‘Skip a meal’: Harvard expert Dr Sinclair’s tips on how to live healthy, longer

About eighty per cent of our longevity and health is determined by our epigenome and by not our DNA and we can change our epigenome by how we live, Dr David Andrew Sinclair, professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, told Hindustan Times’ health editor, Sanchita Sharma on Friday.

Dr Sinclair talked about some minor dietary and lifestyle tweaks that can turn on the body’s defences against ageing and help promote longevity and good health.

 

He said that eating three regular meals a day will not give the best results for longevity, instead, “skip a meal in a day”.

“What I do is that I skip a meal in a day and I try not to snack but have tea or coffee,” he said.

Dr Sinclair however said that young people should not skip a meal, older and middle-aged people can skip a meal in a day.

 

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“Don’t skip breakfast, may skip lunch or dinner depending on the individual, this is for middle-aged or older people who have slightly slower metabolism,” he said, adding that he isn’t promoting starvation.

Dr Sinclair explained that longevity factors get turned on when a person remains hungry for a brief spell. “If we sit around the whole day, keep eating and don’t feel hungry, our bodies will relax and stop fighting ageing,” he explained.

He also discussed some other ways to turn on the body’s defences against ageing:

• Lose your breath from exercise.

• Do hip-hinges exercises, weight-lifting. Keep your hips strong.

• Use biomarker feedback. Monitor your health level, track your vitals and see how’s the body performing on a daily basis.

• Sleep well and reduce stress.

• Eat plants that have been stressed, for example, wine is made from grapes that have been stressed.

Dr Sinclair appeared on the cover of the Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Besides Sinclair, the sixth day of HTLS 2020 saw Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and YOOX Net-a-Porter Group’s Federico Marchetti in participation.