People are becoming increasingly more interested in living longer.
Health, wellness, dieting, and fitness are more and more prominent on social media, and health monitoring technology are becoming increasingly popular.
Cardiologist Dr Eric Topol has been researching longevity for decades, and is considered to be one of the top five voices on the subject.
He’s just released his latest book, ‘Super Agers’, a detailed guide to living a longer, healthier life.
Topol told Mike Hosking it’s not necessarily about living longer, but rather extending the years someone lives with intact health.
He says living to 90 and being perfectly health throughout ought to be more important than trying to live to 110 and having many years of dementia, or profound frailty, or poor quality of life.
Although there are revolutions happening in regards to anti-inflammatory and hormonal medications, Topol says it’s never going to be as simple as a pill.
Things like lifestyle factors, environmental pollution, microplastics, and forever chemicals also need to be controlled, he explains.
Listen to the full interview for a detailed explanation of health, longevity, and the new developments in the medical sector.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So let's get into a little bit of health talk
and specifically longevity. The king of the hill is doctor
Eric Taple, the cardiologist who's been researching longevity for decades.
Of these in the top ten mostated authors in the
history of medical research, is also considered one of the
top five voices of longevity. His book is Superaging. That's
must read in doctor Eric Taples, whether it's out of
Lahoya in the States, good morning, hey, good morning mate.
(00:23):
He is exciting, if not historic times in terms of longevity.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I do think so it's not exactly longevity or life span.
I do think it's extending health span, that is the
number of years of life with intact health.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you think most people get that because we are
fascinated with numbers. If you can live to one hundred
and forty three, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, I hope that you get it, because if you
live to ninety and you've perfectly healthy through our that
ought to be the goal, rather than trying to live
to one hundred and ten and having many years of
demand show or profound frailty or poor quality of life.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Talk us through the bicics solvent how much of its
genetics if it's genetics. How much can you do about that?
How young do you need to start? Can you retrofit
to yourself all of those matters.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, it turns out the genetics for health span is
in nearly what we expected. We did a big study
fourteen hundred people, you know, almost age ninety whole genome sequencing.
We didn't find much. And also the patients in the
book I presented in Superagers, they had their relative died
ninety eight year old woman, her parents, her brothers all
(01:38):
died in their fifties and sixties. So it isn't genetics.
That may be a small part. There's a small part
of luck perhaps, but the big reason that people have
health span that's so extraordinary is because the immune system
is so intact throughout their lives.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, so a lot of ways you can do that.
The factors that you know, Mike and I'm sure all
your listeners, like diet that avoids things that are pro inflammatory,
that exercise, both aerobic and resistance training, and good sleep health.
These things are fundamental to preventing an untoward inflammation in
(02:22):
the body and keeping your immune system intact. But just
more than that, we're learning lots of ways that we
can get the pace of aging in a person through
these clocks. So there's a science of aging that's giving
us these new metrics to assess whether a person's immune
system and the vital organs are pacing at a fast
(02:45):
or slow rate relative to their biological age.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I supposely the problem we find that the more we
know is whether this is averages. So a person like you,
guys on average, the city, the society, whatever versus me,
and I'm thinking, well, can live to ninety eight and will?
So is it individual or is it averages?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, really, what's important, at least to me is the
individual story. The averages are meaningless when it comes down
to the single person. So that's why these metrics that
have come from the science of aging are so helpful,
because you can look at organ clocks, whole body clocks,
and you can see whether or not there's something that's
off track and get on top of it. Because the
(03:30):
big three age related diseases that interfere with our health
span are heart disease, nerve degeneral disease, and cancer. And
now they take twenty years to actually while they're incubating
in our bodies. If we can't get ahead of those,
we got trouble. We have to be smarter than that.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
The medical intervention in being able to measure these things
in life. Are we advancing in that area as well?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yes, as you know, these GLP one drugs like ozembic
have profound anti inflammatory effects in the body and the brain.
But that's just the beginning of this gut hormone revolution
in medicine. There's like fifteen of these hormones in combinations
and various doses in pill form that are going to
(04:19):
be very important because, as I mentioned, the immune system
keeping that intact and getting rid of bad inflammation. We've
never had good drugs to do that, and we're starting
to see that now.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
How experimental is this GP stuff that we're taking at
the moment? I mean the more I read about it,
I mean I see what happens to people, but equally
I see potentially what will be seen to be side
effixed down the track. Are we still in an experimental
phase of this will not.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
No no longer? You know, we're twenty years into this
GLP one story. Every side effect that has been tracked
down turns out it's either not worrisome or it can
be For example, the muscle ass issue can be countered
by resistance training. So there's no side effect that's going
(05:07):
to hold this back. Surprisingly, I mean, really, I'm never
one to be supportive of the pharma industry, but this
time it looks like they've really hit it big. And
it's just the beginning of it, because we haven't gotten
easy into pills yet, going to make it much less expensive,
and there's much more potent ones coming, and of course
there's other drugs that have this strong anti inflammatory, pro
(05:29):
immune system effect that we're going to see. It's going
to make a uge difference in preventing these diseases.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Will we simply be in an age whereby you can
do whatever you want to do. The doctor eventually goes
you'll need to stop and take some of this. I'll
take the pill or pills, and my problem is over.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
You know, it's never going to be simple as a pill.
There's still the lifestyle factors that we that we reviewed,
and even more, and of course there's some of the
things that we have that are real problems, like air
and the plastics, micro nanoplastics and forever chemicals. We're not
doing enough to get those down to control those because
(06:09):
those are also affecting. So you know, it's a combination
of all these things. We have to get on better
lifestyle behavioral factors. We have to do something about our
environmental toxins that's not helping this at all. And of
course there's going to be better treatments and medications to
achieve prevention. In the years ahead. We're going to be
(06:31):
able to prevent the big three diseases like never before,
and in fact, we've never gone a good job of
any any of them.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Well, so that's what's so exciting. I was going to say,
as part of the problem, though, the more we can treat,
the heart of the messaging will be around lifestyle, because
surely if we've not looked after ourselves well to this point,
once you've suddenly got what we would perceive to be
a miracle, Cua, you're not talking to me about exercise
and slip because I don't need it because I got
my magic pill.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, well, this is a really good point making. But
what's different about the current situation is we used to
just tell people this is what you should do, but
there wasn't any specificity at the individual level. A point
you made earlier. We're going to be able to say
to a person, you know, you are at high risk
(07:18):
for Alzheimer's disease in the next fourteen years, and these
are the things in your lifestyle, and we're going to
be able to measure whether or not we change your
brain clock and all these other markers. And they're modifiable,
these markers like so called PETAW two seventeen, and that's
going to be motivating for people as opposed to the
(07:41):
general recommendations for the entire population, so specificity at the
individual level and temporal features, saying when these are things
we've never been able to do before. That's what AI
can help provide.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Is there still value do you reckon in regulating sleep,
eating well, exercising and doing that for genuine enjoyment and
longevity and actually trying to avoid pills and potions and medications.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, this is really important, Mike, because as I reviewed
in the book, if you start at age fifty, no
less earlier, but let's say fifty, multiple studies show that
if you are doing the things you just mentioned, you
get seven to ten years of health span intact healthy agent.
(08:29):
So it's as you're saying, we don't get people to
do these things, but that in itself to provide a
lot of incentive. But we're going to get even more
incentive in the future by having individualized forecasting.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What's your view on the blue zones? Are they real?
Is there something in those nothing at all?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Their bogus? Unfortunately, it was a kind of you know,
affirmation confirmation bias. We all wanted there to be blue zones,
but no, these people, it was mythical. They never had
documentation of their ages. And sure there are people that
have extraordinary health span, but that's not been proven by
(09:11):
the blue zones.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Unfortunately, what's your expectation, all things being equal, and when
we talk about longevity, you should be what eighty seven
and playing good tennis ninety six and playing excellent volleyball
or what.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, I would say a superager or what we call
the welderly, has gone past eighty five plus and have
never had cancer, heart disease, or neurodegenerative disease. It's totally
intact cognitivevilion physically. Now, if they're playing tennis or whatever,
that's fine, they don't have to. But you know the
(09:47):
point is they've reached that age and they've not They've
never had to be hit with the Big Three. And
that's a really great goal that we're gonna achieve. And
we're gonna flip the elderly, which is what we have
right now. People it's sixty five and older. They're mostly
the elderly with a chronic disease. We're going to flip
that to the welderly super agers in the future.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Is this western or global?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Global?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Is Western a problem as being Western a problem?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah? I mean we unfortunately, like for in the US,
we have the worst consumption of ultra processed food, and
we have the worst plastics and microplastics story around there.
So there are some problems Western and particularly US centric,
that are really hurting us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Isn't it funny? I've always found it fascinating that the
more we know. I look at a place like America
and New Zealands know better in terms of obesity and
food and stuff, so we know the answer, and yet
we don't want to. I mean, how do you explain
obesity and how do you explain how people eat what
they eat and all of that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, unfortunately it's not like a simple explanation, right, I Mean,
it's a lot tied into ultra processed foods and poor
diet and as there's factors that we still don't even
understand about how this has been this steady epidemic of diabesity.
But you know, we have a counter to that. Now.
(11:15):
We have a class of drugs that help and they're
going to be as I mentioned, much cheaper and in
pill form. The problem we have is we don't want
them to be forever drugs. We'd hate to have people
taking these for their whole life so they could not
be obese or marketly overweight. We have to come up
with strategies that keep people at a much better health
(11:38):
status and body weight throughout their lives without having to
rely on pills.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Idealing two questions from my wife. One, you don't eat
red meat heaven for a long period of time. Where
do you get the stuff that you would get from
red meat from?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, well, I love, of course salmon and seafood. I
love you know, lots of things that are a good
sources a protein that don't require red meat. You know,
I follow largely a plant based diet, Mediterranean type diet,
So yeah, I think red meat has been incriminated for
(12:12):
a long time. You know. I tell my patients, you know,
it's fine to have red meat, but just don't do
it on a frequent basis. But there's some people who
are very committed carnivores and I can't affect they're interest.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Second question from my wife, I have an espresso at
two thirty in the morning every morning. I think it's
a gut cleanser. Am I right? Or am I killing myself? Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
No, Actually, the data for coffee is so good. It's
one of the only things I know that people love
that it's actually good for you. So all the data
show up to four cups a day or espresso like
you take. There's nothing wrong with that. It actually is
associated with every positive health outcome you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I've enjoyed the conversation. Maybe we'll get together in ten
years and see how we're going.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I enjoyed it as well.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
All right, Eric, go well, Eric Turple, Doctor Eric Turple
out of La Joye this morning. His book is super Aging.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
So let's get into a little bit of health talk
and specifically longevity. The king of the hill is doctor
Eric Taple, the cardiologist who's been researching longevity for decades.
Of these in the top ten mostated authors in the
history of medical research, is also considered one of the
top five voices of longevity. His book is Superaging. That's
must read in doctor Eric Taples, whether it's out of
Lahoya in the States, good morning, hey, good morning mate.
(00:23):
He is exciting, if not historic times in terms of longevity.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I do think so it's not exactly longevity or life span.
I do think it's extending health span, that is the
number of years of life with intact health.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you think most people get that because we are
fascinated with numbers. If you can live to one hundred
and forty three, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well, I hope that you get it, because if you
live to ninety and you've perfectly healthy through our that
ought to be the goal, rather than trying to live
to one hundred and ten and having many years of
demand show or profound frailty or poor quality of life.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Talk us through the bicics solvent how much of its
genetics if it's genetics. How much can you do about that?
How young do you need to start? Can you retrofit
to yourself all of those matters.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, it turns out the genetics for health span is
in nearly what we expected. We did a big study
fourteen hundred people, you know, almost age ninety whole genome sequencing.
We didn't find much. And also the patients in the
book I presented in Superagers, they had their relative died
ninety eight year old woman, her parents, her brothers all
(01:38):
died in their fifties and sixties. So it isn't genetics.
That may be a small part. There's a small part
of luck perhaps, but the big reason that people have
health span that's so extraordinary is because the immune system
is so intact throughout their lives.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, so a lot of ways you can do that.
The factors that you know, Mike and I'm sure all
your listeners, like diet that avoids things that are pro inflammatory,
that exercise, both aerobic and resistance training, and good sleep health.
These things are fundamental to preventing an untoward inflammation in
(02:22):
the body and keeping your immune system intact. But just
more than that, we're learning lots of ways that we
can get the pace of aging in a person through
these clocks. So there's a science of aging that's giving
us these new metrics to assess whether a person's immune
system and the vital organs are pacing at a fast
(02:45):
or slow rate relative to their biological age.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I supposely the problem we find that the more we
know is whether this is averages. So a person like you,
guys on average, the city, the society, whatever versus me,
and I'm thinking, well, can live to ninety eight and will?
So is it individual or is it averages?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, really, what's important, at least to me is the
individual story. The averages are meaningless when it comes down
to the single person. So that's why these metrics that
have come from the science of aging are so helpful,
because you can look at organ clocks, whole body clocks,
and you can see whether or not there's something that's
off track and get on top of it. Because the
(03:30):
big three age related diseases that interfere with our health
span are heart disease, nerve degeneral disease, and cancer. And
now they take twenty years to actually while they're incubating
in our bodies. If we can't get ahead of those,
we got trouble. We have to be smarter than that.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
The medical intervention in being able to measure these things
in life. Are we advancing in that area as well?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yes, as you know, these GLP one drugs like ozembic
have profound anti inflammatory effects in the body and the brain.
But that's just the beginning of this gut hormone revolution
in medicine. There's like fifteen of these hormones in combinations
and various doses in pill form that are going to
(04:19):
be very important because, as I mentioned, the immune system
keeping that intact and getting rid of bad inflammation. We've
never had good drugs to do that, and we're starting
to see that now.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
How experimental is this GP stuff that we're taking at
the moment? I mean the more I read about it,
I mean I see what happens to people, but equally
I see potentially what will be seen to be side
effixed down the track. Are we still in an experimental
phase of this will not.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
No no longer? You know, we're twenty years into this
GLP one story. Every side effect that has been tracked
down turns out it's either not worrisome or it can
be For example, the muscle ass issue can be countered
by resistance training. So there's no side effect that's going
(05:07):
to hold this back. Surprisingly, I mean, really, I'm never
one to be supportive of the pharma industry, but this
time it looks like they've really hit it big. And
it's just the beginning of it, because we haven't gotten
easy into pills yet, going to make it much less expensive,
and there's much more potent ones coming, and of course
there's other drugs that have this strong anti inflammatory, pro
(05:29):
immune system effect that we're going to see. It's going
to make a uge difference in preventing these diseases.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Will we simply be in an age whereby you can
do whatever you want to do. The doctor eventually goes
you'll need to stop and take some of this. I'll
take the pill or pills, and my problem is over.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
You know, it's never going to be simple as a pill.
There's still the lifestyle factors that we that we reviewed,
and even more, and of course there's some of the
things that we have that are real problems, like air
and the plastics, micro nanoplastics and forever chemicals. We're not
doing enough to get those down to control those because
(06:09):
those are also affecting. So you know, it's a combination
of all these things. We have to get on better
lifestyle behavioral factors. We have to do something about our
environmental toxins that's not helping this at all. And of
course there's going to be better treatments and medications to
achieve prevention. In the years ahead. We're going to be
(06:31):
able to prevent the big three diseases like never before,
and in fact, we've never gone a good job of
any any of them.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Well, so that's what's so exciting. I was going to say,
as part of the problem, though, the more we can treat,
the heart of the messaging will be around lifestyle, because
surely if we've not looked after ourselves well to this point,
once you've suddenly got what we would perceive to be
a miracle, Cua, you're not talking to me about exercise
and slip because I don't need it because I got
my magic pill.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, well, this is a really good point making. But
what's different about the current situation is we used to
just tell people this is what you should do, but
there wasn't any specificity at the individual level. A point
you made earlier. We're going to be able to say
to a person, you know, you are at high risk
(07:18):
for Alzheimer's disease in the next fourteen years, and these
are the things in your lifestyle, and we're going to
be able to measure whether or not we change your
brain clock and all these other markers. And they're modifiable,
these markers like so called PETAW two seventeen, and that's
going to be motivating for people as opposed to the
(07:41):
general recommendations for the entire population, so specificity at the
individual level and temporal features, saying when these are things
we've never been able to do before. That's what AI
can help provide.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Is there still value do you reckon in regulating sleep,
eating well, exercising and doing that for genuine enjoyment and
longevity and actually trying to avoid pills and potions and medications.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, this is really important, Mike, because as I reviewed
in the book, if you start at age fifty, no
less earlier, but let's say fifty, multiple studies show that
if you are doing the things you just mentioned, you
get seven to ten years of health span intact healthy agent.
(08:29):
So it's as you're saying, we don't get people to
do these things, but that in itself to provide a
lot of incentive. But we're going to get even more
incentive in the future by having individualized forecasting.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
What's your view on the blue zones? Are they real?
Is there something in those nothing at all?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Their bogus? Unfortunately, it was a kind of you know,
affirmation confirmation bias. We all wanted there to be blue zones,
but no, these people, it was mythical. They never had
documentation of their ages. And sure there are people that
have extraordinary health span, but that's not been proven by
(09:11):
the blue zones.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Unfortunately, what's your expectation, all things being equal, and when
we talk about longevity, you should be what eighty seven
and playing good tennis ninety six and playing excellent volleyball
or what.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, I would say a superager or what we call
the welderly, has gone past eighty five plus and have
never had cancer, heart disease, or neurodegenerative disease. It's totally
intact cognitivevilion physically. Now, if they're playing tennis or whatever,
that's fine, they don't have to. But you know the
(09:47):
point is they've reached that age and they've not They've
never had to be hit with the Big Three. And
that's a really great goal that we're gonna achieve. And
we're gonna flip the elderly, which is what we have
right now. People it's sixty five and older. They're mostly
the elderly with a chronic disease. We're going to flip
that to the welderly super agers in the future.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Is this western or global?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Global?
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Is Western a problem as being Western a problem?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah? I mean we unfortunately, like for in the US,
we have the worst consumption of ultra processed food, and
we have the worst plastics and microplastics story around there.
So there are some problems Western and particularly US centric,
that are really hurting us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Isn't it funny? I've always found it fascinating that the
more we know. I look at a place like America
and New Zealands know better in terms of obesity and
food and stuff, so we know the answer, and yet
we don't want to. I mean, how do you explain
obesity and how do you explain how people eat what
they eat and all of that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, unfortunately it's not like a simple explanation, right, I Mean,
it's a lot tied into ultra processed foods and poor
diet and as there's factors that we still don't even
understand about how this has been this steady epidemic of diabesity.
But you know, we have a counter to that. Now.
(11:15):
We have a class of drugs that help and they're
going to be as I mentioned, much cheaper and in
pill form. The problem we have is we don't want
them to be forever drugs. We'd hate to have people
taking these for their whole life so they could not
be obese or marketly overweight. We have to come up
with strategies that keep people at a much better health
(11:38):
status and body weight throughout their lives without having to
rely on pills.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Idealing two questions from my wife. One, you don't eat
red meat heaven for a long period of time. Where
do you get the stuff that you would get from
red meat from?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, well, I love, of course salmon and seafood. I
love you know, lots of things that are a good
sources a protein that don't require red meat. You know,
I follow largely a plant based diet, Mediterranean type diet,
So yeah, I think red meat has been incriminated for
(12:12):
a long time. You know. I tell my patients, you know,
it's fine to have red meat, but just don't do
it on a frequent basis. But there's some people who
are very committed carnivores and I can't affect they're interest.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Second question from my wife, I have an espresso at
two thirty in the morning every morning. I think it's
a gut cleanser. Am I right? Or am I killing myself? Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
No, Actually, the data for coffee is so good. It's
one of the only things I know that people love
that it's actually good for you. So all the data
show up to four cups a day or espresso like
you take. There's nothing wrong with that. It actually is
associated with every positive health outcome you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I've enjoyed the conversation. Maybe we'll get together in ten
years and see how we're going.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I enjoyed it as well.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
All right, Eric, go well, Eric Turple, Doctor Eric Turple
out of La Joye this morning. His book is super Aging.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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