sarah gottfried: hi everybody itãs dr. sarahgottfried iãm here again with pedram shojai. hello dr. pedram.pedram shojai: hello how are you? sarah gottfried: good and iãm really excitedtoday about telomeres. can we talk about telomeres and what they mean, why shall we care aboutthem, what do you think? pedram shojai: 100% these stuffãs been allover the news, all over the media, most people donãt even know what people are talking aboutin this articles and some of the people in the articles i donãt think know what theyãretalking about. itãs exciting, itãs promising but we want to just dispel some of the mythsand also just kind of get in to what the implications are and you guys, weãll talk about the endcaps on genes here. weãre talking about kind
of some geeky stuff but the implications arethat these people are saying that it could extend your life right. thereãs these lifeextension promises and headlines coming out in the news right now.we want to talk to it because thereãs a lot to be said for lifestyle, thereãs lot tobe said for how we engage in life and how these telomeres function but lengthening andextending life and all of these things, we want to really be careful about so doc iãlllet you take it first. sarah gottfried: i actually would say letãsdrill this even further. i think itãs more than implications on longevity, iãm goingto take this longevity piece for a moment because this is totally cool. hereãs whatit looks like. right now the best way of measuring
your longevity, how long youãre going tolive this full and luscious life is by measuring how long your telomeres are and i like howyou just described it. it is a bit geeky what this things are but let me give it a quicklittle try, this is inspired by you pedram. telomeres are as you just said the caps onyour chromosomes. we all have 46 chromosomes in the cells throughout our body. these arelike the bodyguards, this is my pedram moment, theyãre like the bodyguards that are keepingyour chromosomes from dumping important genetic information into your cell where theyãrelost forever. you want these bodyguards to be buff, a little handsome and to take careof you. howãs that pedram? pedram shojai: love it, the metaphors areworking.
sarah gottfried: good, okay. iãm always thinkingabout the show that we did on endocrine disruptors and not letting those endocrine disruptorsget out of prison so thatãs where the bodyguards came from.pedram shojai: i think that line works. sarah gottfried: yeah. thereãs some reallyinteresting data here, a lot of people think, okay telomeres, iãll worry about that wheniãm middle age, iãll worry about that when iãm 60 but hereãs the deal. elizabeth backburngot the nobel prize for her work on premenopausal women so weãre talking women in their 20ãsand 30ãs and 40ãs because the women in that age group who had the highest perceived stresswere aging 10 years faster than women who had a normal menostress. we know that stressis a big player here and it can take a decade
off of your life so thatãs the why bother.we got the key weather. a few other why bothers, yes.pedram shojai: iãm pretty sure people listening to us right now might have some relationshipwith stress that might be affecting things. itãs kind of the epidemic of our culture,weãre all compressed for time, weãre all under stress whether it be environmental stress,whether it be time compressing and i got to get the kids making ends meet because lifeãsbills come in faster than its payment sometimes. weãre all under stress and this side of thescience is pretty clear. under stress, these things shorten weãre in trouble right. thereis something that we need to look at when it comes to how we live because the stressesin our life are increasing our chances of
aging more rapidly and getting into trouble.sarah gottfried: thatãs exactly right and i think the important piece here. i just wentto this functional medicine conference where i got to hang out with pedram one night andwe kept coming back to this really fundamental point which is youãre adrenal function, theway that your brain talks to your adrenal glands and your mid back, the way that youãrenavigating stress or dancing with stress, that determines so many different parts ofhow healthy you are and how good you feel when you wake up in the morning.this is just one of those measurements. i happen to love objective measurements so thecool part here is that weãve got some hard data to share with you about telomere lengthand what actually changes your telomere length
and how you are loving up the bodyguards thatyou have for your chromosomes. pedram shojai: love it, love it. we roll upour sleeve and get into this thing? sarah gottfried: yeah.pedram shojai: after you. sarah gottfried: i mentioned a elizabeth blackburnand that work she did on premenopausal women, now sheãs had hundreds of studies since then.sheãs also done a fair amount of work with dean ornish, you might have heard of dean.i first started following him in the 80ãs because i am older than you pedram and i starteddoing his low fat diet and some of his comprehensive lifestyle changes. since then iãve sort oflost my love for low fat diets, thatãs like another conversation like i donãt actuallythink low fat living is the life that i want
but heãs the first one who showed that hiscomprehensive lifestyle changes could reverse cardiac disease and now he has all these cooldata showing that it helps you with your telomeres. one cool thing he found, iãll just kick offwith this and then iãll hand the baton back to you pedram. he found that thereãs 500genes in your body that are changed by the comprehensive lifestyle changes. heãs gotthis whole package, low fat diet is part of it which works for some people. he also hasyoga and stress management, heãs got these other pieces, theyãre all kind of knit togetherand you could maybe speak to this a bit as well but what he found with these 500 genesthat are changed by comprehensive lifestyle changes.he found that some of the good genes in your
body that prevent cancer, prevent heart diseaseare turned on and some of those bad genes that we want to stay off because they canalso lead to cancer and other problems, accelerated aging, those are kept off or turned off. thatãscool, 500 genes changed by comprehensive lifestyle changes. now pedram, your turn.pedram shojai: the interesting thing about this is you got 30 men to take part in thestudy and itãs so hard you guys to track this because youãre making these comprehensivelifestyle changes. raise your hand if you started a diet and ended it a month later.these are long term changes and you got these 30 men, part of the study and they took abaseline after three months but some of these studies go out like five years because hereãsthe deal. the stuff doesnãt change overnight
and once these people made the fundamentalchanges in their lifestyle, once they were able to say okay, my stress management, mydiet, my exercise, here are the things that iãm doing as part of my program and iãvecommitted to this and iãm doing it. after the consistency hit and the time hadgone by then they started measuring the stuff, thatãs when we started to see the differenceand for me thatãs a really, really big point because we live in this era of instant gratification,we live in this era of saying okay you know what, the weddingãs coming up, what dietdo i need to get on this month to fit into that dress and then go back to the pumpkinpie or whatever it is thatãs going to seasonally slaughter me again and the key to this, thekey to changing the genetic expression, the
epigenetics, weãll kind of talk about epigeneticsin a minute. \ is that it was sustained. this took a whilefor people to do but in doing so thereãs some very, very promising results right? itreally points to, to me is the fundamental gushtolt, a paradigm shift that we need tobe a part of and not just say what do i do to get healthy now but how do i live my lifein a healthful fashion from here on end and thatãs going to help the expression of yourgenes, your childrenãs geneãs, your generations to come because these habits have kind ofbeen built in now and will need to play out over the years.sarah gottfried: you got it, i mean you articulate about it so beautifully and even though thestudy that you just mentioned was done in
men and as you described you want to havethat long view when it comes to these comprehensive lifestyle changes, thatãs what we want forall of you to have the long view. this has been shown in women of all different ages.i mentioned the premenopausal women and how they age 10 years faster if they have highperceived stress. we also know in menopausal women that themenopausal women who are not getting enough sleep, shorter telomeres, aging faster, nota huge surprise but i think that adds so much more credibility and umph to the idea thatokay darling, you got to manage your sleep so you donãt fall down a hormonal flightof stairs or a genetic fall a flight of stairs. pedram shojai: thatãs right and they kindof look like a step ladder anyways. you know
what i would love to see and i donãt knowif you know of any follow up studies on this, iãll have the team look into this is whenare people going to start looking at this and children and seeing the epigenetic expressionof genes because itãs really... youth is wasted on the young and these kids can prettymuch eat the cougle pebbles and have a candy at school and they seem to be fine and theykeep trucking along and then one day in their 30ãs all of the sudden things change right.the question becomes if we look at this and how these genes could express, what does thatmean for the long play like you said on these kids and their expression, their 20ãs and30ãs and iãd like to look at things like their success in their career and their marriageand all these other variables that this thing
called life that happens. all of a suddenlife gets so difficult and so challenging and if we were to change around the way ourgenes were lined up to express at that age, how would that help play out our early adultyears which all of a sudden become really stressful and chaotic and very challengingfor many people. sarah gottfried: itãs a great point pedramand what we do know because iãve looked at the telomere literature recently, what wedo know is that kids who have a ton of stress even in utero like if you had a mother whohas a bit of a stress case for one reason or another, thatãs been linked later comparedto controls to shorter telomeres and children who have an abusive situation and abusivehome, thatãs also been linked to shorter
telomeres.i think part of the problem with doing the research if i put on my research hat rightnow. pedram shojai: please do, i love it when youwear that. sarah gottfried: part of the problem is thatitãs harder to collect this data in children and to... itãs harder to get approval throughthe organizations that are trying to protect children like at a hospital such as ucsf orsome of these research was done. itãs harder to get past those committees that make a decisionabout whether you can do a study, itãs easier to actually look at the 25 year old and havea set of controls, have a set of 25 year olds who have in utero stress and then look attelomere length.
youãve got a really important point aboutthe more comprehensive, bigger strategy of how to eat, how to exercise, how to sleep,how to connect with the people who matter in your life, what supplements to take, howto dance differently with stress and how do you measure that, how do you measure a differenceand i think the cool part here is that weãre measuring a difference with your genes andthis study that you mentioned with the guys was over five years but thereãs also studiesshowing that if you take a mindfulness class three months after you start mindfulness class.it changes the telomere experience. thatãs measured with telomeres which is the endsme, that kind of is the, itãs like the engine of the bodyguard right, itãs the enzyme thatãssort of maintaining the genes. how cool is
that that in three months after you startmindfulness, youãre improving telomeres, youãre improving the telomere experience.pedram shojai: love it. there was a study, i think we talked about it a couple of showsago where i think it was in harvard where they were looking at meditators and they weremeasuring cortical density and it was showing that that part of the brain was actually gettingneuroplasticity and what that means is guys, the part of your brain thatãs responsiblefor impulse control, higher moral reasoning, really the thing that separates us from themonkeys is starting to grow and get more developed and the density of the neurons gets increasedwith meditating. this was like a six week deal, was it much,it was showing that you can actually generate
and get growth in those phases which actuallyhelps you become a better person, not just morally but in terms of decision making andbeing able to have the clarity of thought to stop the impulses because impulses is really...if weãre talking about weight loss, weãre talking about bad decisions in a relationships.weãre talking about all things that usually get us in trouble because most of us knowwhat to do right? but the question is do we always do it, most of us know what to do,thereãs all sorts of good information out there, thereãs not a shortage of informationbut thereãs a big shortage in will power and impulse control and staying with programsand stuff like that. six weeks of meditation increases your capacity to be able to do sothen you could master life better then you
lose the weight you want to lose and you geton top of things and youãre able to maintain these lifestyle changes.this is powerful stuff and iãm really excited about the studies that are coming out, everyweek it seems like we got something cool to talk about.sarah gottfried: itãs no question in fact i think we need to talk more about the harddata changes that weãre seeing in people who make these lifestyle changes that weãretalking about. i just think that itãs so incredibly sexy but you knew that alreadythat itãs sexy. i think that this point that you made about cortical thickness and howthat changes in meditators is really important and i would even go further and say this cankeep you out of divorce court. you and i are
both married, weãve got a lot of people listeningto us who are in a relationship. we want to be bumping the decision makingup from the reptilian brain, like the amygdala thatãs always looking for the danger andthe threat and the tone and so forth. bump it up to prefrontal cortex where we can makea much more resourceful decision before we respond to our spouse right? i love that andi think that when you find physical changes that you can measure with these mind, bodyexperiences that people have with exercise that people do with the foods that theyãreeating and their supplements. i think that was so exciting.pedram shojai: 100% i couldnãt agree more because selfishly iãm a hail from the meditationside of the world so me iãm jumping up and
down with my pompoms in the back going finallyall these harvard guys are proving what weãve been talking about for 20 years right?sarah gottfried: i think youãve been talking about it for about 5,000 years actually.pedram shojai: except in different bodies apparently. weãve been at this for a while,this meditation thing and things that donãt work go away right? thatãs really what thetest of time proves, people say itãs funny people called me. oh youãre into that newage stuff, i said thereãs nothing new age about what i do. if my kung fu tradition aloneis 5,000 years old right? this stuffãs ancient wisdom, itãs been around forever and againthings donãt stick around that donãt work. meditation has been practiced since time likethe start of time really in one way or another
by humanity and thatãs really one of thefirst things we lost after the industrial revolution, i mean we donãt have any cultureof that in the west. any culture of introspection, culture of even feeling like itãs okay totake a nap. you iãd love to hear your take on this because the caracole means and allthese things that are shrinking these telomeres right?all of these adrenal hormones that are causing this kind of rapid aging, how does one stopand pulse in their day to put a dent in this and to shift that type of energy around becausethereãs so much we can do and my favorite part about doctor sarah gottfried you guysis that sheãs got the answer right there, in the prevail head of hers, sheãs go theanswer and sheãs about to tell us. fire away.
sarah gottfried: i think what we should dois we should riff here for a moment and maybe generate our top five list of how it is weãrehitting the pause button because i like to be super inclusive when it comes to this ideaof mindfulness, itãs not that you have to go to john cabid zenãs meditation courseand do it that way and thatãs the only way. itãs not that you have to go to a yoga classand do it five days a week, thereãs so many different ways to do this. one of my favoritesthat iãm working right now is one square of dark chocolate, about 80% cacao and hereãsmy meditation. i take a bite of it, put it in my mouth andi donãt chew. i chew everything right? iãm such a chewer, chew gulp, chew gulp and iput it in my mouth and i let it melt and i
donãt chew, iãm so present in that experienceof the chocolate. pedram shojai: love it.sarah gottfried: thatãs one of mine, how about you?pedram shojai: let me take this thing off. this is the watch iãve been wearing.sarah gottfried: show and tell. pedram shojai: this is the watch iãve beenwearing lately, itãs got no hands on it, it just says now. my buddy gordi makes thisup, iãll put up a link because i think theyãre awesome and basically every time iãm likewhat time is it, i just look down and it reminds me to just breathe. itãs now and what areyou doing right now and for me thatãs kind of a big part of one of my zen masters taughtme this is always check in with yourself and
check in to the living, breathing moment andjust ask yourself, what am i doing right now. man i was really getting flustered about thatthing or i got the meeting tomorrow and whatever it is.whatever it is because youãre bound to be doing something and fretting about somethingin life and thatãs just the human condition, whatever it is, just stop and take a breathand youãll find that the learning how to pop in that clutch how to get you and weãrealways in gear right. learning how to pop in that clutch for a second and just stepin to that phase of mindfulness really develops that skill for us and over time we get betterand better at it so that when your spouse is saying that thing that they always say,that always gets you worked up.
instead of you having the customary responseand kind of snapping back or whatever it is your fire back pattern is, you stop and saywhat am i doing right now right? you catch yourself to say something youãre going tosay something hurtful, you catch yourself and maybe say something that might heal ormend that and turn those things around right? thatãs where again that prefrontal cortexand that ability to become the higher more evolved really human being is within all ofus, we all have the capacity to do that and itãs a few breathãs away.sarah gottfried: love it. weãre doing a pretty good list here i think.pedram shojai: thatãs true, back to you. sarah gottfried: love the watch. next timeiãm going to say shoegasm. you know how i
love orgasm, i love how orgasm turns on thesympathetic nervous system, fight or flight and also your pair of synthetic nervous systemrest and digest turns on at the same time, how cool is that? iãm not going to talk aboutorgasm today, iãm going to talk about shoegasm. this is less effective maybe for the guyslike i donãt wear a watch, i canãt do the watch thing, i appreciate the now watch buta good pair of shoes, that gets my oxytocin going especially red.you know this about my pedram right? a good pair of shoes, oxytocinãs going up, i wantto hug people, oxytocinãs one of the best ways to get cortisol kind of slapped downinto the position it should be in. back to you pedram.pedram shojai: i love it, i love it.
sarah gottfried: this is like the mars invenus. pedram shojai: it really is. now iãm goingto have caveman on you here. one of the ways i really like is getting aggressive sprintinginto your life. if you look at an animal that has just been chased by a lion say in thesavannah, they have this thing where they run and they run and then once the stressis over, they have this little shake and itãs this release of the cataolmis, itãs thisrelease of their adrenals and their sympathetic nervous systems, they go like okay, wow, isurvived this one and then they kind of go back to just eating and hanging out and doingwhat they do. usually they have a good poop right then.one of the things that i love for guys and
girls is sprinting like your life dependson it and doing that at least twice or three times a week just quick sprint, stop, breathe,pant, pant, do it again, do it again. what that does is it starts to really cycle andflush, it gets your endorphins going in, it really starts to play with those catacolmineswhere your body understands real stress versus psychological abstract stress in some waysand for me iãve always found that to be powerful. just work out hard, iãm not a marathon guy,iãm not a long term running guy, i like the burst activity so back at you.sarah gottfried: honey youãre singing my songs. i love this, in fact i just was writingabout this in my new book about how to reset your hormoneãs metabolism because burst trainingdoes just what you described, it resets your
stress response so that instead of being inthat constant iãve got so many things to do today, iãve got to do this, i got to pickup the kids. it allows you to use your stress response the way nature intended which isrun all out, run hard and then you rest for a while.itãs just the perfect thing for adjusting your body, also helps you with growth hormone,more on that in a future episode so i think weãre up to number five.pedram shojai: i think this is it yeah. sarah gottfried: number five iãm going togo girlfriend on you again and say my favorite way to hit the pause button is to call a girlfriend.now let me explain and i canãt remember exactly, it was the chief of psychiatry i think atstanford who said this. he said if youãre
a guy and you want to improve your healthand live your best life possible, be married to a woman. if youãre a woman and you wantthe best health possible, you want to live as long as you can, spend as much time withyour girlfriends as possible. hereãs my prescription, i want you to calla girlfriend, this works for guys, it works for women, you just canãt call a guy, pedramãsaccepted here. you call a girlfriend and you just chat for like 10 to 15 minutes, oh mygosh, it is the best thing in the world, so good for you.pedram shojai: 100% agree with you. iãll tell you that one thing alone has probablykept my marriage healthy is iãve learned that when she comes with a certain frame ofmind i know that thatãs a girlfriend call
and i was like, you know you should call soand so, i think that would be a great call for you and as good as i am at like listeningand being the culmination and all these kind of stuff. something is just a girlfriend talk,itãs girlfriend talk. just let them work it out and it really, really helps out, itreally does. sarah gottfried: pedram this is cortical thicknesstalking i think because that was pure prefrontal cortex. a lot of men in that situation, theone youãre describing with your wife and you know i love your wife, not picking onher, this could easily be in my household... pedram shojai: anyone right?sarah gottfried: right i mean in that situation you could say hey, are you premenstrual orhave you gained weight, whatãs going on are
you... or you could say call a girlfriend,i think that might be... iãd love for you to go out and have a cup of tea with the girlfriendor just hop on the phone with her. pedram shojai: absolutely.sarah gottfried: so much more effective. pedram shojai: you know what, and guys letme warn you about this. if you say it in a flip it way, theyãre going to say screw you,what do you mean, right? what you got to do is be super supportive and say oh my god,that sucks, i canãt believe they said that and then give them the space to call a girlfriendbut donãt problem solve. our tendency is to problem solve, what happened? did you gethurt, did the car get hurt, are you bleeding, whatãs the problem, i donãt get it, moveon right?
thatãs how we think and thatãs not how theemotions get processed, they need to be talked through in a lot of ways right? the wise moveis to allow that to happen and once thatãs done thereãs closure and everyoneãs happy.sarah gottfried: itãs so true, i saw an infographic recently that was a guide for the guys onhow to deal with your female partners, hormone issues and it had a range of safety with thecomments that you make and kind of the snarky tone and one of the comments that was consideredthe most safe was would you like another glass of wine? i just want to address that for amoment, itãs so hilarious but itãs also... it actually raises your cortisol to pour anotherglass of wine so i donãt think that that, thereãs a time and a place for glass of wine,i had one with you last week but i think itãs
really important to realize that these waysthat we self-medicate, some of them are not so effective.pedram shojai: yeah and thatãs... you guys, we all need to decrease our stress and weall pick our poison right? a little bit of exercise, a little bit of tai chi, a few deepbreaths go a long way, if youãve been holding it back all day, you go home, you put downa bottle of wine because youãve been storing it up. i think the take home message hereis if you can live your life in a way where youãre not adding stress all day so you gotto come home and dump on your spouse or go through a bottle of wine and just be likei canãt believe itãs only tuesday and all that kind of stuff.if you could live your life in a way where
youãre not letting stress put chinks in yourarmor and youãre moving through your day kind of more gracefully then youãre not shrinkingdown your telomeres, youãre not aging rapidly and youãre not putting yourself in this kindof one down position so thatãs kind of i think the moral of this story is live lifewell. lifestyle is really the missing ingredient here and weãll provide you all the toolsand all these types of things. between us and all our friends you got allthe resources you need but you need the perspective change so you understand that this is justhow you live your life and itãs not another fad. health isnãt a fad, itãs either youãreliving healthfully and living long and happily or youãre going to be spending a lot of timedealing with how much your copays are.
sarah gottfried: copays and divorce court.pedram shojai: exactly. sarah gottfried: maybe we should call thishow to prevent shortening of your telomeres and divorce?pedram shojai: weãre retitling guys. well sarah itãs always a pleasure, i canãt waittill next week and you guys, wherever youãre seeing this, hearing this, podcast, youtube,whatever it is, go ahead and leave us questions, weãre happy to answer and weãre always herefor you, we are here to serve. sarah gottfried: suggest future topics, welove doing this with you guys, you know how i love the hard data and itãs just such apleasure to be of service. pedram shojai: love it. okay guys, dr. pedramshojai, dr. sarah gottfried and weãll see
you next week.sarah gottfried: bye everybody. weeks weãre going to have lots and lots of sugar throwingat our children and into our communities and thatãs going to create a big huge sugar rushand then...
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