The Rich Roll Podcast - A Longevity Masterclass: Emerging Science & Timeless Wisdom of Healthy Aging

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Welcome to our fourth masterclass episode where we share big truths from some of my best podcast guests, honing in on a single theme or subject matter. Today we are diving deep into the subject of longevity, specifically: how to age healthfully, how to biologically promote longevity, how to embrace your innate potential for growth beyond the prescribed productive years, and how to cultivate a true life-long expansion of self. From science and technology to diet and mindset, there are choices you can make to access not simply the longest lifespan possible, but also the greatest health span your body is capable of. There are real, tangible, practical methods we can employ to get the maximum value out of our bodies and therefore our lives. As always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.  Today’s episode is also viewable on YouTube: https://bit.ly/Longevity688 Masterclass Series: Click here to listen to our first deep dive on the microbiome, here for our second on mental health, and here for our third on addiction & recovery. The full episodes for all guests featured in this episode can be found in the show notes here: https://bit.ly/longevity688 I sincerely hope you find this experiment helpful and instructive—and/or that you share the episode with those who could benefit from it. Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. They say that age is just a number, but I call bullshit on that. I think aging is a perspective. that. I think aging is a perspective. Aging can harden you to long-held beliefs that don't serve you, or it can bring you wisdom. Aging can restrict your sense of possibility, or it can unlock your further potential. Aging can be used to excuse yourself from new experiences and challenges, or it can be the catalyst for pursuing your most meaningful goals. Aging happens to everyone, but allowing it to limit you is a choice. So the question becomes, are you going to let aging defeat you? Or are you going to leverage it to empower you?

That preface was my way of welcoming you to our fourth Masterclass episode, in which we share big truths from some of my best podcast guests, honing in on a single theme or subject matter. And today, we're gonna dive deep into the subject of longevity. We talk a lot about longevity on this show from a science and technology to diet and mindset perspective. But beyond the amazing information you're about to hear, the real foundational truth I want to begin with is this. Longevity is possible. Because there are choices that you can make to access not simply the longest lifespan possible, but also the greatest healthspan your body is capable of. There are real, tangible, practical methods that we can employ to get the maximum value

out of our bodies and therefore our lives. Large populations of people around the world are already achieving amazing longevity results. And we know this from the work of my first guest, Dan Buettner. Dan Buettner is a bit of a longevity superhero. He's a Renaissance man. He's also a National Geographic fellow and multiple New York Times bestselling author. But he is perhaps best known for his work with the quote unquote blue zones, which are these communities spread around the world that boast the highest per capita populations of centenarians.

Essentially, places where people not only live inordinately long, but also seem to resoundingly be living happier than their fellow Western world counterparts. So in this first clip, Dan's gonna offer a primer on how to live a long and fulfilling life based on his many years of studying

these blue zones populations around the world. And maybe not surprisingly, nutrition plays a key role. So this is me and Dan Buettner. Well, just by way of background and context, for those people listening or watching who are new to kind of your work, I think it would be helpful to just kind of provide a quick synopsis of what this whole Blue Zones thing is about. longevity hotspots in Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Ikaria, Greece, Nikoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, and not far from here, Loma Linda, California, and the Seventh-day Adventists. And over the past 15 years, I've been studying these cultures in an effort to preserve this interconnected set of factors that are common to all these places that are yielding longevity. Right. So amongst these populations, none of them are striving for longevity. They're not thinking about it. They're not going to the gym. They're not dieting. Their lifestyles are set up

in a certain way that is conducive to them becoming centenarian, right? The foods they eat, conducive to them becoming centenarian, right? The foods they eat, the manner in which they interact with their community and interact throughout their daily lives in a physical sense, all of these things kind of contribute to this set of parameters that you have kind of distilled down and canonized.

That's right. So I would say the big epiphany, it took me 10 years to make this realization. You know, in America, we tend to pursue health. We find a diet or we find an exercise program or we get a coach or we get on a supplement program and we think, well, we got to find this program. We need the discipline, the focus of mind, and we're going to go after it. And the vast majority,

90 plus percent of people fail at what they start at within a year. In blue zones, these people are eating mostly plant-based foods. They're moving every 20 minutes or so. They're hugely socially connected. They're suffused with purpose, not because they've tried. It's because they're a product of their environment. They live in places where the cheapest and most accessible foods is peasant food. It's whole grains, it's nuts, it's greens, it's tubers. So it's cheapest and most accessible. And they have these time-honored recipes to make them taste good. And their kitchens are set up so they can make them easily. So of course they're going to eat that. It's a lot easier to eat that than to travel to a big city and buy processed foods. They don't have these

mechanized conveniences in their houses. So they're not turning to some power tool to do their work. They're kneading bread by hand or grinding corn by hand. They're doing garden work by hand. The option to implode into their homes onto their electronics isn't there because within a day, if you're not showing up to the village center or the party or church, somebody's knocking on your door to show up. Yeah. There's a certain expectation. And nobody wakes up wondering what their position is in their community. There's always a very clear sense of purpose and sense of responsibility. The Okinawans use this word ikigai. People are starting to use that word a lot, sense of purpose purpose and it really does make a big difference when it comes to longevity

Probably eight extra years of life expectancy But the purpose experience in blue zones isn't the sort of follow your passion purpose that we think of in america You know, we think well we we're going to retire or I got some free time on my hand I'm going to travel or i'm going to play golf or Pursue knitting whatever it is. Purpose in blue zones is spliced with responsibility. So when people think of purpose, it's always connected to putting the focus back on somebody else.

It's making sure the younger generation thrives. It's making sure that the community is taken care of, making sure certain practices are preserved. There's always an altruistic element to purpose in the blue zones. When you look at these blue zones pillars, movement, plant-based, plant slant diet, faith, friendship, connectivity, all of these things, are they relatively evenly balanced? They're certainly interdependent with each other, but is there one that stands out? Did you write this Blue Zones Kitchen book

because the diet component of it is so important? Or how do you think about the interplay of all of those? Yes, they are definitely connected, but the most important variable there is eating. Americans probably lose six years of life expectancy eating the standard American diet. This is at middle age, by the way, overeating, say a Blue Zones diet, which is largely beans, whole grains, greens, nuts, and tubers, and fruits and vegetables as well. So I'll spin out a couple of the insights

captured for Blue Zones Kitchen on how they eat. First of all, they're cooking, no matter where you go, they're only using about 20 ingredients over and over and over. Of course, they know how to combine these ingredients to create a symphonic deliciousness, but not a ton of different crazy foods or super foods, no super foods, except for beans. Beans is probably the superfood. Number two, they tend to consume all their food in about an eight-hour window. Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper. Number three, they tend to say something before the meal

that marks a punctuation between their busy life and now we're slowing down to eat, like a prayer, the Adventists or the Sardinians or Harahachibu, which is a Confucian adage that the Okinawans say before every meal to remind themselves to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full. They tend to eat with their family. They tend to not have electronics in their kitchen. So they're not eating to their favorite song or eating to their favorite TV show.

They tend to cook at home as opposed to going out. These are all things that I would argue add to the ecosystem of eating that produces long-lived people. And the core of which being this knowing how to make plant-based food taste delicious. And the very clear lesson that we get from Blue Zones is here's environments that we know are producing the statistically longest lived and healthiest populations. And when I say longest lived, I don't mean they have better genes that are going to make them live to 120. What I am saying is they're avoiding heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia, the diseases that foreshorten your life. So they're getting the full 95 years or so, which is the capacity of the human machine.

If you're listening to this right now, to the extent science understands the human body, your body's capacity is 95 if you do all the right things. These populations are achieving that 95-year mark better than any other population in the world, and they're doing it because they live in the right environment. Next up in our survey of longevity is David Sinclair, PhD, who is one of the world's leading scientific authorities on aging, and maybe even more more importantly how to slow its effects. David is a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He's one of the scientific pioneers who co-discovered the cause of aging for yeast and in this clip David unpacks the science behind

what aging is and provides insights into what we can do about it. and provides insights into what we can do about it. What do you think are the most important things that people should be doing or looking after on a daily basis to kind of, you know, take out an insurance policy against aging, given the current state of knowledge and understanding? That's well put. We now know we all have the power

with the scientific basis to actually live at least 15 years longer. Okay. So there are actually, and I talked about this, I think on Twitter recently, that there are five things that are pretty obvious and easy to do that'll give you 15 years. And that's just off the top of my head. Things like exercise, the fasting, don't eat too much, eat the right foods, try to be plant-based, get sleep, have social network. That gives you 15 years. That's amazing.

That's not even going, delving deep into my book, which takes it to another level of what the best exercise and supplements probably are. About 80% of our lifestyle, 80% of our health in old age is due to our lifestyle and how we live. And only 20% is genetic. And actually that's done by studying twins who,

some smoke, some don't, some do all this stuff. Your genes are not your destiny. That's the good news. So what that means is it's up to you. And if you want to be frail or to be honest, dead at 80, go for it. We know how to do that. Do everything that the marketing people want you to do. Eat the cake, sit on your fat ass and watch movies.

That'll get you there pretty quickly. But fortunately, in part, thanks to new media like this, we can actually all talk about what we think of the ways to extend lifespan and not be frail in old age. Like my father, I talk about him a lot. I'm very proud of him as a beacon of hope. At 80, he's still running around like he's 25. He's got no aches or pains, very sharp minded,

using all sorts of high tech, lifting more weights than I can literally. And our trainer who's currently training the two of us together, he says, you know what? I think my dad was dead lifting, what was it, something like 180 pounds, something a lot. And he said, the last 80 year old that I trained was learning how to get out of a chair.

And he's also somebody who's been on your kind of protocol for a while at this point. And to see him in the gym at 80, like crushing it, it's very inspiring. Well, I think most of us can achieve that in life. You know, there will be unlucky people. Of course, diseases still will hit us. But most of us are wasting our lives

because we're basically not you, but most people don't think about their longevity. They think, oh, when I'm old, I'll deal with that when it comes. But now in early and midlife is the time to invest because it'll pay off dividends later in life. Let's define our terms. I mean, what is aging from your perspective? Well, I've come to the conclusion that aging is a condition. I will be bold and say it should be declared a disease. If you smoke, it increases your chance of getting lung cancer by about fivefold. And we worry about that.

We spend billions of dollars on trying to treat cancer and prevent smoking. Getting to the age of 60 increases your chance of cancer by a thousandfold. Aging is the root cause of, by far, orders of magnitude, of all of these diseases that we eventually get. They're not separate things. How many people do you know that get heart disease and Alzheimer's in their 20s? Very few. The reason is because the body is young enough to fend off these diseases. So my approach to this is that if we can figure out why we get

old and how to reprogram the body, the cells in the body to be young again, we won't get those diseases. And even if we have those diseases, the body can heal itself like we were 20 again. Mm-hmm. Okay. So then when we age, what is actually happening on a cellular level? All right. So we in the aging field have come up with eight or nine, what we call the hallmarks of aging, the underlying causes of aging from chelomelos to mitochondrial decay to proteins misfolding. But I think there's actually one of those pieces of the pie, one of those eight or nine, that's above all of them, that rules them all. And this is what I think is the basis of what I'm calling the information theory of aging. And what we and the

team for sure deserves credit for finding was that there's a set of genes in yeast cells and also in our bodies as well, though at the time we didn't know it, that sense the environment. So when a yeast cell is hungry or it has too much temperature change, you make it hot, you make it really cold, or you subtract out some amino acids, it will live longer. And that is because it's activating a set of genes called the sirtuins. And they're called sirtuins because their first yeast gene was called SIRT2. Now, what's key to this whole information theory is that SIRT2 is an acronym. It stands for Silent Information Regulator Number Two. So just a little bit about genetics. Silent information is essentially a gene that

switched off and stays off. And in yeast, that's the genes that control whether a yeast cell is a male or female. So SIRT2, that gene was known already to yeast biologists in the 1980s to silence genes, to keep them off. And what the lab that I was in, Garenti's lab, discovered is that if you mutate these SIR genes, SIR2 and SIR3, SIR4 genes, the yeast cells live longer. But out came this silencing, what we now know as an epigenetic regulator. And that blew everyone away, but it was very confusing. Why would a gene regulator have any impact on longevity? But what I think now is that the major cause of aging is a loss not of the genetic information,

but the epigenetic information of the body. The DNA strand is very tightly packaged in other proteins called histones. And those histones come together very tightly to silence genes so that's what the sirtuins do they they bundle up the genes so that they get switched off or the histones might be spread out and they allow the cell to read the gene and that's what we call the epigenome it's the system that controls how the DNA is packaged and says to the cell these genes should be on and these genes should be off.

Because DNA is digital, the epigenome, if you look at it, is actually analog. And analog information is extremely subject to noise over time. The main reason we switched to digital. But being analog means that it's very hard to copy. It's also very hard to maintain in a pristine state over a period of two weeks for a yeast cell or 80 years for a human. And so I'm fairly convinced, given the work we've done over the last 10 years,

a lot of it unpublished, that the reason we age is that it's the analog information in the body that's lost over time, not the digital. In the same way that a compact disc has digital information, and if you scratch it up, you lose the ability to read the right songs at the right time. Right, that's super interesting.

I think it's pretty clear that the food we eat has a drastic impact on our health and longevity. But what about periods of time, sometimes even longer periods of time than people might even think possible, when we don't eat at all? Or in other words, can fasting have any impact on health span? Well, Dr. Alan Goldhammer has the answer, or a answer, I should say. An iconoclastic pioneer in his field, Dr. Goldhammer is the founder of True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, California, which is one of the first and largest facilities

in the world that specializes in medically supervised water-only fasting. Over the last few decades, Dr. Goldhammer has successfully supervised more than 20,000 patient fasts and has seen lives transformed wholesale. So in this clip from my discussion with Dr. Goldhammer, he walks us through the benefits of fasting and the power of a whole food plant-based diet to prevent and reverse the many chronic lifestyle ailments that unnecessarily impair or shorten the lives of millions of people across the world. shorten the lives of millions of people across the world. How good you can become in a sport may largely be dependent on genetics and luck. How long you're going to live in life may be largely dependent on genetics and luck, but how well you're going to

live in the time you have left may be dependent on what you put in your mouth and the diet and lifestyle choices that you make. And so what we're trying to explain to patients is you're not going to live forever. You're going to die. There's been over a hundred billion modern humans born on the planet. There's 7.3 or 4 billion alive today, but there's only been five well-documented people that have lived past 117. So the thing is you're not going to live forever, but you don't have to spend the average 9.6 years of debility or 17 years in poor health that the average American is spending, you know, giving up compromise in the last decades of life that could be your richest decades of life because of chronic degenerative diseases, because we haven't taken control of

our diet, sleep, and exercise patterns. And that's what we're trying to point is you may not be able to live forever, but you can reduce dramatically the years of debility that you have, your vulnerability to infectious disease, your likelihood of developing heart attack, stroke and other debilitating conditions. That's where the big payoff is. Not living forever, but living well until you die, having a good life and then having a good death. All right, so how does the fasting come in though

as a pathway towards that? So fasting is interesting because you're dealing with people that are oftentimes addicted to the artificial stimulation of dopamine in their brain, whether it's to drugs or dietary issues. Fasting is a great way of breaking that cycle. It can be a very effective way of getting the person to the point where good foods taste good.

It's a great way of lowering the blood pressure enough you can eliminate the medications, along with the chronic cough, fatigue, the impotence, and premature death that's associated with them. Normalizing the blood sugar levels so your insulin levels normalize. So you don't have the cravings and the binging and all the other stuff that sometimes go along with it. Or in autoimmune diseases, oftentimes pain is significant,

inflammation and swelling. People can't be active. They can't dissipate their tension. They aren't able to engage effectively. And so when you get people out of pain, it's like an epiphany experience. And now the motivation goes up. It's hard to be motivated to make diet and lifestyle changes when you feel like crap all the time. But when you get a taste of feeling good again, it's very motivating.

And now oftentimes that's enough motivation to help people overcome their addictions and their tendencies. The reality is I found the most effective patients are those are most motivated. And motivations that are the most powerful is pain, debility, and fear of death. Yeah, 100%. The only problem is, you know, a lot of these people, they get out of pain and they're not fearing death anymore.

And then they might slip slide a little bit cause they think I'm better now, I don't have to work quite so hard. So, you know, there's challenges on both sides, but- Yeah. It's one thing to talk about intermittent fasting or, you know, a fasting mimicking protocol. It's another thing altogether to talk about a 40-day water fast. I mean,

that is a very extreme thing. Moses, David, Elijah, Jesus, and our patients, you know, do fasting. It is interesting that fasting is, you know, shows up in all these various religious traditions. Isn't it interesting? The Jews, the Jains, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Christians, all these religions that's diametrically opposed on so many things that are killing each other in the street over disagreements. They have one thing in common

and that's a tradition about fasting because fasting changes how you feel about yourself and the world around you. It can't help it. You know, these traditions resonate throughout history. And, you know, the reality is perhaps it's because that's what works. So you approach fasting from a perspective

of weight management and also disease prevention and reversal, but there's also all this emerging science around longevity and anti-aging. Of course, that's Longo's, you know, specific lens on this, but by dint of autophagy and all these other, like sort of, you know, biomechanical systems that are affected by fasting, there's now this whole world of research opening up

around prolonging life as a result of this. I actually think the people that are gonna turn out to get the most benefit from fasting, this one in two week fast that we do with healthy people is healthy people. Healthy people that are looking to stay healthy. For example, to avoid vulnerability of infectious disease, to avoid the problems that, you know,

not waiting like my brother did till he has a heart attack, but the people that are willing to use it to prevent the problems from the beginning. And interestingly enough, I've been communicating with Walter Longo recently about doing a joint study where we're gonna use his expertise and access and our facility to not just intermittent fasting,

but long-term fasting and compare and contrast and see what the very best bang for the buck, so to speak of is in terms of taking healthy people and helping them stay that way. We've got a study that's planned for next year looking specifically exotic biomarker changes with these dietary changes with fasting and then trying to differentiate how much fasting, how frequently, what's the right combination.

That's all relatively new territory. Why 40 days or 21 days? Like what is it about that extended period that's so important? Well, what we do is we wanna fast as short as possible, but long enough to get the problem resolved. And so it's not like we're setting out to try to beat Jesus in the fasting duration.

We don't go over 40 days generally, because if you keep the fast under 40 days, there's few metabolic complications. As you start getting into the really long fast, the 60 days, the 80 days, the longer fast that were done in the past, it's a much more delicate balance in terms of electrolyte balance and other things. And so the guy that I trained with Alec Burton in Australia used to do fast as long as a hundred days or longer. And I asked him by the time I got there, that was 36 years ago, he was no longer doing over 40 days as a routine,

just very occasionally. And I said, why? And he said, well, because of the sleep deprivation. I said, oh, I didn't know that patients had any more trouble sleeping on long-term fast. He goes, oh no, not the patients, me. He had sleep deprivation. He was just worried too much. Yeah, he worried too much about it. So he decided to keep it to 40 days because we knew

from experience that that was the period of time you could go without getting into more of the complications. Walk me through the experience of this journey that you see with the typical patient. I mean, you're demanding a lot of them. They're going through something they've never done before. What is that like for that individual when they're on day three, day 10, day 30? Yeah. So the first few days of fasting are actually the most difficult because you're adapting off a glucose metabolism into a fat metabolism. So the brain is changing fuels from burning sugar to blurring largely beta-hydroxybutyric acid, which comes from the ketone bodies from the fat breakdown. So there's an adjustment there. You're detoxing oftentimes a lot.

Although we've learned to minimize the effect of detoxification by getting people to eat a fruit, vegetable only diet for a few days before we started fasting. That's made a huge difference. So they're not coming off caffeine addiction at the same moment that they're trying to adapt to the fast. They've already gotten that stuff out of their system. And that's actually the most difficult stuff

to get into the cigarettes, the caffeine, the alcohol, all the meat, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy products, processed foods, all the host of chemicals that people are putting into their body with over-the-counter prescription medications. So we've gone through a weaned down process and then we start fasting. And their mouth may coat up

and taste like something crawled in there and died. And they may have some skin rashes or elimination. They may get mucus discharge. They may get some vivid dreams. They may have aches and pains, and they may have difficulties with all kinds of adaptive process, but they go away. And then something else comes along and then it goes away. And then it becomes very empowering because they realize that they're able to get through this process that just because they had a headache doesn't mean they have to rush out and try to suppress those symptoms with a pill.

It goes away, the body's able to heal itself. And then once you get into four or five days of fasting, the body's pretty well acclimated to the fasting. At this point, there's no hunger. People are going to cooking demonstrations. They're coming to lectures. They're going to the dining room to socialize with people. They're five days, 10 days into a fast.

You think, oh my God, you haven't eaten for 10 days. Nope, I just enjoy being there. That's crazy. Not a problem. So then depending on the patient, sometimes they start getting relief. Their pain, maybe for the first time in years, the pain that they've been suffering with is going away.

You know, some people have these chronic debilitating problems, start resolving, things start falling off, tumors start shrinking, they start getting excited. Like, oh, maybe there's something to this idea of the body healing itself. And we're monitoring these patients to go through the process. And then at some point you get to the point

where there's a limiting factor. Maybe their electrolytes start to drop a little bit or their energy is not acceptable. They're not able to maintain accurate ambulation or maybe they've just got, that's how much time they've got. Cause you know, some people have jobs and lives and responsibilities. So we only have so much time here for 40 days.

Well, my life completely craters on the outside. But for many people, this is an intense epiphany experience because they've got this intense education that they're really open to. They've seen these other people, sometimes what looks to them like miracles going on. Cause they're seeing people that they're really open to. They've seen these other people, sometimes what looks to them like miracles going on. Cause they're seeing people that they have no expectation that that could get well, getting well.

They're experiencing themselves sometimes for the first time a sense of empowerment because they're able to actually reverse these processes that they were told nothing could be done, learn to live with it. What do they expect at their age? That's just how it is. And now they're thinking, wow, if they were wrong about that, maybe they're wrong about other things too. And they start looking at all aspects of their age. That's just how it is. And now they're thinking, wow, if they were wrong about that,

maybe they're wrong about other things too. And they start looking at all aspects of their life. And when people first start exercising at first, it's not pleasant. They got aches, they got pains, they're fatigued. They're not getting the success. They can't do what they want. But as they do it, they get to the point

where not only do they tolerate, they're not just doing it because they wanna maintain the weight or get the figure or whatever it is. They're doing it because they start realizing they're not just doing it because they wanna maintain the weight or get the figure or whatever it is. They're doing it as they start realizing they're getting real intrinsic benefit from engaging in this consistent activity. And now they don't wanna give it up.

And I think the same thing happens when people really get into a healthy lifestyle. Yeah, they're invested. They don't wanna go give it up and feel like everybody else feels because of some greasy, slimy, convenient food. They're willing to pay the price of trying to do the planning and do what it takes

to try to ensure that they can get their needs met. Just like I think people that get into a regular exercise regime realize that now this is so beneficial. They will literally structure their schedules around making sure that that's an important part of their activity. And the same thing happens with sleep. When you realize how important sleep is

to health and maintenance and energy, you start prioritizing that and you don't compromise your sleep. When you realize how important sleep is to health and maintenance and energy, you start prioritizing that and you don't compromise your sleep. You don't compromise your exercise. And hopefully you learn to not compromise your diet and lifestyle. I tell people, here's what you need to do. First, get enough sleep

because it's your most critical activity. Then engage in regular exercise so you can dissipate the tension. You can build fitness and have the time to prepare and eat healthy food. If there happens to be any time left, well, fine, you go to work. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts

and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online

support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one

need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm

now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it.

Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. There is no prescribable pharmaceutical, no magic pill available that will instantly prolong our lives. But there is an often overlooked and culturally undervalued tool for longevity that just might surprise you. A counterintuitive answer to our overstimulated, hyperproductive lifestyles

that is readily available to everyone. What is that? It's sleep. Sleep, people. Enter the renowned Matthew Walker, a scientist and former professor at Harvard Medical School and current professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley,

and one of the country's leading sleep experts. In this clip, Matthew shares insights into the value of sleep, the connection between insomnia and disease, and why sleep is inseparable from longevity. All stages of sleep are critical. No one stage of sleep are critical. No one stage of sleep you can do without suffering detriment.

Right. Firstly, what we know is that one out of every three people that you pass on the street is not getting the sleep that they need. So the CDC right now recommends, stipulates a minimum of seven hours of sleep to maintain human health. Yeah, one of the striking things in the book

that really hit me was the relative lack of elasticity in the human body in that just one night of dysregulated sleep a week has much more of a profound deleterious effect than you would think. You would think like, well, I sleep pretty well most nights, but once a week, like my stuff got screwed up, but I'll recover. But the downstream implications

of just a little bit of dysregulation are much more serious than one would suspect. Yeah, I mean, a good example is another study where if you take healthy adults and you limit them to just four hours of sleep for a single night, the next day we see a 70% drop in critical anti-cancer fighting immune cells, 7-0, called natural killer cells. Now today, you and I have both produced cancer cells more than likely.

What prevents those cells from becoming and manifesting as the condition that we call cancer is in part these critical cancer fighting immune cells, natural killer cells. those cells from becoming and manifesting as the condition that we call cancer is in part these critical cancer-fighting immune cells, natural killer cells. That is a dramatic state of immune deficiency. And it happens quickly after just one bad night of sleep. So you could imagine the state of your immune system after weeks, if not months of insufficient sleep.

And I think about this all the time when I wake up after an amazing night of sleep, and then my experience throughout the day is optimal. And then the following night, I have a degraded version of that. And I wake up and I think, why can't we figure out a way to replicate this day in and day out without pharmaceutical intervention. Like I'm trying to do all the right things and yet it is so elusive. And part of that yes is age, because when you're a teenager, you can just fall asleep in an instant

and seem to get a good night's sleep no matter what. But I'm constantly thinking about like, how do you figure this out and master it? Because if you could, it would literally change everybody's lives. Yeah, if you take the reverse of that, we know starting with this recommended sweet spot of between seven to nine hours a night,

going in the downward direction, there's a very simple truth, which is that the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts or cause mortality. Right, which is so ironic given that the hustle culture, the hustle culture, you know, it's all about maximizing those daylight hours and I'll sleep when I'm dead. Right. And you're just hearkening that death. Yeah. It's, you know, it's mortally unwise advice, anyone who tells you that.

But to me, I think, you know, sleep could be seen as the Swiss army knife of health. You know, whatever ailment that you're facing, sleep normally has a tool in the box that can help. And so for me, I think the Shangri-La is perhaps less about trying to elongate lifespan than it is really about prolonging people's health span. Because when you ask most people, that's what they really want when they're trying to sort of, you know, live a clean, healthy lifestyle. They don't want a life with disease and sickness. But when you are starting to short change your brain and your body of sleep, that's what you're inviting.

You know, and the elastic band of sleep deprivation will stretch only so far before it snaps. And if you fight biology, normally you lose. And the way you know you've lost is disease and sickness. The human hubris over all of this though is something to behold because we always think we can find an end run around these things. And as beautiful and magnificent

as the scientific method is, it tends to be very binary in its approach, right? So if X, then Y, controlling for variables. But when you're dealing with systems that are so complex, my sense is that oftentimes it leads to unintended negative consequences, right? Like take this pill and you'll sleep well, but we're not realizing or looking at

all these other things that are occurring. And it isn't until much later when researchers like yourself can pull the covers on that and say, this was not such a good idea. Yeah, pull the covers, no pun intended. But I think you're right. There is a very understandable,

again, I don't want to sort of be finger wagging or chastise people. If you don't know the science of sleep, I would be just as as unknowing but it took mother nature 3.6 million years to put this essential thing called you know a seven to nine hour sleep need in place to think that with hubris or arrogance that we could come along and within five or 10 years, if we're, you know, medical, sort of forcing medical residents to go through these ridiculous sort of schedules, or, you know, if you're in some other professional industry,

that you can just find a way to hack that system is unfortunately misfounded. During deep sleep, our heart rate decelerates, our vascular system, our vessels start to relax. You can think of deep sleep, our heart rate decelerates, our vascular system, our vessels start to relax. You can think of deep sleep like the very best form of blood pressure medication that you could ever wish for. We also see that it's during that nighttime phase when we drop levels of cortisol, which otherwise if left in high concentrations is a stress-related chemical. It's an adaptive chemical too. We all need cortisol. But if you're just chronically high in cortisol,

that is deathly for your cardiovascular system. And sleep will actually ratchet down that level. Also, sleep will quiet the fight or flight branch of your nervous system. It's called the sympathetic nervous system, which I think is terribly named. It's anything but sympathetic. You know, it's agitating, it's aggravating.

And it's during deep sleep that we actually shift over from that fight or flight branch to the more quiescent calming branch called the parasympathetic nervous system. And so now we can start to understand why we see risks for heart attack, risks for cardiovascular disorder. We published a paper a couple of months ago

demonstrating that short sleep and particularly not just short sleep, but also fragmented sleep. And this is, I think, another important point that we've learned in the most recent years. It's not just about the quantity of sleep, it's also about the quality of that sleep. And we found that people who had fragmented sleep

had a higher likelihood of their blood vessels becoming hard, it's what we call atherosclerosis, the hardening of the blood vessels, which can then be a direct pathway to cardiovascular disease and heart attack as well. That's interesting. And is there a sense of where that falls in the pecking order of importance when you compare it to nutrition or exercise or these other kind of contributing or ameliorating factors with respect to heart disease? It's just as heavy a hitter. If you

look at the combination of quantity and quality of. If you look at the combination of quantity and quality of sleep and you look at the effect sizes, it's right up there. You can almost play the game, and I don't mean to do this because I'm very dedicated to a practice of physical activity and exercise. I'm not quite at your level, and I eat very cleanly. I too am a vegetarian. So I respect those things because

I know how utterly important they are for my health span and my lifespan. But I can do a thought experiment where I say, I take you, Rich Roll, and I'm going to deprive you of either exercise for 24 hours, of food for 24 hours, of water for 24 hours, or of sleep for 24 hours. And sleep by- There's no comparison. By a country mile will dwarf the physiological and mental deficits that come by way of that. I think the only other thing that's perhaps

will overtake sleep is oxygen. You know, if I start with oxygen, you will- Yeah, maybe. I hold my hands up, I lose out to oxygen. Right, right. But you've said often that, you know, when you think of the pillars of health, sleep isn't a pillar, it's the foundation upon which all these other pillars are erected,

essentially, right? Yeah, I used to think it was a third pillar, but then, you know, the more I've done this research over the years, the more I realized that I was wrong. It is a foundation on which those two things sit. I want to be clear about one point, and that is that longevity isn't really just about living as long as possible. Because the true objective is to live as vibrantly and as energetically as possible for as long as possible. And my next guest, the esteemed Walter Longo, Ph.D., has devoted his life to this endeavor.

One of the world's leading scientific authorities on the subject of longevity, Dr. Longo is the director of the USC Longevity Institute, as well as the Program on Longevity in Cancer at IFOM in Milan, both of which focus on developing a better scientific understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of aging and disease. Here, Dr. Longo shares his thoughts on aging and the many insights gleaned from his scientific research. and many insights gleaned from his scientific research.

What is aging? What causes it? What exacerbates it? And what have you discovered can perhaps slow it down? So aging is actually not a bad thing, right? I mean, violins age and they get better, right? Marathon runners, they get better, at least for a while, as they age. And then, you know, maybe the peak performance for a marathon runner peaks around 32 to 35, which is very different from other athletes. Senescence is

really the word that deals with changes that are detrimental. So accumulation of damage and other dysregulation that leads to dysfunction, right? So that's the word. So in essence, usually we use aging because people, everybody understands that word better. So it's fine to use aging. But yeah, so as time goes by, systems become, accumulate damage and they start becoming dysfunctional. Why does the body suddenly become less adept at repairing that damage? Well, I mean, there are a lot of theories of aging and most people have focused on the aging part itself. I come up with a term which I call juventology or uventology. And the difference

is that I focus on what is the program that keeps you young versus what is the process that makes you old, right? So it's very different. Right. Gerontology versus juventology is sort of like the study and science of health versus the study and science of disease, which is really the model of Western medicine. Yes, yes. In a sense, I think so. Because if you're studying things going wrong, aging, right? Then you focus on the deterioration. So for example, if you think of a car,

and that's one of the pillars that I talk about in the book, you can study the tires and you can say, okay, I'm going to learn everything about the rubber, how the rubber gets older and older and how to make it not get older and older. But I can come around with uventology and say, why are you worried about that? Just change the tires, you know, do 50,000 miles and put a new set of tires on. Now all of a sudden, all their research, you can see how it's pointless, right? You just have to find out how to replace the tires. Right. So you got to figure out how

the body can produce new tires, right? Which gets into this stem cell regeneration work that you do. So what is the structure that you set up to try to determine what keeps the cell young or what can sort of increase its longevity? Yeah, so the beginning, it was use this simple organism and use genetic tools that at the time were only available for yeast, for baker's yeast, right? So for example, one of our first studies that we published in the

science journal was every single gene in the genome, which is about 6,000 genes, and see which one becomes most protected against toxins, right? Multiple toxins. And then the hypothesis was, if something is super protected against damage, it's going to be protected against aging. And that worked out very well. And that led to the identification of what's probably now recognized as the most important pro-aging pathways,

the TOR-Syskinase pathway. And so there was one strategy, use the tools, genetic tools that we had. And the other one was because I was in the Walford lab and we had lots of people working on the molecular biology of yeast, not aging. Nobody cared about aging at the time. But for example, upstairs,

I had somebody called Fuyu Tamanoi and he was working on RAS. And we, the field that described our RAS reacted or was activated by sugar, right? So then I came out of the welfare lab. I say, if sugar activates RAS and calorie restriction extends the lifespan of all these organisms, it must be that if I delete RAS, the yeast is going to live longer. So this is a biased approach versus what I said earlier, which is completely unbiased. And sure enough, now they live a lot longer. They live two or three times longer just by deleting this sugar gene. So now the tauricis canase is the protein

pathway and the brass PKA is the sugar pathway. You delete both of them, you get tenfold lifespan extension. Wow. And then you then step it up and apply this to a rat population? Yeah, then you apply it to, in our case, a mouse population, also knowing that the data from Cynthia Canyon, Gary Ravkin, and others in worms and flies, right, which was matching. So everything was starting to make sense.

That was all aligned. So TOR was causing aging in all these organisms. If you activate it, and if you did protein restriction, the organism lived longer, right? So just protein restriction. So then you do the work in mice. And then of course you do the work with nutrition and say, well, if deleting the protein gene and the sugar gene makes the organism live longer, what if I just remove sugar and proteins? And then you go in proteins, you say,

well, do I need to remove all proteins? Maybe not, maybe just certain amino acids that are contained in proteins. So we remove serine, trionine, and valine, three amino acids and show that those were the ones, the major ones that control the TOR gene, right? So then we started really having a much more sophisticated understanding

of all the network that controls aging in yeast and mice, but also understanding of the nutrients within food that control the genes that control aging. Right, so you deduce from that what, and how does that inform like the next chapter? Well, from that, we deduce that it works, right? It's not a mouse or a yeast finding. This is going after cellular protection,

multi-system cellular protection across the board. So then these mice that could get to 50% longer life, but have half of the cancers and protection of diabetes, protection from inflammation, protection from cognitive decline. Their brain work better longer. And we also show that for the humans.

So now all of this is possible. You're starting to say, well, we don't have to be this Western world of living long, very sick now. We used to live a little bit shorter, healthier. Now we live longer, sicker. And we can live longer, healthier. So the opposite of what we are obtaining now.

So now we're keeping people alive with lots of drugs, lots of intervention. Yeah, the idea that extending longevity will only extend the period of time in which you're sick is the paradigm you're trying to upend. Yeah, we want to turn it completely around. So not only we don't go to higher, because of course, as soon as you start saying,

we want to make people live 20 years longer, 210, let's say 30 years longer than now, right? People are going to say, no, absolutely not. Because they think of all the people that they know, they're all sick. Old folks home the whole time, you know, unable to walk. Yeah. So, but if you look at Emma Morano,

who at 112 could still live in her house alone, right? I mean, she didn't live alone, but she could have if she wanted to. I mean, she had people that came. But I think until 105, 106, she was living alone. And also if you saw Salvador Icaruso at 110, you'd think that's pretty good. Right. Named one of the top 100 longevity leaders in the world,

Sergey Young is an XPRIZE Foundation board member, the founder of the $100 million Longevity Vision Fund, and a development sponsor of the Age Reversal XPRIZE, which is a global competition designed to find a cure for aging. You heard that right, a cure. In this next clip, Sergey shares a profound truth. And that truth is that technology can extend our lives,

but we have to create lives that we want to extend. The real secret to longevity isn't a secret. It's about what we're creating here and now, how we're living our lives on a daily basis. And this is the foundation for what Sergey calls growing young, but I'll let him explain further. I'll let him explain further. On top of everything in here, one thing we haven't gotten to yet in this discussion around longevity, isn't just arresting the aging process.

It's this idea of, I mean, it's literally the title of your book, like growing young, like the reversal of aging. So can you kind of parse those two things when you say growing young, like the reversal of aging. So can you kind of parse those two things when you say growing young, like what exactly are you talking about? So what we started is like average lifespan on earth increased from what 35 to like,

or at least in developed countries from 35 to 75 years. But then the upper limit of lifespan, it's still the same. It's somewhere around 120 years. So the oldest person on earth was this beautiful French woman who died, I think, back in 1999 in the age of 122 years. And this has been unchanged through the whole history. So then the question is, how do we change that? And so far, the way we've done,

we increase our lifespan and healthspan has been avoiding early deaths. But that's like the only thing that we've done. And even the focus of today discussion is like, well, let's just not die from cancer. Let's not die from heart disease, from diabetes. And we're facing actually the next wave, the next barrier, which is neurodegenerative disease

comes which come in the latest stage of our lives, somewhere around 80s or 90s, which we still need to solve. But it's again, it's just, so the average lifespan increased because we avoiding early death. So that's the modus operandi. Right, because a lot of those stats are driven by infant mortality as well, right? Exactly, well, that's like the biggest problem

that we've been solving. So, but what is happening with the technologies and science breakthroughs, which are available to us today, and which is in like a work in process today, we will soon have an ability to reverse aging. Even like there was very small studies done with eight people who actually managed to reverse their aging

based on set of biomarkers, but a very small number. But, and again, it sounds impossible and ridiculous today, but this has actually happened. You can grow young. You can change your set of biomarkers to be younger. Like even today, like when I had my studying story, when I rejected the idea of taking the PLT the rest of my life and change my diet, became plant based, doing physical exercises, taking omega-3, and there's like even a vegan version of that

available, right? So you can be vegan and taking different supplements. I reduce my biological age by probably three to five years. So that's already happening. We just have this lifestyle intervention, and this will be contributed and complimented by our ability to influence genetic diseases or our genetic setup, by our ability to regrow and replace organs. Actually the two most difficult ones is actually brain and heart.

Isn't it symbolic? And, or having longevity and appeal, right? We have so many longevity and age-related disease kind of drug candidates at the moment, like with formin. Generic drug has been there for 50, 60 years, pretty safe. We still need to run a trial, but what is it in terms of creating age reversal effect, right?

Or life extension effect. But this is still in development stage. But again, there's a lot of ideas how we can reverse our aging. And some of these species on earth, they don't have an aging process. So the way they die is like metaphorically, like being hit by a bus, right? So there's no, in terms of our biological setup,

we don't necessarily need to age, but again, and this, and I do think it was the theme of our conversation today, before embracing technology and science of age reversal, there's much bigger issues that we need to solve. Mm-hmm, yeah, 100%. Create a life that we need to solve. Yeah, 100%. Create a life that we want to extend. Yeah, 100%.

We like to talk a lot about the minutia or the 1% that's gonna, you know, some supplement that we can take, but in truth, the real mover here is how you're living your life on a daily basis. And it's not sexy, it's not, you know, there's no hack involved with that. It's just, you know, there's no hack involved with that. It's just, you know, good habits. It's everyday choice.

That are practiced every single day. It changed your mentality. Rather than taking responsibility and changing the world, changing your health, you just like sit and wait until something magical will happen. And I'm a little bit against that. I'm also, I also think I a chemical engineer by my first degree.

So that's why I just rejected the idea of having statins for the rest of my life. And this is where my longevity journey started. I just do believe that a lot of things need to be tested in a proper way before we can embrace that. And in the meantime, we just need to look at the livers that we can actually control today and we can change today. So I think the downside of believing in like magic pill or magic supplement is that it's just another excuse for us to be irresponsible. Yeah, it divorces you from responsibility. Yeah, I would agree with that. If certain animal species can live extraordinarily long lives, then why can't humans? Well, our next speaker on longevity wants to answer that question. Enter Peter Diamandis.

Peter is best known as the founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and executive founder of Singularity University. Over the course of his storied career, Peter has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space travel, venture capital, and education. In this clip, Peter explains the intriguing concept of something called longevity escape velocity and gives a prediction as to when scientists will reach it. How long before you think we reach what you've talked about as achieving longevity escape velocity?

Maybe like describe what that is. So today science is having breakthroughs that are extending your life every year. And on the average for every year you're alive, science extends your life for about a quarter of a year. There is a point and Ray Kurzweil talks about it extensively. And Ray wrote the preface of our book. He's one of my mentors,

one of the greatest thinkers on exponential technologies. He's my co-founder at Singularity University. And I asked him, when do you think we're gonna reach longevity escape velocity, which is the point that for every year you're alive, science is extending your life for greater than a year, right, sort of departure point. And his answer about when we'll get there, he said is about 12 years, that's his guess.

Now, if someone else said it, I wouldn't give it that much credence, but if you Google Ray Kurzweil's accuracy on his predictions, it's like 86%. I mean, the guy is extraordinary in his predictions of the future. And then I was in a conversation with George Church, who also write about extensively in the book. And I asked George, when do you think we're gonna,

George is a professor of genomics at Harvard Medical School, same as David Sinclair, they're fantastic friends and collaborators. And George said, within the next 15 years. Wow. And so I'm like, that's kind of insane, right? Right, so assuming, let's assume for a moment that that's correct,

15 years from now, give or take, every year that you live, there will be an incremental- Addition of your life's health. Yeah, sufficient enough such that the perpetuation of life would seem to never cease. Yeah, it's like, you know, we have a 24,000 mile diameter

or circumference of the planet. And if you're in a jet going at a thousand miles an hour westward, the sun never sets, right? And that's, if you go faster, the sun will rise. You're in stasis. And so it's somewhat similar in that regard. And it gets you thinking, which is, you know, to use a phrase from one of Ray's books, Fantastic Voyage, it's living long enough to live forever.

Now let's put aside the idea of living forever as a moment, but how long can we live? When I was in medical school years ago, Rich, I remember watching a TV show on long lived sea life. And I didn't have much time for TV. I would basically just watch Star Trek whenever I could, which was my sort of vitamin dosage. And what I learned was that certain species of sea life,

like the bowhead whale, large mammal, can live for 200 years. And Greenland sharks can live for 200 years. And Greenland sharks can live four or 500 years, sea turtles, similar multi-hundred year lifespan. And so the question is, if they can live that long, why can't we? Right. And I remember thinking, it's either gonna be a hardware problem

or a software problem. And we're gonna have the tools to fix that. And I think we're on the precipice of that. And what, from a philosophical point of view, like that conjures up a conversation around the appropriateness of all of it, does it not? I mean, you're somebody who's always been very optimistic. You've written a couple books

where you kind of canvas these emerging technologies and you characterize them in very favorable terms. So you're not one to be prone to dystopian, you know, scenarios, but I can't help but think like in the event that, you know, perhaps we could live to something like 200 years, like what would that mean?

Like how does that impact our psychology as a species? How does it impact how we think about risk? How does that impact overpopulation on a planet of, you know, decreasingly limited resources, et cetera. So how are you wrapping your head around all that? I know you've got a whole thing. Let's open the store, I love it. So first of all, a study came out six months ago

out of done by Lenz School of Business, Oxford and Harvard that looked at the impact of extending the lifespan by just one year of every human on the planet. The economic impact is $38 trillion, the global economy, of being able to keep you and me in the game a year longer. So it's a massive positive impact to the global economy, earning potential, being productive. And why do people stop working?

Because they're in pain or they're tired, they don't have the energy. But if you can have the vitality, the aesthetics, the cognition, the mobility at a hundred years old that you had at 50 or 60, it's an amazing time to be alive. I can't help but think if you could live to 200, the possibility certainly exists

that you would have multiple partners across that period of time. You might have multiple families. Like I had a whole family with two kids with this person and now I'm gonna have two kids with the... You could do that three or four times over. And multiple careers, three or four times over. The reality is that our existence,

our societal structure, our laws are built around a very different age. Four times over. You know, the reality is that our existence, our societal structure, our laws are built around a very different age. You know, we don't have a true democracy, but representative democracy because the communications didn't exist back, you know, hundreds of years ago to be able to count everybody's vote, but they do now. And, you know, the idea of social security

was designed and developed when the average lifespan was like 55. You know, you would retire, go on social security, you know, 18 months later, you were dead. And so all of this is changing. And, you know, for the financial advisors listening to us or the people who are dependent upon financial advisors, making sure you have enough money if you're going to add 20 or 30 healthy years is an important conversation to have.

And it's not being had sufficiently because I think this is the direction that we're heading. longevity escape velocity is kind of a fun exciting idea to ponder but i'm not sure how it applies to our lives on a daily basis there are other things that drive our attention and focus things like heart disease depression autoimmune disorders and how about at the top of that pyramid stress stress is a big. And according to my next guest, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, it's at the heart of 70 to 90% of conditions treated by primary care doctors. In regard to longevity, the truth is that bodies under chronic stress will deteriorate more rapidly than those that are not. And in the following clip, Dr. Chatterjee explains the science behind stress and how to properly manage it

to promote a longer, healthier life. I feel like the word stress is used very cavalierly, like, well, we're all stressed, I'm stressed out, I'm anxious or whatever, but perhaps it might be beneficial to define the term. Like when we say stress, like what do we actually mean and what is happening biologically, physiologically in the body when we are under this form of duress?

I mean, it is a perception. It is a perception when your body feels that it's under threat, that it is in danger. That fundamentally is what I think stress is. Now, how do you explain that? Between 70 and 90% of all conditions that a primary care doctor sees in any given day is in some way related to stress. That's bananas. That is bananas. But I'm going to explain why I think it is quite easy to understand when you understand what the stress response is. So let's go back again two million years, right? Two, three, whatever.

We go back a couple of million years ago and understand how our stress response evolved. So we were again in our hunter-gatherer community, getting on with our business, doing what we need to do, and a wild predator is attacking or approaching, we get scared. In an instant, our stress response kicks into gear. So what happens then? Well, the series of physiological changes start to take place that are designed to keep us safe. So I can't list them all, but let's go through some of them. Your blood sugar starts to rise. Great. That means you're going to deliver more glucose to your brain. That is fantastic in that threat scenario. Your blood pressure starts to go up, so you can deliver more oxygen to your brain. Your amygdala, that's the emotional part of your brain, right? That becomes hyperreactive. So you

are literally hypervigilant for all the threats around you, your blood starts to become more prone to clotting. So that if you were to get attacked by that lion and that predator, you're not going to bleed to death. Your blood's going to clot. It's going to keep you safe. These are very, very smart, complex mechanisms that are designed to keep us safe. The problem is, quite simply, is that now in the 21st century, many of us are having our stress responses activated, not to wild predators, but to our daily lives, to our email inboxes, to our to-do lists, to the fact that we've got competing demands at work, to the fact that two parents are working and someone's trying to rush home to pick up the kids,

the fact that actually we're living separate from our family, so we're having to do all the childcare ourselves, we don't have grandparents around us, to the fact that we may have elderly parents now we're looking after, as well as looking after a young family, for many of us,

that is activating our stress response. So what happens? Well, those mechanisms that are so helpful to us in the short term, they start to become problematic. Blood sugar going up is fine for 30 minutes. If your blood sugar is going up day in, day out, well, that leads to fatigue, obesity, high blood pressure, and ultimately type 2 diabetes just from being stressed. And I can tell you that stress is a very, very key player when it comes to

your blood sugar. And I have put many cases of toxic diabetes into remission. Yes, I changed their diet for sure. But when the diet plateaued, the way I got the blood sugar lower was by addressing their stress levels. So blood sugar, problem helpful in the short term, harmful in the long term. Blood pressure, again, same thing. Great if you're running away from a tiger. Great if you're in your spinning class in the gym. It's an appropriate response to that stressor. But if that's happening to your email inbox, that's a problem. What about your emotional brain, right? The amygdala. I just said, when you are trying to escape a predator, you become hypervigilant to all the threats around you.

That is appropriate. If you go to downtown LA tonight and it is dark and you are walking down a dark street and you think somebody is following you, you know what? You want your amygdala to go on high alert. You want to be hypervigilant to all the threats around you. If that's happening day in day out to your life, that's what we call anxiety, right? So suddenly this very complex mechanism, when you simplify it right down, we can start to see why up to 90% of what I see as a doctor is in some way related to stress. But what about the things that it switches off, right? We've spoken a bit about relationships. So libido is a big problem these days. I've been practicing for nearly 20 years. I'm seeing more cases of low libido now than I've

ever seen. Not a week goes by where I don't see a young male in their 20s complaining of low libido. This was not happening even five years ago, certainly in my practice. There are many factors to consider, but stress is probably the biggest in my view. Again, go back 2 million years, you are running away from a threat. In that moment, you need to prioritize survival. You do not need to be able to chill out and procreate with your partner. So your body switches it off, right? It almost sounds overly simplistic, but I love simplicity because when you understand it simply, you start to realize, hey, I understand now why anxiety, why low memory, why poor concentration, why insomnia, why low libido, why hormonal problems, why obesity, why type 2 diabetes

can all have stress as a key player. Gut problems, right? Last Mintel survey in the UK showed us that 80% of UK adults have complained of some form of GI problem in any given year, right? Now, food, of course, is a factor, but I would argue that stress is a bigger factor because what happens, again, just like libido, if you're running away from a lion, you don't need to be able to digest food. You should get switched off just like that. It's a time fraught with problems, pressures, external pressures, things that we feel that we have to do. There are so many things that we can do, but the thing that is rising to the surface in me now is we need downtime. We thrive on downtime. Our brains thrive on downtime. You simply cannot get up, go on your phone, consume, watch what the world is giving you, reacting, go to after work drinks, go to all these family engagements, come back, lie in bed, consume more. You simply just cannot

do that without there being a consequence. You will be accumulating micro stress dose after micro stress dose and you will go over and it will lead to family arguments. It will lead to a row with your partner. It will lead to you getting stressed out at work and falling out with your boss. It is all a consequence of that framework of micro stress doses and where is your stress threshold. You need to minimize the micro stress doses and you need to take active steps to increase your resilience. So let's call it simple. You mentioned a morning routine, right? I'm a huge fan of morning routines. And the framework I create for people is a morning routine has three M's and the way I see it, mindfulness, movement, and mindset. So if you want a morning routine, you don't know where to start, think about those three M's. Now, you can personalize them to your own life. If you have

got an hour in the morning, great. If you've got five minutes, you can still do it in five minutes. Just the act of having five minutes to yourself in that morning actually transforms the rest of the day. Have some time to yourself, really be mindful of that. And if you find a morning routine helpful, start there. Now, the next thing I'd probably say to people is think about how much you've moved, right? Yes, we know physical activity is important, but fundamentally, if we go back to too many years ago, when we think about our stress response, what is the stress response designed to do? It is priming us for physical activity. Nowadays, the stresses are coming in such a way like, you know, we're sitting on our butts

at our desk and our email inbox is stressing us out. Or the fact that actually, oh man, I am exhausted today, but everyone at work's going out tonight. And then my sister's flying into town tonight. Oh man, I just want to go to sleep, right? So I would say, have you moved enough? Just ask yourself, have you moved? If you haven't, just make it a priority every day to do something. Even if it's a 10 minute walk at lunchtime, put your phone down, go outside for 10 minutes, and you will start to burn off that stress in your body. But those are two simple things, right? When you're traveling, if you're traveling to go and see your family, right? And this applies not in the holiday season as well, that people are

traveling to work and they're getting stressed out. Use that travel time to really look after your mental health, right? Don't put the news on, right? Own your mental space. Own what's going on in there. Use that time to listen to relaxing music. Listen to an inspiring podcast. Pull up the Calm Meditation app on your phone and put your headphones in and meditate for 10 minutes. I am not asking you to do three hours of yoga every day, even though that will help you, right? I'm asking you to just think about, have I given myself a bit of time today? If you are getting stressed out at a party, your family are there, your mother is stressing you out, right? Your mother-in-law, let's say, you know, or whatever, check in with your breath. It's a cliche. It is

the biggest cliche, just breathe. If people understood what breathing actually does on a fundamental physiological level, we would all be practicing every day. Breathing is information for your body. When you're feeling stressed, when you've got deadlines that you're working away for, you will not realize, but your breathing will change. You will start to breathe more from your chest than your diaphragm. You will breathe quicker. Your breath will be more shallow. And what does that do? That sends messages to your brain that I am in danger, that there is a problem.

And that gets you in a vicious loop where you start to breathe faster. Now, the great news about that is, is that you can very easily change that situation. If you consciously change your breathing, you can change your physiology. So if that's happening, you're at a party, whatever, there's a work due, you know what, maybe go to the restroom or go outside and just for two minutes, breathe. Do the three, four, five breath. If you don't like

that one, do a box breath where you breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, hold for four. I guarantee if you do that for one minute or two minutes, you will feel calmer and the way you deal with that situation will absolutely change. You will be less reactive. What if we reimagined aging not as something to fear, but as something aspirational? Well, in this inspired clip of our masterclass on longevity, we reframe aging as a sacred phase of life to be celebrated. An opportunity, an opportunity to share accrued wisdom, channel it into a second act, and leverage it to make your life and relationships more meaningful. Leading us on this philosophical journey is Chip Conley. Chip is a highly accomplished individual, but I want to draw attention to his latest endeavor as the founder of

something called the Modern Elder Academy, which is the first midlife wisdom school dedicated to transforming aging. Here is Chip Conley. What's fascinating is there's a societal narrative on aging and then there's a personal narrative. The societal narrative is, if you can survive your midlife crisis around 45 or 50, on the other side of that, you have disease and decrepitude

and then you die. Right. And the reality is the personal narrative on people's aging is very different than that. And there's something called the U-curve of happiness. It's gotten a lot of social science research attention. And the idea of it is once you hit around 47.2, although your mileage may vary,

with each passing decade after that, you get happier and happier. So you're happier in your 50s than your 40s, 60s than 50s, 70s than 60s. And you start to see some leveling out and a decline in happiness around the last two or three years of your life. So if you're living to 100

and maybe who knows how long he'll live, he's probably still on the stride going up. Yeah. But what's so strange is the gap between the personal narrative, which is actually people do get happier after age 50, and the societal narrative, which is, you know, you're all downhill after about age 40.

The way we think about aging is so unhealthy. It's like this black hole. Like, you know, there's, and I know you've talked about this, there's childhood, there's adulthood. And then what, like what happens for 40 or 50 years? Like, we don't really talk about it. You've dubbed it elderhood,

but short of housing people in these horrible, you know, sort of assisted living situations, we haven't really created any kind of modern, forward thinking kind of programming around like how to get the most out of these many decades later in life. You know, if you're gonna live till 90, which is very likely for a lot of us,

my parents are 84. Neither one of them has been a huge athlete and they're on a six-week vacation right now at age 84. So if you live till 90 and you're 54, which is a little bit younger than you, you're halfway through your adult life if you start counting at age 18. And we don't think about life that way.

We very much underestimate how much adult life we have ahead of us. We also overestimate how long we're going to be an invalid. And there's something called compressed morbidity in the medical field. And it means that in essence, the time of your life when you're sort of on the verge of death is a much shorter period on average than it used to be. So you've got, you know, what Mary Catherine Bateson would call is, she calls it the midlife atrium. She says that having additional life, having additional years,

because longevity in the year 1900 was 47 on average. And by the year 2000, it was 77. She says all of those additional years are not like having extra bedrooms in the backyard of your house, like you're old longer. No, she says it's like having a midlife atrium. And the midlife atrium means there's light and air

and additional space happening in the middle of your life. So you're in midlife longer. And yet we have very little in the way of society, resources, tools, or even thinking around what midlife is supposed to be. Yeah. One of the critical kind of tools that you leverage at the Modern Elder Academy

that I wanna hear a little bit more about is just getting really clear on what your mindset is so that you can begin the process of deconstructing it and perhaps telling yourself a new story. Yeah, well, so there's four key pillars of our curriculum. The first one's reframing aging, helping people to see that maybe their best years are ahead of them.

Right, can this be aspirational? It can be. And some things get better with age. I love that your listeners and your community is very much about keeping the body alive. But certain things get actually better with age. Your emotion, your emotional intelligence grows with age. Your spiritual awareness grows with age. So there's a lot of things that actually get grows with age. Your spiritual awareness grows with age.

So there's a lot of things that actually get better with age. And yes, if you work on your body and your health and your nutrition, it might get better with age as well. You're a great example of that. So there's that, reframing aging. Then there's mindset. So there's growth and fixed mindset.

We're big fans of Carol Dweck's work at Stanford. And so a fixed mindset is when you tend to think of life as I'm here to prove myself and I define success as winning. The problem if you have that point of view as you get older is you stop playing the games you can't win. And that means your sandbox gets smaller and smaller. And as it gets smaller, you actually get more bored because you're not trying new things. So moving from a fixed to a growth mindset means moving from proving yourself to improving yourself. And instead of focusing on winning, you focus on learning. Becca Levy is the one who actually, in many ways, our program is built on her work from Yale.

She was able to show that when you shift a person from a negative to a positive mindset on aging, you give them 7.5 additional years of life. What? It's actually more life than if someone stopped smoking at age 50, or if they started exercising at age 50. So the public health benefit of shifting a mindset around aging has a greater benefit to society and people are happier.

And yet we have PSAs left and right about how we should stop smoking and how we should start exercising. We have no PSAs around how to reframe aging. One of the questions we ask at MEA is, what is it that you know now or have you done now that you wish you'd known or done 10 years ago? Think about that for a moment.

And then ask yourself 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now? And this is how I started to learn how to surf at age 57, because I live on a beach near a surf break, somewhat famous one. And I was like, ain't gonna be any easier at 67 than 57, Chip. So we began this masterclass by hearing from Dan Buettner

on his study of centenarians. And I can think of no better way to end this masterclass by hearing from Dan Buettner on his study of centenarians. And I can think of no better way to end this masterclass than by hearing directly from a centenarian himself. His name is Mike Fremont, and he is 100 years old. A 100-year-old retired engineer turned climate activist who, in addition to being pretty darn with it, holds a slew of age group world records, including the fastest recorded marathon for a 91-year-old. You heard me right. And at 96, the ripe old age of 96, he set the American one-mile record for his age group.

What's perhaps most remarkable about Mike is that his running career didn't even kick into high gear until his 60s, which for context was 40 years ago. If you may be feeling like it's too late, that you've missed the boat on regaining fitness, I would say take a cue from Mike because you are incorrect. I love chatting with him. I consider him a new friend and I'm proud to share his story with you. This is a never before published clip from my conversation with centenarian Mike Fremont. I guess the first obvious question is, how do you feel?

What is it like to be a hundred? These, believe it or not, are the very best years of my life. No question. Why is that? Things that I've worked for and worked on have blossomed out. I'm still here. I can still run, so to speak.

For my age, I'm practically number one. Yeah. By sheer process of elimination. But also, I mean, it's amazing that you still get out there. You're still running. You're so engaged with life. Where does the running begin? I was 36. I had three little children.

And my first wife died of a brain hemorrhage when our daughter was two weeks old. And I had started a business a year before, and I was all alone and was stressed. And I lived on a dam, and I used to run across that dam every day after work. And it was very rewarding. It was better than two martinis. So running became a little part of my life. And then they got me in a race and I did okay. I didn't come in last. Yeah, so it's around 60 where you start getting competitive though.

Is that correct? Not really. I don't think I ever became competitive actually until I was 88. Uh-huh. I ran a marathon when I was 88 and I got first place in history in what they call the world single age running. And then at 90, you do it again, the single age world record for the marathon. And at 90, you also set the single age world record for the half marathon. And at 91, the single age world record for the half marathon. That's right. So you have four world records and you have a whole slew of five-year age group records going.

There's too many to even keep track. I didn't even realize that at the time. Uh-huh. There's not much competition out there. There hasn't been because people don't understand how your system works and contributes to being able to do these things. So talk about that. I wanna hear more about like, how were you able to not just run marathons

and half marathons in your late 80s and over the course of your 90s, but also set world records. Like what is the secret to longevity here? The longevity, the interesting part of it is I'm 22 years older than the average person who dies in this country. Right.

And it's simply because of what I eat. And I hold that largely responsible for all the records that I set in old age. No question in my mind, absolutely it is diet that has determined my continued existence and my beautiful health. So essentially for the last 30 years, determine my continued existence and my beautiful health. So essentially for the last 30 years, you've been eating a very strict whole food plant-based diet.

100%, 100%, no exceptions. So what about the fitness routine? What is the secret to how you've been able to continue running into your 90s and now at 100? I was able to retire at the age of 88. Yeah. So low stress, free time? Diet and stress are the two things that can kill,

definitely can kill. And if you can keep your life from distress as well as stress, you're very fortunate. My routine had been three times a week, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, I would run 10 miles until I was 98. 10 miles, three times a week? 30 miles, 10 miles, three times a week.

Yeah, wow. And what is it like now? It's five miles, three times a week. Do you do any other exercises? Up to this year, I have been a canoe racer on a lake that's three miles away. So I was one of the first guys out there with my racing canoe. And another guy in an old canoe came up to me and says, what kind of canoe is that?

And I described it. And I said, you want to try it? And he said, yeah. So we exchanged canoes and he tried it. And he became your canoeing buddy? He became our canoeing buddy. And then we attracted another guy because we're out there plugging away. And then I said, you know, we ought to start a group here.

He at the time was 13 years younger than me. So I was, what, 78? He was 65. I said, why don't we call it the EPA? That's the Elderly Paddlers Association. There you go. And are you still doing that now? Yeah. You are.

Well, I haven't started the season yet. It's been too cold. But the EPA lives on. Oh yeah. Well, I haven't started the season yet. It's been too cold. But the EPA lives on. Oh, yeah. Okay, good. Anybody run a marathon at age 100? I don't think that that's ever occurred. I don't think so.

I really don't think so. Yeah. I think I could because I think a marathon, I set the world record in was not overly stressing. It wasn't. No, I think I could have gone further. Really?

Wow. But the fact that you didn't even kick into your highest gear in running until you were around 60, and that's when you kind of really found your competitive groove with all of this. It's very inspiring because that's a period of time where most people would feel like it's time to slow down. And in your example, that's where I feel like you really started to get more

engaged with your life. Well, I'm very grateful for this opportunity. and that's a major impact I could have is to reach other people with this message because I'm saying it works for me big time to be at least 22 years older than the average person who dies in America and I feel that's not long enough yet.

Yeah. I think you got a lot of life left in you, Mike. Thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome. I sincerely hope that after hearing all of this vital wisdom, your perspective on aging has shifted from that of limitation to a conduit to the healthiest, most fulfilled version of yourself. I trust we offered you a handful of tools and practices you can implement today to begin a renewed journey toward living as well as you can for as long as you can. as well as you can for as long as you can. If you've been inspired, then consider revisiting or visiting a new My In-Depth Conversations with these esteemed guests.

The guests you've heard here will have their episode numbers posted in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of

course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management.

And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. So thanks for listening and watching, and please know that I'm wishing for all of you the greatest longevity possible. Until next time, peace, plants. Thank you.