Have you noticed a growing trend in people wanting to live longer?

Back in 2013, Google co-founder Larry Page helped create Calico Labs, a company dedicated to researching and understanding aging. More recently, the Russian-born billionaire, Yuri Milner, announced the formation of Altos Labs, which has some pretty wealthy investors, including Jeff Bezos, for the same purpose.

Are these companies being created actually to help people live longer, healthier lives, or are they really the experimentation grounds of billionaires who want to live forever?

I don’t know. 

However, some of the technology available to them is awe-inspiring and scary at the same time. If you are interested in this area, you may have heard of CRISPR (1). This tool allows scientists to edit certain parts of a DNA strand. For example, if you are thinking about a ‘test tube’ baby, I don’t think they are called that anymore but you know what I mean conception happens outside the body, and it is possible for the scientist to run a DNA profile of the two parents. Once that is done, they may notice that the mother has a gene that might increase the child’s chances of getting diabetes. They would then use CRISPR to edit out that gene. Or, from a more dystopian view, they could look at the father’s genes and notice that he has a gene that may limit the baby’s height. Using CRISPR, it would then be possible to change these characteristics before the baby is born, essentially engineering a baby. The best or worst part of CRISPR is that it is relatively cheap…meaning that it will be accessible to people easily in the future.

It has already been used to change the lifespan of mice (1) and also is currently being used in the effort to eradicate malaria by altering the DNA of mosquitoes so they can’t carry the parasite (2).

Some claim that CRISPR is so power full that, in theory, it is possible to take the DNA of an elephant, take the DNA of a wooly mammoth and find the differences, then edit the DNA of the elephant, and ‘voila’ you have a wooly mammoth (3), real-life Jurassic Park stuff.

The Altos Lab has also hired Shinya Yamanaka, who shared a 2012 Nobel Prize for the discovery of reprogramming cells to grow younger. This ‘reprogramming’ technique has been applied to mice, after which they show clear signs of age reversal. Some scientists call ‘reprogramming’ a potential ‘elixir of life’(4). Supporters of this technique claim it is possible to take a cell from a living 80-year-old and, in the lab, reverse’s its age by 40 years. However, it has not been tested in humans yet.

These labs are beginning to experiment with genetic changes and cellular age reversal, but what if you want to add some healthy years to a respectable long-lived life? How do you do that without having access to a super lab?

It’s really quite simple. 

The answer can be found in Dan Buetner’s book, Blue Zones. These are areas of the world where there are more 100-year-olds than other areas. They also have some things in common. All the areas have a strong community; the older a person becomes, the more important they are in their community. The opposite of what we have in Western culture.

They eat various food, but it’s always whole and locally sourced.  Again almost the polar opposite of most cities in the developed world. They exercise daily, not gym workouts but general whole-body movements usually built into their daily routines, like chopping wood or carrying water. They minimize stress. They don’t indulge in ingesting toxic substances into the body.

All these things are pillars of lifestyle medicine, are free to access, free to use, and available to you right now!

If you want to add healthspan to your lifespan, start implementing small but significant changes to your life using lifestyle medicine. If you want help with that, I’m here for you.

Sources:

1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2264168-crispr-doubles-lifespan-of-mice-with-rapid-ageing-disease-progeria/
2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-the-us-plans-to-release-24-billion-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-180979833/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIElM1outQ
4. https://news.sky.com/story/jeff-bezos-amazon-founder-funds-new-age-reversal-company-opening-in-uk-12400621 

Back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, I didn’t think much of staying up all night. Pulling an all-nighter for university or a party was pretty straightforward. I think that a little bit of this mentality has stayed with me, and I see it in my patients as well. Sleep is the first thing to do when there isn’t enough time. When we are trying to cram everything into this short time we have on the earth, we tend to turn to caffeine and willpower to grind through the day. With 50% of Americans reporting not getting enough sleep, it’s time to ask the question, has this sleep deprivation damaged our health?  Currently, a new wave of doctors is asking their patients to prioritize sleep. 

Why are they doing this?  

These doctors understand the hierarchy of health. They understand that to be healthy; we need good nutrition, exercise, relationships, stress management, and sleep. The bottom of the pyramid is sleep. Poor sleep cannot be undone by nutrition, exercise, and meditation. Or, as I like to say, you can’t exercise yourself out of chronic sleep deprivation. 

How much is enough?

Recently I showed a friend some stats from my Whoop, which is a wristband that tracks some metrics like sleep. He noticed that I spent 8 hours in bed and whistled as if to say I was lucky to have that much time. But he did not realize that I planned my day around it. When I have my kids, I work backward from their bedtime, which is similar to mine, so I know when to feed them and get them ready for bed for their optimal health and mine. That means switching off the T.V. and devices, saying no to things that will make me stay up late, and exercising some discipline with my children. Something I’ve noticed that has gone out of fashion with most North American parents nowadays. 

What does the science say?

A 2019 paper published in Harvard Health concluded that a MINIMUM of seven hours is recommended for good health. The research was based on hundreds of studies that followed peoples’ long-term experiences of heart disease, diabetes, and mental health difficulties. Those who slept between seven and nine hours were typically at lower risk of future ill health. 

However, the time you need to spend unconscious varies with age. One journal detailed that 18- to 60-year-olds “need” seven to eight hours, 61- to 64-year-olds “need” seven to nine, and the over-65s drop an hour again (for some unspecified reason).

By contrast, however, when I’m working with clients, I’m looking for people who sleep a lot. Some studies have shown a link between oversleeping and bad health.

A study published in the journal Sleep looked at 1.4 million people and found a 30 percent rise in the risk of death for people who slept nine hours or more, possibly because they may have underlying medical or social problems. Interestingly, the report concluded that while short sleep may represent a cause of ill health, long sleep is believed to represent more of an indicator of ill health.

When it comes to sleep and your health, try using the Goldilocks principle, not too much or too little.