How to Measure and REVERSE Your Biological Age | Dr. David Sinclair EP 675

0:03Hey everyone, this is Lewis Howes and I am so excited to invite you to the Summit of Greatness 2024 for happening at the iconic Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. This is more than just an event. It's a powerful experience designed to ignite your passion, boost your growth, and connect you with a community of other inspiring achievers. Join us Friday, September 13th, and Saturday, September 14th for two days packed with inspiration and transformation from some of the most incredible speakers on the planet. Don't miss out on this chance to elevate your life, unlock your potential, and be part of something truly special.

0:38Make sure to get your tickets right now and step into greatness with us at the Summit of Greatness 2024. Head over to lewishouse.com slash tickets and get your tickets today and I will see you there. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

1:02How much does alcohol, smoking, or marijuana, or psychedelics actually affect lifespan? Do we have enough research on this? Well, we do on tobacco smoking. Obviously, it's very clear. That's a decade off your life. And what's interesting is that what we're learning about these various things that you can do to hurt yourself or to protect yourself is that what's happening is that your body is aging at a different rate. So smokers, you can measure it, are older biologically than people who've never smoked. And that's why they look older too. We can measure that now in my lab. If I took your blood, I could tell you how old you are biologically, not just your chronologically.

1:41I want to do that. I saw you post this on Instagram that you're like 46. Is that right? Or you're 42 or what is it? I went down to, what was it, 44, I think. Okay, 44. It bounces around, but it's usually a decade younger than I. That's cool. So what do you do? You take a blood sample and then you what? Measure the blood? There's two ways of doing it. There's one company that I advise called Inside Tracker, and that's what I use. I've had that too, yeah. You've done that yet? Yeah, yeah. So they come to your home where you donate, and then you get this readout of, I think it's 40 different parameters, and they use an algorithm and tell you how old you are.

2:15So I'm 42 or something like that. I do want to say is I use my body as an experiment and try to be a role model. And I've been optimizing my lifestyle for 20 years now based on this feedback from Insight Tracker for the last 12, 13 years. And you can see the graphs of things going out of the optimal zone and then I make a change based on science and it comes back or even better. So we know from smokers that their biological age is older when they smoke is what you're saying, right? Yeah. Well, that's one test. The InsideTracker test is what I do routinely every few months. But there's a new type of test that my colleagues and in my lab we've developed.

2:53It's called the DNA methylation test. It's also known as the Horvath test, named after my friend Stephen Horvath at UCLA. The way to think of this is, if you've ever heard of the epigenome, these are the control systems that control our DNA. It turns out that that system you can measure. It's chemicals on your DNA that change over time predictably. And we've just developed a way to measure that 100 times cheaper than it was before. And I'm going to bring this test to the public so that people can test their biological age. At home or something? It should be a cheek swab. That's what we're developing.

3:29So you don't have to prick or take blood or anything. You do a cheek swab. Exactly. And you ship it in or something? Yeah, you'll post it in. And then you get, hopefully just a week later or less, here's your credit score for your body. That's cool. And then even better, here's how you slow it down or reverse it based on everything we know about you. Wow, that's cool. And we'll take you on that journey. So do this, eat this, swallow this. That is cool. And the reason I'm excited about it is it's very hard to focus on what works because we have no idea. You exercise, you hope that it's good. Yeah.

4:00Is it too much, too little? If I eat this, does it help me? We need a dashboard for our bodies, and that's what these give you. We know that smoking makes you age biologically. That's why it makes you look older, smoking. What about drinking alcohol? We've talked about wine and the substance in wine that could be supportive, but alcohol in general, does that affect biological age and aging? Well, it all depends on quantity. one glass a day most doctors would say, especially if it's red wine it's fine, and the alcohol actually can help with the cardiovascular system reduces bad cholesterol and more importantly raises the good cholesterol HDL.

4:42This is for red wine and the alcohol in white wine does a little bit of good too. But beer so beer will raise the levels of uric acid which is a protein breakdown product that you can pee out but if you have too much beer and other types of food that contain a lot of this type of protein you will raise your uric acid level so why does that matter it's becoming very clear that if you have high uric acid levels your body will age fast i now measure my uric acid levels you can get little test strips uh you can just buy them you know you spit on it and 10 seconds later you see your levels. And so the lower the level, the better.

5:26The higher the level means there's risk for what? It's really bad for cancers and heart disease mainly. It's a sign of accelerated aging.

5:40Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:36Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the daily motivation show.