The Secret to Aging in Reverse Revealed by Harvard Professor | David Sinclair

there's a memory of being young in all of our bodies that we just have to tell reset take a pill and we've become like Deadpool and we can regrow things we don't know how many times you can press the reset button and restore the hard drive it could be once we've done that maybe it's 100 times oh my gosh [Music] but it gets even crazier when we can actually change the genome we don't just read it we write it there are drugs on the market most people may not realize we are changing people's genetic disease we're curing genetic diseases we are living in the future man this is a revolutionary conversation for me welcome back to max out everybody the man to my right I chase down today because today's show is for me everybody and you guys get to listen in because we're going to talk about anti-aging we're going to talk about living longer we're going to talk about living better and the man to my right is the foremost expert I think on the spinning Earth today in this area Harvard Professor he's one of Time Magazine's most influential people he's been knighted in his home country of Australia and he's kind of an unbelievable combination of part scientists part businessman and an unbelievable best-selling author International best-selling author of this book lifespan everybody that I want you to get why we age and why we don't have to and that's we're going to talk about today is you not having to age and how we can help you with that so Dr Sinclair David thank you for calling me David thanks Ed for having me here going forward it will be David so please thank you combined IQ very high today guys and he's holding up 85 percent of it so Let's uh let's talk first off about because this heavy note-taking probably for the audience today I want to talk first off about aging and how we measure it because you know I'm not sure you know if we're going to not age or we're going to reverse our age there has to be a calibration method and I'm wondering when you do that is that is that telomeres because I know you talk about the Horvath clock also in your book right how do you measure aging well we used to just look at people and that person looks kind of old that person doesn't right then we had telomeres which was all the rage in the 1990s actually telomeres aren't the whole rage anymore there's a new way of measuring aging and it's this Horvath clock you mentioned okay so the whole bath clock has revolutionized our ability to design ways to slow down and in my lab accelerate aging we can measure it I could take your blood today maybe I should take some back to my lab and I could measure your actual biological age so forget about candles they're irrelevant I could measure this Corvette clock and I could tell you not just how old you are biologically but how long are you going to live and when you're going to die when you're going to die yeah very accurately it's it's scary but this clock actually tells us I think about what the process of Aging is why do we age in the first place so it's not telomeres is sort of old school now is that what you're saying well you know I I try not to just be black and white about this but telomere is certainly not the whole story of Aging anymore so in general then we're going to get very specific why do we age how do we age well so this is what's in my book which is I I've kept bottled up an idea about aging and we studied it for 10 years and kept it secret and it all just flowed out onto the page in the book and we have all this research to back it up what I'm proposing is that there are lots of different causes of Aging telomere losses and other is a main one there's stem cell loss senescent cells so zombie cells that accumulate all these things we actually as a field I'm a scientist uh first and foremost we declared victory over aging about 10 years ago we said there are eight causes of Aging let's put them in a pie chart we're done we know what causes aging and I'm there thinking that's great but what causes those things right is there a unified theory of Aging okay and that's what I've got in the book it's called the information Theory of Aging and it can explain I think why all of those things happen so instead of building nine dams or eight dams on eight tributaries we may be able to go all the way up and stop the main driver of what causes us to get old so I want to go through a couple of things by the way the book by the way now has an audio version that's been updated as well and I really recommend you all if you have the book is go get a look at the new audiobook and listen to that because there's a whole new thing in the book there that he's added as well but I want to go through some of the basic things you've covered because some of these things I do and I'm wondering if they're still effective and I'm wondering if I shouldn't be doing them anymore but one of the things I was prescribed I have a touch of arterosclerosis in my life and one of the things my cardiologist was concerned about was inflammation in my body and so I was prescribed Metformin yeah in an effort to reduce inflammation in my body and I'm wondering all of your thoughts on Metformin because it's at the kind of the it's part of the book and it's also part of a lot of the conversation about anti-aging glucose regulation and those kind of things yeah so the thing with metformin that everyone needs to know and we'll know if they get the book is that there are three main ways to slow down aging three genetic Pathways I work on one pathway called the sirtuins which we can talk about later but there are Crux of Defending against aging there are two others one responds to how much protein you eat and the third one responds how much energy chemical energy is in your body that's metformin okay so metformin will trick your body into thinking there's not enough energy and it'll respond and actually make your body we think fight against aging right and particularly type 2 diabetes so metformin is a drug that came out from the French lilac it's originally a a natural molecule but it was tweaked a bit so it's now a drug you need a prescription but but I'm shocked are you still taking it for him I'm not ah well all right we need to talk okay but I'm not an MD but why should we talk should I be still taking it I don't make any recommendations in general but but what I do is I take it you do uh yeah I don't leave home without it can I tell you why I stopped and you can correct me so okay I stopped because I started to read at least anecdotal evidence because I do lift weights I'm an athlete I'd like to think of myself as an athlete even though I'm pushing 50 years old um that it may have some negative implications on athletic performance and or recovery all right so now we're really jumping in fast all right here we go all right so I'm waiting for today for a long time sorry yes metformin what it does is it it inhibits your mitochondria it makes your body think you don't have enough energy and your body will respond accordingly and you become what's called insulin sensitive you'll have low glucose levels in your body and it'll prevent type 2 diabetes right what we also know from studies of 10 000 up to 100 000 people in some studies people who take Metformin seem to be protected not just against diabetes but against heart disease cancer Frailty and Alzheimer's that's all good that's what you find in a an anti-aging or longevity pill okay metformin is great because it's as far as you know pretty safe it's been taken by probably 100 million people around the world it's on the list of the World Health organization's list of essential medicines for Humanity so it's it's it's pretty good you're not you're not going to die from it it's very rare consult a doctor as you did but I was surprised that your doctor put you on Metformin even though you didn't have diabetes that's very rare the reason was in um I should I I won't say her name but I think she's sort of at The Cutting Edge of this and she really does believe that one of the greatest risks to my health or anybody's health is developing type 2 diabetes great so your doctor knows a lot more than most doctors correct most cardiologists it's Lipitor and Crestor and uh you know don't eat a steak exactly and and their View and I train a lot of doctors and work with them but their view is unless you pass the threshold of a disease we won't treat it but metformin will prevent diabetes as well and get your glucose levels and actually the best predictor of longevity right now besides this clock is your blood glucose levels you want to keep them down okay you do not want to go up and I was going up and up and up so I started taking metformin a couple of years ago you do and my ostensibly my biological Age based on different tests not the clock but the other tests went from 58 down to 31.4 it's incredible and you look 31.4 and I look 58 so I want to I need to get back on that format I was I was just I was joking with Ed that I needed to wear this padded suit so that I I don't look such a wimp you're looking great thank you but let's get back to the muscles so this is called hypertrophy muscular hypertrophy which is great I would love to look like you and I just don't have the time to do it but but it's it's great plus you you'll be much stronger when you're older which is key to living longer bone density things of this all of that's great and actually one of the the things we like to say in my field is the best way to live a long life is to hang on to the handrail which basically means don't slip and break your your femur yeah or you're done for like my grandmother right but let's get into something really important a lot of people aren't sure about metformin because it there were two studies just this year that showed that it slows muscle hypertrophy right but here's the good news okay and I know the world's experts in this and I've talked to the authors of the paper so here's the Scoop all right first time awesome right you're getting this this is awesome what they found and this is also work that's not yet out so let me give you the scoop okay the patients that got metformin and those that didn't they all got bigger muscles and they all got stronger okay one group got slightly bigger muscles that was the group on Placebo and those on Metformin didn't get so big but when they when they did the strength they were equal wow so they're all strong wow they may not look as good okay so I think it's a vanity versus longevity decision okay but I think there's a way around this as well now we're on The Cutting Edge we don't know for sure but what I do is when I work out I stop taking metformin let my body recover for a couple of days and then I go back on it oh and you know Peter attia did the good doctor who who studies this we both agree that you don't want to be taking the same medicine every day necessarily just as you don't want to work out every day you need to give your body a rest okay so you know we cycle so in between workouts you might say if someone works out let's say Monday Wednesday Friday you might suggest that the work out days specifically they not take something like metformin on those days that's what I did okay that that's based on everything we know in the world right now okay and then by the way thank you for that you guys first off I'm so grateful that you exist because no I I we're talking about this off camera too that this whole field that you're in is moving so quickly and you're at The Cutting Edge of it and I think every person listening this in regards to they want to live healthier they also want to live longer but as they live longer they want to be able to they want to I've already looked at it differently I look different I love my dad but I look different at 48 than my dad did at 48. you know I'm saying I think athletically physically my strength level and I think what's possible with somebody like you like right now if someone did all the things that are in your book if they put the right formula together not only do you think they can not be aging but what's the window of time they might be able to reverse their aging but I know that's by person by person but in general how many years can someone reel off their life or add to their life rather well right well so someone like me doesn't typically exist because they're scared of what my colleagues our colleagues will say and it's pretty rough for a scientists to be out there talking about things that are really on The Cutting Edge and projecting into some extent speculative still correct right right right based on evidence but speculative but but how selfish is it for me and my family right to reap the benefits we're all scientists in my family we're on similar programs how selfish is that for me to keep that bottled up I want to tell the world what I'm learning it's wonderful and we're in a world where now everybody can learn as fast as I'm learning and what I'm doing and that's that's I feel an obligation to do that but what about uh talking about the the metformin the story couple two and a half years it says it takes off or adds to so if you're it can right yeah theoretically if you're 50 you're now 47 and a half if you're on a the normal dose of Metformin is what they're saying but we don't really know we don't know what it's going to do to to diminish your ability to get type 2 diabetes what that could do heart disease all the inflammation in your body because of these glucose spikes correct well so here's the most important take home message is that only 20 of your longevity and how you'll feel when you're 70 and 80 and 90 is genetic okay the rest is in your hands wow isn't that that's liberating yes I mean you can sit on the couch you can eat potato chips you can not exercise you can eat whatever you want but you're minimizing your your potential right and what we all have in our bodies what we co-discovered in my lab is that there are genes that control how long we live we work on these Pathways and what we've discovered is they don't just exist they respond to how we live and what we want to do is Trick our bodies into thinking there's adversity biological stress not emotional stress of biological stress okay so now we understand why does exercise make us healthier and live longer why does being hungry make us live longer why do all these things eating good foods it's because they're turning on these body defenses these longevity genes that we work on and that's the Revelation they're in all of us but we they become complacent unless we trick our bodies into getting this feeling of of adversity adversity so it's we call this hormesis okay formosis is what doesn't kill you makes you live longer and that's the reason you should be running and getting out of breath that's the reason you should be eating plants that are being stressed themselves you get the benefits of those molecules that they make for their own benefit okay we call that Xeno hermesis terrible terrible word but anyway it's good to eat stress plants like uh that's where I read red wine is good for you we believe it's full of those molecules thank God thank God yeah so Resveratrol you'll remember we yes where are you so let's go there you're famous for that and um I got the feeling lately yeah maybe you're not as married to it as you once were or am I incorrect about that and then for those of you that are taking Resveratrol is it also not true that if you're not doing something that can make it bind to something so that it can be absorbed by your body do you mind talking about that for a second because people just kind of willy-nilly take these pills I think to some extent and think they're doing something so a do you still feel strong about it as you did it one time and B could you tell us how to properly ingest it sure thank you all right so I also dodged the question not intentionally of how far can we slow and reverse aging you did I'm sorry you're right I let you dodge that well I'm so fascinated I I worry because people say oh how can you say that right right so this is my best guess is that you can alter your lifespan at least a decade by how you live your life maybe more wow and my father is is an example of someone who took Life by the horns changed his life he's super fit he's now 80 he's living life like he was 30 still he's got no diseases he just put his name on a wait list for his dream car I'm thinking a wait list you're optimistic that is awesome I started a new career really this is the future for all of us if we look after our bodies and do what we think is the right thing love it right uh so so that I think the 10 years is is 10 years is at least based on current science something you could be doing right and actually every four years longer we live we gain another year just because the trajectory of the science how it's going and we're going to talk about crispr a little bit later where we might be able to interrupt heart disease and some other things here going forward that'll just that'll extend life oh my God it could be three decades but but go ahead go on Resveratrol if you would so Resveratrol is this molecule in red wine that is thought to protect the French from high fat foods and we discovered that it activates an enzyme in the body called cert1 one of these sort of unprotective enzymes that's activated by hunger and exercise okay so Resveratrol we discovered as the first molecule that could mimic a caloric release calorically restricted diet and exercise this wasn't an excuse to just sit on the couch and he'd pop a pill because we actually found that if you take if mice took Resveratrol and exercised and ate a healthy diet they lived the longest okay so it's a combination but you want to keep these enzymes active because as we get older these defensive enzymes like cert 1 they go down in their activity okay so there are two ways to keep cert ones Super Active besides living the healthy lifestyle that many of us know about and is in my book page 302 303 unbelievable jump jump to the because some people they want they just want the facts right just want the list right um but Resveratrol is a remarkable molecule because plants make it to survive because plants have certain longevity enzymes as well okay but when we ingest that we get the benefits right so you said I was not as hot on that yeah what happened was yeah okay what happened was all of us who've been blessed to be successful in what we do have gone through really hard times and I had my moment the worst time of my life in 2010. so I'd spend what was that do you mind saying what it was yeah sure so I I had discovered Resveratrol activates anti-aging Pathways we've shown that an extended lifespan and everything from a yeast cell to a worm to a flight or Mouse protected them against a western diet and even extended their lifespan when we gave it to them every other day that was great we developed drugs that were showing efficacy working in humans to treat the disease called psoriasis yes which is inflammation on the skin everything was looking like we were going to be the first people to make a drug that treats aging on the market and then a couple of companies for reasons that we can only speculate came out with their science and said it's all wrong everything David said is wrong I remember that it blew up yep I remember that it trashed the trials and I was the Pariah of the scientific world and it was tough I spent a week in bed I couldn't get out of bed it was real depression and I was really angry with the world I'll admit because here I am trying to do my best right I'm putting my life aside I'm putting my family aside to help the world like you do yes well maybe not just family but you know we want to know exactly what you mean and it was and then everyone said haha you're wrong screw you and it was tough but you know you my passion is to leave the world a better place yeah this is your calling so I couldn't stay in bed no that that to me is worse than death is just sitting there hope everybody just heard that yeah it really is you got to have my mission is to to change the world in this way so got out of bed and spent the next three years testing whether what these companies were saying and I'll say who they were Pfizer and Amgen both didn't didn't agree with us but what I did and the Silver Lining was it forced us to do even better science and go back and test our hypothesis very very rigorously and we put out a paper in the journal science which is the best in the US best in the world probably showing that we were right that Resveratrol really was activating this enzyme and wasn't what the naysayers were saying but you know what in the media there were crickets no one cares about to come back right they just cared about now right uh so what we've done over the last what is it now seven years is we've been testing this even more rigorously okay I'll tell you what we've done okay we've created a mouse we can genetically create Mouse with very specific changes we changed the mouse by changing one amino acid one part of this protein so you don't mind if I get a little bit technical in here do it all right please so the enzymes are basically machines that change other proteins okay and so at one it it's the traffic cop it tells the body to to fight diseases fight aging okay but to do that it has to move it has to change things and what it does is it it has this active enzyme activity in the middle that's its chest but this arm is the activator this is the gas uh sorry the accelerator pedal okay so the accelerator pedal is pushed by Resveratrol Resveratrol come in I get it stick here yep push the accelerate and now the third one enzyme is fighting against disease okay now we figured out that you can block this step by changing one little thing give it tennis elbow can't bend the elbow now Resveratrol cannot work anymore got it so we made a mouse that was unable to bend this arm and activate so the accelerator pedal we took it out of the system the mile the mouse is otherwise normal it doesn't have the accelerated pedal though so if if we're wrong and we give resveratal to these mice they won't live longer on a high fat diet Western diet if we're right residual won't work at all okay and we got the second result 100 and that's as close to proof that we were right in the first place so what I'm hoping is that'll reinvigorate the field and we'll get those drugs back into those clinical trials okay but I haven't been sitting on uh on my hands I've been working on other molecules that seem to have a lot of promise and maybe even better than the original Discovery such as well we call them NAD boosters or nads some people call them nads so there are two ways to activate these these protective enzymes one is the accelerator pedal yeah the other is the gas that comes in through here and if without either of those you don't have hyperactive system okay and as we get older we lose this NAD yeah so it's estimated that by the time you're my age 50 and you're getting close you have about half the levels you did of NAD when you when you were young when you're 20. so of course your defenses against aging are going to be about half the levels that they were so there are some ways to to keep your NAD levels relatively High okay one is to exercise lose your breath work out lose your breath you said that a couple times yeah you want to lose your breath so not walking cardio lose your breath cardio yeah that's the best way at least based on the animal studies we've done in some human studies okay and then the second is uh you want to be hungry at least part of the day and that'll raise the levels of I mean by that like so so do you believe in intermittent fasting or do you I do you do I do we used to restrict calories the whole day yeah in these what we call calorie restriction and that was the Paradigm for about 70 years actually and this the last 10 years we've realized hey you don't need to always be hungry you can actually eat a decent meal or two okay but don't eat three meals a day don't always snack because being hungry is what turns on these protective enzymes and so I've now shifted my life to eating small meals I now what I do is I skip breakfast as best I can yeah eat a very late lunch or even forget to eat lunch and then eat a normal dinner this is more and more so that Dr Ian Smith that I told you was on my show his book was about intermittent fasting but that but the Aging benefit was never discussed we discussed the health benefit although I'm sure Ian's aware of it it's not something that we discussed just put a loop on Resveratrol what about the way you take it is it important I was reading that you thought something about taking it with either like a yogurt or a milk or something it can bind to why does that matter well so there are clinical trials over the last 10 years based on our research and some have failed and some succeeded and the main reason that they failed in my view is that doctors who don't understand Resveratrol have just given the pill with water and Resveratrol is the equivalent of brick dust it's like eating sand right we're here on the beach if you eat sand you're not going to absorb it okay but if you crush up the sand and mix it with things you might absorb a little bit that's what we do with resveratrol and what I do personally is I have this amazing yogurt that I make myself okay and I mix it with that and it dissolved beautifully and I have a couple of spoons of that so if I take if I'm taking a pill could I take it with a yogurt is that what you're suggesting that would work in your stomach I have powder in my basement so I just spoon it in okay I take about half a gram to a gram okay awesome but yeah you got to do that and so the recent studies that have actually included Resveratrol with a meal have succeeded in lowering blood sugar and there are actually now I was just at a meeting in Washington DC where they have beautiful clinical data showing that it works like metformin to reduce blood sugar so this blood sugar concept because that's my cardiologist is a big thing too this is just going to be huge throughout everything that we're learning about the body and keeping it stable and not aging and also not doing not even turning on certain Can it can inflammation the body speed up turning on a genetic code that's already in there absolutely yeah yeah that's a really good good point the inflammation is is a problem because if you have inflammation it'll also shut down these defenses against aging and that'll lead to more inflammation and just accelerate aging you know we know that we get to about 40 and we're still pretty good we get to 50 and we're starting to feel a little different looking different that's absolutely true and then you fall off a cliff yes that's this positive feedback of inflammation shutting down longevity genes and vice versa okay and it just because I have found that those things we're going to talk about them later like my vision other signs of aging really started to accelerate in my mid to late 40s approaching 50. I mean a massive different so I didn't interrupt you there but it's certainly something I've seen evidentially like my own experience as a human I feel myself aging now at this point yeah so there are things you can do to slow that down right and things that we're doing that slow and reverse aspects and then technology that can reverse all aspects okay let's keep talking about that wait um everybody there's one of these shows my audience loves this just so you know so there many of them are driving right now they're going to go back this is watch it again or listen to it again and you're taking all these notes so I want to go through a couple other specific things we've talked about Resveratrol we've talked about metformin there's sort of this cocktail sort of that you suggest to some extent I want to talk about growth hormone for a second what are your feelings about growth hormone both um taking an exogenous version or doing things that might uh if it even works of growing your own and wise growth hormones so important or not important yeah so in my field of Aging research it's it's debated tremendously and most of the the debate comes from studies of animals and what we find is that animals that have low levels of growth hormone live longer so there's this low levels live longer right okay but there's something that my colleagues don't appreciate and that is a lifelong treatment of or lifelong existence with low growth hormone what you end up with is dwarfism so small animals okay due to a lack of development live long oh wow it's also by the way knowing that the smaller you are you tend to live longer that we know that from pet dogs if you've ever had a large dog you know the problem so the reason is that during development uh we're actually slowing down the clock and you actually the clock is changing when you're young as well but what what I believe anyway is having read thousands of papers on this topic is that growth hormone isn't bad but it won't make you live longer okay because what what it's doing is some benefits it's going to improve your body's metabolism this can help you grow muscle but what it's not doing is turning on the longevity genes which is what you need to do okay the kind of things that I'm doing to get those active as well okay so what's exciting to me is maybe you could take growth hormone but then trick the body into thinking that it's lacking growth hormone and that you're exercising tremendously how would you do that trick it yeah well what I do it is the combination of the metformin yes uh with the Resveratrol and there's then an NAD booster which I take those are the three main components by the way I don't recommend anybody do anything I'm a PhD not a doctor right but I I feel an obligation to say what I do and the and by the way one of the things there's all these companies out there suggesting that your name's on them but you're not involved with any particular uh company that's NAD that they could purchase right now sorry no no I'm glad you mentioned that out because if you look on the internet you might think that I have 10 companies there's even a Sinclair lab somebody started a company with my name on there goodness so I don't do that and there's a very good reason for that okay it's because I need to be able to give you my unbiased scientific opinion and if I if I have some favorites why would you trust what I'm saying no good point Okay so we've got the growth hormone answer okay uh my age uh you find a dude looking like me that dude may have had an interest in hormone replacement and I'm wondering your thoughts on that so I've had people say to me as your hormones in your body diminish you are aging and so for that reason in the anti-aging movement particularly testosterone therapy for both men and women now is a pretty highly prescribed and recommended protocol as their own levels drop what are your thoughts about that yeah I think that makes perfect sense to me okay there are two points one is that maintain what you've lost I think it makes perfect sense testosterone and growth growth hormone okay but don't think that they're going to make you live longer that's not the solution okay you I think you need to combine that with these other things that will put your body in a defensive State because testosterone and growth hormone they're going to do the opposite they're going to put your body in the growth reproduction State okay which is great when you're young but it's not going to extend your lifespan do you believe uh is it a wives tale that either testosterone the growth hormone May grow uh organs in your body or do we not know in other words the heart might expand and say to a dangerous extent and secondly I just love asking you this stuff sorry and secondly uh the potentially if you were to develop cancer or a tumor that could accelerate the speed of which the disease manifests itself in your body do you do we know do we have an idea do you have an opinion about it yeah uh well so it's debated so there is the the truth is we don't actually know but uh I've read all the literature and and my personals take on the science is that it's not a risk to develop tumors but if you have a tumor then I think then then you get serious with your doctor and I think you stop this stuff but everything I've seen is that things that you and I do they're not going to make things worse but it but if something's detected then we're in New Territory so for instance NAD boosters I take those if you give those to mice they have new blood vessels it's like a super drug for athletes they they can run further okay but it also you don't want extra blood vessels growing in your tumor all right good point so I think that with an abundance of caution anyone who has a tumor don't take these things but it's not going to necessarily grow a tumor okay if you don't have one already wonderful okay so let's talk by the way thank you I'm I are you having as much fun doing this as I am because you know all this stuff already well this is one of the best interviews I've done because we're getting into all sorts of things that I usually don't get asked about wonderful let's talk about aging for a second so as we're measuring aging I've heard I've read some things so understanding what's happening could you explain to us is it the is it the cell's inability to Now read the DNA like it used to or what's happening that's causing this to happen our body and is what I just said completely ridiculous no it's correct seriously you summed it up probably better than I could which is uh the analogy I use is is a DVD these old things you used to put movies on kid any kids watching or listening this is that these are old things you used to put uh digital information on but they're a good analogy because you can actually scratch them okay right and so a DVD is the digital information and our genome our DNA is digital instead of zeros and ones it's atcg chemicals that information is actually very robust you can get it out of an old person it's intact mostly you can get out of a fossil it lasts for thousands if not millions of years that's that's the cool thing about digital information plus there's another type of information that controls the reading of those genes we call that not the genetic but the epigenetic information and epigenetic basically says how is the DNA organized so a cell reads the right genes the right time and we don't know as much about it because it's much harder to read the epigenome than the genome Okay the reason is the epigenome is not digital information it's it's actually analog it sucks anyone who's had a cassette tape or you know a phonograph or a record player sure is actually experiencing the problems with analog information okay there's generations of of people now that have never experienced analog in their lives but trust me analog sucks and our bodies half of the information in our bodies is analog okay and that's the problem that's why we age okay because the analog we have an analog system that reads the DNA and over time it doesn't read the right genes the right time anymore okay and cells when they don't read the right genes they don't function well so our blood glucose goes up we get weak we get diseases that's aging but also what happens is that the cells forget what type of cells they are yeah they de-specialize we call it X differentiation essentially we become a melange a collection of cells that have forgotten what kind of cells they should be got you and that is pretty bad news right yes if you scratch your DVD you're in trouble we've been looking for the Polish on that DVD and I think we found it okay and it is well we call it reprogramming genetic or epigenetic reprogramming and it's a set of genes that we can put into cells or into the eye of a mouse and reset the age of that animal remember that clock that we're going to measure on you yes we call that the epigenetic clock for a good reason because it's it's actually the analog changes in the cell right okay but here's what we can do we can actually tell the cell now that you're old and you're not reading the right genes go back and read the genes the way you should okay it's essentially polishing the DVD another way to think of it is we're rebooting the cell yes we've got corrupted software screw that let's restart this the the the the whole computer okay and you're young again okay right erase the hard drive start again wow we didn't know that was possible until a year ago wow that's what's in the book I was writing the book as we made these discoveries imagine that there's a there's a memory of being young in all of our bodies that we just have to tell reset oh my gosh and so there you're do you mind naming the company that you're involved with that I was reading about that had something to do with the retina or you're doing it you're working on it specific with eyes is that not right yeah that's right so it's still in stealth mode yeah this is incredible but I'll reveal it to all your listeners for the first time it's called I I do know and it's interesting the first part of it is I because we're going to treat glaucoma oh my gosh this is huge and then idouna is also the Norse goddess of longevity but here's what we want to do and I'm an entrepreneur just like you because I believe not just in making discoveries but making them practical for people I do know is planning and working towards uh treating the loss of vision in in people this is unbelievable but if we can reverse aging in the eye what what can't we reverse aging in so it's early days but what we've just discovered and we have a scientific paper if you Google uh my name you'll find it okay we were able to reprogram the retina of an old mouse that couldn't see very well anymore to be young again so the nerves in the back of the eye they became young and they come these mice completely got their Vision back this is unbelievable this is one of the this may this may be one of the the most exciting things that we're on the brink of that you're at the Forefront of on the planet right now the reason it's important to me hey it's funny as I've aged I had perfect vision you know as a baseball player I'm I mean unreal Vision I could read a street sign for Miles Away people I don't know if it's miles away but far away people say how do you see like this and now I'm finding I can't read the street sign from 30 feet away the this area where I'm most aware of my aging is in my ability to see and I have a sister I haven't told you this who is um juvenile diabetes born without a pancreas that functioned and she's gotten to the point where essentially in Long stages of her life she's been completely blind and now sees just to some extent so do you think that there's even properties eventually with people with um I mean massive retina deterioration you believe is going to be something that could be reversible at some point so I I don't want to have a promise because it's just a year old and we we're making discoveries pretty fast but it's still in animals but let's let's just suspend all sorts of uh disbelief right now and talk about what's possible possible so what I can tell you is the reason that you and I are losing our vision the reason we have to do this at night is because the the nerves in the back of our eye are not youthful anymore and they they're forgetting that they're nerves right as we said earlier and if I reprogram your eye just with an injection what I think would happen is that you'd get those nerves would say oh [ __ ] I go I go to work well yes again that I think we can we can do our nerves in our eye are no different than a mouse's eye really okay but we did another experiment we crushed the back of the optic nerve we really yeah like you crush your spine it's not going to grow back unless you're a baby we reverse the age of those nerves so much that they actually started growing back to the brain even after we killed them that's oh my gosh you said where else could that eventually be applicable in the body is UN you guys unbelievable now we're not talking a decade now we're talking I mean we could potentially talking people living extremely long lifespans what's doxycycline doxycycline Zen antibiotic that you take for Lyme disease and some other infections it's pretty common so what's the application here well so we engineered our our treatment so that we put new the genes in the eye yes and then we give them my stocks a cyclone for three weeks okay and that turns on the gene okay they get their Vision back then we turn it off again by taking away the antibiotic so here's here's a future scenario we can put those genes into our whole body and as we get older or God forbid we we break our back we injure ourselves and we're not going to survive we get an IV of Doxycycline or we take a pill and we've become like Deadpool and we can regrow things like an axolotl would chop their limb off and the grow again oh my God and then we stopped taking the antibiotic We're Young and then we can wait another few decades right do it again right so here's the cool thing and I'm going to mention this in my social media because we don't know the answer yet but I'll keep you updated I'll give you a call we don't we're back on we don't have love to come back on we don't know how many times you can press the reset button and restore the hard drive it could be once we've done that maybe it's 100 times oh my gosh I I uh I'm such a uh uh I'm not a skeptic I think sometimes my mind goes to what's the problem with that and I think about presuming enough food in the world if people are living two and three and 400 years long have you thought through some of those issues that's something you don't even think about no I think about it all the time you do yeah because it's the planet and Humanity water and food right there's only a there's a finite amount of that at least right now well so I talk about this in my in my book also because we can't just solve aging and make people live a decade or more longer without tackling the other problems we have but what I've done is calc the calculations and the rationale comes out that this is the best thing we can do for the planet now it sounds crazy right that if we have people living longer how's that going to help well first of all it's it doesn't raise the the population that much in fact most countries are leveling off anyway okay okay even if we stopped aging today the rate of population growth isn't that much there aren't that many old people that are dying actually it's uh it's actually less than the rate of immigration right now yeah and there are a lot of countries that need help Japan is losing its population Europe as well so there's that but talk about consumption we throw away half our food in this country we've got to fix that first sure right but the biggest thing the big takeaway message is if we can keep people healthier for longer and just have them die in a matter of months at the end which is what happens if you live to a hundred I understand now okay I get it so people centenarians we call them people who make it over 100 they die quickly usually have a heart attack or a kidney failure they cost at least one third less than the rest of us I get it let's get us out of there I just got it yeah okay that's trillions of dollars saving we already waste a lot of money on Health Care yeah keeping people alive for 10 years in nursing homes I think we all have a duty to keep ourselves healthy for longer if not for ourselves but for our children and our grand kids who have to take care of us for 10 years this is a revolutionary conversation for me it's a paradigm shifting conversation because some of the things we've discussed today everyone want to go back you have to get this book you have to get this book you have to be following this man on social media and you're going to want to get the next one this is someone that if you want to live better longer healthier you want to stay close to this man because obviously he's going to live for a whole long time and he's at The Cutting Edge of all of these things we've talked about I want people to dream for a minute then I'm going to go for a question about I don't have a lot of money and I want to begin to live longer but I want to go to one more thing just I want people to understand some of the possibilities out there talk to them about crispr just a little bit because this is combined with what you just described something that is you begin to think through all of the technological advances in the world but in terms of of terms of this space we may be entering the if we want to call it the internet age of anti-aging right now we may be sitting on our the apples and the Microsoft Concepts the Googles of anti-aging right now in some of these spaces and and these will change people's lives so tell them about Christopher just for a second yeah right so so we've gone through what we can do today in our daily lives and there's Cutting Edge technology that that I took about in my book and we just talked about that's coming very soon yes and there's medicines already that you can possibly take but the future looks incredible I've already said that even if we don't have these breakthroughs every four years we get to live longer we get another year of life that's that's great but what's coming makes my head spin and I've been at The Cutting Edge of of genetics for the last you know 30 years and I just can't believe every morning I wake up and I pinch myself that we're living in the future already but what's coming blows my mind so in my department at Harvard Medical School I get to work with people who grow eyes in a dish and people who work on uh all sorts of futuristic stuff growing brains in a dish George Church is one of my good friends and colleagues he's just my lab's just on the different floor than his in the same building so he's one of the guys that uh women as well there were a team of people that showed that you could actually edit the human genome this is huge so we can now read The genome you know instead of a billion dollars to read your genome I can do it in my lab for a device with a device that big right now for 100 bucks right I can do that today yes and soon it'll be in a few hours for less than the cost of a needle crazy that's the crazy stuff but it gets even crazier when we can actually change the genome we don't just read it we write it and we can change genes we can put new genes in very easily there are drugs on the market most people may not realize you may not realize that we can now the FDA approved drugs we are changing people's genetic disease we're curing genetic diseases we are living in the future man it's crazy but the future be for us is going to be even crazier because we are just on the cost of hundreds of companies working on crispr and gene therapy and this is the hottest thing in biotech right now I mean imagine everybody the ability to interrupt the fact that you have a predisposition to heart disease or a form of cancer and interrupt that how about this maybe this is nuts could we potentially interrupt somebody's and make them smarter could you change someone's intelligence through altering their genome could you do that well theoretically there's a lot of genes involved in intelligence and the brain has to be Wired from an early age okay but we know the drugs are capable of making you more intelligent or at least give you more creativity so we we could do that theoretically but one of the things I'm excited about is being able to alter our bodies in ways that make us resistant to certain diseases heart disease HIV now we can get to that yeah go ahead there are two kids on this planet that were genetically modified to be resistant to HIV that's craziness now crazy to think about now there's a whole debate we we in the world should start debating whether we want to not just help ourselves kids resistant to heart disease to cancer we know how to do this if you said David could I make my kids resistant to cancer that's easy I could do that in my lab one of my students could do it it's not difficult we know that there are species that live a lot longer than us they have certain Gene variants they have special types of these longevity genes whales can live 200 years we know pretty much what they're doing they're stabilizing their epigenome their DVDs don't get scratched as much so whales can live 200 years so it's possible we know some of the genes that are involved we could give ourselves that and we could give our children that why would we not what are the negative implications of something like that uh well we just want to make sure it's safe I think what else is it doing is that what you mean right you could make them intelligent but they might then get cancer the next so I want to make sure I pronounce it right cine Linux am I saying that correctly it's analytics yes yeah what is it well they're exciting too okay that's also been a breakthrough so as I mentioned that before we figured out how to reprogram the body the best technology and understanding we had were these Hallmarks of Aging they're about eight yes of these and I mentioned some of them one of the main ones is is senescent cells which accumulate okay right so when you get a really bad scratch DVD when your cells forget what type of cell they are they can kill themselves but if they don't kill themselves they'd become senescent so what's senescent they actually instead of dying they just sit there like zombies and that'd be fine except they start to secrete these factors that cause other cells that are healthy to grow old and defective inflammation is a big problem yeah and we think that senescence cells are causing this problem so cenolytics is just a word for drugs that will kill off those cells when they're not dying themselves right and in mice if you do that they get rejuvenated okay and they get younger okay I'm I'm uh I'm thinking through someone listening this because my the typical person in my audience I think works out to look better or eats to look better and I think the next level of Consciousness particularly unfortunately I found that anti-aging has almost become um in a space and an area where people with some affluents have been thinking about more than people that are just trying to get through life and improve their stock in life and I don't like that part of it yeah and so I know there are people listening this going this sounds good I can't afford to get metformin I I'm probably not going to take growth hormone and I'm not sure that I should anyway Resveratrol is relatively affordable for most people you could probably get your hands on that potentially but if you were to give me two or three four basic things I could do to begin to reverse the aging process for me would be the caloric restriction would it be carbohydrates what would those few things be if I'm not able to get myself a couple of these medications that I should be putting in my body right away yeah well so I absolutely agree with you that we can talk about gene therapy for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars which is great if you're losing your vision by the way but but these are not available to everybody right and I just got back from Africa a few months ago and you know believe me there are people in this world that don't care about anti-aging sure we also don't call it anti-aging where I come from because anti-aging is a whole group of people who are working on other things so we call it longevity research but what if there was one thing you asked me that I could give advice or maybe a few things the first would be eat less often there are studies that have been done with my colleagues at the National Institute of Health they gave mice who are very similar metabolism to us very different diets they wanted to know is it better to eat more meat or to eat more carbohydrate or more fat big debate and the result blew me away okay he found that it wasn't better to eat more meat he found it wasn't better to eat more fat and it wasn't better we better to eat more carbohydrate okay it wasn't what you ate all those mice lived a normal lifespan how much you ate but the ones that ate it in a small time of day two hours a day live 20 longer wow so here's the take-home message wow if that's right it's not so much what you eat it's when you eat that's important and so I've gone on a diet where I restrict when I eat I try not to eat breakfast try not to eat lunch that has made me feel a lot a lot better I'm sharper and I think that I'm going to live longer because of that because that's that's step one and in fact that saves money sure sure does right right and don't over indulge in anything don't just eat all meat in my view don't eat all fat you want to mix it up trick your body oh I'm running out of this I'm running out of that and even with uh Resveratrol don't have to take it every day take it every other day tricks your body another thing that's cheap uh get off your ass okay um I typed a book and I I think I aged a lot writing this book actually but it was worth it but if you don't get your body into a state of breathlessness or get your muscles to be tired and sore your body will say hey everything's good I don't need to fight diseases I don't need to fight aging okay okay so you lose your breath at least a few times a week if you can get on a treadmill I think 40 minutes is great 10 minutes is good but anything is better than nothing okay um what else is good so what I do when I go to the gym on Sunday with my son you go once a week well I try to go more and I'm on planes a lot yeah um but I have a home gym so I try to do all that but I I don't I don't live a perfect life it's maybe why I take extra molecules to try and supplement that I've said it yeah yeah uh but work about midnight so it's yeah you're you're in that Mega achiever multiple companies your lab all the work you do children you're at that point where yeah sometimes your Fitness and your nutrition may take a vaccine right which is probably not healthy one thing you didn't mention that I'm surprised and I've not heard you talk about this we're not being happier so and I know it's not part of the research necessarily or maybe it is but do happy people live longer they do they always do okay so how come that's not part of what's talked about or is it just so anecdotal or silly that it's not discussed but but I would think happier people have less stress in their body probably less inflammation in their body just by not having that kind of stress it's true it's true but one of the reasons we don't talk about it is that we don't understand why it works okay but it's a scientist you have to be able to prove why it works okay yeah yeah that's why people didn't regard aging as a disease which I do we didn't understand why aging happened so we said uh okay it's natural let's not deal with that but now like cancer we understand we think how it works you can focus on that now it's now it's okay to say it's a problem happiness wishy-washy but all of a sudden the centenarians the people that live to a hundred they're always happy that's right right mind you if I live to 100 I'd be pretty happy too right no there's no but they've been happy their whole life yes and that that's definitely works but I haven't been happy my whole life I'm a lot happier now that I'm 50 because I've learned what a bad day is and most days are not bad days even if you think they're bad um but yeah early in my life I was quite depressed actually we talked a little about that off camera so let's just go there for a few seconds I've told you that the thing that surprised me the most and I just think it should here's somebody who's you know arguably the best person in the world in their field is doing work that has tremendous meaning I mean you I don't know that you could do work with that has more meaning to mankind than what you're doing right now outside of spiritual work um yet you're not always happy you haven't always been happy in your life and I think it's important that people know that because I've told people that you're on my show thing that surprised me the most all these Mega Achievers what do they all have in common some of it's work ethic some of it's good fortune some of it's intellect but they don't all have those things the vast majority struggle with to some extent with a little bit of their mental health do you still just when I met you when we just embraced when you first got here I thought you had an ease and a um honestly like an Elegance about your personality this is somebody very comfortable with themselves but I but as I've started to watch you more I wonder if this there's this dude in there it's a little bit of battle with himself that's wondering if he's not moving this at the speed that he should if his work is not where he would like it to be yeah absolutely yeah I'm a perfectionist and an overachiever I want to leave the world way better than I found it at least some somewhat better and I I find myself in a position of great responsibility now I'm at Harvard and I've got this research so I'm maximizing my day without sacrificing my family as best I can but early in my career because I set such a high goal from an early age ever since I was four I wanted to understand why we age and wake the world up why aren't we worried about this this is not good we treat cancer we treat heart disease we treat Frailty we treat Alzheimer's but you know what causes all of those things aging why don't we care and so I've always set that goal and there were stages in my life where I thought I wasn't going to achieve anything I saw that I was stuck in a Str I was thought I was stuck in Australia I just finished a PhD there were no jobs for phds who were studying the sexualized life of a yeast cell that's what I trained in that's awesome and I thought what have I done I've worked myself into such specialization I'm not going to change the world I might make some yeast happier but that's about it and being inconsequential is is worse than death for me I want to wake up every day feeling as I'm going to make a difference being inconsequential is worse than death for you you know what occurred to me as you were saying it you know one of the obligations responsibilities we all have is to create a life that we want to live longer for right and so for the vast majority of you listening to this you know one of the things that is so important about all the things you listen to on my show and particularly today is how about we start creating a life that we can't wait to be around for longer in anticipation of one of the things that makes me so excited about today's show look I do a lot of shows I've been so looking for it by the way and it's exceeding my expectations is because I've been in anticipation about the work you do and I I want to ask you about that from a business perspective because we know that much more time but there's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this so this is something I know you've not been asked but he this is also a Serial entrepreneur multiple businesses a couple I'm going to make them make me get involved with but um if you were an entrepreneur knowing that this see if someone could have knocked on my door in 1985 and said hey the internet's coming maybe you ought to start thinking about that as a businessman this thing's coming this waves coming start to think strategically about businesses products Services methods of delivery that could help there I feel like what we're describing this this longevity industry we'll call it that is the next big wave and if I were an entrepreneur listening to this I'd be thinking how do I prepare myself what should I be thinking what should I be looking at so I know it's a difficult question but what advice would you give to an entrepreneur who's hearing these things from you and all the possibilities that come along with it what should they be thinking or doing yeah so the world has changed a lot in the last few years I was the first young guy to start companies on longevity and I I if people are wondering it's all on my website I've started more than 15 companies I help I've helped dozens and I've taken four public awesome I reinvest all that money by the way in startups and jobs and philanthropy so I'm I'm not I'm not trying to make money I'm trying to leave it leave but if someone could have instructed me when I was young what I would have said to them is identify a trend and if you don't have the money to invest get involved in startups but but work with the best people don't work with mediocre people because the best things are going to get really hard when you start up a company things are going to fail you may be near bankruptcy and you want to be with people that you can trust so I don't work with [ __ ] anymore really that that's the first Criterion and uh you know my friends are all like family to me and vice versa so that's actually one of the best bits about getting older is you you have this group of people you can trust but from the outset I wish that I had always worked with the best of the best so look for that if you have a little bit of money you can invest in something like this some of these companies are just getting started and the field is exploding so I agree with you that longevity research is going to make the iPhone look like old news I do too and I love what you said about Trends and finding the best people those are two huge keys if you're an entrepreneur thinking about this if you think about what are the trends how does it impact the business you're in currently right what are the changes going to be there okay I have one last question for you because I'm just fascinated to know this are you doing are you afraid to die enough you're not that's an easy question in fact I used to be afraid to die when I was in my 20s and 30s because I wanted to see where things would go yeah and there's this natural fear in all of us but I now know that I'm not afraid because I fly a lot and a few times those planes were going down and I I had felt that I was going to die it was going to be sad that I'd miss my family my family would have to do without me but personally I'm not worried about that my wife is the opposite she grabs under my arm and she's I'm gonna die and say if we die we die I don't want to die and I'm just like as long as it's not too painful I'm good with it so letting go of the fear of death was one of the best things I ever did in my life because now I can live without fear you got it that's the key that's why I ask you David I really believe that letting go of the fear of dying allows you to live freely now allows you to embrace it and I I got to tell you like I'm more excited about life and where it's going and what the possibilities are because someone like you exists in the world I'm like I really admire you and I'm glad we've become friends you're going to stick very close to me just so you know because I want to live a long time but because I I'm not afraid to die but I am excited to see what happens while I live and I'd like to do it as long as I can yeah well we're going to be friends because you're an inspiration you you do all the right things with your life and you don't do all the right things but I know what you mean I know I know exactly what I'm trying to do as good in the world and I think we both have a lot in common that we want to make a difference in other people's lives and make a difference in the world that line you said that's gonna I'm gonna reflect on that tonight about living a life of of an inconsequential life is worse than death well the reason I follow you is that I have bad days I need inspiration it's not all easy and and guys like you we we get inspiration from you and you you lift us up thank you brother man I I'm so glad I met you let's do one more time I want to make sure they know where to follow you I don't know if I've ever had an interview where I've felt more optimistic and learned more I certainly learned the most today that's for sure but where do they find you where do you want them to go find you want to see on Instagram or where should they go well yeah I'm on all social media okay and where do they find you what do you want to put it on the screen on YouTube yeah sure we have a website called lifespanbook.com you can sign up for a newsletter they also a lot David a Sinclair and Instagram is David Sinclair PhD okay wonderful David thank you so much today I enjoyed this so much I know you guys did in the audience as well you got to share this you got to share this people need to know this information give them optimism give them hope and give them the strategies to live longer and live better right now thank you Dr David Sinclair everybody you know that every day to engage with me follow me on Instagram we run the max out two minute drill every single day which means when I make a post which is 7 30 Pacific 10 30 Eastern Monday through Friday first two to five minutes make a comment especially on this video make a comment and you're in a drawing every single day the other way that you can get the drawing is to make a comment on people's comments and if you miss the first five minutes just make a comment every day on every post we add up all those people and pick winners as well you can write on my jet you get to meet some of my guests you get max out gear come to see me speak live all kinds of cool things happen so get involved with the max out community on Instagram on the max out two minute drill God bless you and continue to max out hey guys thanks for sticking around if you'd like more click the videos right here they're exactly what you need to see next and if you're new here hit subscribe and become a part of the max out community and tell me what you think about the videos in the comments below I read all of them every week and I select winners that get all kinds of prizes gear coaching calls with me make a comment

Channel: Ed Mylett

Views: 791,919

Keywords: ed mylett, mylett, david sinclair, david sinclair aging, Live Longer, anti aging, reverse aging, reverse aging 2019, podcast about living, podcast about healthy living, podcast about health, podcast about healthy lifestyle, health, podcast, health theory, health theory david sinclair, inspiration, motivation, harvard, longevity, reverse aging skin, reverse aging naturally, ed mylett interview

Id: -wApz_zqQIQ

Length: 61min 6sec (3666 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2019