We've got to break this idea that when you're old, you're useless.
And I mean, it sounds rough to say that.
This is what a lot of people really have.
And we have this picture in our head, in fact,
you probably have this picture right now.
And it's that there's tubes, there's monitors, there's wheelchairs,
and you don't know your name, and you spend the last 20 years of your
life in slow decline, suffering, and spending all of your money,
and then basically dying in a hospital.
That's actually not what has happened
throughout all of history, until very recently.
What used to happen was the village elder.
Like, you become old and wise and venerated, and you share your life's
experience with the younger generation, who, at least those of them who are smart
enough to listen, because it saves them all the suffering.
Human progress happens because we pass things on
from the last generation to the new generation.
So I spend as much time as I can interviewing people in their 80s and 90s.
You know, "Oh, you won a Nobel prize. You're still running a lab at 94?
I think I want to pick your brain."
That's Eric Kandel, the guy who discovered neuroplasticity.
And so, to be able to do stuff like that, you've got to first not die.
And there's four things, it's like the thesis of my next book,
four things are going to kill you.
They'll keep you from becoming an anti-aging guru.
And one of them's Alzheimer's Disease.
You look at the odds, your chances of getting Alzheimer's are
probably approaching 50%, depending on your gender.
Women get it more than men.
I've been doing a lot of work with Maria Shriver's Women's Alzheimer's project,
because this is a gender-specific disease.
Men get it, and people get more attention on men, but women get it more than men.
And if Alzheimer's doesn't get you, what's going to get you?
Cardiovascular disease.
And if that doesn't get you, cancer.
And the thing that underlies all three of those conditions,
that is rampant, is diabetes, type 2 diabetes.
So the first thing you do to live a long time is
don't die from one of the big four killers.
So you have the four killers: cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's,
and cardiovascular disease, right? Yes.
And I'm guessing that the number one way to start avoiding these things
is the food that you eat.
It is the food that you eat.
And 'The Bulletproof Diet' is a book I wrote in 2014 that
really brought ketosis back into the mainstream.
And the very trick that didn't work in the '70s for ketosis is that it matters what
kind of fat you have, it matters what kind of protein you have.
So here's something you could do.
Google "Bulletproof Roadmap," and this is the whole diet on one page infographic.
You can print it out and put it on your fridge, it doesn't cost anything,
and it just tells you, "this protein is less inflammatory
than this protein." "This fat is a good fat, this fat's a bad fat."
And the trick here, that will change your performance right now,
and how long you're going to live, is that
there's a big list of suspect foods in the middle.
And this is going to sound shocking.
The foods that work for you may not work for your spouse or your best friend.
And it's okay that there is no, "this food is a good food."
And when you identify the guilty suspects in your food supply, guilty for you,
it stops chronic inflammation.
And chronic inflammation is a precursor to every one of the four killers,
and it also is a precursor to diabetes.