In Search Of Excellence - Dr. Mike Roizen: Your Genes Are Under Your Control | E71

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Welcome to another episode of In Search of Excellence! My guest today is Dr. Mike Roizen – a world-renowned physician and author whose work has helped tens of millions of people improve their health and wellness through lifestyle changes, and whose purpose in life is help other control their gene expression through healthy living. Dr. Mike formerly served as the Chairman of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, and Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago, and in 1997, he left to co-found a company called Real Age, a consumer health media company that inspires people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Shortly after selling the company, Dr. Roizen was named Chief Wellness Officer at the Cleveland Clinic, the first such position at a major healthcare institution in the United States. Dr. Mike has published more than 185 peer-reviewed scientific papers, has written 18 books, including 4 New York Times bestsellers, and has received 13 patents. 07:32 The difference between real age and actual age- Used to think this was all physiologic- How to calculate your actual age?- Age test on a new app called Longevity Playbook at the longevityplaybook.com    13:10 The results of the Human Genome Project- What's the rest of the DNA?- Switches that control your genes- Your habits influence how your genes function 15:58 How will 20% of our genetics we cannot control negatively influence our life expectancy?- Some of us are born with dominant genetic genes that might cause sickle cell disease- Many of those 20% we're learning how to alter with CRISPR Cas9- Stress Management turns off or on over 256 genes and reduces our rate of aging very substantially 17:51 How useful is DNA testing like 23andMe?- They are designed to let you know what risk you have from a genetic standpoint- You can take action to reduce the risk- Some of these tests aren't exactly accurate 20:19 Should parents do genetic testing of their kids?- In the future, it will be more common and more useful.- Some genetic tests are mandated state by state- We're still in the infancy of this field 24:34 38 choices to improve cognitive functioning and reduce aging- Mike’s life mission is to alter your genetics to control them to improve the quality of life and life expectancy - Speed of processing games- Favorite video games- Mike jumps rope every day 36:14 How to get 10,000 steps a day when you are a very busy person?- Walking on a treadmill as you work, making phone calls- What is important is physical activity- 10,000 daily steps are optimal 40:35 The benefits of drinking coffee- If you're a fast metabolizer, drinking lots of coffee lowers your risk of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Type 2 diabetes- 8 cancers, including breast cancerSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

I'm actually 78 and my real age is around 57.4. But real age is the actual age of your body as opposed to your calendar age. And your real age can be many years older or younger than your calendar age, depending a lot on your habits. My life mission is to help other people do that as well as myself.

You know, I'm a side effect of the test, if you will. So stress is a incredible ager. But again, by doing stress management, you get to change the effects of stress on you and your rate of aging is very substantial. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be, to learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance.

It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings, and we all have different routes and hope. I want to get there. My guest today is Dr. Mike Roizen. Dr. Mike is a world-renowned physician and author whose work has helped tens of millions of people improve their health and wellness through lifestyle changes and whose purpose in life is to spread the message that we get to control our genes to a large degree. Dr. Mike formerly served as the chairman of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care and dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago. And in 1997, he left there to co-found a company called RealAge, a consumer health media company that inspires people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Shortly after selling the company, Dr. Roizen was named Chief Wellness

Officer at the Cleveland Clinic, the first such position at a major healthcare institution in the United States. Dr. Mike has published more than 185 peer-reviewed scientific papers, has written 18 books, including four number one New York Times bestsellers, and has received 13 and many foreign patents. Dr. Mike, it's a true pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Randy, it's always great to be on excellence. So thank you for inviting me. So we met at the Scale Global Summit, a conference in Las Vegas about a month ago. There are a lot of speakers there, very prominent speakers from Mike Pompeo and William Barr, Jewel, Kimball Musk. And I have to say, of all the presentations there, I enjoyed yours the most.

It was fascinating. I thought it was going to be boring. I've heard doctors speak at lots of different conferences and they were okay, but this is, it was spectacular. And I'm super excited to share this today with everybody listening and watching. Let's start. I got to say thank you. That's a high compliment. I was really the appetizer for Boris Johnson. So there was a medical speaker before each of the political ones, and I was Boris Johnson's appetizer. Boris was awesome, funny, down to earth, but you guys were neck and neck there. I mean, that's a great warm up, and he was awesome, but so were you. Thank you.

Your actual age is 77 years old, but your real age is closer to 57. Can you explain the difference between real age and actual age and where net present value figures into this calculation? Sure. And you got net present value correct because this really started because we were trying to motivate patients to get 10 to 20 years younger in the perioperative period. That is, if you're 10 or 20 years younger, you have a, at 10 years younger, you have a threefold reduction in complications or threefold quicker return to function. And it seems to be logarithmic. So at 20 years younger, you're ninefold fewer complications. We got that from the database on cardiovascular outcomes in 1978 from the California study. And as you said, I'm actually 78 and my real age is around 57.4.

But real age is the actual age of your body as opposed to your calendar age. And your real age can be many years older or younger than your calendar age, depending a lot on your habits. We used to think this was all physiologic. For example, we used to think when you exercise, you improve blood flow to the brain and you improve your cardiac function. you decrease the damage to your arteries, so you stay younger. But it's more than that. You actually change which of your genes are functioning or not. You, for example, for exercise, you turn on a small gene, a gene in the muscle that produces a small protein, a RISN, goes to your brain and increases brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor. So one of the things that we've learned in the last 10 years is really that what you're doing when you make these changes is change which of your genes is on

which proteins you produce. Now, what does net present value have to do with it? It is your choices, the net present value of your choices, just like the net present value of investments makes a difference in how long and well you live. And believe it or not, it's actually much more similar to investment than we thought because compounding plays into it. So for example, if you lower your LDL cholesterol or your apolipoprotein B from 140 to 70, in the first 10 years, it may be a 6% reduction risk. But by 40 years, it's a 30% reduction risk. There's a compounding of benefit, just like there is an investment. And that gives you the net present value of your health choice, just like there's a net present value to investments.

When I'm calculating NPV, I'm going on an Excel spreadsheet. I know the inputs. I know the formula. How do you calculate that you're closer to a 57 today? And it's something that people would want to know, I would think, right? They want to know their score. Am I above or am I below my actual age test on our new app called Longevity Playbook at the longevityplaybook.com. It is launched on June 15th, so pretty recent. And on June 15th, you'll be able to get your actual age test and do it. And it has the inputs of actually about 60 inputs. The major inputs, obviously, are your blood pressure, your LDL cholesterol, your stress management, whether you are making unforced errors like smoking or vaping, your marital status, how many orgasms you have, if you will, your fasting blood sugar, and a whole bunch of characteristics that allow us to gauge the net present value of your changes all put together. And yes, there's a lot of covariance used because obviously some of the things affect the same areas such as blood pressure and LDL cholesterol both affect

your cardiovascular risk, your heart disease, strokes, memory loss risk, although blood pressure also for some reason affects cancer risk. Will the average person be able to go on your app and know all these stats or they're going to have to call their doctor? Because I think most people don't know their cholesterol level and probably a lot of other inputs on that. If they don't know those,

they can either get them from their physician or they've got many people have blood pressure monitors now at home or you can go to a drugstore for your blood pressure. But in fact, if you don't put those in, you still get your actual age, not counting those, and you can get those at a later time and add them in. Let's move to your desire or your, one of the themes is you can genetically engineer your DNA while you're alive, as opposed to when you're born. There's roughly 300,000 genes that are available. We've talked about, you've talked about 22,500,

and you've talked about concepts like junk DNA. So can you talk to us about the Human Genome Project, which I believe cost $4 billion when they were doing it, and now you can get a sequence test at Walmart for $100? Right, except when it's on sale. It's on sale usually Mother's Day and Father's Day. You can get it for $70. But in fact, that's right. The Human Genome Project started in the private sector by Craig Venter and by Collins at NIH, and costs around $3 billion to do each of them, to do one genome. And when they started it, there was enough DNA in the nucleus that they expected to find 300,000 genes, but they only found 22,500 each. And so they said, what's the rest of the DNA? And they agreed to call it junk DNA. But it was also funded by a large nine country project called ENCODE to look at what it was. And in 2008 or nine, it was found that these are really switches that control your genes. And the great news is at least 80% of those switches you control,

meaning all genes do is really produce proteins or watch other genes. And which of your genes are on or not is largely under your control, at least 80%. In the most recent two twin studies, one found 93% and one found 94% of those genes are under your control, largely under your control, so that your habits really influence how your genes function and those proteins those genes make influence are really how you function and how long and well you live. So you are a genetic engineer and get to control it. Whether you went to MIT or Caltech or not, you're a much better genetic engineer for you than any of those are. Right. We should also point out that I know you're joking about the schools, but really these techniques that we're going to talk about today are really applicable to anybody, whatever socioeconomic status, no matter where you live in the world. That's exactly right. It is. Your choices matter for you, no matter where you are.

You said 80% we can influence. We're going to get into the details of some of the amazing and simple things we can do. What's the 20% of our genetics that we cannot control that will negatively influence our life expectancy? of us are born with dominant genetic genes that might cause, if you will, sickle cell disease. And we know we can influence that through genetic engineering techniques that are really brought from the outside, but we don't know how to influence that ourselves, how to turn off that sickle cell disease gene-producing protein produces sickle hemoglobin. But the good news is many of those 20% that we don't know, or six or seven percent in the most recent studies, that we're learning how to alter them with CRISPR and Cas9 and the improvements on CRISPR and Cas9. So there really are a huge things. Let me give you one more example. Stress management. You say,

how important is that? Well, it turns off or on over 256 genes. And the majority of the genes, it turns off, produce inflammatory proteins, proteins that increase inflammation. And the majority of genes it turns on that produce proteins that decrease inflammation. So stress is an incredible ager. But again, by doing stress management, you get to change the effects of stress on you and your rate of aging very substantially. getting these genetic tests? You mentioned Walmart. I think most people know 23andMe is a leader in this space. It's $199. I've seen it on sale for $99 online on a whole bunch of different websites. On a lot of my social media, this pops up as well. Is it worth it to get this test? Does it be helpful? And can it add to and give you recommendations for longevity or is it pretty much designed to tell you if you have some lingering illness or cancer in your body?

They really are designed to let you know what risks you have from a genetic standpoint, but you have to take action. So for example, if you had a gene that predisposes to breast or prostate cancer, well, we know a lot about the things that turn those RAS family of genes off and turn on the GSTM1 protein-making genes that decrease breast and colon cancer propensity. Now, that means you have to take those actions, but those actions are quite common, and so you can take them anyway. I believe that the 23andMe and the other genetic tests in general let you give you a heightened awareness of yourself. But the key point isn't just that awareness. It is then taking action to rid yourself of that risk. And some of them aren't exactly accurate.

As you probably know, I think I said I drink eight cups of coffee a day. Well, if you go to my 23andMe, it says I'm a slow coffee metabolizer. Well, if I was a slow coffee metabolizer, I wouldn't have eight cups a day and be able to sleep well at night. So either I've induced around that by having progressively more and more cups of coffee, or that test isn't perfectly accurate yet. I know a lot of parents today, including me, do cord blood when our kids are born. And I also know there's a lot of recommendations from doctors, pediatricians who do genetic testing on newly born babies to determine whether there are issues, future material health issues going forward. In one case,

we have a friend whose child is severely disabled and their disease wasn't caught until they were three or four years old. And now this young lady is unable to speak, communicate, is in a wheelchair for life and has a life expectancy of 21 years old. Is genetic testing something that all parents should do when their baby's born? And is it something that parents should do on their kids later in life, regardless of their age? You know, I think that it will become more common and more useful. There are some genetic tests that are mandated state by state. So, for example, phenylchlorozygous and some of the other genetic diseases, their metabolic equivalents are measured. I think that over the next five to ten years, maybe two to five years, we're going to find much more use for both prenatal and natal genetic testing

or post-birth genetic testing and for genetic testing in the rest of us. We're still at the infancy of this field, and obviously it's important in cancer treatments, different treatments for different receptors, different genetic markers of breast cancer. But we're going to learn much, much more through what I would call the AI or the machine learning, plus the large databases that are now working with genetics to help us. That's one of the reasons that 23andMe started. It was to really, as I understand their vision,

to help people understand their risks and to be able to cure the disease earlier. Now, there are some things that you should do definitely, if you will, when you're a kid. So we normally test if I have a patient and I take care of adults and usually people 50 and older who want to live to 110 in the same shape they are now. That's the goal with each of these patients I take care of. But say someone has a high cholesterol, well, we measure it then in kids as early as six years old and actually start treating it if it's there because of that compounding benefit effect that I talked to. So yeah, it's going to be a lot. I think we're going to be able to have healthy longevity a lot more progressively as we go on. That's interesting. I've never heard of

a six-year-old taking an anti-cholesterol drug, for example, for future in life. Is that a common thing? It's just something that I've never even thought about. I've never even heard someone doing that for their kids. And like I said, I've got five kids. We all talk about what should we do with cord blood and medical recognitions, doctor referrals, all things like that.

Well, we measure a whole bunch of things, their blood pressure, et cetera, so that if their family, for example, were you, Randy, and I, we should disclaim it, I have no idea what your blood markers are, I don't take care of you, et cetera, but were you to have familiar hypercholesterolemia, yeah, we'd start testing your kids at age six. And I don't know whether that's just the Cleveland Clinic or just a few countries, but I think there is a growing awareness of the value of preventive care for the family once you know some of the genetic markers of the adults in the family.

So you talk a lot about in your life mission is to alter your genetics, to control them, to improve quality of life and life expectancy. And you've identified 33 choices we could do to improve our communities. Yeah, by the way, let me correct just a little bit of that statement. My life mission is to help other people do that as well as myself. You know, I'm a side effect of the test, if you will. But my life mission is to help every one of your listeners or every one of my patients do it. Yes. Thank you for clarifying.

You've identified 33 choices we could all make to improve our cognitive functioning, and it can decrease your rate of aging. Can you talk about what some of these are? I think you've identified six big things of the 33, and we can talk about some of them are super easy, some of them take no time, and some of them take a little bit of time. Yeah, there actually are 38 now that have been shown in at least two studies in humans to change your rate of brain aging. So the big six are the ones that affect everything. Normal blood pressure, you want it under 115, under 75, and that bottom number you don't want below 50. You want an LDL cholesterol or apple lipoprotein B below 70. You want your

fasting blood sugar or hemoglobin A1c in what is the normal range, usually between 80 and 99 for fasting blood sugar, under 5, 4 for hemoglobin A1c. You want your waist as measured at the belly button with you sucking in to be half your height. You want not to have cotinine or vaping end products in your urine from either primary smoking or vaping or secondary or tertiary. You want to do stress management as a routine and to practice that with a posse and purpose. So having six friends you call routinely and are vulnerable to and a purpose in life as you have with excellence and I have with helping people live younger or longer. Those are the six big. Then there are two things that are the next and stress management is so important. We have that as another one, if you will, a seventh. Eight might be, and I'm doing these kind of in order of importance, eight would be doing the four components of physical activity that have been shown to make a difference. Any,

that's 10,000 step or step equivalent today. You don't like walking, play badminton, play with your kids, garden, whatever you do has step equivalents. And in the longevity playbook app, we have those step equivalents, but you can look them up on the internet as well. The second thing is resistance training. You want to do that before cardio to build up your muscles so you don't get injured and the keys are the core so the core exercises are push-ups if you will lunges wall squats bent over back row and i'm missing one uh uh lunges i said lunges squats bent over back row um push-ups um and oh getting out of the chair without using your hands uh with with weights in your hands when you're young like you are um and then the uh next one is speed of processing game. Again, we have them

embedded because it's that important into the longevity playbook app, but it is the brain HQ games of double decision and freeze frame have been shown to decrease dementia. Now, those are all take some time, but the speed of processing is only 18 hours over 10 years. Decreased dementia in randomized controlled studies starting at 73 or 70 for 10 years by 40 plus percent. So really huge decreases. Then there's some simple things. More coffee is better. Half a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, lycopene, tomato sauce, or watermelon. So they're really simple things. Omega-3 fats, you don't have to like fish oil. You can do it with algal-based oils. So there's some simple things like that. Another one is four smells a day. And that's really important for COVID because it decreases

the, in animal models, it decreases the plaque buildup, the amyloid buildup along the olfactory nerve and into the basal ganglia, it decreases those. And in humans, we've got two studies now on four smells a day decreasing your risk of dementia. So there are a lot of things that are relatively easy that make a big difference to how long and well you live. Let's go through a couple of these because you said a few things that I want to come back to that I think are very important for our daily behavior. You talk in terms of cognitive functioning and playing these games. I think you said 18 hours over 10 years. Can you just get more into that calculation?

And I know most people say video games are bad for you, but in this instance, video games are good for you. Well, they're very good for you in preventing. And what they do, actually, we're learning in a very preliminary study, what they do is turn on a gene that repairs your brain neurons. So one of the things that it's as if it says, you can tear me today, but you won't be able to tear me in two days. Apparently, that happens with the brain too. When you use it and do it speed of processing, you cause a little injury, but that injury calls forth a gene that produces the NPAS4 complex, which is a repair gene. It turns on

repair protein, that NPAS4 repair, that helps, four groups, memory games, if you will, executive control games, control, and then speed of processing games. The speed of processing games, five, five, in the first five weeks, two hours a week. In month 11, two hours twice a week. In month 35, two hours for two weeks. Total of 18 hours over 10 years. Decreased the risk of dementia independent by over 40% and increased acetylcholine production in those key areas. So pretty simple to do that. And those were Brain HQ's games. They keep testing them and keep finding similar results now in three randomized studies in humans. So I'm a big fan of those. And anyone can do them. They're pretty darn easy to do. And you should start while you're still computer. And obviously, you're pretty gosh darn computer

literate if you can use Riverside to record this on podcast and anyone listening has enough skills to do it. So just literally 10 hours in the first month, four hours in month 11, four hours in month 35. And if you're similar to the people in the study, and I think most of us are, they've now done three studies in different ethnic and age groups, but they started with 73 to 83. It's a huge benefit.

What I've noticed when I do this, when I did this and still do it, is I recognize things in the periphery. When I'm driving a car, I'm much better able to spot things that are dangerous to me and react successfully to them. So I think it is a benefit. And hopefully that's pretty easy to do. So if you're doing video games, you want to challenge yourself with a timed video game that pushes you. And so I guess War of the Worlds and all of the other video games, when you're playing against someone, have a time component. So maybe the kids are getting smarter this way,

or at least less likely to not be able to take care of themselves when they're 100. What are your favorite video games? Well, I got to tell you, I spend a lot of time with brain hq games and they have about 20 different games on there but i but i it's it is freeze frame and double decision that i do the most so i i i love actually i love doing freeze frame because i can beat almost anyone on it i've practiced it enough so this is an easy easy one. No, I got to tell you, my other favorite game, which is not a – it's kind of – is I do jump rope. So jump rope increases your bone strength. It's the only thing we know that doesn't just maintain it but increases it. it's as though you are injuring the bone a little bit and you turn on your osteoblast,

your ability to make more bone in your spinal cord, your spinal columns and your hips. And so I love doing that because it's a very aerobic workout in a short period of time. And you can carry a jump rope with you whenever you go on the road. So you're saying you're approaching 80 years old and you're, you look like you're in good shape. When I, when I, when we spent some time together at the conference, you're, you're trim and you're lean, but you're telling me that you jump rope every day and you even take a jump rope to, uh, when you travel and you're.

Yes, that's, that you travel and you're. That's, that's true. Crazy, right? No, I can tell you, I can, I can tell you, you can, you can actually, when I was on, one of the times when I was on the Dr. Oz show, I challenged him to jump rope and I was beating him so bad. They went to commercial. That's awesome. I love that. So the cognitive game is very easy to do, right? Not a huge time commitment. But when you talk about 10,000 steps a day, I think most people are going to listen to this and say, there's no way. And it's sort of like, we know we're supposed to work out every day. We know we're supposed to get

some kind of cardiovascular activity to stimulate the heart, get the heart beating. But what are you going to say to people like me who start their day at 6, 6.30? I've got kids. I come home. I have five kids. I come home for dinner, spend time with my wife and the kids. And then when they go to bed, I'm back working in my office, my home office, which is where

I'm recording now. And I'm working pretty much seven days a week. I'm running four companies right now, I'm back working in my office, my home office, which is where I'm recording now. And I'm working pretty much seven days a week. I'm running four companies right now. I'm writing a book. I've got this podcast. How am I going to get 10,000 steps a day? Am I going to take a two-hour walk around the neighborhood while I'm on a conference call? Well, in fact, let me go in.

That's actually one of the ways to do it. So over the last 20 years, I've had a treadmill desk. And all it is is a treadmill with a Trek desk, T-R-E-K. I don't have any relationship to the company, but they're wonderful desks because you can use it on a regular treadmill. And I do an awful lot of my reading and my conference calls on that. When I get called by a friend or when I call a friend or even when I'm playing, calling my kids, I do walking when I'm doing that. So, yeah.

And so if I had my phone, I put it away when you said put it away for this. But if I showed you my phone, I think it's on the other side of the room. But if I went and got it, you'd see I do 10,000. I actually do a few more steps than that every day. But you get step equivalents. So say you're roughhousing with your kids or gardening. That roughhousing with your kids may be 120 steps a minute. And gardening is about 120 steps a minute, and gardening is about

83 steps a minute, playing ping pong 100 steps a minute, swimming 120, etc. If you play squash or racquetball or batman, it gets up to 180 steps a minute. So you get step equivalents for everything you do, even washing dishes and vacuuming. So the whole point is for you to get physical activity because that 10,000 step equivalents, as I showed you the data, it came from a Japanese pedometer manufacturer who's really trying to sell pedometers. But maybe he had the data because 10,000 is the number that decreases type 2 diabetes, that reverses pre-diabetes, that decreases colon cancer, that decreases breast cancer, that decreases heart disease, that is the most effective at decreasing dementia. So, yes, 4,000 is better than 2, and 6 is better than 4, and 8 is better than 6, and 10 is better than two and six is better than four and eight is better than six and ten is

better than eight but you don't get much more health benefit more than ten thousand a day so when you do cardio you probably get 150 to 200 steps a minute doing cardio or resistance training so everything counts you forgot pickleball the fastest growing sport in america do you play and what kind of calories are we talking about there? I imagine, you know, I am going to play. Um, I should, uh, I can't say that, but, um, uh, so I tapped in the U S team and the Pan American games in squash and squash is a racket sport that is kind of a, a forerunner to pick a pickleball um if you will and so i um i will pick it up someday i haven't done it yet i did get a gift of a couple

pickleball rackets and a couple pickleballs um and so I look forward to doing that. But you probably get in, and I don't know if there's singles pickleball, but if there's singles pickleball, you're probably getting 120 to 140 steps a minute. In doubles, you probably get about 80 step equivalents a minute. You said something about caffeine and coffee that goes against conventional wisdom and everything my doctor has told me. And I mentioned this to a couple of friends. I saw this presentation and there's all these concrete things you can do and they're super simple. And I got a lot of pushback on this one and said, no, that's not true. Drinking four cups of coffee is one of the things on your list that increases longevity?

Yeah. The interesting data is if you're a fast metabolizer, how do you tell if you're a fast metabolizer? You have a eight ounce cup of regular coffee and you don't get headache, gastric upset, anxiety, or abnormal heartbeats in that hour. So assuming you don't get that, then the more coffee you drink, the lower your risk of Parkinson's disease, of Alzheimer's disease, of type 2 diabetes, and of eight other cancers, including breast cancer. And what's found for breast is usually found for prostate, but that hasn't been shown yet. And eight other cancers. But the real benefit I look at is it decreases your risk of Parkinson's disease and dementia. And it appears to asymptote after six. So maybe you get more and more benefit up to six. Decaf gives you about half the benefit. And so it may be that, in fact, we get more benefit on prevention of liver disease and

diabetes by going higher than six. But in any case, four to six cups a day has been shown to be probably the best thing we know for preventing liver disease. The research shows that men burn 101 calories during a 20-minute sex session or 4.2 calories per minute, while women burn around 60 calories during sex or 3.1 calories per minute. How often should we be having sex and does having sex frequently and orgasming frequently increase our longevity? We don't know cause from effect here, but the association, and there are four studies on this prior to a couple in the recent past. So there are now six studies on it. And the data is better tabulated in men than women

because women can have multiple orgasms at one session, whereas men usually have one at a time. And men, the average 58-year-old man has 58 orgasms a year, one per week. The average, if you increase that to 350, one per day, you are the equivalent of 16 years younger. So with that alone, now we co-vary that a great deal in the program because we don't know whether it's an association or a cause. For women, it is, continue to have more orgasms, with a number of foods such as anything that will improve your arterial function, avoiding red meat, avoiding processed red meat, avoiding simple sugars, having lycopene, that's the active component of cooked tomatoes and watermelon,

and a number of other things. So there's a strong correlation between choices and erectile function and orgasms. The strongest correlation at 58, if you're having orgasms at 58, will you at 85? They looked at that in the U.S. social study, and they found that the strongest correlation, one having a partner who was still alive. If you had one at 58, the same partner at 85. And the second thing was your C-reactive protein, your HS, your highly specific C-reactive protein level. That is the lower the inflammation level at 58, the more likely you were to still have erectile function and orgasms at 85. I think there's a lot of people who just listen to what you said, Dr. Mike, are pretty psyched right now and say, hey, if I can have an orgasm and have sex every day,

I'm going to live nine years longer. I think that's a stat that most people didn't know. Yeah. The data is that, and we don't have enough data on two a day, but in fact, the one study that looked at and went that far showed that it was about twice as beneficial. So it may be a linear relationship, but that may be related to rate of aging. It may be an association. So, Randy, that's a goal for you okay with five with five kids you've probably already been doing something on those lines i'm not sure what i should and shouldn't say on the on the show but i i think men

i we could say that men can't have two orgasms a day for 350 days a year. I think some things are not humanly possible. Maybe they are for some people, but I, I don't know anyone. That's an average. You can have five a day and none the next day, Randy. Okay. All right. I think I'm going to start, I think I'm going to start charting it out with my workout schedule that I look at every day. I think I would have to start charting it out with my workout schedule that I look at every day. I think I would have to add a new category to that. How important is it to have a supporting, loving partner to increase our longevity? Do people who live alone have lower life expectancy than people who are together through some period of their life.

Yeah, there are two different, if you will, net present value calculations on this. One relates to stress. So you have three stressful life events. You're 32 years older. If you have six people you're vulnerable to, including a spouse, you're only two years older. So huge benefit from stress reduction in having a posse, especially a supportive, if you will, partner. The second thing is marriage itself, independent of that. So a happily married man is three years younger than a single man, irrespective of sex, if you will, irrespective of frequency of orgasm. And even a unhappily married man is about one year younger than a single man. Women only get a benefit if they're happily married in these studies.

There are a couple of these studies that have been done very well. The Whitehall studies in Great Britain and the Alameda County studies by Berkman in the U.S. where they looked at this very carefully. Thanks for listening to part one of my amazing conversation with Dr. Mike Roizen, whose work has helped tens of millions of people improve their health and wellness through simple life changes that we can all make. Be sure to tune in next week for part two of my amazing interview with Dr. Mike Roizen.