DoctorOz: Cameron Diaz's Secrets to Healthy Aging and Living Longer

So let me just show people cells. So you all know them, right? They reproduce, that's the foundation of life. And as these cells begin to grow, they divide and they divide faster and faster, often reproducing perfectly. So that's rejuvenating you, it makes your skin younger, your bones. But as we grow older, this normal process where our cells divide, as we sit right now, rebuilding all of our tissues, starts to slow down, comes to a complete stop sometimes. And that's fundamentally what aging is about. So you outlined three important factors that determine how well those cells divide. So you can make new skin, new bones, new everything. So it's our genes, which we're born with, we get from our parents, our environment. And then as we get older, our choices, our actual choices are choices we make for ourselves. And I'd ask, if you don't mind, to share some of the most important tips. The one that I really resonated to was sleeping. So how many hours does Dr. Diaz sleep a night? I try to get six. Six is my minimum. Eight is my optimum. Six hours is usually what I get. You also love wearing sunglasses, not just to look cool. No, it's really actually, especially because I have light blue eyes, it's for protection for your actual eyeballs. They could be. I don't know. Well, that was nice. Thank you. They look good, and they are actually serving a purpose. They are protecting our eyeballs from the sun, because just like our skin, that gets damaged from UV rays, our eyes as well. And ultimately, what happens as you get older, it happens, like my eyes, where light becomes very difficult. Bright light hurts your eyes, so. When you think about it, the back of your eye, right, has to take all that light and process it. And that's why, if you don't eat your leafy green vegetables, as an example, they're depleted, because it's hard to keep up. And too much sunlight, you can't overcome no matter how much you eat good stuff. Okay. Especially when you live in California. Water is valuable. We drank a bunch, but we also can use water to wash our hands. And you actually are very insightful about the importance of washing our hands. Yes. Let's do the exercise. Why do you love washing your hands so much? Well, we all say that, we all know that we're supposed to wash our hands, right? This is something, why? Because it kills the bacteria. Well, there was a period in time where we didn't know this up until the mid 1800s, where until there was a doctor named Semmelweis, that was noticing that there were women who were dying, there was a high rate of death amongst women giving birth and to children. And they figured out that the students who were going from the autopsy room, doing autopsies on cadavers, when they gave birth, they were delivering babies, they were, the babies were dying, the women were dying, because they were directly transferring the bacteria from the cadavers, the dead bodies, to these women's internally. And so he figured out that there was bacteria. And he was the one who said, let's wash our hands. And so now it's a practice that everybody does. There's an emotional part of growing older. Yes. Which we give lip service to sometimes, but this is pretty important. The value of a positive attitude. Yes. That was also something that was very interesting, because again, it affects us on a cellular level, our attitudes, minds, our body follows our mind, right? And everything we know we can push through if we just give it to, you know, we accept it in ourselves. That's really what we have to do with aging. We have to accept it. And the more you accept it, the better you are with it, the healthier and happier you live, but the longer you live, it adds on. The scientific research is about seven and a half years that the people who accept that they are aging and that they can age well, live seven and a half years younger. Imagine almost a decade more life. Yeah, for just because you are happy to do it. With all the things that you have learned, all the time you've spent interviewing experts on this, give me the vision that you have for yourself when you're in your 70s, 80s, and hopefully beyond. Because listen, if you can hear her voice right now, there's a pretty good chance you'll live to age 100 if you follow these recommendations. For me, I just hope that I get to live life to the fullest. That's all I really want to do. I want to be snowboarding and swimming and scuba diving and doing all the things that I really love doing now in my life, and really, I think it's doable. I think it's possible. If I take care of myself, if I embrace my aging and take care of myself the best that I can and do all the things that I know now that I can do to do so, then I hope I just live until one day I just go to sleep and I don't wake back up. That's what I hope.