The School of Greatness - 3 Health Factors That Are Destroying Your Body [MASTERCLASS] EP 1346

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Today’s Masterclass episode is all about optimizing your health. Three experts share their tips and advice for how you can improve your health habits to live a longer and healthier life. In this episode, Casey Means, physician & Co-founder of metabolic health company, Levels, shares the truth behind conventional medicine and why curiosity is the key to overcoming our fear of mortality.Daniel Amen, psychiatrist, brain disorder specialist, and best-selling author, teaches techniques to help you optimize your brain.David Sinclair, biologist & professor of genetics, explains how substances like alcohol and tobacco affect your body and how you can get your future self to thank you.For more, go to http://www.lewishowes.com/1346Full Episodes:Casey Means: https://link.chtbl.com/1252-podDaniel Amen: https://link.chtbl.com/1243-podDavid Sinclair: https://link.chtbl.com/1232-pod

There's no medication that reverses diabetes. There's no medication that reverses heart disease. There's no medication that reverses Alzheimer's, dementia. They manage the symptoms, you know, and maybe... Maybe some relief a little here and there. Relief, but they do not create health. And what health is, health is... Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful.

So let's go ahead and dive in. I've also heard examples of people who, let's say, eat perfectly, but still have challenges. Maybe their relationships are off and they're in a stressful environment in their relationship or their marriage or whatever it might be, or they just react poorly. They worry often to things they see and experience. They're a worrier. And so every time they worry, there's a, I guess the stress hormone is spiking, right? And sending hormones to the body, which is spiking blood levels. Is that right? Yeah.

Blood sugar. So it sounds like the psychological side of things is also extremely important to understand. And that every time you're allowing your body or your mind to ruminate on a consistent basis, it's sending a signal to the body in a negative way, which is helpful if there's a real life threat, but not when it's on a repeat every day. Is that right? That's exactly right. It's that chronic low grade stress that can be really damaging. And there's, you know, something that's been really fun to experiment with is, you know, there's now heart rate variability monitors like Oura Ring or Whoop or Leaf Therapeutics. And what these

do is heart rate variability is a metric that you can track that looks at actually the time between each heartbeat. And oddly enough, we want the time between each heartbeat to actually not be consistent like a metronome. We want it to have some variability. Yeah, like maybe 0.7 seconds and then one point, I'm sorry, 0.7 seconds, 1.1 second, 0.9 seconds. That's variability. Why do we want that? It really is a symbol of a dynamic system. You know, you want elasticity in the system and that can sometimes have some irregularity to it. Sort of the way I kind of think about it is like a stiffer system is going to be a little bit more, more regular. And there's sort of that, and it's and these are subtle, you know, it's not like you can feel it in your pulse if you just feel your pulse, but you can pick it up. And so we want more heart rate

variability. And usually less, lower heart rate variability is an objective measure of stress. And I've worn these things and been giving a talk on Zoom or something like that. And I'm looking at my data afterwards and my heart rate variability plummeted during the talk, or I'm processing email, my heart rate variability goes down. And then of course, glucose may go up. And so you see these things happening together. And the immediate thing I think is, this is where our tools come in. This is where the deep diaphragmatic breath, where the mindfulness, where having awareness of this happening. And then there are so many things we can do to modify that stress response, even telling your body you're safe. You know, everything is actually okay. Can have a huge difference. So really dialing into awareness and then where can I apply the

tool? So I would say I take about a 100 times more diaphragmatic breaths now than I did a couple years ago because I realized, wow, if this is happening all the time throughout the day without my awareness, that's going to add up over the next 30, 40, 50 years and have a huge impact. But it's not actually just the chronic low-grade stress. There's been a lot of research showing that acute traumatic events, like loss of a loved one or divorce or childhood events, so adverse childhood events, which are usually, there's an acronym in ACEs, people who have many of these tend to actually have worse metabolic health. And this actually may be related to changes in the brain that affect metabolism. So really changing sort of our set point for stress thresholds early on in life.

And so sometimes we'll have that patient, like you talked about, who's doing everything right. They're eating really healthy, but they're just really not quite making that progress towards driving what they want. And a lot of those patients I'm thinking about, what is like the deep core wounds and what's the set point that's causing you to feel that this world is not a safe place, that is causing you to be inherently hypervigilant. And doing that work even on myself has been so positive because I think what you start to unpack as you go down that journey is that your perception of the world and whether it's safe is very much dictated by your lifetime of experience. And I think for those of us who have been on a journey of like therapy, and now people are very interested in, of course, how psychedelics can fit into this. And then, you know, other modalities, you know, long-term meditation, you know, deep meditation events and things like this that can really unwind some of those kind of amygdala-based, fear-based responses in the brain. a new level of health, because what it's doing is changing the fundamental way you see the world as

a place of threat or a place of safety. And unfortunately, I think in our modern world, fear has become a currency that we've used to profit in a lot of ways. If we can get people to be fearful, we can get them coming back for information that assuages that fear. And we see that with social media. We see it with the news. There was that undercover reporting of one of the CNN executives who said, was recorded saying, if it bleeds, it leads, that we need to get people fearful for them to come back and watch. And what that's doing to our stress hormones, to our brain set point, to our desire to have dopamine stimulation, to kind of get some pleasure in the face of all this fear, the way that's affecting

our cellular biology is profound. And so, you know, I think all of this movement that we're seeing right now towards helping people, towards normalizing mental health care, normalizing, you know, psychedelic use is not an end-all be-all, but I think it's interesting how that's now being talked about as a way to really help people unlock some of this chronic, you know, fear. I think it's going to have, you know, could have positive impacts on the body because if we're living with chronic fear, our bodies are not functioning properly. And many of us are. Did you live with chronic fear for a while?

I think that the healthcare system, the conventional healthcare system, unfortunately uses fear as a way to control patients in a lot of ways. Um, we, you think about a conversation between a physician and a patient and it's like, you know, your cholesterol is a little high, you need to take a statin and the patient might say, well, can I have some time to like work on diet and lifestyle? Well, I mean, it's your choice. I mean, I'd recommend the statin right now because obviously I don't want you to have a heart attack.

But like, you know, sure, if you want to try diet and lifestyle, like that's the type of thing that's happening every day. where this fear of bad outcomes is, I think, driving very much a pharmaceutical and invasive intervention type of strategy. And I think that that really was unsavory to me because it's very disempowered. It's like, if I can drive fear in a patient, then I can essentially get them to do whatever intervention I recommend. And as a surgeon... Medicines, procedures, anything. Right. Exactly. Oh, well, if we don't treat this ear infection with antibiotics, then it could travel to the brain and create a brain infection. And it's like most ear infections resolve on their own without antibiotics. And overuse of antibiotics is causing huge, huge problems with our gut, which then leads to mental health issues and metabolic problems. And it's like, but if people are scared of the potential, you know, outcome that may be

very rare, then of course you can kind of get them to do stuff. And I think that I don't think that doctors are intentionally doing this. I think we have an incentive system in Western health care that really drives people towards intervention. But I think that, you know, I also think that with COVID, we saw this happen where, you know, this fear of, you know, anyone, you know, being harmed from COVID or, you know, that we, you know, kind of got people to do anything and everything. And we're kind of losing this, we're losing kind of that rational sense of the risk that is inherent in living. You know, we get in a car every day and like there is risk involved in that, but we choose to do it.

And I think that, you know, there's just a lot of sort of fear-based thinking that happens in the healthcare system that unfortunately disempowers patients and pushes them to do interventions more quickly. When I think that there is so much opportunity to help coach them with diet and lifestyle, which takes longer, it's harder, but ultimately it generates health rather than just putting a bandaid on disease. There's no medication that actually generates health. Only diet and lifestyle strategies generate health. And so that should obviously be the foundation of our medical system.

But unfortunately, we're not very well trained as physicians to know that information or to coach on it. But yeah, to answer your question, I think a large part of my personal journey has been trying to overcome fear. Personal fear. I think one of the biggest examples of this is my mom just passed away about a year ago from cancer. And just as any normal person, I spent my life fearing my parents'. Like, it's like, Oh, this is going to be horrible and devastating. And I think a lot of people worry about premature loss of a parent. And, you know, I think going through that experience and it actually being a very beautiful transformational experience. Um, see, it was a very, it was sort of a surprise. And,

um, she had two weeks between her diagnosis and her death. Oh, man. We had this beautiful time together as a family. She was actually very much on the same page about sort of holistic health as me and knew in her heart that she was dying very rapidly. She chose to stay at home, be with the family. We were all together, had this spectacular two weeks, the hospital system through every possible medium was trying to pull her into the system. You know, it was pancreatic cancer. So it's like, you need a liver stint, you need a liver biopsy, you need a blood transfusion, you need to start chemo immediately. And the reality was she knew

I'm dying like right now. She ended up dying in two weeks. None of the interventions would have helped. We wouldn't even had a, you know. Would have lasted maybe a few more months or a few more weeks. Maybe you don't know. I actually don't think at all. I think that. Might've caused more stress and more. Well, and it was COVID. So she would have been in the hospital and we could have not visited her. So anyways, that experience of seeing her approach, um, seeing her pure joy in the face, she was just ended her last two weeks, very joyfully was very at peace. Um, we had that time together. Um, she was not just like locked in the hospital doing interventions that would not have helped very much. I realized, oh, something I've been fearing my entire life happened was the most transformational growth experience I've ever had.

I still feel way more connected to my mom than I ever could have imagined. No one can tell you, oh, you're going to still feel connected until you maybe experience that. And it kind of made me realize fear is kind of not useful. So I think that something like that, and I think it probably lots of people have their own examples, just kind of makes you realize the futility of living in, in fear. And you know, what does it do? It damages your body. It doesn't really change the outcome. A little bit of healthy fear is useful. Of course, like you don't want to cross the street without looking. But the idea that we should be fearful all the time, like that's going to protect us is such a fallacy. So turning to Stoic philosophers, turning to, you know, some sort of Eastern texts, Buddhist and Taoist texts, like sort of looking into traditions that have thought

this way has been a really useful part of my journey. And I think needs to be a part of how the healthcare system reforms because we weaponize fear of death as a way to control patients into doing anything we want. And I think fundamentally overcoming your fear of mortality, which is the only thing we can be certain of in this world, and really approaching that with a sense of awe and a sense of curiosity and a sense of what can this teach us about how to live, I think is an absolute foundational part of what we need to do as individuals, but also the healthcare system, because otherwise we're just using fear as this thing. Fear of death is this thing to just wrangle people into as many interventions and as pharmaceuticals as possible with the off chance that people think it's going to somewhat reduce

their chance of mortality. So what I heard you saying there was that there is no medicine that can actually make you healthier. Is that correct? Or that could actually solve the issue on the medicine itself? The vast majority of all medications, I probably wouldn't say all on a record, but I would say the vast majority do not generate health in the body. They manage symptoms. They don't cure the disease or whatever. If you take away a diabetes medication from someone, their diabetes is not gone. It's right back there where it was. Whereas if you get someone to really foundationally improve their

cellular function, which can only be done through consistent dietary and lifestyle habits, they can truly reverse their disease. But there's no medication that reverses diabetes. There's no medication that reverses heart disease. There's no medication that reverses Alzheimer's dementia. They just kind of manage the symptoms. They manage the symptoms, you know, and maybe... Maybe some relief a little here and there. relief a little here and there. Relief, you know, life extension for some of them, but they do not create health. And what health is, health is optimal cellular functioning. We are just a big, you know, bag of cells and each cell needs to be functioning properly for us to have health. What is a symptom? What is disease? That is

cellular dysfunction happening on the individual level, happening in a, you know, if that's happening in mass, that might be tissue dysfunction. If that's happening, you know, in a bigger way, it's organ dysfunction. And that's when we see symptoms of disease. So we have to really zoom in on what's happening in the cell. what is a cell is being getting its information from what you're eating what it's being built from which is your food um what stress hormones it's seeing binding to its little cell membrane um you know what's happening with your hormones which of course is dictated by stress and by sleep and by exercise and by food it's the super complex milieu that can only be optimized

by the choices that we're making every day, day in and day out consistently, even by the sunlight we're exposing ourselves to in the morning. And, you know, Andrew Heuermann talks about this all the time, but literally the consistent exposure of sunlight first thing in the morning is chemical information to your body through the sunlight's energy to tell your cells how to function. You can't put that in a pill. You know, it has to happen for these millions of years of evolutionary evolved processes. And so yes, like medications can't with their, you know, one pathway that they might be intervening on truly generate foundational cellular health, which is what we need to achieve.

They don't bring wholeness back to the cell. Yeah. I guess there's what, some creams or something that might help you heal a cut or something like that, but we're talking about like a chronic illness medication, right? Yeah, but even if you think about a cut, you know, I mean, a cut is like, it seems so simple, but it's actually so complex. It's like for a cut, if you think about people with disease, like diabetes, for instance, one of the reasons that people with type 2 diabetes die is because of chronic wounds. They have wounds that won't heal.

Oh, yeah. Are they internal wounds or external wounds? External wounds. People can get, something that happens with people with diabetes is they often have nerve damage because of the way the blood sugar is affecting the nerves. So then their feet become numb. And then they might get a cut on their foot. They don't feel it.

And then that festers. And because of their high blood sugar, their immune cells don't work. So they can't heal the wound. And then they die from the wound. And then they get a huge systemic infection that might lead to death or an amputation. So the majority of lower limb amputations are caused by diabetes, diabetic ulcers that are like wounds. How many people have type 2 diabetes in the U.S.? Do we know the number? Oh, yeah. Well, there's 128 million Americans with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

And of those, 30 million have full-on type 2 diabetes. 30 million out of what, 300 and what is that, 300 something million people? Yeah, it's about 13% of the population now. Has type 2 diabetes. Yeah. And it was less than 1% in the 50s and 60s. And pre-diabetic, you're saying 100 million. Yep, around that. What does pre-diabetic mean? Who is someone who might be pre-diabetic?

Well, it actually can be quite surprising. There are lots of young, healthy people walking around who look otherwise fit, who have pre-diabetes and don't know it. 90% of people with pre-diabetes do not know that they have it. How do you know if you have it? Well, the easiest way to do it is through a blood test. So you basically get a fasting blood sugar test from your doctor. And if it's between 100 and 125 milligrams per liter of fasting glucose, that's considered pre-diabetes. 100 to 125. What do you want to be at? What's a healthy range? So what's considered normal is 100 or below. 100 below. But I would say that that is way too lenient of a range because what we've figured out is that people in the low

end of normal are much less likely to develop long-term problems with like heart disease, stroke, or diabetes. So even if you're in the high normal range and your doctor says to you, oh, your fasting blood sugar is 97, you're great. You're normal. You should see that as a huge red flag. You are metabolically dysfunctional if that's the case. And so really where you want to shoot for is about 70 to 85 milligrams per deciliter. And can people get a test that they can order and do this themselves? For sure. What are these?

You can actually buy it at CVS or at the pharmacy. What's it called? You just prick your finger. Or what are these called? One drop. They're called glucometers. Glucometers. They're literally $20 on Amazon.

There's Keto Mojo. You just prick your finger and then it'll tell you right away in a few minutes. In five seconds, yeah. So then it just tells you what your level's at. What it is. And it's cool to check it actually day to day, like for a few weeks. Because one thing you'll find is that, let's say you have one poor night of sleep. Like let's say you had a big work thing due and you got six hours instead of eight hours.

Your blood sugar in the morning might be 10 points higher. Come on. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Or let's say you had a really late meal the night before. Your blood sugar might be higher the next morning. So what it starts putting together for you is this is very dynamic. And if I did these activities day after day, year after year for my whole life, I'm building.

So figure out what allows you to be in that 70 to 85 range. Maybe it's like a really awesome workout in the middle of the day prior and getting to bed a little bit earlier and getting morning sunlight exposure and doing some deep breathing in the morning. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, cool, my blood sugar is 72 milligrams to breast leader, you know, or fasting for, you know, 16 hours or something like that. But figuring out what works for you to stay in that low range and then dial it in for as many days of the week as possible as you can. The other really interesting thing about fasting blood sugar as a test is that, you know, the body, like we were talking about with the insulin resistance, it's very adaptable. And when the body starts becoming insulin resistant, so it's saying we're seeing too much glucose around, we're producing, like we're going to create an insulin

block. What the body does is it's like, well, we've got to get this glucose out of the bloodstream. So it starts producing more insulin. So your insulin levels will actually start rising as you become insulin resistant to push more of that glucose into the cells. And so a study in the Lancet, a big medical journal, showed that you can actually keep your blood sugar levels normal for like 13 years prior to them elevating. And all the while, insulin is rising, but it's compensating to keep glucose low. Unfortunately, because we don't check fasting insulin in this country, we're missing that window where people are clearly becoming insulin resistant, but their glucose still looks normal and they're yearly check. So to just make this concrete, you and I could both go to the primary

care doctor and have a fasting glucose of 80 milligrams per deciliter. And so the doctor says to both of us, you're both in perfect health. If I'm really insulin resistant because I'm on that glucose roller coaster and I'm getting poor sleep and I'm chronically stressed and not managing it and I have childhood trauma that I haven't addressed, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. I could be at 80, but I'm doing that by my insulin being elevated to like 35 or 40. And your insulin might be two. So your body's not working hard at all to keep your insulin at 80. And my body is having to preserve so much insulin.

So I am clearly on the path towards metabolic disease, diabetes, and all the associated conditions, heart disease, stroke, cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, fatty liver disease, gout, infertility, retinal dysfunction, blah blah blah blah. And you're in the clear, but our doctor tells us that we're the same. So this is why I recommend that every patient ask their doctor for a fasting insulin check because you have a sense of what's actually happening under the hood. Have you seen anyone who is, the mind is under so much attack that they've been addicted to substances, they've tried to get off, and they're unable to stay consistent

with healthier habits because they had some type of mental condition that was so aggressive that they were just like, I need to drink, I need to smoke because I've tried the other way and it doesn't work? Or have you seen people who have been successful time after time if they're able to follow the challenging practices consistently to improve the quality of their brain? See, I would say they're simple practices. I've seen people... Challenging for people to...

I've seen people both ways, right? And often it takes enough pain for them to change. Meaning what? But sometimes, like losing their kids. Oh, man. But sometimes even when they lose their kids, they don't change because their brain has been hijacked. I mean, I don't know if you're like me, but one of the reasons I never did drugs is I never wanted something else to control my life. Yeah, it was one of the reasons.

I also never wanted to make an excuse because I would see people, especially playing football in college, guys would get drunk after a game and then they would not be well the next day at practice. That was one, I was like, I want to have an advantage, but then people would do things and they'd like cheat on their girlfriend, they're like, oh, I was like, I wanna have an advantage, but then people would do things and they'd like cheat on their girlfriend,

they're like, oh, that was drunk, I'm sorry. I was like, if I cheat or do something bad, I wanna own it. I wanna be responsible for being a jerk or being a or whatever I did, as opposed to blaming a substance that did that thing. So you wanna be in control. Absolutely. Of your whole life.

And that's what I want. I don't want anything else controlling me. And if you know these things are potentially addictive, it's like playing Russian roulette. It's like, I would never play Russian roulette. I'm like, that's stupid. You know, why would I increase my chance of trouble? I mean, you know, to think you're invulnerable. trouble. I mean, you know, to think you're invulnerable. What about the wave of plant medicine use and normalization of plant medicine, the people saying it's

transformational work, helping them heal their pain of their past, helping them overcome trauma, helping them break through things they've never been able to mentally break through with. This work of ayahuasca, plant, all these different things. What are your thoughts on that in terms of brain scan results? Well, I actually did a study with Ibogaine, which is one of the plant medications. It's like an ayahuasca? It's like ayahuasca.

And it wasn't good from a brain perspective. Really? But I think it's going to be an interesting, exciting part of psychiatry. And there are lots of studies. It's just recently legalized, not now, but in two years in Oregon. And they're going to legalize what? medicine plant medicine in oregon yeah mushrooms oh they are psilocybin in oregon yeah microdosing because the problem is i wish so the big innovations in psychiatry now are magic mushrooms and marijuana and more medications and i'm like how about diet exercise and learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think? Don't you think we should at least start? Let's start there. Let's start, you know, with brain health. But I think it's going to be an interesting, exciting thing. But you know,

psychiatrists were really interested and excited about Valium. And they were really interested and excited about cocaine. Freud used cocaine. And they went, oh, they're interested and excited about marijuana. And they go, well, the brain has cannabinoid receptor sites. Well, the brain also has benzo receptor sites, and that didn't work out well. And the brain also has opiate receptor sites, and that didn't work out well. And the brain also has opiate receptor sites and that didn't work out well. We should be finding ways to naturally increase opiates and that's exercise. People say, well, plants are natural.

You know, this has been happening for centuries with our ancestors. And cocaine is natural. Right? Right. I mean, just because... Sugar is natural, I guess. cocaine is natural right right I mean just because sugar is naturally sugar is natural right I mean is it helpful that's the question so what about magic mushrooms or mushrooms or micro dosing this you know I've I've heard mushrooms are good to eat you know food mushrooms well I actually make I have a supplement company called BrainMD and we make something called smart mushrooms. I put a scoop in my shake every morning. It's got lion's mane and cordyceps and reishi and they have both immune system benefits and cognitive benefits. And I feel at 66, every bit as sharp as when I was 20.

And I feel at 66 every bit as sharp as when I was 20. So what's the difference between those mushrooms versus the medicine mushrooms? They don't have hallucinogenic effects. What helps the brain when we hallucinate? It activates. It actually turns on some of the limbic or emotional parts of the brain. And if you're doing it in a therapeutic environment, you might be able to reprocess some of those painful memories in a different way. You might be able to separate from them, get a different perspective of them. But there are other ways to do that that might not have side effects. Like there's a treatment for trauma I like called EMDR,

eye movement desensitization and Repress. I studied that in police officers. I hear amazing things from this. So helpful. And that does a similar strategy of... Activates your emotional brain and then calms it. So I did a study with police officers who had PTSD from being involved in shootings. And most police officers don't PTSD from being involved in shootings. And most police

officers don't want to be involved in shootings, that it becomes traumatic for them if they hurt someone. And like soldiers in war, and they were all off work, and on average of eight EMDR sessions, they all went back to work. And it calmed down the emotional parts of their brain. So that's pretty exciting. There's another technique I use called havening, which is bilateral hemisphere stimulation. That's what EMDR is. You bring up the trauma, get your eyes to go back and forth. And that trauma connects to another trauma, which can connect to another. It's really interesting. But havening is just really simple. It's thinking

about the trauma. I want people always to go into their pain, not away from their pain. And so, for example, I told you my dad died May 5th last year. And a couple of days later, I'm at my mom's house. And we're just going through paperwork, right? I mean, it's what you do after somebody dies. And somebody, some idiot, had a picture of my dead father in the mortuary in that stack of papers. And all of a sudden, I find it and it hits me and it just bothered me. And a couple of hours later, I realized it was bothering me. It was circling in my head. And so I teach my patients this. It's havening. It's like, think about what's

bothering you. And for 30 seconds, stimulate both hemispheres of your brain so as i do this it's stimulating that side if i do that stimulate while you bring up the trauma and do that like up to six times and after the first time i'm like that's the last picture of my dad i'll ever see wow and it was okay and then i did it twice more and the picture became my favorite picture of my dad because he was at peace yeah and I slept like a baby that night and the picture never bothered me again it's just simple and there's these simple techniques that everybody should know. Why do you have to be sick to learn how to be well? Shouldn't we have, and we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25, that we teach kids how to love and care for their brains, their minds, their relationships,

and be purposeful. their minds, their relationships, and be purposeful. How much does alcohol, smoking, or marijuana, or psychedelics actually affect lifespan? Do we have enough research on this yet? Well, we do on tobacco smoking. Obviously, it's very clear that's a decade off your life. And what's interesting is that what we're learning about these various things that you can do to hurt yourself or to protect yourself is that what's happening is that your body is aging at a different rate. So smokers, you can measure it, are older biologically than people who've

never smoked. And that's why they look older too. Wow. We can measure that now. In my lab, if I took your blood, I could tell you how old you are biologically, not just your chronology. I want to do that.

I saw you post this on Instagram that you're like 46. Is that right? Or you're 42? Or what is it? I went down to, what was it, 44 I think.

Okay, 42. It bounces around, but it's usually a decade younger than I thought I was. That's cool. So what do you do? Do you take a blood sample?

Yeah. And then you what? Measure the blood? There's two ways of doing it. There's one company that I advise called Inside Tracker and that's what I use. I've had that too, yeah. You've done that? Yeah. So they come to your home or you donate and then you get this readout of I think it's 40 different parameters and they use an algorithm and tell you how old you are. So I'm 42 or something like that. I'm on the I'm in the top 2% of people from my age for youthfulness. So I'm happy with that. Just dust it off, a little brag over there. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you better be if you're researching this and the top scientists in the world on this. Oh, yeah. I don't like to brag. That's not what Australians and scientists do.

But what I do want to say is I use my body as an experiment. And try to be a role model. And I've been optimizing my lifestyle for 20 years now, based on this feedback from InsideTracker for the last 12, 13 years. And you can see the graphs of things going out of the optimal zone. And then I make a change based on science and it comes back or even better. So we know from smokers that their biological age is older when they smoke is what you're saying, right? Yeah. Well, that's one test. The inside tracker test is what I do routinely every few months.

But there's a new type of test that my colleagues and in my lab we've developed. It's called the DNA methylation test. It's also known as the Horvath test named after my friend Stephen Horvath at UCLA. The way to think of this is, if you've ever heard of the epigenome, these are the control systems that control our DNA. It turns out that that system you can measure, it's chemicals on your DNA that change over time predictably. And we've just developed a way to measure that 100 times cheaper than it was before. And I'm going to bring this test to the public so that people can test their biological age. At home or something? It should be a cheek swab.

That's what we're developing. So you don't have to prick or take blood or anything. You do a cheek swab. Exactly. And then you ship it in or something? Yeah, you'll post it in. And then you get, hopefully just a week later or less, here's your credit score for your body. That's cool.

And then even better, here's how you slow it down or reverse it based on everything we know about you. Wow, that's cool. And we'll take you on that journey. So do this, eat this, swallow this. That is cool. I've got to take that test. Yeah, well, you can get on the wait list if you want. Okay.

There's a website because we are taking names right now. We may do some studies with early adopters too. That's cool. Where's the wait list for that? It's called Tally. T-A-L-L-Y. Tallyhealth.com. And the reason I'm excited about it is it's very hard to focus on what works because we have no idea.

You exercise, you hope that it's good. Yeah. Is it too much, too little? If I eat this, does it help me? We need a dashboard for our bodies and that's what these give you. That is really cool. Okay, so we know that smoking

makes you age biologically. That's why it makes you look older, smoking. What about drinking alcohol? We've talked about wine and the substance in wine that could be supportive, but alcohol in general, does that affect biological age and aging? Well, it all depends on quantity.

One glass a day, most doctors would say, especially if it's red wine, it's fine. And the alcohol actually can help with the cardiovascular system, reduces bad cholesterol and more importantly, raises the good cholesterol HDL. This is for red wine. And the alcohol in white wine does a little bit of good, too. But beer? So beer will raise the levels of uric acid, which is a breakdown product of a protein

breakdown product that you can pee out. breakdown product then you can pee out but if you have too much beer and other types of food that contain a lot of this type of protein you will raise your uric acid level so why does that matter it's being becoming very clear that if you have high uric acid levels your body will age faster we just had dr. David Perlmutter on there's a book about uric acid, talking about like this is one of the root causes of poor health and aging faster and things like that. So I'll call it. You talk to him a lot? Yeah, yeah.

I actually was one of the first people to read his book before it came out. Yeah, it's really good. It blew my mind. I now measure my uric acid levels. You can get little test strips. You can just buy them. You just pee on it? No, you spit on it, and 10 seconds later you see uric acid levels.

And so the lower the level, the better. Right. The higher the level means there's risk for what? Everything. According to David, it's really bad for cancers and heart disease mainly. But I think he's right that it's a sign of accelerated aging. The higher the uric level, the faster you're going to be aging. Yeah.

And a larger amount of consumption of alcohol, specifically beer, I'm hearing, raises that level. Beer in particular has a lot of the chemicals in it that will raise uric acid unfortunately. And that's from David Perlmutter. He gave me a list of foods. I saw beer on there and I was like, that sucks. Now is there any benefit to beer in biology, in science? Does it help you improve the quality of your health? Does your brain get better? Does your body, your system get better, does it make you younger at all, or are there no benefits to beer biologically and in your brain? There are benefits because there's alcohol in there, and a little bit of alcohol is good for your cardiovascular system.

But there's other things that's good for your cardiovascular system too, right? That you don't need. So beer on the list of alcohols is at the bottom for health mostly, unless it's full of sugar, like there's very sweet wines, I think would be a problem. But beer does have a lot of vitamin B,

B group vitamins, B3, tons of it. But you can get that in other ways too. You can. What can you do? I mean, you've got to live as well. I don't prescribe a life that's prolonging and feels longer. You've got gotta live as well. Right, right. I don't prescribe a life that's prolonging and feels longer.

You gotta live a little. Right, right, enjoyment. The enjoyment of the richness of life, yeah. Right, though I am trying not to drink alcohol these days. I've never been drunk in my life. Yeah, amazing. Never been drunk. I don't find it amazing because I just never found the,

I never had the desire to do it. I never, I like tasted some when I was 16 and I was like, I don't understand why I would ever drink this. Plus it was also for me, maybe that's one of the reasons in your mind I look younger, I look like I haven't aged more, is because I found it as an advantage in sports

when everyone else was drinking, I was like, oh, it's weakening their immune system, it's making them slower mentally, this will give me an edge in athletics. They were hung over after games in practice and I was like, I'm gonna be sharp. And so I just kept on with it. I was like, this is just gonna make me sharper.

Now I have my other, I use sugar in other ways, this is my vice, so I'm not perfect, but does alcohol make you look older too? I use sugar in other ways, is my vice, so I'm not perfect. But does alcohol make you look older too? In excess. In excess, got you. Yeah, yeah. So a little bit every day is okay, a little bit. But most doctors, like physicians, would say if you overdo it, you will age.

And actually what you do as a researcher is you look at people who live a long time and compare them to either their twin, which has been done, or family members. And actually how you live your life has a massive impact on how long you live. There's a twin study. They took identical twins, genetically identical, in Denmark and they said, okay, let's look at them through their life and there were massive differences in how they looked and how they how long they lived and when they went back to see what the causes were they could figure out first

of all that 80% of their lifespan was determined by how they lived not their genetics you mean the way they felt about themselves the people they hung out with their environment the activities they took on, or what do you mean? Well, mostly their lifestyle, what they ate, did they smoke, did they drink,

did they exercise? Did they sleep well, all that stuff. Right. And those that did all the good things, the same genetics, twins born the same day, one could live 10 years longer than the other.

Now, this is what I'm curious about. Were these twins hanging out all the time? Because usually when you're hanging out with someone all the time you pick up the similar habits right you pick up a similar lifestyle habit as your parents as your partner and you kind of eat the same things it's really hard to be like I'm going to drink every day and I'm not going to drink every day if you're living together and in the same room right yeah yeah I don't know how it is maybe they they got separated at birth or something interesting But does tell you a lot that the fact that 80% of our future health is in our own hands is liberating

That's really cuz often we think art it's not gonna make a big difference It really makes a big difference how you live your life Every day focus on that and one thing that I do is I look at my future self and I ask myself What's that guy saying to me today if he could speak to me what's he saying please don't eat that exactly please don't drink that anymore you had enough like you're gonna hurt me in 10 years that's how you need to think about it it's coaching yourself 10 20 30 years out right it's interesting I asked David Perlmutter I said what are some things you wish you would have done

young as sooner to improve the quality of your health? And he was like, flossing. He was like, he's like, and I didn't go deeper into that, but I remember him saying that. I was like, there's wisdom in whatever it is. Maybe he had some gum issues or something he had to deal with at one point that was really affecting him for a year or two.

I don't know, I'm just making this up. But if he can go back, he'd be like, I wish you would have done this better so I didn't have to suffer later right yeah what are the things you've done or you're doing now that your 10 year old self will be so happy for like if he was in front of you right now he'd just be hugging you and high-fiving you non-stop the things you're doing that he will appreciate in 10 years and then what are a few things that he's going to say, man, I really wish you wouldn't do that right now?

Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So let's see. So I measure myself so I can speak scientifically, not just that it makes me feel good. It's the one meal, one main meal a day. He would be grateful for.

I'm sure of it. And as a result, I'm leaner and more ripped. I hate to say that word. You look lean. I am lean. You look really lean. I've gone over the last two years from 150 pounds to 133. Yeah, you look leaner even from the first time I had you on. Your face is leaner and chiseled.

Yeah. I don't think I want to lose any more. Yeah. I need to go back to the is leaner and chiseled. Yeah. I don't think I can lose any, I want to lose any more. I need to go back to the gym and do a little bit more. So the one meal a day, but you weren't doing one meal a day, what, five, 10 years ago? No, I only started during the pandemic. Yeah, this is new for me too. It's hard actually. When you begin, you feel hungry because you've got those crashes that make you really hungry and you've got this hormone called ghrelin that makes you hungry. But once you get through that, it takes about three weeks. So anyone who tries it, make sure that you don't give up early. Just power through and then your liver will wake up. One main meal a day. So that's one. The other thing I think that he will be happy is don't eat sugary foods.

Oh, man. Yeah. Don't eat that cake. So at a restaurant, when they said you want dessert, I always say no. But then I'm hoping that someone at the table orders what I want. But that's all I need. I need to taste it. I don't need to fill myself with a cake.

Gotcha. Because you still want to enjoy your life and live a full life, but you don't want to, in 10 years, be like, why do they eat cake every day? It's not worth it. Yeah. Really. Your future self will thank you for it.

Lifting weights, I know you do that. So I need to do more of that. I got a standing desk. So most of the day I'm standing, which is great. Again, you have to get used to it. You'll feel tired for the first few weeks. Yes. Your legs will.

I'm now mostly focused on eating plants. When did you start that? That's recently. Eating mostly plants. Yeah, I've switched. I love meat. I wish that I could eat more. But you've just got to look at the science.

There's some really good studies of thousands of people who just look at how long people live and what they eat. And I mean, it's not even an argument. But there's so many people that bring in the argument, well, all these people have cured these diseases or whatever, gotten rid of these things from meat only. But people make the argument, right? Like you see it online, people making the argument right like you see that online people making the argument for meat meat meat so how where are they finding these research studies

of people living longer on an only meat diet i don't know but you're not seeing them you're not seeing studies of anyone that lives over a hundred that all they do is eat meat well there might be one person or two but when you look at 10 000000 people, what they eat, it's the vegan and the pescatarian that win out. In the blue zones, right. Yeah. And the numbers are something like you drop it down to, you've got 88% less chance, or actually it's 12% chance for most diseases. So most diseases are protected by these diets. Really? Wait a minute, 88% less chance of what? These diets really wait a minute eighty percent less chance of what? Of dying at any one point

In the age range of the study which Wow, which is by eating by being a pescetarian. Yeah Yeah, so it's vegan pescetarian. Those the best then above that would be Actually pescetarian was better than vegetarian a little bit of meat seemed to help but it has to be fish. With the omega-3s in there, right? Yeah and particularly oleic acid is good which is found in avocados and olive oil. That activates one of the protective enzymes that we study in the lab. Which acid? Oleic. O-L-E-I-C. What is some of that but not a lot of that? It's a monounsaturated fatty acid or a MUFA. If you have a bit of olive oil, there's a supplement online that I get

that has high levels of oleic acid in it that I take every day. Okay, cool. With the DHA and EPA. All that stuff, yeah. All that good stuff. Yes, okay. So that's my fish intake as a pill.

You don't eat fish, or you eat very little? Well, you know, I'm evolving my diet. So I've gone from a Mediterranean diet over the last 10 years to the last two, three months to all plant-based, no dairy, and, yeah, no meat. And I'm just seeing what happens to my body. I'm measuring things. It's an experiment. It's not a philosophy. And if things don't work out biologically, I'll go back. I mean,

I'd love to go back to a state. I'm Australian after all. But I'm driven by science and that's all it is. Yeah. Okay. So you got these four. Was there another thing that your future self would thank you for? One meal a day, don't eat sugary foods. That's going to be one of the most challenging for me. Lifting weights, eating mostly plants. Was there anything else? Get control over psychological stress. Oh, yeah. Why is this so important?

Well, the main problem is you have high levels of cortisol when you're stressed out psychologically. And it's clear that people who have high levels of, really high levels of stress are chronically ill. And even it accelerates gray hair. That's actually a fact. It's not just a myth. You really are getting older if you have stress. Really, something that's scientifically proven

that if you're stressed out all the time or more frequently, you're gonna get older, biologically. Correct. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Can you reverse gray hair without dyes? Yes. Really? Well, not routinely, but there are examples of that.

There are some drugs that have shown in the clinic that make hair go from gray to brown. The best example I can tell you is that when people are stressed out, let's say they're in the banking world and they're losing their minds, you can find hairs that start to turn gray. So you look at them, and they're a little bit gray at the bottom. Oh, good, I'm turning gray. Then they get given a vacation, and they go away for a couple of weeks. And guess what happens to the hair shaft?

It gets brown. It's brown again. You can find these gray-brown segments of hair in people. Yeah. And what they tracked it down to was that the cells that make the hair pigment start to shut down, but they can be reinvigorated. But I suspect once you've been gray for a number of years, it's really hard to get back again. It's hard to reverse that. Yeah.

Yeah. But, but you know, I'm, I'm the first person to say aging is, is not unidirectional in my lab. We're driving it forwards and backwards at will. It's not really difficult anymore.

Once you figure it out. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I wanna remind you that you are loved,

you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.