LS 38 - Mitigating the Risk Factors of Aging by Reducing Inflammation with Dr. Robert Buckingham

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Welcome to the Longevity Show, Informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field, along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a life happier life. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Robert Buckingham to the show. He is the author of Hazing How Capillary Endothelial Control Inflammation and Aging. Robert, welcome. How are you?

I'm fine, thank you. It's a pleasure being on your show.

And you're coming to us today from beautiful Ojai, California, is that correct?

Yeah, small community, just a little south of Santa Barbara. Beautiful day today.

Yeah. Good. Good to have you on the show. So you talk a lot about infl inflammation, and I just want to make sure the listeners really get a good understanding what is inflammation, and then maybe you want to talk about how it occurs.

Inflammation can occur anywhere in the body, from the skin to the deepest tissues and organs. Inflammation can be acute, that is a sudden onset with a beginning and an end, or it can be chronic with insidious and progressive symptoms that occur.

And this is becoming increasingly more common in our Western culture as people live longer.

What is causing it? I mean, it's been said that we basically die of two things, either inflammation or oxidation. Do you agree with that?

Actually, they're both the same.

Inflammation causes cells in the body that nurture the end organ called capillary cells, to increase their outer membrane permeability to inflammatory constituents from the blood. When they do this, the cells that are involved, the capillary cells, the end organ cells.

Run hot. And when they run hot, they increase their combustion internally. And when they do that, they create reactive oxygen species, which are free radicals that can.

Cause damage and need to be reduced. They're also known as oxidants.

What is the hazing aging component then?

The idea is to reverse the chronic inflammation that's going on in your body that's causing the capillary cells to run hot and allowing for scar tissue, cancer, autoimmune disease, and infection to increase in end organs.

Hazing, aging then, is about things that we can do, lifestyle choices, perhaps some.

Supplements, even some medications that can help.

The capillary cell run cool and reduce.

The risks.

That occur from chronic irritation and inflammation.

Okay, so the idea is to. You said run cool. I thought that was kind of an interesting phrase that you used. What do you mean by running cool?

The idea here is that when capillary.

Cells run hot, their combustion, internal combustion, increases, and this increases permeability through their outer membranes. So everything can get through from the blood to the end organ.

And it does.

White blood cells, inflammatory proteins, all sorts of mediators that increase inflammation. And this sets up the possibility of failure of the end organ, either from scar tissue, infection, autoimmune disease, or cancer. So the idea is to reduce the combustion in the capillary cell, and by reducing the combustion in the capillary cell, you run cool. As the combustion in the mitochondria slows.

Down, that is an organelle in the.

Capillary cell, the cell actually runs cool. And when it runs cool, the membranes, the outer membranes, improve on their permeability, and they allow less inflammatory cells to come through to the end organ.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

When capillary cells run cool, when their mitochondria stop having to produce calcium or release calcium and produce ATP, the capillary cell changes configuration and goes from round to flat. When it goes from round to flat, the channel between the cells closes up and the membrane, the outer membrane, becomes less susceptible to allowing inflammatory cells and proteins to go through it.

So when a capillary cell runs cool, it basically improves its outer membrane permeability and reduces the probability that inflammatory cells and proteins will get through to the end organ.

Okay, and what does that do? What happens then?

If you can prevent chronic movement of.

Inflammatory cells from the blood to the.

End organ, you reduce the risk of chronic inflammation. Now, there are times when inflammatory cells need to get through.

To treat certain acute breaches to the end organ.

However, as we age, the tendency is.

For the capillary cell to run hot and for their membranes to allow more inflammatory cells to get to the end organ. So the whole idea of hazing aging.

Is to reverse that bias, cool the.

Capillary cell and reduce the permeability of the outer membranes to allow inflammatory cells and proteins to penetrate to the end.

Organ from the blood.

And so that will increase longevity?

Absolutely.

In fact, if you look at the interventions, the lifestyle and otherwise, although it.

Has not been put ever been put together in such a straightforward manner as.

I've just given you.

Epidemiology studies, and they're in the hundreds now, have shown that certain lifestyle choices or certain supplements or medicinals, when added, reduce inflammation and increase longevity, improve quality of life, can.

We know that we're doing this. Can we see any results along the way? Are we, you know, is there a scorecard for this, if you will?

The two most common symptoms that almost everybody feels as they get older are fatigue and pain.

Now these are oftentimes coupled with arthritis, brain fog, shortness of breath, depending on which end organ is mostly involved. But suffice to say that with aging.

And with chronic inflammation, and with the mechanism that I've just talked about, fatigue.

And pain are the two most common prevalent symptoms that plague everybody as they age and get older.

So if you're mitigating aging, if you're mitigating or hazing aging, if you're making or going all in on lifestyle choices, improving vascular inflammatory risks, fatigue and pain will improve.

And then secondarily arthritic symptoms will improve, brain fog will lessen, the likelihood of developing memory and dementia related symptoms decrease, and a general feeling of well being begins to permeate.

Well, that's good to hear. That's definitely what we all want, right? So are there any studies on this that you want to share or any, you know, any, any examples of it and shortcuts or hacks as to how we can get there? I mean, what's, what's the prescription for doing this in our own lives?

Well, first of all.

My book, Hazing Aging, which by the way, you can find almost anywhere online, it's at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.

But at the very end of the.

Book, there's an extensive bibliography about.

Close.

To at least 150, maybe as many as 200 studies discussing what I'm about to tell you and how it affects inflammation. But suffice to say that if you were to make to start a process of reducing inflammation, it would begin with an exercise program.

It would extend then to.

Limiting simple sugars and saturated trans fats in your diet. It would then extend to sleep hygiene that is improving sleep efficiency, getting seven continuous hours of sleep every night, which would then extend to stress reduction, limiting stressors in your life to a place where the stresses may be affecting.

Your anxiety, maybe even causing depression and sleeplessness.

These are the big four.

Then as you move on from there.

Making sure that your blood pressure is well controlled or in the normal range, which currently now has been decreased to less than 120 millimeters of systolic pressure as of this last week, making sure your blood sugar is well controlled, making sure your cholesterol levels, your LDL cholesterol is at or near ideal levels.

These are all secondary and adjunctive.

Inflammatory issues that need to be addressed, in some cases urgently.

What else do you want to share with the listeners? Maybe a question that I haven't asked or just anything in general, a question that you get frequently asked about it.

The whole idea of hazing aging.

Is to block chronic inflammation and protect the end organ from from progressive damage and decline. As we get older, the end organs become even more vulnerable to inflammatory risks. So it becomes even more imperative as we age to understand how to haze it and to get on top of it and mitigate these risk factors before they insidiously change your life to a place where it becomes unmodifiable.

Lifestyle choices can make the difference.

They can be a game changer and a game breaker. If you practice anti inflammatory living through appropriate lifestyle choices by going all in, you can haze aging by decades. You can have quality of life, meaningful and relevant life well into your 90s and perhaps even into the 1002, where you can be.

Full of your entire essence rather than just being in a very limited capacity. This is really the message that aging isn't for sissies. But at the same time, as you get older, the window for preventing inflammatory change narrows and you have to be more careful, not less, in terms of limiting these influences.

Yeah, no question about it. Can you know that you've done this, that you've achieved it in a quantifiable way? I mean, is there a specific test to know that you've done this?

Well, that's a very good question, Jason. I've known people who got perfect numbers.

From their blood test, but.

Something in their life has gone awry and they're still having symptoms that would suggest that their aging is persisting. Sometimes it's excessive alcohol use. Sometimes it's stress from the loss of a loved one or an animal or a child. Sometimes it's financial crisis. In other words, everything has to be looked at in total. There isn't one test or one marker that we can point to and say, well, it looks like you're okay. If there is one marker that I would say probably sums up inflammation best, it's known as the hscrp, or highly sensitive C reactive protein. But I must say that even that marker.

Has a lot of caveat associated with it and can't be really relied on exclusively as a marker of pass or fail. Really what it comes down to, from one person to the next is are you doing everything you can with your lifestyle and mitigating vascular risks? Are you doing everything you can to limit the aging process and you need to Be honest and open with yourself about that. And if the answer is yes, well.

Maybe there's only so much you can do if you're still not feeling right.

But my guess is the answer is no. There are some things that you still can do to make adjustments that will improve your quality of life. And the other thing, Jason, that I need to say is that although fatigue and pain are the two most common symptoms that are related to aging, there is no, there is no time in.

Life when it's too late to start this process.

Even if you're 80 and in a chair and unable to walk, the capacity to make necessary changes in your life to improve your quality, in essence.

Should not be forgotten.

I see a lot of people, sometimes as early as their 40s who just give up. They just say, oh geez, I'm too this or I'm too that. I don't have enough together.

That's where this book can really make a difference. If you're sitting on the sideline and you think it's too late or you don't think you've got what it takes, this book tells you exactly why that's not correct. In fact, the first couple of chapters involve my own personal experience with this matter.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Do you have a website in addition to the book with any additional resources?

Yes, I do. The website is called drbuckingham.

Hazingaging.Com Fantastic.

Well, Robert Buckingham, thank you for sharing this with us. It's always great to hear new stories, strategies on this and some of that good old fashioned advice of just the right diet and lifestyle choices makes all the difference, doesn't it?

It really does. But Jason, in addition to that, it's the persistence of these choices. Even one bad meal where you just indulge excessively in fats and sugar can have a substantial impact on.

And a ripple effect on your metabolism, your microbiome in your intestines and then the inflammation that ripples from it. So the process has to be comprehensive and it should be consistent.

Yeah, most definitely. Good stuff. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Robert Buckingham. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Jason.

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