David Sinclair on How Fasting Can Help Fight Against Aging

And what is going on with eating? So if you have one meal, and say this meal comprises 2000 calories or whatever, and you have this meal at 6pm and you fast for 24 hours until you eat again at 6pm, if you have this one meal a day, why is it better to do that than to have, say, you know, smaller meals of like 500 calories multiple times per day, little snacks? Well, because going back 6 million years back, you know, we're in the trees and then in the savannah, our bodies were designed, well, or evolved to respond to adversity. And we've removed that from our lives, because it feels good. But we need adversity to be resilient and to fight disease. So what I'm saying is that period of hunger, and it's not even hunger these days, I didn't even feel it. I feel great if I don't eat. And it takes a few weeks. So anyone wants to start, give it some time, give it a couple of weeks. But what's happening in the body is you're turning on these adversity, hormesis response genes, we call them longevity genes, and they make the body fight aging and diseases. And so by eating through the day, the traditional, oh, you've got to have breakfast, best meal of the day, blah, blah, blah. First of all, it's not true that you need to be full or fed to think clearly. It's very clear that people who are fasting have as good, if not better, mental acuity. Okay, that's one. So I think that that needs to be thrown out the window. Kids are different. We're not talking about kids, we're talking about adults. And we're not talking about malnutrition or starvation too, let's be clear. But we are talking about lengthening that window of not eating. So if you always are satiated, fed, your body says, hey, I've just killed a mammoth, no problem, don't need to worry about survival, I'm just going to go forth and multiply and screw my long-term survival. So this is all about long-term survival by making the body freak out that there's tough times. And that's running away, like running away from a cat, like the savannah, and being hungry. There's molecular reasons that all this works, but trust me, the data is very clear that this is the way to go if you want to be healthy in your 80s and 90s. Well it actually does make sense when you put it in that way, that your body, when you're fed, relaxes. And so if you're just doing that all day long, and I know for a fact that when I am not fed and I go and do things, whether it's perform, one of the things that I've been doing is I don't eat before shows. Like I take many, many hours before a comedy show. And I used to just like eat whenever. And then I would do shows and I would have a meal like an hour before the show and I don't know, I'm trying to wake up, I'm only trying to come on, come on, come on. But I've now recognized, actually I saw a video where Cat Williams was talking about this. Do you know what Cat Williams is? Hilarious comedian? I do know. Well you're slipping if you don't. He's hilarious. He was doing this interview and he was saying, what's your process before a show? And one of the things is I don't eat. I make sure I don't eat. And I was like, that's wise. That's really smart. And I'm like, I needed to hear that even though I kind of knew it, but I never written it down. I never like associated it absolutely, but now I have. Like now I do not eat before shows. I won't do it unless I know I have three hours. So what's your average day look like? It depends entirely on whether or not I'm doing podcasts. If I'm doing podcasts, generally I'm up early. I get my workouts in. I usually have something to eat after the workout. So I'm talking about like I eat around 11, 11 a.m. That's my first meal of the day. And then I go and do my stuff. And I generally feel like my workouts are so strenuous that I'd need some sort of nutrition afterwards. Some sort of fruit to pump the muscles back up and give them some sugar and some protein. So usually I'm eating meat and maybe like an apple or something like that. That's like a normal meal for me. And then I don't eat again until nighttime. Great. And you're not snacking? No. Maybe sometimes after a podcast I'll have like, we have these on it warrior bars that are just buffalo meat and some cranberries and stuff. I like those. I'll eat one of those. Good. Well, at least you're going to 11. You got that sleep. Yeah. So you're probably not eating late. It's just the strenuous activity. My workouts are very hard. So after them I feel like I need something. I don't like that feeling of like a brutal workout and then being starving for four or five hours because then it becomes a distraction. So I listen to my body. But if I don't work out, I don't eat until dinner. Like say a day like today, I didn't work out today. So I woke up, hung out with the dog, had some coffee, sat out, went over some emails, did some shit just a relaxed morning and then rolled into here no food. I won't eat until we're going to dinner tonight. Great. I won't eat until then. Yeah. With Lex. That's going to be fun. And John Donner. Yeah, of course. Looking forward to meeting you. Yes. So you're doing the right things. Certainly better than most people. But what I'm trying to build or make are molecules that mimic fasting as well. So if you cannot fast like I do, then you can just take a pill. And what we've shown in mice at least is that if you give them this molecule that I'm taking, NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide, which as I mentioned speeds up metabolism, those other stuff, those mice could run 50% further. These old mice, we gave it to them for three weeks, put them back on a treadmill and those that had the NMN in their water ran 50% further. Better blood flow, better oxygenation, better energy. And that is literally exercise in a pill. That's crazy. So we're in late stage human clinical trials now. Well, anything that's going to be released to the public. Well, it depends on what the FDA does and if it was mother fuckers. Oh, don't get me in trouble. I love the FDA. I do too. But it's fair enough. They protect us. Yes. So we're going through the procedure that has been around since, as I mentioned, early 20th century. But we've done hundreds of people now, certainly dozens over the last few years. And we know at least that this molecule is apparently safe and raises the levels of the molecule we want to build up. The molecule is called NAD. Do you want to talk a little bit about NAD? Yes, please. So NAD is what those mitochondria, little miconite, little energy producing things use to make energy. So there are two molecules in the body that are really great. You need both for life. And without them, as I said, you're dead. ATP is the energy and NAD makes that. And as we get older, the levels of NAD go down. Our body makes less and actually also degrades it more. So if you take my skin or in the study that they took people's skin, when you're 50, you've got half the levels of this NAD than you did when you were 20, which is scary because this molecule is required for life. Without it, we're dead in 30 seconds. So what we're doing with our clinical trials is giving a precursor, a smaller version of this that the body will turn into NAD and bring those levels back up from where they are when you're old to where you are when you're young. And we see at least in animals and hopefully in people that it revs up their metabolism and makes them fight aging and disease like we do when we're young. I mean, there's a reason we don't get a lot of heart disease when we're young or Alzheimer's because our bodies fight against diseases. We get older and especially if we sit around or smoke and don't exercise, our bodies just give up. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.