Brian Johnson says he has the body of an 18-year-old when he does his anti-aging tests. Does that make him a biological 18 year old? Dr. Ben Levine, a world-renowned exercise physiology expert, explains why he doesn t think so.
00:00:59.380So it's a very biostatistical test that's done that really, really relies on large, large sample numbers.
00:01:08.520And so there's these tests that are done.
00:01:11.500They're measuring epigenetic changes, and they can basically measure your biological age.
00:01:17.820But the standard of deviation is about four to five years.
00:01:21.000So when you have hundreds of thousands of different people coming into that sample size, it's a lot more accurate.
00:01:29.180You can actually do a large study and figure out what someone's biological age is and what different lifestyle factors can regulate that.
00:01:37.060When you go down to these consumer-available tests at the individual level, it's a lot of noise because, again, the standard of deviation is four to five years on average.
00:01:49.480And so the test isn't really that accurate on the individual level.
00:01:54.280So you could do that test and then do it again in two weeks and have five years difference, right?
00:02:01.520So my take home from that is you can claim all these things being biologically 18.
00:02:11.040I think that, you know, Brian Johnson's doing a lot of things right with his diet and lifestyle, and he is, you know, improving the way he ages.
00:02:19.580It's a lot easier to reverse accelerated aging.
00:02:23.780So in other words, if you were doing things bad in your diet, so if you're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods, if you're overweight, if you smoke, if you drink a lot, if you're sedentary and don't exercise, you're kind of accelerating the way you age.
00:02:38.300And it's a lot easier to slow that acceleration, which makes it look like reverse aging.
00:02:42.900But if you're already doing everything really that you can to live as healthy as you can, it's really hard to reverse that biological age by 20 years because you're already doing sort of everything, right?
00:02:54.920And that's where these new technologies come into play.
00:02:57.440So I would say I don't believe that Brian Johnson's 18, you know.
00:04:18.080But what I'm saying is they didn't have any of these other classical diseases.
00:04:20.700And he took these individuals and asked a question.
00:04:25.400Can I put them on a pretty regimented exercise program for two years and reverse the aging of their hearts?
00:04:33.140Now, your heart aging, you can accelerate it if you are smoking, if you are sedentary, if you eat a lot of added sugar.
00:04:42.140All these things accelerate the aging of your heart.
00:04:44.100So as we age, our hearts get stiffer and our hearts shrink.
00:04:48.620And that really predisposes us to cardiovascular disease, the number one killer in the United States, as well as many other developed countries.
00:04:55.840So he took these individuals and put them in two groups.
00:04:58.400One group was going to get the exercise treatment.
00:05:00.200And the other group was a sham control, sort of a placebo.
00:05:02.980And they were doing sort of stretching, yoga-ish type of exercises, enough to make them think they were getting the intervention, right?
00:05:09.000So the individuals that got the treatment, the exercise treatment, I mean, this is a progressive program.
00:05:23.000These individuals, over the course of six months, sort of worked their way up to actually doing five hours of exercise a week.
00:05:29.580A large amount of that exercise was cardiovascular exercise where they were jogging, they were on a stationary cycle, getting their heart rate up,
00:05:36.820to the point where they could have a conversation, but it was very, very breathy.
00:05:41.580And then they also incorporated what's called high-intensity interval training.
00:05:46.600This is where you're getting, you know, you're doing, you're pushing yourself a little bit harder where you can't have that breathy conversation because you're working so hard.
00:05:53.780You're getting your heart rate up to 80% max heart rate or more.
00:05:57.380And then you recover for a period of time and then you do it again.
00:06:00.000And there's a lot of different types of protocols out there.
00:06:02.240They were doing one called the Norwegian 4x4 protocol.
00:06:04.980This is where you are, for four minutes, going as hard as you can and maintaining that effort for four minutes.
00:07:15.160We can talk about that because exercise also affects that.
00:07:17.480But the heart, you know, it does get stiffer and it shrinks over time.
00:07:21.840And depending on how much you exercise, the percentage can change.
00:07:25.040And one of the biggest reasons for the stiffening of the heart is actually taking in a lot of refined, added sugar.
00:07:32.560So sugar, if it's not immediately taken up into your muscles, which is what exercise does, it really opens the gates and allows glucose to come into your muscles.
00:07:43.320If you're not exercising, even, you know, after you make insulin and, of course, you're going to take some into adipose tissue, some into muscle, you're going to have a lot of glucose around in your vascular system.
00:07:52.980And what happens is there's a reaction that happens on the molecular level where the glucose interacts with collagen that lines the myocardium and the pericardium around your heart.
00:08:04.320And that collagen becomes stiffer when it reacts with glucose.
00:08:09.920This is something that's around forever.
00:08:11.800And so that's why exercise is so, so important for increasing the flexibility of your heart because it's getting that glucose out of your vascular system, out of reacting with the collagen surrounding not only your blood vessels that causes hypertension, but your heart, right?
00:08:28.500And so I just think that's the most compelling and just really encouraging study for individuals that are middle age and really have never exercised, that they can actually reverse the aging of their heart by 20 years.
00:08:45.780And so, and this is what I'm talking about.
00:08:47.420I'm not talking about doing the DNA test, the epigenetic test that has all the statistical noise.
00:08:52.360I'm talking about actual structural changes in the heart, right?
00:08:56.320So that, to me, would be the best thing that you can do.