The Longevity Solution

Jason Prall

Yeah, of course. Great to be here.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So what I like too is just so the audience get to know a little bit more about you. So I’ll just kind of go through your by a little bit. So they see all the cool stuff that you’ve done. Obviously you’ve done much more than this, but this is you know, I can only spend so much to tell all the awesome things you do. So Jason Prall is a health educator, practitioner, author and filmmaker in 2018, his independent research and experience and led him to create the human longevity project, a nine star nine part film series that uncovers the true nature of chronic disease in our modern world is currently finishing his first ebook titled Beyond longevity, as well as his next film series that x floors ancient methods of healing mind, body and soul from indigenous cultures around the world. I mean that’s fascinating. That’s really fascinating. It’s gonna be so cool.

Jason Prall

Yeah, I’m excited. It’s been a little bit of a long project because of all the travel shutdown that we’ve experienced over the last few years but we’ve been to India to work with some of the premier match masters of Ayurveda. We were in the Himalayas working with some Buddhist and bone healers at the 16,000 ft. We went to Peru so far to work with some Ambien mountain shamans down there and yeah it’s a lot of fun.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I know I want to get in to kind of your projects that you’ve done and learn a bit more of that. But I’m really fascinated. So some of the bone healers you know the Buddhist up in the Tibet I mean so what were some of the takeaways from there that really kind of hit you hard as you were there.

Jason Prall

Yeah it’s funny because you know everybody that we worked with there didn’t speak English right, they were speaking in their native tongue and so I literally had no idea what they were doing when it comes to the healing methods. But fundamentally without language to interpret what was happening it was clear that the way that they approached healing from was from an energetic level in essence everything is energy. And so sure we can we can work with the physical matter and that’s fine because that’s energy too and we can go above that and we can work on the energetic level. So they use a lot of chance they use their their sort of Buddhist awareness practices right? So they used awareness and chance and energy to influence health. And then of course they use some herbal remedies similar to Ayurveda, they have herbal Chinese medicine also similar practices using herbs to influence and bring things back into balance at the body level. But there is a lot of very esoteric, very interesting practices that they used in the Himalayas for sure.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So sound. I mean that is so kind of primal and foundational and I know like you’re saying with the chanting and with the samples and and all of these things I mean so did you get to experience that, did you get to kind of feel what that felt like and the impact on you?

Jason Prall

Yeah I actually did do an actual sort of a modern sound bath style of healing in Kathmandu. And there it was literally this tiny room and there was gongs and different sound elements throughout the room. And so it was literally a felt experience in the body but with most of the practices they were so subtle. Right? So really you have to use awareness and that’s the key with a lot of the Buddhist and bone healing practices is that they’re using awareness to influence your health. Right? So the sound is a mechanism by which you can transfer energy no question but there’s an intelligence at play too. Right? So this is the thing that I think a lot of times we forget about in energy medicine or these energy practices is that there’s not only just the energy, there’s an Intelligence and so we can use that intelligence and invite that intelligence in. And so that’s what we do with a lot of the awareness practices is that you’re using awareness to open the heart to be able to receive, essentially allow intelligence to do the work for you, right? And the key is to kind of get out of the way. And so because these Buddhists and bone healers have been dedicating their life really to healing and to end suffering in all beings, right, this is literally what they do all day every day. 

They’ve developed, they’ve cultivated a certain level of awareness and a certain capacity to harness energy to to bring an open hearted, unbelievable love to, to the practice. And that is what does the healing, It’s not them, they are just a conduit, so to speak. They understand how to work with it such that that divine love, that divine intelligence can do the magic for you. And it’s really, it sounds really hokey and it sounds kind of new agey, but when you work with those healers isn’t New agey at all, they’re working with ancient practices and this is something that dedicate their lives to. They don’t they’re not on instagram. They don’t care about any fame. They don’t take money, right? They accept donations for their monastery that supports them, but they don’t get paid, right? They live a very, very modest life and that is part of their duty. So it is really, really fascinating to work with like that. And so when you tune into the subtle level of your field, you can notice things. It’s not as it’s not the gross level that we typically think of when it comes to healing. And did I feel this or notice that it’s very subtle, but the influence is extremely, extremely powerful

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And in kind of the American society, you know, we’re used to like you’re talking about kind of these gross influences where something is just done to us, you know, we go in and you know do it to me and fix me here, we’re we’re talking about, you know, you have to the energy exists but you need to create you be able to tune into that and let it flow through you. Otherwise, you know, like you’re saying you need to get out of the way, otherwise you will then interfere with that and it won’t have that impact. So the awareness is, you know, as the biggest key of all.

Jason Prall

Absolutely, yeah. And again like it’s it’s really hard to put words to what’s really happening, right? But it’s along the lines of how thought influences your physical health. How does emotion influence your physical health? Right? These are really interesting concepts to think about and the same goes for these practices. How are these awareness? Is this awareness practice influencing your physical health, your mental health and some of the effects may be felt or noticed in the moment and some maybe unfolding as you go. So you know when you work with these healers, they’re dealing with concepts like karma, right? Like past life things, things have been unprocessed. And so their belief, the way that they operate is that if we bring things back into alignment, if we remove the blockages, then the course that you’re on going forward can now be more harmonious, right? 

So that is a different level of reality that most of us in the west don’t really operate from, we operate from, there is something here, fix it or there’s something out of balance, let’s fix it. There’s more, let’s remove the blockages, let’s get things flowing again and let’s see if we can sort of change the trajectory of your future. Right? And so that is a different paradigm. And so it’s it’s a really interesting that’s why we want to include that because it’s such a different way of thinking about that, but but I think we we all have this concept in mind where if I eat this way or if I start exercising today, the future starts to change versus me doing the same things that I do every day, that’s that’s sort of the course that I’m on, right. So they’re doing that same thing, an energetic level with the intent and the idea that is going to influence a more harmonious future for you.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And the key is because we’re talking about karma, the key is then to create action or have an action that does not have a karmic imprint and and to be able to do that, you have to kind of so refine your thoughts, your intentions, your actions as so that so it doesn’t have that ripple effect that that generates karma in in other areas in your own life.

Jason Prall

Yeah. And really the key is to come from alignment, operate from your heart, right? So when we take inspired action from our heart, this is the place where karma is not generated, right? But when we start operating from the mind from our ego, from our wounded parts, this is what is going to generate some more suffering, right? And that’s, that’s just more things to, to realize. And so all of this is to recognize the way forward, the way through all of this is to move closer to living from the heart, living in the moment, living in the present, living from the heart. And this is what all the ancient traditions say from Ayurveda to the bone and Buddhist healers to the shamans in south America, I mean to the Maori in new Zealand, they’re all saying the same thing that the key to health, the key to prosperity, the key to well being in all areas of your life, good relationships is to live truly from the heart. And so to do that, you know, there’s a lot of things that are kind of getting in the way right? And a lot of them are past pains and past sufferings and conditions that we are conditioned throughout our entire lives. And so in many of these practices, the one of the fundamental keys is to get rid of that conditioning too, unlearn everything you think, you know, right? And that’s a difficult thing for many of us because we rely on this information that we’ve been conditioned with to get us through our daily lives and so to, to literally strip all that away is a fairly big threat to our nervous system right? It’s it’s not safe to do that, but that is the practice for a lot of these traditions, is to learn to let go, to learn to relax, to learn to get rid of these sort of conditioned beliefs, conditioned thoughts, conditioned behaviors and when we can do that now we can live authentically right? 

But but there’s so I mean I’m constantly living in conditioning right things that I do, the things that I think the things that I’m that I believe are all sort of aspects of conditioning that I’ve picked up and so it’s a process, no question to, to let go to unwind some of these things, but as we do, so we can live more from the heart. And this is what in a big way can, can allow us to to heal, to to resolve the things that we might be dealing with. In fact, I was just this past weekend, I was with master and we were talking about this very thing about the practice of anti-aging and this is a deep practice in tai chi and qi gong. And some of these Eastern Asian practices and and it really comes down to living from the heart, living in the moment. And when you do that, it’s like the way he described it is that it’s, you’re traveling faster than the speed of light and it’s almost, it’s essentially instantaneous to the point where time slows down and time can actually reverse. 

So that was kind of his way of explaining this, but ultimately it’s living in the present, right, where time and space don’t exist, right? This is the practice, a lot of these meditation practices and awareness based practices getting into that sort of empty void state, right? That quantum state, that zero point and whatever we wanna call that when you’re there in a meditation, you recognize it to some degree, we get there in a flow state where time starts to work, right and things to take. It seems like they slow down if you’ve ever played sports or or or you’ve done ballet or dance or music, there’s certain instances where things are just flowing so seamlessly and time starts to change and work and it’s really bizarre. And that’s a sort of along those same lines when we get into that state and then we get about outside of this space and time and that’s where the ultimate healing can really can really occur. So this is and this is bizarre stuff that we don’t really talk about in functional medicine. Integrative medicine. But I think as we go forward in this Regenerative Medicine world, we’re gonna start talking about this stuff more and more. We’re going to be using technologies that are going to be introducing these cons To us, right, this infrasound and and all these different sound technologies that we’re gonna be developing and light technologies that are already here that are gonna continue the sort of quantum devices. I mean the next 15 to 20 years is going to be unbelievably exciting when it comes to Western technology starting to introduce some of these concepts that the ancients have been practicing for thousands of years.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, I mean that’s so cool. I mean, because all of this, you know, like talking about zero point and all, I mean that’s that’s that, that middle path, you know like the buddhist talking about this that where there is neither this nor that, you know, talking about, you know this zero point I would consider that like nirvana in a way or nirvana or whether you do quality or you know, and at that zero point, you know, there you have no craving, you have no and when you don’t have the craving, when you’re not holding onto your hurts, you’re not holding on to your perceptions, you’re not holding onto your traumas or your ego. You know that that’s when you’re letting go of, you know, the suffering sort of say and and that’s you know that that’s kind of the Buddhist words, but like you’re saying it translates into all these other ancient practices and you know with what we’re doing. You know, recognizing the power of these ancient healing methods and with the technology we have, you know, to be able to replicate these states. I mean it’s gonna be so fascinating. I mean, I know we’re doing it in so many ways already, but then to take this to that next level and to be able to almost cheat the system using technology.

Jason Prall

Yeah, absolutely. And this is what’s cool and because it’s really introducing us to these ideas, right? Like infrared light, right? Infrared saunas, you might use photo bio modulation, some sort of cold laser. These are now this is just dealing with light, right? But this concept of healing with light is now opening up somebody’s mind who maybe used to think about pharmaceuticals or vitamins or perhaps herbs. Now there now we’re talking about light and we’re seeing what it can do or pulsed electromagnetic field, right? These are things we can’t see. And yet they’re working wonders for people for pets for amazing amount of the population is now using things like light and sound. And so once we start to open that Pandora’s box of what sound and light can do. Now we’re starting to think beyond just this sort of macromolecule billiard ball style of healing. And we’re starting to get into again the quantum the unseen these elements of energy healing. That once you kind of open your mind to that and you see the reality of what this stuff can do now. We’re talking about really interesting technologies that are kind of hard to imagine, kind of hard to conceptualize in the mind. But ultimately it just starts to open the door to new possibilities and that’s what’s really exciting.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

That’s so cool. And then backtracking so that this is what you’re working on now, which is kind of beyond longevity project. But then going back, you know, so that it is kind of like the ultimate and then trying to find out how can we replicate that, that it existed for thousands of years. But then also we’re looking at these different cultures throughout the world, you know, in your longevity project that have lived in a way that allowed people to live healthy, vital, you know, and in a good, you know, for you know, for a long time. I mean, so what are some when you scour the earth, you know, for these different cultures? I mean, what are some of the main principles that you are seeing that we can apply in our own life so that we can enhance our regenerative abilities?

Jason Prall

Yeah. And this is really, really important, right? And the reason that I wanted to create the human longevity project film series was because I saw this regenerative medicine movement coming right? And we’ve seen this, it’s been coming for a while. We’ve got Silicon Valley talking about, you know, living to 182 living forever, right? And curing the disease called aging. Right? And so there’s some deep philosophical things that come into play when you start talking about living forever, right? I mean, I don’t know that anybody really wants to live forever. That actually sounds kind of tortuous to me. And you start to recognize that when you when you start to hang out with people that are 95 100 and 105 and despite their relatively good function, you can see that there’s this winding down of the cycle of life and this acceptance of like, you know what, I lived a good life, I’m ready to go whenever God takes me, Right? 

That was a common sort of mentality. And I think that’s a pretty natural response for us humans. I don’t know that we’re really intending to live really, really long time. That said, this idea of regenerative capacity, right? This regenerative potential is super super critical because I do want to live a long time, but I want to live healthy, right? Like I want to live 100. Sounds great, right? If I can live to 100 and I can be relatively healthy by the time I get there. Fantastic. That’s a good life, right? But it’s really critical that we approach our lifestyles in that same vein, this granted we’re gonna have amazing technologies, we’ve got some that are here already, right? I mean peptides and stem cells are doing amazing things in and of themselves and things like nerve hydro dissection and we’ve got all kinds of amazing things that are happening in that space. But I think it’s really important that we don’t just live in a way that is destructive to ourselves, to our community, to those are family, to those around us, to the environment. Right? So going forward despite the fact that we’re gonna have these amazing technologies at our fingertips and they’re gonna come cheaper and cheaper. It’s really important that we live in a in a way that’s going to be sustainable for our, for ourselves and for our local environments, right? So living from alignment becomes ultimately critical and because if you don’t and you’re and you’re living in a way that’s destructive to your body, let’s just say, just keep it to ourselves here, your destructive to your body. Now, you’re trying to use something like stem cells to repair the damage that you did because you’re, you’re doing stupid things, right? And so you’re constantly chasing your tail. And that doesn’t seem to be effective. 

Nor do I think that it’s sustainable, Like I don’t think it’s gonna actually work. So, we’re gonna have to live in a way that makes sense. And so this is really what I wanted to do it because we’ve got these groups of people around the world in Ikaria Greece and Sardinia Italy in Okinawa, Japan in the Guanacaste region of Costa rica have identified as blue zones, right? And these are regions of the world where people make it to 100 at exceptionally high rate. There’s just so many people that make it to 100 so that’s where we went, not because We really cared about the regions, I actually just wanted to speak to these people that were in their 90s and 100. So I want to find them and it’s not exactly easy to do, right? So, and the cool thing was because they live in different cultures and different regions around the world. We can kind of, we can’t just say, Oh, it’s, they live a long time there because of this person lives a long time because of their genetics, right? And these are all different people living all around the world. 

And what we found was that there’s a few fundamental characteristics that lead to them being healthy in, well into old age. One of them is the fact that they were intimately intertwined with their environment. They got up with the sun, right? So, well let’s just backtrack because we’ve got to recognize that if somebody is 100 years old today in the year 2022, that means they were born in 1922 right now. These people were born in the 19 Tens and 1920s, in little tiny villages in various parts of the world. So they didn’t grow up with any cars, any electricity, no refrigeration. They lived a very, very simple life. So they were forced to operate with the seasons. They were forced to operate with the daily cycle. So they got up with the sun, they worked the land, they raised their animals, they were shepherds, whatever the case was, but they were very physically active. They were, they couldn’t just get up whenever they wanted to.The work needed to be done. And it must be done during the light because they didn’t have electricity right? When the sun went down, they went to bed. Right? So, they operated in rhythm, Right? And this is something that is fundamental to our health, right? We now know about circadian rhythm and this idea that our whole biology is guided by primary, primarily the light cycle. And there’s other other things too, like temperature and extra and movement and food. They also influence our circadian rhythm, our biological rhythm, our 24 hour cycles within the body. This was something in 2017 that was given the Nobel Prize for three scientists who were studying circadian rhythm at the cellular level. So we now know that we have clock genes and and beam all genes and we’ve got all these period genes inside ourselves, that everywhere in our body there constantly reading and responding to the signals primarily from our brain and as well as our skin, that are sending signals about what time of day it is based on the angle of the sun and the temperature and all these things. Right? So we have this amazing clock.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And these are like survival mechanisms because the body is based upon surviving. So if we don’t know what’s coming next, If we don’t learn, you know what the changes in nature and how to prepare for the next step, then then we don’t survive. So, that’s how important it is genetically that these different clocks exist within us.

Jason Prall

That’s right. And these are and as you said, they’re predictive, right? So this is what is really interesting is that based on past information our body’s going to predict when the sun is gonna come up tomorrow. Right? And based on that information it’s gonna kick on digestion at a certain time. It’s gonna kick on cortisol, right? We’re really familiar with this cortisol rhythm that wakes us up, gets the body going, that increases blood sugar. It’s starting it’s starting to get us going right, once the, once the sun rises are, cortisol starts to rise, melatonin declines right? When the sun starts to set, our melatonin rises are, cortisol is supposed to anyway declined and this is what allows us to fall asleep. 

And a whole different set of programs started operate at night. Right? So this is this is a fundamental one that all of these elderly people, these these wisdom keepers around the world were did amazingly well isn’t a circadian rhythm. They were operating on the circadian rhythm. And so very very critical aspect that we really need to get in tune with. Again here in the west, many of us are sitting in front of computers like I am right now we’ve got lights on at night, right? We are working out at six or seven p.m. This is not not in alignment with circadian rhythm and this idea of circadian rhythm and operating by the daily cycle has has deep roots in Ayurveda, thousands of years old science, deep roots in chinese medicine, right? Thousands of years old. So this is this is fundamental. They’ve known about this, this science in these in these traditions and we are now confirming it in our own scientific way here in the west. But but we’re all familiar with this. If you’ve ever traveled time zones, right? You travel three or four or five, 10 time zones and all of a sudden your body is trying to predict what time it is. But your airplane just gave it to you for a loop, right? Because you’re now in a different part of the world. The sun is setting in a different time based on your biological clock. So it takes a few a few days for your body to readjust to the current light cycle. Right? So this is a fundamental one. And bring it to the sort of scientific aspect here, circadian rhythm. If it’s not in alignment with the natural light cycle, if you have somebody that’s working night shifts and swing shifts all cause mortality increases dramatically. This means cancer, autoimmune conditions, food sensitivities, skin conditions, you know, cluster headaches, you name it, all of the diseases all cause mortality increases when we are awake at night and sleeping during the day or somewhere in between. If we’re not getting really good sleep, operating and doing so in the right part of the night, then our machinery just gets all out of whack. Right? And so,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I mean, you can kind of imagine an individual that never know what’s gonna happen next. And that’s kind of the environment that we put ourselves in, you know, with all these blue light, you know, we screen, you know, like working out at night and and every that the body has no idea what’s going to take place next. So the stress level is gonna be elevated. We’re gonna be in that inflamed state. You know, you said, cortisol levels gonna be elevated. That’s insulin resistance. More weight gain. All these things, you know, are than just gonna just gonna be compounded on us just because we’re not living by the simple principle, you know, living with nature.

Jason Prall

Yeah. And this is the metabolic function completely goes into chaos, right? And so, in fact, this is one of the things when I work with a client, no matter what they come in with, whether it’s cancer or autoimmune diseases or, you know, hormonal imbalances doesn’t matter. Weight gain, they want to lose weight. One of the first things I do is make sure that the circadian rhythm is, is optimized. Right? And so the biggest part of this, because it is the lights get a lot of attention. The blue lights and lights at night. But the biggest part of the circadian rhythm is getting outside and getting enough daylight in our eyes and and on our skin primarily in our eyes. Most of us spend most of the day inside. So we don’t get outside enough for the light to actually influence our biology in a way that is profound enough to change our circadian rhythm. So simply by being inside most of the day and then look, a lot of people go outside and they put sunglasses on, right? So this is influencing the spy of light that hits the eye, then hits the super charismatic nucleus and the pituitary and hypothalamus that then communicates to the rest of  the, of the body. So those signals really need to be authentic and they need to be strong enough to be able to set these clocks in our brain and our body. So one of the things that we can do is start to get outside more like go outside first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up assuming the sun is up when you wake up, get light in your eyes and you can just sit there with your t. I would say for most people it’s a good idea to cut the coffee back a little bit. And even though I love coffee, cut the coffee back too much caffeine is not a good thing. But but sit there and just allow the light to come into your eyes even if It’s a cloudy day, even if it’s a rainy day, that natural daylight. So 15, 20 minutes, at least in the morning first thing will set that, that morning clock and that is critical. So this is a big piece. And of course when you think about how they’re living, you know, the elders around the world, they never had to worry about this. 

Their entire life. They were, their circadian rhythm was optimized. They got amazing sleep. They never dealt with digestive issues. Like nobody had talked to, knew really anybody with digestive issues. except for the younger people. that lived a more Western lifestyle. So that was a big one. It’s just literally being in touch with the environment, in touch with nature, constantly in, in, in relationship with it with the food, right? Everything was grown organically locally. They consume their own foods, local foods. Another big, it’s a factor for all of these populations, this movement, constant movement. They never worked out, they never exercised, they didn’t have a lot of recreation, but they were constantly moving. They didn’t sit at computers like we do today right now. This is a, this is an element that I think is important to recognize that it’s pretty unfair to ask everybody that’s listening to this, including you and me, to start to move like they did because it’s probably not gonna happen. 

We live in a modern world. That is, that is changed dramatically. And so most of us don’t have that opportunity. And so what do we do, right, the key is to to constantly move throughout your day. I’m actually have a standing desk so I can just get up and sit down. So instead of standing all day or instead of sitting all day, I can constantly move. Even if I’m sitting, I can get up and move around right, constantly move your body throughout the day, go for a walk at lunch, get some exercise in the morning or early afternoon. Late afternoon and early evening is not the greatest time to exercise, but if you must, you know, that’s that’s okay too, but it’s this idea of constantly moving and doing as much activity as you can, whether it’s play, hiking, jogging, running, lifting weights, Pilates yoga, what have you, but just constantly moving. And that’s a really, really important factor. And and and the biggest part of that I think is play. If we can introduce more play into our life, it’s probably the best way to move. So we’re forcing movement if we’re doing exercise that we don’t like to do, pretty unsustainable and and and from a mental emotional standpoint, you’re sort of doing yourself a disservice, right? So finding something that you engage with, whether it’s playing with your dog, playing with your kid, playing games of any kind, but just doing something that you really enjoy is probably the best way to to incorporate movement in your life, but but really if you don’t move hard, that’s another aspect is like moving hard sometimes, right? Really forcing your body to adapt to a new stimulus. A new pressure is really really critical for strength for optimizing certain hormones. And that’s something that they constantly did right. They were working hard throughout their day, a lot harder than we do. They would walk 30 40 kilometers sometimes just for to go get some food that that they didn’t have, whether it’s fishing,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

They were dealing with the kind of changing environment. So it’s not. So they had their natural cold, natural hot and the body had to adjust to that and in regard to movement. Also we it is like the best possible brain stimulation to to to move and be engaged because if you’re just sitting still, you’re staring straight onto the screen and like we’re doing right now, you know, there’s no eye movement so there’s no exercise for the brain because the eye we are just looking straight and also we’re not adjusting posture. So the brain does not have to calculate as to how should I just for this movement or do this or running on uneven ground or you know, jump rope or all these different things where the brain has to continually adjust based upon what the body is doing. So it for dementia or Alzheimer’s for I mean it is key.

Jason Prall

This is actually the number one thing that you can do to avoid or to reduce your risk of dementia. Alzheimer’s, it’s not brain exercises, you know, memory to have a healthy brain is to exercise to constant and, and you know, things like music, there’s some other activities, there, two languages are really good one to pick up a language. So, this is what we saw two in those that were in their eighties, nineties and beyond, was that they were still engaged with these things. In fact, 1 94 year old lady, I was chatting like I said, I asked her, I said, look, you know, you’re, all your friends have passed away, you know, in fact, many of your family, they’re either not here or they’ve passed away. What keeps you going? And she said, well, I’ve got to learn this song for the violin class on Wednesday. And I thought, what an unbelievably genius and brilliant answer that is right, because she kept everything in perspective, It’s like, what else do you live for? You live for the, you live for the things that are in front of you right now, right? And so it was important for her to learn. And she picked up the violin at 92 She was 94. And so she’s like, I mean, she was horrible and I used to play the violin. So, I mean, she was really bad, but it was the most unbelievably cool thing I’ve ever seen. I was so inspired by it because I mean, to have the courage to pick up a new skill at 92 years old, I mean, it’s truly amazing and to to to not be good and to lose your faculties. I mean, like she does, she didn’t move like she used to write, so everything becomes a little more challenging. And yet those are the things that kept her going mentally emotionally as well as from a brain perspective and physically keeps her engaged, right? So, these are the types of things that we saw over and over, these nine year old, 100 year olds, they were still doing things that they enjoyed 100 and five year old in Sardinia was riding his bike still, he was playing chess with his son who was like 70 something or 80 something. 

And and so, you know, they were still engaging with life. So if there’s any population here, anybody here that it’s in their 70s, 80s, watching this, the key to continuing to have good health into the 80s and 90s and beyond, is to continue to engage with life, find things that you’re excited about, find things that wake you up in the morning that keep you engaged and that that will keep you healthy beyond anything else. Like, I mean, that, that over and over again, this is what we saw, it’s the love of life itself, that is that keeps people going and when we lose that, we lose this drive to get up and and to live life to actively live life, then then sort of we’re sending these subtle signals to our body that it’s time, we’re kind of one down here, you know, we’re almost done right, and everything starts to shut down.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. And I think it’s so in our in the modern society, I mean, we we think that we are so great because we have these assisted living, you know, we we restore our elderly away so that they’re comfortable, they can, you know, they’re all taken care of, but then they’re just kind of, they they’re just existing. Like you’re saying they don’t have that purpose, They don’t have something to live for. They don’t have that community engagement with where there’s multigenerational, that that really kind of stimulates their activity because, you know, an assisted living, you’re just going to hang out with people are waiting to die, you know, instead of having that purpose.

Jason Prall

Yeah, and this is a big fault. I think of our society and this is something that I think we really have an opportunity to to shift, which is to really embrace our elderly, embrace these elders who really have tons of wisdom to share. I mean, the research is abundantly clear that when the older generations hang out with the younger generations, the kids, they get younger, like everything about it from a, from a biological perspective, all their immune markers, everything starts to shift internally. It’s really amazing that all there by Biomarkers start to become younger. And so they really benefit from hanging out with the youth. And of course the youth can benefit tremendously from learning from the elderly. I don’t just mean 98, I mean 60 and 70, right? Like still really, really valuable information that we can all learn from, that those who have gone before us. Right? So we’re missing out on a huge opportunity to re-engage our elderly population and job, bring them back and say, hey, you know, what can I learn from you? Right? Like what is that I can gain from you to make my life easier, right? And this is what we found over and over again. 

I didn’t expect the humor and the wisdom to the degree that I saw it in like 95 plus expected by that age, that’d be kinda kinda losing it a little bit and somewhere, you know, when they get into that age, it’s, it’s, we just start to decline. But the, the humor and the very subtle wisdom of just the simplicity of life, the profound things that they said, you know, in fact, I remember asking, I was talking to a guy named and in Ikaria Greece and he said, you know, when I was younger, the body was busy and the mind is still now, what I see is that the mind is busy and the body is still and I thought my God, he summarized like it’s probably somebody written a book on that, right? And he summarized in one sentence. So it’s those type of things that I think we can gain these tremendous wisdoms that can, that can like really land from these elderly populations. I think that’s a big one that that if we can incorporate the elderly populations back into our lives. And if you are in the elderly population to find a way to engage with the youth has been shown in the research over and over again to be extremely beneficial.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And I think that allows power to flow through the generations. I mean as we have it now, we’re segmenting things which does not allow that generational power to kind of fuel us. So we don’t feel as supported, we step out into life and feel confused. We feel lost, you know, because we don’t have that foundation behind us of the generations that have lived before us and have this tremendous wisdom and understanding.

Jason Prall

Yeah, this is a big one. I remember speaking with I forget her name. She was in her late sixties or early seventies in Okinawa, very, very smart woman and she was saying she was a very educated woman and she was talking about the west and she said, you know, one of the problems I see in in the United States is that you guys really value your autonomy, your individualism. And she said, what you’re, what you’re missing is that you’re isolating yourselves and this isolation causes disease, you know, and this isolation itself is a driver of disease. And of course we see this in a lot of the research when it comes to community and the value of having a support network. It’s a total game changer. But we have become so autonomous here in the west. And there’s pride to that, right? Because we can, we’ve literally done such amazing things socio economically That we can we can live on our own right. Where some of these people that we met, they didn’t, there’s no way they would have lived on their own in 1945 Sardinia Italy in the mountains, you needed, they relied on other people.So there was a network of support. Now on the one hand, you could say that that’s a weakness that you rely on others that you must rely on on this and they must they had to rely on others. 

On the other hand, it’s such an amazing strength when you have a big enough network that you can all count on one another and disasters would happen. Things would happen to certain families or their homes or what have you and the entire community would come and help out because they realized that if somebody in the community was suffering and hurting and that actually affected them too. So there was such an amazing support network which provided a level of not only actual safety but perceived safety, right? The sense in my body that I am safe, then I’m okay that if something happens, there’s people that have my back and I know that right, there’s a lot of us that don’t actually have that essentially built into our nervous system because we we’ve lived such an autonomous life and there’s childhood traumas and other things that have incorporated or that have, that have led to this feeling that that I’m not safe, even people that ton of money have this feeling of if I’m not safe in the nervous system. And so that was really, really noticeable to was the fact that you could tell that they all had a profess sense of connection with others that are around them. 

So, and that’s, that’s different than community. Right? Community is sort of the physical thing. The connection is the non physical aspect of community that may or may not be there. I can be in an online facebook community, but without the connection, right? Or I can be in a community and feel ostracized, in which case that’s even worse because I should feel connected, but I don’t write. So they all had a profound sense of connection with their community. and I would say perhaps even more importantly they had a profound sense of connection with, with God, with the divine, with something that was beyond themselves. And in the case of sort of the more Shinto religions in, in or it’s not even religion, I guess Shinto belief systems in Okinawa, it was the connection to nature, connection to ancestors, right? So that I think was really, really important to. And and as we spoke with more and more of them, you got this feeling that they kind of just turned things over to the divine. They didn’t have to carry it all. So you know what, I’ll be here until God says so right? And it was quite funny because I ask people how, you know, how long do you want to live? And so it’s not up to me, right up to God. And so they just didn’t care. They didn’t have any desire to get to 100 or 100 and 580 like some people are talking about, they just let go of so much and turn it all over. And so I think that’s something that, that I noticed in the west that we, many people have lost that and I’m not even saying that we need to have a fundamental religion that we that we subscribe to, I think that’s great if we do, but that wasn’t my background and upbringing, and yet it’s come into my life as I’ve recognized the value of it in so many ways, both on the physical health, mental emotional spiritual, there’s something there that is so, so valuable. So that was a really, really big one, that that was a thread throughout all of the communities that we visited,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that spirituality is, you know, whether you’re you’re Buddhist or Hindu or, you know, all these different, you know, shamanism, you know, that that spirituality kind of brings that focal point and and bring the people together so that they, it’s kind of like their heartbeats and the same rhythm, you know, that they have something that they come together with and they live within that energetic matrix, sort of saying,

Jason Prall

Absolutely, and and and there’s something there, like, there’s something that is bigger than you, there’s something there that we can that we can look to beyond ourselves, right? So it actually expands our level of awareness outside of just this Small me here right here right now, right? And, so as we get beyond ourselves into the family, into the community, into the sort of universal levels of consciousness or awareness now, we’re starting to operate our entire life with that in mind, right, this sort of focused, inward small self perspective that that I mean I grew up with? I mean this is what I thought for a long time it tends to be more constricting. And so there’s just something bigger at stake when you recognize that, that there’s a bigger hand at play. Then there’s less worry about some of these small things.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

One of the things that I want to touch on before we, before we end this, you know, we’re talking so much about circadian rhythm, about our you know, the patterns that exist, you know, you know preparing for winter, preparing for summer, We got night, we got day, we had all these different things that are taking place and one of the glands that we were really kind of looking towards, to help us to understand what’s going on around us is a pineal gland. And there’s a lot of research coming out in regard to this pineal gland and this ties in how important circadian rhythms are for longevity and for anti aging and the hormone that one of the main hormones it produces is melatonin. And I know you’ve done a lot of kind of research in regards to melatonin just based upon what you’re seeing in regard to this. So can you tell them a little bit about, you know that the high dose melatonin, I mean what does it do to the body and how can a person benefit from that?

Jason Prall

Yeah, this is a hormone a supplement that I think will be a part of regenerative medicine going forward and it sort of already is now to some degree. But melatonin is a hormone that’s produced by the pineal gland, that’s what we typically think about. And it’s typically thought of as the darkness hormone, right? It’s right, it’s a sleep hormone, but it does so much more. It isthe most powerful antioxidant in the body and it trump’s super oxide disputes. I mean it’s it’s trump’s glutathione. It’s amazing what melatonin can do from an antioxidant perspective and and how it works, there’s there’s sort of three ways that antioxidant can we an antioxidant can directly quench oxidative free radicals. Right? So it sort of chemically quenches those. 

The other way is that it can turn on antioxidant enzymes, things like super oxides, which melatonin does, right? And the other way is to turn down inflammatory cascade. So actually turn down the the oxidative sort of chains. And so it’s it’s it’s turning down the pro inflammatory genes, It’s up regulating the anti inflammatory antioxidant genes and it’s directly quenching? So it’s it is in three ways unbelievable at lowering inflammation excess inflammation, interesting thing about melatonin hormone perspective is that unlike things like testosterone or growth hormone or some of these other hormones that we might supplement with, there’s no negative feedback loop. 

So you can take tons of melatonin and when you take it away the body is still going to make its own melatonin that’s not the case for for some of these other hormones, which is why they can be so dangerous and also you know, difficult to work with because you’re constantly having to monitor your body’s own ability to make it the receptors if they’re gonna start shutting down these types of things. And so it’s got an unbelievable safety profile when it comes to these high doses as well which is which is interesting because again it’s a hormone, so we’re conditioned I think in the sort of scientific community and the practitioner communities that when we’re dealing with hormones tiny, you know, just getting this sort of physiological dose is is the best thing you wanna do, you don’t want to go above and beyond. But with melatonin, you know, there’s something called LD 50 right, the lethal dose of 50. And so this is a number that with just about every substance that we use table salt for example, we’re gonna try to find how much table salt it’s gonna take to kill 50% of, let’s say rats, right? So we take a rat population and we try to find this dose and I think it’s something like three mg per kilogram or something to kill, to kill 50% of the rats, Right? So we do this with vitamin B six, we do it with, you know everything. And they don’t they haven’t figured out the lethal dose for melatonin. They tried but they can’t get there. And so this is what’s fascinating is that you can

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

The rest just get younger and younger.

Jason Prall

That’s right. But what’s fascinating is not only can they not figure out how to kill a rat or a mouse with melatonin, but they can’t even really generate any negative consequences, negative side effects. So this is what’s really fascinating about this hormone. And I’m not saying there aren’t any, but what I’m saying is the safety profile is remarkable considering you know, compared to other other vitamins and minerals that we might take. I mean it’s way more safe than magnesium, for example. Right. So we can take this at high doses. And in fact, many people have hundreds of milligrams for years and no negative side effects. 

There was one study that looked at 6 6600 mg. So 6.6 g of melatonin nightly for I think upwards of a month and no negative side effects. So, we were talking about 50 mill 200 mg 204 100 mg. This is really nothing compared to what the research has shown and what I’ve found, both personally and clinically with my clients, is that it’s unbelievable for gut function. So it really, really regulatory from a gut nervous system perspective, we see microbiome shifts with melatonin because your microbiome are actually responding to your secretion of melatonin. The gut itself normally without even supplementing has 400 times more melatonin than what’s produced by the pineal gland. 

So melatonin is something that’s not only produced by the pineal gland, it’s produced by mitochondria. So this is what’s really fascinating is that we’re starting to recognize and this isn’t, I wouldn’t say it’s consensus yet, but the evidence is suggesting and pointing to the fact that all mitochondria produce melatonin and use melatonin because of its antioxidant properties. So I think we’re just we’re still early in in the melatonin research because you can’t patent melatonin, there’s not a lot of financial incentive for for these companies to spend millions of dollars looking at melatonin and what it’s gonna do, but what I’ve seen clinically is that it’s it’s unbelievably helpful for gut inflammation of all kind. It improves skin. So you get softer skin, more even toned skin. It actually helps. It’s beneficial for a lot of sun. Your skin will actually produce more melanin. You’ll be more protected from UV rays. It regenerates the thymus gland. So actually speaking of pineal gland, there’s an interesting pioneered thymus gland connection here, I think it was Dr. Walter Pierpaoli who did swapped out pineal glands of old mice and young mice and when he took the pineal gland from the old mice and swapped it into the young mice, the young mice got older and everything about them, muscle wasting cataracts. All the hallmarks of old age started to increase. Now the young mice and taking their pineal gland, putting it into the old mice, they started to show signs of reversing aging. So they started getting healthier in every way. So it means they grew their coats increased muscle mass. 

I mean when they did an autopsy autopsy they showed that the degradation of the thymus gland in the young mites with the old pineal glands was significantly increased. So the thinking here and the confirmation and later research has shown that the melody tonin actually helps regrow the thymus gland. And thymus gland is critical. That’s where T cells are produced. So for inflammatory processes for your immune system as a whole having good t cell function having good thermic function is absolutely critical. And so the interesting thing about our thymus gland is that it starts to its sort of peak size and peak function at about puberty. So right about 13-14. And then from there it starts to decline, it starts to gain a little more fatty tissue functional tissue decreases thermic output. T cell function decreases from puberty. So by the time we’re 30 40 50 70 you know our thermic function is dramatically decreased right and 35 is about this age range where it starts to decline rapidly. 

So what we see then is with melatonin starts to regrow the thymus gland. And so this becomes really, really interesting when it comes to immune function and immune senescence. This idea of the immune system not functioning is one of the best predictors for aging or for death. Is that when the immune system doesn’t work anymore, this is when we go downhill quickly because we’re suspect subjected to infections and also the inflammatory processes in our bodies just aren’t regulated well. So that is just one component of what melatonin can do is regrow the thymus gland. The other big parts have to do with how it influences downstream hormone like lutin. Izing hormone follicle stimulating hormone. These are hormones typically thought of with regard to puberty. Right, so interesting enough, we have this follicle stimulating hormone utilizing hormones in women starts to increase and of course cycle once puberty hits and and then in women after menopause starts to shoot up utilizing hormone follicle stimulating rise dramatically. And that is part of this aging process. When we supplement with melatonin, we actually suppressed lutin. Izing hormone suppress follicle stimulating hormone and that is the typical relationship between these hormones, these sex hormones and melatonin. And in that vein we actually have seen that if you give tons of melatonin to a prepubescent, you can actually delay puberty. So I guess that’s a downside. If you want to give it to kids, it’s not a good idea because it will suppress lutin. Izing hormone follicle stimulating hormone to the point where it will suppress the development of puberty on the plus side for women that have gone into menopause early, perhaps we can actually pull them back out of menopause by supplementing with, with higher doses of melatonin. 

This has been shown time and time again. And it’s partially because of this relationship with utilizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. We can start to decrease those, basically put the brakes on those hormones. And that that pulls them back out of menopause along with the reduction in inflammation. So melton is a fascinating hormone. Really good I guess really good for gut health. Really good for skin health, amazing for lowering the inflammatory load overall improves immune system function, improves the gut microbiota composition. I mean, I honestly can’t say enough about it. I’ve used it personally for quite a while now. I’ve used it a lot of my clients and Exactly, yes.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And I mean I and I love melatonin and I do it for my cancer patients. I have them on 200 mg at, at bedtime.

Jason Prall

Beautiful. I love that. I totally forgot about cancer and this is this research and I’m glad you brought that up. Research has shown this over and over again that in fact there’s people in Europe that only give melatonin for cancer, which I thought was pretty crazy cause you can do all the other other things, but I didn’t know you were giving it to them. That’s fantastic.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. Yeah, no, it is cool. And then also you have like autism that’s something that’s really flaring up and they see a strong correlation between high dose of melatonin on autistic Children and how it really wakes up their brain. So I mean it’s just a fascinating hormone that we’re learning more and more about. And it used to be, you know, in the way back when we thought that panel was just a useless gland. In fact they saw no function and no reason for the pineal gland kind of like what we do now with gallbladder and appendix that we just jacked him out and then if you so but the and we have for the anti aging you were talking about thymus and you know, so and like in the peptide world we’re talking about like the major peptides for anti aging, like thymosin alpha one and epic talent of million. You know, these are like the key peptides for anti aging. So to really revitalize your famous and the pineal gland is like for anti-aging.

Jason Prall

Absolutely. And this may be and you know, when it comes to aging that the research is actually starting to point to not this damage associated with aging, but actually there’s a clock, there’s an aging clock. That is what all the research is pointing to is that it’s sort of programmed this program, this idea of programmed aging. And you know, philosophically that makes sense that we have this life cycle. And so we’re constantly looking for this aging clock in the body. Where is this thing? And how does it, what’s the sort of master controls? And there’s a handful of sort of markers that we’re finding now that can control a large part of aging. But it’s interesting to think about the potentially the pineal gland may hold some of these answers as being a kind of master regulator. 

I mean, it’s obviously a very important gland when it comes to spiritual awake, to going into different levels of awareness. Right? When we talk about things like Ayahuasca and some of these psychedelic medicines, they’re really having an influence on pineal gland in Ayurveda and and some of these ancient eastern practices, there’s a lot of aspect to the pineal gland and the practices. So there’s something going on there with the pineal gland and I suspect that there’s going to be really important discoveries, when it comes to Anti aging Medicine, Regenerative Medicine. But when we talk about melatonin, I really want to highlight the fact that it’s to go beyond this idea of sleep, right? Sleep is important. So like that’s an important way and circadian rhythm to regulate your own natural production of melatonin. 

So definitely do all that. And when you supplement with melatonin you can put skin cream with melatonin on your skin and it’s really, really beneficial. Right? So every cell is utilizing melatonin. And if mitochondria are producing melatonin, like the research is suggesting then it goes beyond just a sleep function. It’s actually serving a cellular regeneration function, right? It’s actually helping to clean up the cells and mitigate excess damage. And to me that’s really where I get excited about melatonin is what can it do to kind of clean up some of this damage that’s naturally occurring as I get older. And it’s kind of hard to stop throughout the body. So we need something to kind of mop it up while we also do all these other things to help you know, increase our regenerative potential with things like peptides and things like stem cell and and post electromagnetic field and all these things that we can utilize melatonin seems to come in there and and play a really, really important role in assisting the mitochondria primarily as well as the microbiota.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, I love it. Well, Jason and tell everyone where they can find your where they can watch your documentary because, I mean, it’s a fascinating documentary. And if we learn from what has been done, then we are able to move forward better. So where can people find it?

Jason Prall

Yeah, they can find me at awakened health academy. So awakenedhealthacademy.com. As well as you can find my, my new book at beyond longevity book dot com. and you can also go to humanlongevityfilm.com Specifically.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Love it. Thank you so much, Jason. Thank you for everything you’re doing.

Jason Prall

Absolutely! Thank you so much.