Ever wonder how Silicon Valley billionaires are investing in research to reverse and slow down the aging process? Well, let's get to the root of it with our guest, Faraz Khan. As a Management Consultant and Longevity Expert, Faraz has bridged his background in computer science and passion for anti-aging to create a platform dedicated to longevity. We delve into his journey and the groundbreaking techniques he uses to help others slow down their aging process.
Getting into the nitty-gritty of aging, we dissect the science behind cell division and its implications on diseases such as Alzheimer's. Ever heard of the Hayflick limit? We explore this concept and discuss how stem cells play an important part in replenishing cell division. And who better to learn from about longevity than the longest-lived people worldwide? We gain insights from their lifestyle and how they maintain their longevity.
Lastly, buckle up for a deep dive into the world of longevity. We discuss mindset, diet, and lifestyle modifications that can contribute to a longer life. Faraz shares an enlightening exercise to help shift our perception of aging and reveal the essential components of longevity including sleep, exercise, nutrition, and mental resilience. We'll also touch on practical advice on reducing oxidative stress, balancing blood sugar levels and the importance of certain supplements. Plus, you'll get to hear about the influential figures in Faraz's life and the life lessons he has gleaned from them. So, are you ready to embark on your journey to longevity? Tune in!
If you liked this podcast
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md
Ever wonder how Silicon Valley billionaires are investing in research to reverse and slow down the aging process? Well, let's get to the root of it with our guest, Faraz Khan. As a Management Consultant and Longevity Expert, Faraz has bridged his background in computer science and passion for anti-aging to create a platform dedicated to longevity. We delve into his journey and the groundbreaking techniques he uses to help others slow down their aging process.
Getting into the nitty-gritty of aging, we dissect the science behind cell division and its implications on diseases such as Alzheimer's. Ever heard of the Hayflick limit? We explore this concept and discuss how stem cells play an important part in replenishing cell division. And who better to learn from about longevity than the longest-lived people worldwide? We gain insights from their lifestyle and how they maintain their longevity.
Lastly, buckle up for a deep dive into the world of longevity. We discuss mindset, diet, and lifestyle modifications that can contribute to a longer life. Faraz shares an enlightening exercise to help shift our perception of aging and reveal the essential components of longevity including sleep, exercise, nutrition, and mental resilience. We'll also touch on practical advice on reducing oxidative stress, balancing blood sugar levels and the importance of certain supplements. Plus, you'll get to hear about the influential figures in Faraz's life and the life lessons he has gleaned from them. So, are you ready to embark on your journey to longevity? Tune in!
If you liked this podcast
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md
Hello, this is Pushing Boundaries, a podcast about pioneering research, breakthrough discoveries and unconventional ideas. I'm your host, dr Thomas R Verney. My guest today is Faraz Khan, ma Management Consultant and Longevity Expert. Welcome, faraz.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me on Dr Verney.
Speaker 1:It's a pleasure. So I understand that you have established what you call a one-stop shop for the best techniques and latest info and anti-aging and longevity. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that came about and what it's all about?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I have my background in computer science. I was a tech engineer for a while and then I got into management consulting because I found just writing tech to be a little bit boring. I got into management consulting, worked with a lot of firms, especially Amgen Biopharma, which is based out of in California, 1,000 Oaks, and so I spent some time with them when I got to learn some of the insights of the healthcare industry, and they were making these biologic drugs. We were helping them roll them out, and this would take a lot of time, a lot of money by some very well-meaning individuals, and then the sales team would take over and then they'd go sell to the doctors and whatnot.
Speaker 2:And so that really, when I was in management consulting in Los Angeles, I started thinking about how could I use some of these techniques or pharmaceuticals to help my parents slow down their aging, because I have an Indian background and family is very, very important and we get guilt stripped when we spend too much time away from our parents, and so, as part of that guilt and shame, I said what can I do really to help slow down their aging? And so I started Googling and researching and the rabbit hole even in 2018, went very deep, and so I started going down the rabbit hole and learning of different ways that scientists are trying Longevity researchers are researching to slow down and reverse the aging process and I said, wow, there's something. So I decided in 2019 to switch careers actually and quit my management consulting firm well-paying job and got into the field of longevity and anti-aging as somebody who started a podcast. So that was my first entry and foray into the field. I started a podcast where I started interviewing a lot of experts experts in longevity, health, wellness and experts like yourself, dr Bernie.
Speaker 2:You've been on my show to talk about what are the practical things that people can do today to slow down their aging and what's coming in just five, 10 years that can really turn this field around and allow us to live in much younger bodies. So that was how this came about. We've also got a hair wellness company that we do. Now. We sell hair wellness products for women to help keep the hair, because hair is very important as part of the anti-aging protocol.
Speaker 1:Right. So you mentioned your parents, that you were sort of concerned about their aging. You also mentioned the fact that they kind of have a way of guilt-tripping. So have you found a remedy for guilt-tripping?
Speaker 2:I think I need to consult with you on that. Good answer.
Speaker 1:Very good answer.
Speaker 2:That is a challenging topic for sure. I think I'm becoming more aware of their guilt-tripping, but they're just set in their ways, and my mother especially. They use whatever ways they have to get their children to comply.
Speaker 1:Really, so on your website and I think you pretty well said it also here in the last few minutes you have said that there are very promising developments unfolding over the next five to 10 years that may make diseases like heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's and diabetes a thing of the past will be living like how much younger cells full of radians, vigor and energy. So what are these new developments that you're talking about?
Speaker 2:Totally. Let me fill your audience in on what's going on in the field of longevity the most exciting stuff. So what's happening is that a lot of Silicon Valley billionaires and people that have made a lot of money in technology are realizing that they're mortal after all and they'd like to change that, and so they're investing a lot of their money. Jeff Bezos is one of the investors. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is another investor. We've both started funds and companies and there's many more that have been started that are researching different ways to slow down the aging process. Now we've known for many years that there were about nine hallmarks of aging that were founded or discovered or agreed to by scientists in about 2014. Recently, that list has expanded from 14 to 19. Sorry, there were nine initially and now five have been added, so now there's 14 in total. So all of these they talk about either stem cell exhaustion or epigenetic information, so in your cells the epigenome is not working properly because of the environment. There's now an inflammation, has been added, there's telomere shortening, so there's about 14 different hallmarks that they call of aging. So a lot of these companies they're going after, they're getting funding, they're hiring a bunch of really smart scientists and they're going after individual hallmarks. So some are saying we're going to go work on stem cells, some are saying we're going to work on cellular reprogramming, some are saying we're going to work on cellular senescence, and I'll explain all of those in a second. So there's funding coming in. Because of funding they can hire very, very good scientists, and these funding and the scientists together are allowing them to do studies on smaller animals like mice, rats, fruit flies, for example, that are showing very, very promising results in terms of increasing the longevity of these animals. And what's interesting is, because mice only live about two years or so, you can measure the increase in longevity very easily, because if they live to three years, that's a 50% increase. If they live two extra months, that's about whatever, that is 12% or so. So it's easy to measure that. And now, because they're so common with the genome, with mice and rats and us, that scientists are now figuring out ways to kind of use human trials to show the same outcomes. And so that's what's really happening, and I can dive into the two hottest areas. Out of the 14 hallmarks paging, there's two that are super hot right now.
Speaker 2:The number one area, dr Bernie, is called cellular reprogramming so in I believe it was 2012 when a Japanese scientist discovered these four transcription factors, which are basically proteins that turn on specific genes inside your cells. So these four proteins were turning on specific sets of genes that were transferring a human adult cell into an embryonic cell, so going all the way back to a stem cell, which means then it can become any cell from that point on. So then it can divide indefinitely. This was a shocking development that they found that any adult cell that has been alive for 50, 60, 70 years, that cell could be taken back to an embryonic state and then it can divide indefinitely. So that led to concern that well, this might become cancerous, because if a cell can divide indefinitely, that's what cancer does it just divides. And so they started testing with those different transcription factors. Now the current, I guess, consensus is that there's three out of those four that you can use and that will not cause cancer. And so there's one research study that was published just a week ago by a team at Harvard Medical School, by Dr David Sinclair, which showed that they can use these three different transcription factors to reverse, increase and decrease somebody's epigenetic age or not somebody's, but cells epigenetic age. Very, very. I guess you could redo it over and over again. So it's something that can be repeatable and it's shown in these studies. There's also multiple other studies that were done in the last year that had the same or similar results with these three different factors. So again, very promising area. A lot of money I think the most money in anti-aging is probably going to this one area.
Speaker 2:The second area that's also very, very interesting is called cellular senescence. So I just want to explain that real quick. What happens is human cells have a limit. They divide about 50 times. It's called the Haiflich limit, and the reason scientists believe that they divide only 50 times is because the DNA, when a cell divides the end caps of the DNA, it's this protective chromosome at the end.
Speaker 2:That is not really DNA, but it's just a chromosome that's protecting the DNA. So it's like the end caps of your shoelaces that are protecting the shoelace, and so when a cell divides, the end caps or the chromosome at the end shortens every single time. We just called the telomere, exactly, you got it. Yes, and scientists believe that after 50 divisions the telomeres become so small that if you divide the cell anymore then it may cause mutations in the DNA, which could lead to cancer, and so that's why a cell is very smart it stops dividing. Now there's ways to allow, and so once the cell stops dividing, then it turns into what they say old, grumpy man. It's called the senescent cell. That's just angry and just mad at the world, and it's secreting these inflammatory phenotypes and inflammatory substances in the cell. So it's like poisoning the cells around it. So scientists are looking at ways to turn these senescent cells old grumpy men, into young cells again and reducing that burden, that load that we're carrying because of this and inflammatory excretions that they're doing.
Speaker 1:As far as they have been, no ill effects of this.
Speaker 2:One of the companies called Unity Biotechnology that was funded by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, actually did a big trial last year and it had a failure. It failed. They tried it in the knee. Some people think that because they were injecting the material, that's why it didn't work. They should have given it orally because it's a whole body problem. Regardless, the trial failed for the senolytic cells senescent cells. That same company is doing additional trials this year and there are many other companies that are doing trials in senescent cells as well. That is the second most funded area.
Speaker 2:Scientists believe that sooner or later we will find a way to figure this out or to reverse the age and get rid of these senescent cells.
Speaker 2:The third very interesting area of recent interest is a theory that was expounded first by David Sinclair, who's at the Harvard Medical School. He's got a lab there. He talks about that all of aging comes from a loss of information in the cell. The cell loses information because the epigenetics of the cell, the methylation patterns, because of the environment, cause it to forget that it's a younger cell. It stops creating the proteins that keep you young. As we age, it creates different sets of proteins and those proteins correlate to the age that you are. For example, gray hair, hair loss, diabetes and other diseases that are associated with age are because of the information theory, meaning the cell has forgotten the original age that it came from and how it should function with the proteins. What they're doing is, again, they're using that type of manipulation with the three factors to get the cells back to a younger state as well. That is Dr Sinclair's team. They just launched a recent paper that had some success in that field.
Speaker 1:You said that cells divide approximately or always, only 50 times.
Speaker 2:Generally, always generally 50 times. That was known for the longest time as a hard limit for the cells. As scientists are able to increase the telomere length, especially in petri dishes and labs, then they can see cells dividing more Inside the human body or in natural circumstances. They believe 50 is the limit, but of course that can be manipulated.
Speaker 1:In terms of 50, how many weeks or months or years pass between cell divisions? Is 50 cell divisions the same as 50 years, or is it 100? What is it?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. It really depends on the part of the body or the organ. For example, the cells in your gut are dividing every five days very rapidly. The cells in your brain hardly at all.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:In some brain cells, a child, or when you become an adult, pretty much 90 to 95% of those cells in your brain stay constant. There is some rejuvenation going on and some division going on in the brain, but it's very, very small. That is the problem we come into, especially with longevity. One of the toughest problems to solve is the problem of Alzheimer's. Is what do you do when the brain stops supporting you and you lose mental function?
Speaker 1:Do you rely on the body to make up for it?
Speaker 2:Interestingly, there has been two people that are researching Alzheimer's have been very positive in the last few years. There were two trials this year alone, just in the last two months, that were very promising to slow down the progression of Alzheimer's by the slowing down beta amyloids is what happens in the brain. Two big pharmaceutical companies have had positive trials of reducing or slowing down Alzheimer's. Experts that I talked to in this field believe that Alzheimer's will become just a chronic condition that we can manage, For example, like we do with diabetes or other chronic conditions that stay with us but they don't kill us. We don't forget everybody. We know we don't die because of it. It's more going to be something we maintain. We measure tests to see how we're doing. They believe that combination of pharmaceuticals and or lifestyle changes can actually have a positive impact when it comes to Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 1:Coming back. I'm fascinated by this number, 50. Is it the same in all mammals? Is it different in mice than humans? How does it work?
Speaker 2:At this point in all the mammals that have been tested. That is the limit. It's called the Hayflick limit. It goes about 50 times because all the most of the DNA between us and mice. It's mainly almost identical, with some variations. They do function the same way across most of the organisms that have been studied. That seems to be the theoretical maximum limit.
Speaker 1:As you said, mice only live about two years. The average age expectancy for humans, let's say North America, is over 70, with some difference between men and women. Women living longer Is it? In mice the 50 cell divisions happen much faster than they happen in humans, right Correct?
Speaker 2:Now it's also interesting to note that humans have a lot more cells which are dividing 50 times. So that's number one. Two we also have a lot more stem cells, and stem cells is what allows new cells to come in. So let's say that if we didn't have stem cells, we would probably run out of divisions in 10 years or so. But every organ, every tissue has a bank of stem cells. So when the normal cells are dividing, the stem cells monitor the situation and say, okay, we need more base cells. And so a stem cell what's magical about it is it comes out and says, okay, we need more cells. It divides into two. One is a daughter stem cell, which goes back and goes back to the niche and just rests. And the other cell now is a brand new cell that has 50 divisions left to go right. So that's how stem cells keep recreating the base level of cells that we have, so they can start the division process all over again.
Speaker 1:So then you would agree with me that cells are pretty intelligent.
Speaker 2:They're very intelligent. That is your thesis of having a memory and a conscience. The more we learn about the body, the more we know it's not just in the science. There's more going on. Right now. It seems metaphysical, it seems out of the world, but I think science will get closer and closer to exactly what you're saying and we'll know that as proof soon.
Speaker 1:So just changing the subject a little, about changing our focus just a little bit. What can the longest lived people teach us about health and longevity? Has that been looked into?
Speaker 2:Totally. These zones where people live routinely live over a hundred years. There are centenarians, some are called super centenarians because they live over a hundred and ten years, which is fantastic, and so there's about five zones in the world and they're called the blue zones, and scientists have been studying these blue zones for a long time. We can learn quite a few lessons from them, in that these people are. What they do is all of them seem to have a purpose in life, and the reason they wake up is they have something to do. For example, I went visited a blue zone in Okinawa, japan, and I met with a 97 year old woman and a 92 year old man, and they had their daughter was actually translating, their daughter and their son. His son were translating and I asked him a question of why do you wake up in the morning, every morning, why are you waking up? And the woman flat out said I want to live, to be a hundred years old, because the whole town of the whole town of longevity, the village, really is going to celebrate me. Wow, what a concept. The whole town celebrates them. They have a parade and everybody comes together, so they have a reason to wake up. In fact, her daughter told me that when she woke up in the morning, she put makeup on every morning and I said, why, in case somebody comes to visit her? And I said, does anybody come to visit? She goes very rarely, but she puts it on anyway. It makes her feel good.
Speaker 2:So these people and the blue zones, they have a reason to wake up in the morning. They have a reason to live. They've got very strong social connections. So they, a lot of them, live in multi-generation households. So the kids, grandkids, and parents and grandparents are typically living in the same house, so they're taking care of each other. It's not like, oh, the parents have to go to hospice and the kids are in daycare all day. It's all a very combined family unit that takes care and watches out for each other. So that's another thing that they do. That's really really well.
Speaker 2:Also, this connection they have connections and friends across and they have very long, very long friendships right, you know this. That helps them go through the tough times in life, which I think you can speak to as well, very well there. So that's something that's important to them. They also have a higher purpose in life to have a faith, a God they believe in, and so that seems to carry them along as well. In addition, they move all the time.
Speaker 2:So what we have in the current world, dr Verney, is we have a lot of mental stress and we have low physical stress, meaning we're not moving the body as much as we should. They have the opposite problem. They have a lot of physical movement. They're building fences, they're milking cows, they're walking their sheep up the hill, up the mountain, and they have low mental stress. They're surrounded by family. There's no technology, no cell phones. That's a simple life, and so that's what they have. That's going on for them. So, again, I can go on and on, but those are some of the key factors how these longest lived civilizations are continuing to live a very long life.
Speaker 1:Well, I can certainly identify with that. My mother lived 202. Beautiful, and she always put on makeup before she went out. She put on sunglasses so that people wouldn't see my wrinkles, she said, and she was very social, which would drive my father crazy because she would be on the telephone for an hour with one of her friends and, according to my father, she would talk about nothing, but what she was doing, of course, was connecting right. And so you know it was I'm sure it was. It was motivating her and helping her to live to a very good old age, 102. And she was perfectly fine in her head, like not a touch of Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2:Which means you have great longevity genes in your family.
Speaker 1:Yes, so far so good. Yes, and I'm the same way, though without the makeup, but I certainly, you know, have a purpose and I have lots of friends and lots of social contacts. So, yeah, I certainly subscribe to that. Now, in terms of your own life, was there anything in your own background that you think contributed to your interest in this subject? I mean, first you went into management, I know, but underneath it perhaps there was something else.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I think the biggest. There are two reasons for it, primarily or three, I should say I wasn't completely satisfied with the life choice that I had, with management, consulting and working for a big corporation and a big city. I just felt like there was something missing. I had. I didn't have purpose in my life, waking up and serving the organization and making them money and making myself money and living a good life, while it seems really good for most of the world to think about, but it wasn't all that fulfilling for me. That's number one.
Speaker 2:Number two I wanted to be in a technology which would be in the future, something that was coming, that was new and exciting, and so I literally looked at seven or eight technologies that I could get behind. Artificial intelligence was one of them, augmented reality, virtual reality sensors, 3d printing, robotics and longevity. And then I said which of these fields can I make the smallest? I would have a difference. What can I do something in and what am I interested in? So I think that longevity appealed to me because not only could I help my parents which would be something I would give back to them, right but also I want to look and feel young when I'm older and I want to live a younger and much longer life, and so part of it was personal, part of it was for my parents, part of it was finding something that excited me, that was a little bit out in the future, and then part was just dissatisfaction with my current state.
Speaker 1:Are you presently in an intimate relationship?
Speaker 2:I am not currently, because I'm focusing all of my time and effort into building a company and making money. That is something that I realize that I'm lacking at the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well remember, social relationships are important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so absolutely, I agree with you 100%. What I am doing in fact is I'm building in the moment while I'm not dating actively I'm building a set of friendships. In Austin. I'm in a part of men's actually two men's groups where we get together every two weeks and we share we really share deeply about our lives, all the things that are going wrong. There is no facade in this group. There is no personas that we bring. We just lay it all out and say here's what's going wrong. Well, here's what I had some challenges with, and that really helps get to the core, because men, we don't really like to talk about emotions, and so with both of these groups, I think that what I love about it is we are so humble and honest with each other and so open about everything that we get a lot of feedback from men, but also support if we need to one-on-one Okay.
Speaker 1:So how important is mindset for a healthy and long life?
Speaker 2:It's probably the most important. So let me just run your listeners through a simple exercise. So just play along with me if you're listening. So let's say I'm going to ask you how long, or how long do you want to live? What is the age that you think it will be your time to pass on? Let's just think about that for a second. You don't have to write this number down, but just think about that. Now.
Speaker 2:If I ask you one year before that you reached that age, how would you feel physically? Would you be full of life, or would you be barely moving at all? How would you feel mentally? Would you be sharp, would you have mental equity, or would you be not recognizing people around you? So I think for most people, the answer would be I'd be mentally sharp and I'd be physically strong. If that is the case one year before it's your time to go, do you really think you would go then? Because you're in a good place, right? So then what's the real age?
Speaker 2:But people that do this exercise will add another 10 years to their perceived time longevity, life, right, life that they think they'll live, which is fascinating, because now in your mind, you have to plan for being 95 if you said 85 earlier, and so that unlocks a shift in you where you say, no, I have to build a better body, I have to build a better mind, I have to take care of myself, I have to have friendships, relationships, and you just plan for 10 more years. Right, and it all starts with the mind. We also know that. You know this, dr Varney. This is what you do. You talk to people and you focus on the mind.
Speaker 2:You're an expert on the mind, and even with all the studies, all the learnings, we have the mindset, the purpose. It's more important than anything else that you can do, because if you don't have a purpose for example, people that quit corporate America right One year after retirement your chances of death increased by 11%. It's a shocking number, because you've lost your purpose to wake up in the morning, and so that's why a lot of people, a lot of experts in the longevity world, say that if you want to live a long life after retirement, that is not the end of your career. You have to start. You should start. You should consider starting a second career. Maybe you can coach younger individuals that are coming up behind you, maybe you can start a garden, maybe you can start gardening, or maybe you can do something else. Save the planet, save the oceans, where you feel compelled to wake up in the morning, because that is what is probably the most important thing for longevity.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, very good, very good. So I noticed on your website that you say that you only recommend things supplements. I guess that you use yourself. Is that true that?
Speaker 2:is true, correct, yes, now I use a lot of supplements, but there are some that I love more than others, and I like to think of longevity as an onion. You have to peel certain layers to get to the root, and the opposite is also true is you build from the core and you start and you keep adding on. A lot of people in this space will go get a stem cell treatment without optimizing their sleep or their exercise, and to them I say, okay, okay, if you have $5,000 or $20,000, feel free to spend it, but it will be much better use of your energy resources and time and money if you could start to optimize some of the core layers and then add on things as they make sense to the level that you're at.
Speaker 1:So what do you consider the core layers?
Speaker 2:So yeah, absolutely. The base layer for me is consists of four items. Number one getting good sleep. Number two exercising every single day. People say that if you could create a pill that had the effects of exercise in it, it would be the first trillion dollar company ever made. So it's that important. Exercise is that important. So it doesn't mean you have to go lift for 45 minutes at the gym every evening. No, let's look at the longest lift people. They're just walking all the time. They're walking for an hour or two a day, sometimes in the sunshine, sometimes in the evenings, but they're just active all day long. Right? So do something. If you're sitting at a desk all day, then find a or get a standing desk where you can stand, take a break every hour, walk for five minutes Simple things, it's not complicated. So we talked about sleep exercise.
Speaker 2:Nutrition is very important In the blue zones. Most of the people that live there are eating primarily a plant-based diet with some meat and some fish. Experts call this akin to the Mediterranean diet, which is, of course, probably the most studied diet when it comes to longevity interventions, and so that's a good one. I will not say that there is one diet for anybody, but Mediterranean, by and large, seems to work for the most number of people. So that's number three. Number four is something you're an expert in.
Speaker 2:Mental resilience is keeping your mental stress as low as possible, and this is important for a variety of reasons. When cortisol gets imbalanced in your body, that causes a lot of problem. That causes you to be in fight or flight all day long, which activates certain parts of your nervous system and your body that don't need to be activated at all time. You're not running from a tiger all day, and so these are the four core components that you should do first, before you get into supplements, before you get into stem cell treatments and whatever else we can add on to that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so then that takes me to the next question. So what are your favorite supplements?
Speaker 2:Okay, fantastic. So these supplements are Let me list them in order Number one and I'll explain just a little bit about each of them. Sure, the first one what happens to a human body past middle age is, let's say, when you were a child and you were cycling down the street and you fell down, you bruised your knee. Typically, you'll see inflammation on that wound, where your body's sending the immune system to heal, but that causes some swelling, redness. That's what's inflammation inside the body, and naturally, once it's healed, it goes away, right, right, but starting middle age and beyond, we have humans build this problem called inflammaging, which means we have a chronic, low-grade inflammation in various parts of our body, and that's basically immune system.
Speaker 2:Either there's a microbe or pathogen that came in that's not completely been resolved, or is just misfiring and attacking your own cells, and so we want to calm that down as much as possible, because it's one of the reasons you age faster. It's called inflammaging. So we want to reduce inflammation and there is natural substances, for example, curcumin, which comes from turmeric, which is an East Asian spice, which is very, very good for reducing inflammation from the top down, all the cascades that start from the very top. It's very effective at stopping the cascade even before it begins, so that's something that I love taking every single day. I highly recommend it to everybody else.
Speaker 1:I take it too, I take it out. Fantastic, yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good one. The second one that I would talk about is something to reduce the oxidative stress in our body, like an antioxidant. For example, you walk out in the sun for too long, that causes DNA damage and breaks, you inhale polluted air, or you drink bad water, or you eat the wrong food, or there's chemicals in your beauty products. All of these are attacking the human organism, the cells, and your body needs a defense, so antioxidants are quite helpful for fighting back against these insults to our body, and so my favorite antioxidant is called astaxanthin, which comes from Hawaiian not Hawaiian, but algae, blue-green algae and that astaxanthin is the reason salmon are red, and the reason I brought up Hawaii is there's a company from Hawaii that I buy my astaxanthin from. They make very good quality astaxanthin, but so not only is astaxanthin a very, very powerful antioxidant, but it also enables your body to create more antioxidants in its own body. So it helps your body create more, which is fantastic, and it's completely natural. It comes from algae. Algae, basically, is the food source for the entire ocean and some might say for the entire planet, but certainly for the ocean and so it's in the algae, and so that's where we get it from. So that's number two. The third one that I like to do is I want to balance my stress levels because, as you know, this Dr Verney stresses out of control these days and it causes you to go to fight or flight all day long. And even your traumas from childhood can cause your stress levels to erupt, and so the traumas please talk to Dr Verney about. But for the actual stresses that you have in the environment or in your body, you can use natural adaptogens. Ashwagandha is one of the adaptogens that has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. You can use. There's a rodeola that you can use that comes from Russia. That's also pretty effective for balancing your stress as an adaptogenic way. So that's something I recommend for stress.
Speaker 2:Then we get into blood sugar. This is extremely important. What happens so I'll explain this very, very quickly when you eat a high carb no rush, take your time, don't rush, okay. When you eat a high carbohydrate meal, what happens is that that converts into sugar in your body. So your body converts that into sugar that goes through your intestine. The carbohydrates get absorbed back into your bloodstream. So now there's a lot of carbohydrates, or blood sugar that's now circulating in your bloodstream. So your body naturally sends insulin to shuttle that into the cells. The cells can use that to create energy, but beyond a certain point you just can't fit any more insulin or any more sugar into the cells. And so this sugar is now floating around on the bloodstream and it likes to attack things. It attacks the proteins that are doing all the job in your body. It attacks the DNA in your cells, it attacks the blood vessels themselves and it also attacks collagen. Collagen makes up 70% of your body, at least of the skin, 70% of your skin and it makes up the majority of your organs as well that are internal. So for all these reasons, it's very important to reduce the sugar levels in your bloodstream.
Speaker 2:How do you do that? Well, number one, you could eat a low carb diet to begin with, which Mediterranean diet, for the most part, is low carb. It's not high carb, at least. In addition, what I do is I take this supplement called the berberine Burberry again, east Asian supplement, natural. It's similar to metformin, but it's natural, and so what it does is reduces the blood sugar spikes that happen. It reduces blood sugar, improves the blood sugar regulation in your body so that the blood levels stay stable and stay nice and low, because then sugar can attack various organs and collagen in your body. The other thing I do almost always people can do, even if you don't want to take Burberry is after every meal I take a 15-minute walk. This has been shown in scientific studies to reduce your blood sugar levels significantly. 15-minute walk after every meal you get the steps in, you get some exercise and you reduce your blood sugar levels. So all you're winning in all ways. So that's number four. I will have a couple more if that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, collagen is extremely important to us. As I described, 70% of your skin is collagen. Most of your organs are made up of collagen and as we age, your body produces less of it, and so it's vital for us to get more collagen. You can get it from two sources. You can get hydrolyzed collagen supplements that can easily go through your gut and be absorbed by your body they're a little bit more expensive or you can just take gelatin. Collagen is also something that you can drink in a cup of tea. Unfortunately, you have to mix gelatin with something warm, like a warm liquid, otherwise it gels. It's not so easy to kind of then eat that Collagen doesn't have that problem, but you can use either. Or they have all the amino acids that you need for your body to form the collagen. You can also take a little bit more vitamin C, a little bit more copper and some manganese. That helps your body create the collagen internally. So that is something that I recommend I take every single day. Collagen is very important for you. And then a last one that I'll mention here, or last two real quick is called NMN, and NMN is basically there's a material or substance in your body called NAD. It's called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, and so what this does? It has multiple functions. It helps create energy. It's available in your cell, but it helps your body create more energy through the mitochondria. It also helps repair DNA damage and thirdly, it also helps with supporting these proteins or enzymes called sirtuins. Sirtuins are called the longevity genes. They're in every cell and so NAD is important for supporting the function of sirtuins normal function. So for all these reasons it's extremely important.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of buzz in the anti-aging world about NAD. There's two ways to actually supplement. To get enough NAD in your body, you have to take precursors, because the NAD molecule is just simply too big to get into your cell directly. So the two precursors are NMN is a quite popular one. The second one is called NR or nicotinamide riboside. You can take either or they have good data behind more of them. I took NR for many years. I've started taking NMN recently. It doesn't matter as long as you take one of them. So that's important. And the last one I'll say is fish oil. It's simple, it's anti-inflammatory and it's also very good for the EPA and DHA levels that are all the fats that are inside your brain. We want to support your brain and fish oil seems to be extremely good at doing that.
Speaker 1:So is that like omega?
Speaker 2:Yes, omega 3.
Speaker 1:Omega 3. Yeah, what about garlic?
Speaker 2:Garlic is good. Again, I eat garlic. I don't supplement with it Garlic and ginger. They're extremely good, both for fighting off fungal infections, bacterial infections, but also from a longevity standpoint. So those I would just recommend making it part of your foods and, if you want to take a garlic supplement, absolutely. It also helps improve blood circulation. Garlic does, and so that's it's in certain supplements for that reason as well.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it really sounds as if you had acquired a really deep understanding of the cells and, on a microscopic level, how they work. How did you learn about all this?
Speaker 2:It's passion, right? So when I said to you I looked at 708 different fields and where could I make an impact and where was I interested, I'm genuinely interested in the science behind it. I'm generally interested in how cells work. In fact, when I was in college, my parents wanted me to go to med school but dissecting a rat turned me off because it smelled so bad and I didn't want to cut up animals. So that's the reason I didn't go to med school. But I've always had a fascination with biology and how the body works and how you can change your inputs to the body so you can change the outputs and the function. Just fascinates me a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm really impressed because I know a little bit of science and everything that you say is right on, and I'm just amazed that you didn't go to university to study all this, but that you just acquired it on your own.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you very much, dr Varney. I also have the privilege of talking to anti-aging and longevity experts every week, such as yourself, as I said, and that also helps me clear some of my doubts and ask very intelligent questions so that I can keep educating myself.
Speaker 1:So, in terms of what you have just said, now, who can you think of as the three most influential people in your life? Who are three people who have most influenced you?
Speaker 2:Yes, excellent question. I think the number one person that influenced me the most is Tony Robbins, Because, yes, I was like I said. The changing of my job and starting a new career where I knew nothing, it was completely fresh start Was so nerve-wracking and for some it's not, but for me, maybe because of my old traumas around scarcity and lack and not having enough right.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was a huge roadblock and I was struggling to cross it. I'd been thinking about it for two years, but going to a few Tony Robbins events gave me the jet fuel that I needed to really take the move. The number two person that I would say that has been a big influence on me is Dr Peter Diamandis. He's an entrepreneur, he runs Abundance360 and he invests in a lot of tech startups. He's very well known in the tech startup world. He finds funds, creates funds to fund really interesting challenges for space travel or, in other ways, moving the planet forward, and he's a very abundant thinker. He's a futuristic thinker, and so he's somebody I look up to as an entrepreneur, as using technology, for really moving the needle and for getting exponential returns in a shorter amount of time.
Speaker 2:The third person that I look up to is Ray Kurzweil, who is an ex-Google engineer, very, very accomplished entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:He's got tons and tons of inventions that he's created, and he is the person that coined the term longevity escape velocity.
Speaker 2:So, according to him, 86% or 84% of all of his predictions have come true, by the way, which is astounding because he's almost 80 and he's been saying things for a long time, and so he believes that in this decade, in the 2020s, before 2030, we will achieve longevity escape velocity.
Speaker 2:And what is that? That for every year that we age chronologically, we will have the technology available to reverse the age by more than a year. So we're, in effect, using technology to reverse aging faster than we are aging. So we're starting to go back in time, and that is very fascinating because in the future and I'll just say this in the future, there will be probably 3D printed nanobots that will be monitoring our bodies. There will be mirrors with all kinds of iris scans that will be monitoring how we stand, how we're looking, perspiration, heart rate, blood sugar levels will be monitored real time, and I think that even before something like a cancer or like even diabetes can manifest in our bodies, we will know way ahead of time using real time technology. And so, as humans, we may have to become open to using more of technology in and around us, and that can really help us if used correctly, in the right way.
Speaker 1:Very interesting. What is the most important lesson you have learned about life as of today, as of this moment? What would you say is the most important lesson you have learned?
Speaker 2:What a beautiful question, and the lessons that I've learned has nothing to do with longevity or living a long life. It's more a perspective of that. There's eight billion people in the world and everybody has a unique path through life, and everybody gets their stressors. They get their circumstances that are placed in their life. Nobody has it easy, and the best you can do is to make the best of the circumstances that have been given to you. And what's most important for me is perspective. What's most important for me is wisdom.
Speaker 2:Talking to people like you, dr Verney, and now you know, in the beginning, when I was a teenager, I would think, oh, you know, I'm so young, I'm invincible, I don't want to talk to older people. Now I want to sit down at your feet and ask you questions about. Give me wisdom, because there's a lot of things I'm not seeing, that are, that are just coming, that are right behind the corner, that I haven't even thought about yet, and so it's more a perspective of how can I best manage my circumstance and how can I learn from people that are ahead of me.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, wonderful. Well, you're doing a remarkable job and you're just beginning, so who knows where you're going to be in 10 years, right?
Speaker 2:Totally, I'm super excited and, yeah, thank you for coming on my show. It was fantastic and I'd like to stay in touch with you and check base and have you back on my show next year as well.
Speaker 1:Sure, so before we go, would you please email me the names of the six supplements six or seven supplements that you mentioned as really important, and I will add them to the podcast so people know and people can reach you at fully vitalcom, correct, yeah?
Speaker 2:So that's for the hair wellness is fully vital.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's just for the hair and the rest of the supplements.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the rest of the stuff is on antiaginghacksnet. That's where they can find my podcast. That's when they can read up on interviews that we've done in the past, and they can also reach out to me there. Anti-aging Hacks H-A-C-K-S.
Speaker 1:Hacks, oh, h-a-c-k-s. Yes, hacksnet Dot net. Yes, okay, got it. Okay. Well, thank you, it was really a pleasure and, by all means, let's stay in touch.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Dr Rooney. Thank you. This was an honor to come on your show.
Speaker 1:It was a pleasure having you. Thank you and bye-bye, bye, bye. Thanks, dr Rooney.