Dr. Greg Eckel Longevity Series - Part 1

So the premise of longevity and the hope or promise is a longer life. And I really want to couch that in health span, which is quality of life lived, rather than just length of life lived. You know, I've gone on public television and said, I want to live to be 150 years old. Now, the oldest documented person on the planet ever lived 122 years. That was in 1997. And we haven't had anybody break that barrier. Now, when you say that 150 years publicly, you will hear a pin drop. They look at you like, Dr. Eckel, you are crazy. Do you see what they look like out there? I don't want to live that long like. And that's not what I'm talking about with the promise of longevity. We are talking about quality of life. And then it starts to beg the question as to, well, what is a life worth living? Because so many people aren't asking that. You know, we spend over $100 billion a year on health care, healthcare, I would call that disease care or sick management, because there really isn't any health in the equation. When you look in the text books in medical schools, you know, they aren't taught what is healthy. So what we want to promote in a longevity model is a richer life. You know, a life worth living. You know, it's interesting, right? We have this discussion was we don't even know how to define it. Like, what is, what is aging? So there's program cell death. So immune system, as we age, it gets weaker. That allows us to become more susceptible to illness and die. So that's one of the programmed components. There's hormones. Our endocrine system can also show programmed aging. So where our hormones are slowing down, we've got metabolism that starts right when you're born. Then you get damage is what happens to the frame and the system living. And then you get pathology is when you overwhelm the system, the body isn't able to repair itself and it starts to decay. So metabolism, damage and pathology. And really the goal is to separate metabolism from pathology. There's another subset of that, though. There's the wear and tear theory, which is as you wear your body out, it, you know, you use it up and you use up your vitality and you die. So there are a lot of different theories of aging. There's the modern theory and then there's the ancient theory. And we really are blending those together clinically these days. So there's a great concept out there. It's called the blue zones. Dan Buhner Drew on a map that the highest concentration of centurions on the planet and he took a blue pen. That's why they're called the blue zones. And there are five areas that are considered the blue zones. We got Ikaria, Greece, Sardinia in Italy, Loma Linda in California, Okinawa in Japan, and Nicoya Peninsula down in Costa Rica have the highest level of centurions on the planet. And so we studied what are the commonalities there. Now there are also. The other concept that I want to really weave in to our discussion on longevity is the planet our biosphere, our home. You know, as a naturopathic physician, my charge is to address the root causes of illness and that is within the realms of levels of toxicity. We need clean air, we need clean water, we need clean food. You know, we could actually sequester all of the carbon in the atmosphere if we just had everybody convert to regenerative farming and enriching our soil. So you've got to put these things together. Those five areas that I, that I shared, they have low levels of toxicity in their environment. Now there are some other pillars to health with regards to the blue zones that I really want to unpack for people. So in studying the blue zones, there's seven pillars, commonalities that we found in those five areas of the highest concentration of centurions move naturally, right? These folks aren't going to the gym, they are out gardening, they're walking, they're house cleaning. This is natural movement in all of the directions. Number two is purpose. And this is really crucial in a sense of what gets you up every day and you want to have a sense of purpose for your life. Number three is less stress and building into the lifestyle, into your day to day routines that shed stress. You know, deep breathing, going for walks, appreciating beauty and nature. Number four is the 80% rule. Stopping eating before you are full. Do not eat to satiation of complete stuffedness. Right? You want to stop at eat 80% there. Number five, plant based diet, high dependency on vegetables. You know, eat your vegetables is the pat answer coming from the naturopathic provider. But you get all your multivitamins and minerals from vegetables. Less dependence on meat or high protein components. So when you think about protein, the size of your palm of your hand or a deck of cards, about 3 to 4 ounces to 2 to 3 times a week suffices there in these populations, alcohol. Actually teetotalers die seven years younger than folks that drink moderate amounts. So this is not binge drinking, this is one to two Glasses of wine a day, moderate alcohol consumption every day actually leads to a longer life community. This is one near and dear to me. Loneliness is a killer. So having the quality of your relationship, it's not a quantity component. But quality relationships really does matter here, folks. This is not a new concept. You know, we kind of think we're the new kids on the block. We've got, you know, we've got the science, we've got the tech, but the ancient civilizations had it figured out long, long ago. So in this whole concept of longevity, so it comes from the Taoist in Chinese medicine. We have Ayurveda coming out of India as well. These are all on longevity practices. They from age immemorial, they have been talking about longevity. The Taoists believe, you know, when you leave your body, your spirit lives on forever. And, you know, I think it comes from the component of that desire for life, the living life to its fullest and really with a lot of energy. You know, I think a lot of times what can come up in a longevity discussion is, well, why do you want to live forever? Or why do you want this long lifespan? Is it you're afraid of death? Is it, you know, what is it like, the end? It's the unknown. When you leave your body, you, you know, I always revert back to laws of physics where energy can't be destroyed or created. It just changes form. I have a patient, Lois, she's 91. She called me on her 91st birthday and she said, Dr. Eckel, thank you so much. I said, well, what's going on, Lois? She said, I am healthier now at 91 than I was at 81. She was out. She was on a cruise in Alaska, walking as much as she wanted to walk. And. And, you know, I hold her up to people because it is never too late to dial an age like you actually can age backwards. Where we're showing we can actually reverse biologic age of the cell. Well, what is the biologic age? So the chronologic age is how many years around the sun you've gone. Biologic age is how old do your cells think they are? And you've seen those people, you know, the same age as you, they either look younger or they look a lot older. And you go, wow, what is going on with them? Well, some of that is genetics. Some of it is ancestral traumas. Some of it is levels of toxicity, levels of stress. All of these things play a role in the kind of dialing an age for yourself. We want our hearing, we want our sight. We want our taste, our touch. We want to be pain free. We want to be able to be freely movable, you know, free and sovereign beings. And that's for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and then for the world and the globe. And that's the vision that I hold, gets me up every day. It's why I'm looking for innovative ways of stacking the therapeutics to help people live to their fullest. You know, like, that's the way, that's the type of life that I want to promote for our patient base. What we're doing in the clinic and really what the researchers are out there looking at components. Here's one component is we're not going to be able to supplement our way out of a bag of potato chips, right? You have to be responsible in your life. We've got the technologies, we've got the therapeutics that can help your innate intelligence get there. Every year I'm in practice, I am more and more impressed, and I can speak more certainly on how the body can heal itself given the right information, if we remove those obstacles to cure. So the top three killers in life, cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegeneration. You know, there are some really innovative immunotherapies on the market now that have really helped bring down the death rate. So we've got to measure it, you've got to check it. If you're not looking at what's happening with it, it just might kill you.