Can we stay young forever?

welcome to the newsmaker coming to you from the science Unlimited conference in Montreux do you want to stay young forever well my guest today is David Sinclair who is a leading scientist on longevity and may have a cure against aging and even how to reverse it David thank you so much for your time you now 50 years old what do you do against your own aging well I wish I did more exercise I do a little bit of exercise each week but I also try to be a little bit hungry every day that's the one bit of advice that I would give that is don't always eat every meal and we've known for centuries that being a little bit hungry is good for you so what do you eat I mean I cannot see any single gray hair on you not yet we will say so far so good I eat a fairly standard diet I try to eat vegetables more than meat but other than that it's mostly about the quantity or the lack of food that I think is most important so our viewers will be interested to know what else they can do to slow down the aging process do you have any more secret recipes well I think becoming puffed doing a bit of exercise every few days is key you can reduce your chance of diseases by 40% by just getting out of the chair doing a little bit of running or cycling I try to do that but most of my life is at a keyboard unfortunately so these are very easy things to do it's actually it actually saves money not eating as much I think if I ate everything I wanted to I would be really quite a big big person so it's it's healthy it makes you feel better and you probably live longer as well and decades of medical research have shown as well that cutting down on calories is also prolonging and extending the lifespan but us like eating less chips and chocolates really help well I think everything in moderation you know chocolates are not going to kill you but I think if you constantly eat too many calories and too many foods that don't have nutrition a lot of nutrition then that's still going to be a problem so I actually gave up eating desserts when I was 40 10 years ago although I sneaked a little bit from my wife when I get a chance so have you become younger in that case well I don't know if I've become younger I did a blood test that that said that it predicts your age and I was able to take my age from 58 at the time down to 31 point four according to this blood test and so I think with the healthy lifestyle at least blood tests say that I'm younger than I used to be you are a biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard and also known for your work on resveratrol as a anti-aging dietary supplement how extensive is the medical use and application already well what we discovered actually is that there are genes in the body that control how long we live and also which diseases we we get and so these genes are they have a name they're called sirtuins and think of these genes as protectors of the body and when we diet and eat a healthy lifestyle eat healthy foods and we exercise we can actually turn these genes on and at least in mice if you make a mouse that has more of these genes they're much healthier for longer and they get sick just at the end of life so that's what we would love to have I would love to help humanity and have people live until they're 80 or 90 and die much more quickly instead of what we do now is keeping one part of the body healthy but not all parts of the body um and so what what I do is I find molecules like resveratrol that will turn on these genes we have some clinical trials right now with new types of molecules that are we think even better than resveratrol from red wine that are in in early safety studies in people and we're hoping that in the next few years we'll have a medicine that could treat rare diseases and eventually many millions of people as well there are many other end aging pills as well like cor c1 for example are people nowadays not tending to over-consume them and use them like aspirin in any kind of bad circumstance well it's an interesting world we live in for the last thousand years maybe longer people have been wanting to slow down their aging process by taking this and that but the science of aging longevity as we call it has really really reached a point where we understand largely why we age and how to control it at least in lab studies and and we're at the the verge of of things actually becoming true medicines but right now there's a there's a tendency for could the consumer world to be a little ahead of the science of what we actually know and you can understand customers and patients who want medicines that aren't yet available trying all sorts of things but the good news is it's not all bad science there's some very good science there have been a couple of Nobel prizes awarded for this research but these medicines are just around the corner and that's what I'm focused on it's to try and get these medicines to patients as soon as possible and you're also focused on writing a new book lifespan which is also about reversing the process of Aging does this mean that elderly people will become babies again well I don't know about babies but but what I wrote in lifespan is all of the knowledge that I've gained over 20 years and synthesized it into one idea about what causes us to age and what I believe is our bodies still have the information in them to be young again in in the same way that a compact disc becomes scratched and if you polish the compact discs you can still read the music and we're finding in the lab that we can create the scratches in in a mouse and make it get older quicker but what's most exciting is we're just writing up some scientific papers now that show we can actually reverse the clock of aging so tell me how this would work on a human being not just online so I can tell you that a lot of my research until recently has been taking pills or put the molecule in water and drink it this is a new therapy it's very powerful it's a gene therapy and what it does is it reprograms the cell to read the genes as though the cells were young again and I think this is the problem with aging is that our cells don't read the genes at the right time the way when we were young just like a scratch compact disc the reader will skip the songs so our cells are skipping the genes and this gene therapy tells the cell to read the right genes so they're the brain cells become young and we see the muscle cells become young again and we can actually measure the clock of aging we can read it with our machines and we see that the clock goes backwards the anti-aging industry is also a booming business David according to Orbis research the industry had some 43 billion u.s. dollars in 2018 and will reach some fifty five billion u.s. dollars by 2023 what do you make of these staggering numbers well so the aging field because the research has gone so well and the public is even more interested in aging more than ever this field is booming it's booming in customer and consumer products as you mentioned but also in the pharmaceutical development which I'm in most people don't know that there are now dozens of companies working on medicines that could treat aging itself and someone's going to be successful in the next few years and it's a extremely exciting time and I just want your viewers to know that the science has come a long way and it's not snake oil anymore it's the cutting edge of biology right now and and pharmaceuticals I'm thinking will be just around the corner what about the Swiss farmer chains here I mean Novartis for example is also developing anti-aging drugs and so on but still not pouring that much money into this area do you see that change I do see a change already Nestle is also working on products that will potentially tackle aging and actually here in Switzerland in Geneva Lausanne there is a hub of science and economic activity around aging it's just growing every year some scientists are from the EPFL in Luzon they wrote in 2016 that even simply eating the fruit upon grenade can actually slow down the process of Aging is another natural way to prevent wrinkles well what what they showed is your olefin a is a molecule that you can pull out of pomegranates that in some people is converted to a longevity molecule and the science is very strong scientists here in Switzerland are extremely world-class so I that this has a chance of delaying aspects of Aging in people as well and I'm excited about the progress of of that work here in Switzerland we also have a lot of skincare companies like la prairie and FLL and for example the company Valmont and so on that's also a booming business how do you see that well the so the cosmetic industry I see two types of company there's the the companies that focus on traditional antioxidant approaches which have been around for 30 40 years there are some very innovative companies here in Switzerland and in France that I'm aware of that are using these new discoveries about longevity genes to actually treat the skin and these same molecules could also slow down aging in the rest of the body as well but it's it's not just business and PR Rd skin care products really working oh well I don't know for sure I'm not studying skin but I do know some of the science behind these products is real so I think it's possible that we finally have products that truly reverse aspects of aging itself not just cover it up David so you mentioned to me before the into as well that you started a new company in 2017 together with a board member from Logitech tell me what it's all about also my goal is to bring together people from all around the world to work on this problem of making us healthier for longer and my latest group of companies is under one group called life Biosciences headquarters in Boston and we were very lucky to have one of our board members brac and Darrell the CEO of Logitech and he joined because he had a great interest in what we're doing video we also we really like having him on the board because he's got expertise in in AI data analysis which is also what is driving our discovery process are you looking for more corporations and collaborations with us with companies and executives in that case we are and one of the reasons I keep coming back to Switzerland is to talk with scientists and and other industries here about partnering there's there's one that I'm working on right now that we think we could have a really big impact on aging and so it's it's actually surprised me that within all of Europe that Switzerland is the hub of a lot of what I'm interested in living forever has been a dream for many people according to the UN world population prospects the life expectancy at birth for men is 68 years and for women 72 years how long should a human being live nowadays well I think if people can stay healthy without diseases they should have a right to live very long time they also have the right to leave the planet when they want to and actually Switzerland is one of the few places in the world where you can do that so I applaud the Swiss for that but I think it's it it should no government and no society should dictate when somebody has to die and I think that we should all fight as we have for the last 200 years to make people live the longest and the healthiest life possible so it should be a personal choice to decide when to go oh yeah absolutely and I don't think anyone can tell you when to die or when not to die and for how long do you yourself want to live well I'm not afraid of dying I have three wonderful teenage kids so I'd love to see where they end up and I'm also very excited about where humanity is going in the future you know I've always dreamed of us leaving this planet flying cars all that stuff I love the idea of the future and that's one of the reasons I'm a scientist I want to make the happen faster than it would without me being here so I would just like to stick around to see what happens but I also think that I have a lot more work to do so I would love to live more than a hundred years old if it's possible but that's not why I do the research what do you do your research for well I think we all want to leave the planet knowing we've made a difference that our lives have been worth something and so that's what drives me I would love to when I die no as my final thought that this place will be better for having lived here thank you so much for your time and good luck for your research David thank you for having me

Channel: Archive TV

Views: 300,977

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Id: tl5oDAraC0Q

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019