LIFTS Episode 105 - Why Humans Age: Telomeres, Longevity, and the Limits of Lifespan with Dr. Bill Andrews

31:32Matthew Januszek:Is that what you feel worse when you're older after you had a couple of drinks and what you did when you were younger? There's also the alcohol dehydrogenase gene and things like that. Believe me, alcoholism is one of those diseases that I really want to cure. And I believe that alcoholism has nothing to do with aging. It has to do with mutations or variations of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene. But it's like I want to cure aging first. And then that's one of the things, alcoholism and sickle cell anemia, and there's a whole bunch of other things that have nothing to do with aging that I want to focus on curing.

32:07So you took me on a tangent there for a second.

32:08Matthew Januszek:Sorry about that. Yeah, no, that's okay. But it's the feeling. When I'm not talking about the feeling, I'm talking about the damage to your liver that kills people, okay, from drinking excessive alcohol. Now, the same thing happens if you have a genetic situation like the dystrophin gene. okay if you have a variant of the dystrophin gene that causes muscles cells to divide faster from wear and tear you get muscular dystrophy muscular dystrophy is caused by a variant of a gene called dystrophin and so that accelerates telomeres shortening too but you don't you don't experience muscular dystrophy when you're young you only experience it later after you have had all those cells divide so much that the telomeres got so short that the damaged cells can't be replaced anymore.

33:00And same with AIDS, okay? Acquired immune deficiency syndrome. When people first get infected with the virus, they have no symptoms, but the virus is killing immune cells, and other immune cells are divided and replace those cells. But when you run out of telomeres, that's when AIDS starts showing its symptoms and you can't replace the damaged immune cells anymore. And that's why it's an immune deficiency syndrome. Okay. It's like there's everything aging and every, almost every disease you've ever heard of is connected to the length of our telomeres. And I always say bad things happen when telomeres get short and we have to solve that problem.

33:44And no matter what else we do to try to cure the aging process, nothing will ever cure Asian unless we also solve the telomere shortening problem because that is the one hard fast limit to our lifespan that is completely understood without any theories

34:00Matthew Januszek:sorry what about you know GL we've talked a lot about GLP ones and and if you look at some of the reports out there what what they seem to say is calorie caloric restriction is having a huge impact on people's lifespan um and a lot of these glp drugs because of some of the side effects or positive side effects that that people are not eating anymore they they these drugs are keeping people as well as losing weight they're keeping them um they're extending their lifespan so what what is your um sort of view on if any that the link with with a lot of the work that you're doing and some of these GLP-1s in relation to caloric restriction and that causing people to live longer?

34:48Well, you know, GLP-1 is just one of the many things that we can do to improve our health. And what happens as a result is that we reduce our wear and tear, okay, just with everything, okay? So everything we do that's healthy is actually reducing the wear and tear, which is preventing slowing down the rate of cell division that is needed to do to repair things. And that includes caloric restriction and stuff like that from producing less free radicals, which damage tissues and cells. There's also mitochondria dysfunction. Mitochondria dysfunction is a very important thing that correlates with aging, but it does so by not really causing aging.

35:31It causes a wear and tear that eventually will lead to teloneres being so short that we can't repair the wear and tear anymore. Okay, so, I mean, I can, if we had hours and hours to talk, I could talk forever on mitochondria health, how to maintain good mitochondria health, how to, you know, all the benefits of caloric restriction, senolytics, NAD. I mean, these things I understand fully. Better than most of the people that are even in the field studying these things. Because I spend every minute of every day just thinking about aging and figuring it all out and just trying to understand everything I can because I want to live forever.

36:19Matthew Januszek:So do you see, just for me, and dumbing this down then, Bill, is so you've got the wear and tear side and then you've got the extension or saving or preserving the telomeres. So some of the things that we've talked about such as GLP-1s, reducing alcohol, I guess things like exercise, even though I guess that does cause some inflammation. I'd be interested to get your thoughts on that as well. We'll skip back. But some of those things, what you're saying are helping to reduce the wear and tear on the organs, which are naturally going to assist. But then there's this other side which is the telomere, which also works to extend your lifespan.

36:58Matthew Januszek:Have I understood that correctly? Yes, but, you know, we're talking about a five-hour podcast here. I speak all the time at not just anti-aging medical conferences and cancer conferences and heart disease conferences, but also at sports conferences, okay, about athletics. okay so yes athletics if done wrong incorrectly especially endurance well endurance exercise and bodybuilding and things like that can accelerate your wear and tear and telomere shortening and things but there's also ways that exercise that don't do that now i used to hold the world's record for the most 100 mile races run in a year and people would think well isn't that a contradiction to everything that I think.

37:45But no, because it turns out that when you exercise consistently, like I run every single day, I haven't missed a day now in six years. If I run every single day, I train, but I keep it fun. Okay. And the rule is if it ever stops being fun, quit and save it for another day. Because when you are one of those runners, let's say, It's not just running. It's kayaking, bicycling, hiking, everything you can imagine in endurance sports. If you are an occasional endurance exerciser, let's say you run every two weeks, and then you go and run a marathon, you'll do okay. But you'll be on your hands and knees throwing up afterwards, and you'll be stiff as a board from inflammation for two weeks.

38:38and that's all because your body isn't conditioned to know what all this means okay your body doesn't have brains but the systems send the pain on your joints are sending signals to your brain and everything like that causing an immune response inflammation is going to the joints to fight whatever is there but if you run every single day your body doesn't do that because it it gets conditioned, okay, or acclimated, okay, is probably the better word. And so I've done, I've gone to ultra marathons, even when I was running on myself, I've taken blood from runners beforehand, during and after the races.

39:20And I've looked at all kinds of things from electrolytes to inflammation markers to oxidative stress, looked at correlated with their electrolytes and their lifestyle and things like that and i think it's very very clear that those people that exercise mostly for the fun of it okay and like when the runners who go out running for the adventure more than the the strain are actually decreasing their inflammation and oxidative stress not increasing okay so so i think there's so running is is a goldilocks effect kind of system where there's such a thing as too little running, too little exercise or endurance exercise that actually increases oxidative stress and inflammation.

40:07And then there's too much. By too much, I don't mean quantity. I mean intensity. Okay. So don't be one of those people that push so hard that you are on your hands and knees throwing up after an event. Be somebody that, you know, 90 miles into 100 mile race, you're saying, Oh, my God, I'm having the time of my life, I wish it would never end. Okay, that is, that's the way I am when I'm running a hundred mile race. Okay, I just can't get over the adventure that being out in nature and things like that. And it's like, I really don't want it to end. Sometimes I even fall asleep while I'm running.

40:43I'm so running so long. And I suffer from something I call can't turnaround disorder. Okay, it's like, I just what if I say, tell somebody I'm going out for a two mile run and I get on a trail, I just can't turn around because I'm just, what's around the next turn? What's over the next hill? I'm not saying to myself, oh, I need to train harder, get more exercise. I just know it's just the running is just by exploring and having fun is actually really good for me. And it's, but yeah, I just probably spent most of our time just on that short description. No, it's all good. Look, we should definitely go running, Dr.

41:24Bill. I run almost every day. I've not done an ultra marathon, but I've done numerous marathons. I don't think on mile 22 I'm thinking about I can go for another 22 miles. I'm thinking about how can I finish the last 4.2 miles of a marathon. So I still need to get there. But ultra marathon running is completely different from a running one. And by the way, Michael Wardian, who I think you probably know, lives a mile away from me. So I see him on the trails. We run together all the time. And I'm going to look you up on Strava next. We can be Strava friends. If you know him, I'll tell him that you said hi and that we had him on this podcast.

42:01I know of him. I don't know him personally. But my running buddies used to be like Ann Trayson and Dean Karnasas and things like that. It's a different time. Um, I, let's see, there was something I want to add. I want to, just quickly ask for years. One of the things that we talk a lot about on this podcast is longevity and recovery. And you've kind of touched on both. So we, our industry, the industry that we're in, which is predominantly, most of the people listening are in the fitness or wellness industries. And over the last five years, they've really incorporated all forms of recovery into their facilities, into the training.

42:43We're talking about things like Norma Tech boots, compression boots, red light therapy, cold plunges, just hyperbaric chambers, which actually that's kind of shown to increase the length of telomeres. I'm just curious, when you look at influencers, founders, consumers asking about what comes next, then you've got people like Brian Johnson and Dave Asprey that are pretty much running public experiments. certainly not with the science pedigree that you have, but they're tracking biomarkers, tracking a ton of things and sharing everything in real time. On one hand, the good thing is that it's unprecedented engagement that we've ever seen with science, if you can call it that.

43:27But on the other hand, biology does not really move at social media speed. So they're trying to really accelerate things. And as you said, you want to live forever. Brian Johnson says, it doesn't want to die. From where you sit inside the mechanisms, is this really accelerating progress or is it oversimplifying extremely complex systems? Because here's the thing, telomeres is not something I've ever heard a Gary Brecka or a Brian Johnson or Dave Asprey actually talk about. 99 % of the anti-aging field is looking for ways to make a buck out of anti-aging products, whether they work or not, okay?

44:07And they don't really try to understand everything like I do, because my mission is to cure my own aging. I want to be around when we find life on other planets, okay? It's like a lot of great things are going to happen in the future. I don't want to miss out. So I'm focused on really what's going on with aging. But, you know, you'd mentioned things like hyperbaric chambers make telomeres longer. Okay, well, that's a total misunderstanding. And I've talked to a lot of, when I see them at conferences and expos selling, making these claims, I'll say, okay, so where's the data showing that telomeres are being lengthened?

44:48Okay, because there are ways of making telomeres longer in your blood without them being lengthened. Okay. And it's actually not making them longer. You're just actually causing a change in the cell population in your blood to either bring in cells that have longer telomeres. So cells from your bone marrow. So if you have an inflammatory response, cells in your bone marrow, which have long telomeres, even when you're really long lived, they have long telomeres. They're going to divide and infiltrate your blood And as a result, the average length of your telomeres are going to be longer. Same is true with toxins and stuff like that, which are going to preferentially kill off cells that have short telomeres.

45:36As a result, the average telomere length in your blood is going to increase. And the analogy that explains that best is if you have a company and you fire your dumbest employees, the average IQ of your company increases without anybody getting any smarter. Same as if your company hired a bunch of geniuses, the average IQ of your company increases without anybody getting smarter. These things are happening in our blood. And so what I try to say is that when somebody tells you that they have some kind of product, whether it's a lifestyle, diet, therapy, et cetera, supplement, ask them, does your product induce the expression of telomerase?

46:18because that's really the only way to know if your telomeres got lengthened. The only thing that can lengthen telomeres is this enzyme telomerase, which we haven't even talked about yet. It's like in the 1990s, when I first learned about telomere shorting, I was essentially recruited by this company called Geron Corporation to lead an effort to discover a way to lengthen telomeres. And I discovered this enzyme telomerase by the fact that our reproductive cells couldn't possibly have short telomeres shortening. If they did, our children would be born with shorter telomeres than we have. So in our reproductive cells, I and my team discovered this enzyme called telomerase.

47:01And we then put it into other cells and showed that we could totally stop the aging and process in those two and stop the hayflick limit, as I mentioned before. But you have to show, so if there's a product out there that somebody's claiming lengthens telomerase, they have to show that it induces the expression of telomerase. And so I encourage people to ask that question. And I'm going to right now tell you, because I know we're running out of time. That's what my main research is doing, is trying to find anything that can get inside of our cells, turn on the gene for telomerase, which exists in all of our cells, because for reproductive cells produce telomerase, we have the gene for all of it, in all of our cells.

47:45It's just shut off, but it's repressed in all of our other cells. I've been looking for ways of de-repressing the telomerase gene to produce telomerase in all of our cells to lengthen our telomeres. And I've tested, I've got million dollar robots here that can test 4 ,000 different plant extracts a day or chemicals a day or molecules a day. And the best thing that we've ever, I'm going to do some marketing right now. This is a product called Televital. It's produced by a company called Touchstone Essentials. It's USDA organic. And what I really like about this product, one thing I like about it is it contains the top five most potent natural products, natural ingredients that we've ever discovered.

48:34Okay. And it mixes these things in here. When somebody takes this product, it induces telomerase inside of their cells. It doesn't, telomere shortening and lengthening is like a tug of war. They're shortening and lengthening. But in the absence of this product, there's only shortening. So this is adding some people to the lengthening side of the tug of war to lengthen telomeres, but it doesn't, it's not potent enough yet to win a tug of war. But in a few years, we're going to have something that wins that tug of war. Okay, but - Bill, just on that. Well, let me just say, this slows down the aging process.

49:10And a lot of people say, you mean it doesn't reverse aging like all the other products do? Nothing reverses aging, but this is the only product that I know of that actually can slow down the aging process, and that's a good thing. Sorry.

49:22Matthew Januszek:No, it's okay. So with this, obviously, we have a lot of people online. Mo gave a few examples of people like Gary Brecker, who I like a lot of what he says, but I'm always very skeptical when he comes out of it because I'm waiting for the product drop to happen at the end. And obviously, you've got a product, and I guess that's what funds it. I don't have a product. Oh, you don't have a product. I discovered the ingredients that this company put into their product. Okay. All right. So on that, just to be clear then, how are you, I guess, connected with the company or with this product? And I just want to get clear to see whether there's arguably any kind of influence or leaning towards a particular product that that supported or supporting any of your research in into this particular idea.

50:14Matthew Januszek:And maybe that's for the people that are listening as well, because, you know, you have to be quite skeptical with people that have an opinion and even some of the ways that research is funded, because it could lead you to a particular direction. And somebody's creating a huge pharmaceutical company or vitamin company behind the scenes. So just just curious if you can kind of, you know, give us a clear overview of that as well. So any like we do, like, bring in go to market partners, okay, but we don't actually go out and pursue go to market partners, we, when we when we make a discovery, we put it on the shelf, because we're too busy doing research to actually try to think about products, because our goal is to cure the eating process, we want to, we would have loved to have been able to turn like somebody like Betty White back into a 25-year-old.

51:02Look, feel, and behave 25. That's the goal of our research. But then we do get contacted by companies that ask if they can license, let's say, some of the discoveries that we've made and just put on the shelf. And we'll say, sure, but you have to provide my company with a royalty that will go 100 % towards the research. Okay, so it's a way of helping to fund our research. Our research here costs$2 million a month. Okay. Now that some product sale, like some of the other Televital or some of the other products, they will never, ever come close to covering that full expense. So, so it's a lot of, a lot of other sources of funding too, but, but we do get a royalty, but believe me, we don't go out of our way to try to find those royalties to try to make money because we're too busy doing our research.

51:55Our goal is to curate, and especially in my lifetime. Yeah, so I do understand. I see this all the time. I see a lot of people trying to market products that actually don't work. They're based on poor science, and I actually have my own podcast, which is called Up One, because I take things up a notch in terms of evaluating scientifically peer-reviewed studies. So I don't just do what is called critical meta-analysis of peer-reviewed studies. I don't just do meta-analysis. I do critical meta-analysis, which means I read all the papers. And with my arsenal of tools, I am good at looking at experimental design, data analysis, construct validity, statistical theory, all these different things that make a paper good or bad that most reviewers will actually miss.

52:46And that's why a lot of junk papers get published. But I will go through this in my podcast and really explain to people what really works and what doesn't really work. And so I will be honest with you, 90 plus percent of the products on the market do not work. And I don't actually say their names or go out and point fingers at them and stuff like that. I will tell people what questions to ask. and the question to ask when anybody claims to lengthen telomeres is does the product induce telomerase expression and this product does okay this product does induce telomerase expression and i'm not going to say if other products do or not but i'm going to say go and ask them and if somebody tells you that they do have a product or somebody tells somebody who's listening to this podcast somebody does have a product that they say they show data that lengthens telomeres or that induces telomerase expression and lengthens telomeres.

53:47Show me the data because I would like to look at, because I'm the inventor or co-inventor of every method there is for measuring telomere length, measuring telomerase activity. And I just swear to God, I see so much crap out there. Scientific publications where people actually on the very first page of their publication show a picture of what's called an electrophoresis gel showing that their product induces telomerase expression. And then me and my colleagues that really know all this stuff look at that paper and they say, that's not a telomerase assay. It's like they're showing some garbage data and telling everybody it's telomerase and it's not even telomerase.

54:31This is the kind of crap that occurs. And people, this whole, you're going to get me going on. There are actually videos of me talking about the problems with why cancer is not cured, why publish or perish is a rule that has destroyed the scientific industry. People are publishing just so they can add more publications to their list because that's how they get grants. Then there's – We tried to pause there. And by the way, there's also a lot coming from China as well on the research field. One thing you look – And it's good. And it's good. A lot of good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And what we typically do, just because we're short in time here, we typically like to end with our final takeaways on this podcast.

55:15I think you've been a fantastic guest. We need to get you back on. I've got a couple of quickfire questions, just maybe one answer questions, Matthew. I'd love to give you a couple as well. So let me go through my list here, and I'd love to find out yes or no. So first question is, in the year that you set the record for running the most 100 mile races, how many races did you run? I ran 12. 12, okay. That was 1998. Incredible. And in terms of some of these therapies that we've seen, yes, would you say that they work or not? Red light therapy, effective or no for longevity? See, I don't do that, but I will tell you that they all have benefits, okay?

56:02But they all, if I say all, then I blame the product, but a lot of them will make claims that aren't actually accurate. I'm not saying that they intentionally do it, they just might unintentionally not understand what's really going on. Okay. Is HRV a North Star indicator for health or longevity? So many people use that. Well, no, it's health. Okay. It's a measure of health and poor health is going to decrease longevity. And it's important to separate the two. How about cold plunging? Is that a great recovery tool? You're putting me on the spot. I don't do it. Okay.

56:46Matthew Januszek:Matthew. I've got one question. And it's, again, Bill, it's more to many of the people that are listening to this that are in the health and fitness and wellness space. Outside of the supplement that you recommended there, which I think we'll like to get the details and we'll share that with people that are listening. But what would you say are some real basics in terms of whether that's exercise, diet, sleep, and we even talked about alcohol? What would be three or four of your recommendations that you would say are solid pillars that we should do our best to follow that will help support some of the research that you've been able to find about essentially living longer?

57:39Well, decrease the rate of cell division and decrease the rate of telomere shortening. Okay, is really the most important things. And so antioxidants, anti-inflammatories are extremely important. Vitamin C, well, vitamin C is really important, but more important than that is vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids. Those things are the most well-published and past muster in my critical meta-analysis of peer-reviewed studies on the ability of able to decrease their rate of telomere shortening. Okay, now they don't lengthen telomeres. Okay, so when I was talking about the tug of war between shortening and lengthening, we can add people to the lengthening side, but we can also remove people from the shortening side.

58:26Okay, and so those kind of things. So quit smoking will reduce the number of people on the shortening side. Quit drinking, same thing. Yoga, meditation. I speak at yoga and meditation conferences all the time, and I show data showing that people that do yoga and meditation have longer telomeres than their friends of the same age that don't. Exercise is fun. Lose weight. Obesity actually accelerates aging by accelerating wear and tear, therefore accelerating telomere shortening. And it does so by the induced inflammation and oxidative stress that burdens the body from all the excess weight. Then there's other things like even pessimism.

59:12And I don't really understand why, but there's two studies showing that pessimism, actually pessimistic people have shorter telomeres than people their same age that are optimistic. So if you don't think you'll live to be 100, you probably won't. And telomeres will tell you so. I'm trying to think of what else to tell you. I would, to reduce inflammation, I would take the ALCAT test, A-L-C-A-T. Okay, I have nothing to do with this test, but I'm a big believer in it. It's a test that measures what foods cause inflammation in you. Identify what those are. You can find it on Google by A-L-C-A-T. also read Dr.

59:57Sandra Kaufman's book called The Kaufman Protocol. She's written two books now. I think they're the best books ever written on the subjects of what supplements each person should take and every person is different. And this book tells you how to identify which ones you should take. And there's also like cardiovascular disease, okay, which I don't know if we didn't have time to talk about, but I've invented a lot of cardiovascular treatments and drugs and things like that, as well as cancer and other things. But there's books by Dr. Amy Donin and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. Her last name is D-O-N-E-E-N.

1:00:38His last name is E-S-S-E-L-S-T-Y-N. Those books are the best written. I'm also going to add Floyd Shilton, who's written inflammation nation. Dr. Caldo Esselstyn's book is Reducing and Reversing Heart Disease. Dr. Amy Donin's books are called The Heart Attack Gene, and she's got another book on brain health because brain health is very cardiovascular related. But those books, I mean, I have those books here. I've read everything. I've got them all marked up as which pages are important, really critical. I think they're really good, but I'm trying to think of what else to tell you. It's do endurance exercise, keep moving every single day.

1:01:26On the subject of marathons and stuff like that, I'm going to tell you, my wife is the most incredible person when it comes to marathons. I'm imaginable. She's just about to turn 69 years old. She just a few months ago ran seven marathons on seven continents and seven goals okay and then she after that she got on a boat my friends who did that she got she got on a boat and went to the north pole and ran a marathon right after that so she's she she's one of the handful of people because they had a leg of that in antarctica too yeah that was the first the first leg of the race uh to do seven marathons on seven continents in seven days was on antarctica that's right and they went to i think dubai and then south africa yeah south you're right south africa then dubai then perth i i've lost track after that it's just she's non-stop and she's she's the oldest person to ever do that okay and i don't like using the word old i just did it accidentally she's the longest lived person to ever do that because living is about, life's about living, not getting old.

1:02:42Okay, so. Well, this has been fascinating. We're going to have to get you on. There's so much that we're going to unpack here. I just want to thank you for coming on. Matthew, I will hand it off to you to close.

1:02:53Matthew Januszek:Yeah, thanks again, Bill. We always say this, there's always a lot more to talk about, but I think in this case, maybe what we can do is we can come up with a few specific areas that that you particularly focus on and maybe do a little bit more of a deep dive because we've, we have tried to cover a lot of things. And we've also tried to deal with some of the sort of skepticism of, of a lot of the information that's out there with, when it comes to the word longevity or the biohacking space. And, and you certainly have, you know, you've, you've certainly got a lot of information and research to, to back that up.

1:03:30Matthew Januszek:So thanks again for, for joining us, please uh we'll we'll put some information on how you can find more about bill how you can find out about his podcast and some of the research he's done we'll include that in the show notes and also on the email that we put out and um thank you very much for listening i hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as we have

1:04:05Thank you.