You’re Aging Faster Than You Think — Here’s How to Slow It Down | Dr. Sou Orlando | Ep. 171

Introduction to Longevity and Healthspan 0:00

Do you want to live 200? And oftentimes, the answer is no, absolutely not. What if you could live as you are living today, having the same energy, same capacities? Yeah, I signed for it. If we focus on healthspan, you're going to get the lifespan. But what is one thing that most people misunderstand about getting older? Getting older. A Healthy Point of View podcast, your top rated show, where we bring experts from all over the world to talk about health, wellness, beauty, and mindset. We have Dr.

Sue Orlando. Americans are living longer than ever and staying well for less of it. Dr. Sue Orlando, Longevity Scientist, Strategic Advisor, Founder and CEO of ION Life, has built her career on closing that gap. We now know that aging is deeply connected with inflammation, and so this inflammation that will accelerate this aging process may be responsible for age-related diseases that are going to occur over time. We have an amazing, brilliant healthcare system, but it's been trained to detect either symptoms or disease.

So nothing is built to help people to prevent from having these diseases in the first place. Six out of ten Americans have at least one chronic disease and four out ten have two or more. Do you think we're facing a healthcare crisis or a prevention crisis? Welcome to another episode of A Healthy Point of View podcast, your top rated show, where we bring experts from all over the world to talk about health, wellness, beauty, and mindset. I'm your host, Sam Tahata, in today's guest, we're gonna be talking about the biology of aging.

So what did I do? Of course I had to bring an expert to tell about biology in aging, todays expert, she has a PhD in biology. We're going to go into the actual details of the cellular process, molecular process and truly understand metabolically how your body needs to perform. What does that take is understanding the lifestyle, understanding, the things that you put into your what are you eating? What is that nutrition look like? the results of your baseline compared to your results, of what we're getting out of, what you're doing with your nutrition looks like.

What are those measurements that we are looking like? So today, we have Dr. Sue Orlando. Dr Sue. Welcome to a healthy point of view. Thank you so much. I'm very pleased to be here with you. Absolutely. So Dr, Sue, just to, get straight to it. What does aging look like here in the United States? Wow. Um, it's a big and, and a B question. So first of all, I will start with what is aging, right? Because, uh, there is some clarity to provide regarding the definition of aging per se, if I may. Oftentimes aging means, people are having wrinkles, gray hairs, maybe it's a chronological age that we decide by these numbers, you age, right?

And I would like to talk about it maybe later to explain what really aging is, because scientifically we can define aging. Now, if you talk about the population aging overall in the USA, and especially maybe you think about lifespan, we unfortunately see that in USA the health

Aging in the U.S. and the Prevention Crisis 3:40

pain is one of the worst or the worse compared to most of, the biggest country. And that's quite shocking, you know? And why that? you know, lifespan for definition is the time that you live your life. Right. And the lifespan is not so bad. But unfortunately, when we see the curve of the health span, meaning the numbers of years that used to healthy over your entire life, this decline is quite impressive, especially in the US, which means that while people age and live longer, They have a decline in the health, in their independence, and their functions.

And this is probably related with the biggest challenge we experience in The US, which is the metabolic health. The metabolic dysfunction that we see for the population that start with very early age. This is related by one of the most important aspects is food that were eating in Absolutely, absolutely. So when we look at aging here in the US, what is the biggest problem that we need to fix when it comes to aging? So the biggest problem will be to start from the foundation and to really help people to understand what they need to do to stay healthy as much as long as possible.

And we can talk about multiple aspects, but you know that for anyone, I like to say aging is not something that occur one day from one date to another. Aging starts at the time we are born, right? These are some mechanisms of physiological and biological process that decline over time, and that creates this aging, but the way we live, the environment where we leave is highly influencing the ways we age, And the environment can be characterized with how we eat, how exercise, and how work out. The environment where we live in terms of toxins and pollution, the stress level where are we experiencing.

There are many, many parameters that influence the age. One of the biggest issues we experience in the US is how to feed our kids. I will say, you know, if you start with removing all this junk food, sugar and unhealthy food out of their plates, that would be already a very big start to help people stay healthier, longer and age better. Absolutely. So Dr. Su, with your expertise, you understanding what aging should look like in a perfect world where someone has the ability to eat, exercise, do everything correctly.

What does that health span and lifespan, what should that look for a healthy individual? So what we're looking for, ideally, to achieve in terms of longevity, and we are going to talk about longevity a little bit, is that the curve of the lifespan and the health span stay closer and as long as possible. Meaning that what you expect is to live as longer as possibly in our optimal health. Right? So no decline, keeping our energy, uh, Keeping our mindset, keep being mental, mentally sharp, being able to do whatever we're doing as long as possible.

And that's the goal of health optimization and making sure that aging is a healthy aging, you know, is not, there is, it's not just a fatality to age and to lose all your capacity. You can take control of your house, but you need to work on it right now. Yeah. I'm happy you brought that up because, you know, one of the things that I see a lot in the longevity space, the whole industry is that a lotta people are just fixed on this number. Oh, I wanna leave until I am 180. But what does living to 180 really look like, right?

And one of the things that you mentioned is that health span, which is the quality of life, the vigor, that vitality, those things. So when we talk about quality life. Well, let me ask you this. We're talking about health, span and life span. In your opinion, what's more important? Health span? I would say the same. Exactly. And I mean, except if you prefer like to be dependent and live longer, but for the benefit of whom, you know, for for society, it's not really optimal to take care of people who are sick or need to have assistance for your family, I don't think you expect seeing your grandchild, seeing you on the bed.

I think that ideally, and that's a tricky, a good question. Oftentimes when I ask two people, my first question is that, do you want to live to 200? And oftentimes the answer is no, absolutely not. Because the way they see the 200 is like being on health decline, not able to enjoy their life, having their purpose, their independence, the passion that they have right now. But I ask them, let me say it differently. What if you could live as you are living today, have the same energy, same capacities, but up to 200? And then the answers change, right?

Oftentimes people say, yeah, I signed for it. That's the difference between health spine and lifespan. Yeah. And I agree with that. You know, one of the things that I typically tell people is that if we focus on health span, you're going to get the lifespan with it, and that's where you really want to optimize that health. Now, Dr. Sue, when we look at some of data that is out there, it shows that six out of 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease and four out 10 have two or more.

Hallmarks of Aging and Chronic Inflammation 10:20

Do you think we're facing a healthcare crisis or a prevention crisis? So I think the result, like we measure right now, it's a result of many, many years of maybe unconscious society about how we raise our kids, how eat, how we take care of ourselves. And right now, those chronic diseases occur because of our lifestyle, the environment. Again, food is really not the best that we could take. The fact that people may be not being aware of what it takes to take of your health. chronic disease can be very broad and what means by chronic diseases is that once you have this disease, it's for life.

That's the meaning of chronic. So it oftentimes is not reversible. It means that you will have to live with that. And that's a big challenge for the society. You start to get a treatment for maybe cardiovascular disease or maybe hypertension or may be cholesterol or diabetes and you take it for live. And unfortunately, that's happening because nobody was proactively helping people to take care of their health. And that the sick care system we're experiencing right now is oftentimes we have an amazing, brilliant healthcare system, but it's been trained to detect either symptoms or disease.

So nothing is built to help people to prevent from having these diseases in the first place. We don't teach them about nutrition. we don' t teach about lifestyle recommendations they should provide to their patients. They don t know. they need to see a signal. And oftentimes when we see the signal, it's too late. I think that's part of the whole pharmaceutical-driven system that we live in, which is unfortunate. It's that doctors are programmed to prescribe, prescribe and prescribe. And they forget one of most important parts, the foundation, nutrition.

Dr. Hsu, when we look at someone with your expertise, you have a PhD in the biology of aging. You know, you've been able to really study, participate in many different research. What is one thing that most people misunderstand about getting older? That's again, getting old or the biology, the aging, it's a very complex process that's occurring in your body. And it is not one event, one action or one signal, right? It's the body of many biological systems that are occurring similarly and oftentimes interconnected.

Right now, thanks to the science, we are able to understand what drives aging. We have right now about 12 hallmarks of aging, I'm not going to give you a teach about that. But we know we're able understand each one of these hallmark. With understanding this hall marks, hopefully modify those hallmarks, each one of them. So before we were thinking that aging is something that occurs anyway, so we have nothing to do about it. Now we should be very more optimistic because we are able to intervene to help aging better to optimize those systems.

We talk about mitochondrial decline, metabolism dysfunction, cellular senescence, to name a few. And because now we are able to understand which one of these mechanisms, we're able understand what we need to do to prevent having these declines over time. So you mentioned the hallmarks of aging. What are the top three that people should actually pay attention to out of those hallmarks? You know, I would say the most important for me that we can really, you know work on it is the the chronic inflammation.

And if you think about the population, most of the time, many people oftentimes suffer from chronic information. We know that this chronic formation is ultimately related now to this age-related disease or the decline over time based on aging. So people have to know about what's going on in their body and being able to measure and see if they're suffering from this chronic inflammation. And because it's difficult to see outside, visually, if you're suffer from chronic information, people looks very nice outside.

Very good looking, maybe very lean body muscles and everything looks great. But when you go deeper, you detect this current inflammation, And so when you detect it, you can really work on it on different ways and to remove this part from your aging process. And that's that would be a good start for people to think about it. So I've heard you use the terminology before watching your content, inflammation. Exactly. What is inflammation? That's the kind of version of this chronic inflammation, because we now know that the aging is deeply connected with the inflammation.

And so this inflammation that will create this aging process, accelerate this ageing process. But not only accelerate the age process but may be responsible of age-related disease that's going to occur over time. So we know when it comes to inflammation, I want to stick to that hallmark of aging. I'm going to stay on that topic for a bit here and dig a little bit deeper. We know that oxidative stress causes inflammation. What are some of the drivers causing oxidated stress in the body? they can be various driver causing from oxidative stress and they, they could be environmental.

They can't be related to hormones. That can related stress related, and, uh, that can also related by what you, what do you inject when you ingest in terms of food. So the challenge in, um, this, the science is there is no one answer and it's oftentimes not black and white. I wish we could give a clear recipe to everybody to say, this is what you do, you don't, and you're going to be fine. But this where it comes also the bio-individuality. Some people are more reactive to some intervention or to environment than others.

So maybe some action like maybe an environment that is not neutral for someone will be very bad for somebody else, you know? So, yes, we know those oxidative stress are really bad, for any older mechanism internally in cells, but I will not point out only this oxidate stress, if you will. I think the broader you have these pictures, the better will it be to be able to play with each one of these hallmarks of aging and all the science we know around, like an orchestra conductor, no? That's how it takes to really focus on your biology of ageing.

Absolutely. Dr. Sue, you know, the wellness industry has grown substantially. I mean, everywhere you turn your head, there's somebody promoting wellness. And sometimes, or should I say a lot of times, that things that they're promoting and making those different packages on food and stuff that, they make it look healthy, right? It might not be so healthy. And, you know, I've had a lot of patients, even friends that they'll go to the grocery stores that are known to be healthy, right? Whole foods.

And all of a sudden they're buying all this food that's highly processed, that, they are selling it at whole foods, when it comes to their nutritional part, and we're talking about inflammation, the inflammation in the body, What can you tell us about a lot of these foods that are out there, these prepackaged bars, snacks, even if you go to Whole Foods, what can tell you about these food that people are going to the nutritional store and they think that they're being healthy, but they are not? Yeah, thank you for bringing this important question and topic.

Nutrition, Processed Foods, and the Gut Microbiome 19:40

There is no way to have healthy foods that is on package with certain numbers of liters that you don't understand. You know, what I always recommend to my clients, my family, and my friends is that eat whatever is grown, you know like the whole food like vegetables. dairies, but really like everything that is not unprocessed, meats, fish, and you can do your own recipes at home. I know it takes, it may things that you take time, But we are selling you something that's wrong. and is not helping you.

And even, I don't know if you are using like protein powders, but I do see on the firsthand on my clients, on their get tests, the result of the usage of protein powder. Because people think that having protein power powder every day after workout, and it's just a good replacement for meal. They are very happy to have their proteins, but it doesn't have the same effect on your body. Can you see that in the gut test? I do see. I recognize how people, I suspect, so I tell them, are you taking protein powders?

How often? So I never say never. Let's say if they have to travel, They're struggling with finding a healthy place to eat. They may have a clean protein powder they can use exceptionally for this time, but it should never be something you replace a health meal by a protein-powder shake and think that this is your meal. It's not natural. And on top of that, the food should be of course raised and gross like vegetables and from mother nature, if you will, but also organic. on grass fed because we know also that sometimes we think we want to take care of ourselves eating well.

But in fact, it's full of pesticides and any other products that we don't want. To have it on our goats. Right. And that's something that. We hear a lot of, you know, all over the news now that the pesticides, the glyphosate that they're spraying on. Our foods and what that does. It's showing that it can even potentially cause certain type of diseases like cancer. So, you know, when it comes to taking control of your health, I know you're a very data-driven kind of person, especially having your PhD in the biology of aging.

Data is important for someone like yourself. What are some of the metrics, biometrics, biomarkers that people should actually follow up on consistently? Number one, get a baseline and then follow-up on to take control of their health. Yeah, that's another great opportunity for people to be aware about the fact that if you look at the healthcare system right now, if go do your checkup maybe once a year, you will have the very, very basic biomarkers measured, right? And oftentimes even the range that they consider out of range are very extreme.

Meaning that, If you wanna detect something, it's really because you are really sick and that not what we want to achieve. We really want it to before this seek or alarm. So first of all, the numbers of biomarkers that are measured oftentimes are very, very limited and not enough to really understand what's going on in your body. In terms of biomarker, I will say that the first thing is to do a very comprehensive full blood panel to look at all the aspects about your metabolism, your your thyroid, your hormones.

I mean, sky is a limit in a way that you can look at many, many aspects in there. But then after I like to really look, at the gut, for example, because that's something you often never have when you go to do your health check, but you find out so much in the guts. The gut is full of a huge population. that works for us and to communicate in our body for all the mechanism. It's not only for digestion. The gut is, maybe you know or you don't know, but you have about 70% of your immune system localized in your guts, showing the importance of this population to know how our microbiota is healthy.

But they also a connection with the brain, we have the connection, with hormones, the inflammation can be involved and so on. So sometimes, you You can address some issues that you feel in the body, just looking at the gut and finding out where are the disbalance. Other aspects we can look at, and you need to think about it as a broader overview, is all this epigenetics, right? But it's not one measure. But epigenetics, we can use it because before we were thinking that genetics is really reflecting what our health outcome.

You have health history, family history and it's a fatality that you're going to have the same trajectory. But it is not the case. The genetics play only for the 20% roughly of our house outcome, And the 80% of it is our epigenetics, is the way that we express or not some genes that are present in ourselves, like a big library, let's say the genes are our library. The epigeneetics will be the books that will decide to take off the library or no. And these are influenced by our environment. So it's good to measure it because it is not just a number, it isn't a data.

It is something that you can modify. And when you are aware of what's going on in your body, you decide the right action, the informed decision to modify those measures in the correct direction. There is many other measures that you can take, but of course you could maybe run some DEXA because the DExA will help you to find out your body composition. One of the key aspects for some people, especially in the US, maybe will be the visceral fat, which is ultimately connected with a lot of issues about metabolism dysfunctions.

So we want to prevent people from some risk that can be identified and preventable as an example. Yeah, no, I love that. That's, you know, always tell people you can't improve what you don't measure. And you just mentioned quite a few of them. Now, with the gut microbiome, if you're doing a stool test on your patients. So. When it comes to the microbiomes, and I want to stay on one of the topics that we're talking about before, like we were talking. About inflammation. Right. I. Want to say inflammation, but either or inflammation or information.

But we were talking about, you know, when people go to a lot of these nutritional stores, and sometimes they're buying the wrong things that they should be eating, right? Instead of eating real food, they eat a whole lot highly processed foods, like the protein powder that you mentioned, where if that affects your gut microbiome, that has a hold effect on potentially how your genes are expressing themselves, depending if there's certain toxins in there. That also has an effect in your brain access And then it has an effect on how your microbiome is balanced.

So I wanna talk about the importance of balancing out the gut microbiomes so then your body can perform the way it should perform, right? With a strong immune system, with a stronger metabolism, making sure you have good metabolic health. What are some of the things that you do as a practitioner in functional health when you're working with your clients and wanting to balance out their gut microbiome. That's a good question. So first you have to read and understand where is the disbalance. And to add on that is that the gut has such an impact on you want to connect with the inflammation.

The gut can have a direct impact under inflammation because oftentimes we hear about leaky gut which is where the good barrier is not anymore able to maintain are the items that the foods that we inject should be staying within this barrier, but then it starts to spread in the body, in blood, and that's where we start to have this inflammation effect. So that is really, really important to look at. And from outside, you can't guess, it's impossible to guess. So that's why we are really to dig deeper and understand what's going on inside.

But for balancing, you know, it starts from changing the food. Oftentimes, we clear the foods. It's based on having a very healthy Mediterranean food, for me is one of the best way to help your gut. The Mediterranean food is also called an anti-inflammatory diet because it has all the ingredients to helps you slow down the inflammation from inside out. So that's the first approach. Then we have the knowledge about the plants that we can use to rebalance the gut is it's incredibly reach and then that's another aspect that I look at to really help people to leverage some spices and plants that we can use for that and of course probiotics, probiotic, prebiotic, postbiotics that can be found either in the food per se or as a supplement can a very good addition on that.

So the Mediterranean diet, right? Eating a nutritional plan that's based off Mediterranean. What does a Mediterranean Diet look like? You know, Mediterranean diet is something I've been raised with, so I'm very familiar with that. But I will describe it starting first like olive oil. If you look at Mediterranean plates and foods, you will always find everything is cooked on olive. You have a lot of vegetables, colorful vegetables. Seasonal vegetables often time when we had this all this data on this Mediterranean food, we talk about countries that are not as developed as America, so maybe people will take their food from the soil directly, and so very natural without pesticides and things like that.

We have some meat, but oftentimes it can be fish, or meat and the portion of fish and meat is quite low. It's not that much, you know, and and you have like those those beans, those green vegetables and all of this. But very healthy. That's that's very different from what you look at an average American is eating or what they have in the kitchen. Absolutely. So when we look at like the Mediterranean diet, I want to break things down a little bit further and talk about their benefits and potential negative side effects as well.

When we looked at fats, like you brought up olive oil, right? There's other types of fats. You know, cheese and other things of that nature. I want you to explain to the audience the difference between saturated fats, non-saturated fats and trans fats so people have an understanding of what they should be eating and what Yeah, well, I mean, there is a lot of debate on the fat right now. So I'm not sure that I am the right expert to really describe on all those fats. But, you know, basically, especially in the Mediterranean food, we said that plant-based fats is really healthy.

That's what we're looking for olive oil. And, and, that's it's really one of the best products that going to be like the healthy fats, you know, the good we you hear about the Good cholesterol,

Biomarkers, Testing, and Measuring Health 32:40

like on the bad cholesterol. So When we're looking at the fat, we try to increase our good cholesterol and reduce our bad cholesterol to have the right balance and to really eliminate any cardiovascular risk, development of arteriosus plaques, and so on and forth. So not all fats are bad. For example, olive oil will help you build this good cholesterol in your body, which will compete against this bad cholesterol. And it's like the difference between omega-3 and omega 6. We still need to have a little bit of both of them, but omega 3 is what we're looking for.

And the fish oil that people now take, and I'm really careful of having enough fish and omega-3 in my food to optimize this good cholesterol, but also for all the benefits we can get also from brain and things like that. So not all fats are bad, those fats lack more from animals that can come from meat, very heavy meats or some butter. So that's where it sometimes is controversial. That's more importantly from processed food or canola oil and things like that. This is what things that we want to avoid because they're not going to the direction that we're looking for to optimize our health and our good versus bad cholesterol, but also for the inflammatory aspect that the rise of the inflammation.

I try to be, But I'm not the expert on this field. No, of course. So which are the facts that should really stay away from? You know, everything that's like I would say if you get very big steaks, you know, like heavy, I don't eat meat, but you these white parts, should avoid it for sure, especially when they're cooked, the process, their reaction that's happening when it's cooked is really not in favor of what we're looking for for healthy aging. And every fat that that comes from this fast food industry.

This, I mean, everything about fast-food is really not the best. More of those processed foods. Processed foods, exactly. A lot of trans fats that have no fiber or nutritional density to it. I'm with you on that. Now, what about, we get this question quite a bit when it comes to carbs. You know, some people look at carbohydrates and says, oh, carbs are bad. Right. But I like to break it down to the two type of carbohydrates that we have. We have simplex carbs and complex carbs. Can you give us a little bit more details on the difference between the simple carbs, complex and how people should implement it in their diet?

Yes, absolutely. So of course, I know some people trying to avoid carbs overall, but each one may have his preference. I'm not into carbs in general neither, we all need for sustainable energy to have complex carbs, because the carbs will be, when injected will being released slowly over time, they will not create this glucose spike and that's the one that helps you to maintain this energy over time, not having this food craving after maybe a meal or one or two hours. In opposite to the simple scrub will be like maybe a sodas that goes sugar that you can sugary food that can get that sounds really good at the moment.

But after that, it will have a very double side effects because you will this glucose spike coming up and praying this fresh energy and then this again, food craving and the circle. And this really not good at all for your health, for you metabolic health and an overall energy. So that's where we think carbs, we have to distinguish the both of them. Absolutely. Is there any type of a protein that you prefer personally better than others? Yeah, you know, I want to say, first of all, how important proteins are for for us to stay healthy and and how people, especially people when they get aging, they tend to have less.

smaller portion of eating so, and they oftentimes minimize the proteins, you know, size that they need to have. So having enough protein every day, something that everybody needs to think about it, that's a work, because you have to make sure at the end of your day that you the protein you need, to keep your body strong, To build your muscle, Because even if you exercise but you don't eat proteins you can't build this muscle and maintain this muscles over time. Now when I think to proteins, I love fish, so I'm a pescetarian, but I never say to people, you need to be pescatarian.

It's a kind of choice and preference. But as long as it's something that, again, When you check the source, the sources good is not products like, you know, with full of hormone antibiotics or any things, but you can definitely lean in meat such as, chicken, veal, for people who eat veals, not everybody here in America. uh fish eggs eggs are very good proteins and you know it's been very controversial maybe not in america but uh back in the days where i was in europe uh if people were just pushing hard about don't eat eggs, it's raising up your cholesterol.

But we found out so much benefit of eggs which is something that we should all think about it, but the right eggs again, organic eggs. Yeah, and plant-based proteins are very, very good. You can find it on the chickpeas and everything. The only challenge is that When you look at the proteins in tech, you need to check how much you can get from one portion, and oftentimes where you eat protein coming from animals or fish or even eggs, You can't get much more proteins for the same amount of food. That's where when people are decide to be vegetarian, I think it's much more challenging for them to.

Be able to get the good amount of protein with what they eat, you know. Right. Absolutely. So, Dr. Sue, your physically fit. You know, You obviously take care of your health when it comes to your body. And we talk about movement and exercise. from a scale one to 10, 10 being very, very important. What do you rate making sure people exercise to help with the aging process? 10. 10? Absolutely. Why is that? You know, because muscle is first of all starting with muscle because exercising helps you with much more than building and maintaining muscle.

But muscle muscle, is an organ that is so much needed for healthy aging. And we oftentimes minimize the importance of muscle people think about muscle for more aesthetic or like, you know beauty and physical. But it's not, you know, all your body is maintained thanks to your muscle, your back is maintain thanks your muscles. So if you want to keep your independence in movement, in energy, over time, it is critical to maintain your missiles and you can only do it by exercising.

Mediterranean Diet, Fats, Carbs, and Protein 40:40

But for cardiovascular also prevention and optimization, we know that walking, even walking is for me a way of exercising and all the recommendations we see about the, you know, the numbers of mild tissue walk are just the strict minimum. You know resistance training, it's also known as a very, very powerful way to not only build your muscle, but also help you with your hormones. So this is why exercising helps you in many, many ways. And finally, with you mental health, because exercising help to get your brain clear and your mind clear, and doing something for yourself, it's really empowering as well.

Absolutely. I love it. Now, one of the other things that we know is extremely important is sleep. So when you work with your clients, how much do you have them prioritize your sleep when it comes to taking care of their health? So sleep is indeed part of the foundation, as well as nutrition, exercise. Sleep is really priority number one, equal to all the other foundation pillars. The first thing I want to make sure is that understanding their sleep quality. and how long they sleep, but also how deep and well they slept for the quality, because it can impact everything.

It's again impacting the stress, it's can affect the inflammation, impact the hormones, and ultimately impact how we age. So I really dig deeper in the sleep quality and if we need, we have to work on sleep optimization for sure. So we talked about nutrition, exercise and sleep. I know the viewers and listeners want to know what what are your top three non-negotiables for nutrition? Give me one non negotiable for a nutrition one, non negotiable, for exercise, and then one on negotiables when it comes for sleeping.

Like, what do you do for those things that it's a must every single time you deal with? Yeah. So You know, instead of maybe non-negotiable for nutrition, I would say, let's change the way we think about nutrition. You when you start to think of your body as your one and only unique engine for life, And you think about how well I can nourish my body in a way that I'm going to stay healthy as longer as possible, energize as long as I see the food help me achieve this goal. And I don't see that the same way as they used to see it.

And I try to help people understand the importance of the nutrition, what the nutrients can bring you as benefits. But also if you don't take care of what you put in your body, What are the risks you're taking or what will be the ultimate impact on your health journey and longevity journey. So I tried to help people to change the mindset, to think about it's not about losing weight, it is not too bad about looking slim. And the funny thing is that sometimes people come to me because they think I'm helping them, I want to help them to weight loss.

Why? Because my clients, while they optimize their nutrition, they lose weight. But it's not the goal. The goal, of course, is good. It's a cherry on the cake. but the gold is really to re harmonize and rebalance everything and making sure that everything you take is helping you to stay strong as long as possible. I like that on The food side of things of the whole mindset shift is I'll tell you, maybe in Dominican the way I grew up, Everything I eat is for the taste and the flavor. That's the way I grew up.

Just having a good, nice piece of meat, some rice, beans, it's that. Today, I ate based off of how I'm going to feel after I. Exactly. I don't want to fuel these when I heat based stuff for taste. I don't feel good afterwards. You know, I feel horrible. I love my mom's cooking, but it's not the way I want to feel. So but when I eat based off of how I'm going to. Feel, you know. That's why I start eating more healthy. you. Know, II clean so I. Don't have those insulin spikes, well, don' feel drowsy and groggy and whatnot.

so that's on my end. What do you say that you're kind of the same way you eat? Based off. Of. Yeah, but you know what? I enjoy what I'm eating. Because the fact is, I think, you have some sensors in our brain and we think that this is what we love because we get used to. But when you start to change your habits and you try new things, healthy things. Maybe for some people, it's a little bit more challenging at the beginning, at first place, because they will say, not tasting as my incredible three layers burger that I got from this place.

But then there is a process occurring in your brain that you start to appreciate because you also feel better. So there's the connection with your feelings and your brains and the signals say this is good for me. Let's do it again. Yeah. And you see the results as well. So I really enjoy the time I spend to think about what I'm going to eat, what i'm gonna select. Intense social life, I'm traveling a lot. I am not cooking at home every day. Which I can, but I not. And I still able to make the best choice for myself.

You know, you always have a chance to pick what works best for you. Absolutely. Now, let's talk about the exercise. What about what are your non-negotiable when it comes to movement and exercise? So non-negotiable is first move every single day. You know, people sometimes put the bar too high and because the bars is too higher, they will say, I'm gonna have to run an hour. They never start, you know because it's too hard for them. So my non negotiable, is whatever you are, at which stage you start small, baby steps, but do something for yourself.

And so every single day, I would never not at least walk, you know, walk for several miles, feeling good, feel feeling that I'm taking care of myself. And then after, that's this resistance training that you should do atleast three times a week. I love finding ways to enjoy my time. So I loved, of course, performer Pilates because That's my passion. But I also have to do also beyond my muscles and my weight, you know, lifting because I have too. You know that's not because. I love it, but I'll have two.

What about we talked about the nutritional side of things. We talked. About moving your body to exercise. And then what about sleep? What do you do when it comes to sleep. So first, I'm a very good sleeper. So unfortunate enough to be able to sleep easily. But what I am doing is set the environment for making sure that I have the best sleep and the quality sleep. First of all, not recommend to have a late dinner close to your bedtime and I will stop eating at minimum, minimum two hours before going to bed.

Because we know that if you don't have enough time to make your process, processing the digestion, this will ultimately may have impact on your quality sleep. The other aspect is to set the environment to quiet, dark, and that also helps you to have a room temperature that is appropriate, not too hot, to be able to sleep well. That's the first basic recommendation. The other thing is that to try to be consistent, because to sleep well, your body gets better when you maintain a good circadian rhythm, and for that, going to the bed You know, like the same time or one hour or less, more or, less it's better than just making some changes from one day to another.

Because otherwise it is like experiencing small jet lags every day and same for the wake up time. So trying to wake be to, wake, up the, same, time, And I know that sometimes you want to sleep more like during the weekend or your day off, but still don't exceed too much. So then you maintain this rhythm and your body recognize that this is a time to slip and this where we have to rest. Absolutely. Now you have a lot of knowledge when it comes to the biology of aging, more knowledge than the typical person, right?

How hard is it for you to actually follow everything that you know? everything that I know. And when it comes to aging. Yeah. So first, I think of course it's challenging to follow everything, but I you need to organize it by step and by priorities,

Exercise, Sleep, and Daily Longevity Habits 50:40

right? I always say that regulation come first before optimization. If you don't build solid foundation, You can't get benefit of the optimization that you will see the trends that we see over time. So let's say you have a house and you want to work on the middle of second floor without, you know, fixing and repairing the basement. That's not going to works. It's going be stable. I'm working still on maintaining my foundation. And it's not a program, it is not like one day a reset. It's something we need to keep consistent.

That's the challenge because some people say, oh, I did it once. But fortunately, your body continues to evolve. Your biology is evolving and is dynamic over time. So it better to do maybe less. But consistently, instead of trying to do everything, but inconsistently. So what I'm doing is that I know my numbers. I understand my biology. radar on. Maybe you and somebody else may have other situations because we are all unique and this is where they should put their focus on and maybe what works for you may not work for me or reversely.

So that's the thing. You know, it keeps me busy to do whatever I learn and I'm doing, but I have, I am quite disciplined while I continue to enjoy my life. And I decide to, does it fit with me? Does it work with? Is it something that I need to integrate in my day to day life or not, because longevity is a daily practice. You know, it's not something that we do for fun or for time. It's something we need to integrate and feel good, not feeling overwhelmed, you know. And to answer to your question, I have some people like me being doing amazing intervention, but they even don't know why and they don t measure the before and after, and So that's the question is that if you ask them, does it works for you?

They will not be able to answer. No, that that. That's what we should be. Able to ensure we spend so much energy and time on those, especially for those healthy people who have a very healthy consciousness lifestyle to really know what why they're doing that and what are the benefits they taking from those those actions? Absolutely. Now, Dr. Sue, you have a you're working on a book. Yeah, right. Let's talk about that. What what what inspired you to actually start writing a You know, it's been a long time, several years that I was thinking about writing this book, and my book is almost done, but I'm working on this publisher process, that classical publisher, process that takes a while.

So if there is any publisher here interested in reading my books, I will be happy to share more about that. But it is really about How I started in this journey of this longevity with my PhD in biology of aging, what I experienced on the research and development when I spent most of my professional career in helping developing uh, innovative medicine to treat autoimmune disease. Uh, what I found out that this common, uh you know, patterns that occurs in all these diseases, which is quite similar to the biology of aging and is also part of my personal story.

I speak about my grandma who was like my kind of, um, time I realized what is the difference between healthspan and lifespan and what I want to have a bigger impact to the society and help people realize that they can take care, take control of their health. If they start now, if they started to realize with small action, you can really optimize your trajectory house. And, I oftentimes said that, longevity is an ongoing relationship with your future house and the sooner the earlier you start your relationship, the better the greater the return over time will be.

Absolutely. So, you know, right now there's a big movement that's happening, the Make America Healthy Again movement, The Maha movement. What are your thoughts about this movement? I'm very impressed and very happy that finally there is some wake-up call about realizing that if there are some, we need to act and to help the society, our generation, the future generation be healthier. And of course, everybody realized that we have things we can control and other things, we cannot control because it's It's the life we're living.

It is the way we eat, what we buy, and what is sold to us. I really appreciate that we start to realize that, we have to raise what's going wrong, the challenges, issues, how we can help our population to stay healthier. I agree with that. So that's who I have these cards here. They're conversation cards by Steven Berlett with the diary of a CEO. so you'll open it up. You just grab one card out of their random card from anywhere in the middle. And once you grab the card, you read it out loud, and then answer it.

Do uncomfortable situations bring the best or worst out of you? Well, that's a great question. You know, I think that I would say bring best of me in a way that, um, have this, uh, probably this wisdom that every time I'm in the situation, Um, I always see, uh, the opportunity I having during this, of this situation, what I get from the situation.

Mindset, Book, and Closing Takeaways 57:20

And, you know, when you see the empty glass, The glasses are empty or half plane of, a half empty. I'm always the positive person who would say, we're going to get there. We're gonna fix that. we gonna do that? So any confront for in a comfortable situation I will remain. You know, then I will find my best way to to work out on this. Awesome. So as we wrap up here, if there's one person that's listening or viewing this podcast that really resonates with today's message and it's just like, you know what?

It's time. It' time for me to take control of my health. What's that lasting that you can leave them off with? You know, I mean, you have everyone as the opportunity to take control of their health and health trajectory and longevity. Again, health is not something that you fix when it breaks. It's something you can design. And so you are empowered. We have many, many tools available today for you to first get your numbers and blind your body, understand where you're at, what are your risks, and what your opportunities are.

Working with foundation step by step, you don't have to do all of them right away, but think about it and think of your one and only engine that compared to everything you can buy, it's unreplaceable. You cannot upgrade it. you have it for your own life. So I would say prioritize yourself, self-care and self love is something that is very important to think. Is not being selfish, take care of yourself. It should be your priority number one, because after that, everything will be much easier. And you can follow your purpose, your passion, you know, help your family, grandchild, if you are like older, and think about your future with really like better, being reassured about the trajectory that you're building for yourself.

Absolutely. If people want to find you, where can they find They can find me on Instagram or on YouTube or LinkedIn, whatever they prefer. But I also have my website, ionlive.com. And I'm happy to continue the conversation with anyone. As a client, as a partner, I just are having the conversations about this. This is my passion and I love sharing more with everyone. That's amazing, which will include all the links down below. And Dr. Sue, it was a pleasure having you on a healthy point of view podcast.

This was very informative. Thank you. Amazing. Guys, you heard Dr. Sue. Dr Sue Orlando here. She said it very clear. Health is not just something that you fix when it's broken. This is something you design. You have the ability to design what your health looks like. Taking a lot of these proactive approaches that we talked about today, making sure that do early detection, make sure you measure what you want to improve, this is how you truly take control of your Make sure you take this podcast, share it with your friends and family, allow them to change the trajectory of their health.

Make you subscribe, like, comment, do all that fun stuff, and we'll see you for the next one.