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Live Longer by Activating Your Body’s Anti-Aging Gene

With: Dr. Bill Andrews

About the Episode

What if the key to living for over 125 years is already inside you, just waiting to be turned on? Every cell in your body has a built-in aging clock that’s ticking down with each passing day. But here’s the surprising part: you have a gene that could slow or even reverse that clock, and it’s been deliberately shut off.

In this episode, Dr. Bill Andrews, a molecular biologist and longevity researcher who discovered the human telomerase enzyme, explains why your telomeres shorten as you age and how activating your body’s dormant anti-aging gene could extend both your lifespan and healthspan. If you want to understand the real science behind aging and what you can actually do about it, this conversation reveals breakthrough research that might just change everything you thought you knew about getting older.

Listen now and start activating your longevity today!

What We Discuss

Dr. Andrews breaks down the science of telomeres (the protective caps on your chromosomes that shorten every time your cells divide) and explains why this shortening process is the kingpin of aging. He also shares groundbreaking research showing how lengthening telomeres reversed dementia in mice, restored vision and hair color in humans, and why your immune system’s strength depends on keeping these cellular timekeepers long. You’ll discover why the typical 125-year maximum lifespan exists, what accelerates aging beyond that natural rate, and the plant extracts that can reactivate your telomerase gene.

Telomeres: Your Cellular Aging Clock

Your body is made up of 100 trillion cells, and inside each one are chromosomes with protective caps called telomeres, similar to the aglets on shoelaces that keep them from fraying. Every time a cell divides, these telomeres get shorter by a specific rate, like using up ride tickets at an amusement park. You start as a single-cell embryo with 15,000 bases (100 ride tickets), but by the time you’re born, you only have 50 ride tickets left due to all the cell division required to grow. When your telomeres reach 5,000 bases (essentially zero ride tickets), your cells lose their ability to function, enter a phase called senescence, and you die of old age. Telomeres also regulate which genes get turned on and off throughout your life, which is why you see changes like wrinkled skin, gray hair, and declining organ function as you age.

The Telomerase Gene: Your Body’s Anti-Aging Switch

Every cell in your body contains the gene for telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres, but in most cells this gene is shut off by a repressor protein that acts like a dimmer switch turned to zero. In your reproductive cells, this gene stays active to ensure your children are born with long telomeres, but evolution shut it off everywhere else to eliminate longer-lived individuals after they’ve raised their young, increasing genetic diversity within the species. Through decades of research testing nearly 20,000 different plant extracts, Dr. Andrews has discovered compounds that can induce telomerase production.

Reversing Aging Through Telomere Lengthening

When Dr. Andrews added telomerase to human skin cells in petri dishes, the telomeres actually got longer, reversing aging by every measurable biomarker. Research by Dr. Ronald DePinho at MD Anderson engineered mice to age by telomere shortening as humans do, then used gene therapy to lengthen their telomeres after they showed severe aging and dementia. The results were stunning: the mice became younger in every way imaginable, and their dementia was reversed, proving that memory loss isn’t about losing memories but losing access to them. While gene therapy costs about a million dollars per patient and isn’t entirely safe yet, anecdotal reports from people taking telomerase-activating supplements show improvements in vision, hair color restoration, and hair regrowth, particularly in those with critically short telomeres in specific tissues.

Even with perfect lifestyle choices and perfect genetics, the baseline shortening rate limits lifespan to 125 years, but by activating telomerase production through supplements or eventually gene therapy, you can potentially extend that limit. The goal is to minimize accelerated telomere shortening while maximizing telomerase activation so you can spend those extra years feeling healthy and vibrant.

Listen now and start activating your longevity today!

Guest Bio

As a scientist, athlete, and executive, Bill continually pushes the envelope and challenges convention. Bill is known for being a scientist first, focusing on scientific research, allowing others, instead, to market the products that his company discovers.