Smologies #28: AGING with Caleb Finch

Oh hay, it's your old dad here. Save and use some pancakes even though you sleep until eleven am Alley Ward. And this is an episode of smologies. If you're like, what is that? These are shorter, classroom friendly, kids safe episodes. So if you're looking for the full shebang with more information and probably me swearing a little bit like a trucker, we've linked that in the show notes. There's the full

It's the unknowns that we are still working out basic mechanisms, and we know that it is under some genetic influence. If you have the genes of a mouse, you're only going to live two years. If you have the genes of a human you might get to seventy eighty or ninety, so it's genetic. But then among individuals, the role of genetics seems to be much less. Roughly identical twins lifespans you can attribute twenty percent of their heritability in aging

So only twenty percent is attributed to genes, which is terrible news for those of us who like to deny personal responsibility.

So I've been working on in many parts of my career on environmental aspects of how individual gene responses to the environment, to diet influence outcomes of aging. And I'm now in the last six seven years been focusing on air pollution, which shortens lifespan in proportion to the number of particles per cubic meter and also accelerates almost all of the diseases of aging, including the risk of Alzheimer's.

So let's go to the superbasics. As someone who is not as well versed in this as you, what exactly is aging? How do you define aging?

Well, the basic way is at a population level that after the age of forty, your risk of mortality essentially doubles every seven or eight years. Oh, so there's an exponential increase in mortality risk. And preceding that is parallel risk in chronic diseases, heart disease, cancer, and at later ages Alzheimer's. So the individual pathways in this are not understood, but as by age group, aging increases the risk of

So our risks of disease and dying go exponentially up. Okay, rather than bum you out let that fact. Encourage you to write the novel that you've been intending to, or Collins sick, go to six Flags tomorrow, or wear the shoes you think you should save for fancy occasions were today we're all getting old. Just go for it, Champ, Speaking of how do you ask a genius expert the most basic question ever? You just do it. People you live in the now watch is it that ourselves don't

That's part of it. Our molecules don't regenerate as fast, and there's some molecules that are as old as we are, in our blood vessels and our connective tissue and in our eyes that undergo molecular deterioration.

I know they say you're kind of a new person every seven years.

Is that that's not at all correct?

Okay, so that's some flim flam to debunk.

Which is not true. Yeah, that's one of those sort of inherited tails that have no scientific substance. I have no idea where that comes from.

I gotta look it up.

Yeah, there's no there's no science there, right.

I didn't think so it always, I mean it's always. I don't know where that came from. But it's an interesting myth.

And no, it's not interesting. It's disruptive because it's wrong.

Right. By the way, if you're like, was Ali just dying at this point? The answer is yes, man, I am dying up here, both from a molecular standpoint and psychologically. But just stick around because like life, there are twists and there are turns around every corner. So how old are you really? Okay, there's a cool math trick you can do you take your age and multiply it by sixteen, then divide it by sixteen, which is your age. You're just your age. I made you math for nothing. Here's

What he's ever looked at it that I'm aware of?

Well?

Ted, did you notice when you showed this to me that I kind of stopped breathing a little bit?

Not only that the condition of this is unbelievable. Now, how do different animals age? I know you mentioned a mouse might have a lifespan of two years.

Any each species has its own pattern of aging, So mice don't get Alzheimer's disease, and they don't get blood vessel disease and have heart attacks, but they do get cancer and their arteries become more rigid and their lungs become more rigid. Because of molecular aging. That part of aging happens in humans at a much slower rate. And in addition, we have diseases that are special to the human species, including Alzheimer's disease.

Is the brain the part of our body that ages the quickest or where do we see aging happen?

Well, I'd say blood vessels, and so there's in terms of shared anatomy across men and women, the blood vessels are already beginning to age even before puberty.

Really, yes, I just want to acknowledge that the terms men and women and male and female are along a gender binary that doesn't apply to everyone. And doctor Finch is talking about broad strokes in historical studies, and I just want to let the non binary folks know out there that I see you and I love you. And what about male versus female lifespans? Have we seen that change over the last few decades or pretty study?

Well? Both, No, they both increased as overall health has increased is observed in the health rich populations of the world, and our upper income people in this country are a health rich people. That women are living five years longer than men.

Why is that?

We don't know?

So what are we doing that is helping progress aging or what are we doing? What are we doing wrong? Essentially when it comes to aging, well.

The major health concern across the country is people are eating more energy rich foods than they need and not getting enough exercise. I mean, that's simple lifestyle take home. It's boring to say, but if you are even mildly obese in midlife and you're not exercising, you're having a shorter life expectancy.

And you mentioned something about sugar, and I know that inflammatory foods and inflammation is part of your research. How does inflammation affect the human body in terms of.

It, Well, all of the diseases of aging that we worry about, blood vessel disease, obesity, Alzheimer's disease, cancer involve the molecules of inflammatory responses. So it's deeply built into our systems and in the processes of aging. So that's just a fundamental fact. And the term inflammation comes from ancient understanding of when you have a cut, it swells

Flames on the side of my face, breathing breath, heaving breath. Is there a way that we should be keeping inflammation at.

Bay, Well, that's part of the idea of exercise and diet, which reduces the level of inflammation.

So move your bod and eat your greens. We fixed it America. What's happening in other parts of the world and in blue zones where longevity is higher? Side note, what is a blue zone? So this came up in the hematology episode and I only know that because I

I'm not an enthusiastic of something unique about the blue zones. I mean, there are peoples in all of the continents who are a live a little longer than the average, But most of my colleagues don't think there's anything unusual about that. But if you look globally, lifespan has been increasing as early life mortality decreased because of reducing infectious disease.

So now is the time when we dive into listener questions. And also I mentioned that a portion of the podcast income goes to a charity each week. This week, doctor kleb Vinch chose curealz dot Org. Cureaalz dot org. It's a nonprofit organization. They're dedicated to funding research with the highest probability of preventing, slowing, or reversing Alzheimer's disease. Now to date, they have raised over eighty six million dollars to fund almost four hundred studies, and one hundred percent

Well, the evidence is very clear. Almost nobody gets beyond one hundred, and there's one person in the last thirty years who reached over one point twenty, Jean Calman. But there are more people getting to one hundred, but they still in the last thirty years, she's the only one to get beyond one hundred and twenty.

So sign note. Jean Coment lived to be one hundred and twenty two, the oldest human on record, and she was fond of wearing headphones and doing chair gymnastics, prayer, fruit salad, and smoking well one Dunhill cigarette a day and a small glass of port wine until she was one hundred and seventeen, which proves that you're never too old to quit a bad habit and turn over a new leaf. So seriously, let's nope. The smokes folks love old Dad. And what's the role of telomeres in aging?

We don't know. So telomers are at the ends of chromosomes that get shortened during cell division. So some of our cells do show shorter telomers in the immune system. Its actual functional consequence is not clear.

So that's clearly hasn't been the secret to.

There's no secret. There's nothing in aging that is a secret.

Does he hate me again? Twists and turns, Listen to the end. What's your favorite part about the field or what you do?

Surprise?

Yeah, still got a lot of it right.

Well, the complexities of biology are just awesome, amazing, and every year there's a new level of mechanisms subcellularly or in how organs talk to each other. It's just endlessly fascinating.

Any other things that you're excited about working on or you think people should know about the aging process or taking care of themselves, Well.

I'm collaborating with some anthropologists and a group of people who live in the Bolivian Amazon, And what's fascinating about these people that simon a they're living under conditions of two hundred years ago without medication, and they're growing their own food, and they all have high levels of infection. Some of them get to age seventy or eighty. But what's remarkable a small percent, ten percent, nobody lives much

Do you think there's anything about the gut biome that's at play there?

That's an open question. I don't know.

We'll see. I guess there's a surprise and a puzzle waiting for you with that. Yep, thank you so much for letting me ask you so many questions. Thank you so much, good questions, he said, I had good questions, y'all. He does not hate me. So after the interview was over and the mics were off, doctor Finch said, I asked great questions. I was doing a service for science by making the podcast. I honestly almost joy webbed in