#454 25 Minutes to Make You Healthier Than 95% of People

Siim Land (0:07)

I think every one of us has heard the saying that life is equal to time. And it basically is in a literal sense because how long you're alive just reflects to how much time have you spent alive and how much time are you alive. And many people say that, you know, time is equal to money, and therefore life is equal to money. Of course, money is very important, but money isn't going to extend your lifespan directly. Of course, you can hire good doctors, but what you need is longevity intelligence. And this is a concept that I've coined, and you might have heard about emotional intelligence, social intelligence, those kind of things. But when we're talking about longevity, then I think longevity intelligence is a good concept to use. So what does it consist of? It basically consists of many factors that affect your longevity and health. They are your genetics, your lifestyle, your disease risks, your biological age, your biomarkers, and also what I call the longevity horizon, which refers to what happens to your health in decades. And in my presentation, I'm going to go through these components and explain to you how can you increase your longevity intelligence.

Before that, a quick example of my grandfather, who unfortunately died at a young age of 36 to colorectal cancer. And, you know, of course, life is unexpected. There are many things that contribute to a person's death, but a great deal of that was because of his lower level of longevity intelligence. Now it wasn't his fault. He lived in the Soviet-occupied Estonia at the time, so no one really knew about how to prevent cancer or how to prevent other chronic diseases. But colon cancer is one of those types of cancer that you can pretty much treat completely if you detect it early enough. And the gold standard diagnostic tool for detecting colon cancer is the colonoscopy. And if you detect the cancer early enough, then yeah, you can cure it completely. Unfortunately, you know, he never did a colonoscopy, he never did a blood test, he never did a DNA test, and he also followed some unhealthier lifestyle habits, such as smoking and alcohol, which ultimately led to his death. So, let's start with some of the lifestyle and disease-related risk factors to your longevity. The World Health Organization has outlined the top 10 causes of death worldwide, and they are ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections, neonatal conditions, different cancers, Alzheimer's and neurodegeneration, diarrheal diseases, diabetes and kidney disease. So, most people in the Western and industrial societies will die to some of these non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, neurodegeneration and diabetes. And these are predominantly lifestyle-related diseases. And as people who want to live a long time, our main goal is to pretty much focus on preventing these diseases because they're going to give the biggest bank for a buck in terms of extending your actual lifespan. And these diseases also follow a certain timeline. For example, before the age of 50, your risk of heart disease and cancer and Alzheimer's is very low. But after the age of 50, and especially after the age of 60, your risk of heart disease and cancer starts to increase exponentially. Now, Alzheimer's and other forms of neurodegeneration start to increase slightly later, so late 70s and early 80s. And heart disease and cancer are still like the first of the main killers for most people, and it's almost like the bottleneck as well, because you can't reach the age of 100 if you get a heart attack and die at the age of 60 So therefore, if you want to reach the age of 70, you need to make sure you don't get a heart attack in your 60s. And if you want to reach the age of 90, you need to make sure that you don't get some form of Alzheimer's or neurodegeneration in your 80s. So, postponing these diseases is the key.

The American Heart Association has outlined some of these eight life-essential components or factors that reduce the risk of heart disease, and they are, number one, get healthy sleep, number two, manage weight, control cholesterol, manage blood sugar, manage blood pressure, eat healthy, be more active, and quit tobacco. So, these are the easiest, most modifiable lifestyle risk factors as well that will reduce the risk of heart disease. At the same time, they also acknowledge the fact that age and aging is the biggest risk factor for heart disease. The older you get, the higher your risk of any form of chronic disease becomes. So, therefore, you need to also look at some of the hallmarks of aging, which I'm not going to go into the details in this presentation, but essentially, slowing down the speed of your biological aging will also reduce the risk of all these chronic diseases, especially heart disease. Now, what's good for your heart is also good for your brain. So, if you reduce the risk of heart disease, then you're also reducing the risk of neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's. Now, there is one key concept that specifically refers to the brain and neurodegeneration, and it's brain or cognitive reserve. And it essentially describes your brain's resilience. It's resilience against different kinds of stressors and aging, and people who have a higher cognitive reserve, they also experience less symptoms of neurodegeneration, and they might even delay it. Whereas people who have low reserve, their decline in neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's is also much faster. Now, the cognitive reserve doesn't reflect to your intelligence, it doesn't mean how smart you are, it mostly refers to just using your brain in some shape or form. And using your brain can involve reading, learning new languages, solving puzzles. So if you have a very cognitively demanding occupation, you work at a job for decades that requires using your brain, then you have a higher cognitive reserve as well. And therefore, you have a lower risk of, let's say, accelerating the development of neurodegeneration. And even socializing is also very beneficial for increasing your cognitive reserve, so social skills. The centenarians, people who live to the age of 100, they get the same diseases as everyone else. They just get these diseases a few decades later. And this is also a clue to how the average person can extend their lifespan. You delay heart disease, you delay neurodegeneration with a proper lifestyle, and also monitoring your health status over the course of your entire life.