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8 Secrets to a Longer,

Healthier Life

B Y B R I A N S T A N T O N

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Climbing Mountains in our 90s

Carmelo Flores Laura reportedly lived to be 123.1 As a Bolivian shepherd, he didn’t have access to supplements or modern medical care. He never even joined a CrossFit program.

So what was his secret?

I’ll tell you in a bit. It’s so simple, you might even laugh.

The truth is, we all want to live longer and healthier lives. We all want to stay ac-tive and vital, free from degenerative disease, able to climb mountains into our 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. I know I do.

Unfortunately, our healthcare system isn’t set up to keep us climbing mountains into our 90s. Instead of encouraging a healthy lifestyle, we have to actually get sick before we get help. Instead of preventing diseases, we throw drugs at them.

Modern healthcare, is of course, a business, and the goal of any business is to turn a profit. Sadly, disease management, not disease prevention, makes the most money. Preventive care hardly gets any airplay. It’s not in Big Pharma’s interests to keep us healthy.

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I could go on, but you get the point. Conventional medicine may be good at treat-ing acute conditions, but it doesn’t care if you age beautifully. You need other strategies to take control of your long-term health.   

But where do you turn? With so much information on the internet, so much slick marketing, how can you separate the longevity wheat from the chaff ?

If you’re so inclined, you could get comfortable, unlock your laptop or tablet, and dive into the evidence. Thousands of scientific papers - pages upon pages in the PubMed database - have been published on the topic of healthy aging and life-span extension in humans. It’s an impressive stockpile of useful knowledge, but not exactly light reading.

Really, unless you’re in the field or an obsessive nut like me, you probably don’t have time to get into the weeds on this topic. Work, personal responsibilities, and countless other daily activities make this a huge challenge. There are only so many hours in a day.

The next best thing, then, is to find a trusted source to interpret the science of lon-gevity. You need someone who can cut through the crap and isn’t trying to sell you supplements. Most importantly, you need someone who can summarize what you need to know.  

Well, since you’re here, I nominate myself for that most important of jobs. I would be honored to be your trusted longevity information source, at least for the next 5 minutes. In addition to being a certified Primal Health Coach, I’m also a certifi-able health nut. I live and breathe this stuff.

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This eBook is all about healthy aging - understanding and supporting it. First I’ll tackle the “understanding” aspects: the difference between lifespan and healths-pan, the most important marker for healthy aging, the role of the gut in longevity, and more.

Then to the heart of the matter: I’ll give you 8 practical tips to enhance your health, live longer, and prevent age-related decline. Obviously there are more than 8 ways to stay healthy as you age, but these will certainly get you started.

Best of all: none of these longevity secrets involve expensive drugs, surgeries, or un-proven treatments. They are natural, primal strategies that you can start imple-menting today.

I want to stay vital for as long as possible. Let me help you do the same, whatever your age.

 

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PA R T 1

Healthy Aging 101

Your typical rat lives for about two years. Slap a bushy tail on that rat, however, and the animal:

1) Suddenly becomes cute

2) Lives seven times longer

That’s right. Despite an uncanny resemblance to their nocturnal cousins, squirrels live seven to eight times longer than rats. We don’t know why this happens. Their genes are nearly identical.

Rodent genes are very similar to ours too. Rats, for instance, share many genetic markers for disease with humans – making rats good research subjects. Since rats are so short-lived, we can examine fifty generations of the little critters in one hu-man lifespan.

Yet at a deep level, we really don’t know why a rat lives two years, a squirrel fifteen years, and a lucky human one hundred years. But we do know a healthy rat from an unhealthy rat. Unhealthy rats have more tissue damage, and this damage is caused by things like free radicals, aging mitochondria, and senescent cells.

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“These fundamental processes are almost certainly driving tissue health,” says Dr. Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. “As for what actually drives lifespan? We really don’t know.”2

So instead of lifespan, let’s focus on healthspan for the moment. Healthspan, ac-cording to Merriam Webster, “is the length of time that the person is healthy – not just alive.”

Here’s the basic idea: even if we can’t push human lifespan much past one hun-dred, we can still stay strong until our last breath.

Me? I want to climb a mountain when I’m 95. Perhaps it’ll look more like a mole-hill than Everest, but what do you expect from a nonagenarian?

Here’s the interesting part. If I do manage to reach that age, there’s one marker that will predict my continued health, cognition, and capability. Any guesses?

Let’s rule out a few things first. The marker in question is not telomere length, liver function or glucose metabolism.

Give up? Alright, it’s inflammation!

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What the heck is inflammation anyway?The term “inflammation” gets thrown around a lot these days. Confusion abounds, however, on its exact meaning and significance. To be honest, I was con-fused about inflammation for most of my life. Nobody ever really stops to define it, so it’s no shocker that most people are also confused.  

Let’s clear up that confusion. When we talk about inflammation in the context of aging, we are talking about chronic, low-grade inflammation. This kind of inflam-mation occurs when immune cells – inflammatory cytokines, for instance – infil-trate healthy tissue in the absence of specific disease. And when the infiltration reaches a critical level, tissue health is compromised.

 

Leaky gut is one major cause of chronic inflammation. When someone has leaky gut, undigested particles sneak out of the intestines and into the bloodstream. In response, the immune system generates cytokines to “kill” these particles. But these cytokines do more harm than good. Check out my article here for more de-tail on leaky gut.

Along with leaky gut, there are countless other causes of chronic inflammation. Very thick books have been written on the subject. Books large enough to impress even your smartest friends. But you don’t have time for that, do you?

Instead, let’s go straight to how inflammation status predict healthy aging.

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Super agersChronic disease – heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc. – usually gets people between their sixties and eighties. In some folks, however, these diseases don’t arise until much later. Scientists study these super agers to learn why this happens.

One thing they’ve found is that super agers - centenarians, in fact -  have longer te-lomeres than the average population. Longer chromosomal end-caps, the theory goes, offer better protection against age-related DNA damage. But once someone reaches centenarian status, do telomeres predict anything about their health?

It appears not. In a 2015 study of over six hundred Japanese centenarians, re-searchers found that inflammation, not telomere length, predicted healthy aging.3 This is a remarkable finding. Lower levels of inflammation, measured using bio-markers like C-Reactive Protein and Interleukin-6, were predictive of both longev-ity and overall health.

“This [analysis],” write the authors, “allowed us to identify low-level inflammation as, after age itself, the most important correlate of not only survival, but also capa-bility and cognition.”

Keeping inflammation at bayThe takeaway is pretty clear: to optimize both lifespan and healthspan, we need to keep chronic inflammation at reasonable levels. One way to do this is to get to bed on time. Along with the other anti-inflammatory benefits of sleep, melatonin (the sleep hormone) has some sweet anti-aging properties.

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A strong gut barrier is also crucial. There’s evidence, in fact, that centenarians have elevated levels of “good” bacteria in their intestines.4 These friendly bacteria, perhaps, help super agers keep inflammation at bay by preventing leaky gut.

I could go on, but its a fact that chronic inflammation degrades human tissue over time. Keep inflammation low and you’ll have healthier tissue.

Pretty important for climbing mountains into your nineties.

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PA R T 2

8 Secrets to a Longer, Healthier Life

1) Walk A LotRemember that Bolivian shepherd that lived nearly twice as long as your average American? Yeah, Carmelo Flores. That guy.

You’ll also remember I promised you his longevity secret. This “secret” is actually something most of us do every day, though probably not enough of it.

 

“I walk a lot, that’s all,” said the grizzled Bolivian. “I go out with the animals.”

 

He walks a lot. I told you it was laughably simple.

 

Carmelo Flores was, in fact, engaged in an anti-aging lifestyle. Remember the most important marker for healthy aging? Bingo, inflammation.

 

Keeping inflammation in check, as we covered earlier, helps stave off degenerative disease so we can reach our later years without being confined to a hospital bed. Healthy centenarians - our role models for healthy aging - have remarkably low lev-els of inflammation.

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So where does walking factor in? How about this: regular exercise actually reduces systemic inflammation. And walking, also specifically linked to lower inflamma-tion, is perhaps the simplest and lowest-impact way to exercise every day.5 So keep those walking shoes handy.

 

2) Control Blood SugarAnother way to suppress inflammation and promote longevity is to control your blood sugar.

 

Here’s why: if your blood sugar stays high for too long, you become insulin resis-tant. Insulin resistant? That’s when insulin – a hormone that transports blood sugar to your muscles, liver, etc. – stops doing its job. Then all that sugar gets stuck in your blood, increasing your risk for cancer, dementia, and heart disease. Not good.

The simplest way to control blood sugar is to limit carbs. You do want some carbs, however, to replenish muscle glycogen, promote quality sleep, and much more. So how do you control the glycemic response when you do eat carbs? Here are a few scientifically-verified tips:

• Sprinkle cinnamon on your carbs. It limits your blood sugar response to the meal.6

• Eat more slowly (chewing more also enhances digestion and helps satiety)

• Take a walk after dinner (the old “constitutional”)

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• Do a hard workout – sprints, squats, long hike, etc. – a few hours before a carb-rich dinner. This helps drive blood sugar out of your blood and into mus-cle tissue.  

3) SprintSpeaking of hard workouts, how about doing a few sprints? As you might have guessed, this type of exercise – called high intensity interval training (HIIT) – pro-motes healthy aging in multiple ways. Let me give you some examples.

In one paper, researchers found that intense workouts decreased mortality risk in older Australians.7 In another recent study, researchers discovered that HIIT train-ing not only reversed age-related decline in muscle tissue, it also boosted protein synthesis in other parts of the body.8 This is good for longevity because our DNA is programmed to manufacture less protein as we age. In other words, sprinting turns back the clock on our genes.

How much sprinting should you do? Mark’s Daily Apple founder and super ager Mark Sisson recommends one sprint workout about every 7 to 10 days. This al-lows for proper recovery when done alongside, for instance, strength training.

 

Seem like too long of a recovery period? Maybe you aren’t going hard enough. “Most people who want to sprint all the time,” writes Sisson, “aren’t really sprint-ing.”

If you’re unable to do traditional running sprints, don’t worry. You can capture these benefits by turning up the intensity on the bike or in the pool.

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4) Fast IntermittentlyOur ancestors didn’t eat three square meals a day with munchies in between. Fresh mammoth meat wasn’t always available, so of necessity, they fasted.

 

Fasting, if done wisely, stresses the body in a good way. This is called a hormetic response. Temporarily depriving the body of nutrients improves our metabolism and boosts factors associated with healthy aging like autophagy and mitophagy. Plus fasting improves insulin sensitivity, which keeps blood sugar from sticking around in the blood for too long.9

 

Does this mean we should restrict calories? Not necessarily. Decades ago, scientists noticed that calorie-restricted rodents consistently outlived their well-fed counter-parts. But when calories are restricted in humans, our muscle mass and bone den-sity suffer. Not a good tradeoff.

 

Enter intermittent fasting, or eating normal amounts of calories in a compressed time frame. With this kind of fasting, the beneficial longevity pathways of caloric restriction are activated without a loss of muscle mass.10 Cool.

 

How should you go about these fasts? Many studies showing benefits use a 16/8 regimen (16 hours of fasting, 8 hours of eating), and I adhere loosely to this proto-col. Sometimes the fast is 13 hours, other times 17.

If you’ve never tried fasting, maybe start with a 12-hour overnight fast. This kind of fast captures some of the longevity benefits, while also enhancing your cir-cadian rhythm. From there, you can work up to 16 hours or more.

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5) Learn New ThingsWhen I was learning to standup paddle board in Puerto Rico last year, I noticed my board had the word “Laird” inscribed on its surface. “You’re gonna be surfin’ like Laird Hamilton, man,” the instructor joked. Then I got out there and surfed like Brian Stanton. If you can call what I was doing surfing.

Unlike me, however, standup paddle boarding is one of many sports that big-wave legend Laird Hamilton has mastered. He’s a 53 year old ultra-athletic kid. His se-cret? Never stop inventing, balancing on, and playing with an array of toys on both land and sea. Probably no one has learned more sports than Laird.

As it happens, this kind of physical-learning helps keep the brain young. German neuroscientists, in fact, recently found that physical exercise slowed cognitive de-cline in the elderly.11 And of all the activities tested, learning an elaborate dance routine had the strongest brain-boosting effect. Foxtrot, anyone?

 

6) Get HotIn 2015, a group of scientists analyzed the habits of 2,315 Finnish men and discov-ered something pretty incredible.12 They discovered that the more a Finnish man used the sauna, the less likely he was to develop cardiac disease or die from any cause. More recently, another analysis of this data showed a similar result for low-ering risk of Alzheimer’s.13

So why is sweating it out in a sauna so good for us?

For one, at high temperatures our bodies produce heat shock proteins (HSPs) that circulate, eliminate damaged proteins, and repair injured tissue. We want these

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HSPs. An increase of HSP production, in fact, significantly lengthened the lives of worms.14

What else? In human trials, sauna usage caused a massive release of growth hor-mone, and since growth hormone declines with age, this is kind of a healthy aging “hack”.15 Finally, in mouse trials, high temperatures triggered better insulin sensi-tivity and a concomitant drop in blood glucose levels.16

 

Some combination of these factors is likely responsible for the anti-aging effect of the sauna. Saunas, as you know, are available at many gyms. Help yourself to the benefits of a 15-20 minute daily session.

 

7) Eat GlycineGlycine is a simple amino acid abundant in tendon, gelatin, and bone broth. We typically don’t prioritize it in our diet. Instead we feast on steak, chicken breast, pork chops – muscle meats with little to no glycine. There’s good reason, however, to rethink our dinner plates.

The case for glycine has developed gradually. First, researchers singled out methio-nine as the “bad” amino acid in protein because mice deprived of methionine lived considerably longer.17 But giving up methionine essentially means giving up meat. I don’t relish that thought.

 

Fortunately, another group of scientists discovered that adding glycine to the high-protein, methionine-rich, diet of mice extended their lives by 30 to 40%.18 In other words, eating glycine countered the negative effects of methionine in these rodents. More recently, it was found that glycine also restores age-related respira-tion defects in human cells.19

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Glycine has only grown more popular since. “Glycine has crucial function in cyto-protection, immune response, growth, development, metabolism, and survival of humans and many other mammals,” wrote the authors of a recent 2017 review. 20

 

So yes, glycine is important for healthy aging. I get my daily dose through collagen powder - a few scoops in my shake. Simple as that.

8) Maintain MuscleMuscle mass is a strong predictor of longevity. In one study, researchers followed 3,659 participants over 16 years. 21 The best survivors? You guessed it: the most muscular group.

 

How might building muscle promote longer life? Like fasting and heat exposure, lifting heavy things induces a hormetic response. Through a series of metabolic and hormonal signals, our body comes back stronger after we break it down with push-ups, pull-ups, and other resistance exercises.

 

For example, growth hormone and testosterone - two hormones crucial for healthy aging - increase when we resistance train. And, lifting weights drives blood sugar out of the blood and into muscles. This effect, which we discussed earlier, reduces inflammation - the center of the bullseye when it comes to aging well.

 

When it comes to resistance training, more is not necessarily better. In fact, accord-ing to the research, women that spent “moderate” amounts of time strength train-ing have a lower risk of death than more frequent lifters. It seems prudent not to overdo it, then.

 

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Personally, I’m a big believer in a minimalist program: 1-2 sessions of compound lifts per week, a simple regimen for building and maintaining muscle

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Final Words

If you take the information in this eBook to heart, I can virtually guarantee you’ll be on your way to healthier aging, whatever your present age.

 

But this is just the beginning. In the coming days I’ll send you new ways to live longer, digest better, sleep more soundly, burn fat more effectively, reduce stress, and more. I also encourage you to review my stockpile of research-driven articles available on www.PrimalSapien.com.

 

Finally, thanks for reading my ebook. As a bonus, I’m offering a limited number of exploratory health coaching sessions for free right now. To learn more about health coaching with me, click here.  

 

Stay primal,

Brian Stanton

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Sources

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2. “Judith Campisi, Ph.D. on Cellular Senescence, Mitochondrial Dysfunction, Cancer & Aging.” FoundMyFitness.com. 28 April 2017. <https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/judy-campisi>

3. Arai Y, Martin-Ruiz CM, Takayama M, et al. “Inflammation, But Not Telomere Length, Predicts Successful Ageing at Extreme Old Age: A Longitudi-nal Study of Semi-supercentenarians.” EBioMedicine. 2015;2(10):1549-1558. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.07.029.

4. Biagi E et al. “Gut Microbiota and Extreme Longevity.” Curr Biol. 2016 Jun 6;26(11):1480-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.016. Epub 2016 May 12.

5. Mathur N, Pedersen BK. “Exercise as a Mean to Control Low-Grade Systemic Inflammation.” Mediators of Inflammation. 2008;2008:109502. doi:10.1155/2008/109502.

6. Medagama AB. “The glycaemic outcomes of Cinnamon, a review of the experimental evidence and clinical trials.” Nutrition Journal. 2015;14:108. doi:10.1186/s12937-015-0098-9.

7. Gebel K et al. “Effect of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity on All-Cause Mortality in Middle-aged and Older Australians.” JAMA Intern Med. 2015 Jun;175(6):970-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.0541.

8. Robinson MM, Dasari S, Konopka AR, et al. “Enhanced Protein Translation Underlies Improved Metabolic and Physical Adaptations to Different Ex-ercise Training Modes in Young and Old Humans.” Cell metabolism. 2017;25(3):581-592. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2017.02.009.

9. Shariatpanahi ZV, Shariatpanahi MV, Shahbazi S, Hossaini A, Abadi A. “Effect of Ramadan fasting on some indices of insulin resistance and compo-nents of the metabolic syndrome in healthy male adults.” Br J Nutr. 2008 Jul;100(1):147-51. Epub 2007 Dec 6.

10. Anton S, Leeuwenburgh C. “Fasting or caloric restriction for Healthy Aging.” Experimental gerontology. 2013;48(10):1003-1005. doi:10.1016/j.exger.2013.04.011.

11. Rehfeld K, Müller P, Aye N, et al. Dancing or Fitness Sport? The Effects of Two Training Programs on Hippocampal Plasticity and Balance Abilities in Healthy Seniors. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2017;11:305. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00305.

12. Laukkanen T. “Association Between Sauna Bathing and Fatal Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality Events.” JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(4):542-548. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8187.

13. Laukkanen T, Kunutsor S, Kauhanen J, Laukkanen JA. “Sauna bathing is inversely associated with dementia and Alzheimer's disease in middle-aged Finnish men.” Age Ageing. 2017 Mar 1;46(2):245-249. doi: 10.1093/ageing/afw212.

14. Murshid A. “Stress proteins in aging and life span.” Int J Hyperthermia. 2013 Aug;29(5):442-7. doi: 10.3109/02656736.2013.798873. Epub 2013 Jun 6.

15. Leppaluoto, J. et al. “Endocrine effects of repeated sauna bathing.” Acta physiologica Scandinavica 128, 467-470, doi:10.1111/j.1748-1716.1986.tb08000.x (1986).

16. Kokura, S. et al. “Whole body hyperthermia improves obesity-induced insulin resistance in diabetic mice.” International journal of hyperthermia : the official journal of European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology, North American Hyperthermia Group 23, 259-265, doi:10.1080/02656730601176824 (2007).

17. López-Torres M. “Lowered methionine ingestion as responsible for the decrease in rodent mitochondrial oxidative stress in protein and dietary restric-tion possible implications for humans.” Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Nov;1780(11):1337-47. doi: 10.1016/j.bbagen.2008.01.007. Epub 2008 Jan 18.

18. Brind, Joel. “Dietary glycine supplementation mimics lifespan extension by dietary methionine restriction in Fisher 344 rats.” FASEB J.April 201125 (Meeting Abstract Supplement) 528.2

19. University of Tsukuba. "Scientists reverse aging in human cell lines and give theory of aging a new lease of life." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 May 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150526085138.Figure -.-.

20. Razak MA, Begum PS, Viswanath B, Rajagopal S. “Multifarious Beneficial Effect of Nonessential Amino Acid, Glycine: A Review.” Oxidative Medi-cine and Cellular Longevity. 2017;2017:1716701. doi:10.1155/2017/1716701.

21. Srikanthan P. “Muscle mass index as a predictor of longevity in older adults.” Am J Med. 2014 Jun;127(6):547-53. doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2014.02.007. Epub 2014 Feb 18.