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But if every year in chronological order means feeling worse — creaky, tired, and, well, old — even in the latest biohacking fad Promise to live longer?
I mean, I don’t want to live to the end 20 My years in the hospital comatose or in the nursing home demented. I want to go for a run, have sex, or ski on my bike,” says Mark Heyman, MD, a functional medicine physician who helps change myths about aging as an inevitable physical and mental death by considering our overall health span And not just our longevity. “If I can’t do the things I want to do as I get older, then my healthspan will decrease. What’s really exciting is that we’re now looking at ways that we can dramatically change that trajectory. “
A big part of what Hyman describes as “a powerful paradigm shift” is understanding the difference between our chronological age — the fixed number of years that pass after we are born — and our biological age , a number that reflects the health of our body systems and how well they work together, which, according to Hyman and many of his fellow researchers, can be reversed. “It’s not just about preventing bad things from happening in the future. idea,” he suggested. “We can get healthier, we can reverse chronic disease now. ” This is the subject of Heyman’s latest book, Forever Young: The Secret to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life , which offers how A blueprint for successful rollback by identifying key hallmarks of aging—such as dysregulated nutrient sensing, hormonal dysfunction, inflammation, insulin resistance, and an impaired microbiome—and providing practical insights into optimizing these functions through food, supplements, and lifestyle changes method.
Forever Young: The Secret to Living the Longest and Healthiest
Being able to physically control our own biological destiny is somewhat novel The idea has already popularized platforms and services like Harvard professor and biologist David Sinlair’s new Tally Health, which has amassed nearly 85, -Waiting list ahead of launch last month: A simple face-swab kit can tell you your biological age, while a monthly membership offers practical and personalized guidance to help you keep your biological age down (Hyman’s Function Health, currently in beta, aims to similarly provide access to users through a membership model, giving users access to a wide range of biomarker tests and detailed insights from a global network of experts.) Here, Hyman provides his The latest bestseller offers a primer on SparkNotes, including this piece of advice he’s happy to give away for free: “If you want to shed every sign of aging, you should eat more sugar. “
I’m not a doctor, but this kind of thinking just seems intuitive!
is like He When Xu Li heard the theory of evolution, he said: “I didn’t expect how stupid that is! “
Your new book breaks down the signs of aging as you define them. What are these signs anyway?
There are nine classics. I added one, which is the microbiome.
Microbiome: Hot right now.
Yes. This is important! You have a whole host of bacteria living inside you that have important interactions with your overall health, immune system, weight and metabolism. So keep your inner garden healthy by fertilizing with the right foods that bugs love to eat Very important — prebiotic fibers like asparagus, artichokes, and plantains, and probiotic foods like miso, kimchi, sauerkraut, and kimchi. I would actually say that one of the most important hallmarks of aging is dysregulation of nutrient sensing. This It’s a mouthful, but essentially it means how we interact with food, what effect it has on our biology, and how different things are considered based on what we eat or don’t eat, what we eat and when we eat it. On or off. So that’s where you’ve probably heard about things like low-carb diets or low-protein diets or calorie restriction — all of these things are in the longevity conversation and they all work through these meta-pathways. If we keep Overstimulate or understimulate or not stimulate these pathways and we end up with disease and eventually age rapidly. The good news is that these are bugs that can be corrected and if we focus on them then we can actually change our biology Aging trajectory and reversing our biological age.
How has the whole concept of longevity changed the conversation around aging?
We live in an ageist culture, but what we see around us as normal aging is actually abnormal aging. It is a reflection of our circumstances, our choices , our diet and our lifestyle. Ordinary people spend almost their last % Living in poor health – that’s not good. But we’ve come to assume it’s normal. It’s normal to be weaker, it’s normal to be weaker, not being able to do what you want Things are normal. It’s normal to have all these chronic diseases. But that’s not the case. These are abnormalities due to the way we live. These are the signs that something is wrong with aging.
Do we have the ability to reverse our biological age?
Well, that’s what’s so exciting about this job. The body has this incredible ability to repair, renew and regenerate if we provide the right conditions. At any point, we can reverse our biological age and become healthier.
According to a bold claim in the book, the first step in this biological age reversal process is sugar abstinence : “If there is an intervention that extends longevity, prevention or reversal of chronic disease, would be to drastically reduce or eliminate sugar or fine starches in the diet.” Why is sugar so bad for us?
This has to do with aging in the way it affects the characteristics of the human body. So all the longevity switches are adversely affected by sugar — obviously the insulin signaling pathway, it’s screwing all this up in the wrong direction, it causes DNA damage, mitochondrial damage, oxidative stress. It accelerates inflammation throughout the body. It destroys your protein.
So, no sweets? Absolutely not? How about all the alternatives to the hard stuff?
A lot of them must have concerns as well because we are always looking for a way out of this addiction. But the truth is, these substitutes are also addictive because they stimulate the same dopamine pathways that stimulate the same sweet receptors in the tongue as sugar. We’re still trying to get the dopamine hit. But it doesn’t have to be without sugar. Think of it as a recreational drug: You know alcohol isn’t good for you, but if you have a shot of tequila or the occasional glass of wine on the weekend, it’s no big deal.
What should Do you eat longevity?
Eat from nature’s medicine cabinet and focus only on upgrading the phytochemicals in your diet , because the medicine is there. In this book, there is a complete diagram of all the different phytochemicals and what they do to our biochemistry. The power of food as medicine should be the guiding principle in your choice of what to eat, and the best quality of food you can achieve. Make sure you also eat for your microbiome and get enough good fats like olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds. All those omega-3 fats are very important. Then just avoid foods you basically don’t recognize. The more you deal with, the worse it is for you. As you age, you also need adequate protein, especially in the morning. This means 20 to 19 grams or more, preferably after a workout. This will help build muscle, which is a byproduct of aging; if you lose muscle, you lose function, your metabolic fitness goes down, and everything else goes down with it.
You also devote space to explaining how stress can have a significant impact on our biological systems.
We just keep accumulating chronic stress – it’s a biological phenomenon. Ultimately, this stress response can make us sick and burnt out.
What are some simple and feasible ways to reduce stress?
Look, stress isn’t going away for any of us, so we have to learn to let go way of stress. There are many ways to reset like how we reset a phone or a computer and it is very important to learn how. Personally, I meditate in the morning for 20 minutes . I also try to meditate in the afternoon. After this phone call, I’m going to meditate! I often do yoga and breathing. You can also use other more passive reset tools such as hot and cold therapy, saunas, cold baths – exercise is great for reducing stress, being in nature, being with friends, cuddling. All of these help our body go into a parasympathetic state. You just need to learn how to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Because it doesn’t happen automatically. Relaxing takes work!
