← The Dan Buettner Podcast
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- [00:01]
Dan Buettner
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- [00:43]
Hassan Minhaj
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- [01:51]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
average life expectancy more than 100 years ago was under 50. We've opened the gates to extreme longevity during the course of the 20th century. I've called anti aging medicine the second oldest profession.
- [02:06]
Dan Buettner
Quackery.
- [02:06]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's quackery.
- [02:08]
Dan Buettner
So why in the next hundred years can't we see the life expectancy of 130? You've probably heard on Instagram that humans will soon be able to live to 120 or maybe even 150. Well, my next guest sets the record straight. The University of Illinois Chicago demographer Dr. Jay Oshansky has written the definitive paper on how long we'll really live and how to get the most good years out of life. All right, Jay, the average person listening to us right now, if they do everything right. How long can they expect to live on average?
- [02:47]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Keep in mind, on average is what we're talking about here, right? I would suggest that the upper limit to human life expectancy in long lived populations developed countries would be about 90 for females and about 84 for males. So on average about 87 years. Now keep in mind it's an average. So when you say 90 for females, it means half of the females will live beyond the age of 90. It's important to realize that it's an average.
- [03:18]
Dan Buettner
So how about the group of people who listening to us right now, who does everything right, they eat mostly a whole food diet, they get regular physical activity, they manage their stress, they sleep eight hours a night, they have good social connectivity. How about those people? What's the maximum they can expect?
- [03:39]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Let me emphasize that this concept of a maximum, think of it more as a glass ceiling and not a brick wall that we can't go through. So if everyone does everything right, we still age, we still grow old, death still occurs. The diseases associated with aging and growing old will still happen. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's. These are things that go wrong with the human body as a result of a phenomenon which we generally call aging, which is currently immutable. But researchers are trying to find a way to alter that process.
- [04:17]
Dan Buettner
Wait a minute, I'm on Instagram, and on Instagram I'm told I can live to 100 or 120.
- [04:25]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Well, all right, so two totally different numbers. So there are people that live to 100. Statistically the probability is very small.
- [04:34]
Dan Buettner
What is it about in the United States? In the United States, people are listening right now. Let's pretend they're middle aged or a little younger. Of course, everybody listening is about to get much younger after they hear Jay Olshansky's advice here.
- [04:46]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
But for males, it's about 1 to 2%, maybe a little more. For females, about 5% probability of making it to 100 even once you've made it to middle age. Now again, these probabilities have always been low and they were much, much lower 100 years ago. So you have to realize when you go from close to 0% survival to 100 up to 1 to 2%, which is where we are today, it's a pretty dramatic increase. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's really hard to get 1 to 2% of the population living to 100. Let me emphasize it may not sound like like I'm talking about a high number. It's huge average life expectancy more than 100 years ago was under 50. Almost no one made it into their 80s, 90s and 100. There were people that lived long lives know, hundreds of years ago, but most people didn't live that long. We've opened the gates to extreme longevity during the course of the 20th century by reducing early age mortality, by reducing middle age mortality, by introducing medical technology that enables people to live these extremely long lives. And guess what? We get to see the consequences of aging as a result of that success in reducing early age mortality. It was like a Faustian bargain. We save the children and we get heart disease, cancer, and stroke among the survivors.
- [06:19]
Dan Buettner
People listening out there just heard that 100 years ago, life expectancy was 50, and now you just told us that it's 80.
- [06:28]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's about 80.
- [06:29]
Dan Buettner
So why in the next 100 years can't we see the life expectancy of 100?
- [06:35]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
The longevity game that we played more than 100 years ago was designed to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality. We succeeded. So when you save the life of a child, you add seven, eight, nine decades to life. When you save the life of a 70, 80, or 90 year old, you only add a small amount of survival time. Because these folks are already very old. The risk of death is very high. And so the amount of time that you can manufacture by saving the life of an older individual is much, much less. So the game we played in the early 20th century was save the young. We succeeded, we won that battle. We should be declaring victory in our efforts.
- [07:21]
Dan Buettner
Why can't we have a game of save the old now?
- [07:24]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
That's what we're trying to do, right? So we got heart disease, cancer, and stroke as a result of operating these living machines for seven, eight, nine decades. So what are we doing? We're going after the diseases that we're now seeing at older ages. The problem is, is that beneath the surface of these diseases is a foundational biological process of aging that percolates underneath all of these diseases and disorders. So when you alter your behavioral risk factors, which is important, by the way, it's going to have a pretty dramatic impact on your quality of life for sure. But when you alter these risk factors, you, you lower the risk of diseases specifically, but you're not having any influence on the basic biological process of aging.
- [08:11]
Dan Buettner
Let me, let me, let me just make sure I get that right. We've gotten very good at delaying dying of heart attacks, of dementia, of cancer, of type 2 diabetes, but we hit the limit of our biology. Our biology is just designed to kind of fall apart when we're 80 or 90 years old. And even if we get rid of all the diseases, the body is still going to fall apart.
- [08:37]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
That's correct. So I have suggested that the vast majority of the population in long lived countries, and I would venture to guess that the vast majority of the people listening to today are living on what I call manufactured time. If you're alive over the age of 50 or 60 or 70, chances are your life has been saved multiple times through medical technology and basic public health. The natural limit to human longevity, I would suggest, is decades behind us. It's probably somewhere around 50 to 60 years. Could be a little bit lower. In other words, if you strip away all the. All medicine, all pharmaceuticals, all surgical procedures, dentistry, you take it all away. You let the natural limitation of these bodies express itself. We probably would on average live about 50 to 60 years. Wow.
- [09:32]
Dan Buettner
So for those people who believe in God, God sort of designed us to be 50 and we've sort of.
- [09:38]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
So I won't take on God. But we did publish an article in scientific American in 2001 entitled if Humans were Built to Last. And we basically said, what would the human body look like if there was a designer and the designer designed the body to last longer than it does now? It would look a lot different. These knee joints, these hip joints, loss of muscle mass, loss of bone density, loss of neurons in the brain, These would be all things that would be designed differently. The only reason why we get to see the consequences of the loss of bone density and muscle mass and neurons is because we succeeded in saving the young. Living long enough to see the consequences of aging. That's where we are today. That's the world that we created for ourselves. It was a, a great bargain to save the young for sure.
- [10:30]
Dan Buettner
You offered a great metaphor a few minutes ago that as we age, the problems emerge faster and more. More of them. So you, you used like a whack a mo. Whack. More gophers pop up and they pop up faster. So we have to do it faster and faster. And it's sort of a losing game.
- [10:49]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
That's right. So the game that we're playing today is totally different than the one that we played before. I do call it whack a mole. But think of it. And the language that I have used in my manuscripts is we live into what I call the red zone. A red zone is a time in life when frailty and disability tends to rise exponentially. It's associated with survival into extreme old age. We've Seen it throughout history for those that have in fact lived that long. But the easy way for people to understand it is the longer you live, the more of these diseases of aging you will begin to see. So the whack a mole analogy actually is perfect. The longer you live, the more moles there are. And the longer you live, the faster they come up. So when you reduce the risk of heart disease, which of course we should be trying to do, you reduce the risk of cancer and you elevate the risk of something else. Death is a zero sum game. When one thing goes down, multiple things go up at the same time.
- [11:48]
Dan Buettner
Another very powerful thing you said, which I think is lost on our pursuit to seek youthfulness. We want our muscles to be strong and we want our faces to look smooth and young. And even if we achieve that, the Achilles heel is our brain. Can you talk about that?
- [12:08]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yes. So there are parts of the body that don't replicate. So as you grow old, you will lose more and more neurons. You'll lose more and more muscle fibers. I've called these the Achilles heels of the human body. We can replace knee joints, we can replace hips, we can replace heart, lung, eventually kidneys. There's lots of things that we can do. We've got the. But we've got some basic Achilles heels. I would also add we have, I don't know how many tens of thousands of miles of a cardiovascular system that changes, that ages with the past.
- [12:41]
Dan Buettner
I like what you said about the brain specifically because brain cells, we don't get more of them and we begin
- [12:47]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
losing them fairly early in life, that once they're gone, they're gone forever. We cannot recreate them. There is some neurogenesis that goes on. Neurogenesis is the growth of new neurons in the brain, but it's very minimal.
- [13:04]
Dan Buettner
So even if we could somehow engineer the new svelte 18 year old Jay Oshansky. Was. Were you a wrestler?
- [13:12]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
I was a runner.
- [13:13]
Dan Buettner
A runner? Yes.
- [13:14]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Marathon runner.
- [13:14]
Dan Buettner
Your brain would still continue to deteriorate
- [13:19]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
even if we could somehow recreate a younger version of this body. Unless we create a younger version or we arrest the aging of the brain, we inevitably will see the consequences of this extended survival in problems with cognitive function.
- [13:37]
Dan Buettner
And even if we regenerated brain cells, we don't know that they would wire themselves to allow us to think or
- [13:45]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
remember or there's a lot we don't know about how the brain operates, about memory issues. So even if we could somehow get the brain to recreate those nerve cells that have been lost. We don't really know how well that would work in maintaining normal cognitive functioning.
- [14:03]
Dan Buettner
So you're kind of the buzzkill when it comes to this unmitigated optimism that we're going to live longer.
- [14:09]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's a realistic check based on what the human body has been telling us all along. There is a lot of hype in the field of aging where people embellish and exaggerate what we can and cannot do. And look, I've called anti aging medicine the second oldest profession.
- [14:31]
Dan Buettner
Quackery.
- [14:32]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's quackery. People have been selling longevity for thousands of years. The origin of alchemy was built on the idea that kings could drink their wine or whatever it was that they were drinking in their youth, in their cups made of gold. Keep in mind, this may sound pessimistic, but you have to realize the accomplishment that public health and medicine has had in the 20th century is nothing short of enormous. We should be celebrating the longer lives that we are now living. Now, of course, you said earlier, and I agree with you, we always want more. You get the average up to 80, we want 85. You get the average up to 85, we want 90.
- [15:15]
Dan Buettner
Yeah.
- [15:16]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
And I've argued that we've reached a point of diminishing returns, where instead of trying to live longer, we should be trying to live healthier.
- [15:25]
Dan Buettner
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- [18:19]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah. So back in 1990, my colleagues and I speculated that the rise in longevity, the rise in life expectancy must slow down. And we said it has to slow down, not because of failure, but because of success. Having enough people live long enough so that the biological process of aging becomes the dominant risk factor once you get to older ages, which means you can continue to have advances in medical technology that will extend life. But unless those advances in technology alter the basic biological process of aging, unless it influences those Achilles heels we were talking about, the rise in life expectancy had to slow down. A lot of folks disagreed with us. They said, no, no, no. Advances in technology will accelerate life expectancy upwards. It's going to drag longevity with it. And we said, it can't happen unless you see a change in the aging process itself. We waited 35 years. We retested all of the data on all long lived populations. What did we discover? The slowdown in the rate of improvement in life expectancy began in the year 2010. It has continued to the present. We see this slowdown everywhere, even in the longest lived populations. It doesn't mean we're not living longer we're living incrementally longer, but at a much, much slower pace plateau relative to what we've experienced in the past. This was the prediction we made in 1990. The evidence we published last year was definitive.
- [19:58]
Dan Buettner
Let's give listeners a history of life expectancy through time.
- [20:02]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Sure.
- [20:03]
Dan Buettner
So life expectancy around the time of Christ for humans, what was that?
- [20:08]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Probably around 30.
- [20:10]
Dan Buettner
30.
- [20:10]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Now keep in mind, 30 is an average. And it was so low because infant mortality was extremely high. Perhaps a third of the babies born died in the first year of life.
- [20:22]
Dan Buettner
Now let's go to the 17th century.
- [20:25]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
1600, Germany, probably around 40 years.
- [20:28]
Dan Buettner
40 years. So in 1600 years we saw only a 10 year rise in life expectancy.
- [20:34]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
10 years is a lot.
- [20:35]
Dan Buettner
Yeah. Oh yeah, oh yeah. But 1850 or so, what happens after 18? Mid 19th century, what happens to life expectancy?
- [20:42]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Probably around 50. So you got another 10 years in 200 years.
- [20:47]
Dan Buettner
So life expectancy gain is, is accelerating.
- [20:50]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah. What was happening was a lot of folks were moving indoors. Indoor living and working environments began right around 1850, 1900, then clean water. You know, we learned about how diseases are transmitted, we learned about infectious diseases. Keep in mind, all those huge gains that began around 1850 were a result of reducing early age mortality. So we saved children, doctors used to
- [21:15]
Dan Buettner
do autopsies and then they go deliver babies. And those babies didn't survive as well. And it wasn't until the late 19th century that doctors figure out, oh, if I wash my hands after doing an autopsy, these babies survive better. So, so between 1850 and about 1990 or 2000, every 10 years life expectancy
- [21:38]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
went up two years, two to three years.
- [21:40]
Dan Buettner
So that was like the progress that took 200 years before that. So why do we see this huge leaps in life expectancy after.
- [21:49]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
So the huge leaps occurred almost exclusively as a result of reductions in death rates under the age of 10.
- [21:56]
Dan Buettner
Make that simple for us. Well, how did that happen?
- [21:59]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It was basic public health. So removal of waste, clean access to clean water.
- [22:04]
Dan Buettner
Just think your garbage remover.
- [22:06]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah. Here we are in an indoor living environment, working environment. The air is controlled.
- [22:12]
Dan Buettner
Yes.
- [22:12]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It can be snowy and freezing outside. We're very comfortable in here. Now, that wasn't always the case. Move yourself into the past just one or 200 years. People worked out in the open, they lived out in the open, they had open fires. If you and I went back 100 years or 150 years, we would find the conditions almost entirely intolerable. Very, very difficult to live under those conditions. This is a cushy environment. And guess what? When you bring our pets into this cushy environment, right, you bring our cats and our dogs into this cushy environment, you see the same thing.
- [22:50]
Dan Buettner
They live longer too.
- [22:51]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
They live longer too. And now you get to see the upper limits to how long dogs can live.
- [22:55]
Dan Buettner
What was killing most Americans in 1900,
- [23:00]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
it was infectious diseases like tuberculosis, polio, you know, the diseases that we don't see now because we have vaccines that are incredibly effective in reducing or eliminating all of these diseases. Some of the simple things like an abscessed tooth that we can now fix by going to the dentist, Our children back then used to die from those. Wow. So we don't often appreciate the importance and the value of medical technology and how it has manufactured an enormous amount of survival time. Now, keep in mind, medical technology continues to save us, right? So you get saved once early in life with these vaccines, then you live into your 20s or 30s, you have problems with your teeth. Medical technology saves you again, right? You have that abscessed tooth removed, you live into your 40s and 50s, you know, some other problem arises. Your gallbladder, you go to the surgeon that's removed, your life has been saved again. Most people, once you get out into your 60s, 70s and 80s, your life has been saved by medical technology multiple times already.
- [24:09]
Dan Buettner
But if you go to these anti aging or longevity conferences, the people who tend to get the biggest audiences are the ones that tell us how we're going to live to 120.
- [24:18]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
They're telling us what we want to hear.
- [24:20]
Dan Buettner
Yes. You made a famous bet that argued that nobody alive today will make it to 150.
- [24:27]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Correct.
- [24:28]
Dan Buettner
You made a billion dollar bet.
- [24:30]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah, tell us about it. So the story is back in about the year 2000, Scientific American published an article, aging and Longevity. And my good friend Steve Austad was quoted in there as having said something like, life expectancy is going to go up to 150. So I called him up, I said, yeah, you don't really mean that, do you? Because it actually can't happen either mathematically or biologically. It's quite implausible. And he said, no, no, no, I don't think life expectancy will go to 150. I think one person could live that long. And I said, yeah, well, the oldest lived person was Jean Calmon, who made it to 122. I said, that's quite a few light years away from 150. He said, yeah, advances in medical technologies. This sound familiar, by the way? Advances in medical technology will Allow us to alter the biological process of aging and somebody will make it out there. So Steve and I each decided to wager $300, $150 twice. We put it into an investment, and after 150 years, it'll be worth about a billion dollars. If anyone in the year 2000 is alive in the year 2150, that billion dollars goes to Steve's surviving relatives. And if no one makes it, it goes to my surviving relative.
- [25:44]
Dan Buettner
And as Steve points out, if he's right and he's one of the people who makes 250, he gets the billion dollar.
- [25:49]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Good for him. Good for him, you know, and you can't win. I can't win. Yeah. I don't actually think anyone alive today is going to be. There may be a handful of people alive today that make it. They'd have to make it to 125, 125, approximately. So I think it's. It's possible.
- [26:10]
Dan Buettner
Numbers game.
- [26:11]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah, it's a numbers game. Keep in mind the probability of getting a super centenarian, somebody past the age of 110 or somebody like a Jean Calmon to 120, 22 or 125 increases as the population increases. Cases. Right. So back in 1900, there were 1 billion people on the planet.
- [26:30]
Dan Buettner
Yeah.
- [26:30]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
We now have 8 1/2 billion people on the planet by 2150 or so. I'm not, not quite sure what the number is going to be then, but it'll probably, probably be closer to 10 billion, at least on the planet. So the probability of one person making it out to past 125 will rise, and it may very well happen, but most people aren't going to make it that far.
- [26:53]
Dan Buettner
You're a big advocate in research on the fundamental causes of aging or mitigating those. What innovation could come online that could really help us maybe live to 150? Imagination.
- [27:09]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
There is. So let me state one thing categorically. Aging is inherently modifiable. That process that percolates beneath the surface, it's not programmed into our bodies. It's an inadvertent byproduct of living long enough to see it. So it's inherently modifiable. It's been done in other species. So aging can be modified. So there's more.
- [27:33]
Dan Buettner
And aging is more or less a buildup of damage.
- [27:36]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Right, Buildup of damage. The accumulator damage to the building blocks of life. So the byproduct of operating these living machines is damage to the cells, tissues, organs and organ systems. You see it when you drive your car, right? Yeah. The brakes begin to fail.
- [27:52]
Dan Buettner
I see it mostly in the mirror in the morning, actually.
- [27:55]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
You see it in the mirror, Right. I mean, look, we see the aging of our skin and our teeth and our bones and muscles. It's not like it's something we're not familiar with. But the process of aging is inherently modifiable. Researchers now are pursuing multiple pathways to alter that underlying biological process.
- [28:14]
Dan Buettner
Say that simply. What do you mean by that? What would we modify?
- [28:17]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Basically, I think the way in which we may be able to alter aging is to interfere in a sort of a gateway pathway that exists within the human body that's influencing or regulating this underlying process of aging, that accumulated damage to cells. I think we may be able to slow down that accumulated damage or the presence of the damaging compounds that lead to the problems with cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.
- [28:50]
Dan Buettner
So is there another way? For those people who don't understand pathways,
- [28:53]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
there's an easy way. So let's just assume, for example, that one of the main causes of aging are problems associated with insulin in the body, and that naturally, as we get older, we can't process insulin as effectively as we do. Let's just call that the gateway for now. I don't know if that's it, but there is a hypothesis that it is potentially one of the sensitivity to insulin
- [29:17]
Dan Buettner
or the production of insulin.
- [29:18]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's both. Okay, it's both. So if we can develop an intervention that alters that whole process of the insulin signaling, sort of what goes on in the human body with regard to insulin, and let's assume that that's the pathway, and also think, by the way, that there's multiple pathways, not just insulin, but perhaps multiple ones. If we could just find a way to intervene, in other words, make that process less damaging with the passage of time, then what will happen is people in the future may make it out to the age of 70 or 80, but biologically, they could be 10, 20 years younger, biologically than their chronological age than what you've seen in previous generations. Let me give you an example. I have a photograph of my sister at the age of 60. I have a photograph of our grandmother at the age of 60. The exact same age. They look totally different. And it's not just hair color and clothes. There is reason to believe that more recent generations appear to be senescing or aging at a potentially slower rate.
- [30:29]
Dan Buettner
What would explain that?
- [30:31]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
I don't know. If I had to guess. What you're seeing in our grandmother is the consequence of a harsh life. She smoked. She didn't always have indoor living and working environments. She came from Europe, from Eastern Europe. And so life was hard for her,
- [30:51]
Dan Buettner
probably had to work harder.
- [30:52]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah. So I think what you see is the consequence of accelerated aging probably experienced earlier in life and decelerated aging experienced among my sister. It's pretty evident in photographs of generations.
- [31:09]
Dan Buettner
One of the most important lessons we learn from the Blue Zone is how to eat to 100. We know exactly what people there have been eating most of their lives, and it's whole food and mostly plant based. But it's not just what they eat, and it's how they eat. They cook at home and they cook together. Cooking is never rushed. Someone is chopping vegetables, someone else is stirring a pot and someone's telling a story you've already heard and nobody seems to mind. That's simple ritual that turns food into connection and connection into longevity. At my lake house in Wisconsin, the kitchen is always the center of the house. Friends gathering. We cook simple meals. We linger at the table, maybe play a few rounds of cards after dinner. Those evenings do more for my health than any supplement ever could. When I'm traveling, I like knowing my home can still host those moments and give the gift of connection to other families. Hosting my home on Airbnb means other people get a space where cooking isn't an afterthought. It's a reason you come together. Hosting fits naturally into my life. It keeps the heart of the home alive even when I'm away. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host I've written several New York Times bestselling cookbooks on the Blue zones. And the number one question I get is this. What about when I don't have time to cook? That's why I launched Blue Zones Kitchen Ready to Eat Meals. We've now served over 3 million meals made with the same whole food principles I found in the world's longest lived communities. They're maniacally delicious. Find us in your local freezer aisle or@bluezoneskitchen.com Blue Zones eating even on your busiest days. Let me try this metaphor and tell me if it doesn't work. So, you know, I think of aging as the buildup of damage over time as cells replicate, which I understand they replicate on average about once every seven years. And every time they replicate, there's a doubling of damage, more or less. And when we were young, we had a cassette tape of the Beatles and we make a copy of that Cassette tape for our friend. And that tape didn't sound quite as well, and our friend maybe would make a copy of that. And pretty soon three or four generations of copying this tape, you can almost not hear the music anymore. And is that a useful metaphor?
- [33:48]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's a useful metaphor. So the number of cell replications that occur in humans is roughly about 50. And then after those replications are done, the cells commit suicide. The name for that is called apoptosis. You actually want that to happen, so you want these old cells to fluff off and you want them to be replaced by younger versions of themselves. Now, this is potentially one of the interventions that researchers in the field of aging are working on. It's called senolytics. So there is a compound called the senolytic compounds that are introduced into the body, and they remove what we call zombie cells. Zombie cells are cells that should have gone away because they've had their 50 replications, but they hang around. They're still alive, but they don't do what they're supposed to be doing anymore. They get in the way. They interfere with the normal functioning of the cells, tissues, and organs. When senolytic compounds are introduced into the body, as the theory goes, like Drano, it sweeps them out, leaving behind the younger versions of these cells, which allow these tissues or organs to operate at a higher level of efficiency. So there's evidence to suggest that these potential senolytic compounds could, in a way, reverse. I use air quotes around reverse because I'm always reluctant to suggest we can go back in time.
- [35:12]
Dan Buettner
Can we just take a senolytic supplement?
- [35:15]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
And, well, there are people that are actually trying to buy those on the Internet today. I wouldn't recommend it, because you don't really know what's in any of those compounds that you're buying from China or Israel.
- [35:27]
Dan Buettner
But so on that topic, you know, we've all heard of resveratrol and metformin and rapamycin and NAD plus. And what. What longevity supplements should people be taking right now?
- [35:40]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
There are no longevity supplements that exist today that have been documented to extend life. So not disability. There's no evidence that. That they were. Keep in mind, I am. I am.
- [35:51]
Dan Buettner
Do you take anything? Do you take.
- [35:53]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
I take one. One thing only. And it was prescribed by my doctor, Vitamin D. Okay. As you get older. I'm 71 years old. As you get older, your ability to process vitamin D through exposure to sunlight begins to wane. The moment you begin replacing that vitamin D, it has a pretty dramatic effect. And I noticed a Pretty dramatic effect when I introduced it. But I don't take any other nutritional supplements. Mostly because most nutritional supplements are, you know, they give you expensive urine and that's about all they do.
- [36:29]
Dan Buettner
That's big in Paris.
- [36:30]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
I'd much rather eat food. I'd much rather eat healthy.
- [36:33]
Dan Buettner
So people are listening right now. What, what, what advice do you give them when it comes to supplements?
- [36:38]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
So when it comes to supplements, the evidence does not support the use of supplements for the vast majority of the population.
- [36:45]
Dan Buettner
So you're just doing an experiment on yourself and probably wasting money.
- [36:49]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yes, I think so.
- [36:50]
Dan Buettner
How about stem cells? That's really hot right now. What do you, what's going down to Central America and getting.
- [36:56]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah, and what's the scientific evidence to support the use of stem cells? These are the questions I have you on.
- [37:02]
Dan Buettner
Is there any.
- [37:03]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Well, these are the questions that people need to be asking. I wouldn't, you know, take a trip to Central America and, you know, based on, you know, a friend of yours that tells you that stem, you know, getting an injection of stem cells is going to do anything. You actually need scientific evidence and there's none, there isn't evidence to take them. Today I am really careful as a professor of public health and what I recommend. There is a long history of claims exactly like this. I'll give you one example. In 1980, there was a claim that the use of growth hormone would reverse the process of aging. This was a study that was done by a guy by the name of Daniel Rudman in Milwaukee who demonstrated that people who injected themselves with growth hormone had increased muscle mass. They argued, better mental acuity. And doctors started prescribing it off label as an aging intervention until it was discovered that it was associated with brain cancer. There's lots of examples like this where people conduct experiments on their own bodies without knowing what the consequences are in advance. And I am dead set against us, at least me anyway. I won't conduct an experiment on my own body without the evidence.
- [38:19]
Dan Buettner
For people listening who would like to live longer or at least live the capacity their bodies offer them. What, what advice do you give them?
- [38:29]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Rule number one is really simple. Choose long lived parents.
- [38:33]
Dan Buettner
Okay, all right, I've chosen them. What else though?
- [38:36]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
All right, so the next thing is to avoid the activities that shorten life. It's not like we don't know what shortens life. Smoking cigarettes will kill people at a much earlier age. Becoming obese will elevate the risk of death. You have to avoid the things that shorten life. Then you Adopt lifestyles, behavioral lifestyles that are known to lower the risk.
- [39:04]
Dan Buettner
What are those things?
- [39:04]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Well, the first one would be movement. You have to move these bodies. You know, the moment you go horizontal. You know individuals that make it out into their 80s and 90s that end up bedridden for a couple of days, they begin losing muscle mass very quickly. So you have to be vertical, you have to move. And then of course your social relationships are extremely important. Isolation is like smoking cigarettes. So you, it's, you need to be connected to other, other people. There's no question about that. And the scientific evidence is definitive on this.
- [39:41]
Dan Buettner
So, so we're here.
- [39:42]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Wait, we didn't mention diet.
- [39:44]
Dan Buettner
Oh good.
- [39:44]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
And I have to, to emphasize that there is plenty that we can do. The foods that we eat represent fuel for the body. You have a choice of what you put in there. You could, you could put low, a low grade fuel in these bodies and you're going to get the result you might expect by using low grade fuel. You put in high grade fuel, high quality fuel, these bodies will operate more efficiently for a longer time period. So there's nothing new there. I'm not, I don't think I'm really telling you or anyone else anything that they don't already know that food works. It does have a powerful influence. It's not going to make everyone live to 100 or, or 120. But you can maximize the potential that exists within your body. For you it might be 110. For somebody else it might be 100. For somebody else it might be 90. It's going to vary from one person to another, but at least you can maximize the genetic potential for longevity that you were born with.
- [40:44]
Dan Buettner
What do you think about sex? Do you think about it all the time? Does, I mean, do you think having regular sex contributes to longevity?
- [40:54]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
So it's funny you should ask this question because my colleagues and I have been studying and evaluating the risk factors for exceptional longevity for a while. And when we look at medical records, one of the things we look for is whether or not these older individuals are taking erectile dysfunction medication. These older men and the ones that tend to be the healthiest are the ones that are sexually active. Wow. So it tells you a story about a number of attributes of the individual that are likely to be telling.
- [41:25]
Dan Buettner
Shooting. I know this is association, but shooting from the hip. A 60 year old who's regularly having sex, how, how much more life expectancy can they expect compared to a six year old who's not having any sex? At all?
- [41:38]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
I don't know the answer to that. And it's a complicated question. Because you can have. That's why you can have nuns, for example.
- [41:44]
Dan Buettner
Why are you talking.
- [41:45]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
You can have nuns, for example, that live exceptionally long lives. They're not having sex at all.
- [41:48]
Dan Buettner
We don't know that. We don't know what goes in those, happens in those convents.
- [41:52]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
But look, it's telling you something about the connectedness of the individual to others.
- [42:00]
Dan Buettner
But there's no question if you're having regular sex, you're likely to live longer than if you're having no sex at all. In general.
- [42:08]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
In general, I would say it's a positive signal that there's probably a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. There's probably some social connectedness benefits as well. And plus probably you have a partner. Keep in mind having a partner itself has a beneficial effect. The moment we lose partners, the risk of death rises pretty rapidly, especially in that one year after losing a partner. These individuals that make it out to older ages are younger people living in older bodies. This is a conversation I had with my dad in his mid-90s. He said, I don't know who that guy is in the mirror. He said, but inside I'm a 40 year old. He said, I still appreciate all the things that I appreciated when I was 40 years old. I just happen to be living in this body that doesn't operate as well as it used to. So we should be really careful on how we think about and treat older individuals, in part because we're going to get there ourselves.
- [43:10]
Dan Buettner
So on the Dan Buettner podcast, we give extra points for vulnerability when it comes to longevity. Jay, what do you worry about loss of cognitive functioning? Say more about that.
- [43:23]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
It's probably the greatest fear among those of us that rely on our cognitive functioning for our everyday lives. I had this discussion many years ago with one of my advisors. Her name was Bernice Newgarden, one of the most well known human development scientists in the United States. She had this great fear of Alzheimer's disease. She was brilliant, but she didn't want to lose her brilliance. It's what defined her as a scientist, as a person. The moment that's lost the definition of who I am and who she was disappears. She ended up getting Alzheimer's. Now, in her case, like many others who are highly educated, you develop mechanisms for coping with the development of dementia of one kind or another. And those coping mechanisms allow you to live with these problems for a longer time period. This is called intrinsic capacity. You could see I'm wearing hearing aids because I've lost hearing in both of these years. I wear reading glasses for reading. There's lots of things that I do on a day to day basis to compensate. There's things that I can't do anymore. Remember I used to be a marathon runner? Yeah. I can't do that anymore because of a problem with a lower back might be associated with the fact that I was a marathon runner. So I replaced it with walking. So how we adapt to these changes in our bodies with the passage of time defines how successful we are in the way in which we age.
- [44:55]
Dan Buettner
Are you still sexually active? Yes, that was the question. I bet you that was a surprise question. Well, yes, you wanted me to ask you one that nobody's ever asked you. So there you were asking me to ask centenarians that question. So I thought I'd put it on you.
- [45:09]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yes, very much so.
- [45:10]
Dan Buettner
Does your wife know?
- [45:14]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Yeah. Yeah. You didn't ask if I was sexually active with her, but the answer is yes. It's actually an important part of our lives.
- [45:22]
Dan Buettner
So in wrapping up here, I'm your 15 year old son and I want to live the longest I can. What advice do you give me?
- [45:32]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
You have to avoid the things that you're going to pay the price for later. So you must not smoke cigarettes, you must not drink excessively. My recommendation is to actually not drink any alcohol at all. But if you're going to do it, do it in moderation. The other thing is, and I had this conversation with my in laws a while ago, they used to try to avoid everything that they thought might be harmful. I said no, it's all about enjoying life.
- [45:59]
Dan Buettner
Yeah.
- [45:59]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
So every once in a while they would like, you know, a hot dog and some french fries. Right. Because it was something that they enjoyed in moderation. My goodness, it's all about enjoying life. So yeah, go out and have that hot dog and french fries and enjoy, enjoy it. Just don't have it every day. They don't have it for every, every meal. It's all about enjoying the days that we have.
- [46:21]
Dan Buettner
There you go, from the top scientist, Jay Olshansky. Thank you very much.
- [46:25]
Dr. Jay Olshansky
Thanks for having me.