Your birthday tells you your chronological age—but it may not tell you how quickly your cells, mitochondria, or even individual organs are aging. In this episode of The Dr. Brighten Show, Dr. Jolene Brighten sits down with functional medicine expert and bestselling author Dr. Will Cole to explore the science of cellular aging, why biological age can differ from chronological age, and the everyday factors that may influence how well your cells function over time.
This isn’t a conversation about expensive biohacking or trying to live forever. It’s about healthspan: preserving your energy, cognition, metabolic health, strength, cardiovascular health, and ability to participate fully in your life as you age.
Your birthday tells you how many years you’ve been alive. It doesn’t necessarily tell you how well your cells are aging.
In this episode of The Dr. Brighten Show, I sit down with functional medicine practitioner and bestselling author Dr. Will Cole to talk about cellular aging, biological age, mitochondrial health, and the factors that may cause different parts of the body to age at different rates.
More importantly, we move beyond the expensive biohacks and complicated longevity routines to ask a much more useful question: What can you realistically do today to support the health of your cells for the decades ahead?
Dr. Cole’s central argument is that modern life may be creating a mismatch between what our biology evolved to handle and what our cells now encounter every day—from artificial light and altered eating patterns to environmental exposures and chronic stress. We also discuss research on organ-specific aging, signs that may accompany mitochondrial dysfunction, metabolic health, fasting for women, strength training, food, sleep, and the surprisingly important roles of nature and community.
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Cellular Aging: What You’ll Learn About Biological Age, Mitochondria, and Longevity
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why your chronological age may not reflect your biological age and what researchers are trying to measure when they talk about biological aging.
- The research suggesting that individual organs may age at different rates, meaning your heart, brain, kidneys, and other tissues may not necessarily follow the same biological clock.
- Why Dr. Cole believes we’re seeing signs of accelerated aging in younger adults, not just in people traditionally considered elderly.
- What mitochondrial dysfunction may feel like before someone ever thinks about their mitochondria.
- Why brain fog and persistent fatigue are two symptoms Dr. Cole hears frequently when people are struggling with broader metabolic and cellular health issues.
- Why feeling “wired and tired” or anxious but exhausted may deserve more investigation than simply being told to rest.
- Why fatigue should not automatically be dismissed in women with conditions such as endometriosis, a disease that extends far beyond the menstrual cycle.
- What Dr. Cole means by “cellular confusion” and how he connects inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, and the modern environment.
- Why environmental exposures, food, chronic stress, disrupted circadian rhythms, and biotoxins all enter the conversation when discussing accelerated aging.
- Which cardiometabolic and inflammatory markers Dr. Cole believes deserve more attention in preventive conversations.
- How artificial light at night may affect much more than sleep, because organs and tissues participate in their own circadian rhythms.
- Why the conversation about longevity may also need to include nature, social connection, spirituality, gratitude, and nervous-system regulation.
- How Dr. Cole approaches fasting for women without turning it into another rigid wellness rule.
- What a practical longevity-supportive meal can look like, including protein, omega-3-rich foods, colorful plants, and polyphenol-containing foods.
- Why a 10- to 15-minute walk after dinner may be one of the simplest metabolic habits discussed in the episode.
- How Zone 2 exercise, high-intensity intervals, strength training, and mobility serve different roles in long-term health.
- What Dr. Cole recommends doing in the hour before bed to better support circadian signaling and sleep.
- Why preserving lean muscle as you age is one of the long-term habits Dr. Cole prioritizes personally.
- Why neither of us believes longevity should require a wellness routine so complicated that you have to reorganize your entire life around it.
What Is Cellular Aging?
Cellular aging refers to the biological changes that accumulate in cells over time and influence how effectively they can function, communicate, respond to stress, generate energy, and repair damage.
Chronological age is simple: it is the number of years you have been alive.
Biological age is more complicated. It attempts to describe how “old” your biology appears based on measurable changes in the body. Researchers are investigating multiple ways of estimating biological aging, including molecular, metabolic, inflammatory, cardiovascular, and epigenetic markers.
One of the things I wanted to clarify with Dr. Cole in this conversation was the difference between legitimate emerging science and the increasingly crowded world of longevity marketing.
A biological-age score can be interesting, but the real question is not whether a test tells you that you are biologically 37 instead of 42.
The more clinically meaningful question is whether your blood sugar regulation, cardiovascular health, inflammation, strength, cognition, sleep, and other markers associated with future health are moving in the right direction.
That is where the conversation about cellular aging becomes less about vanity and much more about healthspan.
Healthspan is not simply how long you live. It is how much of that life you spend with the strength, cognitive function, metabolic health, independence, and energy to actually participate in it.
Can Your Organs Age at Different Rates?
One of the most fascinating areas discussed in this episode is organ-specific aging.
We discuss Stanford research examining biological aging across multiple organs. The premise is striking: one part of your body may show signs of accelerated aging even when other systems do not.
In the research discussed during the episode, accelerated aging of particular organs was associated with greater risk of diseases involving those organs. Dr. Cole highlights the findings involving the heart and brain as especially important.
This introduces an entirely different way of thinking about aging.
Instead of simply asking, “How old am I?” future preventive medicine may increasingly ask:
- How is my heart aging?
- How is my brain aging?
- How is my metabolic health aging?
- How are my kidneys aging?
And importantly, are there modifiable risk factors showing up before disease develops?
That does not mean an organ-aging test can predict your future with certainty. It does mean researchers are becoming increasingly interested in why biological aging may be uneven throughout the body.
Why Someone Can Look Healthy and Still Have Cardiovascular Risk
This part of our conversation became personal for me.
Over the previous year, six of my friends had lost their husbands in their 40s. Some of these men looked like the picture of health. One had recently completed an Ironman. Another was a marathon runner.
They didn’t fit the image many of us have of someone at high cardiovascular risk.
That is precisely the problem.
Fitness is extraordinarily important for health, but appearance and athletic performance cannot tell us everything happening internally.
Dr. Cole discusses looking beyond how “healthy” someone seems and paying attention to cardiovascular, inflammatory, and metabolic markers. Among the conventional labs mentioned in our conversation are high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, homocysteine, A1C, glucose, triglycerides, and other cardiometabolic measurements.
No individual marker should be interpreted in isolation, and testing should always be considered in the context of personal and family history. But prevention requires looking for risk before someone becomes symptomatic.
Waiting until someone feels sick is not the same thing as preventive medicine.
What Does Mitochondrial Dysfunction Feel Like?
Mitochondria are best known for their role in cellular energy production, which is why mitochondrial health inevitably becomes part of any meaningful conversation about energy, metabolism, inflammation, and aging.
When I asked Dr. Cole what mitochondrial dysfunction actually feels like, his answer was much less exotic than people might expect.
The two symptoms he sees most often are:
Fatigue.
Brain fog.
He also describes people feeling wired and tired, or anxious while simultaneously exhausted.
These symptoms are not specific to mitochondrial dysfunction. Brain fog and fatigue can occur with anemia, thyroid disorders, sleep disorders, nutritional deficiencies, medication effects, infections, autoimmune conditions, hormonal changes, metabolic disease, and many other health issues.
That distinction matters.
You cannot diagnose mitochondrial dysfunction because you feel tired.
But unexplained or persistent fatigue should not simply be normalized either.
Why Fatigue in Women Deserves More Attention
This is especially important in women’s health.
During our conversation, I brought up endometriosis because fatigue can be an enormous part of living with the disease.
Yet women can still be told some variation of:
“Sleep more.”
“Drink more water.”
“Stress less.”
“Have you tried losing weight?”
Endometriosis is not simply “a bad period.” It is a complex inflammatory disease, and reducing the entire experience to pelvic pain overlooks the systemic symptoms many women report.
When a woman repeatedly tells her clinician that she is exhausted, the goal should not be to convince her that fatigue is normal.
The goal should be to ask why.
The Modern Exposures That May Be Accelerating Aging
Dr. Cole groups many of the influences he believes contribute to cellular stress into several broad categories.
1. Food and Eating Patterns
The conversation is not simply about “good foods” and “bad foods.”
We discuss food quality, nutrient density, meal timing, metabolic health, and whether someone is constantly eating from morning until bedtime.
Dr. Cole also repeatedly emphasizes bio-individuality. A food may be nutrient dense and still not work well for a particular person at a particular point in their health journey.
2. Environmental Exposures
Dr. Cole raises concerns about modern exposures including PFAS, microplastics, pesticides, herbicides, and other environmental chemicals.
This is an evolving area of research, and it is important not to turn environmental health into another source of fear. Exposure cannot be completely eliminated.
The useful question is where meaningful exposure reduction is realistic rather than trying to create a perfectly “toxin-free” life.
3. Artificial Light and Circadian Disruption
One of the most interesting themes in this episode is that your brain is not the only part of your body paying attention to time.
Tissues throughout the body have circadian biology.
The gut, skin, brain, liver, and other organs receive signals that help coordinate activity, metabolism, rest, and repair.
Our modern environment allows us to live under bright artificial light long after sunset, eat late into the night, and stare into illuminated screens until the moment we fall asleep.
Dr. Cole considers this mismatch between our biological clocks and modern light exposure an important part of cellular health.
4. Biotoxins and Infectious Triggers
Mold, bacteria, viruses, and other biological exposures also enter the conversation as potential contributors to inflammatory stress in susceptible individuals.
5. Chronic Stress and Trauma
Psychological stress is not occurring separately from your physiology.
The nervous, endocrine, metabolic, and immune systems communicate constantly.
Dr. Cole describes cellular stress through the lens of the “cell danger response,” while I emphasize something I think medicine often gets wrong: a protective response is not necessarily evidence that the body is simply malfunctioning.
Sometimes the response itself is appropriate.
The problem is that the signal telling the body it needs to remain protected never goes away.
“Cellular Confusion,” Inflammation, and the Body’s Protective Response
Dr. Cole uses the phrase cellular confusion throughout the episode to describe a state in which modern environmental and lifestyle signals interfere with normal cellular signaling and regulation.
He discusses pathways including mTOR, sirtuins, AMPK, NRF2, autophagy, and mitophagy as part of that framework.
But you do not have to memorize a biochemical pathway map to understand the broader concept.
The body needs to be able to alternate between states.
- There are times for growth.
- There are times for repair.
- There are times for activity.
- There are times for recovery.
- There are times to eat.
- There are times when food is not coming in.
- There are times to be exposed to bright light.
- There are times for darkness.
Modern life can blur many of those distinctions.
And that may matter.
The First 30 Minutes of a Cellular Health Morning
In our Protocol Playground segment, I asked Dr. Cole to make all of this practical.
Imagine you wake up tomorrow and decide you want to start taking better care of your cells.
What should you actually do?
His suggestions begin simply.
Consider an Overnight Eating Break
We discuss starting with something as ordinary as roughly 12 hours between dinner and breakfast rather than immediately jumping into extreme fasting.
For example, you might finish dinner at 7 PM and eat again around 7 AM.
That is very different from telling every woman she should fast for 18 or 20 hours.
Fasting is a tool, not an identity.
Your menstrual cycle, health history, medications, activity, sleep, metabolic health, pregnancy or breastfeeding status, history of disordered eating, and individual response all matter.
Consider Polyphenol-Rich Foods and Drinks
Green tea, berries, pomegranate, extra-virgin olive oil, and deeply pigmented plant foods come up throughout the episode.
The larger takeaway is not that one particular tea will reverse aging.
It is that a varied diet rich in plant compounds can be part of a broader longevity-supportive eating pattern.
Do Not Let Your Phone Own Your Morning
This is one of my additions to the conversation.
If your first action each morning is opening social media, you are allowing an algorithm to decide which emotional stimuli enter your nervous system before you have even decided what kind of day you want to have.
You do not need a 90-minute wellness routine.
You may just need a little space before the world starts asking something from you.
What Should You Eat for Healthy Aging?
When I asked Dr. Cole to build a longevity plate, he started with protein.
Protein needs vary, but preserving skeletal muscle becomes increasingly important with age.
He discusses roughly 30 grams of protein at a meal as a potential target for some adults, while emphasizing that total needs depend on age, size, activity, and individual circumstances.
From there, the plate becomes colorful.
Foods discussed include:
- Fatty fish and other sources of long-chain omega-3 fats
- Broccoli sprouts
- Asparagus
- Brussels sprouts
- Blueberries
- Blackberries
- Pomegranate
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Tea
- Adequate high-quality protein
What I appreciate about this conversation is that we also acknowledge digestion.
If a giant raw salad leaves you bloated and miserable, you do not earn extra health points for forcing it down.
- Cook the vegetables.
- Blend foods.
- Use soups and stews.
- Cook fruit into a compote.
Meet your digestive system where it is.
Be Careful With Unnecessary Food Restriction
This is an important counterpoint to the wellness culture surrounding longevity.
We discuss fermented foods and bone broth as examples of foods that may work beautifully for one person while aggravating symptoms in another, particularly when histamine is an issue.
But there is another side to this.
People with chronic symptoms sometimes begin eliminating one food after another.
Eventually there are only a handful of foods left that feel “safe.”
Restriction itself can become part of the problem.
The goal of nutrition should not be to make your diet progressively smaller forever. When appropriate, working with a qualified nutrition professional to address symptoms and strategically reintroduce foods can be an important part of recovering dietary variety.
One of the Simplest Metabolic Habits: Walk After Dinner
If you want one strategy from this episode that requires almost no equipment, special knowledge, or money, this may be it.
Take a walk after eating.
When I asked Dr. Cole what someone with signs of insulin resistance could do immediately after dinner, he recommended approximately a 10- to 15-minute walk.
Your muscles use glucose.
Movement after a meal provides another place for that incoming glucose to go.
The walk does not need to be intense.
You do not need to change clothes.
You do not need to track your heart rate.
You simply need to move.
And if you can do it outside, you may get the additional benefits of nature, fresh air, connection, and a psychological transition out of the workday.
Zone 2, High-Intensity Exercise, and Strength Training
Exercise is another area where more is not necessarily better.
Dr. Cole discusses short high-intensity efforts, including REHIT, as one form of hormetic stress.
But he also repeatedly returns to walking and Zone 2 aerobic training.
Then there is strength training.
When I asked what he does now because he wants to be healthy enough to be there for his children at 80, his answer was strength training.
Muscle is not simply cosmetic.
Skeletal muscle plays an important role in mobility, metabolic health, glucose disposal, physical resilience, and maintaining independence as we age.
I also make the case for mobility work, particularly for people who find traditional stretching intolerably boring.
You need to be able to move through your life, not simply live longer inside it.
Your Evening Light May Matter More Than You Think
We spend a significant portion of the episode talking about “dirty light”—our shorthand during the conversation for artificial light exposure that does not resemble the natural light-dark environment humans historically experienced.
The goal is not to become afraid of your light bulbs.
It is to understand that light is biological information.
In the evening, that might mean:
- Dimming overhead lighting
- Reducing bright screen exposure
- Making your bedroom as dark as reasonably possible
- Moving the phone away from your face before bed
- Developing a consistent transition from daytime stimulation into sleep
Sleep is not dead time.
It is part of the biological rhythm that allows the body to recover from the day.
Nature, Spirituality, Community, and Longevity
This was one of the most unexpected parts of our conversation.
Dr. Cole and I discuss research examining religious participation, spirituality, nature exposure, forest bathing, and community in relation to health and longevity.
He describes his own time in nature as a spiritual practice.
We even talk about bird song.
I had recently traveled through an airport in Finland that played bird sounds throughout the terminal, and I remember realizing how strangely calm I felt in an environment where I would normally be more activated.
Whether your version of this is prayer, meditation, faith, time in the forest, walking with someone you love, or simply sitting outside, the larger point is worth considering:
Human health has never existed solely inside the human body.
We evolved in relationship with light, darkness, nature, food, community, movement, rest, and one another.
Longevity discussions that focus exclusively on supplements and gadgets may be missing some of the most fundamentally human inputs we have.
You Do Not Need a Full-Time Longevity Routine
The internet can make healthy aging look exhausting.
For many people, the stress created by trying to perform perfect health is not particularly healthy.
The take-home message from this episode is much less complicated.
- Eat nourishing food.
- Get enough protein.
- Build and preserve muscle.
- Walk.
- Sleep.
- Respect your circadian rhythms.
- Spend time outside.
- Address metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors.
- Do what you realistically can about environmental exposures without becoming consumed by them.
- Stay connected to people and practices that give your life meaning.
And stop waiting for perfection before you begin.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Cellular Aging
Cellular aging describes the biological changes that occur in cells over time and can affect their ability to generate energy, repair damage, communicate, and maintain normal function. In this episode, the discussion includes mitochondrial health, inflammation, metabolic health, and biological aging.
Chronological age is the number of years you have been alive. Biological age attempts to estimate how aged your body appears based on molecular or physiological characteristics. Different biological-age models use different biomarkers, so they should not all be treated as interchangeable.
Potentially. Biological-aging measures are specifically designed to identify differences between calendar age and biological characteristics. However, a biological-age score is an estimate, not a diagnosis or prediction of exactly how long someone will live.
Research discussed during the episode suggests that biological-aging patterns can differ among organs. Dr. Cole highlights research examining organ-specific aging and its association with future disease risk.
Dr. Cole says brain fog and fatigue are two symptoms he commonly encounters in people with broader cellular-health concerns. However, these symptoms have many possible causes and cannot diagnose mitochondrial dysfunction on their own.
Mitochondrial abnormalities can contribute to impaired energy metabolism, but fatigue is nonspecific. Persistent fatigue should be evaluated for other potential causes including thyroid disease, anemia, sleep disorders, nutritional deficiencies, medications, chronic inflammatory conditions, infection, and hormonal factors.
In the episode, I discuss fatigue as an important symptom experienced by women with endometriosis and emphasize that endometriosis is a systemic inflammatory condition rather than merely a menstrual problem. Fatigue in someone with endometriosis may also have multiple contributing factors and deserves appropriate evaluation.
Fasting and time-restricted eating are being studied in relation to metabolic health and cellular signaling pathways. In the episode, we discuss fasting as a tool rather than a universal requirement. The appropriate duration and frequency depend on the individual.
Some women can use time-restricted eating or fasting appropriately, but there is no single fasting protocol that is right for every woman. Menstrual status, pregnancy, breastfeeding, medications, metabolic health, training, sleep, and eating-disorder history all matter.
Rather than one “anti-aging” food, the episode emphasizes a pattern that can include adequate protein, omega-3-rich foods, colorful fruits and vegetables, polyphenol-rich foods, and foods that an individual can comfortably digest.
Protein needs vary considerably. Dr. Cole discusses approximately 30 grams per meal and around 90 grams per day as examples for some adults, but these are not universal prescriptions. Body size, age, activity, goals, kidney function, and overall health should be considered.
Post-meal movement can support glucose disposal. In the episode, Dr. Cole recommends a simple 10- to 15-minute walk after eating as an accessible strategy for metabolic health.
There is no single best form. Aerobic conditioning, strength training, high-intensity exercise when appropriate, walking, and mobility all contribute different benefits. The most effective program is one that is safe, appropriately challenging, and sustainable.
When I ask Dr. Cole to choose one for the average person, he chooses sauna, while noting that both can be forms of hormetic stress and that dose matters.
When asked whether alcohol is compatible with optimal longevity, Dr. Cole answers no. The episode does not suggest drinking alcohol as a longevity strategy.
You do not need to overhaul your life. Start with one sustainable behavior: take a short walk after dinner, improve sleep consistency, strength train regularly, increase nutrient-dense foods, or create more separation between bright evening light and bedtime.
About Dr. Will Cole
Dr. Will Cole is a functional medicine practitioner, bestselling author, and pioneer in functional medicine telehealth. His newest book, Heal Your Cells, explores cellular health, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and strategies intended to support long-term health.
About Dr. Jolene Brighten
Dr. Jolene Brighten is a board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist (FABNE), nutrition scientist, Certified Menopause Specialist through The Menopause Society, and certified sex counselor. She is also an author and women’s health educator focused on helping women better understand their hormones, reproductive health, and whole-body health.
Links Mentioned in This Episode
Heal Your Cells by Dr. Will Cole
healyourcells.com
Dr. Will Cole Website
drwillcole.com
Instagram: @drwillcole
The Dr. Brighten Show
drbrighten.com/podcasts
Dr. Jolene Brighten
drbrighten.com