Modern Conveniences Are Making Us Weaker

Well, we live in a crazy age. We do. It's fun, but stressful for a lot of people. Stressful. Well, and for your study, for the study of human life extension and anti-aging, when you look at the stresses that are completely, they're very novel to the human experience, like the stresses of social media, the stresses of cell phone use, the stresses of blue light, like staring at screens at night, like all that stuff. How much of an effect do you think that's having on people, and have we even quantified that yet? We are quantifying it, and it's having a real negative effect. Mental health issues is going to be the medical problem of the 21st century, no question. There are companies that are doing these remote video chats with a psychologist or psychiatrist. They are booming. These are the next billion dollar companies. Really? Yeah. I mean, anyone want to make money, look into that. But we are living in a stressful world, and part of it's because we don't have much else to worry about. We've gotten rid of all the major worries. Wolves. Yeah. We don't have to ... We're not on the savannah anymore. We're not going to get picked off by a cheater, well, a lion probably. But we've built this world. Six million years ago, the first hominid, ape-like thing was up in the tree, walking around actually upright, which is interesting, right? Wasn't swinging from the branches. That picked up a stick. That animal picked up a stick, and that put us on this treadmill where we are today. Innovation after innovation, tool after tool after tool. But in response, our bodies have deteriorated. We only build our bodies as much as we need to. So if we've got tools, and we can throw rocks, we don't need a lot of muscles. And in fact, our head just expanded so we could build better tools faster and faster. And the culmination of that is an iPhone, but where are we going to be in another 100,000 years? It's really scary, because this treadmill, we cannot get off it. There's no going back. There's no stationary, because we've got problems that we've already created from our own technology that we have to solve with better technology. We're a species that, once we've picked up that stick, we're on this path. And those things that got us here, there are actually four traits that I can think of that got us here, that make us different from all other animals. Those are not just what got us here, they're our biggest threat. But we also have to use them to get us out of this problem. And what are those? Well, let's see. So the first one is tool making. Okay, no big deal. We've got hands that have evolved to throw rocks, shoes. Our feet actually are built for shoes. Imagine that. They're all these jeans that we've been... Feet are built for shoes. Yeah, yeah. Our feet actually are... We've had shoes for so many years that we've got feet that fit shoes. Have you ever seen what it looks like when those guys in the Amazon walk around with no feet and they develop these hand-like feet? No. Oh, they can pick up stuff? Oh, no, you have to see this. Because what happens is, when they walk around barefoot in the dirt for so long, their toes develop the ability to grip. So they're gripping the ground. So their toes, instead of being like a person who wears shoes all the time, where the toes are all connected, they splay out like hands. That's very strange. That makes sense. I want that. My friend Steve Ranella was in Guyana and he was hanging out with his tribe and they live in the forest. Look at their feet. That's incredible. Maybe that's the way we should be. That's the way I think people lived when they lived in the jungle forever. This is the Horani... How do you say that? Horani? This is the Ecuadorian rainforest, these people. When you look at their feet, I think it's soft ground and they're walking around in dirt all the time and their feet splay out and they develop the ability to push off of things with their feet. So it's the exact opposite of the way human beings develop bunions where they smush their feet into these shoes that don't really fit human feet and then they get these weird bunions where their toes are pointed towards the other toes. This is the opposite. They spread out like fingers. Yeah. Well, we can trace the genetics of this. We become a very weak species. If you get into a fight with a, let's say a chimp. Let's say a house cat. Even that, they'll bite you off or dog will eat your face off. We're at their mercy. But even the strongest human cannot beat your average chimp or any chimp. Not even close. We're pathetic. So we're basically a lollipop physique. We're a stick with a big head. But that's because we've had these tools for so many years. We've had fire. Even our guts have shrunken down. We don't have long intestine. So he put us out in the wild. We're screwed. We can no longer exist in the wild. Yeah. But I live in Boston. I'm out there in the winter for maybe 10 minutes. I'm dead. So that's who we are now. We are this pathetic physical species that has built tools that got us here but are actually messing with our minds. The blue light, the chairs we sit in, the food we eat all the time. These have made us a weaker species. So what I'm hoping to do with my research and some companies I'm building is to get us out of that problem and engineer our way out and also make wellness and health a thing that people actually can take care of themselves. And what are the steps that what there's one thing that people can do and exercise is a good one, right? Because of the fact that we live these sedentary lifestyles and most of the time people are sitting down and there's a lot of time spent standing at screens. How important do you think it is to get out and do something and what kind of an effect does that have? Like what kind of quantifiable effect does that have on life extension? Oh, it's very clear. There are two things you can do that are well known to extend your lifespan. And when I say extend lifespan, I don't mean be older for longer. I mean be healthier in your 80s and 90s. Like my dad who's turning 82 who's got the the physique and mental aptitude of probably a 30 year old. He's stronger than me. So you want that. Okay, so what do you have to do? Well, you have to start early. You can't just start when you're 80. Although it helps but it's not the best. So you want to just get out of the chair. People say walk but I think it's better to lose your breath. Become hypoxic, you know, hypoxia chambers or hyperbaric chambers. These stress the body a little bit. So run for 10 minutes a few times a week. That's what I do. And you don't have to run for hours. It's just 10 minutes is enough. Go biking. So it's a fact that people who regularly ride bikes and I think it was something like up to 80 miles a week. They would have a 40% less chance of having a heart attack than someone who didn't do that. So it's a massive change. It's not just a little thing at the margins. Massive changes. The other thing is which I do is to skip meals. So it's not that hard. I now feel weird if I eat a meal for breakfast or lunch and I try not to snack too. This idea of nutritionist, three meals a day plus snacks, never be hungry is killing us. It really is. I think that if you do these things to animals in controlled settings, they live longer, a lot longer, 20, sometimes 30% because they're healthier for longer. They don't get cancer and heart disease and dementia. So I don't know why we don't all do that. I just think we just like to sit around and eat. It's good. It feels good to just eat chips. Have M&Ms. Yeah, but don't do what just feels good. Oh, for sure. Yeah. When you talk about how eating one meal a day can extend your life, is it because when you're eating all the time, you're taxing your digestive system, which taxes your resources, or is there some sort of a mechanism that leads to decay of the human body from overconsumption? What is it? Yeah, so overconsumption or just consumption in general makes your body complacent. We know this in great detail at the molecular level. There are genes that respond to how much you're eating and what you're eating and whether you're exercising. And these are called longevity genes. And they give our body resilience and fight aging and slow down what we can now measure, the biological clock. So I can take your blood, or actually now we've developed a very cheap test, just a swab to be able to tell you very accurately how old you are, not based on how many times the earth goes around the sun. That's ridiculous. Age is just a number. You can actually take a swab. I can tell you how old you are really. But then using real science tell you how to slow that down. And this is really cool. Just in the last few years we figured out you can reverse human aging as well. 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.