Before You Cut Bangs
Hosted by Laura Quick and Claire Fierman, “Before You Cut Bangs” is full of hilarious conversations about real life, common and uncommon crises, and possible cosmetic errors that come along with it. Through storytelling and therapeutic wisdom, Claire and Laura share how to NOT fuck up your hair (and life) while walking through similar situations,
Produced by Will Lochamy
Before You Cut Bangs
2.17 We Asked America’s Top Aging Expert How to Stay Young. His Answer? tune in!
Botox, supplements, cold plunges, IV drips… The internet is screaming a million ways to stay young, but what actually works? We sat down with Dr. Steven Austad—America’s leading aging expert—to separate fact from fantasy. His answer? Unbelievably simple… and honestly refreshing. If you’ve ever chased the fountain of youth, don’t miss this episode. And buckle up to learn the truth from the guy who has a billion-dollar bet that someone is living to 150 by 2050.
Welcome to. Before you Cut Bangs, I'm Laura Quick and I'm Claire.
Speaker 2:Fehrman.
Speaker 1:I am a professional storyteller and I'm currently working on my first book.
Speaker 2:I have worked in mental health for many years in lots of capacities and this is a really important time to tell you our big disclaimer this is not therapy. We are not your therapists or coaches or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you shouldn't really trust us very much at all, unless you want to and it turns out well, then you can trust us, that's great.
Speaker 3:Boy, this is a very special episode. Before you cut bangs, we just have a little rainbow thing. It is, though, we're doing this series right and you're having different guests on. It's kind of our summer series.
Speaker 2:I just named it.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And it's called Porch Talk or something, but Summer Vacation.
Speaker 3:It's called Summer Vacation Because normally we don't have guests on this podcast, but now we have like a series of them coming on and I'm really really excited about this one today. So I heard on the radio a while back this was years ago that there was a bet between two scientists that the first person to be 150 years old was already alive, and it was a billion dollar bet. And then turns out one of the guys that made that bet came on my radio show because he was a TEDx speaker and he was talking about longevity and we've been friends ever since and so now he's on the radio show every couple of weeks. Jason Bateman mentioned him on SmartList the other day.
Speaker 1:I saw that. I saw that, which is pretty dang incredible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but also like anytime, if you're watching CBS Sunday mornings, they're talking about longevity like this is the guy. Dr Stephen Allstad is joining us today. I'm really looking forward to it and we're just like good personal friends. We just went to Alaska together.
Speaker 1:Are you a billionaire yet?
Speaker 4:I am not a billionaire yet. Unfortunately, I have to wait until the year 2150 to win my bet, unless somebody lives to be 150 before then, which is entirely possible.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, well, I've got a lot of questions.
Speaker 3:I didn't even think about that. I thought it had to pay off on that date in 2150 or whatever.
Speaker 4:No, that's the latest it could be.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 4:Right. But if someone was born in 2001, or was born in, let's say, 1990 and reaches 150 by 2140, then that'll also win the bet.
Speaker 1:So you're saying there's a chance for me to help you win this bet. Yeah, yeah, yeah Well it's going to be a woman, for sure, oh duh, obviously, and what type of cut you think I could get if I'm the one?
Speaker 4:If you're the one, then I would go 50-50. So half a billion dollars.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good. I don't know what I could do with that at 150 years old.
Speaker 3:Is there any kind of stipulation, like they still have to be cognizant, or do they just?
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, no, no. They have to be cognitively, they have to be able to carry on a conversation and know what they're saying. So that's an important caveat, because they can't be demented and just be, you know, in bed staring at the ceiling. That doesn't do it.
Speaker 1:That won't work.
Speaker 2:I have faith in you.
Speaker 1:Do you have faith in me? I don't know. Miss Runner, Claire's gotten athletic.
Speaker 2:She could tell me it's going to be my number one cause of death. I don't know, we always start this with a warm-up question, related or unrelated. This one I going to be my number one cause of death. I don't know, we always start this with a warm-up question, related or unrelated. This one I made to be a little bit related to the topic and this goes for everyone to answer. If you could age backward for one year, starting today, what would you do differently with that time?
Speaker 4:Ooh, hmm, we're only talking about the last year, or we're talking about aging backward to any age that we want it to be?
Speaker 2:I like that great question, so let's do that. If you could age backwards and do some things differently, where would you go and what would you do?
Speaker 4:boy, this is going to be really boring, but I don't think I would do anything differently.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 4:Because I don't believe in looking backwards and I made a number of decisions when I left the animal training business to go to graduate school. I could think maybe you should have stuck in the animal training business, but on the other hand it all worked out. So I think looking backwards it's bad for your health.
Speaker 1:That is beautiful. That's so mentally strong. I was like I thought I was going to stick with the one year thing and I will say, because I've been working out with weights for the last like six months, I feel so much better with like light weight training, where I used to just run my heart out. I would go back and do that longer. I feel like because I just have felt a big difference on like how well I rest. Based on that and it's not like I'm not nobody's going to be recruiting me to the Olympics. Okay, I'm not setting any records. I'm lifting five to eight pound weights, but I feel a lot better, so I would do that. But I'm with you. I'm lifting five to eight pound weights, but I feel a lot better, so I would do that. But I'm with you. I don't like looking back. I'm like there's no sense in that.
Speaker 3:Wilbur yeah, I mean I hate to just follow along with that trend, but it is kind of the truth, like even the mistakes that I've made, and there have been plenty. I wouldn't change most of those or any of those mistakes because they've made me kind of who I am, I guess. So I don't know If I, maybe I wouldn't, I wouldn't eat as many chicken wings, I don't know.
Speaker 4:I don't know, but even then I like chicken wings, I love them, I know.
Speaker 3:So I don't think I if I really honestly, physically, the only thing I would change is when we used to run a ton and we did like an ultra and train for a very long time. I didn't wait train during that, so that's the only physical thing. If I could go back I would say, hey, I'm not going to run as much, I'm going to mix in weight training as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, from the therapist, y'all are giving excellent clinical answers like no regrets, so I can live with that. Um, I wish I would have believed I was mentally stronger than I am. I think that toughness now is a good thing, and I used to think vulnerability was the answer to all of life's questions. Not always, and plug your ears. I wish I never smoked. I bet you wish you never smoked. I loved smoking. I still love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I liked it a lot. I still miss it. I haven't had a drag in you know what? 16 and a half years.
Speaker 1:I only smoked for that one week when all my friends hazed me because I thought I could lose 10 pounds by smoking and that didn't work, and I feel like our bodies are pretty good at like.
Speaker 3:If you quit smoking and then don't smoke for decades and decades, your lungs pretty much clean themselves out. Is what I've been told. Do you know?
Speaker 4:about this. I know you're not a medical doctor. Yes, by and large, after about 15 or 20 years, that's true 15 or 20?. But you know, the funny thing about smoking is that it was known to be really bad for your health in the 1930s.
Speaker 1:Except for it was also really cool, though, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I guess In the 1930s. I'm not sure how cool it was, but there was a paper published in the most famous science journal in the world in 1938 that showed that people that smoked lived 10 years less on average than people who didn't, and that's pretty much the same thing we know today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it turns out they were just lying. All the tobacco companies.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know, imagine that to make money. Who knew?
Speaker 1:So, like my husband always says, everybody just wants to be cool.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I agree with that, Dr Austin. How do you become an aging specialist? What degrees along the way made you this expert on longevity?
Speaker 4:Well, I have a very unusual route to being interested in this. I got interested in it actually through animals, not because I was particularly interested in human health, but I discovered by accident that opossums age as fast as mice. They only live a couple of years, they get cataracts, they get parasites, they lose muscle over the course of a few months. And that accidental observation got me interested in well, why do we age at all? Why do some things age fast and some things age slow? And for the first 10 or 15 years that I studied aging I did not think about the human implications. Never occurred to me. And then suddenly one day I thought wait a second, all this stuff I've been studying, people will be really interested in it.
Speaker 4:And the reason I think I became an expert, a sort of broad expert in it, is that, coming from the outside, I've always felt if you could have come into a new field from the outside, you need to know it better than the people who are in it. So I just did a tremendous amount of reading everything I could get my hands on.
Speaker 1:The lion, taming the fighting with the. So that was your first career.
Speaker 4:Well, I don't know. I have several. First, careers that was. That was, let's say, my last career before I went into academics. I was a taxi driver, I was a pool hustler, I was a truck driver. I had a bunch of different careers because I was writing the great american novel and I needed to put food on the table while I did that.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you. When I told you that he's the most interesting man in the world, that was not hyperbole, it's the truth. And the stories are endless and we unfortunately don't have enough time for all of them, but I do want to hit on um, you have been attacked by a lion and you have been attacked by a bear.
Speaker 2:Did you guys?
Speaker 4:have any questions about that. I know the answers. I would just like kind of a general synopsis of those events, one or the other or both. Well, I didn't get hurt that badly by the bear. I basically got bowled over and batted around by a bear who got mad at me because I was forcing him. This is a trained bear, very good bear normally. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait. Why were you forcing the bear to do weird things?
Speaker 4:We were doing training for a particular movie. So the way that movie animals are trained is that you just train them to generally obey, you teach them to sit a bunch of things, but then they may have to do something specific for the movie. So then you train them for that particular thing, just for the movie. And that's what we were working on. And it was a hot day and I'd made him do it a whole bunch of times in a row and he just said that's it.
Speaker 1:Is this your first time training a bear?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was and that's the only bear I really worked with, but it was a very good bear most of the time. I mean, I did like bank openings with the bear where I would take the bear out with a bunch of People, not on a leash or anything. He loved Tootsie Rolls, the little Tootsie Rolls. I give Tootsie Rolls to everybody and come up and feed the bear. But this one time he just lost it.
Speaker 1:What year was this? This feels like something that could have happened.
Speaker 4:I don't know 1975, something like that.
Speaker 3:The bear was Gentle Ben, like the actual famous bear, Gentle Ben. That's the bear that is actually.
Speaker 1:Gentle, ben tried to kick your ass.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, he didn't try, he kicked my ass. I mean, the only injury I got from that is he hurt my back when he knocked me over.
Speaker 2:Is that like Jeremiah Johnson Bear? Or like Robert Redford movies Bear?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. So here's the thing. I don't know what movies Gentle Ben was in, but I know of Gentle Ben the bear.
Speaker 4:The most famous movie that he was in was called the life and times of judge roy bean, uh, in which, uh, paul newman had to punch him in the face and he wasn't very thrilled about doing this, and we said, no, no, no, it's going to be okay, but this is a one take, only shot. You're never going to be able to get near this bear again. Um, so it it worked fine. He punched him in the face, the bears yelled and went after him and I jumped in between them and, uh, it worked well, but again, it was one take only, and let it be known that, uh, dr ross, that in his entire family are like massive animal lovers and conservationists, and uh yeah so mean you can't hurt a bear by punching it in the face.
Speaker 4:It's going to hurt you All right.
Speaker 3:So we need to roll right into like, talking about aging and like how do you live longer? Who lives the longest right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think one of the things that we want to tell you because we realize that you're probably not someone who listens to a podcast called Before you Cut Bangs probably not someone who listens to a podcast called before you cut bangs Um, although I promise you would laugh if you did Um, I would love to tell you that one of the reasons we started this podcast is because, um, claire is a therapist and I am a person who's needed a lot of therapy and and it was, and uh will is a good sport, and so we really want to give people fun, down to earth ways where they can stay mentally healthy, and we obviously know that living a full, whole life is part of that. So what maybe are some of the things like what's the biggest misconception about aging? What do you see people?
Speaker 4:I think the biggest misconception is that people think it's largely genetic and then if your parents didn't live a long, healthy life, you're not going to either, and that's absolutely wrong. We know a lot about this. We know that about 25% of the length of your life is determined by your inheritance. The rest is up to you. The rest is lifestyle inheritance. The rest is up to you. The rest is lifestyle, and so you can have a huge. You know, if you had the last three generations all diet at 50 means nothing whatsoever for your own longevity. What really matters is your lifestyle choices yeah, lean in, tell us.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, they're very they're. It's not a secret, right, um? Eating right, keeping a healthy body weight, getting a lot of physical activity, a lot of mental activity, sleep, all the things that probably your mother told you you should be doing. That's still the best advice we have. In fact, we now know that things like exercise are not just good for your body, they're good for your brain. It's a good way to stave off things like Alzheimer's disease, something that we never guessed. So those are all the things. It's not a big secret.
Speaker 3:So is that 25%, though that's hereditary? Is that like heart disease or things that, because you know, we talked about this recently you and I did where some people that can seemingly be in great health and eat correctly and work out and whatever, can automatically just have a heart attack and die at a relatively young age?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean people can have some genetic mutation that maybe the parents had, maybe they didn't have, but let's say they had a mutation that made them particularly susceptible to heart disease. When I say that 25%, that's about people generally, for people who die very young they probably had some family inheritance and also for people that live a very long time. If you have a parent or a relative that lived over 100 hundred, that increases your chances of living over a hundred by about 20 fold. Wow, so it has a huge impact, but for most of us it's really lifestyle that matters exercise.
Speaker 3:You brought that up. Isn't there kind of like a line, though, of like too much cannot be good, like you talked about, when you study people that have lived to be over a hundred or even over?
Speaker 1:like blue zones, for instance, when they say like it's not, like they're out there working out every day, they're just walking everywhere marathon runners generally don't make that list right right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the list of player olds that are marathon runners is vanishingly small. Um, getting a sensible amount of exercise. You can't overdo it. I mean, if you overdo itdo it it can weaken your immune system. You know you can injure yourself, but most of us don't have to worry about overdoing it, that's, you know we live such sedentary lives relative to what our ancestors lived, that we don't really have to worry. You know, if you run 50 marathons a year, maybe you're overdoing it, but I don't know a lot of people that do that.
Speaker 3:I think this is interesting the person that you think is going to live to be 150, the first person you think they're already alive and you have it kind of narrowed down to who this is. It's not like a specific name, but you kind of know where this person lives.
Speaker 4:Sure, it's not like a specific name, but you kind of know where this person lives. Sure, my best guess is it's going to be a Japanese woman, because Japanese are the longest-lived people that we know about now, and women everywhere live longer than men.
Speaker 1:Which is why I'm going to be starting a commune after our husbands die, so that all of my favorite women can live alongside me with lots of pool boys.
Speaker 4:And that's very true. I mean, one of the important things is keeping your social connections. As you get older because women live longer than men, they often lose a lot of their social connections if they had them with men and they end up lonely.
Speaker 2:Well, what is it about the Japanese women?
Speaker 4:It's probably their diet. There might be some genetic components of that, because all of the Asian countries, once they got wealthy enough to afford enough food and everything, they walk a lot. All of the Asian countries are long-lived. Korea is long-lived, china, now that they're getting richer, they're also. So there could be something genetic that we haven't identified yet, but still right now, I think the Japanese woman the most common age for women to die is about 94 years of age.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 4:So they're doing quite well.
Speaker 2:Wow. Where does happiness and positivity land in aging and longevity?
Speaker 4:That's a really, really complex question. I'll just give you my observations of the most successful aging people that I know. They tend to be people who live in the moment and don't worry about things. Bad things can happen to them. That happened, it's bad, it's gone. And you say if you live long enough, all your children die, your spouse dies, all your friends, and these people just seem to be quite accepting.
Speaker 1:My son and I. My son always jokes. He's like you know, one day we're going to be like old together because we're only 20 years apart. He's like you know one day we're going to be like old together because we're only 20 years apart. He's like how cool is it that we're going to be like old together? And I was like don't be weird.
Speaker 3:Well, I think this bodes well for me, because I don't stress about stuff.
Speaker 2:I know you're incredibly flexible.
Speaker 1:We call Will our favorite Labrador retriever of a human.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, yeah, I favorite labrador retriever of a human, yeah well, yeah, I mean, you know a certain amount of stress can actually be beneficial, but too much stress is clearly, clearly not beneficial. We know it destroys the immune system, it has all kinds of really bad effects. So but, on the other hand, something that people don't have that much control over Some people are just, they have that personality. It's like sleep. Sleep is one of the other big things, but you don't have that much control over your. You can control the amount of time you spend in bed, but that's not the same as the amount of time you spend getting high quality sleep.
Speaker 2:Why is that? Will you explain that a little more?
Speaker 4:Why is sleep so important?
Speaker 2:No, no, no. The people that don't have great sleep, and you're saying that it's just who they are.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, we don't have good ways to encourage. There's only certain things you can do. You can cool the room, you can try not to overstimulate yourself, but still there are people that are good sleepers and people that are not. I'm not a good sleeper. Most academics that I know are not good sleepers.
Speaker 4:You can take drugs, but there was actually a recent study that found that they've discovered this whole system new circulatory system in your brain that gets rid of wastes when you're sleeping, and they have found that the way that it is is these vessels kind of pulse, and they move waste out of your brain while you're sleeping. And they have found that, and the way that it has, is these vessels kind of pulse, and they move waste out of your brain while you're sleeping. So that's why it's good for you. What they found, though, is that if people take Ambien to sleep, those pulses don't happen, so that kind of sleep is apparently not as helpful as normal sleep, which is very disappointing for me to learn, since that's one of the ways I can get a good night's sleep.
Speaker 1:It's a real plus sign for me, though, Doc if we're being honest, because I'll be sleeping hardcore.
Speaker 2:I'm going for it.
Speaker 1:Me too. I love it. Okay, you know, when we think about the people who listen to this podcast, we know that they are people who either are curious about the mental health or and they maybe have lived their own shit show of a life and just want to tune in for whatever kind of crazy ass shit we're going to talk about on here, right? But I think that we also realize that, by the surveys we've done to the people who are tuning in, anxiety is something that is high on their list. It is something they're trying to navigate, and I think that one of the questions that I had is they're also being inundated because most of them are on social media. They're getting ads for anti-aging. Is there this is two part question is there a way to age backwards?
Speaker 4:It's a very easy answer no. Almost all of the anti-aging advertisements that you see on social media are absolutely bogus. Sometimes they're just things that there's no evidence to support them, and sometimes there's things that we know have no effect. There's lots of evidence to show they have no effect, but that doesn't stop people from making these ridiculous claims on social media, and it's gotten worse recently. I don't know why that is, but it drives me crazy, I have to tell you.
Speaker 1:And we've talked about overconsumption and really kind of medicating your scrolling and the algorithms are so smart, right, they're going to appeal to whatever you've been Googling. And maybe you've been trying to figure out like, oh, I've got these wrinkles and I hate them, or I feel tired all the time, or whatever. So when you think about NAD supplements, that's a big one Like go get injections, spend all this money.
Speaker 4:So you're saying None of that is proven. Now there are treatments for skin. That's actually one of the things that there are very good treatments for. There are things that's actually one of the things that there are very good treatments for. There are things. Anything that contains Retin-A, for instance, is good for your skin and can moisturize your skin and make it look better. It's not really turning back the clock. It's fixing some of the damage that's happened over the years to your skin.
Speaker 2:Awesome Noted to call the dermatologist.
Speaker 1:Retin-A got that, putting it on the list.
Speaker 2:Well, isn't that retinol? Is that the? It's happened over the years to your skin. Awesome Noted to call the dermatologist Retin-A got that, putting it on the list.
Speaker 1:Well, isn't that retinol? Is that the same thing? Yeah, yeah, I hate it. It makes me break out.
Speaker 3:I feel like in the past I've heard you say that overall, when we look at people that have lived to be over 100, there are like a few things that they have in common, right? The one was the exercise routinely. What are some of the others? I?
Speaker 4:wouldn't say they exercise routinely. That's overstated. I'd say they're physically active. But there are some people that aren't. I mean there are people who lived over 100 who never did anything. There are obese people. If you have the right genes you can compensate for a lot. A friend of mine has a woman in the study who smoked for 95 years. But that's very, very exceptional For most of us. It's really your lifestyle.
Speaker 1:I have the meanest grandma Like she. Literally she's so freaking mean and she is in her late 80s. She looks so good, her cheekbones are really hot and she's she's mean as shit and she smoked her whole life and I'm just like damn, I just think it's just like she's so mean. That's what kept her alive too mean to die too mean to die. Do you think that's a thing?
Speaker 4:uh, I think it probably isn't okay well, that bitch I mean.
Speaker 4:there is this complication, though. When I say people that live to be that old are placid, accepting, you know the people that weren't. You know they got to be too anxious, they got to be too stressed and they died. I think that there's a kind of a survivor bias. The people that reach 80 are really different than the people that reach 100. If you live your life in the best styles, you're going to be pretty likely a healthy 80-year-old, but you're not going to be a 100-year-old unless we find some breakthrough in aging biology, which there's a lot of promise in but nothing demonstrated yet.
Speaker 1:What's the biggest breakthrough you've seen through the research and we know that you are the guy. What's the one that really stands out to you?
Speaker 4:Well, I guess the thing that stands out the most is that we now know of about a dozen different drugs that, in laboratory animals, can make them stay healthy much longer 25, 30% longer. So you know, instead of having a human equivalent, instead of living to 80, we average would be more like 110. And finding that one drug does something like that, that actually was shocking to me, but finding a dozen that do it. But here's the big caveat on that First of all, we don't know if any of these drugs do the same thing in people, but most of these only work in males. What?
Speaker 3:And we don't know. Shut up, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 4:We have no clue as to why that is that's because women are living longer.
Speaker 1:Than you assholes anyway, y'all actually need the 20 years to catch up.
Speaker 2:I actually had that thought. Like every time I hear women live longer, I'm like, oh, thank god. And then I forget that men might be like, well, shit, so I'm good for them, going to go for them. They got to win, but these drugs are not to. I'm just making sure I understand. The drugs aren't a remedy for some illness. It is truly something to enhance life.
Speaker 4:Right, they're preventatives. That's the key thing is they prevent the illnesses. They don't treat the illnesses. It turns out that they might treat the illnesses, but their main effect is in preventing them. And that's why the biology of aging is so important to the future of human longevity, because it's almost the apex of preventative medicine, because it doesn't just prevent cancer or Alzheimer's disease, it prevents everything together. Because all of these things, aging's the number one underlying factor.
Speaker 3:And lot of times people you know respond to like, oh, these live to be 125, 150 in the way of like I don't want to be that old, that's, I'm going to feel terrible and whatever. But the idea is that 125 is the new 85 or something like that. Right, like your, your actual happiness and well-being would also extend along with the actual years.
Speaker 4:Sure, yeah, I mean nobody's for extending, you know, the last debilitating years of your life. No, that's not what it's about. It's about staying healthy. And here's a concern. In the last 30 years in the United States and in most other developed countries, life expectancy has continued to increase, although at a slower rate, but healthy life expectancy has hardly budged over that time. So what we're doing now people that used to die of a heart attack they don't die now. We know how to save them, but they may live a compromised health after that. Same thing with people who had cancer. They died before. Well, now we can save them, but the treatments of cancer are very hard on your body oh my God, so hard. So one thing that focusing on the aging processes does is, like I said, it prevents these things rather than getting better at treating the problems once they occur. You know what my friends in the field say is we don't have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system.
Speaker 1:Right, ain't that the truth? What about diet?
Speaker 4:A diet is important, but it's also highly individualized. We know at a population level that people that are vegetarians live longer than people who are not vegetarians, but on the other hand, people that are vegetarians have a lot of lifestyle factors that are probably different. It's certainly in the animal world. We know that eating a low protein diet increases longevity increases longevity. That's not entirely clear in people, because low protein diets tend to lead to less muscle and as you get older, having muscle is more and more and more important.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:You know, if you have weak legs muscles, you're likely to fall.
Speaker 2:Not us. The person we're talking to in the corner is Laura's sister, so when I said not us, she also is with me on long distances.
Speaker 1:Yes, very long distances. I'll be like, what did you do this weekend? And she's like, oh, I did like 150 mile bike ride. And I'm like, oh my God, we're just prepping our legs to not fall. Okay.
Speaker 2:I trip a lot, but I don't fall. Okay, diet, when you say highly individualized meaning, is there like certain, are you talking about? Like blood types, or what do you mean? Well, that's it we don't, we don't know yet how to personalize diets.
Speaker 4:But we're learning because now you know everybody can get their genome sequence and pretty soon people are going to figure out if you have this genetic signature, you're healthier if you eat a low-carb, high-protein diet. But if you have that, then you should eat a low-protein, high-carb diet. One of the things we know is that most people get plenty of minerals, of vitamins and minerals. There's lots of studies now that show that taking multivitamins is a great placebo but it doesn't really have any impact on health. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't do it. If it makes you feel better, my thought is, do it.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Are there any supplements that you think are helpful?
Speaker 4:Again, it depends on the person and it depends on what you're doing. There's a study that's going to come out on Friday that's going to make a big deal out of vitamin D and I think it's completely unwarranted. But be prepared to hear about how great vitamin D is for preventing aging.
Speaker 4:Unwarranted because bad research or not individualized the research is okay, but the measure that it's using of success, which is the length of your telomeres in your blood cells, is a not a good metric. So you can get all these tests of your biological age. You know there's a whole bunch of commercial. None of them are worth anything, and I'll tell you. I'll tell you why. A friend of mine took up some of his own blood. He split it up into 10 parts and he sent it off without any information on his age to all these places to get his biological age measured and I think his real age is 62 and the the results came back. They ranged from 22 to 72 for his biological age, and sometimes the same lab would send him back things that differed by 20 years. So it's a waste of money right now to get any of these tests that tell you anything about your biological age. Just getting a good physical will tell you more about your biological age than those.
Speaker 1:What about all these shots, these weight loss shots? What do we think about?
Speaker 4:them. Yeah, the GLP-1, those are really intriguing and those may turn out to be the first widely used anti-aging drugs. We don't know that yet, but we already know because so many people are taking these right. Millions of people are taking these, and they appear to be protective against dementia, heart disease, kidney disease. These are some of the biggest health problems that people have as they get older, so those look like they have many benefits besides weight loss.
Speaker 4:Now what we don't know yet is if you don't need them for weight loss, if you're at a healthy body weight and you start using these, how beneficial they are. Most of what we know about them are people that are high risk for all these things because they're obese or they're diabetic or both. So but what we know is extremely provocative and interesting. There's a lot of research going on in this area now and for the most part, it's positive, correct. Yes, absolutely Absolutely, from what we know. But again, we know this from people who were not so healthy to begin with. What we don't know about any of this stuff is if you're really healthy, if you, you know, if you get plenty of exercise and you eat right, you have a healthy body weight. All these things. We don't know if anything is better than that at this point.
Speaker 3:Asking for a friend named Laura. What is a glass of wine at night? Where do we fall on that?
Speaker 4:Yeah well, there's a lot of information on this.
Speaker 1:It makes me happy. I just want to throw that out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, I think there is no harm in that. There's recently been a couple of highly publicized studies that said any amount of alcohol is bad for you, but there are many, many studies that say the opposite.
Speaker 1:In Italy back in the day. Pregnant women drank all the way through there and I'm like what kind of damn wine was that? I don't think I'm not advocating for that, just so everybody understands, but I do think it's an interesting like abusing it versus having a glass of wine, right, I mean, at one point people were thinking, you know, a glass of wine or having a couple of glasses of wine, right?
Speaker 4:I mean, at one point people were thinking, you know, a glass of red wine a day is healthy.
Speaker 1:That wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 4:I know, and that's because it contains trace amounts of this chemical called resveratrol, which at one point was thought to be a potent anti-aging drug, but that turned out to be nonsense. But it wasn't nonsense for the person who, uh, who discovered it, because he built a company and sold it for $720 million, uh, to a big drug company who now has abandoned research in that area because, turned out, didn't do anything Damn.
Speaker 1:Good for him though.
Speaker 2:That was a great question and let me say this what I'm hearing from you is this is there's some generalizations of healthy body weight. Move your body, find out what feels good as far as food that you consume. So there's some like generalizations around that, and it sounds like the same for alcohol. As I have aged, if I drink one beer or one glass of wine, I feel terrible, like it just doesn't work for me, and I do it anyway Sometimes. I'm going to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:I've never seen. You only have one of anything.
Speaker 2:Go on, you can take that right out of here. The point was, one is enough, okay to make me feel bad. So lots of generalizations and I'm hearing, but there's like more to come. You're hoping in the future we might be able to be more specific of Claire, because you're this blood type which I don't know, and should, you should be eating plant-based whatever. Is that right, yeah?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and there's a ton of research going on in this. It's it's going to be complicated because you have 20,000 genes, but but we're figuring it out and pretty soon you will be able to. It's called personalized medicine. I think it's what we should think of it, as personalized prevention, but that's going to be available to anyone.
Speaker 1:How far away from that are we? We're highly interested.
Speaker 4:A handful of years interested A handful of years.
Speaker 1:Wow, a handful of years.
Speaker 4:It's open next week.
Speaker 3:I know same.
Speaker 1:So until then, should we all move to Japan, or what do you think?
Speaker 4:Well, no, it turns out, as Japanese people move to the US, their life expectancy drops. It doesn't drop as far as ours is and, by the way, the us has the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized country, any technologically advanced countries.
Speaker 3:because we don't know how to take care of ourselves as a group and alabama's at the very bottom, not the very bottom like bottom three or four yeah, alabama has life expectancy.
Speaker 4:That's about the same as Mexico.
Speaker 2:Wow, well, I hope that my clients that are listening get to relax a little bit, because a lot of my clients are coming to me because they've bought this supplement and this green juice and that, and we talk so much about consumption and consumerism. We can relax a little bit, is what you're saying?
Speaker 4:Yeah, around all this buying and taking. Yeah, relax is right and go out, go for a walk, enjoy the sunshine, get a good night's sleep, eat food that you like. If you have a glass of wine that doesn't make you feel good, don't have a glass of wine.
Speaker 1:But if you have a glass of wine and you love that shit.
Speaker 4:Then have it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I like to hear, doc.
Speaker 3:Don't draw sad things. That was great, oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Anything, we didn't ask that you would want to say.
Speaker 4:I guess we said it, but let me emphasize it Beware of anything you read on social media that claims to have anti-aging properties. It's either unproven at best or completely bogus at worst.
Speaker 1:Damn, I've got a lot of freedom.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you Before you Cut Bangs is hosted by Laura Quick and Claire Fehrman and produced by Will Lockamey.
Speaker 1:Follow along with us everywhere. Please subscribe to the podcast. Find us on Instagram. We're constantly doing polls. We want to know what you think, and I know that you probably know this, but reviewing us and giving us five stars matters more than anything, and we are so grateful to have you here.
