636: Dr. Jeffrey Gladden on How We’ll Make 100 the New 30 and Longevity + Aging Research

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is about if it’s possible for us to make 100 the new 30 and we go into longevity and aging research today’s guest. His answer to that question would be absolutely yes, and probably in this decade. I’m here with Dr. Gladden, who began as an interventional cardiologist with the passion for bringing cutting edge services to outlying areas. And he pivoted to longevity medicine after facing his own mortality at the age of 50. He has cracked the code for himself, and he came to many new realizations and questions that drove him to his new consuming passion, which is helping others turn back the clock and start, stay young to live their best and most impactful lives. And he’s releasing his first book called Making 100 the New 30. And he also runs the Gladden Institute, where they provide a lot of the things we talk about today. But we get to delve into the pillars and the overlapping circles of aging and longevity and talk about some of the factors that may make the biggest difference. And we also have a conversation about what are some of the foundational things we can do with our kids to help them have a really solid foundation for longevity as well. I think you’ll enjoy this episode. And without any further ado, let’s join Dr. Jeffrey Gladden. Dr. Gladden, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Gladden: It’s great to be here. Really nice to be here, Katie. Thank you.

Katie: Well, I’m very excited to learn from you about all things longevity today. But before we jump into that, I also have a note from your bio that you love playing games, and I would love any that are especially favorites for you. I’m always looking for new recommendations to play with my kids.

Dr. Gladden: Oh, well, I’ll tell you, Rummy Cube is a game that my mother loves to play, and so we’ve played that a fair amount. Puerto Rico is a really interesting strategy game. If you’re into strategy games. Bang is an interesting game based on Italian Westerns where you’re basically trying to kill each other, but it becomes kind of a fun party game in a way. So those games are fun, but then I enjoy playing cards like Cribbage and Euchre and a game called Oh Heck. That’s also known as Oh Hell. That’s a very fun bidding game. So those are fun. And then I like to play games at the beach, like Bocce and Cadema or paddle board, that kind of thing. Paddle tennis kind of thing. Shooting baskets. What’s interesting is when I was in college, my college roommate was a big game player. He came from a game playing family. So literally we could be doing anything and we’d be making up a game as we went along. So it could be pitching stones against a fence, it could be anything but. So anyway, I just have that sort of playful mindset.

Katie: I’m sure there’s a way that relates to longevity as well. And of course, longevity now is what you are well known for your research in and your work around. I know it’s also an amazing story, but I would love to hear how you made the jump from interventional cardiology into now longevity.

Dr. Gladden: Yeah, so the story is one of self survival, quite honestly. I was a busy interventional cardiologist, and I did that for 25 years. And I built my own heart group. I had ten offices and twelve doctors. I had started cath labs and outlined hospitals. I co-founded a heart hospital with another cardiologist and a large institution named Baylor in Dallas. And I was involved with medical device companies, had a lot of things going on, had a young family at the time. And then in my fifties, I started putting on weight. I was exhausted all the time. The phrase in the house was, Dad’s always tired. If I would come under stress, I would be somewhat anxious, and then I would go over this cliff of depression. Quite honestly. It’s like you couldn’t talk yourself out of it. You just felt yourself going over the cliff. And then I was developing some brain fog, and my father had died with dementia. And so all of that became very concerning to me because I’ve been an athlete my entire life, played soccer, some soccer in college and basketball in high school and things like that, and liked to do a lot of outdoor activities.

So anyway, I went in and got some lab work done, and I was told that everything checks out okay for your age. You’re really just getting older and why don’t you take an antidepressant? And that just didn’t sit well with me. It was such an existential moment, quite honestly. I mean, to be told that you’ve hit the zenith of your life, it’s just going to be downhill from here, and you’re going to have to make peace with the fact that you’re aging and you’re losing capability, right? I mean, what a horrific message for any of us to get, right? And so I said, no, no, thank you, and kind of threw myself into functional medicine, age management medicine, integrated medicine, and two and a half years later, I’d crack the code for myself as to what was going on with subclinical Hypothyroidism. That was only diagnosed through biometric testing, not through lab work with hormone depletion. That was then repleted with understanding my genetics, that I don’t make certain neurotransmitters very efficiently.

And once I got on the right supplements and things like that to improve that, I felt great again. I mean, I felt literally great again. And I realized that I’ve been practicing sick care as a cardiologist, not health care. So I decided, you know, if I can feel this good, I wonder how good I can be. I wonder how good I can be, and I wonder how, you know, many years and decades I can carry it forward. So I left the cardiology group. I left behind what I knew for something. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I was just completely passionate about it because it was becoming my life story. And so that has evolved into Gladden Longevity, which is now kind of all in full bore, keeping people young. That’s really what we’re all about.

Katie: I love that story I say on here. I’m sure my listeners maybe are tired of hearing it, but that we are each our own primary healthcare provider. And I love your story because you really illustrated you were an actual health care provider, and then you became your own healthcare provider in the choices that you made, that made a really big difference for you. And I feel like that’s an empowering stance because then we realized all the variables we do have control over that can lead to a positive change in our own lives and realize no one’s coming to rescue us while we can work with great doctors. And that’s really helpful. At the end of the day, it’s our choices that determine who we are and all of our outcomes. And so I love that. Your story is such a beautiful example of that. And you mentioned this kind of curve that probably a lot of people listening can identify with where they feel like things start going downhill. But from a biological level, when does that youth phase of life technically end and aging start to begin? From a biological perspective?

Dr. Gladden: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll give you an answer, I think, just to comment on your comment. I think one of the key things for the audience to take away from this is that it’s really important when you’re talking with a healthcare provider that many times you’re talking to someone who’s been trained in a particular way, and they have a particular toolkit, and they’re married to this set of answers. They have a set of answers. This is what we do. This is how we think. This is what we’ve been taught. This is what our literature tells us, and they get married to a set of answers. And what I found to be so empowering in this entire field is not to be married to any of the answers, because the Gladden Longevity, we literally have thousands of answers that I never knew existed before, and yet we’re really only married to the questions, right? And I think if you frame for yourself, what questions am I really asking?

Like, for example, my questions are, how good can I be? And how do I make 100 the new 30? How do I function like, I’m 30 years old when I’m 100, and how do I live well, quote, unquote, well beyond 120. I wake up 27 every day. And that mindset is incredibly helpful at enabling me to do things. But then being married to those questions, if you’re talking to a healthcare provider and they’re not married to those questions, they’re married to, well, how do you make peace with where you are now? And we’ll give you something to kind of soothe the symptoms. And if those are the way that they’re thinking, then you know you’re not working with the right person. So I would just encourage you to identify your questions and then get married to those and stick with them. So you would ask me, what was the question? You’d ask me? I kind of got carried away with that.

Katie: Like, biologically, what determines when sort of youth ends and aging begins?

Dr. Gladden: So this has actually been worked out by people at Stanford, and it turns out that youth technically ends at age 26. So if you’re 26 or under, you’re still in your youthfulness 25 or under. Really, once you hit 26, it starts. And then aging is not a linear progression, right? We tend to think of it that way because every year it’s another birthday. It’s like, Well, I don’t feel that different, but in actual fact, it’s an exponential process. People age so much more between, say, 70 and 80 than they do between 30 and 40 or 40 and 50. And we know that. We see that all around us, and yet we have a hard time projecting it for ourselves. Hard time saying that ten years from now I’m going to be significantly different, or 15 years from now, I’m really going to be different. It’s just hard to imagine that. So aging really starts at age 26, and then it comes in waves. The first real wave is at 34. So there’s another surge there, and this is based on proteins that are released into the blood that are consistent with the aging process. There’s another surge, a smaller surge at age 60, but there’s a massive surge between age 63 that peaks at age 78. And that’s probably the steepest part of the aging process.

Katie: Well, and that’s so fascinating to me. It makes sense when you explain it, that it’s not a linear process, and it certainly wouldn’t just line up chronologically with our age. But then that makes me think, are there things that are within our control that we can either measure or modify that can affect that progression.

Dr. Gladden: 100%. Yeah. So the first thing is to kind of understand how old you are, right? I mean, the first question you may want to ask is, well, where am I in this process? In which case there’s testing that can be done to help you identify that. And at Gladden Longevity, we do very comprehensive testing because, in essence, we’re all a mosaic of ages. You have a bone age, you have a heart age. You have a brain age. You have DNA methylation age, which is an epigenetic age. You have an immune system age. You have telomeric age. You have mitochondrial age. You have all these different ages, really, that we’re comprised of. And then think of it this way, that you’re really only as young as your oldest age. So maybe in your family you’ve got a lot of heart disease or something, for example. Well, everything could be great. Maybe you’re 40 years old in a lot of areas, you’re 35 or 30 or whatever, and that’s wonderful. But your arteries are the arteries of a 55 year old, right? So your point of taking action is really going to be focused on arterial health, let’s say. That’s going to supersede some other things.

So actually going out and getting one biological age, like, there are different algorithms that can be used, take some routine blood tests, run them through a particular algorithm. It’ll spit out a biological age for you. I find that that’s misleading for people because they’re not really understanding where their vulnerabilities are. And then something sneaks up on them and they wonder, well, how did this happen? Right? Because I thought I was doing well. And so it’s important if you’re really serious about being young, is to know, okay, well, where am I aging the most and how do I attack that? So that’s the first thing.

And then the second thing is that you will never get away from the need to get good sleep, exercise, eat a healthy diet, which is really low inflammation, plant based. There can be some meat, and there occasionally whatever you need to do. But really, you need to understand that. The other thing you need to understand is that your biology doesn’t like to be forced into a corner. It’s not about being keto all the time. It’s not about doing anything to push your body one direction all the time. Your body likes to cycle through different stages, so that’s very important. And then there’s there’s all the rage about intermittent fasting right now, which is really interesting. But there was an article that was just published showing that people that eat one meal a day have a 30% increase in mortality and an 80% increase in cardiovascular disease. And so it’s really interesting. You have to be careful when you’re taking on these things. Right? Like, I’m going to be an intermittent faster. Okay, we’ll think about that, and I can talk you through a little bit more about how to do that safely, but there’s things like that that you have to start with, and then there’s another layer beyond that. So I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but I’ll let you keep asking the questions.

Katie: Oh, my gosh, you have so much we can go into. And I know that I’ve read in your work that you said it is possible to slow or halt or reverse aging today, and I definitely want to get into some of the specifics of that. But as a follow up on the fasting point, I’m curious if there are caveats to that around. Maybe more just circadian based fasting of eating when the sun’s out and not eating right before bed and or do you see any benefits in a longevity approach to longer forms of fasting, like the ones recommended by a lot of the major religions at different times during the year?

Dr. Gladden: Yeah, I think this is a really excellent question. So what we understand is that fasting is excellent. We know that calorie restriction in mammals across every species that’s ever been tried in does improve longevity. And it’s hard to be hungry all the time. You can fasting a 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours. There are five day fast mimicking diets out there. The prolonged five day fast mimicking diet. Walter Longo kind of pioneered this research out of USC. So you can technically fast for five days and not really break your fast. And what that does is it rejuvenates your whole system, right? You’re forced to recycle all the proteins and all the nucleic acids, etc. Your mitochondria rejuvenate themselves. And so there’s all this regenerative activity that comes from fasting.

That being said, when we intermittently fast and we’re going to not eat, and we’re just going to eat one meal a day because that’s going to be healthier, because we’re going to be keto and we’re going to be fasting for most of the day. Well, why would it be that if that’s so good, that in this study, with 24,000 people, by the way, between 1999 and about 2015, why is it that people had a 30% increase in mortality and an 80% increase in cardiovascular disease? And my understanding of that, my working hypothesis on that is that it’s not about the fasting being bad, it’s about the eating. We tend to think of eating as being a restorative activity, right? So I exercise now, I’m going to rest and recover, right? That’s restorative. I fast it all day and I’m going to eat that’s restorative.

But in actual fact, eating is actually a very stressful activity on the body, particularly if we’re eating large quantities of food. And so we’re better off, if you’re going to fast, to eat smaller quantities of food and spread it out over a few hours than you are to sit down and have that one meal. Right. Because all of a sudden your body has to cope with all those calories, fats, whatever else is in it. And I think that’s where the stress is coming.

The same is true if you’re going to do a longer fast. It’s not so much about the fasting. That’s great, but how do you reintroduce food? Right? I think you have to really pay attention to that. Smaller quantities, take it easy, maybe a little more frequent meals, that kind of thing, to kind of reintroduce food to your system.

Katie: I love that. And I love that you also touched on the point of sort of that adaptability and not putting your body in a corner. I haven’t heard it said it that way, but I think that’s a perfect way to say it in that I feel like there’s so many trends around really extreme versions of diets that restrict so much of one thing or point toward only one thing. And my thought has always been my goal is for my body to be very, very adaptable and to still always give it as good of inputs as I can. But I want it to be able to handle the fuel sources I give it. And I want it to be able to adapt to whatever my living environment is and not where I’m in a restrictive diet for my whole life in order to function in a normal way at all. And I feel like some of that maybe has gotten lost in these trendy diets that overly go in one direction or another. I would love your take on that, though. Are there any?

Dr. Gladden: Yeah, I think it’s really smart on your part to have that insight because really the body doesn’t want to see the same foods all the time. What the body really likes is variety, right? It really likes variety. So every time I go to the grocery store, I try to buy different things. I try to buy different things, different vegetables, different ingredients, different whatever, mix it up. Because your body really does like variety. And what we find is that if your body is exposed to the same foods all the time, your immune system starts to react to elements of that, and then you end up with food sensitivities or allergies or whatever it might be. And so I think variety is really key. So you have people that are on, like, okay, I’m on a meat diet, right? So I eat meat three times a day, and I put fat in my coffee, and if I could, I’d put meat in my coffee. And it’s kind of like you’re pushing yourself to such an extreme. Your body needs variety. It needs more nutrients than that. And so I think having a diet that’s more plant based, because we know that there’s so many good antioxidants, phytochemicals, cancer reducing, cardiovascular disease protecting there’s so many good things that come to us from plants and then filtering in the healthy fats. If you want to use MCT oil, fine. If you want to use some grass fed this or that, that’s fine too. But I think for most people, what we found is that that’s really become kind of their healthy diet, particularly when there’s good variety within that.

Katie: And you’ve also I’ve read in your work before that you called longevity as the currency of impact. Can you explain what you mean by that? And then from there, I want to springboard into some of these pillars of longevity.

Dr. Gladden: Okay. Yeah. So longevity or usefulness. So let’s just talk about that. So different people aspired to be different ages. Dave Asprey is 156, or maybe he’s 180. I think he’s 185, something like that. Dan Sullivan is 156. Peter Damantis is 700. Other people, 300, whatever it is. The problem with this is that for me, those numbers are pure abstractions. I have no way to relate to what it would be like to be 150 years old. Right. And every picture I ever saw of somebody that’s 100 or 110 or 120, it’s like, not so much. That’s not really what I’m going for. Right. But I relate to being young.

And so longevity, for me is really synonymous with the youthfulness. And so the real question is, how do we stay young for a long time? And I think that’s a really important thing to understand when you think about longevity. So that’s probably the best place to start. Right there is. Just think about what you want to do to be young. And then with the currency of impact. If you think about it as you age, if aging is exponential, let’s say you get to a point where you’re 70 years old and you’re really starting to decline, and yet your impact in your 20s was superseded by your impact in your 30s and then your 40s superseded debt and your 50s superseded debt and your 60 superseded debt because you’re gaining wisdom and insight and relationships and more resources. So your impact is becoming exponentially increased. And yet when the lines cross, then your impact starts to crater.

And once people hit 80, their impact can just go to nothing. And the thing that’s really tragic is you take really vibrant, contributing individuals and the next thing you know, they’re becoming almost irrelevant to everyone but their family, right? Because now they’re being visited in a nursing home or wherever it is. And that’s really a tragedy. Yet if we stay young, if we stay young for a long time, let’s say we can function like we’re 30 until we’re 100, then that exponential impact continues to build, right? So that longevity of youthfulness, if you will, is the currency of ever expanding exponential impact, which is a joy. It’s part of the joy of living, right? Even the podcast you’re doing, you love what you’re doing. Each decade you’ll be having more impact, affecting more people. That’s part of your joy. Why would you want to give that up? So stay young and you can continue to grow this in a massive way. That’s why I call longevity or youthfulness the currency of impact.

Katie: I love that. And then like you, I love that focus on the youthfulness and staying young. And I would say I feel younger and more energetic hands down now than I did in my 20s. And I really do think that the trends that could continue, but I know that I would love to get into some of the specifics of that. So what are some of these pillars of longevity that tie into feeling younger and youthfulness and having that mindset as well, right?

Dr. Gladden: Well, it starts with mindset. So we really have four circles that we think are critical if you’re going to win at an exponential game. Let’s say you’re playing an exponential game. And the thing with the exponential game is that what happens for most people is that when they get to a point in their life where they don’t feel like they want to, or look like they want to, or can’t do what they want to, they have a choice. They can either acquiesce to getting older or they can say, no, I want to get healthy. And so that’s the point at which they eat better, sleep better, get some exercise, etc, learn to meditate, lower stress. But the problem with the get healthy strategy is that it’s a linear response to an exponential problem. And because it’s not really looking at the true drivers of aging, it will run its course. And in four years, five years, eight years, it will no longer work.

In fact, that’s another key thing. What worked for you in your 30s won’t work in your 40s, won’t work in your 50s, won’t work in your 60s. You have to constantly keep reinventing what works. So the pillars of aging revolve around four circles. There’s a life energy circle, which is the one that binds them all. Then there’s a longevity circle, which is related to the drivers of aging. There’s a health circle, which are all the things related to health that people are familiar with. And then there’s a performance circle, which really has to do with how people perform physically and mentally and so on. The life energy circle, the first thing is mindset, right? And it’s so critical that people be married to their questions and not their current answers. I come across people all the time. It’s like they’re in their 60s. I know how to work out. I learned how to work out when I was in college. This is what I do, this is how I work out. It’s like, well, would you be open to entertaining some new things? It’s like, well, no, I really know how to do this. It’s like, okay, that’s really kind of a closed minded approach. And I think that really works against you. When you’re dealing with an exponential problem, you want to be married to the questions, how do I do this better? How do I adapt? How do I stay young? What do I need to do? I think that will make a massive difference, right?

And I think there are many other really important things on that life energy circle, like feeling loved and feeling worthy, and feeling safe, and mental health. So many people suffer with anxiety and depression and addiction and PTSD, and it has such a massive impact on their health, their ability to commit, their ability to follow through, whether or not they self sabotage. So those are really critical things to get right, and then having a bigger sense of purpose, right? And some sense of spiritual connection, having great relationships. Those are all on life energy circle, so anybody can work on that circle. And I would start there for sure, because that’s going to pay you massive dividends, really. So then when you get to the longevity circle, then it’s like, okay, well, how long are my telomeres? What’s the status of my mitochondria? What does Proteostasis look like for me? What’s my epigenetic age? What’s my rate of epigenetic aging? What’s my immune system look like? How many senescent cells do I have? What’s their secret story status? How much inflammation do I have? Right? Am I able to repair my DNA adequately? What’s the status of my stem cells? Are they able to rejuvenate me? You have all these questions that come up that are really critical to the aging process itself.

And I found that there’s really three kinds of medicine. There’s traditional medicine, which is symptom driven, right? If I ask you, did you see your doctor today? It’s like, no, I feel fine. So you only go see the doctor when you have a problem, that’s symptom driven healthcare or sick care, then below that is functional medicine. It’s root caused medicine. It’s like, well, I’m going to work for somebody to get to the root cause of my accident. We’re going to figure out I had leaky gut and my foods and this and that. We’re going to get my gut biome work out and things are better. But that’s still not looking at those pillars of aging, those drivers of aging. Then you have longevity medicine, right, which is really where you’re starting to focus on. How do we rejuvenate the telomeres, how do we get the mitochondria to work properly, how do we get your epigenetic age to come down, how do we reboot your immune system, how do we get your stem cells to work properly. All these kinds of things that are the real drivers of what’s happening. And that’s possible. And that’s why we’re so excited, because we’re able to do that now.

And when people come to work with us, we can build them a package. Where I’ve started to think about this, if you give us five days, we’ll give you five years. And if you give us 15 days, we’ll give you 15 years. Right. Because we can do a variety of procedures and things like that where we can actually push people back in time. And it’s remarkable, I mean, it’s truly remarkable what we’re able to do these days.

Now, what can people do at home? Well, the first thing after life energy is get as many biological agents measured as you can so you get a feeling for where you’re at. And then one of the healthiest things that you can do is to start to donate plasma. Right. Donating plasma is a very healthy activity, and you can do it two times a week, even you may not want to do that all the time. But if you donate plasma, you’re actually getting rid of older proteins in the blood and it allows your body to rejuvenate and replenish those. And it has a similar effect to Plasmapheresis, where you take out half your blood volume and replace it either with albumin or it can be replaced with young plasma from a 23 year old, which is incredibly rejuvenating. When you’re older, let’s say you’re in your 60s, that becomes amazingly rejuvenating. But if you’re 35, you’re 40, whatever. Donating plasma will be enough to help push you forward.

So once you do your testing and you know where your problems areas are, then there are definitely things that can be done about those. But one thing in general, sleeping well, meditating. I think donating plasma, things like that are going to be some key things that almost anybody can do. And they’ll pay for your plasma, right. So it doesn’t even cost you anything. You can make money to buy supplements.

Katie: Yeah, one of the few things in health that actually doesn’t cost money, but can be a source of money, which is a rare thing. Most of the things cost money. I love that you call that circle life energy. And that stands out to me because I feel like, often the discussion of longevity and health just focuses on the physical aspect of health. And when I looked into some of the research, and I was for a while fascinated with the studies on Blue Zones, what struck me was people got so they were arguing over these little details, like, oh, it must be the wine. It must be the fish. It must be that they’re vegetarian. It must be. And I was like, the only thing they technically all have in common is a really strong sense of community. And yes, maybe they’re eating these particular foods, but they’re walking there with their family or friends and having this bonding, leisurely loving dinner together. And it seems like research is coming out to support more and more that the point of community and relationships really being a big key to this. Even anecdotally we see people who have that tend to live longer because of the purpose, because of the relationships as well. So I love that you make that focus.

I’m also curious your take on some of the things that are often tossed around as ways to at least reduce all cause mortality or extend longevity. Things like they talk about lean muscle mass being a good predictor of health markers as we get older. The Finnish people are very fond of sauna use as a way to reduce all cause mortality. I’ve seen some research around light and sunlight as being beneficial as well. But what’s your take on some of these more trendy things that are linked to longevity and if they’re important or not?

Dr. Gladden: Well, let me just say one thing about the vertically integrated communities that you’re talking about in the Blue Zones. I think they’re wonderful. People are out there exercising, they’re vertically integrated across four or five generations. They have a sense of purpose, there’s family, there’s love, there’s relationships. And people have often wondered, well, what’s the key to the French paradox? Right? How are these people smoking cigarettes, eating Foie gras, drinking wine and living in a long time? How does that work exactly? And it’s not the red wine and it’s not the cigarettes and it’s not the foie gras. It has to do with these fresh Mediterranean herbs. So summer, savory, basil, tarragon, rosemary. These herbs actually protect your arteries. I won’t go into all the biochemistry of it, but they actually decrease oxidative stress in the arteries specifically. And when you lace them together, they have a different time frame in which they work.

So in those Blue Zones, one of the things they’re doing is they’re eating these fresh herbs, and there’s a variety of them. It could be combination with seaweeds and other things too, kelp or whatever else. But this is really one of the keys, is that variety of these fresh organic herbs. So you really want to build those into your diet too. And then when you start to talk about other things like saunas yes, the data on saunas out of Finland. It’s amazing, right? It’s remarkable. And so we’re big fans of Saunas. We’re big fans of cold plunge. We’re big fans of getting sunlight, getting fresh air, living in clean environments, getting daily exercise, not waking up, if you’re going to exercise three days a week, you have to wake up and say it’s today of the day. And if you introduce a decision into anything, the failure rate goes to 100%. So you basically just want to take as many decisions out of your lifestyle choices as possible. Don’t have the Ben and Jerry’s in your refrigerator because you’re going to eat it, right? Take that decision away. I’m going to exercise every day, so you just find a way to exercise every day. And I think things like that saunas, okay, I’ll put a Sauna in my house so I can exercise at least or I can do a sauna at least four days a week, things like that. I think you want to build these things into your system, so make it as easy as possible.

Katie: And you mentioned your goal of how to make 100 the new 30. Do you think that that’s something we will see in our lifetimes? What’s the progression going to be to get there?

Dr. Gladden: Yes, we will see that in our lifetimes. In fact, I think we’ll see it this decade, to tell you the truth. There’s a lot of talk now about the Yamanaka factors, right? In terms of cellular reprogramming for epigenetic age reversal. The Yamanaka factors were developed by Dr. Yamanaka in Japan, where they took basically a skin fibroblasts and turned it back into a truly pluripotent stem cell, which is a stem cell that could become any other cell in the body. The problem with it is that they all form tumors. All those stem cells form tumors. So now the concept is we’ll use three of the four Yamanaka factors, and instead of doing a full dose of them, we’ll just do enough to push the cell back in time, but not enough to turn it all the way back into a pluripotent stem cell. And so that’s happening right now.

That research is happening right now, except that when you do that, you still don’t really totally rejuvenate the cell. There are parts of the cells that don’t get rejuvenated with the Yamanaka factors currently. So there isn’t a perfect solution to this. But I can tell you this, that it’s going to be an orchestration. It’s going to be a symphony of things that get done, and there’s going to be a timing, a sequence, a frequency and intensity and a duration with which different things are applied. And this is what we’re doing right now. At Gladden longevity in Our Life trial is playing this. We’ve written a symphony. We’re playing this symphony of longevity now where we’re doing things with people, but we’re not doing the same thing all the time. We’re cycling them through various states and doing certain procedures for them when we see them in the office to help reboot things. So we’re doing those procedures in a certain sequence as well. So I think this is the key. Understand that. Yes, it’s going to be possible. It’s going to be playing a symphony of things to get it done. And even if you have the Yamanaka factors and you’re going to reprogram yourself, it’s still going to take other things coupled with that to stay youthful. That’s not enough.

Katie: I know you guys have a whole host of symphony, you called it at your disposal. What are some of the cutting edge ways that you’re working with your clients? What are some of the things that maybe people haven’t even heard of that you guys are able to do?

Dr. Gladden: Well, we’re able to do plasma fresis. We’re able to use young plasma in the state of Texas. We have access to a telomere lengthening product that nobody else in the world has access to currently, that’s had dramatic effects after COVID. My telomeres went from being about five years younger than my chronological age to about five years older than my chronological age. You should also understand that COVID beats up your health. The flu beats up your health. The flu will age you. COVID will age you. The vaccine. We’ve seen age people, their cardiovascular capacities go down. So when you have those things, you need something to be able to reverse that, right? And so we have this telomere product that took my telomeres back to being in the 80th percentile for like a 33 year old. And so it also helps to reboot the immune system. So we’ve seen that repeatedly. And so, again, it’s a question of what does somebody need? We don’t necessarily do everything for every person. Then we have access to very small embryonic like stem cells that are circulating in your blood that we can liberate with a proprietary laser that was developed by a guy Todd Ovicitis, and with those in conjunction with signaling peptides and fresh plasma, young plasma, in your system. Those stem cells can do magic.

If you put stem cells into old plasma in a petri dish, they die out. If you put the same stem cells into young plasma and a petri dish, they divide and do great. You can’t get your best Olympic swimmers to set a world record in a swimming pool that’s full of the accumulated trash of aging. Right. All these inflammatory markers and cytokines and proteins and all these things that build up. You have to clean out the trash and then you have to go after decreasing the rate of formation of the trash. So using things to prune senescent cells, using things to decrease the formation of senescent cells like rapamycin and things like this, all these things come to bear in terms of what we’re doing. So yeah, we’re really serious about this and we kind of leave no stone unturned and if a new stone shows up, then we’re the first to try to pick it up.

Katie: And I’ll link to your website so people can keep learning more about that if they are interested, especially in the particular aspect of that.

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I’m curious, from the data and from your experience in working with people, are there any things that emerge as sort of like generally universally beneficial daily habits, supplements, like lifestyle things that are within our control, and or things that you would put on your own sort of personal 80-20 list of non negotiables that you do.

Dr. Gladden: Well, the life energy circle is a non-negotiable really focusing attention there. It’s just so critical living a life where you’re not anxious, right? Living a life where you feel at peace, where you feel connected, where you have great relationships. I don’t think there’s anything more wonderful than that, not only for your longevity, but just simply for the quality of your life. So I think that has to be probably number one. Number two, I think the things that I do are intermittently. I go through these different protocols in the office where I’m swapping out my plasma. I’m doing different things. I’m lengthening my telomeres. I’m using very small embryonic like stem cells to rejuvenate areas of my body. I’m taking Rapamycin, I’m doing these things. And I’m at a point in my life where all of that matters because I’m on that steeper part of the curve, right? I’ll be chronologically 69 this month, but I wake up 27 every day. And that’s great because I can go out and run four or 5 miles, no big deal. Ride my mountain bike, snowboard. I can do anything I want. Good body surf. I can literally do anything I want. And so I think that’s key.

So, yes, certain supplements, there’s L Ergothioneine, there’s Urolithin A, there’s spermidine, there’s lots of supplements that are, I think, really interesting and helpful. There’s boosting NAD with NMN or nicotinamide riboside or something called Nuchido TIME. However, we don’t boost NAD for people that have cancer because NAD can also feed cancer cells. So it’s really important to know what you’re dealing with. Right? And I think screening for cancer appropriately, not with an MRI scan, which can miss so much, or even traditional blood tests, which can miss so much, but actually looking for circulating tumor cells or circulating tumor DNA, things like that, that gives you a higher specificity and a higher sensitivity as to what’s going on.

I think being hormonally replete, a lot of people, men go through andropause women go through menopause without good hormone replacement, bioidentical hormone replacement, and tracking how those hormones are being metabolized to make sure you’re not developing toxic metabolites that increase your risk for prostate cancer, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, whatever it might be. That’s very important to get that right. And then thyroid is massive. So many people’s thyroids start to decline and function, and many people don’t convert inactive thyroid to active thyroid in their brain very efficiently. We’ve been able to help many people just by uncovering that genetic trait and addressing it, particularly people with concussions.

Like, we had a person who had a concussion, worked with a very prestigious university in Dallas, Texas, with a medical school that was in their program for six weeks, making no progress. We did a genetic test and found that she did not convert inactive T4 to active T3 in her brain. You would never know that without the genetic test because you have no way to measure T3 in the brain. You can measure it in the systemic blood, but you can’t measure it in the brain. We put her on some T3. One week later, she was ready to graduate from that program. It can be that dramatic. It’s the idea that you have to always be curious. You have to always ask, how can we do this better? What are we looking for? And so that mindset is critical, but those are some things just to rattle some things off. But I think if you have a younger audience, even if they’re middle aged or whatever, I think that donating plasma is really kind of a cute trick way to go about it.

Katie: I will definitely put that tip in the show notes. That’s a new recommendation, and I’m excited to try it as well. For all the parents listening, I often think about anytime I learn something new about health, I think of how can I help my kids learn this at a younger age and implement this as a foundational thing that they don’t have to learn the hard way when they’re an adult. And I know a lot of moms consider that as well. And you are in the data and day to day with people who are reversing aging. Are there any sort of foundational lifestyle things or things we can put in place with our kids that will serve them? I’m thinking immediately of things like helping them have solid relationships and giving them the tools for building community and having relationships, probably encouraging time outside, good sleep hygiene. But are there foundational things that we can give our children early on that will help their youthfulness later in life?

Dr. Gladden: Yeah, I think absolutely. I have four kids and five grandkids, right? So I qualify as a parent. I think it really only takes one kid that qualifies as a parent, quite honestly. It’s that it’s that big of a transition. But I think that people don’t talk enough with their kids. Right. The currency of love for kids is basically time and attention. It’s not money. It’s not anything else. It’s really your time and your attention. And part of that attention is focusing on what they want to show you, what they want to do, what they want to play, what they you know, that’s so critical to validate their play, right? The other thing is that as they grow up, it’s incredibly important to them to start to talk about how they’re thinking. This interaction at school, this with their sibling, with their friend, whatever it is, this teacher, and helping them to have tools to kind of frame these interactions in a way that’s healthy. Right? It’s like, let’s look at it from this perspective and let’s look at it. And what do you think that she was thinking and what do you think she was feeling? And this kind of thing, so that you start to get kids to actually start to have the capacity to empathize and put themselves in the other person’s shoes, and then put themselves in their shoes and then try to figure out what the best solution is going to be. I think we don’t teach that to our kids very well. We just let them kind of play and bonk and fight and do whatever else, and I think we can help them a lot more get that kind of perspective and insight.

Katie: I love it. And springboarding from that, a question I love to ask for the end of interviews is if there is a book or a number of books that have profoundly impacted your life personally, and if so, what they are and why.

Dr. Gladden: Well, the book that’s probably impacted me the most is the one I’m writing, which is 100 is the New 30. It should come out this spring. It’s 100 is the New 30. How we’ll stay young forever by playing the symphony of longevity. That’s the title of it. I think beyond that, more than books, it’s really articles that I read. I read so many scientific journal articles that it’s really the articles that I read. So there’s been some really profound things there. Understanding the hallmarks of aging. Those articles are really critical, I think. And then understanding basically how to deal with senescent cells, understanding telomere biology, understanding how stem cells work, really understanding how senescent cells pollute the environment and how inflammation gets geared up and things you can do to decrease inflammation. That’s really critical. So there isn’t one book per se that I kind of rely on. I kind of go straight to the literature.

And we do have a podcast also where we discuss a lot of this. You’re probably aware of that, the Gladden Longevity Podcast. We have I don’t know how many episodes, 150 plus. It used to be Living beyond 120. Now it’s Gladden Longevity. So we discussed a lot of the stuff there, but I would say the books that have impacted me the most have been more on, like, Eckert Tolle on The Power of now. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book, but it’s a book on really how you frame up reality and meditation and sense of consciousness and understanding that your mind is a tool, but what you think is not. Who you are that there’s a consciousness above that, right? And so learning to live in a different realm, we wake up every day, what I call into a VR realm, we wake up every day, we have VR glasses on, we think this is real. But when you take those VR glasses off and you actually go to a higher plane, all of a sudden, a lot of the anxiety and stress kind of goes away. So anyway, I think those books have had a lot of impact on me.

Katie: I will put links to those and to your podcast in the show notes so that people can find that and keep learning from you. And lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to the topic of longevity or just life advice that you feel is very important?

Dr. Gladden: I will just give you one more thing from the life energy circle, which is this concept of feeling safe. I find that many people don’t feel safe, and that if you get to the bottom of that, if you’re feeling anxious, if you keep drilling down, it’s because you don’t feel safe. If you’re angry, it’s because you don’t feel safe, right? If you lack confidence, it’s because you don’t feel safe. And so many of the emotions, if you’re depressed in many ways, it’s because you don’t feel safe. And so if you start to understand that, and you start to understand that safety can never come from something outside of you, just like loving yourself, only you can do that, right? Nobody else can do that for you. You have to scoop up your small self and scoop them up and love them. Nobody else can do that. People can love you, but nobody can love you more than you love yourself. And so being able to do that and then be able to give yourself safety also, right? Being able to give yourself safety also, realizing that it’s not going to come from money, degrees, relationships, family, and none of that’s going to provide safety, all that can be taken away. So how do you ultimately feel safe? When you get to a point where you can feel safe and you feel loved, it’s transformative for your life. All of a sudden, you can take on life in a completely different way. And I think living life with a sense of joy every day, as opposed to a sense of dread is so dramatically important for your health and your longevity. So that’s what I would say. I would say work on yourself. That’s really the place to start. Really work on yourself.

Katie: I love it. I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up for today. But like I said, I will include links in the show notes to more learning from you about all the things we’ve and I’m so grateful for your time today. It was such an honor to have this conversation. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Gladden: Katie, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Katie: And thanks, as always, to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama Podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.