2021-12-31 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - mindbodygreen - How to look & feel 15 years younger
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnj_0cbp3iM&ab_channel=mindbodygreen
- Interviewer: Jason Wachob
Transcript
david welcome
hey jason it's great to see you great to
have you back on the show and
it was so awesome to see you mentioned
in our wellness trends specifically
around longevity
and something we're particularly excited
about and you're excited about is this
idea of democracization
you know
when people tend to think of longevity
they tend to think of
really expensive tests and potential
potentially pharmaceuticals and
supplements and so on they think of
silicon valley and billionaires and all
that crazy stuff you read
but let's take a step back and and talk
about democratizing longevity and i'm
curious you know what is democratizing
longevity mean to you yeah well you're
right that there is a group of
individuals that
i meet more and more often
that have the means and the wealth and
the connections
to extend their lifespan i think by
20 30 years
but it's a small group of people
and what we need to do is to give
that that information
to everybody and that involves not just
making it available but truly
being educational
and interesting and so what i've
decided to do with my career as this
harvard professor from a lab
is to use hopefully decent abilities at
storytelling to educate people and make
it interesting i have a podcast coming
out early next year january 5th where
hopefully it's an
interesting uh
journey through the longevity world of
science and
nutrition and and exercise but also
supplements and
some of the more far out things that
these billionaires are into and so it's
about education primarily but the second
part of that that i'm very into and
driven by is to make
the
medicines that will come out of this
field of aging research available to
everybody
uh because if it's just for the rich and
it's cost a hundred thousand dollars
treatment then that's really not going
to help me achieve my goal in life which
is to really make millions
hopefully billions of people live
healthier lives and in doing so lengthen
their life as well
and so the science that we do and the
drug developments on i've started about
a dozen companies now the companies are
very focused on making those drugs
are cheaply and widely available
and the kind of technologies for the
most part
are
drugs that could be just a few cents a
day once they
eventually uh get widely used
what do you think was the biggest update
that impacted our understanding
of longevity in the last year you're on
top of everything
what's been interesting to you over the
course of the last year
yeah
well
what's actually happening in society is
super interesting i used to be uh the
pariah of biology i'm so sure harvard
wanted to kick me out a few times
but there's been a real shift both in
mentality of doctors and researchers and
the public
that aging is something
that is more akin to a medical condition
a disease and that it's treatable so
there's this zeitgeist mega trend if you
want to call it in society that's
changed but in terms of research and
breakthroughs a really big one and
forgive me for focusing on myself for
one second my lab and the research team
and our collaborators a year ago exactly
to the day almost that
we could reset the body in terms of age
go back by about 80
and do a permanent reset of the body now
this is in animals but these are mice
that are very similar biologically to us
and we've done it now in human cells and
human
tissue so we're optimistic that the same
principles that i'm going to tell you
about in mice apply to humans and that
is that we have a backup copy of youth
in our bodies that can be accessed we're
now using gene therapy because that's
what we know works but we're hoping
uh to find natural molecules that will
achieve the same result to not just slow
down the aging process which we know we
can do by eating well at a training kind
of diet and exercising lose your breath
a few times a week at least
but by actually taking a supplement that
would reset the body within a matter of
a few months to go back
not just by six months but
many many years
and i truly believe that's going to be
possible in the next five to 10 years
and our goal now is as a society is to
stay alive until these discoveries
become mainstream
and so you you think we're five or so
years out from having that smart drug if
you will or
that
we can take and that alone will extend
health span
yeah i know it sounds crazy right
unfortunately i'm at harvard so people
tend to take me a little more seriously
but
the big
breakthrough was the discovery that we
have this backup copy
of
youthfulness
the easy part is figuring out how to
reset the system it's similar if you
want to use the analogy of the wright
brothers i know it's used a little too
much but it it works the wright brothers
the hard part was figuring out how to
glide around
the dunes strapping on the engine flying
eventually transcontinental flight now
global that's just extensions of what
they did in kitty hawk
and we basically in aging we've done
that now we know how to fly
and now we're going to strap on the
engine and see
how quickly and how cheaply we can do
this so i'm quite confident that we will
find molecules that will do this in fact
there was a paper that just came out
that shows a natural molecule called
alpha ketoglutarate
that i predicted in my book lifespan
probably would work
was able to reset the age
of 40 people i think out of 42 people 40
people had their biological age reversed
by an average of eight years
within just
uh under a year of taking this
supplement so akg
right and we can take that that is
currently a supplement that's out there
or can it be found in food naturally or
where can we find it i think a lot of
people are going to be very intrigued
yeah
me too like like most of these molecules
that plants make in response to stress
these molecules are called xenohermetins
that we name them that
they uh
you need to
a lot of them a lot of plants to get the
amounts that
are medicinal and so i it's better to
eat a purified source of it you can buy
akg or of ketoglutarate on the internet
i look for trust and supplier
very high quality high
content of alfie kimku right there are
some companies that are selling it that
are combinations with vitamins in the
case of this human study that's what
they sell but yeah it's widely available
and it would be really quite a thing for
humanity to have a safe molecule that's
similar to an amino acid that we could
just pop and if it's true take our years
our age back by half a decade or a
decade now i'm quite skeptical because
it sounds way too good to be true
but then again some things are true so
we're going to repeat the experiment
and see what happens but i will say that
the reason i think it's it's plausible
is that if you give alpha ketoglutarate
to yeast cells that make beer and bread
to fruit flies and to mice they also
live longer so there's something really
important going on here
building off of akg
resveratrol you've always been a fan of
resveratrol in many ways i feel like you
put resveratrol on the map are you still
a fan of resveratrol in terms of
supplementation and in terms of some of
the magic can do in terms of our
longevity
well i i am since we first made this
discovery in 2003
or there are something like 5 000 papers
showing that it's beneficial to cells
human cells and animal studies and and
even now there's about a dozen
positive human studies with resveratrol
now the downside of resveratrol is that
you cannot get it from red wine you'd
need to drink 200 glasses a day and that
even when you buy it purified
it's it's insoluble so if you put a
spoonful of resveratrol which i did take
every morning into water it'll sink to
the bottom
so you need to mix it with something i i
have a low-fat yogurt i recently am
doing vegan yogurts
which work well coconut base or with a
bit of olive oil which itself is a
xeno-hermetin product but not too much
because i like to fast until about late
afternoon or dinner but then it gets
absorbed in the body we know that from
human studies as well and unfortunately
most people don't know that and they
just swallow whereas resveratrol peeled
with water and they think that'll work
and it doesn't so keep that in mind now
in terms of red wine i did raise the
the sales of red wine by 30
by our discoveries uh and it stayed up
and i'm known as the red wine guy but my
my good friend um and colleague serena
poon who's a nutritionist among other
skills and a chef had
looked at my diet and said there's too
much dairy there's too much meat and
there's also too much alcohol so i'm a
kind of binary guy i don't like making
decisions so i just said okay i'm
cutting it all out and we'll see what
happens and i've done that i'm currently
vegan
uh no alcohol
and i feel great i think i can continue
doing this i'm grateful to serena
actually for making those
recommendations but not everybody can do
it and a little bit of red wine really
doesn't hurt unless um you've got a
medical condition well on the subjective
diet you know if we're gonna have to
wait five years we've got a lot of work
to do between now and then in terms of
lifestyle so
in terms of you know working on
feeling good
working on
you know our health span for the next
five years because a lot can happen
between now and then
what does the latest science say about
lifestyle in general in terms of
nutrition how i know it's highly
personalized but
if you were to generalize you know still
plant-based for longevity still
high-intensity interval training still
some hot cold therapy i'll just stop
there like what in terms of lifestyle
what should we what should we all be
focusing on right now
yeah well the science is really strong
on those areas it's not really up for
debate
and i say that because some people don't
bother changing their lifestyle because
they think oh next year there's going to
be something new but that's not true
when it comes to
the
benefits of
plant-focused diets
um and exercise
there's nothing no science that i could
see ever coming along saying
the opposite of that now
there are a lot of people who are
excited about
meat-based diets there are the
carnivores as they call themselves if
you look at the science and that's what
i do you know i love me i wish meat was
going to make me live to 200. that would
be my dream
but the science says that a
plant-focused plant-based diet
is associated with longevity and
meat-based diets are not that's just
a fact and we even know the molecular
mechanisms that likely promote longevity
amino acid ratios in plants turn on the
body's defenses against aging and meat
amino acid ratios do not
and you know the other issues with meat
as well but those are the main things
and so
the the longest lived people
are either on a mediterranean diet
which as you'll is mostly plant-based
there's a little bit of fish a little
bit of meat not a lot of olive oil and
unsaturated fats and monounsaturated
fatty acids
um as well as a little bit of wine
preferably red wine that's your
mediterranean diet now those people live
the longest on the planet there's a
variant in asia called the okinawan diet
which is also mostly plant-based and not
a lot of calories and then it's the
opposite for red meat it's inflammatory
and you'll end up with high levels of
cholesterol among other issues
but if you want to build up muscle and
you want to temporarily feel great you
know by only all means eat eat a lot of
steak but i wouldn't do it for a long
period of time over your lifespan it
won't
have a lot of benefits and the way to
think of this jason is that
there are adversity mimetics that mimics
that that mimic adversity and the body
hunkers down
and builds a stronger longer lasting
body that's the lifestyle i've chosen
so by eating these plants and by
exercising and being a bit hot and get
cold the body thinks heck i could die
next week i better build a stronger body
that's what i do then there's the
abundance memetics which is i'm going to
take growth hormone i'm going to eat a
ton of meat i'm going to burn the candle
at both ends which will make things
brighter for a while but you'll burn out
but both lifestyles can make you feel
great and i can vouch for that with my
lifestyle and
in terms of
exercise
what have we learned about high
intensity interval training recently you
know
there's lots of debate around you know
it's five minutes or it's ten minutes or
it's this percentage of your this is
what you need to get your heart rate up
on like is there consensus on high
intensity interval trading in terms of
benefits for longevity uh yeah
uh some is good
that's what it is it really is
don't sit around
so that the the worst
for you is don't move okay sit in a
chair all day and then go home and
or stay at home watch movies okay that's
the baseline that'll probably take 15
years off your life
the next thing that's good is you you
can have a standing desk i'm standing
here
pretty much all day and behind me you
can see gym so when i have a break i go
do a bit of working out that's what it
says the next level minimum a lot of
people like walking minimum seven
thousand steps twelve thousand some
people do above that doesn't give you
benefit but you asked me about interval
training i i looked at the science i
think three times a week losing your
breath for at least ten minutes is a
good thing above that doesn't hurt
unless you're
really over doing it but it's hard to
overdo it
rowing
watch out for your back it's good
cycling even better but yeah just move
and maintain flexibility maintain muscle
mass as well because it'll help with
your hormones and if you fall over you
won't break a bone
and
what about
those who
push themselves probably
a little too much who
maybe run a little too far
who
you know look we have a lot of people in
our audience who love
being well love feeling great and they
go to the gym every day or they run
every day or they do yoga
what how do you think about the line
that's crossed where potentially too
much is detrimental for longevity
yeah well so the clients that i work
with are often
for whatever better term fitness
fanatics
and
many of them exercise
every day
and what we see in response is a spike
in cortisol
and that will age you there's no doubt
about that
and so to you can overdo it you can
overstress the body and so my
recommendation or advice
is every other day exercise let your
body rest and that's also true for some
of these supplements i occasionally skip
a day and let my body recover
and you know that's i think the recipe
for for success is that just
going full bore the whole time
is is not going to be optimal you do
need those recipes
and then what about hot cold therapy and
how you view that right now
well covert makes a little tough unless
you have these in your in your house
which i i don't but i used to do cold
plungers i used to do cycles of
four degrees celsius which it will you
know almost shivering cold water up to
my neck
stay in there for as long as i could
bear which was about five minutes
jump out go in a sauna
for 20 minutes feels great and then
repeat that a few times and i i never
felt better after that you know so it
may not make you live longer but you
certainly feel invigorated
but the science is really getting
stronger on that
i would say that
five years ago we didn't know but now we
do know that sauna protects you against
heart disease if you do it regularly i
would say at least do it once a week and
cold plungers are increasingly thought
to be helpful for a reason that's
interesting what it does is it activates
the production of brown fat which exists
mostly in your back
and brown fat is super healthy it puts
out signals that increase your
metabolism and also again this adversity
signal that your body will defend itself
better and i think we're just going to
learn more and more that keeping your
body
or getting your body out of the comfort
zone in temperature wise
and oxygen wise and nutrition wise is
the trick
so in the spirit of democratization what
does that practice look like in the
shower can we hack it in the shower with
temperature well of course you can uh
just
don't turn on the hot water and get
under there for a few minutes but
for some reason i can't do that myself
but if you can
i think it'd be great i instead like to
turn it up to almost scolding hot hope
that's mimicking a sauna but yeah all of
that i i totally would do that if if i
could manage it
but i just love warm showers in the
morning so it's not for me so so do i
that's that's the one i i i pretty much
will try and practice everything with
that one i'm having part of it's made me
psychosomatic because back in college
when i played basketball you know i
lived and i i used to hate that sitting
in that tub after practice you still
want to go back there
at cold tub another one which is
emerging but you know so many people are
excited about myself included
intermittent fasting what's your take on
intermittent fasting these days and what
does the science say
so adopting intermittent fasting in my
life has been the single biggest change
to how i feel and also how i look
and i've taken off i've been getting
younger past decade and the biggest
impact has been this change in my eating
habits
and
so what the science says let's
leave me aside for a minute what the
sign says is that
it's not just about what you eat it's
when you eat and
the body should not always be fed so
what actually happens in the typical
american western is
you eat you wake up you have some food
for breakfast your blood sugar will
spike up to about 120 130 megs per
deciliter
you'll feel great a lot of energy sugar
and then the body produces insulin and
sends the glucose way down now you're in
a deficit and they go way down below
like a roller coaster now you're you're
feeling like you need a snack it's
eleven o'clock i gotta be hungry i just
had breakfast so you start snacking then
you have lunch and you're up again
and then you shoot down again in deficit
now it's the the middle of the day and
you've got
low glucose you're tired you've got the
brain fog i can't wait till dinner and
then you
snack and you eat and you repeat this
cycle every day
so i don't eat breakfast
i have tiny bit of yogurt or olive oil
but that's nothing
for fasting and then i don't eat if i'm
on a good day i don't eat until 7
o'clock at night now there are stressful
days where i might grab a handful of
nuts or something that's healthy and you
can't always
you know be perfect and i'm not but most
days i try my best to get through the
day with hot teas and vitamin drinks and
this kind of stuff just fill up my
stomach with liquids
now what that's done to me is that now
my liver after just three weeks of doing
this and now it's been many months
is well close to a year
is it's now putting out
its own sugar my liver is way smarter
than my mouth in my brain
and i wake up in the morning and you
know you can measure these things i use
levels health device but there's a bunch
and i can see that my liver is smart it
builds up my blood glucose as i'm waking
up even before i actually wake up
and then it's leveled throughout the
whole day steady like that a few little
blips so i have a nut or i exercise or
something
and then at dinner it'll go up but not a
lot and then
i sleep through the night so that's
optimal for longevity we know that that
it's very healthy to have relatively low
blood sugar levels and steady ones so
i'm hugely in favor of intermittent
fasting and
i've had
i've got my 20 year old body back as
well i never thought i could i had love
handles for most of my life and they're
gone finally
you mentioned levels and glucose
monitoring
[Music]
it is
how should we be thinking about that in
terms of you know it you said it's
optimal to to have i guess a baseline
that's relatively consistent
you know i found the experience
fascinating when i
did my trial just understand which foods
had an impact on me and which didn't you
know for example i love black coffee i
love espresso
coffee negligible it actually lowered my
glucose slightly you know i would have
fun i would do these experiments i'd say
like all right i'll have an impossible
burger and some fries and a frozen
margarita and then i'll have a doughnut
after this was like at a weekend you
know weekend i eat more literally
let's see how high this thing can go
it's like you know i was like a kid like
a teenager in like a sports car like
let's see let's get this on the freeway
and let's see how fast we can go
and sure i got it pretty high it was a
double spike it came down
and then you know during the week i'm
pretty healthy i do my thing you know
what did i learn you know when i have my
my my beans my refried beans less of an
impact when i had a healthy fat you know
some avocados in there versus just the
beans and so forth but i'm curious like
if in terms of longevity
you know look life happens cake happens
donuts happen and and that's also part
of the the beauty of life living a long
healthy joyful life is also about
celebration every once in a while so how
do you think about the fine line between
all right i'm going to keep this thing
low
and
forever or or
90 of the time versus all right i'm
going to enjoy this street over here
and there and it's going to go up with
it but it's going to come down and it's
how do you think about balancing that
well that's key you know there's no
point me saying you cannot eat during
the day or you can never have dessert or
never have wine or beer
that's really not the point you know
if you live a life like that and you're
not enjoying it life may not be longer
but it'll certainly feel that way and
you don't want that
and
you know sometimes people see me eat
a sorbet or you know i'll have a lunch a
salad or whatever and they say oh david
you said you don't eat lunch well i
never said that i just said i try my
best not to
and that's what it's all about and you
should be able to indulge yourself
but you know try to focus on certain
types of diets mediterranean you know
that can include dessert but i'd like to
have some rules in my life because i'm
i'm not that good at being ambiguous and
so my rule that i set for myself when i
was 40
was
no more desserts at dinner but i've
modified it i'm allowed to steal tastes
of other people's desserts and that's
worked really well and i think that's
the key to success is don't be too hard
on yourself and if you fail at something
or you eat something that you probably
shouldn't have don't be hard on yourself
everybody needs a treat once in a while
and otherwise life's not worth living
anyway 100 agreed
so
yeah we've talked about nutrition we've
talked about
intermittent fasting we've talked about
exercise i think everyone understands
sleep you need sleep you can't run on is
that true just uh something you you
can't run on no sleep well you can but
you'll crash plus it's going to
accelerate aging as well the genes that
we work on called the sertums that
control aging they also control the
sleep wake cycle
and so those two things are totally
connected and if you disrupt your
biological age get older you'll disrupt
sleep and sleep will disrupt longevity
so you just got to keep both of those in
check in parallel because they're going
to affect you
and so the last one i'll i'll touch on
anxiety
loneliness
we're experiencing a mental health
epidemic you know there's obviously a
big trauma but the big t and then little
trauma with little t and and you know
being in this pandemic you know there's
definitely collective trauma for some
it's the little t for others it's the
big team i think it's safe to say it's
been difficult for most everyone
and so how do you think about
anxiety stress mental health in general
and the role plays and longevity
yeah well it's really important getting
back to the cortisol levels um your
brain
controls your longevity you know this uh
in my lab we've manipulated
mouse brains uh to make them turn on
longevity genes and then the whole mouse
is healthy so we just know that the
brain is putting out factors that will
either accelerate aging or slow it down
so your mental state's important it's
also important for immunity
a beautiful paper was published last
week in one of the world's top journals
that showed that
if you change a few neurons in the
center of the brain again in a mouse but
pretty interesting
that you'll
change the amount of
circulating
immune cells in the body
and those immune cells can pick off
cancer cells and viruses
and so you know i used to
i believed that the mind could control
the body but now we just have proof
that's actually working and which
neurons are doing that so what does this
all mean it means that you should
keep your stress levels down if you can
up meditate i now meditate as often as i
have time for again serena poon has been
a good influence on me in that regard
but if you have the big stress the big t
then you do need some help and
increasingly you can go online and speak
with a therapist and
i've seen some really great results from
particularly young people who become
anxious you know in this day and age
with social media
with school and college and the stresses
of
all of that and code 19 on top of it
it's really it's hard to be
a young person without the coding skills
that we had also to want agreed it's
tough out there it really is and
you know i'm an optimist i like to think
there's a silver lining here but we
shall see going into 22. so just
rounding out lifestyle we kind of
covered everything but i'll bring it
back to food since we all love going
grocery shopping
i'll put you on the spot if you had to
pick you know your top five longevity
foods that
everyone would be better off consuming
as frequently as possible what's on
david sinclair's longevity food grocery
list oh food lots of yeah okay so good
food so as a as a
guide i try to
choose foods that have been grown under
stressful conditions
so these would be
organic for a start a locally grown
and not in a just a regular hot house
with lots of nutrients and water so
if i can go to a local
farm i'll do that
and
but the other way you can do it is you
can look for foods that have a lot of
color
the purples the reds the very deep
greens
these are signs that the plants are
making healthy molecules for you these
xenohormetans as i mentioned so that the
top foods would be
if i could only eat one food it would
probably be avocados the next one i do
like very high quality
fresh very tasty you know with maybe a
little bit of bread or gluten-free bread
dipped in there but not a lot i've tried
to avoid
carbs like that so we've got two the
third one would be a roasted brussels
sprouts pan fried
bit of garlic and
salt pepper
that's three but the next would be um
cantaloupe or rockmelon as i would call
it
as a fruit that's the most nutritious
you can get and if i could pick another
one in that category i'd say blueberries
as well i snack on those pretty often
and then the fourth category our fifth
category that's important would be the
nuts and so cashews are my favorite but
i also have brazil nuts basil and just a
whole variety of nuts during the day so
if i'm peckish i'll take a few and the
protein in the nuts suppresses appetite
i love it everyone get out their pencils
go on their instacart or amazon prime or
go to their local farmer's market
wherever you go shopping you got your
list
personally i think
you made me very happy with avocados
taking the number one spot
i'll never forget there was a moment on
the podcast where we had walter longo
the famous walter longo
on the show this was like two years ago
and we were talking about avocados and
he said
i'm not sure we don't have the data if
if all this avocado consumption is good
for us and i was like
hold on
you just said like there's no santa
claus to everyone
so i'm very happy to hear avocados
well well i'm i'm a good friend and
colleague of falters we've known each
other since we were kids actually in our
20s
and we like to debate
but where i would disagree about that is
that we know that avocados have high
levels of oleic acid
as well as sodas olive oil and oleic
acid will activate cert-1 which is an
enzyme that controls longevity in our
bodies and so we know at least some of
the components such as oleic acid are
extremely beneficial as well as those
unsaturated fats that come along
so
in closing
there's so much happening in the
longevity space
is there something specific you're just
beyond
excited about in the movement that you'd
like to share in the movement
this is the movement this is a longevity
movement i feel like everyone longevity
wasn't in the lexicon i feel like a
couple years ago right
yeah yeah you're right about that it's
been
really a thrill for me to see this
movement occur because i was banging my
head against the wall for
25 years and no one would listen
my book helped it's sold close to a
million copies around the world so that
was good but what i'm most excited about
is the fact that the younger generation
has embraced longevity unexpectedly
because
you know stupid me i thought only old
people cared about aging but no it's
you know gen y and gen z that have
realized that humans can achieve
anything if they put their minds to it
and we now realize a lot of young people
realized is that aging begins before
birth
and every day is important and the clock
is ticking and you can slow that down by
living well and eating well and even
some supplements that i mentioned these
will slow the process down and the
longer they live the more technology
they can
be exposed to so many people who are
born around now in the last 10 years can
make it to the 22nd century
and imagine what's going to be available
then if you know the last five years has
totally changed
everything and we can now reverse aging
so yeah that's mostly what excites me is
that every day i'm contacted by young
people in their 20s and 30s who are
excited about what we do and want to
join the movement and either get
involved in social media or
medical research and devote their
careers to it
and for the record again what is your
biological age versus your uh
your real age if you will
well i'm 52
and uh
my biological age is in my low 40s
depending on the measurement but
when i'm really good then i can get it
down into the low 30s but yeah right now
my blood by chemistry if you looked at
it you'd say and you didn't know me
you'd say i'm in my early 40s you know
i'm still waiting for that gray hair to
appear so
so far so good
the good news is that what i'm i've been
doing to myself which is listed also in
my book page 304 if you want to jump to
that it doesn't seem to be hurting me
which is a good start but also as i get
older seems to be benefiting me as well
i gotta get on the david sinclair
program i'm getting up there i'm 47 now
so
you know i gotta do the biological age
test i i'm somewhat i did you know
look i believe
wellness is a journey and and
it doesn't matter how old you are it's
never too late to start yet there are
times when i look back at my 20s and oh
man i was just a mess
right and and we did damage to our uh
bodies in those days and we we think
we're immortal in when we're 20
but now that we can measure the
biological clock we can take a blood
test we're developing in my lab
this cheek swab which will be a lot
cheaper
than the current tests
that can tell us our biological age and
we know that even in your 20s you're
aging your body if you don't look after
it
and that goes for things you might not
think of when you go to a rock concert
and you listen to super loud music
you're aging your ears so that by the
time you're our age you'll have less
hearing so that actually leads me okay
this this is the real last question so
is there something that's really under
the radar you know that's a great
example that is either on
on one hand it's
aging us that we're not aware of like
like going to a rock concert or on the
other hand
the behavior
that is promoting longevity that we're
unaware of like what are we unaware of
that is working for us or against us in
terms of the longevity that'll be i mean
it that's the last question yeah well
what we have found is that if you break
dna
that accelerates the aging clock
dramatically in my lab we can drive
aging forward in a mouse and make it get
old within a few months but the good
news is we can now reprogram them to be
young again so we're driving aging
forwards and backwards but what this
tells us is that things that break
chromosomes are
really potent accelerators of aging now
smoking will do that going in
bright sunlight for hours and burning
your skin will do that we know that from
experience we didn't realize it was
aging but it really is
but there are other things that break
dna in our lives there are chemicals
from plastics even the new car smell is
breaking our dna
when we fly
at high altitudes we're breaking dna
because the cosmic rays hit us i'm
skeptical of these scanners that they're
neutral on breaking dna and getting an
x-ray and a ct scan will break your dna
now we need ct scans and x-rays for good
reason i wouldn't refuse one from your
doctor but don't get ct scans and x-rays
if you don't need them so i've had big
arguments with my dentist
please don't x-ray my mouth every year i
don't want it and they say
you gotta have it
and i say why because you need to pay
for your machine so i
i try to reduce my exposure to radiation
in general for that reason
david always a pleasure thank you so
much
jason it's been great to see you thanks