What can a 192-year-old tortoise teach us about living longer, healthier lives? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Stephen W. Clark, MD, PhD, MSCI from the Kallel Foundation to explore the science behind healthspan. Transcript: Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Well, Dr. Clark, it’s so great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation You’re welcome. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network I’m really excited to talk about this. It’s hard to believe that a tortoise by the name of Jonathan could be almost 200 years old. Doctor, he predates both you and I. He actually predates the Queen Victoria actually ascending to the throne. So that’s an amazing accomplishment for Jonathan. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Yeah, he was 33 years old when Abraham Lincoln died. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network I mean, that’s, you know, I guess my first question is, does it surprise you or is that typical of any animal on the planet living that long, almost 200 years? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation For his species, it seems to be abnormally long. So there was a study that looked at that and the maximum age for his species, the Aldabra, was around 94 years old. So he’s twice that age. So as far as his species are concerned, yes, he’s quite abnormal. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network And my understanding is, well, let me ask, because I’m not the expert, you clearly are, is that the oldest species of animal on the planet? I mean, elephants have long lives as well, but is that- So Jonathan is the oldest land animal. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation There’s things that are in the water, like the Greenland shark that, you know, the bullhead whale maybe that lived a little longer. The Greenland shark is supposedly 400 years old, if not older. Yeah. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network So I want to get into your research and how this can translate to human longevity. But let me ask, what do you attribute, or based on the research, what can we attribute to Jonathan’s extraordinary longevity? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Well, the main thing we found that was quite unexpected was that it seems like his mitochondrial genes, that the mitochondria produce energy in the cell, that those genes looked very, very young compared to the rest of his genes. So for some reason, he’s able to keep his mitochondria, I think, really pristine, and they’re functioning to be very much intact compared to other old tortoises. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Does he have a special… Forgive me for asking basic questions. You know, I’m a lay person, but does he have a special diet that he eats? I mean, is he eating a Mediterranean or a DASH diet? Or is he eating plants? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation He’s definitely a vegetarian. He’s definitely a vegetarian. So he gets lots of lettuce and carrots, and he’s feeding by hand because he’s blind. And so, but yeah, he’s very much a vegetarian. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network And does he… I mean, a tortoise is typically pretty slow, but does he exercise as he go out for strolls, for walks? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Yeah, tortoises, giant tortoises especially, are pretty sluggish, to say the least. But he’s not abnormally so. So he moves about as much as the other tortoise. He’s got tortoises around him. So he’s not… He’s still very mobile, but he’s not abnormally slow compared to other tortoises. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network So what can we learn? I mean, you run a not-for-profit longevity research institute or organization. How do you take what the longevity of Jonathan, who predates Abraham Lincoln, to your point, what do we take away from this? How does it move your research along? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Yeah, so we’re interested in actually looking at generic FDA-approved drugs that increase healthspan and lifespan. And so for us, the reason why we did this study, and the reason why we’re gonna do other studies like this, is it gives us a clue about what potential targets could be. In this case, could we do something similar in humans as far as mitochondria are concerned? So we’ll look for drugs that maybe impact mitochondrial health, for instance. So yeah, it’s not a guaranteed-for-sure thing, but that’s something that we will focus on, for sure. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network I mean, he seems to be extraordinary, even when it comes to tortoises, or torti, I don’t know what the plural is, but tortoises. But 90, the average human lifespan is somewhere between 80 to 90 years old. Could we see with this, based on your research, could we see human lives extend into the triple digits, like 105, 110 on average? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation I think so. I think actually even, I think if we had better preventive medicine treatments, we could see that. I think the nonprofit is for sure interested in increasing longevity, but we’re, like I said, also interested in increasing healthspan. And so by, I think, controlling hypertension, diabetes, things like that, or actually preventing those from happening, if you look at hypertension, for instance, 70% of people that are 60 years old have hypertension. So if you could delay that so that maybe people don’t have hypertension when they’re 60, maybe they’re 80, then I think you will see that overall average survival increase. The question is, how much? Does it go from 80 to 90, or 90 to 100? That’s still debatable. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network And you mentioned the word healthspan. I should have asked you this at the beginning. How would you define healthspan? Because it’s different conceptually than lifespan. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Absolutely. So it turns out that most people spend about 20, 25% of their life in bad health. And so 80% of their life is good health. So that’s what we’re talking about with healthspan. If we can increase that to spending 90% or 95% of your overall lifespan in good health, that would be a very positive thing. So for instance, if you were 60, instead of having hypertension, you did not have hypertension, that would be a healthspan positive. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Okay, so I’m definitely on board with that. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation So yeah, we’re interested in people not only living longer, but living healthy longer. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Does the human body, again, I’m kind of going away from the healthspan and more towards lifespan, but can the human body last? Can the heart, the lungs, our organs, our cardiovascular system, are we, assuming we take care of it and we have a positive healthspan, can it last for longer periods of time, beyond 100, 110? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Yeah, so there’s been data saying that there’s a maximum age for humans, around 120 years old. I think that’s with current knowledge. That’s what that maximum is. I think eventually in the future, we’ll be able to extend that more. I think currently right now, the things we’re doing, I don’t think can go beyond that, but eventually I’m thinking we can figure out ways to kind of partially reprogram the body a little bit and go beyond 120 years. But that’s pretty far off in the future, I think. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Right, so let’s go back to, Jonathan, obviously is a extraordinary case. You’ve conducted research on him based on what he’s eating, all his DNA. How do you take that and put it into practice? So let’s talk about the practical aspects of research. I mean, obviously you have to do the research. You have to look at the genes. You have to look at the data sets. How does it translate into active? So how do you make it practical? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Yeah, so for instance, we are doing drug screens to try to see how we can increase the longevity of different organisms, right? This may help us identify other drugs that might do that. For instance, if we know a drug impacts mitochondrial health, then we might test that, right? And see, does this drug actually increase longevity as well? So it doesn’t directly give us a drug that we can go after, but it kind of peels back the onion and we can see, oh, maybe this is one of the ways Jonathan is able to live longer. I don’t think it’s the main reason. I don’t think, aging is what we call polygenic. There’s probably thousands of genes that are involved in it. I’m sure the mitochondria are very, very important, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle. And so we’ve known for a while that mitochondrial health was important. It’s one of the hallmarks of aging. We’ve seen that mitochondrial health declines in humans with age, but we didn’t know exactly how. And so Jonathan is sort of giving us a clue as far as maybe how that’s going on. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network And you mentioned that part of your research is on some of the drugs. I would imagine that this is an emerging, maybe emerging is the wrong word, but this is a certain category of drug development and research that really has taken off over the last decade. Because at the end of the day, we all want to live longer, but we also want to live healthier. So I could see the demand for it, but is this kind of an emerging area of development and research? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation As far as mitochondria are concerned, it is. People are beginning to notice that mitochondria are important. And so I think people are looking at ways to increase the health of mitochondria. As a nonprofit, again, we’re interested in generic drugs, FDA approved generic drugs that have already been in humans. So that way we can quickly do trials in humans and we don’t have to do all the preclinical research that you have to do with the new drug. So yeah. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network How do you follow up the research on Jonathan? What’s next? Do you go back and do research in another year, another few years? I mean, can he change? Can things change year to year? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Well, a couple of things. We were only able to do what we call a buccal swab of his mouth. The island was very concerned that we would get, you know, cause him to have an infection if we drew blood. So we’re still hoping we can draw blood and get a better sequence. We have a pretty good sequence, but we would like to have a better sequence. Moreover, we would like to test more aldabras like him, more of his species to see if he’s indeed very unique or he’s part of a subspecies that exists. Like I said, the previous study had shown that 94 was the maximum age for most of these aldabras. We suspect that Jonathan is a subspecies that lived much longer. It’s just that people haven’t identified them yet. So we want to do more sequencing on more aldabras. In addition, we’re looking for other targets. Jonathan has shown us that the mitochondria may be important. We also believe that other long-lived species probably have equal pathways that may be different that we can study and see if they’re also potentially a target. So we would like to do other long-lived species. Even there’s some birds that have lived really long. There’s other fish that have lived really long. So we’re really looking for other targets for aging. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Well, it really is amazing. I hope Jonathan can live for another 100 years. I mean, wouldn’t it be great if he made it to America at 350? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Well, the previously recorded oldest tortoise was 250 years old. And it died because something fell on its shell, it cracked its shell and it got infected and died. Now there was questions about whether or not it was really 250 years old, but it’s possible, we think, that Jonathan could live well into his 200s. Now, how much past 200, it’s hard to say. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, well, it sounds like he’s treated really well and he must have a very positive… Have you met him? Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation We have not. Yeah, so we work with the vet on the island, Joe Hollins, and he did all the buccal swabs for us. But we plan to go to the island and give the island his sequence and the paper and in a ceremonial way. But yeah, we have not met him. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network I wonder what his personality is. Is he optimistic? Is he, you know, I don’t know if they have personalities. I would assume they have some kind of personalities, but he must seem like he’s happy-go-lucky because, I mean, he’s made it so. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation I think he’s pretty happy-go-lucky. Again, he’s treated like a king on the island. They have him feeding and they watch over him very closely. So I think he’s getting the best care he could possibly get. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, well, if only we could revere our elders like they revered Jonathan, maybe that’s the lesson as well, in addition to the generic, you know, using something, testing some of the generic drugs is revering your elders. Dr. Clark, you’re gonna have to leave it there. Amazing research. I hope you can, you find the secret to HealthSpan, sir. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to bringing you back again very soon. Stephen W. Clark MD, PhD, MSCI, Kallel Foundation Thank you. Take care.
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