#1 Longevity Expert: Fastest Way To Get Alzheimer's & A Decreased Lifespan (You're Probably Doing!)

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   What would I need to do if I want to get Alzheimer's or shorten my life as quickly as possible?

2. DSDr. Darshan Shah0:09

   [laughs] To get Alzheimer's. Okay, you're right. No one's ever asked me that question, but [laughs] I can give you a five-step program to getting Alzheimer's. Why don't we, why don't we do that? [laughs]

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:20

   Let's do it, yeah.

4. DSDr. Darshan Shah0:21

   And you'll be surprised to hear that your genetics actually not in my five steps-

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:26

   Wow

6. DSDr. Darshan Shah0:26

   ... believe it or not. Okay? Because I really believe that even if you are genetically susceptible to Alzheimer's, the chance of you being able to prevent it completely is very, very high. So I think we need to move on from, "My mother had it, my family members had it, so I'm destined to have it." That is absolutely not the case. Okay? So the five steps to getting Alzheimer's, um, starts in childhood, believe it or not. Play football, uh, American football or, you know, rugby, a sport that you're hitting your head over and over again at high velocities, right? That constant trauma, and not necessarily getting concussions, the trauma of hitting your head over and over again as a child and then into high school and beyond definitely sets you up for a situation where your chance of having dementia later on in life is greatly increased. Okay?

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:22

   Okay.

8. DSDr. Darshan Shah1:23

   Many people take that even into adulthood, playing professional sports, um, even riding a motorcycle and falling off, riding, um, mountain biking and falling off and hitting your head. The amount of trauma that builds up over multiple episodes of hitting your head sets your brain up to have not just Alzheimer's, but also Parkinson's later on in life.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:44

   Okay.

10. DSDr. Darshan Shah1:45

    The longer you extend that and the more you play these sports that your head is unprotected, the more damage builds up over time in your brain. Okay? Um, then step two, moving on to, like, adolescence and early, early adulthood. Eat a ton of ultra-processed food, lots of sugar. Don't start your meals with vegetables. Instead, have a very carby diet and throw your metabolism off. And so step two is having poor metabolic health, right?

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:15

    Right.

12. DSDr. Darshan Shah2:15

    We know in the Western world, 80% of adults have poor metabolic health, and that sets you up in a situation where you have a much higher risk of getting dementia in the future. And what's beautiful about this conversation, Rangan, is, like, we don't need to just talk about dementias.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:31

    Yeah.

14. DSDr. Darshan Shah2:32

    It's the same for heart disease, cancer, all sorts of-

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:35

    Longevity

16. DSDr. Darshan Shah2:35

    ... longevity in general.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:37

    Exactly. I mean, and of course, I know we're only two parts into the five-step plan.

18. DSDr. Darshan Shah2:41

    Yeah.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:41

    And, uh, of course, it's a slightly ridiculous question in many ways, but the reason I was asking it was to really just showcase how many of these things so many of us are doing.

20. DSDr. Darshan Shah2:55

    Yeah.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:55

    So we don't directly ask ourselves the question, how can we speed up getting a brain disease? But it turns out that many of us are living lives which are actually doing that, right?

22. DSDr. Darshan Shah3:05

    Exactly, exactly. And the damage builds up over time, and what's incredible about our human body is it's so incredibly resilient, especially up to the age of about 30 or so, right? And this resiliency tricks us into believing that we're incredibly healthy-

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:21

    Mm-hmm

24. DSDr. Darshan Shah3:21

    ... that we can live through anything, that nothing bad is gonna happen to us. But the damage builds up in childhood and adolescence as well, just as much as it can build up later. Now, what happens as we age, so step three of the program then, is to create a massive amount of inflammation, [laughs] and that is through having poor gut health, even poor oral health, being sedentary. So this all happens when we get a job, right? We become more sedentary. We continue to have a poor diet. Um, we're eating more ultra-processed food, and our gut health suffers. And 90% of our immune system lives in our gut, right?

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:56

    Mm-hmm.

26. DSDr. Darshan Shah3:56

    And so when our gut is not healthy, it's being attacked by thousands of toxins that are basically in our food-

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:04

    Mm-hmm

28. DSDr. Darshan Shah4:04

    ... and our immune system is on overdrive, which creates a situation that we all know is another root cause of disease called inflammation.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:11

    Yeah.

30. DSDr. Darshan Shah4:11

    Right? Then the next thing that you can do is just don't care about your level of exposure to toxins, right? And so, you know, we know that we live in a society now where we have 150,000 man-made toxins in our environment, and these have only been here for the last 60, 70 years. These were never here before. And we are constantly and consistently exposed to toxins in our air, our water, our food, and the skin products that we use, and you just don't even think about it, right? And so we live in this state of just ignorance of toxins, but they do build up. They're almost the fourth leg-

Episode duration: 1:51:48