Longevity Professor: The Key Factors To Stop Decline & Slow Aging After 40! | Rose Anne Kenny

one of the central messages in your book is that 80% of our aging biology is within our control so I thought we'd start with some practical tips right A lot of people listen to this show ranging from 20 year olds all the way through to 80 year olds right so if I was going to say to you let's say if someone's in midlife in their 40s or 50s and you were going to say one or two things for them to focus on what would you say I give my top three and the first one I'd start with would be friendship and to culture friendship how important that is maybe we can take a step back you mentioned there that 80% is in our control and isn't that wonderful because everybody assumes it's genes you know aging is about your genes and you're you're you are stuck more or less at the moment anyway with whatever genes you've got but that isn't the case genes only contribute to 20% of the aging process 80% is within our control so that's fantastic and then what are the things that we know are in our control that influence the process that influence that 80% and so if my top three would be as I said friendship having good friendships um it's not about quantity but it's very much about the quality of relationships qual quality of friendships and we can come back to how that works later on I I'm and I'm sorry to say the next two because the once I said this on radio in Ireland and the interview said to me oh my God not those old chestnuts again but I have to mention diet and I have to say exercise because they are very important and they are something that certainly definitely makes a difference and then if I were to include a fourth I'd say stress how you know stress is so bad for us so anything that we can do to attenuate stress processes or attenuate stress itself is important for the aging process yeah brilliant so friendships well let's broaden it out I guess relationships the food we're eating how much we're moving our bodies and how much stress we're being exposed to we're going to get into all of those in detail yeah but as you say a lot of us who are healthc conscious these days have heard some of these messages right you have been publishing papers for years you've been treating patients for years you teach medical students you've got a lot of experience and I think everyone comes to the Aging conversation at different times in their lives right so you mentioned your top three there but I'm I'm interested how would you frame it differently depending on the age of someone who's coming to see you so for example if someone is a I don't know a 40y old female for example how would you change that messaging slightly to be super relevant for them good question so 40-year-old female uh will be coming into menopause so to be preparing for that I would say that's the first thing we can talk a little bit about that um it doesn't change what I'm saying about friendship but it's sometimes much more difficult because there are an awful lot of other pressures on someone's life so they don't have the time to be culturing friendships Etc so but to use some mechanism for retaining friendship is very important you know when you're picking up kids from school and having to do the housework piece and your work piece that makes your life much more difficult in the context of diet in the context of exercise I can absolutely say that I almost came to a full stop when I was in that period of my life with my children and with my professional life Etc all of the things that I'm going to be talking to you now about and the and your audience and sharing as being important from manipulating the aging process were almost at a full stop because I wasn't able to do everything and I focused on those other things but I think to not to it's not all or nothing so at least to try and do some of the things we know are beneficial I mean on that that's really interesting at this stage in your life now with all the experience that you've got with the knowledge you now have if we rewind back to your 4es had you known what you know now do you think you would have been able to make different choices would you have made different choices back then that's such a great question at a personal level I probably wouldn't cuz I adore my work and obviously I love my family but i i w i in order to really focus on on factors we just talked about you really need to pull back from one or other and I would not have done that at a personal level I wouldn't have done it however I didn't know as much as I know now and now that I know as much as I know I'm working really hard on it to be honest well that that thing about work and and purpose of course is something you you've written a chapter on which we're definitely going to talk about so I get the messaging for a 40y old um if I was 70 years old talking to you saying Hey listen what can I do how would your messaging change for let's say a 170-year-old well then the messaging is very different because generally speaking we have more time although I've met a number of 70-year-olds who say I've never been busy since they retired um generally speaking we have more time and I think that there's a a perception out there societal perception that as you get older you shouldn't be doing as much you should slow down we don't expect as much of people and I would love to see that concept changed because I my advice would be do a little bit more every year I definitely mean that applies to exercise a little bit more ex whatever your movement is that you enjoy do a bit more each year year after 50 but I would also um recommend that in the context of food put a put a bit more variety into your food every year think of something different that you can do but also creativity and purpose change that also every year of your life so that you have something that you want to do new every year Variety in our on our plate and in our lives and in our exercise regime are really important so I would say that applies can I say something about the age thing 20y olds this is important for and that's the age I'd like to see starting to engage in the proc I was going to come that so far away well I have a great story about that because I was giving a lecture in Trinity recently and we have a what's called a te course which um draws students from non-health related courses in the University into a module modules they might be interested in and aging is one of them so I had students from geography and law and mechanical engineering Etc in in the audience in front of me and after the lecture two young chaps came up and they were from Durham University on an arasmus and Ben and Dominic and they said that they were looking for the University to choose for their Rasmus and they chose Trinity because of the longitudinal study on Aging that was being done in Trinity and I was like just like you wow and and I said why and they said because we feel it's such a an important area now they were not what one was in bioengineering and the other was in one of the um Humanities and and they said and we're interested in becoming maybe setting up anme in this very space but anme for 20 year olds what's an a a a small and medium-sized Enterprise so like a small business an innovative business in this space so that they could harness their their interest in aging to to create a business opportunity for themselves that's why they chose Trinity so that they could access Tilda and when I mentioned Tilda during the lecture they came up to me afterwards so so I was really energized by that and their approach was what you're talking about suits the middle-aged and older person but we'd like to reshape it for the 20year old so there love that isn't it amazing I love that so I want to talk about Tilda um you mentioned it and I'll be honest growing up my familiarity with that term was to do with a particular makeer Bas MTI rice which we would have a home till basy rice I'm sure many people listening will will resonate with that but when you talk about Tilda you're not talking about a rice brand are you I'm talking about the Irish longitudinal study on Aging that's where the D comes from there was already the Italian longitudinal study on Aging so we had to we had to recreate it we couldn't use the S from study let's just understand what that means right you say longitudinal what does longitudinal mean and and I just want a bit of context here people who've been listening to my show for a while we know very recently I had on professors uh Robert waldinger and Mark Schultz who are the director and associate director of the Harvard adult development study that's been going on now I think 85 years or more right so they're familiar a little bit with that study and some of the learnings from it so can you explain what your study is what does longitudinal mean and how would certain elements of your study compare to what they're doing in Harvard okay so longitudinal means generally that you have a cohort of people and in our case in Tilda it's a an Irish population of people aged 50 and older chosen through a randomly selected sample which means that whatever findings we get we can generalize to the population and the same people are studied longitudinally at regular intervals in our case every two years and the study has been running for 16 years now with a three to foure Pilot runin so every two years we go back to the same people now that's what long the longitudinal bit is that allows you to understand the process of Aging so you're looking at the same person now for 12 16 years as it stands at the moment you knew what they were like at Baseline and then you can actually look at changes in the components I call it the tapestry of that individual which makes up how they are now for example we we we measure a number of different factors of course we measure genetics the epigenetics all of those new biomarkers of Aging the common things like you get in a blood screen your kidney function your re your your kidney function your electrolytes I was going to say youran electrolytes I'm so used to saying that when I'm ordering them your kidney function your electrolytes your hemoglobin Etc but we also measure social factors and economic factors and and they're really important for to understand who we are biologically so we measure all of those factors and for example at age 50 if we had a man who who was had that broad assessment including a very detailed Health assessment who had a stroke 16 years later we can go back and see okay what were the things about that man compared to others in the study which were probably the risk factors at that time which led him to be a victim to stroke in 16 years no I love that that's that's so fascinating isn't it I think we can all really get our heads around that that if this happens instead of just looking at what were the blood tests on admission or six months before your GP before you got the stroke I think there's a growing recognition that these chronic diseases they don't just happen overnight the process that's driving them is going on in the body for 10 20 sometimes maybe 30 years so I can see the power there that you can go back and go hey what was going on when you were 50 and so what are some of those key learnings that you found so far oh there's a host of them okay so let we've published nearly 600 papers from the study to date and not only us we make sure that the data is publicly archived after it's been cleaned and we've done you know an analytics on it to make sure that it's yeah kosher um and then it's publicly archived in Ireland but also in Michigan so that it's available to universities worldwide this is a great asset for us because um that means that you get researchers all over the world tapping into your data source so let's say what have we published so far so it depends we we we we carve it into three big domains social econom I omic and health from the health in the health domain we found that things this won't be a surprise metabolic syndrome is very common it it starts early metabolic syndrome is where you have a mix of obesity central obesity particularly high blood pressure early diabetic markers and abnormal lipids in the blood that that cocktail makes you much more at risk for cardiovascular events later on and does it does that cocktail speed up the rate at which you age yes absolutely it does and can we just yeah um ran if you don't mind just pause here for a second because I think we talk about aging a lot where it's it's becoming more and more a part of the vernacular I think you're certainly in my world the people I communicate with are very health conscious we're hearing a lot about anti-aging these days what exactly is going on when we age because then I think it would be helpful if we understand that then we can understand well metabolic syndrome which is so common now how is that influencing those kind of parameters of Aging okay so so just imagine you have you know this very famous image of an iceberg and a threshold a line going through the iceberg that's the sea level and we can see the iceberg at the top that's your older person um and below that there's a whole lot of stuff and below that is the process which has been accumulating for years and years and years of all of the biological biomarkers we'll talk about those influenced by the social and economic factors which eventually lead in the case we're talking about now to to health diseases or disorders to a health outcome so all of that's been going on for many years as you've said and then it creeps above the threshold and we get a heart attack or stroke or Dementia or whatever so aging is actually really the manifestation of disorders or diseases that we're very familiar with and and and multiple diseases because having multiple diseases is not uncommon as we get older and average of four to five is common um so but the process that we're trying to understand are the earlier stages where it isn't a disease as such but it will ultimately evolve into one or other disease um if something isn't done about it and checked and that that's what we're most interested in so if we come back to metabolic syndrome what we're looking at is early physiological changes in blood pressure that's the hypertension and in the lipids in Li fat lipids triglycerides cholesterol Etc and in your waist tip Ratio or obesity markers um and and early diabetes just creeping hemoglobin a1z and and then how they evolve into a disease state so it might be that you then develop type 2 diabetes full blast or kidney disease as a result of atherosclerosis or a heart attack Etc but it's the early combination of those the metabolic syndrome itself is very common in Ireland 40% of people over the age of 50 have it it's remarkably Comm do you know what that figure is in the UK oh very similar yeah our date is almost duplicate and generally America tends to be a little bit worse than us doesn't it they're they're they're fatter and generally sicker than in Ireland and the UK actually yeah so if someone listening to this wants to take action on that right to go okay you've said a few things there about metabolic syndrome yeah what can I do now at home you know what would you advise would you advise them to measure these things go and see a healthc care professional you know find out if they have it how would you advise people to tackle that so I would definitely say we should all know our blood pressure and we should know it every single year after the age of 40 know what your blood pressure is and know what your seated blood pressure and your standing blood pressure is because we get as we get older we're more likely to get a drop in blood pressure standing and that actually has to be managed a little bit differently so know your blood pressure seated in standing every year know your lipid profile and it's not just about cholesterol it is about triglycerides and HDL LDL ratios Etc so know your lipid profile every year and know your hemoglobin A1c hemoglobin A1 see is a very good marker for diabetes obviously but pending diabetes and pre-diabetes um and it actually is um an indicator of what your glucose has been doing over the last two to three months so that's why it's such a good marker it doesn't shift up and down with the food intake Etc so at least those three things we should all know yeah so what I like about that there's a lot of um talk about anti-aging now and and some of the testing that has been spoken about is not widely available to everyone yet right I agree whereas the three things you just mentioned blood pressure a blood lipid panel and an hba1c uh measurements from your blood is pretty commonly available certainly in the UK those things are freely available on the NHS yes right so the National Health Service so they're very accessible things and so if we just go into those a minute let's take hba1 okay 2 to 3 month average uh measurement of our blood sugar yeah so one of my frustrations with I guess the way the practice of medicine has evolved over the years is that it's become very black or white and much of the time we interpret things in a very black or white fashion it's either normal or it's pre-diabetic or it's diabetic right type 2 diabetes I'm talking talking about so you know if your hbmc is 6.5 or above we say type two diabetes if it's between 6 and 6.5 we say that's pre-diabetes but if it's 5.9 or 5.8 or 5.7 it will often be reported as normal so I'd love you with all your knowledge to expand on what do you like to see with an hba1c you know of course you want it normal but are you off the school of thought where lower is better so when I started off as a junior doctor with respect to blood pressure we were treating blood pressure systolic pressure if it was more than 160 no way now yes and now we're looking at 120 hold on so when you when you qualified it was 160 yes you were treating when I qualified I'm pretty sure it was 140 was the threshold to actually treat yeah and now we're down to 120 yeah so so so so and that's because massive randomized control trials have been done to explore this so so it's the same with all of these we're talking about biomarkers everything we're talking about now are biomarkers all a biomarker is is a marker of your biological status so all of the biomarkers that we use we use thresholds because that's where the information um is at that particular time and obviously it's much easier to apply at a population level for individuals it varies and you know the way there's a distribution in at a population level and of course people lie outside of a normal distribution many um and we we're we're learning that that same change with respect to blood pressure is applying to a number of other biomarkers and lower and lower and lower thresholds are being applied so so if a patient came to see you and their hba1c comes back at 5.9 so technically it's not yet in the pre-diabetic range what do you say to them I advise them I give them I give them lifestyle modification advice you say look it's it's not yet pre-diabetic but if we don't do something or if you don't do something um this may very quickly end up at pre-diabetes and that's what we've shown in the study that it very likely will evolve into pre-diabetes even two and three years later so get get a grip of it now when it's reversible yeah and the grip is easy grip is low sugar you know manage your diet and lose a bit of weight that the grip for that one is very easy there's some pretty good uh data now I think showing that all cause mortality is it goes up as your average blood sugar goes up so if we compare let's say an hba1c of 5.9 again technically normal with an hba1c of 5.4 I've seen some good data showing that actually your your mortality goes up as that goes up right yes yes but we're still calling 5.9 normal which I I don't think we should be anymore and you mentioned something there which I think is really worth expanding on at a population level versus an individual level right I I'm not sure everyone fully understands that concept right and I think it's an important one because a lot of the time the guidelines we're being given that doctors are applying are things that maybe let's say in the NHS have been deemed overall for these 60 plus million people that exist in the country we can afford to actually manage this percentage of people if we have crossed this threshold right so on a population level it works but individually you may miss out right how how would you frame it for no I think you framed that incredibly well so I'm I'm um if you're near the threshold of something those thresholds have been derived by averages just to understand that and so it's a cut off based on averages but each side of the average there is a distribution and and it's it's we don't make recommendations based on the lower pieces of that distrib bution or the lower levels of that distribution we make it where that cut off occurred because that's the only way we can apply things at a large large scale within a Health Service so therefore when you're in dealing with an individual patient I try to in deal with the individual I give them the evidence I say look this is what's these are what the recommendations are in my opinion I'm knowing you I see these these potential risk factors and I actually think if I were you I would get a handle on these risk factors now when you've plenty of time it's coming back to the 20y olds again there's lovely data on blood pressure to show that if You' have a slightly higher blood pressure even in your 20s you're on a higher blood pressure trajectory for the rest of your life whereas the lower blood pressure group within that population distribution in your 20s are less inclined to have the higher trajectory those those graphs are fascinating the whole thing is fascinating this this idea that you mentioned with your till study that you can go back this is for people above the age of 50 someone has a stroke let's say in their late 60s if they're in your study you can go back and go hey what was going on here yes that's incredibly helpful and I I'm really excited to see how this data set builds over the years and what else we're going to learn but that's 50 and above as you just mentioned with the blood pressure there we can go even further back we can actually recognize in our 20s we can might be we might be a to pick up Stu in our 20s that indicate what's going to happen when we're 60 70 80 so just to finish off on that piece we started off talking about the advice you would give to a female in their 40s then we moved on to the advice that you would give someone potentially in their 70s recognizing that everyone's an individual and everyone you know needs slightly different advice but stereotypically if there was a 20-year-old sitting in front of you saying oh he in you know that's miles away in the future right why do I need to be bothered about that or what would you say to a 20-year-old that might make a difference in terms of what they do so I would sit them down and I'd show them a great graph from the denan study which I'll share with you now so the denan is a different model longitudinal study to ours it's a thousand babies born in the same year studied longitudinally and they're now in their 50s um and in the denan study they looked at their whole cohort of a thousand when they were all aged 38 and at this stage of the study they had the ability to measure their biological aging their epigenetic clocks okay so they were able to actually look at their biological clock and of course everybody was the same age had the same chronological clock in other words number of candles on their birthday cake and remarkably they show showed that some people aged 38 were behaving biologically like 28y olds but some aged 38 were behaving biologically like 48 year olds a 20year distribution in their biological aging although they were all the same chronological age that's an amazing study and so the Practical take-home for someone in their 20s is what so the Practical take-home is this this process starts really early on now you know the the trite thing to say it probably starts in the womb but for an individual that doesn't help but the process does start uh in your 20s and you can do damage in your 20s when they looked back on the 38y olds who had the almost 50-year-old biological aging through the clocks the factors which drove that accelerated aging were adverse childhood events you know traumatic experiences in childhood depression in childhood or depression in a household divorce in a household or or bad behaviors early on in the in lives like smoking and alcohol in in in the participants lives if we just talk about these Aces for a minute these adverse childhood experiences this is something that I've covered on the show many times through the lens of trauma with people like Dr Gabel Mass Dr Bessel vandero recently with a a chap called Dr Russell Kennedy on anxiety and we're seeing very clearly for many years now data on adverse childhood experiences on how you know difficult childhoods trauma divorces um you know abuse the impacts of those things play out in your adult risk of disease illness autoimmune disease all kinds of things right but you're saying it also plays out these emotional factors what we consider emotional factors that also plays out in terms of how quickly we're aging well well you see because how quickly your aging is what's driving those diseases later on in life that's my point the aging process all it is is the precursor to having one of those diseases and the pace of that aging process is all that is is means is that you'll have one of those illnesses earlier that's what aging is Professor David Sinclair who I spoke to maybe two or three years ago on this podcast he makes the case in his book that we should consider aging a disease what's your perspective on that well I I I don't entirely agree with that although I can see that there's some overlapping Concepts um there isn't a diagnosis for aging as such um it's a very multifactorial process um it's something that we all will experience in one way or another it doesn't necessarily lead to a disease outcome that we recognize um so there are some of the reasons that I wouldn't agree with that but also as a doctor and knowing busy ED departments Etc I wouldn't like people to think of Aging for which we have no cure at the moment is a disease and when somebody comes in that they they attribute something to aging and we can't do anything about it I think that that patients would lose out yeah I think the point everyone's trying to make is that the aging process underpins all kinds of diseases that we get lat one in life heart disease stroke dementia cancer whatever it might be and so if we can slow down the aging process we also reduce the risk or at least delay the onset of many of these diseases I think most scientists study aging would agree with that but I think there's a wider Point here for me which I've been thinking a lot about recently there does appear to now be I want call it an obs ession necessarily but the term anti-aging is something that really has got the sight Guist now right people are very excited about anti-aging reversing aging all these kind of things are we missing something about The Human Experience are we trying to defy something that is fundamentally a part of humanity you know we we're born we live for a separ time and then we die I know you know all the biology and the the blood markers and you've done all the science of Aging but from a philosophical point of view what's your perspective on that that's a it's a great question first of all factually quality of life gets better as we get older that's the first thing to say and this has been shown by many many studies in in our own study in in Tilda um aged 50 upwards quality of life continued to improve year on year until late' 70s and the factor which actually impacted then on positive quality of life was physical ill health that was the biggest factor that impacted on quality of life information is not enough to make change in your life you have to take action so to help you take action after watching this video I've created a free nutrition guide for you this contains the five most important practices I've seen in over two decades of seeing patients they work for you no matter what your dietry preference there's a step-by-step action plan to help you implement those changes in your life if you want to receive that free guide right now just click on the link in the description box below but the the measures that we were using for quality of life very good tool didn't get to the same level in the 80y olds as they it was in 50 until people was were were 84 so in other words it went up and it slowly came down and it was only at age 84 that your quality of life was the same at 50 better once you've hit 50 on average it gets better your quality of life gets better and doesn't get down to that level until you're 84 so you have 34 years of good times maybe longer because the only factors that were influencing beneficial quality of life on this is on average now this is for at a population level we're physical disability so not being able to do what you were previously able to do because of arthritis or another physical ill so is that the point for you I think that's the point from your book is is not necessarily about trying to live to 150 right yeah the the message I get from your work is that it's just about how do you make sure you've got that quality of life until you do drop down dead yes yes yeah and and living independently and having a good quality of life they they should be our two metrics um for for happy lifespan so so on that then um what are some of the myths that are are currently being propagated would you say around aging there's all kinds of talk about living to 150 or 120 130 you know what's your take well first of all are there any myths out there that you'd like to share a different perspective on and I guess related to that how old do you think it is possible for a human to live in good health well well for the latter question I would answer to Jean cmon who I wrote about in the book we know therefore 26 is feasible right is that what she lived yeah she lived to 126 so that's that's feasible I think it was 126 or 122 so we know that that can happen that's the first thing to say um the the the the second thing is that actually longevity is attenuating at the moment it's it's the the curve has started to slow down and flatten out in the UK since 2012 and in the US now the attributable reasons for that are disparities in socioeconomic state that's what we've that's what most of the researchers in this area would now agree in in the UK and in the US a dominant feature driving that is younger debts due to Opi wow so but but it so that wonderful linear association between um years and lifespan that we've talked about for the last couple of decade seems to be slowing down so up until 2012 yeah our longevity was going up in a lar fashion 2.2 years every 10 years since the 1800s so each generation was living longer every generation you know and every every parent wants a better life for their kids than they had and I guess you could say a longer life potentially so that was happening but in 2012 the graph start to change it started to slow down and uh and particularly noticeable actually in the UK it hasn't slowed that much in Ireland of interest but we're behind you in terms of the numbers of people over you know the percentage of the population over 65 that may have influenced it slightly but it hasn't yeah but in the UK particularly in the US and some European countries not northern European countries of Interest so and and the biggest driver for that is is is Social disparities I mean rongan when did we ever talk about food banks you know now I mean I mean it's it's you know and now they're daily part of daily practice throughout the country so you know you we never thought we'd see that a nurse had to go to a food bank to get food so that's the level of disparity we're seeing in society and I know you've studied this as part of the tilder yes study we have and I I I know many researchers around the world have also studied this but when we think about socioeconomic status we think about income we think about poverty what exactly is that doing on a cellular level how how is that affecting the aging process um I have a colleague K mcui who's actually studying this very thing Across the Life Course and showing the biological the epigenetic the clock changes that we're seeing associated with socioeconomic divides so you've got five different groups say quintiles of socioeconomic status and those who are in the lower the the worst socioeconomic status have much accelerated biological clocks and because of the richness of the data we're collecting I'm able to say to you today that that is the case independent of anything else which might be driving accelerated aging yeah I mean it's absolutely fascinating let's just contrast then um the lady I think Jean Lise calore who you wrote about in the book The French lady who went past 120 yeah you you've written about her in quite a bit of detail um which is it was just so fascinating reading about her story she had a a privileged life um and probably all of the components that we have got control of with respect to the aging process she Illustrated throughout her life that's what I liked about her life and very positive attitude yeah I I write this down um you you put in I mean it's as I say I love your book I think it's jamack full of really practical information um at the time of writing the record holder for longevity for the human species at 122 years and 164 days as a French woman Jean Lise calore and you know there's many paragraphs on her but this one I I wrote down and I think this really speaks to what we're talking about with socioeconomic status which is Gian never had to work she employed servants and led a allegedly lifestyle within upper Society presuming Hobbies such as fencing cycling tennis swimming roller skating playing the piano and making music with friends in the summer with a husband she would mount an ear she enjoyed an idilic relatively stress-free and funfilled life now you can interpret that two ways you can either interpret that and go okay wow that has shown us what is possible and I can see that the various elements that you write about in your book A lot of them are you know are there within her story or that can be incredibly off-putting to people and go yeah all right for her you know my life is completely different to that no wonder I'm struggling so so how do you make sense of that well well I I mean you're a doctor I'm a doctor you know you sit down in front of somebody you talk to them about ways of alleviating stress but you know that they're finding it hard to make ends meat yeah you I and and it's it's a terrible problem um it's so you've just exemplified that issue I struggle with that I mean I know what the facts are I know what works at a biological level so now we're going into how how important this is as at a sociological level at a societal level how can we change society to to enable all of the things that we know will work and frankly everything we're we're talking about here that individuals can modify they don't cost money by and large but they you need not to be stressed about how to feed the kids throughout the week at the same time so one of the things that we've we've learned from our research certainly is education education education that education drives better um Quality of Life less stress and more higher income in later life if if if you can achieve that in younger years so at a societal level one of the things that we certainly can do is protect education for everybody and ensure education for everybody um so that's one thing and then I I think we need to be mindful of how closely those societal issues are linked to health and it's only going to cost us long term in the Health Service if we don't address them well you know that's a real frustration about this whole topic and area is that we're just kicking the can down the road each government coming in is just trying to win the next election right and they're not thinking about 30 years 40 years like because they'll be long gone they won't be in power you know by then and it's a real problem because it's not rocket science to figure out if you feed your population well if you um provide for them you make it easier for people actually people are going to be healthier they're going to live better they're going to put less strain on the Health Service later on in life but no one's kind of doing that but but one thing I will say and I think your book really speaks to this a lot of the things that people can do to slow down aging are free of charge right they they are and I like you have worked in areas where people are struggling to make ends meet and even within that you know I can't change the poverty um but if you can really connect with that patient and help them understand how you know 10 minutes of meditation or prioritizing 20 minutes with your kids or your partner each day or it is worth on that Saturday afternoon going and nurturing your relationship with your friends and your family whatever it might be those things make a biological difference so I guess I'm trying to say is that yes we want to change society we want uh politicians to get involved and societies to to be more equal less disparity between rich and poor all those sort of things but we still even in an unequal Society yes it's challenging but we can help people make better choices can't we and we have to take control of this ourselves and you've written about this um no matter what even breathing exercises anything which will enable de-stressing is very important and that only takes a few minutes a couple of times a day you know the other thing I I think that that we can we can take control of uh is community ensuring Community engaging Community being more engaged in our communities volunteering so volunteering will help others who are stressed and most of the volunteering is now done by people who are coming into their third fourth you know wave of life and and 70% or something is the figure and they they get so much benefit from volunteering mental health problems are significantly less quality of life is more is better and disability is less we've shown this objectively in people who volunteer and that's not because they were well enough to volunteer that's longitudinally people who do it are less likely to get those negative outcomes so volunteering is really good and volunteering gives back to the community and but volunteering May well help to buffer some of the challenges that we've just outlined I want to talk about attitudes yeah our attitude towards life because if I continue what you wrote about uh Jean Lis calore you you you write that she did actually move into a nurs home I think it was after a fall aged 110 yeah but again some really interesting things there even though she was in a nursing home calmore initially followed a rigorous daily routine she was woken at 6:45 a.m. started the day with a long prayer at her window she thanked God for being alive and for the beautiful day that was starting underscoring her positive attitudes and out look then she sits on her armchair and does gymnastics wearing her stereo headset right so this is fascinating I've got this wonderful image of this 110 year old lady basically practicing gratitude every morning right and you know we've touched on gratitude several times on this podcast over the years there's really good research on gratitudes it seems as though she naturally had this positive attitude from what you know from what you've studied how important is attitude to the aging process hugely important that's what I would say probably you know the most important thing that now now it's hard to change your attitude I mean attitude is very much about being an optimist or a pessimist you know um but but knowing it's important people might be able to put more time and effort into creating a positive attitude or being positive or less negative about things um we we talk about resilience in in in the science of aging and what makes some people resilient and others not and how you perceive yourself aging and your attitude towards your own aging and towards others is a major factor and again in the tiled study we have shown we've measured perceptions of Aging or aging attitudes at Baseline and and obviously follow up and people who saw themselves as 20 years younger than their age as I do um actually were fit physically fitter and mentally cognitively better independent of all of the other factors we were able to adjust for 10 years hence so it matters so the the the phrase you are as young as you feel actually has scientific validity yes it's biologically embedded I mean abolutely it's just fascinating that you know I I think a lot about I guess what might be considered the more softer aspects of Health right attitude our perception these kind of things but but really they're not they're not so soft when you start studying them there's actually hard data on them I spoke a few months ago with someone called Professor anise Muki um she's you know very very experienced consultant endocrinologist a women's hormone expert and in the conversation which is all about women's hormones and the menopause I shared with her some research that I came across showing that in societies where they perceive aging as a good thing they associate it with wisdom yeah um you know when life experience people report less menopausal symptoms yeah right so I'm very keen to say I'm not saying that menopausal symptoms don't exist nothing like that I'm well aware that they cause huge amounts of problems for many many women but it's fascinating to me that when we have a perception in society that actually aging is a good thing people report less symptoms and I think that's source of fits with what you're talking about I so so so perceptions are internal okay they come from ourselves our personality type if you like and and and factors that have influenced us through our lifespan through the life course which make us but also from society then that's a really good point that you've raised if you're constantly getting negative agist attitudes from the media or from individuals or whatever very hard for you to retain a positive attitude and an optimistic attitude when you're being bombarded by in some cases subliminal agism now I think that is changing yeah um I I even have seen a change over the last decade I think it's changing but that unfortunately during Co initially in the initial stages of Co we encountered so much agism in the policy approaches the quick F fix approaches I we don't need to go into it now but I mean you know the whole approach to people in nursing homes the whole approach to older people being discharged from hospitals Etc I mean a very very agis approach the whole approach to letting people die on their own and not let their families be with them you know the whole thing was was catastrophic so so and the and the language that was being used by the media at the time people were be called out because of their age an 85y old woman who had multiple diseases died Etc now they stopped that and I noticed it changed during Co because of the backlash in Ireland we used a term which is a terrible term called C cocooning so everybody over the age of 70 was asked to cocoon which meant that they stayed in their home and didn't engage with anybody so the the subliminal implication of that is you're 70 Society no longer needs you you aren't of value it's you know you you can stay there cocooned terrible word and no one will notice the difference at a societal level in terms of your input to society so it is changing but but and I was very optimistic and then Co hit and I saw just this negative attitudes towards aging just enveloping everybody again yeah I think it's just worth pausing there a little bit because I I I really feel strongly that these lockdowns this social isolation piece has been so toxic for so many people um couple of sort of points to just mentioned for from my perspective remember a couple of years ago um maybe after the first or second lockdown I can't remember when I once the ledure center had reopened and I went uh to go and have a swim I was chatting to the guy at reception who hadn't seen for about six months and we were just having a bit of a chitchat um and he was just saying people have changed he's like people in their 50s and their 60s 1970s who 6 months previously he said would come in bright chatting they're now withdrawn they look older they're not saying much right and and this is the impact you know of course there's many things there worry fear anxiety whatever it might be but there's no question that isolating people has had really toxic effects there's no question about that everything you've said unfortunately is factually correct in the Tila study the um loneliness increased threefold during Co so we were able to track that because it's longitudinal so we knew what the loneliness parameters were that we were measuring before coid and it increased three-fold as did depression increase three-fold independent of any every anything again and we know from animal studies if you put a monkey in a cage on its own because we're gregarious animals as monkeys are in a cage on it own and then biopsy the lymph node which is the engine house for inflammation and Immunity you can find that the genes in the lymph the genes in the lymph node are upregulated for inflammation and down regulated for the factors that protect our immune systems and it's well known with social isolation you're more likely to get colds and flu and viruses so there's biology um but but but it's it's the long-term toxic effects inflammation is probably if you were to identify one thing that accelerates the aging process and is culpable for the are causal for the biological changes it's inflammation so I I I think it I think that the social isolation has indeed caused biological consequences which may long-term be toxic but worse again people are finding it really hard to reconnect now this isn't only older per persons younger people have also suffered a lot and continue to suffer so I I it's something we have to address as individuals to be aware of it and to reach out as much as possible I I think you know humans are you know we're creatures of habit you know we we get used to new normals very very quickly and I I really think we've been deceived by convenience right there is a cost to convenience it is more convenient to meet up with your friends on Zoom you don't have to go anywhere you just you know in your kitchen with your coffee press join and you feel you're interacting with them now of course that can have benefits particularly for people who live far away but it ain't the same thing and I also I've seen with so many patients and so many friends they used to go to classes whatever it might be yoga martial arts singing but over the last years they went on to zoom and they've never returned turn back but that convenience I think lter can be toxic and I don't know how we start reminding people I keep saying it on the show I want to try to remind people to go listen you want to do 10 minutes at yoga every night on YouTube great but still sign up for that Weekly class that you used to go to back in 2019 because you get so much more from that class by the yoga you get the social engagement and that is we we we have evolved as gregarious animals we have to do it talking about community um in your book you wrote In detail is it Rosetta Rosetta yeah and it was it was truly fascinating I wonder if you could talk us through Rosa and what does that teach us about the power of community and social relationships this is a great story and it was probably the start of the link between social sciences and health um so Rosetta was a town in small town in Northern Italy and in the 1800s they they needed to immigrate there wasn't any employment so they immigrated to a location in the states in Pennsylvania in the states they called it Rosetta the town in the states and they um they replicated an awful lot of their lifestyles in in Italy in terms of the the infrastructure the way the town was designed Etc and then more and more from Rosetta Italy um immigrated to rosette in the USA and a scientist called Steven wolf he wasn't a scientist he was actually a gastroenterologist but he got interested in epidem iology and he was very interested in the brain gut response and and interaction and network so he had a holiday home near it um and he gave talks to towns and Villages nearby and one night he was speaking in one of the towns and a GP came up to him a general practitioner and said you know you're talking about what was the big killer at the time cardiovascular disease um in men in their mid 40s 50s in the USA he said I'm I'm working in this town it's one of two or three towns I work in nearby and I'm seeing I'm not seeing that I'm seeing people living well into their 65s and Beyond this is in the 1900s 1930s and 40s um and and he said I'm definitely seeing something different there than the other towns I'm working in nearby so Steven wolf didn't just take that as a you know he went with medical students the next summer they took over the town hall and they did all of the measures we know lead to Long longevity because in the interim he checked their their death rate books and found that yes it was true they seemed to be living longer in Rosetta and he found no suicides Etc so he they went and they installed themselves in the town hall and started doing blood pressure they took blood tests for blood glucose at the time uh Etc and they couldn't find anything then they looked at diet and they couldn't find anything and I'm sorry to say but they actually found that they were eating you know quite quite luscious pizzas regularly and he he looked at everything he could think of smoking wasn't more common exercise there wasn't any difference in all the factors we're talking about and he was sitting one morning in the Town Square in Rosetta on a Sunday uh outside the church and the next thing the church doors opened and everybody piled out of church but they didn't move from there they stayed outside the church and for an hour or two afterwards they were still there chatting kids running around mixing and he realized that the secret of longevity in Rosetta was Rosetta itself yeah and then he started to explore their their social engagement their social networks their social infrastructure three generations living in one household for for a a town of 2,000 um civilians at the time there were 22 different Civic societies people were always doing something so that was he then he he got other researchers from his university involved who were interested in Social scientists and they started this whole research field which is so huge now of how important sociology is in determining our health it's it's just fascinating and particularly where you said their diets probably weren't that good because of course we're trying to promote Healthy Lifestyles but what what does that mean you know if you could live by yourself and hit all your ex exercise targets and hit a clean organic no sugar diet sleep eight hours a night right but you didn't have Community you didn't have connections you know who would be better off and I'm inclined more and more to think that social connections are right at the top of the tree I I I actually I believe that that's why I started when I made my list at the beginning you asked me what were the top few things and I said friendship you know that social connection that's friendship that's engagement and we know ourselves if you've had a good night out in my case with the girls with lots of laughter um and you know there'll be a couple of drinks involved potentially very likely um the next day you feel so good yeah and it's been such a good experience so we know this it's intuitive and yet we need to make an effort particularly since Co to build that now back into our daily routine yeah and come back to your yoga that's why it's so much better to go to the yoga class and not do yoga on YouTube on your own all of the time you write about the blue zones M and you know I'm interested as someone who studies aging what is it what is it about the blue zones that you like so much you know what is it that they can teach us and but what is it that they can't teach us as well so certainly from the blue zones a lot that we've um already rehearsed with respect to Rosetta is evident in the blue zones there sort of an exaggerated Rosetta um in that there's a fantastic Community activity there's a wonderful um Talk by a social scientist who went to Sardinia and she was engaging with this old man who was over a hundred he was in his kitchen sitting in the corner and she went to interview him and she said she didn't get a word in edge way there were three generations living in the house um and then the way his kitchen was positioned it was the road outside the house was right beside the kitchen window so everybody passing would see he was sitting there and they'd hop in to say hello some of them he liked some of them he didn't like he engaged with them all but after they were gone you know he would say sometimes can't stand that man or something but but her point was she couldn't get a word in edgeways because there was so much activity in the kitchen it was like a railway station and it occurred to her of course this is contributing to his longevity he's constantly being distracted and variety and engaged so never being left isolated never being left alone at no stage was he alone and for people who've never heard the term blue zones before perhaps it's worth just giv top so there there are five blue zones and they're important they're called blue because when they were first identified by the scientists who originally identified them they marked the zones with a blue marker so it's no more attract more more exciting than that why they're the blue zones but they're they're actually in quite disparate areas of the world I'll tell you where they are there's lalinda in California it's an Adventist group and what's and sorry just to say that underpinning the blue zones is that they have a disproportionately high number of people living to 100 and Beyond with good health okay so that's what it is so Lim malonda and the other one is in ncoa in Costa Rica then You' have Sardinia in Italy and and the Blue Zone why Sardinia is a blue zone is people there disproportionately live longer and healthier than Mainland Italy just beside them Iaria in Greece also an island and okano in Japan now already you you'll think oo they they're Islands by and large not all they're by the Sea and they're all on elevated Heights so they're they're not at sea level but they're elevated now the things that they share in common which scientists now believe of contributed to the exceptional longevity but healthy longevity or I've described to great social engagement and Civic engagement Community engagement but also um their diets are pretty much plant-based that's one thing they share in common I'm not saying that these are exclusively associated with longevity but certainly factually they share this in common secondly no processed foods little or no processed foods low salt mhm low sugar in their in their their foods and they never eat to satiation and actually I have a scientist friend Giovani who was working in Sardinia for a while who's really interested in biological clocks but he's from Mainland Italy and I asked him what did you notice different about Sardinia and he said they they they don't deliberately do calorie restriction but they are calorie restricting he said and fasting they don't deliberately do you know how doing that they just don't eat as frequently and they don't fill the plates as much as as as we do I mean I appreciate this is secondhand now you were chatting to one of your colleagues who was there yeah but is there any more flesh on the bone there like what time were they eating did they have smaller plates did they finish eating early so they had smaller plates smaller plates smaller plates I think that by the way I think it's one of the best hacks you can do to eat less is just have smaller plates so there smaller plates perceive you you have more exactly just from that yes smaller plates predominantly smaller plates and very often wouldn't have a full bre breakfast their their meal would be a lunch and and an evening meal but neither of those were too heavy in terms of food intake and then the other things that they had in common were physical activity as we understand it was built into their day it was never called exercise but they did a lot a walking they walked everywhere when they needed to do something I saw a video of by one of the original scientists who discovered the blue zones of a woman in her mid90s chopping firewood and she had done that every day of her adult life and went out the back and her mid in her mid 90s chopping firewood but this was part part of her routine like Jean Marie calmon it was part of her routine you know what I love about that there's no kind of Fitness tracker on her on her wrist she's not going I need to hit this amount of aerobic a week this amount of strength a week she's just chopping Woods she's getting cardio she's getting strength V2 Max is going up you know it's and you know that's that's the f anything think for me about the blue zones but if we talk about you know exercise for a minute clearly physical activity is important right and um right at the start of this conversation when I asked you if someone was in their 70s what would you say to them if they wanted to say Professor Kenny how can I slow down aging how can I make sure I'm as well as I can be when I'm 80 or 90 one of the things you said was to do more move more yes and I know I've heard you talk about that before and it's something I've become aware of now I'm in my mid 40s but I'm realizing that actually movement I was Chan to people at this family du at the weekends I was saying one thing I'm realizing you just cannot get away with not moving once you stop moving it goes downhill very rapidly and as you get older you got to move more yes and so I'm massively increasing now how much I move and a lot of this is just it's not anything flash it's just walking more just walking an hour a day and then trying to you know just trying to build that in more and more but what I find fascinating particularly as aging is being spoken about and sold to a lot of us in the health space it's a lot about tracking and hitting various metrics and this will be good for your strength this will be good for your heart this will be good for cardio and what you see in the blue zones is that no one's measuring a damn thing right these guys aren't thinking about oh I need to get my resistance in I need to get my cardio in what's your perspective on that cuz that's fascinating that's really really interesting to me so I don't do any tracking or anything because actually frankly it would stress me um uh I I I I think with respect to the blue zones it was built into their natural day so for us how would we do that yes go for a walk but also when You' to nip down to the shop for groceries give yourself the extra 10 or 15 minutes to walk down to the shop or get on your bike I cycle to work all of the time because some some days that's my only way of getting any activity into my day um and and that is very doable you know to there are other opportunities the other thing about the blue zones is they did them in nature so there was a lot of nature to see obviously but also a green nature and I think we underestimate how good nature feels there's also though purpose to their movement right and again I think really trying to go deeper below physical activity you know as you said at the start right you were in an Irish television interview talking about diet and exercise and the the TV present is like oh come on you know it's it's almost boring people have heard it that many times right but we know movement is important and we're well aware that in Western Society now frankly in all societies are jobs are sat down right we're sitting in cars we're sitting on sofas we're on Zoom right so it's harder you know in the blue zones I know a lot of them you know it's part of life you have to move to get food you have to move to get in the garden and pick the vegetables right so it's not as if they've necessarily got more willpower than us it's built into how they function but the thing I've been thinking about rosan is that movement has a purpose to it walking to the shops has a purpose to it standing on a treadmill right or walking on a treadmill or running on a treadmill like if you got someone from a um a tribe and you put them on a plane and brought them here can you imagine what they might think looking at someone in a gym in their L CR on a tread go yeah but they're not going anywhere right and I guess look I get it I'm not saying there's no purpose to it but it's it's quite interesting that the movement has a purpose that lady in a midnight is chopping wood well that's for a purpose for the fire yeah but we're often doing movement without any purpose we're trying to meet a very dry Public Health guideline 150 minutes of moderate activity a week now I understand we need guidelines but I just think son is they're so dry yeah they don't have I don't think they connect with people but you can flip that look at your day and say okay if I want to build walking or cycling into my day what is it about my day that I can restructure slightly so it's not you know as you you know that that fixed interval but just a liquid part a fluid part of my day I've got some people now in in the hospital I'm working in who've looked at that and thought okay the solution is I'm going to walk X you know three quarters of my way to work or whatever I can possibly do give myself that little bit more time in the morning and make that happen I'm going to have face tof face meetings with people rather than Zoom people and make myself go to their office and okay it'll take more time but actually a the face to face is good for both of you you get a much better outcome I think this face tof face interview is better than if we did it by Zoom um but also you're getting you're getting your so-called activity built into the day so there are we can make a difference we can walk to school with the kids in the morning it is feasible for most of us and I think we have to look I just want to acknowledge that some people I know can't walk anymore they struggle with movement they might have an illness they might have an injury they might be in a wheelchair so I want to acknowledge that and make sure we're including them within the conversation and of course if one is in a wheelchair let's say you can move your arms for example then there are movements that you can do in fact Jean Lise kelmore as you as we mentioned when she was in her nursing home you know she did gymnastics every morning while she was sat on her armchair she would flex and extend her arms and her hands and then her legs right oh this is interesting nurses noted that she moved faster than other residents who were 30 years younger right so that's really really interesting to me and I don't know how you do this I have a few kind of um personal movement rules as it were which I really try and apply and I've really tried to apply them even more since I had children so one of them is I will very very rarely take a lift or an elevator I'm always taking the stairs at the airport if I do drive to the supermarket I park the furthest away I can from the entrance rather than the nearest one and my kids now know and actually the great thing is because the kids keep seeing this and they've seen it for a number of years and they know like if we go to the local super market and we've parked we'll always take the stairs there and back with our bags I think once recently I'd hurt my foot and I was thinking oh you know should I get the lift I was looking at the lift and I think my I think it was my son said come on Daddy we always take the stairs and I thought yeah good yeah I'm taking the stairs and so again trying to flip it to go where can we in our modern urbanized let's say Western uh lives how can we put in practices and rules that become our Norm do you know what I mean it's what becomes our Norm when I ever I get off a plane I'm always taking that I've been sat down I don't want to take that escalator and and honestly normally I'm the only person I was just going to say that it's it's we don't think so there are things we can do that are easy that's a great that's a great way to look at it and that's looking at your day and saying okay anything I can possibly do I always take the stairs at at work uh rather than the elevator and it's six flights up and I feel great after it and sometimes I do it two or three times a day and that that I'm thinking well at least I I got that much in um so so we can build it into our days it's a mindset and you said earlier on convenience and since Co particularly with zoom and convenience that's all about convenience as well so it's a different way of looking at convenience and actually flipping it to be to to to our benefit two things about movement that I'd like your perspective on one is sarcopenia the other one is how fast we walk can you speak to those two things because they're they're really interesting and super relevant how we age so sarcopenia is it's a fairly new diagnosis if you like or disorder that we've become aware of and it's an infiltration of sceletal muscles they're the muscles we use for moving um and it's very much AG related um much more prevalent than we thought I mean in people who don't move much 70% have this sarcopenia um and what it is it's fairly toxic to sceletal cells and actually sarop Kia is probably underlying what we know of as Frailty because muscles maybe haven't been moved as much as they were moving because that's how you prevent sarcopenia by keeping muscles moving continuously waking up those muscle cells and muscle tissues to to keep functioning um and as we get older they need to be reminded to keep moving and is this particularly resistance training strength training that we're talking about here or is it just generalized L strength training it's predominantly strength training so why is it do you think that we need guidance on strength training which makes people think about the gym which is off-putting for many people yet in the blue zones from what I understand the people who are living to 100 105 110 aren't really going to the gym no but they're doing strength training because she was chopping wood and they're lifting the cils of of fish that they carry in from the sea Etc and they're you know know they're they're they're um going to the stores and walking back with their bags of whatever they're carrying Etc I mean strength training is it can be part of an aerobic exercise part of a walking exercise it doesn't have to be deliberately weightlifting again your analogy of the treadmill was brilliant likewise if they came and saw people lifting heavy things while Seated on a very strange chair in a gym you know that would have the same problem keep their back straight and then a certain post like the hell is this about so so we can do we can build strength training into our into our daily routine as well we we we um just because of the way our society has evolved we're not really doing strength training that much as part of our day we buy the wood in in the local supermarket and then throw it in the boot of the car when we're and drive home Etc so so that's why we have to focus more on strength training it's been eroded everywhere like even for those people who engage with online shopping which is very common these days right which is very time-saving but a lot of online shops now the driver will bring the shopping in and put it in your kitchen right now I get it not everyone does that not everyone has access to that but it's just another example of how bit by bit any movement that we did have is just being slowly eroded away it comes back to the convenience thing everything we're doing is about convenience but in fact convenience isn't necessarily what's best for us so um do you strength train I do and and I do weights I'm one of those people that they'd be shocked at when did you start doing weights I have always loved the gym yeah I've always loved the gym this was it wasn't that your research taught you things that you thought wow I need to get in the gym you already always I've always liked the gym so I've I've always done the gym not as frequently during the week when I had younger children Etc but I've I've pretty much always done the gym okay so what in your behaviors has changed on the back of your resarch right no the the reveal moment oh it has it has um definitely my diet has changed I oh yes I'm I I I abs absolutely like I wouldn't dream of having a bar chocolate now I mean or anything I try really try hard not to have processed foods now I will I clearly have processed foods so I can't help but but but generally speaking my diet has changed an awful lot I don't eat nearly as much red meat I eat much more fish and much more vegetables nuts and seeds Etc whereas I wouldn't have done that before so diet definitely we'll be back to the conversation in just a moment now many of us struggle to find time to eat all of these incredible Whole Foods that's why I'm a big fan of good quality Whole Food supplements like this one that's been in my own life for over 3 years now it contains over 75 Whole Food Source ingredients vitamins minerals pre and probiotics and can help us support our energy Focus digestion and our immune system ag1 are giving my audience a fantastic offer onee supply of vitamin D and five travel packs with your first order you can see all details at drink a1.com livmore or just click on the link below and now back to the conversation I've reached out to friends I was working really hard focusing on my family um and I hadn't been engaging as much at all and I've reached out to groups of people that I went to school with that I went to college with um and we're now all part of different WhatsApp groups I'm on four different what WhatsApp groups from my past um is that still good WhatsApp groups it's it's it's brilliant because now we're meeting up regularly so one group meets once a month another group meets twice a year whatever but we're meeting up and it's fantastic and the thing about meeting up at this stage in your life is you know there's no baggage you have nothing to lose you're not you know it doesn't matter who you are or what you are you knew this person who in a time gone you shared an awful lot together that's so different from anything you'll engage with with somebody new now and it's very precious and very rich it's a fantastic experience we have a great laugh there's a lot of sharing and if somebody in the group isn't well or whatever they share that and we bolster them in that so that's been that's been something different I don't drink as much so I'm what s of alcohol alcohol so I try not to have I I don't drink at all at the moment and I have very long periods when I won't drink at all how do you find that you live in Dublin right yes how do you find that socially much more socially acceptable now than it used to be when I was going to college or as a young doctor we worked hard and we played hard that was what we did um that is I find it socially much more acceptable particularly with younger people um and younger students and doctors that I'm engaging with the the drinking culture is changing definitely now they may be using other substances but but there certainly I think it's more acceptable now for people not to drink it was interesting when earlier on when in our conversation you mentioned you know what you do in your 20s um really can make a difference in terms of how you age I I was thinking back to my days in Edinburgh as a medical student thinking you know I'm not sure much of what I was doing back then was helping my aging but I guess related to that one of your other core messages is that it's it's never too late no it is nevero never too late to make a change and I think that's a really important message can you just speak to that a little bit because people may go oh yeah in my 20s this happened or in my 30s and 40s I was a career I I was really really stressed we can still make changes even if we've had maybe some toxic behaviors in the past so okay I I'll approach that in two ways um we we we certainly can make behaviors and there have been CH changes that make a difference there have been studies of patients in wheelchairs for example who have started strengthening exercise programs upper limbs or whatever they can whatever they can move and they've had an over holist overall benefit including a benefit in some of the epigenetic activity by doing that so that's that's that cohort so I use that as an example because people would assume oh you know I think very often that that's not something that you're going to modify but you can within the context of whatever your disability you can modify other beneficial aspects including sarcopenia but the second thing is there is um a recent study a randomized control trial where four different interventions were used one half of the study just carried on as ever and the other half of the study modified diet did exercise to 60 to 80% so whatever they could do maximally they did it to 60 80% for 30 minutes 5 days a week would that be the equivalent of let's say a a brisk paace walk brisk Pace walk so you're too breathless to talk got it so nothing simple stuff simple stuff so that's so they modified um uh diet and the diet was very much um a microbiome focused diet so lots of diversity polyphenols carotenoids Etc probiotics and the exercise was as we've discussed but they also uh did breathing exercises a few times a day to modify stress and to calm stress and they also um worked with sleep and invoked different measures which would improve sleep epigenetic markers were measured at the beginning of the study that's the biological clocks I was talking about earlier on and the study lasted for eight weeks and at the end of the study and remarkably I think in the cases which um had these changes these interventions in the8 weeks everybody complied that was the first thing they watch compliance very carefully epigenetics showed that their aging clocks had reduced by 3.6 years isn't that amazing hold on hold on in eight weeks okay in eight weeks by focusing on small changes in our lifestyle small changes that are under our control they could change their biological aging by over three years yes in just eight weeks yes that is utterly remarkable it is now I don't know whether that would be sustained I can't imagine it would because what I'm saying is that there must have been a rapid change over the acute phase while while the systems were being rebooted and then it would the calibration would kind of well it's a bit like you know I don't know if you are completely untrained you you don't lift weights or anything right and then let's say you go to the gym yeah the first two weeks you start you're you're going to start seeing muscles popping out everywhere you know your body is going to start adapting very very quickly and then that can often start to Plateau unless of course you're challenging it in different ways it's it's like kind of biological principle really isn't yes but well and there will be further studies to look at it I mean they just looked at this 8we period but this is the first study to look at an intervention in older male adults uh like this which has shown a change in the epigenetic clock um so there will be other studies looking longer term etc etc and you know you mentioned epigenetic clock right and if I go back to the start of this conversation where we were discussing that 80% of our aging biology is within our control so what's going on with the other 20% is it genes and when you say epigenetics what do you mean okay great question so genes are the 20% epigenetics are the 80% so the epigenetics are the dynamic movable features that are on our genes which are influenced by the environmental factors we've been talking about like diet and like exercise and like social engagement Etc the genes are the fixed DNA which in animal models we can U manipulate and change but not in humans so they're the fixed bits we can't do anything about the genes but the 80% are epigenetics so they're they're methyl groups that are stuck onto the genes that are kind of opening up and closing down and opening up and closing down and they're giving signals to the cells to produce this protein to make this energy in the cell to get the autophagy going which is the the truck that take gets rid of the toxins that the energy produces from the cell Etc so the dynamic piece of the process is what we refer to as epigenetics and we have a way of measuring that and that measurement gives us biological aging of the cell in other words the Vitality of the cell yeah really really interesting so what we can actually do about it you know rosan one of the things I really really liked in your book was in the introduction I'm just going to read it to you because I think it is so so key i' never ask a patient their age but rather base decision making on an assessment of a person's biological age derived from a traditional physical examination and history no two 83 year olds are the same one can run a marathon and the other is a frail nursing home resident so making a clinical treatment judgment is very different for each and not related merely to a number yeah now I think this I think sews together quite a few things that we've been talking about today how much our perception of Aging influences how we age how quickly we age but also if I think about as two doctors sitting here having a conversation we can stereotype patients you know how do you how do how do we report how do we present case history right to our colleagues okay 58y old male um you know two children works as an accountant you know stereotype stereotype literally start to influence how our colleagues are going to hear that story right and I think it's really good for all of us to be aware of our biases right because it's it's like time right this is getting quite philosophical now but it's it's like time right one hour of time yes we can measure it by a clock but one hour of watching paint dry and one hour of having you know abuseful conversation with you who's flown over from Dublin to have this conversation with me in my studio is a completely different experience it's the same one hour but you can't really compare those two one hours because the experience is so different and then the same way this whole thing about asking people how old they are like more and more I think it's highly problematic because we're we're conditioning what we think they should be doing or how much they can do some from an age and we all know people in our lives of the same age who are you know wildly different don't we yeah um that your analogy was fantastic there um we're we're well I I can only speak to my own profession your is medicine we're I think we're really bad at stereotyping um and and and then that's coupled with how we deal with somebody how we manage their condition Etc and their or how we view their prognosis yeah um I now I I don't have solutions for that I don't know how we step away from that I I I say when I'm teaching I say don't ask people their age you know you make a judgment call on your assessment and that's really important because that will make the young doctor actually look at how somebody's walking how how often do people actually measure and I'm always saying right so what what's their walking like I didn't get them up or you know it was late at night or whatever but we need to watch people's Gates make judgment calls on objective measures like that rather than than age but I don't have a solution to that it's just I look it's hard not everything has a solution for it but I think for me the take-home is just be aware of it just be aware of that bias not only for a doctor but when I'm interacting with anyone in my community or friends or their parents you know don't just assume that because someone is a certain age that they will want to do certain things or you know certain things are off limits for example in that in that context it's awfully important to ask people about their past you you get a completely different patient in front of you if you find out what what their what their life was like what they did I mean you suddenly it's like a black and white drawing becomes full of color yeah when you and and easily it makes it much easier for you to contextualize your engagement with that person and how you're going to treat them well that's one of the joys of our job isn't it that's one of the joys of being a daughter is you you get this really intimate window into your patients lives it's it's deemed okay in the patient doctor interaction to open up about things that in other settings wouldn't happen so I would say that's one of the great privileges of being a medical doctor you you get to experience stuff and yeah but we feel so much better you feel as an individual so much better about having shared that with someone I mean I that's why I am passionate about medicine because I think that it affords us opportunities of Engagement that I don't think a lot of other professions do but also passionate about slow medicine and we're losing that so tests have become much more sophisticated much more easily accessible and very often we don't give enough of time for the patient to tell us what they think is going on they by and large will give us the diagnosis in 90% of cases I completely agree so when I was at Medical School in the end of the 1990s we were told by our professors back then that the history is everything yes right or or most of it right so what the patient tells you yes I've been practicing for over two Dees Ates I passionately believe that if you give patients time and space they will pretty much tell you almost everything that you need to know so do I yeah in this era now of you know fancy testing Diagnostics do you still share the same viewpoints oh I I I believe that absolutely and I'm practicing and that that I I get I get virtually everything I need from spending time but it is time and particularly with older patients you have to be prepared to be patient and give the person time however it's harder I find to share that approach with some of the younger doctors that I'm dealing with because you know there's an adrenaline rush when you're a young doctor and you want to get the angio done now and see what the vessels look like you know um so I find it harder and harder to to persuade young doctors that honestly you'll get it from the history because that's not very exciting to them when they' have so many other exciting opportunities you know I very much am drawn to The Human Side of medicine I've very much been drawn to what's the message behind the words of what my patients are saying yes the other the other thing that I would en that we should be encouraging I think and it falls out from all of this is intergenerational transfers of knowledge and sharing so that if you as doctors if you give time to the patient to tell their story you will learn so much but in in life um younger people spending time or having friends who are older and likewise people who are older having friends who are in younger Generations that's not common anymore anymore and it was and and I think that's something else that we can individuals listening to this could make an effort to do because you'll gain from it that's what you see in the blue zones don't you that a lot of this intergenerational not just where they live how they socialize and interact it's not uncommon from what I understand for a 20-year-old to be hanging out with a 70-year-old which has huge benefits for both parties yes that's right on the subject of you know continuing what we just said about the kind of things patients open up about when they're talking to their daughter if the environment is right if the clinician is being attentive for example you've written an entire chapter on sex and intimacy with respect to aging now this is a topic that is not often spoken about it's a little bit taboo for many people to talk about this so my first question is were you nervous when writing it why I guess did you think it was so important to put this chapter in so I wasn't nervous in writing it because I've had a bit of a journey as it were with respect to this topic and the person who opened my eyes to this is a girl called Stacy Lando who's a professor of Gynecology and aging in Chicago and she is passionate about this area and started writing U maybe 20 two decades ago um in with respect to sexual activity and aging um so I'd followed her and her work for some period of time and have become very friendly with her actually um and I I've been really interested in the area and it's what what fascinates me about it is it's almost like it's it's invisible in society it's not disgusted and when I became enthusiastic about it at the dinner table because we always made an effort when the boys were in school to kind of get together and we all had an evening meal together I would say oh gosh start talking about something I'd learned about sexuality and aging and they were right Mom we're gone now we've eaten thank you we're leaving the table I don't want any more no more I could just I think younger Generations find it almost impossible to conceive that there would be sexual activity between you know older persons in the Tilla study 70% of couples are still sexually active and our mean age now is 68 but that's the data for for the from the first wave of the study so it's it's it's common um we it's becoming more discussed it's be we're becoming more aware of it at a societal level we as doctors don't talk to patients enough about it we don't ask p would you like to discuss sexual activity on a regular basis people I think find it hard to discuss it on in individual level so I had no problem writing about it at all because I'm very enthusiastic about it and I think it's something that we need to be discussing more and there are issues with it as people get older um erectile dysfunction is not uncommon now erectile dysfunction can occur at any age and probably one in three as you know from your general practice men have experienced it at some stage or other and there's lots and lots of reasons for it but there are reasons which need to be investigated um even if it's intermittent and it can be indicative of underlying atherosclerosis that's thickening of vessels blood vessels in in older adults when I say older people 50 and above and that needs to be investigated early and you know that Iceberg we talked about that's the process happening down here below the threshold of the iceberg it can be managed early I I think that's a a very important take home for people that we perhaps haven't spoken about enough on this podcast which maybe speaks to exactly what you're talking about about how to boo this topic is but I think a lot of people women and men don't realize that erectile dysfunction could be yeah an early warning sign that you already have thinning of the blood vessels in your heart like the blood vessels exist everywhere you know if there's a problem yes with your erection your heart so if you're having it you should get that checked outs 60s so that's very important to to be aware of that it can be an indicator also of of of early stage diabetes etc etc so it needs to be and then for women vaginal dryness is a huge issue so some of the reasons why older people don't take part as frequently in sexual activity is because it's painful or uncomfortable particularly for women now that can be dealt with so dry mucosal Services we know about dry eyes dry mouth postmenopausally but dry vagina dry vulva is also not uncommon and it can be dealt with with hormone replacement therapy local hormone therapy and gels but there's something that we should be discussing with our patients and I really think as doctors for those age groups we should just ask about it have you any problem with and if there's a problem that'll open up the discussion so how does this relate to aging right so let's say a couple want to be intimate and have sex as they're older okay so that's a desire but in terms of the biology of Aging how does sex and intimacy play play a role oh well this is really interesting because actually um it probably decelerates the aging process decelerates yeah it's really good and are you you know to get really granular here are we talking about the act of sex so intercourse or are we talking about intimacy because intimacy probably both because yes because it's the neurohumoral consequences of intimacy probably that predominate in terms of decelerating the aging process probably through a attenuating any inflammation at a cellular level neurohumoral couple of fancy words there what does that mean for neuro is the nerves that are involved usually autonomic nerves predominantly sympathetic so nerves and humoral other hormones involved including oxy kosin and and the the feel-good hormones we know about endorphins you know dopamine serotonin Etc so intimacy helps to slow down the aging process intimacy does now the act of Aging itself is equivalent to I I did have the figure in the book I think it's something like four minutes on a treadmill but it mightn't even what's sorry intim the act the act of the actual inter sexual intercourse the act of sexual intercourse so that the added value of that over and above the neurohumoral effects of intimacy is exercise and you can get that another way so it's probably probably predominantly the intimacy that is having the beneficial effects so if we just take the big picture look one of the things I I I think has come through from this conversation you make it very clear in the introduction in in your book that there's no one thing that determines how quick you're going to wage or how slow you're going to wage It's a combination of factors right there's multiple things and of course we all live different lives so you know we C we can all get there we can all slow down the aging process I guess by doing what we can within the context of our lives so not everyone is going to be able to do everything now in relation to what we've just been talking about sex and intimacy of course many people will feel that they're not in a relationship right maybe many people may feel that or they are let's say happily married but both themselves and their partner no longer wish to engage in Intercourse right so let's just be really clear what we're saying we're not saying that that's a bad thing necessarily are we you know what's the what's the message there for people so the message there for people of course it's individualized and there are people there are lots of studies to show that there are people who are not sexually intimate who have very good quality of life and are happy with that status quo m it's only if whatever your situation is is causing you worry or stress or unhappiness that it's not good but if you're getting pleasure from whatever the state either you know being single and not having any sexual intimacy being in a couple but not having sexual intimacy or having intermittent sexual intimacy um it's whatever is making you happy and as long as it's not stressing you and making you unhappy that's what's toxic let's talk about sleep uh what is the relationship between sleep and aging and I've got to say one of the things I really really enjoyed reading about was these four sleep chronotypes yeah yes uh I reckon I'm a lion what do you think you are I'm definitely a lion okay yeah from from the description in your book I'm a lion um in fact let should we do you want to go through those I go through them so there are four types there are dolphins lions bears and wolves um and the whole point about this is what what's our chronotype our chronotype is almost our personality type coupled with our 24hour circadian rhythm okay now all of our cells have a 24-hour circadian rhythm and they're all governed by a central clock in the brain called the Supra kosmic nucleus scn um and it basically every single thing about us is governed by that um so that at nighttime when it's dark different rhythms are turned off and different rhythms are turned on and then in the daytime different R rhythms turned off and on that's what's important now our chronotypes which are our sort of personality types coupled with our Rhythm are roughly divided into four groups there's the Dolphins the Lions the Bears and the Wolves Dolphins struggle to fall asleep sleep approximately 6 hours wake up unrefreshed may experience anxiety irritability they're perfect s Lions medium sleep Drive wake up early lots of energy little energy at bedtime I'm almost supine after 9:00 in the evening I'm useless optimistic overachievers go-getters health conscious eat well take exercise and they're leaders right maybe we're choosing maybe we're anyway maybe we like to think of ourselves in this way but I I I think no I'm pretty much a lion I think I'm a lion and then bears are deep sleep at night rise with the sun strive to be healthy team players hardworking easy to talk to and they have good people skills and then the Wolves I married to a wolf um wake up in a haze groggy in the morning I recognize that energy in the evening so he's much better in the evenings tend to miss breakfast come alive after dark creative pessimistic Moody comfortable alone and they they're very often the the the chronotype which is actually aligned with great creativity um and they're also most likely to be addicted than other sorts of chronotypes and by that we mean to my husband is not by the way but by that we mean to alcohol and drugs or or gambling uh behaviors they're very often wolves in their chronotype they're just fun chronotypes they children to be scientifically more or less aligned um um and what what benefit is there for us knowing what we are so the point is that all of our society is orientated towards the the dolphin the lon and the bear but the poor all wolf finds it really difficult CU they come to life later on in the afternoon in the evening and about one in five of us 20% are are wolves to to comply with the timetable that Society sets I.E be in school at 8:00 or 9 o'clock in the morning you know come home at 4:00 Etc go to bed early get up early in the morning they struggle with that that's the first thing the second thing is our chronotypes are very closely aligned to sleep habits as you can see from the description also to food intake so um it's it's important that people who have the latter chronotype we described the wolves are aware that they're more likely to get health negative Health outcomes from negative lifestyle behaviors and I'm sorry if that sounds miserable but it's just that they're more likely to overeat or maybe overd drink um and that's part of their struggle with this impos osed clock which isn't their natural clock um now now you can turn that around and that's the good news um by Bit by Bit bringing the um clock that you are comfortable with as a wolf into maybe the bear or lion clock and by doing that to do that by going to bed consecutive nights 15 minutes earlier but you have to stick to it you have to be very rigid with yourself and stick to that until you kind of get more into a natural clock and that does reset some of the yeah neuro humor we're going to come on to again changes that are very closely aligned with the Circadian rhythm yeah it's really really interesting I think you know knowledge is always a good thing isn't it and at least knowing our Tendencies can be helpful they can help us realize why certain things are easier for us you know I'm you know yes I I'm getting up early a piece of cake it's no problem I love doing it I love getting up I love getting after the day first thing in the morning um where it's not everyone in my immediate environment yes let me put it like that is the same right so in fact you you ra something really interesting you're a lion and your husband is a wolf yes um is there an issue if our partner is not the same chronotype as us you know what once you understand what's going on and you understand that this is a physiological behavioral thing it makes it so much easier and and I think that each to his own in that context and and as you said knowledge is is is very powerful and understanding it makes a huge difference yeah I think it's great I think the thing which you did mention which I just want to highlight is that well first of all Society is set up in a certain way which makes it easier for certain chronotypes but one thing I've found very much so is that yes there may be a genetic kind of template that you find easier but some of that is shiftable you know if you don't expose yourself to light as much in the evening if you bring your eating times earlier if when you see natural daylight in the morning if you can do that first thing you know get up early and expose yourself you can actually I wouldn't necessarily say reset but almost reduce the effects like I know there's some studies I spoke to Professor Sachin Pander about this who's done a lot of the time restricted eating research at the S Institute in in California yeah you know he spoke to me about a study where they took people camping without electronic devices and how it's amazing how so much of what we think on natural bedtime is actually is due to our lifestyles is due to our light exposure at what time we're eating caffeine at what time we're eating our evening meals whereas if you go camping without electronic light you know you just exposed in nature to Natural Light you're eating earlier actually our bed times are often quite different or natural bed times are often quite different from what we think yeah absolutely so that nucleus the super chasmic nucleus it is linked directly to the eye and it responds most strongly to exposure to Darkness or to light and remember it is the mother clock that sets all the other clocks in ourselves so if we are retuning it if you like by exposure to light first thing in the morning and then Darkness at night that will help greatly because that clock is what's attuned to your chronotypes I have an I cite a a very famous um Irish gelic footballer actually in his 90s and when I was chatting to him one day I asked him about his day and he gets up first thing in the morning and he goes outside and takes the air he just goes outside every single morning and gets some some real natural light natural light is very important then the crawler of that is to help with sleep make sure your room is really dark yeah because that's how that's how our biology is responding it's basic stuff that I think needs reemphasizing time and time again because we hear this stuff all the time right but if hearing it once meant that we would change our Behavior yeah well I wouldn't have a podcast you know I wouldn't be writing books you would be writing your book it's like if we just heard it once your diet and movement is important and we did it there would be no need for us to keep talking about these messages around the world so I'm going to put a challenge to you now right so the other big thing is blue light that's really bad for that super chasmic nucleus and certainly I am guilty of this at night I'll just check for one minute my email or my text messages just before I go to bed right go before I go to sleep and you get on and then an hour later you're still trolling through something you have just exposed your poor old nucleus to all of that blue light immediately before it's supposed to switch off all your systems and allow the the systems which kick in to get rid of toxins in the brain to kick in blue light is really bad and it's we should try to abstain from it for about an hour before going to bed I mean we've evolved with familiarity with yellow light fires Etc and yellow light bulbs until very recently blue light is very new to to us the wavelength of blue light is not good for that nucleus in terms of the circadian rhythms so if possible we should try to and that's something else I've changed that behavior is not looking at anything on a computer or on my phone for about an hour before I go to bed yeah I mean it's it's something that's so difficult for people to do they're so addicted these devices well you know I went to a meeting in Barcelona recently A cardiology meeting was leaving very early in the morning like 4:30 leaving the house in the taxi almost at Dublin Airport and I thought oh gosh my phone I've forgotten my phone there's no way I could go back for it I had my laptop so for 4 days I had no phone I was wearing one of those Garmin devices as part of an experiment that one of my research students was doing and my mean heart rate went down from 74 during the day to 66 because I had no phone okay and I was able to in the evenings after the meeting go home and log on to my emails and do it but I was in control I was making the choices there I didn't have any tanging or pinging or light alert s in the background and that just shows how much I didn't realize it before this but how much impact that was having on my cardiovascular system that that is absolutely incredible I'd love to see that done on a on a wider trial because I just I just don't think we we realize the Insidious nature the the way being on the entire time has crept in where it is now the norm for so many of us yes for me one of the most powerful things I can do for my health if and when I remember to do and I've got to say at the moment I'm being really good with it is I charge my phone in my kitchen yeah you know so live in a house I leave it downstairs it doesn't enter my bedroom yeah so by not entering my bedroom it's automatically you know the the friction there to actually go and get it is huge it's just not going to happen whereas if it's there yes it is very hard for people to resist and of course when people say it's my alarm clock it's always like you know alarm clocks you can get for about a f on Amazon you know it's yes or wherever you know your secondhand charity shop whatever it might be right you can get them I I I'm always looking with patience and myself for what are the kind of onetime behaviors that the kind of Upstream behaviors I can do that automatically Downstream changing and I think not bringing your phone into your bedroom if you can yes is such a powerful you're not going be looking at Blue Light you're not going be looking at your email you're not going to beting caught up on Twitter and but of course people find it hard to do and I also want to acknowledge that some people need to be on call for certain things yeah sick family members whatever it might be the way I tackle that because that is something that is real in my life is I have a landline and I've got a mobile and now I know a lot of people these days don't have landlines anymore I do and only immediate family have my landline number yes so therefore I can put my mobile phone off and I know if someone in my immediate family needs me there's an emergency they can get me yes and so again I don't want to say that's for everyone I share that in case there's anything in there that's helpful for someone but these are small things that make a massive difference they're tiny things but it's awfully hard to do I panicked when I realized I didn't have the phone and by the end of the four days I kind of thought do I really have to pick up my phone again and within 24 hours I was right back there and I really noticed it this time the pinging and the background constancy of it and the Expectations by others that I was available you know it's almost it's a terrible pressure that we're putting on ourselves when we talk about the biology of aging and slowing it down what exactly does sleep do sleep is very important I'm tentative about saying this because if people are poor sleepers and you emphasize how important sleep is you know what one thing you don't want to do is is make people more anxious about the fact that they're not sleeping so when we're talking about this we'll also talk about Solutions hopefully that might help people sleep is very important 7 to n hour sleep is what is recommended um as we get older now now our our our clocks our biological clocks not our biological clocks our chronotropic clocks change as we get older so we don't sleep as much with age um so that might be an issue um but sleep is the time when our bodies get a chance to get rid of all of the toxins it's a time when our brain gets a chance to consolidate the memories we've learned during the day and to um store them in long-term memory it's it's a recharging period it was it was was thought that our brains were dormant or almost dead during sleep but then once we had EEG we realized that actually it's the most active period for our brains in the 24-hour cycle it's working really hard to get rid of toxins to to be refreshed and ready for the next day and people who have shorter sleep are more likely to get cognitive impairment and dementia in the longitudinal studies and they're more likely to have inflammatory consequences like poor immune responses to viruses or indeed cardiovascular disease so sleep is very very important so you know like it's always hard with sleep isn't it as as you say there will be people with um young families yeah uh young children who are struggling and and often they can hear that and go oh man you know I'm sleep deprived I'm knackered what what can I do you know I'm going to speed up the rate at which my biological clock ages and I think we have to acknowledge that we have to recognize that it is tough It's really tough for adults for many adults now who don't have help around them you or night shift workers you know people who have to work at night I mean the evidence that that night shift is not good for your health is quite strong um but we have to we have to have workforces who work at night we've worked at night for a significant proportion of our of Our Lives um so what are your top tips some for people so what what can we do about it exercise during the day helps okay but not immed imely before you go to bed because what exercise does is it triggers your whole autonomic nervous system it gets it all Lively and active and awake and it's going to be awake when you're going to bed try and so try and have a chilling period for a period of time um maybe an hour before you go to bed read a book or do something to de-stress meditate if possible make sure the room is dark we've said that before some people find a hot bath or a hot shower helps before sleep there are foods which are not good and there are foods which help so food any foods which contain tyramine tyramine is a precursor to noradrenaline noradrenaline is one of the transmitters involved in the sympathetic system and that's the fight ORF flight system so any foods which contain tyramine will keep you awake at night and what are those they are the like blue cheeses dark cheeses um um preserved Meats um BN sauce anything with additives in it like that not good foods which contain tryptophan which is a one of the um proteins evolved with serotonin which is a relaxing um if you like compound are are good and that would be foods such as cottage cheese um almonds the teas we know about um Believe It or Not fatty fish like salmon there's a great study in 95 men in each cohort where they at salmon before going to bed three times a week versus a group who just at the same equivalent of protein but taking different Meats with it and the salmon eaters their sleep improved over a peri significantly over a short period of time so Omega oils all they help um so that's essentially saying for that particular group that was studied eating fish in preference to meat if people are choosing to consume animal protein you're saying fish seems to be better in terms of promoting good sleep as opposed to meat in the evening yeah and I've given a whole list there's quite a large list of things which and the other thing to be aware of is foods that are high in fiber may impact on sleep at night because they just require more activity from the gut to break down the foods so there are things for people to be aware of um and I and if if there are some technologies now which are EV emerging and you've probably discussed this on your on your show before which which may help some people and they're worth trying pink Noise White Noise what they do is they it they influence the rhythm of of the brain waves during sleep the non rapid eye movement waves and the rapid eye movement waves and may help and there are also Technologies which actually marry the noise with the different slow waves which is what you want to get slowave acity which may be of benefit they've been shown to be of benefit in some studies and not of benefit in other studies so my own take on that is this could be very individualized but definitely I think worth trying and for those people who are in that stage of life where let's say they're struggling for example young parents young kids they're not sleeping particularly well at the moment in terms of a message of Hope for them let's say you go through three or four years of sleep deprivation whilst your kids are young it's certainly something that I did my wife did right um how detrimental is that or is it just one of those things that happens in life at a particular time but as soon as you are able to and if you can get back on track with your sleep then like from a from an aging perspective is that okay does it first of all the vast majority of people do get back on track to whatever their normal sleep rhythm is that's the first thing and secondly there's very little evidence that that period of time has a negative impact particularly on longer term consequences on the aging process I think a lot of the core messaging in your book and from your research is that it's not about the one-off things it's about what are you doing you know 80% of the time by and large exactly you know month after month year after year is that a fair reflection that's a very fair reflection it's about consistency and it's it's a it's a it's the long game you know particularly if you if you start the game early yeah I got to say we we've been chatting for a long time and there's so much more to talk about you you've you've really have written a wonderful Boy Ag proof it's it's so succinct it's full of science and research but it's also very very practical so I can see why it's proven so popular with people I did want to cover this I'm not sure we got a time to go into it in detail but there's one chapter on purpose and laughter which is really interesting any kind of Topline thoughts on those two things you want to share well first of all laughter is really important and we know this intuitively because we feel good after but it releases a whole lot of neuro hormones which are which are very important for us and that's actually used therapeutically now I'll just cite one study which I find amazing is that people who had had a heart attack who who were exposed to laughter therapy were 48% less likely to get a recurrence of a heart attack now that's a massive figure so so that's the benefit so just carry that moment and know that laughter matters laughter is a way of us to bond socially so it's all tied up with this whole social engagement it plays into what you said about friendships before like if I think about hanging out with my best mates what do we do well we do lots but one thing we're we're always doing is laughing when we're together right so you know again that speaks to everything that they're not all in isolation they all all of these behaviors absolutely interact and you know kids laugh 400 times a day there are studies to show this toddlers laugh 400 times a day but we we laugh so much less as we get older so let's introduce laughter as part of it laughter really ister is the best medicine and then purpose purpose is terribly important and and actually my message about that is anything can have purpose you know if making a shopping list and go down to the shop to get the Stu that's purpose you you can create purpose in your day we need to feel purpose if we feel feel we have no purpose or or almost unwanted or unnecessary and we come back to this whole concept of social isolation of people over 70 and cocooning people over a certain age if we feel we have nothing to contribute we have no purpose that's really bad for us from a physiological perspective yeah one of the things in that chapter I particularly liked and it's something you just echoed now is that you can find purpose in anything it really makes me think of what we were saying about attitude yeah right like you know the going to get the shopping can be seen as a chore oh man I got to go and get the shopping now or whatever it might be but you can actively reframe that you know maybe a bit of gratitude maybe a bit of oh wow I I get to go and actually get the food now that feeds my family or feeds me and my partner whatever it might be and I know it sounds very soft and very simple I honestly believe that you can train yourself to have this attitude you can train yourself to look at the positive side of everything even washing the dishes and and purpose is tied into control and we need to be in control there are lots of lots of studies showing that in an employment hierarchy those who are in control that is one of the most important contributors to good health in those individuals compared to those who maybe are often in the bottom of the of the hierarchical chain and have no control they have to do what they're told Etc so purpose is part of that purpose if you can reframe it um gives you control over your life it is your purpose and you're framing what your purpose is therefore you're in control and that's really good for us biologically yeah I love that I got to say I've so enjoyed our conversation I I enjoyed meeting you a few months ago at the Book Festival and speaking with you and having all our panel discussions I've really enjoyed reading the book uh just to finish off what would your top tips be for people to say Professor I want to slow down the rate at which I age what can I do I would say build an even stronger friendship group keep moving and move a little bit more every year not less more every year and be cautious about your diet love it thanks for coming on the show if you enjoyed that conversation I think you are really going to enjoy this one about what and when to eat for longevity this is probably the most effective diet that's ever been promoted on the planet this protects our body against Decay disease and the root causes of Aging is not only good for you but will make you live longer

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 213,000

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: 7WRvjarInps

Length: 127min 47sec (7667 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023