Never Go Through Menopause? Dr. Steve Garan, U.C. Berkley

Dr. Steve Garan has spent his career studying the neuroendocrine roots of aging. In this conversation, he makes the case that the same part of the brain that guides us through adolescence and growth also sets the pace for how we age.

In this episode:

• The hypothalamus as the conductor. Steve explains how this small region of the brain orchestrates hormone production and drives life’s major milestones, from adolescence to the end of growth to menopause (what he calls “the dirty M word”).
• Hormones like Russian dolls. Complex hormonal patterns, including estrogen, are nested inside one another and are built to shift over time. Those shifts are what move us from one life stage to the next.
• Menopause as an accelerator. Steve shares why aging speeds up significantly during menopause, and what that tells us about where to intervene.
• No pill, no cream. Steve’s bold position: aging will never be solved with a supplement or topical. The answer, he believes, is a device that can mimic and maintain youthful hormone profiles.
• Healthspan for all. The mission behind the research is to prevent age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and cancer by keeping the body in a youthful state.
• The tech behind it. How his team is using artificial intelligence and pea-sized, increasingly miniaturized chips to build the device, and why he estimates it is 10 to 15 years away.

About Dr. Steve Garan

Steven A. Garan, PhD, is Director of Bioinformatics at the Center for Research & Education on Aging (CREA) at UC Berkeley and a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His work focuses on neuroendocrine aging and systems biology, including years of research on how caloric restriction affects the hypothalamus. He played a lead role in developing the Automated Imaging Microscope System (AIMS) and is credited with coining the term “phenomics.”

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