#251 Longevity and Aging Q&A - Dr Olli Sovijärvi and Teemu Arina

Teemu Arina (0:30)

Thank Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Teemu Arina from The Viakers Handbook, and also upcoming Resilient Being book. So today's topic is resilience, longevity, and how can we slow down aging? What I really like about longevity research is that it's really pushing the boundaries of what it needs to be human, and getting into the nuts and bolts of why we are on this planet. Because in the end, aging is a very central part of the process. So we go back in evolution to the times when we were just single cell organisms, and there was basically the Earth's magnetic field was not as developed as it is today.

And we were receiving, you know, occasional bursts of magnetic radiation from the sun, for example. And that induced mutations in single cell organisms. And those cells that continued dividing, despite the DNA damage, those actually died over time, you know, it was not a good thing. But at some point, there was the adaptation that happened, which basically led to something we call DNA repair. So basically, the cells stop dividing.

They know this damage, they go back and they basically fix the damage. And there's many other processes like that in the human body. One of them could be described as autophagy, which is the way how the body is recycling damaged cells.

There's different imbalances in communication between cells and organ systems. There is different metabolic dysfunctions, mitochondrial dysfunction and so on that are contributing to the aging process. And luckily, our system is extremely resilient. It's really resilient in its ability to repair damage. But that is also a part of the reason why we age and why we die so young. In nature, there are animals and insects and a bunch of other things that seem to live forever.

So, party crates are really good examples. Jellyfishes are great.

Sharps can swim forever and not get cancer.

And so in nature, there are species that seem to have defeated the hallmarks of aging. But as humans, we still have them, but it's part of our capability of being so extremely adaptive and resilient in the environment where we are. So those are the topics today.

We welcome you to join in the chat. So the Bikers Summit YouTube channel, there is a chat on the stream and you can draw in your comments. I'm also following the chat on Siim Land's YouTube channel as well. So hello, everyone who is there. There's already a pretty educated audience there. So I recommend you to check out the chat because people are already talking about things like metformin, resveratrol, rapamycin, spermidin. I actually took spermidin this morning. Spermidin, sperm, that's where it comes from. It was actually first discovered in sperm and it seems that it is activating autophagy and longevity. So I just took that this morning to see what happens if I'm going to live forever like a jellyfish. So if you have any questions about how you can become a jellyfish or tardicrate or whatever, you are welcome to join the chat. I have a couple of single cell organisms joining me. So in studio we have Dr. Olli Sovijärvi and a multicellular extra cellular organism, Siim Land from Estonia who despite his age seems to live forever already. So we will learn a lot from him. Of course, he has written several books about aging and the processes that break or make us. So welcome gentlemen.

Olli Sovijärvi (4:48)

Hello, hello.

Siim Land (4:49)

Thank you very much.

My absolute favorite animal is Hydra.

You're right. It's Hydra. But if you cut it in half, it's kind of like Medus or this jellyfish type of creature, but not so. So if you cut it in half, it can regenerate itself. So that's pretty amazing. There are different kinds of animals, tardigrade, of course, absolutely ridiculous, can tolerate like 150 degrees Celsius and almost to the close to the absolute point of zero.

Teemu Arina (5:27)

That's probably closest to Chuck Norris we have in that lock-in.

And what is interesting when you mentioned that these divide and they replicate by cutting them actually as humans, we can live forever by dividing basically by reproduction. And I think that's one of the reasons why we die is that we can pass on the information to the upcoming generations so that we live as long as is needed for the epigenetic changes or the information from the environment to reach our DNA to modify itself to be able to adapt to the environment. And there is this paradox, which is basically that if the environment is changing faster than we are doing this process. So meaning if we extend lifespan, so if we are like doubling, tripling, quadrupling our expected lifespan or even healthspan, which is probably the better side of aging here.