The Secrets & Science of True Anti-Aging

Ed Jones 00:00
Thank you so much, Dr. Pavey. I am stoked and fired up about this conversation on nutrition worlds podcast. One reason is in the old saying, Do you have a dog in the fight, I do have a dog in this fight, because we’re going to talk about aging and anti aging, and being 65, I certainly realized them in the fourth quarter of my life. And I have pretty much focused a tremendous amount of my studies over the past about five years on what mechanisms can we actually bring into our life with choices that could potentially slow down aging and aging truly is a disease which I know you’ll talk about. You’ve been on a couple other podcasts with me, we’ve always been very helpful. You are amazing with your experience being at Life Extension Foundation, one of my most trusted partners, and I just welcome you to this special podcast, Dr. Pavey.

Dr. Pavey 00:51
Oh, well, thank you so much for having me on.

Ed Jones 00:52
You know, I say sometimes the that we generally age, not because we wear out, but far more because we rust out. And I know, you know, we all have our sources of information education that we trust. I really like lately, I’ve been listening, Dr. David Sinclair’s podcast on anti aging. But he had a really good analogy. He said, you know, 15 years ago, we didn’t know anywhere near what we know now about what is really behind aging, we were actually mistaken about several concepts and theories. And he said, You know, when he looks at all these animal studies, and you look at a regular mouse, regular mouse lives about two years, a mole mouse lives 20 years, yet they’re cousins to each other. So when you see things like that in nature, I mean, I’m always been intrigued about the why. Why does something happen? Well, because those two mice are very similar, but in not in lifespan. Why would we not look at the the mole rat and say, Okay, celluarly and nutritionally, why is this able to live 10 times longer? That’s the whole concept of what I want us to get into today. What can we understand about the true mechanisms of aging? And then what can we do about it?

Dr. Pavey 02:11
Oh, what a great topic. And I really like the introduction. And I love that analogy of that we rust out.

Ed Jones 02:21
Thank you.

Dr. Pavey 02:21
And looking at, you know, kind of these, these pathways, cellular pathways have what contributes to the aging process. Because right now what we’re trying to do is kind of look into studies that slow the aging process down. Haven’t quite got to age reversal yet, but hopefully in the future that’s what we’re going to be seeing. But there’s a couple of different pathways of interest. I’d like to talk about, like the mTOR pathways. We can also talk about senescence cell burden. I’d like to also talk about, oh, probably the hottest, anti aging, nutrient out there right now NAD?

Ed Jones 03:02
Yes, yes, yes, I did about that. Of course, I take all of the things that you’ve mentioned. And, you know, I just want to read here, something that I just found interesting, because I was doing a tiny bit of research. And Eleanor Roosevelt, of course, long ago said this, and I’m going to have to disagree with her. She said, today is the oldest you’ve ever been. And the youngest you’ll ever be, again, well, on a calendar. That’s true. But I do not believe that we have to just settle for aging. We can do something about this presently that we could not do 10 to 20 and before years ago, and I think it’s very disheartening, that much of the medical community certainly doesn’t have any of this conversation. They’re not trained. It’s not their fault. It’s kind of a system that just is the system. But here we are to train, here we are to learn. So let’s talk about some of these concepts because really when you boil it down to the kind of the the three or four buckets of aging, the mechanisms, the reasons, there’s there, there’s not really 100 There’s really three or four main ones, maybe five, and those are the ones we focus on. So what can people learn about this?

Dr. Pavey 04:09
Absolutely. And I think there is a paradigm shift that’s starting to happen, because I think people are starting to think, you know, what, I don’t think aging is, you know, just inevitable. It’s like the natural process of things. I think people are being more proactive, saying what can I do to make myself healthier? What can I do to you know, chronologically going along, stay healthy? And these really kind of interesting pathways. Did you want to talk about maybe mTOR first?

Ed Jones 04:36
I love mTOR it’s a it’s a crazy word, but I actually Dr. Mercola. I started reading about mTOR many years ago, I’m very fascinated by it. And it’s a concept that I we know is part of this real process of aging.

Dr. Pavey 04:48
Absolutely. So it does stand for why it’s in the literature in two different ways. The M would million I’ve also seen it written as mechanistic and target of rapamycin tor. So this is actually, kind of simplistically what it really is. It’s an important molecule that actually regulates cell growth. So when we’re, you know, in our childlike form, we actually need mTOR to grow into our into our adult form. But once we’re there, we don’t necessarily need so much stimulation for growth. And here’s what may be of interest to your listeners is that when mTOR starts to get a little bit too overactive, it can actually trigger weight gain, but fat weight gain, people are probably familiar with you, as we age, it’s a lot more difficult to lose that kind of body fat, and mTOR, too much like excessive mTOR could actually possibly be behind that. Now, on the flip side, we don’t necessarily want to little mTOR either, because we do need to make sure like our for example, like our stem cells are stimulated to replicate. So we do want to maintain our muscle mass, our tissue density, but mostly, if we’re looking at it, like on a scale, most of us are a little bit heavier on the excess side than on the deficient mTOR side, which can attribute to weight gain.

Ed Jones 06:19
And I know that at least Dr. Mercola made a big deal of this too much protein can alter mTOR to a negative side. Now I’m a big fan of a decent amount of protein, because I work out so hard. And I’m also many of my platforms of information, I really have seen a lot of people who don’t eat enough protein. And as we age, I think that can be a very crucial mistake as we age. So it’s all about balance. Again, everything about nature is is not an exact science, but it’s all about creating a synergy and a balance. And that’s where we will win this race. And again, we’re not going to stop aging, you know, we rent these bodies, they’re going to wear out. But the thing is, and this is my, you know, sad observations and um, I think it’s most people’s, you know, I remember growing up being 15, and 25, and 35. It seems today that most people at 50 ish are like the other people used to be at 70 ish back when I grew up, aging is accelerating for multiple reasons. And we can do something about it. So into what, like diet or nutritional wise, what can we do about him?

Dr. Pavey 07:25
Yes, so one of the ways that we can actually help to balance the scales, so we’re not too much this way, we’re not too much that way, is actually AMPK activation can help to balance kind of tip the scales back into neutral. So AMPK Another exciting, well, it’s an actually an enzyme that life extension has been looking into, it seems for adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase. And I might argue, it’s one of the most important enzymes, cellular enzymes. Life Extension calls it like the master regulator of energy balance, because once AMPK is activated, it does regulate energy in the body. Like, for example, supporting insulin sensitivity, huge component, especially to fat gain. What a lot of people may not know is that when we start gaining weight, when we kind of move into insulin resistance, it’s actually insulin that’s creating the problem. So just to kind of put it simplistically, you know, when we consume like a carbohydrate meal, or we’re eating a little bit of sugar, that sugar gets through the digestive tract into the bloodstream, hits the pancreas, and then the pancreas secretes insulin. And insulin kind of finds its way to our our tissues. And it acts like a key that unlocks the doors to the cells to open up the door so the sugar can get out of the blood and into the the tissue for metabolism. But when we start moving into insulin resistance, what happens is the door doesn’t open, even though insulins right there trying to unlock that, you know, unlike the key it, the doors don’t open. So one of there’s two pieces here, we want to look to see well, why is the door not opening If insulin is there, and oftentimes it’s because AMPK is not activated. Another aspect is if the sugar is still floating in the blood, that will trigger the pancreas to secrete more insulin to try to force the doors open. And insulin is actually an anabolic hormone. It’s not just a key, it actually tells the body to start storing fat storing fat store store store, turning that sugar into fat, and that is what creates that weight gain effect. So the more insulin we have in circulation, the harder it’s going to be to lose weight. So keeping that AMPK activated so we can get those doors open. And then the pancrease says Whoa, okay, there we go. We, you know, we got that sugar out of the bloodstream. We did our job, we can shut down the insulin production for now.

Ed Jones 10:02
You know, I speak about insulin probably hundreds of times as far as the different platforms and even with many, many clients, and I think it is a key to aging gracefully, and staying further disease free. And I really encourage people to do blood testing, because I really find that when people have 10, and over on insulin, fasting insulin, they’re going to have much more difficult time with many parts of the chemistry from cholesterol to their weight gain to their blood sugar and everything. But AMPK it’s new people can take this supplementally?

Dr. Pavey 10:32
Well, AMPK because it’s the enzyme inside of ourselves, but we want to do is take something to help activate it to turn it on. And there’s a couple of different nutrients that have been studied to help do that. One is Gynostemma pentaphyllum, which is an herb, it also you could probably find it I’m listed as joagulin, which is the common name. It’s a it’s a drink as a tea, also, but very common in pill form. And the second nutrient that’s been really well studied is called Tespiritin. It’s an orange fruit extract. So both of those are great ways of supporting AMPK activation from like a nutritional perspective. Although probably the most, like, powerful way of activating AMPK is exercise.

Ed Jones 11:21
Ah, okay.

Dr. Pavey 11:22
Yes, exercise, also calorie restriction. But like for myself, it’s very difficult to be consistent with exercise. And I do try to do intermittent fast, intermittent fasting, but it just is so difficult to maintain. So you kind of for myself, you taking some nutrients, like, you know, some great herbal support, like with Gynostemma pentaphyllum. And has spirit in that really is a little bit more convenient.

Ed Jones 11:52
Yes, yes. And, of course, combining all together would be the ultimate, I know, I take a product called AMPK activator. And it’s, we offer that and I just, you know, that is that has been around a long time. But the science keeps growing on this concept. So again, AMPK is a very important part of the mechanism of aging, we can do it by intermittent fasting, which I certainly highly recommend and or time restricted eating would be another word, if you can just eat in 10 hour window, don’t eat for 14 at least three days a week, that can be very, very beneficial. And then, you know, I am an exercise nut. I mean, my daughter makes fun of me. She said, Dad, I just didn’t get your gene for the gym. I just can’t do it. I just can’t. And you know, there are people who are important people, not I’m every single day, five days a week for the past 52 years I have been in the gym. And it’s just, you know, it’s like me brushing my teeth. And when I go to the gym, it’s the same thing. But I know people are not all wired like that. So those who just can do the very best they can, but they can’t do it that level, we can add AMPK to their supplement protocol and or some of that time restricted eating. So that’s one of the buckets of aging. What would be next?

Dr. Pavey 13:00
Oh, let’s start. Oh, how about senescence cells?

Ed Jones 13:04
Oh, yes. I love that concept. Because it makes such sense. Even to a non scientist it does.

13:11
Yes. So senescence cells. So how it kind of works is, every time our cells divide, we lose a little bit of that telomere length, you we you know, most of us are kind of familiar with that. So when the cell reaches the end of its lifespan, when the telomeres are super short, and it can’t divide anymore, what ends up happening is the body then induces that process called apoptosis kind of moves. Its program cellular death is sometimes what it’s referred to, it just removes like damaged cells that are no longer functional, trying to make room for healthy cell division to kind of fill in the gaps. Kind of I kind of think about it as real estate, you know, it’s prime property there, that if you know, if a cell has reached the end of its lifespan, we need to move it out. So we can fill it in with some healthier cells. But if that cell does not apetios.

Ed Jones 14:07
Which means a naturally die.

Dr. Pavey 14:09
Yeah, it’s not cleared out what happens because it’s no longer dividing. It’s it’s no longer you’re actually being functional in the tissue. And this is what we call a senescence cell. And because it’s really technically not really alive anymore, and it’s not really dead because it hasn’t been cleared out. It’s also been referred to as a zombie cell.

Ed Jones 14:31
I’ve never heard that.

Dr. Pavey 14:32
Oh, yeah, that I’ve seen that in the literature. So and actually, it’s a pretty good analogy, because it’s really not doing much help for the tissue, it’s actually getting in the way and creating a lot of inflammation.

Ed Jones 14:45
And it gets in the way because if it wasn’t there, then a newer, fresher younger cell would replace it right?

Dr. Pavey 14:51
Correct. Yes. In fact, this is one of the mechanisms of our organs aging. Now a few senescent cells here and there probably probably not going to create too much problem for our tissues, like for example, like our kidneys or our heart because senescence cells, they can accumulate anywhere. But when they start to pop up here and there and they’re in there and next thing, you know, we’ve got this huge accumulation of senescence cells that can interfere with organ function.

Ed Jones 15:19
Makes total sense. So what do we do about that?

Dr. Pavey 15:21
Yeah, so there’s a couple different nutrients also that can help to stimulate the apoptosis kind of that clearing. So probably the most potent nutrient is fisetin, which is found it and strawberries. It is currently what’s found in the literature, it is the most potent,senolytic, and what do we mean by senolytics? Is seno would be senescence cells. lytic means destroying, getting rid of lysing it getting out of there. So fisetin, number one. I’ve heard it pronounced both ways.

Ed Jones 15:53
buys it. And I take fisetin everyday because people who really know me are saying, Of course you do. And you take everything. No, I don’t think everything. But I interviewed a guy from New Zealand, who’s a pharmacist about a probably a year ago, and we we posted it, I think on nutritional site. And the first time I ever heard that word was from him. He i He had a book called The eight pillars of aging or something like that. I was reading I was like, What is this word? I don’t even know how to pronounce it. And but since that day, I have been so sold on the premise and philosophy of how this compound works. Because it again makes total sense. I mean, skeptics will say, you know, I want to see, you know, 3000 studies on it. I’m sorry, I’m 65 years old, I don’t have time to wait to 85 to get an absolute proof because the one thing I know is it safe. One, we have to make sure that these things are safe, we’re not going to deal with anti aging drugs and nutrients that could potentially kill us that makes no sense at all. Visited or fisetin. First off, Okay. Yep. And I’m doing double dosing because I don’t want these senile cells to remain in my body. And be like, if my tires were worn out on my car, and I have no tread left. I can’t put new ones on till I get the old ones off. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to get some of these old cells out, especially in the organs, because dysfunctional organs are going to create havoc . So fisetin and of course, strawberries, we still I’m still value foods greatly. The problem is strawberries are still in the Dirty Dozen list of all the pesticides, one of the heaviest sprayed, and you can’t wash it off. And there’s nothing you can do about it except buy organic, wonderful. You don’t want to take the product, well try to get organic strawberries need a good number? Because it’s going to take a good number, isn’t it?

Dr. Pavey 17:38
Yes. Oh, absolutely.

Ed Jones 17:39
But it still adds to the mix. So five to 10 is is one of those supplements that I will stay with based on already the current research that seems to be very, very dominant about its mechanism of action, because that is replacing old sales is like replacing the tires in your car, we got to do it. And I mean, what age do people would they probably want to start considering some of these things.

Dr. Pavey 18:03
Actually, that kind of number is usually 40. Yeah, that’s when we start to notice changes.

Ed Jones 18:12
I talk about the fact that I think Mother Nature has put together our circuitry for the main purpose of procreation, which is of course, having babies and when Mother Nature kind of discards us after that point in time, so we have to step up to the plate and do more things that we didn’t have to do before 40, because we had these protective mechanisms because nature protected us to have more babies so we can continue the species. It doesn’t really care if I was 40. So that’s why I’m on the gameplan of all the right things, and still enjoying life, I will not live in a cave and I will not live in fear. I just know that doing the best I can is the best I can. So okay, we’ve covered those two, what would be next?

Dr. Pavey 18:49
Well, actually another nutrient that actually starts to deplete when we start to hit 40 is NAD.

Ed Jones 18:56
My favorite is NAD.

Dr. Pavey 18:58
Oh, absolutely. So, um, it’s kind of interesting. When I was in school, I’m learning medical biochemistry, NAD seemed to be everywhere.

Ed Jones 19:11
Oh, really?

19:12
And it didn’t dawn on me. Wow, you know, this is really important. Until I was looking into your, your healthy aging longevity. When you’re looking at the research and saying, Wow, it makes sense. It’s involved in so many different chemical processes. It’s actually involved in every single process for making energy. So whether you’re eating fat or carbohydrates, either way, you need an ad to create energy out of that.

Ed Jones 19:45
I love it and we’ll talk about it and people listening this is not NACwhich has become very popular for lung health and of course all the different infectious going around. I’m a huge believer in NAC’s benefit too, but it’s not an anti aging. NAD which has some cousins to it mmm and other ones, but in ad itself is going to protect the mitochondrial function is that part of when the mitochondria is a source of the biggest probably source of fast aging, we damage this part of our cell, which is the energy production part of a cell. So now I know that, can we eat foods that increase NAD or do we just really have to supplement of course, I’m supplementing again within a D, because it’s too valid to ignore.

Dr. Pavey 20:29
It’s very difficult to get precursors, like direct precursors to making NAD from food. So really kind of what it starts off. Now this is not a direct precursor, but the very beginning is actually niacin. But it takes multiple steps to get to NAD itself. So what we can do in terms of like, for example, like oral supplementation would be like taking which is actually two steps away from making NAD rather than the multiple steps from the niacin. So beside that, we can actually get it from like, from dairy products, but in small quantities, micro dose,

Ed Jones 21:15
A question I think some people may have is, you know, someone says, I have high cholesterol, what can I do for it? And again, you know, we’re not treating medical conditions, but we want to empower people with knowledge. Okay, we say, well, you can do amla, which I love. And we could do, let’s say, red yeast rice, while they go get paperwork. And they say, Okay, look how much I’ve improved. What, there’s not really a definite way to look at this aging with blood testing, is it or is there?

Dr. Pavey 21:41
That one’s tricky, because there really isn’t like one biomarker that’s gonna tell you, you’re kind of where you’re going in terms of age.

Ed Jones 21:49
So we have to go some of this with the faith of the science, the faith of the science that’s is still limited at this point. But again, we know because of the depth of studies, like the mole rat, and the regular rat, and all of these other studies with NAD, that if this is the mechanism of aging, and these things are safe. I’m a gambler. I used to love to go to Vegas, well, I’m gonna gamble on these supplements, because one is I know they’re safe. They’re not terribly expensive. What do I have to lose? And I can add a few more pills. And maybe, and again, I will say this constantly, I’m not looking to live 90 years old, I want quality of life, I want to go to bed well and wake up dead. That’s my, that’s my philosophy, go to bed well and wake up dead. Of course, that’s everyone’s dream. But you know, I don’t want that last 12 years of just decrepit health and just struggling and always having people take care of me. That’s my goal. And I think most people listening who are past 45, they would have similar goals. So putting together a toolkit a plan, with not only these things we’re talking about, but of course, you know, the exercise and, and the right foods and the blank, blank, blank. And of course, that’s one thing we do here is try to empower people with knowledge. And always I used to say all the time, and I separate the world in two classes of people, learners and non learners, I’m sorry, people, if you’re a non learner, and you’re in this world, which is pretty darn toxic, you’re going to age probably really fast, unless you are that one and maybe 5000 people who genetically have some miraculous genetic structure that they can do everything wrong and still live a long time. Most of us aren’t like that, I’m not going to take a chance I am. So I’m adding the things we’re talking about and have added those. So we’ve got three options now for people, and all three of those work on different mechanisms don’t they?

Dr. Pavey 23:33
They sure do.

Ed Jones 23:33
So if someone only did these three things, you’ve got three of the buckets of aging, that you’re actually filling so that we hope to slow things down. And again, we just You just said you know, you can’t define this with a really functional blood test. And that makes people in the real black and white science community kind of question things because they want that accountability, feedback. But we can’t really see it. And we’re not going to say it for some time. You know, long ago, I heard someone saying I just really resonated with me. What if I and I’ve said this to people? What if I gave you a pill that would make you ate and make you go younger? One day for every day you took it? How long would it be before you felt it? That pretty much hit me hard? Because you know what, if it was actually making me one day younger, it would be several years before I would say I felt it. So I have to trust that this is going to help slow down aging because we’re not going back a day younger every day I take it I just want to slow it down. I want to be 70 but more like 50 That’s what I feel like now. I’m 65 and actually feel like I’m 40 I do most of the time I get a little hobble hit. But other than that I’m feeling really, really, really good. And it’s because of nutrients and diet. It just is it’s not by luck. So there’s three days or anything else supplementally That would be very important for people?

Dr. Pavey 24:50
If you can do three, you’re working on three different things. You’re really covering your bases. Yeah, but yeah, of course they’re in there. big scheme of things, if you’re working on these kind of longevity pathways, you may not necessarily get a lot of benefit if you’re not taking care of just your baseline health. So and this is where, like the lab testing really comes into play, keeping, like testing your insulin, but it’s not often tested, which boggles me. Because you know, the higher the insulin level, the more problematic it really is, versus just looking at glucose alone. And then, of course, keeping your blood pressure under control, looking at, you know, making sure your lipids are under control. So I mean, we want to make sure that your biomarkers for just overall health are nice and in balance, even maybe doing some hormone testing neurotransmitter testing some of these more innovative tests as well. I’m currently a NAD testing is only available for research. But hopefully, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it may be commercially available, hopefully, in the next maybe couple of years. Because that would be great to monitor that. Yeah,

Ed Jones 26:01
That would help me help everyone know, the dosing, it helps you know, how much is really right. And if I’m low, like, like, I started checking pregnenolone, you know, it’s the kind of like the grandmother of kind of hormones, mine was pathetically low, how would I’ve known that if I didn’t check it? And so, you know, supplemented a little bit, just bring it back to average, and all these little pieces to the puzzle, it’s kind of like to use the analogy of an orchestra if you if you had an orchestra with 500 musicians in it, and the music was simply not in tune and had really not much beauty to it anymore, you’d have to go in and really evaluate many of these musicians, you wouldn’t go in and find one person screwing the music up. And that’s with aging, we have to look at these different components in order to create the beautiful music of chemistry that slows aging down. And we all know people who have aged very gracefully, and part of that can be luck and part of his genetics, but most of the time, it is going to take effort for most of us, we are not blessed with that, that halo of being able to detoxify everything and have slow damages to mitochondrial function. And again, I don’t wanna take the chance on it, because by the time that there are windows of opportunity that we lose if we wait too long. Absolutely. So

Dr. Pavey 27:12
Yeah, very well said. And, oh, just a note of senescence cells. Again, not a commercially available, you know, test to say, Oh, you have this many senescent cells. Yeah, but one thing that we can do is, you know, kind of monitor these basic numbers, like, for example, the kidney function tests.

Ed Jones 27:33
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Pavey 27:33
Looking at like, GFR. Very easy test to do your monitoring to see, okay, how is our kidney filtration doing? Is it is it improving? Because if there’s a lot of senescence, cell accumulation, probably going to interfere with filtration. So we can see these, like maybe small changes, like you said, you know, you’re one day healthier? Yeah.

Ed Jones 27:52
Well, you know, we do a tremendous amount of blood testing through an independent lab at Nutrition World. They’re here a one day a week and looking at I’m so glad you said that, because it’s it’s so blatantly clear when you look at that kind of blood work between a 20 year old, a 40 year old, 60 year old and an 80 year old normally. But I am so blessed to be able to have clients that some people have done everything the right way. And I can look at that 72 year old and say, as I did just yesterday, you have a kidney function of a 21 year old, you have a liver function of a 21 year old that shows that they’re on an anti aging program, whether they know it or not, doesn’t it? Because your GFR I mean, most people, you know, I kind of say it kind of, you know, like a lot of six year olds have a GFR 60 is not the best number because young people have at 120. It’s the filtration rate of the kidney, I’m going to really take that to heart, because that would be at this point the most is not direct, but it’s an indirect evaluation of damage and aging that’s happening in the body, isn’t it? Absolutely. So that’s fantastic. And you know, Albert Einstein, and it’s not all about nutrition, because there’s other parts to aging, which is our emotional and spirit part of us. And he said, Albert Einstein said, do not grow old, no matter how long you live, never cease to stand, like curious children before the great mystery from which we are born. So there’s a whole bunch of other stuff we need to embrace because I can tell you with my experience, I think there’s two people who live under extreme umbrellas of fear, which we have more now than we’ve ever had in the history of mankind. And those that are not happy and don’t have music in their heart. They can still live a long time, but it’s generally going to take away their lifespan. If not, it certainly takes away the music in their heart. So we have to put together many multiple plans and I’d so appreciate you coming all the way from out of town and traveling up here flying up here to be with us at Nutrition World’s podcast. This is so informative and it’s firing me up even more for the rest of my journey which is helping to educate myself. Yes I’m selfish because I want to slow my aging but at the same time I’m an educator and I’m passionate to help other people so thank you Dr Pavey for being here at Nutrition World’s podcast.

Dr. Pavey 30:14
Thank you.