Hello, health enthusiasts, and welcome to Rev Up Health, your go-to podcast for all things wellness. I'm Dr. Mark Hechler, and I'm Tandi Hechler. Together we're here to fuel your health journey with the best of functional medicine and holistic well-being. Each episode, we'll dive deep into topics that matter to your health, bringing you the latest insights, research, and inspiring stories. Whether you're on a quest for vibrant health or just looking for daily health tips, we've got you covered. So let's embark on this journey together and transform the way you live. So, Tandi, what's on our wellness radar for today?
Hello, hello, and welcome to today's podcast. Today we're going to talk a little more about what kind of healthy aging strategies we can do — what we can do in our lives if we want to avoid chronic disease and optimize our own health.
Aging as a Disease
I wanted to mention the book Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair. This was one of the first books we read as we were starting this journey to a more preventative type of medicine, and it was a very interesting concept of aging as a disease, and longevity. In this book, it talks about the fact that in the Merck Manual of Geriatrics, a malady that impacts less than half of the population is a disease, whereas aging affects 100% of the population, so it is not classified as a disease. However, aging is the cause of all the chronic diseases that we face. Chronic disease leads to aging, and vice versa.
One of the things that's important to know is that we're not really out to live forever — our plan is to live fully for all the years that we have, optimizing health, and not necessarily living forever. We just want good, productive, quality years of life. It's not about who can live the longest, because you can live for a long time in a wheelchair or a bed. But to be able to travel, pick up grandkids, go for walks, ride bikes, or run, you're going to need to optimize your health and avoid those chronic diseases that often happen after we continually put a lot of inflammation in our body. If you optimize your health, it's going to be automatic that you're going to live longer and healthier.
1. Nutrition and Gut Health
We're going to look at some different strategies, and number one is to start with nutrition. How are we fueling our bodies? We just have to emphasize gut health — that's what it boils down to. We want to make sure our gut is as optimized and healthy as it can be, because the gut is very important for a lot of aspects of life. It's something that allows pathogens into our body, but it also promotes hormone health, so there are a lot of things our gut does for us. What we can do to help optimize that is start with eating the right stuff — good, healthy fruits and vegetables and good, healthy, selective protein sources.
Eating organic when you're able to will help your food be the most nutritious and have the best building blocks for our cells. Anything you can do to support good nutrition is going to support good, healthy cellular growth and reduce oxidative stress. Oxidative stress leads to inflammation, which leads to a lot of chronic diseases — high blood pressure, atherosclerotic heart disease, neurodegenerative problems.
I really love how Dr. Casey Means talks about fueling your body in her book Good Energy, where she talks about looking at her plate and asking, "How are these foods going to build my new cells?" Things might taste good sometimes, but they're not always the best fuel, so it's real hard to stay on track sometimes.
Another one that falls into the category of nutrition is alcohol avoidance. There is no amount of alcohol that's tolerable — everybody says, "Well, do it within moderation," and yes, do it with moderation, but there's no level of alcohol ingestion that is actually good for you. That's where it's a little deceiving, because for years we've been told that red wine can be healthy and that we should consider red wine. I think it's a personal decision how you want to approach the topic of alcohol. We kind of just stumbled upon not partaking in alcohol when we decided to try Dry July. It's a conscious decision — you have to decide, "Do I want to sleep well this night, or do I want to have alcohol?" You can't do both; you can't have alcohol and sleep good at night.
2. Physical Activity
Next in line, number two: physical activity. Engaging in regular, consistent physical activity — and consistency is really the key. Sporadic involvement in activity is okay, but being consistent on a regular basis is what we really help to promote that mitochondrial health. It's basically move it or lose it — the more you're moving your body, the more your joints remember how that works and stay lubricated. If you sit around, things are going to happen. If you've ever broken a bone and had to have it casted for six weeks, you can tell the difference between the arm that hasn't been casted and the one that has.
Muscle health is very important for everyone, but it is so important for women, and it's been downplayed in women for a lot of years. Healthy aging really involves that healthy muscle. There's a tremendous movement right now with the female population and muscle development. It's not about getting big and bulky — it's about having good-quality muscle health. We talk about the muscles being very important for glucose disposal and hormonal regulation, but it's also important to think about our bones, because bone health is also a very critical part of living your fullest life and aging.
If we're more active in both aerobic activity and resistance training, that's going to help us from all those aspects. It supports VO2 max too, which is a very important part of fitness — a level of fitness, and an indicator for how well you're aging. The higher the VO2 max, the better you're going to be able to perform and be functional and optimal in health.
3. Mental Health
Number three: mental health is a very important thing. Practicing mindful meditation and things of that nature — just ways to tone it down and cool down. It's a good stress reliever, and stress is not good on the body from a chronic standpoint.
As someone who has struggled with mental health and worked on that very consistently for probably over 20 years now, it takes work — it really does take work — and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I've had therapists, energy workers, body workers, because there is such a huge connection between your mental health and your physical body. So making those connections and working that out — just like with physical activity, you may go get a trainer to help you be physically active; well, now maybe it's okay to get a therapist to have your mental therapy in check too. It's much more widely acceptable, and it's very common that you'll see a lot of people who have gone through therapy.
The other important piece to note is that when you start working on your mental health, it's not only helpful for you personally, it's also helpful for your relationships. The social interactions — it may not just be with a significant other or a partner; it's children, parents, extended family, even your co-workers. Social interaction is very important, and it plays into our cognitive levels too — our abilities to have mental thought processes that are easy to come by, instead of forgetting all the stuff. Maybe learning a new language or a new hobby or habit is very helpful.
4. Sleep
Now back to the one we mentioned initially, number four: sleep. Sleep is very, very important, and probably one of the most overlooked aspects of health. Some people think, "Well, I don't need much sleep, I can get by without sleep." No, you can't. I was right there at that time — I would be the one who could work till midnight or even 1 in the morning, get up the next day and do it again, and think, "I'm not tired, so I don't need to sleep." Not true, because sleep is so important for cellular repair, hormone balance, and brain health in general. If you've gone through schooling, you remember it's always important to get a good night's sleep before you take a test, because it's just better for mental clarity. We're talking about seven to eight, even nine hours for some people — some of the younger population actually need a little more sleep, and it's a little harder to get sleep when we get old.
Today's society has made it a little difficult to incorporate that sleep and have good sleep hygiene. We've got a lot of blue screens, we're taking our work home very often, and there's a perception that the busier you are, the better. Slowing down, turning those screens off, and taking time to prepare for sleep can really set you up to have better quality, which is so important. Sleep hygiene is something that's difficult to work with, but there are a lot of things we'll mention in other podcasts to optimize sleep.
I'll just say, if you're not dreaming, that could be an indicator that you're not getting great quality sleep, because dreaming is good — it helps you know that your brain has gotten a chance to slow down. If you've got sleep apnea, or a partner who has sleep apnea, they may not have significant dreams, because they don't get into the deeper levels of sleep to promote those dreams, so they never get that rest and relaxation. And it's not just individuals with sleep apnea — it can be folks who have a drink of wine before bed, or medications they have to take for sleeping purposes. There are a lot of things you can do to help optimize that sleep and dreaming.
Something we recently did that was super helpful — this is another cell phone talk — is turning off the notifications. Our cell phones are all we have; we don't have a landline, so we have to be available for phone calls. But having those phones next to the bed, you weren't getting great quality sleep because of that. Even just it buzzing — it buzzes, and you get tuned to that buzz, and it either wakes you up or you're listening for it, so you never really get the level you need. It's always been a little uneasy being a physician on call, but things have gotten easier and better over the years, so it makes a difference to avoid the distractions.
5. Supplementation and Hormone Support
Next: supplementation and hormone support. There's a whole vast variety of things, but we can give you some basics. We're looking at things like omega-3s and vitamin D. Those are huge — most of the population is deficient in vitamin D. 85% of us are deficient. We're inside all the time, and even people who are outside getting good sunlight are often deficient, and we're wearing sunscreen, which also helps reduce our vitamin D. Vitamin D plays such a big role in our other hormones and energy.
It's funny — we have some friends in Canada, and they were telling us they don't even test for vitamin D anymore, because everybody used to be deficient, so they don't even test it on the regular testing. And even in the United States, we've got lots of insurance companies that won't pay for a vitamin D test unless the patient has already been diagnosed as vitamin D deficient, which seems a little backwards. As we age, it's harder for us to make these hormones and get the vitamin D levels where they need to be, so aging has that part going against us too.
As far as the omega-3 goes, that's another one that's a little contradictory, because for so many years we were taught fat is bad — go fat free, don't eat fat — and now we know fats are very important for so many reasons. So omega-3 is a great supplement and good source.
6. Environmental Factors
Number six: environmental factors. There's a lot of exposure to toxins and pollutants out there — plastics. These are significant endocrine disruptors, and anything we can do to minimize our exposure — even the beauty products, sunscreens — it makes a difference; it affects how our system works. Smoking — there's no amount of smoke that's good, and vaping is the same. Some people think, "Oh, I don't smoke anymore, but I vape now," and really there's just as much. Smoking accelerates aging — it will reduce life expectancy by 10 years, and increase your risk fourfold for cardiovascular disease. 85% of all lung cancers are due to smoking or smoke exposure, and of course COPD is a very significant chronic disease too. These toxins — air pollution, heavy metals — affect a lot of the systems in our body at the cellular level, and even our cognitive and mental decline can be due to those types of things.
7. Chronic Disease Management
Chronic disease management is another way we can help reduce the aging that can occur. Manage the chronic disease, whether it be blood pressure, diabetes, or existing heart disease.
8. Community and Social Engagement
Number eight: community and social engagement. We've talked about this multiple times — how becoming involved, whether in different groups or with your own partner, matters. Become involved, because those connections will help give a person purpose, and that will help reduce our cognitive decline.
That is an interesting topic. I just had a conversation recently about being introverted, and how you can think that as an introvert you're kind of a loner and you do your own thing — but you still need that connection. No matter what type of personality you have, it's really important that you find your community of people. Maybe it's just one person, but you've got that person to have connection with. Obviously it's good to have a group, because inevitably — that's what happens when one person in a relationship passes, and then the partner passes within a short amount of time, just because that community and that social bridge is not there.
Where Supplements Really Fit In
I want to briefly touch on some of the supplements folks may have questions about. There's a variety of different supplements, and you can take those things for what they're worth. Dr. Peter Attia gave me the best analogy, and it really drives it home. He said, to help with aging and functional abilities as we get older, you can look at supplements this way: if you've got people on the Titanic, supplements are like deciding where the chairs are positioned, what am I going to eat for dinner, what am I going to drink, who am I going to talk to — whereas the things we can do physically, like exercise and eating right, are actually changing the course and direction of the ship. So supplements are small little parts of things. Does it matter? Yes, sometimes — it may improve the quality of your life or make you more comfortable — but it doesn't change the fact that the ship's eventually going to go down. So we really need to focus on the things we spoke about, like exercise and diet, which really make a difference in the quality of our life.
But the supplements — omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, coenzyme Q10 (a good antioxidant), curcumin, vitamin C, magnesium, and various probiotics for gut health — those are important too. There are ways you can also get probiotics just through nutrition, but supplementing probiotics — unfortunately, our gut health is so struggling; it's been sacrificed because of our awful diet. 70% of our diet is essentially from highly processed, overly processed foods that are just nutritionally void. And then you've got resveratrol, NAD boosters, and selenium — those are important for antioxidants.
Detoxification
I want to touch briefly on detoxification. Essentially, we want to help clean up our system. Your liver is working overtime to try to detoxify things, so anything we can do to help our own system work and clean up the engine will help us perform better and prevent chronic disease. Hydration, certain dietary food choices, exercise, even sauna — they talk about sauna being a detoxifier that helps the liver and kidney toxin load. Sleep we spoke about, and then avoiding alcohol and tobacco, the probiotics, and mindfulness for stress reduction.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, there are a lot of things we can do in our lives to minimize our exposures and optimize our health. You just have to step back and look at what you need to do — what change can I make, what can I focus on? You don't have to do it all at one time; do one thing at a time. There's a lot of noise and distraction out there, but you can't go wrong with exercise and dietary changes and improvements — those are just things that are very important.
So if you think of aging as a disease, and what steps you might take to treat that disease, that might help reframe how you look at aging. If you have any questions or comments, or want anything specifically spoken to in our podcast, reach out to us at Revelation Health and Wellbeing. Otherwise, we hope you have a healthy day.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Rev Up Health. We hope you're leaving with some valuable insights to supercharge your health journey. Don't forget to follow or subscribe to Rev Up Health wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a rating and review. Have a topic you want us to explore? Reach out to us on our social media channels — we love hearing from our wellness community. Until next time, keep thriving, and remember: your journey to health is a journey to a better you. Stay well, and we'll connect with you again soon. This is Tandi, and this is Dr. Mark, signing off from Rev Up Health. Take care.
The information provided in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. The content is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient and their healthcare provider. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your healthcare regimen, including diet, exercise, or treatment plans. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Revelation Health and Wellbeing.