The Keys To Aging Well

i can't stress this enough you know recovering from injuries recuperating don't let those muscles tighten because the way our body works is to compensate and tighten somewhere else or overuse another muscle it's really important to have those muscles working efficiently welcome to doctors pharmacy i'm dr mark hyman and that's pharmacy with an f f a r m a c place for conversations that matter if you want to learn how to age well if you want to learn how to avoid the ravages of diseases that we get when we age and also be vibrant and healthy and live well you better list this podcast because it's with my long time friend functional medicine colleague leader in the field of functional medicine dr frank littman and we have been buddies for a long time we've been running this road for a long time and then we were just joking at how old we're getting we used to be young whippersnappers in our 30s and 40s and now we're 60 and 65. so we're doing okay we're doing okay uh frank is really an incredible pioneer in the field of functional medicine integrative medicine and what he likes to call good medicine it's just good medicine he's the founder of 11-11 wellness center and the chief medical officer at the well in new york city he's a sought after speaker and offer of six best-selling books how to be well the new health rules which is awesome young and slim for life revive and total renewal and his newest book which we're talking about today is called the new rules of aging well a simple program for immune resilience strength and vitality well thank you frank for writing that book so i don't have to and i really appreciate your digging into this topic of aging because it's something that's interesting me more and more every day as i get older as we all are uh so welcome to the podcast thank you thanks for having me on yeah we are getting older but it's uh thank god for functional medicine and what we've been doing it just it helps a lot makes it easier you're right i mean functional medicine isn't about treating disease it's about optimizing function and creating health and when you do that you're learning how to turn on all the systems of the body that regulate everything that matters as we age in a positive way and that allows disease to sort of not have a place to hang out and it's a very different approach to disease and to aging and we're going to get really deep into it today because there's so much research on longevity and there's been so much research on healthy aging lately far more than you know even 10 15 years ago it's just astounding so the goal really isn't necessarily to live as long as possible although i want to live a long time i'm going for another 60 years uh the real goal is to live well to be vibrant energetic and you know my my definition of health is basically being able to wake up in the morning do whatever you want if you want to go for a horseback ride you want to climb a mountain you want to sit and read a book in a rocking chair whatever it is that makes you happy that's what uh healthy aging is so how do we how do we get there frank how do we do this well you know as you said i agree 100 you know it's about getting up every day and enjoying your life and doing what you want to do and being able to do with being able to do what you want to do without struggling and the the whole concept of functional medicine or optimizing function or optimizing the human condition is really how you age well you know i think there are little tweaks you make say you're 60 i'm 66 and we've been doing certain things for many years and as you get to a certain age as you get into your 60s i think you need to tweak a little bit more to actually affect these longevity genes or these nutrient sensors or whatever you want to you call them which actually affect your aging and help you just increase this health span as you're talking about or optimize your health span as you increase your lifespan and you know what i find interesting and i've always found this with functional medicine is a lot of this ancient wisdom is there it's how do we tap into this ancient wisdom and now as well as you pointed out there's more and more research that's how do we you know use this modern research and tap into this ancient wisdom and combine the two and and that's how you age well that's right and uh it is pretty simple you know i think to emphasize what you just said there's a difference between your health span and your lifespan your lifespan is how many years are alive your health span is how many years of your life are healthy so you could live to be 90 and your health span could be 60 and meaning you start to go downhill and you become decrepit and end up in a nursing home for 20 years that that is not the way we want to live uh you basically want to live fully until the day you die and then drop dead of nothing and i think that's what i'm looking forward to yeah exactly and that's you know i think that was the impetus of the book especially you know i now have a grandchild and i want to you know enjoy my grandchild growing up and be healthy and vibrant and be able to play with and that was sort of the impetus of you know what else can i do i mean yes you know i eat well i exercise i meditate you know you know sleep is very important so i started getting into the research and what are these little tweaks that i can do as i get older and and so that was why i wrote the book because in a way a selfish uh journey i wanted to see if it would help me and then you know as i do with my books i try and make it simple for people because i think a lot of this research is very complicated you know when you talk about the mtor and the am a pk and a lot of these complicated concepts you know my modus operandi is always how do i make it simple for people to understand so they can take these nuggets and make changes in their lives they don't have to understand what mtoy is although we can talk about it they don't have to understand that you have these longevity genes that may be affected by certain you know of what you do people just want to know what to do and how to do it and that's sort of what i try to do in the book you know your books are very good because they're they're very clear they're they're they're simple but not too simple they're very practical and they're laid out in ways that are in digestible chunks that allow you to just absorb the information and i i'm actually a little jealous because i i love those books and i think they're laid out so beautifully and and you you parse it down to just the essential things and i like to write you know way too long books so much i want to explain but this is such a practical set of tools for living not just aging well but living well so you know it's the same thing do you want to age well or be healthy now or live well or get rid of disease it's all the same so what what do you think the biggest factor is when it comes to aging that controls our aging process um well i i don't know if there's one biggest factor but the things that i've changed you know we probably live very similar lives we have the things that i've changed now in the last couple of years have been one i eat less and i do that mainly by fasting a lot i mainly you know do time restricted eating which in a way forces me to eat less i have two meals a day instead of three meals a day so i eat less i really pay attention to my my sleep like more intention than ever um which i think is important um and sorry just to go back to what i eat and and the the big change the other big change i made in my diet as well as eating less and time restricted eating i eat a little bit less animal protein which we can talk about which i think is important but as you get to my age also losing a sarcopenia losing muscle mass becomes important so as much as you need to decrease animal protein you know you you need to be careful about decreasing protein too much because you don't really lose muscle mass which is a big issue with what people suffer with as they get older so there's all there's all this fine tuning that needs to be done and it's not um you got to do x y and z you got to you know alter it according to your needs and how are you coping with with the aging process um and then the last thing i think is you got to be able to have a sense of humor you've got to be able to laugh about it i just can't do some of the things i used to do and you know it is what it is it's not you can't fight it and you've got to do the best you can but you have to have a sense of humor about it otherwise you know that's not a good thing if you can't laugh about it yeah if we take life too seriously it definitely creates age and you know it's interesting when you look at the studies on aging the the defining characteristics of a lot of centenarians people have to be 100 years old is their resilience is their ability to bounce back from life's punches we all get knocked to our knees by loss by divorce by illness by this by that the difference is how do we respond to those challenges and are we resilient or do we end up going into a downward spiral of depression and despair and dysfunction and to me that that's a really interesting thing it's your mindset it's your belief it's your sense of optimism you know optimists live longer even if they're wrong absolutely and yeah no it's a hundred percent correct and that concept you know as i said earlier it's about you know mixing this ancient wisdom with modern science one of the first things i got taught by my chinese medicine teacher here from corngold and harriet brownfelt was health is about resilience how do you build someone's resilience you know it's not about how well you are but how well you you you respond to the knocks in life to diseases it says and they always stress this concept of resilience i agree 100 with you it is about being more resilient healthy aging well is about being resilient uh you may not be you know i can't run for instance i don't jog anymore because i got a gammy knee but i walk and i cycle so you adapt yeah you know you and that's with everything in life and i think your attitude is important too so food is a big deal in terms of health and in terms of aging so what is the biggest mistake people make in terms of food when they eat if they want to live a long healthy life well i think people eat too much especially as you get older i think eat people eat too frequently i think there's more and more studies showing that you know time restricted eating or fasting whatever you want to call it has very positive effects on our metabolism you know there was a study that just came out said you you know doesn't help you lose weight well you know that that's maybe the the case but i think you know and i've been monitoring this lately in our practice we're doing more longevity stuff we've been monitoring markers biomarkers for for health and aging with people who doing whether it's time restricted eating or doing fasting mimicking diets or fasting whatever way they're fasting but we've been finding that their metabolic markers change positively which is very interesting now most people do lose a bit of weight but for the most part time restricted eating or only eating in certain periods of fasting definitely has a positive effect on on aging so i think eating less is important low carbohydrate diet i mean you came up with this brilliant term called the pagan diet which i think is absolutely brilliant um so thank you for that well yes for people for people listening the way i came up with that was i was on a panel with frank and another doctor was a vegan cardiologist and frank was more focused on paleo at the time and they were arguing and fighting and i was in the middle like a ping pong ball and back and forth i'm like if you're a paleo and you're vegan then i must be pagan and i sort of sort of laughed as a joke but then i realized it really made a lot of sense because they have far more in common with each other than the traditional american diet the only difference is where your protein which is animals or beans and grains that's it everything else is the same exactly so i think you know if we want to look at a diet that was probably the best would be a variation some type of pagan diet i'm not against animal protein but as you get older i think you need to eat a little bit less animal protein probably i mean we this is what the the research is showing that the the amino acid composition of animal proteins in particular meat is such that it inhibits one of the or stimulates one of these biomarkers that you don't you know these nutrient sensors or longevity genes that you don't want to stimulate as you get older when you're young when you're up to 40 or so and you want to get stronger and build muscle then eating animal protein is good but as you get older it may be a problem has it hasn't hasn't um hasn't this research shown that actually as you get older that you need more protein to improve your muscle synthesis which is really the thing that makes us age faster we're talking about it before but sarcopenia this loss of muscle results in a whole series of consequences including inflammation and pre-diabetes and abnormal cholesterol and and all kinds of issues that lower hormones increase cortisol and decrease testosterone so it's losing muscle is a very dangerous thing as you get older and it's really why people end up a nursing home so how do we actually have enough but not too much because it seems like we need more as we get older right so that this this is probably the most complicated issue as we get older how much because i agree 100 i do think we need to increase animal protein but you as you get older you actually need to increase protein so how do you increase plant proteins if possible without increasing too much carbohydrates because you want to still keep your carbohydrates down so you know the way i get around it i actually use i have a protein shake and i use p protein and i put collagen in yeah because collagen actually has the amino acid profile doesn't have as much leucine and methionine so it's less of a problem then you know i won't have as much steak not that i don't have steak tonight we're having steak it's not that i don't have animal protein but i have cut it back a bit and maybe i eat a little bit more fish and a little bit i have collagen a lot of the time i have collagen almost every day so i think that is a fine balance and it's not there's no simple answer here and i don't um i think it's a big problem not having enough protein as one gets older but it also seems to be a problem of eating too much animal protein for sure for sure fun and what's enough you know we we have these giant steaks and big hunks of meat and what we really need is about 30 grams to stimulate muscle synthesis which is about the size of your palm now if you're shaquille o'neal it's a bigger piece if you're five years old it's a smaller piece right so you can use your own body as a sort of a measure of how much protein you need but i think that's a very simple right that's why your pagan diet i think is brilliant i i love that content i think that sums it up yeah exactly actually it's funny you mentioned the pea party because i created something called the pagan shake which is essentially pea protein pumpkin seed protein and collagen grass-fed collagen protein so it's exactly what you're talking about right and that's what i do i think that's a way of getting around it to be quite honest so that's great that's brilliant yeah fantastic so so let's talk about this idea of of time-restricted eating because it it it's a and there are many ways to quote fast there's what we call intermittent fasting which is maybe not eating for a whole day or three days or a week sometimes there's time restricted eating which is only eating with a certain time window there's fasting mimicking diets which are eating less calories for a number of days to stimulate the same pathways there's ketogenic diets they all do a very similar thing so what what is the biology of how this works we know that these these things do work looking at animal studies human studies in terms of improving metabolism and the longevity biomarkers but what are we seeing and how these methods actually work and what is the most effective what should people be doing in order to take advantage of this new science right so what they're doing i mean the way i explain to patients is um which i think is is i mean it's doing they're doing a number of things but it's triggering your body's own self-cleansing mechanisms after you haven't been eating for a certain amount of time 14 probably more 16 hours your body's self-cleansing mechanisms kick in which is very important with the aging process because one of the the factors in aging is your body is once and it goes back to functional medicine your the functioning of these systems don't work as well so the the fasting actually starts putting that that autophagy system into play so i think that's probably one of the most important aspects you know it also will improve mitochondrial function which also decreases as we get older so the the the consequences of fasting or what happens in your body are often the opposite of what happens as you get older so that's why i think it's so important why which way of fasting is best is the way that you'll do i mean whatever works easiest for a person is what i encourage and i think the easiest one for most people is to eat dinner earlier and eat breakfast later which is what i do and what i recommend now if people want to do a day of just water fasting or three days or even more that's great that's a little bit more complicated and and most people won't do that but if you can do that that's fine there's also this fasting mimicking diet where you do five days a month of very low calories and no animal protein and low carbs and you know we've actually created some shakes or my health coach has some recipes for people if they want to do it themselves you can buy the prolonged um shapes as well you should bring out some shape i mean it's a no-brainer to bring out a five-day program of because it works i mean we've done it on patients that actually there's no question you get the same results whether you do fasting mimicking diet for five days you do intermittent fasting we're seeing positive results across the board with biomarkers and different types of fasting so i don't think there's one way i think the way is to find the way that you will do and that works easiest for your lifestyle yeah you know people people say dr hyman what do you eat for snacks and i'm like i don't i think snacking is the worst invention snack foods are typically really unhealthy and they're a modern invention and we used to not have to be eating all the time and that's the problem we're eating all the time and i think you know just to underscore what you said about these different approaches to time restricted eating intermittent fasting fast and making diets is they activate a set of mechanisms in the body that improve blood sugar control to get rid of belly fat that increase muscle synthesis they build your bone density they increase testosterone that increase brain function and cognitive function that improve your stem cell function that help your immune system and they clean up all the debris in your cells it's called autophagy which we're saying sort of self-cleaning mechanisms uh there's mitophagy as well that comes from from the same process so these are these are things that we actually can take advantage about without actually changing what we eat now if you change what you eat you get a double benefit but but these are very powerful things that we should be paying attention to in the science and i think you just feel better you feel more energetic rather than being sluggish from eating food all the time right no and you nailed it thank you you you know all those mechanisms are what actually start you know their function decreases as we get older it becomes harder to to keep your blood sugar under control um the muscle synthesis all you know brain cognition and brain function so fasting is like a magic pill um or eating less and um is a magical so uh to me that's yeah probably the most important thing you can do it's true hi everyone hope you're enjoying the episode before we continue we have a quick message from dr mark hyman about his new company pharmacy and their first product the 10-day reset hey it's dr hyman do you have flc what's flc it's when you feel like crap it's a problem that so many people suffer from and often have no idea that it's not normal or that you can fix it i mean you know the feeling it's when you're super sluggish your digestion's off you can't think clearly or you have brain fog or you just feel run down can you relate i know most people can't but the real question is what the heck do we do about it well i hate to break the news but there's no magic bullet flc isn't caused by one single thing so there's not one single solution however there is a systems-based approach a way to tackle the multiple route factors that contribute to flc and i call that system the 10-day reset the 10-day reset combines food key lifestyle habits and targeted supplements to address flc straight on it's a protocol that i've used with thousands of my community members to help them get their health back on track it's not a magic bullet it's not a quick fix it's a system that works if you want to learn more and get your health back on track click on the button below or visit getpharmacy.com that's get pharmacy within ffarmacy.com now back to this week's episode and you know you mentioned the meat thing and i think it's still to me it's still the science is still controversial you know i talked to my friend walter longo who's one of the leading longevity scientists and he's from italy and he's the guy who developed the fasting mimicking diet he's been on the podcast and he and he said you know this woman emma morano who lived to be 117 years old and she was anemic when she was a young lady and her doctor told her to eat three eggs a day which she did for 100 years literally and and then when she was in her 90s i think she was getting frail and weak and her doctor told her to eat a pound of meat a day and she did and she went from 90 to 117. so i wonder you know how how true is this and if your other uh lifestyle factors are good if you're eating animal protein and getting adequate muscle benefit from it as you age you know where is that fine line in in terms of animal protein well that i think this is the dilemma not really a dilemma but i think we all need to you know find what works for for our bodies but i think it also um points out a factor that in western medicine we always try and look for the one thing it works and everything works together it's a co no we have this complicated system and the mtor issue maybe one small part of it so i think you've got to find that balance i i agree i don't think i mean i know vegetarians who get cancer you know the the idea of animal protein causing cancer vegetarians get cancer vegetarians you've got to find out what works for you and once again i'm not like trying to blow smoke up there but the pedant concept the pagan diet i think and finding your own type of pagan diet i think is is uh if we if we're looking for a solution not that there's a solution yeah the pagan died in terms of you know intimate fasting eating within that content a time restricted eating a pagan diet is the way we all should be eating yeah and you know i think the other thing that um that is important i've noticed for aging is muscle and uh you know i think we we have a neglected organ which is our muscle that we don't pay much attention to and and this condition that we get as we age and it's inexorable like if you don't do something to stop it aggressively you will lose muscle so you could be the same weight at 65 and you are 25 but your body be twice as fat and it literally looks like a rib eye marble steak as opposed to a filet mignon which is what you want for your muscle with no fat rippling through it that's all related to our diet in in the lack of exercise and so the two things i want you to talk about is the other side of the coin because protein you need and you want to get enough but not too much but it's actually sugar and starch to drive this aging process and then that combined with muscle strengthening and building as you get older seems to be some of the most important factors so can you talk about those and how they relate to aging sure well sugar and starches are the devil there's no i mean that you know it's not even a debate you've got to get as much of that out of your diet as possible um so you you know you want to eat the protein is is a harder one how much protein you eat and i think as you get older maybe decreasing animal protein increasing bit of pot plant protein but still keeping those carbohydrates as low as possible or the the sugars and the starches right i think the muscle issue is interesting you know because i've been doing acupuncture for so long and i really got into the functioning of the muscles it's not just about building muscle you want those muscles to work efficiently and what i see a lot of especially as we get older and we have injuries certain muscle groups tighten up and when certain muscles tighten up and they don't fire your body compensates and starts using other muscles so let's say you have a tight hip or you have an ankle problem your your your back muscles have to work more and then you start getting back pains and then maybe it work goes up to your shoulders so not only do you have to improve muscle mass or watch the loss of muscle as you get older you've got to watch that functioning because as we get older yeah muscles tighten and the fascia tightens that that thin layer that surrounds the muscles like you know when you cut open a chicken and there's this fascia around the muscles that surrounds all our muscles in our body and that as an acupuncturist and and paying a lot of attention to that for the last 30 years i've seen becomes a problem especially as we get older and as we injure ourselves and especially as we get older and we end up injure ourselves we don't tend to to recover as well so it's really important when you do injure yourself to get some body work to get some acupuncture to get those muscles working efficiently again and not just letting injuries sit there and not treat them so i think it's not only building muscle mass and not losing or not losing muscle mass but it's improving the muscle efficiency and that's keeping those muscles long and and and limber and watching that the fascia doesn't tighten that's a really good point frank because uh i've had back issues my whole life from back surgery when i was 30 and recently had another back surgery and now i'm getting treated by this physical therapist who's going into the fascia and rewiring things and then giving me exercise to do that compensate for the inactive muscles that exactly we were talking about and it's i it's been only like three days of working with this person and i feel like a different human being my body feels limber lighter opener it's pretty amazing so i i mean not everybody can access that but it's it's there's ways you can do it yourself with foam rollers and other things to really to really help okay so let's talk about something that and in the book i talk about foam rolling i think you i just have to mention foam rolling because i think that is you know a lot of people can't afford going to some body work who does deep tissue work but foam rolling is sort of the closest you'll get to going to someone who can do that i really i can't stress this enough you know recovering from injuries recuperating don't let those muscles tighten because the way our body works is to compensate and tighten somewhere else or overuse another muscle it's really important to have those muscles working efficiently it's one area of functional medicine that we didn't really get into in functional medicine we talked about most of the other organs but we didn't really talk about the functioning of the musculoskeletal system yeah i think that is really important well it's definitely one of the nodes on the matrix which is structural but if we don't get into it enough i agree and actually we're talking about building a whole course on a structural module so i think that's very important all right let's talk about something that is a little abstract but is it really central to aging and that is impacted by our diet light by exercise by environmental toxins and it's something called our mitochondria and we've talked about that on the show a little bit before but it's it's really important so what are mitochondria why are they so important in aging and disease and how do we improve them because it seems to be the central feature of aging is the dysfunction and the loss of mitochondria right so the mitochondria are just the energy power houses in the cells and you have many in in all our cells and as we get older the number decreases and their function decreases so optimizing their function and trying to increase their number is one of the most important things you can do for aging and interestingly enough most of the things we've been talking about improve mitochondrial function or increase the number we'll mention yeah because we haven't but it's a low carbohydrate diet or or you know fats or what the mitochondria thrive on fasting is particularly good particularly good for mitochondria exercise in particularly high intensity interval training is really good for it strength training as well so sleep a lot of the lifestyle changes you know to me the mitochondria are what we in chinese medicine talk about chi we talk about the energy and how do you boost chi to me the mitochondria are the western equivalent to qi that's your body's energy and all these changes we talk about actually work with the mitochondria what one of the things we we haven't talked about and which actually are works seems to work well or stimulate the mitochondria is um this concept called homesis which is i love that concept what does that mean what does that mean i love that concept so homies means sort of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger basically ah that's perfect definition that's the best definition i've ever heard that's a little bit of stress is actually good for the body you know you know chronic stress we know is a problem and creates all these problems and and it will help won't help you age well but a little bit of stress homesis is good and that's what fasting is fasting is physical homesis it's a stress it's a little bit of mild stress on the body and your body's uh response to that and and we talked about resilience but your body's response to that will be in is a positive response which stimulates all these factors that are good for aging so we talk about fasting we talk about a little bit of interval training where you push yourself a little bit more than usual um going from hot to cold so even just having an ice cold shower after a hot shower you know i love going from a sauna i've become obsessed with my sauna going from my sauna jumping into some freezing cold water so you know temperature extremes are another way of of stimulating homesis um i love that i love that i love i love going for my steam or sauna right into an ice bath and that's good for aging i mean that's good that's homie so anything that's a little bit of stress on the body is good and actually what's interesting i remember years ago at jeff bland talking about this or someone at one of the functional medicine con conferences um with phytonutrients a lot of the homesis is really good for plants so plants develop more antioxidants and and um protective phytonutrients to protect themselves from whatever they have to deal with to to survive so spraying them with herbicides and that doesn't actually help them develop these phytonutrients to protect themselves which actually end up being good for us too yeah so the first time i heard about homesis was years and years ago at one of the functional medicine con conferences where someone i think it was jeff who talked about the importance of homesis on plants and developing you know phytonutrients that would then benefit us yeah you know it's really important to understand this idea because when you look at for example organic versus conventional plants or even wild plants even versus organic plants the wild plants have way more by hundreds to thousands of times more antioxidant potential phytonutrient compound and they also taste better and what's interesting is that flavor goes along with phytonutrients so the flavor profile of a food is directly related to the nutrient density and to the phytochemical content so if you go to a garden which i did the other day in a friend of mine's garden and you pick a really ripe tomato that's just ripened on the vine you stick it in your mouth and it's an explosion of taste and flavor and phytochemicals that is so different than these cardboard store-bought tomatoes that don't taste like anything so that's really the power of the little stresses and i think the strength training the hit interval training the the the fasting the phytochemicals these are all ways to actually improve this um i want to get into some tweaks that you you have in your book that are really really great but before i want to talk about this idea called our epigenome and how that plays a role in our cells age and how we deteriorate so what is an epi genome what what is its relevance to aging how do we deal with it what can we do to to help fix it right so this is you know once again one of the basic concepts that's come out of well that hasn't come out of functional medicine but what functional medicine treats that you know most of our genes we can change or we can manipulate in a way or up regulate or down regulate so for instance you know i actually just did a whole genetic test i've got terrible genes i knew i had terrible genes um you know i have the genes i have the epo e for the gene for alzheimer's i've heart disease genes i mean my genetic profile is terrible but whether i get alzheimer's and heart disease and all these diseases of aging is determined by how i live my life these lifestyle factors how i sleep how i think um how kind i am to other people how you know optimistic i am and what i eat how i move my body all are going to affect most of those other genes or the genes that we can affect to or up regulate or down regulate to affect our aging so aging is probably less than 20 genetic i mean there's obviously a genetic component where you can't change those genes i've got those genes oh no i don't know about those genes but i've got enough genes that i know that i can change you know just because i have the epo e4 gene just because i have some of these high genes doesn't mean i'm going to get it yeah i'll probably i'm losing it a little bit you seem all right you seem all right prank you do okay my heart may not be as good but that sort of makes me you know want to just be more careful because you can change how you age you can change you know the the progression of of these diseases and i think it just all comes back down to these lifestyle changes that we all have to make and you know sleeping is one of those things that i think is really really important and and you know we don't talk enough about it although more and more people are starting to to realize importance of sleep um but you know how you move how you sleep how you think how you eat when you eat all these factors affect this epigenome these malleable genes that actually can be up regulated or regulated and affect how we how well we feel and and how we age i think it's really an important point frank because you know you mentioned you have these predisposing genes but they're not predestined exactly not predestined to get these conditions and what most people don't realize is that you know 80 to 90 percent of our chronic disease issues are not driven by genetics they're driven by what we call the exposed zone what our genes are exposed to and how those genes are expressed and so if they're exposed to environmental toxins if your microbiome is not healthy if your diet's crappy if you're not exercising if your mental set your mindset is not optimistic and focused and positive it literally can change the expression of your genes by all these factors and that's the beautiful thing about functional medicine it teaches you how to optimize the function and the expression of your genes to improve their functioning and also to reduce the ravages of aging and i i'm very optimistic about you frank because i didn't realize you were 66 i thought you were like 56 i mean i know you're kind of older than me but you don't look it so something's working and i think for two old dudes we we're doing all right i'm 60 or 66 it's it's it's working and i think that people don't understand that what we see often as aging in america is abnormal aging it's not it's not really uh how we need to age that we can age vibrantly and healthfully and be alert and focused and energetic even right up to the end and i've seen this in many people i mean i mean this guy was 95 years old the other day he had a girlfriend that was 20 years younger than him she was a young spring chicken at 75 and he was just running around the room and i'm like what's up with you how do you do this he says whatever i did yesterday i just do it today if i played single sentence yesterday i'd do it today and i think he just kept living his life and not mentally uh succumbed to the idea of aging and i you know i think you have to be more cautious careful you have to be more alert to what you need to take care of yourself but i think you know we have so much potential to stop and even reverse the ravages of aging and i you know i noticed this to myself you know i i am because of covet i was locked at home like everybody else i'm like well i'm not going to not exercise and i got a zoom trainer and i really never had done weights before because i was you know i was running around the road i was i didn't i don't like it i don't like it hurts it's uncomfortable i'd rather go for a bike ride you know play tennis and and i got serious about it and within a very short time i noticed my body started to change i literally put on 10 pounds of muscle my my it was like i was an incredible transformation and it was just in a very short time so i think we have the potential at any age to stop and even reverse these effects and what i love about your book frank is that you you have very simple tweaks that have a profound impact on healthy aging so talk about some of these tweaks and i can sort of trigger you if you need to but i just think you can really yeah i'm so i mean i mean you talk about things like physical intensity cold showers we talked about rolling out your fascia magnesium saunas mushrooms uh sunshine sleeping uh sort of various kinds of simple treat tweaks or tricks they're not really tricks they're just science-based interventions that if we stack them have accumulated benefit right so there's so many simple things we can do i think um actually just to get back to what you said you know i'm also starting to do some weights now i've always resisted weights too you know i love riding my bike outside and doing yoga and stretching but i sort of always resisted weights and i'm starting to do a little bit of weight of you know weight training now and i also find it actually quite helpful so so you know i'll concur there i think you know i'm going to start back to the fascia and watching injuries because what i've seen so often in so many people you know because i see so many patients many times people are exercising a lot and something happens they injure themselves and then they don't recover properly and then they stop exercising or they don't exercise as much so you know i encourage everyone when you do hurt yourself just take care of that injury so it doesn't limit it may change the way you exercise in future you know i can't run because of my knee but i ride a bike so you know you you do want to continue exercising but don't let that injury um uh just stick around or you you you don't let it fester you need to treat injuries um so if you can't get bodywork a foam roller can be really helpful i think going out getting outside early in the morning again you know getting some fresh air and some natural light first thing in the morning is a really good thing um i find it helps people sleep at night in other words getting your body into some type of rhythm i'm also obsessed with rhythm you know maybe because i saw when i first started doing medicine in south africa when i worked in the bush and there was no electricity and i saw how people lived with the rhythms and cycles of life they got up when it was like they went to bed when it was dark they ate what whatever was local and grown locally and they didn't seem to have a lot of the chronic diseases are seeing in the cities i think trying to keep a rhythm is important if you can try keep it with the seasons and and with day and night it's important so you know if you go to bed um try wake up early and get outside and try to go to bed at the same time every night so try and create some type of regular schedule i think that's really helpful um you know i'm boring now me and my wife go to bed pretty early it's been great with a little grandchild because he goes to bed even earlier than us probably the only person who does um but if you can get into some type of rhythm you know going to bed at the same time waking up at the same time in the morning and getting outside and getting some fresh air and some natural light that's really helpful um i do think uh trying to incorporate some form of time restricted eating is helpful for most people especially as you get older than 50 it's a good idea um keeping active during the day so you don't have to go to the gym you don't have to ride your bike but you know get up and move around move your body i just you know you just want to move your body um um it's amazing how inactive we are you know when you look at an average day i've got a ring it's called an aura ring and it tells you how many hours of inactivity you have and i'm like holy crap how about eight hours of doing nothing and sitting in my doing podcasts or reading a book or working on my computer and i just you know it's really important to to move right and you know i've found that since covert i've made that much more you know especially doing more virtual sessions with patients and not in the office i'm actually getting up in between and going out which is good so i think that's important and i think the you know the little things we talk about you know don't take yourself so seriously have a sense of humor about aging being optimistic um being kind to others and yourself i think kindness compassion i think these are all really important factors in aging yeah and then finally having you know having a sense of purpose and some meaning and that sense of purpose may be your job it may be your family it may whatever it is find something that's meaningful to you you know it could be volunteering at a non-profit but i think getting involved in something that's important to you is is really important and and then finally find a tribe that or a community that you relate to that supports you and that you can support so you know i think yes obviously eating we talked about eating and sleeping and exercising all important but it's these non-tangible things that are important and it's the little things we do on a daily basis the ordinary things we do on a daily basis that have an extraordinary effect on our health and our aging and that's these little things we talk about you know having passion and for life and having meaning and and having a community so you know don't just think it's all about diet and exercise which is really important a lot about what's going on up here yeah absolutely so um in your mind yeah you know these things are are key and you know there's so much bad stuff going on i mean there's so much negative it's so easy to get caught up in the negativity of today and uh yeah uh well you know frank wait you were talking earlier i just reminded me of this study i read in the journal of the american medical association this year which was very amazing which showed that longevity was related to your sense of meaning and purpose yeah so even even the science is showing that just being connected to something bigger than yourself is so so important and having meaning and purpose is so key uh so frank let's talk a little bit about supplements is there a role for supplements do they really work there's all these longevity supplements out there it's a waste of money is it is it a good idea tell us what's the deal on supplements well i think they work i take it yeah i do think they work i mean look i'm not going to i think it's a bonus raw rather than essential because they tend to become expensive but i do think supplements are helpful to optimize function i really do and you know i am i take the you know the regular supplements that that i will take with it vitamin d which i think is essential for everyone you know i'll take my fish oils but um but there are supplements which i think do affect the mitochondria and do affect the aging process am i sure about that no i'm not sure but you know i'm not going to wait for the signs to confirm to to to make sure it's happening i'm going to take it um so i mean the thing is when they're lower risk they're low risk there is a cost to it but the benefit potential is there and and i think that there is good evidence that these things do affect some of the biology of aging yeah me too you know i take narco enzyme 210 i take nicotinamide nucleotide riboside so which is like the hot one in nab right in a dnd and nmr there's you know everyone's pushing their supplements but i actually do think they were i mean i'd take it it's hard to say if it's making um a big difference because i'm doing all these other things too but but i take it particularly as we got older it makes a big difference you know i see you know people who are more nutritionally deficient as they age their diets aren't as good they the absorption is not good and there's really good data that shows you even a multivitamin in an older patient reduces the risk of disease and hospitalizations infections and all those things so particularly in the time of covid we all need to upregulate our our nutrient levels um so what about testing are there are there tests you can do in functional medicine that are different that help you determine longevity what what do you recommend well yeah i don't know if they're different i just do a few more biomarkers you know we we do like the boston heart or cleveland clinic has one too right i mean we do an advanced lipid panel which i think can be helpful and then we do you know we do insulin growth factor we do interleukin 6 we do a couple of other inflammatory markers um but for the most part we're doing um most of the markers we've always done we've added maybe a couple more we're doing more obviously hormones measuring hormones and then there's a wonderful genetic test that we've started doing the 3x4 genetics which i find by far the best genetic test started by a woman it's a south african woman who is a functional medicine oh yeah person um what's her name again but anyway yael i find that we we've been finding because it's the only genetic test that i've seen that actually sort of works in a functional medicine perspective and puts a lot of the how do these genes work together and what you can do to help these combination of genes so it's a it's a pretty helpful test that we've been doing as well now then you know the the other tests you know you know measuring your biologic clock and telomeres i don't know about those tests i mean they've been promoted and um you know we starting to play around with it i don't know how important that is i think peop some people like to see these things which is fine but you know my philosophy hasn't changed from that perspective it's more about making these lifestyle changes um and and you know whether you want to do this extensive testing is fine my experience has been that these lifestyles these factors we've talked about have been changing people's markers i mean yeah you can measure it over time so you can and people like that so if you want to actually do a you know a test and then measure it three to six months later you see the changes which is actually you know that's quite um encouraging for people so from that perspective i think it can be helpful but these things aren't necessary i mean the things that are necessary are the pagan diet and then what you know looking after your sleep and you know moving your body and having meaning all the things we talked about now whether you want to measure all these factors can be helpful because it can help you fine-tune things like the genetic test can say okay your liver function you may need some more of these nutrients because the way you're processing hormones or toxins is not so good or you you have more propensity for inflammation or or your brain health may not be as good to take this i do think the markers can be helpful in sort of taking it to the next level but not existential yeah i know i think i agree there are supplements not replacements for everything else um so you know foundationally all the things we talked about are really important lifestyle diet sleep exercise maybe a little supplements but there's new things on the horizon that are for healthy aging that people are researching talking about can you share some of the promising things that are ahead that you might be focused on sure so um as embarrassed i am to say is there's a drug called metformin which is a popular you know it's used in diabetes a lot which seems to be showing positive effects for aging too which go beyond just keeping your blood sugar down it seems to affecting this mtor one of these longevity genes or these nutrient sensors seems to have some positive effect on aging my concern with any drug metformin including included is you know what are the side effects metformin seems to have a relatively you know low profile of side effects that can affect absorption of of some nutrients b12 in in particular can use some gas also can affect your response to exercise but it's sort of relatively benign um so that's one that i find interesting there's a drug called rapamycin which i'm definitely not recommending yet which some people are taking but because that rapamycin you know shots don't emptor yeah emptor but um so you know those are the two drugs and then some people are using peptides i don't really know enough about peptides to to recommend them i find them quite intriguing and interesting um i just don't know enough about them yet and i think you know there's so much research going on too there's going to be you know products coming out but at this stage you know it's really what we've been talking about metformin especially if you tend to be pre-diabetic as you get older is something interesting i'm going to explore it a little bit further i'm a little bit hesitant at the moment yeah i'm cautious about it berberine is the natural equivalent of metformin i've been starting to take berberine now because that has similar effects to the performance um but that's as far as you know i i don't do the crazy stuff in the biohacking you know the biohacking world has been very interesting because that's a very masculine approach to um aging but i think we've got some good stuff there i mean some of the the by hacking guys i think go a bit too far a little bit more on the the sort of more gentle side of of the the pushing it yeah yeah but but there's a lot yeah there's a lot of ways of wild west out there people should be cautious of people using stem cells exosomes or stem cells exactly i i think there are there are promising things they're not quite ready for prime time yet i mean metformin is you know i believe that if you if you focus on the lifestyle and dietary things you can probably achieve most of the same benefits and what i worry about is like if people say i'll take a statin and i can eat a mcdonald's it'll be fine for my cholesterol that is just a bad idea so frank your book is just fantastic i encourage everybody to get a copy it's out it's called the new rules of aging well a simple program for immune resilience strength and vitality that's what it looks like it's a fabulous book i i just think it's also a beautiful book it's digestible and there's so many brilliant little snippets of wisdom that are easily applied to your life every day and it will help you not only live longer live better but also even if you're not old it's a great it's a great book for just optimizing your health whether you're 20 30 40 50 60 it is it is a good manual for your life so i encourage you frank to keep doing what you're doing and we've been on this road a long time you know and as functional medicine practitioners we do see the power of these methods to really transform people's lives when nothing really else does so i i'm planning to be 120 i don't know where you're going frank but i i'm uh i'm i'm really i'm really interested in this you're right we're both getting older so we're way more interested in aging so you can hear a lot more about it uh and thank you so much for everything you do with frank and thank you mark thank you and they can learn to learn more about frank's book go to dr frank lippman that's dr frank lippman with 1p.com at forward slash books uh and and learn more about frank and his work it's really tremendous and if you love this podcast please share with your friends and family on social media leave a comment tell us about how you've figured out ways to age well and push off the ravages of aging which we're trying to do and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and we'll see you next week on the doctor's pharmacy you

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 27,008

Rating: 4.8907366 out of 5

Keywords: frank lipman, dr. mark hyman, doctor’s farmacy, age well, aging, longevity, muscle recovery, foam rolling, fasting, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating, keto, ketogenic diet, supplements, vitamins

Id: GXv71L8jrmU

Length: 57min 42sec (3462 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020