The Medical Profession is Ageist | Joe Rogan and David Sinclair

Do you take anything else that is notable? Well, I can run you through it. Sure. I'm on a statin for high cholesterol. Why are you on a statin? I've been on a statin since I was in my 20s. Whoa. Yeah. Hmm. That stuff's fucking terrible for you. Right. So my good friend and colleague, George Church, at Harvard told me I'm killing myself, but I have really high cholesterol. My family. Genetically. And does your family have a history of heart disease because of this? Yeah. So my grandmother, at least according to her, had a stroke in her 30s. Whoa. And then, yeah, it's bad. So I'm fighting bad Ashkenazi Jew genes here. Hmm. That's crazy. It's been on them since you're in your 20s. That's, and you're a thin man. If anybody looked at you, they would never think that you would have an issue. Yeah. It's unfortunate, but I'm a doctor's worst nightmare. Cholesterol, I teach them so I know what they're like. But also when I go into the doctor's office, I say, here's what we should be doing, or you should be doing to me. And so I went in my 20s and I said, I want to go on a statin. And this is in the days when statins weren't well studied. And my doctor said, but you're not old. And I said, I don't want to wait till I'm old and sick to get this medicine. I need it now. And I fought the doctor, fought the doctor. And eventually he prescribed it. And my cholesterol came down. I'm the same with dentists. I went to the dentist a few months ago and I said, I want my teeth fixed. My two front teeth. And she said, they're fine. Normal wear and tear. And I said, I don't care what's normal. Fix my teeth, get them back to how I was when I was 20. No, we don't do that. We don't do that. Well, you did my daughter, right? Last week. Yeah, but she's young. She's got a future. Oh, bloody hell. Don't be ageist. What was wrong with your teeth? Oh, they're wearing out. And I hated feeling that worn out. Wearing out? You don't get that? In what way? And shorter and flatter. What the fuck are you eating? Rocks? Yeah, I must be. It's the Australian diet. A lot of sand in your food? Yeah, so I said to her, I thought you were one of the world's best dentists. And she said, okay, fine. I'll do it, but don't blame me if it doesn't work. And so she... Doesn't work. Well, she was worried that it might snap off or not. So she's putting a cap on you? Yeah, she's extending my two front teeth. But that's normal. Like people get caps all the time. Well, it's not a cap. It's actually just material stuck to the tip right there. Oh, just on the tip. Yeah, it's... Oh, so like if you had a chip tooth, they would do that instead of replace the actual tooth itself. That's what they did to my daughter. Yeah. And I said, do that to me. That looks great. And she said, no, no, no. Finally she said, okay, but it's your problem. You got to pay for it. Fine. And she did it. And she actually said at the end of it, this is great. I might offer this as a procedure to other patients. But my point is not about teeth. It's that the medical profession is ageist. They give young people certain treatments because they're young and they don't give them to the old, but then they don't give the young people the treatments that they need before they get old. Yeah. It's wacky. I had a similar thing happen with a torn meniscus. I have a minor meniscus tear. And the guy told me, well, if you were young, they would stitch it up and hope that it would heal. I'm like, what the fuck does that mean? I go, everything works good. Like what is difference? What is the difference between me and a younger body? And he said something about blood flow. You have more blood flow. I said, look, I'm not a doctor, but that doesn't make any sense. I go, I'm working out all the time. There's a lot of blood going through there. Like what the fuck is happening? And I'm like, let's just shoot some stem cells in there and see what's up because they wanted to do meniscus, you know, what is it, menoscopy, whatever, what they call it when they cut some of the meniscus out. And I'm like, yeah, let's just try. It's totally working. Like, I don't have any pain in it now. So I think there's a weird thing that they do do when you get to a certain age. Like I have a friend who has a torn ACL and they essentially, he's in his 50s, like late 50s and they essentially told him not to fix it. I go, hey fucker, get it fixed. What are you crazy? I have a wobbly knee. And they're like, well, they told me if I was younger, fuck that doctor. Go get that thing fixed. He's like, wow, the recovery time, like shut up. You just recover. You just, you're alive. A year goes by, it's fixed. Just stop. Just go get it fixed. Yeah. See, that's the problem with today's society because we think a 50 year old is over real. Dead. That's BS. 50 is still very young. Actually there are 70 year old, 80 year olds, even 90 year olds still playing tennis. Yeah. Loving life. That's just the beginning of what's coming. If you maintain activity. That seems to be the key. The really hard thing is when someone's in their 50s and they want to get in shape now and they haven't been active their whole life. That seems to be a problem. Their DVD is scratched up. Yes. Hard to go back. It can be done though. I did see a guy who was 58 years old who started running marathons at 58. In his 70s he's running sub three hour marathons and he looks great. He just had to take his time and really be dedicated and watch his diet, nutrition, and next thing you know this guy's an elite marathon runner. It is doable. What we find in the lab is if we treat mice early in life it gives them the better, much better life span. Sure. So don't ever leave it too late. Well you see that with athletes. Athletes that were fit when they were young and never lost it. Really maintained and stayed in the gym and stayed active. You see them in their 50s and even in their 60s looking great. Whereas once your body deteriorates it's very difficult to bring it back. But if you maintain it it seems like there's people today that are doing that and it's much more common. If you go to a gym for instance, go to a nice gym, you'll see a lot of folks that are in their 60s and 70s that are really active and they're there all the time and their regulars have the gym and they look great. They do. My father is a prime example of that. So he's in Australia and he's been taking care of his body since he was in his early 40s. Probably a little too late but still he's been taking cement a man and cement form and for a while he was a very tall. But he's been active. That's the key I think. And then so that combination, so he's now just turning 80 this year, you would think that he's 30. If you didn't know his age, he's running around. My mother passed away from cancer so he's dating women, he's out every night, he's traveling the world. Now this is the future for people in their 80s. He started a new career at 80. It was at 76. What's he doing? He got bored. So he retired at 67, thought he had another 10 years of good life and he kept going and going and going. His friends are getting frail, he's still active. So he went back and he's working at Sydney University on the ethics panel for clinical trials and other studies. And that's what you want older people with wisdom and knowledge to do, to give back. That sounds good too, like for you, you get your dad hopped up on all these awesome new drugs, then you get him working on the ethics panel for clinical studies and then you get him to give you some death row patients so you can try it on, right? Ethics. Yes, I know what you're doing now man. You're wiggling the system a little bit with your hyperactive super healthy dad. Right, well I don't recommend anything even to my family but they end up demanding it. My brother was pretty upset that we weren't giving him any. Well it seems like it's working out really well for your father. So Met Forman, the NMM and what else is he taking? He's also on a statin and he exercises, that's the main thing. So he's on a statin as well because he has the same predisposed condition. That's an awful condition man. One of the things that I was talking to my doctor about, he's saying that there are people that just have high blood pressure or higher, you know, higher blood pressure or higher instances of heart disease in their family and it's just a really unfortunate genetic issue. It is, it is. But fortunately we're able to tackle heart disease pretty well these days with blood pressure drugs and cholesterol drugs. There are some side effects, no question. But what we're talking about with these longevity drugs that are in development is that sure you can be prescribed this medicine for your Alzheimer's or for your liver disease but as a side effect it'll keep the rest of your body healthy as well, protect you against cancer and all these other things. That's what's so radical about what we're doing.