Growth Hormone and Metabolism, Dr. Barzilai | The Future You | Men's Health - video Dailymotion

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Growth Hormone and Metabolism, Dr. Barzilai | The Future You | Men's Health

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00:00So I think just going back to that idea of exceptional longevity, looking at the genetic

00:04makeups of these exceptional centenarians, what did you find? Welcome to The Future You,

00:10a new series by Men's Health, where we talk to the leading experts in health and longevity to

00:14help you live longer and stronger. I'm your host, Rich Dormant. In this episode, we're talking with

00:19longevity expert, Dr. Nir Barzilai, about growth hormones and metabolism. We found many genetic

00:26components that slows aging in those centenarians, and two of them have actually been created into

00:35drugs. The drugs are not to target aging, but to target some of the diseases of aging. Those drugs

00:42were developed by Merck, one of them, and by Ionis and other pharmaceutical. They all pass phase-free

00:47trial, and they're coming to a pharmacy next to you, I think, soon. But I want to talk more about

00:54about the most common alteration, genomic alteration. So it's about growth hormones.

01:03And in centenarian, in 60% of our centenarians, we find some alteration in their ability of growth

01:11hormones to act. Now, I should just tell you, there's only one growth hormone, but there are

01:16hundreds of growth hormones. Okay, one is called growth hormone. But no matter which growth hormone

01:24you're seeing, it's altered in a lot of our centenarians. And what does it mean? It really means

01:33that when we are young, we need growth hormone, because we need to spend our energy and growing

01:44and be as tall and handsome as you, and be strong and resilient. But then we get to over the age of 50,

01:53and we're starting to break down. And it doesn't make sense to spend the energy on growth when we have

02:01a lot of issues that we have to take care of. So our centenarians, for example, one of the major growth

02:09hormone that represents the whole pathway is called IGF-1. IGF-1 levels, so we take centenarians,

02:18for example. They're all only 100 years old. But centenarians have a chance of dying, you know, 30% a

02:25year. So they're going to die now. Those with the lowest IGF-1, with the lowest growth hormone,

02:32live twice as long as those with not. So even at 100 years old, it's good to decrease this growth hormone.

02:40And we did another thing. We, there is actually pharmaceuticals, several pharmaceuticals were

02:47trying to develop this anti-growth hormone therapy for cancer, okay? Because cancer is one of those

02:55things that grow, and actually have those receptors for growth hormone, and they try to stop them.

03:01And the drug was good, but it didn't stop the cancer. So we took the drugs and actually tried

03:08first in, in animals. And we showed that even if we give animal later life, this drug, they live much

03:16longer and much healthier. So we can discover in humans, develop a drug, go back to animal and prepare,

03:24you know, the next generation of treatment for people. Metabolism is a huge buzzword in wellness

03:33right now. Glucose is the new gluten. Lots of people are thinking all about metabolism. You've been

03:39thinking about metabolism for a long time, particularly in the context of longevity, and in particular, brain

03:45health and brain functioning. Can you talk about your research there, and what some of those

03:51developments have been over the last 10 or 15 years that have, are making their way into the market?

03:57Metabolism is one of the hallmarks of aging. And people sometimes ask me, what is your favorite

04:04hallmark? And I say, you have five daughters, who's your favorite daughter? If you tell me,

04:09I'll tell you which is my favorite. Because the point is, we target one, we target the other, right?

04:16So I'm trying, because of that, by the way, many people come and they write paper and said,

04:23our hallmark is in the center. Because you know what? When you treat that, you affect all the others,

04:28which all the others can do too, okay? This is internal debate between us. So I'm just saying,

04:35yeah, I came from metabolism. I believe in metabolism. But this is only one of the hallmarks. You know,

04:41when I started thinking about a drug called metformin. The most prescribed drug in America,

04:48is that correct? Yes. But not for what we're talking about. Well, you know, metformin is a drug

04:56that's taken chronically in people with type 2 diabetes. And it's been out in the world for 80 years

05:06in the United States only since 1993. But there's more billions years use of this drug than almost

05:14any other drugs that exist in the formulary. Not only that, it's also the cheapest drug in the US

05:20formulary. And what is it doing for those who have type 2 diabetes? And then what are its applications

05:25for those who perhaps are not diabetic, but want to find other uses for it? So back to metabolism. So

05:32let me start with that. Metformin is an extract of the French lilac. But it's not nutraceutical

05:37because it's actually modulated. But it was used between the 1920s and 1950s in Europe

05:45because mothers or doctors or something said, you know, this will treat your arthritis. This will prevent

05:51flu or cold. This will prevent malaria. It was used for many things because people realized there's

05:58something in it. And at that time, they realized that people with diabetes who are taking this drug,

06:05their glucose is lower. So it was kind of hijacked to diabetes. And a lot of people are telling me,

06:13hey, you know, this is a diabetic drug. And I'm saying, no, it's actually not a diabetic drug. It's

06:17probably an aging drug, okay, that was repurposed already for diabetes. That was the order of thing.

06:24It's also kind of interesting that when metformin came to the United States, very late,

06:31okay, very late in the 1990s, the FDA said, we have to study and see if metformin is work on us Americans.

06:42Okay, the British were not enough, the Danish were not enough.

06:45It's empty. And as part of that, there was, you know, people said, what does that metformin do for

06:54diabetes? And I happened to be the fellow at Yale that answered this question. I took diabetic patients,

07:02I gave them metformin and did sophisticated tests to show that it improves the insulin

07:08action in the liver. That doesn't matter. But that was the metabolism. So even now, people said, you're wrong.

07:14Metformin is doing this. And I said, yeah, who wrote the paper? And they see that it's me, okay?

07:20So I can actually move away from that. I didn't know at that time. Really, I didn't think of metformin,

07:26although aging was my interest all the time. This was a project and I didn't realize the serendipity here.

07:32But okay, so now you have this drug metformin and you start noticing incredible things. You start

07:40noticing that people in metformin have less cardiovascular disease and less dementia and

07:46less cancers. And you start having actually studies, clinical studies, and you know, there's

07:54studies association, right? We look at diabetic patient with and without metformin and we see

07:59less cancer. That's not really good because it wasn't designed to test that. It was kind of

08:05an observation. What really you have to watch in order to, and I'm saying it's for the public,

08:12you really want always a clinical study means I want a drug and I want a placebo and everybody's

08:20blinded and we'll see what it does. So metformin in a clinical study prevents diabetes. In a clinical

08:27study prevents cardiovascular disease. In a clinical study prevents decline from cognitive impairment.

08:37In a study, it prevents mortality. So you started all of a sudden getting data that for some were

08:46confusing because what is it that it prevents this and that and that? And that's back to, yeah,

08:52that's aging. Okay. Because it targets aging. So if you target in the wrong time, it's going to

08:58prevent whatever disease you're going to get next. I don't know what it is, but it's the aging

09:03that is going to drive this disease. And so that's in short metformin.

09:08Why isn't it in the water? If it has all of these amazing byproducts for

09:13the people who are taking it, why isn't everybody taking it?

09:16So it's interesting. It's already pre-COVID. So it's five or 10 years ago that the governor of

09:23Singapore asked me to come to consult to the prime minister office. And I said,

09:30I'll be happy to consult, but if I can have questions before I can give you answer. And one of

09:36the questions was exactly that. What about putting metformin in the water? And Singapore is one place

09:41that can do it. And the answer is not. Okay. The answer is not. And part of it, we kind of discussed

09:49before, metformin is not the right drug for people who don't have the signs of aging. So for example,

09:59metformin lowers growth hormone, which is good in old people, but it's not good in young people.

10:05It's not good in people your age who are also exercising and building muscle.

10:09That's not when we have to give you metformin. So the answer is metformin is not for everyone,

10:16but metformin has been repurposed to, first of all, obesity. It's not the best,

10:23they're much better drugs, but people on metformin lose on average five, eight pounds.

10:29It was repurposed for women with PCOS, with polycystic ovary syndrome.

10:34And when I say repurposed, the FDA didn't approve for that. Just doctors can do it and they do

10:41clinical trial. A clinical trial that it prevents diabetes. Okay. Non-diabetic patient. Okay.

10:47You're asking about diabetes and not diabetes. That's non-diabetic. It prevents, it prevents diabetes.

10:52The FDA didn't approve it for pre-diabetes, but people are using it. It's now repurposed for COVID.

11:02So, and I think that's an important point. During COVID, nine studies around the world,

11:10all showing the same thing. People on metformin have less hospitalization and less death.

11:15So, in the United States, there was a clinical study. Again, you know, it was controlled for

11:23other drugs, actually, in this case. And they showed that people who get metformin within three

11:29days of positive COVID, usually in the first day, they had 50% less hospitalization death and 60%

11:37less long COVID. It was in the New England Journal of Medicine, in Lancet. I'm throwing just really

11:42reputable. Okay. So now a lot of people, I mean, when people say we have COVID, I'm not feeling well,

11:49what should I do? I said, take metformin. Okay. So it was repurposed for metformin. And not only that,

11:55now a lot of people are taking metformin for aging because they know that it's coming.

Growth Hormone and Metabolism, Dr. Barzilai | The Future You | Men's Health

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