101-Year - Old Nutrition Professor’s NEW Longevity Advice | Dr. John Scharffenberg: Full Transcript

Transcript sourced from the original YouTube captions. Timestamps link directly to the video.

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What is that? A chainsaw you're offering? I'm chainsawing a log. How old are you in this photo? Oh, I don't remember, but it was just a few years ago. Okay, so maybe you're like, you know, 97 or something. Yes, maybe 95. Your grandson, Eric, also told me a story about you kidnapping a nurse while you were in the army. Are you able to tell us a little bit about the kidnapping a nurse story? Yes. And now there's climbing half dome. What? No, wait, you're 80. That's Dr. Sharenburgg, who's now 101 years old. We first interviewed him when he was 100 years old. Later, we filmed his TEDex talk for our longevity conference. His videos get millions of views. He's funny, positive, sharp, speaks English and Chinese, Dr. Sharpenberg broke his hip last year while in Slovakia on his world lecture tour. That injury would derail people decades younger than him. But he had hip surgery and has made a full recovery since then. Dr. Sharenburgg, who trained at Harvard, has been a nutrition professor at Lomol Linda University for over 70 years. Lomol Linda near Los Angeles is a blue zone. Many of its residents live long and healthy despite being in a modern environment filled with modern traps like tasty junk food.

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with modern traps like tasty junk food. Many of these residents are 7th Day Adventists. Dr. Sharenburgg is a lactoovo vegetarian. Many Adventists are lifelong vegetarians or vegans and they have the birth certificates and records to prove their ages. We've heard people casting doubt on the blue zones. So, we thought it was important to go to these centinarians face to face and learn more about them. Diet and exercise are just part of the longevity puzzle. Centinarian researchers point to other factors that may be even more important for longevity like sense of purpose. So, one final question. What tip would you have for your children on what to do now to live a nice long healthy life? Yeah. So in geriatrics we say everything is multiffactorial but you said tip. So um I'm going to just say one and I think it applies uh I think for what regardless of what age you are um to really think about purpose social connection but over and over over these 75 years our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned into relationships with family with friends with community. resilience. But more recently, it's been recognized that equally important to healthy aging is the ability to bounce back after physiological stress.

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physiological stress. All of them 100% have faced some significant adversity throughout their lives. 100%. And I would say 100% of them are pretty resilient. And of course, sense of humor. At 110 years of age, she was getting around on her own. She would go out and eat at restaurants a couple of times a week and she had this marvelous sense of humor. In all of the centinarians that I've interviewed, they all have that quality just marvelous outlook on life. This is why we met Dr. Sharenberg in his home to learn more about his past 101 years starting from his birth in 1923. In this interview, he shares many health insights, including his take on weight loss drugs like Osmpic, supplements, protein, and how cancer can be preventable. By the way, many people assume Dr. Sharenburgg is just lucky, born with good genes. They're wrong. Let's look at the facts. His mom died in her late 60s from Alzheimer's. His dad died at age 76 from a heart attack after already having multiple. His brothers died at 83 and 86. One had diabetes and the other had high blood pressure causing multiple brain hemorrhages. Dr. Sharenberg has outlived them all by almost 20 years so far. And

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them all by almost 20 years so far. And he doesn't have any of the diseases they did. Hey. Hi again. Oh, your tie. Great as ever. That tie. How you doing? Fine. We sat down with him to go over his memorabilia. Starting with a photo of a woman who looks an awful lot like him. Who's this? That's my mother. She's beautiful. She was so skinny going through college. They said she was just walking around to save funeral expenses. Okay. How long did she live? Late 60s. Not very long. Oh. She had kind of Alzheimer's at the end. Really? She didn't know anybody. Wow. In bed. That's early for Alzheimer's, isn't it? It was. My dad died at 76. But remember, this generation has lived 30 years longer than the last generation. Yeah. So that's explainable. But why I have lived 14 and 17 years longer than my brother is explainable only that I exercise. This book, what does it say? Now, this book has some of my sayings on it. On the back here, it says, "Exercise in midlife increases longevity." Okay. And what is that? A chainsaw you're offering? I'm chainsawing a log. Okay. How old were you in this photo? Oh, I don't remember, but it was just a

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Oh, I don't remember, but it was just a few years ago. Okay. So, maybe you're like, you know, 97 or something. Yeah, maybe 95. Just 95. Now, and on the back it says who I am. You're a soul winner, a public health teacher, nutritionist, health educator, and a friend to man. In here, I wanted to have the that Chinese picture of show, which is longevity. I thought it was in here, but it isn't. But that looks like Hong Kong Harbor says, "Born in Shanghai, China, December 15th, 1923 at age 12. Finished one-year Chinese language course of a thousand characters. Baptized in Hong Kong at age 14." Yeah. We got thrown out of Shanghai because of the Japanese coming in 1937. And I recall you saying somewhere that you remember just the curse words in China. Oh yeah. All those bad words. You can't forget them. My uh mouth got washed off with soap a couple times by my mother. Oh my. Now you wanted some early pictures. Hey, that's graduation from high school. Wow. That's in Andrews University now. It's called Emanuel Missionary College. Then Mrs. Burman was the head of the academy, the high school. I was president of my class. Mrs. Burman said, "What year do you want to be in this year?" I said, "I want to be a senior this year." All right. You'll be a senior. So, you skipped I skipped junior year at that point. I wish I could have done that. These are a lot of family photos.

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a lot of family photos. This is my grandfather. My grandmother and all the kids. This photo on the bottom, it's your Is that in China? Ho. That's your dad. Yeah. He died at 76. H. What did he pass away from? Heart attack. But he had had couple of them before that. So in your family there's Alzheimer's and heart attacks. What else? My two brothers died. One they discovered before his death that he had diabetes. And the other one had high blood pressure. He had little hemorrhages in his brain. So the last 10 years of his life, he couldn't drive the car. He couldn't operate his business. He was an orthopedist. And his wife drove and she preceded him in death with a massive stroke. But here I've lived 14 and 17 years longer than my brothers which is amazing. It is. Yeah. It might be all the laughing. That's what it's it's the same same family, same kind of genetic background. So that's not the difference. Main difference is at age 51, I left the school of medicine, my teaching, found the best place to live within one hour of Euseite up in the mountains above Fresno. I worked hard in exercise. It was all forestry. I bought a chainsaw. Yeah. You did stuff like this. Went to work. And went to work. I cleared two acres of land for agriculture. I put in 80 fruit trees. I planted one year 3, 000 strawberry

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planted one year 3, 000 strawberry plants. My grapes did the best. I had the best grape juice. Concord grape juice. Better than what you buy at the store. It was very tasty. We had over 100 quarts every year of grape juice. Wow. And your grandson, Eric, he's told me that he remembers you would jump across 10-ft streams around your mountain property. Yes, I I jumped the streams at age 80. Yeah, I was jumping around. At any point, have you ever woken up and thought, I should slow down? No. So, that's your father and then his two older brothers, your grandma, your grandpa. She had a dream one night. uh not her, it's her sister who's not in here. But she had a dream one night that people with peculiar dress said, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." She went to the library, found out that was Korean dress. So she went to Korea and she and another man there started the first school, which is now Samyuk University, moves from Ping the Young up there and north down to Seoul. M your whole family is very impressive. That's my wife. Your wife is beautiful. She was beautiful. Wow. Spanish looks like, doesn't it? And there's her parents next to it. Here's my wedding picture. Wedding. I had the best photographer. This is in the nurse's dormatory. See, we're all in the military. Brother was in the Navy. He was in the army and I was in the army. Mhm.

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Mhm. This is uh my little girl, Eloise. Where is she now? In Washington State. And how old is she? She's about 77. Here she is with her brother. That's my son. I think that's the cutest picture. They're adorable. Where's your son? He's a doctor. He married a nurse. She's a nurse. Married a doctor. Says here you're a medical evangelist. See, I was in China. I was spiritually oriented but I saw the doctors had more influence on the people. Yes. Than the ministry. Yes. So I went into medicine and then the Dr. Miller a China doctor had special training in John's Hopkins in taking out goiters. He was known for this. And I said to myself, this is silly. Why doesn't he give the people iodine so they don't get goiters? So that pushed me into prevention. Your grandson Eric also told me a story about you kidnapping a nurse while you were in the army. Are you able to tell us a little bit about the kidnapping a nurse story? Yes. This girl wanted to study the Bible and be an Adventist and they were all what Buddhist or whatever they were in Taiwan. And she had to go out to buy the food every morning for the meals. You know Chinese do it buy fresh food every day. It's not like we do with refrigeration. Anyhow, what happened was they didn't want her to study with Adventists, study

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want her to study with Adventists, study the Bible. So, I agreed to pick her up when she was out with a rickshaw with her suitcase and I bought her airplane ticket, took her to the airport and saw her off and had people meet her in Taipei and we just opened a nursing school and she took nursing and I was scared because I was in the military. I said, "This would make big news here if they got in the newspaper, American Army officer kidnapped Chinese girl. I was scared cuz her parents were against it." Yes. They finally found out where she was. What' they do? Didn't do anything. But anyway, she ended up a nurse. Good. We just opened the nursing school. Now, here's a picture. Something I did which was worthwhile. I became the president of a nutrition congress in S. Paulo. S. Paulo is a big town, maybe 28 million people or so. We have 800, 000 Adventists in S. Paulo. They wanted me to be president of this organization. So, I became president and here it is. We had I don't know 5 days or something of lectures. There's you up there speaking. We went to Liberia. That's in Liberia, Africa. And here is the president of the Adventist Church, General Conference of Washington DC. He took me and a group of young people, I was old over there trying to teach us how to bring people into the church. This first

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bring people into the church. This first time I've ever done this. We had 223 people baptized, became Advent, and started a new Adventist church. I was the former president of the general compet Adventist church. This is me in Slovakia. There was a man there who had just started a new group on hypertension specialist on high blood pressure in Slovakia and he had a meeting every year and I was asked to speak. Here's Dr. Farsy the head of the Slovakian hypertension organization. See, there were about 50 people there at this meeting, doctors, and I was lecturing to them about hypertension. You know, the animal products tend to raise blood pressure, and the plant products lower it. I'm reading over here. I've lectured in many public schools in Eastern Europe. I have lectured overseas with more than one lecture per day for every day I was away from the US. That's right. In 2013, I had 162 lectures in 153 days. In 2015, 139 lectures in 123 days. Yeah, you're busy. I I really worked. You're still busy. Now there's climbing half dome. What? Wait, you're 80? No way. A 70 mile trip up and back. Yeah. And at the end there's those cables you have to pull yourself up by. It takes a lot of strength. That's very scary. Were you scared? No. Not at all. Was it hard? No.

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No. Could you still do it? I think I still could. When I was up there, I telephoned my wife. Do you remember how long this took? It took the whole day. Yeah. A lot of people break it up in two two days, but I did a fast from the bottom up to the top and back 17 miles. Now, this is Dr. Miller. It's not in color. Dr. Miller was one of our first Adventist physicians to go to China in 195. He lived to be almost 100. He made soybean milk on there. got the Chinese going on soybean milk and did studies on Ohio on it and it did as well as cow's milk. Kids thrived. So I worked with him later at the Linda Food Company. I was in charge of their research foundation. Here he is opening the hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. Actually the main speaker was Madame John Kaishek. I was in the military adviser to the Chinese military in Taiwan at that time. So I got to be there. And it says here you were director of the International Nutrition Research Foundation. Yeah, that's part of Long Island Food Company. And you authored a book, Problems With Me, in 1979. You were the first editor of the first Korean Medical Journal. And he says you wrote many articles and published much material on nutrition such as Sweet Talk on Sugar. One book you don't know about. The three of us were considered editors. We wrote the first book textbook on how to do nutrition surveys. I did the clinicians

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nutrition surveys. I did the clinicians part of it. I established how much calcium we needed every day. Arie Schaefer was about our chemist. He was in charge of the group and we had an agriculturalist there. So three of us were in the secretariat and my name is on that book. We were based at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. So you established the standards for calcium. Anything else? Well, that's the main thing. I was the one that suggested what it should be. I put it low. And Dr. Heg said he was my best professor at Harvard and he influenced the whole government about how we should eat less meat, less cholesterol. He did a big job on that. And he said, "We don't have any problem getting enough calcium. Our problem is we're excreting it too fast. So if you eat only half as much salt, you won't excrete so much. be like taking a pill with 900 milligrams of calcium in it. If you make sure your blood vitamin D is right, you absorb two to three times as much. So the things we can explain to people how to get their calcium without having to drink a lot of milk. And yeah, another beautiful photo of you and your wife. That's 1993. Oh, interesting. It says here, you also wrote a paper for the medical department on the no oil diet. Yes. That's a little controversial. I said, "That's not quite right." See, there's where we lived in Cascadel Woods. And here is just beyond our property. 5 minutes walk is the Whiskey

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property. 5 minutes walk is the Whiskey Creek. Here's my oldest brother. His orthopedist and his wife. And there's me and my wife right here. And here it is with my brother and his daughter and son. He was a brilliant man, a computer man. He died with a brain tumor. You know, Mormons and Adventists die more often with brain problems, neurological problems than other people. We don't know exactly why that is. Here we were in Australia at a place where they had all kinds of birds, parrots landing on your head and everything. My wife did like it. Well, you like birds. Who put together this book? My daughter did it. Well, she chose a great cover, but she's blind, so she had to depend on somebody else. Wow. Thank you. This is quite a photo book. Yeah. With the stories in it. But I thought the thing I did in S. Paulo was a big deal. Thing I did in Liberia was a big deal. And I think lecturing to physicians in Slovakia was a big deal. So those are some of the important things in my life. Yeah. But you're you're still doing it. That's the thing. Like I always wonder cuz when most people travel, they find it difficult to change time zones and just all those things. I don't have trouble. I don't have any trouble. No trouble. Now here's something. Here's my son. I didn't realize before how much we look alike. We go to church sometimes. They say, "Is this your brother?"

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say, "Is this your brother?" Now I have this all on slides on sugar. Handling your sugar problem. There's some very interesting things about the sugar. We now know it increases heart attack risk, the high level of it. And we now also know there's a connection between the brain, the hypothalamus of the brain, this MS gland here, parotted, and the fluid movement within the teeth. If you get sugar in between meals, it reverses the fluid movement, more chance for cavities. That was discovered by Dr. Steinman at our dental school at Lomolinda. Very exciting story. He also showed that if you're eating sugary things between meals, it stops the fagocytosis, the white blood copusle engulfing germs and killing them. It stops that procedure. If you're eating between meals, and it depends on how much you do, how long it does do that. So, we were the first ones as Adventists to discover it had to do with fagocytosis, the white blood corosis. And we didn't discover about the heart disease and sugar. American Heart Association discovered that. But the Heart Association said we should have no more than nine teaspoons of sugar a day for men and six for women. When Ellen White told Adventist, "Be careful of sugar intake." The average American was getting about 10 teaspoons a day. So I think she hit it about right because that's what the heart association is saying. Now this is kind of interesting about sugar. The only

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of interesting about sugar. The only problem with it is so pure, so good that it's no good for anything. Why weren't we born with toothbrushes in our hands? Yeah, why weren't we? That could have helped, huh? See, Dr. Steinman was saying he wouldn't let his daughter use a toothbrush. He said it's what we're eating that's causing the problem. Your teeth are real, right? I have two new ones. False. Two new ones. If you aren't true to your teeth, they'll be false to you. That thing there, the laminated when I first did them cost about $ 350 to make one of those. You buy them in hundreds and now it costs $ 7 to buy one of these. Oh, it's actually a trifold. Lots of recommendations. I have about six different ones of these. Do you remember I told you before about Dr. Register taking these rats? Yes. And put them on a junk food diet. They make alcohol and then they make opiates, codine, morphine. We now learn that overweight people are doing the same. And if you give them an opiate blocker, they lose their appetite for all those junk foods that they were eating, which is kind of interesting for weight control. So that's ompic, which was never permitted by the FDA, Food and Drug Administration for weight control, only for diabetes. But weight control people were using it. They got another one now called WGOI. Yeah. Which is approved just last March for

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Which is approved just last March for people overweight to use. But it's semlutide. And so that little paper I have there is a summary of what semlutide does. It's a hormone naturally in your body. And this medicine is a kind of substitute for that hormone. It tells you you lose your appetite for this junk food. And it slows down the emptying of the stomach. It even produces more pancreatic cells to produce more insulin, which is unusual. A lot of people, including celebrities, are are using these drugs now. What do you think about it? It's expensive. It is expensive. Do you think it's safe? Over $ 100 a month, you know, at least some thousand dollars a pill. So, it's expensive. Now, the ketogenic diet might be helpful to some people. But way you get ketosis is cut down your carbohydrates to only 50 grams a day. That means less fruits and vegetables and then add a lot of coconut oil. I don't think that sounds good at all. But if you fast one or two days a week, that will put you into ketosis. Or if you skip supper, that puts you into ketosis. Now, there are a lot of people skipping breakfast. that increases your risk of dying. About these weight loss drugs, Ompic and Reggoi, do you think they're safe to take? That's been something people have been wondering. All drugs have side effects, so I don't like it. I'm I'm worried about them, but

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like it. I'm I'm worried about them, but they're being think about lots of people. So, I have to ask you, where do you get all your energy from? I don't know. I think I have ambition I have in mind to get something done and I think that's what's keeping me going because I'm always having something I got to do. So it sounds like you're never really bored. No, I'm not bored. You sound like you also don't get worried or stressed very often. No, that's good. What are your goals for the future now? Things have changed a bit since last year. I think I'm going to relax a little bit. It It's going to be hard. What's your definition of relax? Well, I want to go birding. I like the seabirds. I'd like to get some trips on these boats going out and the sea the seabirds, you know, they tell you what each one is and all that. It sounds like you've probably been to over 100 countries. Oh, yes, I have. I think at least 150. I've never taken time to relax and do the birding I want to do. So, I I'd like to do relax and do some of that. Can you explain more about this journal to us? Well, this is the alumni journal for the medical school. So, they have an alumni journal and they put you on the cover. Yeah. I was surprised. This little snippet about you, it mentions a lot of really cool accomplishments. You're the first to add iodine to infant soy milk in the US. You started the first weight control program for the Adventist church and the first cancer prevention program in the US.

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cancer prevention program in the US. And a lot of people were upset with that. They said, "You can't prevent cancer." The main one was a surgeon at the White Memorial Hospital. And I spoke to the medical staff there said, "Do you think if you stop smoking, you can cut down on lung cancer?""Yes.""Don't you think there's other things you could do, too, like eating right?" And they all not in agreement because I was the one who started that and they didn't like my terminology. Prevention, you can't prevent it. But what's this cancer group? The big cancer came out three months later with the same title prevention of cancer. So I gave seminars on prevention of cabinet. It seems like the word prevention even nowadays is very controversial to people when we talk about preventing disease because you know they talk about genetics or you just can't stop some things from happening apparently. But it sounds like you've kind of fought back against that idea. Yeah, I think you could prevent a lot. You could live a lot longer. And I don't know if I've told you about ACEs. Yes. The kids. Yeah. I I think that's important, too. We need to put our money and make sure kids are brought up, right? If all these people have trouble, somebody's in jail or has mental problems, somebody in the family, we got to help those kind of people. Yeah, it's very important. And can you tell us the story of this one guy from your medical school? Who? Frank, the guy who calls me in my class. Yeah. Tell us about Frank Damazo. He's given millions of dollars. Last throw

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given millions of dollars. Last throw was 10 million to Lolinda. One floor is named after his wife. She just passed away. There's a amphitheater named after him. And he calls me cuz he wants to be the last one to die in the class. Cuz you two are the two remaining people and he's one month older than you. Yeah. He calls me. How's my health? But he's a nice fella. Frank's a nice fell. While editing this episode, we had more questions for Dr. Sharenberg, so we called him. What's your opinion on supplements just in general? Well, you know, the American Cancer Society says don't take these multivitamin supplements because they know of some supplements which did the opposite of what they were supposed to do. For example, like beta carotene. We thought that was really good. So we gave it to smokers for example and increased their death rates. They're afraid until we study it more that we might have problems with other ones similarly. H I see. So, I'm a geriatrician by training and uh my patients sometimes ask me, "Well, doctor, what what supplements can I take to perhaps help my brain or my bones or my heart or my joints? What supplements should I take?" And I will say that in most CA cases, my

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And I will say that in most CA cases, my answer is very simple. None. The key to a healthy you and a healthy planet is not in a pill, but on your plate. What about protein? Is that something you think people should be like taking protein powder? No, I don't think so. About one out of seven people have chronic kidney disease. One out of seven. Oh, that's high. Yeah, it's about 14 15%. And if you had less protein in your diet, we could cut that down greatly down. We could cut it down to about 30%. See? And so we think that we should have less protein and not more. But Dr. Sharenberg, I've heard especially like older people and you might fall into that category might need more protein to prevent from sarcopenia. What do you think about that? Yes, there are people who think that older people might need more and the major reason they aren't getting enough is they don't eat enough. See, that's the major reason, right? But there are a few people who do eat enough but still have protein deficiency, but that's very small amount. Mhm. It's mostly they're not eating enough and so they aren't getting enough protein. Do you take any protein powder or supplements? Any supplements at all?

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or supplements? Any supplements at all? I don't. I avoid it. I I'm trying to avoid it because we know that if you cut down on the protein we're taking in, we could cut down our kidney disease mortality about 2 / 3 to oneird of what it is now. Yeah. I've also heard that the lower your protein intake, the lower your cancer risk. But that probably is true. Right now, are you taking like vitamin D? Any supplements at all? B12. I'm taking vitamin D. What about iron, John? Yes. I iron is important, but there's two kinds of iron. He iron and nonhemire. Now, heir is what you get from animal products, from meat. For example, in the nurse's health study, they took a certain group of them and put a needle into the sternum and pulled out the sternum contest to see how much iron they had. And the meat eaters had a lot more. But that nursing group who had more, we know it comes from the meat, they also had more diabetes. and increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, increases the risk of heart attacks, increases the work of the incidence of intestinal cancer. So, we don't think he iron is a good thing. So, a vegetarian wouldn't have that heir.

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have that heir. Are you a fan of epidemiology as a field? Oh, yes, I am. Okay. You're speaking Chris's language. He loves epidemiology. Well, for example, this autism that our new health director is pushing, you know, to he he doesn't think that he he thinks the immunizations are the problem. It isn't the problem because they had two school systems, I think with Denmark and Japan or somewhere, and they examined all the kids, those who had been immunized and those who hadn't been. there was no diff difference in autism rates. So I think it's something else and I think through epidemiology we should be discovering what it is. We are doing it. We should be doing big studies on it to find out. I I really believe in epidemiology. If we do epidemiology correctly, we should be able to find causes for all of these unusual things. So what do you do all day? Well, I've been doing lectures and stuff, preparing for them all the time on nutrition stuff. I just gave one for be translating into Chinese on is nutrition related to hypertension. Do you mention you're going on a trip pretty soon? Yes, we're going to go over to Europe all the month of September just for a vacation sort of. I've never done that

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vacation sort of. I've never done that before.