Biologist and genetics expert Dr. David Sinclair is out to prove he can live past 100 years old, and he thinks you can too. On this episode Sinclair goes in-depth on the process of aging and the techniques you can incorporate into your life that help you live a longer, healthier life, including optimizing your diet, the benefits of exercise, the role of a positive attitude, the importance of sleep, the three supplements he takes every day, why it’s never too late to slow the process of aging, and so much more.
Dr. Sinclair is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, and he is best known for his research on aging, with a focus on epigenetics. He’s been called one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time, and in 2019 he released the New York Times bestselling book, Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
But remember, life is long. You want to look at ways that will extend your lifespan two, three, four decades from now. But I think you can have both. I think that it’s all about pulsing it. Doing adversity, and then occasionally, having the abundance as well.
It’s important not to mix up the two uses of the same word. So stress that I’m talking about, hormesis, is biological stress. Making your body and your cells think that there’s adversity. Psychological stress is just a different beast. It shouldn’t even be called the same word.
And I think that also helps focus the mind and reduce stress. If you’re actually working towards something bigger than yourself, you’ll have that mental state and you won’t be so focused in on yourself and anxious.
When is it too late for people? I’ve never seen it too late.
80% of our longevity and our health in the future is in our own hands. Only 20% is genetic, which we cannot yet do much about. Some of these changes are very simple.
The other thing that really is important to know is that there are additive benefits. If you eat, exercise, do hot and cold therapy, mental state, if you do all of that, plus the supplements, they’re additive. It’s not take a supplement and you don’t need to do any of the others.
Well, this is what my mission is. The reason I’m talking to you today is to wake people up and realize that you shouldn’t just wait until something traumatic happens in your life, whether you get sick or your parents or your grandparents. It’s important to realize now that you can do things for those people in your lives, your life and yourself.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:24 – What is aging?
02:52 – What happens in our body during aging?
06:10 – How fasting decreases aging
15:00 – On eating three meals a day
18:39 – The best things to eat to reduce aging
23:05 – Organic v non-organic foods
27:04 – Should we only eat food that’s “in season?”
29:46 – On sugar
31:42 – How to test your biological age
33:22 – Using exercise effectively
36:18 – Sleep and aging
40:36 – The benefits of saunas and hot tubs
45:04 – The relationship between stress and aging
47:55 – How positive attitude impacts lifespan
48:34 – NMN, Athletic Greens, and resveratrol
52:57 – Why David quit dairy (and did it matter?)
58:00 – When should you start slowing your aging process?
01:01:05 – On puberty and aging
01:02:53 – Are biological problems becoming engineering problems?
01:08:54 – Using drugs to reverse aging
01:11:24 – On lyme disease
01:17:06 – On hip-replacement and increased death rates
01:21:36 – How to think about aging before it’s too late
01:23:30 – What’s the ultimate age we can live?
01:28:30 – Second-order effects of living longer
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