Look, I get it. Maybe you’re brand new to the concept of defeating aging.
I know what it’s like to discover that life extension is a thing…and then to also realize that it’s actual science.
I remember what it was like to begin that journey.
So today, I’d like to share my story with you. Maybe you can relate.
Today, we’re going back to the basics.
This is the first video in a series that will lay the foundation for you new guys.
If you know nothing about longevity, except that you want to achieve it,
this is where you’ll learn about the foundational science,
where you’ll get introduced to the jargon and start down the path of discovery.
I want you guys to get this, all you guys.
Watching these videos should prepare you for some of the other, more technical and more scientific videos.
I want you to get to the point where you can understand the science,
and pull from it what you need to put together a plan, to monitor yourselves as you execute that plan,
and to rationally make adjustments to that plan as you progress.
Recently, I was talking to a guy, let’s call him Joe, who was unaware of the longevity movement,
but was intrigued by the notion of living a radically longer and healthier life.
So, I sent Joe to this channel.
He got back to me later and said that while he liked the concept, my channel was way over his head,
that he really didn’t understand much, and so he left the channel.
And that got me to thinking.
The science of longevity is a pretty new field, and I think that most people are not that aware of it yet.
How does someone move from being unaware to being knowledgeable?
How do they enter the community of “long-lifers” and how do they get up to speed?
If someone discovers longevity and this channel is their introduction…
am I speaking to those people in a voice that they can understand?
Based on the reaction of Joe, the guy that I mentioned earlier, I don’t think I am.
And I want to be. I consider myself an advocate for longevity…
I want to get the word out.
I want to create videos that are discoverable,
that people can stumble upon, who are not familiar the idea of turning back the clock.
That will capture their interest and get them started on the path to becoming knowledgeable about this new science.
Which means, there’s gonna be some changes to this channel.
Now, if you’re a loyal follower, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to abandon you, I’m not.
I’ll still be doing videos that take a deep dive into the science.
But I’m also going to be doing videos that speak to the guy or gal whose new to all of this.
Who doesn’t understand the science, who doesn’t speak the jargon, who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid.
So, I thought I’d start off with my origin story.
How I became so passionate about the fight against aging.
For me, it all began in a little farming community in Kansas, in August of 1949.
That was over 71 years ago. I’ve come a long way in those 71 years. And I’ve learned a lot.
I left the farm in my wake a long time ago.
I joined the Navy, like my dad before me, and served a couple of tours in Vietnam.
After I got out, I knocked around for a couple of years and travelled all over the states, and all over the world.
I finally settled down in Portland, Oregon.
I’ve had a career in the visual arts and I’ve been a graphic designer, an art director, an illustrator and a 3D artist.
I’ve been married, I’ve raised a brilliant son, a son any father could be proud of.
And I’ve had people die on me. I’ve lost people I was close to.
All of them, before their time.
Now, I first brushed up against the idea of living beyond the normal life span years ago.
I was a big fan of Robert Heinlein, and I read “Methuselah’s Children” and “Time Enough For Love,”
both about extending the human life span.
Science fiction first entered the realm of science fact when I came across a book called
“Life Extension” by Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, in 1985
and “The Engines of Creation” by Eric Dressler in 1986.
In 1985 I was 36. I was in pretty good shape. I worked out, although not regularly.
Sometimes I ate pretty good, sometimes I ate junk food.
The thing is, I didn’t worry about it. I was indestructible.
No matter what I ate or how often I worked out, my body stayed about the same.
The years went by and I kind of forgot about the whole idea of extending the human life span,
because I thought of the whole notion as “science fiction.”
Something that would be great, but not something that I ever expected to become reality.
At least, not in my lifetime. It was something for the distant future.
So, I lived my life.
I had a career. I raised a family. I spent a lot of time outdoors. I pursued a lot of hobbies.
And over time, my body became less and less indestructible. I started to put on some weight.
I started to lose some muscle. And strength. And endurance. And mobility.
Which meant that I couldn’t do the same things that I used to do.
Now, none of this happened overnight. It wasn’t any one thing, it wasn’t anything that I really noticed.
It was a gradual process that took about 25 or 30 years.
But suddenly, I was 60 years old…and I didn’t recognize myself any more.
I mean, I did, but I didn’t.
I had an image in my head of who I was, and it hadn’t changed much in those 25 or 30 years.
But the man in the mirror had, and he didn’t fit with my image of who I was.
In my mind, I was still young and fit. Healthy. Strong.
But that’s not who I saw looking back at me in the mirror.
I weighed about 270 pounds.
And yet, my musculature was smaller that it was when I weighed 180. I was fat. I was weak.
I was getting sick more often…I never used to get sick.
I was tired, and I was getting to be apathetic about things that used to make me passionate.
As I became less able to do the things that I was asking by body to do,
I started asking less of it and becoming less and less active.
I slowed down. I wasn’t participating in life nearly as much as I used to.
And I had an epiphany. I suddenly realized that the best part of my life was behind me.
And that I didn’t really have anything to look forward to…except a steadily worsening condition.
That I was going to continue to slow down until eventually I just… stopped.
I was waiting to die.
So, what happened? What turned me around? What was the moment that I set out on a new path?
When I turned 60, it was 2009. That was the era of infomercials on broadcast TV.
One night, I was sitting on my couch, watching TV
and probably eating a pint of chocolate chip ice cream or a large bowl of popcorn.
My 60th birthday had recently passed, and I had become well aware of the condition that my body was in…
and I wasn’t too happy about it. But I really didn’t know what to do about it or where to start.
And an infomercial came on. It was Tony Horton and he was hyping P-90.
If you don’t know, Tony Horton is a super fit guy who’s currently 62.
While the infomercial was intriguing and I was enticed by the notion of being able to lose weight and get in shape in 90 days,
what really hit me was the fact that Tony is only 9 years younger than me.
If he could it, so could I.
So I sent away for the DVD. Although I didn’t know it at the time,
I had taken my first step on different path than the one I had been on for the last 25 or 30 years.
And I had taken that step because at the time, I felt that it was now or never.
That this was probably my last chance to ever get back in shape.
Now, all I wanted to do was to lose weight. I weighed a hefty 270 pounds.
And I’ll be honest. Reaching my goal was hard.
What was my goal? Simply to stay with the program until the end, to do the 90 days.
I can’t tell you how many times I just wanted to give up.
There were lots of days when I fell off the wagon, when I didn’t do the workouts, or I pigged out on junk food.
But I always came back. I always picked up where I left off and continued on the path.
And after 90 days, I had lost a bunch of weight.
Not as much as I wanted to, but enough to know that I had made significant progress,
and that I could make more if I could just stay on the path.
Now, over the next 8 years my ability to stay on the path varied, and my weight went up and down.
It never got back up to 270, but I hit 245 several times.
And somewhere on that journey, I also decided to see if I couldn’t get stronger as well.
So I started working out more and lifting weights. And I saw some progress in that area as well.
I was setting goals, and when I would hit that goal,
I would abandon the lifestyle that I had adopted while I was pursuing that goal, and go back to the lifestyle that I had been living before.
And guess what? I would regress. I put the weight back on. Duh!
In 2014 I lost my partner to cancer. She was quite a bit younger than me, she was only 45.
And that’s when I realized how truly precious life is.
That’s also when I realized that you have to take responsibility for your own health care.
You can’t leave it up to the doctors.
Cathy’s cancer was very treatable,
but they didn’t catch it in time because she was so young and the doctor didn’t think that her condition could possibly be cancer.
So they didn’t even bother to check until it was too late.
So, I started on a journey to take responsibility for what was going on in my own body.
I had already demonstrated that I wasn’t too old to lose weight or to put on new muscle.
So I began taking inventory and trying to learn how to naturally remedy several conditions that I had that were related to aging.
It took a few years, but in 2017 I had another epiphany.
That’s when I realized that as long as I set goals and then reverted back to my old way of living when I reached them,
I was never going to make any real progress.
That’s when I realized that I was going to have to make a radical and permanent change to my lifestyle.
I was going to have to permanently give up soda, and sugar, and refined, processed junk food.
I was going to have to workout for the rest of my life. I was going to have to re-invent myself.
So I did.
Again, it was not easy. I had a lot of setbacks. I encountered a lot of hurdles.
Several times I would stumble and fall. But I took it slow, and I was fairly consistent.
I had a worthy prize that kept me coming back, that allowed me to pick myself up and get back on the path.
But I still wasn’t really trying to turn back the clock.
I still hadn’t become aware of the advancements that had been made in longevity science in the last few years.
I didn’t know that life extension was even a thing, that it was no longer in the realm of science fiction.
But even though I didn’t know that many of the strategies that I was employing
could reset my biological age and turn back the clock, that’s what I was doing.
And, I realized that the results I was getting were pretty great.
That’s when I recognizes that there were probably a lot of guys out there who were in the same boat as me.
That, without them really noticing,
the years had passed them by and that they had become a lot softer than they wanted to be…
and that was something that they wanted to change.
So I decided to start this channel. I wanted to share my experience with other guys.
I also wanted to have an audience or a following that I was responsible to,
that were expecting me to keep making progress.
Because that would motivate me to stay on track…
and, let's be honest, I needed all the motivation I could get my hands on.
And something interesting happened.
As I shared my experience, I started looking for more information that I could share.
And that’s when I learned about the science of longevity.
I discovered the Hallmarks of Aging.
I don’t mean that “I” discovered them, but I became aware of their existence.
I learned that doctor & scientists & researchers are all starting to think of “aging” as a disease…
a disease that is curable.
I learned what causes aging, and what to do about most of those causes.
I learned that a definitive “cure” for aging is not only within the realm of the possible,
but it’s probably not that far into the future.
And that if I can hold on for that long, in relatively good health, I can probably take advantage of that cure.
And that opens up a whole new playbook.
A whole new realm of possibilities.
And I have you guys to thanks for that.
If not for this channel, if not for the sense of responsibility I have to you guys and the need to provide you with more and more information…
I’m not sure that I would have ever become aware of the fight to end aging
or the techniques and strategies that I’m now employing.
So…thank you.
And I invite you to join me on this quest.
In the pursuit of knowledge that can reset our biological clocks,
can extend our lifespans and hopefully, keep us healthy and active for longer than anyone ever thought possible.
If this sounds like a great plan, and you’d like to learn more on this topic,
then check out this playlist that I created especially for you guys,
you guys that are just starting out. This is where I recommend that you begin.
That’s it for me. Until next time, I’m outta here.