2023-03-18 - Interview Dr. David Sinclair - India Today - Exclusive Conversation With Geneticist & Harvard Professor David Sinclair

Length: 37:49
Interviewee: Dr. David Sinclair
Interviewer: Kalli Purie

David Sinclair is a man who claims his ‘biological age’ is 10 years less than his actual age of 53. The Harvard Geneticist is a leader in longevity science. Watch him in a riveting conversation with Kalli Purie, Vice Chairperson, India Today Group at the #IndiaTodayConclave. The two discuss the formula to look younger, how healthy sugar is for you, whether fruits are a good substitute for sugar, the newly-researched stress-busting food, the benefits of red wine and the magic of metformin

Transcript

Introduction

0:00	good afternoon everyone we're fast coming to an Era where we
0:07	will be celebrating our DNA age and not our birth age our birthdays will mean we get younger
0:14	and not older imagine that I have with me
0:20	the handsome Miracle almost 54 year old doctor from Howard Middle medical school
0:27	who specialized in molecular genetics
0:33	he promises no aging no wrinkles no disease and possibly choosing your own
0:40	death date author of lifespan and professor of
0:46	genetics welcome there are many beautiful people here today in the audience but Everyone
0:53	likes a few tips right so first of all can you explain to the
0:58	audience here what is the basic theory of reversing aging and bio switches
1:07	well thank you Kali thank you for having me today uh so the science of aging and aging
1:13	reversal has come a long way in the past 20 years uh when I started at Harvard Medical School it was considered crazy to try
1:21	and slow down aging let alone reverse it but the science is now at a point where
1:26	we really do understand what drives aging and also that there's a backup copy of Youth in every one of
1:33	our many trillions of cells that we've just recently learned how to access and
1:39	reboot the body like you would reboot an old computer and reinstate the youthfulness of
1:45	tissues and organs and make them work again like they were young and this is only a few
1:51	years old now but it's the technology is far beyond what I thought I would see in my lifetime and it's only getting faster
1:57	in its development so can you explain the basic Theory
2:04	which is about keeping the body under a state of constant stress to activate the
2:10	longevity genes how does that work Yeah you mentioned the bio switches what
2:15	we discovered in my lab and in many labs around the world that is that there are genes that
2:21	control how long we live some of us are born with the best versions of those genes and
2:27	those people tend to live over a hundred those with parents like the Prime
2:33	Minister that lived over 100 I tend to live also for a long time but most of us
2:39	are not born with the perfect set of genes so we need to do a little extra and what we've discovered is that how we
2:46	live our life what we eat how much we move the type of molecules that we
2:51	ingest every day how we sleep how relaxed we are how many friends we have this modifies another type of system in
2:59	the body that's called the epigenome the epigenome is different from the genome
3:05	I think you all know that the genome is the DNA that we get from our parents the epigenome is what controls the DNA that
3:13	tells a brain cell to be different from a liver cell from a toenail producing cell
3:18	and over time we lose those instructions the epigenetic instructions become lost
3:26	and what we've found is that by living a healthy life the kind of life that we'll talk about
3:31	later you can slow that rate of Aging and prevent this this Corruption of the
3:36	body software and even reboot it so can we talk a little bit about this
3:43	style of living what are the things that we can do to slow that aging process down and activate these genes
3:51	yeah well there's there's some good and bad news the good news is that aging is much easier to slow and reverse than we
3:56	thought the bad news is that what causes us to slow our aging process is to give our
4:04	bodies a bit of a shock in today's lifestyle most of us have an
4:10	abundance many of us we have enough food and we don't need to exercise that's not the way we used to live and
4:17	it's not the way our bodies perform the best by sitting for most of our lives and
4:23	eating almost you know constantly three meals a day for many of us we end up
4:28	turning off these body switches and the body ages faster and faster so we've
4:33	built a world that's very comfortable but the backlash is that we age faster
4:39	so what we've discovered in my lab in studies in yeast cells that make bread
4:45	and beer in worms and flies and mice and monkeys and now humans is that we want to put our bodies into a state of
4:52	adversity make the body feel a little bit uncomfortable so how do we do that well we can skip meals we can exercise
5:00	we can eat food that it's that is plucked from the ground when it's also
5:06	stressed because they have wonderful chemicals in them that make us healthier and we can also get enough rest and calm
5:13	down the sleep that leads to inflammation and other things like that so really you want to make your body
5:19	fearful of running out of food or fearful that you're having to run away from a from a tiger and that turns on
5:26	the body's defenses against aging we've learned but that doesn't reverse aging
5:32	so much that's requires a little bit more attention which we've only recently figured out how to control

Skipping meals

5:44	and before can we talk a little bit about skipping meals what what do you recommend as a
5:52	diet for slowing down the aging process
5:57	there is a set of genes that I wrote about in my book lifespan that's called
6:02	the sirtuins and they get turned on when there's not enough energy in the body so
6:08	if you don't have a lot of sugar in your bloodstream or a lot of protein they will get turned on and they defend the body against the damage that causes the
6:16	the aging process and so what I've over time learned to do is to skip meals I'm
6:23	not always successful sometimes I have breakfast in in uh in beautiful places but from my my goal is
6:31	to not eat a large meal until dinner and then I eat a very healthy vegan meal
6:39	uh and very rarely alcohol and this diet that I have gone on to for now about 18
6:45	months my partner Serena poon who's a nutritionist and a longevity expert as
6:51	well moved me from what I thought was a healthy diet Mediterranean diet with
6:56	some red wine and cheese I went completely to mostly well almost completely to plants and my body has
7:03	responded I look better I think my skin is better I feel better my memory is certainly better
7:09	but I think it's not just what you eat it's also when you eat and this constant eating three meals a day plus snacks is
7:17	making us age faster than we need to so are you recommending intermittent fasting
7:23	well the way we put it Serena and I is you want to eat within a certain window and so I like to eat within a period of
7:30	about six hours a day and not more I can snack you know some snacks might be some
7:36	sugar-free chocolate or some nuts or some avocado it's not a crime to eat if
7:42	you're a little bit hungry but don't eat a big meal and if you can until either late at night or or have it in the
7:48	morning because you want to have a period where your body is not ingesting food and it will turn on its defenses
7:54	against disease and aging see can you talk a little bit about the fact when you went almost 20 hours without eating
8:02	and you did that for a period of time yeah so 20 hours is a long time to go
8:07	without food every day but your body gets used to it I found that after two weeks of doing that I was not hungry
8:13	anymore if I felt a little bit hungry I would drink a lot of tea Serena and I
8:18	have a green tea matcha which is filled with all these wonderful chemicals from stress plants and drink drink a lot of water and tea I
8:25	think here in India we know how to do that and that is the solution and
8:31	we often think oh we need to feed the body the sugar that you know have a dessert have a have some some lollies
8:37	but really your body can make its own sugar your liver makes sugar you just
8:42	need to wait two weeks for it to get used to it our liver is pretty lazy but after two weeks it learns ah in the
8:48	morning I have to make some sugar and what what I found is that my liver making sugar is a lot smarter than my
8:54	eyes and my mouth eating sugar because when we eat three meals our sugar goes up and down and up and down and we get
8:59	we get lots of energy then we crash and we get brain fog and then we need eat again and we're hungry and you go like
9:04	this through the day when you don't eat until dinner your steady with your sugar because your
9:10	liver knows what to do and you can focus and just have a lot of energy so one meal a day
9:16	um you would recommend that and what would you recommend in that one meal
9:22	yeah well try to eat and try to at least skip one meal a day that would be my recommendation and if you can do two
9:28	even better some people go without food for three days I've never been able to do that I like food
9:34	but what's in the food well as I mentioned I went from drinking a lot of red wine because
9:39	red wine actually that the component of red wine Resveratrol was discovered in my lab to slow aging so I thought drink
9:45	a lot of red wine that's got to be healthy but the new research just over the last two years says that alcohol
9:51	drinking drinking alcohol every day is really not good for you so I've cut out
9:56	alcohol and I've focused on Plants so this vegan diet has no Dairy which is very difficult here in India yes uh but
10:04	we we do that we substitute milk with coconut and nut based milks and yogurts
10:11	they taste very good as well and then so a typical dinner would be
10:16	well plant-based meals that that taste just or even better than what I used to
10:21	eat and I don't feel like I'm lacking anything and you might ask well why would you do that well there's a lot of
10:27	science behind it the Protein that's in plants is actually has a ratio of amino acids that
10:34	stimulates these longevity genes the septuans and another one called mtor and
10:39	if you always eat meat every meal your body is just not fighting aging the way it could if you ate more plants
10:46	so you're against meat in that sense well I love meat I would love to eat
10:52	meat they taste it tastes really good it's just the science says plants give you better bang for the Bark for
10:57	longevity than meat I mean you can eat meat occasionally fish for example has a lot of great omega-3 fatty acids
11:04	um so I'm not against meat I just think try to focus more on plants if you can you say you said something about
11:10	stressed vegetables okay you talk a little bit about that what is that versus you know normal organic
11:17	vegetables yeah so when Farmers grow vegetables they try to grow them as fast as
11:23	possible it's much more economical the problem with that is that giving plants a lot of
11:29	sunlight and water and fertilizer makes them very happy
11:34	and as I just told you a happy organism does not is not a healthy organism so
11:40	when plants have a little bit of stress so a little bit of lack of water or there's a little bit of a caterpillar on
11:46	there or even not a lot of sun in the case of green tea matcha they put the
11:51	plants in the shade then those plants respond in a stress response they turn on the production of chemicals
11:58	called polyphenols Resveratrol from red wine is a polyphenol that's produced
12:03	when the plants get stressed and it's my theory which has a name a terrible name I
12:09	apologize it's called Xeno hormesis zenor means I was hoping you were not going to bring it up because of the
12:15	terrible name yeah well just remember eat if your food is stressed then you
12:20	get the benefits stress your food so you don't have to and so what we focus on Serena and I are
12:26	plants that are full of color Serena says eat the rainbow so try to eat bright red and purple dark green colored
12:34	vegetables because those are the ones that have these polyphenols that can turn on the body's defenses and actually
12:40	in my lab if we give polyphenols to mice they actually get healthier and run
12:45	further like they've been exercising so these little molecules polyphenols can actually not substitute but can help you with
12:53	your exercise and your otherwise healthy plant diet so in Superstores we're going to have inorganic organic and stressed
13:01	vegetables now that's a great business plan we should do that

Sugar

13:07	sugar sugar is very addictive of and it's a real pick me up so is there a healthy way to
13:13	have sugar uh depends on the sugar if you're talking about cane sugar sucrose I would
13:21	try to limit that as much as possible unfortunately I gave up eating
13:26	desserts in my 40s though I do steal it from people at the table so Serena
13:31	orders the desserts for me but really sugar is something that is known to be
13:36	toxic in the long run it's sucrose which forms glucose will attach
13:42	to your your body's components your proteins will become what's called glycated and that's known to drive aging
13:48	as well so that's why we try to not eat too much and so we don't want to eat a lot of sugar but there are substitutes
13:54	there's for example monk fruit produces sugar which Serena has told me to try
14:00	and it tastes just as good as sugar and it doesn't give you that Spike and that should be good for longevity what about
14:07	Stevia maple syrup honey coconut sugar um they're all on a various scale um
14:15	honey has is not so good in large amounts Stevia I think is okay but it's
14:21	all on a scale I think the best is allulose or monk fruit and then a bit above that a bit worse than that is
14:27	Stevia but at the bad end is glucose sucrose and honey but honey has a lot of
14:33	good goodness in it so I wouldn't say avoid honey just don't eat too much of it how would you classify sugar and fruit
14:40	like would that be something you would stand replace desserts with like at the end of a meal would you just have a
14:46	piece of fruit yeah for sure fruit is good um I would avoid fruit juices unless
14:51	they're from fruits that don't have a lot of sugar but oranges and apples and pineapple have a lot of sugar that I
14:57	generally avoid okay um I'm going to talk to you a little bit about your Vitality pills

Vitality pills

15:04	why don't you tell us a little bit about the Vitality pills and what we can do to
15:10	make ourselves you know eternally Young and Beautiful yeah
15:16	so I I've been taking supplements for and experimenting on myself for about 20
15:21	years and my father has also been doing it he's now 83 and in perfect health
15:29	and what I learned through my research and through my own self-explanation and then clinical
15:34	trials in hospitals is that there's certain molecules from Mostly from
15:40	plants that provide the benefits of fasting and exercise as well
15:45	and so I was taking these separately I take a variety of them
15:52	do you want me to go into which yes I mean don't go into the details but we would all like to know where these pills

Where are the pills available

15:57	are available and what's in them sure everyone's thinking where can I get the prescription all right so if you don't
16:03	have a pen uh you can go to my book and I wrote these chemicals these supplements down in my book in the
16:10	English version it's page 304. um and there are three main things that I take and have taken for over a decade
16:17	the the one chemical that I take every day is Resveratrol which is the red wine chemical and that comes from grapes
16:26	and so that one gets sprinkled into some yogurt in the morning I also take a moment that's the one
16:33	where which which red wine has right but it's the amount you take is equivalent to
16:38	750 glasses of red wine per day I don't recommend getting it from red
16:44	wine uh so the the other molecule is called nmn
16:51	nmn not to be confused with M M's don't don't mix those up nmn is a a version of
17:00	vitamin B3 that makes a chemical in the body that we need for life and that's
17:05	called NAD and as we get older we make less and less of this and without NAD
17:10	these sirtuins that we discovered slow aging remember the genes that we discovered they don't work without a lot
17:17	of NAD so as we get older our defenses Decline and so by taking this supplement
17:23	we know that it doubles the levels of NAD back to when I was age 20. and
17:29	there's now clinical trials that my colleagues at Harvard have done that says that nmn has some health benefits
17:35	in early studies such as lowering cholesterol and blood pressure and so I take that one every day as well
17:43	um I take a half a gram of that currently and then the third one is metformin metformin is a little bit more
17:50	controversial because it's a drug and it's just classified as a drug and
17:56	uh that doesn't mean it's necessarily dangerous in fact it's one of the world's safest drugs it's used for type
18:02	2 diabetes to control blood sugar and what's been found is that people who take Metformin tend to live a lot longer
18:10	even those who don't have type 2 diabetes there's evidence that they are protected against
18:16	cardiovascular disease and Frailty and even Alzheimer's disease and so what I
18:21	do is I take metformin even though I don't yet have type 2 diabetes so metformin is it a form of this glp-1

metformin

18:29	receptor blockers a skinny pen orozmic which all of Hollywood is apparently on
18:36	and they're getting thinner and thinner if you see the red carpet at Oscars is
18:42	that what it is a form of that well no it's actually very different metformin will activate your body's energy
18:49	production and boost mitochondria which are the little energy packs in your cells so that's that's a healthy way to
18:55	do it uh I won't say the brand name but yeah this GOP one agonistar
19:00	um causing your body to become more insulin sensitive and take up the sugar from your blood and burn fat and people
19:08	who take this drug uh it's uh they actually they do lose weight
19:14	um so the it I mean the drug is designed to treat type 2 diabetes and it's it's actually a blockbuster very effective
19:22	drug one of my colleagues over uh in New York near barzalai says that in his
19:29	practice he essentially now thinks of type 2 diabetes as a curable disease only in the last few years because of
19:35	these new drugs but people who don't have obesity or diabetes are taking it or they might have obesity but they
19:41	certainly don't have type 2 diabetes and they lose weight the one negative side effect that everyone should be aware of is that people can lose too much fat in
19:48	the wrong place including in the in the face where you don't want to lose it
19:54	especially if you're older and you can tell if somebody's taking this medicine because they start to look it's called
20:01	the brand name face right I'm not taking the brand name either but that's what it's called yeah it is so you have to be
20:06	very careful I would say it's much better to eat less often and exercise and you'll get much bigger health
20:13	benefits than taking that drug let's talk a little bit about exercise what kind of exercise are you recommending

exercise

20:19	like a lot of intro training running Strength yoga
20:25	you know yoga is very important uh I think here are you just saying that because Serena is sitting opposite us so
20:31	yeah screen is down there below the stage here so Serena is um the
20:36	equivalent of me with more of a practice and knowledge about yoga and nutrition
20:42	and mind and body and I missed I missed the biology and chemicals but together we we we do recommend a lot of
20:48	stretching and yoga meditation to reduce stress though I'm not I'm not good at it
20:54	and I'm also not good at exercise I'm often on planes Serena and I have been
21:00	traveling for two months now so we don't get a lot of exercise in that said I used to and what I used to
21:07	do was to exercise three times a week and Lose My Breath you want to be able to be moving so fast that you cannot
21:14	carry out a conversation easily that's when you know you're becoming hypoxic low in oxygen and this low
21:21	oxygen we think is a very good stimulator of this stress on the body and it your body
21:28	responds in a positive way to build muscle get better blood flow and also your tissues will put out chemicals that
21:35	slow aging so really if you can just lose your breath for 10 minutes three times a week that can give Remarkable
21:42	Health benefits lowering the rates of disease by 30 percent so a little bit goes a long way can we
21:49	get a mic to Serena

yoga

21:55	so Serena is a proponent of yoga and I want to know what she thinks about that because in yoga you don't necessarily
22:01	stress the body to a point where you lose your breath or you get out of breath
22:10	[Music] types of Yoga yoga of course especially in the U.S I'm based in La there's yoga
22:18	that is used more as a form of exercise and that can be quite stressful in the body
22:24	I think we stress our bodies in a slightly different way when it comes to yoga because we're really stressing our
22:30	mind you know it's really about uh how how long you can hold still
22:37	how you can clear your mind how you can hold a pose that's stress in a different
22:42	way it's really more stress on the Mind whereas Dave is talking about the stresses on the body but effectually it
22:49	will still have the same results so and David can share about that so we're
22:54	looking for that balance in a way where we're balancing our body but there is a
23:00	stress to our mind and getting to that stress point is then where we find balance so you two are from two opposite ends of

what do we agree on

23:07	the Spectrum in a way you move from a western school of thought she's moved from an Eastern school of thought what
23:13	are the things that you guys agree on over the dinner table and what are the things that you don't agree on
23:19	yeah it people wonder how do we get along because uh I'm opposites
23:24	attractive 100 reality and Serena is very spiritual uh but but we we bonded
23:30	over uh our love for health uh and wellness and respect for the human body
23:35	we both believe that we can help Millions if not billions of people live healthy and longer lives with our
23:41	message that covers both eastern and western what do we agree on we agree on
23:46	nutrition um basically because I do whatever Serena tells me to do uh but what we disagree on are things
23:56	like um how how important is
24:02	uh the the spiritual side of life I struggle trying to believe in things
24:09	that I have no evidence for and Serena has a lot of faith uh and she's always
24:15	right so I think she's onto something um we tend not to disagree on a lot of
24:21	things I think our interpretation of How It's Working is different I will say oh well it's this molecule it's this
24:27	molecule and she says no it's that the body has different energies and it's working this way and according to
24:33	aerobatic practices this is how it's working well it it really is it's a it's a
24:39	wonderful combination the two of us because we we learn from each other and often we we end up with a
24:46	an explanation for phenomena that includes both old and new science

meditation

25:00	that's a very that's a core practice that uh
25:05	David sort of dabbles in a little bit doubles in means what like two minutes a
25:10	day or I don't know honey how many how much do you meditate a day well my problem is I I try to meditate and I
25:16	always fall asleep and yeah I start snoring so I'm not good at
25:21	meditation what I found instead works for me is to have quiet time we call it I close my eyes for 11 minutes uh
25:28	hopefully at least twice a day and have some gratitude during that quiet time or listen to someone talking about stoicism
25:36	that's what I like to do I struggle with meditation I will admit with my crazy lifestyle and my lack of commitment to
25:44	that I haven't been successful really but I really should be because the benefits on controlling your mind have
25:50	been proven I like to talk about animal studies so in mice if you modify the
25:56	Mind Of Mice so you can change parts of the brain of a mouse you can actually improve immunity improve health even
26:02	make the mice live longer just by changing parts of the brain it's very clear that if you can control your mind
26:08	calm it down get it to focus have the positivity as well you can have
26:14	Whole Body Benefits that are often misunderstood by Western person
26:20	so with some of the things that you're suggesting um which are not by the way easy going 20 hours without food or you
26:27	know giving up sugar we differ too you differ there what what is it that well I'm I'm more about eating within a
26:35	window which David share that we we talk about eating Windows uh so you're
26:42	you know which may mean more than one meal a day so you can fast for 12 hours
26:48	or 14 or 16 or 18 or David can go to 20. uh but it's really about making sure you
26:55	get the nutrients that you need for your body during that window of time that you do eat and my belief more than trying to cram
27:03	everything into one meal so we differ just slightly on that as well
27:09	so we have um you know there's a lot of pressure to look good and nobody else has that pressure more than people who
27:16	are in a public space we have a few actors here who are coming in from a hit
27:21	Ott show called the class you can see all all the very brightly dressed fashionable people right here up in
27:27	front um I'd like to ask them how tough is the pressure on you guys to look good and
27:33	what are the extreme things you've done
27:42	I think uh it's it's huge I a lot of us had to de-age essentially for the
27:50	character and what you were saying about losing breath or being out of breath I chanced upon accidentally because while
27:56	I was uh working out for the role I was boxing like four times a week and I found that
28:04	I genuinely like now when people ask me they're like oh we can't guess your age I can't believe you're so much less
28:10	older than you she's not giving her age away uh no but but it genuinely I feel like
28:17	we kind of chanced Upon A lot of the things you spoke about today and they're all making sense now
28:25	I think I'm gonna hate me for this but I had fruits for like two years straight I
28:31	was on a fruitarianism diet I don't know if you know there's the Robert Moore's concept of raw vegan diet so I was on
28:38	that and I still sort of follow it not exactly because now I have temptations and I go and have something whatever I
28:45	need but mostly I used to drink a lot of juice uh and still in the morning I had
28:51	like I think a liter of juice from the hotel itself and they were like your wife just drinking you have a drinking
28:56	problem of juice so yeah so that was one thing with me so I I just wanted to know your version one thing if I ca if I may
29:03	please most of the things that you said and most of the things out there everything revolves around one thing and
29:10	that is uh firstly uh separating your body from mucus like the mucus we produce due to eating a lot of cooked
29:17	Foods one thing that hasn't been resolved yet is the uh the male pattern baldness
29:23	because even in fluterine is uh in the fruit diet nobody has actually given a
29:29	solution to that so look at David's hair just look at David's hair yeah exactly that's why I was asking because I want
29:35	people to this yeah I want this hair yeah so yeah
29:40	yeah well I I think I'm lucky um but I also think that if you slow your body's body's aging your hair will
29:47	also slow down in its changes I I don't yet have much gray hair
29:53	um I I will admit my mother also had good hair so it might be that uh but there's a lot of really good signs going
29:59	on in fact Serena and I have co-developed a product that uh is was developed for the skin in collaboration
30:05	with NASA um and it has this uh space resistant organism extract in it called bacillus
30:13	lysate and the clinical trials so far are showing hair regrowth I don't think
30:18	it's it's crazy to think in five years it'll be common to be able to get your hair back
30:24	um just by spraying something on the science is there what we're doing in my
30:29	lab is we can grow skin and hair artificially in the dish from stem cells
30:35	and we can age that skin forwards and then reverse the age and we're looking
30:41	for ways to do that with natural ways to do that so that we can put it into a
30:46	cream that you could put on the hair and not just make your hair look better but
30:52	actually make your whole skin on your head literally be younger than it used to be and that's what I want to do is to
30:59	make the body not just look younger but literally be younger so you know a question comes up from

age reset

31:05	there that if we reboot reboot our body to let's say
31:10	in does our mind reboot to 16 or 21 as well I mean am I going to have the same sort
31:17	of intelligence creative urges as a 21 year old or a 16 year old
31:24	uh well Serena says sometimes I I get too young uh but there's a there's a happy ending what do you do when you get
31:30	too young do you get frisky do you want to go dancing or what do you do uh you know what young men are like
31:36	they're a little bit um a little bit immature no don't don't give Serena the mic I
31:44	tend to be a little bit uh uh over enthusiastic let's say about
31:49	things and and I've learned to to calm my decision making and be be less
31:55	reactive in all seriousness what we're doing now in my lab at Harvard is
32:02	um so what we do is to reverse aging is we put we we turn on three genes that are normally only turned on in very
32:08	young uh embryos so when we're young we when we're just born or before we we are very
32:16	young and we stay young because there are three genes that are turned on they're called O S and K for short
32:23	and when we turn on these three genes in the adult tissue in human adult tissue or in a mouse
32:30	those three genes make the body younger again this is the reset of the software and uh and we can do that not just with
32:38	uh the eyes and cure blindness which we did a couple of years ago we recently published in January that we could
32:45	rejuvenate a whole Mouse and and see aspects of Aging reversed
32:51	um and so that's where we're going is to truly do a full age reset
32:56	now what we're doing is asking what happens if you reset the age of the old brain and we can grow human brain in the
33:03	lab if you looked on my Instagram account you can see little pictures of human brains that we grow we can make
33:10	them old throw them make them old in about a month make them 70 years old in
33:15	a month and then we can reverse that we can give them Alzheimer's disease see what happens and if we reverse it so
33:21	here's the punch line if we reverse the age of an old Mouse's brain to make it much younger by 70 it gets its ability
33:29	to learn back again and we're now just testing if it also remembers lost
33:34	Memories We don't know the answer but we hope to find out soon so we may have a situation where teenagers are world

philosophical

33:42	leaders and running the whole economy and every space I don't know what kind of decisions they would make then I mean
33:48	teenagers are great teenagers are great but I don't know whether we want them to be running the world we just have a
33:55	minute a minute left um I wanted to get a little bit into this philosophical and spiritual
34:01	areas with anti-aging and age reversal um we are in India we have an ancient
34:08	concept of Karma and God's will and here you are creating a space where nobody
34:14	needs to suffer or at least the rich don't need to suffer and they can choose their day to die are you playing God
34:21	doctor I don't think that I am I think that
34:29	the pursuit of health and wellness and happiness
34:36	is a natural human endeavor and it's a very noble cause and I'm not
34:43	on this Earth to make people live forever I believe my mission and with Serena our
34:49	mission is to increase the advances extend the advances that we made last century with
34:56	medicine but to make it even more effective so that with one treatment we don't just
35:01	treat cancer we can treat all the other diseases that affect us by making us younger and fitter
35:08	I don't believe that's playing God any more than developing treatments for cancer and heart disease
35:13	and dementia is playing God and I think as humans we've always wanted to live better we've wanted to
35:20	modify our environment modify our bodies to be happier and healthier what part of this room is natural I I don't think
35:26	make even this I think is artificial so we as humans we adapt we change our environment and this is the next step in
35:33	human evolution and I think it's the right step because we all have a right to decide how healthy we are we can't
35:40	choose when we were born but I hope that one day we'll have a choice when we die
35:45	what age would you like to well it's a strange question to ask but how what age would you like to die
35:53	um I think the answer would be uh not tomorrow and and that will always be the
35:58	case if you're healthy and happy and have friends uh you'll never want to die I just I know this as a human uh a trait
36:06	and so really the answer is as long as possible but I'd be happy with another
36:12	40 years to do more good work that would be like a hundred I hope more what's happening we talk
36:19	about AI at this Symposium the rate of change in this field is going up
36:26	dramatically and so the advances that we can make now with the assistance of AI is dramatic and in our lifetimes we are
36:33	truly going to see the ability for our doctors to give us medicines that reverse our age and we can do that
36:38	multiple times and so it's an extremely exciting time to be alive and stay alive thank you so much doctor
36:45	so in conclusion I think basically we need to trick our body into thinking we're almost dying so that we can live
36:52	longer and all those people who give me trouble for causing them stress hey I'm helping you live longer
37:00	and I hope that after this chat about skipping meals oh I obviously I'm giving
37:07	stress to a lot of people here you can hear the claps right um uh after this chat I hope that you're
37:14	going to make different choices at lunch maybe even skip lunch the doctor is
37:19	going to be available at lunch he's definitely not eating any lunch so you can bomb him with some of your questions
37:25	I'm sure some of you have those and thank you very much doctor for being here and helping us through this process
37:33	and here's to all of you choosing your own day to die thank you thank you
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