Episode 02: We Can Control Longevity

Welcome to my podcast, asking the question, if not now, when? This is Cindie Brown and thank you for joining me today. For more information, visit me at www.ifnotnowwhen.best.

Many years ago, when I worked in a nutrition office with my friend, we pinky sweared that we were going to live to 120. Now, this isn't just chronological years, but what I'm talking about is healthy years. So many times when I told somebody that I plan to live to 120, they seem to have a vision of an elderly person sitting in a nursing home wearing diapers or in a hospital hooked up to tubes. You know, unfortunately, there's good reason for it. Our lifespans are increasing, but our health spans are decreasing. And actually, in these last three years, even our lifespans are starting to decrease. I think that's a first. At the time, my friend and I made this commitment. We knew people would think we were ridiculous so we just stopped talking about it. Well, after 40 years, that goal is not so far-fetched as the field of longevity advances with so many scientific discoveries unfolding. I kind of think of it like the four-minute mile. Once that record was broken, many followed. I see aging that way as well.

By the way, just as a side note, there are two ways this subject is described. Anti-aging and longevity. I choose to use longevity because of the impact of a comment Mother Teresa made many years ago. She would not participate in an anti-war rally, but would participate in a peace rally.  I like to give energy to what I want rather than what I don't want.

Anyway, in 2003, the mapping of the human genome was complete. Science at that time took the approach that our genes were the determinant of most of our health and lifespan outcomes. Well, research marches on and 17 years later, we've learned epigenetics, which is the science of how our environment and lifestyle affect gene activity and expression is a greater determinant of health and longevity outcomes than previously understood. This is huge. It means we are in the driver's seat even if we're dealt a bad deck of genes we can do something about it. So here's the really good news, a Danish twins study established that only about 20 percent of how long the average person lives is determined by genes. That means we have 80 percent control of our lifespan. That's good news. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing what I've learned in strategies I've incorporated that have made a difference in my energy level, alertness and overall sense of well-being to increase my odds of dancing tango at 110 years old. As I prepared for this episode, I couldn't help thinking about an expression I'd heard, quote, “The further from the shoreline I go, the deeper the water becomes.”  I was getting into some deep water and decided to swim a little closer to shore. The depth and amount of information is overwhelming. And yet, without a doubt, we are truly on the cutting edge of some amazing science on how to slow and even reverse the aging process. What I've tried to do is touch on some of the aspects of this topic that can be most helpful and hopefully make it interesting and engaging because it truly can make a difference in the quality of our lives.

You know, there's no new news or big surprises in the basics of what I'm sharing. But bringing to light some of the whys behind the life extending recommendations and help you make better choices. All of the non-pharmacological life extending recommendations revolve around my five pillars of good health: Feed your body good food, good thoughts and good sleep, exercise and surround yourself with loving friends and family. All five pillars are interconnected working in concert. And when that happens, you're able to create a long, healthy life.

The challenge I found with the science of longevity is tests and trials are done on animals and organisms, which obviously begs the question, will it work on humans? The other form of research is looking at people who live longer than the average population.   That's not an exact science either. However, putting both of these puzzle pieces together brings us closer to good conclusions.

So, there are five regions in the world called Blue Zones where there are high concentration of centenarians. They have about a 20 year advantage over everybody else. These regions are the Barbagia region of Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea, Ikaria, Greece an Aegean Island, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, Loma Linda, California where the population is predominantly Seventh Day Adventists and the island of Okinawa, Japan. There's a great article by Dan Buettner called Reverse Engineering Longevity. And I'll include the link of his article in the show notes, Dan assembled a team of medical researchers, anthropologists, demographers and epidemiologists to study these regions. These places provide a great case study looking at lifestyle, environment and diet to see if there's any similarities among all five zones that we can incorporate into our lives. This is what he and his team found. I'll start with my favorite first, quote, unquote. “Wine at five, people in the blue zones (except Adventist) drink alcohol moderately and regularly. Moderate drinkers outlive non-drinkers. The trick is to drink one to two glasses per day, preferably with red wine, with friends and or food. And no, you can't save up all week and have 14 drinks on Saturday.”  Shout out to my wine down Wednesday friends. We can certainly check that box. Next is move naturally. He says there not in the gym pumping iron and they are not marathon runners  but movement is part of their daily lives because of their environments. They're up and down stairs, up and down hills, they're cutting bushes with machetes. I would think the Seventh Day Adventist living in Loma Linda, California. And I think I've actually seen a PBS special on them and they do go to the gym.  Next is  sense of purpose, “why I wake up in the morning”. The other is what they call downshift. They all have ways to minimize stress and stress leads to chronic inflammation associated with every major age-related disease. The world's longest live people have routines to shed that stress. Okinawans take a few moments each day to remember their ancestors, Adventist pray, Ikarians take a nap and Sardinians do happy hour. I love that!!  The 80 percent rule, which is that you leave the table when you're 80 percent full. And it seems that most do not eat a heavy meal at night. They're late afternoon meal or evening is usually a lighter meal.

Next is plant slant. They do eat meat, but it is not the major portion of their diet. He notes that they eat meat maybe five times a month and it's three to four ounces. And then the others are about social connection, belonging, loved ones, the right tribe. They're all about family, living with extended family and friendships. So they embrace social connection.

So David Sinclair, P.h.D wrote a book called, Lifespan Why We Age and Why We Don't Have to Die. He's an acclaimed Harvard professor and voted one of Time's most influential people with his paradigm shift. He defines aging as a disease and has successfully and literally turned back the clock of time with mice in his laboratory at the Paul F.. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sinclair and his colleagues study the molecular causes of aging and how to improve health span and lifespans by slowing its effects. He says you can't change the genome we got from our parents, but you can change lifestyle. And when you change your lifestyle, we change our epigenome, extending our life. This is powerful and empowering. What Dr. Sinclair studies have shown is the best lifestyle for longevity is to eat less, eat stressed foods and stress our bodies. He's learned it turns on our defense genes. These longevity genes are in our bodies, but they don't get activated unless we eat the right things. Limit how often we eat, get enough sleep and exercise.  Then these genes turn on and they don't just slow aging. They reverse many aspects of aging.

So stressed foods are foods that have dark colors, lighter foods for longevity are not as good because a lot of stress foods produce what Dr. Sinclair calls Xino Hormetic molecules. Wow. It's kind of a big word. So Xino means from other species and Hormesis is the term that means you've got to get your body out of its complacency. You've got to trigger those longevity genes. Once plants are stressed, they're making these colored molecules for their own benefit to protect them from UV rays and dehydration. They're trying to survive activating their own longevity genes. When we eat them, we trigger are body's defenses and we get that benefit. Organic fruits and vegetables are stressed. We don't want the perfect lettuce that's not been put under any stress.

Now, about stressing our bodies, quote, unquote. “More important than what we eat is when we eat.”  Rafael de Cabo from the National Institute of Health studied 10,000 mice trying to figure out if there's a diet that makes them live longer. He fed some mice a diet rich in carbohydrates and another rich and proteins and another in fat and was hoping to see finally what works. What he found out was they all did the same thing. All the mice had short lifespans, about two years, which is what they normally live. But there was one group where he only gave them food two hours a day instead of feeding throughout the day. And they lived about 20 to 30 percent longer. So, a quote from Dr. Sinclair. “So if there's one thing I could say that I've learned after reading thousands of papers and studying this my whole life, it's eat less often.” 

The other way we stress our body is through exercise. Dr. Sinclair explains, it's that huff and puff exercise that's best. Again, stressing our bodies and triggering those survival genes is key. Overall, the idea is to trick our body into thinking times are tough or hormesis.  Eating stressed food and stressing our bodies through intermittent fasting and rigorous exercise really does trick our body into reacting to adversity to protect us. And the long-term benefit is longevity.

mTor, mammalian target of rapamycin. All information I read on the subject of longevity points to this topic as well as how we need to limit this signaling compound. mTor is defined as: “The master controller of protein synthesis in the body.” It regulates cell growth, cell proliferation, cell mobility, cell survival, protein synthesis and autophagy. If mTor is chronically elevated, there is an increased chance of building cancer cells when it's low were in repair and maintenance mode and that stimulates autophagy, which is a good thing. Autophagy is defined as, “the natural regulated mechanism of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components”.  So why is that important? So senescent cells accumulate with age in a wide range of tissues in our body. And the reason removing these dysfunctional senescent or dead cells is important is these cells secrete inflammatory proteins causing all the problems of inflammation which increase the risk of the four major age-related killers, which are; cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and type two diabetes. Also, there's another reason, the mitochondria in senescent cells becomes dysfunctional and releases huge amounts of reactive oxygen species and speeds up the aging process. Keep in mind, the two things that fuel mTor are glucose in an amino acids. The more we suppress mTor, the longer we'll live in. Historically, this hasn't been a problem because we haven't had an abundance of food. Our ancestors came from kind of a circadian rhythm type of life, where there were times where food was plenty, but there were other times food was not plenty, you know, their seasons and availability of food. So, during the time they didn't have a lot of food mTor  was naturally suppressed. And during that time of fast, the cells that were not carrying their weight were instructed to die, which is apoptosis and new stronger cells are born. This is why fasting is so beneficial and helps keep us young. This also activates stem cells calling them into action, which is a good thing. And now that we have an abundance of food year around mTor is not suppressed very often and we age faster. So giving our body a break every once in a while from food does suppress mTor  extending our life. And it's also evidence as to why a plant slant diet also has life extending benefits because protein does fuel mTor.

Dave Aspery wrote the book, Superhuman, The Bullet Proof Plan to age backwards and maybe even live forever. He's known as the godfather of biohacking and his goal is to live to 180. Dave’s step one in the process of living a long time is to avoid the four major age-related diseases, which, as I mentioned above are; Cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease and Type two diabetes. His approach is to lean on the things that extend our life and avoid the things that reduce it by avoiding foods and expose us to toxins that cause cell damage. He goes into great depth on cell health and is also an advocate for fasting as a modality for cell rejuvenation and stem cell growth. He describes in detail “The seven pillars that make us old” to reduce effects of these pillars. He stresses the importance of keeping the mitochondrial DNA out of trouble. The mitochondrial DNA controls how our body makes energy. He recommends we eat foods high in antioxidants to reduce inflammation, get a little sun each day, avoid institutionally produce meat and instead eat grass fed meat, eat organic fruits and vegetables and avoid processed foods.  He has also found that light therapy, red light blue lights, yellow lights also have an impact on lifespan, influencing our sleep cycles and circadian rhythms.

He describes aging as death by a thousand cuts. He says, we all are going to take hits. It's how life goes. If you can reduce those hits, we're much better off and can extend our health spans. Unfortunately, our current food supply is causing us to take many more cuts than we've had to in the past. How we've gotten to this point with our, Standard American Diet”, which the acronym would be SAD, as being the most toxic in our country's history and being one of the least healthy nations in the developed world, is a podcast on all unto itself. But our current food supply truly is the greatest public health hazard of our time as cigarette smoking was in the past with big food companies behaving as big tobacco companies did back in the 80s. The only way this is going to change is with heightened public awareness resulting in the public demanding higher quality food. Voting with their dollars and leaving that Captain Crunch to rot on the shelf.  With all the chemicals in that box, it will probably take about 50 years to rot. I truly believe when we know better, we do better, quote unquote. And I'm encouraged by this movement with more and more people demanding real food minus the chemicals.  I'm behind this elephant pushing as hard as I can, and I won't stop until we get him over the mountain because the way we produce food is not sustainable for our farms, our planet or our health.

Let's talk a little bit about movement as it relates to longevity, one of my pillars, Peter Attia, medical doctor and longevity expert, talks about movement and the best forms of exercise to extend our health life. His recommendation is the load should be more on muscle rather than on the joints. We need to be mindful of joint overload type exercises. Muscle mass is critical to protecting our bones as we age. Resistance training, flexibility and balance training are all really important. They all help reduce the chances of falling and possibly breaking a hip. Even if you're just a little bit stronger, you've got a better sense of balance, you're a little more flexible, just not as vulnerable. And I know most of us have seen that once an elderly person falls and hurts themselves or their bedridden. It's really difficult for them to recuperate. Also, the optimal level of cardio exercise has really not yet been defined, but critical to longevity.

Then there is sleep.  Lifespans and health spans are directly correlated to how well we sleep. According to Dr. Jose Loredo, M.D. at the University of San Diego Medical Center, sleep, especially deep sleep repairs the brain. The blood brain barrier loosens up and that glymphatic system, which is the brain's lymphatic system, cleans the brain out and all the dead cells and debris when we sleep is discarded. Sleep also provides cardiovascular relaxation, helping to prevent cardiovascular disease. Memory consolidation happens during sleep. Eighty percent of what we learn the day before is consolidated during REM and deep sleep, which helps our memory.  Consistent with my five pillars of health working in concert, good health increases sleep health.  During deep sleep you are secreting growth hormone and allows your cells to repair. Our cells don't grow during a workout, but after a workout when we sleep. Keep in mind, if you use sleep aids, you don't get deep sleep, that delta wave sleep, which is so critical. Sleep decreases inflammation and restores body composition. It's interesting, though, the last 50 years we are sleeping less. There is no conclusive evidence as to why, possibly it's the blue light exposure with all of our gadgets before we go to sleep. But no conclusive evidence as to why we're sleeping less. So, seven to eight hours of sleep optimizes our health and longevity for adults. Good sleep hygiene or rules of sleep are important, and one is a good sleep schedule. Going to bed about the same time and waking up about the same time.  You really do need to prepare yourself to go to sleep. Try to avoid caffeine after 12 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon.  It takes about six hours for that to be out of your system. It's suggested that we stop blue light or use some filters that you can get for your phone and TV as well. But avoid blue light before you go to bed. That blue light triggers your brain that it's still daytime and you don't secrete melatonin. Sleep in a very dark room, make sure it's really cold or cool. One interesting fact, though is 25 percent of our sleep is what they call deep sleep. Delta waves sleep. However, as we age it's reduced, but it's reduced more in men, which scientists have not been able to figure out why. Around 85 years of age, women's deep sleep is only about 15 to 18 percent, but men's is only about five percent. It's kind of interesting.

Next is stress. Bruce Lipton wrote a book many years ago called, The Biology of Belief. He's a cellular biologist. What he found is cells that live in a stressful environment have a shorter lifespan compared to cells that are growing and dividing in an environment with less stress, with less stress hormones and increased levels of happy hormones, dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins. One of the keys to longevity is learning how to incorporate stress management tools. There's so much great information out there on how to reduce stress. Of course, sleep and exercise and diet are just a few. Personally, I like to fill my heart with love so there's no room for negative emotions.  Keeping a grudge or staying angry takes too much real estate in my heart. Nor are they emotions I want to live with.

So keeping it real.  For me, knowing and understanding this information is one thing, but to incorporate this into my life and to what extent is a whole different ballgame. It really is easier, though, when I'm home where I can control my environment. But I travel for a living and when I'm on the road, it's much harder. My experience has been that I create more stress trying to follow a strict plan to perfection when I'm traveling, which is counterproductive. I've learned to make the best choices I can, and most of the time I can make pretty good choices. But when I can't, I leave it at that and let it go. Also, what I've learned in the field of nutrition, it's fluid and not an exact science because everyone's different. A different genetic makeup, different health goals. Also, I think the trick is to slowly make better choices and your body will get used to it and feel good and eventually stop craving unhealthy choices. At least that's been my experience. I know I've heard it's takes about 21 days to create or change a habit. And now what I've found is I lean on the good health habits I've created to keep me on track as much as possible.

Another factor that keeps us on track or derails us is our microbiome, the bacteria that live in our gut. There's good and bad bacteria and the bad bacteria love and thrive on sugar. So the more sugar we eat, the more they thrive, the less sugar we eat they diminish or die off. Why that's important is when our gut bacteria are craving sugar, we're craving sugar. So as much as we can reduce those bad bacteria in our gut by not eating as much sugar, we also reduce the cravings for sugar.

You know, I have a long bucket list and I want to stay physically and mentally strong for a very long time so I can have as many amazing experiences as humanly possible. Some of the things on my bucket list are not physically demanding, but others are. I want to experience at all extending this wonderful time in my life. So in my mind, the price of incorporating my five pillars of health is absolutely worth it. Part of my bucket list is live a life that matters and to be of service.  The best way I can do that is to be strong in good health and sharp mind. I don't want to spend the last five or 10 years of my life watching TV because I'm physically not able to do the things I want to do. I want to do the things I enjoy doing. To do that, I've chosen to make learning how to extend my life a priority.  Having all the money in the world if I'm only able to sit home and watch TV isn't worth it.  When my grandchildren and great grandchildren run up to me I want to be able to squat down with ease and pick them up. I want to be able to play with them. This is why I'm so passionate about the subject of longevity and why I want to share it with you. They really are things we already know and hear about, but putting it in a context of understanding some of the cutting edge science and things we can do on a daily basis to bend that that epigenetic curve, to be able to change our life and health outcomes. I find it interesting when we're younger, we tend to sacrifice our health for money. And then when we're older, we would give our money away to feel young again. I'm so grateful for you listening today and I'll leave you with a quote that I really like, which is; “Every new day is a day of awakening. If every day is an awakening, you'll never grow old, you'll just keep growing.” Wishing you peace, love, happiness and goodbye for now.

Article by Dan Buettner called Reverse Engineering Longevity From <https://www.bluezones.com/2016/11/power-9/?_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJjaW5kaWUuYnJvd25AbWFycmlvdHQuY29tIiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAic200ZWh2In0%3D>

David Sinclair https://genetics.med.harvard.edu/sinclair/people/sinclair.php

David Sinclair's Book, Lifespan, Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To https://lifespanbook.com/?utm_term=lifespan%20david%20sinclair&utm_campaign=US+%26+Canada+Lifespan+Searches&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2593356319&hsa_cam=2052147102&hsa_grp=81707249451&hsa_ad=361642248635&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-802781493578&hsa_kw=lifespan%20david%20sinclair&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAjw8J32BRBCEiwApQEKgatIx4WXSR0jNTaqDcGKht_tfWXBu_HFPvIz0LBk2ZAZ21jk52LSoRoCoZkQAvD_BwE

Dave Asprey https://blog.daveasprey.com/about-dave-asprey/

Dave Asprey Podcast: https://blog.daveasprey.com/category/podcasts/

Dr. Jose Loredo MD UCSD Medical Center: https://providers.ucsd.edu/details/11645/jose_s-loredo-pulmonology_lung-sleep_medicine-san_diego

Peter Attia MD - https://peterattiamd.com/

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