[sci-fi music ]
- Welcome, to the Lifespan Podcast, where we discuss the science of aging and how to be healthier
at any stage of life. I'm David Sinclair. I'm a professor at Harvard medical school who researches the biology of aging and I'm co-director of the center for the biology of aging. And I'm joined by my
co-host and co author, Matthew LaPlante.
- Hey, we're back. - Hey, welcome. Good to see you again.
- Good to see you again too. - This is episode two. We're going to be covering when to eat and also what to eat
within 24 hour periods, as well as over a year, not just to maximize your wellness and how you feel and look, but how to maximize
your overall longevity. I'm going to talk about some
of my protocols as well, that I've developed
over the last 20 years, being a researcher in this
area and what works for me and what might work for you, as well. If you missed episode one, don't worry, we're going to cover the basics here, but you might want to go back
and listen to episode one, because we cover some of
the fundamental biology that may help you understand
what we're going to talk about today, even in more detail. So Matt, how've you been, man? - I'm good. Before we get started, we got
got to thank the sponsors. - We do, let's go straight into that. - Yeah.
- It's important that we thank the sponsors because this
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using, now for many years. Our first sponsor is "Levels". Levels is an app that syncs with a continuous glucose monitor, which they provide and interprets
your glucose data for you. I've been so impressed by Levels that I've recently joined
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impact my blood sugar levels. For example, I've learned that white rice and grapes
really spike my blood sugar, whereas potatoes don't, as we've discussed on this podcast, having stable blood glucose
is really important, not only for your daily
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bones where it belongs. So again, go to
athleticgreens.com/sinclair and claim this special offer. Today's podcast is also brought to us by "Inside Tracker". Inside tracker is a
personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from
your blood and your DNA to help you better understand your body and to reach your health goals. I've been using Inside
Tracker for over a decade now and I'm the chair of their
scientific advisory board. The reason I've long
used Inside Tracker is because they provide the best blood and DNA analysis that I'm aware of. They make it easy to get your blood drawn. You can either go to a local clinic or like I do have
someone come to your home it only takes 10 or 15 minutes. It's really easy. And from their Inside Tracker
presents your blood analysis in an easy to understand way. There are graphs and they give you diet and lifestyle recommendations that help you improve
your blood biomarkers. Another feature that Inside Tracker has is their inner age test,
which I helped develop. The test shows you what
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improve that number. So, if you'd like to try Inside Tracker, you should visit them at
insidetracker.com/sinclair and you'll get 25% off
any Inside Tracker plan. Use the code Sinclair, my
last name, at the checkout. - Okay, so, David, when we sat down together, three, four years ago, we
started mapping out this book and I said, look, I need you
to give me one starting place, when we're talking about health advice. Like, there's so much health
information out there. I need you to give me one starting place. And you said immediately, [murmurs], I know, the one thing. So, let's start there, today
- Right. - because it relates to this episode. The one starting place.
- Is, wait for it, drum roll. - Drum roll, for longevity, the one starting place is? - Eat less often. Those three words, eat less often. That is the one thing that
will have the biggest impact on your longevity based on
all the science we'll talk about today.
- Okay, and this doesn't mean eat fewer calories, - It can.
- necessarily. [overlapped chatter]
- that's good. But a lot of people struggle to do that to if you were calorie. - Well, it comes naturally. If you're down to one meal
a day, which I am now, you shed weight and then you
get your 20 year old body back. That's a nice bonus. But then you maintain that weight. You have a larger dinner, which is what I do to make sure I'm not becoming malnourished. Clearly, we're not talking about malnutrition or starvation here. It's about packing your calories into a shorter period of time. - That's because packing your
meals into a shorter period, almost inevitably means less calories, but that's not really what's
happening here, right? It's not just about less calories. It's about, what eating less often does inside of our bodies. - Right, and we'll get to that. But really, it's not just
about the period of eating. It's the period of not
eating that's so important for boosting the body's
defenses against aging to maximize longevity and we'll talk about how that actually works in a minute, but you can still have a large body and fast and get the benefits. In my lab, we've looked at mice that are obese and
trick them into thinking that they're fasted and they live just as long as a skinny mouse. So really, it's about getting your body into this state of defense at any weight, though, I would say that, there are certain optimal
body weights that, it's clear that if you're
carrying excess weight, you're going to accelerate
your aging clock. - What we don't want people
to do is get the idea though that, oh, good, this works
even if you're overweight and so I can stay overweight and then as long as I fast a
little, it's going to be fine. That's not what you're saying also. - Right, there are certain body weights, waist to height ratio's are optimal, for humans is about 0.5. But yeah, losing weight is helpful, we're not fat shaming, anybody, but we're going through the science. This podcast is about
what the science says not what's socially acceptable. And it is true that if you're leaner, you will live longer. That is a fact. It's not necessary to get benefits by doing what we're going to say. But also interestingly, as a side effect of eating less
often, you will lose weight. I did, I've shed about 15 pounds since the beginning of the pandemic and I look better, I feel better. And it's a nice side effect, but ultimately what we're
going to do here is, we're going to say, these are the kind of
things you should consider in your lifestyle. We're going to help you get there. We're going to ease you into it. There are some tricks that make it easier. And ultimately you're going
to end up with a lifestyle and hopefully a body that allows
you to live decades longer. - We made the promise on this program to really stick to the science, to let people know when
the science is coming from studies involving animals. When the science is coming from studies involving human beings, the
caveat here is really important. Most fasting research
has been conducted so far on model organisms, but what we're seeing
in those model organisms is fairly universal. - Well, it is and the most reliable way to extend lifespan of any animal or even a yeast cell is
to restrict its calories. - Well, let's start there. 'Cause you started your career in yeast, you still study yeast. And one of the really big breakthroughs in understanding, how to extend the yeasts lifespan came in your lab when you were studying, what happens when yeast
are calorie restricted. - Right, and that was the goal. The reason I went into
aging research in part and why I was so
optimistic about being able to have a big impact is that we know that
restricting calories works on everything from a
yeast to a spider, a fish, a worm, pet Labradors, and it was 2002, there was a great study that showed you could lengthen
lifespan of the Labradors from, what was it, 12 years to 14. - [indistinct] 1.8 Years. And the only difference really was a 25% reduction in calories, in that study. - That's remarkable. So I went to MIT in the 90s saying, I want to figure out how
the heck this stuff works. How does this diet work? Because then we can bottle it. And we're basically at that point now, but to your point, just taking
a pill, isn't sufficient. If you add the pills, plus the diet, you get an additive, doubling effect. So, we're going to go through
supplements in another episode. Today, it's all about how to maximize when to eat and what to eat. - And that's really important because not everybody
can take supplements, not everybody can access the supplement. What, we're going to talk
about a lot of things, including things that you can
do with $10 in your pocket and things you can do in
a $100 in your pocket. But this is something you could do with whatever you're paying right now, for food.
- Well, it saves money actually,
- You can do it. It doesn't say [mumbling]
spend less on food. - Right, and the kinds of
food we're going to recommend are fairly cheap foods. But getting back to yeast, I went to MIT to study this little fungus. It's a yeast cell you use
to make bread and beer. It's microscopic, put 10 of them together, you might see them as a little dot. That's a small they are, but I used to love yeast. Literally, I would name them. there were little pets
under the microscope. I'd follow them through their lifespan.
- That's adorable [chuckles]. Yeah, I would get really sad
when they would die after about a week 'cause I got to know them. [Matthew laughing]
I would spend 14, actually more, probably 16 hours a day, helping them along in their life, taking away their daughters,
which is how we count. - You know, David, if you love something, you really shouldn't
take its children away. - Yeah.
- That's pretty messed up. - That's true, if you leave the daughters, unfortunately there's about 5 million of them by the end of the experiment. And you can't find the
original mother, that's- - So, these things, they
divide and they expand and they expand. - Exponentially, right? So, you've got to get
rid of those daughters. You don't kill the daughters,
you just move them away. But what we found was that
when you reduce the amount of sugar in the plate,
so they eat glucose. This is what we gave them. 2% glucose makes them live
about 25 divisions, daughters. If you restrict that down to 0.5 glucose, So, you are down to 25%
of that concentration, they will live over 30. And, that's really cool, right? That you can, just by
changing the glucose levels, and we'll get to how that
works in humans, very similar, you can extend life span. And what we showed was
that there's a set of genes that controls that process. This isn't just glucose hurting the cell. There's a genetic pathway that
gets triggered by low energy. And these genes, we talked
about in last episode, they called "sirtuins" and
there are five of these genes in yeast and seven in our bodies. And they respond to low energy. They're respond to other stresses as well, such as high heat, low amino acids, high salt. The sirtuins will get activated by these, what we call hormetic effects. What doesn't kill them,
makes them stronger. And in this case, low
energy led to the activation of these enzymes called sirtuins. And then they took care of the DNA repair and also stabilization of the epigenome. Now-
- There's a lot there, let's slow this down and pace this out. Let's start with sirtuins. What's actually happening when, in the case of yeast or
any organism in this case, because it's very similar
mechanisms, right? What's actually happening with sirtuins, when yeast or any other model organism is calorie restricted, is fasted. - Yeah, well their role
is to extend the lifespan. So, what they're doing down at the very minute part of the cell, is they're protecting DNA and making sure genes stay
"on" when they should be "on", but what's happening
to boost their activity during caloric restriction,
this low glucose level. We managed to figure out in
the first couple of years, when I moved my lab to
Harvard Medical School, well, started my lab at
Harvard Medical School. We found that low energy
activates a certain gene. It has a name, it's called PNC-1. We have an equivalent gene
in our bodies called NAMPT and turning on that PNC-1
gene in yeast was able to activate the sirtuins
because that gene makes a fuel for the sirtuins called NAD. And so in our bodies as
well, when we're hungry, these genes come on that make more NAD, this very small molecule that
the sirtuins need for fuel. And then they do the protection. They repair DNA and they
stabilize the epigenome. - And this is the beginning plays that led to NAD boosters, where we started going, oh, well, if we can boost NAD
in other ways, and that's not, we'll talk about boosters
in another episode, but just to put that in the chronology of how this revelation came about and why so many people are
now taking the NR and NMN. - Yeah, that came out of our lab. We found two ways to activate
the sirtuins synthetically. One was to use the red wine molecule, resveratrol plus some
other plant molecules that are now used in supplement market. And that was a big craze
in the 2000s from our lab. And then the second one, which is now, probably an even bigger
craze is the NAD booster. And a lot of people are
shooting themselves up with NAD or taking NAD, precursor supplements. You mentioned NR and NMN, we'll get to those in another episode. But you can mimic low glucose in these yeast cells by giving
them these NAD boosters. Or you can turn on this
PNC-1 gene artificially, and they live longer in all cases. And we found that if we deleted that sirtuin gene in the yeast, either one of them or multiple ones, then caloric restriction in
the yeast didn't work anymore, which showed us, told us that this wasn't just
glucose being bad for you. Glucose doesn't hurt you,
it's that the low glucose is activating the natural
defense state of that cell, which we have inherited over the billions of years, since we separated. - People who are just going to cut out that little part where you just say, glucose, isn't bad for you. And they're just going
to play that on a loop and it's going to be great [chuckles]. - All right, well, glucose is bad for you but not for the reason
that you might think. - So, we have a little
better understanding now of how sirtuins are turned on by fasting. We talked about two other classes of longevity genes in the first episode, mTOR and AMPK, do you want to go really briefly through how these genes are impacted when we restrict calories, when we fast? - The first one is mTOR, which stands for mammalian
target of rapamycin, the drug rapamycin. We talked a little bit about
it in the last episode, but let's refresh everybody's memory. This is protein complex in the cell that registers amino acids. When you have a lot of
protein, you eat a big steak. It's going to activate
this mTOR protein complex that allows the cell, causes
the cell to build things. It's one of the reasons
eating steak allows you to build more muscle, but that's
not a recipe for longevity. What we know from many animal
studies, even in yeast, if you downregulate the activity of this mTOR protein
complex, you get longer life. Why? Because it's activating a
process called autophagy, which recycles proteins. So when you're hungry, this autophagy will get
all the old proteins, put them in the recycling bin and then bring them out as fresh proteins. And that seems to be really
important for longevity. In fact, even if you just inhibit mTOR and stimulate autophagy, that's sufficient to extend the lifespan of flies and even mice by dramatic
amounts, even 30%. - So, [indistinct] mTOR,
we start with fasting, we get longevity and sirtuins. We start with fascinating,
we get longevity in AMPK, - Same thing.
- Same thing. - But in this-
- But in a different process. - Exactly, it's doing something else. Right.
- And in this case, when you're hungry, AMPK will go up. AMPK, if you're wondering, it stands for AMP-activated kinase, and that's just an enzyme
that responds to low energy. So when you're hungry,
you'll make more of it. And one of the main things that it does is it makes more mitochondria. We lose mitochondria as we get older. And when we exercise, we get more, and this is a way of
artificially stimulating that production. Why do we need more mitochondria? Well, they're important
for metabolizing things that you eat but one of the main things that they are used for is to
make energy, chemical energy. So, when you activate
AMPK, you'll feel better. You'll have more energy
and you also fight aging. - And you're using the
words "you'll" a lot here. You're talking about like, presumably the people
watching and listening to this are human beings, but we should note that, again, much of this research
got done in model organisms. Human studies are a lot tougher. - But we have them for humans. - We do have them for human, but there are fewer of them. And there's like, most of the sample sizes are much smaller. - Yeah, but there's enough known about both mTOR and MPK to make
pretty strong conclusions that these are beneficial
to human health as well. - For example-
- But this is, I guess what I'm getting at here though, is the reason why, I think a lot of people that would hear, well, there's all these animals studies, we're making all these
conclusions on animal studies and you don't have that
many human studies, but human studies are, they take a really long time. They're really expensive. - Well, sure, and until
this is a 100% proven, many of us will be dead. So the point is, we're going
to give people the information in this podcast, in the notes, we're going to provide references. They can read more to
make informed decisions about whether they're
going to try certain diets, lifestyles and even
medicines and supplements. - So, what we know from
studies of mTOR and AMPK, sirtuins is, tells our
cells that times are tough. This triggers this metabolic shift into a different form of energy, and all of that, not all of that, but much of that we
know from animal studies that we mentioned before. The majority of the research on lifespan extension
comes from model organisms, comes from animals that aren't us. But we're not just entering, we're in a world right now, where we're doing this research
on human beings as well. - We are, it's a fascinating time because we've got two worlds and I walk in both worlds. One is, there's clinical
studies being done, some of which I'm involved in
with NAD boosters at Harvard, we've been testing two
years of those in humans, placebo controlled, double blind trial. - Like the gold standard stuff. - Right, and those go to
scientific publications. But, because people
can read the literature and hear about things, there's this self
experimentation world as well. A lot of it on the west coast of the USA [Matthew laughs]
and you hear stuff, and these are anecdotal but
they also are interesting anecdotes that guide the clinical trials. And it's this very interesting
time where we're in, where there are parts of the population, let's call it 1% of the
US that is not waiting for the proof that this works. But I do want to say before we move on that there is pretty good evidence that modulating these defenses in the body in humans also works and should extend longevity. We're not just blind [stammers], I'm not crazy experimenting
on myself and my father. What we know, actually is that drugs that inhibit mTOR, rapamycin in low dose, intermittent
does mimic fasting and does boost immunity and
does give biochemical changes that mimic fasting and predict longevity. And there are people that
are taking rapamycin. Again, we'll talk about
that in episode five. But there's also metformin, which is a diabetes drug
and that activates AMPK. And that's also by looking at
tens of thousands of people, who take metformin for type two diabetes, been shown to slow down the occurrence, not just of diabetes, but
other diseases of aging. Together, just those facts that I've told you make me convinced that fasting and the drugs that mimic fasting are
going to be important for long-term health but also
wellness in your body today. - There's this other way of knowing, this other form of evidence for this that we haven't talked about yet, that I think is important
to bring up here. There's the double blind,
placebo controlled studies that are ongoing right
now that are showing an impact in fasting on longevity. There's like you say, experimental, really interesting, like, wow, that guy is looking really good and he's been fasting,
sort of thing, right? - Yeah.
- But then there's these, large populations and subgroups of populations, all across the world who have fasted as a part
of tradition and culture for hundreds, thousands of years. And there's pretty good evidence
from these groups as well. - Right, well, let's name some of them. - The genes in India.
- In India. They're probably the
most well-studied group. And there's scientific evidence that they have the most
number of people over 70 in good health than any other religion. - Than any other group in India. - Fair enough. - And a lot of people [indistinct] go, oh, well, the genes are
often are also vegetarian, but lots of people in India are vegetarian and the genes are even
doing better than them. - Yes, and we'll get
to the vegetarian diet and what the science says about that, versus a meat based diet. But there are other religions of, Christians fast, there's
the Ramadan for Muslims. These are not just coincidences, these aren't just religious practices. It's clear that humanity has figured out that you feel better. You look better, you ultimately
are disease resistant. It might even help cure diseases by going through these periods of being hungry or at least not having food in your tummy. Why? Because it activates these
three longevity defenses that we just mentioned. - Now, let's get into
these really interesting, sort of gold standard studies. There is one out of the
Baylor College of Medicine. It was run by [indistinct]. This was published just last year. And it showed that fasting
from Dawn to sunset for four weeks improved
blood pressure, reduced BMI, decreased weight circumference and, and this is the important part. I mean, it's all important, but it upregulated DNA repair proteins. This is what we saw on all
these model organisms as well. - Yeah, there are dozens
of studies showing that periods of fasting is beneficial to people who are obese, not just because they lose weight, but they turn on their body's defenses. They become more insulin sensitive. And their glucose levels come down. Also showing that people
of regular weight, like me, can benefit from fasting, there's a number of studies there. And these were all in the show notes. If somebody wants to
go and check them out, but what's really interesting is that certain diseases, type one diabetes, multiple sclerosis even cancer, those diseases seem to
also benefit from fasting, including when you combine
chemotherapy with fasting, you get this double benefit
for many types of cancers. And then the final point that
I think is really interesting is you can mimic fasting, say metformin, a number of doctors prescribe metformin to patients with prostate cancer, because more studies are
showing that these mimicry, these molecules that
mimic fasting or fasting or combinations of both
will help you beat cancer. - And to you, when you see a bunch of different disease
states being affected. You don't think that what's happening is that each of these individual
diseases is being played upon. You think that the thing upstream, the aging is being affected, right? - Yeah, well, most specifically
those three defense components in the cell, they take care of the
body, not just for aging but to fight diseases in
young people, middle-aged, genetic diseases, even something
you might not think of, like macular degeneration has been shown to be slowed down and
even reversed by fasting. - Okay, so far we've been
really broadly talking about fasting, calorie restriction but we haven't talked about
what that actually means. Let's talk about, because there's a lot, I mean, if somebody goes online right now, they're going to say
like, how should I fast? They're going to get a thousand
different recommendations. - It's confusing for sure.
- It's really confusing. Do you want to just talk about what some of these fasting regimens are? - For sure, let's do that. And we talk about them in our books so that that's also our resource. I get questions every day from people. How should I fast? And my first answer is, well, you're an individual, you've got a different lifestyle, different tolerance for pain and hunger. You're a female or a male. You've got different microbiome. These are really important things to take into consideration. When we recommend things, what we're saying is, you can try this, if it doesn't work for
you, try something else. But also just to talk about one of our sponsors, Inside Tracker. I use inside tracker
because it's not just, oh, I feel better today. We actually have to measure things, get a dashboard on your body, to know if what you're doing, whether it's exercise or in this case, your diet and when you
eat is working for you. And that's why I've been
able to optimize my diet over the last 20 in fact, 30 years. I'm not just guessing, I'm actually measuring,
- You're measuring. - Yeah.
- It's a little insane that the way that we
went about testing out whether or not these different
eating regimens were working for us, is like, do I feel better, do I not feel better? It's so vague, it's really nebulous. - Well, you wouldn't drive
a car without a dashboard. So, why do we do that for our bodies, which are even more important. - Yeah, bad habits [chuckles].
- Yeah. That's what we do, right. That's what we've always done. I feel [mumbles]. - Yeah, well, this is
why I have auto pilot. I drive a little crazy. I do that with my body as well. It's all an experiment. But let's go through the diets. Okay, so there's a fasting mimicking diet, Valter Longo, colleague of mine from UCLA is a proponent of that. That's his diet that lowers mTOR activity. It's low in these
branched chain amino acids that I've mentioned.
- Okay. [stammers] a diet that mimics fasting or does that include periods
of actually not taking in any calories? - It's both but you don't have to be as rigorous about the period. The food itself will- - So the food itself is
being processed by your body in such a way that the body is like, I could really use a little bit more, I could really like a little bit more. - Yeah, you want them, to the body to be in a state of perceived adversity. Oh my goodness, I'm running out of food. I'm not eating meat anymore because plants have less
of these amino acids. So it responds to that
low amino acid input. Valter's done some great
work, over the last few years, he and his group have shown that on this fasting mimicking diet, which they can send you at home, that actually helps
cancer patients survive and get over chemotherapy quicker. Again, more evidence that fasting is good, not just for longevity but for diseases. So that's one, the next one let's talk about which a lot of people
call intermittent fasting. We'll just call it fasting. This is a period, if you
go longer than a day, some people do three days,
some people go for a week. I wouldn't go longer than that 'cause then you'll start
chewing up your muscle, which you don't want to do. But these long extended periods are doing a real deep cleanse on the body and turning on that autophagy, that process of recycling
proteins very deeply. Especially, once you get
beyond the three-day mark, when your metabolism
switches into what's called chaperone-mediated
autophagy, the deep cleanse. So that's fasting and then
there's time restricted feeding, which is what I do,
'cause I'm not very good at going beyond 24 hours. - Well, [mumbles] think most
people would really struggle to get there.
- Yeah, time restricted feeding,
which is what I do, which is, try not to eat till dinner. That's hard enough, my hats off to people like Peter [indistinct],
the [indistinct] podcast, [indistinct] many of our
audience will have heard of, he can go for a week and
he's got a lot of willpower. If you've ever met the guy,
he's different than me. I'm more of a hedonist, but he
- Is he grumpier at the end of the week, do you think than he is at the beginning
of the week though? I mean, like after all of that time. - He's always serious. That's what I can tell you, but brilliant. But let get back to this
time-restricted feeding. You want to have at least 16 hours of not eating or not eating very much. And then you can have eight hours. So typically that means
having a late lunch, if you skip breakfast or if you prefer to skip dinner, I'd skip that. - Because we [mumbles] remember here is that there's a period of sleep
in which you are not eating. And so,
- That's the easy part. what you're really doing
is tacking on hours to the front of that and tacking on hours to the back of that. - That's right, so when
people say I'm skipping lunch, that's not as helpful. And so what I've done in my life, let's just use me as an example
of an average human being. 'Cause I'm pretty lazy
and I'm not that driven. I prefer to take a pill,
which is not the right thing. What I started out in my life
was not to eat breakfast. And pretty much been doing
that since I was a teenager. And that for me works
because I'm not really hungry in the morning, I have a cup
of tea or a cup of coffee, and I still do that, a little bit of yogurt to
mix my supplements with, to dissolve them.
- And you're not taking, you're not doing the yogurt. And I've actually seen you do this. The amount of yogurt that you put into your little bowl is really minimal. It's basically just to mix up your-
- a couple of spoons. - Yeah.
- That's it. And that's burnt off in 15 minutes. So it's not going to be a big
deal for the rest of the day. And I try not to eat at all until dinner. And then I have a really
enjoyable, largish dinner, but it's certain types of food. We'll talk about the types of food later, but that gives my body this long window, more than 20 hours of not
having glucose circulating from the external world. Now what happens when you do that? And it takes a few weeks
for your body to adapt, is that your liver will
learn how to compensate for lack of food. It's called gluconeogenesis, the generation of glucose from your liver. And it actually overcomes
the feeling of hunger. When you first skip breakfast and lunch, you're going to be hungry. You're going to be nervous,
you're going to say, I can't do this, Sinclair is an idiot. - Well, this is why people fail at this, is because they run into
that and they think, this is how life is
going to be for the rest of the time that I'm on this diet. I can't do this diet. - Right, but do it for at least two weeks. Because after the two week, especially by the three week mark, your liver has now learned that you're not going
to breakfast or lunch, and it will start making
glucose at a steady level. That's really important because it's known that if you have
these spikes of glucose, it leads to hunger when it
crashes after a big meal, but also that when you
get hungry, you eat. So you're in this wave of hungry, eating- - Do you think people should ramp up, I mean, you said like, do no breakfast and lunch for two weeks but should they ramp up
by like breakfast first and let their liver get
used to compensating for no breakfast and then add lunch? - Well, I would skip one meal and then go for two.
- Yeah. - You can't do the whole thing. Most people will fail, but you're trying to avoid
this thing I was just talking about called reactive hypoglycemia, is that if you eat a piece
of toast for breakfast or heaven forbid, a giant
glass of orange juice, you'll have this spike in
sugar and you'll feel great, but then your body will
put out too much insulin and suck that glucose
out of your bloodstream and put you into a glucose
deficit and that's hypoglycemia. And then you're hungry,
you've got ghrelin coming out into your body and you feel hungry and you need eat something. I'm at a state though, now, where I don't get
those rises and crashes. My liver is putting out glucose from when I wake up till dinner. And I've never been so focused. I've never been so brain fog free because these crashes, what they do is they make you feel shaky or tired and brain fog. And I wish I'd done this in my 20s and done it my whole life, because I've really never
felt better, because of it. - We can actually measure this now with continuous glucose monitors. - Right, and this is a shameless plug to one of our sponsors. - I did not [stammers]
I was not intentionally, creating this moment for a
shameless plug, but we can. - Yeah, well, let's mention them 'cause it makes this podcast free. So, Levels provides glucose
monitors that you stick them on your arm and they
measure the glucose levels and I've used one of them. And what I found was that
there were certain foods that spike my sugar really
high and then I get the crash. And it's very clear that when I'm feeling jittery and hungry, I am in that hypoglycemic state
that comes after a big meal or even a piece of
toast for me or a bagel. That's really important
'cause then you'll learn what your microbiome and your
body responds to well and not. For me, I was surprised that
white rice, toast, grapes were really bad and
potatoes weren't that bad. And so, now I've optimized my diet to not have these periods even after dinner where I feel crappy. - And not everybody is going
to respond the same way. Like you said earlier, we all have different lifestyles. We've got different genes. Jim Nelson's work's been
informative in this. - Yeah, so Jim did a
important study in mice, again, not humans, but it tells us that genetics is important 'cause he took very similar mouse strains, strains of, some are called black 6 and then some white ones. And he crossed them together
to make of genetic diversity, a colony of about a hundred
different types of mice and put them on the standard
caloric restriction protocol, which by recollection, it was close to 35% of
what a mouse would eat, given food all the time,
ad libitum, we call it. And about half the strains
of mice lived longer. And then about a third of what the remaining ones lived shorter. And that was a shock because we thought caloric restriction always works. That's not true, it can
depend on your genetics. And we've now learned
that some strains of mice and probably humans as well
are much more sensitive to this diet, these types of diets. And you probably want
to do it a little less than someone else. And you only know that if you try it on yourself and measure things. - I like this idea that
we're you're all just, sort of lab rats running around, trying things out right now. - Well, I get criticized by
some doctors advocating that, you're not supposed to be
experimenting on yourself. Even people say, you shouldn't be allowed to have continuous glucose monitors. How dare you measure your body? And my view on that is, well, we should ban bathroom scales, if we're not allowed to measure our body. - Well, I love the fact
that you're doing this because I'm going to let
you do it, ahead of me. And then I'm just going to wait and see what really works
and what doesn't really work. And that becomes a starting point. But that is sort of
what you've been doing. I mean, what you've been
doing for a really long time and you've been pretty
open with people about, like, here's what I'm doing and here's what I'm doing right now. And it hasn't been consistent
for 20 or 30 years. Sometimes you start and stop things too, because it's working and it stops working or it feels like it might be
a good idea and it doesn't, that's what we're all doing.
- Well, I've made plenty of mistakes, I don't
talk about my mistakes as much as I should probably, but I've had times where
I ate the wrong things and ate too much and gained weight. And my Inside Tracker
results were horrendous. - Did you ever make any mistakes in fast- like when it comes to fasting itself? 'Cause you've tried
different kinds of fasts, which one really didn't work for you? - Well, they were all beneficial. Skipping your breakfast was good. I think, what got me into
trouble was when I tried to do it without preparation. So I said, okay, I'm going to
just skip lunch and go to dinner without knowing how to do that or being in the right mindset. And I had to quit multiple times. I spent years trying to do this. I could never get rid of my love handles. And this final time that worked for me, worked because I found a trick, and that trick, I'm not going to tell you, I'll tell you.
- No you have to [laughs]- - The trick is that you want
to fill your body with fluids. For me, constant coffee, tea, hot water, all the way through the day. Being hydrated and filled with
liquid takes away any feeling of hunger. Also nuts, if you really, you need to eat something. A bit of protein is known
to take away the feeling of hunger rapidly. - Yeah, this is what my buddy, the cardiologist, John
Day, tells his patients when he's working with them is, like, look, if you got to eat, just start with a handful of nuts and just give me 20 minutes after that. You're not going to be hungry - Right.
- After 20 minutes. - So, there's an interesting story about the role of protein and hunger. And it was first discovered
by a friend of mine, Stephen Simpson in Australia, and he was studying locusts. And he found out that what turns a locust into a swarm was a lack of protein. And when they get too low in
protein, they go crazy on. - Locusts get hangry. - And they start eating
each other, it's that bad. - Yeah, and everything
else in their sight. - Yeah, and we even see this in the mice that we have on low protein diets, they get super mad and they
even attack each other. So you don't want to
be too low in anything. You don't want to be hangry. But getting back to what
really works for me is, I've trained my liver
to produce enough sugar that I don't feel hungry anymore. And if I do, I'll keep drinking liquids. And if I get really hungry,
I'll nibble on some nuts. And that for me has worked really well. I've got my 20 year old body back for the first time in my life. - And I'm never going to go back.
- But you are going to be hungry. Anybody who starts this, they're going to be hungry at first. - Of course,
- they're going to be a hungry- - It's not easy, I'm not saying
that it's going to be easy, - Yeah.
- but it's worth it. - And there is an important
point to make here. And we sort of touched
on it at the beginning, but I think, we need to circle back to it 'cause it's so important
because we're not talking about starvation, we're talking
about intermittent fasting with adequate nutrition, that adequate part's really important. - Yeah, so the acronym would be, IFAN all right, trademark that one. IFAN, let's call it the new type of dieting, by the way, intimate and fasting I learned about a month ago. is the
most popular diet in the US. We talk about it in the book,
that might be part of it. But it's important that
we add the "AN" at the end because we need the adequate nutrition and there's one sponsor,
we haven't mentioned, which is "Athletic Greens".
[both laughs]. But this is true, the
reason that I take a drink, Athletic Greens-
- You're really good at work in these in. - Well, they're important to us. But the important part is that, the adequate nutrition is
important is necessary. Otherwise you're going to be
causing more harm than good. So when I take Athletic Greens,
I drink it in the morning, I know I'm getting all those nutrients that I might not get during the day. - So, now that we sort of set the stage for, when we eat, which is really important, when we eat, we still have to acknowledge, we have to eat sometimes. Sometimes you're going to,
if you intermittently fast, if you're going 20 hours without food, you're going to have breakfast or you're going to have dinner. So yeah, there's going to
be something on your plate. It's really important, also, what's actually on your plate. And that's what this next
half of this episode is about, is what we should eat when we are eating. And maybe the best way to
start this really though, is to talk about what
definitely shouldn't be, or not definitely shouldn't. There should be a lot
less of on that plate. - Right, well, the big killer is sugar. - Yeah.
- Glucose, particularly fructose is also pernicious. And if you give animals lots of glucose and especially fructose, they
will get fatty liver disease. They'll get diabetes, it's really bad. - And this one is absolutely
not controversial, right? Like, we're going to talk about meat later and people are going to
be like really up in arms. But if you say like the
big killer is sugar, there's not like a group of people that's going to come hunt us down. Sugar is bad. - It is and-
and why? - Well, why? Well, there are two reasons that glucose is bad when it spikes, three, if you include the brain fog but let's just talk about physiology here. One is, that you're going
to have glucose attached to proteins that makes them glom up. Think of it like caramelized body parts. This'll ultimately lower your longevity. Reduce your longevity,
give you type two diabetes and probably cardiovascular
disease on top of that. So that's one, keep those
glucose levels down. But also, what glucose is
going to be doing to you at high levels, is shutting off
those protective mechanisms. Remember, particularly
AMPK and the sirtuins. They get switched off by sugar. So, by having that up for most of the day, if you're eating three meals plus snacks, your defenses against disease and aging are going to
be working at a minimum. So instead, keep those glucose
levels low and consistent. You won't get the brain fog, you'll get fewer proteins
modified that'll lead to disease. And thirdly, importantly, you'll actually stimulate your body's natural defenses against
disease and aging. - So, the first step, sugars, let's get rid of the sugar.
- Yeah. On that note, by the way, I gave up dessert at age 40, though, occasionally I steal it and it doesn't count
if you steal it, right? - No, I think there's like
a special little pocket it goes into that doesn't count against- - It's invisible.
- Right. Inside tracker doesn't pick it up. - Right, here's the point, You can quit something but you don't have to be draconian about it. I still like to steal a
few scoops of ice cream if I see it but I'm not
going to eat a giant bowl of ice cream every night. That's a quick way to shorter life span. - We're not trying to
ruin everybody's joy. - No, not at all. Often when I give talks at dinners, people skip dessert after I've spoken. I feel bad about that. - Well, you remember we were talking about doing an experiment where we would have a
conversation around a table with people and then have the servers come with like, a birthday cake or something and you just like, watch them. - We still should do that. But yeah, so glucose is a bad one. Something else to avoid
is super high protein because mTOR, it can be activated but you don't want to
activate it all the time. 'Cause it's not going to
turn on the autophagy, the defenses to recycle proteins. - And this one is going
to a lot of people off. - Well, yeah, there's a lot of people who believe that carnivore diets
are the best for longevity. - And for some people, a lot
of aminos are appropriate. - Well, certainly if you're an athlete or you want to bulk up,
there are short-term gains. You'll feel better if you eat meat, you'll obviously have the
protein to build up that muscle. But we can go through the
evidence when you look at populations at what they
eat and how long they live, as well as the short-term
effects when you eat a high protein, carnivorous,
red meat based diet, those changes will be
good in the short run, but long-term, there's no evidence, in fact, I would say
there's counter evidence to that being beneficial for
longevity, if that's your goal. - And that's because of
the inhibition of TOR - In large part, yes, the
sirtuins will also get switched off by high protein as well. - So, aminos are important. We have to have them, if
we don't have them, we die. But you can get aminos from
plants as well as from animals. - Yeah, it's funny when I say I've gone vegetarian
recently, which is a fact- - Where are you going to get your protein? - Yeah, where do you get protein from but what do you think plants are made of? It's also mostly protein. Now, they're not as bioavailable. So, you're getting like
two thirds the amount as you would from a steak-
- Your body has to work a little harder for it. - Great, I want my body to work harder. It's good for it, it burns energy, it's also activating these
defenses as we mentioned. So I'm now trying out this,
a full vegetarian diet. I'm not yet vegan but that
actually probably works even better for longevity
as the science will tell. - How's it working for you, you feeling? Do you miss meat? - I do, I love meat. I think meat tastes great, but I'm more and more
inclined to enjoy [indistinct] as well.
- So we're starting to go down and talk about vegetarian diet, plant-based diets here. We're going to talk about a
lot of those different choices in a minute here, but I
do want to take us back for just a second to what's happening. Like, really was actually happening in the inside of our bodies. When [stammers] and I still eat meat, I haven't followed you down this path yet. I love the steak. When I put a steak on
my plate and I eat it, what's happening, what
are those aminos doing? - Well, before you get aminos out of meat, you need to digest it
and so the first step is, acid in your stomach
is going to break down that meat into amino acids, and then your microbiomes
can utilize a lot of them. And then those amino acids
are also going to leach into your bloodstream. So, now you've got these amino
acids circling in your body, circulating, and there are three ones that are particularly
important to know about, it's leucine, ISO leucine and valine also known as the
branched-chain amino acids. And these are used by the
body to sense protein intake. And the sensor is this
protein complex we talked about called mTOR. And when there's lots of these three branched-chain amino acids,
particularly leucine, it will be activated. And this mTOR, the role is to say, wow, I got lots of amino acids, let's build muscle, let's repair cells, let's do all good stuff, which is why you you feel
good if you eat red meat and your microbiome can handle it. - Yeah, I feel great, I feel
like I can fight a lion. - Yeah, and you might have
to fight a lion to get it. But what actually is going
on that's deleterious in the long run is that mTOR
can do something even better for your longevity than build new muscle. It actually can turn on
this recycling program called autophagy. And that is very clear. There's no debate as to
whether autophagy is good for you or bad for you. It's definitely good. So, what I think people could do is to, if they want to eat meat, go for it, but try to focus on
plant-based food more often so that there are periods during
the week when there aren't as many, leucine, isoleucine, valine molecules floating
around in your body. So that you have a chance
for your mTOR downregulation to recycle proteins. Now, why do you want to recycle proteins? You might say, well, who cares
about recycling proteins. Well, Alzheimer's disease is
a good example of proteins that get modified and
accumulate in your brain. And it happens not just in
the brain, but in all tissues. We have these old proteins that linger, 'cause us to get old to malfunction, but it's reversible and it's reversible, by fasting, it's reversible
also by having lower levels of these branched-chain amino acids, at least part of the week. - Let's talk about these
primarily plant-based diets. There's lots, I mean, there
is vegan diets out there. You said like, for many people, that's probably
going to be the gold standard but a lot of these plant-based diets have a little bit of meat in them. There's the Mediterranean diet. There's the Okinawan diet. - Lacto-ovo vegetarianism. - Right, lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. Is there anything you
want to say about these or can we talk about them as an umbrella group, don't you
call 'em like blue zone diets? - Yeah, well, let's talk
about blue zones in a minute. I think, what's interesting is that, there was a really big study by the Adventist Health Group, 2013.
- Yeah. - Let's talk about that, because what they
calculated was the chance of dying based on various diets and these were thousands of people. And what they found was that, what's called the hazard ratio, went down the more vegetarian
and vegan you were. What does that mean? Your chance of dying goes down. And the number goes from zero to one. Whereas, one is you're pretty
likely to die tomorrow, whereas a low number, which is around 80, means you've got 20% less
chance of dying on any given day with this hazard ratio. So, the numbers are the following, non-vegetarians are at
one, if you call that one, compared to that, the next
best one was semi vegetarians at 0.92 and lacto-ovo vegetarians, 0.91. Okay, so almost a 10%
reduction in mortality, death. And then you get into vegans, with 0.85, so, that's
15% reduction in death, and then the best one
was Pesco vegetarian. So, getting a little bit of meat- - Little bit of fish,
- Yeah, little bit of meat from fish, probably the fish
oils in there are beneficial. And then you're down to 0.81. So that's a 19% reduction in your chance of death at
any given day, late in life. - Okay, now, that's all cause mortality, but we can also now see
this in biologic aging because we now have clocks that we can use to measure our biological age. And there are studies now also that are showing that these diets are effectively reducing
biological aging as well. - Right, and there were a couple of these, there's a one-year study looking at a diet of mostly vegetarian. But the one that I think
is really exciting is one that just came out a couple of months ago that looked at mostly women on a Mediterranean diet plus
exercise over two years. And they could now calculate what happens to your biological age
over those two years, having switched the diet and they had various recommendations. It's very typical
Mediterranean, limit alcohol, if you have red wine, that's fine. A little bit of fish, only
use olive oil as your fat and focus mostly on plants. That was their lifestyle. And then exercise was walking
and some other weightlifting. - That's the Fourier study. - Yeah.
- Okay, so the interesting thing about this study, at least to me, the thing
that jumped out at me is it came out of Geovanna Masala's lab at the Cancer Institute in Italy. And like, [mumbles] well, why do people whose primary responsibility is to study cancer care about aging? And it comes back to this thing that you've been saying all along, which is that if we can reduce
people's biological aging, we can cut diseases off
where they actually start. - Well, that's exactly right. These diseases that we
think are just diseases are mostly caused by aging itself. And that slowing down
that clock by fasting or eating the right
foods, Mediterranean diet, is now shown not just to slow down the ticking of the clock, but probably reverses your age as well. And that's a mind blowing concept. You have to think about that for a minute, that it's possible by changing your diet to reverse your biological age. - One of the diets that
stands to do this well, likely, that I know you're a big fan of is the Okinawan diet. You were on the Okinawan diet
for quite some time, right? - Yeah, I was, the Wilcox
brothers wrote a book in the 2000s that I loved. And it's mostly carbohydrate, so there's a fair amount of rice but probably could have done better with a bit of brown rice,
white rice sends your glucose through the roof.
- Right. - But mostly what I
was eating were Chinese and or Japanese vegetables
that I could get at the local market, so
they're organic, fresh, green, full of vitamins and soy. Mostly it was that, it was a
plant-based, soy-based diet with a little bit of fish. And I looked great, I felt great. And then my kids came along and we ate pizza for a few years, but it was great while it lasted. And if you look at the Okinawans,
on the island of Japan, they are arguably the longest
lived people on the planet, but they have other things
that are good for them. Things like, social
structure and exercise, they work until they're
in their 90s or 100s- - None of these things happen in a void. - Right, but that lifestyle
is probably the ultimate for human longevity. And we know this because
if Okinawans moved to say, Hawaii, which a lot of Japanese did. Then they don't live long anymore. - Yeah. You talked about lifestyle,
this is a really big part of, you said you wanted to get
back to the blue zones idea. You go across the world, you look at these communities
of long lived people. They have a lot of things in common, and we've been talking about diet today. So, let's just jump into that. And there has been
criticism of blue zones too. - Yeah, so Dr. Harriet hall has said that those demographic data, people's ages weren't actually correct. But if you dig into it,
they did a really good job. So, Dan Buettner I
think is right in saying that these people tend
to live a long time, out of hundreds of people that
they check the records of, going back in the city records, there was one person that was misjudged. What was it? - They thought they were like, 111 and they were actually 107 or something. - Yeah, big deal. - Of course, all studies have caveats, but this I think is really
clear that areas of the world that have the right
combination of foods, exercise, social structure, they do live longer. This is no surprise, even in yeast when we don't give them social life but when we modify their
diet or give them food in a time restricted fashion,
they also live longer. So, I don't understand,
why it's controversial. - There's one more idea about how we should eat that I know you're a big fan of, there's less research behind it, but you believe pretty strongly I'd say and there is evidence, but
I think it's still emerging and there needs to be more research. But, this idea of xenohormesis, this idea of eating plants that have, not just eating a plant-based diet, but specifically focusing on plants that have experienced stress. Talk about that and why you are, so focused on this idea. - Well, the xenohormesis concept, Konrad Howitz and I, coined this term in the mid 2000s, trying to explain why so many plant molecules are good for us? It just cannot be a coincidence. And we came up with this idea, really prompted by a 2003 nature paper that we co published,
that found that there were at least 20 plant molecules
called polyphenols that activate the sirtuin
enzyme called Sirt1, the number one out of
the seven family members. And when I looked into it, these polyphenols do
remarkable things to the body. The one that got the most media attention, because it's in red wine is resveratrol, but there's piceatannol and
there's fisetin and quercetin these are supplements that
people are getting excited about only now, but when you look into it, they activate and inhibit
pathways or proteins in the body that are known to be important
for health and longevity. And in some cases, the same molecule will inhibit one protein
and activate another one in just the right way to promote health. That cannot be a coincidence. There's no way that that
could just happen randomly. So the idea is that
we've evolved mechanisms to sense when our food supply, the plants that we eat are stressed. - Because it's like an
early warning system. - Right, we're humans, we can see that the plants are wilting and we know that the crops are dehydrated. We can measure the soil. Most organisms on the
planet don't even have eyes. How would they know if their
food supply is going to run out unless they sensed the stress,
the fear in those foodstuffs. And so when you stress a plant,
you get more resveratrol, you get more quercetin, piceatannol. And if you look at-
- What kind of plants? we should say, I mean,
it's not every plant that we're going to get those things- - Of course, it's every plant. - Is it every plant that-
- Well, plants have sirtuin genes and they need
to survive just like we do. And they make these polyphenols in order to survive when they run out of, or running out of water and nutrients- - Okay, where are we
going to get most, though? or even preyed upon by caterpillars, but in our food supply a lot of plants have very
few of these molecules. Why? Because we think that the faster they grow and that the less stress
that they have, the better. It's actually more profitable for a farmer to grow plants that grow really
quickly and have no stress, but are they better for us? Absolutely not, so how do we know if a food has been stressed? Well, you can start
with the generalization that if they're grown out
in a field organically, without pesticides, probably
this most stressed, right? But also there are foods that
are intentionally stressed. Red wine is one, the best red wines are ones
where the vines are dehydrated or have fungus growing on them. There's a good reason for that. We know that they taste better. Why? Because Xenohormetic molecules are made along with molecules that taste good and are filled with color,
it's the plant defenses. And so what I look for are
plants that are organic, local and colorful
because those are the ones that are most likely to
have those molecules. In the case of red wine,
choose grape varieties that are stress sensitive. Pinot noir is one of the most sensitive, if not the most sensitive, grape variety. And that's why it has the most resveratrol of any other type of wine. - Let's bring this all together now. There's a lot of information here, but there's sort of a checklist. And, so let's talk about like, if people are going to have
like four takeaways here, five takeaways. Eat less often. You would say, start
with eating less often by skipping one meal a
day and moving from there. - Yeah, and don't snack and don't snack. - And don't snack.
- Yep. Avoid sugary drinks and foods. - Okay, eat less often when
you do eat, kill the sugar. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - I focus on, I try to
eat artificial sweeteners and natural ones, so
Stevia is a big one for me and there are some others
that are out on the market that are naturally occurring sweeteners. - Okay, start working toward
reducing your meat intake. If you're dieting, if your
diet is aimed at longevity, very likely, you're going to need to drop your meat intake. - Yeah, it causes a lot of concern of people who are pro meat but the data is the data. And we've got these
references in our show notes that reducing the amount of red meat and in particular processed meats, is beneficial for long-term health and even prevention of cancer. One of the things that's not
appreciated about red meat. And I'll just mention this is that it's not just that they have more of these three branched-chain amino acids that prevents mTOR from doing
its good stuff to the body. There's also a molecule
called TMA that is in the meat that goes into the bloodstream, the liver turns it into a
toxic molecule called T-M-A-O. And this TMAO is showing,
at least in animals, probably in people, to enhance, accelerate cardiovascular disease. So I would say-
- And cancer too, right? Yeah.
- Yeah. - And so, what we want to do is to limit the nitrates,
the preserved meats, if you like a good steak
by all means eat one, it's not going to kill you. But if you try to just push yourself towards a more plant-based,
plant focused diet and maybe have some red wine occasionally, a lot of olive oil with oleic acid, which activates sirtuins as well. The Mediterranean diet is
the one that I think is, likely to be the easiest
to do in the Western world and to have the biggest bang for the buck. You can go a little bit
further, like I have, don't eat meat and eventually
maybe I'll give up everything, that's dairy and eggs. But the Mediterranean diet
is a very enjoyable diet. I lived on it for over a decade. And one of the things
that's not well known is that there are studies
of Mediterranean diet versus Western diet. And it's a massive difference. There's one here that was
published in, just 2000. There was a reduction in mortality- - In 2000 or? in 2000, the year 2000. - So, it's 20 Something years ago. - It's 20 something years ago. But there are a lot of studies since, there's at least five studies
that have backed this up. If you switch to a Mediterranean diet, if you're under 80 and you do that, you reduce your mortality, chances of death on any given day by 31%. - [mumbles] like, if you're under 80, which means you can still
take advantage of this, even if you're way deep into your life. - Right, and I would say,
probably in this study, they just didn't include
it, people over 80. So I don't know for a fact that it wouldn't work on 80 year olds, - Sure, right.
- But yeah, that's the point that's really important, often when I give talks to crowds, they are elderly. And often the question comes
up, is it too late for me? The answer is, it's never too late. Dietary changes in older people
can have massive benefits. Some people say, oh you need
to have a carry a bit of fat, if you're over 80, you should
have a little bit of body fat. - There was a study that a
lot of people latched on to that they got really excited about because it was like, oh, if
you're older, you can be fat. - Yeah, well, it turns
out that's not true. When those studies have been redone, being lean as an older
person is also beneficial. If you look at, go to a nursing home, I don't know how many
people listening have been to a nursing home but when you go there, look around who's alive. They're not giant men who are obese. They're little women who are skinny. There's an experiment right there. It's obvious, right in plain sight. - Okay, so, eat less. Start working toward
fasting, cut the sugar, cut the meat, eat the veggies. Don't cut the meat and respond with a bunch of carbohydrates,
eat the veggies. And if you are going to eat the veggies and you can find ones that
have been stressed out and are enjoying a little Xenohormetic, you may enjoy a little
Xenohormetic effect from that. - That's great and there's even an order, which you can eat your meals to reduce the blood sugar spike. You can put the sugar
at the end of the meal. So, dessert is fine if you, but put it at the end,
don't start with sugar and don't start with the carbohydrate because that will immediately
spike your glucose. - So, if you are
[mumbles] go back to that, like the second and third point, if you are going to eat sugar, eat it at the end of a meal. - Right, what you ate during the meal and in which order also
makes a difference. [overlapped chatter] - that's just,
- Oh my goodness, eating candy during the
day is just going to make you feel lethargic
when that sugar goes away. - Well, we're doing this
really horrible thing to children by telling
them that their lives are, like sugar is this really great thing that they should have all the time. They should be able to have
snacks that are ladened with sugar and [murmurs] breakfast that starts with sugar and- - Yeah, well, I blame the
food industry for that. 'Cause they want to sell more food. And we've been taught that
children should never go hungry. Breakfast is the best meal of the day. And we've got an obesity
epidemic in kids, no surprise. And what parent doesn't feel guilty when their kid feels hunger,
but for longterm health, even programming the epigenome for long term health requires
some hunger in individuals. And what we do to kids
is we say, big breakfast, here's a snack, here's your lunch, terrible lunch, typically
at schools, public schools, big dinner, go to bed full,
wake up, eat some more. We're not just causing problems
for these kids physiology for the long run, 20, 30 years later, 'cause their epigenome is now set for feast not famine.
- Right. - But we're also setting
them up for obesity, which shuts off their
survival programs right now. So, their bodies are aging quicker than they otherwise would. - I wonder if that's not a
really important frame to put, what we call the obesity epidemic into is, it's not just an epidemic
of making people bigger. It's an epidemic of
making people age faster. - Absolutely and we're
going to see the impact of this in two or three decades from now with an increase of these diseases because the clock has been accelerated. - So this is, most of our listeners, most of the people that
are listening to this, watching this are going to be adults who're going to be making
decisions for themselves. But, much of this, if not all of
this is really translatable to what parents should be starting to help their children develop the habits of eating in these patterns as well. - Right, and it's okay to be hungry. - once in a while.
- Exactly. - Yeah.
- Yeah. And not just have food lying around that whenever they want
to snack, they can. That is the way that we evolved. We have this metabolic winter hypothesis that we've published. When we were, going back probably a
hundred thousand years ago, back to 6 million. What was our lifestyle? We were cold and hungry. These days we live in air
conditioned and heated houses with food always available, which goes against what
we've evolved to be optimal. And so we've got to go
back to those days where, occasionally we were hungry,
occasionally we were cold. We'll get to cold therapy later. But basically the concept,
if there's nothing else that you remember about this topic, just remember this that
we need to put our bodies in a state of want for
them to fight diseases and have ultimate health in
old age and give us longevity. - That's a really good place
I think, to stop for now, because the next thing we're going to talk about is other ways to put our
bodies into states of stress. That's episode three. Do you want to preview
that, just a little bit? - Well, there's certain things you can do. We're going to talk about exercise and cold therapy and so on. As these are ways of making the body feel like it's in a state of adversity. - And do very much, what fasting and these diets do, which is activate these longevity genes. - That's exactly it and the exciting part about the world we live
in now, as we're learning, what is the best combo of those things? And we'll talk about that
in next week's episode. Thank you for joining us today. If you're enjoying this podcast and would like to support us, please subscribe on
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have the opportunity to leave us up to a five star review. Also, please support the
sponsors we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, that's probably the best way to help us. We also have a Patreon account. It's patreon.com/davidsinclair. There you can support us
at any level you like. Thank you for joining us. And we'll be back next
week to discuss exercise, cold exposure, heat exposure
and other acute stresses.
Highlights:
In the second podcast episode of Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair, he and co-host Matthew LaPlante discuss how we can live longer by changing the way we eat. They guide listeners towards a path to longer living by examining how we can change our eating habits to live longer, all while explaining the relevant science.
More details, including an in-depth analysis can be found here.
Now eating 2 Big Macs daily until 79
Without having to watch the entire episode, I'm mostly interested in that study about changing your diet (Even up until age 80).
Anyone have a link, or the title to the study?
Does he talk about quality of life?
I dont care if I live to 130, if by age 80 im a husk of my former self.
Lots of elderly people who more or less are just waiting for death.