Why Your Body Ages Faster When You're Overweight with Steven Austad

James Hill:

Welcome to Weight Loss And, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

Holly Wyatt:

And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and live your best life while you're doing it.

James Hill:

Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

Holly Wyatt:

Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

James Hill:

Ready for the “And” factor?

Holly Wyatt:

Let's dive in.

James Hill:

Here we go.

Holly Wyatt:

Today, Jim, we're talking about something that affects every single one of us: aging. Whether we like it or not, right?

James Hill:

Yeah, we don't like it, but it's reality.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. And if you're trying to lose weight or keep it off, you might be wondering, how does the number on the scale, how does my weight today influence how I'll age tomorrow?

James Hill:

Yeah, we know that excess weight is linked to increased risk for many diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. But what does it mean for us as we age? How long we live? How well we move? How sharp our minds stay? And can managing weight actually slow aging down?

Holly Wyatt:

Interesting. And Jim, this episode isn't about fear. It's going to be about clarity and empowerment. Because once you understand how weight and aging, how they interact, you can start making choices now, better choices now that protect your health and the quality of your life for years to come.

James Hill:

Yeah, Holly. And to help us explore all this, we're joined by one of the world's top experts on aging who happens to be here on our campus. Dr. Steve Ostad is a distinguished professor here at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he holds the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging, and he directs the NIH-funded Nathan Schach Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging.

Holly Wyatt:

He spent decades studying how humans age and what we can actually do to age better. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steven Austad:

Well, thank you. It's delightful to be here.

James Hill:

Steve, you and I talk frequently about this topic and for our audience, kind of start at the beginning. From your perspective, many of our listeners who manage their weight may have not thought much about healthy aging. Why should people manage their weight also think about healthy aging? Why should people manage their weight also think about healthy aging?

Steven Austad:

Well, because managing your weight is one of the best ways to ensure that you'll age in a healthy fashion. And we've actually known this in the aging field for about 80 years. There was very early studies of rats and mice that they basically reduced their diet by 30 to 40 percent. And it made them healthier and longer living in almost every way that we could measure, which no one suspected that something as simple as controlling your weight would have an influence on how long you live. But it's very clear now in everything from little worms to people.

James Hill:

Wow.

Holly Wyatt:

Interesting. And I want us to get into the details. I'm always like, well, is it the lower calories they're eating or is it actually the weight? But before we get into kind of some of the details, give us what's really happening inside our body as we age. We say we age, and I think we don't necessarily know what that means.

Steven Austad:

The fundamental processes of living are actually destructive. So I like to say if you don't eat and you don't breathe, you won't age. You won't have any problem with aging. And, you know, that's a humorous way of putting it, but there's something beyond that. Because what happens when we eat is we metabolize our food. We use that energy to do everything. But like everything, there's byproducts. There's side effects. And the side effects are damaging. And so the very act of burning energy hurts our DNA. It hurts pretty much everything inside our body or inside ourselves. And so one of the most obvious things that we could do is to slow these things down. Now, it's a little bit more complicated than that because you might think, well, if that's the case, then I want to just sit around all day. Because that way I'd have a low metabolic rate.

And one of the early aging researchers, a man named Raymond Pearl, actually wrote a paper called Why Lazy People Live the Longest. And, you know, he did a bit of bad research himself. He looked at a list of longevities of all these different occupations and found out that accountants and lawyers tended to live longer than people who worked in coal mines. and dug ditches for a living. And he assumed it was because the amount of work that they did, not because of their lifestyle factor. So he lived by his own advice and he didn't do any exercise. He ate as much as he wanted and he died of a heart attack at age 61. Metabolism, burning energy has its beneficial effects as well if we use it correctly. In other words, it's not good to be sedentary.

James Hill:

Yeah, I agree with that.

Holly Wyatt:

So is aging, the cells just breaking down? So what's happening in our body when we age?

Steven Austad:

So pretty much everything that can go wrong does go wrong with aging. Your DNA gets damaged. The energy-producing parts of your cells get damaged. The membranes of your cells, all this stuff. And that has far-reaching effects. You say, well, if this just goes on in a cell, what's the problem? Well, cells need to communicate with one another. Your brain has to talk to your stomach, has to talk to your muscles. Your muscles surprisingly talk back to your brain. This is something we've only realized recently when we discovered that physical activity or exercise is actually beneficial cognitively. It's protection to Alzheimer's disease.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah.

James Hill:

No question. So the goal is slowing it down. We're not going to defeat it and we're not going to stop it, but maybe we can slow it down. And Steve, a lot of people talk about, well, it's all genetics. You know, my parents lived a long life. I'm going to live a long life. Do we know how much is genetics and how much is modifiable through lifestyle?

Steven Austad:

We do, actually. We know quite a bit about that. One of the first people to look into this, believe it or not, was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. And he looked into a lot of family genealogies and tried to see what the impact of how long did your parents and your grandparents live. And it turns out it's a surprisingly small effect. It's about 20%.

James Hill:

Wow, that's less than I thought it would be.

Steven Austad:

Yeah, which means that you're in control. The rest of it is environment. Stuff that's not genetic is environment, which means you're in control of your health a lot more than I think people realize and the rate that you age.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I love it. I love that you believe you're in control of your environment. We do too, right? You can create your own environment and I love to hear that. Wow, we have that much power over this process.

Steven Austad:

Yeah, it's very reassuring. Now, I have to say there's one little caveat here and that is for those people who are lucky enough to have extremely long-lived parents and grandparents. Genetics seems to play a more important role in that, the real extreme. So if you had a parent that lived to be 100, and that's very rare even today, then your chances of living to be 100 are about 17 times higher than the average person. But that's only for the very extremes. For most of us, I like to say, if you want to live to be a healthy 80-year-old, take care of yourself. Eat right, stay active, stay mentally and physically active. If you want to be a healthy 100-year-old, then choose your parents wisely.

Holly Wyatt:

Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that. So how does carrying excess weight accelerate aging? Or, you know, kind of, how do the two come together?

Steven Austad:

One of the things that we know is that fat cells, particularly fat cells that are chock full of fat, produce inflammation and And one of the things we know is really important in aging is inflammation. Inflammation is one of those things that can be good for us. It's something that, you know, if we get an infection, then we want inflammation because that helps kill the infection. But it turns out with aging, we get this gradually increasing low level, constant inflammation. And one of the things that affects that is how much fat that we have in our body. So one way to protect yourself against aging is to reduce your weight.

James Hill:

Steve, you know, I started out many years ago in science, and I worked as a postdoc in a laboratory that studied adipose tissue biology. And back at that time, it was thought that fat cells weren't very active. They just stored fat, and that was all they did. But we've totally, totally changed that. And now we understand that fat cells play such a role. And I was actually just came across an article yesterday, you may have seen it, that showed that weight loss, I think they use bariatric surgery, and they showed that it actually cleaned out some of these cells and fat cells that tend to cause inflammation. Again, more solidifying the link between weight loss and healthy aging.

Steven Austad:

You're exactly right. And we're learning this about more and more cells in the body. We used to think, well, a cell does one thing. If it's a fat cell, it stores energy. If it's a muscle cell, it makes your muscles contract. But it turns out that cells have multiple functions. And fat cells secrete a lot of things. As you know, they secrete hormones and they secrete things that cause inflammation. And these are things that get worse as you get older. Because, you know, our body composition tends to change. As we get older, we tend to have less lean body mass and more fat body mass. That's a contributor to aging as well.

Holly Wyatt:

So can we reverse it? I was about to say I'm kind of a little bit depressed here. So we kind of see this relationship. What can we do about it? And maybe this is a good time to unpack. Is it just weight loss or is it nutrition or is it both? Is it how many calories you're eating? Can you give us shed any light on that?

Steven Austad:

Yeah. Well, one of the things that we've discovered in the last 25 years is that aging can be modified. It's not something that's fixed in our body. I don't think we can reverse it, but we can certainly slow it down. And, you know, because there are people now, there's a fellow just died. He got hit by a car. He was the first person to run a marathon at the age of 100. So that kind of shows what the human body is capable of if you treat it correctly. So the thing to remember about aging is that it's inevitable that it's going to happen, but it's not inevitable that it's going to happen at a fixed rate. We can modify it and we can also modify, even if we're still aging, we can still modify how successfully we're aging, how healthfully we're aging. One of the things is staying active and eating right. I mean, you know, it's almost, I don't know. It's almost depressing to think, look, this is what my mother told me when I was 10 years old. You know, eat right, stay physically active, don't smoke, that kind of thing. It's still extremely good advice.

James Hill:

Steve, a lot of our listeners are saying, oh my gosh, I've been overweight. My parents were overweight. It's kind of hopeless. Is there hope and is it ever too late to do something to age more healthy?

Steven Austad:

This is one of the things that I think has been most surprising that we've learned in the last 10 years. In the last 10 years in the experimental animals, we've come up with dozens of ways to slow aging. And the other thing that we've come up with is it seems like it's never too late. You can start doing things when you're at a very advanced stage, and it still helps, and it can still help a lot. We used to say, look, there's no point in having 90-year-olds lift weights because you can't build muscle when you're 90 years old. Well, it turns out it's simply not true. You can do lots of things, and you can have almost as big an effect if you start them late as if you started them early. So for those people who are out there who said, well, I've gotten to this point in my life. I haven't taken care of myself. I guess it's too late. No, it isn't. It isn't too late. But, you know, there's still plenty of things you can do to help prolong your health.

James Hill:

Boy, Holly, that is a really optimistic message right there.

Holly Wyatt:

Oh, I love it.

James Hill:

And if there's one thing we want the listeners to take away from this episode, it's never too late to lose weight, improve your diet, improve your physical activity. You aren't going to reverse aging, but you can do a lot to slow it down.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah, I think I hear that so many times. Is it too late for me? And so just that message alone, I think, is super important. You said there's multiple things you can do. And I love that. Jim and I don't ever believe there's just one thing, you know, one way to lose weight. And so let's talk about some of those things. And especially, I want to get in a little bit because there's some controversy. And I know sometimes the listeners ask me questions about this. Is it about restricting calories where we get our biggest bang for a buck? Or is it about losing weight and that inflammation you just talked about? Or is it about physical activity? Or you may say it's about all of them, but what things can they do?

Steven Austad:

Well, certainly for people who are overweight, the best thing that they can do is lose that weight. But it turns out that it may be the most important thing is having a period of fasting during the day or during the night. So I spent years doing these experiments in mice and rats where we fed them less and they lived longer. And I always thought, well, it's got to be the calories because we're just feeding them the same food. We're just feeding them less. And what I didn't think about, and I'm kicking myself now because I should have realized this, it's for the ones that were feeding less.

Every day when I went in to feed them, they're hanging on their cage waiting for their food, and they gobble it all down in 30 minutes. And so it's not just that they're eating less, but they're fasting for 23 and a half hours a day. And it looks like now that that period of fasting is at least as important as the amount of food that they were eating. So that's as now it used to be. We thought, well, nobody can eat 30 or 40% less than they want to for the rest of their lives. And so this was kind of good science, but without much practicality. But now that we know that a period of fasting can be so beneficial, anybody who would confine their eating to a certain amount of time to, let's say, 10 hours, eight or 10 hours a day, and eat as much as you want then, and don't eat the rest of the time. It's turning out that that has many benefits, and it's not that hard to do.

James Hill:

Boy, Steve, I'm glad you brought this up because Holly and I talk about this a lot. And if you think about it, kind of the American pattern is whenever you're hungry, you go to the refrigerator. You never go without eating. And I think of it somehow, you're not exercising your fat cells. You're always putting stuff in, but you never bring stuff out. And in a way, I think these periods of fasting are a way of exercising your metabolism.

Steven Austad:

Yeah, and I think it's been so gratifying to figure this out because we've known for so long that eating less was beneficial, but we never thought until recently, well, it's not just the amount, it's the timing of what you eat. And I really like that because there's a group of people that saw all this research, the eating less, and they decided that they were going to do this for the rest of their lives. They're called the Calorie Restriction Society. And a couple of times they've asked me to come and talk at their national conference. And these are people that are really excruciatingly thin. And in fact, the first time they went, they said, well, are you coming to the conference banquet? And I said, oh, I wouldn't miss the conference banquet for anything, believe me.

But it turns out that they didn't have to do that. They were torturing themselves needlessly because we now think that most, if not all, of the benefit that you got from starving yourself like that, you can get from just this periodic fasting. The other advantage of periodic fasting is that if you starve yourself all the time, you're not going to be very physically active because that's just going to make you hungry. And so the people in that society were urging one another, we've got to work out more. We've got to exercise more. And somebody says, well, it always makes me hungry if I do that. So you're not really caught in that bind, really, because you can't fast and also exercise.

James Hill:

See, I love this thinking because it's never made sense to me why eating less would be associated with longevity and not physical activity. And to me it's if you want to have a metabolism which supports healthy aging, you need to exercise it through fasting and exercise it through exercise. And to me, those are the things that we should focus on.

Steven Austad:

You're absolutely right. And there are real penalties to doing a lot of eating less and a little exercise, which those people, it turns out, have pretty poor bone quality and they have very low muscle mass. Now, when you get older and you have poor bone quality and low muscle mass, that's a recipe for disaster.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah.

James Hill:

Oftentimes you hear the old, well, people need to eat less and exercise more. But Holly and I have turned it around and say, you need to eat more and exercise more because the people that maintain weight at a high flux, a lot of calories coming in, a lot of calories going out, I think are metabolically more healthy and I think are going to age better.

Holly Wyatt:

But Jim, I think we need to change it. We may need to add, eat more, exercise more, and have some periods of fasting.

James Hill:

I love it. I love it. This is really important information for our listeners. This period of fasting, this has really changed the way we think about how dietary patterns can affect longevity.

Steven Austad:

Yeah. And I have to tell you, my introduction to this idea that it's never too late came from an experiment that made world headlines about 15 years ago. They had a drug that they thought would slow aging in experimental animals. And they wanted to try it out. And they wanted to put it in the food because it's easy to administer if you put it in their food. And when they did that, it turns out that making the food destroyed the drug. So they had to figure that out. And while they were figuring that out, they'd set aside these animals. They're getting older and older and older while these researchers are trying to figure out, well, how do we put the drug in their food? And when they finished, when they figured it out, these animals were the equivalent of about 60 years old. So they had to make a decision. Do we start the drug now when they're the equivalent of 60 years old, or do we start with a whole new group of younger animals? And if they had asked me, which fortunately they didn't, I would have said, no, no, no, it's too old. There's no way that this can still have an effect. But in fact, they didn't. They went ahead and the animals had just about as much of an extension in their life and health as if they had started when they were 30 years old.

James Hill:

Wow.

Holly Wyatt:

So that brings to one question, though, that comes up a lot. Is there an age where losing weight might not be a good thing? We talk a little bit about the obesity paradox, and as you get older, that may change a little bit. So is there an age where you say, don't concentrate on weight loss, maybe concentrate on something else?

Steven Austad:

Yeah, later in life. The later in life, it becomes a problem because there's actually data that shows that people are slightly overweight late in life actually do better if there's some kind of emergency. If you break a leg, you know, if you get in a car wreck, if something happens, having a little bit of extra energy reserve can actually be useful. Now, you want to make sure that part of that energy reserve is muscle because that's really, really important. But, yeah, there is a certain amount of time if you start trying to lose weight you've already lost a lot of muscle. When you lose weight you also lose muscle. Well, you're going to make yourself frail. And by frail, that actually has a pretty specific meaning in my field, which is an inability to respond to some kind of an emergency, for your body to respond. If you need a surgery, for instance, you want to have some energy on you to help you recover from that surgery. If you're morbidly obese it's always probably going to be helpful to lose weight. But if you're a bit overweight and you're at an age where you're you're really slowing down, you might not want to lose too much weight. What I would suggest doing in that case just increasing your amount of exercise because increasing the amount of muscle is what you really want to do. And we know that exercise alone is not much of a weight loss help because you just don't burn that much energy. But in fact, building muscle can be and you can always do this.

James Hill:

Yeah, we talk, Steve, all the time about exercise is not essential for weight loss, but it's essential to keep weight off. And one of the reasons is, is because it keeps your muscle mass and keeps your metabolism geared up.

Steven Austad:

Right. I used to do research in Papua New Guinea and miles and miles and miles from the nearest road of people who still hunted and gathered for their living. And the fact is those people were so muscular. Now they weren't bulky because they didn't have enough food. But they were incredibly muscular and I've always considered myself to be a fitness guy. It's important to me. I've worked really hard at it. When I got around these people, it was pathetic how I felt relative to them. The first time I was there, I had a day pack on my back that I was going to carry up this mountain. And the village chief said no no no you can't carry that you're going to slow us down too much. And I go. I was offended. I'm going to humor him.

Holly Wyatt:

So he just looked at you and said, "You're going to slow you're going to slow us down. I already know."

Steven Austad:

Yeah. Well, he says, you're a white guy from somewhere else you're going to slow us down. It turns out he took my bag, gave him, okay, here's my pack. He turns around, he hands it to his 10 or 11 year old daughter who puts it on her head and walks up this mountain. And really, 45 minutes later, I was so glad that she had that.

James Hill:

Steve, in the last segment here, I want to change topics a little bit. And Holly, this relates... Steve and I meet every now and then for coffee and just share ideas. And we had coffee a couple of weeks ago. And I was telling Steve sort of said, what's new in the obesity field? And I said, well, it's these GLP-1-based meds are everywhere. And Steve said, oh, yeah, they're anti-aging drugs. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. So Steve, tell us a little bit about your thinking there.

Steven Austad:

Yeah, so one of the things that those of us who work in aging are always saying is that if we can find drugs that attack the basic aging process, that what that will do is that will delay all diseases at the same time. Because most of the things that go wrong with us are things that happen later in life. And what we tend to do medically is we say, okay, well, we've got to worry about the cancer, the heart disease, the dementia and all. But if you actually address aging, all these things get delayed or even eliminated. And one of the things that turns out with the GLP-1s is that they not only help people lose weight, but they also prevent heart disease, some types of cancer, they're helpful delaying dementia, chronic kidney disease, glaucoma. I mean, it's almost like this drug is really attacking the fundamental aging processes, not just diabetes or weight loss.

James Hill:

Wow. That's amazing because I didn't think of it that way. But now that you mention it, I mean, again, the weight loss is only part of it because it seems like everywhere we look, the meds are having a positive effect on health and delay or prevention of chronic disease.

Steven Austad:

Yeah.

Holly Wyatt:

And do you think it's independent of weight? In other words, do you think it's having these effects even if you didn't need to lose some weight? You take this drug and you see that effect? Or do you think most of it is happening through the change in body composition, the loss in fat?

Steven Austad:

That's a really good question. And it's a question we're not really in a position to answer now because very few people who don't have an issue with obesity or diabetes have been taking these drugs. And there have been no really well-controlled trials, but we're desperately interested in finding out if that's the case or not. Because like I said, a simple fasting regime can slow aging. Wouldn't it be nice if these drugs would do the same thing? Now, we know that if you give them to people who aren't overweight, don't have diabetes, they will still lose weight. They won't lose as much weight, but they will lose weight.

Holly Wyatt:

And they'll lose muscle. And we just talked about how important that is. So you got to kind of balance that a little bit.

James Hill:

But I just wonder if there's not room for a lot of research here, looking at lower doses of these meds, et cetera, looking at is there a role for them in people that aren't overweight?

Steven Austad:

Right, and combining them with exercise regimes, potentially taking them intermittently, a month on, a month off, something like that. There's all kinds of possibilities. So maybe that those of us in the aging field, we've been looking everywhere we can for drugs to slow aging, and it may be that the diabetes folks found one and we missed it. It's kind of embarrassing.

James Hill:

But Holly and I talk about this a lot, Steve, is that it's not just drugs and it's not lifestyle. Now that we have these drugs, I think it's what's the right combination.

Steven Austad:

I agree. And I think that's something that we haven't been very good at. There's been a group of people that have been looking at lifestyle, a group of people that are looking for the fountain of youth and a pill, and they don't talk to one another and they don't interact sufficiently. But I agree with you. I think this is absolutely a key. And I think we're going to learn a lot. You know, I think I said at one of our last meetings, Jim, that I met a woman who was taking microdoses of GLP-1s for menopausal symptoms. And she said they were miraculous. And I never thought about that. And I don't know if this is just her or if this is something that might really be another feature of the GLP-1s. We'd had no idea.

James Hill:

So stay tuned. This is an exciting area.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, but I think that micro dosing may be important. But when you give the drug in the normal dosage for weight loss, kind of, for a lot of people, not everybody, it doesn't work in everybody even, shuts off appetite. And shutting off appetite completely worries me a little bit because once again, do we really want to be at very low levels of intake all the time? We need some nutrients. We want to preserve our muscle. But the idea of a different dosage, and like you said, maybe it's every other month or doing it in combination. I think that's where this might really work. But just taking them like we're using them for weight loss may not be the best way.

Steven Austad:

And this is one thing we don't know. We don't know what real small doses of these drugs do. You might get most all of the benefits that you got, or even more benefits at a low dose because they were really developed for weight loss and for diabetes treatment. So we don't know about these other potential uses.

James Hill:

So, Steve, look at the future here. How quickly are we going to make progress here in helping people not just live longer, but being healthier at an older age?

Steven Austad:

You could say we already know how to do that. The question is getting people to do it because people that, you know, college professors live longer and stay healthier than people who dig ditches for a living. It's not because we're smarter. It's because we don't put a lot of wear and tear on our body. We know about all the health benefits of eating right and getting plenty of exercise. And so there's really a huge gain to be made here from the people that are the least healthy now if we can somehow motivate them to do the things we already do. And then of course there's all this research now. I mean, there's billions and billions and billions of dollars coming in from billionaires that never wanted to die. They may be doing this for perfectly selfish and narcissistic reasons, but I don't care if all that money leads to something that we can benefit from.

James Hill:

Absolutely.

Holly Wyatt:

So I have one more question people always ask me. Is there a specific biomarker blood test that people could use to track kind of where they are in terms of their biological age? You know, you see websites that have you come out and try to calculate your biological age, but is there a blood marker? Is there any way you could look and say, where am I now?

Steven Austad:

Yeah, that's a good question. Biomarkers, we're calling it. This is the grail of aging research, really, is to do this. There's lots of things that you can purchase commercially to do this. I would not recommend any of them at this point. It's premature. There's a lot of interesting science that's developing. But right now, I'll just give you an anecdote. A friend of mine took his own blood sample, divided it up into about a dozen parcels and sent it out to these various companies and said, OK, what's my biological age? And his biological age came back, ranged from about 28 to 75.

Holly Wyatt:

Oh, my gosh. I love this.

Steven Austad:

And I think his real age was 64, I believe. So this is the kind of thing that you have to be careful of there. You don't want to just increase the health of these people's wallets. You want to actually increase your own health.

James Hill:

We see that a lot in our field of people getting ahead of the science. We eventually may get there, but we're not there yet.

Steven Austad:

Right.

Holly Wyatt:

As a physician, this really bothers me because depending on that number, you are going to take action. And that number was nothing, you know, and you may go out and do something based on on something that has no validity. And it might even make things worse. I mean, that's kind of the case. Oh, I'm 28. I don't need to do anything. It looks like I'm fine. And, you know, you're not. So, wow.

Steven Austad:

I would particularly be aware of the ones that ask you what your age is, because my thought is there's a lot of room here for telling you what you want to hear.

James Hill:

Exactly.

Holly Wyatt:

And then they sell you a supplement, right?

Steven Austad:

Right. Exactly.

James Hill:

All right, Holly, you know what time it is now?

Holly Wyatt:

Oh, yeah. Listener questions. Rapid fire.

James Hill:

You want to go first?

Holly Wyatt:

Oh, yeah, I'll go first. So first one from a listener. I'm 45 and I feel like I'm aging fast. I'm not sure what that feels like, but they feel like they're aging fast. What should I focus on right now?

Steven Austad:

Ah, well, I would ask a follow-up questions. How much do you weigh? Would be one of the first ones. Do you smoke? Do you drink excessively? My guess is if I really asked this person, and I said, what do you think you need to do? They would probably be able to tell me. So I'll just say, so they can hear it from an authority, okay? Watch what you eat. Get more exercise. If you smoke, stop. Just doing those things will actually slow your aging and make you feel better forget about aging it'll make you feel better it'll make you more active it'll make you happier and.

James Hill:

That's the goal, didn't it? It's not just to live long but it's to be healthy and happy as you're later in life. I love it.

Steven Austad:

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that worries me about the GLP-1s is that they reduce appetite because food is less appealing. Well, for some of us, you know, having food be less appealing doesn't sound all like it.

James Hill:

Oh, Steve, we see that. People miss that. They miss going out and having a nice dinner because food doesn't do it for them anymore.

Steven Austad:

Right.

James Hill:

All right. Here's another one. Are the anti-aging supplements and creams mostly hype?

Steven Austad:

Yes. The one thing I'd say that isn't hype is there are skin creams that contain something called Retin-A, and these are things that you need to get with a prescription. You can't get them down at the GNC. They really can do some remarkable things with skin aging. But for most the supplements, there's either no evidence whatsoever or there's a kind of a little bit of evidence. But every time we've looked at these supplements so far, it's turned out they haven't really been all that beneficial.

Holly Wyatt:

Do you take any supplements for aging?

Steven Austad:

I do not. I don't even take multivitamin.

Holly Wyatt:

Wow. I think that's interesting. You're an expert in this area. If there was any data, you would be the one taking it, I think.

Steven Austad:

I would. And when the data comes in and it convinces me, believe me, I will be doing it immediately.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah.

James Hill:

All right, Holly, you want to do a couple of vulnerability questions?

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah.

James Hill:

For our listeners, Steve and I are of a similar age, and I'm not going to tell you what that age is, but I will say we're closer to the end of our careers than the beginning. And my question to you, Steve, is how are you seeing now the rest of your life in terms of how you're going to approach it, what you want to get out of it, et cetera. And I say that because I'm looking at similar things, so I'm very interested in your answer.

Steven Austad:

Yeah, well, to me, the main thing that I want to have is I want to have a goal, and I want to be able to feel like I'm moving towards that goal. And that goal is involved with helping people stay healthy. And whether I continue to work at a university or not, I'm still going to be working at that because I think it's an important thing that we have the knowledge and we can keep track of the science. And we can keep people from getting taken advantage of by things that don't help them. So I'm really thinking, you know, I have so many projects and, you know, somebody said, well, if you didn't work anymore at UAB, what would you do? I said, oh, are you kidding? I have books to write. I have places I haven't been yet. I have things I haven't tried yet.

James Hill:

Fantastic.

Steven Austad:

I haven't skydived and I'm really thinking about skydiving. I have bungee jumped off of 110 meter waterfall, but I haven't skydived yet. So there's lots of things I still want to experience.

James Hill:

I love it.

Holly Wyatt:

It's this intrinsic motivation, purpose and passion is driving you forward. And that's the key for so many things.

Steven Austad:

Yeah. A friend of mine who's head of an aging organization was forced to retire by his firm at age 65. And he said, that's the worst thing that ever happened to me. Because he didn't have goal. That was it. His life was tied up with his job. That's not true for a lot of us, including Jim, I know.

James Hill:

Yeah, that's true.

Holly Wyatt:

It sounds like what you do in your life and your work at UAB have been hooked together a lot. I mean, there's a lot together in that. So if you step away from UAB, that doesn't take away from all the other stuff that is hooked to that and what really brings you joy, basically.

Steven Austad:

That's exactly right.

Holly Wyatt:

All right. So here's one more. What's one part of aging that still challenges you, maybe worries you, either personally or professionally? Something you're like, okay, this is something I need to work on, maybe.

Steven Austad:

Well, I tell you that one of the things that bothers me is for my whole life, I've been something of a jock, you know, and the loss of the ability to be excellent at various athletic abilities. It's still pretty good for someone my age, but in fact, I know that I'm not competitive. That bothers me, you know, but there's nothing I can do about that at this point.

Holly Wyatt:

But wait, I got to tell you something.

James Hill:

I can relate to that.

Holly Wyatt:

You can relate. But this, I'm a runner. And as I get older, I don't get faster. I'm getting actually a little slower. But I move up. And guess what? I started winning. I started winning awards, right? Because there's not as many people. So you can do it. You can do it.

Steven Austad:

Yeah.

Holly Wyatt:

It doesn't have to.

Steven Austad:

The guy that ran the marathon at age 100, he didn't start running until he was 89.

James Hill:

Wow.

Steven Austad:

So it's just been that it's never too late.

Holly Wyatt:

And I'm guessing he won his age group. I'm guessing he...

James Hill:

He's probably the only one in his age group.

Holly Wyatt:

Well, that's what I mean, Jim. Yes, but he won it, you know?

Steven Austad:

Yeah, he set a world record for his age group. Everything from the 1,500 meters to the marathon in the same day. It was a day run.

Holly Wyatt:

Love that.

James Hill:

Steve, this has been great. I'm going to maybe sum up a little bit here. In that there are things that you can do to slow aging and feel better as you age: losing weight, exercise. And one of the big ones we talked about today was having this period of fasting where you allow your metabolism to actually work to use calories that aren't coming in through your mouth. So, there's a lot that you can do, and losing weight, eating healthy, periods of fasting, physical activity, and watch the smoking and drinking, but we know what to do it. Now, you guys have the ability to go out and do it, and really, you're not going to defeat aging, but you can slow it down.

Holly Wyatt:

Yeah. So, Steve, thank you so much for joining us. This is a complex topic, but you made it feel empowering, and you gave us, I think, so much to think about and to be hopeful about.

James Hill:

And, Steve, I want to put in a plug. You're starting a podcast. You want to tell us about that?

Steven Austad:

Yeah, the podcast is going to be called The Longevity Lab. It's done with a local TV personality, David Lamb, and we're putting together our first few episodes right now, so stay tuned.

James Hill:

So, take a look at it. Longevity Lab. Check it out, and you'll get some more tips for healthy aging. Steve, thank you, and we'll talk to you next time on Weight Loss And.

Holly Wyatt:

Bye, everybody

James Hill:

And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss And. We hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

Holly Wyatt:

If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

James Hill:

We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

Holly Wyatt:

And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.