Why do we age?
It’s a simple enough question. It’s so simple, in fact, that most people don’t even stop to ask it.
Aging is normal. Everyone does it. Some people do it faster than others, but few people look forward to the process we define as aging. It’s just what happens over time, and we deal with it as it happens. We grow older, sicker, and weaker, until our bodies give up and we find out what happens when we die.
Today we’re going to talk about what it means to age, how we can age more slowly, and what we will be able to do in the very near future to halt, or even reverse the process.
That’s right, I said halt or reverse aging. There are dedicated scientists working in a number of labs all over the world creating ways to reverse the aging process in humans. We’ve had remarkable success in mice already. You’re not a mouse (I assume) but this animal model is the first living step that can help us find viable therapies.
So first, let’s look at the basics.
Aging is cumulative unhealed damage, leading to cells that malfunction in a number of ways. The most current research is showing that it isn’t the DNA itself, the code that all life is built off of, that becomes damaged, but rather our cell’s ability to read and translate this code to repair and reproduce. These impaired cells lead to impaired tissues, organs, and organ systems. Function declines, and things don’t work right anymore. Joints hurt. Eyes get foggy. Hearts and brains fail.
It’s a collective and predictable set of symptoms that many are working to get classified as a disease. The disease of human aging.
Watching this process in a loved one is torture. A grandparent with Alzheimer’s. A father with heart disease, a mother with osteoporosis. A sister or brother with cancer. If you think watching it is hard, just wait until you’re the one going through it.
Because you, right now, are aging. Some of your genes are mutating. Some of your cells have reached the age of senescence, which means they are no longer capable of dividing and creating new, healthy cells. You might not see or feel the signs of it yet. You might wake up every day without pain and full of energy.
Without mindful lifestyle choices, that will change. And this is what that story will look like.
Around 30, you’ll start to ache. Working out will be harder. You won’t have the physical or mental energy you remember that you had on a day like today.
Around 40, you’ll start using the excuse that you’re “too old.” Too old for sports. Too old to change your diet. Too old to learn new skills. Too old to play. You’re over the hill, as they say, implying your good days are behind you, and half your life is over.
When you hit 50, your physical and mental performance will decline, and you’ll look forward to retirement. You’ll add fat around your body, and trade smooth skin for wrinkles. Everything becomes harder. Your happiness is fading and the world feels dim.
Around 60, this is when serious diseases begin showing up, if they haven’t before now. You’ll move slowly, and your hobbies will be sedentary. Dinners out have been traded for doctor’s appointments.
At 70, vitality is slipping away. There are outliers at this age, the grandparents who are still active and upright, who have made great choices, who are still excited to be alive. Mostly, those who reach this age begin to slowly fade away into deeper illness and malaise.
Some may make it to 80, or 90. Few make it to 100 without trying. And of course, we know what happens after that.
But we, as a species, are at a point where we can change this story. If the largest part of aging is due to cumulative damage and interrupted genetic signaling, then your cumulative choices can make a massive impact on how you age. Your choices can either make this damage worse, or you can do things to help repair this damage.
What if you knew you could live 100 healthy years just by making better choices in your life?
What if you could live 200 healthy years, or 500? How does that change the way you look at your life?
The wonderful thing about the human body is that it was designed to heal itself. Our bodies have multiple systems already in place to repair damage and keep us alive and healthy. It’s not perfect, and scientists are working furiously to fill in the gaps.
Our mission is to make sure our bodies have what they need to repair the damage that happens each day, without causing more damage that can’t be healed quickly or easily. Your choices can either break your DNA faster, or stimulate its repair. Aging isn’t inevitable. You have a lot more control over it than you might think.
There’s no philosopher’s stone. Yet. But if you want to live long enough for us to make one, you’ve got to put in the work, starting now.
What if we, as a species, could preserve our collective knowledge and wisdom not just in books, but in the living people who made great discoveries and breakthroughs? What if you could do crossfit with your great-great-great grand-daughter? What if you could set out on a new career path at 60, or 160? Imagine the wideness of the world that you can explore and create in when age is no longer a limiting factor. Age, in the years to come, will have far less meaning as we learn ever better ways of maintaining these bodies we live in.
So how can you do it?
We’ll approach aging from 4 levels. The first level is the easiest, and it’s the foundation for the other 3 levels. Get this part right, and the rest is icing on your longevity cake. Get this part wrong, and the rest of the steps will be practically useless.
Level 1 is your daily food and lifestyle choices. These are what make you who you are, and I mean that on a cellular level. Giving the body what it needs in the form of whole nutrients, and avoiding the things that cause harm, are the low-hanging fruit that will get you most of your results.
And chances are you know these already.
Eat nutrient dense whole foods, close to the source, as fresh as possible. Avoid as much processed food as you can. Get plenty of protein, and eliminate added sugar. There is no one perfect diet for everyone, and YOUR perfect diet will take a little work to figure out. Knowing your perfect diet won’t help you. Following it will. Don’t be shy about following a more strict way of eating. You have goals. It’s your body.
Smoking will age you faster than most anything else, so don’t do that. Limit your alcohol to one or two glasses a week, if you choose to have any at all.
Going hungry for a few extra hours every day adds years to your life. Restricting your food intake to a 6 to 8 hour window gives your body time to heal instead of focusing on digestion all day. Occasional regular fasting promotes autophagy, a built-in cellular clean-up mode.
You MUST stay active, it’s true that if you don’t use it you’ll lose it. Movement is necessary for your body and your brain to function at their best, so use your breaks to stretch your legs and go for a walk outside. Get in a few harder workouts during the week. Get some sunlight, and fresh air, and plenty of sleep.
Sleep is when new information is hard-wired into your brain, so spaced study sessions with plenty of sleep is better for your memory than cramming. Sleep is also when your body regenerates from the stress of the day, and rebalances hormone levels.
Stress will, in fact, kill you, it’s a source of inflammation and hormone imbalance that damages tissues dramatically. Try meditation, or any of a hundred other ways to decrease the stress in your life.
Hormetic stress is different, and works under the principal that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You don’t have to go to any extremes, just make yourself a little uncomfortable sometimes. Take a cold shower or take a walk in the winter without bundling up. Lift heavy things and put them back down again. The comfort zone is where dreams go to die.
Level 2 begins to target specific cellular mechanisms of aging that are beyond what cells can normally repair. Level 2 is smart supplementation. Supplement use comes with the requirement that you research and trust who you buy from. You’ll also need a deeper understanding of how your body works to biohack your own longevity. In level 2, knowledge is power.
The heaviest hitters in this arena are resveratrol, metformin, and NAD precursors. There are a handful of others that can enhance the effects of these, but we’ll focus on this trio.
Resveratrol had 5 minutes of fame as the antioxidant compound found in red wine. Its antioxidant benefits pale in comparison to its gene expression effects. Resveratrol works with genes called sirtuins, which are responsible for repair and maintenance of our DNA. It enhances the expression of these genes, effectively keeping cells healthier for longer.
Metformin is a prescription drug for those with diabetes. Off-label, it has an impressive list of anti-aging benefits, such as reducing cardiovascular risk, Alzheimer’s risk, and other markers of aging. It’s prescription only, and has shown a lot of potential in studies. This isn’t for everyone, and I’m not a doctor, so this isn’t medical advice. It seems to be most effective for those with metabolic disorder, and shows less promise for people who are already pretty healthy, so it’s best used as a tool while you get yourself in balance.
NAD is a coenzyme that’s necessary for energy production in the cell. It’s part of the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria that turns your food into energy. Without intervention, NAD declines as we age, meaning we’re less good at turning food into energy with each passing year.
It’s also not digestible as a supplement, so we have to aim for NAD precursors, or things that promote more NAD production in the body. Two of these are available now, NR, or Nicotinamide Riboside, and NMN, Nicotinamide Mononucleotide. Both have measurable effects against both NAD levels and against markers of aging.
Level 3 means it’s time to call in the professionals.
There is no one-size-fits-all package for a long and healthy life. Personalized medicine is where the healthcare industry is destined to go, and we’re starting to see more individualized care today. Forward-thinking physicians take a deep dive into your genome and your current biomarkers to get a full picture of your current state of health, as well as discern the steps necessary for optimization.
Getting your genome sequenced is cheaper today than it was 10 years ago, and the price keeps going down as technology improves. Your genes can tell you a lot about how you can tailor your choices for a longer life. Sure, they can tell you if you have increased risks of certain diseases.
More importantly, they tell you how you’ll respond to the choices you make in your life, from the foods you eat to the types of exercise you do, to how effective drug treatments will be. They don’t just shape you, they react to the world around you.
Having this template is a powerful tool, but how do you know how well you’re doing?
With biomarker testing. Biomarker testing is a snapshot of where your health is now. You can get an initial assessment that comprehensively looks at your whole health picture. You can pinpoint areas of concern and work on therapies to improve them, and periodically retest to see how well you’re doing.
There’s now a test that can tell you with an extremely high degree of accuracy how long you’ll live based on your current state of health. It’s called the Horvath Clock, and while it isn’t mainstream yet, it will let you pinpoint the factors in your life that are doing you the most harm, and which are helping to keep you alive.
In level 3 it’s best to work with one or several medical professionals who specialize in optimal health and longevity. Understanding these tests and creating a plan based off of them requires a high degree of knowledge and specialization, so you don’t want to work through these on your own. Even the highest level experts are on a team.
Level 4 is the cutting edge of longevity research. Some of these treatments are available in specialized clinics, while others are still in development. They’re not budget friendly, and there isn’t yet enough evidence to create a protocol around them, but they represent the best we’re capable of so far.
Level 4 is the land of stem cells, peptides, and senolytics.
We naturally generate a certain number of stem cells, which, as you can guess already, decline as we get older. If you can’t make enough of your own stem cells, store bought is fine. Cells cultured from your own tissues are engineered to be pluripotent, which means they can grow into whatever kind of tissue your body needs most, depending on what type of tissue matrix they’re injected into. It’s less about the programming and more about the environment, since all cells have the information to be any other kind of cell. These stem cell injections lead to rapid healing and regeneration.
Peptides are made of amino acids, like proteins, but they’re smaller, and designed to have specific signaling effects when taken. They can target genetic pathways that are virtually impossible to work with through diet, supplementation, and exercise, and can boost the regenerative capacity of cells. It’s like working directly with the source code of your body, and can be especially helpful for those who have a lot of healing to do or have unfavorable genetic mutations related to the rate at which they age.
Senolytics target cells that are too old to divide or function properly, removing them to make way for fresh, young cells. Senescent cells are like zombie cells. They’re dead, but they don’t quite know it yet. During their chaotic and messy decline, they release destructive signaling hormones that trigger other cells around them to enter their final life cycles, and create inflammation and disfunction. Senolytics sweep these zombie cells away so that your body can either make healthy cells to replace them, or injected stem cells can take their place.
I said that there were 4 levels to approach the disease of human aging. I lied. There are 5. Level 5 is into the weeds. It’s the place where scientists are hesitant to travel, but more are exploring this arena every day. Level 5 is the power of the mind. How much does your own belief shape the picture of your health and longevity? What is the human biofield, and how can light help or harm our health? There aren’t concrete answers here yet, but there are fascinating topics to contemplate.
We’ve discussed what aging is, and we’ve covered action steps you can take to slow down this process. This is a wide-open field of research, and there is a lot more to discuss and discover. We’re making advances every day, first in mice, and then in humans.
If you take only one thing away from our time together here today, let it be this:
You are in control of your choices. You have access to all the information and tools you need to live as many healthy years as you choose. You are alive right now, which makes now the perfect time to take action.
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