Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me start right away with a heretical question.
Why should you study gerontology at all?
I think anyone funded by the taxpayer should ask themselves
if they can possibly give anything back in return to society at some point.
The answer is quite clear.
We now know
that the lifespan to be expected at time of birth
is only about 25% attributable to genetics,
which means there must be some kind of environmental influences, dietary factors,
that have influence on the ageing process.
Why do we still know so little?
Why are we bombarded with confusing messages
from those in the field of nutrition
that partially contradict each other?
Something everyone will remember:
15 years ago, it seemed the culprit had been found, namely fat.
People thought that if fat were eliminated from our diet,
we'd all become slim and grow old in good health,
which led to the appearance in American supermarkets
of ridiculous, mile-long shelves, loaded up with various low-fat products,
which did nothing to change the fact
that Americans became more obese year by year.
Then they said: 'Ah no, fat's not the issue!
It's carbohydrates.'
Which then led to strays into the likes of the paleo diet, the low-carb diet,
the Atkins diet and so forth.
There's always some new dietary fad being announced with undue fanfare.
(Laughter)
Where do these ideas originate?
They come about, I believe, at least partially,
in that we allow questionable journalistic formulations
to inflate singular anecdotal cases to the level of scientific knowledge.
Here's a typical example for a single-case anecdote.
You all know this man.
In 1968, a widely read newspaper published a new feature:
The top 10 most prominent death candidates for the coming year.
(Laughter)
Keith Richards was nominated for first place for seven years,
then the newspaper hit the end of the road.
(Laughter)
Or this lady here, Jean Calmet.
The oldest human known to have ever lived on Earth.
[She was] 122 years old.
I know, there are people around claiming to be 600,
but can't find their birth certificate just at the moment.
Jean Calmet actually did turn 122, and she stopped smoking at 117.
(Laughter)
But she started again at 118.
(Laughter)
Only to finally follow the path of virtue at 120
and stop smoking for good.
She then died at 122.
What does this tell us?
Not that cigarettes are healthy,
rather it tells us that ageing is very complicated,
and we need clear, meaningful statistics.
We need simple, experimental systems,
and we need to ask simple questions.
A very simple question and a very simple fact
that is maintained in various countries:
Women grow older than men.
What's the reason for this?
We now know.
It's due to testosterone, the sex hormone,
that is produced in the male epididymides.
There is a very simple evidence for this:
Castrated men grow just as old as women.
Now, everyone can decide for themselves -
(Laughter)
whether that's a viable path for anti-ageing.
Austria is a free country.
Don't worry, there's better advice coming.
(Laughter)
Generally, we should be careful not to confuse correlation with causality.
Sounds complicated, but can be illustrated with normal questioning techniques.
Someone visits a 100-year-old grandmother and asks,
'What have you done differently or eaten for you to have grown so old?'
Ah, this grandmother has smoked ten cigarettes a day.
That must be the secret to her old age.
Perhaps the ten cigarettes did not harm her,
or perhaps they did harm her,
and the grandmother may have lived longer without the 10 cigarettes.
Even cold, hard statistics are not always meaningful.
There is, for example, strong statistical evidence
showing that people who go on pottery courses in Tuscany
grow older than people who don't.
(Laughter)
It's reproducible. Indisputable.
Is it to do with the Tuscan clay?
No, it's because the people have enough money in their pockets
to take care of themselves at their age with their age-related diseases.
If, however, I put an additive into the food of one group of lab animals,
and this group then lives 20% longer
than a control group that didn't receive this additive
but was otherwise treated exactly the same,
then I have probably found a causal factor in their diet.
And such experiments have indeed been done.
I must tell you that the ageing study community is very divided.
But where I agree with my opponents
is that regular fasting prolongs your life -
and that works for the most diverse organisms.
Take, for example, bacteria.
Here you see a graph showing the lifespan of bacteria.
When they fast, shown here by the dotted line,
then they live significantly longer.
The same applies to yeast, worms, flies, mice
and just recently, two years ago, it was shown in the US
that it even applies to apes.
The issue here is not about being slim.
It also holds for lovers of rich cuisines.
This is a different experiment that was done in the United States.
What was done here?
One group of mice was fed with a high-fat diet,
a kind of McDonald's diet,
whereby they got so many pieces of cheese day and night,
that, who might wonder, the mice became fat, sick,
and had severe fatty liver and bad liver values.
A second group of mice was fed the same amount of cheese,
except this group had intermediate breaks.
They were not allowed to eat anything during the day,
but double the amount at night.
These mice were slim, healthy and didn't have fatty liver.
Even though both groups of mice consumed the same number of calories,
both ate the same amounts,
one is sick and the other healthy.
What's actually happening there?
A process called cellular self-cleaning, or autophagy, is switched on.
Whenever you cease to supply food to organisms or cells,
then the organism begins to break down unnecessary components in the cell,
or damaged components,
in order to regain energy from them.
And that makes sense.
It looks like this:
You can see how garbage sacks regularly form in the cell,
mainly surrounding scrap that accumulates with age,
which then assimilates with the [cell] 'stomach'.
These components are chopped into small pieces
and are ready to be used as energy by the cell again.
By doing so, damage that accumulates with age is kept within limits.
It's just the molecular equivalent of catharsis, or purification of the soul,
of which fasting people often report.
So, to bring this all together,
regular fasting prolongs life in the most diverse organisms,
and it can probably be assumed that this works for humans as well.
From this we learn that you shouldn't, as recommended in dietary magazines,
fight every little feeling of hunger with about 20 small portions a day.
No, when you're hungry, you should tell yourself:
'Maybe the autophagy has just been started.'
Greet hunger like a friend.
This also makes evolutionary biological sense.
What did humans do for 99.99% of human history
when they were hungry?
Exactly, they went hunting.
We regularly go hunting in the fridge when we're hungry,
and that for sure goes against biology.
Now, we know, of course, it's already to be found in the Bible,
in Matthew, chapter 26, verse 41:
'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.'
Paradise looks entirely different to us.
Here already shown by Jan Brueghel in a depiction of a medieval paradise:
The three guys here are doing well,
they eat all day, let themselves be served.
That is, you might say, what's wished for in the imagination.
With that in mind we began searching for substances
that switch on the molecular response to fasting,
even though the organism is eating.
This could be of interest to people whose willpower is not strong enough
for an occasional fasting break.
And it could possibly save us from one of the hardest crossroads of life.
(Laughter)
The question is this: Can we switch on the fasting response, the autophagy,
the cellular self-digestion, even when we are eating?
We have examined many hundreds, close to 1000, substances,
natural substances.
We have in fact found one, which is called spermidine.
Spermidine is a substance that occurs naturally in any organism,
but also decreases as the organism ages.
It is found most abundantly in the skin.
People in their thirties
already have significantly less spermidine in their skin
than 25-year-olds.
If we now add spermidine to human cells,
you see the following:
This is a human cell, the cell body, the cell nucleus.
We add spermidine to it,
and we see many thousands of these tiny garbage sacks developing in the cell,
which clean up the scraps that accumulate with old age.
Fasting cells would look exactly like this.
And this works in the most varied organisms.
Here, for example, shown on part of a fly's muscle.
So, we've found a substance,
that switches on the molecular fasting response, the autophagy.
Does it mean that organisms with it live longer?
The answer once again is yes.
You see here a typical survival curve of a fly population.
These are simple drosophila, fruit flies.
They all die within 80, about half are dead within 40 days.
Whenever we add spermidine to the drinking water, here in colour,
the insects grow older and survive better.
We also know that human cells that we have taken from donors ex vivo
survive about three times as long in culture if we introduce spermidine.
Latest studies also suggest
that spermidine even prolongs the lives of whole mice.
And it's not only life expectancy but also disease-free life expectancy,
as these mice are significantly more immunocompetent.
Of course, now you will want to know, where spermidine is found?
As the name suggests, it was discovered in sperm.
It appears there in high concentration.
But I can console you, there's a lot of spermidine
also in wheatgerm, fresh green pepper, mushrooms, cheese,
and a product made from fermented soybeans,
which enjoys high regard in Japan,
the so-called 'Natto'.
We then asked ourselves,
if spermidine helps against ageing processes
by cleaning up the scraps,
does it then possibly also help against neurodegeneration?
You must know that the common denominator of all neurodegenerative diseases
is that protein junk accumulates in the brain in old age.
We've indeed done experiments in relation to this.
You would be surprised.
We did these on fruit flies.
Fruit flies also become forgetful when they grow old.
They have more protein junk in their brains when they grow old,
and the molecular mechanisms responsible for memory
are very similar to humans.
Now you may well be asking yourselves:
'How the hell did this guy measure the memory of fruit flies?'
This is the experiment
that we did together with Stefan Sigrist of the University of Berlin.
You take 100 fruit flies and trap them here,
give them a scent they love:
Plum -
and let them indulge themselves in this plum scent.
Then you take the same flies, let them advance into the next chamber
and give them another scent they love, cherry.
We let them savour the cherry scent
while we give them a sugar treat.
Classic reward experiment.
Then take the same flies and put them in here.
Then they take the lift down, you see it here.
When they arrive at the bottom
you expose them to the plum scent from one side
and to cherry scent from the other.
Where do they all go?
Obviously towards the cherry scent.
Except for these two, they're idiots.
(Laughter)
Or, let's say, they have character:
I love my plum, and I won't be corrupted by such a disdainful reward.
(Laughter)
Okay, that would be a facet of character that increases with age -
not only in flies.
(Laughter)
We found, in fact, that we could return the memory capacity of the flies
back to their juvenile levels by feeding them spermidine,
and that the protein accumulations that had built up in their brains
were broken down again.
This means that spermidine not only helps against ageing
but also ultimately against other diseases associated with age.
This is important because we want to extend disease-free life,
not just life expectancy,
since there's no sense in extending life spent in agony.
I don't want to leave you
before giving you a few practical tips
on how you might stay younger.
Again, occasional fasting.
It's not about losing weight.
By the way, there is already a group of 20,000 people in Austria,
who eat one day and not the next.
That is the so-called '10in2 Community'
under the leadership of Bernhard Ludwig and Erwin Haas;
and they keep to it quite well, which means it's practicable.
Avoid sugar shocks.
It's not about carbohydrates,
complex carbohydrates don't seem to be dangerous at all.
It's really about sweets.
It's now established that sugar shocks are enough to bring about diabetes,
even if you're slim.
It is also known that sugar can speed up the growth of tumours.
Here you see a worm population ageing away.
After 30 days all are dead.
Small doses of glucose are enough to cause a pro-geriatric effect.
That's just one example,
it works similarly in all organisms.
Eat fruit and vegetables regularly.
Avoid supplementing with too many vitamin tablets,
or with vitamin tablets altogether.
It's known that vitamin A and vitamin E supplementation
can cause cancer.
That might not apply to Vitamin D.
During winter we might easily suffer from low vitamin D levels,
since Vitamin D production requires sunlight acting on the skin.
Exercise at least three times a week for half an hour.
That's trivial.
Cigarettes, despite the initial anecdotic examples,
cost you, according to epidemiological studies, 10 to 15 years of your life.
In this online era,
give yourself time to relax occasionally.
The influence of praying and blood pressure
on life expectancy is established.
Because monks live almost as long as women.
(Laughter)
People who drink alcohol in moderation live longer than non-drinkers.
Wine drinkers live longer than beer drinkers,
but beer drinkers still live longer than non-drinkers.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Only drinkers of spirits die earlier than non-drinkers.
Why's that?
People suppose it has something to do with some substances.
No, no, it's very simple.
If there's a grease spot on the window here,
I'd clean it off with an alcohol-based solution.
Something similar probably happens in our vascular system.
Fatty deposits, cholesterol-plaques,
could potentially be dissolved away by alcohol.
That's why alcohol, especially, has a cardio-protective effect.
Having a partner or a family is associated with longevity.
You shouldn't live near a busy street.
You might be thinking 'particulate matter'.
It's not about particulate matter, but noise.
It's measurable.
The closer someone lives to a busy street,
the more stress hormones there are in their blood.
Even if someone says, 'I've got used to it.
I sleep well. The noise doesn't affect me.'
That's not true, he still has more stress hormones in his blood, which is bad.
Exposure to the sun should be limited to avoid skin damage.
We now know that garlic is good for metabolism.
Above all it lowers cholesterol.
We also know that onion and garlic protect mice against infectious disease.
Incidentally, our grandmothers already knew that,
when they tormented us with onion broth, for sure not without good sense.
Several studies show that dark chocolate can act to protect against dementia.
Just recently, a nice study came out
that showed that half a bar of dark chocolate a day
can bring the ability to remember of a 60-year-old
back to the level of a 30-year-old.
It's thought coffee may have similar effects.
However, there's less data supporting this.
There are studies that show it to be true, and some that don't.
It's clear that coffee protects against diabetes
thus maintaining your metabolism.
Coffee also is a great help when fasting, as it triggers autophagy,
as we have been able to show with Guido Kroemer from Paris.
A great, extensive study,
which involved 100,000 people being examined over 15 years,
showed that people who eat a handful of nuts every day are likely
to lower their probability of death by 20%.
That is a hefty figure to come from an epidemiological study.
It holds for almonds, Brazil nuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts,
pine nuts, walnuts, but not for peanuts,
which, botanically speaking, are really legumes.
As nuts they are only pretenders,
they're actually from legume pods.
So it doesn't hold for peanuts.
The next point is a bit delicate.
Avoid the ingestion of too much animal protein,
meat and dairy products,
but only if you're between 45 and 65 years old.
A great new study shows
that if you ingest too much animal protein between those ages,
you increase your risk of cancer to as much as if you were a heavy smoker.
It's not true for the years after that, when animal protein is good for you,
and it's not true, of course, for growing children and teenagers,
who need animal protein,
and not for pregnant women and those who want to become pregnant.
Avoid food dogmatism in general.
Whatever you do keep yourself trim.
(Laughter)
Friedrich Nietzsche knew this and said:
'Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health;
everything absolute belongs to pathology.'
This is Mr. Salvatore Caruso, who has kept somewhat to this regime
and has reached 108 years of age.
He's from my native region, Calabria, from a neighbouring village.
He's never got sick and is doing very well.
He's not a paradigmatic isolated case, he's no anecdote,
as he actually lives at a place
where exceptionally there are many healthy hundred-year-olds.
He followed the nutritional rules I gave you today.
Among all the experiments described,
we shouldn't overlook one important fact.
Namely, that the main problem with ageing
never appears to be a completely biological problem,
but rather one involving society, and thus one addressed by psychology.
Old people aren't left to do much by themselves,
and that could be one of the most fatal errors of our culture.
Dostoevsky wrote the greatest novel of world literature
one year before his death:
'The Brothers Karamazov'.
A work which contemporary critics praised for its youthful freshness.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)