In regard to living a life filled with happiness, joy, and meaning, there is one thing you must have and that is your health. You have to have a healthy foundation, so your eating habits have got to be clean and you’ve got to exercise. All these things will help keep your stress levels down. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean all of a sudden you’re going to be happy. That is not true. True happiness, joy, and meaning in life lie entirely within your own perspective.
The term Blue Zones has been used to describe places where people live long and healthy lives. What exactly does it take to live a long and healthy life? What is the science and the secret behind longevity and life extension? In this series, we are talking to medical experts, wellness experts, and longevity experts to share “5 Things You Need To Live A Long, Healthy, & Happy Life”. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Brett Osborn.
Dr. Brett Osborn is a Board-Certified (ABNS) Neurosurgeon and Author of Get Serious, currently serving as the Section Chief of Neurosurgery at St. Mary’s Medical Center, a Level I Trauma Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. In his book, Dr. Osborn combines his 40+ years of experience to provide an easy-to-read, power-packed, and science-based guide to health and longevity. His expertise and dedication led him to establish Senolytix, a revolutionary, multimillion-dollar preventative healthcare, anti-aging, and aesthetic medical center based in West Palm Beach, FL.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
I am an NYU-trained board-certified neurosurgeon. I finished my residency in 2003, and I’ve been in private practice for the last 20 years, the last 10 of which have been basically geared towards the management of neurosurgical trauma, both in regards to the brain and spine.
I come from a holistic family, my father has been a practicing Chiropractor for 55 years now. He sort of inspired me to at least think holistically, so when I was midway through my residency we were treating a lot of patients that have degenerative diseases in the spine. In addition, age-related diseases known as cancer, mostly in the brain, and I began trying to relate my upbringing to what I was doing in practice. Those diseases are to a great degree, preventable.
As I progressed through my career, people would ask me how I stay in such good shape. I would tell them, these are the sort of underpinnings of what spawned my book, “Get Serious”. Several years later I said, this needs to turn into its own practice, and here we are today. But the messages are the same. In other words, take care of yourself.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Looking back, I’m constantly reminded of how reactive the current medical system is and quite frankly, how backward things are. I spent seven years in residency, and a large percentage of my career as a private practice neurosurgeon treating preventable problems, in particular those related to the spine. I’ve learned that we should be educating the population to mitigate these disease risk factors and aborting disease onset and progression, as opposed to treating the disease after the fact after the patient hits the emergency room.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My father. He arrived in Florida over 50 years ago with my mom with less than $500 and he built this sort of this massive chiropractic — not even a practice — it was really sort of like an empire that he built through focused attention, motivation, and grit. Those are things that I mainly learned from him, in addition to a lot of other like more nuanced things. He worked the hours of a surgeon, so I didn’t see him much growing up. I saw him for a limited amount of time throughout the week, but he did manage to carve out some time from his family on Sundays, and that was good enough.
He built an empire by himself, he had four offices and he ran basically all over seeing patients. I learned not by what he told me, but by what I saw him do, namely his intense work ethic. People don’t learn by what you tell them, they learn by what you show them and I say that all the time to people. That’s one of the things that my dad taught me and it ended up rubbing off on my kids as well. They see my neurosurgery practice — I’m on call 20 days a month and I’m going off at two o’clock in the morning to treat a head injury patient or something like that. It’s constant here. So, my kids have the same exact work ethic by virtue of what they see.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- Humility, which means having the confidence to admit that you don’t know something and being able to ask for help.
- Confidence, I’m a trauma neurosurgeon, so there’s no shortage of that and there’s also no shortage of fear and failure. This doesn’t mean you take reckless risks, on the contrary, it means knowing how to take calculated risks, but you have to take a risk to get anything.
- Grit, If you’re going to fail, don’t be scared to fail. Don’t be scared to try. Know that we do this in medicine to learn from our mistakes, and then regroup, rethink, and get back on the horse.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of our interview about health and longevity. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fields of health, wellness, and longevity? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?
It’s really just one word, experience. When I sum it up into a tagline, it’s longevity medicine with the precision of a neurosurgeon. I’m an authority in my field because I have a wealth of experience in the medical, health, and longevity space because I’ve been doing it for so long.
I’ve been a doctor for 27 years, a real doctor. I’m a doctor who has taken care of patients, who’s performed surgeries and has cut into people. I’m not somebody who just jumped in, claiming to be a doctor or a surgeon, I am one. I’m not a dermatologist telling you, to do this or do that and you need to squat every day. No, I’m the neurosurgeon who has a state powerlifting record, at age 53. I practice what I preach and lead by example.
Seekers throughout history have traveled great distances and embarked on mythical quests in search of the “elixir of life,” a mythical potion said to cure all diseases and give eternal youth. Has your search for health, vitality, and longevity taken you on any interesting paths or journeys? We’d love to hear the story.
There is no elixir and there is no cure all, there is nothing. Health takes work, health takes grit, health takes discipline, and health takes knowledge. These are the things that we try to give to our patients at Senolytics. It’s education first followed by accountability and then hopefully, they have the motivation and determination when it comes to meeting their health goals. We of course also test for biomarkers for diseases, intervening through our therapeutics, retesting and continuing to progress up that ladder until they have reached their optimal health and then trying to maintain it.
Based on your research or experience, can you please share your “5 Things You Need To Live A Long & Healthy Life”?
- Clean nutrition- You are what you eat. If you feel awful try eating a low glycemic index, anti-inflammatory diet, and you’re going to feel well.
- Exercise — We are resilient in our muscles. There’s very hard data that shows that people that are stronger, survive longer periods
- Aggressive use of medications and supplements to mitigate risk factors
- Proper sleep- If you sleep well, you’re less likely to be obese, develop diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases
- Keep stress at bay- Try not to get derailed and keep a smile on your face
Can you suggest a few things needed to live a life filled with happiness, joy, and meaning?
In regard to living a life filled with happiness, joy, and meaning, there is one thing you must have and that is your health. You have to have a healthy foundation, so your eating habits have got to be clean and you’ve got to exercise. All these things will help keep your stress levels down. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean all of a sudden you’re going to be happy. That is not true. True happiness, joy, and meaning in life lie entirely within your own perspective.
Some argue that longevity is genetic, while others say that living a long life is simply a choice. What are your thoughts on this nature vs. nurture debate? Which is more important?
Which is more important, right? I mean with regard to building a life filled with happiness, joy, and meaning, that has to do with one thing, you have to have your health. It’s about 80/20, 20% is dictated by your genes while the other 80% is nurture. You have a predisposition to your parents being fat in their diet, does that mean that you’re destined to get fat and to get those diseases too? Absolutely not. You can push back really, really hard and overcome those predispositions. You may have to work harder than others, but you can certainly do it.
Life sometimes takes us on paths that are challenging. How have you managed to bounce back from setbacks in order to cultivate physical, mental, and emotional health?
Meditation. I’m a meditator. If something really bad occurs like a patient dying, I slow down and rest. Instead of flying off the handle, just stop and think. Don’t dwell on it, It’s happened. Take the time to re-engage yourself and as I said, your mind can do evil things to you. It can drive you crazy. Literally, you can go nuts. Whether it be on the person that’s scrubbing with you or the person that’s trying to turn the room over and get your next case going. It doesn’t do anything. You’ve got to be right in your head. Meditation helps you sort of distance yourself from those thoughts that can sometimes be evil or cause you to be outwardly crazy. It brings a significant amount of clarity. This is a mindset, it must be trained. If you can do this in your personal life, you can do it in your professional life but it must be practiced daily and with conviction.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.” The chairman who trained me at NYU had done around 5000 brain tumor operations in his career. He would show us a film and sit back asking us what we would do in the situation. He’d say, “You can do that, but let me tell you what’s going to happen.” The only people on this earth who can say things like that with such confidence are the people who have done it and been there. Someone who has learned from their mistakes, that’s where good judgment comes from. And as I had said, people go on what makes you different, what makes you unique? For me, it’s my experience, 40 plus years of experience. That’s uncontested.
I’m not the podiatrist who decided he’s going go into longevity medicine. I’m not somebody who says they’re a surgeon and has never cut somebody open. Unless you held the hand of somebody who’s dying, you’re not a surgeon, period. And I know that’s harsh, but this is reality.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
One movement would be to eat less. What is the main problem with people in this country? Easy access to terrible and unhealthy food, and they eat a ton of it. If you could change that one thing and you would shut down half the hospitals in this country. Eat less, eat less, eat less, eat less. Everyone can afford to eat less. Unless you have an eating disorder, you can afford less.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
Readers can follow my work and find more tips on leading a longer and healthier life by following me on my social media accounts and by visiting the Senolytix website, senolytix.io.
Social Media
Instagram: @drbrettosborn
Twitter: @DrBrettOsborn
Facebook: @DrBrettOsborn
Tik Tok: @drbrettosborn
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.