Longevity Unveiled: Early Warning Signs, Lifestyle Choices, and Functional Medicine Approaches
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Longevity Unveiled: Early Warning Signs, Lifestyle Choices, and Functional Medicine Approaches

In this episode, Dr. Alfred Alessi discusses recognizing health warning signs and their impact on longevity. They explore insights from blue zones, the genetics vs. lifestyle debate, and early aging red flags. The role of environment and lifestyle in aging is examined, with a focus on testing and tracking for longevity. They highlight functional medicine's view on metabolic health, muscle mass, and body composition. The episode compares advanced longevity testing options and discusses conventional and functional approaches, including regenerative therapies. It concludes with thoughts on enhancing longevity and encourages listener interaction. (0:00) Introduction and the importance of not ignoring health warning signs (1:01) Understanding longevity and health span (4:35) Insights from blue zones and the genetics vs. lifestyle debate (7:47) Recognizing early red flags for aging (13:00) How environment and lifestyle influence aging (14:13) Sponsor: alessifunctionalhealth.com (15:52) The role of testing and tracking in longevity (17:47) Functional medicine's take on metabolic health (21:37) The significance of muscle mass and body composition for longevity (23:16) Comparing advanced longevity testing options (24:24) The longevity blueprint: conventional and functional approaches (31:37) Exploring advanced tools and regenerative therapies for longevity (33:19) Final thoughts on enhancing longevity (33:55) Next steps: How to connect and engage with the show (34:25) Closing the episode and encouraging listener interaction

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When the warning signs and the lights are coming on, we tend to ignore them.

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Oh, it's just headaches that I've been dealing with for ten years.

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Oh, it's just pain.

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Oh, it's just gut dysfunction.

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And we push it off as if, like, powering through is some badge of honor.

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And I'm not I'm not here to criticize people.

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I've done that in the past as well, and that's just really part of the way I was raised.

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That's how a lot of us were.

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That is what can lead to negative outcomes in the future, problems becoming worse, harder to

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fix if if they are, and more expensive to fix down the line.

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Welcome to Health Decode, your number one source for real health information with your

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host, doctor Alessi and Matt Tack.

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Welcome back to another episode of Health Decoded.

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I am your host, doctor Alessi.

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Very thankful for you joining me today.

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We have a very, very cool episode today.

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This is something that is becoming more popular as of late and a lot of people are starting to

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think about.

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So why not do an episode?

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What better time than now to do an episode about longevity and really why longevity is

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important?

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You know, if I had a dollar for every time I saw a patient who said they were concerned

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about what the future looks like due to you know, whatever condition they might be having.

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You know, it would be a lot.

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And so, it's something important to think about that I think a lot of people maybe don't begin

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thinking about until later on when, I don't want to say it's too late, but could things

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could have been prevented or things could have been optimized earlier.

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So, the decisions we make today set us up for either health or disease in the future.

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And that's just the truth of it.

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Doesn't matter if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or more.

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That's just the way it works.

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And so today's episode is about longevity and really why long gib- focusing on longevity is

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important, how we can optimize that, what tests we might be able to use to see how our internal

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systems like our mitochondria, our genetics, you know, the oxidation within our body could

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be affecting longevity.

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And then what we can do to fight back against those things and improve our longevity outcomes

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for the future.

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So, thank you for tuning in.

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I hope you enjoy today's episode.

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As always, if you like the show, and this is something that you think a friend or family

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member could benefit from, please do share this.

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Please follow the show that helps us to expand our reach to be able to get this message out to

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more people who need to hear this and can optimize their health as well.

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So thank you again.

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Let's get into it.

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So let's just start with really what is longevity and why does it matter?

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Why are we even talking about this today?

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Well, truth is that many people just think that longevity is about like adding years to your

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life.

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But it's really not about adding years to your life.

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It's about adding life to those years.

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Stay with me.

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We don't want to crawl when we're 90 years old, right?

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Beyond all these medications where maybe we're in a wheelchair and life at that point is very

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much stagnant and that ability to do things is gone, right?

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But we're still alive.

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If I asked anybody, they would say that's not how they would want to be in their older age.

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So, the goal is for us to be able to ambulate and move right at a decent rate for as long as

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possible.

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And so the concept here is that longevity isn't better lifespan, it's better health span.

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And lifespan is how long you live.

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Health span is how long do you stay vibrant, free from disability, dependence and chronic

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disease.

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Most of us would say that we would prefer the second one.

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But the conventional medicine system really doesn't focus on that.

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It really only tracks the first how long people live.

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There was a cool study out of the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018.

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It reported that while life expectancy has increased worldwide, the number of years lived

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in poor health has also risen.

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And this shows the gap between lifespan and health span.

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Yes, people are living longer with modern technologies and modern medicine, but those

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years are not vibrant and healthy years.

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So, you know, I personally I'll speak for myself, I would rather live like shorter,

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healthier up until the end, then live 200 and be in the wheelchair bed bound for fifteen of

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those years.

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Again, my personal take, I think most people would agree.

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Now, there's some cool data that comes out of studies across the world.

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And so there's places called the blue zones, and they've done a lot of research on these

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places because they have the biggest population of people living into the 90s, hundreds and

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beyond.

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And so we can take away some lessons from that.

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In particular, these blue zones are places like Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Nicoya in

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Costa Rica, Icaria, Greece, and Loma Linda in California.

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And so, it's interesting because even across different cultures, different continents, the

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patterns are pretty consistent.

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They focus on simple whole food diets, rich in mostly plants, beans and omega threes.

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Daily movement woven into their life, right it's not like they have to plan movement every

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single day like we do in most of our country.

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But that's just their life gardening walking the hills walking to get produce its manual

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work intensive.

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They also have one thing in common, which is a strong social connection and a sense of

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belonging, right?

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A sense of purpose.

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They practice stress relief rituals like prayer, naps, meditation.

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And again, they have this purpose driven living, which it's called Ikigai in Okinawa,

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which is basically, like, what is the reason for being?

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And they very much are focused on that because then it makes doing the daily things important

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to them.

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It's not just, I need to do this so that I can make a buck so that I can buy more stuff.

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Right?

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It's no, I'm doing this because there's a point.

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There's a purpose.

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I'm leaving an impact on this world.

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Out of the Journal of Aging Research in 2020, it concluded that diet, physical activity,

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stress resilience, and social connection were the largest determinants of healthy aging

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outcomes.

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Now, that's the takeaway we want here is really it's genetics versus lifestyle.

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Right?

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And which which one matters most?

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Who wins?

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But it they show that only 20 to 25% of longevity is genetic.

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The rest is really the way you live, eat, move, connect with people, and manage stress.

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And so in other words, you're you're not sentenced by your family history.

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Lifestyle is really the lever that we can pull to modify either better or worse those

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outcomes.

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In a Harvard study out of circulation journal 2016, they followed five lifestyle habits,

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healthy diet, regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, moderate alcohol intake, and

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not smoking.

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And this was associated with twelve to fourteen additional years of life expectancy.

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So, the takeaway here is that you're not at the mercy of your genes.

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Longevity is a choice and the blueprint is there.

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The question is, are you focused on that or are you just ignoring it?

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Right?

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And so, let's get into a little bit here of, you know, maybe warning signs or red flags or

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things you can notice if you're not on the path to longevity.

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And so, things that we would want to get ahead of if longevity is a focus.

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Because the reality is most people don't realize that they're aging poorly until it's

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too late.

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Aging doesn't usually announce itself with a diagnosis.

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The signs are subtle, they don't show up like disease or, pains, things like that.

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They start as patterns, your body's these low level whispers before there's a full on alarm

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down the road.

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And so some early red flags to look out for if you're concerned or you're like, how can I

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optimize the way my body ages for longevity?

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Things like fatigue.

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And this isn't just, I had a bad night's sleep, and I'm a little tired, but lack of energy even

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after rest.

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This can often point towards early signs of mitochondrial dysfunction, where your cells

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aren't producing energy efficiently.

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Go back ten fifteen episodes, we did an episode on mitochondria really, really good in-depth

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episode on what that means.

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Another one, loss of muscle mass and strength, sarcopenia.

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Just did an episode on this a few weeks back because muscle is medicine and studies show

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that adults lose three to 8% of muscle per decade after 30.

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And the rate accelerates even more after 60.

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And so pre planning that getting ahead of muscle loss by focusing on body weight exercise

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even resistance training in particular is very important protein intake using you know,

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specific things to get your body to absorb protein better.

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Gut health is very important as well.

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Because when we have muscle loss, this weakens our metabolism, which can increase the risk

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obviously for things like diabetes, pre diabetes, metabolic syndrome, but it also

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increases the risk of falls and frailty in older adults.

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Another sign is belly fat and insulin resistance.

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So, central obesity is actually a red flag for metabolic syndrome.

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Belly fat is very, very inflammatory.

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And so, we talk about this a lot with patients who come in to see us with pains, particularly

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like low back, mid back, knees, hips, those kind of pains.

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You know, you can do all of the therapies in the world, but if you don't manage the

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inflammation on the internal side, you're missing a mark there that's going to have

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limited results.

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And so, it's very important to know that your adipose tissue fat cells are very inflammatory,

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and they can drive chronic disease with toxicity as well.

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Another one poor sleep, or you know, reliance on medications.

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Big one to look out for is things like brain fog or you know, mood decline, things like

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memory lapses, or it's hard to recall things, maybe anxiety or depression.

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These are early signs of brain inflammation or neuro inflammation, which can lead down the

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line to more severe neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,

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things like that.

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We did an episode way, way back about how Alzheimer's is actually now known as type three

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diabetes.

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And that's because it starts now and eventually the metabolic issues within the body lead to

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the breakdown of the neurons in the brain, which can then become Alzheimer's.

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A big thing to look and to check for things like high inflammation markers, which we're

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going to get into this next in the testing section, but those can be indications of, you

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know, early signs of premature aging or breakdown.

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And then a big, big, big one is weakened immunity.

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I'm sick all the time, or it takes longer for me to recover or to heal.

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All of those can point to immune dysfunction.

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A really cool study out of the Journal of Gerontology 2019, they studied grip strength

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and gait speed as the strongest predictors of mortality.

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So, these were more powerful indicators than even cholesterol and blood pressure.

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So basically your handshake and the pace at which you can walk literally forecast your

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health span.

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If you're able to move quickly and you're able to have some strength with your grip, that's a

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better sign for positive outcomes later.

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And so, you know, what's the mismatch here?

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Right?

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Because it's always like, why is this a thing?

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It's because we're living realistically in a world that our biology was not designed for.

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Our bodies were engineered for scarcity, right?

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Food was not always available.

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Movement, we had to move to stay alive.

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And natural rhythms, you know, rising and sleeping with the sunlight.

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Instead, we're stuck in environments of abundance.

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There's food available all the time.

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Artificial lights everywhere.

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Needing to plan movement, right, or sedentary all day long.

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And so ultra processed foods with loaded sugars, refined oils, chronic stress and the

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screens, we're constantly getting input all day long, which is spiking our cortisol levels,

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suppressing immune function, sedentary lifestyles, you know, they they say sitting is

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actually the new smoking, right?

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Sitting most of the day weakens our mitochondria shrinks our muscles and this

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accelerates insulin resistance.

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And then the toxicity of our environment.

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Everything's plastic, pesticides on all the foods, pesticides in the air.

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There's heavy metals in the water, endocrine disruptors.

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This all just overloads our body's ability to detox and get things out, which can then have a

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cascade of effects like disrupting hormones, autoimmunity, and even cancer.

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And so the The Lancet Journal posted on healthy longevity in 2021, that environmental and

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lifestyle factors account for over seventy five percent of the variance in aging outcomes.

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Meaning that aging is far more about how you live than the DNA you were born with.

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Again, that goes back to the lifestyle versus genetics conversation.

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We always say that genetics load the gun, but your lifestyle pulls the trigger, right?

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You have a predisposition to heart disease, but your lifestyle can either set that off or

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combat that for good.

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And so, now let's get into a bit of the science of longevity and really testing and tracking

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very important things to take into account if you are concerned for longevity or, you know,

00:14:03
just the long term outcome of your health.

00:14:05
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00:15:37
Alright, welcome back.

00:15:38
Let's get back into this and let's get into the nuts and bolts, What we can do to take action,

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focus on our longevity, and get ahead of future issues before they come a problem.

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I was actually just sharing the other day with a colleague.

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It was it was Matt, my podcast co host.

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I was like, hey, let me let me ask you this.

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If you were walking down the sidewalk with your wife and there was a puddle in front of you,

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would you tell her, hey, there's a puddle watch out?

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Or would you wait for her to step in the puddle and then offer to dry off her feet?

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And everybody's going to answer that.

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Like, I would tell her to watch out for the puddle.

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That just makes sense.

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Now, why don't we do that with our health?

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Right?

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Another example is like, as soon as the check engine light comes on with our cars, everybody

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is taking their car to the shop.

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They are getting ahead of that like this.

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People love their cars.

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They want to make sure things run because they're expensive.

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How much more valuable is your body than your car?

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Right?

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When the warning signs and the lights are coming on, we tend to ignore them.

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Oh, it's just headaches that I've been dealing with for ten years.

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Oh, it's just pain.

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Oh, it's just gut dysfunction.

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And we push it off as if like powering through is some badge of honor.

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And I'm not I'm not here to criticize people.

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I've done that in the past as well.

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And that's just really part of the way I was raised.

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That's how a lot of us were.

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But that is what can lead to negative outcomes in the future.

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Problems becoming worse, harder to fix if they are, and more expensive to fix down the line.

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It's always cheaper to fix things earlier than to let things get worse.

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And so if you don't measure it, you really can't manage it because longevity isn't about

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wishful thinking.

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It's about testing the right markers, tracking patterns, and too many people are relying on

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just the annual physical that really isn't scratching the surface.

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But if you want to extend your health span, you need deeper testing, you need functional

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testing.

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And so, functional medicine longevity testing, this is really the hallmark here.

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This is the gold standard for what we would do.

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And so number one, we have to focus on metabolic health.

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That's everything.

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And so checking things like fasting insulin, your hemoglobin A1C, glucose, your CRP, C

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reactive peptide.

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These can reveal insulin resistance years before diabetes diagnosed.

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We take it a step further with the HoMA test where we can see if someone is at risk for

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insulin resistance before their blood sugar is showing that really cool test.

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Continuous glucose monitors or CGMs.

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These are awesome.

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You're seeing a lot of younger people and athletes wearing these nowadays, because they

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want to be able to track what meals and exercise are doing to their blood sugar.

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Right?

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I wore one for a while and I noticed that every time I had oats, right?

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I was eating oats as like a pre workout meal.

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It would spike my blood sugar like no other.

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Now, I just don't eat oats, right?

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That's not something my body reacts well to.

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Instead, I do things like starches like sweet potatoes or even regular white potatoes.

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They have a more flat insulin sugar or insulin spike.

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And so there was a study in a journal diabetologia.

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This is a, I believe, Spanish.

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Even high normal fasting glucose levels predict higher cardiovascular and cognitive decline

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risk.

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So, the higher the glucose or the blood sugar, the higher the risk for cognitive decline,

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right?

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Again, type three diabetes is Alzheimer's.

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Now, the next things we would look for inflammation markers.

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This is things like HSCRP, the similar C reactive protein, homocysteine is a big one.

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And then ferritin, right?

00:19:23
Because chronic low grade inflammation is the common denominator in heart disease,

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Alzheimer's and cancer.

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And these are things that we can predict before they become a problem.

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Now, we're going to look at hormones.

00:19:36
So, a full thyroid panel, looking at things like TSH the free and reverse T3 thyroid

00:19:43
antibodies to check for autoimmunity.

00:19:45
We're going to look at cortisol rhythm rhythm either via saliva test or a Dutch test.

00:19:52
And then sex hormones, androgens, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, because these regulate

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metabolism, mood, energy and longevity resilience.

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Next on the list is cellular and mitochondrial health really, really awesome test is the

00:20:06
organic acids test or an oat test.

00:20:09
This shows us your body's mitochondrial energy output, your body's detox capacity, and it can

00:20:15
even give insight into nutrient deficiencies.

00:20:18
All things that can either set us up for disease or set us up for longevity.

00:20:24
Another one is oxidative stress testing, looking at CoQ10 levels or oxidative stress

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markers, really like assessing how well your body handles wear and tear and stress over time

00:20:36
and the environmental toxicity.

00:20:39
Nutrient status like vitamin D, that's a powerful one Omega three index B12

00:20:44
micronutrients are the co factors of longevity.

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And so every system in the body needs raw materials to work right for these cascades to

00:20:54
work.

00:20:54
Those are the micronutrients it pulls from different sources and stores, particularly a

00:20:59
diet if it's not endogenous, and it uses those to then create hormones, to create energy, to

00:21:06
create ATP, which is our body's energy source.

00:21:10
And so, you know, vitamin D deficiency has been linked with a two times higher risk of all

00:21:15
causes of mortality.

00:21:18
Now, a huge one, and this is body composition.

00:21:21
And so, what we use in our clinic is called a DEXA scan.

00:21:25
This is the gold standard because this will tell you fat mass, lean mass, bone density.

00:21:32
It can predict sarcopenia or osteopenia which are silent killers of health span.

00:21:37
And so, there was a study out of the Journal of Gerontology 2019 showed that low muscle mass

00:21:42
predicts mortality more strongly than cholesterol or BMI.

00:21:47
That is powerful.

00:21:48
Let me say that again, low muscle mass predicts mortality more strongly than cholesterol.

00:21:53
However, the medical system is so focused on cholesterol, they just want everybody to check

00:21:58
your cholesterol.

00:21:59
What's your cholesterol?

00:22:00
Did you know that cholesterol is actually what makes up your brain?

00:22:03
Did you know that cholesterol is what makes up your hormones?

00:22:06
If we don't have cholesterol, you die.

00:22:08
And so, high cholesterol, I mean, if it's skyrocketed high, yes, that's something to be

00:22:14
aware of and something that is important.

00:22:17
However, moderately high cholesterol in the absence of inflammation is actually not that

00:22:22
big of a deal.

00:22:23
It's when there's inflammation and degeneration that's going on within the arteries, within the

00:22:29
heart, plus the cholesterol, then yes, that is something to take care of and something to get

00:22:34
ahead of.

00:22:35
However, cholesterol alone is not the villain they've made it out to be.

00:22:39
Go back 10 episodes, 12 episodes.

00:22:41
I don't know the number.

00:22:42
We did an episode all about that that talks more about it.

00:22:45
Very interesting.

00:22:47
And then some other really cool things, you know, again, the DEXA scan is the gold standard

00:22:52
that we would use that I recommend everybody gets at least twice a year, if not every

00:22:56
quarter.

00:22:58
But on top of that, really cool things we can do is like telomere length testing.

00:23:02
So, you test for telomeres, which are basically at the end caps of all your DNA, and they get

00:23:08
over time, they get shorter because they're being used and worn.

00:23:11
And so shortened telomeres basically equal accelerated biological aging.

00:23:16
There's things we can do to reverse that and actually add length to those telomeres.

00:23:21
DNA methylation testing, and then VO2 max and grip strength testing.

00:23:25
Again, those were things that have been shown to be correlated to better health span long

00:23:31
term.

00:23:32
And so, the reason this matters, and I always like to make sure we hit on this because people

00:23:37
will be like, well, whatever, you know, this sounds cool and sounds like something that

00:23:41
healthy people would want to be concerned with, but that's not me.

00:23:45
Well, everybody's got the same thing inside their body.

00:23:48
And so just because somebody's more healthy doesn't mean they're any different.

00:23:53
What happens is conventional medicine waits until things are broken and things are an issue

00:23:59
to then take action.

00:24:00
Again, conventional medicine is waiting for you to step in the puddle and offering you a towel

00:24:04
to wipe off your shoes versus functional medicine, which says, hey, there's a puddle

00:24:09
here, we should probably go the other way, or we should probably walk around that.

00:24:13
And so it's about getting ahead of things, which are often it's easier to fix then.

00:24:18
It's cheaper to fix it at that point, and there's less chance for more severe condition

00:24:23
down the line.

00:24:24
And so it's using data.

00:24:26
Data is a compass for us.

00:24:28
Now, let's get into a bit of Okay, we've talked about why longevity is important.

00:24:35
You know, what signs to maybe look for if your body is not on the path to longevity, but maybe

00:24:40
there's some things happening now.

00:24:42
And then how we test to confirm that.

00:24:45
Now, let's talk about like what is the longevity blueprint?

00:24:48
Because the good news is we already know.

00:24:50
Right?

00:24:50
We already know what works.

00:24:51
It's twenty first century.

00:24:52
It's 2025.

00:24:53
Longevity isn't about hacking your way to a 100, but it's about aligning with the blueprint

00:24:57
that nature and research have already shown us.

00:25:00
When you put pillars into practice consistently, you shift from just like survival

00:25:05
mode into thriving.

00:25:06
And that's what we're all about.

00:25:08
So here's the blueprint.

00:25:09
Okay, I'm going get into it.

00:25:11
Number one, nutrition, go figure, right?

00:25:14
What you put into your body is the number one predictor for if you're going to be healthy or

00:25:18
unhealthy.

00:25:19
So anti inflammatory diet, higher on protein plants are important, right?

00:25:24
It's I know there's a carnival craze now, but certain nutrients have polyphenols and these

00:25:30
antioxidants in them that are just vital.

00:25:33
And so the Mediterranean diet has been shown or even paleo type of diet has been shown to be

00:25:38
the best for longevity.

00:25:39
And that's what we focus on with our patients.

00:25:42
Prioritizing Omega threes from wild fish, walnuts, flax seeds, polyphenol rich berries,

00:25:49
olive oil, and then limiting processed foods like refined sugars or seed oils.

00:25:55
If you ever are interested in your like, where do I start with all this is so much

00:25:59
information.

00:26:00
You just contact us.

00:26:01
Go to lesseefunctionalhealth.com and you contact us say something like, diet.

00:26:06
Heard you on a podcast Mediterranean.

00:26:08
We'll send you a ton of resources that we do a completely free.

00:26:11
This is just for us to help people.

00:26:13
And so there was a meta analysis in the British Medical Journal 2021 found that adherence to a

00:26:19
Mediterranean diet actually can reduce cardiovascular mortality by up to thirty

00:26:24
percent.

00:26:25
So just diet alone.

00:26:27
Now, movement is the second thing.

00:26:29
Alright?

00:26:30
Muscle is medicine.

00:26:31
Again, we're gonna harp on this.

00:26:32
Daily activity, non negotiable.

00:26:35
You have to walk, you have to move, correct your posture.

00:26:39
You have to get yourself moderately out of breath and get your heart rate up every day.

00:26:43
So zone two cardio, like jogging, cycling, brisk walks, trains your mitochondria and your

00:26:49
heart.

00:26:50
And now, on top of that resistance training, putting your body under some type of weight,

00:26:54
whether it's body weight, whether it's Pilates or holding, or if it's just actually lifting

00:26:59
weights, protects against sarcopenia and insulin resistance.

00:27:04
And resistance training has been shown to be more beneficial for preventing osteoporosis

00:27:11
than the medications they will prescribe you.

00:27:13
So, natural and free, put your body underweight.

00:27:17
Now, the next thing is focusing on stress and sleep.

00:27:21
Right?

00:27:21
Your recovery equals longevity.

00:27:24
Recovery is that much more important or equally important to the amount of effort you're doing.

00:27:29
Right?

00:27:30
If you talk to any high level athlete, if they're burning it every single day, but

00:27:33
they're not recovering properly, what happens?

00:27:36
Injuries, their their career suffers, right?

00:27:39
All these things that they're not able to perform at that level.

00:27:43
Not saying that we need to be athletes, but we need to think like athletes.

00:27:46
How can I enhance the way my body moves and is able to act and do things?

00:27:52
Because stress breaks the body, but recovery builds it back up.

00:27:55
And so, you know, building vagal tone with breath work, meditation, cold exposure, yoga.

00:28:01
We talked about vagal tone in a few episodes back.

00:28:04
So I'm sure you're starting to gather that a lot of these things we talk about tend to

00:28:09
overlap each other, and that's because there's a lot of importance to it.

00:28:12
This topic today is a bit more broad, but there's a lot more fine tuned episodes about

00:28:16
this stuff.

00:28:17
So, go listen to those and share them with your friends.

00:28:20
Now, circadian alignment, right?

00:28:22
Very important.

00:28:23
We need to be on a cycle that is similar to what the sun is doing.

00:28:27
That's just the way the human body was was made.

00:28:30
We rise with the Sun, we want to get sunlight on our body and our eyes first thing.

00:28:34
And then when the Sun starts to go down, we want to be kind of toning down, not looking at

00:28:39
screens, looking at our phones, at the computer, TV late into the night.

00:28:44
Aiming for seven to nine hours of sleep, making sure we're getting five, six sleep cycles in

00:28:50
that time.

00:28:51
There was a sleep study out of the Journal of Sleep 2018 that said less than six hours a

00:28:56
night can increase all cause mortality risk by twenty percent.

00:28:59
So, if we're not sleeping, we're not recovering.

00:29:01
If we're not recovering, our body's breaking down.

00:29:04
And if our body's breaking down, longevity will obviously be at risk.

00:29:09
And so, the next thing, right?

00:29:10
We took this away from the blue zones, the social and purpose pillar, right?

00:29:14
This is the one that gets missed because people just they don't really think that, I got

00:29:18
friends.

00:29:19
Oh, I do this.

00:29:19
But not just hanging out with friends, but like what is the purpose, right?

00:29:24
Like am I building relationships that matter?

00:29:27
Am I connecting?

00:29:28
Am I really like growing in a community?

00:29:31
And so, this can lower stress hormones.

00:29:33
It improves immune function and it boosts those longevity genes, those telomeres.

00:29:39
Things like volunteering, mentoring, right?

00:29:42
Mentoring is a great way to have purpose when we can use wisdom to impart on younger people

00:29:47
to like, this is, you know, a way to go about things, right?

00:29:51
It gives you a sense of purpose and community.

00:29:53
It's all important.

00:29:55
Now, detoxification and environment, again, reducing that toxic load within the body.

00:30:01
So, cleaning up our water systems using reverse osmosis or filtered air in the house, avoiding

00:30:07
things, right?

00:30:08
It's important to avoid heavy plastics, pesticides, toxic cookware is a big one.

00:30:14
The things we put on our body was just talking to a patient about this equally important to

00:30:18
what we put in our body.

00:30:20
If we're putting synthetic fragrances and deodorants and lotions and stuff, that's

00:30:24
soaking right into the skin and getting into your bloodstream.

00:30:27
And then sweating things out.

00:30:28
Sauna is awesome for longevity.

00:30:30
Exercise, we already talked about hot tubs, hot baths, right?

00:30:34
And so, chronic exposure to endocrine disruptors like BPA can be directly tied to

00:30:40
obesity and thyroid dysfunction.

00:30:42
This came out of the Environmental Health Perspectives Journal.

00:30:45
Now, we talked about that, I think an episode ago about thyroid and how that gets

00:30:49
dysregulated.

00:30:51
Now, let's okay, that's all the functional things.

00:30:55
Again, all of that stuff I just talked about basically is free.

00:30:58
Nutrition, I mean, it's not free.

00:31:00
You have to pay for food, but it's not like you have to go buy something special.

00:31:03
Just eat healthy.

00:31:04
Movement, free.

00:31:05
Sleep and recovery, and stress meditation, that kind of stuff free, social purpose community

00:31:10
free, right?

00:31:11
It's not like we're selling you some high valued like crazy thing, like just start making

00:31:17
better choices, right?

00:31:18
Detoxing and focusing on cleaning up the environment in your house.

00:31:22
That's free too, right?

00:31:22
You don't have to buy certain things to eat.

00:31:25
And then now, obviously getting into the more advanced tools, right?

00:31:28
And this is kind of the frontier and the cool stuff that everybody wants to hear about.

00:31:32
But I'll be honest me too.

00:31:34
I like I like talking about this stuff.

00:31:36
Peptides, right?

00:31:37
Using really cool internal signalers that they are is like Mot C, which supports your

00:31:43
mitochondrial energy and BPC 157 for repair.

00:31:48
Ipamorelin is great for growth hormone support and we will combine some of these in different

00:31:53
you know combinations based on what the patients or the person's goals might be.

00:31:58
Bio regulators are awesome.

00:32:00
They're small protein molecules that actually help reset aging tissues at the genetic level.

00:32:05
They're derived from actual glandular tissue.

00:32:09
And so, when you put those in the body, they will build up the similar tissue.

00:32:14
So, it's pretty cool.

00:32:16
And then regenerative therapies, things like PRP, stem cells, red light to promote repair

00:32:21
and resilience, soft wave therapy for targeted support.

00:32:25
Now, again, while these aren't for everybody, and this isn't like you have to do any of

00:32:29
these.

00:32:30
These are like the Formula One tier of proactive medicine, right?

00:32:33
These are the high level, like I want to really get ahead of this.

00:32:37
It's very important to me, that kind of thing.

00:32:39
So, again, if you have questions about this stuff, if you're ever interested in these kind

00:32:45
of things, reach out to us.

00:32:47
We are happy to give you resources on top of resources free.

00:32:51
I don't care.

00:32:52
We will just send you all of our guides.

00:32:54
That way, you can learn this stuff for yourself and not even just for yourself but then you can

00:32:59
impact those in your life as well.

00:33:01
And so, you know, the final takeaway here that I would like to leave everyone with is that you

00:33:05
don't need a crystal ball to predict your health span.

00:33:09
The blueprint is simple, right?

00:33:10
We already know it's eating clean, moving daily, connecting deeply with loved ones,

00:33:14
detoxing regularly, recovering and living with a sense of purpose.

00:33:19
So, longevity isn't about chasing time, it's about creating vitality.

00:33:24
And if you commit to a blueprint, you don't just add years to your life, but you add

00:33:27
quality and clarity and resilience to those years that you add to your life.

00:33:32
And so, you would like to learn more about some of our programs and our longevity testing and

00:33:38
how we can implement some of these things into your life, please reach out to us.

00:33:43
Alessi functional health dot com.

00:33:45
You can schedule a consultation with myself or somebody on my team, and we will talk you

00:33:50
through a personalized game plan to add years and vibrant years to your life.

00:33:55
As always, we always ask if you liked what you heard on the show, if this was valuable in any

00:34:01
way to you, please follow.

00:34:03
Please share this with somebody that you think would need to hear it as well.

00:34:07
And just help us spread the word of natural functional health.

00:34:13
If you want to hear your questions, if you have questions, you want to hear them answered on

00:34:17
the show, or if you have a story you want to share, send it to ask@AlessiFXHealth.com.

00:34:23
We'd be happy to feature you on the show.

00:34:25
That's always a fun one to do.

00:34:27
And as always, stay healthy.

00:34:30
Your health is in your hands, and we will look forward to seeing you on the next one.

00:34:34
Thank you for tuning in to Health Decoded, where we break down the truth about all things

00:34:40
health and empower you to take charge of your well-being.

00:34:43
If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with

00:34:49
someone who needs to hear this.

00:34:51
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00:34:58
To hear your questions answered live on the show, send them to ask@AlessiFXHealth.com.

00:35:04
That's ask@alessifxhealth.com.

00:35:09
Until next time.

00:35:11
Stay curious, stay empowered, and remember, your health is in your hands.