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2021-12-27 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - Huberman Lab Podcast - The Biology of Slowing & Reversing Aging: Difference between revisions

2021-12-27 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - Huberman Lab Podcast - The Biology of Slowing & Reversing Aging (view source)

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(Created page with "* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9IxomBusuw&ab_channel=AndrewHuberman * Interviewer: Andrew Huberman * Length: 2:10:42 * In this interview, we discuss the cellular and molec...")
 
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and the resveratrol altogether.
and the resveratrol altogether.
And there's a good reason for that.
It's all scientific, I try to be.
The levels of NAD go up in the morning
in our bodies naturally.
Our bodies actually have a
cycle of NAD, it's not steady.
- It's Arcadian?
- It's Acadian.
In fact, NAD controls your clock.
This was shown by Shin Imai and colleagues
in this nice science
paper about a decade ago,
that if you disrupt the NAD cycle,
which is controlled by the
sirtuin gene that we worked on,
that is what's telling your
body, oh, it's time to eat,
it's time to go to sleep.
And if you take these, the NMN
late at night, for example,
you can disrupt your circadian rhythms.
- Interesting.
- Conversely, when I travel
and I want to reset my clock
to the time zone, I will take
a boost of NMN in the morning
and I feel great.
- Does this protocol for you,
does it produce any immediate effects
of increased energy, et cetera?
You mentioned that one would,
if it's right for them,
would have to take it
for at least two weeks
to start to see the NAD levels increase.
At that point, when NAD levels increase,
could one possibly expect an increase
in overall energy, focus, et cetera?
I realize we're not making promises here,
but I'm just wondering whether
or not the only measure
of whether or not this protocol is working
is whether or not you die at
age blank or blank plus 20.
And of course, once you're dead,
you can't really know if
you would've lived longer
if you'd done something
differently and vice versa.
- Sure, well, there was a
study again by Shin Imai
my good friend at Washington
University in St. Louis
that showed that improves,
remember this insulin sensitivity,
which is a good thing.
But you can't know your
insulin sensitivity
unless you're measuring glucose,
have a glucose monitor on your arm.
- Do you have one on right now?
- No, no, I used to, I learned a lot.
- Yeah, last time I
saw you had this thing,
it looks like a small leach,
not a large leach and it was
measuring your blood glucose.
- They're very informative
because you learn
what your body reacts to
and grapes were really bad.
Rhonda Patrick agrees with
that, but the issue was,
was what, where were we, Andrew?
- The issue is whether
or not you can expect
any immediate effects on
energy, vitality, focus,
just even subject.
- So what do you feel, is the question.
And anecdotally,
'cause I've been taking
this for a long time,
if I don't take it, I
start to feel 50 years old,
it's horrible.
I can't think straight.
It may be placebo, but who knows?
But what we're doing now are
very careful clinical trials.
We've done the safety for two years,
and we're now treating elderly patients
at Harvard Medical School with
some wonderful colleagues.
And those people are actually going
to be an currently in MRIs.
So you can measure the
energetics and the NAD levels
in their legs as they
exercise in real time.
And that will tell us if
what we see in the mice
is increased endurance actually works.
In the meantime, it's fun
to talk about anecdotes.
I have a number of athlete friends,
some of which have increased their load,
their time in marathons, for example.
There's a good friend
of ours in our circle
that is winning marathons at age 50 now.
And he attributes that to
the protocol that he's on.
- Interesting, I haven't
started taking NMN,
but I'm planning to do that
when my next birthday arrives,
which is in a couple months.
But I do experiments on my
sister and have for years,
I have a sister who's three
years older than I am,
who is very enthusiastic
about these protocols.
And I'll tell you that
after reading your book,
I started purchasing
for her and giving her
an NMN supplement and she
claims and I believe her.
She has a quite sensitive system
and she's very tuned into it.
She feels far and away
better when she takes it,
as opposed to when she doesn't
and I've done the control
experiment of removing her supply,
and then giving it back to
her in this kind of thing.
So that's my other laboratory.
This is what younger brothers
do to their older sisters.
I have a question about something
that if it has no relevance,
we can just treat it as a speed
bump and then move right on.
And the artificial sweeteners,
these things that we
should say non-glucose,
increasing sweetener.
So you've got Stevia,
which is a plant basically.
And then you've got
sucralose and aspartame
and all these things.
There is some evidence that
I know we're both aware of,
they've been publishing
quite reputable journals,
showing that they can
disrupt the gut microbiome
in certain cases in particular saccharin,
the one that basically
nobody uses anymore.
And it's questionable as
to whether or not Stevia
has the same negative effects, et cetera.
That's not what this is about,
but in terms of the sensation of,
or the perception of sweet taste,
is that itself a possible detriment
to these pro-longevity,
forgive me for using the term,
the pathways.
If I were to drink a
diet coke during a fast,
am I somehow disrupting this?
And I'm asking this question,
because I get asked this question a lot.
- Well, there may be small effects.
I don't think they're
worth worrying about.
Joe Rogan laughed at me 'cause
I was drinking a diet coke
during the first
interview I did with them.
I will drink diet coke, I've
read the scientific literature.
And again, it's this 5% thing
that I think is blowing out of proportion.
If I was to put a number
on it, I would say,
if eating a high sugary meal
or drinking a sugar-filled soda,
what is that, 30 grams of sugar?
Let's say that's a 10
out of 10 bad for you.
A diet coke might be a one.
And if I'm, which am I going to do?
I could have a 10 or a one
or go without in my life.
I'll do the one on occasion.
I try to avoid them because I
don't like the ones as much.
But you can't say that sucralose
is equivalent to drinking a sugary soda.
There's just no comparison.
And I think suc, what is it?
Stevia, I do use Stevia whenever I can,
because it's a naturally sourced product.
And I haven't seen any good evidence yet
that it's bad for you.
But I think a lot of this is overblown,
and a lot of it's the media trying
to give equal weight to stories
as you know as a scientist.
It can be frustrating
when something's a 10
and something's a one,
and they're equated.
- How do I say this respectfully?
I think if science
journalists were required
to post their credentials
alongside their name, [chuckles]
then people would take the articles into,
with additional grain of salt, right?
I mean, in other words,
that I think that the science media
is mainly generated
around two specific goals.
One is to make people very, very afraid
or get people very, very excited,
and oftentimes the get people excited part
is sponsored content,
and I think that's overlooked in any case.
Thank you for that.
I want to talk about iron and iron load.
We were talking earlier about ferritin.
And of course, women menstruate.
And so their iron needs
are greater than people,
men that don't menstruate
or women that don't menstruate.
I don't think we can get right down
into how much iron somebody needs
because it'll vary person to person.
But I was surprised to learn that iron
is actually going to accelerate
the aging process in various contexts.
- Well, this is a new
finding out of Spain.
Manuel Serrano's lab has
found that excess iron
will increase the number of
senescent cells in the body.
And senescent cells are these zombie cells
that accumulate as you get
older and they sit there
and they cause inflammation mainly
and also can cause cancer.
And it's found that if
you get rid of these cells
or never accumulate
them, you stay younger.
In animals, and there's some
really interesting studies
out of Mayo Clinic in humans as well.
So iron is a pro-senescent metal.
And so what I think
is that if you're taking
excess iron as a supplement,
you're probably accelerating
your aging process.
The other thing that I
found really interesting
is I've looked at hundreds of thousands
of people's metabolism and
their blood biomarkers.
I was one of the first people
in InsideTracker as a board member,
and I'm still their scientific lead guy.
So I can look anonymously
at hundreds of thousands
of people's blood work.
And we also know how fit
they are, how old they are.
Some of them are marathon runners,
some of them are CrossFit.
And there's a signature of health
that actually is different
than your average person.
Now, I'm not going to
say bad things about MDs
'cause a lot of my best friends are MDs
and I work with them at
Harvard Medical School.
The issue though, is
that with MD training,
there's a scale of what's normal,
and if you're out of that normal range,
something must be wrong,
that's the paradigm that they work under.
But first of all, everybody's different,
and you want to know their baseline
and track people over years to
know what's normal for them.
And what I find for example,
is people who are really
healthy and live the way I do
and have a diet that's fairly
vegetarian, but not strict,
still have slightly low hemoglobin levels,
slightly low iron, slightly low ferritin,
but we have super amounts
of energy, we're not anemic.
And we're getting along great in life.
But a doctor who just
looks at that might say,
oh, we need to give you more iron.
All right, so what I'm
getting at is an example of,
we need to personalize medicine
and look at people over the long run
to know what works for them
and what's healthy for them,
and not just work towards
the average human,
but work towards what's optimal for human.
- I love that answer.
You mentioned tracking
and tracking over time.
And this is a really interesting area
that I know you have been
focused on for a long time.
I've been getting blood worked
on about every six months
frankly, since I was in college.
I just got, I like data
and I got interested in
supplementation and exercise
'cause it made me feel better,
but I also want to know what
was going on under the hood.
So you get numbers back, you
get this hormone, that hormone,
this blood glucose measure, et cetera.
How do you make sense of the data?
I mean, what InsideTracker is doing aside,
how do you personally
make sense of the data
in ways that might differ from the way
that a standard MD might
look at one of these charts?
Because the standard practice is to say,
is it red, yellow, or green, right?
Is it basically too high or too low?
Is it somewhere close to
the margins or are you okay?
Are you in these ranges?
Are there any things
that you pay attention to
that you think are
particularly interesting
for people to just take note of?
I mean, we're not asking you
to go against anybody's physician.
But what sorts of things
should people start
to educate themselves about
in terms of what these
molecules are on their charts
if they choose to get them,
and what do you look at?
- Yeah, well, there's a lot there.
The first is that you
should be tracking things,
because one measurement isn't enough.
These things vary and over time.
And if you can have a
decade or more of data,
it's super important, informative,
as you know, well know, as you know.
So the physician, interestingly,
my physician, let's
take him as an example.
So he sees me, he says,
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm feeling great."
"Okay, see you next
year," that's craziness.
Anyway, so I say, okay, stop.
Let's talk a little bit about.
- Let me educate you, that's
what David tells his physician.
I imagine that the
12-year-old David Sinclair
says to a physician,
"Listen, let's have a
different discussion."
Is that how it works?
- It is.
He finds me pretty annoying
as does my dentist.
But so I say, so hang
on, I've got this data.
I've got the InsideTracker data.
So I pull that up on the screen,
and I'm showing him the
changes in my cholesterol
and my CRP, which is
inflammatory marker as you know.
And we're going through it,
and you can see things change over time,
and I've corrected them
as they go slightly out of
the optimal range for me,
which is different than
what he would do, of course.
But what was funny is that he says,
this is great, I love this data.
But I'm not allowed to get
this because of course,
the insurance companies won't pay for it.
So again, you can pay out of pocket.
It's not super expensive.
I would say, if you save a
bit of money on a coffee,
you can afford this kind of stuff.
But the main point is that
doctors do like this data.
It's just that they're
unable to spend the money
on every one of their patients to get it.
- Is there a code word
that someone can use with their physician
that will trigger a
comprehensive blood test?
I keep trying to figure
out what's the code
that one needs to ask
or tell their doctor,
I'm feeling blank so that
they get a full blood panel.
- Well.
- Do you have to be hemorrhaging
from the gut or something?
- Well, I usually use the WTH method,
which is what the hell?
And then he says, "Okay, we'll do it."
- 'Cause I think a lot of
people out there are thinking,
look, I'd love to have blood
work repeatedly over time,
but that's hard to get
for financial reasons,
but also a lot of people
just don't know how
to approach the conversation.
And this is one of the things
that I hope that we can educate people on,
that they deserve to know what's
going on inside their body,
and that it makes a
doctor's visit worthwhile,
and that you don't have to
feign illness in order to do it.
- Right, yeah, and a lot of people do.
So I would say, if you
can't afford these tests,
there are increasing number of companies
that offer these tests,
InsideTracker is one of them.
And you just do it a couple
of times a year at a minimum.
And then you can share
that with your doctor.
If you can't afford that, then
I would say to your doctor,
here are the main ones
that Andrew and David do.
- Yep, and we must.
And there's an email
that is something like 555,
or a phone number, rather, it's 555-5555.
I think if they have any complaints,
they can just call that number.
David will pick up on the
east coast business hours
and I'll pick up outside of those hours.
- But there was the
main ones, I would say.
Your blood sugar levels,
you want to do your HbA1c,
which is your average glucose
levels over the month.
There's CRP, which I
mentioned for inflammation.
- Yeah, let's talk about
C-reactive protein for a second.
'Cause I think it's been shown
to be an early marker
of macular degeneration
of heart disease, of a
variety of different things.
CRP is something
that we don't hear enough about, I think.
Maybe, what do you know
about CRP that I don't,
I'm guessing a lot, but.
- Oh, it was originally picked up
as something that was
associated with heart disease
in the Framingham study, I believe.
It is the best marker for
cardiovascular inflammation
and is also, we use it as
a predictor of longevity,
and its levels go up with mortality.
And so this is an association,
but there's enough data that I would say,
if you have high levels of CRP,
you need to get your levels down quickly.
And the levels usually go up with age
and with levels of inflammation.
So the ways to get it down
would be to switch the diet,
eat less, try to eat more vegetables.
You'll find it will come down,
and there are also drugs that can do it.
Anti-inflammatories can do it as well.
But CRP is, it's actually, hCRP,
there's a high sensitive
hCRP, your doctor will know.
Get one of those readings.
'Cause if you've got
normal blood sugar levels,
your doctor, or fasting
blood sugar levels,
your doctor might say you're fine.
But a lot of people
have normal blood sugar,
but have high CRP, which is
just as bad for you longterm,
and can predict a future heart attack.
- On the lines of heart attack.
I want your thoughts on cholesterol
and serum cholesterol
and dietary cholesterol.
I cannot, for the life of me,
get my arms around this literature.
And even if I ignore all
the essentially nonsense
that's out there in various
social media groups,
as saying cholesterol is the
worst thing in the world,
or cholesterol is not,
or dietary cholesterol has nothing to do
with serum cholesterol and
nothing to do with longevity.
I can't seem to sort
through the very basic data
that essentially ask,
is having high levels of LDL
going to kill me earlier?
Should I be striving to always
reduce LDL and increase HDL?
Is that a reasonable goal?
And if so,
is dietary cholesterol the
primary determinant of that?
And just as a final point about this,
I am aware of quite good data
that shows that anorexics,
people that essentially eat no food,
unless you force them to,
can often have very high LDL.
So their dietary cholesterol
is essentially zero,
and so they're manufacturing
a lot of their own.
So realize this isn't your
primary area of expertise,
but you're a smart guy
and you think about this
kind of stuff a lot.
What do you think is going on
with the cholesterol literature?
And will we ever get to the bottom of this
as a scientific and medical community?
Because to me, it is rather perplexing.
- It is, but you can get
through the politics.
I know a fair bit about cholesterol
'cause it's in my family history.
And I was headed for an early death,
my grandmother had a stroke 30,
that's how bad I am in
terms of my genetics.
So I went on a statin, and I
know there's a lot of people
who say that statins long-term are bad.
It's associated with Alzheimer's disease.
I've been taking a statins since I was 29.
And that's 'cause I forced my same doctor
to give me the statin,
the conversation was something like this.
You're too young to be on a statin.
And I said, what?
You want me to have a heart attack
before you give me
something, give it to me now.
So 29, I'd been on a satin,
and my cholesterol was
way up in beyond 300,
which is a massive mess up.
Basically my blood was creamy to look at.
So I've now got my cholesterol down
to low, low levels to what would it be.
You can check on my InsideTracker,
but so my ratio of HDL to LDL,
which you want to be less
than five, is now two,
and the LDL is below a
hundred, so it's all good.
And I've measured my
cardiovascular health with an MRI.
I've got a movie of my heart beating.
I've still got a heart of a
20-year old, so that's working,
I'm willing to forgo the risk
that the statin is causing problems later
because of my family history.
But other people, I would say,
be aware that statins
aren't perfect drugs.
There were some interesting new ones.
There's one called the PCSK9 inhibitor,
which is, I think fortnightly,
every two weeks injection,
that blocks the release
of LDL from the liver.
And then that seems to be
great for lowering cholesterol,
but also has other benefits
that might be prolongevity.
And there were some people
that I was just talking to
on the cutting edge of this,
and their doctors are
trying them on this drug
instead of the statin.
So you could talk to your doctor about.
- Do you avoid dietary
cholesterol for that reason also?
Red meat, butter.
I mean, I have been to love butter.
I love red meat.
I realized there's some people who don't.
My cholesterol is a little bit high,
but I'm working to bring that down a bit,
although not by altering
my food intake yet.
But what do you think is the relationship
between dietary cholesterol
and serum cholesterol,
and what's going on with the liver?
Why are anorexics?
Why is there a certain cholesterol so high
when they're eating nothing?
- Well, there've been in a
number of papers over the years
that have been ignored.
And our friend, Peter Attia,
brought to my attention recently,
a new study that I think definitively said
that dietary cholesterol
has almost zero impact
on blood cholesterol levels.
- Good.
- Yeah, so I'm annoyed
'cause I'd been avoiding eggs
and butter for most of my
life and I didn't have to.
So I have eggs-
- Plenty of time, or
at least in your case.
- Yeah, yeah.
So that's the thing.
You can eat these foods
that were ones banned
because it's very difficult
to take cholesterol up
into the body from the gut.
And most of it's being
synthesized in the body.
- Well, I'm just pausing
there for a second
because I think that it's
what we've been told.
Six meals a day, eat a
lot of grains and fruits
and this kind of thing, avoid cholesterol.
I mean, basically everything we learned
in the '80s and '90s and early 2000s
is getting flipped on its head now.
But, and I think this
is a very strong caveat
that's important to mention, amino acids.
In particular, the amino acids
that come from animal products, right?
Seem to have some pro aging
effect on them, right?
At least the way that I've
heard you describe your diet.
And I'm somebody who
enjoys meat, I like it.
But so I'm by no means, a vegan at all.
But I've heard you say
you eat mostly plants,
but a little bit of fish
or chicken or something
of that sort of eggs or.
But is that specifically
to avoid excessive amino acid intake?
Or is it something specific about plants
that excites you with
respect to? [chuckles]
I mean, vegetables are
delicious too, but what is it?
Is it something great about plants
or is it something bad
about when I think of meat,
I guess the biologist in me
thinks amino acids, right?
I don't think top sirloin,
I think amino acids.
And I think top sirloin as I'm eating it,
but really what they are, are amino acids,
including leucine.
- Yeah, well, there are two
good things about plants,
and neither of them is taste for me.
I would eat steak all the time if I could.
I did when I was a kid, I'm an Australian.
But plants have two benefits.
One is that they're highly nutritious,
and they'll give you a lot of the vitamins
and nutrients that I need.
I don't take multivitamin,
I don't want to have the
excess iron in my body.
So there's that high density nutrition.
So those dark leaves, if
it's a spinach salad, great.
The second is that there
is what's called xenohormetic
molecules in plants.
That term, xenohormesis is a term
that I came up with
with my friend, Conrad.
How it's, which means
stressed plants make molecules
that benefit your health.
I'll break it down.
Xeno means between species,
and hormesis is the term,
whatever doesn't kill
you makes you stronger
and live longer.
And the idea is that when
plants are stressed out,
think of a great vine that's dried out
and then starting to harvest the grapes,
which is typically how it's done.
They are full with resveratrol,
because resveratrol is
a plant defense molecule
that I think is made
to activate those
sirtuin genes in a plant.
So plants have sirtuins just like we do.
But by purifying or at least concentrating
in a light-proof bottle and
keeping it out of the air,
we stabilize the xenohormetic molecule,
or it's a cocktail, not just
one, there's others in wine.
We then ingest those and get the benefits
of activating our own defenses,
because our food was getting stressed out.
And by stressed, I don't mean
psychologically stressed.
I mean, biologically stressed.
And so I try to eat plants
that have gone through a bit of stress.
They might be brightly colored,
they've had too much sun
or got nibbled on by a caterpillar.
So you go to places where it's
organic or it's fresh, local,
and those are the plants
that aren't perfect,
and they probably have high concentrations
of these molecules.
And in addition, I also
buy the supplements
to make sure I'm getting
enough of those as well.
- Which supplements mimic that?
- So resveratrol will,
there's another one called quercetin,
or quercetin, some people call it,
what you find in trace
amounts in apples and onions.
And we also showed back in 2003
that it activates sirtuins as well.
But others have, 20 years later,
found that it kills senescent cells
or helps kill senescent cells.
So it's a double whammy
with that molecule.
- And are you actively
picking out the peaches
that look like they were
nibbled on by a caterpillar?
- No, but I don't worry if
they've been banged up a bit.
- What's the story with antioxidants?
Are they of any value whatsoever,
because the way that you
describe them at the beginning,
and what I've heard recently
is that they are not all
the rage for anti-aging.
What are they doing that's useful?
Should we be seeking
out antioxidants anyway
for other seller health purposes?
- Well, yeah, antioxidants
are not going to hurt you
unless you take mega doses.
We do need some oxidants
for our immune system.
And there's even, what's
called mitohormesis,
which is your mitochondria power packs,
need to have a little bit
of these free radicals
to be able to function.
So you don't want to overdose
on these antioxidants,
vitamin C, vitamin E, don't overdo it.
- You don't take a multivitamin, correct?
- Right.
- I think I'm going to stop
after this conversation
'cause I've always just taken one
for the kind of insurance purpose,
which is a stupid purpose.
Not actual insurance, but just thinking,
oh cap top off on my ACBD.
- Right, and I'll pee out what
I don't need, right, sure.
- But that never bothered me.
The whole expensive pee thing never got.
That argument never got
made because of that.
A good vitamin is not that expensive.
I just figured better safe than sorry,
but it may be that it's detrimental.
- Well, it can in the case of iron
as we discussed and the antioxidants.
So when I came into the aging
field in the early 1990s,
it was all about antioxidants.
And we thought that enzymes
by the name of catalyze
and superoxide dismutase, well,
they're going to be the key to longevity.
It turns out that it's
largely been a failure
that giving animals and
humans antioxidants,
haven't had the longevity
benefits that we dreamed of.
And the main reason is that
there's a lot more going on
than just free radical damage.
The epigenome gets disrupted,
we've got these proteins misfolding.
And so the problem really has
been that we didn't realize
that you need to turn on
the body's natural defenses against that
plus a whole host of other
things to get the true benefits.
But I'm not going to say
it's a problem taking it,
an antioxidant drink,
pomegranate juice for one
is full of good stuff,
including xenohormetic molecules.
But resveratrol is a good case in point,
which is when I worked on resveratrol
as a longevity molecule,
first we showed it in yeast
and worms and flies and mice.
Before that, it was
thought that resveratrol
was good for your heart in red
wine when you drink red wine,
because it's an antioxidant.
So then we showed that
it extended the lifespan
of yeast cells through this
genetic pathway, the sirtuins.
And we then tested whether resveratrol,
if we change one atom
to make it not an antioxidant, guess what?
It still worked fine.
So it wasn't its anti-oxidant activity
that was extending lifespan.
It was its ability to turn on
the yeast's defenses against aging.
Conversely, when we gave
the yeast antioxidants,
they lived shorter.
So yeah, that was the
beginning of my transformation
into thinking turn on the body's defenses,
don't give it the antioxidants.
- This is an opportunity
for me to say something
that I've been wanting
to say for a long time,
which is that, what's so
wonderful about science
is that because the goal is mechanism,
you can really start to understand
as you just described, what
actually mediates a process
is very different than
what modulates a process.
I mean, if a fire alarm goes
off in the building right now,
it's going to modulate our attention.
That doesn't mean that it
controls our attention,
it's not mechanistically relevant.
And so I think this
thing about antioxidants
is one of these cases,
it sounds like where it's
in the right ballpark,
but until one really unveils
the mechanism as you have,
you can be, one can or in a field,
can be badly wrong for a
very long period of time.
It sounds like the sirtuins
and really getting down to
the guts of the machinery
of what causes cells to age
is really what it's about.
Zooming way out, what
are the behavioral tools
that one can start to think about
in terms of ways to modulate these?
Basically the way that DNA
is being expressed and functioning.
I've heard you talk before
about hormesis of other
sorts, cold exposure.
We talked about fasting.
We talked about exercise in broad terms,
but what about any evidence, if it exists,
as to whether or not aerobic training
versus weight training,
these sorts of things.
In other words, what
are the sorts of things
that people can do to improve
their sirtuin pathway?
And I realized that there are caveats.
We can't go directly from
a behavior dissertations,
but in the general theme,
what can people do, what do you do?
- Right, well, we know
that that aerobic exercise
in mice and rats raises their NAD levels
and their levels of sirt,
one of the genes goes up
two actually, number one and number three.
What we don't know yet
is what type of exercise
is optimal to get them to change.
We will learn, we're doing work.
Now it's revealed that we're doing work
with the military in the US,
to try and understand that kind of thing.
And I'll always tell you and the public,
when I don't know something
I'm not going to extrapolate.
But what do I do?
I base my exercise on the
scientific literature,
which has shown that
maintaining muscle mass
is very important for a number of reasons.
The two main ones are,
you want to maintain your hormone levels.
I'm an older male,
losing my testosterone
and muscle mass over time.
And by exercising, I will
maintain that and have,
in fact, I probably haven't
had a body like this
since I was 20.
So that's one of the benefits
of having this lifestyle.
- Sorry to interrupt you.
You do know we did an episode on hormones
and there are data in humans
that show that there are some
males in their '80s and '90s
where their testosterone is equivalent
to the average of 25 and 30-year-olds.
I can get you that information,
is really impressive studies.
Unfortunately, they didn't
include a lot of information
about the lifestyle factors, et cetera.
But this idea that testosterone
goes down with age,
it might be the trend,
but it's not necessarily a prerequisite.
- Right, I believe in naturally increasing
and maintaining these hormone levels
and I've been measuring
them for a long time.
And I could see for me,
my testosterone levels
were steadily, levels were going down.
- And then you got tenure
and they went back up again.
[both chuckle]
- No, I actually became complacent.
And it was the worst.
Actually my age changed in the
wrong direction after that,
'cause I was relaxed.
- Interesting.
- And not worried about the future.
But then I got serious.
And I actually, according to
the InsideTracker algorithm,
got my age down from 58 to
31 in a matter of months.
So that was a big drop.
And I've been getting steadily younger
over the last 10 years,
according to that
measurement, the blood test.
- What about estrogen?
Because women are different in the sense
that they do the number of eggs that they,
and the ovaries change over time, right?
Do you think that they can
maintain estrogen levels
in over longer periods of time
using some of these same protocols?
- Well, yeah, I get into trouble
from a certain university
when I talk about this too much.
- About estrogen?
- Just about fertility and long story.
I don't want to get too
much into the anecdotes,
but I'll tell you the science,
which is that if you take a
mouse and put it on fasting
or caloric restriction
for up until the point
where it should be in fertile,
so that's about at a year of age,
a mouse gets infertile, female mouse.
- Due to fasting or
due to simply to aging?
- Due to aging, due to aging.
The fasting, it's not extreme fast,
it's just less calories.
Then you put them back on a regular food,
and they become fertile again
for many, many months afterwards.
So the effect on slowing down aging
is also on the reproductive system.
- Interesting.
- And so that, I wouldn't
say to any woman,
I wouldn't think that they
should become super skinny
to try and preserve fertility,
that's not what I'm saying.
But these pathways that we work on these,
sirtuins are known to delay
infertility in female animals.
Case in point, I'm one of the lead authors
on a paper where we used NMN.
Remember, this is the gas, the fuel,
the petrol for the sirtuins.
We gave old mice.
One group of mice was 16 months old.
Remember they became infertile
at 12, gave them NMN.
And I think it was only six weeks later,
they had offspring.
They became fertile again,
which goes against biology,
the textbook biology,
which is that female
mammals run out of eggs.
Turns out that's not true.
You can rejuvenate the
female reproductive system,
and even get them to
come out of mouseopause
as we call it.
So that's a whole new
paradigm in biology as well.
- That's super interesting.
Sorry to interrupt you,
but I'm reminded by a set of studies
that were done by your former colleagues
'cause they're no longer there,
David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel,
my scientific great grandparents.
Won the Nobel prize for discovering,
what are called critical periods,
this phase of early development
when the brain is extremely plastic.
And a big part of their work
was to show that after a certain point,
the critical period shuts down,
essentially the brain can't
change or not nearly as much.
And then people came
along later and showed
that you could open up these
critical periods again,
but very briefly,
and it takes a very specific
stimulus, essentially,
high degrees of focus, et cetera.
However, there's a well-known
phenomenon in this literature
where if you take an
animal and to some degree,
this has been shown in humans as well,
and you let them pass
through the critical period,
but then you essentially
sensory deprive them.
You take away experience,
you close both eyes.
You essentially reopen
the critical period.
So it seems like I couldn't
help but mention this,
that there's this parallel
between what we're talking
about here with fertility
and neuroplasticity, where yes,
there is a timer where
certain things are available
to the organism early in life,
and then they tend to taper off.
It's not an open and
shut, but they taper off.
But then a deprivation
can actually reactivate
the availability of that process.
Forgive me, I just couldn't
help him mention it,
but to me,
so both of those things
are associated with youth,
fertility and neuroplasticity.
And so I think that
it'd be so interesting.
I'd love to collaborate with you on this
to explore how neuroplasticity
might actually be regulated
by these things like the sirtuins.
- Right, and the sirtuins
do control memory
in neurons as well.
So what I think is really interesting
is that what we're learning from work
that you and your colleagues have done
and in my lab as well,
is that the body has
remarkable powers of healing
and recovering from illness and injury.
And what we once thought
was a one-way street
and you just can't repair,
or you can't get over these diseases,
you can reset the system,
and the body can really get rejuvenated
in ways that in the future will wonder,
why didn't we work on this earlier?
The future of humanity
is more like us walking
around like Deadpool.
We'll probably be cleaner,
and we won't smell as badly,
but Deadpool, if you don't know,
can get injured and just recover.
It's very hard to injure this guy,
and we're going to be the same.
There are many species
you cut off the limb,
the limb grows back.
- Salamanders or.
- Yeah.
We are now learning how
to tap into that system.
And in part, what we're doing
is reversing the age of those cells,
and telling them how to read
the genes correctly again,
reversing the age of that epigenome.
And when you do that, the cells,
the brain, for instance, the skin.
We did the optic nerve.
- Let's talk about those
results for a second.
Then I want to make sure that we return
to some of these behavioral protocols.
You have this amazing paper
at the end of last year,
cover article, full article in nature,
showing that essentially a small menu
of transcription factors,
which control gene expression, et cetera,
could essentially reverse
the age of neurons in the eye
and rescue those cells against damage.
Essentially allow blind mice to see again,
and offset degeneration
of these retinal cells,
incredible paper, and
such a boom to the field.
Where does that stand now in
terms of human clinical trials?
I mean, how do, what are you envisioning
in terms of the trajectory of those data
from mice into human someday?
- Right, well, to get to
the point immediately,
we're going to be testing
the treatment on monkeys,
just for safety reasons.
And then the first patient
should be done sometime in 2022,
early 2023, and we're going
to try to recover blindness.
- This involves making an injection
of a virus into the eye, right?
Right now, there's no
way that I am aware of
to manipulate these transcription factors
through a pill or some other?
- And that's why, we working on in my lab
at Harvard right now.
So it will be-
- It will base moderation of-
- Well you pop a pill in the whole body
gets rejuvenated by 20 years.
That's what we're aiming for.
Now we do it with gene therapy
in the eye and other places.
So in the IES, it's single injection,
the genes go into the retina
and we can turn it on,
with a drug called doxycycline.
And we do that in the mice
for four to eight weeks,
then the eye gets younger.
We can measure that' cause
you can measure the clock.
And then the vision
comes back in those mice.
And I don't see any reason,
why it shouldn't work in people
because it's the same structures
and mechanisms that are
on in the human as well.
Now these-
- And it's one injection.
- It's one.
- I should mention injections into the eye
obviously nobody should do this
outside of a ophthalmology clinic.
And there definitely by
an ophthalmologist but,
the injections into the eye
are painless if done correctly
by the right person.
It sounds dreadful, but it's actually,
I've seen it done hundreds of times.
I've done it, thousands of times
and it's not to myself,
but to other creatures.
And there's a way of doing this
as completely painless to the person-
- Oh you don't feel it.
It's a tiny, tiny needle too.
But the great thing about this is that
it's a one-time treatment.
Those genes go into the back
of the eye and stay there,
forever.
And you can just turn
them on whenever you want.
So what we found is you can
turn them on in the mice,
they get their vision back,
and then you turn it off again.
And so far, many months out,
the benefit has remained,
but if it does decline,
we'll just turn it back
on and reset the system,
rinse and repeat.
So one day what's exciting is that
we could potentially do
this across the entire body
and just take this antibiotic,
every five years and go
back time and time again.
- And thinking about the body
and what's going on under
the head I'm amazed,
still that there isn't a
simple, affordable technology
that would allow me to just
look into my body and see
whether or not there are
any tumors growing anywhere.
I mean, it's not that hard
to look into the body.
I mean that the technology exists.
why hasn't anybody created an at home
or pseudo at home solution,
like a clinic where you can go
and pay 50 bucks or a hundred bucks
and see if you have any
tumors growing anymore.
- Yeah, it's still expensive.
You can get your doctor
to try to get you in,
there's some companies
that offer blood tests
that look at circulating DNA,
that'll measure it.
We're getting there.
It's still probably five to 10 years away
from being really cheap.
You can do things like a
colon cancer test at home.
I think it's a hundred
and something dollars.
You ship off your shit,
excuse my language,
and they measure it.
And they tell you if
you've got colon cancer,
with high probability,
I did that during the pandemic
because I didn't want
to get a colonoscopy.
- Mhmh, is it more accurate or
as accurate as a colonoscopy?
- I believe it's close
to being as accurate.
The downside is that during a colonoscopy,
they can pinch off the polyps
that are looking dangerous,
whereas this obviously isn't that,
but it's certainly easier to do.
And my father who's
Australian tells me that
it's free for Australians.
They get this test routinely.
- Mhmh, interesting.
I want to return to the topic
that I took us away from.
So I apologize, which
is behavioral protocols.
Do you regularly do the cold shower thing?
Ice baths, cold water swims,
are you into that whole biz?
[David chuckles]
- Well, you do know that
I've done it at least once
'cause we did it together.
- That's right.
Not the same bath, just to be very clear,
same sauna, different ice baths,
[David chuckles]
the idea of Sinclair
and Huberman taking an
ice bath together it's a,
it might warm some people's hearts,
but just to be very clear, different,
same ice bath, different, different times.
- Yeah, thank you for clarifying.
- [Andrew] Yeah.
I don't do them regularly.
I do try to sleep cool.
I sleep better anyway.
I try to dress without
a lot of warm clothes.
I'm here in a T-shirt and
it's middle of summer,
but in winter, I'll try
to wear a T-shirt too.
- So you're challenging your
system to thermoregulate?
- Right, right.
I've got this,
hypothesis with Ray Cronise.
We published what's called The
Metabolic Winter Hypothesis,
which is, few tens of
thousands of years ago,
we were either hungry or cold or both
and we really experience that now.
And so, we try to give
ourselves the metabolic winter
and part of the problem I
think with the obesity epidemic
is that we're never cold and cold,
when you're cold you have to burn energy.
It may be only slightly,
but over the whole night,
if you're a little bit cool,
you'll actually expend more energy.
So I try to do that,
but I'm not a big fan of cold showers.
The sauna, I don't have access
to my gym as much as I did.
So, but I do want to get back into it.
I used to do it regularly with my son
and I posted on Instagram once
that he could stay in there for 15 minutes
and I could only stay in for about three.
Anyway, long story short,
I try to compensate with
changes in my diet and exercise
until I get back into it.
- You reminded me of something
that I meant to ask earlier
that obesity reduces NAD
levels and accelerates aging.
How?
I mean, okay.
So again, this is the,
the scientist in the us,
so someone's carrying a lot
of excess adipose tissues,
subcutaneous and,
visceral fat.
But why should that reduce NAD in any ways
that are independent of
effects on glucose and insulin?
If it, you know,
is there's something direct
about white adipose tissue.
And the reason I ask this,
is not simply to dig into mechanism alone,
but I think there are
really interesting data now
that fat actually gets neural innervation.
I mean,
it's not just a,
it's not just stored fuel.
It's stored fuel,
that's acting as an
endocrine organ, essentially.
So,
why would being fat
make people age faster?
- Yeah, that's a question that,
is so obvious, but so few people ask it,
that's what makes you a good scientist.
And so that we don't know,
but I'll give you my best
answer, which is that,
obesity comes along with
a lot of problems that,
include a lot of senescent cells in fat,
if you stain old fat for
senescent cells, it lights up.
- Mhmh.
And when you kill off those cells,
at least in mice, and maybe in humans,
it looks like the fat is
less toxic to the body.
'Cause those senescent cells
in their fat are secreting
these inflammatory molecules
that will accelerate aging as we now know.
We talk about the sirtuins in NAD.
So if we,
if we just look philosophically,
at why this would be the sirtuins only,
like to come on or get
activated when the body needs,
is on the right adversity.
And if a cell is surrounded by
fat or contains a lot of fat,
it's going to think times a good,
it doesn't need to switch on.
So that's the evolutionary argument.
Mechanistically, we don't know,
but it could have something to do with
the response to glucose,
which then responds to the sirtuin gene,
but that hasn't been worked out very well.
- And is there any evidence that leptin,
this hormone from fat can actually,
interact with the sirtuin pathway?
- I don't recall seeing that-
- Maybe I could do a
sabbatical in your lab
and that'd be a fun one.
- Definitely-
- Because leptin during
development is what triggers,
the permission for the hypothalamus
to enter puberty, right?
- Yeah.
- This is why kids that eat
a lot when they're young
and get overweight will also start to go
and undergo puberty more quickly,
although they have
reproductive issues later.
- Well yeah.
We should study the
hypothalamus together 'cause,
the hypothalamus is,
can control the aging of the body.
- The most interesting part of the brain.
[Andrew chuckles]
- For sure.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- If you turn on the SIRT1 gene,
the SIRT2 that we work
on, in the hypothalamus
that actually, will extend lifespan.
Also, it's been shown by Dongsheng Cai
at Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
that if you, inhibit
inflammation in the hypothalamus,
in a mouse, it will increase
or maintain the expression
of what's called GnRH,
which is the hormone that,
he found actually controls
longevity in the mouse in part.
And so keeping inflammation
down in the hypothalamus,
is sufficient to extend
the life span of animals.
And I reviewed that paper for nature
all about seven years ago.
And that was the first demonstration
that the hypothalamus is one
of the leading regulators
of the body's age.
- I find this fascinating GnRH,
for those of you that don't
know actually comes from neurons
in the hypothalamus that then,
literally reached down into the pituitary
and trigger the release of
all the things that control
fertility, luteinizing hormone,
follicle-stimulating hormone, et cetera.
It's such a powerful set of neurons,
and it's never really been clear,
what at a behavioral level
triggers the release of GnRH.
There's all the stories about pheromones
and timers and puberty, et cetera,
but environmental conditions
and dietary conditions
and behaviors that can
control GnRH release, I think,
is an incredible area for exploration.
I'd love to do that sabbatical by the way.
I have a couple, well
seemingly random questions,
but I can't help, but ask
because one thing I like to do
is forage the internet for
practices that at least more than
a few people are doing,
and then wonder whether or
not there's any basis for it.
You mentioned methylation
as a detrimental process,
the way it disrupts the
epigenome and the CD reader,
so to speak.
There are people out there who
are ingesting methylene blue.
And when I was a kid,
I used methylene blue
to clean my fish tank.
And I love fish tanks.
I know you're into aquaria also,
a different podcast episode,
we'll talk about aquaria,
but why in the world, would
people ingest methylene blue?
Meaning is their logic correct?
And or is that a dangerous practice?
I'm not sure I'd want to
ingest methylene blue,
sounds not like a bad thing to do.
- It stains your body if you've
seen, yeah methylene blue-
- Yeah, there was someone
in my lab as a postdoc
was using it to study a
completely different process
related to the blood-brain barrier
and used to inject into animals
and they would turn blue,
but then again, people
ingest colloid silver.
You know they'll put
in there, there's this,
please people don't do this
or if you do, just don't tell me,
'cause I won't like it.
They, people put it in their eyes
and some people actually stain their skin.
They actually become kind of
a silver purple brown color
if they do it excessively.
I mean, there's a lot of
crazy stuff out there.
But what do you think they're thinking
with this methylene blue thing
or should we just get them
to a good psychiatrist?
- I don't know, for sure.
I think methylene blue was found
to extend the lifespan
of some lower organism
and that's where it came from.
My recollection-
- With the emphasis on lower organisms.
- Yes smaller organisms.
I think doesn't, do you
remember Andrew does it,
interrupt or interfere
with mitochondrial activity
and that's-
- Maybe that's why the are doing it.
- Yeah.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- We need to look this up and post it.
- [Andrew] Okay.
- We'll get to the bottom
of this, but those methods,
let's talk about those.
- [Andrew] Yeah.
- Those methods have to
be placed on the right,
part of the genome.
They get attached to the right
genes in the wrong genes.
And if you have a lot of methylation,
it's going to mess up the epigenome.
Smoking will do that, lack of
exercise, all that good stuff.
So you, what you actually want
to do is you want to measure it
and make sure what you're
doing with your body,
is working.
How do you know that if you do this
or that is actually helping.
And so you can test your age.
I could take, a swab from your mouth
and tell you how old you are biologically.
And then we could work on
trying to bring that down
and actually there were anecdotes now,
that people are reversing
their age by a decade or more
just by doing some of the
things that we've talked about
and some other cutting edge stuff
that I'm going to write about.
But yet, but you have to measure stuff.
That's, I didn't want to
forget to bring that up.
I'm measuring stuff all the time.
I have blood tests like you,
I've got this monitor that
stuck to my chest right now
that's measuring myself
a thousand times a second
and I measure my biological age.
- What's it measuring a
thousand times a second?
A huge list of things.
- Yeah, yeah.
So this, this little device is stuck here
and it's for two weeks
that you just recharge it
or send it back and get a new one.
It's got a body temperature movement,
heart rate variability.
It's an FDA approved
device, it's not a toy.
It's not one of these recreational things.
It also listens to my voice,
eventually will me if
I need a psychiatrist
or if I'm depressed,
it will tell me how I sleep, obviously.
But when you put all that data together
and it's individualized and anonymized,
it can now tell my doctor in real time,
if I've got a cold that
needs an antibiotic,
or it's just a virus.
If I am suffering from COVID-19
or even if I'm going to have
a heart attack next week.
And so these little devices
are going to be with us
all the time, instead of going
to your doctor once a year,
which is ludicrous.
- I have to ask you about x-rays.
'Cause every time I go through
the scanner at the airport,
I think, "Sinclair would never do this."
And the argument I heard
you give about this before
was a really excellent one, which is that
it's a low level amount of radiation,
going through at the airport,
but the argument is always,
well, it's just as much as on the plane
and your argument, your
counter-argument I should say was,
"Well then why would I
want to do both, right?
Why would?"
So when you go to the airport,
assuming you're not running late
and you have to go
through the standard line,
what do you say to them?
And do you say, "I'm David Sinclair."
And then they shuttle
you to your own line.
What do you say?
You do say, "I don't like this thing."
Do you have to give them a reason?
- No, you don't.
You can say, "I don't want this."
And they'll get annoyed
'cause it's hard for them
to pat you down,
but you get a pat down and you you're done
as long as you're not
in a hurry, it's fine.
If you want to pay for
the TSA Pre in America
or the way to get around those
scanners, you can do that.
So I travel a lot, so
it's worth it anyway,
but I just go through the metal detector,
I don't get scanned.
- And the metal detector
doesn't have the same,
same problem.
And what about x-rays at the dentist?
Yeah.
- Well, you know one x-ray
is not going to kill you.
Two's not going to kill you, but I-
- Three will kill you.
No, I'm just kidding.
[Andrew chuckles]
- I try to limit it
because it's cumulative.
- Right.
- And I went for six years
without having a dental x-ray
and then my last visit, I just gave up.
I was tired of arguing with my dentist.
So they gave me one,
but they've got led coats on
and they put lead all over your body.
That's telling you something right there.
And funnily enough, my
teeth hadn't changed.
Now you can balance that by saying,
"Well, one x-ray, two x-ray,
three x-rays is worth
it if I have cavities."
And that's true,
you want to know what's in there,
but doing it regularly, for me,
I don't think it was worth it because it,
my teeth are in perfect
health and I've always been,
I don't have any cavities,
didn't have braces,
they're fine.
So stop scanning me.
I mean, I know you have
to pay for the machine,
but you know, do I have a choice?
Yes, so stop pressuring me.
- You know, who shared your
sentiments about x-rays
and the dentist in general?
My apologies to the dentists out there,
was the great physicist, Richard Feynman.
This is a story about him that's
not especially well-known,
but he had very serious
concerns, health concerns,
about x-rays because he
understood the physics
and he understood enough biology that,
he was actually quite vocal about his,
dislike of dental
technology and its dangers.
And he talked about some of that.
People can find that on
the internet, if they like.
Speaking of people who,
are like Feynman,
who've been engaged in public
discourse about science.
One of the things that I
appreciate about you, in fact,
the way that you and I,
initially came to know one
another is through your
public health education efforts.
So, obviously we're doing this podcast,
you've done the Joe Rogan Podcast,
Lex Fridman's Podcast, excuse me Lex,
I'm still adjusting that.
Lex Fridman's Podcast
and many other podcasts,
you've written an amazing book.
What are you thinking these days
in terms of what the
world needs in terms of,
education from scientists,
education from MDs,
education in general as it
relates to these things because,
I think if nothing else
2020 revealed to us that
there's a gap,
there's a gap in understanding.
And that the scientists too are guilty of,
not knowing what to do
with all the information
that's out there on pub med or elsewhere.
I'm just, you know,
what are you thinking for
yourself and in general,
I'd like to just know,
what do you think the world needs there?
Maybe we can recruit some
more public educators.
- Yeah.
Well, we've gone from a
time, when you and I were,
in college and young
professors where the only way,
to get our voice out to
the public was either
through a newspaper or a
very short radio interview,
which for me was extremely
frustrating 'cause particularly
the newspapers and my topic,
every time was twisted into something that
was not just embarrassing,
but Harvard university
used to bring me into the back office and-
- Frankenstein.
- "How did you say such a thing?
We're all going to live to a 250."
I didn't say that.
So, we're now also in a world where
we're overwhelmed with information,
and most of it is wrong
and anyone can pretend to be an expert.
So we've gone from early
days to now the future,
and we're experiencing it right now
thanks to guys like you, people like you,
is that the experts, some experts,
a small number who are
brilliant and good communicators
are talking directly to the public.
This has never been able to be possible,
until this time, right now.
So another five years from
now, and certainly by 10 years,
I would hope that there are
trusted sources of information
of people who can not just
communicate, the ideas directly,
but are able to talk about
things that are going on that
aren't even published yet to say,
"Here's what's really going on.
And this is what the future looks like."
But this is somebody, like yourself
who spent their whole life
studying a particular topic
and knows what they're talking about.
And this,
this is also something
that I think most people
don't know that we
scientists, if we tell a lie,
we burst into flames,
we absolutely cannot tell
something, that's untrue.
And to the best of our
knowledge, we say it as it is,
because if we don't, we're beaten up,
and we, or we kicked
out of the university.
So the people who survive to our age,
and I'm a little older than you.
So I've survived a bit longer.
- But a lot younger inside.
[Andrew chuckles]
- Nah, but we have to measure you with-
- Yeah we need,
I probably need a little
help, hopefully not too much.
- We'll measure that,
and we'll work on your
eating, but this is really,
really important is that,
finally people like your are
allowed by our universities
to talk to the public.
I used to do it,
with a real threat to my survival.
People would look at me,
"Oh, he's a salesman, he's
promoting this and that."
It was seen as a real
negative, but finally,
I think we're in a world where,
it's not negative anymore.
And the pandemic showed that
we needed voices of reason,
voices of fact, that you could trust.
And you can see the
popularity of your podcast,
shows that the public,
they're desperate for
facts that they can trust,
'cause they don't know
what to believe anymore.
- Well,
I'm being completely honest
when I say this, that,
you know, I followed your lead.
I saw you on the Joe Rogan
Podcast and my jaw dropped.
I was like, "This is amazing, like this."
Because,
you get out other good
scientists on before but,
you're tenure Professor Harvard Genetics,
Department of Genetics.
And for those of you don't know,
there's the Harvard and of
course, Harvard Medical School
and they're both excellent, of course,
but these are the top,
top tiers of academia.
And I certainly understand
what it takes to get there
and survive there and to thrive there,
it's like a game of pinball.
You never win.
You just, you just get to,
if you're doing really well,
you get to keep playing.
And that's the truth in academia.
And if you're not, you
stop playing basically.
But when I saw you,
explain what you were doing
in a way that was accessible to people
and also talking about,
possible protocols that they
might explore for themselves
to see if those were, right for them.
I was just, I was just
dazzled and excited,
and I made every effort to
get in contact with you.
And, the rest is history,
but, I think what's really
exciting to me these days is
because of 2020 and with
everything that's happened
and it continues to happen.
There's a thirst for knowledge.
There's also this direct
to the public route
that you mentioned.
And, I think there's also an openness,
I'd love your thoughts on this,
but it seems to me that
there's an openness in,
from the general public,
about health practices,
that there are actually things
that people can do to control
their stress level, to control,
their sleep, to control their cholesterol
if that's what they to
do, maybe they don't
and to even control their lifespan,
which I think is remarkable.
And, I know I speak on
behalf of so many people,
when I just,
I want to say, thank you.
You've, truly changed
the course of my life.
I would not be sitting here doing this
were it not for your example.
And I always say Sinclair,
many people have written books,
many academics have
written books, as you have,
but in terms of doing podcasts
and really getting out there
with your message in a way that
I have to assume raised
your cortisol level
and heart rate just a little bit,
but you did it nonetheless.
You are truly first man in and that,
that deserves a nod.
And, I have a great debt of
gratitude to you for that.
So thank you so much.
- Oh thanks, Andrew.
You're a,
you've become a good friend
and I'm super proud of what
you've done and what you,
I know what you will do.
- So in addition to your book
and your presence on social
media, Instagram, and Twitter,
and appearances on podcasts,
recently I've noticed
that you've opened up,
a survey email/website
that people can, access,
excuse me,
to get some information
about their own health
and rates of aging.
Tell us about that and
what's being measured.
And what is this test that
you've been working on,
secretly and now soon, not so secretly.
- Yeah, well that,
what I want,
is a credit score for
the body to make it easy
for people to follow their health.
And there is a number,
there's a,
there's a biological age
that you can measure.
Unfortunately,
the test is many hundreds
of dollars right now,
but in my lab, we've been
able to bring that down a lot.
And so I want to democratize this test
so that everybody has access to a score
for their health that can predict their,
not just their future
health and time of death,
but to change it.
And I'm building a system
that will point people
in the right direction
and give them discounts for certain things
that will improve, not
just their health now,
but 10, 20, 30 years into the future.
And we can measure that,
and very cheaply, keep
measuring it to know
that you're on the right track,
'cause if you don't measure something,
you can't optimize it.
And so this is the biological age test,
we've developed it, it's
a simple mouth swab.
We're rolling it out.
We're building the system right now.
And there was a sign up sheet
'cause a lot of people
want to get in line,
go to doctorsinclair.com,
you can get on that
and you'll be one of the
first people in the world
to get this test and see what we're doing.
- Oh, fantastic.
Will people be celebrating their,
biological age birthdays?
In other words, if I'm
minus, like if I can imagine,
so I'm 45 right now, soon to be 46.
But if I,
if I were to be so lucky as
to get my biological age to 35
within 12 months, maybe
you can help me do that.
Do I get to celebrate,
a negative birthday?
- Absolutely.
And my plan is that those
people who take their age back
a year or more, we think we can
go back 20 years eventually,
they'll get a birthday card from me
and it's a negative birthday card.
[Andrew chuckles]
- I love it.
And probably very little,
actual birthday cake being ingested but,
who cares 'cause you're
living that much longer.
- That's full of stevia,* that'll be fine.
[Both chuckle]
And thank you for talking to us today.
I realized I took us down deep
into the guts of mechanism
and as well, talking
about global protocols,
everything from what one can
do and take if they choose,
that's right for them to,
how to think about this
whole process that,
that we talk about when
we talk about lifespan
as always an incredibly illuminating.
Thank you, David.
- Thanks Andrew.
- Thank you for joining
me for my conversation
with Dr David Sinclair.
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Today, and in many other
previous episodes of
the Huberman Lab Podcast,
we discuss supplements.
While supplements aren't
necessary or right for everybody,
many people derive tremendous
benefit from supplements.
For that reason, we partnered with Thorne,
T-H-O-R-N-E,
because Thorne Supplements
are the absolute highest quality
and the absolute highest precision,
meaning what you see listed on the bottle
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And so they really are very
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If you want to see the supplements
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So again, it's Thorne,
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to get 20% off any of the
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Also take note that the
lifespan podcast featuring
Dr David Sinclair as a host,
launches Wednesday, January 5th,
you can find the first episode here
on the Huberman Lab Podcast channel.
They also have their
own independent channel.
You can find the link to that
channel in the show notes.
So please go there, subscribe on YouTube,
also on Apple and Spotify.
I've seen these episodes,
they are phenomenal,
and you're going to learn
a tremendous amount,
about aging and how to
slow and reverse aging
from the world expert
himself, Dr David Sinclair.
And last, but certainly not least,
thank you for your interest in science.
[upbeat music]
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