Podcast Summary
Learn How to Control Your Biological Age and Improve Your Health: Your chronological age is determined by the number of years you've been alive, but your biological age is affected by the health of your body's tissues and organs. By taking care of your body through functional medicine, you can potentially reverse chronic diseases and slow down the aging process.
Chronological age is the age based on the number of years you've been alive, while biological age refers to the underlying health of your body's tissues, organs, and biochemical processes. The good news is that we have control over our biological age, and by improving the health of our body's subsystems through functional medicine, we can reverse chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and even Alzheimer's disease. Our body is a system that can be influenced by everything we do, and by activating our body's innate healing and rejuvenation systems, we can slow down and potentially reverse the aging process.
Understanding Our Body's Healing Systems for a Longer Life: Our bodies have an innate healing system that can be activated intentionally to stop the process of decay and aging. By identifying the 10 features of aging and mitigating their effects, we can live longer, healthier lives by enhancing our body's functions through right information, energy, and inputs.
Our bodies have innate healing systems that can help us heal from wounds and injuries. However, many of us interfere with these systems with our lifestyle choices. By understanding how our bodies work and activating these healing systems intentionally, we can stop the process of decay and aging. There are 10 identifying features of aging, and if we can get rid of them or mitigate their effects, we may be able to live longer, healthier lives. We can enhance the functions of our bodies by putting in the right information, energy, and inputs, and by repairing old cells and building new ones.
How to Maintain Your Health as You Age: Taking care of your body as you get older is crucial in preventing chronic diseases like diabetes, memory loss, and heart failure. Eating a healthy diet is the most important factor in controlling biological aging and activating your body's healing power.
As we age, we need to give our bodies more positive inputs and avoid unhealthy habits like partying and eating junk food. Our diet, activity level, stress, sleep, exposure to toxins, and microbiome all play a role in our overall health. By regulating these factors, we can activate our body's healing power and prevent, reverse, or get rid of chronic diseases like diabetes, memory loss, and heart failure. Scientists are investing billions of dollars to study aging and the 10 underlying causes of all diseases. By focusing on the causes of aging, we can interfere with the pathway to disease and create health instead of just treating sickness with medication. A good diet is the most important factor in controlling biological aging.
How Our Diet Affects Our Longevity Switches: Our body has pathways called longevity switches that are influenced by the food we eat. Overloading these switches with too much sugar and protein can lead to age-related diseases, while fasting can activate a process that helps extend life.
Our body has pathways that sense the amount and type of food we eat. These pathways are called longevity switches and they are influenced by our diet. One of the important pathways is insulin signaling, which helps our body maintain blood sugar levels. Too much sugar and starch can overload this pathway, leading to age-related diseases. Another pathway is mTOR, which detects not only sugar but also protein. Overstimulating this pathway with too much food can prevent a process called autophagy, which helps our body clean up and rebuild tissue. Fasting or not eating for a period of time can activate autophagy and lead to life extension.
Eating to Activate Pathways for Longevity and Health: The foods we eat can affect our body's pathways that control aging and disease. Eating high-quality foods and enough protein can activate these pathways and improve our health, leading to a longer, healthier life. Functional medicine can help influence these pathways through lifestyle changes.
The way we eat affects important pathways in our body that control aging and disease. These pathways include AMPK, sirtuins, and nutrient sensing pathways, which regulate DNA repair, blood sugar, mitochondria, inflammation, and more. Eating high-quality foods and phytochemicals can activate these pathways and improve our health. It's important to have enough protein in our diets to build and maintain muscle, which is important for longevity. Aging and disease are caused by various factors, such as inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and protein damage, but functional medicine can help influence these hallmarks through simple lifestyle changes. By taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff, we can live longer, healthier lives.
Achieving Good Health with Functional Medicine: Functional medicine focuses on balancing the body through personalized approaches that address the root causes of imbalances such as bad foods, stress, and toxins. By adding positive inputs and removing negative ones, functional medicine can improve insulin resistance and promote healthy aging.
Functional medicine is based on the simple concept that the body needs to be in balance for good health. Imbalances are caused by bad foods, stress, toxins, a sedentary lifestyle, allergens, microbes, and other factors. Good health is achieved by adding in the right nutrients, quality food, movement, exercise, sleep, breast, community, purpose, meaning, and love. The approach is personalized because everyone's needs are different. Instead of treating individual symptoms or diseases with drugs, functional medicine addresses the hallmarks of aging, including insulin resistance, which plays an outsized role in longevity. Insulin sensitivity is essential for good health, and it's preventable and reversible by removing negative inputs and adding in positive ones.
Insulin Resistance and Its Link to Health Problems: Too much starch and sugar can lead to insulin resistance, causing health issues such as diabetes, heart attack, and cancer. Monitoring insulin levels and reducing sugar and starch intake can prevent these issues and lead to a healthier lifestyle.
Insulin resistance is a major problem caused by consuming too much starch and sugar. Insulin is produced at high levels to keep blood sugar normal, but over time cells become resistant to its effects, creating a cascade of problems including loss of muscle, extra belly fat, and a variety of health issues such as diabetes, heart attack, and cancer. It's important to measure insulin levels and reduce sugar and starch intake to prevent these problems. Treating separate health issues is not effective because they are all linked to the same root cause of insulin resistance. Creating a healthy lifestyle can reverse and prevent these health problems.
Treating the Root of Disease: Functional Medicine & Measuring Biological Age: Treating the root causes of disease is vital for maintaining good health. Functional medicine addresses the body holistically, extending health span and lifespan. DNA methylation tests can measure biological age, and by taking care of our health, we can continue doing what we love for longer.
Treating the root causes of diseases instead of managing symptoms separately is important for maintaining good health. Functional medicine can help create health from the inside out, and can extend both our health span and lifespan. Biological age can now be measured through a test called DNA methylation, allowing us to maintain a high level of function until we are very old. By taking care of our bodies and health, we can continue doing what we love for much longer. It's an exciting moment in health, and we have the power to change our biological age over time.
