Ann LeMaster: Welcome back everybody to the Common Sense Living Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about something I don't know a whole lot about so I thought I would go over this with you as well. And maybe you know more than I do. So it's about aging and mTOR. I met a young man in his 30's, I believe. He was in a facility, and he had mTOR. And I didn't understand what that was, and I'm still not really sure. So enjoy the ride because we're going to all find out.
So few scientific advances in recent years have been as game changing as the discovery of mTOR, the mammalian target of rapamycin, called the CEO of aging by some of the top longevity ever experts in the world. It plays a role in cell proliferation, immune cell differentiation, tumor metabolism and cell longevity. mTOR, which is spelled small m, capital T, capital o, capital R, how does it affect you? What can you do to control it? And how being more conscious of its activity can help you extend your lifespan significantly by understanding aging?
Since the beginning of time, mankind has been trying to find ways to fight aging and prolong life. We struggle and rage against the dying light knowing that our time on Earth is finite, but desperately wanting to extend it as much as possible. But here's the truth, everything ages. Think about it. The glasses and your dishwasher are getting nicks and scratches and will ultimately break. Or perhaps, it will get knocked off the kitchen counter and ultimately will cease to be a glass. This isn't called aging, but it's the same concept. Over time, your body will also get its own share of nicks and scratches in the form of injuries, deficiencies and dysfunctions that will ultimately lead to deterioration. We, humans and other multicellular living organisms appear to age very little until we reach adulthood. And adulthood, we visually noticed that accumulation of damage starting out more than linearly in younger years and increasing exponentially as we get older. It is that exponential increase that we proceed with as aging. There is something important to know about it, though. And that's a concept of biological versus chronological aging. No matter what we do, we can't stop the march of time. We can't stop ourselves from growing one day older, one week older, one year older. This is our chronological age, and it is beyond our control. Our biological age, however, is a different matter altogether. Biological age is marked not by the passage of time, but by the damage that accumulates in the body. The more injuries we suffer, the slower our organs function. The more skin sags, and our hair grace. The more our cardiovascular system strolls or slower our cognition. All of these are signs of our biological age.
The good news, though, is that chronological age and biological age aren't inextricably linked. It's possible for someone who was 50 years old, they had the biological age of a 30 year old because their internal systems and organs are functioning at optimum capacity. Of course, the reverse is true too. It's possible for a 30 year old to have the biological age of a six year old, because all their internal works are slowed, deteriorating, gummed up and just not working properly. Now, my question here is, is it genetics? Or is it what we do, how we do? When we talk about mTOR and its effects on aging, what we're talking about is how it can help to address biological aging. It won't slow the passage of time, but everything you'll read below we'll show you how you can optimize cellular function so your body functions like a much younger organism. And that's the real key to prolonging life from the inside out. The how and why of biological aging. The most important thing to understand about biological aging is that most diseases and dysfunctions are the result of miscommunication between the many, many cells that make up our body. We are a collection of 15 to 20 trillion cells. And 9 to 10 times that many bacteria, all of which ultimately have to work harmoniously and collectively as one that requires a lot of incredibly intricate communication. Sadly, those venues of communication become corrupted, especially as we age biologically.
For example, the brain doesn't know how much fat a person has as it becomes resistant to leptin, and cells can't properly listen to insulin. The liver doesn't know how much glucose is circulating. And therefore, how much should it be making? The body no longer knows when to store fat and when to burn it. It doesn't know how to turn off inflammation or what is born, and what is part of one cell which leads to autoimmune disease. Calcium builds up in arteries rather than our bones. The ability to trigger our internal repair mechanisms becomes corrupted, and cells get more of a signal to replicate, increasing our risk of cancer and decreasing our lifespan. To sum it up, one cell doesn't know what another cell is doing. The brain doesn't know what the body is doing, and vice versa. The cohesion of our bodies begins to disintegrate, and that ultimately is what causes biological aging. To understand cell cohesion, you have to understand how the cells, your body's work and what compels them to do what they do. Cells have an energy budget. In our evolutionary history, energy and food weren't necessarily available 24/7. There were times of feast and famine, especially during times of more famine life had to decide what to do with its energy.
Cells are basically programmed to do things replicate, reproduce, or repair and maintain. Typically with a continuous supply of nutrients, there will be a drive to replicate. This is usually a good thing. It's critical for growth and optimal function. But sometimes, it can have negative consequences. Simply put, if our cells start over replicating, this can lead to age related chronic diseases like obesity and cancer. On the other hand, if there isn't enough energy available to make a new baby, our bodies go into energy conservation mode. It will divert energy away from replication and put it more towards cell repair and maintenance, which it does in order to survive longer and stay healthier for when an appropriate time for reproduction columns later. This repair mode is really the state that will translate into longevity, as this maintenance environment is less than inductive to disease. Ultimately, this process is controlled by mTOR, which receives signals from nutrients sensors and tells us whether to repair or gives them a green light to replicate the nutrient sensors that determine longevity. There are few major sensors that will detect the availability of nutrients and redirect their genes essentially affecting our genetic expression. These include most notably, leptin.
Leptin is a hormone that is produced in your bodies that cells are also commonly referred to as the hunger hormone or safety hormone. It mostly targets the brain and signals that you've stored enough fat so you should eat less. It also plays a role in energy regulation controlling your calorie expenditure as well as fat storage. Much less known, but equally important. It plays a critical role in immunity and inflammation. Insulin is a hormone produced in your pancreas responsible for storing excess nutrients, especially glucose. Insulin recognises when your blood glucose levels become too high, and a job is to store the excess. It is through that process of storing the excess that blood sugar comes down. The problem is that over time, as a result of bad diet and inactive lifestyle, our bodies don't respond to insulin as effectively a problem called insulin resistance that leads to blood sugar rises that can culminate in pre diabetes and eventually type two diabetes. Even worse, it causes insulin to remain elevated more permanently that accelerates biological aging and its chronic symptoms of disease.
Understanding the role these two nutrients play in our cellular signaling can help to clarify their role in aging. Simply put, if we keep those nutrient centers low, it translates more to repair and regeneration that would slow down the aging process of autophagy and its role in longevity. Autophagy is a cellular mechanism whereby damaged molecules, especially proteins, and damaged organelles like mitochondria are detected and broken down, and they're useful parts recycled. This process can be triggered during times of perceived nutrient shortages such as fasting or cavalry restriction. This recycling of broken down molecules is what enables our body to regenerate and repair damage. However, it takes certain hormones to signal the body that there's a nutrient shortage, and therefore it should dial up recycling.
Want to guess which these hormones are? That's right, insulin and leptin. These hormones trigger autophagy and clear the glycated junk from your body and improve cellular repair. However, as we age and because of that diet and lifestyle choices, otology diminishes and that leads to the accumulation of cellular junk, which in turn causes cellular damage, especially in cells with a low turnover rate. Nerves are particularly prone including the nerves that make up our brain mass as there is little cellular turnover to remove junk particles and cells over time to build up cellular junk caused by the decrease in autophagy in aging. But there's good news, autophagy is controlled by mTOR. By managing your mTOR levels, you can increase your body's ability to scavenge and eliminate all that junk that is accelerating in your biological process.
A closer look at mTOR or the mechanistic target of rapamycin was discovered in 1991 as a new protein enzyme, a metabolic pathway that a natural substance named rapamycin targeted any affected, hence the name target of rapamycin. Rapamycin itself was found decades earlier from soil samples taken from the Easter Islands by a group of scientists and biopharmaceutical companies to search for new and potentially therapeutic chemicals. Rapamycin was found to have antifungal properties. Decades later, however, and virtually by accident, scientists discovered that the mTOR enzyme, one far more ancient than hormones, is instrumental in aging and lifespan. It is to put simply, a metabolic switchboard, a protein enzyme that is found in almost all cells of life. mTOR receives input from insulin, leptin and other growth factors, and even raw nutrients such as amino acids and glucose from food and senses the amount of energy, oxygen and nutrient levels in our bodies based on all the signals that decide what to do with cellular metabolism, whether a cell should replicate or hunker down and increase repair and regeneration. If mTOR is receiving signals that there is plenty of energy, it shifts into replication reproduction mode.
As we saw above, too much cellular replication can get out of control leading to cancer and other diseases of biological aging, including that elaborate and insulin resistance. Elevated mTOR and leptin resistance causes that to accumulate in the wrong places, like your liver literally, and figuratively choking off insulin signaling that would normally tell the liver to stop making glucose inhibited function of insulin receptors cells that can't hear insulin signals effectively and have to manage stability to transport glucose into cells negatively affecting the pancreatic cells responsible for producing insulin and controlling blood sugar levels, which are called islet cells. It pushes these important cells towards senescence and death ultimately resulting in double diabetes. That is both insulin resistant and insulin deficient pushing endothelial cells become damaging senescence inflammatory cells that speed up the aging of our cardiovascular system, accumulating junk proteins in nerves, especially in the brain.
However, if mTOR is getting messages that there are not a lot of nutrients available, especially glucose or animal protein, it signals cells to go into maintenance and repair mode ultimately, increasing maintenance and repair far more for its purpose of improving health and longevity. Autophagy is also triggered by keeping insulin, leptin and mTOR low. It gives instructions to the cells to repair the damage rather than replicate. The key is to keep mTOR low by sending the right nutrients signals.
How to keep mTOR low? As you know our eating habits, lifestyle and environmental factors influence the internal processes and hormones within our body leading to the negative effects of aging. It should come as no surprise that the way you eat will have a direct impact on mTOR levels. There are some tips and hacks you can implement today in order to tame mTOR and slow down the aging process. Lower meat consumption, high amounts of protein and especially animal protein and the amino acid Leucine is the reason why your mTOR level skyrockets. Reducing animal protein intake will help keep your mTOR levels low.
And that makes sense as a side note here. If you're going to eat a lot of meat, and if not organic, you're getting a double whammy of ill health because you get all the crap that's in the in-organic meat. Eating more healthy fats, coconut oil, avocados, olive oil and other plant based fats will provide the energy your body needs to function, but won't raise mTOR. Limit your intake of sugar forming carbohydrates and starches. Sugar forming carbohydrates such as bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, cereals, sweet desserts, sugary drinks, highly processed and most fast and deep fried foods all raise insulin levels which signaled to mTOR that you have excess energy, and thus can enter replication mode. Minimize stress. Stress has been proven to impact mTOR negatively as this molecule senses and responds to a wide range of stressors. Stress also raises blood glucose which in turn triggers insulin release. Take care of your gut microbiota. Environmental changes in the gut and gut bacteria composition can affect the mTOR signaling pathway leading to more rapid aging and a higher risk of chronic disease and immune system malfunctioning.
However, there are also some particularly potent herbal ingredients that have been proven to lower mTOR. These include Berberine. This can slow cellular aging by up to 72%, reduce blood sugar levels, regulate blood pressure, improve heart health, lower triglycerides, encourage fat loss and even regulate mood. (inaudible), that this polyphenol helps your body to turn off genes that promote aging, and it's a powerful mTOR inhibitor and a longevity agent which in some studies improve the lifespan of mice by around a mind blowing 31% fisetin that blocks overactive mTOR which makes it a powerful natural ingredients to support healthy longevity, youthfulness and health. It can also reduce skin wrinkles out there, increase collagen production, protect the skin from inflammatory and DNA damage, support brain health, improve circulation, and even protect your bones.
Matcha Green Tea, EGCG, a powerful polyphenol found in green tea is able to significantly suppress elevated mTOR levels and protect cells from damage. EGCG has also been found to promote longevity in the body and help protect the skin against some damage. The active compound in Turmeric is actually a super strong mTOR inhibitor, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory ingredient that can stimulate your antioxidant defense and stop dangerous free radicals from rapidly aging your body. Vitamin D3 supports strong immunity, we know that. Promoting youthfulness by keeping elevated mTOR levels low can reduce the biological age of your cells in just 16 weeks and prevent stem cell deterioration by as much as 70%. Vitamin K2, this vitamin inhibits high levels of mTOR, promotes strong bones and teeth, Boosts Memory function, lowers inflammation and improves heart health.
You know a little bit more about mTOR now, and so do I. I said that young gentleman I had met. I was on a walk and ran across him, and I didn't understand that it was like he ate an overabundance of protein. So now, that explains a little bit why.
So anyway, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope that you gained some knowledge. I certainly did. And that's my thing, I love to learn, and then I pass on what I learned to you. So you take it or leave it. I just offer it. And if you want to believe that you do, and if you don't you just toss it aside or perhaps you share it with somebody that you can help. So once again, I thank you for having tuned into my Taming Diabetes Course. I keep thinking about that because, of course, I'm sitting here looking at my shirt, my husband printed this one. Sweet. And God designed it for me.
So with that being said, my Common Sense Living Podcast is a platform where you can learn more about things of value for your health, mental and physical, and just overall knowledge. I am pleased that you stopped by today. And please stay tuned because I have my secret formula coming up pretty soon that's going to help you to detox. And I'm so excited for it. I can't wait to see what the results are from my own experiment on myself, because I never offer you anything that I haven't tried myself. Okay, because how else do I know if it works? I can't pass it on to you if I don't know if it works or not other than if I expressly say it's for your knowledge. So let me just shut up and let you go on about your life. Have a great day. Thanks for joining.
