Tailor Your Workouts, Diet, and Sleep to Slow Aging & Boost Longevity

The first thing to understand is that health is really a gift. The idea of having that really open mindset that once you get that right, that fuels everything else. Now you can actually start to talk about longevity itself, right? What are the actual things that are driving aging? Things that are below the surface of health. Shortening telomeres, immunosenescent stem cells, wearing out, increased senescent cells and inflammation, oxidative stress.

All these things are under the surface making us get older and accelerating the rate at which we get older. It's in our world, we work out every day, but we change our workouts based on how ready our body is to take on load. If the body has a a low heart rate variability mean it's it's stressed either physically or emotionally, we'll do a lighter workout. We'll do a recovery workout. If we are well recovered and heart rate variability is high, then we'll push harder. Sleep is massive.

We're very keen on people having a sanctuary to sleep in, right? All right, we are live. Doctor Jeffrey Gladden. How are you, Sir? Great. How are you doing? I'm good man, Glad to hear. Always excited to learn about how to live longer, so I'm sure we're going to dive into that at some point today. Yeah, we might touch on that. Might touch on that. So what what gets you into the longevity space anyways? Man It's like in the biohacking realm and keto carnivore dietary

circles. There's been this massive push for just simply living longer, living optimally. So what would get you intrigued by that field of study to begin with? Yeah, so I, you know, my background is interventional cardiology, right? So I did that for 25 years here in Dallas and I love that work. I did a lot of a lot of things in that space. I found in my own heart group. I had 10 offices, 12 docs.

We flew around a little plane servicing outline areas, starting heart attack programs, Cath labs, ending up Co founding in a Heart Hospital here in Dallas with another cardiologist and people at Baylor that's become nationally recognized and has the number of satellite hospitals associated with it now. And you know, I got involved

with medical device companies. I still sit on the board of one doing interventional devices, kind of a legacy activity for me. But but what happened for me was in my 50s, had all this stuff going on and all of a sudden I'm feeling exhausted all the time. I'm putting on weight around the middle. I've always been athletic, played soccer in college and basketball and stuff like that.

And when I would become stressed, I would get anxious and then I would go over this Cliff of depression, like not go for run and feel better. Talk to your buddy and feel better. Just like, Oh my gosh, like I went out of here kind of depression. So you know, I'm obviously very concerned about that. So I go into my, one of my colleagues and I get quote, UN quote tested. And what I was told was that, you know, everything checks out for your age.

Everything looks, quote UN quote normal for your age. You're just getting older. Why don't you take an antidepressant? And it was one of the most existential moments of my life because my dad died with dementia. And so I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, you know, I'm getting some brain fog on top of everything else

and it's like, it's just going to be downhill from here, right? And so I, I was unwilling to accept that, right? So I threw myself into the whole functional integrative age management medicine space and did certifications, a lot of CME, and it took Me 2 1/2 years at that point, of course, with the help of other people, but I cracked the code on everything

that was going on, right. I had subclinical hypothyroidism, meaning that my thyroid numbers look normal, but reflex testing and biometric testing showed that I was hypothyroid. I was not getting enough thyroid activity at the cellular level. And then genetically I don't convert. I'm homozygous for a SNP that decreases my ability to convert inactive to active thyroid in my

brain by 60 to 80%. So once I got on the right combination of active and inactive thyroid called T3 and T4, normal Synthroid or T4 that's typically prescribed would not have done it for me. It was like the lights came back on. It's like, Oh my gosh. And it's like, wow, that's amazing. And then I don't make certain neurotransmitters sufficiently, which I also figured out for my genetics.

So once I got on the right set of supplements to manage that and help me make those properly, all of a sudden I didn't. I could come under stress and I wouldn't get anxious and I certainly wouldn't get depressed. And if I felt myself getting a little depressed, all I do is take one thing and I would feel better in 20 minutes. I'm like, wow, that's amazing. And then I was also at a point in my life where, you know, I was losing testosterone levels,

right? So when we go through menopause, men go through andopause, as you're aware. And so I got on some testosterone, some DHEA, and, you know, lost 20 lbs of fat, put on 10 lbs of muscle. And it's like, Oh my gosh, I feel amazing. And at that point, I realized that I've been practicing sick care, not health care. And I became so fascinated with the idea of optimizing health and subsequently longevity that I left cardiology and everything I knew how to make a living at.

I left all that in 2012 and pretty much base jumped into starting a practice that's turned into glad and longevity. Now we're we're, we're focused on really the target for us in longevity is when we're 100 years old, we want to have a 30 year old body and a 300 year old mind. Yeah, that's really the target. So yeah. I like it. I like, I feel like the word longevity, like I don't ever hear that when I go to a conventional Western medicine doc.

I mean, that's not even in the vocabulary it seems. That's right. No, that's right there. It's either it's either you're sick or you're or you're OK Their term is Wellness, right? And I and I really kind of the hair rises. I have a lot of hair on my head, right? But the hair rises up on the back of my neck when I, when I hear the word Wellness, because it's such a weak word, right? It's like if we do a bunch of sick care testing and you don't have a disease, then, you know,

eat better, exercise. We'll see you back in a year. And now we're in a Wellness program, right? And I think that's such a disservice to people when really

what we want, I think what we want is to optimize. We want to optimize health, longevity, activity, performance and all that sort of thing. And I can walk you through kind of how we think about all that. But but that's why I'm really so passionate about helping people not only live a long time. You know, when you think about longevity, it's kind of abstract. Well, what does it even mean? We're going to live a long time. We're going to be have a long

health span. We're going to, you know, health gevities come into play. But for me, it's really that target of I want to and I want to develop it Now. If I'm going to have a 30 year old body at 100, I need to have it now, right? And I've done 71 laps around around the sun, but I, you know, I can do anything I want, right? And so I want to do that in 100 and I want to develop, continue to develop my 300 year old mind, right? And so this is how you really elevate your experience of being

a human. And to me, that's what longevity is all about. Yeah, I definitely want to dive into your specific framework, kind of how you take clients through this, your patients when it comes like this general population, where do you see people the the chasm really starting to widen as far as like where people really start dropping off a Cliff because like when you're young, when you're teenage years, you know, you're pretty close trajectory

with all of your peers. But then, you know, 20s, thirties, 40s, fifties hit and that gap just gets broader and broader. And I I trying to compare myself to others, but I'm guilty of it and I feel like I never had to like regain my health. I'm never living in my glory days. Like I'd legitimately feel perform better with every year that passes. And I look at, like, I work with clients that are, you know,

making up for lost time. They'll be like, 40-50 years old, and they're trying to, like, relive their high school glory days in football. And it's like they let themselves go for a decade or 20 years. And once they do that, making up for that ground becomes exponentially harder. That's right. When you're looking at the general population, where are

they going astray to begin with? Like where is the first catalyzmic default that they're they're miss stepping on? I think the first is taking health for granted. I think that, you know, when we're young, let's say you chronologically young, certainly as kids and even as teenagers, we simply take it for granted. And then we, you know, we do whatever educational process we're going to do, we get into whatever profession we're going to go into.

And then for many of us, we start to leverage our health for the sake of building our business or building our family or building our community or some combination or all those things. And, and because health has just been a given, we, we, we sort of take it for granted. And I think the first thing to understand is that health is really a gift at any age. It's a gift.

And if you can allow people to get into a conscious framework of, oh, this is really, this is really my greatest asset is my health here. And I and I need to start protecting it. Even as a teenage teenager, Like if you could go into a high school and start to talk to, you know, their health classes or whatever it is and talk about and you know, teenage don't listen anyway.

But the point is if you could maybe in maybe in maybe actually in elementary school where people do listen and you could start to talk about the the advantage. And to your point, the fork in the road, it becomes so massive, right? So massive. And if you want to live young for a lifetime, which is really what we're about how you live young for a lifetime, then, you know, starting to take care of your health all the way through.

I think that's the first misstep that people make is they they, they, they take it for granted, Therefore they leverage it to build other things. And then it's like, Oh my gosh, what happened? You know, I'm pre diabetic. I gained 40 lbs and Oh my God, I can't get up the stairs. Right. So yeah, we all see that.

So I mean, I don't want to derail the trajectory here, but like, when you're talking about your framework, maybe that's the the next place to go. But my question would be, you know, what are the main primary pillars that people are taking for granted when it comes to like their sleep, their nutrition, their, their movement and activity like, and that's probably intertwining to your strategy, but where do people need to focus the majority of their time and effort?

Yeah, well, actually I wrote a book, 100 is the New 30, right? And the subtitle is How Playing the Symphony of Longevity Will Enable Us to Live Young for a Lifetime. And in that book I outlined 4 different areas, and I've added a fifth sense. And the first area, the most important area, quite honestly, the circle that binds them all, they're really circles, if you will, is the life energy circle.

And life energy circle basically has to do with the psycho spiritual space, it has to do with mindset, it has to do with mental health, it has to do with feeling loved, it has to do with having great relationships, it has to do with sense of purpose, it has to do with feeling worthy and has to do with being spiritually aligned, being wise and feeling safe. I think most anxiety, fear, worry, stress, when you devolve down through, it really turns out to not feeling safe.

And so when you realize that unconditional love for yourself is something that's an inside job that we ultimately give to ourselves, Nobody ever got that from their parents, right? Nobody that I ever spoke to or did. And we've all, we've all been traumatized. I don't know anybody that hasn't lived through trauma, right?

So we all live in reaction to that trauma and going in and healing that trauma, really understanding that, healing it, forgiving all the parties involved, and then actually transcending. It's where you become grateful for everything that happened because it brought us to this conversation here today, right? When you start to work through these areas of your life and you stop living in reaction to things that that cause you to go off the rails, right?

And you, you know, you solve the addictions, you solve the other things that are happening, and then you start to feel safe because just like love is a, is an inside job, feeling safe is an inside job. Because what history's taught us

is that, you know, there's no amount of money, there's no amount of followers, there's no education, there's no, you know, family, all that can be taken away, all of it, right? And, and, and almost a nanosecond, right. And so how do we ultimately feel safe, right? Because when you start to solve those things, then you can start to align with this sense of why am I here? Why am I actually here? What's, what's my greater sense

of purpose? So when you work on the life energy circle, all of a sudden now you've created the mindset of, oh, I'm here for a reason and I don't, I'm not married to my answers, right? We feel like we go through life and it's our task to find our answers, right? And yet what's true about that is that all answers have a shelf life. All answers are incomplete, right? It's the questions that actually drive all progress. And what I found in my own health journey was that I had answers.

I've been trained, I knew all kinds of stuff about, quote UN quote, cardiology and my colleagues all had answers, right? And the problem was they were all married to their answers. So it's like, well, you're just getting older when you take an antidepressant. And yet when I started asking different questions, like, no, I don't want to do that, right? That's when I found new answers, right? So it's so important to be married to the questions and not the current answers, right?

And so in my practice, we're married to questions like how good can we be, right? How do we make 100 to new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a lifetime? How do we develop a 300 year old mind, right? And those questions that we wake up to every morning drive the progress. So it never puts us in a defensive posture. We're trying to defend an answer or, or support an answer with more evidence. It's like, no, we're open to

everything, right? It's like, sure that that works. Let's try it, let's try this, let's try that, right? So it's the idea of having that really open mindset, that growth mindset that once you get that right, that fuels everything else. Now you can actually start to talk about longevity itself, right?

What are the actual things that are driving aging? And it's it's things that are below the surface of health. So there are about 16 hallmarks of aging, which are biological processes that aren't talked about, aren't really addressed, that are actually driving the current in the river of aging,

right? Shortening telomeres, immunosenescent stem cells, wearing out increased senescent cells and inflammation, oxidative stress, dysregulated micronutrients sensing and a gut Biome that doesn't work properly. All these things are under the surface, making us get older and accelerating the rate at which we get older. It's an exponential curve, right? We get faster the older we are chronologically, the faster the rate of aging is, right?

And so part of the problem with it, though, is that we tend to experience aging as linear. It's like every year I'm another year older. Well, I'm not much different, or maybe I'm even better. I'm doing pretty good. But in actual fact, it's an exponential game we're playing, right? And if we ask ourselves, what am I going to be like 20 years from now, right? What am I going to be like? Ask yourself, the people listening to this, you can ask yourself, what am I going to be

like 20 years from now? It's almost impossible to imagine we're going to be any different than we are today. So we're in an exponential game. Most of us don't know the cards we're holding. We don't know our genetics, right? We don't even know where we are in the game from an aging standpoint. And we are a mosaic of many, many biological ages, not a single biological age. So we're playing an exponential game. We're playing for keeps. We don't know the cards we're holding.

We don't know where we are in the game, right, particularly relative to the drivers of aging. So the first place, that is to say, OK, well, let's see what cards we're holding, where we are in the game. Now we can, now we can make rational assessments on how to go forward. And then of course, the health circle is all the organ systems, sleep and everything else that

everybody's familiar with. We have lots of very cool ways to go about all that, lots of regenerative medicine technologies and many, many things we do here. And then the last one's performance, right. So the last circle before I get to the 5th is, you know, when I'm 100, I want to be fast, agile, strong, quick balance, great cardiovascular capacity, reserve recovery, flexibility. But if we're going to be that at 100, I need to be at now, right?

And so I think most people start to acquiesce to the aging process by referencing their own age. So for me, I was born in 1954 in February, right? I said I've done 71 laps, but I wake up 27 every day and waking up 27 allows me to reference 27, right? And it's like, if I don't feel 27, it's like, no, no, I'm getting back to 27. Do you see the power of that? It's like, how do I get back to 27?

I just trashed my knee in a, in an accident back in August and I went in and I was told I needed a total knee replacement and I said no. I think I'll take a different tact. I've rebuilt my knee completely. I'm back running faster than ever, right. How do you do that? Well, it's by not identifying with the medical system or your quote UN quote, chronological agents. No, I'm 27, I can heal. I know how to heal. I can rebuild this, right?

So it's, it's, that's, that's what really the driver of of the longevity process, if you will, is that kind of thought process. I feel like a lot of people try and separate out the the physiological from the psychological and they put them in these own buckets. And totally integrate. Yeah, massive disservice because like the brain is the body, like

they're one in the same. And I, I don't know what the research shows, but when you have a specific mindset towards something, it results in very tangible physiological changes. I mean like 100%. I mean just using myself as an example, like I literally never get sick. Like I've been sick twice my entire life. And I think a large part of the reason I never get sick is

because I confidently say that I never get sick. As strange as that may sounds like I don't identify someone that gets sick and I don't be sick. Yeah, yeah, it's a piece of it. And we're all, we're all holding different cards. So different people have different challenges, right? Some people's immune systems are not as robust or whatever else, right.

But nonetheless, having the mindset of how do I have a robust immune system, right, leads you to finding the answers for that, not identifying with, oh, I get sick all the time, right. To your point, yeah, so. So kind of going back to your initial circle that you were talking about, using you as an example, what did you change in your thought process that made you feel safe?

Like, if that's not where you were coming from originally, what did you personally shift to feel that void of safety and security in your life? Well, for me, it's, it's, it's been a psycho spiritual journey, right. So through some really profound deep meditation that I've done, you know, when you do really deep meditation, and some of this can be assisted or unassisted. But when you do really deep meditation, I don't know if you've ever had this experience yet, but but I either you have,

right? I hope you will when you get directly in touch with consciousness, God, source, you know, whatever term you want to put on it, Oh my God, it is nothing but pure love. It is pure love that's flowing through everything. And when you think about the pure love that's actually flowing to us that we're a part of, and then you ask yourself, well, what is, you know, what is love? Love to do? Well, love loves to create. It loves to love, but it also

loves to create. Hence, we have this unfolding universe, multiverse. You know, physics are showing us that we had no idea what was actually going on right to JWST. So, I mean, do we live in a black hole? There's certainly a multiverse. CERN is showing us that they're parallel universes. I mean, you know, quantum

computing is showing us parallel universes. So the reality that we live in is so much more vast than what we understand. The point is, love loves to create. And what's the feedback loop on that, right? It's joy.

So it's love creating joy. So when I connect to source and know that I'm loved, profoundly loved, and then I'm part of the creation process and that I'm here to from a loving place, create joy for other people, for the listeners listening to this, for you interviewing me, It's, it's, it's just all of a sudden I'm safe. You can never take that away from me, right? You can never take that away from me. You can put me in a

concentration camp. You could, you know, whatever, but you can't take that away from me. That's where my ultimate safety comes from, from that psycho spiritual journey, right? How did you get to the point where you can meditate and connect to that depth? Like how? How did that come to be? You know, I mentioned that in my 50s I was anxious and then I

would get depressed, right? So I started reading a book by a guy named Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now that was kind of my introduction to this space, if you will, meditation, things like that. And I've just found that I was, I was reading the book and I wasn't reading it like you would, you know, read it for information.

I was reading it because he was saying things that would resonate with me in a way that would be like, oh, wow, I just need to sit back and, you know, absorb that and just kind of let that resonate with me. Right. I had the experience one night of waking up. This is about probably 20 years ago now, maybe a little more, where I got up in the middle of the night, I'm reading this, I'm reading. I picked up his book.

I couldn't sleep exactly. And I just went into this deep trance and it was just, I was connected. I was just completely connected. There was pure love across this river. A river of love was flowing through everything. And in that moment, I was completely known and I knew completely this other loving entity and I and it was knowing and being known and loving and being loved. And it was absolutely perfect.

There was nothing left out. And it was telepathic communication of this love and knowing, right? And in that moment I realized, Oh my gosh, this is heaven. We talked about pearly gates, whatever else. It's all nonsense really. It's just knowing and being known, loving and being loved. And so once I had that experience, then I came to understand that that's actually my definition of a great relationship is to know and be known and to love and be loved, right?

And I was able to get there through meditation. And then I was able to reenact that in my life with, you know, close relationships, right? And that takes courageous conversations, right? To be vulnerable to no one, be known, right? So you have to have a willing partner. But when you, when you go down that path, it starts to reinforce itself.

And then I've also, you know, Full disclosure, there been some, some in ethogens, right, which are, you know, psychedelic experiences that have also been profound for me in terms of actually resourcing, touching into, you know, source energy, if you will. So yeah, anyway, it's after a while it starts to rewire your brain. You realize that no, I am safe, right? I am safe and I'm here and I'm here to create joy. And but it's a beautiful life. It's a beautiful life.

I love it so and then this and when you have that, it's like, I'm not getting old, right? I'm here to to continue to expand, right? The other interesting thing is that although aging is an exponential decline, our ability to have impact and our opportunities go up exponentially every decade. Also the other direction, right?

So what I want to do is stay young, say 30, let's say, and have those opportunities and impact just continue to go up exponentially. That's my that's my vision of what it is to live, you know, in a longevity space, right? Living young for a lifetime with a 300 year old mind. And I do think there is massive benefit and I think we all inherently know this, but we don't materialize it enough to the point where we can like feel it and touch it and view it as

tangible. But like simply going through life with a sense of purpose is probably the single best thing that I can that I can point to as to, you know, have all the positive health outcomes as a result of that. Because I see so many people that are just, you know, treading water and life and are chronically unhappy. And like, they're the ones that are getting sick. They're the ones that have all these. They're the ones that are depressed on medication that's

right, overweight. You know, dealing with all these issues, you have a sense of purpose that that seems to go on the wayside. That's right. And and I found that finding your purpose is kind of working through the elements on the life energy circle enables you to be in the right headspace, mind space, heart space to find your purpose to to start to live your purpose, right.

That's how I was able to, you know, find the purpose that I just described for you because I think that that is my purpose from a loving place to create joy. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's awesome, man. So when you when you work with people like what, what is your typical patient demographic avatar? Like what are they going through we're dealing with that incentivizes them to come to you and motivates them to come to you. And then what does that look like, you know, tangibly over time with them?

Sure. So the way I frame it up is that people come to us asking different questions, right? So they could, you know, we just had a woman out of the Dakotas

that came down to us with intractable psoriasis. It's like, oh, OK, well, nobody's actually ever really bothered to deconstruct the situation. I think we have tons of regenerative technologies here. We build all kinds of stuff. But I think the miss, the missing piece for most people is that they don't, they haven't gone through a process to deconstruct the situation to understand why, why is this happening in the 1st place,

right. And so for this, for this woman, we were able to deconstruct her situation, do a couple of different regenerative technologies for a while here. She went back home three days later, she was 85 to 90% better. Now she's been able to start working out again. She's on Nomad. She was slathering on, you know, cortisone steroid creams to kind of keep the inflammation under control on her hands and feet so she could work.

She's off those, right? And it's not because we're magical, it's just because we actually take the time to understand why is this happening in the 1st place. And it happens for a variety of reasons, right? There's a, there's a psychological component for her. There was a food component, there was a gut component. There was, you know, some other elements that went into some genetic components as well, right.

So once you actually understand that, you start to understand the system, you can actually shift things around. So we do that over and over and over again. We have other people that come to us. We had a young woman that just came to us with three young kids diagnosed with breast cancer. And it's like, what can you do to help me? And it's like, well, we, we do a lot in the cancer space. We're not cancer doctors, but we can do a lot to support other things that you have going on.

And so we'll be working with her. Why did she get it in the first place? Right. Nobody's asking that question. They just want to treat it. And so when you deconstruct problems thoroughly, you find there's all kinds of solutions and answers there that other people have overlooked. So that's part of our approach. And then we have people that come to us, you know, in their 70s or whatever.

We had a woman out of Aspen that came in, was in a skiing accident, had head trauma, lost her husband a few years ago. Psychological trauma used to be very sort of life of the party kind of personality, could no longer really keep track of the conversations and was kind of losing her friend group and things. We came down here, we figured

out what the problem was. We rebuilt her brain, right, with combination of regenerative technologies, transcranial magnetic stimulation, different peptide supplements, things like that. She's back now living her life, right. So again, it's the deconstruction that enables you to actually have the right solution. That's why we're never married to the to the answers. We're only married to the question, how is this happening? What do we need to understand here? So, so we work with everybody.

We work with executives to just want to, they don't want to sell their company. They want to have five more and keep, you know, keep blowing and going till they're 150. It's like, great, we can help you with that. So yeah. I feel like there's no such thing as maintenance. Like I don't believe it exists. You're you're getting better or you're getting worse.

That's right. And I feel like when you look at that gap in the road, that fork in the road widening, it's a result of the compounding impact of what people are doing in their day-to-day activities. 100%. Better or worse. So you're looking at someone, you're looking at your patient pool and you're looking at people that are trending in the right direction versus

declining. What are like the the common denominators for the positive things they're doing versus that of the negative ones that are creating the most havoc?

Well, the first is that we have a way to actually measure the stress that somebody's carrying in their system, in their nervous system, right? So once we actually understand how much stress, so they can walk in here and say I'm not stressed at all, it's like, OK, great. We measure them. It's like, well, actually your nervous system is telling a different story, right? There's actually a lot of stress here. And then we start to go into, you know, what's that all about?

Well, it's this, it's that we have counselors that we work with on our, on our staff, if you will, that are very, very adapted in a loving way, getting to know people and understanding some of the old traumas that they're still carrying in their nervous system, in their systems. And so for people to actually win at this, it's really important to kind of get out that stuff and be able to heal that stuff, as I mentioned, because that gets in the way, right? Your nervous system.

In fact, I, I, I tell many clients this, that all of life comes down to one thing, right? Just one thing. And that one thing is optimizing your nervous system, right? Well, how do you think what you feel, what you believe is true, what you think is possible, what you believe about the past, about your future, how you move through space, all of it. It's all about the nervous system, right?

And so when people understand that and they see all the stress they're carrying, and one of the first things we do is to work on decreasing that stress, resolving the issues that are causing that stress, right? And then in addition to that, of course, we look at, you know, those drivers of aging, right? Where are they relative to those? OK, well, let's see what's happening there.

And then we look at all the health associated things, what's going on with your gut bio and what's going on with your sleep, what's going on with your cardiovascular, VO2 Max, etcetera, etcetera. We test all this.

And then, and then we look at performance, you know, being fast, agile, strong, quick balance, how, how good are you at all those things, right? So, and then we basically start to build a program that that gets them where they want to go. So they play the best golf of their lives. They race car drivers come in and they, they, they think they're going to retire now they're finishing in the top three again, you know, all kinds of stuff.

And, but it starts with people knowing really what's possible. And, and, and 1st, you've got to actually be asking the right questions. You got to believe it's possible. And then you got to realize that my nervous system is carrying stuff I've been living in reaction to my whole life. Let's clear out, let's clear and resolve that out. So I, my body is free. I call it unencumbered. We become unencumbered to live the full expression of who we are.

And when you do that, your body gets so light, your health improves so dramatically because you're no longer carrying all that stress. So that's, that's part of it. How? Are you testing and measuring their stress load? I mean, is it like a? Yeah, we're looking, we're looking at the at the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system through a couple different lenses actually.

And with that we get reports that basically will give us a good idea of kind of how stressed or not stressed they are and then? Looking at a specific biomarker or range of biomarkers. Yeah, it's, it's basically, you're familiar with heart rate variability, right? So that's basically heart rate variability is a function of, of the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous

system. So just for the audience, and you're probably familiar with this, but you've got an autonomic nervous system through the basal part of your brain called the reptilian brain is controlling your heart rate, your respirations, your body temperature, you know, dilation of arteries, all that stuff running through the autonomic nervous system. You could almost think of it as automatic nervous system. If you're a Yogi, you learn to

control that, right? You get so in touch with your nervous system that you can actually change your heart rate. You can, you can sit out in the Blizzard and actually have the snow melting off of you because you can control your body temperature, right. So, but it's the autonomic nervous system. And so the, there's, there's a gas pedal and a brake pedal in there. There's a sympathetic nervous system, which is a bearish coming through the door. Oh my gosh.

Let's, you know, do whatever we need to do to take care of that. And then there's a parasympathetic nervous system, which is kind of the Zen relaxation, like, Oh yeah, I'm connected, everything is good, everything is beautiful, right. So in, in your car, you're either on the gas or the brake in your body. You're on both pedals at the same time. It's just a question of balance and we can measure that balance through something called heart

rate variability. So heart rate variability is not, well, my heart rate is 60 now I ran up the stairs and now it's 80. That's not heart rate, that's variation in heart rate. Heart rate variability is the difference between the distance between heartbeats one to the next to the next and how it's impacted by respiration increasing when we, when we inspire, decreasing with the

expire. And the more parasympathetic nervous system tone that there is, the more sloppy that connection gets, the bigger the variation right when the bears coming through the door, everything gets regimented right for little, very little variation. So when heart rate variability is low, people are under stress. When it's high, they're relaxed, and that's something we can measure and then interpret through numerous different filters to get a better idea of kind of where it's coming from.

So yeah, there's a lot of people. Using like aura rings for instance that measures HRV lot. Lot of devices now are measuring HRV, Apple. Watch Garmin, All of them. Yeah, Do you? Like a lot of people, you know, totally change their day day activities based off of what they're ordering is suggesting to do that day or vice versa and not look at it at all. Do you put much stock in those wearables and what people should do accordingly? I do.

I think, you know, in our world, we work out every day, right? We work out seven days a week. But we change our workouts based on how ready our body is to take on load, right. So if the body has a a low heart rate variability mean it's, it's stressed either physically or emotionally, we'll do a lighter workout. We'll do a recovery workout, we'll do balance training, we'll do motion or yoga or things like that. We're doing something, but we're not necessarily trying to set APR.

If, if we are well recovered and heart rate variability is high, then we'll push harder. We'll do a harder mountain bike ride, a longer ride, a longer run, a heavier load if we're doing resistance training. So that's kind of how we tend to use it. Yeah. Got you. When it comes to nutrition, you know, I like like talking nutrition. I feel like that's something that most people are doing fasting or taking part in every single day. The compounding effect of that over a lifetime can be quite

prominent. Do you have a stance on nutrition like in working with your people over the years? Some of the denominators there's like most people should probably follow this general rule of thumb around nutrition, no? We don't have that. And the reason is that the what we found is that the problem with every diet is that it comes with a prescription of this is how you should do and this is what you should eat. Again, we're back in the mindset

of who's this individual? How are they constructed, right?

And what's actually good for them? So what are their genetics, right? What's their gut Biome like? What's their ability to digest certain foods, right? How many copies of the amylase gene do they have? But can they tolerate more carbs, fewer carbs? What's their apple E for? Do they do bad on a high fat diet? Is that actually accelerating heart disease and dementia for them or is it actually the right thing?

So until you actually deconstruct the situation and then you understand how their immune system is reacting to certain foods, from our standpoint, it's at that point you can actually say, oh, OK, here's where you are. Here are the foods that I think are going to be best for you. And this is the way I would go about it. So that that's kind of how we think. Again, it's built. It's all built on deconstruction before recommendations. Probably not seen anybody

benefit. From a highly processed, hyper palpable diet though, right? Well, there are things to. Universally avoid. There are things to universally avoid. That's right. So, you know, sugar, high processed foods, too much alcohol, you know, a little bit of alcohol is actually good. It increases enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which actually is the longevity enzyme.

But we find that the people in our program that do the best are drinking very little or not at all or, you know, occasionally or something like that, but they're not like having drinks every night kind of thing. So yeah, what about? Sleep. So like when you're looking at an individual, their biomarkers, feedback, what are you looking for as it pertains to sleep and what emphasis would you put on optimizing sleep for massive role markers? Massive. It's massive.

Sleep is massive and we all get kind of jerked around, you know, with travel time zone changes, you know, speaking here, going to this conference, all that kind of thing, right? So we've, we have our own routines for that, right? And we, we're very keen on people having a sanctuary to

sleep in, right? Whether or not watching TV where it's cold, where they have a chili pad or a cooling mattress room is cold, it's quiet, blackout curtains, true dark glasses, everything that can kind of get yourself in phase

for sleep. We like using something called brain tap, which can actually, or there are other devices too that actually can put your entrain your, your brain into a delta wave and trainment, which is basically a sleep brain wave, which can actually then just kind of take you down and go to sleep. We like melatonin not because it makes you sleepy and there are people for whom melatonin is not the best thing because it can raise morning blood sugar in

some people. But melatonin has a, an impact that most people are not aware of, which is that it actually keeps alive stem cells right in the third ventricle of your brain. And those stem cells in the third ventricle of the hypothalamus are, are actually keeping you young. They're they're releasing exosomes to tell your body to stay young. And melatonin is what feeds them.

So there's lots of reasons on the longevity side to use melatonin if it's if, again, if it's the right thing for you, right? And then there are things like L theanine that can relax the system, magnesium, things like that. And if I wake up in the middle of the night, I'll put the brain tap back on and knock myself back out. So yeah, is it like an app or something? I'm not familiar with that. It's an app. Yeah, it's an app. And it's a headset, so which is basically.

Playing Audible, Yeah, it's a. Combination of binaural beats, if you're familiar with those. So it's a little different frequency in each air, which which basically the brain is a little bit trying to put that together. So it kind of brings it into a A state, right?

Maybe you've heard of Hemisync. I don't know if you're familiar with that. So it's a little bit like that. That's what Hemisync's about is binaural beats to kind of put the brain and fuse the two halves together to try to make sense of what it's hearing. And then this is also used as photobiomodulation. So you have flashing lights through your eyes are closed, but flashing lights through your eyes and through the blood vessels in the ears and that

combination. You get the right intensity of the light, the right volume, and it's just like, whoa, you just go. You can go into a really deep meditative state very quickly. We find it's also great for retraining the nervous system to be able to have less stress in it. So totally.

What do you feel about them? People have this preconceived notion of what the number of, you know, years is that would qualify them as old over the hill or whatever the case may be. But they kind of like get to this stage in life where they associate that with a certain, you know, lifestyle, certain environmental factors. Just think they start today already saying, OK, I'm X amount of years, I'm old, I've only got X amount of years remaining.

Where do you think we should reframe our thinking towards chronological age? Like how should we view 120 years? Like what should we associate with that? What would that look like? What what is the ideal lifespan of a human being? I think we should pay. Very little attention to chronological years. Quite honestly. I think it's a reason I wake up 27 every day and I have. And the reason I'm 27 is I'll be 27 this decade, 28 next decade,

29 the next day, decade. When I'm 100, I'll be 30, right? So the book is 100 is the new 30. So I think what we encourage each of our clients to do is to pick an age they want to be for the rest of their lives and reference that age. If you're listening to this,

think about what age would you like to be for the rest of your life. Some people it's 424035332618. Doesn't matter. The what matters is that it's a time in your life when you felt great physically, you felt great, right? And it's like reference that. And that's the only age that really matters is the age that you believe you are, just like you believe you don't get sick and you don't get sick. Reference that age and then keep

referencing that back. If you wake up and you don't feel that age, just like, oh, well, what do I need to do to get back to where I really am, right? Because once you say, well, I wake up and I'm, I'm old or I whatever, it's, you know, the game's over. You've already, you've already lost, quite honestly, you've already thrown in the towel, right? So when I hurt my knee and I was told I need a total knee replacement, I, I will tell you existentially, I went through

this thing is, is now the time? Is this the time when I give up the fact that I'm 27, right? Is this what this is saying to me? And I'm like, no, no, not going to do it. I'm 27 and I'm going to get back to 27 and that, that, you know, cleaning that and then asking the questions to get me there is how I'm back at 27. So there you go. I like it. What about the the biological age? I feel like we like to quantify things, like to put a numerical

value on things. So not looking at chronological age, but putting emphasis on biological age. What is that? What is that number generated from? What are they testing to reach that biological age? Well, the first thing to understand. Is that you are a mosaic of many, many, many biological ages. So the fact that you think you have one biological age is probably the greatest disservice you can ever do to yourself, right. So Brian Johnson with his

longevity Olympics, right? We were very high performers in that, but we didn't we we did not condone the test at all, right? Because they're looking at one single metric of rate of aging. But we have people with a rate of aging that's very low. But you look at their their other biological ages, they're very old. And so it's a complete misnomer and a total disservice to yourself to think that there's only one biological age, right?

I can't emphasize that enough. It's really important to know, OK, well, what's my brain age? What's my eye age? What's my hearing age? What's my heart age, my blood vessel age, my telomeric age, my stem cell age, immune system age? If you don't know those ages, you really have no idea what you're talking about. So to think that there's one biological age is really probably one of the greatest disservices that this whole field is done to people. So yeah, that's kind of where I

want. To take it next, like this field of study in longevity has become significant more popular, where are people being LED astray? I mean, I guess that being one of the main, that's one of them. It's right there. What? What else? Like what do people? Need to be wary of people that are diving into this. Like what? What is the what kind of differentiates the charlatans from those trying to do it right, I guess. Well, I think you know there are.

People that are going down a particular path and they're having success with it and now everybody needs to do that. That's another complete red flag because we're all different, right? We're, we're built differently, different genetics, different backgrounds, different everything. And, and it's what's so important is to understand that, that you can actually shine, but you have to know who you are to be able to shine in the way that

you were built to shine. And there are many people that will do well with a particular program or another program or

another program, but you don't know who you are until you kind of do the work to deconstruct that. So I think that's really a disservice to people because people get very emphatic, they get married to an answer and they start to preach this answer as if it's gospel and it's, it's simply just as not right. It's a great answer for them, but it may not be a great answer for the person next to them. So yeah, yeah, totally agree. When people ask you how old you

are, do you say 71 or 2727? Yeah, I'm 20. Seven. Yeah. 27. Why not? I'm 27. Right? Prove me wrong. Right. Prove me wrong. I like it. I like it. Well, now that you've got you know, who knows how many chronological years ahead of you because you identify as 27, What's get you excited going forward in the future? I feel like that's key too. Like simply waking up with excitement for what lies ahead as opposed to reminiscing non-stop. Let's get you excited. Oh, everything. Right.

I feel like really in the next three to five years, we're going to crack the code on aging completely. So that's got me super excited. There's so many cool technologies coming down. Started another company that's taking what we do globally. We want to my, my mission is to change the glide path of aging for the entire planet, right?

I want everybody to benefit from information about how to live an uncomfort life, powerful life energy circle, solve the problems related to the aging process. Because I really want to see people instead of all this pain, suffering and decline, right? What if all that was transmuted into people that were energetic and enthused and and creating new solutions for for the planet, for each other, right? What a what a beautiful world this would be.

So I'm really dedicated to helping take humanity down that path. Yeah. So I guess we excited every day I had. AI forget the the guest I had on that a guest on month or two

back and they were talking about the technologies that are coming out in the near future that will be game changing from an anti ageing standpoint. That's right. So much so that they were recommending that people look into, I mean, basically suggesting that you could freeze your body now and then within the next 50 years for sure, the technologies would exist to basically sure rejuvenate those tissues, those cells, because they don't necessarily die.

I mean, when he gave the example of like when somebody is an organ donor, you know, they take those organs and those are fully functional organs that they can then transplant so the tissue itself doesn't die. So what what's your stance on that? Or do you have one? Well, there's there's. Cryopreservation, which is kind of what you're talking about. And there are quite a few people that we had one client that did this actually, who had very

advanced breast cancer. And ultimately we weren't able to turn the tide. People get to a point where their immune systems are so depleted that they just don't have enough to fight back, right? And so in this case, this individual died and her her loved ones decided to have her cryopreserved, right, waiting for the day when she could be, you know, brought back. And so I think those technologies will come.

I think the technologies for those of us that are alive right now, however, we'll be here in the next three to five years where we can pretty much halt aging, start to really reverse it. We're already doing that, right? We see all the ages we measure, we see people going back in time, right, relative to many, many things, many metrics,

right? And so I'm not claiming that we're reversing aging, but I'm saying that we're moving people back to certainly much younger, you know, status, if you will, with regards to immune system, cardiovascular function, brain function, you know, you name it, right? So I really think we're going to get to a point where we do crack the code on that. And it's interesting because then it raises this existential question of, OK, right, You're going to be here for a long time, right?

You're going to be 30 years old for a long, long, long time. So now when I give this talk, I ask, you know, so now let me ask you 3 questions. The first one is what's the meaning of life, right? If you're going to be here for a long time, what's the meaning of life? And then what's your purpose, right? And then the third question is, if you're going to focus on one thing, what's the one thing to focus on, right? If you're going to optimize all this, right?

And then it's interesting. I have people share their answers and they're all good answers. There's no bad answers here, but it's, it's, it's interesting. And then I share the answers that I've shared with you about love, creating joy. I think that's really the meaning of life and it's my purpose in life. And then the one thing I focus on is optimizing my nervous system, right? It's interesting. Even workouts are not about the muscle in my world anymore.

It's all about the nervous system, right? Your, your, your nervous system gets stronger and firing before your muscle even starts hypertrophy. So, and how you move through space, your sense of balance, proprioception. You saw me drop this pen earlier and I caught it, right? That's from that's from training my nervous system, right? You want to move like a ninja. You want to. That's what you want. And it's all nervous system control.

So I'm completely. On the same page and on board with, you know, improving health span, improving lifespan, improving outlook and mindsets because I feel like if you get a population of people that are able to live longer, I mean you get smarter as you age. Hopefully that's right and you're able to you're. Able. To contribute exponentially more in your later years, so to be encumbered by that contribution as a result of physical decline

is just a disservice for humanity. I'm only on board there. All of this does raise the question of if we have significantly longer life spans, more people on the planet, you know, you're going to get the people that are bringing, raising awareness about overpopulation in the planet not being able to support that increase, you know, population size. You have a take on that one way or the other. Yeah, I don't think. That's a problem, quite

honestly. I think of the planets, you know, resources were used in a more or less called a more responsible way. There'd be plenty of resources for us to, to use and, and it would not be a problem. So I think there's some issues there around how we're utilizing the resources. I think the other interesting thing is that people are talking about the next billion that we'll get to is not 9 billion, but 7 billion, right? Because there's really a dearth of, of new babies being born,

right? I mean, you, there's a lot of population decline. You know, look at Italy, look at many of these countries, even China, populations are decreasing, not increasing, right, Even in the US. So I'm not really worried about overpopulation. And I think having a robust group of energetic, wise, loving people that have some life experience also will be a great asset to to humanity is what I would say.

Yeah, I agree. What do you think the reason for the population decline is on the global scale that we're seeing now? You know it's a. Good question. I, I've had this conversation with several people. You know, one of the things that comes up in those conversations is what's the role of social

media here, right? I think people get so enamored with comparing themselves to other people and to a lifestyle, right, that they they lose track of the fact that it's work to actually have a real relationship.

It's work to actually have children and raise them right. And I think there's sort of this quick dopamine hit from social media with this external validation that people are searching for. But in essence, it actually alienates everybody from everybody else. So I don't, I see social media as potentially playing a role here that's really kind of destructive. And you know, it's, it's, it can be good. You can learn a lot of things. You know, this, we're on social

media here, right? And in some way, shape or form. So it can certainly be very constructive. But I think when people start to substitute it for real relationships and really getting to know somebody and this concept of being vulnerable as opposed to trying to be the idyllic person with the idyllic lifestyle with the idyllic dress or, you know, pair of pants or whatever it is. You know, I think, I think I didn't grow up with that. I didn't grow up with any of that, right?

It was all just about, you know, the people you were around and getting to know him, right. So I, I think maybe there's an element of that. I don't know. What do you, what's your thoughts on it? I can. I can totally see that I feel. Like, I mean, I feel like it's interesting because there is more social media activity than ever right now. That's where people typically go and spend their time.

Yeah. And I feel like there's this massive void in people's hearts and souls and I, they crave legitimate human interaction, like real interaction, face to face. And it's. Like they almost. Haven't put the pieces together that the solution to that craving is to put the phones down. That's right. So it's like they know it's there, they know it exists, but they don't act upon that knowledge.

But yeah, I totally agree, man. I feel like, you know, the fulfilment that I get in life is certainly aided by my ability to make a bigger impact through social media. But when I look at what really matters, you know, I could lose all my social media accounts tomorrow and I would not have lost the true essence of my being. You know, I've got my, that's my wife, I've got my son, I got

another baby on the way. I've got my family, my friends, the people that I'm actually interacting with, right? That is where, you know, I find my happiness beautiful. That's it. Yeah, it's in those real relationships, right? And I have lifelong relationships. I'm still friends with people from elementary school, high school, college, you know, medical school, things like that.

So yeah, I think having real relationships that you nurture and that you feel nourished by, I think one question you can the audience can ask themselves or what are the things that you find nourishing, right? What do you find nourishing? Like for me, I find human interaction very nourishing, right? And being with the love of my life, I find that incredibly nourishing, right? I find other things nourishing, being outside, being athletic novelty. I find art incredibly

nourishing, right? I'm a guitar player and I really have always been drawn to the arts and so many things are nourishing. And I think if you start to ask yourself what's really nourishing to me and after go after those as opposed to what gives me the dopamine hit, that's a social media, it's another post, it's a swipe, it's

a whatever you're doing. I think that starts to lead you towards, OK, I'm going to nourish myself because when you do that, you're going to start, I think, having more interpersonal interactions. I think so, yeah. No, 100% agreement. I think we're aligned in that for sure. Hope people listen to this, Will use social media to to listen to this but then put the phone down and that's right, just listen to this and set it aside.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, Doctor Gladden, where do people go to find out more about you? Dive deeper into your world, ma'am. Yeah, so you. Can find us at gladdenlongevity.com.

That's the website. If you want to reach out there, if you're interested to be a client or talk to us about that if you have a question or a problem or an aspiration that you're wanting to deal with. We also have a podcast, the Glad Longevity Podcast. We've got probably 300 episodes out there at this point. The book 100 is the new 30.

And we have a supplement shop, the Gladden Longevity Shop, where we have supplements and bundles of things that we put together that we find to be particularly useful for different, different indications. So yeah, those would be great places to to connect with us. Awesome. We should do this. Podcast again in like 100 years or so. Yeah, let's do that well. Maybe. Maybe we'll make 20 and see where we are. There you go. There you go. Well, I appreciate the time, Sir.

Learn the Latin likewise, Robert. Really a. Pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks, Sir. Have a good one. You too.