A (3:25)

Up to few restrictions on very few restrictions. Yep.

B (3:29)

The alternative is there are people currently in their late 40s that suffer from morbid obesity that if you somehow just kept them alive and with technological innovation that is increasingly more possible that they kick around for a while, let's say magically, you got someone like that to their 90s. Let's use a more realistic example. After age 70, a person is mostly bedridden, requires the care and attention of many people, is bereft of family and friends and lives in a nursing home, tended to hand and foot. Very identical mortality, same day of death, very different degree of morbidity. One person experienced almost none. One experienced a significant amount. So for the rest of the discussion we're going to have here today, we're attending to variables that don't just enhance the probability that you live longer though they will, but they're also going to enhance the quality of life you experience as you age, which is really, really important because if someone's like, do you want to live longer? And you're like, yeah, they're like in a nursing home with tubes everywhere, you're like, oh, how much longer? Like years, decades. You're like, cash me out, I'm good. Some people want that sort of thing, some people don't. So very important distinction.

A (4:45)

Is it a trade off between the two?

B (4:48)

Almost never, but almost. Sometimes there is a trade off between the two. For example, in very difficult athletic pursuits, there are some data indicate that if you really grind it as an athlete, especially into your later years, you could technically be through putting so much through your metabolism, the total human metabolism and the amount of sort of damage and chemical alteration your body takes is kind of like a candle. If you burn it really fast, it burns out a little quicker and just low key. There is a situation like that.

A (5:27)

This is at the extreme end, though.

B (5:29)

Very extreme, very common later as well.

A (5:31)

Donald Trump made a comment about you have a limited number of heartbeats in your life and life exercising speeds them up. Not quite right, Donald.

B (5:41)

One of the many ways in which Donald Trump is more wise than us all. He does have a little bit of a point there. So if you are a hardcore athlete, you may not live quite as long as if you cooled off on the training a little bit. However, if you're a hardcore athlete, you'll probably just not suffer nearly as much from mobility restrictions, morbidity things, various health maladies. You're just going to Croak a little sooner, and by a little, I mean maybe on the order of months to a few years sooner. But your quality of life is going to just be completely different, especially in your later years. Those distinctions are very rare. And there are almost no cases in which mortality and morbidity contradict each other. Usually it's roughly the same stuff. Like, most of the recommendations we'll have talked about today are going to be like a lot of column A, column B, both checked off.

A (6:34)

When it comes to longevity, quality of life, what's the biggest movers or the number one, what's the biggest determining factor? Do you know? Is that a question that can be answered.

B (6:47)

Technically in the literature? So it's difficult to say what the biggest factor is by far, because the way you ask that question has to include what is the degree of variation you account for? So if you say that nutrition is the biggest variable that you're dealing with a hundred people being examined for their nutrition or trying to correlate lifespan, but most of them are eating decently well, it probably won't be the biggest variable. But the kind of raw take, to be completely honest, in our current environment is probably the degree of adiposity that you carry, how much body fat you have and how heavy you are beyond what you were genetically designed to hold. So, like the Great Dane effect or.

A (7:38)

The, you know, big things don't live as long.

B (7:41)

Large dogs are designed with similar systems as small dogs, and they almost always die, like half sooner. Humans are all designed on very similar systems and subsystems. And when you get a human to weigh 4 or 500 pounds, it strains everything like crazy.

A (7:57)

That's like a reliable way to shorten your life. One of the most reliable ways to shorten your life would be probably one.

B (8:04)

Of the most short of extreme drug abuse, like just doing crack or coke every day, stuff like that. Extreme prolonged stress and sleep deprivation, absolute.

A (8:16)

Hunter Biden stuff, total laptop type of shit.

B (8:19)

Right? But yeah, as far as things that we see humans alter in the real modern world today, it's difficult to reduce both your longevity, how long you live your lifespan, and wildly increase your morbidity in a more dependable way than being severely overweight.

A (8:41)

Okay, you mentioned a word there that I thought would maybe be the biggest one. Genetics. What's the role of genetics when it comes to lifespan, longevity, quality of life central.

B (8:51)

And it's interesting that the way you asked, genetics is insanely, insanely pertinent to how long you live and explains almost all of the variants for those wacky Stories you hear, which are often false and sometimes true. Well, my grandfather, he lived till 98. He smoked 10 packs a day, and he mean son of a bitch barely slept, drank all the time. And somehow you live to 98. And usually people trot out these stories to try to reduce the apparent benefits of improving your lifestyle. Because there's kind of a fatalism associated with, like, dude, if my Grandpa lived till 98, just eating raw meat, you know what I'm saying, and smoking eight cigs in an hour, why am I going to go eat kale? That's stupid. I'm not going to waste my time. The thing is, Grandpa probably had just the right stuff genetically. And if you tried at any given age and you tried any given level of genetics that you may have, maybe you're closely related to Grandpa in that regard. Maybe not so much, because he might only be a quarter related to Grandpa. And if the genes shuffle pretty decently, maybe only an eighth. And you might have other people in the family that, like, croak at 55, all of a sudden you're like, ah, whatever. So genetics matter a ton, but they are still altered. So genetics gives you an average. If everything's average in your life, average nutrition, average sleep, average everything, genetics will say you're going to die probably about 72, but if you do everything right, you might die at 82. If you do everything wrong, you might die at 52, 62, something like that. Very big differences abound. However, that settling point of longevity, very genetically informed. However, the reason I said that adiposity is probably the most pertinent variable, the biggest one, explanatory wise, is because it's a variable that you can push all the variables to extremity. You can push your sleep down, you can push your stress sky high, but it's unlikely you're going to do that to yourself for very long in the free modern world. Like, if you work any decent job in the US or any of the Anglophone countries, modern Asia, et cetera, Europe, like, you're probably not going to, like, die because you overworked voluntarily in a coal mine? Unlikely. But, boy, are a lot of people voluntarily overeating like crazy. And being that we're. Are we allowed to disclose the filming location, being that we're in the Austin, Texas metropolitan area, lots of people are eating to such high extents that I'll tell you this. If you weigh 400 pounds and you trot out the genetics bullshit to me of, like, why you haven't lost weight? I'm Drake and you, like, I don't even want. Because, you know, like you can really do unbelievable damage and shorten your life substantially. It kind of doesn't matter where your genetics are at that point.

A (11:39)

If you're talking genetics, does that mean all grandparents and both parents seem to have lived for quite a while? Most people haven't done a full genome assessment or whatever. I don't even know if we've done a polymorphic trait. Like here's the long living gene, here's some of the long giving, long living.

B (11:57)

Spare the expense, it's going to be polygenic.

A (12:00)

But there are, I mean, there's not one gene I can just gene that.

B (12:05)

People only live to 55 or 95, no in between. It's very bimodal. Right. If you look at it, you can look at genetics from two different perspectives in this regard. At least one perspective is there are no doubt genetic variables about a person that under the hood caused them to live a long time or live a short time. You might be able to clear mitochondrial damage faster or something like that. Your genome, the actual like strands of DNA are kept like less methylated than otherwise. There are a variety of molecular machines that do that. Some people have more effective variants or more of them, so on and so forth. You would never look at a person and tell, that's what they have. They just have that ship. That's what grandpa had when the coal mining days, when he smoked a coal chimney every hour or whatever the fuck he did. He was, he was literally a cigarette, Chris, a giant walking cigarette and he wouldn't die. So that is factor number one. There's a bunch of those kinds of things. But the other kind of genetics, and this is straight up still genetics, that affect your lifespan is the genetic propensity for the secondary effects that affect it. For example, if you have a fucking appetite for very tasty, very not good for you foods and you have genetically hunger signaling that's just like kind of you're always hungry or whatever, no pleasure from exercise, 100% propensity to do addictive drugs, a propensity to take preposterous risks, a propensity for poor sleep, that's not under the hood stuff. It's going to affect what's under the hood, but it's expressed in other measured variables. So there's two ways to look at that.

A (13:33)

Okay, environment, how does that impact longevity?

B (13:37)

Yeah, basically in the current modern world, environment impacts longevity a very small amount because all of our environments are generally kind of really good. Good enough that the variance Produced by environment is very small. However, in the developing world, environment has really big effects on longevity. Still, one of the top killers straight up all around the world is indoor air quality. There are still countries and cultures in which you burn for food and fuel, like sod or some shit like that, or inside, and it sure goes out the chimney, but believe it or not, some of the molecules stray to the sides and you inhale that shit. You do that for 30, 40 years, it's going to impact your longevity like crazy. If you've ever been to developing nations like India, for example, you land, the internal circulation of the air stops, external air comes in, you're like, the fuck happened here? And that does not stop until you leave India or go way into the jungle. Because like Mumbai has an air quality that like, if we had that in Austin, there would be like, like, do not travel to Austin, Texas for the next two months kind of shit. Like I remember the California wildfires are a really big deal and the air, air quality was like, oh, it's really bad. And I remember being there and I was like, the fuck. Because I had been to Mumbai a few times, I'm like, man, I could live the rest of my life in this. It wouldn't affect me at all. I've been to Mumbai. So outdoor, indoor air quality, polluted water, contaminated food, things that we just really just don't deal with in the modern world. You go to Japan, Taiwan, the uk, Germany, the us it's all free and clear, pretty much. And so in the environment doesn't have huge effects in that sense. There are other things about the environment that can produce or increase longevity, stress and things like that. I don't like to call that environment. You can be more specific with those things. But generally speaking, environmental factors just aren't a big deal for us living in the modern world. Modern world, how rude. Everyone's modern. In the developed world, it's not a big deal. In the developing world, yeah, it's a huge deal. And one of the ways to increase human wellbeing and human lifespan is to help the developing world clean up. Like in the literal sense of just.

A (15:48)

Have cheaper, cleaner energy.

B (15:50)

Cheaper, cleaner energy. Cheaper cleaner abilities to clean up. Look, because like, if you get a lot of energy, don't exactly clean up your air doing that. If you have five nuclear power plants, you still have to make sure that your production facilities of all these goods are not spewing toxic. You have to have regulatory framework to make sure cars are increasingly expected to have different standards. Because like in India there's like diesel, regular small cars in the road and they put out some smoke that I'm like that our cars at home do not smell like that. They do not pass our regulatory burden. And obviously, of course, like good governance, largely free markets, enough ability to generate wealth, all that stuff.

A (16:25)

So, okay, diet touched on body fat, body weight earlier on.

B (16:31)

Yes.

A (16:32)

Does it matter what you're eating? Does it matter how it impacts you? How should we come to think about diet from a longevity standpoint?

B (16:40)

Great. A diet that can keep your muscle mass at decent levels and does not make you excessively overfat or overweight probably is something like 80% of what we mean by diet's effect on longevity. So if you take two people and they eat two very different diets, but one that they're roughly the same body composition and size, et cetera, they're going to get longevity differences from diet alone, but they're not going to be enormous. On the order of probably five years or less. Just on a heuristic basis, we're not talking about 20 or 30. If someone weighs 600 pounds, yeah, it's 20 or 30 years, if not more.

A (17:22)

Stop arguing over vegan versus carnivore and instead look at how much they weigh.

B (17:26)

Oh, my God. By a long shot. Let's put this in perspective with some characters that can make up in our heads if a vegan or carnivore doesn't matter. Say, you know, they're 350 pounds at 5 foot 7 and they're like, well, I'm vegan, so it's not a big deal. You're going to be like, bro, that ain't it. Now, if you eat mostly healthy foods, lean proteins, veggies, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, and mostly unprocessed foods. If you do that, whatever body weight you're at, it absolutely matters for longevity, but it matters a little bit. And that means you should do it. But the biggest thing that you get out of those foods is the ability to do weight control. Because if you are grotesquely overweight, you could be eating fuck all. It matters, but not by a ton.

A (18:17)

How much mitochondrial damage and stuff like that is coming from junk processed foods? Or is your concern with avoiding ultra processed foods that they're just more palatable than eating the whole food version?

B (18:28)

It's probably another 80, 20 or 90, 10 situation where mostly they're just a portal to being really fat. But yeah, there is some decent research that says very processed meats, very processed, various other foods do have chemical effects, cellular levels that are Absolutely not ideal. Especially if the preponderance of your diet is composed of those foods. But if you eat not so healthy foods a few times a week and the rest is healthy, they cannot statistically differentiate you from someone who eats healthy 100% of the time in the mortality.

A (18:59)

Or morbidity, assuming that you maintain a similar sort of weight.

B (19:02)

Correct?

A (19:02)

Yeah.

B (19:03)

So yes, exactly.

A (19:04)

But again, we're fighting with ultra processed foods are more palatable, often more calorie dense. Go back and watch the fat loss episode that we did before if you want to learn more about that.

B (19:12)

That's it. So that's really important stuff. But I think the big takeaway for me is this. If you kind of two extremes, one we already mentioned, if you are following some ultra healthy diet, either ostensibly healthy or actually healthy, and you have gotten up to £400 and you're not losing weight currently, but you're like, I'm good, I'm eating the new way, it's great, you got a bad thing coming your way. On the other hand, if you happen to be in a position where you are of a healthy weight, you're physically active, et cetera, all the other variables we'll talk about are pretty well in line. And you are looking at a plate of nachos at a Mexican place with your friends and they're like, eat some. And you're like, ooh, but they're kind of going to kill me because they're made of chips and those are bad. Sorry, crisps. Does that make your English feel bad?

A (20:09)

Anglicizing everything?

B (20:10)

Yes. Yes. That's also probably the wrong move. And it's a. It's a wrong move for at least two reasons. One, if in moderation and with all the other factors aligned, you eat some junk every now and again. It's a very difficult story to tell yourself that anything very much matters about if you eat a few chips or zero chips or even a two bags of chips every now and again. The other way in which it matters is the. And this is a little bit more about how you approach food. If you approach food in an erotic fashion, anticipating dangers everywhere, trying to curate your lifestyle to only get the organic vegan superfood shit, and really worrying a lot about what goes into your body, you almost certainly will live less time than if you just didn't give a shit and ate mostly good shit, but every now and again just had 10 burritos. No, no problem.

A (21:02)

I love the idea of the stress of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections depending.

B (21:07)

On the degree of imperfection. But if you're doing a decent job and you're worrying more than that, you're just going insane.

A (21:14)

I did a Jeffersonian breakfast with Brian Johnson a couple of months ago.

B (21:19)

Okay. What is. I don't know what that means.

A (21:21)

So you. Everybody gets, I think, a minute to speak and you kind of go around and you've got a topic that you're talking on and it's a way of, I guess, fostering discussion, some kind.

B (21:33)

Okay.

A (21:34)

And he was talking about some of the research that him or his team had done. I don't know where it had come from. And he said that eating a McDonald's kills you 12 minutes earlier. That was some of the. And I do wonder, you know, I like what Brian's doing in the same way as I like having a scout in an army that goes and sort of. Climbs are really dangerous.

B (21:56)

Yeah, but I'm not climbing that shit.

A (21:57)

I don't want to go up there. But I'm glad he does and maybe tell us some interesting stuff when he comes back down.

B (22:01)

Totally.

A (22:02)

However, I do wonder. This is one question I haven't got to ask him yet, which is how are you or any of the people that are really obsessed with long. I go on the R Longevity, Reddit or whatever, other versions of that, the NAD discussion forum, the Resveratrol discussion forum, all of this David Sinclair stuff from years ago. I wonder whether those communities have got to the stage yet where they've tried to mediate the longevity induced stress reduction.

B (22:30)

Yeah.

A (22:30)

You know what I mean?

B (22:31)

Yes. Now, there are a few ways you could go about this. If you are a person who's obsessed with longevity in a glass half full sort of way, you're looking at the variables in your life and you're like, ooh, I want to optimize for longevity. I love my life. I love science. I love being intricate and meticulous. It's just my nature. I love organizing all the variables and being very strict. You're not really stressed when you're doing that. You're actually involved.

A (22:59)

It's part of your orderliness.

B (23:00)

Yeah. And so not only do you get the benefits of being a perfectionist on never eating any junk, but also you get the benefits of being super involved, which is another big variable we'll discuss later. As seems to have some promise for longevity, but if you're a person who, if they are told, listen, just eat mostly healthy foods and you're good to go. And you're like, oh my God, thank God. But if I tell you, look, every fry you put in your mouth is like 30 seconds less life. Like you're telling your wife something just beautiful about how much you love her on your deathbed and you're like, and my favorite part of you is. And she's like that stupid fry from like a Donald Stole my husband's Soul. If you are a person whom that idea and the pursuit of perfectionism tends to give higher stress levels, I'm going to tell you right now, it's probably not worth it. Just do a good job. Don't try to aim for perfect.

A (23:53)

We'll get back to talking to Dr. Mike in one minute. But first I need to tell you about Carol. I first heard about Carol Bikes from Brian Johnson of all people, who said that this is the best way that he managed to get his heart health improved. I think he's got the heart of an 18 year old, maybe an 18 month old, I'm not sure. But he told me that this was the way he was doing his high intensity training. Dr. Rhonda Patrick also has been harping on about it. And Carol Bike gives you the shortest, most effective workouts. Actually backed by science, it's scientifically proven to deliver superior benefits in less time compared to regular cardio. There's no super magic going on. It just uses AI to personalize resistance based on your unique ability, delivering maximum results in minimum time and making you work very hard. So if you're tired of wasting hours on ineffective workouts, give Carol Bike a spin. Right now. You can save on Carol Bikes by going to the link in the description below or heading to Carol bike.com modern wisdom that's C A R O L bike.com modern wisdom what happened to all of the research saying that if you cut a rat's calories by 50% or 30% that it lives tons longer? Whatever happened to the intermittent fasting side of that? You haven't mentioned once Calorie restriction for longevity extension. Why?

B (25:11)

Because it's almost completely encompassed by the variable of body weight. I'm going to tell you something completely insane, Chris. You might not believe, but when you feed a rat a little less food or a lot less food, it gets a little or a lot lighter in body weight. And if you factor that variable of body weight, it already accounts for that. So it's absolutely true that if you input fewer calories on average in a certain margin, you starve. You can't starve yourself to death and you've like always been starving to death and you're A skeleton. But like at 110 you're like, I'm still hanging in fellas, can I get a brownie? Like, no, no, you would die. Like, I kind of want to die with a brownie in my mouth. So the body weight basically absorbs all of that variance for us. So let me.

A (25:50)

Does that not mean that we should all be fighting to be as low body weight as possible? If you want to live, there's an.

B (25:55)

Optimal body weight, but it's not one number I can give you because it depends on a bunch of stuff. Internal genetic variables I can't possibly predict because I don't have an AI scan of your whole genome. It's coming, I'm sure, but it's not here yet. Another one is frame size. Like someone who's 6 foot 2, you're like, yeah, like, and very broad shouldered. In the interchromial distance for the bones, you're like, yeah, you got to weigh like 115 pounds. And then you're going to be super like longevity. Like, yeah, until they die of starvation summarily one day later. So a lot of variables play into that. But as far as body weight is concerned, you're generally going to take the average recommendation of what most of the governing bodies in medicine agree is the statistically healthiest body weight. And you're going to air either at that body weight or a little bit less. You start going much less than that. Not so great. So for example, if the insurance tables say that you're probably in your best health at £150 given your. They don't usually do frame size already. This is fucking shit. That 150 pounds, you're good to go anywhere between like 135 and 150. That's probably your super golden zone. You can weigh up to 165, 170, 180 if you're more muscular and it'll be almost the same result. But if you get into like the 1 20s or the 1 10s just to live longer, it might not work out so well for you.

A (27:14)

Is holding muscle mass from a diet perspective? Well, actually, just what, what's the role of muscle mass? Talk to me about how muscle mass plays a role in. In longevity. Is it important?

B (27:26)

Muscle mass plays makes sort of two appearances in longevity. One appearance that muscle makes in longevity is that having a decent amount of muscle has secondary health effects for the rest of your system. Muscle is a glucose consumer and it keeps your blood glucose chronically lower than if you didn't have plenty of Muscle and excessive chronic high blood glucose is a surefire way to just croak early. That's it. And so there are a few other ways in which muscle has these great systemic effects and those are awesome. And that's actually the primary driver. The second thing about muscle is when you look at the statistical literature on people with a certain level of muscle mass and their mortality predictions, you see these massive correlations. Correlation is not causation. Most of the variance of muscle mass or most of the relationship between muscle mass and mortality has to do with muscle mass isn't what's keeping you alive. It's just a really good indicator of your overall health.

A (28:24)

It's like healthy use a bias signal 100%.

B (28:26)

So like, if you give me an 88 year old woman who is walking on a cane where she's super jacked, like destroying skyscrapers and shit, she's like, you ever seen someone who's not overweight but they like reach for their luggage and it's like skin and bones and like the muscles are like her biceps, like the width of my finger. And you're like, the fuck is that person moving? And they're barely moving. She's going to croak probably in not so long a time. But it's because she's 88 and because all of the other health factors have precluded her from building muscle. Not as much, because if she built a ton of muscle, it would keep her lifelong.

A (29:04)

If she had a good bench press, she'd be sweet.

B (29:06)

It's true. If she had more muscle, it probably be healthier for her. But a lot of times people who are bedridden, people who are suffering from chronic illness, people who are suffering from chronic physical inactivity, like your hips are totally fucked, so you lose a ton of muscle in your legs. And then like people are like, when you die, they measure your muscle mass in a study and they say, well, it's low muscle mass, it's at the low muscle mass specifically that killed you. Although it did have a small effect. It's the fact that like, oh shit, you were in really poor health. In order to get to this.

A (29:32)

Muscle mass is downstream from what you've done 100%.

B (29:35)

And there's a couple things going around the Internet. People are talking about jump height, your ability to jump high, related to your mortality and grip strength. And like, if you try to train to jump higher or grip stronger, thinking it's going to keep you alive. Reverse causation, not the best use of your time.

A (29:50)

Yeah, yeah. What about Too much muscle. Lots of people listening who maybe be worried about that. They spend all their time in the gym. You as well. Large guy who's competitively body belt bodybuilt for quite a while.

B (30:03)

Yes, body built. So technically, as soon as you get to be considerably 10 or 15 pounds heavier than what the insurance tables predict will be the body weight that lets you live the longest, you're probably not doing yourself any favors with longevity. However, this is one of those instances where quality of life and longevity can be a little bit antagonistic to one another. So that definitely has to be stated that no, you can't be as jacked as you want and still live as long as you want. But if you're not using anabolic steroids and growth hormones to get that extra muscle, the amount of muscle a human can gain naturally as long as they don't have a high degree of body fat, is just not going to make a huge difference in longevity. And so if a quality of life trade off is worth it to you, it's going to be a very small effect. Less than 5 years end of life, maybe even less than that. If you use a ton of steroids to get this jacked, then you're going to be doing some time.

A (31:01)

What are you, what are you talking about with, I don't know, take yourself the sort of course you've done, which I would guess is in the upper range of what most people, even non professional bodybuilders would take. What sort of life price do you think people are paying?

B (31:18)

As far as my back of the envelope calculation for myself personally. So there's a big caveat so that I don't embarrass myself posthumously when this is released.

A (31:27)

When you die tomorrow or die in a hundred years time.

B (31:29)

Huge stochastic element about death. Anyone can just die fucking tomorrow. Blood vessel in his brain just blew up.

A (31:35)

Yep.

B (31:35)

Turns out his head was too big. That kind of weird shit aside, on average, I would have expected myself to probably take about 10 years off of the end of.

A (31:44)

Really?

B (31:44)

Yeah. Yeah.

A (31:46)

What is it that the drugs are doing that's speeding up the dying process?

B (31:52)

Yeah, what aren't they doing that speeds up that? They're growing your heart muscle in a way that makes your heart worse. At pumping blood, they are consistently presenting you with cholesterol levels that do nothing good for your arteries. They are elevating your blood pressure. Now, many of those variables I have kiboshed, so I could be lucky and be looking at less than five years. But there's also an element of where carrying that much excess body weight starts to be a stand in for the muscle. When you weigh. I'm five six and I currently weigh 235. You weigh 235 pounds. At five six, you are. I'm like one obesity category away from the highest one all the time on bmi, Correct?

A (32:35)

Yep.

B (32:36)

But like the amount of weight you carry around, the amount more forcefully your heart has to pump blood, et cetera. That still fucking counts. Fatigue 100%. And so to quote Donald Trump on the heartbeat thing, again, he's not 100% wrong. That definitely is a factor. So if you happen to have used lots of steroids, but you kept most of your health values in check and you just had dog shit genetics for being jacked and you never got really big, you're probably looking at less than five years off your lifespan on average. But I've been pretty big for my size for a long time and my parents are both teeny tiny people with very small frames. I also have a very small frame. I just have a lot of muscle on it, relatively speaking, and a lot of weight I have had for years. And that's absolutely a big fucking problem.

A (33:22)

Do you, I think about Chris Bumstead when you talk about that, Someone who's just retired, age 30.

B (33:29)

Okay.

A (33:30)

Six, two, six, three. I think he steps on stage at like 2:22 30, something like that. I'm not too sure.

B (33:36)

Very mysterious what the classic guys actually weigh. But yeah, 220 to 240 or something.

A (33:42)

I think about him trying to get in and get out. He's like Navy Seal Team 6, like kicking a door down, shot someone in the face six times, and then like, you can't get me anymore.

B (33:52)

I don't have any more Olympia trophies.

A (33:54)

Yeah.

B (33:54)

All right.

A (33:55)

I wonder, wonder how much he's been able, obviously genetically elite. I wonder how much he's been able to get in and get out, so to speak.

B (34:05)

The more you can get in and get out, the better. I never used preposterously high doses, mostly because I was like, I don't exactly want to die, like tomorrow, tomorrow. But also because for me, high doses were just not so great. Not by psychology and stuff. Yeah. But for someone like Chris Bumstead, I mean, his degree of muscle mass and body weight that he carries for his height and frame were never like, insane. Do you know who Big Ramy was?

A (34:34)

Yes.

B (34:35)

Like is that's going to put you in the grave a lot sooner because you are carrying one.

A (34:42)

Isn't he like 340 off season?

B (34:44)

Correct. So he literally weighs 100 pounds more than sebum at probably a slightly shorter height. Like that's the kind of thing that's going to affect you. So just to review real tail end.

A (34:54)

Yeah.

B (34:54)

So to review the muscularity part, if you are very under muscled, it's probably not a huge deal for longevity, but being of at least normal musculature for the average person of your sort of height and frame and age is probably your best bet at longevity. Having a little extra muscle can help, can hurt, probably cancels out on average. So if you're jacked as a natty, unless you got super fat to do it like I did when I was natural, no big deal. Yeah. And then as you use drugs, if you use drugs to get jacked, but you really good at controlling your health variables, you never had excessive cholesterol, you never had chronic high blood sugar from mismanagement of insulin and growth hormone, shit like that. If you did a good job managing that and you never got enormous. Enormous. Yeah, like the drugs definitely kill you faster, but not psychotically faster. I mean there are dozens and dozens of golden era pro bodybuilders that are still alive today. They're in their 70s and 80s. Arnold's still kicking it. Like if this was. Remember one of my mentors, Dr. Mike Stone, told us something about steroids when we were on PhD program. He's like, you know, we in the 80s knew that the media was lying because you just went into locker rooms and gyms, you just didn't see any dead bodies because you know, like 80s anti drug hysteria was a totally different level. I want steroid injection, you're criminal, you're in jail, you're addicted to heroin somehow also and you're for sure dead like tomorrow. That absolutely doesn't happen. However, last category is if you get very, very large, stay large for a long time, stay on tons of gear for a long time and don't attend to the various health consequences. At that point you're rolling the dice. And the only way in which the dice are loaded is with your genetics. Because there are juiced up people that have been jacked for forever. They're beet red and they just like don't die. And they live into their 80s. Not the great model for most people because they just have baller genetics. One of my friends and a mentor of mine, Broderick Chavez, he had I believe like a grandfather or an uncle who like worked literally in the coal mines and he had like some kind of chest condition. This is an amazing story. Was the 1960s. And he like went to the doctor and he's like, oh, something in my, like some lungs or shit. And they're like, oh yeah, here are Diana Ball tablets. D Ball taps. Oral steroids, right? So you just got a script for oral steroids and he was on them for like a generation straight. This is an oral drug you're not supposed to take for longer than like six to eight weeks. He was just on it all the time. And I was like, all right, so what was he like? He was like jacked and mean and he lived like well into his like late 60s or 70s and fucking coal mining, right? And Brod said once, he's like, I think he just died because he was just like, God, fuck this. Just don't want to be alive anymore. The thing is, most of us do not have genetics like that. So really important to say, like, if you know someone that's lived a long time in spite of everything, do you want to take that chance on yourself? I wouldn't.

A (37:49)

Anything else to say on muscle mass? Actually, that's a question. There is something else to say. If I want to take a non bodybuilder but longevity approach for training for this. Yes, very rough hewn, what do I need to do?

B (38:04)

Yes, training two to four times per week for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. Mostly compound movements, large muscle mass movements, underhand pull downs and pull ups, rows, close grip bench presses, dips, overhead presses, squats, deadlifts, et cetera, stuff like that. Obviously vanity shit you can do usually with relatively short rest breaks for sets of 10 to 30 repetitions per set, alternating muscles that aren't involved in one movement with those that are involved in the other. So do some close grip benches, take a quick 10 second breather, do some underhand pull downs, quick 10 second breather, and back and forth and back and forth. That should constrain your workouts to a small amount of time. Interestingly enough, if you're working out exclusively to get more life at the end of your life, like you're also consuming a lot of life being in the gym around sweaty, nasty people. So you have to integrate that in.

A (38:57)

Yes, but there is a cost.

B (38:58)

Keeps the duration of you spending time in the gym lower, but also because of the short rest intervals and the higher repetitions, it allows you to have some of the benefits of cardiovascular exercise that are sort of enhancing to both quality of life and how long you live. And so that's probably the best way to do it. It's very minimal effect on your Schedule and it has probably as much as you'll ever need to extend your lifespan or make it higher quality. If you're training in the gym like two hours a day, six days a week and you're like, for longevity, like, it's not, it's not bad for you necessarily, but it's overkill.

A (39:36)

You're overshooting.

B (39:36)

Yeah, definitely.

A (39:37)

Sleep, what about sleep?

B (39:39)

Sleep's a big deal. Sleep is the ultimate stress reducer in everyone's life. Like, that's pretty much the. One of the main purposes of sleep is to kind of reset the whole system. And sleep is a thing where again, that 90, 10, 80, 20 rule comes in handy if you're mostly sleeping enough to feel well rested. Which means if you need like fuck me tonic, I need 8 cans of Monster to keep me awake after 2pm, you're not getting enough sleep. But if a can or two of Nutonic throughout the day is all you need to be your sharpest, then you're good to go. And you're probably getting enough sleep. Seven to nine hours for most people. As good of quality of sleep as you can manage. Keep the room dark, keep the room cool, few distractions, no blue light, a few hours before bed. All the general sleep recommendations that are really awesome. If you just checklist that and you usually get really good sleep a night or two every few weeks, you stay up all night or you get, you know, really busy with work, you only sleep two hours. No big deal. Generally, that's the recommendation. Chronic, low amounts of sleep in a way that has you feeling it is a big deal. Some people just don't need as much sleep as others. Jocko, is that true?

A (40:59)

Supposedly. So the 4:30am thing, which I'm reliably told by some of my friends that are fathers that they beat on an almost nightly basis, easy, I'm never asleep. They've got dad to do. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I mean, there's that genetic mutation that I think the same likelihood of you having that that requires you to only sleep maybe four hours a night and feel okay is the same likelihood as you being hit by lightning twice.

B (41:24)

Holy.

A (41:25)

It's like super, super unlikely. So few. Very, very rare. Anyway, Jocko is one of those people that I've heard. I think basically what most special forces select for are people that can deal with sleep depth very well.

B (41:38)

Very big deal. Because if you, if you need lots of sleep consistently and you also degrade very heavily in your cognitive and physical function, you just won't make it through selection even if you're a straight up killer. That's the kind of guy you want to be like an elite bodyguard for someone like the President who sleeps normal hours. If you have a decent rotation for your bodyguarding shifts, you can be like a Delta Force level shooter. You're just like, look, if I don't get my sleep, I'm, I'm. Good to know when After a few days.

A (42:09)

Tim Kennedy told me this story. Maybe you ask him about it tomorrow if you're chatting to him, ask him about the time he ran out of ammo and he'll know the story. And I think he said he was awake for like, the only time he slept was when he was concussed by an IED going off.

B (42:22)

Holy shit.

A (42:22)

In like 48 or maybe more hours, he's sleep awake for two full days. Runs out of every different platform, every different magazine, every different piece of ammunition that he had. And you just realized that, okay, that's, that's what the job demands of you. Ross Edgley, who I think wanted an intro to you to have a chat at some point. I asked him, you know, he's done all of these crazy. Swam or did a triathlon, holding a tree. Triathlon. He's the first person in history to ever swim around Great Britain. He did six hours on, six hours off for basically seven months. He's just done the longest single distance river swim in history. It's 300 miles.

B (43:03)

Oh my God.

A (43:04)

55 hours without touching land, without sleeping, without anything. 55 hours straight through. And I asked him what his superpower is and it completely makes sense. All of those things together are him allowing to deal with sleep deprivation and to digest food in very strange situations.

B (43:22)

Yeah. So people's digestion will shut down and ultras and stuff.

A (43:25)

So he's able to have piping hot porridge to keep him warm. When he was in the Yukon, swimming in Canada, piping hot porridge, like a internal hot water bottle heating him from the stomach out. But then get back to moving and being horizontal. If you feed me food, I need to be vertical for at least 45 minutes afterward. Just the way my digestive tract is put together.

B (43:45)

Sure.

A (43:46)

I don't like being horizontal.

B (43:47)

Sure.

A (43:48)

So what I'm saying is certain people deal with digestion sleep in very, very, very different ways.

B (43:53)

Yes. So for those people that don't need as much sleep, don't feel like you have to get it, but if you're genuinely not well rested chronically, you're doing some reduction of lifespan and life quality. 100%.

A (44:08)

What about regularity of sleep. I've heard that the regularity can impact longevity as much as the duration.

B (44:14)

Yeah, it's probably a little bit of an exaggeration, though. Maybe not by much. Especially in extreme cases. It can be pretty nasty.

A (44:21)

Shift workers, firefighters, nurses, Correct.

B (44:24)

Sleeping roughly with the day and night cycle and getting to bed and waking up at roughly the same time on most days is probably a good idea for some people that like that. Brian Johnson Robotic Lifestyle Every morning you wake up at the same time, every night you go to bed at the same time. Dope. But for most people, they're going to take a hit on social quality of life factors. And yeah, if you stay up a night or two a week, a little later, and wake up a little later, it's just not going to be a big deal. But regularity is a really, really good thing. It's a thing that should be built into your life anyway, and violating every now and again is okay. Always being in the mix of God knows when I go to sleep and wake probably not ideal for longevity.

A (45:12)

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B (46:27)

So stretching? No reliable mechanism by which it'll let you live longer, but generally a Moderate to high amount of physical activity has a good combination of promoting the longest lifespan and the longest health span. I think that's like a Peter Attia book title. I just said by accident that, you know, the keeping the morbidity low, having the higher quality of life, because so something like just for people's reference framework, 6 to 12,000 steps per day for most people is totally cool. But a better way to put that is probably if you're doing a lot fewer than five or six thousand steps per day all the time and you don't get a lot of physical activity. Otherwise you could be living longer if you did more physical activity in most cases.

A (47:13)

Just to touch on that, I think I'm a good avatar for the gym bro who goes quite hard for an hour and then is sedentary for a lot of the day. I'm doing some exercise. I'm doing probably significant 95th percentile intense exercise, but I'm also not moving quite so much. What would you say? I imagine a lot of the audience fits into this particular bracket.

B (47:41)

I think you're doing really well for yourself. If you wanted a small but meaningful enhancer to quality of life and longevity later down the road, you would break up your periods of physical inactivity at least another one time in the day for a serious bout of some kind of aerobic output, be it walking as easily as that, all the way up to pretty difficult aerobic activity. And so if you lift weights and you do all that, and if you get, you know, roughly 10,000 ish steps a day, very roughly, huge variation for individuals, you're pretty good to go. But there's probably almost certainly a morbidity reduction way of doing it and probably increases your lifespan by a little bit. If you have several sessions a week, two to four sessions of 30 to 60 minutes of intense cardiovascular activity. And for most people, a really easy way to measure that is can you have a conversation with someone while you exercise? I don't mean a few words here and there like, oh, I'm doing good, see you tomorrow. Like, not that I'm talking about like consistent conversation like you and I are having now. You and I can have this conversation on a walk, no problem. If we were in really good shape, we could have it on a jog. But we're not pushing the pace with aerobic exercise if we can talk. So if you can't talk and you're huffing and puffing, doing that at least twice a week for 30 minutes on end and all the way up to four times a week for 60 minutes on end or any combination. Therein is probably that extra cherry on top for longevity and quality of life enhancements. So if you really want to live as long as possible, I would say some pretty intense regular aerobic activity is probably a good thing and unlikely to be a bad thing.

A (49:25)

Is that something that you're thinking about now that you're out of? I just want to be as big and lean as possible, world. Are you or do you see your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as. Is that contributing in that sort of manner?

B (49:38)

My Brazilian Jiu jitsu definitely counts as that. And I do BJJ now roughly five times a week. And at least a few of those sessions have me huffing and puffing, so I'm probably taking good care of that. I am absolutely not the model for longevity and quality of life. I'm in a very perverse, very strange path, Very understood, very chosen path.

A (50:00)

I think you've at least partly ejected yourself out of that or sort of gently come into land.

B (50:07)

Yeah, I start abuse level steroid.

A (50:11)

But yeah, it just makes me think again. I have this idea called the manopause guys at some point between 28 and 45 that have just wanted to get as jacked and lean as possible. Maybe they have or haven't abused PEDs. Maybe they have or haven't ever tried to do different training modalities, realize that they become chronically aware of their own mortality and they think, hey, I shouldn't be out of breath going up those stairs or whatever. I can't touch my toes or my shoulder hurts always.

B (50:37)

Yes.

A (50:39)

Just again, thinking about people pivoting out of that. And it seems to me that if cardio, which for some people is fun, apparently, but for other people, you need to game it like you have, which is choke the guy. Oh, my heart rate's high. I was trying to choke the guy. My heart rate got high. For me, pickleball, as a good example, I'm chasing the ball around a thing.

B (50:59)

Very British. Very British way of engaging.

A (51:02)

That would be. Yeah, maybe not bulls. Bulls or polo. Um, but yeah, just trying to think about some of the easiest ways for the non cardio lovers to get themselves to that place.

B (51:15)

For sure. That's a great, great question, Chris. A great statement because we know from the exercise participation literature in the physical activity participation literature, I actually used to teach a class dedicated pretty much to.

A (51:28)

This that that is encouraging people to participate.

B (51:31)

Behavior, Right.

A (51:32)

Okay.

B (51:33)

Health behavior is a trip. Like we know pretty well what to tell people to do, but then they're like. And you're like, okay, they won't do it. How do we get them to do it? A big part of that is a two factor thing. One is your physical activity should be pretty fun, and it should also hopefully be something that involves you with other people so that the community reinforcement part is in play and that you have the situation where if you just don't feel like it someday, your airsoft team is still meeting up to shoot airsoft pellets at each other, you better be there. And so you just end up falling in. And if you fall out of activity, that nobody gives a shit because you're just on a treadmill at home and you have no friends and no one to talk to, you're maybe kind of done. But if people are like, dude, are you going to make it to Jiu Jitsu again? I heard you healed up. You're like, I do. I should go back. I love Jiu Jitsu. Okay. I'm going back, dude.

A (52:25)

Fucking social pressure, Usefulness. That was the thing that I realized when I started doing CrossFit and any fighting that you know your most training for most people, unless you have a really cool gym training buddy.

B (52:39)

Yeah.

A (52:40)

Is you steeping in your own neuroses as you stare in the mirror listening to metal or dark thoughts? If it's you and.

B (52:46)

Or nothing.

A (52:47)

Yeah. And I realized, oh, this is awesome. I'm, like, outsourcing all of my exercise motivation to this group of people around me. Sure lightens the burden of me having to do this thing that I kind of probably didn't want to do.

B (53:01)

Yes. And I don't want people to misinterpret that as being like, you got to bully your friends into exercise.

A (53:08)

See that?

B (53:09)

That was good. Have you considered playing American football?

A (53:13)

I played cricket for a long time.

B (53:14)

Excellent.

A (53:15)

That's it.

B (53:15)

I don't want people to misconstrue this as us saying, you need to bully your friends into exercise. There's a latent assumed expectation that people have that you're going to come back to aerobics class, that you're going to come back to the pickleball situation, Jiu Jitsu, whatever it is. And that internally to people, without anyone ever saying anything, you have this thought of like, well, all the guys are at Jiu Jitsu. I'm going to go.

A (53:41)

Social pressure is a hell of a drug.

B (53:42)

It's a big deal. And also, to the early point, it should be something that you ideally look forward to. And then it's fun. You don't Want physical activity and nutrition, everything. And longevity pursuit. To start feeling like medicine. To start feeling you just swallow the horse tablet and then you're good to go. People generally don't tend to stick to that sort of thing. And the discomfort of it, the less enjoyment that you have, the less involvement that you have already. Actually X's off another longevity variable we'll discuss later, which is like life involvement. So if you like what you're doing, you're doing it with friends and it's healthy for you. Fuck, man, you got a real good thing going.

A (54:20)

Yeah, I suppose there's a few times where a more nuclear option is required. If you have Ethan Suplee that you got to meet the other day and you have 530 pounds and you're going to get down to 250 or something.

B (54:30)

You got to do the thing.

A (54:31)

Yeah, you eat the horse tablet all day. But yeah, for most people there are easier ways to kind of increase compliance. I love that. I didn't even know that exercise behavior was it.

B (54:41)

Yes. Health behavior in general.

A (54:42)

Health behavior. I didn't even know. But it makes complete sense. What we spoke about last time on the last episode, which I really loved, was my favorite of the ones that we've done so far about stress management, recovery. What is the role of stress in all its forms on longevity, lifespan, morbidity.

B (55:01)

Yeah. Stress has what has been described, I say pretty accurately as a hermetic response or association. Too little is not great. Too much definitely not great. So if you never have challenging times in your life, times where the best of you is required, times when you have to focus, times in which you struggle both mentally and physically, you're unlikely to have as high of a quality of life and by a little bit as high of a duration of life as if you have times of life that require you to get tired and beat up and stressed and overwhelmed. However, because there's a lot of really cool shit that happens when your body's overwhelmed, and a lot of the crap it secretes when it's overwhelmed are actually like molecules they're studying now that have like longevity enhancing effects. However, if you're so stressed all the time or much of the time that you're like lips just above water kind of stressed, you know, like the gasping for air in a pool that's almost your height, then that is overwhelming your body systems. And chronic high psychological stress will put you into the grave early almost every single time. There's another consideration here of how you perceive stress, because you can look at some successful Business people, athletes, whoever, whatever realm they're in, mothers, five children to raise. If it looks like they're in high stress and to the outside observer, but they're engaged in loving every minute of it, they don't really pay the cost, longevity wise. And it's actually a bit of an enhancer. But if you, no matter your stress level, feel totally overwhelmed and like, when will this end? Type of situation, and you hate it, just get me out. You know, like, you see a celebrity getting asked for the 50th time on your new movie, are you excited about it? And they got these glossed over eyes. It's not just the heroin that time that's glossing them over, that kind of constant overwhelm that's not really great for longevity or quality of life. So what you want to do is sufficiently challenge yourself in life and also get the recovery. That balance is tough. I myself have had a real hard time striking that balance in my life. I blame my wife for this entirely because she's Asian. Oh yeah. Well, I'll get to that in a second. I'll get. So I blame her just for many things in my life. Most really even stuff that like happened to me when I was a child. She wasn't even around because why not at this point? But she is a person who is. Her industriousness is like off the charts and she needs to in many cases be doing something or else she goes insane. The problem is I'm also like that. So when we're together, we just work a lot and we get guilt trips in our own heads about not working enough. And so we're really, really bad about taking time off and time to rest. Nowadays we're a little better at it because per the recovery podcast we did, it's a priority for us as professional work athletes. Like athletes rest the funny. Like I can say this in a space where millions of people will see it. My wife sent me. So sorry. Our the joke is super old. Our adopted son, Jared Feather, IFBB pro. He is like on exactly that level of crystal and I's psychosis about work, but probably worse, which he considers a great honor. And it is, but also it comes with a trade off. He's a very amazing pro, classic physique competitor. And you've seen Jared in real life. Like you're going to see Jared. You're like, why do we even train? There's people that listen exist. I don't even belong to the gym. But C Bum, who's in the same division but has won Six Olympias. And Jared's placed like top five type six in some shows, but has never cracked that. I think he will in the future. But it was your podcast. You had C Bum on that. My wife sent me that clip just like yesterday. And she was like, this is funny. And the clip was, what does Seum do on the average day? And he was like, I wake up, I do some cardio, I go back to sleep after breakfast, I wake up, I chill, I eat again, I take some pre workout, I train, I come back, I eat, I might take another nap, I chill, do family stuff, eat, chill, do family stuff, eat, go to sleep. And it was like, if. Crystal was like, lol. And I was like, lol. And I sent it to Jerry because. And he responded with lol, like, because we guilt trip Jared for wanting to be as good of a bodybuilder as he can be. But Jared does all our RP social media bullshit, all the help with like, app stuff and software. In addition to that, has a full roster of coaching clients for whom he travels all the time across America and the world to help compete. And so, like I recently, he had to take a little time away from training to recover. And he was like, I don't know what to do with myself. And I was like, what do you do for fun? He's like, work typically or plan to work. I'm like, anything else? He's like, I've got nothing. And so it's like, Jared, if you don't pull back on all the work, how are you going to be stepping onto the Olympia stage? You don't have the recovery timeline in your plan to do so. And so for all of us folks that are super grind kind of thing, and none of us are like, man grind, set mentality, we never say that because we're just like, isn't that just what everyone does? Isn't that normal? For those of us in that position, pulling back is a good idea. But if you're sitting on the couch, if you're bored, if you're on your fifth doobie and it's kind of life for you all the time, you're never challenged, never stressed. You will live longer if you stress yourself, especially with things that you're passionate about, involved in, and can progress at that kind of stress in combination with an equal amount of rest and recovery is the joie de vivre, as the French are inclined to say. I don't even know if that's a term.

A (60:55)

Middle of the bell curve stuff.

B (60:57)

Yes. Which is tough because so many of us that are prominent for whatever the fuck. In your case, massive success and intellect. In my case, my curious head shape. You know, we just kind of work a lot and we're like, this is great. And here's the thing, if you love it and you're not overwhelmed all the time, you're pretty good.

A (61:13)

If you're compulsed to do it, if.

B (61:15)

You'Re compulsed to do it and you feel both overwhelm and this sneaking suspicion that you're a little bitch and you just need to go harder, you're not going to live as long as other people.

A (61:25)

So funny. So I had a call this morning. I had my first full genomic test done. Everything I can show you it at some point. Unless you clone the.

B (61:34)

So you're out of the closet now.

A (61:35)

Yeah, exactly. It turns out it is genetic. Who knew that? We went through and you talk about SNPs, different snips, we've got this SNP, we've got this snippet, et cetera. And this is correlated with. This allows you to methylate better, this.

B (61:49)

Allows you to sections of DNA, right?

A (61:51)

Yep. C6770 and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And then next to it there's a percentage number how rare it is.

B (61:58)

Oh, cool.

A (61:59)

And presumably this is across population data or whatever they've got to compare it to.

B (62:04)

They have a lot of data now.

A (62:05)

Dude, I was sat listening to my doctor go through this stuff this morning and it was, okay, so you've got two copies of this gene, 6% of the population, you've got two copies of this Gene, 4%, you've got one copy of this Gene, 18%. Two copies of this, every single one of them. Dopamine drive, Ruminative thoughts. Epinephrine. Norrin don't clear. Adrenaline. Well, like all of the things that will just make you very compulsive, very motivated, very industrious, and it's the first time that I've ever looked at the genetic side of behavioral genetics. So you think my parents have these traits. We know that heritability is a thing, therefore you will have these traits too. But at no point did I ever actually think, okay, and what is the mechanism by which this is passed down? Well, it's the genes, it's the actual genes. And given the fact that we've now got genomics to the point where we can start to see a little bit of the code in the matrix or matrix in the code, we can actually look at it. So I was like reading the Language of me, the building blocks.

B (63:09)

Crazy, right?

A (63:09)

That I was made for. Dude, it was so fucking interesting.

B (63:11)

How do you get that done, man?

A (63:12)

I can send you the link. It was like, not that expensive. It happened in a week. You just swab the inside of your cheek from your home, send it off. And I was like, this is. But also the other thing that I realized, I was like, yep. See that? Yep. See that? And what's really funny is where you go, you've got two copies of this. I'm like, yep. In mom and dad, you go, got one copy of this. And you can determine which parent.

B (63:33)

Holy shit.

A (63:34)

Because you go, ah, yeah, that's. That's dad. That's not mom. Or whatever. The other way. I was blown away. I can't stop thinking about it all day today. So, yeah.

B (63:42)

Did you get to the genes that predict what you're going to be like when you're older?

A (63:46)

They'll be in there, or at least they will have captured them.

B (63:49)

But yeah, you can reading that genome, you'll see some really crazy shit.

A (63:52)

Wow. Yeah, it was cool. So, stress. Don't have overwhelming periods.

B (63:58)

Have overwhelming periods, but make sure they're periods, not years at a time or decades at a time.

A (64:03)

Or like always, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or as energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start. Which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take that data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you actionable recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. Function Track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels and your thyroid function, plus nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from your annual physical. Best of all, Dr. Andrew Huberman is the scientific advisor and Dr. Mark Hyman is their chief medical officer. So you can trust that the data and insights you receive are scientifically sound and practical. Getting your blood work analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it is only $500. Function has a 300,000 person waitlist. Boo. But every Monday, they open up a few spots for modern wisdom listeners. Yay. Right now, you can get the exact same panels I get by going to the link in the description below or heading to function. Health.com/modern wisdom. That's function. Health.com/modern Wisdom. You mentioned about engagement. Some sort of passionate engagement thing. A thing you like to do?

B (65:16)

Yes.

A (65:16)

What's that?

B (65:17)

Let me say something super, super quick about the stress thing. You can have days and even weeks of extreme stress and it probably won't reduce your lifespan as long as you can competently afterwards take days or even weeks of much lower stress until you feel like, yeah, I could do, I'm.

A (65:34)

Ready to get back out stress.

B (65:36)

Whereas like, you know, day three of a vacation after a really crazy period of work, you're not even relaxed yet. Something that folks might want to know is that seemingly, and this is just based on my inference, as you get older, the amount of time it takes you to unplug during a vacation, or as you say in the kingdom holiday to us holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, et cetera, it. It goes up. That amount tends to go up and.

A (66:07)

Takes longer to unplug, right? Yep.

B (66:10)

And so I remember I had met a gentleman, it was a very nice man who was a doorman in New York when I was on vacation with my parents. I was like my early 20s, went to the Dominican Republic and we were there for like 10 days, which we thought was a really long time. He was on vacation for three weeks and an all inclusive in the doctor. And I was like, dude, are you serious? He's like, when you get older, as you get older, it takes you longer to unplug. He's like, so the first week I'm unplugging, the second and third week I'm relaxing. And I was like, that's weird.

A (66:40)

I need a one week warm up.

B (66:42)

To my holiday, dude, seriously. Because it's just not true to say that you're relaxed immediately after any stressful activity. It takes some time. Imagine someone finishing a 15 RM on the squat and as soon as they rack it, you're like, all right, good to go. Let's get in the car and drive off. You're like, hold on a second. My sweat hasn't even started coming out of me yet. Like, there's a process. And so if you're. As you're getting older, it's important to note that what used to be enough duration at a time of relaxation for you may not be. And that it's good to take a little bit more time to be a little bit extra recovered. The best way to know if it's time to start grinding again, you start getting itchy for the shit again. Not compulsively like you want it again. You want some stress. You feel like a lazy asshole. And you're way beyond relaxed if you haven't even gotten relaxed yet you need more vacation.

A (67:32)

Well, this is why it's so important to work out whether you're a. Like a type A person with a type B problem or a type B person with a type A problem.

B (67:39)

Sure.

A (67:39)

Right. Then again, the patient determines the dose of what is required. It's like, yeah, I've been thinking about this all the time, the just work harder, bro advice thing. It's been in my head pretty much since our last podcast. White knuckling, creativity and how you can't do that. The fact that you don't just get to switch on or switch off the industriousness drive. Yeah, yeah. Motivation. It's super interesting. I think it's a really important thing. Also, do you really want to look back and just see that all you did was work like an absolute motherfucker the whole time?

B (68:15)

It would be the honor of my life to die at my job.

A (68:18)

Yes.

B (68:18)

But that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

A (68:20)

Yeah.

B (68:20)

Some people, they look back. You're totally right. All facetiousness aside, for me, it would be an honor to die at work and having been known as a very hard worker. But for most people, they're like, man, there's all this life to live. I remember I was in an English class in college. Sorry. In uni. And I. There was like, a short story we read about a guy who was, like, always super smart and got super straight A's. And he, like, had an opportunity to go. It was in the late 60s. He had an opportunity to get on a bus and go to, like, Washington, D.C. to protest something, but he didn't because he had exams coming up and he gave, like, a speech to a college graduating class when he was like, 60 or something, super successful career. And he was like, oh, you know, my. My one regret was that I didn't get on that bus. And the only thing I thought at the time was like, yeah, but you got these millions from being a career man, didn't you, motherfucker? And you did that passing some exams, didn't you?

A (69:16)

Ye.

B (69:17)

So. But for whatever it is, as far as how you want to live your life, which transitions into that next topic of enjoyment.

A (69:23)

Yep.

B (69:23)

Make sure you're taking breaks. Don't be stingy with the breaks. But if it's all breaks all the time, put yourself through some difficult shit. It's going to help you.

A (69:32)

Okay. Passionate engagement.

B (69:34)

Passionate engagement. I'm not an expert in this subfield of longevity by a long shot, so you can probably have someone on the podcast at some point, which I would consider fascinating. I would at least watch the episode. You get one view from me. Hey, I do run a robot farm in China. That will give you 100 million more views, but you have to pay for that sort of thing.

A (69:51)

Yes.

B (69:52)

So at least we have this robust correlational data that shows that people who are passionately engaged in one or multiple sequential or overlapping lifetime pursuits seem to outlive most other people we know. It's correlated. I'm aware of no causative mechanism through which this occurs. It strains my brain to imagine one. And maybe the causation data is already around. I'm just not up to date on the stuff. So please ask ChatGPT about this. Ask ChatGPT or Claude or whoever about is there mechanistic presupposition or good evidence of how passionately engaging with anything in your life can increase your longevity and quality of life? That data may exist, but at the very least we know the correlations are pretty fucking airtight. And there's just so many people that have lived much longer than you would expect because they were passionately engaged and so many examples of people that were like, and they don't live a long time. So at least as a check the box just in case sort of thing.

A (71:10)

Yep.

B (71:10)

It's probably worthwhile to have in your mind if you want to live the longest, not to have this perspective. And this goes back a little bit to the stress discussion of like, if I'm going to make it really far, I got to chill all the time and never involve myself too passionately in anything because passion gets the heart rate going and that's bad. On the other hand, you want to consider it as a balance, but also it's at least worth a shot to get into that passionately engaging with something. What do I mean by that? Let's say you are just huge on World of Warcraft. Think about it day and night. You play it all the time. You have friends that play it. The game evolves all the time. Even something like that is statistically as a correlation likely to keep you alive for longer than if you have nothing about your life that really gets you going in the morning. Nothing you're building. Another thing is creating something. People who create inventors statistically outlive like almost everyone. It's really kind of strange. Composers outlive almost everyone because it they have a mission and it keeps them seemingly so engaged that it may have.

A (72:19)

Some benefits of game in some ways.

B (72:22)

Some. Maybe. This is a maybe. But here's the thing on the longevity side It's a maybe on the quality of life side, it's 100% certainty. Which is why it also categorically belongs in this discussion. Because even though the longevity stuff, the lifespan is correlated, maybe it's causative. The causation element of quality of life is 100% a thing. Your quality of life is measured in a bunch of different ways, but one of them is like, do you, are you really involved in what you're doing? Do you really like what you're doing? Like, imagine you had to describe, you know, you meet someone on a plane sitting next to them and someone's like, what do you do? And you're like, oh, like I do podcasts and stuff. And they're like, do you love it? And you're like, ah, it's all right, it's a, it's a living. Like you are clearly being facetious. Because if I may guess, Chris, this is a deep involvement for you, having conversations with mostly intelligent people, occasionally sprinkling me in. This is a thing you do and a thing you really give a shit about that is probably going to be good for your quality of life, simply because it's even just a sub definition of the quality of your Life. You're in 100% on something for hours a day. It's a really huge benefit in the statistical literature that we see and so at least worth a mention on two grounds of might causatively enhance your lifespan, but almost certainly will make your quality of life much higher.

A (73:47)

Is this the effect where we see people who retire from their job at a particular age and then there seems to be this sort of drop off towards death? People that retire earlier, people that retire.

B (73:59)

Later might be part of that. The other part, as a big proponent of science, physically big, not smart, just big. I want to say that there's almost certainly a big feature of that dynamic, it's a true dynamic is reverse causation or causation of an underlying variable. If you just don't have it anymore at work because you're fucking dying, you quit work and then you die.

A (74:24)

Understood.

B (74:25)

But, but there may very well be this situation where even if you still got it, if you quit work, your life drains of meaning and then yeah.

A (74:36)

It'S probably multifactorial as well, providing you with community, providing you with structure. Every single day you're maybe moving, maybe you're on your feet with some sort of job, you're getting a steps in it. Like it's, you know, all of these things. Work will set you free. Ah, shouldn't say that to you.

B (74:50)

Huge. You know, I quoted my dad once on the Internet who said, work will set you free. And I had a friend reach out and be like, you do know that was like a sign above, like Auschwitz or Birkenau or something. And I was like, it's still right, though. And like, you know, my dad is as Ashkenazi as it gets, so tell him that shit.

A (75:09)

Okay. Other people, I've heard that.

B (75:11)

All of the people, I like them.

A (75:12)

Chris, I'm sorry.

B (75:13)

They smell. They look at me funny. I think they look funny. What else is there to say?

A (75:18)

That's true. But apparently you need them to live longer.

B (75:21)

Yes, through vampiric consumption of their body fluids. Ideally you get them in infancy, but infants are so hard to find nowadays.

A (75:29)

Birthright decline will do that to you.

B (75:31)

That's right. That's the real tragedy of birth rate decline. No more suck the spinal fluid out of. What is Hollywood even doing to stay young and healthy? A very, very similar statistical picture here as to the involvement stuff. Passionate involvement with something you like is seen in this situation with community and social relations. Family, friends, community involvement are very tightly correlated with your longevity. And because most people like a certain amount of them, they are in that sub definition of quality of life. So we could just say that is really great. It's a big deal. And in many cases people will get all of the socialization they want and no more. Like, I'm in Austin right now doing a bunch of podcasts. If you text me to hang out and I'm interested in hanging out, I'll be like, where? When? If I'm not interested, I'll make up some bullshit excuse like, hey, I'm super busy catching up on something anyway, see ya. I'm good to manage my own shit, so that's totally cool. Most people are doing a fine job at that. However, there are many people that have two things going for them. One is they're not extroverted in a way that outreaches to get other people to hang out with them. And two, they simply are not aware of at least the correlational relationship between that and quality of life and longevity. And so some people are totally fine being hermits, but simple some people are also totally fine being hermits, but when they actually engage in social interaction, when it's foisted upon them, they have like a breath of fresh air go through them. And those people specifically need to be keen on making sure that they do at least the bare minimum to continue to involve themselves with other people. Now, typically in many cases, it's just not a problem. Middle school, too many fucking people. High school, same people. College, uni. A lot of people. You can be ostracized in those situations. You can be a loner, but a lot of times that's either by choice or by you just don't like those people. As you get older, many people report that their ability to form new friendships or sustain older ones, it falls off this set some kind of like doom and gloom scenario or get old, everyone leaves you and dies. That can happen. But there are many, many, many ways in which you can get yourself involved. There are community centers, there are various games and sports and involvements and everything. At any age it's possible for you to reach out, connect with people and regularly schedule hangouts. Be it with family and friends, be it with other people, be it in a volunteering capacity. You don't have to have like deep close ties. Even if you just interact with other humans, like at a soup kitchen for the love of God, several times a week. That seems statistically better than just completely walling yourself off. If you're a kind of person that's inclined for some sociality. So make the effort is what I'm saying.

A (78:36)

We'll get back to talking to Dr. Mike in one minute. But first I need to tell you about Element. For the last three years I have started my morning every single day with Element. It is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. Each grab and go stick contains a science backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium. With no coloring, no junk or any other bs, you might not be underslept, you might not need more caffeine, you might just be dehydrated. And proper hydration is not just about having sufficient fluids in your body. It's having enough electrolytes to allow your body to use that water. Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. If you don't like it for any reason, they'll give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you love it right now. You can try it completely risk free and get a free sample pack of all eight flavors by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com modernwisdom that's drinklmnt.com/modern wisdom. What do you make of Dr. Robert Waldinger's stuff, the Harvard Longitudinal Life Study. So he came on the show and he had found that the single biggest variable in how long people lived was the number of close connections that they have. It was more than smoking, it was more than going to the gym. It was the single biggest determinant. Why would you posit that that might be.

B (80:06)

I wonder if that factors out age. I haven't seen the actual data. If it doesn't factor out age, it's probably partially correct as causative mechanism, but probably only partially. Because when you're 88, most of your friends are dead and you outlived all of them and the reason you die soon isn't because they died. It's partially that, but also mostly because you're 88. Yeah, it's just. Clock's ticking. So, um, it. Like I said, the correlational stuff is a big deal. There are other ways in which it might not be causation driven. If you are a curmudgeonly piece of shit and you're bad to yourself in your own head and you're bad to other people, you just won't have a lot of people around you. If you are very isolated, you're not economically very productive, you're not very involved in things, Most of those things give you more friends, having more money, having more social connections, having hobbies in common with people, they all independently likely correlate or drive longevity. Because when you have more money, you can just afford better healthcare in many cases. And also if you have a lot of money, you're probably high in trait conscientiousness. And so you probably care about your health and also eat well and exercise and all that. Those people just tend to have more social connections than otherwise. But there's. There may very well be an independent causative part of community. I'll say another thing. One of the hypotheses that I like not saying it's true, I just. It feels like a nice thing that makes sense to me is that a certain given level of social interaction is something that the human individual organism has been primed to see as a base level. Because if you look at our ancestral history, like lone humans just die real soon. I'm a fucking lone wolf, bro. All right. Here's a spear. Oh, just kidding. You're the females of the tribe actually picked the plant that wraps the head of the spear. So you don't have a spear anymore. You have a fucking stick and there's a buffalo. It's just one of you and that thing weighs 1600 pounds and it's interested in getting upset at you if you try to kill it. You're not doing shit by yourself. In all of our ancestral history, the loner shit is just like, I love that fucking lone samurai bullshit. Like vibes wise it's awesome. Like I hate when psychotic leftists are like you. No one ever does anything by themselves. Like shut up, you just want socialism. Get out of my face. But in the real world you just draw on your own samurai sword by yourself. That's just not how it works. And so humans are pre built, primed for living in groups. And you're just unlikely to as a human have an evolutionary history behind you, which makes the act of being alone for a long time absolutely normal. Like fuck beneficial. Totally right. But it's just so abnormal that if you expose humans to one closet, no sound, no light, a little bit of food and water just to keep going, and a hole in the floor to poop and pee, they're also gonna die real soon because people need all those variables just cause they're normal. And so social interaction pretty high level as normal. Remember, all of us evolved in very communal circumstances where you walk outside of your hut, which might have your wife and your three children in it, but the rest of the village is always, every night, every day together, everything's together. We're seeing increasingly more as societies get wealthier and older, an atomization of individuals. Like the average Japanese 60 year old has nobody. But here's the thing, how the hell are they alive? They don't need to kill bison with spears anymore. They have supermarkets, they have food delivery, they have online work so you can generate value at home, consume media at home, you just never need to leave. Now watching television shows and listening to music almost certainly will increase your longevity and quality of life. If you just have no choice of anything else but being around real people. I don't think we have to suspect that it's some kind of magic fairy dust effect where like it's the socialization that's good for you. It's the fact that when you don't have lots of socialization, it's such an unusual thing to your human systems, your brain, that you're like this low key subconsciously something is off and then your ability to generate passion, to have meaning, to have purpose, is largely gone because you just weren't built for the shit.

A (84:24)

Yeah, passionate engagement will go up. Maybe you've got people around you, so if you get too fat they're going to say, hey Mike, you're getting a little bit fat.

B (84:30)

Totally.

A (84:30)

You aren't waking up at the right time. So they're this sort of correction mechanism for a lot of other shit.

B (84:35)

Having grandchildren and children around for whom you maybe take care of. Maybe you imbue them with wisdom. That's a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose. You're living for more than just yourself.

A (84:44)

Do parents live longer? Do you know?

B (84:45)

I have no idea. Almost certainly they do, but I wouldn't. I don't have the data in front of me to say that.

A (84:52)

Okay, that's the things that do impact longevity. What are the biggest myths in the world of longevity in your opinion?

B (85:00)

Again, as in all of our myths discussions, this has to be highly curtailed for the purposes of time. There are a few things that come to mind and maybe you can remind me of a few. One is that in 2024, October, am I allowed to say when this was filmed?

A (85:15)

Sure.

B (85:16)

That, fuck, we don't have any supplements that you can take that are like, strong main effect for enhancing longevity and have been approved or that main effect has been illustrated in a wide variety of studies done by different laboratories around the world and we have a deep understanding of the causal mechanism behind that. I take NMN nicotinamide mononucleotide and I was. My clip appeared in some other longevity podcast where I went on a longevity rant on one of my other videos and this longevity expert dude who seemed like a sharp guy knew what he's talking about. He kind of clowned me on the NMN thing. So I took another look through the literature and turns out actually there is some very decent data for NMN having some longevity effects and actual mechanistic effects as well. But the total number of studies on the breadth of populations it's been studied on is just not enough for me to go singing its praises all the fucking time. Which is why I've mentioned it now twice ever in public.

A (86:16)

Pulled up for it both times.

B (86:17)

Yes. And. And so it's just something I take as a hedging mechanism of like maybe something I just swallow it. Right. But I swallow a lot of other things. Most. In any case, I won't get into it, so shut up again. So if there were these pills I could take that reliably increased longevity, I would love that. I would love if there were supplements like that. There's Resveratrol, there's a few other candidates, but none of them have that. Like, dude, is this really worth my money? For sure. Like, if someone's eating only 80 grams of protein per day. And they're like, I can't eat any more real food. Should I take supplements? You're like, yes. Like, will it help with muscle mass? Yes. Like, how many studies? Hundreds. On everyone. There's nothing like that for longevity supplements. So in 2024, if someone's selling you longevity supplements, they could be onto something and there could be some valuable stuff people have in the formulations that actually works, but nothing that we can be ultra super sure about. And really quick, no small number of shady fucking supplement companies will tell you, you got to take this, it's going to make you live longer. And to every single one of them are, if their claims are extreme, they're bullshitting you.

A (87:32)

What about metformin?

B (87:34)

Metformin is not a supplement. It's a drug you have to have a prescription for. However, Metformin is a life extension drug. Here's the thing, it's a very small effect. The only way we really know metformin extends lifespan is because so many people take it for diabetic outcomes that from that mechanism alone we have just like ungodly numbers of the N size is huge. So with a huge sample size in a study, you can zone into real tiny effects and see them. So if you take metformin versus not, you're going to probably live a little longer with metformin than not. But it's not this thing that's going to take like five or 10 years and slap it onto your life. That's what I'm really excited about for the future of medicine. What I'm here to say is in mid to late 2024, it's just not here yet. And metformin, it's not something you just should go out and take. It should be a conversation with your health provider. Not everyone reacts very well to metformin. And again, the longevity benefits are quite small. There's other tons of side effects you can have with it. There's some really good main effects. Tons of people are on it for diabetic control, but it's not some kind of anti aging wonder drug. I will say there's literature coming up a little bit now that some of the mechanistic effects that you see with metformin are even higher with semaglutide and a lot of the new anorectic drugs, the fat loss drugs. So when people say like, well, I'm going to take this drug, but when I get off of it, want to regain the weight, like, yeah, probably. And they're like, well, so I just Got to be on it forever. Like, uh huh. And they're like, but isn't that bad for me? Like, no, it actually might be better for you to be on these drugs than not on these drugs. In like 7 out of 10.

A (88:59)

Is that a direct mechanism from the semaglutide or is it that it's stopping you from your weed addiction and your food addiction and your fucking porn addiction?

B (89:06)

Low at there's at least one mechanism offhand I can talk about it. Low. Lowers your blood sugar, your chronic area under the curve of blood sugar substantially. And that itself has like five different ways in which it doesn't toxify your organs over time. There's definitely a thing. So there are some things like metformin semaglutide that are in the conversation for like, oh, neat. They have little, little longevity boosting effects. But there's just unfortunately no drug or supplement currently yet made that's like, this is the thing you need to take for longevity. And here's the thing, like, there are people that are, dare I say, anti capitalist, anti fitness industry, anti supplement industry that will say the same things as I'm saying and it'll be true. I'm the opposite of all of those things. Insanely supplement optimist, capitalist supplement optimist, et cetera. I just happen to think, like, I don't. First of all, I don't want to lie to people. I also don't sell supplements, so I wouldn't make any money off that. Now if I have to lie to people to make money. Holy shit. Welcome. But it's just one of those things I really wish was true, but it's just not true yet. Yet. And that doesn't mean we're not several years away from massive, massive changes in how drugs and other things can affect longevity.

A (90:14)

One of the other most common pathways, intermittent fasting. We spoke about calorie restriction earlier on, but intermittent fasting is a very specific type of that. With. What's that thing that it does?

B (90:27)

Autophagy.

A (90:28)

Autophagy. Autophagy.

B (90:30)

Autophagy. There's another way to say that that's slightly a slur. So.

A (90:35)

Which we both are.

B (90:36)

Yes.

A (90:37)

I wake up in the morning and the switch has been flipped.

B (90:40)

Always. My switch broke off through violent homosexual intercourse. It was great time.

A (90:51)

Got a world record on Grindr.

B (90:54)

Yes.

A (90:55)

Fasting.

B (90:56)

Fasting is awesome for a bunch of different reasons. Sometimes it fits people's lives better. Sometimes it lets them control hunger better. If you get enough protein, it's probably not going to lead you to Become emaciated or whatever. It's not the optimal way to get jacked, but it's not that far off. However, fasting had this thing a few years back where people were like, this is the thing for longevity. But it turned out that comparing models of fasting versus not fasting, if you keep the caloric restriction as the variable that's at play, there's no way to statistically differentiate fasting versus not fasting. Manno Henselman's has some really good insight on this from a compilation of studies. And so it's not really the fasting that's probably keeping you alive longer. It's the fact that you're eating less food overall and the fact that you are now at a lower body weight lifetime overall.

A (91:43)

So is there no truth to autophagy?

B (91:46)

Autophagy happens all the time. Autophagy itself can occur in the presence of food or not the presence of food. And if your caloric input throughout the day is the same, the amount of recycling of your own nutrients that has to occur is also the same. So autophagy is a thing that you can see very big spikes of and very big declivities of if you fast and then feed. But if you just eat regularly throughout the day, you get these little spikes and the area under curve ends up being like very, at least very similar, right? And so if you want to fast, if you suspect that your reading of literature shows that it actually has slight longevity benefits, I'm absolutely not going to stop anyone. I think maybe that's the case just at a, just a cold reading of the literature. I'm not inclined to believe it.

A (92:31)

Fasting, it's the Holy Grail elixir, right?

B (92:34)

Like, because some people, like, they're on the longevity kick. They're like, so you fast, right? You're like, no, they're like, you're just a. Idiot. Like, nah, that ain't it.

A (92:42)

What about blue zones?

B (92:47)

I don't like the color blue. I like red zones.

A (92:50)

You're wearing blue.

B (92:51)

I hate shirts.

A (92:52)

Awful.

B (92:52)

GBRs. Terrible. Is this blue to you? I don't know what it is to me.

A (92:57)

Maybe I'm colorful, sort of blue, blue, green, teal, Teal. I love teal. I love teal.

B (93:03)

Bennett, why are various of your staff members laughing at that regularly when we do these shoots?

A (93:10)

What it looks like to you, the untrained, unwashed masses, is just that there's light coming up from places, right? There's light, but everybody doesn't know there's a fake sun outside. And there's fake light underneath all of this.

B (93:24)

It's not even actual photons.

A (93:26)

It's simulated photons. Fake light.

B (93:28)

Yeah.

A (93:29)

And you can make these tubes any color that you want. I like them to be teal. He said that we're not allowed them. So I'm being abused.

B (93:37)

People who know about video things say teal sucks.

A (93:40)

Yeah, they do. But you're here in your shirt.

B (93:42)

Yes. Sorry.

A (93:43)

Blue zones. Blue zones.

B (93:44)

Also, the fans are kind of bluish.

A (93:45)

They are. All of these Japanese people keep on living forever.

B (93:49)

Yeah. Why? Yeah. So people in the Blue zones do a lot of things right. They tend to not overeat to the extent of being grotesquely over fat. They tend to have a high degree of community involvement and personal involvement. But. And that stuff we can take away from them. What we categorically cannot take away from them is the ultra specifics of their diets. Because here's how it works in fantasy Internet land. You pick a Blue zone culture whose diet you seem to like and you go, it's the olive oil with the Italians or it's the fish and rice with the Japanese or whatever the hell. That's probably not it. So the big myth here with Blue Zones is there are ultra specific foods and diets that you eat. They're gonna just really radically enhance your longevity. And ultra specific other foods and diet types that you eat that are just gonna croak you out real fast. That's just not it. The other thing about Blue Zones is tons of. The blue Zone effect is just straight up genetic in nature.

A (94:53)

So people that live long live in areas where their children live long.

B (94:57)

Strange. And they're genetically related to those said children. Also strange. And geographically in proximity. The. I gotta be careful. I say this. Within any two compared species, there are hundreds of species. And oftentimes even within a given species that has subspecies. You can categorize most animals on a spectrum of what's called a life history analysis. It's on the one hand called an R. Selected group are. Selected animals don't have long lifespans relatively. And they produce. They're very fecund. So they produce a lot of offspring per individual. The offspring typically don't mostly survive. A few of them will. Not very long lives, not very fun lives in many cases. And like spiders. Spider mommy has. You know, I. If it. It seems to be that that gigantic spider just offset is in roughly the same space it was when we first looked at it an hour ago.

A (95:59)

It's not a prop. I promise. It's not.

B (96:00)

It's Not a prop. Here's. Here's my problem. On the one hand, if it had moved, the supposition that can move infects my brain with the idea that it's going to move up my leg here in a bit and you're going to hear me scream and break the table and jump out of the barn. But also, here's the problem. The supposition that it hasn't moved at all is equally disturbing because then it's plotting, waiting. It's Chris. It's waiting for me. They say that insects don't have the neural network size and depth to experience emotions like we do. But I can tell you that spider sure looks like it's experiencing hate.

A (96:31)

Malice. Yes. Michael Malice. Michael Malice. Blue zones are so are selected. Yep.

B (96:39)

Very many offspring. Not long lifespans. Few offspring survive. Spiders. On the other end you have whales very K selected, which means that they have very long lifespans. Individually. Each whale is one hell of a survival machine. It tends not to die super often. They don't have a ton of offspring, so that's just how they live their lives. You can categorize all human subpopulations, which we used to call races, but that was racist or something on average into more trending towards are selected or more trending towards case select.

A (97:12)

No way.

B (97:13)

That is the last thing I'll say in depth about this specific topic because anything I say further will get me banned.

A (97:19)

Yep.

B (97:20)

And with all the best intentions. I love every human race for all of its various different qualities, but there is a lot of politically incorrect shit that is both true and really kind of in some sense, like, damn, that's fucked up kind of shit that you can take away from this. There are books you can read. But another thing, there's tons of really great shit you can take away from it. Tons of explanatory power. But one of the things is almost every single, every single blue zone group, as far as I know, is just coming from a heavy like unknown K selected population. Wow. Just this is live a long time. You throw Japanese people anywhere, they live a long time. This is what they do. And so we have to be careful not to conflate genetics. Let me bring up a different example, slightly different example. There's a gentleman, I forgot what this guy's name was a while back. He was like recommending really ancestral diets and kind of a lot of raw foods. And he was saying they have an effect on your dentition and how your teeth are. Teeth health, jaw shape. And he was citing a lot of like African subpopulations that they have such healthy teeth and it's because of what they eat. And I'm like, black people just have better teeth than everyone. Like, he just went to Nigerians or whoever have perfect teeth to begin with. And he was like, see, it's their diet. Like, no, it's because they're Nigerian. Their diet could play a role. But I was just like, the total absence of a discussion of genetic variation in this was just like disheartening to say the least. And so when we talk about blue zones, et cetera, if we forget the fact that like, yeah, like Japanese people, etc. Just outlive everyone, we're. If you factor out the genetics, the blue zone shit starts to shrink down to like, okay, it's mostly just community involvement, generally healthy eating, etc. Etc. Socialization. When you factor those things out, the blue zones, if you're looking at like, oh, kale, we have to eat kale or seaweed. That's the thing, you're doing the shit all wrong.

A (99:06)

You mentioned it earlier on what you're looking forward to from a future of longevity standpoint. I imagine some of it's probably got to do with AI. Some of it's probably got to do with computers and uploading and all the rest of it. Yes. Human brain interface thing.

B (99:23)

Yes.

A (99:24)

And I imagine that some of it may be able to do with actually reversing aging as well. Drugs, I imagine AI also makes the drugs that are going to reverse the aging.

B (99:32)

Yes.

A (99:33)

What are the most promising areas when it comes to the future of aging research?

B (99:38)

Yeah.

A (99:39)

Et cetera.

B (99:39)

Yeah, I'll probably do this. I'll try to do this. In order of how it's likely to appear in the future, I'll probably get all this wrong, so you can just take it for what it is. AI powered drug discovery began in earnest, full bore earlier this year. The ability of AI to discover new effective drugs to address various disease conditions is for most people who have thought about it a little bit as yet, unfathomable. It's a quality leap. It's nonsense. If you went back to 1985 in a time machine. Forget that. The time machine is also impressive in this case. And you gave someone an iPhone fully charged, and somehow the iPhone worked through the time machine to access the modern Internet, it would be, to the very best engineers, fucking baffling, damn near magic. But now we take it totally for granted. And kids like jump in the pool with their iPhone and they're like, ah, crap, it fried out. I'll just get another one. Who cares? So what I'm about to say all these crazy things. Remember that most humans do linear extrapolation. But the arc of all of history, all of history, including prehistory and biology and physics and chemistry. Chemistry, then physics is exponential in nature. This is not up for debate. It's just. It just is every single human or not human, biological or geological event that you plot on a chart, you need to plot on a log chart. So it gets rid of the exponent, and that's still an exponent. So this is a real thing. And so when we people are like, what is 2035 going to be like? They mostly do a linear approximation extrapolation, but it's also a linear extrapolation with a very low slope. Because most people have an inborn pessimistic bias, which makes sense in the Paleolithic era, in which we evolved because shit sucked. And you expected shit to suck. Like, yeah, your uncle probably got gored by a bison. Every other day, shit was off. So things are going to get much better very quickly and then even faster. Short of machines killing all of us or World War 3, crazy shit's going to happen. Here's roughly how I see the most likely timeline. Again, huge. Just eat the whole salt shaker for this shit. Fuck. A grain of salt, all the salt. But it's not good for longevity. So don't do. As long as your blood pressure is fine, you're good to go. Okay, so probably one of the first things we're going to see is kiboshing entire categories of disease with insanely powerful drugs. We're going to see in the late 2000s, early 2000s. Like, heart disease, gone, cancer gone, Alzheimer's gone. Just gone. Like, don't take my word for it. We already have a category of viral and bacterial diseases that we've combust. Who the fuck has, you know, anyone? Polio, Like, a human. People just don't get polio anymore. Who dies of, like, rickets and like that? Like, it's just. We laugh at it now, but it used to just kill everyone. Can you imagine the 1600s? You're like, dude, scurvy, Not a thing in the future. They're like, you're kidding. Like, no, like, this guy's drinking the Kool Aid. There's no way. Like, also, Kool AIDS in the future. Like, what's Kool Aid? You're like, it's. It's great. It's. It's okay. It's red and it's sweet and it's based on some berry, I'm not sure. So when you combine entire categories of disease like that, you just take morbidity down like crazy. Because living with like chronic cancer or some shit or chronic heart disease condition, it's a different kind of living than living truly health. And in addition to that, it's going to bump up longevity a ton. And like nowadays the average person lives into their late 70s. That might still be true in about eight years or so, but the distribution is going to close substantially. And so the average person might live into their mid-80s, not a ton higher, but like way fewer people are dying. The bottom tail just goes right up. Yep. So that's probably going to be a big thing, probably a little bit later, maybe sooner. Who knows? We're going to get some traction on reverse aging. David Sinclair has spoken about this at length. He was real early to the reverse aging thing. And the way it works in social media and news media is when you have one rat study that does cool shit, people are like, this is it, When's it coming? And it's like, we need some more time to get this going. But there's nothing about aging really that precludes re altering the expression of your own DNA to just do better cleanup and reverse your age as you present biologically, chronologically, no time machine yet. Biologically, it's a tractable problem. There's nothing theoretically about it. That's like, that's just impossible because again, it seems like like the, the genie from Aladdin wouldn't even do, you know, like the. How do you reverse aging? It turns out that your body mostly ages because the ancestral evolutionary pressures to stay alive and healthy and well, for a long time, we were just too r selected for like, you're probably going to die by the time you're 27. So if we put one half of your metabolic pathways into doing constant DNA cleanup, you just suck at everything else and then you die when you're 18. The world is not sufficiently stable for you and there's not enough providence in the world to keep you upright so that you can fuel your body for shit like that. However, if we get age reversal right, both through therapeutics and genetic engineering, we can have a situation where your body's actually like, oh, I'm just never going to like get lazy about these anti aging effects. And you essentially just continue to live in a roughly 22 year old's body. They've already done this in cell cultures. They've already done it in a few small animal models. It is Not a huge leap to do it in grand scale in humans at large with AI power type of shit that 10 years from now might be a legit thing. I did a whole on my other philosophy channel. I've done a whole thing about the implications, philosophically, conceptually, socially of what reverse aging is going to be like. But Chris, can you imagine taking 100 million elderly Americans in 2037, and three months later, they all present as age 22. Physically 22 years old. Cognitively sharp like 22, energy like 22, titties up like 22. What happens to your dick and balls? Something like 22, bro. Nightclub scene. You gotta go back to your old job. Like, holy shit, gold rush. So all this other stuff could very well be on the horizon. There's a chance it just never works out. I would assign. There's a low probability of that. So aging reversal is a big deal. They talk about this thing you brought up earlier, I think off camera, longevity, escape velocity. When true robust aging reversal comes in, that's the spaceship leaving the fucking atmosphere. Because short of getting hit by a bus or getting eaten by a crocodile, you might just never die because you're biologically just always 22.

A (106:20)

So the most important thing for everybody now to live longer is to live longer.

B (106:24)

Okay, so that's a huge statement. It sounds like tautology, but it really is a thing. If you can just make it to the mid-2030s, there is a high probability that the great gentle, powerful arms of biotech are going to lift you the rest of the way. Just go 2035. That's where you need to reach to, right? You know, when the hero grabs the heroine's hand and lifts her in the helicopter, that type of shit. So because people are often like, okay, I can have a lot of fun smoking cigarettes, eating hamburgers, smoking hamburger flavored cigarettes, a cigarette shaped like a hamburger, every permutation thereof. But like, I don't want to be 88 in a nursing home. Who gives a shit? Up until quite recently, that was like a valid trade off. You could make like, I'm not going to live forever. I want to fucking rock out dope. And for spirit, energy wise, I think that's great. However, it's getting to be pretty clear that into the mid and late2030s, the power of biotech is going to be so fucking absurd. You probably want to make it to see that because you might just be getting a whole different level of ability to live longer at a healthy presentation. So we got that. The next thing after that Somewhere in the mix is genetic engineering. There are genes in your body that make proteins that make you age slower or faster. We can just select for the genes that make you age slower or reverse aging or whatever else you want or make you just not susceptible to entire categories of disease. Like, we already know the genetic variants that basically, like, you'll just never get Alzheimer's. And we know genetic variants that you're probably going to get Alzheimer's probably really soon if we just rewire your DNA as an adult human, you take some pills or you take a shot and over the next several weeks feel kind of look a little different. We can do that. The big problem with that is one is a vector problem. How do you introduce the thing that. But. But CRISPR makes these enormous leaps that you almost never hear about in the news because. Bullshit nerd talk. But now they have a pretty good control of the bacterial genome where they can trade in and out.

A (108:28)

Switch it on, switch it off.

B (108:29)

Yeah. And it's just a few orders of magnitude more complex. But the way AI and biotech go is they just leap orders of magnitude every two years or so. And so we might have. In the2030s, some. I should have a book called in the2030s. And it's just blank. It's like whatever the fuck you want. Magical bullshit's coming and a picture of my ugly face. But there's a situation where. So there's one. There's a vector problem. Probably not a big problem, because it turns out we can vector almost anything into your cells at this point, and we're going to get better at that. The other problem is a combinatorial problem. I tweak this gene, I tweak that gene. This one makes you live longer, this one makes you live extra long. But their proteins interact in high concentrations to poison you, and you die at age 2. How do we even predict that? Well, AI can start to predict a lot of stuff and will eventually be able to predict more or less all the major functions of metabolism of the human body. And because if you simulate like the. The. The layer of phospholipids around your cells with a simulation that takes in most of the variants of how they are, you don't actually need to simulate every single quantum interaction to get a 99.999%, like, functional, functional, functional simulation. So AI, this is absolutely intractable for any human brain to do or any number of group of scientists on Earth working together. But for AI, 2000-30s AI, it would. There is a way. If you Just run the numbers, which like Ray Kurzweil has done for example, and many others. It's just like easily tractable. It's like if you ask a human nervous system at age one, can you kick a soccer ball into a goal? You're like, no, fuck no, it's not advanced doing that. What about a 15 year old? You're like, something's wrong with you if you can't do that. Like really. Do you know how complex the biomechanics of kicking a soccer ball really are? Like fucking really complex. But for a 15 year old adult nervous system, it's an easy task. Same for AI taking the human body and being able to essentially unfold all the DNA, figure out what everything does, figure out the interactive effects and then fold it back up and go, here's what you need to change to get this effect. Once we get that in a completely different era of humanity, you want to be blue, sweet, you're blue. You want elf ears, you got elf ears, no problem, whatever the fuck you want. Of all of the variation that humans can have, genetically, all of humans ever alive occupy a fucking drop in an ocean the size of the volume of the earth. So it's not like everything in there kills you and humans are the only things that are alive. It's that mostly most of human genetic variation is completely unexplored. And if you just manually, through biotech engineer that, you get to a point where people don't age and they don't die of disease and they're just kind of fucking dope. And they even could be really hardy. Like for example, they could take a genetic variant and change the structure of your bones and double layer your skull. So you get hit by a bus, you die. Now you get hit by a bus and you're like, oh, you just walk off. It's totally possible to do all that stuff, but here's the really cool stuff happens at some point. And Jared Feather and I have a little running kind of inside bet as to what happens first. We don't know. At some point cybernetics is going to come in. What the fuck is cybernetics? You get your arm cut off today, they can give you a replacement arm, but it kind of sucks compared to a real arm. However, in 2024, the arm they can install already can ambulate, it can grab some objects, you have a little bit of feeling in there, interacts with your nerves. That shit that in 1990 was like straight up science fiction, like total insanity. In the 2000s, maybe 2000s, but maybe earlier you'll be able to, when things fall off or don't function anymore, replace them with robot parts. Now, I want to be on record saying this. I'm getting the whole fucking thing done. I want to be a robot. If I get, like, my leg hurt and they're like, well, we can also replace it all. Well, we can't replace your heart yet. I'm like, okay, fine, but everything else. So the ability to cybernetically replace things and enhance things means that you're in the situation where, let's say you can no longer ambulate because your quality of life just totally sucks. You can't walk because your knees are too fucked up or something. If you get bionic knees and bionic lower limbs entirely, all of a sudden, social interaction, community, all that stuff, you have access to it. So that's going to be a big deal. It's going to happen. I can tell you specifically at the point where you're going to see a revolution where most humans, not all, choose enhancement over just staying biological. And I'll tell you when this happens. Look at the trajectory of how much cell phones have gotten better or TVs have gotten better over time. It's the improvement trajectory of technology versus biology radically fast, measured in decades prior. Now it's measured in, like, every year your current iPhone sucks and the new one's way better. That is going to be the paradigm it already is to artificial limbs, for example.

A (112:55)

So whatever the merge technological progress speeds with biological progress, or at least technological progress speeds are going to drag you along for the ride.

B (113:03)

Yes. And here's the thing. If an bionic arm is roughly the same ability set as your natural arm, very few psychotic weirdos like me are going to go get their natural arm cut off and put a fucking bionic arm just for vibes. But if a bionic arm three years later is 10 times better at everything that your arm used to do than your real arm, a few of your friends got it. You're like, dude, you're nuts, bro. You cut off your own arm? Like, yeah. Like, do you get tired at work? Nope, it never gets tired. Like, dude, I saw you hiking. Aren't there a lot of, like, lions and shit around? You're like, my arm is. I punch one lion and it just dies. Like, Like, I've shoots lasers, whatever. The lasers thing is a joke, but at some point when technology gets so much faster than biology and the arm is a hundred or a thousand times and every possibility better, people will choose to excise Their limbs and various other body parts. Eyes. Think about this. Have you ever seen the movie Ghost in the Shell? The. No cinematic rendition. It's a. Scarlett Johansson's in it, so it's nice even if you put it on mute. But this one dude gets his eyes fucked up through an explosion. He's like a special forces dude, and he gets bionic eyes implanted. And one of the features he talks about, he's like, yeah, they got this, they got that, they got mile zoom. I had to, like, rewind and go back mile zoom. But you can see one mile ahead. If those eyes are real and they look like human eyes or even like a little bit cyberpunk, but not exactly human. Dude, I'm getting that. I want to see a mile. I want to see in the dark. And if you're 22 or if you're 35 or 45, you're not taking your real eyes out for they're like, well, there's a.001% that surgery goes wrong and you die. You never can see again. That. But if you're 87 and you need a. You know, you can't even see anymore. I'm getting the fucking cybernetic eyes. So the cybernetic stuff is going to start this process which has a distinct end. And that process is replacing human parts with machine parts until we can scan your brain, know exactly every detail of your brain that we need to simulate your entire you, because everything about you, that's you is entirely enclosed in this period. Once we have the scanning technology and the AI tech to do that, you can take your brain and download it into a robot body and have a separate copy of your brain doing one of two things. One is sitting dormantly in the cloud so that when your robot body gets crushed by a boulder because you decided to climb Mount Everest, you wake up in a bed and you're like, what the fuck? Where was I? And they're like, you got to be.

A (115:27)

Wake up in the bed.

B (115:28)

Yes, you do. This is not a philosophical debate at all. This is a giant red herring. I'll take this one on the chin now. I'm getting really pumped.

A (115:35)

I can tell this is the most animated you've been.

B (115:38)

What happens if you have a biological you and someone scans your brain and puts that brain in robot body and turns it off? Which one's the real you? There's a categorically correct answer to this question. Both. There's two of you now. They're both you. They're both going to feel exactly like you did, just before they copied the brain. So if the real you dies fucking on Mount Everest, and then you get uploaded to new or what about. And you wake up in a hospital bed and they're like, hey, you died on Everest. Congratulations. Here, pictures of you dying. You're like, oh, that's dope. You won't remember that unless you were uploading to the Tesla cloud. And then you will. You will be the real you in every sense of the word. That feels like the real you. You're absolutely the real you, because you're not even the real you used to be. All of the molecules of your brain got replaced. The cells replace every few days anyway.

A (116:24)

Do you think you'd have psychological continuity from that? Obviously not from the dying thing. You're not going to like, transport your sense of self from the guy under the boulder to the person in the bed.

B (116:34)

Yeah.

A (116:34)

What do you think here we're getting into philosophy.

B (116:37)

Yeah. I've hypothesized a thought experiment in which you will have continuity. So what we do is we put you in a kind of giant MRI scanner live sort of situation, and it starts scanning your brain. And it already simulated your entire brain and your current thoughts. And then it clones the thoughts. And now there is an a you that lives in the cloud that's looking over your head with the camera systems installing going, holy shit, I can see into my own fucking. That's me right there. But the you in here, you're just looking up and you're like, okay, is there me? Did the copying work? And remember, it's scanning everything live. And so what they do at this is very morbid. They'd probably do it in a better way. But they go, okay, you ready to for full transfer? And you go, huh? And they go, they just cut your head right off. So you biological you dies. But every part of the brain activity, including your experience of your own death, is modeled and experienced live by cyber you. It's like, oh, my God, I'm dying. Holy. But then I'm still here in the cloud. So once we can do that. And again, it's tractable for AI to do this. This is no mystical stuff involved. Then when you can live in a robot body or live in the cloud, there's going to be a couple of different ways people will go with that. Some people will just never do it. And God bless it, fuck it. It's weird. I believe in the soul. Fuck that. The other thing is, some people might embody themselves and robot bodies do things in the physical world. And then maybe like spend some other time in the digital world entirely in simulation. There are many, many people I'm convinced that will just be like, I don't need a robot body. I just want to live in the fucking cloud. Because in the cloud, phenomenally easy small amount of compute. You could just live as the hero in a permanent Lord of the Rings fantasy that never ends. You could speed up your brain to go a thousand X. You can live as a pirate, you can live as a clown, you can live as a whatever infinite lifetimes of modeling that is super futuristic post singularity type of shit. But that's where that's all headed. So tldr for this insane rant. The, for me, the thing that keeps me, at least to my extent of trade offs, interested in promoting my longevity and quality of life, specifically the longevity part is I want to make it to that dope AI medicine part. And once you make it to that, your probability of death shifts down considerably. You make it to genetic engineering, it shifts again. You make it to age reversal, it shifts again. You make it to cybernetic, it shifts again. If whoever makes it to when we're regularly uploading people into the cloud, short of the Earth getting hit by a comet and all the computer systems going, you're never going to die. Never. You know, at some point the protons decay or whatever, one times 10 to the 126 million years in the future. So for the first time it's realistic, optimistic, but realistic to say if you're ever interested in longevity and quality of life improvement, 20, 24, it's a big deal. Now, now's the time to gather. Especially if you're older. Look, if you're 22, you want to smoke a shitload of cigarettes, fine, you'll probably still make it. Who gives a shit? You're like, hey, you're smoking cigarettes.

A (119:33)

I never quit.

B (119:34)

I never quit. X that one out. Jesus. So but if you're in your 40s, especially if in your 50s and 60s and 70s, now's the time to do all the right shit we've been talking about. Because the payoff might not just be you live 10 years longer. And it probably will be. It might be that weird as it seems to say, you might just not die at a human timescale whatsoever. And then you're, you know, you're into some cool shit.

A (120:02)

Dude. What a hopeful way to finish a conversation about longevity and dying.

B (120:07)

Yeah.

A (120:08)

Mike Israel, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, thank you so much. You already know that I love all of the stuff that you're doing. It's been the best period to watch you guys crush RP strength. I've been using my training at the moment the last nine, ten months or so. I told you when we trained together has been the best gains I've made in probably a decade using the app. So I highly recommend people go and check it out at the website, which is Locafino. Don't say that. You say that.

B (120:35)

What? Rpstrength.com yes, that's it. But also go on our YouTube and follow all the links and we'll kick you to the site sooner or later.

A (120:40)

Hell yeah. Mike. I appreciate you, Chris.

B (120:42)

Thank you so much.