October 23, 2024 • 20 mins
Our culture seems to be hitting another spike in our obsession with reducing the effects of aging. In this week’s episode of If I’m Honest with Julia Landauer, I dive into some of the fuss about aging. I talk about Bryan Johnson, the man whose goal of “don’t die” leads him to spend $2M a year to measure and lower his biological age and increase longevity. I describe all the content, ads, and services we see in real life and online that are geared towards minimizing the effects of aging, as well as share my own desire to “maintain my youthful appearance” and what I subscribe to on the anti-aging front. I then share some research from Stanford University that observes age-related changes to the body and at what ages we experience peaks of physical decline. I end the episode by sharing five main things that we can all do to preserve our well-being, as well as suggested foods and nutrients we can consume that may contribute to longevity.
Research and Content Referenced:
Stanford Research on stages of age-related changes: https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/feeling-suddenly-older-scientists-see-aging-waves-at-44-and-60-1a3fd814?mod=djem10point
New York Times article on suggested foods for longevity: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/well/eat/foods-longevity-aging.html
Bryan Johnson on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAwePw-prCE
Learn more about Julia Landauer at https://julialandauer.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest With Julia Landauer. I don't know about you,
but I have noticed another spike in our culture's obsession
with anti aging and reducing age related effects. And this
has always been prominent in life, I think, especially when
(00:27):
it comes to marketing services or products that can help
quote unquote reduce aging effects and with what I think
is particularly potent for women and girls to maintain a
youthful appearance and to maintain quote unquote attractive to others
and all of that stuff. But recently we've seen some
specific examples of that going to the next level, and
(00:51):
this is through biohackers and content we're seeing on social
media and services that are available, new technologies that are
out there. There's a lot going on. So what I
want to do for today's episode, in the context of
this season in general with human performance, I want to
dive into some of the ways that we're seeing this
obsession with anti aging play out in culture. I also
(01:15):
want to talk about some research that actually observes biological
things that happen as we age, and then I want
to jump into things that the everyday person can do
to try to live as healthy and well in as
good a state for as long as they can. Now,
I want to preface this episode by saying, I am
(01:36):
not a medical professional. I am merely consuming research and
trying to be as objective and critical about where the
research is coming from, but then also encourage everyone to
do their own research. So you may have heard of
Brian Johnson, who is famous for spending two million dollars
a year to try to lower his biological age and
potentially not die. He says that for the first time
(02:01):
in human history, because of all of our technological advancements,
medical advancements, AI knowledge understanding research that's done, we are
at the first time in our existence looking at death
as more of a question, not necessarily a guarantee. Now,
I don't know how I feel about that, and I'm
(02:23):
not saying any of that is right or wrong. But
what he's doing and why he gets to that point
is because he is spending a ton of money and
all of his time measuring as many elements of his
body as he can to see how he can get
all of these measurements into an optimal state, an optimal results.
And this is what we call biohacking. Biohacking is not new.
(02:45):
There have been biohackers, whether it's Dave Asprey with his
Bulletproof method, which is incorporating fats into your coffee to
try to help brain performance and doing it at certain
times during the day. There are other examples of biohacking,
like cryo chambers or how you use saunas or water training,
(03:05):
breathing work. Even diets, I think could be kind of
put into the biohacking category if you're having a specific
type of diet that's specifically targeting certain things to help
manipulate your body, in your mind, to increase longevity or
whatever the end result is. So biohacking is not new.
But what's interesting about Brian Johnson One, he's so prominent,
(03:28):
there's a lot of press around him, and there's a
lot of content that he puts out there on his
website Brian Johnson dot com that outlines specifically what he
is measuring, what his results are, what his diet is,
what his sleep exercise, what he calls his quote unquote blueprint.
(03:49):
He puts all that online, so it's fairly transparent. If
he's selling the truthes, it's all transparent, and as a
curious person who's always been interested in human performance, it's
pretty cool to see what is being measured and understanding
what we can get more knowledge about to potentially help ourselves.
And he also takes it a bit further than just
the biohacking itself, Like, you know, I'm curious as to
(04:11):
what compels someone to try to reverse nature's course and
upset the evolution that we have had as humans and
where all living organisms eventually die. You know what compels
someone to do that? And I was watching him on
Andrew Schulz's Flagrant podcast, which is three hours. It was
a long episode, but I was listening to him and
(04:32):
one of the comments that he made as to why
it makes sense for him to pursue this research is
because the human objective is quote unquote don't die. And
if you think about this, whether or not you want
to love him or you want to hate him, when
you think about this, he's not wrong. Right. If humans
feel that their life's in danger, they're going to remove
(04:54):
themselves from that situation. You know, if someone is crashing
on the road, you're going to swerve out of the
way to try to avoid that because you want to
protect your life. If you know that you have a
disease or get sick, you're going to try to seek
medical treatment so that you can survive that illness or
cancer or whatever it is, so that you can keep living.
I think at our core, we do want to try
(05:15):
to survive. So the way he frames it is that
the human existence is the ultimate cooperation game. People have
the same objective, and for the most part, we want
to help other people meet that objective. So it got
a little philosophical there, but it was interesting, I think
(05:36):
to hear kind of this broader reason why trying to
prevent death is not necessarily an out there kind of concept. Again,
I think the idea of living forever sounds incredibly daunting
and overwhelming, but that's just my personal opinion, and I
am intrigued to see the further research that comes out
from his endeavors. It's all of this to say that
(06:00):
biohacking is out there, and there's this kind of almost
like primal need by some people to try to outrun
death if you will, which however you want to feel
about it. It's interesting to absorb from Afar on a
more relatable level. When I am on social media, whether TikTok, Instagram, whatever.
(06:21):
I feel like I am bombarded with content that's about
how we can keep our faces looking young, how we
can stay in shape, how we bounce back all this stuff,
and I think it plagues everyone, but I think women
have been the particular target of anti aging, you know,
maximizing their useful appearance, because that is our culture and
that's what we do. But it's out there a lot,
(06:43):
and we see a lot of it, and I think
with social media, we're exposed to so many more things
that you can do. Right. There's botox, there's fillers, there's
laser treatments, there's red light therapy. There are different types
of scraping off the dead skin on your face. There
are injections that you can do for facials. There's way
(07:03):
to boost collagen, there are topical solutions, there are injections.
I mean, there's so much that's out there to try
to get us to appear youthful. And I'm not saying
any of this in a judging way. I'm saying that
I've observed that it's out there, and look, I certainly
feel the pressure to try to maintain my youthful appearance,
(07:24):
especially in my thirties, where I'm noticing so many more
wrinkles and gray hairs and stiffness in my joints and
my body taking longer to bounce back from adverse situations,
whether that's a rigorous hike or drinking a little too much. Right,
our bodies age, and I'm feeling the effects, and I
recognize that there is so much out there to try
(07:45):
to get us to buy into reversing those aging effects,
and truth be told, I would love to slow down
the effects of aging. I first noticed my body starting
to physically feel like it was declining when I was
twenty six. On the one hand, I was starting to
get a bunch of gray hairs, but I also noticed
(08:05):
that if I sat on the ground for too long,
my knees were really stiff when I stood up, or
it was more easy for me to sleep in a
funky way that then put my back neck in a
crick for a couple of days like It was the
first time where I thought, Oh, this is what the
rest of my life is like and it's only going
to get worse. So once that started happening, I decided
(08:26):
to be a little more proactive in doing what I
could to treat my body with the respect that it deserves,
and stretch really well, hydrate, eat well, and I definitely
experiment with moisturizers and serums. And I dye my hair
regularly so I can cover up the grays because I
really don't like them, even though I know they're natural.
(08:47):
And I get botox periodically. All things that, you know,
try that I do to contribute to minimizing the speed
at which I age, for better or worse. I'm you know,
one day I would hope that I had no shits
to give and wouldn't care about aging. But we're not
there yet. We're not there yet. And one tangent that's
(09:08):
more anecdotal than anything else, and it's not commentary, it's
just observation I've found over the last you know, five
or six years that I've been traveling to France regularly
with Ben. When I go over there and I'm with people,
especially women that are my age, a little younger, a
little older, I find that there's way less use of
botox and fillers over there. Again, this is just my observation,
(09:32):
but culturally, it doesn't seem that anti aging in a
non natural way or in an injected way is as
big of a thing over there. So again, just observation
and to have the confidence of a French woman would
be so so cool because I do have confidence. Don't
get me wrong, I'm a confident person, but there's a
(09:54):
little junisi qua to a French woman's confidence and I
hope that I will gain some of that through osmosis
through my marriage. So girl can dream. Anyway. I say
all this to address the fact that, again, anti aging
sentiments are abundant in our culture, and a lot of
what I just addressed was more on a superficial or
(10:16):
surface level, but then there's also a lot on the
core and molecular level of our beings that people are
trying to do to minimize the effects of aging. Pivoting
a bit, I do want to jump into some research
that actually observes some of the different stages of aging,
and there was recently research that came out of Stanford
University go Card that observe these biological stages of aging.
(10:41):
These researchers found that some age related changes happen slowly
and over time, like the slowing of metabolism and sprinkle development.
But then there are other age related changes that seem
to peak at certain specific times of our lives, so
they come in waves, and researchers observe that these peaks
happen at age forty four and sixty approximately. So at
(11:04):
age forty four, our bodies go through a change in
their ability to metabolize fats and to metabolize alcohol, and
so this will make us feel like it's more easy
to gain weight and that we have more alcohol sensitivity.
At sixty, people experience changes in carbohydrate metabolism, kidney function,
(11:25):
and immune regulation, which can lead to people in their
sixties getting sick more frequently and unable to fight off
some of those lower level infections that people who are
younger might be able to fight more regularly. For both
age forty four and age sixty, these researchers found that
people will experience a spike in skin and muscle aging,
(11:47):
as well as heart disease. Now, I don't mean to
be all doom and gloom about aging at all, like
aging is much better than the alternative if our objective
is to not die. But by having this knowledge, we
can be empowered to make changes to our lifestyle so
that we can prepare our bodies to better handle these
spikes and age related changes later on in life. These
(12:10):
are things like exercising a certain way, building up your
muscle density when you're younger so that it's easier to
maintain when you're older. It's about, you know, making sure
you're eating the right kinds of food so that you
can limit the potential of heart disease, and all of
these things that if you do more research, you'll be
able to find what will work best for you for
your own condition. If we bring this discussion back to
(12:31):
the big picture around health and longevity and trying to
maximize our living well on this planet, a lot of
the fancy, cutting edge technology and health aids that people
like Brian Johnson are using may be inaccessible to the
average person, both from a time perspective, money perspective, any
(12:52):
of that. But there are a lot of things that
we can each do to try to maximize our well being,
maximize our health, hopefully maximize our longevity. And I know
that this discussion cannot be limited just to things that
are in our control, which I'll get into in a second. Right.
I'm aware that access to medical attention and proper medical
(13:13):
care is not always great for everyone. I know that
not everyone has healthcare. I understand that there are some
systems in place that make it harder for us to
live the best that we can across the board. But
I am someone who always likes to focus on what
is in my control, and so that's what I want
to do by sharing some of the research that I've done,
(13:33):
some of the things that I apply to my own life. Again,
I am not a medical professional. I encourage you each
to do your own research and talk with your doctor
to figure out what's best for you. But there are
some key things that seem to be universally accepted as
good for our longevity, and that's what I want to
share with you now to close out this episode. So
(13:54):
a handful of things very important. To not smoke. Smoking
is not good, not good for your lungs, for your health.
Just don't smoke. The next thing, which is personally more challenging,
is to minimize drinking alcohol, especially as you get older.
Like it has negative effects. You can it'll impact your sleep,
it can impact your body's recovery. I know all this,
(14:14):
I love my wine. We're gonna keep working on it.
The next thing to do is to exercise, both moderately
and rigorously. So moderately is kind of in those zones
two to four, which is roughly a heart rate of
one twenty to one fifty depending on some things. But
then you also want to get some rigorous exercise to
really get your heart rate elevated into that like final
(14:35):
percent of your capacity. I know this is easy to
say as an adult without kids or dependents who works
normal hours, but prioritizing sleep is another really important thing,
not only for your mental recovery, but for your body's recovery,
for your ability to fight off cold and infections. Sleep
is really important. And the last element that I want
(14:58):
to dive into in this non exhaustive list is diet.
It's universally accepted that we want to minimize the processed, dyed,
and packaged foods that we eat, and the more that
we can have natural, organic, whole foods, as they say,
to increase our nutrient count, to increase the benefits that
(15:20):
we get from it, that's always better. I know we
could go into a whole separate conversation about good food
scarcity and grocery deserts and preservatives and food. I mean,
I know it's not great, and I know it's expensive
to eat healthy but the more that we can do that,
the better it is for our bodies. And I was
reading an article in the New York Times that cites
some research I'll put in the description, and they talk
(15:42):
about four different specific types of food that we should
try to maximize our intake of so that we can
best fuel our bodies. And the first thing they talk
about is prioritizing plant based proteins. So these are things
like lagoons, nuts, whole grains, and they help with muscle
and bones strength, which is critical when you're getting older.
(16:03):
As we mentioned at age forty four and at sixty,
you'll see more muscle degradation. So the more robust muscles
can be when we're younger, the easier it is to
maintain later. And this article made the specific note that
getting proteins from red meats may have adverse effects and
that they actually the fattiness of the red meat and
(16:25):
everything can increase risk of heart issues later on, So
do with that as you will, again always do more research.
The second area that they focus on is getting enough
calcium and vitamin D. Calcium from things like dairy and milk,
and vitamin D is largely from the sun, but also
can be found in mushrooms, fish, and eggs. The next
(16:45):
area that they focus on are polyphenols, which are antioxidants
and anti inflammatory nutrients which are found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee, berries,
dark leafy greens, vegetables, and avocados. And continuing on the
avocado train is the importance of healthy fats. Healthy fats
are in things like avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish
(17:10):
specifically salmon and tuna, and the omega oils are really
good for you. So again, plant based proteins, calcium, vitamin D,
antioxidant and anti inflammatories, and healthy fats, which kind of
summarizes to feel like a bit of a Mediterranean diet.
And again this is one article based on some a
(17:32):
subset of research. Definitely do your own, everybody is different,
but trying to minimize the process died in packaged foods
can be beneficial, quite beneficial for longevity. Reading about all
of this longevity work brings me back to my Pea
racing days, where you know, I was a full time
athlete and all of my time was centered around how
(17:52):
I could be the best racer, how I could be
in the best physical shape, mental shape, how I could
maximize my business opportunities, get sponsorship, meet people, all this stuff.
It was so cool. Twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and twenty
eighteen were like what I consider my peak racing years,
and twenty fifteen but peak racing years because I really
felt like I was living into that professional athlete lifestyle
(18:15):
where I could have the luxury of focusing on training.
And I love exercising. I love training, I love pushing
myself to the max. And I was talking about this
this athlete lifestyle with my guest Gary Clute on episode
fifty five, and we were diving into just all of
the really interesting things you can do. And it's such
(18:35):
a luxury and privilege to be able to focus one
hundred percent on your health. And some of the things
that I did in that kind of three year period
when I was really really active was making sure that
I was sleeping a lot. I was making sure that
my diet was great for the kind of first time
in my own control. I was meeting other athletes and
doing things like water training and pool training and doing
(18:58):
deep breathing and under standing the benefits of sauna and
ice bath work and really getting into mindfulness, and it
was just really cool, and I feel like it gave
me some building blocks that I can now channel into
my life post racing that still feed my needs on
an emotional and physical and mental level now. So I
(19:23):
love doing this research. I love seeing what other people
are doing, even if I think it's wacky. I think
there's value in understanding why people are diving into the
different subjects that they are. And I will definitely be
keeping an eye on Brian Johnson and seeing what are
the things he does, and I would love to hear
if you guys are doing anything that's really interesting and
(19:44):
catering to your mental and physical wellbeing, please put them
in the comments on a social media post send me
a DM because I love to especially figure out accessible
things that we can do that help us feel better.
The better we feel, the more enthusiastic we're going to
(20:04):
be about going into the world and living really rich
best lives that we can, which I'm a big advocate
for everyone. That is our episode. Thank you so much
for joining me for another episode where we dove into
biohacking and the fuss around aging and kind of what
all that entails. If you enjoyed this episode or found
it helpful. I hope you'll share it with someone who
(20:24):
might also like it. I would love to hear from
you leave a review comment on my post on social
If you could subscribe to the podcast and rate the podcast,
it would mean a lot to me. As always, thank
you so much for letting me be honest with you,
and I look forward to seeing you in two weeks.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest With Julia Landauer. I don't know about you,
but I have noticed another spike in our culture's obsession
with anti aging and reducing age related effects. And this
has always been prominent in life, I think, especially when
(00:27):
it comes to marketing services or products that can help
quote unquote reduce aging effects and with what I think
is particularly potent for women and girls to maintain a
youthful appearance and to maintain quote unquote attractive to others
and all of that stuff. But recently we've seen some
specific examples of that going to the next level, and
(00:51):
this is through biohackers and content we're seeing on social
media and services that are available, new technologies that are
out there. There's a lot going on. So what I
want to do for today's episode, in the context of
this season in general with human performance, I want to
dive into some of the ways that we're seeing this
obsession with anti aging play out in culture. I also
(01:15):
want to talk about some research that actually observes biological
things that happen as we age, and then I want
to jump into things that the everyday person can do
to try to live as healthy and well in as
good a state for as long as they can. Now,
I want to preface this episode by saying, I am
(01:36):
not a medical professional. I am merely consuming research and
trying to be as objective and critical about where the
research is coming from, but then also encourage everyone to
do their own research. So you may have heard of
Brian Johnson, who is famous for spending two million dollars
a year to try to lower his biological age and
potentially not die. He says that for the first time
(02:01):
in human history, because of all of our technological advancements,
medical advancements, AI knowledge understanding research that's done, we are
at the first time in our existence looking at death
as more of a question, not necessarily a guarantee. Now,
I don't know how I feel about that, and I'm
(02:23):
not saying any of that is right or wrong. But
what he's doing and why he gets to that point
is because he is spending a ton of money and
all of his time measuring as many elements of his
body as he can to see how he can get
all of these measurements into an optimal state, an optimal results.
And this is what we call biohacking. Biohacking is not new.
(02:45):
There have been biohackers, whether it's Dave Asprey with his
Bulletproof method, which is incorporating fats into your coffee to
try to help brain performance and doing it at certain
times during the day. There are other examples of biohacking,
like cryo chambers or how you use saunas or water training,
(03:05):
breathing work. Even diets, I think could be kind of
put into the biohacking category if you're having a specific
type of diet that's specifically targeting certain things to help
manipulate your body, in your mind, to increase longevity or
whatever the end result is. So biohacking is not new.
But what's interesting about Brian Johnson One, he's so prominent,
(03:28):
there's a lot of press around him, and there's a
lot of content that he puts out there on his
website Brian Johnson dot com that outlines specifically what he
is measuring, what his results are, what his diet is,
what his sleep exercise, what he calls his quote unquote blueprint.
(03:49):
He puts all that online, so it's fairly transparent. If
he's selling the truthes, it's all transparent, and as a
curious person who's always been interested in human performance, it's
pretty cool to see what is being measured and understanding
what we can get more knowledge about to potentially help ourselves.
And he also takes it a bit further than just
the biohacking itself, Like, you know, I'm curious as to
(04:11):
what compels someone to try to reverse nature's course and
upset the evolution that we have had as humans and
where all living organisms eventually die. You know what compels
someone to do that? And I was watching him on
Andrew Schulz's Flagrant podcast, which is three hours. It was
a long episode, but I was listening to him and
(04:32):
one of the comments that he made as to why
it makes sense for him to pursue this research is
because the human objective is quote unquote don't die. And
if you think about this, whether or not you want
to love him or you want to hate him, when
you think about this, he's not wrong. Right. If humans
feel that their life's in danger, they're going to remove
(04:54):
themselves from that situation. You know, if someone is crashing
on the road, you're going to swerve out of the
way to try to avoid that because you want to
protect your life. If you know that you have a
disease or get sick, you're going to try to seek
medical treatment so that you can survive that illness or
cancer or whatever it is, so that you can keep living.
I think at our core, we do want to try
(05:15):
to survive. So the way he frames it is that
the human existence is the ultimate cooperation game. People have
the same objective, and for the most part, we want
to help other people meet that objective. So it got
a little philosophical there, but it was interesting, I think
(05:36):
to hear kind of this broader reason why trying to
prevent death is not necessarily an out there kind of concept. Again,
I think the idea of living forever sounds incredibly daunting
and overwhelming, but that's just my personal opinion, and I
am intrigued to see the further research that comes out
from his endeavors. It's all of this to say that
(06:00):
biohacking is out there, and there's this kind of almost
like primal need by some people to try to outrun
death if you will, which however you want to feel
about it. It's interesting to absorb from Afar on a
more relatable level. When I am on social media, whether TikTok, Instagram, whatever.
(06:21):
I feel like I am bombarded with content that's about
how we can keep our faces looking young, how we
can stay in shape, how we bounce back all this stuff,
and I think it plagues everyone, but I think women
have been the particular target of anti aging, you know,
maximizing their useful appearance, because that is our culture and
that's what we do. But it's out there a lot,
(06:43):
and we see a lot of it, and I think
with social media, we're exposed to so many more things
that you can do. Right. There's botox, there's fillers, there's
laser treatments, there's red light therapy. There are different types
of scraping off the dead skin on your face. There
are injections that you can do for facials. There's way
(07:03):
to boost collagen, there are topical solutions, there are injections.
I mean, there's so much that's out there to try
to get us to appear youthful. And I'm not saying
any of this in a judging way. I'm saying that
I've observed that it's out there, and look, I certainly
feel the pressure to try to maintain my youthful appearance,
(07:24):
especially in my thirties, where I'm noticing so many more
wrinkles and gray hairs and stiffness in my joints and
my body taking longer to bounce back from adverse situations,
whether that's a rigorous hike or drinking a little too much. Right,
our bodies age, and I'm feeling the effects, and I
recognize that there is so much out there to try
(07:45):
to get us to buy into reversing those aging effects,
and truth be told, I would love to slow down
the effects of aging. I first noticed my body starting
to physically feel like it was declining when I was
twenty six. On the one hand, I was starting to
get a bunch of gray hairs, but I also noticed
(08:05):
that if I sat on the ground for too long,
my knees were really stiff when I stood up, or
it was more easy for me to sleep in a
funky way that then put my back neck in a
crick for a couple of days like It was the
first time where I thought, Oh, this is what the
rest of my life is like and it's only going
to get worse. So once that started happening, I decided
(08:26):
to be a little more proactive in doing what I
could to treat my body with the respect that it deserves,
and stretch really well, hydrate, eat well, and I definitely
experiment with moisturizers and serums. And I dye my hair
regularly so I can cover up the grays because I
really don't like them, even though I know they're natural.
(08:47):
And I get botox periodically. All things that, you know,
try that I do to contribute to minimizing the speed
at which I age, for better or worse. I'm you know,
one day I would hope that I had no shits
to give and wouldn't care about aging. But we're not
there yet. We're not there yet. And one tangent that's
(09:08):
more anecdotal than anything else, and it's not commentary, it's
just observation I've found over the last you know, five
or six years that I've been traveling to France regularly
with Ben. When I go over there and I'm with people,
especially women that are my age, a little younger, a
little older, I find that there's way less use of
botox and fillers over there. Again, this is just my observation,
(09:32):
but culturally, it doesn't seem that anti aging in a
non natural way or in an injected way is as
big of a thing over there. So again, just observation
and to have the confidence of a French woman would
be so so cool because I do have confidence. Don't
get me wrong, I'm a confident person, but there's a
(09:54):
little junisi qua to a French woman's confidence and I
hope that I will gain some of that through osmosis
through my marriage. So girl can dream. Anyway. I say
all this to address the fact that, again, anti aging
sentiments are abundant in our culture, and a lot of
what I just addressed was more on a superficial or
(10:16):
surface level, but then there's also a lot on the
core and molecular level of our beings that people are
trying to do to minimize the effects of aging. Pivoting
a bit, I do want to jump into some research
that actually observes some of the different stages of aging,
and there was recently research that came out of Stanford
University go Card that observe these biological stages of aging.
(10:41):
These researchers found that some age related changes happen slowly
and over time, like the slowing of metabolism and sprinkle development.
But then there are other age related changes that seem
to peak at certain specific times of our lives, so
they come in waves, and researchers observe that these peaks
happen at age forty four and sixty approximately. So at
(11:04):
age forty four, our bodies go through a change in
their ability to metabolize fats and to metabolize alcohol, and
so this will make us feel like it's more easy
to gain weight and that we have more alcohol sensitivity.
At sixty, people experience changes in carbohydrate metabolism, kidney function,
(11:25):
and immune regulation, which can lead to people in their
sixties getting sick more frequently and unable to fight off
some of those lower level infections that people who are
younger might be able to fight more regularly. For both
age forty four and age sixty, these researchers found that
people will experience a spike in skin and muscle aging,
(11:47):
as well as heart disease. Now, I don't mean to
be all doom and gloom about aging at all, like
aging is much better than the alternative if our objective
is to not die. But by having this knowledge, we
can be empowered to make changes to our lifestyle so
that we can prepare our bodies to better handle these
spikes and age related changes later on in life. These
(12:10):
are things like exercising a certain way, building up your
muscle density when you're younger so that it's easier to
maintain when you're older. It's about, you know, making sure
you're eating the right kinds of food so that you
can limit the potential of heart disease, and all of
these things that if you do more research, you'll be
able to find what will work best for you for
your own condition. If we bring this discussion back to
(12:31):
the big picture around health and longevity and trying to
maximize our living well on this planet, a lot of
the fancy, cutting edge technology and health aids that people
like Brian Johnson are using may be inaccessible to the
average person, both from a time perspective, money perspective, any
(12:52):
of that. But there are a lot of things that
we can each do to try to maximize our well being,
maximize our health, hopefully maximize our longevity. And I know
that this discussion cannot be limited just to things that
are in our control, which I'll get into in a second. Right.
I'm aware that access to medical attention and proper medical
(13:13):
care is not always great for everyone. I know that
not everyone has healthcare. I understand that there are some
systems in place that make it harder for us to
live the best that we can across the board. But
I am someone who always likes to focus on what
is in my control, and so that's what I want
to do by sharing some of the research that I've done,
(13:33):
some of the things that I apply to my own life. Again,
I am not a medical professional. I encourage you each
to do your own research and talk with your doctor
to figure out what's best for you. But there are
some key things that seem to be universally accepted as
good for our longevity, and that's what I want to
share with you now to close out this episode. So
(13:54):
a handful of things very important. To not smoke. Smoking
is not good, not good for your lungs, for your health.
Just don't smoke. The next thing, which is personally more challenging,
is to minimize drinking alcohol, especially as you get older.
Like it has negative effects. You can it'll impact your sleep,
it can impact your body's recovery. I know all this,
(14:14):
I love my wine. We're gonna keep working on it.
The next thing to do is to exercise, both moderately
and rigorously. So moderately is kind of in those zones
two to four, which is roughly a heart rate of
one twenty to one fifty depending on some things. But
then you also want to get some rigorous exercise to
really get your heart rate elevated into that like final
(14:35):
percent of your capacity. I know this is easy to
say as an adult without kids or dependents who works
normal hours, but prioritizing sleep is another really important thing,
not only for your mental recovery, but for your body's recovery,
for your ability to fight off cold and infections. Sleep
is really important. And the last element that I want
(14:58):
to dive into in this non exhaustive list is diet.
It's universally accepted that we want to minimize the processed, dyed,
and packaged foods that we eat, and the more that
we can have natural, organic, whole foods, as they say,
to increase our nutrient count, to increase the benefits that
(15:20):
we get from it, that's always better. I know we
could go into a whole separate conversation about good food
scarcity and grocery deserts and preservatives and food. I mean,
I know it's not great, and I know it's expensive
to eat healthy but the more that we can do that,
the better it is for our bodies. And I was
reading an article in the New York Times that cites
some research I'll put in the description, and they talk
(15:42):
about four different specific types of food that we should
try to maximize our intake of so that we can
best fuel our bodies. And the first thing they talk
about is prioritizing plant based proteins. So these are things
like lagoons, nuts, whole grains, and they help with muscle
and bones strength, which is critical when you're getting older.
(16:03):
As we mentioned at age forty four and at sixty,
you'll see more muscle degradation. So the more robust muscles
can be when we're younger, the easier it is to
maintain later. And this article made the specific note that
getting proteins from red meats may have adverse effects and
that they actually the fattiness of the red meat and
(16:25):
everything can increase risk of heart issues later on, So
do with that as you will, again always do more research.
The second area that they focus on is getting enough
calcium and vitamin D. Calcium from things like dairy and milk,
and vitamin D is largely from the sun, but also
can be found in mushrooms, fish, and eggs. The next
(16:45):
area that they focus on are polyphenols, which are antioxidants
and anti inflammatory nutrients which are found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee, berries,
dark leafy greens, vegetables, and avocados. And continuing on the
avocado train is the importance of healthy fats. Healthy fats
are in things like avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish
(17:10):
specifically salmon and tuna, and the omega oils are really
good for you. So again, plant based proteins, calcium, vitamin D,
antioxidant and anti inflammatories, and healthy fats, which kind of
summarizes to feel like a bit of a Mediterranean diet.
And again this is one article based on some a
(17:32):
subset of research. Definitely do your own, everybody is different,
but trying to minimize the process died in packaged foods
can be beneficial, quite beneficial for longevity. Reading about all
of this longevity work brings me back to my Pea
racing days, where you know, I was a full time
athlete and all of my time was centered around how
(17:52):
I could be the best racer, how I could be
in the best physical shape, mental shape, how I could
maximize my business opportunities, get sponsorship, meet people, all this stuff.
It was so cool. Twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and twenty
eighteen were like what I consider my peak racing years,
and twenty fifteen but peak racing years because I really
felt like I was living into that professional athlete lifestyle
(18:15):
where I could have the luxury of focusing on training.
And I love exercising. I love training, I love pushing
myself to the max. And I was talking about this
this athlete lifestyle with my guest Gary Clute on episode
fifty five, and we were diving into just all of
the really interesting things you can do. And it's such
(18:35):
a luxury and privilege to be able to focus one
hundred percent on your health. And some of the things
that I did in that kind of three year period
when I was really really active was making sure that
I was sleeping a lot. I was making sure that
my diet was great for the kind of first time
in my own control. I was meeting other athletes and
doing things like water training and pool training and doing
(18:58):
deep breathing and under standing the benefits of sauna and
ice bath work and really getting into mindfulness, and it
was just really cool, and I feel like it gave
me some building blocks that I can now channel into
my life post racing that still feed my needs on
an emotional and physical and mental level now. So I
(19:23):
love doing this research. I love seeing what other people
are doing, even if I think it's wacky. I think
there's value in understanding why people are diving into the
different subjects that they are. And I will definitely be
keeping an eye on Brian Johnson and seeing what are
the things he does, and I would love to hear
if you guys are doing anything that's really interesting and
(19:44):
catering to your mental and physical wellbeing, please put them
in the comments on a social media post send me
a DM because I love to especially figure out accessible
things that we can do that help us feel better.
The better we feel, the more enthusiastic we're going to
(20:04):
be about going into the world and living really rich
best lives that we can, which I'm a big advocate
for everyone. That is our episode. Thank you so much
for joining me for another episode where we dove into
biohacking and the fuss around aging and kind of what
all that entails. If you enjoyed this episode or found
it helpful. I hope you'll share it with someone who
(20:24):
might also like it. I would love to hear from
you leave a review comment on my post on social
If you could subscribe to the podcast and rate the podcast,
it would mean a lot to me. As always, thank
you so much for letting me be honest with you,
and I look forward to seeing you in two weeks.
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