UrbanUpdate

While his real age may be 53, biologist David Sinclair tells GQ his “biological age” is more than a decade younger. By biological age, Sinclair is referring to the body’s internal status at the cellular level, which can impact your overall life expectancy. As a professor in Harvard’s Department of Genetics and as a co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, Sinclair’s dedicated much of his professional career to researching this topic.

All of his research has culminated in the launch of Tally Health, an at-home test conducted with a cheek swab that will report back with your own biological age. From there, you’ll receive some multivitamins that promote healthy aging, as well as lifestyle tips like diet and exercise.  

Along those lines, Sinclair broke down his own diet to GQ in all of its detailed, strict, health-promoting glory.

For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.  

GQ: For starters, what is your chronological and biological age?

David Sinclair: Well, I’m turning 54 in June, but I’ve been getting younger every year for the past ten years, so I’m currently ten years younger.

Well, I just took the test and I’m happy to report that my work here is done because I’m two months younger than my actual age, which is 32.

No, that’s not true!

Well, I wasn’t really health-conscious in my 20s, so does that mean I’ve taken years off of my life?

Well, you are fairly typical and I include myself, because I wasn't healthy in my 20s either. I think a lot of us think that when you’re in your 20s, you’re impervious to aging and illness, and what we now know is that the epigenetic clock starts ticking from birth and that what we do in our 20s does affect our ultimate longevity. So it’s never too early to be watching your health. The good news is that it’s also never too late to start, and you slow the aging clock at any age. We’re even finding ways to reverse aspects of aging. I started working on my age in my early 30s.

What do you mean when you say you started?

I started skipping breakfast, avoiding sugar, and taking resveratrol.

By skipping breakfast, do you just mean intermittent fasting?

Yes. I think three meals a day plus snacks is too much. It puts the body in a state of abundance, which turns off our longevity genes. So you want to have a period of fasting each day starting as early as your 20s. But if you’re younger, we don’t want malnutrition or starvation, that’s not the point. But you want to take-in your nutrition and your calories in a certain window. The one that I try to go for is 16 to 18 hours without eating a large meal. That’s basically having a very late lunch or large dinner.

Do you think that can happen for people who’ve made pretty bad lifestyle decisions? Can they still reverse their biological age?

I do. But most people are not willing to make dramatic changes to their lifestyle. But I think if they did, then they would see similar benefits. Perhaps even better if they’re starting out at a higher number than I was.

What exactly do you eat in a day?

There isn’t really a typical day. But if I averaged out a typical day if I was home? (By the way, I haven’t been home in two and a half months.)

I try to get at least six hours of sleep a night, and sometimes I’m successful, but I would say that’s something I need to work on. I would prefer to get seven to eight, but I can get by with six. I sleep on a bed that adjusts my body temperature while I’m asleep to get the deepest of sleep—it lowers your body temperature and then warms you back up toward the morning. It monitors my heart rate through the night and so I see how I’ve done. I also wear a ring that tells me similar information.

Is it the Oura ring?

Well, they don’t pay me to promote their product, but I guess there’s only one ring you can wear.

I should say that my morning routine has been shaped by my partner and business partner, Serena Poon. She’s a nutritionist and chef who’s really shaped my nutrition. Before I met her, I lived very differently and ate what I thought was healthy—but it wasn’t as healthy as what I do now. What she’s put me on is, first of all, oral health. I’ll start by rinsing my mouth with coconut oil—pulling it—that improves my mouth microbiome. And then I have hot water with lemon. I brush my teeth with nontoxic toothpaste, and then I go down to the kitchen and have a little bit of yogurt with some polyphenols. The one I’ve talked about a lot is resveratrol. Now, it’s just a couple of mouthfuls of yogurt so it’s not going to break my fast and it’s not considered breakfast by any means. But it is how I get all my polyphenols in and they dissolve—I’ve been doing that for about 15 years.

Then I have a green matcha tea, which is full of healthy polyphenols like ECGC catechins—and that's a cancer-preventative—so I have at least one of those, maybe two. Then I go to work at a standing desk—I have a standing desk in my office at Harvard and I have one at home as well—and I do my best not to sit down throughout the day. I will continuously drink water and hot tea throughout the day until dinner.

What are the changes that Serena has influenced?

A plant-focused diet. I rarely, rarely eat anything other than plant-based and nut-based foods, including milk. I’m off dairy and I’m off alcohol as well. Very rarely will I eat any or drink any of those things, but on occasion for a celebration or whatever I’m happy to do that, but that’s what I focus on. That’s made a huge difference to my blood biomarkers and epigenetic age. In just a matter of months, I was able to further reduce my biological age by eating better.

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Before that I was on a red wine and cheese-based diet, which was not conducive to health as much. It’s good to know though that the recent data on alcohol is showing that even one glass a day of alcohol is going to affect your brain cells.

That’s devastating news.

It’s sad, though when I switched to this new diet, I got my memory back as well. I was unable to remember phone numbers and key codes easily, and now it’s simple. So I got back to my 20-year-old brain. I just thought it was old age, but it wasn’t, it was my lifestyle.

I expect Tally to evolve into a personal assistant for wellness and health so that it can give you recommendations that are personalized. I could see that in the future you’d be at a restaurant and it would know which restaurant you’re at and it would know based on your biomarkers that you should order this appetizer and this main meal, and suggest that you skip dessert because it knows that tomorrow you’ve got to workout and that kind of thing. But we’re not there yet.

If you’re already 10 years younger than your chronological age then your doctor might not want to take immediate action, but if you’re 10 years older than your birthday candles would suggest then your doctor might want to take immediate action. I think it’s important that people know how they’re doing on the biological age curve, not just their chronological age, which doesn’t tell you as much about your health.

What about lunch?

In my day, I’ll rarely eat lunch. If it’s a small salad, that’s fine. Maybe that’s once or twice a week, but mostly I try to go without a lot of food until dinner, which is about 7 p.m. That dinner would be a plant-based, nut-based dinner with rice, almonds, couscous, or crushed cassava. I love what I eat—as much as when I used to eat meat.

For snacks during the day, if I am peckish or my brain feels a little bit tired, I’ll nibble on a little bit of very dark chocolate—80-percent chocolate—or some nuts. I have a Brazil nut a day for the selenium. I’ve learned from Serena that being vegetarian—or vegan in our case—I haven’t had to give up much at all. In fact, I feel like my life is richer for it. It does take some effort when it comes to socializing or restaurants. Sometimes we even splurge—I’ll have the occasional French fry.

What do your workouts look like?

Before the pandemic, I was doing a lot of gym exercise—running on the treadmill and doing weights. After that, I’ve fallen a bit off the wagon. I don’t exercise every day. I have weights at home in my bedroom and a gym in my bedroom that I use. Ideally, I aim for three times a week to do some weights, and if I don’t go for a run, I go for a walk. I would say that’s my biggest challenge right now is to get moving. I’m writing my second book, and I’m developing my next podcast, a TV show—it’s getting a little bit too busy and I would love to do more. I would say I’m not ideal in that department.

When you’re traveling, do you still prioritize food and supplements and all that?

Serena and I travel together often and we’ve both got half a small suitcase dedicated to this stuff. We take green tea matcha, supplements… It's part of our lifestyle. And we try to choose foods from around the world that are vegan and super healthy. We are prone to late-night picnics, but in general we try to contain our eating window to six or so hours a day.

What would be your main piece of advice to people wanting to improve their overall health?

You don’t have to be so strict and draconian about it, but you do have to be consistent and try your best under the circumstances. And not find excuses to just do what your body wants or what you feel like doing.

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