The Exchanges

Q but the initial results from that, those biomarkers seem to indicate that we're onto something with a few, a few, um, short bursts of these drugs, at least in the mice. How do you think about that? And is that also the future so that we control sort of like part of our aging and then what we don't control, we can use drugs to reverse or, um, slow down.

A We were working on this for a while based on the idea that we could find genes that would polish the scratches on the DVD. Um, and we came across a set of three genes called O, S and K for short, which are three of the six or so Yamanaka factors. Um, and about a year ago, we published that we could reverse the age of an animal. Um, and we restored eyesight to a blind old mouse and cure glaucoma in that animal. And we are now working towards human clinical trials. In Canada, we have a non-human primate study for safety to see how that goes, and within the next 18 months, if all goes well, we will be reversing aging in a human, if all goes well. So that discovery, in part, you know, there are a few other colleagues that are in this, but not a lot, led to a huge interest in this epigenetic information theory of aging that we started off talking about. And the idea is that we can Truly reset the age of the body and diseases of aging, like Alzheimer's and heart disease, even cancer will go away if we become young again. My company's called Life Biosciences. It's here in Boston. Uh, Altos has come along three years later and they're working on this too, but the goal is, is a great one. I wish them all the best of luck. I hope that they are hugely successful because it could be transformational for our species on the planet, the ability to finally control The rate at which we age, not…

AI assessment note: “we could reverse the age of an animal... within the next 18 months”

Q Let's talk about sugar before we get into some other, um, adversity states. What do we know about sugar and its effect on our biological age?

A Not that much. So the biological age right now is measured A number of ways. You can do a panel of 40 blood tests. Um, inside tracker is, is just one that I use. The other more, more, um, epigenetic related, so back to the scratches on the CD, you can measure those scratches. It's called the DNA methylation clock or the Horvath clock, named after Stephen Horvath, a scientist at UCLA. And these are the chemicals that get added or subtracted from the DNA molecule that tell genes to be on or off. And the sirtuins that I work on help control that process. And you can read these with a DNA sequencing machine. And DNA sequences, you know, we're using all the time now in the lab. And by reading those chemicals where they are and how they've changed over time, for instance, Shane, I could take your blood or a cheek swab and tell you biologically how old you are relative to others, your age. And so your birthdays don't matter as much for your health as your actual DNA methylation age or your scratches. Now we can measure that, but to your point, we haven't known about the clock long enough to know If glucose or sugar directly impacts that clock. What I can say is that people that eat a Mediterranean diet have a slower ticking clock and people that exercise and do the kind of things that I'm telling everybody today to do. In general, have a lower biological age than those who do all the …

AI assessment note: “we haven't known about the clock long enough to know If glucose or sugar directly impacts”

Q is like, as we age, we tend to sleep less, and everything that I know about sleep tends to tell me that sleep is super important for mental functioning, for age, aging well, for, um, All of these, like, health benefits associated with sleep, and you're telling me you get four or five hours, and you're 52, and you have a twenty-year-old biological clock, so maybe sleep isn't that important?

A Maybe, maybe. I'm, I might be 15 years old if I could get more sleep, but, uh, we'll never know. But I, I, what I know is that those sirtuin genes that I talk about all the time, and I've been studying for 30 years, they control the clock. And then the disrupted clock affects them because it's a big cycle. And if you get that out of whack in an animal, they will, if you don't let them sleep, they will age prematurely. If you stop a rat from sleeping for just two weeks, it will develop diabetes. It's really important. So I don't think there's any argument that sleep is important, but can you hack your way around it? Maybe that's what I'm showing. But I don't want to give the impression that I think that that's the best way to live life. I mean, I got, I got up at 5:30 this morning. I went to sleep probably at one o'clock. Um, that's not a good way to live. I, I am tired. Um, I, I do fine. I've got caffeine. I've got my NAD boosters, which do help me get through the day in the morning. But ideally, I would want more sleep. I think I'd have better memory and focus if I did that. There are two hacks that I'm doing that allow me to get away with less sleep now. Um, I've included meditation at night into my daily life, most days. Um, and that's been very helpful. Um, and the second is that I have a bed that reduces my body temperature in the middle of the night, and I get deeper slee…

AI assessment note: “I don't think there's any argument that sleep is important”

Q want to go back to the theory of adversity before we come to supplements and sort of like some of the stuff that you do and with adversity, there's other ways that we can introduce stress to our bodies, like hot tubs or saunas. What do we know about saunas and hot tubs? Like there seems to be a strong correlation, at least with saunas to longevity. Why is that?

A Um, well, so I'll admit when I started writing, uh, my book, which is, um, which was a number of years ago, Uh, the editor said, oh, you should talk about saunas and hot tubs. And I said, this is a serious book. Come on. I'm not going to put that fashion in there. But I was wrong, actually. There's now a lot of evidence that being in a sauna is good for heart health at a minimum. There's a lot of studies of thousands of mostly men in Finland that do sauna bathing, as they call it. And they are protected dramatically, like they are exercising. But, um, how does that work? Well, You know, there's lots of theories. It's hard to prove, but one theory is that we have what are called heat shock proteins in our body that get turned on when the body's too warm, and we know actually if you turn on heat shock proteins in animals, they live longer, and they do that because they help fold proteins correctly, and misfolded proteins and the recycling of proteins is very, very important. It's one of the reasons that I eat a plant-based diet mainly, is to turn over that protein, um, Uh, cycle. But yeah, so that's one. Cold is different. We think it's working through a process that is called browning of fat. We have white fat on our back that turns beige or brown by being cold. And then that revs up our metabolism. And this brown fat also seems to secrete, uh, little signals that make the rest …

AI assessment note: “one theory is that we have what are called heat shock proteins in our body”

Q If we fast for two meals, and then on the third meal, we eat as many calories as we would have eaten during the rest of the day normally, are we still getting benefits of fasting?

A Yes. Yes, yes, yes. We are. That's the great news that, so take me for example, I have big dinners, um, Because I'm making up for the lack of food during the day, and so I'm not losing weight. Once you've hit a set point, and you've got your, your body weight, and during COVID, I dropped from 150 pounds to 132. I'm now steady at that 132, feeling great, eating tons of food that I always wanted, but it's packed into an hour or two of feeding. Now, how do we know that works? Well, we know from blood tests in humans that it, it looks like it's Beneficial. You get the kind of changes that are seen in younger people. Things like I mentioned blood glucose, and then there's hormone levels and stress levels, which I've been measuring in myself for a decade. So I can tell you for me, it works. Um, but the, the other thing that's important is that from animal studies that have been done over the last hundred years in mice and rats and dogs, um, it's very clear that it's not just what you eat. It's when you eat. And there's a very famous study That was done by a colleague of mine, Rafael de Cabo at the NIH in Bethesda, and he made three different types of diets for mice. One that had a lot of protein, the other had carbs, the other had fat, and he thought he would find the optimal diet for the mice. Turns out it didn't make any difference. What mattered was when he gave the food, and if h…

AI assessment note: “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. We are. That's the great news”

Q So talk to me a little bit more about your father. Is he eating mostly a plant-based diet too?

A Yeah. Yeah. So he and I are very similar. I'm people think I'm experimenting on my dad, but I'm not. He's a scientist. He reads the science and we've come up with this protocol, which is the, uh, very low glucose. We don't eat a lot of sugar. We try to avoid desserts, low carb, don't eat a lot of Meat. He would eat meat very occasionally, but mostly it's plants. Um, he doesn't eat much during the day. He mainly eats dinner and he's, he's lean now. And, uh, what else? He does more exercise than I do, so he's better at that. He does aerobics. He goes a couple of times a week to the gym and does rowing and weightlifting. What else is it? He takes the supplement. So he's on resveratrol, NMN, metformin, uh, and that's his cocktail. He doesn't take athletic greens just yet. Uh, but he's a super healthy, 82 year old. He was not on that path in his fifties. My age, he was overweight. He had high cholesterol, looking at dying in his seventies. In his mid seventies, he went on this protocol and is now an 82 year old that's fitter than most people that age. He has no diseases, perfect mental health. His eyesight hasn't changed in all that time. And so, yeah, I mean, we're looking forward to this experiment being a successful one, but if nothing else, he's a beacon of hope that you can start late and have big effects.

AI assessment note: “He would eat meat very occasionally, but mostly it's plants.”

Q How would a listener go about testing their biological age?

A There are some companies that have just started up, um, that measure this from a blood sample. Uh, it's fairly expensive. It's a few hundred dollars at least. Um, my student, one of my students at Harvard Has developed a technology where we can measure this clock very cheaply, um, for at least 10 times less than that. And, uh, we're about to release a product, uh, in this, sometime this year, that would be a cheek swab, which is far easier than a blood test, of course. And so just for a lot less money, and hopefully more, more often, you can look at your biological age and say, well, Is my new diet affecting my age? Have I slowed it down? Am I reversing my age, which is increasingly doable? There's a website if people want to sign up. I hope it's okay if I mention that. People often want to know.

AI assessment note: “There are some companies that have just started up, um, that measure this from a blood sample.”

Q Why did you give up dairy? You mentioned that you stopped, stopped dairy. What, what caused you to do that? And then did that have any impact? Cause you, I know you monitor your body quite a bit. Did that have any impact on you?

A Uh, seemingly it did. Yeah. Uh, and so I changed one or two things at a time and have a look how it goes. And I'm an experimenter. I love dairy. I was eating a lot of cheese and red wine. My diet Two or three days a week was a cheese board and a couple of glasses of red wine, maybe more. And she was looking at what I, uh, eat and she actually, uh, said, uh, that's not very healthy. And, uh, so I've adopted her lifestyle, which is not so much, um, meat, cheese, dairy. And I've looked at my blood biochemistry and I'm actually now younger and healthier than I've ever been. Since I've been measuring it over a decade, now it's more like 14 years, and I can plot various parameters, testosterone, glucose, the list goes on, inflammation, blood type, blood cell composition, and for most of those markers, I'm better than a twenty-year-old for, for health. And, uh, and I think a lot of that's due to my new diet that I've adopted, because I can just see things getting better and better over time.

AI assessment note: “she actually, uh, said, uh, that's not very healthy”

Q And you mentioned the Mediterranean diet earlier. Is there anything that we've learned about what we know about what we eat and like high fat versus low carb versus all of the stuff that to maximize our longevity?

A Yeah. So the, the amazing thing about the state of knowledge of humanity right now is that Over the last few thousand years, humans have figured out to eat less often. There are states of fasting. Most religions do that, but also the types of foods. Uh, Mediterranean diet is a good example. There's a Okinawan diet, which is a Japanese island that has mostly plants, um, and a little bit of fish, but mostly it's not overeating and there's not huge amounts of animal fat and animal products and dairy in a typical long lived population. Uh, that I just described. So that we've known for a long time, and you know, it's crazy that we're debating this. Mediterranean diet is just known to be healthy, and vegetarian and vegan diets are also conducive to longevity. Um, but the other thing that's amazing about our state of knowledge is that people like me have discovered genes that control aging. Sirtuins are the ones that we work on, this mTOR gene that I mentioned. Those diets are turning on those defenses. That we discovered, not because we were studying diets, because we were studying yeast cells and worms and fruit flies, but now we understand in this unified theory of aging that by eating these types of foods, you're making the body think that times are tough, turning on the defenses that for the long run will be conducive to longevity and forestall these diseases that will kill us, …

AI assessment note: “mostly it's not overeating and there's not huge amounts of animal fat”

Q and, and sort of about diet and eating for peak mental and physical performance. And it's interesting to me that you mentioned cutting out dairy and seeing this go, because the three things that he mentioned carry the most bang for the buck for, for cutting out were Gluten, dairy, and sugar in terms of your sleep, your physical performance, your mental performance. Do you have any thoughts on that?

A Yeah, I do. I really do. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a lazy guy. I like meat, right? So I'm an average person. Uh, and so I've, I've, I've done this over time. I'm not great at it. And I, I've just mentioned that because sometimes people say I can never give up alcohol. I could never give up meat. It's not true. And so I, I, at least I found it not to be true. First thing I cut out was a lot of carbohydrates. I used to eat bread every day. I would just put, if I ate something, it would be on toast. Okay. That's my life. I cut that out and have found immediate improvements in my biochemistry levels, particularly my glucose levels. The next thing I cut out was, uh, was meat. I worked towards a Mediterranean diet, had fish, and eventually Now I'm, I'm no meat, and, and that improved my numbers even better. Cholesterol, um, what do you call it? Triglycerides all came down, and I have a familial history, genetics of heart disease. I have what's called LP little a high levels. LP little a is the worst. You know, about 30% of us have this, and we're destined, if we don't do something, to have a short lifespan. That was very important, was the, Cutting out meat. And it's not just the protein. It's also the fat that comes along with the steak and whatever that I was eating. And then the third change was the, the dairy. I did that just to see what would happen. I figured it wouldn't matter…

AI assessment note: “First thing I cut out was a lot of carbohydrates... then the third change was the, the dairy.”

Q a benefit or, uh, you know, I tend to think it would only be a drawback, like this low level of persistent mental stress would be bad for you, but maybe if it's intensity and it comes in intensity and then dies to nothing and then comes again, it would be good for you. How do we think about the relationship between stress, mental stress in this case and longevity?

A It's important not to mix up the two uses of the same word. Um, so stress that I'm talking about, hormesis, is biological stress, making your body and your cells think that there's adversity. Psychological stress is just a different beast. It's not, it shouldn't even be called the same word. Um, but let's focus on that. Now we know that a little bit of excitement and thrill is very beneficial. Um, but you can have chronic stress, depression, you know, just the kind of stress that leads to cortisol surging through your body. This is not healthy at all and would reduce lifespan. We know from animal studies that those that are under social stress will be unhealthy and die sooner. So if you are experiencing that, Try to figure out how to reduce your psychological stress. Meditate, breathing exercises, just try to avoid worrying too much. This is really important, and I can speak again from experience. I was a very agitated, anxious person in my teens and twenties. By my thirties, I went to Harvard, and I thought, if I continue worrying like I have been, I am going to die young, and that's not going to be a good look for someone who works on ageing. So I've learned to not worry so much. I focus on what I can do in the day. I focus on the fact that I'm never probably ever going to run out of food because I live in a wealthy country. I'm not going to run out of shelter. I'm going to h…

AI assessment note: “chronic stress, depression... This is not healthy at all and would reduce lifespan.”

Q You mentioned exercise, and I know some people love exercise. I'm not one of those people. I sort of, um, do it, but I don't love it. I don't look forward to it. I, um, is there any hope for me? Like, is there a point at which I can maximize the advantages of exercise, but not, not anymore, like declining utility?

A Well, I feel for you. I'm the same. Um, I'm lazy as I mentioned. So Let's see. So, so what, what's recommended by doctors who know what they're talking about? It's, you want to have two types of exercise at least, three if you can. So what are they? There's, there's yoga, Pilates, that's, you know, for joint stretch, that's the basics. Important for longevity. You don't want to break bones if you fall over. The other is weightlifting. You want to exert your muscles, grow muscles, at least maintain your muscles. By the time you're my age, you know, I'm I'm losing more than one percent of my muscle mass every year if I don't exercise. So lifting weights, that's important. Then the third type is aerobic, and the minimum amount to have benefits, um, pretty substantial benefits, though, would be to lose your breath at least once a week, preferably three times a week for 10 minutes. So that's not a lot. But even that, I'll admit, is hard for people like you and me to do. But it's not as though you have to go running for an hour or cycling for a hundred miles. It just a little bit goes a long way. And what's happening when you exercise is that, again, it's turning on these defenses that your body thinks is needed to survive. But, you know, I'll tell you something more personal, and this is, this is not medical advice. It's not science. But I do everything really well. Except two thing…

AI assessment note: “minimum amount to have benefits... would be to lose your breath at least once a week”

Q your chronological age sort of becomes important. One of the ways that I've heard you talk about before is fasting and it's super interesting because fasting isn't new. I mean, it used to be a necessity for us, but now we're starting to learn about why it's helpful. Can you talk a little bit about the benefits of fasting and how it relates to slowing down or even reversing aging?

A Yeah. Well, these systems that tell cells how to read the genes at the right time, this epigenome, um, there are gene, there are factors that control that. Um, and so a little, very little bit of biology here. DNA isn't just floating around the cell. It's actually looped into big loops that tell genes to be switched on. Uh, and genes that should be switched off are bundled up tightly. Um, and we call this stuff chromatin. And those, those loops of genes that are on and bundles of genes that are off Are controlled in part by a set of genes called the sirtuins, and those genes make proteins that cause these loops and bundles, particularly they create these bundles to keep genes switched off, because you don't want a liver, liver gene or a skin gene coming on in the brain. But that's what happens with aging, we find. And, uh, so one way to make sure this process goes slower is to turn on these sirtuin epigenetic regulators, uh, to use a more technical term. And there are seven of these, uh, epigenetic regulators, the, the things that prevent the scratches, and, uh, we can turn them on With gene therapy. In mice, we do this, and if you do it in the brain of a mouse, they'll live longer. Do it in the body, they can live longer. But we can't genetically modify ourselves. So what we can, we've also found is that these genes get turned on by adversity. Adversity, or at least perceived …

AI assessment note: “these genes get turned on by adversity... If our body thinks we're going to run out of food”

Q your chronological age sort of becomes important. One of the ways that I've heard you talk about before is fasting and it's super interesting because fasting isn't new. I mean, it used to be a necessity for us, but now we're starting to learn about why it's helpful. Can you talk a little bit about the benefits of fasting and how it relates to slowing down or even reversing aging?

A Yeah. Well, these systems that tell cells how to read the genes at the right time, this epigenome, um, there are gene, there are factors that control that. Um, and so a little, very little bit of biology here. DNA isn't just floating around the cell. It's actually looped into big loops that tell genes to be switched on. Uh, and genes that should be switched off are bundled up tightly. Um, and we call this stuff chromatin. And those, those loops of genes that are on and bundles of genes that are off Are controlled in part by a set of genes called the sirtuins, and those genes make proteins that cause these loops and bundles, particularly they create these bundles to keep genes switched off, because you don't want a liver, liver gene or a skin gene coming on in the brain. But that's what happens with aging, we find. And, uh, so one way to make sure this process goes slower is to turn on these sirtuin epigenetic regulators, uh, to use a more technical term. And there are seven of these, uh, epigenetic regulators, the, the things that prevent the scratches, and, uh, we can turn them on With gene therapy. In mice, we do this, and if you do it in the brain of a mouse, they'll live longer. Do it in the body, they can live longer. But we can't genetically modify ourselves. So what we can, we've also found is that these genes get turned on by adversity. Adversity, or at least perceived …

AI assessment note: “these genes get turned on by adversity... If our body thinks we're going to run out of food”

Q your chronological age sort of becomes important. One of the ways that I've heard you talk about before is fasting, and it's super interesting because fasting isn't new. I mean, it used to be a necessity for us, but now we're starting to learn about why it's helpful. Can you talk a little bit about the benefits of fasting and how it relates to slowing down or even reversing aging?

A Yeah, well, these systems that tell cells how to read the genes at the right time, this epigenome, um, there are gene, there are factors that control that. Um, and so a little, very little bit of biology here. DNA isn't just floating around the cell. It's actually looped into big loops that tell genes to be switched on. Uh, and genes that should be switched off are bundled up tightly. Um, and we call this stuff chromatin. And those, those loops of genes that are on and bundles of genes that are off Are controlled in part by a set of genes called the sirtuins, and those genes make proteins that cause these loops and bundles, particularly they create these bundles to keep genes switched off, because you don't want a liver, liver gene or a skin gene coming on in the brain. But that's what happens with aging, we find. And so one way to make sure this process goes slower is to turn on these sirtuin epigenetic regulators, to use a more technical term. And there are seven of these epigenetic regulators, the things that prevent the scratches, and we can turn them on with gene therapy. In mice, we do this, and if you do it in the brain of a mouse, they'll live longer. Do it in the body. They can live longer, but we can't genetically modify ourselves. So what we can, we've also found is that these genes get turned on by adversity, adversity, or at least perceived adversity. If our body t…

AI assessment note: “these genes get turned on by adversity... If our body thinks we're going to run out of food”

Q So let's talk a little bit about what we eat in terms of reducing aging or, um, sort of reducing that, that Biological clock. What are the best things to eat?

A I know it sounds a little bit repetitive, but it is individual, but you can make some generalizations. So first of all, the individual differences are obvious. There's your body type, but also your gender. And I think just as important, your physique, if you are into bodybuilding or you're an athlete professionally, that's very different than someone like me, who's just using their brain and their fingers to make a living. So that there's that consideration. And there are, there are hacks that I'm helping develop that allows you to be in the adversity state, which is what we were describing, eating less, consuming less protein. That's the adversity state that's longevity, but then have periods where you can have an abundant state. Um, and so perhaps, you know, I would suggest trying on days that you work out, assuming you're not a professional athlete, Having some extra protein, eat a little bit of fish, for example, but mostly for that adversity state, you want to be focused on plants. Why is that? Because plants have less available amino acids. Your body has to work harder to get them out, but they also have a ratio of amino acids that turns on some of these defenses that I'm talking about. A very important one is called mTOR, little m, capital T-O-R, and it's there to sense how much protein you're taking in. And if it's always sensing that you're eating protein, it will not,…

AI assessment note: “mostly for that adversity state, you want to be focused on plants.”

Q You track a lot of your data, right? With, uh, you have an aura ring on, I think, you use an eight sleep, uh, you're, you're testing your biological age. Are, are we starting to think of biological problems almost like engineering problems where we optimize for specific data points in the hope that those data points are correct?

A Well, absolutely. Uh, you know, I was at the forefront. I was kind of this biohacking guy. Scientist interested, and I was out on a limb as one of, you know, maybe 50 people in the world that do what I did. Now there's millions of people around the world that monitor themselves with rings, with beds, with, you know, with watches, um, there's plenty of fitness trackers you'd be aware of. They are all part of this global movement to not fly blind without help. We can track things, we can see what works, what doesn't, and it was crazy that for up until recently, we would Be driving, the equivalent of driving a car without a dashboard. Who would do that? You know, you, you might have a check engine light. You could overheat. Same with our bodies. And, and going to the doctor once a year for an annual checkup, um, now that we can monitor ourselves every hour, soon every, every second, eventually every 1000th of a second, that world that we're entering makes this old world of going to the doctor once a year seem medieval. And it is. What can happen in a year? You could get cancer. You could have heart disease. You could have a heart attack. Now we have the devices. Some of us use them. Increasingly, eventually, everyone will have them. We'll know ahead of time if we have cancer, if we have heart disease, if we're going to have a heart attack next week, and stave off those things and …

AI assessment note: “Well, absolutely. Uh, you know, I was at the forefront.”

Q Uh, have you thought much about the implications of living longer and like what that means for society and housing and money and fiscal policy and politics?

A Yeah. Yeah. It's important. I think about it a lot and we need to have less impact on the planet. I think that technology can solve anything we want. Uh, we just need to put our minds to it. And, and that includes being, being able to Grow food that isn't wasting water, using up too much land, degrading the soil. We can do this. We have the knowledge. It's just a matter of investment and willpower and incentives and capitalism being, you know, conducive to, to making that happen. But yeah, we, we waste a lot. Half of the food in the US, by the way, is thrown out. So to say that we have a food shortage is, is ignorant of that fact. But what we want to do is to produce food and not throw it away. And that's one of the reasons I've focused recently on Shelf life of vegetables. But that, that's just one small part of a whole load of things that needs to happen. One thing that always comes up from a crowd that I would talk to about this is, what about overpopulation? And if you do the math, it turns out that even with slowing down aging and making us live to a 120, we're not going to overpopulate. We're going to level out at about ten billion people. Uh, whether we live longer or not, the big impact is reducing fertility or fertility rates, birth rates, and that's plummeting across the planet, particularly in the developed, uh, developing world, and already in the developed world wh…

AI assessment note: “if you do the math, it turns out that even with slowing down aging”

Q One is, is there a notion to eating things in season? Like, I go to the grocery store, apples are there, 365 days a year, but they're not ripe on a tree, 360 Five days a year. They have a season. They have a time. Should we be eating with that season? Or is that a good thing that these plants and fruits are available? 24, seven, three, 65 now.

A Yeah. Well, so that it's knowing that if the plants are in season, um, and otherwise healthy, they're, they're actually, they have the energy to produce these molecules. Um, so yeah, in season, but, but grown under conditions that are not perfect. Okay. Um, the off season apples, the, the, the ones that are a little bit flowery I would avoid those. They don't have the abundance of nutrients and chemicals that we want. But yeah, it's, um, so organic in-season vegetables and fruits is, is the way to go, and that's what I have turned to in my lifestyle, increasingly so as I get older, um, and then increasingly regretful that I didn't do it earlier. For those of you who are not watching this on, on, uh, video, I'm now drinking a cup of hot matcha tea, the green tea, the very concentrated green tea, Those leaves that are grown often in Japan, they come from green tea plants that are put in shade conditions before they're picked, and it's that lack of light that causes it to become bright green, but also produces molecules that are healthy. There's one called, for short, ECGC, which is known to be a xenohromatic molecule to turn on the body's defenses, and pretty much every morning I start my day with one of these, and it's a great way to start because there's, of course, no sugar in here, It's boosting, uh, my body's defenses, but it's also filling up my stomach, so I don't feel the…

AI assessment note: “organic in-season vegetables and fruits is, is the way to go”

Q reasons that we, we tend to age or accelerate aging as we get older is that we tend to sleep less. And I guess that's not the case, right? Because I always thought, oh, like, you know, I see this with my parents right now, right? Like they're sleeping less than they used to. And I just assumed that that was part of aging, but also what accelerated our aging.

A Yeah, I think you're right. And, and that's the problem. Once you start like getting less sleep, you will age and your age will give you less sleep. And that's why it's important to, to maintain that, that, you know, sleep health. But, you know, NMN, which is this NAD boosting molecule that I mentioned earlier, that is part of the sleep-wake cycle, and one of the hacks that I, I think is, is really beneficial is that by taking NMN in the morning, I'm simulating or stimulating the morning response, and I get the alertness and the energy that I would have had if I'd had more sleep, and I can reset jet lag. You know, I'm a scientist, so people might say, David, you can't mention Anecdotes, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I haven't had jet lag for a decade because I've been able to modulate my own, um, body clock by using these chemicals, which as I mentioned, um, are activating sirtuins and controlling the clock. Now, most people don't know that, but, um, I think if, if you, uh, have paid attention to the kind of things that I'm saying out there, uh, you would know that, um, it is possible to hack the clock.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think you're right. And, and that's the problem.”

Q I mean, there is a point unhelpful, right? Like if you don't eat, you will die eventually. Is it sort of like you skip one meal is good. You skip two meals is great. You skip six and you're back to good again. Or is there sort of like some sort of limit that we should think about in terms of maximizing the benefit if we are going to fast?

A Yeah. Well, there's some real key points to hear here. One is we're not talking about malnutrition or starvation. That would not be beneficial, and in fact, when, you know, 10,000 years ago or more, people were not living a long time from fasting because they were not getting enough nutrition, but in our world now, we can have any, not energy drinks, but drinks that contain enough nutrients. We can make sure that we're not deficient. We can measure things with blood tests, and we can make sure that we're not deficient, but the optimal The second point is that the optimum is different for everybody, in part because we have different tolerances for not eating, but also because we have different microbiomes with different genders. We just are genetically different, and we know from studies in mice that you can take regular lab mice and mix up their, like, breed them in a way that you get a little bit of diversity in these lab mice and give them caloric restrictions so you don't feed them More than I think it was. 40%. What they would normally eat. And some mice breeds strains. We call them lived a lot longer. Some of them died earlier. So you then, but practically what should you do? Well, it seems to be a rule that if you fast at least. 14 hours, you'll have a lot of health benefits, better metabolic stability, lower blood sugar levels, better cholesterol, these kinds of things k…

AI assessment note: “it seems to be a rule that if you fast at least. 14 hours”

Q What is aging, biologically speaking, and why is it a problem?

A Well, if I have to tell you why it's a problem, then we have a problem. Um, it's one of the largest costs to our economy globally. It's more sick care than health care. There's a huge amount of suffering for the individual and of families. Anyone who's seen someone die understands that, ah, it's often not a pleasant process, and it can take many years, and the final moments are extremely stressful for everybody and, and often painful. So, you know, that, that's in itself enough motivation. Um, but you know, the economic reasons are, are, are really important. We just calculated with, I have colleagues in London, who are economists, and they calculated that the US alone, just by slowing down aging by one year, and making people productive, more productive for one year, would save over the next three decades, 86 trillion dollars, which we waste now on just keeping people alive in a sick state, um, and they're not productive, of course. Uh, and so, uh, if you do it for 10 years, it's 365 trillion dollars. That's a lot of money that can be used for Education, uh, additional research, healthcare, and even combating things like, uh, global warming, climate change. I can't think of a more important thing to be tackling right now, uh, as a species on this planet.

AI assessment note: “it's one of the largest costs to our economy globally.”

Q That's fascinating. Where does the notion that we should even eat three meals a day come from?

A I suspect, and I want to research this for my next book, it's, I think it's the, the, uh, the food producers that they want that, uh, it become, you know, a saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and, and then you've got the, the, the bars, the, uh, the food, the, the snacks that we now eat in between meals. For some reason, um, doctors, nutritionists were either educated or misinformed, or both, that, uh, the body is best When it, it's never hungry, and we know that is not the case, and just one point on the hunger. I typically am not hungry. Now, if, if you start fasting, and you've never done it before, you will feel hungry. There's a hormone called ghrelin, which will cause that. Of course, it's not real. Hunger is just mental state, but after three weeks, you find, I found, that the state of hunger goes away, so during the day, I'm not, not peckish. You know, I might eat some nuts or whatever just to Suppress a little bit of twang, but, um, I'm not starving by any means, and I actually really, really enjoy my dinner as a result. But, you know, I tell you this, Shane, and your listeners, because if you try to do what I do tomorrow, you will fail. You need to slowly work up to it and learn the tricks, like drinking water, drinking tea, fill your stomach with hot or cold water and fluids, and that'll help.

AI assessment note: “I think it's the, the, uh, the food producers that they want that”

Q time. And, and to that point, like growing old seems like a Distant event in the future. I mean, it happens slowly and then all at once. We don't seem to think about it until we're really late in the game or we have a loved one or somebody goes through something. Why is that? And is there anything that you you've seen effective at bringing that forward for people?

A Uh, well, this is what I, what my mission is. The reason I'm talking to you today is to wake people up and realize that you shouldn't just wait till Something traumatic happens in your life, whether you get sick or your parents or your grandparents, and it's important to realize now that you can do things for those people in your lives, your life and yourself. You know, typically I, we, we wait until it's, it's too late for those people. Um, my parents, my mother is a good example. My mother died young from lung cancer. She was a smoker who didn't take care of her body at all. And I watched her live the last 20 years of her life in a really painful state. She had one of her lungs taken out through her ribs. That's not what you want your mother. Um, I wish that I had the knowledge that I have today that I'm applying with my father to her life. And she might even be around today if we had done that.

AI assessment note: “well, this is what I, what my mission is. The reason I'm talking”

Q You mentioned teenagers. Is there a link between when we start puberty? Like that, that sounds to me, when we think of puberty, it sounds like rapid aging, almost like a concentrated dose of aging. Is there a link between when we start, how long we live? And is that true that puberty is sort of like this rapid dose of aging?

A Well, I'm going to speak as a scientist with an opinion. And that opinion is based on all the science that I've read. And I read a lot of papers. Before I get out of bed, I'm reading science, science papers. Here's what I believe. Now, I don't want parents to get upset with me. I certainly don't want people to worry, but here's what I think will turn out to be the case. The biological clock, this, the scratches on the CD that we talked about earlier, they start at conception. The egg and the sperm come together, even an embryo, even a fetus and a young baby, they're aging. We can measure this on this clock. And certainly teenagers are aging. Now we know that obesity and lack of exercise, lack of nutrition, lack of plants is unhealthy. And I would not be surprised if the teenagers are by the time they hit their twenties on average are older biologically than they were 2030 years ago. Uh, when I grew up because we are, we were moving. We were generally not so overweight. We were not eating as much sugar. And that's probably accelerating our kids aging rate, meaning that 2030 years from now, 40 years from now, that is still going to echo in their health, um, because the clock, unless you do something radical, doesn't go backwards.

AI assessment note: “The biological clock, this, the scratches on the CD... start at conception.”