Mindfulness Meditation

Forget weight - metabolic health (glucose, insulin) predicts telomere length better than BMI

Lean people can be metabolically unhealthy; obese people can be healthy. Telomere length tracks insulin sensitivity, not BMI.

"Yeah, it's a good question. It's paradoxical, but it turns out the longer... Sperm are unlike the other types of cells where the longer they are around and replicate, the shorter the telomeres, sperm opposite. So older fathers have sperm with longer telomeres, and there is an effect in the offspring. So when we do studies, when we have the data to know how old was your father when you I'm going to go to the next episode. older fathers have sperm with longer telomeres and there is an effect in the offspring. So when we do studies, when we have the data to know how old was your father when you were born, that's a covariate. That's something that shapes telomere length. And what's the effect in the offspring? Is it shorter or longer? So longer. So sperm is telomere length is longer and that can affect the offspring telomere length to be longer. Are there studies that have looked at whether or not having a longer telomere length to start predicts, you know, healthy aging? Okay. So that is, I believe, and I think many of us in this field believe that that is probably one of the biggest stories out there, which is telomere length at birth, that initial setting, which we know is partly genetic, but partly prenatal environment and, you know, health of mom and dad and their germline, you know, epigenetics. So that is one of the biggest determinants of their tilmer length in late life. We all, you know, we can change it a little bit, but you know, what you start with is a big factor. So no one has followed people to say like, is it true that what you're born with then predicts, you know, how soon you get sick and when you die? We don't know, but we think it probably is pretty big. So you guys want to look at that? Yeah. Yeah. Someone should. Yes. And not just lifespan, but like you said, you know, look, does it predict cardiovascular disease? Does it predict dementia? Well, let me tell you how important it is. National Institute of Aging, which mostly studies old people, they have started to fund, they started to say, okay, midlife determines older health. So now they fund studies of midlife. And they've even funded us and our colleagues to look at pregnancy now to see telomere length, how it's transmitted and affected at birth from social and economic disparities, race, sex, stress, how all of those shape telomere length at birth because they believe it is going to create a healthy trajectory of aging or not. And so that's where they're investing now. It's kind of like having runway, right? You want to have something to start with. But you also just, I just thought of an important factor with a lot of nutrition studies that are looking at telomere length and how various types of nutrition or even I would say other lifestyle factors like sleep affect telomere length. It sounds like because there's such a really big effect of the psychological stress on telomere biology, that socioeconomic status and educational background, all that stuff seems to be a huge confounding factor for those other studies, right? I mean, that's something that really needs to be accounted for because you can have people that have poor nutrition, but that's because they're, you know, they're, maybe they have a lower socioeconomic background. And it is a factor. Education in particular. And so they're also stressed, you know, so it seems like, yeah, education. So it seems like certainly something that really should be considered big time. Yes. So it is, it is, it has to be a covariate and age, chronological age has to be a covariate. You can't quite make sense of the data. Yeah. The education, the SES effect is interesting. It's there inconsistently small effect. What shows up the most is education. And I think that we even found... So the more educated, the longer the telomeres? Yes, exactly. Positive correlation. My colleague Janet Wojcicki found that in a low-income sample of Hispanic women, they're all pregnant. Those who graduated high school had babies with longer telomeres in their cord blood. Those who did not graduate high school had babies with shorter telomere length. So we couldn't figure out anything that could explain it. We co-varied, you know, everything we could, and they're all low income. So the education is probably filtering in so many different ways of promoting better health. You're making me feel good about my PhD. But so to just sort of transitioning to the next sort of topic is what you can do in your life to not only delay telomere shortening, but maybe even reverse it. For example, things that can activate that enzyme we talked about earlier, telomerase, which is important for, as you said, putting nucleotides back on telomeres. So things...I mean, people ultimately that are concerned about the aging process and about living healthier and increasing their health span and wanting to, you know, basically hold on to their telomeres, you know, what sort of factors in the lifestyle not only can delay but even possibly reverse, so activating telomerase, for example. Yeah. So there are supplements out there. They haven't been studied much. TA65? That's one of them. You know, I think there's always, I mean, telomerase is also pro-cancer. So there's always that kind of... Right. I've been concerned about that. Yeah. You want to see the long-term studies. Cancer doesn't just take one year. They follow people on one of those telomerase activating supplements. And one year later, telomeres look good, better. So that's exciting, except for that's only one year. You don't know what's brewing, right? Cancer takes a long time to develop. So there's that worry. There's the, there's the omega supplements, which of course seem healthy for so many reasons, depression, inflammation. They appear to affect telomeres in a dose response way, depending on how much we absorb them. So a colleague, Jan Kiekel-Glazer, did a study on high dose and low dose omegas. And it wasn't the dose. It was how much omegas people actually had in their blood cells that predicted telomere lengthening over four months. So it can't hurt. It's one of the few supplements that we think is good for telomeres and safe. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I take omega-3 for a variety of reasons. Yeah, me too. Brain health. So basically, I think I remember this study. The blood levels omega-3 did seem to positively correlate with longer telomeres. That's right. I can remember that. I think vitamin D, there was another one also with vitamin D, correct? Where there was a sweet spot of vitamin D levels. I think it was something like 40 to 60 nanograms per mil, which was associated with better telomeres as as well. What about exercise and meditation? So telomerase activation. So yeah, so these lifestyle things, and Liz and I wrote a book summarizing all of the different things we know about telomeres from their biology and genetics to the lifestyle factors. And it's interesting. I would say that there's a pretty big literature on nutrition, exercise, sleep, showing healthier levels, longer telomeres. But of course, these are correlational. So what we really want are these intervention studies in humans. How much can we really move these things around? Is it just that they're all correlated at birth? You're born with disadvantage, you have shorter telomeres, you're less likely to do all these health behaviors. So we really need to experiment and move these things. So one study that I believe you just read, maybe just came out, was a study by Eli Petterman who took sedentary high-stress caregivers, so men and women caring for a partner with dementia, and he had them exercise for six months. At the end of six months, their stress was lower, their telomeres were longer compared to the control group. And so that's a hint. It's, you know, it's just one study, but it's a hint that we can improve our circulating immune cell telomere length. Exactly how that happened, we don't know. Is it per cell? Is it a refreshing of naive cells in the immune system? It's very crude when we do this in humans and we look at blood. We don't know exact mechanisms, but we see telomere lengthening, and that's probably a good thing. So another study, Ashley Mason just published this. We did a weight loss trial. And we found that, first of all, no one really keeps off a lot of weight a year or two later, right? The people, the handful of people who kept off 10% of their weight a year later had telomere lengthening. So that was pretty exciting."

Performance anchors -- find the single biggest thing limiting your recovery

Galpin introduces the concept of performance anchors -- identifying the single biggest factor limiting your recovery rather than chasing dozens of biohacking interventions. He warns that leaving a health expo with 14 new things to do will make things worse, not better.

"anchors. So a performance anchor is the"

Post-Olympics depression and the importance of identity beyond performance

Galpin describes the mental health crisis of elite athletes who build their entire identity around their sport, leading to post-Olympics depression and emptiness even after achieving their lifelong goals. He emphasizes the need for psychological support and identity development outside of performance.

"have no identity outside of that. And so"

The flow state as the ultimate motivator in elite athletes

Galpin shares how a top professional athlete described the 3-second moment before catching a ball as better than any drug -- a state of hyper-awareness and sensory alertness that became the primary motivator for an entire career of discipline and sacrifice.

"drug I ever had. I was so hyper aware."

Realistic expectations matter more than any single recovery modality

Galpin emphasizes that realistic expectations about what any recovery modality can achieve is critically important. He argues that any modality can be supported with some evidence, but the question is whether it is the most important thing you should be doing and whether you understand its actual magnitude of effect.

"Realistic expectations of what it's going to do and the magnitude of effect it's going to have. And if you're honest about that, then I'm all good with it."

Meditation and breathwork calm the gut-brain axis

Experts discuss how meditation, breathwork, and calming practices directly support gut health through the gut-brain connection, recommending daily practice alongside dietary interventions.

"How do you think the Make America Healthy Again agenda is going so far? At the time of this recording, it's been, I don't know, a couple months or something, right? Yeah, I think the best part of it has been the awareness that it's caused in our society. You know, people who weren't talking about health and wellness are now talking about it and talking about the food that's out there. They're questioning ultra processed foods. So I think the awareness part has been a huge success. Yeah, I'd have to agree with Tina. I think the awareness part is probably the biggest win, right? So some of the ideas are long legislating health, meaning banning these things and banning certain additives and all that. It's a step in the direction of increasing awareness. But what you're trying to do then is force people to make the right choice. And that never really goes well. You know, if they don't really understand why they can't have red dye number 45 in their Cheerios or whatever, they'll just find another way. And they'll, and food companies will find another way, right? So you can ban the existing ingredients. They'll just come up with new stuff. And so I think ultimately it's the awareness and the knowledge that's so important. And one thing that goes along with the awareness is that people are now seeking the knowledge more, which is why programs like this, for example, become really important because people need to go somewhere to learn about what am I putting in my body? What impact does that have? How does that relate to the things I'm feeling? And then what are some of the simple things I can do to modulate my experience and improve my health span? It can be very complicated for people because you hear a lot. There's a million and one things you can do from the moment you wake up to the time you go to sleep. Totally. I feel compassion for people that listen to this show. Yeah. Like every week I sit down, I mean, it's not always about health, but when it is, it's like. It can be complicated, right? Yeah. And everything sounds like the most important thing. Totally. Right? Totally. And so you can get this paralysis by just feeling overwhelmed and overanalyzing every little step you take and every little thing you do. And then I also, one of the things I get when I engage with a lot of people is they feel wholly inadequate because they do see influencers and all that who seemingly live a perfect life, right? They wake up and they have a three-hour morning routine because they're getting up at 4.30 in the morning every night, right? At least it's what they're portraying, right? And they're sleeping 12 hours every night and their diet is perfect. They don't need a single drop of a seed oil or this or that. And it really makes people feel inadequate and a failure in the same way that back in the day, the ultra skinny fashion models used to make people feel fat. Right. And so, and that leads to inaction or, or more negative action to me in ways that I think, um, can, can drive harm towards society. So I think what my goal would be in the way I talk to people about health and wellness and all that is number one, start with at least an 80, 20 rule, you know, 80% good decisions. You're going to make 20% bad decisions. I'm probably somewhere in there. Yeah, which is then you're living, right? Because there's a lot of living that happens in that 20%. And if you live 100% perfect, you lose out on a lot of the aspects of being human. Also go broke. And you go broke. Yeah, exactly, right? We can't all spend crazy money crazy money on everything every little thing and so a lot of it to me is about building your system to a level of resilience where the 20 doesn't break you right and so there's some foundational things that i think are really important for people to understand uh and and i'm hoping that comes out more in some of this make amer healthier again idea. Yeah. I overheard a conversation with two moms saying, RFK better not take away my kids' concrustables. These are lifesavers to me. And I thought, oh my God, that's crazy that she would say that. But then I realized like, this is great. It's still planting a seed in her head. She knows that those are not probably healthy and she's doing them out of convenience, which I'm a mother of three kids. I understand how hard it is when you're getting out the door, but at least it plants the seed in that mother's head and says, oh, maybe I should make different choices for my child. So I think just having people have this top of mind has been really a huge success. Yeah. I think you both raise a solid point that the education and awareness, I tend to be, I wanna be optimistic, but I would say I'm a bit cynical just because there's so many major life-threatening issues that seem to be sidelined by a lot of the leaders in this space, like the freaking bioweapon that's still being injected into babies example and i know you guys you know you're with a company so i don't you don't have to agree or disagree with that uh you know the thing spraying in the sky you know 5g towers next to every freaking church and school i'm like it's frustrating to me because i i don't think it's important that we educate people about fruit loops right but it's like in terms of needle movers and something that's really going to impact society and people's health and longevity, I think some of the things that are getting attention are relatively insignificant versus some of the more, you know, grievous harm that's being inflicted upon people or that they're inflicting on themselves. That's kind of the cynical side of yeah the positive side is like wow i mean a few years ago no one kind of in the mainstream was even acknowledging any of that let alone the fruit loops right so i'm trying to be patient and just allow things to kind of unfold and also one of the things i like to remind people of is um that we are each responsible for our own well-being. I think one of the downsides is us looking to a politician or legislation to fix our lives. It's like, I don't care what the government says. I'm going to do my own research. And if I make mistakes, it's on me. But I think one of the downsides too is people outsourcing their power their power to legislation. When meanwhile, you know, we all like that every time you pick up a fork, it's like you doing it, right? Yeah, it is. But, you know, to Tina's original point, if the knowledge and awareness isn't there, then people don't know they're harming themselves. And these corporations are feeding us all kinds of poison that we're just unaware of. So it's like you can't have informed consent if you're not informed. Yeah. And that's a really important point because the solution to alcoholism and alcoholism risk is not prohibition. Right. So you can have prohibition. That didn't work out so well. It didn't work out so well. Right. You'll find another way. What is the underlying driver of alcoholism, right? Why would someone become addicted to it? That's really where the solution lies. It's not stop the vice or ban the vice. And so that's where my concern is that that's the easy route that it'll end up taking, is that we're just going to ban a lot of things and remove this from that, that but we're not maybe we're not putting enough emphasis on the education side of it and the empowerment and like you said informed consent you have to have the informed side of it right so yeah i mean you think about uh to me in terms of food there's a few main offenders one being aspartame the other one being msg and then probably throw like really gnarly seed oils in there too i'm curious if you guys have your worst offenders but in terms of regulation you take something like msg if you go to the gas station and buy some beef jerky or some chips and you look at the ingredients you're like oh you know i have a little awareness of this i want to make sure it doesn't say monosodium glutium glutamate. You read the label and it just says spices. Right. You know, there's a lot of that going on. And even in the supplement industry, unfortunately. So that part of like the education and awareness, I think is really helpful because as the consumers become more educated, then the demand for products that aren't shady like that grows. Right. And then manufacturing gets cheaper and people can launch companies that have clean products that are actually successful, you know? Yeah. I think just going back to the whole foods, the whole real foods is just exciting to see people talking about that more. Totally. On that note, so we mentioned that it can get very expensive, right? And you guys have a really great company with relatively affordable, very meaningful supplements. One thing I like about Just Thrive is you guys don't just put out like 57 products in your suite for the hell of it. Oh, we got a vitamin C and a B vitamin C. You just kind of stick to your thing, which is mostly gut related. What for each of you would be the top three free health supporting practices or interventions? Don't involve buying a freaking product. Okay. Okay. I would say, okay. I guess I would say avoiding products that have glyphosate and pesticides that are sprayed with. Oh, I forgot glyphosate in my fantasy. Yes. Throw that in there. So I would say avoiding foods that are, you know, laden with glyphosate because those are so disruptive to your gut health. So that does kind of involve buying something because you're going to be buying foods that are organic, but trying to avoid those types of foods. Intermittent fasting has been really good for, that we know now that intermittent fasting actually in the fasted state will help certain bacteria proliferate. I do think that when you're hormonal or in menopausal years, it's a little bit, you have to be a little bit more careful with intermittent fasting, maybe not as long, because it could add stress and contribute to increases in cortisol. But intermittent fasting is a great tool. And then just- That actually saves you money. Yeah, exactly. See? If you're not spending. Exactly."

Huberman's self-designed meditation: shifting focus from interoception to exteroception in steps

Huberman designed a meditation shifting focus from internal body to progressively distant external points across 3-breath cycles.

"So I essentially designed, and I'm sure other people have done it, but a meditation that I would sit or stand and close my eyes and just focus on everything from my skin inward, my breathing for maybe the three breath cycles and just really focus on what's right here. Then I would open my eyes. I would look at my body from the outside. I look at my hand and focus my attention and look there and breathe for three cycles, you know, three breaths. Then I would focus my attention on something maybe eight to 10 feet away and do the same."

Meditation practices for consciousness and brain states

Discussion of different types of meditation practices and their ability to create various brain and body states and levels of consciousness understanding.

"I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do."

Maintaining presence in an AI-driven world

Luke and Alyson Storey discuss how mindfulness and spiritual discernment help maintain human sovereignty and presence in an increasingly AI-driven and technology-saturated world.

"AI, spiritual discernment, and human sovereignty"

Spiritual discernment as a filter for health information

The episode explores using spiritual discernment as a framework for evaluating health advice and technology, helping listeners develop their own inner compass rather than blindly following trends.

"Spiritual discernment and the future of human sovereignty"

Perceived control reduces the stress response even when the control is illusory

Sapolsky describes classic experiments showing that merely believing you have control over a stressor dramatically reduces the stress response, even when the control is a complete placebo. This reveals how perception and mindset directly modulate our physiological stress reactions.

"yet merely by feeling like you have some sense of control just imagine how worse it would have been if I were not the one pressing the lever"

Dopamine is about anticipation, not reward

Sapolsky explains the revolutionary finding that dopamine is not about reward but about anticipation -- it is the happiness of the pursuit, not the pursuit of happiness. This insight reframes how we understand motivation, satisfaction, and the human tendency to habituate to positive experiences.

"it's about this is going to be fantastic"