If you're interested in healthy living, you won't want to miss this interview with anti-aging scientist James Clement, author of "The Switch: Ignite Your Metabolism With Intermittent Fasting, Protein Cycling, and Keto," While a lawyer by trade, he has since transitioned into a full-time research position, running his own antiaging research laboratory. From Lawyer to Full-Time ResearcherClement wrote "The Switch" because he saw that many still don't understand the basics of health and longevity. The "switch" refers to the switch between activating and deactivating the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, which is the central topic of discussion here. His book also covers how to upregulate your mitochondrial function and other important pathways for health and longevity, such as NAD+.
60 Minutes Interview with Harvard Geneticist Professor George Church What Sets Supercentenarians Apart?Supercentenarians are the rare individuals who have made it to the age of 110 and beyond. According to Clement, there are only 50 to 80 supercentenarians in the entire world at any given point. In the U.S., an estimated 120,000 people make it to 100, but only 20 of them make it to 110. As Clement began working with these supercentenarians, he realized that what set them apart was the fact that, up until the age of 105 to 108, they'd really had the health of someone in their 70s and 80s. They have no age-related diseases, and typically die from sudden onset immune failure followed by pneumonia. This suggests that improving your immune function is an essential criterion to make it past 100. Clement goes so far as to say that, in many respects, supercentenarians age normally, while the rest of us age at an accelerated rate. The basis of his book is essentially how to normalize your aging, thus allowing you to optimize your life span. It's worth noting that while your lifestyle plays a tremendous role, there's also a strong genetic influence. Siblings of supercentenarians have a 17 times greater chance of reaching 100 years old than the rest of us, for example, and many female supercentenarians have a mutation in the IGF-1 pathway. This makes them short in stature, so 5 feet is about the size of the normal supercentenarian woman. In men, it tends to be a growth hormone mutation that similarly makes supercentenarian men somewhat shorter than the average man. Importantly, these mutations limit mTOR and turns on autophagy, which is what gives these people such a head-start on longevity. But there are ways for the rest of us to limit mTOR and increase autophagy as well. The SwitchThe target of rapamycin (TOR), from which mTOR derives, is an evolutionary mechanism that started with bacteria. All organisms need nutrition, and the ability to make proteins and reproduce. When nutrition is scarce, as it tends to be from time to time in the natural world, the organism must venture out to seek more resources.
Anabolism is what allows you to grow and increase muscle mass, whereas catabolism is the process of breaking down, repairing and removing old worn-out cells. Importantly, catabolism is the phase that cells enter when resources are scarce. The cells essentially slow down protein production and cell division at this time, and activate the process of autophagy, which gets rid of misfolded proteins and dysfunctional organelles. These old, worn-out proteins and organelles are recycled by lysosome, which breaks them down into their base component parts and then releases them back into the cell. These components can then be used to make new amino acids capable of rebuilding new proteins. This natural clean-out and regeneration process is why activating autophagy on a regular basis is key for health and longevity. The same process occurs in your mitochondria, which is called mitophagy.
Why Cycling Through Feast and Famine Is so ImportantOne common mistake, which I also made, is continuously inhibiting mTOR. It's really important to cycle back and forth between inhibition and activation of mTOR. The anabolic state triggers cell growth, and that includes stem cells — cells that can become any cell needed, anywhere in your body.
Meal Frequency and TimingBased on the evidence, time-restricted feeding appears to be one of the essential keys to optimal health and longevity, as there's no other way, really, to cyclically activate and deactivate mTOR and autophagy. You have to have a period of famine, a restriction of nutrients, to enter into a catabolic state. The question then becomes, just how long does this famine need to be? To be sure, eating throughout the whole day is a prescription for metabolic disaster. Research by Dr, Satchinanda Panda suggests 90% of people eat across a span of 12 hours a day, and many across even longer timespans, which clearly is not doing them any favors.
I too was on a four-hour eating window for many months, but I'm now starting to think that perhaps this window also needs to change from time to time. Four to eight hours is probably the sweet-spot, and I now think shrinking the eating window down to four hours a few times a week is enough. How to Incorporate Exercise for Optimal ResultsThe timing of exercise can also play a role. If you're fasting for 20 hours and eating within a four-hour window, aggressively working out about two hours before you break your fast will suppress mTOR and activate autophagy even further, increasing metabolic markers such as 5 AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and decreasing insulin-like growth factor (IGF), at least in your muscle. As noted by Clement, this strategy will actually allow you to achieve the benefits of a two- to three-day long fast.
Generalized Rules of ThumbSo, to summarize, having large amounts of dairy and/or animal proteins for 12 hours a day or more is a prescription for metabolic disaster, as it prevents the suppression of mTOR and activation of autophagy. One of the easiest solutions is to restrict your eating window to four to eight hours each day, fasting the remaining 16 to 20 hours and, ideally, exercising a couple of hours before your first meal.
At present, I'm experimenting with an updated cyclical time-restricted eating strategy that can be summarized as follows:
Each day, right before I eat my first meal, I will do a really hard blood flow restriction (BFR) training workout. Knowing how the body loves variability and uses that to optimizing the whole system, avoiding anything that is too monotonous makes sense to me. Clement is a proponent of BFR as well.
The Importance of NAD+Overall, NAD+ may be one of the most important longevity molecules that we know of. As explained by Clement, NAD+ is a coenzyme needed by longevity-related enzymes called sirtuins. It's also required for DNA repair. Finding data on NAD+ sorely lacking, Clement began his own research, starting with a clinical trial testing intravenous (IV) NAD+ in elderly people, in collaboration with Dr. John Sturges. Clement also underwent the treatment, which involved an infusion of 1,000 milligrams of NAD+ per day for six straight days, finding it remarkably effective for tremors he'd had since he was 20 years old.
NAD Plummets With AgeNAD+ levels plummet by the time you're 60 years old, and is nearly undetectable by the time you're 80. NAD+ is a crucial part of the longevity puzzle, as it's essential for repairing broken DNA. Broken DNA is not something that occurs once in a while. Single-stranded DNA breaks occur about 125 times an hour in every cell of your body, and double-stranded breaks occur about 25 times per day in every cell. DNA breaks are further accelerated if you're exposed to high levels of electromagnetic fields, which virtually everyone in the developed world are.
While IV NAD+ is available, it's cost prohibitive at $1,000 per IV. Fortunately, there are less expensive ways to raise your NAD+. Two precursors to NAD+ are nicotinamide riboside (NR) and nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), both of which are available in supplement form. NAD+ patches are also available, and all of these are far more economical than IV. A 1,000-milligram dose of NR has been shown to double your NAD+ level. The problem is that for the elderly, doubling a grossly deficient level is not enough. In people with near-undetectable levels, the NAD+ levels need to be increased by 10 to 100 times. So, while taking an NR or NMN precursor for six months will double your level, you may still be depleted. Clement's study revealed many older people need 4 or 5 grams a day for a period of time to restore more youthful levels, which could end up being costly at today's price of NAD supplements. To circle back to exercise and time-restricted eating, both of these strategies will increase nicotinamide phosphoribosyl transferase (NAMPT) by about 30%, and NAMPT is the rate-limiting enzyme for the recovery of NAD+ from its metabolic breakdown product, nicotinamide. In other words, implementing time-restricted eating and fasted exercise will naturally increase your NAD+ levels even without taking any NAD+ supplements. More InformationClement also reviews the possibilities of using CRISPR technology for gene editing, so for additional information, please listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript. He also discusses how his laboratory is pushing the limits to minimize the transitional period from discovery to integration into clinical medicine.
It was to this end, also, that Clement wrote "The Switch: Ignite Your Metabolism With Intermittent Fasting, Protein Cycling, and Keto," which I highly recommend adding to your library. Reading through it, and implementing the strategies covered in this book can go a long way toward warding off age-related diseases and optimizing your longevity. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/12/29/strategies-that-will-help-you-live-longer.aspx
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Nia Pure NatureThe Provider of premium Quality Health Products To Live Better Lives Archives
March 2022
Categories |