# Dr Lindsay Wu: Australia's longevity quest & are Blue Zones even real?

An episode of [Project 100 with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1767053714), 10 Nov 2024, 55 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/05ac4e52-79fb-46b8-849c-b305000bd6d0/b744746b-150a-42fb-bfb5-b305000c34ad/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ef13e652-7a19-41fd-9d0f-b305000bd6dc

All content and media by Project 100 is created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. *** Dr. Lindsay Wu is a Senior Research Fellow at UNSW Sydney, leading the Laboratory for Ageing Research, and has co-founded several biotechnology companies, including Life BioSciences and Jump Start Fertility, focusing on interventions to maintain healthy ageing. This podcast was all about Australia’s standing in terms of longevity—how we measure up against other countries, how our health compares to Blue Zones, and whether Blue Zones are even real. We also highlighted the importance of community, weight training, and some practical advice he’d share. Additionally, we discussed Dr. Wu’s collaboration with renowned longevity expert Dr. David Sinclair, along with much more. Follow Project 100 on Instagram. Follow Mark Bouris on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter & YouTube. Scientific Studies discussed: Dog Aging Project - Test of Rapamycin in Aging Dogs (TRIAD) Authors: The Dog Aging Project Team Genetic Studies of Ashkenazi Jews by Dr. Nir Barzilai Authors: Dr. Nir Barzilai CHAMP Study (Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project) Authors: This study involves researchers from the Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project team "Eat Like the Animals" by Steve Simpson and David Raubenheimer Authors: Professor Steve Simpson, Professor David Raubenheimer Study on Bed Rest and Muscle Mass in Older Individuals Authors: Unspecified; associated with aging research teams University of Sydney Research on Weightlifting for Older Adults Authors: University of Sydney research team Professor Sally Dunwoodie's Research at Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Authors: Professor Sally Dunwoodie and research team Dr. Wu on Reducing Chemotherapy Side Effects Authors: Dr. Wu and co-authors Sir John Gurdon's Study on DNA Damage Restoration Authors: Sir John Gurdon Shinya Yamanaka's Discovery of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (2006) Authors: Shinya Yamanaka See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Dr Lindsay Wu welcome, thanks for having me, and we're
[0:03] Speaker 1: calling this project Project one hundreds. I should say, welcome
[0:06] Speaker 1: to Project one hundred.
[0:08] Speaker 2: Mate, great to be here.
[0:10] Speaker 1: Now, maybe we just I noticed on you you've got
[0:13] Speaker 1: an nah MRC grant or that tells me you're pretty smart,
[0:18] Speaker 1: because they're pretty hard to get, and I know that
[0:21] Speaker 1: for a fact not too many of those are handed out.
[0:24] Speaker 1: So what is your research area?
[0:29] Speaker 3: Yes, so you're doing fellowship.
[0:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So you know I'm in a fellowship
[0:33] Speaker 2: right now. I've actually ended the NHMSC one and I'm
[0:36] Speaker 2: funded by the American Federation for Aging Research and Evolution.
[0:40] Speaker 3: Which is that's a new one. I haven't heard that one.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a brand new organization set up by
[0:45] Speaker 2: the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund for Aging Research, right, which
[0:49] Speaker 2: sort of gets into what I do.
[0:50] Speaker 1: So so the Saudi isn't interested in this stuff too
[0:53] Speaker 1: as well, right now?
[0:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So evolution is an enormous organization.
[0:56] Speaker 3: What do you call it?
[0:57] Speaker 2: Evolution? Heav Yeah, so evolution with an H.
[1:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, but what does that mean?
[1:02] Speaker 3: Evolution?
[1:03] Speaker 2: Like I don't know where the name does come from,
[1:05] Speaker 2: to be honest, but they're you know, they're putting substantial
[1:07] Speaker 2: funds both towards basic research and private investment in longevity
[1:11] Speaker 2: and aging research. Wow, which is my specialty.
[1:14] Speaker 3: Well that's perfect for you. So what have you been
[1:17] Speaker 3: working on?
[1:18] Speaker 1: Can you just give us a bit of a flavor
[1:19] Speaker 1: of the sorts of research topics? Given this a longevity
[1:24] Speaker 1: discussion and I actually don't like the word or whatever,
[1:26] Speaker 1: you know, living longer, living better discussion. What are the
[1:29] Speaker 1: sort of things that you're you've been looking at with
[1:31] Speaker 1: some of the funding you've been getting.
[1:32] Speaker 2: So the main thing that we're excited about is reproductive aging,
[1:35] Speaker 2: so specifically infertility in women order women. So you know,
[1:39] Speaker 2: these egg cells that women having their body are very
[1:42] Speaker 2: unusual in terms of their cell type. So you know,
[1:44] Speaker 2: most cells in our body turnover quite frequently throughout our lives,
[1:47] Speaker 2: but women are born with all the eggs you'll ever have, right,
[1:50] Speaker 2: And so you've got this egg cell that's been sitting
[1:52] Speaker 2: around for you know, literally decades, and so to me,
[1:54] Speaker 2: it's the lowest hanging fruit for aging research. You know,
[1:57] Speaker 2: to wine back a little bit, my research has always
[2:00] Speaker 2: been on extending lifespan and treating the underlying biology of aging.
[2:06] Speaker 1: If we're talking about Australia, how are we going in
[2:11] Speaker 1: Australia when it comes to longevity?
[2:12] Speaker 3: I mean, like statistically, I mean how do we look?
[2:15] Speaker 2: Yeah? Excellent. So I think we're the fourth longest lived
[2:18] Speaker 2: nation in the world, which is an astounding.
[2:20] Speaker 1: Achievement in a statistical sense, right, because I think the
[2:23] Speaker 1: average as understood, the average age of an Australia male
[2:28] Speaker 1: in Australia was a little over eighty one years. For
[2:32] Speaker 1: females I think ready two years. But I noticed in
[2:35] Speaker 1: the ABS stats that came out more recently that's dropped
[2:37] Speaker 1: back a little bit.
[2:38] Speaker 2: I mean, I know, the one that the ABS have
[2:40] Speaker 2: been really interested in was the fact that there are
[2:43] Speaker 2: people aren't living longer as time goes by. So you know,
[2:48] Speaker 2: the expectation is that average longevity goes up or life
[2:51] Speaker 2: expectancy goes up, so therefore the maximum life span, you know,
[2:55] Speaker 2: these people who live beyond one hundred, that number would
[2:57] Speaker 2: continue to go up. We aren't seeing people live, you know,
[3:00] Speaker 2: well beyond one hundred and five, one hundred and ten
[3:02] Speaker 2: or anything like that.
[3:03] Speaker 1: So we're seeing more people get closer to get closer
[3:06] Speaker 1: to one hundred, but not more people going beyond whatever
[3:10] Speaker 1: the limit was before. It's in other words, lifespan increase.
[3:16] Speaker 1: I mean one of the explanations that could be just
[3:18] Speaker 1: better access to health technology or a medical system.
[3:22] Speaker 2: I mean, I suspect we're living healthier lives than ever before. Right,
[3:25] Speaker 2: smoking levels or as low as they've never been. People
[3:27] Speaker 2: in this country are very active. We lead a great lifestyle.
[3:30] Speaker 2: Preventative healthcare is fantastic, and our medical system is fantastic.
[3:34] Speaker 2: You know, the fact that people aren't living longer in
[3:36] Speaker 2: terms of the maximum lifespan, you know, it's a hotly
[3:39] Speaker 2: debated topic. So some people are saying it's evidence that
[3:41] Speaker 2: there is in fact a maximum limit to human longevity.
[3:46] Speaker 2: My personal view is that the data, you know, the
[3:50] Speaker 2: people living longer hasn't taken into account the research that's
[3:53] Speaker 2: going on in the background. So with some of the
[3:56] Speaker 2: interventions that are being developed in the lab, if applied
[3:58] Speaker 2: to humans, it could go beyond one hundred and five
[4:01] Speaker 2: hundred and ten.
[4:02] Speaker 3: And what sort of interventions are we talking about now.
[4:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's quite a few interventions that you know,
[4:06] Speaker 2: reliably extend life span in animals. The most potent one
[4:09] Speaker 2: that people would have heard about is a drug called rapamcin.
[4:12] Speaker 2: So it's actually approved and used in the clinic for
[4:14] Speaker 2: transplant recipients. So it's not a gentle drug. It's not
[4:17] Speaker 2: something that you take as a supplement just for fun.
[4:20] Speaker 2: But at least in every animal species it's been tested
[4:22] Speaker 2: for so far, rapamcin very reliably extends lifespan by a
[4:26] Speaker 2: good thirty percent or so. And this is something that
[4:28] Speaker 2: is effective when delivered late in life to already old animals,
[4:32] Speaker 2: and it extends their lifespan even further or even for
[4:34] Speaker 2: a brief period in the middle of life. So raprimcin
[4:37] Speaker 2: is a really interesting intervention that could you know, push
[4:40] Speaker 2: what to.
[4:40] Speaker 3: Do though, to make me stop eating?
[4:42] Speaker 2: Or on?
[4:42] Speaker 3: What's it doing?
[4:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's used in transplant recipients because it stops
[4:45] Speaker 2: the immune system from becoming too active. What it actually
[4:48] Speaker 2: does is control the balance between making new proteins and
[4:51] Speaker 2: breaking down existing proteins. So to wind it back a
[4:55] Speaker 2: bit proteins unfolding is really bad news. So you know,
[4:58] Speaker 2: that's been the idea of our timer's research for a
[5:00] Speaker 2: long time, which you know that particular hypothesis may not
[5:03] Speaker 2: be real, but in any case, we've got this really
[5:06] Speaker 2: high concentration of proteins in our cell and if they
[5:08] Speaker 2: unfold and start becoming tangled, that's a problem. So the
[5:12] Speaker 2: way rapamycin works is to stop new proteins from being
[5:15] Speaker 2: synthesized and to turn on the breakdown machinery. So now
[5:18] Speaker 2: you start breaking down the damaged proteins, you give the
[5:21] Speaker 2: cells a chance to recover, and so once you take
[5:25] Speaker 2: that away, suddenly you've gotten rid of all the damaged
[5:27] Speaker 2: proteins and now you can start growing new proteins that
[5:30] Speaker 2: are hopefully less damaged.
[5:32] Speaker 1: So humans, are they trying rapper micein on humans?
[5:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's used clinically, as I say, for these
[5:38] Speaker 2: transplant recipients. It's used in cancer, some cancers. There's been
[5:43] Speaker 2: a big movement to run these clinical trials in humans. Actually,
[5:46] Speaker 2: the best chance that I see for getting this getting
[5:49] Speaker 2: better evidence for whether this actually works is this big
[5:52] Speaker 2: dog trial. So companion dogs, you know people love, they
[5:56] Speaker 2: spend a lot of time and money on, they maintain
[5:59] Speaker 2: excellent cords. They share a similar environment, so they're exposed
[6:02] Speaker 2: to the same microbes as us. Have huge genetic diversity,
[6:06] Speaker 2: just like humans. So there's this big dog age trial
[6:09] Speaker 2: which is testing rapimcein in a double blind, placebo controlled
[6:13] Speaker 2: trial to see if it extends lifespan and dogs, and
[6:16] Speaker 2: you know, beyond that, you would really hope that someone
[6:19] Speaker 2: stumps up the money for a rappi mice and longevity trial.
[6:23] Speaker 2: The problem with longevity and aging research in terms of
[6:27] Speaker 2: its clinical translation is it's the longest and most expensive,
[6:30] Speaker 2: difficult clinical trial you could possibly imagine. I mean by definition, right,
[6:34] Speaker 2: it's going to go for a lifetime, right, So you
[6:37] Speaker 2: know people going for the lower hanging fruit, and there
[6:38] Speaker 2: are some lower hanging fruit, so you know things that
[6:40] Speaker 2: happen that go wrong during old age. So neuer degeneration,
[6:44] Speaker 2: cardiovascular disease, the one I've been interested in is female
[6:47] Speaker 2: in fertility. There are some other gum disease goes wrong
[6:51] Speaker 2: during old age. So people looking at those indications for
[6:54] Speaker 2: rappermicin and other interventions in aging.
[6:57] Speaker 1: So I was listening to dot Ptter and also Andrew Human.
[7:01] Speaker 1: They both said they've tried rappim misin both of them
[7:05] Speaker 1: and met Foreman as well. They're not on it like
[7:09] Speaker 1: all the time, but they both talked about it, and
[7:11] Speaker 1: I don't know whether they've had any, but they're in
[7:14] Speaker 1: the United States, of course, but is Astralia sort of
[7:18] Speaker 1: behind the rest of the world when it comes to
[7:20] Speaker 1: these things.
[7:20] Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean for those individuals, you know,
[7:23] Speaker 2: they're trying it on themselves. It's sort of an off
[7:25] Speaker 2: label thing.
[7:26] Speaker 3: But allowed to do that? Can you do that here
[7:28] Speaker 3: in Australia.
[7:29] Speaker 2: If there's a GP who's willing to prescribe it to you, yes, yeah, okay,
[7:32] Speaker 2: So if I had a gym, there are some gps
[7:34] Speaker 2: who do.
[7:34] Speaker 3: That, Okay, So that's right. So I get that.
[7:37] Speaker 1: So because rapp of my icein and met forman can
[7:39] Speaker 1: be prescribed for certain conditions, I think metforums for diabetes
[7:43] Speaker 1: or something like that.
[7:44] Speaker 2: I mean metformans. It's given out like Lolli's to diabetics. Right,
[7:47] Speaker 2: It's been around since the fifties. We know a safety profile.
[7:51] Speaker 2: Millions and millions of people have taken met Foreman.
[7:53] Speaker 1: And rapid misins for rejection of performance of some sort
[7:58] Speaker 1: of organ that you might have had yplanned people to
[8:00] Speaker 1: begin with.
[8:01] Speaker 2: Sorry, they're very sick patients to be with, so that's
[8:03] Speaker 2: why it's it's a bit hard to you know, interpret
[8:05] Speaker 2: the data from people who've been taking rapace you know,
[8:07] Speaker 2: at scale.
[8:08] Speaker 1: And if we're talking about Australia's America. You know, I
[8:11] Speaker 1: guess I could sort of talk about just generally around
[8:13] Speaker 1: the globe. And you know, there's this whole concept of
[8:17] Speaker 1: blue zones. I mean, I wouldn't mind talking about blue
[8:20] Speaker 1: zones for a moment. I don't know why they're call
[8:22] Speaker 1: them blue zones for a start. Why it's blue. I
[8:26] Speaker 1: guess as somebody's come up with a clever.
[8:28] Speaker 2: Idea places near the ocean, it could.
[8:30] Speaker 3: Be, Is that right?
[8:33] Speaker 1: I think they are actually ands in Japan for any
[8:36] Speaker 1: of the Ocean, Ikorea, in Greeces, and Island in the Mediterranean.
[8:41] Speaker 1: The Italian one, which the name avoids me at the moment,
[8:43] Speaker 1: is near the near the sea. So the so called
[8:47] Speaker 1: there's one in the United States. So the so called
[8:49] Speaker 1: blue zones. What do you think about these generalizations that
[8:53] Speaker 1: we keep hearing about.
[8:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, So the first thing I'd say is everyone has
[8:56] Speaker 2: their own favorite hypothesis about what's going on. Yeah, And
[9:00] Speaker 2: I don't hold any strong opinions either way. But the
[9:02] Speaker 2: one that I always like to throw out, that's just
[9:03] Speaker 2: to sort of stir the pot a bit, is that
[9:05] Speaker 2: it happens to be that these places that have extreme
[9:08] Speaker 2: longevity also have extremely high rates of welfare fraud and
[9:11] Speaker 2: poor record keeping. So it may be the case that
[9:14] Speaker 2: all these people who are supposedly living a very long
[9:16] Speaker 2: time are just taking over their mum's or dad's ID
[9:19] Speaker 2: to collect welfare checks.
[9:20] Speaker 3: Oh wow, So that's.
[9:21] Speaker 2: Actually an extremely well characterized association, so you know, interpret
[9:25] Speaker 2: it with a bit of course.
[9:26] Speaker 1: In other words, the reason why in this particular village
[9:30] Speaker 1: there are twenty five people who have allegedly lived past
[9:33] Speaker 1: one hundred years of age, it's because they're dead anyway,
[9:36] Speaker 1: and no one's actually known about it, and the kids
[9:38] Speaker 1: are now recorded as being that person. It's because they
[9:41] Speaker 1: get a welfare check on top of their own welfare check.
[9:43] Speaker 2: I mean, there was this I saw this report that
[9:46] Speaker 2: in Japan, if you go through the welfare records, there
[9:48] Speaker 2: are supposedly all these people still alive who are one
[9:50] Speaker 2: hundred and twenty something years of age, right.
[9:52] Speaker 3: Which is probably impossible.
[9:53] Speaker 2: Right, It's clearly that the record keeping hasn't kept up
[9:56] Speaker 2: to date.
[9:56] Speaker 3: That's very interesting. So it's sort of a but.
[10:00] Speaker 2: But I didn't want to put an entirely a dampener
[10:04] Speaker 2: on the idea of these blue zones, though, I was
[10:06] Speaker 2: just throwing it up to stir the pot a bit.
[10:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's but by the way, we need to
[10:10] Speaker 1: be critically examined these things, because we all might not
[10:15] Speaker 1: also all be chasing the Holy Grail them and not
[10:17] Speaker 1: even exist in terms of one hundred and twenty years anyway.
[10:20] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, but what they, I suppose all do
[10:23] Speaker 2: have in common is some pretty obvious aspects of their lifestyle.
[10:28] Speaker 2: So they lead stress free lives. They tend to be
[10:30] Speaker 2: in beautiful locations, strong community, people get regular sleep, and
[10:34] Speaker 2: healthy diets. Yeah, I mean, none of this is rocket science.
[10:38] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[10:38] Speaker 1: Do you think that that's actually when you say healthy dies,
[10:42] Speaker 1: do you think that a healthy diet?
[10:44] Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, correct.
[10:45] Speaker 1: So we talk about the Mediterranean diet. I mean, and
[10:47] Speaker 1: this is one of the things I'm really interested keen
[10:49] Speaker 1: on is. I was someone saying to me, oh, you know,
[10:52] Speaker 1: you have the Mediterranean diet here in Australia, which you
[10:54] Speaker 1: can you can eat tomatoes and lettuce and cucumbers and
[10:58] Speaker 1: grigg salad and olive oil, and you can have fish
[11:03] Speaker 1: a couple times a week and maybe not drink as
[11:06] Speaker 1: much the Mediterranean die.
[11:07] Speaker 3: But then I thought about I thought to himself, well,
[11:09] Speaker 3: wait a minute.
[11:10] Speaker 1: If you're looking at the island of Vickery and I
[11:12] Speaker 1: wonder why it's only one island in Greece, because there's
[11:16] Speaker 1: lots of islands of Grease and lots of people live
[11:18] Speaker 1: the same sort of lifestyle. Then I started to think
[11:20] Speaker 1: to myself, I wonder if the soil on the island
[11:24] Speaker 1: of Grease has got some sort of elements in it,
[11:28] Speaker 1: more magnesium or more whatever it is in the soil,
[11:32] Speaker 1: or it's got no soil, it's got all these rocks,
[11:34] Speaker 1: or what is the case in relation to what food
[11:38] Speaker 1: they are eating? What is the sunlight like, what is
[11:41] Speaker 1: the rain water like, what is the tap water like?
[11:44] Speaker 3: What is the weather like?
[11:46] Speaker 1: Is it hot all the time? Is it cold all
[11:48] Speaker 1: the time? Do you need to get snow in the
[11:51] Speaker 1: winter and boiling hot in the summer? Do you need
[11:54] Speaker 1: humid weather or dry weather? There's so many variables that
[11:57] Speaker 1: the blue zone seems to me to be.
[12:00] Speaker 2: It's hard to extraordinarily really hard to, isn't it.
[12:04] Speaker 1: And do you know anyone who's actually doing any study
[12:07] Speaker 1: on this stuff or trying to drill down into these concepts.
[12:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't know, but it's not necessarily relevant
[12:14] Speaker 2: to the blue zones. But there are definitely studies of
[12:16] Speaker 2: these ultracentinarios, people who do live extremely long. So, you know,
[12:20] Speaker 2: there's this study of the genetics of Ashkenazi Jews who
[12:23] Speaker 2: live past the age of one hundred. So there's a
[12:25] Speaker 2: guy named near Barsli who's also a prominent researcher and
[12:28] Speaker 2: met foreman who's been running that study, and you know,
[12:31] Speaker 2: he's seeing some genetic associations between longevity in this population.
[12:36] Speaker 1: When you say genetic associations, in other words, blessed genetically blessed, Right,
[12:41] Speaker 1: they're likely their lineage is likely to live longer, no
[12:45] Speaker 1: matter what right I mean as subjects is not smoking
[12:47] Speaker 1: and doing at least.
[12:49] Speaker 2: Based on associations anyway, we're seeing people with those genetics
[12:51] Speaker 2: are living longer. So whether that's just you know, cause
[12:55] Speaker 2: and effect going in the wrong direction. You know, people
[12:57] Speaker 2: those genetics happen to also be wealthy and lived a
[13:00] Speaker 2: great lifestyle. You know, who knows?
[13:02] Speaker 3: Or is it more correlation as opposed to correlation?
[13:05] Speaker 2: Right?
[13:05] Speaker 1: You know that just so happens, right, that those people
[13:09] Speaker 1: are living longer. Of course, of the genetics, there's got
[13:11] Speaker 1: nothing to do with their lifestyle.
[13:12] Speaker 2: Right, And the other you know the other study it's
[13:15] Speaker 2: not a blue zone, but it is I suppose relevant
[13:18] Speaker 2: to blue zones. Is you know, there was a study
[13:20] Speaker 2: of healthy aging men, healthy aging men living in Concord
[13:23] Speaker 2: run out of Concord hospitals in Australia. That's right in
[13:26] Speaker 2: western Syntey. So it was called the Champs study, and
[13:29] Speaker 2: so was the Champs and it was essentially following the
[13:33] Speaker 2: lifestyles of older men living out in the community, right
[13:36] Speaker 2: just to see what would correlate with their healthy longevity
[13:39] Speaker 2: or healthy aging and their overall longevity. And you know,
[13:42] Speaker 2: one of the strongest correlations that dropped out of it
[13:44] Speaker 2: was being of Mediterranean background and eating a Mediterranean diet.
[13:49] Speaker 2: So make of that what you're will, right, but there
[13:52] Speaker 2: is definitely a correlation there.
[13:54] Speaker 1: So do you ever get curious about though, what does that?
[13:57] Speaker 1: What do they mean by Mediterranean diet? That's I mean,
[14:00] Speaker 1: there's a less meat because I know where my father
[14:03] Speaker 1: comes from. In Greece, there's no cows because it's mountainous
[14:06] Speaker 1: and cows need to graze. They ate very little meat
[14:11] Speaker 1: twice a year at Easter largely and a little bit
[14:18] Speaker 1: at Christmas time, and perhaps a little bit during.
[14:20] Speaker 3: The year, but rarely.
[14:21] Speaker 1: He did not live near the water, so he was
[14:23] Speaker 1: in the mountains. So there's no fish at all. Zero
[14:26] Speaker 1: And I do need a lot of food. They're not
[14:29] Speaker 1: massive eaters. What I member, it was not a lot
[14:32] Speaker 1: of food available, but what they ate was largely vegetarian
[14:35] Speaker 1: because they were farmers. And he lived to a good
[14:39] Speaker 1: old age. Notwithstanding he's starved as a kid because the
[14:43] Speaker 1: war was on. Do you think there's do you think
[14:47] Speaker 1: that we today we overindulge, we eat too much? Do
[14:52] Speaker 1: you think there's something in that?
[14:53] Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, So you know, we stopped talking about pet
[14:56] Speaker 2: hypothesis about what's going on. Yeah, so one of them
[14:58] Speaker 2: is around protein intake. Exactly, you're too much. That's right,
[15:01] Speaker 2: That's right. And it's a bit counterintuitive, right because you know,
[15:04] Speaker 2: the palaeo diet, for example, the Atkins diet is super
[15:07] Speaker 2: effective at losing weight. People feel great on a high protein,
[15:11] Speaker 2: low carb diet. But in terms of longevity, at least
[15:14] Speaker 2: from the animal data we have so far, high protein,
[15:17] Speaker 2: low carb diet is associated with shortened life span. Wow,
[15:22] Speaker 2: And so if you're optimizing for longevity, the ratio should
[15:25] Speaker 2: be flipped to high carb, low protein. Now I mentioned
[15:29] Speaker 2: this protein, this drug rapper micin earlier. So rapamcin hits
[15:33] Speaker 2: a target called m tour it's this nutrient sensor in
[15:36] Speaker 2: the cell and it specifically sensors free amino acids that
[15:39] Speaker 2: come from protein. So this one drug that we have
[15:42] Speaker 2: that seems to be really potent at extending life span
[15:45] Speaker 2: targets the sensing of protein intake. Right, So when we
[15:50] Speaker 2: put animals, and you know, multiple different species on these
[15:53] Speaker 2: diets that are fixed have fixed ratios of protein to carb.
[15:56] Speaker 2: Those that are on the high carb low protein lived longest,
[15:59] Speaker 2: but it comes at a cost. They end up being fat,
[16:03] Speaker 2: right because they're overeating. So it turns out our appetite
[16:06] Speaker 2: is strongly tied to achieving a certain protein target. So
[16:09] Speaker 2: every day we must hit this certain amount of protein,
[16:11] Speaker 2: and if we don't hit it, we'll continue to feel hungry.
[16:14] Speaker 2: So you know, when you talk about where your grandfather
[16:17] Speaker 2: or grandfather grew up, one is there was less probably
[16:21] Speaker 2: less meat intake. But deever is there they wouldn't have
[16:24] Speaker 2: been able to afford more meat even if they wanted
[16:26] Speaker 2: to correct, right, And so in a way they were
[16:28] Speaker 2: restricted for their protein intake. And so that's a really
[16:32] Speaker 2: interesting one. Again, what makes it really counterintuitive is that
[16:34] Speaker 2: protein intake is really important for building muscle mass. And
[16:38] Speaker 2: if we talk to geriatricians about what they care about
[16:40] Speaker 2: in old people, it's maintaining that muscle mass.
[16:42] Speaker 1: And then that's counterintuitive to what you just said before,
[16:44] Speaker 1: because in order for me to maintain my muscle mass,
[16:46] Speaker 1: apart from exercising, I've got to have enough protein.
[16:49] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[16:49] Speaker 3: So, but if i'm having so.
[16:51] Speaker 1: Is the question is the point you're trying to make.
[16:53] Speaker 1: Then you've got to have enough but not too much.
[16:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and probably at different stages of your
[16:58] Speaker 2: life you should optimize for different things. Right, So in
[17:01] Speaker 2: older frail people, we really need them to maintain muscle
[17:04] Speaker 2: mass because you know, if they lose just a little
[17:06] Speaker 2: bit of muscle mass, they can go down hell really quickly. Yeah,
[17:09] Speaker 2: when we're younger, if you're interested in having kids, protein
[17:12] Speaker 2: intake is really important. It's great for fertility. The period
[17:15] Speaker 2: in between, you know, maybe we don't need to optimize
[17:18] Speaker 2: for high protein. Maybe we should be optimizing for high
[17:20] Speaker 2: carb low protein. And again you think about these people
[17:23] Speaker 2: have very healthy lifestyles, so the Mediterranean, so high pasta
[17:27] Speaker 2: or rice intake and very little meat intake, So they've
[17:30] Speaker 2: got that ratio of the opposite direction.
[17:33] Speaker 1: And that's quite complex.
[17:35] Speaker 3: So because.
[17:37] Speaker 1: That is very complex, because what's confusing, and I guess
[17:40] Speaker 1: that's what my podcast series is about. It's confusing because
[17:44] Speaker 1: if you listen to you know, the most popular experts
[17:48] Speaker 1: at the moment, that's Peter return Human and David Sinclair,
[17:53] Speaker 1: they espouse the importance of protein. They're always espousing the
[17:59] Speaker 1: importance rotin and exercise. And by the way, if you
[18:02] Speaker 1: exercise at the rates that they suggest, particularly that Peter
[18:06] Speaker 1: Attio suggests, you will not be able to do that,
[18:09] Speaker 1: maintain that unless you have enough protein because you just
[18:12] Speaker 1: tee yourself down. You do have to have a certain
[18:15] Speaker 1: amount of carbs too. But there seems to me to
[18:18] Speaker 1: be of opinion, seems to be more protein now they're
[18:24] Speaker 1: talking about they're normally talking to audiences between over fifty
[18:29] Speaker 1: over fifty years age. What you're just saying sort of
[18:32] Speaker 1: sort of flies in the face of that, because you know,
[18:34] Speaker 1: fifty to seventy maybe sounds like the period when you
[18:38] Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be eating too much protein or is it
[18:41] Speaker 1: a function of how much exercise you're doing.
[18:43] Speaker 2: So I would say it's a function of how much
[18:45] Speaker 2: exercise you're doing, because if you have protein intake, there
[18:48] Speaker 2: is in fact no limit to how much muscle mass
[18:50] Speaker 2: you can put on with the bullets of protein. There's
[18:54] Speaker 2: a book by Steve Professor Steve Simpson and David Rabenhein
[18:58] Speaker 2: over at Sydney UNI. It's called Eat Like the Animals.
[19:00] Speaker 2: So they are the world's experts at this optimizing for
[19:04] Speaker 2: nutrient ratios to extend lifespan or be fertile and dictate appetite.
[19:11] Speaker 2: Maintaining muscle mass is really important. So the short answer is,
[19:13] Speaker 2: we don't know what that ratio should be in a
[19:15] Speaker 2: human at least in the animals. Low protein extends lifespan.
[19:19] Speaker 1: And what does that mean though? When you say the ratio,
[19:22] Speaker 1: what do you mean by that?
[19:23] Speaker 2: Yeah? So you know, if you imagine a big bowl
[19:25] Speaker 2: of rice with some a little bit of fish on top,
[19:28] Speaker 2: that's a typical Okinowan diet, right, is that right? Yeah,
[19:31] Speaker 2: So it's high carb, low protein versus you know what
[19:34] Speaker 2: I actually personally enjoy eating, which is a big old
[19:36] Speaker 2: chunk of steak and maybe a potato or two on
[19:39] Speaker 2: the side.
[19:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a by the way, that's a thing,
[19:44] Speaker 1: like it's an actual thing. Don't don't do too much carps, right,
[19:47] Speaker 1: like people your age, my age in particular, because my age,
[19:50] Speaker 1: we worry about putting on weight, belly fat especially, we
[19:53] Speaker 1: start to get concerned about, you know, belly fat being
[19:57] Speaker 1: an indicator of other types of things you might get
[20:00] Speaker 1: that could kill you, in particular heart attacks. And therefore
[20:04] Speaker 1: we sort of diet a little bit. And and like
[20:08] Speaker 1: I happen to exercise a lot, and I know if
[20:10] Speaker 1: I don't have protein after exercise that I take longer
[20:15] Speaker 1: to recovery. And I also I just feel flatter, much
[20:20] Speaker 1: more flatter. Not eno if that's a mental thing or
[20:24] Speaker 1: like something I'm imagining or is my body become accustomed
[20:27] Speaker 1: to that level of protein.
[20:29] Speaker 2: No, I mean I would say that we know for
[20:30] Speaker 2: a fact that there are very strong cues that control
[20:33] Speaker 2: our appetite, that work deep in our brain to say
[20:36] Speaker 2: that if you haven't had enough protein intake, you'll still
[20:38] Speaker 2: be hungry. Right, So that's very clear. So I don't
[20:43] Speaker 2: think you're imagining that.
[20:45] Speaker 1: So just so let me just I'm just sort of
[20:48] Speaker 1: spinning around this a little bit.
[20:49] Speaker 2: But yeah, it becomes really difficult, right because people are
[20:52] Speaker 2: going to be listening to this, wondering if they should
[20:53] Speaker 2: starve themselves with protein.
[20:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, and have more carbs, right, And.
[20:57] Speaker 2: What I would say is you wouldn't be able to
[20:59] Speaker 2: starve yourself protein voluntarily anyway, because that drive is so
[21:03] Speaker 2: strong in our brain to hit that protein target. So
[21:05] Speaker 2: no one's going to be able to voluntarily unless they're living,
[21:08] Speaker 2: you know, under in poverty or in a Greek island,
[21:11] Speaker 2: remote Greek island. No one's actually going to be able
[21:13] Speaker 2: to voluntarily restrict their protein intake. I would suggest, don't
[21:16] Speaker 2: eat much more than you need to.
[21:18] Speaker 1: So okay, well, is that a height weight based calculations?
[21:24] Speaker 1: So for example, when you buy these protein powders, generally
[21:27] Speaker 1: speaking they say you don't need more than thirty grams
[21:30] Speaker 1: of protein. This is like pure wave protein or something
[21:32] Speaker 1: like that. Way isolate, Is there some science in that maybe,
[21:39] Speaker 1: Like in other words, and thirty grams of pure protein
[21:42] Speaker 1: might equate to about a two hundred fifty gram steak.
[21:47] Speaker 1: Is about the met level of proper protein you get
[21:49] Speaker 1: out of that piece of meat, Which sort of intuitively
[21:53] Speaker 1: says to me, Mark, you don't need more than a
[21:55] Speaker 1: two and fifty grand steak for any one meal and
[22:00] Speaker 1: that and mark And by the way, I wouldn't be
[22:02] Speaker 1: able to eat two of those. I don't want to eat
[22:04] Speaker 1: five on a gram's a steak. My brain was, so
[22:06] Speaker 1: that's just too much, Like I don't feel my appetite
[22:09] Speaker 1: wouldn't go that far.
[22:10] Speaker 2: But af your appetite is telling you that you're full,
[22:13] Speaker 2: no reason, no reason to keep pumping extra protein into
[22:15] Speaker 2: your body. You know, our brains are fantastic at this.
[22:19] Speaker 1: Because you know, because I mean I've been listening and
[22:22] Speaker 1: reading to reading that we should be having between one
[22:26] Speaker 1: point six and two point two grams of protein per
[22:29] Speaker 1: kilogram of weight. But that's a bit unusual sort of statistically.
[22:35] Speaker 1: I don't quite like that because if I got no muscle,
[22:38] Speaker 1: just fragment, if it's all fat and bone, no muscle,
[22:43] Speaker 1: I'm sure that would not be the case. I think
[22:45] Speaker 1: the reason they want you to have between one point
[22:47] Speaker 1: six and two point two grams per kilogram of weight
[22:52] Speaker 1: is based on an assumption as to how much muscle
[22:54] Speaker 1: mass you have, because that's how.
[22:57] Speaker 2: Much muscle mass you need to put on and you
[23:00] Speaker 2: need to build as well. I'm not an expert at
[23:02] Speaker 2: how they came up with these these intake guidelines for
[23:05] Speaker 2: protein intake, but you know, it intuitively makes sense that
[23:08] Speaker 2: it's proportional to you know, how much leanbas you.
[23:11] Speaker 1: Have, and there must be there must be a general
[23:12] Speaker 1: assumption that you know, the average amount of fat for
[23:17] Speaker 1: a person relative to the whole body weight might be
[23:21] Speaker 1: thirty percent. There was somewhere between twenty and thirty percent,
[23:25] Speaker 1: which is probably about right. I mean, there are people
[23:27] Speaker 1: on who are either side of that, but they're probably
[23:30] Speaker 1: outliers in terms of a total population. Is there danger
[23:36] Speaker 1: in any one of us listening to those sorts of
[23:40] Speaker 1: conversations and not knowing statistically where we fit within the range?
[23:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, potentially, I mean, because we're all.
[23:49] Speaker 1: Self medicating ourselves with protein. We're sort educating ourselves with
[23:53] Speaker 1: you know, carbohydrates for self medigating our source of training systems.
[23:57] Speaker 1: We're self medigating the souls of the amount of sleep
[23:59] Speaker 1: we need to have. Because we know that we hear
[24:01] Speaker 1: someone who's got this high profile of intellect and knowledge
[24:08] Speaker 1: and respect in the community, your community, you know, the
[24:12] Speaker 1: scientific community, we then go off and start self medicating
[24:16] Speaker 1: for us because every one of us is different.
[24:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, I mean, so okay, it's laid out there.
[24:21] Speaker 2: I'm not a nutritional epidemiologist. That's a whole field, and
[24:24] Speaker 2: they'd have opinions on how much protein you need to have.
[24:26] Speaker 2: But I definitely believe it's the case that if you're
[24:29] Speaker 2: if you don't feel like eating something and you're trying
[24:32] Speaker 2: to force it into your body because you're you know,
[24:33] Speaker 2: you think it's going to be good for your health,
[24:35] Speaker 2: don't do that, right, don't overeat or underreat if it
[24:39] Speaker 2: if it makes you unhappy.
[24:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's funny, is very good at this. I
[24:42] Speaker 1: know some guys are bodybuilders. I haven't saying for what,
[24:45] Speaker 1: but I used to know them, but like competitive bodybuilders,
[24:49] Speaker 1: and they used to tell me they would eat every
[24:52] Speaker 1: two hours, not five times, but every two hours and
[24:55] Speaker 1: actually would get up in the middle of the night
[24:57] Speaker 1: and have some food wake up, set alarm, get and
[25:00] Speaker 1: have like a protein shake or something like that in.
[25:02] Speaker 3: The middle of the night.
[25:03] Speaker 1: They also had a lot of carbs as well during
[25:05] Speaker 1: that period while so building.
[25:08] Speaker 3: But they would.
[25:09] Speaker 1: Also say that they had so much food that it
[25:13] Speaker 1: got to a point where they couldn't eat it and
[25:15] Speaker 1: they would feel like they're going to choke, like they
[25:18] Speaker 1: just couldn't actually get it down and that is intuitively
[25:21] Speaker 1: to me that sounded like.
[25:23] Speaker 3: They were giants, like in terms of muscle mass.
[25:25] Speaker 1: But intuitively it told me that they weren't meant to
[25:27] Speaker 1: have that amount of muscle mass, and they weren't meant
[25:29] Speaker 1: to eat that that much amount of food. Now they're
[25:31] Speaker 1: doing it for a show and they're trying to win
[25:34] Speaker 1: a competition or something like that. So I think what
[25:36] Speaker 1: you're saying, you know, like from it just an maturity
[25:39] Speaker 1: point of view, it makes sense. Listen to what our
[25:42] Speaker 1: bodies tells us, and every one of us is completely different.
[25:46] Speaker 2: Too, That's right. But I guess where it starts to
[25:48] Speaker 2: become really important is frail older people. So in those
[25:52] Speaker 2: older people, really the struggling is to get them to
[25:54] Speaker 2: maintain muscle mass and eat anything.
[25:56] Speaker 1: And is that someone with I can't remember it's call now.
[26:00] Speaker 1: But when you cycopenia, Yeah, when you say to lose
[26:02] Speaker 1: muscle mass, how do you know that you are in
[26:07] Speaker 1: that cyclopedia phase, which is when you're losing muscle mass
[26:11] Speaker 1: Apart from the fact do you know you're old?
[26:13] Speaker 3: But when do you know when you know?
[26:16] Speaker 2: That's a good question. I mean the clearest sign is
[26:19] Speaker 2: losing weight. So I'll tell you one study. It's astonishing.
[26:24] Speaker 2: So it's looking at the impact of bed rest on
[26:26] Speaker 2: muscle mass and older people. So basically it just gets
[26:29] Speaker 2: some older people to lie down in bed for five days,
[26:31] Speaker 2: which happens all the time. Yeah, so when that five days,
[26:35] Speaker 2: they lose two kilograms of muscle mass. So just have
[26:38] Speaker 2: a think about that, right. Imagine some soloin steaks, which
[26:41] Speaker 2: is my favorite cut of meat, you know, four or
[26:44] Speaker 2: five of those babies, and having that cut out of
[26:46] Speaker 2: your body. Just imagine what it does to your body.
[26:48] Speaker 2: And that just takes not getting out of bed for
[26:50] Speaker 2: five days.
[26:51] Speaker 1: And that's that is what cycopenia is, is that psychoped
[26:54] Speaker 1: That's it. And when you say older people were talking
[26:56] Speaker 1: about over seventy.
[26:57] Speaker 2: It was over eighty. I've ready, right, and so you
[27:00] Speaker 2: know that's going to happen at some point in our lives.
[27:03] Speaker 2: And so when it happens to me, I'm hoping that
[27:05] Speaker 2: I go into old age with a reserve of muscle mass. Right.
[27:08] Speaker 1: Yeah, Well that's and that's sort of the thesis that
[27:12] Speaker 1: a tear and all those people were talking about you've
[27:14] Speaker 1: got to build it now because you're not going to
[27:15] Speaker 1: build it overnight. It takes a long time and then
[27:17] Speaker 1: you've got to maintain it.
[27:18] Speaker 2: Right, and we're really good at building it when we're younger. Yeah,
[27:21] Speaker 2: and so that speaks to you know, when a high
[27:23] Speaker 2: protein diet may be appropriate or less appropriate. You know,
[27:27] Speaker 2: young guys, young men and women who want to look good,
[27:31] Speaker 2: want to lose weight. A high protein diet is probably
[27:33] Speaker 2: if we know for a fact it's effective at losing
[27:35] Speaker 2: weight and looking reps right, people look great and you
[27:39] Speaker 2: know they have higher level higher circuland levels of sex
[27:42] Speaker 2: hormone levels, they're more fertile, so that could be a
[27:45] Speaker 2: good time to have our high protein intake.
[27:48] Speaker 1: It's interesting because like if I'm like, I'm nearly seventy,
[27:52] Speaker 1: so if I'm trying to.
[27:54] Speaker 2: You're looking good for nearly seventy.
[27:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you.
[27:56] Speaker 1: If I'm I think it's a genetics if I'm trying
[27:59] Speaker 1: to actually is not because I've been really conscious of
[28:01] Speaker 1: these things for a long long time. But if I'm
[28:03] Speaker 1: trying to prepare myself when I get to eighty, not
[28:07] Speaker 1: to have an accident, not to fall over, to be
[28:11] Speaker 1: able to also from a not so much a lifespan
[28:15] Speaker 1: point of view, but just from a health span point
[28:17] Speaker 1: of view, be able to enjoy myself, to be able
[28:18] Speaker 1: to do certain things, pick grand kids up, you go
[28:22] Speaker 1: for run around the park with them, more whatever. I
[28:26] Speaker 1: need to have a certain level of muscle mass in
[28:28] Speaker 1: order to move more my limbs and also to have strength.
[28:32] Speaker 1: So that that suggests me that right now, ten years
[28:36] Speaker 1: prior to that eightieth birthday or eleven years probably that
[28:39] Speaker 1: eighty birthday, that.
[28:40] Speaker 3: I need to.
[28:43] Speaker 1: Either build more muscle mass or maintain muscle mass where
[28:45] Speaker 1: I have it, which suggests me it's harder to maintain
[28:49] Speaker 1: muscle mass at my age than.
[28:52] Speaker 2: It is doable right now.
[28:54] Speaker 1: It's doable, but just to do more resistance work, more
[28:58] Speaker 1: than I've ever done before, not necessarily have there, but
[29:00] Speaker 1: definitely more more diligently.
[29:02] Speaker 3: It's probably better way of putting it.
[29:03] Speaker 1: You can't miss two weeks, you can't miss a month
[29:07] Speaker 1: through injury. If you do, it's really hard to recover.
[29:09] Speaker 1: But then it tells me, if I'm being consistent at
[29:13] Speaker 1: the training environment, the strategy around my exercise, that I've
[29:19] Speaker 1: also got to be equally focused on the nutrition I
[29:24] Speaker 1: have in my system and the amount of energy. And
[29:26] Speaker 1: you talked about it before that I my mitochondria can
[29:31] Speaker 1: produce for my cells to contract either fast or slow.
[29:38] Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, we're back to where we
[29:41] Speaker 1: started because my cells are getting older, my mito country
[29:46] Speaker 1: is getting more lazy or less responsive, etc. So it
[29:49] Speaker 1: sort of tells me that I've got to be really
[29:51] Speaker 1: strict therefore in relation to my protein intake. See, the
[29:55] Speaker 1: people that you're talking about in Okinawa, they're probably not
[29:59] Speaker 1: doing the same exp size regime that I might be
[30:01] Speaker 1: talking about to prepare myself for when I'm eighty.
[30:03] Speaker 2: I mean, they are certainly active, is my understanding.
[30:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm talking about building.
[30:08] Speaker 2: They're not lifting weights.
[30:09] Speaker 3: It's correct.
[30:10] Speaker 1: They might be carrying a bucket of water from down
[30:12] Speaker 1: the mountain or something, or but I'm sure they're not
[30:15] Speaker 1: picking up rocks and moving you know, building stone, dry
[30:18] Speaker 1: stone walls and stuff like that anymore. Someone else within
[30:20] Speaker 1: the community is doing that, which is one of the
[30:22] Speaker 1: reasons why you know, these communities work so well. So
[30:25] Speaker 1: if we wind that back, it sort of suggests to me, Mark,
[30:29] Speaker 1: there's no point you're looking at that blue zone in
[30:32] Speaker 1: Oknaa and probably the same one as the one in Korea.
[30:35] Speaker 3: Because.
[30:37] Speaker 1: It's like there's a big community there. They're not interested
[30:42] Speaker 1: in building muscle as such. They're not doing exercise, they
[30:46] Speaker 1: don't have access into gyms, they don't go to a gym.
[30:49] Speaker 3: They just they're active.
[30:51] Speaker 1: That's enough to sort of make you okay, but it's
[30:54] Speaker 1: not going to optimize you. And I'm talking about optimization here.
[30:58] Speaker 3: They're probably not even.
[31:00] Speaker 1: Thinking to themselves, how can I bend down and pick
[31:03] Speaker 1: my two year old two year old ground kid up.
[31:06] Speaker 2: I guess what we could learn from them is the
[31:09] Speaker 2: aspects of their life they enjoy now, right, So they
[31:12] Speaker 2: maintain a strong sense of community. They lead stress free
[31:15] Speaker 2: lives and you know that's quite frankly enjoyable at any
[31:19] Speaker 2: time of your life. Yeah, and it's definitely not going
[31:21] Speaker 2: to hurt your longevity.
[31:23] Speaker 3: No one ho longevity.
[31:24] Speaker 1: And I think you're right about the stress free bit,
[31:25] Speaker 1: because like you know, we sit here in Australia, you
[31:28] Speaker 1: and I sitting here right now. We're in the middle
[31:30] Speaker 1: of Dalinghurst. You know, there's traffic outside. We both take
[31:34] Speaker 1: transport to work either we you know, we don't work
[31:36] Speaker 1: from home. We either travel by probably transport that we drive.
[31:41] Speaker 1: Both cases's a lot of traffic. Then there's a lot
[31:43] Speaker 1: of people, like in those small villages there's not a
[31:46] Speaker 1: lot of people. There's a lot of people who can
[31:48] Speaker 1: annoy the shit out of you as well. You live
[31:52] Speaker 1: a stress I live a stressful life in my work
[31:54] Speaker 1: environment because it's extraordinarily competitive in the work environment I
[31:59] Speaker 1: work in my day to day job as opposed to
[32:02] Speaker 1: this stuff. This, this stuff is like unbelievably fun to me,
[32:06] Speaker 1: Like this amazing fun for me compared to what.
[32:08] Speaker 3: I do day to day.
[32:10] Speaker 1: So I live like a high level of stress, a
[32:14] Speaker 1: high level of cortisols being flushed through my system, like
[32:17] Speaker 1: from the moment I wake up literally to the moment
[32:20] Speaker 1: I go to bed at night, all of which sort
[32:23] Speaker 1: of probably has a toll on my system, including my
[32:27] Speaker 1: energy levels. You know, Like, I can't imagine that my
[32:34] Speaker 1: mitochondrial system is working efficiently if it's getting flushed with
[32:40] Speaker 1: stress hormones all the time, you know. Like, So, therefore,
[32:45] Speaker 1: to some extent, our punch on for chasing these otherwise
[32:51] Speaker 1: unreachable blue zones around the world, maybe we should stop
[32:54] Speaker 1: talking about that, yeah, because I mean real. Yeah, Well,
[33:00] Speaker 1: number one, the may not be real for the reason
[33:02] Speaker 1: you mentioned before.
[33:03] Speaker 3: Or at least not as.
[33:07] Speaker 1: Whole as we are led to believe that there's going
[33:11] Speaker 1: to be pockets of them, which you know, you can
[33:13] Speaker 1: you can poke holes at in a statistical sense because
[33:17] Speaker 1: there's some error in the statistics. Therefore, what should we
[33:23] Speaker 1: be chasing here in Australia? What should we be sort
[33:26] Speaker 1: of aspiring to?
[33:28] Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I.
[33:29] Speaker 2: Mean there are some practical things that are being pushed
[33:31] Speaker 2: at the moment in older cares. So you know, I
[33:33] Speaker 2: mentioned you mentioned resistance training, and people seem to think
[33:37] Speaker 2: that that stops at a certain age that you can
[33:39] Speaker 2: get away without, you know, lifting weights. But you know,
[33:41] Speaker 2: old frail people in a nursing home lifting weights is
[33:44] Speaker 2: fantastic for their health. There's very strong data. You know,
[33:48] Speaker 2: some of this data was from the University of Sydney
[33:50] Speaker 2: just over across town, showing that you know, older people
[33:53] Speaker 2: lifting weights leave, you know, have incredible health benefits beyond
[33:58] Speaker 2: just muscle mass, you know, some other things. There's intergenerational living.
[34:03] Speaker 2: So the idea of you would have seen this ABC
[34:05] Speaker 2: series where little kids spend time in nursing homes again
[34:09] Speaker 2: has fantastic impacts on the older people, benefits that far
[34:13] Speaker 2: exceed anything we could hope to achieve with the drug.
[34:16] Speaker 2: There are many lifestyle changes we couldn't make today at
[34:19] Speaker 2: scale for the care of older people that would improve
[34:22] Speaker 2: their lives.
[34:22] Speaker 1: What about people in the middle age? When I say
[34:25] Speaker 1: middle aged between forty and sixty, I mean what should
[34:28] Speaker 1: they be doing to prepare themselves? Because I can't imagine
[34:30] Speaker 1: if between forty and sixty, So in other words, maybe
[34:33] Speaker 1: they've had their family, they don't need protein as much.
[34:36] Speaker 1: They're sort of past that sort of ego period where
[34:40] Speaker 1: they've got to look cut and all that sort of stuff,
[34:42] Speaker 1: and they maybe are eating a greater amounts of carbs
[34:46] Speaker 1: compared to protein. They start to sort of lose their
[34:50] Speaker 1: way a little bit. What should those people be thinking about?
[34:53] Speaker 1: Because they want to they want when they get eaty,
[34:55] Speaker 1: they want to be in good shape.
[34:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. So the safest answer I can give
[34:58] Speaker 2: is to maintain that muscle mass, do you know, continue
[35:01] Speaker 2: to do resistance training and exercise. That's the safest answer,
[35:04] Speaker 2: because you know, diet is debatable and not necessarily always achievable,
[35:11] Speaker 2: and you know people doing exercise have immediate benefits and
[35:14] Speaker 2: feel good.
[35:15] Speaker 1: So it looks like the non negotiables exercise, that's right. Yeah,
[35:18] Speaker 1: So like so of the three I mean the four strategies.
[35:22] Speaker 1: I guess it's purpose and community. Let's call that one strategy.
[35:26] Speaker 1: You've got to have a purpose in a community. One
[35:28] Speaker 1: thing is for sure about the blue zones I call
[35:30] Speaker 1: blue zones, they're all got community is a big part
[35:32] Speaker 1: of that.
[35:33] Speaker 3: And purpose within the community. In other words, I've got a.
[35:35] Speaker 1: Roll and I'm either the grandfather or you know, my
[35:39] Speaker 1: job is that going to take the rubbish out every whatever?
[35:42] Speaker 3: But I've got this purpose community.
[35:43] Speaker 1: Let's let's that's one, and that's probably there's no dispute
[35:46] Speaker 1: on that one. The second strategy has to be around
[35:50] Speaker 1: what I eat. But the strategy around our food intake
[35:53] Speaker 1: it seems to be a little bit difficult, but not
[35:56] Speaker 1: not sure how much protein, how much we're the example,
[36:00] Speaker 1: give me before rice, et cetera. What type of proteum,
[36:03] Speaker 1: what type of rice?
[36:04] Speaker 3: You know?
[36:04] Speaker 1: How often a day, what time of day? That's a
[36:07] Speaker 1: bit confusing. The third strategy would be sleep. You know,
[36:10] Speaker 1: you've got to get your rest. You must sleep, that's right,
[36:13] Speaker 1: and which is quite funny because like when I was
[36:16] Speaker 1: in my twenties, you were nearly a superhero if you
[36:20] Speaker 1: could live on four or five hours sleep at night.
[36:23] Speaker 2: That's right.
[36:23] Speaker 3: Now.
[36:24] Speaker 2: I don't think that's that's changed. You know, people still
[36:26] Speaker 2: take that attitude really and you know the unfortunate part
[36:29] Speaker 2: about the importance of sleep, that's not unfortunate. Sleep is great,
[36:32] Speaker 2: but you know, society can't function without shift workers. There
[36:36] Speaker 2: are certain occupations that we just need to keep society
[36:39] Speaker 2: ticking over.
[36:40] Speaker 1: Well, those poor buggers might not make it though, that's
[36:42] Speaker 1: the problem.
[36:43] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it's if they're sleep deprived.
[36:45] Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So you know, I guess that
[36:47] Speaker 2: means they need to take extra care of their health
[36:49] Speaker 2: later in life, not maintain that lifestyle. Yeah, you know, forever,
[36:54] Speaker 2: and we need to compensate them. Well, I guess, well.
[36:57] Speaker 1: I hope we do, because we're taking something quite important
[37:00] Speaker 1: away from them that they probably don't even realize. And
[37:04] Speaker 1: the four strategy therefore, which seems to be the one
[37:07] Speaker 1: that is not negotial, and that's your fitness program with
[37:13] Speaker 1: your strategy around exercise. So we've got exercise, sleep, nutrition, purpose,
[37:21] Speaker 1: and community, which is just one those four things. They're
[37:25] Speaker 1: pretty simple.
[37:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and they're obvious sort of thing, that's right.
[37:29] Speaker 2: I mean, some people look in on the aging research field,
[37:33] Speaker 2: and they want to look at what they can do now,
[37:35] Speaker 2: and they see it's these obvious things that their grand
[37:37] Speaker 2: grandparents could have told them about, and they're like, well,
[37:38] Speaker 2: this isn't a field of research, this is not serious.
[37:41] Speaker 2: But you know, that's that's where we're out at the
[37:43] Speaker 2: moment for being able to give advice to people, those
[37:47] Speaker 2: old school advice that their grandparents would have had.
[37:50] Speaker 1: Because like when I was a kid, my grandparents on
[37:53] Speaker 1: my mom's side always said, you have it's silly today,
[38:00] Speaker 1: meat and three vegs. So in the three vege was
[38:04] Speaker 1: always much bigger than the meat, than the piece of meat,
[38:08] Speaker 1: but it was three vegetables and it wasn't like a
[38:12] Speaker 1: bowl of mashed potato.
[38:13] Speaker 3: It wasn't a bowl of pasta.
[38:15] Speaker 1: It was like some greens and some colored vegetables make
[38:19] Speaker 1: probably carrots, and then there might have been a bit
[38:21] Speaker 1: of bit of potato in there, and there would be
[38:23] Speaker 1: a piece of meat, and that's what and you would
[38:26] Speaker 1: that's in the morning you ate porridge and or wheat picks.
[38:30] Speaker 1: And in the evening you always no one ate. Late,
[38:34] Speaker 1: everybody ate because me and my dad worked fattery. Dad
[38:36] Speaker 1: got over at four o'clock. We would all be eating
[38:39] Speaker 1: at six o'clock and people when they had eaten at
[38:41] Speaker 1: ten o'clock at night, and sleep was an important part
[38:45] Speaker 1: of everything. Exercise was not something that was looked at exercise.
[38:51] Speaker 1: No one ever really thought about resistance training. When I
[38:53] Speaker 1: grew up, there was no such.
[38:54] Speaker 3: Thing as a gym.
[38:55] Speaker 1: There was no gyms with weights, And I want to
[38:57] Speaker 1: talking about there's swimming pools and stuff for that, because
[39:00] Speaker 1: nobody need weights. You know, obviously there's bodybuilders, but generally speaking,
[39:05] Speaker 1: the normal person did not go to the gym. My
[39:08] Speaker 1: father didn't definitely go to the gym as opposed to
[39:12] Speaker 1: me as a grandfather. I'm a grandfather. Now my grandkids
[39:17] Speaker 1: see me go to the gym. So the world has changed.
[39:20] Speaker 1: What do you think it has? What has causes? What
[39:23] Speaker 1: has our change in our sort of psyche? Do you
[39:26] Speaker 1: think that's made us become much.
[39:28] Speaker 3: More aware of it?
[39:29] Speaker 1: Is because we've got more money and we've become greeting
[39:31] Speaker 1: want to live longer.
[39:31] Speaker 2: Look, I think the simple answer, exactly as you say,
[39:33] Speaker 2: is that we're a wealthier society. Yeah, people have the
[39:36] Speaker 2: time to think about this in the bandwidth to worry
[39:38] Speaker 2: about their health and can spend money on gyms and
[39:42] Speaker 2: gym memberships and getting fit. Yeah, I think it's actually
[39:45] Speaker 2: a healthy reflection on our society.
[39:48] Speaker 1: But do you think that's also that's and I think
[39:51] Speaker 1: I agree, I think that's sort of writers. But I
[39:54] Speaker 1: think it's driven from us wanting to indulge ourselves in
[39:58] Speaker 1: the wonderful things that life has to offer for a long,
[40:00] Speaker 1: much longer period because we can, right, because we've got
[40:04] Speaker 1: the money to live longer. We never had forty fifty
[40:08] Speaker 1: years ago. We didn't have the money to live longer. Yeah,
[40:10] Speaker 1: someone who was eighty forty fifty years ago or seventy
[40:13] Speaker 1: wasn't thinking about living another thirty years. They thinking I'm
[40:15] Speaker 1: going to live another five years or teen years maybe.
[40:17] Speaker 2: And I guess the big shift was seeing at the moment,
[40:19] Speaker 2: is people actually thinking about how long they want to
[40:21] Speaker 2: live or could live. Yeah, that's never happened until you know,
[40:24] Speaker 2: very recently, maybe ten or twenty years ago. Yeah, it
[40:27] Speaker 2: wasn't a topic of conversation. It's just this fixed thing.
[40:30] Speaker 2: And that was kind of it, Right, save enough money
[40:33] Speaker 2: in time to keep your life, but not necessarily worry
[40:37] Speaker 2: about your health. And I think it's healthy that people
[40:39] Speaker 2: are starting to become aware of this and worry about it.
[40:42] Speaker 3: It's unhealthy.
[40:43] Speaker 2: I shouldn't say worry what I you know, one thing
[40:45] Speaker 2: I've noticed that I is not a positive change is
[40:49] Speaker 2: people almost become hypochondriacs about their longevity. Yeah. I mean,
[40:53] Speaker 2: if you're doing something that's not enjoyable and not fun,
[40:55] Speaker 2: now forget about it. It's not going to beneficial for
[40:58] Speaker 2: your life span.
[40:58] Speaker 1: And it's a good point because and I actually get
[41:02] Speaker 1: a bit worried about people too, because some people feel
[41:06] Speaker 1: as though that there's proxies out there in the world
[41:09] Speaker 1: that they've got to try and be close to, like
[41:12] Speaker 1: be equivalent of. And you look at people like again,
[41:16] Speaker 1: like Peter A ten And I'm not ready to criticize
[41:18] Speaker 1: Peter t but and he's doing a great job of
[41:21] Speaker 1: building knowledge about this topic. But there's people out there
[41:27] Speaker 1: be thinking, well, I've got a bit like that, and like,
[41:30] Speaker 1: you know, like he exercises for a couple of hours
[41:32] Speaker 1: a days. Most people don't have that time.
[41:34] Speaker 3: To do that. A couple of hours exercise every day.
[41:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I was on a panel with this
[41:37] Speaker 2: guy who's saying that he would take sixty supplements every morning,
[41:41] Speaker 2: sixty sixty pills. Go ahead and live your life.
[41:45] Speaker 3: Man. Yeah, well, I guess it's all right of him,
[41:48] Speaker 3: but all of us shouldn't look to us out looking
[41:49] Speaker 3: him and say I got a bit like that.
[41:51] Speaker 2: So he'd taken that inspiration from, you know, one of
[41:54] Speaker 2: these public figures in the in the longevity advocacy fields,
[41:58] Speaker 2: some like Brian Johnson, was right, right, And that's you know,
[42:02] Speaker 2: that's almost the guy's almost comedic, right. I actually started
[42:05] Speaker 2: to appreciate a sense of humor.
[42:06] Speaker 3: Well, he's an experiment on himself.
[42:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and you're going to afford you do
[42:10] Speaker 2: it exactly exactly.
[42:11] Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking someone who spends a couple of
[42:12] Speaker 1: million bucks a year on himself just as just his
[42:16] Speaker 1: longevity quest.
[42:18] Speaker 2: Right.
[42:18] Speaker 1: And I guess he looks younger, He looks pretty good.
[42:21] Speaker 1: He's I've seen photos with him with his shirt off.
[42:24] Speaker 1: Is fairly ripped competitive what he used to be like
[42:26] Speaker 1: when he was in the tech when he was a
[42:27] Speaker 1: tech brow where he made all his money. But equally,
[42:31] Speaker 1: it's not attainable for most of us, right, most of
[42:34] Speaker 1: us aren't ever going to get there.
[42:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, blood transfusions from your kids is not a scalable solution.
[42:39] Speaker 1: From your kids. Yeah, yeah, exactly. My kids wouldn't let
[42:42] Speaker 1: me be transfer take their blood. I'm pretty sure that
[42:45] Speaker 1: they want to hang on to it for themselves. So
[42:47] Speaker 1: where do you think then a sensible position should be
[42:52] Speaker 1: for us as a nation.
[42:54] Speaker 2: As a country, you know, like I say, we already
[42:57] Speaker 2: have outstanding health systems. Preventative health care is fantastic in
[43:00] Speaker 2: this nation. We could probably do better at older the
[43:06] Speaker 2: care of older people. So nursing homes you know, suffer
[43:09] Speaker 2: from just under being underresourced and not getting enough stuff.
[43:14] Speaker 2: You know, I mentioned things like resistance training. Again, that
[43:17] Speaker 2: research came out of Australia, out of the University of Sydney.
[43:20] Speaker 2: We've done really well there. So that's I think where
[43:23] Speaker 2: we could go as a nation, or what we could
[43:24] Speaker 2: do is a nation. Now. In the future, I'm hoping
[43:27] Speaker 2: and as a field, we're hoping there will be drugs
[43:29] Speaker 2: that have clinical evidence to show a protection against age
[43:33] Speaker 2: related disease. So, whether it be rapper mice and met foreman,
[43:37] Speaker 2: some of these ned precursors that I'm working on. Hopefully
[43:40] Speaker 2: in one of those will come through and you have
[43:42] Speaker 2: strong evidence to show that we can extend overall lifespan,
[43:45] Speaker 2: but more importantly delay age related disease.
[43:48] Speaker 1: Just finally, I did notice in my notes that you
[43:54] Speaker 1: have co authored papers with doctor David Sinclair.
[43:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean he recruited me to UNSW.
[44:00] Speaker 1: So but he was when you did you PhD or No, this.
[44:04] Speaker 2: Is I would have been ten years ago to actually
[44:07] Speaker 2: set up our lab at UNSW.
[44:08] Speaker 1: So is he still in Australia. I thought he was
[44:10] Speaker 1: an American.
[44:10] Speaker 2: He's in the United States, United States, but he was
[44:12] Speaker 2: an adjunct at a conjoint at U and s W
[44:15] Speaker 2: for a while.
[44:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so he was there for a while, was he?
[44:17] Speaker 1: And he's like, you know, like a rock star in
[44:22] Speaker 1: the United States, cit he stays when it comes to longevity,
[44:24] Speaker 1: the whole whole discussion. Where do you think he's at,
[44:28] Speaker 1: Like what is he saying? Where do you and do
[44:32] Speaker 1: you have conversations?
[44:33] Speaker 3: Do you follow him? Do you read his stuff?
[44:34] Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, we're good mates. I mean the last time
[44:36] Speaker 2: he came out to the country, he flew in for
[44:37] Speaker 2: my wedding, which was lovely. Where he's in terms of
[44:42] Speaker 2: his labs research at the moment, he's in reprogramming what's happening?
[44:47] Speaker 2: So this is epigenetic reprogramming. So this is the idea
[44:49] Speaker 2: of turning back the clock basically to being an early
[44:52] Speaker 2: embryo to start again. So we know that our as
[44:57] Speaker 2: we get older, in fact, not even as we get older,
[44:59] Speaker 2: as we grow into a human being, cells differentiate, they
[45:03] Speaker 2: turn into different cell types, so for example, skin cells,
[45:05] Speaker 2: brain cells, liver cells, whatever, And that's all down to
[45:08] Speaker 2: how our DNA is being turned on or off. And
[45:11] Speaker 2: you know we've got the same DNA in every cell,
[45:13] Speaker 2: but it's what we call the epigenetics. So whether those
[45:15] Speaker 2: genes are on or off, now that can drive whether
[45:18] Speaker 2: they turn into certain cell types or it can drive
[45:21] Speaker 2: whether they are cells continue to divide anymore. And sort
[45:25] Speaker 2: of the dream is that we could rewind the clock
[45:28] Speaker 2: on our DNA to essentially go back to the early
[45:31] Speaker 2: embryo stage and then have fresh cells completely erase the slate.
[45:37] Speaker 2: So that's the dream, and you know it's this technology
[45:40] Speaker 2: was used first to It's what we call induced pluri potency.
[45:44] Speaker 2: It's where you take adult cells, for example, skin cells,
[45:46] Speaker 2: you grow them in a dish and you can rewind
[45:49] Speaker 2: them back to being embryonic stem cells. Wow. And so
[45:52] Speaker 2: you can do this in a dish. So this was
[45:53] Speaker 2: discovered in the early two thousands, and I could go
[45:55] Speaker 2: a bit on a bit about this the fant you know,
[45:59] Speaker 2: the free of this discovery is really interesting and it's
[46:02] Speaker 2: really illuminating for how to think about this. So the
[46:07] Speaker 2: original experiment in the nineteen sixties this British guy John Gerdon.
[46:11] Speaker 2: So the idea of the time was that DNA becomes
[46:14] Speaker 2: damaged as we grow old and that's what drives aging. Right,
[46:19] Speaker 2: So what he did is he took a skin cell
[46:22] Speaker 2: from an adult frog, so it's old DNA, and he
[46:25] Speaker 2: then put that into a frog eggsll And he was
[46:28] Speaker 2: using frogs because they have massive eggs and it's just
[46:30] Speaker 2: one cell. So you can take out the egg cell
[46:33] Speaker 2: DNA and put in that old DNA. Now, in theory,
[46:35] Speaker 2: it's old DNA, it's become damaged over time, right, and
[46:38] Speaker 2: yet it leads to a completely healthy frog. That egg
[46:41] Speaker 2: grows up, it goes through normal development, and it's perfectly healthy.
[46:45] Speaker 2: It's fine. So somehow something floating around in that egg
[46:48] Speaker 2: cell is able to rewind the clock of old DNA
[46:52] Speaker 2: and you can actually repeat that experiment for one hundred
[46:54] Speaker 2: generations and they're fine. So something floating around in the
[46:57] Speaker 2: egg is driving the turning the clock back on our DNA.
[47:01] Speaker 2: It took until two thousand and six, I think a
[47:04] Speaker 2: Japanese followed by the name of Shinya Yamanaka actually figured
[47:07] Speaker 2: out what those factors were and those are the factors
[47:10] Speaker 2: that are used to create stem cells today. So that was,
[47:13] Speaker 2: you know, two and six, two thousand and seven. So
[47:15] Speaker 2: we've been growing stem cells in a dish for a
[47:17] Speaker 2: long time since then, basically since the discovery of those
[47:21] Speaker 2: four factors. And I know where Sinclaire at and many
[47:23] Speaker 2: others in the field is trying to do this inside
[47:25] Speaker 2: the body. So if we could deliver those factors to
[47:28] Speaker 2: existing tissue inside the body, whether we could rewind the
[47:31] Speaker 2: clock back to essentially being a stem cell and then
[47:33] Speaker 2: grow completely fresh tissue.
[47:35] Speaker 1: And is that to sort of stop I don't know,
[47:40] Speaker 1: a cancer growth or what is the purpose of it?
[47:43] Speaker 1: Is it just to get us back to being young again?
[47:45] Speaker 2: Or yeah, that's right. So the idea is if you
[47:48] Speaker 2: rewind that clock, you could reset longevity, I suppose is
[47:53] Speaker 2: the dream. Now the big caveat is that when you
[47:56] Speaker 2: rewind the clock, if you do it, if you go
[47:57] Speaker 2: back too far when those cells go to differentiate again,
[48:00] Speaker 2: they won't necessarily differentiate into the cell type you want,
[48:03] Speaker 2: and so that's called the terrotomain. It's almost like a
[48:05] Speaker 2: type of tumor that grows inside the body. So that's
[48:08] Speaker 2: a very risky, very risky strategy. But if you could
[48:12] Speaker 2: just tickle that epigenetic clock, if you could just rewind
[48:16] Speaker 2: it a little bit, the hope is you could rewind
[48:19] Speaker 2: aspects of aging.
[48:20] Speaker 1: So we're they're up to now if they put any
[48:23] Speaker 1: papers out or they there.
[48:24] Speaker 2: You know, when you think about low hanging fruit again
[48:27] Speaker 2: for aging research, the one that they looked at a
[48:29] Speaker 2: few years ago was the optic nerve. So this is
[48:31] Speaker 2: the nerve going from the eye back to the brain. Now,
[48:34] Speaker 2: if you damage that at the moment, those nerves they
[48:36] Speaker 2: can't regrow. But if you reprogram them back to the
[48:39] Speaker 2: embryonic state using these reprogramming factors, that nerve can regrow,
[48:44] Speaker 2: and at least in animals you can restore vision. Wow. Right,
[48:47] Speaker 2: So it's a potentially a very powerful, but very risky strategy.
[48:51] Speaker 2: That's where his lab is at at the moment.
[48:53] Speaker 1: Is it being done here in Australia or is all
[48:55] Speaker 1: the overseas all of the US.
[48:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, so reprogramming as a technology, you know, there's a
[49:00] Speaker 2: lot of research on epigenetics and reprogramming. It's all about
[49:03] Speaker 2: how to apply it in a safe way. That's the
[49:06] Speaker 2: tricky part. There are plenty of reprogramming epigenetics specialists around
[49:11] Speaker 2: in Australia. In fact, just up the road from ust In,
[49:14] Speaker 2: Darlinghurst and Sydney there are I know, many researchers working
[49:17] Speaker 2: on this. I don't know that they're working at it
[49:18] Speaker 2: in the context of aging. The main reason people work
[49:22] Speaker 2: on epigenetics I think around here is for cancer research.
[49:25] Speaker 1: Right, but he's working Sinclair was working on it in
[49:28] Speaker 1: relation to aging.
[49:29] Speaker 2: That's right.
[49:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
[49:31] Speaker 1: And we go back to that same old question. I mean,
[49:34] Speaker 1: maybe we've been doing this for ten thousand years. I
[49:37] Speaker 1: wouldn't have a clue, but it seems to me that
[49:41] Speaker 1: if someone can crack this code or help us age
[49:45] Speaker 1: more slowly, or in fact even reverse it, like Donald Trump,
[49:51] Speaker 1: they could end up becoming the president of the United
[49:53] Speaker 1: States or president of the whole world.
[49:56] Speaker 2: What is that?
[49:56] Speaker 1: And I mean, why we got this massive?
[50:00] Speaker 2: Why is it a new thing? Is what you're aating?
[50:01] Speaker 1: Yeah? What looks like a new thing, But why is
[50:03] Speaker 1: we got this massive interest in that?
[50:07] Speaker 2: So I will say that people like David Sinclair, Andrew
[50:10] Speaker 2: Huberman and so on are excellent public communicators and they've
[50:14] Speaker 2: been extremely active in driving the field in the public.
[50:17] Speaker 1: Eye, building a movement.
[50:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's safe to say. And you know,
[50:22] Speaker 2: I've been working in aging research not as long as
[50:25] Speaker 2: they have, since early twenty tens, and at the time
[50:30] Speaker 2: it was kind of a French topic. I think people
[50:32] Speaker 2: at the time were aware of tilameres, the fact that
[50:35] Speaker 2: telim is with these bits of our DNA that became
[50:36] Speaker 2: shorter with age, right. But you know, these days, I
[50:40] Speaker 2: think with these books that have been released to the mainstream,
[50:43] Speaker 2: that's really helped push the field in the public imagination.
[50:48] Speaker 2: You know. From a scientific perspective, I think it holds
[50:50] Speaker 2: huge promise. If we could develop a drug that treated
[50:54] Speaker 2: multiple aspect you know, the underlying biology of aging. Imagine
[50:57] Speaker 2: all the diseases we could treat, The impacts it would
[50:59] Speaker 2: have on public health.
[50:59] Speaker 1: By yeah, and the impact that the economic impact would
[51:04] Speaker 1: be enormous, But our population would also probably be become
[51:09] Speaker 1: an issue because the population would would never really die
[51:14] Speaker 1: or would but die for a slow rate, so that
[51:17] Speaker 1: that itself has economic sort of impacts. It's quite a
[51:22] Speaker 1: it's complex, it's not without us issues Like if you know,
[51:26] Speaker 1: we're seven and a half billion people in the world,
[51:28] Speaker 1: if all of a sudden we kept producing kids, but
[51:31] Speaker 1: the seven a half billion at the top end never
[51:34] Speaker 1: really moved, They kept lifting, just living longer and longer
[51:36] Speaker 1: and longer. We're going to have a bigger and bigger
[51:38] Speaker 1: resource problem, and a bigger and bigger environmental problem, and
[51:42] Speaker 1: a bigger and bigger everything else problem, the crowd overcrowding problem.
[51:45] Speaker 1: But I guess if that's not a leal population, but
[51:49] Speaker 1: anyone individual would rather be one of the ones who's
[51:51] Speaker 1: at the top and stays stays on this planet for longer,
[51:54] Speaker 1: we'd all back ourselves to survive better than any better
[51:57] Speaker 1: than anybody else. I can sort of, I can sort
[51:59] Speaker 1: of see the point for me. The reason I'm to
[52:00] Speaker 1: approach one hundred, by the ways, because I'm just curious
[52:03] Speaker 1: about this whole topic, and it's also confusing, and the
[52:07] Speaker 1: more I read, the more I hear, and the more
[52:10] Speaker 1: confused I get. Actually, because I'm not a scientist, but
[52:14] Speaker 1: I guess what I wanted to do is talk to
[52:17] Speaker 1: people like you and ask the questions that are us
[52:23] Speaker 1: non scientists would like to ask, because a lot of problems,
[52:27] Speaker 1: a lot of the problems with those individuals who are
[52:29] Speaker 1: building awareness and doing a great job. They talk to
[52:31] Speaker 1: each other and it gets very dense, you know, it
[52:34] Speaker 1: gets complex, right, and most most people zone out because
[52:40] Speaker 1: they go, my god, what are they talking about and
[52:43] Speaker 1: other than someone who might have particularly interested in science
[52:45] Speaker 1: or who in fact as a scientist. So they build awareness,
[52:49] Speaker 1: but at the same time it's very, very complex, so
[52:51] Speaker 1: complex and confusing that it becomes unattainable and you'll lose
[52:55] Speaker 1: interest all of a sudden. So that's the objective of
[52:59] Speaker 1: this show is to speak to people like you and
[53:02] Speaker 1: not my preferences to speak to assis. By the way,
[53:05] Speaker 1: because I don't think the rest of the war controls is.
[53:07] Speaker 1: I think Australians are as good as anyone in the
[53:09] Speaker 1: world at this stuff. I'm happy to talk to Peter
[53:12] Speaker 1: or t Or and who if they want to.
[53:13] Speaker 3: Come and talk to him.
[53:14] Speaker 1: But nonetheless, I think Australia and has this capability And
[53:20] Speaker 1: what do you think about do you think you know
[53:21] Speaker 1: you're a scientist? A mirror researcher s and your researcher.
[53:25] Speaker 1: You read all the papers that are written in all
[53:27] Speaker 1: the accredited journals. Do Australia do we bad above our weight?
[53:32] Speaker 2: Yeah? Look at aging research. Absolutely, there's some fantastic stuff
[53:35] Speaker 2: coming out. It probably isn't publicized as much overseas. And
[53:42] Speaker 2: I think the other thing that we're doing in starting
[53:44] Speaker 2: to change in Australia is that previously we were doing
[53:46] Speaker 2: basic research, really really fundamental basic research. There wasn't being
[53:50] Speaker 2: applied to the question of aging, if you know what
[53:54] Speaker 2: I mean. So I mentioned, you know, the detailed work
[53:55] Speaker 2: on epigenetics just up the road here, or metabolism just
[53:59] Speaker 2: up the road here. That's really important for aging. And
[54:02] Speaker 2: you know I've in the past set up conference series
[54:05] Speaker 2: where we try and get people who have this basic
[54:06] Speaker 2: research and get them to focus it on aging research.
[54:12] Speaker 2: You know, on the global scale, if you look at
[54:15] Speaker 2: the number of papers academic papers that are published per
[54:18] Speaker 2: dollar public investment, Australia is the most efficient in the world. Wow,
[54:21] Speaker 2: we are incredibly productive when it comes to scientific research.
[54:25] Speaker 2: In the field of aging research in particular, it's really
[54:27] Speaker 2: starting to change. We're really starting to see researchers drive
[54:31] Speaker 2: their work towards applications in aging, and so in terms
[54:34] Speaker 2: of where the basic research is at, I think it's
[54:36] Speaker 2: quite strong. You know. I'm quite proud of what we're
[54:38] Speaker 2: doing at uringsw in female fertility and extending reproductive lifespan.
[54:44] Speaker 2: And there are people doing, you know, as I mentioned,
[54:46] Speaker 2: fantastic work on nutrients sensing and how much we should eat,
[54:50] Speaker 2: what those what nutrients we should be eating. That's out
[54:54] Speaker 2: of the University of Sydney. There's also fantastic work at
[54:58] Speaker 2: a clinical level tracking older people and looking for these
[55:01] Speaker 2: risk factors. So I think we're doing well well.
[55:05] Speaker 1: That makes me happy because you know, I'm heading into
[55:08] Speaker 1: that territory and I want to make sure that I
[55:11] Speaker 1: want to make sure, in a very selfish way, that
[55:12] Speaker 1: I have the right people around me for the future.
[55:14] Speaker 1: So doctor Lindsay who, I really appreciate your time. Thanks
[55:17] Speaker 1: for muching me, thanks for having me. Hopefully we can
[55:19] Speaker 1: catch up again, that'd be great.
[55:21] Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks mate,

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.