Is it possible to slow aging?

I want to talk about the biggest thing out there, the biggest cause of death. It's associated with absolute everything. It's associated with an increased risk for heart disease, cancer. We all do it, and we can't stop from doing it. And it plagues us everywhere. It's a big focus of our current healthcare industry and many biohackers and people you might follow, Instagram, Facebook, read, they are tracking this and seeing what they can do to block it. What is this big thing that's such a big deal to associate with every illness out there? And you right now are doing it. It's aging. Our body's aging is associated with every chronic illness. And there's even a phrase called inflammaging, which is aging induced inflammation. And many of you already know that inflammation is associated with every chronic illness there's out there. So what I'd like to talk to you all about is what is aging, what causes aging, what's related with it? And then talk about some things you can do to slow the aging process down, age gracefully, and ultimately block some of the detrimental effects that aging causes. One of the things that's just important to realize that if you look at statistics, government statistics, death rates, morbidity, chronic illnesses, aging is the number one health concern in our country right now. There are things that make you age quicker, like smoking, drinking, poor health choices, poor diet, even drug use, things like crystal meth, other drugs actually can make you age really quicker. And there's things you can do to block aging. But how do these things actually affect your health? And what are some markers for those? That's what I want to talk about right now. So there's nine major markers of aging. I want to walk through and talk about the major ones that we can actually do things about. The first major marker of aging is genomic instability or gene instability. Now, when we first did the whole gene mapping thing back in the 90s and we mapped the human genome, we did not realize that actually this thing called SNPs, which are small deletions, extractions of genes, are actually where all the actions happening and these changes in your genes can actually be translated from generation to generation. So grandmother's smoking and drinking environment, or mold exposure or chronic Lyme disease, can change her genes, and while she's pregnant, it can change the mother inside her womb's genes and then the grandchild. A very interesting concept to think about is transgenerational epigenetic priming, which is a gene mutation being passed intergenerationally. And the way it happens is while you were an egg inside your mom, she was in your grandmother's womb. And so things your grandmother did actually affected you before you were, even before your mother was born and you inside your mother. So these things are real and environmental is a big part of this. Chemicals in the environment and a whole host of other things. This is something you can actually do something about and we'll talk about a little bit later on. The next thing is telomere length or telomere attrition. Some of you may have heard about telomeres, the caps in our DNA that actually protect the DNA. And every time your cells replicate or you make new cells, they these things get shorter and shorter and shorter. So every time you turn over cells, you have more environmental stresses that affect cells multiplying. These telomeres actually get shorter. The research here is a little controversial and there are some things you can do to help preserve telomere length. But this is something we know that's directly related to cell aging. And every cell in your body can only divide so many times before it actually dies. And so these telomeres actually you can look at and tell how long a cell is going to live or how many replication cycles that cell line actually has. The next thing is actually alterations and nutrient sensing. So as you the aging process happens, it can be sped up. So you might have vitamin B, you know, B12 or folic acid in your body, for example, but your body can't utilize it and can't use it and it doesn't work properly. This is altered nutrition sensing. One of the most well known things related to this is actually the MTHFR gene. It's related to how your body uses folic acid. This is one of the reasons why folate's put in food and prenatal vitamins have folate in it. Because with gene defect, your body does not use folate quite as well, even if you have it in your diet. What happens is our cells as we age can have a similar effect with all your vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin C, your B vitamins, minerals, et cetera. And so they just don't work quite as well. And it's almost like aging begets aging. So as your cells get a little older, they don't sense the nutrients quite as well, so they don't work quite as well. So you age a little quicker and just has this feed forward cycle. So finding the weaknesses in your metabolism, addressing those through metabolic testing, can actually help you have a focused targeted nutrient program that actually helps with your own Personal nutrient insensitivities. The next one's a big hot topic right now, which is mitochondrial dysfunction. The mitochondria are the powerhouse of your cells. They're like miniature nuclear reactors that take molecules and actually create heat, ATP and energy for your body. This is where many chronic diseases lie. This is where cancer lies. When your mitochondria become dysfunctional, they can become senescent cells. The cells become senescent or they won't. They get stuck and they don't die, but they just create inflammation. Or a severe version of this could be a cancer cell where you have a disconnect of the. It's called electron chain uncoupling. And so what happens is your cells get stuck and they, they can't appropriately make energy and they get stuck in a metabolism that uses sugar only. And so what happens is that's one of the processes, this uncoupling of the mitochondria that goes from healthy cells to senescent or stuck cells to cancer causing cells. And so there are things you can do to actually help your body preferentially find these stuck cells and turn them over, have them die preferentially and use those cells parts for making better mitochondria. One of the interesting thing about your mitochondria is they want to make better mitochondria. So if you have two unhealthy mitochondria, they can sometimes come together and make one healthy mitochondria in a process called fusion. And sometimes if you have a really big healthy one, they'll break up and make multiple smaller healthy mitochondrias. And so your mitochondria want to make healthy versions of themselves. And so there are things you can actually do to help improve that process. Again, this is associated with aging. The next thing is alteration of your stem cells. Many people have heard of stem cells. The very, very first stem cell was when an egg from your mom and a sperm from your dad came together and made the first fertilized egg. That was the ultimate stem cell that turned into a zygote, which was 32 plus stem cells. And they multiply and multiply and multiply until they go into the areas that become your brain, your gut, your skin, your heart, your lungs. And the primordial cells. The original cells that formed by the organs are actually stem cells. What happens as you age, you lose these healthy self regulatory cells and you age. And so inflammation, all the things I mentioned, can lead to this. And there are things you can do that actually can bump up your body's ability to produce stem cells. Last but not least is altered cell communication. Every cell in your body has to communicate with other cells and does this through your nervous system. It does it through hormones, it, it does it through cell chemical signaling, things called cytokines, which many people have heard of now. And as that communication becomes unregulated, dysregulated, more inflammatory, one cell doesn't connect with another cell quite as well. And all things I mentioned so far get messed up. So the next part I'd like to talk about, what are some things you can do that actually can address some of these systems so you can actually apply and start using anti aging principles in your life right here, right now. Take care. We'll talk.