better yeah the the stat I I |
| 4:50 | was with uh Mutual uh friend of ours Eric verden up at the buck and we were |
| 4:56 | talking about this the stat that he threw out is that genetics account for seven percent and |
| 5:02 | lifestyle for ninety three percent and that's extraordinary because we do have control over our lifestyle uh but the |
| 5:08 | point you made which and I also uh Brian Binney who was the pilot who won the |
| 5:13 | Ansari X prize made the flight again felt dizzy went to sleep never woke up you know at age 69 and people don't |
| 5:22 | realize this that heart disease does start early and it is to a large degree |
| 5:27 | preventable you know it is expensive but this is where the work that you do and |
| 5:33 | to some degree my companies do is going to change the game I'll give you one example which I'm excited about uh and |
| 5:39 | this you know we have this enzyme in our liver pcsk9 that generates our bad |
| 5:44 | cholesterol or LDL and you know we've had these monoclonal antibodies that cost ridiculous amounts of money it's |
| 5:51 | like five ten thousand dollars a year and so it's not a first line defense to lower your cholesterol by 50 but we've |
| 5:58 | just finished our primate studies now going to humans on a vaccine against the |
| 6:05 | pcsk9 enzyme right and it's will be 50 bucks a year and you can sort of do this |
| 6:12 | preventively and and uh I mean you can talk about the the crispr edit of the pcsk9 gene well this is exactly the kind |
| 6:19 | of thing that needs to be done and I commend you for for supporting that uh kind of development |
| 6:24 | uh you know I talked about the the expense and and you and I talk about this a lot is that it starts out for the |
| 6:31 | rich and let's call them the elites who are pushing the boundaries that was that's true for all technology the printing press wasn't available books |
| 6:38 | were not available uh initially flight was not available to most people |
| 6:44 | um and it's going to happen the same way here computers get cheaper and biotech is going to get cheaper and you're helping that |
| 6:51 | um so what I'm looking for is in the same way that you are reprogramming so now we use gene therapy where in |
| 6:58 | non-human primates now correcting Vision restoring uh the youthful of Youth of |
| 7:03 | the eye um that's still going to be a uh a therapy that is expensive Gene therapies |
| 7:11 | are are there nature but my life is working um extensively hurriedly with passion |
| 7:17 | and yes hurry up hurry up yeah like I'm walking every day and push them harder |
| 7:23 | on our behalf those of us who wrote the certain age uh they do have molecules and |
| 7:29 | combinations of molecules that can reverse aging um without gene therapy and so those |
| 7:35 | chemicals could be very cheap they could be a few cents a day maybe a few dollars to reverse aging and but save trillions |
| 7:42 | tens of trillions of dollars um overall in GDP costs for the US and |
| 7:48 | that's the kind of the buck that you get yeah I know it's it's great I mean picking up on the point you said earlier |
| 7:54 | uh I think people need to realize that as you said Technologies in the beginning that are only affordable to |
| 8:01 | the rich also in the beginning don't work that well um you know the mobile phone in the beginning was a you know a hundred |
| 8:07 | thousand dollar device and would drop a call for a Wall Street Banker on every block going down Manhattan and by the |
| 8:13 | time it works really well it's cheap and available to everybody and hopefully the work that you're doing is going to democratize and demonetize these uh |
| 8:21 | these things and picking up on the trillion side I'm sure I know you know |
| 8:27 | the stat that came came out I don't know nine months a year ago that a single additional productive year of life |
| 8:33 | for the human population is worth 38 trillion dollars the global economy which is I mean that's mind-boggling |
| 8:40 | wait we calculated it um and by we I mean Andrew Scott |
| 8:45 | um and other colleagues uh in the UK we've calculated that it's it's actually 86 trillion for the us alone uh |
| 8:53 | extending a lot Healthy Life by one year and if you do 10 years it's 365 trillion |
| 8:58 | for the US uh and so this is the only way of saving that much money |
| 9:04 | is to stop military spending which obviously we're not going to do and this is money remember that can be used for |
| 9:10 | developing new medicines education tackling climate change pushing technology forward you know the the idea |
| 9:17 | that slowing aging is going to bankrupt us and overpopulate US turns out to be |
| 9:22 | patently false demonstrably false and uh so that's why you and I think that this |
| 9:28 | is one of the challenges of our time over the next five to ten years to be able to achieve a cheap safe effective age slowing and |
| 9:36 | age reversal yeah I don't think I mean it's it's a moral obligation and I think |
| 9:42 | people need to realize that there's such a pushback you know I think people don't realize there are so many institutions |
| 9:49 | that exist today that don't want that because they've |
| 9:55 | built their entire existence on the fact that we die and the fact that we are not |
| 10:00 | living longer but it's the single greatest gift you can give humanity and |
| 10:06 | any individual well it is and and you give a lot of talks I'm curious how you have your audiences respond mine what |
How Long Do You Want To Live?
| 10:15 | I've learned over the last 25 years is that it's all about framing the question if I ask people how long do they want to |
| 10:21 | live most people will say oh over age 90 or 100 come shoot me |
| 10:28 | um it often offends the 90 year olds 100 year olds in the audience and I I I'm also on record saying |
| 10:37 | nobody who's healthy who has friends wants to die tomorrow nobody no matter |
| 10:42 | how old they are age is irrelevant as long as you're healthy and happy and that's what we're aiming for but also if |
| 10:48 | I frame the question differently it is if you could be healthy at 120 |
| 10:54 | would you and almost everybody wants that and so it's not the longevity that people want it's the health that leads |
| 11:01 | to longevity and the good news the technology does that we I don't know how to make someone live longer without |
| 11:06 | keeping them healthy do you no I think I think we need to Define for a second the term of lifespan and health span right |
| 11:13 | and I think really what you and I speak to to a large degree constantly is Health span is is re retaining your |
| 11:21 | cognition your Aesthetics your Mobility so you're thinking clearly you look good you're moving well you know past 100 uh |
| 11:28 | and I had the same experience I literally was at a event at the Vatican |
| 11:34 | on stage with a uh an elderman a rabbi a |
| 11:40 | priest a cardinal it sounds like the opening of a joke and there's this audience of of probably about 300 |
| 11:46 | scientists and Physicians and Tony Robbins was there with me and I I asked |
| 11:52 | them how many of you here would like to live past 120 and it was like crickets |
| 11:58 | it was like maybe 20 of the room raised their hand and I was like shocked and you know this was in the earliest days |
| 12:05 | of my asking that question of course I reframe it now in a different way but there's another you said that |
| 12:11 | beautifully which is uh you need to have friends right you need to have people you care about uh and the notion that uh |
| 12:20 | having you need to have your future and your mind and heart be larger than your past if you have nothing to live for why |
| 12:27 | live and I think that whole psychology is so so critically important right uh |
| 12:33 | and you'll you're the expo at this you inspire people to have goals which is really what gets us out of bed in the |
| 12:40 | morning and anyone who doesn't have a passion or a goal in life just find one it's it's essential for Health and |
| 12:46 | Longevity in my view and happiness and it can be small it can be large but you |
| 12:51 | need one and it's actually now proven that those who have goals and companions |
| 12:57 | who support them those two things are the ones that live the longest in fact that was even more important than diet |
| 13:03 | in this long-term Harvard study beautiful good I've got both of those in Spades |
What Does It Mean To Have A Longevity Mindset?
| 13:10 | um I'm curious uh one of the mindsets I talk about is having a longevity mindset |
| 13:18 | because I think you can Will yourself to live and will yourself to die and I'd |
| 13:23 | love to you know you don't use that terminology but I'd love to hear your |
| 13:29 | thoughts on what you think a longevity mindset means well |
| 13:36 | I've witnessed it my father who I wrote about in my book lifespan and who recently flew out from |
| 13:43 | Australia to be with me in Boston and helped me teach a course at Harvard uh to those students he uh |
| 13:51 | he had to change his mindset he was a typical 67 year old at the time |
| 13:57 | which is a mindset as I understand it I'm going to retire I'll have a good 10 years hopefully uh and then the rest is |
| 14:03 | hellacious and I don't even want to think about it but it's going to happen and my career is over and I'm not sure |
| 14:12 | I'm going to do much but just sit around and maybe do some gardening now that was 67 he's now well he became uh mid 70s |
| 14:20 | and realized he actually after adopting these longevity Lifestyles that I talk about |
| 14:26 | um and which includes we'll get to a fasting eating well exercising the usual |
| 14:32 | stuff but also some suppleness yeah he gets a lot of sleep he has very good social group |
| 14:37 | um he hangs out with one of my ex-girlfriends which keeps him young uh true story and uh and so |
| 14:45 | the supplements you know a lot of people know the supplements that I take myself he takes those as well and together |
| 14:52 | some combination of those has allowed him to get through his 70s in a very healthy way he's got no diseases uh he's |
| 14:59 | got uh he started a new career he uh he went back to work he's helping raise his |
| 15:05 | grandkids in fact one of his grandkids is living with him um and he loves life and he's had to |
| 15:10 | change his mindset his mindset is hey he told me last night uh over over the |
| 15:16 | Internet a video conference hey I've decided to get a puppy you know that's his mindset is |
| 15:23 | I'm going to live over a hundred I've seen that I've made it through my 70s I'm getting younger literally he's |
| 15:28 | getting biologically younger as he gets older he's now 83 no diseases uh not |
| 15:33 | even any pain he's got super amount of energy his brain is actually sharper |
| 15:39 | than it used to be in his 40s because he he's not distracted by by his kids and |
| 15:45 | so he's loving life like he never did before and realizing that the idea that |
| 15:51 | you have this finite limit um you need to just give give that up give that up and say that anything is |
| 15:56 | possible because science is also advancing at such a rate that we don't know what's going to be possible even |
| 16:01 | five years from now five years ago I didn't know it was possible to reverse aging safely now we know at least in |
| 16:07 | animals it is and it looks like it will be in primates with which we are one and so as the longer you live the longer you |
| 16:13 | will live that's already true but it's going to be exponential and so that you we do have to have a mindset of |
| 16:19 | um we need to love what we do multiple careers |
| 16:25 | um and and not have a limit because that does Place limits on us mentally as well as physically this |
| 16:30 | episode is brought to you by levels one of the most important things that I do to try and maintain my Peak vitality and |
| 16:36 | Longevity is to monitor my blood glucose more importantly the foods that I eat |
| 16:42 | and how they Peak the glucose levels in my blood now glucose is the fuel that powers your brain it's really important |
| 16:48 | High prolonged levels of glucose what's called hyperglycemia leads to everything |
| 16:53 | from heart disease to alzheimer's to sexual dysfunction to diabetes and it's |
| 16:59 | not good the challenges all of us are different all of us respond to different foods in different ways like for me if I |
| 17:06 | eat bananas it spikes my blood glucose if I eat grapes it doesn't if I eat |
| 17:11 | bread by itself I get this prolonged spike in my blood glucose levels but if |
| 17:16 | I dip that bread in olive oil it blunts it and these are things that I've learned from wearing a continuous |
| 17:23 | glucose monitor and using the levels app so levels is a company that helps you in |
| 17:29 | analyzing what's going on in your body it's continuous monitoring 24 7. I wear |
| 17:35 | it all the time really helps me to stay on top of the food I eat remain conscious of the food that I eat and to |
| 17:41 | understand which foods affect me based upon my physiology and my genetics you |
| 17:47 | know on this podcast I only recommend products and services that I use that I |
| 17:52 | use not only for myself but my friends and my family that I think are high quality and safe and really impact a |
| 17:59 | person's life so check it out levels.link slash Peter give you two |
| 18:04 | additional months of membership and it's something that I think everyone should be doing eventually this stuff is going |
| 18:11 | to be in your body on your body part of our future of medicine today it's a |
| 18:16 | product that I think I'm going to be using for the years ahead and hope you'll consider as well you know one of |
It's Never Too Late To Begin Your Longevity Mindset
| 18:21 | the other I agree 100 and it's it's beautiful and I one of the things that I |
| 18:27 | do and and I know you inherently do this given your world your life your your uh |
| 18:34 | who you spend time with is uh actually taking in all of the breakthroughs |
| 18:40 | constantly uh that are going on there's a shocking number of breakthroughs going |
| 18:45 | on across the wide range of the Hallmarks of aging and the Technology's |
| 18:50 | coming our way and the tools of AI and so it's when you're deluged by all this |
| 18:56 | positive news in the health Tech and biotech World um and you substitute that for all of |
| 19:03 | the news from the crisis News Network my my name for CNN it allows you to uh to |
| 19:10 | just be optimistic because it's accelerating right I mean I mean you must feel a palpable acceleration of the |
| 19:16 | amount of Publications and breakthroughs and Technologies uh in this field right |
| 19:22 | uh well my head is spinning and uh even I can't really keep up I'm using AI |
| 19:29 | to feed me the papers that I need to read or look at social media helps uh before I get out of bed I know this |
| 19:35 | sounds really bad uh before I get out of bed I probably read the abstracts of 20 different papers in |
| 19:42 | this field of advances and that's just the beginning of my day uh and I'm not exaggerating there's there's a deluge I |
| 19:49 | get feeds for that and these are Big breakthroughs we used to think it was exciting to extend the lifespan of a |
| 19:55 | yeast cell by 10 uh that was when I was you know in my 20s nowadays you can't |
| 20:02 | open up a major journal typically without seeing something relevant to aging and a breakthrough in |
| 20:08 | understanding why we age and how to slow it down and even now reverse it and it it's a wonderful age where we can do |
| 20:15 | instead of one experiment per month which is how I did my PhD we can do a million in a day the The genome is now |
| 20:22 | 100 to 200 instead of being 2 billion and uh and even reading the DNA |
| 20:27 | methylation clock from a cheek swab or a blood which is your one way of measuring your biological age speaking of |
| 20:33 | democratization of Technology it's it's a few hundred dollars at best for a consumer right now to measure their |
| 20:39 | biological age through a blood test or a cheek swab my student just developed technology that brings that down uh by |
| 20:45 | at least two orders of magnitude probably go three to make it just a few dollars I mean it'll keep coming down to where the cost of sending the sample in |
| 20:52 | will be more than the actual test itself that's that's to plug the company it's |
| 20:58 | called Telehealth if you want to sign up as one of the early users I'm excited get it get in line for that but but my |
| 21:05 | point is that we are in a world where things are changing so rapidly that you |
| 21:10 | want to stick around if not anything but curiosity yeah well what's the most exciting time ever to be alive I mean |
| 21:16 | the only time we're exciting than today is going to be tomorrow and I agree with you the Deluge is is exponentially |
| 21:23 | accelerating and I ended up building an AI system myself that searches the |
| 21:28 | world's news for uh for converging Technologies impacting Health span and |
| 21:34 | Longevity and uh I think everybody listening knows where it's longevity insider.org and I get 10 to 15 Journal |
| 21:42 | articles tweets you know uh anyway magazine articles about this what are |
| 21:48 | the breakthroughs and it's it's staggering and what's amazing and David you you mentioned this slightly a little |
| 21:55 | bit earlier you know five years ago really ten years ago the idea of working in the field of |
| 22:01 | longevity or aging or an idea of age reversal was uh was a Death Note now |
| 22:08 | it's the hottest subject I mean how many graduate students do you have competing for positions in your labs I mean it |
| 22:13 | must be staggering it's hundreds per position but uh and and we're fortunate |
| 22:19 | that there are a lot of new Labs opening up in this field it's it's blowing up in a nice big way there was probably more |
| 22:26 | than 10 billion dollars now committed to investing in aging research and Drug |
| 22:31 | development uh just in the past couple of years and uh so there's a lot of |
| 22:36 | opportunity for young people not all of them will end up in my lab I have a lab of about 20 people so we're short on |
| 22:42 | space but uh it is it is really exciting to me to |
| 22:48 | see young people jump in we we actually as a field made a mistake about uh 20 years ago we thought even 10 |
| 22:55 | years ago we thought that the people we want to Target with the message of get on board get with us get with the |
| 23:02 | program call aging a disease uh were people over 70 65 maybe 50s might might listen we're |
| 23:10 | not sure turns out those that are 18 to 30 are the ones that are most passionate and I didn't see that coming but it's |
| 23:17 | really been heartwarming I think it bodes really well for the future of humanity so for people who are listening |
| 23:22 | who are in their 60s 70s 80s you know uh is it the message that it's not too late |
| 23:30 | to start yeah yeah yeah definitely definitely definitely not definitely not |
| 23:35 | too late just to be clear yeah I here's the thing to remember is that |
| 23:41 | uh aging is something that's really malleable we know from twin studies that |
| 23:47 | those who change their lifestyle can have a dramatic effect on their ultimate longevity animal Studies have shown you |
| 23:55 | can intervene at the equivalent of 80 90 years old and still have a benefit and that's with relatively old technology |
| 24:01 | these age slowing molecules now we're reversing age we can take a blind Mouse and make it C again uh in a |
| 24:08 | week you know these are the kind of technologies that are coming online that will allow someone who is of any age to |
| 24:15 | be rejuvenated and we can now multiply rejuvenate tissues we haven't published this yet so it's a scoop uh it's not |
| 24:22 | just a one-time reset we're actually this is in a mouse though we reverse the age of their eye and I got to give |
| 24:28 | credit to Bruce Cassandra's lab here at Harvard we reverse the age of the eye of the mice they get their Vision they age |
| 24:35 | out again and we just hit them again with the reversal and then they go back again and so I see a future where you |
| 24:41 | know a 90 year old goes back to being 50 they age out till they're 60 and then they just keep resetting every decade |
| 24:48 | that technology we do we can do this in mice we're not that biologically different in terms of our aging process |
| 24:55 | as a mouse is in fact the process of Aging as I've shown in my research is |
| 25:02 | similar all the way from us back to a yeast cell so I I'm very optimistic that these Technologies of age resetting will |
| 25:08 | work in the very old as well I love it a few pointed questions here for fun so uh |
How Long Until We Reverse Aging?
| 25:14 | I'm curious I've had conversations with Ray Kurzweil about this idea extensive about uh longevity escape velocity right |
| 25:22 | the the point in time in which science is adding a year to your life uh greater |
| 25:27 | than a year for every year that you're alive so it's Divergent and you escape and then I've also had this conversation |
| 25:33 | with George George Church a mutual friend uh working with us together on our age reversal X prize which maybe |
| 25:39 | we'll talk about and they both gave me a number of when they think will reach longevity escape velocity and I am |
| 25:47 | curious if you're willing to offer one I already know how to |
| 25:53 | ostensibly make someone |
| 25:58 | less uh age than they currently are and I can work with them to make them |
| 26:05 | more than a year younger within a year |
| 26:10 | so I would say we already have knowledge how to |
| 26:16 | go back more than a year every year now the the critics will say well David |
| 26:21 | you're just measuring the epigenome and you're measuring some biomarkers that's not proof and the answer is yeah you're |
| 26:28 | right but we're certainly not far away from a future where we're able to if |
| 26:34 | nothing more stop the aging process and I truly |
| 26:40 | believe that if you look at my biological Age based on a number of measures I'm at least a decade younger |
| 26:45 | than my chronological age my birthday candles would tell you and I'm not that |
| 26:51 | good at exercise I could probably be a lot younger if I tried so I really think |
| 26:56 | that that we're on this cusp if if you ask me in what 1903 uh how are we close |
| 27:04 | to Flying I'd say yeah we got the technology it's just a matter of when and it's probably going to happen in the |
| 27:09 | next few years okay so you didn't actually give me an answer you gave me a sort of answer so I I but the question |
| 27:16 | needs to be a finer point because you're right it's like could you theoretically now when will you so I guess the |
| 27:22 | question is uh when will a set of treatments exist that might allow age |
| 27:29 | reversal and be accessible to some segment of the general POS uh you know |
| 27:35 | public all right uh 10 10 years 10 years beautiful so that's what that's what Ray |
| 27:40 | that's what Ray said George had it at about 15 but both of those numbers are shocking so I mean when I'm on when I'm |
| 27:48 | speaking to anybody interested in this area I'm saying listen your job is not to live for 50 years your job is to live |
| 27:54 | healthfully for the next 20 to intercept all the Technologies coming our way during that period of time exactly and |
| 28:00 | so my father's on that trajectory he's 83 he'll be around all goes well at least for another 10 |
| 28:07 | years um so I'm talk about motivation uh it's not just about how long do you want |
| 28:12 | to live it's how long do you want your family to live and when you phrase it like that you know who wouldn't give a |
| 28:18 | lot of money to spend extra year with their parents it's it's crazy right there is there is nothing more valuable |
| 28:23 | than our health and health is the new wealth and at the end of the day you're going to spend the money |
| 28:29 | one way or another on health and the question is do you want to spend it at the end of life fighting a multitude of |
| 28:35 | diseases in and out of the hospital or do you want to pay the attention and |
| 28:41 | prevent this diseases from happening in the first place I mean it's that that cut and dry |
| 28:47 | um how old do you want to live pal oh I mean that's not a fair I don't think it's a question I can ask ask you |
How Long Does David Sinclair Want To Live?
| 28:54 | without uh with a straight face okay because of all the conversations we've had yeah no here's the thing I I've been |
| 29:01 | changing my views over the years um I could have told you very honestly uh if you ask me let's say 10 years ago |
| 29:09 | uh let's say when we were hanging out at the Ted Med conference in San Diego how |
| 29:15 | long do you want to live and I I would have honestly said um I'm not doing this because I want to |
| 29:21 | live longer um I'm doing this because I hope future Generations will live longer and I really believe that I'm now at a |
| 29:30 | point where I've had a lot of fun biohacking my body measuring things taking things getting younger feeling |
| 29:36 | better uh arguably looking better and uh I'm just having so much fun doing this I |
| 29:42 | I don't want to uh to stop doing that I'm not afraid of death you know anyone |
| 29:48 | who's seen me drive my Tesla around knows that's true that's why autopilot |
| 29:54 | uh so you know it's not I'm not personally scared of of what's to come but I am |
| 29:59 | now I'm hoping that I'll be able to stick around for another 50 years maybe |
| 30:06 | 100 years to help push the field forward to see what happens to help Inspire |
| 30:11 | others as well and train others and so I'm I'm now more of you know I'd love to live to 150 if I could before I really |
| 30:18 | didn't think about it yeah it's interesting right I remember when I was in in medical school not far from where |
| 30:24 | you are right now I watched this television show on Long Live sea life uh and you know Bullhead Wells are living |
| 30:30 | in 200 years and Greenland sharks for 500 years and sea turtles potentially |
| 30:35 | longer and I remember thinking you know if they can live that long why can't we and it's either a hardware problem or |
| 30:42 | software problem and we're going to solve that and I I see this decade as that time we're making that that uh |
| 30:48 | we're getting the tools to do that but then I I stop and I think you know there appears to be |
| 30:56 | some kind of a existing limit in the 120 time frame |
| 31:01 | uh that has never been statistic this you know no one's we haven't seen any examples of out of billions of people |
| 31:08 | anybody living longer than that yeah yeah that's a bunch of a bunch of |
| 31:14 | baloney good yeah I'm glad to hear that that that's not it that's not even logic |
| 31:20 | to use that argument uh you know it's it's 1899 let's look at the statistics |
| 31:27 | of human flight what are you going to project it's impossible to fly has never been done right but uh this limit to |
| 31:35 | human lifespan there is there is no biological limit of course there isn't we are the same stuff as a whale that |
| 31:42 | can live a lot longer than us this will build the same stuff as as tortoises and pretty much the same stuff as trees that |
| 31:48 | live thousands of years it's a software problem I'm yes putting career on the line it's a software problem and what's |
| 31:55 | interesting about biology is that software encodes the ability to rebuild the hardware so we got to reset the |
| 32:02 | software and when we do that in my lab we find that tissues regenerate in animals our organoids which are many |
| 32:08 | human organs regenerate they fix themselves and they function like they're new again so it's in my view 99 |
| 32:15 | a software problem and that's the good news because you can reboot software pretty easily we do this all the time in |
| 32:22 | my lab and what blows my mind in a paper that we published in 2020 |
| 32:27 | was that we discovered that there is a backup copy of the original software in |
| 32:34 | the body that you can access and flip the reset switch and it all comes back to life and December December 2020 cover |
| 32:41 | issue I remember it well it was epic it was it was fun to discover and a shock and actually that was one of the biggest |
| 32:47 | moments of my life because of my career because we didn't know if there was a backup copy it's it's one of those gifts |
| 32:55 | to humanity that it exists we don't exactly know how it's encoded whether it's in a protein or on the DNA or some |
| 33:02 | other thing we haven't thought of yet but 100 we know that it exists and we can tap into that now I love you for |
| 33:08 | that buddy thank you for your passion and your extraordinary extraordinary work let me flip the conversation |
Is It Immoral To Want To Live Longer?
| 33:15 | slightly to the morality of living longer because if you ask the general |
| 33:20 | public many of them would say you know it's immoral or it's not fair we don't |
| 33:28 | have enough resources it's overpopulation and they come up with a multitude of reasons |
| 33:34 | of why it's a bad thing to live longer and I just for those who might be having |
| 33:41 | a dinner conversation that goes that direction uh I'd like to forearm them |
| 33:47 | with the opposite sure well read read the last note of my book it's all about |
| 33:53 | that I wrote it because a lot of these same points were brought up and uh there |
| 34:00 | were some very simple answers in in my view and I've debated bioethicists uh |
| 34:05 | Leon Cass was someone who advised the Bush Administration who I debated on on |
| 34:11 | public radio um so that I've thought a lot about this so that the summary would be that |
| 34:17 | um ethically it is our duty to uh to allow |
| 34:24 | people to choose when they die we don't choose when we're born but I think everybody has a right to choose |
| 34:30 | how long they live it should be a human right if they're a tools to do that you get a choice you don't have to take the |
| 34:37 | technology or use the technology but I want everyone to have that choice so it's also I think not just a right it's |
| 34:45 | an your obligation to live as healthy and as long as you can to do the right things I do that not |
| 34:52 | just for selfish reasons I'm not vegan just because I want to live long I don't want to be a financial and other other |
| 35:00 | burden on my on my kids you know who hasn't parents that have cost them a lot |
| 35:06 | of time money and angst sorrow desperation um because their parent didn't look |
| 35:13 | after themselves or was sick for 10 years I've had a parent that was suffering for 20 years now you know I'm |
| 35:19 | not upset this was just the way life went for my mother but she did smoke she |
| 35:24 | didn't take care of herself and I would say that having seen the difference between my mother and my father now it |
| 35:30 | we have an obligation to our family to look after ourselves and that's that's my view on the ethics of it yeah just to |
| 35:37 | add you know one of the concerns people have is overpopulation of the planet and |
| 35:43 | if you look at the charts uh it may be exactly the opposite you know Elon who |
| 35:48 | now has I guess on record 10 children goes on to to point this out for uh for |
| 35:55 | different reasons but you know 50 years ago uh 50 years ago the average children |
| 36:01 | per family globally was something like 5.6 it's now dropped down to below 2.4 |
| 36:07 | the U.S is below the replacement rate as is Japan by a large margin in many parts |
| 36:13 | of Europe and it may well be that we have a massive underpopulation on the |
| 36:19 | planet and you know just go fly across any country and look out the window uh |
| 36:25 | yes we have our mega cities but the majority of the planet is is under populated and yes we need to feed clothe |
| 36:34 | provide energy clean water to everyone especially as as people become wealthier |
| 36:40 | they want better quality of Health Care better education and and better food sources but we can do that and that's |
| 36:47 | what technology does you know it's from every from cellular agriculture to solar |
| 36:53 | this is the direction we're going but saying to a group of people Thou shalt |
| 36:59 | not have the right to live a longer healthier life that doesn't sound like a an ethical |
| 37:05 | option well no and even doctors should feel that that um their mission is to |
| 37:11 | prolong life there is no great greater or noble cause than the prolongation of life this is Francis Bacon |
| 37:19 | 1614. we added to a propagation of a healthy life yes exactly even better and |
| 37:26 | that includes mental health you gotta keep the brain young otherwise there's no point uh but your point is well taken |
| 37:32 | which is that what we're doing in this field addressing either 80 or 90 something percent of the |
| 37:40 | cause of ill health on the planet um is the right thing to do for our |
| 37:47 | species and for the planet also considering how much we could save |
| 37:52 | um and how much is wasted right now on what I call sick care rather than Health Care yeah and so there's devastating |
| 37:59 | devastating and but it just made one point United the United States ranks 42nd |
| 38:05 | in terms of of population longevity on the planet it's insane well this technology is distributed unevenly and |
| 38:13 | that we need to figure out a better way I'm from Australia originally where everyone has free health care and it |
| 38:19 | works great you know because people who get sick are a major burden on all of us we forget that it's not just isolated |
| 38:27 | and it impacts all of us socially as well um so really what we want is is cheap |
| 38:32 | and effective not just medicines that treat diseases at the end stage these |
| 38:38 | you know Band-Aids or what I call whack-a-mole medicine we want to these cheap medicines to make it possible for |
| 38:45 | us to get through our 60s without the fear of cancer and our you know 70s and 80s without heart disease these are |
| 38:52 | medicines that are right on the on the cusp of being available there are some medicines such as metformin and low dose |
| 38:59 | of rapamycin they're already on the market and are being used to prolong Health that way |
| 39:05 | and these are the drugs that I think are going to have a huge impact on the future of humanity in the same way when |
| 39:11 | antibiotics and vaccines were discovered yes thank you let's let's jump in for a few minutes into what you and I both do |
How Can You Make Changes To Improve Your Health & Longevity?
| 39:19 | that others can do uh that is effectively cheap and reasonably uh |
| 39:25 | affordable for everybody and then talk a little bit about what the next layer of activities are to |
| 39:32 | maximize so let's go back and forth I'll start with sleep um I didn't get enough sleep last night |
| 39:38 | but I prioritize it I used to in medical school shoot for five and a half I |
| 39:43 | considered my stability point but I just uh sat down with Matt Walker for uh for |
| 39:48 | an hour and the stats are are staggering you know there's nobody who can actually sleep |
| 39:56 | under six hours and have uh have good health we need at least seven closer to |
| 40:02 | eight hours to be able to do that I use an eye mask I use a cooling blanket I |
| 40:07 | use a uh a uh basically a process of |
| 40:13 | bringing the lights down and ultimately getting myself to bed at the same time |
| 40:18 | every night which is like 9 30 because my eyes pop open at 5 30 6 40 at 5 45. |
| 40:24 | similar for you yeah so exercise and sleep are my downfalls I have worked on |
| 40:30 | it as well I I was talking with our mutual friend Tony Robbins about this and Serena poon |
| 40:36 | we were on on also on a podcast um uh an Instagram live to be specific |
| 40:42 | and we were comparing our sleep patterns and after that we followed up with our uh our actual sleep measurements we're |
| 40:49 | all measuring it and uh I thought I was bad I was getting an average of about |
| 40:54 | 5.5 Serena vibration uh I think Tony was |
| 41:00 | less than five and then Serena was four point something so here we are professing get sleep and we are you know |
| 41:08 | the worst offenders of probably most people so I think that um I'm I've |
| 41:13 | really admit that I'm not perfect and I am striving you mentioned some some hacks I have a bed that reduces my body |
| 41:20 | temperature so I get better sleep deeper sleep I also I use other things such as dimming lights as well |
| 41:27 | um but I really I do need to do better one of the things that's not well appreciated is why is it so important to |
| 41:33 | get sleep now there's two things new discoveries have said that it's a way of cleaning the toxins out of the |
| 41:39 | brain there are draining channels that pump when we're asleep that's important that's even true for flies fruit flies |
| 41:45 | the other thing is that these longevity genes that we've worked on for years called the sirtuins control not just our |
| 41:52 | longevity clock our biological clock but they also control our 24-hour clock and when |
| 41:59 | either of those clocks gets messed up they affect each other and so by sleeping well you also |
| 42:05 | slow down your rate of Aging interesting uh let's get to uh to exercise next uh |
| 42:11 | it's a weak point for anybody busy um but uh one of my takeaways from this |
| 42:18 | longevity Platinum trip I just finished because everybody was was over and over |
| 42:23 | and overstating exercise is one of the most important |
| 42:28 | um uh if you would uh compliments to any longevity plan and if it was a drug it'd |
| 42:36 | be a multi-trillion dollar drug uh how far are we from exercise mimetics that |
| 42:42 | can help maintain muscle mass well I think we're already here uh it's just |
| 42:47 | not well known uh so the first thing is that exercise plus these mimetics gives you a double |
| 42:53 | bang for the buck based on animal studies and some hints in human uh one of the molecules that we've |
| 43:00 | worked on for many years uh Resveratrol is an excise mommetic makes mice run further gives human more |
| 43:08 | uh energy the one that's more recent from my work is called nmn not to be |
| 43:14 | confused with M M's please don't switch those out but in a man is a precursor and and |
| 43:20 | Peter um you are I'm imagining everybody who |
| 43:25 | knows your work and who's read David's amazing book lifespan yes so so with anime |
| 43:32 | um the mice run further uh and it's even better if they exercise |
| 43:37 | but we have we have new data from Metro biotech uh which was spun out of my lab |
| 43:43 | 10 years ago and using a molecule that also raises NAD in in muscle uh and |
| 43:49 | other tissues those people had increased endurance as well as lower uh other |
| 43:54 | parameters such as cholesterol and blood pressure so again probably an exercise mometic |
| 44:00 | um you know I'll let you in on a little bit of a secret working with the military who are helping sponsor these |
| 44:06 | trials I'm allow I'm now allowed to say that I saw the news when it came out when it was leaked yeah well I went on |
| 44:12 | Joe Rogan's podcast uh and he asked me about that and I got in huge trouble for even mentioning it uh and that's all I |
| 44:19 | did I mentioned it uh and then then the military put out their own press release a couple of years later and I thought |
| 44:25 | okay all right now I can talk about it but we're also and we're just increasing uh the number of patients there being |
| 44:31 | tested by a lot by another hundred but that um that study has gone really well and so I |
| 44:39 | think that this NAD boosting is one of these exercise mimetics |
| 44:44 | um are we going to be in a world where we just pop a pill and we're just as fit as we would otherwise be we're a long |
| 44:50 | way from that because exercise does a lot of things um there's an interesting new molecule called Lac fee which is a little lactate |
| 44:58 | plus spinal alanine amino acid which was shown in a recent paper that that is |
| 45:03 | what stimulates um hunger after exercise and one of the reasons it's hard to lose weight after |
| 45:10 | you exercise or if you exercise and so there are these discoveries where we're able to manipulate our physiology and |
| 45:16 | our mental state as well and those things I think together will help us but also products that you mentioned like |
| 45:22 | the pcsk9 Inhibitors are also helping people lose weight and bring their |
| 45:27 | metabolism back to more of a healthy lean State as well and I I just want to |
| 45:33 | encourage people to try and lose weight if they are overweight because there's really few things that really accelerate |
| 45:39 | the biological clock um it's smoking it's lack of sleep but |
| 45:44 | it's it's also obesity so try and bring your body down to a BMI of around 25 or |
| 45:49 | less it really help a brief note from our sponsors let's talk about sleep sleep has become one of my number one |
| 45:56 | longevity priorities in life you're getting eight deep uninterrupted hours of sleep is one of the most important |
| 46:02 | things you can do to increase your vitality and energy and increase the health span that you have here on Earth |
| 46:07 | you know when I was in medical school years ago I used to pride myself on how little sleep I could get you know it |
| 46:12 | should be five five and a half hours today I pride myself on how much sleep I can get and I shoot for eight hours |
| 46:18 | every single night now usually I'm great at going to sleep if I'm exhausted you |
| 46:23 | know I've worked a hard day I'm right out but if I'm having difficulty and it |
| 46:28 | occurs I'm having insomnia my mind's overactive and I need help to get that eight hours I turned to a supplement |
| 46:34 | product by life force called Peak rest now Peak rest has been formulated with |
| 46:39 | an extraordinary scientific depth and background includes everything from long lasting melatonin to magnesium to |
| 46:46 | l-glycine to Rosemary extract just to name a few this product is about |
| 46:51 | creating a sense of rest and really giving you the depth and length of sleep |
| 46:56 | that you need for Recovery it's a product I hope you'll try it works for me and I'm sure it will work for you if |
| 47:02 | you're interested go to mylifehorse.com backslash Peter to get a discount from a |
| 47:10 | life force on this product but you'll also see a whole set of other longevity and vitality related supplements that I |
| 47:16 | use we'll talk about them some other time but in terms of sleep Peak rest is my go-to supplement hope you'll enjoy it |
| 47:23 | go to mylifehorse.com backslash Peter for your discount for those interested I |
What Dietary Changes Could You Make To Increase Your Health?
| 47:29 | mean my exercise protocol I will do all I can to get 10 000 steps in I'll take |
| 47:35 | my conference calls there I can't do my podcast there because of the noise but I'll take walking meetings wherever I |
| 47:41 | can and then I'll do a heavy weight workout uh once a week at the gym and |
| 47:47 | then I've just got a catalyst suit I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Catalyst suit that uses Electro uh |
| 47:53 | electromuscular stem in a a whole suit you're wearing and a video it's it's |
| 47:59 | check it out it's Catalyst with a K but it's uh it's a pretty cool technology that I use for exercising at home sort |
| 48:06 | of uh sort of the exponential Tech version of it Peter's wearing a suit that electric electrically stimulates |
| 48:12 | his whole body uh let's go to let's go to diet uh let's |
| 48:17 | begin with the fact that sugar is a poison um yeah but that is true uh do you watch |
| 48:24 | how much sugar you eat I I do I'm usually I just took off my CGM I use a |
| 48:29 | continuous glucose monitor to monitor it and listen I'm not perfect but it is I think twice about eating uh sugar and |
| 48:37 | people need to realize the body did you know Humanity did not evolve over the last hundred thousand years in an |
| 48:44 | environment that had all the sugar cane and all the sugar it's an inflammatory molecule it causes hypercholesteremia |
| 48:52 | neuro inflammatory cardiac inflammatory it's not good for you to say the least |
| 48:58 | yeah I've avoided it um as much as I can since my since I turned 40. I don't eat desserts unless I |
| 49:06 | steal it um and then I I look at Sugar again it like it it's not going to kill me but I |
| 49:12 | do think of it as a poison it helps me get over it because our bodies crave sugar it's what how we evolve it's a |
| 49:19 | good source of quick energy but it does it one of the things that it also does is it covalently |
| 49:25 | um very tightly attaches to proteins and makes them malfunction or even become toxic uh and so one of the the readouts |
| 49:33 | of for type 2 diabetes is uh what's called glycated hemoglobin or hba1c |
| 49:39 | which is a glucose attached to our hemoglobin protein but what most people don't remember is that hemoglobin is |
| 49:46 | just one protein out of 20 something thousand that also get attacked slash |
| 49:51 | attached to glucose and uh and that's bad for the body so keeping levels |
| 49:57 | steady as well is and as low as possible without feeling tired is is a goal so |
| 50:02 | practically what I do I'm wearing a CGM right now down here on my tummy I won't |
| 50:07 | show you that for obvious reasons but I like to see as steady levels as I can |
| 50:12 | that also doesn't just mean I'm going to be healthy but it also means that I don't get the the rushes and then the |
| 50:19 | brain fog during the day and that used to be my life I would eat and then I'd get hungry and eat hungry and with my |
| 50:25 | glucose doing this and it's no way to get through life I can now just power through the day my liver takes care of |
| 50:31 | my sugar levels for most of the time I don't feel hungry and I just think and I can focus yeah no it's it is amazing I |
| 50:39 | use a I use levels as the uh the system the app that I use |
| 50:44 | they work with Dexcom and it's interesting right if so both of us do a |
| 50:50 | seismic intermittent fasting I think you do more than I do I will try and uh in |
| 50:56 | fast six o'clock at night through one the next day I'll have a late lunch and a dinner but you have an extraordinary |
| 51:02 | amount of energy More Than People realize when you're able to do that because you're not you know blood's not |
| 51:09 | flooring to your gut and uh people need to try it it's it's a fascinating |
| 51:14 | feeling I mean I literally felt hyper when I started that the first time yeah you're right it's a fallacy say that you |
| 51:21 | get tired because that's what happened when you when you start because your liver is lazy it won't make glucose for |
| 51:27 | probably the first two weeks so power through that that zone drink a lot of water tea coffee Whatever Gets |
| 51:34 | You Through fill up your tummy and you'll find that you end up having more energy than you've ever had in your life |
| 51:39 | yeah it's it's amazing so we hit sleep uh exercise uh diet I think mindset is |
Measuring Your Body Levels To Understand It Better.
| 51:45 | is clearly one of the most important things as well um and that comes with love Community |
| 51:51 | hugs and and just uh you know purpose in life um |
| 51:57 | uh and then you know we can talk about it some other time but there's a whole slew of I call it don't die from |
| 52:03 | something stupid category uh which is you know Imaging yourself |
| 52:09 | uh in a way you know this is through life force uh through uh Fountain life |
| 52:15 | uh through inside tracker uh these are ways to understand what's going on inside your body uh so that you can be |
| 52:23 | data driven in in the decisions that you make exactly yeah so I I work with |
| 52:29 | top athletes and other well-known people who want to optimize |
| 52:35 | their body for performance and longevity and I cannot do anything |
| 52:40 | uh scientific or even effective without measuring something and I either use |
| 52:46 | inside tracker or I'd be involved with them for many years and I into just full disclosure I put an early investment in |
| 52:53 | that company are there other measuring companies Telehealth is one I'm now developing for biological age |
| 53:00 | um there's a lot uh the whole uh life force group they do a lot of measuring so what I made the case of for in my |
| 53:08 | book was that we need a dashboard on our bodies as good as or better than we have |
| 53:13 | for our cars and we wouldn't drive our cars without a dashboard it would be crazy we wouldn't know where we're going |
| 53:20 | how fast we're going if we're running out of fuel why do we do that on our bodies why do we go to the doctor for an annual physical this is Medieval we need |
| 53:27 | our bodies to be checked up a thousand times a second which is what you can do now with monitors like uh you know |
| 53:34 | levels Health provides that's just glucose the future as you know is that we're going to be monitoring thousands |
| 53:39 | of analyze constantly and all going to your AI that is optimizing your life if |
| 53:47 | you wanted to if you don't it might be a couch potato that is your option but you should have the option to actually |
| 53:52 | maximize your health buddy uh uh I am grateful for our time uh I'd love to |
Outro
| 54:00 | come together and uh on our next conversation do a little bit of an AMA we both have a large Twitter audience I |
| 54:07 | think uh both of us have asked them what they'd like us to talk about so on our |
| 54:12 | next session uh why don't we take some conversation from uh from the community but uh I wish you an extraordinary day |
| 54:21 | and and a week ahead pal I appreciate you well thank you Peter and likewise |
| 54:27 | what you do for us uh people at the Forefront of technology is you inspire |
| 54:32 | us and give us the resources to make the impossible possible thank you thank you I'm Proud by the way everybody to be a |
| 54:38 | uh a benefactor to David's research in his lab along with Tony Robbins we love |
| 54:43 | what he does and uh and counting on you so much David all right take care everybody |
| 54:49 | you too bye bye everyone this is Peter again before you take off I want to take |
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