At age 44, my friend and colleague Dr. Sara Gottfried, M.D., got a research opportunity few people would want. She performed a simple blood test of how fast she was aging, and she failed.
She was aging 20 years faster than her chronological years, as measured by her telomeres. Those are the protective caps on your chromosomes that determine how your cells age. You want telomeres that are long and lovely. Dr. Sara’s were short and stubby.
Despite what we’ve been told, it’s not normal to age fast, gain weight, feel anxious, and become disease-ridden. Just as the number on the bathroom scale isn’t always a simple reflection of calories consumed vs. calories burned, the number of years you’ve lived isn’t always a reflection of your biological age (meaning the age of your cells).
Dr. Sara’s telomeres and body needed rescuing, so she dove into the science and created a breakthrough protocol to slow down aging.
Dr. Sara also had adrenal fatigue, a slow thyroid, estrogen dominance, disrupted sleep, and insulin resistance. Because her cells were numb to insulin, her blood sugar was climbing. Not in the diabetes range, but prediabetes. These hormone problems added up to faster aging.
During the past five years of research, Dr. Sara discovered crucial truths locked in our genes—truths about how you age, how you gain weight, how your body handles stress, and so much more. In her new book, Younger: A Breakthrough Program to Reset Your Genes, Reverse Aging, and Turn Back the Clock 10 Years, she reveals important yet little-known truths to slow down aging and reverse anxiety. She helps you create hormonal harmony and turn on and off the appropriate longevity genes. Here are just a few highlights:
- Breast cancer runs in her family, so she learned how to turn off her cancer-promoting genes using her fork and wine glass.
- Sara doesn’t detox well—neither do half of Americans—so she needed to add a specific B vitamin to her daily regimen. Hint: we talk about the MTHFR gene and detox in our interview below).
- Her grandmother died of Alzheimer’s disease, so Dr. Sara was thrilled to learn about the functional medicine protocol that preserves cognitive function regardless of age. Hint: it involves a specific way of eating, exercising, practicing yoga or meditation, flossing, brushing teeth, and sleeping.
In her new book, you’ll learn what happened to Dr. Sara’s telomeres over the past 5 years as she tested and refined her protocol, first on herself, and then on 1,000 other women.
I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of Younger and loved it so much that I wrote the following endorsement:
The brilliant book, Younger, by Dr. Sara Gottfried MD is mesmerizing, cutting-edge and a must-read! It teaches how you can turn your good genes on and your bad genes off via a healthy mix of science and gene information, together with simple assessment tools and powerful lifestyle changes. You’ll feel happier and calmer, look and feel younger, and actually reverse age-related diseases – even if you have anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, breast cancer, heart disease or obesity in your family. Why wouldn’t you want to influence your genes for the better? I know I do and so do my community of anxious women. We will all benefit immensely from Dr. Gottfried’s wisdom!
~ Trudy Scott, nutritionist and author of The Antianxiety Food Solution
I also had the opportunity to interview Dr. Sara about this topic and you can watch and listen below as we discuss some of the following:
- Telomeres and aging (at 44 Dr. Sara had the telomeres of a 64 year old woman)
- Healthspan and feeling fantastic
- Walking on the beach for the adrenals, earthing and vagal toning
- Forest bathing and the effects on cortisol levels [this isn’t in the book]
- Ikaria “the island where they forgot to die” – herbal teas, tight social community, long lunches, no watches, 7.5 hours of sleep
- Date night and chanting in the infrared sauna
- Finnish study: saunas, longevity and the FOXO3 gene (a panacea? and even a form of exercise for those with heart failure)
- MTHFR “detox” or methylation gene (depression and alcohol detox)
- We can impact how our genes talk to our bodies in such profound ways
- The FKBP5 Gene is turned on by severe trauma (studied in Holocaust victims) and affects how we handle stress
- The TH gene is turned on by the cold
- rs6330 – NGF/nerve growth factor gene and vagal tone (CC form = more anxious females; TT form = more anxious males) [this isn’t in the book]
- Genetic testing is optional but can be done with 23andme, Pathway and SmartDNA (in Australia)
- Testing telomeres with Lifelength and SpectraCell
- Vagus nerve and parasympathetic system – affects anxiety levels, the gut, voice and brain – improved with meditation, prayer, chanting, social connection, singing, call girlfriends, sleeping on your right side
- 7 day Younger challenge (most powerful levers from the book)
- 7 week Younger challenge
- Thing about your 75 year old self: “I want to make decisions that are kind to her” and “How can you kind be to your future self”
If this resonates with you, I encourage you to join Dr. Sara’s slow aging revolution by ordering your copy of Younger.
I hope you’ll join Dr. Sara and me in our quest to continue resetting genes and reversing aging in 2017. The science is yours for the taking!
If you are like Dr. Sara and have issues with your adrenals, thyroid, insulin, or sleep, you could be aging too fast, as she was. And while the genetic hand you’ve been dealt may seem like a fait accompli, the greatest truth Dr. Sara discovered is that you can “turn on” good genes and “turn off” bad ones using the seven-week protocol she developed based on the latest research. Thankfully, she’s done all the research so you don’t have to!
When you order the new book, feel free to click here to submit your receipt and get several bonuses for a limited time, including Dr. Sara’s Younger Quick Start Guide. This guide includes an overview of the Younger Protocol, Dr. Sara’s Anti-Aging Prerequisites, and a sample menu so that you’re ready when the book arrives.