Modern Wisdom - #343 - Dr David Sinclair - Defeating Ageing & Living Longer

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Dr David Sinclair is a Professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-Director of the Paul Glenn Centre for the Biological Mechanisms of Ageing. The longevity movement is huge, people all around the globe are trying to discover how to live longer and slow down ageing. It's been 2 years since Dr Sinclair was last on the show, so I figured it was time to invite him back on and find out what he's been up to. Expect to learn why having a dog can make you live longer, how fasting can slow down ageing, what the longevity research says about loneliness, what Dr Sinclair's new supplement regime looks like, whether he's worried about 5G phones or Bluetooth headphones and much more... Sponsors: Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://puresportcbd.com/modernwisdom (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy Lifespan - https://amzn.to/3xaFIrQ Sign up to Dr Sinclair's waitlist - https://www.doctorsinclair.com/ Follow David on Twitter - https://twitter.com/davidasinclair  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr David Sinclair. He's a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul Glenn Center for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging. The longevity movement is huge right now. People all over the globe are trying to discover how to live longer and slow down aging. It's been two years since Dr Sinclair was last on the show, so I figured it was time to invite him back and find out what he's been getting up to. Expect to learn why having a dog can make you live longer, how fasting can slow down aging, what the longevity research says about loneliness, what Dr. Sinclair's new supplement regime looks like, whether he's worried

about 5G phones or Bluetooth headphones and much more. The first time I ever met Dr. Sinclair a couple of years ago in his office at Harvard Medical School, he let me use his Australian knighthood to rest one of the cameras up against, which kind of tells you everything that you need to know about him. It's sort of casual genius, I guess, like really brilliant, but doesn't really make a big song and dance about it. He's just finished up doing Rogan and Lex Friedman and Whitney Cummings show, and um, I love him. Every single time I get to speak to him, I'm super impressed by all the

work that he's doing. He's going to take tons and tons away from today. If you're on you here or if you're a long time listener, please go and hit the subscribe button for me. It's the best way that you can support this show. It makes me very happy and it ensures that you do not miss any episodes when they go live every Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Go, go give it a little tap for me. I thank you. But now it's time to learn how to live longer with David Sinclair. Ladies and gentlemen boys and girls welcome back to the show. I am joined by Dr. David Sinclair in

Style magazine referred to you as a Sydney-born researcher who is a rock star in the long-jevetly field. In 2014 he was voted alongside the likes of Jeff Bezos and Beyoncé, one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. David, welcome back. Oh, boy, thanks, Chris. What an intro. The on say, do you ever think that your work would take you into the, the echelons of Beyonce? Uh, I guess I, I dreamt about it. It seems like you're everywhere at the moment.

Are you? It feels like you are. No, you are everywhere. I mean, I came out of the pandemic with a rush. A lot of people wanted to see me. So that's why it feels like I'm everywhere. But not being very quiet, even social media, I wasn't as active. But I'm certainly dying to be out there,

communicating, talking about my next book. The old one's selling really well, so people want to hear what I have to say, so I don't mind being a scientific communicator, because right now there's a lot of BS out there terms of information, and I think people like me need to step up. You've hinted at the new book. What can you tell us about what it is? Okay. So it's, I have to be careful not to give it away because someone probably will bang it out and beat me to it. But it's a, it's a look at how did we end up in this world that we live in, that we've created and the effect it's had on our bodies over the last six

million years. Technology is great, but it also makes us weaker as a species, and many of us are living lives that are extremely unhealthy because of it. And we have to use the four traits of humanity that separate us from animals to get us out of this mess because they got us into this mess. And I'm talking about the fact that I'm sitting in front of bright lights, staring down a computer,

sitting down, we're all eating too much too often. These things we've created, and it's beyond that. Actually, our bodies have evolved to be pathetic because our technology has replaced the need for big muscles. And instead, we look like a lollipop. We're unfit for purpose.

Exactly, and I mean, Boston in the winter, when you were here last to to talk put us outside in 15 minutes we're probably going to be dead. That's that's not a very strong species you know most animals around here live the whole year outdoors we're not built for that anymore and there's no going back right we have to keep innovating to fix the problems we've had created and to make sure that we continue to improve our lives. It's not clear whether we can ever get off this treadmill. When are you aiming for publication for that?

I know this is like the author's nightmare question, but when are you aiming for it? Well, probably sometime next year. But it's going really well. My co-author, Matt LaPlan and I are best buddies. And this isn't work for me or him. We just laugh our heads off. Is that going to be the guy that you're going to do your YouTube mini-series with as well? Is that the same dude?

That's the plan. Yeah. So we're going to do some pilots to see how we work on camera. If you've read, I think you've read, but if anyone has read lifespan, or actually more importantly, listen to it, Matt and I kid around in between the chapters, and you can get a sense of what we're like.

But he's great, he feeds off me, he's a journalist, not a scientist, so he can ask all the dumb questions. And then I can tease him about being stupid. That's really great. I love it. Okay, so since we last spoke, I've really fallen in love with evolutionary psychology.

One of the questions that has been in my mind ever since we spoke is the purpose to dying, because I thought that we were supposed to be adaptive fitness maximizers, and surely that means that having a certain end to life is a bit of an error. Why haven't we just been evolved to become immortal? Well, we only evolved to stick around for as long as we need to replace ourselves. Richard Dawkins put it pretty well. Our genes get to move on, but we don't.

And that's the case. We haven't really evolved into our station in life. Wales have, they're at the top of the food chain, and they can leave hundreds of years, bow head whale being the longest. Conversely, mice get picked off in a year or two, they don't bother building a body that lasts a 100 years because they won't be around anyway. And with that energy that you save living longer, you actually can put it into reproduction,

which mice do. And where somewhere in between, and the problem is we haven't been at the top of the food chain for that long. We used to be picked off by cats and pretty much even spiders are in the savannah. And what we need to do is to engineer ourselves to live longer. We're not going to evolve fast enough for any of us to matter how benefit. So the length of time that we stay alive is almost like a predictive risk mitigation from our bodies. Yeah, thinking out loud, I think it's more like planned obsolescence. Evolution's not going to put too much effort into keeping our bodies young if it doesn't

need to because it could then put resources elsewhere. Similar to, I don't know, a phone these days. No one expects to have it 10 years from now, so they don't build it to last that long anyway. And that's what we are. But if we stuck around for another 20 million years as a species, we may evolve to live hundreds of years. But that doesn't really help us right now.

And unless we solve this problem of people getting sicker and sicker longer and longer, and the economic burdens of that, we as a civilization may not make it more than a hundred years from now. What do we gain then? Presumably, if we are sacrificing longevity for something, are we stronger than we would be? Are we faster than we would be? Is our metabolism more efficient than it would be if we were planned to live for 150 or 200 years?

Yeah, usually it's a trade-off in reproductive rates. You look at whales, how often they breed versus a male, so it can have six to 12 offspring at once. We're somewhere in between. If we just evolved and we didn't do it, if this was not human directed, we would probably live for a couple of hundred years and be less fertile and kids. We may not be able to have kids until we're in our 30s,

biologically, we'd slower let down and stretch out life, which sounds good to me. That's what you're trying to do. So it's so strange that essentially what you're aiming for here is to kind of jump the cue. We don't have to wait a few hundred thousand or a few million years for evolution to do it, to realize, you're almost knocking on the door of evolution and reminding it, look, there aren't any threats anymore. We've completely nerfed our environment.

Let us live for as long as we want to. Well, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying, though. I don't know if we'll ever be immortal, but gaining an extra 15 years isn't that difficult. If you just do the right things that we all know are good for us. Don't smoke, do a bit of exercise, eat less frequently, get some good sleep, have friends. These things will get you

another on average another 14 years versus someone who doesn't, don't smoke as an important one. But the technologies that we're inventing as a field in my lab could get us beyond that. So, you know, we're talking about it within our lifetimes being able to be 1995, you know, 100, still play tennis, hang out with the grandkids if you've got them great-grandkids probably. This is not crazy anymore, and in fact, we've got signs that we can not just slow down aging but reverse it, which I'm pretty excited about to say the least, because I used to think that we wouldn't see these changes in our lifetime, but they're happening right

now, and it's far quicker than I thought it would be. It's like the Moore's Law of longevity research. It is and we're actually hope by Moore's Law. In my lab we crunch about a terabyte of data every week. It's speeding up probably in a few years, it'll be a terabyte per day. And so we rely on that. We also can sequence your genome in a day for $100 and can be done on a little device like this it used to be two billion dollars twenty years ago. So more is helping us in genetics as well. That's funny so you mentioned fasting now eating less. The mechanism of fasting how it works where does that come from? Is it the restriction of the nutrients or is it the

discomfort of feeling hungry? Well, it's not exactly clear. It might be a bit of both. So mostly, the good news is that when your body doesn't have spikes in blood sugar from eating and doesn't have a lot of amino acids around from eating a steak, it will go into a defensive mode. We know that my lab published this in 2005 from a rat study that when you're hungry or chlorically restricted, we used to call it a lot. The levels of longevity genes go up.

We studied, we studied one called Sir T1, SRT1. But now basically that the concept is when you're not eating and your body is experiencing low glucose and has to make its own glucose, it will go into this defensive mode and you want to maximize that. So I go for at least 18 hours a day without trying not to eat and I compensate with tea and coffee and the interesting thing is I don't feel hungry anymore unless I'm super stressed but that doesn't happen that often. Do you need to feel the hunger? I'm not sure. I would love to see definitive evidence of that but it might be true because the brain does control aging as well. That'll be interesting, right? How much of the effect of the fast comes from the discomfort of sensing the fast and how much of that is perhaps being curbed by the hot drinks,

which you advocate is one of the ways to kind of get through a fast a little bit more easily. I guess it's going to be difficult. You would have to use some sort of calorie less difficult, you would have to use some sort of calorie less stomach filling, like flumps or something. Well, so interestingly, in the 1930s, 35 Clive McKay and his colleagues who studied Chloric restriction, actually were one of the first groups to report that if you feed rats instead of food, you give them cellulose with a little bit of food, which is the same bulk, they do live longer. So that's why I lean towards the feeling of hunger not being as important as just maintaining

your blood sugar levels at a steady low level. That's interesting. So, okay, so beyond fasting, optimal diet makeup for you is lean towards vegetables, colors, stress vegetables and stuff like that. If you eat just your one meal a day, what do you tend, what does that tend to look like? What's sort of typical David Sinclair dinner? Well, the really isn't one. If I'm eating out, yeah, it's quite different. I mean, I'll avoid fried food and a lot of meat. I just can't digest it.

My bacteria and my gut don't care for it anymore. Those guys died out a while ago. So I cannot eat big heavy meals with meat unless I train myself. And I don't do that. So a typical meal, if I'm at home, I might have a little bit of cheese, some vegetables, I'll cook some up or even eat them raw with a dip. Usually I'm working. If nobody's visiting, I'm actually just grazing while I work and that's my dinner. I don't really

at home focus on making meals. I'd rather just get other stuff done. But eating out is an important point. If somebody has a dessert, I won't typically order a dessert. I haven't since I was aged 40 and that's over a decade ago. But I will steal a spoonful of cheesecake. Someone else's. You got to live. What's the point of living longer if it's not enjoyable? So that's the other point, which is you wouldn't want to go from a standing start to what I do because you'll have habits that are really hard to break. Just putting stuff in your mouth and chewing is a habit. I'll ask anyone who's been a smoker about that. I think we like as mammals. We like to suck on things and chew on things. So there's that to overcome and that takes a couple of weeks at least to get used to.

So go steadily and try skipping one meal if you've never tried it either breakfast or dinner. Eat breakfast or eat dinner but don't do both. Someone should write a protocol for that. Like, you know, just a really good blog post about how to, because I've seen many about how to do intermittent fasting, but very few about how to transition from a normal or a multiple eating state into a fasting state, you know, they want to five, try this, they five to ten, try this, they've, you know,

that would be, someone do that, someone can write that for us. Yeah, it's an interesting one that you've got a problem, there is a problem with eating lots of protein in regularly coming from a gym, bro background. Obviously, that makes me want to be violently sick. If someone wants to try and maintain muscle mass or even increase their muscle mass, is it going to have to be a trade-off? Because there's a maximum amount of protein that you can absorb within one meal

Increasing the frequency that you eat that protein that is good for muscle synthesis, but bad for longevity Is there any sort of insight you've got there? Right. Well, if you want to be a bodybuilder Especially professionals What I do is is it may not be optimal though, you know There's a fair number of athletes who say plant-based diets are equal or better. I'm not an expert on that, but what I can tell you is that, I mean, I've built up my muscle

mass on a diet like I have. I don't know if anyone can tell, but I'm in better shape than I've ever been. You know, I'm back to my body as there I was when I was 20. And so I don't find that my diet prevents me from gaining muscle mass or working out. I suppose if I wanted an extra 5% gain, I could do that. But for me, just being healthy, fit, feeling good, and lean is my goal.

I'm not out to win contests. How come that sleep isn't a hormisis stressor like fasting or exercise? Well, it's an anti-hormisis. It's necessary for long life and health. There's no question about that. You mean a lack of sleep? Yeah, yeah. Why can't you, because you're saying fast, it's uncomfortable, it makes you feel, it makes you live longer. We're in scary mode. We need to extend our life or else we might not be able to reproduce before we die. So knuckle down and the same thing goes for exercise, you're under stress. Why not just, why, why isn't sleep

or a lack of sleep have the same impact? That's a really, really, really, really good question. No one's ever asked me that. But the answer is that the longevity gene that we study, that's really, we think it's really important for human longevity too, is part of the circadian clock. And when you mess that up, either through lack of sleep, jet lag, or just aging, which diminishes the clock, stability, to form high peaks and low peaks, then it impacts your longevity probably because it's affecting your ability to fight disease through longevity, defences. But it seems to be a positive feedback problem, which is that if you don't get enough sleep, you screw up your aging, and then you you age and aging screws up your sleep.

And by the time you're elderly, you're not sleeping well. And you're probably under this accelerated aging program. Interestingly, I talk a lot about NAD, which is part of my research, controls this CERT-1 defense system. And the levels go down as you age but they also go up and down during the day as you're waking up you start to make more NAD and if you disrupt that NAD level you disrupt your sleep and so that's why I tell people if they're going to boost their NAD levels do it coincident with the clock as it's rising

hit it then which is in the morning. Because I know from experience that if you take it late at night, you're going to bump up your body, make it think that it's the morning and you'll have trouble sleeping. It'll be like taking malatone into wake-up and caught is old before bed. It's just not in line with the natural circadian rhythm. Right, but I find, and this is just anecdotal. I find it's very good raising in AD levels when you get to a destination in a different time zone, which makes sense, right, that you're able to control the body's clock and reset it. What if it's 10 pm at night?

We're in my destination. Yeah, then I'll fast until the next morning and then take a hit of NAD booster in the morning. God and I feel great. I don't I don't have jet lag anymore You managed to fix that problem Yeah for myself for sure. There's been some research in the melatonin recently hasn't there around longevity or at least I keep on seeing it popping up here and there Have you looked into that at all? Oh? Well, I read the literature. It's hard to keep up with all of it, but I don't think I've seen anything amazing about Militonin in years. And when you start to see big gap in discoveries in science, you start to wonder, is it really reproducible or not?

But if there's something new, I'll definitely send it my way and I'll report about it in public. I'll have a look. So, sleep for longevity. Does anyone, I mean, I can't believe that anybody in this world after Matthew Walker just read-pilled everyone on the planet with his book. I can't believe that anyone doesn't really value it. How often do you encounter people that don't understand the price they pay for poor sleep?

Not very often. I think I've got his book on the shelf up there. You know, there it is next to my rocket ship. So it's much more, I mean, thanks to the book, Matt's book, it really is in public's consciousness. Now, I don't talk to everybody and I tend to talk to people who approach me and they're interested already down the rabbit hole right yeah yeah yeah. But it's it's night and day excuse the pun in the public's eye the value of sleep but I find that some people get stressed out about not sleeping which makes things worse so you have to be careful not to worry too much.

What I did was I I have one of these horror rings which tells when I've had a bad night's sleep and that's not so much to tell me that I need to take it easy. I mean, I can tell everyone knows when they feel crappy, but it's more about reflecting on what happened than I before and what might have caused it, maybe a big meal, too much alcohol, that kind of stuff. I had an author on the show talking about some of the challenges of tech addiction and wearables addiction is now another thing where he was talking about people who have to hit their 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 steps a day and their husband thought that this particular

woman was having an affair because she'd always leave the house at 10pm at night and it turned out that she was seven and a half thousand steps under her. So she's there power walking around the neighborhood and her husband thinks that she's off having sex with the neighbor or something like that very very briskly walking to have a quick fling that lasts for about seven minutes and then coming back. Well, it does become addictive, but it's better to be addicted to that than a lot of other things. I think that the future is that we will know way more about our bodies than we know about our cars. Right now it's the opposite. I mean, who would drive without a dashboard, but how many of us have tracked our bodies over the last 10 years, like I have? And what's coming in the very near future,

and I already am in this future, it's just, you know, I'm one of the, you know, front row seat, you'll have a ring, you have a watch, but more importantly, your doctor will give you a patch to stick here, either just before the visit, maybe a week before, or if you just left hospital, and then eventually, you wouldn't leave home without one because you'll need it. These devices are, instead of going for an annual checkup, they'll measure

you a thousand times a second. And they're real they exist, I've got one just in my bag, I usually wear it, you push a button, it sinks with your phone, your doctor can see the results. And they'll tell you if you get sick, if you're going to have a heart attack in the future, next week, they monitor your breathing, your temperature, your heart, and it's in the US FDA approved. So these are true medical devices, not toys like these things. And you say it can work out which side you slept on, whether you slept on your right or your left last night and stuff like that.

Oh, yeah. I mean, they're seeing a lot that you've got to give up some privacy. Oh, you have to say, yeah, one of the best things that I've heard you say was someone can steal your credit card once, but once your health records are public, that's for life. That is going to be health record security is going to be a huge thing as you get all of these crazy insights and you're potentially able to look at the project out. Someone's life, that's implications for employment, for relationships, for insurance, for everything.

It is, but we already live in that world. We shouldn't be scared of it. Now, we're talking about gaining an extra 10, probably 20 years for some of us with this technology. You have to take technology for what it is. Already our medical records are digitized and can be stolen, but they're not. There are really robust mechanisms in place and laws right now about health, data, security and we'll strengthen them. But right now, I'm not concerned. I think the benefits far outweigh the risk and I haven't seen anybody's genome get hacked or stolen yet

I am I am building a company that that will tell you your biological age and and ostensibly how to Slow down the process and reverse it with all the latest technology and I've got a website if anybody wants to sign up and Chris, we can do you as one of the earlier doctors. What's the website?

The website is doctorsinclair.com. Doctor is spelled out, not D-O-C-T-R, sinclair.com, get on the wait list. And you'll be one of the first people on the planet to have this test done. And I'm sure we'll offer some discounts early for early adopters too. I love it. What do you want to be able to measure through a bio device that currently it's quite hard to measure? Right.

Well, first thing is that that'll be a mouth swab. So that the age of your body that will tell you a biological age. It's just an easy, you don't have to spit. I mean aside from that, so let's look at the wearables that you've got on now. You can get HRV and you can get what side you slapped on and you can get blood glucose through these insulating things. What's missing? What would you like someone to bring up the technology to do next? Yeah, I know. I heard the question. I was going to get to it. I just forgot to mention the other stuff.

The, uh, you, if you're an off. So I would, I think, look, who goes on a patch would be great rather than sticking a needle. That's coming. Oh, yeah. I've seen that. I've seen that in the middle of those things

on the back of people's arms. It looks like a, no, it's dangerous. I don't know. I'm not fantastic with needles. Yeah. Well, I don't find it pleasant to put in. You actually have to push a button and it hammers it into your arm.

And I don't like needles either. I get scared of it. Once it's in, it's OK. But the thought of it flying into my skin is not good. And on Instagram, if you want to check it out, I pulled one of these off my arm. There's blood there. I pulled it apart.

You can see the inner workings and the needle. It's up there. David Sinclair PhD, if you want I pulled it apart. You can see the inner workings and the needle. It's up there. David Sinclair PhD if you want to check it out, but yeah, what would I like to measure? I'd like to know amino acid levels ketones Inflammatory molecules sex hormones if possible Calorie counter that'd be great just an accurate one Yeah, so I don't have to think about it. I don't come up. You've got an Apple Watch.

Do you not not convinced with how accurate the daily calories are if you were to run that through? Well, don't you have to enter the data? In terms of what your expenditure for the day or your input, your input. Oh, no, I'm saying what's going into your bloodstream. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, that Oh, no, I'm saying what's gone into your bloodstream. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, that would be like, I don't know, that would be like my fitness pal on,

you'd have to some sort of barcode on the inside of your mouth that automatically, yeah, that would be insane. So I'm working on that. I have no idea how you even solve that problem. Like what do you do? Do you have like a little infrared scanner in the back of your throat? Is that right?

Okay, David, a three-gulps of water. It looks like half an apple there. Let's put it this way. We haven't filed all of our patents yet. So let me finish this up. But you know, often when I dream of something that I really want to see on the planet, I just go do that. It, honestly, man, it blows my mind how much stuff it is that you do.

Like, I'm aware that you're supposed to be at the forefront of longevity and research and getting stuff done, but this is like, even the last time that we spoke, you were talking about how briefly, you tend to get these IP sales and stuff comes through and then it's really, really good. And this is a period where you've got tons of money that you don't really know what

to do with. And then you just decide to go and spend it all on creating something else that's crazy. And you have sort of a circadian rhythm of finances as well. And it just feels like, I don't know, it's cool. It's cool that you've got someone who's so reckless in a way, kind of at the forefront of this. Yeah. Maybe that's not the right word to use, but let's say I'm amplifying my impact by reinvesting the dollars that I make into new technologies. And it's working.

It's really working. I've invested in probably 20 companies now, and they're all really exciting and they do. Not just longevity work but virus detection, revolutionizing, microbiology. We can look at the structure of the cell now in three dimensions, one of the other companies. There's a lot going on and I guess I just put a deposit down and expect a return on most of them if So far, I haven't lost any money, which is pretty cool. But this is one of the reasons I need to live longer, because some of these companies take a while to get my return, especially drug companies. I can't find that. The main reason for your longevity desire is so that you can see the returns

in your financial investments. Yeah, it's not a very good algorithm is it, but actually one of the things that I like to say and it's partly true is one great thing about staying young and living, living longer is that you'll outlive your enemies and it makes life a lot easier. So I'm finding that's actually true. All right, so talking about exercise, your exercise prescription for longevity seems like quite a low dose of movement to me. It's like 10 minutes out of breath a couple of times a week. Is that a minimum effective dose or an optimal? Minimal.

OK, have you got any idea what an optimal one would be? No one does. Okay, have you got any idea what an optimal one would be? No one does. But it's somewhere between running 10 minutes, three times a week on a treadmill and running 20 miles a week, something like that. And there's a lot of studies, so it's really hard to say which is the optimum

and there are different types of exercise. There's running, there's cycling, et cetera. But yeah, at a minimum, lose your breath two, three times a week. And if you can't do that, if you're too old or too lazy, like I am generally, long walks are great. I like to lift weights. So usually next to my desk, I'm moving house, but usually I'd have some weights just next to me. And so when I'm bored or feel a little bit restless and I've been sitting down, I'll just pick up weights. And know that you don't have to go to the gym, just have these sitting around next to you. And I find that to be really great. And I do my exercises with a little

bit lighter weight than a body builder would. I haven't told anybody this, but this is what I do. I do a lot of reps, you know, I'm doing this and this during the day. And I do many reps and I do a lot of reps, and I'm doing this and this during the day. And I do many reps, and I do them fast, because that also gives me the aerobic exercise, as well as builds up my muscle. Now, I have a gym, so I do more serious weights, but in my office, I'm doing high reps in its aerobic and muscle building, which, you know, I've been optimizing this for my body for the last 30 years since I was a kid. And I don't know if it works for everybody, but for me, I've never felt this good. I've

never been this sharp. I've never been this happy. I'm not going to say I've never looked this good, but I certainly feel young and great with what I'm doing. Well, you had to lift your shirt up to clean the camera lens before we got started and you, you're looking lean at the moment, lost to whatever it was, 12 pounds since February. I found my six pack. It was somewhere under there. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, another advocate, I guess, similarly within this space, although a little bit more towards the performance endurance endurance side's Ben Greenfield. And he tells me that trying to walk through his office,

he says, is like doing an obstacle course because he's got a kettlebell here and he's got a resistance band there. And during, he's got a treadmill desk that he walks on with one of the self-powered banana treadmills, are you gonna show me a treadmill desk underneath your desk? I'm gonna show you what I have under here,

which is cool. I don't know who makes this thing, but... What's that? What that looks like a torture machine? No! Oh, is it a stepper? Is it a stepper? Stepper under my desk.

Wow, okay. Yeah, well, I mean, if you get bored and restless, I suppose just turning around and having something to do, have you had to look at the impact of sitting or being sedentary on longevity? Oh, yeah. I mean, the classic quote is, it's as bad as smoking now. That may or may not be true, but it's certainly bad for you. I can speak from my own experience that I sat down for two years to write lifespan, the book. experience that I sat down for two years to write lifespan, the book. By the end of it, I couldn't walk properly. I had a cramped up to a former smussel that runs through your hip bone.

And it took about over a year to fix it. And that's just one example of the problems you can have from sitting. But, you know, if you're sitting, it means that you're not moving your heart, you know, training your heart. That's the main problem. And also you get the obesity that comes with it or the weight gain. And there's very few things in this life you can do to accelerate your body's clock faster than to gain a lot of white adipose tissue or fat on your body. Now, I'm not telling everybody they have to be, you know, have a six pack. That's not really the point. That's a choice. But you want to maintain a healthy weight.

BMI, for me, optimally looking at the sciences around 23. Different races and sexes are different, of course. But the point is that there is an optimal weight for longevity that you can hit. I write about it in lifespan if you want to look up the references and all of that. But I was talking about this with Joe Rogan just last week that, you know, we talk about being healthy, and lean, and optimizing our bodies, not because we want to shame anybody else, who isn't, I mean, I've been pudgy for some of my life.

What we do it out of love, we really just want everybody to feel the way we do, and have the confidence that we do, and that comes from working a little hard, sometimes going without some things that you'd love to eat or do or doing some things you don't want to do. But in the end, it's so much, it's so worth it and the gains you get at the end of your life will really make it worthwhile. But think about anyone that's in a new, that's found a new productivity app, right? Or joined a cult or joined a new religious movement

that they makes them feel whole, makes them feel good. They become evangelists for that movement, right? Dude, you've got to try this new note taking app. You've got to try this new workout. You've got to come to this new nightclub or whatever it might be because I want you to experience the thing that I've had. Then you are right, it seems like for some reason, the empathetic position in terms of trying to get people

into a position of health doesn't really seem, it doesn't feel like that gets sort of felt. It feels dictatorial and oppressive as opposed to empathetic and encouraging. Yeah. Well, you and I are trying to hit the right tone here and I think that it's worth saying again, it's hard to go from a standing start to extremes. You just have to do better every day and you'll fail some days. I'm not perfect and nobody is, but as long as you keep at it, it's all about every day trying to do better. And in fact, that's the goal in life anyway, at everything you do, but for health it's all about every day trying to do better. And in fact, that's the goal in life anyway,

at everything you do. But for health, it's really important because our bodies are trying to fight us. Our bodies want to sit down. They want to eat sugary and fatty foods. And the food industry designs the food to activate those pleasure centers. So we've got the marketers and food producers against us.

And I'm trying to even level the playing field here. What was it you said, fuck the limbic system. That's right. Don't do what it says. Otherwise, all we'd be doing would be eating, sleeping, and having sex. I know that sounds great, but you're not going to live that long, unfortunately, especially if you're doing them all at the same time. So what about emotional well-being?

What about how does that relate to longevity? Obviously, it's very messy, I guess, as someone coming at it from a more scientific perspective, is that harder to study? What is? So emotional well-being relating to longevity. Yeah, I see what you mean. It's really important because there's a certain amount of stress that's mental stress that's good for you. Keeping on edge, having a purpose in life, being excited, that's all good. But you can overdo it and have anxiety. A lot of people do, especially having

come through this pandemic. That will release cortisol among other inflammatory stimulators, which will accelerate aging. There's really no question that an animal that's stressed lives shorter. If anyone's who's kept fish in an aquarium can see that the stressed out fish that get picked on, not only a smaller and have less color, but they don't live as long either. So you don't want to be that fish. And so what I've done to use myself as an example is work very hard to overcome my anxiety. I am naturally anxious. I'm an overachiever. I worry about every mistake that I make, even a misspelled word on an email. But I've had to realize that life isn't that serious.

A serious day is when you see one of your family members die in front of you and that happened to me. Everything else, it's a good day. If you wake up in the morning, your heart is beating, you've got friends, you've got your health, it's a good day no matter what. My perspective is so important and it really is difficult, I think, to keep a hold of that, especially over the last year. Everyone's got sun-urotic, right? Less novelty, less time around other people, less being taken out of your own head. Well yeah, it's been said and I agree that mental health is going to be the disease of the

21st century because we've taken care of a lot of other issues. But the world we've built around us, topic of my next book, is extremely stressful. There's no doubt and social media contributes to that and it's designed to be addictive. Myself, I'm on social media and I have to be very careful not to get distracted by it too much because there's actual work to do. Shit to be done. And 150,000 people die every day from age-related diseases. So I got to focus.

But anyway, the stress is there and it's nobody's fault. But there are ways that we can overcome it. There's mental exercises, there's meditation, there's breathing. These are these are things. And online therapy is really taking off. And so if you if you do need help, check those out because I think they're going to be a real revolution in mental health. Betterhelp.com slash modern wisdom for 10% off your first month.

I read a study, calling it a study is giving it far too much credence, but I read an article that said that people without dogs or families die soonest. People who have families live longer, people who have families and dogs live longer again, but people that only have dogs live longer, you think that's true? Gee, I know that having a dog makes you a little longer. I know that having friends makes you a little longer. And that date is really clear, looking at people across their life. I didn't know that just having a dog makes you a little longer.

It's only one thought that it might be the friends that are holding you back that are just a byproduct of the dog. The dog's got friends, you got to walk the dog with the dog's friends, get rid of the friends, sweet, even the dog. The dogs got friends, you got to walk the dog with the dogs friends. Get rid of the friends. Sweet, you and the dog. Well, yeah, you know, I'll give a scientist interpretation. Dogs don't lie to you and we spend a lot of our time worrying about motivation and is someone going to be loyal? Are they going to reciprocate? Dogs are just there. You don't have to worry so that that whole part of being a human and interacting with humans, if you take that out of the

equation, I bet you you lead a much less stressful life. I think as well, having an animal that is dependent on you, I'm still just all about Chris mostly, but the times that I spend around my buddies that I've got kids or dogs or whatever, it really does just force you to remember like I am not all that's going on in the universe. There is other things out there. I can focus my attention on to this other animal that's dependent on me and I've got to look after it and it has needs. It's not just about you and I guess that neuroticism, that overthinking, that over assessing of what's going on, it's going to help you to get that done. So having a dog is a mindfulness exercise is what I'm saying. Yeah, for sure. And it gives you purpose. Having a purpose in life is definitely helpful.

And if you don't have a dog, or you don't want a dog, find what you love and just do that. And you'll live longer. And it's a great thing when you can do it. And that's another reason to have longer lives, healthier lives, because if you don't like the career that you started in your 20s, take some time off and start again. At 50, you know, I could potentially have another 50 to go just get started. Didn't your dad change his career at 72 or something like that? Yeah, it's close to 76 actually and he's still going strong at 81. Yeah, he's a real beacon of hope, I call him. Good example to set. Have you been able to study the effects of loneliness or companionship on your mice? Is that something that you can do or is it kind of hard? Um, we haven't, but we do cage mice either separately or in groups.

I haven't seen that it makes a difference. Um, but then again, I haven't paid attention either. Uh, next time I come on, I'll have the answer for you. I'll, I need to text someone in my lab, uh, who actually does the real work. I just get to talk about it. Yeah, I get you. I need to take someone in my lab who actually does the real work. I just get to talk about it. Yeah, I get you. You mentioned, I think it was on Rogan's show where you said that, um, sort of under the age of 25, you thought that, um, supplementation and things like that, perhaps were not quite so necessary, at least with regards to, I think specifically NMN, or NAD boosters and stuff like that. If you were 20s to sort of early 30s,

would it just be focusing on diet, training, finding yourself some good friends and sort of getting some life skills, or is there something else that you'd do? Get a dog, yeah. Yes, get a dog. Everyone, this is the front end of the funnel for dogs. AffiliateLinkDogs.com slash modern wisdom.

10% of your first dog. Yeah, well, we're also building a company that has dog longevity products, supplements. So watch out for that. But yeah, in your 20s, I usually go by what's worked for me. In my 20s, I was a Jim rat, I did a robe, excited yoga. I watched what I ate, I didn't eat breakfast, I tried not to eat too much bad food, you know, as a 20 year old, you can eat pizza once and while. So that worked for me.

And I think that it makes sense given that the body's protective defenses against aging are still pretty high when you're young, NAD levels are higher. So you should be okay. Can I say that it would not help to supplement? No, we don't have any idea. But I think it's more important to start in your 30s based on my experience. And you know, there is still a risk with all supplements.

There's no molecule that's perfectly safe, even fish oil, I think, has warnings on it. So, if you're 20 and you're going to do this for your whole life, that's a greater risk than someone like me who's 50. You could argue. Yeah, that's interesting because out at the tails, the extremes of your usage, if there is a negligible

background risk to something that you're using, if you use it 5,000 times instead of 10,000 times, the likelihood of that risk has been chopped in half, right? It is, but if it's still only one in a million or one in a billion, it doesn't really matter. We know what's going to happen to us if we don't do anything. And that's tragic and scary. So in terms of weighing up the risk, I don't understand people who say, oh, I don't want to take risk, very troll because we don't have any proof that it works. Well, dude, it costs two cents a day. It's never hurt anybody as far as we know.

And what's going to happen if you don't. So that's fine, but I'll miss you when you go. Can we go through your daily supplement routine now? We did one, two and a half years ago, and I'm really interested to try and compare. So morning to night, what are you, what are you currently taking doses and such like? Yeah, well, actually, it hasn't changed since I wrote a lifespan 18 months ago. So page 304, see the list. I've added a few things I work out more, I'm doing more weights three times a day.

Supplementation, still NMN, resveratrol, submitform, and... Vibration spring. The baby aspirin, definitely. That's, if nothing else, protective against colon cancer, but probably other stuff too. I like to keep inflammation down, that's a whole mark of aging. So I've added Chorsatin, which is a molecule related to resveratrol, which is also suppresses the activity of senescent cells. And there's another one that I'm experimenting with to have a look what happens. And trust me, I'm a doctor, right? I'm a PhD. I monitor myself. I know my body better than probably anyone on the planet, few exceptions, but I

know when something negatively affects me or positively, and so I can do these experiments on myself. So the one that I'm testing out is Physitin FISETIN, we showed in 2003 and 2005 in two nature papers that it extends the lifespan of animals, small animals, worms and flies, but nevertheless it's been now shown that it's senolytic, it kills off the senescent cells in the body, at least in my probably in humans based on some human data. And so I'm looking at that. Other than that, that's my life. I definitely eat less now. I'm skipping lunch, not just breakfast routinely, and really enjoying that. If you got any idea what sort of calories typically on a day you would end up eating, total?

No, I probably would have one drink, so probably either a red wine or a whiskey at night, with a salad, some cheese, maybe a bit of shrimp, maybe some chicken if I'm eating out, but probably not often. But that's it. I tend not to eat more than half a regular meal at dinner compared to what I see of one else eat. And that's one today. Once a day, yeah. Wow. And then I'm chewing on gum and drinking tea the rest of the time. I do have a bit of yogurt in the morning which I freely admit. That's to mix your

reservoir of trolling, right? Yeah, because because all these molecules, the polyphenols that come from plants, churrosthen, fizzitin, resveratrol, even co-cumin, especially co-cumin, they're like brictus, they don't get absorbed, they're crunchy, so you have to mix them with something olive oil or yogurt so that they get absorbed. And I know this from human clinical trials, I'm not just making this stuff absorbed. And I know this from human clinical trials, I'm not just making this stuff up. And if you have a spiritual with a bit of food and fatty food, you get five times the levels in the blood. One of the things that I was really fascinated by after our first conversation was how passionate

people were in the comment section and also messages and stuff that I got. And then further conversations about longevity that I've had over the last couple of years. Do you notice this sort of within the longevity community that there is? It's quite a animated group. Why do you think that is? Well, it's certainly growing. The number of people that are into this and excited by it. And the number of people who have now read my book, which is, it's going to be close to a million by now across the world in 20 languages, which is really mind blowing. So there is this zeitgeist, or you could call it a mega trend of people caring about

their bodies and realizing that aging is in their own, the pace of aging is in our own hands. I like to say 80% of it is based on studies of twins. But yeah, they're very enthusiastic and we're getting more and more enthusiastic because the technology is in the discoveries and the knowledge about how to slow down and even reverse aging are coming out fast and furious. And I'm trying to read them, sort through them, and give the best of them out to the public on social media. But it's head spinning what's happening. You know, this paper that we published in December in nature, which I have a copy here. I'm pretty excited. We got the cover. So here we go. Turning back time, reprogramming retinal cells can reverse age related vision loss.

This is this thing that you did in mice whose retinas you'd crushed, right? And then you... Yeah, it's even better than that. We can rebuild an optic nerve, but we treated glaucoma. And also, we just took old mice that were blind. And for the first time, restored their vision back to normal. So what this tells you is you can reset the age of a tissue without any issues that tissues that are old

and we think are gone, are recoverable. And so what this tells us is that aging, first of all, there's a backup copy of the information to be young again, stored in our bodies somewhere. We are looking for where it is, but there is a reset switch that we've found. And that as long as you know the trick, it's really easy. Any student, even a high school student, could do this experiment, preferably not on their parents, but it's not that hard once you know. And I think we've reached a turning point in being able to control the pace of aging.

In my lab, we can accelerate aging in a mouse, we can reverse it, we're reversing age, not just in the eye now, but in the ear, in the brain, recovering the ability to learn. So this is super exciting. And it's taking the academic world by storm. There are a lot of labs that have jumped into this field, at least for Nobel Prize winners and now working on this,

who have won awards for different things, but now are working on this. And more money coming in than ever before, both in labs, but also in companies. There's a lot of investment. So all of this, I think if we look back at the history of the 21st century, this will dominate the first 20 years. And then what I'm talking about will be the most exciting thing over the next 20 years. Is everyone just holding on to your co-tails?

You mean writing them or holding them? Holding them just desperately trying to keep a hold of whatever you're doing and thinking like, yeah, well, you've got all of these new people coming in investment money researchers. Well, you know I'm certainly trying my best to bring the world along with me but I can't take credit for it. There's hundreds of researchers around the world seriously and they don't go on podcasts so you don't hear about them as much but they're there and they've worked really hard and they're brilliant and when when we get together, it's an amazing synergy because we're often working on different pieces of the puzzle and they're finally coming together into one single hypothesis that

hopefully can explain why we age and as I wrote in my book why we don't have to. What you thought's on the COVID vaccine? Have we got any sort of concerns there? What you thought was on the COVID vaccine? Have we got any sort of concerns there? No, nothing serious. I talked a lot about COVID in the beginning of the pandemic. And then, I noticed, yeah. And then it really sort of,

you seemed like you'd done your work and then stopped. Well, like a lot of people who had kids, I need to focus on my family. So I did that and they're all good, and so I'm back out. But, so I know enough to be dangerous about COVID. The vaccine, I know the people who make literally invented and the people who make the Moderna vaccine. Good friends of mine.

It's not a concern. I mean, seriously, if you're worried about that, you should be worried about crossing the street. It's more likely you'll get hit by lightning than something bad will happen to you from a vaccine. There's no chips from Bill Gates in them. It's a miracle of science, and we should embrace it. Scientists have saved the world here.

We would have been done for. We've lost many, many millions, tens of millions of lives if there wasn't a vaccine. So I really don't subscribe to the idea that we should avoid vaccination, or we may as well just go back to the middle ages. What about 5G? Everyone's got problems with that.

Having you 5G phone nearby or in your pocket. I've certainly seen some videos and stuff in terms of the radiation that comes off them. How does that affect longevity? Well, we don't know. We don't even know how going through those airport scanners affects longevity. I try to avoid them if I can. So here's a funny story. I need to interject there. You told me, you told me that you request a manual search, whatever it's called. I'd rather not go through the scanner. I'll take this thing. Flying out of Boston, leaving your very office and your lab. I requested that very same thing,

to which the security guard looked at me, said, are you sure, sir? I said, yes, put my bags in the thing and tried to take me into a side room in which I would have had to have fully stripped down. Unbelievable. I can't believe that you tried to stitch me up to get me to go into. I'm going to leave. No. I can't believe that you tried to stitch me up to get me to go into

me. No, Adam. I'm Adam. I thought to myself that Dr David Sinclair has tried to stitch me up so that this big, burly man takes me into a room and makes me take all my clothes off. Well, you're onto me. You do know it was April 1st when you visited. But I've gone through scanners because currently my clearance isn't updated. And I wear this patch on my chest and they freak out when they see I've got a flashing light on my chest. They think I'm Iron Man or something. Not far off. Okay.

So 5G is going to be all right then. We're not concerned. Yeah, I'm not worried. I've looked at the data. There's nothing that concerns me. There is radiation. I think we should study it, but I don't think there's any evidence that it's going to be harmful. It doesn't damage DNA, which is what my main concern is because that will aid you. What about Bluetooth headphones, stuff like that? Same. Yes, same. It's low-dose radiation. You know, you can you can worry about this stuff

Or you can just get on with it. The scanners I particularly worry about because At least the early versions of those machines had penetrating Radiation out of wavelength that wasn't healthy and Europe banned them before the US did And so I don't panic if I have to go through the scanners these days, but just if I have a choice and I can skip it, I will. But yeah, for phones and all of that, Bluetooth. Now, but I would like to test various radiation types on mice for their lifespan, because you've hit on a good thing, which is often whether it comes to radiation or molecules that are in the environment, nobody tests

the longevity of an animal because it takes too long, takes three years. And so even while short-term, it doesn't have any effect, it might speed up aging or do something else. Yeah, that's an interesting one. I found out that a 20-minute phone call with your phone to your head is the same as being in a room with a Wi-Fi router for an entire year. So that was an interesting comparison in terms of the amount of radiation that comes off. Right.

Well, if it doesn't change the epigenome, and that is what I believe drives the majority of aging, then I'm not concerned. But that's a good experiment, actually, Chris. We could take these emitters, whether it's a phone or a router, or maybe even a scanner at the airport, and just put cells in there and see if it disrupts the epigenome structure, so the three-dimensional structure of DNA. And if it does, then we probably should be testing a mouse or two. But if there's no effect, it'd be great to publish that because I think that that would allay a lot of fuse.

My first published paper can't wait. Is this what you do? Do you go to bed? Do you go to bed at night and think like what my what my experiment? And we're gonna do in the morning the same way that I go to bed thinking of questions for podcast guests. You just think about what my experiment about longevity you're gonna do the next day. Of course, but this is what I'm paid to do. But then you have an army of people that just go and do it. You just, what do you do? You WhatsApp someone and say, right, I want to put, can we put some cells in the scanner please ring the airport so if you can get a hold of one, make it happen. Yeah, I tend to be pretty stubborn. If I want to do something, I won't stop till somebody says, yes, so yeah, I've already looked into it.

You can get these scanners. They're fairly expensive, but they have them around the place. I know people at NASA could probably call. Get all the ones from Europe that they banned. Get those, they'll be flogging them. And you can give them. That's right, they're probably in some Eastern country,

who knows, but I think we do need to have the government pay for this. Every time there's new radiation, look at the rate of aging in an animal, that would be great. Because I think most, it's not on anybody's radar, excuse the other pun, that this could affect the aging process. And how would you know unless you tested it? I saw on your Instagram something about being able to stop or reverse gray hair. What's going on there? Oh yeah, so that was another lab that did that, but it was really interesting. So that there are people, it's pretty common actually that people can go temporarily gray from a lot of stress in their life.

And so the hair will start to grow gray out the bottom. And then if they relax, go on a vacation, it'll go black again or brown. And you get this hair that's brown, gray, brown. They've got roots coming through on a really bad hair day. It could be. Anyway, so that this research journey's team plucked these hairs out and looked at what was going on at the molecular level and could see that there were changes that were associated with aging and it's reversal, which is exciting because if we can understand how this happens,

we could not just reverse gray hair, but also other aspects of aging in the body. And I like that idea that you can use hair as a model for a reversal. It's easier than restoring eyesight, put it that way. You tweeted the other day saying, life's a journey, pick a worthwhile destination. What's a destination that you're working toward? Well, it's really simple that the world is a better place. Down one level from that that that everybody in the world

can live a better life and healthier life longer life because of something that I did. More practically, it could be simple as writing my books to give people advice on how to take their life into control and to control. And ultimately, I'd love to have a medicine or two that can treat diseases and aging itself. And I feel like something is, I mean the book

lifespan certainly was was more popular than I ever imagined. So I can tick that one off the list. But the destination really, it's an interesting destination because I don't know how far into the future we can go. I'm not making this up as I go along, but it is changing with every week new discoveries that are coming out in my life and others. They're pushing that destination further out into the future and allowing me to do things with my life that I never thought that I'd have the chance to do. You and Beyonce, mate.

David Sinclair, ladies and gentlemen, people want to keep up to date with your stuff. Where should they go? Also that we, you can donate as little as 10 bucks to my lab to help us buy some of this state out of state of our equipment. That's Sinclair lab, Sinclair lab.com. And then on social media, Twitter is David A. Sinclair, and Instagram is David Sinclair, PhD. And I try to be as entertaining and educational as I can be.

And I'll Chris, these saying, somebody wrote a negative thing as you do on Twitter that oh scientists think they're philosophers now. Yeah we do, but not only that, these are saying if you read them these are what I teach my students and I figured why just train 20 people at a time when I can give it to potentially millions. I love it man. Until next time. I love to come back. Thanks Chris. This is awesome as usual.