We're Shockingly Close To A Cure For Aging | Answers With Joe

i had a birthday recently and um i'm way past the age where birthdays are things to get excited about now it's just pretty much a reminder that my body's decayed one more year yeah aging's you know it's a joke that a lot of comedians have made over the years that you know when you get to a certain age doctors just kind of stop trying to fix you yeah after a certain point life is just an endless series of you know trying to figure out what's causing the random pain today and then you go to the doctor with that pain and they just they just give you the shoulders like i don't know man just it just happens cool thanks guy but there are some doctors and researchers that are doing the exact opposite they're actually making the case that aging itself is a disease and it's a disease that can be treated and i for one think it's a pretty compelling argument so today let's not go quietly into that good night and let's talk about how we can slow stop and maybe even reverse aging [Music] the merck manual defines aging as quote a gradual continuous process of natural change that begins in early adulthood and that's fine change is good it goes on to say that quote bodily functions begin to gradually decline during a person's early middle age cool but people can grow old in several ways there's chronologic aging which is your agent years biological aging which is changes in your body and psychological aging how you act and feel in 1970 the average life expectancy in the u.s was 71 years old 50 years later it was 77 and you might be thinking hey seven more years that sounds good but it's kind of not because yeah we're living longer but those years are being added at the end of our lives when we're at our most decrepit and in the most pain in other words we may be extending our lifespans but we're not necessarily extending our health spans for example between 2013 and 2015 the number of years lived in poor health in the uk was 16 for males and 19 for females more people living longer also increases the risk of more people living with dementia and alzheimer's disease and this isn't just a problem with individual lives this has societal implications these people often need constant care in order to live their daily lives which may create economic and social burdens for communities and caregivers and families and of course the longer you live increases the risk of developing other chronic conditions like cancer and diabetes and heart disease it's like this constant expensive whack-a-mole that we play for the last 20 years of our lives until eventually one of those malls gets us but what if we change our thinking on this what if we stop thinking of these as different diseases but start thinking of them as symptoms of a bigger broader disease the disease of aging now i know to a lot of people that sounds crazy i mean calling aging a disease aging is a natural process how can a natural process be a disease right but cancer is a natural process arthritis is a natural process most diseases are natural processes when you think about it and we fight those tooth and nail so why not fight aging itself it's actually funny to me how uh aggressively people push back against the whole idea of life extension and age reversal people call it unnatural as if there's anything natural about how we're living our lives these days no it's weird to me like why wouldn't you want to live longer and healthier you know why wouldn't you want to live in less pain it's like people have some kind of mortality stockholm syndrome or something i mean we know that different people age at different rates we know the different animals and species age at different rates so clearly aging is a malleable process that can be sped up and slowed down and we're learning how to do exactly that so let's start by talking about exactly how aging works and i should probably point out that a lot of what i'm talking about here today comes from the book lifespan by david sinclair he's a harvard researcher that focuses on aging and he's got some pretty unique insights it's worth a look okay so right off the bat there's no unifying theory of aging except for one that sinclair proposes which we'll get to here in a minute you know one hypothesis is that dna damage causes aging there are also theories about mutations to the dna or that free radicals contribute to aging but many of these theories have kind of fallen to the wayside over the years these days aging is usually attributed to a handful of cellular processes including attrition of telomeres genetic instability from dna damage mitochondrial dysfunction senescent cell accumulation and stem cell exhaustion and researchers work at addressing these specific cellular aspects as a way to kind of slow down aging which may mitigate the diseases that are caused by aging which could force all death all this may help add more healthy years to our lives but they won't exactly help us live longer for that we need a singular reason why we age which brings us back to david sinclair's book and his theory which he calls the information theory of aging sinclair writes in the book that there are two different types of information in biology there's digital which is based on a finite set of possible values like dna and analog which is commonly referred to as the epigenome which are heritable traits that are transmitted by genetic means and while dna stores genetic information the digital information a structure called chromatin stores epigenetic information that's the analog and it's this information that kind of guides the assembly of a human being from a fertilized egg in another way of putting it if the genome was a computer the epigenome would be the software he also uses the analogy of a scratch dvd you know that that over time a dvd can accumulate scratches to the point that eventually it won't play anymore but that information is still there underneath the scratches and if you polish that dvd which i've done many times myself it'll play perfectly again and the epigenome works in the same way over time little imperfections build up scratches if you will that cause the cellular processes to sort of deteriorate which we experience as aging so that's cool and all but um how exactly do you polish in a genome right well it turns out we have genes that are designed to do exactly that they're called longevity genes or sometimes vitality genes and they're tied into what they call our body's survival circuit and they've been around literally since the beginning of life on this planet life it turns out wants to survive and times are not always plentiful so during times of stress these survival genes kick in and help the body repair itself you know when times are tough they hunker down and when times are easy they tell the cells to grow and reproduce fast now one of these longevity genes is called target of rapamycin and us in other mammals it's called mammalian target arypomycin or impor so when we're under stress intor sends a signal to help improve survival by boosting dna repair reducing inflammation from senescent cells and by digesting old proteins and when everything is good it helps with cell growth by managing the creation of proteins so mtor target of rapamycin keep that in mind another longevity gene is called ampk which stands for adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase that word salad will make sense in a minute i promise so to explain ampk um first let's step back first of all the cells get their energy in the form of chemical bonds which is delivered by the atp molecule like you know that when you eat something the digestion process breaks it down over and over until it gets down to the basic molecules it can be used by the cell while the basic molecule that can be used by the cell that delivers energy is atp or adenosine triphosphate this is a nucleoside adenosine tied to three phosphate groups so triphosphate so once atp gets inside the cell the cell strips two phosphate groups from the molecule releasing energy in the process and leaving behind a single phosphate group turning atp adenosine triphosphate into amp adenosine monophosphate okay you got it still with me okay good so cells require a steady source of atp in order to keep functioning as it processes this atp into amp it starts to fill up with lower energy amp molecules so ampk is essentially the gene that tells the body to start pulling energy from stored sources in the body like fats and sugars so to bring this all home when there are high levels of adenosine monophosphate in the cells it activates the adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase gene word solid explained and the amount of ampk that gets activated in us changes as we get older in our youth we have high levels of activated ampk which is why we burn fat so much when we're young but those levels do drop off over time but a side benefit of ampk activation is that it can actually slow aging in a couple of ways one by reducing oxidative damage and two by protecting against senescence synthetic cells by the way i mentioned those earlier if you're wondering what those are they're kind of like zombie cells like they're alive but they're not functional they basically just pump out a bunch of inflammatory signals that causes all kinds of problems but ampk activation can clear those senescent cells out through a process called autophagy so ampk burns fat and kills zombies so how do you turn on your ampk and become a sexy zombie hunter well one way is through calorie restriction eating less seems pretty obvious but if you don't feel like starving yourself there's also a pill you can take metformin's a drug that's used to help treat type 2 diabetes but it also activates ampk it basically mimics some of the benefits of calorie restriction without decreasing caloric intake it can also help improve physical performance increase sensitivity to insulin and reduce cholesterol levels and the best part it's super cheap but you do need a prescription in the us so one last longevity pathway are a family of enzymes called sirtuins there are seven of these the cert one through cert seven these play a major role in cell survival and metabolism but also dna repair now you might have heard of nad supplements lately or nad supplements these are what those are for uh circuins are dependent on that and these can also be activated by low calorie or low amino acid diets or exercise so you get mtor ampk and sirtuins these are the three longevity pathways according to sinclair they were evolved to protect the body during times of stress by activating survival mechanisms and once activated according to sinclair quote organisms become healthier disease resistant and longer lived so basically the key to longevity according to this theory is for the body to be in a slight state of stress at all times i know that that sounds like a lot of fun but there are some other ways of doing it the first is through intermittent fasting so if you want to activate that ampk gene you got to make your cells hungry and that means not eating sometimes one of the most popular ones is called the 16 8 diet this one has you fast for 16 hours and then you eat within an eight hour window for some people this means you start eating at noon and stop eating at eight when i do it i usually start from two and then i end at ten because i tend to stay up late and then there's the five two diet that has you eat seventy five percent fewer calories for two days a week there are other versions of it as well but whichever one works for you studies have shown that intermittent fasting can help lower blood pressure reduce body fat and decrease weight now in the interest of balance there have been some some pretty recent studies that have come out that have shown that it's actually not as effective for weight loss as we once thought but for its anti-aging property studies show that there are some pretty compelling results now another way to switch on those sirtuins is through cold temperatures cold temperatures activate brown fat or brown adipose tissue so this is a type of fat that has more mitochondria than regular fat and it kind of helps maintain body temperature and cold conditions and as a side effect it kind of helps in dna repair because again your body's in stress this is why a lot of people advocate for cold showers which i'm just gonna come out and say it that's a big nope for me dog yeah i tried it i tried the cold shower thing and uh no although it's mostly carried on our backs kind of between our shoulder blades so if you just lay on an ice pack or a cold pad for a little bit of time every day it's supposed to produce a similar effect and last but not least there's exercise yeah i know it always comes back to exercise not only is exercise help with blood flow heart and lung health mental health it can also preserve telomeres those things at the end of the chromosomes that help protect them from damage the good news is you don't have to exercise all day to get the benefits uh one study showed that just 15 minutes a day of exercise a person can reduce their risk of heart attack by 45 percent they say that the goal is to exercise enough to the point that you get to where you're out of breath enough that it will be difficult to talk so if you can just do that for 10 to 15 minutes a day that's enough to make a difference now i know a lot of you out there like 10 or 15 minutes come on who can do that can i just take a pill and yes there are some pills that you can take which is where we get into the supplements but before i go any further this is where i do have to lay out the disclaimer and tell you that i am not a doctor what i'm telling you is not medical advice but these are some of the supplements and pills that are being studied the first is nmn or nicotinamide mononucleotide nmn is a precursor of nadplus so when you take an nmn supplement your body breaks it down into net plus as i mentioned before nad plus has a a lot of benefits to the body it's central to metabolism it's associated with things like down regulation of energy production and mitochondria inflammatory conditions and oxidative stress and its level does decrease as you get older you might have also heard of resveratrol lately this is a compound found in several plants like peanuts berries fruits and grapes it's known for being associated with various health benefits like anti-diabetic properties anti-obesity antioxidants and glucose metabolism other medicines and supplements that show promise in extending lifespans are the aforementioned metformin and rapamycin rapamycin is interesting actually because it was first found in a bacterium on easter island uh you know the island with the big heads on it and stuff that's actually how it got its name the polynesian name for easter island is rapa nui and for years it was used as an immunosuppressant for transplant patients until some studies actually showed that it had some anti-aging properties you might remember that mtor gene that triggers dna repair that i was talking about earlier well mtor stands for mammalian target of rapamycin that's how they found this gene so rapamycin can trigger dna repair and improve longevity there's actually been some amazing studies in mice with this actually though i should say that as an immunosuppressant it can have some undesirable side effects so be especially careful with this one so research is ongoing but any or all of these things might be enough to give you just a few extra years of life years that might get you close to some real crazy stuff but now we have the ability to edit our jeans so maybe someday we can just turn those processes on at will no fasting no cold showers involved at all so one of the wilder ideas in david sinclair's book is that we could maybe someday alter our genes to have an age reversal trigger one that gets turned on when we take a certain antibiotic so yeah the idea is that we you know could edit this gene and then we can spread it throughout somebody's body with a with a viral vector this is something that we're already learning how to do and then you know at various times in our lives as these age-related issues start to crop up we can just take that antibiotic and then that age reversal trigger just kicks in in our genes and we just kind of age backwards for a while we get more energy our joints get stronger our skin gets more supple our hair gets its color back and then when we're at the biological age that we want to be we stop taking that antibiotic and just start aging normally again wash rinse repeat this sounds like science fiction but apparently they're already doing this in mice now of course if you really want to cheat death there's always cryonics which i did a whole video on before now we're really nowhere near being able to restart bodies that have been frozen from liquid nitrogen and if we're being honest the chance that we could ever make it work is pretty low but in 2019 scientists did put a human being in suspended animation for the first time this happened at the university of maryland and the process was basically they they rapidly cooled the brain to less than 10 degrees celsius or 50 degrees fahrenheit and they did it by basically replacing the patient's blood with an ice cold saline solution and this gave surgeons extra time to perform surgery on this patient that had literally lost half of his blood he was essentially dead for a while his brain and his heart went silent but then they brought him back to life the boundary between life and death has been shifting for hundreds of years now and now we can actually put people in suspended animation it's only for short periods of time right now but give it another 30 or 50 years the bottom line is aging research is still in its infancy it's actually remarkable that we know as much as we do because there's so few researchers out there that are really studying this but that's changing and it's changing fast we are about to see an absolute explosion in aging related research because as i mentioned at the beginning of this video mindsets are starting to change around aging from just being a thing that's bound to happen to a disease that we can treat and in january this year a major step was taken in that direction when the world health organization's 11th international classification of diseases revision went into effect the idc is an international standard for clinical diagnosis of epidemiology and health management in developed nations they basically assign a code for every disease this is a big deal because having a disease recognized with a code by the idc basically legitimizes it in the eyes of the research world and basically allows for drugs targeting that disease to be clinically tested and approved and the newest edition of the idc includes for the first time ever an extension code for aging related diseases and the reason this is huge is because it not only provides more money for research and development but also insurance companies can now provide coverage for anti-aging therapies so maybe soon you could actually get metformin prescribed specifically for anti-aging so everybody's been saying i've been too doomy and gloomy on this channel lately well how about this we are close to massive advancements in life extension over the next 20 years so you might not live forever but it might be a lot longer than you think so i'll leave you with one last thought and let you guys debate it in the comments um i'm sure many of you have already started thinking about all the reasons why it would be terrible if people live longer i mean other people not you the overpopulation problem the world can't sustain that many people the economic and labor problems that people never retire these are all interesting points uh and there are counterpoints to all of them but i just want to ask one thing how much differently do you think people would act if they really had to deal with the consequences of their lifestyles i've heard so many people in various places you know sort of poo poo the climate change thing by saying like oh the worst of it will happen long after i'm dead or whatever you know and same attitude for a lot of things i'm just using climate change as an example but what if we did have to live with it what if instead of thinking about how it's going to affect future generations we have to realize that it's going to affect us in our own lifetimes would we change our behavior and would that change behavior produce a better society i'm curious what you think let me know down in the comments big thanks to the patreon supporters who help keep the lights on around here and are forming an awesome community and just being really cool people i get to bounce ideas off of and everything i can't thank you guys enough but there's some new names i need to shout out real quick we got michael krugman eric basinger egg butters diana cortez t suzuka uh andrew cutting him kimmy e victor godoy miranda steve was bengans joseph byron and justin garrison thank you guys so much if you would like to join them get early access to videos get exclusive live streams and just be part of an awesome community you can go to patreon.com please do like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here i'll put a little video right here and google thinks you'll like that because they've been following you that's not creepy and you can look at any of these over here on the side that have my face on them and if you like them i do invite you to subscribe i come back to videos every monday alright that's it for now you guys go out there have an eye opening rest of the week stay safe and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 785,541

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Id: -abQ226CpEw

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Mon May 16 2022