Dr. Nir Barzilai has always been fascinated by the aging process. Most of us know if we don't treat our body well, we will likely succumb to one or more chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or neurodegenerative disease.
Dr. Barzilai has been studying the genes of SuperAgers, the people who have no just a longer life span, but a healthy lifespan. We're beginning to identify the longevity genes and crack the code on human aging.
We get into the science during this discussion, but Dr. Barzilai also shares some practical tips so you can Age Later.
Transcript
[00:04:17.010] – Allan Dr. Barzilai, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
[00:04:20.060] – Dr. Barzilai Nice being with you.
[00:04:21.740] – Allan Now your book, Age Later: Healthspan, Life Span and the New Science of Longevity is obviously a topic that I think more and more as I age it just kind of one of those things that just sticks out like, you know, I see people living to their 90s to one hundred. And plus, I was watching a show on Netflix the other day called Old Guard, and they were effectively immortal until for some reason they weren't. But you're talking about people in this book that are almost immortal.
[00:04:52.910] – Allan I mean, they're living 40 percent longer than the average. And that's that's incredible. And if we're going to live that long, obviously, we also want to have the health span to go along with that. So a lot of good stuff. I want to pull out of your book, and I really appreciate the opportunity to review it with you.
[00:05:09.080] – Dr. Barzilai Sure.
[00:05:10.260] – Allan OK, so you got interested in aging. You're talking about meeting up with your father. You're walking with your father.
[00:05:18.200] – Dr. Barzilai Grandfather.
[00:05:19.980] – Allan Grandfather. And he got really he got really tired walking up a hill and that kind of got you at an early age thinking about aging. And in your study, as you got older, you know, you're actually studying this topic. You identified a term you call super agers. Can you can you define super agers and some of the traits that you found in people that live for a really long time?
[00:05:41.390] – Dr. Barzilai Well, let me just go back and say that in the field of aging, we call it Gero science. We made really great strides because we kind of ignored the fact that it's really very complicated when you look at the components. But it's less complicated when you look at models that seems to age longer, to age slower, I mean. And to have an increased health span. And there are models like that in nature. And once they were discovered, once you could do it, imitate some of the findings in genetic ways, it became much, much more achievable.
[00:06:27.680] – Dr. Barzilai And we understand now that aging is flexible and we can target it. And the reason I went to the centenarians at the same time where those genetic component have been discovered and very exciting models, was because I thought, you know, let's go to humans who live 100 years old because they lived, as you say, they lived 40 percent longer than their cohort. You know, now people are living longer anyhow, but we're not living to age of 100 and ask, what are the reasons for their slow aging, and that's why we got them. And in order to be in my study, basically you have to be healthy at age 95. Now, if you're one hundred and twelve and in coma, you still make it because it's the genetics that we were after. OK, and we wanted to find the genetics component of exceptional longevity, but being healthy and living independently at 95 showed that no matter what, they've exceeded their health span by a lot compared to other people. And that that's our definition of the super agers.
[00:07:49.530] – Allan OK, now you found a few traits that are fairly common amongst the super agers dealing with cholesterol, growth hormone. And I'll be honest with you, the last part of that, you got a little over my head in the science.
[00:08:06.810] – Dr. Barzilai Yeah.
[00:08:07.350] – Allan But can you talk about those traits, what they are and what they mean?
[00:08:11.400] – Dr. Barzilai Yeah. So, for example, when we started looking at the centenarians and doing just kind of routine tests, initially routine tests, one thing that was really remarkable is that they had a high level of the good cholesterol of HDL cholesterol. It actually ran in the family. It's kind of complicated because the good cholesterol goes down when you look at this certain individual longitudinally, OK, you take the same person. The HDL every year, every eight years will go by five fold by five points.
[00:08:46.890] – Dr. Barzilai So basically 100 years old, their HDL should be like 20. But it wasn't it was normal. When you, when you look at those data cross-sectional, when you look at population, it doesn't change with age. It's forty five for men. Fifty five for women. So how can you explain that in individual it goes down and as it's the same. Well if this is a longevity factor, if this protects you against dying, then the people where it goes low, they die and the people with high level maintain the high level up.
[00:09:22.410] – Dr. Barzilai And this is kind of what we've discovered in our centenarians. So they did have high level of HDL, which made us ask, well, what is the genetics of that? What are the changes in genes that they have and others do not have that explain this high level of HDL in their families. And we found a couple of them that proved to be not only interesting, but they're, it was kind of realizing the promise because in each case, a drug was created for them. One by Merck and one by another pharmaceutical called Ionis. So it really was a proof of concept that was really interesting and important.
[00:10:12.420] – Allan OK, and now the second trait you talked about was human growth factor.
[00:10:17.530] – Dr. Barzilai Right.
[00:10:18.310] – Allan Particularly the IGF one.
[00:10:20.410] – Dr. Barzilai So, again, one of the first thing that was discovered in nature, in genetics is that the animal models that the animal dwarfs in many models, they live long. Even the nematode, when you take out the nematode warm, when you take out the growth gene, they live much longer than the little dogs live longer, the ponies live longer. And when you mutate many of those growth genes, you get an extension of health span and lifespan.
[00:10:59.320] – Dr. Barzilai And I actually thought that that's probably not going to be the case in humans. But, you know, when you write a grant, you come up with hypotheses. You don't care if it's true or not. And my belief had nothing to do here. I was convincing that I should get the money to do it then. And we found out that it is very important. In fact, more than 60 percent of our subjects have mutations or changes in the growth hormone pathway, the growth hormone pathway.
[00:11:31.930] – Dr. Barzilai There's more than one gene. There's about growth hormone, but there's another gene that's very important. That's called IGF1. And that's what growth hormone does when it binds to the liver, it increased growth IGF1 and then IGF1 has this receptor and growth hormone as receptors, there's a whole pathway. And this pathway is impaired in our centenarians. And so we think that actually look, it's to explain simply the theory here is that at a certain point you have to change your energy from growth to defense.
[00:12:13.900] – Dr. Barzilai OK, now you're playing defense. You have to stop this growing and you stop you have to start like pointing the energy to do something else, like stop the genetic breakdown, stop the breakdown, basically. And so people who are already tuned like that are aging just just later.
[00:12:39.340] – Allan OK, so the big anti aging movement has people taking testosterone and in some cases they're also taking growth hormone, but in fact, that might actually be shortening their lives.
[00:12:53.950] – Allan Right. And I would add estrogen for women in this case. Look, we were rushing and by the way, I was there at this camp initially, when I came to aging, there was no aging, not much of aging. There are several people who had apostasies, but there is no really big signs of aging. And I thought, well, I should be an endocrinologist because one thing is clear, all those hormones are going down, which means let's just replace them. And that's how we'll do aging.
[00:13:35.780] – Dr. Barzilai And it turns out that it's almost the opposite, because, look, when you have the breakdown of aging and you're seeing lots of things, some of them can cause aging. There's no doubt some of them maybe don't play any role, at least in our lifespan. But some of them may be protective. After all, when you start to have this break down, just like you have an infection, you have inflammatory response. When you have a breakdown of aging, you have a response. By the way, some of this is inflammation too.
[00:14:12.860] – Dr. Barzilai So it's it's not as simple as to say, oh, it's high, we lower that or it's low and will increase it. It's not like that. And I think the best, and all the examples that you gave are really good. But, you know, the estrogen was such a controversy. I mean, some people say why the Women's Health Initiative even went to estrogen. We knew it's going to be good.
[00:14:42.050] And now that it's bad, people are saying, well, maybe, you know, maybe no, it's not what it is. Maybe there's other explanation. And they basically focusing on the fact that if you give estrogen between 50 and 60, maybe at that point you get some benefits. But still, the women who are older than 60 didn't do well in estrogen. So it's going to it's going to get to them, OK? And it's kind of the same with testosterone.
[00:15:09.360] – Dr. Barzilai And I mean, no matter how we looked at testosterone, the risks outweigh the benefits. And growth hormone is a really open area because there is a lot of business in growth hormone and lots of elderly people are getting growth hormone.
[00:15:29.930] – Dr. Barzilai And in the meanwhile, I'm discovering by totally unbiased way that probably this is not a good idea to give growth hormone OK, because it's the opposite. If you have low growth hormone, you're much more protected. You can live healthier and longer.
[00:15:47.180] – Dr. Barzilai I would say just one thing to be aware of, this effect of growth hormone is huge in females and not as much in males, both in animals and humans. In other words, growth hormone injections might not be as risky for men as they are for women, but we are not sure of how risky it is. What is the magnitude of this effect? So there's a little openness here, but be careful.
[00:16:22.240] – Allan Yes, and then when you get into the mitochondria, I think you did lose me a little bit there only because it got pretty, pretty detailed. But can you kind of go into, you know, the mitochondria does a little bit more than just provide energy in the cell. And the things you're finding is that that's part of what's causing the aging or the slower aging.
[00:16:44.080] – Dr. Barzilai Right, so yet so let me let me describe the evolution of that, OK? Once upon a time, many hundreds of million years ago, there was the initial cell. And the cell had a real problem, the cell had a lack of energy could do only glycolysis. There's not that many calories from glycolysis. And the cell was also exposed to oxygen, which is very toxic. So there was the cell, but next by the mitochondria was walking. And the mitochondria is really a bacteria that can do two things, can harness the oxygen and also make energy out of that.
[00:17:38.180] – Dr. Barzilai So that's how the cell got the mitochondria. OK, so these mitochondria is a collaboration of bacteria and and the cell to make it better. And it was felt that in this marriage the cell really was calling the shots because a lot of the messages came from the nuclear genome, OK, for the from the nucleus of the cell. Right. And what we kind of discovered is a new biology that really showed that this mitochondria has hundreds of its own messages.
[00:18:20.480] – Dr. Barzilai And so there's a crosstalk not only between the nucleus and the mitochondria, but those peptides that are being manufactured by the mitochondria are exiting and they're influencing other effects across the body. And they are known as mitochondrial derived peptides. So, yeah, you know, about the mitochondria and the powerhouse and the fact that mitochondria declines with aging and that is associated with lots of diseases. And we really need to make sure our mitochondria is OK.
[00:18:54.890] – Dr. Barzilai But there's another aspect of the mitochondria, which is the messages they have. And I have a company that I founded with my co-founder, Hossy Cohen, who is the dean of USC School of Gerontology. It's CohBar where we are actually making therapy out of those peptides that are basically offering resiliency against many of the diseases of aging.
[00:19:25.940] – Allan OK, so so these are traits that we would have. You know, if we're looking at our own aging, there's seven what they call, I guess, Hallmark's. You didn't identify these, but you mentioned them in the book. So kind of like the areas where your field looks, a couple of them that I was really I was obviously familiar with and you've gotten into already is the epigenetics, but also inflammation and a few others. Can you kind of go through those and why looking at all seven of those is important.
[00:19:57.380] – Dr. Barzilai By the way, I have eight there, but, you know, we had seven initially, the Europeans had nine, then Brexit happened, you know. You know, those those hallmarks we we initially thought to call them the pillars of aging. And then we said, you know what, we still are gathering data. It's going to change. And if you all of a sudden take a pillar, the whole building would collapse. So let's not call them pillar, let's call them Hallmark. But in fact, I'm using much more another term, which is knob's, because what makes a hallmark hallmark is the fact that there's a good research that shows that if you intervene then you change health span and lifespan.
[00:20:47.930] – Dr. Barzilai OK, that's really the evidence. Another thing interesting, those hallmarks are interconnected in the sense that you can target one of the knobs and it's going to influence the others. So I'll give you an example. One of those hallmarks is called Purtill Stars. What is Protostar? We are manufacturing and with aging, we're manufacturing in increase amounts of proteins that are just wrong. They're not folding right, they're not accumulating. They're doing traffic jams and they're causing lots of problems.
[00:21:33.120] – Dr. Barzilai Now, there is a way to deal with it. There are several ways to deal with it. But one is called autophagy. Autophagy is the garbage disposal of the cells. OK, there is the ability to garbage disposal that is decrease with aging. But by the way, it's a green energy garbage disposal because it gets those proteins or whatever garbage takes them to little components that are, that can be recirculated for energy again. And autophagy, by the way, is eating yourself, but it's not really eating yourself, it's cleaning yourself and making available better, better body.
[00:22:11.430] – Dr. Barzilai So when you turn on autophagy, which you can do genetically or by drug, you get the effect on the mitochondria. You get the effect on the metabolism and you get the effect on immunity. OK, and other things. Another thing, two of the hallmarks are decline in immunology, in immune function and also inflammation or as we call it, inflam-aging. Those are the really two things that are relevant now to COVID. And let me make a point out of here, COVID.
[00:22:51.840] – Dr. Barzilai So I'm telling you how we went from Hope to promise. Right. And we're going to realize the promise. And then COVID landed on us. And it's it must be an opportunity to but COVID landed on us and really showed ages. It showed that if you're 80 years old, you're two hundred times more likely to die if you're 20 years old. OK, it's really the major risk for dying.
[00:23:16.800] – Dr. Barzilai And by the way, multi morbidity, lots of diseases for me they're just how old. But you are biologically, you know, at age 65, half of the people in Europe have less than two diseases and the other half have more than two diseases. So they're they're not super agers. They're aging really quicker. Aging is the major risk factor for COVID. And this is because of something that happened to those Hallmark's the immunity declines so the virus is more likely to attack you.
[00:23:50.550] – Dr. Barzilai And second, what the people die from within few days of the infection, they get a very big inflammatory response uncontrol that is destructive, that is destroying the lung, and that is really causing the death. Those are two of the hallmarks of aging that can be targeted. Actually, both of them can be targeted. And we're trying to find a way for the public to know that, know what to do about it. But this is just, I think, important insights on the hallmark. If you want something more specific, you can ask.
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[00:25:58.080] – Allan That was wonderful because, you know, I think that really when I when I saw that picture, because you had a graphic in the book, you could see that interrelation, you know, and you did an excellent job there with Covid as an example of, you know, you've got two things. You've got the immune response and then you've got the inflammation in the body and how they're interrelated. So now that's really good.
[00:26:19.380] – Allan You got into one topic that I thought I thought was a little interesting. You know, being in the health space, I have a lot of friends that are in the health space. And I have one friend that was on metformin while he was he was diabetic. He reversed his diabetes and he got off of metformin. But he decided for personal reasons, longevity reasons, to start taking metformin again. Now, he exercised he rides his bike. He does a lot of different things. So he was already exercising, which was a benefit. But then when he started talking about metformin, I was like, OK, well, until I saw it in your book. So can you kind of talk about the benefits we get from something like metformin or exercise?
[00:27:00.810] – Dr. Barzilai Sure, really interesting topic. And in fact, let me say, I have many interest in metformin, but it's all because of overwhelming interest. We're trying to do a study that will demonstrate to the FDA that aging can be targeted and then variety of age related diseases, not only one, but few can be delayed substantially. OK, that aging is a preventable condition from age related disease perspective. To thread this needle, we had to find a drug that does it, a drug that is available, a drug that doesn't have pharmaceutical about it because we were just scientists and a drug that really will serve as a tool to pave the road.
[00:28:00.780] – Dr. Barzilai Because because the point is, if the FDA doesn't have indication to target aging, then health care providers don't have to pay for it. If health care providers are not paying for that, the pharmaceuticals are not going to jump in because they need a business plan. I realize that. So we needed to break that. And that's the Gero-science effort and American Federation of Aging Research. And the NIH now are all partners in the study.
[00:28:29.850] – Dr. Barzilai That's called TAM, targeting aging with metformin in order to show that aging can be targeted. OK, so that's the big picture. OK, of course you have to understand that because of that I'm not selling metformin to anyone. OK, that's not the purpose. But I need to do the study in order to show that. But why why metformin? Well, first of all, if you give metformin to almost all animals. Most recently a fish, one of the fish that is in the lab now investigated. It's called killing fish, killing fish, all other animals. You give them metformin, they live healthier and longer.
[00:29:11.000] – Dr. Barzilai OK, but in in people, because and by the way, metformin, just from historical perspective, it's a drug that initially in the forties of last century. OK, so 80 years ago was used to prevent flu and malaria. In other words, somebody discovered the fact that it has some strong effects. While doing that, people also demonstrated that people who got metformin and in high glucose level, their glucose level normalized. And in fact, then it all became about diabetes. And it's the first drug of choice to treat Type two diabetes, which is the major form of diabetes.
[00:30:02.160] – Dr. Barzilai So metformin is out there for more than 60 years. So everything you want to do, you know about metformin, we know about metformin, OK? It's been around there currently almost two hundred million people around the world that are on metformin. So it's generic. There's no pharmaceutical beyond it. It's cheap. It's safe.
[00:30:26.230] – Dr. Barzilai Perfect tool for us. What is the evidence from humans, Will? If you take non diabetic and give them metformin, you'll prevent diabetes in them. OK, a big clinical study, it's called the DPP. Another big clinical studies were to look at the effects of metformin versus other drugs on prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, metformin prevented cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
[00:30:57.820] – Dr. Barzilai There's many association studies, hundreds of association studies, all showing that people in metformin have less cancers, all all kinds of cancers. There's both clinical studies and association studies that there is less cognitive impairment and less Alzheimer's in people with metformin. And maybe the most fascinating to me is a huge study that was done in the UK, where in the UK you can go into the pharmacies and get data, you know, not the name of the person, but other medical information on those on those subjects.
[00:31:43.070] – Dr. Barzilai So they took like 170,000 people and took this 78,000 that are on metformin data control with age match people, you know, in the treated by the same doctors getting subscriptions from from the same pharmacies. And basically they showed that compared to non diabetic people with diabetes and metformin had much less mortality, 17 percent less mortality over five years of follow up. Now, the people with more mortality had no diabetes and the people on metformin had diabetes, they had they were more obese and more sick to start with, and yet they live longer.
[00:32:36.000] – Dr. Barzilai So take everything I told you about metformin and you see that it's a real drug that has real effect on many diseases in a composite of diseases. And that's why we use it as a tool to get permission from the FDA to target aging with it.
[00:32:58.840] – Allan OK, now we can get we can get a similar effect with exercise, but in the book you kind of talked about using both of them together.
[00:33:06.260] – Dr. Barzilai So, you know, so one of our challenges is we have all those hallmarks. Let's say we have a drug for all the hallmarks. Can we use all the combination together?Will it be additive? And the answer is it's specific. So we collaborated with a group that done the following study. They took elderly and they exercise them. A half of them were exercise with metformin and half of them without. And they actually that was an NIH grant. And they predicted that metformin will be editive to the effect of exercise. But to their surprise and by the way, there are other groups that showed the same.
[00:33:58.750] – Dr. Barzilai All the people that exercised did better, but the muscle of the ones that exercised was bigger than the muscle of those that exercised and were on metformin. So it looked like metformin was actually inhibiting the growth of the muscle. OK, we were interested in that because in one of the supplements that you don't read, they also show something fascinating that although the muscle was a smaller, the strength was the same between two groups.
[00:34:37.820] – Dr. Barzilai OK, so for me it means per gram of muscle. The one on metformin is better. OK, why is that? And what we did with this group we got, they did biopsies before and after treatment of the people. And we looked at the transcript of those biopsies and we showed exactly the mechanism by which muscle growth with exercise and why and how it wasn't growing as much with mitochondria, it was totally fitting. But metformin increased 516 other transcripts that are more of the aging protected transcripts.
[00:35:23.080] – Dr. Barzilai OK, so they affected autophagy, as I said before, some other things they decrease and or some other things. And so at the end, you can choose if you want to exercise because you want big muscle, don't take metformin. But what the metformin did is it didn't affect the force but affected the aging of the muscles. So at the end it had the similar functional effect but you can choose what you want to do.
[00:35:58.890] – Allan Yeah. And that kind of falls in line if you think about it. When we first started this conversation and we were we were talking about the growth factor in the hormones and people will often take those hormones because they want to get a little bit more muscular even as they age. And then here we are saying, you know, if you can build the quality strength of muscle without building that extra size, metformin will help you do that. And I guess the final one is…
[00:36:26.270] – Dr. Barzilai Can I just say something about that. Look, a lot of what growth hormone is doing and for which you say it is quite expensive. Right. So how people, why people are buying it. Because they see something. What they see growth hormone melts fat under the skin. OK, that's why people seeing that something is happening when it melts fat around your muscle, your muscles look bulgier, OK? There's very few studies that shows any effect on strength. OK, maybe there's a little bit, but it's not much at all.
[00:37:08.370] – Allan Yeah, that's going to come with the testosterone where you're recovering a little faster, therefore you're working out more often and that's typically where, you know, bodybuilders, they use either testosterone or steroid. That's where they see the size come from is they're just able to train harder and longer and more often. And that's what they get.
[00:37:26.820] – Dr. Barzilai But, you know, what you said is very important. So I want I want to use this opportunity. We're talking about 70 years old. We're not talking about bodybuilders below 40. OK, so what I'm telling you is true for aging, OK? I'm not saying it's untrue for the others, but I'm not saying it's true either. OK, so let's say let's just build a Chinese wall.
[00:37:56.810] – Allan Yeah. And I think that's where I was going with this is to say, you know, a lot of the things that we would be doing to build muscle and look more aesthetically pleasing are not necessarily going to be good for aging.
[00:38:16.310] – Dr. Barzilai Exactly.
[00:38:16.950] – Allan OK, and one that I wanted to get into is I saw this on this show. It's been years ago. And you name them you call them chronies. But they're basically people that significantly under eat. And there's some science behind how under eating can and calorie restriction can allow you to to live longer. We see that. We've seen a lot of that. But you talked about in the book ways that we can use things like intermittent fasting and ketosis to mimic that effect.
[00:38:46.680] – Dr. Barzilai Right. So I want to say something about this paradigm. When we started caloric restriction, we knew another fact that if you give zero calories they all die in a few days, right, so we know that there are limits. OK. The question is how much how much calories, right?
[00:39:10.520] – Allan Yeah.
[00:39:10.770] – Dr. Barzilai And I'm not sure that the chronies took the right amount of calories. I think they took less calories than what they should have. But for me, one of the things that I, that we've done that always has to go back to the science. Yeah, we did those caloric restriction everywhere all the time, and it was always successful. OK, and whenever I test a drug that might affect aging, one of the control groups is the caloric restricted animal. Right. But what we did with the caloric restricted animal is the following. We would come in the morning. They were hungry. We would put all the food in the morning so they would eat all the food in the morning and will fast for twenty three hours more. OK, we really OK, because we said, oh, you know what caloric restriction means, it means that less for breakfast, less for lunch, less for dinner.
[00:40:07.490] – Dr. Barzilai But that's not what we did to the animal. When we started actually doing the caloric restriction throughout the day, they were thinner, but they didn't live longer, which means something is in these. Fasting is important for the benefits of caloric restriction.
[00:40:26.160] – Allan Do you think that has something to do with, you know, with cell death and the bodies reusing of materials a bit a bit more efficiently?
[00:40:35.750] – Dr. Barzilai Well, we are looking we're looking now and it really we're looking at it what happens in this time course of fasting. So we're taking young and old people, men and women, and we're trying to look what happens to the biology of aging. We're going to take their cells and see at which time they become younger. Right. We are going to see in the plasma, when are the ketones starting to go up? When is the insulin going down and all that and and really determine. Because, look, first of all, if all it takes is 12 hours, then more people will be able to do 12 hours.
[00:41:13.820] – Dr. Barzilai They'll they'll just skip lunch right? The 16, eight hours, which is what I'm doing is just surprisingly easy. All you do is skip breakfast. And you know that in 16 hours you can have whatever you want and you're not limited, although you find out that you eat less, but you're not limited. And I think this is a big advantage. If you gave me a diet for three months, I could fail any day. I could break any day. But I'm not going to break if I have two hours to go. I'm just not going to break. OK, so that's easy. And another thing, you lose weight quite rapidly initially, then it's stabilized, but you lose weight, so good diet.
[00:42:00.230] – Allan And I think that's kind of the point. You know, when I get into ketosis, which I'm approaching right now, I naturally stop wanting to eat breakfast. I just when I wake up I'm not hungry. That's a very productive period of time for me. So even stopping the eating because it's quiet. You know I get up about four or five o'clock in the morning. And so I have about four hours before any emails are coming in or anything else is going on.
[00:42:25.610] – Allan And those are the most productive hours of my day. So I don't want to stop and eat. Then I want to wait till the email start coming and then I can eat my breakfast while I'm reading email. But, you know, I think there's a lot to this and I appreciate that you're taking the time to to study how all these different protocols and in some cases now we're going to say medications can target aging because again, we don't want to just get older. We want to we want to have a long health, healthy life, too. So try to get that biological age lower than our chronological age.
[00:43:01.970] – Allan Doctor, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:43:11.700] – Dr. Barzilai Well, first of all, I agree with this definition and, you know, with my book, I'm not trying to sell any medication, although I have a lot of comments on many of those and not on medication, on stress, on society on interaction.
[00:43:33.480] – Dr. Barzilai I mean, boy, the older people are so lonely with this covid-19. They are just so lonely. There's so many things that are part of health span. And it's not only medical, it's emotional, it's everything. What I'm what I'm trying to do is really to say something else. So I'm sorry. I'm not you can ask me specifically, but I'm trying to do something else in my book. I'm trying to say there's a lot of information out there. OK, here, we're going to have information out there.
[00:44:11.250] – Dr. Barzilai How how do you know what's real, what's marketing, what was proven, what was hope, what is totally fake? OK, it's very difficult. And I'm saying, look. I'm going, I'm basically I'm impressed only when I see a clinical study, a clinical study means we take a population. Half of them are on a drug, half of them are in placebo. They don't know. The doctors don't know. And we have an outcome that we calculated. We know how many people we need and how much time we need. And this is a clinical study. And that's the only way that you can be sure that you're doing the right thing.
[00:44:56.470] – Dr. Barzilai And unfortunately, there are not that many of them. I brought as an example, vitamin D. Vitamin D is associated with every disaster in the world. OK, but just the same, except women with osteoporosis. Every time you give vitamin D to people in risk, almost nothing happens or very little happens that the effect of vitamin D seems huge and when you give vitamin D, almost nothing happens or very little happens.
[00:45:30.020] – Dr. Barzilai So there's no compelling reason. By the way, I have low vitamin D level. My doctor wanted me to take the vitamin D and I said show me to me. And he said, well, maybe if you have osteoporosis, said, let's do a scan. I did a scan. I actually have bones that are five sizes thicker than the average. And I'm thinking, you know what, maybe that's why I have low vitamin D level, because we might not know all the direction. Maybe the fact that my bone is like that, it decreases the conversion of vitamin D because it needs protection. So I don't need to be all bone. OK, so so for me, vitamin D is not a is not an issue because the clinical studies have not supported it.
[00:46:24.340] – Dr. Barzilai There is another part of vitamin D, though, that I would give us an example. If you want to take vitamins, at least vitamin D didn't show to be harmful. So that's also good. So, you know, we can go one by one. And so but then there's another category. There's a category of drugs that have promise, OK, based on lots of data, maybe animals data. But there is no clinical study and maybe there won't be clinical study, you know, there are nutraceuticals. OK, so in that play, in one of the examples, anime and ad supplements and a man. So I don't have anything against taking in a man.
[00:47:13.130] – Dr. Barzilai I think I don't understand everything. We don't understand everything we need to know about any men, but it probably has strong anti-aging properties. And I don't see really that it's doing harm, although I'm not in absolute way sure of that either. OK, are they good people who have cancer? Maybe it's not good in people with cancer. OK, there are lots of safety issues that we could deal. But the point really that I'm trying to stress is we have to do better than just reading something in the Internet and taking it much better than that. And there's a way to make progress in that.
[00:47:52.510] – Allan Yes. Well, Doctor, thank you so much. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book Age Later, where would you like for me to send them.
[00:48:00.650] – Dr. Barzilai So Age Later can be bought on Amazon. And if you want to have more information about the book and about health, the American Federation of Aging Research, AFAR.org is where you can find more about the book.
[00:48:21.810] – Allan You can go to 40PlusFitnesspodcast.Com/449 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Dr. Barzilai, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:48:33.950] – Dr. Barzilai A pleasure. Good luck to you and and nice mission to have.
[00:48:38.150] – Allan Thank you.
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Before we get started today, I wanted to take just a moment to reach out to you and offer this special invitation. I’m opening up my calendar to give you a free 15-minute consult. During this consult, there’s no obligation. I’m there to help you reach your health and wellness goals, so we’ll talk about the things that are getting you stuck. We’ll come up with strategies that will help you be more successful and we’ll look for those little things that you might be missing on your wellness journey. So if you’re ready to do something special before the summer, go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/15min. And I’ll be sure to have that link in the show notes. So, do go to the show notes if you forget this, but it’ll be out there – a free 15-minute consult with me; the same kind of consult that I would normally have with my clients. This one’s going to be for you absolutely free. Go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/15min. Thank you.
We all want to look and feel our best. In her book, The Ultimate Age-Defying Plan, Ashley Boudet helps us use a plant-based diet to slow the aging process.
Allan (2:19): Ashley, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
Ashley Boudet (2:22): Hi Allan. Thank you for having me.
Allan (2:24): Today we’re going to talk about your book, The Ultimate Age-Defying Plan: The Plant-Based Way to Stay Mentally Sharp & Physically Fit. I can say I have celebrated my 53rd birthday this year. That term “age-defying” starts to resonate with me as I’m kind of turning onto what I would call the second half of life. Age-defying is pretty darn important.
Ashley Boudet (2:51): Yeah. Well, you’re pretty young. It’s been so much fun writing the book and also learning. And it’s a little bit of a relief, I think, to learn that there are things that we can do to stay young. A lot of people look at me and they’re like, “What do you know about aging?” But I thought turning 40 would be a big deal. And I think that even though I try to ignore age, it doesn’t really matter that much. There was something about it a few years ago that was like, “What’s going to happen?” I thought it would be something big or a big change in it. It really wasn’t.
And I think my fabulous coauthor and I would both agree that we both have felt better later – 40s and 50s and on, than ever. So it’s turned into an opportunity in a way. Sometimes eating well, exercising and all of those things come easier when a person is younger and may have a different meaning when you get a little bit older. It’s more of an opportunity, and what I call it is self-care. We talk about this a lot in some of our classes, that the way we really do see the future of medicine is self-care, is learning to take care of yourself and bringing the power back. And that also includes cooking.
Allan (4:08): That’s what I really like, is your book’s unique in this perspective. I’ve seen doctors that have brought in folks to write recipes for them before, but this is a book that you could naturally tell the book knew what the recipes were because they’d eaten it. It was almost, I’m not going to say a love of food, but it really talked about how you can use food to nourish your body. And we’re going to talk about that acronym in a minute, but that food’s a big, big part of that; in fact, the first part of it. But as you’re going through the book, it was telling you if you’re looking at this stuff and you want to get these nutrients in, here are the recipes, here are the page numbers. Go after it. I thought that was really cool because it wasn’t necessarily a prescription. It was empowering someone, like you said, to do self-care.
Ashley Boudet (5:05): Exactly. As a naturopathic doctor, many times, and even in my early training, I would give people lists of things that you shouldn’t, or ways that you should eat or things that could help to support your body. But I learned that actually knowing what to do with those foods was so huge. Some people had no idea how to even make a food taste good. And Mark calls what he does “food activism”. He’s been in this vegan chef world for a long time and he’s very clear that it has to taste good for anybody to even try it, to even begin to bring vegetables into their life on a regular basis. What we also do in our classes, and we wanted this book to be similar to that, where it’s bringing up the experience of the food and the experience of how these things are medicines and how they work in our body.
Allan (5:59): I was looking at something as simple as wanting to get more dandelion root into my diet and saying it looks different; it doesn’t look like all the other lettuce and stuff that I would normally eat in a salad. How do I put it in there and make it a normal part? Some of that I’ve found works really well with smoothies, it also works very well with a salad. But it is a little intimidating when you’re looking at a particular vegetable that you’ve never cooked with before and saying, “Here’s this big purple eggplant. What do I do with it now?” There are some recipes in the book that will actually help me do that.
Ashley Boudet (6:35): Yes, exactly. And we like to encourage people to use these recipes as what Mark calls a “template”. So, to try this recipe and then to begin to get more creative and to bring in another food. Like if you’re doing a green salad or something with greens, how can I make this work with dandelion? And just to start experimenting more, but to kind of give you a place to start, so you can then have years and years of recipes that you can just come up with yourself.
Allan (7:04): There are 175+ of them in this book. So this is a really good start for anyone that does want to either go plant-based or at least make sure they’re getting more plants in their diet, because I think that’s important for all of us. You have an acronym in the book that I really like. I tend to go towards numbers and acronyms; it’s just something I love. You have a really cool acronym – NOURISH. Do you mind going through each of those pieces and what they mean for us?
Ashley Boudet (7:36): Sure. I love the word “nourish” itself, because I feel like it’s a very rich word. It kind of invokes the idea of really taking care of yourself. We like to simplify things. The book has seven ingredients or less; we want to make things really easy and doable for people. At the same time, the information and the idea of this age-defying plan – we want to keep it as simple as possible and to look at the things that we do every day that we feel could be the most powerful and healing. So, NOURISH is pretty easy to remember. I’ll go through them quickly.
N is nutrition – the basic nutrients that we need for our body to work.
O is oxytocin. And I love that. Oxytocin, not a lot of people know what that is, but it is what they call the “happiness hormone”. There was a study not long ago that I think was pretty widespread out there that was talking about how hugging for I think it was 20 seconds or something – like a long hug – actually would increase the levels of this pleasure or calming hormone in your body. There are so many things that also will increase oxytocin. This is one of the first actual studies that looked at the blood levels of the hormone, but anything that makes you feel good. So I put oxytocin in there, and that can be being outside, talking to a friend, even eating a really delicious meal, laughing, things like that. So, that’s the O.
“Use it or lose it” is all about using your brain and your body in the way that they want to be used. So, challenging yourself, getting rid of that idea that it’s too late to try something new. If maybe you thought you might want to do a triathlon – not that that’s something I would do – but use it or lose it. Always moving your body and never feeling like it’s ever too late. Also, challenging your mind as well. And we go into all of these in more detail in the book, obviously.
R is for relationship, and that is the importance of really nourishing your relationships and nourishing the idea of a connection to a community, to how we contribute to our community and how we share our stories with each other. That can be very nourishing.
I is for intention, and by this we mean knowing what’s important to you in life, having a vision for your life, knowing what you value and making choices from there.
Then the last two – pretty obvious, but super important on the top of my list really, are sleep and hydration. Sleep is the importance of getting your body that downtime to shut down and recuperate. In the book, I have some studies that are really interesting about how sleep helps us to detoxify as well.
And then hydration – this is simply getting enough water. This is something that, living in Colorado in a dry climate, I’m always having to remind people of. But really anybody can benefit from sometimes drinking a glass of water when they’re looking and wondering, “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I feel well?” in many different ways. Also we talk about with hydration, using water as medicine. So this can be taking an herbal bath or jumping into a cool river and having our circulation react to that and really awakening our nerves and our cells in that way.
So, those are the things that we have learned both separately and together over years that have really helped us to stay healthy; things that are important to do every day. They seem very simple and they’re actually very powerful to us.
Allan (11:32): You put a lot of good detail in the book on each and every one of these; some considerations, some things you can do to get this. I really appreciated that this was not just a, “Here’s the acronym” and then, “Go do these things.” You actually provide a lot of guidance in the book on exactly how to do those things.
Ashley Boudet (11:53): Right. We wanted it to be, one, something simple that didn’t feel too overwhelming for people. We also have one page on NOURISH, so we were hoping that could be something people could take with them at the gym or something, just to remind themselves of what all these things mean.
Allan (12:14): Now, one thing that I have not really talked about a lot on the show, and it was kind of surprising because this is episode 377 – we’ve never really talked about kidney and urinary tract health. As I was reading your book I saw the section on that and I was like, “376 episodes leading up to this, we haven’t had this conversation.” So I was really glad that you got into it. The kidneys, obviously we know they filter our blood. We know that if someone gets diabetes, over time they are very likely to cause damage to their kidneys and perhaps need dialysis. Dialysis shops are popping up all over the country pretty much faster than weight loss clinics are. It’s just surprising to me how many there are now. We are not taking good care of our kidneys.
Ashley Boudet (13:12): Right. I wanted to put this in the book, and it’s kind of a small section in the book. I think from the naturopathic perspective, it’s less strange to talk about the kidneys as really important organs of elimination and balance in our body. Even if you look at Chinese medicine, the kidneys are central to health, and something that’s always looked at and addressed, kind of in a different way in Chinese medicine. I wanted to see what people are dealing with when they’re aging, and surprisingly, chronic kidney disease was one of the top 10. This was from the Council on Aging. I looked at the top 10 things that a lot of people are dealing with with aging, and kidney was number six. So it was right up there with heart disease and diabetes, and it’s because it’s connected to all of these things. In addition, all of these things that we can do every day, like drinking enough water and nourishing our bodies and our cells and exercising – all of these things are going to help to support our kidneys as well. So, the idea that I like for people to keep in mind is, it’s really scary to think of kidney disease. I’m not trying to minimize when someone has a very serious kidney disease, but all of these things that we do every day are also protecting our kidneys.
Allan (14:40): So, in many cases, kidney disease is also a lifestyle disease.
Ashley Boudet (14:45): Right.
Allan (14:47): Okay. Now, I’m someone who enjoys cooking. I probably don’t cook enough meals on my own, but as this is going on now and I’m down here in Panama, I’m going to obviously cook more, primarily because there’s not a huge number of restaurants within the distance and I would get very, very bored eating at the same ones all the time. So, I do tend to cook the majority of my meals. And I do recognize that one of the cool things about that is I actually now know what I’m putting in my mouth, so there’s no extra this or that getting snuck in there that I don’t want in my body. Can you talk about some of the value of when we cook our own meals? What does that do for us?
Ashley Boudet (15:36): Yeah, it’s huge. So, Mark has been teaching cooking classes for many years. And around the same time that I was doing my clinicals and telling people about nutrition and learning everything about nutrition was when I realized people need to learn to cook. I need to learn to cook. Honestly, when I was in school and in a doctoral program and was more stressed out, what really brought me to health, one of the main things was taking the time to cook for myself. It turned into really my time. So when we teach classes, I try to invite people to bring in all of their senses. As we’re starting to sauté the onions, to really smell those foods. And when we’re talking about which herbs we’re using, to smell those as well and to look at them and maybe even get a little bit more quiet and think about where these foods came from. So, using all of our senses and using all levels of experiencing that food is something that you can’t get when you just go and get takeout food or go to a restaurant. Some people talking about the prana in a food, and the prana is a very real thing. It’s the energy and you could say the love that someone puts into the food. That actually helps us with digestion and really contributes to our health as well.
Allan (17:00): What I found is that I get a lot of pleasure out of going to a local market, a farmer’s market, and literally sitting there with the person that grew the plant and asking them about how they grow this. You start seeing them just light up. I think they get more joy out of being a farmer at a farmer’s market than they make profit selling at a farmer’s market, because the food’s cheaper and better there. But you know that they picked this this morning. They got up at 6:00 in the morning to make the 7:00 or 7:30 farmer’s market time. They got up; it’s daylight, they picked it. It’s sitting right there. You take that home, rinse it off, and that becomes part of your dinner that night. To me, it’s so fulfilling to know that literally, this was a growing plant this morning and it’s on my plate tonight.
Ashley Boudet (17:56): Right. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s our connection to nature. Food is our medicine.
Allan (18:02): And it didn’t fly in from Chile. Not that there’s anything wrong with Chile, but that’s a long trip. The organic, locally grown produce is going to provide you better nutrition and you’re going to feel better about it when you’re helping out a local farmer with that purchase. A lot of times when I’m talking to folks, they’re saying, “I really struggle to cook for myself because I just don’t have enough time” or, “This doesn’t work out for me. I go into my refrigerator and there’s nothing there.” Can you give us some tricks – I know in the book you had seven – for meal prep and making it a snap?
Ashley Boudet (18:44): Yes. This is very important because it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks you should do; you have to do whatever is going to work in your life. We’re all busy and life keeps us going and going, so one is to think of it as something that you’re doing for yourself; so back to that NOURISH. I could go through the seven from the basic cooking techniques section, but it has to taste good and be easy and be something that you enjoy. This should be an experience that you enjoy. So some of the quick things that you can do to make sure that you’re prepared for having that good experience and it not being a stressful experience, are to prepare ahead of time, of course. We suggest maybe taking a weekend day and in a relaxing way to plan out a menu for the week and think about where you need to get these foods and what you need for that week, and get that ready. Then preparing ahead of time, and also creating an organized space. Maybe Marie Kondo can help – I know everybody’s talking about her these days. But really having a Zen space, is what Mark says helps so much to be able to make those meals more quickly and to have the preparation process be much more enjoyable. So, having a place for everything, knowing where to find what you need, and then planning ahead are some of the simple things that you can do to bring in both flavor and nutrition. We also have a few recipes in the book on making spice blends. The idea is that you can have different dried spices that you can blend together. You can put together parsley, basil, oregano and some other herbs and make an Italian blend, so we’re going to have Italian night. Or you can put together certain herbs with cayenne, and that can be more like a Mexican flavor or an Indian flavor. You can have those at your hand, and that way you can feel like you’re being more creative, but it’s also not too much work to have to do.
Another thing is – and this is something big that Mark teaches in all of his classes – is the idea of the template. So, the first meal, or some people say, “What’s a go-to meal?” To get nutrition and to also have it be interesting and delicious would be what he calls the “monk bowl”. It’s the idea of a bowl that has a nice balance – so a grain, a green, and a protein. The grain could be quinoa or rice, or even rice noodles or pasta. The green just means any veggies. You want to go crazy on the veggies and have all the different colors that you can imagine, not just green. And then the protein, which can be for a vegan diet something simple, like quick roasted tempeh or tofu, or you can do lentils or beans or something that you can either do in a quick cooker, or even a can or something like that if you’re in a hurry. When you have that base, then you can add extra things. The things that we like to add are some toasted seeds or avocado or something raw, like some raw greens on top, or even sauerkraut or something like that. Those are pretty simple things that you can have in your pantry or in your fridge all the time. And then in a few minutes you can create a really delicious, really nutritious meal that’s not the same as one that you’ve ever had before, because you can mix and match all these ingredients.
Allan (22:27): I liked all of that because this is something like the salad in a jar concept. That’s great, because you could set that up the night before. In the morning when you get ready, you go. So maybe you had the salad for dinner, you had the extra that you put in that jar, and that’s your lunch and you’re set. Now, the one that hit me in the heart that my wife, when she does listen to this episode, she’ll understand – I just mess up so many dishes when I’m cooking. But you guys had the tip in there to try to use the same pan for more than one thing, and a lot of the recipes do exactly that. I thought that was pretty cool, because I’ll go make something and it’d be 15 pans, and forks and spoons and all that dirty. It got me to thinking I am spending time washing these dishes, and in some cases my wife steps in and does that since I did the cooking, but it is time consuming. There are things we can naturally look to that are going to reduce the amount of time. So if time is the issue, you can remove that issue.
Ashley Boudet (23:37): Right. And on other days, when you have a little bit more time, you can make the big mess in the kitchen and make it your art space and go crazy. But on a regular day-to-day, make sure that this can really be a part of your life and not something that you just do every now and then. That’s the person that we were thinking of in this book, and how can we make this as easy as possible?
Allan (23:59): And I liked that a lot of the recipes can be batch-cooked or batch-prepared, particularly with the spice blends. I had never thought of that. My wife thinks I have a spice fetish. We did the move to Panama; I’m throwing out all these spices or giving them away. I just collect spices, because I think they make the meals delicious. As I’m down here in Panama, I have less selection but I’m making it work. Ashley, I define “wellness” as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
Ashley Boudet (24:47): I like that too. I like to break it down into simples. So three things. I’m going to go back to NOURISH, and I would say, nourish your body, one. So this is food, water, movement, challenging – all the things we talked about. Nourish your mind – so your brain, your emotional body – finding joy, quiet, spending time in nature. And then nourish your connections. So, nourish your body, nourish your mind, and nourish your connections. And that’s your connection to family and friends, community, maybe your connection to greater, to all beings that live, and even maybe extending beyond to something greater than yourself, because that’s where we can answer, “Why am I doing all this stuff in the first place?”
Allan (25:38): Those were wonderful. Thank you. If someone wanted to learn more about you and Mark, learn more about the book, where would you like for me to send them?
Ashley Boudet (25:50): Mark and I together is Doctor and Chef, so our website is DoctorAndChef.com. And on that website you can find where to find the book, more information about the book, and we have some resources that are downloads and different information on certain topics that we talk about in the book that we go more in depth on.
Allan (26:11): I liked that there were a good many links to the resources section to dive deeper. The book is a great resource in and of itself, but you have some add-ons that they can go find. So the name of the book is The Ultimate Age-Defying Plan and you can find the links to all of that at 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/377. Ashley, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
Ashley Boudet (26:36): Thank you. It was great chatting with you.
Allan (26:43): I really love having conversations with folks like Ashley, where they’re stretching me to learn new things, to focus on things maybe a different way. It’s always great to get guests on the show that teach me something. I’ve really enjoyed this journey of podcasting, where I’ve been able to read all of these great books and have some really cool conversations. And one of the ways I think I can help you is by sharing that with you. If you find yourself stuck, you just want a boost to make your summer awesome – let’s get on the phone. I’m offering a free 15-minute consult. You go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/15min, and that will take you to my Calendly calendar. There you can book a time and we can get on a phone – it’s a Zoom conference line. Really easy, just you and I, 15 minutes. We’re going to set some strategies, we’re going to go over goals, and I’m going to help you make this fitness journey much, much better. So go to 40PlusFitnessPodcast.com/15min. Thank you.
On this episode, we discuss Thomas Moore's new book Ageless Soul,, a book an successful aging.
Thomas Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul, as well as many other books on deepening soul and cultivating a mature spiritual life, three of which have received the Books for a Better Life Award. At turns, he has been a monk, a musician, a university professor, and a psychotherapist.
Phases of Aging
– Immortal is the phase of life when you don't think of life as limited.
– First taste of aging is when we begin to recognize that life is not permanent.
– Maturity is the phase where you begin to see changes.
– Shifting toward old age is the phase when you begin to feel old age coming on.
– Old age is a phase of life when you begin to flow with your age.
Most of the shifts from phase to phase come about with an event. In Thomas' experience, that happened when he had a heart procedure. The initiate isn't planned, but it happens anyway.
Puer and Senex
“To age well you have to be profoundly old and profoundly young.”
Puer is a Latin word that means young person and Senex means old. We carry around a bit of each of these where our youth and our age talk through things to live well. We need to pay attention to the voices. These are a part of your identity and both can be useful.
Melancholy
Sadness and melancholy are a part of aging. Rather than try to collapse from it or avoid it, you should embrace it. Accepting this and looking for the new opportunities that are available to you now that you've reached a given age. And when you're older, you now have something to give to people that are younger.
Thomas recommends that we spend more time outside in nature as we will now have a much greater appreciation of it.
Developing a Clearer, Deeper Sense of Self
As we reach old age, we have developed as a deeper person. We can use our time to reflect more. We can observe and experience aging of others. We are learning more and we become a different person.
We can dedicate ourselves to learning, relaxing, and enjoying what we see.
Dr. Elissa Epel is a renowned health psychologist and the director of University of California San Francisco’s Aging, Metabolism, and Emotion Center. She is also the co-author of a new book entitled The Telomere Effect. The Telomere Effect examines the role of telomeres in the aging process and provides information on how we can protect these telomeres and improve our quality of life.
Dr. Epel explains that all of our cells contain telomeres, which act as protectors to our genes. Over time, our telomeres are exposed to a sensitive chemical environment. This can cause telomeres to shorten, possibly leading to aging and disease. Rates of aging differ by the individual, as it based on our varying chemical makeup and lifestyles. We can slow the aging process by making positive lifestyle changes, which help to maintain or possibly extend telomere length.
One factor that can cause us to age faster is chronic stress. A threat stress response, which involves feeling that our physical self is at risk or in danger, is linked to a greater stress response with cortisol and inflammation. The key to altering this is through awareness of our stress and changing our response. Meditation helps people become observers of their thoughts. They are more equipped to be at peace and go with the flow.
Other factors within our body that can harm us include inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance. We can help to remedy these threats by exercising and eating whole, unprocessed foods and a vegetable heavy diet. The key is to make small changes that will add up over the years, making an overall difference in your cellular health and aging.
In his book, The Art and Science of Aging Well, Dr. Mark Williams writes about the current science on aging in a way that give insight into how we should live to make sure we have the highest quality of life as we age. He notes a statistic that is quite relevant to aging. The death rate for humans is one per person, in other words, we all die. It is all just a matter of how and why.
Eight myths
All old people are the same and they are falling apart. We all age at different rates. Even the organ systems age at different rates. Because of the nature of growth and experience, as we age we become more valuable, not less.
Losing weight will make you live longer. We are very weight conscious, yet severe dieting can increase your chance of death.
As we age we become more forgetful and senile. It is true dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's are more common when we are older, but those are disease states. Forgetting names, walking into a room and forgetting why you're there, and losing car keys are all symptoms of being normal.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks. We don't naturally lose productivity as we age.
There is nothing we can do about aging. We can make choices. Only about 30% of our longevity is genetics. That gives us 70% of the puzzle for aging well.
Old people are an economic burden. We can ensure we have systems that don't cause a larger, older population to be a burden on the young. In fact, older people provide a lot of uncompensated productivity through volunteer activities.
Old people are not interested in sex. Older couples do remain active and are happier with their sex life.
You're going to end up in a nursing home. Only 3% of people end up living in a nursing home.
Cell Aging
It used to be thought that cells live forever. This was disproved by Leonard Hayflick. A cell can replicate approximately 50 times before they effectively die. The only way to break out of the aging control is when the cell becomes malignant.
Cells count the number of times they can replicate. Each time a cell replicates the end is slightly shorter. A telomere is an end-cap that causes the cell to stop replicating and the cell dies (apoptosis).
Sugar and Aging
If our blood sugar is high, which is typically measured in blood work as A1C. This shows advanced glycation end products (AGE), which gums up the works. High consumption of high glycemic and processed foods age us faster. Avoiding these kinds of foods are important for aging well.
Benefits of Exercise for Aging Well
We were made to move. Physical exercise is a key requirement for aging well.
Proven benefits of exercise:
Reduced risk of heart disease
Reduced risk of sudden death
Lowered blood pressure
Improved mood
Less of depression
Weight loss and loss of fat
Reduced risk of diabetes
And most likely a reduced risk of cancer
How much exercise should we get? An answer came from one of Dr. Williams' clients. Work up a good sweat every day.
Three Keys of Aging
The amount we lose is surprising small due to aging itself versus other things.
The older we get the more important self-maintenance activities become.
The opportunity to improve goes up if we're not on the extreme ends of the fitness continuum.
In Cracking the Aging Code, Josh Mitteldorf does a deep dive into the science of aging. His research has led him to some theories that differ quite a bit from what many of us may have believed were true. Our body is programmed to destroy itself as we age.
As a part of this discussion, Josh explains why he doesn't believe Paleo or natural eating extend our lives. Nor does he believe that anti-oxidant therapy make us more healthy. In fact, anti-oxidants may shorten our lives.
The four core reasons we age:
Inflammation
Inflammation is important to help us address outside threats, but when we're older, this inflammation turns on us. Inflammation attacks us, causing arthritis, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease. It is also associated with many types of cancer.
A high-carb diet is inflammatory. Having extra bodyfat is inflammatory. But our bodies are different and we have to experiment to find what works for us.
Immune System
The Thymus gland creates T-cells to fight viruses and bacteria. As we age, the T-cells begin to turn on us and are linked to arthritis and macular degeneration fo the retina.
Apoptosis
This process of “cell death” is important to help the body get rid of damaged cells. As we age, the process degrades resulting in two types of errors: damaged cells may be missed, or healthy cells are destroyed.
Telomere Shortening
Each time a cell is divided to go on the telomeres, which are endcaps for the DNA helix shortened. When the telomere reaches the end, the cell can no longer divide and effectively dies.
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