Are You Serious About Being Healthy and Independent Longer?
Then You Must Watch this Podcast on Dr Nir Barzilai
If you are interested in being healthy and independent longer then you owe it to yourself to listen to this very enlightening podcast. Dr Barzilai is one of the leading academic authorities in the world on healthy aging. He leads this work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the National Institutes of health. Dr. Barzilai is a very entertaining and engaging speaker. You will enjoy hearing him speak about this very important topic.
Think about this. The people who are living to be 100 today were born when life expectancy at birth was 50. They are living twice as long as the average person did then. They don’t just live longer. They develop chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease 30 years later. Their children develop chronic diseases later. Most people who live to be 100 are healthy longer and have a much shorter period of chronic illnesses before they die. We spend a lot of money on Americans in the last two years of life. People who live to be 100 have health expenses those last two years that are one third of average.
Dr. Barzilai discusses some of the molecular biology of aging and we seem to be very different before and after age 50. Before age 50, growth factor signaling protects us and makes us healthier. After age 50, growth factor signaling kills us. There are some theories that try to explain that. As a practical matter, I think there is an easier explanation.
Genes that are essential to normal development, like the genes that make up the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) kill us when inappropriately activated after age 50. In the fetus and child, mTOR serves as a master metabolic genetic switch that coordinates food availability with growth in the fetus and child. Once the child is grown, mTOR continues to activate growth pathways but after age 50 when our children are grown, that is no longer beneficial and mTOR activation makes us sick and kills us.
mTOR is paired with another master genetic metabolic switch called AMPK. These are like dimmer switches. When mTOR is maximized, AMPK is minimized and vice versa. When there is no food, mTOR is minimized and AMPK is maximized to pull calories and energy to support fetal survival until there is food again. AMPK is the survival switch and that is its function throughout life.
Dr Barzilai mentioned intermittent fasting, exercise, SGLT2 inhibitors like Jardiance, metformin, and rapamycin. each of these interventions dims mTOR and brightens AMPK. That is the common denominator. He also talks about the negative effects of growth factor and IGF-1. Those molecules brighten mTOR and dim AMPK. It is all tied together and we already have proof that it works in humans.
If you treat patients with high risk diabetes and chronic kidney disease with metformin, a statin, an ace inhibitor like lisinopril, and aspirin they live 8 years longer and complications are delayed 8 years compared with patients receiving usual care. With the knowledge that we have right now, you can be healthy and independent longer.
Yup! We physicians have alot of reponsibilities to reestablish trust and accountability to save the profession, Bill! https://open.substack.com/pub/mcgdoc/p/can-mcg-detect-metobolic-heart-dysfunctions?r=q7iae&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I found this very interesting (but follow up information is sadly lacking) and would explain the "50 years" switch you mentioned.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/cells-across-the-body-talk-to-each-other-about-aging-20240108/
Recently, a set of papers documented a new biochemical pathway that regulates aging, one based on signals passed between mitochondria, the organelles best known as the powerhouse of the cell. Working with worms, the researchers found that damage to mitochondria in brain cells triggered a repair response that was then amplified, setting off similar reactions in mitochondria throughout the worm’s body. The effect of this repair activity was to extend the organism’s life span: The worms with repaired mitochondrial damage lived 50% longer.
What’s more, cells in the germline — the cells that produce eggs and sperm — were central to this anti-aging communication system.