Longevity and Starvation Mimicking Strategies

I've had many leading experts on this show, including Matthew Walker, and they've all said the same thing about sleep. They've said it's the biggest positive investment you can make in your own performance. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you're consistently tired, poor decision making will follow and eventually cause other things to fail in your life. So if you're looking to optimize your recovery, you should start looking at what you're sleeping on Our sponsor, Helix, makes high quality mattresses tailored to your body. It doesn't matter if you run hot, sleep on your side, or need something firm. Helix has a mattress for you. And I asked them recently to send one to a member of my team, and Juan received it. And we travel a lot. So when he's home, quality sleep really matters. And he told me he's getting the best sleep of his life. and the data backs it up with eighty two percent of people in a Helix study saying they saw an increase in their deep sleep. And with a one hundred and twenty night trial, you've got four months to prove it to yourself. You can get twenty seven percent off at helixsleep d. com slash diary. That's helixleep d. com slash diary I got told the other day which helped me understand myself. I got told that When we're hungry, especially when it's sort of like late at night, the logical center of our brain, like the prefrontal cortex is less active and the amygdala, the sort of emotional part of our brain that ons the dopamine is much more. And it helped me to understand why maybe late at night if I haven't planned my food I'm much more susceptible to make a bad food choice that I then regret. I'm much more acceptable to lean in for sugar or something that's like super high in carbs or whatever. Yeah. That really helped me. And this is why the planning thing makes a lot of sense because I can use my prefrontal cortex, my logic go of my brain to make the food choice In the morning. Yeah so that I don't find myself making a mistake It's so important, Stephven because people have to understand that willpower is not the answer. You cannot use willpower to control your food behavior. It's part of your ancestral evolutionary limbic reptile dinosaur brain And so when your blood sugar drops You're going to eat whatever in front of you. If there's a vending machine, if there's a doughnut, if it's cookies, it doesn't matter. Even if you know better And I've experienced this, you're just going to eat whatever because it's a life threatening emergency. Your body doesn't know that there's grocery stores and restaurants. It means you're going to go out and try to hunt and gather and do something. It's like an emergency So when you have that food emergency And you don't have the right food on you You're in trouble. I have that all the time. I have this like constant fight with myself where this one voice is like, do the fucking right thing. And then this other part of my brain is like, just today, break the rule and you ye But obviously, that voice is louder sometimes than others. and typically late at night it's louder. Sleep deprivation, stress, stress, sleep deprivation, all that increases. your appatiety increases cortisol that increases Glin, which is Grelin, which is a hunger hormone I we know you can take you know, young Klfy collge kids and sleep deprived them and they're going to creve carbs, they're going to crave sugar and they're going to gain weight. So it's not rocket science What about for someone that doesn't have any money at all? so they can't, know they don't have the ability to A lot of the privileges that mean you have. what are some of the very basics that they should be thinking about in order to remain healthy in a world where every convenience store is trying to sell you something cheap and sugary. Yeah. It's a really good, good question. know I think the economics of being healthy is a problem and we know that there's a huge disparity in health U But it's not only economic, it's education. You know, I met with a woman who's the doctor at a clinic in Beds Stivverson, which is in Brooklyn. It's a very underserved area And in a very low socio economic status group, very unhealthy And she said, you know, Mark, you know the number one predictor of health Is it money? No, Is education. So even people who are were wealthy but haven't been educated still have issues So for me, it was really about education. And so people can be educated to do the right thing and it doesn't have to be expensive And I was part of this film ten years ago called Fed Up childh obesity in our food system and the advent of sugar and marketing and processed foods. and we visit a lot of families and I work with a family inth South Carolina easy. It's one of the poorest areas in America. It has the worst u called the Food deserts are one of thest food deserts in America basically where there's not a lot of healthy options to choose from. And there's something called the retetail Food Environment index. How many healthy grocery stores are there to fast food and convenience stores? And there was like ten to one was terrible And his family, you know, was lived on one thousand dollars a month for food for a family of five. They lived in a trailer They. We're in disability in food stamps The mother was one hundred plus pounds of overweight. The father was very overweight, had type two diabetes and was already at forty two years old old was on dialysis for kidney failure which is amazing because you usually don't see that until later The son was sixteen years old and fifty percent body fat guy should be ten to twenty and was about to be diabetic was pre diabetic And Rather than kind of they were part of the movie I said, whyy do you want tona do this? And they were like, Well, in order for my dad to get a kidney transplant,?es, goes, wait, we'reing we don't what to do. We're doing all this low fat stuff and we're doing all these diet stuff we have in the house, not working So I went to their house trailer and Id rather than giving a lecture about what to do I said, let's cook a meal together, But first let's do an inspection of your kitchen and let's see what's in here And so we pulled out everything from the freezer and the fridge and the cupboards. and everything was packaged, boxed, processed. everythingverything was very high in high fructrose corn syrup from the peanut butter to the salad dressing, everythingverything had trans fat in it, It was just deadly And a lot of it said diet this. and my basic rule is if it has a health claim on the label, don't eat it You know, it's gluten free potato chips, doesn't make it healthy, right? Coca Cola is gluten free, doesn't make it healthy. So I showed them what they were doing. and I said, let's just make a simple meal. Here's a guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget. Hudty, well for you. for the planet and your wallet. And It's made by the Environmental Working Group. You can get it on eWg. org. It's free And and it was like, how do you choose the cheaper cuts of meat or the beans or the grains or the veggies? You know like onions and carrots and celery are not expensive. You know, a lot of veggies are not expensive. So we made turkey chili We made a salad from fresh ingredients, olive oil and vinegar dressing, not dressing those full of chemicals and high frructose corn syrup and refined oils. I showed them how to roast as sweet potatoes. I showed them how to stir fry vegetables. We had some asparagus They never eaten anything fresh. They never cooked in the kitchen. The kids came out who were playing video games. they came running in the kitchen. like what's that smell? Like And there was like the roasting of the sweet potatoes. We had this beautiful dinner together. They love the food And I was like, you know what I don't know think' going to, but you didn't have cutting boards. they didn't have knives. like they literally hadn't like we tried to cut you know the onions and the sweet potatoes with a butter knife because that's all they had. was like a butter knife. It was really hard. So I bought them on the way home. I bought them cutting boards on Amazon and on Iives and I sent it to their house Ne week the mom texts me she says Mark We lost eighteen pounds this week as a family. A year later, the father lost forty five, got a new kidney. The mother lost one hundred pounds. The son lost one hundred and thirty two pounds. and went to medical school. first guy and his family went to college and he asked me for a letter recommendation for medical school And they lived in one of the worst food deserts. they didn't have much you know, economically and they were able to figure it out because eating real food doesn't have to be expensive. You don't have to have a seventy dollarars Wagu ribbeye steak, right? You can eat real food. And it's just as simple as not eating the ultra processed food. It's so bad for us And it kills eleven million people a year We know the state is so strong. It causes mental health issues, aggression, violence, depression, anxiety, gun violence. I mean, the studies are there. I did a podcast on the Doctor's Pharmacy, my podcast about this, talking about how our food is affecting our mental health, not just obesity and diabetes but our cognitive function uh ADD and memory issues. I mean, it's all linked to what we're eating. So We have a, you know, like I said, the best of times, the worst of times. we know What to do, but we have the ability to do it It's it's a problem of education, a problem of political will to change the policies that are driving us to do the wrong thing. And right now there's a bill being proposed in Congress that would limit pilot ultra process food for kids with food stamps, which I think would be amazing The food industry is biting back tooth and nail. So so we're fighting big forces. food industry is the biggest industry on the planet When I was growing up. And I was trying to be healthy. One of the things I used to do was chug milk. Yeah because I got told that it would make me tall like my brothers. I used to drink like crazy. Yeah. straight from the carton. Just as many gulps as I could take from the. work? Did you grow? I have no idea. I'm still shorter than they are, so I guess not. That's one of the big myths that I think a lot of families still believe that Milk is great for our bones and to help us grow What's your thoughts on the milk? Yeah. it's a controversial topic as well.. mean, I mean the dairy industry is big Our current Secretary of agriculture worked for the dairy industry It's problematic because the science isn't there. There was a paper called Milk in Health that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. op medical journal in the world, arguably, maybe the Lanet if you're from the UK. But it basically was written by two Harvard scientists that dissected all of the scientific evidence around milk and whether the claims were right or not. And just Maybe for the audience in Europe, you might not know this been in the states who remember this. there were all these got milk ads. So there were Famous people, celebrities, you know, sports athletes, politicians all wearing a white milk mustache And they're like got milk as a promotion and in those ads, it would say, it's going to build better bones. It's going to do this, it's going to do that and the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission actually or I think it was the federalry say you can't Do that. because it's It's not true. L you have to take those ads out. So those ads went away And it was in government. promoting those ads with the Dairy Cncil. So there's something called checkout programs that the government has where it's supposed to support agriculture. Well, the government was paying in part for these ads with taxpayer dollars, and the science wasn't there the dietary guidelines for Americans says that the average American should have three glasses of milk a day and kids should have two glasses of milk a day to be healthy You cannot get money and funding for school lunches in America without having milk on the menu Now there is no evidence to support this. In fact, there's opposite evidence that skim milk causes weight gain because it doesn't satisfy your appetite, that milk can cause cancer Prostate cancer. Prostate cancer that it doesn't create strong bones. In fact, there's high risk of fracture with high milk drinkers that it creates a lot of digestive issues for people. It can create autoimmune diseases like type one diabetes. It has common allergies or food sensitivities that people get And I remember was I was in the emergenence room once and when I was working in the ER and this mother comes in with this kid with like you had like This tenty infection a few wee like, what happened? Like when did this start? Oh, it started when he was like twelve months old. I said, what changed? Well, I stopped breastfeeding. and I started giving him milk. and all of a sudden he started getting these ear infections. And I'm like, o, this is before I even knew about all this. It was just kind of an interesting footnote. But we really have have to look at the data and be science driven and The problem is we have corporate capture in America the food industry has captured our food agencies, our political system from the FDA to the USDA, they spend for example, half a billion dollars just on the farm bill, which has for example, food stamps and other food programs, child infant nutrition So it's really Unfortunate but milk iss not nature's perfect food. It's only nature's perfect food if you're a calf Is there health benefits to milk? Yes. so that's the other side of it. Now what milk should we be drinking, right? If we're drinking modern milk? mododern milk is from hosting cows that are almost homogenous ins the samee, not homogenized milk, but homogenous breed. They have very few bulls inseminating and they have like, you know, Masm insemination program from a very few bulls that have a limited genetic stock And they're what we call A one cows. So most heirloom cows, most sort of historical dairy had something called A two casine, which is less inflammatory, less likely to cause gut issues less 're problematic for the body. So sheep and goat milk have A two Certain cows like Jersey or Gernsey cows have A two in them. And you can get A two milk. you can A two you take ice cream now And so this A one casing is potentially very problematic I think the current dairy is not great. And then we pasteurize it and homogenize it and then we you know, we add growth hormone to the cows that goes in there. We have estrogen that we add into the cows. It's in the milk. We have sixty different hormones in the milk. someome of them natally occurring But we milk pregnant cows and that milk has a lot more hormonal effects. So I think current dairy is not something we should consume. Now if you have a chance to get sheep milk or goat milk or A two milk from a cow, that may be okay. Yogurts may be okay. and depends on your genetics too. seventy five percent of the world's lactose intolerant Many people have dairy sensitivities. But I think you know, if it's from the right source, it's okay, for example, I use goat whay as my morning protein shake. So goat whe is from goats, obviously. There's very little caseine in it, but it's A two caseine, if there's any, and I don't react to it. But if I have regular whey, I do have a reaction, I get congested, I'll get pimoles or I get regular stuff. So I don't think dairy is something we should be consuming in large amounts unless it's certain kinds of dairy What's your position on freree All fruit. Oh my fruit. I think it depends, right? So if you're a diabetic and you're metabolically completely out of whack. and you don't have any metabolic resilience. You know, eating a plum might be a problem for you. And now we have continuous glucose monitors. You can track your blood sugar and see. And I've had patients like this Gee, I ate a plum and my sugar goes through the roof So but I ate at apple, it doesn't. So I think different fruits have different effects on you. But for the most part, fruit is full of phytochemicals, fiber fyerutrients, it does have a little bit of sugar in it. I would say no fruit juice. I think fruit juice is definitelyink to obesity in kids and other things But if you want to have an apple or a peach or a plum fine. I think You shouldn't have it first thing in the morning I think protein and fat in the morning is important because it activates your metabolism and your protein synthesis. If you eat sugar in the morning, which is essentially what we eat in the world today, cereal, pancakes, waffles, muffins, bagels, you know, sweetened yogurt, sweetened coffees. I mean, it's the worst possible thing we can do for our biology. It jacks up our blood sugar and insulin and ends up causing us to gain weight and be hungry You know, be craving more stuff. So having fruit, for example, you have frozen berries in your If I had frozen cherries, forple, in my why protein, that's okay. because there's protein in there and it mitigates the effect Wh about eating times? When to eat? Yeah Have you got any thoughts around when we should and shouldn't be eating? Yeah, for sure. I think you know you know, we had something called breakfast before, which was breaking the fast. And now people eat all night, they eat til they go to bed and they soon they wake up they eat or have something sugary stuff in the morning like get sugary coffee. And they don't give theirselves a window fasting, which is critical for our biology. And I wrote about this in my book, Young Forever where we talked about how do we havever our own repair renewal system kick in. because the body, think about it, Stehven, your body, when you cut yourself heals, the skin closes and heals, how does it know how to do that It's so smart. It's got your bones break. It heals, right. I broke my ref few years ago, it just healed, right? What's going on? I'm not going, wouldould you please heal in there? It knows what to do. It recruits stem cells, it recruits repair factors and growth factors, and it knows what to do. So the body has this innate healing, repair, renewal and regeneration system And we need to learn how to activate it. And most of us do the opposite. We do everything in our power to deactivate it and that causes disease Food is the most important thing we do to interact with these regenerative renewal repair systems. It's one of the things we call the hallmarks of aging. and there's one called deregulated nutrient sensing, and it really relates to how our bodies relate to food, how our nutrient sensing systems are dysregulated by our highly processed diet by high sugar and starch and not enough of the right foods So so in the in the long answer to your question. You know, it's important to give yourself a break of twelve Hours. So if you eat six at night, you could eat six in the morning, minimum Best probably fourteen. So if you eatinner at six, you breakfast at eight. That's okay. That's a fourteen hour fast. And in that time, your body is doing its cleanup recycling repair. Is there an evolutionary story here? For sure, absolutely. You know when you know, we didn't have grocery stores, we didn't have, you know, Whole Foods, we didn't have restaurants, we didn't have takeout, we didn't have convenience stores So we had to go out and find fot And I just came back from Tanzania and visited the hunter gathrs there, the Kadza, which is one of the last few tribes that hunt and gather. And we went hunting and gathering I was like, Man, it's a lot of work to go you know, dig up some roots and kill a bird in the tree. And like it was a project. We ran around for hours. And so we don't know where we're getting our next meal. And so the body has had to deal with periods of feasts and famine before. And so what it's got built into it is a system of conservation and repair when we don't eat And so the system is activated that improves our blood sugar control It recruits new mitochondria and builds new mitochondria, that reduces inflammation that activates cellular cleanup and repair processes. So you have all these old cells and damaged proteins. Your body has a little digester, almost like a little vacuum cleaner that goes and sucks this all up and then digest it. then uses the parts,'s almost like a recycling system in the body We need to activate that. And so that fasting period is it time to do that? And we've seen even, for example, we know, for example, concentration camp survivors who live really long like They onlyve ninety hundred plus years old Many of them, and it's because they had this period of deep starvation had an effect on their biology. And know this we know this from many animal studies. It starvation and fasting will extend your life by a third. If you eat a third less calories, you'll live a third longer. Now it's not fun, right? But you don't have to do that. So timing and eating is important. So give yourself three hours before bed for no food And give yourself at least twelve to fourteen hours between dinner and breakfast How do we know in the animal studies it wasn't just the calorie restriction that caused the sort of longevity effect Oh it was the It was. So what if I just restrict my calories instead of fasting Well, you can do that. I met a guy who was from the Kelly Restriction Society Do colorate restrictions to science? Yeah, which is based on this research in animals where think about it, if you eat a third less, you live a third longer. So for a human, that would be one hundred and twenty years old And I said, what do you have for breakfast He said, Well, I had five pounds of celery And I'm like, okay, you go do that. I'm going figure out another way. So you have to eat enormous amounts of like low calorie food just to feel full, right? That's why yeall of food. So he was starving. and there are a lot of downsides to starving. You lose muscle, which is necessary. There's certain things that go wrong And so it's not really the optimal strategy. You want to do things that mimic starvation. So how do you mimic period of starvation that causes something called autophagy, which basically means to eat yourself, to basically clean up yourselellves. It's like self cleaning or self repair, right And so there's a lot of ways to hack that. You can do it by this longer term overnight fast you can do it by certain supplements and certain medications like raapomycin being studied for longevity, which is a drug that's used for cancer and for other immune suppressing treatments, but it works on this pathway called MTOR which essentially is the activation of cellular buildup. It causes muscle synthesis. So if you want to build muscle, you want to activate MTOor with protein, which is good, but you don't want to activate it all the time. So this drug inhibits MTOor which is what happens when you starve yourself. So it mimic starvation. And then you get this benefit or drugs like methformin are being studied, which is another drug that's looking at How do we activate this longevity switch called AMPK, another pathway that's regulating your nutrient sensing. so when you have enough You don't am enough nutrients, this activates. But if we're running around eating, well, you can actually take this drug and it may have an effect. There's a large trial going on now. I'm still agiagnostic