“This Food Can Repair DNA & REVERSE AGING!" - What You NEED TO KNOW! | Dr. William Li
JlHlf6KTzrA • 2026-01-24
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Kind: captions Language: en We often think of aging as something that's inevitable, something we can't change. But aging doesn't have to mean decline. In fact, research is showing just the opposite, can help support healthier aging at any age. And in fact, can slow down cellular aging is a pathway that shifts your biology from go to wo, slow down, repair, and restore yourself. 50 nanomles per liter increase in there was a 0.13 kilobase of additional tie length. That's equivalent to slowing biological age by 3.3 years. Pretty cool. What are the things that slows down everything and helps us repair? Greatest reduction in the speed of biological aging. The things that you probably have heard about >> [music] >> Hi everyone, Dr. William Lee here. We often think of aging as something that's inevitable, something we can't change. And it's true. We are all going to get older every single second that we're alive. But aging doesn't have to mean decline. In fact, research is showing just the opposite. Every day, the food that you eat and your daily habits send signals to your cells in your body. And these signals shape how fast and how slowly you can age. And this is all happening from the inside out. This is what's known as biological aging. And it's different from the number of candles that you put on your birthday cake or in other words, your chronological age. Biological age reflects the actual conditions of your cells, your DNA, your mitochondria, the power plants of your cells that give you energy and your metabolism and your immune system and your stem cells and your circulation, which is what I study, a field called androgenesis. So today I'm going to walk you through some clinical studies that reveal how simple everyday habits can help support healthier aging at any age and in fact can slow down cellular aging by influencing three major pathways in your body. Ready? Let's go. Okay. First pathway. I want to explain this by starting with something that everyone is going to understand right away and that's your morning cup of coffee. Right? Coffee has caffeine in it and you know we all drink our coffee to get that jolt, that pop that makes us feel more alert. Well, a study from cellular aging and scinessence lab at Queen Mary University in London uncovered something fascinating about caffeine in your cup of coffee. It turns out that caffeine can help activate this AMK, right? A is in Adam, M is in Mary, P is in Paul, K is in Karen. AMPK, one of the body's ancient longevity pathways. Okay? So, think about AMPK like your fuel gauge. And when [snorts] your gauge is running low, energy levels are running low, the gauge shows low, and so the AM pathway switches on. When your fuel is low, energy runs low, your AM C pathway switches on and turns on. Okay? Gage low, AM pathway switches on. Now, by switching on this EMPK pathway tells your cells, let's slow down growth, please. Let's conserve energy. Let's repair any damage that's there, and let's make sure that that the cells that you're running are running more efficiently. In other words, is a pathway, all right, that shifts your biology from go to wo, slow down, repair, and restore yourself. That's what pathway does. It's important for longevity because by switching it on, you are slowing down the rate of aging, the go go go and it's allowing your body through your cells to start taking care of itself. This is really really vital and we when we age and it happens at the cellular level. Now what are the things that activate our pathway that slows down uh everything and helps us repair the things that you probably have heard about that are beneficial for healthy aging and longevity. Exercise activates the AMPK pathway. Fasting, intermittent fasting and longer fasting activates the AMPK pathway. Cold exposure, you know, the cold plunge activates AMPK pathway. And eating foods that contain certain polyphenols all actually activate AM pathway. And we know that these factors are linked to longer healthier life. So, back to the cup of coffee. Researchers found that caffeine in your cup of coffee activatempk pathway directly. Here's something interesting. The research team in London that did this had previously shown that caffeine can also influence your to pathway. Tor stands for the target of rapamy. Don't worry about the complexity. All you need to know is that to is another key growth and nutrient sensing pathway that helps longevity. So caffeine stimulates which slows everything down. less go repair yourself and it actually stimulates to which actually in nutrient sensing helps your um cells slow down and improves longevity as well. Now AMP pathway does another thing too. Not only does it actually help conserve energy and repair yourself, it also lowers inflammation. Okay, that's very important if you want to actually age healthy to lower your inflammation. amppk pathway through caffeine can also improve metabolic efficiency and helps your cells become more resilient to stress. We know that resiliency is actually that ability to bounce back from a stress. That's important for success in life and it's important for healthy aging as well, right? Because we all want to stay sharp under pressure. Now, what does this mean practically if you want to actually take control of your own AMPK pathway? Well, there's some practical ways to do this and I'm about to tell you how. First, how you drink your coffee can make a difference. Caffeine may be the spark, but if you actually add sugar to it or syrups, flavoring, ultrarocessed creamers, what those things do is they undermine the benefit of the caffeine and the polyphenols in your coffee. If you want your coffee to help amp up yourmpk pathway, don't add sugars or any sweeteners, artificial or otherwise, or dairy, to it. Black coffee, that's how I drink it. best way to optimize the effect of the natural polyphenols that are found in your coffee and the caffeine that will turn on your AMPK and support yourself. Second, coffee works better for AMPK pathway when you are in your fasting state, right? So, if you practice intermittent fasting, having some coffee during your fasting window doesn't break your fast. It's liquid with some polyphenols. There's no calories in it. And so, yeah, that's actually fine. Basically, just have your coffee while you're not eating. It's a great way like if you are waking up in the morning and you are not eating right away. You're extending the fasting period from your evening, have some black coffee, no sugar, no creamer, and you'll actually activate your AMPK pathway. Now, third, caffeine isn't the only way to activate your AMPK pathway. There are other foods and ingredients that can also help too. Here's one that one of my favorites is green tea. Green tea contains both caffeine and antioxidant kakans. These are also polyphenols um that actually activate your AMPK pathway. Turmeric, which contains curcumin, okay, will also help activate this pathway. So can cinnamon, think about a little bit cinnamon on your coffee, makes it taste really nice, gives it a nice aroma. Apple cider vinegar. Now, I wrote about apple cider vinegar in my book, Eat to Beat Your Diet. Turns out apple cider vinegar actually turns on your metabolism, your brown fat to burn down harmful extra white fat, increasing your metabolism. Apple cider vinegar will also turn on your EMPK pathway. And cruciferous vegetables, you know, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, arugula, all those types of vegetables, they will also turn on this pathway that will um help your cell conserve energy, slow down, repair itself, and actually slow down cellular aging. Now, another food that I want to mention, legumes and beans, right? These are great sources of dietary fiber that can help your gut microbiome. in your gut microbiome uh when it's wellfed will lower inflammation in the body. So these foods aren't just for sustenance or nourishment. They actually turn on they activate your AMPK pathway so your cells function better. They conserve energy. They work more efficiently. They repair themselves and more importantly for healthy aging they actually don't push you into that go go go mode. I want to also tell you don't forget about exercise because no matter what you do, what you eat, how much you eat, you still need to have movement if you want to age in a healthy way. Turns out exercise is one of the most powerful natural triggers to turn on your AMPK pathway. Even a brisk walk in the morning, pair that with your coffee, can get your AMPK pathway going. So, your daily cup of Joe coffee plus a brisk walk can help improve your cellular resiliency as you age. and therefore help you age in a healthier way. Very important. Now, I want to talk about another way that you can actually improve your aging that has to do with vitamin D. The health of your muscles isn't just about looking fit. It's actually one of the strongest predictors of how long and how well you'll live. Healthy muscles control your blood sugar, support your metabolism, and protect your bones, and keep you mobile and independent as you age. And here's something that most people don't realize. You can actually look strong and still be weak. Let me explain. Muscle decline isn't just about losing muscle size. It's about losing strength and power and cellular energy. After age 30, we lose about 3 to 8% of our muscle mass with every passing decade. And after 60, that pace of muscle loss accelerates. But muscle strength often declines even faster than muscle mass. The real issue begins inside the muscle cell. Muscle cells rely on mitochondria. These are the energy engines. And with age, these mitochondria wear down. They become damaged and they're less efficient. They don't recycle themselves properly. And recycling is a process called mphagy. And without mphagy, that leads to decreased energy, reduced strength, slower recovery. And that's even if you're eating well and exercising. Well, that's where Timeline powered by Mtopure comes in. Midtopure is the only clinically validated uriththn supplement. It's the one that I trust. Uralithna A is a bioactive that supports mphagy that helps clear damaged mitochondria and replace them with new healthier ones so that your muscle cells can produce more energy. Clinical studies show that taking Mitoure daily improves muscle strength in as little as 4 months. And if you care about staying strong, capable, and independent as you age, supporting cellular energy and muscle health isn't an option. It's foundational to your health. And that's where MOPure stands apart. You can get 35% off your first purchase of Timeline powered by Muddy Pure this January. Remember I told you while AMPK pathway helps to regulate yourself's energy and repair system as part of healthy aging, tieumirs are those caps that um protect your DNA. So think about caps on a shoelace, right? They've got the little plastic caps. When those caps wear down, the shoelace unravels that can happen to your DNA as your tieumirs wear down. No good. All right. So as tieumirs shorten which happens during aging that's like the wick of a candle burning down your DNA becomes more and more vulnerable to damage and your cellular aging can accelerate. Now nobody wants to age faster at the biological level. So the question is what can you do to protect your DNA? What can you do to protect your tieamir? Well research has been done at the Georgia prevention institute at the medical college of Georgia and guess what they found vitamin D all right can help protect your tieumirs. What the researchers did, they looked at data from 1615 adults, ages 20 to 39, so all healthy. And what they did is they measured their vitamin D levels and they measured their tieumir lengths. And you do that by drawing blood and looking in your white blood cells. And you can actually measure the uh tieumir length. And here's what they found. The researchers found that the higher the level of vitamin D in the blood, the longer the tieumirs. The lower the vitamin D in the blood, the shorter the tieumirs. Longer is always better. more protective of DNA, slow down cellular aging. Now, like many other things that vitamin D seems to protect against, including cancer, here is another protection by uh that it can actually offer. Now, this was not a minor difference. What they found for every 50 nanomles per liter increase in vitamin D. Now, I know you're probably going to say, I have no idea what that means. Trust me on this. It's a tiny little extra um bit of vitamin D. There was a 0.13 kilobase of additional tie length. And you're like, "Okay, I don't know what that means, Dr. Lee. What I'm telling you is a little bit of extra vitamin D leads to a little bit of extra lengthening of the tieumir, which protects your aging speed." So, um, and by the way, so what does that mean? Right? So, I told you 50 nanom per liter of vitamin D equals 0.13 kilobase of additional tie length. If you had to do the math, okay, and I will tell you that that's equivalent to slowing biological age by 3.3 years. Pretty cool. All right. Vitamin D, beneficial micronutrients, also good for bone health. Of course, builds help helps build good bone. Also important for immunity, good for lowering inflammation, and I mentioned lowers your risk of cancer. So, another benefit. Now, vitamin D can keep our tieumirs longer and slowing down cellular aging. For those of you who are science geeks, you're probably saying now, all right, tell me how vitamin D works. Well, I'm going to try to boil it down in a simple way. Vitamin D has receptors. Now, a receptor is basically like the lock and the vitamin D would be like the keys. When the key goes into the lock, vitamin D goes into its own receptor. All right? It's found in every cell, including immune cells, even stem cells. And it turns out that when vitamin D turns into its own receptor that reduces oxidative stress and it supports DNA repair pathways, key into the lock, turn on repair pathways, reduce stress. And what does this do? This helps to protect tieamir stability. These are protective caps that actually slow down cellular aging. What does that mean from a practical standpoint? How do you support healthy vitamin D levels? Here's three simple ways. Number one, first, make sure you get some sunshine. Consistent sunlight exposure. Just 10 to 20 minutes, okay? Even on your arms and legs can make a difference. And depending on where you live and your skin tone, that's actually an easy way to get a dose of vitamin D. Now, if you live in a really bright sunny area, you got to make sure you don't actually get overexposed to ultraviolet radiation. that increases your risk of skin cancer. But, you know, if you just actually have moderate exposure to sunlight, all right, don't go out in the heat of the sun. Go out earlier in the morning. Go out after the peak heat sunshine after 2:00 in the afternoon, 10 to 20 minutes on your arms or legs. That's enough to get you started. Now, ultraviolet radiation from sunshine activates vitamin D on your skin. Number two, you want to get vitamin D, you can eat foods that contain vitamin D. And here's some examples. Fatty fish like salmon, sardines, and mackerel contain vitamin D. And so do egg yolks that can contain vitamin D. One of the best natural sources actually are mushrooms. Mushrooms contain vitamin D. And here's something interesting. If you ex expose mushrooms to sunlight, they will actually make more vitamin D. So I'll tell you what I do in my kitchen. Get some simple white button mushrooms. The I call it the lowly lowly white button mushroom. Wash it up or brush it off. All right. Slice it, okay? Lengthwise so you get the nice mushroom slices. Make sure you keep the stem. Lay them out on a cutting board. Stick them in front of your window with the sunshine coming in. Guess what? You do this three hours before you're going to cook with the mushroom, you will actually get the mushroom to increase the production of vitamin D in the mushroom. Super simple little hack that actually works. So, how do you know if you need more vitamin D? You can actually get your levels tested. That's probably the best way to know where you stand. And many adults will uh who don't have enough vitamin D or live in a place without a lot of sunlight. All right. So, think about the northern hemisphere. There are places where it's dark a lot. And by the way, we don't wander around naked most of the time. We're wearing clothing, so we're blocking a lot of sunshine, sunlight. We're indoors a lot. So, a lot of people actually would benefit from vitamin D supplements. And what I would do is actually to figure out the right dose. It depends on your blood test. So, go ahead and get your vitamin D level tested and analyzed. And having somebody, your doctor, help guide you is the best way to go. Right? This is not one-sizefits-all. You want to actually supplement yourself in the right way and the right amount. But supplementing vitamin D, super simple way to access extra vitamin D and that will actually protect your DNA, protect your tieers over time, helping you age in a more healthy way. Okay. One more thing I'm going to tell you that can help you with longevity is called epigenetic aging. Now, the heck is that? If I told you that tieumirs actually protect DNA and slow down cellular aging, epigenetic aging is another way that actually can influence how fast your uh cells actually age. So there's something called methylation. I'm going to explain this to you and it's just a kind of epigenetic change. And think about epigenetics like a dimmer switch not for your lights but for your genes. You know your the genes are a section of DNA that uh give a certain kind of instruction. So if you think about epigenetics as sort of like the dimmer, epigenetics up, epigenetics down, all right, you're turning your dimmer lighter on. It tells your body which genes to actually do to use and which genes to turn down, dim or turn off for the moment. Okay? Now, everything we do pretty much influences this dimmer switch, the epigenetic switch. What you eat, h how much stress you're feeling, how much sleep you get. All right? Your physical activity, all these things will influence epigenetics. that dimmer switch for your genetics. So researchers from the University of Washington and the National University of Natural Medicine looked at epigenetics as a marker of aging. And what they did is they looked at healthy men aged between 50 and 72, so second half of their life. And they basically had an 8-week lifestyle program. And to measure their biological age, they use the researchers use something called Horvath's epigenetic clock. Just trust me on this. This is a just a tool, a research tool used by longevity uh researchers. And here's what they found. All right, they looked at what they ate, etc. The researchers found that those people in the study that consumed the most food with polyphenols, highest polyphenols, okay, that influences something called DNA methylation. I'm going to tell you what that means in a second, but when you add foods with polyphenols, and it influences methylation, that actually had the greatest reduction in the speed of biological aging. Now, I just said a mouthful, so I'm going to explain it to you again. By eating foods that have a lot of polyphenols, which we know are good for you anyway, we now know that it can actually influence the methylation in your cells and that reduces the speed of biological aging. So now I got to tell you what methylation is, right? DNA methylation. Okay, so your genes, the sections that um contain instructions for what your cell's doing, they're made of DNA. The DNA will make proteins, but not all the DNA is used all the time. Methylation is one of the kind of internal parts of the factory protein factory in your body where a chemical methyl group just take my word for it. It's a chemical group sits on the DNA, okay? And it squats on it. When the methyl group sits on the DNA, it tells the DNA to be either more active or less active. More methylations, okay? So basically, you put the methyl group into the DNA, it tells the genes to turn down or turn off, right? So, think about throwing a shoe into a factory conveyor belt. All right? You're going to actually slow gum up the system. You're going to slow it down. In fact, by the way, that's where the word sabotage come from. A sabot is actually a shoe that in uh Holland used to be thrown by protesters in a factory into the machinery to slow down things. That's why it's called sabotage, sabot. And methylation is a natural way as part of a switching to slow down the factory of the genes. All right? So kind of slows everything down. It it makes everything go slower slower slower. Now if you have less methylation, you're not sitting the methyl group is not sitting on the DNA gumming it up. Less methylation means the genes are turned on and they become more active. So there's more protein actually made. Does that make sense? So epigenetics what you eat can actually cause more methylation which turns genes down can turn harmful genes down and less methylation can turn genes up. All right? And make it be the beneficial genes. This whole thing is called epigenetic regulation. And this is what I was telling you about the dimmer switch. All right? You're not changing the DNA. You are just squatting on it. Okay? By methylating it or by with less methylation, demethylation, you're actually letting the process, the machinery go on more. All right? You're just controlling how much of the DNA is actually being used active. Now, what does this all this have to do with healthy aging? Well, basically these methyl groups that sit on your cells um slowing it down keep the um uh right amount of beneficial DNA on uh and and you need to actually be able to turn down or turn off the wrong DNA methylating it and you need to actually have the right beneficial DNA going on to be able to protect your cells and help you age in a more healthy way. Right? This is partly why we say epigenetics, this dimmer switch for the parts of the gene and methylation sitting on the DNA with a methyl group to slow it down or to release it actually it contributes to uh longevity. So I just explained some pretty complicated science to you but what are the things that you can do practically? Right? Let's talk about food. I study food as medicine. So let's get into it. What are some of the foods that can actually benefit your epigenetic switch, your dimmer switch for beneficial DNA? Well, it turns out that tea, green tea, ulong tea, all of these teas, chamellinosis, actually help make positive changes in your epigenetics. The spice turmeric, right? You like a good curry, the turmeric contains kurcumin. All right, kurcumin causes epigenetic changes that are beneficial. Garlic. Garlic, if you actually cook either Mediterranean or Asian dishes, you're from that part of the world or you enjoy eating Mediterranean or Asian dishes. I always tell people I eat Mediterrasian style. I can tell you well there's garlic used in in many of the repres recipes recipes in both of these healthy cultures. Garlic actually induces positive epigenetic changes. Rosemary the herb rosemary okay like a spice uh actually beneficial epigenetic effects and berries strawberries raspberries blackberries love berries okay their polyphenols help activate protective DNA for healthy aging. Okay, back to the research I was telling you from the University of Washington that looked at the dietary polyphenol intake. What they found, these researchers found those who ate the most food with the highest polyphenols, they dropped their epigenetic age by 1.2 years in just 8 weeks of eating foods with polyphenols like berries. And some participants in the study showed reductions of almost 3 years epigenetic saving the aging uh compon speed of the cell by three. Right? So what do these polyphenols do? They actually help to bring out the dimmer switch. Um they've turned on the dimmer switch brighter more protective genes DNA that protects you gets turned on. Right? So that's less methylation and they help to slow down the inflammatory genes adding methylation to slow down uh gum up that machinery less inflammatory gen. So polyphenols, you know, they're getting right down into the nitty-gritty of your cells. They're helping your cells have more benefits, less harm, improves resiliency of your cells, and this, by the way, also improves metabolic function, and it helps you with long-term health. All right, so what are the practical applications in real life? All right, you ready for a pro tip here? Um, basically, drink green tea or ulong every day. I do it every single day. Super easy. I like loose leaf tea. All right, I don't like it in a tea bag cuz some tea bags shed microplastics. Just throw some loose leaf tea, pour hot water, let the tea leaves settle to the bottom, ready to drink. And by the way, don't drink super super hot tea because actually studies have shown that that gulping down really hot tea actually increases uh the risk of esophageal cancer because of the uh heat damage uh to your throat as you're as it's going down the hatch. All right? So, brew the tea. Don't drink it piping hot. Cook with turmeric. Even a teaspoon of turmeric you can add to a soup. You can add to a stew. Uh, obviously a curry, absolutely delicious. All right, add garlic and rosemary to your meals. Flavor and function as well. And you know, one of the things I like to do in the morning, I like to have some berries. Just simple berries. Whatever you can get fresh at the market, make sure that it actually tastes really good. Wash it. All right, 60 seconds under cold running water. Just have berries a few times a week. Okay, fresh I prefer, but it turns out the polyphenols are also found in the frozen berries. And by the way, you can also do your own research on foods that contain polyphenol. Bottom line is that most foods that are colorful, flavorful, uh these are the fruits and veggies and the produce section of your grocery stores, you can bet that they actually are going to give you a good dose of beneficial polyphenols that will help your epigenetics. So, what do we talk about today? We talked about aging and we talked about slowing down the process of aging at the cellular level so you can live longer, better, healthier, have more resilience in your cells. And science is telling us how we can counter the forces that would normally let us uh uh deteriorate or decline. We can actually take steps, all right, to be able to help ourselves slow down that process of aging and be uh more resilient. And your daily habits matter a lot. All right? How you start your morning can actually count that cup of Joe, that cup of coffee, how you nourish your body. All right? those berries, the green tea, all right, the cruciferous vegetables, and the signals that you send to yourselves every single day, exercise, all right, sunshine, vitamin D foods, all these things influence your biology in a way that allows you to age in a healthier way. Now, you don't have to do all these things all the time, all right? That just is way too overwhelming. But take small actions few times a week. They're going to add up for you, okay? The key thing is consistency. All right? Just keep on doing the small things that you can remember. Tea, sunshine, walking, polyphenols, berries, all these things will actually benefit you because they add up over time. Now, if you found this information helpful, pass it on to a friend, forward it to a friend. If you liked it yourself, hit the like button and make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel because I'm going to keep on updating my channel with more information, more helpful tips that are based on science that can actually help you live a longer and healthier life. So remember, share this with somebody you know. Anybody who's interested in health and wellness, aging well, longevity, dodging decline. Those are the people that might enjoy this. And I will see you in the next video. Dr. Lee out. Hey, if you like that video, then you're going to love this one. Check it out.
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