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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your old dad here, saving you some
Speaker 2: pancakes even though you sleep until eleven am when you
Speaker 2: visit Alley Ward back with another episode of Ologies. So
Speaker 2: I have been promising you for weeks, an episode about
Speaker 2: aging and marching toward our demise, molecule by molecule. Here
Speaker 2: we are, folks, we made it. So this is an
Speaker 2: interview that is like concentrated laundry detergent. It's like eating
Speaker 2: spoonfuls of instant coffee, like cereal. It's to the point.
Speaker 2: It's tensely powerful information, minimal buffoonery. Aging. Why how let's
Speaker 2: get into it first. Let's get some business out of
Speaker 2: the way. I want to thank everyone supporting on patreon
Speaker 2: dot com. Slash Ologies for submitting their questions making the
Speaker 2: show possible. Anyone wearing ologies merch out and about. I
Speaker 2: hope you find each other and fall in love. Have
Speaker 2: me officiate your wedding. And thank you to all the
Speaker 2: folks who have rated and subscribed and left reviews. I
Speaker 2: read them all you know that. For example, glassful Assass
Speaker 2: who said that they changed two passwords and signed into
Speaker 2: four different accounts to leave a review which was very
Speaker 2: hilarious and sweet. Also thank you for the review KATEVF
Speaker 2: who says every week I wait with baited breath for
Speaker 2: the latest episode to drop. Ally and her guests are
Speaker 2: so captivating, and one episode even brought attention to a
Speaker 2: medical condition I didn't realize I had and may have
Speaker 2: saved my life. Thanks all that, Ward, thank you for
Speaker 2: continuing to live. Let's talk about old age. Okay, So biogerontology, etymology.
Speaker 2: So bio means life and jeron means old man. So
Speaker 2: the biology of an old guy not super inclusive in
Speaker 2: terms of its roots, but it's a subset of gerontology.
Speaker 2: It examines the processes of aging. So how does old
Speaker 2: thing happen? Now? I came across this ology after recording
Speaker 2: Coloniology about turtle life spans back in November, and a
Speaker 2: Wikipedia page whispered biogerontology is a thing, which ushered me
Speaker 2: to an article about how one particular ologist has been
Speaker 2: studying this since the nineteen fifties. And lo and behold,
Speaker 2: his office was a few miles away from me in
Speaker 2: La What so I gingerly begged him via email to
Speaker 2: hang out, and I freaked out when I got a reply.
Speaker 2: Then I navigated to usc with my vintage purse full
Speaker 2: of microphones and hope, and I knocked on his door
Speaker 2: twelve seconds after our appointed time. And there he stood
Speaker 2: a person who is ranked in the top half percent
Speaker 2: of the most cited scientists in the world. Five hundred
Speaker 2: papers with his name on them, decades of research, thousands
Speaker 2: of students, scores of studies. This dude in the cardigan
Speaker 2: in the khaki pants standing before me with a long
Speaker 2: white beard and an office piled with books. He is
Speaker 2: the dude. Now for a visual, just Google image search
Speaker 2: father time, and then add a laser focused expression and
Speaker 2: a furrowed brow. He's like a human fountain of knowledge
Speaker 2: on how our youth slips away. So in the death
Speaker 2: and Dying episode. I talked to Colin Perry, who makes
Speaker 2: ballpoint pens inscribed with the motto I don't have time
Speaker 2: for bullshit, and I should have given this biogerontologist one
Speaker 2: of these pens as a parting gift, because, as you
Speaker 2: will hear, when you are an expert on mortality factors,
Speaker 2: you don't suffer fools, you don't waste any time. This
Speaker 2: man does not have time for bullshit, and I love him.
Speaker 2: So let's get right into it. Let's talk about metabolism's
Speaker 2: modern life, life spans, risk factors for losing your memory,
Speaker 2: Thoughts on a possible cause and cure for Alzheimer's, why
Speaker 2: we age, secrets of centenarians, and what a seventy eight
Speaker 2: year old professor and globally lauded science hero does to
Speaker 2: stay so fit and so sharp. So sit up straight,
Speaker 2: take some notes for the concentrated crash course on the
Speaker 2: Forward March of Molecules with world renowned biogerontologist doctor Caleb
Speaker 2: tuck Finch.
Speaker 3: Mind me of where the radio program is.
Speaker 2: It's on Apple's iTunes and anywhere on the internet. So
Speaker 2: thank you so much, sure for doing this. So let's
Speaker 2: go into your background a little bit. Can you tell
Speaker 2: me why you decided to study aging well?
Speaker 3: As an undergraduate, I was looking to work on fields
Speaker 3: that had not been fully developed, in which there would
Speaker 3: be the chance to work out some of the basic questions.
Speaker 3: And one of my professors at Yale, who was a
Speaker 3: physicist named Carl Woes, coming into biology in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: he said, well, why don't you think about aging. Nobody
Speaker 3: knows anything about the biology of aging, even much less
Speaker 3: than how embryos developed. And this was nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: which is just five years after Watson and Crick, and
Speaker 3: we didn't know what the genetic code was, so that
Speaker 3: stuck in my mind. And then when I got to
Speaker 3: graduate school in New York at Rockefeller University, I did
Speaker 3: my PhD on aging, and sort of the first papers
Speaker 3: on the neurobiology of aging came out of my work there.
Speaker 2: So yes, Doctor Caleb Finch attended Yale on a scholarship,
Speaker 2: working in labs to help pay his tuition, and he
Speaker 2: graduated in nineteen sixty one with a degree in biophysics,
Speaker 2: and then he went on to Rockefeller University to get
Speaker 2: his PhD in cell biology, studying cellular activities during aging
Speaker 2: in mammals, and he gave a talk on this subject,
Speaker 2: and some chipbroni afterward came up to him to say, like,
Speaker 2: don't bother. Everyone already knows what they need to know
Speaker 2: about aging. And that tall drink of hater aide was
Speaker 2: a pathologist, Peyton Rousse, who had recently won a Nobel prize.
Speaker 2: Finch was like whatever, dude, and went on to become
Speaker 2: one of the foremost voices in the highly respected field
Speaker 2: of senescence research, which that's just a fancy word that
Speaker 2: means the condition or process of deterioration with age. So
Speaker 2: what part about the aging process fascinates you the most?
Speaker 2: Is it the effect neurologically or is it the entire body?
Speaker 3: It's the unknowns that we are still working out basic mechanisms,
Speaker 3: and we know that it is under some genetic influence.
Speaker 3: If you have the genes of a mouse, you're only
Speaker 3: going to live two years. If you have the genes
Speaker 3: of a human you might get to seventy eighty or ninety.
Speaker 3: So it's genetic. But then with among individuals the role
Speaker 3: of genetics seems to be much less. Roughly identical twins
Speaker 3: lifespans you can attribute twenty percent of their heritability in
Speaker 3: aging is due to genes that influence aging, So it's
Speaker 3: really a minority of the individual differences in humans and
Speaker 3: in other animals can be attributed to inherited genes.
Speaker 2: So only twenty percent is attributed to genes, which is
Speaker 2: terrible news for those of us who to deny personal responsibility.
Speaker 3: So I've been working on in many parts of my
Speaker 3: career on environmental aspects of how individual gene responses to
Speaker 3: the environment, to diet influence outcomes of aging. And I'm
Speaker 3: now in the last six seven years been focusing on
Speaker 3: air pollution, which shortens lifespan in proportion to the number
Speaker 3: of particles per cubic meter and also accelerates almost all
Speaker 3: of the diseases of aging, including the risk of Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: Was that inspired it all by living in Los Angeles?
Speaker 3: Indirectly because I have had colleagues in the epidemiology group
Speaker 3: on the Health Science campus who were pointing out to
Speaker 3: me that the rate of arterial aging in Los Angeles
Speaker 3: scaled in proportion to the density of air particles in
Speaker 3: your residence and the arteries that they were studying with
Speaker 3: the carrots which go to the brain and so they
Speaker 3: kept saying to me, well, Finch, why don't you're interested
Speaker 3: in the neurobiology of aging. You really got to see
Speaker 3: if there's a relationship to the arterial aging that we've
Speaker 3: been described, that we've described as driven by air pollution.
Speaker 3: So that's what I undertook to study. In last year
Speaker 3: we published definitive paper in collaboration with epidemiologist J. C.
Speaker 3: Chennett in the USC's School of Medicine. And in that
Speaker 3: same paper a mouse model showing that air pollution increases
Speaker 3: the Alzheimer processes. And we know what molecules are involved
Speaker 3: in the mouse anyway.
Speaker 2: So let's go to the super basics. As someone who
Speaker 2: is not as well versed in this as you, what
Speaker 2: exactly is aging? How do you define aging?
Speaker 3: Well, the basic way is at a population level that
Speaker 3: after the age of forty, your risk of mortality essentially
Speaker 3: doubles every seven or eight years, So there's an exponential
Speaker 3: increase in mortality risk, and preceding that is a parallel
Speaker 3: risk in chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, and at later
Speaker 3: ages Alzheimer's. So the individual pathways in this are not understood,
Speaker 3: but as by age group, aging increases the risk of
Speaker 3: chronic diseases that are causes of death. And then you
Speaker 3: can add, at a more fundamental level, what are the
Speaker 3: mechanisms behind that? And that's where the mystery is.
Speaker 2: So our risks of disease and dyeing go exponentially up. Okay,
Speaker 2: Rather than bum you out let that fact. Encourage you
Speaker 2: to write the novel that you've been intending to, or
Speaker 2: collin sick, go to six Flags tomorrow, or wear the
Speaker 2: shoes you think you should save for fancy occasions wear today.
Speaker 2: We're all getting old. Just go for it. Champ, Speaking
Speaker 2: of how do you ask a genius expert the most
Speaker 2: basic bitch question ever? You just do it? People you
Speaker 2: live in the now watch Is it that our cells
Speaker 2: don't regenerate as fast? Is it?
Speaker 3: That's part of it? Our molecules don't regenerate as fast.
Speaker 3: And there's some molecules that are as old as we are,
Speaker 3: in our blood vessels and our connective tissue in our
Speaker 3: eyes that undergo molecular deterioration.
Speaker 2: I know they say you're kind of new person every
Speaker 2: seven years.
Speaker 3: Is that that's not at all correct?
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's some flim flam to debunk.
Speaker 3: Which it's not true. Yeah, that's one of those sort
Speaker 3: of inherited tales that have no scientific substance. I have
Speaker 3: no idea where that comes from.
Speaker 2: I gotta look it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no there's no science.
Speaker 2: There, right. I didn't think so it always, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's always. I don't know where that came from, but
Speaker 2: it's it's an interesting myth.
Speaker 3: And no it's not interesting. It's destructive because it's wrong.
Speaker 2: Right. By the way, if you're like, was Ali just
Speaker 2: dying at this point, the answer is yes, man, I
Speaker 2: am dying up here, both from a molecular standpoint and psychologically.
Speaker 2: But just stick around because like life, there are twists
Speaker 2: and there are turns around every corner. Ps Where did
Speaker 2: that destructive myth start? I did a little digging, thinking
Speaker 2: that the origin would be like an ancient tale, but
Speaker 2: it seems like it started in two thousand and five
Speaker 2: with a Swedish stem cell scientist, Jonas Freisen, who had
Speaker 2: been curious about the ages of different cells in the
Speaker 2: body and used radioactive carbon fourteen tracers conveniently deposited in
Speaker 2: humans from nuclear warhead tests in the sixties to track
Speaker 2: the age of different cells. So how old are you really? Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a cool math trick you can do. You take
Speaker 2: your age and multiply it by sixteen, then divide it
Speaker 2: by sixteen, which is your age. You're just your age.
Speaker 2: I made you math for nothing. Here's the deal. Your
Speaker 2: body is a bunch of different ages. Like the lining
Speaker 2: of your guts, which are just constantly splitsh splashing in
Speaker 2: an acid bath. They're newborns. They turn over every five
Speaker 2: days or so, but skeletal muscles are fifteen. They're about
Speaker 2: to get their learning permits. Some part of your brain
Speaker 2: are just as old as you are, just about other
Speaker 2: parts turnover faster. The core of your eye lens you
Speaker 2: can see ophthalmology episode from more on. That is exactly
Speaker 2: your age from pre birth that never turns over. This
Speaker 2: is fun. This is like antique road show for your
Speaker 2: meat covered bone scaffolds.
Speaker 1: What he's ever looked at at that I'm aware of?
Speaker 4: Well, Ted, did you notice when you showed this to
Speaker 4: me that I kind of stopped breathing a little bit.
Speaker 4: Not only that the condition of this is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: So in his nine hundred page book Longevity, Senessence, and
Speaker 2: the Genome, Caleb Finch covers the life spans and aging
Speaker 2: processes of everything from apple trees to forty year old clams,
Speaker 2: to lobsters who molt away their exoskeleton and avoid some
Speaker 2: mechanical aging that way, to schurch and fish that can
Speaker 2: outlive humans to relatively old teenage salamanders. So if you
Speaker 2: listen to the Colonialogy episode, you might remember my side
Speaker 2: about the etruscan shrew that has a heart rate of
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred beats per minute and lives two years versus
Speaker 2: tortoises with slow metabolisms like Old Jonathan, a giant tortoise
Speaker 2: kicking it retirement style on an island at age one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty seven. Naked mole rats can live up
Speaker 2: to thirty two years, perhaps due to an uncanny ability
Speaker 2: to just slow down their metabolism when they need to
Speaker 2: or repair their wonky DNA, which humans can also do.
Speaker 2: And I don't think doctor Finch would enjoy the term wonky.
Speaker 2: But here we are. Now how do different animals age?
Speaker 2: I know you mentioned a mouse might have a lifespan
Speaker 2: of two years.
Speaker 3: Any each species has its own pattern of aging, so
Speaker 3: mice don't get Alzheimer's disease and they don't get blood
Speaker 3: vessel disease and have heart attacks, but they do get cancer,
Speaker 3: and their arteries become more rigid, and their lungs become
Speaker 3: more rigid because of molecular aging. Those same that part
Speaker 3: of aging happens in humans at a much slower rate.
Speaker 3: And in addition, and we have diseases that are special
Speaker 3: to the human species, including Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 2: You've said that other primates don't get Alzheimer's the way
Speaker 2: that humans do.
Speaker 3: They have a very much milder aspect of brain aging.
Speaker 3: And there's nothing equivalent in the great apes or in
Speaker 3: the rhesus monkey to the devastation in the brain of
Speaker 3: Alzheimer's disease, where there's huge amounts of death of neurons
Speaker 3: in particular pathways. But there's major gaps that still remain
Speaker 3: to be filled before we have a definitive conclusion. But
Speaker 3: the present time, I'm comfortable in saying there's nothing that
Speaker 3: has yet been shown to be equivalent to the level
Speaker 3: of brain cell damage that happens in Alzheimer's in any
Speaker 3: other primate.
Speaker 2: And what is causing that. I know there's many, many factors,
Speaker 2: but primarily.
Speaker 3: Well that's a huge set of unknown questions that the
Speaker 3: field of Alzheimer's, and I'm in that field in a
Speaker 3: significant way, is trying to understand. So there are changes
Speaker 3: in the brain that are going on from the age
Speaker 3: of thirty onwards. In my lab in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: I had the first evidence that there's a progressive loss
Speaker 3: of synapses in the brains of healthy mice and healthy
Speaker 3: humans in middle age. So there's changes that are happening
Speaker 3: in the thirties to forties that are on a pathway
Speaker 3: that in some individuals takes a more steep dip leading
Speaker 3: to degeneration of neurons. We don't know what triggers that
Speaker 3: steep dip from a more gradual, progressive change that everybody experiences.
Speaker 2: So side note. Just about a week or so ago,
Speaker 2: a study was published that had the Internet all of uzz.
Speaker 2: It had the catchy title Perfiromanus gingervalis in Alzheimer's disease
Speaker 2: brains Evidence for disease causation and treatment with small molecule
Speaker 2: inhibitors WOW. In short, researchers found that bacteria that caused
Speaker 2: gingivitis aka inflamed gums could lead to brain inflammation, leading
Speaker 2: to Alzheimer's. This seems like huge news, but of course
Speaker 2: I'm primed for flim flam debunkery. Also, I saw there
Speaker 2: was a study from two thousand and five by doctor
Speaker 2: Margaret Gatz about gum disease and Alzheimer's. So maybe this
Speaker 2: isn't new news. Maybe this is just internet sensatialism. So
Speaker 2: I emailed doctor Finch the other day, expecting either crickets
Speaker 2: or like a pushshaw, but I got a note right back.
Speaker 2: He said, just look this up as a mouse study.
Speaker 2: It is impressive and supports Margie gats prior conclusion that
Speaker 2: oral infection increases Alzheimer's disease risk, but now gives a mechanism. Exciting.
Speaker 2: He was on board. This is great. Even more exciting
Speaker 2: he had cced doctor Margaret Gatz, who said thanks all
Speaker 2: back high a little fan girl moment. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: a tiny bacteria in your gums can make big brain
Speaker 2: trouble later on, and this news is getting us closer
Speaker 2: to keeping healthier noggins in the future. Is the brain
Speaker 2: the thing? Is the brain the part of our body
Speaker 2: that ages the quickest, Or where do we see aging happen?
Speaker 3: I'd say blood vessels are so there's in terms of
Speaker 3: shared anatomy across men and women, the blood vessels are
Speaker 3: already beginning to age even before puberty.
Speaker 2: Really, yes, so we're already.
Speaker 3: We're already accumulating at and plaques on our arteries. And
Speaker 3: if you're in a household with smokers as a child,
Speaker 3: that it's accelerated. If you're in an area of high
Speaker 3: air pollution, that's accelerated as a child. But then there
Speaker 3: are differences between men and women by reproductive status, and
Speaker 3: the ovaries of women start to lose egg cells even
Speaker 3: before birth.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so yeah, you start dying before you're born.
Speaker 2: Gool gool googol. Just cut banks, textra crush, We're all
Speaker 2: going to die.
Speaker 3: So by the time of puberty, half of the egg
Speaker 3: cells a woman was born with have disappeared, and then
Speaker 3: the rest of them are lost by age fifty, which
Speaker 3: is menopause. There isn't anything equivalent to that in men.
Speaker 3: Testosterone levels do decline, fertility does decline, but it does
Speaker 3: and have a steep drop off, as is the case
Speaker 3: from women. And this is an important example of how
Speaker 3: our embryonic development defines different patterns of aging. Because the
Speaker 3: ovary is fully formed in the embryo and those genes
Speaker 3: turn off, and no new egg cells and follicles are
Speaker 3: formed after birth, and that there's nothing like that that
Speaker 3: happens in the male gond test.
Speaker 2: I just want to acknowledge that the terms men and
Speaker 2: women and male and female are along a gender binary
Speaker 2: that doesn't apply to everyone. And doctor Finch is talking
Speaker 2: about broad strokes in historical studies, and I just want
Speaker 2: to let the non binary folks know out there that
Speaker 2: I see you and I love you. And what about
Speaker 2: male versus female lifespans? Have we seen that change over
Speaker 2: the last few decades or pretty study?
Speaker 3: Well? Both, No, they both increased as overall health has increased,
Speaker 3: and it is observed in the health rich populations of
Speaker 3: the world, and our upper income people in this country
Speaker 3: are health rich people. That women are living five years
Speaker 3: or longer than men.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think if it's stress or not, but
Speaker 2: I feel like, no, it's.
Speaker 3: Not simple like that, because it's it's hard to define
Speaker 3: stress because a completely stress free life is impossible. And
Speaker 3: in the other hand, there are people who have apparent
Speaker 3: high levels of stress, women who have eight kids and
Speaker 3: who live to be ninety, so it's not at all
Speaker 3: clear how we define stress.
Speaker 2: So a side note, quick shout out to my grandma
Speaker 2: Teresa Ward, who lived to be ninety nine years and
Speaker 2: nine months despite having eleven in childs writer, right, so
Speaker 2: what are we doing that is helping progress aging? Or
Speaker 2: what are we doing? What are we doing wrong? Essentially
Speaker 2: when it comes to aging.
Speaker 3: Well, the major health concern across the country is people
Speaker 3: are eating more energy rich foods than they need and
Speaker 3: not getting enough exercise. I mean, that's simple lifestyle take
Speaker 3: home is it's boring to say, but if you are
Speaker 3: even mildly obese in midlife and you're not exercising, you're
Speaker 3: having a shorter life expectancy.
Speaker 2: As the fit doctor Tuck Finch explained this, I wondered
Speaker 2: if he ever had a turning point in his life
Speaker 2: and started to pay more attention to his health such
Speaker 2: as I was doing sitting in his office at that moment.
Speaker 2: Has your work changed the way that you live?
Speaker 3: I would say no. I've always been athletic and physically active,
Speaker 3: and I never smoked, and I don't eat or drink
Speaker 3: sugary or fat foods. But that's always been my preferred avoidance,
Speaker 3: so nothing interesting to say.
Speaker 2: Well, do you play basketball, do you ski? What's your secret?
Speaker 3: I used to be a competitive swimmer. I swam in college.
Speaker 3: I get modest amounts of exercise, not too much to
Speaker 3: wear my joints out. So I do some hiking, I
Speaker 3: do some swimming, I do some weightlifting. I mean, nothing
Speaker 3: exotic or overly strenuous.
Speaker 2: Not any zoomba or tybo. No, no kickboxing, no good.
Speaker 2: That means I don't have to start that.
Speaker 3: I just it's very dull, nothing on, nothing unusual.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned something about sugar, and I know that
Speaker 2: inflammatory foods and inflammation is part of your research. How
Speaker 2: does inflammation affect the human body in terms of aging.
Speaker 3: Well, all of the diseases of aging that we worry about,
Speaker 3: blood vessel disease, obesity, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, involve the molecules
Speaker 3: of inflammatory responses. So it's deeply built into our systems
Speaker 3: and in the processes of aging. So that's just a
Speaker 3: fundamental fact. And the term inflammation comes from ancient understanding
Speaker 3: of having when you have a cut, it swells up
Speaker 3: and it's red and it's hot and it causes pain. Well,
Speaker 3: basis for that are the inflammatory cytokines that come in
Speaker 3: to help the body clean up the damaged tissue. But
Speaker 3: responses to damaged tissue happen inflammatory responses in arterial disease,
Speaker 3: in cancer and obesity, and an Alzheimer's disease. So there's
Speaker 3: a shared core of inflammatory proteins that are at work
Speaker 3: during aging. From the day we're born.
Speaker 1: Flames on the side of my face, breath, heaving breath.
Speaker 2: Is there a way that we should be keeping inflammation
Speaker 2: at bay?
Speaker 3: Well, that's part of the idea of exercise and diet,
Speaker 3: which reduces the level of inflammation, and some people are
Speaker 3: still looking for pills that will do the equivalent of
Speaker 3: exercise and proper diet. That's the strongest starting place.
Speaker 2: So move your bod and eat your greens. We fixed
Speaker 2: it America. And where has the average American lifespan gone?
Speaker 2: I mean, are we still increasing or have we hit
Speaker 2: a point?
Speaker 3: No, we're decreasing. In the last ten years, the average
Speaker 3: lifespan in the United States has decreased, and we're now
Speaker 3: in the twentieth or thirtieth in the world and having
Speaker 3: in our adult lifespans. Because of all that we've been
Speaker 3: talking about the epidemic of obesity as a direct relationship
Speaker 3: to that, plus the health disadvantages of lower income people
Speaker 3: who don't see doctors and can't afford medication, and then
Speaker 3: this terrible epidemic of drugs. Those are all pushing lifespan
Speaker 3: down after remarkable gains in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: And what's happening in other parts of the world and
Speaker 2: in blue zones where longevity is higher? Side note? What
Speaker 2: is a blue zone? So this came up in the
Speaker 2: hematology episode and I only know that because I searched
Speaker 2: my Google Drive for the word legomes. So a blue
Speaker 2: zone is a place identified by author Dan Butner, who
Speaker 2: has studied some scientists data and concluded that people in
Speaker 2: five places live the longest ok Nowa Japan, Sodinia, Italy, Koya,
Speaker 2: Costa Rica, Akaria, Greece, and a small posse of Seventh
Speaker 2: Day Adventists in the La suburb of Loma Linda, California.
Speaker 2: So what Saith Dan? Are commonalities among these groups? Apparently
Speaker 2: they are prioritizing family above everything else. They smoke lass,
Speaker 2: they eat a lot of veggies, are semi vegetarian. They
Speaker 2: have constant moderate physical activity and good social engagement. Which
Speaker 2: does not mean likes and comments on Instagram, but like
Speaker 2: hanging out with many generations in the community. Oh also lagooms.
Speaker 2: They eat a lot of lagoms. So does doctor Finch
Speaker 2: think this is just a hello beans?
Speaker 3: I'm not an enthusiastic of something unique about the blue zones.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are peoples in all of the continents
Speaker 3: who live a little longer than the average, But most
Speaker 3: of my colleagues don't think there's anything unusual about that.
Speaker 3: But if you look globally, lifespan has been increasing as
Speaker 3: early life mortality decreased because of reducing infectious disease. But
Speaker 3: pushing against that is the global epidemic of obesity, the
Speaker 3: global sale of tobacco, which is huge in Africa and
Speaker 3: in Asia, and the global issues of air pollution, which
Speaker 3: is getting worse in most of the world because of
Speaker 3: fossil fuel consumption and global warming.
Speaker 2: And is global warming contributing directly? Is it temperature change
Speaker 2: contributing directly to the way our bodies work or age?
Speaker 3: That story is emerging. This is a book that I
Speaker 3: wrote that talks about this. This came out this year.
Speaker 2: This book is called the Role of Global Air Pollution
Speaker 2: in Aging and disease, and the title appears in stark
Speaker 2: white all caps against the veiled, smoky silhouette of a
Speaker 2: polluted Parisian skyline. I am truly confounded as to how
Speaker 2: one human can be so prolific. I did wonder. I mean,
Speaker 2: you've probably ish over five hundred papers and four books.
Speaker 3: Actually this is my sixth, your sixth book.
Speaker 2: How do you approach life to how do you get
Speaker 2: all of this done? How do you balance all of
Speaker 2: this personally?
Speaker 3: I have a very happy home life. I work very hard,
Speaker 3: but I give myself personal time and avoid feeling ground down.
Speaker 2: Oh that's very smart. That's a very good life lesson.
Speaker 3: Well, what works for me might not work for other people.
Speaker 4: Don't my me.
Speaker 2: I'm just having a moment here evaluating everything I've done
Speaker 2: wrong in my life. What do you think as the
Speaker 2: as the baby boomer generation starts to age, what do
Speaker 2: you think the best thing our society can do to.
Speaker 3: Well, our society doesn't have much meaning, they I mean,
Speaker 3: there is no such thing as our society, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: who is our society? There's hundreds of societies, so every
Speaker 3: unity has its own lifestyle. So the main point is
Speaker 3: is a healthy diet and exercise and avoid cigarettes. And
Speaker 3: that's totally boring to say, but that's really the basis
Speaker 3: for optimizing outcomes of health at later ages. You need
Speaker 3: to maintain a healthy lifestyle from childhood onwards.
Speaker 2: So now is the time when we dive into listener questions.
Speaker 2: And also I mentioned that a portion of the podcast
Speaker 2: income goes to a charity each week. This week, doctor
Speaker 2: kleb Vinch chose curealz dot org. Curealz dot org. It's
Speaker 2: a nonprofit organization. They're dedicated to funding research with the
Speaker 2: highest probability of preventing, slowing, or reversing Alzheimer's disease. Now
Speaker 2: to date, they have raised over eighty six million to
Speaker 2: fund almost four hundred studies, and one hundred percent of
Speaker 2: the funds go directly to research. So thank you listeners
Speaker 2: for helping a lab by SIMPI Pets getting closer to
Speaker 2: a cure for Alzheimer's. Okay, your listener questions. Now, I
Speaker 2: didn't want to take up too much of the professor's time,
Speaker 2: so I blazed through these questions without reading off a
Speaker 2: bunch of names, but I will insert them when I can.
Speaker 2: For example, the first two questions here were asked by
Speaker 2: Liz Sunden, Athena Balisteri, Dion Dabolow, Mike Manakowski, Anonymous, Bob,
Speaker 2: Anna Thompson, Lucille Adinette which might be Audonay, I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: and Taylor Munich I have some listener questions. Almost everyone
Speaker 2: is just asking what's the secret to aging? Well, it
Speaker 2: seems like diet, exercise, rest. Yeah. Do you think that
Speaker 2: there's a maximum age that the human body can reach?
Speaker 3: Well, the evidence is very clear. Almost nobody gets beyond
Speaker 3: one hundred, and there's one person in the last thirty
Speaker 3: years who reached over one twenty, Jean Chalmand. But there
Speaker 3: are more people getting to one hundred, but they still
Speaker 3: in the last thirty years, she's the only one to
Speaker 3: get beyond one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 2: So sign Oue Jean Coment lived to be one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty two, the oldest human on record, and she
Speaker 2: was fond of wearing headphones and doing chair gymnastics, prayer,
Speaker 2: fruit salad, and smoking well one Dunhill cigarette a day
Speaker 2: and a small glass of port wine until she was
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventeen, which proves that you're never too
Speaker 2: old to quit a bad habit and turn over a
Speaker 2: new leaf. So seriously, let's nope. The smokes folks love
Speaker 2: old Dad. And do you think that there's anything to
Speaker 2: the secrets that they claim? A glass of whiskey a day,
Speaker 2: a hardboiled egg extension. I think there's every time someone
Speaker 2: reaches a remarkable age, you never.
Speaker 3: Heard that set will say that about them, But I've
Speaker 3: never heard any of them say that. You have to
Speaker 3: distinguish between what people say about about centenarians and what
Speaker 3: the centenarians actually say. So if you talk to New York,
Speaker 3: Albert Einstein Medical College near Barselaw is a great expert
Speaker 3: on this, and what's he's shown is that his group
Speaker 3: of centenarians have the same diseases of other people, and
Speaker 3: some of them smoked, and some of them are still working.
Speaker 3: There isn't really any genetics or lifestyle that makes it
Speaker 3: obvious as to how they got there.
Speaker 2: So super quick. This lab at Albert Einstein Medical College
Speaker 2: is great and focuses on the metabolic decline of aging.
Speaker 2: They hypothesize that the brain leads this decline. But real quick,
Speaker 2: just let's get back to if I was hallucinating stories
Speaker 2: about eggs and whiskey. Okay, good news, my brain still works,
Speaker 2: because the Internet is just littered with stories of centenarians
Speaker 2: with Quippi secrets to longevity that are just bogglingly bad advice.
Speaker 2: So one of the oldest living World War Two vets,
Speaker 2: Richard Overton, who passed away in December. He lived to
Speaker 2: be one hundred and twelve, and he drank four times
Speaker 2: as much coffee as me.
Speaker 4: Get me a cup of coffee. Sometime. I'd drink a
Speaker 4: boke of the covid in the morning. This morning, I'd
Speaker 4: drink about that much.
Speaker 2: Whiskey and four cups of whiskey a day. So okay,
Speaker 2: he's going to be the only one, right, Nope, Nope.
Speaker 2: Mariano pops Rotelli said at one hundred and seven that
Speaker 2: everyone should have a little whiskey nip a day, telling
Speaker 2: a newspaper quote, I've had a shot a whiskey in
Speaker 2: my coffee every morning for one hundred years, he said,
Speaker 2: I went to the doctor three times in one hundred years.
Speaker 2: He's dead, I'm still living. Okay, so that's two people.
Speaker 4: Wait. Wait.
Speaker 2: One hundred and five year old British man and Jack
Speaker 2: Reynolds credits his long life to a daily regiment of whiskey.
Speaker 2: Agnes Fenton one hundred and eleven told reporters that she
Speaker 2: drank three Miller High Lives and a glass of Johnny
Speaker 2: Walker daily. Also at one hundred and eleven, Grace Jones
Speaker 2: credited a shot of scotch every single day for the
Speaker 2: past fifty eight years, which I don't think is how
Speaker 2: you're supposed to drink scotch. But you live that long,
Speaker 2: you do what you want. Now, did I make up
Speaker 2: the egg part? I did not. Italian Emma Moreno lived
Speaker 2: to one hundred and seventeen. She consumed eggs every day,
Speaker 2: also a glass of brandy daily, but just put down
Speaker 2: the bottle. Friends. The current oldest person alive, one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty year old Hane Tanaka of Japan, credits family, sleep,
Speaker 2: and hope as her secrets for longevity. She also drinks
Speaker 2: a lot of water. She drinks a lot of water,
Speaker 2: she's a lot of small fish and soup, and she
Speaker 2: keeps faith in religious spirits. So what I'm saying is
Speaker 2: it's anyone's guest, And by anyone, I mean Caleb Finch,
Speaker 2: and by gay I mean conclusions based on decades of research,
Speaker 2: and you mentioned that genetics is only about twenty percent of.
Speaker 3: Effect, twenty five percent somewhere in that so.
Speaker 2: It's a minority. And what's the role of telomeres in aging?
Speaker 3: We don't know. So telomers are at the ends of
Speaker 3: chromosomes that get shortened during cell division, So some of
Speaker 3: our cells do show shorter telomers in the immune system,
Speaker 3: its actual functional consequence is not clear.
Speaker 2: So that's clearly hasn't been the secret to.
Speaker 3: There's no secret. There's nothing in aging that is a secret.
Speaker 2: Does he hate me again? Twists and turns, Listen to
Speaker 2: the end. Also, I wanted to take up the least
Speaker 2: amount of his time, so apologies for not always reading
Speaker 2: the patron names. You girl here was flustered. But Kelly Meeker,
Speaker 2: Jullie Noble, Sarah Desmet, Kristin Long all had questions about Alzheimer's,
Speaker 2: which we go back into here. What's been the most
Speaker 2: exciting find for you and your work?
Speaker 3: Well, we made a finding that in the realm of
Speaker 3: Alzheimer's disease that has been important, that the most toxic
Speaker 3: form of the amyloid peptide that people still considered to
Speaker 3: be one of the major factors in Alzheimer's is small
Speaker 3: aggregates rather than the large amyloid fibrils. And so that
Speaker 3: oligomeric A beta was discovered in my lab here and
Speaker 3: it's recognized as the most toxic component in the amyloid cascade.
Speaker 3: So that was that was one of our discoveries. And
Speaker 3: I would say the other discovery that we published this
Speaker 3: year is that air increases the production of the amyloid peptide. Really, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's published.
Speaker 2: And the difference in smaller plaques versus bigger plaques, does
Speaker 2: that signify that it might be more gradual of an onset.
Speaker 3: Well, people don't think that this plaque size is the importance,
Speaker 3: because there is. The point is that in the vicinity
Speaker 3: of the amyloid plaque, which is outside of the cells
Speaker 3: in the brain substance, the neurons that are nearby are
Speaker 3: less healthy, their projections are more twisted, and they have
Speaker 3: more protein abnormality, so that it's really the total plaque
Speaker 3: load that is associated in some still mysterious ways with
Speaker 3: the loss of synapses in the brain. And then the
Speaker 3: end of the day, all of my colleagues and I
Speaker 3: are a uniform agreement that it's the loss of synapses
Speaker 3: that causes the deterioration in Alzheimer's when neurons can no
Speaker 3: longer talk to each other across synapses.
Speaker 2: And that might be impeded by the plaques.
Speaker 3: Then, yeah, the plaques in some way seem to be
Speaker 3: causing loss of synapses. So the chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology,
Speaker 3: this is immensely complicated and there isn't a single pathway
Speaker 3: that seems to account for it.
Speaker 2: So it's the plaques that cause the loss of synapses,
Speaker 2: and the question is how do we arrest the plaques.
Speaker 2: So they're working on it now. A few folks such
Speaker 2: as Caitlin Donald Rose, mccatherine Shannon Patterson. During Olambushan Caroline
Speaker 2: Lewis had this next question, do you find any particular
Speaker 2: strategies for keeping your brain sharp or for maintaining neuroplasticity?
Speaker 3: Well, I've told you all I know, exercise and have
Speaker 3: an active life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, puzzles, anything like that.
Speaker 3: No, my science is an endless set of puzzles. I
Speaker 3: don't have to play games to challenge my brain.
Speaker 2: Patron Christopher Yersowitch asked about diets and one Patro Martinez
Speaker 2: asked this next question specifically and what about vegetarian veganism
Speaker 2: diets any evidence for those?
Speaker 3: Well, the main point is whatever you eat, keep your
Speaker 3: blood lipids and blood sugar low. And there are people
Speaker 3: on vegetarian diets who are live as long as people
Speaker 3: who are meat rich diets. But it's harder to keep
Speaker 3: your blood properties healthy if you're eating a lot of
Speaker 3: fatty meat and a lot of salt.
Speaker 2: Patron Evan Mounro said, I intermittently fast, partly for weight
Speaker 2: loss and partly because of the apparent benefits to longevity.
Speaker 2: How much reliable proof is out there that fasting or
Speaker 2: strict calorie reduction leads to longer life and humans? And
Speaker 2: what about fasting in that are coloric restriction? Any evidence
Speaker 2: that it slows aging or gives the body a break?
Speaker 3: Well, in humans, there's no evidence that fasting or starvation
Speaker 3: does more than lower's blood lipids, but there's in a
Speaker 3: long term basis, extreme coloric restriction for most people is
Speaker 3: simply not sustainable. Doctors who treat obesity have agreed that
Speaker 3: you can only go so far with somebody who has
Speaker 3: been obese to by diet and exercise, there's something else
Speaker 3: that keeps causing them to bounce back, but my calling.
Speaker 3: Walter Longo, who's the lab right down the hall, former
Speaker 3: student of mine, has made some important discoveries that a
Speaker 3: fasting mimicking diet really only a couple of days a
Speaker 3: month improves blood chemistry.
Speaker 2: I looked him up at boom. Walter Longo dot com
Speaker 2: has the Secrets to life, which apparently are not secrets
Speaker 2: if you just give him away for free at a
Speaker 2: white page. Seriously check that out. Among the bull of
Speaker 2: points was eat mostly vegan plus a little fish, limiting
Speaker 2: meals with fish to a maximum of two or three
Speaker 2: times a week. Choose fish crustacean mollusks with a high
Speaker 2: omega three, omega six and vitamin B twelve content like salmon, anchovy, sardines, trout, clams.
Speaker 2: Pay attention to the quality of the fish, choosing those
Speaker 2: with low levels of mercury, and confine all eating to
Speaker 2: within a twelve hour period. For example, start after eight
Speaker 2: am and n before eight pm. Don't eat anything within
Speaker 2: three to four hours of bedtime. There you go, now,
Speaker 2: regar day. There is no mention of Miller High Life
Speaker 2: or spiking your folgers with gas station whiskey or smoking cigars,
Speaker 2: so just probably don't do that anyway. That information was
Speaker 2: at Walterlongo dot com. What is the hardest thing about
Speaker 2: your job or the part about your job that you
Speaker 2: dislike the most?
Speaker 3: Well, there's nothing that I dislike. I'm happy to say
Speaker 3: that I'm no longer running large training grants, and I'm
Speaker 3: no longer the director of the Alzheimer's Center, which was
Speaker 3: another twenty to thirty hours a week on top of
Speaker 3: everything else I do. So I'm a seventy nine and
Speaker 3: I am enjoying the freedom to not have a large
Speaker 3: number of people answering to me, and I have a
Speaker 3: group of highly talented, highly motivated people in my research
Speaker 3: lab and we're making doing a lot of good science.
Speaker 2: What's your favorite part about the field or what you do? Surprise, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I still get a lot of it right.
Speaker 3: Well, the complexities of biology are just awesome, amazing, and
Speaker 3: every year there's a new level of mechanisms subselularly or
Speaker 3: in how organisms talk, how organs talk to each other.
Speaker 3: It's just endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 2: Does this man slow down? Do you have a seventh
Speaker 2: book on the way?
Speaker 3: Yes, there's going to be a popular level book on
Speaker 3: air pollution in the next year. A year and a half.
Speaker 2: That's great. Do you drink a lot of caffeine? How
Speaker 2: do you do all this?
Speaker 3: I have two cups of coffee a day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems to be working. I know.
Speaker 3: That's all I Need's all you need.
Speaker 2: So I'm spending the last two minutes of my time
Speaker 2: with him, just really going for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a very stupid question. Did you ever see
Speaker 2: the movie Benjamin Button? And how did you feel about it?
Speaker 1: And not Little children anymore?
Speaker 3: Benjamin? I did see it. I thought it was clever, Okay.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed the script writer's imagination and could second guess
Speaker 3: some of the decisions. I saw that what five years ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just curious. It seemed like it would
Speaker 2: be right for a lot of mistakes in aging.
Speaker 3: But well, I mean, go to the movies to be entertained,
Speaker 3: read a novel to be entertained. These are signed. This
Speaker 3: is not a scientific experience.
Speaker 2: It was not a documentary.
Speaker 3: From what I recall, It was an amusing fantasy.
Speaker 2: Any other things that you're excited about working on, or
Speaker 2: you think people should know about the aging process or
Speaker 2: taking care of themselves.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm collaborating with some anthropologists and a group of
Speaker 3: people who live in the Bolivian Amazon. And what's fascinating
Speaker 3: about these people that simon a. They're living under conditions
Speaker 3: that of two hundred years ago without medication, and they're
Speaker 3: growing their own food, and they all have high levels
Speaker 3: of infection. Some of them get to the age seventy
Speaker 3: or eighty. But what's remarkable a small nobody lives much
Speaker 3: over eighty. What's remarkable is that their levels of arterial
Speaker 3: aging are twenty five years slower than in North America,
Speaker 3: and they have almost no heart attacks or strokes. So
Speaker 3: we're trying to understand what aspects of their environment, their diet,
Speaker 3: and interaction with their genes might slow the arterial aging
Speaker 3: touch such a degree.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's anything about the gut biome that's
Speaker 2: at play there?
Speaker 3: That's an open question. I don't know.
Speaker 2: We'll see. I guess there's a surprise and a puzzle
Speaker 2: waiting for you with that. Yep, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for letting me ask you so many questions. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much, good questions, he said, I had good questions, y'all.
Speaker 2: He does not hate me. So after the interview was
Speaker 2: in the mics, we're off, doctor Finch said, I asked
Speaker 2: great questions. I was doing a service for science by
Speaker 2: making the podcast. I honestly almost joy webbed in my
Speaker 2: car on the drive home. He's just super focused and
Speaker 2: all science on the outside with a very warm and
Speaker 2: curious heart. I love him. He's great, and he returned
Speaker 2: my email so fast. I'm a big fan. So to
Speaker 2: learn more about doctor Caleb Finch's work, you can go
Speaker 2: to Aliward dot com, slash ologies, or follow the links
Speaker 2: in the show notes to my site. I post all
Speaker 2: kinds of info about his studies and other studies mentioned
Speaker 2: in the episode. Again, his latest book, Global Air Pollution
Speaker 2: in Aging Reading Smoke Signals. It's even available on Amazon,
Speaker 2: as are many of his other books. Ologies is at
Speaker 2: Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali Ward with
Speaker 2: one L on both and thank you Hannahlippo and Aaron
Speaker 2: Talbert for moderating the wonderful nook of the Ologies podcast
Speaker 2: Facebook group. Thank you Ologies transcribers for all the work
Speaker 2: you're doing to make the back catalog accessible to our
Speaker 2: d and heart of hearing friends. Merch is available at
Speaker 2: ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 2: for helping me manage that thanks to new interns Harry
Speaker 2: Kim and Caleb Finch. Caleb just started a very fun
Speaker 2: new podcast called You're Never Too Old about anime and
Speaker 2: comic books and pop culture. You can check that out.
Speaker 2: Thank you to assistant editor Jared Sleeper of the podcast
Speaker 2: Make Good, Bad Brain for helping with edits and with
Speaker 2: a little research too, and of course to editor Write
Speaker 2: or Die To at least age one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: two Stephen Ray Morris, who puts the pieces all together.
Speaker 2: He also hosts the podcast The per Cast and see
Speaker 2: Jurassic right now. If you stick around to the end,
Speaker 2: you know I tell you a secret. This week's secret
Speaker 2: is that I have Christmas gifts I haven't mailed yet.
Speaker 2: I see them every day. It produces a shamewave, so
Speaker 2: I got to do that. I'm sorry Jennifer, and also
Speaker 2: Sophia and Hannah and Aaron. I love you all. I
Speaker 2: should go to the post office. Also, as long as
Speaker 2: I'm apologizing, I'm sorry to ERICU RVT of thirteen years,
Speaker 2: who left a four out of five star review because
Speaker 2: they were po that Eternal episode implied veterinary medicine was
Speaker 2: more routine and less dirty than fieldwork. I was so
Speaker 2: wrong to say that that medicine can be very gross
Speaker 2: and difficult, and I'm so sorry to have minimized that aspect.
Speaker 2: That medicine is dope as hell. I'm so sorry that
Speaker 2: I made it sound more routine, that was hyperbolic and jocular,
Speaker 2: and I apologize. I hug you in high five you. Also,
Speaker 2: if you want to say hi, or you have a
Speaker 2: suggestion for improvements to show maybe before leaving it in
Speaker 2: a review, just email me at Hello Ali Ward at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. You can also tweet at me or
Speaker 2: dm me on the grams. I respond to as many
Speaker 2: as I humanly can. I read pretty much everything you
Speaker 2: guys send me, even if I am not able to
Speaker 2: write you back. I truly love and welcome suggestions on
Speaker 2: how to make ologies even better. One more secret, I
Speaker 2: drank Taiwanese cheese tea three times this week. I loved
Speaker 2: it every time.
Speaker 4: Okay, b'erebye, Pacaderman's College, Mambiology, cry doo, Zoology, Lithology, zechnology, meteorology,
Speaker 4: wold of Pedacology, ethnology, seriology, philology.
Speaker 2: I am old, how old are you? Sixteen?
Speaker 4: And my grandmother