231: David A. Sinclair | Anti-Aging Research And Understanding In “Lifespan”

When it comes to anti-aging research, Dr. David A. Sinclair of Harvard Medical School is on the forefront of research and innovation. He joins on episode 231 to discuss his new book Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To.

Dr. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1995.

He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. with Dr. Leonard Guarente where he co discovered a cause of aging for yeast as well as the role of Sir2 in epigenetic changes driven by genome instability. In 1999 he was recruited to Harvard Medical School where he has been teaching aging biology and translational medicine for aging for the past 16 years. He was also on TIME magazine’s 2014 list of the “100 most influential people in the world”.

Show notes:

• Dr. Sinclair’s background, and what led him into the field of anti-aging research
• what it is about adversity that leads to a chemical response in the body, across sirtuins and more
• how aging is not yet thought of as a disease, and how that can change through communication efforts
• why society and people can seem stuck in a slowed form of evolution as compared with where we are headed
• why studying organisms fighting adversity, similar to how Dr. Cockell studied extremophiles, is the way to find most answers
• how stress at a cellular level is different from psychological stress that releases cortisol in the bloodstream
• what it means to have senescent cells accumulate in the body as one ages over time
• how an optic nerve was regrown in a mouse, and what that means for our potential nerve-based regrowth
• what kinds of demands Dr. Sinclair has on his time with regards to the research he does
• how the Horvath Clock represents true age of a person beyond external appearance and other metrics

This was an enjoyable episode, and book, that is right on the forefront of aging research and technology. Dr. Sinclair is very active in this space, and it shows. You can check out his website, the book on Amazon, or some of his research.