WTH?!? The Doctor's Chat Episode 2: Longevity Killers

And you're live.

All right, welcome back, Everybody. I am Dr. Greg Eckel.

Dr. Jonathan Nadal, and this is what.

The the Doctors Chat edition. We are coming at you with a whole thought process and a kind of a new format. I wanted to bring Dr. Nadal on as my lead physician at Naturecure's world headquarters there in Portland, Oregon, and share his knowledge base and his energy with you all out there as we are writing a book on longevity. So we wanted to share with you all some of the processes that go into that and what we're up to these days. So we're going to talk about longevity and we're going to launch really around historical context of longevity. What are the theories of aging. We're going to talk about premise of life extension, how we can even be having this conversation now. And we also want to know, you know, what contributes in here, so different lenses. We're going to talk about, we're going to talk about mindsets, the bioenergetics. We've got a lot to unpack here. But both of us are Chinese medicine practitioners at heart. We use that as the framework for how we filter information in the medical paradigm to help our patients get to where they need to go to achieve their goals. And really, I like to say thrive. I want to just start it out here with just some, just basic premises. So I am going to lob that one over to Dr. Nadal and really coming at it from maybe a Taoist perspective, Chinese medicine perspective, when we start talking about longevity in modern times, it seems so new. But why don't you shed some light on that for us?

Yeah, absolutely, Dr. Eckle. It's a fascinating concept. It's not new. You know, especially when we think about some of the emperors way back in ancient China, you know, beyond just not feeling ill, they were trying to live forever, right. And then fast flash forward like a few thousand years later and we have, you know, bodybuilders and biohackers left and right, trying to figure this out again, still so obviously an important topic. We don't just want to not die. We want to thrive for as long as possible. Right?

Yeah.

And with our brains, our brawn, and our community, like you always say, right. I love it.

I love it. Yes. Thanks for taking on that moniker. You know, one of the things that comes up for in the discussions that I get in with folks around longevity is extending our health span, the amount of years that we are healthy. And I actually had a patient ask me, how are we even having this conversation today? Right. Like in disbelief, you know, because I've said, you know, I want to live to be 150 years old. And when you say that out loud in crowds of people, they kind of look at you funny. Are you kidding me, Doctor? Like, have you seen them out there? Like, I don't want to live that long. You know, walked by a neighbor who's out shoveling snow over the winter and talked about, you know, we're really getting into longevity. We're living an amazing time. And he's retired, in his 70s. And again, he looked at me like, who wants to live that long? Right? And so I wanted to start out a discussion or kind of our premise as to life extension, longevity, health span, right? Those are not interchangeable words, but we have this ancient historical perspective. But more importantly, I think we got to talk about life of like, what is a life worth living? You know, it isn't the bill of goal goods that we've been sold on. Just consume, right? How much can you consume and how big is your house and what kind of car are you driving? And, like, what are the capitalist components to life that is empty? And what gets you saying, like, I don't want to live that long, right? There is this aspect in Taoism, like our roots in Chinese medicine, or, you know, it's the way or the, you know, you've seen the Taiji symbol, the teardrop of white going up and black going down, a little drop of each in both sides, and that's the energetic cycle of yin and yang. So the Taoists, they. They've held humans and animals would live in balance with the Dao, the way the universe. So Daoists believe in spiritual immortality, where the spirit of the body joins the universe after death, which is actually a law of physics, right? So that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It only changes forms. So let's start at that level of discussion of life worth living. We're not just talking about consuming or. The one with the most toys at the end of life wins. You can't take any of this with you. So what are we talking about here in this balance between environment and human and life form, non life form, inanimate object to, you know, the concept of, you know, the preciousness and the magnificence of what we get to have in this plane of existence together.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's so. It's so relevant and deep and mysterious at the same time. I mean, so many points that you hit on. It's like the more we delve into, the more like, you Said kind of the capitalist nature, materialism. It's like, how much gold do you want to be buried with in your grave? That's only going to drive you deeper in the ground. Right. It's like this sense of levity and lightness that we get with community and exchanging these more intangible things, like whether it's joy or even sharing a meal and a good conversation with someone, helping each other feel like these are the things that leave a more lasting impression, that will carry us through time much more than a fancy car or a bigger house. Sure, those things are nice, but, you know, you make me think of this notion of. And we've talked about it, the ikigai, where it's like, yeah, that. And it relates to Taoism ultimately. It's like, let's live fully and richly, but let's. Let's make sure that there's meaning and purpose. Right.

So that. Where does that come from?

The ikigai? It's kind of. I think it means just a reason for being. And a lot of its roots are in Dallas practices where, you know, there's a couple of different Venn diagrams that overlap each other. You know, where if you devote your hours of the day and your existence to what you love versus what you can be paid for, for instance, against what the world needs and what you're good at, all those have some overlap and reveal further meaning and coherence if you can live that way. So, for instance, if you do what you love and what the world needs, we can call that fulfilling a certain sense of mission. Right. If we combine what the world needs and what you could be paid for, we can call that vocation. Right. So we can put it in abstract or plain, like material terms as well. Even what you can be paid for and what you're good at is more of the profession and then a fun and important one. If you're doing what you're good at and you're doing what you love, then we have more of a passion. Right?

Yeah.

So. And there could be multiple passions and multiple missions, but ideally, the more they can all meet is where you have that ikigai or that. That reason for being where you find a sense of fulfillment day to day, night to night. So I like the way that that's kind of put together for some of what we're talking about. Right.

I love it. Yeah. That mission, purpose, you know, the research on a life well lived. You know, people aren't looking back on their deathbed thinking they should have worked more hours of the day. At work. Right. It is about those fulfilling moments. Now I find myself lucky enough to be doing something that I love every day. So it does consume quite a bit of my day, which is serving you all, listening and viewing, because it is very fulfilling to me to get up to solve problems and to give presents for, you know, allowing stories to come out or, you know, people share with us things that they've never shared with another being on the planet. That, for me, is super fulfilling and also to get results for people. So there are those. Those aspects of a life worth living, of time well spent with family relationships and meaningful exchanges and vulnerabilities and growth. And we have these systems through time, like Chinese medicine, where I shared with the Yin Yang symbol as an understanding of the energetics of this plane of existence. Right. So we have yin and the Yang. So Yin is the black, the Yang is the white. On that Taiji symbol, the different representation of those energetics, we've got the sun, daytime, daylight, active energy producing. That's Yang. The nighttime, the moon is passive and reflective. That's yin. So those are the energetics that are always interplaying between each other to create movement and motion. And basically the one becomes the two, becomes the three, becomes the 10,000 things of, like where the universe sprung forth. We have the five elements of Chinese medicine as an energetic component, but as a framework to incorporate into this discussion around longevity. So what do you want to share on the five elements and seasonal balance along those lines?

Yeah. Wow. And taking it back to that Taiji symbol, so that there's yin and Yang, there's that active dynamic principle, and there's that more steady earthly material aspect. Right. Each of the five elements is. Is twofold. Okay. So whether we're talking about nature or the seasons or even the organ networks in our own body, and I know we'll get into that even more so in due time, but the way we can think of it, I mean, even as simple as the energy of spring, this. This energy of rising and expansion, of coming back from. From death and rest, we have wood energy. And that's not hard to wrap around if we picture wood and the same energy as spring. Yeah. They are one and the same in Chinese medicine. Right. There's a lot of Yang, for instance, in that wood energy. But guess what? It started in the depths of winter in a very deep yin. There was that seed of Yang that was waiting to come out. And we can see that interplay with every season and even the micro seasons within our life. Right. Day to day, year to Year, decade to decade, you can kind of look at any, anything going on in your life and kind of see it from a different lens depending on what's useful or applicable, you know, in a bigger picture. Even if we want to look at more of the water stages of life, you know, maybe towards the end of any prolonged experience or even maybe part of the death process where there's a lot of yin and retreat energy coming through to it, you can go as deep and far as you want, you know, but at the end of the day there's, there's beauty and coherence that, that we are striving for at the cellular level and even at the more metaphysical spiritual level. And like you said, with every element within it there is a yin and a yang and they will continuously feed into and create each other.

Yeah, I love that and thank you for sharing that because that, that is lost in a lot of the biohacking and the longevity movement now of like artificial intell is going to help us figure it out. And I'm all for using computer learning and neural networks, but filtering it through this ancient lens that has really stood the test of time. It helps to make decisions for oneself in what is the correct path or next step for yourself. So for instance, and why I wanted to start it out with this ancients discussion is we are now at the point where we can measure our biologic age, how old our cells think they are versus just chronologic age of our trips around the sun. So every year is your chronologic age. But you've seen those people that you know that are the same age as you and they either look 10, 20 years older or 10, 20 years younger and you're going well gosh, we're the same age. Feels good when they look older, right? But it is, but that component is really around. Well their cells are saying are telling a different story. There's a different narrative happening there where the biologic age of how old the cells think they are is much older or younger. And that the ancient emperors of China, you know, riding on their horsebacks, patrolling their land, they wanted to look vital, right? So that the neighboring ruler wouldn't even dare to encroach on their land. They wanted their folks, you know, gardening and working in the fields to be very vital, to be able to harvest all of the food that was produced. They wanted sexual virility, right? They wanted to produce many offspring so their lineage would last forever, right? So this concept of longevity, we've always had it in the human psyche and the aspect is how long can we extend our health span, our healthy living. Right. We don't want what we're seeing now is disease, sick care on the planet with no regard for environment. So really tying in the aspect of biosphere and Gaia, Mother Earth, this aspect of we are part of something larger. We're not just this individual, gray mattered individual, not a part of the environment. We're seeing a lot of dysfunction and suffering and illness, mental illness from that thought process of separation. Early on in my career as a young, I wasn't even Dr. Greg at that point. I wrote one of my undergrad thesis was on the idea of wilderness, of how important it is to have wilderness. Not just theoretical, but actually wild. And I came across a book by Martin Buber which was I and Thou. It was the objectification of nature, making it other rather than one. And in where we're at now in our practice at Nature Cures is around a oneness principle of we're just pretending to be separate in this reality. But ultimately, you know, we return to source. We came from source, we live and then we die, we return to source. So that aspect of the oneness, you know, we have 110,000 people dying every day of aging. Right. We never called aging a disease in the past. But having the theories of aging so we can measure the biologic age. But in ancient times and with Chinese medicine, how do we talk about theories of aging here? And in particular thinking about life force, Jing essence, yin and yang, fluid along that line.

Yeah, let's go there. Good. So if we. And it'll connect to it, if we even think about the way some of the classical texts on some of the herbs with Chinese medicine, like the Ben Saojing, the there was the organization of herbs just for common day to day uses. Right. There was the second class which were more to deal with just illness as it arises. And there was an entire other third class. Sure, back then it was like gold and more alchemical herbs. But those were the ones to help make you live forever or fly or whatever it was intended to do. So it's been documented since then that there were actual things being used to increase a lot of these life essences. If we can compare even the idea of jing, right. Or that foundational fire, Qi, that's the driving force behind a lot of the other yin and yang related essences in our body. I mean, we can make it even simpler by saying more say kidney yang being associated more with. With testosterone in some ways. Right. Or kidney yin being associated more with Estrogen, it goes way beyond that. Because even when we mentioned the kidneys, it's not just the kidneys, it's the adrenals and the entire sphere of the kidneys and the water element. But as we age, we know that these things that begin to go down and diminish in how much we have and how well our body utilizes it. And it's becoming easier and easier to correlate in Western medicine how some of these essences or hormones or even neurotransmitters start to shift and decline as we age. And this is well established in Chinese medicine. They had different words, but ultimately the same descriptions for it.

Right.

And I think that's some of the stuff of what you're speaking of. And I want to also just to balance that water element of the kidneys with that heart fire element, because they kind of root each other. Even if we think about some of this concept of this giant field that we're in, and we're all just different varying concentrations of that energy, there's no you or I, we're just kind of mirror images of everything in this field. Right. And our heart, the coherence within it, we're seeing even the electromagnetic concentration of our hearts, it's like 10 or 20,000 times more concentrated than even our brains. We think so much that our brains are the walking around floating electrical organ. But even more so, it's our heart, which is a fun and beautiful idea at the same time, if that's really what's in the middle of this being moving through time and space. Right, right.

Yeah. The heart centeredness, you know, with no word in Chinese medicine for mind, body medicine, it's all heart based medicine of the heart. As the emperor or the empress, the director of the show. And really our encouragement in the practice is to really get folks their frontal lobe open so they can access their creative selves, their creators, and really drop down into the heart space to create from there. Rather than some intellectual or rationalized approach to what's happening out here, but opening the heart and actually creating from there of like in win, win, win scenarios, meaning winning for the individual, winning for the person that they're dealing with, and then winning for the collective as a whole, that we can actually set up the systems to work like that. And we've got the good framework. In the Taoist beginnings of Chinese medicine and Chinese medicine in and of itself, there's this also this concept you mentioned, the kidneys and the water element of Ming men fire, that fire that burns between the two kidneys and then coupled with that fire, the cauldron is this concept of Qi, or energy. And there is prenatal qi, what your parents gave you, and then there is postnatal qi, or energy, what you are giving you, what you put in here, what you put in here, what you do with your body. So you're creating energy, and you're either subtracting energy or adding to the energy. It's really not a static amount of energy in the universe. So you're either gaining or you're decaying. And we want people to gain. And we actually, you know, there's book titles like, what do I Got Younger Next Year of how to age backwards. You know, we do a V cell procedure in the clinic where we're showing 3 to 15 years age reversal on biologic aging of how. How old the cells think they are. So I wonder if you could speak into that cauldron and the Ming Men fire and maybe bring even a discussion of Jing essence in there.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're making me think of like, so when we have prenatal or ancestral qi coming in, imprinting our DNA, what it was before as we're being created, right? And then we have the postnatal qi, we know the earth element spleen, the stomach transforms and transports all the Qi that we're putting in. But guess what? I think the Taoist monks were onto something a little bit deeper than just what your parents made and what we're putting in our bodies. I think they knew some way about even this whole epigenetics things that were what's going on right now in science. I think they well understood that even what we have been programmed with originally through the proper use of Mingmen and our essence and how we go through our day by day and how we properly use our energy, not a whole lot of excess, everything in moderation, Right. Even joy. Right? So that. But yeah, if we think about some of these epigenetic changes that we can start implementing through, even through some of the genetic tests that we're using, just to see, like chronological age versus biological age, which you were speaking about, we're realizing through food, nutrition, lifestyle, some of the regenerative medicine procedures that are out there, like the vesol that you mentioned, there's a lot of ways that we could even change the methylation patterns on our DNA so that it is not shutting off and shutting on the way that supposedly it was programmed through from our parents. I feel like that is the modern alchemical equivalent of what is really being put into the potential collagen of us seeking this elixir of life and carrying it forward in a much more profound and prolonged way.

Yeah, that, that component. So let's, let's speak about Jing, because that's not really an equivalent in the west of what we have around that. And this is a. The life force, energy that comes from, you know, the fountain of youth in the Mingmen fires, this fire that burns between the two kidneys, and it. It steams the water of the kidneys, which is life energy, and it steams it and allows it to perfuse the body. So we have some of these prescriptions around what increases energy, what decreases energy. So what has been called the tiny death is ejaculation. Right. Anytime a male ejaculates is the loss of essence. And, you know, we don't have any concept of that in the west. Right. With just the excess around sexual activity and just, you know, just let your dollars just throw out the window. Like if you're going to expend your life energy and your force, go ahead and masturbate, right. Or just ejaculate with 100 partners or whatever. The thing is around that, where, you know, these concepts of tantra come in, of recycling the energy and allowing that to ascend the energy cycles, to then create that connection to the one and honoring more of the sacred aspects of life. And in this reality of what we're doing now, not everybody will hear that last sentence that I said. They'll just say, Dr. Eckel, what are you talking about? Right.

Yeah, but you're speaking to. I mean, it's, it's pathological to, to society and to these times. And it speaks to what we were initially talking about, like consumerism, wanting more and more and more, where whatever it is that we want and acquire, whether it's material goods or sex or connection, it's all staying at this superficial level. So we fall under the delusion where more quantity is more. And we're forgetting the deeper elements that originally even things like sex and mating and copulation were meant to do. When it comes to tantra, there's a lot of talk of essentially ritualizing sex. And I think it's healthier to remember that it's ultimately adding sexual energy to ritual. Right. Just that weird gray area that can become very meaningful and beautiful. You know, we think about what you said, like do ejaculate, do semen. If you lose some blood through a wound, that's fine, you'll be good in a few minutes. Right? You can be sweating for an hour or two working outside or at the gym, you'll probably be good. But then when it comes to what you mentioned, La Petite Mort, Right. Where even after some intimate time, you're probably out for a little while, and that puts you out more than anything. And that's just a tablespoon worth. So it's. Even conceptually, it's like, wow, yeah, that's some really important stuff, you know.

Yeah. And we never get taught about it. Right. In any terms. It's like it's a forbidden topic because. Oh, it's, you know, like that's pornography or whatever the concept is. And really, it comes back to a life worth living, you know, with poetry and music and dance and. And lovemaking, all of these things that we only get this body for this short amount of time on the planet, and we haven't really been taught what it's capable of doing. And so really, in the gratitude vein, which tons of research around gratitude and what that does to our brains and to our hearts, you know, the. The preciousness of. Of life, I mean, it is. It's a miracle. I mean, we're. We're floating around on this ball in space, hurling around the sun, a tiny speck, really, in the grand universal consciousness. And yet we're here. And you were created to be here at this time, hearing these words, and that's pretty miraculous. So if we're not expecting miracles, I'm not sure what we're waiting for, because we live it every day on the planet. And that's the piece where I want to. I think it differentiates us in the discussion around longevity in that this isn't. We're not afraid of dying. I don't want people to be afraid of dying. I think. You know, I was on a panel once talking about uploading our consciousness into the cloud for immortality. And I put immortality, because it feels like that would be a prison for consciousness. I answered. I said, look, I do not want to live forever like that. I don't know what other planes of existence there are and what work I actually came to do here. So this is one stop in a grand continuum of things as far as I'm concerned. And so, yes, I want to maximize the days on the planet that I do have, my brain, my brawn and community. I'm inviting folks that are listening to this to come along on this ride and this discussion with us because we're going to have some fun and we're going to weave in the ancient stuff and weave in modern science and really where the Two come together is a pretty magical place. So you brought up. The other component that you brought up was bioenergetics. We just kind of touched on it, you know, rooting it here. Yes, I brought up Jing essence and had that conversation here. But we, I also want to talk about the field and that this aspect of unity, consciousness and separation from self versus oneness. And you know, we live here in this dualistic reality of this three dimensional space. So there is that yin and yang, there is that interplay between, you know, the shadow and the light and the, you know, up and down and you know, hot and cold. We have those dichotomies. But at the same time it comes together on the more of a meta level to form the one. And so if you look at all of the universe as one entity, it starts to get interesting, I think in the discussion around, you know, well, why, you know, why would Creator have suffering or you know, death, like in really just unjust death and just, you know, things that are, you know, make us sad and you know, create the like, why, how is this even happening? Questions? Well, if you look at the grand scheme of things, I don't know how incarnation works, even if you believe in that. But if you look at the whole evolution of the planet, we've been here for a short period of the time on the planet, so we're at. It's almost like consciousness is waking up to the awareness of consciousness, right? And that comes through us as humans. And so having that in a discussion around longevity of, you know, purpose and passion, like what you had talked about on the three Venn diagrams of what are we creating? Who, you know, I bring my children up as to say, you know, if you serve a billion people, you'll become a billionaire, meaning you're in service to people. Like we are in it together. And if we're, we all need to go at the same time rather than, you know, the 1 percenters don't live any longer than anybody else and you know, it's not there isn't that separation. And so if we all kind of woke up to that and stopped playing somebody else's game in the longevity front, I think one, we would have more joy and we would have a lot more fun and perhaps a lot more ease with more equitability and abundance for all, because we actually do in a very heavenly state here. If we could get enough people to see it and realize it. I just took us on a way big tangent, but I want to see where you go with that.

No, I mean, I Have a quote from Rumi. Can I share it please? Yes, because it's a beautiful one. The other night I was rereading. So out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there's a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make sense. Right?

It's yes, poetry. That's what we're talking about here. So for more poetry in capturing what is happening. And so I'm going to pose a question to our listeners and viewers and we want to make these more interactive with you all. So you are welcome to send us some thoughts and some input here. And I'm going to say I'd love to have you send it to supportnaturecuresclinic.com so it's s u p P O R T at Nature Singular cures with an sclinic dot com. I'll put that in the show notes as well. But you know, we want to hear from you like what does this. What is a life worth living? What do you think it is? What is it for you? Because it is different for each of us. I agree with the poetry. Rumi is so inspirational on how he was able to actually capture the essence of what we are talking about here. So that. Thank you for that. That was awesome. You know, so theories on aging. So we're talking about the ancient theory. So if we bring that up into modern, modern discussion. So there's a program theory, there's an endocrine theory, there's an immunological theory. So in the program longevity, this is considering aging to be the result of sequence sequential switching on and off of certain genes, with senescence being defined as the time when age associated deficits are manifested. So senescent cells, you may have heard these called zombie cells. They're basically when a cell replicates to a certain level, it only has so many replications until it becomes kind of a zombie cell. It doesn't do what it was programmed to do, but it keeps replicating and kind of clogging up the system. So that's called program longevity. There's another one called. Oh, do you have something on that?

Yeah, no, endocrine.

Yeah, endocrine theory. That's the biologic clock acts through hormones to control the pace of aging. So this is the piece where I was talking about, you know, your buddy is the same age as you or your girlfriend and they look older or younger than you. Well, maybe they have, maybe they Were smokers. Maybe they had a lot more stress, maybe they had a lot more epigenetic changes, meaning the EPI is above the gene. So that's, you know, diet, nutrition, stress level, trauma, ancestral lineage trauma. So all of those things play a role on the endocrine theory of aging. With it, which would be out of the hormones causing age to the cells and then immunological, which is on our immune system. We know as we age, our immune system becomes, it can become less effective. So the immune system is programmed to decline over time leading to an increased vulnerability to infectious disease and thus aging and death. Which is what we just saw going through the pandemic with the highest likelihood of death from COVID was over 75 years old. Because of the programming of the immune system. Not aging well or it declines with age. That makes you more vulnerable as you age. It doesn't have to be that way. But that's what we're seeing in modern era aging component. So those three are types of aging. And ultimately aging happens on multiple levels. I think one of the biggest aging that we see in the clinic is of mindset. We hear, do you ever hear just get used to it, you're getting old. You should fire that provider immediately. It is not true. I have 91 year olds and you can go on our YouTube channel to see Lois. She called me up on her 91st birthday thanking me because she was healthier at 91 than she was at 81. So this woman came in at 81 and you think, you know, most 81 year olds are being written off by their general providers and practitioners, even the gerontologists. And you know, I leave the door open. You know, we're realistic, we're not over promising, we like to over deliver. But you know, it's so gratifying to have a patient 10 years later. You know, she's walking around, she's talking about going on cruises up to Alaska. She's got more energy than she had 10 years prior. She's wit is there, her sharpness of tracking, like she's sharper than she's ever been, at least in the last 10 years. So you're never too old for this, that you can actually get younger next year. Now eventually we do die. I mean that is a reality. We do leave the body like we've got other things to work on. But we want to create an environment where you are creating from your heart space and you have love and abundance and you feel seen and heard and loved like you can actually feel it. It's not just words. It's an actual experience on a cellular level. Right. And so that. That aspect of the program theory, then there's the damaged wear and tear theory, which is the wear and tear and free radicals, which all of these do play a role in the aging process. And we are living at a time where the discussion is, we can actually address on multiple levels here on reversing that trend. You know, we just defined aging as a disease. Now, that's revolutionary because that 10 years ago, we weren't calling. We are calling aging inevitable. Now it's labeled as a disease. It has an ICD10 code, which is a diagnosable condition. So it is treatable. Right. And there are more therapeutics coming out. So, you know, I really. I think I like to emphasize health span of. We want good, quality living to the very end. And we want to promote enjoyment and fulfillment, fulfillment and abundance. And then we get into this scarcity versus abundance mindset. And so maybe we want to talk about that in kind of a more beautiful state of creation versus suffering. And the nice thing about this 3D reality is we have free will, so we can choose how we want to experience it. But people don't understand that that is a choice.

Yeah. And, you know, it makes me think of, you know, everyone can. Can feel how a stressful situation will impact them. You know, whether you're being chased by a tiger or stopped by a cop, the same physiological response is happening. Right? And even 10 minutes later, after the whole situation is done, those ideas are still pulsating and causing the same physiologic changes within you. Cortisol's going through the roof. Maybe some norepinephrine, epinephrine. So we have a bunch of both endocrine and neurological changes that are leading to also immune changes. Right. All these systems wreaking havoc. So if our thoughts are doing that, is it unreasonable to think that our thoughts can't do the opposite? Right? And I think that's what you're. What's. What you're getting at. I mean, yes, there's stress every day, every, everywhere. It's crazy times right now. But at the same time, we have some very ancient, powerful machinery here and here, right? And if we can only learn to tap into it and use it in a way that best serves us and our community and our world, we'd be at an advantage. Right. We think of the opposite of stress or just envisioning that. That future that we want to imprint, kind of that whole process of remembering the future, right. Through elevated Emotion and trying to connect with it in the way that you see it best and feel free to add to it. These are some things that we've been discussing a lot lately and I think it's fun to talk about because it's.

No, no, those are, I mean that is, that's the essence of what we're getting at. And it is, you know, layering these pieces is a lot of fun. Using the kind of the modern day tech and info and then filtering it through our lens with our just that historical component of a long lived medical system. So that that whole aspect of we haven't been taught how to create or the choices that we make actually do add up and being able to, you know, freeing ourselves from the past and separating from any future thought and living in the kind of the magical present moment. Right. Like we have all of these different thought processes, religions, spiritual pursuits, talking about being in the present moment and from there creating from your cup is full rather than your cup is empty because you are not going to be able to create from lack or want. You've got to create or live into that future self that is already. It's almost like you're remembering your future. That was one of the quotes that we got. We did this training through a Joe Dispenza organization called NCS for Workplaces. And we're creating a culture in our work of creators and folks that want to play at a higher level and have, have that ability really maximize the potential of what our forebrains are, our prefrontal cortexes are capable of. And so it gets into neuroscience and what are possibilities. So, you know, it actually reminds me of this study that I wanted to share, which is claim and age. So Harvard took these elderly men to a house up in the Berkshires outside of Boston and they told them and they were all in their 60s, 70s and 80s and they did blood work on them beforehand. Then they, you know, these are folk, you know, folks with disease and other things of aging that we typically see in society. And they told them to behave like they were 28 years old and they were playing music of that era. They were dressed that way. They had posters up and pictures representing those times of their youth. And what they discovered over two days of these guys pretending they were 28 was they actually came out of the house younger by just thinking themselves back to their earlier age and behaving that way. So they had a heightened state of emotion and they dropped their preconceived notions of who they were. Like one guy came in with A cane. He wasn't using a cane anymore when he left. And their markers, their biomarkers were actually younger as well. They had less inflammation, they had higher hormone levels, they had better quality of vitamins and minerals in their blood from their mindset. So, you know, the first thing is, can we really set the clock where we want? Well, yes. So I feel like I'm 28 most days, and I act like that most of the time too. And Dr. Nadal can attest, but it is like, why not do that? You know, we've got research to support it. Let's use it that way, you know?

Yeah, please. Absolutely.

On the flip side of that coin then, we have contributing factors to aging. And so, you know, living on Gaia or Mother Earth, we do have levels of toxicity and, you know, the state of the union, we don't have clean drinking water or food or air. And these things are produced free radicals in our body and they accelerate the aging process. So there are ways that, whether they be public policies, wars, do not contribute to the longevity of anybody on the planet. There are a lot of these items that contribute to our aging. So it's like, what side of the teeter totter do we want to be on? Glass half full or glass half empty? Personally, I choose the glass half full. I'm a radical optimist. But I also know by visualizing what I want the future to look like, we can actually create that. Now, this isn't just the dawning of the Age of Aquarius here, folks. There is work to be done here. But we could do that work with joy and lightness and ease and elation and even bliss, because that component of knowing in our hearts that we are going to create this reality. But if you aren't putting forth any vision of what that future is, if you're just going with the propaganda of what the programming is, it looks bleak, right? I mean, we're going through maybe the fifth mass extinction on the planet. I mean, we've got all kinds of signs to show that. And so it's how do you remain in a beautiful state of being and knowing and trusting that we actually can create it together? My goal with this platform and this discussion for us is to get people thinking longer. Like, if you, like I did, I put out I'm going to live to be 150 years old. Well, by saying that, it actually starts changing your behaviors, right? And maybe I'm privileged because I've got to sit with 90 year olds and 99 year olds and they say, you know, Doc, had I known I was going to live this long, maybe I would have taken better care of myself. Right? And it is true, like I do have that privileged seat in the office with people. It is very humbling actually that people come in, they are trusting their health to myself, my team. And we get to care and love them and really come up with plans and programs that help them out of suffering. Now ultimately the individual, you have to do this. You are response able. You have got the responsibility, response able. You have the ability for a response. And so one, you know, here at the kind of the tail end of the show, let's talk about some of those ways that we actually can program this thing because Dr. Nadal, you mentioned it like we can program it one way, we can program it the other way. So let's program it together in a, in a longevity fashion. Right. We, we have studied the blue zones. So just, you know, kind of skipping down, we did create a little bit of an outline for you. So even though we are all over the place today, there are seven pillars in the blue zones. And you know these concepts they studied. What are the blue zones? These are areas around the globe that were circled in a blue pen where they had the highest concentration of centurions, those living over 100. And you know, we have Loma Linda, California, they live 10 years longer than others in North America. I carrier, Greece. They're the lowest levels of middle aged mortality, lowest rates of dementia. Sardinia, Italy, this is the highest concentration of male centurions. The Italian men, they've got it. I guess it's maybe their jovialness. Okinawa, Japan, females over 70 are the longest lived population on the planet. Then Nicoya, Costa Rica, down on the peninsula, the world's lowest rates of middle aged mortality, second highest concentration of male centurions. And so they studied, you know, what were the qualities here. And we have seven pillars. Do you have those, Dr. Nadal?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if we think enough, we could almost kind of almost figure them out. Right? So moving naturally. Right. So most of them aren't going to the gym. We're talking about gardening, even house cleaning. I'm going to add probably dancing in there too. Yes, just moving naturally. Getting those lymphatics, blood flow, joy, community, that's all in that, right. Another one is purpose. You know, I mentioned the ikigai earlier and having a sense of purpose is huge. The Okinawans call it ikigai. Nicoyans call it pura de vida or pura vida. Right. Spanish are living the good life ultimately, right? Knowing your sense of purpose, it's worth up to adding seven years at least to your life. Right. And then less stress experienced. So they have routines that help shred stress, right? Everyone experiences stress. You can't be immune to it, but it's how you deal with it and how you process it to let it go that that makes a world of a difference. Right? Even things like some of these cultures remembering their ancestors. Prayer serves a big role regardless of the religion or spirituality. Right. Even naps listening to your body. How about that? If you're a little tired after a meal, it's okay to lie down for a few minutes and relax. And then happy hour was even mentioned. And there's more to it than discounted drinks. I mean just having that convivial like just community and connecting and talking. The next One is the 80% rule. I think this is a really important one because so many of us, when we're starving, we will eat till we eat till we eat. But guess what, there's the 80% rule. So basically eat till your stomachs are 80% full. Right? It's a 25 year old Confucian kind of mantra, how to hachi boo. It essentially reminds them to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full. And even further, eating like a king for breakfast, a commoner at lunch, and then the smallest meals at dinner, or maybe not even at all. So after you've gone through this entire fast. Yes, starting off with the biggest meal, giving your body those reserves and then tapering it gradually. There's a lot of talk on intermittent fasting and different dieting programs. But I love the simplicity in this because nutritionally it makes a lot of sense. Right, next, as far as what they're eating, we got heavy vegetables, mostly plant based diet, a lot of beans, fava, balak, soy, lentils, all cornerstones.

And then when it comes to meats.

They'Re only eating about five times a month, mainly pork. And that may be different from region to region. You know, some there might be more fish than others. Serving size is about 3 to 4 ounces of that protein. So that's about a deck of cards. You know, you go to your friend's barbecue and you want several ribs that might be a little bit more than you need. Definitely not hitting the 80% rule there. Right. So just some things to think about. You know, all these can be immediately applied and incorporated with time and then alcohol considerations.

Right.

This may be except for Seventh Day Adventists and other considerations, but usually they can die seven years earlier on Average for the teetotalers of just excessive drinking. Right. One to two glasses of wine a day. I know sometimes for males or females it can differ a little bit. But on average if there's one to two glasses of wine a day, it's actually it can be beneficial if you already are drinking. If you haven't drank for years, this doesn't mean you need to go out and get a bottle of wine because it's going to be good for you. If you're not drinking, that's okay. But that was something common throughout these blue zones. Okay. We do overdo it in North America and several other industrialized countries for sure. The community all but five of the 263 centurions interviewed belong to some faith based community attending some services up to four times per month. It adds about four to 14 years of life. That's a lot. I mean what does that community look like? It could be different for everybody. It can be a religious service, it could be making music, it could be chanting prayer, dervishes, gardening, you name it. I think the aspect of community is the take home there. So those are some of the main pillars.

I love it. I think ending on community is really appropriate. That is what we are here. It is what we gets us up in the morning. We get to come out and share our information with you all. We wouldn't be doing it without you. If you like today's show, make sure you go out, give us a five star review and also share it. Share us with your friends and family because we all do want to age well together. So let's go together. This is information you're not going to get from the mainstream media. The New York Times is definitely not going to be sharing this with you. They want you in a fear mindset so that you can get control. So we are looking to open it up. We want to have this discussion with you. Give us an email supportaturecuresclinic.com let us know what is a life worth living? What do you consider your pillars for longevity and let's do it together. Let's have some fun with this discussion we are launching right here. This is just the introduction. We are going to talk about the first tenet of aging next show which is don't die. So we are going to cover the top killers out there and what you can do about them, how to get assessed and really how to reverse them. So everybody, it has been a real pleasure.

Dr. Greg Eckel, Dr. Jonathan Nadal and.

This is what the health, the doctors chat series on the contact talk radio. We are here Tuesdays from 2 to 3pm Pacific Time. See you next week.