Aging is Now Optional w/ David Sinclair | EP #60

0:00I'm NFL Lineback at Tijayawatt and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the active wearer I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co -design their latest drop. I work with designers to create high -performance active wear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in -store online and in the app. Because your personal best is greater than anything.

0:31When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together, use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end -to -end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp .com. Do you think there is an upper limit to human aging? It's not even a question.

1:05Let me explain. I thought that that wasn't fair to have consciousness and to know that we're going to be sick and dying or whatever and all that. I was inspired by my grandmother who told me that humans can do better. My PhD supervisor said, why would you go study aging? It's not even a real science. And thank goodness I didn't listen to them. aging isn't just damage to the body like we wear out, it's actually a loss of information. There will be a day, I believe, where you'll be able to rejuvenate your brain and get back memories, get your ability to learn again. I'm no longer talking about slowing aging, I'm talking about true age reversal multiple times.

1:41There's a backup copy of information in every cell, and that fact that there is a backup copy changes everything. There is no law that says we must age. Remember that.

1:55Welcome to Moonshots and Mindsets. One of my favorite conversations from abundance 360 this year was a fireside chat with Dr. David Sinclair. Knowing around the world is one of the leading, if not the leading thinker on age reversal in epigenetics. David is a professor at Harvard Medical School who studies aging and longevity. He had just published an epic paper in Cell about the work he's done over 13 years on on how to accelerate aging from epigenetic changes and then reverse that aging. In this segment, we're gonna be diving into the work that he's most recently done and where he thinks it's going.

2:36You know, I'm a fan of David, a big fan. I've donated to his lab. I've written about his work in the book that I wrote with Tony Robbins called Life Force. I promoted his book Life Span, David St. Clair's book, probably more than I've promoted at my books. He's one of the most exhilarating thinkers, a deer and beautiful soul. We're going to be visiting David during my longevity platinum trip this coming August and going to his lab. And I'll probably have a follow on podcast when we dive into some of the deep science that he's doing. He's an individual that during this conversation will answer the question, is there an upper age to how long we live.

3:20What is the latest on the epigenetic reprogramming that has been able to reverse the aging of tissues? And he's someone with whom I'm working on a health span ex -price. Super excited about this. All right, so settle in, get ready. What would you do with an extra 20 or 30 years of healthy lifespan? You're about to find out. Enjoy this episode for my a private summit to Bunnens 360 with Dr. David Sinclair. Welcome, David. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me back. Hi, everyone. Thank you to you and Serena for flying in from India. It was a long flight. How long was that? I don't know. Too long. Well, the topic of longevity has grown to one of epic proportions.

4:12I think I want to hit on a point I made earlier. The idea of human health span extension of age reversal was kind of a taboo subject a while ago, wasn't it? Well, not too long ago. Yeah, when I started in this field in the early 90s, it was considered the end of my career by many people. So my PhD supervisor said, why would you go study aging? It's too complicated to understand. It's not even a real science. And thank goodness I didn't listen to him. Yeah, so remember that for our students out there watching. Was it what was it that got you to move into that direction? Was it a personal passion?

4:52Was it inkling? It was definitely more than an inkling and still is. If any of you have read my book, you'll know that it was By the way, how many folks have here have read lifespan? Yes? Thank you. I appreciate that And Peter, I think you know the answer to the question. That's why you asked it. I was inspired by my grandmother who told me that humans can do better. And that's what I love about what Peter does here. That's the vision. We can always do better. There's a bright horizon that we need to get to. We need to steer humanity in that direction. I felt that way my whole life. That's why we're friends among other reasons.

5:31And so she said when I was four years old that everybody I knew including my pets were going to die and it's not going to be pretty And then I'm going to die and as a four -year -old that was a bit of a shock to be told that and we all we all learn this around the same age But we forget about it because it's too painful to live every day knowing that fact as sentient beings as conscious animals It's really a burden that we bear And I also thought that that wasn't fair to have consciousness and to know that we're going to be sick and dying and watch everyone else die That was the age four and then at age around 1516 I thought this new technology called genetic engineering could actually tackle this problem in a way that had never been done before so I said my sights on that Let's go to January 12th You published a paper in cell you published a few landmark papers this one being amongst them that showed the ability to control aging using epigenetics in mammals.

6:35Just, you know, what were the major points of that paper? Because it definitely, it cemented your work and this concept of the information theory of aging. Yeah, so the information theory of aging, as it's called, I formulated when I was still in my 20s, I woke up in the middle of the night with this idea. It, I guess, was delivered to me by Muses. Wrote it down in my notebook, and I still have that notebook in my office. And I'd been going off that playbook ever since. And that's the idea that aging isn't just damage to the body, like we wear out. It's actually a loss of information that we inherited from our parents and built on during development.

7:18And yeast cells have that problem. And we just finally published when was that 25 years later that we mammals have the same issue. And by understanding, I think, a large part of why we age, we were able to control the aging process in a colony of mice, driving them forwards and backwards in their age and making them get diseases. And now we're even reversing those. That's spectacular. So one of the questions we asked here, but even when they walked in here, was put on their badge, how old do you think you will live? And I think the 90 % had hit 120 or higher, but I think what's happened is society has trained us to have certain expectations.

8:06If your parents and grandparents had made it to 75 or 80, you expect that. And when you hear the oldest living human being is 122, 123, you think, okay, there's a brick wall there. One of the questions I'd love you to share, when the answer to love you to share, is do you think there is an upper limit to human aging? Well, I know there isn't. No, there is not. Yeah, it's not even a question.

8:37Drop the mic moment. Let me explain.

8:44There are lots of reasons why I give that answer to me itself evident, but for some people it isn't. And there are critics of this idea that we can live beyond 120. But one of the best examples is that we've been able to extend the lifespan of every species that we've tried to extend the lifespan of and we're no different from those species. That's point one. The second is that there are many species who are very similar to us genetically, biologically, that live a lot longer than we do. The best example would be the bowhead whale, but a lot of whales live longer than us. And they have children, they're conscious, they produce milk.

9:19So we just need to mimic what they have, it allows them to live so long. And I think we have a much better idea now of how to do that. And so yeah, there is no law that says we must age. Remember that. So one of the things that's going on, we've spent the last few days talking about massive advances as an AI and quantum computing and sensors networks big data. And the realization is we're in a period of very hyper growth of these technologies. And you know, it's Ray Kurzweil who will be speaking tomorrow morning talks about the bridge to a bridge that your job is not to live. Now to do something that's going to get you an extra 100 years, it's to get you the next 10 healthy years to intercept those technologies.

10:02Do you agree with the idea, David? I think you do, but maybe your time frame is different, that this next decade is very different than any time ever. Oh, for sure. So we're already many decades ahead of where I thought we would be technologically from when I started. I thought I was working to help my children and future children and grandchildren, but it turns out that the pace of discovery has gone way faster, and that's partly due to technology, we can now do an experiment that analyzes billions of genes in the same time frame in a day that used to take us years of work and billions of dollars.

10:46And that allows us to do very quick experiments. The other thing that makes me super positive about this is that we've made a, I think we've made a major breakthrough in our understanding of not just why we age, but also how to control that process. And the turning point in my career was the discovery that there's a backup copy of information in every cell, in every body's cells, and that that backup copy can be accessed. And there's a switch that you can flip that allows cells to reset their biological age and function again as though they were young because literally they are young again. And that fact that there is a backup copy changes everything.

11:32We're no longer talking about slowing aging. I'm talking about true age reversal multiple times. And I don't get laughed off stage anymore when I say that. Do you wanna give it up for that? That's...

11:49I mean the idea that we aren't tied to the tyranny of aging and death is extraordinary, changes everything. Everybody, Peter D. Madness here, I've been asked over and over again, what do I do for my own health? Well, I put it down in this book called Peter's Longevity Practices. It's very readable in just an hour. In the book I cover, longevity diet, exercise, sleep, my annual found upload, meds, and supplements, longevity mindset. It's literally consumable in just an hour's time. Hopefully to incentivize you to make a difference in your life, to intercept the technologies coming our way. If you want this, it's free.

12:32Just check out the link below and download it right now. The evidence that you have for this backup copy, there are a few things you speak about in your book and your podcast, could you speak just a few examples there? Right, let's see, we've got some visuals we could call up actually. So let's call up the slide with the four faces on it, the top right on our guide here. Slide six, I think it is. Yep, that's a good one. Alright, so let's do a show of hands. So how many of you have heard of the epigenome or at least epigenetics? I hope everybody's raising your hand. All right, we're done. They're all good students.

13:16All right, so the concept is that what we've realized is that most of disease and disability is not driven by our genes, it's actually controlled by the regulator of those genes, which is the epigenome. One of the best examples of that are these people here. So these are individuals from two sets of twins. these are in Denmark, a very large study of Danish twins, looking at the effects of genes versus environment, or epigenetics, which is what responds to the environment. And so if we click the button forward once, you'll see that the identical twin of these two individuals, hopefully you can see, looks a lot younger, and is actually younger biologically.

13:56We can now measure that. And it turns out that by living a healthy lifestyle, often you hear about doctors recommending these things. we know a lot about how to slow down the aging process. You don't just look younger, you actually are biologically younger. And that's why if you exercise, you eat right, you eat less often, you take the right supplements, you will be biologically younger and you will actually stave off disease until much later. So what does that actually mean if we go back one slide? The concept is information. So the main type of information that we know about is the genome in the DNA.

14:32But there's also another level of information that's just as important and even more complex. That's the epigenome. And those are the structures that control how the DNA is bundled and shaped in which genes out of the 25 ,000 get turned on and off when we're forming an embryo and we develop. And those genes can be switched on and off depending on how we live. If we put our bodies in a state of perceived adversity or adversity that isn't too damaging, the epigenome will actually respond and be more stable. So the idea is you want to stabilize your epigenome so that your cells remember how to function youthfully for longer.

15:06The analogy, as shown in this slide, is compact disc, hopefully all of you remember what those things are. You're incredibly. Incredible technology you could fit about 20 songs on there. When I teach at Harvard, the kids are like, what are you talking about? So if you're young, it's like resetting a computer or pressing the buttons on the side of your iPhone. So what the analogy is that the digital information is the DNA and that's the music, but you need to read it, it's not just pits on a metallic disk. The epigenome is the equivalent of the reader of that information and the songs of the genes.

15:45And aging I believe and our new paper presents very strong evidence, this is the case, that aging is a kind of scratches on the CD so that the cells still have the music, the genes, but they're just not read correctly at the right time in the right place so that your cells forget how to work. So we see that brain cells become more like skin cells and skin cells become more like kidney cells, we become a melange instead of highly differentiated functioning youthful cells. And so that's the information theory of aging and what we found out in this paper is what drives that process in large part is broken DNA, avoid x -rays, CT scans.

16:19if you can help it, don't fly too much. If you can help it. Yeah, well, don't do what I do. And live what were ways that actually prevent those breaks, because that disrupts the epigenome we showed. But here's the cool point is that we've discovered you can polish off those scratches and get back the beautiful music of cells and their youth. So that's extraordinary. There's a concept that has been talked about for some time of longevity escape velocity. that there's a moment in time that for every year that you're alive, science can extend your life for more than a year. And I think the numbers that people talk about today is that we're for every four years, we're adding a year of life.

17:01Where are you on this and where do you think, what do you think will reach longevity escape velocity? How far out are we? Well, so we get about three months for every year, we stay alive, currently, without breakthroughs, like the one I'm talking about. Let me give you an update on where we are today. Please. And whatever you're willing to say, I know some of it's amazing. And we can extrapolate from here, but remember it's not linear. There's one thing from this conference. The journey has been a rapid one. We made this discovery that you can reset the age of cells, human tissue, mouse tissue, living mice.

17:48What is it now? It's about five years ago. It was published three years ago. We started working on mice. We reset the eyeballs of mice to be young again. They got their vision back. That was the cover of nature. That got the cover of nature. That's the December 2020. Third row far right slide. You were very fortunate. Nature was bold enough to put the title, turning back time on the cover of their magazine. We're very honored by that. And this is the paper that changed everything for my lab, for my outlook about aging. And what we've done since then is we've formed a company called Life Bio Sciences.

18:28and they've been pushing ahead for all those years. We've done extensive studies in mice. We needed to know if it was safe. It's very safe. We've never seen anything negative after years of work and driving this process. We found that those three genes, O, S, and K for short, these are gene regulators that set off a cascade of events during embryogenesis to make a young human. Turns out, lucky for all of us, I think, is that those three genes also set back the clock in adult cells without causing tumors or any disease. And without bringing them back so far, that they've lost identity. And this is the thing that blows my mind, is you'd think that if you just keep it on for a long time, you'd go back to zero, age zero, which you don't want.

19:15It's not true. They go, cells go back about 80 % and stop. There's a barrier that prevents them from going back to zero if we leave off that other gene. It's a gift to humanity for sure. And so now we're at the point where we're conducting at LifeBuyer Sciences, a Boston -based company. Non -human primates, these are green monkey studies. I should say the reason that there's an iris on this cover is that we show that you could reverse blindness due to glaucoma and also old age by resetting the age of the retina back to youth. And those mice got their full vision back again. So the think about this your body if this is true the body is Looks old, but it's actually it just needs to be reset So I don't think of an old person now as an old person.

20:04I think it's just a body that needs to be reset polished So this is a big deal because I mean one of the critiques about the work that you and other individuals in this field have done is It's all done in mice, you know, that's great, but we're humans, you know mice get all the benefits But non -human primates is a big deal. We share 99 .99 % of our genetic code with them. We do. And so I had a sneak peek at the results. And I would say things look rather promising at this point. It's a big deal, guys. It's a very big deal.

20:47And so it's my prediction that will be in the next 18 months or two years, testing our first age reversal clinical trial in humans to cure blindness and those studies are actually being planned right now and the material to do that is being manufactured. How are you guys feeling about your longevity mindset now?

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22:30Trust me, your gut will thank you. Alright, let's get back to our episode. You know, we're going to be, thank you, we're going to be visiting your lab during the longevity platinum trip in August and September. or how many graduate students do you have there, what's the setup that you have that will be meeting? Yeah, I don't know if you had this experience, but every day I go into my life and I'm surprised how small it is. It's just like Elon Musk says, if you have dedicated people who know really how to make a difference and look forward rather than today, they can achieve anything. And so I've got this small group of around 20 bright -eyed young PhD students and postdocs who perform all this magic.

23:13And it's a pretty small lapse about a thousand square feet we do it all there. And yeah, to me it's amazing to walk in there and I never get tired of showing people around because it's like magic. You go in and you see, actually I think the next slide might be interesting. Click to the right. And what you'll see is that we're now growing human brains. Have any of you seen, do you think they're going to grow these organoids? Probably many of you have seen this. So on the left we have cerebral organoids grown from human tissue. We can now, I think we're the only lab now that can make these brains get really old.

23:48We can make them 70 years old within a matter of weeks. Now they develop dementia. We can measure that with these electrodes on the right. We grow them on these little electrodes. And then we do reverse the age of those little organoids and they get their thinking ability back, whatever that is. we do see the electrolyte activity come back. Sometimes they grow little eyes as well, it's kind of cool. Amazing. But why do we do that? It's not just cool. It's actually tells us that the whole brain is reversible. And we've actually done this now in mice. We haven't published this, so you've heard it here first.

24:18That we can reverse the age of an old mouse's brain, so they have dementia. We spend three weeks reversing the age of the brain. We just give them an intravenous injection of our therapy, turn it on for four weeks. And those mice have a young brain, and they have their ability to learn again. So I imagine a day where we will have an infusion either in our eye or in our whole body, and we just take a drug to turn those genes on. We use Dr. Ciclin, just your antibiotic. As a trigger for those things. Just a trigger, we don't need an antibiotic. It's not used as an antibiotic, it's an on -off switch.

24:51But we can reset the body. And so after the eye, we're gonna go after hearing and dementia. And there will be a day, I believe, where you will be able to rejuvenate your brain and get back memories, get your ability to learn again. Wow, let's give it up for that. I mean, are you guys here in the same thing? I just want to jump up and down here. I mean, so listen, I've asked Ray Kurzweil, I've asked George Church, and now I'm asking you, this idea of longevity, escape velocity target date. Let me give you a couple of decades and tell me, you know, as a betting man under over, within the next decade, in the second decade, in the third decade.