Pam Strand (00:00):
Welcome to the Longevity Gym. Hello, my name is Pam Strand. I'm your podcast host. The Longevity Gym podcast is about living longer, stronger, and better, and it's based upon my work and studies over the last 20 years. 20 years ago, I launched my personal training and life coaching career, and my work and my studies have always been guided by my curiosity of how the mind and body work and how they work together. I've also always been curious about how do we get better as we go. In the last three years, I became aware of and began to study the science of longevity. I thought it a perfect overarching theme to my work and my interest, but more importantly, it seemed to provide the answer to questions people have as they consider their fitness journeys in their middle years and beyond. Specifically, they're asking, how do I not age before it's time, and how do I stay strong and healthy for as long as possible?
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Fortunately, for all of us, scientific research has begun to dig in and answer those questions, particularly with respect to what is happening in the body as it ages and to how we can intervene to slow and even reverse the biological aging process. Aging is the most common aspect, underlying aspect of chronic disease, and scientists continue to unravel and unwrap age-related changes in the body in order to identify how the process can be changed for the better to reduce disease and add healthy years to our lives. In this episode, I start a three-part conversation on biological aging and how we can support our body so the process progresses as slowly as possible. First, let's look at aging. In the human body, aging is a progressive time-related process that brings physiological changes to the body. The three main changes are these. One, it creates a state where cells stop dividing and stop doing their jobs and ultimately contribute to aging. This is called cellular senescence. The second main change is a decline in biological functions such as metabolism, muscle strength, joint mobility, bone density, cognitive function, and vision and hearing. I'm sure none of these are a surprise to most of you listening to this podcast. The third main change is a loss in the body's ability to adapt to metabolic stress, or in other words, to be able to adapt and adjust to situations which disrupt the balance of the chemical processes within the body, particularly those involved in producing and
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Utilizing the energy the body needs to operate well, there is no one single cause of aging like the body itself. Aging is a multifaceted, multi-dimensional, interwoven process. In general, though human aging is characterized by a low grade chronic level of inflammation that has been termed inflammaging. Inflammaging is caused by a breakdown of the metabolic function of the cell, moving it into a state of dysfunction or senescence, which I just described. This breakdown then is compounded because cells impact tissues which impact organs, and overall the breakdown places demands on the internal systems of the body, especially those whose roles are to respond to and repair damage.
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The body is designed to be resilient, to be able to adapt to metabolic stress, but aging does override this ability. The scientific quest is to understand what is happening at the cellular and systemic level so we can understand how we can influence the process and get the body back to its natural, healthy, steady state. Scientists are identifying ways to influence the process with medicines and supplements, but I'm not going to adjust those as they are not my area of expertise and are outside the scope of my credentials. In this conversation, however, I want to talk about the lifestyle causes and solutions to biological aging. The good news is that 75% of the correction to the aging process can be made with lifestyle changes. Only 25% of the aging process is dictated by our genetic makeup. I am most familiar with a study published in 2013, which identified nine hallmarks of aging or nine characteristics of the aging process.
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This study is the most widely accepted theory of aging. The nine hallmarks that the study identified collectively are the key aspects of the aging process, and the study presents them in three groups. The first group is called the primary hallmarks, which explain the underlying causes of cellular damage. The second group is called the antagonistic hallmarks, and they represent the responses to the cellular damage. The third group is called the integrative hallmarks and involve the systemic response to cellular damage. In today's episode, I wanted to discuss the first group, the primary hallmarks. In the next two podcasts, I will cover the antagonistic and the integrative hallmarks, but before we dive in, I want to share some important notes. What I am sharing is not medical advice, and it's not meant to be any type of diagnosis or suggestion for treatments. Instead, what I am sharing is information and how we can best support the body to be stronger and healthier and more resilient as we age, and certainly what I'm sharing is not to replace anything that you already know is healthy and safe for your body and even on the other end things that you know that don't work and are unhealthy for you.
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So let's get started. We're going to talk about the primary hallmarks of aging. The first is an increased amount of DNA damage, which leads to genetic mutations and an increased risk of cancer. Our DNA naturally breaks and repairs throughout our life, but when it cannot or is not repaired, it ends up being harmful to the health of our cells. Major known ways for DNA to get damaged are UV rays, chemicals, internal oxidative stress, and tobacco. The best known ways to protect DNA are shown to be intermittent fasting, mild and moderately intense exercise and to refrain from smoking, exercise, and not smoking are well known to be correlated with health. But I wanted to spend a few moments speaking to intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting refers to time restricted eating where there are designated windows of time during the day to be eating and not to be eating.
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From a cellular health perspective, intermittent fasting supports the body's processes to clear out the senescent cells or those cells which are no longer working as they should be. Intermittent. Fasting does this by triggering the processes within the body to get rid of cells that have been damaged beyond repair. There are so many approaches to intermittent fasting, but I have learned the most basic and effective approach is a 12 hour fasting window. An eating schedule for a 12 hour window might look like this, breakfast at 6:00 AM, lunch at noon, and dinner at 6:00 PM I have also learned that a tremendous amount of research shows benefits of fasting windows longer than 12 hours, but doing too much or going to extremes can shift a beneficial process into a detrimental one. So take care if you want to go to a greater fasting window. This is not my area of expertise and is beyond the scope of my credentials. If this is an area however you would like to explore more detail, I recommend checking in with your doctor or a credentialed dietician or nutritionist.
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The second primary hallmark is telomere attrition. Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes, like the cap at the end of the shoe laces, telomeres protect the coating regions of our chromosomes from damage. These ends also act like clocks that control the number of replications a cell can make. Telomere attrition is the gradual loss of these caps slowly leading to a dwindling population of cells in vital organs affecting the health and function of our organs. The most common causes are lifestyle related, eating high inflammatory foods such as highly processed foods, foods with high sugar content, and highly refined carbohydrates. Other lifestyle causes are stress and sedentary lifestyles. The best ways to support the lengthening of telomeres are stress reduction, exercise, frequent movement throughout the day and nutrient dense foods. Nutrient dense foods are foods that provide a high level of nutrients relative to their caloric content.
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They are foods such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and lean proteins. They are also foods that do not include high levels of additives with respect to stress, it's important to note that aging disrupts our system's balanced way of functioning, which causes a stress response in our bodies. So when we look at our lifestyles, we want to look at how, if at all our lifestyle choices add stress or more disruption to our systems. If you're interested in learning more about stress and the body, I invite you to listen to episodes five and six of this podcast. The third primary hallmark is age-related changes in the way our genes express themselves. Our DNA provide the hard-coded instructions that get passed from generation to generation and that govern how our bodies operate. The DNA also ensures our bodies survival. It takes a thousand years for any hard-coded changes to occur in our genes, so to quickly pass survival information from generation to generations, markers are placed on areas of the genes that influence how genes are turned on or off over time. These changes are called epigenetic changes. When age-related epigenetic changes
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Occur, our genes parts of our genetic code are closed down, so when cells go to replicate, they don't get the complete set of instructions and do not replicate correctly. This harms the functions of our cells and increases the risk of cancer and other related age-related diseases. The most common causes of these age-related changes in how our genes express themselves are lifestyle driven, stress diet, environmental exposures such as toxins and pollutants. The good news about age-related changes and really for any epigenetic changes is that they can be erased through healthy lifestyle choices. These include stress reduction exercise in intermittent fasting. You may notice a pattern here, and I'll talk to that in a moment, but it's important to note that when our body's internal environment improves, the epigenetic changes can be erased and our genes express themselves in healthier ways.
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The fourth and final primary hallmark of cellular damage is the loss of proteostasis. This means that the cells lose the ability to make proteins, which are the building blocks of everything in the body with this loss of ability to produce or make proteins. Protein molecules can also be malformed and combine incorrectly with other protein molecules. This is one of the root causes of age-related disease, including Alzheimer's disease, but it happens in other parts of the body as well. The most common causes of this seem to be systematic stress to the internal environment in the body. Science hasn't found many ways to correct or help this issue, but heat shock seems to help such as use of asana. But if you do that, be sure to spend no more than 30 minutes a day.
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At this point. I want to reiterate that what I have shared here is not diagnosis and not recommendations for treatments. I share this information in the spirit of helping all of us understand what is happening or could be happening in the body as we age, and how we might support our bodies in a way to slow or reverse the aging process. Intensity and types of exercise foods that are consumed. Intermittent fasting use of sauna should follow what is safe for you and your health. If you have questions, be sure to check in with your medical doctor or medical professional. With that said, I truly believe that the more we know about our bodies, the more powerful we can be in making choices that benefit our health and longevity. While the ideas I have shared
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In this episode may sound like nothing new, what feels new, at least to me, is knowing that these lifestyle choices can impact our health at the deepest level, at the cellular level, and to me, that is a profound piece of information because if we find ways to implement these things in our lives in a safe and healthy way, science is telling us that doing so will likely have a transformative effect on our health in the aging process in our body. If you have listened to my previous podcast, you may remember me saying that it's estimated that we have 100 trillion cells in our body and a little improvement in their function leads to a significant improvement in our health, at least in my estimation. For 100 trillion bits of improvement sounds like a tremendous shift for the better in our longevity. I think this is why, and I have no scientific evidence that shows this to be true, but I think it is why some studies show that aging can be reversed by three to four years in just eight weeks of focus on eating healthy, exercising, managing stress, and practicing mindfulness.
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Taking care of ourselves helps us take care of ourselves. Let me say that again because the words sound the same. By taking care of ourselves, C-E-L-L-S, we are taking care of ourselves, S-E-L-V-E-S. It's the ultimate form of self-care, and I invite you to tune in to my next episode when I continue the conversation about aging and continue to help answer the question, what can I do to not age before it's time? If you want to make sure to stay in the loop as I post new episodes, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter. I send an email about every two weeks and highlight podcast episodes, and I will occasionally email more frequently when I have news about my upcoming offerings. You can use the link in the show notes below to add your name to my email list or visit my website, strand fitness online.com. You'll see a signup form on my homepage. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Longevity Gym on any podcast app that you might use. Thank you for tuning in, and I will see you soon.