My Top Three Longevity Tips: Foods to Avoid and Habits to Embrace

Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of the doctor's pharmacy. Essentially, there's these four nutrient sensing pathways that regulate biological aging. One of the hallmarks is called deregulated nutrient sensing. Essentially, it means your body and food are not working together to create health. And so these pathways, when they're not properly tuned up, will drive all the other hallmarks.

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That's rupahealth.com. now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand. Well, you if you're looking for data about your biology, check out function health for real time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, well, check out my membership community doctor Hyman plus.

And if you're looking for curated, trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website, drheiman.com for my website store, and a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. Every week, I bring on interesting guests to discuss the latest topics in the field of functional medicine and do a deep dive on how these topics pertain to your health. In today's episode, I have some interesting discussions with other experts in the field, so let's just jump right in. The single biggest input to your biology every day are the pounds of food you eat every day, and the information in that food is, in real time, changing your biology and regulating everything that's going on.

In fact, I call them the longevity switches, which is kind of a term I made up in the book. But essentially there's these four nutrient sensing pathways that regulate biological aging. And these pathways are one of the hallmarks of aging. So one of the. One of the hallmarks is called deregulated nutrient sensing.

It's a big mumbo jumbo of, you know, medical language, but essentially it means, you know, your body and food are not working together to create health. And so these pathways, when they're not properly tuned up, will drive all the other hallmarks. So, for example, the amount of starch and sugar in our diet is driving increase in insulin signaling pathways. So insulin goes up, and this insulin creates this cascade that drives all the disease of aging. So insulin resistance and poor metabolic health, which affects now over 93% of the population, according to a new study, is the biggest driver of heart disease, of cancer, of diabetes and dementia, and not to mention all the other problems like depression and infertility, and so many other problems that occur from insulin resistance.

So this is, this is the biggest phenomenon that's happening globally, which is caused by our ultra processed diet, which is about 60% of our calories in America. And processed food could be sardines in a can or a can of tomatoes. That's not necessarily bad. But ultra processed food means that they take these raw materials from industrial agriculture, corn and soy and wheat, and they highly process them into components that you wouldn't have in your kitchen, and they recombine them into things that are food like substances. And I've written about this.

I've written, I think, more books than I probably should have on food and nutrition. So a lot of the fast food. That'S out there, a lot of the grocery store in the sort of inner aisles that are like highly packaged foods. Yeah, all of that. Yeah, yeah, all of that is so bad for you.

And if you look at the label of ingredients and you can't recognize what it is with covering the front of the package, you shouldn't eat it. And, you know, whether it's a corn dog or pop tart, you may not be able to tell the difference looking at just the ingredients on the label. So that's the biggest drop of so many of these deregulated nutrient sensing pathways. The other is just the constant influx of food. So we.

We eat all day long, we snack, we eat before bed, and then we eat when we wake up. And this doesn't give our body a rest. And so that activates this pathway called mtoR. MTOR is a really important. One of the four longevity switches.

First is insulin signaling. That's mtoR. MTOR is activated by protein and by also by sugar. And when it's overactivated, it actually can drive cancer and prevent your body from repairing and healing itself. So you need to give your body a break from eating and inhibit mtor, which then allows this process called autophagy, which essentially means self cannibalism.

So what's really exciting is our body has these innate repair mechanisms. We have the ability to clean up waste. We have the ability to rebuild new tissues. We have this, I can think of it. You cut your skin and all of a sudden your body then makes new skin, which is kind of a miracle, right?

This is going on inside your body too, but we don't allow that to happen. Imagine if you had a cut in your skin. You kept scraping it and digging at it, and it would never heal. That's exactly what we do with this constant influx of food. So we have to give our bodies a break so we can activate this process of self cleaning, recycling and repair.

And this is called autophagy. Now, you can't do that all the time because if you weren't eating all the time, you're going to starve to death. So you need to sort of have this Goldilocks balance between stimulating mtor to create protein synthesis, to build muscle, but also inhibit it at times by not eating. We call it time restricted eating, intermittent fasting. Theres a lot of ways to do it that activates autophagy, which then creates a self cleaning process.

So think about like, its basically this cleanup crew that comes in and cleans up all the garbage and gets rid of all proteins and old inflammatory stuff and then builds new stuff. So it's like you've got this build building construction crew and this demolition crew, and you need both to actually maintain your health and create longevity. So food is the biggest single thing. And we can talk a long time about how to use food to activate all the longevity switches properly. And the other, the other big thing that I think is driving our disease states is lack of exercise.

I mean, most of us are not using our bodies as they were meant to be used. We don't carry and lift things anymore. We don't run anymore, chasing animals to go kill them and eat them like we used to as hunter gatherers. So our bodies are not being used and are not fit. And that lack of exercise creates this horrible set of consequences that drives disease across the whole spectrum of illness, whether it's dementia or diabetes or heart disease or cancer and many, many other problems.

So exercise, the right kind of exercise, strength training and cardiovascular fitness are medicines just like food is medicine, exercise is medicine that activates also these longevity switches and pathways. And it also works through these four longevity switches. MTor insulin signaling, another one called sirtuins, which we can talk about, and AmPK, which is regulated by sugar and so forth. So we have all these redundant pathways that are designed to work together to repair DNA, to shut off inflammation, to clean up old parts, to build muscle, all these great things that our body needs to do so we can maintain our health. And what's so exciting now is we know how to turn the dials on these switches.

You know, it's like a jet plane. You go in the jet plane and it's like a little overwhelming. And you see the cockpit, you go, man, that guy's going to fly this thing. It's got 4000 dials and switches. I hope we can take off and land, but your body the same way.

And then the beautiful thing is though, learning a few simple principles, you can keep the thing running without a whole lot of effort if you just know what to do. In Okinawa, which is one of the longest lived people in the world, they form a community at birth of babies that are kind of connected by their parents that go through life together and go through all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations from birth to like 100 years old. And it builds a sense of. And it's not like a hundred people, it's like five people or four people. And it's, you know, most people can't even say there's one friend they have that they can call up when they feel bad or sad, who they can have a honest, transparent conversation to that's really heartbreaking.

And it's so much of a driver of so many ills of our society. It's something people don't talk about. And it's what, you know, when we were with Rick Warren in Saddleback Church, I had the insight of using the power of community to help people create health. So suicide is contagious, but health is contagious. That's right.

And obesity is contagious, but so is, you know, good health. Good health, right. And I think that's such an important thing you're creating in the world is this call to belong. And not only to belong, but actually you've created a very specific roadmap. So I want to get into that.

Now, you've talked about going in to go out, so let's talk about going in and what that means and how do you do that? Right. So I have about 20 exercises in my book that really take you by the hand. The whole point is to get dirty in this journey of self exploration and have fun. But going in starts with first an audit.

Radha Agrawal
Who are you spending your time with? Just take a moment to write down who are the people I'm spending my time with today at work, at home, around me, family, friends, relatives. Who are all the people you're spending your time with? And just write that down on a piece of paper and take a look at this map. And this map will begin to.

And what I like to do is color code it. So work friends, I'll color code in green, and family, I'll color code in red. And friends that I choose, I'll color code in orange. Right? So different colors just to sort of see.

Okay, cool. And then I have this kind of axis of energy that I created in my book in chapter one or in part one of the book, where you sort of assess, okay, who are the community members who are bringing me up? And who are the community members in my life who are bringing me down? So looking around, you begin to see, ah, cool. So in all the green quadrant sort of is.

Is up and to the right. So therefore, I realize that my work life is very positive. I have very positive community at work. But then maybe there's more red dots around family and friends in the negative quadrants. So you're like, ah, okay.

I need to really understand and assess what's happening in my family life so I can really heal that or support that or ask myself, you know, how do I connect and handle family members? And we've, you know, we all, we've all, we're all, we all go through that. And so really looking, although I know. Youre family, they're all pretty awesome. Well, you know, we.

Mark Hyman
Dad's India and your mom's Japanese. My dad's. Yeah, sister's a doctor. And sisters, you know, well, you know, it's. And culturally, it's interesting, right?

Radha Agrawal
Like, you know, my father, my mother, some of the most loving community builders I know. In fact, they modeled what community looks like for us. And yet it's interesting because culturally, talking about love and sex and differently, you know, you just don't talk about those things, you know, with your, with your kind of asian people parents and so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen. On the other hand, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional honesty. Honesty, yeah.

But I think, again, we all have those sort of issues. I'm going through the motherhood process right now. I'm seven months pregnant, and I keep asking myself every day, what kind of parent do I want to be anyway? So, plotting this graph, you begin to sort of see a pattern of, okay, cool. You know, here is my entire life map, and it begins to give you sort of the beginning of that story.

And then from there, you ask yourself, okay, why am I spending my time with these people? Are they grandfathered in? Are we making excuses? Am I being lazy? Is it just easier to keep them around?

You know, what is it? Do I not have givers or energy suckers? That's right. Exactly. And can I.

And can I sort of be honest and vulnerable with that person and share, hey, listen, this is how I'm feeling right now in this relationship, and it's not working for me, or I'm really sort of wanting to spend time with more positive forces. I'm going through pregnancy right now, and I don't necessarily. I just want to spend just some more time connecting with the joy in my life and things like that, being more honest and vulnerable. And I've had those conversations, and it's. And it's wonderful.

Either it becomes a mirror for that person to say, oh, wow, I realize I'm not showing up the way you want me to, or they say, okay, I totally understand, and let's reconnect after you give birth. So I think that there's that honesty piece there that we forget. We end up just ghosting our people in our lives. We end up running away, or we end up shit talking, and it ends up being a very negative experience. You know, saying sort of, this isn't the time to spend time with somebody right now, because I want to level up with my community members is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your friend, too, because they will begin to see how they're showing up, and hopefully they'll go on the journey of self exploration, too.

Mark Hyman
So rather than just cut them off, just have a real, honest conversation with them. That's right. That takes courage and vulnerability on all of our ends, but it doesn't create resentment on the other side. That leads to negative storytelling and hurt and all other sort of larger issues. So that's the first step in going instead of taking inventory.

Radha Agrawal
Yeah, taking inventory. Exactly. Auditing community, who you spend time with. The second thing that I. This is what I did when I turned 30, and this is exactly what I outlined in my book, is my own journey that's taken me from feeling like I don't belong to this incredible, connected, joyful community that gives me wings and lets me fly.

The second thing I did was I wrote down a three column list, which we'll get into. Column one was all the qualities I was looking for in a friend. So I just wanted to write down and actually manifest and call in what were the qualities I was looking for in a friend. We do this type of audit, again, for our romantic relationships. We do this for our professional careers.

I want a job that pays this much. I want a job that has this type of vacation. I want a job. Right. Like, in terms of life, it's interesting.

Mark Hyman
In terms of life planning, it's not a category. It's like, why not love, work? It is money. Exactly. Friend is not a category.

Radha Agrawal
And it is the most important when I say the most important category in life to focus on, and everyone says, focus on money, power, fame, and building your business. But really none of it will happen and or will result in joy or joyful life experience. If you don't have a community being like, oh, my gosh, mark, high five. Like, whoa. We get to celebrate your major win New York Times bestseller list again.

Holy shit. Let's go and throw a giant party for you. You know what I mean? If you're just kind of like, writing by yourself in your room and have no one to celebrate, then at the end of it, you're empty again, you know? So it's so critical that we continue to put our laptops down and keep our word and go to those dinners with our friends and say yes to the dance floor and say yes to adventure, because at the end of the day, no matter, no amount of success will mean anything if there's no one to celebrate it with.

Right? So column one was all the qualities I was looking for in a friend. I wanted friends talked about ideas and not each other. I wanted friends who said, yeah, bleep that out to life. I wanted friends who really took care of themselves and took care of each other.

I wanted friends who are interesting and interested did. Right. Who are good listeners. I wanted friends. Yeah.

So I wrote down everything I was looking for in a friend, which was kind of vulnerable because there's so much shame around saying, I don't belong, or there's so much shame around writing down the quality. It just feels desperate for some reason in today's society. Right. But if we just remove. Right, that's what I'm saying.

But if we removed all of that stigma because there is stigma around fomo, fear of missing out and fear of being left out, you don't tell people like, yeah, I was left out from the party and it really hurt. Like, we're so proud. We don't really talk about that. Right. But faux blow is a concept talk in my book quite a bit.

Which is fear of being left out. Right. Which is a more subversive, negative version of FOMO. Right. And then Jomo is joy is missing out, which is the joy of missing out and having the confidence to know there's other things to do.

Mark Hyman
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Radha Agrawal
So I don't want friends who are negative nellies, lazies, shoulder shruggers, Debbie Downers, Netflix, and, you know, chill watchers all the time. And homebodies. Like, I wanted friends who are just like, you know, really say yes to life. Say yes, like. And I call it Fyf in my book.

It's a very. And somebody else might want a friend who they can sit around and do knitting with. That's right. That's what I'm saying. Everyone's different.

So your qualities are going to be very different from my qualities, whoever's listening out there. Right. And that's exactly what you want to do right now, is ask yourself, where do I feel the most energized? And then column three, perhaps the most important column, was all the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want, all the qualities I need to embody. So I need to be less of a workaholic.

I love my work. You know, I need to put my laptop down. I need to be less judgmental and nitpicky and perfectionist. And, you know, I'm a CEO, right? I run companies for a living.

And so my job is to focus on what's going wrong. Right. My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong. So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships, into my friendships, I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful for what's going right. Yeah.

So that sort of understanding, shifting your frame. Yes. That compartmentalization of. In my work, I'm going to be focused on really kind of wanting to improve service and product and whatever, but in my personal life, to really compartmentalize and say, hey, wait, let me really focus on what's going right. Especially as an asian woman.

You grow up in a household where it's like, you're only loved if you get an a plus. A plus. And you did all right. You went to Cornell, and you were on the varsity side team and. But, yeah.

So I think. I think it's, it's so important to take that audit, you know, and look in the mirror and ask yourself, you know, how are you showing up for your friends, too? So that was a really important. Going in is doing an inventory of your life and what matters. Looking at yourself.

Yeah. Looking where you're not the best friend and what you want. That's right. The qualities, looking. So what else is part of going in?

So going in. There's also another exercise I do, and there's so many more, but I'll share one more. By the way, the book is full of these amazing practical exercises. It's not like, oh, you should be in a community and you should go have friends. And it's like a roadmap, step by step, to take you through the process of how do you create community capacity in yourself and how do you build and find community?

Mark Hyman
And it's really, really awesome. Thank you. And I illustrated the book, too, so every page is fun to read. Like, I, you know, it's not a bunch of words. It's very, it's like, I really like.

Radha Agrawal
Pictures and colors and it just makes the whole journey of community building a lot more playful and colorful. So what are the other going into? One more going in exercise I'll share before we move on to going out is I have you also assess what I call your via chart. So it's imagine a three venn diagram, three circles that you draw. So circle one is your values, the v and via is your values.

The I in value in the via chart is your interest, and the a is your abilities. So just write down your values, your interests and your abilities in three concentric circles and sit down with yourself and ask yourself today, mark Hyman, what do I value today? Because what you value today is going to be different than what you value maybe ten years ago. Maybe ten years ago, you're a big party animal. And then now you still are.

I mean, you know, something's changed. I still see it burning, mandy fist pumping on the dance floor, you know? But today, you know, maybe you just got married to beautiful wife, you're nesting, you move. You have a house in New York now. And so maybe your values today is more family driven.

And whereas ten years ago, I might have been different, so I'm seven months pregnant today as well. So my values are different. And values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life. You know, what are the things that matter to you? And you can google values and see sort what values come up.

And there's all kinds of lists that come up. In my book, I list out about 100 values that you can choose from, but it's also something you can find on the Internet and you can begin to sort of map out what do I care about today? And really sit with yourself and connect to that, that essence. So write that down in one circle and that will give you, again, the beginning of a roadmap for the type of other people that you want to connect with. Shared values are so critical.

Right, the I. Because if you name it, then you can identify others. Right? That's right. Exactly.

And then the I in your via chart is your interests. So what am I interested in today? So, you know, it's different from your values, and your values is more sort of, kind of intrinsic qualities. Family, you know, community, work life balance, you know, that sort of thing right now. Whereas your interests might be things like hiking and yoga and mindful meditation and music festivals, you know, daybreaker and daybreaker.

Yeah, thank you. And all kinds of. Right. So it's, what are you interested in tangibly doing today? And some people I do this workshop with will say, well, I don't know.

We all have interests, right? So dig deep.

If you don't have an interest right now, then start cultivating them. And that's what's so fun about this going in journey, is that life is we have 100 years to live on this planet. Let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just one. Well, only 100 years. If you eat right, follow my advice and connect in the community and follow rada's advice, then you get to 100.

Exactly. If you read all of Mark's books. Yeah, for sure. And then your abilities are. And I really think about abilities through the lens of what can you bring to your community?

So what are your abilities? Not just like, I'm a good public speaker, but what can you bring to your community? Are you. Is one of your abilities to ask amazing questions? Is one of your abilities to cook?

Are you a good cook and chef? Can you cook for your friends? Was one of your abilities to gather people in your home? Is your home a really wonderful place to gather? You're a great dj.

Exactly. Two of my friends, I love giving this example. One of them, she always has a purse full of electric candles so that when, you know, she really, like, doesn't like neon lighting. So she'll walk into any room and she'll just be like, oh, no, no, this is, like, too harsh. Lighting.

She'll turn off all the lights and break out all these electric candles and, like, vibes out the place instantly. And it's incredible. And you have these other friends who are great sort of artists, musicians, instruments. Exactly. Play great things and do skits and that's exactly right.

Mark Hyman
So fun. Yeah. So they bring instruments. Like, Eli and I bring gold stars often to gatherings, and we'll say, mark, you did great. You know, it was a wonderful thing.

Radha Agrawal
You just said, here's a gold star for you. Right. You know, we went to the hospital when Eli's father was sick, and we gave all the doctors and nurses gold stars and said, thank you for what you're doing. Great job. You know, checking his pulse.

Mark Hyman
We looked at you like, what the. And they all started competing with each other for how many? The doctors, like, serious doctors competing with each other for how many? It's like kindergarten. Yeah.

Radha Agrawal
For how many gold stars they got and they put in their badges. And it was this, like, hysterical. And we turn this sort of otherwise scary place into a playground. And, you know, it's whatever we can bring that feels good for us. It feels natural to us.

Bring that to your community and your experience and write down your abilities chart. All right, so we've got the inventory. We've got your bia chart. You've got three column list of where they fit in terms of whether they're bringing you life and energy or taking it away. So what about going out then?

Mark Hyman
You've done this inventory, done all these things. What's the process of actually going out with this and finding your community and building it? So step one. And there's some people who are like, I'm shy, or like this naturally to me. Or it's so much easier for you, Radha, because you're naturally more extroverted, which I, by the way, break those labels in my book, too.

Radha Agrawal
In part one is we talk about the fact that we have begun to sort of label ourselves into corners. So I'm an introvert. I'm an extrovert. That's a good example with Carl Jung, who kind of named those terms. And people are really banding around those terms.

I've seen friends who are definitely extroverted start dating introverts and then begin identifying as introverts and disappear from the face of the planet. And so I think we've taken these terms too literally, where Carl Jung himself, who defined these terms, said that if you are only introverted, you'd be in an insane asylum. If you're only extroverted, you'd end up in an insane asylum. So we are on a spectrum of introvert, extrovert, which I call metaverse in my book, right? We are all metaverse.

So let's just stop. Some days I'm social. Some days I want to be at home by myself, filling up on energy. And so I think if we stop putting these social limitations on ourselves, we'll begin to allow so much more exploration in the communities that we're a part of. And so exploration.

So going out begins with first, like, removing all of these labeling and. And then getting sort of a deep understanding of who we are, that going in experience. And then it's just putting your shoes on. Like, I would say, put your shoes on. Write down five communities in and around you that align with your values, interests, and abilities and then begin exploring them.

So it's a light touch, right? So, for me, the first year was okay. When I went on this journey, when I started at 30 years old, I realized I didn't belong. And I was going to sports bars and doing kind of like the everyday thing. I asked myself, okay, what are the things that I really care about?

What am I interested in? So I realized I'm interested in entrepreneurship. I'm interested in music festivals, which I'd never really explored in my twenties. Right. I just was kind of doing the city life thing.

So I began looking up all the cool music festivals around, and I stumbled upon burning man, lightning in a bottle, and different music festivals. I started going to, I started going to entrepreneurship summits, like summit series, and, you know, various communities in New York and across. Across, like, nexus summit community. It's sort of a young global leader summit. So I began sort of charting this on a little map as well.

Mark Hyman
So you go to pre existing gatherings of people who had similar interests. Exactly. Interests, values. And all of a sudden, I started meeting people, and I started realizing, oh, wow, wait a minute. You're interested in saying things I'm interested in.

Radha Agrawal
We want to solve problems for the world. And I began to sort of find my people for the first time. And one by one, I said, hey, let's hang out. And whereas before I used to have siloed relationships, right, like, I had my friends I work out with, I have my friends that I go, you know, go travel with. I have my party friends, I have my intellectual friends.

But this was the first time in my life also that I wanted to remove all the compartmentalization and just bring everybody together fearlessly. Because I think so often, for some reason, we can get territorial with our friendships as well. I call that the oxytocin overload, which is actually a term around when you become so close to somebody as a friend, one on one, there's a sort of. You don't have to. Animal instinct.

Yeah, exactly. Animal instinct that you don't want to share that person with somebody else, whether it's your kids or your. Or your family and friends, that overload is there, and it's on us to just recognize that it's happening. To know, wait, I'm feeling irrationally jealous. I'm feeling irrationally territorial over this friendship.

And to name it and just say, hey, I just want to let you know that I'm feeling irrationally territory. And then I know that's oxygen level because I care about you so much. But so that going out piece is so critical. And first, like, tearing down all the needs for those siloed friendships and just bringing everybody together, which is what I did. And again, it could work differently for everybody, but for me, just breaking down the barriers and sort of fearlessly introducing my friends and watching them develop friendships without me feeling jealous of their friendship was actually something new that I didn't have in my twenties, right?

So, in my thirties, I was like, wow, that's so cool. I did. More is more. More is more like, I connected them. They're now friends without me.

That's so cool. And. And they thank me, you know, when they see me every once in a while, they're like, oh, my gosh, thank you so much. Like, this person is such a meaningful person in my life now. And more is more.

So, like, everyone listening out there, you know, connect your friends fearlessly. You know, recognize that the rising tide truly lifts all boats. And, you know, when we actually courageously and fearlessly connect one another, life becomes far more rich. So, yeah, going to. So then going out and exploring all these communities, I began finding these people, bringing them to my house, hosting dinner parties.

Not that weren't just wine and cheeses. Everyone listening, let's stop doing wine and cheeses. I think we're past that. I think it's time that we really think about gathering as a more meaningful connection point. Kombucha and kale chips now, right?

Exactly. Kombucha and kale. Exactly. But there's just, you know, I talk about entry rituals. Like, when someone comes into your home, how are they coming into your home?

Is it just like, hey, I'm here with wine, or are you greeting them with, you know, a little wishing well to say, hey, today, when you're coming into my, to my home. I want you to share a little wish that you have for this gathering. I mean, tribes always had rituals. That's right. That's right.

Mark Hyman
Ceremony. And you're saying, let's bring that back into our lives. Exactly. Because it creates meaning and context and connection. The question is, what are you trying to achieve with supplements in the space of longevity?

What pathways are you activating? What are the important longevity switches in the body and how do you regulate those? So I think aside from the foundational stuff, which has a lot to do with extending life, you mentioned the fish oil study, vitamin D. I mean, there's just so much data on this that's really impressive. But in terms of specific thinking about which product supplements are effective for longevity and aging, there's, there's a number that really come to mind and just to kind of back up a little bit, and I'm going to get a little geeky here, if it's okay, because this is a masterclass.

There are a number of things called the hallmarks of aging, which are these fundamental dysfunctions that happen as we age, if we age abnormally. So aging should be considered a disease. It's not normal. The way we see aging in this culture is a sign of abnormal aging. And we think it's normal because pretty much happens to everybody, which they get old, disease and decrepit.

You know, if you're 65 years old, it's like you're going to have three or more chronic illnesses. Just out goes. Right. But it's not inevitable. And, and so one of the hallmarks of aging is, is a dysfunction of these nutrient sensing pathways.

So we have exquisite systems in our biology that sense either abundance or scarcity. Oh, there's too much of a food. We just, we want to start to build and grow and make stuff in our body, but if there's scarcity, it activates all these repair and healing and general mechanisms. And we need both. We need, we need both a demolition team and we need a construction team to actually continue to renew and rebuild our bodies.

And a lot of these supplements that we're talking about are working on some of these key pathways. So one of them is really important, is called nad. Now, nad you probably heard about. It's, it's an important compound that's part of your cellular metabolism, helps produce energy, but it turns out it has a lot broader effects. And one of the key nutrient sensing pathways is something called sirtuins.

These compounds, these pathways were discovered in 1991 by Lenny Guarte and his colleagues at MIT and it was a real breakthrough because they were able to stimulate certain sirtuins in yeast models and mice models, and extend life dramatically, double it, sometimes even up to a thousand years equivalent in a wormhood, or 120 or 140 in a human. How they were doing it with some of the mice studies. So what turns out is NAD is a sirtuin activator. So when NAD levels are good, which means you have energy, it turns on the sirtuins, which then creates a whole downstream series of effects that creates longevity. So it sends out a massive DNA repair team, which is awesome, because we get 100,000 hits to our DNA every minute, basically from various insults, from food, from react oxidation, oxidation, from metabolizing food, from environmental toxins, from all sorts of things.

Second, it actually inhibits one of the key hallmarks of aging, which is inflammation. And we talked a lot about inflammation on the podcast, but it does so through a particularly important mechanism that is the master. One of the master inflammation switches in the body, which is called nf kappa B, or nuclear factor kappa B. And essentially, this is a transcription factor. Transcription factors are what tell your gene what to transcribe.

So, how does your DNA know what to do? Well, it's listening for messages all the time from signals from your body. And nf capit B is a signaling molecule that tells your DNA to make more cytokines, to make more inflammation. So when you activate sirtuins, it shuts that off. It also increases your metabolism, increases your insulin sensitivity, which we've talked about a lot on the podcast.

If you want to be healthy, you have to be insulin sensitive. So it's through a whole series of different mechanisms. Naddemen has multiple actions through sirtuins, in addition to just powering up cellular energy. And some of the studies from David Sinclair are just mind boggling. He uses derivatives.

So Nr nicotinamide riboside is made into NMN, which is then made into nad in the body. So this is a normal consequence of, like, cellular reactions. So you can give Nad as a shot or as an iv, but you want to take it as a pill, you have to take it as NR or NMN. And David gave NMn to these mice. Now, these old mice.

Now, they had these mice treadmill, which I'm not a researcher, so I don't really know about it, but they had these mice treadmill that have an upper limit, because no mouse has ever run more than 2 km like young, old, any mice, right? And so they had this mouse treadmill. It was like 2 then would just kind of turn off. It would like overheat and stop. And they gave this old mice NMN, and the mouse ran 3 broke the treadmill.

So it's pretty amazing. And even in some studies, it regulates all sorts of stuff like hormones and fertility. In some studies, they've literally been able to reverse mouse appause. So take menopausal mice and give them NMN, and they start menstruating and get fertile again. It's really trippy.

So that's just one example of one compound. Another one, I think that's really important is something that actually, and I think curcumin or this product, I think, are really important, which is regulating inflammation through, again, these very variety of effects. But there's a common called HTB, himalayan tardy buckwheat derivative that has, like 132 phytochemicals, including quercetin and rutin, which. Quercetin also is a longevity supplement. So it contains a lot of these things, but it also contains a compound only found in this ancient grain, which isn't really grains of flour, called himalayan tartary buckwheat, which has only been recently been recultivated after thousands of years of being sort of out because it's in the himalayas and it's called tuhoba, and it actually is regulating some of the inflammatory systems that are involved in senescent cells and chip cells.

So as we age, some of our cells just get older and they don't really die. They're kind of like zombie cells, but they're not just inert. They're actually creating a whole inflammatory cascade, and then they're causing other cells to become senescent zombie cells. It's like, it's terrible. So you get this kind of wave of inflammation.

And so this can help to kill that. And there's something called chip cells, which are cells that are from the bone marrow, from damaged stem cells that produce white blood cell. And you get these funky white blood cells in your body that are just generating tons of inflammation. So some of these compounds really help to regulate this inflammatory, senescent thing. So one of the hallmarks of aging is cellular senescence, which means the aging of your cells.

And how does that happen? These zombie cells is essentially what happens. And we can go into how they're created. But it's really fascinating how these natural plant compounds combat this. And what's also exciting, Drew, is there are so many other compounds, additions of three that are super powerful, like green tea extracts, epigalactic catechins, resveratrol, you might have heard about resveratrol was the thing that was first sort of discovered, which is from red wine, that helps to activate sirtuins to extend life by a third.

So if you actually take resveratrol from red wine, you give it to mice, theyll live a third longer, which is equivalent to humans being 120. Right. Which is kind of cool. But then how much resveratrol did they get? They got a lot.

They got the equivalent studies are like 1500 bottles of reduced, well, they got the 1500 bottles of red wine, so don't try this at home. Okay. But what was interesting is that there was ferretrol and this was fascinating and it's kind of wild. These pathways, these conserved longevity pathways that are really survival pathways. When they're activated, they're so powerful that they have so many beneficial effects.

So even though the mice kept eating junk food and not exercising, their, their metabolism got faster, their exercise capacity increased. We call vo two max. They reversed their diabetes and insulin resistance and high blood pressure and even while eating crap. So I'm like, wow, what if you actually ate well and exercise and then use this as a booster? Amazing.

So that's, that's the thing. And there's also incredible compounds that are of now looking at how we can actually help to extend life. Called fistine, which is f I s t I n, which is from strawberries, is a compound from strawberries, but turns out to be an incredible longevity supplement. Sulforaphane, which comes from broccoli. Broccoli sprouts are the highest concentration of these.

So this is a hugely detoxifying molecule. Anti cancer, it improves glutathione and really helps with some of the key longevity pathways. So I think, you know, you've got but these incredible compounds and theres more, obviously, theres compounds from persimmon, theres compounds from lychees, theres berries, theres compounds in chinese medicine, theres all these wonderful compounds that actually help to activate these longevity pathways. Were talking about AmPk before, but quercetin, resveratrol, catechins, curcumin, all these things from the plant kingdom all regulate these pathways. So do I think we should take three?

Yeah, but theres probably a lot more that are going to be coming around the pike. And I think a basic longevity stack of supplements would be NAD HTB rejuvenate. And I think vitamin D is up there for sure. But, and I would like to sort of see a polyphenol blend, like a polyphenol blend. And if I could put it all in a pill, I would put in catechins, I put in resveratrol, I put in Quercetin, Id put in festine, id put in curcumin.

I put in a lot of these very important compounds that come from plants as a cocktail of various phytochemicals that all have very different effects. But that's what I would do. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on all social media channels at Mark Hyman and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy.

I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free marks picks newsletter@drheiman.com. markspicks I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that helped me on my health journey, and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drheiman.com markspicks.

Thank you again and we'll see you next time on the doctor's pharmacy.

This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.

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My Top Three Longevity Tips: Foods to Avoid and Habits to Embrace

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1: Introduction to Longevity

2: Impact of Processed Foods

3: Benefits of Fasting

4: Importance of Exercise

5: Building Community

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