How to Maximize Your Genetics for Longevity

How long you live has a very powerful genetic component. If you have long living parents, you have a 62% lower risk of all causes. 71% lower risk of dying to cancer and 85% lower risk of dying to heart disease. Having both a male and a female sibling who survived until the age of 105 increases your chance of living to 105 by 35.6 times compared to the general population. That's a major genetic advantage that most people don't have. However, every one of us can maximize our own genetic potential to live a long and healthy life, which I'm going to talk about in this video. Let's talk about understanding some of your biggest genetic risks because having certain unfavorable polymorphisms can increase your risk of chronic diseases that kill people. By understanding these genes, you can modify your lifestyle that reduces the genetic risk. By not knowing your genetic risks, you might be sleepwalking towards dementia, heart disease, or cancer. Let's start with the biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's. APOE or apoloprotein E. We all have two variants of APOE from 2 to 44. 44 is the highest risk and 22 is the lowest risk. 33 is no risk. Individuals with 44 have a 8 to 15 times higher risk of developing Alzheimer's. People with the APOE22 genotype have been seen to have a 66% lower odds of Alzheimer's compared to those with the APOE 2 and 3 genotype. 87% lower than those with APOE3 and 99.6% lower than those with APOE44. APOE2 is also linked to longevity independent of Alzheimer's. People with E22 live longer overall. Having the E22 or 23 genotype is linked to a greater odds of reaching extreme longevity and reduced risk of mortality compared to even 33. Having E4, even a single variant, is linked to a reduced odds of reaching extreme longevity. Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate the risk of having an E4 alil. Quality sleep and consistent sleep schedules have been seen to mitigate the risk. Drinking alcohol increases Alzheimer's risk in APOE4 carriers. So you might want to cut out the alcohol or keep it to a minimum if you have APOE4. A Mediterranean style diet has been seen to lower dementia risk by 35% in E4 carriers. Things like high blood pressure, hyper lipidmia, high blood sugar, high inflammation will be worse for E4 carriers because these are also risk factors for Alzheimer's and heart disease. So you need to be more careful with your biomarkers as a E4 carrier. Another genetic risk is having high LP little A levels which is a genetic risk factor for heart disease because LP little A is one of the most aogenic lipoproteins that can contribute to the athoscoric plaque accumulation. LP little A below 50 mgs per deciliter is considered normal but above five is already linked to a higher risk of heart disease. A 2021 large UK bioank study among 460,000 subjects discovered a linear increase in athosceric cardiovascular disease risk after an LPA concentration of 8 mg per deciliter. Unlike the awe 4, you don't need to get a DNA test to understand your LPA levels. You can measure LPA with a regular blood test. Yes, LPA levels do fluctuate slightly, but they're not going to move from wall to wall with just lifestyle. You can maybe modify it by about 20 to 30% at most. But if you have higher than normal LP delay levels, then chances are you have the genetics that increases your LP delay, which puts you at a disadvantage in terms of heart disease risk. The recommendation is the same with E4. If you have high LPA levels, you just need to be more careful and diligent with your lifestyle. Pay attention to your diet, your sleep, your exercise, and track your blood markers more regularly to keep them more in the optimal range. It's also seen that high inflammation status predicts future risk of heart disease more than LPA in people over the age of 75 with established heart disease. It means that high inflammation and high LPA are cumulative. It's better to have both lower, but you can't lower LPA unlike you can lower inflammation. There's certainly hundreds if not thousands of genes that affect your longevity in some way. Scientists don't understand all the genes that influence longevity and aging. Some of them increase your risk of heart disease. Others increase your risk of cancer and Alzheimer's. If you have family history of particular chronic diseases, such as everyone in your family gets heart disease or Alzheimer's, then it's very likely that you have some genetics for a higher risk of those specific diseases. So, if everyone in your family dies to heart disease, you need to take heart disease a lot more seriously compared to someone who has a lot of family members who live over the age of 100 with no chronic diseases. That's unfair, but that's just reality. The next most important thing you can do for your longevity is to never smoke. Doesn't matter what your genetics is. Smokers are up to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer. And smoking contributes to 80 to 90% of lung cancer cases. The risk increases cumulatively the longer you smoke and the older you get. Now, I'm sure you've heard about the grandpa or uncle who smoked every day several cigarettes and they still live to the age of 110. We've all heard of these stories, but these are anecdotal examples that actually support the idea that smoking is bad for you. These individuals who live to the age of 100 while smoking have extremely good genetics to begin with because most people even with good genes might not live to the age of 100. And second of all, we actually have to look at the broader data, not just individual examples because you can find anecdotal examples for everything. This 2004 study on centinarians in Rome saw that among 157 of them, 83.8% 8% had never smoked, 13.5% were former smokers, and only 2.7% were active smokers. So, out of all people in Rome, only 0.000017% were 100year-old smokers. Smokers were mostly males and they had more chronic diseases after the age of 65. You'll always find someone who smokes cigarettes and lives to the age of 100. The same way you'll find someone who drinks 12 cans of Coca-Cola every day and also lives to the age of 100. These are anecdotal examples from people who have extremely good genetics to begin with. For every smoker that lives to the age of 100, there's millions of smokers who die in their 60s and 70s to lung cancer. You just don't hear about them. There's also no safe amount of smoking. Smoking a single cigarette a day increases the risk of heart disease by about 50% as much as smoking 20 cigarettes a day does based on a 2018 meta analysis of 141 studies. So, it doesn't matter what your genetic potential for longevity is. You would live longer if you didn't smoke, even if you have good genetics. Now, one obvious thing to keep in mind is achieving optimal health. Healthier people live longer. And if you're in better health, you're more likely to live longer. That's just logical. Having a longer health span, staying healthier for longer predicts longer lifespan in super centinarians. Having optimal health has many components. I'll name some of the most important ones. Being on the leaner side. Research consistently shows that leaner people are healthier. And if you also have adequate muscle mass, being leaner is associated with longevity, especially for men. Having low inflammation, high inflammation is one of the main drivers of aging and chronic diseases. Having good metabolic health with low fasting insulin, low triglycerides, lower blood sugar, lower blood pressure, and low visceral fat. Having good muscle strength and votes support cardiovascular function and metabolic health. having good mental health and social health because these are underappreciated aspects of healthy aging and longevity. If you want to know about the biomarkers and their optimal ranges, then check out my book, The Longevity Leap. It covers over 70 biomarkers and is based on over 8,000 scientific references. Another important thing to talk about is luck. Some people live to the age of 100 not because they have exceptional genetics, but because they're just lucky. They're born at the right time in the right place and they avoid the unnecessary risks that could kill them. It's important to realize that you could die at any moment. You could get hit by a bus. You could accidentally overdose on caffeine powder thinking that is creatine. Or you could choke while eating a piece of meat. It only takes one accident and you're dead, unfortunately. And there are no respawns. Hence, it's beneficial to avoid unnecessary risks in your life. I'm talking about not going backpacking in Afghanistan or some other dangerous part of the world. It probably applies to skydiving or bungee jumping as well. If you're not an adrenaline junkie, and it's not like your bucket list activity, then why take the risk? Don't drive a motorcycle without a helmet and it's probably better to not drive a motorcycle at all because they're way more likely to get into traffic accidents and die to them. Don't drive a car without a seat belt. Definitely don't check your phone or something else while driving. It's very easy to just take your eyes off the road for one second and you'll hit the bus or drive off a cliff. I think you get the point. It doesn't matter how good your genes are if you do stupid things that cut your life short. Avoiding unnecessary risks can also be applied to your everyday lifestyle such as your diet, your supplements, your exercise, and your daily routines. With your diet, you should play it safe rather than follow some fringe diet with no evidence. With exercise, there's evidence that being sedentary is bad for you, but there's no evidence that you need to be an extreme exerciser or athlete to live longer. In fact, there might be some diminishing returns if you exercise too much. So, maybe it's better to be more moderate with your exercise. But do try to challenge yourself and get fitter over time. Don't take every random supplement you hear about. Take only the ones that have solid human evidence because let's be real, supplements probably contribute about 5 to 10% to your overall health and some of them could be potentially harmful, especially because supplements aren't regulated and you don't know what you're actually getting. With experimental longevity interventions like gene therapies and other treatments, it's probably better to wait a few years to see if they're safe instead of being a trailblazer. Trailblazers can often get burnt or they get unwanted side effects. Here's a quick rundown of the lifestyle activities that we know will maximize your genetic potential for longevity. Number one, don't smoke or vape. They're both bad for you. Although vaping is safer than smoking, maintain a body fat percentage of 8 to 10% for men and 20 to 30% for women. You don't want to be just skinny. You want to be 8 to 10% body fat lean with muscle as a man and 20 to 30% as a woman. Exercise four to five times a week mixed with weights and cardio. It's better to be decent in both rather than elite in one and bad at the other. You don't want to be a fat powerlifter or a skinny cyclist. Eat in a way that keeps your blood work clean and body weight lean, but minimizes ultrarocessed food. You want to eat mostly whole foods, but as long as you're otherwise healthy and with good blood work. Don't go super neurotic with your diet. Limit alcohol to less than two drinks per week. Ideally, between zero to one drinks per week is the best. More than that is probably more harmful. Although you can get away with a lot more than smoking. Sleep 7 to 8 hours. Research suggests 7 hours is lowest mortality, but you probably don't have short sleeper genes. So 7 to 8 hours is a safe bet. Avoid extremes in diet, exercise, supplements. I know eat a balanced diet sounds cliche, but more and more evidence is pointing in that direction. Eat moderate amounts of protein, moderate amounts of carbs, and moderate amounts of fats from various different sources and prioritize food quality. Test vital biomarkers annually to track your health status. I'm not going to go into the details in this video which markers to test, but things like lipids, inflammation, blood pressure, visceral fat, bone density, viax, etc. You really don't know how good your longevity genes are. That's why lifestyle is so important. You might think you have good longevity genes, so therefore, you'll take it easier with the lifestyle, but it might turn out that you actually don't have such good longevity genes, and vice versa. If you want to follow an evidence-based anti-aging lifestyle that has helped me and dozens of others reach top 1% of health, then check out our school community. We have a 30-day anti-aging challenge that gets you started. Plus, there's more advanced courses. link in the description.