humanOS Radio

About 40% of people worldwide will get lower back pain at some point in life, and on any given day roughly 12% of adults are experiencing lower back pain. This crippling condition strongly influences quality of life, often affecting relationships with loved ones, impairing performance at work, and leading to substantial costs – not only healthcare ones but also expenses due to absenteeism and so on. This episode features Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. McGill is a professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo. He has published more than 240 peer-reviewed scientific articles in which he used an array of methods to explore the causes of back pain, the most effective ways to rehabilitate back pain, and strategies to optimize athletic performance while sparing people’s spines. Dr. McGill continues to help numerous people overcome back pain and has worked with a spectrum of people spanning Olympic medalists, members of the special forces, the government, and the general population too.

Perhaps you want to feel great about how you look at the beach. Maybe you play a sport in which it’s important to be powerful and strong relative to your weight. Or you might simply be interested in continuing to function well as years pass by. Whatever your goals are, you should be interested in the mass and quality of your muscle tissue. In this episode of humanOS Radio Dan speaks with Dr. Keith Baar, Professor in Residence in the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology in the UC Davis School of Medicine, about this important subject, addressing topics such as how to exercise and eat to optimize muscle mass and function across the lifespan.

In this episode, Dan speaks with Dr. Mike West, CEO of AgeX Therapeutics. Here, we discuss a variety of important questions related to the science and potential of stem cells to positively influence human health including: The distinction between progenitor cells and stem cells; what goes wrong with stem cells during senescence; current clinical uses of stem cell therapies; what Dr. West’s team is working on at AgeX; and the future of stem cell therapies.

We now know that the gut microbiome is intimately connected to our own health. You can even think of these gut bugs as though they are another organ. But while we know of the great importance of the gut microbiome in our metabolism, oxidative status, brain health, gut health, and more, knowing exactly how to intervene to promote health is a science in its infancy. In this episode, however, Dan chats with Susan Westfall, who recently published a study in Nature looking at the combination of various probiotics prebiotics, including the ayurvedic polyphenol formula, triphala. In short, the formula promoted widgespread benefits to the fruit flies in which is was tested, but the most remarkable statistic on the research was a 60% extension in lifespan! Listen here to learn more.

If you value how you look and feel, you probably dedicate considerable time and effort to your physical fitness. But how often do you pause to ponder the state of your mental fitness? If you’re mentally fit, you’ll make better decisions and thereby enhance your ability to achieve goals, whatever they pertain to: physical performance, work, relationships, and the list goes on. In this episode of humanOS Radio Greg speaks with Dr. Andrew Hill about how to improve brain health and performance. Dr. Hill founded the Peak Brain Institute where people go to train and thereby improve their brains. Tune in to find out more about what you can do to boost your brain health and function!

Most of us know that the majority of our cellular energy is manufactured within mitochondria which are organelles that dwell inside our cells. The problem is when we produce energy, a byproduct of that process creates reactive oxygen species (ROS). These ROS - or free radicals - can cause cellular damage and so for a long time a prevailing idea was that it's good to take antioxidants, like for example vitamin E, C, A, to quench these ROS signals. Turns out, that's not that case. We need these ROS signals to trigger cellular protective mechanisms. In fact, it's these ROS signals that might just be the common pathway by which many behaviors and substances exert their health-promoting effects. In this episode, Dan speaks with Professor Michael Ristow, a key player who helped turn the oxidative theory of aging on its head.

In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan hosts a discussion with Professor Antonio Nunez exploring the work and he and his colleagues are doing looking into how environmental light can lead to structural changes in the brain. For the great majority of us who aren't spending our days hunting and gathering, this could have important implications for our health and perhaps our productivity. The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that Americans spend, on average, about 90% of their time indoors. Is it possible that spending too much time in dimly lit rooms and offices is affecting our ability to learn? Might environmental light be involved in the regulation of cognitive performance and mental health?

Many other organisms have superhuman abilities, such as the capacity to ward off cancer, periodically reverse aging, regenerate limbs, and even regrow brains. Yet these non-human species share many genetic similarities with us. This naturally raises the question of whether we can learn from other animals in our quest to delay aging, reverse disease, and – dare I say it – return to life from the empty expanse of death. These lofty goals bring us to today's episode of humanOS radio in which Dan speaks with Ira Pastor, CEO of Bioquark.

The number of people with cardiovascular diseases is increasing at an alarming rate, and such disorders are now the leading cause of death worldwide. Because these diseases tend to cluster with pathologies like type-two diabetes, they are sometimes given the umbrella term “cardiometabolic diseases”. The number of people experiencing sleep problems has increased in lockstep with the growing prevalence of cardiometabolic diseases, and in the latest episode of humanOS Radio Dan speaks with Professor Kristen Knutson about why this is unlikely to be a mere coincidence.

In this episode, Dan speaks with Bruce Hay, Professor of Biology at Caltech. Much of Professor Hay’s work focuses on the genetic and molecular mechanisms that regulate cell death, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. In brief, Professor Hay's research has shown that “we want to slow or stop… accumulation of the mutant genomes that inexorably occurs as we age”. Professor Hay and his team have done work showing that when they stimulate mitophagy – a process in which mutant mitochondria are selected, tagged, and then shipped to organelles that break them down - they might allow healthy mitochondria to substitute in their place, rejuvenating cellular function, a finding that could have profound implications for those of us seeking to ward off aging.

As the stage in which people dream each night, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep can bring euphoria, terror, and even genuine harm in some instances. On transition into REM sleep, your body enters a fascinating state. True to its name, REM sleep results in characteristic, swift, saccadic eye movements. But many other features of REM sleep are noteworthy. During REM sleep, activity in some brain regions is even higher than during wakefulness, so it is little surprise that it is from this sleep stage that you naturally arise each day. This state has therefore been dubbed the “gateway to waking”. But while your brain is highly active in REM sleep, your muscles are actually paralyzed (other than your heart and respiratory muscles). For this reason, REM sleep is sometimes known as “paradoxical sleep”. But what exactly is REM sleep actually for? In this show, Dan speaks with Professor John Peever, Director of the Centre for Biology Timing and Cognition at the University of Toronto. Professor Peever’s research focuses on how the brain regulates wakefulness and sleep, and our discussion focuses on REM sleep.

If you are alive today, you've benefited greatly from humankind's ability to deftly handle infectious agents via antibiotic medications. In fact, probably the single greatest achievement of modern medicine remains our ability to thwart (many) deadly microorganisms.  But our high usage of antibiotics has put great pressure on these pathogenic bacteria to mutate for their own survival. As a result, deadly strains of bacteria have become more virulent and more resistant to our medications, creating so-called “superbugs.” For instance, an increasing percentage of tuberculosis cases worldwide are attributed to bacterial forms that are resistant to multiple drugs and require more complex treatments with an array of different medications. Eventually, former wonder drugs, like penicillin for instance, can be rendered ineffective. This is a very scary proposition and this problem is not likely to go away on its own. We need new ways to control bacterial infections and we need them fast. And that brings us to my guest today. In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan speaks with Paul Garofolo. Paul is the CEO of Locus Biosciences, a biotech company that is developing a novel class of antimicrobials that take advantage of the CRISPR-Cas system. If this pans out, it would offer a viable alternative to conventional antibiotics, and would presumably be less subject to the known mechanisms of drug resistance. Secondly, this method could be targeted to specific pathogenic bacteria, thus leaving your friendly bugs alone. This seems like a win-win that is both lifesaving and health promoting, potentially (depending on the context).

You probably already know that ambient light regulates circadian rhythms by interacting with light-sensitive neurons in the eye. What hasn’t been clear is whether visible light has physiological effects on other tissues in the body outside of the retina...until now. In this episode of humanOS Radio, Dan talks to Peter Light. Dr. Light is a pharmacologist and a leader in the field of cellular electrical activity. He is chief investigator at the Light Lab at the University of Alberta, and director of the U of A's Alberta Diabetes Institute. He and his research team discovered - largely by accident - that chronic exposure to blue light causes human fat cells to shrink, store less lipid, and alter their function in other ways that are likely relevant to metabolic health. This suggests that subcutaneous fat might be a sort of peripheral biological clock, and raises all sorts of intriguing questions. Could repeated exposure to blue light serve as a protective mechanism against insulin resistance, chronic systemic inflammation, or even obesity? Listen to the interview below to learn more!

Does a ketogenic diet cure diabetes? A new study set out to explore the efficacy of this diet in a diabetic population and it's been getting a lot of attention. The results, in fact, are impressive but claims are being made about what the study showed that are not entirely true. In this episode, I've brought on the multi-time guest, Stephan Guyenet, PhD - author of the book the Hungry Brain, and co-author of the Ideal Weight Program on humanOS.me - to help sort out the findings from the hype.

Aging has long been characterized as a loss of complexity. The body loses the ability to adapt to various forms of stress, which gradually results in disease and loss of function. This is most evident in the muscles and bones, but neuroimaging has revealed that this occurs in the brain as well. The aging brain becomes less specialized than that of younger counterparts. We see increased secondary activation in areas of the brain that are not typically involved, possibly as a way to compensate for poorer signal transmission.   One intervention that we know helps to restore complexity and plasticity is exercise. No big surprise there. Another, oddly enough, is beetroot juice. In today’s episode of humanOS Radio, Dan talks to Dr. Jonathan Burdette. Dr. Burdette is a neuroradiologist and researcher at Wake Forest School of Medicine, who uses advanced MR imaging techniques to study the brain as a complex and interconnected network. Recently, he and his team designed a clinical trial to investigate whether beetroot juice - in combination with an exercise regimen - could enhance neuroplasticity and improve brain function in measurable ways.