Do you think there is an upper limit to human aging? It’s not even a question. Let me explain. [Music] I thought that that wasn’t fair to have consciousness and to know that we were going to be sick and die and watch everyone else die. I was inspired by my grandmother who told me that humans can do better. My PhD supervisor said, “Why would you go study aging? It’s not even a real science.” And thank goodness I didn’t listen to him. Aging isn’t just damage to the body like we wear out. It’s actually a loss of information. There will be a day, I believe, where you’ll be able to rejuvenate your brain and get back memories, get your ability to learn again. I’m no longer talking about slowing aging. I’m talking about true age reversal multiple times. There’s a backup copy of information in every cell. And that fact that there is a backup copy changes everything. There is no law that says we must age. Remember that. [Music] Welcome to Moonshots and Mindsets. One
[00:01:00] of my favorite conversations from Abundance 360 this year was a fireside chat with Dr. David Sinclair, known around the world as one of the leading, if not the leading thinker on age reversal and epigenetics. David is a professor at Harvard Medical School who studies aging and longevity. He had just published a epic paper in cell about the work he’s done over 13 years on how to accelerate aging from epigenetic changes and then reverse that aging. In this segment, we’re going to be diving into the work that he’s most recently done and where he thinks it’s going. You know, uh I’m a fan of David, uh a big fan. I’ve donated to his lab. I’ve written about his work in the book that I wrote with Tony Robbins called uh Life Force. I promoted his book Lifespan, David Sinclair’s book uh probably more than I’ve promoted my books. He’s one of the most exhilarating thinkers, a dear and beautiful soul. Um we’re going to be
[00:02:02] visiting David during my longevity platinum trip this coming August and going to his lab. and I’ll probably have a follow- on podcast when we dive into some of the deep science that he’s doing. He’s an individual that during this conversation uh will answer the question, is there an upper age to how long we live? Uh what is the latest on the epigenetic reprogramming that has been able to reverse the aging of tissues? And he’s someone with whom I’m working on a health span X-P prize. Super excited about this. All right, so settle in. Get ready. What would you do with an extra 20 or 30 years of healthy lifespan? You’re about to find out. Enjoy this episode from my private summit, Abundance 360 with Dr. David Sinclair. Welcome, David. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me back. Hi everyone. Um, uh, thank you to you and Serena for flying in from India. It was a long flight. How long was that?
[00:03:01] I don’t know. Too long. Uh well uh the topic of longevity has grown to uh one of epic proportions. Um and I think I want to hit on a point I made earlier. Uh the idea of human health span extension of age reversal was kind of a taboo subject a while ago, wasn’t it? Well, not too long ago. Yeah. When I started in this field in the early 90s, it was considered the end of my career by many people. So my PhD supervisor said, “Why would you go study aging? It’s too complicated to understand. It’s not even a real science.” And thank goodness I didn’t listen to him. Yeah. So remember that for our students out there watching? Uh was it what what was it that got you um to move into that direction? Was it a personal passion? Was it an inkling? Uh it was definitely more than an inkling and still is. Uh if any of you
[00:04:00] have read my book, you’ll know that it was um by the way, how many folks up here have read lifespan? Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um and Peter, I think you know the answer to the question. That’s why you asked it. Uh I uh I was inspired by my grandmother who told me that humans can do better. And that’s what I love about what Peter does here. It’s that’s the vision. It’s that we can always do better. There’s a bright horizon that we need to get to. we need to steer humanity in that direction. Um I felt that way my whole life. That’s why we’re friends uh among other reasons. And uh so she said when I was four years old that everybody I knew in including my pets uh were going to die and it’s not going to be pretty um and then I’m going to die. And as a 4-year-old that was a bit of a shock to be told that. And we all we all learn this around the same age. But we forget about it because it’s too painful to live every day knowing that fact. as sentient beings, as conscious animals, it’s really a burden that we we bear.
[00:05:02] Um, and I als I thought that that wasn’t fair to have consciousness and to know that we were going to be sick and die and watch everyone else die. That was age four. And then at age around 15 16, I thought this new technology called genetic engineering could actually tackle this problem in a way that had never been done before. So I set my sights on that. Let’s go to January 12th. Uh, you published a paper in cell. You published a few landmark papers, this one being amongst them, uh that showed the ability to control aging using epigenetics in mammals. Um just you know what were the major points of that paper because it it definitely it cemented your uh your work and this this concept of information a theory of aging. Yeah. Yeah. So, the information theory of aging as it’s called um I formulated when I was still in my 20s. I woke up in the middle of the night with this idea.
[00:06:00] It I guess it was delivered to me by muses. Uh wrote it down in in my notebook and I still have that notebook in my office and I’ve been going off that playbook ever since. And that’s the idea that aging isn’t just damage to the body like we wear out. It’s actually a loss of information that we inherited uh from our parents and built on during development. Um, and yeast cells have that problem. And we just finally published, when was that? 25 years later, that we mammals have the same issue. And by understanding, I think, a large part of why we age, we’re able to control the aging process in a colony of mice, driving them forwards and backwards in their age, and making them get diseases. Um, and now we’re even reversing those. That’s spectacular. So, one of the questions we asked everybody when they walked in here was to put on their badge, how old do you think you will live? And, uh, you know, I think the 90%
[00:07:01] had hit 120 or higher. But I think what’s happened is society has trained us to have certain expectations, right? You know, if your parents, your grandparents had made it to 75 or 80, you expect that. And when you hear the oldest living human being is 122, 123, you think, okay, there’s a brick wall there. Um, one of the questions I’d love you to share, one of the answers I love you to share is, do you think there is an upper limit to human aging? Well, I know there isn’t. You know, there is not. Yeah, it’s not even a question. Drop the mic moment. Let me explain. Uh there are lots of reasons why I give that answer. To me, it’s self-evident, but uh for some people, it isn’t. And there are critics of this idea that we can live beyond 120. But one of the best examples is uh that we’ve been able to extend the lifespan of every species
[00:08:01] that we’ve tried to extend the lifespan of and we’re no different from those species. That’s point one. Um the second is that there are many species who are very similar to us genetically, biologically that live a lot longer than we do. Uh the best example would be the bowhead whale, but a lot of whales live longer than us. And that, you know, they have children, they’re conscious, they produce milk. Uh so we just need to mimic what they have that allows them to live so long. And I think we have a much better idea now of how to do that. Um and so yeah, that there is no law that says we must age. Remember that. So, one of the things that’s going on, we’ve spent the last few days talking about uh massive advances in AI and quantum computing and sensors, networks, big data, and the realization is we’re in a period of very hyper growth of these technologies. And um you know, as Ray Kurszswwell, who will be speaking tomorrow morning, talks about the bridge to a bridge that your job is not to live now to do something that’s going to get you an extra 100red years. It’s to get
[00:09:02] you the next 10 healthy years to intercept those technologies. Uh do you agree with the idea, David? I I think you do, but maybe your time frame is different. That this next decade is very different than any time ever. Oh, for sure. Uh so we’re already many decades ahead of where I thought we would be technologically um from when I started. Um, I thought I was working to help my children and future children and uh and grandchildren, but it turns out that the pace of discovery has gone way faster. And that’s partly due to um technology. We can now do an experiment that analyzes billions of genes in the same time frame uh in a day that used to take us years of of work and billions of dollars and that allows us to do very quick experiments. Um the other thing that makes me super positive about this is that uh we’ve made a I think we’ve made a major breakthrough in our
[00:10:00] understanding of not just why we age but also how to control that process. And uh the the turning point in my career uh was the discovery that there’s a backup copy of information in every cell in every everybody’s cells. um and that that backup copy can be accessed and there’s a switch that you can flip that allows cells to reset their biological age and function again as though they were young because literally they are young again. And that fact that there is a backup copy changes everything. We’re no longer talking about slowing aging. I’m talking about true age reversal multiple times. And I don’t get laughed off stage anymore when I say that. Do you want to give it up for that? I mean, the idea that we we aren’t uh tied to the tyranny of aging and death
[00:11:02] is extraordinary. It changes everything. Hey everybody, Peter D. Mandis here. Uh I’ve been asked over and over again, what do I do for my own health? Well, I put it down in this book called Peter’s Longevity Practices. Uh, it’s very readable in just an hour. In the book, I cover longevity diet, exercise, sleep, my annual found upload, meds, and supplements, longevity mindset. It’s literally consumable in just an hour’s time, hopefully to incentivize you to make a difference in your life, to intercept the technologies coming our way. If you want this, it’s free. Just check out the link below and download it right now. um the evidence that you have for this backup copy. There are a few things you speak about in your book and your podcast. Could you speak just a few examples there? Right. Uh let’s see. We’ve got some visuals we could call up actually. So, let let’s call up the the slide with the the four faces on it, the top right on our guide here. Slide six, I think it is.
[00:12:00] Y that’s a good one. All right. So, uh let let’s do a show of hands. Uh, so how many of you have heard of the epiggenome or at least epigenetics? Hopefully everybody’s raising your hands. Okay. All right. We’re done. They’re all good students. All right. So the the the concept is that what we’ve realized is that most of disease and disability is not driven by our genes. It’s actually controlled by the regulator of those genes, which is the epiggenome. One of the best examples of that um are these people here. So these are um individuals from two sets of twins. These are in Denmark, a very large study of Danish twins looking at the effects of genes versus environment or epigenetics which is what responds to the environment. U and so if we click the button forward once, you’ll see that the identical twin of these two individuals uh hopefully you can see looks a lot younger and is actually younger biologically. We can now measure that.
[00:13:01] And it turns out that by living a healthy lifestyle, often you hear about uh doctors recommending these things. We know a lot about how to slow down the aging process. You don’t just look younger, you actually are biologically younger. And that’s why if you exercise, you eat right, you eat less often, you take the right supplements, you will be biologically younger and you will actually stave off disease until much later. So what does that actually mean? If we go back one slide, the concept is information. So the main type of information that we know about is the genome in the DNA. But there’s also another level of information that’s just as important and even more complex. That’s the epiggenome. Uh and those are the structures that control how the DNA is bundled and shaped and which genes out of the 25,000 get turned on and off when we’re forming an embryo um and we develop. And those genes can be switched on and off depending on how we live. If we put our bodies in a state of ad perceived adversity or adversity that isn’t too damaging, the epiggenome will actually
[00:14:00] respond and be more stable. So the idea is you want to stabilize your epiggenome so that your cells remember how to function youthfully for longer. The analogy as shown in this slide is a compact disc. Hopefully all of you remember what those things are barely incredible technology. You could fit about 20 songs on there. Um when when I teach at Harvard that the kids are like, “What are you talking about? This is ridic.” So if you’re young, it’s like resetting a computer or or pressing the buttons on the side of your iPhone. Uh so what the analogy is that the digital information is the is the DNA. Um and that’s the music, but you need to read it. It’s not just pits on a on an um a metallic disc. The epiggenome is the equivalent of the reader of that information. and the songs of the are the genes and aging I believe and our new paper presents very strong evidence this is the case that aging is the is akin to scratches on the CD so that the cells still have the music the genes but they’re just not read correctly at the
[00:15:00] right time in the right place so that your cells forget how to work so we see that brain cells become more like skin cells and skin cells become more like kidney cells we become a mlange instead of highly differentiated functioning youthful cells and so that’s the information theory of aging and what we found out in this paper is what drives that process in large part is broken DNA. Avoid X-rays, CT scans if you can help it. Um, don’t fly too much. If you can help it. Yeah. Well, don’t do what I do and uh and uh live with ways that actually prevent those breaks cuz that disrupts the epiggenome we showed. But here’s the the cool point is that we’ve discovered you can polish off those scratches and get back the beautiful music of cells and their youth. So, uh that’s extraordinary. There’s a concept that has been talked about for some time of longevity escape velocity that there’s a moment in time that for every year that you’re alive science can extend your life for more than a year and I think the numbers that people talk about today is that we’re for every four
[00:16:01] years we’re adding a year of life. Uh where are you on this and where do you think what do you think we’ll reach longevity escape velocity? How far out are we? M uh well so the so we get about 3 months for every year we stay alive currently without breakthroughs like the one I’m talking about uh let me give you an update on where we are today please uh and whatever you’re willing to say I know some of it’s amazing uh the and we can extrapolate from here but remember it’s not linear there’s one thing you know from uh from this uh conference the The journey has been a rapid one. We made this discovery that you can uh reset the age of cells, human tissue, mouse tissue, living mice. Um what is it now? It’s about 5 years ago. It it was published 3 years ago. Um we started uh working on mice. Uh we reset the
[00:17:02] eyeballs of mice to be young again. They got their vision back. That was the cover cover that got the cover of nature. Uh that’s December 2020 third row far right slide. Uh yeah, we were very fortunate. Nature was bold enough to put the title turning back time on the cover of their magazine. Very honored by that. And this is the paper that changed everything for my lab for my outlook about aging. And what we’ve done since then is we’ve we’ve formed a company called Life Biosciences. Uh and they’ve been pushing ahead uh for all those years. U we’ve done extensive studies in mice. We needed to know if it was safe. It’s it’s very safe. We’ve never seen anything negative. After years of work and driving this process, we found that those three genes OS and K for short, these are uh gene regulators that set off a cascade of events during embryogenesis to make a young human. Turns out, lucky for all of us, I think, is that those three genes also set back
[00:18:02] the clock in adult cells without causing tumors or any disease and without bringing them back so far that they’ve lost identity. And and this is the thing that that blows my mind is you’d think that if you just keep it on for a long time, you’d go back to zero, age zero, which you don’t want. It’s not true. They go cells go back about 80% and stop. there’s a barrier that prevents them from going back to zero if we leave off that other gene. It’s a gift to humanity for sure. And uh so now we’re at the point where we’re conducting at Life Biosciences um a Boston based company uh non-human primates. These are green monkey studies. Um, I should say that the reason that there’s an iris on this cover is that we show that you could reverse blindness due to glaucoma and also old age by resetting the age of the retina back to youth. And those mice got their full vision back again. So the think about this, your body, if this is true, the body is looks old, but it’s
[00:19:02] actually it just needs to be reset. So I don’t think of an old person now as an old person. I think it’s just a body that needs to be reset. polished. So, this is a big deal because I mean, one of the critiques about uh the work that you and other individuals in this field have done is it’s all done in mice. You know, that’s great, but we’re humans. You know, mice get all the benefits, but but non-human primates is a big deal. We share 99.99% of our genetic code with them. We do. and and uh so I’ve I’ve I’ve had a a sneak peek at the at the results and I would say things look rather promising at this point. Um it’s a big deal guys. It’s a very big deal. And so it’s my prediction that uh we’ll be um in the next 18 months or two years testing our first age reversal uh clinical trial in humans um to cure
[00:20:01] blindness. And those studies are actually being planned right now and the material to do that is being manufactured. How are you guys feeling about your longevity mindsets? Now everybody, I want to take a quick break from our episode. Tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day. In fact, I use it twice a day. It’s called Seed Health. Now, your microbiome and gut health are one of the most important and modifiable parts of your health plan. Your gut microbiome is connected to your brain health, your cardiac health, your metabolic health. So the question is, what are you doing to optimize your gut? Let me take a second to tell you what I’m doing. Every day I take two capsules of seeds daily symbiotic. It’s a twoin-one probiotic and prebiotic formulation that supports digestive health, gut health, skin health, heart health, and more. It contains 24 clinically studied and scientifically backed probiotic strains that are delivered in a patented capsule
[00:21:00] that actually protects it from the stomach acid and ensures that all of it reaches your colon alive with 100% survivability. Now, if you want to try Seed’s daily symbiotic for yourself, you can get a 25% off your first month supply by using the code moonshots at checkout. Just go to seed.com/moonshots and enter the code moonshots at checkout. That’s seeds.com/moonshots and use the code moonshots to get 25% off your first month of seeds daily symbiotic. Trust me, your gut will thank you. All right, let’s get back to our episode. You know, we’re going to be Thank you. We’re going to be visiting your lab um during the longevity platinum trip in in August and September. Um, how many graduate students do you have there? What’s the setup that you have that will be meeting? Uh, yeah. I don’t know if if you had this experience, but every day I go into my lab and I’m surprised how small it is. It’s just just like Elon Musk says,
[00:22:00] if you have dedicated people who know really how to make a difference and look forward rather than today, they can achieve anything. And so I’ve got this small group of around 20 brighteyed young PhD students and postocs who perform all this magic. And uh it’s a pretty small lab. It’s about 1 th00and square ft. We do it all there. And uh yeah, it’s uh to me it’s it’s it’s amazing to walk in there and I never get tired of showing people around because it’s it’s like magic. You go in and you see um actually I think the next slide might be interesting. Click to the right and what you’ll see is that we’re now growing uh human brains. Have any of you seen to grow these organoids? Probably many of you have seen this. So on the left we have cerebral organoids grown from human tissue. We can now I think we’re the only lab now that can make these brains get really old. We can make them 70 years old within a matter of weeks. Now they they develop dementia. We can measure that with these electrodes on the right. We grow them on these little electrodes and then we can and we do re reverse the age
[00:23:01] of those little organoids and they get their thinking ability back. Whatever that is. We do see the electrical activity come back. Sometimes they grow little eyes as well. It’s kind of cool. Amazing. Uh but why we why do we do that? It’s not just cool. It’s actually tells us that the whole brain is reversible. And we’ve actually done this now in mice. We haven’t published this. So you’ve heard it here first. That we can reverse the age of an old mouse’s brain. So they have dementia. We spend three weeks reversing the age of the brain. We just give them an introvenous injection of our therapy, turn it on for four weeks and those mice have a young brain and they have their ability to learn again. So I imagine a day where we will have an infusion either in our eye or in our whole body and we just take a drug to turn those genes on. We use doxycyc just your antibiotic as a trigger for those genes. It’s a trigger. We don’t need an antibiotic. It’s not used as an antibiotic. It’s a onoff switch. But we can reset the body. And so um after the eye, we’re going to go after hearing and dementia.
[00:24:00] Yes. And there will be a day, I believe, where you will be able to rejuvenate your brain and get back memories, get your ability to learn again. Wow. Let’s give it up for that. I mean, are you guys hearing the same thing? I I just want to jump up and down here. I mean, so listen, I I’ve asked Ray Kerszswall. I’ve asked George Church. And now I’m asking you uh this idea of a longevity um escape velocity target date. Uh let me give you a couple of a couple of uh decades and and tell me you know as a betting man under over within the next decade in the second decade in the third decade uh do you mean escape velocity or the single? when we will have the ability to go and get a a mechanism that will uh allow us to uh basically age in place or age in reverse so that we’re no longer,
[00:25:00] you know, if every year we’re alive, we’re extending our lifespan for more than a year. Well, it’s it’s already here. It’s just not available widely. Um it’s already here, ladies and gentlemen. At least if you’re a mouse. Well, so I’m not I’m not talking about our therapy. That one is that’s hardcore. That’s a rocket versus the Wright brothers. U but there there are technologies now that and and some published papers that are talking about rapamy uh rapamy and combinations. So Greg Fehee has done good work u continues to do good work on uh combinations of molecules that have age reversal properties. Um, so I believe that there are already molecules and drugs that you can use to reset your age somewhat, not go back to being 30 years old again if you’re my age. our ability in my lab and presumably scientists across the world if they’re smart um to use AI to answer questions that that we were not able to you know I I wake up and poor Serena my
[00:26:01] partner who’s here with me um knows that I I read papers first thing in the morning uh usually and uh so that is a real tax on on my brain but I can only cover 100 papers morning 7,000 papers published in the medical science every Yeah, it it so that alone ability to synthesize that every day would be great and it we’re doing that now. But just ability to ask AI how to find the best molecules that can mimic the OSK gene therapy, you can ask AI that you can get decent answers. So we are going to have exponentially exponential increases in the pace of this field. So, it’s not just AI helping us be superhuman. It’s also the funding level, the amount of money that has gone into certain companies in this area since we published that paper in nature. Uh there’s been investment um in the business
[00:27:01] uh and uh and Jeff Bezos have evolution. I was showing him some of the companies earlier that are capitalized and and the reason is perhaps to state the obvious is that this is an area that’s no longer the backwater of biology. it really it’s pharmaceutical development and those that capture that land uh will be the dominant industry of this century. Amazing. Um you one of the points I remember in discussion with you and and George Church was that it’s likely that a real rejuvenation uh uh therapeutic will if it works for one tissue and organ will work for the entire body. That’s also lucky but it’s true. Uh that’s what we find in animals. Now, we haven’t I haven’t injected myself yet. I’m probably not going to do that for a few years, but in in mice, uh I’m shocked that what works in the eye, in the optic nerves, the nerve cells, works in the epithelial cells in the retina,
[00:28:00] works in the outer layer of cells on the retina, works in the kidney, we just published the muscle. you know, if it works in all those different cell types. Um, I think it’s a universal process of biology to be able to re be reset. And, uh, so that’s why I’m I’m not exaggerating when I think a whole body reset is coming. Amazing. One of the things that we talk about on the on the longevity platinum trips usually is this uh idea of gene therapies using these basically these molecular robots, the adnoassociated viruses and where you can target your virus towards particular tissues. Well, that’s what we do. We have a domesticated virus, the AAV, which is already used and approved by the FDA. Our system is a little bit more advanced, the one that we co-developed with George. Um, and that is it’s a two-part system where you need both s both parts, but it’s also inducible. So, right now, as far as I’m aware, nobody else is developing a product for uh in the clinic that is has an onoff switch. I think that’s
[00:29:01] important for two reasons to to make that happen. Even though it’s triply expensive, can I can I just when you’re as you’re setting this up, you’re saying we’re going to put these three genes, the OSK genes in all the cells of your body, but we’re going to have to turn it on, otherwise it’s inactive. It starts out off, correct? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what we we did in this paper in nature and and this new one in cell is that we have exquisite control over when these genes come on for safety reasons but also because we now know in the mice at least you can reset multiple times so that you’ll have this treatment your body will be filled with these genes. They’ll be off and if we get sick or if we get injured or if we get too old we can take a course of an antibiotic for a couple of months and get reset every time. Or if we’re in the emergency room, they give you an infusion of doxycycline. On come these repair genes, your nose regrow, your spine regenerates, etc.
[00:30:00] Yeah. Amazing. Um, you know, Tony and I were were blessed to be able to provide you, you know, to give you gift you a quarter million dollar donation for your lab. Um, where are you? What if you had unlimited funding, which hopefully you will, you don’t yet. Uh where would you be experimenting? Where would you be going next? Yeah, I I would put a lot of effort in the next generation of age reversal technologies. Um right now it’s a gene therapy, which means it’s it’s going to be expensive and hard to uh fulfill our dreams of changing humanity. That said, um what we want to do is we want to turn those gene therapies into a pill. Uh and so you can take a course of a pill and get the same effect. Um and that’s it’s actually easier to distribute molecules
[00:31:00] than it is viruses. So I would expand that group and screen millions of molecules for those ones that in combination could be taken. um either you could have a cosmetic company, you could have probably one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. That’s an area I think is super important to get ahead of. Hey everybody, this is Peter. A quick break from the episode. You know, I’m a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don’t watch the crisis news network I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. How entrepreneurs are solving the world’s grand challenges. What the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week I put out a blog. One blog is looking at
[00:32:01] the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of news you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandis.com/blog and learn more. Now, back to the episode. You know, one of the questions that people ask you and me all the time is, is this just a treatment for the wealthy? M and uh we saw the study done by London School of Business uh Oxford, Harvard that reducing age one year uh in the global population adds 38 trillion dollars to global economy. So it really is an uplifting of of humanity. So uh you think we will get as we get to volume we will get to a point where this is accessible, affordable and made available to everybody
[00:33:00] or I’ll die trying. Yeah, that’s the goal. I I’m really optimistic. I I already have some molecules in the lab that uh show signs of age reversal. Um but there again, you know, I want to build a Concord real fast. Uh let’s hit on a few other quick things. Uh rapamyosin. Yeah. Are you taking it uh on and off? Um yes. I’m taking six milligrams once a week. Mhm. Um med uh metformin. Yeah. daily when I remember. When you remember. Yes. Well, Serena, I’m sure, is there to help out when she can. Uh, you’ve gone vegan. Have you always been vegan? No, I was, uh, pseudo Mediterranean about 2 years ago. And, uh, which I thought was healthy. Red wine, cheese. Uh, it was a great life. But unfortunately, I I was losing my memory. Uh, and I I really wasn’t that I mean I was about seven or eight years younger
[00:34:01] than my actual age according to Inside Tracker, a testing company. Um, I met Serena Pune, who’s here in the audience, who Peter’s been referencing, I’ve been referencing. She’s a among other things a nutritionist, um, but also a longevity expert, and a lot of things I don’t know, she does. And one of those things is what to eat. Um, so she turned me on to veganism. Now, I would say I’m a struggling vegan. I still have butter and milk occasionally. I’ll occasionally have some alcohol. Uh, but I do try to be plant focused as much as I can. And I do, it turns out I I love plant stuff. I love hummus and baba ganoush and all that stuff. So I don’t just eat salads. Uh, but what what surprised me when I switched to listen to Serena is that I I measure myself in many ways as I think you all know. Uh, I went back another 2 years in my biological age just in a couple of months after switching to that diet. So I’ve been convinced. Now I think there are a lot of people who say, “Wo, I got to have my meat. I got to have my alcohol.” I would say just try to temper it, especially the alcohol.
[00:35:01] Yeah. My my father used to say, “Petron, I just done everything in moderation.” Talk about mitochondria. I mean, the powerhouse uh you know, the whole NMN NAD complex, but um the number of mitochondria fall off as we age and the efficiency of them. Um what’s that’s one of the hallmarks of aging? Yeah, it is. So there there are about a dozen hallmarks now. We keep adding on and these are really underlying causes of aging. Mitochondrial dysfunction is one of them. Um though I think that epigenetic changes drive a lot of these including mitochondrial effects because when we reset the age of the cell the mitochondria get rejuvenated which is good news. Now these power packs decline NMN and boosters of NAD rejuvenate mitochondria and that’s been shown to be highly beneficial in animals and now in people and so one of the things that you want to do is make sure that your battery packs your mitochondria stay healthy and numerous and that’s one of the reasons exercise and fasting are beneficial is that your body boosts the
[00:36:01] mitochondria. And your fasting regime right now is it has it changed at all? Are you still one meal a day or are you I try I ate a little bit of lunch as you saw. I I really try as Serena will tell you cauliflower. Yeah, you know, it’s really hard. I agree that just having one meal a day um is a challenge. I think it’s okay if you’re not perfect. You I try to skip breakfast. I try to skip lunch. I’m not always successful, but in general, my average day looks like most of my calories are eaten within a 6-hour window. And so I do you feel you’re getting enough protein to keep your muscle mass? We’ve talked a lot about the importance of muscle and uh reversing sarcopenia as we age. Yeah, I do. So I think if you if you don’t pay attention to what you eat and you just eat lettuce leaves, you’re not going to do it. But we’re Serena and I are very careful. We we focus on legumes and we we uh those plants that have high protein content and nutrition. And that’s the key. You need to educate yourself on what to eat, not just when
[00:37:01] to eat. Uh I think I promoted uh lifespan more than any of my own books. It was just such a beautiful book. You’re very kind. Uh and I think it’s important. It’s waking people up to the possibility to give them hope uh and to give them a mindset. Uh you have another book you’re working on, right? When do we expect that? What’s it going to be about? Uh well, also congrats on on your book, Life Force. It’s sold very well and I think deservedly so. whole chapter in the book that Tony and I wrote about about David. Yeah. Well, thank you again for that. That was kind. And if you haven’t read Life Force, well worth it. Uh so yeah, the book two is everything that you wanted to know that wasn’t in Lifespan will be in this one. Uh so I’m I’m thinking about calling it lifespan too. It’s really a a journey through time. That’s a good one. A journey through time looking at what makes us human. What are what are in our
[00:38:01] what’s in our genetic makeup and our epigenetic makeup that we can learn from in how to live our lives through this tumultuous time where society is trying to not just kill us but make us age rapidly. Um our lifestyles of sitting and eating and lack of exercise, stress, um even social media is really bad. These are things that put the body in a state of complacency. And this book will be in the same way lifespan was the textbook. This will be the guide book of how to live in today’s world and beyond. Amazing. Um you know you pinned a tweet um in which you talk about the factors that are counter to uh a longer healthier life. Smoking for sure that’s the worst. the worst alcohol intake. Again, new new data data says alcohol is worse than I even thought. Um, so so if you want your reseratrol, take the pill, not the red wine.
[00:39:01] Definitely. Okay. Waist size. What? Waist a waist size. Yeah. So people who are overweight um have a in general an older epigenetic age than those who stay at a BMI between uh say 21 and 24. So that’s a fact. So if you want to age slower, maintain your BMI in what’s considered a healthy range. Yeah. Uh inflammatory uh CRP levels. Yep. That’s I think it’s Yeah. Inflammation is the underlying killer for so much. For sure. For sure. And there are foods that you eat that can be inflammatory. Uh for instance, some of us are uh have a reaction to dairy or to certain grains. Be careful about that. You don’t want that. Your gut is very important for inflammation. You don’t want bacteria getting into your gut, lodging in your bloodstream or in your brain. That can cause disease diseases that we all know of. So yeah, keep inflammation low. And one of the best ways to do that
[00:40:01] is to uh not just eat well, but also make sure that you’re not allergic to things in your environment. And you can do blood tests to make sure that’s not happening. David, um it’s an honor to call you as a friend. I’m grateful to have you here. Thank you for all you’re doing. Likewise, sir. Thank you. Let’s give it up for David Sinclair. [Music]