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00:00:02
you've mentioned minimal alcohol but how much does alcohol smoking or marijuana or psychedelics actually affect lifespan do we have enough
00:00:13
research on this yet or uh well we do on on tobacco smoking is obviously it's very clear that's a decade off your life and what's interesting is that what we're learning about these various things that you can
00:00:26
do to hurt yourself or to protect yourself is that what's happening is that your body is aging at a different rate so smokers you can measure it are older biologically
00:00:38
than people who've never smoked and it's why they look older too wow bounces around but it's usually a decade younger than that that's what it is so so what do you take a blood sample
00:01:04
like and then you what measure the blood there's two ways of doing it uh there's one company that i advise called inside tracker and that's what i use i've had that too yeah you've done that yeah yeah so they come to your home or you donate and then you get this uh
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this readout of i think it's 40 different parameters and then use an algorithm and tell you how old you are so i'm 42 or something like that i'm on the i'm i mean the top two percent of people from my age for youthfulness
00:01:28
so i know i'm happy with it just dust it out a little brag i like it yeah yeah well you better be if you're researching this and the top scientists in the world on this oh yeah i don't like to brag that's not what australians and scientists do
00:01:41
but what i i do want to say is i use my body as a an experiment yeah and trying to be a role model and i've been optimizing my lifestyle for 20 years now based on this feedback from inside tracker for the last 12 13
00:01:54
years wow and you can see the graphs of things going out of the optimal zone and then i make a change based on science and it comes back or even better so we know from smokers that their biological age is older when they smoke is what
00:02:08
you're saying right yeah well that's one test the inside tracker test is what i do routinely every few months but there's a new type of test that my colleagues and in my lab we've developed it's called the dna methylation test
00:02:20
it's also known as the horovath test named after my friend stephen horvath at ucla the way to think of this is if you've ever heard of the epi genome these are the the control systems that control our dna
00:02:33
it turns out that that system you can measure uh it's chemicals on your dna that change over time predictably and we've just developed a way to measure that 100 times cheaper than it was before
00:02:44
and i'm going to bring this test to the public so that's people can test their biological at home or something or it should be a cheek swab that's what we're developing so you don't have to prick or take blood or anything you do a cheek sweat exactly and then you would ship it
00:02:57
in or something yeah you'll post it in and then you get hopefully just a week later or less here's your credit score for your body well that's cool and then even better here's how you how do you slow it down and reverse it based on
00:03:09
everything we know about you wow that's cool take you on that journey so do this eat this swallow this that is cool i got to take that test yeah well you can get on the wait list if you want
00:03:21
okay there's a website because we are uh taking names right now we may do some studies with early adopters too that's cool what's up where is it it's called tally t-a-l-l-y
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tallyhealth.com and uh the reason i'm excited about it is it's very hard to focus on what works because we have no idea you exercise you hope that it's good yeah is it too much too little if i eat this does it help me we need a dashboard for our bodies and
00:03:46
that's what that's what these give you that is really cool okay so we know that smoking makes you age biologically that's why it makes you look older smoking what about
00:03:58
drinking alcohol you know we talked about wine in the the substance in wine that could be supportive but alcohol in general does that affect biological age and aging
00:04:10
well it's all still depends on quantity uh one glass a day most doctors would say especially if it's red wine it's fine and the alcohol actually can help with cut the cardiovascular system reduces uh
00:04:22
bad cholesterol and more importantly raises the good cholesterol hdl this is for red wine uh and the alcohol in white wine does a little bit of good too but beer so beer will raise the levels of uric acid which is a
00:04:36
breakdown product of a protein breakdown product then you can pee out um but if you have too much beer and other types of food that contain a lot of this type of
00:04:49
protein you will raise your uric acid level so why does that matter it's being becoming very clear that if you have high uric acid levels your body will age faster we just had uh dr david
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perlmutter on who has a book about uric acid talking about like this is one of the root causes of poor health yeah and aging faster and things like that so alcohol you talk to him a lot yeah yeah
00:05:13
i actually was uh one of the first people to read his book before it came out yeah it's really good it blew my mind i now measure my uric acid levels you can get little test strips uh you can just buy them usually you just piano
00:05:26
you swap spit on it and 10 seconds later you see you see your acid levels yeah and so the the lower the level the better right the higher the level means there's risk for what everything according to david it's
00:05:39
really bad for cancers and heart disease mainly but uh i i think he's right that it's a sign of of accelerated aging the higher the uric level the faster you're gonna be aging yeah
00:05:52
and a larger amount of consumption of alcohol specifically beer i'm hearing raises that level beer in particular has a lot of chemicals in it that will raise uric
00:06:04
acid unfortunately and and that's from david palmar he gave me a list of foods and i saw beer on there like oh that's now is is there any benefit to beer in biology in science is it help you
00:06:18
improve the quality of your health your is your brain get better does your your body your system get better does it make you younger at all or are there no benefits to beer biologically and in your brain
00:06:30
there are benefits because there's alcohol in there and a little bit of alcohol is good for your cardiovascular system but but there's other things that's good for your cardiovascular system for sure right that you don't that you don't need
00:06:41
so beer on the on the list of alcohols is at the bottom for health mostly unless it's full of sugar you know like there's very sweet wines i think would be a problem but beer does have a lot of vitamin u b
00:06:54
b group vitamins b3 tons of it but you can get another way you can [Music] what can you do i mean you've got to live as well right right i don't prescribe a life that's that's prolonging and feels longer you've got
00:07:07
to live a little right right enjoyment the enjoyment of the richness of life yeah right though i am trying not to drink alcohol these days i've never been drunk in my life yeah amazing never been drunk i don't find it amazing because i
00:07:19
just never found the the this i never had the desire to do it i never i like tasted some when i was 16 and i was like i don't understand why i would ever drink this plus it was also for me maybe that's one of the reasons
00:07:32
in your mind i look younger i look like i haven't aged more is because i found it as a an advantage in sports when everyone else was drinking i was like oh it's weakening
00:07:44
their immune system it's making them slower mentally this will give me an edge in athletics they were hung over after games in practice and i was like i'm gonna be sharp and so i just kept on with it i was like
00:07:56
this is just going to make me sharper now i have my other v i use you know sugar in other ways this is my advice so i'm not perfect but um does alcohol make you look older too
00:08:09
in excess yeah yeah yeah so a little bit every day is okay a little bit but most doctors um like physicians would say if you overdo it you you will age and actually what what you do as a researcher is you
00:08:21
look at people who live a long time and compare them to either their twin which has been done or family members interesting yeah and actually how you live your life has a massive
00:08:33
impact on how long you live there's a twin study they took identical twins genetically identical in denmark and they said okay let's look at them through their life and there were massive differences in
00:08:46
how they looked and how they how long they lived and when they went back to see what the causes were they could figure out first of all that 80 of their lifespan was determined by how they lived not their genetics
00:08:58
you mean the way they felt about themselves the people they hung out with their environment the activities they took on or what do you mean well mostly their lifestyle what they ate did they smoke did they drink did they exercise those did they sleep well all that stuff right
00:09:11
and those that did all the good things the same genetics twins born the same day one could live 10 years longer than the other now this is what i'm curious about were these twins hanging out all the time or were they because usually when you're
00:09:24
hanging out with someone all the time you pick up the similar habits right you pick up a similar lifestyle habit as your parents as your partner and you kind of eat the same things it's really hard to be like i'm going to drink every day and i'm not going to
00:09:36
drink every day if you're living together and in the same room right yeah yeah i don't know i wonder how it is maybe they they got separated at birth or something interesting uh but it does tell you a lot that the fact that 80 of our future health is in our own hands is
00:09:49
liberating that's really because often we think ah it's not going to make a big difference it really makes a big difference how you live your life every day focus on that and one thing that i do is i look at my future self and i ask myself what's that guy saying
00:10:02
to me today if he could speak to me what's he saying please don't eat that exactly please don't drink that anymore you had enough like you're going to hurt me in 10 years that's how you need to think about it it's coaching yourself 10
00:10:14
20 30 years out right it's interesting i asked david pearl about it i said what are some things you wish you would have done young sooner to improve the quality of your health and he was like flossing he was like he's like i and i
00:10:27
didn't go deeper into that but i remember him saying that i was like there's wisdom and whatever it is maybe he had some gum issues or something he had to deal with at one point that was really affecting him for a year or two i don't know i'm just making this up
00:10:40
but if he could go back he'd be like i wish he would have done this better so i didn't have to suffer later right yeah what are the things you've done or you're doing now that your 10 year old
00:10:51
self will be so happy for but if he was in front of you right now he'd just be hugging you and high fiving you nonstop the things you're doing that he will appreciate in ten years and then what are a few things that he's
00:11:04
gonna say man i really wish you wouldn't do that right now oh yeah okay all right so um let's see so i'm so i measure myself so i can speak scientifically not just that it makes me feel good
00:11:17
uh it's the the one meal one main meal a day he would be grateful for i'm sure of it and and as a result i'm leaner and uh you know more ripped uh
00:11:29
you look lean i am lean like really lean i've gone over the last two years from 150 pounds to 133. yeah you look leaner even from when i the first time i had you on your face is leaner and chiseled yeah
00:11:43
i don't think i can lose any i want to lose any more yeah i need to go back to the gym and do a little bit more so the one meal a day but you weren't doing one meal a day what five ten years ago no i only started during the
00:11:54
pandemic um yeah this is new for me too it's hard actually when you begin very hard you feel hungry because you've got those crashes that make you really hungry and you've got this um hormone called ghrelin that makes you hungry but once you get through that it
00:12:07
takes about three weeks so anyone who who tries it make sure that you don't give up early just power through and then your liver will wake up one main meal a day so that's one um the other thing i
00:12:19
think that he will be happy is don't eat sugary foods oh man yeah don't don't eat that cake mmm so at a restaurant when they said you want dessert i always say no
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but then i'm hoping that someone at the table does what i want yeah but that's all you all i need i need to taste it i don't need to fill myself with a cake gotcha um because you still want to enjoy your life and live a full
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life but you don't want to in 10 years be like why do they eat cake every day it's not worth it yeah really your future self will thank you for it um lifting weights i know
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you do that so i i need to do more of that i got a standing desk so most of the day i'm standing which is great again you have to get used to it you'll feel tired for the first few weeks yes your legs will
00:13:09
uh i'm now mostly focused on eating plants i think when do you start that that's recently uh maybe mostly plants yeah i've
00:13:20
switched i i love meat i wish that i could eat more but you just got to look at the science there's some really good studies of thousands of people who just look at how long people live and what they and i mean it's not even an argument
00:13:32
but there's so many people that bring in the argument well all these people have cured these diseases or whatever you know gotten rid of these things from meat only and but people make the argument right like you see it online people making the
00:13:44
argument for meat meat meat so how where are they finding these research studies of people living longer on an only meat diet i don't know but you're not seeing them you're not seeing studies of anyone that lives over
00:13:56
a hundred that all they do is eat meat well there might be one person or two but when you look at 10 000 people what they eat it's uh it's the vegan and and the pescetarian that went out in the blue zones right yeah and and the numbers are
00:14:09
something like that you drop it down to you've got 88 percent less chance or actually it's it's 12 percent chance for most diseases so most diseases are protected by these diets really wait a minute 80 percent less
00:14:22
chance of what of dying at any one point in the age range of the study which wow which is you know by eating by being a pescetarian yeah
00:14:34
yeah so it's vegan pescetarian those the best then above that would be um actually pescetarian was better than vegetarian a little bit of meat seemed to help but it has to be fish and what's the omega-3s in there right yeah and and
00:14:46
particularly oleic acids good which is found in avocados and olive oil that activates one of the protective enzymes that we study in the lab which acid oleic o-l-e-i-c
00:15:00
what is some of that but not a lot of it's a monounsaturated fatty acid or mufa uh if you have a bit of olive oil there's a supplement online that i get that has high levels of olic acid in it that i take every day okay cool with the
00:15:12
dha and epa all that good stuff yes okay so that's my that's my fish intake is a pill you don't need fish are you very little well you know i'm evolving my diet so i've
00:15:24
i've gone from a mediterranean diet over the last 10 years to the last two three months to old plant-based no dairy and yeah no meat and i'm just seeing
00:15:37
what happens to my body i'm measuring things as an experiment yes it's not a philosophy and if things don't work out biologically i'll go back i mean i'd love to go back to a state i'm australian after all but you know i'm driven by science and
00:15:50
that's all it is yeah okay so you got these four was there another thing that your future self would thank you for one meal a day don't eat sugary foods that's gonna be one of the most challenging for me
00:16:02
lifting weights eating mostly plants was there anything else get control over psychological stress oh yeah why is this so important well the the main problem is you have
00:16:15
high levels of cortisol when you're stressed out psychologically and it it's clear that people who have high levels of really high levels of stress uh are chronically ill
00:16:27
and even it accelerates gray hair that's actually a fact it's not just a myth you really are getting older as if you have stress really so this scientifically proven that if you're stressed out all the time or more frequently you're gonna
00:16:40
get older biologically correct wow yeah yeah can you reverse gray hair without dyes uh yes really well not routinely but there are
00:16:51
examples of that um there are uh some drugs that have shown in the clinic that that make hair go grey uh from gray to brown the the best example i can tell you is
00:17:04
that that when people are stressed out let's say they're in they're in the banking world and they're losing their minds um you can find hairs that start to turn gray okay so you look at them and they're a little bit grey at the bottom oh good
00:17:18
turning gray okay then they get given a vacation and they go away for a couple of weeks and guess what happens to the hair shaft it gets brown it's brown again you can find these gray brown segments of hair
00:17:31
in people yeah and what they they tracked it down to was that the cells that make the hair pigment start to shut down but they can be reinvigorated but i suspect once you've been gray for a number of years it's
00:17:43
really hard to reverse that yeah but but you know i'm i'm the first person to say aging is is not unidirectional in my lab we're driving it forwards and backwards at will it's not that's really difficult
00:17:55
anymore once you figure it out any high school student could do it these days in a mouse at least make sure that that reward really bask in it really appreciate what you've done and what's come to you and but
00:18:08
and here's a very important but is but take that feeling of being saturated with dopamine the huge win and attach it to the effort process that got you there
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