Mark Hyman argues that aging doesn't require decline. Six in ten adults have chronic disease, but animal studies show a one-third lifespan increase is possible, and Blue Zone residents prove lifestyle can activate longevity pathways. The culprit: 60% of calories come from ultra-processed foods, driving insulin resistance and the chronic inflammation that fuels age-related disease.
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We now have a society where 6 in 10 of us have chronic disease, where 4 in 10 have more than one. Where if you're over 65, you know, 80% have. Have a chronic disease. And probably even more, when you look at things a little more subtly about dysfunction, that happens. So what we see as aging today is something that gives us an impression that it's bad to get older because you're going to become disabled, decrepit, dysfunctional, frail. But that's a model that is now being challenged by researchers in longevity and who are proposing that we may be able to even create something called longevity escape velocity, meaning we can escape death by advancing science that will keep us living longer and longer each year we're alive. Really, I'm not sure I'm into that because I don't know if I wanted to be a thousand. But I do think that it is pushing the boundaries of what we thought is possible. And we know in animal models, we've been able to extend life by a third. Right. So if we do certain interventions, we can take animals and make them over there longer. Which means for humans, you'd live to be 120. So we've had women who live to be very old, like Madame Clement, who lived to be 122 years old, who was a French woman who was documented legitimately to be 122 years old. That's incredible. It's incredible. And she was a wine drinking, smoking chocoholic. But I wouldn't follow her longevity plan. She had other things going for her to go against that. Yeah, for sure. So that was an anomaly. But there are cases of very vital, healthy people. And I traveled through the blue zones around the world where people live to be well over 100. I saw this couple that had a combined age of 210. Oh, my gosh. How long were they married together? It's been too long, according to that. Maybe like 100 years. I don't know. My gosh, 90 years or something. It's really wild. Right? So we see these pockets and we learned a lot from them about how to activate our longevity pathways. And they have a society and a culture that by default does it. We don't have it. We have a default society that makes us sick and overweight and creates early death. What would you say are the main causes of our society that causes us to get overweight and get sick easily? I mean, hands down, it's the food we are eating, a diet, a toxic diet that is unlike anything we've eaten in human history. 60% of our calories are ultra processed food, which means they're made from basically food, like substances that are from soy, corn, and wheat and other additives and ingredients and fillers and colors and dyes and thickeners that are highly toxic to our systems. And they're inordinately high in sugar and starch. We used to eat 22 teaspoons a year as hunter gatherers, if we were lucky to find a beehive or a berry patch. Now we have that every day on average. And kids have like 34, which is like two and a half soda, like large sodas a day. Right. So that's what's driving a lot of this. And that drives this phenomenon called insulin resistance, which is at the heart of the aging process. And that insulin resistance causes inflammation and all the age related diseases.
