Kind: captions
Language: en
people who meditate regularly are
biologically younger people who meditate
regularly are biologically younger but
just one meditation experience can still
have favorable influence
dr cara fitzgerald welcome to the show
thank you i am thrilled to be here i'm
really excited to have you you are
dealing with an area that i have become
absolutely obsessed with which
so methylation which we'll we'll explain
to people what that is in a minute but
the idea of my epigenome
is really controlling how my genetics
express themselves and that becomes
really important that had been on my
radar for a long time but i couldn't
imagine what was actually happening
and so your book is called younger you
which
phenomenal book thank you and it really
goes into detail on this idea of what
methylation is and i think even though
like for anybody hearing that for the
first time i promise we're going to
bring you in you're going to love it by
the end of this and you will understand
why it matters but walk us through
the what i'll call the three layers
genetics
epigenetics and then what methylation is
and what brings them all together yeah
for sure
so
you know genetic our genetic material is
static it's not changing we inherit some
from mom and some from dad and and it's
kind of packaged relatively carefully
and and it doesn't change you know and
and can you explain the packaging part
that's where this all starts to get
interesting and people that know it well
sort of throw that one off the cuff how
how is one's
dna which i assume is what you mean
yes yeah well i mean we have a lot of it
you know if we end to end i think it
what wraps around the world twice if we
did like all if we spread it all out
from all of our cells one single strand
within a cell is about six feet it's i
mean it's a ton it's like it's you know
but it's it's it's microscopic
um
we have to
wrap it up extraordinarily carefully to
fit it into a cell i mean it's just it's
mind-boggling uh and so then so it's
it's wrapped around proteins called
histones and then histones are grouped
in four so there's just rap rap rap rap
rap grouped in four and these little
groups of four are nucleosomes and then
they're packaged together in what's
called a chromatin and then ultimately a
chromosome
what's extraordinary is
that wrapping helps regulate so this is
the epigenetics that you're talking
about so we have to we need to open it
to allow a given gene to be expressed
and then we kind of wrap it and tuck it
back in or we keep it on and
so again gene dna
genetics epi above the gene so it's all
of these variables that go into
um allowing genes to turn on and turn
off it's all of the all of the
biochemical marks or imprints whatever
you want to call them and there's you
know many of them a hundred plus
that are in working together engaged in
allowing genes to be on and off and is
it the sirtuins that are doing the
actual reading of the dna and putting
the um
the methylation markers on the dna is
that what does that
no the methylation markers are placed
down on the cytosine nucleotide
using dna methyl transferase
and then it's and there's a family of
dna methyl transferase enzymes that will
do it at different times i mean i think
this is where we can get in and have our
lifestyle actually
influence what happens during cell
division all right so to bring this back
up a level for people that probably now
feel like i've drugged them down in the
weeds too much so what
what became really interesting for me is
to okay we've got this careful packaging
of the dna yeah and the way that we
express or
fail to express
a gene within our dna
is by wrapping it so essentially hiding
it and saying don't read this yes and in
your book you said something really
interesting which is that if the dna are
the the language of our genetics the
um methylation is the punctuation and so
it says stop reading here
line break this is a new paragraph so
this is an eye cell this is a heart cell
this is a skin cell and oh by the way
you're in the eye so i sell express
yourself
and so you've got all of that in one
sort of without methylation would be one
run-on sentence yeah that's right and so
the methylation goes in and says and god
knows what would be turned on yeah it
would just be a big mess and we think
that this big mess is part of the aging
journey but yeah you begin losing your
punctuation yeah and now or
it's distorted it's not it's not where
it's supposed to be the word is
misspelled or out of place in the wrong
paragraph see that's really helpful for
me so once i had that paradigm that
understanding of okay my
the dna says you know your eye should be
this big versus my eyes a different size
my heart cell functions like this yours
functions like that so we each have our
own um
way that all of this is going to express
like you said half from mom half from
dad but then over the process of aging
that gets oh i forget the word wonky it
goes wonky i think to use the word
my scientific word is wonky
so that begins to break down
um
when it's breaking down
what exactly is happening the
methylation marks are literally just
missing
so a few things are happening and that's
an awesome question i think
mechanistically we have some idea but
why it's happening is
a really hot topic right now in the
scientific community so when you look at
the epigenome of a younger individual as
compared to an older individual it's
it's it's fascinating like genes that
are on in youth are inhibited in age and
um
it tends to be that genes that are
helpful and beneficial and are on in
youth and then genes that are actually
and those same genes are turned off in
age but it's predictable across all of
us i mean you can't avoid these changes
i think unless we're working on it right
now so you can't avoid them yet right
that's right we can't avoid it well and
we're starting to learn i mean this is
what i wrote about we're starting to
learn you know lifestyle interventions
that can help
you know prevent the extent of the
breakdown and rewind them in some cases
yeah that's right that's right
as looking at the biological age clock
so the question i think is with this
predictability is it just
uh
damage from wear and tear in life or is
there some sort of a programmed element
to this that's driving the aging journey
are we programmed to die exactly which
is as predictable and sort of elegant in
its structure as you know
developing a human during embryogenesis
or early infancy when we're when you
know infants are are just aging at this
accelerated price they're like super
humans you know i have a toddler at home
and actually she's turning four but um
so she's moving out but
[Laughter]
but just watching her so thinking
epigenetically and watching my kid you
know when she was an infant sort of heel
like you can see her skin knitting
before before your eyes i mean it's
or her learning new language or her
going from sitting to standing to
walking i mean it's all happening at
this
record pace and it's and this
developmental
uh this accelerated developmental place
is part of her epigenetic journey you
know as part of her aging journey and
that changes over time and then we hit
maturation and sexual maturation puberty
etc and then you know women hit
pre-menopause and or and perry and post
and on and on and all these are driven
epigenetically and then we've got this
aging phenomena where things break down
where you know we're at risk of
developing cancer and dementia and
cardiovascular disease and diabetes etc
and when you look at the epigenome it
looks like it's it looks like it's
programmed in there
it's something that you know all of us
thinking about it would like to change
and have some control over yeah so
that's a really interesting blend of the
philosophy and the science so
if we are pre-programmed to die
what are the markers that do that so i
really want to understand
this the the idea of methylation so
i'm realizing now as i'm formulating
this question that i have created an
image in my head
of like a
dollop of glue basically that just says
you know stop here
one is
is that
what it looks like because your book
goes into this idea very extensively of
methyl donors so things that you eat
that
generate they're they're building blocks
of the goop as i'm imagining it yeah um
that creates the ability for the body to
put those markers
so you have
material needed to put markers yes and
then you have the
um
placing of the markers in a way that
promotes longevity versus dying yeah so
help me understand those two elements so
what is it that gives us the methylation
and then
what
in this paradigm where we assume it's
pre-programmed even if we're just doing
a thought experiment right now yeah um
where does it get moved from and to that
begins this
experience of aging so
methylation there are hundreds of of
methyl transferase enzymes these guys
are putting some methylation's a whole
bunch of different things like a lot
it's a carbon and three hydrogens
they're you know ubiquitous in in nature
and our body just you know we evolved
using methyl methyl groups for a lot of
things a lot of really important stuff
the same at the molecular level how do
they end up being so many different
things well by the it depends on what
enzyme is
is using it so there's a methylation
cycle
that's worrying in our body all of the
time and this is where we're using b12
and folate and betaine and and and
choline etc to produce the universal
methyl donor so this is a cofactor this
works with the enzyme and it's called
esodential methionine so methylation
cycle is worrying to our body and
incidentally we become less effective at
this as we age for a variety of reasons
and we can talk about that
and secondarily global hypomethylation
of the epigenome is actually is a
phenomenon so if you were to weigh or if
you were to weigh all the methyl groups
on our dna you know in an aging
individual as opposed to a young
individual they'll have less a net less
so globally they're just producing less
less and therefore it's being used on
and one thing correct me if i'm wrong
methylation is used to repair
dna so if it breaks and it broke
somewhere where now a missing piece of
punctuation is gone i need to
re-methylate that to say oh yeah
remember you're an eye cell
so i need to hide yes we do in part yes
and the folate cycle which is part of
the methylation group gets in there and
helps with dna repair too there's
there's a lot of there's a lot of pieces
in the dna repair puzzle so so
methylation cycle is always is always
worrying along we're making this
cofactor acid sami we call it and then
cme works with the methyl transferase
enzymes all the hundreds of them in the
body
and you know my focus has been dna
methylation um and so cme is used there
so we want to keep this methylation
cycle worrying efficiently all the time
at any level like my my my kiddo my
toddler you know she needs to be
accessing loads of methyl groups as well
like we just all through life i mean
this is one of the reasons that we
prescribe
folate during pregnancy you know and
even preconception like we really want
to be thinking about making sure this is
happening so um methylation needs to be
moving forward but we we don't and we'll
talk about this we don't necessarily
just want to throw a ton of vitamins at
it um you know we'd all we would have
already discovered the fountain of youth
right if that was going to be successful
we could just take a ton of folate and
well the reason that we even connect
those ideas is because the vitamins are
the precursor that allows helping make
it yeah so so but we want to eat these
in our food and in some cases take
vitamins so we want to be thinking about
the methyl donor cycle we want to make
sure we've got enough
sam we want to make sure methylation is
happening and we do that you know just
keeping our methylation cycle humming
and then on the other hand we want to
work on directing where those muscle
groups are going and that is
what we think
uh may be the role of polyphenols you
know of the culture you get from plants
yeah that's right
they seem to influence the dna
methyltransferase enzymes and perhaps
uh support placement of methyl groups
where we want them to just put a point
on that for a second so from an
evolutionary standpoint we have evolved
to eat plants
and
the idea of thinking of these as
signaling molecules i think becomes very
important so literally it gets inside
your body and it will
say so i've heard it referred to as
nutrition partitioning
so it's like nutrient partitioning so
hey it's i'm a traffic cop right so i'm
saying you go here you go over here
but it's something i eat is it that it's
the presence of certain polyphenols
tells my body to do the direction or the
mere presence of those polyphenols do
they make the polyphenols make it into
my bloodstream they influence the
behavior of the enzyme so going back to
the dna polyphenols in my bloodstream
yeah they should be yeah some of them
would be measurable yeah i mean some of
them are transformed by our
our microbiome and they become secondary
compounds but yeah this episode is
sponsored by athletic greens get a free
one-year supply of vitamin d and five
free travel packs with your first
purchase
simply visit athleticgreens.com
impact theory now enjoy the episode
it's so weird this is so complicated
this is like some alien invasion type
stuff
that's really fun but really like the
more i'm beginning to understand it and
trust me i am well aware my knowledge is
so surface compared to yours but
the more i understand this more i'm like
god man this is like really
intricate yeah and because it's so
intricate and complicated i'm really
surprised that what i eat
can have such a profound impact in fact
i want to give people one of the punch
lines of the book you did an eight-week
intervention which is like a blip a blip
that's so short
and in eight weeks you were able to get
people to see on what they call the
horror bath clock yeah which is a clock
of biological age
uh to go backwards three years yes which
is insanity in eight weeks just based
did you i can't remember
exercise was part of it yes so it's diet
and exercise a modest exercise
prescription
meditation twice daily 10 minutes
minimum
diet we we gave them additional greens
powder some more of those polyphenols we
gave them a probiotic and we wanted them
to sleep well so we focused on sleep
hygiene as well so those five variables
we worked with that's so bananas to me
and so the
oftentimes i'll have a conversation with
somebody before the camera starts
rolling and then we'll hit on something
so interesting i'm like you know we
should say that on camera and that's
when we'll start
you said i should be testing all of my
um internal biological markers because i
do all this weird stuff whether it's
cold exposure
yeah i mean you you you do it yes i do
the reason that i haven't is one
time like if somebody would just show up
at my house and draw blood or whatever i
would do it like no problem and then the
other is i have one really bad strategy
and that's i am i am always trying to
ask how much stress can i endure
and so when i think about longevity
i know like i don't drink i don't smoke
i don't do drugs but i do stress yeah
and so i'm a little worried about what
my horowath clock is going so you
haven't done your biological age yet i
haven't i i do want to and admittedly it
is the friction of having to leave but
if i wasn't worried about the answer i
would have gone out of my way to figure
it out um
but stress does concern me and i steer
by how well i sleep and so when i get
into a period where my because i never
set an alarm literally i mean i had a
4am flight i would set an alarm but
barring that yeah i wake up when i wake
up yes but as i get stressed or excited
my sleep will reduce sure
and so
i'm always a little especially right now
i am i'm really going hard at this
particular moment yeah and so i'm a wee
bit uh are you meditating though like
yes yeah you do yeah i don't like when
they say if you uh
don't have five minutes to meditate
you're the person who most needs
meditation yes i believe in that so
aggressively that yeah i meditate even
in fact i meditate more in my hyper
stressful periods than i do when my life
is more even keel
because i am so aware
one quality of life is so hugely
impacted by meditation and then to my
performances yeah yeah yeah let's really
get deep on it for a second i don't know
let's assume that you're right
that we are pre-programmed to die yeah
and so now i'm looking at it from an
evolutionary standpoint i'm saying okay
it's a really stressful environment if
it's a really stressful environment we
gotta get rid of these old [ __ ]
because they're gonna take resources so
let's just speed things up a little bit
yes and uh get them out of the way
so that we have enough resources for the
next
generation if i'm right that would make
predictions
such that people would live for a
shorter period of time now i'm setting
you up but
if i'm right would it not predict that
if you were pregnant let's say during a
stressful time
that
those children would live shorter lives
that it's been demonstrated i mean it's
already been demonstrated
like you can look at the dutch hunger
winter or i mean of course there was
food famine another kind of a stress i
mean
we certainly see total life stress you
know maternal stress and experience even
you know a generation now grandparents
and and probably further out um
it will absolutely influence epigenetic
expression towards um
earlier mortality as well as an
increased incidence of the chronic
diseases of aging so stress plays a huge
role
we translate in the mother stress
both dad's dad's right there so let me
when we talk about stress i want to say
psychic stress but i also want to
include physical stress in there so
physical stress could be changed change
to eating
you know
excess food or insufficient food i mean
i want to i just want to kind of expand
that but
but yes in the realm of epigenetics
dad's a big player granddad's a big
player great granddad is a big player so
i remember the first time i heard
somebody say
that trauma can be passed on yes and i
was like uh-huh it's like photosynthesis
i mean i sort of think about it it's
like like psychic this
psychic experience is translated into
biochemical marks that then influence
pass on like because how it would have
to then be encoded in the sperm and the
egg yes
yes on to their dna is that encoded into
the sperm in the egg and do you predict
if we can't already
will in the future somebody be able to
look at sperm and say
this you would you would pass on stress
or whatever yes so moshe saif who was a
co-author and an advisor on our on our
study
would it says that yes that there will
come a time that we'll be able to
predict
outcome in offspring by looking at
patterns from mom and dad or even
looking at patterns in utero that and
that we'll be able to actually change
those patterns so that we can forego
some of the fallout that we would
otherwise succumb to that is crazy the
thought that i could go in and
work with a fertility doctor to say okay
look at my the current state of my
sperm and see like is this going to be a
problem am i going to pass something on
this is where we're going like that's
actually going to happen yes yes yes yes
that is bananas yes so what's happening
then is you're saying that my
there is some global
marking on my
dna
via the methylation
that then or i guess it doesn't have to
be global
although i would assume it will be
because it's going to be expressing
itself in my body but then it's also
going to express itself
in
uh pregnancy
yeah so here's the thing and let me just
say too there's some cool research on
the heritability of exercise habits and
how you can hand down some of that to
your offspring so you can change the
methalone that's what we call the the
methylation genome you know you can
change the methyl one favorably or not i
suppose if you're a non-exerciser and
and hand down some of those benefits to
offspring yeah
that is fascinating um so here's what
here's what happens this is my
understanding we
uh
so our your methylation marks
you and your wife conceive you have a
fertilized eggs your egg you know your
methylation marks her methylation marks
are handed handed down but then they're
largely removed so 1011 translocation
enzymes actually remove methylation
marks you know from the fertilized eggs
for the most part like we remove the
bulk of them so don't be old that's like
the punch line of that moment yeah
you're just you're just you're cleaning
the slate you're allowing you're
allowing the you know a genesis of a new
a new human there's but not come let me
just finish this not entirely there's
some of you some of your methylation
patterns translate over as do your wives
your wife and and that is the
heritability portion of of dna
methylation so it's not all lost
and so that might be your exercise
habits or you know some of the stress
that you've experienced
and that actually might carry a few
generations back
that means that there's
what i'll call intelligence imbued in
that system where there's a
decision-making process that says remove
these don't remove these
yeah so what you know what gets to stay
and what doesn't there's something
called the imprint home and that is
that's being studied by randy jourdale
so you know the goody mice studies
probably right because of you yes
but it's worth telling they're really
important because this is so crazy the
most cited thing in science yes it's so
fascinating so i'll tell about that
paper in a second but just to kind of
wrap this up
the imprint home is some of what can be
inherited from mom and dad some of the
methylation patterns that can be
inherited from mom and dad and randy is
actually really interested in studying
that now because some of them can
translate into pretty serious diseases
so so he wants to work on that but also
in the imprint time can house the
benefits of exercise if you've had a
good habit you know good exercise habit
and some you know some other really cool
stuff too you said that there is uh
a signature for trauma an epigenetic
signal signature for trauma but there's
also then one for wisdom
and
we think so yeah that to me is this is
so much more complicated than people
think yeah
yeah so resilience so trauma we we've
studied trauma i think that there's a
sort of an obsession with studying
trauma patterns not just in the
epigenome but you know beyond that and
so we know trauma can be carried carried
over trauma can be established in early
life and then and then it can translate
as chronic disease later on and it can
translate to you know having a really
poor stress tolerance i mean can
translate into all sorts of things so
yes trauma has a strong influence
resilience does too
but
we know less about how that translates
that's what we need to study and that
goes back to the idea that moshe sef
posited where
you know if we understand these patterns
well we can look at you early on or or
or look at an embryo or or you know a
fetus and decide you know these are
resilience patterns and if they're not
we can correct them etc i mean you know
the era of epigenetics and epigenetic
diagnostics is just just just beginning
and it's it's just going to continue to
grow
but we should be putting energy towards
studying um
resilience and what that looks like and
then to your point studying wisdom so
honestly we're in such a rabbit hole but
let me just say
because you talk about the yamanaka
factors quite a bit i know you i've seen
you talk to david sinclair at least
twice and and you're always yammering
about his his yamanaka research and and
and and reversing aging causing aging by
messing up epigenetics and then
reversing aging cleaning it up with
these three of the four yamanaka factors
that clean up methylation specifically
they bring it back to a more youthful
pattern
so we have to ask ourselves in this
quest
for youth and this was something that i
posed at the very end of my book if
we're going to
turn back the hands of time by decades
are we going to by extension
you know remove the molecules of wisdom
that have have embedded in our dna so
you know i was listening to you guys
talk about if you had a life-threatening
illness you might just go for the
yamanaka factors to see if you can turn
it back would you learn would you lose
some of this extraordinary knowledge
that you've obtained on your journey i
mean you've done some amazing work in
your life and some of that is
biologically embedded in your epigenome
i mean what are we doing by turning back
the hands of time are we at risk of
losing some of these
um
you know these marks of wisdom these
these beneficial changes as well that's
one thing i found really interesting
about your book and we're not going to
forget the mice so people follow oh
right okay um
is in the book you talk about unintended
consequences and so you lay out this
incredible book which you know we'll
we'll get into some of the things that
you should be eating and all that stuff
in a minute but um you lay out this
incredible plan for how people can
reverse the biological clock you'll
never be able to reverse the
chronological clock obviously but um
that your biological aging you can move
backwards
and then you say but hey
be careful because we don't know where
all of this is going yet and so you do
have to be very thoughtful about those
unintended consequences yeah um and you
guys have talked a lot about you know
teratomas or tumors and cancer and so
forth but yeah i wonder you know i
wonder about some of the you know the
less understood shifts that happen with
maturation etc and this is why i'm
obsessed with whole food so like i try
never i do supplement vitamin d when
there's not enough sun but if there is
sun then i don't supplement and i go get
the sun because there's probably things
that we don't understand about the skin
is doing something when it actually
feels the radiation you know on it
let's talk about athletic greens my
friends the all-in-one daily drink to
support better health and peak
performance to help each of us be at our
best ag-1 by athletic greens simplifies
the path to better nutrition by giving
you the one thing with all the best
things one tasty scoop of ag-1 contains
75 vitamins minerals and whole
food-sourced ingredients including a
multivitamin multi-mineral probiotic
greens superfood blend and more in one
convenient daily serving and right now
athletic greens is doubling down on
supporting your immune system they're
offering our audience a free one-year
supply of vitamin d
and five free travel packs with your
first purchase simply visit
athleticgreens.com
impact theory that's athletic greens.com
impact theory and get your free one year
supply of vitamin d and five free travel
packs today athleticgreens.com
impact theory all right guys take care
and be legendary
all right so walk us through the mice
yeah yeah um it's interesting to me in
the longevity space
um because i come from functional
medicine i come from you know i have a
nutrition background i'm a naturopath by
training and
we're obsessed with these things um
so
nutrition has this extraordinarily
profound generationally
um
powerful influence on gene expression
and randy girdle showed it randy jourdal
and and waterland in 2003. it's
interesting to me because that was when
we mapped the genome we figured out the
gr the human genome in around 2003 and
we started to realize it wasn't it
didn't house all the answers that our
genes aren't our destiny in that same
year
journal and waterline published their
gudi math study um
which incidentally they couldn't publish
i think it took them 16 different
journal submissions and finally to a
really low tier journal they were
accepted yeah people were like yeah
whatever you know their peer reviewers
did not buy what they saw wow didn't buy
it didn't accept it
so what they showed they used in a goody
mouse which is which has the goody gene
expressed and in animals and in mice
this means that they this when this gene
is on they're they're blonde and they're
obese they're very visual they don't
look like a normal you know house mouse
and they die from you know obesity
related causes i mean it's just it's
pretty extraordinary so this you can get
this mouse and and do research studies
on them and it was actually waterline
journal credits waterline for the idea
of testing
um nutritional intervention in in this
mouse model like can they methylate and
inhibit the gene and so that's what they
they set out to do actually they
initially set out to shut they initially
wanted to look at what methyl donor
deficiency would look like so
insufficient methyl donors was their
first study is and the mice died they
just did they didn't fast normally they
died yeah they just died immediately
yeah they didn't survive at all the
offspring so these were in pregnant
goody mice dams and they gave them they
fed them a methyl donor deficient diet
and offspring were
dead on arrival whoa yeah so that's how
important these methyl donors are in our
diet like they're exquisitely important
so that was study one and they didn't
publish that was just communication that
i had with randy girdle so study two was
let's increase methyl donors let's give
these pregnant aguti mice some folate
some b12 some choline some betaine let's
give them that and lo and behold that
goody gene was hypermethylated and shut
off so a lot of methyl groups a lot of
the st the glue or whatever your glue
blobs
shut the gene off
and their offspring were brown like they
look like wild mice they just like
normal wild mice but here's the kicker
so these are just nutrients that give to
the pregnant
and dams and they reverted the offspring
to what they call pseudo-agouti and it
went on for generations so once one
laboratory looked at how many
generations and calculated five i think
journal and waterland went back three
in their lab so nutrients given to the
pregnant mouse resulted in a
generational influence on gene
expression
for five generations yes five
generations in one so i no longer had to
sort of hypermethylate them and they
would keep coming out as normal brown
mice yeah or on a continuum so it's not
an oil it's not an all or nothing like
some might have a little speckle of
blood like it you know it's it's a
continuum of how
hypermethylated that gene is but
in general there is a trend towards
turning off hypermethylating and
inhibiting that gene and therefore
restoring these mice to the sort of
brown wild type mice and and and
shutting down the the diseases that they
were vulnerable to
whoa
now yeah big deal i mean that's how
powerful nutrients are and that study
was ignored at first they didn't believe
it it just seemed
it just didn't seem possible they could
influence genetic expression yes yes yes
that's so nuts that's really let me tell
you another kicker this is a crazy story
so another postdoc in journal's lab
looked at this same model so again the
goody mice the goody pregnant mice and
gave them genistein's the soy isoflavone
so a soy phytophytochemical same effect
as the methyl donors so a polyphenol
nothing to do with that methylation
cycle that i talked to you about at the
beginning nothing to do with b12 and
folate etc but somehow changed
methylation shut off the aguti gene
griddle me that i was going to say so i
don't i don't even understand enough to
know how weird that is so it's pretty
weird because it didn't so the dna
methyl transferases
lay that you know use cme to put methyl
groups onto the gene to shut that gene
down
but genistein is a polyphenol it's it
doesn't influence dna it doesn't it it
isn't making sami it isn't giving the
ingredients to shut it down so it's
doing something else and they speculate
that it actually repositions the gene
sort of making
the the available methyl groups able to
get in there and act so it's doing
something else and they speculated yeah
just maybe just like opening it opening
that goody gene up for you know ready
access to the the fewer methyl donors in
circulation or something so so journal
in his lab said look you guys
you know we think nutrients are
beneficial you know and of course they
are but i was taught we just peed them
out you know there's no harm you know
you'll use what you need you get rid of
the wrath
right
they showed five generations that these
nutrients influenced and so their
conclusion in that 2003.
well it had this powerful favorable
influence on these on on these mice on
these good things
it's doing bad things so so that's what
they said you know we long thought these
were basically inconsequential right i
mean medicine we evolved not even paying
attention you know physicians aren't
even trained with nutritional training
like we just don't even think nutri
nutrients are a big deal at all and
these guys completely changed that
conversation and in their abstract the
end sentence was we need to pay
attention to how powerful these are you
know because they can have unintended
consequences so and then they show
genosphene does the same thing and it's
not even a methyl donor and so in that
study the post-doc who wrote who who
conducted that study said
well you've got a vegan mom who's eating
a whole lot of soy so you know loaded up
on genistein maybe she's eating grains
with folic acid you know fortified
grains which were riddled with in this
country you know and layer in a
multivitamin a prenatal and you've got a
ton of methyl donors or or or nutrients
acting like methyl donors and and that
may not be
a safe phenomena now we know we need
methyl donors in pregnancy no doubt
about it um we need them throughout our
lives we really need to be bathing our
our genes in
in healthy methylation
but yeah it can get a little squirrely
when we're using isolated micronutrients
and dosing really high and layering
layering in with other nutrients that
have an influence on methylation that we
don't even understand yet like genistein
and
so it goes back to your original point
of diet you know whole food matrix
eating how we evolved you know getting
some vitamin d from the sun i mean just
sort of having that be our
touch point sort of you know our
foundation
and then layering on some of these
interventions if we need them if there's
a reason
man being a pregnant woman does not
sound stress-free it's like you can't be
stressed because that's gonna pass on
you've got to be hyper careful about
what you eat you can't just blast your
system with all these vitamins
damn
uh yeah well the re there is some cool
research actually the the
the folks that grow baby health are
friends of mine and they've used they're
using our program and layering it into
what they're doing and they've got
extraordinary birth outcomes like their
incidents of common childhood illnesses
or um you know gestational diabetes some
of the complications of pregnancy
they're like nil their incidents of
autism in offspring from this from this
clinic are
i think you know maybe one if that i i
put the stats in yeah they've published
on them and they are using
micronutrients they are using a prenatal
so i want to clarify i don't want i
don't want anybody to get anxious there
absolutely is a place for these
micronutrients in pregnancy and you get
them from a whole foods diet and you
avoid folic acid fortification
and you know just pay attention how much
soy you're eating
eating et cetera so there's some some
ducks to put in a row
um but we still
you know micronutrients are generally
healthy in pregnancy wow all right let's
get into the the do's and don'ts so
let's set aside exercise for now
and just talk about uh diet what should
people be eating
yeah
so we wanna we want methyl donors like
up the wazoo loads of methyl donors so
we want to be doing um greens lots of
greens we want to be doing you know
leafy good greens spinach
kale yeah yeah totally we want to be
doing um we want to be eating some beets
not a ton but maybe a couple of small
beads
they're pretty high in sugar and we just
we don't need a ton of them um
deep red gives us something
betaine yeah betaine will help were the
methylation cycle it will help with
methylation beets
uh
seeds mushrooms shiitake enoki maitaki
these are rich with choline folate
they're like they're mushrooms are
really extraordinary wild mushrooms just
so gross are they growth i can't deal so
okay fine so
for those folks who like mushrooms eat
mushrooms there are alternatives like so
mushrooms
you can't
or you can take them encapsulate it if
you want to if we can but is is is it a
whole mushroom just like ground up yeah
okay so it's not like it's a
isolated compound from the mushrooms
actually
just encapsulated shredded mushroom yeah
got it yeah you can you can get that you
do that with liver as well right yes in
fact that's how i ingest my liver
because i don't cook it it's fair yeah
liver is a multivitamin in a food matrix
it is so extraordinary you don't need
you don't need to eat a ton of it you
don't have to have it every day if you
get three servings a week you're getting
just a massive amount of good folate and
b12 etcetera is there encapsulated liver
that you
recommend yes
it is i have a whole list of
of products that i like in the in the
resource
section that we vetted for for purity
new zealand source liver tends to it has
in my research
the cleanest
reputation they seem to be doing a
really good job so
methyl donors eggs another beautiful
source of choline that you want to be
getting
yeah so greens seeds some nuts uh fats
and nuts have to be raw
you know
raw is better but i would because i'm
cooking out some of the micronutrients
or because they and the delicate fats so
you know they're more beneficial in the
raw state because like raw pumpkin seed
sounds pretty gnarly they're not bad big
pumpkin seeds are really good yeah
that's right i do
go with what you're going to consume so
it's not like baked becomes bad for me
it's just not as good don't eat like
charred obviously don't eat really poor
quality try to get a good quality but i
use i eat roasted pumpkin seeds i love
them i throw them on my salad you're
going to get some nutrient for your bang
for your buck in that structure and do
we have like a short seed list of the
good ones
we really like pumpkin we really like
sunflower
sesame
those are good so seeds mushrooms liver
greens
eggs
salmon or other really fatty fish and
those are going to keep that methylation
cycle whirring those are some of the key
ingredients that will keep methylation
wearing mushrooms
and then we've got these traffic
directors the polyphenols and so those
are all your colorful fruit and veg i
mean some of our favorites are curcumin
curcumin turmeric turmeric curcumin is
an extraordinary those are the same
thing turmeric is the spice that houses
curcumin curcumin
um
so curry do you like curry can you do a
curry i eat curry frequently awesome um
golden milk is one of my favorites i
love curry
golden milk is a is a turmeric drink
turmeric and a little bit of coconut
milk and you know a little pepper and
some other spices and it's just
delicious it's a veer it's a time
immemorial drink in india
it's delicious um
so methyl donors plus these polyphenol
compounds that um appear to direct what
where methylation is happening and we
want to load up and you know again
blueberries curcumin
egcg and the other
catechins in green tea i don't know what
that is i know a green tea you know
green tea so green tea is loaded with
these phytochemicals that are you know
gene whisperers dna methylation
adaptogens whatever you want to call
them i mean just helping with optimal
epigenetic expression that's what we
think okay and most of the research at
the time of our book
um
is in vitro so in cell studies or in
animal studies but they seem to be able
to turn back on some of the genes that
are shut off in the aging journey so
these compounds have far-reaching
beneficial effect they're anti-cancer
they are anti-inflammatory
they're anti-microbial and you know
beneficial to our microbiome um they're
anti-aging in a lot of ways analytics
like quercetin
what's this analytic synalytic helps
helps
inhibit production of the zombie cells
those pro-inflammatory yeah so just just
think colorful elements of your fruits
and vegetables far and wide have this
methylation adaptogenic effect seem to
be able to direct dna methylation what's
your take on fruit i think of fruit and
vegetables as being so different i even
think of berries as different fruit
fruits yeah yeah
most of the fruits have important
compounds but we don't obviously because
of the sugar impact you don't want to be
eating tons of them so you need to be
mindful
um
can i eat as many raspberries as i want
you know if your blood sugar is in
reasonable control i mean do you wear a
continuous glucose monitor i have many
times yep i'm not currently yep but yes
so pay attention you know just pay
attention to how your body responds like
i we recommend blueberries on a daily
basis as one of those or any dark
berries raspberries would be in there um
if you're going to load up on them you
know you might want to just pay
attention to your sugar and see how much
you can tolerate it's going to be
different for for all of us but if you
have your raspberries maybe on a salad
and you've got a higher fat dressing and
some fiber in there you know each of
it'll be different for each of us
but super important
information is contained in raspberries
and all of these and
we're just starting to understand how
sophisticated the information is like i
was reading a this is a cell study but
curcumin in turmeric
can
inhibit mtor in multiple myeloma cells
so in a cancer i know
and it's a cell study so it can it can
hypermethylate
an the mtor gene in multiple myeloma
cells in a cell study
by by comparison curcumin has also been
shown in cell studies to turn on a
hypermethylated braca gene so braca the
braca
genes are major highly important tumor
suppressor genes so they keep us clear
of cancer a functioning bracket gene
keeps us clear of cancer takes care of
dna repair etc does a lot of stuff
the bra a functioning bracka we're not
talking about the brachial mutation but
a functioning bracha gene can actually
be hypermethylated and inhibited and
then it's associated with all sorts of
cancers
so
it by getting hypermethylated or hypo
hyper so it's shut down and no longer
available to do its work
hypermethylation lots of methyl groups
inhibit it from being on so
curcumin will allow that to be
re-expressed so an mtor it can shut it
off in a multiple myeloma cell but braca
it can turn back on to go do its good
work all right so let me say that in
layman's terms so mtor which is
basically grow so hey body grow grow
muscle grow tumors yes so
we're shutting down mtor and then we are
removing the errant
punctuation that is making the the
sentence impossible to read in the braca
gene we're turning the bracca back on
and allowing it to function
that's cool so it does two two opposite
things curcumin and turmeric does two
opposite opposite things in cell studies
it's amazing so do some of the other
players like ludiolin or um
quercetin um what else genestein so
going back to soy that's a really
important polyphenol i think of soy as
being bad
yeah
i would say that if you can get an
organic and perhaps fermented soy
it's an important polyphenol i mean it's
just got important potent power benefit
for the most part beneficial power i
just wouldn't as a guy need to worry
about the estrogen
no i don't think that there's there's
enough and you don't want to swim in it
you know have a serving of it every now
and again if you if you like it we don't
use it in the intensive part of the
program but we do
um allow it for vegans in the program or
uh when you transition off of the
intensive eight weeks you can include it
and and they're important polyphenols
so
these guys are the traffic director so
we want to load our body up with this
collection of compounds and
there's a 30 page nutrition
appendix that will give you the details
like all of the foods that you can
access to get some of these really
important epi nutrients as a category
both of them were calling them
epinutrients
okay so
there's a reason that your book is
robust
it is not brief in its um incredible
description of what's going on and what
we need to do to combat all of that
stuff this is
really really incredible stuff to me
i want to run through just a synopsis
and there's been a few things that we
haven't gone really deep on that's
probably worth just reminding people
that they should be doing but so all
right we've got our genetic code which
isn't changing it's not going anywhere
but you have the epigenome which is
probably way more important like when
you look at the genetics of a plant it's
way more robust than the genetics of a
human and yet humans are pretty damn
complicated right
because of this epigenetics of what is
expressed what's not expressed yes what
you eat yes has a huge
impact on what's expressed going back to
the my study it's pretty crazy that you
can alter the pregnant mother's uh diet
and it has a five generational impact
that's so crazy i really think that's
going to give women heart palpitations
but if i can help them reframe it that
it can be a negative impact or it can be
a positive impact as in the study was
looking at the good things that you can
pass on which is pretty incredible okay
so we've talked about all that
now
let's give a quick breakdown what is the
role of stress sleep and exercise right
um incidentally we have what we call the
younger you hybrid in here for pregnant
women and preconception so we put
together what we think is a good eating
pattern so if you have palpitations
ladies and you're if you need it just
take a look at the book because you can
totally eat for your genes your genes
and your offspring
so
if we're not sleeping we're aging i mean
you know sleep is an essential component
of good epigenetic expression insomnia
ages people and that's been demonstrated
looking again at dna methylation
um but it's a lot better so i just walk
through all the hacks that i've used
cold room you know going to bed on time
not setting my alarm that's a big thing
for me um i use melatonin and magnesium
i find both to be helpful
i use meditation so i do meditation
sometimes i'll listen to rain like i'll
just all sorts of different very dark
room so we need to sleep we need to
figure out how to get it it's really
important with repair and anyway on and
on stress
is
potently pro aging
and again as you as as we've been
talking about it can be generational um
and it can it will influence mortality
morbidity and mortality but i think
stress is one of the most pro-aging
um
experiences that we can have and that we
need to be paying attention
to
turning it off and not
allowing it to drag us by the hair
so stress is very pro-aging i think
the clock that we used the horvath 2013
like the flagship sort of gold standard
clock that we used in our study um a
full 25 of those methylation sites are
influenced by the stress response 25
there's no other factor that influence
that this so singularly influences the
clock as these what they call
glucocorticoid response elements on the
clock so that to me suggests that stress
plays a huge role
huge
um
sleep stress
conversely the data on meditation on tai
chi on yoga is extraordinary
even a single
exercise can have favorable changes like
we can make a difference pretty quick if
we continue to do it over time i mean
just think cell division after cell
division after cell division you can
hand down these favorable changes so if
we continue with our good habits we can
have these lasting and really powerful
improvements people who meditate
regularly are biologically younger
people who meditate regularly are
biologically younger but just one
meditation experience can still have
favorable influence even yoga like a
weekly yoga habit showed beneficial
changes on the epigenome a weekly yoga
habit so
you know we got this we can we can do it
you don't have to retire to the mountain
you know and and and a zen monastery and
practice eight hours a day like you just
start wherever you are and you can make
favorable changes but understand that
the habit is obviously better
same thing with exercise like a single
exercise uh event can
change dna methylation epigenetic
expression favorably like one single
time keep doing it and it's
you know the benefit of it is so far
reaching there was a paper that came out
not too long ago really arguing that all
of the benefits of exercise come from at
the epigenetic influence as i said we
can pass some of those down and the
older you are the more bang for your
buck you get with exercise exercise will
turn back on those previously inhibited
tumor suppressor genes as we age our
risk for cancer rises exponentially
and a piece of that is you know and
again this is goes back to the program
aging conversation is that we reliably
shut down our tumor suppressor genes
like these genes that keep us clear of
plants or we start to hypermethylate
them and inhibit them i mean what that
is that about
exercise turns them back on as do these
polyphenols it's like exercises like a
physical polyphenol isn't that wild it's
not wild it's like it's like it
exercises like eating a vegetable that's
crazy i know it's so cool and it doesn't
take a lot so one exercise event can be
beneficial but then again the habit the
lasting habit is good and we could have
a whole nother conversation of are we
doing high intensity are we you know
doing something low and slow i mean what
are we doing are we doing weights
resistance training there was a study
that came out not too long ago
specifically beneficial for
mitochondrial dna methylation so pretty
cool
i think we do what we love what we're
good at what we're consistent with and
our study a very gentle prescription of
30 minutes five days a week minimum
perceived exertion 60 to 80 percent of
max so not intense but it was the
consistency that we thought was
important
over exercising can be pro-aging i mean
anybody who compe is a competitive
athlete i mean i know when i was i was a
cyclist in in med school i was racing
competitively and i would always crash
at the end of my season you know i'd
always have a upper respiratory
infection always you know you just wear
your yourself down with the stress of of
repetitive you know really high
intensity events and you know it's it's
pretty common that you get a cold or you
get sick for a while so over exercising
can be a pro-aging but
you know i still love high-intensity
interval training i just you know i'm
just a little bit more mindful about it
and i do pay attention to my biological
age and we can talk about that as well
that will have to be on round two i
cannot believe how fast this went that's
this is so fascinating to me where can
people follow you where can they get the
book
youngeruprogram.com
or
drcarafitzgerald.com so clinic and
everything else drcarafitzgel.com
book
youngeruprogram.com and we also have an
app where we have irb
we're researching our institutional
review board means we have permission to
continue to do research so in our app
which you can find at youngeru program
you can jump in and join us on this
continued research and the next you know
data that we're looking at is awesome
it's exciting and i just you know look
forward to publishing on it soon i can't
wait that'll be a lot of fun
guys you will love the book check it out
if you're as obsessed with aging
backwards as i am this is another fun
one be sure to check it out and speaking
of things that you should check out if
you haven't already be sure to subscribe
and until next time my friends be
legendary take care peace