ANEW Insight

Breathwork for Longevity: Reverse Biological Aging & Boost Mental Health

• Dr. Supatra Tovar • Season 1 • Episode 111

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Breathwork, longevity, and biological aging — in this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. Supatra Tovar sits down with world-renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Helen Lavretsky of UCLA to uncover how conscious breathing practices can transform mental health, reverse biological aging, and extend lifespan.

Dr. Lavretsky shares her groundbreaking research on how ancient practices like yoga and pranayama intersect with modern neuroscience, showing that something as simple and free as breathwork can influence telomere length, gene expression, neuroplasticity, stress resilience, and emotional regulation.

Listeners will discover how slow, controlled breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers cortisol, reduces inflammation, and rewires the brain for calm and clarity. We also dive into the science of epigenetics, where lifestyle choices like diet, exercise, and breathwork influence which genes are expressed, ultimately shaping health and longevity.

This conversation is both deeply scientific and practical, offering real tools anyone can use immediately to boost resilience, improve sleep, manage anxiety, and even slow down biological aging.

✨ If you’ve ever wondered how to use your own breath to heal, regulate emotions, and live longer, this episode delivers the science, the inspiration, and the tools to start today.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • The link between breathwork and biological aging
  • How slow, conscious breathing activates the vagus nerve
  • Why caregivers and trauma survivors benefit from breath practices
  • The role of epigenetics in reversing inflammation and stress damage
  • How breathwork influences telomere length and aging clocks
  • Practical breathing techniques for sleep, resilience, and stress relief
  • The future of integrative psychiatry and lifestyle medicine

Episode Timestamps

  • 00:00 – Welcome and introduction to Dr. Helen Lavretsky
  • 01:00 – From psychiatry to yoga: Dr. Lavretsky’s personal journey
  • 03:00 – Early studies on breathwork in dementia caregivers
  • 06:00 – How breath affects stress, neuroplasticity, and gene expression
  • 09:00 – Parasympathetic activation through 4–6 breaths per minute
  • 12:00 – Immune system, cortisol, and inflammation regulation
  • 15:00 – Fear, amygdala activation, and the stress society we live in
  • 18:00 – Interoception and reconnecting with the body through breath
  • 21:00 – Landmark studies on telomere length and aging reversal
  • 24:00 – How lifestyle, diet, and breathwork extend longevity
  • 25:00 – Preview of Part 2: breathing demonstrations and tools

Resources & Links

Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

So I just really wanted to get Dr. Helen on here so I could investigate breath work further. Before we start though, I'm gonna read a little bit about Dr. Helen and then we'll get right into our questions. Dr. Helen Lavretsky is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose lifelong fascination with healing. The whole person was sparked during her early medical training where she observed the powerful intersection between emotional resilience. Her research combines clinical neuroscience. With Eastern wisdom, using tools like FMRI, genomics and heart rate variability to uncover how un, how conscious breathing shapes emotional regulation and enhances mental health. Through her work, Dr. Lavretsky is helping redefine what true healing means in psychiatry. Um, and I had no reliable tools to turn to in my life. I was searching. What would, you know, what would I need to cope with all of this? And finally, during a family vacation, I encountered a teacher who taught Kundalini yoga on the beach. And this was on the island of Lanai Hawaii, and it was like completely breathtaking, you know, combination of this very flowy, breathy, uh, meditative yoga, um, and the setting on in a lagoon. That was completely devoid of people, you know, like just a few of us on the beach. And um, uh, when I returned to Los Angeles, I was totally determined to find another way to study it, and I found it in my then gym and I was at four o'clock on Saturday, but I went for the next year. Very intensively, but, uh, only three of us attended it and, uh, the class was eventually canceled and then I found a Kundalini yoga studio, more like a yoga center or um, Mindful Practices Center, and that became my home for the next 15 years.

dr--supatra-tovar_1_07-23-2025_122900-1:

Oh, I love that. And, you know, I can completely relate. When I was starting my graduate studies, I got so stressed out and knew I just needed to do something, um, to manage stress. So for me it was, uh, meditation. I'd already, um, been a, a regular practicer of, um, Pilates, which is very similar in certain ways to yoga. And then for the next. The now almost 20 years, I, uh, re, re remained myself in a different way. Um, so, uh, gained multiple new expertise that, uh, is now very handy. So at the time when I started, it was still a woo woo kind of area, you know, it was not regarded like, uh, uh, a very, uh, so a lucrative way to eng engage, engage, uh, in terms of your career goals. It's not just your lungs or your heart, it's all of you. It's your brain, it's your immune system, it's your aging, uh, that are responsive to all of this mind-body practices and breath include all, most of this practices include breaths as like a key element, like I studied Tai Chi or Qigong, or yoga, and all of this have commonalities, common practices.

Dr Lavretsky:

Right. So this is the best tool a human has in our possession in order to regulate our response to the environment. You know, it's harder for us to immediately regulate, uh, let's say heart beating. But with our control of breathing muscles, we can control the rate of breath, the depths of breath, uh, the flow, put our attention concentrate as a meditative focus on the breathing and that changes. Um, basket of tools, how to cope with life. Uh, you, you all set was, uh, kind of de determining your own destiny. Instead of being reactive to whatever is going on, you could take a breath step, uh, back, uh, assess the situation and make a conscious decision instead of a knee-jerk reaction being reactive to whatever's going on around you. Right. It's the calming effect of slow conscious, uh, controlled paced breathing. And it's been determined by numerous studies that breaths four to six breaths per minute, which is, gets you into this coherent state, uh, at which, uh, your blood pressure drops, your heart rate drops. And, um, as a result, you feel calmer. And even if you just close your eyes and follow your breath consciously, that automatically slows down. Um, the rate of breathing and the normal rate is between 12 to 60. Eight to 16 breaths per minute. Um, anxious people have a higher bit, a higher rate of breathing. So if you slow it to four to six breaths per minute, it uh, really, you know, tells your body, calm down, slow down. Well, there are multiple systems involved in stress, uh, response. It's immune system, it's hormonal system. And so, yes, uh, central system serve regulating all of these processes, but they, uh, work in unison. So once you start calming down. The cortisol levels drop, uh, adrenergic, uh, hormones that stimulate blood pressure, like increase hypertension, also drop bowel reflex.

dr--supatra-tovar_1_07-23-2025_122900-1:

That's so amazing. Can you go into that a little bit more and just for people who have never really heard of that epigenetics is, you know, a lot of people think that, uh oh, I was born with, you know, this set of genes and so I am destined to get. Cancer or whatever it's, and what we're seeing in science is that that's not true. So breath work itself, if you can explain it just a little bit more simply for our audience. It does what exactly for gene expression. There are close, uh, centers in the brainstem. That vagal nerve is close, has a nuclear next to breathing center, but then they go up in the brain. They are connecting to, um, locus sirilus that is controlling noradrenergic input or stress response and amygdala. That is a fear center and we're all in fear. In fact, all of the media wants us to be in fear. The amygdala that is in fear and that amygdala prepares us to run from a bear, you know, or a lion. That is an evolutionary response when we account danger. But we have lions and bears and, uh, earthquakes and tsunamis all every day. Basically some, something happens. What is being amplified is by media. And so, uh, social media, you know, television, uh, social media, is that, do you hear any good news? And, uh, the first, uh, thing I try to do with my patients, the first, uh, achievement is to regulate their sleep. And I work, work with long COVID now that, you know, really results with, um, the 98%, uh, percent of people not sleeping due to increased inflammation and stress of dealing with, uh, long COVID. So the first thing that I, I spent 50% of my time trying to get them to sleep and teach them breathing techniques. Uh. Um, paying attention to all the stimuli that are happening in your body. So you tune out all, uh, that is outside, which is not pleasant most of the time, and you just pay attention. Close your eyes and pay attention to your breaths or your heart rate, uh, or what's happening to your internal bodies, like you can talk to your liver or your bladder or your kidneys and establish this mind-body connection. My question to you, is it even if you learn all of these breath work techniques, is it as effective? If you're not working on what's going on in your mind, do you need to coordinate the two? We live in this fear centered world. Does working on those thoughts while also working on the breath create more, uh, effective change in the body?

Dr Lavretsky:

Well, you know, when you are calm, your mind is not as disordered. You know, like you don't have to be in panic. If you are, bring yourself not, and the breathing is what come, brings the calm. Like in the brain we did FMRI, we did PET scan, we did gene expression. This was the first study that did, uh, measured telomerase in humans. And the second study measure measuring, uh, gene expression, all of the systems really changed. And, uh, this was a big revelation because none of it was known before that study. So this is, we see it very commonly that these people who are very, very stressed die earlier. And stress does promote senescence or aging, and this practices reverse, uh, cellular aging, you know, and we've shown it with telomeres and others have shown it with telomere links. And, um, uh. An enzyme that takes care of telomere links. Since then, uh, we've developed all sorts of other indices of aging, um, biological aging or cellular aging, like DNA clocks, aging clocks. And, uh, we do that now, you know, we, uh, gene expression also tells a very nice story, uh, of, uh, restructuring of genes to promote.

dr--supatra-tovar_1_07-23-2025_122900-1:

Oh my goodness. So to sum it up for people, and I did get it wrong, it's telomere length, not telomerase. Telomerase is the enzyme that activates it. Uh, is. Telomere length determines essentially your aging. And as we age with more and more inflammation and stress, uh, you know, when we're constantly in stress, the length of telomeres get shorter and shorter. It doesn't involve any medication. It something that you can practice regularly and it feels amazing. So, Dr. Lavretsky, we're out of time for this half of this podcast, but I wanna get into. Types of breathing exercises in the next half of this, um, episode. Would you be willing to model some breathing for us so that our listeners can take away some really powerful tools, uh, to help their health?

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Dr. Supatra Tovar

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