You know, a lot of research shows us
that, you know, walking 30 to 45 minutes
a day seems to give us all the kind of
health and longevity benefits we might
want. But I'm wondering is that through
the old lens where we thought aging is
inevitable and therefore walking 30 to
40 minutes a day is simply just doing
the best that we can within that
paradigm. Whereas if you look at it
through your lens that actually aging is
not inevitable. Sure, you know, maybe
walking is helpful, but maybe it's not
enough. So, what is your perspective on
movement, exercise, and how that fits in
to your kind of theory and philosophy on
aging?
>> Yeah.
Well, probably it for me to say don't
walk and don't uh move. That that's step
one. If you don't walk or move, then
you're in big throttle when you get
older. Um, so that's a minimum. But if
we're talking about what's what's not
maximum but optimal, we don't know that
for sure. And it's might be everyone's
different. But in general, losing your
breath is important. Highintensity
exercise, you don't need a lot. I just
mentioned 10 minutes a few times a week.
That appears to be sufficient to give
you the the longer term health benefits.
And what's probably going on is in part
is that we well we discovered and we
published this in 2018 in the journal
Cell if anyone wants to look it up that
old muscle starts to think that it
doesn't have enough oxygen even though
there is enough oxygen and it shuts
itself down and doesn't make a lot of
energy and the blood vessels start to be
depleted and it's a just a terrible feed
forward process after that. So by making
your body hypoxic and giving it a stress
both in the you can actually do excess
oxygen or lack of oxygen just you just
want to shock the system then your body
gets to reset. Um and and one of the the
most popular things to do in the
longevity world now is uh what is it?
High pressure barriiatric uh oxygen
therapy and that I think is also
resetting this uh this problem that our
bodies have with a what we call pseudo
hypoxic.
Um, one of the ways that we could reset
that without exercise and without high
pressure oxygen chambers was using NMN,
this molecule that I take. It actually
boosted the body's ability to make new
blood vessels. It restored the the
ability to measure oxygen in the muscle.
Um, and when we gave it to mice, they
could run 50% further without having
trained. But the good news is, well, no,
the important point is that the mice
that were young and exercised and got
the molecule in their water ran twice as
far. So, it's it shouldn't be an excuse
to pop a pill and not do anything. But,
there are some little changes you can
make. I lift weights. I have them around
my house. I I'm at a standing desk which
goes up and down here. These are changes
that I make that um you know, I'm
standing most of the day now. And this
will really help. It builds the muscles
in your leg and and your butt and your
back. That's important now, especially
for a male my age where I'm losing 1%
muscle if I don't do something about it
every year. But also the hormones,
testosterone comes uh from having those
large muscles uh signal to the testes.
And I've been able to correct and and
raise my testosterone levels just by
keeping those large muscles in shape.
>> There's so much to dive into there. It's
incredibly fascinating that potentially
to get these longevity benefits that
you're talking just maybe 10 minutes of
this kind of pulseed exercise where
we're out of breath. So highintensity
interval training several times a week
which is very achievable even for the
busiest person out there. So I I find
recommendations like that really really
inspiring because you know eating less
exercising 10 minutes several times a
week you know a lot of people think
health and wellness is the preserve of
the wealthy the middle class all kinds
of things like that and and I know there
are certain things which do cost money
but it's also refreshing to know that
there are lots of things that actually
can be done completely free of charge
you know eating less is actually saving
you money right than uh than eating
three meals a day. But you know there's
a couple of points around exercise which
I really want to dive into. One of them
is as you say at your age you're losing
1% muscle mass uh each year uh if you
don't do something about it. I think
that starts at the age of 30 for for
most of us. So what's when I think about
that and I think about mTor and protein
I had this slight clash in my head
whereby we know that sarcopenia this
loss of muscle mass is a problem as one
gets older uh risk of falling problems
after that all kinds of things happen
when we lose that muscle mass so a lot
of the recommendations around fighting
psychopenia are to do with yes
resistance training but also the amount
of protein you are consuming to make
sure you're limiting how much that
happens. Yet at the same time, we're
sort of suggesting that to increase our
aging, we should be limiting our protein
intake.
Help me help us see through that
apparent contradiction.
>> Well, yeah, I'm not saying limit protein
intake at all. I get plenty of protein
um just mostly from plant-based sources
where there's not a lot of the branch
chain amino acids. Those leucine,
isolucine, vein amino acids are the ones
that activate mTor. Um and so yeah,
focus on plants. You'll have enough
protein to build muscle. I have no no
trouble building muscle. Um
that that it's a fallacy that you need
to be eating, you know, these protein
shakes and meat to get stronger and to
build muscle. Now, if you want to
professionally build muscle, by all
means, go for it. But for most of us who
just want to feel good, look good, live
longer, what I'm recommending doesn't
affect your ability to do those things
and and build up muscle one bit. And
there's it's also a fallacy that older
people cannot build up muscle. My
father, who's 82, uh had built up a lot
of muscle. He goes to the gym twice a
week. He runs. He hikes. and he
literally is stronger than me. Um, and
he says he hasn't felt this good since
he was in his 30s, though he he does say
that he probably felt like crap when he
was 30.
>> Even then, even if he did feel like crap
when he was in his 30s, that's a pretty
powerful
thought, isn't it? That someone in their
80s
can be quite confident in saying,
"Doesn't matter how I felt in my 30s,
I'm feeling better in my 80s than my
30s." That is that's incredible, right?
It's it's not something to be sniffed
at. That is something that is not the
norm in society. It's not what people
expect. People think it's an
inevitability that we're going to get
slower, more tired, our memory's going
to go. And I don't buy that. First of
all, I've seen that there are many
things we can do to mean that's not an
inevitability. But I think you take it
that you take it even further and and
you're showing very clearly that that
does not have to happen to everyone.
>> It's exactly right. I'm not going to say
my father and I are a clinical trial.
Um, in fact, we were just doing this
mainly because we're scientists. We can
read the literature. We're researching
it. Um, but it's a fun experiment,
right? We've now been doing this long
enough that something weird is going on.
My dad feels like and acts like he's 30
and I don't act or hopefully you can
judge look like I'm 52. He's 82. So,
that's pretty interesting. We'll see
over the next 10 20 years what happens.
But he he's not a special person when it
comes to life. He he's an average guy.
He didn't like exercise. He was not
looking forward to the future. Uh he's
not obsessed with his health at all. And
look at what happened. You know, he's
living a life that he didn't expect at
all. And we're already planning going to
Africa after co he's looking at life
over the next 30 years. I mean, what
80-year-old does that?
>> An 80-year-old whose son is David
Sinclair. Let's see.
>> It may be
>> um
you mentioned uh well that that there's
this theme isn't there always about this
hormetic stress, this pulseed stress on
the body that you can then recover from.
I can see how interval training does
that. Um
what about other forms of training? Now,
as we have this conversation, I am
2 and 1/2 weeks away from doing my very
first marathon. So, I I'm I'm I'm going
to be running the London Marathon in two
and a half weeks. When this conversation
comes out, hopefully I will have
completed it. I am not doing this for
longevity to be really clear. I'm doing
it for other reasons. It's something it
was a challenge that was set to me. I'm
enjoying the process of seeing if I can
do it.
But it's an interesting question since I
have you on. You know,
clearly running a marathon and I'm not
an endur, you know, typically I've not
been an endurance type guy, so I've not
done lots of stuff like this at all.
This is well outside my comfort zone.
Could this be a stressor on my body
that
has a powerful effect when it comes to
what my body then does with respect to
thinking it needs to hunker down?
Of course, it's going to be highly uh
individualbased. Or could it be that
it's too much of a stress? You've gone
past that hormetic sweet spot and it's
gone into the realm of actually
depending on my fitness levels and and
and how it fits into the rest of my life
that it can actually become problematic.
Sorry to interrupt. If you're enjoying
this video and want to dive deeper into
the topic of nutrition, I have created a
free special guide which contains the
five most important changes I think we
all need to make when it comes to our
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below.
>> Uh I'm I'm not worried about you. If you
look at marathon runners,
uh there's a very clear uh correlation
with longevity. People who bike or run
long distances uh do live longer. In
fact, in the case of cycling, if you do,
I think it was 80 miles a week, your
risk of heart attack goes down uh 60%. A
massive amount. I don't know about
marathons, but um I I think that you'll
be fine based on all the evidence.
>> Yeah. So um and then you mentioned with
we've not spoken really in detail about
NM yet, and I would like to, but you did
mention when the the the mice took it,
their endurance
got better and and that that sort of uh
rung a kind of that really rung in my
brain when you said it because I
thought, "Oh, I'm doing a marathon in a
few weeks."
as well as its anti-aging ability, does
it also in in your experience beyond
that trial have an ability to improve
and increase our endurance levels?
>> Well, we don't know in humans yet. Um,
there's been
very few studies uh with NMN and
endurance.
In fact, I'm struggling to think of one
now. we're doing it myself um over at
Harvard and we'll know probably early
next year if this is true but I do have
an anecdote um one of my now good
friends Ken Ry out is his name he was a
middle of the road marathon runner kind
of a doing it as a hobby and I met him a
few years ago and he decided to to make
it his mission to see if he could uh use
my science to improve And every few
months he got faster and faster and
faster and he now 50 years old and he's
the world champion for his age. Uh and
often just beats the 30-year-old in
marathons. Myrtle Beach was the most
recent. He will be in the same marathon
as you. Uh so look out for Ken Ray out
if he wins this race. He's the official
world fastest 50-year-old in marathons.
>> Oh wow. and and he's he's on NMN and
resveratrol
um mainly and uh you know we don't have
a twin as a negative control which is
what we should have and it should be
placebo control but absent that it's
pretty interesting what we've seen
happen here
>> if you enjoyed that short clip I think
you are really going to enjoy the full
conversation which you can check out
Yeah.
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