Harvard Professor Explains the SECRET To AGING IN REVERSE | Marisa Peer & David Sinclair

when you do one loving thing for your body it will do so many loving things back it's not just that you can walk better you feel better you jump out of bed better you probably have better sex what i think is the main thing that i love about it is that i i'm proud of myself for having done this [Music] hi everybody and welcome today my guest is david sinclair professor of genetics at harvard medical school he's a new york times bestseller and a patented inventor they're all fascinated on how we can slow down aging look younger feel younger age more slowly and david's work centers on why we age and how these are great news how we can slow down and even reverse its effect so i wrote a book on the very same thing and i'm so excited about you being here david so welcome it's great to be on marissa thanks for having me see i believe that aging is an expectation that we turn into i know you believe that we don't need to become old and the aging process is something we can take responsibility on that's really music to my own ears so i'd love you to share with us what about your research and why it contradicts the mainstream belief that aging is kind of inevitable it just happens oh well at my time of life and at my age and we kind of expect it to happen but i want you to tell us why you have some contradictory research backed up beliefs backed up by research and and i can't wait to hear them well sure the the field of aging uh in terms of the science behind it is similar to the 1980s and 90s for cancer research before that there was very very little you could do about cancer you could cut it out but that was it but now we have very targeted medicines and nobody would say when you you got cancer well that's just life that's just natural go home and pack your things you're gonna die why do we say that about aging we have the technologies now that are showing you can even reverse not just slow down but reverse human age we can now measure it very accurately uh with even a mouth swab test that i'm developing and then we're showing actually my colleagues and i that certainly in mice and dogs we've done some work on horses and even some human studies aging isn't that hard to slow down we already know the easy things to slow down aging it's just a matter of doing them and we can talk about those you've probably heard of many of them but there are more advanced things that we're working on that understanding the genetic basis of aging and even medicines that some are available some are just coming online so in the future people will look back at today uh you know with pity that we didn't even realize that there was something we could do about it so can you start with the easy things i think we always want the easy things first what are some of the easy things that we can do to slow down aging yeah well the the ancients knew this we just forgot it or we became lazy if there's one thing i could say that would very likely give you uh more years of healthy life and it's important these are healthy years where you look and feel younger you're not just living longer as an old person that thing would be uh to eat less often and there's been some wonderful studies showing that um mostly in animals but some some human studies as well that it's not as important what you eat it's when you eat and so i've skipped breakfast for most of my life i now skip lunch most days and have a regular dinner and that i believe is it's the biggest bang for the buck in terms of healthy longevity so do you do this 16 hour what i call intermittent fasting or do you do even longer than that i eat once a day and usually it's a healthy dinner if i can help it uh but i'm only human i think everybody needs to enjoy life so i have the occasional cheesecake kind of thing but not often uh and so it's i go for about 18 hours i try not to eat late as well because i don't sleep well so you do you have one meal a day seven days a week right okay if i have lunch or maybe it's it's some nuts or a little salad but nothing heavy and that's rare and did you have to train yourselves to do see i i don't ever even want breakfast it's me skipping breakfast is easy but my sister my husband just they have to eat the minute they wake up so for some people like you and i that's kind of natural but what would you say to someone who says skip breakfast and wake up rather nurse and and i really need lunch how do they do that well that's fine we're all different there's no one-size-fits-all for what i'm saying today or what i do so some people need breakfast they are hungry in the morning you and i are not but i think if if you can skip either the beginning meal or the uh the end of the day meal with dinner that would give you combined with sleep this 18 hours 16 to 18 hours that we think is going to be very beneficial and when you do it you said you eat anything so would you eat just whatever you wanted or you still look at some foods like high fat fat fried foods and salty food as like oh that's not great for aging either do you have some foods that you simply do your best to avoid because of their impact on aging oh sure and every meal i look at uh scientifically i'm just saying i i don't always stick to eating leafy greens for dinner i'm not i'm not a rabbit but my my diet does tend to look more like a rabbits than a lion's and there's a study that just came out a few days ago by steve horvath's lab over in ucla he was one of the co-authors that showed that when you do that test of biological age that i was talking about the mouth swab that we're developing those kind of diets which are rich in plants legumes nuts low fat low sugar they do actually those people have slower aging okay have you got any um tips on the worst food that you should avoid if you possibly can because a lot of people say you know i i cut my appetite by drinking loads of diet coke i have so many models to say and i drink 20 cans of diet coke a day and i don't eat but then i think that's so bad for you because you're drinking like chemicals what would you say to someone who said i'm really not eating because i'm drinking diet seven up or diet coke or i think it's called mountain dew or lots of black sweetener in it right so i've looked looked into this and these diet sodas are are nowhere near as bad as actual sugar yeah well that's good to know you know high fructose corn syrup you just want to avoid that and certainly in america it's it's in a lot of foods i know uh but you know diet sodas aren't perfect they they trick the body and the microbiome into responding as though you're actually eating sugar but i i really don't believe based on what i've read that they are that bad you know if you want to put a number on it just to to be you know more informative they might be 10 to 20 percent as bad as real sugar and if you need a sugar fix uh absolutely need one you know it's much better choice than actual sugar uh but the best choice are some of these natural sweeteners stevia based sweeteners are what i try to try to eat um but you know one one candy one cake's not going to kill you um that's the point but try to be good as much as you can every day and over a lifetime or certainly that the latter half of life it will make a huge difference what are your thoughts on the mind body connection because i believe if you do anything and it's stressful and you hate it and you're forcing yourself not to eat and feeling really miserable and forcing yourself to exercise and hating it how do you think that plays out what i'm asking you is like the mind-body connection do you think that our thoughts play a part in our and how we age oh 100 uh it's two types of stress you can put on the body and they're very different there's the physical stress which is exercise and being hungry cold hot these kind of uh perceived adversities that makes the body fight against aging and diseases but mental stress is different um it's more you know it's psychological and but again if you have too much of it just like any physical stress it will be bad for you but a little bit is okay uh having a little bit of agency and excitement i think that that's actually necessary for a long life have some purpose but if you go overboard and you're either depressed or under too much stress and your heart is beating faster what you'll end up doing is secreting a variety of inflammatory molecules into your body cortisol is the main one that we know about and you want to keep your stress levels low so meditation calming thoughts breathing i practice all of those to make sure that my very stressful job doesn't get the better of me so if you're like doing all of this i had an example i was in la a few months ago my house got flooded and it and i'm i try really hard to be super calm i don't want it before but i just found for dealing with builders and having my whole house collapsing was a little stressful and i was thinking i cannot have this cortisol going through my body and it was like a nine-month job and i was singing this song everything's going to be all right but if we're the best of intentions something happens something drama goes on and it is super stressful how would you advise someone to to cope with that i mean i know meditating is great but let's imagine you're in your house and it's flooding you've got a building crew on every floor and they're all saying oh he broke that it wasn't me and i didn't do that we can't fix that and you can't suddenly rush off and meditate what would you advise people to do when it's the same thing you've got three kids one sick with dogs thrown up on the carpet and the toilets leaking in everyday life when we can't always light a candle and be very zen is there anything you can advise people to do to get out of being in that high stress state which we know is incredibly aging well for sure i used to be extremely stressed every day of my life i thought i was going to have a heart attack when i was in my 20s and 30s during my 30s we had three kids and that's stressful as well i bet so what i'm saying by using myself as an example is you can overcome that natural fear of things getting out of control and these days i'm i'm helping run many companies running a lab at harvard i've got three kids i've just moved house things go wrong here's what i do i remember the worst things that happened in my life and it's actually helpful if you've experienced adversity in your life young people don't have that to turn to as much but i think of the moment when my mother died in front of me and it was not an easy way out for her it was quite painful and i think that's the worst that life can get everything else is easy and so when i come home every day when people say my kids say how was your day my reaction literally is nobody died it's a great day i'm alive it's a great day and so that that's how i get through it i i just count every day as a blessing that i'm still here and healthy i sing you know i find these songs like bob marley every little thing is going to be all right or there's one by e17 got all right all right it's really all right and i find singing a song with positive lyrics like don't worry be happy or that pharrell song is actually really good for me because it tricks your mind to thinking oh you're happy you've got to flood the ceiling's collapse but you're singing so i guess you're happy and it's often why bomb disposal experts will whistle or marines will will sing as they run and do endurance training because it really tells your mind you're singing i guess you're just happy no matter what and it's a really good thing to do to find a song maybe i'm having the time of my life when you're really not i mean i know how to drive my daughter to school and i'd if there was some drama in the back of the car with other kids i would just sing and i find it really it works but i i love your tips so i've got the you know 18 hours of fasting if you can only eat one meal a day it's fine to have black coffee with stevia in it if you feel that's helping you go without food and that's great advice and that a diet beverage is actually still better for you than a high sugar beverage what else can we do aside from this this is one great thing and i think everyone can look at that and think you know i could eat less because in nature animal you know a lion when they eat but they only eat what they eat and they don't eat again for hours they don't graze all the time so that's a great tip but what else because i know you have so many yeah well it's become a lifestyle for me um i wrote them down in my book so if anybody wants to hear them all that they're they're out there um actually the cheat sheet versus page 304 people can jump to that and have a look at what i do and the book's called lifespan the what i do that's next probably most important uh is uh maintaining my body's uh weight which includes exercise and i really don't like exercise um but if i so if i can do it anyone can yeah what i do is uh so right here i have next to me a little speaker for music so i agree music is always around to keep me calm uh and i have some weights here and so when i'm not busy or i need to stand up normally this is a standing desk that i can push up and down i'm sitting currently um move just move whether it's a walk or pull up some little weights that aren't even that heavy just move those do this i try to keep my hips in great shape because that's one way to die as you get older by falling and breaking your hip oh tell me more about that how do you keep your hips in great shape because i love that because that is the thing so many old people fall they fracture their hips and then that's really a problem so sit down sitting is a major problem in in our lives i had to sit down to write my book for two years and i literally could barely walk with i had a limp because i had a cramp in my piriformis muscle that wouldn't go away but with regular exercise it did go away and so i think that the exercise what's called hip hinges so you you lean forward and you pick up a weight so you keep your shoulders back you lean forward till horizontal pick up a heavy weight uh for me that would be probably 100 pounds something like that but if you're older you don't need to lift that much and then just stand up till you're straight and then put it down again and do that 10 times are you leaning forward so you're like hinging like that so you're like a number seven if you like is that how you lean you lean from the hips exactly so you hinge over from the waist and keep your back straight you don't want to bend that and you pick up a waist with pick up a weight with straight arms and then bend them is that right keep your arms straight the whole time as you pick it up so you're picking it up sort of like that no you'll stand up and your arms will be at your side yeah go to the front and then just lean forward and put it down again and then keep doing that with your arms straight down so you don't lift your arms up you just lift the weight off the floor so a bit like a kettlebell is that right you can use a kettlebell that works fine yeah but you don't lift your arms up you just lift your body up right okay we can all do that so um i've read a lot about how you believe that exercises i mean i've read that before that exercise is one of the second most powerful ways to slow down aging but that one you believe is perfect for the hips is that right right and you'll walk better and actually the the slower you walk the it's a predictor of how long you're going to live and uh so you want to maintain your ability to walk um it's just a good sign of your overall health and and lack of frailty there's another test you can do which is how quickly and easily can you get up off the floor with crossed legs i've done that one i love her how do you do cross legs and crossed arms you cross your legs sit down and get up again yeah and you just keep practicing it yeah that's an indicator of how you're going to age isn't it it sure is and middle-aged people tend to have to put one hand on the floor and older people have to get on one knee and it's an indicator of the strength of those muscles in your core that's all it is and it's important you maintain those so when you're saying exercise there must be some exercises better than others so what if someone said well i do yoga every day or pilates are there particular exercises that are better than other exercises uh well i think it's a combination they're all beneficial so certain types of yoga will strengthen your muscles um and that is just as probably just as valuable as lifting those weights um but you also want to keep up aerobic exercise but the good news there uh and i can say this because i really don't like losing my breath it's a horrible feeling um is that you can you can do 10 minutes a few times a week on it if you have a treadmill or go running outside when it's warmer and just 10 minutes has been shown to be greatly beneficial you don't have to run for miles to get the benefits but you do want to put your body in a state where you're so puffed that you couldn't carry out a conversation and that again puts your body in this defensive state it in you know what is a million years ago probably our ancestors were running around on the savannah and that's what we're built to do our bodies if we're sitting around eating all the time and not feeling cold not feeling too hot our bodies become complacent and they don't fight back against disease and aging if you can't run because you say one of my knees have gone on i live on a hill what do you think about rebounding using a mini trampoline getting out of breath that way great yeah i've done that before too especially in winter it's useful yeah do you think that's as good as running if you really work up a sweat on it and yeah absolutely because i heard that the anti-gravity part of rebounding was the aerodynamic was really good for your lymphatic system do you think that's true makes sense no i hadn't heard that that's really interesting okay what about sex because i've always believed that having great orgasms is incredibly anti-aging because most animals don't mate for anything other than to recreate so i think your mind when you're having a lot of sex believes that you must be young because because that's what young people do they may in order to pass on their genes and i you know i've studied a lot of people in blue zones for those who don't know it you obviously know it it's where people naturally seem to live a long life and i know people who live to 100 often say that they're a lot of sex even in their 70s so talk about that and how having an active sex and particularly for women being orgasmic can slow down aging well it's it's tough for a lot of women and and some men that they lose interest in sex uh towards the latter half of their life but clearly moving is important um i don't know about orgasms being important for aging i think someone should study that or maybe you know more than i do but there's no question that sex gets your uh breathing rate up your heart rate up and could could be part of a healthy lifestyle uh it and you know it's it's not not um too unenjoyable either so i think that that's uh that's a good tip the problem i find talking to clients of mine um and friends is that uh for a lot of people whether they're in a bad relationship or just hormonally deficient uh it's it's not as interesting anymore well i think you're right you know and of course if you if we're doing what you say for eating less and looking after our bodies and working out feeling younger the minute you feel better you think well i feel like i could have sex again because now i feel young and vibrant it's that thing about well i'm lit i'm lying on the stove reading pringles i haven't worked out and i feel really kind of and the last thing i want to do is take off my clothes show some of my body and have sex and they don't look so hot either so i'm not interested but i think it all comes together when you do young activities and you feel young i think it helps you to maintain a sex life and of course women especially when you orgasm you make natural killer cells that do slow down aging and you make hormones that fight depression so i think it's very important if you can to keep having sex because for women much more so than men it has an anti-aging effect because your mind goes hey i don't care how old you are clearly making a baby here and if you're making a baby i'm gonna have to keep you healthy enough to raise that baby at least until it's old enough to take care of itself so it's quite interesting sex because your mind doesn't just want you to make a baby you want you to raise it certain point in making it and leaving it on its own so we are wired to reproduce ourselves but also to raise that baby and so yeah there's so many things we could do but what else would you recommend so so far i love what you're saying i love the dieting i love the fact we can do any kind of exercise i don't want to get out of breath and stress our bodies what else well these are the easy things that i'm talking about yeah um you know i'm a molecular biologist i'm not a fitness trainer but i do i'm a scientist i can read things the other thing that i i do is i did more before the pandemic was plunge myself into cold baths of water and go in saunas because there's some good evidence particularly in the sauna area uh that that's also healthy and that could also be working through the same mechanism of putting your body into a state of perceived adversity to fight back yeah do you think that's what the um my friend's doing that cryotherapy is it kind of psychotherapy where you're going into the like like going into the freezer for three minutes or i know wim hof very well who sits in the ice bath so you think the heat and the eyes have the same effect i think so the the science isn't conclusive just yet uh but what's clear is that if you look at people who regularly go in saunas they have much lower rates of um cardiac arrest so that to me says there's something important going on there the ice baths it makes sense you can build up what's called brown fat speeds up your metabolism brown fats very healthy as opposed to your white fat which builds up around your belly brown fats around your back usually and so that that theoretically could be a way that cold shock therapy is beneficial for longevity um and you can do that just by having a three-minute ice-cold shower can't you or does it have to be longer than that no three minutes is is all i can take anyway uh after three minutes i'm pretty much done but um i don't do the cold showers i i'm not sure i think a shower for me is supposed to be pleasurable but yeah um you can jump in a pool which isn't heated or if you're really good at it or want to do something there are professional places you can go commercial places to get either in a uh a mist of liquid nitrogen which i've tried a few times but at my gym they just had a four degree celsius water bath that i would walk into and three minutes was enough my son though who's uh at the time was uh 12 before the pandemic uh he would he could stay in there 15 minutes or more so a lot of people have different tolerance tolerances for these things but you do what you can and three minutes i think it's efficient and if you use hypnosis and go in there and say you know i'm super warm and i'm really chill because they did some studies where they get people to put their hands in buckets of ice but if they made themselves say this is warm this is warm this is warm they could tolerate it for much longer rather like when you're walking on coals and saying the most poor moss it's amazing how you can endure more even running if you tell yourself i love this and this is great [Music] so why do you think that some people age so quickly and become old before their time you know we know there are old people who look and act young and then there are young people who look and act incredibly old why do you think some of us age way before our time well there are a lot of reasons but the good news is that when you look at twin studies there's one from denmark that only about 20 of your health in old age is genetically written into your genome from your parents the rest is up to how you live your life and there are some things that you can do as i mentioned uh to to slow that down um and if you don't do them then you'll you'll speed up and we all age at different rates and we can measure that with this this epigenetic clock it's called and uh so what you find is people who smoke are [Music] older than than their twin or for or the general population those who become very heavy uh who don't eat the right foods [Music] and uh and who are stressed out and what we're also learning is that the type of food that you eat as i mentioned earlier is very important so all of those things combined um actually get you another 14 years on average of healthy life there was a harvard study that came out last year about that and that's just the easy stuff you know i think most people have heard it maybe not in the level of detail that i'm talking about but what i'm also excited about are taking things to the next level to get people into their 90s and and beyond even into their hundreds and still work if they want play tennis hang out with the great grandkids that's the future that i think is is actually capable or possible with the science that we now know i wanted to ask you a question because i heard you talking somewhere else about how you can take a swab of the cheek and by looking at someone's blood you can tell them pretty much when they're going to die how many people actually want to know that that's an excellent question uh well i i was sitting with uh for lunch with my business partner uh and she said uh i bet you a lot of people want to know their age especially if they can reverse it which i believe we can give advice that would help and so i sent out a tweet and we got back the number with thousands of responses um that 93 of people said heck yeah i want to do that test and so we decided to form a company on the spot that was early this year and we've now we're now building this company we have a test we have reduced the cost of the test by a thousand fold and in fact if we have a website if anybody would like to get on the list uh to have this test taken and uh be some of the first to uh to sign up because of course you're not saying hey i've got your oblige you're going to die at 72 you're saying well you're predicted to die at 72 but if you're only 60 now you've got 12 years to start doing some things that will push that age further out and further out because it's never too late to take some action to slow down aging yeah it's not even one number it's a it's a number that will change over time and it'll be cheap enough that everybody not everybody but most people will be able to do this every few months to see if their diet change and diet and lifestyle is working for them otherwise we're flying blind we don't drive a car without a dashboard why do we do this with our bodies and so that's what we're building we're going to have a dashboard for the body and provide real information and direct them to real products that we've tested that are that are what people say they are um and so the the sign up for that if anyone would like it's dr sinclair.com and you spell out the word doctor you know i think i'm going to take that test it reminds me of i met somebody i had a client who came to london he was french and he he was just looking at a particular type of english girl who likes to go out and get drunk and party they're not all like that and he said to me it's really amazing is that french women do everything to to prolong their looks and english girls seem to want to destroy them as fast as they possibly can i mean yeah that's it's a really interesting observation that a french woman is very proud of i must preserve my looks and an english girl is i'm just going to go out and get trashed and have a great time and i'll i'll sort that out later so i think i'm going to take that test i'm going to get my husband to take that test too because actually you're right it's not scary it's it's like a warning look here you are but you can do something about it and many people have said you know it's only when i got a heart murmur i had a heart attack but i thought wow that's a warning sign and now i'm suddenly going to do better and i guess some people who get cancer do that they say well i decided to you know really look after myself but then others say well what's the point so i'm always talking to my guests about how to master their mindset because people like you are so fascinating because you've taken an everyday event and become a master at doing something so can i ask you when in your life you've most needed to really master your own mindset and what helped you and who helped you so every day i want to get better that's that's my mindset and i've been working towards this goal of helping everybody on the planet live healthier since i was age four so it's been a lifelong goal but there was a time where i almost quit uh it was too hard i was uh [Music] going through hard life with uh three kids uh tough marriage and then i my science was attacked by two of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world they attacked you did you say they did they said my science is wrong one of our discoveries the major one and a lot of people just believed the pharmaceutical companies because of course they know better than this one guy at harvard um so what i you know i was in bed for a week i couldn't get out i guess it's as close as ever i've been depressed uh but i'm i'm proud of myself that i was able to say well i can't spend the rest of my life in bed and i know when i die i'm going to regret not fighting so i got out of bed went back to work and pulled the team together and worked on this to see if it was true were we right or where we're wrong we just needed to know and i it took about two years and then we published a paper in science that said yeah we were right and they were wrong and that took a lot of willpower and i found out that i was more resilient than i realized yeah i mean some of the best people in medicine and in alternative health have been attacked and besmirched in front of the guy who wrote sugar blues and the guy who actually discovered what child bred fever was septicemia they were both ridiculed um diminished and then they realized not later they were absolutely on target i mean the guy who developed septicemia actually died in a mental hospital it was a terrible thing and because he was the one who said it's just not washing their hands going from the mortuary to delivering a baby so first they attack you then they accept you and then they believe in you and then they usually say later well he was amazing so i'm glad you came back from that because it's very hard when you're innovative and and you get attacked by somebody as big as big farmer because they're so powerful but we live in a world where people are less likely to believe everything a drug company says in your and that's a good thing so that that was your hardest time something else i'd like to ask you because you have a wife and three children are they all on board with eating the way you eat and exercising the way you exercise no well my children are so young they don't have to worry about it how old are they uh 18 16 and 14. right boy um younger boy girl and then the eldest is uh is a day so non-gender and uh they're great that they they're very scientific they're very different weirdly talented in their own way no the the lifestyle that i'm talking about is for people in their late twenties oh right because i was trying to imagine getting my daughter of course at that age they want to go out with their friends and drink they often smoke just as like it looks super cool they want to go to pizza hut and mcdonald's because that's what they do i mean i work with a lot of autistic children trying to get them to bed and they say the same thing i already feel different to every other kid on the planet and if i can't eat mcdonald's and pizza now i feel even more different and i really get that but it's so hard for kids when they're expected to do this strict diet or when all their other kids having milkshakes and chocolate yeah and the one thing that i would say is that um the childhood obesity is something that's a problem in the west and increasingly rest of the world um and and the food industry has a lot to do with that and schools over here in the us yeah just terrible food pizza and all that that that i would love if we could solve that problem because the epigenome which is the regulator of your genes uh changes and and this is the clock and having a lot of excess weight will speed up the clock no matter what age you are the clock's ticking from birth it's not it's a fallacy to say when you're 20 you're not getting old um but uh you know other than other than maintaining a healthy weight i think kids should be kids yeah i mean i totally agree with you then i mean i i think you should get your kids into healthy eating and allow them to go and have a pizza with their friend or a burger at weekends but definitely don't serve that stuff up at home i know with my daughter when she was little i i had um three glasses on the windowsill and i put a filthy coin in one and a baby tooth in another and dirty jewelry and another and she just watched that coca-cola strip out and she's never drunk it to this day so i never said you can't have it this is what it does it's eats everything in its path so that worked better um than banning it i think when you ban stuff and kids are like early teenagers the more you ban it the more they want it but when you allow it in moderation it's a bit like in france where they allow children to have a small glass of wine i don't know if that's a great thing i would never do that but they they have a much lower rate of people having a problem with alcohol because it's for you to something you do moderately at the weekends so it sounds like you've done a great job with your kids and then everyone's going to ask but what happens when i go to dinner parties because i have a really healthy people say to me oh god it's so boring what happens when you go out and people invite you around you know i was just doing a school i did i did my school for the last two weeks in a country manor house just outside london it was amazing it was on jacoby in manor but they were providing food and the first day they provided macaroni cheese which i just wouldn't need and so what do you advise people to do when they have work events and functions or maybe they're they're a rigor on a tv show and they're constantly bringing in pizzas and burgers and cakes and how do people cope with that pressure if their if their social life involves eating or even if their life involves going out to dinner with clients i mean i know you do it because it's your passion but how would you advise other people to do this when they say well i've got a husband and three kids and i've got this my heart of my job is entertaining how can i or how can i do it what would you say because of course you've been in the medical field so you know that too that often you're out and don't always carry all that food with you but how do people make this a lifestyle when they feel the odds are stacked against them yeah well you don't try to do what i do from day one you work up to it you might skip breakfast for one one week and replace it with some coffee and tea when you go out i go out most nights every week actually i was out with the whole family at a burger place uh what i eat regular food i try to avoid a lot of red meat and fried foods but other than that and i'll have french fries i'll i'll eat a bit of cake occasionally but it's i know it sounds silly but it really does come down to to being to eating in moderation yeah i'll sample things i'll often share things um and it's very rare that i go home feeling full in fact i can't remember the last time actually i did eat a fried chicken sandwich about two weeks ago and i still regret it took me two days to recover because my body and my microbiome in my gut was not used to it but the point here is you can eat essentially anything but try to bias it towards the kind of things that i mentioned and just don't overdo it don't i mean it's so easy to just for habit from habit sticking things in your mouth and and breaking that habit is the hardest thing and it takes at least two weeks for you to get over that habit and once you do once you're in the lifestyle that i'm in and i'm not that strict right i'm not thinking about this all the time then it feels weird to be putting so much into your mouth and especially the kinds of foods that are super sweet and very fatty and and you just want to work your way slowly to that it could take two weeks could take a month but it does take some willpower it's not going to just happen by itself but it's so worth it like what you said earlier marissa that you feel so much better about yourself when you've you've got a physique that that is is more youthful and it's not just that you can walk better you feel better you jump out of bed better you probably have better sex what i think is the main thing that i love about it is that i i'm proud of myself for having done this and i feel better with more confidence and people say but i love food i'm like yeah but if you love food then you have to have a respect for i love food so i'm going to love eating some berries and love eating some fish but saying yeah but i love pringles and hot dogs and pop pop-tarts that's not even food that that's not loving food that's loving chemicals because if it doesn't decompose that really isn't food and so telling yourself that you love food no that's that's abusing food because it's not even food right there's no [Music] giant packet of chips that once i've eaten it feels better than feeling healthy yeah kate moss said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels and i think you know what you just said then was so true because once you start to eat better and eat real food and really enjoy like vegetables and fruit and water you know if you give your body water every day ask for if you give your body diet coke every day you want that too but when you start to eat better and then you have an off day think oh my god this is like having a hangover i feel so bad i had no idea yeah i used to go to my mother's every other sunday and every monday i'd feel like a hangover i thought oh actually it's the food she gives me all these puddings and rice pudding with jam in it and stuff that i don't even really want and i realized that my poppy was reacting like it was almost poisoned because once you start to sort of purify your system you really do react really badly to totally think wow i ate like this for 10 years and i must have really been hurting myself because look at one day does and of course it is really an act of self and i'm thinking i love my body enough not to put it in my body because it's not even food i mean i always say if it doesn't decompose if if it's got if it's got full of colorants if you can ask for it in egypt like haribo's and so they know what it is in every country in the world they know what diet coke is mcdonald's kfc and haribos if it's got words in that you can't even pronounce that's not food right well when you will look after your body and do the kind of things we've said uh you feel young you you literally are younger it's it's not a question anymore we can measure this now with these tests and i i really don't feel any different than i did when i was 20. i actually think i'm loving life way more because i've got the wisdom of a 51 year old yeah and the energy and body and and you know whatever and if you measure my blood by chemistry and plug that into a an algorithm that tells you or estimates how old you are i fluctuate between my early 30s to my early 40s depending on how good i've been that month and you know you're sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you you're a study in point when you i'm surprised when you do one loving thing for your body it will do so many loving things back it's really like um i'm gonna do one nice thing for my body like stop eating fried food every night but my body is gonna do amazing things but i just have to do one nice thing my body will do so many things you say you look younger you feel younger you look good you have more energy you feel more like having sex your mind is clearer so you've got to see it as an investment it's like buying better food is an investment i'm doing something loving for my body by refusing dessert refusing cake refusing fast food but in doing that and seeing as an act of love the payback you get is immense and then eventually you think you know i can't believe i ever ate like that because it's like if you take the sugar and cream out of your coffee of course you miss it terribly after about six weeks i can't believe i drank that stuff every day now tastes disgusting yeah well if you look at photos of me from i think probably five years ago i looked older i think and i've become stricter in my diet over the last five years as i've gotten older and wiser and less worried about my kids and more about my own health the but also it's an act of love for your kids you know to eat better is an act of love for your children because you want to be here for as long as you possibly can you know every age i lost both my parents in 2016 and i i felt so lucky that i had them my dad was 89 when he died i was lucky i had them for so long but i still miss them i would have liked to have even more of them well that's why i do what i do it sure is and and i i make an argument in my book that we have a responsibility to do this for our loved ones who want us around even for an extra two weeks and hopefully another 10 years it's a selfish act to let yourself age rapidly so i think it really is selfish to yourself because you're every time you eat badly you are and and don't move your body you're actually punishing yourself and you know it because you eat badly and they think i feel terrible you said really i feel awful why did i even do that i feel so bad so it's not really an act of oh i'm going to comfort myself and reward myself with a big bag of candy or potato chips because even though we say that it's a reward it's a treat our body says are you kidding me this is not a reward you're filling it up with colorants and preservatives and sugar and it's not a reward it's a punishment and if we could only look at it more like that we might think well like you said i can have like four or five potato chips but i don't need a massive bag followed by a whole litre of ice cream as well because now i feel guilty and it's never too late to start studies you can be 70 or 80 and you can still have a benefit by doing the kind of things i've talked about and my father has shows what you can be like in your 80s he's just as vibrant healthy and probably much happier than in his 30s and 40s and that's the world that i want everybody um to experience in them yeah you start working out even in your 70s with weight your muscles actually really respond to that so i wanted to ask you for my audience what are your three top tips for mastering your mind all right so what i what i do to do what i do which is take on one of the hardest problems ever faced by humanity uh is i wake up every day realizing it's a gift that i have my health and my energy and my friends and my family so i jump out of bed i start playing loud music i'm dancing around i'm super happy even if the day is going to be stressful i the second thing i do is i surround myself by with positive people i get texts from people pretty much every morning saying today i hope it's going to be you know you're going to crush it today it's going to be fantastic and i send them the same motivation so it's a wonderful world to be in and then the third thing that i would say keeps me going is uh i remember um the bad times in life and realized that the little things that are bad today really don't matter and if they if i if i'm not going to remember them next week i'm not going to worry about them so much in fact most of the things you go through you'll forget about a year from now and uh so keep the stress down get good sleep surround yourself with great people uh and just be positive that you're around and and try to stick around for longer and if you had a song because i know you said you get up and you love music what is the song that would really get you going and also have your message in it wow all right okay off the top of my head uh there are a bunch i i listen to hundreds of songs every day uh there are a lot i actually listened to a lot of female artists that my children make a lot of fun of me for being too young but okay so uh i think katrina and the waves working on sunshine would exemplify how i go through my life it's just don't take life too seriously bound around uh be happy and spread that to all of the people in around you and what about frank sinatra you can survive to 105 when you're young at heart i love that too i do and i love that well two at young hearts run free tonight time is on your side that's a good thing to do i guess for my career it's i did it my way yeah yeah that's a great something i love that because you did you did it your way and in adversity you bounced back and it's a shame that you got attacked but i love the fact that you stuck that out and then you became victorious and that's always a great thing so i'm very pleased for you for that so thank you so much has been amazing and you've given us some really great things to think about and of course everybody can do that we can all say okay as you say skip breakfast maybe three times a week lift some weights do some exercise maybe have a cold shower or something but responsibility that word it means an ability to respond that's what responsibility means if you want to be younger healthier fitter be responsible and decide hey i just have to choose to do this and then choose to keep doing it because you make your habits and then your habits turn right around and make you and you might as well make great habits because whether you're making bad habits or good ones it's a process of repetition that wires them in yeah exactly and and part of my goal besides developing medicines and new ways to understand slow aging and even reverse it now is to be an educator and close to a million people have now read my book and many of the those people's lives have been changed for the better um and so you know that i i think that's going to be one of my main contributions is to educate people that our lifespan and our health in old age is almost completely up to us and how we choose to live yeah and if you think like marilyn monroe and bridget bardo they were like they were classed as middle aged when they were 35 they were sort of written off i remember that i remember being a kid and seeing something in the paper about bridgette bardo at 35 she's really old now and only later did i realize how weird that was but of course you know when you want to have a baby they call you is it prima something really old at 35 and yet more and more women are having babies later because we are changing the way we age if we look at how our grandmother's dressed and how we dress and how we feel and you know i paddle board every day i go jet skiing with my mother at my age she would have never got on a paddle board then she would have gone to the moon it just wouldn't have occurred to her that you could um be active and paddleboard and kayak and canoe and swim in the sea and dive off boats because it's a choice and if you i believe if you choose to do young things it keeps you young if you listen to young music hang out with young people sometimes and stop being sedentary then you feel young like frank sinatra said so i really could talk to you all day because you're fascinating and interesting but also you're bang on the money so where can we find you tell me more about your website tell me more about your book titles and remind us of that page because we're all going to be looking at that certainly okay okay so that the test uh that's going to be mouth swab for your age um is it dr sinclair.com i'm going there i sign up now because that the wait list is getting long okay and you want to be the first ones there uh i'm on social media so you can follow me on twitter and instagram um [Music] david a sinclair is twitter and david sinclair phd is instagram okay and i have a book called lifespan and there's a website to sign up for newsletters there and that website is called lifespanbook.com lifespanbook.com and you can buy the book you know anywhere really it became a new york times bestseller which was uh [Music] i guess a good feeling but also i'm glad that the message is out there um and that's it i'm writing another book now um about how to improve your life but lifespan turns out to be something that has really touched the hearts and minds of the planet people are waiting for somebody to finally tell them the truth about what to do for their health and why aging should be considered a disease and that disease is now treatable a lot often people want to learn about our research at harvard what are we doing what's the latest thing so we also have a lab website if people want to check us out and we're going to put out some newsletters and updates and that's called sinclairlab.com well thank you it's been amazing i'm going to be following on twitter and instagram i'm getting your book i'm signing up for that swab and i believe that almost everyone watching you today is going to be doing the same thing because you've given such a gift you're giving us years of our life and so i want to thank you myself personally my husband's going to be on this and i want to thank you for our audience because i know that what you've done today is immensely generous you've given everyone the possibility of living a longer life and that's exciting having those extra years is amazing so thank you so much check out my next video here anyone notice that that day comes around they're sick because here's how the mind works you say oh my god i volunteered to share that meeting i must have been out of my mind i die if i've got to go on stage i don't want to do that and your brain's like leave that with me now next wednesday

Channel: Marisa Peer

Views: 174,172

Keywords: hypnosis, marisa peer hypnosis, marisa peer, rtt hypnotherapy, marisa peer I am enough, personal development, mind valley talks, mind valley marisa peer, mindvalley, marisa peer interview, marisa peer speech, self help, self improvement, self development, inspiration, motivation, marisa peer healing, marisa peer anxiety, motivational video, inspirational video, david sinclair, david sinclair anti aging, david sinclair joe rogan, david sinclair aging, david sinclair interview

Id: kdcAglpLCd8

Length: 54min 56sec (3296 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021