Longevity, Muscle, Fat Loss & Staying Sharp for Life - Dr Mike Israetel

1. 0:00 – 5:23

   What is Longevity?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Mike Israetel, welcome to the show.

   2. MIDr Mike Israetel0:01

      Chris, thanks for having me again.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:04

      In a barn this time.

   4. MIDr Mike Israetel0:06

      Yes. Uh, I- the person who picked me up blindfolded me, put a shot in my arm. I woke up in a helicopter being rappelled down to a barn. I have no idea where we are, but interestingly, I do have some ideas about longevity on the brain.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:19

      And an erection?

   6. MIDr Mike Israetel0:20

      Always.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:21

      Ah.

   8. MIDr Mike Israetel0:22

      No, I'm just kidding. Never.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:23

      Talking about longevity, a bit of a buzzword, especially the last sort of five to 10 years on YouTube.

   10. MIDr Mike Israetel0:29

       Sure.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:29

       How'd you come to think about longevity, constituent parts? What is it?

   12. MIDr Mike Israetel0:35

       Um, longevity is kind of a big concept, and there are two underlying concepts at least that are important to chat about. One is the duration of your life, how long you're alive, and the end run of that is mortality. Like, if you die at 97 versus you die at 57, then you lived 40 years longer, whatever, you had more longevity in that sense. And that used to be kind of sort of the only way longevity was discussed, uh, a generation ago or so and times before that. But there's an important sub-component, sort of part two of longevity, that has to be in the discussion for it to be the most meaningful discussion possible, and that is a variable, the end run of which isn't mortality but it's morbidity, and that is quality of life. So the two parts of longevity are, how long do you live for, and what is the quality of life that you're experiencing during that time? So mortality is how soon you die. Morbidity is like, what are the last 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years of your life like? Because it is a very, very different situation to have two people live to 90 and croak summarily at 90 and one day at the same time holding hands, very romantic, but one of them up until two years ago was living life to the fullest, active, independent, uh, healthy generally speaking, could travel, maybe could drive all the way up to-

   13. CWChris Williamson2:15

       Few restrictions on what they can do.

   14. MIDr Mike Israetel2:17

       Very few restrictions.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:17

       Yep.

   16. MIDr Mike Israetel2:19

       The alternative is there are people currently in their late 40s that suffer from morbid obesity, that if you somehow just kept them alive, and w- with technological innovation that is increasingly more possible, that they kick around for a while, let's say magically you got someone like that to their 90s... Let's not- let's use a more realistic example. After age 70, a person is mostly bedridden, requires the care and attention of many people, is bereft of family and friends, and lives in a nursing home, uh, tended to hand and foot. Very identical mortality, same day of death, very different degree of morbidity. One person experienced almost none. One experienced a significant amount. So for the rest of the discussion we're gonna have here today, we're attending to variables that don't just enhance the probability that you live longer, though they will, but they're also going to enhance the quality of life you experience as you age, which is really, really important, because if someone's like, "Do you want to live longer?" And you're like, "Yeah." They're like, "In a nursing home with tubes everywhere." You're like, "Ooh."

   17. CWChris Williamson3:27

       Ah.

   18. MIDr Mike Israetel3:27

       "How much longer?" Like, "Years, decades." You're like, "Cash me out. I'm good."

   19. CWChris Williamson3:31

       Ah.

   20. MIDr Mike Israetel3:31

       Some people want that sort of thing, some people don't, so very important distinction.

   21. CWChris Williamson3:34

       Is it a trade-off between the two?

   22. MIDr Mike Israetel3:37

       Almost never, but almost. Sometimes there is a trade-off between the two. For example, in very difficult athletic pursuits, there is some data indicate that if you really grind it as an athlete, especially into your later years, you could technically be throughputting so much through your metabolism, uh, the total human metabolism, and the amount of sort of damage and chemical alteration your body takes is kind of like a, like a candle. If you burn it really fast, it burns out a little quicker. And just, just low-key, there, there is a, a situation like that.

   23. CWChris Williamson4:17

       This is at the extreme end, though.

   24. MIDr Mike Israetel4:18

       Very extreme. Very extreme.

   25. CWChris Williamson4:19

       'Cause I think Donald-

   26. MIDr Mike Israetel4:20

       We'll talk about that later as well.

   27. CWChris Williamson4:21

       Donald Trump made a comment about, uh, you have a limited number of heartbeats in your life, and life, uh, exercising speeds them up.

   28. MIDr Mike Israetel4:29

       Yes.

   29. CWChris Williamson4:29

       Not quite right, Donald.

   30. MIDr Mike Israetel4:30

       One of the many ways in which Donald Trump is more wise than us all. Uh, though he does have a little bit of a point there. Um, so if you are hardcore athlete, you may not live quite as long as if you cooled off on the training a little bit. However, if you're a hardcore athlete, you'll probably just not suffer nearly as much from mobility restrictions, morbidity things, various health maladies. You're just gonna croak a little sooner, and by a little, I mean maybe on the order of months to a few years sooner, but your quality of life is gonna just be completely different, especially in your later years. Those distinctions are very rare, and there are almost no cases in which mortality and morbidity contradict each other. Usually it's roughly the same stuff. Like most of the recommendations we'll have talked about today are gonna be like a lot of column A, column B both checked off.

2. 5:23 – 7:30

   The Biggest Factor of Longevity

   1. MIDr Mike Israetel5:23

   2. CWChris Williamson5:23

      When it comes to longevity, quality of life, what's the biggest movers? Or the, the number one, what's the biggest determining factor? Do you know? Is that a question that can be answered?

   3. MIDr Mike Israetel5:36

      Uh, technically in the literature, so it, it, it's difficult to say what the biggest factor is by far, because the way you ask that question has to include what is the degree of variation you account for? So if you say that, uh, nutrition is the biggest variable, but you're dealing with, uh, 100 people being examined for their nutrition or trying to correlate lifespan but most of 'em are eating decently well, it probably won't be the biggest variable. Um, but, uh...Bak- uh, uh, the kind of raw take, to be completely honest, in our current environment, is probably the degree of adiposity that you carry. How much body fat you have and how heavy you are, beyond what you were genetically designed to hold. So, like the Great Dane effect or the, uh, you know, like...

   4. CWChris Williamson6:29

      Big things don't live as long.

   5. MIDr Mike Israetel6:30

      Large dogs are designed with similar systems as small dogs, and they almost always die, like, half sooner. Um, humans are all designed on very similar systems and subsystems, and when you get a human to weigh 400 or 500 pounds, it strains everything like crazy. And so-

   6. CWChris Williamson6:47

      So it's like a, a reliable way to shorten your life. Or one of the most reliable ways to shorten your life would be...

   7. MIDr Mike Israetel6:53

      Probably one of the most, short of extreme drug abuse, like just doing crack or coke every day, uh, stuff like that. Um, extreme, uh, prolonged stress and sleep deprivation.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:05

      Absolute Hunter Biden stuff.

   9. MIDr Mike Israetel7:06

      (laughs) Total laptop type of shit, right?

   10. CWChris Williamson7:09

       (laughs)

   11. MIDr Mike Israetel7:09

       Uh, but, um, yeah, as far as things that we see humans alter in the real modern world today, it's difficult to reduce both your, uh, longevity, how long you live, your lifespan, and wildly increase your morbidity in a more dependable way than being severely

3. 7:30 – 12:22

   The Role of Genetics in Longevity

   1. MIDr Mike Israetel7:30

      overweight.

   2. CWChris Williamson7:31

      Okay. You mentioned a word there that I thought would maybe be the biggest one. Genetics. What's the role-

   3. MIDr Mike Israetel7:35

      Yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson7:36

      ... of genetics when it comes to-

   5. MIDr Mike Israetel7:37

      Yes.

   6. CWChris Williamson7:37

      ... lifespan, longevity-

   7. MIDr Mike Israetel7:38

      Yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:38

      ... quality of life?

   9. MIDr Mike Israetel7:39

      Central. And, uh, I, uh, uh... It's interesting, the, the way you asked. Genetics is insanely, insanely pertinent to how long you live, and explains almost all of the variance for those wacky stories you hear, which are often false and sometimes true, of, "Well, my grandfather, he lived till 98. He smoked 10 packs a day and he... Mean son of a bitch, barely slept, drank all the time, and somehow he lived to 98." And usually people trot out these stories to try to reduce the, uh, apparent benefits of improving your lifestyle, because it, uh, there's kind of a fatalism associated with, like, "Dude, if, if, if my grandpa lived till 98 just eating raw meat, you know what I'm saying, and smoking eight cigs an an hour, who gi- why am I gonna go eat kale? That's stupid. I'm not gonna waste my time." Yet the thing is, Grandpa probably had just the right stuff genetically, and if you tried at any given age, and you tried at any given level of genetics that you may have, maybe you're closely related to Grandpa in that regard. Maybe not so much, 'cause you might only be a quarter related to Grandpa. And if the genes shuffle pretty decently, maybe only an eighth. You might have other people in the family that, like, croak at 55. All of a sudden you're like, "Eh, whatever." So genetics matter a ton, but they are still altered. So genetics gives you an average. If everything's average in your life, average in nutrition, average sleep, average everything, genetics will say you're gonna die probably about 72. But if you do everything right, you might die at 82. If you do everything wrong, you might die at, uh, 52, 62, something like that. Very big differences abound. However, that settling point of longevity, very genetically informed. However, the reason I said that adiposity is probably the most, um, pertinent variable, the biggest one explanatory-wise, is because it's a variable that you can push all the variables to extremity. You can push your sleep down, you can push your stress sky-high, but it's unlikely you're gonna do that to yourself for very long in the free modern world. Like, if you work any decent job in the US or any of the anglophone countries, modern Asia, et cetera, Europe, like, you're probably not gonna, like, die 'cause you overworked voluntarily in a coal mine. Unlikely. But boy, are a lot of people voluntarily overeating like crazy. And being that we're... Are we allowed to disclose the filming location? Being that we're in the Austin, Texas metropolitan area, lots of people are eating to such high extents that... I'll tell you this. If you weigh 400 pounds and you trot out the genetics bullshit to me of, like, why you haven't lost weight, I'm draking you. Like, I don't even wanna hear your shit.

   10. CWChris Williamson10:17

       (laughs)

   11. MIDr Mike Israetel10:18

       Because, you know? Like, it... You can really do unbelievable damage and shorten your life substantially. It kinda doesn't matter where your genetics are at that point.

   12. CWChris Williamson10:28

       If you're talking genetics, does that mean all grandparents and both parents seem to have lived for quite a while? Most people haven't done a full genome assessment or whatever.

   13. MIDr Mike Israetel10:39

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson10:39

       I don't even know if we've done a polymorphic trait, like, here's the long living gene, or here's some of the long giving, long living groups.

   15. MIDr Mike Israetel10:47

       I, I could spare the expense. It's going to be polygenic. But there are-

   16. CWChris Williamson10:50

       You mean there's not one gene that I can just-

   17. MIDr Mike Israetel10:52

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson10:52

       ... take or turn on?

   19. MIDr Mike Israetel10:52

       The age gene. Oh, shit. Yeah, people only live to 55 or 95, no in a between, it's very bimodal, right?

   20. CWChris Williamson10:58

       (laughs)

   21. MIDr Mike Israetel10:58

       Um, if you look at it, you can look at genetics from two different perspectives in this regard, at least. One perspective is there are no doubt genetic variables about a person that under the hood cause them to live a long time or live a short time. You might be able to clear mitochondrial damage faster or something like that. Your genome, the actual, like, strands of DNA are kept, like, less methylated than otherwise. There are a variety of molecular machines that do that. Some people have more effective variants or more of them, so on and so forth. You would never be able to look at a person and tell if that's what they have. They just have that shape. That's what grandpa had when, the coal mining days when he smoked a coal chimney every hour or whatever the fuck he did. He was, he was literally a cigarette, Chris, a giant walking cigarette, and he wouldn't die.

   22. CWChris Williamson11:39

       (laughs)

   23. MIDr Mike Israetel11:39

       So, that is factor number one. There's a bunch of those kinds of things. But the other kind of genetics, and this is straight up still genetics that affect your lifespan, is the genetic propensity for the secondary effects that affect it. For example, if you have a fucking appetite for very tasty, very not good for you foods, and you have, uh, genetically hunger signaling that's just like kind of you're always hungry or whatever.

   24. CWChris Williamson12:05

       No pleasure from exercise.

   25. MIDr Mike Israetel12:07

       100%. Um, propensity to do, uh, addictive drugs, a propensity to take preposterous risks, a propensity for poor sleep. Um, that's not under the hood stuff-... it's gonna affect what's under the hood, but it's expressed in other measured variables.

   26. CWChris Williamson12:21

       Yep, yep.

   27. MIDr Mike Israetel12:21

       So there's two ways to

4. 12:22 – 15:15

   Is Environment a Significant Factor?

   1. MIDr Mike Israetel12:22

      look at that.

   2. CWChris Williamson12:22

      Yep. Okay. Environment. How does that impact longevity?

   3. MIDr Mike Israetel12:26

      Yeah. Yeah. B- basically, um, in the current modern world, environment impacts longevity a very small amount, because all of our environments are generally kind of really good. Good enough that the variance produced by environment is very small. However, in the developing world, environment has really big effects on longevity. Still one of the top killers, straight up, all around the world, is, um, indoor air quality. Uh, if, there are still countries and cultures in which you burn for food and fuel, like sod or some shit like that-

   4. CWChris Williamson13:04

      Dung or wood.

   5. MIDr Mike Israetel13:05

      ... uh-huh, inside. And yeah, sure, it goes out the chimney, but believe it or not, some of the molecules stray to the sides and you inhale that shit. You do that for 30, 40 years, it's gonna impact your longevity like crazy. If you've ever been to developing nations like India, for example, you land, the, uh, internal circulation of the air stops, external air comes in and you're like (sniffs) "The fuck happened here?" And that does not stop until you leave India or go way into the jungle, because, like, Mumbai has an air quality that, like, if we had that in Austin, there would be like a m- like, "Do not travel to Austin, Texas for the next two months," kind of shit. Like, I remember the California wildfires were a really big deal, and the air, air quality was like, "Oh, it's really bad." And I remember being there and I was like, "Fu- the fuck?" 'Cause I had been to Mumbai a few times. I'm like, "Man, I could live the l- rest of my life in this and it wouldn't affect me at all. I've been to Mumbai." So outdoor, indoor air quality, uh, polluted water, contaminated food, things that we just really just don't deal with in the modern world. You go to Japan, Taiwan, the UK, Germany, the US, it's all free and clear, pretty much. And so then the environment doesn't have huge effects in that sense. Um, there are other things about the environment that can produce or, uh, um, increase longevity, stress and things like that. I don't like to call it an environment. You can be more specific with those, uh, things. But generally speaking, environmental factors just aren't a big deal for us, living in the modern world. The modern world, how rude. Everyone's modern. In the developed world, it's not a big deal. In the developing world, yeah, it's a huge deal. And one of the ways to increase human wellbeing and human lifespan is to help the developing world clean up, like in the literal sense of the word.

   6. CWChris Williamson14:37

      Just have cheaper, cleaner energy.

   7. MIDr Mike Israetel14:40

      Cheaper, cleaner energy. Cheaper, uh, cleaner abilities to clean up. Look, 'cause like if you get a lot of energy, you d- don't exactly clean up your air doing that. If you have, uh, five nuclear power plants, you still have to make sure that your production facilities of all these goods are not spewing toxic shit. You have to have regulatory framework to make sure cars are increasingly, uh, expected to have different standards. 'Cause like in India, there's like diesel regular small cars on the road, and they put out some smoke that I'm like, "That... Our cars at home do not fucking (laughs) smell like that." They do not pass our regulatory burden. And obviously, of course, like good governance, uh, largely free markets, enough ability to generate wealth, all that stuff, so...

5. 15:15 – 23:40

   Dieting Principles for Longevity

   1. MIDr Mike Israetel15:15

   2. CWChris Williamson15:15

      Okay. Diet. Touched on body fat, um, body weight earlier on.

   3. MIDr Mike Israetel15:20

      Yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson15:22

      Does it matter what you're eating? Does it matter how it impacts you? How should we come to think about diet from a longevity standpoint?

   5. MIDr Mike Israetel15:30

      Great. A diet that can keep your muscle mass at decent levels and does not make you excessively overfat or overweight probably is something like 80% of what we mean by diet's effect on longevity. So if you take two people and they eat two very different diets, but one, uh, th- they're roughly the same body f- composition and size, et cetera, they're gonna get longevity differences from diet alone, but they're not gonna be enormous. On the order of probably five years or, or less, just on a heuristic basis. We're not talking about 20 or 30. If someone weighs 600 pounds, yeah, it's 20 or 30 years, if not more. You know, once-

   6. CWChris Williamson16:12

      So stop arguing over vegan versus carnivore and instead look at how much they weigh?

   7. MIDr Mike Israetel16:15

      Oh my God, by a long shot. Let's put this in perspective with some characters that we make up in our heads. If a vegan or carnivore, doesn't matter, uh, say, you know, they're 350 pounds and 5'7", and they're like, "Well, I'm vegan, so it's not a big deal," you're gonna be like, "Bro, that ain't it." Now, if you eat mostly healthy foods, lean proteins, veggies, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, and mostly unprocessed foods. If you do that, whatever body weight you're at, it absolutely matters for longevity, but it matters a little bit. And that means you should do it, but the biggest thing that you get out of those foods is the ability to do weight control. Because if you are grotesquely overweight, you could be eating fuck all. It matters, but not by a ton.

   8. CWChris Williamson17:06

      How much mitochondrial damage and stuff like that is coming from junk processed foods? Or is your concern with avoiding ultra-processed foods, that they're just more palatable than eating the whole, a food version?

   9. MIDr Mike Israetel17:17

      It's probably another 80/20 or 90/10 situation, where mostly they're just a portal to being really fat.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:23

       (laughs)

   11. MIDr Mike Israetel17:23

       But, um, yeah, there is some decent research that says very processed meats, very processed various other foods do have chemical effects, cellular levels that are absolutely not ideal, especially if the preponderance of your diet is composed of those foods. But if you eat, uh, not so healthy foods a few times a week and the rest is healthy, they cannot statistically differentiate you from someone who eats healthy 100% of the time in the mortality or morbidity division.

   12. CWChris Williamson17:49

       Assuming that you maintain a similar sort of weight.

   13. MIDr Mike Israetel17:51

       Correct.

   14. CWChris Williamson17:52

       Yeah.

   15. MIDr Mike Israetel17:52

       So yes, exactly.

   16. CWChris Williamson17:53

       But again, we're fighting with ultra-processed foods are more palatable, often more calorie-dense. Go back and watch the fat loss episode that we did before if you wanna learn more about that.

   17. MIDr Mike Israetel18:02

       That's it. So that's really important stuff, but I think the big takeaway for me is this, if you... Kind of two extremes. One we already mentioned. If you are following some ultra-healthy diet, either ostensibly healthy or actually healthy-... and you have gotten up to 400 pounds, and you're not losing weight currently, but you're like, "I'm good, I'm eating the new way. It's great," you got a bad thing coming your way. On the other hand, if you happen to be in a position where you are of a healthy weight, you're physically active, et cetera, all the other variables we'll talk about are pretty well in line, and you are looking at a plate of nachos at a Mexican place with your friends and they're like, "Eat some," and you're like, "Ooh, but they're kinda gonna kill me 'cause they're made of chips and those are bad..." Sorry, crisps. Does that make your English speak feel better?

   18. CWChris Williamson18:58

       (laughs) Anglicizing everything.

   19. MIDr Mike Israetel18:59

       Yes, yes. Um, that's also probably the wrong move. And it's a- it's a wrong move for at least two reasons. One, if in moderation and with all the other factors aligned, you eat, uh, some junk every now and again, it's a very difficult story to tell yourself that anything very much matters about if you eat a few chips or zero chips or even a wh- two bags of chips every now and again. The other way in which it matters is the... and this is a little bit more about how you approach food, if you approach food in a neurotic fashion-

   20. CWChris Williamson19:32

       Mm.

   21. MIDr Mike Israetel19:32

       ... um, anticipating dangers everywhere, trying to curate your lifestyle to only get the organic vegan superfood shit, and really worrying a lot about what goes into your body, you almost certainly will live less time than if you just didn't give a shit and ate mostly good shit, but every now and again just had 10 burritos, no, no problem.

   22. CWChris Williamson19:51

       I love the idea of the stress of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections.

   23. MIDr Mike Israetel19:56

       Depending on the degree of imperfection, but if you're doing a decent job and you're worrying more than that, you're just going insane.

   24. CWChris Williamson20:04

       I did a, uh, Jeffersonian breakfast with Bryan Johnson a couple of months ago.

   25. MIDr Mike Israetel20:08

       Okay. What does-

   26. CWChris Williamson20:09

       Uh-

   27. MIDr Mike Israetel20:09

       I don't know what that means.

   28. CWChris Williamson20:10

       So you... Everybody gets, I think, a minute to speak, and you kind of go around and s- and you've got a topic that you're talking on. And, um, it's a way of, I guess, fostering, uh, discussion, some kind.

   29. MIDr Mike Israetel20:22

       Okay.

   30. CWChris Williamson20:23

       Uh, and he was, uh, talking about some of the research that him or his team had done, I don't know where it had come from, uh, and he said that eating at McDonald's, uh, kills you 12 minutes earlier. Uh, that was, uh, some of the... And I do wonder, you know, I l- I like what Bryan's doing in the same way as I like having a scout in a army that goes and sort of climbs a really dangerous-
6. 23:40 – 26:02

   Does Calorie Restriction Help or Hinder Longevity?

   1. CWChris Williamson23:40

      What happened to all of the research saying that if you cut a rat's calories by 50% or 30%, that it lives tons longer? Whatever happened to the intermittent fasting side of... You haven't mentioned once calorie restriction for longevity extension.

   2. MIDr Mike Israetel23:56

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:56

      Why?

   4. MIDr Mike Israetel23:58

      Um, because it's almost completely encompassed by the variable of body weight. Now, I'm gonna tell you something completely insane, Chris, you might not believe, but when you feed a rat a little less food or a lot less food, it gets a little or a lot lighter in body weight (laughs) . And if you factor that variable of body weight, it already accounts for that. So it's absolutely true that if you input fewer calories on average, in a certain margin, you're gonna starve... You can't starve yourself to death and you've, like, always been starving to death and you're a skeleton, but, like, at 110, you're like, "I'm still hanging in, fellas. Can I get a brownie?" They're like, "No, no, you would die." Like, "I kinda wanna die with a brownie in my mouth." So the body weight basically absorbs all of that variance for us. So let me put it another way.

   5. CWChris Williamson24:37

      Does that not mean that we should all be fighting to be as low body weight as possible if we want to live through-

   6. MIDr Mike Israetel24:41

      There's an optimal.... body weight, but it, it's not one number I can give you because it depends on a bunch of stuff. Internal genetic variables I can't possibly predict 'cause I don't have an AI scan of your whole genome. It's coming, I'm sure, but it's not here yet. Another one is frame size. Like, someone who's six foot two, you're like, yeah, yeah, like, and very broad-shouldered in the interacromial distance for the bones, you're like, yeah, you gotta weigh like 115 pounds, and then you're gonna be super, like, longevity. Like, yeah, until they die of starvation summarily one day later. So, a lot of variables play into that, but as far as body weight is concerned, you're generally gonna take the average recommendation of what most of the governing bodies in medicine agree is the statistically healthiest body weight, and you're gonna err either at that body weight or a little bit less. You start going much less than that, not so great. So for example, if the insurance tables say that you're probably in your best health at 150 pounds given your f... They don't usually do frame size, so already this is fucking shit. But 150 pounds, you're good to go. Anywhere between, like, 135 and 150, that's probably your super golden zone. You can weigh up to 165, 170, 180 if you're more muscular, and it'll be almost the same result. But if you get into, like, the 120s or the 110s just to live longer, it might not work out so well for you.

   7. CWChris Williamson26:01

      Is

7. 26:02 – 38:25

   Role of Muscle Mass in Longevity

   1. CWChris Williamson26:03

      holding muscle mass from a diet perspective... Well, actually, just what, what's the role of muscle mass? Talk to me about how muscle mass plays a role in, in longevity. Is it important?

   2. MIDr Mike Israetel26:13

      Muscle mass plays, makes sort of two appearances in longevity. One appearance that muscle makes in longevity is that having a decent amount of muscle has secondary health effects for your rest of your system. Muscle is a glucose consumer, and it keeps your blood glucose chronically lower than if you didn't have plenty of muscle. And excessive chronic high blood glucose is a surefire way to just croak fucking early. That's it. And so there are a few other ways in which muscle has these great systemic effects, and those are awesome, and that's actually the primary driver. The second thing about muscle is when you look at the statistical literature on people with a certain level of muscle mass and their mortality predictions, you see these massive correlations. Correlation is not causation. Most of the variance of muscle mass, or most of the relationship between muscle mass and mortality, has to do with, uh, muscle mass isn't what's keeping you alive. It's just a really good indicator of your overall health.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:11

      It's like healthy user bias signal.

   4. MIDr Mike Israetel27:12

      100%. So, like, if you give me an 88-year-old woman who is walking on a cane-

   5. CWChris Williamson27:18

      Oh. (laughs)

   6. MIDr Mike Israetel27:19

      ... but she's super jacked, she's grrr-

   7. CWChris Williamson27:21

      (laughs)

   8. MIDr Mike Israetel27:21

      ... destroying skyscrapers and shit. She's like, you ever seen someone who's not overweight but they, like, reach for their luggage, and it's, like, skin and bones, and, like, the muscles are, like, her biceps, like, the width of my finger, and you're like, "The fuck is that person moving?" And they're barely moving. She's going to croak probably in not so long a time. But it's because she's 88 and because all of the other health factors have precluded her from building muscle, not as much because if she built a ton of muscle, it would keep her life longer, right? It's true.

   9. CWChris Williamson27:51

      If she had a good bench press-

   10. MIDr Mike Israetel27:53

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson27:53

       ... she'd be sweet.

   12. MIDr Mike Israetel27:53

       It's true, if she had more muscle, probably be healthier for her. But a lot of times, people who are bedridden, people who are suffering from chronic illness, people who are suffering from chronic in- physical inactivity, like your hips are totally fucked so you lose a ton of muscle in your legs, and then, like, people are like w- when you die they measure your muscle mass in a study and they say, "Oh, it's low muscle mass." It's not the low muscle mass specifically that killed you, although it did have a small effect. It's the fact that, like, oh shit, you were in really poor health in order to get to this low muscle mass.

   13. CWChris Williamson28:19

       The muscle mass is downstream from what you've done.

   14. MIDr Mike Israetel28:21

       100%. And there's a couple things going around the internet. People are talking about jump height, uh, your ability to jump high related to your mortality, and grip strength. And, like, if you try to train to jump higher or grip stronger thinking it's gonna keep you alive, uh, reverse causation. Not the best use of your time.

   15. CWChris Williamson28:37

       Yeah. Yeah. What about too much muscle? Lots of people listening who maybe were worried about that, they spend all their time in the gym, you as well-

   16. MIDr Mike Israetel28:45

       Somewhat.

   17. CWChris Williamson28:45

       ... large guy who's competitively body belt, body built for-

   18. MIDr Mike Israetel28:49

       Body built.

   19. CWChris Williamson28:49

       ... quite a while.

   20. MIDr Mike Israetel28:50

       Yes.

   21. CWChris Williamson28:50

       Body built.

   22. MIDr Mike Israetel28:51

       So, technically, as soon as you get to be considerably S- 10 or 15 pounds heavier than what the insurance tables predict will be the body weight that lets you live the longest, um, you're probably not doing yourself any favors with longevity. However, this is one of those instances where quality of life and longevity can be a little bit antagonistic to one another. So, that definitely has to be stated that, no, you can't be as jacked as you want and still live as long as you want. But if you're not using anabolic steroids and growth hormones to get that extra muscle, the amount of muscle a, a human can gain naturally, as long as they don't have a high degree of body fat, is just not gonna make a huge difference in longevity. And so if a quality of life trade-off is worth it to you, it's gonna be a very small effect, less than five years end of life, maybe even less than that.

   23. CWChris Williamson29:42

       Hm.

   24. MIDr Mike Israetel29:43

       If you use a ton of steroids to get this jacked, then you're gonna be doing some time at the end of your life.

   25. CWChris Williamson29:48

       What are you, what are you talking about with, uh, I don't know, take yourself, the sort of course you've done, which I would guess is in the upper range of what most people, even non-professional bodybuilders would take. W- what sort of, uh, life price do you think people are paying?

   26. MIDr Mike Israetel30:05

       As far as my b- back of the envelope calculation for myself personally, so there's a, a big caveat so that I don't embarrass myself posthumously when this is released, um-

   27. CWChris Williamson30:14

       When you die tomorrow-

   28. MIDr Mike Israetel30:15

       There's a huge-

   29. CWChris Williamson30:15

       ... or die in a hundred years' time.

   30. MIDr Mike Israetel30:16

       There's a huge-
8. 38:25 – 44:58

   Sleep for Longevity

   1. CWChris Williamson38:25

      What about sleep?

   2. MIDr Mike Israetel38:26

      Sleep's a big deal. Sleep is the ultimate stress reducer in e- everyone's life. Like, that's pre- pretty much the, one of the main purposes of sleep, is to kind of reset the whole system. And sleep is a thing where, again, that 90/10, 80/20 rule comes in handy. If you're mostly sleeping enough to feel well-rested, which means if you need like, "Fuck Nootonic, I need eight cans of Monster to keep me awake after 2:00 PM," you're not getting enough sleep. But if a can or two of Nootonic throughout the day is all you need to be your sharpest, then you're good to go, and you're probably getting enough sleep, seven to nine hours for most people, as good of quality of sleep as you can manage. Keep the room dark, keep the room cool, few distractions, no blue light a few hours before bed. All the general sleep recommendations that are really awesome, if you just checklist that and you usually get really good sleep, a night or two every few weeks you stay up all night or you get, you know, really busy with work, you only sleep a few hours, no big deal. Generally, that's the recommendation. Chronic low amounts of sleep in a way that has you feeling it is a big deal. Some people just don't need as much sleep as others.

   3. CWChris Williamson39:44

      Jocko.

   4. MIDr Mike Israetel39:44

      Uh, is that true?

   5. CWChris Williamson39:46

      Supposedly. So the 4:30 AM thing, which I'm reliably told by some of my friends that have fathers that they beat on an almost nightly basis.

   6. MIDr Mike Israetel39:54

      Yeah, easy. I'm never asleep. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson39:55

      They've got dad shit to do. Yeah, exactly.

   8. MIDr Mike Israetel39:57

      Right.

   9. CWChris Williamson39:57

      Um, but yet, I mean, there's that genetic mutation that I think the same likelihood of you having that, that requires you to only sleep maybe four hours a night and feel okay, is the same likelihood as you being hit by lightning twice.

   10. MIDr Mike Israetel40:11

       Holy shit.

   11. CWChris Williamson40:12

       It's like super, super unlikely.

   12. MIDr Mike Israetel40:13

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson40:13

       There's a few, but very, very rare. Anyway-

   14. MIDr Mike Israetel40:15

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson40:16

       ... um, Jocko is one of those people that I've heard... I think basically what most special forces select for are people that can deal with sleep dep very well.

   16. MIDr Mike Israetel40:25

       Very big deal, because if you, if you need lots of sleep consistently and you also degrade very heavily in your cognitive and physical function, you just won't make it through selection, even if you're a straight-up killer. Like, that's the kind of guy you want to be like an elite bodyguard for someone like the president who sleeps normal hours.

   17. CWChris Williamson40:47

       Yep.

   18. MIDr Mike Israetel40:47

       You have a decent rotation for your bodyguarding shifts. You can be like a Delta Force level shooter. You're just like, "Look, if I don't get my sleep, I'm, I'm good to no one after a few days."

   19. CWChris Williamson40:56

       Tim Kennedy told me this story, maybe you ask him about it tomorrow if you're chatting to him, ask him about the time he ran out of ammo and he'll know the story. And, uh, I think he said he was awake for... That the only time he slept was when he was concussed by an IED going off-

   20. MIDr Mike Israetel41:09

       Holy shit.

   21. CWChris Williamson41:09

       ... in like 48, maybe more hours. He's asleep for, awake for two full days, runs out of every different platform, every different magazine, every different piece of ammunition that he had. And, uh, you just realize that, okay, that's, that, that's what the job demands of you. Ross Edgley, who I think, uh, wanted an intro to you to have a chat at some point.

   22. MIDr Mike Israetel41:29

       Oh, dope.

   23. CWChris Williamson41:30

       Um, I asked him, you know, he's done all of these crazy... He swam or did a, a triathlon holding a tree, a treethalon. Uh, he's the first person in history to ever swim around Great Britain. He did six hours on, six hours off for basically seven months. Uh, he's just done the longest single distance river swim in history. Uh, it was 300 miles-

   24. MIDr Mike Israetel41:50

       Oh my God.

   25. CWChris Williamson41:51

       ... of 55 hours without touching land, without sleeping, without anything. 55 hours straight through. And, um, I asked him what his superpower is, and it completely makes sense. All of those things together are him allowing to deal with sleep deprivation and to digest food in very strange situations. So, he's-

   26. MIDr Mike Israetel42:09

       Yeah. Some people's digestion will shut down at ultras and stuff.

   27. CWChris Williamson42:12

       Yeah. So, he's able to have piping hot porridge to keep him warm when he was in the Yukon swimming in, in Canada. Piping hot porridge that, like a internal hot water bottle heating him from the stomach out. Um, but then get back to moving and being horizontal, if you feed me food, I need to be vertical for at least 45 minutes afterward, just the way my digestive tract is put together.

   28. MIDr Mike Israetel42:32

       Sure.

   29. CWChris Williamson42:33

       I don't like being horizontal.

   30. MIDr Mike Israetel42:34

       Sure.
9. 44:58 – 53:30

   How General Daily Activities Impact Health

   1. CWChris Williamson44:58

      Going back to the exercise portion, I realize we touched on muscle mass, like the bro side of exercising, but what about more general activity outside of that?

   2. MIDr Mike Israetel45:08

      Yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:09

      Walking and-

   4. MIDr Mike Israetel45:10

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson45:10

      ... stretching and cardio and all that stuff?

   6. MIDr Mike Israetel45:12

      Yes. So stretching, no reliable mechanism by which it'll (laughs) let you live longer, but generally, a moderate to high amount of physical activity has a good combination of promoting the longest lifespan and the longest health span. I think that's like a Peter Attia book title I just said by accident, um, that, you know, the keeping the morbidity low, having the higher quality of life, because... So something like, uh, just for people's reference frame, 6 to 12,000 steps per day for most people is totally cool. But a better way to put that is probably if you're doing a lot fewer than 5 or 6,000 steps per day all the time and you don't get a lot of physical activity otherwise, you could be living longer if you did more physical activity in most cases.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:58

      Just to touch on that, uh, I think I'm a good avatar for the gym bro who goes quite hard for an hour and then is sedentary for a lot of the day. I'm doing some exercise. I'm doing probably significant... 95th percentile intense exercise, but I'm also not moving quite so much.

   8. MIDr Mike Israetel46:21

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson46:21

      What would you say? I imagine a lot of the audience fits into this particular bracket.

   10. MIDr Mike Israetel46:25

       Sure. I think you're doing really well for yourself. If you wanted a small but meaningful enhancer to quality of life and longevity later down the road, you would break up your periods of physical inactivity at least another one time in the day for a serious bout of some kind of aerobic output, be it walking, uh, as easily as that, all the way up to pretty difficult aerobic activity. And so if you lift weights and you do all that, and if you get, you know, roughly 10,000-ish steps a day, very roughly, huge variation for individuals, you're pretty good to go, but there's probably almost certainly a morbidity reduction way of doing it, and probably increases your lifespan by a little bit if you have several sessions a week, two to four sessions of 30 to 60 minutes of intense cardiovascular activity. And for most people, a really easy way to measure that is can you have a conversation with someone while you exercise? I don't mean a few words here and there, like, " (panting) Oh, I'm doing good. S- See you tomorrow." Like, not that. I'm talking about, like, consistent conversation like you and I are having now. You and I can have this conversation on a walk, no problem. If we were in really good shape, we could have it on a jog. But we're not pushing the pace with aerobic exercise if we can talk. So if you can't talk and you're huffing and puffing, doing that at least twice a week for 30 minutes on end-

   11. CWChris Williamson47:50

       Mm-hmm.

   12. MIDr Mike Israetel47:50

       ... and all the way up to four times a week for 60 minutes on end, or any combination therein, is probably that extra cherry on top for longevity and quality of life enhancements. So, if you really want to live as long as possible, I would say some pretty intense regular aerobic activity is probably a good thing and unlikely to be a bad thing.

   13. CWChris Williamson48:10

       Is that something that you're thinking about now that you're out of "I just want to be as big and lean as possible" world? Are you... Or do you see your Brazilian jiu-jitsu as... Uh, i- is that contributing in that sort of manner?

   14. MIDr Mike Israetel48:23

       My Brazilian jiu-jitsu definitely counts as that. And I do BJJ now roughly five times a week, and at least a few of those sessions have me huffing and puffing. So I'm probably taking good care of that. Um, I am absolutely not the model for longevity and quality of life. I'm in a very perverse, very strange path, a very understood-

   15. CWChris Williamson48:44

       But I do think you-

   16. MIDr Mike Israetel48:44

       ... very chosen path.

   17. CWChris Williamson48:45

       ... I think you've, uh, at least partly ejected yourself out of that or sort of gen- gently come into land Yeah, I stopped- ... from some-

   18. MIDr Mike Israetel48:52

       ... uh, uh, abuse level steroid use.

   19. CWChris Williamson48:55

       (laughs) Uh, but yeah, it just makes me think, again, I have this idea called the manopause. Uh, guys at some point between 28 and 45 that have just wanted to get as jacked and lean as possible, maybe they have or haven't abused PEDs, maybe they have or haven't ever tried to do different training modalities, realize that they're-... they become chronically aware of their own mortality-

   20. MIDr Mike Israetel49:15

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson49:15

       ... and they think, "Hey, I shouldn't be out of breath going up those stairs," or whatever-

   22. MIDr Mike Israetel49:18

       Yes.

   23. CWChris Williamson49:18

       ... "I can't touch my toes-"

   24. MIDr Mike Israetel49:19

       Yes.

   25. CWChris Williamson49:19

       ... "or my shoulder hurts always."

   26. MIDr Mike Israetel49:22

       Yes.

   27. CWChris Williamson49:22

       Um, just again, thinking about people pivoting out of that, and it seems to me that, uh, if cardio, which for some people is fun apparently, but for other people you need to game it like you have, which is choke the guy, "Oh, my heart rate's high. I was trying to choke the guy. My heart rate got high." Um, for me, pickleball is a good example.

   28. MIDr Mike Israetel49:42

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson49:42

       I'm chasing a ball around a, a, a thing.

   30. MIDr Mike Israetel49:44

       Very British. Very British way of, of engaging.
10. 53:30 – 1:03:54

    The Two Sides to Stress in Longevity

    1. MIDr Mike Israetel53:30

    2. CWChris Williamson53:30

       Uh, what we spoke about last time on the last episode, which I really loved, was my favorite of the ones that we've done so far about stress management, uh, recovery. What is the role of stress in all its forms on longevity, lifespan, morbidity?

    3. MIDr Mike Israetel53:46

       Yeah. Stress has what has been described, I say pretty accurately, as a hermetic response, or a association. Too little is not great, too much definitely not great. So if you never have challenging times in your life, times where the best of you is required, times when you have to focus, times in which you struggle both mentally and physically, you're unlikely to have as high of a quality of life, and by a little bit as high of a duration of life, as if you have times of life that require you to get tired and beat up and stressed and overwhelmed. However, because there's a lot of really cool shit that happens when your body's overwhelmed and a lot of the crap it secretes when it's overwhelmed are actually like molecules they're studying now that have like longevity enhancing effects. However, if you're so stressed all the time or much of the time that you're like lips just above water kind of stressed, you know, like the gasping for air in a pool that's almost your height, then that is overwhelming your body's systems, and chronic high psychological stress will put you into the grave early almost every single time. There's another consideration here of how you perceive stress, because you can look at some successful business people, athletes, uh, whoever, whatever realm they're in, mothers, five children to raise, and-... if it looks like they're in high stress and to the outside observer, but they're engaged and loving every minute of it, they don't really pay the cost longevity wise and it's actually a bit of an enhancement. But if you, no matter your stress level, feel totally overwhelmed and like, "When will this end," type of situation and you hate it, just get me out. You know, like-

    4. CWChris Williamson55:39

       Mm.

    5. MIDr Mike Israetel55:40

       ... you see a celebrity getting asked for the 50th time, "Well, your new movie, are you excited about it?" And then you got these glossed over eyes.

    6. CWChris Williamson55:45

       Yeah.

    7. MIDr Mike Israetel55:45

       It's not just the heroine that time that's glossing them over. That kind of constant overwhelm, that's not really great for longevity or quality of life. So, what you wanna do is sufficiently challenge yourself in life and also get the recovery. That balance is tough. I myself have had a real hard time striking that balance in my life. I blame my wife for this entirely. Like-

    8. CWChris Williamson56:07

       'Cause she's Asian?

    9. MIDr Mike Israetel56:08

       Oh, yeah. Well, I'll get to that in a second. I'll get ... So, I blame her just for many things in my life, most really, even stuff that, like, happened to me when I was a child, she wasn't even around, 'cause why not at this point? But she is a person who is ... Her industriousness is, like, off the charts. And she needs to, in many cases, be doing something or else she goes insane. The problem is I am also like that. So when we're together, we just work a lot and we get guilt trips in our own heads about not working enough and so we're really, really bad about taking time off and time to rest. Nowadays, we're a little better at it because, per the recovery podcast we did, it's a priority for us as professional work athletes. Like, athletes rest. The funny, uh ... And I can say this in a space where millions of people will see it. My wife sent me ... So, uh, sorry. Our, uh, uh, the joke is super old. Our adopted son, Jared Feather, IFBB Pro, um, he is, like, on exactly that level of Crystal and I's psychosis about work, but probably worse, which he considers a great honor, uh, and it is. But also it comes with a trade-off. He's a very amazing pro classic physique competitor. And you've seen Jared in real life. Like, you get to see Jared and you're like, "Why do we even train?" Like, there's people that, this, exist? I don't even belong in a gym. But CBum, who's in the same division but has won six Olympias, and Jared's placed, like, top five, top six in some shows, but has never cracked that. I think he will in the future, but ... Um, it was your podcast, you had CBum on that my wife sent me that clip just, like, yesterday. And she was like, "This is funny." And the clip was, "What does CBum do in the average day?" And he was like, "I wake up, I, I do some cardio, I go back to sleep after breakfast, I wake up, I chill, I eat again, I take some pre-workout, I train, I come back, I eat, I might take another nap, I chill, do family stuff, eat, chill, do family stuff, eat, go to sleep." And it was like, if ... Crystal was like, "LOL," and I was like, "LOL," and I sent it to Jerry because ... And he responded with, "LOL." Like, 'cause we guilt trip Jared for wanting to be as good of a bodybuilder as he can be, but Jared does all our RP social media bullshit, all the help with, like, app stuff and software. In addition to that, has a full roster of coaching clients for whom he travels all the time across America and the world to help compete. And so, like, I, recently he had to take a little time away from training to recover and he was like, "I don't know what to do with myself." And I was like, "What do you do for fun?" He's like, "Uh, uh, work, typically? Or plan to work?" I'm like, "Anything else?" He's like, "I- I- I've got nothing." And so it's like, Jared, if you don't pull back on all the work, how are you gonna be stepping onto the Olympia stage?

    10. CWChris Williamson58:59

        Yeah.

    11. MIDr Mike Israetel58:59

        You don't have the recovery timeline in your plan to do so. And so for all of us folks that are super grind kind of thing, and none of us are like, "Man, grind set mentality." We never say that 'cause we're just like, "Isn't that just what everyone does? Isn't that normal?" For those of us in that position, pulling back is a good idea. But if you're sitting on the couch, if you're bored, if you're on your fifth Doobie and it's kind of life for you all the time, you're never challenged, never stressed, you will live longer if you stress yourself, especially with things that you're passionate about, involved in, and can progress at. That kind of stress, in combination with an equal amount of rest and recovery, is the joie de vivre, as the French are inclined to say. I don't even know if that's a term.

    12. CWChris Williamson59:40

        Middle of the bell curve stuff.

    13. MIDr Mike Israetel59:42

        Yes. Which is tough because so many of us that are, that are prominent for whatever the fuck, in your case, massive success and intellect, in my case, my curious head shape, um, you know, we just kinda work a lot. And we're like, "This is great." And here's the thing. If you love it and you're not overwhelmed all the time, pretty good.

    14. CWChris Williamson59:58

        If you're compulsed to do it.

    15. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:00

        If you're compulsed to do it and you feel both overwhelm and the sneaking suspicion that you're a little bitch and you just need to go harder-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:00:07

        Yeah.

    17. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:07

        ... you're not gonna live as long as other people.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:00:09

        Dude, so funny. So I had a call this morning. I had my first full genomic test done.

    19. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:14

        Whoa.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:00:15

        Everything. Uh, I can sh- I can show you it at some point unless you clone me. Don't clone me.

    21. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:19

        So you're out of the closet now?

    22. CWChris Williamson1:00:20

        Uh, yeah, exact-

    23. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:21

        Excellent.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:00:21

        It, uh, turns out it is genetic. Who knew? Um, that, uh, we went through and you talk about SNPs, different SNPs. We've got this SNP, we've got this SNP, et cetera, and this is correlated with dot, dot, dot. This allows you to methylate better, this allows you to do-

    25. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:35

        Sections of DNA.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:00:36

        Yep.

    27. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:36

        Right? Yeah.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:00:36

        Yep. The C677T and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

    29. MIDr Mike Israetel1:00:39

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:00:39

        And then next to it, there's a percentage number, how rare it is.
11. 1:03:54 – 1:08:15

    Why You Need to Relax More as You Age

    1. CWChris Williamson1:03:54

       about engagement-

    2. MIDr Mike Israetel1:03:56

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:03:56

       ... some sort of passionate engagement thing.

    4. MIDr Mike Israetel1:03:57

       Yes.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:58

       A- a thing you like to do.

    6. MIDr Mike Israetel1:03:58

       Yes.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:59

       What's that?

    8. MIDr Mike Israetel1:03:59

       Let me say something super, super quick about the stress thing. You can have days and even weeks of extreme stress, and it probably won't reduce your lifespan as long as you concomitantly afterwards take days or even weeks of much lower stress until you feel like, yeah, I could deal with this fucking stress.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:17

       I'm ready to get back at it.

    10. MIDr Mike Israetel1:04:18

        Whereas like, you know, day three of a vacation after a really crazy period of work, you're not even relaxed yet. Something that, uh, folks might wanna know is that seemingly, and this is just based on my inference, as you get older, the amount of time it takes you to unplug during a vacation, or as you say in the, the kingdom, holiday.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:04:42

        Holiday.

    12. MIDr Mike Israetel1:04:42

        To us holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, et cetera, um, it, it goes up. That amount tends to go up, and-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:04:49

        Takes longer time to slow down.

    14. MIDr Mike Israetel1:04:51

        ... longer to unplug.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:51

        Right. Yep.

    16. MIDr Mike Israetel1:04:52

        And so I remember I had met a gentleman, he was a very nice man who was a, uh, a doorman in New York. When I was on, uh, vacation with my parents, I was like in my early 20s, went to Dominican Republic, and we were there for like, uh, 10 days, which we thought was a really long time. He was on vacation for three weeks at an all-inclusive in the DR. And I was like, "Dude, are you serious?" He's like, "When you get older, as you get older, it takes you longer to unplug." He's like, "So the first week I'm unplugging. The second and third week I'm relaxing." And I was like, that's weird.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:23

        I need a one-week warmup to my holiday.

    18. MIDr Mike Israetel1:05:25

        Dude, seriously. 'Cause like it's just not true to say that you're relaxed immediately after any stressful activity. Like, it takes some time. Like, imagine someone finishing a 15 RM on the squat, and as soon as they rack it, you're like, "All right, uh, good to go. Let's get in the car and drive off." You're like, (gasps) like, hold on a second, man. My sweat hasn't even started coming out of me yet. Like, there's a process. And so if you're, as you're getting older, it's important to note that what used to be enough duration at a time of relaxation for you may not be, and that it's good to take a little bit more time to be a little bit extra recovered.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:00

        Mm.

    20. MIDr Mike Israetel1:06:00

        The best way to know if it's time to start grinding again, you start getting itchy for this shit again. Not compulsively, like you want it again. You want some stress, you feel like a lazy asshole, and you're way beyond relaxed. If you haven't even gotten relaxed yet, you need more vacation.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:14

        Well, this is why it's so important to work out whether you are a, like a type A person with a type B problem, or a type B person with a type A problem.

    22. MIDr Mike Israetel1:06:21

        Sure.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:06:21

        Right? The, again, the patience determines the dose of what is required. It's like, yeah, I've been thinking about this all the time, the just work harder, bro advice thing. It's been in my head pretty much since our last podcast, uh, white-knuckling creativity and how you can't do that. Uh, the fact that you don't just get to switch on or switch off the industriousness f- like-

    24. MIDr Mike Israetel1:06:45

        Drive.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:06:45

        Yeah, yeah.

    26. MIDr Mike Israetel1:06:46

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:06:46

        Motivation.

    28. MIDr Mike Israetel1:06:46

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:06:47

        It's, uh, super interesting. I think it's a, a really important thing. Also, do you really want to look back and just see that all you did was work like an absolute motherfucker the whole time?

    30. MIDr Mike Israetel1:06:57

        It would be the honor of my life to die at my job-
12. 1:08:15 – 1:13:51

    The Benefit of Passionate Engagement

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:15

       Passionate engagement.

    2. MIDr Mike Israetel1:08:16

       Passionate engagement. I'm not an expert in this subfield of longevity by a long shot, so you can probably have someone on the podcast at some point, which I would consider fascinating, I would at least watch the episode. You get one view from me.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:28

       Hey, hey.

    4. MIDr Mike Israetel1:08:29

       I do run a robot farm in China that will give you 100 million more views.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:08:32

       That's-

    6. MIDr Mike Israetel1:08:32

       You have to pay for that sort of thing.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:08:33

       Yes.

    8. MIDr Mike Israetel1:08:34

       So, at least we have this, robust correlational data that shows that people who are passionately engaged in one or multiple sequential or overlapping lifetime pursuits seem to outlive most other people. We know it's correlated. I'm aware of no causative mechanism through which this occurs. It strains my brain to imagine one, and maybe the causation data is already around, I'm just not up to date on the stuff. So, please ask ChatGBT about this, ask ChatGBT or, uh, Claude or whoever about, is there mechanistic presupposition or good evidence of how passionately engaging with anything in your life can increase your longevity and quality of life? There, that data may exist, but at the very least, we know the correlations are pretty fucking airtight, and there's just so many people that have lived much longer than you would expect because they were passionately engaged, and so many examples of people that were like, eh, and they don't live a long time. So, at least as a check the box just in case sort of thing-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:52

       Yep.

    10. MIDr Mike Israetel1:09:53

        ... it's probably worthwhile to have in your mind if you wanna live the longest, not to have this perspective, and this goes back a little bit to the stress discussion of like, if I'm gonna make it really far, I gotta chill all the time and never involve myself too passionately in anything 'cause passion gets the heart rate going and that's bad. On the other hand, you wanna consider this as a balance, but also, it, it's at least worth a shot to get into that passionately engaging with something. Wh- what do I mean by that? Let's say you are just huge on World of Warcraft, think about it day and night, you play it all the time, you have friends that play it, the game evolves all the time, even something like that is statistically, as a correlation, likely to keep you alive for longer than if you have nothing about your life that really gets you going in the morning, nothing you're building. Another thing is creating something, people who create, inventors, statistically outlive, like, almost everyone, it's really kinda strange.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:10:53

        No way.

    12. MIDr Mike Israetel1:10:53

        Composers outlive almost everyone, because it, they have a mission, and it keeps them seemingly so engaged that it may have some benefits for longevity.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:11:03

        A bit of an end game in some ways.

    14. MIDr Mike Israetel1:11:04

        Some... In s- uh, maybe. This is a maybe, but here's the thing. On the longevity side, it's a maybe. On the quality of life side, it's 100% certainty, which is why it also categorically belongs in this discussion, is even though the longevity stuff, the lifespan is correlated, maybe it's causative, the causation element of quality of life is 100% a thing. Your quality of life is measured in a bunch of different ways, but one of them is, like, do you, are you really involved in what you're doing? Do you really like what you're doing? Like, imagine you had to describe, you know, you meet someone on a plane sitting next to them, and someone's like, "What do you do?" And you're like, uh, "Oh, like, I do podcasts and stuff." And they're like, "Do you love it?" And you're like, "Ah, it's all right. It's, it's a living." Like, you are clearly being facetious because if I may guess, Chris, this is a deep involvement for you. Having conversations with mostly intelligent people, occasionally sprinkling me in, this is a thing you do and a thing you really give a shit about. That is probably gonna be good for your quality of life simply because it's, even just a subdefinition of the quality of your life. You're in 100% on something for hours a day, it's a really huge benefit in the statistical literature that we see, and so at least worth a mention on two grounds of might causatively enhance your lifespan, but almost certainly will make your quality of life much higher.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:12:30

        Is this the effect where we see people who retire from their job at a particular age, and then there seems to be this sort of drop off towards death-

    16. MIDr Mike Israetel1:12:40

        It might be-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:12:40

        ... people who retire earlier, people who retire later?

    18. MIDr Mike Israetel1:12:42

        ... it might be part of that. The other part, as a big proponent of science, physically big, not smart, just big, um, I wanna say that there's almost certainly a big feature of that dynamic, it's a true dynamic, is reverse causation or, uh, causation of an underlying variable. If you just don't have it anymore at work 'cause you're fucking dying, you quit work and then you die.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:13:06

        Understood.

    20. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:07

        Uh, but, but there may very well be this situation where even if you still got it, if you quit work, your life drains of meaning, and then, yeah, you might not be-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:13:18

        It's probably multifactorial as well, providing you with, uh, community, providing you with structure every single day, you're maybe moving, maybe you're on your feet with some sort of job, you're getting your steps in, it's ba- ba- ba- ba- ba, like, it's, you know, it's all of these things.

    22. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:30

        Huge. Huge.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:13:30

        Work will set you free. Ah, shouldn't say that to you.

    24. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:32

        Huge. You know, uh, I quoted my dad once on the internet who said, "Work will set you free," and I had a friend reach out and be like, "You do know that was, like, a sign above, like, Auschwitz or Birkenau or something." And I was like-It's still right, though. And like, you know, my dad is as Ashkenazi as it gets, so-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:13:48

        Ah.

    26. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:48

        ... tell him that shit.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:13:50

        Right.

    28. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:50

        Right.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:13:50

        Uh,

13. 1:13:51 – 1:23:32

    How Important Relationships Are For Longevity

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:51

       okay. Other people. I've heard that all of the people-

    2. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:54

       I just don't like them, Chris.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:55

       I'm sorry.

    4. MIDr Mike Israetel1:13:55

       They smell, they look at me funny. I think they look funny. What else is there to say?

    5. CWChris Williamson1:14:00

       That's true. But apparently you need them to live longer.

    6. MIDr Mike Israetel1:14:03

       Yes, through vampiric consumption of their body fluids. Ideally you get them in infancy, but infants are so hard to find nowadays. Um-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:14:12

       Birth rate decline will do that to you.

    8. MIDr Mike Israetel1:14:13

       (laughs) That's right. That's the real tragedy of birth rate decline, no more infants-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:14:17

       No adrenochrome.

    10. MIDr Mike Israetel1:14:17

        ... to suck the spinal fluid out of. What is Hollywood even doing to stay young and healthy? Um, a very, very similar statistical picture here as to the involvement stuff. Passionate involvement with something you like is seen in this situation with community and social relations. Family, friends, community involvement are very tightly correlated with your longevity, and because most people like a certain amount of them, they are in that sub-definition of quality of life, so we can just say that is really great. Um, it's a big deal, and in many cases people will get all of the socialization they want and no more. Like, I'm in Austin right now doing a bunch of podcasts. If you text me to hang out and I'm interested in hanging out, I'll be like, "Where? When?" If I'm not interested, I'll make up some bullshit excuse like, "Hey, I'm super busy catching up on something. Anyway, see ya." I'm good to manage my own shit. So that's totally cool, most people are doing a fine job at that. However, there are many people that have two things going for them. One is they're not extroverted in a way that outreaches to get other people to hang out with them.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:15:41

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    12. MIDr Mike Israetel1:15:42

        And two, they simply are not aware of at least the correlational relationship between that and quality of life and longevity. And so some people are totally fine being hermits, but some people are, some people are also totally fine being hermits, but when they actually engage in social interaction, when it's foisted upon them, they have like a breath of fresh air go through them. And those people specifically need to be keen on making sure that they do at least the bare minimum to continue to involve themselves with other people. Now typically, in many cases, it's just not a problem. Middle school, too many fucking people. High school, same people. College, uni, a lot of people. You can be ostracized in those situations, you can be a loner, but a lot of times that's either by choice or by you just don't like those people. As you get older, many people report that their ability to form new friendships or sustain older ones, it falls off. And this isn't some kind of like doom and gloom scenario, where like you get old, everyone leaves you and dies. That can happen, but there are many, many, many ways in which you can get yourself involved. There are community centers, there are various, uh, games and sports and involvements and everything. At any age it's possible for you to reach out, connect with people, and regularly schedule hangouts, be it with family and friends, be it with other people, be it in a volunteering capacity. You don't have to have like deep, close ties. Even if you just interact with other humans, like at a soup kitchen, for the love of God, several times a week, that seems statistically better than just completely walling yourself off, if you're a kind of person that's inclined for some sociality. So make the effort is what I'm saying.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:17:17

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Episode duration: 1:55:20