How To Make 60 The New 20: Reverse Your Biological Age

Quick heads up before we dive in. Enrollment for the Flipping 50: The Stronger Way is open all month long, and you can still save $100 on annual membership. That's a total savings of $379 compared to paying monthly. Inside, you'll find 12-week strength training programs, plus dozens of yoga, Pilates, mobility, balance, stability, core, corrective exercise, agility, power, and recovery all designed specifically for women in midlife and beyond, all evidence-based and waiting for you no matter what life is throwing at you in this moment. This isn't just about longevity for someday later. It's about feeling stronger, moving better, and having more energy today. The link is waiting for you in the show notes. I'd love to welcome you inside.

Let's get right to the good stuff. So I'm just gonna be a tease today, and this is it. How would you like to turn back the clock and have a biological age in your 20s when you're over 60? And that's exactly what my guest has done. But that's not all that miraculous until, until you learn that she once was diagnosed with 3 autoimmune diseases. Here's how it's going to play out in this episode.

You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down. You're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast, and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger.

Spoiler alert: before we even dive into this episode, I like to be transparent. I want to let you, let you know fully before we go into this, that number one, this will not feel like a supplement sales kind of an episode. However, we're talking with someone who actually began a supplement because of her own health issues, but she talks within it very transparently that she's very food first, that this supplement is indeed actually a food that no one else, no company wanted any part of because they couldn't patent it and make any any money off of it, even though it was warranted and needed and works. So she did it herself. We don't talk about the supplement itself, we talk about her story. My guest is Leslie Kenney, an Oxford-based longevity expert and graduate of UC Berkeley, personally reversed diagnosis of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and infertility, later giving birth naturally at the age of 43. Now 60— well, actually 61, by the way— with a biological age of just 21. Yes, you heard that right. Her remarkable recovery inspired her to dedicate her life to translating cutting-edge longevity science into accessible, evidence-based solutions for the public. Leslie went on to co-found the Oxford Longevity Project, a nonprofit devoted to educating and empowering individuals to age smarter through science-backed strategies. She also founded Oxford Healthspan, the company behind Primadine, a premium food-derived spermidine supplement sustainably sourced from the longevity islands of Japan, where exceptional numbers of centurion— centenarians thrive. Spit those words out. Leslie Kenney, thanks so much for being here.

It is a real pleasure to be with you today. Thank you so much for inviting me on.

Well, you have such a story. So as I looked forward to this, I really was looking forward to this and thinking, okay, we need to simply unpack this. So I want to— I'm first of all looking at you, and not everybody is going to get the opportunity to do that. You may have seen a clip, and if you're not watching this on YouTube, you're missing out because Leslie is, first of all, radiant. And, you know, so now 60 with a biological age of 21, I'm like, I want to sit down with this woman, right? Because what, what other people have sometimes is quite contagious. And so I'll have what she's having. But you were told at 39 that you had 3 autoimmune diseases. And only a few good years left. That's pretty significant in terms of changing the end of the story, given fast forward, here we are. Can you take us back to number one, that moment, what was going on? And, and was that like a major pivot, or was, was sickness or illness, not feeling well, a part of your life up into that point?

Well, infertility was a big part of my life up until that point. I'd been trying with my husband to get pregnant for 8 years then, and unsuccessfully. 3 IUIs, was on my 5th round of IVF. I had gone from being 38 with idiopathic infertility, the fancy word for we have no idea what kind of infertility you have, to tipping into age 39 and having geriatric infertility, because obviously it's your age. And I was waiting for donor eggs. But they were all arranged and I noticed some pain in my hands. I was using scissors trying to cut some ornaments for the Christmas tree and found that it was really painful. Turning faucets and turning doorknobs was excruciating. And it felt like arthritis, what I thought arthritis was. I didn't know what exactly that would be, but I went to my doctor and thought, oh, it's obviously not arthritis, because I'm too young. It's probably some form of, I don't know, maybe carpal tunnel or something. And didn't think anything more about it, carried on preparing for my IVF using donor egg cycle. And my doctor called me and said, your test results are in, please come into the office so we can have a talk. And you know, that's always bad news. And she told me that I did in fact have rheumatoid arthritis and that I could use immune suppressing drugs, injectables to suppress my immune system to stop it from destroying my joints and deforming my fingers and hands. But she also told me that I had something called lupus, which I had never heard of, didn't know what it was. And she said it was destroying my organs. And that it was pretty bad, that my immune system was so strong, it was really creating a lot of havoc. And I said, "Don't we want a strong immune system? Isn't that good for fighting cancer?" And she said, "Unfortunately, your body looks like it's fighting cancer, but it's attacking you." And I said, "Okay, well, what's the solution to that?" And she said, There isn't anything. Unfortunately, there is no treatment to manage it. There is no cure, and you should expect it to get worse over time. At this point, the entitled medical consumer in me emerged, and I said, wait a second, you're the doctor, you're the expert, you've got the certificates framed behind you on the wall. I'm a client. I have a really important IVF round coming up. It was so hard to find a donor egg that matched me ethnically because I'm half Taiwanese, half Caucasian American. And you have to fix this, fix this so that I can carry on having a baby. And she just looked at me, shook her head and said, I wouldn't do the IVF. Even if you're successful, you've only got a good 5 years left. That left me speechless. So in a sense, that was a turning point in that I suddenly realized I had no control over my body. And I left that, that meeting with my doctor thinking, what, Brené Brown always says she asks us to do when we have negative thoughts in our mind. Is that really true? And at the same time, I heard the voice of my very dearly beloved Midwestern grandmother from Indianapolis. I know you're in the Midwest as well. And my grandmother had been deceased for a number of years at that point, but she just— I heard her say, let's throw the kitchen sink at it, Leslie. And I thought, "Gina, I think she's right. It only stands to reason that a patient who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, and isn't sleep deprived or stressed ought to have a better shot than someone who is all those other things." And I decided in that very moment, so it was a bit of a turning point, I'm going to be the best patient I can possibly be. I'm gonna be better material for my doctor to work with so I can meet her halfway and then maybe maybe she's going to find a cure for me. And, uh, at that point, I also went to the patient chat rooms. And I don't know if you've ever used these before, but a lot of us who've gone through IVF really rely on these patient chat rooms, and we will cycle together and give each other support and talk about new things we've heard about that will help with egg quality or, uh, you know, embryo development or implantation.. And I thought, all right, they were a great source of comfort and help to me when I was going through IVF. I'm gonna go to the rheumatoid arthritis and lupus patient boards. And when I went to the RA patient boards, I discovered loads of patients who said, yeah, I've been on the immune suppressing drugs, but they stopped working. They stopped working around 18 months. And then my doctor put me on a new set of immune suppressing drugs. And it just sounded like a merry-go-round merry-go-round. It occurred to me that maybe the body was finding a way to get around these drugs because it didn't like the idea of having the immune— the immune system suppressed. So I'm thinking about that, and then I go over to the, the lupus boards and the patients are talking about a study that had been done in Germany in 2000. So this is 2004 in Boulder, Colorado, and I see this study which says that there are 13 lupus patients who have been given a transfusion called intravenous immunoglobulin, and all 13, every single one has improved, which is exactly the opposite of what my doctor said, that I should expect it to get worse. So I'm thinking, what is this intravenous immunoglobulin? It sounds very very highfalutin, very, you know, what is this? And it turns out that it's antibodies donated from anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 people. And it was meant for patients whose immune systems were incapable of producing antibodies to fight infection. But when they gave it to patients, they noticed that it had an immune modulating effect. It was essentially restoring the immune system to homeostasis, to a point of balance. And it was not overreactive and it was not underreactive. And I thought, well, this is the holy grail. That's what I want. I wanna be cured. I don't wanna be managed. And so I went to my doctor and said to her, hey, look at this, I want this. And she said, That's too bad because 13 patients does not mean statistical significance. So sorry, no. Um, and I went back to the patient bulletin boards and I found a doctor in San Francisco who did prescribe 2 rounds for me, which I did in Denver. And at the same time I thought, right, I'm going to reset my immune system. I'm Putting it back to balance, that means I can't unbalance it by doing anything else that will trigger my immune system. So I took an allergy test and I saw that I had a problem with dairy, gluten, and eggs. Um, I thought about exercise. I know it's a big thing for you. And I thought, I'm too sedentary. This is inflammatory. Let's stop with this. Let's start hiking Mount Sanitas, you know, every other day, do Yoga, right? And, and then, you know, I optimized my sleep. I quit my job. I did trauma therapy. Honestly, Debra, if it, if it resonated with me, if I thought there was a 1% chance of it helping me, I went for it because I had nothing to lose. So, so I did all these things. And at the same time, I began to question the immune suppressing drugs. And we know that autoimmune patients who suppress their immune systems long-term, unfortunately they have a higher risk of cancer because we're suppressing, suppressing, suppressing. And the immune system is there to also surveil, not just for things like COVID, but also for cancer.. And I thought, I'm resetting my immune system. I'm removing the inflammatory triggers. I don't need to suppress my immune system. And under supervision, but not from my doctor in Boulder, I stopped taking the immune suppressing drugs. And when I went back to see her for a checkup, a routine checkup, she opened my file, which she'd obviously not consulted beforehand. She just looked at it and said, 'Well, look at that. You don't have lupus or RA.' And I just said, 'What?' She said, 'All your labs have come back to normal.' And I said, 'That's amazing. Do you want to know what I did?' And without even looking up, she said very casually, 'No, that's okay.' And that is when the penny dropped. That is when— that was much more monumental than her telling me I had this disease. It was that whatever I had learned, whatever I had done would never benefit another patient. And that—

oh my goodness—

made me so angry because that's what those patient chat rooms are all about. We're there to help each other. And to think that someone in the healing arts I suppose because they don't have the time to listen. And maybe she thought I was going to say that I had, I don't know, that I'd done some kind of séance and pulled up spirits from another realm to heal myself. Who knows? She probably thought I was cuckoo. But, you know, the reality is our doctors don't have time. The current medical system does not allow them the time they need to walk alongside their patients put in the detective work to unpick these complex diseases, find out the root cause, and work with those patients to address them and get rid of them so that these patients are actually cured. And so as a patient, I know doctors talk about, oh, like, we can manage this. I don't want to be managed. I want a cure. And so having found what put me into remission, my interest in the immune system was piqued. Now I did do AP biology in high school, so I had some interest in biology, but I did not do science at university. And all of a sudden the immune system became very relevant for me. What was this thing that I had just been so blasé about? Um, for so many years that was going to be my Achilles heel. And how did it relate to premature aging at age 39? And how did I flip it so that I could effectively reset it, restore it? And now today I'm actually 61, have a biological age of 21.

Right?

That doesn't make any sense.

No, crazy.

But the body has an innate wisdom, and it's, it's not that it's failing us. It sometimes makes a less, a less bad choice, which leads to a cascade of events that result in disease. And we live in environments that are constantly challenging us, especially women and women in midlife. In that sandwich position, taking care of children, taking care of the household, holding down a job, thinking of the mortgage, thinking of their aging parents. We have to be all things to all people. The stress is unbelievable. And is that an inflammatory trigger? You bet it is. Is that going to cause inflammation to go wild? Will that inflamage us?

Yes.

And At the same time, we have that— it becomes a perfect storm because we're going into perimenopause or menopause, and that is another factor. So, um, I was, I was incredibly lucky to, um, to find those other patients to whom I will be eternally grateful, even though I don't have their names. But it's, you know, it's, it's a sisterhood. And we're all working to help each other. And that's why I share this story. It's not over till it's over. And if we give the body the right stimulants or stimuli, muscle is medicine, right? You know, muscle, sleep, food, good food, good social connection, stress reduction. The body responds and it can reward us. So that's really, that's really been my message. And I've been so blessed to have been able to pull that thread around the immune system to working with scientists at the University of Oxford. I'm now based in Oxford, England. Quite a change from, you know, sleepy Rocky Mountain college town, Boulder, Colorado, to another college town in, in the United Kingdom, but some amazing science has been done here at Oxford on rejuvenating the elderly or aging immune system with a really awkwardly named compound called spermidine, which is happily found in our food, in things like mushrooms, in beans. I know not everybody likes beans. I have friends who say they make me windy, I don't like it. But you know what, learn to love them or cook them a different way so you can, because they're full of spermidine, um, and wheat germ. So there are food sources of this, and I'm always trying to encourage people to, uh, to get more of this into their into their daily diet if they can. So that's kind of my story. I will just make one correction. You mentioned 3 autoimmune conditions. I was initially only diagnosed with 2, and that is because of a medical quirk, which is that I complained of pain in my hands. So I was sent to a rheumatologist, and rheumatologists are looking for rheumatological conditions and they don't swim outside of their rheumatology lane. I also had Hashimoto's, which was only diagnosed later, but that had to be diagnosed by an endocrinologist. And when I was diagnosed later with Hashimoto's and put on Armour thyroid hormone, which has all of the hormones that our own thyroids make, not just levothyroxine, just T4, I fell pregnant naturally like that, no assistance, and delivered a healthy baby at age 43.

Amazing. And I'm so glad you went back to that because I was like, I'm still stuck here doing math.

And I did.

It's not my best subject, but I think we only got 2 here.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's, that's where the third one, where the third one came into play.

Amazing. So, and I want to tap into this more. So I think the, um, the Hashimoto's, because a lot of women will by midlife have been diagnosed with a thyroid issue, but I think the number is about 90% of those are Hashimoto's. And yet a lot of women don't know that. They haven't been told it. They're their physician may not know that or be looking at the right thing. So talk a little bit about that and how is it that potentially our lifestyle factors might be contributing. I think you alluded to it a little bit because a woman's midlife is, is kind of like, like, here I am, I'm a target, shoot at me.

Yeah.

From all directions of life. Yeah.

Yeah. Ask me to spin more plates and, you know, throw some oranges and juggle them in the air at the same time. So with, with thyroid conditions, number one, different countries have different reference ranges. And that means that— and first of all, we'll just talk about reference ranges. You will be compared to all other women your age. And so look around you, look at women your age, think about 100 of them in the, in the shopping mall when you're next there, the grocery store, and think, do I want to be compared to these women or do I want to be optimal? Right now, if you happen to fall into the average reference range in the United States, you're normal, but that does not necessarily mean optimal. Okay, so that's one thing I want to mention. Number 2, when you go to a doctor and you complain of typical, uh, low thyroid, hypothyroid symptoms, maybe cold hands and cold feet, your hair is falling out, you're losing the outer thirds of your eyebrows, you've got weight you can no longer shift, you have brain fog, you've noticed your eyelashes are falling out. These things, these symptoms, first of all, a lot of doctors will say, "Do you know, honey, that's just, that's midlife. That's just how it is." Right? Okay, so that's number one. And they may, "Oh, low brain fog and you've got low mood?" would you like an antidepressant? Yeah, right. Okay, so they, they won't, they won't necessarily look at that. In the United States, they're also less likely to offer you HRT. Um, and then if they do your thyroid test, if for instance they do have the wisdom to say, okay, could be thyroid, let's check this out, the two most likely tests they're going to give are TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, and T4. T4 is the raw thyroid hormone, but it's not what our— this— our— all of our cells have receptors for a thyroid hormone called T3, but that is not T4. So our body has to convert T4 into T3, but we're not always testing for that. Sometimes, um, we don't test for reverse T3, which sits on our thyroid receptors blocking thyroid hormone getting into the cell to give us energy. And finally, the most important thing is they do not always test for thyroid antibodies. And that is what I think happened to me, uh, because I was going through IVF. Nowadays, you know, 20 years after my story, uh, it's pretty routine to test the thyroid. I don't know what happened when I went through IVF, why they did not figure this out, because it would have saved me over $100,000. That's in 2002, '03, and '04. So, because that's what I paid to do these 5 rounds of IVF and the donor eggs. Now they do test for some of these. I don't know if they're doing thyroid antibodies, but if anybody listening to this suspects they have, low thyroid, and it could be autoimmune, definitely make sure you get the thyroid antibodies tested, right?

Yeah, so much so. And talk about lifestyle habits. So talk about what, what impact do they have, number one, on potentially causing or hitting, hitting a critical mass so that you would say, okay, I— you've been diagnosed with this, or coming out of it on the other end and improving symptoms the way you feel and/or putting it into remission.

Well, so let's talk about movement, which is, you know, your— it's your area. And, you know, back to muscle is medicine. So we know that healthy muscle emits— it's like an endocrine organ and it emits something called myokines, which are anti-inflammatory inflammatory signaling molecules. And this is a great resource for us. So if we think about our health, as I tell people, everybody puts money into their pension, right? You have to do a little bit all the time through all the years. We do have to think about our healthspan in the same way, and that we need to put a little bit in. And our muscle is great because it's gonna give us back more. The longer we maintain it, the more we're able continue to, to flex those muscles, maintain them with regular resistance training, the more we get a payout from these myokines, which is fantastic. So that's on, say, the muscle side. And I haven't even talked about insulin sensitivity, glucose metabolism, brown fat versus white fat. You know, if you've— if you're lean, you're going to have more brown fat, which, uh, brown adipose tissue, which burns, uh, you know, calories more even at rest. So there's so many dividends that you get paid by investing in resistance training. So that's one thing, anti-inflammatory and all those other benefits I talked about. Sleep is huge and it's so underrated. And a few years ago, I heard an interview with CEO of Netflix who was asked, um, who's your nearest competitor? And he said, it's actually sleep.

Oh my gosh.

And I thought, whoa, that's, uh, that's something, isn't it? Yeah, we're all obsessed. We're all— we humans, we're addictive little animals, and we just, we got to see what's going to happen next, right? So, you know, sleep, our sleep has gotten worse the more that these electronic devices have become a part of our lifestyles. They've become indispensable. They're how we connect with others, which, yes, that's a good thing, but they disrupt our sleep. They make us so addicted that we scroll past what would be a normal bedtime. But also we've got the blue light that is being emitted by them. Raising our cortisol when it shouldn't be raised at night. Cortisol should be raised in the morning. We want our cortisol to be low at night so that melatonin can be high and help with that glide path to sleep. So, uh, the other things that happen during sleep, especially for us women, we have twice the incidence of getting Alzheimer's than men, and During deep sleep, which generally happens between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, the glymphatic system jumps into action. That's where the compartments of the brain literally become smaller. Your, your blood vessels get smaller, and then cerebrospinal fluid can course through these parts of the brain and clean up. It's also a time when we fast naturally and the body is going through rest, repair, and recovery. And if we happen to have some muscle, people who, who have decent muscle actually will be able to activate autophagy or the cell renewal process after only 12 hours of being without food. And sleep is the easiest time to do a fast.

Absolutely.

So that's sleep. So we've done exercise, we've done sleep, um, stress reduction. As you said, a midlife woman is like— she's a walking bullseye, you know, just shoot me with the Nerf gun as many times as you want, right? And, um, and so we've got to find ways to say no. I think a lot of A lot of influencers are there saying, learn to say no, I can't, I can't do it. There's a limit, my bucket is full. And so stress reduction, and of course there are lots of things we can do, whether it's yoga, breathwork, a walk in nature, Mount Sanitas, right? Things like this, social connection. Huge. Toxic people. Well, you know what? This is a good time to declutter your friendship wardrobe, right? And there are times when if these friends are no longer serving you, you know, it's time to wish them well and hope they find a better friendship fit with someone else.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then there's food and ultra-processed food is everywhere. It's so easy. Again, if we're stressed, we're time poor, it's easy to say, okay, I know I shouldn't have this, but just, I have to because I have no other choice. So we've got to find ways to have other healthy choices available to us, you know, whether that means, cutting up some carrots and having hummus in the refrigerator so that when, you know, when we get hangry, we've got something quick and healthy. Or just even having bean sprouts. I'm talking about things like broccoli sprouts, mung bean sprouts. These are good sources of spermidine, by the way. Getting those, drizzling them with olive oil, putting a little Himalayan sea salt, maybe some sesame seeds on top. Healthy snack. We've got to start replacing the ultra-processed food with real food because there are compounds in there that our bodies have interacted with as a species. We have evolved with plants, and we need more of these plants and these phytonutrients in our life to keep us younger. I've talked about spermidine as being one that helps activate autophagy or cell renewal. But did you know that it does that without inhibiting something called mTOR? I don't know how much you or your audience know about mTOR, but I like to think of mTOR as the door to muscle. And, um, you know, if you are fasting and you're fasting for longer period of time, the first place your body goes for food is your muscle. But, you know, and one of the main benefits of fasting is autophagy or cell renewal. But guess what? You can, you can use spermidine, which is found in all plants, to activate autophagy without sacrificing your muscle, which I think is a kind of magic power.

Amazing. Yeah.

And there are, there are other things, uh, you know, uh, so many other phytonutrients. I could talk about carotenoids or epigallocatechins, but I don't want to bore people with all of these, you know, all this jargon, right? Let's just say green tea and, well, carrots, you know.

I wanna ask you something. So in terms of the spermidine, and you've mentioned several foods now, just probably to recap for everybody, I heard mushrooms, I heard beans. Broccoli sprouts, uh, wheat germ.

You mentioned sprouts would be better. Broccoli sprouts, an excellent source of sulforaphane, which is a very good detoxifier of estrogen for women who are worried about breast cancer. Um, but go for things like sprouted mung beans and chickpeas. Those will be excellent sources of spermidine, and you can make those on your kitchen counter. These bean sprouts for pennies.

Amazing. Well, you can. I kill things. But, um, question: I lift weights, I have a skill, and that's it. But, um, I want to ask you how much. So I think everybody would be asking, if I just have little bits of these things every day, am I covered? Or are we talking I need to be taking it in an adequate amount that allows me a dose that actually will make the difference, and that we too can be 21?

Okay, well, uh, um, first off, I want to say one thing, um, again, because I think it's a sisterhood, and I am a patient advocate first and foremost. I am on BHRT, body identical hormone replacement therapy, and I want every woman— it is my goal in life that every woman at every age has the opportunity to speak about hormones throughout their life because this is a whole of life course discussion. Women who are young have PCOS, who have PMDD, uh, or as you go through perimenopause, menopause. So, and I, I am a big believer in this. However, um, yes. So how much would you get of spermidine, which is— it is a part of what I do. The clinical trials, so that means in humans, showing cognitive improvement in those with memory problems is around 1 milligram, sorry, 1 milligram a day. And so that is a baseline, but honestly, you wanna get more into your diet. And so you would definitely want to aim for some from your diet, you know, as much as you can. Another good source is a Japanese fermented soy dish called natto. I remember Denver has a Japanese market and they sold natto there. So anybody listening in the Denver area, this is— go there and get this. It's not to everybody's taste, but try to learn to love it if you can, because it is a very rich source of spermidine. Um, and you can also supplement with it too. And there are food-derived sources of it that you can get. I make one, um, and there are others as well, but you want a really high-quality food source from someone you trust because there are a lot of synthetic variants out there that are being cut into little bits of wheat germ like a street drug and put into capsules. And, uh, you know, it really disheartens me when I see this because unfortunately, um, you know, supplements, supplemental foods, it's still a bit of a, of the wild west out there, but I'm a food-first kind of person. Please get the mushrooms. And oh yeah. And another thing about eating mushrooms, If you take shiitake or oyster mushrooms, you will get some spermidine, but you will also get a compound called ergothioneine, which as we get older, the sebum that we once, you know, despised as pimply teenagers, that sebum actually, we have a different kind of reverse sebum that stays in our skin for longer and it oxidizes and it gives off a distinct odor. And if you've ever passed a thrift shop, you might actually catch a whiff of it. And in Japan, they have studied this and it is called— I mean, the translation is a bit terrible. The translation is old person smell.

Okay.

I know it's not great, but ergothioneine in mushrooms, which also has spermidine, and I'm not talking like chestnut mushrooms or button mushrooms, you need shiitake or oyster, you will get both.

So, okay, amazing. So to ask you, what does— so you at 39 when you were struggling and diagnosed, and then you look at you at 61, 60 Yes. And yet with the biological age of 21, what does this mean to you on a day-to-day? Like, how do you feel? How is your energy?

What is—

fantastic. I have so much more energy at 61 than I had at 39. At 39, I had this crushing fatigue. I just needed to sleep, and I was cold all the time even though I was in sunny Colorado. I just didn't have the energy to go out. You know, I tried to ski, I did ski, but I was— I didn't have the endurance and the stamina. Now I do feel that I have entered what I like to call my new prime, and 61 happens to be a prime number in mathematics. I know you said math wasn't your favorite, but for the mathematician, 61 is a prime number. It's very unique in that respect. And I see this as the start of my new prime because I have fulfilled— women at this age, we fulfilled many of the obligations that we had. You know, when you're a young woman, you feel, oh, I've got to be this, My parents say I should study that, or I should marry this person, or I should have children, or I should not have children, right? We don't have the confidence always to go our own way. And now we have loads of confidence. We're past menopause, and we have so much wisdom. We are very— we feel great in our own skin.. And if we have the energy and if we have that potential for cell renewal, which is the foundation, our cells are the foundation of everything, whether in our brain or our liver or our heart, uh, to maintain this body for longer, uh, also through things like resistance training, then wow, what a new world this becomes. And I tell everybody, we are not going to to age like our grandparents. I mean, my grandparents at this age, my grandfather died at 63 of a major heart attack. My grandmother was dead at 67 of a brain tumor. Before that, they looked old. They looked old. They were square dancers, round dancers, and ballroom dancers. It wasn't that they weren't active, but you know, they were drinking a lot. That was the generation. And so, we have no role model for what the new 60, 70, 80, and 90 looks like. We have to make it. But I think what's great about the boomer generation is that we've done this before. We were the ones who wanted to wear blue jeans. We pioneered Casual Friday. We're doing things differently and we're going to have to reimagine what this new prime of life looks like and make sure we've got the energy, you know, through mitophagy, make sure those mitochondria are functioning right through autophagy, make sure those cells are functioning right, optimizing these things so that we can carry on for the next 30 years with vitality and independence and strength and good humor.

Amazing. I love this, and I love just the, the huge journey that you've taken us on in a very short amount of time, telling us your story and so many happy endings, actually. And we're not, we're not done yet. We're only halfway through. So that is exciting. And thank you. For, you know, I think bringing something. So I have a bottle, by the way, of Primidine, and I'm using it that way. So not eating nearly enough mushrooms, and certainly the right kind. Now that I know that—

now you know—

eating more broccoli sprouts than I am other sprouts. So now I know that. I've learned so much. But I think the key here is looking at, number one, a diagnosis isn't a sentence. And it— look behind it, look beyond it, and look about what else you can do. And look at the system, and maybe the system isn't serving you. That doesn't have to be the system you go with. So you've broken a lot of rules and changed the game a little bit for all women. Thank you so much. Is there a place, Leslie, where they can follow you? I'm gonna put the link for the Primadene here, and I've got a link for listeners who also wanna try it and first wanna learn more and then look at trying it. But where can they follow you?

Uh, on Leslie's New Prime. So it's L-E-S-L-I-E, then S New Prime, Leslie's New Prime. And I've got some videos on YouTube. I have, you know, Instagram, uh, the YouTube, a lot of it is about gray hair reversal, which is because, you know, that's a bit of a vanity thing. A lot of my girlfriends wanted to know why I don't have to dye my hair, you know, at this age. And so I've put whatever I know, whatever hacks, they're all there. And then something very close to my heart is the OxfordLongevityProject.org. And that is also on Instagram, also on, you know, it's got a URL, a website. And that is me with a bunch of Oxford, like true Oxford scientists and doctors who are way smarter than I am, but we're there to try to bring out the latest breakthrough science around things like exercise and food and sleep that we can do ourselves without a permission slip from our doctors. We can do this to meaningfully Age healthily, better, longer. And so that's another resource. And then, uh, as I said, I am a food-first kind of person on the spermidine. Um, I did want my mom to have more spermidine in her life, and so I did try to get the University of Oxford to fund a company that was, you know, bringing this great research from Oxford to you know, to the masses. They said no because it's a food and it can't be patented, and so there's no pharmaceutical exit. I said, okay, fine, I'll do it anyway. And that is what primidine is, for anybody who's listening and wondering. Food first, supplement second. And these, you can get these as powders and you can just add them to a smoothie, so you don't have to swallow as a pill. Nice. You can add to a key lime pie or to a matcha latte as a kind of longevity matcha latte. And like I say, food first. But yeah, you can find that at OxfordHealthspan.com.

Amazing. Love the recipes. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you for being here.

Likewise. So fun connecting with someone who also shares Boulder as a hometown. Yeah.

The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcome injuries resulting from information presented on this podcast. If today's episode reminded you that it's time to put yourself back on your own priority list, don't wait. Join me inside Flipping 50: The Stronger Way and save $100 on your annual membership. You'll get year-round access to progressive strength training programs, mobility, yoga, Pilates, balance, corrective exercise, and so much more. All created specifically for women who want to stay strong, active, and independent for decades to come. You can join monthly if you prefer, but the annual membership gives you the biggest savings, $379 savings compared to paying month by month. The link is in the show notes. Come train with me. Your strongest years don't have to be behind you. They can absolutely be the ones you're living right now.