Growing old may be one of the inevitabilities of life, but it does not have to be miserable. Dr. William Bruno presents the Longevity Pyramid to serve as a guide to reframing aging as an opportunity to thrive. Joining Zach Gurick, he explains why genetics do not have to define your destiny and why simple daily habits can greatly extend your health span. Dr. Bruno emphasizes the importance of adopting a whole foods-based diet, maintaining a physically active lifestyle, and getting enough sleep every single day. He also breaks down some tests you should get to detect life-threatening diseases and prevent them from worsening as early as possible.

The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

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Aging Gracefully Through The Longevity Pyramid With Dr. William Bruno

Our guest has a remarkable story that bridges two worlds, cosmetic surgery and longevity medicine. Dr. Bill Bruno is a board-certified plastic surgeon who has performed over 6,000 procedures in Beverly Hills since 2004. Years ago, everything changed. A coronary calcium scan revealed early signs of heart disease. Instead of relying solely on medications, Dr. Bruno took a different path. He overhauled his nutrition, fitness, and stress management. In the process, he discovered a new mission, which is helping others prevent the health crisis that he narrowly escaped.

As a physician and longevity expert, Dr. Bruno is reframing aging, not as an inevitability, but as an opportunity to thrive. Through his digital wellness course, virtual coaching programs, and educational outreach, he empowers people to take control of their health with science-backed strategies that go far beyond the operating room. 

In our conversation, we will explore why genetics don’t have to define your destiny, the longevity pyramid that makes up 80% of what matters most for your lifespan, and the simple daily habits that can extend your health span. Get ready to rethink what’s possible for your body, your health, and your future. Dr. Bill Bruno is here to share his journey and his blueprint for living fully alive.

 

 

Dr. Bruno, thank you so much for joining us. It’s such a pleasure and a privilege to have you on. I’m excited for our readers to learn from you. I’m excited to learn from you myself, from your years of expertise, wisdom, and experience. Thanks for joining us. I’m excited to dive in.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

How Dr. Bruno Got Into Plastic Surgery

You’ve had this long, successful career as a plastic surgeon. I’m always interested in people’s passions and where things developed. What led you into that field originally?

I’ve been practicing plastic surgery for over twenty years. I always knew I wanted to be a surgeon. As I was going through my general surgery training, I thought that plastic surgery seemed the most interesting, most creative, and most artistic. Even though I did a lot of reconstructive surgery in my training, I was always drawn to the aesthetic procedures. I always enjoyed the creativity that it offered.

As I got out into private practice, I found myself doing mostly 98% cosmetic procedures, like breast augmentation, tummy tuck, fat transfers, eyelid surgery, and things of that nature. Some of the reconstructive procedures I miss, but I didn’t necessarily miss the lifestyle that goes along with that. You have to be on call a lot. There are a lot of emergencies and a lot of weekend calls coming into surgery. I ended up in aesthetics. It’s what I love the most.

You have this creative, artistic side.

I used to draw a lot as a child. A lot of plastic surgeons have some type of artistic background, to some degree.

Dr. Bruno’s Work On Longevity And Wellness

That’s great. You had your own journey. You’re focused a lot on longevity and wellness. Can you maybe share a little bit and take us back through that journey and what led to what you’re doing with longevity?

Sure. A couple of years ago, on a routine blood test, I noticed that I had high cholesterol, which led to a number of other tests, one being the coronary artery calcium scan. This was like a CAT scan of the heart, basically. It’s supposed to be zero, indicating that you have no calcifications. At the time, I was about 49 years old, and I had a very high score. It was over 400, which led me to a CT angiogram, which is a CAT scan of the heart. However, in this test, they’re injecting some dye into your veins, and it gives you a much better image of the blood vessels to the heart.

Based on that, I adopted a 100% vegan or a very heavily weighted plant-based diet. I took a deep dive into nutrition, educating myself on how to control my cardiovascular disease, exercise, optimizing sleep, nutrition, stress management, and things of that nature. I was trying to avoid relying on pharmacologic interventions, trying to avoid taking a statin for the rest of my life. I’ve been doing that for the last couple of years. That’s what got me interested in wellness and longevity.

I started giving advice to my patients. My patients come to me for a quick fix, for lack of a better term. They want a tummy tuck, lipo, breast reduction, or something like that, but I always found myself trying to impart some longevity advice to them or some lifestyle-related advice. I realize that most of our diseases, cardiovascular disease amongst them, are primarily lifestyle-related. There’s so much that we can do as people and as patients to overcome that. We can possibly even reverse it in some cases with lifestyle.

Most cardiovascular diseases are primarily lifestyle-related. There is so much we can do to overcome or reverse them just with a few positive lifestyle changes.

Eight years later, I did have that test repeated, and my disease was stabilized. They do that test. It’s a CT angiogram where they use AI. It’s called the Cleerly scan. It got a specific look into the blood vessels. I had a few areas where I was 28% or 32% stenosis. I didn’t have any soft plaques. For the audience, the soft plaques or the unstable, dangerous plaques could break off and cause a heart attack or a stroke. The heart plaques are the more stable, calcified ones.

That’s what led me to where I am. I do coaching and teach patients lifestyle methods, how to improve their body composition, and how to not only look better and feel better, but to live longer as well.  It also led me to create a digital course on wellness and longevity, which is a self-paced course that people can do on their own. It tries to empower people to take control of their own health.

Don’t be reactive, as most doctors are. They’re very reactive. Most people get their blood checked once a year. If it’s within normal ranges, they say, “I’ll see you next year.” There’s no real, proactive plan. There’s no real prevention happening. That is what I noticed. I would look at my patient’s blood tests prior to having plastic surgery, and I would notice so many things were wrong. Their cholesterol and liver function tests, even though they were “normal,” there was so much room for improvement.

Nonetheless, that’s where I am. That’s how I arrived at where I’m at. It’s never too late. I wish I had started earlier, maybe in my 20s and 30s, but going through residency, med school, and fellowship, most doctors aren’t eating that well or are eating in hospital cafeterias. There are late nights on call. We’re certainly not optimizing sleep at that stage of our lives. I learned a lot about lifestyle, and I am happy to pass this along to my patients and others. That’s why I created the course. It was to try to reach as many people as I could.

Getting An Extremely High Calcium Score

That’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that journey. I want to dive into some of those different things that you mentioned and unpack that a little more. You had a calcium score of over 400. That’s extremely high, right?

Yeah, that’s very high. Zero is normal, which means no hard plaque, which means no disease of the vessel. That was high, putting me into the top 1% or 2% for my age. That’s how I knew I had to make some changes. Yeah.

You and I talked about this before, but the Cleerly test, which is available, identifies the difference between hard plaque and soft plaque. In the calcium score, it’s only identifying overall plaque, not making the distinction between hard plaque and soft plaque, correct? 

That’s correct. If you do get a calcium scan and a zero, you might be lulled into thinking you’re safe, but not necessarily because you could have the soft plaques. That is not picked up on the traditional calcium scan. That’s where patients or people would opt for getting the Cleerly scan, the CT angiogram, or they’re injecting the dye. It is a little bit more radiation, and it costs a little bit more. It’s certainly not covered by insurance, but it will give you the most information about the soft plaques, the intermediate plaques, and the hard plaques. You’re right.

I’ve had that test done myself, so I have the pictures of the insides of the vasculature of my heart. There’s one little spot where I have a tiny bit of yellow, which is the soft plaque. I want to make sure that that doesn’t expand. We can do things to reverse that. Eight years have gone by. You’ve gone from 400 to having minimal soft plaque. Did you ever retake the calcium score to see what that is now? 

I did. When you do the CT angiogram or the Cleerly, included within that is that you’re going to get a calcium score, which is very common, I learned. My calcium score went up, which sounds bad at first. It went from 400 to 800. The good thing is that the plaques have calcified. You want to take your soft plaques and harden them, which apparently is what I did on a low-inflammatory, plant-based diet.

Although my calcium score went up, the degree of stenosis didn’t seem to go up in any of the vessels. My soft plaque is zero based on the test that I had. It’s a test I’ll probably repeat every five years moving forward due to the degree of plaque that I do have. It’s a useful test if you have a history of heart disease. Should you get the screening coronary artery calcium scan? Maybe.

Another test you and I talked about is a CIMT. It’s an ultrasound of the neck. It’s called the Carotid Intima Media Thickness test. This isn’t your traditional ultrasound of your neck looking for flow. This is an ultrasound where they can look at your carotid artery and look for actual soft and hard plaques right in the neck. What’s happening in the neck is usually a window to what’s happening in the heart. Not always, but typically.

You got your results of that test returned.

I got my results, and I knew I would have plaque there, which I did. My arterial age was a few years younger than my actual chronological age. My goal is to get it younger. I’m 57. I’d like to have the blood vessels of a 35-year-old, so I’m going to strive for it with exercise, lifestyle, minimally processed foods, and that sort of thing, which we can get into later. That’s a great screening test for your audience. It’s called a CIMT test. It’s usually done by a practitioner who’s trained in this very specific type of ultrasound of the crowded arteries in the neck.

There are those two tests, the Cleerly and CIMT. Unless you have significant symptoms, it’s not going to be covered by insurance. It’s often not promoted by your cardiologist or doctor until you get to a certain point. We’re talking about doing this before you have symptoms, so you know your baseline. You’re taking control of your health. You can then do things to prevent those symptoms from coming or prevent you from having a heart attack, a stroke, or things like that. How do you go about getting those tests done? How much do most people charge?

For the CIMT, which is the ultrasound of the neck, that can be performed for about $200, maybe. It’s not covered by insurance. It’s a great test, honestly. Anyone over the age of 40 should be looking into that because its screening will tell you soft plaques and hard plaques. The other test I mentioned, which is the Cleerly, which is a CT angiogram, is about $2,000 or $2,500. It is not covered by insurance. Usually, that’s going to be done through a cardiologist. For the ultrasound of the neck, you don’t have to go to a cardiologist per se, but you probably go through a primary care doctor and seek out a referral. Most of those people are paying out of pocket.

Benefits Of Adapting A Whole Foods-Based Diet

You reversed the stenosis and calcified the plaque, making it soft plaque to heart plaque, over that eight-year period by lifestyle interventions and changes. Maybe you could walk us through. This will lead into the other parts of the conversation about your course and the things that you’re teaching people to do based on your own experiences. What were those steps that you took? You mentioned changing your diet to a mostly vegan diet and whole food, plant-based, unprocessed foods.

I would start there. Let’s say nutrition. In the course, I use the framework of a longevity pyramid. For the reader to visualize, what’s the base of this or the foundation? For most people, for longevity, let’s say it’s nutrition, exercise, and sleep. These are all lifestyles. These are all things that you can control. The nutrition component is whole foods. I’m not saying everyone should be vegan. I myself have adopted pasture-raised eggs and grass-fed beef. I feel that’s healthy. I feel that most people can agree.

Try to eat mostly whole foods and single-ingredient foods. Try to avoid most of the ultra-processed foods, which seem to make up about 60%-plus of the American diet. Along with that, try to optimize your protein. Certainly, as we get older, even after the age of 30 or 40, we start to lose muscle mass. I try to optimize that, which is about 1 gram of protein per 1 pound of ideal body weight. You want to retain as much muscle mass as you can as you move into your later years.

On that note, is that part of the reason why you introduced more of the eggs and grass-fed beef into your diet?

I did it more for the nutrients and the vitamins that come along with those. Certainly, you can get sufficient protein on a vegan diet. They have vegan bodybuilders. You must be very careful about it, and you must be dialed in as far as getting your tofu and beans. It can be done. I realized after years of study that not all meat causes heart disease. Some of it is how it’s prepared. Some of it is how it’s sourced. I wouldn’t say being strictly vegan is the ideal diet. If I were to pick a diet, a cardiologist would recommend a Mediterranean diet, the so-called heart-healthy diet.

I also adopted a lot of intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, where I’m trying to limit my eating to an 8 or 10-hour window. I only eat from 10:00 AM to 6:00 or 7:00 at night. That’s very good for promoting good metabolic health and cardiovascular health. It also helps decrease inflammation. What I learned is that heart disease is not just caused by elevated cholesterol. That’s one part of it, but it’s caused by inflammation and insulin resistance. These are things that a lot of people aren’t looking at.

Even primary care doctors are looking at what’s your total cholesterol and your LDL. The conversation almost ends there, where there are so many other cardiovascular markers to look at. There’s an apolipoprotein B, which is gaining more and more popularity. There’s high sensitivity CRP, which is C-reactive protein, a fasting insulin level, to look at how your overall metabolic health is and whether your body is inflamed or not. Inflammation needs to be evaluated a lot more closely. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Time-restricted eating is helpful. Not everyone needs to do it, but I do think it is a great way to optimize your blood sugar levels and become more insulin sensitive.

Not everybody needs to do time-restricted eating, but it is a great way to optimize blood sugar levels and become more insulin sensitive.

Importance Of Regular Physical Training And Enough Sleep

Briefly, with the other things you asked me about lifestyle, for the exercise piece, there’s the resistance training and then the cardio. You have to do both. People always say, “Which one?” It’s not picking one. Most people should be doing 2 to 3 sessions of resistance training a week. Each session may be 45 minutes. Also, people should be doing 2 or 3 sessions of low-intensity state cardio. It’s the so-called Zone 2 cardio, which is brisk walking on a treadmill at a slight incline. If you have the time for it, maybe throw in one session of high-intensity interval training or sprint training during the week.

It depends on where you’re starting. If you’re not doing anything, start with walking. Start walking maybe ten minutes after each meal. That’ll also help control your blood sugars. It’s only 30 minutes a day of walking, and it doesn’t have to be all at the same time. Start thinking about tracking your steps. How many steps are you taking a day? What seems to be the magic number is about 7,000 based on the latest studies. You don’t have to get 10,000 steps a day. If you’re at 2,000 or 3,000, work your way up to 4,000. Try to increase from where you’re at.

Finally, along the lifestyle or that foundation of this pyramid, is the importance of sleep. A lot of people underestimate that. Getting at least 7 and a half to 8 hours of sleep is critical. For people who have the lowest amount of sleep, studies show that they have the highest incidence of dementia, obesity, and metabolic disease, like Type 2 diabetes.

People who sleep longer tend to live longer. A lot of this comes in creating good sleep hygiene habits, not going to bed with the television on, not using your phones, your tablets, or your screens too close to bedtime, and not eating too close to bedtime. Probably the most important sleep habit is going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every day, even on the weekends. Those are a few of the things in that foundation of lifestyle to build upon. I’ll stop there and see what your thoughts are.

Detecting Cancer And Metabolic Diseases Early

That’s all super helpful and fantastic. I love that, too. My grandmother is turning 99. She doesn’t necessarily eat that healthily. I would think she would eat healthier, but she sleeps like a champion. She has always been someone who sleeps a lot. She goes to bed around the same time. She sleeps until 9:00 AM every day. She still walks everywhere, goes up and down the stairs, and exercises a couple of times a week on top of that. Sleep longer equals live longer. What else is in the pyramid, then, if we move up the pyramid? 

To be honest, if you can do those things or most of those, that base of the pyramid might account for maybe 80% of your results or your health span. Your health span is the quality of your life, and then your lifespan is how long you live. Moving up, at least in the pyramid that I envision, is which diagnostic tests should we be getting at what age? Some of those, we touched upon.

Let’s not forget that heart disease is the number one killer in men and women in the United States and in the world. It’s important to look at the tests that we talked about, like the calcium scan, the CT angiogram, and the ultrasound of your neck. Anyone over the age of 50 should certainly be looking at cancer, because cancer is the number two cause of death in men and women in the United States. There are some tests you could think about getting, like a full-body MRI, which can detect cancer sometimes at an early stage.

You could think about getting a blood test, like the Galleri test by the company, Grail. It’s one example where they can screen for 50 different types of cancers, which are cancers that are not ordinarily screened. In other words, you should keep getting your colonoscopies, mammograms, and prostate exams, but 70% of the cancers that people get and die from are not typically screened for.

Added in there is other testing, like the fasting insulin I mentioned before. Metabolic disease, which is Type 2 diabetes when I say that, is probably the 6th or 7th leading cause of death in the country.  Let’s not just look at what your blood sugar is. Let’s look at what your fasting insulin level and your hemoglobin A1C are. More and more people are getting that.

Maybe you need an oral glucose tolerance test, which involves seeing how well your body reacts. People are using these continuous glucose monitors. There’s value in that to see how high your blood sugar goes and for how long it stays high. It should come down two hours after you eat. That’s the second phase of the pyramid. Let’s not die of something that can be avoided, whether it’s heart disease, a slow-growing tumor, or a metabolic disease that has gone untested.

 

 

That’s great. I’ve had a full-body MRI. I’ve had the Galleri test done. Putting those two things together helps if you have any cancers, for sure, and can be beneficial. If you did detect something, then the time-restricted eating and eating whole foods and mostly plant-based foods is probably going to help you. 80% is the stuff that we already talked about at the bottom. Even if you did get a test that had some less-than-ideal information on it, then the solution is to change your nutrition and sleep more, unless there is a need for surgery or a procedure.

In the foundation, which includes nutrition, exercise, and sleep, if you’re doing your best there and you’re optimizing those areas of your life, you can help reduce the top four killers, which are heart disease, cancer, dementia, and metabolic disease or Type 2 diabetes. What’s interesting is that one diet treats them all. It’s a whole foods, minimally processed food diet. If you’re exercising a lot and you’re getting good sleep, you’re going to bring down your risk of all those diseases.

Still, it’s nice to test. It’s good to test, looking at your heart over the age of 40 or looking for cancers over the age of 50. In some cases, it may be sooner, depending on family history or specific symptoms that you might have. If someone is a chronic smoker or a heavy alcohol user, they might need to look into tests, like looking at their liver. Do they have a fatty liver? They should do a CAT scan of their lungs. Do they have lung cancer? You’re right. If you do get a bad result back, hopefully, you can help either control it or potentially reverse it, in some cases.

Importance Of Social Connection, Purpose, And Stress Management

Is there anything above that on the pyramid?

Yeah, and it’s not to minimize these things. We’re getting up the pyramid. We’re almost to the top third. There, I have the importance of social connection, the importance of having a purpose, and the importance of stress management. We learn this from the people in the Blue Zones, these areas of the world where people are living to be 100 or more with the highest degree of frequency. Having social connections, the importance of family, the importance of having a faith or religion, and the importance of volunteering, all these things truly not only extend your life in years, but also improve the quality of your life.

Reducing stress has been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease. You can increase your telomere length with some of these things, too. Even meditation and things like that all go to promoting a longer, quality life. Sometimes, people think that social connection and purpose are the softer sciences, but I don’t want to minimize them. I think there’s great value in those.

For people in the Blue Zones, no one lives to be 100 on their own. You need a sense of community. We look at those people in Okinawa, Japan, Greece, and Italy, where there are a couple of Blue Zones. There’s even one here near me in Loma Linda. Loma Linda is about an hour and a half East of Los Angeles. The Seventh Day Adventists mostly eat plants, and they have a strong sense of community and faith.

That’s what’s above the testing on my pyramid. Above that, I have the supplements, hot saunas, and cold plunges. They deserve that place there. There’s value in them. If you’re doing all these other things and you’re getting all the screening tests, people are like, “What supplements should I take?” If you’re taking the targeted supplements for what you need or what you might be deficient in, they can maybe move the needle at 2% or 3%. A lot of people want to start out with, “I want to do all these supplements. I want to do an NAD infusion. I want to do hyperbaric oxygen.” I don’t think that’s the right approach. There’s a place for those once everything else is in order.

Why You Should Build Muscle Mass Not Just For Aesthetic

That’s good advice. We need to do the basics first. Thanks for sharing that. I love the visual of the pyramid, how it all works together, and how it’s built on that base. I’m curious. What do you find most impactful in your daily routine? Maybe walk us through your own practices or your day. How do you reduce stress and make sure you’re getting the right sleep? You mentioned before, too, that you eat a time-restricted 10:00 to 6:00 window. What does a typical day in your life look like?

I’ll typically eat maybe at 10:00 or 11:00. In the morning, I’ll usually do surgery, and then I’ll come to the office. I might eat Greek yogurt. I might have some protein powder, some berries, some chia seeds, or something like that. I didn’t mention this earlier. At that first meal of the day, you want to try to get around 30 to 40 grams of protein to kickstart your day, so you’re optimizing muscle protein synthesis.

What happens overnight when you’re sleeping until you have that first meal of the day, and you could call it breakfast or lunch, is that it’s going to help prevent muscle breakdown. That meal is as important as your last meal of the day, which should also have 30 or 40 grams of protein. Certainly, you have another meal in the middle or a snack.

I say that because at least most Americans are under muscle. They have less muscle mass in their body. I say this not to say that we need to look better and look like fitness competitors or bodybuilders, but having more muscle mass on your body helps promote a better metabolism. It makes you more insulin sensitive. You can more easily handle blood sugar and blood glucose when it enters your bloodstream. You have less likelihood of becoming frail as you move into your older years. We know that when people have a fall after the age of 65, 1 out of 3 people, if they break a hip after 65, might not survive the 1st year. Maybe it’s pneumonia, a blood clot, or something else.

Having more muscle mass allows you to handle blood sugar and glucose better when they enter your bloodstream. It makes you less likely to become frail as you move into your older years.

This message of increasing muscle mass is not one of aesthetics, as it is a function and a metabolism. We’re learning more about this. There are lots of vocal people out there in the world. Gabrielle Lyon is one doctor who comes to mind who is promoting this muscle-centric movement. Nonetheless, it’s important to get that meal in.

I’ll have another similar 30 or 40 grams. I’ll have a salad maybe at lunch, and in the evening, maybe it’s grass-fed beef and a non-starchy vegetable, like broccoli or anything green like that. It is looking at your day and thinking, “Am I getting sufficient protein?” For most women, it should be at least 100 grams. For men, aim for a gram of protein per pound of body weight.

I’ll try to get in a resistance training session, maybe 3 times a week and 1 on the weekend, if I can. I am more mindful of my steps. I got one of these walking pads in my office, because I’m either in my office or in surgery. I looked a couple of years ago, and I was only getting 2,300 steps a day, which is poor. That’s sedentary. Now, I’m at about 6,500. If you have to change your environment, like getting a walking pad, a standing desk, or whatever that is, try to incorporate these into your daily routine so they become habits, which become behaviors. You then don’t even think about them anymore. That’s what I try to do.

Recommended Supplements To Take Regularly

I did mention supplements. I don’t want to minimize them, but they are just that. They’re a supplement to an already hopefully healthy lifestyle. There are a few supplements most people can benefit from. One is creatine. They’re finding creatine has a lot of value, not only in muscle health, but in brain health, even at higher doses. For most people, it would take five grams of creatine a day.

There’s value in taking the Omega-3 supplement, which is a high-quality supplement. If you’re not eating 2 to 3 servings of fatty fish per week, which most people aren’t, supplement with Omega-3, two grams a day. Maybe take magnesium and vitamin D-3, which most people are deficient in, as it is. Maybe a protein powder if you need it. There are plant-based ones. There is whey protein. That’s a glimpse into my day, or how I try to incorporate at least the base of that pyramid.

For sleep, I wear blue blocker glasses at night that are these orange-red tinted glasses. It cuts down on the blue light from the TV or my phone. I’ve been using it for years. That helps me fall asleep and stay asleep. I track my sleep with an Oura Ring. It’s important to have a sense of how much deep sleep you’re getting, because deep sleep is where brain detoxification happens. That’s where muscle building happens, fat burning happens, and so on. Those are a couple of things that I do. I didn’t want to ramble on that.

That’s perfect. That’s all super helpful. Thanks for sharing those little things, too. Even those few supplements can make a big difference for people because most are deficient. I’ve heard statistics. 90% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. There are high percentages of people who are deficient. You also talked about how creatine is not just for muscle. I appreciate that explanation that we need more muscle, not for an aesthetic thing. It’s a functional, metabolic thing. So, I do, 

 

 

Weight training isn’t for people in their twenties. They’ve done studies where patients in their 70s and 80s who started weight training make significant strength gains. Although you lose muscle mass, the first thing people lose is strength. In fact, grip strength is one of the tests that we would look at in longevity as an indicator of survival or as an indicator of your longevity. If you have a stronger grip, that’s a proxy for overall body strength. You’ll be more likely to save yourself or prevent yourself from falling. I do think there is a big need for that in men and women. A lot of people assume it’s a young person’s gain, but it isn’t. Everybody should be doing resistance training.

There’s a lot more data coming out on that. There’s research showing that there’s brain drive and neurotropic factors that come as a result of resistance training. There are so many other benefits. It seems like the pendulum has shifted back from doing cardio and Zone 2 to, “This is good for our heart health as well as brain health and everything else.”

Resistance, and it’s free for the most part. You might join a gym. How much does it cost? You might hire a personal trainer, maybe for a few weeks, to teach you the basics to do these moves safely, but generally speaking, there are so many things that we can do that don’t involve investing in gadgets, a sauna for your home, a coal plunge, or a red light. Some of those things are great. In fact, most of them are, but you don’t need those.

Why You Should Get Sunlight Every Morning

What most people skip is the one thing I didn’t mention. I almost think of it as a nutrient. It is sunlight and the importance of getting sunlight every day. If we go back to the sleep element, if you can get 10 to 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning in your eyes, this helps reset your hormones. It turns off the melatonin. It turns on the serotonin and the cortisol, such that the more sunlight you get during the day, the easier it is to go to sleep at night.

If you can get 10 to 15 minutes of sunlight in the morning, it is easier to go to sleep at night.

By the same token, when the sun goes down, you should maybe think about getting dimmers on your lights, like these red lights or these red light bulbs. That softer light goes a long way to telling the brain that you’re getting ready for sleep. It’s part of the reason why these blue-blocking sunglasses are so valuable at night, if you do need to watch TV or if you do need to work on your computer.

Think about getting daylight during the day. Ideally, if you can, get grounding or earthing. It is getting your bare feet into the ground or into the sand. This has very powerful effects on the body. It’s known about, but it’s not talked about that much. I get it. Most people are like, “I don’t have access to grass or sand,” or, “I work in a building all day.” You have to try your best to change something like that if you can, whether it’s blue blocking glasses or going out on your lunch break. Getting some sunlight is important for your circadian rhythm overall.

I use grounding sheets on my bed. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m, I’m getting that in. I do have a walking pad at my desk. It’s a little bit harder to type. I’ve learned, too, that my watch doesn’t track my steps. I have to put it on my ankle to track my steps because my hands aren’t moving on the walking pad at my desk. That way, I’m getting my steps in. Those little things can make a difference, and it’s not expensive. 

If you can incorporate one small change every couple of weeks or every month, by the end of the year, you’re like, “This is my new behavior. I now do this. I don’t eat within three hours of going to bed anymore.” You start to adopt these habits that will become longevity. Longevity is more about your daily habits and decisions than it is gadgets and expensive technology.

We can use technology where we can. An Oura Ring is a great way to leverage technology, but by no means do we need to invest thousands of dollars into having a lot of items in our homes. You could start thinking more holistically and doing basic things, like drinking clean water, maybe getting an air purifier for the home, or maybe spending more time outside, walking with friends in nature. There’s a lot of value there, and it’s free.

Benefits Of Daily Red Light Therapy Sauna

That’s great. Thanks for sharing that. Are there some of those biohacks that you personally utilize, like red light therapy beds, coal plunge, sauna, and those types of things?

I have a red light machine that I’ll sit in front of in the morning, maybe for 15 minutes. It offers lots of benefits, not just to the skin, but to the mitochondria, the small powerhouses of ourselves, to give you more energy. A lot of people aren’t getting red light in the morning, which is that light at sunrise. It’s not at noon when the light is right overhead. That’s a different type of light. I’ll use red light therapy.

I’ll use an infrared heating blanket. It’s almost like a sleeping blanket that doesn’t get as hot as a dry sauna, but close to it. There’s another thing, which is the importance of sweating. Most people don’t sweat enough. You want to eliminate and release toxins. I’ll use that once in a while. I’ll drink hydrogen water each day. I have a device that infuses hydrogen into the water, which is a very anti-inflammatory type of water. Those are a couple of things that I did purchase that have value.

If you can get into a dry sauna or a hot sauna, there’s great, robust literature on that for extending people’s lives, decreasing the risk of dementia, and decreasing the risk of cardiovascular events by up to 50% or 60%. This is comparing doing 1 dry sauna a week to doing 4 or 5. They learned this from the studies in Finland, where people do saunas automatically. It’s a lifestyle there. If I were to look at one of those so-called biohacks, a hot sauna is well-studied and has a lot of benefits to healthspan as well as lifespan.

Exciting Progress In Peptides And Stem Cells

That’s great. As you think about the future, over the next 5 to 10 years, what’s on the horizon for you? There are a lot of breakthroughs and things happening that are driven by AI and information being more readily accessible as well. What do you see as the future of medicine? What’s exciting to you?

I think of a couple of things. One that’s already here is peptides. It’s the world of peptides, not just outside of Ozempic and Mounjaro, which are weight loss, but peptides to improve cognition and improve body composition. I started using copper. It’s GHK-Cu, which is an injectable. Most of these peptides are injectable. Some are oral, but there’s a subcutaneous injection. Copper improves skin tone, collagen, and elastin, but it also turns on about 4,000 other genes in the body. It’s a truly longevity-based peptide.

Along with those, we’re scratching the surface of stem cells and the use of stem cells. It may be harder to get in this country. It is not FDA-approved yet, but still, there is a wide array of illnesses and ailments that can be treated. A lot of them are off-label with stem cells and exosomes, which are these little molecules that come out of stem cells. That’s probably the future of medicine and having a more targeted approach to people.

You mentioned AI. There are ways with genetic testing and blood sampling to create a more personalized, precise plan for someone. You’re almost predicting what diseases you might be more susceptible to and which lifestyle improvements, peptides, or even pharmaceutical interventions we can take to help prevent those diseases from ever manifesting.

Most of the studies say that lifestyle is about 80% of your lifespan, and maybe genetics is 20%, roughly. Let’s optimize that 80%. Let’s say you’re predisposed to Alzheimer’s. There are some things you can do from a lifestyle standpoint to maybe delay the onset of that or push it back even further so you don’t get Alzheimer’s in your 60s. Maybe you don’t get it until your 80s or 90s. That’s exciting.

Most studies say that lifestyle is about 80% of your lifespan and only 20% genetics. Let us optimize that 80%.

The use of AI makes it so much easier to target where your genes are. You can get your whole genome map for a few hundred dollars. That was multimillion dollars in the past. Peptides, stem cells, and your role in some of the genetic testing are exciting in the future. It gives you, the patient or the consumer, a little bit more empowerment and be more proactive.

Bring this information to your doctor. There are all these at-home blood tests that you can get. I’m not suggesting you should do this on your own. You should do this under the guidance of your physician. Maybe you need to find a functional medicine doctor or integrative medicine practitioner who can guide you through this. I’m excited about the stem cells the most, along with the peptides, because it’s so dramatic what they can do. They’re so effective. Stem cells aren’t cost-effective yet. I hope that they will be in the future. Peptides are becoming more cost-effective. That’s where I stand on those.

It’s very exciting, what’s coming, what’s here, and then what’s over the horizon here soon. You started taking the copper peptides. Do you take that once a week?

It’s once a day, 5 days in a row, and then 2 days off. Most of the peptides are cycled like that. You’ll take them for 2 or 3 months, and then you’ll take 1 month or 6 weeks off. You cycle them like that. They’re very short-acting. It’s a molecule. These peptides are signals to the other organs or cells in your body to perform a certain function.

They have a very safe profile. It’s knowing which dose to get and how to inject it. For some people, they’re a little uneasy about injecting themselves. Although, more and more Americans are getting used to Ozempic and Mounjaro, so that won’t be as big a fear. I started taking that along with another one called BPC-157. This helps with healing and inflammation. I also take TB 500, which also helps with healing. You can take these when recovering from sports. I’ll probably be implementing these into my surgical practice to help people expedite their healing from plastic surgery procedures. It’s a great role for that, too.

I’m curious. I’ve taken BPC-157 and TB 500 orally or as a nasal spray. Do you use the injectable version of those?

I use the injection. All 3 that I mentioned come in 1 vial. You can take them orally. I know BPC-157 gets pretty good absorption that way. There are some nasal sprays. My understanding is that the injectable form has the least risk of getting degraded in the GI system. I don’t mind injecting, so I’ll do that. If someone is averse to injecting, certainly, there are some pill forms available. There are even some sublingual tablets of these strips that you can put on the roof of your mouth for absorption. It’s exciting. It appeals to almost anyone. You could do this for cognition, libido, body composition, and inflammation. There are so many indications for them.

There are no real adverse side effects of those.

Not as of yet. There’s such a high safety profile. They’re such short-acting molecules. They’re different than pharmaceuticals or drugs, which tend to have more side effects. They’re not FDA-regulated, which is okay. The FDA wants to regulate them. They want to try to monetize some of these. Unfortunately, you have to find a good supplier because it is a bit of a gray market if you’re buying peptides online without knowing the practitioner or getting them through a trusted physician. As time goes on, they’ll become more and more available and cost-effective as well.

Pushing For More Personalized And Customized Treatments

It’s exciting stuff. I was going to ask you one other question as we’re wrapping up here. You mentioned different blood testing and things like that. I’m curious. What blood tests do you recommend or do you use yourself? How often do you test your blood and biomarkers?

I use a service. It’s called Life Force. This is a company that I believe was started by Tony Robbins and a few of his longevity physician colleagues. Every three months, they’ll come to my office, or they’ll come to your home and draw your blood. It’s a very comprehensive blood panel. One is, they’re looking at a fractionated lipid panel. It’s not like LDL and HDL. It’s looking at particle size and particle number, which is important.

You can ask your doctor to run one of these. Most doctors don’t do this routinely. It gives you a lot more information about not just your cholesterol number, but the shape of it and the number of LDLs. That’s important because you want to have a certain pattern. You want to have bigger particles and fewer of them. This causes less trauma to the arterial walls.

Also, in that panel, you are looking at hemoglobin A1C, hormones such as thyroid, sex hormones, testosterone, and estrogen. I mentioned earlier the highly sensitive CRP, which is hs-CRP or C-reactive protein. This is a great indicator of overall inflammation. That should be almost less than one. Knowing where you stand is useful. They look at some other things like homocysteine and uric acid.

It’s a great service that anyone can get. It’s about $120 a month. For that, you have 4 blood draws, but you also get 4 telehealth visits with their physicians who walk you through all those blood tests and the significance of them. Based on that, you can make changes either to your diet, your exercise program, or maybe you need further testing in something. That’s a service that I use. I have no affiliation with them, but I would share that. There are many others out there that do that.

The point is, I would recommend getting your blood tested more than once a year. Once a year isn’t enough. Also, what they’re testing for sometimes isn’t robust enough. There are these great cardiac panels, metabolic panels, and even some of the hormone panels out there that people aren’t normally looking at. That’s what I do. I’m pretty happy with that. I ordered a genetic test. It’s a swab of your cheek. This will also help guide you for certain supplements that you might want to be thinking about, certain lifestyle changes, and dietary things. Hopefully, I’ll have those results in about 4 to 6 weeks.

That’s based on your genetic profile, then? 

Yeah. That’s highly personalized and customized.

That’s great. Thank you for sharing that. We’re moving towards this much more personalized, precision medicine that’s a lot more driven by data, blood biomarkers, and things like that. It’s exciting where we’re heading.

That’s the future. The treatment is more targeted. We’re not just thinking about general populations. We’re speaking specifically about you, the individual.

Get In Touch With Dr. Bruno

Thank you so much for being with us. This has been fascinating. You’ve given us and our readers a lot of very practical things that we can implement and things that we can consider. I love that pyramid. I will go back to the longevity pyramid. Thank you. Where can people connect with you? How can they download your course and follow you there? 

My website is WilliamBrunoMD.com, and there’s a Wellness tab there. That’s where I have a couple of free eBooks that your audience might be interested in. One is a fourteen-page book on longevity tips. It’s a very actionable list of some of the items we talked about on the pyramid. I have another eBook on how to improve your body composition. I also have my digital course there. I’ll be adding my body recomposition coaching program there. I’m also fairly active on Instagram under the same name, @WilliamBrunoMD. I have a lot of plastic surgery content there, but also a lot of wellness tips and advice.

Thank you so much for the great work that you’re doing to help people transform their lives in all facets and areas. Thanks for sharing this with us. Go to WilliamBrunoMD.com/Wellness. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you. I appreciate it. It was fun.

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What a great, practical, and fascinating conversation with Dr. Bruno. I hope that you took away a few nuggets. We covered so many different topics, but to recap, that longevity pyramid is such a helpful visual. Everything’s built on nutrition, exercise, and sleep. With nutrition, it’s whole foods, optimizing protein, time-restricted eating, and avoiding processed foods.

Exercise is more than just doing some cardio here and there, but it is also getting that resistance training. There are so many benefits to resistance training, both metabolic and functional. It is getting some Zone Two cardio 2 to 3 times a week as well. Maybe 7,000 steps a day is the number that we should shoot for. He gave some tips on how to do that. 

On top of that, we have all the testing that we talked about. There’s the Galleri test. There are full-body MRIs for things like cancer. There’s the Cleerly test, which we’ve talked about on this show before, which is that CT angiogram. He mentioned the CIMT test, which is a scan of your neck. He also mentioned all the things above that, which are your social purpose and reducing stress. Having a faith background as well is extremely helpful. Those are the Blue Zone kinds of things we talked about.

At the top of the pyramid, there are biohacks and supplements. He mentioned red light therapy, sauna, and then some supplements that he mentioned, like creatine, Omega-3s, magnesium, and D3. That’s the longevity pyramid. You can connect with Dr. Bruno at WilliamBrunoMD.com. Check out the Wellness tab there for a couple of free eBooks, which outline a lot of this stuff that we covered, as well as his course and coaching. Thank you so much for joining. We’ll see you next time back here.

 

Important Links

• Dr. William Bruno
• @WilliamBrunoMD on Instagram
• Wellness | William Bruno Plastic Surgery
• Free Longevity E-Book | William Bruno Plastic Surgery
• Life Force