#430 The Longevity Leap, Fitness, Nutrition, and Bloodwork w/ Dr Michael Lustgarten

Siim Land (0:00)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. Today, I'm playing a replay of me being a guest on Dr. Michael Lustgarten's YouTube channel called Conquer Aging or Diet Trying. In this episode, we talk about my new book, The Longevity Leap, and my ideas about health and longevity. Check out Michael's YouTube channel at Conquer Aging or Diet Trying.

Michael Lustgarten (0:18)

Today, we've got Siim Land, whose new book, The Longevity Leap, is a deep dive into the science of longevity and how we can add healthy years to our lifespan. So with that, we're going to do a deep dive into Siim, his backstory, and then as much as we can cover in the book. So welcome, Siim.

Siim Land (0:36)

Yeah, my pleasure, and I'm happy to be here.

Michael Lustgarten (0:38)

Cool. So there aren't that many interviews of you on YouTube, or at least I didn't see very many. So I think it's important that we go back and look at the evolution of the process, because where you started on YouTube is almost a completely different place, although in this health and fitness sphere. So but I want to go even further back. So as a kid, active into health and fitness, so what are your earliest memories of being into the active and fitness lifestyle?

Siim Land (1:11)

Yeah, so my earliest memories probably have to do with, in terms of fitness, have to do with doing pushups with my dad when we were kids, something like four or five years old.

Like in the evening, we would do like a pushup contest of how many pushups we could do. And like we were amazed, wow, my dad can do like a bunch of pushups. So that was like my earliest introduction of, hey, I want to be kind of strong as well. I want to do, you know, different kind of a calisthenic exercises and to be strong and healthy. I, you know, as a child, I was growing up in the countryside. So I was always doing something like physical, mostly playing outside and playing soccer with my brother, or we also did like this, you know, medieval battles with each other. We like fight each other with sticks and swords, that kind of thing. Climbing trees, of course, we did some like physical labor as well, like carrying some stones or doing hay. Like we spent our summers in our great aunt's place that, where you do the hay traditional way, where you like rake the hay, you throw it in the barn, you stomp it, so it's kind of the old school method. And yeah, also just doing pull ups on the tree, on a branch, when I was like, I guess, something like eight or nine years old, I remember, you know, in the evening again, like trying to do like a few sets of pull ups. And yeah, I mean, those were the kind of early days of me trying to exercise. I wasn't particularly like, at least with cardio or stuff, I wasn't like very athletic. I think I was in good condition and fitness with calisthenics. I was in school. I was like the best in calisthenics out of my class, but not for cardio. So yeah, I was always kind of mediocre with cardiovascular exercise. And yeah, in high school, got into more like strength training. And yeah, since then, I, you know, as an adult, I started to learn more about all the different topics, primarily in the beginning, learning about how to build muscle and lose fat through like a gym perspective. And gradually, yeah, learning more about different aspects of health and longevity as well.

Michael Lustgarten (3:27)

All right, wait, so were there specific people besides your dad who you kind of had as fitness role models when you were a kid or a teenager?

Siim Land (3:39)

Yeah, like, I guess, yeah, my dad was a role model for the kind of calisthenics side. But overall, like fitness, I didn't have like, you know, any particular role models besides that. You know, I did play soccer a little bit, but I wasn't yet like into like sports in that sense. So I was kind of self, I just, my main motivation was to just, yeah, kind of, I thought it was just, you know, something that you would want to do as a good human being to like get strong and be kind of athletic. So it's this kind of the soccer is quote, it goes something along the lines that it will be a shame for you to grow old without knowing what your body is capable. So yeah, I think that was maybe one of the quotes as well that has kind of kept me motivated as like a teenager.