Aging is a disease, a disease that is ‘treatable’. Dr. David Sinclair is a leading world authority on genetics and longevity and in his book, ‘Lifespan’ explores Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To’. In this episode, Jen explore discusses Dr. Sinclair’s book, longevity genes, and how focusing on your nutrition can enable you to age strongly. 

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SHOWNOTES

Yes. We’re going to age. It’s not about not ageing, but it’s about aging really well so that we don’t. Well, I call it a lifestyle disease. I’ve always called them lifestyle diseases. Things like heart disease type two diabetes is a classic lifestyle imbalance. Alzheimer’s, that’s another one. All these things that we get as we get older, I believe are preventable.

Our body tells us when we’re off track and we get to tweak things and live into a different future or we go, oh yeah, that’s just heart disease. That’s just one of those things. Cause I’m getting old. 

We have these vitality genes. Vitality genes make up, what’s called the genetic survival circuit. It’s like a gene circuit and this gene circuit is the cause. It has the ability to reverse aging. Yes, it does.

This is a very simplified overview of what Dr. Sinclair talks about, and there’s a lot more to the concept. I promise it’s worth doing the handful of hacks, as Dr. Sinclair talks about in his book. 

So many of these hacks are ones I’ve been speaking about for years from my book 7 Steps to Sanity and podcast episodes. 

Let’s talk about our body genes. 

Gene A stops the cells from reproducing when times are tough, when the body is under stress.

Gene B actually turns off Gene A when life is good!

Sirtuins Genes, they’re great in that they carry a version of the survival circuit, which enables our bodies to keep going. The challenging thing is, it brings it in from all over old, negative, distant ancestors and all that genetic signatures that has been handed down through generations, and that’s why we age now.

Some healthy tips to help slow the aging process:

  1. Intermittent Fasting – Nutritionally supported fasting is what I mean. Having a rest day a week rests our digestive system. It’s more low calorie than no calorie. The most important is that we support it with herps, such as adaptogenic herbs. You can fast weekly, or if even seasonally (when the seasons change).
  2. Cold exposure, eg: Ice baths – Ending your shower with a cold shower is the easiest way to integrate it into your everyday life. We want to encourage your body to produce brown fat because brown fats are healthy fats (not white fats).
  3. Exercising – moving your body every day is important. We want to move our bodies in some way, every day. High-intensity interval training is the most effective at helping our bodies to age slower. The most beneficial part goes beyond that kind of cardiac fitness and stuff in lung fitness. It actually comes down to your telomeres. Telomeres are the protective caps on the end of your chromosomes and your DNA strands live within your chromosomes. We want to protect them. The thing that taxes them the most is oxidative stress.

Telomeres get shorter each time a cell copies itself, but the important DNA stays intact. Eventually, telomeres get too short to do their job, causing our cells to age and stop functioning properly

10 Healthy Hacks to help you age well:

  1. Eat more plant-based diet. Start introducing more avocado or broccoli or cabbage or cucumbers and tomatoes into your diet. They contain an element called Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN).  NMN is a source of vitamin B3 niacin. They showed in Dr Sinclair’s experiment that those foods really rich in NMN helped to really slow the aging signs. 
  2. Eat more niacin rich foods
  3. Reduce or eliminate refined and processed foods. 
  4. Sleep – Broken sleep is the first sign of adrenal tiredness and we’re taxing our body. We are aging our body faster. It needs to be a priority. We talk about how you achieve your life force lives in your adrenal glands. Your little glands that sit on top of your kidneys reduce your stress hormones, but also your reproductive system hormones. 
  5. Managing our stress with adaptogens herbs, we can’t make stress, go away. We’ve got to get our body in a place where it can manage stress.
  6. More cold showers
  7. Exercise daily and incorporate more HIIT, or high-intensity interval training
  8. Don’t use a microwave oven.
  9. Don’t over-expose your body to UV from the sun
  10. Don’t smoke. It just taxes all our body systems. It just really does because it’s a big stress on our bodies.

Helpful Links

Healthy Life Hacks

The Healthy Life Hack I want to share with you today is:

  1. “Eat clean and fewer calories,” Intermittent fasting
  2. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” manage stress and get great sleep.
  3. “Exercise,” Move your body daily
  4. Integrate one of the 10 hacks I shared each week and make a lifestyle change that will help you age well. Remember it is a disease that is treatable and preventable

Did you enjoy the podcast today? Please let me know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Every month I draw one lucky reviewer to have a free one-hour consultation with me. Also, remember to subscribe wherever you’re tuning in from so that you always catch the next episode.

Are you looking for more great resources? Get a free copy of my Feed Your Body ebook here and be sure to explore my blog while you are there.