00:00:00- Speaking of prospering,
00:00:01how far off are we from age reversal, do you think?
00:00:04- That's one I'm most excited about.
00:00:06So have you looked at Yamanaka factor?
00:00:09Have you talked about this on your show before?
00:00:10- David Sinclair has been on,
00:00:11and I know that he's sort of tangentially associated with it,
00:00:14but assume, no, do the 30,000 foot view
00:00:17of the Yamanaka factors.
00:00:18- So every cell in our body has the same DNA, okay?
00:00:23We know that.
00:00:24And the DNA is in every cell
00:00:27because of a process called mitosis.
00:00:28Every time we make a new cell
00:00:30from the time we're in the womb to today,
00:00:32we're making new cells,
00:00:33both our entire DNA gets copied over into every cell.
00:00:36But what makes my eye look and act differently than my skin?
00:00:40If it's got the same DNA, how's it different?
00:00:43How's it different than my brain or my tongue or my feet?
00:00:46Those are different cells.
00:00:48There's different cells in different organs in the body.
00:00:51Those cells are different
00:00:52because the genes in the DNA are on or off.
00:00:56So there's a bunch of switches,
00:00:57and the switches are either on or off.
00:00:59And that creates cellular differentiation.
00:01:01It's what makes one cell different from another cell,
00:01:04the eye cell different from the heart cell,
00:01:06different from the skin cell or the lung cell.
00:01:08And the switches that are on or off
00:01:10are these little molecular switches.
00:01:12They're molecules that sit on top of the DNA,
00:01:15and they keep that gene from working.
00:01:18It blocks it off.
00:01:20And then the other gene is open.
00:01:21And when it's open,
00:01:22that means that your cell is making RNA copies of that gene
00:01:26and turning it into a protein.
00:01:28- Zeros and ones.
00:01:29- Zeros and ones.
00:01:29And each gene makes a unique protein.
00:01:32The proteins that then come out do a bunch of stuff.
00:01:36They're machines, they're molecular machines.
00:01:39And they're constantly doing all this stuff in your cell.
00:01:41And that's what makes every cell different
00:01:43is what genes are on and what genes are off.
00:01:46And the complexity of this is astounding.
00:01:49If you were to think about a cell
00:01:51being the size of Manhattan,
00:01:53so imagine a cell is a city the size of Manhattan
00:01:57with 500-story tall buildings.
00:01:59That's how big it would be.
00:02:01And every person is a protein.
00:02:03There's 10 billion people
00:02:04living in this 500-story tall building, island of Manhattan,
00:02:08going in between the buildings, up and down, all day long,
00:02:10building stuff together, never sleeping, always working,
00:02:13running into each other, having coffee,
00:02:14making stuff together, breaking stuff together,
00:02:17working 10 billion of us.
00:02:18Those are the proteins in the cell.
00:02:19- In one cell.
00:02:20- In one cell, running around doing stuff.
00:02:22For 80 years, that's one second in one cell.
00:02:26That's how complex this is.
00:02:28So the proteins that are on or off matter a lot,
00:02:31and then they make stuff.
00:02:32So that's why the eye cell does totally different stuff
00:02:34than the brain cell or the heart cell.
00:02:35As we get older, this is the current science on this.
00:02:40It looks like what happens is we have DNA breaks.
00:02:43DNA gets damaged from radiation and sunlight
00:02:46and bad eating and alcohol and all the other shit.
00:02:49As those DNA breaks happen,
00:02:51your cell actually fixes the DNA.
00:02:53It's very good at fixing it.
00:02:54Goes in, there's a bunch of proteins.
00:02:55They're the worker proteins that are repaired proteins.
00:02:57They go in, they fix the DNA.
00:02:59Every time the DNA gets fixed,
00:03:00there's a chance that those ones and zeros,
00:03:03those ons and offs, get moved around a little bit.
00:03:06And as they get moved around, over time,
00:03:09they get moved to the wrong place.
00:03:10So what ends up happening over time
00:03:14is that the wrong genes get turned on
00:03:17and the right genes can get turned off in a cell.
00:03:20And then that cell stops working right.
00:03:22The eye cell stops doing what it's supposed to be doing.
00:03:24The heart cell stops getting the right electrical cascade
00:03:28to flow through the other cells.
00:03:30All of the cells, the skin cell becomes a little wrinkled.
00:03:32And eventually, if enough of those cells
00:03:34have those epigenetic, is what it's called,
00:03:36epigenetic errors, you start getting wrinkles.
00:03:39Your heart stops beating as well.
00:03:40You go blind.
00:03:41All these sorts of things happen with aging.
00:03:43It looks like the root of all disease may be aging.
00:03:46And aging is a disease.
00:03:48So it is a disease rooted in the fact
00:03:50that the epigenetic factors, these little molecules,
00:03:52move around in the wrong place.
00:03:54That's what we discovered is basically aging.
00:03:58In 2006, a guy named Shinya Yamanaka
00:04:01found that he could take four proteins
00:04:03and put them on a cell.
00:04:05They would go into the cell
00:04:06and they would move all of those epigenetic markers,
00:04:08those ones and zeros, to make that cell into a stem cell,
00:04:13which can then be turned into any other cell in the body.
00:04:15So that was the magic thing he won the Nobel Prize for.
00:04:18In 2016, another scientist published a series of papers
00:04:21showing that instead of putting a lot of those four proteins
00:04:24on the cell, you could put a small amount.
00:04:26And if you put a small amount,
00:04:27instead of resetting all those molecular markers
00:04:30and making that cell back into a stem cell,
00:04:33what it actually does, it just moves those markers
00:04:35back to where they're supposed to be to make it a young cell.
00:04:38And suddenly that retinal cell
00:04:40becomes like a young retinal cell.
00:04:41The skin cell becomes a young skin cell.
00:04:44The heart cell becomes a young heart cell.
00:04:46All of these cells get reset.
00:04:48And they did this in mice
00:04:49and they made the mice age to like 250 plus years old.
00:04:52They put it in monkeys, the wrinkles went away,
00:04:55and they've done it in specifically applying it
00:04:57to retinal cells in the eye and reversed blindness.
00:05:00- This is Sinclair's stuff, right?
00:05:02- Sinclair has one of these companies
00:05:03that's in clinical trials now.
00:05:05And there's dozens of others.
00:05:06Altos Labs is like one of the most funded startups in history
00:05:08that no one talks about.
00:05:10They've raised close to probably $10 billion at this point
00:05:14to pursue these technologies.
00:05:15But basically what this means is we are now discovering
00:05:18not just the four proteins,
00:05:19but a whole bunch of other little molecules
00:05:21that we can put into a cocktail.
00:05:23Either we're gonna drink it, take it as a shot,
00:05:25or take it as a pill, it will get into our cells
00:05:29and it will reset the epigenetic of that cell
00:05:32to make it young again.
00:05:33They're starting with targeting diseases,
00:05:36like a particular, like blindness or glaucoma in the eye,
00:05:39or rheumatoid arthritis or some other heart issue.
00:05:42And they're applying these factors
00:05:44to the cells in that tissue only.
00:05:46- Locally. - Locally.
00:05:47But over time, what'll end up happening
00:05:49is this becomes a systemic treatment
00:05:51and they're already doing it in animal models.
00:05:53And then you can either do it continuously
00:05:56or what I think will end up happening
00:05:57is we'll probably have a system whereby these factors
00:06:00will be continuous, when I say the word factor,
00:06:02I mean protein.
00:06:03These proteins can be continuously made and released
00:06:06inside our body as they're needed.
00:06:09So we maintain our youth and we will live theoretically
00:06:13for as long as we want.
00:06:15That's where this is headed.
00:06:16And the technology shows now that we can do this in animals,
00:06:19we can re-dose them, re-dose them and keep them young.
00:06:22- Has it been done systemically yet?
00:06:24- Yeah. - You mentioned-
00:06:24- Yeah, this is the mouse model where they made these mice,
00:06:28the equivalent of like having someone live
00:06:29like 200 plus years old.
00:06:31And this is like so early,
00:06:32they haven't even optimized the molecules.
00:06:34They haven't optimized how you deliver the molecules.
00:06:36They haven't optimized the dosing.
00:06:38They haven't optimized the method of the dose.
00:06:40Like there's all these techniques
00:06:41that are gonna be developed on top of this.
00:06:44For every one year we can extend average human lifespan,
00:06:46we're adding tens of trillions of dollars to GDP, right?
00:06:49So this is also another big economic driver,
00:06:51but it's not just how long people live,
00:06:52it's how healthy they are and how energetic they are
00:06:55and how happy they can be.
00:06:56And they can now go out and not feel all the pain
00:06:58and have the disease.
00:07:00Theoretically, this can lead to a reversal
00:07:03in rates of cancer proliferation or reversal in diabetes
00:07:06or reversal in many of these other diseases
00:07:08that are fundamentally rooted in this kind of failure
00:07:11of your epigenome,
00:07:13the markers that turn your genes on and off.
00:07:15So this is a technology category that I am like,
00:07:20I think is one of these other things
00:07:21that you can kind of think about the compounding effect,
00:07:23free energy, right?
00:07:24Like AI automation and infinite labor
00:07:29for people to do all the things they wanna do
00:07:32and potentially living forever.
00:07:34I mean, you start to think about
00:07:35how these all kind of compound.
00:07:36That's why I'm excited about the future.
00:07:38Like these very quickly become these sort of
00:07:40compounding effects that drive us into a happier tomorrow.
00:07:43And then again, it becomes a question of abundance.
00:07:45How do you wanna spend your time?
00:07:47Again, a hundred years ago,
00:07:48I don't think people would have had the job option
00:07:50of being a yoga instructor or being a podcaster
00:07:53or being a wedding photographer, go down the list.
00:07:56Like there's so many things that people have found joy
00:07:58in doing with their time
00:07:59and they can be productive doing it.
00:08:01I think more of that starts to happen tomorrow.
00:08:04And it's less of the like,
00:08:06you gotta go work the corporate shitty job
00:08:07on a trading floor in a corporate office at a cubicle
00:08:11or in a factory or all the things that maybe
00:08:14we will look back one day and say,
00:08:16"Hey, that was kind of limiting human potential."
00:08:19Like maybe humans could do a lot more and maybe they should.
00:08:22And these shifts to more abundance
00:08:25give us that opportunity to do that.
00:08:26- How far do you think we're off from getting to the stage
00:08:29where we can do age reversal?
00:08:30One decade, five decades?
00:08:34- Way less than that, way less than that.
00:08:36We are in clinical trials now on several of these cocktails.
00:08:41And there's always a risk in going from animals to humans,
00:08:46but we've done it with human cells in vitro, in a petri dish.
00:08:51And we see the effect that we are expecting to see.
00:08:54So we have a lot of reasons to believe that
00:08:57over the next 10 to 20 years,
00:09:01more of this starts to proliferate.
00:09:05- You've heard Peter Diamandis' idea of longevity,
00:09:07escape velocity, right?
00:09:09That you need to stick about every year that you live
00:09:12means that you're going to live a little bit longer.
00:09:14But that when you cross a particular threshold,
00:09:16you just need to stick about until this happens essentially,
00:09:19or whatever the equivalent is, whatever the technology is.
00:09:22It allows you to extend lifespan indefinitely.
00:09:24- I think it's fair.
00:09:25- You just hold on, hold on.
00:09:27It's probably the best long-termist view
00:09:31for looking after your health.
00:09:33That now is not the time to fuck it.
00:09:36- Right, totally.
00:09:37- Because in the past,
00:09:38there wasn't really any reason to stick about.
00:09:40Yeah, you're gonna live 80 years or 70 years or 60 years,
00:09:43but you know, you're playing around with fives and tens.
00:09:45Whereas if the difference is between 80 and a hundred,
00:09:48or 80 and 120. - Or 200, yeah.
00:09:51You're like, "Hey, keep it together."
00:09:53And by the way, a lot of,
00:09:54the number one thing you can do to fix your epigenome,
00:09:57which you can do without taking these drugs, is exercise.
00:09:59- Fasting. - Well, fasting helps.
00:10:02Fasting does have an effect, but exercise.
00:10:04Exercise releases molecules that in many cells in your body
00:10:07will go in and start to address the epigenome
00:10:10and make you more youthful.
00:10:11And then there's other things that you can start to take.
00:10:13Some of this peptide stuff that people are crazy about
00:10:15has shown that it has an effect.
00:10:17I don't want to be prescriptive on these things,
00:10:21but there's a lot of ways that you can start
00:10:24to kind of edge your way
00:10:26before all the big clinical stuff is done
00:10:28and the big products come out to market.
00:10:31Look, you know sleep matters, but let's be real.
00:10:33Most nights, you're probably not getting the sort of sleep
00:10:36that's actually restorative.
00:10:37Eight Sleeps Pod 5 fixes that.
00:10:39It's a smart cover that you throw over the top
00:10:41of your mattress that actively cools or heats
00:10:44each side of the bed up to 20 degrees.
00:10:46They've even added a temperature-regulating duvet
00:10:48and pillowcase so you and your partner can sleep
00:10:50at your preferred temperatures covered head to toe,
00:10:53like some temperature-controlled mummy.
00:10:55Plus, it's got upgraded sensors that run health checks
00:10:57when you're asleep, tracking things like abnormal heartbeats
00:11:00and breathing issues and sudden HRV changes.
00:11:02There's a built-in speaker for white noise.
00:11:04The autopilot feature learns your sleep patterns,
00:11:07makes real-time adjustments to improve your sleep.
00:11:09It even detects when you're snoring
00:11:10and lifts your head a few inches to help you breathe better.
00:11:13That is why Eight Sleep is clinically proven
00:11:15to add up to an hour of quality sleep per night.
00:11:18And best of all, they have a 30-day sleep trial,
00:11:20so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights.
00:11:22And if you don't like it,
00:11:23they will just give you your money back.
00:11:24Plus, they ship internationally.
00:11:26Right now, you can get up to $350 off the Pod 5
00:11:29by going to the link in the description below
00:11:31or heading to eightsleep.com/modernwisdom
00:11:33and using the code modernwisdom at checkout.
00:11:36That's E-I-G-H-T sleep.com/modernwisdom
00:11:39and modernwisdom at checkout.