Longevity Expert: The Top 3 Things You Must Do To Slow Aging & Live Longer | Matt Kaeberlein

Matt welcome to the podcast thanks pleasure to be here I'd love to just jump right in with the million-dollar question obviously there's people who live to 100 I had somebody on the podcast recently who is over 102 years old so it was a pleasure to talk with her but I feel like there's a narrative now that you can almost like hack your age and you can do certain things to help you like live longer I know you study longevity and aging what is your take on all that yeah so I mean I think the way I would frame it is first of all it's not only about quanti of life right there's this quality component that's really important and I think you know what we know for sure is that almost anybody can have a pretty significant impact on the quality of their years um and I and again I think if you look at like the typical American you know most people are probably giving up 10 to 20 years of quality life simply because of poor lifestyle habits that that are modifiable so there's no question we can we can deal with that today I think there's a likelihood that most people can gain additional years of life again you know even just through lifestyle modifications maybe a decade of additional longevity and I think then where it gets kind of speculative is given where the science is at now and where it's likely to go in the next 5 10 20 years you know how much beyond that can we accomplish and that's an exciting time in the field because I think there are opportunities there's the potential that the science of longevity or science of Aging will actually give us new tools new solutions to extend healthy longevity Health span and lifespan you know maybe quite significantly but that that that's a little bit more speculative at this point what have you found in your research that tends to be like the biggest things that decrease people's lifespan like is it diet is it exercise is it relationships like what what destroys longevity yeah I mean you kind of hit on three three of the big ones right there um I mean the reality is right I think most of us are at least aware of the sort of risky lifestyle habits that can shorten lifespan smoking is sort of the classic example or drinking too much alcohol where there's no question that that will uh dramatically in increase your risk of dying prematurely I think where a lot of people maybe don't appreciate how significant the detrimental impacts can be are things like obesity diabetes sedentary lifestyle um again you know for I would say and this is kind of sad but you know given the trajectory that the average person is on just looking across the the general population in the United States because of things like obesity and diabetes and sedentary lifestyle again most people are probably giving up 15 years or so of quality life and you know and and I I think one of the things that makes this challenging is there is this probabilistic component to it in other words you know just because you are obese doesn't doesn't mean with 100% certainty that you're going to develop heart disease premature cancer diabetes dementia but your risk goes up quite dramatically and and so I think when we look at the population average there's no question that that poor nutrition in particular is is that if I had to pick one thing that's probably the thing that that most people are falling down on and there's a variety of reasons for that it's just an unfortunate reality that in our culture it is really really hard to eat a healthy diet it it takes work and I think most people either because they don't know what that means or they they they don't think that it's going to have a significant impact on their health or they're just not willing to to do it that's that's where a lot of people fall down sedentary lifestyle is the the the kind of next one and those are pretty close like I I I said if I had to pick I'd probably pick diet over exercise but you know ask me tomorrow and it might be a different answer they're pretty close as far as the diet part I've heard two things right I've heard there's there's a camp that it's like focus on the quality like eliminate certain foods reduce you know eating a lot of red meat reduce eating certain thing eating certain things and then there's another Camp that's like the biggest lever you can pull is weight loss is reducing your caloric intake to you know not be obese reduce your risk of diabetes where do you see how does all of that align with the research yeah so I would say those two things are related meaning that um it is much easier I think for most people to maintain a healthy weight if they are eating what I would consider a healthy diet I think one of the challenges though is that you know what that means healthy diet I think we can give some general guidelines but there isn't necessarily a one-size fits-all solution that's going to be optimal for everyone so I tend to be pretty pragmatic and I guess I would take sort of an 8020 approach to this how can we get 80% of the benefits right with 20 20% of the work in terms of diet I think you know the the two things that most people uh can do if they really want to and it's not that hard once you actually dive into it but it does take some habit modification is take a look at what you're eating cut out to the extent you can highly processed foods right I think that's that's number one if it's something that is processed or highly processed if you can cut it out of your diet and then cut out the simple sugars and and this takes a little bit of learning you have to kind of read the labels or do some research but again you know there's this idea of shopping around the edge of the supermarket that's not perfect but again that's 80% of the way there cut out the simple sugars the highly processed foods you're going to be in good shape I tend to then say you need to you need to you need to try a few things and figure out what works for you what helps control your appetite for me personally I found that eating a diet that is pretty high in protein makes it so I'm just not hungry and I have no no trouble maintaining a healthy body weight if I if I do those three things cut out the the highly processed foods cut down on simple sugars eat a lot of protein I get I would say the fourth thing that I've done that really had a huge impact and I know this is hard for people they don't like to hear it but get the alcohol out of the house if you drink regularly at home get the alcohol out of the house those are pretty much useless calories and I actually think this is important to take 30 seconds to dive into because you'll hear this idea that moderate consumption of alcohol is beneficial to your health there is some data to support that so if you look at epidemiological studies people who drink about one drink a day tend to have lower risk of of what's called all cause mortality of dying but those populations where you see that are also populations that aren't in the middle of an EP obesity epidemic so I think the problem is if you are struggling to maintain a healthy body weight and regularly consuming alcohol that's in general detrimental I think if you are eating a Mediterranean diet at a healthy body weight and you want to have one drink a day or maybe even two drinks a day no problem but for most people that's not the case so I think there's this misperception that oh a little bit of alcohol is good for me and then it just kind of spirals out of control for a lot of people with those epidemiological studies were those people also exercising and eating a healthier diet and if so could that have been the reason that they're they they they live longer and not necessarily the alcohol so I don't think we can say with a with that that's that that's 100% the case right so the way that these studies are typically done is you look across the population right so first of all you're sort of stuck with allc comers in many cases um and and in those in those studies it is the case it's called it's what's called a j-shaped curve and and what that means is if you look at the you think of a a plot of risk of dying as a function of alcohol consumption at zero it's a little bit higher risk of dying and then it drops down about one drink and then once you get above one or two drinks a day it shoots up meaning your your risk of dying goes up really dramatically so there is this effect there that that is real in many of these studies where at One Drink A dayish there's a little bit of a a decrease in in all cause mortality but those studies are typically done in populations that are that are consuming like a Mediterranean diet for example so I would speculate that if we were to do a study like that in the current population in the United States we might not see that that benefit from one drink a day and this is my personal experience I I can't actually point to data to to support this with 100% certainty my personal experience from talking to lots of people and knowing lots of people is that that telling yourself you're going to drink one drink a day pretty soon turns into two drinks a day pretty soon turns into three drinks a day so all things being equal here's what I would say all things being equal just don't have alcohol in the house if you can help it if you want to go out for drinks with friends once in a while you're at a conference you want to have a beard not a big deal but I think the a lot of this is about habits and and so if you are at an unhealthy weight right now I think create putting yourself in the best situation for Success which means getting a bunch of the crap out of the house uh is really your best opportunity to then move the needle in the right direction and so again I know it's hard for people but if you can just make that commitment even if you just say okay for the next six months I'm just not going to have any alcohol in the house develop these new habits get yourself on a road to a better what I would call Health span trajectory and then re-evaluate in six months and see where you're at there was a lot of talk like years ago about red wine being good for your health and being good for the heart I think mainly because of reservatrol and then I've also seen in more recent years that you'd have to drink like an excessive amount of red wine to actually get the amount of reservatrol that would be beneficial for heart health I forget the exact amount but it was like insane it was like bottles a day if you want to do what the mice got yeah so what are your what are your thoughts on all that so a couple things to say um number one most of the data that's out there suggests that it's not it's not red wine in particular it's it's probably actually the ethanol in the alcohol that that may confer some benefits for for heart disease and that you know people don't really know why there's there's it could be stress reduction it could be that the the the alcohol itself the ethanol actually um solubilizes some of the molecules that become sticky in the in the the plaques um nobody really knows for sure but it's probably not red wine in particular the other thing to say is that whole Resveratrol story this is very unfortunate because this was this was um what almost everybody in the longevity field today would agree was a massively flawed study those data have not been reproducible um and that led I think it harmed a lot of people because it got presented as this very appealing story that red wine is healthy for you and I think it led a a lot of people to overc consume alcohol you know because they had this idea that was planted in their head that there's this this miracle molecule in red wine that promotes longevity we now know that science was flawed at a minimum um and and and and so it just hasn't held up so there really is no data in fact I would argue it's even more than that the meta analyses that have been done clearly show that Resveratrol does not promote Longevity if you look at the average across dozens maybe hundreds of studies that have ever been published the effect is a little bit less than zero for Resveratrol for longevity so you know I think that it's just unfortunate that that sort of got misrepresented and and and in the scientific literature and then in the media in a way that probably harmed a lot of people I want to dive more into to back into diet and I guess as far as you know people making better choices like you said a lot of it comes down to Habit formation you talked about like one of the things that you recommend and you've done for yourself is keeping like alcohol out of your house specifically right and then focusing on limiting processed foods getting enough um protein in and and not having the alcohol were like three of the biggest things you focus on what are some ways that you found to be effective from like a nutrition like a dietary pattern standpoint to helping you like improve your nutrition habits long term yeah I the other thing that I that I would put in that bucket is again um foods that have a lot of added sugars to them I think that's sort of a a a really um easy way I mean it's not easy necessarily it takes some discipline but but it's an easy way to cut you know garbage out of your out of your diet so I think um you know the one of the things that I've done and I this isn't for everybody but I've done it and I found it to be pretty um uh impactful and I know a lot of people who have who have tried this is continuous glucose monitoring and so these are these devices that um you know are have been used for diabetics for many years they're just they're about the size of a quarter and they go usually right on the back of your arm and um it'll sync to your smartphone and it'll show you your blood glucose sort of in real time and um and one of the reasons why I think that's really impactful is you get this instant feedback when you eat something you can see what happens to your blood glucose and you can see how different foods affect your physiology so I've learned something every time that I've done it but the the first time I did it one of the things I learned is that Bagels cause my blood glucose to spike I mean they go it goes through the roof and and you know that's maybe not shocking to people who have done this before but I think the average person doesn't necessarily appreciate that at least for some people depending on genetic makeup perhaps um bread will have a very very significant impact on your blood glucose level now is a blood glucose Spike necessarily bad no not necessarily it's more the kinetics of how fast the glucose goes up and how fast it comes down but I I I I point this out because for me um that experience of seeing that massive blood glucose Spike to the point where the alarm went off on my phone so it kind of had this psychological impact as well um you know was sticky it's stuck with me okay the next time there's a bagel in the break room I'm going to think about it do do I really want that Bagel is it you know is that something that I really need to put in my body so I think some things like that that can can have people think about what they're eating a little bit more can be impactful the other thing I'd point to is um tracking your food I think this is probably if I had to pick like one thing if you could actually get everybody to do this for two weeks I think it's such a huge learning experience if you actually with some level of prec ision track all the food you put in your body and what the nutritional composition and calorie composition of that food is you will learn a lot you'll learn portion sizes how many calories are in a portion size what's the composition of all the foods I meeting in terms of you know simple carbohydrates fiber different types of fat protein um and you'll remember that so I think I think knowledge is is quite powerful but sticky knowledge and that's why I think like the CGM or the nutritional track tracking the food tracking are are a couple of things that really stick with people and so there are a bunch of apps out there that do it I really like my fitness pal but you know that's just because that's what I have experience with it I I like that one because you can take a picture of the barcode and usually it'll automatically populate right into your app but I think knowing what you eat and and also knowing to some with some degree of precision what your calorie expenditure every day is is super super powerful in terms of losing or or maintaining weight and you know I think again getting back to my sort of pragmatic approach to health too often you'll hear this nonsense out there about well you know it's it's it's not really how much you eat it's what you eat and you know to to sort of first principles if you eat more calories than you burn you're going to gain weight if you eat less calories than you burn you're going to lose weight it's not that difficult and so getting beyond that I think is just going to distract people and it's going to it's going to it's going to cause people to make mistakes just it it's really simple try to make the amount you consume less than you burn or equal to what you burn if your goal is to lose weight or maintain weight I want to talk about epigenetics for a second because you know as you're you're sharing some of this and you're talking about people developing better habits and learning to improve their diet quality to increase their their lifespan and increase longevity there might be C certain people listening to this and they they're looking around them and maybe people in their family diabetic heart conditions heart attacks Strokes stuff like that and they're like my genes are completely like flawed like I'm there's no way that I can improve my own health and to be honest I felt that way growing up where I saw members of my family who were sick and I often heard well you just you might have bad genes bad jeans bad genes and now I think it's confirmed that we have the ability to change out our health outcomes even just from what we're talking about here based on lifestyle modification what is your view on epigenetics and how do you convince somebody who's listening to this that sees people around them and their family that you know very unhealthy how do you convince them that they can actually change yeah so I mean I I think it is it is true right that genetics play a role in your risk of developing disease and I think in particular genetics can play a role in your body's response to this to to the same sort of diet exercise things like that so there's no question there are some people who can eat a crappy diet and they won't develop obesity right because they have a certain genetic makeup that's true that's actually pretty rare but that is true but if you look at longevity the data are pretty clear and we can we can we can look at the the the impact of genetics on longevity a few different ways I think twin studies are one interesting way to do this but all of the methods that people have used suggest that you know it's probably at most 25% of longevity is genetically determined and what that means is 75 % is determined by environment and environment in general are things that we can control and diet goes under environment so diet activity pollution all that stuff goes under goes under environment and so we can control that so 75% of your health if you want to look at it that way or more is modifiable and so I think that's a good message for people to understand the other thing I do is it's actually a very easy thought experiment you obesity in particular right so if there are you will some sometimes hear this idea that well you know some people have a genotype that's that that causes them to become obese and and that's not true there are people who have gen genetic makeup that that makes it easier for them to become obese but if you look back 50 years from now if you just go look at pictures of the average American population 50 years ago sorry 50 years ago so let's say 19 1973 um if you look at pictures from 1973 and you look at the people in those pictures you don't see obese people their genes have not changed so our genetic makeup as a population does not change in hundreds of years it changes in tens of thousands of years so that is all environmental it is not your fault if you're obese and I I think that's that's where I think this message gets a little bit um diluted sometimes I think that given our culture and our society it is extremely challenging for for most people to Main Ain a healthy weight it's not impossible but it's not easy but it is also the not the case that you have a genetic makeup that means you are going to get obese you are going to get diabetes unless you're very very rare less than 1% that is all controllable and there is no question that if we if we instituted controls I'm not suggesting this okay nobody nobody you know write me nasty emails I'm not saying that we we you know put people in a box and feed them once a day but there is no question that if we instituted controls on what people ate we could cure the Obesity epidemic it would not exist so it is to some extent a reflection of what is out there in our culture and our environment and choices that people make and you have a choice whether to get sick and whether to to develop all of these diseases that go along with an unhealthy lifestyle I think a lot of it too comes down to to stress like I mean people are just constantly stressed and and food becomes like the mechanism to help solve their problems and you know people emotionally eat or people grow up in environments that are super stressful and maybe they're not taught the importance of of what to eat or they don't have access to it or whatever in the context of longevity how does stress play a part in all that yeah I mean stress is complicated for a couple reasons stress first of all means a lot of different things so there are a whole bunch of different types of stress right and and there are there are internal stresses within the cells of our bodies there's external stresses that could be you know things like temperature or I mentioned air pollution but then there's psychological stress and emotional stress and so it's just complicated because we kind of put one word to mean a whole bunch of different things and then the impact of stress on longevity is also complicated because there are many cases where a little bit of stress is actually beneficial this this concept called hormesis where a little bit of stress actually turns up what are protective responses in the body and then promotes Better Health outcomes but once you get past a Tipping Point obviously then stress becomes detrimental and especially when stress impacts things like nutritional choices the energy that you've got to go exercise for example your ability to sleep we haven't really talked about sleep sleep ties into the biology of aging and Longevity clearly and poor Sleep Quality can have a negative impact on on healthy aging so once stress becomes detrimental for for those sorts of things um then absolutely it can have a negative impact on on your likelihood of developing age- related diseases and your health outcomes as you get older um you know what to do about stress you know that's a that that's that's that's a very very challenging problem and again I think um you know it ties into what I was talking about before which is that unfortunately given the society that we live in today it this sort of uh very unhealthy high calorie good tasting food is everywhere and it's so easy if you're feeling stressed out to make the choice okay I'm going to you know default to food as an Adaptive mechanism or alcohol we talked about alcohol as well so I I mean I look that's that that's not something I'm naive enough to think that I can solve other than to say I think again a lot of this comes back to education people understanding the impact that these things have um and then being willing to take action and and try to develop new habits and you know next time you're feeling stressed out instead of going and getting a Big Mac or whatever take a walk right go lift weights what do something active right um I think that it is in fact I know it is possible for people to make those choices develop those new habits and get themselves on a better health span trajectory we're talking about a lot of stuff that you said like is backed up by research and science as far as how to improve um lifespan how to increase longevity how to to essentially I guess reverse aging you know to reverse aging there's also a lot of information out there and biohacking has become quite popular over the years what are what is what are some things that you see online or I know you're pretty active on Twitter or X I guess it's called now what are some things that you see that are just not backed up by science that have become popular sure so let me just take a step back and and and talk for a minute about this term reversing aging because again I think this is a term that you know for better or worse I would say it's for Worse has sort of made it into the sort of vernacular of this community um I I want to be clear that that there is no evidence scientific evidence right now that we can reverse aging in the sense of taking an old person or an old animal and making them biologically younger again okay what we can do is improve health and reduce mortality risk reduce risk of death or reduce risk of developing diseases that shouldn't shock anybody we've known this for decades right lower blood pressure you're going to reduce somebody's risk that they're going to die you know over the next 10 years so that's is that reversing aging if you lower your blood blood pressure did you get biologically younger probably not and I would say there's no scientific evidence to support that so I just want to make that point because unfortunately you hear people who should know better using sloppy terminology that I think misleads the the non-scientific public so no evidence that we can make make people or animals younger yet I'm not saying it's impossible but we can prevent but I guess we can prevent like disease right from you can reduce your risk of developing disease and reduce your risk of dying and again I just want to make the point we've known that for decades right I talked about blood pressure stop smoking that's another way to do it right if you're obes lose weight that's another way to do it so I think that or take medications for your diabetes right so again we can improve health absolutely um I just it's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine but I do think it's important that people not think that we can make people younger or get turned off on the field because they're like oh that sounds like snake oil right because people are using these terms that are not really legitimate okay so then so your question was in the sort of you know longevity Community SL biohacker piece of that Community what are some things that maybe don't have as much scientific validity to them that that people may be may be doing now is that what you're asking yeah okay so the first thing I would say is this this area is very much a gray area in the sense that it's very hard to say that something absolutely doesn't work at least from a scientific perspective so as a scientist it's very hard to prove something doesn't work you have to go and do dozens of studies or hundreds of studies like we talked about with resveratrol to get to the point where you can say with some level of you know 99% certainty Resveratrol does not affect longevity that hasn't been done for most of these things so I think what I can say is you know some of the things where 's less evidence to support beneficial effects um you know a lot of the supplements for sure uh fall into that category I know people are taking you know some people are taking stacks of dozens of supplements there's actually very little in the supplement space where there is a lot of evidence for longevity some of these things though there is some evidence for health right and that may or may not translate to lifespan but at least for certain people there's likelihood of health benefits so I would put you know fish oil supplements in that category is that necessarily going to going to make you live longer probably not but there's absolutely a portion of the population who are who can benefit from that or vitamin D right I live in Seattle I didn't know this until I went and got blood work done that I was vitamin D deficient so I took take a vitamin D supplement so I think there are some things like that um that fall into that category it's also the other thing I would say is there's a risk reward calculation that needs to come into play here things like vitamin D fish oil very unlikely to cause problems so I'm not so worried about that some of these things though like you know the sort of more edgy edgy things you know the like for example and please nobody listening please don't go do this but you know there are people who are doing gene therapy on themselves right and and you know that has the potential to really go catastrophically wrong I would one of the things that I would kind of put in that bucket is stem cell Therapies right so and the only reason I say that is because the stem cell therapies are not particularly regulated and so a lot of times you don't really know what is being put in your body or where those stem cells came from and so I do believe that there are some studies in laboratory animals for example that exogenous stem cells can actually have some pretty interesting potential benefits in the context of longevity or at least healthy aging but because it hasn't really been regulated uh in human medicine it's very difficult to know what you're getting and so I've worry about that so that's one of those things that I would put in that bucket of you know probably not unless you unless you have a high degree of certainty that your offshore medical tourism Clinic um is doing it right I would be very careful about stuff like that um the other thing though that I think is important to maybe say and and you know there are some of these these sort of high-profile influencers who have come out out with their you know their their their protocols for longevity I would say any longevity protocol that has more than like five or six things on it is way past the point of diminishing returns like we've already talked about the big things that will get you most of the way there and I would just say if you haven't got the foundation if you haven't taken care of your diet gotten yourself to a healthy weight exercise regularly got your sleep down you know you feel emotionally fulfilled and connected taking these supplements probably isn't going to do much for you so so I would just say get the 80% part taken care of first that's what's really going to move the needle and then you can worry about about some of this other stuff and unfortunately I think these influencers kind of feel like they have to come up with something new every week you know oh this week it's saunas next week it's going to be ice plunges you know is that going to move the needle for most people if you're if you're obese and you have diabetes no it's not going to take care of that first before you worry about the other 20% but in the case of something like we talked about like hormesis which I think is like essentially like using stress I think to your advantage right I mean at least for me I mean this is I guess totally anecdotal but I found that cold plunges and saunas have helped me manage my stress better because I'm doing something that's challenging I get in there and I'm like this sucks but then I get out and I'm like I'm so glad that I did that then I get better over time and and then that like makes me feel better and again that could be purely anecdotal um but do you think in that context where somebody is just doing it for something like hormesis or to challenge themselves like every single day do you think it could be beneficial yeah a couple things I would say there one is absolutely so I mean I think finding out what works for you and motivates you is is absolutely a big a big part of this right so so so so yes uh I guess I shouldn't have been so dismissive about sonas and at Cold PL it's all I do understand what you're saying I do think it's important not to expect that that's going to be a fix right if you don't take care of the other stuff if it helps you great the other thing I would say is and I think this is where the supplements are interesting too placebo effect is hugely impactful right and so I think there are there are probably many of these supplements that actually have benefits for people not because the supplements themselves are doing anything but because psychologically we believe that they're doing something for us so placebo effect and I would almost put potentially you know sauna and cold plunges in potentially some of the effects are in that category right you believe that it's pushing you and it's making you stronger and it's making you healthier I think it can have that effect whether or not the actual stress itself is having the effect the last thing I will say about stress though is you know it's kind of a it's kind of a double-edged sword and this is where the hormesis piece gets a little challenging is in every hormesis experiment that's been done what you see is at some level of stress there's a benefit but if you push it a little bit too far you fall off the cliff and so that's the that's the risk you run with with trying to get hormesis just just right what I'm hearing you say is like people who say hey I got my my my a my biological age tested for instance and it says that I'm like 10 years younger than my chronological age that's there's no science to to to back that up right so I wouldn't say that here here's what I would say is so most of these biological age tests are measuring only one thing usually it's what's called methylation which is an epigenetic Mark yeah so so that's one thing that changes with age there are lots of things that change with age and what these methylation marks have been been shown to to be useful for in what some people call biological age is it's a better predictor of mortality on sometimes disease but let's just say mortality because that's what most of these have been trained on so it's a better predictor of your risk of dying than your chronological age alone okay that's useful but it's not particularly useful because they're not very precise and there are lots of other things we can look at that are probably better predictors of your risk of dying than just how many birthdays You' had for example do you have diabetes if the answer is yes your risk of dying is higher than somebody of the same chronological age who doesn't have diabetes we didn't need a biological age test to to tell you that so so I think that's where I it gets a little bit confusing I do think these biological age tests the ones that are precise enough can be a a useful hand on where you are in your current health status at the moment I think the problem right now is that these direct to Consumer tests are not regulated and they're not validated and so you really have no idea whether the test that you're taking is accurate in any way and these companies really have no incentive to be honest about it so I think that's where it's it's kind of interesting how some the same people can be very suspicious of companies in certain Realms and then completely trusting of companies in other Realms and I would just say these companies that are selling biological age tests have no incentive to tell you if their biological age test isn't consistent or precise or accurate and if they're trying to sell you something and give you a biological age test I'd be very very skeptical if they're trying to say you took our biological age test here's your biological age oh and by the way buy these supplements from us and your biological age score will go down I'd be very very skeptical of that what are your thoughts on fasting as it relates to longevity so this is really interesting so if you look at the the the data and I'm going to start with just the just the data and nothing more this comes mostly from laboratory animals rodents in particular mice fasting in the absence of coloric restriction basically does nothing to longevity there might be a small effect but it's tiny on the order of a few percentage points you compare that to caloric restriction which can increase lifespan 50 60% if you restrict calories enough so fasting plus caloric restriction big impact on longevity in laboratory mice fasting without caloric restriction basically no impact interesting thing is if you do caloric restriction without fasting you lose about half of the effect so some of the effect from caloric restriction requires a fasted period but a fasted period if you just overeat when you're not fasting basically does nothing that's the that's what the laboratory data tells us in humans it's obviously more complicated right for first of all we don't even know if caloric restriction on average is going to be beneficial for people here's what I would say here's my take on fasting in people if fasting is a useful strategy for you to lose or maintain a lose lose weight if you need to lose weight or maintain a healthy body weight if if that's how you if that helps you maintain a healthy body weight it's probably a net win do it if you are expecting to get a longevity benefit from fasting there's really no data to support that and here's where my concern comes in there are two places where I think fasting is potentially harmful for some people one is body composition so if you are practicing fasting and not doing any sorts of resistance training there's a very good chance you will lose lean mass which is problematic as we get older you want to maintain muscle mass as you get older so I would at least at a minimum get a dexa every six months and figure out if your body composition is going the wrong direction I'd put bone mineral density under that as well the other place is psychological consequences um I personally have known lots of people who've dabbled with different types of caloric restriction and I've seen people go down a path and look I'm not a psychiatrist so I'm not diagnosing anyone my perception is that they struggled with some psychological side effects from fasting or other types of caloric restriction humans are funny animals and we are in this environment where you know we're if we're abstaining from something that has a psychological consequence so again I would just say pay attention to yourself and if you are developing you know something that might look like an eating disorder because of fasting stop fasting it's you got to do what works for you and like I I think you're totally right where um you see so many people where they just they they don't eat enough throughout the day and then that has like diminishing returns because the very thing that they want is they they're fasting so they can reduce their body fat percentage right and then you know look leaner look more athletic or whatever but but then when you when you lose muscle mass it just defeats the purpose yeah yeah and can we can we double click on that for a second because I think there's a really important additional message here it's not only fasting but there are these new the weight loss drugs The glp1 Agonist wovi and munaro and um and they work right they do absolutely help people some people lose weight they cut down on appetite but there's a real concern that if you're eating even if you're eating less if you're eating a lowquality diet the consequences of that again on body composition bone mineral density lean mass over years could be quite detrimental and so again I think fasting is one example but there are these drugs now that can help with appetite control as well it's even more important to eat a higher quality diet if you're eating less if you want to maintain your health maintain a positive body composition that's going to set you up for Success down the road and again I would personally say pair it with resistance training for sure to do everything you can to maintain lean body mass and Bone mineral density so I'd love to double click into the resistance training side of things because I know we've we've touched we've spoken a lot about diet as one of the big rocks when it comes to longevity exercise obviously um is is right there and I feel like exercise online at least doesn't get talked about as much because people can't really argue about the benefits of exercise like we all know it's beneficial right you you'd be surprised there are some of my colleagues who want to argue about that but I agree with you I don't get it but in the context of exercise you know for years you heard people say to do cardiovascular exercise for heart health endurance um lung capacity stuff like that and then now there's been this massive surge in resistance training which I love because I'm a I'm a meathead at heart I mean I like to run but I'm a meathead at heart where it's like resistance training for longevity you got to have more muscle you got to be able to reduce your risk of injuries all that stuff what are some of the big rocks within the exercise space that are important for people to focus on when it comes to longevity yeah yeah so again I think I I think just to be precise here the um the role of exercise in in longevity is complicated because again if you go back to the laboratory studies which is where a lot of this starts it's a little bit less clear there how big of an impact exercise has on longevity in let's say mice in the laboratory I think that's mostly because it's very hard to do rigorous exercise studies in mice particularly resistance training if you think about how do we get a mouse to lift weights like that's a real challenge so so I think that you'll see people point to this and say well there's not a lot of evidence that exercise slows aging and I would say that's mostly because the mouse models are are not very good here's what I would say in in people again let's start from pragmatic uh a pragmatic position which is some exercis is better than none right so first thing is I don't care what you do get out there and do something if you got if you're living a sedentary lifestyle whatever you find easiest to do go do it but I would say if you start to Prior I like what what types of exercise give you different benefits I would say probably the right answer is a diversity of types of exercise is best but I would say everyone should have some component of resistance training in their exercise regimen and I think resistance training can look like it can it can look like different things to different people my preference is you know get in the gym and lift weights right free weights better than machines right that's my personal preference and I think there's some but but but do whatever works for you if it's push-ups pull-ups body weight whatever I think the the key there is you you want to do something that is going to if you're depending on how old you are if you're you know in your 30s 40s 50s 60s Even build lean mass strengthen your joints right maintain bone mineral density so that we're all going to get to the point where it's going to be difficult it's going to start by being difficult to maintain lean mass and then it's going to become impossible right you want to start with as much lean mass as you reasonably can I would say without you know taking steroids but as much lean mass as you reasonably can your function the higher your function is when it starts to decline the better off you're going to be when it starts to decline so that's the rationale and we know that resistance training has positive impacts not only on muscle function strength movement but bone quality quality right and if you look in elderly people fractures are a a huge problem right you older people fall down they get a fracture and once that happens their risk of mortality skyrockets so I think the double benefit of maintaining functionality of your muscles and your bones you know makes it just a no-brainer that everybody should be doing this and I and I'm going to say dexa again I mentioned I mentioned a dexa I really think it's useful for most people to get a dexa once year so you know where you're at especially in terms of your bone density but you'll also get an indirect measurement of your lean mass you can actually see how you're progressing over over time so that if you if you are towards the lower end you know you got to take action you gota you got to move you got to get it done um I think that's that's that's important and valuable but um but yeah I mean I would say I I don't I don't I don't think it's particularly useful to try to tell people what specific type of resistance training they should be doing at least you know maybe not to start but just say you should be doing something and you should be doing it regularly a few times each week and you should be tracking how much muscle you have how strong your bones are and how functional you are but I would also say you know if you if you just know in your heart you're not going to be able to stick with going to a gym and lifting weights three times a week because you absolutely hate it find a different way to do your resistance training right it doesn't have to be again you got to it's got to be something you're going to be able to stick with right I think that's the other piece that's that that that sometimes people fall down because they commit to doing this initially but it's something that that just isn't realistic for them to stick with for the long run this is for the rest of your life so you gota you got to find something that's going to work for you at least for a few years and then modify it as you go there's been a big surge lately in the talks of like Zone 2 cardio um what are your thoughts on like you utilizing Zone 2 cardio to increase your lifespan yeah so again not much evidence for long well okay let me just say that um there is correlative evidence right that that V2 Max for example is a predictor of mortality lots of things are predictors of mortality so I don't put a lot of faith in the idea that you know I'm going to prioritize you know V2 Max because that's going to make me live longer again I would take a step back everybody's got to take a look at where they're at right now right if you are sort of already at a very high level in terms of your Fitness sure then maybe you want to prioritize how many minutes do I spend in zone two and interval training and all of that to try to get your V2 Max as high as you possibly can for most people that's really not the place to start for most people the place to start is move regularly do some resistance training some cardiovascular training and give yourself some realistic metrics to to shoot for if you know trying to Tar Target a certain number of minutes in zone two is helpful to you by all means do it but that's not essential and that's really not what's going to move the needle for most people in in my view so personally I don't I don't personally worry about that I don't I don't try to Target you know a certain amount of time in zone two or try to Target a certain amount of time doing you know high-intensity interval training but I do try to do a diversity of different types of activity so I prioritize resistance training you know I do that religiously three to four times a week I do a diversity like I don't I don't do a set routine I do a diversity of different types of of weightlifting but I prioritize that and then I go out and do different stuff I'll go play basketball I'll do an elliptical my wife and I will go do stairs um so you know go hiking we live in a beautiful place up here in the Pacific Northwest with lots of hiking so so I think you got to figure out what works for you that works for me and I don't feel like I need to be very particularly regimented in the number of minutes I spend doing a certain amount of activity because I know for me in the long run that's not going to work you mentioned dexa scan and and that being a good thing for people to get you know once a year to see where they're at from a body composition standpoint bone mineral density standpoint and also it to be you just helpful to see like how you're I guess aging right what are some other things that you think people should focus on some other markers they should pay attention to I mean I guess just to make sure that they're aging gracefully yeah so I I would say the other kind of love hanging fruit here and and it's it I I recognize that there is a socioeconomic component here where not everybody has great health care great health insurance or the financial flexibility to go pay for stuff that insurance won't cover um but if you if it's within your capacity to do that I think the other lwh hanging fruit here is get a comprehensive blood panel right so the the blood work that is done through your through a typical Primary Care is very basic and doesn't capture most of what you probably want to know unfortunately Primary Care in the United States sucks I don't think anybody's going to disagree with that or well not very many people so I think there are some I think there are some comprehensive blood P blood panels out there that can give you a lot more information than you're going to get from a standard CBC cam hormones I think are one place to look I think you know a lot of people have and I'm talking about the sex hormones now estrogen testosterone uh FSH lsh all that stuff um I think a comprehensive hormone panel obviously you need a doc who can interpret it for you although let's be honest Dr Google's pretty good these days um I think that I think there's a lot of people who have hormone imbalances who don't know it and that contributes to so first of all that's probably caused in part by poor lifestyle choices but it also contributes to your likelihood that you're going to to develop diabetes and obesity if your hor if your sex hormones are all out of whack from where they're supposed to be um um heavy metals are another thing right so are you you know we all should eat more fish but you know what if you have too much mercury in your blood you probably shouldn't eat more fish so knowing if you have any heavy metal toxicities I mentioned vitamin D that's a really easy thing to get from blood work if you're deficient in vitamins you can fix that right these are all things that are fixable and it's easy to know and it's not that expensive so you know we're probably talking I don't know $250 um there are a bunch places out there where you can get blood work online ageless RX is in the longevity Community Ulta labs and I don't have a financial stake in either of those these are just companies that I'm familiar with where you can order blood work online get the data back and you know take it to your primary care dock if you have a good relationship with your primary care dogor so that's one thing I would point to that a lot of people can find out in advance if you've got a problem that's that's actionable and in many ways that will make it easier for you if you if you choose to make a commitment to a healthier lifestyle if you get these other biological parameters that are maybe out of out of balance in Balance that'll make it easier for you to see the benefits or to see the gains from the lifestyle modifications so that's one place that I would point to that that's that's pretty easy couple hundred dollars you know and I get it I it's funny because I've talked to a lot of people who blow you know $500 on nothing on a fancy dinner but if you tell them why don't you go get this comprehensive blood panel done it's $250 they're like well my insurance won't pay for it why should I pay for it and I'm like because it's your health and that's the most important asset that you have but there's this you know we've been sort of we've been sort of trained that Health Care isn't something we should really have to pay for some at least some people have I'd say get out of that get out of that mindset because the Health Care system is broken it's a disease care system you need to take initiative and ownership of your own health and I would say thousand bucks a year even is well worth it if you can keep yourself from getting sick and and give yourself an extra 10 years of healthy longevity I want to talk about something that um sometimes I mean I don't think it gets overlooked but I know we talk about diet and exercise a lot when it comes to longevity and now there's been I mean more information coming out about the importance of relationships and fulfillment when it comes to longevity because again like we talked earlier about it's all about quality not about quantity and if you're you know essentially just by yourself and just eating healthy and just EX in that's all you do and you don't have any kind of social life I mean it's there's going to be diminishing returns right I mean over the course of of long-term Health what are your thoughts on relationships and why do like be why do like being in fulfilling relationships why are they so important for for longevity yeah so so a couple things I would I would say there one is this this is um one of the this is probably the most challenging if if we kind of think I kind of think about four pillars everybody's got their pillars right there's somewhere between four and nine so so so so I sort of think about four and I would put you know social connectedness um in that fourth pillar if we say you know nutrition so so eat move sleep connect right those are my four pillars eat move sleep connect so I put that in the connect the connect pillar and that's the hardest one from a scientific perspective to nail down I would say first of all we don't really know we don't really know biologically why that is so important but the data are pretty clear right and and you can look at this again a variety of different ways you can look at perceived quality of life and you can look at mortality risk but but the data are clear that people who have connected relationships with other human beings tend to live longer be healthier and feel better about their quality of life so it is real and I mean I think I think the reality is look humans are social animals right we evolved to be social animals and so that human connection for most people is going to be extremely important to your overall health quality of life there's also the kind of obvious stuff which is that if you have you know a significant other that you live with and something happens to you they're more likely to see that happen to you and get you help whereas if you're living alone you might just die right so there is the sort of obvious piece but I think this connectedness goes beyond that to a an intersection between psychological wellness and the rest of our physiology which impacts stress is going to tie into that and impacts the the biology of Aging but we don't understand it like that's probably the least understood of this intersection with with the biology of aging and wellness sleep is kind of next up on that least understood list sleep is an area though where I think there are real opportunities to learn a ton in the near future about how Sleep Quality impacts the biology of Aging so I didn't really answer your question other than there's two other things I would say about this one is and this is a generalization I know but but there's a lot of truth to it men are way worse at connectedness than women are so I think for for men you know it middle-aged men and and I would obviously I'm a middle-aged man I'd put myself in this bucket too this is if I had to look at my four pillars that's the one I'm probably weakest in and I think this is something that men in particular we need to pay more attention to it and and figure out ways to help each other with this one because it's it's really hard for a lot of men to be healthy in that area of their their life the other thing though I would say is again we got to be a little bit careful about one siiz fits-all Solutions here and you know not everybody needs the same level of connectedness right and I don't know if that some of it's going to be genetic some of it's going to be our life experiences but we don't want to try to force people to have relationships but I do think for most people it it is something where there is room for improvement from a bare minimum standpoint I know you said this this area is under research that needs more and that we shouldn't be like pushing um you know one method on everybody but just based on maybe your own experience talking to people the research you have seen in general what would you say or like some of the minimums people should try to do every week as far as socializing to to improve their their overall health yeah so I don't know I guess I would say I don't have this is this is an area where I have yet to really develop uh what I would consider a protocol like again I'm a little bit uncomfortable right now saying you need to have X number of social interactions a week right what I would say more generally is um I think everybody can find Value in taking a look at their their relationships today and asking yourself a few questions right like how many how many relationships do I have where I really know that I can count on this person right like what and again this idea of what is is a true friend I don't I mean that that's hard to say but like how many relationships do you have and does it go beyond your spouse if you have a spouse so I think again for a lot of men we tend to put that relationship on our spouse and we neglect relationships with other men that are very strong bonds of friendship right so you I think we can all take a look at our lives and ask you know how many really strong relationships do I have outside of my you know spouse and kids maybe or parents um so that's one thing you can do and then I think uh you know trying to take steps to find activities that you can engage in right and again this is going to be different for different people maybe it's a social group playing cards I don't know at the community center you know maybe it's a softball league right finding opportunities outside of your household and your work where you can have interactions with with people who are you know at the same stage of life that you are um I think is is something that people can do but you know again it's really um this I think is probably the hardest one for me at least to to to to settle on solutions that are are gonna fit everyone right no I appreciate your honesty on all of that and I think I mean I'd love to with that said like just just chat for a few minutes on sleep because I think it's no secret that sleep is so important I mean it's so every I think I think most people I mean I think almost everybody knows at this point that sleep is Paramount for overall Health and Longevity Stress Management everything what might not be as understood is that from what I've learned just through talking to Sleep Experts and people who study sleep is that the quality is much more important than than quantity it's like that being getting quality sleep is definitely much more valuable than just laying in bed for8 hours hours right sure what are your thoughts on that and then like what is it about quality of sleep that that helps improve overall health and lifespan so first of all I think you're right quality of sleep is probably more important than than than quantity although I would say what you said is true if you're just laying in bed awake then that's not useful particularly from a sleep perspective but again I would say it's hard for people unless you've got a really good sleep tracker it's often hard for people to know if they're getting good quality sleep so so I would say Quantity of sleep is a good proxy for quality of sleep as long as you're actually asleep and not laying in bed a weake just just to leave it at that so so couple couple other things to say one is why is sleep important I mean we're still learning right this is an area that's been understudied for sure is this interaction between the biology of aging and sleep and what I would say is um it's bidirectional what I mean by that is that the quality of sleep impacts your biology of Aging uh and as we get older the the declines and function throughout the rest of our body and particular in certain regions of the brain impact our ability to get high quality sleep so it's almost a vicious cycle in that way um but there's a lot to be learned there one of the things we know is that sleep is important for the brain's ability to kind of reset itself and remove some of the damage that accumulates right at a molecular level so that seems pretty there's been a lot of research there that while we sleep that there are mechanisms in the brain that help kind of detoxify the brain and remove that damage from the brain and get it to other parts of the body and so when you're not getting high quality sleep that doesn't happen as efficiently and that seems to then lead to a greater risk of declines in brain function neuronal loss Dementia in some people over over time so that that's probably the most important biological or at least the most um studied uh biological reason why we sleep although I would suggest it's probably not just the brain that it's probably other parts of the body that also need get those benefits from from sleep certainly you know it's kind of obvious that the the the muscular system is able to to undergo healing uh just from disuse not being used as you sleep too much disuse obviously is detrimental but we need a period of time each day where we're not actively on our muscles or using our muscles or our bones or skeleton so I think there's probably benefits outside of the brain as well from s but but that's that's an area again where there's lots of research happening and there need there needs to be more because we really don't understand it very well quality though of sleep this is an area too that I think is is is still uh uh expanding and and look I'm not a sleep expert so so so I don't want to I don't want to say anything that that's that's too uh critical other than to say it's my impression that it's still pretty poorly understood even what we we mean by quality of sleep so if I had to guess five years from now we may actually have a somewhat different definition of what quality of sleep means than we do today there are some trackers AA ring is one of the more popular ones that can give you a perspective on sort of realtime quality of sleep I've used an or ring I'm not wearing mine right now but but I've used one um quite a bit uh I think that can be useful for some people but I would say also again this is where you need to kind of know yourself try it see if it works for you there are some people who wear an aura ring and it actually causes them to sleep more poorly because they're like worried about the score they're going to get the next day right so so you kind of have to you know you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot by using these devices but I do think you know there is probably some value and understanding what are some of the the things that can impact your quality of sleep and again we're going to come back to alcohol so the one thing I learned from my aura ring is that and I everybody I've talked to who's done this experiment Will has told me the same thing alcohol trashes your quality of sleep at least as measured by the aura ring although I have to admit I have had a little bit of suspicion that maybe the people who developed the aura ring don't like alcohol and they designed the algorithm to give you a bad score no I I I I I actually believe alcohol probably does trash your quality of sleep but for me that was that was the thing that was the most potent at trashing My Sleep Quality even one one glass of wine before I go to bed trashes my Sleep Quality the other thing that trashes Sleep Quality is travel that's that's not true for everyone but I think for most people that's pretty much a universal I guess the way that I also understand it and maybe correct me if if if you think that I'm wrong or that maybe this is misleading that I I think that you know getting good quality of sleep is essentially just making sure you're going through every stage of the sleep of the Sleep Cycle because each cycle has different benefits for your health I think that's true I think um you know there there are certain metrics around am amount of time that you spend in deep sleep and and REM sleep and but again this is an evolving field and so that's why I I kind of as somebody who's not in that field it's my perception that we may have sort of different standards five years from now than we have right now for what we really mean by by quality of sleep and then in terms of of of how you accomplish that I mean I think that's the real challenge right so sure everybody gets that sleep's important what do you do about it if you're not sleeping well and that's where again this to me is a that this is a tougher this is a tougher pillar than food and exercise I think food and exercise I'm not saying they're easy they're not obviously lots and lots of people struggle with food and exercise but we know what to do right it's not a matter of not knowing what to do it's a matter of actually getting people to do it sleep is a bit more challenging and this idea of good sleep hygiene there's a lot of value there but that's not going to fix the problem for everyone so I think that there are some you know there's more work to be done in figuring out what are some tips that we can give people who do practice you know what would be considered good sleep hygiene going to bed at the same time every night you know not doing a lot of screen time right before you go to bed all this stuff that gets talked about but there are still some people who struggle with sleep and so you know how do we how what are some additional Solutions we can take to help people improve their Sleep Quality I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done there but it seems like the biggest things we should focus on are diet exercise healthy relationships and again doing all this to where how it fits within our the current context of our lifestyle our goals our situation and and and Matt I wanted to thank you so much for coming on and for sharing all of your wisdom your knowledge and all on all of this because I think it can get a bit confusing at times if people want to connect with you they want to learn more about what you're doing um and the work that you have coming up where's the best place to do that yeah so I'm on Twitter mcine um also on LinkedIn those are probably the easiest places to find me right now awesome while make sure to include the links that stuff in the show notes and um Matt wanted to thank you once again for coming on I think the audience is going to get a lot out of this one great thank you thank you so much for watching if you like this video I really think you're going to like this video as well I'll see you [Music] there

Channel: Doug Bopst

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Id: yqacX0wM_1w

Length: 64min 21sec (3861 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 23 2023