The Dr. Josh Axe Show - 9 Signs You're Aging Too Fast & How to Reverse Them

Starting point is 00:00:00 Have you noticed how your life expectancy depends as much on where you're born as who you are? For instance, Japan boasts an average lifespan exceeding 85 years, while certain U.S. states like West Virginia and Mississippi are closer to 74 to 75 years old. That is a decade less. And it's not just 10 years less of life. It's also quality of life. And even within the U.S., blue zone regions like certain areas of California, Minnesota, Hawaii, Utah often rank at the top with lives averaging 81 years. Listen, here's the reality. This isn't

Starting point is 00:00:36 random. There is something that the people of Japan are doing. It's very specific. Whereas in states like West Virginia and Mississippi, they are not doing certain things. And on today's episode, I'm going through how to extend your lifespan, add years to your life. But here's the other kicker. Add life to your years. And if you're a person who doesn't want to be in your 60, 70, 70, 80s and 90s, and being feeble, and being, you know, having no energy, being sick all the time, then this is the episode for you. I'm going to go through how you can truly thrive and be healthy like my parents are. In fact, I've got a, my mom who's 73, my dad who's 75, they're still water skiing. They can go out and run if they want. Now, they typically don't run, run. They

Starting point is 00:01:22 run a little bit and walk a little bit. But overall, they're bringing their grandkids to Disney world. My dad's playing basketball and soccer. They are very fit and very healthy in their mid-70s. And I had a grandfather who is 96 years old worked up until the day he died. And so if you're a person wanting to know, hey, what should you eat? What supplements should you take? What biohacks should you do? What do you need to do to not only live a long time because this episode is about longevity, but also have a long health span where you can be active, fit, and healthy without dementia, without being feeble and weak, while you age as you get older. And so today's episode will be all about the diet, the herbs, the exercise, and the habits that can slow the clock and support longevity. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Jack show.

Starting point is 00:02:30 So here's one of the first things people miss about aging. Aging starts deep inside yourselves. And scientists have identified nine key cellular changes called the hallmarks of aging that explain why our bodies break down over time. Now recently, scientists said, well, actually, there's not nine, there's 12, and now people believe there might be more than 15. But what I'm going to do is go through today, what I believe are the nine most crucial harm marks of aging. And if any of these things break down at the cellular level, it's what causes you to age

Starting point is 00:03:02 more quickly. Now, here's the other thing that's so important. One of the ways that I've been able to see really amazing results and other practitioners that practice personalized cellular medicine like I do is I've been able to help people reverse type 2 diabetes, hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, even in some cases help them heal from cancer because we focused on healing the cell and reversing cellular aging. That's the key. Number one sign that you're aging too quickly is altered cellular communication.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Your cells are constantly sending and receiving signals. imagine you've got a cell phone and you've got a friend that has a cell phone. Okay. You're constantly communicating. And listen, this is important for anything. You know, when I grew up, I played basketball and I played soccer. We were constantly communicating in order for a, as a team for us to win. Okay.

Starting point is 00:03:53 So that's a really important part of great relationships, right? Your spouse, if you go to any marriage counselor, they will tell you, do you want to have a great, when do you, when do relationships starts to fall apart? When communication starts to fall apart and break down. It's the same thing with your cells. Now, the biggest warning sign of this tends to be hormone imbalance, right? Your hormones are, your signals are off. So like insulin resistance with prediabetes or diabetes, right? Hormone imbalances, when those signals between cells and systems breaks down, you get sick, right?

Starting point is 00:04:27 Like any relationship and the relationship between your cells, if your cell signaling gets off, that makes you sick. that's number one. Your biggest warning signs there tends to be poor sleep. You're not sleeping through the night. Okay. Melatonin's off. That's a hormone. Cortisol's off. That's a hormone. So that's one example. Or if you're a female, your cycles off. Okay. Or as a male, you've got low testosterone. There is, there are signaling issues happening. But poor sleep is one of the biggest issues, especially if you're waking up a night or can't fall asleep or waking up too early. That's a big warning sign, okay, that you are that you have what we call altered cellular communication. It's one of the number one hallmarks of aging.

Starting point is 00:05:11 Number two, microbiome dysbiosis. This is where your gut microbiome, it regulates immunity, your metabolism, your mood, and so much more. And when it becomes imbalanced, dude, everything from taking drugs like antibiotics and contraceptives, poor diet, like a diet high and sugar, low in fiber, emotional stress, this disrupts communication between your gut and your other organs. including your brain and causing you to get sick. We all know that when you get inflammation in your gut, that can cause leaky gut,

Starting point is 00:05:44 where things like proteins and toxins leak in your bloodstream causing inflammation then throughout your body, this weakens your immune system. And also it impairs nutrient absorption. So think about all the negative things that happens when your gut is not healthy, okay? You can't absorb nutrients. You can't create nutrients. your body is, you know, systemically inflamed via all these things passing through the gut, getting the bloodstream, and then creating this, this circulating inflammation and immune response.

Starting point is 00:06:17 And so that is a big, big telltale sign that you were aging too quickly and it's disrupting your longevity is if you have leaky gut or microbiome dysbiosis. Let me ask, do you have chronic constipation? And that's, if you don't have a bowel movement every day, that's constipation. You should have at least one healthy bowel movement. It should be well formed every single day. Here's another one. Do you have bloating?

Starting point is 00:06:41 Okay. Here's another one. Do you have gas? Here's another one. Do you have candida? Bad breath. Do you have food sensitivities? Do you have poor absorption of nutrients?

Starting point is 00:06:52 Right? Autoimmune disease, of course, is leaked to leaky gut. So all of those are warning signs that you have an organ system or something in your body, your cells. are aging too quickly, okay? And that leads to shortened lifespan. And we'll get into solutions here in a minute, but that's important to know. Number three, hallmark of aging according to science today.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Epigenetic imbalances. Okay, so epigenetics, this is how lifestyle, environment, and emotions influence gene expression, and this will either silence harmful genes or activate healthy ones. Very similar things to get microbiome. Poor diet, stress, toxins, lack of sleep. can flip the switch towards aging, inflammation, and disease. And obviously, positive lifestyles can reverse it. Now, I also want to say this, though, epigenetics or some of the genetic things that can

Starting point is 00:07:44 also cause you to be sick is if you've got a genetic variant issue and you don't know, like MTHFR gene, that's where you don't methylate well. Well, if you're not methylating well and you're not getting the right foods to help methylation and living the right lifestyle, you're going to end up having major issues where you can't detoxify. You can't create enough glutathione to protect your body and help you detoxify. It can cause issues with fertility. Numerous, numerous issues happens if you have MTHR gene. Now, listen, if you have it and you got low stress, you're eating pretty healthy, and especially if you're eating things like organ meats that really, really helps, like liver, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:23 getting those good methylated B vitamins in, then you're fine. There's no issues there. But if you have a gene variant like that, here's another one, mold. there's a gene variant for mold 24% of people they're not able to fully detoxify for mold so it just keeps recirculating in their system that's why have you ever seen this or you might know somebody you may not but i have several friends where if i like if i walk through a moldy hotel it doesn't really bother me like i don't notice anything but i've got a friend of mine if we were walking through a moldy hotel like later on they'll be sick in fact i don't just have one friend like this i have like I've got almost 10.

Starting point is 00:08:59 I've got a lot of people I know. If they're in a moldy hotel, they are or anywhere, like they know. They start feeling ill right away because their body isn't good to getting rid of it. Now, that person can live to be over 100 years old, but they need to know that they're sensitive to mold and they need to know what to do about it, like taking certain binders in things to get rid of it, right? They probably need glutathione. They need to support their liberty toxification.

Starting point is 00:09:25 and they need milk this. They need certain foods like cilantro, steam vegetables, a lot of organic meat, liver, and then we need to bind to it with maybe clay, maybe some activated charcoal, chlorella. My point there is this. Epigenetic imbalances, if you have something going on genetically, maybe different with you than someone else, you need to know that and know how to deal with it or else it can make you very sick.

Starting point is 00:09:48 I mean, I've got a friend of mine in Texas who was sensitive to mold. And he was one of the healthiest people. people I knew. I mean, mid-40s, super healthy, did everything right, amazing athlete, and his like kryptonite is mold. And it took him a year or so to figure out. If you wouldn't have fully figured it out, you've got to died 30 years early just because of this one thing. So knowing your genetic imbalances or susceptibilities, your kryptonite is so critical to not aging too fast. This is why I'm a big fan of doing sometimes certain types of testing, like testing for micronutrient deficiencies or organ age and just saying where do you need the most help?

Starting point is 00:10:34 Because for everybody, it's different. Remember, if you want to heal, you typically need a personalized plan. If you want to be experience your optimal level of health. Number four, hallmark of aging is this. mitochondrial dysfunction. Your mitochondria are the power plants of your cells producing ATP, your body's regular energy currency. With age, mitochondria function declines, which leads to fatigue, cognitive issues, reduce physical performance and energy, slower healing. All of those are side

Starting point is 00:11:05 effects. Now, of course, there's also side effects like cancer. There's major side effects if your body's batteries all get low. It's like anything. Imagine when the battery gets really low and certain technology, it doesn't work as well. Your body's the same. However, if you can keep your mitochondria it can do amazing things you know um toxins stress inflammation these all damage your mitochondria and your mitochondria needs very specific nutrients to function at the highest level probably the most important is a form of niacin it's a it's a later on version of vitamin b3 called niacin it's called nad plus and uh i will i'll just tell you a quick personal story when i went through my spinal infection years ago I had to get on an IV antibiotic and I was I was just so sick for a year, just not able to walk for a year.

Starting point is 00:11:59 And coming out of that, just not walking for you, just my energy wasn't as strong and vibrant as I wanted to be. And I started taking this really high quality. I did a little bit of NAD plus, okay. I did it as an IV. I would do it sometimes as a subcutaneous injection or as a supplement, liposomal N80 plus. And I was just blown away at how much it helped my energy. I think part of it was just being down that whole time. My body's battery was really low of my mitochondria,

Starting point is 00:12:28 and it was the thing that boom, I noticed more than anything. So that's probably the most powerful thing you can do to fix that issue. And then there's coenzyme Q10, there's PQQ, there's a choline Alligate, which is a precursor to uralithan A. There's a lot of things that can help your mitochondria function at a higher level. Here's another big thing. Knowing your purpose in life is very rejuvenating and healing to your mitochondria. You know, in Chinese medicine, they would call this chi.

Starting point is 00:12:55 In Western medicine, we call it cellular energy or ATP. But really, if you want to live a long time and have a long health span, one of the single greatest things you want to focus on is your mitochondria. Okay. It's the battery in every cell in your body. In fact, you don't have one battery in each cell. You've got sometimes hundreds or thousands. So lots of, lots of batteries.

Starting point is 00:13:14 But you need to take care of those if you're going to be healthy. Here's the biggest warning sign, okay, that you are, you have mitochondrial. dysfunction. You got low energy. That's it. You're tired all the time. You are physically tired all the time. And maybe you're not healing as well. Okay. You maybe got injured. Now you just your body doesn't seem to heal. Okay. If you've got those issues, you really want to focus on that hallmark of aging of healing your mitochondria. Number five, hallmark of aging that you're aging too quickly is oxidative stress. Every cell naturally produces free radicals during energy production. But excess free radical, it damages your DNA. It damages

Starting point is 00:13:53 proteins. It damages also your cell membranes around your cells. What we'll start to notice with oxidative damage is cancer. Cardiovascular disease is very high. That list. Alzheimer's. Those are some of the diseases. But I'll also say this. You just start feeling

Starting point is 00:14:09 older. You start looking older. That's oxidative stress. Okay. And coupled with something else called inflammation. But if you start notice, oh, I'm starting to get skin spots. Like you start to actually look older. if you have an apple with a you know, let's imagine a bright red skin of an apple and you take a bite of it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:29 What happens to that apple flesh over time? If you look at it two hours later, it's turned brown. Okay? That's oxidation. The same thing happens to your skin. You start to get skin spots and wrinkles and you start to look older. Now listen, some of this is a natural process, right? We are all going to age.

Starting point is 00:14:45 However, if it happens faster, I mean, here's the thing. You should be able to look back 10 years and be like, oh, okay. you know, I do look a little older now. You shouldn't be able to look one year ago and be like, oh, I look quite a bit older than I did last year or two years ago. It shouldn't be that noticeable. That means your oxidative stress is really, really started accelerating. And you don't want that, right? That causes you to age more quickly than you want.

Starting point is 00:15:12 Ways you can slow oxidative stress, ionoxidic-rich diets are really powerful. Polyphenols found in things like green tea, like matcha, and it. extra virgin olive oil, vitamin C, glutathione that's been helped produced by certain herbs like milk thistle, but doing lots and lots of antioxidants, doing berries, right, blueberries, goji berries all the time. Again, vegetables, carrots and steamed spinach. Liver has lots and lots of antioxidants. And so doing some of these foods is going to help slow that oxidative stress. Number six, sign that you are aging too quickly. Inflammation. It's inflammation that is making you feel older.

Starting point is 00:15:54 We talked about looking older with oxidative stress. Inflammation and oxidative stress were kind of like a couple. They tend to go along together. Inflammaging is you feel older. Okay. Now, inflammation is a term for persistent, low-grade inflammation that builds over decades, sometimes without symptoms early on, but then they hit you. Especially joint pain and arthritis.

Starting point is 00:16:20 Okay. If you all of a sudden are like, man, my joints just feel, I just, my joints feel a lot older, right? That is one of the biggest signs of inflammation. Now, it's also connected to chronic illness. Heart disease, dementia, autoimmune issues. That's inflammation as well. There's loads of things that contribute. Poor diet being the biggest one with inflammationaging. Leaky gut is connected there. A lot of high emotional stress over years and years and years, lack of sleep. But poor diet is the single biggest one. that will cause inflammation, eating sugar, eating refined grains, eating processed, hydrogenated oils and C2Oles, all these things that inflame the body cause inflammation aging, okay? And again,

Starting point is 00:17:02 if you're one of those people, you're like, okay, like you start to feel those injuries you had when you were younger, right? You sprained your ankle when you were in high school or that old ACL injury that never bothered you not, not that much. Now it bothers you a lot. And the key here is, again, listen, you're going to age and you're going to notice it some over time, but it's happened very gradually and slowly versus it's like, whoa. Not only does this one little area feel older, now my whole body feels older. Okay, that's from inflammation, and you really want to focus on reducing inflammation by loading up on anti-inflammatory foods and herbs.

Starting point is 00:17:36 Okay. So a lot of wild caught salmon, a lot of grass-fed beef, a lot of vegetables and a lot of fruit. That's it. Meat, vegetables, fruit, healthy fat. Meets, vegetables, fruit, healthy fat that are the high. highest quality, right? Wildcough salmon, grass-fed beef, you know, chicken's okay, but I would say the fish is the best, right? Those omega-3s are fantastic. The healthy fats, especially walnuts, avocados, extra virgin olive oil. And then you want to do some fruit, typically the most anti-inflammatory

Starting point is 00:18:08 fruit. Berries are going to be on that list. Pineapple and Kiwis are going to be on that list. And then vegetables, really focus on reducing inflammation and then lots of herbs, lots of Umuric, lots of ginger, lots of rosemary as a supplement, Boswellia is great, which comes from frankincense, and then lots of bone broth and collagen. If you can follow a diet like that and be highly anti-inflammatory, you're going to reduce inflammation and you will actually start feeling much younger. Number seven, impaired autophagy. Atophagy is your body's built in housekeeping or trash department, right? I mean, they're bringing out the trash, okay? They're also like a recycling department. They help take things that are broken in your body cells, take the parts that

Starting point is 00:18:53 are still good, reuse them and get rid of the rest. When autophagy slows, your body becomes a wasteland, okay? And it gets clogged up. Imagine a city that just went through a crisis where there was an earthquake there. And it's like cars are broken, buildings are falling apart. It's just the whole city's clogged up and damaged. That happens over time when your body isn't activated. autophagy well. The areas of your body that are most responsible for autophagy are going to be your liver and your gut, your digestive system. And from a cellular level, your lysosomes, you have something called lysos in your cells and they activate autophagy on a cellular level. Certain things help that fasting, exercise, polyphenols, I mentioned earlier, quercetin, which is found in

Starting point is 00:19:44 onions and citrus fruits. But overall, just eating a really healthy. diet of a lot of vegetables and again doing good exercise that's good for your body. Now listen, I think there's exercise that ages you. If you're doing long distance triathons, marathon running, and lots of crossfit, you're aging your body fast. Most of you understand, if you really think about it, running and pounding on pavement day after day after day, especially when your body, you start to lose muscle. And if you're doing it when you're older, that's very hard on your body. Now, can you get away with it if you're running on a track and only doing short bursts and not overdoing it? And maybe if you're running on a treadmill, yeah, your body can do better with that.

Starting point is 00:20:28 And so, and I'm not talking about going and running one mile. I'm talking about training for marathons and triathlons and what happens to your body when you over exercise, doing a three hour crossfit session. Or just when you're exercising that hard, jamming your joints and doing it for speed, you're aging your body and you'll pay for it later. Okay. I know my wife and I experienced this. Listen, being unwise and are at certain points in life. I know that I was a little too hard on my body doing some exercise and, you know, and now I feel it, right? Or I definitely thought it when I hurt my back. Now I'm doing all the right things and I'm feeling a lot better. But you can really age your body if you do the wrong type of exercise. The right type of exercise you want to do. I'll get into it a little bit are things that are going to be easy on your joints. That's why you're like, swimming or exercising in a pool is phenomenal. But again, one of the biggest hallmarks of aging is impaired autophagy. Exercise, movement, spending time in nature, certain foods like you're going to find in green tea are very good for autophagy.

Starting point is 00:21:31 Number eight is this, cellular senescence, okay? If your autophagy is an activated right, you have these zombie cells. They're called senesic cells or zombie cells that build up in your body. and they release this toxin that inflames all the tissues around it. And so you really need to clean that up. But again, there are certain things that are very helpful at healing and eliminating autophagy. And activating cellular senescence is one of the biggest things. You know, one of the things I found that is really good for senescence in terms of the studies out there.

Starting point is 00:22:06 Again, we mentioned fasting would also be what is probably the single biggest thing, but also prayer and meditation. just reducing stress. Stress is hard it harms yourselves. Think about it. It's causing cellular damage. And I want to think about it like this. They call senesic cells zombie cells. It's like it's like the living dead.

Starting point is 00:22:27 That's what they call it a zombie. It's a cell, but it's like a former part of itself. You know, I had a somebody, a friend I knew in high school. And he smoked lots and lots of weeks. You just started doing a lot of drugs. And it was so sad because, you know, Star-out. athlete and academically just so great, all these things. And he just did it to the point to where he was just,

Starting point is 00:22:49 uh, kind of lost all ambition. Have you guys ever known anyone like that? Like somebody that just did a lot of drugs and it was almost like, they're like a shell of themselves because of it. So it could have been everything from childhood trauma to drugs to all these things. Well, that same thing that can happen to a person as a whole. What's happening to them at the cellular, if we would bring in and bring a microscope on that person of what's happened,

Starting point is 00:23:11 they have all this senescenta. cell communication where even their your cells mirror you in a way and if you are psychologically sick and you have had that many toxins drugs toxins damage your body you your cells end up like you in that same way their age their damage they're you know they're they're they're um they're uh just a fraction of their former self and so cellular senescence now the good news is you can start to heal cellular senescence by just really nourishing your body and doing combination of nurturing and cleansing. You know, there's a diet protocol. I think it's very good for this. It's called the Gershian therapy. This is probably the most popular. It's one of, I put in the

Starting point is 00:23:54 top three diets out there for cancer today. Max Gershyn was a brilliant medical doctor from Germany, moved to New York, saw great results in healing and curing tuberculosis and cancer and incurable diseases. And the diet was pretty much vegetable juice and liver, okay? Vegetable juice and liver and apples. I mean, you know, granny's green apples. That was like the basis of the diet. And those are a lot of the foods that help your body cleanse and get rid of these senescent cells. Okay. So very, very healing. But this is a sign of aging. There is you have these senes. And part of that is you just don't feel well. You feel lethargic. Okay. That's cellular senescence. And that's what you're feeling in your body. Number nine is this. The last hallmark of aging is stem cell exhaustion. Stem cells are your body's repair toolkit. They regenerate tissues and keep your organs functioning over time, if your stem cells become depleted or less responsive, this slows healing, tissue renewal, and immune resilience. Okay. So if you're a person who you just notice, you know, when you have something to happen,

Starting point is 00:24:56 your body just does not recover very quickly. Again, this happens as we age. But it shouldn't happen too fast, okay? That's a big warning sign. Immune system, if you get sick all the time, you know, it's like every time there's a cold, you get a cold. It's different when you're kids. You should be getting sick because you're creating that immune memory.

Starting point is 00:25:16 So that's different. But if you're older and you're sick all of the time, anytime you get sick, you get injured just with the very littlest thing and it takes a long time to heal. That's stem cell exhaustion. Okay. Your body isn't healing. There's a lot of things that can help that. Calorie restriction.

Starting point is 00:25:34 So just eating mostly meat and vegetables is very good for this and berries. Nutrients like NMN or NOMN or. N80 plus, peptides like BPC-157, TB-500, GHK-C-C-U, these help rejuvenate stem cell activity and are really powerful. In ancient forms of medicine like Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, what they would recommend for stem cell exhaustion would be, they call them Chi and Yang boosting. It's going to be a lot of the adaptogenic herbs. It's going to be aschwaganda in Ayurvedic medicine. It'll be rhodiola rosea. It will be panics ginsing, d'angquai.

Starting point is 00:26:18 These adaptogenic herbs, cortisette mushrooms, are very, very good for supporting stem cell production. And so that's the idea there is you really want to support it. But those are some warning signs. And so those are the nine hallmarks of aging, according to my belief. Now, by the way, the original nine hallmarks of aging, there are. a handful different than what I shared, but now that it's been expanded, I think these are the nine that are the most relevant that you can take action about in healing your body. Do you have unexplainable illness, hormone dysfunction, weight loss resistance, brain fog,

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Starting point is 00:27:27 And just as importantly, it comes with proper interpretation of your results. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. Now, I also want to mention, and so that's the Western functional medicine scientific idea about longevity, and those nine things you need to focus on to heal and address longevity and increasing your health span. However, do you know that longevity and the idea of it was talked about far before this in traditional Chinese medicine? And they had their own philosophy and form of medicine when it came to improving longevity. and it was called the three treasures. They believed that our health is tied to three things.

Starting point is 00:28:16 It was called Jing, Chi, and Shen. By the way, this lines up with the Bible, with things like health of body, soul, and spirit. A very similar thing in Greek medicine, very similar three Trinity that you'll find in Ayurveda. It's the three things. So Jing is body, chi is mind, or actually more, it's breath and soul,

Starting point is 00:28:37 and then Shen is spirit. And so you want to be healthy, body, mind and spirit or body, soul and spirit. And so think about it like this. Jing is really tied to your physical body. There are certain things you need to do to support that. There are certain things you need to support your breath, which is really your mindset and your motivation and your well. And then Shen is your spiritual health and your emotional health really anchored and

Starting point is 00:29:00 tied to that. And that's really tied to your identity. It's tied to your purpose, gratitude, your social bonds and relationships. and they had a much greater and holistic idea of how you can truly be healthy. I'll tell you, one of the biggest fallacies in all of medicine today, when you look at mainstream, especially in the Western world in America and Europe and Australia, is there's not a great enough emphasis on spiritual and mental health and how that impacts our physical health.

Starting point is 00:29:28 I mean, I really believe that your mental and spiritual health is even more important and then the food you eat. Okay. I think that when somebody is cancer, childhood trauma, and spiritual, you know, demons, and that could be used both in the actual spiritual sense and the non-spiritual sense.

Starting point is 00:29:55 But I think that childhood trauma, negative mindsets, all these sort of things, I think that's a greater cause of cancer today. than eating a poor diet. Our emotional stress, our childhood trauma, our negative thoughts, I think our lack of faith, I think those things actually cause more sickness and illness than actually poor diet with certain conditions in cancer probably being the number one. Okay. So today, if you go to see a doctor and you've got certain issues,

Starting point is 00:30:28 I think about this, especially issues like depression, anxiety, cancer, some of those types of conditions, if you're not addressing your spiritual and mental health, you're missing out on 50% of your healing, at least, at least. And so it's really, really important. And this is something the ancients do. This is why the Bible talks about it, right? These ancient forms of medicine that Abraham might have even had passed on the initiation of them, these are things we're not even looking at or thinking about today in often cases. Okay. And I'm telling you, they're very important. And so let's jump into these three treasures or what you might call the Trinity of longevity and ways you can improve your longevity.

Starting point is 00:31:10 Number one is Jing or body. And this is tied to, if we go even deeper there, your cell structure. What actually makes up your physical body? It cells. And so we're looking at your cell membrane and all these different areas of your cells. And if you're going to heal your physical structure, of course, you need to take care of it physically, right? There's a very specific diet.

Starting point is 00:31:31 You need to be exercising regularly, just doing the right things physically. That's one. Number two, cellular energy. Okay, so cell structures, one. Number two, cellular energy. This is tied to our breath. This is tied to some of the way that you think, healthy habits, movement, anything you need to fuel your mitochondria.

Starting point is 00:31:54 It's going to be tied to that. And a lot of that is positive thinking, right? But then it goes beyond that and even deeper, and that's tied to what I called cellular intelligence. This is this is really tied to, again, your spiritual health. It's prayer. It's meditation. It's reading a scripture like the Bible. It's, it's, and then it's doing things to serve others, live out your life purpose, know who you are, your true identity. For me, it's my identity in Christ and God. And so it's knowing who you are. If you don't know your identity, if you don't know, or if you're not living out to a degree your purpose,

Starting point is 00:32:29 If you don't have a deep intimate relationship with God and with other people, and you do that by serving them and making their life better, not focused on you, focused on them. When you do that and you have that reciprocal, somebody's concerned about you in that way in adding value to you. When you do that, you have great, you are spiritually healthy. And that floods into healing your entire body, into cellular longevity, into making you truly healthy. But we're missing this today. say something about these ancient physicians, like the Hippocrates and Maimonides and these physicians that founded Chinese medicine and Iroveda and in Greek medicine, right? They knew and understood something.

Starting point is 00:33:16 You know, today, the form of medicine we practice today is only like 150 years old. It's not that old. Chinese medicine and I are ready, 3,000 years old. And they looked at essentially millions of individual case studies in terms of forming these. So there's so much efficacy around why they work and how they work. And they're proven over time. You know how unproven mainstream medicine is? You know, I mean, here's the thing. Most people live a long time today, not because of mainstream medicine. I would say in, I don't want to say in spite of fully. We're living much longer because of proper sanitation.

Starting point is 00:33:52 Okay. Better sanitation. That's, I mean, you know, and just generally, we have more access to food. And to a degree, some quality food at that being ate a more rounded diet. But overall, the medical model of us, like, let me just say this, all these different medications for different conditions, I don't think that's really, truly increased our lifespan much, if at all. I would say if we're an emergency, our emergency medicine system is the best in the world. And it's incredible, absolutely incredible. But our mainstream medicine of like somebody comes in with high cholesterol and you give them a statin drug, I mean, it's, you know, it's or you're depressed, you're giving you intrepresent. Hey, you have nothing going on, but you're a 16 year girl.

Starting point is 00:34:39 So we just automatically give you birth control. That's harming people. That's taking years off their life. And so the biggest reason we're living longer today is sanitation. I mean, for the most part. It's a big, big thing. So, so all that being said is that these ancient forms of medicine are, are much, much more proven than our current medical model we're living in of drugs and surgeries

Starting point is 00:35:01 and chemo and radiation. And I'm not saying that there aren't good parts of it, okay? Antibiotics, if somebody has a life-threatening infection, incredible. Surgery to repair a damaged, you know, ACL, that's amazing, right? So we have some amazing things there, but a lot of it's not, it's actually doing more harm than good. When we look at one of the most important aspects of longevity, diet is always included in lifestyle. You know, in blue zone areas like Okinawa, Sardinia, Loma Linda, people are up to 10 times more likely to live past 100. And their diets are mostly consistent of whole foods, wild caught fish, vegetables, herbs, certain types of fruits, whether it's pomegranate or avocado or lemons, right?

Starting point is 00:35:50 but unprocessed whole foods tends to be part of their culture. You know what else does? Walking and moving regularly, okay? So just not for, oftentimes it's a mode of transportation, riding a bike somewhere, walking up and down hills, but a lot of time outdoors, a lot of time doing things like walking and cycling and eating whole foods. I mean, these are key. I want to mention in terms of a diet, a Mediterranean-style diet, which is more plant-forward

Starting point is 00:36:19 and high in fish and omega-3s and extra virgin olive oil is linked to a 30% lower risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's according to large observational studies. So we see this. And again, the diet is that we've talked about. It's fruit. Sometimes it's beans, by the way. I would mention that. That's getting you more fiber.

Starting point is 00:36:39 Certain types of nuts like walnuts and almonds and macadamias, green leafy vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, fermented foods, oily fish with omega-3 fats. These are the most commonly eaten foods on these longevity diets. And when you study the blue zones, they found that there are nine commonalities. They're actually called the Power Nine that allow people to live longer and have the longest lifespans. This is published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. So here's what they found, okay, that everyone that lives a long time for the most part,

Starting point is 00:37:12 what they share. Regular low intensity physical activity is built into daily life. like walking, gardening, and household chores, okay? But walking is the single biggest one. They walk a lot, okay? And so that's number one. Number two is purpose. A strong sense of purpose adds up to seven years of extra life expectancy.

Starting point is 00:37:35 Okay. You know you've got some sort of gift or something and you're contributing to society in some way. You have a purpose. The next one is downshift. There are daily routines to reduce stress, like naps, prayer, socializing, tea time. You know, this is what I see in a lot of patients that become chronically ill. From the moment they wake up to the time they go to bed, they are doing something to

Starting point is 00:38:04 try and get ahead. Constantly, every moment of their schedule is with something. Now, it's not to say, some of those people are even purpose driven, but even if they're purpose driven, it's in a way that's maybe self-serving or it's so that's taking up, I mean, they're just doing stuff every moment. You need to be purpose driven and have things you're doing that are contributing and making the world a better place. In addition, you should be working hard, but also playing hard and also resting. Okay. And so being able to downshift, that was another big part of living a long time. Here's another one. The 80% rule. They stop eating when 80% full to

Starting point is 00:38:39 to avoid overeating. They don't overeat. That's huge. By the way, that's huge in Chinese medicine. It's one of the biggest principles that you want to follow. Here's another one. wine at five moderate regular alcohol consumption especially wine with friends or food in common now here's what I'll say is really different about this one it's not drinking wine does not improve longevity okay um according to some studies when you go to a place like Italy or France where you're seeing this a lot what they're doing is at five six o'clock for the rest of the evening they're having a glass of wine they're eating a Mediterranean diet and then they're sitting there with friends and family and laughing and relaxing

Starting point is 00:39:24 and just just living in a state of joy okay now you could do that with alcohol or without alcohol I think the more more's not as good now I think I listen I'm what I believe based off the studies I've read is listen I don't think if you have one or two glasses of red wine a week it's going to take years off your life or even add years to your life okay I think that's fine I think drinking alcohol constantly all the time, it's not good for you. But I do think if your liver is pretty robust and healthy, you can have a glass of wine a day or two a week and it's not going to be a detriment to your health. But all that being said, I think that what's really happening here when you look at this

Starting point is 00:40:03 correlation, it's a lot more of this sort of, it's really connected more of that downshift, right? You get it. Here's what, let me tell you that what made me physically, when I, after a few years in practice, is I was that person before. I would wake up. And from the moment I woke up, I was doing something. Now, some of it was good stuff.

Starting point is 00:40:23 I was, you know, doing a gratitude walk or doing something. But then it was like, even after dinner, I'd go home and eat dinner. Okay. It was at night. I'd get off at 6.30. That's late already. Eat dinner at 7. But then when I was there, I would sit there and work on my computer and watch TV at the same time the rest of the night.

Starting point is 00:40:44 And I think that made me sick versus if I, And I started getting leaky gut. And I think if instead, if I would have been done with work and I would have just ate with a good friend or family and done that for two hours, I would have been so much healthier. So I don't think it's the wine or not the wine. I think it's what's happening as part of the way you eat and having a family meal and having deep relational connection. Here's another one of the power nine that causes people to live longer. belonging. Most belong to a faith-based or spiritual community, which is linked to longer life. You're finding purpose there. You're finding community there, the best things together.

Starting point is 00:41:26 So a sense of belonging to a sense of community. There are so many people that are just lonely. Or they're part of a dysfunctional community or family that's tearing them down, right? So there's a big, big difference there. Here's another one, loved ones. They prioritize family. keep aging parents nearby and invest in their children. Family, family, family, family. Okay? It's another big one that they saw in these, the lifespans here. Increase your lifespan.

Starting point is 00:41:52 And then the right tribe. They're surrounded by social circles that support healthy behaviors and positive choices. It's not just family, family. It's family that is really positively supporting one another regularly. Now, I want to talk about exercise for a minute because the type of exercise you do can cause you to age more quickly or more slowly. I mentioned earlier, marathon running, doing long distance triathlons, crossfit, for the most part. Listen, if you're doing weights for time in that way, especially after the age of 29 or 30, you're aging your body.

Starting point is 00:42:30 That's the reality. Okay. There's almost no way around it. What they found is certain sports really caused were better at de-aging. You were slowing the aging process. Now, the first one is this. Racquet sports. Tennis and pickleball and badminton.

Starting point is 00:42:49 The Copenhagen City Heart Study, which followed over 8,500 people for up to 25 years found that adults who played tennis regularly live 9.7 years longer. That's almost 10 years longer than the sedentary adults. Okay, think about that. Playing tennis can extend your lifespan by like 10 years. It's amazing. And badminton was 6.2 years. Okay. Now, they didn't have pickleball then, but there's evidence that pickleball would be very similar.

Starting point is 00:43:17 There's a study on over 80,000 people in British Journal of Sports Medicine. The fact that racket sports swimming and doing some form of aerobics were linked to the greatest reductions in death. So here's the thing. And by the way, the racket sports reduced death by 47%. The next closest swimming lowered it by 25%. and aerobics, 27%. Cycling, 22%. Cut mortality.

Starting point is 00:43:48 Weight training, 27%. Hit training was good as well for mitochondrial function. Even walking, though, can add up to 11 extra years to your life. Let me say this, though. So I had on multiple studies there. Generally speaking, in ranking order, the number one thing you can do to improve your longevity, that's racket sports.

Starting point is 00:44:06 And when I read one of the the people that analyze the study of the scientists, they said, we believe it was multi-fold. One is, when you're playing pickleball, you're doing it with friends. It's like a fun community way of bonding. It's competition. So there's a benefit there. Another one was it was good for hand-eye coordination, very good for the brain. And three, it was a form of cardiovascular fitness, but you're having to get low a lot with your legs and actually working a larger muscle group.

Starting point is 00:44:34 So there are all of these different benefits in working your core. So there are a lot of using your breath. You're getting a release actually emotionally when you hit a ball when you hit something. So there are all of these different benefits of playing racket sports. So that's number one. Number two is swimming. Okay. It's a form of exercise that's low impact where you're working large muscle groups.

Starting point is 00:44:57 You're working your lungs. Loads and loads of benefits there. Those are the top two that you can do. Then cycling, just going out and riding a bike was number three on the list as well, I believe. And then you had weight training and walking were also good in terms of things you can do. Now I want to walk you through the top herbs and supplements for longevity. Some of these have been used thousands of years for adding years to people's lives. The first one here is turmeric.

Starting point is 00:45:21 Tumric is high in a compound called curcumin, which is highly anti-inflammatory. It's going to help inflammation. It's going to help oxidative stress. There is a study that found that consuming 1,000 milligrams a day of curcumin for 12 weeks significantly reduce the markers of oxidative stress and inflammation. So that's a great one. And you could do that as a supplement. You could do it as a tumor gold milk or tea.

Starting point is 00:45:44 It's important to take it with a warming herb like ginger or black pepper to increase absorption. Ashwagand is another one. This is probably the most prized adaptogenic herb for longevity in all of Ayurvedic medicine. One study or review found that taking doses of around 300 to 600 milligrams daily significantly lowered cortisol levels, morning cortisol, and improved stress, anxiety, and fatigue. So this is a really good one for longevity. Rodeal rosaea, this is one of my favorites for improving mitochondrial health and energy levels.

Starting point is 00:46:18 This is good for stress, for mood, for concentration. Taking just 200 milligrams daily is beneficial. Koenzym Q10, this is also good for ATP function. Now, I do want to say this, Resveratrol has been one of the most popular. longevity supplements for the past 20 years. Ever since David Sinclair and some others at Harvard did some studies on, I think it was just done on worms and said, oh, it increases your lifespan by a long time. However, since then, there's been a lot of research debunking his studies.

Starting point is 00:46:48 And there's even a lot of people saying that he was getting paid sort of indirectly for the studies. And so there was, the studies should just be thrown out. So listen, resveratrol is the antioxidant found in blueberries and grapes. I think that you should eat blueberries to increase your longevity. I think taking a little rosveratrol, maybe it's fine, but I really don't think it's going to do as much for adding yours to your life as actually just eating blueberries. Okay, probably a better option.

Starting point is 00:47:23 N80 plus, we mentioned that NAD plus. It can also be found in, it's found in different forms. It's NMNN is another kind of name. for it. NADH is another name for it, but these are mitochondrial boosters that are amazing for longevity. This was one of my tops in terms of compounds. And then getting more probiotics and prebiotics to support nutrient absorption and get microbiome health. I think those are good options. And listen, there are so many other supplements. I think a lot of the antioxidant rich berries, chisandra would be very, very high on my list. Great for longevity. Triphala, which is an Ayurvetic berry blend,

Starting point is 00:47:58 also good for gut and constipation, really amazing. That would be a great one. Green tea like macha, amazing, amazing for longevity as well. So there are numerous, but I would say generally just try and get more herbs, try and get more spices, drink more herbal tea on a regular basis. I mean, when you look at Japan, who has the longest lifespan, they drink loads of green tea over there. So much herbal tea.

Starting point is 00:48:23 Here we're doing like coffee and adding butter to it, okay? That's okay, doing some coffee. And listen, genetically, that might be good for some people, but I will tell you, I do think green tea or drinking oolong and white tea, just drinking a lot more herbal teas even throughout the day would be better for us. Another big longevity habit is sleeping. Studies link poor sleep to a 25 to 30 percent higher risk of early death and age-related diseases. So all these things are really important. And of course, as we mentioned, you really want to focus on keeping. stress low. You want to focus on building better social bonds. In fact, the longest study on

Starting point is 00:49:03 longevity, it's 90 years now almost at Harvard found the number one factor for longevity was strong social bonds. And I want you to think about who are those people that are taking you down in life? Listen, if there's family, we have negative people in our family, right? But also think about who are people you could go and spend time with and pursue a relationship with, who are willing to with you return that favor and be able to build a relationship with them. You want to think about that as well. We know spending more time in nature. In fact, there's a study done in Japan.

Starting point is 00:49:39 It's on forest bathing. Showed a 40% drop in cortisol and improved natural killer cell activity. That's huge as well. Sunlight. There's the other one. Just be outdoors more in nature. Super helpful for increasing your lifespan. So again, the keys to living.

Starting point is 00:49:57 longer or this. Number one, have strong social bonds and great relationships. Number two, remember that longevity is not just about your physical health. It's about your spiritual health and your mental health and how that also impacts your physical body and longevity. So pray and meditate, be part of a faith-based community and serve others. Live out that purpose and find your identity, right? And you're going to find it there, probably, not backpacking, through, I don't know, the Himalayas or something. And then listen, exercise for longevity. Play pickleball in tennis.

Starting point is 00:50:36 Swim. Ride your bike and go on lots of walks and do a little bit of weight training. You know, weight training. Add muscle. That's a longevity muscle as well. So you want to lift weights and add some muscle there too. That's longevity exercise. And then add some of these herbs and things in your diet.

Starting point is 00:50:48 If you do that, it's going to not only add years to your life, but life to your years. Thanks for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe show. Remember each and every week, we're diving down. deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Make sure to subscribe, like, and share, and I'll see you on the next episode.

The Dr. Josh Axe Show - 9 Signs You're Aging Too Fast & How to Reverse Them

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