#138 Blood Sugar Management for Longevity with Dr Molly Maloof

Siim Land (0:00)

Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:03)

Body, mind, empowerment.

Siim Land (0:05)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:11)

Everything the body needs.

Siim Land (0:13)

Control your mind.

Teemu Arenä (0:16)

Welcome to the Bikers Live Show. My name is Teemu Arenä. I'm the curator of Bikers Summit and co-author of the Bikers Handbook.

Sorry about the little delay in getting this all started up. Today, our guest is Dr. Molly Maloof. I'm so excited to have her because she is on a mission to radically extend healthspan, maximize human potential and redefine health care using medicine, technology, education and media. And what I really like about her work is that she's been diving deep into quantified self and how we can measure what's going on in the human body. How can we make visible this black box and optimize the different aspects that go into optimal health, performance and well-being. And she's been actually preparing for coming to Finland to speak at the Bakker Summit by getting some extended sauna sessions. And you will notice when she comes on to the call that she is pretty hardcore when it comes to going to sauna and optimizing blood sugar and immune system function, as well as life extension, autophagy and all those different topics that we're going to be discussing today. So, welcome Molly to the call.

All good.

Molly Maloof (1:43)

How's it going?

Teemu Arenä (1:46)

All good. Looks like you just came out of a sauna.

Molly Maloof (1:50)

It's true. I've been sawing every day for like the last month to optimize detoxification.

Teemu Arenä (1:56)

Oh, wonderful.

You also came from Burning Man. Did you know that actually Finland brought world's largest like sauna to Burning Man? And some of my friends were running sessions over there.

Molly Maloof (2:10)

I had a list of all of the spas and the saunas at Burning Man, but I only made it to two.

But I'm really upset. I didn't know that you had friends there.

Teemu Arenä (2:21)

Yeah, they built this huge like round big sauna for people in Burning Man. But if you missed that one and our audience missed Burning Man and all the different bathing options, you're welcome to Bikers Summit in Helsinki, Finland, first and second of November.

And Dr. Molly Maloof will be speaking there as you know, the wood-heated sauna originates from Finland, especially the smoke sauna version where you heat the sauna with smoke. And yeah, the stones are hot for like 24 hours and it takes 12 hours to heat properly a smoke sauna. And one of the gentlemen from the Finnish Sauna Society, where the research into the health benefits of sauna originates from, is going to be there. An old gentleman and his business card reads traditional Finnish smoke sauna heater. He will be there guiding people into the health benefits of sauna. And what I learned from him is that actually the qualities of sauna that are most important for a good sauna experience are invincible. Those are the basic elements of nature. So fire that brings heat, water, which is basically the humidity, the steam, the water that you throw on the stones, also air. So you need good ventilation, so there should be direct access to fresh air, also in a sauna experience, and also earth, which is basically the stone or whatever material that is made out of.

So yeah, the combination, the perfect balance of these basic elements linked to your presence as a spirit in the sauna is what creates the perfect sauna experience. And what is a good sauna experience is different for each individual. So going to sauna is not a competition who is going to be staying there longest, but it's a personal experience of connecting to your body and to all these basic elements and to healing. And in a Finnish sauna, it's definitely nothing to do with gender, nothing to do with status. So basically undress all uniforms and whatever labels you place on yourself. And you're just a human being with other humans there sharing an experience. So that's what Finnish sauna experience is all about.

Yeah. So Dr. Rhonda Patrick came a couple of years ago to Finland and also visited the Finnish Sauna Society. And she's a big fan of bathing as a way of extending lifespan.

And she spoke a lot about activating things like the FOXO3 pathway for longevity and all that. So Molly, what are your favorite aspects of sauna when it comes to health benefits?

Molly Maloof (5:35)

Well, the first one I can think of is just the fact that it causes massive amounts of basal dilation in your periphery. So that means it's activating your parasympathetic nervous system. When you're really stressed out, you tend to contract your blood vessels, and that brings blood flow to the central organs. But when you go into a sauna, it causes basal dilation. So it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and it's deeply relaxing.