REVERSE AGING naturally by doing THIS | Dr. Mark Hyman

You want to be able to kind of be vibrant and do whatever you want to do as long as you're alive. And that's possible whether you're 50, 60, 70, 80, even 100, 110. I've seen people who are still going at it well over 100 years old. So basically there's these 10 phenomena that seem to be going on that drive all the aging diseases and rapid aging. And we now know that, that we can actually, through lifestyle interventions, through certain nutraceuticals, even certain pharmaceuticals, we can actually reverse our biological age measured by these epigenetic changes.

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. Your topic for today is how do you become even younger forever? And, I want to thank you for tuning into the show. This is an exciting episode. I get to have a really good buddy returning to the podcast today. This is Dr. Mark Hyman, and most of you know him, right? Most of you have his books. We've had him on stage. He wrote the foreword to Limitless. He's been on our podcast a number of times. He's a practicing physician, internationally recognized leader. in the field of functional medicine. His CV is just so long. It's just— you'll see it on jimkwik.com/notes, honestly. But, he's the founder and the director of the Ultra Wellness Center, senior advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He has an incredible podcast which everyone should subscribe to. It's Doctor's Pharmacy. I've had the honor of being on that show. He's written a bazillion books, like, I don't know, 14. There's probably more than New York Times bestsellers. He probably— I just can't even keep track. But, his new book is this. And I recommend all you Kwik readers get this. It's called Young Forever: Secrets to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life. I read it yesterday on the plane and let's go into it. Thanks for being back on the show, Mark.

Oh, Jim, thanks for having me. This is so great to be with you again.

I value our friendship. It's been over 10 years and you really—

More than 10.

Yeah, more than 10. You look younger and I know you feel younger and just the energy around you, you know, it's Especially the past few years, it's just been very nourishing for me. So, I appreciate you. I'm turning 5-0 this year. I don't really talk about my age and everything. Recently, a few weeks ago, we had our first child also. So—

Amazing.

I am more and more thinking about the topic of this book and that's why I just absorbed it. So, let's start in a way that makes sense. You refer to age as— most people refer to it as like this gradual decline, right? Increased illnesses, chronic disease, becoming less independent, and it's really abnormal. And, but it seems like the norm for, for most people. So let's talk about this. Why is this so normal? And maybe we talked about the difference between normal aging and abnormal aging.

Yeah, well, you know, most of us look around as people get older, it's a scary prospect. They're decrepit, frail, disabled, dysfunctional, you know, can't do the things you love to do, aches and pains, diseases. And that is just not how it has to be. And what's exciting about the emerging field of longevity is we now understand that the phenomena that we typically see around us as normal aging is really abnormal aging. It's dysfunction in these basic systems that underlie all disease that we call the hallmarks of aging. And so, we're redefining aging as a disease that can be treated and reversed, not your chronological age. Obviously, you're 50, I'm 63. We can't change the date we were born, but we can change what's going on on the inside and reverse some of the processes that are driving these chronic diseases of aging like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, just frailty and dysfunction. You want to be able to kind of be vibrant and do whatever you want to do as long as you're alive. And, that's possible whether you're 50, 60, 70, 80, even 100, 110. I've seen people who are still going at it well over 100 years old. So, that's pretty impressive when you see a person do that. And, it's because And for some reason, their collective life, their thing, their life experiences has helped their biology not go into this abnormal aging state.

I love it. So regardless of the age and stage of someone listening, they could get benefit from this now whether they're in their 20s, 50s, 70s, 80s. You mentioned hallmarks of aging. So what happens when we age and how do we address this? And is there one more important than the other?

Absolutely. So basically, there's these 10 phenomena that seem to be going on that drive all the aging diseases and rapid aging. And, we're understanding them from inflammation to changes in our microbiome to our mitochondria to damaged proteins to epigenetic changes, DNA damage, zombie cells, telomere shortening. And, the most important one I think is deregulated nutrient sensing. And, this essentially means how do we relate to the food we're eating and what happens to our biology when we eat certain foods or we don't eat certain foods. And, we now know there's these 4 longevity switches that are sensing your nutritional environment. And, if you are eating crap and you're eating tons of sugar and processed food and not eating the right levels of phytonutrients and amount of protein and so forth, you end up causing these longevity switches to all turn towards rapid aging. But, if you understand that If you eat too much sugar and starch, you're turning on insulin. And that's a bad thing when it's done in excess over a long period of time because it causes weight gain and inflammation. In fact, it damages your brain. It's one of the biggest things that's driving cognitive decline, dementia, memory loss, even depression is insulin resistance. And this is sugar and starch and the processed foods. So that's a huge driver of aging. Then protein's the other one. I think if we're constantly eating and constantly stimulating this pathway called mTOR, we end up with more rapid aging because we don't give our bodies a chance to recycle, repair, renew. So, you need times where you're not eating basically 12, 14, 16 hours a day depending on what feels comfortable to you, but you need to take a break so your body can clean and repair. And, that's where you stimulate this process called autophagy, which is self-cleaning or self-cannibalism. But, you also do need protein in the right amounts at the right time so you can actually build muscle because muscle is the currency of aging. So, it's sort of like the Goldilocks phenomena. You don't want it always on or always off. You need that on-off. And, that's really a key part of aging. So, these nutrient sensing switches are so important and we can regulate them. And then, the epigenome is so amazing because we can actually change the marks on our genes, not which genes we have, but which genes are turned on or off expressed that either drive health and longevity or disease and early death. And, we now know that we can actually through lifestyle interventions through certain nutraceuticals, even certain pharmaceuticals and other hormesis practices, which is little stresses that make our body kind of kick into repair, we can actually reverse our biological age measured by these epigenetic changes. So, we've never really had a biomarker for longevity before and aging. And now, we do, which is this biological age measurement through DNA methylation testing, which is these little kind of marks on our genes that tell Which genes should be on or off.

We've talked about in previous episodes how you believe food is information. And so, it's not just even— it's what you're eating certainly, but then it also has to do with how you're eating it. It has to do with when you're eating it. How about exercise? Exercise and movement. I mean, when we're talking about longevity, everyone wants to grow older, you know, I mean, not grow older but grow better. They want to add years to their life, maybe even more important adding life to their years. What role does movement and exercise play in longevity? Yeah.

It's huge. I mean, one of the things that people need to understand is that muscle is the currency of longevity. If you lose muscle, you're not just getting skinnier or maybe flabbier, you're actually changing the entire internal milieu of your body. Your stress hormones go up, your growth hormone goes down, which is a repair hormone. Your insulin resistance increases, meaning you become more pre-diabetic. You lower your testosterone. You have all these inflammatory things that happen in your body. You increase your risk of dementia. And obviously, if you lose muscle, more frailty and potential risk of falling and injury and death. So keeping your muscle is so important and you need to do strength training in some form, whether it's bodyweight exercises, whether it's bands or weights or various options that people can use, but you have to actually do resistance training and you have to then have protein afterwards to build muscle. So I think that's the biggest thing that I think people don't realize is that if you want to stay functioning and healthy as you get older, you have to— build your muscles because they tend to degrade over time just like everything else. And, you need to put energy into the system to actually build the muscle that is going to keep you functioning and healthy.

And, we're talking about physical health and we're talking about physical fitness, our audience obviously being Kwik Brain, they think about their mental fitness and their mental health. So, when we're talking about mental health and stress, trauma, maybe connection or lack thereof, how important is community and purpose when it comes to living longer and better?

Yeah. I mean, your brain is so so influenced by everything that you do, what you eat, exercise. And also, you know, we have our psychological stresses and traumas we've all experienced. You know, Gabor Maté talks about the big trauma, uh, big T trauma, little t trauma, which is, you know, can be, can be influencing the way that we see the world, our mindset, our beliefs, our attitudes, what we choose to do or not. So getting your mind straight is so important. Having meaning and purpose is so important. Healing old past traumas is important because if you're in a constant state of stress and sympathetic overdrive from unresolved trauma in your life, then it ends up causing faster aging, more degradation of your brain. I mean, cortisol itself causes shrinkage of your memory center in your brain, your hippocampus. So it's really important to, to stay focused on, you know, resetting your mind from the ways that we've, you know, accumulated our beliefs around what keeps us from actually feeling free and open and happy. And that's so key. And you mentioned community and friends. That's also such a big thing. We need to build community in our lives and friendships and places where we can actually be ourselves and be seen and be witnessed and known. That's such a huge part of these communities like Sardinia and Ikaria where I visited, the Blue Zones. They have this deep sense of connection and community and it's just a key part of what they value and it actually makes you live longer.

I've heard you say it's not just our biological networks but our social networks.

That's right.

And they can definitely affect our neurological networks for sure.

Totally.

I'm sure a lot of People who are listening are curious if they were to be a fly on the wall following you around wherever you happen to be in the world, what does a day in the life of Dr. Mark Hyman look like? Do you have a certain longevity protocol that you try to stick to for both your mind and your body?

I totally do. I mean, this morning, basically, it's about just establishing some simple habits and routines that you can do. For example, I mean, I prioritize sleep, so I make sure I get 8 hours sleep a night. And then, I wake up and I like to meditate Even, you know, 15, 20 minutes in the morning just to kind of get my nervous system reset. If I have a little extra time, I do a little journaling and kind of process the day. And then I do a workout with my bands. I do a resistance training set where I use, you know, heavy resistance and build muscle, but it's a high-intensity set of 30 minutes. So I really get going. My heart rate goes way up. I usually turn my steam shower on, go in that for 10 minutes and get really hot. And then I go in my bathtub full of cold water. I just turn on the cold water and it's like 45 degrees. I did a cold plunge this morning. And then, I have my Healthy Aging Shake, which I talk about in the book Young Forever, which essentially is regeneratively raised goat whey. I use goat because it has less inflammatory properties than cow dairy. And, its whey is an incredible way to build muscle. And, I put all sorts of adaptogenic mushrooms in there, creatine, something called urolithin A, which helps with muscle synthesis and mitochondrial function and cleaning up your mitochondria. I put my gut food protein— I mean, my gut food powder in there, which has pre- and probiotics. polyphenols just to keep my gut healthy. And so, basically, within an hour, an hour and a half, I have really started my day great and sets into motion all these basic systems that have to be optimized to live a long time. So, all the things that I'm doing are positively influencing the hallmarks of aging. And then, I take my supplements like I have NMN and various other things I take that kind of work on my longevity pathways.

I've had the opportunity to travel different places with you and I have to say you are one of the most congruent individuals where I think More people need to practice what they post. I mean, you're really—

Practice what they post. That's a good one.

And so, this book is very dense. I recommend everyone gets their copy, Young Forever. And now, just 2 quick more questions that are just top of mind. In there, you talk a lot about different tools and therapies and some things are very innovative. Which do you feel like has the most potential to maybe stop or maybe reduce or Maybe reverse aging.

Yeah. I mean, there's a number of things that are emerging that in addition to diet and exercise, stress management, sleep, which are just the foundational cores that you can't get away from, and then some basic nutraceuticals and supplements, there's some interesting practices that I think are powerful that are available now like hormesis practices, essentially hot and cold therapies, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ozone therapy, even hypoxia, which is where you put a mask on or these different for low oxygen or these things called Cell Gems, which help you stimulate your mitochondria. So, there's a lot of things that are currently available that are pretty accessible for people. And then, there's what's coming down the pike, things like plasmapheresis where they exchange your blood, take out the old plasma, clean it out, and put in the new albumin. And just your body can clear out all these old inflammatory compounds. And, I'm really excited about that. Then, there's exosomes and stem cells and Those are sort of being done now as well in some places. So, those are the things that are available now. I mean, on the pike, there's some really interesting stuff in longevity science around studies on rapamycin and metformin, which a little dubious about, but that's what a lot of people are prescribing. And then, there's some really cool stuff around maybe even reversing our stem cells to a younger set of stem cells that helps us to repair and fix all kinds of problems by inserting these transcription factors called Yamanaka factors. It's a little sci-fi, but essentially, they found that as you develop, you have these basically switches that make you turn your original cells into liver, kidney, or brain, or eye, and then it stops at some point. Well, you can actually insert these back in, in animal models, and reverse your age by basically turning on these transcription factors called Yamanaka factors that will make you younger. So, if you're 50 and you decide, I want to turn back the clock, you turn on these switches and you end up reversing your gray hair, your arthritis, your wrinkles, your organ health, your muscle function. All of that can be done through this really wild techniques. They're doing it in animals now. I don't know if it'll be ready for primetime, but it's kind of cool. So there's a lot of stuff coming down the pike. Longevity science is exploding and I think we're in an interesting moment around it.

Yeah, very hopeful. I recommend everyone gets their copy and we'll put links to a lot of the resources that Dr. Hyman mentioned. Cell Gym, ozone, hyperbaric in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes as well as links to the book. Actually, where can we direct people to get their copy?

Well, they can go to youngforeverbook.com and learn all about it. And, there's all kinds of extra bonuses there, but they can go get the book anywhere they want, their bookstore, local bookstore, Amazon. It's available everywhere, audiobook and Kindle.

Amazing. And, some of the things that we mentioned are investment of time or certainly money. How about top 3 things or 3 things that people could do right away today to increase their longevity, their health, their brain, and their body span that maybe won't cost anything? Because some of the routine things that you mentioned, people don't have to— it doesn't cost them anything, they just have to pay attention, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think the things that are really the obvious ones are fix your diet. I mean, get rid of sugar and starch, which are the drivers. Occasional treats are fine, but as a main part of your diet, this is the killer. This is what's driving us into early decrepitude and aging. So eating a whole real food diet, having adequate protein, getting rid of starch and sugar, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, basically common sense. And then resistance training. And you don't really need equipment. You can use your body weight. You can buy a couple of cheap bands. There's lots of things online you can do, but resistance training is so key. And then there's a couple of things you can add in, obviously besides sleep and stress management, like hormesis practices. So, take a cold shower for 2 minutes in the morning, have a hot, hot bath which can stimulate heat shock proteins and repair, or if you're lucky enough, get a sauna. So, there's a few things you can do that are really powerful that kind of turn on these longevity pathways that keep you young and healthy.

Awesome. Marc, everyone, thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone, get the book, Young Forever: Secrets to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life. I challenge everyone to actually do this. Whatever platform you're listening to this right now, whether it's YouTube, on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, take a screenshot of this and share one thing. And maybe Mark will ask you the question of one thing he wants to see shared. Make sure you tag both of us. Is it Dr. Mark Hyman or Mark Hyman?

Yes, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. D.R. Mark Hyman. Yeah. Perfect.

And @JimKwik so we get to see it. And what do you want them to post when they're sharing? Maybe an answer to a question or something they're going to do or— Yeah.

What is the one thing you can change now that can add life to your years and years to your life?

Perfect. I love it. Maybe something that's from this episode or something that you have in your own toolbox. We'd love to see it. I'll actually repost some of my favorites and we'll gift— I pre-ordered a number of copies. We'll gift a couple copies also randomly to our community just as a thank you. Yeah. Thanks again for being on our show.

You're the best. Thank Thank you, Jim.

All right. Thank you everyone for listening. Make sure you leave a review, subscribe on YouTube, and be one of our, what, close to a million subscribers there. And please, if this episode was valuable, share it with your friends and family who could benefit. And until our next episode, be limitless, everyone. Take care.