I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable passion. Satiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can.

And that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness. From personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness.

Join me on the journey to better health. So you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. What if 100 was the new 30? Well, today’s guest is going to tell you how to. Make that exactly so. I’ve got Dr. Jeff Gladden with me today. He is an interventional cardiologist and at, in his 50s, he had some wild health stuff come up where he was told, you’re just getting old, take an antidepressant.

And that changed everything for him. And we are the beneficiaries of that today because he is getting old. He’s going to dive into some longevity strategies that made me go, when’s your office open? So I am super excited to share him with you. He’s the author of the book, 100 is the New 30. And guess what?

You’re going to get three secret little chapters. The first three chapters of his book for free. I’m going to put that at jjvirgin. com forward slash Gladden. Dr. Jeffrey Gladden is the founder, CEO, and medical director of Gladden Longevity. He’s the host of Gladden Longevity Podcasts. And an expert in longevity medicine, health optimization, and human performance.

He graduated with honors in medicine from Temple University. And again, he has worked all throughout the cardiology field, which has really given him a great perspective, um, that he has now shifted into longevity. So, I will be right back with Dr. Jeff Gladden. Stay with me.

Dr. Jeff Gladden, welcome to the show. Thank you.

Good to be here, JJ.

I’m thrilled you’re here. We have something We have a, a concept In common. Okay. Neither of us like the idea of aging gracefully.

Oh, yeah, that’s a, I don’t even know what that means. It means making peace with decline. I, it doesn’t resonate.

I love when I heard you say that. I’m like, that’s so good. Yeah.

And of course, who doesn’t love the idea that a hundred is the new hundred? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I sort of thought through the whole Aging process and you think about what it is. We really enjoy about ourselves, right?

It’s really our youthfulness and people focus on a number like I’m gonna be a 160, you know, whatever the number is, but it’s It’s an abstraction. It’s so hard to imagine what that even means. Um, and yet I can relate and you can relate to what it is to be 30 or 20 or whatever it is when you’re youthful, right?

And that’s, that’s the joy of living right there when you have the confidence to do what you want to do and do anything you want to do. That’s what I’m going for. So, you know, it’s so

interesting is I actually am enjoying life more now at 60. Like if you said you could freeze at any age,

yeah.

I would actually say

now.

Okay, I’ll, I’ll give you a little insight on that, I think. Okay. So, you know, my, my real concept here is when I’m 100 years old is to have a 30 year old body and a 300 year old mind. Oh, see, that is perfect. Right? Yes. And I think what you’re commenting on about loving being 60 is the fact that at age 60, you’ve acquired wisdom, experience, insight, a sense of equanimity, a sense of peace about life.

And that’s really a joy. That’s a joyous way to live life, right? And so I think that’s what you’re resonating with. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always say, if I could just have skipped through the twenties, thirties, forties and gotten into this place. Now I hear you in your fifties, something went down that got you very into the longevity space.

Yeah,

that’s right. So my background is interventional cardiology. As you know, when I was here in Dallas, we’re in Dallas right now. And I was, I’d practiced that here and I was in the middle of Many things, building my own heart group. I had 10 offices. I co founded a heart hospital up the road in Plano, Texas, with Baylor and another cardiologist.

And, and I started getting sick in my 50s. Basically, I was exhausted all the time, uh, and I was putting on weight, uh, which was unusual for me. I’ve always been athletic and thin and it was a new thing for me. And when I would become stressed, uh, and I had a lot going on, um, I would feel myself going over a cliff of depression and I was developing brain fog.

And I’m like, holy cow, what’s going on? My dad and Sounds like

every 50 year old woman.

Right. Well, sort of, right? Yeah. Andropause, menopause. Um, my dad ended up dying with dementia, right? So when I started to feel all these symptoms, I’m like, oh my gosh, what is going on? You know, what is really going on? And I went into my local physician, friend of mine, and said, you know, here’s what’s going on.

He said, well, let me do some blood work. And it’s like, okay, great. Let’s see what comes back. And when it came back, I was told, you know, everything checks out for your age. Right? Right. Everything checks out for your age. You’re just getting older. Why don’t you take an antidepressant, right? And they said this to a doctor.

Mm hmm. It’s the most existential moment of my life, right? It’s like, oh my gosh, I have reached the pinnacle and it’s just gonna be downhill from here. And I’m like, That’s not happening. I’m not going to let that happen. So that’s when I threw myself into the whole functional integrative age management medicine space.

And then it took me two and a half years. We could do it now if we had the labs in front of us, we could do it in two minutes, but it took me two and a half years to basically figure out what was going on. And, uh, and you know, after I, after I cracked the code, and I can tell you what it was, I had subclinical hypothyroidism.

All my thyroid numbers look normal, right? But, At a cellular level, which only gets detected with biometric testing, rarely done, um, you know, I was really depleted in the thyroid. Then genetically, I don’t convert inactive thyroid to active thyroid in my brain efficiently at all. So for me to get on just Synthroid or T4, right, uh, which is normally levothyroxine, which is normally prescribed, would be a disaster for me.

So I got on a combination of T3, T4, and the lights came back on. Then I was going through enterprise. I was. I need a testosterone, DHEA, right? I lost 20 pounds of fat, put on 10 pounds of muscle. It’s like, well, that’s pretty cool. And then the brain fog and the depression was a function of the way I make neurotransmitters.

I don’t make them very efficiently, and I have to be on the right set of supplements in order to do that efficiently. Once I got on those, it was like I could come under lots of stress. And I wouldn’t be impacted and then I really learned how to meditate and that had a massive effect also, right? So anyway, I I felt you know, two and a half years later I felt better than I had in a long time and i’m like, oh my gosh I can’t practice sick care anymore.

I have to go into health care. This is true health care I want to help people do this. That’s

so great. Yeah, so Obviously when you think of traditional aging,

yeah,

they come in they go. You’re just getting older And they just start managing you with polypharmacy.

That’s right you

Your approach seems to be 180 degrees different.

That’s right.

So, someone walking in, you know, what, what, how do you evaluate someone? Sure. If someone’s looking at this going, you know, and, and I would guess you probably felt better than in your 50s than you had in your 30s.

Uh, yeah, I did feel better than my, 30s. Which is awesome

and possible and why you say 100 is the new 30, but.

Someone’s starting to look at this going, you know, I’m starting to notice that my energy’s not where it is. Maybe I’ve got some brain fog, etc. Like what’s the, what’s the process?

So, you know, I think the best approach to any situation is to actually deconstruct the problem. Before you start recommending solutions.

There are a lot of shiny objects in this bio hacking, age hacking, age management space, right? It’s like, oh, you need that, you need this, and you need that. And it’s like all those things can be great. But unless you’ve taken the time to deconstruct the situation, actually understand who you are and what your genetics are and how they are predisposing you to certain things, both good and bad, and you understand where you are in the aging process.

Really, they talk about biological age, right? But we’re not one biological age. We’re, we’re a hundred biological ages, right? A brain age, a heart age, a blood vessel age, a telomeric age, a DNA methylation age, on and on and on. So you have all these different ages. So if you don’t know, you know, what cards you’re holding and you don’t know where you are in the game, you can never really hope to win.

And the problem is that we tend to think of aging as being linear, right? It’s like every year I’m another year older, I feel, don’t feel maybe quite as good, or I feel about the same. But it’s actually exponential and people don’t, don’t relate to that, right? Even though we see it all around us, we know people age more between 70 than 30 and 40.

But if we ask ourselves, what are we going to be like 10 years from now? What are we going to be like 20 years from now? It’s almost impossible to imagine that we’re going to be any different than we are today. So we’re in a game that’s exponential, exponential decline, and yet we have linear strategies to an exponential problem.

You know, grasping for this and that, that’s a linear strategy. You actually have to have a comprehensive, really exponential strategy for an exponential problem. And that’s what we focus on doing.

That makes so much sense. It feels like to me Like compound interest. It is right where you’re saving, saving, saving.

Right. Saving. All of a sudden you have a lot of money. That’s right. You know, it’s like, to me it’s the same with muscle mass. We’re putting all of this on. That’s right. Right. What about the difference in aging? And I wanna get into how we really look at this, this comprehensive approach, but, but I wanna put the focus on women.

Sure. And. Besides the obvious of women, you know, have, go through menopause, men do go through endopause, but it’s not the same. Not the same, no. What are the differences in the way that women age versus the way that men age?

Well, I think everybody knows that women are somewhat protected from cardiovascular disease while they’re menstruating.

Um, and that’s a, that’s kind of a gift. It’s a gift of estrogen, if you will. We know that, that when women go through menopause, it’s almost like falling off a cliff in terms of the aging process. It accelerates aging very, very quickly. And without hormone replacement, um, it’s very, very difficult to combat the aging.

Issues that show up with hormone depletion. For example, loss of muscle mass, loss of cardiovascular capacity, loss of bone density, loss of brain function. There was a fascinating study done by Kaiser looking back at 500, 000 women that they had treated. And women that had, there were 250, 000, women that had any form of hormone replacement therapy, even things that we would think were not either adequate or the right thing, like unopposed estrogen, or just a little bit of progesterone, maybe just testosterone, or maybe all three, and maybe they only took it for six months, or maybe they took it for a year and a half.

Even with that, that group had a 50 percent reduction in their dementia risk going forward. Unbelievable, right? Unbelievable. And yet, you know, we, we, we, people still in the traditional medicine space sort of balk at the idea of bio identical hormone replacement, right? When it’s really the obvious thing to at least look at.

Now, it’s not right for everybody. If you’ve got cancer, if you’ve got other things going on, it may not be the right thing. But, you know, just things like that. So really, I think, The initial step when you’re going through menopause is to say, okay, how do I get my hormonal health back? Right? And then from there, you’ve got to deal with all the same aging things that other people do.

But I think that’s the biggest piece of it right there.

And in helping a woman get her hormonal health back, is there more to it than just doing hormone replacement therapy?

Well, there’s a lot to it. So in our, in our world, we’re basically, deconstructing the situation. So let’s say we were working with you.

Okay. We would, we would do very comprehensive genetic testing for you. We would look at how you actually process hormones, what your hormone metabolites are like. We would look at many, many biological ages for you. We would get an idea of, you know, bone density, muscle mass, strength, but we would also look at what’s your risk for cancer.

Do you have any genes that predispose you to a particular kind of cancer? Do you have any circulating tumor cells? Um, people, you know, the, the key to cancer is actually diagnosing it early, right? And so, when we talk about, well, let’s get a, let’s get an AI assisted, um, MRI scan, or I’m gonna do, you know, some test, uh, routine lab testing to look for cancer.

Those are really very, very crude tests. And so, um, The best way to be safe when you’re doing hormones is to actually do a very sophisticated test to look for circulating tumor cells. Look, now we have a test where we can look at the immune system and see if it’s actually constructing itself in a way that it’s actually combating cancer even before you could ever see cancer.

What is that called? It’s called an onco declare. What is it? Onco declare. Onco declare. Or you could think of it as cancer declare. So it’s a, yeah, super helpful test. And then, um, it’s also now possible to actually look for the mother cells of cancer, which are called camel cells. They’re cancer associated molecular, or cancer associated mononuclear like cells.

And those cells are considered to be, by some, the actual first initial cells of cancer, where a blood cell and a tissue cell come together and create a hybrid cell, and then create daughter cells that then become the cancer cells. So when you kill the daughter cells, you don’t kill the mother cells. It takes a special test, which you can also get done now.

It will be clinically available in about two months, but you can identify these camel cells, and then there’s a biphasic antibody that can go in and kill those specifically. Wow. Right? It’s getting super sophisticated. And everybody fears cancer, but really, the fear is not diagnosing it early. Yeah. Right?

If you’re going to have a problem, let’s know about it. It’s like heart disease. If you’re going to have a problem, let’s know about it. We can It’s the other ship away from the iceberg. We just need to know what’s going on.

Now, you mentioned genetic testing, and then you also, you talked about the biological age of all of these different tissues.

So, you know, you’re, you’re looking at your heart, your bones, your brain. So, what would make some one organ different?

I’ll tell you, it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting, right? So even the skin on your face is aging at different rates. The skin around our eyes ages much faster than the skin on the rest of the face.

So your heart, if you’re set up genetically to develop heart disease, let’s say, or have a problem with the heart muscle. And you’re eating the wrong diet for your genetics and all of a sudden your arteries can age much faster than say your bones which may be in perfectly good shape. Likewise, if you’ve got good genetics around cardiovascular things and you’re doing well there, but you haven’t taken care of your bones, if you’re not doing resistance training, hormone replacement, and things like that, you can have osteoporosis and have a very healthy heart.

So you really, again, you have to understand who you are and What cards you’re holding and then how to play your particular game. Everybody has their own hand to play.

And how much, when you talk about genetics and diet, what are you doing? What type of genetic testing are you doing? And so what are you finding for like diet?

Like how different are dietary interventions? Well,

different people actually have different numbers of copies of something called the amylase gene. So the amylase gene, when we, when we eat a carbohydrate and take it in, saliva secretes amylase. So the digestive Uh, process actually begins in the mouth, even before it hits the stomach.

And there are up to 20 different redundant copies of the amylase gene that can be present in a human. So you can have one copy or you can have 20 copies. People that have 20 copies are much more carb adapted. They can eat carbs, they don’t put on weight, they don’t become diabetic, they don’t have issues with carbs.

People that have a low number of amylase are much more prone to either put on weight or to become diabetic even at a lower body weight if they have fewer copies of the amylase gene. Isn’t that interesting? Wow. Right. So we talk about, well, it should be a low carb diet. Everybody needs to be keto. It’s not true.

Everybody’s their own person. If you really understand who you are, you can pick the right thing for you, right? So protein can be good. I know you’re a fan of protein. Um, you know, but protein, lots of protein. May not be the right thing for somebody with kidney disorder or another problem. Or we talk about vegetables.

Everybody needs more leafy greens and vegetables. Well, those may be great, but if you’ve got a real sensitivity to sulfur or other things, you need to avoid that or lectin. So there’s, everybody has to dance their own dance through.

And can genetic testing show that, or does that also need to be combined with something like a microbiome

test?

It has to be tested. It really requires genetic testing plus food sensitivity testing. That’s actual functional food sensitivity testing, not just antibodies that could cross react. And the gut biome and your digestive tracts processing. In other words, is your pancreas secreting the enzymes that it should?

Do you have enough acidity in your stomach? Are you losing a vegetable fiber or, or, or protein in the, in the stool? Are you losing fat in the stool? Because if that’s the case, or if your gallbladder is not working well, you’re not absorbing fat soluble volume vitamins. So you really have to know the whole sphere here to know what would be right for this individual.

Super interesting.

Yeah.

Because if that’s off, everything else was going to be

off. Exactly. If that’s off, then, you know, you’re not putting the right gas in the tank. How is it ever going to run right?

Now, I remember when I first, there was one, and I know that it’s genes, but it’s how each of these companies are doing their different interpretations, and there was a company I used to work with called Pathway Fit, Pathway Genomics, and so they came out and they would tell you what was your right type of exercise.

Is there such a thing for your genetics or not? There

are, there are, um, interesting genetics around exercise. So there are, um, genes that we look at. I’ll just, I’ll just say this. You’ve probably heard about statin drugs, right? And you’ve heard about statin drugs causing problems for people with muscle pain or muscle weakness and things like that.

Well there are genes that will actually tell you if you’re the person that’s going to suffer from that. Inside that constellation of genes are genes where people don’t necessarily When they exercise, their muscles start to hurt sooner than they would otherwise. They can’t process the energy properly.

So for you, you can work out and feel great. For them, they work out and they feel terrible. So the way to overcome that genetic issue is to give them D ribose, give them creatine, give them things that actually help their muscles work in the context of working out. But without that, they really struggle.

Isn’t that interesting? That is

super interesting because, I would imagine, like, when I look at all the hallmarks of aging, I’m like, exercise, exercise, exercise. I would imagine exercise is probably a foundational part.

It’s a foundational part, and yet you have to be able to help people get there. Not everybody can just step into it as easily as you can, right?

You have a history of this. Well, no, I’ve

always done it. You’ve always done it. I’ve been an athlete

my whole life. Played soccer in college and, you know, run, mountain bike, surf, run, do anything I want to do now. But, um, But you know, that’s easy for me. And my VO2 has always been excellent. My VO2 is exceptional for a 40 year old, right?

So, and I’m 70 at this point chronologically. I wake up 27 every day. So are you

testing VO2 maxes on your patients? Oh yeah.

A hundred percent.

Great.

Yeah. VO2s, anaerobic thresholds. We get incredible data on heart rate response to exercise and we can actually see. Changes in the heart before you would ever do it with a regular stress test.

I’m board certified in cardiology, interventional cardiology, nuclear cardiology, and the testing that we’re doing is better than anything that I had as a cardiologist. That’s so

in my perfect world, we would be doing VO2 maxes and everybody is like part of their physical. Can you explain what it is and why this is important?

Yeah. VO2 max. The easiest way to understand VO2 max is that it’s basically how much blood can your heart pump in a minute. That’s really the best way to think about it. It really correlates, on the other side of that, to how much oxygen can your mitochondria utilize. Um, but really the way it functionally works out is how much blood can your heart pump.

Um, and the more blood that you’re able to pump in a minute, the longer you live, the lower your risk of dementia, cancer, heart disease, decline, general activity levels. All of that is improved, right? And so, having a high VO2 max, It’s really, really important.

So what are you, how are you counseling patients to improve their VO2 max?

Cardio. So we’ve been measuring VO2 max for over 15 years and I’ve done it. Wow.

You are such a pioneer.

Yeah, we’ve been doing it a long time. I did it. I used to, my co founder of this heart hospital up the road here. And um, once I left cardiology, I stayed on at the heart hospital to basically counsel cardiac rehab patients on how to never need the heart hospital again.

And I became the director of cardiac rehab and I instituted cardiopulmonary exercise testing or VO2 max testing for every cardiac rehab patient. And we did that for a couple of years until the hospital deemed that it was too expensive. I

was just going to think they were Push back just because they were scared of the risk.

Well, actually, it decreases risk, because if you know where somebody is, I’m thinking

perceived though, right? Exactly. You

can be precise about what their exercise should be. Otherwise, I think it’s a risk.

Right.

But what we found is that, um, Even in very sick people, they could have really depleted VO2s, or some of them were genetically gifted and actually had pretty normal VO2s to start, and then we could take them up from there.

You know, there was a fallacy when I was in medical school that you’re kind of born with a limit on what your VO2 can be, right? It’s like, this is what your VO2 max can be. And what we find is that people come and work with us, and we can get their VO2s to go up by 50%, 70%, 100 percent from where they start.

It’s really dramatic. So, yeah. And training for VO2, there’s a lot of misconceptions about this. Everybody’s talking about Zone 2, right? So, we test everybody. Okay, go do

it. For the audience, let them know what Zone 2 is. So

Zone 2 is essentially raising your heart rate, um, Up a little bit. So let’s say for you, it might be a heart rate of 118, 122, somewhere in that range.

I would say just kind of, you sound breathy, sexy, but you can talk.

But you can talk, right? You can carry on a conversation. Exactly. Now, zone 3 would be higher than that. That’s where you’re starting to have trouble carrying on a conversation. Zone 4 is really kind of a stressful zone. It’s, it’s really, there’s more cortisol, it’s kind of stressful to the body.

And zone 5, which is the highest, is when you’re all in. That’s when you’re going anaerobic. That’s when you’re sprinting, let’s say. So, we have people that come to us and they say, well, um, you know, I stopped doing the cardio that you recommended. I’m now doing Orange Theory. I’m doing CrossFit. I’m doing this.

I’m doing, I’m doing gym training and my trainer tells me, you’re getting plenty of cardio. You know, your heart rate’s going up and I’m like, great, let’s test it. All their VO2s go down. All of them. The way, the only way that we’ve been able to build VO2 and we do it routinely for everybody is zone three.

And what’s the time period, because what I’ve, what I’ve been looking at is, is looking at more, uh, HIIT cardio training for, to really help with, like, in my, in my world, I like to do walking with a rucking vest, and then I will go do my HIIT training. And I do more of a HIIT, I started to get, uh, Do more HIIT that was more in the, let’s say, zone four.

So I’ve been pushing zone five, like SIT training, sprint interval training. So when you say the zone three and the zone five, what are you doing in terms of actual prescription timing, et cetera?

Yeah. So what we find is that the, the cake, if you’re, if you’re making a cake, there’s a cake in the icing, right?

So the cake is actually sustained cardio. So 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour. of zone three, like when I’m out mountain biking and stuff, that’s the interval training. If I go for a run that’s more like zone three, pushing a little bit. This morning I did, I rode my elliptical nine miles and I. Probably took me about 30 minutes and I’m probably in zone three, maybe pushing a little bit higher than that, but I couldn’t carry on a conversation the whole time.

So if you’re listening to this, if you can carry on a conversation, you’re really not doing cardio, right? And then, so that’s the cake. And then the, the icing is the interval training where you’re doing the sprint training. And I do that on a VASPR three days a week where I will push as hard and I get breathless and I, you know, you’re, you’re kind of all in.

That combination, Just builds BO2max beautifully.

Now, do you have an interval? I’ve been playing around, like, I always play around with my HIIT intervals. So now I’m doing the Norwegian 4×4 right now. But is there an interval prescription you like or does that not really

matter? Well, I think this. I think that when it comes to exercise, we’re big fans of, number one, doing something every day.

Because otherwise you’ve got to wake up and decide, is today the day? Right. And quite often it’s not. And quite often it’s not. So if there’s a decision involved, the failure rate goes to 100%, right? So you take out the decision. It’s like, I’m going to do something every single day. Then the question becomes who am I this morning when I woke up and what is appropriate for me today, right?

Just because it’s Tuesday doesn’t mean it’s time to try a PR and you know, sprint training or something, right? It’s really about doing what your body is designed to do that day. So that’s looking at your recovery score, your heart rate variability. Where are you? Okay, today my heart rate variability is lower.

It’s Tuesday. I know I like to do this, but it’s going to be more of a recovery day. I’m going to do a recovery workout and you enjoy it. And every workout I do is like, I’m so grateful that I’m here being able to do this. Like what a joy to be able to move like this. Right?

Right.

So when you put joy into it, then it becomes sustainable.

If it’s hard work all the time, you know, you burn out. So for me, it’s joyous all the time. And then on some days when I, when I’m well recovered, it’s like, let’s just hammer it. Right. I feel good. Let’s just really go hard. And that’s how I train basically. So it’s, it’s doing the right thing on the right day.

And then I do five days of cardio and two days of resistance training. And I do sophisticated resistance training with ARX. So I’m doing, you know, negatives and all that sort of thing. And then a lot of balance training, training the nervous system. In fact, I’ll, I’ll share this with you. I think. I think pretty much all of health and certainly all of fitness boils down to one thing, and that’s training the nervous system.

Because you know that when you start to lift a weight, it’s not the muscle that gets triggered first, it’s the nervous system. The nervous system starts to fire more strongly. That’s what generates the muscle. Somebody with a stroke, They can’t move at all. So it’s really about the nervous system.

Coordinating the nervous system, being fast, agile, strong, quick, balanced. That’s what we’re going for, right? And so, when you do that, you throw in balance trading. We have a slack line in our gym at the office, which is not far from here. We play on the slack line. We play on balance boards, endo boards, and things that move dynamically so that you’re constantly challenging your nervous system.

If you go to the gym and do the same thing all the time, You know, you’re not going to get the same results as if you’re challenging your nervous system every day. So to your point about what sprints are right, it depends on the day, how recovered you are, and then mix it up. Do a minute sprint, do a 90 second sprint, do a 30 second sprint.

Kind of

like the old fartlek training, the most unfortunate name for exercise ever. But I love all this because it’s everything I’m looking at is how do we incorporate. Power, agility, balance. So it’s, it’s, those are the biggest things we lose and I’ll tell you. Yeah. I looked, I, I decided I wanted to get into the best shape of my life at 60 and I realized that in the last couple of years I’d gotten into the biggest rut.

And when you look at exercise, you’re supposed to do more than what you’re used to so your body adapts. But we, you know, I’d gotten in, I’ll go to the gym and throw weights around all day long. Sure. The rest of the stuff I don’t like to do. Okay. But you know, the more you do, the more you do. So that’s what my body adapted to.

Right. And now I went, you know what, now I need to do. That’s right. More HIIT training. I gotta do some jump training. I’m gonna do more balance. I went back into yoga. I started to do all the stuff that

is

hard.

I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you how I approach these things because some of this stuff is challenging.

I approach it like I’m seven years old, right? It’s like there’s a slack line. Now, if I’m looking at it as a 70 year old, I’m going to look at that and say, well, geez, that looks dangerous. I’m not sure I should be on that, right? But if I look at it as a 70 year old, it’s like, hey, I want to try that. I want to try that.

It’s my mom

looking, I’m going on it.

That’s right. I want to, I want to try that. And if you come at it with this really youthful attitude, this is part of living young. Approach everything with that youthful attitude. I want to try that. Then you’ll figure out a way to do it safely. And the next thing you know, it’d be like, Oh, I can do this.

Or I’m taking some steps on this thing. It’s really cool.

And don’t you find that when you do these things in a controlled environment, then when you get into the wild, you are less likely to get hurt. A hundred percent. This is, this

is, this is, that’s absolutely right. This is why it’s training the nervous system is so key.

Yes. You know, everybody starts to fall when they get older. Right. And then they break a bone and then they break a hip and then they’re downward that exponential decline. Well, that really accelerates, right? So, um, the best defense against that is training the nervous system. So you have great balance, right?

So if you get bumped, you, you either don’t fall down or if you fall, you know how to roll.

Which

is why

we have

to keep

doing new stuff. New stuff. We have to keep learning new stuff. That’s right. We have to do it in our movement patterns. And since I knew, it was Tim and I decided, um, to go to this HIT class.

Yes. In our neighborhood where we were literally The oldest people buy a landslide.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I was like, I could give birth to everyone and I could probably give birth to, you know, they probably, I probably have grandkids over there. Okay. And, but I realized, you know, just like you never want to be the smartest person in the room, You never want to be the fittest, youngest person in the room either.

So it was fantastic and pushed us to, we’re both very competitive. So that’s what I do is I look for fitness situations that will push me out of what I normally will do. Cause I’ll go in the gym, do the same old stuff. And maybe I’ll do it a little heavier, but. You know, I’m not, I’m not pushing myself out to do that.

Now I’m making myself do single legged Romanian deadlifts that are hard. You know, so how do we do hard things? You mentioned HRV and I would love you just to unpack that because I think this is such a great tool we can have to really figure out what we should be doing and how we’re recovering.

Well, HRV is heart rate variability.

Um, and when people think about heart rates and it varying, they think about, well, I’m sitting here, my heart rate is whatever it is, 70, whatever it is. And then I, uh, run down the hall and it goes up to 95 or whatever it goes up to. That change is not heart rate variability. That’s a change in heart rate.

Heart rate variability is actually beat to beat variation. So you have a beat, then the next beat comes in, let’s say it’s a second later and the next one comes in 1. 1 seconds later and the next one comes in 0. 9 seconds later. That beat to beat variability. is heart rate variability. And it correlates with respiration.

When you take a breath in, it increases. When you blow out, it decreases. And it’s also a function of how strong your vagal nerve tone is. And we measure this also for all of our clients. We can tell them how strong their vagal nerve tone is. Super important to understand this too. How do you measure this?

We measure it with, um, leads on the wrist and we basically, um, get a readout that shows us vagal nerve tone, it shows us sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous balance, it gives us neurohormonal balance, it gives us brain information, almost like an EEG, um, it’s really fantastic. So somebody again can sort of see really where they are.

And what we like to see is that when you do this kind of cardio that we’re talking about, you build vagal nerve tone. And that’s really key because when the vagus nerve is strong, you stay healthy, right? The vagus nerve, basically when it’s, you have all that parasympathetic tone, which is basically rest, recovery, repair, it keeps your organs healthy.

When that’s weak and the sympathetic nervous system tone, which is all the stress and fight and flight and everything else, that’s beating everything up. So you want to have a really strong bouncer at the door that says, Hey, everything’s cool. You go away, you go away and we’ll just stay calm. That’s having a strong vagus nerve.

And so you can build that with a cardio and we measure that. So, yeah.

So you build that with what specifically? Well, with cardio, quite

honestly, you build it mostly with cardio. You can do it with gag. Uh, you can do it with gargling. Um, you can build vagal nervous tone that way. Gargling? Yep. Yep. You can do gargling exercises and build HRV.

You can. You can. Huh. So when you have strong vagal tone, then your HRV, your heart rate variability, actually increases. So you want a high HRV and that will depend on how well you slept, whether you traveled, you know, if you had something to drink the night before. Many things will impact HRV. But you can wake up the next morning and say, okay, here was my HRV.

And that gives you a good insight into how rested your body is and how much stress you’re ready to take on. And then that’s how you decide how much to do in your exercise workout.

Now I was monitoring my HRV with my aura ring and my Apple watch and it was really low. And then I talked to Molly Maloof cause I’m like, Oh my gosh, I used to be on a podcast with her.

And she goes, no, you need to do a chest strap to really see it. Which was remarkably different. So, okay. Yeah. Because I was concerned here. Yeah. And so someone wanting to really know what their HRV is and monitor it, what would they do?

Well, I think, you know, there are things that are accessible, right? Um, chest straps are accessible, Garmin watches are out there, um, you know, Apple watches, Oura rings, whoops, straps.

All of them will measure it. None of them are perfect. Um. Yeah. We actually get HRV out of this test that we do this way when we’re measuring vehicle tone. I think that’s actually a more accurate measure. That would vary, wouldn’t it?

It does. I mean, it’s, it’s, I would assume, is it, it’s not like a DEXA where it’s gonna flip a little bit based on if you overate the day before.

This would be like if you had a, went out and, Partied your butt off and didn’t sleep at all and then were completely upset and gotten a car accident on the way to the thing. Your HRV, I would assume, would be It’s very

volatile, very volatile. I, um, I tend to run high HRVs because I do a lot of cardio and my vagus nerve tone is extremely strong.

Um, it’s over 4, 000 and the normal range is like 2 to 4, 000. I’m in like 5, 000, whatever. So it’s very strong. Um, but I had a concussion. I, I went snowboarding with a my daughter and a guy that she was dating at the time, and I had a crash. I was like my second run and I was just kind of getting my legs under me.

I had a crash and ended up with a concussion. My heart rate variability went to zero. The next morning it was literally zero. Wow. Right. So it depends. Heart rate variability is very. Real time feedback for you on where you are. It’s not fixed like a DEXA scan where your bone density is a certain amount, your muscle mass is a certain amount, percent body fat.

It changes, it’s very dynamic, so it’s very useful that way.

So it’s useful, but if you were going to try to do one in the office and correlate it to your ORA wing, you’d really just have to do it right then and there to go, that’s right, here’s the, that’s right, here’s the, because that’s what I like people to do with the DEXA is get a DEXA, use your home bio impedance, know they’re going to be different, that’s right, at least you know, at least you know the correlation,

yeah, that’s right.

So, where do you see the field of longevity going, like what are, what’s coming up that’s new and exciting? Regeneration.

Regeneration is really the ticket. So, everything that we talk about from the standpoint of really understanding your, it’s important, it’s so vital, you gotta know the cards you’re holding, where you are in the game.

Then you’ve got to basically adjust all the things that you can, the right supplements, the right diet, the right sleep, the right exercise. All those things are critical. Can’t get there without it. Then you actually, I think, really need to focus also on the psycho spiritual space. How do you actually get to that place where you feel More zen, more connected, more love, more joy, right?

And less stress and less worried and all these kinds of things. That’s really important. Which was really

the 40s are stressed and worried and all of that. That’s why I said we could have just jumped over that. Yeah.

Although you learn a lot from that, right? You learned a lot from that, right? So it’s the price of an education.

But when you get to a point, you know, 60, 70, whatever, wherever you are, Really, it’s pretty easy. Like, Brian Johnson, right? He’s here at the show. But it’s easy to get super healthy when you’re in your 40s. That’s like so easy. I mean, we see that all the time. It’s like super easy. Especially

if you have two million dollars a year to put towards it.

Yeah, and if you’re gonna

spend two million dollars, right? Although, you know what’s so cool about Brian Johnson? That’s

actually not that hard. When you read the stuff that he’s doing. Yeah. What he’s really uncovered is that the things that make the biggest difference are not the things that really cost any money.

That’s right. Yeah, he’s right. Exactly. Olive oil, sleep. Yeah. Chocolate. Chocolate. Exactly. So which is Yahoo, which is great. Yeah, which is great. But that’s only going to carry any of us so far, right? Everybody that ate better, learned to meditate, exercise. They all got older, right? And they all died. So it really comes down to rejuvenation.

And that’s a function of So, as we age, we, we collect these zombie cells in our bodies, these senescent cells that you’re familiar with. And these tend to accumulate, and as you know, one of the problems with them is they start to excrete these inflammatory cytokines. So now your system’s inflamed, and now those zombie cells are recruiting normal cells to become zombie cells.

So this is part of the acceleration and the exponential decline. So, Using Sentalytics to basically kill off some of the zombie cells. You need some, you don’t want to kill them all, but you want to kill off, let’s say, a crop of them. Then you need Plasmaphoresis to clean out all the trash. So we do Plasmaphoresis to basically clean out the plasma.

Then you can add in Young Plasma, which is something Brian is doing. Um, and then you can actually add in umbilical cord and placental factors that don’t include stem cells, but they actually include many of the rejuvenation factors that include, that would enable a fetus if it had a finger cut off to regrow a finger in the womb, right?

So now you have really, really potent regenerative factors. Now you add stem cells to that. You can pick the stem cells depending on what you’re going to treat. And then you follow that up with signaling peptides and other supplements to help all that work. You, it’s unbelievable what you can do for somebody.

And this is all happening now? Yeah, it’s happening in our office right down the street.

Wow. Yeah. Are you open?

Yeah, we’re

open. Yeah, come on in. Wow. That’s incredible. Yeah. What kind of results are you seeing? Share a, like, crazy story with me.

Well, you know, you can take people that, you know, You know, are really struggling, like they can’t hardly walk, they can’t, um, they’ve got cardiovascular disease and the next thing you know they’re out, you know, feeling great, their hips are fixed and they’re, they’re starting to jog again, do stuff like that.

You know, people with brain frog and brain dysfunction, where you can actually improve them. People with Parkinson’s are actually minimizing their symptoms, uh, almost going away. Um, you know, it’s, it’s, it really comes down to rejuvenation. That’s really going to be the key of how we go forward. And we’re going to have to keep rejuvenating.

Because living has its own wear and tear, it has its own cost, right? We’re breathing oxygen, there’s free radicals, you know, you can’t kill off every free radical. So the question is, how do you reset? How do you reboot? And that’s where the rejuvenation comes in. That makes so much sense.

Wow. Yeah. Well, this has sure been enlightening.

Yeah. It’s fun. And for everybody listening, you’ve got your book, A Hundred is the New Thirty. You’re giving three of your chapters away for everyone. So I’m going to put that at jjvirgin. com forward slash Gladden. Okay. And in addition to that, of course, all your social media and your, um, clinic. Yeah.

Beautiful.

Wow. Yeah. I wish I had time while I was here to get over there. But I’m, I’m I’ve been back and forth to Austin and Dallas a bunch. Yeah, exactly. I must have a field trip.

Yeah, have a field trip.

Wow, yeah, because I need to stay younger than my husband. He’s younger than me.

Okay, well, maybe not.

He’s

hearing that now. He’s like, hold on.

Well, yeah, I’ll tell you the other key, and we’ll finish up with this, is Well, I think one of the biggest keys is that I wake up 27 every day, and I can’t tell you how powerful that is to actually claim an age, right? And it’s like, if I don’t feel 27, it’s like, no, I’m not going to say I’m good for my age, that I’m better than most people my age.

Because I hear that, oh, you’re so

strong for a girl. I know, no, I’m strong. Right, exactly. Not for 27,

and I, and so what do I need to do to get back to 27? And when you, when you keep that youthful reference point, that’s so powerful. It, it really, I can’t. Can’t tell you how powerful it is. It

makes me think of the study Mark Hyman shared with me where when you’re positive about aging you live seven and a half years longer.

That’s right. I’m like, well, okay, that’s easy. Yeah, check the box on that. Yeah, exactly. But you know, when you know all of this stuff is, you’re more excited about, like I’m more excited right now about Everything going on, career, all of it, than I’ve ever been.

100%. Same for me. Yeah, there’s more things happening, more collaborations, more interesting things going on than ever in my life.

And that’s how it should be. Yay. Alright, so

again, jjvirgin. com forward slash gladden, G L A D D E N, and thank you so much. Amazing. Oh, my pleasure,

JJ. Thank you.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, jjvirgin. com, and make sure to follow my podcast at subscribetojj. com so you don’t miss a single one.

And hey, if you’re loving what you hear, don’t forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

Hey JJ here and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information. That’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes.

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