68 Future Now Show - Space News, Interviews about their new books, and discussion on Longevity with Stephen Sideroff, PhD., and Robert Lufkin, MD Hey kids. What time is it? The future is coming on it's coming on it's And you're coming on right into here and now with dr. mrs. Future aka Alan Londell and Sun Londell Yes in reality and Bobby Wilder not just our science correspondent but our dear friend and colleague and exploring the edge of the future and our go-to guy when we want to know about brain enhancement and nutritional chemistry and Different ways to extend the health of our lives. Yes. Welcome Bobby. Thank you. Well, that's great That's always great to be with both of you anytime anywhere We do have fun don't we? Remember you came in during the covid crisis and have been with us ever since Yeah, a friend of mine said, you know, there's something weird going on in China and we're gonna get this thing And so I was listening to you're on the radio and I said, you know these guys. I know Al There's something strange coming down our way Yeah, yeah, something strange called being on the air Actually, I guess we're not really on the air anymore. There is some like the airwaves in the air in the air And also we're in the new time frequency because we're live But we're recording for the future and thus when you're hearing this is actually time travel to the past It's one of those mysterious things about time all time all time. That's our domain I'm gonna have even more fun today because we're actually doing a lot of video on this show Even though you folks are listening or probably hearing it on the radio or the internet most likely on your phone So today's a special show because we are actually speaking to two longevity experts Dr. Steven sitter off and a dr. Robert Lufkin who did a conference on longevity Last year and brought together the top people in the field I'm not gonna go into the details right now But we will in about half an hour or so This is our half hour to talk about other news on dr. Future before we get into our guests Longevity is our main focus for the show and that will begin at around 130 today. I'm really excited about it So stay tuned. Yeah, but meanwhile, let's do the dr. Future slate Yes, we got some news we just have to get out to now The top of the news is that there was a spacecraft that was on the far side of the moon Chinese spacecraft and it just took off Tuesday morning and is heading back to earth with a bunch of rocks. Oh boy. Thank you China Yeah, the humanity is mastering the moon once again and this time it's China Yeah, it's a testimonial to how much just a couple of generations can do when you befriend people Instead of making them your enemies and then if you can just not get jealous when you're actually successful at bringing them to their full potential As long as we get to play with the rocks Yeah Couple kilograms of rocks Yes, well, I think with the Asian personality, it's all about being kind and polite and What's that magic word they say saving face and if you make them look bad, they're gonna make you look bad But if you make them look good, they're gonna make you look good. All right instant reciprocity. Yes Okay, well, I think our NASA folks are probably pretty good at some of those things probably more than the politics It goes and especially the scientists they all like each other because they're all into the same stuff like Understanding the regolith of the moon. What's going on there? Is that a part of the earth at one time or not the regolith that's like the dead soil of the moon The surface material. Yeah It's the moon dust well from which moon dust arises. Yes Anyway, the change E6 probe Ting E6 was launched last month it landed on the far side of the moon and then it lifted off Tuesday morning as I said earlier It took six minutes for the engine to burn to get it into an orbit around the moon And that's where it was rendezvousing with another ship which is gonna take it home to earth And is it a Chinese ship of course of course? So leave it to the Chinese. It's gonna be all China all the time where everybody's United States our moon signature was let's do this as a whole earth Civilization it's one step for man and a giant leap for all mankind and now we want to include all humans Well, of course you understand America has been more of belting pot So naturally we have a more of an open attitude towards incorporating lots of different nation states. We do normal That's not so the youngest of all of the international cultures. Yeah, yeah, and makes it more naive and interesting Yeah, and in some ways less baggage more of a teenager more belligerent But yeah, I think the next step is maybe we need Jim rough in on this we need to get the Chinese to give us some rocks I Win win win. Yeah, right. Are we sharing our rocks with their rocks? Question no our rocks were part of international diplomacy when we first brought them back and I forget it there was something like I don't know 12 kilograms of rocks that were brought back from the previous moon missions and half of them have been Distributed to different countries for their museums and for their research Now these rocks are particularly exciting because they're from the South Pole the 8kin region Which is an impact crater four billion years old. It's about the time life began on earth here. It's big It's a big big crater. It's like 1500 miles across That's a country that's half the size of our country. It's the oldest largest crater on the moon It's been known for a while. It's one of the first things we saw through telescopes Now we need to get some rocks from it That's very appropriate that the oldest culture on our planet or one of them is going to the oldest Zone on the moon the oldest impact zone Yeah, very interesting, but remember that was for all mankind the series on Apple TV. They delve into this It's an alternative history of NASA where we continue to explore the solar system didn't stop after Apollo like we did in this timeline It's kind of exciting because the South Pole became the place where we first created a civilization Mm-hmm. Right because we were able to find water there which gave us the ability to mine fuels like hydrogen and oxygen Yeah, and of course just exist with all the things we needed water for yes And of course, there's the mythology then of Arthur C. Clark in 2001 a space Odyssey where we not only where we had a base on the moon But we discovered other life on the moon Mm-hmm. We had this signal right those ancestors who? intervened in our evolution all those millions of years ago In between and or created it yes, right tilted our evolution in the direction Now walking after all our species is a little weird compared to the rest of this planet so it would appear Yeah a little more manufactured a little less in sync with the other life on earth what's going on here? Obviously connected and yet separate yes. Well, that's how hybrids are yes They get something from all of their parents. Thank God for the oneness oneness. I should I say goddess? Let's get back to the story. There's only one one this but yeah, there's only one part of it It's true How can I be that how can you be one and many at the same time? It's one of those complicated things about duality yeah, it had one parent Anyway, that's a couple more stories before our guests. Okay. Yeah, there was a Japanese billionaire that was supposed to go on SpaceX's flight around the moon. It's gonna take a flight around the moon. They're supposed to be this year 2024 Oh, right. This was the year Space is supposed to do that circle the moon with some passengers. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah COVID set that well yeah, they set up these plans back in 2018 COVID happened of course and then SpaceX got deals with NASA for launching to the ISS or astronauts That's really great. So to change their focus a little bit that and Starlink Starlink and launching thousands of satellites Is kept SpaceX very busy and having little tourist flights around the moon just didn't seem the best model for making money and being successful Sure as a corporation in America. Well, we're all trying to balance multiple priorities, right? Yeah Yeah, so what turned out to be more successful was the Starlink communications naturally because we all use communication Landing on the moon. Well how important are moon rocks to you right now? Well, I think moon rocks are Very important to people to astrophysicists. Oh, yeah, exactly But not like communications where everybody has a communicator in their pocket. That's true Everybody with the cell phone cares about communications most of them probably don't care about moon rocks Yes, I said and do I care about the ability to Join any country on the planet with my phone and just opening it up and doing my thing without being bothered by having to sign up for different companies Constantly depending on where I am. I'm very happy about that. That's true We like it when our machines are efficient and make our lives easier instead of harder. Yeah, yeah much happier Sure. I think what happened was you saku Aizawa, he was that's the Japanese billionaire who was gonna go up with Elon Yes, and he got all these artists and designers and regular people but top in their field to go on this flight In the meantime, I think back then he had three billion dollars Right now his net worth is about half that because oh, yes craziness of international currency valuation, right? I guess the reserve currency value of the Japanese yen has changed Yep, that's important Bobby. That's true. That has have roped up too much I think also he managed to scratch his itch by getting a trip to the ISS as well. Oh, yeah He went with the Soyuz, right? Yeah, he took a Soyuz flight Early on see when you're an independent citizen of the planet You can use any of the vendors that are going to space. Welcome to the brave new world. Yeah Soyuz is viable right now. Uh-huh. They had their last viable mission a year or so ago the head guy He's not there anymore Because of the war is this yeah Really we lost him because space tourism is not as big a field as they thought at least at this point in time Well in 2004 it was a pretty big idea and they probably thought that they'd have an airplane that would fly pretty soon and it took 20 years before when was Elon's first Simultaneous landing was that like 2016 or something was it that long ago? Yeah, I remember it sounds about right Yeah, 26 damage what multiple rockets landing Originally he was going to use the Soyuz rockets because he didn't have his own rocket And then the deal fell through and they were asking for too much money or whatever So he decided to build his own rockets then we now have today and so yeah fortunate that he didn't go through with the Soyuz connection Meanwhile SpaceX's evaluation is steadily climbed back in 2018. It was valued at 30 and a half billion and Just recently it was valued at roughly 200 billion Doing what they're doing. Yeah, very interesting. I guess it'll happen sooner or later Probably in a couple years at this point looks to me like the next big test is the SpaceX is Test of the Starship 4 which needs to land it needs to actually land And not blow up or melt and dissolve the atmosphere from friction It needs to actually succeed and that's hopefully gonna happen with the next test mission. Sometimes this month I believe okay meanwhile no quick trips around the moon for anybody Google has put out a press release this week saying that don't believe everything they're saying about their AI Google's AI is getting a really bad rap because people have been tricking it into saying put glue in your pizza And then you can have rocks to eat things like that We're saying that that a lot of these are fake. They're not really what Google said to do and people are making up stuff Just to mess with you. Well, that's not quite true I mean it is what Google said to do, but it was just spoofing It's great. It turns out that Google had to look at comedy sites to answer some of the goofy questions people were asking Well the AI has to understand humor and satire which it wasn't getting it's not that was real news It doesn't surprise me that Google doesn't understand comedy and satire because they've been all about controlling the narrative people who are into control Go away from humor. They can't take a joke Their seriousness is how they act like they're more important So I think the fact that Google thinks that they have to clamp down on humor is typical Google I don't think that it's gonna win the race. I think loving humanity and reflecting the really fun aspects of humanity is what's gonna win the race Yes from a human point of view. Yes, but you want the end from an AI point You don't want to ignore humor you want to hopefully understand it But at least recognize what is humor and what isn't right is that turn what isn't at least have that differentiation That in the algorithm well you can because no to crack down on it. You have to know what it is You know, it's a way of defining the issue But I don't think that programmers know how to program something they don't understand themselves Well, there is the limitation of the psychology of the programmers and the people telling the programmers what to do There is that psychology to consider in the equation for sure And a lot of them are not females and do not see how to play on an even play field or to have a decentralized model of Organization and and all these other wonderful things that are seeping into our system of living together Yeah, well back to that only one one is thing It's gonna happen but for range but the thing is that Google is making progress in trying to reduce the fake results I think it's pretty funny when people create weird things make it look like it's coming from somebody else What what progress is Google making in your view the whole idea of what's fake and what's real? It's a never-ending story and we need new tools in that arsenal as Media gets the point of being able to fake everything Voices this week. I've been creating fake voices. They're not as good as real voices yet But they're getting darn close and I have the control over hundreds of them These give me as a media creator the ability to tell big stories with lots of people and completely make it up and And it's a wonderful freedom It's kind of like I guess how a writer would feel with just a pen and paper and knowing that you can create anything you want Only in this case, it's you know cinematic movies. Yeah Well, I was really happy to see the AI gurus that we were listening to last night the curious refuge fellow Matt wolf and their third host, but as AI producers and people who really appreciate the power of the AIs the Top people in the field want the freedom to experiment. They don't want to have an outside Curator forcing them to go through control grids Yet they also understand the potential dangers of giving too much freedom to people who are going to use it responsibly, so that's a really important conversation that we all have to have and America is way more suited to have that conversation than say the totalitarian regimes of the world We do understand freedom. We're a melting pot country. So we have had more of an experience of many other points of view Yeah, absolutely. These are the people that you were talking about It's a really good link on how AI is changing the world the chat with Matt wolf From curious refuge our effuge the names of the hosts Calib warden Calib yes Calib and his co-host partner She is even more humble than he is both of them are so beautiful as representatives of social media influencers Shelby that's her name so Shelby and Calib are the hosts of curious refuge and Just this week they hosted Matt wolf who is definitely one of the main AI Podcasters your research is everything in the AI world future tools.io Future tools.io Yeah, so that's a website maintained by Matt wolf right that is definitely a huge hub in the Emerging AI producers. Yeah, we'll get into that in that one future episode It's quite interesting Actually, just got a very cool program that I've been using for transcription you can drop any audio or video file into video to text And you get a transcript within a minute hmm be right back The votes are in chef Ben here from back nine grill and bar at the easy-off past tempo exit We are so proud of our food and our service and your votes back nine has been voted Santa Cruz counties best burger and best happy hour in the good times You've heard me talking about our house ground burgers. It's time for you to come and try one So you can taste the juicy difference and what makes our happy hour the best you have to come and experience it yourself See you at the nine. Hi folks. How many of you out there love to garden? Wouldn't it be nice to grow some of your own food or maybe a flower garden would brighten your day? Well now you can have the pleasures of gardening without all that effort. 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Yes, you can place it right on concrete for those with bad backs You've got critters and gophers no space or maybe no dirt with the Knox Garden Box The therapy of garden is now the prescription for good mental health the way to find your fabulous Knox Garden Box is by logging on to Knox Garden Box calm That's KNOX Garden Box calm or by calling 831 461 9430 here's my story I take eight different prescribed drugs daily at five dollars a copay that's about forty dollars a month now I spend just 1995 a month and save well you can figure it out 90% of all prescriptions are covered check for yours at monthly fee rx.com never again overpay for your meds monthly fee rx.com get all your meds for one small monthly fee rx.com Okay, welcome back to the show we are Speaking with dr. Steven sitter off in this half hour Steve is an old friend issue one of my professors from McGill dr. Steven sitter off as an internationally recognized expert in resilience optimal performance addiction neurofeedback and alternative approaches to stress and mental health He's an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobacterial Sciences with a joint appointment in the Department of Rheumatology and UCLA's School of Medicine as well as the director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics He's recently finished a new book. He's gonna tell us all about it. Welcome Steve to the show Alan hey, it's such a pleasure to be here with you. It's great to see you too Steve. Yeah And Bobby yeah, we got Bobby on the line. I think you met. He's our science correspondent in San Francisco And hi there Bobby. Yeah, hi Steve. He came on board with us at COVID has been here ever since We've had so many interesting stories with him over the years Nice, including yours now We've spoken to you about your nine pillars of resilience book in the past and I'm curious how this Revision is different or is this a rethinking of some of your ideas or refinement? How would you describe what's going on now? I would say that my work really is designed to help people make changes in their lives for people to really make transformations and to be able to engage with the world in a much more adaptive manner and I continually learn better ways of reaching people in helping support people to actually make changes in their lives because We are all so stuck in old patterns old habits And so my evolution is a continuing process of finding the keys to transformation I said so transformation is the bottom line. That's what we're going and what is Affirmative for someone at 40 is the same thing at 60 or what? I like to start with two ideas one idea is that We have to have a growth mindset as we approach the world as we approach life so many times so many people Look at one of their shortcomings or something that they feel they're not doing very well And they'll just feel like okay. Well, this is who I am I guess I just am not able to do this or that with a growth mindset Anything that we see as a shortcoming is really an opportunity for an Avenue of growth any time we notice something that we have difficulty with that's a signal to us to okay Let's put some attention here. Let's put an intention here to grow along this lines And from that same perspective one of the key ways that I've modified my book is one of the common ways that people talk about Resilience is it's the ability to bounce back right yeah, I'm sure you've heard that expression Yeah, we run into obstacles we deal with them and we come back to optimal health again Well, that would be great if we're starting out at optimal health So yes, you can bounce back to that but yeah You don't want to bounce back to where you were before the stressful experience began You don't want to go back to where you were you want to learn a lesson from this stressful experience from this challenge Yeah And so at the end of the challenge you are better than where you were beforehand so that with the next Challenge you're going to be even better equipped and I refer to this not as bouncing back But as bouncing forward that's good Some might say spiraling up spiraling up. Yes. Yes sure. It's always engaging in it Actually, this is a way to challenge yourself through your day through your life What did I learn from that experience how am I better now than when I first took that challenge? Do you find that this mindset of wanting to continue to learn makes a difference in the aging process? You can continue to have that neuroplasticity as you get older. Yeah, you always want to be challenging yourself in life to Keep learning to keep growing because when you do that you're sending a message You know, we have this relatively new concept of epigenetics. Yes, Dr. Lipton's Bruce Lipton's right right in fact I talked with Bruce about this recently and the whole idea with epigenetics is it's how we have an Influence on our basic genetic makeup the genetics don't change But whether specific genes get expressed or not depends on new learning Yeah, and so the more you engage in new learning the more you create healthier and healthier Basic ingredients of our physical makeup Yeah, I agree by the mystery if what I can see is figuring out how to tap that power Within the constraints of your own belief system How much right do you believe that you can change your genetic predispositions for example recently? I interviewed Joe dispensa another person who really is in the transformation Yes space. Yeah, and what I love about his work is that he has actually got the data So he has the data of biological changes With changing your thinking changing your behavior and changing your feelings and so With data such as his I can go to anybody and say look Here is evidence. This is empirical evidence of the power of thinking the power of your feelings the power of your actions So I can help people really modify their belief System about what's possible And the more we can engage in what's possible We don't know what the limits are of that. We know we can see changes And the sky is the limit in terms of what we can really achieve That's great to hear because there's so much I sense a sense of a Dispondency these days in our country. Maybe it's the politics of the shift. There seems to be so much separation and anxiety And it would be great if that could be relieved through some processes We can do within our own lives Definitely one of the things I notice in the world today is a lot of people Using a lot of their energy in being stressed out about things that they don't have any control over Yeah, and this happens on all different levels can happen you could be Frustrated and angry with a friend of yours because they're not Responding in a way that you would like And then you can waste a lot of your energy being frustrated rather than going into a place of acceptance This is who that person is. I'm not going to change them. I need to just be accepting of Their behavior it doesn't mean I like it But whatever there's going on in your life that you can't change you want to find a place of acceptance So you're not using up your limited Resources going down paths that have a dead end. Yeah. Yeah, no, we don't want that Now I want to keep going Do you think that in the era that we're living through now people are in need of more Psychological counseling do you feel like maybe something has shifted so that people don't have the Resources just at their fingertips through friends and through normal access that we've relied on in the past And that we're living in a more complicated world. So we need a more studied approach to handling it Well, I know that with the onset of COVID that Therapists got busier and busier So there's evidence of that and there's evidence of computerized Therapy and online therapy growing partly because of the growing need as you're just suggesting and you know life feels more dangerous it feels more uncertain and Life seems more Conflictual these are all triggers for our stress response and in my experience The more stress we experience the more our coping abilities begin to break down So yes, there is a greater need for Coaching support a direction in people's lives Because our lives is so much more complicated in one of the talks I gave recently I was asking people where's their stress coming from and the biggest Response was that it's not any one thing that's so terrible. It's that there's so much on my plate There's too much to be done. It's like there's pressure to do so many different things and Life is speeding up all of the different developments scientific developments are all kind of speeding up how life is Experienced all of these things are sources of stress and we don't really learn healthy ways of dealing with stress when we're growing up In fact, we learn much the wrong messages because we're learning just from our little family Our primary caregivers and if they didn't figure it all out then they're gonna teach us the same way that they do it Not that they're gonna consciously teach us but even just modeling their behavior We're gonna make the same mistakes Do you have some thoughts on this topic that I think is emerging called Fragility and are you seeing that that is something that is more prevalent and does it fit into your Understanding and application of your resilience model was that word? Fragility. Yes. Yes. Well, it goes along with More and more stress people become as I just said people's ability to cope starts to break down With more and more stress so you can refer to that as being more fragile and We see this in terms of health and we see this in terms of a lot of different ways that it plays itself out There's a chronic illness is is growing in our society For the first time in recorded history our age span has decreased first time in history So we're seeing the effects of stress all around us and Fragility is sort of like the step that occurs in the process of breakdown So yes, and this is why I've created my book and my model Because it's a time where becoming more resilient is an absolute must for everybody So we go over quickly the nine steps just that those who are new to this have an idea of what we're talking about Yeah, with some nice examples that will inspire people and maybe help them apply it to their own life a little Definitely definitely so this is something you've thought about for a long time and have really distilled Right your understandings to these nine steps right if we think about all we have to deal with To improve our health it can feel overwhelming. So I've distilled Everything down to these nine pillars The first three have to do with relationship and the first pillar has to do with the most important relationship We have which is our relationship with ourselves Start with ourselves. That's right. It's right. I'm gonna say to Yeah, right So your audience can reflect for example on if they make a mistake how they treat themselves when they make a mistake a Lot of people will beat themselves up for the mistake a lot of people will be hard on themselves critical judgmental put themselves down and what I say in my book is Most of us have this sort of negative relationship with ourselves where we talk to ourselves and treat ourselves In that way Forms the way that we expect the world to treat us right because yeah, nobody's gonna treat me better than I treat myself Exactly exactly and so the first piece of advice for people is you want to start developing creating a healthy internal voice and a healthy internal voice the DERISTICS of a healthy internal voice is coming from a place of love Compassion so for example if you make a mistake and usually if we make a mistake There's a cost to the mistake, right? You usually have to apologize Yeah, I mean you make a mistake and the cost could be financial the cost can be relational But there's a cost to it and we tend to avoid costs typically, but yeah, yeah so Why beat yourself up you're already Experiencing a cost as a result of that mistake so my advice to everybody is that when you make a mistake The way you want to treat yourself is with compassion To be easy itself don't you want to swear it yourself or stuff like that right right and then the next thing you want to do in Terms of recovering from a mistake is if there's a cost to that mistake What's the lesson to be learned? What can I learn from this experience so that I'm less likely to make this mistake the next time so it doesn't happen again? Right, right so this is a healthy relationship with yourself coming from that place of love Ashen acceptance this is another key to how to be in relationship with yourself Hmm a lot of most of us if you think about being on this path in life We're someplace on that path But most of us feel we should be further along that path. I should have done better I should have done it this way I shouldn't have made that mistake and our whole language is about not being okay with where we're at yeah Yeah, I wasn't able to deliver I wasn't able to you know, right Alan has something he likes to say I think which is trust the perfection as you know a way of relating to Everything and the greatness the lack of it the mistakes the full range is just allowing yourself to get off the hook From meeting it all to rest on your shoulders Exactly, so what I say is if you're in point a and you feel you should be at point B Yeah, I will say that if you say to yourself, I should be at point B Essentially you're saying there's something wrong with me where I'm at because I should be further along So when you say that you're actually undermining yourself the key is to be accepting of where you're at Because if you want to get from a to b the fastest way to get there is by accepting your starting point Here's where I'm starting. I mean I like that. I'm starting here But here's where I'm at I can't find my keys because I'm so distracted that when I put them down. I'm not paying attention That's why I can't find them when I'm looking for them. Okay, let me accept that about myself About how I get distracted the first step is that acceptance so the first pillars your relationship with yourself Yeah, I can see that after you have take the step of reflecting on your own behavior Which and then and then not judging yourself for what you did right? So it's having an honest relationship with yourself, but also in accepting in loving relationship with yourself Yeah, yeah self-love that big big topic in and of itself. Yeah, this is a lot of self-loathing going on You know, I know I know and the public discourse doesn't help either Yeah, because we see such derogatory language used by our leaders That it sort of makes it okay to do rather than how we need to be feeling is like that's sending us all in the wrong direction Well, we call these echo chambers, right and people tend to go towards the echo chambers that are most close to their own internal voice, right because then they are getting some kind of validation that allows them to go further in that direction So how does your resilience model deal with that where if the need is really to? develop a healthier voice within yourself and yet you are going into Social situations that are actually amplifying the negativity like how would we handle something like that? Well first off it has to do with mindset This is actually my fifth pillar of resilience mental balance and mastery and it's based on having a positive Approach to life in a positive approach to yourself. So, you know when you wake up in the morning do you? Think about what can go wrong? What do you think about what can go right? Okay, and in my book and in my model I'm teaching people to focus on what can go right I'm teaching people to start the day with the intention of having Positive good things happen in the day So if that's your mindset and you walk into a room or you turn on any kind of station in which the it's very Conflictual in which people are badmouthing each other. It's your responsibility to turn off that station It's your responsibility not to stay there and be bombarded by negativity Yeah, that makes sense if you have some control of the environment But a lot of folks have to go to conferences where you know people have a different mentality like Sometimes I've been to events where I feel like I'm a comic at a cynic scattering, right? You know and the predominant belief systems out there are still into blame and justification and Really a lot of the social fabric is people taking a little bit of pleasure in Consulting their common enemy. Yeah, so you got to hold on to your belief system when you're in these environments I guess that's the lesson. I need to be able to hold on Response in me when I'm around that and it's become so prevalent It's almost like the way that people are defining their relationships now It's interesting when I was having a conversation with Bruce Lipton. Yeah, we were talking about The power of the environment to shape your biology that influences your biology Oh, and so you want to be very careful about the environments in which you put yourself now as Alan was saying, you know, what if you don't have a choice? For example, the other day I did a workshop for executives in a corporation Hmm and if you're in a work environment, you can't choose who you're working with and you can Choose your boss either and so in those situations You have to come up with some kind of I like to say imagery So I tell people imagine this giant glass bell And imagine that you place this giant glass bell over the person That's kind of toxic the person who's bad mouthing the person who's got nothing but negative And I want you to imagine that all the words coming out of his mouth have a color to it And so that as he's talking and the words are coming out with this color They hit this glass bell and they bounce back to him or her and so people find that very effective because they have an imagery that actually helps them stop those words and those messages from being absorbed and It gives them a sense of protection in those dangerous environments And that's something that we all need is to feel like we can protect ourselves in those toxic environments Toxicity shield of some sort so that be the meaning if I understand it of something like instant karma The idea that people's words reflect back on themselves and it somehow doesn't harm you So you're you're shielded from it. Yeah, I like to say that I'm in partnership with the universe That's my approach It's standing with you then and so if you know you've heard on Charity events where they say we have this $1,000 matching Challenge right you give us a thousand and we have this other thousand to match it right right? I approached the earth and the world that way. I'm gonna put out positive energy because I'm partnering with the universe And if I put out positive energy, that's what's gonna come back to me And it's been my experience that that's what happens And so I'm not gonna want to put out negative energy because the universe will give me negative energy back So I take that responsibility and expand upon it And I find that it's a very effective way for me to stay positive Great So you're the author of your own positive experience and the world is the echo chamber Right exactly. Yeah, so you have a few years behind you and making this happen now too, eh? Yeah, it seems to be working. Okay And the beauty is that people who I've worked with What to me that they find it's true as well. So I'm gonna keep on this track. Oh You think there's a critical mass once a certain number of people reach this kind of awareness that culture will shift I think there is. I don't know what it is where it is or where we're at with it But I would agree with you. Hmm. Well, Steve you always inspire me so much You're just an icon of everything that you're teaching and your resilience definitely inspires me And well, thank you. I I appreciate it and today's a great day. Today is the day. My book got published That's right. There's the fourth. Yeah Today today's the day so people can go right out and get it from Barnes and Noble Amazon or any place where you buy books Great and you look up Steve sitter off and the nine pillars of resilience And you can also find a link on our archive page, which is drfutureshow.com Today's links page and of course when we post the show and Steve we're gonna keep you on We're gonna have dr. Lufkin speak for the next half I learned then the both of you together to talk about your longevity conference and your takeaways from that So it's good feel free to stay on the line, but we'll mostly be talking to dr. Lufkin for sure All right. All right. All right. Thanks so much. I'm so glad you're here [Music] Okay, welcome back to the show This half hour we were speaking with Robert Lufkin m.d a physician medical school professor at UCLA and USC And he's really focused on the applied science of health longevity and consciousness He's been through an ordeal himself with chronic disease and transforming his life Into a new robert. I guess you might say And he's going to give us the latest and the greatest from his world in his new book Lies I taught in medical school, which is a bit of a clickbait. Don't you think Robert? But still I mean it shows you how the system may be evolving welcome to the show Thanks, Alan son. I have to say I'm a fan of your program I've listened to it and it's an honor to be on it today. So thank you. Thank you for your kindness and having me Yeah, and it's great that we've got to know you from other events Yes That's right piers on the frontier. That's right Yeah Science, big shamanism Yes, yes a lot of good happens there indeed Indeed so so tell us about what you've been up to lately you teach in medical school Now that is interesting because you have been through a life changer where you've kind of left traditional Medicine to embrace an alternative. Can you tell us about how that transformation? Yes, you're a traditional m.d Who's going into the world of non-traditional solutions? So yeah, yeah Very very interesting to a lot of people we know Yeah, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm actually the ultimate quintessential medical insider I spent my whole career as a medical school professor a teaching practicing medicine Writing papers taking money from drug companies to do research and all that sort of thing And I was dragged screaming and kicking into this out of I'd like to say I wanted to make the world a better place But it was really out of self-interest when I came down with four chronic diseases that Forced me to kind of question what I've been taught and what I've been teaching and what my colleagues are still teaching sadly In many places. Oh, I said so the disease came in not just as one bit as a committee That's right. Well, and I think that what's really refreshing is that we're in an era where the medical profession is updating their beliefs and what they're sharing with people because we have so much more information now and Research does move us forward. We're not where we were in the 50s. We're not where we were in the 80s We've got new tools at our disposal and I'm sure you've been keeping up to date with that Yeah, and I want to go on record The book is critical of western medicine and it throws a lot of stones But I'd like to go on record and saying that I still believe in western medicine It had a revolutionary impact in all our lives in the 20th century through public health measures infectious disease It's transformed globally the way we live and even today if I step outside and get hit by a bus I'm probably gonna want to get those life-saving measures that western medicine. Of course. Yeah, you're not gonna go Ayurvedic and herbal for your broken bones Well lifestyle will certainly help me heal better But in the acute life-saving event if I need my spleen removed and I need my bone set There's certain things that western medicine does better than anything else that we know of yes The problem is in the 21st century We're facing a new set of diseases that were present before but now they've reached epidemic proportions You're talking about the chronic disease and you know you the ones you faced were pretty much Pevident in our society. Oh, they're the number one killers in western society, right? I think that's really instructive because you got separate treatments for each of these disease But in actual fact you've identified a root cause would you say that's yeah? Exactly the problem is and this is the failure of western medicine today I think is that these chronic diseases which take up 80% of the resources and that we're seeing really an epidemic of them things like obesity and Overweight most adults are overweight or hypertension half of adults have hypertension And it goes on and on cardiovascular disease stroke heart attack cancer all-time disease and mental illness These are all reaching epidemic proportions And western medicine is applying the things that were so successful in the 20th century things like pills and surgery to treat these and It's obviously not working in many cases. Well, isn't it because you don't have so much time to treat someone They're just really not enough personal health care to go around so we have to make it simple like a pill Yeah, I think we all Patients ask for pills. I mean I would rather have a pill than get a lecture about lifestyle and how I need to change what I eat and how I Exercise, but yeah, the sad truth is that the pills that are given And the pills that I was prescribed I was subscribed to medicine for each one of those four diseases like high blood pressure Yeah, high blood pressure and galloped and prediabetes Each of those pills while they may be life-saving in the moment and prevent me from dying acutely and also Lowering the symptoms. The sad part is that they don't do anything to treat the underlying Cause and these diseases go on and continue and continue and continue The number one cause of death that you me and all our listeners are likely to die of statistically is a heart attack and the current treatment for heart attacks is When the blood vessel is narrow to the heart which causes the heart attack A mechanical stent is put in to open up the blood vessel and that's standard treatment now and I Works for a week, right? It works for a little while they they get a stent and they go wow western medicine saved my life I dodged that bullet what they don't realize is a stent maybe it saved their life acutely But it doesn't change their long-term survival and in fact the underlying disease the so-called Atherosclerosis or narrowing the blood vessels continues to go on through all the other arteries of the body and even in the stent itself And that's emblematic of all these chronic diseases in other words the pills and surgery in most cases don't actually treat the underlying cause and The fascinating thing the wake-up call for me was The treatment for these underlying causes it's the same thing It's the same type of treatment if the treats one thing will also treat and reverse the other thing and its lifestyle Specific things that I as a patient can choose to do with my life That will you know reverse obesity hypertension diabetes all these things in that Does that mean that taking a pill won't work? Well It depends a lot of pills is that just a piece of it now it used to be the only solution now It's just one of ten Okay lifestyle, but how did you determine that? I mean what kind of did it take much detective work to figure out these underlying causes? Well, what happened to me as I talked about in the book is I was diagnosed with four diseases I went to my doctor and they gave me four pills for them You know to death until three-twen and they said lifestyle doesn't really work You're gonna be on these pills for the rest of your life get used to it so they didn't believe enough about they didn't they didn't see that as As key as you do today Exactly and I out of self-interest I began looking at the literature and studying and looking at controlled papers I didn't invent this I didn't discover this it's out there But I wasn't aware of it many my colleagues are not aware Researching it for yourself and sharing it with your colleagues exactly and through the knowledge of this that these basic lifestyle tools Which I didn't think would work either. I was able to literally Reverse these four chronic diseases to the point the doctors couldn't believe it They thought the lab was broken or something because my labs returned to normal And I was something that they weren't used to they deep prescribed the medicines for me In other words, they told me to get off the medicines and anytime we talk about stop taking pills or anything Any of this should only be done with your I'm not advocating anyone stop their pills or the medicine Without the cooperation of your health care provider. They need to be involved because otherwise it can be dangerous Yeah, provide them with treatment. Well, you do need an alternative treatment and that treatment is now what we're looking at Absolutely. Yeah, and this treatment does something that the pills and surgery can't do And it reverses the basic underlying cause that can actually wind these diseases back type two diabetes, you know The majority of people not all but the majority of people can reverse their type two diabetes to the point where they Stop taking insulin and metformin and other drugs with lifestyle changes primarily nutrition in that point. It's really remarkable Diet and exercise still core, right? Well, yeah Diet and exercise are foundational, but also sleep is critical Sleep not only quality and quantity, you know, famous study They took healthy college students and they sleep deprived them and within 48 hours. They became diabetic So it messed up their metabolism and their metabolic state And of course the fourth pillar is stress, you know, which Steve will agree with the On this then stress mindset is also key and the thing that I learned about lifestyle is Nutrition is right up there, but you have to sort of fix all of them in other words if I fix my nutrition my sleep My exercise, but if I don't fix my stress, I can still have problems So any one of those pillars you really need to address everything at once. Yes. Yes And you also had discovered rapamycin, I believe that had a key element in the aging process your longevity Yeah, that seems to be a darling in the emerging world of avoiding long-term disease And the combination of that with was it metformin metformin and rapamycin Seemed to be a nice thing to consider as well in your research and longevity I think our audience would be very interested in hearing you talk about the way that the rapamycin works for People who are trying to combat their diseases, but I agree with you too that it's it's a foundational is Your health working with your diet One of your big points that I got from your work was junk food stuff and bright colored packages are not good for you Cut down on carbs cut down on sugar and we're off to a good start here. Are you wearing? I'm asking to nerdy of a question. Yes. Well, I try to split carbs and sugar I didn't start out to write a longevity book But the penultimate chapter in the book is on longevity and I was sort of forced into it because I became aware with you take These chronic diseases that we talk about today and that are discussed in the book These are the diseases that statistically determine our longevity So if we slow down or reverse these chronic diseases an interesting thing happens We start living longer and the same metabolic processes that reverse these diseases Also increase on longevity and there's a metabolic switch that we talk about in the book that rapamycin is a drug that affects it called mTOR and Diet and lifestyle affect mTOR and rapamycin does too But to give you the profound wide-reaching effects of mTOR and rapamycin It's the most powerful anti-aging pharmaceutical that's ever been discovered yet And when you put rapamycin cream on the hands of people the wrinkles Decrease and tend to go away if you put rapamycin in your hair the gray hair tends to go away The hair grows back If you put rapamycin in the stent in the coronary arteries The blood vessels don't clog off anymore It slows down menopause rapamycin in the animal model at least delays menopause fertility increases hearing avoids Age relating hearing loss and even the diseases that we die of like I said the stents in the coronary arteries Also in cancer rapamycin is FDA approved for Adjunctive cancer treatment for eight different cancers and even for Alzheimer's disease rapamycin is now being studied in human trials Around the world with that so rapamycin is an amazing amazing drug but to your point al and I want to emphasize that It's a pill and we don't really understand totally Anything about longevity or how rapamycin works is it just mTOR or is it ampecainase Is it the sertulins or other pathways and the point is that we're still being surprised with rapamycin There are many things we don't know but lifestyle we do know Does the same effect of rapamycin or even synergistic effects? So I would never I mean I take rapamycin, but I would never take rapamycin Without first getting your longevity house in order in other words your lifestyle And then you can get the benefits of everything but taking it as a pill itself I think you're missing out on things and you may not even get a benefit I know what you mean. I think it's kind of like taking ozimpic Yeah, I was gonna say that seems to be the natural part of this conversation is people who are Trying to get there through ozimpic which is a pill to control their obesity. Yeah, I like my lifestyle Just give me a hug It's a new addiction as opposed to something that restores your body's vitality. Yeah Absolutely, absolutely and side effects associated with it Right now rapamycin has relatively few side effects, but we don't know Lifestyle does have side effects the metabolic approach I do that I talk about in the book The diet the side effects are six pack abs, you know And and getting rid of brain fog and fitness and vitality and a joy of life All these things are the side effects of the lifestyle, but nothing really negative so far Wow and it took finding out that you had to combat disease to really get you to try this new approach, huh? Yeah, I mean so many my colleagues who have had a similar journey are sort of forced into it by a personal experience that draws them into it And it's too bad it has to be that way, but more and more people This happens to them. Hopefully the message will get out so that this doesn't have to be the way for everyone to find out about it I guess is the silver lining of adversity now Did you find that you were going along in life and you were feeling fine and you're thinking that you were living a pretty healthy normal life And then you found out all of a sudden you had these diseases and then something changed How would you tell that was it a sudden epiphany? Were you a burning man? Well, see that year I wasn't because I have my kids and so the four diseases came on almost the same time and as I began studying them and researching them It became clear that there are some alternatives that I figured what the heck I've got nothing to lose, right? And so I tried them and things began happening. I began feeling better My lab markers improved and it was working and the more I read about it the more encouraged I got and the more I did it The more successful it was and eventually that's how I went down that path. No, no How open have been your colleagues in your insights into this you teach in medical school Do you see introducing these ideas into the curriculum? Yeah, some of the ideas well many of the ideas in the book are going against what is modern medical orthodoxy and People still teach a calorie is just a calorie, you know If you want to lose weight just exercise more and eat less Well, we've all seen how well that works and that's one of the lies I talked about in the book but the reception to me has been gracious and open from most of my colleagues, you know, I think intelligent people can You know reasonable people can agree to disagree about things and I hope that I'm open-minded enough that I Stay open to views that disagree with mine and I look at them No, I try to read the few reviewed literature and the original citations and I just ask my colleagues to do the same and Sometimes it's even reading an article and we interpret it differently But the reception has been good. Mm-hmm good. I'm glad you hear it a couple things I'd like to mention before we bring steve on with you You made some good points. I thought regarding the whole diet area of junk food and seed oils Can you briefly tell our audience a little bit about your insights and junk food and seed oils? First of all full disclosure. I'm a recovering junk food attics. I know it is like junk food I can't keep them in the house. I've got a teenage daughter and a younger daughter and they bring it home So I have to be very careful But if you want to do one thing to improve your metabolic health that is avoid junk food And the problem is most food in our stores and all food in the 7/11 is junk food by definition by junk food I mean highly processed contains a lot of carbohydrates grains cereals Lots of ingredients and lots of ingredients and lots of ingredients colors packaging Advertising these junk foods drive inflammation they drive insulin resistance and they drive these foundational metabolic Abnormalities that I believe are the root cause of all these diseases. So getting rid of junk food and it's hard Eating healthy food. What about in moderation? What about just a little bit of junk food? Yeah, that's it people say well, you know, you got to live and how do you want your health? You want your health in moderation or do you want to go full on and be absolutely healthy? Puck corn at the movies? Well, you know, we all have to live But at least we can be aware of it and be at least many people are not not aware of the damage They do when they feed their kids sugar cereals or orange juice how harmful these things are Well, that's a good point. You think we should have a medical devices that let us know how harmful they are so we have some feedback Sure. Yeah, what you're signaling there is the continuous glucose monitors were Up until now have been only available through a prescription in the United States These are monitors that allow you to follow your glucose Just put it on your arm and you see it on your smartphone and get feedback on the diet and how your lifestyle is working in in England You can buy them in any store, but that's about to change in the United States for the first time this summer Continuous glucose monitors will be available for consumers. So anyone who wants to go in and the Walgreens or CVS or whatever they can buy those Oh, that's great. Okay. So you recommend that that would be a good feedback to see just how much your glucose is being affected by When you eat a candy bar or chips or whatever I do many of my colleagues don't some doctors say patients should not have access to that information They shouldn't see what their glucose is doing, but I disagree I think the patients need to be informed and we're all better because of it Okay, good point. All right. All right. We're gonna go to a Santa Cruz voice local Campaign for our sponsors and then we'll be back and have a little round table with you and Steve Yeah, what do you want to hear about your longevity experiment there? Right looking forward to it. We'll see you in a couple minutes. All right, stay tuned everybody. We'll be right back. 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I will help you. I have over seven years experience working as a lawyer Protecting others from abusive relationships Stop the abuse now call on the angel attorney angel l has at sanacruselegal.net [Music] Welcome back to the show we're talking to dr. Robert Lufkin and bringing back on after steven sittaroff our two esteemed doctors once a clinical psychologist steven and robert is a md I think you were in radiology originally in robert Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, I'm kind of curious you guys are both down in l.a. And have a number of affiliations with l.a. health care How did you two meet what's a little bit about your story? Was it a conference or how did we meet? We've been friends a long time. It's it's it's behind the veils of history So far Okay, friends for many many years After you came to l.a. I mean you knew how as one of our other friends of the show Right back in the 70s and I guess you came to l.a. After you're to stand at McGill and Right, right and it's been such a pleasure Rob and I have been good close friends for years and years so last year actually the last couple of years What a joy and pleasure it was to partner with rob and put on a longevity summit Yeah, that's what we're coming to with this. Yeah, you guys actually put on a summit on longevity brought together world's experts in the topic and And I have to compliment both of you because that was such a diverse and so cutting edge in covering so many subjects about how to live healthfully live longer from very interesting intricate research about new therapies and mental health therapies and resilience and diet and nutrition it was so Comprehensive, so how did it come together? How did you guys decide to do that? Well, as part I think we had natural synergies from our backgrounds I'm a medical doctor Steve as a psychologist and the role that Psychology and sort of mind-body if you will is really foundational and longevity and Going through that process really opened my mind up about so many things on the mind side You know that I hadn't thought of coming from more of a traditional medical approach more like stress It's effects on health. Yeah, and even mindset for longevity as part of stress as well For me it was such a pleasure to know that whatever I didn't know Rob would know [laughter] I really felt like I had the psychological covered but when it came to the medical it was a great pairing of our expertise because when you're talking about longevity You have to integrate both of those pieces to really get a full Compliment of the issues in longevity. Yes the mind-body. Yeah, one of the big questions that came up at the beginning It was eye-opening for me that made me think about this that the different guests talked about was the Question of why work on longevity? What's the point when I think most of us grew up? We were afraid of population over population really the population explosion and we're worried about too many people on the earth Well today we know that's not true and there's population collapse going on China, Japan, Korea, Italy Yeah, we're too successful at getting what we wish for Exactly and so at a very basic level with decreasing fertility and decreasing population Extending longevity Lifespan of the people who are here at least will make up for some of that But that in itself is probably not enough of enough reason and and a lot of people say hey Why do you want to live longer? You know, I certainly don't want 10 extra years in the nursing home and we're not talking about Yeah, you want quality lifespan. Yeah without increasing health span, but yeah I think Ricky Gervais had a really funny line about how he would want to live older if he could live Like at age 40 for another 30 or 40 years But living at like age 70 or 80 for the last 10 years of your life really sucks like nobody's looking forward to that Well, I'd like to propose something even better that certainly hadn't occurred to me before this whole experience is that is A lot of people when they think of prolonging age they say well I'm at age 60 and now instead of dying in five years when I retire I live another 40 years And they go well, I don't want you know like Ricky Gervais. I don't want to live another 40 years at age 60 You know, I want to play if at 30 or 20 Well, I'm going to propose something that might even be better Think about where each of us have gone in our own life's journey between 20 and 60 How we've grown as people how we've matured how we've changed and becoming a different person So rather than looking at extending life longevity as another 40 years on the golf course or Watching netflix reruns or just even hanging around with your grandkids How about if we take those 40 years and we suddenly become new people We transform ourselves into the people that we've never seen before in other words Take that amplification from 20 to 60 and put it from 60 to 100 And we grow as people we become the wise elders that we all need in the world And we do things that we're never possible Rather than just extending things at 60 or extending things at 70 Let's transform ourselves into a new life and a new generation and for me That is very exciting. I want to live an extra 40 years. I don't want to play golf for 40 years Or I don't want to be retired for 40 years And I can be on the cutting edge of discovery, right? Yeah, yeah Do you embrace the idea that aging is a disease? Well, I think it semantics a little bit because longevity is When people die, it's not like their bodies wear out. There's a mistaken conception I think that aging is just wearing out of our bodies when somebody dies of a heart attack It's not that their body wears out or even their heart wears out There's a specific event that happens that causes blood to stop flowing When people die of Alzheimer's, it's not that their brain wears out They have a active inflammatory reaction in the brain So longevity and Aging is not a result of wearing out in my opinion where we just kind of wind down I think it's a result of specific diseases and it's a short list You can go on the internet and you can see the top five diseases that are going to kill us all statistically Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, stroke It's a short list Yeah But the risk of those diseases is increased with aging And if we adopt some of the metabolic and stress strategies that Steve and I talk about in our books We're able to slow down those diseases and improve longevity You could be healthy at 100? Oh, you sure There are people who are healthy at 100 and that's why it's unfair to Use a stereotype image of a frail 80 year old who can't walk when no politics here But we have two presidential candidates who are 80 years old And maybe they're not a good example because neither one of them are doing very well, but well at least a little kid For president Yeah, exactly but look at Mick Jagger, you know and Keith Richards They're in their 80s running on stages Colosseums in front of tens of thousands of people every single night You're playing those same songs Great inspiration Yeah, well, I have some of the people in this room I'd say our great examples in this zoom call Are great examples of defying the expectations of age I look at all of us and I know that very few people would guess We're as old as we are And I think those expectations need to change because if people Expect they're going to die at age 65. They do the expectation the mindset Most firefighters die within five years of retirement a large number And if we expect 80 year olds to be frail and weak That's that's what you get. Yeah, we need to rethink the whole medical psychological framework for this I'm the medical field in radiology There are radiation doses that we're recommended to get throughout our lifespan that are cumulative over the life And that's based on an age of 65 If you're going to live to 120 You need to rethink we all need to rethink about radiation exposure Maybe not get as many x-rays and maybe do other things Medicine needs to look at people living to 100 not living to 60 No, I think it comes to mind is that biology is a Self-repairing mechanism the self-repairing system So one of the things that I write about in an article that I published in psychology today Yeah, the title was purpose the ultimate and use it or lose it. Yeah purpose for sure And I talk about how we potentially have an influence on our genetic makeup through the epigenetic process It's um, Bruce Lipton you had who you had on the uh, right and so if you rather than retiring and as Rob was saying get onto the golf course Which could be fun, but if instead you have a purpose a reason for living And if that purpose is actually in service if it's designed to help our species Live a better life. You're sending a message Right directly through at the epigenetic process to your genetic makeup saying I Have an important purpose for the species We need to stay healthy Longer and in that article I actually propose that if you have a purpose in life You actually send a message to your own biology To stay healthier longer because of that purpose We'll have to do some research to see if that actually can be proven It's empirical, but I think it can be proven That biology can be in directed by psychological purpose Yes, exactly and that goes back to mindset, right? Steve that mindset is so important. I I was talking to a friend and Something they they were saying. This is the last time I'm probably going to go to this event and And you know, why was that because well, I'm I'm so many years old and it's like That in itself becomes a self-fulfilling thing that they visualize themselves as being old I used to talk about aging and say, you know, Botox injections or dying your hair It may make you look younger, but it doesn't change your longevity. You don't live any longer And somebody once corrected me on that and they brought me a large body of literature showing that People it's correlated. It's not causal, but people who inject Botox maybe or dye their hair or Do things to adopt a more youthful appearance actually do live longer Maybe not because of the Botox or the you know, Grecian formula But because they have a mindset of youth and they see themselves as continuing on So mindset it blew me away with doing their conference with Steve that for all the lifestyle factors to reprogram our epigenome Mindset is one of the most powerful ones. Yes There's an interesting study that was done. They took a group of elderly people And they took them to this camp where the whole camp was designed based on the 1950s So it was taking these people back to their childhood the cars that were around were from the 50s and They essentially this has to do with mindset. They essentially had these people Experienced themselves from 30 or 40 years Before and they looked at a lot of their biological markers And they found that they actually reversed Some of the biological markers of aging by putting them in this mindset of a younger version of themselves Interesting. Yeah, it's actually evidence that this notion of mindset and where you place your focus Actually has a biological impact. Hmm. So we could have a VR time machine for each of us Take us back to our youth and that actually would show physiological benefit. That's right. That's right Yeah, well, that's all Your audience can probably figure out for each of them a creative way of creating that that actually has an impact Well, how do you create that? Okay in the case you just stated a group of people went to a summer camp that evoked These memories do you think that the Griffith show the same thing happens? Yeah, if you watch your old favorite tv shows or movies Or if you look through picture albums or what are some of the techniques that are going to be most successful at restoring that sense of self I think it's about immersing yourself So I can picture perhaps a Phenomenal experience from 30 years ago and just immerse myself in that experience Try and remember the smells the tastes the sounds Maybe I'll use music of that era to facilitate that process And then remember my feelings from that time and perhaps the joy I was experiencing and if I immerse myself in that as intensely and for long enough I think it will have that effect and if I did an interview with joe despenza who actually did some of these studies And looked at their biology and actually did find A regression in some of their biological markers So I think rob and I in our interviews in our longevity Summit actually found various kinds of evidence that we have these capabilities That's interesting. You see you when you drove from the various participants Okay, so for the un-initiated joe despenza, what did you take away from him? So rob and I interviewed him for our longevity. He wrote becoming supernatural how common people are doing the uncommon Yeah, and when he helps people just as I just described helps people Immerse themselves in a positive state in a healing state in an Intentional mindset state that their physiology begins to shift and A lot of their symptoms fall by the wayside. He had evidence about this. So this after that interview I I hadn't had much exposure to joe despenza, but I signed up for I spent a week with him in mexico Doing a meditation retreat it was with about 2,000 other people But it was amazingly intimate and intense it involved Meditations as long as five hours or six hours or so, but it was very very powerful and it almost went beyond Meditation it was different than the meditation I experienced before like the possina or anything It was more along the lines of shamanic visions and Although there were no drugs involved it was all through practices and all we were visualizing dmt in our pituitary gland and kind of the natural ways to Access alternate worlds and even change the future. I mean, it's It sounds to me like if you've had some of these transformative experiences in the past that such an events like this might help bring them back Up to the moment for your Absolutely. Yeah, joe despenza at least from my experience was very powerful medicine and i'm still kind of Unpeeling the layers on that experience. Hmm. Yeah, you know Something that i've been formulating as you guys have been talking is if you could talk about and characterize the experiential differences between say intention and just positive thoughts that you're telling yourself Versus something that is a little more mysterious such as meditation and maybe compare that also with hypnosis And all of these being different techniques that might be invoked by people who were trying to go through some kind of transformation and What works what is available? You know, you got her going deep here Yeah, because i was just gonna say that there's some crossover with bruce liptons work too and what you're talking about joe despenza What i loved about joe's work and it's it's outside of my expert steve can maybe comment on more But i love the idea of our past really defining our present and our future and through the default mode network Basically and that his techniques were aimed at redefining the present and changing the future and actually moving things around To make things happen in the future. It was very powerful very nystical, but i think there's a lot of truth to it i'd say that all of those different approaches you mentioned son have a lot of things in common and Change and transformation which is really at the heart of my book, but it's really the big question How do we really get real change and one of the problems with creating change is that we have a whole history Every one of us has this whole history and that history is imprinted in our neural networks And so now you do something new you learn something new which is a single experience Or a brief experience it can't compare in terms of its impact with your entire history And that's why change is so difficult so all the methods that you just talked about Whether it's hypnosis whether it's meditation whether it's biofeedback They are all about bringing a focus to the process of change But then creating a practice that over time begins to supplant the old learning in the old memory You have to balance out the energy of a consistent new pattern to overtake the whole history that we have when we engage in a learning process Wow. Yeah, I think about it from that perspective Yeah, and I think you were talking about how Bruce Lipton had approached that aspect of how we create reality that We have a part of ourselves that is just going with our programming which consistent with the past We're fitting into the patterns that we've already mastered and we're just putting them out because it's easier There's less resistance, but the actual opportunity for transformation is in accessing that untapped spirit of creativity and innovation and that's something that is emerging new So that those two have to play together, right? Yeah, and whether it's Joe or myself or Rob or so many people have said Is that when you go to do something new? The unknown is uncomfortable and this is what usually causes people to shrink back to the old pattern Is they start to do something new and different? It feels uncomfortable and that discomfort Needs to be tolerated if you want change to a car you have to Accept and tolerate some discomfort We refer to it as growing pains, right? Is that you step into new territory? You have to little by little adjust and adapt to that Did you guys do that when organizing this event? Do you have experience from growing pains in bringing all these different folks together? Definitely Yeah, rob and i really took it on as a challenge Yeah And we wanted to bring mind body together in that longevity arena Not just one or just the other Okay, in the final few minutes here. Is there any other takeaways from that event that you wish to share with us? This was a part of the mind was there a body person there for example that really got your attention One thing that struck me is just how close mind and body were interrelated And you really can't talk about one without the other and our speakers reflected that So I think it was nicely covered in our program. Did you have any speakers that combined both well mind and body Other people still specialized. I'd say people are the most part specialized wouldn't you rob the body people would mention Lifestyle, but really not go into it or address it significantly and vice versa Gamera and mayor was sort of the gut brain axis and there was sort of that kind of thing or dale bredison Talked about lifestyle and all timers and reversing all timers with these different things But yeah for the most part, unfortunately, there's still a lot of silos there microbiome and desire steve and i interviewed lisabeth perish who's Yeah, and she actually had gene therapy using the clotho gene So she got that through a cmv vector that she had for a while Clotho is getting a lot of interest and and the challenge with all of these is Demonstrating the effectiveness, you know on longevity. It's really hard with humans because you can't do longevity studies But the interventions testing program is when I go to a lot that's run by the federal government Is paid for by tax dollars and they take mice and they basically take two groups of mice and they give them methylene blue or they give them green tea or ashwagandha or a rapid mice and or metformin or We were thinking about it because it's a public program We can all write in and suggest things to be given to these mice and the mice only live three years three years Fast results Yeah, so they do 660 they do nad supplements. They do statins they do everything and then they see if the mice live longer or shorter with the drugs and The one drug at least in these studies by far that's more than anything else is rapamycin But there are other ones like a carbose which is a diabetic drug which blocks carbohydrate uptake blocks glucose from going in When you combine a carbose with rapamycin you get a bigger effect than either rapamycin or a carbose by itself So that speaks to what we talked about before that we really don't understand what's going on with any of these but Lifestyle by limiting carbohydrates should be done if you're even thinking about taking rapamycin or a carbose The lifestyle thing should be in place, but there's so many things out there as so many different things to try It's it's really it's amazing Yeah to see what what you actually adapt or adopt into your regimen is I guess the question Do you do any testing on yourself based on your genetic background also your microbiome Genetic yeah what you have there. So do you do any of these personally yourself? Yeah, I do everything I do genotyping I do gene sequencing micro biome studies. Steven. I both did it with biome. We had Some to them. Yeah on there The microbiome is really challenging because you get a lot of data But it's in my experience at least is tough to translate it into actionable items even recommendations That's not saying the micro It's somewhat individual right? Yeah, yeah in the microbiome. It's not saying the microbiome is an important even foundational as far as our mental health But it's really remarkable. I mean in one study they even after one ayahuasca experience within 24 hours the microbiome Dramatically changed and that was out of hemel patel who's a scientist at UC San Diego who works with joe despenza They did that work and it's amazing that the microbiome can shift So suddenly from an experience we think of largely in our heads But there's just so much we don't know about these things. Yeah, the microbiome critters Don't live very long either. Do they can mutate quickly? Yeah in the reproduce very quickly But it may makes you think twice about taking an antibiotic which is like a nuclear bomb on your microbiome Similarly using mouthwash is like an atom bomb on your oral microbiome Which now mouthwash is associated with hypertension because of nitric oxide destruction and so it makes us really rethink Even our cosmetics our skincare products. Do we want to kill all the bacteria all the time? I guess if you want to change it quickly if you're going to get a fecal transplant and you want to Yeah, if you know what's going in is going to be better than what's there. Yeah, but that's sometimes stuff to predict True to a lot of un-variable. So it's interesting that that's one of the areas of the biome project where I learned about something I hadn't heard of before they called it leaky gum syndrome Right, it's a leaky guy. Yeah, and that aging a lot of people get periodontal disease at a certain age along with all of those other age-related killers and that the mouth microbiome was one of the things that the biome people were targeting for better resilience Absolutely and rapamycin one of its effects is actually making your gums heal and slowing down gum disease like for elderly people But it's fascinating the bacteria in the gums particularly peach in javans peach in javalis Has now been seen in Alzheimer's patients in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and in the coronary arteries of people with heart attacks and so the whole idea of Microbiome it appears we have microbiomes all over our body even in organs that we previously had been taught were sterile It helped me but it appears they're these microbiomes and some people are even suggesting parasites as well that we're really underestimating them and all so I'm sure I'm sure the microbiomes have their own microbiome Yeah, everything blew up in the 1980s as far as junk food and our health just started deteriorating and a lot of people blamed seed oils or glucose But I have one colleague who believes it was the advent of sushi restaurants Which as spreaders of parasites even subclinical parasites? We don't realize that can go into the liver go into the brain and all these other things who knows, you know, it's an open question Yeah, right. Well, I would say what I thought was really fresh about Your approach was the constellation the way that all of those silos were Represented and affecting each other just by the fact that it was the same audience receiving that information From so many previously separate realms and I'm wondered how has that played out since you guys put on that conference? Did you notice any transformation that you weren't expecting? Well, my biggest takeaway has been listening really to rob talking about sugar And that's probably had the biggest impact on me and my behavior. I'm still working on it And conversely my biggest takeaway was Being raised with a dietitian mother and nutrition everything was thinking about mindset and I got that from steve and from the mind people That's great. Wow. Great. Well, thanks so much you guys. It's really been fun talking with you You're both having books released today, right? That's right. Both of our books released today Okay, well, why don't you take the last minute and tell people how to get ahold of them? The names of the books are my book is lies I taught in medical school and it's on amazon or barns and noble or your local library or independent bookstore Okay, and steve mine is the nine pillars of resilience the proven path to master stress Slow aging and increased vitality. I love the subject It's a step-by-step process that is presented. So excellent excellent All right, all right one other thing any plans for any future gatherings between the youtube probably yeah Get these books out first. Yeah, it was a great experience. So Actually steve and I are doing a joint book signing at the local barns and noble here in A couple weeks. Oh, yeah, that's great. We'll need to get there All right, thanks everybody happy future now and thanks being there. I really appreciate it Thanks, Bobby for listening so well in the background. Uh, you'll be analyzing what you guys said and reporting on the next shelf Thanks again Thank you.