#354 Can You Live Long On a Bad Diet, How to Reverse Seed Oil Damage - Q&A Siim Land

Siim Land (0:00)

Hey, welcome back to the channel. My name is Siim Land, and today we're doing an Instagram Q&A. If you want to ask me a question, then make sure you follow me on Instagram at SiimLand. Do it. All right, so first question. Will I reach my old age if I still eat junk and soda and 80% rule? So I think he's referring to the 80-20 rule that what matters most is what you do 80% of the time than the 20% of the time. And most of the results in terms of your health and longevity could also be kind of mediated or caused by 80% of the things that you do.

So to answer your question, then first of all, ultra-processed food consumption and sugar-sweetened beverages and sodas, they are associated with shortened life expectancy and shorter lifespan. So they increase mortality risk. How much depends, of course, whether or not you get diabetes, whether or not you gain weight, and whether or not you get metabolic syndrome. Theoretically, you know, if you're a person who stays at an optimal body weight, optimal body fat percentage and optimal biomarkers as well, you don't have diabetes, you don't have insulin resistance, you don't have any heart disease, you don't have any hypertension, and you're lean, you exercise, you have muscle, et cetera, and then you eat a little bit of junk food and drink some soda, then theoretically you can still get away with it, probably a little bit.

I do think that it's much harder to maintain that or to achieve those optimal biomarkers but it's possible theoretically because the junk food, the negative health effect of junk food comes from it giving you diabetes and it making you gain weight. And if you don't gain weight and if you don't have diabetes from eating those things or drinking sodas, whatever, then I think there is still some epigenetic factor as well in terms of how these foods affect your epigenetic age beyond calorie restriction, but the effect is probably much smaller compared to the actual weight gain and the diabetes, because people who have relatively clean diets, they still die prematurely sometimes to cardiovascular disease or metabolic syndrome or being overweight, even if they're eating a clean diet, so to say. Obviously, they're not that meticulous with their diet, but they're eating whole foods.

Most of the grand boomers or whatever, they don't eat a super bad diet, but they're not eating a healthy diet either. They eat whole foods, but they might eat too much fried food, they might eat too much processed meat, they might drink too many calories, they might drink too much alcohol, et cetera. So yeah, even on a healthy diet, you can gain weight even on a healthy diet or a whole foods diet, you can get diabetes. But if you eat a very ultra processed food diet, then the likelihood of you becoming diabetic is much higher.

And if you avoid that, you maintain good biomarkers by being very physically active and maintaining a calorie deficit is the key here, then you can get away with probably a little bit, although I would still, with all things equal, like twins, a twin who eats the perfect pristine diet and maintains the same calorie intake, maintains the same biomarkers and health versus another twin that eats junk food diet, maintains the same calorie intake, then there might be some worse effects in terms of the biomarkers. The difference might be only very small, maybe 5% or 10%, because the vast majority of the effects come from the calorie restriction and the calorie intake. And whether or not those calories are processed or natural foods, they may have like an additional 5% or 10% difference. That's personally what I think. But at least based on the science right now, the most important thing for the longevity is that you don't get diabetes, you don't become overweight, and that you don't develop metabolic syndrome and develop heart disease or things like that. Those are the biggest things that you need to focus on. And you can get diabetes, you can gain weight even on a healthy diet. So it doesn't have to be a junk food diet. It's just that the junk food diet is much more likely to make you diabetic and make you gain weight and develop visceral adiposity and those kinds of things. And this is very interesting because I saw, a few days ago, I saw a YouTube video about this 109 year old US war veteran from World War II, who is 109 years old, but he smokes 12 cigars a day, drinks four glasses of whiskey a day, eats ice cream every night, drinks only soup and canned mushrooms and those kinds of things, and wakes up at 2 a.m. and drinks four cups of coffee when he wakes up. So, you know, it goes to show that you can get away with a lot if you have good genetics. Obviously, that person has very good genetics of not getting heart disease and not getting cancer.