TOP Harvard Scientist: These 5 Habits Are Aging You Faster | David Sinclair | FO562 Raj Shamani

Harvard scientist David Sinclair reveals 5 habits that extend healthy life and discusses cutting-edge aging reversal research.

Key Takeaways

Simple lifestyle habits can add over a decade of healthy life.
Aging is a treatable condition, not an inevitable decline.
Scientific advances are enabling the first human trials for age reversal.
Intermittent fasting and exercise are effective, evidence-backed anti-aging strategies.
Education and gradual behavioral changes improve long-term health outcomes.

What the video covers

Harvard study shows 5 key habits—no smoking, no overdrinking, maintaining healthy weight, managing stress, and eating healthy—add 14 extra healthy years.
David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School scientist with 25 years of experience, aims to improve global health and reverse aging.
Aging is influenced by DNA damage and other factors; lifestyle choices like reducing meal frequency and regular exercise can slow aging.
Sinclair challenges common nutrition myths, such as the importance of breakfast, advocating for fewer meals and intermittent fasting.
Emerging therapies include gene editing and clinical trials aiming to reverse aging in humans, building on success in mice and monkeys.
Aging may soon be classified as a medical condition, with treatments targeting the root causes rather than symptoms.
Lifestyle interventions like sauna use, weight lifting, and movement are recommended alongside scientific advances.
Sinclair emphasizes gradual dietary changes rather than abrupt fasting to improve adherence and benefits.
The video also discusses the potential of age reversal drugs and the future of medicine in treating age-related diseases.
Sinclair highlights the importance of ongoing research, regulation, and public awareness to make anti-aging therapies widely available.

Chapters

What are the five habits that can extend healthy life according to the Harvard study?

The five habits are: not overdrinking alcohol, not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, managing stress effectively, and eating a healthy diet.

How does David Sinclair suggest people should approach meal frequency for better health?

Sinclair recommends reducing the number of meals to two per day instead of three, as supported by clinical trials showing health benefits, and advises gradual dietary changes rather than abrupt fasting.

What progress has been made in age reversal treatments according to the video?

Age reversal treatments have progressed from successful experiments in mice and monkeys to ongoing human clinical trials, including gene therapies targeting aging at the cellular level.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

There was a study from Harvard that showed that the men who lived the longest actually had 14 years of extra healthy life if they just did five things. Don't overdrink, don't smoke, don't be overweight, don't stress, and eat healthy. If you just do the basics, that's already 14 extra healthy years.

Speaker A

eat healthy. If you just do the basics, that's already 14 extra healthy years. Wow. I'm a scientist, work at Harvard Medical School, have been there for 25 years, and my goal in life is to improve the life of everybody on the planet,

Speaker A

Wow. I'm a scientist, work at Harvard Medical School, have been there for 25 years, and my goal in life is to improve the life of everybody on the planet, potentially treat or cure all diseases.

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go to a rock concert and we're blasting our ears. We go home with older ears than when we went to the concert. Tell me the ideal protocol for a young person.

Speaker A

Here's a good point that I want to make for everybody. There are other things aging as well besides DNA damage. X-rays break your DNA, by the way, but I can guarantee it's aging you every time we go to a rock concert and we're blasting our ears. We go home with older ears than when we went to the concert.

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Give me specifics. What kind of other protocols will make me better? If you're not a young child in your 20s, three main meals a day is too much. Reduce your number of meals down to two and you'll be good. That's been shown in

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Tell me the ideal protocol for a young person.

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When you do the research, it's marketing food companies. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. That's a serial company marketing.

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Try to eat less than three meals a day. See if you can join a gym so you can lift weights. If your gym has a sauna, great. And move, move, move, move. So, walk upstairs. Don't take the elevator.

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to do it. The way you would do it is don't stop eating immediately. Just have a smaller meal each day or eat something that's filling like a lot of vegetables.

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Give me specifics. What kind of other protocols will make me better?

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little bit tired to my brain turned on. My body was making what are called ketones and the brain loves them. They fuel the brain. I was super awake. I was also more energetic.

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If you're not a young child in your 20s, three main meals a day is too much. Reduce your number of meals down to two and you'll be good. That's been shown in many clinical trials to have vast health benefits.

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I have a little structure here that I brought to show you this to explain it.

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I read that you need to eat six small meals in order to grow and get better.

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I have a small favor to ask you. I need you to subscribe to our channel. The more subscribers we have, the better and bigger guests we can bring and provide you more value through these conversations. And the full audio

Speaker A

When you do the research, it's marketing by food companies. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. That's a cereal company marketing.

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If someone's watching you for the first time, okay, and they have no clue who you are and what you do.

Speaker A

No way. It is. You were telling me about fasting. What most people do is they say, "I'm going to stop eating for a day and see what happens." Then they say, "This is too hard. I'm hungry." That's the wrong way to do it.

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Like a lot of them, right? And we're honored to have you here. Oh, thanks for having me on, Raj.

Speaker A

The way you would do it is don't stop eating immediately. Just have a smaller meal each day or eat something that's filling like a lot of vegetables.

Speaker A

Goodness. Well, the first part's easy. What I do is I'm a scientist. Work at a Harvard Medical School. Have been there for 25 years. And my goal in life is to improve the life of everybody on the planet in a big way. Not just a little

Speaker A

Perhaps some hot water. It's not just healthy to drink and cleans out your blood, but also it fills you up. You don't feel hungry. Once you get past three days, what happens is remarkable. I went from feeling a little bit hungry, a little bit tired to my brain turned on. My body was making what are called ketones and the brain loves them. They fuel the brain. I was super awake. I was also more energetic.

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started human clinical trials to reverse aging. And so I guess that sounds pretty interesting. If if I just heard that I might listen. Um but yeah, basically what what I want to do today is explain why do we age? How do we slow it down?

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Wow. How? Okay, explain from the basics. Let's say why do we age and how every body cell or every body organ is aging differently.

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Is it going to be possible? How far do you think we are? Oh, we're so much further than I thought we would be. So, I just turned 57, right? And uh so I'm getting I'm getting older, but I didn't think in my lifetime

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I have a little structure here that I brought to show you this to explain it.

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happening right now. I'm living my my job is in the future decades ahead of where I thought we'd be. I used to talk about age reversal as though it was something that would be for the next generation of humans in the future 22nd

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So, this is a piece of DNA. Okay. And actually, I have another model to show you guys this.

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managed to go from human cells to mice to monkeys and now we've got people multiple people now being treated with an the world's first age reversal technology in the eye. initially.

Speaker A

I have a small favor to ask you. I need you to subscribe to our channel. The more subscribers we have, the better and bigger guests we can bring and provide you more value through these conversations. And the full audio experience of this show is also available on Spotify where you can follow us and listen to the new episodes as well. Now, let's get into the episode.

Speaker A

just go to some some shop or some website and be like this is it. I want to take this or put this and then my eight starts getting reversed. One thing I find interesting is just the thought that you

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If someone's watching you for the first time, okay, and they have no clue who you are and what you do.

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100 uh into ourselves and maybe it would work. So, the the point I'm making is we're not going to go do that because we don't know how safe it is yet. We're testing that now.

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That's like most people watching this. No, no, of course. So many people know. My audience would definitely know you.

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know, years ago, and all of their diseases got cured, including including blindness. And then it worked in monkeys. And now hopefully we'll find out whether it it works and hopefully it will work in humans. But it exists. And

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Like a lot of them, right? And we're honored to have you here.

Speaker A

Wow. And we're already working on versions of the drug that are not just for the eye, but could be to treat the whole body like we did in mice. And when you when you do this in mice, they live longer,

Speaker A

Oh, thanks for having me on, Raj.

Speaker A

I'd be happy with a few years just to start with. But it's similar to the weight loss drugs from think back 10 years ago. Nobody thought it'd be that easy to lose weight. But then obesity in the US was

Speaker A

Thank you. But tell us if someone's watching you for the first time, what you do and why they should listen to you for the next hour.

Speaker A

The same thing is going to happen, I believe, with aging. Aging will be declared a medical condition or a disease. That's what my book lifespan talks about. And that doctors will one day probably for you, you're still young. You probably won't

Speaker A

Goodness. Well, the first part's easy. What I do is I'm a scientist. Work at Harvard Medical School. Have been there for 25 years. And my goal in life is to improve the life of everybody on the planet in a big way. Not just a little bit, not just one disease, but my goal is to potentially treat or cure all diseases, especially those that come with old age. So I work on aging and we are one of the leading labs to be able to reverse that process and we've just started human clinical trials to reverse aging.

Speaker A

got diseases, aches and pains, they're going blind. Hey, there's a lot Yeah. a lot to gain and not a lot to lose.

Speaker A

And so I guess that sounds pretty interesting. If I just heard that I might listen. Um, but yeah, basically what I want to do today is explain why do we age? How do we slow it down? How can we reverse it? And what's going to happen if this clinical trial works in humans? Is age reversal going to be possible for all of us one day?

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Then everything in my body, all my body organs, they have different age than my passport age than my actual age.

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Is it going to be possible? How far do you think we are?

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You're made up of over 20 trillion cells and each cell has a different age and and it's so my brain, my heart, my immune system, everybody, everything is of different age.

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Oh, we're so much further than I thought we would be. So, I just turned 57, right? And, uh, so I'm getting older, but I didn't think in my lifetime I would see the advances that we've already made. For me, when I go to my lab, so I open the door and there's, there's right now 40 kids doing research and they're doing amazing things. I have to pinch myself that this is actually happening right now. I'm living my job is in the future decades ahead of where I thought we'd be. I used to talk about age reversal as though it was something that would be for the next generation of humans in the future 22nd century.

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age. And vice versa, you can age slower. And even identical twins with the same DNA can be 10 years apart in their actual biological age.

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M, but we figured it out about 10 years ago that we could safely reinstall the software of cells and they become young again essentially permanently until they get old again. And, uh, in the 10 years we've managed to go from human cells to mice to monkeys and now we've got people, multiple people now being treated with the world's first age reversal technology in the eye initially.

Speaker A

So which one's making me sicker? We'd have to analyze. I could do a blood test and have a look or even a cheek swab and have a look at how you're doing over there's a clock that's in every

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So it, it's happening. It's not just theoretical. It's literally under FDA approval being tested right now in patients.

Speaker A

Absolutely. That's almost certainly happening already. Even a baby will have organs that are different ages.

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Wow. How far have you, what do you think, like at what point someone like me or someone who's watching can just go to some shop or some website and be like, this is it. I want to take this or put this and then my age starts getting reversed.

Speaker A

from it if your heart is older. And uh and that's one of the reasons we need to work on aging. If you have an old heart or your mother does, we can target her heart and make her heart young.

Speaker A

One thing I find interesting is just the thought that you and I could go into my lab right now. Not that we would do this because we want to be very safe, but it would be theoretically possible for you and me to go into my lab and inject this drug ER100 into ourselves and maybe it would work.

Speaker A

Yeah. Well, there is a clock in every cell. Uh and we used to think it was uh the mutations, the defects in the DNA, but actually we we learned that the DNA itself can be rejuvenated. So the DNA

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So, the point I'm making is we're not going to go do that because we don't know how safe it is yet. We're testing that now.

Speaker A

their parents cells. But then there's a reset switch. So, the point is we we used to think it was DNA and the mutations, the defects in your DNA. It's it's almost certainly not that. It's something else, but it's

Speaker A

Yeah. But it might already exist. The ability for us to reverse the age in our bodies. If we take ER100, this drug stands for epigenetic reversal. We'll talk about it later, but this drug, um, we gave it to mice, uh, like I said, you know, years ago, and all of their diseases got cured, including blindness. And then it worked in monkeys. And now hopefully we'll find out whether it works and hopefully it will work in humans. But it exists. And if it works in people now this year, it's probably only a few years away from being a drug that doctors could use.

Speaker A

so what is that what is that I'm glad you asked Raj the information theory of aging says it's not DNA it's not the genome it's something called the epigenome so the epiggenome is the control systems that read the DNA Okay. So, a little bit

Speaker A

Wow. And we're already working on versions of the drug that are not just for the eye, but could be to treat the whole body like we did in mice. And when you do this in mice, they live longer, they get younger. And so I wouldn't yet say, of course, we're all going to live 100% longer remaining lifespan.

Speaker A

Yeah. Uh and those little chemicals. I I have a little structure here that I brought to show you this to explain it.

Speaker A

I'd be happy with a few years just to start with. But it's similar to the weight loss drugs from think back 10 years ago. Nobody thought it'd be that easy to lose weight. But then obesity in the US was declared a disease. And we have drugs now. In fact, we have pills that are as good now as the injectables.

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Every cell. But it's wrapped up very tightly microscopically. And if you put all your cells end to end, it would go to the moon and back eight times. It's a lot of chemical, but it's very thin and you can wrap it up

Speaker A

The same thing is going to happen, I believe, with aging. Aging will be declared a medical condition or a disease. That's what my book Lifespan talks about. And that doctors will one day probably for you, you're still young. You probably won't want to try it for another 5 to 10 years. I wouldn't rush it. But for those people who are 80 or 90, what have they got to lose really? If it's, if it looks safe, their body's deteriorating, they got diseases, aches and pains, they're going blind. Hey, there's a lot, yeah, a lot to gain and not a lot to lose.

Speaker A

like a spiral staircase. Yeah. One strand is running up, this one's going up, and this one's running down.

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True. When you say aging, yeah, right? My passport has one age, which I...

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you've got two stairs. And now you can split the cell. Now you got two cells.

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All right? So this is DNA. M and we used to think that changes to the steps were the cause of aging. What I'm saying is in my theory, you've got your DNA is largely intact. In fact, if you

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take a 100-year-old cell, you can make a young organism again, you can even make a young mouse out of a cancer cell. It's the DNA is not as big of a problem as he thought.

Speaker A

Okay. Okay. So, what's the epiggenome? The epiggenome are the control systems that that package the DNA.

Speaker A

So DNA is not just floating around six feet. It's wrapped up tightly in little bundles. And actually I have another model to show you guys this.

Speaker A

Okay. So in this model the DNA is blue and it's wrapped around these tennis balls. These are proteins. So the DNA gets packaged. But so you can see that now the DNA which is this blue velcro is it's not 6 ft. It's now much much more

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tightly packaged. Now there's a problem once you've made the tight package in the cell.

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How do you read the gene? How do you read the DNA? Cuz you have to get at it to read it.

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So what the cell does, it says, "All right, a gene that needs to be turned on. Let's say a gene for making a nerve cell.

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Let's turn that one on, but keep the liver cell closed because you don't want the liver to to be expressed." What it does is it unwraps these proteins so that now you'll even take them off a bit like

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this. Now the cell can read that gene. Okay, that DNA is accessible whereas these other ones are closed. So this is open what we call chromatin. Open chromatin and then this over here is closed chromatin. Gene is on in the

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middle gene is off on the left. That's the epiggenome. Okay. And every cell has a slightly different pattern of open and bundled.

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Open, bundle, open, bundle. There's about 20,000 genes. Different patterns. I think of it sometimes like a piano. We all have the same notes. Every cell has the same keys, but the way they're played, if each gene is a note, the cell

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plays beautiful music, but differently for each, but it's the same instrument in every cell.

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So, what I'm telling you is the blue, this DNA is not changing with aging.

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Your mother has the same DNA essentially that she had when she was a baby, but the way it's packaged changes, right? Genes that were once open and working great and making the cell healthy, they start to get closed like

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this. And genes that should stay closed start to open up. Let's see if I can open up this one. All right. So, let's say this this protein flies away.

Speaker A

This tennis ball. Yeah. Here we go. Now, now your your mother's DNA has lost one of these proteins. and a gene that is for the liver is now coming on in her brain. And your her brain cells are forgetting how to be

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brain cells. They're starting to be a little bit more like liver cells. And that's what we see. This is what we call changes to the epiggenome.

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Okay? And another way to think of it is epigenetic noise. Okay? When you're young, it's perfect. When you're old, this whole thing gets unrang unraveled, tangled. It's a huge mess.

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Okay. So, we discovered this in and published it in 2023 in the journal cell. It was 13 years of work. We tested this. Do you want to know how we tested it?

Speaker A

Well, we in the first 10 years of my lab, uh, we tested in in human cells and that wasn't that difficult.

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But then we need to test it in a in an animal. So, how do you test whether this causes aging? We needed to do this in a mouse.

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Yeah, like that. Okay, we need to do this in a young mouse. And if we're right and we do this in a young mouse, what's going to happen to the mouse?

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It's going to age. It's going to age. So, we did that. The way we did it was we now now this gets interesting. We distracted the proteins that control the epiggenome because they they don't just wrap the DNA,

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okay? They actually repair DNA. So we were creating a few cuts in the DNA. So here's this is basically blow up of the DNA.

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We would cut cut it right through the yellow. And these proteins now they say, "Oh my goodness, we have to go repair the DNA." So they they move. They go to the broken DNA.

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They help repair it. They wrap it up again. And then if all goes well, they go back to where they came from.

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But here's the problem. We noticed that they don't all go back. Sometimes sometimes they get lost. They're gone.

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So now the gene that should be wrapped up is now exposed and the cell is reading the wrong gene.

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So we did this to a mouse. We cut the DNA for 2 weeks when they were young.

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And then we waited cuz nothing happened. Nothing immediately happened. The mice were happy. They're running around the cage. Similar if you got an X-ray.

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X-rays break your your DNA, by the way. Okay. Do you feel anything? No. No. So, broken DNA doesn't hurt, but I can guarantee it's aging you because every X-ray is aging me.

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Absolutely. There's no question. We did this to the mouse, not by X-rays, but we used a very precise cutting enzyme.

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And we did that for 2 weeks. A little bit more severe than an X-ray.

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And we waited and we waited. We waited. And 10 months later, we looked at the mice and it's now a very famous photo on the internet. The brother and the sister are next to each other. The brother was

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not treated. Healthy, shiny coat, running around the cage, black coat. Uh the other one hunched back, wrinkled skin gray uh not moving around, and couldn't remember anything. in just two weeks.

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No, it took months after, but the twoe treatment was enough to to start this process of unraveling that it was like dominoes led led to aging. We got aging.

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Uh and that was probably the hardest experiment we've ever done. It was 40 40 scientists, 13 years of work, but we got the result that the theory predicted that unraveling the DNA leads to aging in an animal. And the reason it took actually

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uh 13 years was a lot of scientists said an old looking mouse is not an old mouse.

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It could be gray for other reasons. Yeah. So it took us about a decade to satisfy our peers, our other scientists who are trying to disprove us that these truly were old mice. So how did we do it? We looked at their tissues. We

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looked at so you know hisystologology. We cut the tissue. We looked at it. We gave it to other scientists to analyze experts in the eye, the liver, the brain. And they sent us back the results and they said, "This one's an

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old mouse." And we said, "No, it's not. It's the same age as the other one. it's just been accelerated. Um, we also could use the clock. Do you remember how we talked about we can measure your biological age by looking at cells? We

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could do that with mice, too. And those mice that we did this unraveling, they were 50% older than their twins born on the same day.

Speaker A

Wow. But you only tried it on mice or did you tried it on monkeys as well because monkeys are the closest to human beings, right? Well, so here was the question that I had about 10 years ago.

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Do we keep studying age acceleration or do we do what I really want to do with my life?

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Take it away because if you can give aging, maybe you can take it away. And so we stopped working on age acceleration so much that we use it as a tool to make mice with gray hair to study gray hair and skin aging. But at

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that point I said, "All right, now let's figure out if we can take an old epiggenome that's all like messed up and maybe there's a way to get it to go back to being young again like that.

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Can you reverse aging?" And that's crazy. How would that be possible? Theoretically, it made no sense that it might be possible.

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But we know that embryos get young, they can reset. Remember I said after the first week of age, you can go back in time.

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So my guess, my hunch was that there's a reset switch in the cell. We just need to find the switch. We didn't want to repeat what was done in 2000, early 2000. But I do want to mention the guy's

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name. I was just in in Japan, actually. Um and so he's a legend there. Uh Professor Shina Yamanaka, he came up with four genes.

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You can use more genes. You can use 10, 20 genes, but he needed at least four genes uh to make those cells go back to being stem cells.

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So we had the idea, why don't we try just a few of them? But no one thought to do that because the Nobel committee and Yamanaka said, you need all four for it to work. I said, "Well, let's try

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three or two or one. Maybe that would help. Maybe we could go partially back to being young, but not so much that we get cancer and lose the identity." Now, remember, we want the cell to get their identity back.

Speaker A

Yeah. Not to lose it. Yeah. That was the trick. Yamaka lost the identity. We want to do the opposite.

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So, how did we do that? We decided to take away one of the genes. We took away a gene called CMIC which is short we call it M for short M and the reason we chose that that one is

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that it's a cancercausing gene. Seemic is we know causes cancer so we didn't want that anyway. So one put three of the Yamanaka genes into human old human cells OSK for short which are now legendary genes uh for this treatment. And what he

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found in the next week was that those cells went back about 80% 75 80% to being young. Got their identity back. They remembered how to be skin cells. They grew better. They were more robust, healthier, but they never

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ever ever got to be stem cells because we didn't have the M the Mick to create the stem cells. Now, that was in in human cells. That was in the year 2017, right? It's a long time ago.

Speaker A

Yeah. But the next question that's really interesting that one decided to do was what if we do this in an animal?

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Will it heal it or will it kill it or hurt it? We don't want to hurt animals, but we wanted to test if it could help the animal. And one decided to do the eye.

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I thought that was a crazy idea. I thought, let's do the liver. The liver is easy.

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But the eye, you kidding me? That's complicated. So he figured out how to do that. He put Actually, I have a model here to show you. He put the genes, the three genes inside a virus like particle. This is like one of these

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things. It is a a capsule with a membrane with proteins. I mean, you might have seen pictures of this. It's like any any virus.

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Yeah. But inside is this protein pocket. And now you can put your OSK age reversal genes in there and you can make trillions of these in the lab, put them in a syringe and inject them anywhere you want. And the

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virus will infect the cells of the body. If you put it in the eye, it'll go into the eye cells. If you put it into the vein, it'll go to your liver and your lungs. And when it gets inside the cell,

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it opens up and delivers the DNA. So that's how we get DNA into cells.

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That's how we cure genetic diseases currently. It's called an AAV. And there are different flavors. There's ones that scientists use for the eye, some that are engineered for the liver, different flavors. We used one called AAV2, which is designed to uh hit the retina. M

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and one Cheng's idea, the brilliant idea was let's see if we can make damaged optic nerves heal again.

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M why? Because all animals don't heal their eye. In fact, if I hurt your eye, you would not regrow your optic nerve.

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Yeah. Same with your spine. If if you break your back, you're not going to walk again.

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But very young animals, even very young humans, can regrow their nerves. So, one said, "If we can take them back to being like a baby again, we'll see that the animal can regrow the optic nerve." And uh he texted me a result. When was it

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2018? And he sent me a photo of a nerve. The first one was dead. So, a little bit of color, but mostly it was black. He said, "Do do you see that?" I went, "Yeah." He goes, "Now look at this one."

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The next text was a beautiful regrown optic nerve that regrrew within 2 weeks back to being young and fresh again. It it had regrown and this had never been done before at this this level. And Wang said, "Do you see what I see?" And I

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said, "I think I see it." And he said, "What do you see?" And I said, "I see the future." And that picture of that that nerve is now flipped vertically and is in on the wall of the house at home

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because that was a moment that I'll never forget. I get tingles in my body.

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I'm getting them now just thinking about that moment because that was the first evidence that safe age reversal was possible in mammals in complex organisms just in the eye. But we knew it if it worked in the eye it should work

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anywhere. We didn't choose the eye because it would work better. So you're telling me a damaged eye, damaged optic nerve.

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Yeah. She's got completely reversed and got back to the repaired version. So it if this works, then what it possibly means is a blind person can see again.

Speaker A

Well, what I can say as a scientist is we've cured blindness in mice. We've taken old mice that just can't see and then two weeks later they can see perfectly again perfectly like a young mouse. So it works in mice. That's a

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fact. The other fact is if you have a monkey with a damaged optic nerve, we can improve their vision in some cases almost to normal what they were before and now we're testing it in humans. So I think theoretically

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I would say most likely 80% 90% it will work in humans because our eyes are the same as monkeys. They're just a little bit bigger. The same same as the monkey eye and it worked really well in the

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monkey. And we can see that those nerves are getting younger. It's not just because they regrow from the damage but we can measure their age. Remember we can now measure the clock and the nerves got young again.

Speaker A

And we didn't just use damaged nerves. We tested glaucoma which is a leading cause of blindness in India. It's very prevalent pressure in the eye. There's 50 million people uh globally. uh it's one of the largest causes of blindness

Speaker A

and we've cured that in mice and we hope in these studies now in people that we'll be able to greatly improve the vision of glaucoma patients as well and wow that's but this is just the beginning we we are

Speaker A

just doing the eye because it's a good place to start it's a good place to put a virus and you did that in humans very recently right you did the first child yeah how many months ago um a few months ago.

Speaker A

Okay. And till when we have to wait for the results or well this is where I have to get a little bit um uh scientific and and FDA uh under the regulation.

Speaker A

Yeah. FDA approved. So it's an FDA approved study to test safety. Mhm. And so the the ultimate outcome of this study in terms of the FDA is did it hurt the patient? Did it spread out the eye?

Speaker A

Like did it go anywhere else? Did it cause inflammation? Did it cause a cancer? That's why we're doing this study and we're starting very carefully.

Speaker A

The first patient that we saw dosed um just got a very little dose, not a big one, and we just waited for a month to see what would happen. So now more people have been treated and we're waiting. But I know what you're asking.

Speaker A

Will we know this year if it works and I could say between friends? Possibly because every patient is their own experiment.

Speaker A

You measure their eyesight before treatment during and actually for another 5 years. So, if it works, even though it's a small number of patients, it's only 18 people, we might see if it's working this year.

Speaker A

Wow. I I hope it works out for everyone because this is going to be this is this is going to be one of the biggest this is going to make one of the biggest impacts in human life like all around

Speaker A

the world because we could treat diseases. If we could just make people more healthy, like they don't have to suffer through all the things, all the things while they're even alive. Forget like coming back from 90 to being 50

Speaker A

again, but at 90, can they at least feel and live like a a 40year-old, that is going to be incredible, right?

Speaker A

Yeah. It's it's really worth pondering because we have to throw away our our misconceptions. The first misconception is that we're treating aging and that we're just trying to make frail people look better or feel better. This, if it works, could be a treatment for

Speaker A

almost every disease known to humans. M we can improve in my lab multiple scerosis, wound healing, brain aging, so memory loss, uh the kidney, the heart, the muscles, liver. There's no part of the body that could not theoretically be

Speaker A

improved treated healed repaired rejuvenated, restored by this technology. It's not just aging. It's all diseases. Even young children if they hurt themselves and they need to rejuvenate and and fix something that the body doesn't normally heal. Yes, lizards can regrow parts of their body

Speaker A

and salamanders can regrow a whole arm. Maybe we can do that for ourselves one day too.

Speaker A

But but explain while you're explaining I've written like few words and I want to go deeper in that. Okay. Like the most most basic thing is he said this is there in every human being right and if you cut these yellow part that's like

Speaker A

damaging and we are damaging uh we are damaging on an everyday basis we're damaging 20 things maybe 20,000 things on an everyday basis in our life right uh every day you will get at least 20 trillion of those breaks in your body

Speaker A

so these the DNA is breaking in my body. Oh yes. Right. And that is causing the aging.

Speaker A

Why is it breaking? Oh well. So why why am I getting older and why you versus me? Let's say there are two different people, right?

Speaker A

In your body this this breakdown is happening probably let's say in a different way and in mine is happening faster or slower or I don't know why why is we all are born same right?

Speaker A

Well partly it's depends on our parents. If our parents had good genes to repair DNA and stop breaking, um, then we have an advantage. People that live a long time have less broken DNA and have a much more stable epiggenome, so less

Speaker A

epigenetic noise. And whales that live the longest of all mammals, they have low DNA damage and their epiggenome, those structures stay stable. Um, but between you and me, let's say, um, let's say I'm aging faster than you, okay?

Speaker A

Let's let's say we're twins, right? Okay. And I I obviously don't look as young as you. So, what what what's wrong with my body?

Speaker A

Well, one thing that might be different is that the the enzymes that mop up free radicals. Um, so I'm drinking coffee, right? It's it's got free radicals is coffee has quite a lot of hydrogen peroxide in it. And you're drinking,

Speaker A

let's say, you're drinking coffee. I think that's water. Mhm. But maybe I don't repair my broken DNA faster as fast as you do. And that means that these these proteins that hold the DNA in place, uh, they don't get

Speaker A

distracted as quickly. Um, the other thing might happen is that the these these proteins that go away in your body, maybe they find their way back better than in my body for whatever reason. There's a better signal to come

Speaker A

back. But why why mine are probably better and yours are not? Well, there's lots of different reasons.

Speaker A

Uh, one is that um there are signals that tell proteins where to go in the cell.

Speaker A

I'll give you an example. Okay, this is a tennis ball, but let's imagine it's a protein.

Speaker A

Proteins get modified. They don't just get folded. Okay, there's a folded amino acid sequence.

Speaker A

All of our proteins get modified uh and I've got this little thing. This represents what we call acetilation. It's okay.

Speaker A

Uh it gets attached to typically an amino acid called lysine. And now that this has been acetilated, it will behave differently. It will be active and will help repair the DNA and it will go and fold up the DNA better

Speaker A

because it's got this attached. And maybe your body puts these on more frequently than my body does to make this protein more active.

Speaker A

That's a difference between people. But yeah, go ahead. You were saying something. Well, there's another big difference that is not genetic.

Speaker A

It's actually as important as the genetic parent component. And this is the good news.

Speaker A

The way you live your life impacts the pace of aging and how much DNA damage there is. Right? So, if you don't get a lot of X-rays, you don't fly a lot and get hit by cosmic rays, um you don't get

Speaker A

CT scans. Okay, that's one thing that would give you an advantage. If you eat a lot of colored plants, uh I call this xenormis, but basically Serena uh says eat colored food, eat the rainbow.

Speaker A

Colored food has chemicals that help repair DNA, that help proteins bind up the epiggenome. And these chemicals we get from our food supply.

Speaker A

Now, if we eat a a regular lettuce from California that's that's not or I don't know where in India they grow terrible food, but if it's just grown mass market and it's not colorful like a what you call iceberg lettuce,

Speaker A

that's not going to have a lot of these what we call polyphenol chemicals. But if you eat gee, it would be the best. So green tea matcha is full with it. Um there's a bit in red wine, but we

Speaker A

don't like alcohol anymore. Another good one would be dark green leafy vegetables. Um spinach.

Speaker A

Anything that's got a lot of color will have chemicals that like bell peppers and stuff that help.

Speaker A

Bell peppers are great. The other thing that helps plants become colorful is adversity stress.

Speaker A

So if you eat a great healthy plant-based diet, not not you don't get from from meat, by the way. So my diet and Serena's is is plant focused for that reason. It's healthier. And these chemicals come from plants, not from

Speaker A

animals. That's an advantage that we can all have. And then there's the usual things, running, right? Moving, fasting.

Speaker A

These also boost the activity of these proteins that help repair DNA and help bind up the epiggenome and stabilize it.

Speaker A

So this is some of the things my lab has done over the last 25 years is to connect what we live, how we live, what we eat, how we move to this process of aging.

Speaker A

What I'll come to activities later but before we go to colored plants, what is there in colored plants? like why specific why specific very dark colored plants are better not the normal colored plants.

Speaker A

Okay. So xen when I look at two plants they look same to me like a lettuce look lettuce or a spinach would look like a spinach.

Speaker A

Yeah. The darker spinach will be better for me. That's what you're trying to say.

Speaker A

Yes. Yes. And and why why so this comes to my theory called xenormmesis. Okay.

Speaker A

It's not just my theory. I came up with it with a colleague of mine who I want to mention Conrad Howitz. So in 2006 we published this theory and the idea came from the observation that we couldn't couldn't explain this observation with

Speaker A

current theory at the time in the pharmaceutical world almost all drugs are based on plant molecules.

Speaker A

Aspirin for example a lot of the cancer drugs these are plant originally plant molecules. Even metformin which is for diabetes very popular in India.

Speaker A

It comes from a plant uh which is goat r it's called in Europe. So why are these plant molecules so good for us? It makes no sense. The plants don't care about us do they? I don't think so.

Speaker A

Xeno hermesis hypothesis says that when plants need to survive too much shade or not enough water in the case of grapes where they dry out right they try to survive the plants make these chemicals many of which are colored

Speaker A

they have color not all of them but many of them colored and they make them to survive these are plant stress survival molecules polyphenols a polyphenol if you're wondering A phenol is a chemical ring.

Speaker A

Do can you make it here? Yeah, sure. Anything. Yeah, there's a bit of chemistry lesson.

Speaker A

Yeah, please. Uh, so phenolic a phenolic ring looks like this. Okay. Okay. And the all stands for like an an O, an alcohol on there. Well, just an a a polyphenol.

Speaker A

Okay. So, this is a what's called a phenolic ring. Mhm. And you can make chemicals out of this structure. Plants make a lot of things out of it. There's one in uh easiest one to draw is in grapes uh called

Speaker A

resveratrol and it it looks like this. These are, if you haven't done chemistry, what what's at these joints here are carbons.

Speaker A

Mhm. Okay. And they all have a little hydrogen on there. But basically, this is two phenols connected by a bridge.

Speaker A

Mhm. And this is resveratrol. Plants make this molecule, a polyphenol, phenol, two fallen phenols, when they want to survive, when they get stressed. If there's not enough light, not enough water or even infection by a fungus, they make a lot of this,

Speaker A

especially grapes, but most plants make this. And when you drink red wine, you're getting a lot of this.

Speaker A

If there just wasn't so much alcohol, it'd be even healthier. But you can buy rveratrol. I've been taking resveratrol powder every morning for the last probably 20 years because I truly believe that resveratrol is one of the polyphenols that can slow down aging.

Speaker A

Why? Because one of the proteins that controls the epiggenome which we study called one gets activated by this molecule. So when I'm eating rveratrol in the morning, my body gets filled with it. I eat about a gram. So it's a lot.

Speaker A

It floats through the body, gets inside the cell, and it makes my epigenetic regulator more active, so I'm not going to age so quickly is the theory. That's why. But you can eat stressed plants, which make these molecules.

Speaker A

Stressed plants. Stressed plants are good for you. Colored ones. Yeah. So, because they're stressed, they're trying to survive.

Speaker A

And that the stuff that they're making a little thing inside them which helps them make which helps them survive for longer. That is the stuff that we need.

Speaker A

Mhm. It helps us survive as well. It does. And why is is a good question.

Speaker A

Why would they make us survive better? My theory is it's because we get a signal when our food supply is going to run out. Our bodies will hunker down and try to survive and be stronger. So these chemicals signal human adversity in the

Speaker A

future. M and by eating rveratrol every morning I'm tricking my body into thinking that food supply might run out.

Speaker A

Big famine is coming. Exactly. Famine is coming. Exactly. Yeah. This is I never knew that science is going to be this interesting for me.

Speaker A

Okay. So So that's why you want to eat colored plants and that's why it's make it's making us better. So that was the first part.

Speaker A

The second is what's happening inside my body as I sit here right now. Okay, I'm I'm on this chair right now and this is making me older, right? As I'm just sitting here.

Speaker A

Yes. Why? Like what's happening inside my body? What's happening inside each of my cells which is making me older?

Speaker A

Well, there's a few things that are happening. Um there are at least 12 major causes of aging. Um, I just happen to think that what what we're talking about here with the epiggenome is the is one of the primary major ones.

Speaker A

Yeah. But some of the things that are happening are the ends of your chromosomes, the DNA. If this is the end of a chromosome, it's getting chewed away slowly. Every time the cell divides, it gets shorter.

Speaker A

So, these are like fuses that get shorter. Uh, that happens particularly in cells that divide a lot like your blood cells and your liver. That's one thing. Um, your stem cells are getting older. The one thing though that you can't stop is

Speaker A

this DNA breakage. This is happening even if even if I put you in a lead box at the bottom of the ocean with no X-rays, no cosmic rays, DNA still breaks. Why? Because during the copying process, remember how I said DNA copies

Speaker A

by unzipping this down the middle. Cut it down the middle. Now you get two strands.

Speaker A

Yeah. As you do that to the six foot long piece, inevitably it's going to break once or twice every time. It's weak.

Speaker A

You can't stop it. So the process of being alive is causing DNA breaks. So you you cannot stop that.

Speaker A

But can I slow that down? Yes. By eating the right foods, by exercising, by fasting.

Speaker A

Okay. Uh by doing all those good things will slow down that process. Okay. You said slowing down comes with let's say eating colorful plants. That's one one way of doing it. What's there in meat? Why? Because meat has lot of

Speaker A

protein. Meat has a lot of good things. A lot of people will argue that you should start eating liver and whatever.

Speaker A

I don't Yeah, but that's not going to give you longevity. It's going to give you, you know, some some strength and you're going to build muscle a bit bit faster.

Speaker A

Not a lot faster, but a bit. But that's not longevity. Here's one way to think of it.

Speaker A

There's adversity mode, right? So, the body thinks that it's stressed. There's this and then there's abundance mode.

Speaker A

Lots of meat, just killed a mammoth, lots of food, energy, fat, protein. This is this abundance mode accelerates aging. And adversity mode, as we've talked about, slows this down, protects the body. So, if you want to be in abundance mode and grow big and be

Speaker A

Mr. universe. Live this lifestyle. If you want to live a long time, be in adversity. Fast, eat plants, run.

Speaker A

That's signals of adversity to the body to preserve the body. Preservation, growth. Or what you can do, what I what I think is probably the best for especially for someone young like you, do both.

Speaker A

a few days a week, eat protein, work out, be abundant, but have some adversity, too. Sauna, running, fasting, that's also good.

Speaker A

So, this applies in every every aspect of life. If I am making myself and my body stressed and trying to signal that I'm in adversity, then it's going to help me live longer.

Speaker A

Yes. Now, we haven't done a human trial, so yes is the answer to all of the evidence in animals points to it being true in humans as well. But if you take a mouse and you feed it resveratrol or

Speaker A

you feed it uh other polyphenols, yes, it will live longer and be healthier in general. It can be resistant to obesity. Even we we in 2006 we published resveratrol given to fat mice makes them healthy as healthy and

Speaker A

long lived as thin mice lean mice. Um so yes you you can eat these molecules and get the benefits of adversity without actually having to be hungry. But you might say well then why do I have to fast if just eating plants is good

Speaker A

enough? I don't think it's good enough. What we found in my lab looking at these animals is if you do both, if you don't eat three meals a day or if you're a mouse, you don't constantly eat and you take

Speaker A

these molecules as well in the diet, you get double the effect. So that's why in my lifestyle, I focus on plants, I exercise, I try to do, you know, hot, cold as much as I can, and I'm taking

Speaker A

polyphenols every day. Uh, that's my belief. It's not proven yet, but all the science points to doing all of these things together. They're additive.

Speaker A

Give me specifics. The way you gave me specific of how colorful plants will make you better. What kind of other protocols will make me better? Will it help me age slower? You you said running. You said so how much running?

Speaker A

You said sauna or cold. Like how much of that? Like it's so many things right now. So, this is why I restarted my podcast and this is a shameless plug for my podcast. It's called Lifespan because I get these questions every day

Speaker A

is what are the details. How much should I fast? What should I eat? If I'm a woman, is it different than being a man?

Speaker A

Yeah. So, my my podcast has a lot of that. Okay. So, if you have a little bit of time, what I know you've watched some of it, so I appreciate that.

Speaker A

But we we can cover some of it today, but it's re it really takes many days of listening to know all the details. But there are some some general rules. Let's start with fasting. Is that okay?

Speaker A

Yeah. Okay. So, fasting uh if you're not a young child, let's say in your 20s, three main meals a day is too much, how many meals a day do you eat?

Speaker A

Three. Three. Do you think you could get away with two? Easily. cuz you can eat the same calories just reduce the window of eating.

Speaker A

That's been shown many in many clinical trials even in humans to have vast health benefits.

Speaker A

I read that you need to eat small six small meals in order to I mean grow and get better and yeah who told you that so much of like internet chatter just gave me it's wrong. That's old school

Speaker A

nutritional advice. Okay, that didn't understand longevity science. The idea was don't stress your pancreas, have a little bit of food, snack.

Speaker A

Actually, a lot of that, I hate to admit it. When you do the research, it's marketing food companies. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.

Speaker A

That's a cereal company marketing breakfast cereal. No way. It is. All my life I've believed breakfast is.

Speaker A

In fact, I've made certain changes in the last four or five years to make sure that I I eat breakfast no matter what because breakfast is going to help me do so many things.

Speaker A

Well, if you love breakfast, that's fine, but you should have a almost no dinner in that case.

Speaker A

It's what you want to do is have a period of fasting. So, no food.

Speaker A

So, you can sleep. You're not eating while you're sleeping. Yeah. But if you're eating first thing in the morning, then you'll want to finish eating in the early afternoon so that you get that big stretch of no food. Why? Because it's going to do

Speaker A

this. It's going to turn on our anti-aging natural defenses against DNA damage and this epigenetic change.

Speaker A

If you're always fed, if your body always has sugar and protein, it's going to be in abundance mode, not adversity mode. And we know what abundance mode does. It speeds it up.

Speaker A

What's the most important meal then? Well, it depends on the person. We have different chrono types. Some of us like to eat in the morning. Some like to exercise. I'm not a morning person. I don't like or need food in the morning.

Speaker A

So, for me, I I've been skipping breakfast most of my life. And my father, who's now 87 in perfect health, same. That's the Sinclair's. But you might love breakfast. You wake up, you're hungry, you want to eat, you want

Speaker A

to exercise, but you may not feel hungry at night. So, you can choose. But I I do want everyone to consider that this old idea of eating constantly through the day and snacking is actually a marketing ploy.

Speaker A

You know, you've just you've just ruined my belief right now, which is I I eat very heavy breakfast and I eat very heavy dinner. Lunch probably I'll skip or maybe have like small thing.

Speaker A

That's it. But jeez, Raj, we're going to have to measure your biological age. Now I'm worried.

Speaker A

Like the two things that you told me, these are the two things which I'm doing very Man, you might be 35 for all we know.

Speaker A

Don't don't worry. Don't don't tell me. We We can fix you. It Here's a good point that I want to make for everybody.

Speaker A

If you're nervous, and I can tell I just hit a nerve. Yeah. It's never too late. Like we have really good protocols now to slow down aging and soon to be reversing it, I believe.

Speaker A

So, don't worry. It's It's never too late. and you're very young, so you'll be fine. I do want to stress though something that a lot of people don't think about is we mentioned that we're we're getting DNA damage all the time.

Speaker A

Now, there are other things that that can accelerate aging as well besides DNA damage.

Speaker A

Since we published our work in 2023, we and others have shown that any major damage to a cell can accelerate its age, not just DNA damage. For example, if you pinched the nerves like we did for the eye, those nerves got old very quickly

Speaker A

by years, just within days, they went years old. And that's in a mouse. So that's like 20, 30 years in a human. I think that every time we go to a rock concert and we're blasting our ears, we

Speaker A

go home with older ears than when we went to the concert. It makes sense, right? Because now when you get to 60, you're losing your hearing. Why? Because your ears have gotten older faster than someone that lives in the countryside. What I think

Speaker A

is happening is every time we stress a cell beyond what it's capable of handling, these proteins that control the epiggenome, the the genetic readers, they move around to help repair the problem and they don't all go back to

Speaker A

where they came from. And so if you could make sure that this structure here stays stable and not unravels any time, you could live hundreds of years in fact. And that's why whales live hundreds of years, we think, is they

Speaker A

stabilize this structure whereas we humans, we're damaging ourselves and they fly away. Some animals only live a couple of years and some only for a few days. And uh so in a mouse, if you damage the DNA, these structures just

Speaker A

fall apart. They're not very strong. It's easy to to actually damage a mouse cell. And if anyone has seen me at a rock concert, I've got earplugs in. If I'm walking down the street and a loud noise, I now have my fingers in my ears.

Speaker A

I know I look stupid, like, why is this guy? It's just an ambulance, but I truly believe that these loud noises do age you, particularly your ears. And you know what you get? If you drink a lot of alcohol or or smoke, you

Speaker A

get you get cancer and other issues. I don't smoke or I don't drink, so that's I'm safe there. I love that.

Speaker A

Well then I've never tried all of that. Then you're probably younger than than your actual chronological age, we call it. So, that's good. You're doing all those right things. Now, now we just need to reduce your number of meals down

Speaker A

to two and you'll be good. Okay. Let's go back to fasting. Actually, we deviated. Yeah. You were you were telling me about fasting.

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. So, what what I talk about on my podcast is how to how to practice fasting and and it not be a real problem.

Speaker A

What most people do is they say, "I'm going to stop eating for a day and see what happens." Then they say, "This is too hard. I'm hungry. I can't think. I've got brain fog." That's the wrong way to do it.

Speaker A

The way you would do it is, let's say you love uh dinner, but you want to stop eating dinner or just eat early.

Speaker A

Don't stop eating immediately. Just have a smaller meal each day or eat something that's filling. A lot of vegetables.

Speaker A

Yeah. And fill your stomach up with tea instead if it's at night, not caffeinated, but perhaps some hot water.

Speaker A

Serena and I are always with water. Hot water. We just got off a plane from Tokyo. We were always saying, "We need hot water. We want hot water." Cuz we're It's not just healthy to drink and cleans out your blood, but also it fills

Speaker A

you up. You don't feel hungry. So that's one hack for fasting is to fill yourself up with liquids. Um, another hack is uh to do it slowly. And then another hack actually is just get over it. You might

Speaker A

feel a little bit hungry, but so what? It's not going to kill you. You know, I've been able to fast for I went without a meal really for 2 and 1/2 weeks uh fairly recently. Last month I did that. And yeah, there were times

Speaker A

where I thought, yeah, I should just go to the cupboard and eat all everything that's in there. I wanted to, but you your mind is very strong, right?

Speaker A

Everybody has that power to resist going into the fridge. It's not easy. We all want to do it, but you have to think, do I really want to achieve this or am I going to give in to my animal instincts?

Speaker A

That's that's one of the keys to fasting is don't give in to that quick fix. It's worth it. And if you fast actually for over 3 days, then you start to get into this new phase called chaper chaperone

Speaker A

mediated autophagy. Have you ever heard of that? Never. All right. So, autophagy is autoagi, self-eing.

Speaker A

And our cells are always eating themselves. When there's a damaged protein, let's say this thing unfolds um or gets gets too many of these attached in the wrong place, the cell can detect it and send it to be destroyed and

Speaker A

recycled. Proteins will get turned into amino acids. Amino acids rebuilt into protein. That's autophagy.

Speaker A

It happens all the time, but it happens much more when we're when we're hungry.

Speaker A

And it happens even deeper cleansing after 3 days of not eating. And that will get rid of the really old crappy proteins. So these days I try to do a three or a 5 day fast probably once every few months partly for autophagy

Speaker A

partly because it helps me drink water stay the same weight and and live life well and drink water.

Speaker A

So for 3 days you drink only water and I'm definitely drinking all the time. Um if it's a strict fast I won't eat anything. If it I'm going for a few weeks, I will eat some vegetables, small amounts like a carrot, some celery, uh

Speaker A

but not a lot. Not a lot. Just enough food to fill my little tummy up. But I feel great. Actually, once you get past 3 days, you don't feel hungry anymore.

Speaker A

What happens is remarkable. I high have you ever fasted? No. It's really amazing. And I can tell you I'm not I'm not good at fasting. And in fact, I'm I don't have a lot of willpower. If I can do it, most people

Speaker A

can do it. I decided to to try it. I was actually doing it before a podcast so I could say on the podcast. I I did it.

Speaker A

After the third day, something remarkable happened. I went from feeling a little bit hungry, a little bit tired to wow, my brain turned on. My my body was making what are called ketones. And the brain loves them. They fuel the

Speaker A

brain. So I was super awake. was like taking a few shots of caffeine. I was also more energetic. I wasn't tired at all. I woke up every morning. I was feeling great.

Speaker A

And so I I love that feeling. So when I fast, I'm actually looking forward to getting into that state again. But most people don't get there after the second day. They're like, I can't do this anymore. Or, you know, I'm going out to

Speaker A

dinner. I have to eat with my friends. That is that's also the hardest problem with fasting is we're social animals.

Speaker A

I do find that and when I'm with Serena traveling uh she's a trained chef actually and so we we do like to eat really well. Every time we go to a new city we eat one of the top restaurants but when I come home

Speaker A

that's my recovery fasting period. Um and and the cleanout autophagy process. Yeah. You know in India the in lot of in India lot of small communities and cultures they have a practice around fasting and it's deep rooted wisdom it's so wise they they knew it

Speaker A

was healthy you know the problem that I've seen perhaps not in India but in the Middle East because there's so much food they eat late at night after the the daily fast but they eat so much they eat

Speaker A

probably twice as much as normal so that counter acts probably any good that they get but if you if you if you fast and you don't overeat the I think the health benefits are really uh huge and there

Speaker A

have been studies of caloric restriction and fasting in humans and um I think actually the the best way to rejuvenate yourself and feel better and even get younger it's fast is to fast yeah once a month I would say at least once a month I I

Speaker A

would say every day you could skip a meal and fast for how how long like what should be the break between there's a few different versions um and you know again on the podcast I get into it there's one that that is very popular

Speaker A

in Australia called the 52 which is uh you fast for for uh 2 days and eat five depends what you can do um in terms of a daily window you try to fast for 14 if you can do 16 hours, it's great. I try

Speaker A

to go for 18, but it's not that hard. If you sleep for eight of those hours or seven, then it's really just skipping a meal and having a late lunch, skipping breakfast, late lunch, or having a late lunch and not eating

Speaker A

till breakfast. That's that is the way that I think is the healthiest is to do it every day, not just once a month. And would you consider a morning smoothie or a morning protein or morning whatever a breakfast

Speaker A

as well? Yeah, but I'm not as strict as most people. Well, so I I've measured myself over the years. This is all scientific, right? So I'm not just making stuff up um like some people do.

Speaker A

I've found that having small amounts of food, particularly if it's not carbohydrates, it doesn't break my fast.

Speaker A

M. So I've been having with res r resveratrol mixing it with a bit of yogurt, vegan yogurt. Now I used to have Greek yogurt that doesn't break my fast.

Speaker A

If it's a little bit, it's okay. A little bit of olive oil, that's okay.

Speaker A

But a real smoothie, that's loads of calories. That could be 600 calories right there if you put a banana in there. So that's a meal there.

Speaker A

I'm vegetarian, so I think I'm I'm not very concerned about my meals because I eat vegetables all the time. That's all.

Speaker A

Only once a Once in a day, I would eat like bread or rice and other meals, it's just the vegetables or proteins.

Speaker A

Yeah. Good. Now, I'm going to get a lot of people hating on me because people love the carnivore diet. I just want to say carnivore diet can work great. It has seemingly improved health of a lot of people, lost weight. What I'm saying

Speaker A

though is long-term by the time you're 90, I think that it's not as beneficial as a vegetarian or a vegan diet. If you're going to do something, you don't need to do it every day or every hour.

Speaker A

Do it for a couple of days, then have a rest, do it again. And that way, you can get the benefits of exercise and protein, but also this adversity, hunkering down, survival mode. I think that actually probably works the best

Speaker A

because your body gets the chance not just to hunker down and and slow down, but gets some time to heal as well and grow fast and fix things.

Speaker A

Got it. Have you heard about water fasting? Yes. Like 7-day water fasting actually repairs a lot of stuff. Stuff like that.

Speaker A

Yeah. Uh there's a lot of good evidence. I believe in it. Yeah. What does a 7-day water fasting would do?

Speaker A

What would it do? What would it do? Well, it it activates this chaperone mediated autophagy CME.

Speaker A

It'll also activate these repair systems probably rebuild your epiggenome. Um, it also raises the level of a molecule called NAD which the proteins that we study called sertuins they need NAD. So by being hungry uh you raise your NAD

Speaker A

levels and these now become super active. So, it's another hack is to to get your NAD levels higher.

Speaker A

What is NAD? I'm glad you asked. NAD is one of the most important molecules for life.

Speaker A

There are two molecules that we cannot survive without for 10 seconds. And we're full of these two chemicals.

Speaker A

One is called ATP, which is chemical energy. If you take cyanide, you stop making ATP and you're dead, right? You need ATP. The other one which is more of a a machinery reaction chemical reaction um mediator is called NAD.

Speaker A

NAD the full name if listeners want to know it nicotinomide which is vitamin B3 fused to adinine actually part of DNA ducleotide anyway NAD you don't need to remember the full name but NAD is in our bodies and when we

Speaker A

exercise or if we're fasting we do get more of it so for the last 10 years I've been working with teams to test if boosting NAD levels in humans gives health benefits as a theory would predict it should use

Speaker A

these proteins to repair DNA and do other cool stuff and the answer is yes we've published well my colleagues have published and I've been fortunate to be part of that group number of Harvard studies people could check them out they're online

Speaker A

raising NAD levels reduces blood pressure lipids cholesterol um and what was the latest um oh it's not published yet but there are some benefits to cognition as well but this molecule u NAD is being tested around the world in different studies

Speaker A

Alzheimer's kidney disease heart failure and those studies are just finishing up this year so that's another reason why I'm optimistic that something big is going to happen this year so if what what I've said just to summarize is

Speaker A

we've got ER100 to reverse aging but we've also got this other molecule which we called MIB626 which boosts NAD which can slow aging and slowing aging is important until we get the age reversal worked out.

Speaker A

And this is the supplement or this is the thing that you were telling me that you take after the long flight and exactly so well we don't take NAD because NAD is a big molecule.

Speaker A

You know I told you all the components if you eat it it's not going to get absorbed easily. Um so we take a piece of NAD called NMN.

Speaker A

Okay. So this NN which is nicotenomide monucleotide not ducleotide one monucleotide. It can be swallowed. It's absorbed. We know that it raises blood levels of NAD by twofold in most people. Um, and that is what I've been doing for at least 13

Speaker A

years in the hopes in the science that we would see uh slower aging because of that.

Speaker A

What see we're talking about aging, we're talking about damage, but I was reading that a child's repair system is much better than an adults.

Speaker A

Right. Sure. So, what's what happens? Why a kid is able to actually repair themselves with all these damages, all the things. Let's say if a kid doesn't fast or the kid doesn't run or kid doesn't do anything, still

Speaker A

he's been or she's been able to actually repair uh all these damages. But I'm not or like as we age, we are not.

Speaker A

That's such a good question and it the best questions are the obvious ones, you know, but we don't talk about them.

Speaker A

Why is a child so good at repairing? Yeah. Why doesn't a child get Alzheimer's disease? Why don't they get heart disease?

Speaker A

Yeah. You know why? Yeah. Even ch like kids have lower rates of cancer as well. Like Yeah.

Speaker A

Why? Like these are same things which happens to all of us. Okay. Here here's what I believe to be the truth.

Speaker A

Their epigenome which controls the genes. Is optimal. M every cell knows what it is, what it should do and can do it. But starting even before birth, this process of aging starts to happen and cells eventually forget how to be optimal. And that's

Speaker A

what we see as aging. It's what we see as diseases of aging, but we start out optimal. And ER100, the drug that we're testing, is designed to get us to go back to that optimal point where we can heal pretty much anything.

Speaker A

So, as I'm getting older, these things in my body are forgetting and they because they're too many.

Speaker A

So, they don't know where to go. What was the original place to go? Is that Yes. They your cells are forgetting which which piano keys to play or which genes to turn on because these these are the these are the piano players.

Speaker A

Yeah. They're getting lost and they're not hitting the right keys anymore. And the the beautiful music of our youth becomes a terrible noise, a cacophony of terrible music.

Speaker A

But then the question is, can you play it again beautifully and heal like a baby again? See and this is there in every organ right? So every organ is like now operating in a different system. Can I find out which organ or

Speaker A

which specific place where they are damaging more in your body? Yeah. Yeah. We can read it. We can see like specifically you can find out whether my heart is older or my brain is older or my immune system. I don't know.

Speaker A

Yeah. What all is possible and what all is not possible. For sure, we could do what we do to the mice, to you, but it would just require a sample. If you give me a tissue sample, I can tell you how old

Speaker A

your tissue is. Now, that's easy. I can take your skin from your mouth, I can take your blood. Taking your heart tissue is a little harder. But you from a cheek swab, we've actually found and it's been published that using a test

Speaker A

that we developed partially in my lab, the signature of the cells in your cheek also have a signature of how well your heart is aging or not. It's crazy, right?

Speaker A

Yeah. I don't why we don't we don't know. But there is that signature of different organs in the mouth. And it might be because there's a memory of how you've been living. Right? If you've been fasting your whole life, which you haven't.

Speaker A

Mhm. Your cheek cells would tell you. We have a memory of that. If you've been smoking, you haven't. Thank God. There is a memory of smoking in every one of these cells that we measure. And actually, my friend Steve Horvath, who

Speaker A

invented this clock, uh he said that the clock is much more accurate than people's memory of smoking.

Speaker A

Uh I think most people are in denial but anyway that's a that's that's an aside.

Speaker A

We can there are surrogates for different tissues in the mouth. So I what I think will happen in the future is you'll give a sample of your cheek or your blood to your doctor and you get back a a picture of yourself saying this

Speaker A

part of your body is old, this part is young. We need to target this part.

Speaker A

Interesting. Wow. Pretty fascinating. And if I get to know let's my heart is old. Okay. And it's it it has aged.

Speaker A

Yeah. Is it because of some disease which is why it's aging or is it because it's aging that's why I'm getting a lot of diseases.

Speaker A

It's mostly the second one that because you're aging you get diseases. And if we can reverse the age of that diseased tissue the disease goes away. We know this from studies in my lab and others.

Speaker A

If you give a mouse Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and you make the brain young, the disease goes away. The body can cure Alzheimer's if it's young. That's why young people don't get Alzheimer's. We have to think about that, right?

Speaker A

But yes, the the answer would be we think that the reason that organs get diseases is because they get old. But you are right also that diseases can accelerate aging. If you genetically have a problem with your heart, it can age faster. And

Speaker A

some people have diseases that accelerate aging in all tissues. Have you heard of progeria?

Speaker A

No. There are progeria diseases which accelerate aging in essentially the whole body of the of the child. And a teenage kid can look 80 years old. And we actually we made we made the same mice in the lab. We have mice that look

Speaker A

old rapidly like the ones that we cut the DNA, but they they're there are the same mutation in the mouse as in the human patient.

Speaker A

And now what we're testing is can we reverse the age of those mice to make them young again? And if that works, then there's hope for these children.

Speaker A

Can one one organ which is getting older in my body can make my entire body older? or can make all the other organs in the body old.

Speaker A

That's so fascinating. All well I wouldn't say all but most of the tissues and organs are talking to each other and one old tissue can accelerate aging in other tissues. I'll give you a couple of examples. One is if you implant old fat

Speaker A

into a a mouse or maybe a rat, a rodent, okay, it will make the rest of the body old.

Speaker A

The age spreads from this one old part of the body in fat. And I all of us my age in 50s, we have old fat. We can actually stain it. There's a a color. We can stain it. Your fat is probably light

Speaker A

blue. Uh I don't know. Let's imagine a light blue. No, that that's that's more like that's that's like my fat. A 90-year-old would be super dark blue like this velcro. Okay.

Speaker A

Almost black. So we can measure that. Anyway, that those cells are secretreting inflammation molecules called inflammatory cytoines and they age the rest of the body.

Speaker A

Another the second example I want to give you is if you accelerate aging of part of the brain called the hypothalamus which is at the base here.

Speaker A

That's a part of the brain that communicates to the body with lots of different molecules, hormones.

Speaker A

If you accelerate the aging of that tissue, the body gets older. But here's the cool thing. If you keep it young, it makes the whole mouse young and the mouse lives longer.

Speaker A

And how do I keep them? Yeah. Adversity. Well, yeah. Like I said, don't eat as much, exercise, all that. I think that polyphenols are a very good way to keep your brain young. The other thing that I do, which I don't talk

Speaker A

about a lot, so let let's talk about it now. Okay. Between friends, no one's no one else is listening right?

Speaker A

um the blood flow by the time you get to my age, there's always a loss of blood vessels.

Speaker A

Of course, you know, I've got an aorta that's still flowing well or I'd be dead. And I measure it all the time here. I get it. Not all the time, but every few years I measure this with an

Speaker A

ultrasound. My corroted. But what we forget is that all the tissues are filled with microscopic capillaries or capillaries as we say in Australia.

Speaker A

Yeah. those become less numerous as we get older. So, you can think when we're young, blood's flowing easily, but when we're older, it's pushing it hard through. There's not a lot of gaps. It's one of the reasons we're not fit when

Speaker A

we're older, the blood just can't get through. And if you are obese, one of the things that I do besides try to exercise aerobically, which I should do a lot more of, but I'm on plane a lot of

Speaker A

the time. The other thing that I do is I take a small dose of uh a erectile dysfunction drug.

Speaker A

I won't say the name, but you know what I'm talking about, right? ED. I'm not taking it because I have problems with erectile dysfunction with erections. I don't have any dysfunction, but it does open up blood vessels.

Speaker A

Certainly, it makes them more flexible and you get better blood flow. It's the reason that it works down there, but it doesn't just work the blood vessels.

Speaker A

Yeah. And allowing my tissues to be filled with more oxygen. And the reason I mention that is that a lot of the problems in the brain especially are caused by a lack of blood flow.

Speaker A

Do you think tracking blood flow can actually be helpful for anybody? Yes. The brain blood flow. Well, if you can track it, it's not easy, but yes, I think uh I I've had it done with an MRI. You can measure that. Um I

Speaker A

think if it was available, it would be worth doing. It's very important to maintain healthy blood flow. And one of the things that I attribute my father's health, mental health, is that he's done everything he can to maintain healthy cardiovascular

Speaker A

system. Yeah. Interesting. So the the friend I was talking you talking about the entrepreneur friend in India who's trying to solve this.

Speaker A

Yeah. Right. I ended up meeting him and he's he's he's built this device called Temple which is now they're trying to actually measure the brain blood flow.

Speaker A

That would be very useful. I would love to try that. And we could even see if fasting helps and polyphenols help.

Speaker A

ED drugs should help. Yes. But all of that's that's great. And uh we could see if using this Temple device. Yeah.

Speaker A

Temple. Yeah. If if we're brain aging faster or not because it's it's a good indicator.

Speaker A

That's the whole bet, right? You know, and you know, it's fascinating like every time I do these exercises which you were telling me right now on the device on the app, I can see my brain blood flow going up. So every time I'm

Speaker A

in sauna or every time I'm doing the I'm I'm running like like crazily that it just grows. It just goes up. And then when I'm laying down, I'm doing my breath work, I'm lying, I'm doing nothing. And it just

Speaker A

like it's you can see all the things that you were talking about, you can see your brain blood flow actually increasing.

Speaker A

Amazing. No, that that'd be very helpful cuz like I said, right now it's expensive. MRI, not most people can't do that or afford it, but if there was a cheap way to measure it, I I'd walk around with it all the

Speaker A

time. We were when we were talking about this, you were also telling me about entropy.

Speaker A

Yes. And why what is entropy? like tell me and why is it becoming such an important conversation all around the world?

Speaker A

Well, the there's different types of entropy. Um what is entropy? Well, people even disagree on what entropy is. Um at its fundamental level, it it's information.

Speaker A

Um but what most people teach it in college is that it is disorder and order and and the more entropy, the more disorder. though the if real professionals disagree with that description. Okay, it's the fun fun fundamental it's information and

Speaker A

informationational noise. But the the reason that's important in my field u in many fields including AI but in my field this is ordered a young cell is ordered and has pristine information right all the information is there now we're doing some aging right now

Speaker A

we're now we're 57 years old unfortunately this is loss of information it doesn't remember how to be like it was when it was This is increased entropy is disorder.

Speaker A

Okay. A loss of information. But the question that I had in 2014 was, is there a backup copy of this information? Is it possible to reverse entropy?

Speaker A

Of course, it requires energy. You don't just circumvent the second law of thermodynamics for free, but we can eat.

Speaker A

we can get energy and maybe there's a system a memory of how the cell was put together the DNA wrapped up from 30 40 or in my case 50 years ago and that was one Cheng's PhD thesis can he find a way

Speaker A

to get this to go back is there a memory of that and I think we found it that it exists there's a backup copy of the original state of the cell where now that's that's the question that we're trying to answer in my lab

Speaker A

right Now, where is that information stored? But every piece of information from 30, 40, 50 years is stored. It's somewhere there, we believe. So, it's new biology. We're looking at it. We think we've found evidence that there's new structures on

Speaker A

this original molecule that tells the cell, this gene should be wrapped up tightly, and this other one should be opened up like when we were young. And that's sitting in every old person. So now when I see an old person who's frail, can't

Speaker A

cross the street, well, I don't see an old person. I just see someone that needs to be reset.

Speaker A

Someone just who's who's forgotten how to be young again? Yes. But inside is a young person just needs to be switched on again.

Speaker A

Can you do that? Can you switch it on? We do it in my lab every day.

Speaker A

And if someone's been switched on for a long time, is it bad for them then?

Speaker A

We don't think so. That's why the FDA uh gave us permission. We did a lot of safety studies in the monkeys and in the mice for years. We looked at this. We haven't seen any negative issues so far.

Speaker A

Cross your fingers. We we have to be very careful because we are playing with very strong technology, powerful technology.

Speaker A

But we wouldn't have started the clinical trial if we thought there was any risk to the patient.

Speaker A

Um I'll give you an example. We've published that if you turn on those three genes in the eye at high levels, not just for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, um we did it for 6 weeks. If you if you leave it

Speaker A

on for a year, even up to 21 months, there's no negative effects. In fact, the longer you leave it on in the eye, the better the effect. The vision gets better and better and better. And here's here's the thing that I love in that

Speaker A

paper that we published on glaucoma. If you turn it off, and we have ability to turn it on and off, right? We actually just give the patient a pill, it turns it on, they stop taking the pill, turns it off. It's the world's

Speaker A

first regulatable gene therapy, by the way. But we did this in mice. We we turn it on, cured or at least improved vision, turn it off. Okay? What happens?

Speaker A

The disease comes back or aging happens. They lose their vision. Now for the second time, now we do a cool experiment. We turn on the genes again.

Speaker A

What do you think happened? You show posit. You You saw positive results. We can do it multiple times. Now I would have wanted to turn it on three, four, five times, but the mice got old and they died. But they died with very good

Speaker A

eyesight. So what this tells me is that this can be turned on many times. So imagine a future where we have these genes in our body that we can turn on with a pill. We just take a pill for a

Speaker A

few weeks every few years and we just go back in time. That would be so cool. That would be so amazing. But essentially you're telling me that most of the old people are not old.

Speaker A

They've just forgotten that they are young person inside and you just need to switch on that thing. Does that mean for every part like even for let's say you said spine right spine is very difficult to do that

Speaker A

do you do you because spine degeneration is one of the biggest problems in the world right now because we all are sitting like I have it oh you do oh no it's like my my L4 L5 S1 is just

Speaker A

it's gone there was a recent study that came um out of China actually but and it was done very well they injected these three Yamanaka age restoration genes into a joint of an animal. Um, it was a mouse that

Speaker A

had osteoarthritis. Okay. Right. I think it was the leg. It wasn't the spine, but still.

Speaker A

Yeah, it's a good model. The uh cartilage regrrew. So, I'm excited about testing this in human patients, back injury, sports injury, or just old age wearing out.

Speaker A

Wouldn't that be good? Instead of putting stem cells in there to try and fix a little bit, we just give you a young new joint, it grows again.

Speaker A

True. But with with your thing, Yeah. can those pills can that switch it on my degeneration and stop that as well?

Speaker A

Well, I I would be optimistic given this study that we've just talked about, we'd have to test it. So, the way we would do it theoretically, um, we'd need FDA approval, but we could take ER 100 and put it into

Speaker A

your spine. Um, and then we would give you the the pill and we would do an MRI and see if your spine regrow.

Speaker A

I mean that's what we're doing with the eye right now. If it works in the eye, it's going to start.

Speaker A

We should talk. Absolutely. You tell me when the eye thing starts. Okay. Another thing is about immune system. Yeah. People who have weak immune system, they age faster.

Speaker A

And what's there? Is it because I'm doing all the bad things that's why my immunity is weak or my immunity is weak and that's why I'm like what's the correlation?

Speaker A

There are a few possibilities. is it's not fully agreed upon by scientists but one is the immune system can be overactive and secrete inflammation factors and having a lot of inflammation uh like kil 61 beta these can accelerate aging because

Speaker A

inflammation is just bad overall we know that the other thing that can happen is if your immune system is not very active um it's the opposite can actually not destroy old cells So the old some old cells like the blue

Speaker A

ones in my fat, they're called scinsesscent cells. Okay? Have you heard of scinesscent cells?

Speaker A

These are some people call them zombie cells. Okay? The reason they're called zombie cells is when cells divide, they're young, they're healthy, but when they get really old, either because their epigenome is unraveled and they're they're confused or the ends of their

Speaker A

DNA gets short too short, they run out. Then the cell has a signal stop dividing. Then they just become a useless zombie cell. Actually, they're worse than useless. They start putting out inflammation factors. It's called SASP. Anyway, it's it's well known.

Speaker A

Um, and we know that if you put scinsesscent cells into the fat, like I was saying before, it makes you age faster and your immune system is clearing out these scinesscent cells. Um and in fact there are companies now

Speaker A

working to give vaccines that will help the body kill them. U but that might be another reason why if your body's not good at killing these scessent cells then you would age faster.

Speaker A

Coming back to the aging part right do you when you were explaining me about immune system and going these things.

Speaker A

Yeah. Right. I had this very basic question which is what's what determines whether in my future I'm going to age faster or slower. Is it the pace of my aging? Is it my current scenario? What is there in my body right now already?

Speaker A

Or is it my psychological or physiological resistance that I'm fighting? My whole body is fighting towards that aging and all these things. What is the biggest determin like determiner or what is the biggest contributor?

Speaker A

The biggest contributor to your rate of aging is your environment and how you live your life. Um it's it's debated somewhere between 80 80 to 50% of your future health and your rate of aging is how you live. how you live and and how

Speaker A

your body composition, right? If you're lean in good shape with lots of strength, you're going to age probably age slower than someone who has let themselves gain weight and sit around.

Speaker A

But some of it between 20 and 50% is you're just born with that. There's not much you can do about that part. That's what you get from your parents. But the good news is at least half maybe more we

Speaker A

can change that and we can slow it down by living the right life. Now some changes take decades right taking resveratrol you're not going to suddenly get younger tomorrow.

Speaker A

Yeah. Despite what some cosmetic companies say so there's long-term things and uh you have to have some faith.

Speaker A

Mhm. Uh but some things are are quite u quick. You see them quickly. So I switched to a vegan diet when I met Serena. Um, it's about 5 years ago. I started g I gave up I gave up wine. I

Speaker A

gave up most meat and uh and didn't eat as much calories and I noticed within really within days I felt better and then I did my blood work again and after a month my inflammation levels went way down and I was healthy already. Um,

Speaker A

there's an inflammation marker that everybody should get measured called CRP. Okay. what a C reactive protein. Doctors usually measure it as a as a predictor of heart disease, but it's a good measure of overall inflammation. And my CRP levels went way down. The lower the

Speaker A

better actually with this molecule. And that was quite a a a quick effect. Um it didn't take decades to see the benefits.

Speaker A

So we we spoke about in terms of benefits and changing your lifestyle. We spoke about fasting.

Speaker A

Yeah. And we were speaking about exercise but then we dwelt into other things. So in exercise the running part is better or the strength training is better.

Speaker A

Oh gee. Well I would say both. Unfortunately there isn't one that's better. They do different things. But I would say if I could only do one thing for health it would be aerobic exercise. It would be losing my breath for 10 minutes three

Speaker A

times a week minimum. How much do you do? very little. Let's just not go there.

Speaker A

Yeah. Well, I I I can sympathize because um it it is tough when you're as busy as you are. It's hard to fit it in.

Speaker A

I do once a week for sure. Oh, good. You do lose your breath. You're I lose my breath at least once a week, but I lift weights or at least do some of that for like two to three times in a week.

Speaker A

Good. Well, lifting weights is important for other reasons. It's not going to massively change your blood flow, but it is going to help you with a few things. Strength, which is super important even at your age for your

Speaker A

back, right? And limbs. Most people my age have a shoulder issue. Yeah. Right. Um, and if you're older than me, let's say you're in your 70s or 80s, if you don't have muscle strength, you can fall. You can break bones. You can

Speaker A

even die from falling. So, you do want muscles. But the at your age, if you're in your 20s and 30s, the biggest effect besides looking better is that you'll have um better metabolism. You'll be burning more energy so you can eat a

Speaker A

little bit more, enjoy life a little bit more. Um but also it's was very good for maintaining hormone levels.

Speaker A

You were when you were talking about improving brain blood flow and you were talking about the supplement.

Speaker A

Yeah. Right. Which you would take which will expand your vessels, right? Do you think L arginine helps in that?

Speaker A

I I don't know. People take L arginine for making their for for improving the vascularity in the blood.

Speaker A

Yeah, I I don't off the top of my head know how that works. It's it's an amino acid. It may be involved in uh the production of nitric oxide which is how the dysfun erectile dysfunction drugs work. Uh without this gas, it's actually

Speaker A

it's interesting. It's a gas that's produced by the what are called the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels. As you get older, you don't make as much nitric oxide gas and you know parts of your body fail because of

Speaker A

that. Um it may be that L arginine as I would call it um the amino acid is helpful for the production of that gas though you know I'm not an expert so I have to speculate. Um but there are other things you can do.

Speaker A

You can take nitric oxide boosters. For instance, beets have nitric nitric oxide. You've heard about beets.

Speaker A

Now, the I don't take that because typically it comes with a lot of sugar.

Speaker A

I regard sugar as like a poison. Um, occasionally I I'll eat some candy, but I don't eat a lot of carbs and sugar. I try to avoid it as much as possible.

Speaker A

Why everybody's just like so anti- sugar? I understand. I understand what's going on and I understand it's a poison.

Speaker A

Yeah, absolutely. The days when I'm not taking sugar, those days are like tremendously better. But just like demonizing everything around it, I feel it's like we're doing so much unjustice. At least once a month is fine or like once in 15

Speaker A

days is okay. Yeah. Everything in moderation. It's just that the world, especially the United States food.

Speaker A

I don't know, India is probably the same. Everything has sugar in it. Even hidden sugar. Even the Chinese soups that I order, uh, I realized I thought, "Oh, healthy Chinese soups with vegetables, grams of sugar in there, the sauces."

Speaker A

You have to be just really careful. It's the hidden sugars. You eating a candy once in a while is not going to hurt.

Speaker A

It's every day taking in all this sugar. So, why is sugar bad? There's a couple of main reasons. One is sugar attaches to proteins, right? We talked about this this protein here. This this protein and every protein in the body can have sugar

Speaker A

stuck to it and that makes it old protein. Actually just recently a few days ago a company announced that they found a way to remove the sugar off proteins which is great.

Speaker A

Yeah. One day we can get rid of it. So glucose on the proteins called glycation.

Speaker A

The problem is that a lot of proteins in the body cannot be easily recycled. The ones that make up part of the skin, right? The the collagen that's in the skin, you don't recycle that easily. So that when it gets sugar attached

Speaker A

is almost permanently damaged. So you don't want high levels of sugar. So I try to keep and you should try to keep your sugar levels at a low level.

Speaker A

Um because it's the high concentrations that are bad. That's one thing. The second is that you're you don't want to be susceptible to diabetes and diabetes is pretty prevalent in India and globally. So that's why but it you're

Speaker A

right it is demonized. But I sometimes I say that it's a poison to make the point because I'm trying to counteract the other group of people that are making billions of dollars off sugar.

Speaker A

Yeah. And fructose corn syrup is up there. Uh in America they use it in most foods actually. Um especially the sauces.

Speaker A

True. It's you know diabetes is one of the biggest reasons why I started getting healthier in my life because my parents have my dad has diabetes. my grandmother had diabetes. It's like it runs in my family. And I remember when I

Speaker A

was I think 16 or 15 probably, I went to a clinic with my dad and I was eating a sandwich. It's the doctor who was there who just looked at me and he's like, "You know what? You should stop that or

Speaker A

else you're going to be diabetic in like before even you turn 25 because everyone in your family has it." Oh yeah.

Speaker A

And that just stuck with me. So either you can call that doctor a devil or or a blessing because since that day I was like okay my only challenge in life became that I want to beat diabetes by 25 like I don't want to

Speaker A

have diabetes at the age of 25 and I just kept beating and then that's I measure my sugar levels to the tea like everything I do is just to defeat diabetes in my life.

Speaker A

What is your fasting blood sugar level right now? Yeah, I don't remember, but it's it's way below.

Speaker A

It's okay. Yeah, it's it's much HB1C is also good. I was going to mention that. Yeah, HBA1C is good.

Speaker A

Yeah. All right. Everything is great. Like it's it's it's better than Yeah. like most of the people in the world.

Speaker A

I'm I'm pleased. Obviously, if you're eating a a vegetarian diet, that's going to help. Um, for those of listeners and viewers who don't know what HBA1C is, it's worth speaking about it. HBA1C is um when sugar gets attached to your

Speaker A

hemoglobin in your blood. The red in your blood gets sugar attached and doctors can measure the percentage of your hemoglobin that has sugar on it.

Speaker A

That's your HB A1C. And the more percent is covered in sugar means you've got more sugar over the a period of a month in your blood. And if you're above seven, it's it's bad.

Speaker A

Bad. Yeah. It's diabetic already. Diabetic. Yeah. I like mine to be around five, 5.2. That's a healthy level for someone my age. I have the same problem.

Speaker A

My family is diabetic if they don't watch out. Um my father, my grandmother had a stroke in her 30s. It's that bad.

Speaker A

Uh so I have terrible genetics. So I've had to also be very careful. Same. That that makes two of us. So that's what that's so that's why I keep my blood markers like every 3 months I'm trying to test doing a lot of things

Speaker A

and just keeping everything in check and that's good news you have to stay alive for or healthy for as long as possible because the breakthroughs are coming there are companies now that have figured out how to replace a pancreas to

Speaker A

make insulin really is it there already out there it's not on the market yet but they're able to do it and I I think they had success in the clinic now.

Speaker A

But my my intention and my goal is to not have it at first place ever. Yeah.

Speaker A

I just live such a healthy life that at least I can just uh you know just delay it for as long as I can.

Speaker A

Yeah. And there will be a time in in your lifespan where you don't ever have to worry about getting cancer, diabetes, heart disease. We're already almost there. You can detect cancer very early.

Speaker A

you can prevent diabetes pretty easily. I mean just looking at the GLP-1 receptor drugs and dementia is coming down rapidly.

Speaker A

We are at a world especially those who have the financial resources to spend on all of these tests where you don't have to die from these diseases anymore.

Speaker A

True. True. Now it's getting better and it it will keep getting better thanks to people like you. It will one day there'll there'll be a time in probably next decade where we won't worry about half of the diseases that we talk about

Speaker A

today. Right. Right. And even in the past 12 months there have been huge breakthroughs and about 15 new drugs on the US market and some breakthroughs in cancer. Pancreatic cancer is now treatable. It's incredible the progress just happening now and AI is going to

Speaker A

speed that up. It's also really exciting to think about what's happening in my lab. Remember, we discovered this eye eye reversal about 9 10 years ago. Since then, we've continued to innovate.

Speaker A

So, we now have the ability to swallow a pill, give a mouse a pill, and reverse its age and and rejuvenate it. And we're working on getting it into humans to see if we can do this without an injection,

Speaker A

just by swallowing something. How much of AI is going to help you? A lot. We've been using AI for a few years now. One way we use it is to use a camera to see whether an old cell has

Speaker A

been rejuvenated. Using a a camera, we can look at millions of cells and say those cells were 90 years old and now they're 20. That's AI. But the other thing that's even more impressive is we can start with a trillion molecules,

Speaker A

theoretical molecules like rveratrol, but trillions of them. And then instead of doing each experiment at the bench in the lab, which would take hundreds of years even with robots, we can do it virtually and AI can look at a target

Speaker A

protein and we actually know what the targets are that we want to reverse aging and say which of these trillion will reverse aging and it it's given us a few hundred to test which we're testing right now.

Speaker A

Interesting. And now and what give me give me in basic language simple words that if you wouldn't be using AI how many years it would have taken you to do exactly what you're doing right now.

Speaker A

Well I asked an AI model to estimate this. Yeah. And it did all the calculations and it said in my lab with let's say there's 20 people working it would have taken 160 years and over a billion dollars to do what we did for it cost us

Speaker A

about $20,000 and a few months of work. Wow. And that that was a few years ago. Now it's probably you could do it on your phone. It's going to get to the point where anybody can design a drug using

Speaker A

their phone. We're almost there. The hard part though is taking the the chemical that you've that's been designed by the AI and put that into humans. And all of that's hundreds of millions of dollars. Which is why unfortunately I think these claims that

Speaker A

we're going to cure diseases in the next few years is wrong cuz finding the design of the molecule is the easy part.

Speaker A

Remember we we've done this many times in my lab. Yeah. It's making them work and testing them.

Speaker A

That's the slow part cuz that involves humans, the government, regulation, money. Yeah. Other mafias.

Speaker A

Well, we we face a lot of competition. So, my my company, Life Biosciences, which is is leading uh some of the competitors are Jeff Bezos, Sam Holtman, uh and others. Um they've put billions to try and uh catch

Speaker A

up with us. But the good news is there's not just one winner. Yeah, it's a whole big industry that will come and there are lots of diseases that can be tackled.

Speaker A

Do you think there's a farmer mafia? Oh, tell me a bit more what you're thinking.

Speaker A

No, I'm asking you. What do you think when I say this? So, I'll tell you what I don't believe.

Speaker A

I don't believe that farmer companies I hear this sometimes. Farmer companies don't want me to be successful because it will put them out of business. M everybody that I know at farmer companies wants to help people and if

Speaker A

they see a new area of science like what we're doing they'll do it too and in fact a lot of large companies farmer companies are working on age reversal now so they're jumping on it they're not trying to stop it

Speaker A

are they banning together I don't think so I think that they are competitive but I have seen really bad tactics against my lab against my companies from certain pharmaceutical companies.

Speaker A

Like what tactics? Um doing poor science that was wrong to invalidate patents that we had filed.

Speaker A

Uh and these stories get into the newspapers and the journals. One of them is res the rveratrol story. We published that rveratrol activates this enzyme s one which is true. It's all been proven now. It's not disputed, but that one

Speaker A

company I'm not going to mention because they're one of the most powerful companies in the world put out a paper that said Sinclair's work is totally wrong. It invalidated they tried to invalidate our patent and uh it caused a lot of problems. We I

Speaker A

couldn't get any money in my lab for years. My lab dwindled down to just a few people hanging on for dear life. I almost was put out of business as a scientist because a large company and the newspapers and even the world's

Speaker A

leading scientific journal believed that I was wrong. Even my university, I'm at Harvard, right? I had a group of people come into my office and quiz me and say, "What? What's going on here?" Like, it was really bad. I I stayed in

Speaker A

bed for a week. I was so depressed. I thought of quitting. It was rough. And to this day, people still think that I was wrong. But we've we've been proven right since. But uh it that was that was

Speaker A

really bad tactics that they used. And they've still not either publicly apologized or said that they were wrong.

Speaker A

And what kept you going then? Because what I'm doing is bigger than me. That what I'm trying to do is to give everybody a healthier life. And if I have to suffer as a consequence, I'm prepared to do that. I'm prepared to die

Speaker A

for this cause. It's really that important to me. So, having a little bit of uh trouble in my life, that's okay.

Speaker A

Um I was a little bit depressed because I felt like the world was ungrateful, but you know, I I got out of bed, I went back to the lab, and we just worked harder at trying to to to test the

Speaker A

theory and see if we were right. We did turn out to be right. But what I learned from that episode, which was 2010, um is believe in yourself, do great science, and don't get discouraged. Just keep going. And that's a lesson that

Speaker A

everybody in life should have because if you do something important, there will be critics.

Speaker A

Yeah. There will be people in the media telling you that you're not good. Um and you will you will face problems. It's not going to be easy. Uh but you have to expect it and get have a very thick skin

Speaker A

and not take it personally. True. Yeah. I think it was Benjamin Franklin or some one of the founding fathers that said that uh if you don't have enemies, you're probably not doing anything important.

Speaker A

Yeah. How about you? Do do you have crit critics or Of course. Really? Of course. Very very few though.

Speaker A

Yeah. Good. Because I'm in the probably a good green zone, but Well, you're also a very very kind and honest person. Uh but yeah anyone who has has fame will attract absolutely there will be thousands of people who would not like

Speaker A

you know just this part as well like there will be people who be like hey why did you question about that thing he was wrong and you just listen to him and and then they just bash me and call me

Speaker A

that I was a I was soft on you and then there'll be people who would just call me was like oh you were clueless in front of him and then there'll be people who will be like if I do come very well

Speaker A

prepared, do everything right, understand your scientific theories as well. And then I ask you on that then people like oh if if it was only about science you would have done it in some journal why you making podcast about

Speaker A

like no matter what you do there'll be critics who will just you make it advanced you make it curious you make it dumb in all three you'll face critics so it's okay.

Speaker A

Yeah and the lesson here is just keep doing your best be honest be be authentic and you'll be okay.

Speaker A

Yeah. And but the work that you're doing I've I was I keep reading like almost every year it just appears some of the other place some quote like this where it says that anyone who is inventing anything new gets ridiculed by people of

Speaker A

that generation. Oh yeah. Only the next generation actually you know starts uh reaping the rewards and they become grateful like people who were peers and colleagues of Edison they ridiculed him right and now because of him we are doing all of these things and

Speaker A

that's so so Edison was getting rid then who are we right you have to expect it and people don't like change um they certainly don't like Are you experiencing this? Oh yeah, it's it's been rough. The most vicious

Speaker A

attacks are from my scientific colleagues. Um the public is generally very supportive. It's the scientists, but it it it's a scientist's job to criticize other scientists. That's how science progresses. There's nothing wrong with cordial um professional, gentlemanly, a gentle person um

Speaker A

arguments. Fair. So all of these things do like do you get stressed because of all of these things?

Speaker A

I used to. Yeah, definitely when when I was your age because I hadn't made it yet. I hadn't reached my goal. I hadn't done everything I wanted to do. I'm now at a point in life where I've already achieved more than I

Speaker A

thought I would in my lifetime. So everything else is a bonus. Um I have three wonderful kids. I have a wonderful partner. Um I have a great job. I get to have fun talking about my work. Um, and

Speaker A

I have really smart students who do the hard work. They're back at the lab today working hard on a Sunday. I, um, I don't get stressed. And my heart rate is in the 40s usually, at night for sure,

Speaker A

during the day maybe 50. Um, and my heart rate variability, which I think you would know, you want a high heart rate variability, it's in the 90s, which is like a, you know, a marathon runner.

Speaker A

Yeah, it's cool. And I think that's because of my practice, which is to never get stressed.

Speaker A

Nice. See, this is what we need to promote as well. We need to get a lot of people to go India, then promote the Indian wisdom, like the Indian ancient wisdom. They figured it out.

Speaker A

Oh, they did the food, the relaxation, the meditation, the routines there. There's so many things which we which are yet to be discovered by the world.

Speaker A

Well, it's the world's oldest religion as well. It's one of the oldest cultures. It's it's the oldest civilization. Yeah.

Speaker A

Yeah. So, of course, they figured it out early. Yeah. We're still catching up. And actually, some of the medicines are Aurvedic medicines. There's a lot of uh truth to that. And we're just finding the molecules that are working in those

Speaker A

those ancient medicines from the plant world mostly. True. And you're a big prop. Yeah. You promote plants a lot. So of course you would like that. Uh you like lot of Indian wisdom as well. I'm sure. Okay.

Speaker A

Tell me is we were talking about stress. Is aging partly accumulated stress? Um it is in the sense that when the cells the body gets overloaded with stress too much a little bit is good but if you go too far then these processes

Speaker A

that drive aging happen faster. Um but we have to be careful not to confuse psychological stress with biological stress.

Speaker A

Explain both. All right. Psychological stress we all know we're worried. We have cortisol levels in our body. where fight or flight mode that is psychological stress that will age you faster. We know that be mostly because the hormones that come

Speaker A

out of your system are causing accelerated aging. Um that's psychological that that you can change within minutes. Right now if we do breathing exercises we can bring that down. That's easy to fix.

Speaker A

That's step one. The other is biological stress. Now, a little bit of biological stress is good. Remember how I said fasting exercise sauna um cold plunge, cold plunge. Um these are going to activate your body's defenses against adversity. But if you do too much, if

Speaker A

you uh let's say if you don't eat for so long that you start to chew up your muscles, that's not that's too much stress. If you go to a rock concert, if you uh go out in the sun and get very

Speaker A

sunburnt, that's going to be too much for your cells. That's not mild stress. That's not adversity. That's serious damage. And that's going to help this process of unraveling. And we know the evidence of that. Anyone that spent their life in the sun

Speaker A

will have experienced broken DNA from the light. And that this process will accelerate. And you can even see there's a photo on the internet of a woman. I think it's a woman anyway, a person who got sunburnt on one side of the face

Speaker A

because the sun was coming through the window of the car, the truck. And so one half is much older than the other side.

Speaker A

And so we know that the sun can accelerate skin aging. And it's the same for the rest of the body. Too much damage will accelerate aging.

Speaker A

But shouldn't we be in the sun? That's what everybody a little bit. For sure. A little bit.

Speaker A

Now, I'm there's debate. Some doctors say no sun. No sun is good. I I in my life, I like to get a little bit of sun, but not enough to feel burnt. That's definitely too much. And I usually wear

Speaker A

sunscreen and a hat. But yes, um I like natural sun. Um but be aware that any sun is going to accelerate aging.

Speaker A

And at what point this small damages becomes a permanent stress damage in my body?

Speaker A

Yeah. All right. So that's a very good point. Let's go back to this this balls here that I've got here.

Speaker A

So what we we want is this always to stay stable and and in this structure and a little bit of damage, a little bit of adversity, a little bit of hunger hunger or a sauna is not going to change

Speaker A

this. Okay. It's when it gets to a point where this these proteins have to react and go away and fix that's too much.

Speaker A

Yeah. So rock concert or X-rays will cause this. So a little bit is okay and then this is too much because then these don't always come back to where they come from where they started. That's what we've seen.

Speaker A

Um, and so actually if you if you just give a little bit of DNA damage, um, a tiny bit, it doesn't cause this problem.

Speaker A

The cells can deal with it. But if the if there's a broken chromosome, not just a little nick, but a broken one, that's a very serious problem for the cell. If it doesn't fix that chromosome, either the cell will die or the animal will get

Speaker A

cancer. So you have to fix it. So that's why it's panic for the cell. And this comes apart. if you break a chromosome.

Speaker A

But usually what happens with DNA damage is just a little bit gets broken. Half of it gets broken here.

Speaker A

Okay? And you can easily fix that. That's not a big problem. But if your 6 ft comes apart into 3 ft and 3 ft, that's a big problem. That's called a double stranded DNA break.

Speaker A

But how do I know like what am I doing on an everyday basis? Because this sounds scientific. Like how do I know that what I'm doing is actually making me better or damaging me?

Speaker A

Yeah. Well, I I would go with the evidence which is that we we know the healthy fasting practices from human studies. We know the healthy sauna practices. Um so, for instance, with sauna, you can definitely overdo it. There's

Speaker A

temperatures that you don't want to go and and you you can dehydrate. But if if you look online, if you go to pubmed.org, ORG you can read papers about sauners and it's it's it those papers will tell you that like 20

Speaker A

minutes three times a week is associated with less heart disease. So my point is you don't need to know molecular biology. You don't need to understand this fully.

Speaker A

In fact I don't even understand this fully. So I go based on human studies what works and what seems to work.

Speaker A

Do you because you're talking about sauna. Did you see the new thing that uh you need to freeze your balls before like when you're going to the when you're going to the keep them cold if you want to if you

Speaker A

want to procreate? Yeah. Yeah. I would wrap them in Oh, for sure. We know that sperm requires cool because that's why it's it's the reason it's outside the body.

Speaker A

And now I saw some videos where people are keeping a cold ice pack on the head as well. So they're keeping it on the head, they're keeping it on the balls and then they're saying why the head? Oh, that part I don't know

Speaker A

about. I actually think that a bit of stress to the hair follicles could be good for hair. Um, I use red light to stimulate Okay.

Speaker A

my uh my hair growth, but yeah, a little bit of stress on the head is good for you. Um, but freezing the balls. You think if someone's going to the sauna is not putting a nice cold pack down there,

Speaker A

then is it a problem for a long time? uh not long time, but but in the short run, you'll make less sperm if you're even if you wear tight pants and get hot down there. Uh it's known that you need

Speaker A

to be less than body temperature to make sperm in a in a productive way. Um at my age, it doesn't matter, but for for men that want to have children, yeah, I would think it would make sense to have

Speaker A

I wouldn't freeze them. That would be worse. But just a cold towel down there probably I think that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker A

Then you know when when you look at young people because you said young men right now so typically from 20 to 30 it's 10 years of hardcore hustle, bad work timings, toxic food, just your in financial insecurity.

Speaker A

You're in struggle. Like you you're these 10 years you don't know what you're doing. Even if you're actually very ambitious and things are going right for you, you don't know when you're eating, when you're sleeping, what you're doing, and you're you're

Speaker A

perpetually alive. So this 10 year of all these bad environment according to you, like according to aging, right? Can we reverse this damage?

Speaker A

We're working on it. We can in animals and I think one day we we will be able to reverse it. But today if like that's today we don't have it. So let's say if anyone who has gone through this 10

Speaker A

these 10 years or is going through these 10 years of putting themselves will this become permanent damage and they will never be able to reverse?

Speaker A

Uh no we think that all aging is reversible theoretically. Uh we're doing it in the eye. We think it'll work everywhere, but right now there's there's nothing that really reverses aging by more than a year or two. It's

Speaker A

still early early days. So all these habits of 10 years, they're actually damaging us.

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. That's why I tell young people, even teenagers, don't go out and party. Don't, you know, drink so much alcohol. Don't just eat pizza because what you're doing now will affect the rest of your life.

Speaker A

But how But how do people stop partying? How do people stop like just working really hard and sleeping for 4 hours?

Speaker A

Because that's where Well, working hard and sleeping for 4 hours is is uh is pretty common. I still do that myself. It's It is hard, but it's but it's the really bad uh habits, the overdrinking. So, I used to drink every

Speaker A

day some red wine. I don't do that anymore. I I think there are a lot of young people that have stopped drinking alcohol if they like like yourself. Did you ever drink alcohol?

Speaker A

No. Great. Um I did and I regret it. Smoking is the big one. Smoking has chemicals in it that break DNA. So you're going to be like that mouse that got older faster if you smoke.

Speaker A

Agree. Um so I would say there are some pretty easy things to to avoid doing. Um, there was a study from Harvard that showed that the men who lived the longest, they actually had 14 years of extra healthy

Speaker A

life if they just did five things. And this is what I remember. It was don't overdrink, don't smoke, don't be overweight, uh, don't stress, and eat healthy. Those are what your grandmother would tell you probably.

Speaker A

If you just do the basics, that's already 14 extra healthy years. But how do you get rid of the part which is no alcohol is easy, no smoking is easy, no no stress is such a part of your life

Speaker A

today. If you're young and living in a large city like this, you're stressed about financial insecurity. You're stressed about AI taking your job. You're stressed about what's going to happen. You're stressed about your health. You're stressed about uh reversing the damage

Speaker A

with all the sugar and alcohol that you have consumed over the past couple of years and you're stressed about finding the partner, starting a family. You can't get or probably if you have a toxic boss, you're stressed about that as

Speaker A

well. How do you get rid of that? It's difficult. And I was not good at it until I was 50. And this is when I met Serena. What I've learned to do is to have faith in myself.

Speaker A

That's the key. I was hard on myself. And you probably are cuz you're very successful. You're probably I I could do this better. I should do this better. Why am I not doing this better? Why didn't I sleep

Speaker A

more? Why didn't I You got to stop that. That is destructive. What I do now is, yeah, I'm concerned that my lab could run out of money.

Speaker A

Yeah, I'm concerned that the trial might not work. I'm concerned that some newspaper will make up a story. Yes, but I don't dwell on it. It comes to my mind and I push it away and I tell myself

Speaker A

I believe in myself. I can't control what they're doing but I can control what I am doing and this is what I'm going to focus on. And I am older so I have a little bit more experience that I

Speaker A

know that I can do it. But I wish earlier in my life I had had this attitude which is I believe in myself and I'm not going to worry. I will figure it out.

Speaker A

I will face trouble but I know that I'm strong enough to get through it and I will I will defeat whatever comes my way. And that's how I live now. So I don't get upset with these things.

Speaker A

It's it's good to hear. It's very difficult to practice. It is. I'm trying. It took me 50 years but yes try. It's so important. Your life will be completely different if you can master that.

Speaker A

What do you think? What are the top three things that young person is doing which is damaging them the most?

Speaker A

Oh well um overeating number one being obese and and is the number one globally.

Speaker A

Okay. Um we know that that accelerates aging. Um the second would be not moving enough. We sit down too much. We play computer games. were at a desk job. Um, and then the third would be the quality of the food is terrible. Uh, it's easy

Speaker A

and cheap to buy fast food and it's the food is engineered to be addictive and it's not as much fun eating, you know, hummus or lentil curry. These are not as exciting things. And I thought of plants as the side dish to meat my whole

Speaker A

life until recently. But those are the three things if you can uh maintain a h a healthy weight. So for me as soon as I start to build up more than that much on my body on my chest I know

Speaker A

I need to get fast and get rid of it. So there's that. Then there's move move.

Speaker A

Just get a standing desk, go for a walk, go for a run, get to the gym, do something, anything. Just don't sit all the day. So, in my office, I have a standing desk. I'm rarely sitting the whole day. Um, you know, my feet get a

Speaker A

little bit tired, but it's it it's great. It's very good for my my muscles, my legs are strong, and all I'm doing is standing. And then the third one is quality of food. Fresh food, fresh colored food. You'll feel so great. Um,

Speaker A

don't overcook things. I I know most cultures including India overcook their vegetables. Maintain it. Make it crunchy. It's not bad. It actually tastes better. So um cuz you're destroying a lot of these polyphenols if you overcook it or over microwave it. Um so yeah, just

Speaker A

slightly steam, slightly boil uh or eat fresh vegetables. Salad is great. All day salad. I also I was in until last to last year I was exactly like you. I used to see vegetables as a side thing. It was it was not the main dish.

Speaker A

It was a side dish even though I'm vegetarian. Ah because I would kick I would eat like overly cooked lentil soup which we call dal in India. So I would eat that or like vegetables which are filled with

Speaker A

oil and curries and like just mixed everything. And I always used to think that that's healthy. I'm eating vegetables. But that's so true. Um there's there are studies that show that vegetarianism is pretty good for longevity. But what's

Speaker A

really interesting is if you break it down into healthy vegetarian and not healthy vegetarian, there's a big difference. The healthy vegetarians are way ahead of the non-healthy vegetarians. So just being vegetarian is not sufficient. Give me give me

Speaker A

different uh uh differences between healthy vegetarianism and not healthy vegetarian. Oh well, so an unhealthy vegetarian would eat uh French fries, chips, bread, uh and overcooked soups and and other things. It's kind of winter food is is is not healthy vegetarian. Healthy

Speaker A

vegetarian is yes salads obviously, but also um the legumes. So, baba ganoush uh hummus these things are also full of protein and vitamins as well. Um so a typical meal for me and for Serena would be some fresh fruit, fresh vegetables,

Speaker A

maybe a bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and uh if we steam the vegetables, it's very quick, very light.

Speaker A

So the the asparagus would still be crunchy, the broccoli would be crunchy. Um, but yeah, they've if if your vegetables start to lose the color a lot, you've you've gone into the unhealthy side.

Speaker A

Yeah, that's a good metric. If the original colors is no more the color, then you've made it unhealthy.

Speaker A

You know why? Because these chemicals, these polyphenols are the colors and they're the health. So the the color disappears, the health disappears.

Speaker A

Interesting. Okay. Tell me the ideal protocol for a young person. Well, how many hours of sleeping? Like this is the most basic thing, but still I want to know.

Speaker A

All right. Well, I am going to say a few things, but the the detailed is in lifespan my podcast. Okay. So, everyone tune in to that for the detail, but the cheat sheet would be uh try to eat less than three meals a

Speaker A

day. Uh see if you can join a gym so you can lift weights. If not, get some weights at home. And that's pretty easy.

Speaker A

If your gym has a sauna, great. If you can afford a sauna, get one at home and uh move, move, move, move. So, walk upstairs, don't take the elevator, get a standing desk, walk to the shop. It's these small things add up. Uh and and

Speaker A

monitor yourself, right? You have a ring on. I have couple of rings on. I'm always looking to do better.

Speaker A

uh more more steps, lower heart rate, more heart rate variability, better sleep. Um speaking of sleep, we haven't touched on that.

Speaker A

What I've learned and Serena also taught me is it's not the number of hours that you sleep, it's the quality. And you can measure deep sleep. And the amount of deep sleep you get is really what determines the brain fog in the day and

Speaker A

how energetic you are. So she and I can go for a week with only a few hours sleep. And that's not a problem for us because we are very efficient at sleeping. We get into sleep quickly. We dream. We get deep sleep. And we wake up

Speaker A

fresh even after just a few hours. Now, we don't do a few hours forever. We do catch up on weekends usually. But it I do want everybody to know that you can still have healthy sleep as long as it's

Speaker A

efficient. And some of these devices like this one will tell you your efficiency, right? And over 90% is typical for us.

Speaker A

I need the sweet dreams. Sweet dreams is Serena's uh we were talking about this earlier. Sweet dreams is Serena's product that I take every pretty much every night to get into deep sleep.

Speaker A

Yeah. And then the the protocol that you talked about and the things that you talked about, is it true for a 25year-old, 45year-old, 65year-old all or do they do it differently?

Speaker A

Um well the exercise and the sleep um and the diet they're universal but when we get into the next higher level of detail about which supplements which medicines um then it changes over time and then we then there's stem cells and

Speaker A

peptides and blood transfusions. There's another level of complexity which we talk about on my podcast.

Speaker A

But I would say in your 20s, what we've talked about today is a very good start.

Speaker A

And I know that your listener demographic is 20 to 30. So start with the basics. Um get the those right and then you know consider some supplements.

Speaker A

You know the ones that I take for example resveratrol in the morning. Um NMN in the morning for the NAD boost.

Speaker A

Should young people take that? Well, I don't ever make recommendations cuz I'm I don't know everybody's blood work.

Speaker A

I would say the science is strong that taking it um can have benefits at any age, though we haven't tested it on people in their teens and 20s yet. So, there's an unknown, but based on mouse research, which we've done for the last

Speaker A

15 years, it should be fine. I wanted to say though, and it's important that everybody listening knows, um, I measure everything, right? I I know when something's changing. I know if it's doing good or bad, and it's all

Speaker A

done under doctor's supervision. And that's important, right? We don't want to just take something and hope for the best. And we don't want to do it without our doctors knowing about it. So, I would encourage everybody to do what I do and what what

Speaker A

my father does and what Serena does is we measure things and we talk to doctors. Serena and I talk to three different doctors every week about things. That's a bit excessive cuz that's our life. But I do encourage

Speaker A

people to not just trust what you hear on the internet. Research it yourself. Talk to your doctor. Take one thing. See if it works for you. Measure it. Look for a change. If you don't see a change, why do it?

Speaker A

Fair. Yeah. Is there actually this this is a better question. While I was asking, I just turned my question. One supplement that young people should never take.

Speaker A

Um, which is yes specifically for people above the age of 40 or like under 40 or under 35. People should not take at all.

Speaker A

There are medicines that people my age sometimes take for longevity. Um there's a diabetes drug metformin which lowers blood sugar. That one I think is uh extreme for someone in their 20s to be taking. Why? Unless you have a history

Speaker A

like you, uh, your body is is still very sensitive to insulin, able to deal with a lot of metabolic changes. So, it's not necessary. And so, why take the risk with a medicine?

Speaker A

There's another drug that's even more risky called rapamy. Have you heard of this drug?

Speaker A

No. So, rapamy is a favorite of the longevity field because when you feed it to animals, different types of animals, they live longer. Um, but it also affects the immune system. If you take too much, it makes your immune system go

Speaker A

down. And, uh, that one has a lot of side effects if you take high doses. So that one for me would be if you if you were to force me to say what not to take.

Speaker A

That to me seems too extreme and unnecessary in young people to be trying that because the risk is too high versus the reward.

Speaker A

That's my opinion. Um some may differ. Some people love um rapamy. Um even I am cautious with rapamy at my age because it has toxicities. It affects the immune system. Um and I am concerned about the long-term side

Speaker A

effects of this drug. Um the ones that I take like with the reserverrol and the enem these are natural molecules. They exist in our food. They exist in our bodies.

Speaker A

So the risk is really low and the potential gain is correct. But is there any specific supplement which is easily available and people are taking right now and which we should not take? Shouldn't I sodetamine as a supplement that's out there? Well,

Speaker A

the there is some scientific debate about one particular supplement um it's an amino acid called torine and there was one study that gave torine to mice and they lived I think it was 15% longer. So I started taking torine and

Speaker A

didn't see much benefit to me based on my blood work and then a study I think it was last year came out and found that there was no decrease in this amino acid in older people and so I've stopped taking it for

Speaker A

that reason. So I think if if people are taking highdose torine they should look at the science and make a decision for themselves.

Speaker A

What should is there a point like where someone could get obsessed with all these longevity tools and protocols and at what point it is it is detrimental for your body it's actually damaging not helping like you're waking up certain point you're

Speaker A

tracking this you're tracking that you're doing cold plunge you're doing sauna you're doing eating like you know how you have these ninjas yeah I mean there are definitely people who obsess about it I don't know if it's overdoing it but they're obsessed for

Speaker A

sure. Um I'm not in that category. I'm a scientist and I do it for a learning exercise. I want to learn. I want to teach.

Speaker A

Um and it's also enjoyable. It's it's like a hobby. So I I think that if you read up about it, you become knowledgeable about it and you follow, let's say, follow me on social media, it can become enjoyable.

Speaker A

It's it's like a something that you do as as a hobby. But hobbies can become detrimental if you become obsessed.

Speaker A

Yeah. With anything. Yeah. Right. You can collect a few cars, but if you want to spend all your money on cars is detrimental. Same with uh longevity. If it is taking too much of your salary, too much of your time, if

Speaker A

you're taking too many supplements at once without testing them on yourself, then you've gone too far. I'll tell you, for me, I have a I have a bag of supplements that I take with me on my travel. I've worked with these and

Speaker A

tested them on my body for some of them for over 15 years and it's like a symphony of supplements. I I I know what I'm taking. Um I'm at a point where I've adjusted my life and I know what to take and I'm

Speaker A

happy with it. Occasionally I try something new. Occasionally I stop taking something. So that I think that's a healthy way to exist is you you do it for fun and then you know if I skip it or I forget my

Speaker A

supplement I'm not going to worry. If I eat some meat I'm not going to worry. If I have breakfast I'm not going to worry.

Speaker A

But it's the consistency. It's I've been taking resveratrol almost every day for you know 15 years or more. I've missed a few days but it's consistent.

Speaker A

Exercise, walking, all these things. It's, you know, longevity doesn't come overnight. It can take decades to appear, but you can't decide at my age, oh, I'm going to suddenly live long. Not yet. We're working on it. But to get to

Speaker A

my age and have my kind of a heart rate and heart rate variability, you do need to start, I think, decades earlier or at least 10 years earlier and optimize.

Speaker A

Preferably your age. I wish that I started at your age. I didn't really get into it until my 30s. And in my 30s, you know, that was the 2000s. We didn't know much. There was not much you could do.

Speaker A

Now, there's so much information. It's a wonderful time to be alive. And we can actually, I think, have a big impact on our future health by what we do, what we eat, what we swallow. Um, and it's it's

Speaker A

fun too. True. If if people are listening to it right like whoever is listening to it right now and feels overwhelmed by all the information in the world by this podcast by all the things they do in the

Speaker A

world right and they could just change one thing in their life tomorrow morning which will have drastically the biggest impact on their aging on their life on making them better what would be that one thing right the first thing I'm going to say is it's

Speaker A

not confusing if it's presented clearly and what I'm I'm building is a community where people will learn how to live their longest life. It's called lifespan.

Speaker A

Yeah. So that's that's what I'm doing. I want everybody to experience this, but it can be overwhelming. So we need to explain it simply. So I would I would start with eating less often and within those meals eating fresh.

Speaker A

That's the start. Okay. And then learn from there. So much to learn. It's really fun and you'll feel so great.

Speaker A

Perfect. Done. I have the last question which I ask all my guests which is what is the cost of becoming David Sinclair?

Speaker A

Oh, I rarely have time for myself. I was not a I was not the father to my children that I wanted to be. I'm trying to make up for that. Uh, but I was often away and I wasn't focused on the present

Speaker A

and I did not appreciate my life and the I wasn't grateful for the joy that I could have had in my 30s and 40s because I was so focused on making the impact, testing the science, getting the molecules into people that I didn't stop

Speaker A

and appreciate that I had three amazing kids and a house and a career that I loved. It was just go go go, always problem solving. Uh I'm different now.

Speaker A

But I missed probably 20 years of joy that that came with being David Sinclair, of working, being obsessed to perfection.

Speaker A

Thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for spending time with me, explaining me the science which was my nightmare today. I understand much better. I love this ball's analogy and this this structure. Thank you so much

Speaker A

for doing all of this. I really really love our time here. Raj, I I appreciate you having me on and this was a really great chance to tell people about what's typically very complicated science and I think your questions were perfect to be

Speaker A

able to explain something that I rarely have a chance to explain at this very simple level but very interesting level as well.

Speaker A

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. See you know with me how I got exposed to your work.

Speaker A

There was one guest on my podcast. He ended up talking about the stuff that you have written in the book and then there was another guest who also spoke and then the third I was like what is going on?

Speaker A

Oh that's interesting. Yeah. And I was so fascinated. Thank you for doing this. It's a pleasure to host you.

Speaker A

Well no it's a pleasure to be here. Um I love how you educate. Uh this is not a podcast about advertising. It's not about you know making ourselves look good. It's it's for your listeners to learn. Yes. I love that. Yes.

Speaker A

That's why you've been so successful. Thank you. Thank you. That's the whole goal. Today, we're going to learn. As you can see, we have the whole classroom set up here right now.

Speaker A

Yes, exactly. Thank you for watching this episode till the end. We would love to know what you liked or disliked about this episode and which guests you would like to see on the show. Let us know in the comments.

Speaker A

Your feedback help us improve and make every episode a little better. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out.

Topics:David Sinclairaginganti-agingHarvard Medical Schoolhealthy habitsintermittent fastingage reversallongevityhealthy lifestyleclinical trials

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