#396 Longevity Scientist Shared His Diet for Slowing Down Biological Aging - Michael Lustgarten PhD

Michael Lustgarten (0:00)

Mortality risk goes down dramatically from birth to about 10 to 14 years old. That's the lowest all-cause mortality is when you're basically just a teenager. And then it pretty closely linearly increases for every year that we're alive after that. So if we know all of these biomarkers with as many organ systems as possible, instead of seeing that linear increase for mortality risk, can we flatten it? If we can flatten it, for how long, right? 50 years? 20 years?

Siim Land (0:24)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. My name is Siim Land, and today our guest is Dr. Michael Lustgarten. Michael has a PhD in exercise physiology and is one of the world's leading experts in self-quantification and biological aging. Michael has an amazing YouTube channel called Conquer Aging or Die Trying, where he shares the latest research on longevity and also shows his personal experimentations.

Michael, welcome back to the show.

Michael Lustgarten (0:49)

Thanks, Siim.

Siim Land (0:50)

Yeah, I'm happy to have you back on the show. It's your third time, and I always think of what are the guests I bring to the show. It's always people I'm most interested in talking to at that moment. So you have a lot of this.

I think you're one of the really original, let's say not biohackers, but more of the guy who tracks all the biomarkers.

You've been doing this for over 10 years of tracking all your food and tracking all your biomarkers several times a year. So you have, at least for yourself, you have pretty much a ton of data about what kind of supplements, what kind of foods and exercise affect your biomarkers and how it correlates with your speed of aging and longevity overall. So yeah, I'm happy to pick your brain about, in this episode, we'll be focusing mostly on nutrition and diet and how it affects these biomarkers that are linked to mortality or longevity.

Michael Lustgarten (1:53)

Cool.

I'm not the only one, right? So you've recently met Joe Cohen, too. So he's been deep in the game for a long time, too. And probably even more in some ways with the blood testing, right? So he's got his panelists, not to give South Dakota a shout out, but or to give them a shout out. But their panel is extensive and exhaustive. And I wouldn't say that if it wasn't true, right? So and I see you jumping, you know, doing, you know, in that group too. So, you know, we're a small but evolving group of people who are, you know, trying to optimize their way to maximum health and longevity through objective biomarker tracking.

Siim Land (2:33)

Yeah. So maybe we can start with what is your philosophy or how do you look at it like tracking biomarkers and how would you like, let's say, because like in the world of nutrition, there's so much noise and so much like conflicting information, like one week you hear on the headlines that, you know, eggs are great for you and the other next week it says even one egg is as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes. So, you know, there's a lot of people obviously being very confused about that. So what's your like, I don't know, philosophy or view on this?

Yeah.

Michael Lustgarten (3:09)

So it isn't just that side of it. The other side of it too is based on animal studies and, you know, randomized controlled trials and people in other people.

Many people in the, you know, pro longevity or wanting to slow aging space will say, oh, you know, I'm going to take X, Y as your supplement or I'm going to do this to my diet because of studies in other people and studies in animal models of longevity. But never actually testing themselves to see if that intervention or interventions is a negative, neutral, or actually a positive, right? So for the longest time, as you mentioned, I've been looking at just even the standards, looking at biomarkers of kidney function, liver function, immune cells, inflammation, metabolic health, the full spectrum, blood pressure, lung function, based on the premise that if I track these things for a very long time, not only will I discover the diet, exercise, supplement, or in some cases, supplement and sleep approach that can minimize mortality risk and potentially maximize my longevity, but if I do end up with a disease, I should be able to catch it earlier rather than I've got some pathology that's been happening for 20 years, and it's like, where did this come from? And then not just that, knowing how my body reacts to certain foods or certain supplements that may guide whatever therapies if some adverse health condition does come up. The crux of my approach, besides testing, tracking, intervention, and repeat, which I call the F-around find out approach, is, you know, so mortality risk goes down dramatically from birth to about 10 to 14 years old. That's the lowest all-cause mortality is when you're basically just a teenager. And then it pretty closely linearly increases for every year that we're alive after that. So if we know, you know, all of these biomarkers of as many organ systems as possible, instead of seeing that linear increase for mortality risk, can we flatten it? And if we can flatten it, for how long, right? 50 years, 20 years?