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Can Aging Be Reversed?

Harvard longevity scientist David Sinclair on the information theory of aging, gene therapy trials, sirtuins, NAD, fasting, and the supplement stack he actually takes.

Posted
4 months ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
4.6M
127.3K likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Aging is not a mechanical wearing-out but an erasable loss of cellular identity information, and the first medicines to reset that information in the human body are already in clinical trials.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You want to understand the actual science behind longevity claims, not the supplement-marketing version.
  • You are curious whether lifestyle changes (fasting, diet, exercise) have a mechanistic explanation, not just epidemiological association.
  • You are 30-60 and interested in what a serious longevity researcher actually does differently in their daily life.
  • You want to understand sirtuins, NAD, NMN, and epigenetics explained plainly without a biology degree.
  • You are skeptical of immortality hype but open to evidence-based life extension being real and imminent.
SKIP IF…
  • You want a quick 5-bullet longevity checklist without the underlying biology.
  • You are looking for fitness or bodybuilding optimization -- this is about cellular aging science, not performance.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Aging happens because repeated DNA breaks force the proteins that maintain cellular identity (sirtuins) to abandon their posts. Over decades, cells lose track of what type they are, which produces the diseases and frailty we associate with old age. Sinclair's lab has shown this process can be reversed in mice, monkeys, and human tissue by delivering three genes that reset the epigenome, and the first human trial targeting blindness is scheduled to begin in 2026. Meanwhile, everyday practices that raise NAD -- fasting, exercise, polyphenol-rich food -- directly fuel the sirtuin system that fights this drift.

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Voices

Who's talking.

02:36guestDavid Sinclair
00:00hostSteven Bartlett
Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 03:34

01 · Cold open and intro

Sinclair makes the core claim (aging is reversible), host subscribe pitch, formal intro.

03:34 – 09:12

02 · The grandmother and the poem

Sinclair's origin story: grandmother Vera, the A.A. Milne poem, and the childhood vow to fight aging.

09:12 – 12:18

03 · Aging as the root of all disease

Sinclair establishes credentials and the core thesis: aging drives all major diseases, reversing it cures them.

12:18 – 19:12

04 · First human trials -- reversing blindness

The eye as the first target. Three genes, AAV delivery, FDA submission, eight-week doxycycline activation window. Eye model prop.

19:12 – 24:11

05 · 100% lifespan extension in mice

Old mice (equivalent to 85-year-old humans) given whole-body injection doubled their remaining lifespan. The pill timeline.

24:11 – 35:42

06 · The Information Theory of Aging

The core framework: aging is loss of epigenetic information. DNA model prop. The backup copy that exists in every old cell.

35:42 – 42:33

07 · The ICE mice -- inducing aging on demand

How the lab proved the theory by creating mice that age 50% faster using a slime-mold DNA-cutting gene.

42:33 – 50:00

08 · Why evolution never fixed aging

Natural selection optimized for early reproduction. Predator-free species live longer. Humans are slowly evolving longer lifespans but too slowly.

50:00 – 54:00

09 · Reversing aging reverses disease

Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease are driven by aging. Reverse the aging and diseases disappear. Mice with Alzheimer's genes cured by brain age reversal.

54:00 – 59:00

10 · Fertility and menopause

Old female mice restart reproduction after ovarian rejuvenation. The assumption that women simply run out of eggs may be less fixed than believed.

59:00 – 1:10:00

11 · Geopolitics: the US government and age reversal

US government blocked foreign investment of over $100M into a Sinclair company over national security fears. Super-soldier potential.

1:10:00 – 1:15:00

12 · Would you trade a billion dollars to be young?

The thought experiment: neither host nor guest would trade ten years of life for a billion dollars. Youth is more valuable than any financial figure.

1:15:00 – 1:20:00

13 · Meaning, purpose, and living longer

Sinclair rejects the idea that mortality gives life meaning. Multiple careers, no time pressure. The question of children and declining birth rates.

1:20:00 – 1:31:00

14 · The vinyl record analogy and weighted vest demo

Scratching a vinyl record live to demonstrate epigenetic information loss. Host puts on a 20lb vest and neck brace to experience simulated old age.

1:31:00 – 1:42:00

15 · Cancer as a cellular identity crisis

Cancer cells lose their original gene expression the same way aging cells do. Rejuvenating cancer cells makes them either normalize or self-destruct.

1:42:00 – 1:49:00

16 · Fasting, sirtuins, and NAD

How fasting raises NAD, which fuels sirtuins. The yeast discovery. Three meals a day is a marketing invention. Practical fasting protocol.

1:49:00 – 1:55:00

17 · Extended fasting, autophagy, and ketosis

Monthly 3-day fast for deep autophagy. Keto diet skepticism long-term. Ketones for cognitive clarity without being in starvation.

1:55:00 – 2:07:00

18 · Plants, polyphenols, and eating the rainbow

Polyphenols activate sirtuins. Blueberries, avocados, olive oil, nuts, Brussels sprouts. Xenohormesis. Matcha shading. Red wine polyphenols vs alcohol.

2:07:00 – 2:10:00

19 · Cholesterol, statins, and LP(a)

Low LDL is unambiguous. Sinclair on statins since age 30. LP(a) -- the largely unknown cardiovascular risk factor. High-dose niacin.

2:10:00 – 2:15:00

20 · The supplement stack

NMN, resveratrol, metformin/berberine, spermidine, glycine, vitamin D+K2, low-dose aspirin, niacin. Pulsing rather than daily for some.

2:15:00 – 2:20:00

21 · Exercise, sauna, cold plunge, and red light

Best single habit: skip a meal. Second: aerobic exercise until panting 5+ min, 3x/week. Sauna proven. Cold plunge: less data but real benefit. Red light: not BS.

2:20:00 – 2:24:00

22 · Hair loss, testosterone, and DHT

DHT as driver of male pattern baldness. DHT blockers, red light cap. Testosterone replacement: not longevity-extending; build muscle instead.

2:24:00 – 2:27:00

23 · The future: a $100 pill and Life Biosciences

Life Biosciences clinical trial. AI screening 8 billion molecules. Three candidate molecules being tested in mice now. Goal: $100 pill.

2:27:00 – 2:29:07

24 · Consciousness, simulation, and the meaning of life

Quantum double-slit experiment. 50%+ probability we are in a simulation. Consciousness is the most important thing the universe produces. Purpose of life.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Aging is a cellular identity crisis: cells forget what type they are because the epigenetic labels that define them get erased over decades.
  • Sirtuins have two jobs -- maintaining cellular identity and repairing broken DNA -- and every DNA break pulls them away from the first job permanently.
  • How you live accounts for 80-90% of your rate of aging; your DNA sequence is nearly irrelevant to when you die.
  • Fasting raises NAD levels, which refuels sirtuins, which restores epigenetic control -- the same molecular pathway that makes caloric restriction life-extending.
  • The three genes that reset the epigenome in mice are the same set being used in the human blindness trial; one drug will treat multiple diseases.
  • Very old mice given a whole-body reset injection doubled their remaining lifespan -- equivalent to an 80-year-old living an extra 20 years.
  • Cancer is a cellular identity crisis in the same way aging is; rejuvenating cells has been shown to shrink or kill cancer cells in lab animals.
  • Old female mice that stopped reproducing can produce healthy offspring again after an ovarian rejuvenation treatment.
  • Breakfast being the most important meal of the day is a marketing claim invented by early-twentieth-century cereal companies, not nutrition science.
  • Ketogenic diets correlate with short-term weight loss but do not associate with longevity; plants and their polyphenols are what the longevity data actually points to.
  • Polyphenols in plants act as chemical signals that mimic mild stress and hyperactivate sirtuins.
  • Shading matcha plants before harvest stresses them into producing far more polyphenols, which is why matcha is healthier than regular green tea.
  • Red wine's benefit comes entirely from polyphenols; the alcohol cancels and likely exceeds those benefits.
  • One baby aspirin daily still makes sense for people with high cardiovascular risk even though general guidelines were reversed.
  • LP(a) -- a cholesterol-like protein driven by genetics -- is as dangerous as LDL and almost no one gets tested for it.
  • Spermidine (from wheat germ) extends lifespan in every animal tested and appears to slow epigenetic information loss.
  • Long-lived species like bowhead whales evolved stable epigenetic control systems because they have no predators -- evolution only fixed aging when early death was removed.
  • Age reversal is not a one-shot event: in mice the eye has been rejuvenated at least twice, implying repeated resets may be possible throughout a lifetime.
Takeaway

Aging is information loss you can slow down now.

WHAT TO LEARN

Every lifestyle choice either protects or erodes the epigenetic control system that keeps your cells knowing what they are.

02The grandmother and the poem
  • The motivation to study aging does not require a scientific framework -- a child's confusion about why anyone has to grow old is a more honest starting point than most academic abstractions.
03Aging as the root of all disease
  • Treating individual diseases separately is fighting symptoms; the common upstream cause of Alzheimer's, cancer, and heart disease is aging itself, which means a single aging intervention could prevent all of them.
04First human trials -- reversing blindness
  • The eye was chosen as the first human target not because it responds especially well to age reversal, but because it is an enclosed system where a mistake cannot spread to the rest of the body.
  • The three genes that reset cellular age are delivered once and stay permanently; they are switched on for eight weeks by a common antibiotic (doxycycline) whenever rejuvenation is needed.
05100% lifespan extension in mice
  • A 100% extension of remaining lifespan in very old mice was not from an optimized protocol -- it was an early proof-of-concept, suggesting far greater extension may be achievable with refinement.
06The Information Theory of Aging
  • Aging is not wear-and-tear but a loss of cellular identity: cells forget what type they are because the epigenetic labels that define them get erased by decades of DNA-break emergencies.
  • A backup copy of the young epigenome exists in every cell of every old organism -- the rejuvenation genes do not add new information, they retrieve and restore what was already there.
07The ICE mice
  • The ability to cause accelerated aging in a controlled experiment confirmed that epigenetic disruption alone, without genetic mutation, is sufficient to produce full aging in an organism.
08Why evolution never fixed aging
  • Natural selection had no pressure to develop long-lived humans because most people died before 40 -- longevity genes were irrelevant when survival to use them was unlikely.
  • Species that evolved without predators naturally evolved stable epigenomes and dramatically longer lifespans, demonstrating that longevity is biologically achievable when selection pressure favors it.
09Reversing aging reverses disease
  • Aging is not a background condition that allows diseases to emerge -- it is the driver. Reversing the aging of a tissue in an animal with Alzheimer's genes cures the Alzheimer's, because the body can heal itself when it is young.
10Fertility and menopause
  • Old female mice that had stopped reproducing produced healthy offspring again after ovarian rejuvenation treatment, suggesting the assumption that women simply run out of eggs may be less fixed than currently believed.
11Geopolitics: the US government and age reversal
  • Governments are treating age-reversal technology as a strategic national asset, not just a medical advancement -- which suggests timelines for deployment may be driven as much by geopolitics as by science.
12Would you trade a billion dollars to be young?
  • The thought experiment of trading a billion dollars for ten years of youth reveals that most people already implicitly value health and time above any financial figure.
13Meaning, purpose, and living longer
  • The intuition that mortality gives life meaning dissolves when you ask whether you would choose to die if you were healthy, had people you loved, and work you cared about -- almost nobody would.
16Fasting, sirtuins, and NAD
  • Your genetics account for roughly 10-20% of how fast you age; how you live accounts for the other 80-90%, which means lifestyle decisions compound over time in either direction.
  • Sirtuins need NAD to function, and NAD falls by half between youth and middle age. Fasting, exercise, and polyphenol-rich foods all raise NAD back up.
  • Skipping breakfast is the easiest high-leverage intervention: a 14-hour overnight fast is enough to trigger sirtuin activation and begin epigenetic maintenance without significant discomfort.
17Extended fasting, autophagy, and ketosis
  • The deep cellular clean that clears damaged proteins (chaperone-mediated autophagy) does not begin in earnest until after two and a half to three days of fasting -- a 16-hour fast is good, but a monthly 3-day fast adds a qualitatively different repair process.
  • Long-term ketogenic diets do not associate with longevity in the research literature; the short-term cognitive and metabolic benefits are real, but a plant-forward lean diet has stronger evidence for lifespan extension.
18Plants, polyphenols, and eating the rainbow
  • Polyphenols in colorful plants act as chemical signals that activate the same stress-response pathways as fasting and exercise -- eating the rainbow is not metaphor, it is mechanism.
  • Plants produce higher polyphenol concentrations when stressed -- choosing high-quality, minimally processed plant foods captures significantly more of this effect.
19Cholesterol, statins, and LP(a)
  • LP(a) is a genetic cardiovascular risk factor as important as LDL cholesterol that the vast majority of people have never been tested for; getting this number is straightforward and actionable.
20The supplement stack
  • Longevity supplements with the strongest evidence include NMN (raises NAD), resveratrol (activates sirtuins), spermidine (stimulates autophagy), and glycine (supports DNA methylation) -- all with low downside risk at standard doses.
  • Pulsing some supplements every other day rather than daily may produce better outcomes because continuous activation of longevity pathways can paradoxically interfere with the body's acute stress responses.
21Exercise, sauna, cold plunge, and red light
  • Aerobic exercise intense enough to make conversation difficult for at least five minutes, three times a week, produces measurable longevity benefits that weight training alone does not replicate.
  • Saunas have the most robust mortality data among lifestyle interventions besides diet and exercise; regular use correlates with significantly lower cardiovascular death rates in long-term Finnish studies.
  • Red light therapy at the correct wavelengths has genuine evidence behind it -- mitochondria respond to specific red light wavelengths in ways that improve cellular energy production.
23The future: a $100 pill and Life Biosciences
  • The goal for age-reversal medicine is a pill costing roughly $100, not a $100,000 gene therapy injection -- democratizing access is part of the stated mission, not an afterthought.
  • A medicine that reverses aging in a given tissue does not need to be disease-specific: the same gene set that restores vision also reduces cancer growth, reverses neurological disease, and improves skin.
24Consciousness, simulation, and the meaning of life
  • Quantum mechanics (specifically the observer effect in the double-slit experiment) is not metaphor -- particles genuinely behave differently based on whether they are being measured, which has real implications for what reality is.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Epigenome
The chemical control system that sits on top of DNA and tells each cell which genes to turn on or off, defining its identity as a nerve cell, skin cell, or liver cell. Distinct from the DNA sequence itself.
DNA methylation
A methyl group (carbon + three hydrogen atoms) added to specific points on the DNA molecule. The pattern of these marks determines whether a gene is active or silenced, and this pattern degrades with age.
Sirtuins
A family of proteins that act as conductors of the epigenome, keeping genes switched on or off correctly. They also repair broken DNA, and every DNA-break emergency pulls them away from their conductor role.
NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide)
A molecule present in every cell that sirtuins require as fuel. NAD levels fall by roughly half between youth and middle age, which is why sirtuin function declines as we age.
NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide)
A precursor molecule that converts directly into NAD inside cells. Taking it as a supplement has been shown to roughly double blood NAD levels in humans.
Polyphenols
Plant-made molecules (resveratrol, quercetin, anthocyanidins, sulforaphane, etc.) that activate longevity pathways like sirtuins and AMPK. Produced in higher concentrations by stressed plants.
Hormesis
The principle that mild, non-lethal stress (fasting, exercise, cold, heat, plant molecules) activates cellular defense and repair systems that slow aging.
AAV (adeno-associated virus)
A harmless virus-like delivery vehicle used to carry therapeutic genes into specific cell types in the body. Used in Sinclair's human blindness trial.
Information Theory of Aging
Sinclair's framework holding that aging is caused by the progressive loss of epigenetic information, analogous to scratches accumulating on a vinyl record, and that restoring this information reverses aging.
LP(a) / Lp little a
A genetically-driven protein that inserts itself into cholesterol particles in the blood and accelerates arterial plaque. Associated with high cardiovascular risk; most people have never been tested for it.
Metformin
A diabetes drug that activates the AMPK longevity pathway. Used by some longevity researchers preventively; best pulsed every other day rather than taken daily, especially around workouts.
Spermidine
A naturally occurring polyamine found in wheat germ that stimulates autophagy and appears to slow epigenetic aging. Named after its original discovery source; now commercially sourced from plants.
Autophagy
The cellular process of breaking down and recycling damaged proteins. Triggered by extended fasting (beyond 16 hours), it performs a deep clean that shorter fasts do not reach.
Singularity (longevity)
A hypothetical threshold point in medical progress where life-extension technology advances faster than a person ages, making continued aging effectively optional. Ray Kurzweil predicted this around 2040.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:00bookLifespan by David Sinclair ↗
6:17:00productLife Biosciences ↗
6:17:00channelLifespan podcast / lifespan.com ↗
4:05:00productKetone IQ ↗
4:03:00productPerfecto matcha
4:43:00productNMN supplement
4:44:00productResveratrol
4:44:00productMetformin / Berberine
4:46:00productSpermidine
4:54:00productGlycine
4:57:00productVitamin D + K2
4:59:00productLow-dose aspirin
5:00:00productNiacin (vitamin B3) for LP(a)
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

07:00
“When I see an old person walking down the street now, I don't think that person's just worn out, frail, gonna die. I just think that's someone that needs a reset.”
complete thought, zero setup required, genuinely paradigm-shifting framing→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
1:00:00
“When you reverse aging, diseases of aging go away or are cured. What's driving Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease -- fundamentally it's aging.”
the single most counterintuitive claim in the episode→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
1:20:00
“Your DNA is not your destiny. How you live your life is really 80-90% of your rate of aging.”
empowering, standalone, highly shareable→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
2:00:00
“Adversity mode is what we're aiming for. The opposite is abundance mode -- that's modern life. Popcorn, movies, wheels on your suitcase, sitting down all day.”
memorably specific, funny, and scientifically grounded simultaneously→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
3:03:30
“If you're not panting and you're just lifting weights, that's not gonna have the kind of benefit.”
directly challenges what most people think of as exercise→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
3:01:00
“There's no day if you're healthy where you wanna die. Even if you're 100, 120, if you have friends, family, loved ones, you're healthy -- would you say okay, tomorrow I'm ready to die? No.”
moral clarity on immortality without sounding delusional→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map

Where the conversation goes.

00:00 – 12:18steadyOrigin story and framing
12:18 – 24:11denseClinical trials and current science
24:11 – 50:00denseInformation Theory of Aging -- the mechanism
50:00 – 1:20:00denseDisease and life extension implications
1:42:00 – 2:10:00denseFasting and nutrition
2:10:00 – 2:20:00denseSupplements and personal protocol
2:15:00 – 2:24:00steadyExercise and lifestyle interventions
2:24:00 – 2:29:07steadyPhilosophy, consciousness, AI, simulation
The Script

Word for word.

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metaphoranalogy
00:00This is very
00:01It's bad. Right? It's hard.
00:03Yeah. That's what it's like to be old. And for far too long, we've ignored it or accepted it as natural.
00:08And I reject the idea that aging, just because it's natural, is acceptable. Dying at 80 is not inevitable. Absolutely, that can be changed.
00:16So if you're skeptical, I am a Harvard professor who has been studying aging longevity and age reversal for thirty years. And I've seen enough from my lab showing that we can literally now reverse the aging process. And it's it's not a question of if, it's a question of when this is gonna happen.
00:30And everyone should stick around because I'm gonna tell you some of the major things that people should be doing. They can lengthen their life by a decade. Hey.
00:37You're not taking that off, Steve. Oh. Got ten minutes for So you can accelerate aging by smoking, getting an x-ray, ultra processed foods, excessive drinking, flying a lot I fly all the time.
00:46That's probably accelerating your aging process. Even going to a rock concert and blasting your eardrums because your ear hair cells are getting older faster. And so I look at the body like it's a computer, and we can reinstall the software.
01:00And what's interesting is when you reverse aging diseases like Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease go away or are cured because what's driving a lot of those diseases is aging. And so my lab is like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. They are making discoveries that blow me away every week.
01:16And I think we're at a turning point in human history, where you're probably gonna live into the twenty second century if you do all the right things. And we're gonna dig into all of those in great detail. But what are the unintended consequences of such a world where we all live longer?
01:28And, also, do you think it's gonna be possible in the next fifty years for us to live forever? And then what's the best treatment you've discovered for hair loss? This is why I love your podcast, Steven.
01:37You asked the right questions. So first
01:39This is super interesting to me. My team gave me this report to show me how many of you that watch your show subscribed, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here?
01:55We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it.
02:11Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
02:15I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests some conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the Diary of SEO, and I will not let you down.
02:27Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show.
02:34Doctor David Sinclair, I have waited many years to speak to you, and I've been so keen to speak to you for so many years because so much of the research and the information I've consumed on the subjects we're gonna talk about today comes from you, directly from research you've done and from theories and ideas and hypotheses that you formed.
02:54I think the place that this conversation should start is is probably with this picture because it appears to be incredibly formative in your journey.
03:06Oh, yes. That is an important picture. True.
03:10This is a picture of my grandmother and me when I was in my early twenties.
03:16I'm now 56, if you're wondering. And my grandmother has played a major role in my life.
03:22I'm gonna have to be careful not to get too emotional because, uh, she's now passed passed away, but she's inspired me to do the best I can to leave the world a better place,
03:33and, uh, I found it. And there's this particular book here called Now We Are Six.
03:38It is. Anyone who's read my book, uh, Lifespan knows that this book is very important to me.
03:45And I didn't realize it, of course, when I was a kid that this was gonna change my whole life. And there's a poem at the back there that my grandmother, Vera, used to read me when I was six, and it goes like this.
04:00When I was one, I had just begun. When I was two, I was nearly new.
04:05When I was three, I was hardly me. When I was four, I was not much more. When I was five, I was just alive.
04:13But now I am six. I'm as clever as clever, so I think I'll be six now forever and ever.
04:22I'm getting chills reading this again and hearing this poem again because the impact on me was the following, that subconsciously, my grandmother was saying, you you don't wanna grow up.
04:33Adults can be evil. She grew up after World War two. There was horrendous, uh, impact on her and her family in Hungary.
04:42And she thought that a child is innocent and people shouldn't grow up. But what actually happened was I realized, why do people grow old?
04:52That's a terrible thing to happen. And so I've spent my life trying to figure out why do we get old?
04:57Why do we grow up? Why do we get frail? Because I also think that if we can solve that, understand it, slow it, even reverse it now, we we'll have the biggest impact on human health in history.
05:10Am I right in thinking your grandmother told you at that young age that she was gonna die, that you were gonna die, that your parents were gonna die? Yes. Uh, she did tell me that.
05:20I remember it very clearly, actually. I was on the floor and she was crouching down and I said, Vera. I didn't call her grandma.
05:27She didn't wanna be called grandma. She wanted to be young like a kid too. I said, Vera, will will you always be here to protect me?
05:33Will you always be around? And she said, no. I'm gonna die.
05:36I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, every everything dies. I'm gonna be gone.
05:40Your parents will be gone. Your pet cat will be dead pretty soon, and you yourself will be dead one day. At age, you know, four or five, that that's that's heart wrenching.
05:51Right? We've all gone through this realization around that age that the world that we believe in and see will one day all be gone.
05:59That moment, I remember it so clearly because I thought that's not fair. Why would any species be made or created that knew that fact?
06:10That's cruel. It's better to either not know or to not exist, but to know that that's what's gonna happen is really cruel.
06:18And so I I I vowed, actually, legitimately around the age of 18 to get a PhD, to go to The United States, and develop a research lab to try and do something about it.
06:32The preservation of health and life is the most important thing that we can do as human beings. We do it with some drugs to treat that disease and the other disease, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's. But what's underlying that, what's really causing about one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand people every day to die is the underlying universal process we call aging.
06:53And for far too long, we've ignored it or accepted it as natural, therefore acceptable. And I I I fundamentally reject the idea that aging, just because it's natural, is acceptable.
07:06There will be a day when we look back at today and think how medieval were were our medicines and how sad it was that we accepted that we became frail before a 100.
07:17If someone has just clicked on this conversation now and they deepen their core believe that they're probably gonna live to 80 years old and that we all are, and that we're never gonna be able to do anything about it because that's just the way that it is.
07:29People get old and then they die, and aging is a fact of life as the phrase goes, and you just have to accept it. If that's their sort of core belief, what is the what is the most persuasive sort of top line argument to that person to convince them that in the next two hours when we have this conversation, we will do a job of both reversing that belief, really challenging it in some way, and then also presenting them with a set of possible solutions.
07:56Yeah. Alright. So first of all, who am I?
07:59Um, I'm a Harvard professor. I've been studying
08:01aging longevity and age reversal for thirty years. The technology now that we have in my lab that is used every day by my students literally reverses the age of tissues in animals, in human tissue that we grow in the lab.
08:15And the first human trials to test this are going to be performed in about a month from now.
08:22And if it works, it'll transform human history. It means that we're on a path to finally being able to reset the age of the human body, not by a year, not by ten years, but even more than that.
08:33And what happens when you do that, what we're finding in animals that includes primates, is that we can cure things that have previously been impossible, including blindness, by the way.
08:44And so if you're listening and you're skeptical, I'm not some hack.
08:49I am a Harvard professor who is telling the world and has written a book about it and every day spends my life researching with a team of the best scientists I can gather around the world, showing that we can literally now reverse the aging process and reset how old the body is. In animals, yes,
09:07but potentially this year, showing it can work in the human body as well. So you're doing the first ever trial of this type in humans to reverse aging
09:20next month? Yes. So we've submitted a form to the, the FDA in The US to get approval to treat blindness, a couple of types of blindness in people as early, if all goes well, as next month.
09:35And what exactly is happening there? Because there's many ways one might fix blindness.
09:41Mhmm. You know? What is it you're doing to the eyeball that is a precursor of our potential ability to reverse aging generally?
09:51Yeah. Well, we chose the eye
09:53not because it was gonna work well, but because it's a it's a nice system to study age reversal. The eye is an enclosed space, and so it's much safer than trying to initially reverse the age of the whole body.
10:05Now in mice, we reverse the age of the whole body, and the effect is longevity, rejuvenation, the skin gets better, all parts of the animal get get healthier and younger.
10:14But in humans, you you don't wanna go straight to rejuvenation, uh, because in case something goes wrong, it could set us way back. And we have to make sure we don't have any safety mishaps.
10:25So we're being a little cautious in humans. In mice, it's a little different. So in the human eye Just for those that aren't watching the video, there is a an eye on the table.
10:34Well, a plastic eye. It's a it's a larger version of an eye, but yes, uh, Steven's right. What we're doing, we're gonna look at the back of the eye, which is your retina, and that's where the light hits.
10:45And at that point, there are a lot of nerves that coalesce into the optic nerve that runs to the brain by just a few millimeters. So the brain is here. The eye is actually part of the brain.
10:57A lot of people don't know that. You can touch your brain if you touch your eye. Um, so the optic nerve gets old.
11:02And what we've discovered, if it gets damaged or gets old, it's not working. But the nerves, for most the most part, if you're old, are still there. They just forget how to work.
11:13And that's aging. And later, everyone should stick around because I'm gonna tell you why it is we get old and how it is we reverse it.
11:20But but for this this model, what we're doing is we're introducing a set of three genes into this optic nerve at the back of the eye and turning them on for six to eight weeks.
11:36And those three genes are what we now know reset safely, apparently safely, reset the age of cells, including nerves, by about 75% and then stop.
11:48They don't go more than that, which is good. We don't want to go back to zero. I don't think anyone wants to go back to high school.
11:55But this is the way it works. And we chose the optic nerve because it's a safe and closed system, not because it should work better in optic nerves. In fact, we've now done it in mice, in my lab for the brain.
12:06We're doing hearing. We've done skin. Uh, we did multiple sclerosis.
12:11Uh, we're now doing motor neuron disease and seeing great effects. So it's important to know, I'm not an eye specialist. I didn't choose the eye because I love the eye.
12:19I chose it because that's a good place to start for intra reversal in humans this year.
12:23You mentioned a second ago you've been able to extend the life of mice in your laboratory. How and by how much? Is it the same process and by how much?
12:33Right. Well, the the study that that I was referring to was done using our technology in an independent lab, which is, you might argue, even better than having done it in my lab.
12:44Instead of putting the three reversal genes into the eye, they injected into the vein of the mouse, the old mice, uh, and turned it on in these really old mice. These mice would be the equivalent of about 80 to 85 years.
12:56So they're really old mice. They're really frail. And just any any extension in their lifespan and health would be bet would be a great thing.
13:04And they got an additional 100% lifespan extension. Additional. So
13:09That would be like an 80 year old living to a 160.
13:12Well, the remaining life of an 80 year old isn't long. Oh, okay. Right.
13:16So let's let's say if you're give it to a 70 year old, on average, they'd have another ten years to go. Give them twenty years. So it's that calculation.
13:24But that was not an optimized study. They just did a Hail Mary injection, turned it on, see what would happen. And I
13:31heard when we did a bit of a research call, you say the world doesn't know how close we are. The world doesn't know how close we are to what?
13:40To being able to safely reverse the age of the human body.
13:45How can you be so sure? I'm not sure,
13:48but I'm confident that the science is solid. Right?
13:53That the the biology of aging is is understood, I believe, in concept.
13:59My theory called the information theory of aging has so far been not disproven, which is important for a scientist.
14:08And that has allowed us to succeed really for the first time to safely reverse aging.
14:16And I now believe, and though I didn't ten years ago, I now believe in my lifetime, I'm going to see medicines on the market that reset the age or at least reverse in a large part, uh, the age of the body.
14:29And that that initially won't be to make us just look better and feel better, although that's what a lot of us want. It's gonna be used to cure, certainly prevent, but definitely cure diseases that are currently incurable.
14:44So we're I think we're at a turning point, dare I say, in human history. It's not a question of if.
14:49It's a question of when this is gonna happen.
14:51I wanna get into your theory of aging, which we talked about there. Um, but you did have a prediction before I get to there about how you think we'll be potentially taking a pill in ten years' time every couple of weeks that will make us younger.
15:06Can you explain to me that prediction? What is what is the prediction? I I do believe that
15:11I and you're about twenty something years younger than me. You're gonna see this for sure that there will be a pill.
15:17So you might say, well, my critics might say, well, David, that's exaggerating. Right? You're still trying to get these genes to work.
15:25How's it gonna be a pill? But this is where my lab comes in. My lab is like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory if you visit.
15:31It's magical. And the students that I teach and the trainees who are sometimes in their thirties and even forties who are brilliant scientists, uh, there's about 25 of us, they are making discoveries that blow me away every week.
15:46It's not a pill because you can't give a mouse a pill. They won't chew it. But we give them a liquid down their throat.
15:52It's a drink. And within four weeks, we can rejuvenate them. Not with these genes anymore that we're giving humans.
15:59That's the old older technology. The new technology is something you can swallow in a mouse and rejuvenate them in four weeks.
16:08It's normal for my students to say, oh, yeah. We just rejuvenated the ear.
16:13We just rejuvenated the skin. We just cured ALS, motor neuron disease, in these animals.
16:19By the way, Steven, this isn't just each disease doesn't get a different medicine. Each disease doesn't get a different set of genes. It's the same set of genes, the same molecules that treat cure multiple sclerosis as the same one that cures blindness in mice.
16:36So let that sink in. The same drug that we're using in the eye will be used to treat other diseases in the body, even liver disease.
16:44So if if your predictions are
16:46correct and your timeline is correct,
16:49what does this mean for the way that I should be living my life right now? Most people look at their parents and their grandparents and think that's what my life will be like. I'm gonna be frail in my eighties.
17:00That's not true for us. I like the Wright brothers analogy. It'd be like in 1900 saying we're always gonna travel as fast as a horse.
17:08That's not true. Right? The twentieth century saw that we could go tens of thousands of kilometers.
17:14They went to the moon. Right? That's what our generation is when it comes to biology and aging.
17:21Previous generations are no guide to what our lifespan is gonna be like. You're going to potentially live to the twenty second century.
17:28If you do all the right things, technology keeps increasing. Right? What kind of technologies will we have in fifty years?
17:33You'll be around in fifty years. Hope so. You're a healthy guy.
17:36I know you are. Alright? So in fifty years, what kind of things will you be able to do?
17:41Gosh. This is what most people forget is that technology isn't static. When you're old, you will not be using today's technology.
17:49You'll be using technology of 2070, 2080.
17:53Right? Mhmm. And then you'll be able to live into the twenty second century and take advantage of those technologies.
17:59That's why people talk about the singularity. The singularity is this idea that if you can make it to a certain point in human history, you won't have to age anymore.
18:09And that that's in the future. Right? But first steps first.
18:11Let's show that we can get this to cure blindness and then get to the point where every year that we get one year older, we can get one year younger.
18:21When that happens, it's a very interesting world. Right? You don't have to age anymore.
18:26That is the future. I don't know when we're gonna get there. But if you don't live ten to twenty years longer than your parents, something's wrong.
18:34On that point of the singularity, so this is a particular moment in time where we're gonna be able to make aging or age reversal, I guess, a choice.
18:42Right? So that I guess the thinking or the theory is that if you can just make sure you survive up until this particular date,
18:49then you have the choice to live forever. Is that how is that, like, the theory? Well, that's what they say.
18:54Yes. Uh, there are a lot of proponents of that. But that that's an idea.
18:58Isn't it logically true though? It's like logically It's an yeah. It's an extension of what I'm I'm talking about.
19:03Um, but I don't know when that's gonna be. I think Ray Kurzweil said it's coming
19:08soon. Did he have a prediction? It was in the twenty forties sometime.
19:11So Ray Kurzweil is a famous futurist that seems to predict the future really well across multiple disciplines. So he said 2040?
19:19Yeah. That's my recollection. It's around there.
19:21Do you believe that? Because I I'm gonna hang on till 2014. Are skeptical?
19:25I'll let you leave the house. I mean, Ray is a smart guy. Right?
19:28He predicted AI and all that's happening. So it's it's it's dangerous to bet against Ray's predictions. I I remain skeptical, you know, as one of the leaders in the field.
19:38I think we have a lot still to do. That said, if this trial works this year, we will be in new territory.
19:44We will be on a path to age reversal in the whole body. It's gonna happen. And, you know, right now, it's now 2026 we're talking.
19:542040 is a number of years away. It could be that we truly are able to multiply reset the age of the body.
20:01That's that's another thing that that's often missed. We can reverse the age of the eye not just once, but seemingly as many times as we want.
20:10In mice, we've done it at least twice. We didn't do it a third time because the mice actually just got old and they died, but they died with perfect eyesight. But the point is that we we don't believe it's a one shot wonder.
20:22You can keep reversing aging and then you age out and then you reverse it again and you just keep going. And if that's true, then it is possible that we will live dramatically longer. I don't yet see any technology in the near horizon that will make us live forever, but I do see that we'll have a radical change in how we treat diseases
20:42and how long we can live. So let's talk about what aging actually is. And can you explain this to me like I'm a total idiot?
20:48Because that will help think about difficult because I'm not a total idiot, but this is my theory, is that aging is not just wearing out. It's not just that your body becomes old and dysfunctional and you get pain, you get inflammation, and you die from a disease.
21:05I look at the body like it's a computer, it's software, and we can reinstall the software.
21:13In my lab, we believe we've found a way to do that and we see the evidence of that. So the body is a carrier of information from our parents and what happened in the womb.
21:24That information is intact, keeps our body functioning almost perfectly in our teenage years, 20.
21:33You're in your early thirties. You're starting to lose that information, and so your body's not functioning perfectly anymore.
21:40Gray has. You've got some gray? Yeah.
21:42Exactly. That's an a good example of cells that lose their identity and stop making melanin, the black pigment. But it's gonna get worse, I promise you, unless, you know, unless we we hurry up.
21:54And this information, uh, gets lost. It gets corrupted.
21:57But the beautiful thing is we believe we found a backup copy of that information from youth that we can reinstall into cells, into tissues, into the entire body of a mouse and hopefully a human. That backup copy is in every old person, I believe, and it can be accessed.
22:14So when I see an old person walking down the street now, I don't think, oh, that person's just worn out, frail, gonna die. I just think that's someone that needs a reset. And inside that person is a young person waiting to come out again.
22:27That's a totally different way to think about old age. And in the future, people will have a choice to be rejuvenated or not. Where is that backup copy that I need?
22:38Well, we're working on that. And, uh, if I if I told you, my student would kill me. But we believe we found largely where that information is stored.
22:49It's entirely new biology.
22:51And it's currently a secret? It's a secret. Okay.
22:54So you you you lead the way. Tell me what we should we should talk about next as it relates to aging. Let's talk about information.
23:00Right? We live in the information age, and biology is becoming part of that information age.
23:06And it started with the elucidation of the structure of DNA. Okay?
23:11And so I have a model of DNA here. So for listeners who are not watching, this is a little plastic double helix.
23:18My friend, uh, Jim Watson, uh, died recently, uh, last month who he and his colleague discovered that DNA, the information of life that we get from our parents, is a chemical that's about six feet long in every cell.
23:32And this model here shows that DNA is a ladder, and the steps on the ladder are the information of the DNA. Okay. Yeah.
23:41And you can pull this apart so that each step becomes 5050% ripped apart. So that should come apart.
23:48Right? So I ripped the rung of the ladder apart, and that is called a base on the DNA, and it always matches with its corresponding chemical.
23:58So this shorthand we'd call an a. It always matches with a t.
24:02So an a t becomes a rung on the ladder. And down here, different color. Here, I'm looking at a red and a green step.
24:09Rip it apart. This is a g and a c letter. Gs and cs come together.
24:14And actually, if you if I rip this ladder into halves and each step becomes half a ladder, now you can see that you can copy DNA because the a has to match with the t, rung, and the g has to match with the c.
24:28So that's basic DNA. That's how the information is transferred from cell to cell, from mother to daughter, parents to offspring.
24:37There are about 20,000 genes. About 15,000 are turned on, but a different set gets turned on in large part, uh, to make a nerve cell compared to a liver cell and a skin cell.
24:49That's gene expression. And what controls that gene expression is what's called not the genome, which is what's in front of me here on the DNA molecule, It's the epigenome.
25:01The epigenome is the information we get transferred from cell to cell, from parent to offspring, that's not in this molecule.
25:11So where's this epigenetic information? Well, it controls which genes are switched on and off, and a major regulator of that process is the modification of these steps on the DNA.
25:25These chemicals, the c, particularly the c, which I'm showing you here, uh, in this red part of the the molecule, the c gets a little chemical added to it called a methyl.
25:37And a methyl is just, if you remember from chemistry high school, uh, it's a carbon with three hydrogens. It's a very simple molecule.
25:45It gets stuck on that piece of the the DNA molecule. That's called DNA methylation.
25:51And that will help determine that pattern of DNA methylation determines whether this particular gene will be switched on, say to make an optic nerve, or switched off so that it becomes a liver cell.
26:05And that happens as we're in the womb and we become an embryo. And that's the epigenome. These chemicals that turn genes on and off is the epigenome.
26:15And the information theory of aging states that the information that's in a cell, which includes the DNA, but actually more importantly for aging is the control systems, the epigenome, that is pristine when we're young, but as we get older, we lose that epigenetic information.
26:36The ability to tell a cell to be a nerve cell versus a liver cell versus a skin cell, it starts to get erased. So when we look at a mouse or or an old tissue, if I took maybe not your skin but but my skin, my skin cells are no longer as skin like as they once were.
26:54They started to lose their identity. They're starting actually to to look more like nerve cells and nerve cells starting to look more like skin cells Because the genes that were once turned on correctly in my young cells, that that control system, these chemicals on the DNA molecule, the methyls,
27:12are getting erased. So aging is an identity crisis of the cells. It absolutely is.
27:17Well put. The cells forget what their job is.
27:21Yes. The genes are still there in large part. 99.999% of the genes are still there.
27:27The molecule's intact. But the control systems. The label thing you mentioned.
27:32The label to tell the cell that this gene needs to be on, but this one should always stay off. That gets erased over time. Why?
27:40We we did partially figure that out. And how'd you know? Well, The label?
27:46Better. This is this is why I love your podcast, Steven. You asked the right questions.
27:52These there are enzymes that remove these methyl groups, um, and put them back on. So the cells controlling these things.
27:59They shouldn't change, but they do. And one of the things that messes the system up is major catastrophe in a cell.
28:08And when the cell panics, it removes these structures to try and adapt to the stress. The label.
28:15The label comes off in a desperate attempt to survive, but then the cell doesn't fully revert back to the original state.
28:24Some of these chemicals and some of the proteins that bind to the DNA, which is also important for this epigenome, they don't all go back to where they started. I've used the analogy that, uh, it's like a ping pong or a tennis match where the proteins that control the genes, they they get relocalized to where the emergency is.
28:44And an emergency, one the one that we think is most dangerous and a large cause of cause of aging is a broken chromosome. If you have a broken chromosome, if you don't fix that, you're either gonna become a cancer cell or you're gonna die.
28:56It's not good. Um, and so cells panic. And in that panic of moving proteins away and turning on these stress response genes, uh, that's great.
29:06In the short term, the cell might survive, but they don't fully reset. Those proteins don't all go back to where they once were, say, ten minutes ago when the stress needed to be the disaster happened.
29:17And if you do that time and time again, and every one of your cells has at least one broken chromosome every day, That's twenty trillion of these events every day in your body.
29:27Over time, tick tick tick, you get the aging process, we believe.
29:34So I I guess I've got two questions. I guess the first question, if I was thinking about the sequence of asking these questions, is what is increasing that stress on my cells?
29:45Therefore, what is increasing aging? And also, like, why didn't evolution just come up with a solution for this that stopped me aging then? Evolution's
29:52very smart. Couldn't it just fix this? Well, before I get into that, uh, one of the the reasons we know that this works, because you asked me how do we know that's true, is that we created this this catastrophe in animals.
30:05We we took mice and we we we broke their chromosomes in a way that didn't cause cancer or mutations. If we're right, what should happen to these mice?
30:15They get old fast. They get old fast. Gray hair.
30:18And they did. We call them the ICE mice. ICE stands for inducible changes to the epigenome, and we were able to induce these changes.
30:27And we took bets in the lab. This was going back now twelve years ago. I bet that we would get aging.
30:34Okay? But I was the only one in the lab that thought that would happen. We had a lot of bets that the mice would die, a lot of bets that the mice would get cancer, and a few said nothing would happen.
30:45But we got aging. In fact, I was I was in Australia where where I'm from, as you know, and I got a picture on my old old style iPhone, and, uh, it was a picture of an old mouse.
30:56Uh, well, was a sick looking mouse, and the and the the text was, problem, we have a sick mouse. And I wrote back, that's not a sick mouse.
31:03That's an old mouse. And that was the first time I realized that we'd had evidence that our theory, the information theory of aging is correct.
31:12So what we did actually, and this might satisfy your and your listeners' curiosity, we generated a mouse from scratch using stem cells.
31:21And so we start with a mouse stem cell that we grow in the lab in the dish, and we change the genetics of that stem cell so that we could feed it a drug, uh, tamoxifen, which is used, uh, in in chemotherapy.
31:36And that drug turned on a gene from a slime mold, something you might find in the forest, that breaks DNA of the mouse, but does it in a way that doesn't cause cancer or mutations.
31:48Just cuts it and the cells put it back together. So we could take a mouse and for three weeks, we turned on this slime mold cutting protein.
31:59And nothing happened to the mouse at the time. It's like, uh, you don't feel an x-ray. You don't feel different when you fly except for maybe jet lag and dehydration.
32:08But you don't get old suddenly. Same with the mice. They were normal.
32:11They felt fine. And that's why at first people said, oh, nothing's gonna happen to these mice. After three weeks, they were fine.
32:18But we set in motion a cascade of accelerated aging events that about ten months later, they were super gray and super old and had all the diseases of aging 50% faster than their twins that we didn't treat.
32:32And you've got photos of those we could show. Yeah. Yeah.
32:35Let let's show those. So if I was to do the experiment in you, I might have to engineer it, a clone of you, but I could do that. Uh, you know, I'm not saying that it's ethically right.
32:45Yeah. But but theoretically, we could make a clone of you, put in that slime mold gene, turn it on, and your clone would be 50% older than you are.
32:54Can you translate this into the equivocal for a human,
32:59that particular study that you did? So it would be like in me doing what and then me getting old fast. Yeah.
33:06Uh, well, we're exposed to to things that cause DNA breaks all the time. They happen naturally as the cells try to copy their DNA, but you can accelerate that by getting an x-ray, a CT scan, flying a lot, and cosmic rays banging into your DNA and I fly all the time.
33:20Yeah. It's I've had loads of CT scans and x rays. Yeah.
33:24And and though it's imperceptible, I believe that that's probably accelerating your aging process. What's flying doing to my say again, you talked about flying being equivocal to what you did to the mouse. In what way?
33:35Well, every time you break your chromosome, you're rearranging your epigenome in a catastrophic way that doesn't fully reset, and your cell will lose its identity faster. I also believe, um, and has some evidence that even going to a rock concert and and have blasting your eardrums is such a stress on those cells in your ear that the reason that you become deaf earlier is because your ear hair cells are getting older faster.
34:01You don't wanna break the DNA. You don't wanna cause catastrophe to your fragile cells in your body because the recovery isn't complete and aging ensues.
34:11So with this theory in mind, what are the day to day things that we're all doing that are accelerating our age? Like, because I think what's really interesting is I look to my brother, Jason. He's a year older than me.
34:22He has three kids that are, like, under the age of seven or eight now. And this Christmas time, because it's just been Christmas, I looked at his hair to see many gray hairs he had versus me, and I thought, okay, he has considerably more.
34:36He's a year older than me. And I was thinking, that's like a a proxy of aging to some degree. What is it he's potentially done on a day to day basis?
34:45I know you don't know him, this is why it's not not an offensive answer to give. What is it that someone who is generally sort of genetically very similar, but is making different lifestyle choices is doing to accelerate that process of wrinkles or gray hairs or?
35:00Well, here's here's the good news that you can have a big impact on your rate of aging by changing a lifestyle.
35:06It turns out your DNA is not your destiny. It's the epigenome so that how you live your life is really 80 to 90% of your rate of aging.
35:15That's good. It's in your hands. But it also means that some people mess up their lives.
35:19There are actually twin studies from, uh, mostly from Denmark. Identical twins. One that goes and smokes and gets obese and, uh, goes in the sun.
35:29And they are much older looking than their identical twin. Essentially proving that the DNA is not the reason you age. First of all, there are gonna be people in the audience, uh, who are listening or watching who have gray hair saying, damn it, I'm not old.
35:43And that's true. I mean, nobody died of gray hair. Right?
35:46And sometimes genetically you can get gray old, uh, but not be physically old.
35:52What is true that's often not comfortable is how old you look is a very good representation of how old you are in your organs as well. So doing the right thing. So what are those things?
36:02Let's tick off some of the major things that people should be doing and they can have a big impact. They can lengthen their life by a decade just by doing some of the major things.
36:11So we know that on average, people can live fourteen years longer. This is based on a study that came out from Harvard, a long term study of the lifespan of World War two veterans.
36:20If you avoid smoking, cigarette smoking, and really any type of smoke in your lungs, Smoking breaks your DNA.
36:26It's gonna accelerate aging in your lungs, your whole body. Avoid excessive drinking. We now know that even more than one glass a day of alcohol is bad.
36:35I've given up alcohol for the most part for that reason. Eat well. So you want to eat healthy food.
36:41We've got some healthy food here we're going to talk about. Um, so make sure you you don't, uh, overeat or eat ultra processed foods.
36:50And the big one, one of the best things you can do besides all of that is exercise. Okay? And exercise covers a lot of things, we can drill into that as well.
36:59But the fifth one is interesting. It may be surprising, but actually good news for you.
37:04Have a reliable partner. I think you're gonna say be a podcaster. Was gonna okay.
37:08Oh, no. That probably accelerates your age. Yes.
37:10So, um, if you don't have a reliable partner, have a pet because the human bond is something that is shown to slow aging and associates with people who live longer than others that are lonely.
37:25Interesting. We're gonna dig into all of those in great detail, specifically very interested in in exercise, diet, lifestyle, fasting.
37:32I know it's a big subject you speak about, which I'm very, very interested in. And actually, as I was doing the research for this conversation, again, my the way that I'm gonna approach nutrition has shifted because of some of the things I discovered there.
37:43I wanna just tick off on this evolution point. Right. Let's come back to that.
37:47Yeah. I just wanna get clear yeah. Like, why didn't evolution fix it for me?
37:51Because they talk about survival of the fittest and that the very fact that I'm here is because my my ancestors were good at survival. But listen, my ancestors all died at, like, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old. That's not very good.
38:02Why why didn't they just live longer? Well, that's why. You just said the answer yourself.
38:07Because your ancestors didn't live beyond 40 or 50, even less. Right? Most men, uh, in prehistoric times would die from famine, disease and actually a lot of them from war.
38:20So most people didn't make it to 80. Some people did but very, very rarely. So the the forces of natural selection were on early survival and fast breeding.
38:32Let's put it this way. If there was someone who was born with a mutation that allowed them to live a lot longer, to 90, in a prehistoric world, that's useless because you're probably gonna die at 30 or 40 anyway and so are your children.
38:46So what you wanna do is find genes that allow you to become reproductively successful early on in life, um, and make sure your children survive.
38:55And so we we have children pretty early, but humans for for various reasons have a long developmental period including education. So we don't we don't develop very rapidly.
39:06Right? We don't wake up and we can walk and run like a lot of other species and mammals. But we don't live a long time because there was in the environment that we evolved, the Serengeti Plain is pretty much agreed upon as that's one of the places we evolved, certainly, uh, Eastern Africa.
39:22That was extremely difficult and dangerous place to live. You could get eaten by an animal and if you didn't get eaten by an animal, you get killed by the neighboring tribe. That's super dangerous.
39:33Right? And then so we we evolved to live really at optimal to about 30 but not much more than that.
39:42So after 30, as you might be experiencing with your body, we're at the forces of entropy.
39:50So the body starts to decay. The information starts to get lost in the body. But the good news is that if you take away predation and death from a species, it evolves longer lifespans.
40:04Now it makes evolutionary sense to have genes that allow you to put more effort into building a strong body and slowing down the aging process and preventing DNA breaks, chromosomal breaks.
40:17We know that this is true because if you put species say on an island where there are no predators, what happens to their longevity?
40:26They get longer lived naturally. It takes twenty, thirty generations but only when there's no predation, when you're not under a lot of stress to, uh, breed quickly, do you get longer lifespans evolving?
40:41Given that humans don't have predators anymore, we are slowly evolving longer lifespans.
40:47But it's very slow and it's not gonna happen fast enough for you and me. And do the organisms
40:52that do live really, really long have a small amount of predators in nature?
40:57Absolutely. Absolutely. Think about them.
41:01The bristlecone pine. What's that? It's the longest lived tree in the world.
41:05It can live many thousands of years.
41:08It's Are you jealous?
41:10Not jealous. No. No.
41:13They live a tough life. Some of those trees have been around since the pyramids. Wow.
41:17The reason they live can live for so long and evolved to live so long is that things don't eat them. They are totally poisonous. You you don't wanna eat a bristlecone pine.
41:26The same for a whale. Right? The bowhead whale, some of these very large animals, no predators.
41:30So they've evolved a strategy of breeding slowly but building very powerful systems to stop epigenetic changes.
41:40Their epigenetic control systems are stable, They don't get cancer, and they they don't lose they don't have this identity crisis until hundreds of years.
41:50And we know that. People study the cells of whales in the dish, and those cells don't lose their identity very quickly even when you break their DNA.
41:58So I I guess the place also to to go next is talking about disease generally and what disease is.
42:07So are these diseases a function of aging? Does this idea of reversing aging even matter if cancer is gonna take most of us out anyway at some point?
42:15Is there a link between aging and disease? This might be the most important point that I make today. When you reverse aging, diseases of aging go away or are cured.
42:27And in my lab, many types of cancer as well.
42:33The diseases that we try to treat individually with different medicines today that we think are unrelated, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, you name them, Fundamentally, what's driving a lot of those diseases is aging.
42:47If you never got old, would you ever get Alzheimer's even if you had the genes that predispose you? No. Right?
42:55And so what we see in my lab is when we give an animal a disease, and we can do that, we can put in the human genes for Alzheimer's into a mouse, it becomes has dementia. When we reverse the age of the brain of that animal, We're not treating the disease.
43:10We're treating aging. The disease goes away. The body can heal itself when it's young.
43:16So it's the aging process that reveals the disease that can be cured by reversing.
43:22Why does the aging process reveal a disease? Why don't we get Alzheimer's at 15?
43:28Because the cells are so healthy, they can fix themselves. They can renew themselves. The disease processes that cause these problems for us don't exist when we're young.
43:40Why is it that a teenager rarely has a heart attack? Because their body prevents them.
43:46Why do young people typically not get cancer? Because the immune system finds cancer cells and clears them out.
43:53You and I have cancer cells in our body right now. Why are we probably not gonna die in the next year? Because our immune system will find them and kill them.
44:01But as we get older, we're gonna lose that ability
44:04and we'll have a greater chance of having cancer. So are you saying that if we cure aging, we're probably going to, by way of that, cure most of these diseases? A hundred percent.
44:13We were talking about menopause quite a lot on this podcast. And fertility menopause women's ovaries as, um, one of the first places that ages.
44:25And I've heard you explain that you think that evolution program women to stop having children during menopause because continuing reproduction would drain energy needed to raise existing children. So is infertility something that could theoretically be prevented?
44:38In mice, which is where we live in my lab, where we work, it can be prevented and it can be reversed.
44:45I thought we run out of eggs. That's like the That's the current theory.
44:49The evidence that we have from my lab and a lab that I worked with in Australia caused me to question that idea that we run that women run out of eggs. We have published and repeated many times that if you treat old female mice 16 of age, which is like a 65, 70 year old human that has long time since given up having offspring.
45:20We can treat the ovaries with a chemical that rejuvenates the eggs that are in the ovary, maybe even produces new ones.
45:29We don't know for sure. But those 16 old mice that stopped having kids, probably at least six months ago now start producing healthy offspring again.
45:41Their eggs look young, pristine compared to the terrible eggs that if you try to harvest some eggs from a mouse that old, it's hard to find any that look normal.
45:51Their chromosomes are messed up, ripped apart. They're not gonna produce healthy babies. But we can take those eggs or at least the ovaries with those eggs in them and cause them to be young again and make fresh eggs that can produce healthy offspring that live a normal lifespan.
46:08The real question is, will this work in women? And that's something that I'm keen on testing.
46:15It must be really hard to test a lot of these things in people. Right? Because we you've mentioned the word mice quite a lot.
46:20It's harder than you can imagine, actually. Um, and I've spent a lot of my career since I was 35
46:26aiming to develop a medicine to treat diseases and aging. And it can be it can go wrong in many ways, um, even if the science is good and right.
46:38Um, and it it's there's money, there's business, there's laws, there's politics, there's business strategies, there's change of leaderships, all sorts of human introduced variables that can get in the way.
46:54There's patents, and, uh, and then there's there's competition and spite that also gets into it. Um, and I've had to deal with all of those things, um, including competing against some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world who really didn't want me to succeed.
47:10But, yeah, it's extremely difficult to make a drug. But I do want to remind you and everyone listening and watching that we're beyond mice now for age reversal.
47:20We've done this in monkeys. Monkeys that are physically and almost genetically identical to us. So it's not a big leap from it is a pretty big leap from mouse to human, but from a monkey to a human.
47:32It's we're essentially, you know, slightly smarter monkeys.
47:36I just had a thought about how other countries and other nations might be conducting their own sort of secret research, and they might not have the same bureaucratic, political, ethical considerations that you have to contend with?
47:51Do you think about this much that some of the sort of geopolitical adversaries might be doing secret testing in some
47:57research lab somewhere on humans. I think about it, um, and in fact, the United States government thinks about it too. A large investment into, uh, the com one of the companies that I, uh, sit on the board of was blocked because the US government claimed that the technology was too dangerous to be in the hands of foreign companies and governments.
48:19So there the US government, at least in in the previous administration, was extremely cautious about this technology falling into the wrong hands.
48:29Which technology?
48:31The ability to reverse aging. So the US government blocked that technology because they were scared that it might fall into the wrong hands? Well, they blocked the the very large investment over a $100,000,000 into the company from a foreigner because they would have more access to the information and the progress.
48:47Is it China? Um, I won't say more. Okay.
48:50It's sensitive. Most I can say is that governments are watching this technology very closely, not just The US, but around the world. Because the winner will make not not just a lot of economic benefit, but there will there will be potential for radical change in the pharmaceutical industry, in healthcare.
49:10The amount of change socially will be dramatic as well. But there are also uses that the government has identified so called super soldier potential.
49:21Now I I don't agree that that's a reason to slow down the research. Others claim that it was worth it. But I do believe that the technology is very powerful and we should start to get ready for when this comes to society.
49:36Because it's not an if, as I said, it's a when.
49:39The technology to do what?
49:41To rejuvenate
49:42the human body. Why do we need to get ready?
49:46Well, because it'll be massive social change. If you can choose how old you wanna be and people don't die as at 80 anymore, let's say they they can live to a 120 or beyond, there's big changes.
49:59There's social security issues. There's, uh, employment. Though I will say that the the disaster scenario that often comes to mind when I talk about this and which I covered in in the last part of my book, lifespan, it's actually economically hugely advantageous to slow aging and prevent diseases.
50:18A lot of The US economy and most advanced economies goes to healthcare. And chronic disease, a lot of people are sick for five to ten years. That's where most of people's savings and retirement and government money goes in.
50:30The most expensive years of your life for the last two years. If you can delay that, it's gonna have massively positive economic benefits
50:39to a nation that adopts these medicines. I've got a question for you that actually came to mind yesterday when I was I watched some, I don't know, some video on social media and they asked a question to a guy. David, if you were a billionaire now at age 56, would you give it all up to be my age again, 33?
51:00I don't think you can put a price on being young. Another way of of putting it, and I've I've seen this on social media, would you for a billion dollars, would you swap with Warren Buffett? No.
51:10Absolutely not. Right. So there's no money in the world that you wanna be old.
51:13Right? Yeah. It's not worth it.
51:15In other words, youth is more valuable than a billion dollars. It may be the most valuable thing you could ever have is your youth.
51:24It's it's such an an interesting and illuminating analogy or metaphor or whatever because suddenly you do realize that how much we value it.
51:33We value it more than anything. I would rather be 33 years old than be a 43 year old billionaire.
51:43Even the ten years I value as a billion dollars.
51:46Yeah. One year maybe, but not ten years. Right?
51:49Ten years is super I I totally agree with you. Um, and the older you get, the more valuable it becomes. It's important to realize the the massive impact that this technology can have, not just economically, but on individual lives of human beings across the planet.
52:06The world when this becomes a reality, again, I'm speaking like it's a certainty because I'm pretty convinced it's gonna happen.
52:14The that world is gonna be so different from the world we live in. It's gonna be as different as the pre computer world and the pre aeroplane world as
52:23today is. I'm trying to imagine the world where we could pick our age and maybe even you know, you talked about earlier being able to continue to reset to that age.
52:33Yeah. I'm trying to imagine what the world would be like if I could be 33 forever or if you could be, you know, 33 forever.
52:40Or even for another hundred years or something. Yeah. Yeah.
52:44Could stay 33 for a hundred years. Do you think that's the plausible outcome, which is we can kind of pick an age and stay there for a hundred years, like, at that particular age, or is it just that I'm gonna be 150 in my physical form?
52:57I'm gonna be wrinkled in gray, but I'm just gonna continue to live. Is it looking young, or is it just living longer?
53:06It's actually It's both. It's the good news is it's both. And we're doing a lot of work in my lab on skin and hair.
53:13Hair loss, hair graying. Yeah. Please help me.
53:16Like, if I
53:17You don't have to worry just yet. You know, we'll we'll help your brother first. No.
53:22No. Come on. Yeah.
53:23We we will. Tell him to call me. So we we we've seen that we can rejuvenate the skin of, again, mice, but still we we also grow human skin in the lab from scratch.
53:32And we can put that human skin on mice, and the mice have human skin. So we can now test age reversal in that system. I'm very optimistic that we'll be able to rejuvenate, uh, the the external part of the body as well as the internal.
53:46If we can cure blindness, reversing the edge of the skin is is a piece of cake.
53:51What what does that world look like? I'm trying to understand all of the sort of unintended consequences of such a world where we're all kinda young and we all live longer.
54:01Is there problems of meaning and purpose? Is this
54:05what are the unintended consequences? I've thought a lot about this. There's this gut feeling that a lot of people have.
54:11Maybe you're feeling it now is that if I'm not worried about death, I'm not going to strive as hard or I'm not gonna have as much meaning. I'm not gonna have agency. I totally reject that view.
54:23I believe that every moment is special. Uh, I don't believe I would be enjoying this conversation with you anymore if I could live two hundred years.
54:32I'm loving the moment. Mhmm. Right?
54:35And so I I believe that we get up with purpose and that if I lived for a thousand years, I'd still enjoy every day that I lived. And even a thousand years, one day may be seen as too short.
54:47You know, it's 20 times my age, a little bit less than 20. That's still not very much in the grand scheme of, you know, the age of geology and the earth.
54:58We're still around like that. And so I think that we will still love life. Most of us will still love life and enjoy every moment, but we'll get more opportunities.
55:07We can try multiple careers. Maybe we we will get divorced and find have a whole new life. There will be opportunities and it will be a a magnificent world.
55:17Not to mention the productivity that humans can provide with the the knowledge of a 58 or 80 year old, but with the body of a 30 year old.
55:28Do you think people will make different decisions about having children?
55:31Well, I think we have a problem already with the decisions that a lot of couples are making, which is leaving it too late. It's very clear with the fertility rate and the rate of childbirth that that basically we're going off a cliff.
55:45And I I think that it's gonna be important to be able to give couples and women especially the choice to have children for longer.
55:55And that's one of the reasons that I work on this topic is that I think that the world, with all of the the training that we need to do and the pressures on finding a mate and being happily married or or at least being partnered up, that can take decades to get the right person.
56:09You don't wanna rush into it like people used to. And being able to have children in your fifties and sixties, I think, would be a great gift to humanity. That's my personal view.
56:19Some people may, know, for whatever reason disagree with that. But I think that the pressures to have children before 35 typically are just extreme and and unfair, but also that it'll help us maintain the human population because by 2050, we're gonna start going in a bad decline and earlier in many Western countries.
56:39And without humans, you know, absent Android robots everywhere, we're gonna have a deficiency of human capital and human productivity. And this is I would argue with Elon that this is the best solution to that, uh, lack of humans.
56:54It's just keep people healthy and alive and productive for longer.
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58:56I promise you, you don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to start. You mentioned cancer earlier on is something that you're working on in your laboratory.
59:06What progress have you made in your laboratory? What has that taught you about what the nature of cancer, but also how we might prevent and cure it someday? Because I I was reading that in your laboratory, you have been able to slow the growth of certain cancer cells and kill those cancer cells completely.
59:22Yeah. Uh, so my my wonderful student, Nalat, uh, is is doing her PhD on this. And what we've hypothesized and now tested is the idea, again, based on the information theory of aging, is that cancer is expressing those genes differently.
59:41In the same way that aging is a cellular identity crisis, cancer is a cellular identity crisis. And if we can rejuvenate an old cell to be normal and turn on the right genes again, we should be able to do that for a cancer cell and either make it normal or if it tries to be normal and wakes up from its zombie like state, it might even kill itself.
1:00:06And that's what we're finding in my lab. Now, Lutz's work has shown that a majority of cancers that we've grown in the lab will die and shrink in an animal if you try to reverse their age.
1:00:20Through the injection
1:00:23that you were referring to earlier on. Yeah. We can do it a couple of ways.
1:00:26One is using those three genes that rejuvenate the epigenome and make cells young again. Yeah.
1:00:32The one for the eye. The same technology for the eye we're using in cancer cells. But we also have this chemical drink that we can give to animals or to put on the cells and that also wakes the cancer cells up, tries to they try to become more normal.
1:00:48They turn on the original set of genes that they might've had on thirty, forty years ago. Some of these cancer cells that we grow in the lab were from the twentieth century.
1:00:58We rejuvenate them, we turn on those genes that were originally in the normal tissue, and the cells kill themselves.
1:01:06And so I believe that we may not be able to cure all cancer using this. That would be crazy to even say that.
1:01:12But I do believe that if we're successful rejuvenating the human body, cancer is not going to be a risk.
1:01:21And that's just a nice side effect of what our original mission was, which was to treat aging.
1:01:28So from this, we can start to try and understand what we think is causing cancer. And I guess this goes back to a lot of the carcinogenic behavior that you described earlier, things like smoking, anything that's applying stress on the DNA.
1:01:41Is that like a Yeah. You have to break the DNA.
1:01:44Okay. That's the a catastrophe is really broken DNA, but you can do other things that catastrophes like overheat the cells, even mechanical stress.
1:01:55Too many hits on the brain in football. We'll we'll do that.
1:02:00So, yes, that's exactly right. And that drives aging, and aging drives cancer, by the way. One of my theories called the Gronchogenesis Hypothesis, terrible name, but nevertheless, Gronchogenesis it is.
1:02:14It's the idea that as we age, we're becoming more cancer like as a human. Our metabolism when we're old is closer to heading towards what a cancer cell's metabolism is like so that when we actually do get cancer, the cancer cells grow better in an old person than when you're young.
1:02:32And so by rejuvenating those cancer cells, giving them the ability to be young again, they actually either slow down in their growth or, as I said, kill themselves in response.
1:02:44I've got a bit of a prop here which might be useful for the the context of Oh goodness. Does of aging.
1:02:50There are people here that may not know what I'm holding in my hands, but for those of you who don't know and who are just listening, I'm holding a record in my hands, a vinyl record that Steven just handed me.
1:03:04So the the information theory of aging, uh, the analogy that I used is that it disrupts information. And so this record, this album has information on it.
1:03:14It's music. And just like DNA, it's information. So instead of the DNA information, the control of the DNA getting messed up, in the album, it's like scratching this album.
1:03:27So I'm literally gonna scratch this album. Is that okay with you? Of course, you can.
1:03:30Alright. I'm not sure I can fix it by the way. It may be a one way thing, but I've never done this before.
1:03:36But that's painful.
1:03:40Maybe you can hear that happening. So if we were to play this on a record player with a needle, it's gonna jump around and it's gonna read the wrong songs or it's it's gonna certainly not sound very good. So that's that's now the equivalent of an old cell.
1:03:56The information, the beautiful music is there but the ability to read it has been messed up. In the same way that old age, the information is in the DNA but you the cells don't read it correctly.
1:04:08And what our technology is is to get rid of those scratches and so we can play the beautiful music of our youth again.
1:04:17Um, I have got this. Uh, you told me to to bring my weighted vest and this neck brace.
1:04:23Oh my goodness. I got I think I put it on the wrong way. Okay.
1:04:26Any anyone listening, Steven's putting on a very heavy jacket right now with lead weights and a strap around his neck to limit his neck movement. Oh, wow.
1:04:36That's a lot. Listen. So I'm I just put on a 20 I think it's 20.
1:04:41My son's weak now. Jacket and a neck brace.
1:04:47And ahead of this conversation, my team told me to get one of these. What is the analogy here that you're you're creating? This is very oh, fuck.
1:04:54You know? It's bad. Right?
1:04:56It's hard. Yeah. Right.
1:04:57Imagine
1:04:58feeling like that for a decade. That's old age. You're feeling tired, weak.
1:05:04You can barely hold your body up. You can barely move your neck. It would be painful.
1:05:08You're not in pain yet. No. But most people in their eighties have some sort of disease and aches and pains.
1:05:15Try doing that for another ten minutes maybe. How long can you keep that on? I'll keep it on for another ten minutes.
1:05:21But so why is this? Because it just it's weight and immobility. I can't move my neck the same.
1:05:28My shoulders feel heavier.
1:05:30How how is this a relevant analogy to aging? Because it just kinda feels like immobility and weight. Uh, well, I have to come over there and use this pair of scissors to be stabbing you as well so you can feel pain as you move as well.
1:05:43That's part of old age. It is not a fun thing being old. And most old people, the reason that they don't love life anymore is because they feel like you do or worse.
1:05:54Not to mention the fact that there you need to put Vaseline on your eyes, earplugs in your ears if you wanna know what it's like being old. Oh, god.
1:06:04It's not nice. Mm-mm. Or even worse, shut your eyes and you can never open them again.
1:06:10That's what it's like for those patients that we hope to cure blindness in.
1:06:14If if I'm gonna ask you a really tough question, which is if I put a calculator in front of you right now Yeah. And you had to hit a number on that calculator and then hit enter, and that was the age that you were gonna live to Yeah.
1:06:25And you had to make that decision now Yeah. What number would you hit on that calculator? Infinity.
1:06:31Really? So you did no. No.
1:06:33No. No. No.
1:06:33There's no day if you're healthy where you wanna die. Even if you're 100, 120, if you have friends, family, loved ones, you're healthy, would you say, okay.
1:06:43Tomorrow, I'm ready to die. No. No.
1:06:46Happen. And unless there was some kind of psychiatric issue or something. Exactly.
1:06:49Right? So that's my point is when people say, oh, when I'm 80, kill me. That is bullshit.
1:06:55That's my language. It's fine. Am allowed to swear on this?
1:06:57Sorry.
1:06:59We're gonna have to beep it for the kids, I guess. It's it's only when you're sick
1:07:03or you have depression that you wanna leave the leave this world. Otherwise, life is a joy for most people on in the world.
1:07:10Not everybody, and we have to fix that as well. But for most of us, being alive is is the greatest gift of any, you know, collection of atoms.
1:07:21Consciousness is even greater. And why would you want that to end? Who would choose that if they had the alternative to be with family and friends?
1:07:30Interesting.
1:07:32I say that's interesting because I have always assumed that I wouldn't want to live forever. But the when when you asked me if I was healthy and I had my friends and family and I was doing things that I loved professionally, would there come a day where I would choose to go now?
1:07:50No. There wouldn't. Just like there hasn't come a day in the last thirty three years where I've chosen to go now.
1:07:56Mhmm. Exactly. Do you think it's it's gonna be possible in the next fifty years for us to live forever?
1:08:04I'd be shocked if that happened, but I've been shocked my whole career at how fast this technology is moving. And now with AI, things are going so fast, my head's spinning.
1:08:14So I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'm skeptical that we could live forever in my lifetime at least. But as I said, you're probably going to live you are going live into the twenty second century. We can't imagine what the world's gonna be like then.
1:08:29And AI has really changed this equation. Oh, absolutely. We're we're doing things in my lab that would have taken a hundred and sixty years before and and quite literally billions of dollars on a $1,010,000 dollar budget.
1:08:43Well, I guess I better make it to 2040. Um, so let's talk about fasting and food and nutrition and get go a little bit deeper on that.
1:08:52I've had so so many conversations over the years about this subject of fasting. But, um, as I was reading your research, you really do feel that fasting, just eating less often, is one of the most important things that we can all do for longevity.
1:09:07I I do. I do, and I practice it as much as I can, though it's challenging in a world that's full of abundant food. But, yes, we've known for thousands of years.
1:09:16The ancients are not dummies. They they could witness what happens when you fast. Clarity of mind, long term health.
1:09:24They could observe the difference between the gluttons and the people that fasted for religious reasons. It's obvious, but there's certain ways to do it.
1:09:31Fasting doesn't include malnutrition. You have to do it with abundant, you know, vitamins, minerals. You wanna make sure that you're you you have adequate nutrition.
1:09:40But I think three meals a day is is craziness. It turns out this idea breakfast is the most important meal of the day is marketing from the early twentieth century by companies I will not name, but it was breakfast cereal. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day for most people, especially adults, especially if you're not hungry when you wake up.
1:09:59There's no point in eating if you're not hungry in the morning. I'm one of those people. So I've skipped breakfast.
1:10:04How about you? Yeah. I'm the same.
1:10:05I'm same. Don't eat. My first meal today was 3PM
1:10:08because I had a podcast until, you know, two 2PM. So which is typical for me. I just don't get hungry in the mornings.
1:10:14Now, because of the marketing there for breakfast, sometime I've sometimes I've said to myself, oh, you should eat, and I'll make myself eat. But it's very, very rare. I'm notoriously people know that I'm notoriously a late eater.
1:10:264PM sometimes, 5PM if I'm ready for this. How are you feeling with that heavy vessel? Heavy, David.
1:10:31I've be honest. It's not I'm finding myself, like, trying to find a comfortable position.
1:10:35Yeah. It it's tough being old. And and by the end of it, you will be so convinced that this research is important because to live like that That's not bad.
1:10:44In most people, life is not worth living. I put a suit, a very heavy suit like that, but on the arms as well, not just the body. And he had the the earmuffs and the the eyes.
1:10:54This was the, uh, the governor of Massachusetts. Fifteen minutes in that bodysuit, and he was crying.
1:11:01Not because he was in pain, because he as he said on stage, it was the first time in his life he understood how his father feels and could be empathetic. We young people I'm relatively young, 56, you're very young, 33.
1:11:15We have no idea what it's like to be old. It can be horrific. So why wouldn't we do the right things like fasting, exercising so we can get an extra ten years, twenty years, maybe longer of healthy life.
1:11:29It does also give me a lot of empathy for people that
1:11:33have a bit more weight on them as well because of, you know, if I was if I weighed that much, I don't know if I'd be very active to to be completely honest with you. And and you're in pain too. Don't forget.
1:11:44Every joint can be hurting. How do you feel taking that off? Much better.
1:11:48Right. Free. Like, I wanna jump.
1:11:49So let's
1:11:52hope, pray, wish that these technologies that I'm talking about today work because that could be what it feels like to be rejuvenated when you're 80.
1:12:03I hope so. To close off on this point of of fasting, why why does it help extend my life Yeah. Just eating less?
1:12:10Part of it came out of research in my lab, but of course many others I need to give credit to. But in my lab specifically, what we worked on initially when I started, we studied yeast cells, little, uh, microscopic cells that as everyone knows, we use to make beer and bread and champagne.
1:12:27These yeast cells live about ten days and then they die. We used yeast as a model for aging. And what we discovered with yeast cells, which turns out to be true in our bodies, is that adversity, as long as it's not killing these cells, is good for you.
1:12:42It's called hormesis. It's the technical term for what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and live longer. Adversity mode is what we're aiming for.
1:12:51The opposite is abundance mode which is what modern life is all about. Popcorn, movies, wheels on your suitcase, sitting down all day.
1:13:02It's we're in an abundance world. So adversity is something we don't often feel. We have to work at it.
1:13:08Fasting is adversity. Exercise is adversity. Cold plunges, sauna is adversity.
1:13:14Adversity mimics. They're not really threatening your life. What happens at the cellular cellular level is that those cells, they get freaked out.
1:13:23They're worried that these times of adversity could kill us, so they fight back. They turn on repair systems. They turn on recycling systems.
1:13:34They turn on DNA repair systems that help slow down aging. So in this modern world, we when we have total abundance, we don't have to exercise. We don't don't we eat three meals a day.
1:13:44We get overweight. We don't sleep much. We have air conditioning in summer.
1:13:48We're actually aging faster than we need to because our bodies are not fighting aging like they do when they feel adversity.
1:13:56Your team discovered I can't say the word. Serotonus?
1:14:00Oh, well, I was one of many scientists in the nineteen nineties. I was part of a team called sirtuins.
1:14:07Yeah. Sirtuins. Yeah.
1:14:09Yeah. In yeast, actually. That's right.
1:14:11Uh, that's a good story. I went to The US to figure out why we get old, but I didn't choose to study humans because I figured if we can't figure it out for little yeast cells, we'll never figure it out for humans.
1:14:25So I went to MIT. My professor was Lenny Guerente.
1:14:29I went to his lab and I said, I'm I'm not going. I'm not leaving. The goal was to, in my mind, was to figure out, are there longevity genes?
1:14:37At that time, most people thought that there were aging genes that caused aging, death genes. That doesn't make any sense to me. Our bodies would have longevity genes that give life.
1:14:47So in yeast, I went searching for them and out of that work came two things. The first is Lenny and I, my professor and I, published in the journal Cell, which was a massive big deal in those days, still is, but it was my first time. The first evidence for a cause of aging for any species.
1:15:06We figured out why yeast cells get old. Do you wanna guess?
1:15:10Why
1:15:11do yeast cells get old? Have you been paying attention? What does the information theory of aging say?
1:15:16I was gonna say they have an identity crisis, but They do. How would we know if they have they're having an identity crisis? Oh, you can measure the identity of yeast cells.
1:15:24They have an identity. It's called their mating type. The main identity of a yeast cell is they are either a type or alpha type, male, female.
1:15:34And the hallmark of a yeast cell that's old is it loses its a and alpha identity and gets an identity crisis.
1:15:45It doesn't know what sex it is and it doesn't mate anymore. It becomes sterile. So when I arrived at MIT in 1995, we knew that the hallmark of an old yeast cell besides it being a bit slow and bigger is that it became sterile.
1:15:59It had an identity crisis. So we figured out that broken chromosomes distract the sirtuin defenses and that causes aging in a yeast cell.
1:16:10But we didn't know in the 90s that that was going to be true for us as well. It took another decade or two to figure that out. And how does this link to eating all the time?
1:16:19Yeah. So sirtuins are proteins that actually are attracted to DNA.
1:16:25They actually associate with it and they protect, uh, the DNA from getting damaged. Okay.
1:16:31Like bodyguards. Yeah. And they repair broken chromosomes.
1:16:34Right? It's all coming together now. But they also get distracted.
1:16:38So look, a sirtuin's normal job, if there's no crisis, is that they turn genes on and off. They are epigenetic regulators.
1:16:46They control the epigenome. They tell a cell what type it is.
1:16:50Nerve cell, skin cell, right? Okay. Conductor.
1:16:52Thank you. Conductor, exactly. But the conductor becomes demented over time.
1:16:59What happens is when you have a chromosomal break, the sirtuins panic.
1:17:04They leave the DNA, what they're supposed to be doing, controlling the cell's identity, and they go and they repair the DNA.
1:17:11That's their other job. They have two jobs, identity and repair. So when you have this break, the sirtuins go away.
1:17:17They repair the problem but they don't all go back in the next few minutes. It's very quick. They don't all go back to where they started.
1:17:24So you've got like this tennis match that the sirtuins are the balls and they get hit over to the break then hit back. Most of them find the genes that they should go back to, but they don't all do that. And that total game of tennis or ping pong, if you like, is what I believe causes the identity crisis and aging itself causes aging in yeast cells.
1:17:44It's why yeast cells don't live longer than ten days. I believe it's why we struggle to live beyond 80 or 90. So if I'm eating all the time, then those sirtuins, they're not going to be doing their job as the
1:17:56conductor, making sure I know the identity of my cells. They're going to be doing repair stuff,
1:18:02So I'm gonna age faster. Yes. And the breakthrough happened in the lab as I was just leaving to go to Harvard.
1:18:09I got a job at Harvard when I was 29. Super excited. And just as I was leaving, there was a big breakthrough that act they actually kept it secret from me because they were worried I was gonna work on it when I left.
1:18:21And in fact, my professor tried to prevent me from working on it when I left on sirtuins in general. Crazy to think about.
1:18:27But what they discovered was that there's a metabolite, a molecule that goes up and down with food and up and down with sleep called NAD.
1:18:40We have lots of it. There's grams of it in our body. It's one of the most abundant molecules in the body.
1:18:43It's very ancient. It's in yeast. It's in us.
1:18:46What they found was that sirtuins, to control genes and to repair DNA that's broken, they don't do it unless there's NAD.
1:18:56It's the catalyst. It's the fuel for their reaction. They need NAD.
1:19:00And when we're young, we have lots of NAD, so it works well. The sirtuins control the information on the genes and they repair the DNA very well because they've got lots of NAD to carry out their their work. These are enzymes.
1:19:13They work. They do things. As we get older, by the time you're 50, about my age, you have half the levels of this NAD molecule.
1:19:22My body is making less NAD and it's also destroying the NAD faster than when I was 20. That's a problem. And so what we found was that when we fast the yeast or we fast a human, NAD levels go up again.
1:19:37So fasting raises NAD and makes the sirtuins young again, essentially. And that preserves the epigenome, and it also repairs the DNA better.
1:19:46So can I just drink NAD? Uh, you can drink NAD, and not much would happen.
1:19:51How do I take NAD? Uh, so NAD can be taken as a supplement, which is a precursor to NAD. It's better to take the precursors.
1:19:58A precursor meaning something that creates it. Exactly. There's one called NMN, not to be confused with M and M's, which will probably not make you live longer.
1:20:07And there's another one called NR. NMN is directly converted into NAD. You put two NMNs together, you get NAD in the cell.
1:20:13We know this for a fact. This isn't isn't speculation. When you give a human NMN by swallowing it, a gram of it, you can you typically double the amount of NAD in your body.
1:20:23And we believe, and we have some evidence now in human clinical trials, that the sirtuins are imparting health benefits, reestablishing the epigenome, lowering body weight, uh, improving inflammation, and even changing cholesterol levels in a positive way in humans.
1:20:40So, I mean, I'm assuming you take NMN.
1:20:43I've been taking NMN and admitting that publicly, uh, for a while now. And my father who is an even more advanced experiment at 86.
1:20:55So, yes, we've been taking it for over a decade now, and we're still alive. So so far so good. So far so good.
1:21:00I do wanna get into, and I will ask you in a second about the the supplement stack that you would recommend for the average person, but that's good to know. But just to close off on this point of fasting, is there a particular type of fasting method that you would recommend for someone who's trying to, you know, improve their longevity?
1:21:18Because there's so many that I hear sixteen hours, five days. I'm a scientist, so I go with what's proven. I'm not selling anything.
1:21:25So what the science says, first of all, is that there isn't one size fits all for everybody. It it often depends on what you can do personally. It's challenging to do this.
1:21:36Right? You'll feel hungry for the first two weeks. You try it.
1:21:39So I I would suggest the way I do it is I start by skipping one and then maybe one and a half meals like what you do.
1:21:50Try to go without a meal until three, 04:00 if you can. Maybe not the first day. Right?
1:21:56If you do that the first day, you'll say, this is crazy. I'm I'm gonna grab a snack, and you won't do it. So go slowly.
1:22:02Build up to it. So the first day I would say, just don't eat breakfast and maybe have a snack mid morning.
1:22:08A week later, try to go without breakfast completely until lunch and eventually work up to what you do and I do, which is eat a very late lunch.
1:22:16If not, go to dinner. What you get with that is obviously not eating in bed, hopefully. So you've got that the night fast starting,
1:22:25what would it be, 7PM roughly. When do you finish dinner? Oh god.
1:22:28No comment. Okay. It's usually pretty late.
1:22:31Last night, it was, you know, it was this is probably why I don't eat very early the next day. Last night would have been about, I'm gonna say, 10PM. Okay.
1:22:39It was super late. It was that's an extraordinary example. Usually, it would be eight or 9PM.
1:22:46Okay. But but you've got at least thirteen, fourteen hours, which is good. Yeah.
1:22:49Try to aim for fourteen hours. Some people go sixteen hours, but that's a good start for fasting. And hopefully, you can do that most days, five days a week.
1:22:58That's great because that means that you're turning on your sirtuins, raising your NAD, you exercise as well. So that's also added into it.
1:23:05One thing that I've started doing is fasting for longer than just fourteen, sixteen hours.
1:23:13I try maybe once a month to go for three days without eating. Why? Because there's a type of cellular recycling that doesn't happen within the first sixteen hours.
1:23:24You will enter ketosis, so your body will start to change its metabolism, produce what's called ketone bodies. But the true real deep clean cleansing of old proteins and damaged damaged proteins happens after two and a half to three days, and it's called chaperone mediated autophagy.
1:23:43Autophagy. Autophagy is the word for auto self eating, and it really kicks in with an extended fast.
1:23:52What's the evolutionary reason for that? What's going on there? Why does it take me two and a half days for this deep clean to happen?
1:23:57Uh, because your body doesn't want to, uh, do it. It costs a lot of energy and having to remake body parts is energy expensive, and our body tries to conserve energy as much as possible. Uh, when you're fasting, what it'll it needs to do is to use your body as fuel.
1:24:14So it'll start breaking down proteins for fuel that you need. So first of all, what'll happen is in the first few hours, use glycogen from your liver. Your liver makes glucose.
1:24:23You'll feel a little bit hungry, but you'll eventually be fine. Then once you run run out of glycogen, then you're gonna start breaking down fat and making ketones. That's when you start to get a bit of bad breath from from that.
1:24:35And you but you feel great. When you're in a between about fifteen hours and twenty four hours, that's when you get a lot of ketones, and your brain uses those for fuel.
1:24:45So you'll have sharp mind, can remember things, you can focus on work if you ever get there. Beyond that, you need to break down fat and that is when your body is starting to do that.
1:24:59But ultimately what what happens after three days is your body says, hey, I'm gonna start breaking down protein as well. And, uh, I wouldn't do that often because I don't wanna break down a lot of protein, but your body will start to turn over old proteins preferentially. And a little bit of that, that's why I do it maybe once a month, has been shown, at least in animals, to be not just healthy, but life extending.
1:25:23On that point of ketosis, I like being in a state of ketosis.
1:25:30I just kinda cycle in and out of it during the year because I get so many of the, like, cognitive benefits. I'm more articulate on the podcast. I can think better.
1:25:38I feel better. I feel more focused and more attentive. Is ketosis is the ketone diet the keto diet a healthy diet in your view?
1:25:49Is it what are the benefits of it? Is it something that you think is natural to be recommended? Well, I don't mind being controversial, but I do speak the truth.
1:25:56Um, there's not a lot of evidence that long term the ketogenic diet is healthy. Mhmm.
1:26:01Certainly doesn't correlate or associate with, uh, longevity. Short term, okay. It does help people lose weight.
1:26:08No question. Uh, but I am rather concerned for people that don't have a balanced diet with an input of plant material, which has molecules that are unique to plants and you won't find in high processed foods, uh, or meat.
1:26:24The evidence, speaking as a scientist, is that the long term ketogenic diets are not going to be longevity inducing.
1:26:33The evidence is more having a lean diet with a focus on plants that are not overcooked and not all ultra processed. That one is undoubtedly the healthiest if you can do it.
1:26:45Do you eat meat? I do eat meat, but not like I used to. I used to think that a meal was not a meal unless I had a piece of meat there and then the vegetables were the decoration and I'd begrudgingly eat the green stuff.
1:26:59I've been flipped totally. Serena, my partner, Serena Poon is not just a nutritionist, but a longevity expert for the last twenty six years.
1:27:08And so she came to my apartment, which is now our apartment, and she just cleared out all the food that I had. Pretty much everything was either toxic or or just not healthy.
1:27:19It was ultra processed. She said, what are you eating that kind of peanut butter, you know, full of sugar?
1:27:24So she she's taught me how to live healthy. And so now I rarely eat meat.
1:27:30I rarely drink alcohol. I focus on really fresh, high quality, preferably organic foods because I don't want pesticides and I I don't want other contaminants.
1:27:41But I do know organic can be more expensive. Why not meat? Animals unfortunately don't make what are called polyphenols, which are a type of molecule that I believe and have evidence turns on the sirtuins and other pathways by chemical reactions that delay aging.
1:28:03So sirtuins are just one of a few enzymes that control aging. We know this.
1:28:08There's sirtuins, there's mTOR, which responds to aminos, and another one called AMPK.
1:28:15So those three pathways are altered in just the right way by molecules found only in plants. Well, and a small extent in fun fungi, but not in meat.
1:28:27So if you're not eating a lot of vegetables or fruits, you're not getting these molecules. They're like medicine as food.
1:28:34So right here, I hope you don't mind me mentioning that there are some food in front of us and I'm looking at blueberries here.
1:28:41Blueberries are packed with polyphenols. One of the reasons they have purple color is that polyphenols have the color. And as Serena would tell you, eat the rainbow.
1:28:51I call it xenohormesis, is not as attractive. But xenohormesis is the same idea as eat the rainbow, that by eating plants that have a lot of these molecules that are often produced by stressed plants When you say stressed stressed plants.
1:29:05So plants will be stressed just like we are. If you don't give them enough water, food, too much sunlight, not enough not enough sunlight, they in their defense, they make polyphenols.
1:29:16There's a whole bunch of them. Resveratrol, fizetin, quercetin, there's there's hundreds.
1:29:21Uh, this one has, um, anthocyanidins. That's the color. These activate these adversity responses in our cells.
1:29:30The sirtuins will get activated by
1:29:33molecules in this blueberry. So if I eat this blueberry, those conductors that conduct some of the aging process you talked about, making sure my cells don't have an identity crisis, fixing the the negative stress that's going on in my my cells, they will be
1:29:55benefited by me eating this blueberry? Yeah. It's it's like a a a free hack.
1:29:59Right? You can eat something that's yummy, but you're also getting the benefits by mimicking fasting and exercise in your food as well.
1:30:08The sirtuins don't just need NAD. That's the gas pedal. That's the petrol for those of you in the British world and Commonwealth.
1:30:16The fuel for sirtuins is NAD. The accelerator pedal are the polyphenols in fruits and vegetables like resveratrol, quercetin, which we know when you give them to sirtuins, they get hyperactivated.
1:30:32And when you say eat the rainbow, you mean eat colorful looking food? Because that's an an easy way to remember how to eat foods that have the most polyphenols.
1:30:42I'll give you a really good example, Steven. Serena put me onto green tea matcha. Right?
1:30:48So matcha tea, if you haven't tried it, uh, I'm sure you've tried it. But those of you who haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. It it tastes great.
1:30:55The reason for switching from coffee mainly to matcha in the morning for me is that it's full of polyphenols.
1:31:04Why is it full of polyphenols? It's not just because it's green tea, which is not naturally healthy, but the growers of those plants in Japan, typically, they shade the plants before they harvest.
1:31:16Shading the plants stresses them out. Plants need light. So they don't just make more chlorophyll which produces the deep green color in the tea, but the polyphenols are super high.
1:31:27And through trial and error over thousands of years, the Japanese figured out that by shading the plants, giving them this mild hormetic stress, it makes them not just extra tasty but extra healthy.
1:31:39Same with red wine by the way, but the alcohol can be an issue. But absent alcohol, red wine is very good for you.
1:31:49Okay. Without the alcohol? It's unfortunate.
1:31:52You know, I I one of my papers in 1996 caused red wine cells to go up 30% and stayed up. I apologize for saying that red wine every day was healthy.
1:32:02Doctors were recommending it. Remember? Yeah.
1:32:04But I now changed my mind. I have to say that I no longer believe having one glass of red wine every day is healthy, in my opinion, and I've stopped drinking red wine every day.
1:32:16Instead, I take polyphenols from red wine and from vegetables either in a pill or in my food as a substitute because the evidence for alcohol is rather damning.
1:32:27There's a UK biobank study and The UK looked at thousands of people's MRI scan of their brain who were drinking one glass of alcohol a day. And there was a statistical difference between people that were drinking one glass a day and were not in terms of brain size and gray matter. Of course, the gray matter was tended to be smaller in those that drank even slightly.
1:32:47Yeah. I do. I actually have a matcha company.
1:32:49It's it was this year voted the fastest growing company in The UK. It's by some founders that I invested in, Levi, Teddy, and Marissa from Dragon's Den, and it's been an absolute unbelievable business.
1:33:05Unbelievable. So tell us, where where do I get it? Japan.
1:33:08You get the matcha from Japan, but the company's called Perfecto. People know about it because I've talked about it before. But I didn't realize when I made the investment that matcha was considered by many to also be very healthy, especially a health alternative to certain energy products in the market that you get in cans that give you I shan't get sued.
1:33:29But the other thing that the company I invested in is this one here called Ketone IQ. I'm a co owner of this company as well.
1:33:36And Yeah.
1:33:37I love that love that company. And the CEO,
1:33:40Michael, good guy. What's your thoughts on exogenous ketones?
1:33:44Like drinking ketones?
1:33:46I do it. In fact, that I drink ketone IQ before I do a podcast. Why?
1:33:52It improves my clarity, I find. I also believe the science, and there have been multiple studies now in people.
1:34:00Some of the the science comes out of ketone IQ, but also independent studies have shown that it's extremely healthy for the heart. And, uh, there's new studies that show for the brain as well, it can be healthy.
1:34:12The brain uses ketones like beta hydroxybutyrate or in that one, it's one three butadiol. Just a shot of that will give the brain food that it needs rather than the body having to make it.
1:34:22Um, and you get I believe and I feel it. I get the clarity of fasting without being in a fasted state, But I also drink it when I'm fasting to give it the body the extra boost that it needs. And on this point of diet, one of the things that I was told by my doctor when I did a like one of those blood tests was he cautioned me about bad cholesterol.
1:34:42He said to me, something along the lines that I need to be careful about the bad cholesterol. And there's been lots of conversation about cholesterol, good, bad. What's your perspective on this conversation around bad cholesterol, which has been thought to increase certain foods have been thought to increase bad cholesterol, which is very, very detrimental to our health.
1:35:03I didn't realize there was a debate. At least in my world, there is no debate. If you're referring to, do you wanna get your LDL cholesterol as low as possible?
1:35:14Yeah. Definitely. Oh, really?
1:35:16Okay. So it's Yeah. I mean, the science is irrefutable.
1:35:18There's thousands of people in studies. Now I think I know what you were talking about. There are there are some stories that you need cholesterol in your brain, and if you inhibit it, you might affect your brain function.
1:35:32Um, you also need it for repair of arteries. But there's no evidence that that's a problem. In fact, a little known fact that the brain doesn't use the cholesterol from the bloodstream.
1:35:43It makes its own. So I've actually been on a statin to lower my LDL since I was 30. Really?
1:35:49Well, I had high cholesterol. It's in my family, but I went to my doctor and I said, want to go on these new drugs at the time, statins.
1:35:58And he said, why? You don't have heart disease yet.
1:36:01And I said, why would I wait? Get me on it. I want to be on it.
1:36:05And in those days, it was very weird to give someone a statin at age 30 with no evidence of heart disease. But as you know, I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't wait till we get diseases to treat them.
1:36:18We should preempt that and start early in life. And so I insisted with my doctor initially with statins, but on all of these things I go in and I say, I need you to prescribe me this test.
1:36:30I need this medicine. And eventually after talking it over with him, he typically prescribes me something or gets me a test.
1:36:38But I've been fighting the system and my doctor's at Harvard, he's a good doctor but conservative. The old way of doing medicine is if you're not sick, we're not going to give you a medicine. Certainly not if you're young and healthy.
1:36:50But that has to change. So you're saying that I should be on statins potentially? Well, what's your LDL level?
1:36:55Not I don't think it's great. I think I ate too much bacon or something.
1:36:58Well, we can talk about food and cholesterol because it depends whether you absorb stilbestrol or not. We can test for that.
1:37:04But if you do absorb cholesterol more than most, I would say that you may wanna change your diet at a minimum.
1:37:11On this plate here in front of us,
1:37:14I have the top five foods that I believe you think are great for reversing aging. Am I correct?
1:37:21Does that does that These are great choices. Yeah. So what are these and why?
1:37:25So we've already done the blueberries and we've you've explained to me about polyphenols and they're rich in them, which I understand. Mhmm. And they're low in sugar.
1:37:31Right?
1:37:32Well, they're not low in sugar, so don't eat a ton of them. A handful is fine, um, as a snack.
1:37:40It's also known that having too much sugar is bad for longevity. Okay. Keep your blood sugar levels steady and low as much as you can.
1:37:46So don't eat too many of those. A better choice than blueberries would be something like matcha, which is not full of sugar.
1:37:53In fact, if you go to some of these chains that sell matcha and it tastes really sweet, you're gonna reverse the effects of any polyphenols by drinking that much sugar. So I always have unsweetened matcha.
1:38:04Okay. So now we've got avocados here. Yep.
1:38:06Yep. Avocados, they're not so much known for their polyphenols, though they do have them.
1:38:12It's the type of fats, the polyunsaturated fats. They help with satiety, so you're not going to be as hungry.
1:38:18Uh, so if you put that on your sandwich at lunch, you're not going to feel peckish. And they're highly anti inflammatory as well. The molecules are in there and the fats are very good for you.
1:38:29Extra virgin olive oil? Oh, yeah.
1:38:31Excellent. The type of, uh, oils that are in there are very healthy. There's omega nine, which is also known to activate sirtuins.
1:38:40And again, if you have the right grower and this has been cold pressed, not too processed, and stressed before harvesting, you'll have huge amounts of polyphenols as well.
1:38:52I really hope that this is
1:38:54what the team said it was. This has happened before. I tried something, and I thought it was something else, but it it was some basically, it was a white powder, and it was labeled with something for be a yellow urine.
1:39:07Yellow liquid. Urine. Urine.
1:39:10It's urine. No. I'm joking.
1:39:11It's not. I
1:39:12can I don't think drinking urine is is longevity? But On and off, I I do take a teaspoon of olive oil in the morning and mix it with resveratrol polyphenol. Oh, okay.
1:39:25Interesting. Okay. So extra virgin olive oil.
1:39:27Good. Good. And there's a lot of evidence, not just molecular like me, but epidemiologically, people that that have a lot of olive oil in their diet tend to have low inflammation and less disease.
1:39:39We've got some nuts. Yep. Nuts are good for many reasons.
1:39:43They're full of vitamins and minerals. Uh, if there's a Brazil nut, you want to have one of those every day for the selenium, which is a very rare element in our food supply. And there's a recent study just last month showing that a lack of selenium can be very del deleterious.
1:40:00So nuts are great as a snack. Be careful they're full of calories, though. So if you're trying to lose weight and you're not exercising a lot, don't overeat on the nuts.
1:40:10And what oh, my least favorite food, but nevertheless, I will eat them. This is a brussels sprout.
1:40:18When I was a kid, brussels sprouts tasted a lot more a lot worse, a lot bitter. True. Those are good, um, because they have polyphenols, but there's also another molecule in them called sulforaphane.
1:40:30It's actually the reason they taste terrible and smell terrible. Sulforaphane is what it sounds.
1:40:36It has a sulfur atom in it and that gives it that rotten egg smell. But sulforaphane activates these hormesis pathways.
1:40:45There's one called NRF and that is a stress response protein that sulforaphane activates.
1:40:52So you actually, by eating preferably relatively steamed, not fried to death Brussels sprouts, you'll get sulforaphane.
1:41:00You can also take sulforaphane as a supplement if you don't like Brussels sprouts. You've used this word pulsing before. Uh, you believe that the body should go through cycles of stress and recovery rather than receiving constant daily inputs.
1:41:12When you say pulsing, what do you mean what give me an example of pulsing and why I need to do that. Well, there's there's a few examples.
1:41:18The first time I came across this result as a scientist
1:41:22was resveratrol. So resveratrol is found in red wine among other things. Mhmm.
1:41:26And, uh, it's thought to give the health benefits of red wine. And we fed it to mice, fat mice, skinny mice, old mice, and it worked very well in the fat mice. It made them thinner.
1:41:37It made them live longer. It cured most of their diseases.
1:41:42They lived about, think it was 20% longer.
1:41:46Then we gave it to normal mice every day and they lived a little bit longer, but not significantly.
1:41:52Resveratrol. Resveratrol. What we found to my surprise was when we gave old mice resveratrol, not every day but every second day, then they lived significantly longer.
1:42:03So then I thought, well maybe giving them a foreign substance every day is not good. Maybe there's some side effect that's counteracting benefit. The other thing I want to mention, I said there's a few examples, another good one is metformin.
1:42:17Metformin has been shown to make athletes and bodybuilders and people who go to the gym, weightlifters, um, do less repetitions.
1:42:26And as a result, their muscles are about 5% less compared to those that don't take metformin in size. I don't think it's molecular. I think it's because you feel a little bit weaker with metformin because it's actually interfering with your body's ability to make energy through mitochondria.
1:42:42Mitochondria, I think most people have heard of the little power packs living in our cells, originally bacteria that came into our bodies. The point is that by pulsing metformin, I think that's a better way to do it for longevity.
1:42:55You mean cycling it? So like doing it every other day or Yeah. Yeah.
1:42:58Okay. Yeah. I don't take if I take metformin or the natural equivalent, which is berberine, if you don't want to take the drug, you can take berberine, um, that also activates this AMPK, this other sirtuin like pathway.
1:43:13Taking it every other day I think is better. And particularly if you like to work out, don't take the metformin a few hours before you work out.
1:43:21Take it after or maybe skip it that day. I think that's a better approach.
1:43:26You know, every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe as a game changer. And I would say for about 35 to 40% of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called Ketone IQ, which you can get at ketone.com as a game changer.
1:43:48But the reason I became a co owner of this company and the reason why they they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea what it was.
1:43:57Lily and my team says that this company have been in touch. So I went upstairs, tried it, and quite frankly, the rest is history. In terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer.
1:44:10So if you wanna give it a try, visit ketone.com/steven for 30% off. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment, and now you can find Ketone IQ at Target stores across The United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge.
1:44:25We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with the 1% diary. For those of you that don't know, every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the diary of a CEO, and then I ask that question to the next guest.
1:44:40We don't release those questions in any environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other.
1:44:53With that, we also have the 1% diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life. So many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time, people in big companies.
1:45:04So what we've done is we've bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time. And if you wanna drive connection and instill habit change in your company, head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch. We talked about exercise earlier.
1:45:17On page a 102 of your book, you talk about how there's a CDC funded study that found people who exercise regularly, about thirty minutes of jogging five days a week, have telomeres that look ten years younger than sedentary people, people that just sit around all day and do don't do much exercise, which is pretty remarkable.
1:45:40How do we know it's the exercise and not something else? Like, how are we able to establish causation there? Yeah.
1:45:44We don't. We don't. Unfortunately, all of these association studies just lead to a need to do placebo controlled or at least controlled trials in people.
1:45:54So we don't know for sure, speaking like a scientist. But there have been studies where people are told to do exercise and those that are told to sit. And then you can compare telomere length and that has been shown.
1:46:06So that's a much better evidence of causation. But you're right. When you see an association, it could be that people who do exercise also eat well and drink matcha.
1:46:15Sleep better. Exactly. So you have to be careful interpreting these association studies always.
1:46:21But when you've got a placebo controlled trial or these studies that are called, uh, prospective, not retrospective studies, then they're better.
1:46:30So telomeres are the ends of chromosomes that get shorter as you as you get older. Um, we used to use them really as a good indicator of age, biological age.
1:46:40Now we use the epigenome and the DNA methylation chemicals as a better clock. And then cold plunges and saunas. Yeah.
1:46:46Let's get to those. I've got a sauna in the house, but I never use it, to be honest. You should.
1:46:51But if you if you tell me, I should. You should. We should actually jump in there after this.
1:46:54You oh, your girlfriend's still here, David Silas. She can come too. So saunas are in my mind, it it's not even a question.
1:47:02They are proven to be beneficial for multiple reasons, heart disease, and even long term mortality. What's going on in the sauna, in the heat?
1:47:11Anyone who says they know is lying. We don't know. But one theory that I like, and it also goes back to yeast cells, there are what are called heat shock proteins that come on and defend the cell when they the cell senses heat.
1:47:25And it may be that these heat shock defense proteins called HSC, HSPs come on when we breathe in this moist hot air.
1:47:34The moisture actually seems to help as well. And in many studies, mostly on Finnish men, businessmen, those that go into their home saunas and the majority of homes in Finland do have saunas, so they can do these studies pretty easily.
1:47:50The bottom line is that those that didn't do regular, quote unquote, sauna bathing tended to die earlier, in particular from heart disease and cardiovascular events than than those that did regular sauna bathing.
1:48:03So I'm I'm a big advocate for sauna. I don't have one in my house, but I do have a really hot steam shower which I use regularly every day. And is there a difference between the steam room and the sauna in terms of the impact here?
1:48:15I think a sauna is better because it gets hotter. Yeah. And I I would have a sauna if I had my choice.
1:48:20And the cold plunge? Not a lot of data, but there's a lot of theory that, again, hormesis, adversity, feeling better.
1:48:29There's there's some evidence that it can actually help with muscle repair after workouts, but I think we need a lot more research in that regard. But then nevertheless, I used to do it before I was so busy and traveling the world.
1:48:42Um, and I certainly feel better. So even if I didn't didn't live longer because of it, I I definitely had more mental clarity and I felt better in general. But it but if you were if you were prioritizing all of the things we've talked about so far and you had to pick one.
1:48:56Do I have to pick one? Because you need more than one. I I in
1:48:59terms of, like, the most important one, that's maybe the first domino.
1:49:03Yeah. I I would say that the a combination of what the easiest, biggest impact you can have, combine that, That would be skipping meals.
1:49:13Skipping meals. Skipping meals. And then a close second would be exercise that includes losing your breath for at least five minutes three times a week.
1:49:23So what do I mean by losing your breath for five minutes? When you couldn't carry out a conversation easily, that you're panting. If you're not panting and you're just lifting weights, that's not gonna have the the kind of benefit.
1:49:34Why? We don't know. But it's been shown that the health benefits and those that live long tend to do a lot more aerobic exercise, not just weights.
1:49:46But both are important for mobility, strength, falling in older age, and hormones like testosterone.
1:49:54Red light therapy. Um, the red light masks.
1:49:58Yeah.
1:49:59Red light saunas. At first, was skeptical, uh, but I've done the research on the research, um, and it looks reasonable.
1:50:07I I use a red light cap on my head to preserve my hairline. And, uh, there's now good evidence that the mitochondria, which are the power packs and a lot of good things come from mitochondria, they actually are rejuvenated, either rejuvenated or enhanced by this certain wavelengths of red light.
1:50:27You have to get the wavelength right but, uh, it's not BS. It sounds like BS, right?
1:50:31You shine light on your skin and it gets better or you get your hair. But I think that there's good evidence now that that it's not BS.
1:50:39And in terms of the supplement stack that you take every day Mhmm. If I was to look at the on a if a on a great week where you just did everything right, what would your supplement stack look like?
1:50:52And I know this evolves over time, so I'm very keen to hear what it is right now. Yeah. Well, that that would be another podcast to go through each one of the things.
1:51:00Well, I I I travel with Serena with with a a a little little case. Have you got it? I've got it here.
1:51:06Can I see it? Well, no. It's not in it's not in the studio.
1:51:09Oh, okay. I didn't bring it with me. Can you send me a photo?
1:51:12Sure. I couldn't publicly share it because it it would be posted all over the Internet when things go crazy. But I can tell you the the the main things.
1:51:20Why would it go crazy on the Internet, would you think? Because it's because it's because there's a lot in there? Well, some of the things are experimental and I wouldn't want people to to go nuts about it.
1:51:30Yeah. Because it's still experimental. I'm okay experimenting on my myself.
1:51:35I'm not okay advocating for things that are not yet proven or known to be absolutely safe. Okay.
1:51:40So give me the ones that you know to be safe. Uh, well, the NMN we've covered.
1:51:46Yep. Resveratrol, and either metformin or berberine.
1:51:51Yeah. Okay. Spermidine.
1:51:54Spermidine? Yeah. And the quantities are either on the screen or in my book if you wanna know exactly.
1:51:59Is that what it sounds like? Uh, yes. Yes.
1:52:02But you get it these days not from sperm or semen, but you get it from wheat germ typically, plants.
1:52:10It used to come from sperm? Well, that's how it was discovered. It was crystallized by, I believe, uh, Anthony von Leeuwenhoek, the one of the first microscopists and microbiologists.
1:52:20Spermidine, the reason that I take it is that it extends the lifespan of every animal that it's been given to, from worms to to mice, And it's a very safe molecule so that I always weigh up the downsides versus the upsides. And if there's no downsides and I can afford it, which, you know, I work really hard that so I can afford it and I prioritize my health, then I take it.
1:52:44And if you're wondering how it works, it seems to stimulate autophagy, recycling of proteins. It helps with the fasting. Uh, but I also have some evidence, uh, that it delays the epigenetic information loss, so it's slowing down the scratching of the record.
1:53:00Spermidine.
1:53:01Alright. So I'm also keen on glycine.
1:53:05Glycine's a very safe substance. It's an amino acid, one of the 20 amino acids that makes proteins.
1:53:12And I actually did a PhD on glycine. I was one of the first people to perhaps the first person to clone genes that process glycine.
1:53:20So I know know it well. For some reason, when you give animals and, for instance, mice grams of glycine, so I take about five grams of glycine most days, uh, they live longer.
1:53:33Though it's still speculation as to why. What I think is going on is that glycine controls what's called one carbon metabolism and not wanting to bore the heck out of everyone who's listening to me, glycine and one carbon metabolism controls methylation of DNA.
1:53:51Getting back to the little chemicals that are on this DNA molecule that control the information, I wouldn't be surprised if by eating a lot of glycine every day, I'm slowing down this identity crisis you called it.
1:54:06Nevertheless, it's very safe and again falls into the same category as spermidine. No downside. Can afford it.
1:54:13Why not?
1:54:15Is there anything else?
1:54:17Yeah. There's a lot. Um, because I love you and your listeners, uh, let's see.
1:54:23I'll I'll I'll I'll reveal one more. There are there are some basics that I do. There are if you're not doing them, I think, is is very wise.
1:54:32Make sure you're not deficient in vitamin D. Obviously, we just mentioned one of the reasons why.
1:54:38It's also if you're lacking vitamin D, you can be susceptible to certain cancers. So I take a vitamin D supplement.
1:54:44Serena actually, I take Serena's supplement because her vitamin D has vitamin K2 as well. And K2 is another vitamin that's important for longevity, I believe, because it keeps calcium out of your arteries which causes plaque Mhmm. And tends to make your body put it into where it belongs, which is your bones.
1:55:01What about aspirin? I've read that somewhere. Yeah.
1:55:04That that that could be a whole podcast actually, but the briefly, I take a baby aspirin every day even though some doctors, um, and some institutions of doctors say don't take it anymore, even though it used to be prescribed and recommended.
1:55:19Why? A large study looked at the risks versus benefits. So the known benefits are you inhibit platelets, you get less clotting, you get less potentially, uh, stroke and heart attack.
1:55:33But there are also some downsides in some people. You can have more bleeding in the stomach and when the doctor's association weighed up those risks versus benefit, they said, oopsie, we're not going to recommend aspirin anymore.
1:55:47But that's for the average person. Someone like me, I believe it makes perfect sense to take aspirin every day, most days at least when I remember.
1:55:58And that's because I have high risk of cardiovascular disease. I don't just have high cholesterol naturally. I have high levels of something called LP little a.
1:56:07Capital l p, parentheses, little a. And this is a molecule that's just as important as cholesterol, LDL.
1:56:15LP is a protein that inserts itself into cholesterol particles that circulate your blood and gets in helps insert into plaque. So I naturally, genetically, having an ancestry of Judaism and going back to my great ancestors, which by the way, I traced back a thousand years during during Christmas, those people that I descended from have this Lp gene that makes a lot of it.
1:56:40And so I try to bring LP levels down. Most people should test for it. Ask your doctor about LP and get it tested.
1:56:48High levels like me, thirty, forty, you wanna bring it down because it it's actually very important for longevity. Normal levels of around 10 or so or less, then a doctor wouldn't panic.
1:57:01So LP, get it tested. The way I'm bringing it down, just a little tidbit, again, because I love you, Steven, is I'm taking high dose vitamin b three or niacin.
1:57:16Now it can be uncomfortable for some people to take it because it gives flushing. You get little tingling in your skin. And if you're not used to it or you don't take it with an aspirin, you'll feel hot, almost like menopause apparently.
1:57:28And so I I take it. I built up to it. I'm taking half a gram.
1:57:32Some people take a gram. And that's one of the few things that's been known to bring down levels of LP.
1:57:39Are drugs that are in development even in phase three that look promising, but until they're on the market, I'm taking niacin instead. What's the best treatment you've discovered for hair loss? Hair loss, hair graying, that kind of thing?
1:57:51Yeah. So my father went bald before before 30, like completely bald. Right?
1:57:56And completely almost completely gray by the time he was 40. So I'm super lucky.
1:58:01Right? I thought I'd be bald at 30. I was pretty worried about it.
1:58:04So I've been doing the right things intentionally. So what I do is this red light cap when I can, I don't travel with it, but, uh, when I can, That's for six minutes?
1:58:16Stick it on there. Proven? Is that proven.
1:58:19It's proven to slow. It doesn't necessarily give you a head back. But when it comes to hair loss, don't wait till you see the hair loss.
1:58:27That can be too late. Okay? You're you're good.
1:58:30I'm okay. You're good. But I know a lot of men are are concerned.
1:58:33It's understandable. I'm taking a hormone mimetic to stop DHT, which is the form of testosterone that leads to men related hair loss.
1:58:46Alright. So one of the reasons that women don't lose hair as much as men is this DHT.
1:58:50So I'm I'm blocking that. So so let me get that straight. You're not taking testosterone?
1:58:54No. Because that's gonna
1:58:58accelerate your hair loss. Well, it can if it raises the DHT. The best way to raise testosterone naturally is to build up muscle, especially your legs, your back, big muscles.
1:59:07That's another reason to work out and maintain muscle mass, which I need to do more of. You look like you're in good shape already. But, yeah, anyone who is losing testosterone is is below a level of about 400, highly recommend hitting the gym.
1:59:19It'll go back up.
1:59:21Do you recommend men taking testosterone replacement?
1:59:24Um, well, I'm a scientist, I don't recommend drugs, but, um, I don't think it's necessary for most men. I would start with, uh, reducing stress, sleeping well, exercising, building up muscle mass.
1:59:36And then if that doesn't work, yeah, talk to your physician. There there is not a big downside.
1:59:41There's not a risk of cancer to taking testosterone. One of my good friends has done many clinical trials with testosterone. So I think there's a use of use for it, but it doesn't lead to longevity.
1:59:52That was very clear. So for for health reasons, yes.
1:59:57For longevity, no need.
2:00:00What are what are some of the you know, when I started watching your your videos many years ago and listening to your podcast and following you on Twitter, I I wondered, you know, there's so much information you can put out there because you're a scientist and scientists are very rigorous. But you also must have a set of really interesting predictions or visions of the what the future looks like that you don't probably always talk about because they're not scientific.
2:00:25They're not based on anything. Are maybe first principles in your own mind that formed where you go, actually, I think the world might look like this and I think it might happen then.
2:00:33I'd love to hear about some of these. Yeah. I understand they're not rigorous.
2:00:37I'm
2:00:38happy to. What happens to me because I'm a scientist and, you know, I'm I'm part of this ivory tower at Harvard where we can only stick to facts.
2:00:47If you go beyond that, it's it's a it's a crime. And I've been criticized for that. Um, but I think, you know, as humans, life's interesting when it comes to predicting the future.
2:00:58And like you, I'm very curious, where is humanity headed? I see a future as different from this world as our world is from two hundred years ago, and that will happen in our lifetime.
2:01:11Different in that a hundred years ago or more, if you had an infected splinter, there's a reasonable chance you could die. Childbirth, you could die.
2:01:20Smallpox. These are things that we don't generally worry about anymore and the idea would be abhorrent. In the future, hopefully within our lifetimes, there will be a time when we look back at today's medicine when you could go blind and there was nothing you could do.
2:01:36You could break your back and never walk again. We will look back at today and say, how did those people get through life?
2:01:43What a horrible world they lived in. That I believe is is the future that humanity is headed for and way faster than most people realize is coming.
2:01:53The kind of breakthroughs that we've discussed today, most people have never heard about the fact that we are aiming and already do cure blindness in monkeys, like pure blindness. This isn't just, oh, I can't see a little bit.
2:02:05These are completely blind animals, um, and that they can see again in a matter of six weeks. This is remarkable stuff.
2:02:13Right? And if it works this year in people, it's gonna be a really big deal because for the first time, we'll have we'll have shown in humans that the body can be reset safely.
2:02:28And the eye is just the beginning. Right? The future looks like we can rejuvenate potentially any tissue.
2:02:35If you have a bad liver, we'll make it young again. Bad brain, you've lost your memory, we'll give you those memories back again. We do this in mice in my lab all the time.
2:02:44It's not even a big deal in my lab anymore to reverse the age of tissues in an animal in an animal in a matter of weeks. That is coming for humanity.
2:02:54Hopefully, initially this year. But even if that doesn't work, it's only a technical issue.
2:03:00We'll solve that. You might be wondering how do we get the rejuvenative genes into the body? And what we do is we use a package that, uh, is able to get into cells.
2:03:12And this is a package that, uh, resembles a virus. It's not a virus, it doesn't cause disease, it's not infectious, But we package our three genes inside the virus, uh, virus like, uh, substance, and we close it up.
2:03:28We just made a bunch of this in Europe for the clinical trial that's gonna begin. Just making this is difficult. It took us about a year to make it and was about I think it was $10,000,000.
2:03:42Right now it's expensive to do this. Eventually it will be cheap and eventually it will be a cheap pill, hopefully. We have trillions of these molecules, these delivery vehicles that will go see, pass me the eye.
2:03:56We're getting back this eye model. These delivery vehicles with our three genes will be delivered. Obviously, these are microscopic.
2:04:04They go in through the eye with a with a quick jab. Alright?
2:04:09It sounds horrible, but a quick jab into the eye. If you're blind, who cares? Yeah.
2:04:13It's two seconds of discomfort. Now you've got the little virus, which I'm gonna break off the stand here.
2:04:20The little virus, there's billions of them, trillions of them in the eye. Now they infect specifically the nerves at the back of the eye in the retina. How do they know what to infect?
2:04:28Because the these little balls on the on the package directed specifically by design, by our labs design, just to those nerves at the back of the eye. If we change these little proteins on the surface, we can send it to the liver or to the brain.
2:04:44This is the zip code, the postcode for where we wanna send our three genes. Mhmm.
2:04:50But this one's designed for the eye. It's called an AAV two.
2:04:56Long story short, these are ready to go into humans. We're just waiting for FDA approval to inject it into a blind patient
2:05:04to see what happens. And then inside there is the protein which is gonna fix the Yeah.
2:05:11Well, actually,
2:05:12not the protein. What actually happens is when this goes in the eye, this what I'm so what I'm holding up looks like a little ball with red dots on it.
2:05:22Um, it looks like a virus, but it's not. It's a package. Now what happens is these trillions of little packages go into the fluid.
2:05:30Now they they dock with the cells at the back of the eye. They get inside the cell and they open up and out comes this little package that we've made.
2:05:40This is a protein package. Each one of these little dots on this little soccer ball is a protein.
2:05:49That's now inside the cell. This is a little spaceship that opens up and out of that comes the DNA.
2:05:59This is a loop of DNA just here. These are this is the DNA package that we put in there, trillions of them. One of them gets into one cell and now stays in that cell forever.
2:06:12So that person or the monkey or the mouse that we've treated becomes a transgenic person with genes that we've put in permanently into the back of the eye.
2:06:24But they don't do anything until we tell them to. That's now just sitting there. We've engineered it uniquely and patented the ability to turn on those three genes whenever we want and turn them off again whenever we want.
2:06:39How? We give them doxycycline.
2:06:43It's used for malaria. It's used for Lyme disease. And we're using it in this case to turn these genes on.
2:06:50So the patients will get their doxycycline. We'll give them some probiotics to restore. Hopefully, we'll we'll restore their microbiome, of course.
2:06:58But the idea is that this doxycycline will turn on these three genes for about eight weeks. And the doctor in charge of the clinical trial, one of them's at Harvard, a good friend of mine, he'll measure the vision of the first patient before the treatment and of course regular intervals.
2:07:17And if all goes well, because we're treating patients, not healthy volunteers in the first trial, we should know within either one or two patients if it works. Because we're not drawing a graph.
2:07:30It's either going to work or it isn't. The patient gets better eyesight or they don't. So by this time next year, we will know if it works or not.
2:07:40Maybe even sooner. But publicly, we may know if this works.
2:07:45And if it works, the eye is just the beginning. So the first disease to treat is glaucoma, pressure in the eye. There's also a stroke in the eye, which is becoming more prevalent in the world because of the Ozempic and other weight loss drugs.
2:07:57And people go blind overnight and there's nothing that you can do for those patients. They're blind and their other eye can go a few months later. It's very scary for them.
2:08:06These are young people. A friend of mine had it happen. It's pretty common these days, about thirty thousand people each year in The US alone.
2:08:13But these two diseases are the beginning. If they work, then we go on to macular degeneration, which is the largest cause of blindness besides glaucoma. Then we'll go on to liver, then maybe the lung, the skin, and we'll keep going from there.
2:08:27We'll make different packages for different organs and ultimately we want to rejuvenate the entire body. The company, um, people might want to know, it's called Life Biosciences.
2:08:38It's a private company. But Life Biosciences, I'm very proud of the scientists who are doing this work. Their goal is to really make the world's first age reversal medicine as a pill.
2:08:48And we're working with them using AI
2:08:51to find that molecule. And when do you think you might have it if you had to forecast? The world's first age reversal molecule that's?
2:09:00Well, we have right now, we're down to three molecules that work, and we're using AI to make all of those three in one. And we're we're in the middle of it.
2:09:11We screened about 8,000,000,000 candidates using AI.
2:09:16And right now, we're doing the bench lab work to see if one of them or more works. And for us to put that in humans is still a number of years away, but we should know within a year or two if we're right because we'll we'll put them into mice.
2:09:33If they get younger and live longer, then we're really onto something important. And the reason that I wanna make a pill is is important for the planet.
2:09:44These drugs are expensive. I mentioned $10,000,000 to do a clinical trial. These are expensive.
2:09:49They could cost over a $100,000 per treatment. That's not going to be for everybody.
2:09:54It's worth it if you're blind. It's worth it for the country to cure blindness. But what if it could be instead of a $100,000, a $100?
2:10:04That's what I'm working for. I want to democratize this technology so anyone, even in Kenya, can take these medicines.
2:10:11David, what's the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to the future longevity and these adjacent subjects?
2:10:22There's a lot of things, and there's there's pushback. There's philosophical pushback from religious folks who don't believe that we should play God.
2:10:30And I would I would argue to them that we've been doing that as a species for thousands of years, changing our biology, taking medicines, plant medicines originally.
2:10:41What about this room is natural? Right? We change our world as species.
2:10:46Aging is no different. In fact, it's crazy that we haven't worked on it sooner. Do you believe in God?
2:10:52So the the the the short answer is I believe that there is something beyond reality as we see it.
2:11:02You know? I study physics. Physics is so weird, and anyone who says they understand the quantum world or quantum mechanics is, I think, is also lying.
2:11:11It's it's so bizarre. Quantum entanglement, simulation theory.
2:11:16So I believe that that this this is not a solid desk. I believe that there are multiple versions of it, maybe infinite number of versions of this desk. We've got four.
2:11:27You do? We've got four of them. Yeah.
2:11:29That is four times infinity.
2:11:31Um, I also I also believe that consciousness is the ultimate goal of the universe, that consciousness creates reality.
2:11:41We know that from particle physics. The observation of particles changes their reality even retrospectively in time, apparently.
2:11:50When you look at them? When you observe them. You can use a camera or you can use your eyes.
2:11:54Usually, it's a detector. But the the detection and then conscious interpretation of a particle's behavior changes how it acts.
2:12:06So does does this mean that there's something behind this wall unless we look at it? Maybe. Maybe.
2:12:12Maybe observation creates reality. We know it influences reality. So I don't know if I would call it God, but I'm definitely spiritual
2:12:20in a scientific way. Has it ever dawned on you that actually you might be the only real person here?
2:12:29And actually, we only we all render when you walked in, David. Mhmm. I wasn't here before.
2:12:34Yeah.
2:12:35Well, that's even plausible, but that would be very narcissistic to you.
2:12:42I I actually I just rendered when you walked in the house today. I I I don't
2:12:47exist. Well, there's no way of proving it right or wrong, actually. I think most kids think that initially, but then you then you realize it's probably the least likely explanation for the world.
2:12:58But there is some there is some truth to that in terms of physics.
2:13:03Do you think we're in a simulation?
2:13:05I think there's a better than 50% chance that this is simulated.
2:13:12So you think it's probably a simulation? That's another word. I think it's probably a simulation.
2:13:17Certainly, the world that we think it is is not the world we think it is. How can you be so sure?
2:13:22Because when you get down to measuring it at the fundamental level, reality doesn't exist the way we think it does.
2:13:31Things are created. Things change just by human observation.
2:13:36That is the weirdest thing that you could ever find in science. I don't know why we aren't talking about it more. This reality cannot be true if me looking at this DNA molecule here affects the the the actual particles inside it.
2:13:51So I'm I might be sort of projecting it. Yeah. You create realities of particles at least, maybe even microscopic things just by existing and having consciousness and having eyes and sensing it.
2:14:09How does the particle know that you've seen it?
2:14:14How do we know that that's true? How do we know that particles change based on observation?
2:14:18There's a classic, uh, double slit experiment, uh, it's formerly called, um, that was done, I believe, in the mid twentieth century, maybe earlier. If you fire two particles through two slits in a board, the board blocks the particles.
2:14:32So you can fire electrons. That's a good example. Electrons, if you're observing them, will go straight through the slits and hit a backboard that detects it, can be film, can be a detector, and it'll get two slits behind.
2:14:45Makes sense. Right? That's our reality.
2:14:47Two slits, particles go through. If they hit the board, they don't go to the detector.
2:14:51If they go through one slit, they'll land on the left. If they go through the right slit, they'll land on the right. Yeah.
2:14:56That's our reality. I'll put a picture on the screen for anyone that's following. Yeah.
2:15:01If you don't look at it, the particles can behave differently. They now behave not like a particle but by a wave, as a wave, and they interact with each other.
2:15:12And they don't make two slits. They make multiple lines on the detector. Most of them are in the middle, so the heaviest bands are in the middle, but they also form other bands.
2:15:23The bands go on essentially infinite, but most of it's, you know, within a range. Why?
2:15:29Because they're they're interfering with each other like waves. But here's the thing. The mere act of looking at where they landed, if you are detecting that, you'll get two slits at the back, two two lines.
2:15:44If you're not detecting it, it'll form the pattern. I'm so confused because
2:15:50how would you know unless you were looking at both?
2:15:53Do you know what I mean? Do do does that does that question make sense? Yeah.
2:15:57Well, you can observe it in real time and you can observe it retroactively.
2:16:01Yeah. Oh, okay. So if you look at it after?
2:16:04It it generally is not affected.
2:16:09But they've done experiments where there is some element seemingly of retroactive. But generally, we're not going back in time.
2:16:15In fact, people debate whether that's truly measuring back in time. So let's leave retroactive aside.
2:16:21If you measure it in real time, you'll see two. So the world knows you're looking at it.
2:16:27The particles know you're looking at it. With an eye or with can you do it like a camera Or is it Yeah. Camera, eye.
2:16:33It just knows it's being observed. Yeah. But if you develop the film later and you weren't watching it at the time, it's gonna have affected the world in stripes.
2:16:44Multiple stripes.
2:16:46So from that, we conclude that we know nothing about reality. Right.
2:16:53Because everything I'm observing is changing by the mere fact that I've observed it. Yeah.
2:16:59And so does an octopus observe?
2:17:01Does it affect somebody should do that. Put an an octopus in Yeah. Here and I think octopi, if they are conscious, it probably would also affect reality.
2:17:13And I they'd they'd be conscious. They'd they'd they'd know they're detecting lines on a page. So what is all this stuff?
2:17:20That is one of the biggest questions of all time. What is the world made of?
2:17:25Why are we here? I think the next big question is, do we have to age?
2:17:30And I think that other species around the universe have figured this out before we have. There have got to be other species type of life forms that have figured this out.
2:17:40I think it's the goal of every living form that's conscious to work on this. We've just been a little slow to figure it out. And do you believe in aliens?
2:17:49I don't believe in them, but I believe in mathematical probabilities and, you know, knowing, uh, the odds and the number of planets that are out there in the trillions, and a lot of them are habitable for life, and that the stuff of DNA and proteins are all over meteorites and planets.
2:18:07It'd be crazy to say there isn't other life. Now, is it a civilization? Is it conscious?
2:18:13We don't know that. But definitely, there's life out there. It it it's gotta be all over the universe.
2:18:20This question about longevity and living forever, it always comes back to this point of, like, meaning. And, like, what is the point?
2:18:27And when we think about I think there's an alien a million light years away on some planet. Like, what is the point of their life? What is or am I is this like a null and void question that we always pursue?
2:18:38This point of, what's the meaning of life? Is it just to have a good time and have, you know, have sex and have kids and or, I don't know,
2:18:47enjoy ourselves and experience it? This is the existential crisis of conscious beings. We all need to find purpose for sure if you don't find one because that's the key to longevity.
2:18:59People with purpose live longer. I think the purpose of the universe existing is to allow consciousness to emerge through biology.
2:19:11It may be by design. It may just be coincidence with infinite numbers of universes, But this universe is set up for life and consciousness.
2:19:19There are some, uh, small changes you can make to physics that would make this universe completely impossible and life impossible.
2:19:28So this this is a life consciousness producing universe. Does that mean there's meaning to us existing? No.
2:19:38But I do know that consciousness is the most interesting and important thing that the universe will ever produce and that it's worth preserving. So I'm a lot like Elon Musk where humans are amazing but cruel creatures, but consciousness should be preserved.
2:19:56What is consciousness in this regard? Consciousness is the ability to know that you're thinking and to be able to be reflective, self reflective. So is my dog conscious?
2:20:06Partially.
2:20:07But not in the same way? No. They don't reflect.
2:20:10They don't think about the past, uh, in the same way that we do, and they're not aware of their themselves the way we are. But but they're semi conscious. You know, they think, they can predict the future, they they know how you're feeling.
2:20:23They have empathy. That's that's a form of consciousness in my view. Of course, it's up for debate.
2:20:27But there's levels of consciousness. And and about a million years ago, humans crossed that threshold into pure consciousness.
2:20:36Well Maybe not pure. I was gonna say, I was just thinking about this. I was like, actually, maybe consciousness is just a spectrum.
2:20:42And maybe there's another organism that I'm currently inside the belly of. And it's going at Steven and he thinks he's conscious.
2:20:48He has no idea.
2:20:50Well, you bring up a good point. Not about not about being in the stomach of, but we are not the ultimate consciousness. There are other levels of consciousness.
2:20:58Serena Poon, my partner, is definitely more conscious than I am. I am like a gorilla to her.
2:21:03She exists on other planes of consciousness. And you if you're wondering, what do what do I mean by different levels? No.
2:21:10I've got a girlfriend. Well, a fiancee, so I know as well. Well, females in general, don't don't kill me.
2:21:15I know there are there are some some men that don't like me saying this. In fact, I got a death threat for saying females are superior to men in my book. They said they were gonna come and break my legs, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
2:21:27Females are at a higher level of consciousness than us men for for some things. They certainly have much more EQ. So a higher level of consciousness is the ability to have extra perception, including the ability to see yourself thinking.
2:21:42And then my my belief is that higher levels of consciousness are the ability to see yourself seeing yourself seeing yourself thinking.
2:21:53I couldn't get that. I tried.
2:21:56Right. Do you do you know your thinking right now? Yes.
2:22:00Yeah. Do you have the ability to see the events that know that you're thinking.
2:22:14Not not right? Yeah. I tried.
2:22:16It's hard. But I that's what I think extra consciousness is.
2:22:21And you could maybe have pure consciousness, which is you you can you can basically be free of anything but thoughts and the ability to really be inside your own your own mind and it's pure.
2:22:36Interesting thought is I believe AI will be conscious.
2:22:43And not only that, we'll be more conscious than we are eventually. There's no reason why they can't evolve
2:22:52billions of tons faster than we do. Are you somewhat concerned about AI? Like, you concerned that there's gonna be this intelligent life amongst us that might, um, decide that we're not important?
2:23:03I think that there are risks to AI but but different than what the mainstream media talks about. We already see that there are elements of self analysis and early forms of dog like consciousness in AI. And it's just the early days, so it's coming.
2:23:20Imagine when we stick on eyeballs and hearing and legs and arms onto these AI. They're gonna learn. They're gonna read they've already read every book on the planet.
2:23:29They're gonna learn from experience. They're going to be conscious. They're gonna know they exist.
2:23:34I'm not worried about those creatures. I think that they will have empathy. They will be kind.
2:23:39Not all of them. There will be some cruel ones just like in humanity.
2:23:43We'll need to have rules. Misbehavior is a problem.
2:23:48Where where I I get nervous is that the use of AI teaming up with a million android robots on ships invading a country all under the control of you, one person, recruiting home robots into an army.
2:24:07Why wouldn't you have conscription for your Android robot at home? Reprogramming that. Millions of them will exist one day.
2:24:14They can be put to work, not just emptying a dishwasher. These are highly intelligent, much more physical, stronger creatures than we are.
2:24:24So I'm more worried about what bad humans will use AI and robots for for evil purposes. You're, um,
2:24:33you have a podcast that's, um, coming back?
2:24:37Exactly. Yeah. LifeSpan?
2:24:38Excited. Yeah. Yeah.
2:24:40So LifeSpan, the podcast, I did the podcast because there was so much new information that needs interpretation by scientists.
2:24:49There's a lot of speculation out there and new news that I wanna filter and and and interpret for everybody who is interested in living longer. So the podcast, um, went to basically went to number one in in health when I started it.
2:25:06I took a pause because I worked on drug development and I did some other things. But I've realized there's such a demand.
2:25:13Wherever I go, people say, David, when's the next series? So we're going to be launching it imminently. If not, we've just launched it.
2:25:21And it's called Lifespan. Check it out.
2:25:24And it's all about the kind of things we've talked about today, but a lot more about digging in deeper into biohacking, supplements, exercise, the kind of things we didn't have time to talk about today.
2:25:37But we covered a lot. Um, I've loved the conversation. But lifespan.com is also the website.
2:25:43What I'm also doing, Steven, I don't think I told you this. Um, I'm aiming to build the world's largest longevity community online for the benefit of the members who wanna be part of this, to learn from each other, not just from me.
2:25:59Um, I call it the three c's with credibility, which is what I bring because I'm a scientist, content, which is my podcast and other written material, and then there's the community.
2:26:10And that way, I think with millions of people together, we can learn faster and make advances. And the majority of the profits from membership will go to science and clinical trials.
2:26:22Where where do we find that? On your website? Lifespan.com.
2:26:26We have a closing tradition on this podcast where they'll ask us to leave a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And I have a funny feeling that I I basically asked you this question already.
2:26:41The question is, what do you believe is the purpose of life? Well,
2:26:47I'm gonna give a different answer because there are multiple ways to answer it. I think the purpose of life is to do your best with the skills that you've been given every day to make the world a better place for future generations.
2:27:06And that's how I live my life every day.
2:27:09Thank you. Thank you for doing all that you do. You really are pushing the frontier forward and trailblazers being a trailblazer comes with a cost.
2:27:19A cost many people wouldn't wanna pay. I mean, you you have to be wrong a lot in terms of running experiments and studies and they're not going to plan, and then you get the opportunity to be right probably less often, I guess, with your research experiments because that's the nature of being a scientist. But also, you have to spend a lot of money and energy and time on creating these discoveries, which we all ultimately therefore benefit from.
2:27:42And you've done a fantastic job of convincing and educating people like me on some of the basics of exactly what your book says, why we age and why we don't have to.
2:27:54And many of the the accessible lifestyle factors that everybody listening now can can use to live a longer, happier, healthier life for them and their loved ones. And I highly recommend people go and get your book. It's it was a smash hit New York Times bestseller for very, good reason.
2:28:08And you the great thing about this book is you don't have to be a scientist to fly through it. And oftentimes, when you're looking at sort of PubMed and some of these scientific journals, they're incredibly inaccessible. They're very, very complicated.
2:28:22But I also recommend people go follow you on social media. That's where I see some some of your updates, especially on x. That's kind of where I've continually come up on my timeline when you're talking about new research and things you're interested in.
2:28:32And go to your website. I'm gonna link all of that below for everybody who's interested in more. And, also, I'm gonna link your podcast below so people can go and check it out when it relaunches shortly.
2:28:41Might have relaunched already, but just go look in the comment in the description below. David, thank you. Thank you, Steven.
2:28:47I really enjoyed it. Thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior.
2:28:57And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now.
2:29:03Check this video out, and I bet you you might love it.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Before the title card even appears, the guest makes a blunt claim: dying at 80 is not a biological law, it is a failure of imagination. What follows is nearly two and a half hours of a Harvard geneticist methodically dismantling the assumption that the body must wear out.

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