Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / Autumn Calabrese & Dr. Gladden April Q&A – Episode 280

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Autumn Calabrese & Dr. Gladden April Q&A – Episode 280 · Gladden Longevity Podcast

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Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Jeffrey Gladden.
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And as always, we're here to answer five big questions.
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How good can we be?
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How do we make 100 to new 30?
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How do we live well beyond 120?
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How do we live young for a lifetime?
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And how do we develop a 300 year old mind?
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Today, I'm going to be joined by Autumn Calabresi again, and we're going to be going through some of the listener questions.
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I think you're going to find it interesting.
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about some things back and forth.
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again, these are questions that you asked.
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There were 16 of them.
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I think we got to six of them and we will take care of the rest in a future episode.
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But enjoy this.
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We had fun doing it.
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Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
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I'm your host, Dr.
1:15
Jeffrey Gladden, and it's a pleasure to be here again with Autumn Calabresi.
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Autumn's been joining me.
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She joined me for one podcast previously and she's back.
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She'll be back on a regular basis and Autumn, it's good to see you again.
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So what's new in your world?
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You know, when I think about California, I think about earthquakes, fires, tsunamis.
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meter strikes.
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I don't know what's happening over there.
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What's going on?
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It feels like the world's ending a little bit.
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How are you, Dr.
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Glenn?
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It's good to be back with you.
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Yeah, you know, it's really funny.
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I was just talking about this with one of my friends the other day.
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Malibu had like four earthquakes in the span of 12 hours the other day.
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So personally, I feel like I have just been, I'm not one that lives in fear and I do not have this whole like, my gosh, the world is ending.
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But I have definitely been taking some steps recently to just be prepared.
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Yeah, just thinking about it.
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people, is not half the battle.
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It is the battle.
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So I feel like Mother Nature is just letting us know she's not real happy and be prepared.
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So I've been stocking up on earthquake stuff.
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Yeah, a lot going on.
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You might have to consider Texas.
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It's a little calmer over here, you know, here are earthquakes, we get an occasional tornado.
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today we are answering listener questions if I'm not mistaken.
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Yeah, we have 16 different questions that came in.
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All of it has to do with obviously longevity and lifespan.
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So I don't think we'll be able to get through 16 in one day.
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We're going to start with five or six and we'll go from there and we can always do more later.
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But I think the first one we should talk about is just, could you explain the concept of cellular aging and how that relates to longevity so that our listeners understand what it
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is?
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Yeah, let's set the context for that because that's a good question.
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Cellular aging, right?
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So, you know, in the glad and longevity space, we really have these five circles, right?
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Life, energy, psycho spiritual space, health, which everybody's familiar with things related to sleep and diet and exercise and those things.
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Anyway, performance, which is really how we stay fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced.
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Then we have the environments we reside in, how we actually architect those or choose those environments to support the mission, if you will.
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But the fifth circle is the longevity circle.
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And that's the one that really looks at the processes, these hallmarks of aging, if you will.
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And there's 16 of them described currently.
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There will be more.
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But these are the processes that are actually driving the aging process.
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And the way to think about it is they're both the expression of aging and an accelerant of aging, right?
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So think of it this way.
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Here's an example.
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So if someone is elderly and their bones are weak and they fall down, they break their hip.
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So that's an expression of aging.
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But at the same time, having fallen down and broken their hip accelerates their aging, right?
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Because now they're less able to move.
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They're less able to, you know, feed themselves or less able to, or more apt rather, to get a blood clot or whatever.
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They need surgery.
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So at the cellular level, it's a similar thing.
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These hallmarks of aging are both
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what we would call phenotypic expressions of aging, meaning they're demonstrations of aging.
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And then they also tend to drive the aging process.
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So this is happening, of course, at a cellular level.
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So when you look at the cells, that's where these hallmarks are basically being expressed.
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And so in those hallmarks, you you have things like in the nucleus of the cell, right, where the DNA is, you have things going on there.
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have telomeres, which are the end caps on the chromosomes that sort of keep them safe.
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those are being shortened every time a cell divides.
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And so when you think about the different groups of cells in the body, we know that, you know, the immune system, for example, is dividing much more frequently than a brain cell
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is or a bone cell is.
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So our bodies are aging at different rates, depending on the population of the cells involved.
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And the immune system is one of the cell populations that ages the fastest because it's dividing.
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the fastest.
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When we measure telomere lengths, we actually measure them in the white blood cells, which are part of the immune system.
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And it gives us a good look at what the aging process is like for the immune system.
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So that's sign of cellular aging, if you will.
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Another sign would be that the nucleus itself is not actually communicating with the area in the cell outside the nucleus called the cytoplasm.
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It's not communicating effectively.
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And of course, those have to be synchronized to know what genes get turned on, what genes get turned off, what's being produced out here in the factory, if you will, in the
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cytoplasm.
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And so when that communication breaks down, that's another both expression of aging and an accelerant of aging, right?
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And then you have DNA methylation patterns, right?
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People have probably heard about true age or DNA methylation as being a hallmark of aging.
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And what this really boils down to is the DNA is controlled by proteins called histones and by, and they're controlled by acetyl groups and the DNA is controlled by methyl
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groups.
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And these are just little molecules.
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This thing, I'm as little widgets.
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get attached to the DNA or attached to the histone protein that's wrapped up with the DNA.
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And that basically will either turn on a gene or turn off a gene.
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And the pattern of expression of those methyl groups, if you will.
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correlates very well with chronological age.
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And it's possible to be older than your chronological age based on those methylation patterns or younger than your chronological age.
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And those methylation patterns for the most part are impacted in large part by lifestyle choices that we make and also by disease processes that we experience.
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So for example, if you got COVID,
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You were shortening your telomeres.
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You were also changing and aging your immune system.
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You were also changing your DNA methylation patterns to an older pattern.
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If you recovered from COVID, you had the ability to relinked in your telomeres.
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Your DNA methylation has changed back and the cell started working better again, right?
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So these are cellular processes that really accelerate aging.
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There are other ones that are super important, right?
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Like, so the DNA we know is coding for proteins, right?
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Proteins are the...
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many interesting things I want to ask you a question really quick before we pass that telemir part a little bit.
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So telemires, obviously, as you said, when they like the faster they shorten and the more they shorten, the more we age, the faster we age.
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So is there a way to protect our telemires?
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Is there a way to re lengthen the telemires to get that longevity back?
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So if your telemir starts to shrink, is there a way to then
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Row it again.
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Yes.
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So it's a two-sided question, if you will, right?
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There's a head side and a tail side to that.
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The tail side to the question is what are the things that shorten them, right?
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And the head side, what are the things that lengthen them?
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And so the things that shorten them are things like smoking and high stress, a lack of omega-3s, a lack of vitamin D, things that are related to long haul diseases like
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autoimmune diseases or long haul COVID or exposure to toxins, mercury, lime, excess oxidative stress.
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All those things are basically shortening the telomeres.
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The flip side of that is to do some things that actually mitigate stress.
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So people that meditate, people that eat fish in their diet or have omega-3s in their diet, people that have adequate vitamin D, people that exercise on a regular basis.
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don't smoke, things like that.
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Their telomeres tend to be longer.
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Now we're all born with telomere lengths, just like we have different heights when we grow up.
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We also have different, we're born with different telomere lengths.
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Some people have longer telomere lengths, some people have shorter telomere lengths.
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It's the rate of shortening that really matters.
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There are some supplements out there though that also can improve telomere lengths like telomerase activator 65 or TA65.
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It basically will pulse on an enzyme called telomerase
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that will re-lengthen the telomere for four hours and then it shuts off.
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The medicine's gone, if you will.
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So you can do that once a day or twice a day.
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And if you remove the things that are shortening the telomeres and you're using that, you can re-lengthen the telomeres.
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There's TAM 818, telomerase activator molecule 818, which can do a similar thing.
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It's also used in the skin.
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There's another one called isogenes, which has been shown to also have an impact on telomere re-lengthening.
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So there are things that you can do to re-lengthen telomeres, but the first thing you wanna do is stop shortening them, right?
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So that's kinda how that works, yeah.
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a little bit because obviously what you were just saying, so much of what you were just saying pertains to lifestyle.
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And if you're okay with it, I'd love to break it down into a couple of different areas just so we could talk about them a little bit more.
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But obviously our nutrition, our fitness, our exercise, stress management, like, so let's talk about, let's just talk about those lifestyle changes in regards to nutrition.
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Obviously.
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You talked about getting rid of some of those more processed foods, things like that.
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let's just, what are some of the things that we should be eating or that we shouldn't be eating?
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Two words, one gyp.
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is a really interesting, yeah, I think it's a really interesting point.
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You know, what we've come to discover about diets is that it's more about the individual than it is about the food.
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For example, everybody with a diet says, well, you should be eating this and you shouldn't be eating that.
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And there's truth in that.
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But what we found is that for the individual, something that is a good food may not be a good food for them, right?
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And so if you understand that person's genetics and you understand their digestive track, and if you understand whether they have bacterial overgrowth or they don't have bacterial
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overgrowth in the gut or yeast overgrowth, if you understand their food sensitivities and you understand some of their genetics, then all of a sudden you can actually say, here's a
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good food for you, right?
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But you can't simply say, well, kale is a good food because it's high in dietary nitrate and it's very nutrient dense.
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Therefore it's good.
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It doesn't work that way.
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It's also full of oxalates.
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And so some people don't handle those oxalates well.
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So if you're listening to this, the key thing is that if you're trying to follow a diet, what's really important is to actually understand yourself first to understand what food
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should I be eating?
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So doing like an MRT food sensitivity test or a gut zoom or to look at your gut biome and your digestive system and whether you have parasites and overgrowth and leaky gut and
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things like that.
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All that becomes super important.
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And then there's some genetics tests where you can look at how many copies of the amylase gene you have, which gives you an idea of how well you can actually process carbohydrates,
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things like that.
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So other genes that give you an idea of risks for things like dementia or cardiovascular disease, which will either steer you towards having a little bit of alcohol or no alcohol
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or some saturated fats or really very low saturated fats.
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So there's a lot that goes into picking the right diet.
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That being said, I will tell you that what the body likes is variety.
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It likes variety.
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It doesn't want to be fed the same thing all the time.
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And the best concept around variety is to eat as many nutrient dense foods.
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What do I mean by nutrient density?
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So there was a scale called the Andy index that was developed by a doctor.
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It used to hang on the chalkboard in whole foods.
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Actually, you'd walk into whole foods.
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Maybe you remember seeing it on him, but you'd walk into whole foods and you'd see.
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Right.
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Kale, Swiss chard, you know, all of these are thousand mustard greens, collard greens, all a thousand.
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Right.
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So that's the top of the scale.
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So what that means is for each calorie that you consume, you're getting the optimal or the maximum amount of nutrients that you can, all the minerals, vitamins, fiber, everything
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that would count as being nutrition for you and nutritious for you.
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You're getting that as well as dietary nitrate to help you make nitric oxide, to have good blood flow, et cetera.
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Right.
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So.
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Those become sort of the gold standard.
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If you look at a Big Mac, right, on that scale, it's a five, right?
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If you look at French fries, it's like a four.
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If you look at a Coke, it's like a two.
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If you look at the best meat on the planet, which is a bison filet, it's 39, right?
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So you can start to see that really the nutrient density is not in the meat and it's not in the saturated fats.
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It's actually up there in all the vegetables and the plants.
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So this is why we tend to lean towards a plant-based diet to get the nutrient density and variety that your body loves.
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Now, there are many caveats to that.
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Some people don't tolerate the fiber.
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Some people have issues with immunity or immune reactions to certain foods.
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So we're not, we're not giving you a diet recommendation.
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We're simply telling you that inside the diet that works for you, try to have variety where you're not eating the same thing every day.
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Whenever I go to the grocery store, I try to buy different things every time I go.
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Right.
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So I'm not buying the same stuff over and over again.
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And I try to spend as much time as I can in the fruit and vegetable section and find some new things there that I want to do.
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Right.
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And so, and then I supplement it with other things.
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And I find that you just feel better.
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You feel lighter.
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You don't feel heavy.
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And then your blood work looks better and you can do more stuff and it's more fun.
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know, sex life is better.
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Your brain's sharper.
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You know, you're more athletic, right?
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So all those things are wonderful.
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Yeah.
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think it's so important to understand that.
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So for me, obviously, fitness and nutrition expert, been studying this stuff for a very long time.
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For me, it was like six, seven years ago when I was struggling really bad.
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I was losing weight.
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I looked sick.
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I felt sick.
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I was losing muscle mass.
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Couldn't figure out what was wrong.
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Eating really healthy.
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And then finally, finally, we ran some blood work, found out.
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that I had gut dysbiosis going on.
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had, because of that and leaky gut, I wasn't absorbing the nutrients from the healthy food I was eating.
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And it turns out for me, I have a really hard time with nuts and legumes.
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So even though nuts and legumes are a healthy food for some people, for me, they were wreaking havoc on my body.
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I couldn't have them.
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Eggs were another food.
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I used to be able to eat them.
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for whatever reasons I can't now.
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And I was eating eggs every single day, like loved them, favorite breakfast food, ate them all the time.
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So it was these things that I had to unfortunately remove from my diet.
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And once I did, it was like, my gosh, I feel so much better.
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And even when I create nutrition plans, because I have three different versions of nutrition plans, when people do my workouts, portion fix, the four week gut protocol,
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Belvedere, which focuses on women's hormonal health.
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I'm helping people always balance their macronutrients and pay attention to their portion sizes.
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But within that, there's big food lists.
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Like here's all your veggies, here's all your fruit.
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And I always tell people the lists go in a hierarchy.
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The top is the best of the best.
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And as you work your way down, you'll see foods that are a little more processed, things like that.
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Not saying you can't have them, but let's be aware that they're not gonna be the most nutrient dense foods.
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And then I tell people all the time, it's bio individuality.
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So you have to pay attention to how you feel.
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when you eat foods and how your body is reacting like because I'm writing for the masses, right?
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So it's like, so when people look at these nutrition plans that are written for the masses, you've got to take your own self into account.
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And yeah.
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agree more.
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There's a lot of information out there for the masses.
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And what's not included in those instructions is that you need to actually figure out what works for you out of this.
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This is a generally a positive list.
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But to your point, this may not be good for you at all.
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so, but the concept, the concept of having a variety of nutrient dense foods, that's a good concept.
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And you can stick with that.
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It just becomes what's the actual
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you know, how does that refine itself down into an actual meal, if you will.
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But that's a good concept.
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think another thing, you when we're talking about gut health and hormone health, and obviously you said plant-based diet.
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So not necessarily saying no animal protein, but plant-based, we know that based on one of the biggest studies ever done that a variety of plants determines gut health, a variety of
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at least 30 different plants in a week, and gut health can impact hormonal health.
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How does all of that impact our longevity?
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Because what we're seeing right now,
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I'm sure it drives you crazy is on social media.
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Everybody's like, more protein, more protein, you need more animal protein.
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And they're forgetting all about the fiber in the plant.
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Yeah.
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No, I hear you on that.
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Just to take a break.
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You might want to take your camera off.
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You're breaking up a little bit.
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Yeah.
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But when we, you know, when you hear about these high protein diets and there are people that are big influencers out there pushing protein, protein, protein saying, you know,
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everybody as they age needs more protein.
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Well, let's analyze that for a second, right?
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What is it that they actually need?
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They actually need to build more protein, right?
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Because they're losing muscle mass or they're losing bone density or they're losing collagen in the skin.
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So what they really need to do is to build more protein.
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So people automatically jump to, okay, well then they need to eat more protein in order to build more protein.
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Well, that's where it breaks down because even the best protein, biological protein, which is an egg white, if you eat an egg white only,
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Let's forget about the yolk for a second.
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There's some real value in the yolk, but let's forget about that for a second.
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If you only eat the egg white, only 49 % of the protein in the egg ends up showing up as protein in your body.
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The rest of the protein gets converted into carbohydrate.
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Let's say you're eating collagen.
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Collagen is an interesting protein because when you eat collagen, although it's a
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it's a poor quality protein, it actually stimulates collagen formation in your body.
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So collagen has a reason to be consumed, but only about 24 % of it turns into actual collagen in your body or protein in your body.
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Right.
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So this idea of eating all this protein, what we know is that high protein diets are associated with earlier mortality, right?
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They're also hard on the kidneys.
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So why is that?
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It's because when you're eating
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protein all the time, you're activating one of the hallmarks of aging in the cell called mTOR.
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mTOR is basically a molecule that stimulates growth, anabolic growth.
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So if you're on testosterone, growth hormone, eating a lot of protein, the body senses that, we're replete with nourishment, so let's go build stuff, right?
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Bones, muscles, and all that, skin, and we need that.
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But when you do that all the time, you die sooner, and you have an increased risk of cancer.
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So you don't want to be pounding protein, right?
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Protein is not the answer.
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The answer is actually how, or the question rather, is how do I actually build protein?
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And it's not by consuming as much protein as you possibly can.
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So there's a product out there called Perfect Aminos that was developed by a physician actually who happened to be an Ironman and he was looking for ways to build protein
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without having to eat a lot of protein.
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And he put together essential amino acids in a particular.
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formulation, it's called perfect aminos.
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And when you take a scoop of that and put it in water and drink it, 99 % of those amino acids go into building protein in your body.
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So now you're getting what you're after, which is how do I build protein in my body and yet not expose myself to all this other excess protein, right?
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Which some of it would shirms into carbohydrates, of course.
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So protein can become protein and can become carbohydrate.
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Carbohydrate can stay as carbohydrate or become fat.
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Fat.
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pretty much stays as fat, right?
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So that's kind of the end of the road.
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So really important in your diet to think about that.
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Now, animal-based protein, there's advantages to some of it, right?
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Some of the fats in there can be healthy.
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Omega-3s are in there, we know that.
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But the saturated fats, particularly for a lot of people that have predispositions towards family stories of dementia or cancer or heart disease, those don't work.
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They don't work for you.
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And those saturated fats actually have been shown genetically to put on weight for a lot of people.
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So again, you have to know your body type.
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You have to know your genetics.
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You have to know how you're built.
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Then you can choose the right protein for you and the right amount of protein for you.
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And I think as you age, eating is not enough to keep you healthy, right?
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Everybody that ate a great diet still got old and died as far as I can tell.
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So you've got to have hormones that are at play as well.
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Testosterone, estrogen, elements of growth hormone that are actually helping you to utilize the amino acids to build the proteins that you want to build.
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So that would be my thoughts about that.
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Yeah, I think that is all such valuable information to have because you do just watch people, it's an influencer and they're saying more protein, more protein and I'm going to
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look good and I'm going to be younger and they're really not taking into account what happens once that animal protein, that's sort of what I'm referencing.
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What happens in their own body when they're just pounding it, like you said.
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So we talked about obviously nutrition being one very important key part of longevity.
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Let's talk about fitness.
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Let's talk about movement and what we need to do there.
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I think this is a big one.
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We're in a really unprecedented time where it feels like we're just sitting more than ever between the computers and the phones and the TVs and the cars.
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It's just nonstop sitting.
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We're not moving and using our bodies like we used to.
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What do we need to be doing physically?
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I think it's a really big issue.
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think the first thing is to actually understand what what exercise is, right?
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Exercise is simply an activity you do that puts a strain on the body that enables your body to get stronger because it was exposed to that stress.
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Right.
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That's what exercise is.
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It's not about trying to hit a personal record every day.
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You go to the gym or every time you go for a run or ride your bike.
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Right.
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So
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It's about exposing your body to the right amount of stress on this particular day that enables it to get stronger.
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That's what exercise is.
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That being said, what we think is that some exercise seven days a week is actually the way to go about it.
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And let me explain what I mean by that.
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It's not going for a personal record seven days a week.
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It's not that we don't take a break from certain exercises.
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It's just saying that we're going to do some physical activity every single day.
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And the reason that we say that is because if you say I'm going to exercise three days a week or five days a week or six days a week, then you have to wake up and you have to
25:16
decide is today the day.
25:18
Right.
25:18
And when you don't feel like it, it's like, well, I guess there's tomorrow.
25:22
Yeah, that's tomorrow.
25:23
And I'll do it tomorrow.
25:24
But when you know that you're going to exercise, I woke up this morning.
25:27
I've been traveling, right?
25:28
I didn't feel like going for a run.
25:29
I really didn't.
25:30
I kind of laid around a little bit.
25:32
I journaled, uh, and talked with my partner for a while.
25:35
Um,
25:36
It's like, oh, I guess I'm going to go for a run.
25:38
And sure enough, I went because I know I'm going to go for a run right now because I felt like going for a run.
25:43
I don't always feel like exercising.
25:45
Well, once I get out there, it's like, oh, the fresh air, it's 52 degrees.
25:49
It feels so nice.
25:51
Oh my gosh, this feels great.
25:52
You know, and the next thing you know, you're kind of enjoying yourself.
25:55
And so I think it's so critical to actually move every day.
26:00
I think that's absolutely critical.
26:02
I think the second misconception about exercise is that we think it's about our muscles, right?
26:08
We think we're exercising for our muscles, our joints, our tendons and all of that.
26:12
In actual fact, as we age, what we're really exercising in our nervous system.
26:18
So you can think of it this way.
26:20
For example, on the routines that you do.
26:23
Yes, there's muscle involved, but the muscle is along for the ride.
26:27
If you will, it's your nervous system that's choreographing everything that you do.
26:31
It's your nervous system that's enabling you to balance and do the everything else.
26:35
And when you start to think about your exercise as I'm really going to be exercising my nervous system, then you realize that, okay, I can never truly fit only working out in a
26:48
gym because I need to get outside where I have more things happening.
26:53
I can feel the air.
26:54
can see the breeze.
26:56
I was riding mountain bikes this weekend.
26:59
with my son on Saturday in Colorado and we got caught in a rainstorm and it's like, how cool is this?
27:05
It's raining, it's muddy, we're coming down the mountain, we're having a great time.
27:09
We get back, we're high-fiving, but that's, your nervous system is so challenged in those situations.
27:15
This is how you build true resistance.
27:18
This is how you really get in shape is by having an intact and adaptable nervous system, right?
27:23
So I think that would be another thing that I would point out.
27:28
The other thing is that in the nervous system realm, it's really important to do balance training, right?
27:33
Challenge yourself.
27:35
You can do that really well in a gym.
27:37
And just like, don't think you can truly get in shape in a gym.
27:39
You can't truly get in shape only being outside.
27:42
There are some things you can do in a gym in a controlled environment that you can't do outside that will also add strength to you and balance and other things.
27:50
Right?
27:50
So they, go hand in hand.
27:52
but I wouldn't want to see somebody only exercise in a gym or only outside.
27:56
I think they really do compliment.
27:59
We did a podcast on a Juvent Plate, J-U-V-E-N-T Plate, which is a micro impact plate that's turning out to be an amazing device.
28:08
It builds bone density.
28:09
It actually increases balance.
28:11
You can stand on it.
28:11
You can stand on one foot.
28:13
You can do all kinds of things and it reads your body and resonates with your body and then puts you on a 20 minute protocol.
28:18
You can meditate while you're on it.
28:20
I do lots of motions on it.
28:22
And you can almost feel the vibrations kind of, I don't know.
28:25
It's almost like it's realigning your body.
28:27
Like I walk differently when I get off of it.
28:29
And I know what's happening is it's kind of reprogramming or helping to reprogram my nervous system.
28:34
And I'm like super excited about that.
28:36
Now I'm running down the stairs again.
28:37
You know, after I rebuilt my knee and things, it's like, well, this is cool.
28:40
So if you can't run down the stairs, right, you can lift a heavy weight, but you can't run down the stairs.
28:46
It's because your nervous system isn't really being exercised properly.
28:49
Right.
28:49
So those will be some of my thoughts.
28:52
I love how you describe the Juvent Plate because that's another big one that you're seeing influencers talk about all the time, but they're really talking about it in terms of like,
28:59
I'm standing on the shake plate so that my lymphatic system drains and things like that.
29:03
They're not really referencing the balance of it and the neurological benefits of being on that plate.
29:13
So.
29:14
I find it accelerates.
29:15
And I think if you want to stand on one foot, that's a really interesting challenge, right?
29:20
Because it's, it has this micro impact going on.
29:22
So it's constantly sort of throwing you off, which is what a wonderful thing to do is to challenge yourself.
29:29
Here's another thing about working out is people get stuck on a rut.
29:33
They go in and it's like, I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to do curls.
29:36
I'm going to do this.
29:36
I'm going to do presses.
29:37
I'm going to do leg press.
29:38
I'm going to do whatever they do.
29:39
And.
29:40
They get into a rut where their nervous system isn't really challenged.
29:44
You want to be challenging your nervous system all the time.
29:47
So think about it differently.
29:48
Think about how do I go into the gym and challenge my nervous system?
29:51
Right now I'm going to be doing, you know, curls sitting on a ball, or I'm going to be kneeling on a ball, or I'm going to be laying on a ball, or I'm going to be doing
29:58
something that, you know, causes me to have to engage my core and my nervous system.
30:02
I'm going to do it all with my eyes closed, right?
30:04
All these things that actually help your nervous system to really come into focus.
30:09
is massively important because as we age, if we don't do that, we lose our balance and then we get knocked over, we break a hip and that accelerates the aging process, right?
30:18
So I want to be bulletproof.
30:19
When I get knocked down, I want to just roll and stand back up, right?
30:23
have found in the last two years, I started doing a lot of Pilates training and that training really like true Joseph Pilates control ology Pilates training and
30:35
neuromuscularly same thing, the challenge that that brings me in moving that like slow and controlled and being precise and the movement starts from here and articulation through
30:47
the spine.
30:48
has been incredible.
30:50
And then
30:51
After that, when I get into my weight training sessions and things like that, I feel such a difference in how my muscles will activate and like properly, that feels different than
31:03
when I used to do it this way.
31:04
So that's another one that I have found to be really, really helpful and beneficial.
31:11
trained your nervous system and now your nervous system is engaging with the weight that you're lifting in a different way, right?
31:17
More muscles are being recruited or they're being recruited in a finer format or whatever, right?
31:23
So it's really cool.
31:24
I'll tell you another trick that I've gotten into.
31:27
This is a little more esoteric and it has to do with a concept called zero point energy.
31:33
I don't know if the audience is familiar with zero point energy, but
31:37
Zero point energy is actually what happens in a quantum system, right?
31:42
You're in outer space in a quantum, you know, everything is quantum waves, right?
31:46
Quantum fields.
31:47
And if you cool everything down to absolute zero, there's still motion in the quantum, right?
31:53
And so particles, you know, that we would consider mass, particles with mass actually pop into existence out of the quantum and they go back into the quantum.
32:04
And there's an energy that's generated
32:06
at zero point, at zero degrees, that's called zero point energy.
32:10
And we have access to a massive amount of zero point energy, right?
32:14
There's a molecule, not a molecule, there's a material rather called nirite that's been developed that can actually harness zero point energy, right?
32:23
So if you want to talk about energy independence, people are talking about nuclear fusion and nuclear reactors and solar and wind and things like that.
32:31
How do we move our way, move ourselves away from fossil fuels?
32:35
Well, this would be an infinite source of energy, right?
32:37
Like if you had the size of a baseball in your hand, you could power your whole city, right?
32:41
So zero point energy is for real.
32:43
It's, it's, I'm not making this up.
32:46
I've developed this constant, right?
32:48
I've developed this concept when I'm either running, I did it this morning or when I'm on my VASPER, which is like a new step with blood flow restriction or some other activities,
32:57
even mountain biking or whatever of, of harnessing zero point energy.
33:03
And so I just allow my nervous system to pull zero point energy in.
33:06
And I don't know if humans have the ability to actually do this or not.
33:09
But what I'm finding is that all of a sudden I'm able to do more with less effort.
33:14
And it's a really, really cool feeling.
33:16
And if I just focus on my nervous system and I forget about my muscles, it's like, yeah, no, I can go a bit faster here.
33:22
My, my, nervous system can go faster.
33:24
It can run faster and my muscles come along for the ride.
33:26
Whereas if I focus on the muscle, it's like, well, I don't know if I really want to go any faster.
33:31
So if you pull this.
33:32
concept of zero point energy and then let it fuel your nervous system, your muscles will come along next thing you know you're performing at a higher level.
33:40
And that's, you know, I know it's a little esoteric, but that's what I'm doing if people want to know what I'm doing.
33:46
So interesting though, such an incredibly cool concept.
33:50
So we've talked about nutrition and we've talked about fitness and exercise, but I think there's a piece missing still that might be one of the most important pieces in the day
34:00
and age that we live in, which is stress and stress management and the impact that stress has on our overall health and our longevity.
34:11
So what are your thoughts on that?
34:13
absolutely, well, it's absolutely massive.
34:16
You know, we're big fans of doing the brain tap neuro check here in the office for people when they come in next time you come over out and we'll do it for you.
34:23
we put two clips on, people's wrists and have them sit there for about five minutes.
34:30
And we're looking at the status of their autonomic nervous system, right?
34:34
Sympathetic fighter flight, parasympathetic rest, repair.
34:37
We're measuring the balance between those two.
34:40
And then we're also getting some additional insights from that in terms of brain function and brain wave function.
34:47
I don't know if people are familiar with EEGs, but Delta waves would be very slow waves consistent with sleep.
34:53
And then theta is just pre-sleep.
34:55
It's called a hypnagogic state.
34:57
Like if you're being hypnotized or just about to fall asleep, you're in theta.
35:00
Or if you're in deep meditation, you're in theta.
35:03
And then alpha is a little faster, right?
35:05
Theta is a little faster than Delta.
35:07
Alpha is a little faster than Theta.
35:09
And that's typical meditation, if you will, kind of awareness, consciousness, but not really engaging.
35:16
And then there's beta, which is what you and I are doing here right now, right?
35:20
We're analyzing, we're thinking, we're talking.
35:22
And then there's gamma and gamma is a flow state.
35:25
That's when I liken that to meditation and motion, right?
35:28
Where you're skiing, snowboarding, you're running, whatever.
35:30
I'm sure you've gotten into flow states before when you're
35:33
doing something, right?
35:34
You can get a flow state in a conversation.
35:36
You can get a flow state, you know, writing a paper or, you know, creating something, right?
35:41
So many flow states can occur.
35:43
But the point is that we can measure somebody's ability to get into those different states with the same test, this neural check.
35:51
And we also get a sort of a nervous system age, if you will, a stress-related age.
35:57
And it's fascinating to see that people that come in,
36:02
and say that they're not stressed, many times are harboring much more stress in their system than they realize.
36:09
And I think it has to do with the fact that we, as humans, all of us, myself included, we tend to normalize situations, right?
36:16
If we live with an ankle that's not working right long enough, it's like, well, I guess it's kind of normal for my ankle, right?
36:22
So we tend to sort of normalize things and we can normalize a lot of stress.
36:27
I had a client that came in and said, I'm a pilot.
36:30
fly and I'm really good at managing stress.
36:33
said, well, tell me more about that.
36:34
What does that mean?
36:35
He said, well, I can be really stressed about work or something else, but when I'm flying, I just compartmentalize that and I'm really flying and I can pay attention.
36:42
said, well, that's great skill, but what's happening to your nervous system?
36:45
It's like, well, I don't know.
36:47
I mean, I feel okay.
36:48
I feel fine.
36:49
Well, we measured him and it's like, oh my gosh, you know, that stress is going somewhere.
36:53
The body is keeping the score, right?
36:55
You're not.
36:56
You're not ejecting it out of the plane.
36:57
It's being held inside your system.
37:00
And so to your point, when we carry this excess stress, and many of us do, we're aging ourselves quite dramatically.
37:09
Telomeres are shortening, right?
37:10
Inflammation, the gut's being inflamed.
37:12
There's more inflammation.
37:13
There's more oxidative stress, right?
37:15
There's higher cortisol levels.
37:17
There's more insulin resistance.
37:19
The memories don't work as well.
37:21
you know, stem cells aren't working as well.
37:23
Everything doesn't work as well in a stressful situation, right?
37:26
So really, I think one of the absolute keys is mastering the glad longevity life energy circle, which I wrote about in my book, 100 is the New 30, if you want to check that out.
37:37
We don't have time to go through all of that right here.
37:39
But but when you when you get to a place of equanimity and peace and you feel safe and you feel loved, my gosh, all of a sudden, it's like
37:50
Okay, what a beautiful world this is.
37:52
I'm not really worried about much of what's going to happen.
37:54
I'm just here from a loving place, create joy for the people around me, right?
37:57
And it's like, okay, let's just do that.
38:00
So anyway, this idea of managing stress really is about not only learning techniques to increase your vagus nerve tone, right?
38:08
Which a lot of people are very weak there.
38:10
We find the people that meditate or have a lot of cardio build it the best, but it's also changing your perspective on life.
38:16
your perspective on who you are, what you learned, what traumas you suffered, how you resolve them and all these kinds of things that go into it.
38:23
and, and when you do that, you can actually lead a very active, very fulfilling, very engaged, relatively stress free life.
38:33
And when you do that, that filters down to your biology in a massive way.
38:38
It's like taking a load off of your biology.
38:40
It's like, the flower can now actually see the sun.
38:43
It can actually blossom.
38:44
It's really it's really quite dramatic.
38:46
So, yeah.
38:47
I think it's so important for people to really understand the impact of stress.
38:52
For me, I was that person just a few years ago when I first started working with you, Dr.
38:57
Gladden, where I was like, yeah, know, mean, life's stressful, but I manage my stress really well.
39:03
And we quickly found out the body keeps the score.
39:07
My body was absolutely keeping score on me.
39:11
part of the issue of my gut health, a big part of the issue of my hormonal health because cortisol was completely out of balance.
39:18
So insulin resistance was building up.
39:21
despite other protocols that we were implementing while they were helping, it kind of got to the point where it was like, until you learn to manage your stress autumn, there's only
39:31
so much we can do.
39:33
We can give you all the supplements and we can give you all the things, but you're not addressing this massive component.
39:40
that is weighing on you.
39:42
And for me, I found breath work.
39:44
Like that has been something that has been incredibly helpful for me is when I'm in a stressful state to use different breathing techniques because I can implement them
39:54
anywhere.
39:55
I can implement them on a work call.
39:56
I can implement them when I'm driving.
39:58
If I'm having trouble falling asleep, things like that.
40:01
If my brain starts to go and I feel an instant shift, my exercise has always been.
40:08
form of stress management for me, even in mentally it helps me, but we also know that exercise is a stressor on the body at the same time.
40:16
So breath work has been one of those things that really has played into stress management and has very profound effect on me.
40:26
Yeah, we did a, we did a podcast on breath work.
40:30
I don't know.
40:30
might've been a couple of years ago.
40:32
Now people want to look back through the catalog.
40:34
You'll see a podcast on breath work.
40:37
and it's, it's phenomenal.
40:39
And what I love about it is, you know, the, real reason that breath work works is that it's balancing your autonomic nervous system.
40:47
You know, when you, when you're breathing deeply and slowly, or you're breathing in a particular pattern, what you are is you're actually in training your nervous system.
40:55
Right.
40:56
And so it's calming the nervous system down and it's strengthening vagal nerve tone, the vagus nerve, which is carrying the autonomic nervous system signals into your organs.
41:06
It's actually strengthening the nervous system's ability to manage and control what comes into the organ systems, more parasympathetic, less, less sympathetic.
41:16
Right?
41:16
So the breath work is kind of an instant hack into activating your autonomic nervous system in a healthy way.
41:24
people that can meditate and go simply.
41:26
that are meditated enough where if they want, they can just go into the meditative state just, you know, as quickly as they can snap their fingers.
41:33
They can also access that space, right?
41:36
Whether they're driving or whatever else.
41:38
But to your point, the nice thing about breathwork is you can do it anywhere, right?
41:41
You can even do it.
41:42
You can be doing it right now.
41:45
right.
41:46
So it's you probably are doing it right now.
41:48
So anyway, it's nice for you talk to me, right?
41:53
Not really.
41:55
It just feels good.
41:56
It's one of those things.
41:57
It's not even you know, like you're not in a stressful state when you do it Everything just becomes yeah a little more peaceful a little more alert Yes
42:08
So, you know, people think, well, you know, I've got to do all these things I don't want to do.
42:13
I mean, start with breath work for goodness sakes.
42:15
It makes you feel good right from the get-go.
42:17
You know, there's some great apps out there for breath work and things like that.
42:21
and if meditation seems like, geez, I'm not sure how to do that.
42:24
There's some great apps out there too.
42:27
the brain tap device itself actually will train you how to meditate.
42:32
and there are other ones out there too, Muse and other things that people use.
42:35
So there's lots of.
42:37
of hacks to help kind of get you started in how to actually control your nervous system.
42:43
Once you can control your nervous system, now you start to be able to learn how to control your thoughts.
42:48
Right.
42:49
We tend to think that our thoughts are reality.
42:51
Right.
42:51
We think our thoughts are real.
42:52
Like I'm thinking it must be real, but it's not.
42:55
We're just making it up.
42:56
Right.
42:57
And so it can, you know, in other words, what's a good example?
43:02
Like, I don't know, somebody could drop an apple on the floor and we could have six different
43:07
thoughts about what just happened.
43:08
that's a shame.
43:09
That's a tragedy.
43:10
wonder who's going to pick.
43:10
I wonder who's going to eat it.
43:11
Right.
43:12
So you can have many different thoughts and everybody thinks this is reality, but it's not each person's making it up.
43:18
So when you, when you actually learn to control your thoughts, now you're starting to control your reality.
43:25
Now you're really starting to control your nervous system.
43:28
And the breath work is kind of an initial stage into giving your nervous system the strength to be able to control the autonomic nervous system.
43:35
And then you want to move into the space where you can actually control your thoughts, right?
43:39
Now you're actually really calming the whole thing.
43:41
Now you can actually be here with a sense of loving purpose as opposed to in a reactive state of, my gosh, what's going to happen next, right?
43:49
Yeah, I think we've covered so much for the listeners.
43:53
If I had to just give like three little tips for like, what can you do right now?
43:57
If you were listening to this today and what could you do right now?
44:00
I would tell somebody in terms of your nutrition, pay attention to how much processed food you're eating and think more whole foods and then pay attention to how those whole foods
44:09
are making you feel.
44:10
Obviously, yes, you could go get the gut zoomer tests and things like that and those would be great things to do.
44:16
But if you're trying to
44:17
Take action today to start feeling good.
44:20
I would say that I would say move your body It doesn't have to be an hour-long workout even if you just get a walk-in go outside when you're walking and the the ground changes
44:30
and there's some hills and there's some inclines and declines or the pavement isn't even your balance is being changed a challenge your nervous system is
44:40
alerted by all the different senses.
44:42
And then when it comes to stress management, I would say same thing, just at any point in the day, people always ask me, well, when's the best time to do breath work?
44:49
And I say all day, every day, anytime you want to.
44:52
If nothing else, slow in for five counts, slow out for five counts is a great place to start.
44:59
But what would be three tips that you would give to listeners, Dr.
45:01
Gladden, of just what could they do today right now?
45:06
Well, think conceptualizing exercise as really training your nervous system.
45:13
You know, I would do that and I would also commit to doing something seven days a week.
45:18
I think that's a really big one.
45:20
I think on basically controlling stress, I would, if you need help with that, there's a couple avenues.
45:30
Sometimes talking to a therapist can be very good at helping us.
45:34
understand past traumas and kind of help resolve those or move them through, right, to where we can heal them, if you will.
45:43
So that's, I think that can be important, but that apart from really training your nervous system to be able to control your autonomic nervous system and your thoughts probably
45:52
doesn't get you all the way there.
45:54
So the somatic training where you are training the nervous system, the parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system control, and then being able to control your thoughts.
46:03
can take you to a much happier place, right?
46:05
And I think on the food front, I would suggest just never go in the grocery store and buy the same thing twice, right?
46:12
Keep the variety coming and play with the food, enjoy it, as many flavors as you can, all the colors of the rainbow, and then listen to your body, either test or listen to your
46:25
body or both, and find a diet that actually works best for you.
46:31
I think all of this is amazing.
46:33
mean, we have so many more questions on longevity that I think obviously we can get to in future episodes because they're all important and they're all great questions.
46:44
Yeah, no, I appreciate the audience sending those in.
46:47
think we have 10.
46:48
I think we covered about six.
46:49
I think there's probably 10 more to go.
46:50
So we'll we'll crank those out.
46:51
We're not going to miss anybody's question.
46:54
So just hang in there.
46:56
We'll get to it.
46:56
Yeah.
46:57
Yeah.
46:58
Amazing.
46:59
All right.
47:00
Well, thanks.
47:01
Thanks for being on with us today, Autumn.
47:04
was pleasure as always.
47:05
And we will see you next time.
47:08
That sounds great.
47:09
Thank you so much for having me.