EP. 04: Anti-aging
In this episode, we just brush the surface of anti-aging practices and why they matter for inflammation mitigation… if you listen to the end and just become more conscious of what you’re eating or not eating, learn how you can decrease as many chemicals in your environment as you can, incorporate stress-relieving therapies into your daily life, find out more options for exercising, and see why you should be getting quality sleep, then we’re on the right track.
Do you know the most Googled health questions?
Flu symptoms
Diabetes
ADHD
Anxiety
Concussion symptoms
Heart attack
High blood pressure
Kidney stones
Depression
Stroke
Allergies
Now, we can’t control all of these, but there are ways in which we can mitigate our risk and create a centurion lifestyle for ourselves.
I love the book, The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. He takes a dive into a variety of cultures that have had the longest living people and shares how we can take practices and characteristics of those environments and incorporate them into our own lifestyles in order to promote longevity. For example, one culture utilizing ‘Hara Hachi Bu’ from the Japanese means to eat util your 80% full. In European cultures, meals are a social and therapeutic practice where you savor your food as you catch-up with those around the table.
Multiple studies have shown that genetics makes up only 20% of your health, which means 80% is your environment: you can modify your emotion regulation, promote a healthier lifestyle through exercise and nutrition, get enough sleep for healing, and work in some therapy all for a less inflamed system.
Inflammation is proven to be the root of all chronic disease.
So, not sleeping means we’re not healing, we have an increased risk for heart disease or immune issues, and we have an educed mental response time.
There’s not one ‘Superfood’ above all foods; it’s about quality and variety. Of course, we do know some foods have tons of antioxidant properties like green tea, cocoa, turmeric, blueberries, and nuts.
Did you know, there’s a study conducted from 1960-2018 that shows there’s a 1% increase in ininfertility year over year? Think about what’s changed during that timeframe : our food sources and production, more chemical load, faster paced lifestyles, and more stress.
My favorite therapy is red light therapy which we don’t get naturally anymore unless we are waking with the sun and watching the sunset. So, I love my Mito red-light!
You can add years onto your life through anti-aging practices and you can make them quality years with your families and friends by reducing inflammation and increasing your antioxidants.
Show Notes
1
0:00:00
Hi everybody, welcome to another week. I hope that your week is going well. So we have a lot to talk about today. I want to start kind of piggyback off of our lecture or our podcast last week on holistic hypertension, how to manage that. And I was actually looking this morning on the most Googled health questions. So flu symptoms, so far number one, it's a ton of the year for that. Diabetes, ADHD, which raise your hand if you have anxiety, right? Concussion symptoms, heart attack, high blood pressure, which we've covered, kidney stones, depression, stroke, and allergies. So with a lot of those symptoms or diagnoses, they're based in inflammation. And inflammation has been the buzzword for quite a while. It's really the root of all chronic disease.
1
0:01:18
So I want to talk a little bit about managing inflammation, which will ultimately let us lead longer and healthier lives. And really, if you can manage your inflammation, it's kind of like an anti-aging lifestyle and diet. Not only will you help prevent any health conditions, but you'll age gracefully and have good quality of life, which none of us of course get out alive.
1
0:01:43
But if we can be walking outside, gardening, playing with the grandkids or great grandkids when we're in our seventies and eighties, that's really the name of the game and not have Alzheimer's dimensions, Parkinson's and be an assisted living or nursing home. So I want to talk about that. And I know this is going to spark a lot of questions from you guys, which I'm really looking forward to.
1
0:02:06
So you can always let me know on topics that you want to cover in the future. And if I brought something up and you'd love a podcast dedicated to that, that would be great. So of course, we know there's things that we can control in our life and our health, and there's things we can't. So we can't, unfortunately, I wish
1
0:02:27
we could, control how we age as far as the years going by. We can't pick our parents, although sometimes that might be nice. Genetics, they say, is 80% is environment. Genetics is 20% of your health. So if you were dealt, say, a bad genetic card, research shows that that's 20% of your health. 80% in theory can be modified by environment.
1
0:02:57
So that includes emotions, lifestyle, exercise, nutrition, diets, all of the above. So that's really what we wanna do. We wanna add years to our life by making smarter food choices and just healthier life options. And as I said earlier, when we started this podcast series, there's always good, better, and best.
1
0:03:25
So you kind of want to settle into where you're the most comfortable. So some of the latest fads that we've had for years, Red Wine was a big one for anti-aging, resveratrol was a buzzword, and you know a glass of red wine a day is healthy and if you look at the Mediterranean diet, yes that is true. The Europeans, the Italians, they do drink very clean red wine and I don't blame them for that. Their glasses are quite a bit smaller than ours, their serving sizes, so if you ever, if you're into antiques or if your parents were in antiques You can get one of the cocktail glasses and they're tiny
1
0:04:09
Those drinks were so tiny in the 50s in the 60s. If you get a wine glass today, it's like a fishbowl So portions make a big difference So red wine does have its benefits. Resveratrol is a wonderful antioxidant Another buzzword was green tea and it's still really great. There's wonderful studies for anti-aging and lowering inflammation with the active component in green tea. So you can do matchas, you can do add it to your food.
1
0:04:40
There's all different ways to get the benefits of the component in green tea. And of course, antioxidants in general. So as Dr. Corey and I talked about last week with polyphenols, kind of rotating your antioxidants is important. There's so many out there and I'll put together a protocol of different antioxidants
1
0:05:01
that you can kind of pick and choose from. So what I like to do in practice and of course with friends and family is rotate your antioxidants. Your body is bombarded by different chemicals all the time, different emotions, and it's ever-changing. So why would you stay on the same antioxidants for months on end?
1
0:05:21
So it's nice to switch those up. Superoxide dismutase is a great one, SOD. N-acetylcysteine, also known as NAC. Glutathione is a wonderful one. So there's a lot of different ones that you can kind of rotate through to kind of get the best benefit for your health. So what we've seen and what one of my favorite books
1
0:05:41
of all time is and what I recommend to patients, it's a little bit older, but it's the Blue Zones. So this book actually looks at the different blue zones. So cultures that have had the longest living people, centurions, and the most centurions. So the author actually explored these cultures and picked different traits of each one. So they cover Costa Rica,
1
0:06:16
there's American blue zones, the Okinawans have very long living individuals, the Sardinians, no surprise with that. And there's just great take-homes on how to incorporate some of these characteristics of their environment or their diet into your lifestyle. Again, there's good, better, and best. You can't live in Ohio like an Okinawan,
1
0:06:43
but if you can kind of take bits and pieces from each of the cultures that might kind of round out your diet and your lifestyle and promote more of a centurion, hopefully, longevity. So what we're looking at is really looking at that book. There's really no single food. There's no superfood that's gonna cure everything or any supplement that's gonna cure anything.
1
0:07:11
And I get this question asked a lot is okay is turmeric good is curcumin good what's the best this what's the best that there really isn't the best there's good better and best and it's nice to rotate those so same thing with foods we have different foods for a reason right there's different seasons for a reason there's different fruits and vegetables that come up to different times of the year to round out those different nutrients. So there's not just one single food that's gonna make or break you,
1
0:07:43
it's food patterns and really lowering your inflammation. Another characteristic with living longer and managing inflammation, no surprise, get moving, exercise. So the rule of thumb, 20 to 30 minutes, two to three times a week, if you can do that every day, even better. Research shows that just maintaining your weight if you're past a certain age you need about 45 minutes of exercise a day just to maintain. That's
1
0:08:14
not to lose weight but anything that you can do either yoga or walking, Tai Chi, anything just to get moving. Strength training, get those joints moving, get the collagen lubricated and help get that inflammation lessened. Fish, of course we know that fish is wonderful in a lot of the cultures that have blue zones, fish is incorporated into their diets. Of course the quality matters, so we want wild only. With farmed fish we know that their diet is not the best and their living conditions aren't the best. A lot of them are fed grain, so you want wild fish. We don't want trans fats. Trans fats is a new invention, so to speak, for our bodies. We want real fats. And I know
1
0:09:05
they banned trans fats with a lot of the fast-food industry, but you can still find it out there. Wine with dinner. Of course we talked about wine, portions matter, and quality matters. If you can get a wine that's organic, just like we've talked about with Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15, grapes can be heavily sprayed with pesticides, and there's quite a few grapes that go into making a bottle of wine. Those pesticides will get in your wine as well.
1
0:09:39
So you want organic wine. Again, in Europe, GMOs is not really an issue. So there's a big difference, and I have patients go overseas quite a bit, and they say, Dr. Heck, I was able to eat the bread, I was able to drink the wine, I didn't have any headaches, I felt wonderful. Quality, right?
1
0:09:56
Quality and purity.
4
0:09:58
Smoking.
1
0:09:59
Smoking, of course, we know can decrease your blood flow in the body. Some of my worst spine presentations and practice are my smokers because smoking really hurts the microvasculature, it increases inflammation, it lessens healing. And again, there's a lot of chemicals and additives in cigarettes. So we want to try to avoid smoking if we can. And it is possible to add, research shows, about 14 years of life based on your diet. So quality over quantity for sure. There is a couple of practices in that Blue Zones book.
1
0:10:42
There's a practice called Harahachi Bu, where they recommend eating until you're 80% full. So again, if you've gone overseas and you've had, say, a dinner in Spain, their dinners last a couple of hours. And you savor the food, you socialize with those that you're involved with. With American fast-paced lifestyle, with sports and work and everything else,
1
0:11:10
a lot of times we're not able to connect and sit at a dinner table so we lose that feedback when we're eating. So eating slow, chewing your food, and once you're about 80% full, stopping will give your brain the proper feedback that you need. And of course there's studies that show that calorie restriction can contribute to longer lifestyle. Sometimes that's possible, sometimes it's not. There are studies that show that it of course lowers inflammation and improves heart functioning. So that's something to think about. And another way to manage inflammation is managing stress.
1
0:11:51
So getting moving, so exercise, meditation, praying, spending time with your pets, your friends, any way that you can help manage stress will lower your inflammation and promote a longer lifestyle as well. Sleep, sleep's critical, and this is a topic for a whole other podcast. I've had many patients who, and I talked to Dr. Corey last week
1
0:12:19
on the podcast about sleep apnea, right? A lot of us have sleep apnea, high blood pressure, cholesterol issues. There's kind of a domino effect once you have one, everything else starts to follow. So if you're not sleeping, you're not healing, there's increased risk for heart disease, immune issues, and of course, reduced mental response time.
1
0:12:40
So you gotta get sleeping, put down the phone, about an hour before bedtime. And this is something I wanna cover in the future as well, detoxification. So we can help to manage what we're exposed to through diet and stress relief and exercise and all of that. However, our bodies aren't meant to handle a lot of these chemicals. So if we can do seasonal or at least annual detoxifications, there's really good research that shows that'll help to decrease our toxic load for chemicals and lessen inflammation, improve symptoms for chronic disease,
1
0:13:20
and help us live longer. What I wanted to bring up is with talking about detoxification, there's some really good studies. They've been out for quite a while. But there's some studies that show that with the chemical load and all the inflammation, infertility is actually on the rise. So what we've seen since 1960, and this is through 2018,
1
0:13:48
is there's a 1% per year decline in infertility or infertility issues. So infertility is definitely increasing at an alarming rate. A lot of the researchers can't pinpoint it, but if you think, OK, what's really changed since the 1960s to now?
2
0:14:11
Our food, right?
1
0:14:13
More processed food, faster-paced lifestyle. Both parents are working now. More chemical pollution, more stress. We have a faster-paced lifestyle now than we did in the 60s. So if you kind of take all of that into consideration, again I don't think there's one contributing factor, but if you think about all of that, if we can help manage some of that, that might help with fertility issues as well. A lot of the men that come into my practice, if they're having mental clarity issues,
1
0:14:44
just overall poor libido, I always recommend, especially if they're over 30 and if they're having infertility issues, have their testosterone checked. And I know we covered in our last podcast about testosterone. Testosterone has actually decreased 15% since 1987. So let me rephrase that. There's a study that shows that if you were 65 years old in 1987
1
0:15:21
versus if you're 65 year old years of age now, well, 2002, this is a little bit of an older study, but if you're the same age in those times in 2002, you'd have a 15 percent lower testosterone level. Again, researchers don't know why, and we know that testosterone is decreasing more and more. Think about the infertility as well, so all the chemicals. So testosterone is an important thing for men, especially to get checked.
1
0:15:49
And then the other interesting thing that we've seen with connecting with testosterone and infertility issues are these forever chemicals. Again, we can help limit some of that through food, but there's studies coming out that shows that we have forever chemicals in our clothing. And as we sweat, those chemicals get absorbed in our body, just like a lotion would.
1
0:16:12
So forever chemicals in our clothing, in our water. There's over 40 studies that have been done that have shown about 80% of chemicals in pregnant women have been passed to the fetus. And that was an older study, that was 2016. In 2022, we have 98% of us have forever chemicals in our blood. So managing our diet, doing some detoxification,
1
0:16:42
all of that is really important to not only lower inflammation, lower the risk of chronic disease, but age gracefully and age well. So besides diet, what else can we do? Right? One of my favorite things for helping manage inflammation and also it's a great anti-aging hack is red light therapy. For the eyes especially, we know that exposure to red light will help with macular degeneration. We know that exposure to red light
1
0:17:17
will help with collagen formation, it helps with healing, and it just lowers our inflammation. We don't really get that red light exposure or that same exposure that we would normally unless we're getting up with the sunrise and going down with the sunset. If we're not watching those
1
0:17:37
and getting that light exposure, which most of us aren't, we're inside, then we're not getting that critical light therapy. So what I've done, um, I use it's Mito red light and I have an affiliate link you can click on. Um, I just have a little tabletop red light therapy and I'll do that two to three times a week, anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes and I'll focus that on any certain part of my body. So if I have
1
0:18:05
an injury I'm going to have red light exposure to that injury. If I'm working on anti-aging I'll put my serums on and then I'll sit in front of the light. Red light therapy has also shown to help with hair growth, with fertility, so there's many many different benefits to red light therapy, managing your diet, addressing any food depletions or nutrient depletions is critical. So, for example, for bone health as we age, once we are 30, our bone cells are less active and they continue to break down. If you have a family history of osteopenia, osteoporosis, you want to make sure that you have your vitamin D getting
1
0:18:52
checked, K, alkaline foods, so less inflamed foods, and calcium. And with calcium, the difference matters. Again, there's good, better, and best. So calcium carbonate is from seashells. It's the least absorbed because we're not meant to eat seashells. Calcium citrate is better. And then the best is it's MCHC, which
1
0:19:24
is short for microcrystalline hydroxyapatite calcium. So it's basically ground up bone. Our body can see it. It recognizes all those components. It's well absorbed. absorbed and we can use it to help with our own bone formation.
3
0:19:40
Right off the bat,
1
0:19:41
a few foods to help with longevity and inflammation, olive oil and a really good quality olive oil. We know that mono and saturated fats have lower rates of heart disease and cancer. The polyphenols help with age-related diseases. Yogurt. Yogurt's one of the great ones. If you look at European cultures, yogurt is consumed very frequently and they make their own yogurt, which would be great in a perfect world. But if you can eat clean yogurt, yogurt is good for the gut because of the bacteria. My favorite and I, we use in our house is Stonyfield. With Stonyfield, I really like that
1
0:20:25
because they add the bacteria in at the end of production versus a lot of the yogurt companies add the bacteria in the beginning. And we don't know how many are viable at the very end of production. And then you consider shelf life and everything else. So stonyfield's what we use in our house. We use unflavored and just add honey or maple syrup or berries,
1
0:20:48
whatever you like. Fish, we've talked about fish, wild fish, of course, with those omega-3s, and we'll talk in another podcast about the importance of omega-3 fatty acids. With our standard American diet, we have more omega-6s, which is, of course, more inflammatory, so omega-3s are great.
1
0:21:08
Wild fish for cholesterol and hard arrhythmias, which, of course, atrial fib is on the rise. So that's really important to consider. Chocolate. Chocolate's a great antioxidant. And it has great flavanols for blood vessels. It lowers blood pressure. And I'm not talking about Hershey's milk chocolates.
1
0:21:31
Good quality, 70% and over chocolates, or cacao. It's wonderful for dementia, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, and another one is nuts. Eating nuts has shown to give you an extra two and a half years of your life. Good quality nuts. Keep your nuts in the fridge because they're made of fat and fats, if they're left at room temperature for a long period of time, can oxidize. So you want to keep them in the fridge. They have unsaturated fats, which have similar benefits
1
0:22:05
to olive oil. And of course, they're high in various vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients. Brazil nuts, for example, are great for the thyroid. They have high selenium. So a couple of Brazil nuts a day would be great for you. We've talked about wine. And then the other one is blueberries, specifically,
1
0:22:25
but really any kind of berry. Blueberries have been shown to increase balance, coordination, and old age, and it helps to mitigate inflammation and oxidative stress related to memory and motor function. With berries, right? Dirty dozen, clean 15. So berries fall into that category where you want them organic. And this time of year, it might be hard to find organic berries.
1
0:22:47
So if you can't find them, frozen would be a good option. If I can't find organic, we just don't eat them that week. Hopefully, those are some good things to consider and think about for managing inflammation and helping with anti-aging. Then just as far as other options for healthy inflammation levels And really just healthy eating for beginners. So if you are hearing this and you're like, okay So what's one thing I can start with maybe one thing you can start with is watching healthy sugars
1
0:23:27
so start looking at your label and If it is a processed food if it has sucralose, which is an artificial sweetener, aspartame, any of those neurotoxins, you probably want to avoid those. There's a great book I recommend to a lot of my patients. It's a little bit older, but it's by Dr. Blalock. He's an MD, and it's called Excitotoxins. So this one's really good because he talks about MSG, aspartame, and a lot of artificial sweeteners how they cause brain damage.
1
0:24:05
Right? My mom when I was six maybe six or seven had a brain tumor and that was quite a while ago. She had her surgery in Pittsburgh and at that age you know it's kind of scary you don't know what to expect and you have to consider 30 plus years ago, doing brain surgery was not as fine tuned as it is now. But I do remember one thing her surgeon told her 30 plus years ago, is do not consume any artificial sweeteners, because that could cause the brain tumor to come back.
1
0:24:42
Now my mom is still alive and well, she is 82 and no issues since then. So it's something to think about. So if you have any of those artificial sweeteners, if you use the pink stuff in your coffee, throw it out. Because it's not doing you any favors. It's not nutritionally beneficial and it's actually causing some brain damage. So what do you eat for sugar? What God gave you.
1
0:25:09
Maple syrup. And if you notice, certain sweeteners or sugars are during certain times of the year. So we have maple syrup during the winter, the fall and winter and early spring. And then honey, right? The bees. So honey, maple syrup, another one dates, bananas, fruit sugars, molasses is another one that I like. Stevia is one that's out there. And I know monk fruit's really big right now as a substitution. Those are good in theory, right?
1
0:25:45
So there is a stevia plant, and if you have a stevia plant, and you pick the leaves, and you crush it, and you put it in your tea, totally fine. But if you use stevia or monk fruit out of a bag, it's not the same. We take something natural, and we process it so much that it becomes unbeneficial for the body.
1
0:26:06
And it's not necessarily as recognized. So really avoid any artificial sweeteners, any artificial sugars. And then the other easy one to start with
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0:26:19
are flours.
1
0:26:22
So if you do a lot of baking, a lot of cooking, with flour and with grain there's always good, better, and best. So white, not the best. Whole wheat, not the best. Batter, whole grain. And then if you can find an heirloom grain or a non-GMO or organic grain, that's best. If you're doing gluten-free, there's some great gluten-free substitutions out there, but really looking at flour that is heirloom or that's organic that's been around for a long time is the best just to avoid the glycophosphate issue. And we'll talk about glycophosphate, which aka roundup, and how that impacts our inflammation levels and our aging process
1
0:27:17
and a lot of chronic disease and another podcast. But just kind of looking at heirloom and organic is is really the best to do that. We use we use Bob's organic a lot. The other thing that we do is we get our pasta from Italy. So So, they use non-GMO grain, right, to make their pasta. So, as a rule of thumb, if it's from Europe, you're good to go. So those are just easy things to kind of consider. I hope that you'll start looking in your pantry
1
0:27:49
and we'll cover more in our next podcast about inflammation and healthy eating and I'll give you guys some more steps. But if you can start looking at your sugar, looking at your flour, and then just get moving, manage your stress, and maybe be a little more conscious of what you are eating or maybe not eating, that's a good place to start. So I will see you guys soon, are eating or maybe not eating, that's a good place to start. So I will see you guys soon, and remember there's always good, better, and best.
Transcribed with Cockatoo