Kind: captions
Language: en
Most people who get to that elderly age,
they don't die of heart attacks. They
die of infection. Bacteria seems to
really, really mount a good defense
against the kind of infection that might
take you out. Smooth out your
metabolism, lower your bad LDL
cholesterol and improve your good HDL
and lower your triglyceride level,
improve better circulation. There is a
bacteria ecosystem in our brain. Could
we be treating in the future
neurodeeneration using a probiotic? How
cool would that be? Has been shown to
level off the symptoms like pretty much
stop the progression of Parkinson's
disease. She had brain cancer,
glyobblastoma, death sentence. Nobody
survives more than one or two years with
that thing. She's going on almost 7
years cancer-free. And you know what she
did?
Longevity isn't just living long. It's
not about a number you're trying to hit.
It's not like uh going online and
booking a seat in a movie theater that's
reserved for you. Like you can't do
that, right? So, we all want to live as
long as we can. But to me, in addition
to trying to get as far as we can in a
journey of life, it's really about how
do we live in a way that is enjoyable,
we've got not just quality of life, but
really joy of living. And that's really
what I'm fascinated by is really sort of
like how do we get there and how do we
align that long uh runway along with
having a good time along the way, the
good quality of life. So to me those two
things are really important. And you
know people talk about health span but
health span is just a word that goes
back to health which itself is kind of
an objective word. It's a term you know
but when I tell you quality of life
enjoying life
>> you're you're hearing that and you're
already imagining what it would mean for
you. And so that to me brings our
humanity back into it. So for me, one of
the ways I'm looking at longevity is
really um thinking about our humanity,
you know, who we are, what's important
to us as individuals, as communities, as
people along the way. I think that's
really how you get a fuller picture of
it. So I totally think you know all the
people working in a lab on uh the
hallmarks of aging and the biological
and the cellular the scinessence the
mphagy all that stuff amazing they're
the building blocks or the bricks being
placed into the brick wall to understand
what's going on with aging and how to
counter you know um unhealthy aging I'm
actually trying to take a little bit of
a um a larger um uh h sort of hum human
humanitarian or you know our humanity
oriented look at it which is to look at
quality and you know things that are
particular interest to me are um
cognition brain health so important
brain's not a black box anymore it's
still a lot we don't know but did you
know since we're talking about the
microbiome did you know that the brain
has its own microbiome you know listen
when I went to medical school I was told
in no uncertain terms y that the brain
is sterile.
>> Sterile environment.
>> Sterile environment. You do a a tap of
the spinal cord and if you're tapping
into the fluid around the brain, there's
no way in heck you're going to find any
bacteria in that unless you've got
menitis or some kind of brain infection,
right? Well, now we now have within the
last few years like really nailed it
down that there is a bacteria ecosystem
in our brain. um like in our gut gut
brain and you know what the brain
bacteria are not quite as diverse as the
gut as in the gut but about 20% of the
diversity of the gut bacteria is also in
the brain a study was done in Italy
Bolognia Italy they looked at adults
across all the entire spectrum of
adulthood 20 to 40 40 to 70 to 90 to 100
and then they actually looked at people
who are 100 to 114 super aers Okay,
that's that's like entire adult
lifespan.
[clears throat] They looked at their gut
microbiome and then they used
computational [snorts] biology to ask
within the age categories and especially
with the super aers 100 and above any
gut bacteria pop out as super high like
standout bacteria that that you didn't
see in other populations. And it turns
out for the people who uh were a hundred
years old or older, there are four
bacteria that are standouts. Want to
hear what they are?
>> Yes, I do. [laughter]
>> Okay. Um, one of them I know you've
heard of. Three of them I hadn't heard
of. All right. And this is the exciting
part like being a scientist and a
researcher. I mean, you appreciate this
as much as anyone else. You know like
the excitement of discovery in biology
>> is like why we do what we do you know
it's cool one of the bacteria is called
odoracttor o d o r iacttor second one is
called ocelabacttor like oscillation
another one is christristen elensis okay
and then the fourth one is acromancia
these four bacteria are standouts
more in these of these bacteria in these
super aers than you see in any other
group and that stand out higher at
higher levels when they get to this age.
What do they do? What do they do? Okay,
now we know acromancia boosts your
immune system, lowers your inflammation.
We know that it helps to regulate blood
glucose. We also know that acromancia um
we actually think that acromancia might
actually uh uh interfere with um the
development of dementia somehow
regulating brain health. And then the
latest piece of discovery about
acromancia. So bacteria. All right. So
bacteria have a shell around them
physically. They're like like a beetle.
A beetle's got a little shell like the
the bug. There's a particle [snorts] on
the shell of acromancia. I don't know if
you heard about this. Have you heard of
P9? Okay. P as in Peter. Number nine is
a newly discovered particle on the shell
surrounding acromancia. All right. And
you know what they found out is that if
you take a live macromancia bacteria and
blow it up into a million pieces, just
kill it like like like uh pulverize it.
The P9 will still have a beneficial
biological effect.
if it's floating around. So, it's like a
piece of shrapnel from acromancia that's
still biologically useful. And you know
what it does?
It causes your gut to secrete more
natural
GLP1. Mind-blowing, right? So, now you
know this is the bacteria that's doing a
lot of things and it's even got its own,
you know, vest of little tricks in it in
its shell. Anyway, so that's one of the
bacteria. Um uh and um these other
bacteria do things like um lower
inflammation uh fight specific harmful
bacteria like EC coli. So you know think
about it as you get older most people
who are who get to that elderly age they
don't die of heart attacks they die of
infection pneumonia and all this other
kind of stuff. So, you know, one of
these bacteria seems to really really
mount a good defense against the kind of
infection that might take you out. Um,
other ones that you smooth out your
metabolism, uh, lower your, uh, bad LDL
cholesterol and improve your good HDL
and lower your triglyceride level. Um,
other ones, um, uh, seem to improve
better circulation.
These are not surprises once you
actually break down what these bacteria,
these four bacteria
are involved with in terms of your
physical health. Makes total sense. And
these guys, these centinarians and
older, okay? Because I had never
considered when I first started to take
a look at longevity, I thought, you
know, like 100 is like, all right,
that's a that that's like a good peak to
begin looking at. But I had no idea
like, okay, let's just do a dive on the
deep end of the pool and look at their
gut microbiome and and look at all this
stuff. And guess what? You can eat foods
that can stimulate these bacteria to
grow. If you look at our jaws, you look
at our teeth, you look at sort of our
digestive system, we are through
evolution designed to be omnivores, we
can tackle pretty much anything you want
to put in. Now, you know, obviously you
put bad stuff in, your body's going to
respond in a bad They put good stuff in.
So, [clears throat] there's a wide
range. We've got a repertoire. Like, we
got the mixed martial arts of digestion
and processing foods that we're
hardwired with, and that's a good thing,
you know, and yes, there are lots of
different philosophies and approaches
and practices of how to eat healthy. But
I think diversity is key. Our gut
bacteria are no different than any other
pet we might actually have in our home.
You got a pet dog, pet cat, pet
parakeet, pet goldfish,
same [clears throat] deal. You got to be
feeding them every day. Got to take feed
them high higher quality food if you
want them to last longer, you know? And
and how how do our like especially the
furry pets pay us back with attention,
with affection, like it forms that bond,
that connection. Well, you know, that's
happening at a microscopic level in our
gut. Like we we now realize that we've
got to take care of, you know, like the
pregnant mom saying like, I'm I'm eating
for two. We're actually eating for 39
trillion bacteria. You do a a tap of the
spinal cord and if you're tapping into
the fluid around the brain, there's no
way in heck you're going to find any
bacteria in that unless you've got
menitis or some kind of brain infection,
right? Well, now we now have within the
last few years like really nailed it
down that there is a bacteria ecosystem
in our brain. um like in our gut, gut,
brain. And you know what? The brain
bacteria are not quite as diverse as the
gut as in the gut. But about 20% of the
diversity of the gut bacteria is also in
the brain.
>> Wow.
>> Undiscovered country. Think about that.
>> I mean, what could we be doing? I mean,
could we be treating in the future
neurodeeneration
using a probiotic?
How cool would that be? And in fact,
there's some good data already, like um
I I was really struck by um some of
these bacteria. So, you know, you you
get your gut microbiome checked. You get
a huge amount of information. Hard to
know what to do with if you're not like
regularly an if you're not an expert in
the field, okay? But we do
[clears throat] know a few bacteria that
are standouts. And I think that knowing
some of these standouts like the
acromancia
mentioned earlier, um well, there's a
new one, a new player, a new kit in
town, um called Lactobacillus Plantarum.
Now, if you go back, if you go buy a
typical probiotic, you know, like
anywhere you order, um you'll find a lot
of times it's got lactobacillus
plantarum, but there's one of there's a
version of it that's called PS128. Have
you heard of this?
>> Yeah. This thing has been shown to level
off the symptoms like pretty much stop
the progression of Parkinson's disease
bacteria brain
uh interaction. I I don't have the
answer to I you know I don't have the
explanation how it works but wow what a
what a phenomenal find because it opens
up a whole new gateway for us to try to
figure out how to solve these previously
unsolvable problems. You know, at one
point, certainly when I was younger, I
went to medical school, you know, like,
oh, can you get to a 100? Like, most
people can't. I mean, maybe you get one
or two people that are really old.
Obviously, I had no idea. like so many
people were getting to 100. But I think
once you breach that 100 mark, once you
cross that line, all right, now you
start entering super aerentinarians
are people to get to 110, 11, 12, 13,
14. I mean, you know, like those are the
people who are uh getting to the summit.
Okay. And um and and I don't think
there's a strict definition, but I do
think it's in that that that
um uh 10% of the 10%.
You know, the the tippy top of all the
people who um age and and I I think that
the super age probably also includes um
uh people that are actually very vibrant
along the way, you know. I mean, you're
not counting I don't think you'd call a
super aer somebody who's uh in a coma,
you know. uh for the last 10 years of
their life. Unconscious
habit of eating ultrarocessed foods that
have um a lot of added sugar and other
additives that wreck our system. And by
the way, these are the things that we
all grew up with. I mean, you know,
we're we're we're we live in modern
society and since the 1950s,60s,
'7s, ' 80s, '90s, you know, the big
revolution,
uh, the industrial revolution, uh, hit
the food system to make foods cheaper,
uh, more widely available, more shelf
stable, you know, it was beneficial,
good, well-intentioned, okay, and tastes
really great. And so you know engineers
went there to figure out well what
chemicals can we add what you know to
make it really tasty. So I mean look
even for those of us who are very very
health consscious and can speak
authoritatively about like the evidence
of what a good healthy diet should be
more like. The reality is is that, you
know, when you were a kid and I was a
kid, we loved product X, Y, and Z that
we saw on television
>> that we got in Halloween, our Halloween
pumpkins when trick-or-treating, you
know, that we looked forward to, you
know, when our moms took us to the store
at the checkout counter, we wanted to
grab something. Can I have one? Like, I
mean, look, we're all the same. And, you
know, this is not about like
big food conspiracy. This is really
about that was a time when this
explosion that was considered innovation
came about. Long shelf life, cheap,
widely available, tasted really great. I
mean, it was pretty cool at the time.
Now it's not so cool. And I think this
is really where the the um uh social
barometer is beginning to reset itself
to say, you know, we need to be having a
conversation about this now and to ask,
are we doing more damage to ourselves by
not acting to be more progressive to uh
align what we know about health with our
food system? And that's one of the
reasons I'm really glad about some of
the conversations that are going on.
Maybe this is why people in our
generation
need to be stepping up even harder. Um,
not only on our own behalf, but for on
behalf of children,
>> kids. Because if you think about it,
like, you know, we didn't know better at
the time, but now we know better. And so
why should we be subjecting the young
people of today to maybe a fate we
can't, you know, we got to we got to we
got to deal with the backpack that we
that we were handed a long time ago. All
right. And I think we can I think we can
I think it's reversible. Like we're all
hardwired for health. We're all
hardwired for healing. You know, we it's
never too late to change. Um to try to
get back to basics, but I think for
kids, you know, we owe it to them to
give them a clean start. Cancer is I'm a
cancer researcher. If you look at the
statistics, uh one in two men are going
to develop cancer in their lifetime. One
in three women are going to develop
cancer in their lifetime. So think about
it. You go into with those stats, you go
into an elevator with a bunch of people,
you know, on your way to a holiday party
or whatever, wherever you're going to
go. I mean, you look around and you're
like, my gosh, this is this is like a
terrible statistic, right? But actually,
a lot of cancers are preventable and uh
you know, and you can dodge colon cancer
and breast cancer and a lot of other
cancers. you know, if we only had um uh
a better immune system, if we only had
better control over our circulation, so
we're not feeding cancers with our with
our blood with a new blood supply. um if
we were able to um have diets that
actually uh killed off cancer stem
cells, if we had more antioxidant
opportunities to neutralize those free
radicals or that would cause oxidative
stress to trigger mutations in our DNA.
We can fix our DNA as well. If there's
ways that we could actually lower
inflammation, which is the gasoline to
cancer, you know, you might have a tiny
incipient cancer. you have inflammation
on top of that. Okay, now you're
basically pouring gasoline onto the
embers of a fire. It's going to roar.
Okay, and then it's immunity, our immune
system. And I wrote about this in my
first book, Eat to Beat Disease. We are
hardwired for health. We got five health
defense systems. If we could actually
keep those shields up and fortify them
and tend to them like we would with the
gate to our house or the locks on our
window or a lock on your door. You know,
we'd actually get a lot further away.
we'd probably dodge a lot of cancers.
Um, and there are foods that can do it
as well. Diet and lifestyle. It's not
just the food, but food actually we now
know there are certain foods that can
actually have a pretty profound effect.
And so this this is another example like
metabolic syndrome like this um stealer
of years. Okay. This this um robber
baron of longevity is cancer which
seemed to be so
uh nefarious. You know, did you
[clears throat] ever see uh the the
latest Denzel Washington um movie called
Equalizer?
>> Yeah.
>> Equalizer 3. Yeah.
>> So, there's this Italian guy who
basically said, "Oh, this organized
crime, you know, locally is like cancer.
There's no cure."
>> You know what? I I I there was a great
line in the movie, but in fact, there is
a cure to cancer. And we know it now. I
mean, I as a cancer researcher, I'm
seeing it in motion. And we're not quite
there yet, but if with imunotherapy,
I got to tell you, I I um if you want to
see an amazing story that's based on
science, go check out the Instagram
account of a person that goes by the
handle the brainy blonde. Okay? Um she
is blonde, very smart. All right? It's
like a triple on tandra, but she had
brain cancer, glyobblasto, death
sentence. Nobody survives more than one
or two years with that things. She's
going on almost seven years cancer-free.
And you know what she did? She took a
peptide vaccine that boosted her own
immune system. All right? And that was
able to get her through. So in the
future, this is what we're going to be
able to do to conquer the scourge.
That's still treatment. Much better to
prevent it in the first place so you
don't have to go through that pain and
suffering. I think cardiovascular
disease, you know, and like when people
don't understand card I'm I'm a vascular
guy study blood vessels. So I I'm this
is like right in my wheelhouse, you
know, you got 60,000 miles worth of
blood vessels in our body. These are the
highways and byways that bring the
oxygen that we breathe and the nutrients
that we eat to every single organ, every
single cell in our body. So if your
blood vessels are healthy, you got a
chance to be healthy in the rest of your
body. But if you got sick blood vessels,
ain't no way you're going to be able to
optimize your health because your your
your your
um delivery channels for oxygen
nutrients aren't actually going to be
able to fulfill what your body actually
needs for optimal health. And so
cardiovascular disease is not just heart
disease, not just stroke, but really a
compromise of the circulation anywhere
along the way. That's a long journey,
60,000 miles. So if you pulled out
60,000 mi worth of blood vessels out of
your body and lined them up end to end,
that would form a thread that would
encircle the Earth twice. You could
orbit the Earth twice with that thread
of blood vessels. That's in a single
human adult body. All right. So this is
why I think cardiovascular disease um
which which robs us of good circulation
is so
diabolical in terms of stealing it. So,
what are some of the consequences where
we know it steals us? Well, if you get
blockages in your heart, you're going to
actually have not as strong a pump of
your heart. Not just a heart attack, but
you actually compromise uh the muscle
contraction of your heart. It's like
your bicep that can't lift quite as
much. All right? It's called ejection
fraction. Your heart just can't eject as
much blood. That leads to heart failure.
All right? So what you really want to be
able to do is to pres preserve the pump
the muscle function of the heart as much
as possible. We can measure that with a
uh like a sonogram of the heart. We call
it cardiac ultrasound. You can measure
that. You can see that we do that every
day in the cardiology uh office. Um and
um uh and of course you get uh uh other
problems of circulation in the heart.
You can have heart rhythm problems. You
know people always think about
cardiovascular is like heart attack.
Actually more commonly you have an
arrhythmia meaning the rhythm the the
beat of the heart you know uh listen
whether you like rap or beethovven
you're listening to a rhythm okay and
the fact that the rhythm has a pattern
and you're digging that pattern that's
what's important for music also equally
important for the heart. All right. And
when you actually have vascular
problems, you can affect the rhythm of
the heart. When the heart starts to
quiver or fibrillate is what we call it,
that can lead to sudden death. Rob you
instantly. Boom. You drop. Bye-bye. All
right. That's why you use a
defibrillator in the mall or in an
airplane or an airport. Okay? That can
be life- saving because you're putting
the rhythm back. But you got to have a
heart good cardiovascular system. You
need good blood vessels to be able to
flow and of course blockages of the
heart. you block that blood flow, you
know, that's like a putting a roadblock
up on a busy traffic uh lane uh on a
highway, you know, [snorts] uh flowing,
suddenly you got rush hour. Now traffic
uh slows to a halt. All right? And now
you got a parking lot. When you got a
parking lot on blood flow in your heart,
game over. You start killing heart
cells, muscle downstream. And then, you
know, like you're really compromising
your quality of life. And that
ultimately will lead to other problems
as well. Same thing I told you about the
heart can happen in the brain. So
cardiovascular if you think about your
heart you think about your brain. Listen
these are the two things and and these
are the three things that we talked
about metabolic syndrome cancer and
cardiovascular disease that are so
obvious that they rob us prematurely.
okay, of the life, the longer life that
we should be having. And because they
are all so tied to diet and lifestyle
and that's the one thing that in
medicine, your medical doctor who went
to training and medical school, we are
not taught. I'm I'm telling you, you
know, as a card carrying doctor, I
received like a week's worth of
nutrition, all right, when I was in
medical school and uh and nothing in
lifestyle, you know, hopefully that will
change. But this is why you know
podcasts like this, programs like this,
uh YouTube um uh programming like this,
this is what we are trying to do is to
educate people that
the solution to health lies first in our
own hands. Hey, if you like that video,
then you're going to love this one.
Check it out.