2022-09-02 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - Optimize Longevity - Keeping Your Brain Young

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• Length: 45:15
• Interviewee: Dr. David Sinclair

Transcript

0:00	it's super important that we protect the brain because there's really like I said there's no point having a really healthy body if your brain starts to age first
0:09	[Music]
0:29	hi hi nice to see you good to see you uh where
0:36	are you tuning in from today I'm in a new venue called Harvard Medical School so this is my office at Harvard
0:43	that is so okay so you guys you're getting a sneak peek into the office and
0:48	we're moving up and the office is next to the lab I'm assuming where all
0:53	the magic happens uh yep it's just uh over that way encourage everyone who hasn't yet
1:00	mentioned go do that even if you don't get to do
1:05	it right right go do that after this live so then you'll have reference to what we're we're speaking of that episode is called
1:12	Aging and the brain and it's it's an epic episode so I highly recommend that
1:17	you go download listen and then listen to all the other ones if you haven't yet so then these lives and our episodes
1:23	that we do here with q a will make even more sense to you because these are a follow-up to those episodes
1:29	so yay so a lot of really really kind
1:35	um comments today so appreciate you guys did you mention that people with uh
1:40	negative comments don't belong here um well I had I didn't say that this
1:45	time so let me say it okay yeah so it's been great to see especially with the last live that people are uh for the
1:53	most part really positive and sharing their thoughts and kindness and that's what we want here this is not a space
1:58	for people to insult each other and insult the two of us if you want to do that there's you know plenty of other places to go do that but not here this
2:05	is a special place that Serena has really built and I'm just privileged to be part of
2:10	well we co-created this so this is this is super magical and this is a beautiful
2:15	Community It's a combination of both the virus and we're really just here to serve you guys so that's our
2:20	housekeeping and I've already loved to know some of the topics we're going to try and cover um you know how you can measure the
2:28	first stage of your brain and then the things that we can do um two supplements nutrition and exercise
2:34	and meditation uh things that we can do in our life sleep was just mentioned yeah sleep and stress we're going to try
2:42	and cover all of it but if we don't get to all of it then we'll just do another and a part two of us
2:49	stay tuned for that for that someone said I like your haircut I'm too mine yeah
2:57	I don't think you can tell yeah well thank you there's a lot of really kind comments um I appreciate all
3:03	of them so it's great so um let's try this since we're already like nine minutes in and I'm gonna have
3:09	to jump right at right at the top of the hour kind of let's start with what causes brain aging you know and how
3:17	quickly does the brain age I mean this is I want to just let you roll with this
3:23	uh it's fine so brain aging is really interesting because it's it's one of the
3:28	few organs that we absolutely absolutely cannot do without if we want quality of
3:33	life and the problem with medicine today is that we treat the heart we treat kidneys we know how to treat a lot of
3:40	organs that are below the neck but above the neck we've been very poor being able to preserve the age of the the
3:47	youthfulness of the brain and what we're ending up in society and many of our
3:52	family members uh end up this way as well it's totally tragic is that the heart keeps beating but the brain
3:58	declines around the age of 70 and by the 80s and 1790s there's a lot of dementia
4:04	Alzheimer's is a type of dementia and what we want to do today is to talk about ways uh when you're young middle
4:10	aged and even elderly and older to preserve the function of your brain and even improve the function of your brain
4:17	if you started to lose some of that function but the brain is actually can be preserved it actually can age quite
4:23	slowly it's not like the ovaries in females where that's a very fast aging
4:28	process um the brain actually ages quite slowly relative to other organs and it's partly
4:34	because it's protected from toxins it's got a special blood-brain barrier that protects it it also has very good
4:41	defense mechanisms but it's not perfect and it's actually susceptible to damage because those cells typically don't
4:47	divide in your brain and you're stuck in of the ones that you have when you're born so you have to protect them because
4:52	it's very hard to fix them though we are working on that and I think our next load we're going to cover that part of it uh to in terms of brain age reversal
5:00	and reprogramming but before that technology is ready let's just talk about things that we could do today uh
5:06	we'll talk about those things that we can Implement today to slow down the agent of the brain
5:13	[Music] before we dive into that maybe we should
5:19	just highlight some things that it might be common for most people but maybe not for others what what things what are
5:27	contributing factors to the Aging of the brain some people might not even have an awareness of what they're doing they may
5:33	be aging their brain right well the the real breakthrough was an understanding of what's driving Aging
5:39	in the whole body but it's particularly important in the brain because those cells have a lot of metabolism and a lot
5:46	of free radical damage and they can't easily just divide and and kill off the
5:51	dead cells you you cannot kill off your brain cells unless you want to lose your memory and so one of the processes that
5:57	we identified and I talk about in lifespan the book is DNA damage but a
6:03	particular type of DNA damage called a double-stranded DNA break essentially you chromosomes will break and every
6:09	nerve cell and in fact every cell in your body has a few breaks per day that's trillions per day and this
6:16	reorganizes the structure of how the DNA is organized in three-dimension and this affects how the genes are turned on and
6:22	off we call this epigenetic regulation and it's this change over time of which genes are on and off that leads to aging
6:29	we believe and we have a lot of evidence for that um and what the process we've called it we call this process X differentiation
6:36	uh it was previously called this differentiation but we we tweaked that name and actually the
6:42	you know Richard Cutler was the guy that deserves credit for that just differentiate differentiation idea the
6:48	point is that X differentiation leads to cells losing their identity but the identity
6:54	of nerves um is lost so that nerve cells think that they're more like a skin cell or a
7:00	live cell which is not good and so you want to maintain that identity over time by keeping that structure of the DNA in
7:06	three dimensions as perfect as it was when you were young and there are lots of ways to do to do that which we'll
7:12	talk about yeah and so and for and so thank you for explaining all the science behind it in
7:19	terms of like what we do on a daily basis exposure to toxins you know chronic inflammation uh chronic stress
7:27	um poor diets processed foods these are all things that contribute to what David
7:32	just explained and and then and then now we're going to kind of dive into the different things that you can do to
7:39	offset that and just and reverse it really so okay so what should we dive
7:44	into first let's should we talk about um do you want to talk about supplements uh okay yeah because it really it leads
7:54	in from what we're talking about that we want to take supplements that protect the DNA so you don't want a lot of free
8:01	radical damage you don't want broken chromosomes and we also want to boost the repair system so that the so can
8:07	send in proteins to join those chromosomes back together very quickly and and that's really what we're talking
8:12	about and the mitochondria are key to that that one of the most important parts of a nerve cell uh of the
8:19	mitochondria we have thousands in each cell and in the brain and in muscle they're really important because our
8:24	nerve cells need a lot of energy to work and over time as you get older those mitochondria are less active and you
8:31	start to get brain fog and your nerve cells don't work as well and eventually they lose their their identity and so
8:37	some of the supplements that I take uh and so I know you take are aimed at boosting my mitochondrial activity yeah
8:45	and uh so first one first one we can talk about is metformin which we've
8:50	talked about before a drug to treat type 2 diabetes and lower blood sugar and the way it works
8:57	is it inhibits what's called complex one it's a it's a group of proteins involved
9:02	in energy production and it it stops them from working efficiently and in response the cell says oh my goodness I
9:09	don't have enough energy I'm going to make more mitochondria so mitochondria you can think of as battery packs so the
9:15	these little battery packs are also seen as um you can think of them as bacteria they used to be bacteria that swam
9:21	around outside our cells and then we merge them about four billion years ago and what we try to do is we with
9:28	metformin we inhibit them a little bit so that they multiply to compensate and so metformin will boost the amount of
9:34	mitochondria the number of mitochondria in your cells and has been shown to improve memory in uh in elderly people
9:40	now the other supplement that I take every day is CoQ10 which is also part of
9:46	this electron transport chain and the levels decline with age but they also decline when you take certain drugs in
9:52	my case I take a Statin um atorvastatin for my cholesterol familial it's a family issue and CoQ10
10:00	is very important and CoQ10 has been shown to be important for stating off diseases like depression and that tends
10:07	to happen increasingly as you get older and so supplementing that is important for cell function and for mental health
10:16	one other one that I take is alpha lipoic acid which actually did my PhD on
10:22	and you would have seen it's up on the Shelf there the little molecules is
10:27	important for the enzymes that that make mitochondria function and lipoic acid
10:33	actually is like a little motor in proteins that spins around and you make less of it as you get older and so I
10:38	take a regular size supplement one of those capsules that you can buy every day and I've been doing that now for
10:45	about 15 years and I was actually told well recommended to do that by a guy
10:51	called Denon Denham Harmon who invented the free radical Theory of Aging and he still worked at 92 he was in the lab at
10:58	92 when I visited him and uh yeah and he's my hero and I I
11:03	gave a talk at his Institute and uh if he tells me to do something I recommend something I'm going to do it I've been
11:09	doing it ever since um and it's been really great and my mental health by the way has steadily improved with these changes
11:15	you know I I was told that and I and I take it that carnitine actually also
11:22	helps and sometimes is taken with ala because it can have even
11:29	even better yeah absolutely not supporting the mitochondria so could you talk about that just for a second and
11:35	explain what um what carnitine is well carnitine is a a version of an
11:43	amino acid that's important for the body's metabolism um and that if you're deficient in it
11:48	you just have less ability to generate energy and maintain mitochondria so
11:53	thinking of the dlas is really important the other one I think we should mention is called pqq yeah it was a super potent
12:00	antioxidant it's about at least 10 times greater than Resveratrol
12:05	um and it's been shown to boost the levels of a protein called neuron growth factor and
12:13	um that ngf is actually very important for the ability of nerve cells to survive and even produce new
12:21	um nerve growth uh nerve in response to this growth factor the other important
12:26	thing about pqq uh and by the way you can get it in things like kiwi fruit or
12:31	even if you're a baby from mother's milk it's actually uh it stimulates a transcription factor which is something
12:38	that controls genes and its name is crib c-r-e-b and bread is really important
12:44	for nerve health and and particularly for maintaining memories uh and in this
12:49	case it also stimulates the mitochondria so all of these things that we talked about have words can work together to
12:55	maintain the energetics uh and the survival oh and and actually the the
13:02	function of your neurons in old age yeah and um and for those of you asking it is
13:08	pqq um so pqq it's often found in combination with uh with uh CoQ10 I also
13:17	I actually used ubiquinol which is a different form of CoQ10 uh David I don't
13:22	know if you wanted to chat about ubiquinol for a minute but um it's it's the same it's just a more bioavailable
13:29	form and quite often when you're shopping for supplements you'll see pqq and ubiquinol is in a blend together and
13:37	that might make it easier for those people don't want to be taking too many supplements you'd become a more soluble
13:43	form of an available form of CoQ10 and that is the one I take I try to take as
13:49	well yeah so yeah so I think we've covered a lot of brain supplements we have you know and I think and I think
13:56	that a big part of why you know we're talking about brain supplements but I think we should also talk a little bit
14:01	about just brain health through gut health and just cover that a little bit
14:07	um I'm not well actually no there's other there's other supplements though you know we didn't talk about omegas
14:14	um epas DHA uh dhas even some vitamin D should we cover those I mean those those
14:20	few were kind of focused on what David was saying about um mitochondria repair for the brain but there's these other
14:26	ones that we can get through food or you can take supplementary supplementally so yeah a big big one that's been shown to
14:34	help in brain health this is this is shown in many different scientific studies uh Omega fatty acids these are
14:41	PA and DHA which you can get in supplement form they're typically a squishy little uh capsule
14:48	um gel uh and so I take a gram or so of those substances also combined with some
14:53	oleic acid which is an omega-9 these other two are Omega-3s you can also get
14:58	a fatty acid from plants is um this is ala which is ethylene Lake
15:05	acid and uh and so what are the what are the really good sources of ala I mean
15:10	you can get you can get them through if you're if you are not plant-based you obviously can get it through a fish like
15:16	salmon mackerel um so Deans Herring um uh but you can also get it through seeds
15:23	so flax seeds chia seeds um walnuts nuts and seeds are great
15:28	sources and of those oils so that's that's you know if you're if you're not wanting to take supplements
15:35	you can get those omegas um and then did you want to talk about any
15:41	of the other uh okay I mean there some of them are just
15:46	sort of like basic supplements and I think maybe we can talk about magnesium too because that has an effect on our uh
15:54	mental health you know and our stress levels so yeah well so magnesium you can
15:59	be deficient in magnesium from your diet uh and I measure my magnesium levels as
16:04	to people um who I know of and they uh they supplement with magnesium uh typically a
16:11	tablet and there are various forms of magnesium there's glycinate steroid
16:17	um I'm not sure which is better perfect yeah they're different for different people right I know you've said that it
16:24	depends on the person but in general I mean now so some of these in terminate
16:29	is more for brain health I guess um the glycinate more from
16:35	kind of like relaxing the mind but magnesium in the different forms will definitely serve um and I'm sorry to
16:42	interrupt go ahead and no you know a lot about magnesium I take it at night uh
16:47	these days to help me with my sleep um and so speaking of sleep um there are things we can do to take
16:53	sleep maybe we'll leave that for later when you get to the Sleep section but uh magnesium is is really important I take
16:58	anime for my brain because we've shown in animals that it improves blood flow not just in muscles to make mice run
17:05	further but also prevents dementia it can actually reverse temperature in mice and um it's called vascular dementia so
17:12	if you ever have uh grandparents or even great parents great great grandparents that lose their memory a lot of that is
17:19	due to lack of blood flow in the brains it's like cardiovascular disease in the brain and a man in
17:25	fixes that the blood flow improves and so I'm taking an amen every day in part
17:30	not just because we think it's important for slowing aging and maintaining that structure of the DNA and helping repair
17:36	the DNA but also because it opens up and makes me blood vessels in the brain yeah [Music]
17:42	and they sort of piggyback off of that that's something that you can take supplementially that helps with blood
17:48	flow but also just you know we've touched on it um movement you know exercise if you go
17:55	if you do um lymphatic drainage if you use a pemf map all these things can help with um uh
18:02	blood flow and flow with their and kind of dilate that microvascular system that also helps so there's so many different
18:09	things that you can do supplements are one thing that you can do and you can also stack them
18:15	um and with lifestyle and and food and other things so
18:20	um okay so so should we talk about that and then I think I think specifically about these
18:27	supplements that help with their brain health and that and and helping to repair that damage but there's just also
18:33	foods and supplements that are important for just overall brain health and supporting brain health and a lot of
18:39	them are our basic vitamins you know whether it's vitamin D3 you know B vitamins probiotics and prebiotics um
18:47	vitamin C they're all so important for for maintaining brain health so not just
18:52	you know going um okay let's repair the damage but just maintaining what you
18:58	have right now especially if you're if you're young and you want to focus on getting out yeah and so to maintain the identity of
19:05	your neurons your neurons don't become more like skin and fail uh there are certain diets that we we believe slow
19:10	down aging there are a number of studies now that point to that not just showing that you have improved Health but there's one study that showed that
19:16	switching to a mediterranean-like diet which I think you you know is most more
19:22	plant-based than meat also with a little bit of red wine if you wanted mostly
19:28	um olive oil rather than the saturated fatty oils from animals healthy yeah and so this studies show
19:36	that there's these changes to cell identity we can measure this with What's
19:41	called the DNA methylation clock also known as the horbath club it actually takes more slowly when you eat a
19:48	Mediterranean diet which is another reason for for saying that we should focus more on plans and these types of
19:54	foods but plants also contain molecules in them that that activate the body's defenses against aging such as the
20:00	sotoins those for two ins restaurants that I've worked on and uh and that's another reason they take Nomine they
20:06	also activate so twins but let me talk about one study there was one longitudinal study so looking at almost
20:12	2 000 people and there was a 10 reduction in dementia risk for each time
20:18	they uh they switched into a mediterranean-like diet and it correlated with better memory and better
20:23	cognitive performance for those people and so that's just one of many studies showing that what you eat really affects
20:30	not just how intelligent and how much you can remember this week but decades later and
20:37	that's so important to to start early because sometimes it can be too late once dementia is really set in it's
20:44	really hard to reverse it at that stage yeah and I think that's again sort of a running theme that we have here is just
20:51	giving you guys the tools all these reminders things that you can do to be
20:57	preventative right so that's because as David said reversing is much harder so
21:03	let's talk about some of those you know the the different foods and the vitamins that you're really getting in high doses
21:10	from a Mediterranean diet or a plant-based diet so there's a there's a big focus on foods that are rich in
21:18	vitamin B right so and that is we're talking leafy greens and and um and
21:25	greens you know that have folate B12 B6 B3 all of these which we've chatted to
21:32	help control your methylation clock you can probably tell a little bit more about that uh yeah so if you look in my fridge
21:40	um these days it's pretty similar I think to your fridge as to all your recommendations so I have a lot of
21:46	vegetables I have dark green vegetables so this would be um a lot of spinach I have broccoli
21:55	um going to be very beneficial and to boost
22:03	the body's defenses against DNA damage which you know it drives the epigenetic
22:08	changes in a clock um so yeah it's that's it we legumes sunflower seeds I eat seeds during the
22:15	day and occasionally buy the chocolate little dark chocolate which has catechins in it which are also very
22:21	protective and can also boost mitochondria and matcha green tea I've now switched from coffee to green tea
22:27	thanks to you and that's full of a number of compounds but the one that we think is most potent scientists think is
22:34	ecgc which is antioxidant but also I was able to boost mitochondria like
22:40	metformin by inhibiting it and causing a little bit of stress to those mitochondria so they react and produce
22:46	more of themselves but that's in my diet Serena what other things do you eat I'm
22:51	sure well I do avocados that's something that's a part of my daily sorry guys
22:56	there's all kinds of seeds I do it's not every single
23:02	seeds obviously they do a lot of nursing especially for brain health they do walnuts
23:08	um and I love as a as I often share eating the whole section of the rainbow because of those those uh antioxidants
23:15	and polyphenols and so I do blueberries and apples and turmeric is another great
23:23	a great it's a root and I do turmeric and ginger we want curcumin which is in
23:29	the turmeric and usually I have it with a little bit of black pepper black pepper oil either in a drink and a juice
23:35	um or in a latte uh and then I I do obviously a lot of the greens that you
23:41	mentioned and also other types of leafy greens kale spinach all of that I love
23:46	raspberries so I really try and focusing on all the colors brightly
23:51	favorite colors and I also do um fermented foods so we really want
23:56	those probiotics or prebiotics from fermented foods so whether it's like sauerkraut or um
24:03	yogurt you know I do plant-based yogurt pretty much everything every single day these are all things that are really
24:09	important for supporting your gut which helps to support your brain as well
24:16	yeah so most of the things you just mentioned uh boost the levels of a protein called bdnf brain growth
24:22	hypertrophic factor and similar to nerve growth factor in GF that I mentioned earlier uh it's really important for
24:28	maintaining nerve cell health and the growth of new nerves and so it's now been shown that you can grow new nerves
24:35	in a process um that's called urogenesis and bdns are important for that as well forming new
24:41	new uh what are called synapses and what we find we in my lab and other scientists find
24:46	that as we get older vdnf levels go down and the brain doesn't heal and grow and remember things very well and by
24:53	maintaining BDF levels uh during aging by eating these types of foods it has
24:59	remarkable benefits uh ecgc for example people who drink matcha tea regularly
25:04	have a 35 less chance of getting dementia with aging and there's lots of studies showing that so this idea that
25:12	diet isn't just improving you know the taste and your your body metabolism it's
25:17	actually affecting your brain that's something that a lot of people fail to actually think about uh excuse the pun
25:22	but it's super important that we protect the brain because there's really like I said there's no point having a really healthy body if your brain starts to age
25:29	first yeah and um I just wanted to address a comment here about blueberries
25:35	wild blueberries versus a regular blueberries 100 while blueberries
25:40	actually have 33 higher antioxidant values than regular blueberries so you
25:45	might not find them organic obviously because they're wild but they're great you can find them Frozen almost anywhere
25:50	so we can't get them fresh um you can get them Frozen and it's also much more cost effective than
25:56	that yep and they also have higher levels of molecules which we talked about called yeah
26:02	xenoversees molecules yeah so they're much higher than that and um
26:08	adaptogens um as as something that helps to increase bdnf and so adaptogens are like
26:16	ginseng and uh holy basil and ashwagandha
26:21	um go to Cola Ginkgo there's this is a huge part of my uh
26:28	um I guess protocol my daily lifestyle is I take them in either supplementally or in teas or in tinctures so I am
26:36	someone that is a huge fan of adaptogens which I know will focus on at a different episode but those are also so
26:44	um those are also known to help increase your levels of beating up so
26:51	okay so I feel like we've covered actually we're doing really well here we've covered quite a few things and we
26:58	can do lists of foods if people want that but I feel like we've already gone over a lot of General groups
27:05	of foods that have pqq remember the pq2 is that there's a molecule that boosts
27:12	mitochondria yeah we can talk more about that one that this is a molecule that's been shown to that was discovered oh
27:18	maybe 100 years ago and has been trying to be really important for a lot of
27:23	enzymes including the enzyme that gets rid of alcohol in your body and when you take it you boost your mitochondrial
27:30	activity it's another one of those really important ones we met them and you can also get it not just in supplements but from from foods such as
27:37	spinach and parsley and kiwi green pepper carrots cabbage yeah even bananas
27:42	if you eat bananas bananas but sure well and um
27:53	people to try and put in their daily diet whether it's in Juice form or you can throw it into a smoothie or you cook
27:59	with it so many so many health benefits from something like parsley which you you wouldn't guess it does but parsley
28:06	also has some Pikachu in it uh so soon that's a great kind of a great reminder
28:12	on that and um and it's also in in one of our trusted resources too it's in one
28:17	of the products that we use the neuro serum neuro RX that we use and so that's
28:23	it's also there um yeah green too much also had Pikachu so there's a lot of different places
28:30	that you can you can get these molecules these compounds things that help your
28:36	body and help your brain uh other than just supplements so it's it's I mean I do but you know you know and I think
28:42	David does too you're kind of getting it from both um for both your foods from food based
28:48	sources as well as uh supplementally okay that's good so what what about
28:54	chatting about sleep yeah let's chat about sleep and the different things that you can do to help
29:01	your sleep um okay so let's talk about sleeping and what happens when you don't have enough
29:08	sleep and why your body needs sleep why your brain needs sleep yeah well it's
29:15	clearly one of the most important things for for longevity is to use to change and you can get away with less sleep if
29:22	you sleep deeply and there are a number of packs we can we'll talk about in a second how to do that but it's been
29:29	shown very clearly both in animal studies and in humans that people have like lack of sleep tend to develop
29:34	chronic diseases including dementia earlier um one of the things that struck me was
29:40	a 2022 study a recent one that having sleep apnea which I think I suffer from
29:46	a little bit is uh the loss of ability to breathe correctly during sleep and
29:51	it's just right to your sleep it actually some of these people on average um developed all sorts of issues with
29:58	their brain they had increased markers for Alzheimer's disease well it also reduces your bdnf too right when you
30:05	don't have enough sleep it definitely does and this is one of the problems if you don't eat the right foods and you
30:11	don't get enough sleep together you your nerves just end up not growing and forming memories so that's really really
30:17	stress and if you're too much stress and you're doing yeah yeah exactly and then you get inflammation in
30:23	your brain so there's a protein that goes up with aging um that's really uh important that um
30:31	the iba1 it's called and we can stain that in the brain and we see it go up
30:36	and lack of sleep and also just chronic stress leads to increases in that
30:43	um and so you want to keep your stress levels down mental stress and we also
30:48	now know that the brain is definitely controlling the body's immune system and so you can lose your immunity as well if
30:53	your brain is is not relaxed and getting enough sleep what we've discovered as scientists over the years is that there
30:59	are proteins that that go up with aging and are markers of inflammation
31:04	ABA one is is just one that we use um one that's particularly bad for you
31:10	is amyloid beta beta which is a protein that when it's cut into certain sizes it
31:17	will become insoluble and that accumulates both inside cells and outside of cells and outside neurons and
31:24	Alzheimer's patients have a lot of what are these called what are called plaques in the brain and there are a number of
31:30	drugs that are aimed getting rid of those plaques antibodies are bind to them and there are cells in the brain
31:36	that move around that actually eat up those uh those proteins but they don't do a very good job as we get older and
31:43	one of the things that people are trying to do to cure or at least treat Alzheimer's is to Target those proteins
31:50	but what you want to do really that's easier is to prevent them from forming in the first place and one of the
31:56	enzymes that we work on called soap one one of the sotoans is very good at preventing the buildup of beta amyloid
32:04	in the brain and so that's why exercise eating a little less often as well as
32:10	taking supplements like I do and a man I believe are very good ways at slowing
32:15	down the accumulation of these little protein fragments that can crystallize and actually become
32:22	insoluble and disrupt neurons and it's like trying to clean out
32:27	um the trash after it's accumulated whereas if you do recycling throughout most of uh the week it's a lot easier to
32:35	take out the trash at the end of the day
32:43	[Music] for getting in the most reparative way possible
32:50	uh well one thing that most people don't know about me is that through most of my 20s
32:56	and 30s I had extremely difficult um sleep patterns I was I basically was
33:03	approaching the depression because I wasn't sleeping enough and I had to
33:08	figure out ways to fix it and so like I said with my diet I'm pretty lazy when
33:14	it comes to doing things so if I can fix my sleep patterns I think pretty much anybody can and I started to do a few
33:21	things that worked for me and I've now got this whole program which I'll tell you about now
33:27	um so I start with trying to be calm at the end of the night I don't watch TV late at night and I try my best not to
33:33	look at screens though it's increasingly difficult and I turn down the blue light in my screen
33:38	um I wear some blue light blocking glasses uh most nights unless I'm you know being sociable and I don't want to
33:44	look like too much of a nerd but I find that that really does help with my eye strain as well and I try not to uh I try
33:51	to just read or nowadays you've turned me on to meditation and do that just before sleep and often that puts me to
33:58	sleep and so that's working I also take some supplements I take Gaba Gaba and
34:04	l-theanine and this magnesium that we talked about earlier and that combination is typically enough I have a
34:11	warm drink sometimes I have a shower these days I like that more and more and that just puts me in a very calm State I
34:18	reduce the temperature of my bed I have a bed that you can control the temperature and being a little cooler is
34:24	very good particularly during the night when it's cool I sleep most people sleep more deeply and those are the those are
34:31	the main hacks if I can't get to sleep I have other things that I think and actually I know is there any you don't
34:36	think are necessarily the best thing such as melatonin and even Ambien but I
34:42	don't take those um very often and I say absolutely need to get to sleep
34:51	thank you was so upset I I don't think that Ambien is necessary because we can
34:58	train and retrain our bodies um from you know and and in some cases
35:05	in some severe cases yes but I think the average person between diet and lifestyle and movement and meditation
35:11	then you can definitely get into a place where more natural um and and sort of Lifestyle habits can
35:19	really get you to into that state where you won't necessarily need ambient and melatonin it's not you know military is
35:26	something that we make in our body so it's not bad but there has been and just recently
35:31	I'm gonna have to send it to you I think I just found it today but recently there's um you know there's there's been
35:37	Studies have shown that daily use of melatonin is not to say that you do but for people who do
35:44	um use melatonin daily it actually doesn't have has some adverse effects
35:49	but you know there's different things there's um some herbal uh herbal support
35:55	too you know there's there's passion flower and there's valerian root and
36:00	there's chamomile um there's Tulsi there's different teas and natural plant-based
36:08	options for that too and then I also love you know I love using magnesium as well
36:15	as well and then there's some natural melatonin that's in cherry juice so for people who want to have a little bit of
36:21	that before bed that's also helpful to see the kind of get to your body into that state or if you guys have heard of
36:28	banana have you guys heard of well I'm asking like nobody I'm asking you so banana peel if you boil if you boil a
36:38	banana peel if you're someone that doesn't no there's science to this it's because there's such high amounts of
36:44	magnesium in the actual peel so for people who don't want to take uh
36:50	supplements especially at night some people have a hard time smelling pills um then what you can do is you can take
36:55	a banana and you can boil it and let it simmer and then if you drink some of that that actually has high amounts of
37:02	magnesium natural magnesium just to be clear you boil the peel or the banana the peel so you actually just want to
37:08	boil the peels so well I
37:15	uh okay wash your banana really well mm-hmm so there's another actual thing
37:21	if you don't feel like taking a pill it's not for everyone um
37:26	I will I will credit you that I I don't need melatonin often and I don't need
37:32	ambient I need it very very rarely and it's thanks to you because you you have
37:37	given me these tips and so I actually think I could get away with not having
37:43	my ambient anymore it's really just for total emergencies when I'm completely I'm on a flight for example and I can't
37:49	get to sleep yeah I totally agree with you and I've gone from needing it almost every other day to now I rarely even
37:57	need it and it's it's really thanks to you and one thing I will say about those drugs and melatonin as well is that the
38:03	doses in my view though I'm just a PhD not at Mandy is that they're really high and that for me I I would only need a
38:12	tiny little bit instead of a 10 milligram of melatonin or 10 milligram of yeah that's a lot I I would take more
38:18	like two or three milligrams and that was sufficient for my body to get yeah but even now it's now it's closer
38:25	to zero very rarely yeah um and yeah someone said no you don't eat the peel it's just for me
38:32	he's reading the juice don't don't eat the peel just just um just boil it and then just drink a
38:40	little bit of it and you know you can put other things in it you can put you can put chamomile this is just all
38:45	an option so it's not for everybody for those of you that prefer a tea at
38:51	night and I think sometimes drinking something warm at night also helps um as you were saying uh sometimes
38:57	having a warm drink at night can help So Okay Okay cool so we've talked about some of those
39:04	um I love that you also incorporate meditation into the end of your day to kind of help you ease into sleep
39:11	um that's a great practice hey we were talking about uh meditation I'd like to talk a little bit
39:17	a little bit because I'm I'm a novice to this um and I can talk from the perspective of someone who's just learning how to do
39:24	this and the effect it's having on my life how about that okay okay maybe talk about that for a second anyone who
39:30	hasn't tried meditation um you should definitely try it I actually was taught by Serena how to do
39:37	it I use a device that shines light in my eyes it helps but I found that just just as little as 11 minutes a night
39:44	allows me to sleep much better and actually get away with less sleep and it's been really quite amazing the
39:51	effects on my ability to to sleep and then get through the day and have much less stress during the day and
39:57	I listen to music I don't like to listen to people talking to me but but I've
40:02	just found that now I really miss it if I don't do it because my stress level keeps going up and up and up and this
40:08	resets it and I want to thank you Serena for for doing this it's a good change in my life I'm sure I should have done it
40:13	years ago oh you're welcome so glad that it is um and you'd be happy to know that
40:18	there's actually a lot of studies that show the benefit the benefits of meditation um there's a study at UCLA that's found
40:25	that long-term meditators they actually had better preserved brains than non-meditators so you know it there's
40:33	there's studies that show that it helps to preserve that aging brain I mean there are studies at John Johns Hopkins
40:41	at Harvard as you know I'm at Yale that all show how it can reduce the brain
40:46	activity it can it helps with depression there's so many different things um how to get started on meditation what
40:55	do you what's your recommendation uh I so there's different types of meditation there's concentration meditation there's
41:02	heart centered meditation there's mindfulness there's uh tai chi chi gong
41:07	there's Transcendental Meditation there's so many different ones and for people who who have a hard time creating
41:14	time um to do it I would say just do a little bit of breath work I mean that's what that's what we did right they thought we
41:21	just started with a little bit of breath work four counts it's something that I can I can share and post here I've
41:27	shared it before I just called the 444 and you're just breathing in for cats
41:32	um and you're holding that for four counts and then released for four counts and then you pause for four counts and
41:37	you do it again so I just gotta I just got a sign that said it's time so what
41:43	we can do is we can even actually do like a short live where we can walk everyone through like a guided breath
41:50	work meditation we can focus a little bit more about it and what it's doing for your body and your brain
41:55	and the different types of meditation but I would say I would say do a little bit of breath work it kind of eases
42:02	Youth on a sympathetic to a parasympathetic State then your mind can sort of relax and you can be in the
42:08	present uh and then Transcendental Meditation TM is another great
42:15	um form of meditation that I've found to be really beneficial but that does require 20 minutes twice a day but what
42:22	I like about it is that most often we judge ourselves when we're trying to
42:27	meditate our mind's still going we're thinking about our next meeting or what we have to do or the email we didn't
42:33	send we can't seem to quiet our mind with Tien you it's you're almost giving yourself permission to have another
42:39	thought because you have a mantra that you go back to that's sort of your home base so your mind starts to wander and you've
42:47	got spinning and you just remind yourself of that Mantra which is your home base and you go back to your home base and then your mind May wander again
42:53	and you just go back to your home base and so over time you're able to to go
42:59	more minutes without your mind wandering and then it becomes 20 minutes and we
43:04	really should talk more about this on another episode because it does it can help with telomerally it can increase your DHEA
43:12	levels there's so many benefits yeah and I can say questions about how do we do it how do I do it
43:18	we'll definitely cover all of that but as I mentioned right now I'm using a device that that sits on my head that allows me yeah
43:24	it's in our trusted resources you guys if you go there you'll see something called brain
43:30	something that I recommend to a lot of people uh kind of get it helps to get you started it's almost like training
43:37	wheels so it gets you started and then once your body and your mind is in that state and that flow you're able to do it
43:42	without that device um but it's a great uh I love it and I'm a beginner and it's
43:49	working great yeah yeah I'm so proud of you um okay you guys so we're coming
43:55	we're gonna have to and then there's so many things we didn't talk to talk about but I just I feel like we could probably
44:00	do a whole series on brain and keeping the brain young and expand
44:07	on every one of these things so so I don't know maybe that's something not something to discuss so
44:13	all right okay cool all right you guys thank you so much for joining I know
44:18	that some people had issues with the the email sign up but I still encourage you go if you don't get an email and we need
44:26	a couple days so I know that you want the replay like in a minute but the team
44:31	does need a couple days to clean everything up sync up the audio and video type above the notes so give us
44:37	you know maybe three days and you should get a link to that but you should get a welcome link um when you sign up and
44:43	that is to all the notes and the replays for this longevity lifestyle series go to David's Link in BIO or mine and you
44:49	can send it there all right thank you guys thank you David bye