- Dr. David Sinclair is a leading thinker on age reversal and epigenetics
- Aging is not just damage to the body, but a loss of information
- There is a backup copy of information in every cell, which changes everything
- Dr. Sinclair believes in true age reversal, not just slowing aging
- He has published a paper on controlling aging using epigenetics in mammals
- He believes there is no upper limit to human aging
- The next decade is crucial for advancements in longevity technologies.

- A major breakthrough has been made in understanding and controlling the aging process
- There is a backup copy of information in every cell that can be accessed and reset to a younger state
- Living a healthy lifestyle can slow down aging and make cells biologically younger
- The epigenome controls gene regulation and can be stabilized through lifestyle choices
- Aging is like scratches on a CD, but these scratches can be polished off to restore youthfulness
- There is potential for longevity escape velocity, where science can extend life more than one year for every year lived
- Research has shown promising results in resetting the age of cells in mice and non-human primates
- Clinical trials for age reversal in humans may begin within the next 18 months to 2 years.

- The speaker predicts that within the next 18 months to 2 years, they will be testing an age reversal clinical trial in humans to cure blindness.
- They have a small lab with around 20 PhD students and postdocs who perform research on age reversal.
- They have been able to grow human brains in the lab and reverse their age, restoring their thinking ability.
- They have also reversed the age of an old mouse's brain, allowing it to regain its ability to learn.
- The speaker believes that there will be a day when people can rejuvenate their brains and regain memories and learning abilities.
- There are already technologies and drugs available, such as rapamycin, that can reset age to some extent.
- The use of AI and increased funding in the field will accelerate progress in age reversal research.
- The speaker believes that if a rejuvenation therapy works for one tissue or organ, it is likely to work for the entire body.
- They use a domesticated virus called AAV for gene therapy, which has an on-off switch to control the activation of therapeutic genes.

- The speaker discusses their research on gene therapy and the ability to control when genes are activated for safety reasons.
- They mention the potential to reset genes multiple times through antibiotic treatment or infusions of specific drugs.
- The speaker expresses a desire to develop age-reversal technologies and turn gene therapies into pills for easier distribution.
- They mention the importance of accessibility and affordability of these treatments for everyone.
- The speaker talks about the molecule NMN and its role in raising NAD levels, which decline with age.
- They mention ongoing human clinical trials with NMN and potential health improvements observed in participants.
- The speaker addresses rumors about NMN being taken off the market and expresses a desire for widespread access to health solutions.
- They briefly mention the use of rapamycin and metformin in their own health regimen and their transition to a vegan diet.

- The speaker was experiencing memory loss and aging symptoms but found improvement after switching to a vegan diet
- They still occasionally consume butter, milk, and alcohol but try to focus on plant-based foods
- Switching to a plant-focused diet reduced their biological age by two years in just a few months
- Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of aging, but NMN and NAD boosters can rejuvenate mitochondria
- Exercise and fasting can also help maintain healthy mitochondria
- The speaker tries to stick to one meal a day but sometimes eats lunch as well, focusing on legumes and high-protein plants
- They are working on a new book that will provide guidance on living a longer, healthier life in today's world
- Factors that can counter a longer, healthier life include smoking, excessive alcohol intake, high waist size, and inflammation
- Maintaining a healthy BMI and reducing inflammation through diet and avoiding allergens are important for healthy aging.

- Dr. David Sinclair is a leading thinker on age reversal and epigenetics
- Aging is a loss of information, not just damage to the body
- There is a backup copy of information in every cell that can be accessed and reset to a younger state
- Living a healthy lifestyle can slow down aging and make cells biologically younger
- Research has shown promising results in resetting the age of cells in mice and non-human primates
- Clinical trials for age reversal in humans may begin within the next 18 months to 2 years
- The speaker's lab has been able to reverse the age of human brains and restore thinking ability
- There are already technologies and drugs available, such as rapamycin, that can reset age to some extent
- The use of AI and increased funding in the field will accelerate progress in age reversal research
- The speaker discusses their research on gene therapy and the ability to control when genes are activated for safety reasons
- The speaker expresses a desire to develop age-reversal technologies and turn gene therapies into pills for easier distribution
- The speaker talks about the molecule NMN and its role in raising NAD levels, which decline with age
- The speaker addresses rumors about NMN being taken off the market and expresses a desire for widespread access to health solutions
- The speaker has experienced improvements in memory and aging symptoms after switching to a vegan diet
- Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of aging, but NMN and NAD boosters can rejuvenate mitochondria
- Exercise and fasting can also help maintain healthy mitochondria
- The speaker is working on a new book that will provide guidance on living a longer, healthier life
- Factors that can counter a longer, healthier life include smoking, excessive alcohol intake, high waist size, and inflammation.

Get my new Longevity Practices book for free: https://www.diamandis.com/longevity 

In this episode, filmed during Abundance360, Peter and David discuss David’s groundbreaking research on reversing aging through epigenetic changes, emphasizing that aging is not just damage to the body but a loss of information. They talk about age reversal as a possibility, rejuvenating brains, and regaining lost memories.

David Sinclair is a biologist and academic known for his expertise in aging and epigenetics. Sinclair is a genetics professor and the Co-Director of Harvard Medical School’s Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. He’s been included in Time100 as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and his research has been featured all over the media. Besides writing a New York Times Best Seller, David has co-founded several biotech companies, a science publication called Aging, and is an inventor of 35 patents

Read Sinclair’s latest study, Chemically Induced Reprogramming to Reverse Cellular Aging: https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text 

Learn about Abundance360: https://www.abundance360.com/

Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic – a 2-in-1 probiotic and prebiotic that supports digestive health, gut immunity, skin health, heart health, and more.  Try Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic, and make sure to use the code MOONSHOTS at checkout to get a 25% discount. https://seed.com/partner/moonshots

Topics:

0:00 - Unlocking the Secret to Longevity
2:45 - Abundance 360 - With Dr. Sinclair
3:06 - Reversing Human Aging: Possible?
7:21 - Aging Beyond its Limits?
8:35 - Understanding the Aging Process
12:02 - Controlling the Epigenome.
15:45 - Reaching Longevity Escape Velocity
16:35 - Can Aging Be Reversed?
20:15 - Symbiotic for Gut Health
21:36 - Exploring the Longevity Lab
22:28 - Rejuvenating Brains With Science
24:16 - Reversing Aging With Drugs
32:26 - Aging Reversal: $38 Trillion
33:15 - NMN: Military Trials for Life
38:48 - Reversing Aging Through Diet
44:09 - A Low Inflammation Lifestyle



--------------------------------------------

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Do you think there is an upper limit to human aging?

I thought that that wasn't fair to have consciousness and to know that we're going to be sick and die and watch everyone else die.

I was inspired by my grandmother who told me that humans can do better.

My PhD supervisor said, why would you go study aging?

And thank goodness I didn't listen to him.

Aging isn't just damage to the body like we wear out.

There will be a day I believe where you'll be able to rejuvenate your brain and get back memories get your ability to learn again I'm no longer talking about slowing aging.

I'm talking about true age reversal multiple times There's a backup copy of information in every cell And that fact that there is a backup copy changes everything.

1 of my favorite conversations from Abundance360 this year was a fireside chat with Dr.

Known around the world as 1 of the leading, if not the leading, thinker on age reversal and epigenetics, David is a professor at Harvard Medical School who studies aging and longevity.

He had just published an epic paper in Cell about the work he's done over 13 years on how to accelerate aging from epigenetic changes and then reverse that aging.

In this segment we're going to be diving into the work that he's most recently done and where he thinks it's going.

I've donated to his lab, I've written about his work in the book that I wrote with Tony Robbins called Lifeforce.

I promoted his book Lifespan, David Sinclair's book, probably more than I've promoted my books.

He's 1 of the most exhilarating thinkers, a dear and beautiful soul.

We're going to be visiting David during my Longevity Platinum trip this coming August and going to his lab and I'll probably have a follow-on podcast when we dive into some of the deep science that he's doing.

He's an individual that during this conversation will answer the question, is there an upper age to how long we live?

What is the latest on the epigenetic reprogramming that has been able to reverse the aging of tissues?

And He's someone with whom I'm working on a health span X prize super excited about this.

What would you do with an extra 20 or 30 years of healthy lifespan?

You're about to find out Enjoy this episode from my private summit, Abundance 360, with Dr.

Thank you to you and Sreena for flying in from India.

Well, the topic of longevity has grown to 1 of epic proportions.

And I think I want to hit on a point I made earlier.

The idea of human health span extension of age reversal was kind of a taboo subject a while ago, wasn't it?

When I started in this field in the early nineties, it was considered the end of my career by many people.

So my PhD supervisor said, why would you go study aging?

So remember that for our students out there watching.

Was it, what was it that got you to move into that direction?

It was definitely more than an inkling and still is.

If any of you have read my book, you'll know that it was...

By the way, how many folks up here have read Lifespan?

And Peter, I think you know the answer to the question.

And that's what I love about what Peter does here.

There's a bright horizon that we need to get to.

We need to steer humanity in that direction.

That's why we're friends, among other reasons.

And so she said when I was 4 years old that everybody I knew, including my pets, were going to die and it's not going to be pretty and then I'm going to die.

And as a four-year-old, that was a bit of a shock to be told that.

And we all learn this around the same age, but we forget about it because it's too painful to live every day knowing that fact.

As sentient beings, as conscious animals, it's really a burden that we bear.

And I thought that that wasn't fair, to have consciousness and to know that we're going to be sick and die and watch everyone else die.

And then at age around 15, 16, I thought this new technology called genetic engineering could actually tackle this problem in a way that had never been done before.

You published a few landmark papers, this 1 being amongst them, that showed the ability to control aging using epigenetics in mammals.

Just what were the major points of that paper?

Because it definitely, it cemented your work and this concept of the information theory of aging.

Yeah, so the information theory of aging, as it's called, I formulated when I was still in my 20s.

I woke up in the middle of the night with this idea.

I guess it was delivered to me by muses, wrote it down in my notebook, and I still have that notebook in my office, and I've been going off that playbook ever since.

And that's the idea that aging isn't just damage to the body like we wear out, it's actually a loss of information that we inherited from our parents and built on during development.

And we just finally published, when was that, 25 years later, that we mammals have the same issue.

And by understanding, I think, a large part of why we age, we were able to control the aging process in a colony of mice, driving them forwards and backwards in their age and making them get diseases.

So 1 of the questions we asked everybody when they walked in here was to put on their badge, how old do you think you will live?

And I think the 90% had hit 120 or higher, But I think what's happened is society has trained us to have certain expectations, right?

If your parents or grandparents had made it to 75 or 80, you expect that.

And when you hear the oldest living human being is 122, 123, you think, okay, there's a brick wall there.

1 of the questions I'd love you to share, or 1 of the answers I'd love you to share is do you think there is an upper limit to human aging?

There are lots of reasons why I give that answer.

To me it's self-evident, but for some people it isn't.

And there are critics of this idea that we can live beyond 120, but 1 of the best examples is that we've been able to extend the lifespan of every species that we've tried to extend the lifespan of, and we're no different from those species.

The second is that there are many species who are very similar to us genetically, biologically, that live a lot longer than we do.

The best example would be the bowhead whale, but a lot of whales live longer than us.

And that, you know, they have children, they're conscious, they produce milk.

So we just need to mimic what they have that allows them to live so long.

And I think we have a much better idea now of how to do that.

And so, yeah, there is no law that says we must age.

So 1 of the things that's going on, we've spent the last few days talking about massive advances in AI and quantum computing and sensors networks, big data.

And the realization is we're in a period of very hyper growth of these technologies.

And as Ray Kurzweil, who will be speaking tomorrow morning, talks about the bridge to a bridge, that your job is not to live now to do something that's going to get you an extra 100 years.

It's to get you the next 10 healthy years to intercept those technologies.

I think you do, but maybe your timeframe is different, that this next decade is very different than any time ever.

So we're already many decades ahead of where I thought we would be technologically from when I started.

I thought I was working to help my children and future children and grandchildren, but it Turns out that the pace of discovery has gone way faster, and that's partly due to technology.

We can now do an experiment that analyzes billions of genes in the same time frame in a day that used to take us years of work and billions of dollars.

And that allows us to do very quick experiments.

The other thing that makes me super positive about this is that we've made a, I think we've made a major breakthrough in our understanding of not just why we age, but also how to control that process.

And the turning point in my career was the discovery that there's a backup copy of information in every cell, in everybody's cells, and that that backup copy can be accessed.

And there's a switch that you can flip that allows cells to reset their biological age and function again as though they were young because literally they are young again.

And that fact that there is a backup copy changes everything.

I'm no longer talking about slowing aging.

I'm talking about true age reversal multiple times.

And I don't get laughed off stage anymore when I say that.

The idea that we aren't tied to the tyranny of aging and death is extraordinary.

I've been asked over and over again, what do I do for my own health?

Well, I put it down in this book called Peter's Longevity Practices.

In the book I cover longevity diet, exercise, sleep, my annual found upload, meds and supplements, longevity mindset.

It's literally consumable in just an hour's time.

Hopefully to incentivize you to make a difference in your life, to intercept the technologies coming our way.

Just check out the link below and download it right now.

The evidence that you have for this backup copy, there are a few things you speak about in your book and your podcast.

Could you speak, just a few examples there?

We've got some visuals we could call up actually.

So let's call up the slide with the 4 faces on it, the top right on our guide here.

So how many of you have heard of the epigenome or at least epigenetics?

So the concept is that what we've realized is that most of disease and disability is not driven by our genes.

It's actually controlled by the regulator of those genes, which is the epigenome.

1 of the best examples of that are these people here.

So these are individuals from 2 sets of twins.

These are in Denmark, a very large study of Danish twins, looking at the effects of genes versus environment or epigenetics, which is what responds to the environment.

And so if we click the button forward once, you'll see that the identical twin of these 2 individuals, hopefully you can see, looks a lot younger and is actually younger biologically.

And it turns out that by living a healthy lifestyle often you hear about doctors recommending these things we know a lot about how to slow down the aging process you don't just look younger you actually are biologically younger and that's why if you exercise you eat right you eat less often you take the right supplements you will be biologically younger and you will actually stave off disease until much later.

If we go back 1 slide, the concept is information.

So the main type of information that we know about is the genome in the DNA.

But there's also another level of information that's just as important and even more complex.

And those are the structures that control how the DNA is bundled and shaped and which genes out of the 25,000 get turned on and off when we're forming an embryo and we develop.

And those genes can be switched on and off depending on how we live.

If we put our bodies in a state of perceived adversity or adversity that isn't too damaging, the epigenome will actually respond and be more stable.

So the idea is you want to stabilize your epigenome so that your cells remember how to function youthfully for longer.

The analogy as shown in this slide is a compact disc.

Hopefully all of you remember what those things are.

When I teach at Harvard, the kids are like, what are you talking about?

So if you're young, it's like resetting a computer or pressing the buttons on the side of your iPhone.

So what the analogy is that the digital information is the DNA and that's the music, but you need to read it.

The epigenome is the equivalent of the reader of that information and the songs are the genes.

And aging, I believe, and our new paper presents very strong evidence this is the case, that aging is akin to scratches on the CD so that the cells still have the music, the genes, but they're just not read correctly at the right time and the right place so that your cells forget how to work.

So we see that brain cells become more like skin cells and skin cells become more like kidney cells.

We become a melange instead of highly differentiated functioning youthful cells.

And so that's the information theory of aging And what we found out in this paper is what drives that process in large part is broken DNA.

Avoid x-rays, CT scans, if you can help it.

And live ways that actually prevent those breaks, because that disrupts the epigenome we showed.

But here's the cool point, is that we've discovered you can polish off those scratches and get back the beautiful music of cells and their youth.

There's a concept that has been talked about for some time of longevity escape velocity, that there's a moment in time that for every year that you're alive, science can extend your life for more than a year.

And I think the numbers that people talk about today is that we're for every 4 years, we're adding a year of life.

Where are you on this, and what do you think will reach longevity escape velocity?

Well, So we get about 3 months for every year we stay alive, currently, without breakthroughs like the 1 I'm talking about.

Let me give you an update on where we are today.

And whatever you're willing to say, I know some of it's amazing.

And we can extrapolate from here, but remember it's not linear.

There's 1 thing, you know from from this conference the The journey has been a rapid 1.

We made this discovery that you can reset the age of cells human tissue mouse tissue living mice What is it now?

We reset the eyeballs of mice to be young again.

Nature was bold enough to put the title, Turning Back Time, on the cover of their magazine.

And this is the paper that changed everything for my lab, for my outlook about aging.

And what we've done since then is we've formed a company called Life Biosciences, and they've been pushing ahead for all those years.

We've never seen anything negative after years of work and driving this process.

We found that those 3 genes, O, S and K for short, these are gene regulators that set off a cascade of events during embryogenesis to make a young human.

Turns out, lucky for all of us, I think, is that those 3 genes also set back the clock in adult cells without causing tumors or any disease.

CA1 And without bringing them back so far that they've lost identity.

And this is the thing that blows my mind, is you'd think that if you just keep it on for a long time, you'd go back to 0, age 0, which you don't want.

There's a barrier that prevents them from going back to 0 if we leave off that other gene.

And so now we're at the point where we're conducting, at Life Biosciences, a Boston-based company, non-human primates, these are green monkey studies.

I should say, the reason that there's an iris on this cover is that we show that you could reverse blindness due to glaucoma and also old age by resetting the age of the retina back to youth.

And those mice got their full vision back again.

So think about this, your body, if this is true, the body looks old, but it's actually, it just needs to be reset.

So I don't think of an old person now as an old person.

I think it's just a body that needs to be reset.

So this is a big deal because, I mean, 1 of the critiques about the work that you and other individuals in this field have done is it's all done in mice.

You know, that's great, but we're humans.

We share 99.99% of our genetic code with them.

We do, and so I've had a sneak peek at the results, and I would say things look rather promising at this point.

And So it's my prediction that we'll be in the next 18 months to 2 years testing our first age reversal clinical trial in humans to cure blindness.

And those studies are actually being planned right now and the material to do that is being manufactured.

How are you guys feeling about your longevity mindsets now?

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All right, let's get back to our episode.

You know, we're gonna be, thank you, we're gonna be visiting your lab during the Longevity Platinum trip in August and September.

How many graduate students do you have there?

What's the setup that you have that we'll be meeting?

Yeah, I don't know if you had this experience, but every day I go into my lab and I'm surprised how small it is.

Like Elon Musk says, if you have dedicated people who know really how to make a difference and look forward rather than today, they can achieve anything.

And so I've got this small group of around 20 bright-eyed, young PhD students and postdocs who perform all this magic.

And it's a pretty small lab, it's about a thousand square feet, we do it all there.

And yeah, it's, to me, it's amazing to walk in there and I never get tired of showing people around because it's like magic.

You go in and you see, actually, I think the next slide might be interesting.

Click to the right, and what you'll see is that we're now growing human brains.

So on the left, we have cerebral organoids grown from human tissue.

We can now, I think we're the only lab now that can make these brains get really old.

We can make them 70 years old within a matter of weeks.

We can measure that with these electrodes on the right.

And then we can, And we do reverse the age of those little organoids, and they get their thinking ability back, whatever that is, we do see the electroactivity come back.

Sometimes they grow little eyes as well, it's kind of cool.

It's not just cool, it actually tells us that the whole brain is reversible.

And we've actually done this now in mice.

We haven't published this, so you've heard it here first, that we can reverse the age of an old mouse's brain, so they have dementia.

We spend 3 weeks reversing the age of the brain.

We just give them an intravenous injection of our therapy, turn it on for 4 weeks, and those mice have a young brain, and they have their ability to learn again.

So I imagine a day where we will have an infusion either in our eye or in our whole body, and we just take a drug to turn those genes on.

We use doxycycline, just your antibiotic.

Just the trigger, we don't need an antibiotic, it's not used as an antibiotic, it's an on-off switch.

But we can reset the body and so, after the eye we're gonna go after hearing and dementia.

And there will be a day, I believe, where you will be able to rejuvenate your brain and get back memories, get your ability to learn again.

I mean, are you guys hearing the same thing?

See all Peter H. Diamandis transcripts on Youtube

Aging is Now Optional w/ David Sinclair | EP #60