#125 Longevity Pathways in Humans

Siim Land (0:00)

What do the world's longest living organisms have in common? What causes aging in humans? How can you promote your lifespan as well as your healthspan to live a healthier, happier, and more fulfilling life?

Hey, my name is Siim, and in this video, I'm going to walk you through the first lecture of my Metabolic Autophagy Master Class video course.

We're going to cover the Longevity Code, and we're going to talk about the longevity pathways in humans, and how can you promote healthy aging, and how can you slow down the aging process as well. If you want to join the Metabolic Autophagy Master Class, then check out the link in the description. But other than that, let's get to it. Body, mind, empowerment.

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Siim Land (0:43)

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So in the first lecture, we're going to be going through the hallmarks of aging, what they are, we'll find out. The mitochondria theory of aging, that's one of the most used theories for describing aging. Then we're going to be going through the longevity pathways in humans, specifically like insulin, IGF-1 pathway and longevity. Then we'll also go through why is caloric restriction and longevity correlated with each other. And how does it happen? And how can we biohack it in a sense of we don't necessarily have to be starving all the time.

And next, we'll also go through this idea of stress adaptation and hormesis, which is another critical component to living longer and being more self sustainable. And lastly, we'll also touch upon telomeres and longevity. So what are telomeres?

And how can they help us to live longer and be healthier? I want to touch upon this idea of immortality. Like the goal of this video course isn't to reach immortality or such. Or the goal isn't to even live over 100 years old. Although, you know, it's quite possible that it may happen, in my opinion. But the goal is to still promote our health span and, you know, kind of the byproduct of that is going to be living longer. A lot of your lifespan is determined by your genetics. But most of it is determined by your environment, you know, the environment you're placed in and what kind of, you know, activities you do on a daily basis. But in other species, mortality rate doesn't, if a species' mortality rate doesn't increase after their maturity, then it won't age and is thus considered biologically immortal. The word immortal describes cells that aren't subject to the haeflich limit, which is the point where cells can't divide anymore because of DNA damage or shortened telomeres. And there are different species already living who kind of exhibit this immortality aspect, and specifically this species of hydrazoan called Turritopsis dornei, or they're also called the immortal jellyfish. And basically they can revert from an adult stage back into an immature polyp stage and back again several times, which suggests that there isn't a natural limit to their lifespan and they can kind of repeat it several times. There are also some other skin and larva beetles can also go back into their earlier stages of maturity if they're put under these starvation conditions.

And other species like bacteria and such, they can also be revived after thousands of years of hibernation. For instance, in the ice of glaciers, there's like some stored bacteria and some other species that are simply being stuck there frozen and they've been hibernating for thousands of years. And, you know, as those ice begin to melt, then potentially those species, some of those species will be revived as well.

But, you know, there's a difference between aging and immortality. Both of them are relevant for determining your lifespan.

But it's kind of cool to see that, you know, there is certain conditions that at least if not, if not slow down aging, then they will at least, you know, promote your longer health span. So although we could say that the immortal jellyfish is like a good, good mascot for the Metabolic Autophagy Program, we still necessarily don't have to become like jellyfishes or to revert back to into the single cell organism type of living. We're still kind of trying to breach the chasm of living in a modern world and trying to see how can we, you know, the anxieties that how can we incorporate these principles of stress adaptation and caloric restriction in a modern context. But in humans, the aging process has also been quite well documented. You know, there are several factors that contribute to aging, but the most important ones have been laid out by this researcher, Lopez Otin. In 2013, he published with his other colleagues this review of the hallmarks of aging in different species, including mammals.