The 5 Proven Hacks To Slow Aging Everyday & Repair The Body | Dr. Mark Hyman

What are the daily and weekly practices that I use to keep me biologically younger as I grow chronologically older? First is food. As you know, I'm a big food is medicine guy. I'm a practicing physician. I focus on nutritional medicine, functional medicine for 30 years on real patients, and I've used food as medicine. And I'm just blown away and humbled by how our human bodies work. and how we need to personalize our nutritional approach. But there are a few universal principles that can guide you to the right diet. And I think there aren't too many people who are on either spectrum. I mean, maybe the extreme carnivore might disagree with something I'm going to say, but most people, whether you're paleo or vegan or keto or whatever it is, agree Most people, whether they're paleo or vegan or keto or whatever, agree on these principles. One, we should get rid of ultra processed food. We need to dramatically lower our intake of refined starches and sugars and processed foods that are killing us. Two, we should be eating food that's the highest quality we possibly can. And ideally we need to personalize our diet and we need to think of food as medicine. which is the guiding principle for all we're eating. I don't think there'd be anybody in the nutrition space who would disagree with any of those four ideas. And so when you personalize your diet, it should be based on your genetics, your metabolism, your preferences, obviously, but these are really simple principles. So within that, there's a lot of room for what you can eat. Personally, I think a balanced view that's not too extreme is what I call the Pegan diet. And it was sort of poking fun at the extremes of diet. right, of paleo and vegan. But we now know that these principles are, and I've written a book about it called the Pegan Diet, which lays out principles for eating in a nutritionally confusing world. And how do we optimize our health by focusing on quality, focusing on food as medicine and personalization? So first thing, we should be understanding that food is the single biggest bioregulator that we are interacting with. It's the single biggest thing that modifies our biochemical, physiological, hormonal neurotransmitter, pretty much every function, microbiome, everything is going in your body. Your gene expression is controlled by what you eat in real time. So you want to eat high quality food as best you can. Lots of colorful fruits and vegetables, not a ton of sugary fruits, but lots of good fruits can be fine if you're metabolically healthy. Lots of good fats, avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds are really important. Also, people eat more nuts and seeds, have more longevity and better health. Animal foods are definitely a big question mark for people, but I think without going into too much detail here, 'cause we're trying to cover all the five things, I think the data on meat I've discussed deeply in food, what the heck should I eat, in the Pegan diet, and also in Young Forever, I talked about protein and the need for certain kinds of protein as we age. So having good meat is important. I recently visited a ranch out here in Texas where I'm staying, and it was called Rome Ranch, and they provide incredible care to these bison that have really regenerated the soil and increased the water tables and increased biodiversity. Bald eagles are coming back, creaks are coming back, they'd have been dead for generations. Plants that have been dormant for 100 years are coming back because of the bison poop fertilizing them was quite amazing. And, they produce really healthy or generally raised meat. And there's a company called Force of Nature where you can get animal that were, you know, sort of raised in a way that's in their natural habitat and their natural species as they have for centuries and provide really high quality meat that's full of phytochemicals and protein and vitamins and minerals and things that are really essential for us. I think eggs also, pasture raised eggs are great. They had duck eggs on the farm, which I got, which are really great. if you're gonna eat fish, make sure it's low in mercury and toxins. Eat what I call the smash fish, sardines, mackerel, herring, anchovies and salmon, small salmon ideally. If you're gonna eat grains, make sure you eat more heirloom grains. You eat whole grains, not whole grain flours, or some can be fine like Himalayan, turmeric, buckwheat, completely minimally processed flours. If they're in the original heirloom state, they're higher in protein, lower in glycemic. trigging starches. They have higher levels of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. I love him only in the buckwheat, but I, I definitely would, would not be eating flour for most sources. And I would be avoiding gluten mostly, especially from the American dwarf wheat. Some ancient forms of grain can be fine if you're not gluten sensitive. Beans are great, you know, and, and I think they can be a great part of a healthy diet. Obviously, you know, you can't get, you can't get as much protein from beans and grains as you would from like four, six ounce of chicken or meat, you can get 30 grams of protein. You'd need six cups of brown rice and two cups of beans or two cups of beans to get that same amount. So it's a little harder as we get older. Sugar, obviously processed food, sugar, that's, that's just a problem. Ultra processed food should have zero part of your diet, like zero additives, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, all should be completely eliminated. If you're gonna have sugar, that's okay. But just think of it as a recreational drug. Small amounts occasionally can be fine, but not as a daily staple. And eat real sugar, have maple syrup, have honey, you know, I mean have sugar, but don't eat all those artificial weird things. Refined oils can be a problem. I think there are expeller pressed oils, there are high laic oils, there are, oh, they have good mixtures of omega threes and sixes. So I think the sort of narrative, it's all seed oils are bad or not oils are bad. I think it's problematic, but we have to be more, more specific. and it's a little nuanced, but I talk about what that is in my book. And dairy can be great if it's from sheep or goat, and if you're not allergic, but most traditional cow dairy is pretty bad for you, not because, you know, because of all the hormones in it, because of the A1 casein was just super inflammatory, whereas the casein, which is the protein in milk that's in sheep or goat is much less inflammatory. So that's sort of the high level on diet. And if you follow these principles, you can eat lots of different ways, but they're just really core principles of what you should be eating. Next is sleep. Sleep is so important and we don't prioritize sleep in this culture. We think we can cheat sleep and still do well, we can't. We need to practice good sleep hygiene. So what does that look like? Again, you know, people say, I have insomnia, I can't sleep. Well, they often don't practice good sleep hygiene. So go to bed and wake up at the same time every day as best possible. Use your bed for sleep and romance or sex, not TV or work. Create a nice environment in your bedroom. Really limit all the clutter and distractions. Keep it serene, muted colors, get rid of all that crap. Make sure you have blackout shades, or at least an eye mask. Light plays a huge role, and even if our eyes are closed and it's bright out, light will get in and it can affect our melatonin levels and affect our ability to sleep. Keep it quiet. If you're living in a noisy area, use earplugs.

Get grounded.

I think one of the things we don't realize is the electromagnetic frequencies can be a factor. And, they're actually grounding sheets and grounding tents. In New York City, I had a Geiger counter, which measures basically not a Geiger counter, but basically like a EMF detector. And, essentially it measures the ambient EMF or electromagnetic frequencies. And, it basically says, danger, danger, get out of our apartment. because of all the Wi-Fi and everything, there's like all these buildings and all these people with their own Wi-Fi and there's like 100 Wi-Fi things going on. And so we put a kind of like a basically like a Faraday cage, which is it blocks all the EMFs and you couldn't make a phone call inside the tent over your bed. So I encourage you to either shut off your Wi-Fi at night to get a kind of Faraday tent for your bed or something like that and try to keep all the electrical stuff away from your bed and don't check your devices and just Just get your device out of bed. Also, get rid of blue light exposure at night. You can use red light bulbs at home at night. You can use blue blocker glasses. You want to avoid computers, smartphones, tablets, at least two hours before bed. Really, use the blue blocker glasses after sunset. It can be great. Caffeine can be fine for people, but if you're a slow metabolizer, you can have a cup in the morning and that can affect your sleep at night. So, it can really interfere with sleep. if you're really struggling, I would encourage you to get off caffeine. Alcohol, I occasionally like to drink, but it is a super bad sleep disruptor. And I can tell when I wear my aura ring or when I'm, you know, tracking my sleep, when I drink something at night, my sleep is always much worse. And I, and I actually feel worse the next day. So I've pretty much given up mostly drinking. Occasionally I'll have a shot of tequila, but not, not on a regular basis also. Make sure in the morning you get light exposure. Getting 20 minutes of bright light exposure in the morning activates the light receptors in your eyes, it affects your brain, your pineal gland, and sets rising cortisol levels and lower melatonin and kind of helps you actually reset your system so you can get a deeper sleep at night. Also, don't eat three hours before bed. So give yourself three hours before your last meal in bed. I can't always do that, but having a heavy meal and going to bed, it's going to screw up your sleep. I went to a dinner party last night and I'm sure the guy wants to eat at six o'clock. And we didn't eat till nine o'clock at night. I came home and I went to bed at 11:30. I was still, by the time I finished dinner was 10, gotten to bed 11:30, it wasn't enough time. And I definitely could feel the effects today of not having as good of sleep. Also, don't work out at night. Exercising at night will stimulate you and interrupt your sleep. Also, get the crap out of your head that's spinning. So write down your worries. Maybe an hour before bed, do a little journaling. Write down what causes you anxiety, get stuff off your head that your to-do list, what your plans are, just free up your mind a little bit. One of my favorite hacks is a hot bath. I use Epsom salt and lavender oil to lower cortisol. Hot water helps to raise your body temperature, which helps you fall asleep faster. And, magnesium is absorbed through the skin, which helps you relax. And, it's great. So you get the cortisol lowering effects of lavender, and it's just a great, fun way to kind of wind down at night. Also, if you can stretch at night, do a little yoga stretching. If you're lucky, get a massage. Some of the best sleeps I've ever had were when I got a massage at night and then go to bed. It's like I just go into a whole different state. Also heating pads can be great. Warming your middle, heating pad, water bottle, a warm body helps. Don't take medications that mess up sleep, sedatives, antihistamines, stimulants, cold medications, steroids, often headache medication that takes caffeine in them. Be careful of those. Those can screw up your sleep. Try some herbs, passionflower, valerian root, magnolia, A lot of these things can be very helpful for sleep. Magnesium is one of my favorites. Take magnesium before bed, 2 to 400 milligrams. You can take magnesium citrate if you tend to be constipated, glycinate if you're more likely to just have normal bowels. Some of that melatonin, half a milligram to two milligrams can be helpful for some people. Other things, amino acids like GABA, theanine, 5-HTP, really helpful. Try guided meditation. Sometimes I'll listen to binaural beats at night, which is you can listen to them online and get a headphone and it really helps to really reset your brain, yoga nidra, guided relaxation, whatever you like, but I would encourage you to try that. And try my sleep masterclass. You can go to drhyman.com/sleep. So sleep is important. And exercise also important. Obviously, if there was a longevity pill, it would be exercise. Certain types of exercise are far more effective for optimizing our health or metabolism or lifespan. Aerobic conditioning, strength, keeping your muscle mass, being flexible, being agile, super important for staying healthy. You want to be able to, you know, do what I call the Centurion Olympics, basically. Peter Attia talks about the Centurion, you know, decathlon, which is like, what do you need to do? Get up off the floor, play with your grandkids, tie your shoes, you know, but that requires you to be fit and agile and flexible and build muscle. So really important. It has really powerful effects. It's like a stress and it's this hormesis strategy, which is a stress that doesn't kill you, that makes you stronger. And, what are the main ways we need to do with this? One is by boosting your VO2 max. Your VO2 max is basically how much oxygen you can burn a minute. And, that is an indirect measurement of your fitness level and also your mitochondrial function and your metabolism. so the higher it is, the longer you'll live. And the way to get it up is by high intensity interval training and like sprints. Also muscle, super important, maximizing muscle is key. So strength training 30 minutes, three times a week minimum, and having adequate protein after. Getting flexible, yoga classes, stretching, key to keeping your body supple. You know, the stiff old man syndrome is a real thing. So make sure you keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments pliable, flexible. It'll help with your mobility, agility, balance, living pain free. Yoga is really great. So I encourage you to pick up some yoga. You can, there's online classes, easy to do. What do I do? Well, I do four to six days of cardio with interval training. I do road bike mountain biking, tennis is my favorite. Cause I don't even know I'm exercising. Hiking, sometimes I do classes, swimming, 30, 60 minutes session. I do strength training. I use TB 12 sports resistance bands. Sometimes I use weights. I'll do that 30 minutes, four or five times a week. And yoga, I love yoga. So hot yoga, vinyasa yoga, a couple of times a week, stretching a little bit every day, but I definitely get into the yoga. I wish I could do that every day, actually. Also, the next, and so the last, one of the last major things is building community and a sense of purpose. You know, a lot of us, you know, don't have a deep community and loneliness and isolation are big risk factors for for disease and early death. So also your mind, you know, what happens between the ears determines so much about your health. So develop a growth mindset, learn about the world, explore and be curious about yourself and the world. Figure out what's not working and then in your life and take action to fix it. Create a vision statement for yourself. Like what matters to you? What are your goals? What are your dreams? Do good things for other people. Altruism is actually A medicine literally affects us in a positive way in our biology. Our brain circuits get rewarded with dopamine like they do with heroin or cocaine with altruism. And it's much safer and much healthier. So find something that matters to you. Be part of making the world a better place. There was a well-known Indian guru named Neem Karoli Baba who said, you know, you could reach awakening with a simple plan. Love everyone, serve everyone. And he added, feed everyone. So, that's pretty simple. Rules for living. Volunteer, give your, give back to your community. Practice kindness to those around you. Also, there's a way to take your struggles and your pain and transform them into a purpose. Many of us have had, you know, traumas in our lives. We've experienced hard things, and we can use those things to help others. And I certainly, you know, did that. I got very sick when I was in my 30s. I had chronic fatigue, and that led me to understand the body in a different way and discover functional medicine. And I, and I see, I saw how many people were suffering. they don't need to with solutions that are available to them. Also find out what makes you happy, what lights you up, what you're passionate about, and do those things. I love to play tennis. I love to be in nature. I love to hang out with my friends. I love to listen to music. So I find those things that give me joy and I go do them. Find out what you care about and what your dreams are and follow those dreams. You can reinvent your life at any age. So just makes Sure you take the time to explore your life and make those changes that you need to actually bring more passion and joy to your life and make sure you're connected to community because that's so powerful. It's a part of our medicine is this community is medicine. And many of us are, as I mentioned, socially isolated and doesn't matter what it is. It could be a book club, it could be bowling buddies, it can be anything. But the more connected you are to people, the healthier you are, the more your relationships are solid in your life, the better your health is going to be and the longer you're going to live. Also, find out and see people who inspire you. You're only as healthy as the five people you spend the most time with. So if all your friends are.

Eating.

McDonald's and drinking soda all day, somebody call it diabetes water, then that's probably what's going to happen to you. But if all your friends are watching Netflix and binging on junk food, you're probably going to be in trouble if your friends are drinking green juices and doing yoga, you know, probably in their focus on growth and development, you're probably going to be healthier too. Also, be nice to yourself. Most of us are pretty hard on ourselves. And if we actually talk to our friends the way we talk to ourself with our inner dialogue, we probably wouldn't have any friends. Ram Dass talks about this idea of non-judgmental loving self-awareness how do we recognize our negative inner dialogue and how do we how do we overcome that? Also prioritize your own self care. It's not selfish to take care of yourself. Uh, you know, the more you take care of yourself, the better you can be in your life for others. So, you're going to become a source of energy and light for yourself and for others. And I think, you know, focusing on productivity is not the answer. It's on filling up our hearts and our souls. So do those simple things that bring you back to yourself and support your health. Uh, and I know it's for me, it's super important. So after this, I'm going to go for a walk with a friend, and then I'm going to go play tennis later this afternoon, and I, invited family members over for dinner tonight. So I try to do this on a daily basis to add those things that bring value. Also, learn how to manage your stress response. We can't stop stress. It's happening all the time. But we can manage it. And we have to learn those techniques. It can be breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, guided meditation, forest bathing, which we call taking a walk in the woods, writing down your feelings, journaling, super helpful. you know, gratitude Journal, super important. It's actually data on this. It's not just some goofy idea. It's actually something that, where there's real data on practicing gratitude as a method for healing your body and healing yourself. Martin Seligman talks about this in his book, flourish, where he unpacks a science of gratitude. It's how it affects your health and happiness. So focus on what's right and good, not on what's wrong and bad. A lot of us are, you know, focusing what's wrong instead of what's right. And I think We just shift our focus and we'll often be much happier. Also, build your friend network. You know, take time to invest in your friends, whether it's, you know, gatherings you have weekly, it could be a breakfast club, it could be a Zoom gathering you have with your friends all over the country or world. Just make sure you invest in that. Massage is great if you can do it. It helps breathing out stress. I love mine, one of my favorite techniques. You can trade massage with a friend, with a partner. You can get a professional massage if you can afford it. exercise also a great way to reduce stress. So there's so many things, the five different things you can do. They're so important. What you eat, exercise, your sleep, your meaning, purpose, and learning how to manage stress, all super important for living a long and healthy life.

The simple ways you can reset your rhythms and it's not really as hard as you might think. In fact, the best way to do this is really simple. It's really free, which means you can start doing them right away. First of all, getting rhythm. You know, I got rhythm that song. Well, you want to get in rhythm. Schedule when you go to bed and get up every day. If you can have the same bedtime and the same wake time, your rhythms will naturally start to go back into balance. So it's important to go to bed at the same time every night, to get up at the same time. It's not always possible, I know, but try to do it as best as possible. Over time, your body's going to adjust to that new schedule and learns when it has to go to sleep, when it has to wake up. and just make sure you try to keep that even on weekends, vacations, it's hard sometimes, but try to do your best. If you want to adjust your clock, for example, to a new schedule or to go to bed earlier, you can't just do it overnight. You have to sort of shift slowly. So if your bedtime now is midnight but you want to go to sleep at 10, you can start dialing back by, let's say, half an hour earlier for a week and then another half hour earlier until you get to when you want to be. and that can be also for your wake time. If you plan to, you know, you want to wake up earlier, you have to slowly change that. Otherwise, you're gonna not feel good. And you can take your time and do this process slowly. Your body will naturally adapt. The next thing is really create a great sleeping environment. And that means dark. And I use blackout Shades. I use. Some people use those eye masks, make it quiet, cool. The body sleeps best to probably 67, 66 degrees in the room. I know that sounds cold, but you need blankets, and the better you'll sleep. I once went. winter camping with my daughter in Utah and it was like 30 degrees or whatever. And then the yurt and we, you know, there was no heat and we were in my sleeping bag and I slept the best I slept in years. So cold actually can help you sleep well. Use earplugs, make sure there's no noise if you can. So really create a great ideal sleeping environment, make sure your bed's comfortable and so forth. Also, try to get that in the morning, 20 minutes of sunlight. That's gonna make a big difference in helping your rhythm, helping you even sleep better at night. Exercise is great. Not too late at night because that'll activate you, but during the day, in the morning, afternoon, you can exercise and that's going to give you more energy in the day. It's a wonder drug. It actually helps boost melatonin production. And basically just don't do it late at night and it's better for your body natural rhythms to sort of slow down and calm down in the evening. The other two drugs that we use all the time to either perk ourselves up, uppers and downers that are legal, are caffeine and alcohol. So caffeine is an upper, alcohol is a downer. and those often will screw up sleep. And I have an Oura ring. I don't have any relationship with them, but I track my sleep. I kind of interesting to see what happens. And I know I was in Europe recently in Italy, and I drink more wine than I do normally. I don't usually drink much at all. And, you know, you kind of went in Italy, Rome, whatever, do it. Rome's too. And I noticed that my sleep was terrible, that my heart rate didn't go down, that my variability was worse and that my sleep was more disrupted. So it's really not a good idea. So caffeine also is important. Make sure you, if you drink coffee, don't have it in the afternoon because it has a long half-life, five to seven hours, which means, you know, half of it's out of your body in five to seven hours. So if you're trying to go to sleep and still got caffeine in your system, it's going to be harder. Now, it depends on your metabolism. Some people are super fast metabolizers, metabolizers, some are slow. But it's really important to try to get either eliminate coffee and alcohol or at least for sure, track how they affect your biology and your sleep. And basically the best thing if you're having sleep trouble is just to quit them. And then there's screens. We are so addicted to our screens. Me included. I work, I read, I use Kindle and all that, which might be better, but blue light is a really important disruptor of sleep. Now we need blue light in the morning to activate cortisol and all the natural rhythms and we need sunlight and so forth. When you're using blue light at night, whether it's from fluorescent lights or LED lights in your house or your computer or your smartphone, it inhibits melatonin and can lead to cancer, not just sleep disruption, but all kinds of horrible things happen. Light is medicine, and you want the right light at the right time. You want more red light at night, kind of blue light in the morning. You can actually get even in your house these red light bulbs for night, and you can get blue blocker glasses. There's ways to try to protect yourself.

Watching TV before you go to bed.

Not a great idea. But if you're doing that, use the blue blocker glasses. And, you know, you can reset your rhythm. So the key to health is not just food and exercise and sleep and stress reduction, but it's also rhythm. And it's important to remember that rhythm is a key ingredient for long-term health. Sleep is super important. Now, our bodies know this, and that's why we spend an average maybe a third of our entire lives sleeping. But sleep related issues are also really common. In fact, about 70 million Americans, we've all experienced periods when we have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. You may also have had trouble staying awake in the evening or getting out of bed in the morning or focusing on your work because you're too tired. Well, there are many reasons that can account for an occasional sleepless night or a few days of having trouble focusing on the job. But if you find yourself having persistent sleep issues, it's important to look at why. And it could be that your circadian rhythms are out of whack. Now, have you ever experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter, which I certainly did many times in medical school delivering babies as an ER doc, you know how off you can feel after that. When your biological and circadian rhythms are out of balance, so is your health and you feel it. And, you know, one of my favorite books about this is called the Circadian Prescription by one of the leading scientists, doctors that I think has ever lived, a colleague of mine, a mentor, Dr. Sidney Baker, who's really the father of functional medicine. He's an unsung hero and he wrote a book called the Circadian Prescription, if.

You want to learn more.

But let's talk about what are circadian rhythms? Well, it's common to talk about circadian rhythm and it's kind of a bit of a misnomer because there are many circadian rhythms in your body. And they basically are the rhythms your body uses every day to keep all of your daily systems going, your daily cycles in your body. Now, the most well-known and the one we're going to focus on today is your daily cycle of sleep and wakefulness. Now, other cycles control when you're hungry, when your body's hormonal activity has to do this or that, and many, many other bodily processes. Now, most circadian rhythms basically follow a 24-hour cycle. Circadian actually is from Latin, which means about a day. And they're guided by environmental cues like daylight, regular mealtimes, physical activity, even interactions with other people. And these cues are called zeitgebers. I don't know if I pronounced it right, but yeah, that's a real, I think it's a German word, with light being the most important one. So basically rhythm is a key part of being healthy. It's not just exercise and eating and sleeping. in dealing with stress, but also rhythm. And it's important because our bodies are biological organisms and we have to keep them in balance in a rhythm. So what's the science behind circadian rhythms? Well, your body's circadian rhythms are governed by this internal clock. It's in your brain. It's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, big word, but anyway, it's located in your hypothalamus, the sort of control center in your brain, command central, so like the Air Traffic Control Center that regulates a lot of hormones and body functions. And this super-chismatic nucleus basically has about 20,000 neurons that are activated when your eyes perceive light. Now, when this happens, it releases a series of hormones, including cortisol, which helps you wake up and be fully alert at the right time. That's why I recommend in the morning, people get 20 minutes of sunlight first thing if they can by going outside, no sunglasses, but let your body be exposed to that light. And that triggers the release of cortisol and starts your circadian rhythms. It can even help with sleep. It's a really powerful hack that you can use to help reset your biological and circadian rhythms. Your body also uses other clues, these zeitgebers in your environment, to determine what time of day or night to sync up this or that rhythm in your body. And it's quite an amazing thing. There's a whole science even of chronobiology about, for example, which are the better times to give chemotherapy drugs for different cancers based on the activity of that organ, which is pretty amazing. Even in regular medicine, it's considered a legitimate strategy for how to actually time drugs based on your body's natural biological rhythms. You can just kind of Google chronobiology or go on PubMed and find more about it. So, what is it that kind of throws your circadian rhythm out of whack? Well, in a completely natural environment, your body's clock would normally be pretty dialed in. But in the 21st century, we live in a pretty screwed up world. There's so many things that throw us off balance, like screens, computers, phones, working overnight shifts, environmental stressors, all kind of knock our circadian rhythms out of whack. I know I certainly am a victim of that. I travel a lot. I go jet lag, travel different time zones, and I'm constantly shifting my biological rhythms, and it has a huge impact. In fact, they actually did a study on football players in football games, when you were a home team, you did better than, for example, if you played a team that had to travel across time zones. So if you were a team that traveled across time zones, statistically, you were going to lose far more often than if you were playing in your own time zone because of the important effect of rhythm on our performance and our health. So they also change these rhythms as we get older. For example, maybe when you get older, you're likely to go to sleep and wake up earlier, even if your teenage self preferred to stay up late and sleep till noon. that's because of these shifts in our hormones and biological rhythms as we go through life. Now, it's totally understandable if your circadian rhythms get off balance because of all these different insults we have to deal with in the 21st century, but they don't have to stay that way and you can learn how to dial in your own biological rhythms.

So, let's talk about how people manage it.

Well, one of the ways they manage screwed up rhythms is sleep medication, but that's not great. Now, it can be useful when prescribed properly in a limited short-term way. but it's a terrible long-term strategy because the medication actually doesn't really alter your internal clock. You can become dependent on it, it manages the symptoms, and the root cause of your sleep issues still are not really addressed. So if you need a little extra help getting asleep, you could try magnesium at night, melatonin, different herbs can work like passionflower, valerian root, chamomile, magnolia. There's a lot of herbs that can be very helpful. So there's lots of hacks.

The role of community connection relationships on our health. What do the longest living and most joyous people in the world have in common? Well, they all share one common trait, a sense of belonging, of community, of connection. You know, when we have a tribe to live on, when we are connected to others, we have a sense of belonging. When we feel there's a worth outside of ourselves, we can really tap into an incredible array of our own inner pharmacy, not the doctor's pharmacy, but our own inner biochemistry lab in our brain that regulates so much of our health. So when we're talking about today is how the strength of our relationships is one of the key factors, maybe the key factor in determining longevity. I'll just tell you a quick story about a community I might have mentioned before, but it's Rosetta, Pennsylvania, and it was read about this years ago in one of Deepak Chopra's books. And they found that there was this tribe of, not tribe, a community of Italians that came over en masse from Italy, from this little town Italy. And they were all different levels of society, wealth and achievement and success, at least monetarily. But they all came over. But the thing that was unique about them was that they had a deep sense of community. And no matter what station life you were, who you were, everybody celebrated everything together. All the holidays, all the birthdays and the weddings and the funerals and everything was in community. And then when they came to the States, they adopted the same crappy lifestyle habits as Americans, but they didn't die at the same rate because they had this sense of connection. Now we know a lot about this research because the biggest, one of the biggest factors in in terms of your risk for premature death is loneliness. Being lonely and socially isolated is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. That's really serious. So biological aging as a result of all of our stressors and, and our psychological stressors and relational stressors or lack of connection is really important. Lack of physical touch, lack of intimacy, plays a huge role, not lack of being understood and seen and witnessed. plays a huge role in so much of the ailments that we're suffering, not just mental illness, but also physical illness and our longevity. So this whole idea of sociogenomics, I actually came up with this term years ago when I was in Haiti, and then it became part of medical literature, not because of me, but because other people also started clamoring onto it. And it was this idea that our social relationships and our social networks may be more important than our genetic connections. in determining our health and our health outcomes. And that our lifestyle certainly influences our genes, but so does our social connections, our relationships influence our gene expression. And it's really not an abstract theory or notion. It literally is biology. Our thoughts, our beliefs, our relationships all drive real changes that we can measure in our gene expression that can trigger inflammation, stress hormones. So for example, you're having a conversation with somebody, if it's a loving, connected, intimate conversation, your anti-inflammatory genes will turn on, your healing and repair genes will turn on. Whereas if you're in a conflictual relationship or a conversation with somebody, you're gonna have your stress hormones increase, you're gonna have inflammation increase, you're gonna increase all sorts of bad things in your body that are produced by your body that cause harm. So we have huge, huge, huge in motivation, I think, to focus as a, as a key part of our health strategy and just life happiness strategy, a deep sense of community and making sure we build that. So, our social connections, our community and relationships all are associated with long lifespan, with a better mental health, with improved physical health, and things like blood pressure, waist circumference, body mass, inflammation. Now, I was in Ikaria and Sardinia, which are two of the Blue Zones, and the Quepos Peninsula. And, one of the things these communities have in common where people live to be longer than anywhere else, and I wrote a lot about this in Young Forever, my new book was the power of community. They all were part of this fabric, and they all had their place, they all had their role, they all had a meaning and purpose. Even if you're 100 years old, I remember Julia was 103 months, she said, and she basically was still working at 100 years old, making all sorts of wedding accoutrements, like doilies and little lace things. I don't know what they do or nearly, but it was kind of cool. See, she was constantly working and making stuff for all these weddings and was still involved in, in the community life. So I want to share a little bit about a study that is kind of reflects the power of this. And it was an 80-year study called the Harvard study of adult development, and it had been producing data on so many different things on, on who lives longer, happier, healthier lives. And they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people Thrive, what makes them well. So what were the lessons from this study was 84 year study, right? Long study. They were tracking the same people and over generations asking thousands of questions, hundreds of measurements to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And they were giving these people were giving regular updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status. They filled out questionnaires and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and their hopes or disappointments or accomplishments regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more. And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. Then researchers use this data to assess how people's lives, their experiences, their attitudes affect their wellbeing. And one of the thing that was so powerful from this study was sort of surprising. It wasn't career achievement, it wasn't exercise, it wasn't a healthy diet. that determine the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the study's leaders that are, I mean, obviously the people started the study are dead. The current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger from Harvard and Mark Schultz have a new book. It's called the Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. And It's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, the Doctors Pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from the study about how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like? What are the choices we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead. we can spend too much time on social media, but we often don't really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships. And for me, I know as personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this as opposed to like when you have kids and a career and you try to just kind of get by and it's like sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it's really important to find and it even can be just one or two good friends. It makes a huge difference. Now, when these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really actually benefit from this interview because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships and then they considered sort of looking and finding, well, how can we improve that? So maybe took look at your own life. What's your social life like? Who are the people in your life that you care most about, that you want to have a relationship? Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships. So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you and less time with people who drain you and are or, you know, energy steps. So I, you know, I think it's important to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. You know, sometimes you meet with people and all they want to do is complain and go on and on about everything. And I think there, you know, there are other people who, when you're around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play, and it's just that's what you want. You know, prioritize your relationships. We schedule in exercise. We make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet. We focus on our career and work. But we don't focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up and being present for us rather than zoning out on social media, you know, rather than like, you know, doing a million things at once, focus on your relationships. You know, during COVID I think we all felt a little isolated. And so I reached out to about six of my close male friends. And we all have known each other for 40 often, plus years, maybe 35, the smallest, the fewest, I think was 25 years. And so we've known each other and we formed this group. And every Tuesday at six o'clock, we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done. And it's something you can do. It doesn't take any organization. You just need a Zoom link or it's really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that allow you to be seen and known and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Big time to talk to people, right? And sometimes those small relationships that matter. But a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend for conversation once a day, dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends lowers your stress hormones. Pretty good. and also, it's not all about you, right? So take time to ask questions. Find out what's exciting for them. Find out what they're struggling with. Find out what makes them happy. Have them share their life with you and value their opinions. Be present, focus, and don't just kind of be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar and see what the effects will be over time. super important. Next thing is be kind. My grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, I met this new friend. She says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family. And how do we be kind to each other?

And.

The relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. There was a research study in Michigan State that looked on data for 2,500 married couples. And they found they were, you know, how good they were in five different dimensions. Were they extroverts? Were they agreeable? Were they conscientious? Were they stable emotionally? Were they open to doing new things and experiences? And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind and positive you were, the more likely you were to be happy. So People invest a lot of time in finding someone who's perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story. It's more about being kind to the people you care about and fostering those deep connections. Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved, which is called coptuiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it's really about learning to apologize, learning to to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication, and owning your stuff. Like I said, also a great way to build relationship is to ask questions instead of talking about yourself. Ask questions about somebody. Show that you care, show that you're interested in what they care about or thinking about. If someone wants advice, don't just give them your opinion. Ask them questions to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves. Also, don't be shy about expressing your love. There are lots of ways to love and lots of ways to express it. Maybe it's simple things, you know. I had a flight that came in the other night late and I usually take the Uber home. My partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like it just brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing. We're 10, 15 minutes from the airport here and it wasn't a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness, and it was really powerful. So help your friends with a project, you know, ask them what they need to do, whether it's clean up the garage or work on a project together. You know, call an old friend. Maybe they haven't heard from you a while. Maybe you just want to check in on them, ask them how they're doing. Maybe you want to focus on helping somebody who's trying to do something that, you know, may be difficult for them. Try to support them and give them some love. Also, when you have a partner or a close friend, do little acts of kindness. Give them a little gift, you know, buy them something they like, you know, get them something that makes them smile. It can be super simple. You know, when you often don't do these acts, kind of life just, it's a little bit flatter. And when you do them, it's super fun. Like, like I said, when my partner picked me up at the airport, it was like, wow, you know, I got that she really cared. Also, tell people how they, you feel about them. Don't wait till their eulogy to tell them all the things you like about them. Be specific. Give people feedback about what you love about them, what you like about them, what makes you happy, how you feel in their presence. Who would you be without them? You know, who would you, who would you be now that you're with them? What, what do they inspire you to do? And, and thank them for, for what they've do and how they show up for you. Don't be shy. Like I said, don't wait till someone's dead to write a eulogy about them. It's better to have eulogies when you're alive. And I actually had a group, friend group, where we would get together and on people's birthdays we would basically go around and for everybody's birthday we would share a little bit about what they're like and what we like about them, what we love about them, something it inspires us about them. And it's like getting a living eulogy. It's pretty awesome. So, I really, really, really invested in my own friendships, in my own community, and I think it's a critical aspect of our health. And as I get older, it becomes more and more important. So, make sure that you take the time to invest in good relationships because good relationships is just important or maybe more than eating healthy and exercising and giving up sleep.

Nourishing our own spirit and our own mental health and our own bodies is so important and it should not be an afterthought. In fact, many of us never think.

About it at all.

But in places like the Blue Zones, they've naturally incorporated many practices that help them live to be well over 100 that we can learn from. They focus on community and connection and meaning and purpose and rest.

They have a lot of chilling time and hanging out.

In our fast-paced society with to-do lists, calendars, schedules, extra-curricular activities, building careers, raising families, taking work home, emailing at night. I mean, it's made self-care and mental health pretty low on the totem pole of sort of priorities for our lives. But the truth is you really can't live a happy, healthy, fulfilled life and a long one if you neglect to nourish your mind and your spirit and your body. So it might be hard to imagine, but your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, grief, joy, sadness, love, anger, they're all transmuted into biological signals that change your gene expression, that regulate inflammation in your body, that alter your hormones and your microbiome. Literally, your bacteria in your gut are listening to your thoughts and changing for good or bad, depending on what you think or feel. Your neurotransmitters are regulated by your thoughts, obviously, neuroplasticity, your mitochondria, pretty much every aspect of your biology is regulated by what you do and what you think.

And how you live.

So I'm going to focus today mostly on the mind and and your spirit and how do we how do we take care of those things in a way that nourishes us because it's energy that allows us to live a long.

And productive healthy life.

So how do we do self-care? How do we change our mindset? How do we learn about how Community impacts our health? Well, there's a lot of information about how self-care or mindset or community all help improve factors for health and longevity. For example, if you're lonely, your risk of death is equal or more than that of someone who's obese. Being lonely is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. And many people in the world and in America particularly don't have someone they can call if something bad happens or they have a thing they need to talk about or someone who's really a deep intimate connection, even one person, which is really tragic. So practicing behaviors that focus on self healing, self compassion, connection with others are really important. And self love is hard, but it's gotta be your focus because until you take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else. So focusing on things like improving what you eat and exercising and stopping smoking, practicing simple self care, Improving your overall health and well-being and optimizing your sleep are so important for your overall quality of life. Self-compassion is pretty important because when you are loving towards yourself, I mean think about it, most of us, if we put our inner thoughts on a loudspeaker and we broadcast in the world, people would think we're crazy, first of all. Second of all, if we talk to our friends the way we talk to ourselves, we wouldn't have any friends.

So, Be nice to yourself.

Self-compassion is associated with fixing a lot of problems, including physical health symptoms, mental health outcomes, blood sugar control, people with diabetes, improves resiliency in cancer outcomes, mental health in people who actually have cancer. So it's really important to practice self-love and self-compassion. Also nurture your social connections, your community, your relationships. Doing that has been associated with dramatically increased lifespan. improved health span. I was just talking to somebody whose grandmother died at 103 and she loved donuts and she was overweight. They called her Chubby Bubby, which is Bubby is a Yiddish word for grandmother.

And, she was 103 years old.

But, what she did have was a joy for life. What she did have was a deep group of connected friends and social network. What she did have was a great sense of humor. And, she, through her mind was able to to overcome a lot of things.

That she was doing bad to her body.

So, when you actually have these connections and you have a deep social network, it will increase your lifespan, careers of health, including blood pressure, your waist circumference, body mass, it reduces inflammation. And, this is because of this phenomenon we call sociogenomics. Sociogenomics is the idea that our social interactions regulate our biology, they regulate our immune system. So, if you're having a conflict with somebody, you're going to turning on inflammatory genes. If you have a loving, deep connection with someone, you're going to turn on anti-inflammatory genes. That's how powerful this stuff is. Another really important thing is your mindset. If everything is always a disaster, crisis, a problem versus everything is a gift and you're grateful and happy, it has a huge impact on your health.

And honestly, you know, I, my, I.

Was a joke that worrying works because 99 of the time, what you worry about doesn't come out.

Come true.

So the point is that, you know, we make ourselves crazy most of the time by our, our thoughts and by our beliefs. So people who ruminate with negative thoughts, people who have a kind of a curmudgeonly negative Outlook often tend to have shorter life and poor physical mental health. And those who focus on positive thoughts and future goals and rewards are much better chance of having a long life, a healthy life, and a better well-being physically and mentally. My joke always is that optimists live longer even if they're wrong.

And it's true. If you look at the data, your.

Mindset plays a huge role. Optimism plays a huge role on your longevity. Anger is also a big problem. We have unresolved anger that eats at us and also spills out and hurts others. But anger it's often repressed emotion. And when people are not expressing themselves, when they're not able to share their truth, it comes out often as kind of very harsh and aggressive anger. But what's really interesting is, and this is really from a lot of Dr. Gabor Mate's work, in looking at breast cancer studies, he pointed out that those women who who had inability to express their anger, who were always nice, actually had a much higher risk of cancer and a bad outcome from cancer, regardless of the stage or the grade or any type of the biology of the cancer. If your emotions are inflamed, so is your biology. Carolyn Mace, who's an author in a medical intuitive, says that our biography becomes our biology. It's true the other way. Our biology can become our biography. our microbiome, for example, affects our mood, our thoughts, and so forth, but also our life story can become transmuted into biological signals that can really hurt us. Candace Pert talked about the molecules of emotion based on her work at the NIH, which established the whole field of psycho-neuro-immunology about how our emotions and our hormones and our neurotransmitters and our immune system are all constantly in dialogue with each other. So literally, your immune cells are listening to your thoughts. and it's important because if you don't address this in yourself, it actually can lead to bad health outcomes and by changing your perspective by actually learning how to tell the truth, by expressing your feelings in a way that's kind, not with meanness and aggressiveness, but with kindness, it can have a profoundly liberating effect on your life and also improve your biology tremendously. The thing that's really critical for your health and for longevity is having a sense of purpose. Just having a sense of meaning and purpose extend life by seven years. If you eradicate all heart disease and cancer from the face of the planet, the total life extension would be seven years. So having a sense of purpose is hugely important. That's what's going on in the blue zones. They all have a sense of connection and purpose and belonging. It's associated with well-being with improved physical and cognitive health. lower rates of depression, slower aging, even psychological well-being and having a sense of purpose leads to increased telomere length and slower shortening of the telomeres, whereas chronic stress does the opposite. It decreases telomere length and accelerates aging and oxidative stress.

So really important to look at your.

Life and see why you get up in the morning. I think Steve Jobs said once in a commencement speech, if you look in the mirror in the morning and you don't love what you're doing and you're not excited to go to work, You better change what you're doing because this is only ride we get. This is not a dress rehearsal. So what are the ways practically that you could start to reclaim your life? What are the ways you can prioritize self-care and reset our stress response? Well, the first is just breath. We all walk around breathing and it's available to us 24/7 and it's free. So I like the simple take five breath.

There's a lot of ways to do.

It, but you take five breaths in and out. slowly. So into the count of five, out to the count of five. You can hold for five at the bottom if you want, and then five breaths in like that to the count of five in, and the count of five out. You do that when you wake up before each meal and at bedtime, and that can have a profound effect on your health. It only takes a few seconds. Also, there's things like meditation. You can use guided meditation. There's all kinds of apps out there like Calm or Headspace. you can do guided imagery. Yoga nidra is wonderful. I like that we just lay down. I'm kind of lazy, but you can lay down even for 10 minutes. It makes a huge, huge effect on your health, improves stem cell function, reduces inflammation, improves depression, anxiety, sleep. I mean, the effects of meditation and stress reduction in the body are huge. And if you don't have 10 minutes.

To meditate or do something like that.

Every day, you might want to look at your life and see what's wrong with it because that is not good. If you don't have 10 minutes take care of yourself. Start a regular yoga practice. Just moving your body, stretching things out, getting all the knots and tension out really helps. Even 10 minutes of yoga a day is really great. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, there's all kinds of great resources online for free yoga classes. So breathing and stretching can really help reset your nervous system. Beyond the woods in nature, we all have a nature deficit disorder. They now call it forest bathing. We used to call it taking a walk in the woods. But basically, ideas get out of nature. get close to the earth and feel the elements. It really helps bring your nervous system back into alignment. Also, write down what's going on inside. We found from journaling, which is really interesting, people journal about their inner feelings for 20 minutes a day, like their true thoughts and feelings. If they had rheumatoid arthritis or asthma.

Versus them just writing about like what.

I did yesterday, for example, which they.

Did a control group.

They found that the people who wrote about their authentic feelings, had a dramatic reduction in autoimmune symptoms, in inflammatory numbers on lab tests, in asthma symptoms, and an objective lung function.

So this is just writing in your.

Journal can have profound effects in that way. Also, get connected, right? Get someone in your world who you like and make them close, right? Whether it's a friend or a family member, a spouse, Even if you're not around in the same areas, your close friends may be from college when you're younger, get them on Zoom, get a group together, meet every week in person, get a support group going so you can get a safe healing environment to share your life, all the parts of your life, the ups, the downs, the good, the bad. So being seen and known is really some of the best medicine out there. Start exercising and doing strength training. because exercise helps you boost the feel good neurotransmitters, it helps boost serotonin, dopamine, resistance training helps actually reduce the decline in testosterone. So basically it actually helps your energy, motivation and mood. So it's basically a win-win-win. So these are simple things that we can incorporate in our life on a daily basis and have profound, profound effects. So remember, you can't just go around doing, doing, doing, and giving, giving, giving. You need to pause and take care of yourself because if you don't, you're.

Going to pay the price.

So make sure you take care of yourself, practice self-love, self-compassion, work on building a mindset that helps you have a positive outlook on life, build your relationship and community, figure out what your purpose is. And it doesn't have to be grandiose like saving the world. It can be simply just being a good grandparent or being a member of your community or whatever it is. that's really critical and all these things are essential to having a long, fulfilling, healthy life.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. High blood pressure is a real killer. It's the silent killer. You often don't know you have it, but it's a huge driver of kidney failure, strokes, heart attacks, dementia. It's a big deal. Now, normally it's treated with medications.