We ask a lot of questions about our diet.

What's the right way to treat a chronic illness, fight off a virus, lose weight?

The problem is we get a lot of different answers.

Well, I'm here to help.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts podcast.

I'm your host Dr. Michael Greger.

It sounds like science fiction.

Bacteria and a vial of dirt taken from a mysterious island

create a compound that prolongs life.

And not just in the traditional medical sense, thanks to advances in modern medicine,

we're living longer lives, but we're doing so by lengthening the morbidity phase.

In other words, we're living longer but sicker lives.

Traditional medical approaches tend to just increase the number of old people in bad health.

Ideally, though, we'd extend lifespan by slowing aging.

That way, we could delay the onset of deterioration rather than just extend

the period of deterioration. That's exactly what this new compound appeared to do. Researchers

called it rapamycin, named after the bacteria's home, the mystical Easter Island famed

for its rock-carved figures, which is known locally

as Rapa Nui.

Rapamycin inhibits an enzyme that's come to be known as mTOR, or mechanistic target of rapamycin,

a key modulator of aging characterized as a master determinant of lifespan and aging. What does the enzyme mTOR actually

do? It's the major regulator of growth in animals. Activation of mTOR drives increases in both

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