If You Want to Live a Long-Ass Life, Watch This | Jason Prall on Health Theory

in today's episode of health theory with Jason Prall we discuss why your social life is essential for your health the importance of spending time in nature how meditation can really improve your life and these simple things you're not doing that will extend your lifespan everybody welcome to health theory today's guest is Jason Paul he's the creator and host of the human longevity project as well as the host of you optimized radio show and he spent years interviewing centenarians and a gaggle of experts on the secrets to longevity and wellness and he created a 9 episode docu series that makes all of that knowledge available to everybody Jason what I want to know is one what got you started on this journey like many health practitioners in the field it was my own health challenges and so that sent me down this this new trajectory from an engineer to a health practitioner and helping people with their chronic issues that pursuit led me to sort of the idea of going around the world to speak with centenarians from all different cultures and interviewing them and figuring out what their life was like what their culture was like what their environment was like to help bring some of that wisdom back with the idea of modern science backing the the what we see in the real world and we can also show what healthy aging looks like because most of us in the West don't know what a healthy 95 looks like what a ninety eight year old woman who can till upper soil still and pick oranges off her tree and read a newspaper without glasses we don't know what that looks like I've never seen it until I had to go to Okinawa to speak with a woman that was just like that and what were the things you were struggling with in the beginning for me it was very simple stuff it was joint pains and skin condition type things right and these were not problems that I that I got answers to right so even at 13 when my knee issue started chronic knee issues right and I was told by the doctor was overuse and I'm 13 and like even at 13 you know I understood I'm like well but there's 42 year-old after the professionals how how could this possibly be overuse but nevertheless I didn't have the knowledge base or the skill set to really think or act any different than what the doctor was telling me so not getting to the root problem not explained to me why this is happening and trying to mask over the the issues you start to realize okay you know all this other stuff is sorta lies and propaganda and nonsense and when you really figure out what's going on which is a you it's at your peeling your constantly peeling you know you get one level of understanding then there's another layer right behind it so it's not like the floodgates open to some degree it's actually like a constant journey of discovery of another layer so knowing that that's true knowing that you've talked a lot about like research is flawed and really understanding how research happens and how we get into a sort of flawed data set how do you get good at the end of one experimentation when it can be so overwhelming to even know where to begin how a how did you get good at that and then what do you recommend to people now in the age of Internet to really find answers that work for them I think you have to recognize that you are your own experiment and you have your own experiences in the process and there's nobody that can tell you anything about you you have to figure it out so in one way it's you feel like you're a little alone in the process but using other people and other advices as a guide perhaps can be useful to help you navigate the waters but is this something that would have been done a thousand years ago or a hundred years ago based on what we know a pretty good lens to look through to figure out should I be trying this is there somebody on the planet or some group of people doing this in a healthy way if so why are my why or why might that be the case or why might not be the case so figuring out what may work and what may not work through the lens of of history and actual people trying these things is very helpful to help guide you but it can in no way dictate your truth so you just kind of have to start on the process and course correct and self navigate but part of that require you to to an end to listen to to get rid of all the the biased viewpoints that you've heard so to some degree you kind of have to chuck out all that all the extra knowledge because it's coming from a different source that is not you so there are plenty of people that have one truth that is vastly different than another truth that somebody might experience this is why you have so many arts and the arguments in the nutrition world because they are very true for certain people at certain times given certain contexts and very untrue for the another person in a different context different time different set of conditions so because studies are controlled experiments that may or may not even have a good premise to start with let alone a good conclusion you cannot apply research to an individual and think that it's going to always be the case or ever be the case necessarily until you try it so you have to kind of figure it out for yourself and I don't know any other way to do it when you were working with clients did you give them sort of the first rung of the ladder or was there like a baseline protocol that you would point them in a direction I'll give you a possible example from things that I know that you've explored so hey you know that you come from Eastern Europe and what did it look like from an ancestral standpoint in Eastern Europe what were the seasons what would a microbiome of somebody that grew up in that region probably be like is that things like that that at least gives them that first step or is it literally just as long as its whole natural food just start experimenting I mean I think there's more fundamental aspects of health right you have to get good sleep step number one so what does it take to get good sleep right so those are basic things that we can start with the way you think and emote in the world there are ways that we know through practice and through text and through history that has shown us that are generally a better place to be in state of gratitude right a state of compassion empathy right these type of things are kind of a universal concept so despite where you are on the world who you are what your conditions are there are sort of universal truths then I think we need to start with the food equation becomes much more difficult partially because every affects everything so you can't subscribe to one diet if your circadian rhythm is off and think that the that that same diets going to affect you the same way when your circadian rhythm is on when you get good sleep you may or may not be able to eat this food when you get bad sleep you may or may not be able to eat this food so if your diet is just a representation a part of the equation that we have to work in and you cannot separate it from the good sleep from the negative emotions because we know that when you eat a McDonald's hamburger which we can all agree it's not the healthiest food if you're in a state of peace and you're on a beach and you're with friends and you're laughing and you're you don't think this McDonald's hamburger is going to kill you we know that we digest it better we know there's less inflammation at the gut we know that it doesn't impact us the same way however when we're driving down the road we're stressed out we're on the phone we're doing a million things we're eating all at the same time the same meal we digest it differently more inflammation more food sensitivities all these things start to come up so you can't isolate one part of the equation and think that you can find the answer in that one part you've got to work it all together and this is the point of looking at the entirety of the lifestyle to understand what works for the individual all right so you're starting to touch on what I think are gonna be answers to really my overarching questions for the whole interview which is what are the keys to longevity I mean it fundamentally it all comes down to lifestyle and that that encompasses everything right so that is how we think that's how we emot-- that's how we communicate that's how we connect that's that's that's diet is all factored into this but if you take anybody you know and say okay let's let's go through your closet let's toss out all the old stuff right there's inevitably things in the closet that they don't where they don't use there's gonna be a resistance to throw it to giving away some of these clothes why you're giving away clothes that you don't wear to somebody who may need them in theory that's an easy decision but you have an emotional attachment to something in in that piece of clothing and yet we can't get rid of it so there's just in this abundance so that we all have here in the West this overabundance this over convenience we are complexify and so in this let's say closet example we have stored emotions trapped emotions we have this clogged up stuff and so when you are able to get rid of that you actually are freeing yourself of these trapped emotions of this attachment to garbage that it's really not useful to you so we find this in everything that we have in our lives relationships you ever get invited to a party you don't really want to go to and you kind of go anyway I mean why is that right we need to simplify every part of our life we are over complicating everything and what you realize when you go to these places you see that everything is so simple and the requirements for your happiness and health are very little you don't need a lot of things to be happy and healthy and yet we are searching for them and all these things and we get bogged down by them so just by simplifying your environment your relationships everything around you you change your behavior and this is where the change comes from it's in the behavior but the simplicity is the catalyst for that behavioral change so it's a it's a critical part and it's one of the most fundamental things that I recognized that I wasn't anticipating when I went to these places when we showed up in Costa Rica for example we use an area that pays your notice those known for its longevity right and we're going there to find these hundred year olds to talk to them right and it's not like there's a list of them and I have their emails right like you got to go figure out how to find these people so and we had a limited time in the limited budget so in theory this is kind of a stressful situation right we've got a clock that we've got to run up against and yet when we got there I felt like time slowed down or stopped it's almost like comparing driving on the freeway at 70 miles an hour and you just see all these cars going 70 miles an hour you got to go 70 miles an hour right versus walking down the street on a walk you just rolling down around a lake you know and everybody else is strolling around the lake there's a different pace there you're going with the flow to some degree in the flow is affecting you I want to push down this path a little bit because it's something that you brought up that I had never heard before at least not in these words I think you called it social genomics yeah so the interrelatedness of the people that you're close to and I don't know if you meant it quite like what we're talking about now which is maybe a little bit broader but you had talked about the difference between a Costa Rica and a New York and how just the way that it affects you on a physiological level is pretty interesting it's massive yeah and Social genomics can can typically it's referring to human human interactions but to be honest it's everything right so it's it's but it's this the way you inter interact with your environment will actually dictate your genetic expression and there are mechanisms through which we can explain this via the nervous system do tell I'm super curious especially if you know anything about forest bathing oh yes you know yeah yeah so what what is that on a biological level well so this it gets it gets fairly esoteric if you get to the real level I think but fundamentally if we want to stay in the physical discussion here both we know that just being in nature or even looking at a painting of nature changes your brainwave state we can measure this it changes your nervous system the state of your nervous system changes you more to the parasympathetic the rest and digest when you start to change the nervous system function if you talk to any chiropractor for example they'll tell you that changes everything the nervous system is a fundamental connecting point through which our body operates so now the question is is how does the nervous system shift there is something there and we all feel it when we go to a beach when we get outside and and the Sun hits our skin that we know that it's affecting us right and it affects the brain it affects the nervous system affects hormonal fluctuations it exchanges the way our microbiota are behaving and and let's not forget we are mostly microbiota we are mostly viral and bacterial and fungal genetic material we are to even think about what a human is is a weird concept because most of your function is carried out by these organisms that are not you they are there with you and part of you but not you one thing just and I don't want to lose this thread and I really want to get back to the really esoteric part but there was something that you've talked about where you said that it almost doesn't even matter just what bacteria or viruses or whatever you have it matters what how their genes are expressing and that they all have their own genetics and epigenetics and I think that's really really interesting in the field of you know a great functional complementary medicine that we're now obsessed with this idea of epigenetics I think generally what we're referring to is that our human genome is expressing differently but I find it more fascinating that you also have mitochondrial genome right in mitochondria these little organelles that are inside the cells that have their own genome that are not human so we have human genome mitochondrial genome we have microbiota genome and all of these can shift and change based on the interactions with the external world some of which those inputs are actually genetic material themselves so when you eat an apple you actually have micro RNA from the Apple interacting with your genes so now you have all these genetic systems and components working together in unison all trying to accomplish the same thing which is balanced in the ecosystem that it's in this is all changing whenever you think a thought whenever you have whenever you have sex whenever you get to get mad or upset or you feel depressed whenever you exercise everything is changing when you're when we think about blessing our food for example or saying a prayer before a meal so it's this there's gratitude a very basic gratitude practice that will improve digestion so this is I think an important recognition point that everything is affecting everything your thoughts your emotions your behaviors will determine the state of all the organisms in your body in the state your cellular health your organ health and overall organism health and if we can accept that premise then that means everything we do matters and then nothing becomes out of your control it all becomes part of you and part of your practice to get into a state of harmony and balance super interesting all right so now let's go back we were forced bathing we were about to get esoteric like take me to the craziest place you can even just from an end of one perspective and I'm asking this from the context of the last three years of my life have taught me that I know nothing and that I need to truly be open to things that I would have closed my mind off to when I thought I knew something and now I'm just super open - I know nothing and this is an exploration I mean I think for me it came through of exploring personally with plant medicines and by that you mean psychedelics yeah ayahuasca and five Meo DMT and some of these other things you know psilocybin they they show you something different and it's hard to put into words because it's a it's a different connection point so that is sort of a frame of reference that I have another one is through the pasta and meditation and the experience is I the changes in the and the things that I felt and and went through during that process can you define what style of meditation that is so the pasta is sort of a meditation technique that's that's thought to be taught through the line of the Buddha himself and it's a simple style of meditation that teaches you to be in the present moment without attachment so it's not there's no mantras involved there's no visualization involved there's no sending love our gratitude anywhere it's simply being in the moment and recognizing what is and whatever pains or discomforts or thoughts or feelings or whatever is coming through to detach yourself from that so it's almost like removing emotion from the external world so that you master your inner self and your inner peace and balance just going through that improve my knee pain in a 10 day retreat so what is that well I would argue that there was emotions and I was holding on to that manifested in the body and when I was able to detach from those and let those go the pain lets go there are these energies I think that we store in our body and this practice of a possum tation taught me that that's likely the case and if you had to give me that and like the most plain boring language ever what would you say like what is the process of turning inward what are you doing there are so many things there right so you know we have studies showing that when you put a rat in a maze or a mouse in a maze and you electrocute it at one point in the maze you take the mouse out never to see the maze again and they have pups and you put the pups in the same maze we can see their nervous system spike at that same exact point how we're still trying to figure that out right we have some theories and some evidence to suggest a few things perhaps the DNA storing memory perhaps water storing memory perhaps the whole body and the fascist doing memory but that's actually a really smart evolutionary advantage like hey let's pass down that don't go there that's dangerous so it actually may serve a fundamental purpose but we know that that's the case now we can take that mouse out which has never been electrocuted and they have pups we see the same thing and we've gone six seven generations through this and you can still see that manifesting your fur - that is inherited trauma inherited drama we also see studies showing that Holocaust survivors have the same thing elevated nervous system response straight out the gate you know coming out of their kids absolutely yeah so this is I think a real thing and we have to recognize that it's playing a role now how do we unwind that this is where all the practices come in this is why all the Eastern traditions and even even the Western religions have a ritual have a practice of things so this is what the meditation is there to do it's the practice that allows you to escape that reality Yoga saying thank you so define the reality so the you've got traumas built from your own life or from potentially inherited traumas and so breaking the sort of hold they have in your behaviors let's take a more practical example right I've gotten to the point wreck and actually spot this a mile away now the first time I'm talking to somebody but they might be sexually abused at six years old that I can hear that in their voice in their language because of the fear the uncertainty and there's something going on you can see I can see it an email by the language that's used Wow right if you just get good at recognizing the patterns and you start to recognize okay there's something there how do we unwind it well if it's manifesting as you know lupus or rheumatoid arthritis or cancer later on where's the problem you got to go all the way back to that point and get the resolution of that as part of the problem because it has some biological echo because I think they're absolutely because the nervous system is shifted so we essentially have two states of our nervous system one is there the rest and digest right let's stay in play this is where we have sex this is where we sleep and eat food and all these amazing fun nice things then you have the basically the mode that we're stressed out in right it's why you can't get an erection and running away from a bear right there are two different modes you would never need those two functions to operate at the same time right so we have a it's a it's a survival mechanism that kicks in if you stay locked in to that then that means that your process of digestion your process of healing your process of recovery process of sleep process of sex all those things aren't working very well or at all so this prevents recovery and healing so the the act of coming into this world with a cord around your neck or getting abused when you're a child and you don't know how to operate in this world you will create a nervous system shift that is there to protect you it's why when somebody cut somebody off in traffic and they freak out and you're like whoa that guy just completely flipped out for no reason well you wouldn't do that maybe but why there's something embedded in that behavior in that habit in that pattern that comes from something else so these things get ingrained in patterns and personalities you actually see this with people that are successful a lot of successful people had some traumatic event or events and happen their childhood and it may be as simple as a nasty divorce between their parents but oftentimes it's abuse it's verbal abuse emotional abuse sexual abuse an alcoholic parent a parent that gets arrested that's incarcerated these are traumatic for a child because they don't know how to understand this so they develop these these stories these patterns these behaviors that come from that and some of the behaviors may be because I wasn't getting love because my mom made me cry it out instead of hugging me when I was six months I needed to go find a way to get love which means I'm really good at the violin or I'm an amazing football player or I'm really good at math right and so you carry these behaviors now you might produce a really good football player you might produce Oprah Winfrey right these are the things that can manifest it doesn't mean it's a bad thing it can just manifest in behavior and the personality that we think we are is coming from a lot of that stuff so so I think that the important thing is that we have to recognize that that's a real reality but we can undo the parts that we don't need anymore can you put a finger on that like what are some of those basic discipline practices I mean they're simple this it's just meditation the practice of sitting still and quieting the mind and figuring out what's coming up and allow things to come through now there's a number of different meditation styles like I said I like the pasta one because it brings me here instead of trying to escape and allows me to let go of what is let go of the attachment to the things that are around me and just accept what it is and when I did the pasta meditation my knee pain started to slowly sort of evaporate go away except or what 20-something years so explain that I don't know I was just in meditation and and when the pain was coming up I wasn't trying to run from it I wasn't stretching my legs to relieve the pain I was just experiencing it without judgment so an easy example of this would be when your arm when you have an itch on your arm your natural tendency is to scratch because you want to relieve the pain notice I don't like that feeling so let me scratch it away uh-huh that's better but what if you just left it and just experience it and gohan it's interesting without any emotion but any attachment you just let it be and in that process it's almost like it bubbles up to the surface and just goes poof right so another is psychosomatic trauma doctor New York he was a chiropractor I believe I was looking at backs and back pain and he would have for the same x-rays the same physical dysfunction in their back one person is running marathons the other one can't get out of bed and he asked himself what the heck's going on here it's the same thing physically what's happening why is this guy experiencing no pain this one's experiencing tons of pain and when he recognized that it was trauma that was causing that that it was trauma that was causing the pain and through his work he actually showed that all you have to do is sometimes even just let people know that that's a possibility that that's what's causing it and then it will go away I really do feel that we are given the gift of the body showing us something that is out of balance and that's we just have to get it back into balance and some of this is surface level stuff you know are you do you have a lot of toxic food in your in your house you are using all the toxins in your in your environment are you not sleeping enough do you hate the person you're sleeping next to are you not using very good language with people how is your thoughts and your emotional patterns and it's amazing that when you accept this responsibility for healing yourself you accept the gift that that the pain or that the health issues that are there they're there for you without that you wouldn't change you wouldn't be better you wouldn't improve there's no need you're not being forced to so these are the gifts that we're given to allow ourselves to get to a better place to advanced psycho spirituality because they're the difficulties that it's the same in business it's the same in relationships you know look at anybody in the military or on a sports team they come together when things get hard when she hits the fan that's when the real things start to come together right in business same thing you everything that you fail at in business you would look back and go I'm really glad that that happened because it showed me what to do what not to do and I learned from it right so they're all gifts it's just a matter of are you willing to go through the pain and and and understand it from a different perspective and move through it and and and go through the process you've said that you'd like to push yourself that you'd like to rub up against your limits absolutely what's the driving force behind that I think it's curiosity of going to a place that I've never been right now actually one of the latest things that people are doing is there's like a template you sting yourself down your spine with beestings so this actually stimulates the immune system in the nervous system very good thing this is this hormetic stress idea that we need these little it's like where you define harm use for people yeah so hormetic stress is a very important concept that that there are these little stressors that come into your life that are there to help you grow stronger right and and the easiest one is exercise this is a very easy example that in order for a bodybuilder to get big and strong they have to lift a lot of weight but you can't go to a 500 pound squat until you go through the process of getting there so it's this idea of pushing yourself and then recovering pushing yourself farther recovery yourself farther in recovery and this happens with plant chemicals when you eat garlic for example the Alison and garlic that that makes it have that pungent taste that makes it antifungal that all these things that's a poison it's it's there to protect the garlic plant and allow it to survive it's the plants immune system and when you eat it you are getting the poison you're just getting a low-level poison that we've been come accustomed to and learn to respond in a beneficial way to it same thing with with with polyphenols and phytochemical or you know polyphenols that come from blueberries or red wine that we all hear about chocolate these type of things these are not antioxidants they are actually oxidants in other words they create oxidation stress the body responds to that oxidation stress with antioxidant genetics kicking in so there's an antioxidant respond a response to the pro oxidation of the blueberry you know juice of the of the blue part of the blueberry I think this happens with emotions you know when you start to face an emotional emotional e difficult situation you have to learn to kind of get through that right so to me this is my exploratory behavior of getting to places that I've never been emotionally spiritually physically and through that process I am allowed to take away something new that I can't get from a text to me this is the fundamental problem we face right now we are in the Information Age there is overwhelming amount of information you can get learn to do anything online but what we what we're not getting is experience where we're trading in experience for information and knowledge and we think that knowledge is the same thing as this experiential wisdom and it couldn't be farther from the truth it is a big problem I see right now is that people are not going through the experience all aspects of life we are simply reading up reading about it and thinking that we are really smart and then we try to teach what we read whereas to me the more important things comes from the experience which is why I can talk about going to Costa Rica and telling you that time was different and you might say well time isn't exist or time is linear or whatever but we all know that place when time stops or time flew by because we're having fun that same thing happened there so that's an experience that you can't meet about I can't tell you about you have to feel it you have to know it personally and so just today I had breakfast with somebody very bright well-educated but they have no idea what they really want to do and so my struggle was okay I want them to go experience and play and like just see a lot of different things but the thing that will paralyze them is they don't even know what to go experience so for people who you know that's they need to get that experience or wisdom they've got enough knowledge what do you tell them to do like how do they actually go get usable knowledge the easiest thing in the world first of all if you don't know just start doing something do something you'll figure out you either don't want to do it or you do want to do it right pick up a guitar see where that takes you you may like it you may hate it that's if you have no idea like your starting point zero if you have some idea of who you are and your tendencies and your your preferences I think the question we have to ask ourselves is what do I want and what do I enjoy what makes me happy and often times I think we are we are going down a path and what we think we want but really it's what our parents want it's what culture tells us we we should want it's what we see other people have that we think we want but it's not really what we want and so I think asking yourself what you really want is is a very easy question may be a difficult answer at first but if you just sit with it and and play with that a little bit I think it's gonna come to you the other thing is you kind of let life come to you and accept it in a way I didn't necessarily ask for a knee pain and skin issues they kind of came to me and I went with it and I had the fortitude to find the answers myself that I that I wanted to find so in other words I wanted to be healthy I went to the doctor couldn't get answers so I was willing to accept the responsibility to get the health myself and because I was willing to accept that responsibility and go down the path of finding out the answers to my own health issues that led me down the path that I'm on now and forever changed my life right whereas the other side of it was I was good at math I went and studied engineering I became an engineer I did that for ten years found no value whatsoever in and end up driving me to a frustrating place of I don't know what the heck I'm doing here where am I going go find and play with the things that you enjoy and and and recognize what you really want doesn't mean you know how to get there but explore that we've just disengaged so much and we we get afraid and we get I think overwhelmed but if you just start participating I mean amazing things happen that you couldn't have possibly projected in your wildest dreams I want to go back to this notion of connection and the social genomics of it all how have you constructed your group of friends what do you look for how do you make sure that that's healthy and thriving in that you've taken care of that part of the equation yeah this is this is a big one actually because a lot of with the previous work that's been done on longevity in some of these places that are known for their longevity has come to the conclusion that community is one of the most important things I have it I have an issue with that I don't think that's accurate at all I think on the surface it seems accurate and we we communities a word that we like to think is a good thing but communities everywhere it is easy to find what is more difficult to find this connection right and this it's like going on a date right you can go on million dates to find the one that you actually put connection with maybe a little bit different right it's a little different of an experience so connection to me is is huge it's tough with friends and even family because the dynamics change you grow to different pace right now the point at which you developed a friendship with somebody in high school and college post college whatever it was at work you were you were that person and they were that person and you connected at that point you guys met at a point that seemed to make sense as you guys both change that may separate and you may have to let that go again it gets back to this idea of impermanence and not attaching yourself to even friendships or family which is a it's a really weird concept to think about but at the end of the day they're all gonna go away so I think not attaching yourself even to a spouse to mother to a child to a friend is a very important concept it doesn't mean you can't have love for them it doesn't mean you can't but but lose the attachment because things change and and I think that the key is recognizing that each moment is what matters today's all there is right there is no tomorrow there's no next year enjoy today for whatever is in front of you to be able to be in state of gratitude in whatever relationship you have in front of you right now I think is a very important concept especially in today's day and age where you have cell phones taking over and you see people at restaurants right across from each other not even speaking or looking in their cell phone they're not appreciating what's right in front of them so to me it's it's very simple and being in in a place of gratitude and companionship in connection with the people that are in front of you that are with you and if it's not there then you let it go and you go find something else so it's it's a complete detachment from the need to try to create something or or or identify with a relationship status of any kind and allowing it just to be what it is talk to me about purpose which feels a kinship to this but different enough to put a point on it I don't like the word purpose to me the word meaning is more impactful because purpose suggests that there's an inherent thing you're supposed to do or you're supposed to find and what you find when you look around at these people in you know these areas that are that facilitate health and longevity is that they don't really feel like they have a purpose in life they just feel like they have meaning the meaning is all around them that life life has purpose but I generate meaning kind of things saying can you give examples of like what some of the people felt was that meaning this this comes back to simplicity so when we are in the Western world where we have way too many conveniences and we are so fortunate the littlest things lose their meaning right when you get water you don't think about how lucky you are when you buy the bag of apple chips or organic carrots or whatever you're doing you don't really think about how meaningful that is but when you grow your own carrots and you recognize how long that took that you were dependent on things out of your control like the weather have more meaning meanings a choice and it doesn't have to be big and doesn't have to be small but we've lost a sense of meaning and we're looking for meaning in the wrong places how many likes did I get how many people are following me right now how much reach did this thing get how much money was brought in we're putting meaning in the wrong places which is why I think we're so unhappy it's in the most basic fundamental things that if you just take a walk in the forest and just sit with yourself for a sec you start to recognize that it's kind of cool just being here waking up each day taking a breath the simple things in life are very meaningful having a great conversation with a loved one super meaningful so it's a meet to me it's more about the meaning because meaning brings you into the present moment it brings you into everything that's around you purpose is weird grandiose concept that I think we're searching for and we're comparing against other things and does life have purpose yeah I happen to think it does what it is I don't know but for me I just have meaning everywhere that's pretty incredible before I asked my last question tell these guys where they can find you online they can find me at human longevity film that's where our film lives they find me on social media and Facebook and Instagram I just at my name they can look at the on Facebook we have the human longevity project and Instagram as well so perfectly my last question is given all that you went and studied with the centenarians and all the experts that you've met with what is the one thing that people could change right now that would have the biggest impact on their life I think having gratitude simple as that find a way to bring gratitude into your life whether it's a gratitude journal whether it's sitting in a meditation and just have feeling a state of gratitude whether it's reminding yourself about gratitude to me this is sort of the highest state that we can ever be in is a state of gratitude and so constantly just reminding yourself right getting in these little habits of remembering to be grateful for whatever is is around you right now because at the end of the day you're here it's a simple it's it's cheesy it's probably overused it's sort of this spiritual stuff that we shove under the rug but you just start putting in practice you recognize how simple it really is I love it Jason thank you so much for having really great my pleasure all right guys I did not expect the interview to go to the places that we went today but that is exactly why I find Jason so interesting and is something that I think you're gonna see as you go and dive into the other interviews and things that he's done and follow him socially you're see that it's somebody looking at things from a really unique perspective which is that we're probably over focusing on the wrong minutia and instead of really going in and just looking at you know your blood ketone levels or your glucose levels that you're coming up higher and you're really getting in tune yourself that you are instead of sweeping spirituality under the rug you're taking it out you're looking at it you're really looking to find what are the drivers of some of the states that your body is in and whether that's trauma or not but really beginning to look at it delve into it and doing the end of one experimentation and finding out for yourself what's going to work and it's hard to pin him down on exactly what to like eat because you've got to do the work you've got to take responsibility you've got to do the experimentations and find out what works for you and to not be dogmatic to not overly rely on knowledge like he was saying but instead to really get that experiential wisdom and I thought that that was really interesting and everything that he does is in that context of having spoken to all these people that have lived these extraordinarily long lives and looking at the experts and blending the more esoteric too hard to really put our hands on and the data and really looking at where the two come together I think it's a really unique perspective that I think it's incredibly powerful and I hope that you guys will dive into that in your own lives and start putting it into practice those kinds of things have had a tremendous impact on me already and I think that you guys will benefit as well if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're gonna get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full and sure