Young Forever

by Mark Hyman

What happens when it is turned on? Everything you need to reverse disease and increase a healthy life span.3 It improves your cells’ ability to produce energy, reverses insulin resistance and improves blood sugar control, enhances stress resistance, and improves your cells’ housekeeping functions.

Many plant compounds have been found to activate AMPK and may result in longevity benefits similar to those of metformin, including areca nut, saffron, berberine from goldenseal, aloe, resveratrol, ginseng, reishi, hot peppers, artemisia, black cumin seed, bitter melon, tangerines, chlorogenic acid from coffee, and capsaicin from peppers.9

Sirtuins are a family of signaling proteins that regulate gene transcription (the making of new proteins), lower inflammation and oxidative stress, and improve metabolism and cellular energy production.12 They are key players in the health of our mitochondria.

Sirtuins are critical to making us more insulin-sensitive.

Other beneficial compounds are proanthocyanidins, found in berries; quercetin, found in onions; curcumin, from turmeric; catechins, from green tea; persimmon; kaempferol, found in cruciferous vegetables; oligonol, from lychee fruit; butein, found in the Chinese lacquer tree and many flowering plants; and many compounds, like paeonol, used in traditional Chinese medicine.

The bottom line: Cut the sugar and starch and processed food. Eat lots of phytochemicals from colorful fruits and vegetables, good fats, and high-quality protein. Engage in good stress that activates these pathways, including exercise and potentially longer fasts. And give yourself breaks from eating by leaving at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast

Our telomeres, the little caps at the end of our chromosomes, shorten as we age and eventually can’t hold the tightly protected DNA double helix to prevent it from unraveling.

The longer our telomeres, the more years of healthy DNA replication we have. The shorter they are, the shorter our life.

Remember that all DNA does is code for proteins. These proteins regulate everything in your body. Your organs, tissues, and cells are made from proteins. Your cellular messenger molecules, like hormones, peptides, immune molecules, and neurotransmitters, are made from proteins.

We are constantly consuming calories. This endless stream of food (starch, sugar, and protein) activates mTOR, which shuts down autophagy. We never give our bodies the much-needed break from the flood of energy needed to do the cleanup and repair work. Periods of fasting (even overnight for 12 hours) give our body a chance to clean up the messes and damaged proteins we create from the way we live.

glycation. Think of the crackling surface of crème brûlée, or crispy chicken skin or the crust of a baguette. Known as the browning or Maillard reaction between amino acids and sugars, this is what makes food taste good. However, in your body this reaction produces AGEs (advanced glycation end products) that bind to RAGEs (receptors for advanced glycation end products). And they do exactly what their acronyms suggest—they cause your body to age and rage against the insult of too much sugar and starch. Once the sugars bind to the proteins, they become dysfunctional and cause disease.

It turns out that this load of sugar and starch is the most powerful driver of aging. It both shuts off the longevity switches and accelerates nearly all the hallmarks of aging, shortening our telomeres and damaging our DNA, proteins, epigenome, mitochondria, and microbiome. Sugar and starch also drive accelerated inflammation, create hormonal chaos, and age our stem cells. If you want to live a long and healthy life, sugar and starch should be either eliminated or used very occasionally.

Zombie cells are caused by DNA damage, critically short telomeres, and chemical or toxic stress, including our inflammatory diet and lifestyle. They accelerate all the age-related diseases: cancer, heart disease, liver disease, dementia, Parkinson’s, cataracts, arthritis, and muscle loss, or sarcopenia.

While zombie cells wander around your body, they secrete dangerous molecules called cytokines

and other molecules that drive inflammation and cause neighboring cells to become senes...

One study combined quercetin, a natural compound found in apples and onions,

Senolytics include fisetin, from strawberries, persimmons, apples, cucumbers, and onions; luteolin, found in carrots, broccoli, artichokes, onions, chrysanthemum flowers, cabbages, and apple skins; quercetin, found in apples, grapes, berries, broccoli, citrus fruits, and cherries; curcumin, found in turmeric; and piperlongumine, an extract of goldenrod and an alkaloid found in long peppers.

It is now even understood to be at the root of mental illness and neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.

The best way to clean up and rejuvenate old mitochondria is to eat a whole foods low-starch-and-sugar, good-fat, microbiome-supporting, polyphenol-rich diet, practice intermittent fasting or caloric restriction, and incorporate hormesis (good stress) routines like cold plunges or showers, aerobic exercise, strength training, and a few key supplements.

Good bugs create health. Bad bugs create disease.24 It’s impossible to achieve optimal health and longevity with an out‑of‑balance gut.

Western diet—low in fiber, high in processed foods, sugar, food additives, pesticides, and herbicides (especially the microbiome-destroying weed killer glyphosate, used on 70 percent of global crops)—and gut-busting drugs such as acid blockers, anti-inflammatories (like ibuprofen or aspirin), and antibiotics has radically changed the makeup of our microbiome, fostering dysbiosis,

Fun fact: 25 percent of calories from breast milk, in the form of special sugars called oligosaccharides, are not digestible by babies.25 Why are these special sugars there? To feed the infant’s microbiome, especially Bifidobacterium infantis, the microbe responsible for the development of a healthy immune system. Their absence is linked to colic, allergies, asthma, eczema, and autoimmunity in addition to generalized inflammation. There is even a name for this condition: newborn gut deficiency.

Thankfully one company has created a highly researched supplement probiotic called Evivo, containing a specialized strain of B. infantis, that can be given to babies at birth.

As we’ve discussed, cytokines are molecules produced by our immune system to fight infection and cancer. When dysregulated, though, they cause our immune system to overheat, resulting in allergy and autoimmunity.

Even psychological stress and lack of sleep, a product of our overworked, under-loved culture, drives inflammation.

All the hallmarks of aging result in even more inflammation—worsening DNA damage, mitochondrial injury, free-radical accumulation, altered nutrient signaling, not enough autophagy and cellular cleanup, too many zombie cells, damaged proteins, and epigenetic changes. Together, these changes lead to a flood of cytokines that damage and prematurely age the body.

Diet plays a significant role in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia. These diseases were rare or absent just 150 years ago. Hospital records from the early 1800s clearly demonstrate the rarity of type 2 diabetes and heart disease and show that they are not inevitable consequences of being human, but adaptations to a bad set of circumstances.6

In my book Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet—One Bite at a Time,

Today, 60 percent of our diet is ultraprocessed food. For every 10 percent of your diet that is ultraprocessed food, your risk of death goes up by 14 percent.7 You do the math.

In fact, shattering the old idea that weight gain is the result of eating too much and not exercising enough (eating more calories than we burn), science proves that it is the slow accumulation of belly fat from eating too much of the wrong thing that makes us overeat more and exercise less.17 Belly fat is “hungry fat.” It slows our metabolism and fat burning, makes us hungry, and turns us into couch potatoes.

Simply walking for 20 minutes a day can cut your risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia by 40 percent.

Building community, creating belonging, nurturing relationships and support groups, even being in a knitting or bowling group is associated with better health and longevity.

using the power of community as medicine.

Biological aging can result from psychological, social, or physical stressors—from lack of sleep or lack of physical touch.

While trauma that occurs at any stage in life can have negative impacts on our health, early childhood trauma leaves us more vulnerable to disease and death.