EP 137 WTH?!? The Doctor's Chat: The Human Longevity Project with Jason Prall

Hey, welcome back everybody to what the health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel and I have Jason Prall on board today and I'm really excited to share his nine part docu series, the Human Longevity Project. He is a health educator, practitioner and author and filmmaker. In 2018, his independent research and experience as a practitioner led him to create the Human Longevity Project which I'm excited to unfold as to the why behind that and it's a nine part film series that uncovers the true nature of chronic disease in our modern world. He's currently working on his next film series that explores ancient methods of healing mind, body and soul from indigenous cultures around the world. And he's recently released his best selling new book titled Beyond Longevity A Proven Plan for Healing Faster, Feeling Better and Thriving at Any Age, which I highly recommend. I've got that on my bookshelf. Thank you, Jason. Welcome aboard.

Oh, thanks for having me. It's good to see you.

Yeah, likewise. So I love our conversations and these travels that you've been doing. What inspired you, number one, to create this?

Yeah, I mean there's a, there's a, there's a big, for a while now there's been a discussion around longevity, right. We're kind of entering into this regenerative medicine future. And so there's between the technology and the biologics, you know, like the stem cells and, and that kind of thing, there's a lot of interesting things happening. And so I think that sparks the, the human imagination and the curiosity that we inherently have as to what's possible. You know, I think this is an existential question, right, that is fundamentally linked to birth and death and how long this thing that we call life can we extend. Right. And so it's a fascinating conversation that I think comes with some really interesting conclusions and philosophical, I mean, deep, deep stuff, right. And if we take a path, if we follow a path that is really not coherent, that is not harmonious with the principles of life itself, then we're just going to create more suffering. Right. And so while we, sure, we may have some people extending their life really long time, they may be unhappy, they may be creating all kinds of problems in the world, right? So, so it's really something that, that the natives, the indigenous and the ancient traditions, like in Chinese medicine, which I know you're intimately familiar with Ayurveda, they understood these things, right. There's a, there's a, there's a harmony within life and there's principles and we can try to violate those principles, but it's only to our own peril, right? In our own suffering. And so, so I wanted to make a docu series that explored aging, that explored not only longev what it means to be healthy, what is health, where does it come from and why? I mean, my God, why in this western world that is so prosperous, so abundant, are we seeing so much chronic ailments, chronic disease? And not only in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Right. Which is typically what we think about when we talk about longevity, but also the teens and the twenties and the thirties. Right. Because fundamentally that's where longevity, I think, has the biggest lever. Right. Is what's happening basically preconception, you know, with our parents into conception, in, in gestation, you know, after birth, in childhood. Those are really, really important parts. So we created this docu series not only to look at what should I do when I turn 70 and 80 and 95, hopefully, but what do I do when I'm 18, what do I do when I'm 33 to set myself up for a long and healthy life?

I love it.

I love it.

You know, I've had the privilege of sitting with 90 year olds, 100 years old and oftentimes they say, you know, doc, had I known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. And it is so, I am so pleased. And why I wanted to bring you on the show is to really share this. And, you know, we are going to be promoting and getting the word out because it is such a, it is a vital topic for our times of, you know, what is. So, you know, I think you, you define, you know, like, what is aging, when does it begin, where does it occur? Like those fundamental questions. Instead of just, you know, afraid of death or wanting to live forever, it's really bringing in the qualitative questions as to, you know, how do we enrich our lives? So, you know, where do you, where do you begin with just, even just the aging process?

Yeah, I mean, I think thinking about this thing from a sort of. If we've got any medical or health professionals here that, that look into research and are familiar with biochemistry or even just novice people who really have an interest in this stuff, you know, you can get lost in, in the mechanics of biology. Right. I mean, it is so unbelievably complex. And I see people trying to nail it down to, okay, well, aging happens in the mitochondria and aging is a mitochondrial problem or mitochondrial issue. Some people say, no, it's the genetics. You know, we got the telomeres and, and we have the Hayflick limit and it' damage that occurs with double DNA strand breaks, and there's all kinds of things going on. And then others will say no. Actually, if you look at the cell, it's the membranes. It's when the membranes start to break down, the communication and the signaling then starts to go awry. And I think they're all kind of correct, right? I mean, to me, it seems like it's. Aging is actually a little bit different of a thing. But what we're actually talking about when we, when we look at that stuff is the effects of aging. Right? This is fundamental. I think aging is an inherent process. It is. It is inextricably linked with life. In other words, we cannot live without aging. Aging is a process, right? So it's. I think intellectually it's good to separate the two. We have aging, which is part of being alive, and then we have the effects of aging or the downstream effects, the damaging effects. That's generally what people are referring to when they say aging. We want to reverse aging, quote, unquote. You actually can't reverse aging. Aging is a process. You might be able to slow it down. I think there's some arguments to be made there to kind of extend the timeline, but aging is one directional. However, when we talk about the reversing the effects of aging and all this stuff, it really is the effects, right? So we can't reverse aging, but we can reverse the effects of aging, and that's really worth considering. So the question is, how do we do that? Where does aging actually occur and when does it begin? And all this. Well, I think it happens at every time and, and, and size scale. In other words, aging, the effects of aging and the damage can occur at the quantum level, right? We can see disruptions, disharmony. We can see lack of coherence at that quantum level. If we were able to sort of peek into that, then we'll see it at the biochemical level, inside the cell, at the mitochondria, at the DNA. We can start to see it there. Then we can see it outside the cell, extracellular. We see disharmony. We see lack of communication, a breakdown in the function. Then we organ level, the tissue level, and then also the system level. Right. So what's happening with. The reason I mentioned all these layers or levels in the biology is because they're all in communication. So if we see damage, accelerated damage, let's say, in the kidneys, well, the body has amazing mechanisms to sort of, let's Say, steal parts, steal energy from other parts of the body or other systems to help support and nurture and nourish that aspect as best as it can. Right. So this is why. And then we'll lose coherence globally, but we're shoring up the issues, let's say, locally. So I think this is what's cool, is that the body has this way of kind of molding itself and moving energy and robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. And so that is an aspect of our biology. And we have the aspect which again, comes from primarily qigong, the ancient practices, the yogas, how to cultivate energy. Right. So we can actually cultivate and nourish our body systems from the outside, so to speak, from the environment, from the ether, you will. And so there's really cool things that we can start to get into when we understand that. But it is, it is the systems approach that I think is so important because we're trying to look for aging in a cell. We're trying to look and say, okay, well, we're looking at the telomeres or the white blood cells, or we're looking at the length of the telomeres in the, in the liver or whatever, and they're all going to be different. And what you find actually in the telomere lengthening research is that when you do the right things, the telomeres will lengthen, which is a good thing. That provides more genomic stability, but it will lengthen at the shortest telomeres in the body. So if the telomeres are in the liver, then those are the ones that are going to lengthen, not the ones in the kidneys, which are already long. So this is what I'm saying. The body has wisdom and intelligence to try to shore up the weak points as best it can, given the right conditions.

I love it. And that component of different clocks or different measurements of aging in the body, in the human cell. Now, I want to. Because that's one. It's microscopic almost. It's a reductionist, exact method here. Right. And you mentioned the innate wisdom and the innate intelligence of the body and its healing ability. And I'm fascinated by, you know, kind of where you traveled to create this docu series and maybe some nuggets of ancestral wisdom or native, native understanding as to what's going on, because this kind of gets into the, the, the crux of, like, well, what is this reality that we're dealing with here?

Right? Totally, totally. And, and there's some great work done by the blue zones. In National Geographic Dambier, they did a great job. They went around the world and identified these regions around the world, right. Where there's a concentrated number of centenarians, people that are making it to 100 at an abnormal rate compared to the rest of the world. Right. And there was great work done by Michelle Paulan, he was the demographer who was able to verify birth dates and records and, and, and all that, which is a ton of work, and then run the statistics, statistical parameters to be able to identify this. This place is special. Right. So we have Okinawa and Icaria, Greece and we have Sardinia in Italy and then we have the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. And these are known as the Blue zones. And sometimes they'll throw in Loma Linda, but it's not really a blue zone. It's not technically a blue zone. It's just the Seventh Day Adventist population, which is, which is prevalent there. They're worth studying. But the general region actually has nothing that interesting. So what's cool about that work is that they identified these regions. We piggybacked on that work because I wanted to go find centenarians, I went to go find people in their 90s and 1/ hundreds. And so where do I go and find those people? Well, that's where I'd go, right, where there's the most concentration. And so we have good data for that. And so the other reason I like that work is because it takes different regions around the world. Different genetics, different environments, different cultural practices, different ideas. Right. And so that's what we did with the Human Longevity Project. We went out to these regions, we found these hundred year olds, which is not an easy process. It's not like there's a database of them and they don't speak English. So we had to find translators and, and basically knock on doors to, to navigate our way through these small villages to find these people. And we interviewed them and we talked to them. And the beautiful thing I love about again the Blue zones work that we piggybacked on is that because they have different practices, because they have different diets, right. A lot of times we focus on diet, right. When it comes to longevity, what are they eating? How do they eat all this stuff? And the beautiful part is they eat totally different foods, right? And they eat foods that we, we, we deem as bad. In the west, right? In Sardinia they ate a ton of bread, a ton of bread all throughout their life, every day, non stop. And you hear it from there, directly from their mouth. This is what we did it was fundamental. You could not have a meal without bread, et cetera, et cetera. And so the reason I say that is not to say that we need to follow them or copy them, but it's to demonstrate the underlying qualities and principles, right? And the context behind their behavior, behind their diets. This is where the juice is. Because that's what we can borrow from this totally different reality, right? I mean, in Sardinia, they're in the mountains. They are living in small villages. They didn't have electricity up until probably 1960, 1970. So these people that are 100 years old, when I interviewed them in 2019, 2018, 2019, they'd been 50 years old before they ever saw electricity. That means they lived most of their life without refrigeration, without, you know, any kind of electronics. I mean, this is a reality that you and I can't even comprehend, right? We can sort of, if we go maybe on a retreat or we go camping, and that's just this tiny little taste, and yet we still have generally some electronics with us. So they live their whole life this way. So we can't go back and replicate or duplicate that lifestyle. We just can't do it, nor would we really want to. They lived a very difficult life, and yet we glorify that, or we sort of put it on this sort of pedestal where we idealize this way of living. And yet, I'm telling you, it would not be enjoyable. I don't think we would make it very far. And the other part is that we have our own reality to contend with that is totally different, that provides totally unique challenges. They never had to walk into a grocery store and say, no to those chips and no to those organic cookies and no to that pie and no to all these amazing, scientifically validated ways of. Of trying to get my attention, right? We call it advertising, right? These colors and these crunches and these. These taste combinations. I mean, this is like billions of dollars worth of research that have gone into this stuff, right, to try to get us to buy this stuff. So we have to actually contend with that. We don't think much of it because it's become a part of our life. Same thing with them. They had to contend with different challenges eventually. They didn't really think it well after doing it for a while. It's just how they grew up. So we live in different realities, so we've got to understand that. And yet the principles are the same. This idea that the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night is fundamental to our Biology beyond just sleep. It is fundamentally directing what's happening at the cellular level, on the hormonal level, how we digest, when we should exercise. All of these things, our mood regulation, our thyroid hormone regulation, and how that cycles. All these things are playing a role and they're fundamental to the human experience. So if we go and ask and interview these people and get a sense for what their life was like, get their wisdom, then we can extract some of these fundamental understanding of what health is, how to live life, and why it's important to do so. And we can sort of interject that into our modern world. Right? And then again, that's, that's just the first part of the equation. The second part of the equation is to say, hey, look, we live in this modern world. We have all these electronics around us. We have, we swim in a sea of electromagnetic radiation, right? We have chemicals and metals that we are contending with. We, we don't have clean water, right? It looks really clean, thank God. It's, it's, it's abundant. We can get it just by turning on the faucet, you know, thank God. And yet there's, there's drug residues, there are chemicals that are put in there for a variety of reasons, right? So don't have the purity that they, that they would have from when they would drink from a mountain stream while they were herding their sheep. Right? So you can see what I'm painting is this is totally different experience, and yet there's, there's a fundamental basis for understanding what health is and why we can, we can mold our reality in a different way to induce health, which is our sort of natural state.

How important or what did you find in the travels and interviews around community that is, you know, that doesn't get, that's not a packaged product and you can't manufacture that. You have to live it. And so I'm wondering on, on that front what you found.

Yeah, and we have a, we have a. Basically a full episode, I think it's episode seven, dedicated to this idea of kind of purpose, gratitude and community. And so, and there's, there's really interesting things when you start to dig into this idea of community, because community, as you said, it's not easy to sell in a pill. You can't really package it very well. It's hard to deliver to somebody. And there's a number of reasons. And actually, fundamentally, it's really not, we gotta be careful, I think, with the word sort of because community is good, but it's actually, it's just the vehicle to deliver the thing that we're actually looking for. So community isn't itself all that helpful. We can be in community, but if we don't have connection and we don't feel safe in that community, then it actually can cause us harm, so to speak, actually create some dissonance to us, to our nervous system, to when we're in a quote unquote community and we feel like we're extricated, we're not, we don't belong and we don't find safety. And so it is those fundamental needs, human needs, that community has the potential to provide, right? This ability for connection. I mean fundamental. This is, this is in development, in childhood development. This is so fundamental to our, to our nervous system, to our development that it is, it happens in the first, you know, few months of life and safety, right? So we as humans need to feel safe and we need to feel connected. And when we do, our nervous system can relax, we can become open, we can live from the heart, we can pursue our dreams, we can, we can live from a place of deconditioning, right? So we can actually, this is what provides freedom, is that safety and that connection. But again, if we're just thinking, I'm going to be in community, then we may not be getting those benefits. And the other challenge here is that as we go through childhood primarily and there's some other, other factors in here, let's say karma and some other things, perhaps intergenerational stuff that might come through, but we can actually develop sort of character styles and the, the, the inability to connect, right? So we, we have this sort of attachment style that we might call it in psychological terms, but the ability to attach to another. And, and, and we can have an anxious attachment style which, which, which kind of fears that the other is going to leave, right? And so we have this kind of clinginess. You might see this in relationship or this avoidant. So if the relationship starts getting too close or too comfortable, then we push away because it actually is dangerous to sort of, to be vulnerable in that setting. So these are some of the things that may happen in terms of ruptures in our development that prevents connection. So we have to even go deeper and look at childhood traumas and look at childhood conditionings and are we even able to connect or how well can we connect? Maybe it takes a lot, a lot, a lot of safety for one person to feel like they can connect because they're so guarded because of the hurt that they experienced as a, as an infant, really or maybe somebody has a, what we might call a healthy attachment style, right, where they actually can connect to a relative stranger, that they can actually be in a place of open heartedness, they have enough safety established in the nervous system to welcome that connection. So this is a deep thing. And as you probably noticed in the west, we've got a lot of trauma. We've got generational trauma, we've got cultural trauma. You know, especially in different racial groups or ethnic backgrounds. We carry a lot of trauma, right, in the Jewish, in the black, in the indigenous and the native. There's a lot of trauma in a lot of the Asian too. And so, and look, even in the sort of the white heritage that we still can carry this stuff through. So this stuff is deep and so there's a lot of work to be done. And what I noticed in some of those other environments is that because they lived in small village communities that were reliant on one another for not only survival but, but for healthy living, they seem to establish much more safe, supportive and connected community through the family unit and through the, the broader community. So they didn't seem to have as much of this trau experience or this conditioning that would create these circumstances that prevented things like connection.

Interesting is that in that episode on the, on the docu series, love it.

We talk a lot about that.

I call that the elephant in the room. You know, the centers that we are putting together throughout the country and world have, as a, as a core component is really addressing that. You know, a lot of people feel like, oh, I don't have any trauma. But you look at the adverse childhood experiences, the ACE scores and you know, there's kind of three realities as we're born, we live and we die. But that aspect of the, you know, how you have dissonance in your nervous system as a result of some interaction or event or along those lines and how much that sticks in your cellular memory especially. I love that you've got that as a, as a cornerstone in, in the community and connection component.

Well, and it's intimately tied to like purpose and gratitude too. Right. Because we see these as big aspects to being healthy, especially as we, as we get older. Right. A lot. Because a lot of us are living from conditioned mind throughout most of our life. I would say unless we've done a lot of work and even then we can still live from conditioning quite a bit. But you see this at the age of like 65, typically, right. When, when retirement hits or whenever that might be for somebody, when they stop working, they they tend to have this sort of like, I don't know what to do with myself, you know, where is my value? How can I contribute to society? Right? They've raised their children, they've. They've left their job and now it's like, like they can play golf or they can travel, they can do these things. But for many people, that's not enough. And so they find themselves in this stuck place because they're not quite sure what they want to do, right? And so this piece, this resolving these trauma pieces or these conditionings allows us to really find out who we are on a deeper level and show up in the world. Despite the fact that we might be 72, we don't move as fast, we can't do as many things. Our sight is going, you know, like we're degenerating and yet we still have tremendous value. So how can we, how can we find that meaning and that value in, in life, right? I remember Speaking with a 94 year old lady and I asked her, I said, you know, you know, forgive me, but you know, your, most of your family is either passed away or they're, they're not around. Your friends are mostly gone that are your age, your husband, what you wake up, what keeps you going? You know? And she said, well, I have to learn the song for the violin class on Thursday day. And I thought, like, what a beautiful answer, right? In other words, she was able to generate meaning in her life in the mundane, right? There was something important to her about playing her music and reading her scripture and going on her walks. This got her up and got her motivated just to live life. She didn't have to have a big, huge purpose, right? We think about purpose as this like Elon Musk type thing or something, right? Like that we've got to do some amazing, build something amazing, be somebody amazing. And the reality is, is you can be somebod amazing in your local community for the people around you and you can do something amazing every day if you understand really what's at the essence of just living life, right? So I mean, she learned the violin at 92 and she was 94. So she was two years into this sort of violin. I mean, she. I used to play violin. She was terrible, you know, and yet it was so cool, it was so inspiring and it was so impressive to see somebody at 92 pick up a new skill that's not easy and then continue to bring it forth every day and show up in her violin class with her other. I mean, she was. And she and by the way, she, when she showed up in that way, it lit everybody up, just like it lit me up when I said, when I sat with her, you know, like, there's something inspiring, right? Bringing through spirit. And so, like, this is what we have the capacity to do at any age. You know, you see some of these. I've seen videos of some of these people that are like, this woman's like 98 years old, doing like amazing yoga, right? This is inspiring to the youth, right? And there's so much wisdom to share. It's one of the things that we lack in our culture is elders, right? Is the wise elder walking amongst us that can guide us, that we can lean on, right? So I think to me, when it comes to longevity, this is one of the values that I would love for our docu series as well as, you know, your work and everything that we're doing to help people get into those elder years, to become that leader, to become that elder that, that can guide future generations because, I mean, God knows we need it right now. We need so much wisdom. And so I think this is the value as we get older and older and why we want to take care of ourselves in our youth. Not only so we can stay healthy and free of disease and feel good, but why. Why do we want to feel good? Why do we want to be healthy? Well, it's so we can give back, so we can contribute, so we can be. Have this altruistic mentality because that ultimately refees life, right? Is this ability to give.

Ah, Jason, that is awesome. And I, I think, you know, that honoring of the Elder, the wisdom Keepers, and it allows us to bring more love and abundance to everyone else, right? So it's, it is that collective component of everyone gets this. It's not just the select few. It's for everyone and, and bringing back those traditions and, and that comp of health into our older age, you know, times around the sun is so important. I, I am so excited to see the docu series, the Human Longevity Summit. Any last parting words? We are going to include the links on below the video here, folks. Get in on this. This is really special.

This.

He traveled around the globe. I can't wait to hear about, you know, and see the interviews and just the lushness of this production. So thank you for bringing this forth.

Of course. Yeah, I will say that it's the docu series is, is. Is. It's not for the faint of heart. It's very intellectual. There's a lot of learning. So it is for it, that is the point we got deep into mitochondrial science and, and micro, microbiota and how mitochondria communicate with microbiota and provide the foundation for why we want to do some of the things that we want to do. Why does circadian rhythm matter? Why does eating a certain diet this way versus that way impact you differently than somebody else? How is it that something like meditation or connection or, you know, social groups, how does that actually impact our biology? Because that's fundamentally, I think, an important link to make. Why do we want to do these things? Why is hot and cold therapy impact? How does the, how does the biology actually work? Right. So if you're somebody like me, you know, I find that very interesting and it helps me implement some of these things that I might hear about or trust that are good because, like, oh, okay, you know, that turns on heat shock proteins, you know, like you can learn the biology to some degree and then it sticks a little bit more. Then it's a little bit more impactful and it helps you navigate context. Right? Because this is really what it's all about is why you hear this advice from somebody and a completely opposite advice from somebody else. And how can we hold both truths? Well, it's because of context. In some context this is true, and another context this is true. And so which context do you find yourself in that will help you navigate which diet, when to eat, how much to eat? Do I do cold, Do I do hot? What is it that I really need and how do I navigate these waters and what might be impacting or blocking my ability to be healthy? Healthy. So we get into all of that. We get into the philosophy, we get into the deep, deep science. I mean, we've got some of the most highly respected scientists, researchers on mitochondria and microbiota in the world, really actually went to the World Mitochondrial Congress. Yes, there's such a thing. And it is a very, very nerdy boring conference that is the, the forefront of mitochondrial research at like the most unbelievably tiny levels. So, you know, we wanted to bring forth the experts and we did. And so it's, it's cool in that way. And I think it's, there's something there for everybody because even though it does get nerdy and geeky and a little heavy, sometimes we bring it back out and we put it in context. So it's not just this boring rambling. It's, here's the intricacies and here's how it works and here's why it matters. And here's how you apply it and here's what, what to do. So. So yeah, we hope there's something for everybody. Each episode kind of builds on the next. So mitochondria and microbiota and diet and exercise and toxins in the environment and you know, the circadian rhythm and sunlight. Why light is important to influence our biology, raising healthy children. You know, what is it about vaginal birth and breastfeeding and that whole process and how that sets us up for health later on in life. And of course, you know, the aces work and, and connection and trauma and purpose and gratitude and. And then the diseases of aging and we get into cancers and Alzheimer's. Why is it that those people that I spoke with in Sardinia and Icaria in Okinawa, there's like hardly any Alzheimer's, there's hardly any cancers at those advanced stages. Why is that? Well, there's an actual explanation for this that we can, we can utilize. So, so we get into, into all that and it's a lot. It's a fun, it's a big, big series, but it's great.

Awesome. Thank you so much for producing it and coming on to what the health folks tune into this. You don't want to miss it. If you like today's show, please give us a five star review and write down what you're taking out of this interview. I'm bringing you the best and the brightest out there to share what their hearts know and desire, what they want to create in this reality. This is how the change happens. Thanks tuning in everybody. See you next week.