Transcription
[Music] For now, so in addition to exercise, these are the epigenetic factors. You heard a lot about genes and DNA. Epigenetic factors are those factors above the genes that tell your genes which proteins to make, as Dr. Royen said. So if you eat a Big Mac infused with antibiotics and hormones in a feedlot, and order trans fatty acids on your French fries, and a bottle of phosphoric acid called Coke, it's going to tell your genome to make inflammatory agents.
What's the common cause of cancer, Alzheimer's, stroke, diabetes? It's inflammation. Whatever you can do to reduce inflammation, you're going to help with your longevity and your health span. The same with exercise and being careful about the water you drink, organic versus non-organic, and stress, which is neurotoxic to the brain. In contrast, a Mediterranean-type diet, polyphenols, appropriate supplements, exercise, clean air, water, and a strong family unit are very important.
If you read Dan Buettner's book "Blue Zones," the common factor of all the centenarians that he studied is that these epigenetic factors are operant. Their diet is kind of a Mediterranean diet; they work hard, they have clean air, a clean environment, and they have strong family units for when the bottom drops out—and it always does at some point. They also get enough sleep.
So, trying to do my exercise and do the things that I know epigenetically I’m supposed to do, I also, about three or four years ago, met Dr. CT AFR, David Globig, and Amir here at the Aviv Hyperbaric Center. I decided to get involved and learn about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Subsequently, I’ve done a lot of work with traumatic brain injuries, particularly concussions, CTE, post-concussion syndrome, and particularly in sports, but also stroke, cognitive impairment, memory impairment, long COVID, and how to enhance performance. I'm going to share some of the thoughts on that with you.
These are the generally accepted and reimbursable conditions for hyperbaric oxygen use: wounds that won't heal, in particular, burns, traumatic infections, gas emboli, and even acute hearing loss is something to keep in mind. These are generally accepted, payable, reimbursable things. Wounds of the brain, however, the government won't cover; insurance companies won't cover them. But they will cover your diabetic ulcer ready to get an amputation.
So, I looked into the literature a bit, and one of the things you've heard about, many of you know, is telomeres. You heard about immuno-science stem cells from Dr. Hadani and others, and they've shown in very good studies how hyperbaric oxygen increases telomere length. As we age, our telomeres shorten until they finally shorten to the point where the cells are no longer functional, and they become senescent. Senescent cells spew out all sorts of cytokines and cytotoxins that are deleterious to the body and brain.
So, they've shown that telomeres can actually be increased and elongated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I underwent 60 treatments of hyperbaric oxygen, and I'll show you what I did before and after, but my telomeres were elongated by 100%. Now, you have to remember my age; 100% delta for me is not going to be the same as somebody 22 years of age. But regardless, it clearly is a biomarker that one can look at in terms of effect for training and performance.
Amir Hadani, Dr. ARR, and others did another study. They took middle-aged athletes and gave them hyperbaric oxygen therapy. But beforehand, they did a whole lot of biomarker studies. They did a biopsy; they put a large needle into the gluteus maximus of these athletes, biopsied the muscle, and then looked at the muscle for mitochondria. Mitochondria are the organelles in every cell of our body that make energy, using oxygen and glucose to make ATP.
What they found was there was mitochondrial biogenesis; mitochondria actually became more proliferative and more active, meaning more energy and more effectiveness in terms of the operations of every cell. They also saw that they did evaluations looking at cognition, energy level, and general satisfaction, and you can see the improvement before and after the use of hyperbaric oxygen in this healthy middle-aged group. Their cardiopulmonary function also significantly improved.
So, is this something that elite athletes should consider? If you get a 1% or 2% increase in your ability at a high or low level, it can be very significant. With this kind of information, I decided to be an experiment of one. I went to the Aviv Center for three months, and every day, five days a week, for two hours a day, I underwent dives, as they're called, or treatments.
But beforehand, I measured my brain speed, my processing power, my memory. I had brain scans, my MRI spec scans that Dr. Hadani spoke about, and I also had various blood evaluations in terms of my cardiorespiratory fitness. I also did balance and flexibility tests. I did all this before, and then post-treatment, there was clearly an improvement in recall, improvement in my executive function, planning, organizing, mild improvement in attention, and mild improvement in processing speed. All very nice; clearly, it wasn't worse.
But again, objectively, the scans that I had afterwards—this is an MRI showing before and after in terms of blood flow to various parts of my brain—and significantly, the blood flow to those parts of my brain correlated with those parts of brain function in terms of attention, salience, and other functions that were positive. That same thing was confirmed on the spec scan in terms of blood flow. These are two different modalities but measure blood flow to different parts of the brain.
The other thing that we mentioned earlier was about inflammation, the common genesis of so many of the diseases of aging. Alzheimer's, diabetes, arthritis—all of these come from inflammation. I didn't realize what Eric said: that 73% of what affects us is epigenetic or environmental, and only 7% to 8% is genetic.
So, I measured very specific proteins in my blood, proteomics, and at 40 dives, there was a precipitous drop in the inflammatory markers associated with inflammation. So again, it's not that I just feel better, but there was a major biomarker change that I couldn't control, indicating that the inflammatory process was less. I actually published this in a peer-reviewed journal, "Frontiers in Neurology," the difference between zero and one, and my own personal experience and the results.
The CPET is the cardiopulmonary exercise test that was done. I got on a treadmill, breathing with a mask, measuring my oxygen, anaerobic threshold, and aerobic threshold, my V02 max. Post-treatment, there was improvement in lung capacity, improvement in exercise endurance, and actually some improvement in muscle strength.
To cap it off, I actually did a triathlon before and after, and in looking at my cardiopulmonary tests, I improved by about 9% in my aerobic and anaerobic capacity. I was able to finish the triathlon with about a 9% to 10% improvement in my time before and after. I was very pleased with that, and I actually came in first in my age group. But I know this audience fact-checks everything; I was the only one in my age group. [Laughter]
Last year, I competed in the senior games in Fort Lauderdale and came in second. The guy who won, I'm sure he lied about his age. Again, talking about peak performance at any age, one of my fondest and greatest experiences was in August of 2022 when I did the Chicago Triathlon with my daughter, who is 28 years old, for the first time. She kicked my butt, but we both finished and had a great time. It was a very family bonding experience. [Music] [Music]