How to Reverse Aging with Art De Vany (#239)

“There is no such thing as successful aging because aging is damage.”

– Art De Vany

Dr. Arthur De Vany is nearly eighty years old and ripped. Better known as Art De Vany, he was signed as a professional baseball player in his youth and later earned his Ph.D. in Economics at UCLA. He is most famous for his “evolutionary fitness” approach to training and diet, and our conversation focuses on that.

During his time at UCLA, Art did many things, including creating mathematical and statistical models to precisely describe the motion picture market. Art is Professor Emeritus of Economics of the University of California, Irvine, and is a member of its acclaimed Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences.

A lifelong student of metabolism and fitness, Art has lived as a Paleo athlete for more than thirty years and is considered a “patriarch” of the Paleo movement.

He believes there is no such thing as “healthy” aging and that we can intervene to protect against the aging process. In this episode, we talk about his daily schedule, workout routines, why he never gets sick, ice ages, economics, philosophies of intermittent everything, and really dig into the details of a fascinating man.

Enjoy!

You can find the transcript of this episode here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

#239: How to Reverse Aging with Art De Vany

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Want to hear another episode from a guest that defies aging? — Listen to this interview with Jerzy Gregorek. In this episode, we discuss flexibility, strength, muscle gain, and fat loss at any age (stream below or right-click here to download):

#228: The Lion of Olympic Weightlifting, 62-Year-Old Jerzy Gregorek (Also Featuring: Naval Ravikant)

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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Selected Links from the Episode

Connect with Art De Vany:

Facebook I | Facebook II (like Art himself, more active)

The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us about Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging by Arthur De Vany, PhD
Understanding the Stretch Reflex (or Myotatic Reflex) by Brad Walker, StretchCoach
The Inland Waterways: Institutions, Economics, And Policy by Arthur S. De Vany and Andrew J. Rettenmaier
Computability and Algorithmic Compression, Wheat and Tares
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
What are fractals?
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When Bill Gates Walks into a Bar
Toba Catastrophe Theory
The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean
How Humans Learn: Lessons from the Sea Squirt by Sian Beilock Ph.D., Psychology Today
Myokine
Neurotrophic factors
Arthur De Vany — Renewing Cycles
Autophagy: Process and Function by Noboru Mizushima, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Glycolysis
The Legend of Tithonus
The Effect of Mitochondrial Density on Athletic Performance by Roger Schmitz, Moxy
How I Dropped to 5.6% Body Fat and Gained Muscle, Part 1, Art De Vany on Line via The Internet Archive
When the Sea Saved Humanity by Curtis W. Marean, Scientific American
Corm
Strength Training is Learning from Tail Events by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Medium
Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry by Arthur De Vany
Pareto distribution
Arthur De Vany sample workout
How I Practice Evolutionary Fitness by Aaron McCloud
Is Endurance Exercise Really Beneficial?, Art De Vany
Eccentric training
Current Evidence That Exercise Can Increase the Number of Adult Stem Cells by Filippo Macaluso and Kathryn H. Myburgh, Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility
Proteasome
Peripheral vs. Ectopic Fat by Stephan Guyenet, Whole Health Source
My Life Extension Pilgrimage to Easter Island
Caenorhabditis elegans
Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)
FGF21 is an Akt-regulated myokine by Yasuhiro Izumiya, et al., FEBS Letters
A Look at Ribosomes, British Society for Cell Biology
What is a Turing Machine?, University of Cambridge
Faust by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
FOXO1
Neural Darwinism: The Theory Of Neuronal Group Selection by Gerald Edelman
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences – NYU
Kurtosis
Lessons from the Left Coast: What Hollywood Can Teach Pharma about Marketing by Maureen Winigrad, HLG Health Communications
What is Leptokurtic?
Melatonin
How Testosterone Supplementation Shuts Down HPTA by Rick Vallejo, Evolutionary.org
The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat by Loren Cordain
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Skin In the Game: The Thrills and Logic of Risk Taking by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
General equilibrium theory

Show Notes

Introductions from an undisclosed mountain location. [07:12]
How did Art get into economics? [08:17]
You can’t reduce your life to an algorithm — the Zen of evolutionary fitness. [11:10]
Bill Gates walks into a bar… [14:25]
How would Art predict the chance for a movie’s success if he were in charge of a studio? [14:48]
How did fitness and diet enter the scene for Art? [20:02]
Where do cavemen fit into the equation? [20:51]
Lessons from the sea squirt. [23:22]
On myokines, proteostasis, neurotrophic factors, and muscle degeneration. [23:58]
Aging is not programmed — it is the result of the failure of a renewal program. [25:56]
The legend of Tithonus. [28:55]
Mitochondrial density is all the rage. [29:46]
Did seafood save humanity? [31:24]
Brain expansion as a survival response. [32:59]
Why Art eats two meals a day. [34:02]
How Art proactively encourages low mitochondrial density. [36:26]
Is Art responsible for getting Nassim Nicholas Taleb into deadlifting? [37:13]
“Non-steady state exercise is very difficult to quantify.” [40:46]
What does Art’s exercise regimen look like? [41:26]
Time-efficient exercise has kept Art almost entirely injury free for over sixty years of working out. [48:59]
Why does Art prefer shorter rest intervals over longer ones? [50:04]
What does Art have for breakfast? When does he go to sleep? [50:38]
On meal intervals and intermittent fasting to fight muscle degeneration. [52:07]
What does Art have for dinner? [53:39]
How excess fat prevents stem cells from doing their job. [54:41]
What are the most common things people in the Paleo movement get wrong? [56:10]
What does Art have against coconut oil? [57:40]
How does Art take his eggs? [58:38]
Art’s thoughts on minimizing mTOR activation and use of rapamycin and metformin. [1:00:07]
Exercise your muscles, heal your liver. [1:04:51]
How is the ribosome like a universal Turing machine? [1:07:13]
To what part of his regimen does Art owe for not being sick in decades? [1:13:06]
Advice for alleviating depression. [1:16:33]
On the benefits and practice of cold exposure. [1:19:22]
What has Nassim Taleb taught Art? [1:20:10]
What’s your advantage: informational, analytical, or behavioral? [1:24:42]
Art regularly takes melatonin — but not for sleep. [1:27:37]
Why wouldn’t regular consumption of melatonin cause some type of malfunction? [1:31:09]
On human knowledge: what we can know vs. what we can’t know. [1:32:58]
Books Art has gifted or recommended most to others. [1:36:55]
Areas Art considers dead ends in the quest for longevity. [1:40:48]
What does Art do to minimize the likelihood of injury during exercise? [1:44:50]
What kind of class would Art lead if he were to return to teaching? [1:47:20]
What would Art’s billboard say? [1:49:51]
Parting thoughts. [1:52:37]