DAVID SINCLAIR Metformin Helps Turn On the Longevity Genes | Dr David Sinclair Interview Clips

Metformin is a derivative of a natural molecule called a “biguanide from French lilac. It has been used as an herbal medicine in Europe for centuries. In 1957, Frenchman Jean Sterne published a paper demonstrating the effectiveness of oral dimethyl biguanide to treat type 2 diabetes. Since then, the drug has become one of the most widely taken and effective diabetics medicines on the globe.

So well the big picture is that scientists over the last 20 years have figured out that we have these inbuilt mechanisms to delay aging there are what we call longevity genes and they protect us against the nine major causes of aging which we call the hallmarks of aging and these are typically things that we hear about in in the news occasionally the loss

Of mitochondrial function so these are the power packs of the cell loss of stem cells loss of the ability to respond to nutrients proteins misfolding there’s a long list actually and so what these longevity genes do is that they they actually that they’re not normally active in our modern life unfortunately us sitting around and eating constantly is the worst

Thing for us uh and so that’s why diet and exercise for start is is the way to go that turns on these longevity gene defenses now there are a few uh molecules that have well lots actually hundreds of molecules that have been found to extend the lifespan of simple um and dozens of of mammals including mice and and some dogs and metformin is one of just a handful

Of drugs that are already available on the market for treating a disease the other famous one is called rapamycin which is uh less safe than metformin but nevertheless is pretty potent for lifespan extension but getting to metformin the reason that performance is exciting is uh for a few reasons one is that it activates the pathways that i was just talking

About these longevity defenses uh the ones we work on and i talk about in my book are called sirtuins and there are a few other family members but it’s not really that complicated as long as we turn on our body’s defenses it seems that we can live longer and healthier now this drug metformin is was discovered oh way back in the 20th century and the 60s i

Believe it became more popular in 70s and has now been in millions of people as the first line of defense against type 2 diabetes which is high blood sugar in the elderly typically in the elderly and if you’re obese and you don’t exercise you’re predisposed to type 2 diabetes which of course will aid you more rapidly and shorten your lifespan so at a minimum

Metformin will help prevent and actually treat that disease and bring down your blood sugar levels hopefully and it’s a relatively safe drug as far as drugs go it’s on the list of um essential medicines for humanity i think that’s the world health organization’s definition and what it does is it it does many things this drug um it originally comes from uh what

Is it the french lilac uh it’s now it’s modified to be longer lasting in the body but it’s it’s essentially a natural molecule that one of the things it does it interferes with the mitochondria that make the energy in the cells and tricks the cells into thinking that they don’t have enough energy and so they they ramp up their energy production and this also

Helps turn on the longevity genes which also get tricked into thinking there’s adversity and perhaps some starvation going on and so the outcome of that seems to be that cells are more resistant to diseases and deterioration over time and epidemiologically in studies that have looked at tens of thousands of people typically in the us are veterans there’s a

Statistically significant effect not just on the diminution of type 2 diabetes but also lessening of uh predisposition to other diseases which includes heart disease frailty and cancer and so that’s a big deal if it’s true it means that a simple drug it’s relatively simple just one molecule it’s cheap it probably costs to make it a cent per pill a few cents uh

And available globally it’s very exciting that there could be something already that could be prescribed not just for type 2 diabetes but to slow down aging as well really is we’re talking about here is in part classifying and regarding aging as a treatable disease that is what really is going on in some of the countries that we talked about once you do that it

Means the doctors would be much more comfortable prescribing a drug like metformin before you get type 2 diabetes and before you get the typical manifestations of aging and that we andrew and i and others believe that is really the best way uh to address healthcare it’s the biggest bang for the buck as we’ve shown in this paper for a very cheap uh you know a

Few few cents a day and what really if you think about it the majority of age-related diseases are not caused by smoking not so much caused by a bad diet it’s caused by aging and we’ve far too long neglected that fact but finally i think many people in the world thanks to andrew’s book and perhaps some people who’ve read mine are understanding that you can’t

Just address diseases alone you need to get at the root cause of these diseases which is aging itself in other words the processes that lead our body to become frail and less able to fight against the ravages of time

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DAVID SINCLAIR “Metformin Helps Turn On the Longevity Genes" | Dr David Sinclair Interview Clips By Reverse Aging Revolution