Listen
Listen to this podcast or watch the video. CLICK HERE
Transcript
Wendy Myers: Hello everyone, my name is Wendy Myers. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. Today we have my friend, Jason Prall, on the show talking about longevity, and his new project called the Human Longevity Project. Jason went to great lengths traveling all over the world, to six different countries, interviewing 94 people, a number of centenarians for the project, and really gets down to what does it take to live to be 100 years old and beyond. What are the different components, or the common denominators in living a long healthy happy life?
We talk a little bit about the Blue Zones, Dr. Dan Buettner’s amazing project, and all the different common denominators in living a long healthy life, and kind of blow some of the typical known factors in living a long time. Like, maybe beans are not the common denominator that we think, just because a lot of the centenarians living today do eat beans, or they do all eat fish. It’s not that simple. It’s much more complex than that. We delve into all these subjects. A very, very interesting conversation today on the podcast.
If you want to learn my top ten tips to detox like a pro, I created a checklist. I’ve worked with thousands of clients, and I distill the top ten tips that can help you to detox easily and simply. And these are the top ten tips you can get by going to DetoxForEnergy.com, and downloading this free checklist.
Today our guest is Jason Prall, he is a Longevity and Optimal Health Practitioner who works remotely with individuals around the world to provide solutions for those struggling with weight loss, or suffering from complex health issues that their doctors have been unable to resolve. As a nationally recognized speaker and host of the You, Optimized radio show, he has been able to share his unique and innovative with a global audience, which has facilitated the transformation of thousands of lives with simple, practical, and powerful solutions to combat chronic health conditions, and drastically improve quality of life. Jason’s soon releasing documentary film series called the Human Longevity project, which is set to uncover the complex mechanisms of chronic disease and aging, and the true nature of longevity in our modern world. You can look for that to release May 7th.
Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jason Prall: Thanks for having me.
Wendy Myers: Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you got started in health?
Jason Prall: Well, I started off as a Mechanical Engineer. Doing that for ten years or so, and my health issues basically prompted me into this field. Wasn’t really something I planned on, except for the fact that there was no answers that I could find for the problems that I was dealing with. Major issues with my knees from 13 years old, and then skin issues in my twenties basically led me down a path of self discovery when it comes to health, and what I found was that everything that I was being told was basically nonsense.
And so that kind of thrust me into this world of holistic integrated functional optimal health type of strategies, and from there I was just working with a lot of clients. And that just kind of perpetuated my understanding. The discovery of new things, that I think you can only uncover when you work with people. You know you can read research, and you can test things on yourself, and that will give you some level of understanding, but I think as you start to work with people you start to really see the holes in some of the theory, and some of the holes in the things that you thought didn’t apply, or might apply to you, and they don’t apply to somebody else.
And so that really kind of opened me up to being pretty humble with what I thought I knew because it turns out that a lot of the stuff that I was under the impression, I was completely wrong.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. What prompted you to focus on longevity as a practitioner? You just created a new docuseries that’s coming out soon called the Human Longevity Project. Why longevity?
Jason Prall: I think. Honestly, because I got tired of focusing on disease. Everybody that I was working with had chronic issues, right? From digestive symptoms to hormonal imbalances, to hair falling out, infertility, autoimmune diseases, and all these things that we typically hear and see in the functional integrative space. And, you know, I just, it shocked me because what was missing was this understanding of health, and what health is, and where it comes from, and why we’re not discussing health more? We’re always trying to resolve disease, and figure out disease, and figure out these dysfunctions, and explain them, but I think what was missing in my estimation of the field was this sort of teaching of health, and so that’s kind of really where I wanted to focus. I figured there was more headway to make. There was more impact, I think when you start to teach people what health is, where it comes from, and how to do it, then all the disease stuff may never occur, right? We can sort of skip that whole step, and what’s interesting is that’s what you kind of find around the world, right? I think there’s a famous quote that says, “The superb physician treats disease before it occurs.”
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Jason Prall: I think this is what we see around the world is that there’s this lack of chronic disease, and so the question is, is not how do we solve chronic disease, even though that may be part of the equation and the bridge, but I think the more important and fundamental question is how do we avoid chronic disease, and what are we doing wrong, and what are we not understanding about our own biology, our own health to basically skip this whole aspect of our culture.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Yeah, and it’s so important, prevention is key. I mean, that, just living a healthy lifestyle, and it’s not complicated.
Jason Prall: No.
Wendy Myers: Just eating a healthy diet. Exercise. Just very basic things, but it’s very easy in our culture, and all the advertising, and all the fast food, and the convenience that many people enjoy with our food is causing all this chronic disease. Then our conventional mainstream medical system is only compounding the problem. What do you feel is the most important thing to understand about how to create overall health?
Jason Prall: I think the first thing that we need to understand is that health is already there, right? Health is the default operating system. It is the mode by which you were meant to sort of interact with the world. It’s not necessarily something that we have to create, I don’t think. It’s already there, and we just have to allow it, and get out of the way to some degree. And I think the culture, the environment, the lifestyle practices, the mentalities, the emotions. All these things are basically creating problems that manifest in things that don’t look like health. And so I think if we accept the fact that it’s sort of our innate inborn mode of operation, then we can sort of align with that. That’s all we have to do is just align with what’s already there. I think it’s accepting that understanding, and then figuring out, okay, well, what does that mean? How do I align with that? And how do I basically stop all these other things that are preventing the health from just sort of naturally blossoming, right?
I mean, if you think about a seed, and planting a seed in the soil. You don’t have to train the seed. It’s not like there is things that you got to coach the seed on to grow into a flower to a tree. It’s already there, and you just have to provide the right environment, right? It’s not like the seed has to come up with some skills, or it has to be taught. It just has to have the right environment, and I think that is the same thing with us. It’s just that we tend to get in our way a little bit, and we from the get go, even preconception, before we’re even on this planet, we may be sort of behind the eight ball to a large degree because of just the transgenerational issues that we’re starting to see because of the environment, and the society.
As you mentioned, the convenience, and the food, and all these things that are sort of, that we’re doing wrong. And I think more than that it’s not necessarily, I don’t think we can fully place the blame on the individual. I think it’s more of a collective. It’s a societal thing that we have to look at. And so I think, kind of relieve the individual burden off ourselves a little bit, but yet at the same time accept responsibility. It’s not a matter of skirting responsibility, but at the same time I don’t think we should be placing so much blame on ourselves for the things that maybe we don’t see in terms of health.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Well, I think it’s tough for a lot of places around the United States. There’s nowhere to get fresh food. There’s nowhere to get organic food, or people have never learned about gardening, or farming. And so people grow up just kind of get fish, and water, but their surroundings are surrounded by fast food, and convenience, and processed foods, and they just don’t know anything besides that.
Jason Prall: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: The Blue Zones are very, very famous. Did you interview Dr. Dan, is it Buttner?
Jason Prall: Buettner.
Wendy Myers: Buettner. Who created the Blue Zones?
Jason Prall: Yeah, no. We didn’t interview Dan. We did interview Michel Poulain, who is the original demographer, who basically did all of the scientific work to verify if these people were 100, and how many there are, and what’s the concentration. I think his first paper came out in the year 2000, I believe, something to that effect, and he was the one really looking at a lot of this stuff at the scientific level. And so we spoke with him, and we did travel around the world to a lot of the areas that are known for longevity, and some other areas. And I think what’s interesting is that I think there has been a lot of work done on the Blue Zones, but for us with our project it was not a matter of studying the areas, or the locations because I think there has been too much emphasis placed on these regions, as if there’s something special about these regions. In my opinion there’s not. I think the problem is that people are looking, okay, is it the soil? Is it volcanic soil? Is it the fact that they’re near sea, and they eat lots of seafood? Is it the fact that they’re in equatorial regions?
They’re looking at all these things that are location based, and I think they’re missing the point when we do that. I think the more important thing is to look at the people that create the societies in those place. I think the fact that many of the Blue Zones are island nations, or island areas, I think is interesting. I think there’s some genetic implications there, which is to say that there was a not a lot of intermixing between mitochondrial genes, and human genes, and so therefore you could sort of optimize genomes for that climate, that, region, that environment. I think there is some degree of that, but at the end of the day there’s so much difference.
I mean, in Sardinia for example you have the mountainous regions that are known for their longevity. It’s not the entire island of Sardinia, it’s only specific villages in Sardinia, and they are in the mountains with a really amazing mountain water they have. They’re shepherds. It’s a very different thing than just to say, okay, the whole entire island of Sardinia is known for their longevity because that’s not true. Yeah, I think there’s some fascinating aspects to each place, but really I think what you have to look at is the cultures and the people, and the way that they live their life. And I think that is ultimately what’s going to dictate any kind of health and longevity, but I think again it’s not really necessarily the longevity thing. I think the thing that we all want is the quality of life late into our years, right?
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jason Prall: It’s a matter of, I think anybody that wants to live to 150, and for 60 of those years feel like crap, and they’re on medications and can’t move, and can’t think, and can’t see. I don’t know anybody that really wants that, right? This is what’s impressive to me about a lot of these places is that they have this sort of longevity, but really what they have is an amazing quality of life, and an amazing function into their 90’s and beyond 100. It’s truly amazing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and some of the common longevity aspects in some of these Blue Zones is they’re a community. In sense of support and community that they have, and that’s one of the seven components that fosters longevity in these Blue Zones.
Jason Prall: Yeah, I think community is very, very key, and I think it goes back to kind of what we were discussing earlier, which is that basically as individuals we become a product of environment to some degree. Now, we can skew from that. We can divert from the cultural norms, or as Vishen Lakhiani would say the culturescape, right? The landscape that is provided by the culture is dictated by the culture, but the problem with that. Take for example, 20 years ago, right? And you were eating organic food, and buying organic food, and maybe even growing organic food. You were kind of the outlier in most communities, and to some degree still are, depending on where you’re at in the U.S. But 20 years ago certainly that was not the norm to find, and eat, and buy, and source organic food. And so just doing that alone, you are kind of on your own. In a way you’re outside of the community, and so this becomes the challenge that understanding health.
I mean, take for example right now, people wearing BluBlocker’s. We got all kinds of things that are starting to creep into the normal arena, but even still.
Wendy Myers: You can spot the bio-hacker nerds with their BluBlocker glasses.
Jason Prall: Right, but if you went to a party or whatever with BluBlocker’s on. You wouldn’t fit in, and this is a part of community, right? We all want to fit in. We all want to be a part of the group. We all want to be included. We all want to feel good about our surroundings, and if we can’t do that because we’re making good healthy decisions, and the group is not. Does that improve your health or not? I don’t know the answer because you’re going against the community and the crowd, but you’re making better decisions. This becomes the challenge of … Yes, community is critical, and also hopefully the environment, and the healthy aspects of the lifestyles are a part of that.
And so it may be more beneficial to make poor food choices if you’re sitting and hanging out with family and friends and you’re having a great time, then it is to make amazing dietary decisions and eat alone, right? This becomes the really tricky part, and I think it’s been shown that community is so, so critical to the point where it is actually more beneficial. Not having friends is more harmful to your health than smoking.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and that’s something is that’s sad about our society. I don’t think we really value the elderly like we do in Japan, and in Okinawa, and some of these other Blue Zones. In Japan the elderly are revered and celebrated and supported much more so, and I think a lot of the elderly here are very isolated, you know?
Jason Prall: Yeah, and if you don’t feel like you’re a part of things and you’re 84. I mean, I don’t know, perhaps there’s something inside of you that sort of just dies. And you’re, like, okay, well, we don’t need to be here anymore, right? I think if you don’t have a purpose in your community, and in your family, and in your local area. Then it’s probably more difficult to maintain good health and achieve these older ages in good fashion. I think the elderly serving a role, and it’s not like the elderly are pitied in these areas, right? Like, okay, mom’s going to have to live with us. It’s like mom is coming in to help me with the kids, so that I can go out and do things, right? And Grandma is teaching the grandkids things, and grandads teaching all these skills and they’re still playing a valuable role, right? I mean, these people in the areas that we went, and the elderly we spoke with. I mean, they’re still very functional at 80 and 90. A guy in Costa Rica was 91, and he still goes out back with a machete, and takes care of some brush to clear the field.
Wendy Myers: That’s gonna be me at 90, 91.
Jason Prall: You good with a machete? Yeah. I love it. It’s not like they’re just sitting around. They still have a role in the community, and I think I don’t know how we incorporate that in the U.S. We’re so far from that, but I think we have to at least think about how we can integrate that into our lives more if we want health as we get older.
Wendy Myers: Well, how can people in the U.S. or the Western cultures use these lessons from the Blue Zones?
Jason Prall: I mean, I think that there is two main lessons, I think that we can take home right now, which is to say that the easiest thing we can do, and there’s no excuse for it really not to do it, is to simplify our lives in every way. There’s nothing preventing us from doing that, right? To simplify our lives. And this can go from food to relationships, to the clutter around your house, to all the things that you think you need, and the time that you’re spending, right? I mean, we do so much, and we have so much, and we use so much that we’re polluting the environment. We’re polluting our mind. We’re polluting our emotional states. We’re polluting our space, right? I think that is the easiest thing we can do is just start to simplify. Use less. Create less. Move less to some degree, but also in more intelligent ways, more functionally. I think just slowing down, and simplifying our lives is profoundly critical if you want to mimic their lifestyle because everything they did was simple. They didn’t have all these things that we have, and they didn’t do all these things that we do.
I mean, we try to do so much now because we have the capacity to do so, right? With the technology and convenience of everything we feel like we can do everything on our own, and so I think that places a huge burden on our brain, on our nervous system, and our cognitive capacity to function. We get this decision fatigue. We get this overwhelm, this overload, and from a mental emotional standpoint I think this is really where it comes in because the nervous system gets thrown so far out of balance, and if you can’t get back into this parasympathetic state because you’re doing too much and you have too much. To some degree I don’t know how much benefit it’s going to be to eat well, and to do some of these other things because you can’t get into a rest and digest state anyway. Whether you’re eating healthy food or not, if you’re not in a rest and digest state, is it beneficial?
I think it’s so critical that we come back to that a little bit, and I think it’s easier than we think. We don’t have to have all these bio hacking tools. We don’t have to meditate.
Wendy Myers: Don’t say that. Dave Asprey might hear you. He might hear this.
Jason Prall: And here’s the thing, bio hacking and these new technologies are cool and they’re fun. If that’s your game and you love that stuff. Use it and have fun with it, right? But if you hate it and you think that, that’s what you need in order to be healthy. I think you’re sadly mistaken. And if somebody is telling you that’s what you need to be healthy. I mean, it’s just insane, right? I think we need to slow down, and calm down, and simplify our lives in every way.
I think the other things that we can do. Well, the other main theme I would say is to just integrate with nature. If something you’re doing is not how nature would do it, or is against the grain of sort of the natural ways then it’s hurting you in some way. Maybe a by-product, maybe a secondary effect, maybe a tertiary effect, but at some point it’s going to hurt you, right? Whether it’s drinking water out of a plastic bottle, right? Okay, yes, you have the toxins in the plastic bottle, but then you have the plastic bottle itself, which is gonna end up in the environment somewhere, which at some point in time is gonna end coming back around to either hurt you, or some other human, right? The environment is a reflection of us and our behaviors, and it will get mirrored back to us inevitably, right? Whatever we do to the environment comes back to us. There’s no other way.
I think if we just start thinking a little bit differently. How can I integrate with nature? Then over time things start to get better and the reflection back upon us is more in our favor. You can think about this in any number of ways, but I think as a general theme integrating with nature is just a simple way to induce health.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, so as far as longevity is concerned, the Blue Zones, there were seven different components that contributed to longevity. Can you briefly go over those?
Jason Prall: Yeah, I have some …
Wendy Myers: Did you read the book? Did you do homework?
Jason Prall: I didn’t read it. I skimmed it, and I know some things, but I would disagree with them.
Wendy Myers: Ah.
Jason Prall: And not because they’re wrong necessarily, but because they’re drastically incomplete.
Wendy Myers: Mm.
Jason Prall: I think they were something to the effect of eating mostly a plant based diet, drinking wine at 5 o’clock, community purpose.
Wendy Myers: I remember something in there about fish and beans?
Jason Prall: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Being a common denominator.
Jason Prall: Yeah, beans I think are. Yeah. I think this is a … In my opinion this is a novice way of explaining things, right?
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jason Prall: In other words we’re just gonna identify the things that we see over and over. Well, that’s great, but, okay, how about electro magnetic fields? Where do they come into play? How about circadian rhythm? Where does that come into play? How about birthing practices? Where does that come into play? Right? There’s so many things now. Toxins. Where’s the toxin discussion?
Wendy Myers: They’re everywhere.
Jason Prall: Yeah. Exactly. But see here’s the thing that I think was drastically missed in the previous studies of longevity, and it’s often forgotten about. It’s the historical context of longevity. If you’re talking to a person that’s 95, or 100 years old right now, just to keep the math simple. They were born in 1918, and not only that, if they weren’t born in the U.S. and they were born in some random island in Greece, or in Okinawa. 1935 Okinawa is quite a bit different then the U.S. We can’t compare beans, and these type of things to what they were doing there. I mean, in the places that we were visiting they didn’t have electricity til 1970, or 1950 in one place, and 1970 in another. Think about what that means, some places didn’t have electricity until 1970. That means for most of the person’s life, that’s 95 years old or 100 years old right now. They didn’t have refrigeration. They didn’t have freezers. They didn’t have automobiles in any meaningful way. I mean, people were mostly walking or on horseback, or on carts. They didn’t have transporting of goods and food. They didn’t have lighting that was disrupting their sleep and circadian rhythms. Everything was different. Imagine giving birth without electricity, right? I mean, it’s a totally different.
Wendy Myers: No, no. Thank you. No, thank you.
Jason Prall: Everything changes, right? We have to remember the historical context of these things. I mean, water, simple plumbing doesn’t occur in these situations. We can’t look at, okay, just because they eat beans. All right. Whatever. [inaudible 00:23:34]
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and I think that begs the question when we’re thinking of centenarians and them being born, say a centenarian today was born in 1918, or before. And they grew up with a strong foundational diet, strong bones, strong foundation of health that then has carried them into their later years. That health has stayed with them even if maybe their diet’s strayed, or they started eating TV dinners in the 1970’s or whatever the case may be. But today it doesn’t seem like the prognosis is very good for living a long life because so many people grew up eating cereals, and grains, and processed foods. What are your thoughts on that, on the future generations living a long lifespan?
Jason Prall: I’m actually somewhat optimistic believe it or not. I think in so many ways we’ve done so much damage, and here’s what we have to recognize is that there is generational accumulation of damage, right? If grandma made bad decisions, and grandpa made bad decisions, and then mom and dad did too, and then I did in my youth, and now I’m starting to wake up and care about my health. Well, I kind of got a long way to go, right? But that’s not to say that things can’t be done. And so we have this accumulation of degeneration of the sort of human genome, the mitochondrial genome, and the environment that we need to work our way out of, but I think the technology and the awareness is really starting to ramp up because we’ve gotten so sick there’s a need for this now, right? Everybody is moving into the health field. Everybody is starting to think about what they’re eating. Everybody is starting to think about how they’re moving. Meditation is becoming a thing. Yoga is becoming a thing, right? We now have these apps, and these technologies that are going on our head, and up our nose, and looking at our microbiota. I mean, we’re changing, right?
And this is all happening, I mean, you’ve been in this field long enough, this is fast.
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Jason Prall: This is in the last ten years things have shot through the roof in terms of what we’re focusing on, right? I think in the next 15, 20 years with the way technology moves, and now a refocusing of technology onto health, and onto longevity in particular it’s gonna change real fast. I think there’s a lot of hopeful things to look forward to, but we may still have to trudge through the mud a little bit as we go. I think the only thing that I would say is that if we were looking to technology to save us, I think we’re sadly mistaken because we are biological creatures, and I don’t care what Ray Kurzweil says he can do. We’re much more complicated than a human. In fact, I mean, we’re not even human one would argue. Most of us is microbiota. Virus, and bacteria.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’m just a big virus.
Jason Prall: Exactly. We all are, right? We’re just a big Petri dish carrying around these microbes, and they do most of the things for us anyway. I think, I think we have to remember that, that we are always gonna be a part of nature. We are biological systems. We are multi-organism systems that work together. We can look to technology, and I think there’s a lot to be hopeful there, but we also need to combine that with this sort of reintegration with nature, and a more cohesive lifestyle that’s more in alignment with basically the entirety of human history, right?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting you talk about technology, and people looking to technology to save them. And I used to as a teenager and after always reading Scientific American, and looking at the latest drugs, the latest breakthroughs to cure cancer, and all of these. The latest medical testing equipment, and all of these things that potentially provided hope to cure disease, but the really the key is prevention, and going back to these basics with diet and exercise, sunlight, circadian rhythms, and just going back to our ancestral way of life, how our bodies have evolved for millions of years to function healthily.
Jason Prall: Yeah, and I think that’s where technology can come in and sort of help guide us, right? You take something like the Oura ring, right? Which I’m not affiliated with other than I like their stuff. This Oura ring if you’re not familiar with it goes on your finger, and you wear it at night. You can wear it all day, but it looks at health variability. It tracks your sleep, right? In this way a device that can sort of measure how we’re doing. These parameters as long as they’re good parameters, and the Oura ring it does measure the correct and good parameters. Then it can help guide our behavior, our lifestyle, right? A lot of stuff we know, we’re thinking, okay, I’m gonna try this diet, but you don’t really know if it’s working for you unless you’re doing either significant testing on the right things, or you feel a difference, right? Or you might be using an infrared sauna, or red light therapy. We got all these new cool things that we’re trying, and doing, but a lot of times we don’t know if it’s having the effect that we want.
Exercise, we know exercise is good. When do you do it, and how much, and how hard? It’s gonna change based on each day, right? I mean, if you get crappy sleep then you might not want to work out so hard. If you get great sleep, and you’re well rested, and you’re well fed, you might have a good workout, right? But if we can track these things, our sort of biometrics, and say, okay, where am I at? Okay, it looks like I’m really well rested. This would be a good day for a hard workout. And so I think these are the type of things where technology can come in and assist us, and show us and help us understand how to behave in a way that’s beneficial to our health.
If we’re looking for technology to come in and do something to us, then I think we’re gonna continue to get far off track because again it’s about how we behave. It’s about our lifestyle. We have to take ownership of what we’re doing. We can’t look at technology and go, okay, yeah, I’m gonna make these really bad decisions, just shine that line in my eye, and do this thing, and then that will save me, right? It has to be this sort of cooperative thing with technology. And I think if we do that, and we use technology in a responsible way, not something that’s just going to track my steps. I mean, that doesn’t do anything for you, right? We need technology to show us things, to change our behavior, that it will be in a more congruent way with sort of a natural lifestyle.
Wendy Myers: Yes, yes. Tell us about your docuseries the Human Longevity project.
Jason Prall: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: When I spoke to you in San Diego, I saw you at the Digital Marketer Conference. I was really impressed with the lengths that you have gone to, to document longevity. You did, was it 100 or 200 interviews?
Jason Prall: Oh, god, 200. I wouldn’t be here if it was 200, but it was close. We did, I think 94 interviews with various experts. And then we did 22 interviews with elders around the world.
Wendy Myers: Okay, yeah. How many countries did you go to?
Jason Prall: We ended up going, I think, we were in about five or six in total. The idea there was to go to enough places around the world, such that genetics change, you know, their genetics are different and diet is different. And if we can sort of knock those two out of the equation, then we can look at things that really matter. Everybody wants to know what the longevity diet is, right? And I think this is such a funny question because we’ve known for a longtime that diets vary all around the world. And imagine again if you were living in 1942 Costa Rica, there’s no debate on what your diet is. You just eat what’s there. This is the way humans have operated basically forever until the last 150 years. The diets that people have are based on their geography, and based on their seasons.
And so to suggest that there is one diet, or an optimal way of eating is a little ridiculous. That would suggest that in some parts of the world you can live long and healthy, and in other parts of the world you couldn’t, and as we know that’s not the case. We wanted to go to enough places to sort of break those two aspects down, and also look at the various lifestyles and cultures that maybe seem to line up, right? What are the practices that seem to be consistent in some of these places. And so again I think what we wanted to do is go deeper then the surface level stuff that we’ve seen before, right? The fact that most people eat beans in the places that they’re in, that’s irrelevant.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I thought, well, if all these people in the Blue Zones eat beans, then I’m not just gonna live to 100 because that’s just not happening for me at least.
Jason Prall: Right. It’s stuff like that, that we need to do away with. And if we can get down to the fundamental aspect of what’s important, then I think we can understand how to make decisions better, and that was really the goal. And so essentially what we focused on were the various systems that interact. The microbiota, which I mentioned before. Which we think about as in our gut. Right, in our GI tract, but they’re on our skin. They’re in our liver. They’re in our heart. They’re in our kidneys. They’re in our brain. Vaginal canal. They’re in our eyes. They’re everywhere, right? These microbiota control function. They literally talk to our mitochondria, which are quasi bacteria that live inside our cells. They have their own genome, and these microbiota also talk to our DNA. And so we have this basically three way communication going on between all these microbiota, the genome of the microbiota, the genome of the mitochondria, and the genome of the human, right? We have three genetic components here all communicating trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the environment, and how to behave, right? And they all are, their goal is the same, right? They all want to live. They’re all working together to live. And be healthy, and prosper, if you will, right?
Then you have the fourth genetic that comes in, which is food. And then you have, you know, this is where something like a strawberry contains genetic information, contains micro RNA. That food that literally can talk to your cells, your DNA, and your mitochondria. That micro RNA is a communication tool for our cells, but also the food, the components in that strawberry for example, the polyphenols, the phytochemicals, the sugars, these type of things, the fibers. They get metabolized by the microbiota in our GI tract, and then our microbiota after metabolizing them sort of spit out metabolites. These little communication molecules. It can be hydrogen sulfite. It could be nitric oxide. It could be short chain fatty acids. It could be reactive oxygen species. These are all sort of communication mechanisms to our mitochondria and our DNA.
This is sort of the fundamental component that we wanted to sort of elucidate, that this is how the organism, the super organism that is we call a human operates. We require microbiota to sense our environment for us, and talk to our own human cells to tell it what’s going on in the environment, and then our human cells will respond accordingly by turning on this gene, and turning off that gene, and doing all these things, right? If we think about these organisms as being highly adaptive biological entities, then they’re always going to be trying to adapt to the environment that it’s in.
If you have somebody that’s eating processed foods, and staying up late at night watching TV. And, you know, has this horrible lifestyle, then those are the environmental inputs that your biology is going to try to have to deal with. And it’s going to try to adapt to that, and you may not like the adaptations, but it’s gonna do its best, right?
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Jason Prall: This is I think if we can understand that, that’s all we’re talking about here is the organisms adapting to the environment, and behaving in accordance with the environment, then we can understand sort of the similarities in some of these places, and the differences. Why they can eat tons of bread in Sardinia and be completely fine? Not only fine, thrive. They’re eating tons of bread, and they’re thriving. Bread, cheese, tomato.
Wendy Myers: That’s very upsetting. That’s very upsetting to me.
Jason Prall: Right? Wouldn’t you like to?
Wendy Myers: Because I want to do that. I want to eat bread all day long, and cheese, and that’s pretty much it. Yeah.
Jason Prall: And wine, right?
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Exactly.
Jason Prall: Yeah, I mean, that’s the goal, right?
Wendy Myers: That’s my Blue Zone diet.
Jason Prall: Exactly. But we have to ask ourselves this, right? Why can they be healthy in that environment eating tons of bread, and I mean literally tons. And if you ask them, if you talk to these people, they will tell you, you have bread with everything, in fact it was a sin not to have bread with a meal. You could have bread that was three weeks old, and you’d figure out a way to use it. You did not let bread go to waste, it was that critical. And so how can we have that, and yet in our culture we demonize the heck out of bread. We’re having these debates, whole books on demonizing bread, and in practice I’ve told people not to eat bread, and stay away from gluten, right? Because it is a reality I think in our culture. Again, I think we have to see what’s going on there, right? And there’s a lot to unpack with the bread situation, but I think what that teaches us is that there’s no such thing as a “bad food.” And I know we’re looking at lectins now, and I know we’re looking at all these plant compounds, and thinking that they’re bad, but I don’t …
You can’t adopt that mentality, and also look at these people that are healthy that eat tons of corn in Costa Rica. I mean, tons, it’s in everything. They’re eating rice, and they’re eating beans. That right there, it breaks down every known thing about our dietary sort of dogma that we have here in the U.S.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think, well, our problem is all the greens are contaminated with glyphosate, and micro toxins because of the way that they’re grown, harvested, and stored. And that’s the issue. You go to Europe I stuff my face with croissants all day long, and I’m totally fine. I’m happy.
Jason Prall: Exactly.
Wendy Myers: But it’s you can’t do that here. It’s not the same quality.
Jason Prall: And I think that’s really a huge component of what we’re dealing with overall is the toxins, right? I mean, this is your world, right? These toxins, it’s not a small thing. I know people think that, oh, yes, whatever. There’s toxins and I’ll do what I can, but, I mean, it’s everything. The toxins are overwhelming us right now, and the toxins that when you combine a toxic environment with a shitty lifestyle, and a toxic environment with electromagnetic fields, I mean, sorry. Yeah, diabetes, and autoimmune disease, and Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. And you name it, this is gonna happen because the body cannot deal with this stuff. They are destroying the microbiota in our systems. They are destroying the mitochondria. These are the systems, right?
We can talk about things at an organ level, or at a tissue level, which is it tends to be where we talk about toxins, but at the end of the day where they’re really impacting things is on the biological systems level, which is always dealing with mitochondria, the microbiota, and the DNA. That’s where all the things are happening. And so you can’t code proteins, and unfold proteins properly, you have energetic disturbances in the mitochondria when you have metals in there that shouldn’t be there. That have a higher affinity in the mitochondria then things like copper, and, you know, so the toxins are huge. And they’re so disruptive that you almost can’t even measure it. We’re to the point now where it’s almost pointless to even look at it. You just have to figure out ways to get it out of your environment, and out of your body.
Again, these people that are 100 years old in most of the countries around the world. They didn’t have. Literally, zero toxins their entire life, or most of their life. I mean, we can’t look at … This is why we can’t look at the seven habits, right? Okay, beans, and mostly a plant based diet, and wine at five o’clock. Toxins, right? These things.
Wendy Myers: Well, I read that book the Blue Zone, so I thought, yes, this is what I need to do. Wine every night at five o’clock.
Jason Prall: Exactly.
Wendy Myers: But I really love everything you’re saying here, and I agree with so much of it, and I just think it’s really exciting that you created the Human Longevity Project, and I really respect your work so much, and your knowledge base, and the numerous conversations I’ve had with you, you really know your stuff. And so tell us when is the docuseries going to become available to the public? And how can people access it?
Jason Prall: Yeah, we are launching it May 7th. It will be a nine part series, and we will release an episode a day starting May 7th. And we cover everything from, we get into microbiota and mitochondria a little bit, so it gets a little sciencey. Hopefully, it’s sort of kept fun and we always try to bring it back to the practical, I mean, that’s the basis of this, but we also talk about diet and exercise. We cover that in great detail. We have a whole episode on environmental toxins, and really what’s going on there, to explain what’s happening biologically in our bodies. Circadian rhythm, we talk about child birthing. Purpose and community. Purpose is a funny one, right? How does purpose effect longevity. And you can kind of think, oh, yeah, well, it probably does. But when you think about biology, how does purpose actually filter down to biological systems and aging. We try to uncover that a little bit. We cover a lot of areas, and I think we have to look at all of them if we want to have health. We can’t just look at one area, right?
I mean, I’ve talked about that how we have to look at the entire picture in order to get health. It’s May 7th, it’s online, I think probably just a link in the show notes is probably the easiest instead of me just trying to throw one out there at the audience, but I would encourage anybody that has any interest in health ’cause that’s what we’re focusing on to check it out because it’s not a disease focused thing. Our goal is to empower anybody that is going to watch this. Inform them on how to make the lifestyle decisions, and how powerful these lifestyle decisions are. ‘Cause a lot of times when you tell a client, or a friend, or whatever, “Hey, you should get up in the morning and go out outside, and get sun in your eyes.” I mean, they don’t think that’s going to solve their autoimmune disease, right? They can literally put auto immune disease in remission, right?
Wendy Myers: It can’t be that simple.
Jason Prall: Right. We have to unpack that and really show how powerful that is, and so that’s kind of the goal.
Wendy Myers: Well, Jason, thank you so much for coming on this show, and listeners if you want to tune into the Human Longevity Project just go to MyersDetox.com, search for Jason Prall, and you can find the link and the show notes in the podcast. And again, Jason, thank you so much for blessing us with your presence, and coming on the show. Listeners if you want to learn more about me, you can go to MyersDetox.com. Where can people find you Jason?
Jason Prall: I mean, honestly, everything is going into the Human Longevity Project right now. They can find me on Facebook if they search my name, but Human Longevity Project is where I’m at for now, and probably where I’ll be going forward.
Wendy Myers: Okay, great. Fantastic, and everyone thanks so much for tuning in today. It’s really my pleasure to educate you about health and longevity. This is a live to 110 podcast, so it’s great. We don’t do a lot of shows on longevity, but we get to it eventually, occasionally. And so you guys can learn more about me, like I said at MyersDetox.com, and if you want to download my top ten tips to detox like a pro checklist, you can go to DetoxForEnergy.com. Thank you so much for tuning in.
