Your Doctor Is Wrong About Aging
Hello Health Champions. How many of you have been told by your doctor that whatever condition you
have is normal for your age? That you just need to accept that there are certain things you can't
do. Certain things you can't change at your age. But the question is how much should we accept and what
do we have the power to change? According to the mayo clinic as we age we should expect arterial
stiffening, hypertension - high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, bone loss, fragility,
osteoporosis, constipation. If you're female you should expect to lose muscle tone in your pelvic
floor muscles and therefore have some incontinence. If you're male you should expect prostate
enlargement and urinary difficulty. We should further expect memory loss, cognitive decline,
loss of hearing and vision, cataracts. Your skin will change. It will get thin, inelastic, and bruise
more easily. You'll get wrinkles, age spots and skin tags. Your metabolism will go down. You will
lose muscle and gain fat and you will gain weight also. And then we're told our muscles will go away .
We will lose muscle strength, muscle endurance and flexibility. Well I guess someone forgot
to tell this lady. She never got that memo. But the problem also is that they think the muscles
are responsible for the function and they say because you lose muscle you will also lose
coordination. You will lose stability and you lose balance. And the muscles they're involved but they
have very little to do with this, because a muscle will only respond when it receives
a signal. Your brain and nervous system processes billions of bits of information every second
and they send these signals out to animate the muscles and the different parts of the body.
Your body responds to gravity it responds to movement it receives this information
and then it sends the signals out to the muscles to create coordination, stability and balance it is
all about the signals. In my office we use muscle testing to evaluate people and we have people come
in with non-functioning muscles and in a matter of seconds we can turn those muscles on. Does that
mean we build more muscles in those seconds? No of course not we change the signals we change
how the body and nervous system is processing those signals. So things that are alive have a
lot of signals. Things that are dead don't have any signals. So quiz: What do you call a muscle
that has no signals? That receives no signals? That generates no signals? It is called
a steak. And then some people would say oh well of course muscles matter because if you have
twice as big a muscle it's going to be twice as strong. Yes if it has a signal. If it has a good
quality signal then it will be strong. If you don't have any signal then you just have a stake that's
twice as big. Now let's explore why we have come to these conclusions. Why are we being told to expect
poor health as we age? Well the first thing is that we look around and we observe what's going on. We
look at other people and we see what's happening to them and if it seems to happen to just about
everybody, then it's really really common and we call it normal. But just because something
happens a lot does not mean it's normal. The second reason is called the central dogma. Also known as
genetic determinism and this has been with us now for almost 70 years. That's the idea
that the genes determine everything about us. So we're going to take a look at that because what is
dogma? Dogma is a principle laid down by an authority that is taken as incontrovertibly true.
It means that they make such a convincing argument. They discover something they make a convincing
argument and we buy it to the degree that we never question it again. What is the central dogma then?
Well it says that DNA controls life. DNA is our genetic material. In most cells except red blood
cells you have a nucleus and in that nucleus you have your genetic material., your DNA which is
like a recipe for every protein and everything that you can make in your body
and the DNA has a sibling RNA which is like a mirror image so the RNA imprints on the DNA
and then the RNA goes out and lines up the amino acids like pearls on a necklace and it creates the
protein. So once they discover the structure in 1953 and they figured out this process and they
said oh my god this is the answer to everything so in 1958 they formulated and suggested the central
dogma and they said this is how it works. This is all there is to it DNA controls everything about
life. But there was a problem. This model is a bit incomplete and how did they figure that out. Well
they figured that we had to have at least 140 000 genes because we had 100 000 proteins another 40
000 regulatory proteins and according to their model each gene controlled or coded for one
protein so therefore we had to have at least 140 000 genes. And then 50 years or so after DNA was
discovered the structure was discovered they had the human genome project they actually traced out
every one of those genes and the final count came in right around 20 000. So right there it was a
huge upset because that meant this model could not work. It could not be complete. It could not
be the answer and what they found then is it's not so much about genetics but it's about epigenetics
meaning above genetics. So it's not so much about what genes you have it is how are they expressed
because you can have genes and not express them. You can have good genes and express them you
can have bad genes and not express them. And the way that 20 000 genes can make 100 000 proteins
is that you can have different genes combined with others. These genes can cooperate and the
combination can produce different genes so now we have a lot bigger number out of these few genes
but there was one question that they basically overlooked. They never asked is there anything that
tells the DNA what to do what is it that makes the DNA decide when and where and what to do?
So think about DNA as a blueprint. A blueprint is a drawing for a house and just like DNA is a drawing
to tell how to put the protein together. But when we say that the DNA controls life; the DNA controls
the manufacture of the protein, it's like saying that the blueprint controls the building of the
house. It's completely disregarding the contractor and the builders and the painter and the interior
decorator and so forth. Another example would be of a cookbook that if we liken DNA to a cookbook
it's a bunch of recipes that tells us how to put things together to create delicious food.
But if we say that the DNA controls the protein then it's like saying that the cookbook decides
what's for dinner and cooks the dinner, right. It's just containing the information on how to do it.
There is something else that tells it when and what and how. And basically the DNA is closed down
like a book until there is a signal that tells the book to open and it tells it on which page and
what paragraph to read. And where do these signals come from well they come from chemical factors
they come from mechanical/structural factors and they come from emotional factors that humans
have all these different different aspects to their being and then we create a perception and
one person could be allergic to strawberries another one could be perfectly fine so the
body makes a different perception. It's a learned perception to that nutrient to that chemical. We
could have different emotional responses. We could have the same exact event happen but we think of
it differently some people think it's a good thing some people think it's a bad thing that happened.
Our perception is different right there's millions of different factors we make an interpretation and
that is what creates the signal that will express the DNA. Now listen carefully this is big. If you
understand what we just talked about that is the difference between a victim or a creator.
How come? Because if you accept which we did for 50 plus years and mainstream medicine and media
are still viewing the central dogma as the way things work; that DNA controls things. If we
buy into that model then you're a victim. There's nothing you can do about it because whatever you
received at the moment of conception that is who you are and you can't change it because
the DNA is fixed and DNA controls everything about life. And this is why this is part of why we have
such a victim status in our health care system. That there's nothing you can do about it you
can just have to wait for the next medical invention or donate some more money for
research so they can find a new pill because they have made us believe that this is how it works
and a drug is the only thing that can change it. But if on the other hand you understand the second
part that we talked about about epigenetics now you realize that you're the creator
that you have enormous control that your nervous system processes billions of bits of information
and you can change those. The chemical mechanical structural the emotional aspects you can change
your perception you can change your interpretation you can practice you can change your lifestyle and
if you don't like what your life what your body what your health looks like you can change the
expression of your DNA. We also need to answer the question of the body as a statue or a river. Are we
mostly solid and non-changing? Or are we more like a river that's flowing and ever changing? So let me
give you an actual example here. I had a patient in my office I had seen her for about a year she came
in with all kinds of of health problems and in a year's time we had them mostly taken care of.
But then she decided to start exercising and her knees started hurting and she asked
me. So what do we do about this? Do I stop exercising? I said no. We'll fix it.
And then a couple of days later she had an annual visit with her medical doctor
and the medical doctor advised her that at your age if you have knee pain
then you should not walk. You can't walk again for exercise because you will wear out your knees. And
this is what I looked like when I heard that. But the reason that medical doctor said that
is that she thought of the human body as a statue. Se thought that you you have what you have and as
it wears out there's nothing you can do about it. But we need to understand that the body is
a river it is always changing it is exactly like a river where you can't step in the same river
twice because the water is always different. You are never the same because your cells are always
changing. The question is are they changing to something better or worse or are the next
pretty much the same. You replace 90% of your cells every year. So you're sitting there right now
and 90 percent of what you see in the mirror wasn't there last year. And so when we talk
about knee pain then it's not that the knees wear out. It's that they don't repair properly because
every part of your body is breaking down all the time. It has to it's supposed to but it's also
supposed to be rebuilt. So if you have knee pain or arthritis it is not because it's wearing down
it's because it didn't repair properly. And have you thought about how very often people have pain
in one knee and not the other? They can have arthritis in one and not the other. Is that because
they only walked with one leg? They spared the other leg. They used one leg three times as much?
Obviously not, okay. So we have to understand that we are a river. We're always repairing.
The question is - how do we repair it better? So once we understand that your DNA codes for the proteins
but it's the epigenetics it's the environment it's all those factors we talked about that signals
and expresses that DNA now we understand that it's epigenetics we're interested in
and these epigenetic changes are happening moment by moment. It's not like we do a little bit
now and a little bit more next month. It's constant second by second. You're processing
billions of bits of information and every bit has an impact on how the next generation of
genetic expression is going to be. And in the book "You Are The Placebo", a great book by Joe Dispenza,
he talks about some of the research that they've done on epigenetics and hold on to your hats here.
We have about 20 000 genes so how many of those can we change. Well they looked at some
chemical changes meaning nutrition they changed people's diet and they found in people with
prostate cancer that by changing the diet by improving the diet they upregulated 48 genes
that were tumor suppressing and they down regulated 453 genes that were tumor promoting.
Right? So already here hundreds and hundreds of genes in favor of health just by changing the diet.
Well what about the other factors they also looked at the emotional or stress.
So meditation, relaxation exercises, is a way to reduce stress. So they taught some people how to do this
and they had them do it for eight weeks. And the people who were novices they
favorably expressed 1,561 genes for improved health. And the people that they studied a little bit
more long term the longer they did it the more benefit there was they improved 2209 genes. They
also looked at the structural aspect which is the mechanical has to do with with movement and
posture and exercise and they had people exercise twice a week for about six months and they found
that these people on average had improved 7,000 genes that were related to better health.
So in these three examples we find that thousands and thousands of genes were changed. They were
expressed differently. So it's not about the genes you have it's how you express them. And if you did
any one of these categories emotional structural or chemicals you would probably get tremendous
benefit. You could change hundreds of genes but what if you did all three at the same time.? Now you
could really start building yourself a better body. And now that you have a really solid understanding
of these concepts let's answer this question: should we expect poor health with aging?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we will never age. I'm not saying that there is no
impact of aging on these things. I'm saying that most of the things that we blame on aging are
actually due to other factors. So what is health? Health is not about absence of disease
Health is when everything is working the way it's supposed to. Everything. So that's a hundred percent.
If a hundred percent of everything that was supposed to work, in your case, was working,
would you have a problem? No. I always get the same answer. I ask that question. If everything was
working I wouldn't have this disease, right. We get that, but function the thing that's supposed
to work is on a gradient. It's not an on off switch. So as time goes by as we age
we tend to have a decline we go from health to a mild decline to a moderate to severe decline
and then finally into disease. Here's what it looks like probably for a lot of people
that we're healthy for the most part till we hit our 30s and then we have mild decline till we hit
somewhere in our 40s 50s then we're in moderate decline by the time we hit
our 50s and 60s and then we're in the range of disease. And this might happen a little sooner
or later but sort of on average. And what are the factors that determine how quickly this goes down?
Well, they're called toxicity, deficiency, degeneration and stress. So toxicity is
when we have insulin resistance, when we have metal toxicity ,when we have inflammation
those are things that interfere. The body wants to do things a certain way but it can't because these
things are interfering. Deficiency is when you have to have something but you don't have it. It's
like you're going to build a house and you need some brick but all you have are Styrofoam blocks.
Then you can't build the thing you planned because you're deficient you don't have the parts.
Degeneration is use it or lose it and most things that we call aging like posture and loss of muscle
tone etc. That is dis-use. Use it or lose it. If you keep it up, your body will make new cells
that can perform that function. If you stop then your body has no reason to produce those
cells again. And finally stress is a state where your body has different priorities
when you are in homeostasis, your body has access to all the resources and it can put those
resources toward making new healthy cells and tissue. But when you're stressed you're basically
in a state of danger your body is interpreting you as being in danger. Whether it's a lion attacking
you or a car trying to run you over. Or if it's just a deadline or a bill or a screaming kid
you perceive all those as a threat as something that requires urgent attention. Something that
you have to defend yourself against or deal with. And in that state your body puts a higher
priority on dealing with that outside thing than it does on healing and making new healthy cells.
So by learning to influence these four factors and improving them you can change the slope.
Some people totally abuse themselves and they have a slope that goes like this and they're
dead by 30. There are some very sad examples of that. But what if we can shift it the other way?
What if we can make all of this decline happen much much slower so it looks something like this?
Right. And now you're in health until you're 60 or even beyond you have mild decline until your 90s
and moderate decline from there on out. But if you can slow down the decline enough
then you can reach the end of your life without ever having to get into disease
and suffering. So this is basically what my channel is about. These are things that we
know today these are things that we can control. That if we slow the decline. If we understand
how holistically we can take care of ourselves and slow the decline, then we can make that a
reality. But there's one more line and it looks like this and this is more of a hypothetical line.
These lines are not hypothetical. We know this is how it works. This is how maybe it could work
within several decades. There is a lot of research on longevity that suggests
that cells are actually immortal. That for the most part death happens because it's programmed, but if
we can figure out how to un-program that, then there is no reason a cell shouldn't be able to live
forever. So now we're not talking about living longer and getting old we're talking about living
longer without getting old. So what's the next step? Well first of all you want to stop expecting aging.
You do not have to have poor health as you age. And the reason that's so important is that your
emotional state is part of that epigenetic influence. That when you expect something
in a sense that becomes an instruction for the genome to do that. So that's the first thing
secondly you want to do those three factors we talked about meditate, exercise, reduce inflammation,
so this would be the emotional the structural and the chemical. This is what my channel is about. You
have hundreds of videos to figure out the details about how to accomplish these things and these
four steps would be the main thing that you need to do to get from the gray arrow to the green
arrow. To shift that rate of decline that's what it's all about. Now the next step is about maybe
starting to shift this green line up a little bit closer to the yellow. One of the things they have
studied is called sirtuins or survival genes and the fuel the thing that drives these genes
that up regulates these genes is something called NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide.
Ad there's a couple of supplements called NR and NMN, nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide
mononucleotide, and these are basically different forms of the same thing. In the body they can
go from one to the other some people say one is better some people say the other is better but
they're different advantages. The one that has been studied the most is nicotinamide riboside
and it's a little smaller. It probably crosses membranes a little better. Another thing they've
studied is called Resveratrol that also positively impacts these Sirtuins and another thing is
quercetin that can also have a positive impact. So a lot of people asked me after a previous video
if I use any of those what's my opinion about them and yes we do use these quite extensively
in the clinic and there is a brand that puts all three of these into one package quite affordably
and I'll put a link down below that you can check it out. If you go through that link then it will
also get you five percent off. And when you've done all of those things then you want to wait
for the breakthrough. And the breakthrough is for the researchers to finally figure out how
to break that genetic code and how to influence the epigenetic expression so that we stop aging
altogether. Some of the researchers believe that that could happen within several decades.
So one of the biggest reasons for you to take care of yourself if you want to live a long time
is that the longer you live the more likely that you're going to still be here and experience
that breakthrough. When is it going to happen? Will they finally succeed? Well if we stick around
we'll find out. If you enjoyed this video you'll love that one and if you truly want to master
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