Passion Struck with John R. Miles - The Reverse Aging Effect: How to Stay Young and Healthy with John R. Miles EP 157

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on the Passion Struct Podcast, aging is a natural process of life that every single one of us, no matter how fit, healthy, or strong, must face. As we age, we become more prone to certain ailments. It has been discovered that our biological age is the most significant factor for all major diseases, including dementia, diabetes, and cancer. Simply put, while contemporary medicine addresses illness, it doesn't address the underlying reason, aging itself. Welcome to PassionStruct.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.

Starting point is 00:00:58 We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Momentum Friday, an episode 157 of PassionStruck. Thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce this to friends or family members, we now have episode starter packs, both on Spotify and on the PassionStruck website. And these are collections of your favorite episodes that we organize by topic

Starting point is 00:01:40 so that any new listener can get quickly acquainted to everything that we do here on this show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. so that any new listener can get quickly acquainted to everything that we do here on this show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed our episodes from earlier in the week, I interviewed 80 Milkmen, who's a behavioral scientist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, post of the popular podcast, Toysology, and we discuss the science behind how you get from where you are to where you want to go I also had a great interview with Elise Michaels who's a men's mental health coach and we discuss her approach to helping men Overcome trauma along with her four pillars of peak performance

Starting point is 00:02:16 My solo episode last week was on the importance of unconditional love and ways that you can build it in your own life Please check out all those episodes. And if you truly love any of them, we would so appreciate getting a five star rating interview. It goes so far and helping boost the popularity of the show. I also wanted to acknowledge our fan of the week Cindy Golden who writes pathological. I have suffered from mental health issues the majority of my life. Your interview with Saraphay allowed me to see things in a

Starting point is 00:02:45 completely different way. Yes, the DSM is flawed and mental health professionals should be telling the public the truth that none of it is based on science. Thank you John Miles for bringing episodes like this to life. Well, thank you so much Cindy for your rating and review. We appreciate it so much. Now, let's talk about today's episode. From Millennium's, a quest for the Fountain of Youth and Extending Life has been a frequent topic, a various myths, Hollywood movies, and parables worldwide.

Starting point is 00:03:15 One of the earliest accounts was from Herodotus, a Greek historian in the fifth century BC. He reported that in the land of microbiomes, a Fountain of Youth gave the people in that region extremely extended life spans. The name connected most closely to the quest for the fountain of youth is 16th century Spanish expeditionary Juan Ponce de Leon who allegedly believed it would be discovered in Florida. In Japan, tales of hot springs that could restore youth and heal the body were also common in even our to this present day.

Starting point is 00:03:47 Let's face it, aging is a natural process of life that will inevitably happen to every one of us. Unfortunately, we're not going to live forever. However, our daily activities and well-being are directly dependent on the condition of our body systems, realizing that we inevitably age, what can we do to stay fit and healthy and get more time here on Earth to live out our vibrant lives? The answer is this, we can intentionally slow down our biological aging process. Yes, you heard that right. Finding the core reason for aging and learning how diet, lifestyle choices, and exercise effect effect extending your life, places the power of perspective and knowledge in your control. You don't have to hope for or imagine a mythical

Starting point is 00:04:31 fountain of youth that holds a secret to reversing age. You can decide daily to turn back the clock, slow the aging process, and reset your age. In today's episode, I will be taking an in-depth look into the science and behavioral changes that are associated with reverse aging, to educate you on how it is possible to chronologically age forward while biologically aging backward. Human behavior and one's environment

Starting point is 00:04:57 both play a key role. Let's now examine the story of the social, physiological experiment by Ellen Langer to prove that biological aging can be externally influenced by perception and behavior. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let the journey begin. Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist, conducted a novel experiment in 1981, in which she invited

Starting point is 00:05:29 participants to live is if they were 22 years younger. She arranged for eight men in their 70s to stay in a converted monastery. Some of them were arthritic and use canes, yet they entered a time warp when they entered the doors of the monastery. On an old radio, Perry Como sang. On a black and white television, Ed Sullivan, created guests, everything within, including the books on the shelves, and scattered publications were intended to invoke 1959. The men in this experimental group weren't told to just talk about what life was like in 1959, but were told to actually act as if they were in 1959.

Starting point is 00:06:08 Meanwhile, a control group lived in a similar atmosphere, but did not act as if it was decades ago and only considered their past events. Those in the experimental group talked about historical events as if they were contemporary happenings. No accommodations were made to help with the men's frail physical conditions. No one carried their bags or sisted them up the stairs

Starting point is 00:06:29 or treated them at all like they were elderly. Nothing, no mirrors, no modern clothing, no images other than portraits of them as their younger selves reminded them that they had actually aged 22 years from the current perceived year. After a few days, both the controlled and experimental groups were assessed. It was noticed that the men from both groups improved in physical strength, manual dexterity,

Starting point is 00:06:52 movement, posture, perception, memory, cognition, taste sensitivity, hearing, and vision. Compared to the control group, the majority of the impermanence in the experimental group were far more significant with a complete 63% of them having more significant cognitive test results than they did at the onset of the experiment. Then several unaffiliated volunteers were shown before and after images of the men in the experimental group. They were then asked to identify which was the younger of

Starting point is 00:07:22 the two photos. They all evaluated those in the after photos as two years younger than those in the before photos. This experiment proved that it is possible for someone to get older chronologically but get younger biologically through their mindset and corresponding behavioral change. We'll be right back to PassionStruck. If you're like me and you're a busy business owner, the last thing you want to be spending your time on is administrative tasks like handling payroll, employee benefits, time off requests,

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Starting point is 00:08:27 workplace for their employees. And right now, Gusto is offering our listeners three months free at Gusto.com slash passion struck. Get easy payroll benefits, HR, and a happier team. So go to gusto.com slash passion struck for your first three months free. That's Gusto.com slash passion struck comes a time when you need to consolidate whether you're out of hard drive space or you're significant other as if you really need to buy that many pair of shoes. And I found myself needing to consolidate how I approach social

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Starting point is 00:09:56 Slash Passion will get 10% off their first purchase with AppSumo. Please consider those who support the show and make it free for our listeners. And I know all these links and discount codes can be difficult to remember. So we put them all in one place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Now, back to passion strut. Let us now dive into the science of reverse agent and discover how you can go about reducing your biological age, your risk of chronic disease, and overall extend your

Starting point is 00:10:24 health span. So you may be asking, can aging be influenced? A stated earlier, aging is a natural process of life, that all of us, no matter how fit or strong, must face. As we age, we become more prone to certain ailments. It has been discovered that our bioage is the most significant factors for all major diseases, including dementia, cancer, and diabetes. Simply put, while contemporary medicine addresses illnesses, it doesn't address the underlying

Starting point is 00:10:50 reason, aging itself. According to Dr. Cara Fitzgerald, who is an upcoming guest on the PassionStark podcast in her book, Younger You, a whopping 80% of adults, over 65, have one chronic disease, and a full 77% have two. And in my interview earlier this week with Katie Milkman, a behavioral scientist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, she revealed that 40% of premature deaths

Starting point is 00:11:17 in the United States are due to behaviors that we could change. Now, the question really becomes, do we have to endure all these illnesses, pains and difficulties as we age? Before I proceed to the answer of this question, which I believe is already obvious, let me highlight the type of aging that we're referring to here. We have the chronological age,

Starting point is 00:11:36 which is the number of years that we've been alive here on the planet. And then we have the biological age, which is also known as physiological age, which refers to the relative age of how old you seem. Based on how your cells have changed since you've been alive, our focus is on reversing or slowing down our biological age. So now, let's go back to that question. We do not have to go through all those difficulties as we grow older.

Starting point is 00:12:01 Believe it or not, there is new hope that we can live longer, healthier and better, and may even be able to turn back the hands of the biological clock. This has been particularly proven by one Harvard longevity scientist named Dr. David Sinclair, whose biological age is about two decades younger than his chronological age.

Starting point is 00:12:20 In his book, Life Span, why we age, and why we don't have to, which was the culmination of decades of research and experimentation on worms, flies, mice, and monkeys. Sinclair came to the conclusion that the nine hallmarks of aging, from exhausted stem cells, to tangled proteins to a sluggish metabolism, didn't actually drive the process. Instead, they were caused by DNA damage and faulty gene control. He discovered the exact mechanism at work in every organism in the world from yeast and bacteria to

Starting point is 00:12:52 homosapiens was caused by aging just becoming a loss of knowledge. That is another way of explaining that aging is a disorder caused by missing or corrected data. It's similar to a computer program that has broken code lines and has forgotten where the computer code is. Thus, he proves that yourself simply don't have the capability to do what they're supposed to be doing and that this can be corrected.

Starting point is 00:13:14 So, Claire believes that 80% of our longevity and our health in the future is in our own hands. Only 20% is genetic, which we cannot yet do much about. So, what is the role of epigenetics and DNA methylation in aging? Epigenetics can be considered the thread, connecting your diet and lifestyle habits, bioage and risk of disease. The epigenic clock is based on the body's epigeno, which consists of chemical alterations to DNA, such as methyl groups, the pattern of these markers evolves over time and records a person's biological age, which might trail or exceed chronological

Starting point is 00:13:52 age. We will concentrate on a crucial epigenetic process known as DNA methylation. If epigenetics is a collection of several sorts of software, DNA methylation may be the most influential and long-lasting. It is undoubtedly the most researched of all epigenetic markers. To put it simply, DNA methylation is the operating system. It informs your hardware, meaning your genes, what to do. DNA methylation exercises power by depositing commonplace chemicals known as methyl groups on top of your genetic material. Those methyl groups control which genes are turned on and turned off and to what extent. Dr. Cara Fitzgerald emphasizes in her new book, Younger You, Reduce Your Bioage and Live Longer Better.

Starting point is 00:14:36 That while DNA methylation has a lot of power over your health and well-being, you also have a lot of impact on it. She says, what you eat, when you go to bed, how stressed you are, how much you walk, and how much loving touch you participate in, all impact how and where those methyl groups are positioned, and thus how your genes are expressed. Dr. Fitzgerald, along with my previous interviews with behavioral scientist Katie Milkman and Michelle Seager,

Starting point is 00:15:03 I'll point out that it's your microchois made over sustained periods that have the largest impact on your long-term health. According to studies, if you give your body more of the things that promote healthy DNA methylation and less of the things thought to deregulate it, you can give yourself the DNA methylation patterns of a younger you. This is how you can reduce your risk of getting diseases, or how you may be able to slow or even reverse the path of disease if you're already sick. Plus, you'll lose excess weight, restore lost vigor, and have folks wondering what the heck are you doing to seem so young for your age. Do you have a topic like today's that you would like to see us cover? You can reach us at Momentum Friday at passionstruck.com.

Starting point is 00:15:46 Keep your emails concise. Use a descriptive subject line. That keeps things easy for us. Reach out to us if there's a topic you're interested in learning about. There's something that maybe you're going through any big decision that you're wrestling with or perhaps you just want a new perspective on work,

Starting point is 00:16:03 love or life. Whatever's got you staying up at night, hit us up at Momentum Friday at PassionStruck.com. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. Now, back to PassionStruck. So I've covered a lot of background there. So now I'm going to dive into what are six steps that you can take to reverse your own bioage. Within put from several longevity researchers and active participants in the search for reverse agent,

Starting point is 00:16:29 the following are significant ways you can boost your health and slow down or reverse your biological clock. The first is it starts with your mindset. There's a common belief that you're only as young as you feel. Now, science shows us it's true. All that we do and all that we become starts from our perceptions and belief systems. As shown in the earlier story about the experiment done with the elderly men, we saw that when they believed that they were living 22 years ago, they started

Starting point is 00:16:56 to act like it and slowly became their younger and healthier selves. Because they became free of the limiting mindset that told them that they were old and unable to function, they were able to find the strength they didn't know that they had and bought back some time for themselves. So understand that a positive mindset can reverse the aging process and intentionally build your mind, aligning itself with the possibility of getting biologically younger, and that it not only can, but will happen. Second, alter your diet. Our body systems are directly impacted by the types of food that we eat, as well as the amount.

Starting point is 00:17:29 Like a car engine, if we put bad fuel into it, it can wear out more quickly and eventually stop working. So, it is advised that you eat a diet that is very high in plants, with vegetables, lojumes, mushrooms, fruits, nuts, and seeds. It has been suggested by both Dr. Sinclair and Dr. Fitzgerald that there is a sweet spot in food consumption that shows the positive effects of eating less. Additionally, you can still eat meat, but ensure you do so in moderation. Also, consciously reduce your intake of starchy foods like bread, rice, and potatoes, and

Starting point is 00:18:03 as much as possible, avoid sugary foods and drinks like sodas, candy, cakes, pastries, wine, fruit juices, cookies, and so on. So eat proportionally, get into the habit of intermittent fasting, and ensure you take lots of vitamins that promote DNA methylation. Including beef liver and beef supplements, greens and vegan protein powders, rest veritrol, magnesium, DHA, and vitamins D in K2. Also, make sure that you look for high-quality ones made by companies like Medagenetics, Designs for Health, Clear Labs, Optimum Nutrition, Life Extension, and Vital Nutrients. And then, ensure that you hydrate a lot. Drink at least eight glasses of water daily to keep your body system fresh and toxins free. Third, maintain a healthy exercise routine.

Starting point is 00:18:52 Your lifestyle obviously impacts your health and the chances for slowing or reversing aging. Simply put, a healthy exercise routine will benefit your body while an unhealthy one will damage it. When you think of exercise, you commonly see it as a way to burn calories, reduce stress, build muscles, and improve your cardiovascular system. It's actually all these things and so much more. Exercise actually provides core nourishment of your DNA methylation and is your anti-aging elixir. A 2018 study published in the European heart journal indicates that cardio has the biggest impact on anti-aging. It found that endurance exercises like swimming, running, bicycling, and high intensity interval training slowed signs of aging compared to weight lifting

Starting point is 00:19:38 on a cellular level. So actively engage in exercise and physical activities like running, hiking, swimming, and so on, to keep your muscles and overall body strong and fit. For, develop a proper sleep routine. Sleep is essential to health, and especially epigenetic health, a growing body of science from studying both humans and animals.

Starting point is 00:19:59 Illustrates that in addition to the benefits, link to sleep, not getting enough can accelerate aging. According to recent research published in Sleep Health, sleepless nights were shown to change your biological age. Both short duration and poor quality were shown to accelerate aging. A study by UCLA researchers uncovered that a single night of inadequate sleep can make older adults' cells age quicker.

Starting point is 00:20:25 This might not seem like a huge deal, but it has the potential to bring on a lot of diseases, including multiple sclerosis, heart disease, as well as cancer, just to name a few. 2019 research published in Nature indicated that people who slept less than five hours a night compared to those who slept seven or more had significantly

Starting point is 00:20:46 shorter telemores. And if you're unfamiliar with what a telemore is, they protect the ends of chromosomes from becoming afraid or tangled. A shortened telemore is shown to be a biomarker for accelerated aging. The key to excellent sleep hygiene is consistency. So ensure that you have a proper sleep routine to prevent chronic deprivation. Getting at least six to eight hours of sleep per night is advised, along with ample periods of being in the down state during the day. A topic that we will be covering in detail in an upcoming interview I have with sleep expert Dr. Sarah Mennek realized that lifestyle changes like these have an outsized impact on your health, energy, vigor, and longevity. And make sure that you put these sleep suggestions into

Starting point is 00:21:29 practice. Fifth, pay close attention to your stress levels. It's imperative to know what is going on in your body so that you can quickly determine when something is not right. Before it gets out of hand in your face with depression, anxiety, or other things that you might be experiencing. Don't get too carried away with work or your everyday life that you're not giving proper attention to your physical and mental health. According to Dr. Fitzgerald's research, stress plays an enormous role in DNA methylation, impacting almost 25% of the methylation sites in the epigenetic clock that she and her team used to determine biological aging.

Starting point is 00:22:05 It may be difficult for you to control the things that cause you stress, but you have a lot of influence on how you respond to it. Please check out if you want more information on this, the deep dive that I did on this topic in episode 142 on why you must feel to heal. 6. Stay in enabling environments. From the earlier story of the experiment, we saw just how much the role of the environment in which the aged men were placed, influence their perception and, in turn, their lives. Likewise, the things around you have a direct physiological and psychological impact on your health and aging. An unhealthy environment, prevalent with filth, vices, and negativity will

Starting point is 00:22:45 naturally be a breeding ground for diseases and will inevitably cause you illness and rapid aging. In contrast, a clean and healthy environment filled with positivity and possibility will improve your state of being and boost your chances of reverse aging. So ensure that you consciously choose to stay in the right environment to benefit your overall health. So I provided a ton of information. Now you may be wondering, I am not a doctor. No, I'm not. So how do I know if these suggestions actually work? I honestly had my doubts as well. So I implemented them and had myself tested by Insight Tracker to determine my biological age. I used their inner age analysis, including taking a blood test, to examine the 17 biomarkers for men, to calculate my biological age. It should be noted that there

Starting point is 00:23:33 are 13 biomarkers for women. Their system uses over 10 years and tens of thousands of samples to compare each biomarker to my peers, and then analyzes the contribution of each one to calculate my biological age. What I discovered was absolutely mind-blown. My actual biological age was actually over 10 years younger than my chronological age. So I use that to say that the aim of today's show has been to do a deep dive on the process of aging and to provide you with some techniques that you can incorporate into your life, just like I did that would help you live a longer, healthier life. These include optimizing your diet, the benefits of exercise, especially cardio, the role of reduced stress, the significance of your mindset, the vital importance of exercise, especially cardio, the role of reduced stress, the significance

Starting point is 00:24:25 of your mindset, the vital importance of sleep, suggestions on supplements, and a diet that you can take on and so much more. More importantly, I wanted to illustrate that it's never too late to slow the aging process. In our drive for success, many of us push ourselves so hard that we forget to check our engines to ensure that they're in good and healthy condition. But remember that you can suddenly break down if you keep allowing this hustle culture to invade your life. So try to take those daily steps and implement habits to keep your body system in its best shape. The combination of the recommendations that I laid out will help you to balance your DNA methylation, lower your biological age, and help you build resilience to disease. The result is a younger

Starting point is 00:25:11 you. Hey, I hope you all enjoyed this show, and I wanted to thank everyone who wrote in and who also gave us reviews this week. And of course, everybody who listened. Thank you so much. The show notes will be on passionstruck.com. Videos are on our YouTube channel at JohnRMiles. Please go there and subscribe. We have well over 300 videos that you can prove. Advertisers deals and discounts are at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. I am JohnRMiles. I'm both Twitter and Instagram and you can also find me on LinkedIn. If you want to know how I managed to book all these amazing guests that I have on the show, it's because of my network.

Starting point is 00:25:47 Build those relationships before you need them. Most of the guests that you hear on the show actually not only subscribe to the show, but offer us suggestions for both guests and topics to cover. Come join us, you'll be in great company. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struct podcast episode with Vice Admiral Sandy Stowe's. Sandy spent 40 years in the US Coast Guard, 12 of them at sea, and her career was filled with

Starting point is 00:26:11 leadership lessons, leaned while breaking ice and breaking glass. As the first woman to command an icebreaker in the Great Lakes, and to lead a US Armed Forces service academy. I came to believe while I was a cadet that yeah there were challenges being a woman, one of the first women at the Coast Guard Academy, but if I pulled myself back and looked at it objectively a lot of people had a hard time depending on circumstances and you could choose to let what those people said do you get to you or you could choose to prove them wrong. Maybe it's the German in me,

Starting point is 00:26:48 but I choose to prove them wrong and to show that I could make it there. And all it did when somebody would tell me, hey, you're a woman, it's gonna be harder for you here. I would just say, hey, to myself, that's just another incentive for me to try harder and to persevere. The fee for the show is that you share it to myself. That's just another incentive for me to try harder and to persevere.

Starting point is 00:27:06 The fee for the show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something interesting. If you know someone who's interested in the topic of reverse agent, definitely share this episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with people that you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen and we we'll see you next time. Live life, passion struck.

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Passion Struck with John R. Miles - The Reverse Aging Effect: How to Stay Young and Healthy with John R. Miles EP 157

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