Rewind Your Clock: David Sinclair, PhD Wants To 'Cure' Aging

We've got to throw away our preconceptions of what being old is ... Being 50 is not old anymore ... Even 80, like my father, that's not old anymore if you take care of yourself. You extrapolate that into the future, they'll be a day when being 100 isn't old.

I think the most important thing for anybody to live healthier for longer, if there was just one thing I could say, it would be eat less often. Don't eat three meals a day.

The bottom line is you've got to get out of your comfort zone, get your body out of its comfort zone—hormesis is what we call it. The problem with today's world is... we just want to be relaxed; we just want to be fed. We don't want to feel discomfort, and that's leading to a whole bunch of problems. If we're not always telling our body things could be problematic, our bodies don't care—they don't fight against disease; they don't fight against aging.

The byproducts of what we call lipolysis—the breakdown of fat when you're hungry—produce monounsaturated fatty acids, the kind you can get from olive oil. Those molecules circulating in the blood are about a thousand times more potent than resveratrol at activating a longevity enzyme.

80% of our health in old age is due to our lifestyle and how we live; only 20% is genetic ... Your genes are not your destiny.

We've been on this trajectory of living healthier and being more youthful in our old age for the last few hundred years. A child born today, if we stay on that trajectory here in the US, can expect—not just hope—but expect to live to 104. That means they'll still be healthy [at age] 80 and 90, which is great.

Last week, my brother's family lost a house. It was all burnt down ... It really brings home the fact that we're living in dangerous times. And you can deny it; you can deny that the world isn't changing and we've lived through these times before. But let's just face it; let's use Occam's razor—the simplest explanation is that the world is fucking up and we are the cause of it. It's not that hard to admit unless you've got some other agenda.

Let's not be silly about it—aging is what's driving cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease; it's the main cause of disease and disability on this planet.

What I want is a world where people in their 80s and 90s are not just appreciated, but they're actually utilized. If they're healthy, they can be advising or running companies or motivating the youth. That's the world that I want.

I'm skipping one to two meals a day, and it's changed my life. I feel great. A lot of people say 'it makes me feel queasy' or 'my stomach's burning.' I've found I get used to it. If you find that it's too hard, try [drinking] a cup of hot water. I think coffee is great ... That gets me through the morning.

The FDA has actually agreed that if we do certain clinical trials, for instance with metformin, the diabetes drug that we think might slow aging, if we can hit certain endpoints and show things are actually working, they are well-prepared to consider calling aging a treatable condition—if not a disease—that we can prescribe medicines for.

I would love a world where people can live to 250 [and] expect to still be playing tennis at 120. I think it's doable. There's no reason why we can't do that with our ingenuity.

Because resveratrol is fairly insoluble, taking it with a fatty solvent, such as yogurt, increases absorption 5-10 fold.

When we look at the state of healthcare in the United States, it's horrific compared to where it could be in terms of what we could be doing for people. It's such a Byzantine mess. I don't see our way through it or out of it without some really significant changes at the highest level.

If I raise my NAD levels either by fasting, exercising, or taking a supplement, I don't get the effects of jet lag.

We could have a world, by the time we're elderly, where people in their 80s are just starting a new career ... That's a world, a globe, that would save trillions of dollars.

Compared to type 2 diabetics who don't take metformin, those who do have a much lower risk of Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and heart disease over the next five years.