Build Muscle & Maintain Longevity | Dr. David Sinclair & Serena Poon | Optimize Longevity

what people also don't realize is you can overcook your plant protein source and then that lowers the amount of proteins that you're actually getting so your cooking method can actually affect the amount of protein you're getting from your from you know a plant-based diet so as long as you're a little bit mindful about that just not you know not overcooking even boiling can reduce the amount of protein that you're getting you know roasting steaming of course has less of an impact on the amount of protein so that's a really that those are small little mindful changes that can really impact your your diet if you are staying plant-based at to you know build muscle or to work out or however you so choose just that one little tweak can make a really big difference the amount of protein that you're getting thank you [Music] hey Serena hi hi hi you're looking uh well rested and no you're not but you're looking good I'm I'm not I need to follow my own my own protocols and recommendation but thank you I really appreciate that makeup is amazing so is lighting we should share what we use for lighting um so okay hi so I've just been chattering away to the audience and they're amazing as usual really really kind with their comments hey should we get into it yeah another short amount of time we've got lots of people joining us thank you all for joining us yes so fun uh and everyone's super kind David everyone's telling you tell you how much younger you look I'd have to say it's it's kind of true we're gonna have to do a whole episode just on our skin our skin routine yeah I I can tell you that I look a lot better since I've been following your advice for nutrition and health and despite the lack of sleep that you and I are getting well not getting uh we are unventioning from day one uh more of a plant-based diet and certainly I've benefited from not drinking a lot of alcohol now and a lot of cheese and uh and uh all of that I mean we can talk about nutrition but I think let's say that for another day but I certainly think that my skin is better than it used to be um and I I can only credit uh yours your advice thank you thank you so much for sharing that I appreciate it what is really great for the audience to know is that in addition to uh the skin benefits and hair benefits we'll definitely talk about that another time too uh you can have a really great workout routine which we'll talk about today we're going to talk about building muscle and still maintaining your longevity even on a plant-based diet so we'll dive into that after some of your burning questions from last time uh Serena um it would be fair to mention something we developed together that we put on skin we'll leave that what do you want to do uh well yeah we can do that we can do not everyone here has it has been introduced to it but we can focus some more time on it next time on skin and our skin routine but sure yeah if you have it there if you have it right there let's share why not I don't have it here it's in the bathroom but Serena and I developed a product for skin which we both use and it's it's available if you want to check it out uh I think it might be sold out but you I think it might be coming in soon it's called aeonia and we developed it with with NASA's collaboration and this show is not meant to be promotional I just thought it would be interesting to a lot of people to know that we have switched to using that skin care product and that also could be part of the difference we'll post it later but we want to get him to exercise so yeah let's get into it there's a lot of questions about meat and exercise and you know I we I we want to make sure that people understand it's not that we're saying meat is bad but let's dive into exercise uh and and and answer some of those initial burning questions that people had about berberine I met foreman and as a follow-up to our last chat for sure um well let's start with exercise in general what is a good exercise regime um you and I uh I think we generally agree on this uh we read the scientific literature every day and what it says in general is uh a little bit goes a long way so if your exercise is running a few miles a day that's great if you don't want to do that if you don't like it you can do something else you can do yoga you can get a standing desk and walk upstairs uh you can do some sit-ups you can lift weights at the gym and uh you know brisk walk you you do the plank I can't really do that very well ah well we need but we can build up to it I have a friend who can do like an eight minute plank I didn't even know that was possible but anyway the point is there's lots of different ways that you can exercise um actually while you're talking about that do you mind talking about resistance training a little bit and how that does affect uh mtor and how that does affect how we build muscle because that's come up a lot and and this plays into some of the supplements and taurine and even metformin and seven reperto mice and uh so resistance training uh so I uh used to do a lot um when I went on this podcast tour uh a couple of years ago I had a lot more muscle than I do now you and I Serena we've been on the road for eight months so it's hard to work out all the time especially when you're on an airplane um so I would love to do more so going back to what I used to do I used to work out at least one time of week which was intense it was for two hours at the gym or at my house I like to do it every other day mixing it up upper body lower body uh what we tell clients is to to make sure not to forget your back and hips um and and upper thighs because for longevity which is what we're here to talk about that's crucial as you get older you're losing a lot of mass in fact uh particularly males after uh the age of 40 they're losing at one or two percent a year um but women so they also lose testosterone and one of the the most dangerous things to do is to lose muscle mass in your hips because I think we all know of people or even on our family members who've fallen over when they're older and broken a hip or broken a femur and that's a really fast way to end in your life because if you're a frail and old you often don't recover from that fortunately your mum when she broke her femur she's young enough uh that she recovered but my grandmother wasn't when she broke her femur not her hip she was so lucky um that's a that's a really tough injury to recover from she is not filled with metal so but anyway the the point really is move you've got to move if you want to live a long time you have to move walking is great for maintaining those hips and lower back you'll feel better you'll have a bit bigger spring in your step when I did a lot of weights I not just look better but actually felt so much better um I felt like I was walking on air um and uh that wasn't just because I bought new shoes it was because the muscles in my legs were good and for men and women to maintain hormone levels particularly testosterone yes you want to maintain that muscle mass your leg muscles your back muscles these big muscles they will signal to your genitals to produce an adrenal system to produce these hormones yes and that's one of the best possibly the best way to maintain your hormone levels as you get older yeah and I'm so glad you highlighted that because not everybody knows that you know when when people are focused on on building muscle and maintaining muscle mass quite often it's for their physique and how they look and of course how they feel for strength for energy but it's it's crucial to to the regulation of our hormones our growth hormones for men and women testosterone um and then something called cortisol which is our stress hormone it helps balance and regulate all of this affects our thyroid hormones as well which helps with our metabolism so it's I'm so glad that you pointed that out because some people don't realize that you know you're checking off a lot of boxes beyond what you might just see in the mirror there's a lot happening inside of your body that you don't you're not even aware of that you're benefiting so so alongside that so we know exercise great for movement prevention of injury insulin control and on our hormones let's talk about some other things that are obvious uh but yet let's get into the Sciences it you know what's happening when we exercise what's happening with well so I think many of our listeners followers are aware of what's called mtor a little m capital t o r and this is stands for Target of rapamycin so rapamycin is a a longevity medicine that is certainly a longevity drug for animals and may help humans as well there's some clinical evidence and rapamycin will go and Skip to bind to what's called mtor and inhibit it and slow its activity down what this does is it tells cells that there's not enough amino acids around to build a lot of muscle and that does two things it slows down cells production of protein even if you take a take a high level of it you'll actually tell your body to start degrading protein to make new ones and that's actually similar to fasting so think of inhibiting mtor and rapamycin as ways of simulating stimulating a fasting response without actually having to fast which is pretty cool um the problem with that is when you down regulate mtor your body thinks it's not good enough amino acids particularly uh leucine isoleucine Balinese branched chain amino acids and your body slows down it's a starvation fasting response um and you'll typically have a harder time building muscle when you're in that state that's why bodybuilders and people who want to build up muscle they do the opposite they take leucine yes nice loose and veiling uh they take amino acid seen as exactly that and so that that's great when you want to build muscle no argument there protein which we're going to talk hopefully about how to get that from clients as well so that's the that's the feast response okay so the feast response the abundance response that I talk about in my book is is great the growing and healing but long term if you keep that on every day you're not going to get longevity benefits because you've got to have some part of your week in the adversity response the adversity mode right and that's why we are advocating uh and practicing pulsing things yes right you can switch adversity abundance adversity abundance and it becomes an art uh when should you take supplements when should you exercise when should you eat so that your body has time to think that it's in adversity so you might want to be hungry and not taking um are not taking these amino acid supplements and creatine and potentially not even taking metformin so your body starts to turn on longevity responses dampening inflammation we're carrying DNA lengthening telomeres giving me that longevity effect so you stay young and then on certain days you can do the opposite you can work out not take these supplements and build up muscle and that's uh that's really the way the scientific literature is saying that we should do our lifestyles to maximize longevity but also to also make sure we don't lose muscle mass as we get older right so a lot of people have questions uh and they've asked us about metformin because you talk about it frequently people know that we take Berber marine and Metformin and there's a question about when to take it because of the benefits of Metformin uh which we can talk about some people here know what metformin does and what berberine does so there's a big question that we're conjugate and that you posed on the on the on your post which is when is the best time to take it when we are when when people are trying to do this cycling or pulsing right and and maybe we can just run over and Metformin really quick um some people don't know what metformin is you know it's a drug for type 2 diabetes and it's got a lot of different benefits some of which David's already addressed but we can talk about it again really quickly yeah um so you and I take it my father takes it he's now 83 he's doing well now the reason that we take it is not because we're type 2 diabetics it's because we want to make sure our glucose levels don't rise as we get older that's known to be a bad thing for aging and for of course diabetes and heart disease oh oh may I point something out I'd like to point out that that's actually very common for a lot of people even if you are mindful of your diet you know your blood glucose levels have a tendency to rise as we get older so I just want to put that out there because there are a lot of people that are very very mindful of their diets what they take what they eat and your your blood glucose levels might still go up and it's just common as we as we age super hard especially if you have a genetic predisposition yes and uh you know we work with with uh folks who struggle to keep their glucose levels down even if they're eating a great diet and there are things you can do metformin is one of the first things that doctors will put patients on and we we um it's a generally recognized uh safe drug though I saw somebody mention uh we should mention the side effects there are side effects with every drug every drug uh with the exception of fish oil um that needs to be discussed so what we know about metformin is that first of all probably 100 million people have taken it so far so this has been around for decades and we're going to strike that number because we don't know for sure and we're not citing it but a lot of people have taken it that's the point the side effects typically are gastrointestinal uh you can feel a bit sick you can feel like you're full um which some people think is is a nice side effect um sometimes there are serious side effects um one in a few thousand people uh it's not very common but you still want to be aware of it you can have a serious side effect called lactic acidosis where the body becomes uh too um anti-respiratory to put it one way and you get a lot of lactic acid build up similar to running a marathon you'll get lactic acid and if you feel sick if there's any side effects always with any supplement or certainly medicine uh go tell your doctor that you're doing it um of course they'll probably know that you're taking that from it already but make sure they know that they're side effects so they can advise you and if you stop metformin what's known as the side effects go away it's it's reversible which is great now you can get metformin over the counter in a lot of countries a Asia Africa in what we call the Western World you need a prescription so you need to talk to your doctor about getting it if you don't have type 2 diabetes you either need to bring to them some of the scientific papers which Serena I suggest we should post those uh on the notes to this live or you can find them in the back of my book these are papers you can show your doctor and often that helps educate them in this science now the papers that I'm the papers that I'm referring to show associations between people that take metformin and those that have reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's and Frailty and even cancer and uh and that's why I am taking it I think Serena you're similar it's not just about slowing glucose increases it's about preventing other diseases that are associated with aging and then for those of you who are who are you called berberine and I'm noticing that we're already at nine minutes to the top of the hour and there's a lot that we haven't covered yet but I think we should cover berberine just briefly uh if you'd like to cover that David it's it's um it's a compound found in a lot of plants it's natural you know people have been using it in traditional Chinese medicine in ayurvedic practices for many many years and it has a lot of the same benefits there's you know blood sugar control lipid regulation uh it's anti-inflammatory there's ampk activation that we haven't really talked about yet we can maybe talk about very briefly uh before we move on to a couple more big points we should share with people before we jump off good and I want to get onto the touring so I'm going to talk really fast stick with me um first thing I want to do is I I mentioned in one of my posts that I was going to get into the paper on Metformin so Serena forgive me I'm going to show a figure here oh yeah no absolutely I I definitely think you should this is something that comes up a lot when we're traveling we do our talks um and this is a very important piece of information that David's going to show you right now graph here on the right shows the difference between those who are taking metformin and those who are not the ones the ones that are higher up are the ones that didn't take metformin and those are taking metformin are the the ones on the far right what that shows is the evidence that metformin slows down muscle growth okay and you'd be probably surprised to know that the only difference is five percent so muscle size difference in that experiment was five percent now if that's the only difference um I would rather just do a little bit more exercise and get my muscles bigger the good news is those muscles even though they're slightly smaller we're stronger okay so that let's pause on that let's pause on that because in his Brilliance David sometimes forgets to give a moment for the point that he was making which is it's only five percent and how that information has been presented um in the public forum has made it look like or given the the perception that it's a much larger percentage which has people really fearful or hesitant about taking metformin and in reality that difference is only five percent now five percent is movable as David said you can just exercise a little more you can be that's that's something that we can work with it's not as if it affects you it's a it's a 30 drop which is sort of how it was coming out in the literature so these are two different types of Metformin you can take it as a pill or a capsule um I find the capsules are better yes um Yes actually if you can get it compounded that would be best because it's a little bit cleaner and less likely to give you gastrointestinal um issues so let's jump into taurine yes and then I think we definitely should address there's been a lot of comments about meat uh and about and about plant-based diets uh when people are trying to build muscle and maintain longevity so let's talk about taurine they're just because there's been some recent information that's been out there uh that's not on chat GPT yet so you're going to hear about it here so taurine touring is a semi-essential amino acid that we need for sure when we're babies but we start to make it when we're older some animals don't make taurine like a cat now what has been published recently was in the news and I tweeted about it was that um so taurine's being found high doses uh typically around two to five grams a day it's hydros lowest blood pressure improves cardiovascular health improves the lipids um and uh and seems to improve blood pressure as well this is all great right sounds like anti-aging to me now it's got neuroprotective effects as well yeah I think that's why you started taking it no I mean I've been using touring for a long time but not at the levels that have been recently discussed in these applications right because you can find it in sports drinks and energy drinks but it's it's pretty low concentration usually now this amino acid was shown in the science paper from last week so when you give it to mice they have a lot of health benefits that are similar to what I just described in humans and they even gave it to monkeys and found that their health improved but the big deal was that those mice lived um because by my recollection I think it was 12 to 16 longer I'll check on that but it was it was a significant extension of lifespan which is a big deal because if it had a negative side effect they probably wouldn't have lived longer right and so Alum I think taurine is super interesting the thing that confuses me and the literature right now and scientists is taurine is found in me right and taurine is also known to activate M4 which goes against the theory that inhibiting mtor for adversity mimicry is yes things to provide longevity despite acting creating mtor and so this is going to you know spark a debate discussion with the carnivals of course but I think this is a good good uh transition for you to talk about nutrition because a lot a lot of people want to know about how do they get protein if they're not going to eat a lot of meat well I I want to backtrack just a second you know and just remind people of some of the benefits that you've mentioned so taurine it can improve your cardiovascular health as we just said is neuroprotective it's anti-inflammatory antioxidant it's got all these benefits um that as David and I talk regularly when you're doing things that help all your systems every organ system when you're doing things that are that keep you balanced that are healthy it lends to longer longevity so I know that most many people out there they're kind of looking for that magic pill how much nmn do we take how much this how much that it's it's not just like one thing so it's just a good reminder that this amino acid is giving you these benefits and there might be some debates on things but these benefits lend towards longevity and just better health better overall health and by touring on the internet make sure it's a supply that sells clean pure GMP grade taurine I'm currently taking uh two grams a day and to see how that works with me that's a pretty high dose I'll measure myself I'll report back Serena I think you're on similar dose as well uh yes yes so we've opted out those and we'll see how that goes um as always you want to measure yourself in case there's any negative side effects in order to make sure it's benefiting you as well otherwise it's a waste of time well and it's just good to know what's going on with you you know just like measure before uh most of you I wouldn't say most of you but many people out there have uh devices that measure and you can take tests but you have devices that measure your heart rate your you know your oxygen so many different things so just take a peek at what your numbers look like before you put something new into your routine uh and then I just wanted to address there are people asking about when to take berberine when to take mtor not mtor sorry metformin we typically take it or at least I take it in the evenings so um I usually take my metformin at night before bed um David I think you you do that too even that upsets your tummy sometimes and then with the berberine I take it at night with metformin but I also take it a couple times during the day as well if I can remember and that that's sort of dependent on you know your age as a female and there can be benefits to breaking up say 1500 milligrams of berberine throughout the course of the day rather than you know taking it at the very end at the very end of the day so I saw several questions about that now I agree with that I'm at moment at night but it really it doesn't really matter um Some people prefer it in the morning yeah the half-life is 8 to 12 hours so you'll get a benefit um throughout the day if you take it in the morning so that's one thing to consider I like to take it at night because it upsets my stomach and I'm asleep when it's in my tummy so and berberine I take it whenever I can remember to take it so there's no particular current day mostly plant-based your plant-based I'm intermittent vegan how do we get the right amount of amino acids and before you answer I want to just quickly say one of the reasons for focusing on Plants besides getting the wonderful polyphenols and uh molecules from those plants and we like to eat stress colorful plants another reason for having plants is that the ratio of amino acids uh is beneficial we think the longevity based on the research and if you're just eating meat you get high levels of these Brands chain amino acids which might initially make you feel great but in the long run you don't want to have them always in your system so Serena over to you uh yeah no well we're both we're both plant-based I mean I know you're struggling but you're mostly plant-based and you know I think one of the tricks that people don't realize is that you can get the amount of proteins that you need from plant-based sources and it's actually good to kind of combine them so there's legumes we are very regular about how much chickpeas you know wheat chickpeas and lentils and different types of legumes on a very regular basis they're extremely high in plant protein and also plant fiber sometimes people are concerned about the carbs but there's so much fiber in this type of food balances it out your net carbs are actually a lot lower than what you think and what people also don't realize is you can overcook your plant protein source and then that lowers the amount of proteins that you're actually getting so your cooking method can actually affect the amount of protein you're getting from your from you know a plant based diet so as long as you're a little bit mindful about that just not you know not overcooking even boiling can reduce the amount of protein that you're getting you know roasting steaming of course has less of an impact on the amount of protein so that's a really that those are small little mindful changes that can really impact your your diet if you are staying plant-based at to you know build muscle or to work out or however you so choose just that one little tweak can make a really big difference the amount of protein that you're getting you know I think that some people can't live without meat and I think it's good to emphasize that you do what you can right with the movement you do what you can with your diet you do what you can you don't have to be 100 vegan to get the benefits you try to shift things as best you can and I struggle as Serena said sometimes I eat a bit of fish or occasionally some meat um occasionally I have alcohol I don't want to restrict myself completely but I do do my best to focus on the foods that are healthy oh one last thing um uh by the way I just got a message from Tony Robbins he says hi yeah the uh the uh to fuffle about sweeteners just very briefly you told me Serena to stop eating these uh and drinking these artificial sweeteners you were absolutely right the science now is pretty strong that that probably not healthy they uh affect the mitochondria in your body yeah they cause inflammation and even worse the World Health Organization is going to declare that Aspartame is a potential carcinogen and Sucralose is also bad for you so these are things that you buy ahead of time and I you know I went on Joe Rogan's podcast unfortunately with the Diet Coke and I got criticized for that and I thought what's the big deal now I wish I hadn't done that well I mean when I knew that you drew soda I was also like what what are you talking about and we can't do that uh and I know there's a lot of people out there that drink soda what I would say to that is there are a lot of healthy alternative versions to soda that can kind of give you the same satisfaction it's you're still getting that sweet bubbly you know maybe it makes it's a comfort food or a comfort drink but you can have healthier Alternatives and that's really what it's about it's about choosing something that makes you feel good that feeds your body feeds your soul that uh is a healthier version you know that doesn't also hurt you that doesn't cause cellular damage um and that can help extend your longevity so there's a lot of people that talked about vitamins real quick uh-huh I just saw a few questions about this to answer those uh we like to use uh aguilers uh and monk fruit yes and there's actually some combinations out there you guys look for it sometimes it's just that blend monk fruit is extremely sweet in small doses and you know in the past and actually some Brands still use erythritol and other types of sugar alcohol to cut that sweetness so that they can make it an equal ratio to sugar if you're substituting um and sometimes it's hard you know it's hard to measure in an eighth of an eighth of an eighth against one tablespoon or teaspoon of sugar to get the equivalent flavor and equivalent level of sweetener but there's a lot of Brands out there that cut it in different ways and so just go and look for combinations I wanted to address supplements really quick when it comes to being plant-based especially if you are working out and you're trying to build muscle so for those who have asked and I've seen it a lot yes you will likely need to supplement B12 and iron and now that's dependent on your body so you get your measurements done do what David says all the time which is you know get your blood work done see what your levels are and if you shift into a more plant-focused diet see if it changes you know I don't I don't need to take those supplements all the time every once in a while I do everybody is a little bit different but your omegas make sure you're taking omegas if you're not getting it from your foods that would be a lot of seeds you know if you're doing your flaxseed oils and your chia seeds on a really regular basis then you might be getting your omegas enough of your omegas if not then you supplement and of course vitamin D thank you there is someone here that said that they love the Serena loves ultimate D it is it is great and um yeah it's got K2 and other things in it everyone should be on K2 I think it's a really great vitamin as well as D yeah and it's and it's combined so uh I you know what I don't think we have time to go through some recipes that I put together as a surprise to our audience if they are interested in building muscle on a plant uh plant Focus or plant-based diet but if you go to our our profiles and Instagram if you go and you follow and you subscribe to optimized longevity sign up for our newsletter then maybe I'll just put it in the newsletter that you guys received I think you sure you should promise that right now yes okay so um all right you guys well David do you feel good about what we shared today we're 10 minutes after the hour and I have another live so we're gonna have to jump off uh uh but were there any other burning burning questions you felt like needed to be answered uh or we can save it for the next one because I love how you guys you know sort of bring some questions from one into the next we'll address them a little bit at the top um of the episode uh before the main topic casual exam no I think this was really great I appreciated a lot of the comments um people are asking questions and answering them on the chat which is great because we can't answer all of them so this is a great Community uh we want to build it tell your friends we're uh we're working on lifespan uh the next season together and uh looking forward to seeing you all there in the meantime we're going to be keeping on doing these things which we love just being spontaneous when we talk about new news and our personal things that we do um now just feel grateful that we've got uh this community of folks that uh we can talk to and we're going to do these more often you know we took a a break because we were traveling all the time uh it was really hard on us but we're back we're we're here and uh we'll see more often yes and thank you guys so much and we'll see you guys really soon I think next week actually so stay tuned and uh and thank you guys so much Thanksgiving see you guys soon foreign

Channel: Optimize Longevity

Views: 38,856

Keywords: david sinclair, dr david sinclair, chef serena poon, serena poon, reverse aging, aging, longevity, david sinclair nmn, extend lifespan, lifespan book, longevity diet, david sinclair interview, david sinclair fasting, david sinclair diet, lifespan, david sinclair podcast, holistic health, dr. david sinclair, david sinclair resveratrol, lifespan david sinclair, david sinclair increase your lifespan, nmn, metformin, sinclair lab, lifespan podcast, harvard aging doctor

Id: uSwvSh7ssEQ

Length: 34min 43sec (2083 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023