← The Dr. Josh Axe Show
The Dr. Josh Axe Show
My Parents Are 75 and Water Skiing! Here’s Their Secret to Longevity
00:51:57
We’ve been told aging is inevitable, but what if you could slow it down?
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
Dr. Josh Axe
The kid you hear playing the piano, he's not mine. On top of the two weekly piano lessons and finger yoga, I give my son Smarty Pants vitamins to support his brain health. Because while I'm supposed to say it's not a competition, of course it's a f ing competition. Choose Smarty Pants vitamins to support your kids brain health and help them master whatever their chopsticks may be. Shop on Amazon smartypantsvitamins.com or at target today. Have you noticed how your life expectancy depends as much on where you're born as who you are? For instance, Japan boasts an average lifespan exceeding 85 years. While certain US states like West Virginia and Mississippi are closer to 74 to 75 years old, that is a decade less. And it's not just 10 years less of life, it's also quality of life. And Even within the U.S. blue zone, regions like certain areas of California, Minnesota, Hawaii and Utah are often rank at the top, with lives averaging 81 years. Listen, here's the reality. This isn't random. There is something that the people of Japan are doing. It's very specific. Whereas in states like West Virginia and Mississippi, they are not doing certain things. And on today's episode, I'm going to be going through how to extend your lifespan, add years to your life. But here's the other kicker. Add life to your years. And if you're a person who doesn't want to be in your 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and, and being feeble and being, having no energy, being sick all the time, then this is the episode for you. I'm going to go through how you can truly thrive and be healthy like my parents are. In fact, I've got my mom who's 73, my dad who's 75. They're still water skiing. They can go out and run if they want. Now, they typically don't run run. They run a little bit and walk a little bit. But overall, they're bringing their grandkids to Disney World. My dad's playing basketball and soccer. They are very fit and very healthy in their mid-70s. And I had a grandfather who is 96 years old, worked up until the day he died. And so if you're a person wanting to know, hey, what should you eat? What supplements should you take? What biohacks should you do? What do you need to do to not only live a long time? Because this episode is about longevity, but also have a long health span where you can be active, fit and healthy without dementia, without being feeble. And weak while you age as you get older. And so today's episode will be all about the diet, the herbs, the exercise, and the habits that can slow the clock and support longevity. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. So here's one of the first things people miss about aging. Aging starts deep inside your cells. And scientists have identified nine key cellular changes called the hallmarks of aging that explain why our bodies break down over time. Now, recently, scientists said, well, actually, there's not nine, there's 12. And now people believe there might be more than 15. But what I'm going to do is go through today what I believe are the nine most crucial hallmarks of aging. And if any of these things break down at the cellular level, it's what causes you to age more quickly. Now, here's the other thing that's so important. One of the ways that I've been able to see really amazing results in other practitioners that practice personalized cellular medicine like I do is I've been able to help People reverse type 2 diabetes, hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, even, in some cases, help them heal from cancer. Because we focused on healing the cell and reversing cellular aging. That's the key. Number one sign that you're aging too quickly is altered cellular communication. Your cells are constantly sending and receiving signals. Imagine you've got a cell phone and you got a friend that has a cell phone, okay? You're constantly communicating. And listen, this is important for anything. When I grew up, I played basketball and I played soccer. We were constantly communicating in order for a. As a team, for us to win, okay? So that's a really important part of great relationships, right? Your spouse. If you go to any marriage counselor, they will tell you if you want to have a great. When do. When do relationship starts to fall apart, when communication starts to fall apart and break down, right? It's the same thing with yourselves. Now, the biggest warning sign of this tends to be hormone imbalance, right? Your hormones are. Your signals are off. So like insulin resistance with pre diabetes or diabetes, right? Hormone imbalances. When those signals between cells and systems breaks down, you get sick, right? Like any relationship, in the relationship between your cells, if your cell signaling gets off, that makes you sick. That's number one. Your biggest warning signs, there tends to be poor sleep. You're not sleeping through the night. Okay, Melatonin's off, That's a hormone. Cortisol's off, that's a hormone. So that's one example. Or if you're a Female, your cycle's off, okay? Or as a male, you've got low testosterone. There are signaling issues happening. But poor sleep is one of the biggest issues, especially if you're waking up at night or can't fall asleep or waking up too early. That's a big warning sign, okay, that you are. That you have what we call altered cellular communication. It's one of the number one hallmarks of aging. Number two, microbiome dysbiosis. This is where your gut microbiome, it regulates immunity. Your metabolism, your mood, and so much more. And when it becomes imbalanced due to everything from taking drugs like antibiotics and contraceptives, poor diet, like a diet high in sugar, low in fiber, emotional stress, this disrupts communication between your gut and your other organs, including your brain, and causes you to get sick. We all know that when you get inflammation in your gut, that can cause leaky gut, where things like proteins and toxins leak into your bloodstream, causing inflammation then throughout your body. This weakens your immune system, and also it impairs nutrient absorption. So think about all the negative things that happens when you're getting. Gut is not healthy, okay? You can't absorb nutrients. You can't create nutrients. Your body is, you know, systemically inflamed via all these things passing through the gut, getting the bloodstream, and then creating this circulating inflammation and immune response. And so that is a big, big telltale sign that you are aging too quickly and it's disrupting your longevity. Is if you have leaky gut or microbiome dysbiosis. Let me ask, do you have chronic constipation? And that's. If you don't have a bowel movement every day, that's constipation. You should have at least one healthy bowel movement. It should be well formed every single day. Here's another one. Do you have bloating? Okay, here's another one. Do you have gas? Here's another one. Do you have candida, bad breath? Do you have food sensitivities? Do you have poor absorption of nutrients? Right. Autoimmune disease, of course, is leaked to leaky gut. So all of those are warning signs that you have an organ system or something in your body. Your cells are aging too quickly, okay? And that leads to shortened lifespan. And we'll get into solutions here in a minute, but that's important to know. Number three hallmark of aging, according to science today, epigenetic imbalances. Okay? So epigenetics, this is how lifestyle, environment, and emotions influence gene expression. And this will either silence harmful genes or activate healthy ones. Very similar things to gut microbiome. Poor diet, stress, toxins, lack of sleep can flip the switch towards aging, inflammation and disease and obviously positive lifestyles can reverse it. Now I also want to say this though. Epigenetics or some of the genetic things that can also cause you to be sick is if you've got a genetic variant issue and you don't know like MTHFR gene, that's where you don't methylate well. Well if you're not methylating well and you're not getting the right foods to help methylation and living the right lifestyle, you're going to end up having major issues where you can't detoxify. You can't create enough glutathione to protect your body and help you detoxify. It can cause issues with fertility. Numerous, numerous issues happens. If you have MTHFR gene. Now listen, if you have it and you got low stress, you're eating pretty healthy and especially if you're eating things like organ meats, that really, really helps, like liver, you know, getting those good methylated B vitamins in, then you're fine. There's no issues there. But if you have a gene variant like that. Here's another one. Mold. There's a gene variant for mold. 24% of people, they, they're not able to fully detoxify from mold. So it just keeps recirculating in their system. That's why. Have you ever seen this? Or you might know somebody, you may not, but I have several friends where if I like, if I walk through a moldy hotel, it doesn't really bother me, like I don't notice anything. But I've got a friend of mine, if we were walking through a moldy hotel, like later on they'll be sick. In fact, I don't just have one friend like this. I have like, I've got almost 10. Okay. I've got a lot of people I know if they're in a moldy hotel, they, they are or anywhere, like they know they start feeling ill right away because their body isn't, isn't good to getting rid of it. Now that person can live to be over 100 years old, but they need to know that they're sensitive to mold and they need to know what to do about it. Like taking certain binders and things to get rid of it. Right? They probably need glutathione, they need to support their liver detoxification, they need milk thistle, they need certain foods like cilantro steamed vegetables, a lot of organic meat, liver. And then we need to bind to it with maybe clay, maybe some activated charcoal, chlorella. My point there is this epigenetic imbalances. If you have something going on genetically, maybe different with you than someone else, you, you need to know that and know how to deal with it or else it can make you very sick, isn't it? I mean, I've got a friend of mine in Texas who was sensitive to mold and he was one of the healthiest people I knew. I mean mid-40s, super healthy, did everything right, amazing athlete, and his like kryptonite is mold. And it took him a year or so to figure it out. And if he wouldn't have fully figured it out, he could have died from 30 years early just because of this one thing. So knowing your genetic imbalances or susceptibilities, your kryptonite is so critical to not aging too fast. This is why, you know, I'm a big fan of doing sometimes certain types of testing, like testing for micronutrient deficiencies or organ age and just seeing where do you need the most help. Because for everybody it's different. Remember, if you want to heal, you typically need a personalized plan if you want to experience your optimal level of health. Number four hallmark of aging is this mitochondrial dysfunction. Your mitochondria are the power plants of your cells producing ATP, your body's cellular energy currency. With age, mitochondria function declines, which leads to fatigue, cognitive issues, reduced physical performance and energy, slower healing, all of those are side effects. Now of course, there's also side effects like cancer. There's major side effects. If your body's batteries all get low. It's like anything imagine when the battery gets really low and certain technology, it doesn't work as well. Your body's the same. However, if you can keep your mitochondria healthy, it can do amazing things. Toxins, stress, inflammation, these all damage your mitochondria. And your mitochondria needs very specific nutrients to function at the highest level. Probably most important is a form of niacin. It's a later on version of vitamin B3 called niacin. It's called NAD Plus. And I'll just tell you a quick personal story. When I went through my spinal infection years ago, I had to get on an IV antibiotic and I was just so sick for a year, just unable to walk for a year. And coming out of that, just not walking for you, just my energy wasn't as strong and vibrant as I wanted to be. And I started taking this really high quality. I did a little bit of NAD plus. Okay? I did it as an iv. I would do it sometimes as a. As a subcutaneous injection or as a supplement liposomal NAD plus. And I was just blown away at how much it helped my energy. And I think part of it was just being down. That whole time, my body's battery was really low and my mitochondria, and it was the thing that, boom, I noticed more than anything. So that's probably the most powerful thing you can do to fix that issue. And then there's coenzyme Q10, there's PQQ, there's choline alligate, which is a precursor to urolithin A. There's a lot of things that can help your mitochondria function at a higher level. Here's another big thing. Knowing your purpose in life is very rejuvenating and healing to your mitochondria. You know, in Chinese medicine, they would call this qi, okay? In Western medicine, we call it cellular energy or ATP. But. But really, if you want to live a long time and have a long health span, one of the single greatest things you want to focus on is your mitochondria, okay? It's the battery in every cell in your body. In fact, you don't have one battery in each cell. You've got sometimes hundreds or thousands. So lots and lots of batteries. But you need to take care of those if you're going to be healthy. Here's the biggest warning sign, okay, that you are. You have mitochondrial dysfunction. You got low energy. That's it. You're tired all the time. You are physically tired all the time. And maybe you're not healing as well, okay? Maybe you got injured. Now your body doesn't seem to heal, okay? If you've got those issues, you really want to focus on that hallmark of aging, of healing your mitochondria. Number five hallmark of aging, that you're aging too quickly is oxidative stress. Every cell naturally produces free radicals during energy production. But excess free radical, it damages your DNA, it damages proteins, it damages also your cell membranes around your cells. What we'll start to notice with oxidative damage is cancer. Cardiovascular disease is very high on that list. Alzheimer's, those are some of the diseases. But I would also say this. You just start feeling older, you start looking older. That's oxidative stress, okay? And coupled with something else called inflammaging. But if you start to notice, oh, I'M starting to get skin spots like my. Like you start to actually look older. If you have an apple with a, you know, let's imagine a bright red skin of an apple and you take a bite of it, okay? What happens to that apple flesh over time? If you look at it two hours later, it's, oh, it's turned brown, okay? That's oxidation. The same thing happens to your skin. You start to get skin spots and wrinkles and you start to look older. Now listen, some of this is a natural process, right? We are all going to age. However, if it happens faster. I mean, here's the thing. You should be able to look back 10 years and be like, oh, okay, you know what, I do look a little older now. You shouldn't be able to look one year ago and be like, oh, I look way. I look quite a bit older than I did last year or two years ago. It shouldn't be that noticeable. Okay? That means your oxidative stress has really, really started accelerating. And you don't want that, right? They cause you to age more quickly than you want. Ways you can slow oxidative stress. Antioxidant rich diets are really powerful polyphenols found in things like green tea like matcha and extra virgin olive oil, vitamin C, glutathione, that's been helped produce by certain herbs like milk thistle. But doing lots and lots of antioxidants. Doing berries, right? Blueberries, goji berries all the time, again vegetables, carrots and steamed spinach. Liver has lots and lots of antioxidants. And so doing some of these foods and is going to help slow that oxidative stress. Number six sign that you are aging too quickly. Inflammaging, okay. It's inflammation that is making you feel older. We talked about looking older with oxidative stress. Inflammation and oxidative stress are kind of like a couple. They tend to go along together. Inflammaging is you feel older. Okay? Now inflammaging is a term for persistent low grade inflammation that builds over decades, sometimes without symptoms early on, but then they hit you, especially joint pain and arthritis. Okay. If you all of a sudden are like, man, my joints just feel, I just. My joints feel a lot older, right? That, that is one of the biggest signs of inflammation. Now it's also connected to chronic illness, heart disease, dementia, autoimmune issues. That's inflammating as well. There's loads of things that contribute. Poor diet being the biggest one with inflammation. Leaky gut is connected there a Lot of high emotional stress over years and years and years. Lack of sleep. But poor diet is the single biggest one. Okay. That will cause inflammation. Eating sugar, eating refined grains, eating processed hydrogenated oils and seed oils. All these things that inflame the body cause inflammaging. Okay? And again, if you're one of those people, you're like, okay, like you start to feel those injuries you had when you were younger, right? You, you sprained your ankle when you were in high school or that old ACL injury, that never bothered you, not that much. Now it bothers you a lot. And the key here is again, listen, you're going to age and you're going to notice it some over time, but it's happening very gradually and slowly versus it's like, whoa. Not only does this one little area feel older, now my whole body feels older. Okay? That's from inflammaging. And you really want to focus on reducing inflammaging by loading up on anti inflammatory foods and herbs. Okay? So a lot of wild caught salmon, lot of grass fed beef, lot of vegetables and a lot of fruit. That's it. Meat, vegetables, fruit, healthy fat. Meats, vegetables, fruit, healthy fat that are the highest quality, right? Wild caught salmon, grass fed beef, you know, chicken's okay, but I would say the, the fish is the best, right? Those Omega 3s are fantastic. The healthy fats, especially walnuts, avocados, extra virgin olive oil. And then you want to do some fruit, typically the most anti inflammatory fruit. Berries are going to be on that list. Pineapple and kiwis are going to be on that list. You just want to. And then vegetables really focus on reducing inflammation. And then lots of herbs, lots of turmeric, lots of ginger, lots of rosemary as a supplement. Boswellia is great, which comes from frankincense. And then lots of bone broth and collagen. If you can follow a diet like that and be highly anti inflammatory, you're going to reduce inflammation and you will actually start feeling much younger. Number seven, impaired autophagy. Autophagy is your body's built in housekeeping or trash department, right? I mean, they're bringing out the trash. Okay. They're also like a recycling department. They help take things that are broken in your body cells, take the parts that are still good, reuse them and get rid of the rest. When autophagy slows, your body becomes a wasteland. Okay. And it gets clogged up. Imagine a city that just went through a crisis where there was an earthquake there and it's like cars are broken, buildings are falling apart. It's just the whole city's clogged up and damaged. That happens over time when your body isn't activating autophagy. Well, the areas of your body that are most responsible for your autophagy are going to be your liver and your gut, your digestive system and from a cellular level, your lysosomes. You have something called lysosomes in your cells and they activate autophagy on a cellular level. Certain things help that fasting exercise, polyphenols I mentioned earlier, quercetin, which is found in onions in citrus fruits. But overall, just eating a really healthy diet of a lot of vegetables. And again, doing good exercise, that's good for your body. Now listen, I think there's exercise that ages you. If you're doing long distance triathlons, marathon running and lots of CrossFit, you're aging your body fast. Most of you understand, if you really think about it, running and pounding on pavement day after day after day, especially when your body, you start to lose muscle. And if you're doing it when you're older, that's very hard on your body. Now can you get away with it if you're running on a track and only doing short bursts and not, not overdoing it? And maybe if you're running on a treadmill, yeah, your body can do better with that. And so, and I'm not talking about going and running one mile, I'm talking about training for marathons and triathlons. And what happens to your body when you over exercise doing, you know, a three hour CrossFit session or just when you're exercising that hard, jamming your joints and doing it for speed, you're aging your body and you'll pay for it later. Okay, I know my wife and I experienced this. Listen, being unwise in our at certain points in life, I know that I was a little too hard on my body doing some exercise and you know, and now I feel it right, or I definitely felt it when I hurt my back. Now I'm doing all the right things and I'm feeling a lot better. But you can really age your body if you do the wrong type of exercise, the right type of exercise you want to do. I'll get into it in a little bit. Are things that are going to be easy on your joints. That's why like swimming or exercising in a pool is phenomenal. But again, one of the biggest hallmarks of aging is impaired autophagy. Exercise, movement, spending time in nature, certain Foods like you're going to find in green tea are very good for autophagy. Number eight is this cellular senescence. Okay, if your autophagy isn't activated, right, you have these zombie cells, they're called senescent cells or zombie cells that build up in your body and they release this toxin that inflames all the tissues around it. And so you really need to clean that up. But again, there are certain things that are very helpful at healing and eliminating autophagy and activating cellular senescence is one of the biggest things. You know, one of the things I found that is really good for senescence in terms of the. The studies out there. Again, we mentioned fasting would also be. Is probably the single biggest thing, but also prayer and meditation, just reducing stress. Stress. It harms your cells. Think about it. It's causing cellular damage. And I want to think about it like this. They call senescent cells zombie cells. It's like the living dead. That's why they call it a zombie. It's a cell, but it's like a former part of itself. You know, I had a. Somebody, a friend I knew in high school, and he smoked lots and lots of weed, just started doing a lot of drugs. And it was so sad because, you know, star athlete and academically just so great, all these things. And. And he just did it to the point to where he was just kind of lost all ambition. Have you guys ever known anyone like that? Like somebody that just did a lot of drugs and it was almost like they're like a shell of themselves because of it. So it could have been everything from childhood trauma to drugs to all these things. Well, that same thing that can happen to a person as a whole, what's happening to them at the cellular. If we would bring in and bring a microscope on that person of what's happened. They have all this senescent cell communication where even their. Your cells mirror you in a way. And if you are psychologically sick and you have had that many toxins, drugs, toxins, damage your body, your cells end up like you in that same way. Their age, their damage, they're just a fraction of their former self. And so cellular senescence. Now the good news is you can start to heal cellular senescence by just really nourishing your body and doing a combination of nurturing and cleansing. You know, there's a diet protocol that I think is very good for this. It's called the Gerson Therapy. This is probably the most popular. It's one of. I put in the Top three diets out there for cancer today. Max Gershon was a brilliant medical doctor from Germany, moved to New York, saw great results in healing and curing tuberculosis and cancer and incurable diseases. And the diet was pretty much vegetable juice and liver. Okay, Vegetable juice and liver and apples. I mean, green apples. That was like the basis of the diet. And those are a lot of the foods that help your body cleanse and get rid of these senescent cells. Okay. So very, very healing. But this is a sign of aging. There is. You have these senescence, and part of that is you just don't feel well. You feel lethargic. Okay? That's cellular senescence, and that's what you're feeling in your body. Number nine is this. The last hallmark of aging is stem cell exhaustion. Stem cells are your body's repair toolkit. They regenerate tissues and keep your organs functioning over time. If your stem cells become depleted or less responsive, this slows healing and tissue renewal and immune resilience. Okay. So if you're a person who you just notice, you know, when you have something happen, your body just does not recover very quickly. Again, this happens as we age, but it shouldn't happen too fast. Okay. That's a big warning sign. Immune system. If you just. If you get sick all the time, you know, it's like every time there's a cold, you get a cold. It's different. When you're kid, you should be getting sick because you're. You're creating that, that immune memory. So that's different. But if you're older and you're sick all of the time, anytime you get sick, you get sick, you get, you get injured just with the very littlest thing. And it takes a long time to heal. That's stem cell exhaustion. Okay. Your body isn't healing. There's a lot of things that can help that calorie restriction. So just eating mostly meat and vegetables is very good for this. And berries. Nutrients like NMN or NAD plus peptides like BPC157TB500GHKCU. These help rejuvenate stem cell activity and are really powerful in ancient forms of medicine like Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. What they would recommend for stem cell exhaustion would be. They'd call them qi and yang boosting. It's gonna be a lot of the adaptogenic herbs. It's gonna be ashwagandha. In ayurvedic medicine, it'll be rhodiola rosea. It will be panax ginseng Dong Kwai, these adaptogenic herbs, Cordyceps mushrooms, are very, very good for supporting stem cell production. And so that's the idea. There is. You really want to support it, but those are some warning signs. And so those are the nine hallmarks of aging according to my belief. Now, by the way, the original nine hallmarks of aging, there are a handful different than what I shared. But now that it's been expanded, I think these are the nine that are the most relevant that you can take action about in healing your body. Do you have unexplainable illness, hormone dysfunction, weight loss resistance, brain fog, and you're tired of being dismissed when you know something isn't right? Well, get my at home testing of targeted biomarkers, including hormones, thyroid and metabolism, plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to help you understand your. The truth is your doctor is probably reading your blood work all wrong. They're missing the cellular issues behind the symptoms. This new testing flips the script. The future of interpreting test results is here. I'm currently offering a simple at home blood test that actually tests for the right things. And just as importantly, it comes with proper interpretation of your results. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to my bloodwork. Now I also want to mention and so that's the western functional medicine scientific idea about longevity and those nine things you need to focus on to heal and address longevity and increasing your health span. However, do you know that longevity and the idea of it was talked about far before this in traditional Chinese medicine and they had their own own philosophy and form of medicine when it came to improving longevity. And it was called the Three Treasures, they believed that our health is tied to three things. It was called jing, qi and shen. By the way, this lines up with the Bible with things like health of body, soul and spirit. A very similar thing in Greek medicine, very similar three trinity that you'll find in. In Ayurveda, it's the three things. So jing is body, chi is mind or actually more it's breath and soul. And then shen is spirit. And so you want to be healthy body, mind and spirit or body, soul and spirit. And so think about like this. Jing is really tied to your physical body. There are certain things you need to do to support that. There are certain things you need to support your breath, which is really your mindset and your motivation and your, well, you. And then shen is your spiritual health and your emotional health really anchored and tied to that. And that's really Tied to your identity, it's tied to your purpose, gratitude, your social bonds and relationships. And they had a much greater and holistic idea of how you can truly be healthy. I mean, I'll tell you, one of the biggest fallacies in all of medicine today when you look at mainstream, especially in the Western world, in America and Europe and Australia, is there's not a great enough emphasis on spiritual and mental health and how that impacts our physical health. I mean, I really believe that your mental and spiritual health is even more important than the food you eat. Okay. I think that when somebody has cancer, childhood trauma, and spiritual demons, and that could be used both in the actual spiritual sense and the non spiritual sense. But I think that childhood trauma, negative mindsets, all these sort of things, I think that's a greater cause of cancer today than eating a poor diet. Our emotional stress, our childhood trauma, our negative thoughts, our, I think our lack of faith. I think those things actually cause more sickness and illness than actually poor diet with certain conditions and cancer probably being the number one. Okay? So today, if you go to see a doctor and you've got certain issues, think about this, especially issues like depression, anxiety, cancer, some of those types of conditions. If you're not addressing your spiritual and mental health, you're missing out on 50% of your healing. At least, at least. And so it's really, really important. And this is something the ancients knew. This is why the Bible talks about it, right? These ancient forms of medicine that Abraham might have even passed on, the initiation of them, these are things we're not even looking at or thinking about today in often cases. Okay. And I'm telling you they're very important. And so let's jump into these three treasures, or what you might call the trinity of longevity and, and ways you can improve your longevity. Number one is jing, or body. And this is tied to, if we go even deeper there, your cell structure, what actually makes up your physical body? It's cells. And so we're looking at your cell membrane and all these different areas of your cells. And if you're going to heal your physical structure, of course you need to take care of it physically, right? There's a very specific diet you need to be exercising regularly, just doing the right things physically, that's one number two, cellular energy. Okay? So cell structures, one number two cellular energy. This is tied to our breath. This is tied to some of the way that you think healthy habits, movement, anything you do to fuel your mitochondria, it's going to be tied to that. And A lot of that is positive thinking, right? But then it goes beyond that and even deeper. And that's tied to what I call cellular intelligence. This is really tied to, again, your spiritual health. It's prayer, it's meditation, it's reading a scripture like the Bible, and then it's doing things to serve others. Live out your life, purpose, know who you are, your true identity. For me, it's my identity in Christ and God. And so it's knowing who you are. If you don't know your identity, if you don't know, or if you're not living out to a degree, your purpose, if you don't have a deep, intimate relationship with God and with other people. And you do that by serving them and making their life better, not focused on you, focused on them. When you do that, and you have that reciprocal, somebody's concerned about you in that way and adding value to you. When you do that, you are spiritually healthy. And that floods into healing your entire body, into cellular longevity, into making you truly healthy. But we're missing this today. And I want to say something about these ancient physicians, okay, like the Hippocrates and Maimonides and these physicians that founded Chinese medicine and Ayurveda and in Greek medicine, right, they knew and understood something. You know, today, the form of medicine we practice today is only like 150 years old. It's not that old. Chinese medicine, I read 3,000 years old. And, and they looked at essentially millions of individual case studies in terms of forming these. So there's so much efficacy around why they work and how they work, and they're proven over time, you know, how unproven mainstream medicine is. You know, I mean, here's the thing. Most people live a long time today not because of mainstream medicine, I would say, I don't want to say, in spite of Foley, we're living much longer because of proper sanitation, okay? Better sanitation. That's, I mean, you know, and just generally we have more access to food and to a degree, some quality food at that being eat a more rounded diet. But overall, the medical model of us, like, let me just say this, all these different medications for different conditions, I don't think that's really, truly increased our lifespan much, if at all. I would say if we're an emergency, our emergency medicine system is the best in the world. And it's incredible, absolutely incredible. But our, our, our, our mainstream medicine, if, like, somebody comes in with high cholesterol and you give them a statin drug, I mean, it's, you know, it's or you're depressed, you're giving the antidepressant, hey, you have nothing going on, but you're a 16 year old girl so we just automatically give you birth control. That, that, that's harming people, that's taking years off their life. And so the biggest reason we're living longer today is sanitation. I mean for the most part it's a big, big thing. So all that being said is that these ancient forms of medicine are much, much more proven than our current medical model we're living in of drugs and surgeries and chemo and radiation. And I'm not saying that there aren't good parts of it. Okay, antibiotics, if somebody has a life threatening infection, incredible surgery to repair a damaged, you know, acl, that's amazing, right? So we have, we have some amazing things there. But, but a lot of it's not, it's actually doing more harm than good. When we look at one of the most important aspects of longevity, diet is always included in lifestyle. You know, in blue zone areas like Okinawa, Sardinia, Loma Linda, people are up to 10 times more likely to live past 100. And their diets are mostly consisted of whole foods, wild caught fish, vegetables, herbs, certain types of fruits, whether it's pomegranate or avocado or lemons. Right. But unprocessed whole foods tends to be part of their culture. You know what else does? Walking and moving regularly. Okay. So just not, not, not for oftentimes it's a mode of transportation, riding a bike somewhere, walking up and down hills. I but a lot of time outdoors, a lot of time doing things like walking and cycling and eating whole foods. I mean these are key. I want to mention in terms of a diet, a Mediterranean style diet which is more plant forward and high in fish and omega 3s and extra virgin olive oil is linked to a 30% lower risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's according to large observational studies. So we see this and again the diet is that we've talked about. It's fruit, sometimes it's beans. By the way, I would mention that that's getting you more fiber. Certain types of nuts like walnuts and almonds and macadamias, green leafy vegetables, extra virgin olive oil, fermented foods, oily fish with omega 3 fats. These are the most commonly eaten foods on these longevity diets. And when you study the, the blue zones, they found that there are nine commonalities, they're actually called the power nine that allow people to live longer and have the longest lifespans. Okay? This was published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. So here's what they found, okay? That everyone that lives a long time, for the most part, what they share regular low intensity physical activity is built into daily life like walking, gardening and household chores. Okay? But walking is the single biggest one. They walk a lot, okay? And so that's number one. Number two is purpose. A strong sense of purpose adds up to seven years of extra life expectancy. Okay? You know, you've got some sort of gift or something and you're contributing to the society in some way. You have a purpose. The next one is downshift. There are daily routines to reduce stress, like naps, prayer, socializing, tea time. You know, this is what I see in a lot of patients that become chronically ill. From the moment they wake up to the time they go to bed, they are doing something to try and get ahead constantly. Every moment of their schedule is with something. Now it's not to say some of those people are even purpose driven, but even if they're purpose driven, it's in a way that's maybe self serving or it's so it's taking up. I mean, they're just doing stuff every moment. You need to be purpose driven and have things you're doing that are contributing and making the world a better place. In addition, you should be working hard, but also playing hard and also resting, okay? And so being able to downshift, that was another big part of living a long time. Here's another one, the 80% rule. They stop eating when 80% full to avoid overeating. They don't overeat. That's huge, by the way. That's huge in Chinese medicine. It's one of the biggest principles that you want to follow. Here's another one. Wine at 5, moderate regular alcohol consumption, especially wine with friends or food in common. Now here's what I'll say is really different about this one. It's not. Drinking wine does not improve longevity. Okay? According to some studies, when you go to a place like Italy or France where you're seeing this a lot, what they're doing is at 5, 6 o' clock, for the rest of the evening, they're having a glass of wine. They're eating a Mediterranean diet and then they're sitting there with friends and family and laughing and relaxing and just, just living in a state of joy. Okay? Now you could do that with alcohol or without alcohol. I think the more more is not as good. Now do I think, listen, what I believe based off the studies I've read is, listen, I don't think if you have one or two glasses of red wine a week, it's going to take years off your life or even add years to your life. Okay? I think that's fine. I think drinking alcohol constantly, all the time, it's not good for you. Okay? But I do think if your liver is pretty robust and healthy, you could have a glass of wine a day or two a week and it's not going to be a detriment to your health. Okay? But all that being said, I think that what's really happening here, when you look at this correlation and it's a lot more of this sort of, it's really connected, more of that downshift, right? You get it? Here, here's what, here, let me tell you that what made me physically when I, after a few years in practice is I was that person before I would wake up. And from the moment I woke up, I was doing something. Now some of it was good stuff. I was, you know, doing a gratitude walk or doing something. But then it was like, even after dinner I'd go home and eat dinner, okay? It was at night, I'd get off at 6:30, that's late already. Dinner at 7. But then when I was there, I would sit there and work on my computer and watch TV at the same time the rest of the night. And I think that made me sick versus if I and I started getting leaky gut. And I think if instead, if I would have been done with work and I would have just, just ate with a good friend or family and done that for two hours, I would have been so much healthier. So I don't think it's the wine or not the wine. I think it's what's happening as part of the way you eat and having a family meal and having deep relational connection. Here's another one that one of the power nine that causes people to live longer. Belonging. Most belong to a faith based or spiritual community which is linked to longer life. You're finding purpose there, you're finding community there. The best things together. So a sense of belonging to a sense of community. There are so many people that are just lonely or they're part of a dysfunctional community or family that's tearing them down, right? So there's a big, big difference there. Here's another one. Loved ones, they prioritize family. Keep aging parents nearby and invest in their children. Family, family, family, family. Okay. It's another big one that they saw in the lifespans. Here Increase your lifespan. And then the right tribe, they're surrounded by social circles that support healthy behaviors and positive choices. It's not just family, family. It's family that is really positively supporting one another regularly. Now I want to talk about exercise for a minute. Because the type of exercise you do can cause you to age more quickly or more slowly. I mentioned earlier marathon running, doing long distance triathlons, CrossFit, for the most part, if you're doing, listen, if you're doing weights for time in that way, especially after the age of 29 or 30, you're aging your body. That's the reality, okay? There's almost no way around it. What they found is certain sports really cause you were better at de aging you or slowing the aging process. Now, the first one is this racket sports. Tennis and pickleball and badminton. The Copenhagen City Heart Study, which followed over 8,500 people for up to 25 years, found that adults who played tennis regularly live 9.7 years longer. That's almost 10 years longer than the sedentary adults. Okay, Think about that. Playing tennis can extend your lifespan by like 10 years. It's amazing. And badminton was 6.2 years. Okay? Now, they didn't have pickleball then, but there's evidence that pickleball would be very similar. There's a study on over 80,000 people in British Journal of Sports Medicine. They found that racket sports, swimming and doing some form of aerobics were linked to the greatest reductions in death. So here's the thing, like if. And by the way, the racket sports reduced death by 47%. The next closest was swimming, lowered it by 25. And aerobics 27%. Cycling 22% cut in mortality. Weight training 27%. HIIT training was good as well for mitochondrial function. Even walking, though, can add up to 11 extra years to your life. Let me say this though. So I hit on multiple studies there. Generally speaking, in ranking order, the number one thing you can do to improve your longevity, that's racquet sports. And when I read one of the people that analyzed this, the scientists, they said, we believe it was multifold. One is when you're playing pickleball, you're doing it with friends. It's like a fun community way of bonding. It's competition. So there's a benefit there. Another one was it was good for hand, eye coordination, very good for the brain. And three, it was a form of cardiovascular fitness, but you're having to get low a lot with your legs and actually working a Larger muscle group. So there are all of these different benefits in working your core. So there are a lot of using your breath. You're getting a release actually emotionally when you hit a ball, when you hit something. So there are all of these different benefits of playing racquet sports. So that's number one. Number two is swimming. Okay. It's a form of exercise that's low impact, where you're working large muscle groups, you're working your lungs. Loads and loads of benefits there. Those are the top two that you can do. Then cycling, just going out and riding a bike was number three on the list as well, I believe. And then you had weight training and walking were also good in terms of things you can do. Right now, I want to walk you through the top herbs and supplements for longevity. Some of these have been used thousands of years for adding years to people's lives. The first one here is turmeric. Turmeric is high in a compound called curcumin, which is highly anti inflammatory. It's going to help inflammation, it's going to help oxidative stress. There is a study that found that consuming 1,000 milligrams a day of curcumin for 12 weeks significantly reduced the markers of oxidative stress and inflammation. So that's a great one. And you could do that as a supplement. You could do it as a turmeric, gold, milk or tea. It's important to take it with a warming herb like ginger or black pepper to increase absorption. Ashwagandha is another one. This is probably the most prized adaptogenic herb for longevity in all of ayurvedic medicine. One study or review found that taking doses of around 300-600mg daily significantly lowered cortisol levels, morning cortisol and improved stress, anxiety and fatigue. So this is a really good one for longevity. Rhodiola rosea. This is one of my favorites for improving mitochondrial health and energy levels. This is good for stress, for mood, for concentration. Taking just 200mg daily is beneficial. Coenzyme Q10. This is also good for ATP function. Now, I do want to say this. Resveratrol has been one of the most popular longevity supplements for the past 20 years, ever since David Sinclair and some others at Harvard did some studies on. I think it was just done on worms and said, oh, it increases your lifespan by a long time. However, since then there's been a lot of research debunking his studies and there's even a lot of people saying that he was getting paid sort of indirectly for the studies. And so there was. The studies should just be thrown out. So listen, resveratrol is the antioxidant found in blueberries and grapes. I think that you should eat blueberries to increase your longevity. I think taking a little resveratrol, maybe it's fine, but I really don't think it's going to do as much for adding yours to your life as actually just eating blueberries. Okay. Probably a better option. NAD plus we mentioned that NAD plus it can also be found in. It's found in different forms. It's NMN is another kind of name for it. NADH is another name for it. But these are mitochondrial boosters that are amazing for longevity. This was one of my tops in terms of compounds. And then getting more probiotics and prebiotics to support nutrient absorption and gut microbiome health. I think those are good options. And listen, there are so many other supplements. I think a lot of the antioxidant rich berries, Schisandra, would be very, very high on my list. Great for longevity. Triphala, which is an ayurvedic berry blend, also good for gut and constipation. Really amazing. That would be a great one. Green tea like matcha, amazing, amazing for longevity as well. So there are numerous. But I would say generally just try and get more herbs, try and get more spices, drink more herbal tea on a regular basis. I mean, when you look at Japan, who has the longest lifespan, they drink loads of green tea. Over there, so much herbal tea here we're doing like coffee and adding butter to it. Okay, that's okay. Doing some coffee. And listen, genetically that might be good for some people. But I will tell you, I do think green tea or drinking oolong and white tea, just drinking a lot more herbal teas even throughout the day would be better for us. Another big longevity habit is sleeping. Okay. Studies link poor sleep to a 25 to 30% higher risk of early death in age related diseases. Okay. So all these things are really important. And of course, as we mentioned, you really want to focus on keeping stress low. You want to focus on building better social bonds. In fact, the longest study on longevity, it's 90 years now almost at Harvard, found the number one factor for longevity was strong social bonds. And I want you to think about who are those people that are taking you down in life? Now listen, if there's family, we have negative people in our family, right? But also thinking about who are people you could go and spend time with and pursue a relationship with who are willing to with you return that favor and be able to build a relationship with them. You want to think about that as well. We know spending more time in nature. In fact, there's a study done in Japan, it's on forest bathing, showed a 40% drop in in cortisol and improved natural killer cell activity. That's huge as well. Sunlight just there's the other one. Just be outdoors more in nature. Super helpful for increasing your lifespan. So again, the keys to living longer are this. Number one, have strong social bonds and great relationships. Number two, remember that longevity is not just about your physical health, it's about your spiritual health and your mental health and how that also impacts your physical body and longevity. So pray and meditate, be part of a faith based community and serve others. Live out that purpose and find your identity. Right. And you're going to find it there. Probably not, you know, backpacking through, I don't know, the Himalayas or something. And then listen, exercise for longevity. Play pickleball and tennis, swim, ride your bike and go on lots of walks and do a little bit of weight training. You know, weight training, add muscle. That's a longevity muscle as well. So you want to lift weights and add some muscle there too. That's longevity exercise. And then add some of these herbs and things in your diet. If you do that, it's going to not only add years to your life, but life to your years. Thanks for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember you each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally and spiritually. Make sure to subscribe like and share and I'll see you on the next episode.