Cycling Over Sixty

Gladden Longevity

• Tom Butler • Season 2 • Episode 53

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In this episode, Tom tackles replacing his cycling helmet. With countless options and conflicting advice, finding the perfect headgear is a bit of a challenge. Join him as he shares his helmet-hunting journey and ultimately makes a decision.

Tom also provides more details on his planning for this season's challenge; a 400 plus ride across the state of Washington. He shares plans that impact both him and his wife as they travel through some very remote areas of the state.

For a truly inspiring perspective, Jeffrey Gladden M.D., a leading expert in longevity medicine, joins the show. Tom and Dr. Gladden delve into the possibilities of staying active to 100, gaining valuable insights into health and fitness as we age.

Don't miss this episode packed with practical advice, personal stories, and expert guidance!

Link
gladdenlongevity.com

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Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com

Tom Butler:

This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season two, episode 53, glad in Longevity and I'm your host, tom Butler. Welcome back to the podcast If you are new. This is where I interview people who have something interesting to share that informs my efforts to stay fit later in life. I also share my personal journey to take on some cycling challenges at 61 years old. My hope is that my story of a normal guy fighting to stay healthy will inspire you to start or continue your own journey.

Tom Butler:

I mentioned last week I fell off my bike and hit my helmet enough to dent it. That led me to look for a replacement. This week I ended up going with a Smith Persist. I read a lot of lists about helmets and here's what led me to the Smith. First, I eliminated several types of helmets. I wasn't looking at commuting helmets or aerodynamic helmets. I wasn't looking for the lightest or the cheapest helmet. However, I did want to stay under $200. I wasn't entirely sure how much I wanted to spend. Obviously, I wanted something that gives great protection.

Tom Butler:

I believe as an older rider, I need to take protection of my brain seriously. The need for protection means that I know that I want to invest in a good helmet, but they can get expensive. The Smith Persist is 11.4 ounces according to our kitchen scale. My old helmet is 10.3 ounces. I certainly don't think I will ever notice that difference. The lightest helmets are around 7 ounces, but I think they lack safety features that mean that I'm not interested in them.

Tom Butler:

The Persist that I just got is an older model. The newer model is called Persist MIPS. Do people say MIPS or do you say M-I-P-S? I don't know. Being an older model means that my Persist doesn't have the Smith Koroid layer, spelled K-O-R-O-I-D. Koroid is a honeycomb layer that is designed to crush and therefore absorb energy. This is similar to the WaveCell layer on truck helmets. I totally get the appeal of a layer that crushes on impact. The problem is that I think it would be hard to have that extra layer and not interfere with ventilation, and ventilation was a key aspect of what I wanted in a new helmet. The Persist has what Smith calls the AirVac system to move air through the helmet. Now part of Air. Air vac is supposed to keep goggles from fogging up for other types of Smith helmets. While I would have to see a whole lot more about air vac to believe it could do something special, I do think the Persist has better ventilation than my old helmet.

Tom Butler:

One of the biggest factors in getting the Persist was that, as an older helmet, it was on clearance and was only $72. So I felt like I got a good deal on a helmet that, while it doesn't have the latest tech, maybe fits my desires more than newer helmets. I should say that there were two specialized helmets that I would have purchased instead of the Smith, but I couldn't find them in a large size. They were also older models and marked way down from their original price. I didn't find a newer specialized helmet that I thought I would like. I am intrigued by the Specialized Prevail 3. It has what they call air cage technology that is meant to distribute energy throughout the helmet. On impact, however, at $300, I would want to know someone who has a Prevail 3 and loves it.

Tom Butler:

I'm continuing to add more details to the Ride Across Washington route plan. If you're new, this is my challenge for season two to ride the 400 plus miles across the state of Washington. I think we have decided on two of the four places that we will stay at during the trip. One thing that continues to be a factor in route planning is just how remote it is. We will spend one night in Tenasket, washington. Tenasket has a total area just under one square mile. The population is 1,103. It is maybe the definition of a small town. We found the Wanukut Lake Resort 15 miles outside of Tenasket. Wanukut Resort looks like a place that takes you back in time. I am betting that we find Wanukut a charming little resort. When I asked my wife to give a rating on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely it will be a great little resort, she said a 6. Not terribly strong, but not the worst either. One thing that is a plus with Kelly is that when she was a kid, she spent time in Tanzania, or Tanzania, depending on who you were speaking with. While there, she experienced some very rusty conditions, and she is a real trooper when it comes to making do with less than ideal accommodations. We will be expecting the best, and the worst case scenario is that we'll be only there for one night.

Tom Butler:

I'm currently feeling optimistic about the fire threat. That is despite the fact of someone telling me that once the fires get burning, it doesn't get better until October, and also the fact that the FireWatch site says the fire that I am watching is 0% contained. Currently, the easy fire is what threatens State Route 20, the route I will be riding. One of the difficult aspects of the easy fire is that it is on a very steep slope. That means that logs can catch fire and roll down to the roadway. It's certainly not something that I want to encounter on a bicycle. Currently the road is open, but if I was riding it today I would need to be picked up and driven a six mile section that has a vehicle escort. I'm guessing that the fire won't threaten too close to the road again. However, warmer, dry weather is coming soon and that could make it harder to get the fire under control.

Tom Butler:

The biggest thing that worries me at this point is the smoke in the air Because of fires, some much bigger than the easy fire. The air quality on much of my route in eastern Washington is currently listed as fair. Fair means that quote. Air quality is generally acceptable for most individuals. However, sensitive groups may experience minor to moderate symptoms from long-term exposure. End quote. I'm not sure if I am a sensitive person, but I will definitely be having long-term exposure and I will be breathing pretty hard. I think an air quality of 21, which is considered fair would be okay. However, as the quality hits closer to 50, the lowest level of pour rating I would have to make a decision about what is too high. As I have said before, hopefully we will see some rain towards the end of August.

Tom Butler:

Currently, my mindset is that I want to learn everything I can that will allow me to cycle until I am 100 years old. However, that assumes that I will live to at least 100 years old. I found an author, dr Jeffrey Gladden, who believes that breakthroughs in science and technology open the doors so that we can live to 100 and beyond. I am pleased that he agreed to discuss longevity on the podcast. Here's my interview. I've been fortunate to be able to have conversations on the podcast with people who I believe are leading us to the future of health care, and I definitely see today's guest as one of those leaders. Thank you, dr Jeffrey Gladden, for joining me.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Hey, happy to be here, tom, good to see you.

Tom Butler:

Good to see you. You are an MD and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. You also founded Gladden Longevity, which I see as a model for the future of medicine. In addition, you authored the book titled 100 is the New 30, how Playing the Symphony of Longevity Will Enable Us to Live Young for a Lifetime Before we get into anything else. Do you have a connection to cycling?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Oh yeah, well, I'll tell you. I remember wanting to get a bike when I was I don't know what, it was five years old, I think maybe four years old and I remember struggling to learn to ride a bike in my neighbor's driveway and I would ride and I would crash and I would keep riding, keep trying and crashing. It was a fairly small driveway but I was trying to make circles and anyway, I would come home and I would go into my house and I'd slam the door as hard as I could and I'd tell my mom mom, I'm never going to ride that bike again. And then 30 minutes later I'd be out there riding it again. So I was so determined to learn to ride that bike and that led into you know, really kind of loving cycling.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Quite honestly, I kind of got away from it until I went to college. I didn't do much in high school, but in college I had a bicycle. That's how I got around campus and then never had a car when I went to college, rode into town, stuff like that. Then I got away from it again. Then I started some road cycling. Then I got introduced to mountain biking, when I was in my 50s actually, and picked up mountain biking and now I'm completely hooked on mountain biking. I don't think of motorcycling factors in, but I also got into dirt bikes and crotch rockets and all that. So lots of cycling in my, lots of two wheeled adventures in my in my past.

Tom Butler:

Yeah, that's awesome and I love that determination. There's something about a kid and the freedom of a bike. I think that just sucks you in and you just want to be on it so yeah, absolutely. I, as I mentioned, you're a cardiologist and I'm wondering what led you to study cardiology.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Well, that's a good question too. I think my mother's showing up a lot here in this podcast she's probably looking down on us right now so she wanted me to be a doc, I think. Ultimately I ended up going into medicine because my mom wanted me to go into medicine and I thought it was interesting and cool. I got into medical school and really started to excel at medicine, studying medicine, and then went into internal medicine because it was really kind of a more comprehensive approach to understanding the human being, and so I was really drawn to that. And even back then I used to have conversations with some of my classmates about wouldn't it be interesting if medicine could actually optimize a human being, right? What kind of labs would we have to do? What kind of things would we have to think about to actually optimize a human being? And then I ended up doing my internal medicine residency, and when I got to the end of the residency it was clear to me I didn't want to be an internist, right? I just didn't, you know, I just didn't want to see, I didn't want to be having those conversations every day.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So I kind of scanned through all the subspecialties and you know I had this affinity for, for cars ever since I was a kid also and I was like, hmm, the heart, you know, it's a pump, it's tubes, it's pipes, it's exhaust, it's energy. This makes sense to me. I think I'll go into cardiology. So really, that's how I got into cardiology. Nothing else really appealed to me, so it was a little bit by default that I kind of chose that. But once I got into cardiology then I really kind of fell in love with it and it's like, oh wow, there's so many cool things to do here. And I came into it at a time I was an interventional cardiologist, right, so not just doing diagnostics but doing cardiac catheterizations and angioplasties and stents and pacemakers and all that. So it was very procedural at the same time that it was cerebral and I really liked the combination of the tactile involvement with my hands and then the cerebral elements of thinking things through. So I did that for about 25 years actually and did a lot of things in that space.

Tom Butler:

So yeah, Well, I could spend a whole lot of time just asking questions about that whole connection between an interest in mechanics and the mechanics of the heart, and you know the whole system of the heart and how it works. But we're here to talk about longevity and I'm wondering if you see a particular connection between your study of cardiology and an interest in longevity.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

You know it's an interesting question. I will tell you that. You know, when you're going through the different rotations as an internal medicine doctor and you're a medical student and you're exposed to things like neurology and pulmonology and psychiatry and cardiology and GI, and you know rheumatology and orthopedics and all these different things surgery I didn't really connect it to longevity at that point in time, and as I started working with cardiology patients, however, once I did my fellowship, I started to see that having, you know, healthy arteries and having a healthy heart was one of the keys to longevity. But I will tell you that in my own thinking now I have come to understand that the heart is there to do one thing and that's really to supply blood to the nervous system, and that it's really the nervous system that actually is the key to longevity. All the pieces, of course, play their role. You can't, you know. You want bone density, you want muscle mass, you want strength, you want to. You know all these different things, but at the end of the day, it's the nervous system that is the real prize here.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So in my work, the way that we talk about it is that when I'm 100 years old, we're 100 years old.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

We want to have a 30-year-old body and a 300-year-old mind, right, and that comes down to, yes, keeping all the physiology working, but also, at the same time, again, optimizing human existence, if you will. How do you actually optimize the nervous system? Understanding that there's really all of life comes down to just one thing, which is optimizing the nervous system right. How you think, how you feel, what you believe is possible, what you believe about yourself, what you believe about others, you know how you solve problems, how you move, how you go into flow states, how you stay connected, how your relationships are, all of it comes down to programming and reprogramming, in many cases, the nervous system, right. What you react to, what you're living in, reaction to all of this comes down to programming and reprogramming the nervous system. So to be, you know, the optimal person that you can be really is a function of optimizing the nervous system and then optimizing all the other systems to support that right. So that's kind of how I've come to think of it.

Tom Butler:

Now, one of my first episodes of the podcast was how old is a 60? Podcast was how old is 60? In that episode I wanted to explore kind of the concepts I had had about what it meant to be 60 and and how the way that we think about age has changed. Do you think that we need to think differently about what is possible between like 60 and 100 years old?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

yeah, I think we need to completely disconnect chronology from age. What I mean by that is I. I wake up 27 every day, right? So I'm literally 27, and I can't begin to tell you how incredibly powerful that is to have a mindset where you're youthful. You know, many people talk about longevity. Well, I want to live a long time, I want to live. I want to live to 100. I want to be 120. I want to be 180. I want to be 360. I want to be 720 years.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

It's like that is so abstract, right, and every picture you ever saw of somebody that's 100 or 110 is like I don't know, that's not exactly what I'm going for, right, but we all know what it is to be young, we all know what it is to be youthful, and so I really think longevity should be inverted into claiming our youthfulness and maintaining youthfulness. And back to the nervous system, having the right mindset around. That, I think, is critical, because if you wake up and you're 60, let's say you're chronologically 60, and you don't feel well, you say well, yeah, but you know what? I'm good for my age, I'm better than most, I can still ride my bike, I can still do that, and maybe I'm having an off day, but I'm still better, right, and you mollify yourself with that comment. An off day, but I'm still better. Right, and you mollify yourself with that comment. I don't do that.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

When I wake up, I'm 27. And if I don't feel 27, it's like let's get back to 27. What do I need to do to get back to 27,? Right, and that's where I'm at really. I mean, I can do things now I couldn't do when I was 27,. Right, and I can do literally anything I want. And I was born in 1954 and I had a birthday in February, so you can do the math on that chronologically, but I'm 27. And it's so incredibly powerful to claim this youthful age and to relate that as your reference point. And so when you think about what 60 is, 60 to me is just I don't know, it's just the number on a calendar, right, it's the age that you claim that really matters.

Tom Butler:

I think it's an incredibly powerful concept and when I think about, you know, this aspect of not just being alive but being functional, being functioning in a healthy way. If we start thinking about functioning well between 60 and 100, it seems like it changes so much in life because we have a tendency to think of 40 years, between 20 and 60, as being like the optimal time of life, but if we're living in a healthy, functioning way from 60 to from 60 to 100 that's another 40 years. It's like it seems like it would dramatically change kind of our concept of living I?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

I couldn't agree more. In fact, you see, this is where the nervous system's back in to play, right? So when we're let's say, we're living life between 20 and 60, during that 40 years, what, what's happening? Right? So in our 20s it's really late adolescence, early adult kind of development. The brain is actually not even fully developed until age 26 or 27, right, so you don't really have all of your executive function until that point in time. And then you're basically everybody's living in reaction to what they grew up with, right, what they were told, what they were taught and the traumas that they experienced when they were younger, right, whether it was parental or whether it was, you know, siblings, or whether it was bullies in school, or whether it was being patted on the back for getting good grades and being a good boy, right. And so we all end up living in reaction to that early conditioning and training.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

I really think that the next you know 30 years, let's say from 30 on, is us sort of testing that out. How adequate are those presuppositions and those things that we're living in reaction to what we've developed as a operating system? How adequate is that operating system in terms of, you know, succeeding at work or developing truly, you know, great relationships, whether it's friendship, marriages, things like that right, how's all that working out? Right, and we're taking those instructions that we got and testing that against reality, right, and in many cases we find that in some ways it works well and in some ways it really needs an overhaul. Right, and we end up spending our 30s kind of testing that out, maybe into our 40s. Then we start to think about well, geez, maybe not everything's working out.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Now I've gone through a divorce, now I've lost a job, now I've quit this or've done that or whatever.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

What's going on here and maybe I need to rethink this?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Right, you either rethink it or you just keep doing the same stuff, right, and so if you rethink it, then you start to think about okay, well, maybe I need to reprogram the software that's in there, right, and I think as you go through that, by the time you get to 60, you can actually start to develop some real insight and wisdom, some real perspective, right, some real sense of how do I go back and deeply understand those traumas, how do I actually heal them, how do I actually forgive the people that were involved and how do I actually transcend them to where I actually become grateful for everything that's ever happened to me, transcend them to where I actually become grateful for everything that's ever happened to me, and when you get to that point, what you find is that your body, if you've kept it young and youthful, now your psycho-spiritual space is opening up, and so the next 40 years is actually going to be 10 times bigger, better and greater than the 40 years that led up to 60. And that's how I think about it.

Tom Butler:

I think that's fantastic. It brings to mind a quote. I think that's attributed to George Bernard Shaw. He says youth is wasted on the young.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Yeah, and that's an interesting phrase. I mean, we've all heard that phrase. Right, so youth is wasted on the young interesting phrase, I mean, we've all heard that phrase. Right, so youth is wasted on the young. And what he's saying there is that they have the youthful body but they don't have the mature wisdom, they haven't stepped into the full expression of who they are.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

And when you go down this path I was just describing, you end up being unencumbered by those prior traumas, those prior experiences. You're unencumbered from having to live in reaction to them. Now you're free to be yourself, right? You know, when I was growing up, it was all about everybody's well, he's going off to find himself right, or she's going off to find herself right. So what did that even mean? Well, actually it's really about becoming unencumbered so you can step into who you really are, and that takes a lot of courage. But when you do it who you really are and that takes a lot of courage, but when you do it, oh my gosh, I mean, the world becomes exponentially bigger, brighter and better place to live.

Tom Butler:

I just recently had a conversation with someone who said that when he turned 70, that was a tough birthday and again, I think that there's almost this cage of thinking that that is an example of, because I you know. I think what he was saying is I, I'm getting old and you know. My question to him was you know you might have 30 more years? It's not. You know, there's not or or more, I don't know it it's like would that change the way that you think about turning 70?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Well, I think what he's reflecting is a truth that you know society, the aging process, is reinforced on every front, right? Your doctor's telling you, oh, you're just getting older. Right, that happened to me. You're just getting older, or it's time to retire, or you're old now, or you know your friends are starting to complain about the aches and pains, so they're getting older. And so all around you, this idea that you're old is being reinforced.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

And so when you get to a birthday like 70, you can say, oh my gosh, I guess now I'm old, but the nervous system is so strong that you can say at 70, oh man, we're just getting started. This is like the best birthday ever. When I had my 70th back in February, I had an epiphany that you know what my life from now on is going to be so much incredibly better than it's ever been before. I'm so excited for the next decade 20, 30, 40, whatever how many years there are. I couldn't. I was so excited by it. So it just goes to show you it's really all how you think about it.

Tom Butler:

So don't believe don't believe what society is trying to tell you. You've got to. You've got to. If you're really going to live well right, you've got to charter your own course, totally. One of the things that I'm most happy about with the podcast and following my own journey is being able to really demonstrate the difference that lifestyle changes can make. So, you know, two years ago I was, you know, 59. Now I'm 61 chronologically, but there's no way that I am older now than I was at 51, which is two years of making some pretty significant changes not, you know, incredibly difficult changes, but significant changes. There's just no way I'm not younger now than I was two years ago.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Exactly, yeah, the body has a lot of resilience and you can get to a point where the body loses its resilience. And it's important to understand that aging is an exponential process. It's not a linear process. We tend to think of it as linear because every year it's another birthday and, just like in your case, from 59 to 61, you were able to make changes where all of a sudden, you feel like a whole lot better than you did at 59. And that's great. But I can tell you that what you did to do that is not going to work. When you're going from 69 to 71, right, and the reason is that there's a current of activity going on in the body that is aging it. Right. Mitochondrial functions going down, telomeres are getting shorter, your immune system's getting uh, diminished in terms of its ability to respond to new challenges. Right, dna is not being repaired as well. On and on and on right. So these hallmarks of aging are driving the aging process. So, if you're going to back up the concept that I'm 27, if I'm really going to back that up, yes, it involves my mindset and yes, it involves my activity levels. Right, Like on Saturday.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Last Saturday, I went mountain biking in the morning here in Texas in summer it was a little cooler day, you know, like in the 80s I guess. Then in the evening I thought I think I'll go for another ride, so I went out and did another ride. Then I woke up the next morning, did nine miles on my elliptical. Then I had a friend invite me out to a racetrack to race some go-karts on a big outdoor track. We raced those for about three hours, you know, pulling 20 G or two Gs around these corners and and it was a, it was. You know it was a good day, right, so a very active day.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

But you know it's not enough to just be active like that. You've got to actually have an exponential strategy for an exponential problem, and a get healthy strategy consists of eating better, exercising, maybe drinking less or whatever. You know things you take out and things you add in, getting the right supplements, getting some testing done, seeing where you are in the aging process, maybe doing some genetics to see what cards you're holding, what might be lurking around the corner. All that is incredibly wise, but then you need to act on that and you need to actually have a program that actually enables you to go after those drivers of aging right, those hallmarks of aging. When you put together an exponential strategy around the mindset of living young for a lifetime, now you can actually really back it up. Right Now you actually get the job done, and so that's what we do at Gladden Longevity.

Tom Butler:

You're talking about something that I think that you guys refer to as biohacking. Am I?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

correct Age hacking.

Tom Butler:

Okay.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Yeah. So biohacking is. You know, we like biohacking. Biohacking is basically well, let's hack in and see if we can get smarter with nootropics, right, let's see if we can hack in and boost our VO2 max if we, you know, we change our exercise patterns around, or recovery scores, or take different supplements, right, and that's great. But biohacking ultimately is a linear strategy to an exponential problem because it's not really focused on those drivers of aging, those hallmarks of aging. For that you've got to go deeper, right. So biohacking is good. So what we have coined a term is age hacking, where you're actually going at the drivers of aging, and it includes biohacking, but it goes deeper.

Tom Butler:

It is a comprehensive approach. It is looking at a lot of different things that I think that we haven't traditionally looked at. I want to start here, though, with activity, and I'm wondering if you can talk about, kind of, your decades of research and clinical practice. What have they revealed about the importance of staying active?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Oh, it's incredibly massive. You know, when I was back practicing cardiology, you know I was had been in practice maybe for five or ten years and again I did that for 25 years before I left. But five or ten years in I started to see the same patients, right, for some number of years and I just empirically noticed that the ones that were active, they looked so much different than the ones that you know had just kind of settled into a sedentary kind of lifestyle and it was really kind of a nice wake-up call in a way. My parents were always active, my grandparents were active and things like that. So I hadn't really seen that sort of stark contrast, right with people that I knew and it was really revealing to see that actually the decisions you make are like putting money in the bank and interest gets compounded.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So when you go down a pathway of inactivity, the deterioration compounds itself, right. And the next thing you know, if you stop walking up the stairs, you know a year later you can't walk up the stairs, right. On the other hand, if you start walking up the stairs five times a day because you want to stay fit, a year from now you're walking up and down 15 times a day, right? And so this fork in the road is more massive than people feel like it is right, because they sit there and they think, well, yeah, I could walk those stairs, I'm not going to do it, but I could walk them, right. And the other person says I can walk this. I wonder how many times I can walk those stairs, right? That change in thought process, that change in mindset, bears massive rewards or massive, you know, losses, you know, depending on which path you go down. So, yeah, it's, it's huge. It's not enough. It's not enough to, you know, be 30 when you're a hundred, but it's absolutely critical.

Tom Butler:

It seems like when I talk to people it's like people understand and I certainly understood that it was better to be active. It just seems like there is I don't know part of it that this culture of sedentary lifestyle where the things setting in front of the computer is rewarded far more than going out for a bike ride. Let's say that it just seems like there's so many things that are stacked against cultural things and and all kinds of things that are stacked against being active in today's world.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Yeah, I mean, you know, when we were kids, there wasn't anything except to go outside, right, so the only thing that existed, literally the only thing that existed, were some toys in the house and then to go outside. And, to your point, I think there are many more reasons to stay in the house. Now, right, and it comes down to a lot of dopamine stimulation on the computer. Right, a lot of dopamine hits whether you're on your phone, your computer, you're playing a game, you're reading emails, but it's a lot of dopamine hits, right, and I think people are drawn to those dopamine hits. Of course, they get addicted to it in a way.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

And then there's also the idea of comfort. And then there's also the idea of comfort. We have this kind of undercurrent that runs through culture that luxury is associated with comfort. And if you're well-to-do and you've done well in life, and somebody carries your bags and they park your car and they deliver this and they do that, and you take the escalator, and there's this idea that somehow success and luxury is associated with lack of activity and comfort, right, and it's only the working man or working woman that has to, you know, walk the street or do something like that to get to the next job or wherever they're going, right. So I think I think that sort of this idea of status being associated with lack of activity and then the dopamine pull that we get from using phones and computers and tablets, I think that's a piece of it, right.

Tom Butler:

So I don't know. That offsets that and I'm interested to get your thoughts on this. Is that thinking of myself as an athlete in training you? Know, I'm thinking of myself as I've got some goals that I want to reach later on in life and so I need to be in training and and have a training program and everything that's. To me that's a an effective mechanism for kind of fighting against all the incentives to be inactive. What do you think about that?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Yeah, I agree, I think every client we see we identify them as an athlete. In fact, we do athletic genetics on them as one of the many, many, many, many tests that we do because we want to see how they're built as an athlete, right, and people are built differently and some people you know there are people that just hate to exercise and there's some genetics that may predispose them to that, where they simply don't make energy in the muscles nearly as well as you or I might, right. And so when you understand the genetics and you understand how to help them actually feel good when they're exercising, it opens up a new window for them. So I think the idea of being active and pushing into it and being an athlete when I do any of my training now right, and I do something every day it's balance training, it's cardio. We're strong on cardio. Vo2 max correlates to longevity more than anything else. We've been measuring that for 20 years. When you're doing those things, you want to see that your athleticism is improving, and the way that I think about it now is that you're really training your nervous system.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So when I'm riding my mountain bike now down a trail, right, I'm not riding the bike, I'm actually feeling my nervous system at work. And the nervous system is riding the bike. The muscles are along for the ride, same thing if I'm going for a run, same thing if I'm going riding the elliptical, same thing if I'm driving a go-kart. It's really this concept. Or even shooting baskets, right, we have a little micro basketball thing up here in our gym right and it just hangs on a door and I try to shoot from across the room right, which is I don't know how far that is, but it's probably a three-point shot with a ball about the size of a grapefruit. And I haven't been very good at it. I make some shots occasionally, right.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

But I started to change the way I thought about it. I thought I'm not going to stop shooting the ball at the rim, I'm going to basically just allow my nervous system to arc the ball towards the rim and I'm just going to allow the nervous system to do that. And I started making more shots. It's like, wow, okay, this is interesting, you know, it's kind of like the head gets in the way. It's like we're trying to do something. Just allow your nervous system to do it right. It's kind of like going into a flow state, which again is another nervous system state. It's kind of like meditation in action. So this idea of being an athlete and identifying as that and then training to optimize the way your nervous system, you know, works, if you will, the way it moves, and that kind of thing, I think that's a great insight.

Tom Butler:

You started Gladden Longevity and I think, if I read things correctly, that was a desire to look at medicine differently, kind of the future of healthcare differently. Can you talk a little bit about what led you to starting Gladden Longevity and what you hope to bring to the world through those Well?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

I started it because I got sick. So I got sick in my fifties. I was, you know, had a lot of things going on. I was in the middle of co-founding a heart hospital, building my group, I had a young family, I was involved with medical device companies, sitting on boards and things like that, starting some myself. And I was exhausted all the time, right, and it wouldn't matter if I and yes, I was taking some call, but it wouldn't matter if I went on vacation, you know, and slept well for a week. I would wake up exhausted and then I was putting on weight and that was unusual for me. I've always been trim and athletic, so to speak. So I basically was also feeling, when I would come under stress, high levels of stress, that I would get anxious and then, from anxiety, I would go into depression and it would be like not the kind of depression you could talk yourself out of, but the kind of depression is just like man, I just want out of here, kind of thing, right.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

And I was developing some brain fog and my dad ended up dying with dementia. So I'm getting concerned, right. So I went in and got tested and I was basically told hey, all your lab work checks out normal for your age. You're just getting older, why don't you take an antidepressant? And it was such an existential moment for me. It was like, oh my gosh, I've hit the zenith of my life. It's going to be downhill from here, right? I'm in my early 50s. And so I said no, I'm not going to do it. And that's when I threw myself into functional medicine, integrative and age management medicine. And two and a half years later I'd cracked the code on everything, right, I'd lost 20 pounds of fat, 10 pounds of muscle. I could jump out of bed again in the morning. You know I didn't have brain fog. You know I wasn't getting anxious or depressed anymore. All of it because I'd actually unraveled or really deconstructed the problems. And this is the strategy that we take now at Gladden Longevity is to work with an individual and really thoroughly deconstruct them so that they actually understand what's going on and how to manage it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So in my case, I had subclinical hypothyroidism. All the blood work looked normal, right Wasn't, until I did biometric testing that showed that my thyroid levels were really low in the cells right. So once I got on the right thyroid, all the lights came back on. And I don't convert inactive to active thyroid in my brain efficiently. I'm an 80% reduction in doing that. So getting on the right thyroid not just T4, was massive for me. And again it was like holy cow. This feels great. And I was hormonally depleted, right, testosterone, dhea were going down at that point. So getting on that was helpful. And then I don't make certain neurotransmitters efficiently right. So once I got on the right supplements to help me methylate properly and make the right neurotransmitters a couple of nootropics, you know. Next thing, you know I'm not getting anxious at all and I learned how to meditate, also right, which was super helpful.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So the point is that in traditional medicine we're symptom driven. You go in. It's like, oh, you're not feeling well, we'll take an antidepressant Instead of. You know, I was fascinated even in medical school. How do we actually deconstruct this problem, really understand what's going on and then build it back up so where somebody can function optimally, right? That's the goal. So when I had that experience I thought, oh my gosh, I can't practice sick care anymore. What I've been doing is sick care, so I'm leaving this. And it was like base jumping because I knew how to make a living as a cardiologist, but I base jumped into, you know, health optimization, which turned into longevity, which turned into glad longevity.

Tom Butler:

So here we are. It's interesting that you talk about base jumping because seems like I you know and it's probably what I'm reading all the time when I'm opening myself up to all the time. But I I see a lot of people who have been trained in medical school got into practice and with a heart, like, I'm sure, for you, a heart of helping people out 100% and then you know they make this switch to functional medicine because that offers them more than traditional medicine as far as really being able to make a difference in people's lives.

Tom Butler:

That's right. So for you, you know, it was like going into the unknown to go that route from something that's pretty structured. Do you have some thoughts on what it will take to like move the you know, and I'm not, I don't know about so much in other countries but move the American medical system out of this disease model into more of a functional model?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

I don't think it's possible, because the economic incentives are so strong to keep things the way they are inside that system and physicians have been in a way. We were all trained right, and so when you're trained, it's almost like you're brainwashed and you start to believe that the answers that you have are the only answers that exist. Right, and it wasn't until I started asking different questions that I found new answers. Right, and I found, as I was asking the questions, you know, how do I actually not feel exhausted all the time? How do I actually not feel anxious all the time? How do I actually, you know, re-optimize my body composition all the time? How do I actually, you know, re-optimize my body composition? It wasn't until I really started asking those questions instead of what pill do I take? That I started to find the answers. And most medical professionals, they don't think outside that box, they really believe, and they're good people, they're lovely people and they're in medicine many of them for the right reason. But they've just gotten penciled into this box where they're no longer asking bigger questions, right, and that's kind of the tragedy of life money and the administrators who are making their fair share of the money, and the pharma company which is making their fair share of the money, then there's not much incentive to switch that up right.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

So I'm much more of a fan of building something in parallel right where we build longevity clinics and we talked about functional medicine. It's important for the audience to understand that you have traditional medicine right, allopathic medicine, whatever osteopaths that are symptom-driven. Below that you have functional medicine. What's the root cause? But below that is longevity medicine and longevity medicine is a strata that's looking at those drivers of aging right and it's the drivers of aging. When you address those in conjunction with the root cause, in conjunction with the symptom, that you get the most durable result for an individual right. Otherwise, the results are more short-lived. Anyway, this longevity medicine is really key. So I just want to build longevity medicine which incorporates all those layers taken in and build it in parallel and when it gets big enough, then somebody will pay attention to it, or maybe we'll always have two systems, I don't know.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Being in that system for 25 years, I had many, many encounters with insurance players and many interactions with hospital administrators. You know we did end up co-founding the heart hospital with the people at Baylor because they could have got it. But oh my gosh, you know we did. We did meetings at one hospital for two and a half years on building cardiology unit and then they said well, you know, we really appreciate your time, but we've decided we're going to allocate resources elsewhere and I'm like I'm done, I'm never again. I will never, ever waste my time like this again. So I'm never going to waste my time like that. I'm only going to build when I know we can build and then let the chips fall. Quite honestly, yeah.

Tom Butler:

The Gladden Longevity Podcast is out there. People should look for that.

Tom Butler:

And it has such a wide variety of topics and it's so cool. I just want to praise you for the work that you guys are doing to just educate. So many people can just go and learn a lot of cool things, and you know we're not going to get into those topics, people just go there. You're going to. I guarantee you you're going to find something interesting on that podcast to listen to. There is an aspect of looking at that that makes me think about the complexity of the human body and I'm thinking that you must see how incredible our body is on a basically a daily basis.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Oh, yeah, yeah it's, it's unbelievably complex and you know, I, I just I just made a diagram of longevity, but I want to show you this, just so you have a sense of it, and I'll describe it for the audience, since you won't be able to see this. But this is longevity, right here. Wow, right, yeah. Describe what you're showing there. So what I have is 18 hallmarks of aging, In other words, 18 things that actually drive the aging process forward, and I'm showing the interrelationship between them.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

It's never going to be simple to unravel that knot. You're never going to just take one pill and that's going to do the deal right. And so, for each person that we see and those lines are all bi-directional, by the way right, so it's never going to be one simple thing, but one of the joys that we have is working with labs and working with testing companies and things like that to help us unravel that, not deconstruct that situation to where we can actually understand what's going to be the most elegant inputs we can make for this individual to get them where they need to go, and that's really. We just love that process.

Tom Butler:

Now my story is that I spent at least 25 years really being inactive and eating in a way that I believe like severely compromised my mitochondrial health. Unfortunately, that's not unusual. That might actually even be the typical story. Now I'm wondering if you could talk about what you are seeing that gives someone like me hope that I can repair the damage I've done. I think it's obvious that if I would have maintained better habits throughout my life, I would be in a better place and I maybe have lost some things that I can't regain, but what's the hope there for someone like me?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Well, I think you can get virtually all of it back. Quite honestly, at this point in time, Like if you were 80 years old, I'd say maybe not, but you know, you're young, You're just kind of in midlife here, so I think you can get all of it back. There are a lot of things that damage the mitochondria. Excess oxidative stress is a big one. Bad food choices, processed foods, a lot of sugar and sweets that increase oxidative stress. We know that high fructose corn syrup is terrible for the mitochondria, Really destroys its ability to make ATP. And even too much fruit. Although fruit is healthy, lower glycemic fruit is better. You know you want all those polyphenols and all those colors in your diet.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

The way we think about it, I know a lot of people are going carnivore and I wouldn't eat fruit. That's going to kill you. It's like you know, people have taken this a little too far, quite honestly. I mean, really the body like. What we found is that when we test because we test right is that the body really likes variety. Your gut biome likes variety and it likes high nutrient, dense foods right, and it likes a variety of those things right, so meat can be part of it.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

And then there are people that have gut issues where, yes, vegetables make them bloat and do things like that, so they. And then there are people that have gut issues where, yes, vegetables make them bloat and do things like that, so they steer away from that. But there are other ways to get in those nutrients. There's some supplements out there that can do it and things like that. So you know, I think eating a wide variety of nutrient-dense foods is kind of the baseline. Then we refine that. That's kind of the starting point. Then we refine that based on the individual right. What's their gut biome doing? What's their digestive system? Do they have a gallbladder? What are their food sensitivities? You know things like that. What are their genetics, for that matter? And then from there we can actually start to hone in on a diet for that individual.

Tom Butler:

Where do you think we are as far as what we know about how to customize inputs, how to customize what we need to take in dietarily? Do you think we're getting pretty close to knowing what we need to know, or are we a long way off still?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

I think we're 1,000 miles from where we were, but in other words, closer, and I think we probably have 30,000 miles to go. Right, we're much better than we used to be, but I um, I'm very humble in this, in this field, right, the body is very complex, and the whole thing is is really intricate, and so I wouldn't be arrogant enough to say that I think we've just about cracked the code on it. I think it's it's a more intricate than that.

Tom Butler:

That being said, we've made tremendous progress, so yeah, you have a saying live young for a lifetime, which I love that saying. What are you excited? What are you looking forward to or excited about as far as the future of longevity research in helping us know what it takes to live young for a lifetime?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Well, we have several research trials that we're involved with right now. We're really excited to participate in the XPRIZE. The XPRIZE is coming up. It's basically looking at three things If, in one year, can you turn back by 10 to 20 years brain health, muscle health and the immune system. And, quite honestly, we feel like we could do it today. But, that being said, we want to keep doing it better and better and better. So we're constantly pushing on things and we're now getting ready to have some strategic alliances that are going to enable us to go global and actually dive into many, many more areas of research and collaborate with leaders around the world, quite honestly, which is where we want to go. So, ultimately, the goal for us is to democratize this.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Really, my passion in life is to change the glide path of aging for the entire planet. Right Right now, you have to write a pretty decent check to work with us, but I want to democratize this, and that's you know, being on a podcast like this is part of that. Our own podcast is part of that, our supplement store is part of that of that. Our own podcast is part of that, our supplement store is part of that, but ultimately, I really want to change all of that disease and decline that occurs for people, all that pain and angst, right, like the last 25 years. People are more miserable than they are, you know, happy, productive, contributing people, right, and it's like we need to change that.

Tom Butler:

That's fantastic. How do people stay connected? There's gladinlongevitycom. Is that really the? Is that the best place? What are some other ways that people can follow what you're doing?

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Well, the book is out there. A hundred is a new 30. You can get that on Amazon. It's also on audible. I think it's also on Kindle now. So that's a really good reference book. It's about 450 pages and I make the complex simple there, so don't be intimidated by the number of pages, but it's a really good sort of intro to all this area. Then the podcast is a great way to stay in touch, and if you're interested to be a client, you can reach out to us through the gladlongevitycom website. And if you're a practitioner and you're, it's like wow, this guy really resonates with me. I'd like to work with him. You know, reach out to us through the website also. We'd be happy to chat with you.

Tom Butler:

Excellent. Dr Gladden, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. You obviously have a lot of things going on and, again, I'm just really pleased that you're taking a leadership role in all the things you've said here about how you're wanting to lead out in longevity medicine, and you know the podcast that you're making available, the book, and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

Yeah, tom, it's really been a pleasure. I appreciate the journey that you're on right and the way that you're reclaiming your youth, and I would just encourage you to keep going and live young for a lifetime.

Tom Butler:

Thank you so much. Take care now.

Dr. Jeffrey Gladden:

All right, you too.

Tom Butler:

Well, there you have it. Listening to Dr Gladden gives me a lot of hope that I can live to 100, or maybe even more. Of course, he talked about the need to use technology to see what is happening at the genetic and cellular level in our bodies. I think I will make the investment needed to get that data. But the thing that he emphasized the most was the importance of mindset. What do you think? Could you, like Dr Gladden, wake up in the morning with the conviction that you are 27 years old? I don't know if I am there yet, but, like I have said, I do feel like my age is reversing right now. Of course, I loved it when Dr Gladden said that I'm still young enough to reverse the damage I have done over the years, but it does mean taking it very seriously.

Tom Butler:

I would love to hear your perspective. You can find my email and my Instagram link in the show notes, but the best way to share your thoughts is in the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club, For example. This week, Judson started a really beneficial conversation about chain waxing. It would be great for you to join us in the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club. No matter how old you see yourself when you wake up in the morning, I hope you're having some awesome riding experiences and remember age is just a gear change.

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