Dr. David Sinclair

Those loops and structures can be modified by how you live your life.

No matter what size you are, you can have a bigger impact on your life than anything your genes give you.

80% is epigenetic, not genetic.

Well, let's start with what I think was a big mistake, was the idea that people should never be hungry.

Some people never experience hunger in their whole lives.

It's really, really bad for them.

It was based, I believe, on the 20th century view that you don't want to stress out the pancreas and you try to keep insulin levels pretty steady and not have this fluctuation.

What we actually found, my colleagues and I,

across this field of longevity is that when you look at, first of all, animals, whether it's a dog or a mouse or a monkey,

The ones that live the longest, by far, 30% longer and stay healthy are the ones that don't eat all the time.

It actually was first discovered back in the early 20th century, but people ignored it.

And then it was rediscovered in the 1930s.

Clyde McKay did caloric restriction.

He put cellulose in the food of rats so they couldn't get as many calories even though they ate.

And those rats lived 30% longer.

But then it went away.

And then it came back in the 2000s in a big way when a couple of things happened.

One is that my lab and others showed that there are longevity genes in the body that come on and protect us from aging and disease.

The group of genes that I work on are called sirtuins.

There's seven of them.