This experience led me to imagine what would happen if I couldn’t rely on my brain to earn a living. I’d had a successful career so far, but suddenly I wondered if I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I decided to undergo a then controversial brain imaging technique called a SPECT scan to see what was really going on in my brain. It showed that my prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain involved in complex thinking and decision-making—had essentially no activity when I tried to concentrate. Dr. Daniel Amen, who was one of the first people in this country to use SPECT scans, was shocked that I had been even remotely successful in my career with such clear cognitive dysfunction.
Once again, receiving bad news actually came as a relief. It was incredibly validating to hear that there was indeed a reason why everything felt like such a struggle. The issue wasn’t lack of effort or intelligence. It was an actual biological problem, a hardware problem. And there were lots of little-known things I could do to reduce inflammation and improve my brain function. When I found these interventions, the impact was immediate and allowed me to get smarter and faster with each passing year. The good news is that once you know them, the interventions are simple and practical.
If you’re in your twenties or thirties, it is much easier to reduce inflammation now to boost your brainpower and avoid cognitive decline with age, but even if you are older or experiencing symptoms of dementia, it is still possible to improve your brain function. The sooner you start, the better, but it’s never too late to begin growing a younger, more powerful, and more energetic brain. You’ll learn how to do this later in this book.
CANCER
More than 40 percent of Americans are diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.19 When mitochondria become dysfunctional and don’t produce energy efficiently—which, again, is typical of most people as they age—your risk of cancer increases. This is because an inflamed environment offers the perfect conditions for cancer cells to proliferate.
Think about a time you got a cut and the wound became swollen—an obvious sign of inflammation (an immune response) at work. When the body is injured, your cells multiply quickly so the wound can heal. That process alone does not cause cancer. But when cells multiply rapidly in an environment that contains excess free radicals—which damage the DNA of cells—the risk is that damaged or mutated cells will proliferate. If these damaged cells continue to reproduce, the result can be cancer.20
We often think that our risk of developing cancer is based mostly on our genetics, but the data shows that only about 2 to 5 percent of cancers are truly genetically based, and mitochondrial dysfunction causes most others. In 1931, a German biochemist named Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize for discovering that highly dysfunctional mitochondria actually stop burning oxygen to make energy and turn instead to a much less efficient process called anaerobic metabolism, which is the combustion of carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. Anaerobic metabolism is associated with the vast majority of cancers. But if your mitochondria are strong, they will not have to resort to anaerobic metabolism. This greatly reduces your cancer risk.
Cancer is something of a double-edged sword when it comes to anti-aging. Any time you do something that makes your cells grow faster or get younger, you are inherently increasing your cancer risk because cancer cells can potentially grow and rejuvenate along with the healthy ones. Then you end up with this weird dichotomy: You can grow old “normally” with a roughly 40 percent chance of getting cancer, or you can get younger and maybe as a result slightly increase your risk. My solution to this dilemma is to do everything I can to make sure my mitochondria run like superstars because that in and of itself will reduce my risk of cancer. I also take action to promote my body’s natural detoxification efforts.
In addition to apoptosis, which you read earlier is healthy, controlled cellular death that targets old or unstable cells, your body also has a built-in detox process to recycle damaged cellular components. This is called autophagy, a Greek word that translates as “self-eating.” During autophagy, your cells scan the body for pieces of dead, diseased, or worn-out cells, remove any useful components from these old cells, and then use the remaining molecules to either make energy or create parts for new cells. This recycling process removes unwanted toxins, reduces inflammation, and helps to slow the aging process.
When you activate autophagy, you slow down the aging process, reduce inflammation, reduce your cancer risk, and increase your body’s ability to function at its best. There are specific supplements and lifestyle modifications such as brief bouts of fasting that boost autophagy. You’ll learn how to do this as we get deeper into the techniques that make you Super Human.
SLASH YOUR RISK
Despite overwhelming evidence that mitochondrial dysfunction and the resulting inflammation leads to the Four Killers, we live in a society in which an inevitable decline in mitochondrial function is considered a normal part of aging. Of course we expect to die from one of these diseases! Between the ages of thirty and seventy, you experience a decrease in efficiency of the average mitochondrion by about 50 percent, setting the stage for you to develop these killers.
Since you’re reading this book, you obviously have no intention of aging like an average person, and you shouldn’t. By the time I discovered the importance of mitochondria, mine were already trashed from years of toxic mold exposure. The mold had weakened my system and aged me prematurely, so in many ways I was the canary in the coal mine. I felt the “cuts” that affect all of us much sooner than most people because I started off in a weaker spot. In order to get to a basic level of functionality, I had to find out what was causing these cuts and work on eliminating them.
Feeling the cuts so early and so deeply allowed me to experience real-time feedback and determine which environmental factors impacted my health and performance the most. This turned out to be an enormous gift because I was able to learn—and can now teach you—how to stop damaging your own body with thousands of invisible cuts by focusing on the basics: good nutrition, quality sleep, and a healthy environment free of toxins that cause more cuts.
Before we move on to learn how to do that, let’s take a closer look at exactly what these cuts do to our bodies. Obviously, you won’t go from eating an inflammatory meal to developing degenerative disease in one fell swoop. Instead, the cuts from your environment cause invisible damage on the subcellular level. This damage doesn’t age you at once, but it does so cumulatively, day after day, year after year. By the time you become aware of this damage, you’re old. But you can take action now to stop this damage before it stacks up. So after you take the steps to avoid the Four Killers, it’s time to focus on cheating death the way Super Humans do—by avoiding the Seven Pillars of Aging. These are the processes in your body that break as you age, and there’s a lot you can do to control them.
Bottom Line
If you are average …
• You have a 23 percent risk of dying from heart disease.
• You have a 25 percent risk of diabetes.
• You have a 10 percent risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
• You have a 40 percent risk of cancer and a 20 percent risk of dying from it.
So start hacking. Do these things right now:
• If you have joint pain or blood sugar issues, consider taking glucosamine, which helps control blood sugar and extends the life-span of mice (and probably humans).
• Consume more antioxidants to fight off free radicals. Berries, herbs, spices, coffee, tea, and dark chocolate are good sources. There are also medical spas in most cities that offer antioxidant therapy via IV. It may be worth looking into if you travel frequently or need an energy boost.
• Short periods of fasting stimulate autophagy. You’ll read