REVERSE AGING: What To Eat & When To Eat For LONGEVITY | David Sinclair

Dr. David Sinclair 0:00 Adversity, right? What doesn't kill you makes you live longer.

Lewis Howes 0:04 Ooh, that's a good one. So put your body through pain throughout your life as consistently as possible. Like, controlled pain, right? Going in a sauna for 15 minutes and pushing an extra minute, like that feeling of adversity. Going in cold, working out hard, doing something where it's a, you're not gonna kill yourself or hurt or break a leg, but it's like discomfort. Is that what I'm hearing?

Dr. David Sinclair 0:27 That's the most important lesson. [upbeat music]

Lewis Howes 0:45 Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We have the iconic Dr. David Sinclair in the house. Thank you so much for being here. Very excited about this. You are the master on talking about lifespan, talking about how to reverse aging, talking about how to extend our life, our health, and everything. And something you said before we got on here and that I read in your book is that, uh, aging is a disease. Is that right?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:12 Well, that's what I think, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:13 That's what you think it is. Is- would that mean death is a disease as well?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18 Uh, well, death is the, the, the end product of aging.

Lewis Howes 1:21 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21 Right? So we, we've cured just about every other major disease. So you don't die from an infection. You typically don't die in childbirth if you're a woman. So now what's left is aging, and while we're whacking-

Lewis Howes 1:34 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:34 ... each of these diseases, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, we're trying to whack them on the head like a Whac-A-Mole game-

Lewis Howes 1:39 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 1:40 ... we forget that the main reason all these diseases occur is that our bodies are aging. If you don't get old, you don't get those diseases.

Lewis Howes 1:48 Is that because your immune system is strong and so that it fights against disease essentially or-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:53 Well, yes, it's similar, but it's not the immune system that you're thinking of. We actually have inbuilt defenses, we call them longevity genes-

Lewis Howes 2:01 Uh-huh

Dr. David Sinclair 2:01 ... that we can activate in our daily lives by doing certain things. But-

Lewis Howes 2:05 Longevity genes?

Dr. David Sinclair 2:06 Yes, that's what we call them.

Lewis Howes 2:08 How many genes do we have?

Dr. David Sinclair 2:09 Oh, we've got about 23, 24,000 of them.

Lewis Howes 2:12 23 to 24,000 genes.

Dr. David Sinclair 2:14 Right, but there's only about 50 really important ones for longevity.

Lewis Howes 2:18 Okay. And what are the- what are those longevity gene?

Dr. David Sinclair 2:22 Well, the, the ones we study-

Lewis Howes 2:23 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 2:23 ... are called s- called sirtuins, and there are seven of those. And they're in all parts of the body, and they do all really crazy good stuff for us.

Lewis Howes 2:30 Okay. And where do telomeres come into play in-

Dr. David Sinclair 2:33 Well, they're, they're part of it.

Lewis Howes 2:35 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 2:35 Yeah, there are seven hallmarks, or eight, depending. Uh, these are causes of aging, so telomeres are one of those hallmarks. Other things are like the battery packs winding down, those mitochondria in our cells. Uh, we lose stem cells, all this other stuff. But here's the, the important point. Uh, we think, A, that there's a unified cause, a, a whole, uh, upstream cause of all of those things. We can talk about that.

Lewis Howes 3:01 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 3:01 But also, these sirtuins, they defend against all of those. So while we used to think we'd have to develop eight different drugs to slow down aging, if you just tap into these longevity genes, they, they take care of everything.

Lewis Howes 3:13 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 3:14 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 3:14 They continue to regenerate good cells. They continue to fight against disease or stress or whatever it may be or-

Dr. David Sinclair 3:21 They do. They, they're really smart.

Lewis Howes 3:23 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 3:23 They, they're, they make proteins that are, act like traffic cops telling the body how to fend against adversity.

Lewis Howes 3:29 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 3:30 And they've been with us on the planet since life first arose.

Lewis Howes 3:34 And it's seven of them?

Dr. David Sinclair 3:35 Well, the ones I study, there are seven. There are others. There are seven sirtuins, and there are three classes of longevity gene. The ones I study, those seven, and there's a couple of others that you can turn on-

Lewis Howes 3:47 Why don't you study the others?

Dr. David Sinclair 3:48 Well-

Lewis Howes 3:49 Are they not, are they not credible enough or they're not-

Dr. David Sinclair 3:51 We do. We do. But we scientists, we like to, uh-

Lewis Howes 3:54 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 3:54 ... specialize.

Lewis Howes 3:55 Gotcha. Gotcha.

Dr. David Sinclair 3:56 But in truth, even though 10 years ago we used to fight with each other, "My longevity gene is more important than your longevity gene," it was, it was ridiculous.

Lewis Howes 4:03 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 4:04 "My worm's living longer than your worm."

Lewis Howes 4:06 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 4:06 It was really silly. But now we've realized, most of us admit that all these genes are talking to each other. And if you tweak one set-

Lewis Howes 4:13 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 4:14 ... the others will be tweaked, too.

Lewis Howes 4:15 Right. Okay. So these genes, when you say you study them, what does that actually mean? You're pulling, like, blood out of different humans, and you're putting them in a tube, and you're researching, and you're, like, what's actually happening to study these?

Dr. David Sinclair 4:30 Yeah, the, the-

Lewis Howes 4:30 'Cause I'm a non-scientist, I have no clue what that actually means.

Dr. David Sinclair 4:34 Right.

Lewis Howes 4:34 Is it, like, rats? Is it humans? Is it, you know-

Dr. David Sinclair 4:38 You, you've gotta come to the lab.

Lewis Howes 4:39 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 4:39 You gotta see what's going on 'cause it, it's crazy stuff. We, we do anything we can to answer a question.

Lewis Howes 4:44 You're cloning humans in there. You're doing all sorts of stuff, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 4:46 We, we, it, it's crazy stuff.

Lewis Howes 4:48 [laughs] Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 4:49 So we, we're driven by the question, not by the technology. So most labs will say, "Okay, I'm an expert in rats." I don't give a rat's about a rat.

Lewis Howes 4:56 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 4:57 I care about answering a question.

Lewis Howes 4:58 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 4:58 And our question is, why do we age and what can we do about it?

Lewis Howes 5:01 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 5:01 And will, will that transform medicine?

Lewis Howes 5:03 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 5:03 And so what we do, if you came to the lab, you'd see we've got, we've got jellyfish growing. We've got mice that are living longer and running on little treadmills.

Lewis Howes 5:12 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 5:12 Up in the lab, we, we have stem cells that we're growing and, uh, actually turning them back in time. We can reverse the aging of these-

Lewis Howes 5:19 Stem cells

Dr. David Sinclair 5:20 ... human cells. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 5:22 So what does that mean? You, you take a cell from a human-

Dr. David Sinclair 5:26 Yeah

Lewis Howes 5:26 ... like a, like a sample, like a skin sample, like a blood-

Dr. David Sinclair 5:29 Skin, brain cells grow in the dish.

Lewis Howes 5:30 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 5:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 5:31 Wait, brain cells grow in the dish?

Dr. David Sinclair 5:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 5:33 So, like, you take it from like a, a living human?

Dr. David Sinclair 5:35 Yes.

Lewis Howes 5:36 You take a little piece of brain-

Dr. David Sinclair 5:37 Yes

Lewis Howes 5:37 ... you put it in a dish-

Dr. David Sinclair 5:39 Usually-

Lewis Howes 5:39 ... and you reverse the age of the brain?

Dr. David Sinclair 5:41 Correct.

Lewis Howes 5:42 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 5:42 Yeah. That's what we do. Now we can actually grow little, little brains in the dish, too.

Lewis Howes 5:46 [laughs] From scratch?

Dr. David Sinclair 5:48 Uh, well, you start with a network of cells, and then you coax them into forming-

Lewis Howes 5:52 No way

Dr. David Sinclair 5:52 ... these networks. And, and it's like a mini brain, yeah.

Lewis Howes 5:54 [laughs] Okay. So-

Dr. David Sinclair 5:57 And we can age them forwards, make them older-

Lewis Howes 5:59 No way

Dr. David Sinclair 5:59 ... 'cause we think we understand what's driving the aging process.

Lewis Howes 6:02 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 6:02 And then we s- reset-

Lewis Howes 6:03 And then you reverse it?

Dr. David Sinclair 6:04 Right.

Lewis Howes 6:04 So you can create a brain from nothing, a bunch of little cells that come together and create-

Dr. David Sinclair 6:09 Yeah

Lewis Howes 6:09 ... a, a, a thinking brain.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:11 Well, I don't know how much it thinks-

Lewis Howes 6:12 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 6:12 ... but it'll, it'll respond to stimuli.

Lewis Howes 6:14 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:14 It'll, it'll fire, yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:16 And then you can make it older- Like Benjamin Button and then reverse its aging.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:22 Right.

Lewis Howes 6:22 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:23 I- I'm telling you, it's, it's crazy. But when I'm in the lab and, and with my students, for us it's just every day. It's like-

Lewis Howes 6:28 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 6:28 ... going to work and doing stuff.

Lewis Howes 6:29 It's just like, "Ah, there's a brain. It's getting older, it's getting younger." Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:32 Yeah, yeah. But now that I'm talking about it with you, it does sound-

Lewis Howes 6:34 It's fascinating-

Dr. David Sinclair 6:35 ... sound bizarre

Lewis Howes 6:35 ... for a non-scientist.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:37 Yeah, the, the other thing that's weird about this profession, uh, anyone who wants to go into it-

Lewis Howes 6:40 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 6:41 ... is that essentially, y- you're an apprentice under me. And you, you work in the lab and you spend a few years learning how to do all this stuff. It's not easy. The first two years basically you screw up.

Lewis Howes 6:50 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 6:51 But it's weird that, to think about it, you get a bench in a lab and some chemicals, and you have to make the chemicals yourself usually. And then your job is to discover something nobody else has discovered.

Lewis Howes 7:03 New, something new.

Dr. David Sinclair 7:03 It's gotta be not, not just slightly new, radically new.

Lewis Howes 7:07 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 7:07 'Cause I'm at Harvard. They don't give prizes for discovering something obvious.

Lewis Howes 7:10 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 7:11 It's gotta be shocking. And if it's not shocking, it's not worth studying.

Lewis Howes 7:15 And haven't you discovered like tens or you- like mult- 30 something, 35 awards for new discoveries or something, or 35 patents? What do you have? Something crazy.

Dr. David Sinclair 7:24 Uh, it's some, some numbers like that. We do have-

Lewis Howes 7:25 You've discovered a lot of new things.

Dr. David Sinclair 7:28 Well, yeah, yeah. If, if I didn't, I wouldn't have a job.

Lewis Howes 7:30 Right. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 7:31 So there's motivation to always be doing cutting edge stuff. But what drives us and the reason I think we've been successful, uh, is that we're driven by the question-

Lewis Howes 7:40 Mm-hmm

Dr. David Sinclair 7:40 ... not by the technology.

Lewis Howes 7:41 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 7:42 And the technology comes second. So what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay, here's a question. We wanna figure out why does cold improve health, or why does fasting, not eating, improve health?" How do you figure that out? Well, then you gotta pull together teams of people, uh, molecular biologists, biochemists, mathematicians, computer software people, and we get in a room and we, we figure it out.

Lewis Howes 8:04 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 8:05 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 8:06 So what would you say, and your questions are why do we age and how do we reverse it? Is that the two questions you're focused on the most right now?

Dr. David Sinclair 8:14 Uh, yeah, that's, that's pretty good. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 8:15 Why do we age and how do we reverse aging?

Dr. David Sinclair 8:17 Right.

Lewis Howes 8:17 Do you think, and so you say aging is a disease, is, is death a disease as well then in your mind? Is it like that just leads into, and can we reverse death? Is that a possibility?

Dr. David Sinclair 8:28 Uh, no. Not yet.

Lewis Howes 8:30 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 8:31 Not yet. So anyone who's had their head frozen, there's nothing I can do for you right now. But we can, uh, turn back the clock radically. Just in the last couple of years we've figured out that there's a backup hard drive of youthfulness in the cell that we can access to reset it. So usually the earlier you start in turning on your longevity genes, the better. We've learned from studying mice and now humans for many years that if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, you wanna start-

Lewis Howes 9:01 Turn it on now.

Dr. David Sinclair 9:01 Do it now, 'cause-

Lewis Howes 9:02 Don't wait till you're 80 and then say, "How do I go be 60 again?"

Dr. David Sinclair 9:05 But most people do. They wait too long.

Lewis Howes 9:07 Why?

Dr. David Sinclair 9:08 Well, 'cause they're in denial that they're mortal. And, and we used to think that aging was, was a one-way street. You couldn't do anything about it.

Lewis Howes 9:17 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 9:17 We now know from studying twins that 80% of your health in old age is up to you, how you live your life.

Lewis Howes 9:26 Right. Your community, your positivity, your thinking, your food, the sleep you have, like all those things, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 9:31 Yeah. And the reason that they work, we've discovered, is 'cause they turn on the longevity genes.

Lewis Howes 9:36 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 9:37 That's the breakthrough.

Lewis Howes 9:38 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 9:38 So now we're artificially tweaking these longevity genes genetically or with supplements or hopefully medicines soon.

Lewis Howes 9:45 Gotcha. But you can do it in more natural, organic ways is what I'm hearing.

Dr. David Sinclair 9:49 Well, right now that's what we've got. And even if you just do the five obvious things, things like skip meals and don't smoke and exercise, that'll get you an extra 14 years on average.

Lewis Howes 10:00 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 10:00 It's that big. That's not even using-

Lewis Howes 10:02 It's simple

Dr. David Sinclair 10:02 ... high tech.

Lewis Howes 10:03 That's just, there's no technology.

Dr. David Sinclair 10:04 Right.

Lewis Howes 10:04 Just like living a good life.

Dr. David Sinclair 10:06 Right.

Lewis Howes 10:07 So what are the main things to turning on the longevity that anyone can do without technology, without money, you know, science?

Dr. David Sinclair 10:15 Yeah. Well, okay, so we, we've ... First of all, don't smoke.

Lewis Howes 10:19 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 10:19 That'll damage your DNA. That'll accelerate the aging process.

Lewis Howes 10:22 Does that include like e-cigarettes and all these other vaping? Does that also include that?

Dr. David Sinclair 10:29 Well, I'm a, I'm a big, uh, advocate for, uh, for putting nothing artificial in your body-

Lewis Howes 10:35 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 10:35 ... including vaping.

Lewis Howes 10:36 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 10:36 My, my mother died from lung cancer, so I'm pretty militant about it.

Lewis Howes 10:39 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 10:40 Um, I don't think vaping is as bad in terms of the number of chemicals getting into your body-

Lewis Howes 10:45 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 10:45 ... but we've seen recently it's probably not healthy anyway.

Lewis Howes 10:47 Yeah, yeah. Okay, so no smoking. That's one.

Dr. David Sinclair 10:51 That's one. Next one is don't eat so much. Eat less often. So not malnutrition, of course. Um, you don't wanna get too thin. But this three meals a day plus snacks is ridiculous.

Lewis Howes 11:02 I, that's been my life.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:03 In the future-

Lewis Howes 11:04 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 11:05 ... you'll be great.

Lewis Howes 11:05 I need to get rid of that. I will-

Dr. David Sinclair 11:07 Yeah, but you're also working out.

Lewis Howes 11:08 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:08 But someone like me who didn't, who's not an athlete-

Lewis Howes 11:10 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 11:11 ... the most exercise I do during the day typically is typing.

Lewis Howes 11:14 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 11:14 Uh, three meals a day is too much. Actually, one meal is enough for someone like me.

Lewis Howes 11:18 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:19 Yeah, I'm now 50, so my metabolism is way down.

Lewis Howes 11:21 50? You look like you're 37.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:23 Oh, thanks.

Lewis Howes 11:24 It's great, man.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:24 You might need glasses.

Lewis Howes 11:25 I thought you, you're like 100 and you l- look at 37. You've already reversed the aging.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:30 Uh, well, I'm glad I don't look, uh, 80, 'cause that would really be bad for-

Lewis Howes 11:33 Be bad for your-

Dr. David Sinclair 11:34 ... my message. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 11:35 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 11:36 Okay, so we got s- uh, no smoking.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:38 Right.

Lewis Howes 11:38 Uh, eating less.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:41 Um-

Dr. David Sinclair 11:41 Next one would be the, the obvious. High intensity interval training.

Lewis Howes 11:44 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 11:45 Lose your breath once in a while.

Lewis Howes 11:47 Lose your breath, what do you mean? Oh, just by like working out, like you know?

Dr. David Sinclair 11:50 Yeah, become hypoxic. Uh, tell your body that you're being chased by a sa- saber-toothed tiger or-

Lewis Howes 11:55 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 11:55 ... something like that. The reason all of this stuff works in terms of the diet and exercise, uh, it's not that your blood flows more or that being hungry is, is just healthy for the body. It's actually that your longevity genes get turned on by these things. And why does that happen? Why does it happen in humans, in mice, even in yeast cells for bread and beer?

Lewis Howes 12:14 Ha.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:15 The reason is that the body senses adversity and says- We gotta fight back. We, we might die next week without food, and we, you know, we're running away from tigers and lions. That's what this survival network, this longevity gene-

Lewis Howes 12:30 So it turns it on when it feels like it's in survival mode.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:34 That's it. We wanna be in survival mode, and we spend our whole lives trying to reduce our adversity.

Lewis Howes 12:41 Right, being comfortable.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:42 Right.

Lewis Howes 12:43 Being warm all the time.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:43 Don't be hungry.

Lewis Howes 12:44 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:45 Don't be puffed. Don't walk. You know, valet your car.

Lewis Howes 12:49 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:49 Roll your suitcase. Don't carry it, for goodness sakes.

Lewis Howes 12:52 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 12:53 We've done the worst. No wonder we're, we're getting sicker and sicker.

Lewis Howes 12:56 We're in a world of convenience.

Dr. David Sinclair 12:58 Right, and it's the worst thing we could do-

Lewis Howes 13:00 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 13:00 ... for our bodies in terms of longevity. So those three things.

Lewis Howes 13:03 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 13:04 Uh, the other two, um, uh, let's see, what else is there? Oh, the type of food you eat is important. Uh, yeah, there's a big debate of course about-

Lewis Howes 13:13 They say, like, plant-based is gonna extend the telomeres, right? If you're eating leafy greens, that's what I've heard, but-

Dr. David Sinclair 13:19 Right. Well, a- among other things, it's also going to have, um, a couple of really important types of molecules. One are the monounsaturated fats.

Lewis Howes 13:29 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 13:29 Fatty acids. You get that from olive oil and avocados. Those are great. And, uh, we've just learned that that's a really important trigger for a, a certain longevity gene.

Lewis Howes 13:38 Olive oil.

Dr. David Sinclair 13:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:40 I think, uh, when I had Gundry on, he was like, "I drink a cup of olive oil a day," or something like teaspoons of olive oil. He's just eating it.

Dr. David Sinclair 13:47 Yeah. Well, he-

Lewis Howes 13:47 He's like, "I'm trying to get as much in-

Dr. David Sinclair 13:49 He's smart

Lewis Howes 13:49 ... as I can, putting it on everything."

Dr. David Sinclair 13:51 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:52 So.

Dr. David Sinclair 13:52 Well, let- let's get back to that because there's a, there's a new discovery as of a week ago that says we think we understand how that works. But in olive oil, there's also what are called, the other, the other important component of a plant-based diet are polyphenols-

Lewis Howes 14:06 Uh-huh

Dr. David Sinclair 14:06 ... which are the molecules that plants make when they're under adversity, when they're stressed. And I believe that we've evolved to sense when our food is running out. So we get that signal when our plants are stressed. So you don't wanna eat plants that are like this white-

Lewis Howes 14:21 Withered? [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 14:21 ... white li- liquid lettuce you can buy, Californian lettuce.

Lewis Howes 14:24 Right, right.

Dr. David Sinclair 14:25 You want these colored vegetables that have-

Lewis Howes 14:27 Ah

Dr. David Sinclair 14:27 ... been a little bit stressed-

Lewis Howes 14:28 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 14:28 ... a little bit dried out. Wine is a perfect example. It's full of polyphenols, one called resveratrol that we've worked on for 20 years.

Lewis Howes 14:35 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 14:35 And it activates these longevity pathways really well.

Lewis Howes 14:39 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 14:39 So stress your food.

Lewis Howes 14:40 Stress it.

Dr. David Sinclair 14:41 Organic.

Lewis Howes 14:42 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 14:42 Um, I am for a plant-based diet, but I do eat meat-

Lewis Howes 14:45 Yeah, me too

Dr. David Sinclair 14:45 ... occasionally. It tastes pretty good. But, um, but you know, it's very clear, Dan Buettner is right, where you go to the longest-lived places in the world-

Lewis Howes 14:53 The blue zones, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 14:54 Sardinia, right, the Okinawa island-

Lewis Howes 14:56 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 14:56 ... in Japan, they're not eating all meat. Um, and actually we know that if you eat a lot of meat, you shut down some of these longevity pathways.

Lewis Howes 15:04 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 15:05 Yeah. So you actually, you might look good and grow muscle, and that's great when you're young. You wanna find a mate, you wanna look good, you wanna feel good. But in the long run, I don't think that's healthy, healthy.

Lewis Howes 15:15 Really? So cutting down, less and less meat at least, having more plants is the way to go.

Dr. David Sinclair 15:20 Yeah. That's, that's what I've done. I was on an Okinawa diet in my 20s and 30s.

Lewis Howes 15:25 Which is what? Just rice and leaves and-

Dr. David Sinclair 15:28 It's a bit of rice. You gotta watch out for white rice-

Lewis Howes 15:30 That's a lot

Dr. David Sinclair 15:30 ... 'cause it'll spike your sugar.

Lewis Howes 15:31 Yeah, it's a lot.

Dr. David Sinclair 15:32 But it's, uh, it's a lot of tofu, miso soup-

Lewis Howes 15:35 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 15:35 ... uh, green leafy vegetables, dark greens for these-

Lewis Howes 15:38 Uh-huh

Dr. David Sinclair 15:38 ... phytochemicals. Uh, and then what else was it? There was, oh, a bit of fish.

Lewis Howes 15:43 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 15:43 Yeah. But, but also what's important is not a lot of food. I mean, these days I'm stopping eating when I'm about 60, 70% full, and I'm trying to skip-

Lewis Howes 15:52 I just never feel full

Dr. David Sinclair 15:53 ... breakfast and lunch.

Lewis Howes 15:54 Until I've, like, eaten so much, then I'm like, "Okay, I'm full."

Dr. David Sinclair 15:57 Well, you're a young-

Lewis Howes 15:58 So I probably, I-

Dr. David Sinclair 15:58 ... active, hungry man.

Lewis Howes 15:59 Well, here's one of the things. I think, one, when you eat slower, you start to get fuller. You start to feel it. And I've, I'm the youngest of four, and so as a kid, we didn't have a lot of money growing up in a small town in Ohio, and there wasn't that much food. So I learned to, like, grab and just shove it in my mouth, and that became a habit-

Dr. David Sinclair 16:17 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 16:18 ... that I've kinda stuck with. And I'm not starving anymore. Like, the food's available at any time. I can afford it, and I have it all the time. But I think it's reconditioning my mind or a habit or a routine of like, you know, I'm not scarfing my face down right now, but you know, it's that mindset of, I don't know, what if I'm gonna go hungry?

Dr. David Sinclair 16:34 For sure. Uh, we all suffer from that. Well, not all of us, but-

Lewis Howes 16:37 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 16:38 ... those of us who grew up in regular families, we were told to finish our meals.

Lewis Howes 16:41 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 16:41 And-

Lewis Howes 16:41 Don't leave anything on the plate.

Dr. David Sinclair 16:43 And if you've got brothers-

Lewis Howes 16:43 There's hungry kids everywhere. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 16:44 ... brothers and sisters, right, they're stealing your food. Uh, my wife grew up, um, in a very poor family. Um, and, uh, even when she was a student, she could barely afford food. She would scrounge and bu- buy potatoes.

Lewis Howes 16:56 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 16:56 And at the dinner table, she'll kill me, kill me for this, but, uh, she will eat like it's gonna all go away tomorrow.

Lewis Howes 17:03 [laughs] That's great.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:03 But I have to, I have to remind her and everybody, everyone should know this, there's always gonna be another meal.

Lewis Howes 17:09 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:10 There will be another meal. Don't worry. Uh, but we're conditioned-

Lewis Howes 17:13 [sighs]

Dr. David Sinclair 17:14 ... to eat food when we, it's in front of us.

Lewis Howes 17:15 I think it's a mental conditioning, and it's also like you've, either your body's tricking you or it's your brain or it's your gut or something is tricking you, like, "I'm still hungry." Even though you've had 2,000 calories in 10 minutes, you're still like, "Oh, there's food." It's like turning something on where you're like, "I wanna eat that." I don't know why that is.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:35 Well, yeah. I mean, it, it's the reason that we're here.

Lewis Howes 17:37 And it's sugar, it's, yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:37 Our ancestors, uh, put on fat, and they survived the famine. We don't have famines anymore, thank goodness.

Lewis Howes 17:43 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:43 But we, we've descended from those people.

Lewis Howes 17:45 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:45 So we've got the, the genes in our brain that say, "Eat, eat, eat." Um, and it turns out-

Lewis Howes 17:48 How do you turn that gene off? [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 17:50 Well, you, well, you, you can, you can take certain types of food. I, I drink a lot of tea-

Lewis Howes 17:56 Oh

Dr. David Sinclair 17:56 ... uh, and coffee, uh, hot water even, just to fill up my stomach.

Lewis Howes 17:59 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 17:59 That works really well.

Lewis Howes 18:00 Okay. Hot water, not cold water?

Dr. David Sinclair 18:02 Uh, I just like the feeling of hot water.

Lewis Howes 18:04 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 18:04 Cold water, uh, isn't as ... I actually, it might be something about the heat. I've never thought about it, but for me, that's what works. So when I get a little bit hungry at lunchtime, I'll just-

Lewis Howes 18:14 Warm water

Dr. David Sinclair 18:14 ... I'm, I'm basically drinking tea.

Lewis Howes 18:15 Warm water, tea. Yeah, you put in like some-

Dr. David Sinclair 18:17 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 18:17 Oh, interesting. Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 18:18 But it, but it's a fight all the time.

Lewis Howes 18:20 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 18:20 You know, I fly a lot, and, and people are bringing nuts and-

Lewis Howes 18:23 Nuts and cookies and ice cream and-

Dr. David Sinclair 18:25 And you gotta fight it, and it's really hard to fight all the time.

Lewis Howes 18:28 How do you say no?

Dr. David Sinclair 18:29 Well, I do

Lewis Howes 18:30 You do. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 18:31 But how do I do that? So I've trained myself-

Lewis Howes 18:33 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 18:33 ... uh, to fight it. And the best thing that I do besides saying, "Can I have a cup of tea?" is what do I wanna look like next week?

Lewis Howes 18:41 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 18:41 What do I wanna look, look like a year from now?

Lewis Howes 18:43 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 18:44 What do I wanna look like when I'm 80?

Lewis Howes 18:46 So you a- you tell yourself that. You ask yourself the question. I think it's also how do you wanna feel-

Dr. David Sinclair 18:50 Yeah

Lewis Howes 18:50 ... tonight, tomorrow, next week, when you're 80. It's like look like and feel combination is powerful.

Dr. David Sinclair 18:57 Right, 'cause y- your mind is saying now is important-

Lewis Howes 18:59 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 18:59 ... and you gotta train yourself to say tomorrow and the next year is just as important.

Lewis Howes 19:04 The rest of my life, yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 19:05 Right, and that's more important.

Lewis Howes 19:06 Okay. So was that the fourth thing or the fifth thing? I can't-

Dr. David Sinclair 19:08 The fifth thing, uh, I didn't mention. Uh, there are a couple of things. I'll- let's divide it up. One is get good night's sleep.

Lewis Howes 19:14 Sleep is everything.

Dr. David Sinclair 19:15 Yeah. And then surround yourself by friends and people who take care of you.

Lewis Howes 19:18 Yeah. That's like the Blue Zone way too, right? It's like be around a good community, get lots of rest and naps, move a little bit, eat healthy, right? So-

Dr. David Sinclair 19:29 Well, the- these are things that most people should know, but they don't do.

Lewis Howes 19:33 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 19:33 So you and I are here to motivate people to do that.

Lewis Howes 19:35 Exactly.

Dr. David Sinclair 19:36 Uh, but the research, uh, that I discuss in the book is how to take that to a new level, how to optimize those things-

Lewis Howes 19:42 Uh-huh

Dr. David Sinclair 19:42 ... and add some science in there.

Lewis Howes 19:45 To reverse it.

Dr. David Sinclair 19:46 Or get, getting there.

Lewis Howes 19:47 I like this. Okay, before you share that stuff, how did you get into this fascination or curiosity of reversing aging in the first place? Was there someone that inspired you? Was there a moment? Was there a, a, an event? Did something happen?

Dr. David Sinclair 20:03 Uh, yeah, it was an event that I think we've all gone through, but we, we just forgot about. We learnt that there's such thing as death.

Lewis Howes 20:10 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 20:10 We don't live in a Disney movie.

Lewis Howes 20:12 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 20:13 And, uh-

Lewis Howes 20:13 It's not, it's not all happily ever after

Dr. David Sinclair 20:14 ... it's not. It's shocking. When we're four or five we're told this-

Lewis Howes 20:17 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 20:17 ... and we realize it, and we're in denial. You know, oh, no, that's not gonna happen. But, uh, for me, I haven't been able to get that out of my mind.

Lewis Howes 20:25 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 20:26 Uh, it's cruel, don't you think, that we're sentient beings that, that know that this is all gonna end? And it might be-

Lewis Howes 20:31 We fall in love, we love people, they take care of us, and then they're gone.

Dr. David Sinclair 20:35 Yeah. And I don't wanna live forever. Um, I would just like to leave the world a better place.

Lewis Howes 20:39 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 20:40 And I think one of the big things that we're missing in medicine is that aging is driving a l- a lot of our sickness. And when we treat diseases, we're treating them far too late. Once you've got, well, I won't say which disease, but, you know, take my mother for example. Um, let's, let's use her lung cancer as an example.

Lewis Howes 20:57 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 20:58 Uh, she could have not smoked. She could have done all the things we've talked about. She could have perhaps taken some molecules that we work on, uh, and not had lung cancer.

Lewis Howes 21:07 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:07 By the time she had a tumor that was the size of a grapefruit in her lung, it's game over.

Lewis Howes 21:11 She couldn't do anything.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:12 Right. And but we, but we've put billions of dollars trying to cure lung cancer, not prevent it.

Lewis Howes 21:18 If we just prevented it, we wouldn't have to worry about it. We could live longer.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:20 Prevention's easier.

Lewis Howes 21:21 Prevention's very easy.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 21:23 Right? So how old were you when your mom passed away from lung cancer?

Dr. David Sinclair 21:27 I was 25.

Lewis Howes 21:28 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:29 And, uh, oh, no, let me take that back. She was diagnosed when she was 25.

Lewis Howes 21:34 When she was 25.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:34 When I was 25.

Lewis Howes 21:35 When you were 25.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:36 And, uh, she went on another 20 years.

Lewis Howes 21:38 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 21:39 Yeah. But it wasn't-

Lewis Howes 21:40 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 21:40 ... wasn't really an enjoyable life.

Lewis Howes 21:42 It was a-

Dr. David Sinclair 21:43 They took out her l- uh, left lung.

Lewis Howes 21:45 So was she breathing from a tube, or was it like?

Dr. David Sinclair 21:48 Uh, she could breathe, but she wasn't, she was always short of breath. Uh, there were times when she thought she was just gonna suffocate in front of us. Eventually she did, by the way. That was not pleasant.

Lewis Howes 21:58 Oh, my gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 21:59 That's not something anybody wants.

Lewis Howes 22:01 In front of you.

Dr. David Sinclair 22:01 Yeah. And no one tells you what it's like to see your mother die or your parents die. It's, it's horrific.

Lewis Howes 22:07 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 22:07 I, I've never experienced another death, just this one. But it was not pleasant. And we don't talk about it. We deny it. You know, oh, they're gonna drift off into sleep.

Lewis Howes 22:16 No.

Dr. David Sinclair 22:16 That's not what happened to my mom.

Lewis Howes 22:17 It's suffering. It's pain. It's agony. It's suffering, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 22:21 Yeah. My mother was turned into a writhing lizard in front of me. And I, all I could do was whisper into her, her ear, "Thanks for being the best mom I could ever hope for."

Lewis Howes 22:30 Oh, my gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 22:31 And that, that was it. Couple of minutes later she's turned blue and choking and-

Lewis Howes 22:34 No way.

Dr. David Sinclair 22:35 It-

Lewis Howes 22:35 And you can't do anything for her

Dr. David Sinclair 22:37 ... right. That's it. You're helpless. You're helpless. It's d- um, anyone who smokes, please, please work to give it up. It's just not, not a good ending.

Lewis Howes 22:46 Wow. Were you, were you with her alone? Were you with family? Was it friends? Was it-

Dr. David Sinclair 22:50 Yeah, my father and my brother and I. Um, I was also in denial 'cause I flew from America to Australia to be with her.

Lewis Howes 22:58 And you're like, "Ah, she's gonna get through this. It's gonna be fine."

Dr. David Sinclair 22:59 Yeah. You tell yourself she's always recovered the last 20 years. She'll pull through. And the doctor pulled us aside and said, "We've X-rayed her lung. There's barely any lung left that's working."

Lewis Howes 23:10 Oh, my gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 23:11 "You better say goodbye." And I said, "What are you talking about?"

Lewis Howes 23:13 Oh, my gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 23:14 She's laughing in the bed. She's fine. And 10 minutes later she starts choking and fluid's building up in her lungs. And it, you know, if, if you've ever seen somebody have something stuck in their throat, that's what it was like.

Lewis Howes 23:27 Oh, my go- and you can't get it out.

Dr. David Sinclair 23:28 Can't get it out.

Lewis Howes 23:29 You can't ch- you can't-

Dr. David Sinclair 23:30 She's drowning

Lewis Howes 23:30 ... Heimlich Maneuver. You can't CPR. You can't try to-

Dr. David Sinclair 23:34 Well, I'm running around saying, "Help me, help me." And all the nurses are like, "There's nothing we can do."

Lewis Howes 23:40 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 23:42 Uh, so that's traumatic. So please, uh, you know, let's try to prevent these diseases as long as possible.

Lewis Howes 23:46 How old was your mom when she passed?

Dr. David Sinclair 23:48 Uh, so she was my age when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and then she lived till 70.

Lewis Howes 23:54 Wow. But she could have, hypothetically, you know, if she didn't get hit by a bus or something, she could have lived a long, much longer life if she didn't have the cancer.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:02 Oh, absolutely. And through my teenage years I would shout at her, "Stop smoking. You're gonna die when you, when you're in hospital. I'm not gonna come visit you."

Lewis Howes 24:09 Oh, my gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:10 You're only given one life. 'Cause I, I'm pro-life. Everything about me is we are so lucky to be alive.

Lewis Howes 24:16 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:17 You know, one in a trillion sperm from your parent, from your dad, and it's you. What's the chance?

Lewis Howes 24:22 It's a gift.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:22 It is. Don't throw it away. And she was the opposite. She's like, uh, you know, drinking and smoking and, "I've lived a good life. Don't, don't bother me." And she paid the consequence.

Lewis Howes 24:31 Oh, my gosh. Not only did she pay it, but you and your family had to, like, go through it also.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:38 Yeah. Well, you know, I did go and visit her in hospital. When your mom's sick, you know, everything-

Lewis Howes 24:42 Yeah, of course

Dr. David Sinclair 24:42 ... is out the window.

Lewis Howes 24:43 Of course.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:43 Uh, but my father's the opposite. He's taken good care of himself.

Lewis Howes 24:47 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 24:47 And, uh, yeah, now he's 80, uh, perfect health. No, no aches, no pains. Running around the world like a 25-year-old.

Lewis Howes 24:54 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 24:55 So that, that's the dichotomy there. If you do the right things, it's a very different ending.

Lewis Howes 25:00 Now, were you already into anti-aging when she was diagnosed? Or was it be- way before that? Was it shortly after that? Or when-

Dr. David Sinclair 25:09 Yeah

Lewis Howes 25:09 ... when did you become kind of obsessed with being the master of anti-aging?

Dr. David Sinclair 25:14 Well, I've, I've got an obsessive personality.

Lewis Howes 25:16 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 25:17 Uh, I think anyone who's, uh-

Lewis Howes 25:19 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 25:19 ... you know, be- become at the top of their profession-

Lewis Howes 25:22 Of course

Dr. David Sinclair 25:22 ... has to be obsessed with something. They're not normal people.

Lewis Howes 25:24 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 25:24 They're not normal. Um, at age four I became obsessed with it actually.

Lewis Howes 25:28 Four?

Dr. David Sinclair 25:30 Yeah, at four.

Lewis Howes 25:30 My, my first memory is four. I don't even know [laughs] what-

Dr. David Sinclair 25:32 Well, this is my first memory.

Lewis Howes 25:34 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 25:34 It is.

Lewis Howes 25:34 What was it? Seeing your mom smoke and being like, "I don't wanna be that"?

Dr. David Sinclair 25:37 Well, there was that. Yeah, uh, you know, in the s- in the '70s, early '70s when I was a kid, uh, the smoke was everywhere. I couldn't stand it. But that, that was not really my motivation. It was that my grandmother, who helped raise me-

Lewis Howes 25:48 Oh

Dr. David Sinclair 25:48 ... told me, "Everybody's gonna die, and so are you, and so is your cat." And my grandmother was brutal. She didn't lie. She s- told it as it was. But she said, "Now that I've told you that," you know, and here am I crying, "My cat's gonna die."

Lewis Howes 26:03 [laughs] Santa Claus isn't real.

Dr. David Sinclair 26:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 26:05 My cat's gonna die.

Dr. David Sinclair 26:06 It was my cat that was the problem at the time.

Lewis Howes 26:08 Oh, my God. You loved this cat.

Dr. David Sinclair 26:09 Yeah, 'cause it, she said, "Oh, your cat's gonna die before you're 20," or whatever.

Lewis Howes 26:13 [laughs] Oh.

Dr. David Sinclair 26:14 But then she said, "Now that you've realized that-

Lewis Howes 26:16 Oh, my gosh

Dr. David Sinclair 26:16 ... here's the lesson. Make the most of life."

Lewis Howes 26:19 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 26:19 "Do your best to make humanity the best it can be-

Lewis Howes 26:23 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 26:23 ... and don't waste a second." And that, that was it for me. I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go for it."

Lewis Howes 26:29 But when did you actually start researching, like-

Dr. David Sinclair 26:31 Yeah

Lewis Howes 26:32 ... okay, now maybe you had this positive mindset, I'm gonna make the most of every moment, I'm gonna enjoy my life, I'm gonna learn quickly and not be stuck in these, these painful moments. What was it, like, middle school, high school where you're like, "Oh, mitochondria and telomeres," and you know?

Dr. David Sinclair 26:47 So I was a pretty average kid. Um, I liked to have a lot of fun-

Lewis Howes 26:50 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 26:51 ... and I didn't, didn't really take care of myself. Um, actually, you'd be surprised, I was, I was pretty chubby as a kid.

Lewis Howes 26:56 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 26:56 Yeah. But I got to college, and two things happened. One was-

Lewis Howes 27:00 And where were you-

Dr. David Sinclair 27:00 ... I decided-

Lewis Howes 27:00 Where were you in school?

Dr. David Sinclair 27:01 I was in Sydney.

Lewis Howes 27:02 In Sydney, okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:03 So I went to... There, there aren't that many choices in Sydney.

Lewis Howes 27:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 27:05 I went to, uh, it's called, it's called the University of New South Wales, like the MIT-

Lewis Howes 27:09 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 27:09 ... of, uh, of Boston. So I was there, and I wanted to get a degree in g- what we used to call genetic engineering.

Lewis Howes 27:17 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:18 And I thought, that's a cool thing.

Lewis Howes 27:19 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:19 Everyone's going into computing. I'll do something... 'Cause I've got also the personality that I don't like to be told what to do-

Lewis Howes 27:24 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 27:24 ... and I like to be different, so.

Lewis Howes 27:25 You be unique, one of a kind. Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:27 Yeah. I, I do.

Lewis Howes 27:28 Me too.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:29 So, uh, so I went there-

Lewis Howes 27:30 I was the big dumb jock who never drank a sip of alcohol in college, who learned salsa dancing and guitar, who was in choir, in the musical. Like, I was-

Dr. David Sinclair 27:39 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 27:39 Whatever you thought I was gonna be, I was like, "I'm gonna do the opposite." So we have that in common.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:44 Yeah. Probably your parents learnt they had to tell you-

Lewis Howes 27:46 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 27:46 ... the opposite of what they wanted you to do.

Lewis Howes 27:47 Yeah. [laughs] Exactly.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:49 Uh, so I went, I went to college, and I realized two things. One was if I'm, uh, chubby I'm not gonna get a girlfriend.

Lewis Howes 27:55 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:56 So I started working out.

Lewis Howes 27:57 Survival.

Dr. David Sinclair 27:57 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 27:58 Survival mode. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 27:59 I ate carrots for a month and shed, um, 15 kilos, whatever that is in pounds.

Lewis Howes 28:04 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 28:04 Uh, got a, a best body I would have dreamed of. It, it's long gone. That was one thing. So I became healthy.

Lewis Howes 28:11 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 28:12 And I've, I've been this weight ever since-

Lewis Howes 28:14 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 28:14 ... basically. Haven't changed. It, it takes effort. Um-

Lewis Howes 28:16 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 28:17 And the second thing I realized was that I think I could make a difference in the world. And I was ha- playing cards with friends. We do- did a lot of drinking. They did a lot of smoking. Um, typical college life.

Lewis Howes 28:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 28:31 And there was a moment where somebody, um, was talking about, um, old age and laughing at old age and making fun of old people, w- which we, we do sometimes-

Lewis Howes 28:42 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 28:42 ... as kids.

Lewis Howes 28:42 We're young. Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 28:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 28:43 Look how old they are.

Dr. David Sinclair 28:45 And, and I had an epiphany. I think I was 18 years old, and I said, "Do you realize, everybody? Hold it. No cards. Shut the fuck up. I've got a, I've got something to tell you. I've just realized that we are probably the last generation of humans to live a normal lifespan, 'cause there's gonna be a breakthrough, and we're gonna miss out by one generation-

Lewis Howes 29:04 Oh, my gosh

Dr. David Sinclair 29:05 ... out of the how many hundred thousand generations leading up to us of primates. We're it. We're the last ones. We're pathetic."

Lewis Howes 29:11 We're gonna die at 100 or 80 or whatever.

Dr. David Sinclair 29:13 Right. And our kids are gonna live to 130, who knows what.

Lewis Howes 29:17 And their kids are gonna be 160.

Dr. David Sinclair 29:18 Yeah. So then I thought, hey, that's what I wanna do. I wanna make that future be a re- reality in my lifetime.

Lewis Howes 29:25 Wow. Isn't it sad if just, give, give us another 50 years to be born?

Dr. David Sinclair 29:29 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 29:30 How much farther you could extend life, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 29:33 Yeah. I didn't realize how quickly the, the science would go. I thought that I'd probably be lucky to see a little bit of change in my lifetime.

Lewis Howes 29:40 Like 5, 10, 20 years, maybe more?

Dr. David Sinclair 29:43 Well, we already got 14 just on what we talked about.

Lewis Howes 29:45 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 29:46 But the kind of breakthroughs that we've made now, um, you know, I get criticized for looking too far into the future 'cause I'm supposed to be a Harvard scientist. But I think another 5, 10 years is easy. Look at my dad. He's doing all the right things. Also taking some molecules that we've worked on in my lab.

Lewis Howes 30:03 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 30:03 They're not doing him any harm. I hope that he makes it past 100. It's, uh, it's not a clinical trial, clearly-

Lewis Howes 30:10 Right. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 30:10 ... with one subject. Um, but, but he's a role model for what life can be and should be like.

Lewis Howes 30:16 Right.

Lewis Howes 30:17 So now is this molecule the same molecule that you worked on 10 years ago that got, uh, a lot of credibility and then was debunked, I guess, by some researchers, and then now in the last week has come back to be verified as true?

Dr. David Sinclair 30:32 Uh, one of them, yeah. So resveratrol is the red wine molecule. It's one of these polyphenols that plants make when they're stressed out.

Lewis Howes 30:40 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 30:40 And that we found, uh, we at least we thought that when you take this molecule over many decades- ... uh, or as a supplement, you'll be protected against a whole variety of diseases including obesity.

Lewis Howes 30:52 Mm. Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 30:53 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 30:53 Is that why everyone says, like, drink a glass of wine every night or something? It's gonna make you live longer.

Dr. David Sinclair 30:58 Well, that, that's basically because of me, but-

Lewis Howes 31:00 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 31:01 But there's other research of course.

Lewis Howes 31:02 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 31:03 Other people have studied red wine and found that people who drink red wine tend to live longer.

Lewis Howes 31:07 Live longer, gotcha.

Dr. David Sinclair 31:08 You know?

Lewis Howes 31:08 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 31:08 Dan Buettner will tell you all about the blue zones.

Lewis Howes 31:10 Right. So this molecule, is it something you discovered 10 years ago, or you started researching 10 years ago?

Dr. David Sinclair 31:16 Well, so remember these longevity genes-

Lewis Howes 31:18 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 31:18 ... they make proteins that, that tell the cell how to survive. And we can turn on the production of these proteins by being hungry and exercising and being out of breath.

Lewis Howes 31:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 31:29 Um, but we wanted to do it artificially because if-

Lewis Howes 31:31 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 31:31 ... if you're an older person in a wheelchair or you're like my mom and she-

Lewis Howes 31:36 You're not doing HIIT workouts at 90.

Dr. David Sinclair 31:38 Yeah. You need a drug. You can't just expect them to run marathons or go hungry. So we, we wanted to figure out how does fasting, how does exercise work?

Lewis Howes 31:46 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 31:47 That's another important-

Lewis Howes 31:48 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 31:48 ... question, couple of questions. And we found that this, this sirtuin number one, there are seven, number one was very important. In mice if we turned it on, we can make mice with extra genes by the way in the lab.

Lewis Howes 32:00 You can make them?

Dr. David Sinclair 32:01 We, we make mice.

Lewis Howes 32:02 From scratch?

Dr. David Sinclair 32:03 Well, from stem cells.

Lewis Howes 32:04 From a cell you can turn it into a moving mouse-

Dr. David Sinclair 32:07 Yeah, that's easy

Lewis Howes 32:08 ... that bakes and breathes and has a heartbeat.

Dr. David Sinclair 32:09 Come to my lab. You can make a mouse.

Lewis Howes 32:11 What? [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 32:11 We can make them glow green if we want. It's not that hard.

Lewis Howes 32:14 You can take cells and they just what, kind of like form together and turn into a mouse?

Dr. David Sinclair 32:18 Well, we need another mouse to gestate it, but it's-

Lewis Howes 32:20 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 32:20 ... yeah, it's pretty, pretty easy these days.

Lewis Howes 32:22 [laughs] Okay. This is crazy.

Dr. David Sinclair 32:25 You, you can actually-

Lewis Howes 32:26 I'm coming. I wanna check it out

Dr. David Sinclair 32:27 ... you can take a skin cell of a mouse, turn it into a stem cell, make a sperm, make an egg, fertilize itself and make a mouse out of it.

Lewis Howes 32:33 What? [laughs] This is nuts.

Dr. David Sinclair 32:35 Anything's possible these days.

Lewis Howes 32:36 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 32:36 So we, we, we engineer the mouse to have more of this sirtuin one gene.

Lewis Howes 32:41 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 32:41 And it was protected against a whole variety of diseases.

Lewis Howes 32:44 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 32:44 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 32:44 Were you, were you injecting with disease to like test that, or just natural environment diseases?

Dr. David Sinclair 32:50 Uh, so we, we have a lab where we-

Lewis Howes 32:52 It's like other mice have the disease

Dr. David Sinclair 32:53 ... we let them age.

Lewis Howes 32:54 [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 32:56 And that's the main thing. We have a lot of old mice, and we test them if they're frail.

Lewis Howes 33:00 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 33:01 Uh, we look at their strength, put them on treadmills, test their memory.

Lewis Howes 33:04 [laughs] This is crazy.

Dr. David Sinclair 33:05 Uh, we got this whole floor in the building-

Lewis Howes 33:08 Of mice

Dr. David Sinclair 33:08 ... of mouse testing-

Lewis Howes 33:10 Shut up

Dr. David Sinclair 33:11 ... machines.

Lewis Howes 33:11 How many mice are in the lab?

Dr. David Sinclair 33:14 Um-

Lewis Howes 33:14 Thousands?

Dr. David Sinclair 33:15 Well, I, I don't want-

Lewis Howes 33:16 You don't wanna tell me

Dr. David Sinclair 33:16 ... um, anyone to be upset 'cause we do have a large number of mice.

Lewis Howes 33:19 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 33:20 But we- our goal is to make them healthy-

Lewis Howes 33:22 Gotcha

Dr. David Sinclair 33:22 ... unlike other, a lot of other labs.

Lewis Howes 33:23 But you're not trying to kill them like most labs.

Dr. David Sinclair 33:25 No, no.

Lewis Howes 33:25 You're trying to say how can we keep them as healthy and live longer.

Dr. David Sinclair 33:27 And our mice live, our mice live longer so that, we're one of the few labs-

Lewis Howes 33:31 Right. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 33:31 ... where we do that. Uh, but yeah. So we, we, this, this sirtuin one gene, it makes a protein that helps the cell. So we found this red wine molecule just coincidentally turns it on. So if you put the ends, we can put in the little test tube, we have these little test tubes, and we put in the, the protein and we can test whether it's more active or not by how much it glows or fluoresces.

Lewis Howes 33:52 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 33:52 And then we tested thousands of molecules, and the one that worked the best was this one from red wine. It, it made it glow really brightly.

Lewis Howes 34:00 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:00 Fluoresce. And, uh, that was the beginning of this story where we found a molecule from red wine that turned on our body's defensive enzyme.

Lewis Howes 34:08 Huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:09 And that, that was great. We, we put it onto yeast cells. They lived longer. I did that experiment in my dining room actually. You can make yeast cells live longer-

Lewis Howes 34:18 Oh my gosh

Dr. David Sinclair 34:18 ... imagine that.

Lewis Howes 34:18 Crazy.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:19 Uh, we fed it to mice and they were much healthier. They were resistant to obesity and diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

Lewis Howes 34:27 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:27 It basically made mice immune to a high-fat Western diet.

Lewis Howes 34:30 Wow. They could eat whatever and it wouldn't affect them.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:33 And they lived-

Lewis Howes 34:33 They just burn it

Dr. David Sinclair 34:33 ... just as long as those that were, were-

Lewis Howes 34:35 They burn the fat quicker.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:37 Well, no, actually still fat. That was the crazy thing.

Lewis Howes 34:39 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:39 But fat didn't, didn't hurt them.

Lewis Howes 34:41 Oh, okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:41 They were immune to the effects of being fat.

Lewis Howes 34:43 Wow. [laughs] That's amazing.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:45 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 34:45 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 34:46 But, but, but then, a- and this is the one, one that my father started taking about a decade ago, same as me. Um, but he, he was, what had happened in, that was 2003 to 2006. Things were great. We started making better molecules. We made thousands of them.

Lewis Howes 35:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 35:01 They went into human clinical trials. Put it on the skin of patients with psoriasis. They were, actually it was a pill, and their psoriasis got better.

Lewis Howes 35:11 No way.

Dr. David Sinclair 35:12 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 35:12 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 35:12 We, we were on track to having a medicine for aging and diseases that are related to aging and inflammation.

Lewis Howes 35:18 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 35:19 But then everything fell apart.

Lewis Howes 35:21 Why?

Dr. David Sinclair 35:22 So in 2010 a couple of companies published scientific papers that said it's all wrong, that this molecule resveratrol does not activate this enzyme. This fluorescence that we're looking at in this test tube was just an artifact. It was fluorescing for other reasons.

Lewis Howes 35:37 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 35:37 It wasn't real. And, uh, yeah, my world fell apart. The company stopped working on it, and it was hell.

Lewis Howes 35:45 You stopped working on it?

Dr. David Sinclair 35:47 Well, we didn't. Well, for about two weeks I stayed in bed. It was horrific. I went into mild depression. My lab didn't know what to do. Uh, I had friends calling me, well, ex-friends who called me and said, you know, "I'm really sorry," and didn't hear from them again.

Lewis Howes 36:01 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 36:01 It was a tough time. And when you're, you know, and this is what I built my career on. I was known in the world for this, and then it went away.

Lewis Howes 36:09 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 36:10 And if you're a scientist and you lose your reputation-

Lewis Howes 36:13 You're done

Dr. David Sinclair 36:13 ... you're screwed because you're relying on grants and your colleagues' opinion of you to give you the money, to give you those grants.

Lewis Howes 36:19 Their endorsements, their recommendations-

Dr. David Sinclair 36:21 Right

Lewis Howes 36:21 ... things like that.

Dr. David Sinclair 36:22 Right. So-

Lewis Howes 36:23 So if no one's recommending you anymore, no one's giving you money.

Dr. David Sinclair 36:26 Yeah. Grants dried up. Uh, I had 20 people, vibrant lab, world leading science, top of the world, gonna make this medicine. Bam, um, most people left.

Lewis Howes 36:37 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 36:38 No money. Four people, tiny little lab. Uh, even people in my lab said, "I'm out of here. This is crazy. You're full of it." And there was one student who I had, his name is Basil Hubbard, and he said, "You know what? There's something to this."

Lewis Howes 36:52 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 36:52 "I'm not gonna give up." And, uh, but the other people in the lab, one guy in particular, was really mean. He just said, "You're, you're working on this BS stuff."

Lewis Howes 37:01 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 37:02 This resveratrol stuff. But he figured it out. It took him three years to figure out that this-

Lewis Howes 37:07 The intern?

Dr. David Sinclair 37:08 Uh, the-

Lewis Howes 37:08 Or the one person-

Dr. David Sinclair 37:09 He was a PhD student

Lewis Howes 37:10 Okay, gotcha

Dr. David Sinclair 37:10 ... Basil. And, uh, just through grit and, uh, stubbornness and, and genius, he figured out that it, it was real. And we published in 2013, three years later, that there was good evidence that we were not wrong. So okay, take a deep breath. I'm swimming. I'm not drowning anymore.

Lewis Howes 37:30 This is three years of, like, depression or just-

Dr. David Sinclair 37:33 It was bad

Lewis Howes 37:33 ... figuring out, "How am I gonna get to my life, my career, everything back on track?"

Dr. David Sinclair 37:37 Right. Right. I, I was so mad with the world.

Lewis Howes 37:40 I'm sure.

Dr. David Sinclair 37:41 I said it. You know-

Lewis Howes 37:41 Screw everyone. I can't trust anyone anymore.

Dr. David Sinclair 37:44 Well, it was that because I'd devoted my whole life to this. I'd barely taken a weekend off in my life.

Lewis Howes 37:50 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 37:50 And, uh, to have that happen, it was like, oh, you know, I, I, I could have retired at that point.

Lewis Howes 37:56 How did you recover?

Dr. David Sinclair 37:57 Uh, well, so the problem was that I didn't want to die not knowing the answer.

Lewis Howes 38:04 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 38:06 Needed to figure this out.

Lewis Howes 38:07 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 38:07 And knowing that I was wrong was still better than not knowing at all.

Lewis Howes 38:12 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 38:13 So we tried to figure it out.

Lewis Howes 38:14 'Cause it's better to be like, "Okay, I'm actually wrong. Here's the proof. Here's the science." You can live with that, is what you're saying.

Dr. David Sinclair 38:20 Right.

Lewis Howes 38:21 Knowing the truth. And then, okay, how do we solve it? And then what's the new solution, right? Where, where do I go next?

Dr. David Sinclair 38:28 Yeah, and we actually had evidence that we weren't, we weren't wrong.

Lewis Howes 38:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 38:32 So that's why-

Lewis Howes 38:33 It's frustrating

Dr. David Sinclair 38:33 ... I got out of bed, went back to the lab-

Lewis Howes 38:36 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 38:36 ... and, uh, said, "Let's figure this out. Let's do some key tests that'll tell us either way if we're right-

Lewis Howes 38:43 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 38:43 ... or we're wrong." And, uh, it turns out, uh, we weren't wrong. And there was this study you referred to that came out a week ago that said, "You know what? That mechanism that you discovered actually is really important for being activated when you're fasting, when you're hungry."

Lewis Howes 39:02 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 39:02 What happens is when you, when you deplete fat, let's say you're hungry. You haven't eaten breakfast. You'll melt away some of the fat, and you'll generate what are called free fatty acids. And some of them we can get from plants, from olive oil, monounsaturated fatty acids, the good ones. A lab discovered that the way resveratrol works is actually just mimicking those unsaturated fatty acids-

Lewis Howes 39:28 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 39:28 ... that we already know are good for you. And Dan Buettner in the Blue Zones would tell you, from the Blue Zones, would tell you that these are what leads to long life.

Lewis Howes 39:36 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 39:37 And so it turns out resveratrol, if this is true, is basically mimicking gobs of olive oil, but without all the calories.

Lewis Howes 39:45 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 39:47 So my father and I, you know, maybe we've been doing the right thing.

Lewis Howes 39:49 So he's been doing, your father's been doing this for 10 years.

Dr. David Sinclair 39:52 Right.

Lewis Howes 39:52 Even though people tried to say, "This isn't true. This is stupid. It's not actually doing anything." But he's been taking it consistently.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:00 Right. Well, he's a scientist too.

Lewis Howes 40:01 Ah.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:01 Everyone in my family's a scientist-

Lewis Howes 40:03 Gotcha

Dr. David Sinclair 40:03 ... including my wife. And people say, "Oh, are you testing this on your father?" No, he's a scientist. He can read this stuff for himself, and he's the one that made the decision that he believed in it.

Lewis Howes 40:13 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:13 And, uh, yeah, I'm glad that he did because so far so good.

Lewis Howes 40:16 Wow. Okay, so that just happened last week. So 10 years you've been waiting for this to be, like, proven again.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:24 Right. And we've always predicted, I've always said resveratrol isn't the big, big story. The big story is, A, can we make a medicine-

Lewis Howes 40:31 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 40:32 ... which we're still trying, but B, what, we call it the endogenous activator. What's in our own bodies that resveratrol is mimicking?

Lewis Howes 40:40 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:41 And it's these monounsaturated fatty acids that come from when we're hungry or if we eat these healthy plants.

Lewis Howes 40:47 Wow. Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:48 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 40:48 That's pretty exciting.

Dr. David Sinclair 40:49 It, it's damn exciting. But it, it's not as exciting as I thought it would be. 'Cause, you know, in life, it's always an anticlimax, right? You think, "I can't wait until this in my life happens." And then it happens. You think, "Yeah, but tomorrow I've got something else to [laughs] -

Lewis Howes 41:02 I know

Dr. David Sinclair 41:02 ... to figure out."

Lewis Howes 41:03 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 41:04 So really-

Lewis Howes 41:04 Isn't that funny?

Dr. David Sinclair 41:05 Maybe that's just my personality. Are you like that?

Lewis Howes 41:07 I'm very much like that. I remember, um, my whole life I wanted to be an All-American athlete. Like I dr- this is one of my first memories is, like, watching a football game on TV with my dad and him, like, continuing talking about these few guys on the Ohio State football team who are All-Americans. And, you know, you wanna, you want your dad's approval, and he's talking about a few guys on the team. And I'm like, "I wanna be an All-American athlete. You know, if these are the best of the best, that's what I wanna be." And all I did was obsess about being the best athlete I could be and becoming an All-American. And I remember I was in the, um, decathlon national championships in 2005, and there's 16 athletes that go to the national championships for each event. But the top eight are All-Americans, so you gotta be in the top eight to qualify as an All-American. And the decathlon's a two-day event. First day I have a pretty good day. Second day, um, I struggle a little bit, and it gets down to the last event, which is the 1500. And my coach is like, "Okay, you need to beat these two people, and if you get in front of them, you're gonna make it." And I literally cross the line with, like, one of the guy next to me that I needed to beat. It was, like, neck and neck, and I didn't know who, who went in front of the other. And so I'm, I'm waiting for, like, 30 minutes for the final results. And they make the announcements of the final eight, and I got eighth place. And I remember feeling like this so much excitement. I'm on the podium. I'm, like, holding the trophy. I'm like, "I did it. My childhood dream came true." And then probably 20 minutes later I was angry. I was negative. We're all having dinner celebrating, and I'm like, "I don't wanna be around anyone." And I didn't know why that was.

Dr. David Sinclair 42:53 Mm.

Lewis Howes 42:53 But that's, like, with every accomplishment I had in my teens and 20s. I kinda have that same nature where I was just like, "Well, this is not good enough. I need to go after the- become a professional athlete. I need to do it twice. I need to..." I don't know why that is.

Dr. David Sinclair 43:06 Well, that's why you and I are sitting here, I think.

Lewis Howes 43:08 Exactly. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 43:08 Because we never rest.

Lewis Howes 43:10 Exactly. Yeah. So anyways, but we have a lot in common. I'm like a scientist. Like [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 43:15 I'll, I'm gonna train you.

Lewis Howes 43:17 Yeah, exactly.

Dr. David Sinclair 43:17 You're gonna come.

Lewis Howes 43:18 I'm gonna go build a rat from scratch.

Dr. David Sinclair 43:19 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 43:20 It'll be amazing. Um, okay, so, so this paper came out or this finding came out a week ago. You had a nice moment, but then you were like, "Well, onto the next."

Dr. David Sinclair 43:31 Right. Right. Um, I don't know why. I, I, I think it's because I, I was hangry at the time on, on a plane drinking tea. But-

Lewis Howes 43:39 When you read it or when you just found it or?

Dr. David Sinclair 43:42 Well, actually, so the, the guy that trained me... I, so I went to MIT after Australia.

Lewis Howes 43:46 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 43:47 And Lenny Guarente, he taught me how to be a, a world-class scientist. And he and I have been good friends, but frenemies kind of-

Lewis Howes 43:56 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 43:57 ... butting heads scientifically, but we're, we're very close.

Lewis Howes 43:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 43:59 Anyway, like all mentors, I look up to him. His opinion of me matters.

Lewis Howes 44:04 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 44:04 And it was he who wrote an email to me last week, and the subject line was, "Wow!" And in there was this paper saying-

Lewis Howes 44:15 "You were right"

Dr. David Sinclair 44:16 ... "Dan, you were right." Yeah. But he didn't write anything. That was it, wow, those three letters.

Lewis Howes 44:20 The paper just-

Dr. David Sinclair 44:21 And the paper. That's it.

Lewis Howes 44:22 And you knew what it meant, yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 44:23 That was it. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 44:24 Was he on your side after the whole paper came out seven years ago or eight years ago, I guess?

Dr. David Sinclair 44:28 Yeah, I gotta give him credit. He never gave up on me.

Lewis Howes 44:31 He stayed with you.

Dr. David Sinclair 44:31 Yeah, but he's been through hell, too. This field-

Lewis Howes 44:34 Isn't that-

Dr. David Sinclair 44:34 ... is really tough

Lewis Howes 44:34 ... isn't that interesting? The people that have gone through the most crap, ups and downs, they're usually the ones that stick with you when you've got some type of public shaming.

Dr. David Sinclair 44:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 44:43 I noticed that as well. That's crazy. So that's good. So you had a few people that kinda stuck with you and said, "Hey, listen, like this is gonna hurt for a few years, but eventually you're gonna do something else, and then people are gonna forget or they're gonna move on, and..."

Dr. David Sinclair 44:56 Yeah. Well, he's not that touchy feely, but, uh-

Lewis Howes 44:58 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 44:59 He, he was very supportive. And, uh, you know, we're, we're both the two guys that drove this field of sirtuins, these longevity genes-

Lewis Howes 45:07 Oh

Dr. David Sinclair 45:07 ... so we're comrades.

Lewis Howes 45:09 Gotcha. You're f- frenemies, but you're like, "We need each other to push it forward and to-

Dr. David Sinclair 45:12 Right

Lewis Howes 45:13 ... validate our, our, our research."

Dr. David Sinclair 45:15 Right. Your enemy is, is, uh, you know, my enemy.

Lewis Howes 45:19 Right. Okay. That's interesting.

Lewis Howes 45:21 Now, you told me a story before we got on about how you were homeless for a year in the UK. Is that right?

Dr. David Sinclair 45:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 45:27 Can you tell me, h- how did this happen? You're in Sydney in school, and then you move to the UK, and you're what? Sleeping on the streets, eating rats that you made from scratch or something or what?

Dr. David Sinclair 45:38 Uh, y- k- kind of with, without the rats, but it basically, uh, that kind of food. Yeah, this is, this is a story I haven't ever told anybody. Um-

Lewis Howes 45:48 Why not?

Dr. David Sinclair 45:50 It just doesn't come up and I-

Lewis Howes 45:51 Hmm

Dr. David Sinclair 45:52 ... I don't know. I'm, I'm not the kinda guy that boasts about this kind of stuff. But it's, uh, so my, my accent is a little bit Australian and a little bit UK.

Lewis Howes 45:59 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 45:59 And so I spent a year and a bit in Wales, in Cardiff-

Lewis Howes 46:02 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 46:02 ... in the middle of the winter.

Lewis Howes 46:03 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:04 So Cardiff in the middle of winter-

Lewis Howes 46:05 My ancestors are from Wales.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:06 Are they?

Lewis Howes 46:07 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:07 Do you know any Welsh?

Lewis Howes 46:08 No, I don't.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:09 [laughs] Crazy language.

Lewis Howes 46:10 Crazy.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:11 Tried to learn a bit, but they sing their, their sentences, so that's why my voice is-

Lewis Howes 46:15 Oh

Dr. David Sinclair 46:15 ... a bit more like that. Anyway, that's not im- important. What's important is that, uh, I like to take a lot of risks. Especially when you're young, you gotta take a lot of risks.

Lewis Howes 46:23 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:23 In your 20s, 30s, go for it. So when I was 23, I said, "I'm gonna go to the UK and do some of my PhD research." And there was one guy in Cardiff that knew how to do some stuff. So I said, "I'm gonna come and work for you." He said, "Great, I got no money." And I said, "That's great. I got no money either."

Lewis Howes 46:41 [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:42 "Uh, but I'll figure it out." But I had a few thousand dollars-

Lewis Howes 46:44 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 46:45 ... like, you know, from delivering pizzas.

Lewis Howes 46:47 Sure.

Dr. David Sinclair 46:48 And so I bought a ticket, flew over there, stayed in his house for a few weeks, but he said, "You can't live here. I've got my own family to deal with." He was a bitty- bit of a grumpy guy anyway, and I didn't, didn't wanna live with him. So what I figured out was if I go to, to the bar, the pub we'd call them, at night and play games, so they used to have these little consoles where you'd play Trivial Pursuit-

Lewis Howes 47:10 Ah

Dr. David Sinclair 47:10 ... and you'd make friends. And after they were drunk, I'd say, "Have you-

Lewis Howes 47:14 Can I crash?

Dr. David Sinclair 47:15 ... have you, yeah, have you got a place?"

Lewis Howes 47:16 Dude.

Dr. David Sinclair 47:16 And they'd, they'd say, "We, uh, don't have a bed, but we've got this beanbag if you wanna come, come round."

Lewis Howes 47:21 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 47:22 So I'd do that, and I'd stay there for a week or two, and then I'd have to go find another place-

Lewis Howes 47:26 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 47:26 ... usually. Um, and I was eating, uh, these cans, these tins of, uh, tuna.

Lewis Howes 47:32 Tuna. Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 47:32 Ramen.

Lewis Howes 47:32 That would be tuna.

Dr. David Sinclair 47:33 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 47:34 Or ramen.

Dr. David Sinclair 47:34 Staple.

Lewis Howes 47:35 Ramen. So for a year you did this?

Dr. David Sinclair 47:36 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 47:37 So you had no, you weren't paying rent anywhere for almost a year. Were you making money as well, like a little side money or ...

Dr. David Sinclair 47:43 Uh-

Lewis Howes 47:43 [clears throat]

Dr. David Sinclair 47:44 ... I think I still got a s- it was $15,000 a year, but the problem was that the pound versus the Australian dollar was twofold.

Lewis Howes 47:51 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 47:51 So I, my dollar was half the value.

Lewis Howes 47:54 Wow. So it wasn't enough to pay rent. You were just like, "Okay, I gotta eat food. I gotta get the bus. I gotta do whatever," yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 48:00 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:00 You know what's funny? Gosh, we have a lot in common. The one time that I almost slept in the streets, I was in Philadelphia. I had no money. I went to a conference, and I met someone from LinkedIn who was like, "You gotta come to this event. You're gonna meet some great people." I was probably 22 or 23 and just got done playing professional football, trying to figure out how to get a job, how to find some connections. And this guy I met named Ben Sterner was like, "Come to Philadelphia for this conference. You can stay with me on the couch." So he ends up, um, I stay on a, in a hostel for two nights, and he's like, "You can stay with me the last night on the couch," 'cause all I had enough for two nights in this hostel. It was $14.

Dr. David Sinclair 48:40 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 48:41 And I took a Greyhound bus to get there. It took like 30 hours. It should've been like six. And the last night, I'm like, "Okay, tell me the address. Let me know. I'll meet you at your place, and I'll crash on the couch." And he, um, his phone dies, so I never get his address. I never get ahold of him. And I'm in the hostel. I didn't have the money for the hostel, and they wouldn't give me a bed. So I'm walking around the streets of Philadelphia with, uh, my suitcase and a jacket on, and it's like 3:00 AM, 3:30. And I'm like, "What am I gonna do?" There's like benches. Maybe I'll sleep on a bench 'cause my Greyhound bus was leaving like later that d- next day. And I don't drink, right? But I was like, for some reason, I feel like if I go into a bar, I'm gonna meet someone, and I'm gonna build a relationship, and maybe they've got some couch or something. And I did exactly what you said you did. I met some people. They were playing darts. I went in there, and I was like, "Let me play some darts with you." And, um, I just like built a relationship. After 30 minutes, I said, "Hey, I want a place to crash. Do you guys have like a couch or something?" And they had a futon. They let me come in there. I let myself out in the morning, and that was it. But that's how you sleep, uh, not in the streets, y- you meet friends at bars.

Dr. David Sinclair 49:48 Yeah, it's a tip to everybody who's watching.

Lewis Howes 49:51 That's it.

Dr. David Sinclair 49:51 That's how you survive.

Lewis Howes 49:52 That's how you survive. Go to the bars.

Dr. David Sinclair 49:54 Yeah. So Benjamin Franklin said he slept on the floor and knew that he could survive. If you can get through that, then the rest of your life is easy.

Lewis Howes 50:01 Just sleep on the floor.

Dr. David Sinclair 50:02 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 50:02 No pillows, no sheets or...

Dr. David Sinclair 50:04 Yeah, and th- that's how I've lived my life, at least up until fairly recently, which is I know what it's like to be poor and not have anything, so I'm gonna go for it-

Lewis Howes 50:14 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 50:14 ... 'cause the worst that can happen is I just go back to that.

Lewis Howes 50:16 You go back to that. What was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself, uh, with a year of being homeless?

Dr. David Sinclair 50:22 Uh, being homeless isn't so bad. It's a lot of fun. Um, but also that I, I have grit. You know, I grew up in a pretty easy family. I was in the suburbs of Sydney.

Lewis Howes 50:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 50:35 My parents weren't wealthy, but they certainly weren't starving. Um, I didn't know if I had what it took to survive.

Lewis Howes 50:41 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 50:41 So that was my real test.

Lewis Howes 50:42 You needed that experience.

Dr. David Sinclair 50:44 Yeah. Yeah, and everything after that was easy.

Lewis Howes 50:47 Yeah. Well, except for being like debunked, fake debunked by your, you know, researchers-

Dr. David Sinclair 50:52 Yeah, well-

Lewis Howes 50:52 ... and peers

Dr. David Sinclair 50:53 ... physically, I can handle anything. Mentally, I'm not that strong.

Lewis Howes 50:56 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 50:57 Well, I try. Um-

Lewis Howes 50:58 Do you think this made you more emotionally, mentally strong going through this like worst-case scenario for your career?

Dr. David Sinclair 51:06 I like to think so. Um, but I still get beaten up-

Lewis Howes 51:11 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 51:12 ... even, you know, in my 50s now.

Lewis Howes 51:15 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 51:15 We, we just had... I just had 10 years of work with 15 labs collaborating with me, guiding them, and it's 55 scientists. We submitted this research. We wrote it up. It took a year to write.

Lewis Howes 51:29 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 51:30 We sent it to a journal. And as a scientist, your, your work gets reviewed by your peers anonymously, so they-

Lewis Howes 51:38 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 51:38 ... they can write whatever they want.

Lewis Howes 51:39 Don't put their name on it, yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 51:40 So what happened just before, uh, the holiday break was there were four people who wrote comments about our work. Three of them said, "This is paradigm-shifting, brilliant. Got to be published. Will change the world," kind of stuff.

Lewis Howes 51:53 And you didn't know who those names were.

Dr. David Sinclair 51:55 I didn't.

Lewis Howes 51:56 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 51:56 There was one that wrote, "This isn't exciting."

Lewis Howes 51:59 Ooh.

Dr. David Sinclair 51:59 "We, we, we already knew this," which is not true. And the journal said, "We're gonna side with the one naysayer."

Lewis Howes 52:06 Oh, that's the worst.

Dr. David Sinclair 52:07 That, that really was a blow.

Lewis Howes 52:09 Isn't it crazy?

Dr. David Sinclair 52:09 That was like a... I felt like someone hit me in the head with a, with a baseball bat.

Lewis Howes 52:13 Isn't it crazy we al- but we also focus on the one negative when there's thousands of positive reviews of a book or something, and you see one negative, and you're like, "Why?"

Dr. David Sinclair 52:21 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 52:21 Why is it-

Dr. David Sinclair 52:22 Well, it got rejected, so that's 10 years of work

Lewis Howes 52:24 ... that's worth- Oh my gosh. With 15 different labs working on this. Is that right?

Dr. David Sinclair 52:27 It was everything, and I had had this in my mind that we're gonna get it into this world-class journal, and I talked to the journal, and they said, "We're w- we're waiting for it. Let's do this." And that was the future. It was supposed to be this and nothing else, and then to have it rejected. And editors are s- usually, they go with the majority, majority rules.

Lewis Howes 52:48 Why would they go with one-

Dr. David Sinclair 52:49 I still don't know. That's what doesn't make any sense.

Lewis Howes 52:52 Is there a way to resubmit or to-

Dr. David Sinclair 52:54 We're gonna challenge it, so I'm writing up a defensive letter, an appeal, as we call it.

Lewis Howes 52:58 Gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 53:00 But, yeah, I thought I was resilient and nothing could, could get to me, but that did.

Lewis Howes 53:05 It's kinda like being a Olympic gymnast. It's like you could have your best performance, but if one judge didn't like the way you pointed your toes-

Dr. David Sinclair 53:13 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:13 ... and they give you a 9.2 as opposed to a 9.9, you could lose based on an opinion of one person.

Dr. David Sinclair 53:20 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 53:21 I don't like that w- that's not like... I thought science was like black and white.

Dr. David Sinclair 53:25 Oh, boy. There's a lot of politics. Um-

Lewis Howes 53:27 Really? But it's like if you got, "Here's the proof," 15 labs indicate independent case studies, and like triple-checking. I don't know.

Dr. David Sinclair 53:36 That's how it's supposed to work. That's why this was such a blow because everything I thought about how science worked was thrown out the window in this case.

Lewis Howes 53:45 Why do we even have science if it's-

Dr. David Sinclair 53:48 [laughs] It'll get published. Don't worry

Lewis Howes 53:49 ... if... But I mean, if you can't prove something through science, why do we even do it then? It seems like de-

Dr. David Sinclair 53:55 Well, we, we can prove it. It'll come out

Lewis Howes 53:56 ... deflating to me.

Dr. David Sinclair 53:58 Well, what'll happen is either we'll get it, we'll get this appeal, and that'll be great, hopefully. Cross your fingers. Um, but we're gonna have to rewrite it potentially for other journals-

Lewis Howes 54:08 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 54:08 ... which will take us a long time. So the world won't find out about this for a while.

Lewis Howes 54:12 Man. Can you just write it yourself and publish it on your website and say, "This isn't published in a journal yet, but here's all the research. Here's all the proof. Here's the studies"?

Dr. David Sinclair 54:21 Well, you can. Um, no one will-

Lewis Howes 54:23 It's just not looked at as credible.

Dr. David Sinclair 54:24 Right. No one will give you credit for it. Now, there, there are what are called, um, pre-publications. So now we can put our work online, and in fact, you can go online and see this work. If you go to a place called bioRxiv, R-X-I-V, and type in my name-

Lewis Howes 54:41 Mm-hmm

Dr. David Sinclair 54:42 ... you'll see that the work is, is publicly available, but most people don't see it, and the-

Lewis Howes 54:46 Got it

Dr. David Sinclair 54:46 ... the press can't comment on it.

Lewis Howes 54:47 But I mean, how, how many of these journals have published things that people said, "Yes, this is true," but it wasn't true?

Dr. David Sinclair 54:55 Oh, cr-

Lewis Howes 54:55 You know what I mean? It's like-

Dr. David Sinclair 54:56 Yeah, quite a lot. Uh, probably a third of what's published turns out to be wrong, but that's true for all science. That's evolution.

Lewis Howes 55:03 Why do they publish it? I mean, it's like-

Dr. David Sinclair 55:05 Well, we do our best, right?

Lewis Howes 55:06 Gotcha.

Dr. David Sinclair 55:06 We can always be wrong. You know, y- y- Even, even Newton was wrong. Even Einstein was wrong-

Lewis Howes 55:12 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 55:12 ... until quantum mechanics-

Lewis Howes 55:13 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 55:14 ... overturned it all. But-

Lewis Howes 55:15 We're all wrong

Dr. David Sinclair 55:15 ... all science is wrong eventually.

Lewis Howes 55:17 We're right until we're wrong.

Dr. David Sinclair 55:18 We are, but, but those steps along the way are stepping stones to more knowledge.

Lewis Howes 55:24 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 55:25 Uh, but science goes forward and backwards in little steps, but over- overall, it's, it's forward.

Lewis Howes 55:32 Seems exhausting. Gosh, just wanna hang out with the rats. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 55:37 Uh, yeah, it is. I mean, you try not to make a mistake. You try not to-

Lewis Howes 55:39 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 55:39 ... conclude things that are wrong-

Lewis Howes 55:41 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 55:41 ... 'cause that'll damage your reputation. Fortunately, so far in my career, that hasn't happened.

Lewis Howes 55:45 That's why it takes so long to do the research, right? It's why it takes so many trials, so many rechecking years and years.

Dr. David Sinclair 55:52 Well, most labs don't spend 10 years on a project. You'd spend maybe two or three.

Lewis Howes 55:56 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 55:56 This was the big one for me.

Lewis Howes 55:57 Oh my gosh. This is sad.

Dr. David Sinclair 56:00 This was figuring out why we age.

Lewis Howes 56:02 Oh my gosh. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 56:04 Well, that's not important apparently.

Lewis Howes 56:05 Was there anything new in there, uh, that you discovered in the last year that hasn't been out yet, that hasn't been talked about?

Dr. David Sinclair 56:14 Uh, yeah. Well, it's in my book, but other than that [laughs]

Lewis Howes 56:17 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 56:17 ... that might be why they're, the journal's angry that some of it-

Lewis Howes 56:20 Uh

Dr. David Sinclair 56:20 ... ended up in the book, but, uh, I j- maybe I jumped the gun.

Lewis Howes 56:24 Got it.

Dr. David Sinclair 56:24 So what we, what we think we've discovered here is that, uh, cells lose their ability to stay young 'cause they lose information.

Lewis Howes 56:32 So they lose information.

Dr. David Sinclair 56:34 Yeah. So there are two types of information in our cells. One is the genetic information that we get from our parents, of course, DNA. But there's another level of information that's just as important, but we just don't talk about it. It's called the epigenome, which is the instructions to tell the cell which of those 25, 23,000 genes to read. And if you read the right ones at the right time, you'll be a nerve cell or a skin cell-

Lewis Howes 56:58 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 56:58 ... 'cause you don't wanna read all 23,000 at once. So-

Lewis Howes 57:00 Oh, sure

Dr. David Sinclair 57:01 ... that doesn't work.

Lewis Howes 57:01 Doesn't work.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:02 So the epigenome is like the pianist that plays the c- the piano.

Lewis Howes 57:05 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:06 And what we think we've figured out is that aging is that the pianist becomes demented.

Lewis Howes 57:11 Demented.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:12 Just can't play the tune right anymore.

Lewis Howes 57:14 Really? Interesting.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:15 The wrong genes come on.

Lewis Howes 57:16 What is that, what is that called? The, the pianist, what's that called?

Dr. David Sinclair 57:20 The p- the demented pianist?

Lewis Howes 57:21 The [laughs] what's it called?

Dr. David Sinclair 57:23 The epigenome.

Lewis Howes 57:23 The epigenome.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:24 Okay. So the epigenome becomes demented.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:26 Yes.

Lewis Howes 57:27 Loses function in some way.

Dr. David Sinclair 57:30 Right, and we can cause that to happen. One of the main reasons that it happens, we think, is chromosomes break every day, a trillion times in our body every day. And in the process of having to open up the DNA and fix it and put it back together, the epigenome gets messed up, and we lose the ability to read the right genes.

Lewis Howes 57:49 So how do we stop it from breaking?

Dr. David Sinclair 57:51 Well, you, you can't always prevent it. Start by not smoking. Start by not getting burnt by the sun.

Lewis Howes 57:59 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 57:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 57:59 Don't be in the sun for too long?

Dr. David Sinclair 58:01 No. No. I mean, we know that ages your skin.

Lewis Howes 58:04 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 58:04 Any Australian will tell you that. Um-

Lewis Howes 58:05 What about, like, what's the amount of time we should be in the sun without aging? Or is it always have sunscreen on at all times? Isn't that-

Dr. David Sinclair 58:12 Well-

Lewis Howes 58:13 ... chemicals that affect the s- I mean-

Dr. David Sinclair 58:15 Yeah. There, there are some people who will tell you that zero is the best.

Lewis Howes 58:18 Zero sun?

Dr. David Sinclair 58:20 Well, that's what some people say.

Lewis Howes 58:21 But isn't vitamin D supposed to help you live longer too?

Dr. David Sinclair 58:23 Well, yeah, they, they would say to take a supplement instead, but, uh, I'm not that-

Lewis Howes 58:27 This is human nature, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 58:28 Right.

Lewis Howes 58:28 Like-

Dr. David Sinclair 58:29 Sun, for me, it makes you feel good, a bit of UV.

Lewis Howes 58:33 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 58:33 But you don't wanna overload the body.

Lewis Howes 58:35 Got it.

Dr. David Sinclair 58:35 It's very easy to overdo it, and it-

Lewis Howes 58:36 So 10, 20 minutes in the sun is-

Dr. David Sinclair 58:38 When your skin's starting to tingle, don't-

Lewis Howes 58:40 Stop

Dr. David Sinclair 58:40 ... get, don't get red. But in Australia, we used to pull-

Lewis Howes 58:44 Burns

Dr. David Sinclair 58:44 ... pieces of skin off our-

Lewis Howes 58:45 Like, like blisters-

Dr. David Sinclair 58:46 Yeah, pe-

Lewis Howes 58:46 ... right? Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 58:47 Yeah. So I've only been burnt maybe once or twice in my adult life, um, for, for good reason.

Lewis Howes 58:54 So don't stay in the sun too long.

Dr. David Sinclair 58:56 Right. Right. Uh, uh, unfortunately, it ends up, you know, you look white and pasty, but-

Lewis Howes 59:02 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 59:02 ... from, for, for Caucasians anyway.

Lewis Howes 59:04 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 59:05 But that's the price you pay. You, if you suntan a lot in your 20s, by the time you're 40 or 50, you will look about 5, 10 years older.

Lewis Howes 59:14 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 59:15 Now, it's not all about vanity, but skin cancer is also an issue, so-

Lewis Howes 59:18 Yeah, yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 59:19 ... in Australia, we learn a lot about that.

Lewis Howes 59:21 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 59:21 Uh, but-

Lewis Howes 59:22 So you can be in the sun, just put protection on, is what I'm hearing.

Dr. David Sinclair 59:24 That's right.

Lewis Howes 59:25 It's like, or just stay inside all day.

Dr. David Sinclair 59:27 Yeah, no, put protection on. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 59:29 I mean, it's like enjoy Mother Nature. You can go to the beach. You can go on hikes. Just wear a hat. Put sunscreen on your face, your arms, your hands, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 59:38 Right.

Lewis Howes 59:39 Okay. Just making ... [laughs] Okay, cool.

Dr. David Sinclair 59:40 Yeah, yeah. You gotta go outside, uh, for sure. I mean, otherwise, what's, what's life-

Lewis Howes 59:45 What a life? Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 59:45 ... worth living?

Lewis Howes 59:46 Okay.

Lewis Howes 59:47 Now, I just did this trip to, uh, Poland with Wim Hof. We're with a group of guys where we did this intensive breathing and ice therapy training, where we were in the ice for 10 minutes up to our neck, um, breathing and exposing ourselves to the cold. We also hiked four hours on a mountain. There was about 50 miles an hour wind at the top, minus 22 Celsius, and with no clothes on, just shorts, hats, gloves, and shoes. So exposing our legs and our chest and our face to the wind and the cold and pelting us with hail, essentially, at the top. How important is heat therapy and cold therapy to aging or anti-aging?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:00:33 Uh, I wanna hear all about this story.

Lewis Howes 1:00:34 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:00:35 This sounds fascinating. Well, definitely tell, tell us more about that.

Lewis Howes 1:00:38 Yes.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:00:38 Uh, but yeah, so when I started writing the book, um, my editor said, "You ought to talk about this cryotherapy-

Lewis Howes 1:00:44 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:00:44 ... uh, and also sauna." And I said, "That's not science. It can't be real."

Lewis Howes 1:00:48 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:00:49 Uh, so I looked into it. Uh, and we'd also, actually, I must admit, we'd done some work on cold already. Uh, one of these sirtuin protective genes, not number one that I talked about, but number three responds to cold and actually-

Lewis Howes 1:01:03 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:01:03 ... turns on healthy production of what's called brown fat.

Lewis Howes 1:01:06 Uh-huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:01:07 So the more I looked into it, and the more I con- pondered my own research, I thought maybe- Being cold does help your health. And so I, I write about it, but I think that the data, it's not as strong as, as fasting and exercise, but it i- it's believable that what, what you're doing when you're cold, or actually when you're hot, is turning on those protective longevity genes.

Lewis Howes 1:01:30 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:01:30 Yeah, yeah. I mean, not, not internally. You're not gonna freeze internally-

Lewis Howes 1:01:33 Right

Dr. David Sinclair 1:01:33 ... and be cold. But on your skin you're gonna, and just under your skin, you're gonna have what's called brown fat, which is full of energy-producing, um, and heat-producing mitochondria, the battery packs of cells. And those mitochondria are really dense, and it's one of the reasons that they, it, it, brown, not white fat. And the brown fat, it's not like normal fat where you, you're just storing energy. It's actually metabolically active-

Lewis Howes 1:01:58 Oh

Dr. David Sinclair 1:01:58 ... so it's burning energy.

Lewis Howes 1:02:00 It's burning. Oh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:00 But it's also seen to be healthy because it's secreting these little proteins that tell the body to stay young.

Lewis Howes 1:02:06 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:06 We don't know what they all are, but there's a lot of evidence that having it-

Lewis Howes 1:02:10 It's doing a-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:10 Right

Lewis Howes 1:02:10 ... stay young.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:11 Well, yeah. So brown fat is found mainly in babies-

Lewis Howes 1:02:13 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:14 ... 'cause they can't shiver.

Lewis Howes 1:02:16 It's-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:16 Little babies. Did you know that?

Lewis Howes 1:02:17 I didn't know that.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:17 Can you shiver?

Lewis Howes 1:02:17 Why can't they shiver, though?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:18 I don't know. It's weird, isn't it?

Lewis Howes 1:02:20 How old do you become until you can shiver for the first time?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:23 Well, I don't know. Uh, I'd have to guess, but-

Lewis Howes 1:02:25 Two years old

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:25 ... but newborns don't shiver, and they have to use this brown fat. They're full of it. But as we get older, we lose it. In fact, it, when I was, uh, you know, 20 years ago when I was just starting out, people thought there was no such thing as brown fat in adults. And then they did PET, PET scans and found that this brown fat was mostly in people who were cold-

Lewis Howes 1:02:46 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:46 ... uh, and experiencing cold, and found across the back mainly.

Lewis Howes 1:02:50 So you can recreate brown fat-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:52 Exactly

Lewis Howes 1:02:52 ... as an adult?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:02:53 Yes. Or beige fat. You can turn your white fat into brownish fat by being cold.

Lewis Howes 1:02:57 Really? By, by, how, do we know how much cold therapy you need to do? Is it once a month? Is it once a week? Is it daily? Is it for a certain amount of time?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:05 Well, we're still figuring that out.

Lewis Howes 1:03:07 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:07 But seems like the more, the better unfortunately.

Lewis Howes 1:03:09 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:09 So what you were doing sounds perfect.

Lewis Howes 1:03:11 So like every day doing a cold shower or an ice plunge for a couple minutes a day or just something like that helps generate brown fat, which is a layer of mitochondria, dense mitochondria under the skin, which helps you burn more fat.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:03:26 Is that what it is?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:27 That's a good way to put it.

Lewis Howes 1:03:28 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:28 It's designed to keep you warm, but it, it also is telling the body, "Hey, times are tough. We could, we could freeze to death."

Lewis Howes 1:03:36 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:03:36 Adversity, right? What doesn't kill you makes you live longer.

Lewis Howes 1:03:40 Ooh, that's a good one. So put your body through pain throughout your life as consistently as possible. Like, controlled pain, right? Going in a sauna for 15 minutes and pushing an extra minute, like that feeling of adversity, going in cold, working out hard, doing something where it's a, you're not gonna kill yourself or hurt or break a leg, but it's like discomfort. Is that what I'm hearing?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:04 That's the most important lesson. We call it hormesis, and it's, it's basically your body will be complacent if you don't tell it to work hard. And the problem with our society is everything is designed to be-

Lewis Howes 1:04:18 Comfortable

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:18 ... comfortable.

Lewis Howes 1:04:19 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:19 That's what we strive for. You know, I was, I was coming here, uh, flying out, and I'm looking at all the roller bags and thinking, and I, here I'm carrying my two bags here, and I'm thinking, "Should I put it down? No, I'm gonna walk with my bags 'cause that's what people used to do."

Lewis Howes 1:04:33 Oh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:33 But, you know, these days everything is all about-

Lewis Howes 1:04:35 Easy

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:35 ... comfort. Constant food-

Lewis Howes 1:04:38 [sighs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:38 ... don't exercise-

Lewis Howes 1:04:39 [sighs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:40 ... don't be cold-

Lewis Howes 1:04:41 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:41 ... ever.

Lewis Howes 1:04:41 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:43 It's crazy. We're, we're killing ourselves. We're accelerating our aging process.

Lewis Howes 1:04:46 By-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:46 So you gotta get out of that comfort zone

Lewis Howes 1:04:48 ... we're killing ourselves by being comfortable.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:04:50 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:04:51 So is there too mu- Like, if I'm cold therapy and hot and fasting and doing a HIIT workout, is there such thing as too much discomfort in your life that will start to age you?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:03 I don't think so.

Lewis Howes 1:05:04 So I could fast, be in the cold and the heat, [laughs] two minutes of sun, like do all these things in a, in a day, do it consistently, carry my bags everywhere, and you think it'll make me younger?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:17 I think your, your rate of aging will s- be slowed down dramatically.

Lewis Howes 1:05:20 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:21 Skip a meal or two a day-

Lewis Howes 1:05:23 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:23 ... as much as you can. Yeah, I mean, there's no question in my mind that this would work-

Lewis Howes 1:05:28 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:28 ... give you an extra at least 15 years, maybe 25.

Lewis Howes 1:05:31 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:31 It's, it, it's not, it's not rocket science.

Lewis Howes 1:05:34 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:34 If you do that to a rat, if you give it cold or you actually give it less food, um-

Lewis Howes 1:05:40 It starts to-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:42 In, if you come to my lab, you'll see mice. We've got mice that are on a regular diet. They can eat whenever they want.

Lewis Howes 1:05:47 Uh-huh. Food just laying around, just eat as much as you want.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:05:50 Yeah. R- and those are not fat mice 'cause they're on a lean diet. The ones we give the high-fat diet, they die 30% faster anyway. They age rapidly. But let's say even if you're lean like you are and eating well, but you're eating a lot, right, constantly-

Lewis Howes 1:06:04 Yeah, yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:05 ... if we do that to a mouse, uh, they will age at the, what we call the normal rate. So they'll be two years old, they're getting frail, they get gray hair-

Lewis Howes 1:06:13 Oh

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:13 ... they're looking old.

Lewis Howes 1:06:14 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:14 And then they'll die about six months later on average. The mice that are on this calorie-restricted diet that either get less food in total or only eat for a few hours a day, they're running around the cage, no gray hair-

Lewis Howes 1:06:29 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:29 ... they're super active. They stay young.

Lewis Howes 1:06:32 So don't eat.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:34 Well, you gotta eat.

Lewis Howes 1:06:35 It's fasting. It's, it's, what do you like, intermittent fasting-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:37 Intermittent

Lewis Howes 1:06:37 ... or do you like the 24-hour fast? Do you like a, a three-day fast? What do you think is ideal-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:42 Well, I think-

Lewis Howes 1:06:43 ... for most people?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:44 Well, the, yeah, scientifically, I think going for three days is great. So-

Lewis Howes 1:06:49 Scientifically, okay

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:49 ... Peter Attia, hats off to him. That's his profession. He can do that.

Lewis Howes 1:06:53 Is this the, uh, what's the, Prolong or what's the, uh, diet? What's this guy?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:58 Peter Attia?

Lewis Howes 1:06:59 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:06:59 I don't know what his diet is called.

Lewis Howes 1:07:00 Does he have a diet or does he have like a program for this or no? Or this is just his finding.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:03 I, I don't think so.

Lewis Howes 1:07:04 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:04 He's a, he's a doctor who's experimenting on his body in severe ways.

Lewis Howes 1:07:09 And three days is like what he does.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:10 Well, he goes for a week without food. He dr- just drinks water.

Lewis Howes 1:07:13 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:14 And, uh, I-

Lewis Howes 1:07:15 It's probably like skin and bones though, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:17 Yeah. Well-

Lewis Howes 1:07:17 It's probably not the best for high performance of, like-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:19 No, no, no. If you're an athlete, forget it.

Lewis Howes 1:07:21 So what if, if you're an athlete, if you wanna work out and do HIIT training-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:24 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:07:25 ... what, what do you think is scientifically right? Like, a one-day fast and then intermittent fasting and skipping meals.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:32 Well, so h- I get asked this every day.

Lewis Howes 1:07:34 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:34 Um, and the simple answer is, uh, do as much as you can, and the more the better, uh, in general, without losing your energy. But the other fact is that nobody knows the true answer. Anyone who says, "This is the way to do it"-

Lewis Howes 1:07:49 Yeah, no, no, no

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:50 ... is BS'ing you.

Lewis Howes 1:07:51 Yeah. 'Cause everyone's different, and we all have different-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:53 Exactly

Lewis Howes 1:07:55 ... needs and-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:07:55 Different bacteria in the gut, different energy levels, different genes, uh, different lifestyles, different professions.

Lewis Howes 1:08:03 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:03 And so for someone like me, I'll tell you, what works for me is, so I'm, I'm often sitting probably for half the day. I got a standing desk. That's a start. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:08:13 Right. You're not working out.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:15 No.

Lewis Howes 1:08:15 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:15 No. I work out once a week for a few hours. That's about it.

Lewis Howes 1:08:18 Right. That's it.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:19 It's much as I can do. So for me, what I do is I, I very rarely eat breakfast. Um, I'm not hungry in the morning anyway. I try to skip lunch with my cups of tea.

Lewis Howes 1:08:29 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:30 I would say I'm about 70% successful. Um, I might have a little nibble of something in the afternoon, 'cause I can't focus well.

Lewis Howes 1:08:39 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:40 But then I have a normal dinner. I go out to dinner and I'm-

Lewis Howes 1:08:42 Right, right. Have whatever you want

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:43 ... living normally.

Lewis Howes 1:08:44 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:44 That works for me. And I think for, for an athlete at, at least skipping one meal would, would be good.

Lewis Howes 1:08:50 Would be good. And then maybe one day a month not eating or something, right?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:53 Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Lewis Howes 1:08:55 Yeah, like 24-hour-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:55 Don't for a whole week, though.

Lewis Howes 1:08:56 Yeah, a 24-hour fast could be good once a month and-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:08:59 Yeah. One, one thing, though, about that three-day fast, I've never done it myself, but what happens we know is that it kicks in what's called the, the, the super cleansing autophagy pathway-

Lewis Howes 1:09:10 Yeah, which kills the bad cells and-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:12 And gets rid of the, the bad proteins that have-

Lewis Howes 1:09:14 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:14 ... accumulated.

Lewis Howes 1:09:14 Three days.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:15 You need to go for three days to really get the deep cleanse-

Lewis Howes 1:09:18 Oh my gosh, man

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:18 ... unfortunately.

Lewis Howes 1:09:19 You've never done it though, huh? But you don't need it. You look like you're 30, so you're fine.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:23 Maybe I could be 20. Who knows? But-

Lewis Howes 1:09:25 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:25 Uh, yeah, I, I'm like, I'm just a schmo. I, I'm not as will ... I don't have the, the willpower that you guys... I couldn't go hiking in the snow.

Lewis Howes 1:09:34 Right. It's, yeah, I think you could. It's a mindset. You could do it.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:37 Really? Well-

Lewis Howes 1:09:38 I think you could do it

Dr. David Sinclair 1:09:38 ... tell us about that. How did that feel?

Lewis Howes 1:09:41 Um, life-changing. Like, to know that I could hike practically naked. The only thing is at the top, like, when I took my gloves off to take a video, like, then I started to really freeze. So I think the extremities need to be covered, and I think you should have supervision if you're gonna try this. I wouldn't try this by yourself. But since I had warm gloves on, I think I was able to do it. But I remember hiking the last 20 minutes, it was like a cliff coming off the side. The wind was whistling, you know, 50, 60 miles an hour, and can't see much, and it's really cold. Like, it was cold going up most of the mountain for the first three and a half hours. The last 30 minutes, it's just like there was no trees to protect you from the wind.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:10:28 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:10:28 It was a lot colder.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:10:29 Are you shivering?

Lewis Howes 1:10:31 Um, I was sweating still.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:10:33 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:10:34 I was sweating. So I had sweat coming down from the hat, cold, like, you know, you're generating heat and, um, it just, it wasn't fun at the top. Like, it, it started to hurt.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:10:46 And you lose feeling in certain parts of your body?

Lewis Howes 1:10:48 Yeah. Like, my s- chest was, like, stinging and cold, but I think I got enough brown fat underneath me that [laughs] I was, like, generating heat.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:10:55 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:10:56 I had a good layer of fat in my stomach, so I think that helped. But it, you know, I went with a group of guys, so it was, like, this bonding experience. We're all in this together. I think if I did it alone, I probably would've stopped at one point, where there was, like, a lodge at the top and then there was another 30 minutes. I think I would've stopped and been like, "I did enough. Like, I proved it. I did three and a half hours. I got close to the top." But we were on a mission to reach the, the summit.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:11:22 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:11:22 And, um, doing it together, I think a positive mindset in general, maybe this isn't scientific, but I think having a positive attitude can get you through a lot of adversity. And what you speak out of your mouth can dictate the direction that you go in your life. And again, this probably isn't scientific or researched, but if I say to myself as I'm getting to the top, "I'm cold. I'm tired. I don't know if I can make it. Ah, this is stupid. What was I thinking?" I'm probably going to convince my body to start getting colder and shutting down and looking backwards. But because we were like, "Man, it's sunny out," like, we were just saying, "We're warm. It's hot. It's sunny. This is a great, nice hike," like, we just kept speaking, like, these positive words and whe- we convinced ourselves, we believed it, our bodies started to believe it. Whatever we did, we were doing it together and we got to the top, and I think what we say dictates a lot of our, our, our energy and, and-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:12:22 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:12:22 ... our actions. So-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:12:23 So-

Lewis Howes 1:12:23 I don't know if that's proven science or if that's just-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:12:27 Well, yeah, you probably have to do that a few times to-

Lewis Howes 1:12:29 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:12:29 ... to live longer, but yeah. But psychologically, it's changed your life.

Lewis Howes 1:12:34 Absolutely.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:12:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:34 I, I, I was trying to think, like, it was a five-day trip, and I was like, "Are there other weeks in my life that were better than this week?" We, uh, you know, going to the national championships to become an All-American was a big dream of mine and, like, every day leading up to it, but I was still in class. I was in school. It wasn't all fun. Uh, you know, playoffs in college football were, like, great weeks leading up to these games, right? But this was like every day we were taking on new challenges with a group of people. I don't know. Something about it was really special. And Wim Hof is, like, this crazy character who's also helping a lot of people.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:13:14 Yeah, he's great.

Lewis Howes 1:13:14 And he's getting people to get uncomfortable, which is gonna help them fight disease, live longer, all these things that you talk about. Whether he knows the science 100% or not, he's doing things to get people to get uncomfortable on a consistent basis- And I think that helps people in general, so-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:13:30 Right, physically and mentally

Lewis Howes 1:13:32 ... physically and mentally. We're doing breathing exercises every day. As you know, most people are very shallow breathers, and that probably affects, I don't know, if you're shallow breathing your whole life, I, I don't think that can help you live longer-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:13:44 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:13:44 ... I'm assuming. I don't know the science. But just taking deep, full breaths all the time and allowing the body to relax, it was so peaceful. I didn't look at my email once in a week. I didn't think about social media. I was just present, breathing, going through hard challenges, and it felt so peaceful and relaxing. I mean, it was discomfort and then, like, peace. Discomfort and then like, "Ah."

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:08 Right. Well, you need to experience adversity to be able to have the calm.

Lewis Howes 1:14:12 Amen.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:12 Look, like we have in our lives, we know what suffering is, so that's why, you know, even on a bad day, it's still a pretty good day.

Lewis Howes 1:14:19 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:20 You know?

Lewis Howes 1:14:21 That's true.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:21 I, I get home and, uh, uh, my wife, who's wonderful, she'll say, "How, how was today?" And after my mother died, I now say, even though it's a bit morbid, "Nobody died today."

Lewis Howes 1:14:33 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:33 "It was a great day." And that, that's, that's what my, uh, my cutoff.

Lewis Howes 1:14:38 If someone dies, it's not a g- not the best day.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:40 Right. And if you've been through that, then all the other stuff is just m- minor

Lewis Howes 1:14:44 Just average

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:45 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:45 ... average pain. Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:14:47 So the lesson here is, uh, push yourself. Do things that you don't think you're capable of doing. Experience adversity. It'll, it'll help you physically, but even more so mentally.

Lewis Howes 1:14:56 Yeah. How old do you think you can get to live, like, personally? With all the research you've done now, and with potentially in the next 20, 30 years of science that you're going to discover, like, if nothing happens physically, with like a bus or something-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:15:10 ... how long do you think you personally can live if you optimized everything?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:16 Yeah. Well-

Lewis Howes 1:15:17 What's po- what's possible? Not what's gonna happen, but what's possible in your opinion?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:19 Right. Right, right. Well, before I tell you that, um, I'm not doing this to live longer.

Lewis Howes 1:15:24 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:24 I-

Lewis Howes 1:15:24 You don't wanna live forever

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:25 ... I wouldn't mind. Uh-

Lewis Howes 1:15:28 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:28 I'm not looking forward to, to a horrible death. Uh-

Lewis Howes 1:15:32 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:32 ... but, you know, that's not my goal here. It's not that I'm worried about myself. I do wanna leave this planet having done something meaningful. That-

Lewis Howes 1:15:39 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:39 ... that's what drives me mainly. Um, but I'm also a scientist. I'm experimenting.

Lewis Howes 1:15:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:44 I wanna know s- stuff. Remember, you know, I told my friends we're the last generation, so I'm trying to accelerate knowledge at Harvard and at home.

Lewis Howes 1:15:53 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:15:54 So I, I, I do these things to myself. I measure myself, glucose levels, whole bunch of parameters to see what's going on-

Lewis Howes 1:16:00 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:00 ... not as proof, but as indicators of what m- other people may test. And, uh, so I know from my own body that I'm still pretty young.

Lewis Howes 1:16:10 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:10 Um, I still need to do the definitive age test. We can now look at exactly how old-

Lewis Howes 1:16:16 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:16 ... we are with the-

Lewis Howes 1:16:16 Like a ring of a tree

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:18 ... it is. We've just ... It's called the Horvath clock. It's, the pianist, you can measure how old the pianist is within a few percent. So you can actually predict when you're gonna die now.

Lewis Howes 1:16:27 Shut up.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:28 Really.

Lewis Howes 1:16:29 Have you pred- have you predicted yours?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:30 I've gotta do it. I gotta do it.

Lewis Howes 1:16:31 You ... [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:32 I've, I've done a, done a primitive form of that, which is, um, um ... In full disclosure, it's a company that, that, um, I own a little bit of. Um-

Lewis Howes 1:16:40 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:41 But it, so this company takes blood tests. Um, can I say the name?

Lewis Howes 1:16:45 Sure.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:45 It's called InsideTracker. I, I mention it because people are gonna write to you about it.

Lewis Howes 1:16:49 Sure, sure.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:50 So InsideTracker does blood tests, and they measure, uh, a bunch of things, and I've been doing that for about 12 years. So I know I'm tracking myself and everything's staying-

Lewis Howes 1:16:58 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:16:58 ... young.

Lewis Howes 1:16:59 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:00 And they can estimate your age. It's a, it's a rough estimate, so-

Lewis Howes 1:17:03 It can estimate your age by taking a blood sample?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:05 Right, and measuring-

Lewis Howes 1:17:06 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:06 ... things in there that go up and down with, with time

Lewis Howes 1:17:07 And it's probably like a three-year swing either side or something, or it's pretty close?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:11 Yeah. Uh, it, it's an indicator of how well-

Lewis Howes 1:17:14 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:14 ... you're doing with your body.

Lewis Howes 1:17:16 Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:16 And, uh-

Lewis Howes 1:17:17 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:17 ... I, I actually took a test a few years ago, many years ago, and I was, uh ... I came out as 58, and I freaked out.

Lewis Howes 1:17:26 [laughs] 'Cause it made you older than what you are?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:28 I was older than I was. I was 48 at the time.

Lewis Howes 1:17:29 Oh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:30 And, uh-

Lewis Howes 1:17:30 So what did, what did you change?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:32 Well, I, I upped some doses of molecules, took a couple more, um, and, uh, stopped eating badly. Um, and, uh, the next test came out at 31.

Lewis Howes 1:17:45 What? Shut up. What do you mean stop eating badly? Like-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:49 Well, I-

Lewis Howes 1:17:49 ... sugars and candies and cakes, or is this like-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:52 Well, I wasn't strictly intermittent fasting.

Lewis Howes 1:17:54 Oh, okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:54 I'd eat lunches. Uh, had more fat than I do now.

Lewis Howes 1:17:59 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:17:59 I'd eat pizza and things like that.

Lewis Howes 1:18:00 I love pizza.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:01 Gosh. Uh, but I've turned it around. Um, I've never been unhealthy-

Lewis Howes 1:18:07 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:07 ... but this was a real-

Lewis Howes 1:18:08 That was a wake-up call

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:09 ... see, I have terrible genes. My father's side, we all died in our 70s usually, as males.

Lewis Howes 1:18:14 [laughs] So what does it say that you could live to? You don't know yet?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:17 Well, so I haven't answered your question.

Lewis Howes 1:18:19 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:19 Um, so that, that doesn't, that says that I've probably got a- another 20 years extra, right? Right.

Lewis Howes 1:18:25 Extra than the average lifespan.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:27 Well, based on that blood test. We'll see.

Lewis Howes 1:18:29 Got it, got it.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:29 But what, what could we live to? So here's the good news, is that if we just continue on the trend that we've been on for 200 years, and it's been perfectly linear, so you can keep s- stretching it out. A child born today, uh, in the US, can expect, not hope, but expect 50% of them to live to 104.

Lewis Howes 1:18:52 So-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:53 And in Japan, 107-

Lewis Howes 1:18:54 Oh, my gosh

Dr. David Sinclair 1:18:55 ... if we keep going up. Now, that's not gonna happen by accident. That's gonna take researchers like me to figure it out, and a lot of medical research-

Lewis Howes 1:19:01 And them doing the work, and people actually not eating horrible and smoking and doing the things that help-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:06 Hopefully that'll help too. That's why I'm-

Lewis Howes 1:19:08 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:09 ... I wrote the book, is to help people live longer.

Lewis Howes 1:19:11 But just 100 years is their lifespan now.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:14 Well, yeah, that's the predicted trajectory. That's without, um, any radical breakthrough-

Lewis Howes 1:19:19 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:20 ... without, you know, fixing the pianist. Now, if we can fix the pianist and truly reverse aging, like a reset switch, then who knows? You know, we, we could live to 120, maybe longer. It's hard to say.

Lewis Howes 1:19:34 Me and you, or-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:35 Well, yeah

Lewis Howes 1:19:35 ... people born today?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:36 You know, well- I'm going as fast as I can. And, uh, we've got, we've had a big breakthrough in the last year, uh, that we found the reset switch, we think, in the cells-

Lewis Howes 1:19:46 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:46 ... to, to reset the age.

Lewis Howes 1:19:48 So what's the next step? It's like you guys are researching this for the next five, 10 years, figuring out how to do that, reset it?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:54 Well, we know how to do it in a mouse pretty easily. That worked first time. That was easy.

Lewis Howes 1:19:58 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:19:58 And one of my students, another brilliant, uh, student, he decided to reverse the eye, the age of the eye. So he took old mice that were basically blind and made their eyes young again so they could see-

Lewis Howes 1:20:13 What?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:13 ... just like they were young again. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:20:14 So you could do that with people too?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:16 Well, that's the next step. That's a few years away.

Lewis Howes 1:20:17 Oh my gosh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:18 But we're, we're working. I'm an entrepreneur, as you know, and-

Lewis Howes 1:20:20 Yeah, of course

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:21 ... I'm, so I'm trying to push this out of the lab as fast as possible.

Lewis Howes 1:20:24 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:24 But if it works on the eye, what else could it work on? Probably everything, I think. Now, is it safe? We think it, it is. We've given it to mice for a year and no problem. No cancer showing up or anything.

Lewis Howes 1:20:36 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:36 But you don't wanna push it too far. You don't wanna go back to being an embryo. You'll be the world's biggest tumor.

Lewis Howes 1:20:41 Right, right. [laughs] Wow. Wow. So what do you think you could live to, personally?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:46 Yeah. I'll, uh, you know, I'm trying to avoid the question-

Lewis Howes 1:20:49 [laughs]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:49 ... because my, my peers, my colleagues-

Lewis Howes 1:20:52 Sure, sure

Dr. David Sinclair 1:20:53 ... hate it 'cause it's, it's unproven, it's unscientific.

Lewis Howes 1:20:55 Gotcha, gotcha. But just like, you know, obviously it's not proven, but just if, if all goes well and then, you know-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:01 All right. We, we-

Lewis Howes 1:21:02 ... you don't get sick and all these things don't happen.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:04 All right. So, so-

Lewis Howes 1:21:05 No traumatic events

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:06 ... people are gonna rewind this video when I die, aren't they? So I'm on a trajectory, uh, to live well beyond 80 because I'm healthy.

Lewis Howes 1:21:15 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:16 My father's an example.

Lewis Howes 1:21:17 He's 80. Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:18 He's 80 and still-

Lewis Howes 1:21:18 So you should live at least 10 years beyond that.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:20 Right. So at least that.

Lewis Howes 1:21:22 Minimum.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:22 I, I should be healthy into my 90s. Be nice to break 100. Uh, with the technologies and some of the medicines that I'm working on, and one of them that I'm actually taking, maybe beyond 100. That would be nice.

Lewis Howes 1:21:34 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:35 In a healthy way, playing tennis.

Lewis Howes 1:21:36 Wow. In a healthy way beyond 100.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:39 A lot of people do that.

Lewis Howes 1:21:40 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:41 Um, it's not for everybody, but, but you do see people in their 100s that are still working and happy.

Lewis Howes 1:21:48 How much does inflammation, uh, play into your, the longevity of your life?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:53 Oh, it's huge. It's huge. It's one of these hallmarks that it, if inflammation's going up too fast, that's basically your clock is-

Lewis Howes 1:21:58 You're aging

Dr. David Sinclair 1:21:59 ... accelerated. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:22:00 So how do we get rid of inflammation?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:03 Well, there are a number of ways. One is do these things-

Lewis Howes 1:22:06 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:06 ... and turn on your longevity genes, which are anti-inflammatory.

Lewis Howes 1:22:10 Hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:11 Uh, other ways, I, I'm still taking a little aspirin every day.

Lewis Howes 1:22:15 Hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:15 Um, the data still looks pretty good for that.

Lewis Howes 1:22:18 Taking an aspirin?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:19 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:22:19 Does that just-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:20 81 milligrams a day.

Lewis Howes 1:22:21 That just takes away inflammation?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:22 Yeah, mostly in, in your blood vessels.

Lewis Howes 1:22:24 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:25 Um, but you need to take it for a long time, of course, I think-

Lewis Howes 1:22:27 Really? Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:28 ... to stop that. Resveratrol is anti-inflammatory. Um, and remember how I said those mice have beautiful arteries, no fat on them?

Lewis Howes 1:22:36 Really?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:36 So that's good.

Lewis Howes 1:22:37 Huh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:39 Yeah, but basically it's that. And, but overeating and being obese is gonna massively turn up-

Lewis Howes 1:22:44 Inflammation

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:45 ... inflammation.

Lewis Howes 1:22:45 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:46 Yeah. Within a few weeks you'll, you'll do it. Just eating bad food for a few weeks will turn it up.

Lewis Howes 1:22:51 And fasting will kill inflammation.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:53 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 1:22:54 Wow.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:22:54 But you might say, well, if your immune system isn't overactive, what about getting sick? Turns out your immune system gets heightened, but inflammation, chronic inflammation gets dampened.

Lewis Howes 1:23:06 Oh.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:06 So when you talk to a centenarian and say, "Did you used to get sick?" They say, "Can't remember the last time I got sick in my," you know-

Lewis Howes 1:23:13 Centenarian?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:14 Centenarian. People who live over 100.

Lewis Howes 1:23:16 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:17 Uh, so that's a hallmark of longevity.

Lewis Howes 1:23:19 They don't remember when they got sick.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:20 They don't get sick. They rarely get even a, a sniffle or a cold.

Lewis Howes 1:23:24 How is that possible?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:25 Well, they have massive immune systems, so even if someone sneezes on them, that virus is, is attacked and killed. But here's the thing. Since I've been eating and living the right way over the last few years, since that terrible scary test, uh, I haven't gotten sick.

Lewis Howes 1:23:41 You haven't got no sickness.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:42 Not once.

Lewis Howes 1:23:42 No cold, the flu.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:43 No. And I'm on planes, people are sneezing on me. I've got-

Lewis Howes 1:23:46 [clears throat]

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:47 We've got three kids. They're always sick.

Lewis Howes 1:23:49 What if you got, like, uh, what if you ate something that had, like, food poisoning? That would fight against that too, or is that kinda hard to, to fight against?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:54 Good question. I don't know. I, I, I don't know, but I haven't, haven't-

Lewis Howes 1:23:57 Some undercooked chicken or something. You know, it's like-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:23:59 I haven't had food poisoning recently, but it might just be that I can afford better food now.

Lewis Howes 1:24:02 [laughs] That's good. I like that. Wow. Um,

Lewis Howes 1:24:06 this is all fascinating stuff, and I know you've got more in your book, Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To. Um, make sure you guys get this book. Really powerful research and science. I got a couple questions left for you. This is called the three truths I ask everyone at the end of my interviews. So I want you to imagine you're, it's your last day on earth, and you're 150, 200, or however old you wanna be. Um, and you've done tons of research. You've written every book you wanna write. You've answered every question that you can think of while you're alive. You publish all this information, but for whatever reason, you've gotta take your work with you, so no one has access to your work anymore or your research. All your content is-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:24:49 I would cry [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:24:49 ... is gone. It's going with you to another world, wherever you're going next.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:24:51 That sounds like hell. Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:24:53 Just imagine.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:24:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:24:55 Um, but you get to leave behind three lessons or three things you know to be true from everything that you've learned in your life. You can write it down on a piece of paper. Everyone have a- would have access to these three truths, and this is the only three things you could share that they would have access to. What would you say are your three truths?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:14 All right. Right. The f- the first one that I live by is all about maximizing human potential. I believe that we're way underutilized. But for the individual, what you have to think every day is, do something that's worth writing, uh, writing about.

Lewis Howes 1:25:33 Hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:34 Or write something that's worth reading.

Lewis Howes 1:25:36 Hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:37 So have an impact. That's, that's my lesson, is don't settle for mediocrity.

Lewis Howes 1:25:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:43 Do something spectacular, and don't listen to the naysayers.

Lewis Howes 1:25:46 Mm-hmm. Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:49 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:25:49 Is that one?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:49 That's one.

Lewis Howes 1:25:50 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:25:50 Uh, the next one would be, uh, do something that scares you every day. Uh, send off an e- email that you wouldn't be-

Lewis Howes 1:26:01 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:02 ... you'd be afraid to do. Um, and along with that, when you're young, take risks like, like we did.

Lewis Howes 1:26:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:10 You can fail. That's okay. You will fail, but it'll make you ... It'll open you up to more opportunities.

Lewis Howes 1:26:16 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:17 Um, but also you'll be a stronger adult-

Lewis Howes 1:26:19 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:19 ... stronger 40, 50 year old.

Lewis Howes 1:26:21 Yeah. Okay. That's two.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:25 Ah, gee, the third one, I haven't pre-prepared this. Uh, but this one's from the heart. I've described to you what it was like to see my mother pass away, and I spent my life arguing with my mother, right? I regret that.

Lewis Howes 1:26:41 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:42 Uh, so as a parent now myself, let me tell the younger people-

Lewis Howes 1:26:46 Yeah

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:48 ... tell your parents how much you appreciate what they've done for you.

Lewis Howes 1:26:51 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:26:51 Tell them that you love them, assuming that you do, if they're good people. Because there will be a day most likely when they'll be gone and you won't have a chance to hug them anymore or see them anymore, 'cause they're gone. And when they're gone, you think, "How is that possible that somebody can be there and not there within a matter of two minutes?" That happens, and, uh, yeah, I just wish that I'd, uh, told my mom more about how much I appreciated her.

Lewis Howes 1:27:17 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:27:17 So I've dedicated the book-

Lewis Howes 1:27:18 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:27:18 ... to her 'cause she cared more about herself than her kids.

Lewis Howes 1:27:21 Wow. That's special. Those are good three truths. I love those. Well, I wanna acknowledge you, David, for a moment for, um, being obsessed about helping people. And I think your commitment and dedication to doing s- I mean, I don't know what I've done for 10 years consistently, but doing research for 10 years on one thing and trying to get the most out of it, and writing these books, and taking the time to come on my show, and just being obsessed about helping people to leave a better, leave this world a better place, I think it's really admirable and I appreciate you. I acknowledge you for just showing up every single day and doing the work, even when your peers criticize you, and even when the media does this. Like, I know how not easy that is when you're sh- shamed publicly. It's not easy to keep going. But I acknowledge you for pushing through any insecurities or emotional traumas that you faced to try to help people like me and everyone watching to live better. So thank you for, for all that you do. And I wanna make sure people get the book. Um, Lifespan, where can we connect with you online?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:23 Uh, well, I have a website called lifespanbook.com.

Lewis Howes 1:28:26 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:27 Um, I have a newsletter, so that's keeping things up to date.

Lewis Howes 1:28:30 Great.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:30 New stuff I write about every few weeks. Uh, and I'm on social media.

Lewis Howes 1:28:34 Okay.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:34 Uh, Instagram and, uh, Twitter, Facebook.

Lewis Howes 1:28:36 Where do you hang out the most personally-

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:38 Uh-

Lewis Howes 1:28:38 ... on social media?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:40 Uh, Instagram and Twitter.

Lewis Howes 1:28:42 Okay, cool. What's your Instagram?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:44 Uh, it's davidsinclairphd.

Lewis Howes 1:28:47 Okay, cool. So we'll connect with you there. Make sure you guys send him some messages over on Instagram. Uh, this is my final question. It's what's your definition of greatness?

Dr. David Sinclair 1:28:56 Uh, again, off the cuff. So I, I would say, um, I would've ... If you'd asked me a few years ago, I probably would've said something a little bit, uh, self-centered-

Lewis Howes 1:29:10 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:10 ... which is, uh, greatness is somebody who is recognized internationally for, for something important. But I don't think that anymore.

Lewis Howes 1:29:20 Mm.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:21 Uh, I'm married to a woman who has a PhD from MIT in genetics who could have been a superstar scientist but instead chose to do nonprofit work-

Lewis Howes 1:29:32 Wow

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:33 ... and raise a family-

Lewis Howes 1:29:34 Mm

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:35 ... and put up with me.

Lewis Howes 1:29:35 [laughs] Right.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:37 That's greatness.

Lewis Howes 1:29:38 Yeah.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:38 So it doesn't ... You don't have to be internationally recognized. You just need to make a difference in people's lives.

Lewis Howes 1:29:43 Wow. Love it. David, thanks, man. Appreciate this.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:46 Thanks, Lewis.

Lewis Howes 1:29:46 Powerful.

Dr. David Sinclair 1:29:46 Thanks for what you do, too. [outro music]