The first thing to understand is that health is really a gift.
The idea of having that really open mindset that once you get
that right, that fuels everything else.
Now you can actually start to talk about longevity itself,
right? What are the actual things that
are driving aging? Things that are below the
surface of health. Shortening telomeres,
immunosenescent stem cells, wearing out, increased senescent
cells and inflammation, oxidative stress.
All these things are under the surface making us get older and
accelerating the rate at which we get older.
It's in our world, we work out every day, but we change our
workouts based on how ready our body is to take on load.
If the body has a a low heart rate variability mean it's it's
stressed either physically or emotionally, we'll do a lighter
workout. We'll do a recovery workout.
If we are well recovered and heart rate variability is high,
then we'll push harder. Sleep is massive.
We're very keen on people having a sanctuary to sleep in, right?
All right, we are live. Doctor Jeffrey Gladden.
How are you, Sir? Great.
How are you doing? I'm good man, Glad to hear.
Always excited to learn about how to live longer, so I'm sure
we're going to dive into that at some point today.
Yeah, we might touch on that. Might touch on that.
So what what gets you into the longevity space anyways?
Man It's like in the biohacking realm and keto carnivore dietary
circles. There's been this massive push
for just simply living longer, living optimally.
So what would get you intrigued by that field of study to begin
with? Yeah, so I, you know, my
background is interventional cardiology, right?
So I did that for 25 years here in Dallas and I love that work.
I did a lot of a lot of things in that space.
I found in my own heart group. I had 10 offices, 12 docs.
We flew around a little plane servicing outline areas,
starting heart attack programs, Cath labs, ending up Co founding
in a Heart Hospital here in Dallas with another cardiologist
and people at Baylor that's become nationally recognized and
has the number of satellite hospitals associated with it
now. And you know, I got involved
with medical device companies. I still sit on the board of one
doing interventional devices, kind of a legacy activity for
me. But but what happened for me was
in my 50s, had all this stuff going on and all of a sudden I'm
feeling exhausted all the time. I'm putting on weight around the
middle. I've always been athletic,
played soccer in college and basketball and stuff like that.
And when I would become stressed, I would get anxious
and then I would go over this Cliff of depression, like not go
for run and feel better. Talk to your buddy and feel
better. Just like, Oh my gosh, like I
went out of here kind of depression.
So you know, I'm obviously very concerned about that.
So I go into my, one of my colleagues and I get quote, UN
quote tested. And what I was told was that,
you know, everything checks out for your age.
Everything looks, quote UN quote normal for your age.
You're just getting older. Why don't you take an
antidepressant? And it was one of the most
existential moments of my life because my dad died with
dementia. And so I'm thinking, Oh my gosh,
you know, I'm getting some brain fog on top of everything else
and it's like, it's just going to be downhill from here, right?
And so I, I was unwilling to accept that, right?
So I threw myself into the whole functional integrative age
management medicine space and did certifications, a lot of
CME, and it took Me 2 1/2 years at that point, of course, with
the help of other people, but I cracked the code on everything
that was going on, right. I had subclinical
hypothyroidism, meaning that my thyroid numbers look normal, but
reflex testing and biometric testing showed that I was
hypothyroid. I was not getting enough thyroid
activity at the cellular level. And then genetically I don't
convert. I'm homozygous for a SNP that
decreases my ability to convert inactive to active thyroid in my
brain by 60 to 80%. So once I got on the right
combination of active and inactive thyroid called T3 and
T4, normal Synthroid or T4 that's typically prescribed
would not have done it for me. It was like the lights came back
on. It's like, Oh my gosh.
And it's like, wow, that's amazing.
And then I don't make certain neurotransmitters sufficiently,
which I also figured out for my genetics.
So once I got on the right set of supplements to manage that
and help me make those properly, all of a sudden I didn't.
I could come under stress and I wouldn't get anxious and I
certainly wouldn't get depressed.
And if I felt myself getting a little depressed, all I do is
take one thing and I would feel better in 20 minutes.
I'm like, wow, that's amazing. And then I was also at a point
in my life where, you know, I was losing testosterone levels,
right? So when we go through menopause,
men go through andopause, as you're aware.
And so I got on some testosterone, some DHEA, and,
you know, lost 20 lbs of fat, put on 10 lbs of muscle.
And it's like, Oh my gosh, I feel amazing.
And at that point, I realized that I've been practicing sick
care, not health care. And I became so fascinated with
the idea of optimizing health and subsequently longevity that
I left cardiology and everything I knew how to make a living at.
I left all that in 2012 and pretty much base jumped into
starting a practice that's turned into glad and longevity.
Now we're we're, we're focused on really the target for us in
longevity is when we're 100 years old, we want to have a 30
year old body and a 300 year old mind.
Yeah, that's really the target. So yeah.
I like it. I like, I feel like the word
longevity, like I don't ever hear that when I go to a
conventional Western medicine doc.
I mean, that's not even in the vocabulary it seems.
That's right. No, that's right there.
It's either it's either you're sick or you're or you're OK
Their term is Wellness, right? And I and I really kind of the
hair rises. I have a lot of hair on my head,
right? But the hair rises up on the
back of my neck when I, when I hear the word Wellness, because
it's such a weak word, right? It's like if we do a bunch of
sick care testing and you don't have a disease, then, you know,
eat better, exercise. We'll see you back in a year.
And now we're in a Wellness program, right?
And I think that's such a disservice to people when really
what we want, I think what we want is to optimize.
We want to optimize health, longevity, activity, performance
and all that sort of thing. And I can walk you through kind
of how we think about all that. But but that's why I'm really so
passionate about helping people not only live a long time.
You know, when you think about longevity, it's kind of
abstract. Well, what does it even mean?
We're going to live a long time. We're going to be have a long
health span. We're going to, you know, health
gevities come into play. But for me, it's really that
target of I want to and I want to develop it Now.
If I'm going to have a 30 year old body at 100, I need to have
it now, right? And I've done 71 laps around
around the sun, but I, you know, I can do anything I want, right?
And so I want to do that in 100 and I want to develop, continue
to develop my 300 year old mind, right?
And so this is how you really elevate your experience of being
a human. And to me, that's what longevity
is all about. Yeah, I definitely want to dive
into your specific framework, kind of how you take clients
through this, your patients when it comes like this general
population, where do you see people the the chasm really
starting to widen as far as like where people really start
dropping off a Cliff because like when you're young, when
you're teenage years, you know, you're pretty close trajectory
with all of your peers. But then, you know, 20s,
thirties, 40s, fifties hit and that gap just gets broader and
broader. And I I trying to compare myself
to others, but I'm guilty of it and I feel like I never had to
like regain my health. I'm never living in my glory
days. Like I'd legitimately feel
perform better with every year that passes.
And I look at, like, I work with clients that are, you know,
making up for lost time. They'll be like, 40-50 years
old, and they're trying to, like, relive their high school
glory days in football. And it's like they let
themselves go for a decade or 20 years.
And once they do that, making up for that ground becomes
exponentially harder. That's right.
When you're looking at the general population, where are
they going astray to begin with? Like where is the first
catalyzmic default that they're they're miss stepping on?
I think the first is taking health for granted.
I think that, you know, when we're young, let's say you
chronologically young, certainly as kids and even as teenagers,
we simply take it for granted. And then we, you know, we do
whatever educational process we're going to do, we get into
whatever profession we're going to go into.
And then for many of us, we start to leverage our health for
the sake of building our business or building our family
or building our community or some combination or all those
things. And, and because health has just
been a given, we, we, we sort of take it for granted.
And I think the first thing to understand is that health is
really a gift at any age. It's a gift.
And if you can allow people to get into a conscious framework
of, oh, this is really, this is really my greatest asset is my
health here. And I and I need to start
protecting it. Even as a teenage teenager, Like
if you could go into a high school and start to talk to, you
know, their health classes or whatever it is and talk about
and you know, teenage don't listen anyway.
But the point is if you could maybe in maybe in maybe actually
in elementary school where people do listen and you could
start to talk about the the advantage.
And to your point, the fork in the road, it becomes so massive,
right? So massive.
And if you want to live young for a lifetime, which is really
what we're about how you live young for a lifetime, then, you
know, starting to take care of your health all the way through.
I think that's the first misstep that people make is they they,
they, they take it for granted, Therefore they leverage it to
build other things. And then it's like, Oh my gosh,
what happened? You know, I'm pre diabetic.
I gained 40 lbs and Oh my God, I can't get up the stairs.
Right. So yeah, we all see that.
So I mean, I don't want to derail the trajectory here, but
like, when you're talking about your framework, maybe that's the
the next place to go. But my question would be, you
know, what are the main primary pillars that people are taking
for granted when it comes to like their sleep, their
nutrition, their, their movement and activity like, and that's
probably intertwining to your strategy, but where do people
need to focus the majority of their time and effort?
Yeah, well, actually I wrote a book, 100 is the New 30, right?
And the subtitle is How Playing the Symphony of Longevity Will
Enable Us to Live Young for a Lifetime.
And in that book I outlined 4 different areas, and I've added
a fifth sense. And the first area, the most
important area, quite honestly, the circle that binds them all,
they're really circles, if you will, is the life energy circle.
And life energy circle basically has to do with the psycho
spiritual space, it has to do with mindset, it has to do with
mental health, it has to do with feeling loved, it has to do with
having great relationships, it has to do with sense of purpose,
it has to do with feeling worthy and has to do with being
spiritually aligned, being wise and feeling safe.
I think most anxiety, fear, worry, stress, when you devolve
down through, it really turns out to not feeling safe.
And so when you realize that unconditional love for yourself
is something that's an inside job that we ultimately give to
ourselves, Nobody ever got that from their parents, right?
Nobody that I ever spoke to or did.
And we've all, we've all been traumatized.
I don't know anybody that hasn't lived through trauma, right?
So we all live in reaction to that trauma and going in and
healing that trauma, really understanding that, healing it,
forgiving all the parties involved, and then actually
transcending. It's where you become grateful
for everything that happened because it brought us to this
conversation here today, right? When you start to work through
these areas of your life and you stop living in reaction to
things that that cause you to go off the rails, right?
And you, you know, you solve the addictions, you solve the other
things that are happening, and then you start to feel safe
because just like love is a, is an inside job, feeling safe is
an inside job. Because what history's taught us
is that, you know, there's no amount of money, there's no
amount of followers, there's no education, there's no, you know,
family, all that can be taken away, all of it, right?
And, and, and almost a nanosecond, right.
And so how do we ultimately feel safe, right?
Because when you start to solve those things, then you can start
to align with this sense of why am I here?
Why am I actually here? What's, what's my greater sense
of purpose? So when you work on the life
energy circle, all of a sudden now you've created the mindset
of, oh, I'm here for a reason and I don't, I'm not married to
my answers, right? We feel like we go through life
and it's our task to find our answers, right?
And yet what's true about that is that all answers have a shelf
life. All answers are incomplete,
right? It's the questions that actually
drive all progress. And what I found in my own
health journey was that I had answers.
I've been trained, I knew all kinds of stuff about, quote UN
quote, cardiology and my colleagues all had answers,
right? And the problem was they were
all married to their answers. So it's like, well, you're just
getting older when you take an antidepressant.
And yet when I started asking different questions, like, no, I
don't want to do that, right? That's when I found new answers,
right? So it's so important to be
married to the questions and not the current answers, right?
And so in my practice, we're married to questions like how
good can we be, right? How do we make 100 to new 30?
How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a
lifetime? How do we develop a 300 year old
mind, right? And those questions that we wake
up to every morning drive the progress.
So it never puts us in a defensive posture.
We're trying to defend an answer or, or support an answer with
more evidence. It's like, no, we're open to
everything, right? It's like, sure that that works.
Let's try it, let's try this, let's try that, right?
So it's the idea of having that really open mindset, that growth
mindset that once you get that right, that fuels everything
else. Now you can actually start to
talk about longevity itself, right?
What are the actual things that are driving aging?
And it's it's things that are below the surface of health.
So there are about 16 hallmarks of aging, which are biological
processes that aren't talked about, aren't really addressed,
that are actually driving the current in the river of aging,
right? Shortening telomeres,
immunosenescent stem cells, wearing out increased senescent
cells and inflammation, oxidative stress, dysregulated
micronutrients sensing and a gut Biome that doesn't work
properly. All these things are under the
surface, making us get older and accelerating the rate at which
we get older. It's an exponential curve,
right? We get faster the older we are
chronologically, the faster the rate of aging is, right?
And so part of the problem with it, though, is that we tend to
experience aging as linear. It's like every year I'm another
year older. Well, I'm not much different, or
maybe I'm even better. I'm doing pretty good.
But in actual fact, it's an exponential game we're playing,
right? And if we ask ourselves, what am
I going to be like 20 years from now, right?
What am I going to be like? Ask yourself, the people
listening to this, you can ask yourself, what am I going to be
like 20 years from now? It's almost impossible to
imagine we're going to be any different than we are today.
So we're in an exponential game. Most of us don't know the cards
we're holding. We don't know our genetics,
right? We don't even know where we are
in the game from an aging standpoint.
And we are a mosaic of many, many biological ages, not a
single biological age. So we're playing an exponential
game. We're playing for keeps.
We don't know the cards we're holding.
We don't know where we are in the game, right, particularly
relative to the drivers of aging.
So the first place, that is to say, OK, well, let's see what
cards we're holding, where we are in the game.
Now we can, now we can make rational assessments on how to
go forward. And then of course, the health
circle is all the organ systems, sleep and everything else that
everybody's familiar with. We have lots of very cool ways
to go about all that, lots of regenerative medicine
technologies and many, many things we do here.
And then the last one's performance, right.
So the last circle before I get to the 5th is, you know, when
I'm 100, I want to be fast, agile, strong, quick balance,
great cardiovascular capacity, reserve recovery, flexibility.
But if we're going to be that at 100, I need to be at now, right?
And so I think most people start to acquiesce to the aging
process by referencing their own age.
So for me, I was born in 1954 in February, right?
I said I've done 71 laps, but I wake up 27 every day and waking
up 27 allows me to reference 27, right?
And it's like, if I don't feel 27, it's like, no, no, I'm
getting back to 27. Do you see the power of that?
It's like, how do I get back to 27?
I just trashed my knee in a, in an accident back in August and I
went in and I was told I needed a total knee replacement and I
said no. I think I'll take a different
tact. I've rebuilt my knee completely.
I'm back running faster than ever, right.
How do you do that? Well, it's by not identifying
with the medical system or your quote UN quote, chronological
agents. No, I'm 27, I can heal.
I know how to heal. I can rebuild this, right?
So it's, it's, that's, that's what really the driver of of the
longevity process, if you will, is that kind of thought process.
I feel like a lot of people try and separate out the the
physiological from the psychological and they put them
in these own buckets. And totally integrate.
Yeah, massive disservice because like the brain is the body, like
they're one in the same. And I, I don't know what the
research shows, but when you have a specific mindset towards
something, it results in very tangible physiological changes.
I mean like 100%. I mean just using myself as an
example, like I literally never get sick.
Like I've been sick twice my entire life.
And I think a large part of the reason I never get sick is
because I confidently say that I never get sick.
As strange as that may sounds like I don't identify someone
that gets sick and I don't be sick.
Yeah, yeah, it's a piece of it. And we're all, we're all holding
different cards. So different people have
different challenges, right? Some people's immune systems are
not as robust or whatever else, right.
But nonetheless, having the mindset of how do I have a
robust immune system, right, leads you to finding the answers
for that, not identifying with, oh, I get sick all the time,
right. To your point, yeah, so.
So kind of going back to your initial circle that you were
talking about, using you as an example, what did you change in
your thought process that made you feel safe?
Like, if that's not where you were coming from originally,
what did you personally shift to feel that void of safety and
security in your life? Well, for me, it's, it's, it's
been a psycho spiritual journey, right.
So through some really profound deep meditation that I've done,
you know, when you do really deep meditation, and some of
this can be assisted or unassisted.
But when you do really deep meditation, I don't know if
you've ever had this experience yet, but but I either you have,
right? I hope you will when you get
directly in touch with consciousness, God, source, you
know, whatever term you want to put on it, Oh my God, it is
nothing but pure love. It is pure love that's flowing
through everything. And when you think about the
pure love that's actually flowing to us that we're a part
of, and then you ask yourself, well, what is, you know, what is
love? Love to do?
Well, love loves to create. It loves to love, but it also
loves to create. Hence, we have this unfolding
universe, multiverse. You know, physics are showing us
that we had no idea what was actually going on right to JWST.
So, I mean, do we live in a black hole?
There's certainly a multiverse. CERN is showing us that they're
parallel universes. I mean, you know, quantum
computing is showing us parallel universes.
So the reality that we live in is so much more vast than what
we understand. The point is, love loves to
create. And what's the feedback loop on
that, right? It's joy.
So it's love creating joy. So when I connect to source and
know that I'm loved, profoundly loved, and then I'm part of the
creation process and that I'm here to from a loving place,
create joy for other people, for the listeners listening to this,
for you interviewing me, It's, it's, it's just all of a sudden
I'm safe. You can never take that away
from me, right? You can never take that away
from me. You can put me in a
concentration camp. You could, you know, whatever,
but you can't take that away from me.
That's where my ultimate safety comes from, from that psycho
spiritual journey, right? How did you get to the point
where you can meditate and connect to that depth?
Like how? How did that come to be?
You know, I mentioned that in my 50s I was anxious and then I
would get depressed, right? So I started reading a book by a
guy named Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now that was kind of my
introduction to this space, if you will, meditation, things
like that. And I've just found that I was,
I was reading the book and I wasn't reading it like you
would, you know, read it for information.
I was reading it because he was saying things that would
resonate with me in a way that would be like, oh, wow, I just
need to sit back and, you know, absorb that and just kind of let
that resonate with me. Right.
I had the experience one night of waking up.
This is about probably 20 years ago now, maybe a little more,
where I got up in the middle of the night, I'm reading this, I'm
reading. I picked up his book.
I couldn't sleep exactly. And I just went into this deep
trance and it was just, I was connected.
I was just completely connected. There was pure love across this
river. A river of love was flowing
through everything. And in that moment, I was
completely known and I knew completely this other loving
entity and I and it was knowing and being known and loving and
being loved. And it was absolutely perfect.
There was nothing left out. And it was telepathic
communication of this love and knowing, right?
And in that moment I realized, Oh my gosh, this is heaven.
We talked about pearly gates, whatever else.
It's all nonsense really. It's just knowing and being
known, loving and being loved. And so once I had that
experience, then I came to understand that that's actually
my definition of a great relationship is to know and be
known and to love and be loved, right?
And I was able to get there through meditation.
And then I was able to reenact that in my life with, you know,
close relationships, right? And that takes courageous
conversations, right? To be vulnerable to no one, be
known, right? So you have to have a willing
partner. But when you, when you go down
that path, it starts to reinforce itself.
And then I've also, you know, Full disclosure, there been
some, some in ethogens, right, which are, you know, psychedelic
experiences that have also been profound for me in terms of
actually resourcing, touching into, you know, source energy,
if you will. So yeah, anyway, it's after a
while it starts to rewire your brain.
You realize that no, I am safe, right?
I am safe and I'm here and I'm here to create joy.
And but it's a beautiful life. It's a beautiful life.
I love it so and then this and when you have that, it's like,
I'm not getting old, right? I'm here to to continue to
expand, right? The other interesting thing is
that although aging is an exponential decline, our ability
to have impact and our opportunities go up
exponentially every decade. Also the other direction, right?
So what I want to do is stay young, say 30, let's say, and
have those opportunities and impact just continue to go up
exponentially. That's my that's my vision of
what it is to live, you know, in a longevity space, right?
Living young for a lifetime with a 300 year old mind.
And I do think there is massive benefit and I think we all
inherently know this, but we don't materialize it enough to
the point where we can like feel it and touch it and view it as
tangible. But like simply going through
life with a sense of purpose is probably the single best thing
that I can that I can point to as to, you know, have all the
positive health outcomes as a result of that.
Because I see so many people that are just, you know,
treading water and life and are chronically unhappy.
And like, they're the ones that are getting sick.
They're the ones that have all these.
They're the ones that are depressed on medication that's
right, overweight. You know, dealing with all these
issues, you have a sense of purpose that that seems to go on
the wayside. That's right.
And and I found that finding your purpose is kind of working
through the elements on the life energy circle enables you to be
in the right headspace, mind space, heart space to find your
purpose to to start to live your purpose, right.
That's how I was able to, you know, find the purpose that I
just described for you because I think that that is my purpose
from a loving place to create joy.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that's awesome, man.
So when you when you work with people like what, what is your
typical patient demographic avatar?
Like what are they going through we're dealing with that
incentivizes them to come to you and motivates them to come to
you. And then what does that look
like, you know, tangibly over time with them?
Sure. So the way I frame it up is that
people come to us asking different questions, right?
So they could, you know, we just had a woman out of the Dakotas
that came down to us with intractable psoriasis.
It's like, oh, OK, well, nobody's actually ever really
bothered to deconstruct the situation.
I think we have tons of regenerative technologies here.
We build all kinds of stuff. But I think the miss, the
missing piece for most people is that they don't, they haven't
gone through a process to deconstruct the situation to
understand why, why is this happening in the 1st place,
right. And so for this, for this woman,
we were able to deconstruct her situation, do a couple of
different regenerative technologies for a while here.
She went back home three days later, she was 85 to 90% better.
Now she's been able to start working out again.
She's on Nomad. She was slathering on, you know,
cortisone steroid creams to kind of keep the inflammation under
control on her hands and feet so she could work.
She's off those, right? And it's not because we're
magical, it's just because we actually take the time to
understand why is this happening in the 1st place.
And it happens for a variety of reasons, right?
There's a, there's a psychological component for her.
There was a food component, there was a gut component.
There was, you know, some other elements that went into some
genetic components as well, right.
So once you actually understand that, you start to understand
the system, you can actually shift things around.
So we do that over and over and over again.
We have other people that come to us.
We had a young woman that just came to us with three young kids
diagnosed with breast cancer. And it's like, what can you do
to help me? And it's like, well, we, we do a
lot in the cancer space. We're not cancer doctors, but we
can do a lot to support other things that you have going on.
And so we'll be working with her.
Why did she get it in the first place?
Right. Nobody's asking that question.
They just want to treat it. And so when you deconstruct
problems thoroughly, you find there's all kinds of solutions
and answers there that other people have overlooked.
So that's part of our approach. And then we have people that
come to us, you know, in their 70s or whatever.
We had a woman out of Aspen that came in, was in a skiing
accident, had head trauma, lost her husband a few years ago.
Psychological trauma used to be very sort of life of the party
kind of personality, could no longer really keep track of the
conversations and was kind of losing her friend group and
things. We came down here, we figured
out what the problem was. We rebuilt her brain, right,
with combination of regenerative technologies, transcranial
magnetic stimulation, different peptide supplements, things like
that. She's back now living her life,
right. So again, it's the
deconstruction that enables you to actually have the right
solution. That's why we're never married
to the to the answers. We're only married to the
question, how is this happening? What do we need to understand
here? So, so we work with everybody.
We work with executives to just want to, they don't want to sell
their company. They want to have five more and
keep, you know, keep blowing and going till they're 150.
It's like, great, we can help you with that.
So yeah. I feel like there's no such
thing as maintenance. Like I don't believe it exists.
You're you're getting better or you're getting worse.
That's right. And I feel like when you look at
that gap in the road, that fork in the road widening, it's a
result of the compounding impact of what people are doing in
their day-to-day activities. 100%.
Better or worse. So you're looking at someone,
you're looking at your patient pool and you're looking at
people that are trending in the right direction versus
declining. What are like the the common
denominators for the positive things they're doing versus that
of the negative ones that are creating the most havoc?
Well, the first is that we have a way to actually measure the
stress that somebody's carrying in their system, in their
nervous system, right? So once we actually understand
how much stress, so they can walk in here and say I'm not
stressed at all, it's like, OK, great.
We measure them. It's like, well, actually your
nervous system is telling a different story, right?
There's actually a lot of stress here.
And then we start to go into, you know, what's that all about?
Well, it's this, it's that we have counselors that we work
with on our, on our staff, if you will, that are very, very
adapted in a loving way, getting to know people and understanding
some of the old traumas that they're still carrying in their
nervous system, in their systems.
And so for people to actually win at this, it's really
important to kind of get out that stuff and be able to heal
that stuff, as I mentioned, because that gets in the way,
right? Your nervous system.
In fact, I, I, I tell many clients this, that all of life
comes down to one thing, right? Just one thing.
And that one thing is optimizing your nervous system, right?
Well, how do you think what you feel, what you believe is true,
what you think is possible, what you believe about the past,
about your future, how you move through space, all of it.
It's all about the nervous system, right?
And so when people understand that and they see all the stress
they're carrying, and one of the first things we do is to work on
decreasing that stress, resolving the issues that are
causing that stress, right? And then in addition to that, of
course, we look at, you know, those drivers of aging, right?
Where are they relative to those?
OK, well, let's see what's happening there.
And then we look at all the health associated things, what's
going on with your gut bio and what's going on with your sleep,
what's going on with your cardiovascular, VO2 Max,
etcetera, etcetera. We test all this.
And then, and then we look at performance, you know, being
fast, agile, strong, quick balance, how, how good are you
at all those things, right? So, and then we basically start
to build a program that that gets them where they want to go.
So they play the best golf of their lives.
They race car drivers come in and they, they, they think
they're going to retire now they're finishing in the top
three again, you know, all kinds of stuff.
And, but it starts with people knowing really what's possible.
And, and, and 1st, you've got to actually be asking the right
questions. You got to believe it's
possible. And then you got to realize that
my nervous system is carrying stuff I've been living in
reaction to my whole life. Let's clear out, let's clear and
resolve that out. So I, my body is free.
I call it unencumbered. We become unencumbered to live
the full expression of who we are.
And when you do that, your body gets so light, your health
improves so dramatically because you're no longer carrying all
that stress. So that's, that's part of it.
How? Are you testing and measuring
their stress load? I mean, is it like a?
Yeah, we're looking, we're looking at the at the balance
between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system
through a couple different lenses actually.
And with that we get reports that basically will give us a
good idea of kind of how stressed or not stressed they
are and then? Looking at a specific biomarker
or range of biomarkers. Yeah, it's, it's basically,
you're familiar with heart rate variability, right?
So that's basically heart rate variability is a function of, of
the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous
system. So just for the audience, and
you're probably familiar with this, but you've got an
autonomic nervous system through the basal part of your brain
called the reptilian brain is controlling your heart rate,
your respirations, your body temperature, you know, dilation
of arteries, all that stuff running through the autonomic
nervous system. You could almost think of it as
automatic nervous system. If you're a Yogi, you learn to
control that, right? You get so in touch with your
nervous system that you can actually change your heart rate.
You can, you can sit out in the Blizzard and actually have the
snow melting off of you because you can control your body
temperature, right. So, but it's the autonomic
nervous system. And so the, there's, there's a
gas pedal and a brake pedal in there.
There's a sympathetic nervous system, which is a bearish
coming through the door. Oh my gosh.
Let's, you know, do whatever we need to do to take care of that.
And then there's a parasympathetic nervous system,
which is kind of the Zen relaxation, like, Oh yeah, I'm
connected, everything is good, everything is beautiful, right.
So in, in your car, you're either on the gas or the brake
in your body. You're on both pedals at the
same time. It's just a question of balance
and we can measure that balance through something called heart
rate variability. So heart rate variability is
not, well, my heart rate is 60 now I ran up the stairs and now
it's 80. That's not heart rate, that's
variation in heart rate. Heart rate variability is the
difference between the distance between heartbeats one to the
next to the next and how it's impacted by respiration
increasing when we, when we inspire, decreasing with the
expire. And the more parasympathetic
nervous system tone that there is, the more sloppy that
connection gets, the bigger the variation right when the bears
coming through the door, everything gets regimented right
for little, very little variation.
So when heart rate variability is low, people are under stress.
When it's high, they're relaxed, and that's something we can
measure and then interpret through numerous different
filters to get a better idea of kind of where it's coming from.
So yeah, there's a lot of people.
Using like aura rings for instance that measures HRV lot.
Lot of devices now are measuring HRV, Apple.
Watch Garmin, All of them. Yeah, Do you?
Like a lot of people, you know, totally change their day day
activities based off of what they're ordering is suggesting
to do that day or vice versa and not look at it at all.
Do you put much stock in those wearables and what people should
do accordingly? I do.
I think, you know, in our world, we work out every day, right?
We work out seven days a week. But we change our workouts based
on how ready our body is to take on load, right.
So if the body has a a low heart rate variability mean it's, it's
stressed either physically or emotionally, we'll do a lighter
workout. We'll do a recovery workout,
we'll do balance training, we'll do motion or yoga or things like
that. We're doing something, but we're
not necessarily trying to set APR.
If, if we are well recovered and heart rate variability is high,
then we'll push harder. We'll do a harder mountain bike
ride, a longer ride, a longer run, a heavier load if we're
doing resistance training. So that's kind of how we tend to
use it. Yeah.
Got you. When it comes to nutrition, you
know, I like like talking nutrition.
I feel like that's something that most people are doing
fasting or taking part in every single day.
The compounding effect of that over a lifetime can be quite
prominent. Do you have a stance on
nutrition like in working with your people over the years?
Some of the denominators there's like most people should probably
follow this general rule of thumb around nutrition, no?
We don't have that. And the reason is that the what
we found is that the problem with every diet is that it comes
with a prescription of this is how you should do and this is
what you should eat. Again, we're back in the mindset
of who's this individual? How are they constructed, right?
And what's actually good for them?
So what are their genetics, right?
What's their gut Biome like? What's their ability to digest
certain foods, right? How many copies of the amylase
gene do they have? But can they tolerate more
carbs, fewer carbs? What's their apple E for?
Do they do bad on a high fat diet?
Is that actually accelerating heart disease and dementia for
them or is it actually the right thing?
So until you actually deconstruct the situation and
then you understand how their immune system is reacting to
certain foods, from our standpoint, it's at that point
you can actually say, oh, OK, here's where you are.
Here are the foods that I think are going to be best for you.
And this is the way I would go about it.
So that that's kind of how we think.
Again, it's built. It's all built on deconstruction
before recommendations. Probably not seen anybody
benefit. From a highly processed, hyper
palpable diet though, right? Well, there are things to.
Universally avoid. There are things to universally
avoid. That's right.
So, you know, sugar, high processed foods, too much
alcohol, you know, a little bit of alcohol is actually good.
It increases enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which
actually is the longevity enzyme.
But we find that the people in our program that do the best are
drinking very little or not at all or, you know, occasionally
or something like that, but they're not like having drinks
every night kind of thing. So yeah, what about?
Sleep. So like when you're looking at
an individual, their biomarkers, feedback, what are you looking
for as it pertains to sleep and what emphasis would you put on
optimizing sleep for massive role markers?
Massive. It's massive.
Sleep is massive and we all get kind of jerked around, you know,
with travel time zone changes, you know, speaking here, going
to this conference, all that kind of thing, right?
So we've, we have our own routines for that, right?
And we, we're very keen on people having a sanctuary to
sleep in, right? Whether or not watching TV where
it's cold, where they have a chili pad or a cooling mattress
room is cold, it's quiet, blackout curtains, true dark
glasses, everything that can kind of get yourself in phase
for sleep. We like using something called
brain tap, which can actually, or there are other devices too
that actually can put your entrain your, your brain into a
delta wave and trainment, which is basically a sleep brain wave,
which can actually then just kind of take you down and go to
sleep. We like melatonin not because it
makes you sleepy and there are people for whom melatonin is not
the best thing because it can raise morning blood sugar in
some people. But melatonin has a, an impact
that most people are not aware of, which is that it actually
keeps alive stem cells right in the third ventricle of your
brain. And those stem cells in the
third ventricle of the hypothalamus are, are actually
keeping you young. They're they're releasing
exosomes to tell your body to stay young.
And melatonin is what feeds them.
So there's lots of reasons on the longevity side to use
melatonin if it's if, again, if it's the right thing for you,
right? And then there are things like L
theanine that can relax the system, magnesium, things like
that. And if I wake up in the middle
of the night, I'll put the brain tap back on and knock myself
back out. So yeah, is it like an app or
something? I'm not familiar with that.
It's an app. Yeah, it's an app.
And it's a headset, so which is basically.
Playing Audible, Yeah, it's a. Combination of binaural beats,
if you're familiar with those. So it's a little different
frequency in each air, which which basically the brain is a
little bit trying to put that together.
So it kind of brings it into a A state, right?
Maybe you've heard of Hemisync. I don't know if you're familiar
with that. So it's a little bit like that.
That's what Hemisync's about is binaural beats to kind of put
the brain and fuse the two halves together to try to make
sense of what it's hearing. And then this is also used as
photobiomodulation. So you have flashing lights
through your eyes are closed, but flashing lights through your
eyes and through the blood vessels in the ears and that
combination. You get the right intensity of
the light, the right volume, and it's just like, whoa, you just
go. You can go into a really deep
meditative state very quickly. We find it's also great for
retraining the nervous system to be able to have less stress in
it. So totally.
What do you feel about them? People have this preconceived
notion of what the number of, you know, years is that would
qualify them as old over the hill or whatever the case may
be. But they kind of like get to
this stage in life where they associate that with a certain,
you know, lifestyle, certain environmental factors.
Just think they start today already saying, OK, I'm X amount
of years, I'm old, I've only got X amount of years remaining.
Where do you think we should reframe our thinking towards
chronological age? Like how should we view 120
years? Like what should we associate
with that? What would that look like?
What what is the ideal lifespan of a human being?
I think we should pay. Very little attention to
chronological years. Quite honestly.
I think it's a reason I wake up 27 every day and I have.
And the reason I'm 27 is I'll be 27 this decade, 28 next decade,
29 the next day, decade. When I'm 100, I'll be 30, right?
So the book is 100 is the new 30.
So I think what we encourage each of our clients to do is to
pick an age they want to be for the rest of their lives and
reference that age. If you're listening to this,
think about what age would you like to be for the rest of your
life. Some people it's 424035332618.
Doesn't matter. The what matters is that it's a
time in your life when you felt great physically, you felt
great, right? And it's like reference that.
And that's the only age that really matters is the age that
you believe you are, just like you believe you don't get sick
and you don't get sick. Reference that age and then keep
referencing that back. If you wake up and you don't
feel that age, just like, oh, well, what do I need to do to
get back to where I really am, right?
Because once you say, well, I wake up and I'm, I'm old or I
whatever, it's, you know, the game's over.
You've already, you've already lost, quite honestly, you've
already thrown in the towel, right?
So when I hurt my knee and I was told I need a total knee
replacement, I, I will tell you existentially, I went through
this thing is, is now the time? Is this the time when I give up
the fact that I'm 27, right? Is this what this is saying to
me? And I'm like, no, no, not going
to do it. I'm 27 and I'm going to get back
to 27 and that, that, you know, cleaning that and then asking
the questions to get me there is how I'm back at 27.
So there you go. I like it.
What about the the biological age?
I feel like we like to quantify things, like to put a numerical
value on things. So not looking at chronological
age, but putting emphasis on biological age.
What is that? What is that number generated
from? What are they testing to reach
that biological age? Well, the first thing to
understand. Is that you are a mosaic of
many, many, many biological ages.
So the fact that you think you have one biological age is
probably the greatest disservice you can ever do to yourself,
right. So Brian Johnson with his
longevity Olympics, right? We were very high performers in
that, but we didn't we we did not condone the test at all,
right? Because they're looking at one
single metric of rate of aging. But we have people with a rate
of aging that's very low. But you look at their their
other biological ages, they're very old.
And so it's a complete misnomer and a total disservice to
yourself to think that there's only one biological age, right?
I can't emphasize that enough. It's really important to know,
OK, well, what's my brain age? What's my eye age?
What's my hearing age? What's my heart age, my blood
vessel age, my telomeric age, my stem cell age, immune system
age? If you don't know those ages,
you really have no idea what you're talking about.
So to think that there's one biological age is really
probably one of the greatest disservices that this whole
field is done to people. So yeah, that's kind of where I
want. To take it next, like this field
of study in longevity has become significant more popular, where
are people being LED astray? I mean, I guess that being one
of the main, that's one of them. It's right there.
What? What else?
Like what do people? Need to be wary of people that
are diving into this. Like what?
What is the what kind of differentiates the charlatans
from those trying to do it right, I guess.
Well, I think you know there are.
People that are going down a particular path and they're
having success with it and now everybody needs to do that.
That's another complete red flag because we're all different,
right? We're, we're built differently,
different genetics, different backgrounds, different
everything. And, and it's what's so
important is to understand that, that you can actually shine, but
you have to know who you are to be able to shine in the way that
you were built to shine. And there are many people that
will do well with a particular program or another program or
another program, but you don't know who you are until you kind
of do the work to deconstruct that.
So I think that's really a disservice to people because
people get very emphatic, they get married to an answer and
they start to preach this answer as if it's gospel and it's, it's
simply just as not right. It's a great answer for them,
but it may not be a great answer for the person next to them.
So yeah, yeah, totally agree. When people ask you how old you
are, do you say 71 or 2727? Yeah, I'm 20.
Seven. Yeah. 27.
Why not? I'm 27.
Right? Prove me wrong.
Right. Prove me wrong.
I like it. I like it.
Well, now that you've got you know, who knows how many
chronological years ahead of you because you identify as 27,
What's get you excited going forward in the future?
I feel like that's key too. Like simply waking up with
excitement for what lies ahead as opposed to reminiscing
non-stop. Let's get you excited.
Oh, everything. Right.
I feel like really in the next three to five years, we're going
to crack the code on aging completely.
So that's got me super excited. There's so many cool
technologies coming down. Started another company that's
taking what we do globally. We want to my, my mission is to
change the glide path of aging for the entire planet, right?
I want everybody to benefit from information about how to live an
uncomfort life, powerful life energy circle, solve the
problems related to the aging process.
Because I really want to see people instead of all this pain,
suffering and decline, right? What if all that was transmuted
into people that were energetic and enthused and and creating
new solutions for for the planet, for each other, right?
What a what a beautiful world this would be.
So I'm really dedicated to helping take humanity down that
path. Yeah.
So I guess we excited every day I had.
AI forget the the guest I had on that a guest on month or two
back and they were talking about the technologies that are coming
out in the near future that will be game changing from an anti
ageing standpoint. That's right.
So much so that they were recommending that people look
into, I mean, basically suggesting that you could freeze
your body now and then within the next 50 years for sure, the
technologies would exist to basically sure rejuvenate those
tissues, those cells, because they don't necessarily die.
I mean, when he gave the example of like when somebody is an
organ donor, you know, they take those organs and those are fully
functional organs that they can then transplant so the tissue
itself doesn't die. So what what's your stance on
that? Or do you have one?
Well, there's there's. Cryopreservation, which is kind
of what you're talking about. And there are quite a few people
that we had one client that did this actually, who had very
advanced breast cancer. And ultimately we weren't able
to turn the tide. People get to a point where
their immune systems are so depleted that they just don't
have enough to fight back, right?
And so in this case, this individual died and her her
loved ones decided to have her cryopreserved, right, waiting
for the day when she could be, you know, brought back.
And so I think those technologies will come.
I think the technologies for those of us that are alive right
now, however, we'll be here in the next three to five years
where we can pretty much halt aging, start to really reverse
it. We're already doing that, right?
We see all the ages we measure, we see people going back in
time, right, relative to many, many things, many metrics,
right? And so I'm not claiming that
we're reversing aging, but I'm saying that we're moving people
back to certainly much younger, you know, status, if you will,
with regards to immune system, cardiovascular function, brain
function, you know, you name it, right?
So I really think we're going to get to a point where we do crack
the code on that. And it's interesting because
then it raises this existential question of, OK, right, You're
going to be here for a long time, right?
You're going to be 30 years old for a long, long, long time.
So now when I give this talk, I ask, you know, so now let me ask
you 3 questions. The first one is what's the
meaning of life, right? If you're going to be here for a
long time, what's the meaning of life?
And then what's your purpose, right?
And then the third question is, if you're going to focus on one
thing, what's the one thing to focus on, right?
If you're going to optimize all this, right?
And then it's interesting. I have people share their
answers and they're all good answers.
There's no bad answers here, but it's, it's, it's interesting.
And then I share the answers that I've shared with you about
love, creating joy. I think that's really the
meaning of life and it's my purpose in life.
And then the one thing I focus on is optimizing my nervous
system, right? It's interesting.
Even workouts are not about the muscle in my world anymore.
It's all about the nervous system, right?
Your, your, your nervous system gets stronger and firing before
your muscle even starts hypertrophy.
So, and how you move through space, your sense of balance,
proprioception. You saw me drop this pen earlier
and I caught it, right? That's from that's from training
my nervous system, right? You want to move like a ninja.
You want to. That's what you want.
And it's all nervous system control.
So I'm completely. On the same page and on board
with, you know, improving health span, improving lifespan,
improving outlook and mindsets because I feel like if you get a
population of people that are able to live longer, I mean you
get smarter as you age. Hopefully that's right and
you're able to you're. Able.
To contribute exponentially more in your later years, so to be
encumbered by that contribution as a result of physical decline
is just a disservice for humanity.
I'm only on board there. All of this does raise the
question of if we have significantly longer life spans,
more people on the planet, you know, you're going to get the
people that are bringing, raising awareness about
overpopulation in the planet not being able to support that
increase, you know, population size.
You have a take on that one way or the other.
Yeah, I don't think. That's a problem, quite
honestly. I think of the planets, you
know, resources were used in a more or less called a more
responsible way. There'd be plenty of resources
for us to, to use and, and it would not be a problem.
So I think there's some issues there around how we're utilizing
the resources. I think the other interesting
thing is that people are talking about the next billion that
we'll get to is not 9 billion, but 7 billion, right?
Because there's really a dearth of, of new babies being born,
right? I mean, you, there's a lot of
population decline. You know, look at Italy, look at
many of these countries, even China, populations are
decreasing, not increasing, right, Even in the US.
So I'm not really worried about overpopulation.
And I think having a robust group of energetic, wise, loving
people that have some life experience also will be a great
asset to to humanity is what I would say.
Yeah, I agree. What do you think the reason for
the population decline is on the global scale that we're seeing
now? You know it's a.
Good question. I, I've had this conversation
with several people. You know, one of the things that
comes up in those conversations is what's the role of social
media here, right? I think people get so enamored
with comparing themselves to other people and to a lifestyle,
right, that they they lose track of the fact that it's work to
actually have a real relationship.
It's work to actually have children and raise them right.
And I think there's sort of this quick dopamine hit from social
media with this external validation that people are
searching for. But in essence, it actually
alienates everybody from everybody else.
So I don't, I see social media as potentially playing a role
here that's really kind of destructive.
And you know, it's, it's, it can be good.
You can learn a lot of things. You know, this, we're on social
media here, right? And in some way, shape or form.
So it can certainly be very constructive.
But I think when people start to substitute it for real
relationships and really getting to know somebody and this
concept of being vulnerable as opposed to trying to be the
idyllic person with the idyllic lifestyle with the idyllic dress
or, you know, pair of pants or whatever it is.
You know, I think, I think I didn't grow up with that.
I didn't grow up with any of that, right?
It was all just about, you know, the people you were around and
getting to know him, right. So I, I think maybe there's an
element of that. I don't know.
What do you, what's your thoughts on it?
I can. I can totally see that I feel.
Like, I mean, I feel like it's interesting because there is
more social media activity than ever right now.
That's where people typically go and spend their time.
Yeah. And I feel like there's this
massive void in people's hearts and souls and I, they crave
legitimate human interaction, like real interaction, face to
face. And it's.
Like they almost. Haven't put the pieces together
that the solution to that craving is to put the phones
down. That's right.
So it's like they know it's there, they know it exists, but
they don't act upon that knowledge.
But yeah, I totally agree, man. I feel like, you know, the
fulfilment that I get in life is certainly aided by my ability to
make a bigger impact through social media.
But when I look at what really matters, you know, I could lose
all my social media accounts tomorrow and I would not have
lost the true essence of my being.
You know, I've got my, that's my wife, I've got my son, I got
another baby on the way. I've got my family, my friends,
the people that I'm actually interacting with, right?
That is where, you know, I find my happiness beautiful.
That's it. Yeah, it's in those real
relationships, right? And I have lifelong
relationships. I'm still friends with people
from elementary school, high school, college, you know,
medical school, things like that.
So yeah, I think having real relationships that you nurture
and that you feel nourished by, I think one question you can the
audience can ask themselves or what are the things that you
find nourishing, right? What do you find nourishing?
Like for me, I find human interaction very nourishing,
right? And being with the love of my
life, I find that incredibly nourishing, right?
I find other things nourishing, being outside, being athletic
novelty. I find art incredibly
nourishing, right? I'm a guitar player and I really
have always been drawn to the arts and so many things are
nourishing. And I think if you start to ask
yourself what's really nourishing to me and after go
after those as opposed to what gives me the dopamine hit,
that's a social media, it's another post, it's a swipe, it's
a whatever you're doing. I think that starts to lead you
towards, OK, I'm going to nourish myself because when you
do that, you're going to start, I think, having more
interpersonal interactions. I think so, yeah.
No, 100% agreement. I think we're aligned in that
for sure. Hope people listen to this, Will
use social media to to listen to this but then put the phone down
and that's right, just listen to this and set it aside.
Exactly. Exactly.
Well, Doctor Gladden, where do people go to find out more about
you? Dive deeper into your world,
ma'am. Yeah, so you.
Can find us at gladdenlongevity.com.
That's the website. If you want to reach out there,
if you're interested to be a client or talk to us about that
if you have a question or a problem or an aspiration that
you're wanting to deal with. We also have a podcast, the Glad
Longevity Podcast. We've got probably 300 episodes
out there at this point. The book 100 is the new 30.
And we have a supplement shop, the Gladden Longevity Shop,
where we have supplements and bundles of things that we put
together that we find to be particularly useful for
different, different indications.
So yeah, those would be great places to to connect with us.
Awesome. We should do this.
Podcast again in like 100 years or so.
Yeah, let's do that well. Maybe.
Maybe we'll make 20 and see where we are.
There you go. There you go.
Well, I appreciate the time, Sir.
Learn the Latin likewise, Robert.
Really a. Pleasure.
Thanks so much. Thanks, Sir.
Have a good one. You too.