338. Reversing the Clock with Debra Poneman: Age-Defying Secrets for a Youthful Life

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Debra Poneman: 

I meditate 20 minutes twice a day. And I think how do people live without this because I just return for 20 minutes to that calm state and then I can go back into my life. And research supports that it's really necessary at this time in creation.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. 

 

Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your daily helping.

 

Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And I am so excited to share our guest with you today because she in a word is amazing. Her name is Debra Poneman, and she is the founder and CEO of Yes to Success, Inc. Her workshops, keynotes, and online events have provided a step-by-step system to create both profound inner and outer success. 

 

She's also recognized, and that's what we're going to talk about today, she's recognized as a leading authority on turning back the hands of time. In her acclaimed course, aptly named Ageless, she shares that although chronological aging is inevitable, physical aging does not have to occur in the way we're led to believe. She is also a best-selling author and has been an in-house trainer for Inc 500 corporations including Xerox, Mattel, and Enterprise Bank to name a few. 

 

She's been everywhere in the media, both print and live media, including ABC, NBC, Fox, CNN, and many others. Debra, I've given you a lot to live up to today. Welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome, awesome to have you with us today. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Thank you. I hope I don't disappoint. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I don't think that you will. I have the utmost faith in you, but so, there's a lot that we can talk about, but as I did tease, we're going to talk about anti-aging. So let's hop in the Debra Poneman DeLorean, take it to 1. 21 gigawatts and go back in time, tell us what puts you on the path you're on today. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Okay. So as you said in my introduction, I was very happily teaching how to create a successful life for 40 years. And before that, I was a full-time meditation teacher for 10 years. So people can start calculating how old I must be. But whenever I would mention to people that I was about to hit the big 70, yes, you heard it there, what a wild number, I would literally get inundated with emails. Like what is your secret? You don't have wrinkles. You don't have gray hair. You speak from the stage for hours with no notes. 

 

So instead of continuing to spend my life answering emails one at a time, I put together a webinar that I called Ageless. But people wanted more, and here's the good part. I contacted a dear friend, Ronnie Newman, who is a Harvard trained mind body researcher specializing in slowing and reversing aging who I've known since the 70s, we were students at Washington University in Saint Louis together. And I said to her, Ronnie, you are an expert in aging. We got to give a course. People want to know how to slow stop and even reverse aging. 

 

By the way, I just have to brag on Ronnie for a second. I don't know if you remember. You probably don't because you're too young. But she was part of the research team in the 1980s at Harvard that showed that meditation could reverse the aging process. And it appeared on the cover of Newsweek. The headline was something like, Have We Discovered the Fountain of Youth? That was Ronnie's team’s research. So, hey, I knew how to bring knowledge out to the public and she knew all the science behind anti-aging. So we thought, let's do it. And now, years later, thousands of people have taken our anti-aging course.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So this is awesome because I love anything that's rooted in science, but we're living in a really remarkable time where we now are able to do things that we never could do. We have quantum computing really starting to emerge and bringing that machine learning. They're talking about -- and I don't remember where I heard this, this might have been Peter Diamantis who said this that if we can get to about 2029, we have a chance to live to be well over a hundred with a really good quality of life because the things that are coming down the pipe, personalized medicine, nanobots that can swim through our blood and get rid of cancer cells and bad things, the ability to design essentially a system that heals our body from the inside.

 

So this is cool, but it's not quite here. And yet you've been teaching ways that people can heal themselves and slow down, if not reverse aging that doesn't involve little robots that have to be injected into ourselves. So, let's do longevity/anti-aging 101 here, Debra. So what are some things that people can do to where they can extend their lives, have more energy, look younger, be younger, all the good stuff that you know so well?

 

Debra Poneman: 

Okay. Well, I will dive in because it's the usual suspects. No surprises here, proper diet, the right kind of exercise, rejuvenating sleep, a mindset that doesn't believe that you're going to completely fall apart when you turn 50 or 60, getting stress under control. But here's the deal, chronological aging is the given. Once you're 50 and then surprise next year, you're 51, but physiological aging, it's all about lifestyle choices. 

 

And again, you don't have to take my word for it because there is overwhelming scientific evidence that, for example, you eat certain foods, like foods that have a high glycemic index or foods that are rich and refined carbs, or sugars, or process meets with nitrates. They are going to generate what we call free radicals. 

 

This is science. Free radicals are those atoms that they are missing an electron. Now, it's a free radical. They steal an atom from another molecule. That molecule oxidizes or ages is what happens when an apple turns brown. You caught it. The electrons are separated from their pairs. They steal an electron. The atom oxidizes, the apple turns brown. 

 

That's what happens to our skin from free radical damage if we go out in the sun. That's what happens when we over exercise. It causes free radical damage. Another way we age is when you sit around with your friends, and you complain, and one complains about their cataracts. Now, that image is in your mind. Your mind does create your reality. There's science behind that too. The next friend talks about her knees and her knee replacement, that images -- because they're like, oh, get ready, your knees are going to fall apart soon too, or your hair is going to fall out.

 

And there is actually another bit of research that was done by Ellen Langer also at Harvard. You're going to love this, Dr. Richard. Absolutely, it's my favorite research. She took a bunch of 70-year-old guys, and she brought them to a place. It was actually a monastery that they actually redid and made it look exactly like their life was when they were in their 40s. 

 

Like, they had clock radios and they had TVs with the Lone Ranger playing on it. And it was when the, I don't know, the Saxon, the Yankees were in the world series and Eisenhower was president. And they weren't allowed to look in the mirror and they could only talk about things that they were excited about when they were in their 40s.

 

And what happened after five days of that, they were able to do physical tasks that they absolutely were not able to do before. They were able to do mental tasks that they absolutely were not able to do before. It was all a switch of mindset. So I have to say, don't hang out with those people, that's number one, who are always talking about how their bodies are falling apart. When that conversation starts, I leave the room. However --you want me to be more specific of something someone could do?

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Absolutely. 

 

Debra Poneman:

Okay. There's one thing that you should do is, in the area of diet for longevity, is stop eating white refined sugar. Very, very specific. Anyone could do it. It is the worst offender when it comes to brain inflammation and inflammation is the main cause of your brain atrophy or aging too fast. White refined sugar and foods that act the same in your system, like refined carbs, white bread, white pasta, it causes inflammation that slows down communication between neurons. And this is what causes you to feel foggy and dull and forgetful and walk in the room and go, what did I come in here for? 

 

And furthermore, brain inflammation is serious because it means nerve cells in the brain are not only retracting, but with too much abuse, they're going to die. And this plays a significant role in memory loss and even Alzheimer's. And also inflammation is not good for the entire body. And sugar is one of the worst offenders. It can spur inflammation that leads to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, even some cancers. 

 

So start using sugar substitutes that I'm not talking about, what do they call it? Twin? I don't even know what they call those things. Splendor, Neutral Sweet, aspartame, but sugar substitutes like organic stevia or among fruit or even raw organic, unprocessed cane sugar doesn't cause the inflammation that white sugar does. So that's one simple thing. I mean, I have a lot of other simple things, but we can start with that. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I spoke to a researcher, a medical researcher within the last month, and she told me that she believes that Alzheimer's is directly caused by gluten. That's her theory. And so you mentioned sugar and I understand why because it does have inflammatory properties. What's your take on gluten? 

 

Debra Poneman: 

I would say, I don't want to contradict your guest because there are people who are sensitive to gluten and there are people, and the research has shown, that they are not. And a lot of people, they have headaches, they have migraines, they have problem with their gut and all they have to do is remove gluten and their life turns around. People who have skin disorders, people who have depression, the gluten takes that away. And as well as foggy thinking and lack of mental clarity. 

 

But I would say that that is mostly the people who have celiac disease, which is A, an absolute -- it's a disease where your whole body reacts unfavorably to gluten. But I would say, I don't know, maybe she and I could duke it out. I would say that everybody, everybody is affected by sugar. It causes inflammation. Everybody. Whereas with gluten, it isn't with everybody. But can I tell you 1 other thing that affects everybody's brain neurons? 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Of course. 

 

Debra Poneman:

Okay. It is stress. And do you know how neurons communicate with each other? It is -- Ronnie, my business partner, Ronnie taught me that, cause she's the Harvard researcher. And what happens is these electrical charges travel down the spiny, like fingers of our brain neurons called dendritic spines. Remember dendrites from –

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Dendrites.

 

Debra Poneman:

Right. Okay. And the cells discharge a chemical into the space between the two brain cells called the synapse. And then the adjacent brain cells takes that chemical through its receptors and the receptors are kind of like my fingernails, the hard, and at the end of your finger. And the receptor of the second neuron picks up a chemical called a neurotransmitter and then the message travels up the next dendritic spine and the brain passes it one to the other. And that's how we think. Okay. 

 

But when we are stressed, there's a hormone called CRH, corticotrophin releasing hormone that is released into many areas of the brain. Particularly vulnerable is the hippocampus, which is the primary memory center and –

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Memory, yup.

 

Debra Poneman:

Right. And the prefrontal cortex, which is involved with emotional response. And corticotrophin releasing hormone causes the dendritic splines to literally not only detract, but if we are under chronic stress -- see, when the dendritic splines contract, we can't remember what we came in the room for because the space is so big. They can't communicate anymore. Right? And then when we're under chronic stress, actually the neurons begin to degenerate and disintegrate. So that is CRH at work. 

 

Fortunately, once the stress dissipates and the CRH is metabolized out of the brain, the dendritic spines seem to relax and might even grow back. But again, when the stress is unrelenting, they do not grow back. So, according to research, the best thing available to overcome this inevitability of to counteract stress is meditation. 

 

And as I mentioned earlier, I've been a meditation teacher for 50 years and there is a plethora of research that the way that the neurons fire and act in meditators and actually, there's research that the way that the neurons act and 40 to 50-year-old meditators is similar to 20 to 30-year-old non-meditators. And another thing is breath. Breath has also been shown to have a positive effect on our brains, on the dendritic spines, on inflammation. As a matter of fact, I could teach people a breath technique in about one minute. You want me to do that? 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Absolutely. Of course, disclaimer, if you're driving a car, don't do this, but for everybody else, let's rock and roll. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

It's so interesting. Dr. Richard, this technique you can actually do when you're driving and you want to like lay on the horn or you want to just like, strangle somebody or the traffic is just driving you nuts, you can do this with your eyes open. And it's called straw breath and it's so simple. And again, I'm not giving medical advice here, but it's even been shown to reduce blood pressure. And it's so simple. 

 

All you do is you breathe in through your nose, and then out through your mouth. Everybody could do it with me, but when you breathe out through your mouth, you push your lips like you're blowing through a little tiny Starbucks straw. So, you're like, when your mouth is like that, it’s hard to say Starbucks. So in through the nose and then out through the purse lips slowly, like, you're blowing through a tiny straw. And you could empty your lungs, but don't strain. And then again in through the nose full breath, but kind of a full natural breath and then out through the purse lips. Like, you're blowing through a straw slowly. One more time. In through the nose and out through the straw. Now, I'll ask you, we did three breaths. Do you feel more relaxed? 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

I do. I do.

 

Debra Poneman:

Isn't it amazing? And so again, you know what I love about this? You'll love this. Have you ever been on a Zoom meeting, like, maybe a board meeting and people are driving you nuts, and you just want to like jump through the screen and say, you know what I do? I do straw breath. Nobody sees me doing it, but it calms me down and it centers me. And then I could see the truth of what's going on in that meeting more than I can from a place of anger because now I'm doing it from a place of centeredness. 

 

I also do straw breath when I'm in line at the Whole Foods and somebody is taking forever in front of me and I'm in a hurry. I just do my straw breath. Nobody sees it. It brings me right to a place of calm and good for your health and your brain. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

This is good. What I like about this is a few things. Number one, you're shifting your physiological state. And a lot of times, our emotions of stress will spiral. Like, if you're having a bad day, you get out of bed and you stub your toe and then rush hour traffic and it's raining. Like all these things, they kind of spiral. What this is doing, it's bam. And you just hold that, and you completely shift your emotional state. 

 

The other thing I just want to add that's important, and I'm sure Ronnie would echo this sentiment, is that we are living in an era where our body's physiological and automatic response to stress is on all the time. When our ancestors would deal with a stressful event, what would happen? They're minding their own business in their cave and then they see a sabretooth tiger and cortisone and all of these physiological automated responses happen. So we have fight, flight, and freeze. We're able to assess, escape the tiger, fight the tiger, do whatever we need to do. But once the threat is gone, those levels in our bloodstream, they go back to baseline because the stressor is gone. 

 

Our body wasn't designed to be inundated with information that is causing us to completely freak out. It wasn't designed for us to be in a perpetual state of stress. But I would argue that, unfortunately a large majority of society is there every day. Every day. So that you're bringing such a simple technique that people can utilize in any setting to just flip that physiological switch and take themselves out of that state is pretty awesome. So, thank you for sharing that with us. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Well, you are more than welcome. And I think that what you said is so true.

We are under chronic stress, increasingly chronic stress, so many directions. And that's why, frankly, why I do continue to teach meditation. People say you've been teaching meditation for 50 years. Yes, actually over 50 years. And because back in the seventies when I began, yeah, life was stressful, but nothing like it is now. 

 

So I think it's more important than ever that people have a technique that counteracts the stress in our lives. And now we have something that we can do effortlessly. And if people want to go deeper, of course they can learn a meditation practice. I meditate 20 minutes twice a day. And I think, how do people live without this because I just return for 20 minutes to that calm state, and then I can go back into my life. And research supports that it's really necessary at this time in creation. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

It does. Absolutely. There is something I want to revisit. I wrote this down and I've been saving this. So, as you were talking earlier, Debra, about free radicals and things to not do. So we've really gone through -- some may seem intuitive and yet you did a great job of diving into these. Don't eat sugar, meditate.

 

Debra Poneman:

Breathe. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

You said something else about the creation of free radicals from too much exercise. So many people might think, well, the more I work out, the healthier I'm going to be, but that may not be the case. So talk to us about that. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Well, first of all, let me just tell you what you could do that is good for you in the realm of exercise. Okay? Because there is compelling research that's concluded that there are two exercise methods that slow the aging process better than others by preventing cellular aging. You might be surprised to hear what they are. And no, one is not yoga. Although, I'll comment on that in a second.

 

One is endurance training, like aerobics, like rowing or biking or running. But the most effective in this research was actually high intensity interval training or HIT as it's commonly called. And for those of you who don't know what HIT is, it's very high intensity burst of cardio exercise followed by equal or longer periods of a restful type of exercise. 

 

So, for example, think 30 seconds to a minute of sprinting, getting that heartbeat pumping followed by a minute or two of walking or slow jogging. There was a study published in the European Heart Journal where researchers examine the effects of different types of exercise over a six-month period with hundreds of participants. And the participants were told to perform one of several exercise modalities. 

 

And at the end of the six months, researchers found that high intensity interval training increased telomere activity. Telomeres are those nucleotide sequences found at the end of our chromosomes. And when they shorten, aging occurs. Like inflammatory foods, like sugar shortens the nucleotide sequence at the end of the chromosome called the telomere. But high intensity interval training and endurance training were the only modalities found to significantly increase telomere length, thus producing an anti-aging effect. 

 

And the reason why I said, I was going to mention yoga. If you do yoga where your heart is pumping, then it would fall in that category. And of course, as we get older, it's also good to do strength training for our bones and our musculature.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I was going to ask you about that. I was going to ask for your opinion on heavyweight training. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Yeah. Well, again, I would say it's best to start out with a trainer so that you don't go crazy and damage your musculature. But yes, especially for older women, because we tend to get brittle bones more easily than men and that's just the fact. So, and strength training or resistance training, like with resistance bands, same thing does. And I'll tell you -- you want to hear something else? This will kind of blow your mind. 

 

By the way, going back to the over exercising. Over exercising does produce free radicals, but you would have to really over exercise. Like run for 20 miles a week or something like that. But you might think, oh, that's not much, but it is when you're over 50 or over 60, it does. And another thing that produces aging is when you're doing things like, what do you call it when you bang on the concrete, like jog, jog, jog, it's a high impact. High impact, thank you for the word. My brain cells obviously weren't firing just then. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

You need to use the straw method, Debra. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

I do. I need to do more straw breath, but it actually is really bad. I just have to tell you to be honest here. It's bad for sagging skin. It's bad for sagging breasts women. If you don't want to go in that direction, none of that banging on the pavement. You could do a rebounder, that little trampoline, but none of that jogging on the pavement. 

 

People always point to Madonna who's such a beautiful woman, but she's a jogger and she has that little saggy skin problem. It isn't the end of the world. But here's what I was going to say is going to blow your mind. And then I have one other thing that I absolutely have to tell you. Do you know another thing that strengthens bone density and also it's good for immunity and it's good for musculature is, believe it or not, going to bed early. 

 

Because if you go to bed at 10 o'clock, you will produce more human growth hormone, HGH, than if you go to bed later, because speaking of our ancestors running away from a sabretooth tiger, our ancestors also went to bed when the sun went down. And that's when our body start producing HGH. And we reach the peak HGH level at midnight and then HGH production plummets. And around one or two, you are no longer producing HGH. So, if you haven't grabbed that peak HGH between 10 and 12, you are going to age faster. People think, oh, longer sleep is better. Not necessarily. It's when you sleep.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Right. That doesn't surprise me at all, actually, because I know that when we start our sleep cycles, the majority of deep sleep, the physiological restful sleep that repairs our bodies occurs early. So perfectly makes perfect sense. Right? 

 

Debra Poneman:

Perfectly, it does.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Yes. So that lines up right on. So you had one other thing you wanted to tell us that we have to hear. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Yeah, this is it. All right. What do you think science is saying is one of the most insidious causes of aging of the skin and damage to our eyes?

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: Insidious, well, I would say sunlight, but that's pretty obvious. Right? 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Nope. Okay. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:3

Fluorescent lighting?

 

Debra Poneman:

Blue light. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Blue light? Okay. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Blue light that emits from our computer screens. This, in addition to the EMFs, which we are swimming in a sea of electromagnetic fields, but that's a topic for another day, the light that comes off the screens of our devices is called blue light, and it is known to have long term health effects. 

 

Even the health letter of the Harvard Medical School in July of 2021 said blue light can affect your sleep and potentially cause diseases including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity. And studies also said that continued exposure to blue light over time could lead to damaged retinal cells, and eventually to vision problems like age related macular degeneration and even blindness. 

 

And blue light exposure is a particular concern for children, especially really little ones because they're developing eyes absorb more blue light than adults, putting them at greater risk of one term damage to their eyes.

In fact, some researchers say that macular degeneration and blindness are going to be the biggest health crises when our kids who spend hours a day, exposing their eyes to blue light when they become adults. 

 

So, you absolutely want to get either -- these are my blue light glasses. I don't wear them when I'm being recorded, but I don't know. They're kind of cute. I'll keep them on. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Keep them on, Debra. Keep them on. 

 

Debra Poneman:

I'll keep them on. But I also have a blue light protector screen that I put on all of my computers, as a matter of fact. For Hanukkah and Christmas last year, I gave all of my God children blue light protecting screens for their computer and their phones. You can imagine how thrilled they were.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well, and again, the science behind why this is problematic makes a lot of sense. Blue light actually sends a trigger to your brain that hey, cock-a-doodle-doo, it's wakeful time. Right? And so if you are on your screen at 11 o'clock at night, but that screen is sending a signal to your brain, it's not 10 PM, it's 8 AM, then the wrong hormones are being released and you're screwing up your circadian rhythm that way. 

 

So for those of you who are listening to this on your mobile device, there are settings you can go on and turn on your blue light filter. If you're listening to this on a PC or a Mac, you can do the same thing. They've now built that technology into these devices to shut the blue light off. You can actually have it sync up with the actual clock and sundown. And scientists are saying, give yourself at least two hours where you eliminate that blue light exposure before you go to bed. So this is great stuff, Debra. This is super good stuff. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Thank you. And, okay, can I say one more thing? 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Of course, of course. 

 

Debra Poneman:

One more thing. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

One, there's, but wait, there's more. 

 

Debra Poneman:

I just want to say blue light has also been shown to age the skin. So, believe it or not, if you spend long hours in front of the computer screen, you're going to think this is crazy, put on an SPF of at least 40. As a matter of fact, in dermatologist, Stephanie Wilson, she was – Williams, Williams, her name, was quoted in an article in Bizarre Magazine. She says, we're now seeing increasing data on the long-term farms of blue light on our skin. She said our digital devices are swiftly being labeled the silent agers of our generation. 

 

And Dr. Murad, he's a dermatologist. He has a great line of skin care. He said spending four 8-hour workdays in front of a computer exposes you to the same amount of damaging energy as 20 minutes lying, baking in the strong midday sun. So, another reason to get yourself a blue light blocker or put on an SPF. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well, put on an SPF. That I did not know. So that is -- it's not surprising but shocking to be sure. Debra, I have loved every second of our conversation today. I know our listeners learned a ton. As you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guest a single question. That is what is your biggest help, and that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

 

Debra Poneman: 

Oh, my goodness. Okay. The one most important is, I know what it is, you don't have to go whole hog. Don't think that beginning today, you have to go out and do HIT and stop eating sugar and getting your blue light. Be gentle with yourself. Start doing straw breath. But I would say maybe once every few days, add another one of my recommendations, because if you go whole hog, you're not going to do any of it. 

 

But if you just write down all of the things that I suggested today, and every few days, or every few weeks, and if you do something, like do go off sugar, I pray that you do. And if on somebody's birthday, you have a little bit of birthday click cake, it's not going to be the end of the world. So be gentle with yourself. But if you want to turn back the hands of time, go with what I've shared today. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Awesome. I love it. Debra, tell us where people can learn more about you and connect with you online. 

 

Debra Poneman: 

Yeah. Well, my website is yestosuccess, Y-E-S-T-O-success, yestosuccess.com. And if you want to know more about Ageless, it's yestosuccess.com/Ageless. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Perfect. And we will have everything Debra Poneman linked in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Debra, thank you so much for joining us today. I loved our conversation. It was awesome.

 

Debra Poneman: 

Thank you. And thank you for all of the great conversations you bring to the world. I think you're incredible. So thank you for inviting me.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I appreciate that. And I also appreciate each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this conversation. If you're inspired, if you're excited, if you're going to give up sugar today, go leave us a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show.

 

But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.