Manifesting 111 Aspen Live Event October 15 2026
Welcome to the Go Unpro podcast, a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. Now, here is your host, Dr. Brent W. Laartz, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, neuroscientist, and best-selling author. I can't believe everybody's here with us now. All right, so here it is, Manifesting 111. I am so excited to bring this second annual Manifesting 111 Wellness Festival this whole week of everything we're doing to make us live to 111 years of age. Can we live to be 111 years of age? I sure hope so. But we want to be healthy for that long time, right? That's why we call it healthspan instead of lifespan. We want to add years to our life, but also life to our years. This is a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. You may have seen my podcast out there. I am Brent W. Lartz, MD, an author, creator. I'm an infectious diseases physician, microbiome expert. I'm also a neuroscientist with a master's in neuroscience. And that research was in circadian rhythms, which makes me also well. place to do this. This is the Go On Pro Podcast. You can find the Go On Pro Podcast on Spotify.
Okay. So we just had a little hiccup about our live broadcast here, but we're going with the Go On Pro podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Substack, GoOnPro.com, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts, you can see our doctor's 52-week journey also. And we have... some different manifesting journeys there as well as some poetry and a lot of different things like meditation okay so a lot of different tools you can use to manifest 111 years of age disclaimer. I have to do the disclaimer right now as I am a physician. This program and any information communicated within it and any comments or anything else in within this is not intended as medical advice. The information herein is not also any medical care, diagnosis, or treatment of any medical condition.
No component of this content, including discussion or comments, shall be construed or implied as establishing a doctor-patient relationship. Before you translate or copy any of the information, diet, exercise, or products utilized herein or on any social media post to your own practice, consult your own research physician, therapist, or nutritionist for your own health. No warranties or claims are made as to the benefits or risks of any treatments, diet, exercise, or products herein. Research any treatments, diet, exercise, or products herein thoroughly before trying it for yourself. Referral, affiliate, or advertising fees may be garnered by this program. All right, so what is Manifesting 111? Got that out of the way, right? Got the disclaimer out of the way. Now let's get to what I am doing, Manifesting 111.
111 is a supercentenarian age target, right? So amazing what we can do if we just put our minds to it and also our actions, right? But 111 also signifies new beginnings and manifesting change, that spiritual change, transforming from the past into a new being that's going to get to 111 years of age. Manifestation is the method of making dreams come true. The blue zones, characteristics of a centenarian's lives that we have found all over the world, but they're few and far between. These places where more people live to be 100 years of age. And we'll talk about why that is. And we'll also talk about the protein. partial myth. I say a partial because there is some benefit to some people and, but I'm not buying it. All right.
My declaration as the anti-gym bro, you won't hear bro as much muscle as you can. Resistance training is important. We'll talk about that, but it's not about being a behemoth, right? That is not going to get us to 111. My situation, my family history of being A son of two parents that had diabetes and some chronic kidney disease, other health issues created by their lifestyle, created in the 50s and 40s when this country became into where we're at with becoming an ultra-processed country. And that is the problem. The ultra-processed country that is this world today. And that was the 50s. They promised housewives that things would be simpler. We’re going to bring you these Crisco solid fats that you can cook with. It'd be so much simpler than oils and whatever.
that family history of growing up with that, growing up with macaroni and cheese and growing up with that kind of thing, and then extending into that. We'll talk about how to change that and how I'm changing it with my manifestation. Okay. So I would I’m a physician so i should know all this better right but what happened i got up to a bmi of 27 is bmi of 27 horrible no but it's just creeping into the overweight category thought I was healthy thought I was going to be where i needed to be but then did my research when I started to see my parents get their health problems in their 60s 70s and 80s and now i am here to tell you that even as a former athlete and as a physician i was not doing the right things that I needed to do to get there what is the problem we are all the problem there's a comfort crisis in this country right
And I encourage everyone to read The Comfort Crisis by Michael Eastern. It's about the comfort crisis that we have in the United States, about how we are. living on a fast food diet standard American diet the sad diet right it's sad sad how sad is it in our sedentary lifestyle where everything is done for us travel cooking we're even using electric bikes as I’m looking at the window at electric bikes out in the street of aspen right so this healthy place even can have some unhealthy aspects to it. We're using electric bikes to peddle and people aren't even peddling these electric bikes. And it's fueled by our lifestyle, high stress living and mental health crisis, sleep-related illnesses. and epidemic of loneliness.
And then the plastics and ultra-processed, easy comfort foods, easy comfort everything that we have in our kitchen, in our workplace, in our travel, everything that's done for us. That comfort crisis is the problem. Now we're going to talk about how I'm trying to change it, overcoming my past, overcoming my language, beliefs, doubts, fears, language of the past, limiting beliefs, overcoming my genetics, overcoming my situation. It's not just about manifesting and, you know, manifestation is about changing those limiting beliefs and changing your language, but it's about action, right? Home, work, money, friends, city, state, country, society, changing that situation and getting to a better situation. That is something that is important. There's a book by Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit. She has a book about situations and how really success might be part of where you're situated.
Okay. So All can be overcome with work, daily work, okay? So it's not going to be something that's easy. This is not about our comfort world. it's going to be somewhat uncomfortable to become 111 years of age and get there where you need to be, okay? So blue zones, what have we found out about these blue zones? In general, these blue zones where more people live to be 100 years of age, and these are active 100 years old people, isolated from the modern world they're still growing their own food they're still farming they're still cooking their kitchen they're still getting out walking the the countryside okay so and they work they walk everywhere they go they they're wiry they're strong and they're wise and they have connection they have grandchildren in the same household as the elders They have spiritual, religious, and community connections, and they have stress management.
That's important, right? So I am now trying to mimic a farmer in Sardinia. I'm trying to walk everywhere, bicycle everywhere. And now, you know, I work 20 miles, 30 miles, 40 miles from where I live, can't walk there, right? But I'm trying to mimic this as much as I can. We can't mimic everything. We have plastics all around. We have processed foods all around. And we can't avoid it 100%, but we're getting there, right? Can we put it all together? we all know that guy. Tomorrow could be the day. I'm telling you that I could live to 111 that I want to, and I'm trying to change to get there, but I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I could get a heart attack because of my family history, and it may be too late.
But most of research on interventions that they've done can start at middle age. Okay, so 20% of longevity is family history and genes. So You can't completely overcome that. You might need medical treatment. And I might need medical treatment. And that's why I, as part of this, it's not all about this manifesting and just doing all these diet movement and everything. I need to seek medical care where needed, right? So the other 80% is about environment. And that environment could be your lifestyle, my lifestyle. my situation that I'm in. What do we die of? We die of cancer, heart disease, falls. Falls are an important one. And this is why strength is important in older age. Neurodegenerative diseases are also really important. And that's where our diet, exercise, and our movement will improve things.
So I'm going to get a little sciencey here about longevity and health span because there's a little bit of talking about mTOR in the longevity space. mTor is a key enzyme in aging. Inhibition of that mTOR and inhibition at those receptors. prevents aging and causes clearance of senescent cells which is extremely important these cells that we need to get rid of our out of our body that aren't as well eliminated if we don't have the right processes in place and we don't have the right diet exercise etc the right hormone milieu Those senescent cells are causing us problems, causing us mental health problems, causing us heart attacks, etc. There's also a gene and a product protein called alpha-Klotho that prevents aging of cells.
It's really new on the scene as far as a gene that we've discovered that could be manipulative work. And that's going to be coming all along down the line. And then there's an insulin and insulin-like growth factor. Increased levels of insulin and insulin growth factor cause growth of fat cells and tor cells and increased cellular senescence. And I'm not saying insulin is a bad thing because if you need to be on insulin for whatever reason, insulin is a bad thing if it's caused by your diet or by your body's problems within it metabolically.are causing these problems okay so insulin is good for us in certain situations in a natural small amount healthy microbiome this is where the microbiome and this is where some of the studies we've talked about in our sunday science podcast the healthy microbiome improves gut brain heart and hormone health and that requires fiber and it requires feeding it the right whole foods, okay?
We'll talk about that later. This is just showing the mTOR pathway and why potentially. proteins may not be the answer to my health and me making it 211. It's because nutrients and amino acids actually cause activation event or potentially increase protein synthesis in an inhibitive autophagy and oxidative stress to the body. If you need to build muscle or if you need to maintain muscle, you do need some protein. But if you actually have some fasting or calorie restriction, and that would include protein restriction if you are. And if you're going to want to decrease the mTOR activity, that will enhance autophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis and healthy metabolism. cause a potentially extended lifespan and healthspan. There are many, many studies that the National Institute of Aging has done in something called the Interventions Testing Program, where they tested compounds in mice, and they're about to test these in hans to see if they impact aging and longevity.
Calorie restriction seems to be the easiest thing to do.It doesn't involve medication, but if you restrict the calories of a mouse, you decrease aging and you increase lifespan by 20%. Think about that, 20%. If you can increase from 80 to 100 just by calorie restriction, that and these interventions that they've done. With these mice, they've also done, starting at middle age, at 40 to 50 years age of a mouse, which is, you know, one or two years of age, they can cause the same 20% improvement in longevity. Rapamycin. And rapamycin basically is a drug that inhibits mTOR. and at lower levels will inhibit mTOR only, but at higher levels, it's actually a chemotherapy drug. But at lower levels, it causes the right mTOR inhibition potentially, and causes a 20% increase in longevity.
protein restriction and leucine restriction, which leucine is an essential amino acid. If I restrict that, we've been taught these are essential amino acids, right? But potentially, that protein restriction does cause increased longevity in a mouse, that is. I mean, we don't have absolute data for this except for maybe some. cohort trials in hans the other the other interesting thing about this these interventions testing program is the only kinds of drugs that worked for increasing the lifespan of a mouse 20% are these diabetes medications, these SGLT2 and GLP-1 and Acarbose. Increased longevity by potentially 20%. And then if you actually increase the longevity of a mouse by almost 40%. Think about what that would be. And then also potentially estrogens and testosterone-type compounds have been found that have intermittently been found to increase the longevity of a mouse.
Okay, so again, a mouse is different from a han. We're different. They need strength, but they're not going to fall and break their leg. they're going to die of heart disease and cancers. All right. So the fact that these diabetes medications helped is amazing. All right. So we'll talk about the partial protein myth, right? As we age, we need more protein to maintain muscle. That's been a mantra that we've talked about for years in medical science. It is true that as we age, we need more protein. increased protein intake in animals, however, is associated with decreased longevity. However, we need muscle mass to maintain strength because we don't want to fall. However, excess protein in our diet gets converted to glucose, fat, urea, and uric acid. Those things could be detrimental.
And if we're eating too much protein, the average So protein without resistance training may be counterproductive because if you're not building the muscle, and obviously if you're not building the muscle, you're very sedentary, then the protein is definitely not getting utilized. Unless you increase that protein level to a higher amount, then you may increase muscle mass. However, in studies, baseline protein intake plus resistance training. begets the same muscle mass as increasing that muscle or the protein intake. So maybe it's just, we don't need to increase our protein, but we need to do resistance training. The standard American diet usually has about 80 to a hundred grams per day of, and again, that's that sad diet, right? Sad SAD.
that sad American diet has 80 to 100 grams per day of protein in normally and because we eat a lot of meat and we eat a lot of fatty foods the recommended is only 0.8 grams per kilogram and some people will tell you need more like two grams per kilogram but we're here to tell you that that may not necessarily be true if you can do resistance training. And you do need to build muscle mass when you're younger and you need to get that strength when you're younger because as you... get to older age, it could decline. So you need that. Okay. So here's just a schematic of effects of protein restriction potentially that is basically going through reduced mTOR activity because if you increase your protein intake you're going to increase mTOR activity, which will cause muscle growth.
But as long as you are doing some resistance training, that may or may not be true. And then we talk about the new modern food pyramid, right? The new modern food pyramid has a lot of fatty foods in the top. But it also has the vegetables in the top right there, you can see, but we're looking at on other online, just for those that are on other live situations here and or on audio podcasts, we're looking at the old classic food pyramid guide and the new modern.
Lost my lapel mic here. Live. Sorry about that. All right. So you can see that now breads and everything. All the carbs are on the bottom, the proteins and the vegetables are on the top, and the beans are in the middle. Beans can be an important source of protein, and so I like to see those potentially higher. But, all right, so do we agree with that? I partially agree with some of improving on that, but I think that putting it back to, you know, having... egg and what basically looks like a steak there and cheese and turkey may not necessarily be the answer to this we do need protein but again it's not the top of the pyramid and let's talk about our other organ the micro
biome because our microbiome in our intestines digests complex carbohydrates and it that's basically 10 to 20 percent of our diet gets digested only by our microbiome not by our own body and that's very important it manufactures important vitamins uh vitamin b and k and it can affect our mental health stress hormones satiety and obesity And it also is involved in our immune system. It produces short-chain fatty acids, which is extremely important for colon health. And there is also an impact on colon cancer because there is a strain of E. coli that is an increasing cause of colon cancer. And this is not the usual E. coli, so don't think that you've had a urinary tract infection with E. coli. This is a special strain of E.
coli that secretes a DNA mutagen, something that mutates our colon cells into cancer potentially. And it's something we may have... may have acquired 20 years ago by eating an ultra-processed, ultra-processed meats and maybe red meats. And this is something that is still being discovered as we speak. Okay. So And our cellular organ, the mitochondria, mitochondria is very important for aging and the health of mitochondria is important for fatigue. mTOR affects mitochondria, turnover of mitochondria, oxidative stress of overconsption. That overconsption of protein and or overconsption of fats and maybe carbs as well causes sick mitochondria and maybe a big issue for our fatigue of, you know, everybody thinks we're fatigued. I think I'm fatigued, right? And those mitochondria are the powerhouses of our cell that are going to be extremely important in aging.
Exercise improves mitochondrial nber and function, and this may be why exercise by cardiovascular exercise is extremely important. Longevity is not. about adding years to your life. It's about adding life to your years. Okay. This is the important thing that I'm talking about here, that longevity is also not aesthetic either. Okay. So this is not about, you know, I've seen i've gone to longevity conferences and I’d say half of the products that are there for skin and for getting rid of wrinkles etc and with healthy diet and exercise and everything some of that will come but it's healthy to have some wrinkles it shows you know some of these scars shows that you've had experience these smile lines it's from smiling right these these uh lines from our wrinkles, from our eyes.
It's important, right? It shows where we've been and how we're getting to where we are in the future. It is not a collection of hacks or supplements. Supplements are important for vitamins, et cetera, but we can get most of these from food. We’ll talk about this in a second, because if you are going to live a mostly plant-based diet, then you won't be able to potentially... get B12, maybe vitamin D and calcium and or some other minerals that you might need, but also omega-3 fatty acids, which can be obtained from a few sources that are vegan, but you might need to have some supplements, okay? And it is not living forever. It's not the, you've all heard of Brian Johnson living forever. I'm not wanting to be that guy.
I don't want to live forever. I am still experiencing life, loving life, getting out there. And I'm not perfect. I am not talking about being 100% pescatarian. I’m going to probably have bacon at some point and or. estate sometime when I feel like it. But it's few and far between. So the five pillars of longevity are diet, movement, sleep, connection and creativity, plastic free living. Those are the five pillars of what I want to do for my life that's going to bring me to 111. and going to manifest my change to where I'm going to have an unprocessed life. That's where we're at. All right, so what are we going to do with diet? So the first pillar, we're having our whole foods, mostly plant-based and not a lot other.
So not a lot of it, that's your calorie restriction. And whole foods, that's getting rid of processed foods, mostly plant-based, that's eating poor diet choices like high fats and high protein diets of red meat in particular, that's getting rid of those mostly, not all. This was a quote by Michael Pollan, who's a famous author from Harvard and has written a couple of these very interesting books that you can try. And there's other books out there, too. He's a very interesting author. And so really, when we're talking about it, what diet is best for longevity? There's all kinds of fad diets out there, right? Everybody is an influencer and telling you exactly what diet is correct. And really, there is no exactly correct diet and because we're all different, right?
So there's the N equals one, there's the everybody's genetic makeup, their environment, their body makeup, and where they're at and what they've done for the last 20, 40, 50 years of their life. everybody's different. The carnivore diet and keto may be somewhat important for somebody if they can't lose weight otherwise, because it is important for potential weight loss. These people do lose weight, but there is decreased longevity associated with it. And your no or little carbs diminishes the intake of fiber and vegetables, which are extremely important for our microbiome. Mediterranean diet. Has been touted as well and i i love this because it is whole foods it's high fiber it's less processed meats it's only lean meats and fish and it gets the protein from natural sources like beans and leges.
The MIND diet, this was basically, there's a lot of research on the MIND diet, which the MIND diet is almost the same as a Mediterranean diet, a vegan diet. may be important, but let's see what we have here as far as a vegan diet being important versus pescatarian. There are some studies, and below on the slide is from C.R. Zhang in Clinical Nutrition in 2026.There's a study where they showed that a pescatarian diet, even though it may have some fat and some animal protein, does maybe beat a vegan diet. All right, so where we're at here is that food is complex. There are 139,000 chemicals in food. Where do we get these from, right? So these chemicals that we've got in our food could be affecting us.
And these 139,000 chemicals are just now being studied and being categorized and seeing exactly what causes what. in our future, right? So it could be that some natural food could cause cancer that we don't know about. I’m not here to tell you that everything in our food is absolutely healthy with us because we've certainly found that foods in the past try to avoid certain foods that have So food is complex, and I think it's going to take a lot of experimentation and maybe some experimentation done by artificial intelligence, because our research protocols take years to establish longevity and years to establish cancer-causing compounds, right? But artificial intelligence may help us with this because that's a lot of different chemicals that we need to figure out whether they're actually good for us or not.
And what is the problem? Why is it that calorie restriction is important? Why is it that whole foods and vegetables and fruits are important, but there is at least a signal? that red meats are bad for us with respect to cancer, colon cancer specifically, and other types of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Why is it? Is it the saturated fat? Is it other things? And is there maybe some other vegetables? We tout avocados as being a healthy fat because it's got a lot of omega-6s and it's very natural. but maybe it's not. Okay. So let's get to diet tips for longevity. And really we talked about calorie restriction and there are a thousand ways to go about that. Calorie restriction means basically getting down to that weight that is healthier, intermittent fasting, time-restricted feeding, who knows which is best.
I do some of all of that myself, vegetables and fruits have sugar in them, but they also have so much antioxidants that there is some signal that they are good for you, right? So fruits have sugar, they have fructose, right? And so obviously we're trying to avoid sugar, but now we're eating these fruits. There's got to be a payback for why we eat it. And those antioxidants are probably the deal. And I'm sure there's some other reasons as well. fiber being one of them, whole foods, unprocessed, and limiting the ultra-processed. Diet so my top dietary interventions that i'm doing i'm doing this 52-week intervention myself and these are the things i've done i've gone and i'm not going to read through all these this will take forever if i do this for all five pillars but i'm doing no fast food no sodas i do water daily it's cillian i eat now red red meat rarely milk rarely And when I say that milk, I love cheese, cheese.
OK, so I don't know if I can ever be a fully vegan because I love cheese. And but I'm becoming vegan, starting at one, maybe getting to three days a week. I’m at about three days a week right now, a vegan, fully vegan days, getting to maybe five days a week and then low refined carbs, berries daily, dark chocolate, greens. and beans and then purple sweet potatoes i love this because nber one it tastes good and sweet and does have some sugar but as it's loaded with antioxidants amazing how what that intervention people in Okinawa ate purple sweet potatoes almost every day these purple Japanese sweet potatoes And they ate it almost daily. Now they don't. They've gone from being a blue zone to now not being as blue zone, partially because of that, partially because we've imported our fast food restaurants into these.
uh cities in japan uh avoiding processed oils 40 vegetable a week i try to do this occasionally where i'll take an entire week and i'll try to eat 40 different vegetables fruits nuts and beans during the week it really is a challenge to do but uh but and then i make my own a lot of make make my own products right so Especially salad dressing. If I'm going to have a salad, I don't want to eat an ultra-processed salad dressing that has a lot of different oils that I don't even know where they came from. And I make my own oat milk yogurt. I make my own beans and hmus and beans from dry beans, actually, then soaking and boiling and cooking them to make my own beans.
decreased alcohol less than eight drinks per month trying to get even further down than that because research has shown that even one alcohol drink per day is bad probably even need to be even less than that and certainly alcohol is part of our society we've got friends and relatives that drink and so getting together with them, I found that decreasing that alcohol and the non-alcoholic beers nowadays actually taste pretty darn good. So then fermented foods, I make my own pickles by fermenting cucbers, chickpeas, carrots, salsas. These kinds of things are great for the yogurts.the fermented foods, pickles, chickpeas, they're great for my microbiome. Peppermint tea, I've done calci and vitamin B, and we just mentioned this a bit ago, B12, omega-3, extremely important, okay, so if you're going to be in this more vegan diet, okay, so, and I love fish, I love sushi, so can't go wrong there.
Movement. There is two strong determinants of health span and longevity, and can't emphasize this enough because if you do one or the other, it's not important enough because you need to do both. You need to have good cardiovascular exercise and resistance training because grip strength and lower extremity strength is highly associated with longevity. Why?There's a hundred different reasons why, but I can think of a major mortality and morbidity for older people, and that's falls. If you can catch yourself from falling because you have strong lower extremities, and that grip strength also is just really a marker for the fact that we have lived a hard life and actually had to do things ourselves, right? And that is important for longevity.
And that, you know, it's part of a satisfaction of life that you've done things yourself and not just dependent on others. The four pillars of movement, cardiovascular fitness, resistance training, flexibility and stretching and balance. Okay.So a lot of what we do, if we're going to be working on this on a daily basis, needs to be working on that. My top movement intervention is really about daily movement, avoiding injuries, avoiding overdoing it, because injuries can really impact how well you can do this on into the future. time you have off for injuries the better three times per week i'm doing resistance training a low weight high rep resistance training i'm not going for maxes i'm not going for i'm not going for muscle hypertrophy other than what i what i think is a normal amount of hypertrophy from my muscle.
Three to four times a week, I'm doing cardiovascular exercise in a variety, three to five different types.I'll show a little bit of slide about this, about why that is important. Group classes, clubs, court sports for balance, balance training, don't skip legs, misspelled legs on my slide there. One hour per day is important. Push beyond. what what you can do a little bit obviously needing to avoid injury nature forest getting out into the forest and hiking and then competition is something i started doing as well did my first 5k in a little while before movement also in all of this has a little bit of hormesis involved hormesis is a theory that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. So it's basically the U-shaped curve.
And I've got some on the slide here, I've got some data from a couple of different studies that we outlined in Sunday Science recently that showed that you benefit with increased longevity. at the start of doing some exercise, but then at some point it starts coming back up and you lose some of that benefit and you lose that benefit beyond a few times a week. And on the upper right showing that cardiovascular and resistance training and court type sports And if you do try it, and there is one study that showed that if you do three to five different types of exercise, that it extends that longevity benefit of the exercise even further. So cardiovascular resistance training and core based.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be just court-based, but something that is balanced also might also be because of court-type activities and the new pickleball, which I'm not a pickleball player, but pickleball is an important social activity of some people, right? So sleep, it's a snoozer of a problem, right? Everybody, when they're younger, they say, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'll sleep when I'm dead? Really? , that could be actually sooner if you keep up that attitude. , okay. So basically poor or lack of sleep is associated with inflammation, weakened immune system, it's associated with cancer, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke, diabetes, and weight gain, , weight gain, because if you have a lack of sleep, if you get less than five hours of sleep the next day, your leptin which is a satiety hormone, is decreased and your ghrelin, which is a hormone that is associated with hunger and hunger for processed type foods, is increased.
That just from one single night of a five hour or less sleep. You increase your ghrelin and decrease your leptin okay so boom right there boom it shows exactly why sleep is important depression anxiety cognitive decline with poor sleep okay so that's why it's important for better sleep the goal is seven to eight hours of sleep And I've done a lot of different types of sleep interventions for myself. I never really considered myself a poor sleeper, but I'm a physician, right? And, you know, I, you know, with my kids, back when my kids were growing up, my wife at the time said, oh, you're a doctor, so you can stay up with the kids because you're used to having no sleep. Well, partially true. do not get very much sleep.
We get paid in the middle of the night. And so I am sure I've had a lifetime of low amount of sleep and poor sleep, but I wake up refreshed every day. I've tried to get better sleep and longer sleep and better deep sleep. These are the interventions. Early morning sunlight is important because circadian rhythms, as I've done some research Evening, decreased light or red light, blackout room while you're sleeping, cool room, mindful meditation before sleep, breath work, journaling, potentially to get rid of some of that stress that you may have brought into the bedroom. sauna mid-afternoon or early might be important as well. Bring up that temperature and allow it to decrease a little faster potentially with that sauna or hot tub. I'm a hot tub addict.
You find any hotel I'm at, it better have a hot tub because I'm in the hot tub in the afternoon. Going to head there probably after this. Entrainment, sounds and light entrainment at certain hertz of frequency has been shown to potentially improve sleep. 4-7-8 breathing, and we'll talk about this, and we've talked about this for meditation also. 4-7-8. Four seconds or four count breathing in through the nose, hold it for seven, and then eight count of breath outwards with a forceful breath out with the mouth, okay?
right there amazing how that right before bed can really concentrate on things and then also some meditation and and mindful meditation we'll talk about that in a second essential oils for sleep peppermint or lavender tea fan noise basically some different types of background noise that can keep maybe other bigger noises from waking you up seven hours I try to get eight hours on a weekend or a vacation because that, you know, that can maybe catch me up on my sleep. Meditation at four, seven, eight breathing decreases the heart rate. It's calming, gets my vagal nerve stimulated so that I can relax. OK, so that nose, mouth and whoosh breathing. positive affirmations. Okay. So positive affirmations are extremely important as well. I’m a generous person. I am, you know, speak some positive affirmations about your day.
I have done this with my kids all, all the time is, is do the rose bud and thorn. The rose is the great thing you loved about today. The thorn is, is what was bad about today. And then the bud puts you into What is the future and what you're looking forward about tomorrow and the next day and the future? OK, so those kind of things, body scan and move through the body and senses and get to feeling your body and your senses. And concentrating on that that gets rid of some of the stress of the day placing worries into a disappearing ball and that disappearing ball of meditation putting all of your worries and seeing them disappear in the disappearing ball i love that meditation all right so connection this is our fourth pillar right so we've gone through diet exercise and sleep our fourth is connection loneliness in a connected world, right?
So there's an epidemic of loneliness. We have social isolation. We're here on TikTok and we're here on Zoom and we're here on all of this podcast we're in and we're commenting and we're getting together that way, but we're not getting together as much as we used to in a good way. Seniors do better with younger generation living with them. This is important for as you get older with younger generation living with them. And so what I try to do is a lot of different activities that deal with younger people. OK, so and creativity, I can't, you know, connection is not necessarily always about. connection as a as a connection with other people can be connection with yourself and with your own passions creativity with painting with any kind of art with any kind of reading or anything you want to try to do connection with other activities reading and be coming at one with oneself comfortable being alone and then there's sex too there's companionship and sex with that improves longevity.
So I think that this is something we need to overcome in our society and that a lot of communities are actually trying to improve this. And my top connection interventions are not necessarily just about... about trying to get together with other people, that's important. And I've done a lot of that over the years, because you can still be connected with people and be unhealthy connection, right? Mindfulness and meditation, I've done journaling and vision boards. The thing about connection also is about having a passion, having a reason for living, having that mantra, that mission statement, and then creativity. I try to paint, write, and there will be a shameless plug at the end of this talk about the two. Actually, I've written three books.
There will be a shameless plug about those and about my social media and about other. other things. So we'll talk about that. But social and walking clubs, running clubs, I have joined a running club. I travel to go to run clubs to where I can join with other people, see what other people are like in other cities and other countries. And, you know, going to Paris this smer where my daughter was at. Running along the River Seine and seeing all the young people out there and beginning to meet some young people in France and getting all everywhere getting to Aspen unfortunately they shut down the run club on this particular week this blue vast week was the last run club of the year because it's October and it's a you know it snowed last night here and
so they're starting to get to the real season of ski season i guess so they're stopping running here as much and probably running indoors on their treadmill meeting new people Travel, volunteer, mentoring, volunteering, and then family, religion, community, that volunteering, that getting a sense of community and giving back. Urban farm, I've done some volunteering at. We shop there much, many times during the year, different seasons that they have at this urban farm in my town. getting involved with that, limiting screen time, TV, learning a new language. I love doing that because it gets to the cultural aspect of connection, right? I've learned a bit more French than I did in the past because I went to Paris and I do Duolingo. It's an app, right?
Take a class, gym, cooking, gardening, learning new things is extremely important. Now, The fifth pillar, and I think this is something that I've put in my mantra for myself, it may not be in other people's bailiwick, however, plastics and chemicals are one reason why we are aging poorly in this country. We’re exposed by ingestion, inhalation, skin and mucous membrane absorption, and the Forever Chemicals, PFAS, BPA. Plastics, polyesters, polystyrene, polyvinyl compounds. And this is part of this comfort crisis of we all want something that's going to be comfortable and easy, right? So you want these laundry detergent pods you throw in the thing, but they've got polyvinyl compounds in them. What is polyvinyl? they say, you know, it's decomposing and it's compostable, et cetera. But I'm not sure if I buy it.
Food additives processed into undigestible slop, right? And food additives like coloring and other things that are all made from. corn, et cetera, that are made into unnatural products that we don't need in our food. It’s been made to basically be easily digestible, easily palatable, and being able to be stored on the shelf for a long time. But how important is that if we can buy locally, if we can eat whole foods, not eat processed foods, get rid of that food additives. And that's what I'm doing with my life. Plastics and chemicals affect your microbiome, cause hormone disruption and infertility. There's a really cool documentary where they took. 20 couples, I don't know, 10 couples or 20 couples, and they basically got rid of the plastics out of their household and got rid of all of that.
And these couples were trying to have babies for years and were going to going to a fertility clinic. And all it took for most of these couples, they were pregnant in like eight weeks, 12 weeks after changing their diet and changing their households. Diabetes, thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and stroke have been associated. Inflammation, faster aging. And then in utero exposure to plastics has been associated with pediatric intestinal inflammation six to 10 years after being born. Now with that said, did they also then have plastic exposure during their childhood after? They may have. without the plastic exposure, had less pediatric intestinal inflammation. We don't know what, you know, those are some studies. We don't know the true facts of this because it's not a, those are cohort studies and observational studies.
But, you know, how are we going to tell from a randomized clinical trial of giving a woman plastics during... during their pregnancy. My top plastic intervention is really the start. The biggest thing of plastics intervention is right in the kitchen and processed foods. So kitchen, we have so much plastic there and I had so much plastic. I've always had stainless steel pots and pants. But I'm trying to switch to stainless steel, glass, and wood in the kitchen, kitchen utensils. My girlfriend squares, you know, we can't get rid of the silicone scraper that scrapes the pot, and I'll take that for now. But glass storage, water glasses, steel glasses, steel, other different types of things that I've done in my life.No water bottles, trying to get rid of water bottles.
You can see here. take this with me every day in the car to drink my water in the morning we talked about getting water more water uh amazing uh that changed here's my uh here you know ball jars Okay. Storing my food in there. This is my fiber that I bring along trips. Okay. So glass spices, the products coming in glass versus plastic, oils products, measuring cups, padapar paper is something I've discovered, which may or may not be the greatest product, but household chemicals and then also beauty products and personal care products trying to get rid of some of that. I’m holding in my hand a mouse that is made out of bamboo and all you know the outside of is almost 100% bamboo. Grocery bags made out of hemp.
Putting my produce in paper bags. not uh not out of the realm of of possibilities that you could basically get some fresh produce put it in a plastic bag take it up to the counter and take it home and you leave it that in that putting it in the refrigerator why am i why was i doing that produce in the paper bags taking some paper bags i'd get the dry beans put them in there avoiding canned foods canned foods actually have a plastic lining on the inside of a plastic can, of a steel can. And I get dry beans when I can, or fresh produce, okay, avoiding canned foods. Car, work, hens that I use, a mouse, and then clothes, the last part, it has been shown potentially that some micro and maybe nanoplastics are aerosolized in clothes.
And so you can see I'm wearing a wool sweater here. And there are dyes in here, hopefully, that are good. I'm wearing cotton jeans, right? And I can't get rid of everything. I've got wool socks on. I can't get rid of shoes, right? So I can't get rid of everything plastic. But those are my top plastic interventions that I've done so far. And I'm not 100%. I'm telling you, there are plastics still in my life. I'm still going to maybe eat some meat. I am still going to maybe eat some processed food every once in a while. But I'm trying to limit it, and I'm trying to get to a 90% success, trying to get rid of it 90%. Vegan, whole foods, five days, six days out of seven.
Same thing all over them. So manifesting, that manifestation of trying to get rid of limiting beliefs. Okay, so. That's important for me and the situation and the tools I use. And I string successful days in a row and try to get no consecutive days off, okay? So trying to get to that five or six days out of the seven, okay? And I use an accountability app. There's check calendars that I can use on my phone that I can use. My phone has a case on it that's made from wood. amazing that I could get that right. So that phone has a check calendar, has a lot of different things. I have my aura ring on here. It's made out of ceramic, has some different electronics in it that could be bad, but I'm using that for my accountability.
Okay. Daily weights, my gold BMI. my aura ring, and my meditation apps that I can use. So there's a lot of different tools along that 52-week journey, using random rewards to help myself, and then volunteering to help other people as well. And so here's where we're going to talk about manifesting. in order to manifest health and longevity it's kind of a difficult thing right in our society because we we've all come up in our lives and i came up i grew up in the 70s and 80s that was the start you know 1977 was when we came up with high fructose corn syrup and i was eight years old They threw that thing, they threw that stuff in everything, went into sodas immediately.
Okay, so they found a way that they didn't have to buy plain sugar. They could get it from corn, right? So first of all, you need to have a clear vision and you have to have a passion for why it is you're doing this. And for some of us, it could be selfish. One of the things with living longer is you're going to be able to make more money. And people who die older, as long as they die healthy, have more money. Maybe it could be something not so selfish. You want to be there for your grandkids, right? Maybe great-grandkids, maybe even great-great-grandkids. My great-grandmother died. When she was 103 years old, my grandma died when she was 101.
And that kind of longevity, I got to meet my great-grandmother, and she was still with it. She was still walking to the grocery store every day to buy a can of tuna. Grandmother was still alive and still able to play the piano. Amazing. how, and some of that's going to get me some good genes, right? So on my mother's side, some good genes. And you need to have that clear vision of why and how you're going to do it. Okay. So then assess the situation and barriers, obstacles, people, situations. Before you start, you need to change your situation, okay? You need to look at why you might go out and have eight beers on a Saturday night, watching football with the friends, who that is, why you're there, and whether there's some other situation you can get yourself in as opposed to that, and why you need to eat meat, eat processed foods?
Why do you need to have a tub of ice cream at night because you're depressed about something? Is there some situation that's causing that? And that's what I've done with myself, trying to get out of that situation, trying to hang out with younger people, trying to get into this different type of lifestyle that is the more vegan whole food. exercise dominated lifestyle and getting where I need to be. And so the other part about manifesting any kind of change is that you need to align your language, docent your mantra and positive affirmations, write them down and say them every single day. Aligning language. gets rid of negative thoughts. Your brain has dislikes change and you must fight against it. And I have to fight against it.
I have to fight against when I go to work at a hospital, I'm working there for 12, maybe even 16 hours. Do I need to have that diet that's in that doctor's lounge that is horrible for me? Or can I escape that somehow? Can I change that? Avoiding limiting beliefs. Some people can say, you know, I've always been big bone or my mom was, my mom ate this and therefore I will eat this till I die. My mom taught me how to cook and it was this way. avoid those limiting beliefs is extremely difficult, okay? So you have to fight against that by removing those doubts and negative thoughts. 60,000 thoughts per day our brain has, and most of them are negative. Getting rid of those negative thoughts is done not very easily.
but is done with positive affirmations and manifesting and changing your language and changing your actions. So, you know, my daughter thought that manifesting was a lot of hocus pocus and it wasn't real, right? So, so let me just do something here real quick. Why am I having to do that? I'm not sure if that was TikTok trying to make me do that. I had to put a little puzzle piece together too. I'm not sure if that made me do that to continue my live stream. But anyway, so it's not all about thoughts live stream going okay i just i'm sure if it was tick tock to maybe i have to put a puzzle piece together then i'm not sure if i had to do that to keep going or not but i think it was checking to make sure i was still here maybe they want to make sure that people aren't just uh live streaming live streaming uh something forever yeah good all right so
And, you know, some people do think that manifesting is not real, that you can't just manifest your way into a good life. And you can't, you know, I think some people think that it's just I'm going to think about something and it's going to happen. And this is where I think people go wrong, is you have to align your behavior and you have to take action. You have to take action every single day because a dream without action is just a dream and it vanishes in the morning. Action is where it's at for exactly what you need to do. That exercise, that diet, the grocery store you need to go to, the local market, the urban market, urban farm, I should say. those kind of things take some action.
Those kind of things take getting off the duff and then not using the creature comforts that we have. It takes action and getting out into the world and getting out of this beautiful day here in Aspen. Here I am inside. However, I'm taking action and I'm taking action with my diet. We've got some great food in here for people here that are... either pescatarian, vegetarian, and some amazing food. Those kind of things and changing the diet, changing your... shopping behavior and what you buy and what you feed and you know somebody may feed you or you may be a husband or wife who's whose partner cooks or something changing that behavior aligning that behavior and and taking the action is most important part and then gratitude for the universe envy and negative thoughts of others defeats us and then feedback and root cause I was telling you about the accountability app I have, and I can look on my accountability app for the month and see, was I vegan that day or not?
Did I eat beef, pork, cheese? What I ate that day, that was the worst possible thing, and I had that. Did I run? Did I lift weights? Did I do some court exercise? What I did? Did I eat any sugar? Did I eat beans? Did I eat? I have all of this on an accountability. It's simple to do. It's like six or eight calendars that I just put a quick emoji in. And it's amazing tool for me to then give myself some feedback. That's immediate feedback for the month saying, wow. I didn't do this or that, right? So, and I did this positive thing for myself. And then I can start to think about why did I drink a soda that day in the doctor's lounge? Because I bring my own water.
And there's some root cause analysis about travel, right? If you travel and then, you know, they have grapefruit here in the breakfast for restaurant, in the restaurant. But I have to bring my own fiber. I have to bring my own. I went out and I bought some new yogurt, you know, some dairy-free yogurt that I love. And I make my own yogurt in order to get rid of some of the bad foods that we have and what do i do when i'm on vacation can i go someplace healthier can i do things that if i if i have a root cause analysis that i go to new Orleans for my vacation and i or i go on a cruise where they have where they have all you can eat food and they have basically they have some exercise they have a gym they have a little track above everywhere.
They have a pool, right? And they have activities you can do. But is there a root cause analysis for my vacation and for my work, what I'm doing at work, what I bring to work? If there's a cafeteria worker, only restaurants, can I bring my food? Can I food prep? All of those kind of things about root cause analysis, trying to figure out what the problem is, is what I'm trying to do with my life. And I'm 57 years of age right now. may die when I'm 60. You never know. My kid hit by a bus. My kid might have a heart attack. Maybe it was too late. Maybe I changed my ways too late. But here's where we're at with with this 57 years of age.
I'm no expert at getting to be at 111 years of age. I'm trying to tell you manifesting at 111, and I'm trying to tell you how to do it. This is the research I've done. I’ve hoped that it'll help me, but it's not 100%. It's not foolproof. And something I ate, I was telling you about colon cancer. that colon cancer in people age 50 and lower is almost 90-something percent caused by one single bacteria putting out and secreting a DNA mutagen. and they've done multiple, multiple studies now. It's really only been known for about the last five years. We've known for the last five years that there is a huge increase. People with colon cancer below age 50 used to be only above age 50.
We didn't do colonoscopies until people were 50 because even the polyps weren't even being formed. But now the recommendation is getting this past year that had colon cancer that were under 50 years of age and that is increasing by three percent per year as most of you know with stock doubling and whatnot that if you increase something three percent per year that that will double every 15 years doubling every 15 years So it's the year 2026 now, and there are 20,000. 15 years from now, there will be 40,000. And by the time 2050 comes around, there will be 100,000 people, let's call it 80,000, 80 to 100,000 people getting colon cancer every year. That's more than there are colon cancer deaths or incidents every year.
And this is potentially caused by this one bacteria that we may have attained 20 years ago. So, you know, and that's where medical care comes in and catching things early and actual medical care and not all this, all this just diet exercise and what so what not. It needs to be in conjunction with physicians, nutritionists, physical therapists. How whatever is needed for you and whatever is needed for me research it for yourself nope don't just copy what i'm doing i love what i'm doing and i love being passionate about talking about it but it's not for everyone okay so and i'm sure that uh you know red meat is something that's ingrained in certain areas of the country, in certain societies within the United States.
But I can tell you that I'm not having much of red meat anymore Because of the research that i've done and it's not again not for everyone hey here's the shameless plug on the slide here i have two novels that i've written Sean Stamos the Manchurian market and also Sean Stamos blue purge revelation a little shameless plug there i have a third book that was written about It was almost 20 years ago now. It was basically how to avoid infections. It did not have a COVID section on there, but the respiratory viral part and influenza basically kind of foreshadows anything that we had with COVID-19. I'll probably write another book at the end of this. So forthcoming is the Manifesting 111 book and the doctor's journey.
to a 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. That book will be forthcoming. I'm only at 26 weeks right now. We just had 26 weeks halfway through the journey. And those are the things that I've done as I've shown you on this podcast. Amazing journey already for 26 weeks. I can't wait to see what the second half of this year. entails. Okay. So thanks for joining me. These are on the screen for those that are not on audio podcast. These are the links for my books on the left and also my social media on the right. If you want to look at that, it's brentwlaartzmd. On TikTok, it's brent.w.laartz.md. But again, You can find us on any social media, Brent W.Laartz, MD, and you can find Go Unpro on GoUnpro.
com. You can find our podcast, the Go Unpro podcast on anywhere you find your podcast. You can just search it under Laartz, L-A-A-R-T-Z. There's some of it that's just on audio that has a maroon. uh artwork for the for the podcast the blue podcast artwork means it's in video if you want to check out on the video podcast as well but that's basically on any type of podcast you want to get apple Spotify uh Substack i'm on YouTube and everywhere okay so and again go on All right, so any questions from the audience, I'm going to take this and stop sharing so that we can see some good questions. We always get questions on this, and that is, why now and why at 50 years of age?
are you changing this? And again, I told this, and there's multiple studies, this interventions trial program protocol that were they taking mice and giving them different medications and or different interventions. And the one was calorie restriction. But on almost all of these interventions, if they take the mouse at middle age, equivalent to basically what I think middle age is, should be 50, right? To me, 57 is Those interventions actually still work to increase the lifespan by 20% if they start at middle age. This is why I'm starting now. This is why I'm excited about this because I think I can impact my lifespan and exactly what I can do with the rest of my life because I'm definitely nowhere near half finished. with what I've got to do with this life.
So I've had a great life. Thank you very much for joining me on the live stream here. And if you didn't catch this live stream, we're here in Aspen today. If you didn't catch this live stream and you're watching it on video later. We are going to have this around the country in live streams from different locations and getting together a community, a community of everyone who wants to live healthier and do different run clubs with me, etc. I'm going to be going around to different cities and doing run clubs. walking clubs. It doesn't have to be a run club. You can walk. All of these run clubs have associated walking with them as well. And we're getting the sun, the great sun. It's going to be sunset pretty soon here in Aspen. And getting that in right through the window, getting maybe a little late afternoon sun, which might not be so good. I love sunsets. I love it from wherever I go. So wherever I travel, all these places, you'll see me at the sunset as well. Thanks for joining me on the live streams. We'll catch you soon. If you have any questions, you can certainly do them in social media, et cetera, too. So thanks for joining me. Love you guys.
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