The Dr. Josh Axe Show - How to Live Longer and Healthier Starting TODAY | Dr. Melissa Petersen

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Did you know that your lifestyle choices can actually change how your genes express themselves? In this groundbreaking episode of The Dr. Josh Axe Show, we dive deep into the fascinating world of longevity with renowned expert Dr. Melissa Petersen. Discover how epigenetics, mindset, and personalized nutrition can help you live longer and healthier. They discuss:  Uncover the power of epigenetics and how you can influence your genetic destiny Learn why stress isn't always the enemy and how "hormesis" can boost your lifespan Explore the surprising connection between circadian fasting and longevity Discover the foods that can literally turn back your biological clock Find out why your perception of aging might be holding you back from optimal health Unlock the secrets of centenarians and their unique mindset for longevity Understand the crucial difference between chronological and biological age Tune in to this eye-opening episode and arm yourself with cutting-edge knowledge to extend your healthspan. By the end of this show, you'll have actionable strategies to optimize your genes, transform your mindset, and potentially add years to your life. Don't miss this opportunity to rewrite your genetic story and unlock your full potential for a longer, healthier life! Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Dr. Melissa Petersen Instagram Twitter Website ------  Links:  Check out the Human Longevity Institute → https://humanlongevityinstitute.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Act Show, where each and every week we'll look at growing and body, mind, and spirit and how to become the best version of yourself. And today, we have a great expert with us today, Dr. Melissa Peterson. Melissa is a pioneer in the field of human longevity, the founder of the Human Longevity Institute, and a board certified practitioner in holistic health. And she translates the science of lifespan and health span into practical and personalized advice you can use to unlock your potential. and thriving. Today we're going to be talking about anti-aging. We're going to talk about how to control. We're going to talk about if we have control over our genetics or not and how much control we might actually have. We'll also talk about the impact of stress and meditation on lifespan. And we're going to talk a lot about longevity. If you're a person who wants to live a longer and

healthier life, like you want to be a centurion, or you at least want to be in your 80s and still active and healthy and free of disease. And we're going to talk about that today. Melissa, welcome the show. Thank you, Josh. It's such a true joy and honor to be here. Excited to dive into this yummy conversation. Well, yeah, well, longevity is something I know that you've spent years and years and years practicing and learning and actually teaching. You have a whole institute that certifies practitioners and educates people on how to live longer, healthier lives. And I'm curious, You know, how did you get into the field of longevity? Because obviously there's so many different offshoots that people get into everything with, you know,

conventional medicine, basic functional medicine. It could be if you're a, you know, chiropractic practitioner or an MD or whatever it is, or specialized in something like thyroid health or autoimmune disease. But you chose longevity. Why did you choose that as your field of research? Well, I'll say that longevity actually encompasses all of that. And we'll explain that in greater details. We have our conversation today, you know, but my arc, as we all take them, didn't start

out looking for longevity. Yet, what's interesting is that as early as I could remember as a kid, I come from an Italian family. And I'd look around, I don't even know where I got the saying, but I'd look and I go, I've got good genes. I'm going to live a really long time because I had these older Italian relatives all just filled with so much, you know, life. and they're just always together and everybody looked great and they acted great. And I was like,

ah, filled with life and vitality. And then, you know, of course, I was already out on practice. I started kind of my journey into the integrative space really by way of lifestyle. So fitness, dance. I started dancing very young. I was a personal trainer and a nutritionist by time I was in my early 20s, then went and got my doctor in chiropractic. And then from there, the evolution, from there went into functional medicine, went deep down into epigenetics, went into, you know, just integrative lifestyle medicine, the deeper we go down the rabbit hole. We keep thinking it's something more and more and more, but yet it all just kind of comes back to, wait a minute, there's a beautiful innate intelligence within. And if we can just actually understand what throws that out of

balance and how to bring it back into balance, right? The body truly can heal and thrive and live a long life optimized. But when I was in my 30s, my mother at the young age of 51 was diagnosed with cancer. And just days after her 54th birthday, she transitioned out of this life. And that rocked my inner identity of what I had, I'm living a long life. And I'm like, wait a minute. Wait, the other side of the coin is my mom just left early. Like, that's young. Could that be my fate too? And so that started to have me really look. And I'm like, I know that's not my fate. Like we, the way she lives the way I live very, very different. And yet, hmm.

And so it was just kind of in the back of my mind. Like, could it be, could it be, could it be? And so I think that was one of the big inspirations that said, you know, let me understand this. Let me, let me look more, you know, let me look deeper, bigger, wider. And of course, at the same time that was all happening, the science was really busting through. Of course, we've always wanted fountain of youth. Like this humanity is, you know, how do we live as long as possible? But really around 2013 is when the science started to just become so right here that landmark hallmarks of aging came on the scene.

And then by 2017, we had some of the first research study saying, wait, we really can slow down the rate and pace of biological aging. And the last thing I'll say that will tip us into this whole conversation that why this is so important is because how we age internally, not the years on the birthday cake, directly correlates with all cause mortality and chronicity. disease. So instead of looking at do we have to treat a thyroid, right? Do we have to treat blood sugar? Do we have to treat a condition? Maybe that's a secondary effect of what's really happening at a physiological cellular level, how fast we're aging. If we could slow that down, we can also slow down our risk of disease. So I love it. And that's kind of the short, long of how I found my way into this particular arena. Wow. Well, you know, I think for myself a similar story in terms of what really brought me into the field and even solidified some of why I study

what I study, why I'm on a mission as you are to help people, you know, heal naturally is that, you know, my health crisis with my own mom and her battling cancer. And so I know that's something that that we both share in common. And I think, you know, I think about this with my own, with my own mom in terms of like, I want, one, I want to study for myself to live longer, but I want my family to love a long time. Like, I want my parents to be around in their 90s. And I was blessed to have my grandparents to live. I think I have. I had my grandfather lived to be 96, my one grandmother 95, my one grandmother still alive at 95. And so I had lived a long time, yet at the same time, again, my mom had cancer at 41 and

almost lost her life. And so I think that is a wake-up call of thinking, okay, there are things that I need to be doing proactively. And there's a great study that came out a few weeks ago that you may be familiar with that basically showed certain organs age faster than others in individual people. And so oftentimes when we think about, hey, our whole body ages at the same rate, what they find is for some people, you know, if somebody's 40 years old, they might actually have the skin of a 30-year-old and look great, but their heart is the heart of a 70-year-old. And so it's really important. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on, I want to dive a little bit into this epigenetics idea.

And if you could explain what epigenetics are and why they are crucial, the understanding of that and is caring for that in terms of. terms of our lifespan. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that question. So epigenetics, the term epi means above genetics, the gene. And really what this term is signifying is a body of science that studies how our DNA is signaled. Now, a little deeper understanding, we all get to appreciate.

At one time we were told our DNA is our destiny, it is not. Think of your DNA like your code of potential. It is your recipe book. It's your blueprint. But just because the instructions are there doesn't mean that that's actually what's going to express. So this is important because this whole field of epigenetics really looks at what is signaling the expression or the repression of our DNA. Can our code be read? Can it properly be replicated? Is it properly being repaired? Or is it being closed off? Is it being silenced? Is it being turned down?

Are we not able to actually get to it? Now, imagine if, you know, you're starting a new job, but you couldn't get instructions, you wouldn't know what to do or how to do it and how to do it successfully. So epigenetics really gives us a deeper appreciation that the quality of the inputs, the signals above the gene, inform and influence the expression of the gene. So we've all heard kind of that saying garbage in, garbage out, but this is where we get to expand out and it gives us a greater picture. You know, Josh, there's something for your audience. If they haven't heard the term, it's called the ex bosom. And this is a big fancy term to say, hey, we kind of live in this bubble, if you will, called life. And it's our sum total of exposures from the moment we're conceived

all throughout our life to all the inputs. Now, some of them we are directly giving them ourselves, right? The foods we're eating, the water we're drinking, the sunlight we're getting or not getting, the air we're breathing if we have an air filter or not. But others, we don't have control over, right? Like do we live in a city that has a lot of pollution? Do we live in a food desert? Do we live in a place where soils have been stripped? So it's this full total, EMS, social media, content, every type of input. Our body is constantly assessing. Is life safe for thriving? Or is it dangerous and we're only surviving? And this is super important because DNA, it takes thousands upon thousands of years to actually make any real changes to the hard code. So think of that instruction manual as hard code written in ink.

So how do we get information from one generation to the next? Parent to child to grandchild, that's epigenetics. It happens by way of something called a methylation mark. So we methylate, and this is a fancy term, just to say how the gene can be read, how it's being closed, or opened. And it's these methylation marks that help us to know how fast or slow we're aging. And if we can't read the information, we're aging too fast. We need to read the information. And so a bit of what we do in the field of longevity is to say, can we erase those marks? Can we get back to the code? Can we actually express our full potential as long as possible as well as possible? Yeah, it's a great way to instruct it. And I love the way you put that epi above.

You know, if you think about sort of, you know, one thing passing on from one generation to the next generation to the next generation. And we see this in some really basic studies. I think one of the first studies that really kind of woke me up to this because I think it wasn't that long ago, Melissa, where I think everybody said, no, everything is, at least in the conventional medical community, everything is fixed. There's nothing you can do. If your mom had breast cancer, you're going to have it. Or if your dad out of heart disease, you're going to get it. And there's almost like nothing. It was like a ticking time bomb.

There's almost nothing you can do. And now we're saying everything from the health of a pregnant mother, of the health of her gut microbiome, that being passed down to the kids. And almost everything that the parents do, we live in a world today. I think some of this is more of a societal philosophies and worldviews. But I think today we live in a very individualistic society. So most people believe what I do only affects me. And this could be everything from relationship with God versus, you know, in ancient history, Jews and Christian. Christians and Muslims, they all believe that, no, you're part of a body of community. So what you do affects everyone around you. But today we're very individualistic. Well, the reality is what a mom-dad does and a dad does or a grandparent does, that's affecting not just your kids, but their kids and their kids. And so it's really important when we think about legacy.

And I think that it also makes us just more aware of that all of our actions matter. The food we put in our mouth, the thoughts that come through our mind, they all matter. in terms of not only our own health, but the health of our family. So anyway, I just wanted to point out just how important it is. Well, and you know, Josh, it's interesting that, believe it or not, dads matter the most on what's epigenetically getting passed down to the offspring, 120 days before conception, the methylation marks that are in the sperm of the father will be passed to the offspring.

So if that father is in a very high stress, if what's happening in that world, at that time is things are bad. Like, it's dangerous for, for, we can't thrive. Like, there's a lot going on. There's too much. And I, I like to keep things simple in a way that we can have metaphors to make common sense because when we start to talk about these things, we talk about DNA, we talk about epigenetics. Some of us love those terms, but for most of us, it's like, what? That's a disconnect. And so, when we use a common sense approach, right? And just say, yeah, like, what does what we do? You're right, Josh, it affects, there's a ripple effect out and it affects our children, children's children, children after that, because we're taking that information in. And if we don't understand

that we are at the helm and the choices we make and or don't make can either help us or harm us, then we keep kind of unknowingly passing down misinformation, right, and closing ourselves off even more and more and more. And the more that we connect, you know, one of the, one of the strongest correlations to advanced aging, all cause mortality and disease is loneliness. So when we isolate, when we're alone, when we think it's just about us and we don't connect out, we're actually shutting down, right, so much of our own potential on so many levels. So it is really fascinating how the information gets shared and spread. And you said one other thing.

And it's so interesting. I was at a conference this past weekend. And there were several, you know, amazing thought leaders up there speaking. And one of the conversations that keeps getting brought up, and I'm sure you've got some thoughts on this as well, is this conversation around MTHR. So your audience has probably heard this term. And like, oh, I've got the MTHR gene. So basically, like, I'm broken.

Well, we all have the MTHFR gene. You know, methylation is what we're talking about. Methylation is a critical process in your body that happens every single. single day. It's just a matter of are your genes in a position that they're going to take the information in that you're giving it and work with it really efficiently and effectively and quickly, or is it going to take it longer? And it's the quality of the input. So am I giving my body folic acid or am I giving it folate? Right. And so if I'm giving it folic acid, that's not a pure form of the vitamin that I need to actually methylate and open the gene and get to the information.

So it will take me longer to break it down, which means I'm getting less and I'm going to run those cycles less efficiently. And my baby that I'm trying to develop embryonically is getting less of what it needs, meaning there's a greater rate or risk that there could be some challenges to how they're developing. But it's not that you have the MTHR gene. It's saying this information, the quality of the input matters to the very expression of our health and our life and vitality. Yeah, I've pretty strong opinions on this like a lot of things. So I will say, and one is a disclaimer, I do think if you have tested as a poor methylator or you really notice a difference taking it, I do think taking some methylated B vitamins can be fantastic. I do want to say, though, that I think one of the biggest reasons why people are having issues with methylation is the lack of organ meats in our diet. I mean, if you look at where you're going to get, the highest nutrients of methylation, it's going to be in things like liver and heart and the organ meats.

And so if somebody wants to do a real food form, and I'll just want to point this out too, you know, when you look at longevity studies, I was reading a study about how we can isolate something like resveratrol from blueberries or grape skins. And it may have minute benefits, but actually it's more beneficial to just eat blueberries or to just eat grapes.

100%. And so I bring that all up to say is I think a lot of times we still try and do these isolated methylated B vitamins, but I do think you'd be better off. I'm not saying you don't do that. those, but doing those only instead of really taking care of your gut health and your mitochondrial health and doing things to really, like, again, organ meats and bone broth and some of these foods that both help. And organ meats are like the ultimate cellular mitochondrial sort of support in certain

ways. And so, and then of course, gut health, there's some things there too. But, but a lot of it isn't, a lot of it is your body is not converting things very well. As you mentioned cellular communication, this is why I'm a big fan of mushrooms. You know, this is so important for fighting cancer, or a number of things. But yeah, feel free to elaborate on anything else there. Well, I love what you just said.

I mean, you know, we do all get kind of marketed to and programmed to think there's, we're all looking for the magic lotion, potion, or pill. And it doesn't exist. You know,

again, like, the conference I just came from was a big biohacking conference. And it's so funny that we're all looking for the hack. We're looking for the thing. And it's like, no, folks, hold on.

Truly, we know 75 to 90% of what moves the needle to create states of healing, health, and thriving is lifestyle driven. So we're looking for something outside of us. And the answer, the magic, the most advanced human technology, the greatest hack is the human body. It is us. And so if we get curious and say, wait, everything that's being developed, even vitamins, well, why are they being developed? Because they're inside nature's greatest pharmacy, right? The technology is being developed to mimic what happens here and how we connect with Mother guy at Earth. Like it's it's all trying to lead us back to ourselves, to our in to our truth that we are

part of nature. We're part of this this planet. And everything we need is actually here. Yes. To be fair, our farming practices are crappy. You know, so oftentimes we cannot actually get what we need. It may it might not be economical for people in certain places. And yet it is there. It's how it was designed. It's why we should be eating whole food diets. And I will say this one thing. I'm going to just say, gang, again, Dr. Axe and I are not your doctors. This is not medical information. We are not here to treat, cure, or manage any sickness or disease. This is educational information, right? For you to be empowered by. Keep what works, throw away what doesn't. No offense. But you might not. Some of you might like what I'm about to say. Some of you might not. But here's the deal.

down this longevity path, it has been really pushed the agenda to go just eat plant-based for the last probably five, six years has been heavily pushed. And to say that we can look at the blue zones and see that they eat a lot of plant-based, you know, a plant-based diet, that is correct. And we want a healthy gut microbiome. We absolutely need a certain level of plants. We need those beautiful complex carbohydrates because they're going to help us to create short-chain fatty acids and keep inflammation low, it's so important. However, if we look at our

human design and we understand our DNA, humans are omnivores and exactly what you're saying. You know, we shouldn't isolate. It's not about one diet, one path is right. It's just going, hey, as a human, you're an omnivore and your body at a cellular level needs very specific macro, you know, macronutrients and micronutrients. That, is a big way to say vitamins and minerals, complex carbs, proteins, and healthy fats. We need minerals, we need enzymes. That keeps the whole thing working. And to your point, if we're just trying to supplement it away, we're oftentimes missing what we can get with whole food. And I was just teaching a class last night. And I said, listen, gang, it's fine if you're

vegan. Like, I'm not downing any of that. By all means, just make sure you're getting your right essential aminos, your branchedane aminos. Your amino acids are your building blocks that when this DNA, we can have this conversation all day about epigenetics and DNA and our potential and are we over-methylating, under-methylating, any of it. But guess what? If you're not even getting the right amount of amino acids in that convert into proteins, you can run the code all day, but you're not going to replicate it properly because proteins are what build your body, right? So it's just really fascinating to me how we don't see the forest through the trees. kind of thing. You know, we just get too tunnel visioned often. And I think there's an opportunity to

expand back and appreciate the whole system of, that's kind of what you said right from the beginning. Well, this happens a lot with these, you know, longevity experts. You know, I've read several books now from whether it's Peter or Tia or David Sinclair or many of the others on longevity. And I think one of the things happens, by the way, I think these guys are brilliant researchers. Brilliant, yes. And have brought some good things. But I think one of the perspectives that I tend to have, I think because I had a much more holistic medical and health training versus MDs tend to be much more, again, think about looking at things under a microscope. That's sort of the way that they're taught is like it's a they sometimes miss some things on the outside. And again, I'm not saying those men in

particular, but I will say, I will give an example with David Sinclair here in a second, but I will say that what happens is sometimes you miss things. It's like, okay, by taking this one thing, it may decrease risk of cancer by this. But what about that, for instance, One of the arguments with some longevity experts, there's a side of these that say, well, eat less and eat very little meat, okay? And so it's only plants and get just the minimal amount of protein. And here's the thing that I don't hear them saying, which I don't think they actually, if they actually thought about they'd understand because they're incredibly intelligent. I don't think they fully understand that, you know, like they'll talk about mTOR, for example. And so basically mTOR is your body wants to get into it.

They're trying to get the body into a catabolic state for autophagy. So it starts getting rid of all the senescent cells, getting rid of all the things, versus an anabolic state is, well, that's going to help you put on muscle. So you keep yourself from breaking your hip when you're older. And so you want to find that balance there, and it's not all of this one thing that you want to do. And by the way, if I'm using language, not everybody's keeping up with. Maybe Melissa can dive in and explain some of them. You understand what I'm saying.

Yes. And then I'll give you an example of this, too. David Sinclair said he takes between him and some other experts, they take things like, they take metformin. He takes a statin drug, which blew my mind. I mean, absolutely blows my mind. And then this isn't him, but he takes an aspirin a day. And I thought to myself, like, have you done the studies and looked at the literature on statin drugs?

Yeah. And what that does to coenzym Q10 and all the nutritional deficiencies in the body. And so that's why I'm talking about. You look under a microscope saying, well, if I do this thing, it can increase my life span. But that's only in somebody that's severely diabetic. That's not in a healthy person. Correct. Okay.

Thank you. You've teed up so many things for me. So hold on tight. So again, common sense. Let's appreciate this. From the moment we're conceived, single sperm to egg, one cell goes into cell division, multiple cells that go into tissues, that go into organs, that go into systems, into one complete complex human system. So we are not a piece. We're not a part.

We're not just a singular cell. cell. We're more than 37 trillion cells, right? So this collection, but we can learn a lot from a cell. We can appreciate its mechanism of action, but then it's kind of going, nothing lives in a petri dish. And yes, when we do studies, we're looking in, you know, really closed off containers without all the other stimulus, not real world, real time, what's actually happening. And we're looking under very specific conditions. So if we get excited about just coming back to trust our own common sense that there's multiple things here. Let's first tackle the pathway issue. So you were referring to mTOR and senescence. So for everybody listening, this idea of, well, should I

actually eat less and eat less meat? Because I can appreciate as a consumer and just a listener in this conversation, it can feel really confusing. One platform says one thing, one says another. Who do you trust? Who do you listen to? First, listen to the wisdom of your body, right? And the reason that this is being said, and it is so far, funny, it's all around this pathway. So there are what are referred to as nutrient sensing pathways, and there's two main ones. Think of them like switches. M-Tor is a growth. It says, things are abundant. It's time to grow. We're going to take these materials and we're going to build muscles. We're going to build tissues. We're going to store fat. We're going to do a lot of great things. We need that

because if m-tore isn't active, we're not healing and we're not repairing. So if we take something that shuts mTOR off all the time like metformin, then we are really reducing our ability to actually not only build new muscle, to your point, Josh, but repair the damage that we're doing every single day. Amp K is a pathway that says that activates to sense, oh, times are lean, like the potato famine, we're not eating, we have got to slow down and conserve. So it becomes a way to metabolically create a little bit of efficiency. It doesn't totally slow down your resting metabolic rate, but it's conserving the nutrients and saying let's do better with what we have and let's make it go further. It's almost kind of a rationing, which is also too extreme, right? And so we want to

be metabolically flexible. Flexible. That's part of what's being missed from the conversation. If we're going to live a long time, we have to have muscle. And so protein is actually, actually a meta, it activates mTOR, like just eating proteins. And that's why they're saying don't eat protein. Because when you ingest protein, it puts us in a catabolic state. It wants us to build. And they're saying, no, no, no, no, don't do that. But gang, the leading, one of the leading risk factors of aging is a, is a condition called sarcopenia, where we start to waste our muscles. And yes, if you don't have muscle, how do you expect to walk through life? How do you expect to, literally this weekend traveling, I couldn't believe how many people that were probably

in their 50s and 60s couldn't even lift their suitcase over their head to put it in the overhead compartment. So we're missing. You know, we listen to these little studies and these, these opinions, but then we don't take it to ourself. And so I would ask everybody, and one thing I think Peter Atia does well, I do like how he sets the stage. He said, he thinks of the centenary and decathlon. And so, you know, we're going to talk. mindset here in a moment because I think if there's one place everybody starts, don't go look for another supplement to add to your cabinet. Let's really talk about some things that you can do that can immediately add years to your life and life to yours today. But one of the places it starts with,

how are we thinking and perceiving this entire journey? So he talks about going, okay, you know, how do you want to be at whatever age you want to get to? So if you think you want to make it to 100, how do you want to see yourself at 100? How do you want to be, what are the things you want to be doing at that age. And then we backcast and we say, okay, what do I need to do I need to do do I need to eat? How do I need to eat? How do I need to sleep? How do I need to love? How do I need to invest? How do I need to design my life with more intentionality? So I have a greater chance of getting there. And that is a really, really important thing. But it's not, well, I'm going to take an aspirin a day. It's going, we're still trying to bypass

instead of optimize what's innately in us. Yeah. And you hit on something just a little earlier that I think is so critical and it's, you know, comes down to a famous philosophical saying in that is know thyself. And I think what, when I think, just to give you an example, if people, when I think about the people who have the greatest level of spiritual growth in longevity, you think about mystics. It could be Jews. It could be Christians. It could be Buddhist. But the monks, you think about people that are very serene. They're very self-aware. And I would also say in a very similar sense, the people I know that tend to be some of the healthiest, people, they're very self-aware and in tune with their own physiology because I've come across

people who, you know, as we talk about, if somebody does have cancer, we want them to be less anabolic. We want them to be more catabolic, right? And so in that case, it's like, well, we want to do more vegetables. We want to do so maybe more fast to lose all muscle, but we want to get you more in that state versus if somebody is, as you're talking about, they can't put a suitcase overhead and they have weak bones. Well, we really need to get you in more of an anabolic state to build the bones, to build the muscles, to build the body. And so you want to become self-aware. Now, there's blood work that can help you do that.

But I would say even more, there's, you know, an acupuncturists tend to be very good at telling you where you're at in some of those states. But overall, it's really important for you to know your own body because, I mean, again, most people tend to embrace an ideology of paleo, keto, vegan, or carnivore now. I mean, there's all these different diets, but the reality is, everybody is that. completely unique, as you said earlier, and they need a very specific diet for them. This is why I think combining longevity with, which it should be, personalized medicine for the individual is so important. Completely. And so I love that you said this. So we train practitioners and clinicians over at the Human Longevity Institute, and I always tell my docs. I'm like, step number one is you

always say, for what reason? So, and even when I've got some of our age reversal programs that people come into. I'm just like, they're like, okay, so I'm doing an omad. I'm only eating once a day. Okay. All right. Everybody wants to intermittent fast. I'm on a 16-8. Okay. Why? Well, I heard on, you know, this podcast, that is a good thing. Is it good for you? What do you mean? Here's what I mean. For what reason. Josh, you just said it so perfectly. A lot of the studies that get cited in these interviews are accurate and appropriate under certain set circumstances. So for example, when the benefits of intermittent fasting were actually discovered, it was discovered based on cancer treatments. Okay. So yes, there's benefit to intermittent fasting. And we can talk a little bit about that if you

want. But to be real, real clear, what started, the whole thing was, okay, when we go into an extended state without consuming food, we take the body out of that overactive mTOR overfed state, because let's face it, gang, modern living, we are over-stimulated, we're over-fed, we're undernourished, we're under-rested, right? So we're constantly in this hyper-drive state that's keeping the body in a very pro-inflammatory state. It is keeping it in, actually, you know, not to scare people, but the way that we live, foot always on the galley, pass pedal, always needing another dopamine hit and more stress just to more, more, more, more, more, more, more food, more, all the things. Less sleep. That's a pro-cancer state. Like, we're constantly staying in this anabolic, big, big, build, build, build.

So the idea is saying, wait, we have to stop that. Let's activate these other pathways so that we can pump the brakes and we can see, do we have to use chem? Do we have to go really extreme? Can we do some other things first during after? Yes, yes, and yes. Was that? the answer. So it does bring down. It does promote, as Josh said earlier, something called autophagy gobbles up all of these. We'll just call them inflammatory cells. There's a type of cell called a senescent cell, an easy way that everybody we like to call it in the longevity space is a zombie cell because they're not working the way they're supposed to anymore, but they actually didn't go through what's called apoptosis where they break down and leave. So they didn't actually die and they're still not really alive. So they're kind of in this in-between state, but they're stressed.

And they send out these distress signals and they send it out to all the other cells around them. And they kind of like start to take over the tissue and the territory. And it's very pro-inflammatory. So we always want to say for what reason? And from a clinical standpoint, anybody listening, if you're already, you've got a diagnosis, you've got signs, you've got symptoms, you know that your health is not optimal and you are know thyself, you are feeling out of balance. Things are often not right.

then you would need a slightly different approach, right? Maybe a more targeted, precision-based protocol, short-term, not for the rest of your life, to kickstart certain things. You might be a candidate to do a 5-2 fast or a 16-8 fast. We might approach your protocol differently than somebody else who is taking more of a wellness approach. And we talk a lot through the Institute about circadian fasting. You eat with the sun, you fast with the dark.

That's how our biology was designed. And then you don't have to worry about what time is it. Should I eat more, eat less? You follow the cues of nature. And there's more. I'll take a pause in case there's anything before I keep going because you just got me all lit up here. Yeah, yeah. I want to go on with the tuna fasting because I'll say this.

I think more than 50% of people could really benefit from intermittent fasting. And the reason that you said is people, people, are typically getting too much. It's constant, just too much, too much food, too much stimulation, too much. And our body needs to regenerate. And your body can regenerate at the highest level in terms of its ability to clean up, you know, get rid of those, as you mentioned, the zombie cells, that age you, the cause that inflammation aging and things in the body. We need to be able to get rid of those. But, you know, but my favorite form of fat, by the way, the things that have probably have the biggest influence on my nutritional and health philosophy have been the Bible, have

been Chinese medicine and probably more of this sort of cellular medicine, you know, space looking at the scientific literature. So those have all really influenced me. But when I look at a lot of the, you know, religion of the past, you know, they tended to fast at certain times of the year. For instance, a lot of Jews and even Christians in the early church, they would fast on what, do intermittent fasting where they only ate dinner on Wednesdays and Fridays. And then they would have certain feast days and holidays. And so with that, though I think that's really good to promote something that this is another term. By the way, there are so many terms, by the way.

We're not trying to confuse everybody with the millions of terms here, but it's kind of hormesis, which basically where it's stress that benefits you. It's good stress. And so when you get, and by the way, this is the best foods, if you think about wine like this,

when the best wine, actually the wine gets higher in risveratrol, that anti-heart disease, anti-cancer molecule, when there is more sunlight and heat on the grapes and the leaves, and there is less water. So without irrigation, it's called dry farm wine.

And so when that happens, the more stress, it actually produces more chemicals in response. Well, our body is in a very similar way. This is why cold plunging could also be seen as good. And it's similar to fasting as your body starts to adapt and do things to make itself more resilient in the future. So I think fasting oftentimes, the way that has been done historically, where you pick maybe a day a week or something like that could be beneficial to. But as you said, it is all individualized. You really need to listen to your own body. By the way, if you do a fast, and you're like, this is hard, I shouldn't do it.

My body's telling me not to. It doesn't mean that exactly. Sometimes you want to do hard things. But you do want to be able to listen to your body over time and adapt and create something that's great for you. And yes. And so where I would actually invite people in, that's a really safe place, it's actually attuned to how our hormones naturally release and cycle. And so I make the analogy, it's similar like a race car driver. What is that called drafting?

Like in a race car situation, the lead car, another car can come right up behind it. And it can benefit from it. So it doesn't have to use as much gas. It doesn't have to use as much effort. It's getting all the gain based on the car right in front of its work. And so I try to help everybody coming in. Again, if you're feeling like I'm really, I don't know where to start. I am disregulated.

I feel like I need a shift. I need a change. but I don't think I could just go eat one meal a day. That feels a little hard for me. But what should I do? So circadian timing, how our hormone cycle with the light in the dark, the 24-hour light-dark cycle, what we know in the literature is that in the morning, as the sun comes up, your cortisol is going to start to come up. And this is good. It's going to get you up and out of bed. And into the day, It's prompting you to go out and be in nature, in the sunlight. And that's going to actually how well you rise determines how well you rest at night.

You make melatonin in the morning. So you want to get up, see that sunlight. But we know that around 8 a.m. is the first time the hormone ghrelin, gur, I'm hungry, starts to fire in the body. Around 1 p.m. is the next time it fires. And then again, at 6 p.m. And so we can see these cycles. Now, you might be like, Melissa, I hear this from people all the time, but I'm never hungry.

Well, it's because your body's really disconnected right now. So I'm like, just trust me, just start with these simple things, and your clock will reset very quickly. It can happen in as short as a few days to just a week. So you don't have to eat a ton, but if you just start right around eight, right around one, right around six, and you work on that, you already have a 14-hour fasted cycle, right? Am I right on that? Yeah. So you're getting, you ideally, we want at least a 12-hour fast.

every day without consuming to start to get some good benefits. But we get closer to that 14-hour mark that's even better. So this is a way to practice intermittent fasting and to bring our body into a more metabolically balanced and flexible state. So we actually get greater gains without working as hard, hence kind of that drafting principle. And it becomes easier and easier. And you start to burn fat. You start to have more energy. You start to slow down those clocks of aging. You sleep better at night. You're repairing, you're restoring, you're rejuvenating. It sinks things up in a really beautiful, beautiful way. That's great. I want to switch gears here and talk a little bit about what are some of the foods that most promote longevity based on your research? Yeah, so I love,

so there's the big category we would call them bioactive. So these are our polyphenols. Like we're seeing her talking about blueberries. That's one of them. There are some of Kara Fitzgerald's work. She kind of coined the term epitinutrients. And these are really nutrients that impact methylation. It's not going to surprise us. It's going to be our dark green leafies, things that we hear all the time, right? So eating broccoli and eating spinach and getting our dark berries, getting meat. Meat is in there. Fish is in there. Eggs are in there. It's about getting our proteins. These are very, these are epinutrients that our body needs. So they're nutrient dense. You don't have to eat as much to get a lot of good, good, good.

nutrients in your body so that it's like less does a whole lot more. And we've got we've got a whole resource, you know, over on the Human Longevity Institute and a blog just kind of dedicated to it. But yeah, the easy answer is look up bioactive nutrients, look up your polyphenols, look up your epinutrients, and you're going to see things that you're like, oh, everybody talks about this. So I really should eat some dark berries and eat some meat and get those organs and, oh, those are going to help me live longer better? Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's a balance. You know, people say eating by the rainbow, it's true. I know it's not, you know, cool and sexy anymore, but it's true. And yeah, and this is why quality matters, too. You think about something like extra virgin olive oil. If you're getting real quality extra virgin olive oil, it's strong, it's pungent. You're tasting those polyphenols. It's like herbs bursting in your mouth. First, if you taste something, it's, a lot of it is watered down with canola oil. And so you're not getting those same benefits. And so again, you know, quality matters with these foods as well. wow. But yeah, I think you hit on some some really, really important ones there. And, you know, Josh, if I may for a second, I'd like to invite your listeners to just say,

okay, this is like, I'm loving this. I could sit and just chat your ear off all day because it's like, ooh, you get two people in a room that love these types of conversations. Yet, I sit, it's so funny, again, this weekend, one of the questions that came from an audience member was like, okay, there's all these, all these great pieces of equipment and supplements, and there's all these things, right? If I'm going to make an investment, what's the one thing I should do? And here's how he started.

He goes, yeah, yeah, I know there's this low-hanging fruit of all the lifestyle stuff. Everybody keeps kind of talking about that in their talks, but there's all these other cool things out here. What should I do? What should I eat? What should I? And I'm like, okay, all the low-hanging fruit,

are you actually doing it? And, and, and let's pull it back even more. Like, all these beautiful things we're discussing for what reason? Well, how long do you even want to live? How are you living today? What do you think about aging? What do you think about your life and yourself today? Because, Josh, you've mentioned it several times, know thyself, and it's a really important statement, and yet it could be hard. We can get super confused, but I don't know if I know. And we are served information all the time in today's society that would have us question, doubt, you know, kind of feel almost wrong.

Should I dare I even say this is what I believe I might get canceled? Ooh, like we are being put in such a state that it becomes really scary to know thyself. And yet, if we don't know what we want, if we don't know what feels good and what feels bad, how can we say yes, please, and thank you and no thank you? More to this, less to that. How can we even, it doesn't matter what molecules you take. It really doesn't. And guess what? If you're sitting down to eat every day and you're fasting and you're hating it and is causing you stress, that's aging you. So I would so much rather start with the six inches of the most valuable real estate

right here, right, between our, in our head space, because we know that how you perceive, how you perceive your view of the world, it informs and influences right back to the to epigenetics, not just your DNA, but it informs and influences how long you live, how well you live. It influences your life. There was a beautiful study. It was the Ohio Longitude Study on Aging. And Dr. Levy and her team went and looked at this 20-year data set of information that was collected. And it was all about retirement. What happens when people retire? And they were kind of looking at what really drives, what happens after we retire and how well, how long do people live. And what they pulled from this research was that perception of aging, what you believe about

aging directly will add seven and a half years or take seven and a half years from your life. What does that mean? If you, right? Huge. So I mean, resveratrol doesn't even get, there's nothing out like to give seven and a half years and it can all just happen with our percent, like how you view life, is life happening for you or to you? Do you want to live better longer? It's okay if you don't. Don't feel that you have to jump on the bandwagon because everybody's talking about it. Be willing to be honest with yourself. And even if right now you're like, no, I actually don't know. I don't. Life kind of sucks right now. I don't know if it could be better. Then at least be willing to be truthful with yourself in that moment and go,

this is the truth now, but what if it could be better? What if I could change my trajectory. What if I could start to notice what lifts me up, feels good to me, makes me curious, makes me engaged. So our perception of aging is simply this. Do you perceive it as something positive? I'm saging. I can't wait to, I get wiser. I feel like an elder. I value my life and all of my experiences and it's so rich and wonderful and I just can't wait for the next and the next and more and more. That's the type of mindset that's going to give you an extra seven and a half years. If it's, oh, I'm just getting older. How many people? Oh, I'm getting older. Please, if you hear yourself saying that, just go, oh, I just don't say it's, I'm getting older.

Oh, I feel off today. That doesn't mean you're getting older. And what do I want to do about it? Oh, I'm achy today. What do I want to do about it? You can do anything with it. But the moment you start to say, oh, I'm getting older, that means something to you. Oh, I'm breaking down. I'm not working as well. I'm slowing down. I have an excuse to be less alive and vital and vibrant. And as you think, you inform those emotions, your thoughts are producing chemistry that's inputs, equal output, that's talking to your DNA. So it's like, oh, we're getting older. This isn't needed. We're moving slower. So I guess we're going to slow down. So just in how you begin to appreciate life can radically shift how you're experiencing life.

You know, I did a social media post. This was, oh, probably six months ago on longevity. And I said, here's the top 10 longevity foods. And can I tell you the most surprising and to a little bit disturbing thing from the whole thing was the number of people that said, I don't want to live to be 100. That was actually overall the most common response. I agree. And you know what, Josh, I'm with you. And I've had to face that as well. And I'm like, you know what? Yeah, because everybody thinks, like, in the longevity space, we assume people want to live to 100. But I have chills on that. I'm so glad you said that. Because this is really it fundamentally. When we look around right now, life doesn't look like it's worth living to 100. You know, there's not a lot of places that just naturally feel inviting, engaging, good. It feels hard. It feels stressful. It feels uncomfortable. For many, many, many,

many people. We just look at the stats and we see the types of medications and how many medications. And if you just think antidepressants for a moment, which we know at least one in 10 people are on, and I think the number is even a little bit higher now, but just that. And I'm not making a judgment on it. Like it's okay, you know, but here's the thing. Fundamentally, we're trying to not feel. We're trying to disassociate because all those SSRIs are doing are, they're literally conserving the little bit of serotonin you have. Nothing's showing you how to actually build yourself back up and build up states of aliveness and actually promote mental health. So so many of us are already looking through a lens of lack, limitation, not enough, just got to get by. And we're not

hearing enough uplifting conversations that help us to believe and know that more is possible. And more is possible. Life can be whatever we choose it to be. I love the example of Roger Bannister in the four-minute mile. It was said it was impossible until it wasn't, right? And then then literally within six months more and more and more and more people started to run that mile because somebody went out and did what was thought to be impossible. So when the unknown becomes known, right? The impossible becomes possible. We realize, wow, wait, maybe I could do that too. So I'm not here to tell people, yeah, want to live to 100. No, I just want you to want to live today. Let's just start today. Because what we do today is what determines our tomorrows. And if we're

not taking care of ourselves today, if we're not loving ourselves, if we're not supporting ourselves, if we're not nourishing ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, right, environmentally, if we're not nourishing ourselves today, of course we're not going to want to live along tomorrow. So, you know, maybe we can just have a little tenderness and kindness and appreciation for ourselves, notice what we do well, what we do right, what we want more of, and give it to ourselves. Yeah. You know, I think, a lot of people who, and sometimes I ask questions why in this post. And one of the things I think that I uncovered that you're going to say, and you're maybe already familiar with this, but

a lot of times people saw their parents' age or grandparents very poorly. They could have been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's. It could have been severe arthritis. It could have been a number of things. And I think that they put themselves in that same position saying, well, I don't want to be like that in my 80s, I'd rather, I'd rather not be here. But I think if I would ask people, hey, what if you could live to be 90 and still be golfing or playing tennis or running around with your grandkids or sexually active or, you know, with your spouse or a number of things? Like, what if you were able to do all of those things and actually feel like you were in your 50s at 80 or 90? Like, then would you still want to live another 10 years if you're able to do all those

things you love to do? And then most people are like, well, yes, you know, I'd want to be able to do that. And there's two other things I picked up from what you shared. You used the word why several times. And I think this is really important. Yeah. There was a study done recently. I think this was a Gallup study, and they asked people how many people know what their purpose is.

Right. And it was only 25% of people. And that connects to that Ohio study with retirement. A lot of times people feel like their job is their purpose. And if you don't have that. And, you know, when I, whether I'm coaching somebody on their health or helping someone in their business or counseling someone, myself or others on how to grow spiritually. The answer to two questions is really important.

It's why and who? Why? That's your purpose of like, why did you get out of bed this morning? Why do you exist? You said, why would you want to live to be 100 or not, right? So that question of why. So when you can answer that question, here's why and find your purpose, that's key. And the other thing is who, right?

You, but also, and this is connected to identity. So it's purpose and identity. So identity is very much who, who are you? And then who is God? Because our identity is always connected to someone or something. It's ourselves, God, our community. There's a quote by A.W. Tozer and he says something like this, that, you know, what you believe about God is the most important thing about you.

And because that impacts your identity in a pretty great way. If you believe I'm a divine being, I'm created to live for eternity. And my life here is like a speck of sand on an endless timeline. Well, if you believe that, then you're living. living the ultimate longevity life, right? Like knowing that what I do today, we talk about epigenetics. It echoes here, you know, for this time on Earth. It echoes through eternity.

And so when I know who I am and I know my purpose, it really fuels things. So I just bring that up to say, I do think, and by the way, in Chinese medicine, purpose was tied to chi, which basically is your life force, your life energy, all those things. So knowing your purpose and your why, as you said, that's one of the most important longevity factors, which ties into mindset, which you were sharing about, which is so powerful. It really is. And I just, I know we don't have a ton of time left, but I do want to point this out because I've had so many people. I mean, I watch those stats on our client intake forms, because we do a whole profile, a whole lifestyle and well-being and mental emotional. So we can

see where people are at with purpose. And you're right, it's about 20%. And then they get stressed about, but I've got to find it. What is it? I don't know. So there's, this idea that we're somehow supposed to know this purpose, this thing. And what I help people to appreciate, and hopefully this can help your listeners, is it's not about just one thing. You're not here for one thing. You're here. You're here. You are your purpose. Like, you're alive with purpose. The purpose is to experience the moment and to bring the most of you, the most of you to that moment because when you show up in a moment, as you give, man, you receive so much. If you're just willing to just even listen to the birds, to feel the breeze on your face, there's so

much aliveness that you get to experience. And so I would encourage you that it's as simple as begin to notice what feels good, what's interesting, what evokes curiosity, a sense of wonder, a sense of maybe a little excitement or interest. right? So when you get senses of, hmm, lean into that, those are the things that you are just, your soul is kind of calling you towards. And you don't have to go start some big mission and save the world. The world doesn't actually need saving. We all just need to remember, remember our, divine expression. And so those little things are kind of like, you know, voices, voices of your soul just saying, this is you, this is you. See, this feels really good. The things that feel really

crappy that drain you, that overload you, that drag you out, you go, oh, thank you, no thank you. Maybe not so much of that. Maybe if I do less of that, I'll want to get out of bed more, right? If I keep doing that, I want to crawl back in bed. So let's simplify to give ourselves some grace and let it be fun to find our why each day. Because yes, that's part of that study and the perception. And you said one other thing that I want to give a little hope to everybody. If you do have concerns of, I don't want to lose my memories like I've watched my parents do. In that same study, the Ohio aging study, what was found is just, again, this perception of aging, this will to actually live, you have a positive perception of aging. That reduced the expression of cognitive decline by 40%.

Wow. 40%. Yeah. Wow. You know, so it's beautiful. It's so beautiful if we understand that life really is here for us. That's so good. You know, I think we've talked a lot about a lot of lifestyle.

We've talked about mindset. We touched on food a little bit. I'm curious your thoughts on supplementation for longevity. When you think about, you know, I do think that remember this for everybody. I know you're going to agree with the supplements are for supplementing a healthy diet, lifestyle and mindset. But when you do think about supplements that may promote longevity, what are some of the few that might stand out to you? Okay, so I will say this, just for everybody, like, resperatrols actually come under fire.

Like, it isn't, it is a great phytonutrient. It does give us a lot, but the claims of age reversal is actually not standing up in the literature. And like NMN, not standing up in the literature. And, you know, because everybody's saying, all right, what's really the precursors? This gets into cellular health a little bit, you guys, as far as why would we choose a certain supplement? So I like to back out. There's one, and recently there was a study, and what's funny is the charts are hard to get all. There was six, they've looked at kind of everything that's out there,

Respiratrol, rapamycin, metformin, they've looked at some of the different molecules that are often discussed. And there was really only six needle movers. And I will get the study. I'll send it over to Josh in case you want to put it in the show notes. But one of the ingredients, one of the ingredients that came up, up was calcium alpha ketogluterglutrate. And so this molecule has, and I'm not going to name any brands because I don't want to, we're not here to endorse anybody today. But there was a ton of information and research done out of Buck's Institute of Aging. And this molecule has been shown.

It does remodel the DNA. It is validated that on an average use in about, with about as eight eight months of use. They're seeing upwards of eight years of biological age reversal, which sounds like a huge claim. But they're looking at 18 month, 24 month DNA remodeling. So we do know that there are some molecules out there that are actually affecting the DNA. So there's some sets of supplements that we need just to come in to help run the methylation, right? So I'm actually a huge proponent going, yeah, let's make sure that we've got our bees. Let's make sure we've got folate. Let's make sure we got 12. Let's make sure we got niacin because niacin helps us to actually make NAD. Like we do want a foundational good multi-vitamin mineral because most of us are not getting

it. We do need enzymes. We're not getting them. We definitely need magnesium. Holy comole do we need magnesium? We're not getting it, right? And these are critical for cellular function, coline, critical, zinc, critical. So we do have some critical minerals and vitamins that I just believe everybody should.

be getting. Get it in whole food. If you can, if you can't, then we need to look to supplement. But specifically, age reversal, DNA, remodeling, my short list is going to be alpha ketocluterate. I do a lot, and you probably like this in more of the regenerative space. I teach a lot on peptides. Peptides and bioregulators kind of fall into the organ meats. You know, we're looking at glandulars. And so really kind of putting back in what's designed in the body that starts to decline with age. So I like, there's great studies around epitallon. There's really important studies around, you know, our thymus gland starts to decline. So getting thymion, thymus glandulars, thymus and alpha. So there's a couple of categories, but that's a real fancy way to say we need to help our immune system modulate so it can keep up with and respond properly to all the inflammatory cascades coming at it. So I, my big thing, that I would say because I get people coming to me all the time with their fancy. And I actually really like spermidine a lot. There's a lot of phenomenal research around spermadine and the impact that

it makes across the hallmarks of aging. And they've got a phenomenal study. I'm not, I got to, I got like a peek behind the curtain of a study that's going on. So let's just, hence to say that they're about to prove a pretty huge discovery around senescent cells with spermadeen. And I can't, you know, early reveal, but that one is definitely a big one. And I think other than that, when all of a sudden you see everything becoming really popular, like NMN, Respiratrol, not to take away from Dr. Sinclair, but look who's behind it. Look who looks to profit, right? And I'm not saying that there's not literature to go with it, but some of this stuff, it's like, do we really know? Let's give it some time to shake out. Make sense. Could work. If we understand cellular biology.

but a lot of things right now are still a lot of hype that haven't fully been sussed out. So we want to bring down inflammation. We want to make sure the cells have the right nutrients to function right. We want to practice good lifestyle. We want to sleep because if we're sleeping, we're repairing and rejuvenating. And then I think really the peptides and the bioregulators are going to be some of the biggest molecules that are going to move the needle the most. And there's a lot of studies out showing that they do. Yeah, it's so good.

You know, as you talk about spermadeem, what are some foods, just a handful or a couple that are high in spermadeem? Yes. Oh, gosh. Well, it's in wheat. So this is a real conundrum, isn't it? Wheat germ. So because that's gluten. There is a brand that has, and again, I'm not mentioning brands.

There is a brand that does have a gluten-free the way they've been able to extract it. But really, wheat germ is going to be one of your best places to get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a few other foods. I'm trying to remember them off.

I want to say some there's some nuts and some other things. But anyways, yeah, there are. And I should know you guys, but I don't know it off the top of my head. I'm not going to misguide you right now. I'm asking you everything under the sun. So you can go online like a spermitting rich foods. And I think it goes back to this what we talked about. Eat a lot of berries.

You know, eat some great protein sources. Do a lot of vegetables. I mean, and you're going to really, you know, cover a lot of areas. a lot of air is mushrooms again. I'm a huge fan of those for cellular communication, but a lot of those things are going to help you age better and turn back the clock a little bit, too. Talk to me about chronological versus biological aging. Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah. And let me just say water, you guys, water is our conductor. We're one big electrical circuit. So you've got to have clean, purified water, you know, even structured water as a whole other conversation. And the last thing I

will say, and I will talk chronological versus biological, the other thing that makes the whole thing run is oxygen. And you don't have to go do hyperbaric. You literally need to slow down your rate and pace of breathing, breathe slow, low down into the belly to expand those lungs and in and out through the nose. We dump way too much CO2 every day, too much, too much talking, too much mouth breathing, and we lose the pressure gradient that actually drives the oxygen into the cell. So we need to be oxygenated. And if there was one thing that we found during COVID is, right, when we're losing oxygen, we're not staying, having oxygen saturation, we're, they're out. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they're, they, they, they, they're, they, they're, they, they're, they're, they're, that, that's, that's, that's a lot, that's a lot, have the white, have water, so that all those good signals can be conducted and have oxygen, so you can get the main source into the cells that make the whole thing run. And this is why, you know, there, there's a little,

bit of research on VO2 max and just taking even if this one day a week going and doing a little bit of interval training it could be you know one minute on one minute off or four minutes on four minutes off could be on a spin bike or a pool or treadmill but that's you know just again it's not like I think people think a lot of times oh exercise wise I got to go every every day well actually even just one day and add in a bunch of walking every day outside of that I mean walking of course is great but makes a difference yeah 100 percent that's going to increase that load it's going to help you to get more in, which is why Dr. Axis is saying that. So it's not just go exercise to exercise. We were born to move, you know, and listen, there are, there's massive, there's so many different

bodies of research that have really looked at the power just of walking. So on the low side, it can extend your health span, lifespan, lifespan by five years. On the high side, 15 years, by walking. Walking daily. You don't have to go get a gym membership. Just move. And, but to, To answer the question you just asked, chronological versus biological, and really why this whole conversation around longevity is even important right now, chronological age, this kind of takes us back to where we started, is how many years you've been alive, like what, how many candles are on the birthday cake? Biological age is, again, what's happening at the cellular, at the organ, at the system level. So in the beginning, you were saying, hey, you might have the skin of a 30-year-old,

but the heart of a 70-year-old, and that's very true. So if we think, I think, first of all, the heart's always pumping, right? My adrenals are supposed to calm down and go to bed at night, and some of us don't have that. But point being is that different organs already by way the job they do in the body are needed more, right? There's more of a workload on them. We only get so many heartbeats throughout our life. And so we want to think about when, and this is why just actually taking your resting heart rate every morning, we'll tell you a lot about the health of your system. because if you're already zinging up over 74 beats per minute straight out of the gate, we already know you have got a radically increased rate and risk of all cause mortality. Okay, so you're going to be aging a lot faster. We can see you're over 74, your body's in stress.

That is a stress event for your body. And so that's going to have you aging faster biologically at a cellular or organ level. Your tissues are breaking down quicker. So when we talk about slowing and reversing biological age, this is just common sense. If we're not going us fast, we're not breaking down as quickly, there's more time to repair, there's more time to recover, and there's a greater opportunity to stay resilient, to stay functional. And that's really it, right? And where we're at now, and it keeps changing.

Man, unfortunately, it's going in the wrong direction. But we have a gap between what's referred to as health span, how long we are living healthy and well without a symptom or a diagnosis, and how many years we are living. Okay, so now U.S. stateside, we're about 78 years. It dropped. 76 men, 78 women. And we know that on average, most people have one,

they have one, if not four, diagnoses by time they are, 64. 64. So by time we're 64, we're already having some pretty significant event. So we have a gap. My health is breaking down. I'm not recovering. I'm not feeling alive. I'm slowing down. I'm losing my memories. Whatever the thing is that's happening. It's happening at 64, not 78. We should be happy, healthy, happy, healthy, happy, healthy dead. Right? We were designed to be able to easily live. we know that this human body can easily live until at least 130. At least. We have a massive gap in what our potential is and what we're expressing. So this is why that the industry says, okay, well, wait a minute, first, can we just fill that gap? Right. Because for every year, for every year that we are

sick earlier and earlier, it's a $3.8 trillion cost to just to our gross national product. However, However, huge study, this was out in 2020 and sell, that we know that we can add one year of health, one year of instead of getting sick at 64, if we can give them just one more year to 65, we infused 38.2 trillion back into the economy. 3.8 drain by getting sick, 38 trillion back in, in flux. So is there more money in staying healthy? 100%. So the longevity industry has said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can we help people live better, longer? Because if we can, they're going to be happier, they're going to be healthier, they're going to spend more, they're going to earn more, they're going to be more engaging, more beneficial to society. Like, this could probably be a good thing.

And that's really what has allowed this industry to explode and why it's funded by so much private, so many private investors. Longevity isn't being fueled by pharma. Well, they're kind of jumping on the bandwagon now with peptides and stuff with Sinclair's work, but it's being fueled by investor groups that are out ahead of it because they see the potential for it. Yeah, I mean, they're trying to make M&A pharmaceutical and any other compounds. Exactly. Exactly. So they are now. They are. They are diving in there. Yeah. Hey, last question I have for you, there's a lot of information we talked about. We use words like, you know, M-Tor, well, a lot of acronyms, but AMPK and M-Tor and Sert-Well, we didn't even get to Sertu. We got into a lot of stuff, okay?

but everybody who's here right now listening and they want to live longer what is one thing if you're like do this one thing and then maybe two or three okay but what are just a couple like little steps people can do to start living longer now well this is to go back to the guy from this weekend it is the low-hanging fruit um the the first thing is it truly is mindset begin just each day with creating creating your why for the day why are you excited why are you great you great and you're grateful. Why are you so looking forward to getting up and out of bed and into your day? What gifts could life hold for you? That's already going to inform your body to be in a lower, it's going to lower inflammation. It's just, it's going to boost, it's going to lower, you know, kind of the inflammatory

hormones. It's going to put you in a fat burning state. It's going to put you in a more decisive and clear state. It's going to raise oxytocin. It's going to do some good things. Okay. So step one truly is set your mind, set your mind to what you want. And then support yourself to actually achieve that. And I think that, you know, one of the best things move, I mean, my gosh, if I had to go just by the research, mindset movement, those are the first two things that are going to move the needle, the fastest, if you really want to live better, longer. And then if you're like, okay, I have a great mindset, I am moving every day, I'm eating really well, kind of what are some of the advanced strategy. So I always say we have to crawl before we walk before we run. Get lifestyle dialed in. So first,

wake up, set the mind, move and sleep. Please sleep. In the literature, we absolutely know you're going to shorten lifespan if you're getting less than seven hours of quality sleep at night. You know, the data really starts to show if you're getting less than six, it accelerates rapidly. You're not recovering. We need you to recover and repair. You've got to sleep. So think, move, sleep. Those are a couple of the big ones. And the last thing I would say, Josh, is, you know, really, gang, it's easy to hear this, yet we all get overloaded every day. And so mindfulness, meditation, whatever word feels comfortable for you to have a way to bring your system just back into what we would refer to as a coherent or more parasympathetic state in as little as 60 seconds with just doing some box breathing.

again, slowing down your breath. It's going to get you out of that overdrive, pro-inflammatory, accelerated aging, pump the brakes, be present now, focus on something, slow your breathing, breathe a little deeper. And if you want to go, you know, you want to expand that prayer,

meditation, guided visualizations, taking time at least 20 minutes. I do a lot of work with a technology company. I won't mention them, but we have studies with as little as three 20-minute sessions a week, like really doing some just, deep visualization with frequency, with light, with sound. You can increase BDNF in your brain.

We reduce stress levels by close to 40% in a single session. We boost recovery by six hours. So there are some technology pieces that can get stacked on to help, but breathe, move, sleep, eat, and love. And there you go. That's great. Melissa, I want to say thanks so much for coming on today and sharing your wisdom. It was fantastic. I would encourage everybody to check out her Melissa's human longevity institute. There's tons of free resources there you can find as well. And so again, Melissa, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom. If you're watching on YouTube, hey, let me know what is your biggest, what is the biggest

takeaway from today's episode with Dr. Melissa Peterson here on longevity? We'd love to hear from you your biggest takeaway. And if there's anything that you have noticed, have improved your health or any longevity tips you have, hey, please share that in the comment section as, well. I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Ack Show. Remember each week we look at the mind, the body, the spirit, and how to become the best version of yourself. And make sure to subscribe if you're not subscribed, like, and share. Listen, there's so many people need to hear this information on how to live longer, healthier lives. So thanks so much for being on mission with me.

I'll see you on the next episode.