The 5 Simple Hacks For INSANE LONGEVITY You Can Implement TODAY

If your insulin levels are high and your glucose levels are erratic, you are going to shorten your life.

What's your number one wellness tactic for longevity?

Number one tactic is and strategy is to keep my insulin and my glucose levels down. So I am really a believer in the fact, based on all the research I've seen, that if your insulin levels are high and your glucose levels are erratic, you are going to shorten your life and we don't want that. the ways that I actually do this on a day-to-day basis, the first tool I would say that I use is my continuous glucose monitor. So this is a sensor that you're wearing on your arm that's telling you in real time what your glucose levels are. And so through this device, I can actually totally tweak and tailor my diet to keep my glucose levels more stable and learn which foods are spiking my glucose, which aren't. And I know that when I'm keeping my glucose levels more stable, I am also going to be improving my insulin sensitivity. I'm wearing that most days, to be honest. I probably wear it maybe six to eight months out of the whole year to kind of keep me accountable and keep-- I've been wearing it for a couple of years and I'm still learning. And then I get my insulin, my fasting insulin checked every three to four months and just make sure that it's really staying in that ideal two to six milli-IUs per milliliter range. And those two things together, knowing that my glucose is in a stable healthy range and my fasting insulin is low, to me is like a surefire way to know I'm setting myself up foundationally for good metabolism that's so key to longevity. How about you? What's the top of your list?

I mean, you stole mine, so. Which is keeping your blood sugar down.

The other ones kind of feed into that one. Yeah.

Blood sugar, insulin low, and cutting out the starch and sugar. That's number 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 on the list of longevity hacks. And I just tell you a quick story. When I was at Canyon Ranch years ago, there was a head of preventive cardiology from Harvard who came and gave a speech and he said, if you would take a group of 100-year-old people with clean arteries, what would they have in common? And what he said was they would be insulin sensitive, meaning they were able to keep their insulin levels low and regulate their blood sugar. So that was number one for longevity. Now, mine is a little bit like that. It's called food is medicine. So I focus on upregulating all the medicines and food that I know can hack my longevity pathways. Now, there's a whole phenomena that you might not be aware of, which is called phytohormesis, or I call it symbiotic phytoadaptation, which means basically these plants and our biology have co-evolved to activate these pathways in our biology that turn on or off different switches that relate to longevity. So, there's a whole bunch of phytochemicals, but phytochemicals are found in stressed foods. So, if you eat some kind of traditionally grown, conventionally grown, own vegetable, it's not going to be very high in phytochemicals. For example, if you have a tomato that's grown in some hot house that's, you know, bred to be a certain size, it fits in a box, it won't squish, you get it and it looks like a tomato but it doesn't taste like a tomato versus, for example, a summer, August tomato you pick off your cherry tomato plant in your backyard, it just explodes with flavor. If that one's full of phytochemicals, the other one's not. so the phytochemicals are where the medicine and food. So the ones that particularly are good for longevity that I like are sulforaphane, which is in all the broccoli family, epigallocatechin gallates, which are in green tea, and also in this wild sage tea that I had in Korea they have every day, curcumin, which is in turmeric, curries, and you can take it as a supplement. Fisetin, which comes from strawberries and other foods, quercetin, which is in a lot of things like onions, and it's an amazing longevity food. Resveratrol, which is in red grapes and other foods, and silybin, so there's all these amazing, amazing, phytochemicals that you can include in your diet on a daily basis and also potentially supplement with them. All right, so that's my number one.

What about your number two, Kasey? Well, just to one of my actual ones is so similar to that one and I'll just share a few little additional ways that I do exactly what you're saying in my day-to-day life. So, like you said, I'm trying to get the sulforaphane, I'm trying to get the curcumin, all these functional foods that really, you know, big picture what I'm trying to do is minimize my oxidative stress, my inflammation in the body and really support these pathways that are so good for our health. And so some of the ways that I'm getting this stuff, I basically keep cruciferous vegetables, which are of course full of sulforaphane, which activates our antioxidant defenses. I just keep my fridge full of them. So I've got, you know, tons of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and I'm using cauliflower rice and broccoli rice now basically for all my grains. I I steam the stems of broccoli and I turn into soups and I'm doing purees of cauliflower. So just finding creative ways to get these things in. And then the other thing I do is I keep about eight different types of organic sauerkraut in my fridge, all different colors, you know, a turmeric kraut, a beet kraut. And these, of course, are going to have the cabbage and the sulforaphane, but also those prebiotic and probiotic chemicals that are so good for health. And so basically any meal I'm cooking, I'm topping it with whatever beautiful color of kraut will like my plate look gorgeous, but that's another way that I'm getting some of these things that you're talking about. And then the last thing I do, which I have loved, is I, you know, you go and buy turmeric at the store and it's like $25 a pound. So I actually order 10 pounds of turmeric from, there's a bunch of farms in Hawaii that, that you can just Google organic Hawaiian turmeric and they'll ship it to you fresh in a FedEx box. You can freeze it and it's about a third of the price. You can freeze this stuff, throw it in smoothies, you can put it in the food processor before you freeze it to make more of like a paste. And so I'm basically eating four to five tablespoons of fresh organic or frozen turmeric a day with a little bit of black pepper to really activate that curcumin. And so I think a key thing to just to add on to what you're talking about is finding really ways that you have these things at, you know, at arm's length every single day so that you're able to actually really get them in a consistent way because consistency is key. You don't want to just activate your Nrf2 pathway or inactivate NF-kappaB once a week. You want to kind of do it every day. And so keeping krauts available, keeping frozen cauliflower and broccoli rice, having inexpensive organic turmeric in the freezer, these are some of the ways I think about doing it easily. So that's really number two for me is also these functional foods at your really easy to access. Okay, you, how about you? Number two.

Well, for me, number two is this whole idea of hormesis. I talked about the phytohormesis, but hormesis is essentially any stress that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And it's obvious besides diet, the most important thing is exercise. And not just any kind of exercise, but two kinds of exercise that actually help stress your body in a way that make it work better and smarter. One is strength training, which is using various weights or bands or your body weight, whatever you want to do to build muscle. That is so key because muscle is the currency of longevity. And the reason people end up in nursing homes is because they lose muscle and they can't have their shoes or get out of bed or do their activities of daily living. So that's so important. And I was lazy about this, but I, it's changed my life. I started when I was 60, which is a little late in the game, but it's amazing to see the change in my body and my wellbeing just from doing that. the next is interval training where you kind of do sprints. So you can do less exercise but get more benefit by doing kind of really, really fast, like you're running from a tiger for 30, 45 seconds a minute, and then slow down three minutes and then fast. You can do a treadmill on a bike. Uh, you can do it sprinting, whatever you want to do. Uh, that's really important. So I, I really think that's super important. Uh, how about you, Casey?

What's, what's your next number three tactic for longevity? Well, this is so funny because I think ours are going to basically be very similar because of course exercise is on my list too, but a slightly different angle. and just to add on to what you're saying. So one thing I've really been struck by in the research for longevity is how moving more throughout the day may actually be better for us than moving for just, you know, a one hour exercise period throughout the day. Our bodies really, we want to dispose of glucose in our muscles and we wanna activate those muscle pathways constitutively throughout the day, not just in one little chunk. And there's been research that's shown that Our 24-hour insulin and glucose levels over the course of a day are lower if we move just for little periods, like every half hour, rather than just one chunk at the beginning or the end of the day. So the way I'm doing this in my daily life now is I set a timer for every 30 minutes, basically throughout the day. And when that timer goes off, I do a minute or two minutes of air squats, push-ups, kettlebell swings, exactly what you're talking about. It's almost like an interval and resistance training. I'll maybe do some bicycle crunches just right in my office or I'll walk around my house a couple times, which takes about two minutes. And those things just get my body moving more. And it's been a total game changer for my energy throughout the day and also for my 24-hour glucose levels. So moving more. And there was this great book that I just read called Tiny Habits, which I highly recommend, which is about, it talks about habit stacking. So you take something that you do no matter what during the day, like go to the bathroom, like pee, and you see stack it with some sort of healthful activity. So one thing the author recommends is every time you pee, do two push-ups. And so that is easy, there's no pain to that, and yet at the end of the day, you've probably done eight to 15 push-ups. And so that's something I've also incorporated. These 30-minute brief one to two-minute exercise sort of sessions, which are basically painless. And if I'm on a Zoom call, I'll often do it with the person on the call. And then also, after brushing your teeth or going to the bathroom or something that you do every single day, stack it with a little bit of movement, like two push-ups. Okay, that's my number three. How about you, number four? Or no, I guess this is your number three.

Well, you know, there's just obviously so much and I, and I've read your whole book about this, but the next thing, I really like are things that are, again, I'm going to kind of go with the hormesis track that I'm on. And I just love this concept because it's, it's something we all can correlate to, you know, we, we all, you know, live now in this completely thermoregulated, environment where our bodies don't have to deal with the stresses that we dealt with through evolution, whether it's temperature stress or any kind of stress. So what I love are these hormetic therapies that we can incorporate into our life. And my favorite is a couple is, is hot and cold therapy. So whenever I can, I get in a sauna, hot bath. I, I take a cold shower in the morning for two minutes, or I, I do my, I have a bathtub in my house. So I'm home. I'll basically fill up with a cold water, just turn on the cold tap. and some people put ice in there on top of that. I've done that sometimes. And I have a steam shower. Really important. You can buy these now. Higher dose has these, like, sauna blankets. So you can get into this for pretty inexpensive. But the heat and cold does amazing things. The heat actually increases heat shock proteins, which help refold and optimize your proteins, helps your innate immune system. The cold plunge helps increase dopamine and brown fat activation and metabolism. You know, red light therapy is great. I have a juve machine at home, right? I use red light therapy. which helps my mitochondria, it's the opposite of the blue light we talked about on our podcast. Time-restricted eating or taking a break from eating is a little stress, right? So you're starving, but you're gonna take a break for 12, 14, 16 hours a day from eating, maybe a day of fasting once a week, another trick. And there's other things like low oxygen treatments, hypoxia, where you can use low oxygen masks, you can exercise with them that puts your body in a state of stress like you're climbing Mount Everest and that'll activate your mitochondria to repair.

To clean up the old ones, ozone therapy, another one. So there's so many hormetic therapies .

Write about my book, but those are my paper.

Love that one. All the hormetic.

Yep. What's your next one? Number four. Yeah.

So cold plunging was on my list and this is one of the many hormetic activities that you mentioned. And I have really, so I think everyone starts with cold plunging being like, this is the worst thing I've ever done. Why would I do this? And then after like 10 times, you're totally addicted. But something that's been really fun for me with hormesis that I just, you know, I think is worth sharing is that When you start to realize that cold and heat are so good for our biology, it really changes the way I approach adversity in my day-to-day life. Because one thing I notice is that if it's freezing outside, I live in Bend, Oregon, and it gets really cold in the winter and it's like 105 degrees in the summer, it used to be that, oh, I'd immediately want to figure out how to change that circumstance. Like, oh, it's hot, I need to go find AC. Oh, it's cold, I need to find warmth. Now, it's really shifted my perspective to leaning into those experiences. Like, oh, it's cold. This is my cold thermogenesis for the day. Oh, it's hot outside. Maybe I should do some stretching and some yoga out here in the 105 degree heat. And so it turns what used to be a psychological negative into a opportunity. And these days, because sauna and cold plunging can be expensive if you're doing it through purchasing something. It's like, well, this is free. I'm cold or I'm hot just from the weather. So it's really been a positive mindset shift for me. I was just, I just got back, I was telling you, Mark, I just got back from nine days backpacking in Wyoming. And I, there were, we slept at Alpine Lakes every single night that are glacier fed. They're like 40 degrees. And so every single night when I got into camp, I am in that glacier fed lake. And three years ago, I never would have done that because it would have been uncomfortable. But now I'm like, oh, this is a free cold plunge. And I had, I tore my meniscus recently and it was getting acting up on this trip a little bit. And truly after five minutes in those lakes, everything felt better and I was addicted to it. So, I'm just with you on cold, you know, hormesis, but specifically I'm really loving cold thermogenesis and finding that it's definitely had a psychological as well as a physical impact on me. Okay, Mark, what is your number four?

So, my number four is my supplement stack. And I've learned a lot about supplements over the decades practicing functional medicine, but there's some core go-to ones that I never miss. Vitamin D and K, that's non-negotiable I want to keep my vitamin D levels between 50 and 75. I use Omega-3s, Dutch Harbor Omega from Big Bold Health. Jeff Blan's a huge friend and fan and amazing product with all kinds of resolvins that are anti-inflammatory I actually also take my homocysteine Supreme because I have methylation issues and the MTHFR Gene, a high quality multivitamin, a magnesium I take every night, it's night to sleep, and I use my product, of course, gut food, which is like a multivitamin for the gut with prebiotics, probiotics polyphenols. And then that's my basic stack. And then I'm kind of nuts about this, but I, I love to take my longevity stack, which is NMN. I, I take something called HTB rejuvenate, which is made from quercetin. It's one of those longevity molecules. It's immunorejuvenation product from also big bold Health. I take curcumin, green tea, sulforaphane, mitopure, which is euryalethine that comes from pomegranate that helps mitophagy and improve mitochondrial function. And I do a few other things in my Shake, like mushroom adaptogens and creatine and so forth.

That's my, that's my kind of.

Longevity fun pack. Okay, what's your last one, Casey?

Yeah, well, first of all, plus one on all those. And I've been doing Mitopure for a while now, and I'm really a big fan. Anything that supports the mitochondria. And so my fifth really has to do with sunlight. So I have, in understanding this literature around how sunlight is so important for setting up our metabolic and genetic pathways throughout the day, I am now religious about getting at least five to 10 minutes of sunlight first thing in the morning, the first thing I do. And ideally, I'd be getting up to about an hour in the first half of the day outdoors with no sunglasses, looking at the sky, not through a window, and just blasting my super chiasmatic nucleus of my brain through my eyeballs with light photon energy to tell my body essentially to start the day on a molecular level. the way that I do this is, and this is again a habit stacking thing, is I, the second I put that toothpaste on my toothbrush, I walk outside. And so I'm always brushing my teeth in my yard. I walk around my house three or four times and that guarantees me that I'm getting at least two minutes of sun exposure every morning. And then I'll usually try and Stay outside, maybe during my first meeting of the day, or if I have to read first thing, I'll do it outside in my yard. And so that has actually transformed my sleep, which of course sleep is a huge longevity hack to getting quality seven to nine hours a night. But I'd say that sleep has always been tough for me because I get very creative late at night and I often stay up late. And so to move my tiredness earlier, the biggest thing that has helped me with that is to get sun exposure early in the morning. So it's nothing I do at bedtime. It's actually something I do in the morning. So yeah, sun exposure and just trying to spend more time outside in the first half of the day. Okay, last one for you, Mark. Yeah, well, the last one for me.

Is kind of weird. I mean, there's a whole group of these therapies that are kind of innovations in longevity, whether peptides, exosomes, stem cells, natural killer cell infusions, Transfer plasma exchange, ozone. I think my favorite is because it's easier to do is ozone. Peptides are also right up there. Ozone you can do with a home. I mean, the rest of them can kind of be expensive, but ozone can be quite cheap and effective. And, you can do rectal ozone at home. You can buy a machine for under $1,000 and you have it for life. You hook it up to an oxygen tank and you can just get a little bag and fill it up and then put the little rectal tube in. And, it sounds weird, but it actually is a great way to get the benefits of ozone, which is a hormetic therapy that activates all your longevity pathways, heals your mitochondria, activates your stem cells, improves your immunity, helps decrease inflammation. It's a activates all your antioxidant systems. So it's sort of really a kind of a one-stop shopping. And I just love those. So that's my favorite.

How about you? Oh, that's, that's amazing. I have actually never tried ozone before. So that is, that is a very intriguing.

It sounds weird. I know it sounds weird, but it's, it's definitely an amazing. I could save my when I had mold toxicity and my body was one big cytokine storm inflammation, it really, really helped. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. 2005, seven years ago, they said, hey, guys, trans fat kills you. Not safe to eat. Don't use it. But if you go to the grocery store, you can find it everywhere, which is terrifying. I mean, more and more companies are removing it, but it's still there. Also, what.