The Longevity Paradox Quotes

“In the early 1900s, researhers first posited the idea that longevity is inversely related to metabolic rate. They called it the “rate of living.” In other words, if you consistently burn energy at a high rate, you will quickly burn out.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Stomach acid is so important to protect your gut barrier that my colleagues at the Medical College of Georgia (where I went to medical school) are starting to use baking soda as a treatment for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“During rush-hour traffic, emissions of siloxane, a microbiome-destroying ingredient in shampoos, lotions, and deodorants, are found in comparable levels to vehicle exhaust.17 Just one more reason to dread your daily commute.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Sugar substitutes aren’t any better. Many people (including me when I was overweight) turn to artificial sugars to quell their cravings without packing on the pounds. Back then I would have happily performed heart surgery with a Diet Coke in my hand if only I could have found a way to sterilize it! But ironically, although these products are supposed to aid in weight loss, they do just the opposite. That’s because products such as sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, and other nonnutritive artificial sweeteners kill your gut buddies and allow the bad bugs to multiply. Believe it or not, a Duke University study28 showed that a single Splenda packet kills 50 percent of normal intestinal flora! It’s sad but true: if you eat too much of anything sweet, your gut buddies will starve to death, and your bad bugs will live long and prosper—and multiply. Even fructose, the sugar in fruit, has been shown to be a mitochrondrial poison! There goes the neighborhood.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Fructose, the main sugar in fruit, is actually a toxin that can directly injure cells and disrupt mitochondrial function.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Sure, you know that tea is good for you, but pu-erh tea? Go to the head of the class if you guessed what it does: it promotes the growth of Akkermansia muciniphila bacteria!30”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“The latest studies conducted on mice prove that this inflammatory response is also a major cause of aging. In 2018, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine correlated a microbe that was present in mice with a lupuslike autoimmune condition that crossed from the gut into the mice’s organs. The result was gut wall disintegration and immune cells (which you can think of in this case as mouse cops) in the same organs as the invading bacteria. Notably, the same bad bugs were found in liver biopsies of human patients with autoimmune diseases, but not in healthy control subjects.6 In other words, a leaky gut that allows bacteria to cross the border of the gut lining causes autoimmune disease in both mice and humans.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“we see that two types of stress (calorie restriction and exercise) cause you to turbocharge your cells with more mitochondria. But as they get older, most people don’t restrict calories, use intermittent fasting, or do much strength training. The result is less muscle mass and fewer mitochondria for most older people—but this is not inevitable. Slightly stressed cells and hungry muscles will lead to more mitochondria, lower insulin levels, more muscle mass, and overall better health for many years to come.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Dr. Longo’s studies have also profiled a group of people in Ecuador called the Larons (named after the researcher that originally studied them, Zvi Laron). The Larons, who have absent growth hormone receptors, are unable to make IGF-1. These short adults are free from cancer and diabetes, similar to another group with the same syndrome in Brazil.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Sure enough, a long-range study published in 2017 that looked at nearly 16,000 healthy people aged 40 and older found a significant association between cumulative PPI use and the risk of dementia.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“In 2015, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared glyphosate to be a “probable human carcinogen.”22 As a result, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the Feed the World Project (now the Detox Project) teamed up to offer the public the opportunity to have their urine tested for glyphosate.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“On the surface, their longevity is perplexing and just downright weird. In fact, there are lots of weird things about naked mole rats. (Even their appearance. Go ahead, google it.) They can live without oxygen for up to eighteen minutes, almost never get cancer, and on average live about ten to fifteen times as long as other rodents their size.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“As a guide, your HDL level should be equal to or higher than your triglyceride level, which basically signifies that you’re recycling more fat than is being stored. But during our current 365-day growth cycle, the vast majority of people have the exact opposite ratio.”
― Steven R. Gundry, MD, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Longevinex,”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“But perhaps the greatest risk to our musculoskeletal systems as we age is invisible muscle loss.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“The clear message is to start exercising now, no matter how old you are.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Regular exercise also dramatically reduces your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A study from 201815 showed that women who were physically fit at middle age were a whopping 90 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease even decades later. The few fit women who participated in the study and did eventually develop Alzheimer’s did so an average of eleven years later than women who did not exercise, at the age of 90 compared to 79. Now listen up, my female readers. As my good friend Maria Shriver and I both know, Alzheimer’s disproportionally affects women, and the cure is prevention, not a long-sought-after but not-yet-discovered drug. Imagine that you read a headline saying that taking a “drug” would prevent 90 percent of all Alzheimer’s disease if the treatment is started early. How much would you pay for it? Well, that drug is a combination of exercise and, as you’ll soon learn, simple choices in food. Another study examined the effects of exercise on patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s and found that it improved memory performance and even reduced atrophy of the hippocampus, the memory centers of the brain.16 We also know that exercise that uses the legs in particular stimulates brain cells, keeping you alert and healthy long into old age.17 Remember “Michelle”? I have no doubt that walking her Pomeranian (in her high heels!) multiple times a day helped her stay sharp well into her ripe old age. Meanwhile, “brain training” apps that claim to help you improve your brain actually do nothing for working memory or IQ.18 So skip the games and go out for a walk instead. Exercise”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Your body is designed to be a part of a beautifully orchestrated dance between periods of sleep and wakefulness, eating and fasting.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Any bacteria, LPSs, or other invaders lurking where they don’t belong trigger an immune response that generates widespread inflammation and lays the groundwork for accelerated aging and illness.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Lest I be accused of being overly dramatic, here is some evidence of the devastating effects of antibiotics: studies show that every time you take a course of antibiotics, you increase the likelihood of developing Crohn’s disease, diabetes, obesity, or asthma later in life.19”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“verbal and visual skills”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“you are not what you eat; you are what your gut buddies digest.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Did you notice in our discussion of the Blue Zones earlier that not only do people in all of those cultures eat meat very rarely, but they also consume goat or sheep milk products rather than cow? Call this luck or intuitive wisdom (or flavor preference). Whatever it is, it is clearly one factor that has helped those people live such long and healthy lives.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“Another class of drugs that is disastrous for your gut is proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and other stomach acid reducers such as Zantac, Prilosec, Nexium, and Protonix. Stomach acid is important and necessary. It kills off most of the bad bugs you swallow before they make it to your gut. Without enough of it, bad bugs—including those that can cause infectious diseases—can take over. This is why people who regularly use acid blockers are three times more likely to get pneumonia than those who don’t use them;9 stomach acid is one of the best defenses against bad bugs getting into you, as one of its main purposes is to kill bacteria. Also, remember that lectins are plant proteins; stomach acid is designed to digest proteins. So by using stomach acid blockers, you inadvertently wipe out one of your major defense mechanisms against lectins!”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“States”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“In fact, most people who complain of lactose intolerance—and all the pain, discomfort, and embarrassing symptoms that come with it—are actually struggling with casein A1 intolerance.”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age

“as told by Tracey Lawson in her book A Year in the Village of Eternity: The Lifestyle of Longevity in Campodimele, Italy, an elderly man described his relationship with his pig like this: “For a year I feed the pig, then for a year he feeds us!”
― Steven R. Gundry, The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age