The Joe Rogan Experience - #1670 - David Sinclair

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

David Sinclair is a Harvard researcher who believes aging is a treatable disease. His book Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To is available now.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Hey Joe. Hello David. Always good to see you my friend. How are you? Likewise. Feeling great.

I enjoyed you on the Lex Friedman Podcast. I learned some things. Me too. I learned some things. Me too. I learned that I like the guy. He's the best, isn't he? Yeah. He's such an unusual human being. A brilliant guy who's incredibly humble.

He's both a martial artist and an AI scientist. I love that guy. He's so special. Yeah. A philosopher, a poet. Everything. And he's i love that guy he's so he's so special yeah a philosopher a poet everything yeah and he's like so he's so real like and he does he he pushes himself in these very unusual ways and i think a lot of the reason why he does it to examine his own mind and to examine his own potential like he does it as a scientist, but also as a brute.

He's a weird combination of the two things. Because, you know, he's like a legitimate black belt in jiu-jitsu. He's really good. No way. I didn't know that about him. Oh, my God. You didn't know? He doesn't look like he could get how to fly.

Oh, Lex will fuck you up. Like, Lex is like a legit black belt in jiu-jitsu. Yeah. Very good. Now I'm amazed. But, yeah, everybody I know that's trained with them is like he's very good, okay Well what I also didn't know about him He's been too busy to have much of a social life so you and I and everyone else should try and find him a good woman

That's one of my goals now. I eat the the good woman thing is God the good man good woman thing that's a that's one of the keys to success and happiness in life and That's one of the keys to success and happiness in life, and it's so hard to find the right one. And maybe sometimes for some people, hard to recognize if you found the right one, even if you found them. Well, the problem is that we're finding them in our teens and 20s often, when we have no idea what the other sex or the partner that you're looking for really is. And I have a theory that when you're young, you look for the opposite. You're attracted by what you cannot do. But as you get older, you really want to go for someone who's more like you.

Right. You have a friend. Yeah. Someone who you can talk to about common interests. Yeah, exactly. But it's tough. The whole dating thing is crazy. Most of it's done through text now and you've got to try and figure out somebody through the internet. And there's all these games about when do you reply, how long do you wait,jis or not ew emojis are not that's what a 2021 dilemma emojis are not yeah yeah don't overdo the emojis no no emojis well i'm not an expert back in our day we were lucky to meet a girl at a bar or something but uh these days i think it's it's harder especially during covid i'm i'm happy i'm married but if i was single i'd be doing confetti emojis the big heart that blows up i'd do all that shit

you'd have a million women after you joe no i i think um i think emojis are fun jamie thinks they're a different language jamie thinks that emojis are the beginning of the next hieroglyphs and he said it and a light bulb went off my head and I'm like, I think he's dead, right? I think one day we're gonna commute I really believe this that and maybe you can help me out on this I think that if someone concocted a universal language a language that every country could adopt and understand and they did so in you could adopt and understand and they did so in um you could do it in the form of a game where it would be a like as you're getting better at it you score points and you do you know you do better like say if you're playing like a call of duty type game and in that game you in order to increase

levels of the game you must learn this new language and this language is an image-based language that interprets intent through some sort of emoji character system that doesn't require english or kanji or any any sort of letters or any sort of way that we interpret sounds and language which is some new complete new thing kids would would learn it quick. Well, they already have it. It's their Esperanto for sure. Oh, yeah. Right. You and I can talk to someone in Japan

and they'll know what we're talking about. Right, but how many people have adopted Esperanto? One. But it was an idea. And that person's dead. Right, but it was an interesting idea. But I think that if someone came along and did something in the future,

just think how quickly people adapted to cell phone use. In the 1990s, no one had a cell phone. It was, there was no cell phones. You just went about your life and to call someone, you had to call them at home. And then in the 2000s, everyone had a cell phone. I mean, literally it went from like 1991, no one has a cell phone. 2013, everyone has a cell phone. And everyone has a smartphone by then. So it's a completely new world in the span of 12 years. That's unprecedented, right? It is.

Well, it's similar to the turn of the 19th to the 20th century where all these gadgets showed up and people were hyper-stressed and agitated with anxiety. And we're seeing the same now with this super change. And the kids adapt, but a lot of people our age, we're roughly the same age with this super change and the kids adapt but a lot of people our age we're roughly the same age are just trying to play catch up you know what what's the latest emoji in fact laughing is a skull did you know that laughing yeah dead yeah so you know this but i didn't know that my kids thought i was i was an old guy you know where that comes from that's black culture like yeah yeah when, when that's something adopted.

Correct me if I'm wrong. It's like black Twitter, right? Yeah, yeah, sure, I guess. I was going to ask you if you guys know what a hat means. No. Did you see the hat? Because it's like two levels deep. So a hat would mean cap.

Cap. Or no cap. Right. Do you know what that means? What, cap on someone? No. Do you know what that means? Shoot them?

It means you're lying. A what? Yeah. Really? If someone says, like, if they make a statement and they say that's no cap or whatever that means like I'm not lying or they'll call out you're lying. Why cap? What does cap

mean? I don't know. That's the part I don't know. It's just, this is one of these things that's come out of internet culture that you just sort of have to like what the fuck are they talking about? Am I wrong about dead? No, you're 100% on. It's black Twitter, right? Where it came from, I don't know the exact part, but probably. When when i see when i follow like funny black dudes and they wrote right dead dead as fuck or whatever af and they have a bunch of skulls after someone says something

something new that's popped up that i've seen a few people be asking like what does that mean and i was gonna see if you guys know that's no man Man, I rely on Jamie because he's younger. Right, but it's a constant effort to keep up with this stuff. That young Jamie thing is like, eventually we're going to have to change it to not that young Jamie. Got fingers holding on. This is fascinating.

We can watch a new language evolve in real time. It's really great. It is. And it's driven by kids. And it's driven by these interactions. It's like every now and then a wave catches on, and a bunch of people hop on the wave and they think it's fun,

and then they'll start doing this thing, and then that thing becomes like eggplants. When did eggplants become dicks? I don't know, but they're dicks, right? Yeah, I mean, if you saw an eggplant in a cap, what would you say? Now I'm confused. You're lying about your dick? That's where I'm going with the emojis like yeah it would happen you'd fall into you like what the fuck does this mean yeah kids know well

you said that like it was years ago that you said that that picture we pulled up I was trying to think who asked us where there was two people and a turtle in between it like a week or two ago it was in like it was sketched on a wall somewhere yeah that turtle supposedly means like it's a sign of fertility so that was sort of like two people maybe were having sex or they were bonded in some way or another. Was that the Gobekli Tepe image? It could be.

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know. Well, we live in a crazy age. We do. It's fun, but stressful. Stress for a lot of people.

Well, and for your study, for the study of human life extension and anti-aging, when you look at the stresses that are completely, they're very novel to the human experience. Like the stresses of social media, the stresses of cell phone use, the stresses of blue light, like staring at screens at night, like all that stuff. Like how much of an effect do you think that's having on people, and have we even quantified that yet? We are quantifying it, and it's having a real negative effect. Mental health issues is going to be the medical problem of the 21st century, no question. There are companies that are doing these remote video chats with a psychologist or psychiatrist. They are booming. These are the next billion-dollar companies.

Really? Yeah. Anyone want to make money, look into that. But we are living in a stressful world. Part of it's because we don't have much else to worry about. We've gotten rid of all the major worries. Wolves. Yeah.

We don't have to. We're not on the savannah anymore. We're not going to get picked off by a cheetah. Well, a lion probably. But we built this world. Six million years ago, the first hominid ape-like thing was up in the tree, walking around actually upright, which is interesting, right? It wasn't swinging from the branches. That picked up a stick. That animal picked up a stick. And that put us on this

treadmill where we are today. Innovation after innovation, tool after tool after tool. But in response, our bodies have deteriorated. We only build our bodies as much as we need to. So if we've got tools and we can throw rocks, we don't need a lot of muscles. And in fact, our head just expanded, so we could build better tools faster and faster. And the culmination of that is an iPhone. But where are we going to be in another 100,000 years? It's really scary because this treadmill, we cannot get off it. There's no going back. There's no stationary because we've got problems that we've already created from our own technology that we have to solve with better technology. So we're a species that once we've picked up that stick, we're on this path.

And those things that got us here, there are actually four traits that I can think of that got us here that make us different from all other animals. Those are not just what got us here. They're our biggest threat. But we also have to use them to get us out of this problem. And what are those? Well, let's see. So the first one is tool making. Okay, no big deal.

We've got hands that have evolved to throw rocks, shoes. Our feet actually are built for shoes. Imagine that. There are all these genes that we've- Our feet are built for shoes? Yeah, yeah. Our feet actually are- We've had shoes for so many years that we've got feet that fit shoes.

Have you ever seen what it looks like when those guys in the Amazon walk around with no feet and they develop these hand-like feet? No. Oh, they can pick up stuff? Oh, no. You have to see this. Because what happens is when they walk around barefoot in the dirt for so long, their toes develop the ability to grip.

So they're gripping the ground. So their toes, instead of being like a person who wears shoes all the time where the toes are all connected they splay out like hands that's very strange sense I want I want that my friend Steve Rinella was in Guyana and he was hanging out with his tribe and they live in the forest and like look at their feet that's incredible maybe that's the way we should be that's a way we should be. That's a way I think people lived when they lived in the jungle forever. This is the Ho'orani.

How do you say that? Ho'orani. This is the Ecuadorian rainforest, these people. When you look at their feet, I think it's soft ground, and they're walking around in dirt all the time, and their feet splay out and they develop the ability to like push off of things with their feet so it's it's the exact opposite of the way human beings develop bunions where they smush their feet into like these shoes

that don't really fit human feet and then they get these weird bunions where their toes are pointed towards the other toes. This is the opposite. They spread out like fingers. Yeah. Well, we can trace the genetics of this. We become a very weak species. If you get into a fight with, let's say, a chimp.

Let's say a house cat. Even that will bite you off or a dog will eat your face off. We're at their mercy. But even the strongest human cannot beat your average chimp or any chimp. Not even close. We're pathetic. So we're basically a lollipop physique. We're a stick with a big head.

But that's because we've had these tools for so many years. We've had fire. Even our guts have shrunken down. We don't have a long intestine. So he put us out in the wild. We're screwed. We can no longer exist in the wild. Yeah.

But I live in Boston. I'm out there in the winter for maybe 10 minutes, I'm dead. So that's who we are now. We are this pathetic physical species that has built tools that got us here but are actually messing with our minds. The blue light, the chairs we sit in, the food we eat all the time, these have made us a weaker species. So what I'm hoping to do with my research and some companies I'm building

is to get us out of that problem and engineer our way out and also make wellness and health a thing that people actually can take care of themselves. And what are the steps that, there's one thing that people can do and exercise is a good one, right? Because of the fact that we live these sedentary lifestyles and most of the time people are sitting down and there's a lot of time spent standing at screens. How important do you think it is to get out and do something? And what kind of an effect does that have? Like what kind of quantifiable effect does that have on life extension? Oh, it's very clear. There are two things you can do that are well known to extend your lifespan. And when I say extend lifespan, I don't mean

be older for longer. I mean, be healthier in your 80s and 90s. Like my dad, who's turning 82, who's got the physique and mental aptitude of probably a 30-year-old. He's stronger than me. So you want that. Okay, so what do you have to do? Well, you have to start early. You can't just start when you're 80, although it helps, but it's not the best. So you want to just get out of the chair. People say walk, but I think it's better to lose your breath, become hypoxic, you know, hypoxia chambers or hyperbaric chambers, these stress the body a little bit. So run for 10 minutes a few times a week, they would have a 40% less chance of having a heart attack than someone who didn't do that. So it's a massive change. It's not just a little thing at the margins, massive changes.

The other thing is, which I do, is to skip meals. So it's not that hard. I now feel weird if I eat a meal for breakfast or lunch and I try not to snack too. This idea of nutritionists, three meals a day plus snacks, never be hungry, is killing us. It really is. And we know that if you do these things to animals in controlled settings, they live longer, a lot longer, 20, sometimes 30%, because they're healthier for longer. They don't get cancer and heart disease and dementia. So I

don't know why we don't all do that. I just think we just like to sit around and eat. Well, it's good. It feels good to just eat chips, have M&Ms. Yeah, but don't do what just feels good. Oh, for sure. So when you talk about how eating one meal a day can extend your life, is it because when you're eating all the time, you're taxing your digestive system,

which taxes your resources? Or is there some sort of a mechanism that leads to decay of the human body from overconsumption? Like, what is it? Yeah, so overconsumption, or just consumption in general, makes your body complacent. And we know this in great detail at the molecular level. There are genes that respond to how much you're eating and what you're eating and whether you're exercising. And these are called longevity genes. And they give our body resilience and fight aging and slow down what we can now measure, the biological clock. So I can take your blood, or actually now we've developed a very cheap test, just a swab, to be able to tell you very accurately how old you are, not based on how many times the earth goes around the sun. That's ridiculous. Age is just a number. You can actually take the swab. I can tell

you how old you are really, but then using real science tell you how to slow that down. And this is really cool. Just in the last few years we figured out you can reverse human aging as well. Well, you and I have talked about this before, but I'm doing hyperbaric treatments. I've done 40 of them, 40 90 minute treatments over the past few months. How's it feeling? I don't know. I feel pretty good, but I always feel good. That's what's confusing. I've been doing so much shit for so long. I've never stopped. You don't know it's working. That's the problem. So this test that I'm developing,

which will come out later, probably this year, is how do you know what you're doing is working? This is a big problem for everybody. And you don't stay motivated if you don't see it. We have dashboards on our cars. We know how fast we're going. We know if the engine needs work. With our bodies, we don't know that. And if you go to the doctor once a year, they don't know much either, to be honest. I mean, some of my best friends are doctors, real doctors. But what you need is one number at the top to rule them all. So you can measure things. You can wear rings. You can wear these wrist watches. I do a lot of that. I put these things on my chest. But it's really complicated. It's expensive. It's confusing. What you want is one number, and that's your biological age, which the test that I'm developing. And I want to democratize that because right now,

the people who are doing all of this stuff are the really rich people. And most people either don't know or can't afford it. And the hyperbaric treatments, the reason why I'm doing it is because of that study out of Israel. You want to tell people about that? Yeah. So this is a study out of Israel. It's a group that has a chamber built by Germans, which is ironic over in Israel. Yeah. Yeah, so I went in this chamber, actually. I visited them before COVID, some of my good friends over there. And what they do is they put you – I don't know if yours is the same, but this is a really big room, and you can fit about 20 people in there. And they give you oxygen, so extra oxygen, and then they raise the pressure up,

and then they drop it and raise it. Is that what you've been doing? Yeah, and so what happens, I think, to the body is the body's going, oh shit, I've got too much oxygen. So it responds. And then the decreased oxygen makes you feel hypoxic, like running. So this is a way of getting, in my view, exercise without having to exercise. And then you turn on these longevity genes. And I would bet, though I haven't proven it yet, though I am working on it, is that some of these genes that we've discovered, the sirtuins, or discovered to be involved in aging. We didn't discover them, are activated by this hyperbaric chamber. And what they showed in this paper that got probably you excited as well as everyone else is they looked

at the ends of chromosomes which shorten over time, the telomeres, and actually got longer after this therapy. And that is a sign of reversing aging. It's not as good as the clock that I'm developing, but it is a good sign. And they decided after examining these people from 90 days doing 60 sessions that it gave you the equivalent of 20 years decrease in biological age because of the length of the telomeres, which is super controversial, right? It's certainly controversial. Everything's controversial in science until it's been repeated, and it takes 10 years for people to believe it. But it's also controversial, the concept of telomere length being equal to biological age. Well, yeah, it's one aspect.

I would say that it's not that controversial, but it's certainly not the only determinant of age. What I think, and as I wrote about in my book, is that this biological clock, which is literally chemical changes to your DNA over time, is the real number. Telomeres are out there. They're like the wristwatch for health. That doesn't tell you your real age. It's an indicator. And the reason that it's not believed by a lot of people, and'm kind of skeptical to some extent is that telomeres

get shorter when cells divide not all cells divide your brain doesn't divide right not typically and also the telomeres can vary quite dramatically if you measure them one week after another one month after another they're jumping around the test isn't very accurate whereas the one what I what's called the epigenetic age test or a horvath clock named after my good friend Steve Horvath. That's much more accurate. That doesn't jump around unless you actually do something to either slow down or reverse aging. So I would say that you want to do this test. We should do a mouth swab, get you our test. And you can decide if you want to release that number, but I bet you're younger than you are and we could tell everybody. Okay, let's do it. All right. Sounds

good. Should I complete the 60 sessions of the hyperbaric chamber first? Okay, let's do it. All right. Sounds good. Should I complete the 60 sessions of the hyperbaric chamber first? Well, you should do that anyway. Then we'll give you a washout period. A washout period? Yeah. How long? I don't know, probably a few months, I think. For let it settle in? Yeah, but you can sign up for it. I'll put your email in there. I'm down for whatever you're doing, dude. I'm listening. All right. Tell me what to do. Well, so yeah, we just put up a website because I thought people would be interested in this.

So it's Dr. Sinclair, spell out Dr. D-O-C-T-O-R Sinclair.com. If you want to sign up, there's a few. Is D.R. Sinclair taken? Yeah, we didn't get that one, I don't think.

Yeah. Too slow. Well, pull up Jamie.com. Somebody snatched it. There's a certain limited number of these tests. But yeah. Age is just a number.

Find out how fast you're aging. Join Dr. David Sinclair's wait list. So I'm doing this. I've had a fortune in my life. I don't need to make a lot of money. But what I need to do, what I want to do, is to make everybody aware of their health and how to benefit. I mean, you and I, we read a lot about this. We care. But most people either don't have the time or the knowledge or access to the people we have. This is what I want to do. And it starts with this number, this overall arching top level

number, like your credit score. You can look at things like, did you pay your electricity bill? Did you pay off your car? Those are similar to the watch and the rings that you can wear in the heart monitors. But the credit score is what matters. And this number that we can tell you is really what tells your inner core age. And it's irrelevant, really, largely irrelevant how many birthday candles you have. And what's really cool about it is that we didn't know until recently that if you do certain things like hyperbaric oxygen chamber, or there's some things you can inject into yourself in one study, you can reverse human aging.

What's the things you can inject into yourself? Oh, boy. All right, I'm not endorsing doing this, but there is a study that came out looking at this clock that we'll measure for people for not a lot of money. And so this group, they put a few things into the body of patients, and it was for a few weeks. And they measured the clock, and they measured the thymus, which shrinks as you get older.

So I know you want to know what they are. Let's list them. Metformin. Metformin. Growth hormone. And a precursor to hormones called DHEA, which goes down as you get older. And that rejuvenated the thymus of these people. It was very clear.

And the clock went back by years. The metformin thing is controversial, right? And that rejuvenated the thymus of these people. It was very clear. And the clock went back by years. The metformin thing is controversial, right? Because that is a drug for, what is it for? Diabetes? Yeah, high blood sugar. High blood sugar. And what's controversial is that decreases physical performance in athletics.

All right. Am I right about that? No. No one's right about that that I know of. I've read the papers. I don't know how many people actually read the papers. Okay. So here's what the papers say.

First of all, the difference is tiny. You have to squint to see it. Oh. And they also change the axes so that it's not zero at the bottom. So that's cheating to begin with. Second of all, the muscles of those- Can you explain that? Explain what you just glossed over a little bit? Yeah.

Science speak. I apologize. That's okay. Okay. So if a graph looks like that, right? So I'm showing my hand as an axis. So for people that are just listening, like a hockey puck. Yeah.

Or a hockey stick, rather. It's a two-dimensional graph. On one axis, the vertical axis, you've got one number. And on the other, you've got basically the treatment. And what you should do as a good scientist is that bottom number always in the corner should be zero. But you can cheat. You can actually say that that vertical axis starts at 30 and the difference is 33 to 35. And then your eye psychologically thinks, oh, that's a big difference. But actually, if you stretch it out back to zero, it'd just be a tiny little difference. So there's a minuscule difference in discernible physical

performance. But it's also worse than that. It's been misinterpreted. This is the bane of my career is things being misinterpreted because people don't have the time to read it. The other thing is those muscles were just as strong, whether you're on metformin or not. Now, the difference in that little difference in that graph was the size of the muscle so if you want hypertrophy you want to build up you want to bulk up yeah metformin may reduce that slightly I think it's 5% difference something like that refer a professional athlete 5% difference is astronomical no doubt I'm not saying that but what a sprinter

right imagine when you're just like literally trying to be one half of a footstep ahead of your competition five percent means everything yeah but I'm not saying I'm not speaking here to professional athletes necessarily but there's another there's a third misconception isn't it it's crazy how this stuff becomes memes turns out that the reason it that the exercise doesn't build as much muscle is that you just get a little bit tired when you do the reps. But if you have the willpower to do the same number of reps, you're good. So just overcome that feeling. And the reason for that, I think, is metformin interferes with your energy production in these little packages in the cell called mitochondria, the battery packs. Is there an ability to accentuate your energy in some sort of other way, like with stimulants? Well, I take an NAD booster. I don't prescribe anything. I'm not a doctor, so disclaimer. I like that you're doing this thing with your hands. Well, I'm always, I'm a Harvard professor, and I'm cognizant that they will watch this. So I'm not prescribing

anything, but I take this molecule NMN, which raises NAD, which we've shown in my lab and others, that it boosts mitochondrial activity, gives more energy, ATP, in animals. And we're doing human trials right now, and it looks promising. So I try to counteract my metformin with that molecule. That's a supplement. Metformin's a drug, which you either need a doctor or you can get it elsewhere. Other countries actually it's over the counter, it's so safe for them. But long story short, I occasionally, I'll skip a metformin if I'm going to work out, just in an abundance of caution.

But this controversy is way overblown as you can tell. Oh, so you could literally work out and then take your metformin so then you don't have to worry about the negative effects because they're temporary. That's what I do. Oh, okay. So you're only dealing with a very small number, 5%, and then you could mitigate this by just taking it after exercise, which is – that's a no-brainer. Yeah. So it's not a permanent change of your ability to move weight

or your ability to have exercise. And maybe you could have a couple stiff espressos before you work out. Yeah, probably. Balance it out. Yeah, yeah. Anything that'll make you feel good.

I didn't tell people why metformin works. Yeah, I was just going to ask. Thank you. Yeah, that's right. I can run your show for you. Please do. So metformin inhibits your mitochondria, which are the power packs.

It binds to this protein that makes chemical energy. And when you do that, the body responds by making more mitochondria. Remember, a little bit of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's exactly what's going on here. We call this hormesis. And so by inhibiting it, your body builds more. So when the drug goes away, you've now got more energy. And that also helps the body take up blood sugar, become more what's called insulin sensitive. And

that's why it works for type two diabetics. But by accident, this drug has been shown in tens of thousands of veterans and mainly, but tens of thousands of people to also delay other diseases of aging, heart disease, cancer, frailty, Alzheimer's. It's amazing. When you look at now, it's associations. So for the aficionados, we don't know for sure if it does that. But this is the closest thing we have right now to a drug that slows down aging. And what is going on with metformin? What's the mechanism? Yeah. Well, part of it's the boosting of the mitochondria number and raising the energy. But it's got other benefits.

It's anti-inflammatory as well. And to be honest, as I should be as a scientist, we don't know. There's other stuff it does. But we just know that people who take it, a diabetic who is sick and often overweight, who takes metformin, on average lives longer than someone who doesn't have type 2 diabetes and doesn't take the drug. Really? That is an amazing statistic.

That's insane. Yeah. So it literally not just mitigates the effect of diabetes, but it enhances your lifespan past the point of a person who doesn't have diabetes. On average. On average. Yeah. I like how you just hedge your bets there.

So what's going on with metformin? What is it doing to the body and how is it doing it? Well, it's going to inhibit the energy production and the body will start to make more. So you'll have more energy. You'll have- It inhibits the energy production. How so? How so?

Okay. How deep do you want to go? All deep. Let's go deep. Let's go. All right. So the mitochondria- Put my school goggles on.

All right. And stop me if I get boring. You're not boring. So in the cell, right? So let's zoom down into a cell. A cell is a bag. We break through the membrane, the bag out of bag. And now we're in liquid.

Now we're swimming around. And there are these weird shapes that are floating around. They look a little bit like Mike and Ike's. Is that what they're called? Mike and Ike's? Mike and Ike's. Little tubes. The candy.

Oh, Mike and Ike's. Okay. Yeah, I'm Australian. So I talk about other things, but Cadbury chocolate and stuff. Okay, these are littlekes. Okay. Yeah. I'm Australian. So I talk about other things, but Cadbury chocolate and stuff. Okay. These are little tubes. We all know Cadbury chocolate. Do you do? Yeah, sure. It's famous. Okay. Got it. Cadbury eggs, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the Cadbury eggs float around the cell. They look more like an extended little tube. Okay. And they are what we use to make most of our energy. When we eat sugar or aminos, they get transported into the mitochondria and they get converted into energy. So how does that work?

I'm glad you asked. The mitochondria have another couple of membranes. So now we're going to pierce through the outer one and now we're going to swim in between the inner and the outer membrane. What's happening is that that's really acidic. There's a lot of protons in there, and the cell's pushing them into there, and that builds up this gradient of pH. So it's acidic. And then those protons that are in there, they want to get back inside that little thing. And so they can't get through, but there are these little holes, which is a protein called ATP synthase. And when they bust

through that hole, it's like a propeller, like a hydroelectric generator on a dam. And they shoot through and this thing spins around and makes a chemical called ATP, which the body needs to survive. That's where we get all our energy. If we don't have ATP or this little spinny thing, we're dead in less than 30 seconds. You take cyanide, that's what it does. It blocks that process. So it's needed for life. And it seems the more you have of that, the better. Now, one thing that one of my companies that I'm helping and I've invested in, to be honest, to be transparent, is developing is a way to punch holes in that membrane so that the hydroelectric dam is less efficient.

So we've got a leak in the dam. And so not all the energy is going through. So what we see happen in animal studies is that they can eat more food and not gain weight. It's a perfect weight loss pill. Wow. So I want to help cure obesity as well. That sounds very Dr. Oz like though. It's a perfect weight. It's a miracle. It's a miracle pill. Well, it seems like a miracle. I don't believe in miracles, but I believe in good science. And in the 1920s, mostly women who were in these factories, actually it was early World War I, they were making bombs. And there was a chemical called DNP, dinitrophenol, which has this property to break through this hydroelectric dam wall.

And those women were really skinny. And people didn't understand it. And they found out that if you eat this molecule, DNP, you shed weight. And this started to be sold in hospitals. How were they eating the molecule? Well, they were breathing it in, and that was sufficient. Really? Yeah.

So then it became sold. It became one of the best-selling drugs. I think it was 1928, something like that. And people thought that this was the end of obesity. And people were partying in the streets, basically. But the problem is when you bust holes through that membrane, it generates, as a byproduct, heat. And people took too much

because they wanted to get thin really quickly, and they overheated, and some of them died. And that led to the FDA Act. And this is why we have drug regulation. That's why? One of the main reasons. Yeah, they shut that down because it was killing people. How many people died?

Oh, not that many, but still, one is too many. But it's an overdose issue. Right. And you can still get it on the black market. They used to give it to Russians apparently in World War II to stay warm. Wow. Yeah. But if you're wondering, David, why are you making a drug that's going to kill people?

Well, actually, the chemists are working and have made molecules that are sensitive to this acidity. And if it gets too low, it'll turn itself off. Why don't you just let people figure out the right dosage? Let them get warm. They're always stupid people. There are, and you need to let them. You need to let them be stupid. That's a part of the problem with today.

We nerf too many corners. Some people need to bump into the ends of the world. Donk. Ow. You can't have everything cushioned. And you don't learn. Well, this is the problem because also we've got so many people who need help. Yes.

It's a tradeoff. Yes. It is a tradeoff. Everything's a risk. Every drug. There's no safe drug. Yeah. It's like, but we need education, but we also need these fascinating things like this.

So let me tell you some of those other traits that make us different from animals. Okay. So the first one I told you was tool making. The next one, let's see, let's talk about exploration, right? Humans have the fuck you gene or FU gene for short. I just made that up, but I'm looking for it. Okay. But there are people like you and me who just say, and a lot of humans who say, I want to do things my way. Don't tell me what to do. And we've evolved that way. I mean, most animals don't behave this way. It got us to this point. We started, you know, teenagers have a lot of turn, they turn on their FU gene heaps. I have teenagers. It's been hell for some, you know what this is. So the FU gene is a problem, but it's

also been the greatest thing on the earth because we left Africa. The teenagers said, screw you. I'm not going to listen to the chief. I'm going to go form my own village with my women. Let's go. And that we spread across the planet. We screwed some Neanderthals and Denisovans over the time, and we bred with those, and we became even better, stronger, fitter species. Neanderthals aren't extinct.

They're actually still in us. So that's a risk. No, I have my DNA done. Yeah. High or low percentage? Oh oh super high no comment but that'll protect you from heart disease oh nice yeah hopefully if you got that gene yeah so we're hybrids but anyway the the fuck you gene has gotten us to this point but it's also a problem right we have society like covid when a lot of people said i'm not going to wear a mask. We have that in us. But it's also the way we're going to get out of this problem. The FU gene, like Elon has like probably 20 copies of the FU gene. But we need those people to engineer us

out of the crap that we've built into society from previous technologies. You can't have universal compliance. It's not going to work, right? You need some people that are mavericks and some people that are just like testing the boundaries. Yeah, for sure. I mean, most scientists are like that, but I've got it in abundance too. Well, I think it's also, we're dealing with like, think about what we're talking about here, about your field of study, about life extension and how to maximize health. The amount of people that don't know what you're talking about and don't know the science and aren't even aware that this is possible is the majority. So for someone to step out and say, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to do sauna and ice baths every day because it increases hormesis and it maximizes my heat shock and cold shock proteins. And then I'm going to make sure I use blue light blocking glasses and I shut off my cell phone by 6 p.m. And I don't drink coffee after 5 and all these different things. Most people don't know that there's an actual quantifiable benefit to doing all those things. And if you looked at like, this is Anthony Robbins' quote. I'm stealing this from him, but it's a very good one. That incremental change is if two boats are on the same path

and then one veers off two degrees over time, that two degrees equals a huge difference in the distance of your destination. Exactly. And that's why you've got to measure your age. Yeah. That's your core number. Because. And that's why you've got to measure your age. Yeah. That's your core number. Because you don't know you're drifting or how to correct course unless you measure it

and then use science to correct it. And this thing, you could measure it fairly regularly. That's what we want to do, yeah. So you could do it. Every few months, get a new test. It's just a mouth swab. You just send it in. So maybe you have some bad habits.

Maybe you've been partying too much or what have you or studying too late. You can send it in. So maybe you have some bad habits. Maybe you've been partying too much or what have you, or studying too late. You can correct that and then see, hey, look what happened when you did that. Now your body's moving in a better way, a better place. Right. I mean, you can't really fix what you're not measuring. So that's what it's all about. And also most people ignore it. You know, I'm going to eat that pizza, who cares? But you're right. Everything you do that is wrong, not everything, but mostly, it'll veer you off course. But the good news is we know how to slow it down. And now we're learning how to reverse it too.

And I want people to, not just you and me, but everybody to have a sense of their own wellness. Because you can make a big difference. Your genes only control 20% of your ultimate health in old age. 80% is in your hands. People don't know that. It's liberating. Really? 80%? Yeah, because people have studied twins in Denmark.

And they showed that the twins who lead very different lifestyles, one would smoke, one didn't, one would exercise, one didn't. It makes a huge difference. 80%? Another statistic. This is from a Harvard study last year. If you just do the five things that doctors, that we all pretty much know, you can extend your lifespan by 14 years on average. And that's just the easy stuff.

What we're talking about today and with what I hope I'll make democratized will get us beyond that. So what are those five things? By recollection, it is exercise, yeah. Eat the right things. Don't eat so much. Eat less frequently. What else was it? There was sleep and stress.

Oh, and don't smoke. So I think that was six, but you get the idea. So that's the minimum, and that's not even that hard. And what is going on with eating? And that's not even that hard. And what is going on with eating? So if you have one meal and say this meal comprises 2,000 calories or whatever, and you have this meal at 6 p.m. and you fast for 24 hours until you eat again at 6 p.m.

If you have this one meal a day, why is it better to do that than to have, say, you know, smaller meals of like 500 calories multiple times per day, little snacks? Well, because going back 6 million years back, you know, we're in the trees and then in the savannah, our bodies were designed, well, or evolved to respond to adversity. And we've removed that from our lives because it feels good. But we need adversity to be resilient and to fight disease. So what I'm saying is that period of hunger, and it's not even hunger these days. I don't even feel it. I feel great if I don't eat. And it takes a few weeks. So anyone wants to start, give it some time, give it a couple of weeks. But what's happening in the body is you're turning on these adversity hormesis response genes.

We call them longevity genes. And they make the body fight aging and diseases. And so by eating through the day, the traditional, oh, you've got to have breakfast, best meal of the day, blah, blah, blah. First of all, it's not true that you need to be full or fed to think clearly. that you need to be full or fed to think clearly. It's very clear that people who are fasting have as good, if not better, mental acuity. Okay, that's one. So I think that that needs to be thrown out the window.

Kids are different. We're not talking about kids, we're talking about adults. And we're not talking about malnutrition or starvation too, let's be clear. But we are talking about lengthening that window of not eating. So if you always are satiated, fed, your body says, hey, I've just killed a mammoth. No problem. Don't need to worry about survival. I'm just going to go

forth and multiply and screw my long-term survival. So this is all about long-term survival by making the body freak out that there's tough times. And that's's running away like running away from a cat like the Savannah and being hungry or you know that there's molecular reasons that all this works but you know trust me that the data is very clear that this is the way to go if you want to be healthy in your 80s 90s well it actually doesn't make sense when you put it in that way that your body when you're fed relaxes and so if you're just doing that all day long and I know for a fact that when I am um not fed and I go and do things whether it's perform one of the things that I've been doing um is I don't eat before shows like I take many uh many hours before a comedy show

and I used to just like eat whenever. I just eat. And then I would do shows and I would have a meal like an hour before the show. And I'm really trying to wake up. I'm really trying to come on, come on, come on. But I've now recognized. Actually, I saw a video where Cat Williams was talking about this. Do you know who Cat Williams is?

Hilarious comedian? I do know. Well, you're slipping if you don't. He's hilarious. When he was doing this interview and he's saying they were telling what's your process before a show and one of the things is i don't eat i make sure i don't eat and i was like that's wise that's really smart and i'm like i needed to hear that even though i kind of knew it but i never written it down i never like associated it absolutely but now have. Like now I do not eat before shows. I won't do it unless I know I have three hours.

So what's your average day look like? It depends entirely on whether or not I'm doing podcasts. If I'm doing podcasts, generally I'm up early. I get my workouts in. I usually have something to eat after the workout. So I'm talking about like I eat around 11, 11 a.m. That's my first meal of the day. And then I go and do my stuff.

And I generally feel like my workouts are so strenuous that I need some sort of nutrition afterwards. Some sort of fruit to pump the muscles back up and give them some sugar and some protein. So usually I'm eating meat and maybe like an apple or something like that. That's like a normal meal for me. And then I don't eat again until nighttime. Great. And you're not snacking? No. Yeah, maybe sometimes after a podcast, I'll have like, we have these on it warrior bars that are just buffalo meat and some cranberries and stuff. I like those. I'll eat one of those. Good. Well, at least you're going till 11. You that sleep yeah so you're probably not eating late yeah it's just the strenuous activity

me like my workouts are very hard so after them i feel like i need something you know i just i don't like that feeling of like a brutal workout and then being starving for four or five hours because then it becomes a distraction. So I listen to my body. But if I don't work out, I don't eat until dinner. Like say a day like today, I didn't work out today. So I woke up, hung out with the dog, had some coffee, sat out, you know, like just got – went over some emails, did some shit, just a relaxed morning. And then rolled into here, no food.

Perfect. I won't eat until we're going to dinner tonight. Great. I won't eat until then. Yeah, with Lex. That'll be fun. Yes, that's going to be fun. And John Donner. Yeah, of course.

Looking forward to meeting him. Yes. Yeah, so you're doing the right things, certainly better than most people. But what I'm trying to build or make are molecules that mimic fasting as well. So if you cannot fast like I do, then you can just take a pill. And what we've shown in mice at least is that if you give them this molecule that I'm taking, NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide,

which, as I mentioned, speeds up metabolisms, does a lot of stuff, those mice could run 50% further. These old mice, we gave it to them for three weeks, put them back on a treadmill. And those that had the NMN in their water ran 50% further. They had better blood flow, better oxygenation, better energy. And that is literally exercising a pill. That's crazy. So we're in late stage human clinical trials now. When do you think it's going to be released to the public? Well, it depends on what the FDA does and if it works. Those motherfuckers.

Oh, don't get me in trouble. I love the FDA. I do too. But it's fair enough. They protect us. Yes. But yeah, we're going through the procedure that has been around since, as I mentioned, early 20th century.

But we've done hundreds of people now, certainly dozens, over the last few years. And we know at least that this molecule is apparently safe and raises the levels of the molecule we want to build up. The molecule is called NAD. Do you want me to talk a little bit about NAD? Yes, please. So NAD is what those mitochondria, little mechanite, little energy-producing things use to make energy. So you need, there are two molecules in the body that are really great. You need both for life. And without them, as I said, you're dead. ATP is the energy and NAD makes that. And as we get older, the levels of NAD go down, our body makes

less and actually also degrades it more. So if you take my skin or in the study that they took people's skin, when you're 50, you've got half the levels of this NAD than you did when you were 20, which is scary because this molecule is required for life. Without it, we're dead in 30 seconds. So what we're doing with our clinical trials is giving a precursor, a smaller version of this, that the body will turn into NAD and bring those levels back up from where they are when you're old to where you are when you're young and we see at least in animals and hopefully in people that it revs up their metabolism and makes them fight aging and disease like we do when we're young I mean there's a reason we don't get a lot of

heart disease when we're young or Alzheimer's because our bodies fight against disease as we get older and especially if we sit around or smoke and don't exercise, our bodies just give up. That's very exciting. Now, I used to do injectable NAD. I used to do IVs when I was living in California. I haven't done it out here. What is the difference between this NMN supplementation versus IV drip and what's superior? Well, so there's just a delivery route. My assumption is that they're working the same way, same effects, but nobody's put them head to head. I'm yet to see a clinical trial that shows that literally any of them actually work

the way they're advertised. But the theory is that you'll have the same effect. I don't know if NAD IV is better. I mean, it's certainly more direct than eating it and your gut's not eating it. I have an anecdote to tell you. Please. And to my Harvard colleagues, it's just an anecdote. This isn't a clinical trial. So I wrote my book, took a couple of years. I sat down for most of that time and my piriformis muscle, which is one of the main ones in your holds your hip up, cramped up. And for probably 12 months, I had a permanent cramp in my ass. That was really painful. I could barely walk, made me really grumpy. And I couldn't get rid of it. Exercise, building muscle, physiotherapy

wouldn't go away. And this happens fairly frequently to people who don't stand up. So I now have a standing desk. That's another good tip. But I went out to California and met with some of the power broker people in Hollywood who, you know, shall remain nameless, but there's plenty of people you and I know out there who are doing this. They recommended this one person who's well-known and very kind. She said, go to see my doctor, get an NAD shot. And I thought, come on, NAD shot, who believes that science? So I went anyway. Honestly, out of courtesy, I thought it might work, but I'm always up for something. And doctor injected it into my ass and I felt a tingle as was supposed to happen. I walked away thinking yeah that was fun being there done that and I flew home that night and I was at the airport LA airport and I

found that something was different I was kind of skipping in my walk and I thought it's gone after a year this damn thing is gone now Gabby Reese um the the volleyball player who was at her place jumping up in the pool the other day. That's hypoxia. I almost drowned again. But anyway, Gabby says it's probably just the needle. And she might be right. This is not a clinical trial, but it's certainly interesting.

Well, dry needling does do something to muscles. If you have a muscle, like have you ever been dry needled before? No. You offering? That sounded strange. I've done it before. It's really interesting. Yeah.

They basically take acupuncture needles and they stick them in your muscles. But it's really beneficial for releasing and relaxing, like really tight and tense muscles. You know, I have an imbalance in my back because of power kicking on my right side. My left side is what stabilizes it. So the left side of my back is thicker than the right side of my back. Because if you think about it,

if you're standing here like this and you're doing this all the time, you're like, you're leaning into the left side and throwing a kick with the right leg. And then also when I draw a bow back, right, I always draw it with my right side. And so my right shoulder is stronger than my left shoulder. But my left shoulder is stronger pushing because the left shoulder pushes and the right shoulder pulls.

I've got all these fucking weird imbalances in my body. You probably do something else with one hand too that doesn't help. Hey, easy. I didn't say that. And so this nice lady, Jennifer, over at Exo started sticking these needles in there. And she's a wizard. Dirt, dirt, dirt. And she's a wizard. It worked.

It was amazing. It's like I could feel it after it was over. It was like, oh, it released all this tension. So that might have had something to do with it. But, I mean, it's not like they're sticking NAD in your butt just because they think, like, maybe it'll work. Like, she's probably got some responses from other people in the past, right? I mean, there's got to be some science. There's a lot of anecdotal stuff.

And this doctor I have huge respect for. So that was another reason. And it may work. So no one has measured the benefits of NAD, IV versus pills? Nope. Nope. I've got to tell you what. The NAD drip is rough. Really?

It's rough. Yeah. Like, that's why people do it very slowly. They do it over. Have you done it? No. I gotta tell you what, the NAD drip is rough. Really? It's rough, yeah. That's why people do it very slowly. They do it over, have you done it? No, I was offered it at a hotel that I was at. It's the strangest feeling. It's like your body, your stomach cramps up,

you're like whoa. It's hard to open it up. And it's possible to tolerate it with a very fast drip. But most people do it for like two hours. Or 30 to 45 minutes, not 20. What's the fastest you did it? Like 35-ish. Well, if anybody has some data, I'd love to see it.

It gets rough. But marijuana, here's a pro tip. Marijuana changes the whole game. If you smoke some marijuana before you get an NAD drip, I did it in 10 minutes. Yeah, I just sat high as fuck, sat there. But so high, I got paranoid. But there's something that happens. Marijuana reduces nausea in

patients with cancer going through chemotherapy. A lot of people that are, have wasting issues, also different ailments where they have a difficult time eating. Marijuana reduces nausea. And whatever that mechanism is, marijuana has a profound effect on the way your body processes the NAD drip. Because the difference for me between NAD drips with no marijuana is rough. The fastest I did it with no marijuana was like 30 minutes maybe. That's a long time to sit still.

It's not just a long time to sit still. It's a long time to sit still and be super uncomfortable i think i maybe did like 20 20 minutes but uh but i was like this i was like for 20 minutes like and then i i smoked some pot once i we actually did a podcast and we smoked during the podcast and then right after the podcast i was then right after the podcast, I was scheduled for the IV drip, and I was high as fuck. And I said, just open it up. Let's see what happens. And they did the full, like, opened it wide,

and then went through the whole bag in 10 minutes. And the nurse was freaking out, like, are you okay? Are you okay? Because it's crazy what it would feel like if you weren't on marijuana. But marijuana, just like, I was like, this is tolerable. I can handle this.

Pro tip. Pro tip. It's used a lot. These drips of NAD are used a lot, particularly in Florida for addiction. Ah, why addiction? You know, I don't know. It's just that doctors have found that it helps their patients tremendously. Well, it makes you feel better.

And in conjunction with an IV vitamin drip, it's really, it's a nice effect. And I would always like to do it post flights, like say if I fly in from the East Coast or something like that and I'm worn out. There's some science on that. So a good friend of mine at WashU, Shin and I and colleagues showed that the NAD levels in the body of an animal, probably in a human, they cycle through the day. They go up in the morning, get you ready, and then they go down at night. So you don't want to be taking these supplements or having this stuff injected into you late at night because it'll make your body believe that it's the morning. And I also believe, and it really is backed up by the mouse studies, that jet lag is caused by a

disruption of this cycle of NAD going up and down in your body. And so I've been using NMN, this supplement, to reset my body when I travel, and it's been night and day. Excuse the pun. No kidding. So if you fly to Australia, you'll just land, take some NAD? People are shocked.

People who travel with me go, David, you just landed. How come you're going to give a talk? It makes me able to go without rest. I barely have sleep sometimes. That's incredible. And that actually does make sense because that's the feeling that you get when you're jet lagged. Like you just can't get your energy going.

Exactly. And what actually happens, unfortunately, is even if you get your light in your eyes, which resets your brain, your liver has a clock. Other tissues, do you know that? They're separate clocks within the body. And if they're out of sync, maybe your liver is looking for a meal, but your brain says it's the middle of the night and you don't know what to do. And that's why you feel like crap. The only thing that's ever helped me reset it, and it's not profound, but it does help a lot, is exercise. So what I would do is if I fly, the moment I would land somewhere, I would just put my stuff in my room and go straight to the gym.

That'll raise your NAD levels. Oh, makes sense. Because that was, and I know I don't like to do it, right? It's like that feeling like, God, here, finally, I want to relax. I don't have a show for five hours. Let me take a nap. But no, I go straight to the gym. And for anyone who's listening to this, we know this in great molecular detail, and I'm not going to bore you to death,

but this is not just, oh, Dr. Sinclair thinks that this is likely to happen. It's knowing that there are proteins in the cell that bind to genes that control your body's clock, and they're regulated directly by the amount of NAD in the cell. And if you manipulate the NAD levels, that clock and turning on genes on and off gets screwed up. And as you get older, it naturally gets screwed up. And one hope is that by raising NAD more naturally, you also get better sleep. Makes sense. It all makes sense. Getting better sleep is huge, right?

That's a big part of your body's ability to recover and recuperate. How many hours you get a night? Last night, I got three. But usually I get about six to seven. You feel like that's good enough? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And what about people that say that you need eight or nine? Everyone's different. You think that's, it's just a, yeah. How much do you need? I don't feel good without eight. I feel good at seven. I feel better at eight. Eight's like, it's quantifiable. It's like I can see it.

I can feel it. Six or five, I'm like, I can function. But I have friends that just like five and they're good. You know, like Jocko. Jocko, five hours and he's, you know. He's lucky. Real lucky. But the danger is that if you don't get enough sleep,

you do accelerate your aging clock. That's clear. If you keep a rat from having sleep for two weeks, it gets diabetes. Two weeks? Yeah, it's so fast. Oh, that's what we need to do to get rid of the rats. Just starve them.

Give them diabetes. When you're getting ready for sleep, do you have a routine? Do you take like a relaxing tea? Do you take any, are you tryptophan? Are you doing anything that makes you calm down and relax? I do a lot. Melatonin? Yeah, I'm an excited guy.

And the whole day for me is a thrill. So trying to calm down is hard. So it starts with turning off the blueness on my computer screen, my phone. I try not to watch TV after 10 o'clock, try not to do emails after 10.30. That's the start. Then I have a special tea that has tryptophan, L-theanine, GABA, and that helps. I might have a sip of a little bit of alcohol just to calm my nerves. Not a lot, literally nothing like that.

And then if that doesn't work, then I nibble on an Ambien, and that will finally get me to sleep. An Ambien, really? You go hard. Nibble. Nibble. It's barely much. What does that mean? As little as I can... Yeah, yeah, right. How do you know what a nibble is? Yeah.

It's that. So if you have a whole Ambien, are you taking like a tenth of the Ambien? Oh, probably. And just enough to just like get your. Yeah. Just get the edge off. And once I'm asleep, I'm good. But you.

Yeah. But it's a procedure. I've had to learn this. I spent my 30s basically not sleeping. It was hell. I was almost suicidal. It was so bad. Really?

And is it just because you're so excited and you're so busy and then you just couldn't wind down? Yeah, and then young kids didn't help. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. The winding down thing is really hard for people that are like high-performance people that are working all the time and you're go, go, go, go, go throughout the day. And then sometimes when you lie down, it's the only time where you're not engaged with an activity so then your mind starts racing and starts doing an assessment of all the various things that are going on in your life and throughout your day that's my my issue when i go down like i have to make sure that i do not allow my mind to start like going on a rampage and you know like thinking about various projects i'm involved in or different things that I'm working on because then I'll get stuck because it's one of the rare times where I'm alone by

myself not thinking like I'm not by myself but you know I'm just I'm not engaged in anything I'm just laying there and sometimes when you're just laying there your mind's like oh we got nothing to do terrific because there's a lot of shit I've been wanting to talk to you about. It's like, you know, it's like if you don't have a conversation with your spouse and then, you know, you don't talk all day, but a lot of things are going on, then finally at the end of the day, like, okay, here's the things we need to talk about. Like, that's what it's like with my brain at night. It's like, hey, fuckface, there's a lot of shit you need to work on. Like, let's do this and then that, and what about that, and how about this?

And here's what I screwed up, damn it. Yeah, that's, oh, my god. That's the worst I have it's very difficult for me to not think about things that I've screwed up Right before I go to bed, but I must because if I do I will have a really hard time sleeping That's why you're successful. Mm-hmm. That's why Yeah, you evaluate yourself and fix the problems constantly. But it's ruthless. Yeah, it is. It's hard being that kind of person. It's hard.

You have to make sure you don't do it at night, though. That's the big one. Don't do it at night. Because at nighttime, I have to go, hey, shut the fuck up, stupid. Go to bed. Deal with this in the morning. Because in the morning, I'm also by myself. I'm having a cup of coffee.

I'm relaxing. Sit down outside. Listen to the birds chirp for a little bit Then is a good time because then you're starting you you're actually in motion So you could actually get some stuff done that maybe is bothering you maybe you can work on some of those things Nighttime you're not working on shit. You're just gonna ruin your sleep. Well, do you have any tricks drinks tricks tricks? My tricks are just mental exercises. Like I feel myself starting to think about maybe like a bit that I'm working on that I need to correct. Or, you know, this is not the right way to do it.

You need to – I got to go, hey, hey, hey. Stop and just think about your breathing. So my number one trick is just concentrating on in and out and in and out. And it's not even. Along the way, I will go right back into the things that are bothering me and write down, oh, I screwed up this or I shouldn't have said that. And in and out and in and get myself right back on track and eventually I fall asleep. Great. Yeah, breathing is really important.

Yeah. Breathing is really important. Yeah. Even during the day when you're starting to freak out or just get too busy, just 10 breaths will bring your heart rate down. Have you ever read James Nestor's book, Breath? Oh, I want to. It's very good. I've been told every day. Very, very good. And he's a really interesting guest too. I really enjoy talking to him, but his book is fantastic and it's very, very beneficial. And and i use those many of those breathing exercises that are outlined in the book i use in the sauna it's like one of the ways that i get through the sauna and if i do it correctly i can get i can get through like a sauna session and i barely know how rough it is if i do if i really get into it and i like force myself to fully

concentrate by the time i look down like oh my god, oh, my God, it's already 25 minutes. I'm good. Hang on. How hot are you making your sauna? It gets close to 200 degrees. Yeah, like last night was. I'll tell you because I take a photo of the thing. It was 190.

Let me see. So you can fry an egg in there. Yeah. That's it right there. I believe you now. Yeah. It's close to 200. That looks like 198, 199.

Yeah, I did that at Gabby Reese's place recently, too. Oh, yeah. That's where I learned it from. Yeah. From Laird. That's savage. That's savage. He gets on an airdyne bike with oven mitts in the sauna and works out. Like, yo.

Right, those two know hormesis. They exponential it. But I was almost thrown up. I had to leave and come back. Had a cold shower and an ice bath. How hot did he make it? About that hot. Yeah, he goes harder than that. He sent me one, a photo where it's like 225 degrees and he's in there with fucking oven mitts on. They're used to it. Actually, there's a photo that was posted online, Gabby and I. She's used to this. And I was a beetroot.

I looked like that girl from Willy Wonka's. I saw that photo. Yeah. It was brutal. I was about to pass out at that point. Yeah. Well, they're accustomed to some – well, first of all, she was an amazing volleyball player, and he is one of the greatest surfers of all time.

They're super athletes, right? And he's a genuine freak of nature. He really is. Laird Hamilton is a freak. And not just a freak of nature, but like a freak of willpower and control over his mind. Have you ever seen his ankle? No. I hate to show this to everybody again,

but he broke his ankle and just didn't do anything about it. Just kept walking on it. And his ankle fused and became like this tree stump. Like literally it looks like a tree stump. Yeah, but that's not smart. That's his ankle. Okay, don't do that. Yeah, I want to see what that looks like under a x-ray.

But that's just insane mental strength because he's walking around for who knows how long on a broken ankle. And he's like, whatever. Yeah, mine doesn't matter, those two. So they made me, not made me, I volunteered for the second time to jump up and down with weights in my hands in their swimming pool. Yeah. How's that?

Well, it's certainly motivational to jump high to get a breath. But if you don't time it right, you're just going to suck in water, which I did. So what is the workout? How do you do it? Oh, really interesting. You start with a weight that they make. It's different for them. But I started with a lightweight.

I think it was about 10 pounds. Hold it to my chest with one arm, very close. And then you use one arm to swim. And you swim sideways across the pool, there and back, without breathing. Underwater. Underwater. And you feel like you're going to run out of breath

on the second lap. But what Gabby tells you to do is just don't worry. It's your body screaming for, well, you've got a lot of carbon dioxide but you've got enough oxygen so just forget about what your body says and keep going and you do that and it works and that that's part of what she's training you to do is to don't worry about what your body's saying do what your mind wants you to do hmm yeah my friend John Joseph he's a lead singer of the Cro-Mags and he's also an endurance athlete he does a lot of Ironmans he, he's a lead singer of the Cro-Mags, and he's also an endurance athlete.

He does a lot of Ironmans. He's got this heavy-duty New York accent. He goes, tell your mind. Your mind is the one who tells your body who's the motherfucker in charge. 100%. Really, this is what this podcast is about, is don't do what feels good. Force your body to do what you want it to do. Then what they do is, once you've done that, that body to do what you want it to do. Yeah.

Then what they do is, once you've done that, that's just making sure you're okay in water. Then they make you hold two weights, heavy weights, and walk down into the deep end so you're about a foot below the surface, and you have to breathe by jumping. No, not a foot. At least it's above your head a little bit.

So you have to get... The only way to get air is to jump with these weights out of the water and then under. Exactly. And how many reps do you do? You do 10. You do 10, but it's also quite a mind of a matter thing because you have to relax. If you don't, which often happens to me in that pool, I suck in the water because I'm scared. Right. But if you calm down, it's fine.

And you do any kind of pool exercises or pool workouts other than that? No. So this is a completely novel thing for you. Well, it was my second time, but yeah, it's still weird. And I have a fear of drowning, so that wasn't great either. Who doesn't have a fear of drowning? Exactly.'t great either who doesn't have a fear exactly that's the worst way to die apparently really well suffocating is bad i watched my mother suffocate to death and that was not pleasant oh god for her for sure um and i expect drownings the same yeah i can only imagine like and then the willpower like i always think about this is so

stupid but i always think about magnum P.I. Remember the TV show? Yeah. There was an episode where Magnum P.I. got stuck in the ocean and he had to tread water for 24 hours. With sharks probably going around him. I don't remember, but I was a little kid. But I remember thinking, watching that episode, like, damn. Like, you know he wanted to quit.

But I know people can do that. Like, people can do things where they want to quit, but they do not. They just keep going and keep going. I have a couple of very good friends that are endurance athletes that do ultra marathons. They do these crazy Moab 240s and that kind of shit where they're just running for days.

You can tell your body what to do. You really can. Yeah, well, you're reminding me. days you know you can tell your body what to do you really can yeah well you reminded me so good friend of mine he just won the what was it one of the big marathons on on the west coast it'll come to me but he's 50 that day he turned 50 and so he's he's taking a couple of these molecules that we talked about but it's great to see his time get better and better and better. And people say, oh, you won the marathon for your age group. He goes, no, dude, I won it outright at 50. Wow.

That's huge. That's super unusual, isn't it, to win a marathon at 50 years old? Yeah, and he's just getting faster every year. How is that possible? Well, I'd like to take credit, but I won't. But he claims that it's made a huge difference. So this is NMN, and what else is he doing that's allowed? He's doing the metformin.

Metformin? I believe. And resveratrol is the third thing. NMN, resveratrol, metformin, DHEA as well? Not that I know of. Hmm. Interesting. And he's had a big impact.

Well, he's like one of these mice in our lab that runs further. So that all fits. But a scientist says that doesn't prove anything. But it's certainly inspirational, like my father is. It doesn't prove that he's staying young because of me. But it doesn't seem to be hurting him at all. But you're pretty confident that with further research, it's most likely going to determine that all these things are extremely beneficial to basically the overall population. Is that safe to say? For sure. That's why I'm doing it. If we wait for another 20 years for proof of all of this, we're done for. We were born a generation or two too early,

unfortunately. So you've got to take some risks. And the older you get, the more risk you should be able to tolerate. Because you know what's going to happen if you don't do anything. It's not pretty. Yes, it's not pretty. You know, I don't want to shame anybody, but there's a photo of Kelly McGillis, who was with Tom Hanks in Top Gun, and Tom, not Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise. So there's a photo of the two of them in the Top Gun movie, where she's young and beautiful, and he's young and handsome. And then there's a photo of the two of them in the Top Gun movie where she's young and beautiful and he's young and handsome and then there's a photo of the two of them now and she's kind of let herself go a little bit.

He has not and he looks fucking fantastic. It's kind of crazy when you see the contrast of the difference between someone who's taking care of themselves and someone who's not. Yeah, I wrote about this in my book and in fact I use Tom as the example of what you can do. And if you look at somebody his age that was in a previous generation, those actors look really old and he looks great. And he has taken care of himself. I'm sure there's

probably some other work that he's had done, but it can make a huge difference how you live your life. That's the goal of me now is to say, don't wait because you don't want to waste away or become an, have an accelerated age clock. The one that we measure. Yeah. Um, and often it's going to be too late if you just wait. And so in my life, I've been doing this since I was 33 doing various things. Um, adding things along the way. What do you think someone should do if maybe they are 80 and they're listening to this for the first time? I mean, we don't want to rule them out or count them out. What should someone do if you're saying it's too late, but if you are 80 and you're like, God, I wish I had done this earlier, but what can I do now?

Well, so I know a little bit about this because I have some friends who are that old. And when they do the kind of things that we've talked about today, it's a remarkable change. They look younger. They walk younger. In fact, the speed that you walk is the best determinant besides this clock that I talked about of how long you're going to live. And there was somebody that I was talking to the other day that in their 80s started fasting, doing all these things, took some supplements, and their walking speed went back to a young person within a matter of months. It can have a huge difference. And we now know that the clock is malleable. You can turn it back. That's hugely liberating. And even if you're that old, you can make a big difference. I'm just saying that it's

better to start early because you're going to have the biggest bang for the buck. Right. So even if you're older, look, it'll definitely have some effect. But the correct way to approach this is if you're a young person, don't wait until you get old. Start now. Right. Yeah. Now, when you're a young person, like if someone's 30 years old, they don't need to do this, do they? Should they think about metformin and things along those lines at a very young age? 25? In my opinion, no, because you've got your high levels of NAD.

You've got your longevity genes activated. But there are things you should definitely do in your 20s that I did. I didn't eat a lot of food. I skipped breakfast my whole life. And then exercise. I used to go to the gym a lot and do a lot of aerobics. And I definitely don't regret that now. I've still got that core. So I think in your 20s, do the basic stuff. But then the supplements, I think, save till your 30s because your body has the longevity and resilience in those years. But I'm speculating based on animal studies. We don't know. Nobody's done this kind of experiment. And this is the problem.

They're going to know in 20, 30 years what I'm saying is true or not, but we can't wait that long. So I do my best to extrapolate from animals and look at societies that live a long time and make the best I can scientific judgment as to what will work. long time and make the best I can scientific judgment as to what will work. And when you say your whole life, you skip breakfast, was that instinctual? Like, was that just a, just, you don't enjoy eating breakfast? Uh, no, I love, you know, I love a Vegemite on toast like any Australian, but I gain weight. I have a obesity, uh, alleles That's obesity genes is the colloquial way to say that. And type 2 diabetes is in my family. And if all I have to do is really look at a food and I'll put on weight. So for me to have a physique like I do, so I'm pretty lean now, takes a fair amount

of effort. And skipping breakfast was the easiest thing to avoid that, getting overweight. That's interesting. So even when you were a young boy, like you just realized that this is the way to do it, just don't eat breakfast? Well, how long have we known that being overweight is bad for long-term health? Well, we have, but we also were told when we were young that's the most important meal of the day. Right. Well, I'm not a breakfast guy.

If I could skip one meal, it would be breakfast. But some people need breakfast. So I think I'm not saying everyone has to do what I do. And that's the other important point, Joe, is that whether it's your meals or your exercise, you're changing your microbiome, if you've got, or even supplements, unless you measure something, you don't know if it's working and we're all different. Even sleep, as you mentioned. And so that's why measuring things with the clock, with the cheek swab, you've got to measure it. Otherwise, you don't know what works for you. And what works for me may not work as well for someone else. That whole breakfast is the most important part of the day. I think people need to kind of know

that that really doesn't make sense, right? Well, for kids, it's been shown that you do need a bit of food to wake up and think at school. So I'm not saying that, but for adults, I think most of us can skip breakfast. And over time, matter of weeks, months, a lot of us feel better without it. When we look at the average American body, I mean, what percentage of Americans are obese? It's a kind of nutty percentage, right? I want to say it's close to 40% or something like that. Right. Yeah. So there's obviously a lot of eating when you don't really need to eat. And there's that thing that we all do. And I'm guilty of it too. And you just go, ah, maybe I should eat something, but you're not

hungry. You're not really hungry. But like, if I'll go through the cabinets and I'll see some chips, I'll go, those would be good right now. And I will sacrifice my physical health for some temporary mouth pleasure. And if you think about, like, what a bowl of chips. Like, my God, if you eat a bowl of Ruffles, how much fucking calories and bullshit oils and stuff are in those chips? Yeah. It's not good.

Well, you know, our brain is designed or evolved to crave energy. Yeah. Makes sense, right? Because we used to go through periods of famine. We don't do that anymore. Right. So one of my points in the book that I'm writing about how we got here and how we get out of it, this treadmill that we're on, is that we're slaves.

Our limbic system that you and Elon talked about, the core of the brain that we don't seem to control very well with our frontal cortex, it's telling us, eat all the time, eat high calories, sugar, fat, have sex. That's the evil part of our brain. But we need to overrule that in general with our frontal cortex, which we have in abundance, the lollipop species. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that's an evil part of our brain. It's kind of how we got here. Yes. Right? Eat and have sex is how we got here. But it definitely, in modern society, when you're thinking about working all day and you don't have really the time to

really sit down and plan your meals out your your mind can tell you to eat constantly like especially i know a lot of folks that work at places that have snacks available for other employers so you go into the break room and there's just like all these snacks there's like granola bars and that kind of stuff and they just eat them and then next thing you know you've added a few thousand extra calories to your diet every day yeah exactly and so the first thing you can do if you want to do this is clear your house of those snacks yeah makes it easy because i i too you know even though i know the science i will still i i'm recently i'm currently addicted to twizzlers unfortunately when i get stressed out i will snack like crazy and but that's that's the limbic going why

twizzlers a friend of mine put me onto them, unfortunately. They are delicious. Yeah. They are delicious. But what's a good low-calorie substitute to something like that? Or does it even matter if it's a low calorie? Like if you're just eating rice cakes throughout the day as snacks, you're still eating. Don't do that.

Rice cakes and rice in general will spike your blood sugar Which we try not to do if we want to live a long time so you so it twizzlers. Yeah, I know it's crazy I'm not perfect. I'm a work in progress But um so rice cakes spike your sugar too much Yeah rice in general. I don't know about rice cakes. I've measured that but even personally I've been wearing this glucose monitor on occasion, stuck into my arm. And a lot of people are doing this. It's actually a trend. Is that when they're glued on once?

Can I see it? I'm not wearing it today. I'm just tapping where I put it on my arm up here. But there are a lot of companies now doing this. Yeah, I've seen those. Yeah. And I know that rice is bad. Unfortunately, I love sushi.

Potatoes weren't that bad, actually. And grapes were the worst. Rhonda Patrick, the health fitness guru who many of us know, she love sushi. Potatoes weren't that bad, actually. And grapes were the worst. Rhonda Patrick, the health fitness guru who many of us know, she said grapes were the worst for her as well, which is sad, right? You think grapes, healthy, vitamins. They taste good. The thing about potatoes, though, potatoes, there's an effect that happens when you cook a potato and then cool it down and then reheat it. It apparently has much less of an impact on your blood glucose levels. Do you know about that?

No. Rhonda Patrick explained it to me. There's actual science behind it. See if you can find what that science is, young Jamie. But it has much less impact on blood sugar levels. And, uh, here it is. Uh, high glycemic index diets are associated with include, uh, the GI is a measure of the blood glucose raising potential of carbohydrate containing foods. We previously found that eating cooled or reheated potatoes

reduces the GI by 30% to 40%. So when it's cooled or when you reheat it, it reduces the intake, the GI measure, which is crazy. Yeah, well, that's starch, which is just a string of glucose molecules. But isn't it weird that hot, when the temperature of the food has a difference? Yeah. It's good to know. Yeah, it's nuts.

Resistant starch, try cooking rice, potatoes, beans, and pasta a day in advance and cool in the refrigerator overnight. Huh. Reheating doesn't decrease the amount of resistant starch. All right. Interesting, right? Yeah. So just for health benefits, cook your potatoes in advance, cool them off, and then reheat them again. It tastes the same, but it has a big difference in the way your body reacts to it.

I assume we're not talking about French fries, though. Yeah. Well, the French fries, you're dealing with those horrible fats unless you get them in duck fat. You ever have duck fat fries? You've told me about them. I have to try them. Oh, they're so good. They're so good.

I don't think they're good for you, though. Probably not because of all the shit you're putting on them, but would not fresh French fries then be kind of good because they're frozen and then you're reheating them? Maybe you're right. Maybe it's a health food. But then maybe like In-N-Out fries, which are my favorite, are not good. That's what I'm saying because they're fresh and cut right then. Yeah, those are the ones that are not good for you, right? McDonald's is way too good.

Oh, McDonald's are barely fries, man. That's a sugar cube dressed up like a fry. That's like one of them vegan chicken sandwiches. It's not really chicken. I'm a big fan of fries, though. It's a sugar cube dressed up like a fry. That's like one of them vegan chicken sandwiches. It's not really chicken. I'm a big fan of fries, though. It's a problem. But sweet potato fries are better. But any time you're deep frying something, the odds are that shit's not good for you.

Yeah. And actually, because my stomach and digestion and the microbiome, the bacteria in my gut, have adapted to my lifestyle, what I eat. If I eat something like that, a fried piece of chicken the other day with my son, I ate this thing, fried piece of chicken in a sandwich, for at least two days, I felt like I was going to throw up. It wouldn't go down because the bacteria in my gut are not ready for it. So that's what happens. But it's also been shown that your microbiome changes as you get older. what happens but it's also been showing that your microbiome changes as you get older and one way to restore that to a more youthful mix is not to eat so much you need to get your gut microbiome ready for gus's fried chicken because there's a place in town called gus's fried chicken if you

never had it right it's a goddamn sensational chicken. We need to have a pill that you eat before that of the bacteria to digest it, I think. Yeah, something. Because, man, that place is good. It's real fried chicken. I will take you up on that. But one of the things you wanted to know is what can you replace snacks with?

Yes. And what I do is I have warm drinks. It's either a hot herbal tea, or in the morning I drug myself up with caffeine, but with coffee or tea. Down at herbal tea or in the morning I drug myself up with caffeine, but with coffee or tea, you know, down at the night and up in the morning, I'm definitely, you know, like a normal human, but hot drinks are the way to go. I definitely, if I'm a bit hungry, if I just fill it up with hot water, it feels great. And, uh, when you're drinking these teas, they're decaf teas,

I assume. Depends. Uh, after about 11, I don't have more caffeine cause then I won't sleep. I assume. It depends. After about 11, I don't have more caffeine because then I won't sleep. Because when I drink tea, like herbal tea or even a lot of times coffee on an empty stomach, it kind of upsets my stomach a little bit. But tea seems to be more so for some reason, like caffeinated tea on an empty stomach. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. But yeah, liquids are the way to go. And again, if somebody tries this and says, I can't do it, I need to be sticking something in my mouth. There's a lot of habit there. Yeah. Give it time, at least two weeks, and then you'll get used to it. There's a thing that people are doing now where they're trying to quit cigarettes, where it's like a wooden. I saw it advertised on Bridget Phetasy Show on Dumpster Fire.

I saw it advertised on Bridget Phetasy Show on Dumpster Fire. It's like a wooden cigarette that gives you flavors, but it's not even a cigarette. You don't even light it because people are so accustomed to just putting something in their mouth and having this thing that they do to relieve stress. So as they're quitting cigarettes, the idea is that you're putting this thing as a replacement to the cigarettes. There's a lot to that. I've talked about my grandmother a lot. I wrote about her in my book. She's the reason I'm doing what I'm doing.

She told me to try and make humanity better. So Vera used to smoke a lot and drink a lot. It's surprising she made it as far as she did to 92. So when she quit smoking, it wasn't the addiction, but she had this thing she needed to put in her mouth. So she had one of those cigarette holders, and she was chewing and sucking on that for a couple of decades, which as a kid was really off-putting, but now I understand why she needed to. Andrew Dice Clay, the comedian, he quit smoking for a while. I think he went back to it but when he

quit smoking he would just bring a cigarette everywhere and he would just hold on to it and he put it in his mouth too and he'd never light it he put it behind his ear he would just hang on to it and he just didn't light it and i was like what kind of willpower is that like imagine it's right there this is what you want it's right there and you decide to not do it you know but i was like that's a real no one's going to tell you to do that like no one would tell you just carry it around so he would like have one between his fingers and be talking to you and never light it yeah that sounds harder but it's a strange thing that people develop these patterns where they feel like they must

eat right they must put something in their mouth. They must smoke. They must hold on to something. What is that? Is that the thing? I think so. Yeah, that's it. It's called a fume. So what is in there? It's got oils. Oils.

But it doesn't really smoke, right? It just... They have... You just suck on it? They have blanks. Blanks. But does it... Is it a vape?

There must be something. See, there's like a little filter. Maybe make a... See if there's a video. See if like F-U-M has a video on like YouTube. They must have something on YouTube, right? Like, yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, I went to her video to find it.

It wasn't Google-able really, but it's very strange. I don't know. Yeah. I'll find a video. But it's just to me, it's very odd that people have such incredibly ingrained patterns that physical activity of just putting something to your mouth can help alleviate some of the cravings. So is this lady using one of them? There's a little wick or something in there, it looks like.

So she's sticking it in there. You're talking too much, lady. I can't wait too much talk. Let's get to the party. Come on. So she poured an essential oil on that. Oh, she looks... She might be annoying.

So maybe it's a way to... I'm kidding, lady. Don't get mad. Let me see what happens. Is she breathing it out? I don't even see any smoke. Get out of here with your voodoo. Get away from me with your trickery.

One thing I'm curious about is why is it the mouth? Or if we had a drug, we stuck a needle in our eye, would we get addicted to that? That's a good point. Right. Do coke addicts want to put anything else up their nose when they quit coke? I don't think so. It's the mouth. What is it about us as a species that makes us want to suck on stuff?

Maybe nipples from the time you're babies? There you go. That's a good theory. Makes sense, right? Plus, we associate food with pleasure. We're always putting food in our mouth. Kind of makes sense. Well done. We should write a paper together.

Yeah, for sure. Long time coming. I don't even think it's marketed towards smoking, even though it obviously is, but it's calling itself aromatherapy as opposed to, like, smoking or something like that. Let's just get the fuck out of here. All those hardcore cigarette smokers are like, listen to me. That is not going to do the job. Those people like head rushes.

They like to get head rushed. You still doing mushrooms yes how's that going it's going well which ones are you talking about i don't know yeah i do all kinds of them yeah because i do like the nutritional ones i do the psychedelic ones yeah yeah there's a company called atai that uh is turning these into actual drugs they're doing really well. In what way? They're just reengineering the molecules out of mushrooms

to be able to help cure things like, or help with PTSD and depression. Yeah. It's a big thing. I think you helped start this whole trend. Maybe. John Hopkins, I know, is doing some work. They're planning on doing studies with former UFC fighters and dealing with people that have CTE.

Yeah. Yeah, because neurogenesis, because psilocybin in particular. Promotes neurogenesis? Yeah. Cool. MDMA is being very useful for PTSD, huh? Yes, for PTSD. CTE is different.

Oh, sure. That's from banging your head too much. Yeah. PTSD, I had Rick Doblin in here the other day from MAPS, and he's the one who is at the forefront of all this work and pushing this forward and getting approval to use all of these Schedule I substances and trying to make them available for therapeutic use for people with all sorts of issues, PTSD and all sorts of trauma.

It's an exciting time for brain research, actually, and for the patients, because there hasn't been much you could do for people who had mental issues and even Alzheimer's. Now we have these tools that are only going to get better. Super exciting. One of the things we're doing in my lab that's exciting is, you know, we can age the brain forwards and backwards now. Really? Did I tell you that? No. You know we can age the brain forwards and backwards now? Really? Did I tell you that? No.

So since we last spoke, we published a paper in the journal Nature in December that showed we could not just accelerate aging, but now we can reprogram cells to make them. Oh, you know a little bit. So we were able to reprogram the eye of a mouse. A blind mouse became able to see again by making the eye younger again. It's a gene therapy. But ultimately, you want to make it just a pill that reverses aging. How'd you do it on a mouse's eye? So we package it in a virus and it's drug-inducible, so we could just take an antibiotic and turn it on. But literally, it's just a quick injection in the eye, which

we do to mice, it's easy. In humans, people get that all the time if they have macular degeneration or need gene therapy to correct their genetic defect in their eye. And it doesn't hurt. It's very quick in and out. And what we did with those mice was we then turned on these three genes that are normally only turned on in embryos. And we reversed the age of those eyes. And the mice could see again. And now we're just ticking off the various tissues and organs that we can rejuvenate and turn the clock back. And this is the same clock that I'm

talking about with the cheek swab. We now have the ability to turn that clock back and it looks like it's permanent. And so you set the clock back 50% in the body. Now we do the eye, but hopefully the whole body. And then you age out another couple of decades, take another course of antibiotics, go back again and just rinse and repeat. Wow. And so what is happening? Like how is it working? Well, we know some things.

We know that the proteins in the cell that alter the clock are necessary for the vision to come back. So the clock isn't just a clock on the wall. It's actually representing time itself, which is amazing. back so the clock isn't just a clock on the wall it's actually representing time itself which is amazing and we can read that with the same test we use for this cheek swab for people we use on the mice but we do a blood test on them or we measure their eyes we can extract their their eyes forgive me and then we measure the age of their eyes using the same clock test but literally what it is is it's we take their DNA out of each cell each cell has about six feet of DNA

and of course it's bundled up very tightly and how it's bundled up But literally what it is, is we take their DNA out of each cell. Each cell has about six feet of DNA. And of course, it's bundled up very tightly. And how it's bundled up determines the age of the cell. So a young cell will have beautiful loops of DNA and bundles that tells it to be a nerve cell at the back of the eye. But over time, what we see is, in part due to DNA damage and cell stress and injury, those loops and bundles get disrupted. So now instead of this beautiful loop bundle pattern, like a symphony on a piano, they come unraveled. So the bundles get unraveled. And instead of it being a symphony,

the cell is playing a cacophony and no one wants to listen. And it messes up the cell's ability to work. They're still in the eye. They haven't died, but they're just not working like a nerve cell. In fact, they think they're more like a skin cell. They lose their identity. So when we put in our three gene combination and turn them on, somehow, we don't know how, those loops and bundles of DNA go back to their original structure, like playing a concerto again, or I mean, I use the analogy of a compact disc. For the young people, that's a little disc we used to put music on but it the aging process is analogous to scratches on a CD so that you skip songs when you get older you know and

literally we're skipping genes reading when we get older and our treatment is like polish is is polishing the CD so that the cell can now read the beautiful music of youth is this the stuff that Andrew the cell can now read the beautiful music of youth. Is this the stuff that Andrew Huberman at Stanford is working on as well? We're collaborating. Yeah. And are you using that on people with normal macular degeneration, like age-related? We want to.

We're going to be testing it on— Shoot it in this dude's eyes. I've got issues. You do? Oh, my God. Well, I have a sign-up sheet but no just kidding uh but we're going to be testing um macaque monkeys to see if we can improve their vision and if that works and it's all safe then then you move to me the fda oh yeah

one little step up yeah so then we'll hopefully have fda approval to go into our first patients in a couple of years from now, if all goes well. Wow, that's incredible. And so down the line, this may be a thing that people do where every X amount of months or years, you go in and you get a shot, and it backs your age up a few years. Well, for your eyes, yeah, but imagine one day, which is what we're developing, you'd put it in your vein and you become transgenic and then you just take an antibiotic for a month and you get rejuvenated. Why the antibiotic? Oh, we just engineered it that way.

We need a way to turn it on and off for safety reasons. And an easy way to do that is just to use doxycycline, which is what people use for variety of antibiotic reasons. There's some side effects to taking antibiotics, though. And do you mitigate those with probiotics? We probably should, but we don't. Yeah. I have some friends that have had some real huge issues

from staph infections and then taking antibiotics. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, your gut is so important, and the gut-blood barrier is increasingly known to be important for aging. As that breaks down, bacteria in your gut leak across, leaky gut syndrome. And we're finding, we scientists are finding, bacteria showing up in cancers and even in the brain of Alzheimer's patients. And we think that they might be a cause of these diseases. Really?

Yeah, it's brand new science. Super exciting. Why do they think it's a cause of it? Well, any time you associate one thing and another, you speculate that. But it makes sense that bacteria in tissues could be creating inflammation. And inflammation is part of the aging process and diseases. Alzheimer's is very inflammatory. And the thought is instead of attacking, let's take Alzheimer's, instead of attacking the plaque, which has been largely largely unsuccessful it's a little bit successful but not very maybe we just take an antibiotic and kill

those off in the brain it's similar to when this australian barry marshall discovered that stomach ulcers could be cured just with an antibiotic most people younger than us probably don't remember stomach ulcers were thought to be due to increased acid yeah it used to be a stress issue people thought we talked about on the podcast the other day, that it's actually a gut bacteria issue. Right. And Barry Marshall, an Australian like me, we tend to experiment on ourselves. He gave himself this bacteria, got stomach ulcers, and then cured it with an antibiotic. So he gave himself bacteria that caused stomach ulcers on purpose.

Yep. Oh, Christ. But it was worth it. He won the Nobel Prize. Yeah, I guess so. Well, he wascers on purpose. Yep. Oh, Christ. But it was worth it. He won the Nobel Prize. Yeah, I guess so. Well, he was on to something. Right. Well, you know, how much goodness has he brought and happiness has he brought to the world?

That's what scientists should be all about. It's not just about publishing. That's what is the immediate goal. But there are a lot of us, like Andrew Huberman, you mentioned, a really good guy, a good friend of ours. He also wants to change the world. And he's from Stanford, one of the lesser universities. But I love guys like that, people like that, because a lot of scientists are just about what's my next publication. But there are a few of us that look at what is the goal? What are we really trying to do here? We're trying to make the world a better place. How do we do that? Well, we'll innovate, we'll have IP, we'll start companies,

we'll make drugs, and hopefully we'll be saving lives. One of the things I really like about Huberman is he does things publicly. So he's really big on using social media. He puts videos up on Instagram explaining these things, puts videos up on YouTube, and they're really easy to follow. And he'll show you and demonstrate to you, like he had one today on the benefits of focus and posture, that there's some actual real benefits in terms of alertness just by posture and where you're looking at with your eyes and science. And he's talking about this stuff. It's not anecdotal evidence.

It's actual. He's talking about the real neuroscience behind all this stuff and it makes it interesting and it makes people intrigued and it makes people look into things more. People should definitely check out his podcast. It's great. And he's showing the world that scientists can also be eloquent and educational and on the money. And look like a hunk. How about that? Oh, he's, yeah, he was in the pool where I was drowning, too. Uncomfortable to be shirtless with that guy, I bet.

It's all right. He looks like a superhero in a Marvel movie. He does. He does. He looks like a guy that you would say that if you saw a Marvel Comics movie and that guy was a scientist, you'd be like, that guy's not a fucking scientist. Get out of here.

Right. Well, as I said, he's not at a great university. So because he's not at a great university, he has time to work out? He's going to kill me. But please do listen to his stuff. I think he knows you have a sense of humor. A little one. How bad is Stanford, though?

Not good? No, it's great. It's great. He might recruit me out there. Let's see. But this brings me to the third trait that makes us different from animals, which is the storyteller. This is what we do. And Andrew's great at it. He's great at it.

So it got us to this point. We needed stories because we didn't have written words initially. We had to tell history and, oh, the flood came up to here when I was a baby. But that's screwing us as well. It got us here. It's our history. But now we don't know what to believe. We've got QAnon, we've got the internet. You try to buy a supplement. How do you know what supplement you can buy? What do you trust? And the other problem is we don't know who to trust.

You and I, we spend, I think, half of our lives trying to figure out is someone lying to us or not. It takes a lot of brain power. In fact, I would argue that the reason we have such big brains is that once we became liars, we had to be lie detectors too. And then there's this game. That's interesting. I never really thought about that.

Like, yeah, once you figured out a way to communicate, we also figured out a way to be deceptive. But then you've got to figure out if they lied to you. Yeah, the con game. Yes. And then the fourth trait is future seers. We'd be able to project our mind back in time and forward in time. And what's important about that is if someone's, you can lie to someone. I could

tell you that, I don't know, I'm going to be your best friend and I'm going to screw you, really. So you need to detect that. But also I need to know, do I need to be your friend in the future and am I taking the right risk? So am I going to take the risk to lie to you? Absolutely not. You're one of the most well-known people in the world. I'm not going to take that risk. But if I meet someone at the supermarket, I can lie to them because I know in the future it doesn't matter what they think. And that together, the storyteller and the future seer, is also what gets us to this point.

But these also are the traits that'll get us out of the problem we've got, which brings me back to Andrew. We need scientists to be the storytellers. We can't just have people saying, oh, I heard from a friend, this is a fact, or go to a website, trust us, our product works. Because that's untrustworthy. And Andrew is one of the first, if not the first and the best scientist to engage the public in a way that is now a mega hit and be a world-class scientist at the same time. And so I said to Andrew at beginning of COVID, here are the people I work with. I got the best media guys in the world, people in the world, run with them, go for it. And he's become a megastar. And the other day I was saying, you know, damn it.

Why shouldn't I do that? So here am I saying I'm about to work on having myself talk about this as well. And so Andrew's going to teach me how he did it. So you're going to start a podcast? You're going to start video blogging? You start doing the whole damn thing? It's going to be different than this format. It's going to be new, but I'm going to try it.

What's a different format? It's going to be a short miniseries, and so we'll see how it goes. A short miniseries? Yeah. Yeah. What's the plan? What are you going to release it on? YouTube?

Yeah. Yeah? What do you think? Yeah, sure. Perfect. Yeah, definitely. Let me know. I'll promote it.

I'll let you know. I'll let people know, rather. Thanks. That's exciting. So what is the... You're going to just talk about anti-aging, the scope of your research? So the first eight-part series is going to be some of the themes that people keep asking me about in the book. People have read the book, keep saying, what do you take? How much do you take?

When do you take? There's all the stack bros get that. And then there's other things about sleep. How do you improve that? How do you take? How much do you take? When do you take? There's all the stack bros get that. And then there's other things about sleep. How do you improve that? How do you improve what's, I mean, basically what we've talked about today, but in greater detail and more prescriptive and why it works. I'm probably going to have a co-host who is my co-author, we'll see, but he's a super funny guy. And that's the idea. But what I find is that I get so many emails every day. I took my email off the internet. Somehow it still can be found.

Please don't write to me, please. Reddit. No, no, no, no, no. But my point is that I know what people crave for information. And I'm a storyteller myself. I love educating. It's been one of the greatest things is bringing up three kids and telling them about the world. And I want to do that on a grand scale. Well, you certainly have a lot to offer and you certainly have a perspective

that I think a lot of people could benefit from. And you understand things that are super important for life that most people are unaware of when it comes to like longevity and the strategies and what the actual significant impact of all these things that we've discussed so far today. I mean, it's amazing when I talk to people that like are seemingly health conscious that are not aware of all this stuff. And I kind of get it because one of the beautiful things about this podcast is it's my job to talk to people like you. So I kind of get it because one of the beautiful things about this podcast is it's my job to talk to people like you. So I've gotten this sort of accidental education over the past 12 years. Well, thank you for doing this. Guys like me, people like me and scientists, we never

had this platform to come and speak to you. Before that, we were speaking through reporters, newspaper reporters typically, and it was mangled and hyped and it was embarrassing. And every story was, there was a lie or something wrong in there and a headline that was, we're all going to live forever. And I rarely talk to the old media anymore because it's just too risky. I want to talk directly to the public and it's been great. This is a new world. That's exactly how I feel about interviews. That's why I don't do interviews, because they'll take my words out of context. They'll edit it. They'll take something that I've said and put meaning to it that's not true. And they do it because of clickbait, because their business is to sell things. And I think it's very unfortunate. I think it's

changed pretty radically since the internet. It's one of the few things that I think true journalism has suffered in some ways because of the internet. I think independent journalism, like the Matt Taibis and the Glenn Greenwalds and the people that still practice independent journalism, they've thrived because of this vacuum that's been created. But I think there's many publications today, particularly the ones that are online, that survive by clickbait. They need clicks. And if they don't get clicks, they don't get advertisements. So if they can twist things a little bit in the title or give you a deceptive title, but then sort of correct itself in the body of the work, they'll do that. But a lot of people just read the title and they're

like, did you hear David Sinclair says he's living forever? And then next thing you know, you have to talk to your colleagues. So, David, telling people you're living forever? You're like, I didn't say that. Right, right. I even get called into back rooms at Harvard with lawyers who say, you couldn't say that. And I went, I don't think I said that. So I also now record interviews just in case.

Oh, that's huge. Yeah, that's huge. And it's just unfortunate that it's necessary. And I get it from their perspective. Look, we all benefit greatly from journalism. I benefit greatly from reading these stories. I get educated. But when someone writes something that's not accurate about me, then I go, okay, well, what are you telling me that's not accurate about Syria?

You can't trust anything. And even your doctor, they find it hard to keep up with all of this. They don't know what's true. I recently saw my doctor after a year indoors after COVID and it was a virtual meeting with my doctor and he's a Harvard trained, Harvard specialist. So you think top of the world. And so this is how the meeting goes. Hi, doctor. Hi, doctor. Whatever. So how are you feeling? Feeling good. Okay. So how's your sleep? Blah, blah, blah. So it was just questions. Okay, we're done. Hang on. That's not enough. Don't you want to know about this? For example, give me a prostate-specific antigen test, PSA, which is important for people our age because prostate cancer can show up. So his question to me was, well, do you have a family history? And he said, your father's not alive. I went, half the world knows my father's still alive. You don't even know that my father's still alive. That's firstly a problem. Second of

all, I said, no, he doesn't have prostate cancer, never had it. He goes, okay, well, do you have any symptoms? No, but why the hell am I going to wait till I get prostate cancer before I come and see you? Get the test. And he goes, okay, get the test. But that's the problem with medicine right now. You either have to be sick or have a family history before they treat you. So one of the things I've been saying for years in my book especially is aging is a disease and it's treatable.

And, you know, I think we all have a family history of aging. So let's treat it. Let's try to prevent it. And, you know, I think that we really have a much better society if we came in early and tried to stop things before they actually occurred and we went in and we were sick. That's an interesting perspective. We all have a family history of aging. It's a terrible disease. It really is. I mean, it truly, truly is. Do you anticipate a time where we actually will completely stop and reverse aging in our lifetimes? If you ask me that.

Will old ladies look hot again? Will they look like 25-year-old ladies? Well, let's see if we can make really hot mice first. That's the first test. Come on, man. The old ladies don't have much time. They can't wait for you to publish mice studies. So here's the good news, that there is a massive megatrend zeitgeist revolution in aging research.

I used to be in the backwater biology 20, 30 years ago, 25 years ago. Now billions of dollars are being poured into research and development. It's super exciting. There's new breakthroughs all the time in leading scientific journals and companies being developed for new ways to treat skin, to rejuvenate that, livers, kidneys, and eventually whole body. So is it going to happen in my lifetime that we can reverse aging in part of the body? Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to die trying. And I think if we're really lucky, in two years we'll have a success. Whoa.

Can we make old ladies look young again? I don't know. But I know that just in the same way as the Wright brothers built the Wright Flyer with powered flight, it was an inevitability that there was going to be a Concorde and a jumbo jet, 747, and go to the moon. It's going to happen. It's just a question of how much we as a world want to invest and accelerate it. Those old ladies listening are crossing their fingers right now. Come on.

What's his email? What's his email? Come on, doctor. Get it together. In the future, let's not even put a timeline on it, but let's think about how this technology progresses and just assuming we don't blow ourselves up or get hit by an asteroid or the aliens land and stop all the nonsense. When you look at the future, you anticipate human beings, science, to have complete control over this process and the ability to literally bring the body

back to peak form in their prime absolutely Wow we are tool makers we are a few species we can do anything we want yeah right I'm I'm like Elon but for the way I think about biology is we can do anything. We can understand it. There are many species that live longer than us. We've got an elephant clock. It's cheek swabs from elephants. They've figured out how to not get cancer for 100 years. They have multiple copies of a gene called P53, which protects them. We only have two copies.

And that's just an example. We can engineer ourselves either through medicine or through even genetically changing our species so that we don't ever get cancer, at least not for centuries. And that's doable with today's technology. What about genetically engineering ourselves so we're not susceptible to viruses, things like COVID, like getting ourselves into a position where those things have a minuscule effect on us, like that something like COVID would really only be like, like it is for the most healthy folks, where it's like a minor cold. Well, what COVID taught us is that your age matters, not just for how you look and diseases like heart disease, but dying from infection. So if you can stay young, let's say you've been exercising, eating the right things,

eating less, you will be literally younger based on that clock, and you will have a much better chance of surviving COVID. If you're obese and you don't exercise, we saw those were the most susceptible to infections. So one is stay young. The second is there will be medicines to rejuvenate the body. We're testing our NAD boosting drug right now in COVID in 30 hospitals around the US. So fingers crossed for that. Maybe not for COVID, but eventually the next virus that will definitely come. By the way, I don't know if you remember in my book, which came out a few months before COVID, I said, we're going to be hit by a virus, a pandemic. And most people went, yeah, here he goes again. But it happened. Unfortunately, I'm not proud of predicting it, but I knew this would happen. And so I was getting ready for it. Anyway, so that's what

technology is. There's a third technology, which is we could engineer our genes. Our children could be resistant to viruses. That we could do as well. And when you think about these things happening, what would be the mechanism to engineer our genes? Would you be using CRISPR? Would you be using some as-of-yet-not-invented technology? Well, I can imagine a few ways. Just the way vaccines work, you stimulate the production

of antibodies that recognize certain proteins, like the spike protein on the outside of COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2. And so we could definitely make children that would never have a problem with SARS. The problem, though, is that viruses are smarter than us in many ways because they evolve super fast. And we always are one step behind them. So I don't think it makes sense, actually, to genetically modify for specific viruses. But there might be ways that are universal. An antibody that recognizes all flu proteins, we could put that into children and they never get flu. Wow. Now, when you look at human bodies, one of the things that's always been interesting to me is how much variety there is in terms of how we react to certain things. How allergies and things along those lines and how people react differently to different foods.

foods. Is there a way that you can anticipate where one day we'll be able to give someone a test and say, oh, your ancestors thrived on these particular types of foods and these are more beneficial to your body? Because it seems like this one size fits all approach that some people preach, it's just not effective for everybody. It might work with that one person. It's sort of like, do you remember that book, The Secret? Yeah. You remember, like, everybody's like, you can wish yourself and think about the future and you can make it happen. But they only talked to people that were actually successful.

And they're like, I dreamed it into reality. Like, oh, my God, that's all you have to do? But they didn't talk to all the people that dreamed it into reality and it failed miserably like like oh uh had you win the lottery i bought a ticket right so if someone says like uh you know the key to health is to only eat meat um some people that fucking works it really works there's some people that eat carnivore diets and their eczema clears up and their brain fog goes away and they're healthier. These sort of diets where you're elimination diets. But I know other people that go vegan and they go vegetarian and they basically get all their protein from plants and they feel much better. protein from plants and they feel much better. So there's obviously some sort of a biological variability that exists in people. We know it is, right? I'm not allergic to peanuts, but you can't even eat peanuts on planes anymore because some people are so allergic that the dust

from you chewing peanuts can get them deathly ill. Well, thank you for saying that because for far too long, we've treated the average human and none of us are average right and we're changing the way we treat people in medicine and with wellness because we have to personalize it and the only way to personalize something and to know if it's working for you is to measure it hence you know the the company that i'm building to measure things but that's really important because it now means we can tailor your food to you, your supplements, your exercise, because they're really, like you say, everybody responds

differently. I have a different microbiome in my gut than anyone else on the planet. And how do I know? Well, I measure it. I can measure these things. And so in the future, and not too distant future, we can even have an app on our phone that will say, In the future, and not too distant future, we can even have an app on our phone that will say, all right, your latest reading from your heart, from your swab, says that you're deficient in these things and your epigenome, the scratches on the CD are looking like this. You've got that scratch, you've got that scratch. To correct that, go to that restaurant. They've got a special meal for you.

Wow. A special meal to correct issues. That would be the most bizarre thing. If you could go to a restaurant and a restaurant would serve you a meal that's been genetically engineered to correct all the issues that you have. Right. And the problem today is that we can measure our genome, and there are a number of companies that can do that, but we're missing the other half of the information, which I would say is even more important for health, which is the epigenome, the control systems, this clock that I'm talking about,

which we can measure. And that together tells you whether you're going to be an asthmatic or susceptible to diabetes because the DNA itself is just like a code. We don't know how that code's being used throughout our life, and it changes every time we have a meal, every time you see something, it's changing in your body. So you've got to measure both of those to get the real answer to whether what you're doing is working and how to fix it.

This has got to be a very rewarding career path for you because you're not just engaged in something that's intellectually stimulating, but you're engaged in something that could potentially benefit the human race in a spectacular way. What is that like knowing that you're working on this stuff? Well, I'm Australian, so I'm just happy to be here. What does that mean? I'm happy to be alive. I wake up and I was like, oh, I'm not, so I'm just happy to be here. What does that mean? I'm happy to be alive. I wake up and I'm like, oh, I'm not dead. That's cool.

Are Australians happy generally? We are just happy. We don't have egos. It's beaten into us as kids. In school, if I got an A, whatever, if I said that, I'd get beaten up. Tall poppy syndrome? It's exactly that. Yeah.

So I'm wired not to get a big ego. People don't know that's an Australian expression, right? Right. But it's self-explanatory, right? Well, I guess so. The tall poppies, they want to drag them down. Well, you get cut off. If you stick your head up above the rest of the poppies, you get cut off.

Oh, that's what it is. Okay. But what does it feel like to be in this position? Well, I mean, it certainly feels satisfying, but I'm never satisfied. You're the same. This is our personality. But I also feel a tremendous sense of responsibility because I do have the ability, I think, to change the world. And I want to make the right decisions and not get distracted or waste my time. Actually, when you know that 150,000, 155,000 people will die today from old age, it's really hard to take a day off. Is there a possibility that one day doing this and all this work might lead to a

substantial increase in overpopulation? No. No? How come? Well, even in the US now, population is declining. The fertility rates have gone down. And when you do the math, the rate of people who die from aging is barely the replacement of – well, birth is barely replacing the people who die, especially in most of the world. I mean, there's still certain parts of the world that are reproducing at high rates. But even those are coming down. that are reproducing at high rates. But even those are coming down. I was in Africa a while ago, and there were these people I talked to on the ground,

literally on the ground, were saying, yeah, we used to have 10 kids, and now we have two, and we want them both to go to college. So we are in a world now where if we don't do anything, population's going to decrease, which isn't that great either, to be honest. But we also have technology to solve the way we treat the planet. There's no way we can continue exploiting the planet the way we do right now, even with the current $7 to $9 billion that we'll have on the planet, steady state, which is

predicted. Bill Gates talks about this wonderfully on YouTube. Please check it out if you haven't seen it. And so the future of humanity is it's going to be steady state. Maybe it'll top out at 10 billion. But even with aging not being cured, but slowed down and extended health-wise, we're not going to run out of room. But resources, yes. But that's going to happen anyway. So what we need to do is to solve the health care problem. We spend 17% of GDP in the US on sick care. It's not even health care anymore. And if you can save, let's say, even a few percent of that, within that decade, that's trillions of dollars that you save that can be put towards research and development for climate change and other things

that we need to solve as well. There was a woman that I had on recently, Dr. Shanna, the woman who talked about phthalates and all the various... She's an environmental epidemiologist, Shanna Swan, and she was amazing. And she wrote a book. What is the book called? She wrote a book on declining fertility rates, declining testosterone rates, increase in miscarriages, and declining birth rates in people.

That's directly related to the amount of phthalates that we find in their body, which come from environmental toxins, primarily from plastics. There it is. That's the book. It's called Countdown, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female male and female reproductive development and imperiling the future of the human race it's an amazing amazing book and the podcast was incredible she's so interesting and she's really funny like uh she has a thing on her thing on her uh instagram called the jizz quiz like because like like literally if you track the phthalates in in the water supply and in food supply and in human beings there's a direct correlation between the introduction of petrochemical products and the decline in sperm production and the decrease in

the size of the taint which is really crazy because taints apparently in mammals are one of the very best ways of telling the difference between males and females because the taints in males are generally 50 to 100% larger than the taints in females. But the introduction of phthalates is shrinking these taints and it's making male penises smaller it's making the testicles smaller and lowering the sperm count and people are on testosterone replacement earlier in life they have lower fertility lower sperm count earlier in life and generally they have less energy they have less vitality and it's these fucking chemicals that are in our plastics that are leaching into our bodies, but it's measurable.

And it's only really been studied to the extent where she's describing it in these peer-reviewed studies that have come out over the last decade. This is a new science and a new understanding of this impact, and it's really terrifying. Yeah, it is. And it's on the theme that I mentioned, which is we've gotten to this point with technology, but technology screws us. So we have to engineer our way out of the problems that we've created for ourselves. And this is a treadmill that we may never get off. But we need to embrace science to understand what's making us sick and then solve that with ingenuity and the FU gene.

I don't microwave plastics anymore for that very reason. It's scary. There's PCBs and all sorts of stuff. I truly believe that that is an issue for us. There's a real problem with testosterone too with men that it goes down with aging, but it's just going way down. One of the best ways besides taking either a cream or an injection of testosterone is what you do. And what I do a little less than you is to build up your core body muscles.

The big muscles actually tell your testes to make more testosterone. And for me, that's been helpful. I do hip hinge exercises a fair bit, try to build up those muscles. Swings, like kettlebell swings? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why hip hinge? Well, partly because my piriformis was destroyed, but also because, at least my trainer says,

that that'll help me maintain strength around my core. And one of the problems with aging is when you fall over, you break your hip, and this is gonna prevent that. Well, any time you're adding weight, like any weight pushing exercises, with aging is when you fall over you break your hip and this is going to prevent that well any time you're adding weight like any weight pushing exercises you're building bone density and one of the problems with sedentary people is when you're not weight bearing you're not carrying things around not lifting and you don't have any resistance exercises your bones get fragile as you get older especially with our mineral poor diets you You know, there's just mineral poor diets, no weight resistance, not good. But if there was like one exercise that you can do that is like,

if someone said, all right, I just want to do one thing, I might say kettlebell swings. Yeah. You know, because you can, you can do kettlebell swings with heavy weights too. And it's an incredible body exercise. You're using so many different things. You're using your grip, you're using your leg muscles, you're using your back, you know, you're using your traps, your shoulders. It's a lot going on when you think about taking something and doing this and swinging it all the way up and swing it. And you could do it for repetitions. You could do it like heavyweight, do low reps low reps you know it's a good with lightweight it's a good way to warm up and exercise that's how i start out my warm-ups i jump rope and then

i do light kettlebells like 35 pound kettlebell swings yeah great i just can't tell you how much better i feel having done about three years of more intense exercise like that uh anyone who isn't lifting weights you got to do it yeah Yeah, I agree. You just feel so much better. You got spring in your step. You don't get tired. You feel like a new human. And so I've lost a fair amount of weight since COVID. Stopped eating large meals.

And I've never felt better. I'm not calling it a prescription, but what I've done to my body over the last 10 years, if you measure my blood biochemistry and even this mouth swab test, I'm younger than my chronological age. In fact, I've been getting younger over the last decade. So 10 years ago. Based on those tests. You're younger now than you were 10 years ago.

Right. Wow. And you can maintain this. I'm on a trajectory to be getting younger. Wow. And you can maintain this? I'm on a trajectory to be getting younger, yeah. That's so crazy. So what do you think? Do you think it's just a combination of all the things, or do you think it's metformin? Do you think it's NMN?

Well, I think it's the combination because I'm a scientist, and I add things one by one and then measure them. Again, you've got to measure something if you're going to fix it. And so I add things. Sometimes they do nothing to my age or to my health or how I feel or my mental ability. And then I don't do that anymore. And then I add something. Oh, great. That worked. I keep that. And then I'm just adding that on. I would say I'm not the smartest guy in the room. By any means, at school, I was reasonably intelligent, but I wasn't the smart one.

But I think that through what I'm doing and through mind exercises and just running a marathon in my mind, figuratively speaking, every day, I am smarter than I used to be. And it's interesting, right? I'm engineering my body to be better and better and younger and younger as I go. Yeah. That's a real thing. You can get smarter. Yeah. I mean, I did it accidentally, I think. Yeah. That's a real thing. You can get smarter. Yeah. I mean, I did it accidentally, I think. Wow. Doing this podcast. Oh, that's true. Talking to people. Cause if you go back and listen to the early podcasts, I mean, look, there's times today that I sound like a moron, but if you go back into 2009, I really sound fucking stupid. Um, and I think that's not an

accident. That's not a coincidence. It's just, that's who I was. And I think that's not an accident. That's not a coincidence. It's just that's who I was then. I was a dumber person. I was less aware. Well, this is why we need to live longer because you're in peak condition mentally, physically, right? I'm in very good condition both, yeah.

I think definitely mentally this is the smartest I've ever been. Physically, there's certain things just because of injuries, particularly like back injuries, that my body has a hard time doing at full clip like martial arts. But it's just because of the unusually extreme demands that the things that I'm interested in require, like jujitsu and kickboxing are two very explosive things. So the pressure on the tendons and the joints is pretty extreme. It's an unusual demand.

Fair enough. I mean, you've had a harder physical life than I have. But my point is that our brains only become good at 50. How old are you? 53. Almost 54. I'll be 54 in August. Okay. Well, similar. I'm about to turn 52 next week. But we used to think of 50- Look how good your hair looks. It's amazing. No color? Did you put any color in that? Is that your actual hair color?

I dyed it, but I don't have gray. I tried to go summer blonde. Summer blonde? How dare you? It went orange. Why don't you spike it? I was messing with my hair. I was bored during COVID.

How about you get frosted tips? I should. I was bored, but I have no gray hair on any of my body. Just for the hell of it? You should make it all gray just to freak people out. I told my kids that and they went, don't do it. But it's fashionable now. Girls were doing that for a while.

Yeah. You know, young girls were dyeing their hair gray. It's really weird. It's like what a hot old lady would look like. Yeah. Well, fashion's a funny thing. Yeah, it's a weird one. But what do you think is causing you to not have gray hair?

Is that genetic? Like, does your father have dark hair? My father lost his hair, a lot of it, by 30 and is fully gray. My mother had color in her hair when she was still 70 when she died. So it may be genetic but I don't know I'm happy I'm not doing any I'm not plastic surgery I don't have an ad hair transplant or anything you look really good like for guys 52 your skin looks like very pliable you look like you look youthful well there's one way

to tell you know people in Botox anywhere right but if you I've got headphones on but if you look near their ear you botox anywhere right but if you i've got headphones on but if you look near their ear you get the wrinkles you can if you look at someone's ear and around that that's and you don't botox that how's your ear do you have a young ear pretty young pretty young uh everyone can check out my ear but yours grow that's what gets really crazy when you see old old dudes they have ears as big as these headphones. Old dudes have giant fucking ears. Like you run into like a 75-year-old guy, you're like, whoa, look at the size of his ears.

What the hell's happening there? I have no idea. But if only other parts would grow, it would be good. Wah, wah, wah. Haha, sorry. As of old dudes, I just, yeah. But what I wanted to say before is our minds are at their peak so far. Maybe they're going to get better. So we need to allow people to live longer. A lot of people start off careers that, I mean, first of all, we need people like you to stick around for longer. The planet needs you. And so my goal is to let people be healthier for longer. And if you're healthy, you don't die, right? So that's the idea of all this research. But also, if you get longer life, you have more choices. You can have kids later.

You can change careers. If you're busting roads for a living and you hate it, why not have two years of a paid skillbatical from the government or a loan and change? Go make guitars or start a band or become a therapist. Whatever you want to do, it gives you more options during life if you're not worried at 50 that it's all downhill. Did you call it a skill-batical? Yeah. So like a sabbatical where you learn a new skill? Yeah.

Is that your own term? Yeah. I like that. All right. You slipped it in there. You didn't even address it. Trademark, yeah. I think you're making a ton of sense,

and I think also as you get older, there's something that happens to people as you live your life, hopefully, where you keep making mistakes, but you make less of the same mistakes. Because you go, oh, I remember the last time I fucked this up. I'm not going to do this like that anymore. And then you anticipate, well, if I do that, that's going to cause problems, so I'm going to do this. And then as you get to be 50 years old, you have a lifetime of these things that you can draw upon. Hopefully, you have a lifetime of corrections of mistakes that led to success. Unfortunately, for some people, it's just disaster after disaster, and they never develop either a strategy or a pattern of behavior that leads to improvement in the way they think and behave. Yeah.

Well, you need reflection. Yes. And this is us as the time traveler species that makes us different than all of the others is that we have a very good ability of, in general, learning from our mistakes. And people like us, every night, are like, oh man, I screwed that up. I've got to fix that. And that's a way of improving yourself throughout your whole life. And that's what we call wisdom. And I know when you're 20, probably you and I, as well as most 20-year-olds, think that we're the smartest people on the planet. We can solve everything. And the old people don't know anything. But if you're 20

and listening to this, I can tell you, you guaranteed that when you're our age at 50, you've got so much wisdom to refer to because you will make mistakes and you will learn from them. And that's why I like being an educator is that I don't want my students or anyone on the planet to make the same mistakes I've made. And I've made plenty along the way. Yeah, that's one of the benefits of being able to talk to people.

It's like you can learn from their mistakes without having to make the same mistakes. Like you really can. You don't have to necessarily have only experience in order to learn. You can most certainly learn. Like I've never done cocaine. The reason I've never done cocaine, when I was in high school, one of my best friend's cousin was selling Coke and i watched his life deteriorate i watched him be addicted all they wanted to do was do coke and they would they had this apartment in an attic and they would just sit there and just look fucking weird watch movies like they were gone and i said wow it's like i knew him before when we were all younger we were high school kids and then i knew him later and i was like this is like watching watching a person has been bit by a vampire.

And then for me, it was like that drug fucks you up. And so I learned from other people's mistakes. Right. Well, this is the storyteller in us as well. We can learn from from other people's wisdom. Yeah. And so we have to have respect for elders as well. And one of the things that I really loved seeing during COVID was that we really cared about the older people. I didn't know humanity really cared about older people. We were kind of ageist. They're old, put them in a nursing home, who cares? But I think what COVID showed us is that many of us really do care about older people. And that was really reassuring. I have more faith in humanity now. Well, overall, like the problem with the thought of do you care about older people is it's so abstract. Like, yeah, you care about them, but they'll be fine. They're over there. They're just doing their thing. But then when you find out that there's a disease

that targets old people disproportionately, and then unfortunately what happened in places like New York State, where they were taking people that are COVID positive and bringing them back into nursing homes and it ran through them like fire. That kind of shit we hear about. It just makes you so sad when you think about like the last few years with your grandmother that you could have enjoyed. And now she's gone because of this fucking disease. You know, and people say, oh, well, you know, she was 86. What'd you expect well didn't expect someone to bring a covid positive patient back into the nursing home and infect her and

everybody else around her like she could have lived a few extra years and enjoyed her family a few extra years and they could have had those memories so i think it made us directly aware of many many things about our mortality and about what's precious and what's important. And because so many people were forced to stop working and so many people lost their businesses, I think it made people rely on community more too. You know, there's a lot of negatives that happened during this COVID where this pandemic, where a lot of like really hysterical people, and I don't mean that in a funny way. I mean people that were like prone to anxiety

and people that have a difficult time with stress and a difficult time with adverse conditions and situations. This accentuated them past their breaking point. And you see them on Twitter just freaking out, wearing three masks and screaming out the window. There's a lot of people that lost their fucking mind. And I'm hoping that we can bring some of those people back to baseline over the next few months. And slowly, you know, just everybody calm the fuck down.

Let's learn something from this. Let's do better and what I really hope people learn as they go over the studies and they look at all these things that we've learned is your health is of paramount importance it is the most important thing the number one comorbidity besides vitamin D levels is obesity and you can control that you can control both of those things right well we might get some hate mail or hate tweets. Whenever I talk about obesity, there's always a few people that say, what are you hating on fat people for? That's not what I'm saying. Not what you're saying. We're saying, look at the data. Look at the data. What is bad for you? You cannot say that being very overweight is a healthy thing for most people. And that's

all I'm saying. It's a decision. It's just not good for you. It's not hating on a person's state. And listen, I easily could be a fat person. A lot of people listening to this could be a fat person. It's about a pattern of behavior that leads to an adverse result that will affect every single human being listening to this. If you chose to eat the wrong foods and live a sedentary lifestyle it is inevitable it is just how what happens it is and it's part of being a person but also what we're talking about it comes from from love we want everybody to live well and be the best person they can be yeah be happy I want people to be happy I want people to feel good it feels better to have a healthy body when

you know I've been in situations where I gained weight and not even that much. But then when I lost the weight, I'm like, ah, it feels so much better. Like that's a guy gaining 10 pounds and losing 10 pounds. That's not a lot. But if you're 50, 60, 70 pounds, like my friend Laura Bites, she's a hilarious stand-up comic. And she was on a podcast recently and i hadn't seen her since uh i was in california and she lost like how much did she lose like 60 pounds 50 pounds a lot she lost a lot she looks fantastic she just she just she found out she's really funny she found out at

the beginning of the the pandemic she's like well well, what's the thing that fucks you up the most if you're fat? She goes, well, shit, I'm fat. Time to lose weight. And, you know, she just decided to go on a sensible, reasonable diet and exercise. She used online programs, like followed someone online, and is now on the total health path. And when you talk to her, she's like, everything feels so much better. I have so much more energy.

My body feels better. I can move better. Oh, yeah. Think better. Everything. So a friend of mine who I've co-published a couple of papers with, Ray Cronus, he advocates the cold therapy. advocates the cold therapy. And we came up together and we published this thing called the metabolic winter hypothesis, which is when we were out in caves, we're Cro-Magnon people, we would go through winter being hungry and cold. And that is what we need to be healthy,

or at least mimic that. And so the fasting and cold therapy is what we've evolved and what our bodies need to be in tip-top shape. And the problem is we basically stay warm, especially here in Austin. It's pretty warm mostly. And so his prescription, which has worked really well for some celebrities he's worked with, among others, is that you want to be slightly chilly. Keep your house temperature down, sleep without blankets, and don't eat a lot. And he says, I think it was something like, if you don't shed half a pound a day, you're not doing it right.

Half a pound a day, eventually you'll be nothing. Right. But he's starting with people who are really big. Oh, okay. But it works great, that combination. Just being uncomfortable and cold. Well, not even uncomfortable, just slightly chilly. But he also prescribes things like cold jackets. And there's even a thing that Laird Hamilton was telling me. He has this chilly jacket that he sleeps in and stays cold at night. So it's actually chilled? Yeah, he said so. So it's got like an electrical supply

or something that cools you off? I don't know. I don if jamie you can find that we'll have to ask i was using one of those uh mattress covers for a while in la and uh i liked it but i i fucked up a couple of times and one time i made it too cold and i was waking up in the middle of the night shivering that was a problem that's overdoing it that's me and then the other time uh one of them leaked um and it was my mattress was wet and I was like what the fuck is going on you know because what it is is essentially like you put this cover over it and the cover has these tubes

in it and the tubes have water and then there's a machine that sits by the bed and the machine cools the whole deal weren't you using like a whole mattress I still do, love it the one I use is called Eight Sleep. Yeah. It's very similar.

You can change, you can make it hot if you want, if you'd like to go the other way. You can have different zones if the person you're with doesn't want it to be cold, so you can not have to freeze them out too. But yeah, I almost feel like I can't sleep without it, to be honest with you. Like I get mad if I have to sleep somewhere else. I'm like, fuck, it's not going to be cold. I'm going to be so hot. I'm going to be sweating.

Interesting. So when you go to a hotel room, you notice a big difference. I know it's going to suck. I just know I'm not going to have a good sleep. And yours is an actual, the way 8 works, it's an actual mattress itself, right? It's a cover, but it's like proprietary to their mattress. But I think they now actually have a really big cover. I think it works almost very similar, though.

But do they have a mattress or is it just a cover? It's a cover for the mattress, but the mattress is covered in something else that you then zip around this thing on top. It's not just sitting there. It's zipped around. It doesn't like slide around. What I'm getting at, do you need to use their mattress or could you use a regular mattress? Initially, I think you had to use their thing. I think they've now created something you can cover other mattresses with.

Oh, okay. They just started advertising it. Yeah, that's a big thing. A lot of these Tim Ferriss type dudes are always into those chilly mattresses with. Oh, okay. They just started advertising it. Yeah, that's a big thing. A lot of these Tim Ferriss type dudes are always into those chilly mattresses. I used it for a brief amount of time, and I think there was some benefit in it, but I stopped using it. Yeah, well, I could barely sleep last night in my hotel because it was warm, and I had to rip all the covers off.

I did a show last night at Vulcan Gas company, and then we went to Golden Tiger Which is maybe the best fucking cheeseburgers in the world and I had two of those bitches two double cheeseburgers At one in the morning Not the best move right? It's definitely the wrong move. I ate them in 30 seconds, too I wolfed through those fuckers, and then I woke up in the middle of night drenched with sweat Oh my god, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, the food and the meat sweat. So I wore one of these rings that you can measure your sleep with.

Or a ring? Yeah. Yeah. And so I figured out pretty quickly what would disturb my sleep. And more than a sip of alcohol will do it, obviously. But also food. If I ate late, it was terrible. I didn't get into that deep sleep, which is, you know, Matt Walker says is is the thing to get into because your body's always dealing with the food that you've digested

yeah and i think if you lie down and it's still in your stomach i'm guessing gravity just barely gets it out of there i'm guessing yeah i was just so hungry and after i do shows i'm so indulgent i just want to eat you know i did an hour and a half on stage. I just want to go eat. Did you have a drink as well? I think I had a couple. Because that for me is, now I don't care about food. I mean, I'm going to eat if I have a little drink.

It's fuck it juice, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I had a couple of whiskeys. And then two giant cheeseburgers. But it was a great time. Some nice people. Had a lot of fun.

Well, you've got to live. I mean, this is my mantra as well. If you're always too strict, you won't stick to it. Yes. So for everybody who tries, if you don't do it the first time, try again. Go easy on yourself. But do it for yourself in the future. It's going to pay off maybe a decade or two of extra healthy life.

Yeah, there was a great podcast that I did recently with Ethan Suplee. How do you say it? Suplee or Suplee? Suplee. Ethan is an actor, and at one point in time, he was more than 500 pounds. And now he looks like a football player. Now he looks amazing. I mean, he looks like an athlete.

He's like this big, like muscular, healthy guy. That's him. Look at that. Look at the difference between him on the left and him on the right. I mean, substantial. I mean, really, really impressive. on top of all this exercise and diet and you know taking care of himself is express himself and talk about what the struggle was like and part of it was like at one point in time he had lost so much weight that he had to get his skin

cut you know and removed and then he gained a hundred pounds so he goes back and forth and back before and he did this over like 20 years until he got to where he is now and he's a really really bright guy super smart dude so it's it's it has nothing to do with intelligence like willpower and intelligence they're not necessarily directly related and willpower doesn't even like cover all of it because there's so much weird psychological shit that's going on with people that do things that they know are bad, but they keep doing it anyway. Whether it's cigarettes or gambling. The limbic system is powerful.

People are crazy. But he got it dialed in, and it's a massive inspiration to people. Because you see him now. And anybody that would say you shouldn't talk badly about obesity. You shouldn't say that obesity is bad because you're going to make people's feelings hurt when they're obese. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to inspire you to try to achieve what that guy's done, what my friend Laura's

done, with what many people that I know have done. I'm trying to inspire people because it's possible. You're alive. You're breathing. You're breathing. You're moving around. Can you do all those things? You can get to a better place. And once you do that, you will have extreme satisfaction.

And I think you'll also have the knowledge that you are capable of great feats, that you can do this great thing. To lose 270 pounds like Ethan did, my God, that's an incredible thing because that's a mountain that you chop down over years. This is not an easy thing to get to. For years and years and years, he slowly avoided temptation and then even fucked up and gained all this weight again and then slowly got back down again and now he's had a completely healthy weight where he looks amazing you know what one of the things I'd like to figure out is if you lose a lot of weight how far back

does your biological clock go yes and I would suspect it has a big difference on your actual age is to lose all that weight oh my god for a guy like him I would love to do that swab with him at 500 and do that swab with him at 250 and see the difference. Well, next time there's somebody on your show who wants to try that, we could do that. Well, it's just so hard to get someone to commit to losing an astronomical amount of weight like that.

Yeah. But it's also, you know, you need help and you need help from either counseling or coaches or loved ones or friends or someone that can kind of like help you along too because it's difficult. Yeah. And actually your social circle has been shown to work against you in many cases. Really? Ray, I mentioned, he said that when he works with his clients, I think it's okay to mention

that Penn Jillette has lost a lot of weight thanks to Ray. And he found that you shouldn't tell people that you're trying to lose weight because there'll come a point where they say, you've lost too much weight.

You should eat something. Who the fuck are those people? Friends. Assholes. Maybe they don't like the fact that you look better than them. Yeah, look at you, David. Looking all good

You lost too much weight your heads too big for your body now. Yeah Yeah No, those people are assholes. You need better friends good friends will tell you dude. This is fucking amazing Let's celebrate with cheesecake. No once in a while But it's also been shown that if you have good friends and a partner that you love who you can trust you live longer by a lot that makes sense lonely people that's got to be like a painful existence it's the the feeling of you know that's why like the the concept of incels you know involuntary celibates like that is one of the most depressing things in our culture these angry people online like big grown-up man babies that no one wants to fuck like that's terrible right that's one of

those saddest things it does sound horrible yeah uh well yeah that that that's that's the issue that um we do need friends and we need partners to take care of us when we're older. Yeah. But I think generally the reason that my guess that those people live a long time, and it's a fact that they live longer, is that you're countering cortisol levels. When you're stressed out and worried and you don't have a lot of friends, you have these stress hormones, and cortisol is the worst one, the insidious one that causes you to age more rapidly. these stress hormones and cortisol is the worst one the insidious one that causes you to age more rapidly mmm and cortisol is just stress yeah stress mental stress mental stress causes cortisol yeah and I want to be really

clear Joe that that when I talk about adversity and stress on the body hormesis right it's not the same as mental stress this is very different just we use the same English word for it, unfortunately. But there is some benefit in, I don't want to use the word stress, but difficult tasks for the mind, right? Challenge. Yeah. And purpose.

So is the difference that cortisol is released by the body under situations of uncontrollable stress or situations where things are unmanageable or you've gotten past your breaking point? What is the difference between the stress that one experiences through cortisol or where cortisol is released versus the stress of, say, high-level chess playing, where this is obviously very beneficial to the mind. You know, it's an exercise, in fact. Well, I think what you said is right. From my understanding of the science is that if you reach a tipping point and you have real anxiety, that's going to secrete cortisol. But being focused and having a high focus on what you're doing

and taking your mind to the next level, even if your heart rate goes up a little bit, that challenge to the body and the mind, my understanding is that doesn't release a lot of cortisol. But the hormesis effect, it's a U-shaped curve that once you get a little bit of intensity and biological stress and even mental stress, it's a good thing, but you go over a tipping point and then it becomes bad again. Same thing with physical exercise, right? Like those people that run the ultra marathons, after it's over, they're wrecked because they've gone too far. Right. Actually, hormesis, the way it was discovered was people were spraying

herbicides on plants and they kept diluting them down and everyone thinks the less you have less you have the less it'll work but the plants they got the really low dose this is not homeopathy this is real science plants got low dose herbicide that's would kill a plant at high doses grew better than the untreated plants hmm and so what you want to do even if you're a plant is to experience adversity whether it's a plant like a grapevine making wine, it's a little bit dried out or fungus. They make the best wines. They make these molecules that I call xenohormetic molecules, xeno meaning cross species, hormetic, hormesis. And we get the benefits of plants that are biologically stressed out or have adversity without actually having to do it ourselves. So I try to eat plants that have

color in them, have been stressed, organic, not grown in a perfect greenhouse condition. Now, why do plants that have color in them, what is that? Is that because they contain more vitamins? Well, so the color is partly good for you. There are some anthocyanins that are healthy that have color. But it's more of an indicator dye, an indicator color that the plants have been stressed. So for instance, if you shine UV light on a lot of

plants, they'll turn bluish or reddish if they're green. And that's their way of resisting UV. And that color is an indicator. Interesting. And when your body's releasing cortisol because of the high stress that you're in, this unmanageable stress, that is also one of the benefits of exercise that you can actually reduce that cortisol. You could reduce that physical stress, right? Absolutely. Exercise is one of the best ways to get out of depression and just general anxiety. is one of the best ways to get out of depression and just general anxiety. I use it a lot for myself. You know, it's a stressful job what I do. And the exercise, a little bit of running, bit of weightlifting, I feel like a new person. And that's cheap therapy. Yeah, it really is. And it's one of those things that if you can just write down a routine and

force yourself to do it, in the beginning beginning you'll still be stressed out it'll be hard to concentrate you'll be like ah everything sucks but if you just keep going if you just keep going and when you get through the routine you will literally experience during a one hour exercise routine the actual alleviation of stress you'll experience it yeah melts away it'll melt away and then as long as you actually are rigidly, you got to rigorously exercise. You got to really get after it. But at the end of that thing, you're like, it's going to be okay. Like, yeah, man, it's going to be okay. Give me a hug. You know, everybody's all right. I love that. It's my favorite thing. The feeling of a post-workout bliss is just a beautiful bliss. It's like, you know, just you have much fresher,

cleaner perspective on things. And you don't just feel physically great. Mentally, it's, yeah, I did that. Yes. I've achieved something. That's so important. Yeah. That's important for people.

I think people, it's entirely too easy to get through life for most folks. And I think we're not wired for that easy to get through life for most folks. And I think we're not wired for that. We're wired for overcoming great odds and obstacles. I think human beings are wired for predator attacks and all kinds of shit. And we're worried about things that are real,

and when they don't happen, I think we fucking stress ourselves out about little things. Somebody said something once, I forget who said it, but it's a great expression and I like to repeat it all the time and I wish I could attribute it to that person, but they said, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Even if it's not much, you got to always remember that human beings respond to the worst thing that's ever happened to them. If the worst thing that's ever happened to you is your mom took your phone away when you're 16

and you're a brat, you know, like, you're like, fuck it, mom! What the fuck, mom, this is bullshit! That is a person with no character because this is the worst thing that can happen to this spoiled baby is his mom took his phone away from him. Whereas if you grew up in war-torn Serbia, if you, you know, whatever,

you've had a very difficult life on the farm, you've been wrestling since you're 10 years old, and you're preparing for tournaments all the time, that kind of person has experienced a level of stress and difficulty that makes normal situations in life far more easy to manage. 100%. And you can see that in generations. Even before us, that was the greatest generation. My grandmother grew up in World War II depression, and she never got stressed. For her, there was nothing that could compare to that. I became a different person after I saw my mother die in front of me, and I couldn't do anything but whisper into her ear that she was the best mom I could ever have. After that, nothing was as bad

as that. I would have a bad day at work and I'd come home. How was your day? Everyone would ask at home and I'd say, nobody died today. It was a good day. And that sets the baseline, right? Once you've gone through something like that, every day is a good day. Yeah, every day is a good day. If you could stay on this earth and enjoy your friends and enjoy your loved ones and do something that you actually love and get satisfaction out of for an occupation? Find a purpose. Yes. Right?

If you have a purpose in life, you live longer. So I say find a purpose. Do that. Make money. If you're the expert in the world at something, you will naturally earn money at it. So just do what you love. Live longer. It's a win-win. Yeah. And you'll enjoy yourself. It's just so many people, unfortunately, get so stuck in whatever path they were initially on that it's so difficult for them to course correct. on that it's so difficult for them to course correct they get stuck where they develop debt they got a lease for a car and they got a mortgage and they got a this and that and then they have a family independence and then they're moving up the corporate ladder and the company needs you mike

the company relies on you you're a big asset to the company and then you're like shit i really wish i was a pianist i really love playing piano piano. I wish I'd just stuck with that. I could have been in a concert. I could have been fucking Elton John. Shit. And then, you know. Right. Well, one of the things that I think has gotten me to this point in my career,

I started my career when I was four years old. My grandmother said, do something important. So I said, you know. That's kind of amazing. I'll stop people from getting old. You remember that when you were four years old? I remember the exact moment. What did she like?

How did she say it? I know where I was, what we were doing, what the carpet felt like. Wow. She said, David, no,

I asked her, I said, Vera, I didn't call her by her first name because she had the, fuck you, Gene,

excuse my language. I didn't call her grandma, I called her by Vera. Vera. You called her Vera? Yeah, she just wanted to be called by her grandma. I called her by Vera. Vera. You called her Vera? Yeah. She just wanted to be called by her name. Really?

Yeah. Wow. Interesting. She's very rebellious. I guess. One of our kids has the same FU gene. It's been quite interesting there. But that's a different podcast.

You really do think it's a gene? I'm certain of it. Is this the child that's a baby? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, my grandmother, I said, are you going to always be around? She said, no, I'm going is this the the child that's a baby yeah yeah Anyway, if my grandmother I said are you gonna always be around she said not gonna die What do you mean you're gonna die she's everything that you love your pet cat me your parents and you are gonna die and

It's not gonna be pretty and as a four-year-old that that really freaks you out and that was a turning point in my life I said that's not fair. And then over the next few years, I thought, that's cruel to have consciousness, a species that knows that's going to happen, the future seer species. And be burdened with that knowledge that everything that you love is going to die, in many cases, horribly. So I decided at age four to make that my purpose. And I've been working back from that goal ever since and figuring out how to get there, get a PhD, come to America, MIT, Harvard, make discoveries, go on a podcast.

Wow. What a wild moment. A four-year-old looking up at his beloved grandmother that doesn't want to be called grandma. And then she hits you with something that really affects the whole course of your life at four which is so crazy anyone who knew her knew she was a special person so i'm not just making this up she really she's uh yeah i could i could you know get a bit weepy

here if i talk too much about her but she didn't want to talk about the small stuff she didn't care about politics or the weather she just want to talk about the small stuff. She didn't care about politics or the weather. She just wanted to talk about philosophy and history and making humans better because she saw the worst of humanity. Nazis, Russians coming in, crushing the revolution in Hungary. She had to flee for her life with my father. She had my father when she was 15 years old, so that was already she's a rebel. And then she got to Australia.

She fled Europe, and's a rebel. Wow. And then she got to Australia. She fled Europe. And I was born. And she said, I'm going to pour love into this child, me, and make him the vehicle to change the world, to make it a better place. Dude, you're going to make me cry. Yeah, it is. Now you understand why I jump out of bed every morning to do what i do wow that's heavy and it's it's heavy also that through horrible tragedy and the the worst

part of human nature through genocide and war that she comes out of it the other end determined to only concentrate on important things and good only focus on what's significant and then to look at you and to think that you can really change this place i think you can man i think she's right i mean i think you've you've honored her with your choices trying every day thanks joe now we're crying not really but you know i think that these loved ones are our our ancestors our grandparents you know it's a tragedy when we lose them yeah and so i just want people to have an extra year two years ten, ten years with their parents and grandparents. And that's real personal.

It's not about the economy. It's not about, you know, populating the planet or overpopulating the planet. It's that what would you give for an extra few weeks with your wife? Yeah. It's also optimizing the quality of the time while they're still alive which is so important as well like just because someone's alive and in a vegetative state just sit in the corner drooling for the next 15 20 years while they're still alive i experienced that with my grandmother unfortunately my grandmother had a stroke when i was young she had an aneurysm and uh no one was home and she

fell down and was in the backyard and by the time they found her she had been there for quite a while and they gave her 72 hours to live they're like you know prepare it's not gonna she's not gonna make it and she made it for 12 years and it was rough and um when i moved to new york when i was 24 or something like that i um i stayed with my grandfather in new jersey and my grandmother and so she was under she had bed care and she couldn't she can't couldn't go anywhere. You know, she's paralyzed. And she would moan in agony, and occasionally she would talk. And I remember my grandmother when I was young. She was this, like, really eccentric, interesting lady who always home-cooked all of her food, like home-cooked her pasta, made her own sauce.

And she was just an interesting lady. She's just a really unique lady. And then to see her in this, and she was so fiery. And she was always like yelling about things. And she's always passionate about things. And to see her completely immobile for the last 12 years of her life. And then when I moved to New Jersey well I stayed in New Jersey for a while with them trying to save up money for an apartment

and when I was doing that um I just got to see firsthand like really clearly like this life doesn't end well and then and it can end the way it ended for my grandmother, in a terrible way, where she was just in agony. And it was me at really the beginning of a new stage in my life where I was signed by a manager who's still my manager to this day, is a comedian, and I was embarking on this very promising aspect of my life. I was very excited. It was a aspect of my life. I was very excited. It was a new beginning. And here I am, and then I move to my grandfather's place

and stay with him and my grandmother, and I'm watching her die. And she's dying slowly. And it's ugly. It's ugly. I would just hear her in the middle of the night, just... You could just hear her moan. It wasn't a big house you could hear everything and it was uh just a reminder man like you gotta get going this thing doesn't last and

you don't want regrets you don't want any regrets that's right and we're all gonna die one day yeah and we're gonna think was it a life well lived or not yeah was it a life well lived and did you learn did you learn from your mistakes you're gonna make mistakes don't define yourself by them but did you learn and and and are you on the path to optimize yourself we did you become the best person you could be with what you're giving right yeah yeah and if not why and do it now. Yeah. You can't change the past. You know, a lot of us would, I would love to go back and correct some of the things I've done. Um, particularly things have hurt people's feelings, but you can't. So what do you do?

You got to keep going and you got to learn and honor your mistakes and who you were and feel that pain and recognize that regret is very valuable because regret teaches you that there's a real, there's a cost to mistakes. There's a tangible feeling that coincides with knowing you did the wrong thing or you fucked up or you you made an error learn from that and use it as fuel and be the best person that you could be and it's possible for everybody to do that everybody can improve it's not impossible this is not this is not unsurmountable and even if it's just incremental improvements in the quality of the relationships that you have or in the way you interact with people at work or in the amount of exercise you get in a week or in how you stick to your diet. All those little incremental steps, as we were talking about earlier, the little shift of a couple degrees of the path of a boat over the course of the entire journey, it's going in a completely different direction now. You're a way better person.

the entire journey it's going in a completely different direction now you're a way better person this is one of the things that i concentrate on probably more than anything in my life it's just trying to trying to just be the best person i can yeah well you're an inspiration to millions of us thank you for either thank you for what you do we try listen man you are you are in a weird position right now you really can just imagine if you kept people alive for an extra 10 15 years and those people that you kept alive had an incredible impact on the way our culture is formed because they've drawn from their lifetime of experience and all the things they've learned and they've expanded on that and had the opportunity because they stayed alive for 20 extra years or 30 extra years to spread that to so many other people that also learned and it has this overwhelming effect on everybody right yeah we can do way better as a species but we have to use

these four traits that that i think make us different that got us in there in this place in the first place and we are capable individually of doing amazing things you got to take some risks I live by the mantra of do doing at least one thing that scares me every day often 10 of 10 of what you do today that scares Um, I'm not scared to come on your podcast, but what did I do that was scary? Oh, I was investing some money that I could lose. Doge coin. Did you go crazy? No, I won't in case the SEC is listening, but, uh, yeah, I invested money. Uh, but yeah, it's that kind of thing. Even if it's just an email to somebody that I'm afraid that they'll say no to me, I'll send that off.

But, yeah, I'm getting better at it. I manage my stress, but I've always been quite a nervous, insecure person deep down. And pushing myself to do things that I wouldn't actually do has been the best decision I ever made. Yeah, there's not a lot of growth in comfort. That's an important lesson for people. But also, here's an important lesson for people. But also, here's an even more important lesson. The comfort that you get after growth is so much more enjoyable.

Because if you've gone through difficult things, especially self-imposed difficulties, the comfort that you get afterwards, like when you can actually earn relaxation. When I plop down on the couch after a long, hard day and I watch some TV, it's like, ah, I can relax. I really feel good. I enjoy this. It feels good instead of feeling like I'm wasting time. You earned it.

Yeah. What's that sound? I heard it too. Like a fan. Yeah. Do you hear it when this thing's off? Oh, it's my computer. Damn.

Blowing hard. It's going to explode. I don't know. Was that your laptop? Yeah, it's the fan on it. It's old. It is old. Them old laptops.

Uh-huh. But the new ones don't have the right connections, right? They might. I don't know. I haven't looked at the brand new one they just announced. I don't know. I was thinking about it. But, yeah, sorry. I think't looked at the brand new one they just announced. I don't know. I was thinking about it. I think we did three hours already, believe it or not.

That flew past. We just used up three hours of our lives. We used it, but we got out something that I think will benefit a lot of people. Is there anything else you think that we didn't cover that you'd like to talk about? I would like to mention, often people ask how they can help my research. And so if you go to SinclairLab.com, you can help us there. Donate. Donate a few bucks, that's all. And we can do amazing things. Okay.

I'm in. Well, I'll donate. SinclairLab.com. Thank you, sir. Let's go. There it is right there. The Sinclair Lab. Nice.

Beautiful. Support our research. Bam. Very clean. And you are on all the social media platforms, right? You're on Twitter, you're on Instagram. How do people find you on those? So Twitter is David Sinclair PhD. No, David A. Sinclair. And then Instagram is David Sinclair PhD. Well, listen, my friend, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate you very much. And I really, really appreciate what it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate you very much and I really, really appreciate what you do.

I appreciate you too, Joe. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Bye, everybody.