Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week, I’m excited to welcome Alan Graves to the podcast. Alan is the CEO of DoNotAge.org., a health research organisation on a mission to extend the healthy lifespan for as many people as possible. In this episode, we discover why we age, everyday practices that could be accelerating our ageing, and strategies to slow down the clock… over to Alan.
Audio Version
Some questions asked during this episode:
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What is the difference between biological age and calendar age and how can we test for this?
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What are the most common practices you see the public doing that accelerates ageing?
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How do sirtuins play a role in longevity?
Get more of Alan Graves:
If you enjoyed this, then we think you’ll enjoy this interview:
- Dr Frank Shallenberger – Expert Anti-Ageing Strategies
- Andrew Steele – DNAFit – Unlock Your Human Potential
- Annabel Streets & Susan Saunders – The Complete Guide to Ageing Well
The views expressed on this podcast are the personal views of the host and guest speakers and not the views of Bega Cheese Limited or 180 Nutrition Pty Ltd. In addition, the views expressed should not be taken or relied upon as medical advice. Listeners should speak to their doctor to obtain medical advice.
Disclaimer: The transcript below has not been proofread and some words may be mis-transcribed.
Full Transcript
Stu
(00:03)
Hey. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and welcome to another episode of The Health Sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve long lasting health. Now I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do.
(00:23)
Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website, that is 180Nutrition.com.AU and take a look. Okay. Back to the show.
(00:44)
This week I’m excited to welcome Alan Graves to the podcast. Alan is the CEO of DoNotAge.org., a health research organization on a mission to extend the healthy lifespan for as many people as possible. In this episode, we discover why we age, everyday practices that could be accelerating our aging, and strategies to slow down the clock. Over to Alan.
(01:12)
Hey, guys. This is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Alan Graves to the podcast. Alan, how are you, mate?
Alan
(01:19)
I’m very well, Stuart. Thank you for having me on.
Stu
(01:21)
No, look, thank you for sharing some of your time. I know that our times differences with the UK and Australia can be a little bit tricky, so much appreciate it.
(01:29)
First up, for all of our listeners out there that may not be familiar with you or your work, I’d love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please.
Alan
(01:37)
Sure thing. Alan Graves, CEO at DoNotAge.org. My background is varied. I’ve lived a full life, traveled around the world, lived in many different continents. Unfortunately, I treated my body pretty terribly actually. Got to my late twenties, started feeling the effects of the bad habits, drugs, alcohol, violence, the whole nine yards was my youth, unfortunately.
(02:04)
It was this poor health that got me to take longevity or anti-aging, as most people know it as, quite seriously. The whole journey culminated in me being the CEO at DoNotAge.org, which in turn I’ve used the research and the science of aging or anti-aging to turn my health around and then, in turn, through DoNotAge.org, we’ve transformed over 100,000 people’s lives now. Yeah. That’s been the journey thus far.
Stu
(02:30)
Fantastic. Well, yeah. A checkered past. I’m keen then to … You said that you had quite a checkered past, and, that, I imagine would have changed the way that your body recovers and, in turn, the way that your body ages. I’m keen to understand a little bit more about that aging process from your words and how what we do can influence that timeline.
Alan
(03:00)
Sure. There’s a few different ways to approach it. Aging is extremely complex, extremely complex and the more we find out and the more we realize, the more we realize how much we really don’t know yet. We made a lot of breakthroughs recently, to be honest. If you take aging as a whole, there’s still a lot that we don’t know.
(03:24)
The short answer is the aging is derivation from optimal function, essentially. That’s all it is. I think what it’s important to remember is that 20% of our aging or our health in general is genetic. We can’t do too much about it. But then the way I look at that is the aging percent, that is basically down to environment/lifestyle, the things that we can do something about. Yeah.
(03:53)
I think that’s a very positive step and, obviously, that’s where DoNotAge.org sits is the 80% bit, trying to help people reduce biological age, basically.
Stu
(04:06)
You mentioned biological aging. I know that biological aging, calendar age are different and came to know a little bit about how they’re different, perhaps how we can test for it.
Alan
(04:18)
Sure. Calendar age is what you say when someone asks how old are you and how many years we’ve been on the planet. Pretty simple for most people. Biological age is a relatively new concept. It’s how old you are on the inside. We look at somethin called epigenetics. Epi just means on top of. We talked about the genome and genetics and [inaudible 00:04:42] to DNA, so epigenetics is the epi genome sits on top of that and it’s been described as the piano player.
Stu
(04:50)
Right.
Alan
(04:50)
That tells the body which ones to turn on and which ones to turn off and that’s how we determine the biological age, because, really, that is the key driver in a lot of aging processes. Biological age is the one that we can do something about. You may well be 52, but inside you’re 32. You may well be 32, but inside you’re 52.
Stu
(05:13)
Right.
Alan
(05:14)
There’s obviously a lot of variations in there as well. There’s so many different things you can do to reverse that biological age. We have developed a test, so we provide this test that looks at 850,000 epigenetic sites. It’s done by a simple saliva sample. All you have to do is you receive the kit in the mail, it’s obviously all instructed out what you need to do, give your saliva sample, send it off, and then you get your results back.
Alan
(05:41)
It does actually include DNA as well but, obviously, there’s not much you can do about the DNA but it’ll give you some good insights from the DNA and the epigenetics is used to track your progress. From a DoNotAge.org perspective, it gives tangible results, so people can actually see, “Oh, I’ve been doing this for two years now. My biological age is reduced by four years.” Not only are they two years older but their biological age is actually reversed by four years. In essence, they reverse their biological age by six years.
Stu
(06:09)
Wow.
Alan
(06:10)
Does that make sense?
Stu
(06:11)
It does. Yeah. Sounds like Benjamin Button. I like the sound of it. I want some of it. You mentioned prior that there was … I mean, when we’re young, we do reckless things. We drink too much and whatever else we get into is generally not going to be the best thing for our health. I think at that time, often times, at least, our hormones play a part in fixing up the mess that we create.
Stu
(06:42)
I’m keen to understand from your perspective some of the more common practices that you would see Joe Public doing every day that can potentially accelerate aging.
Alan
(06:57)
Well, there’s quite a few. There’s the simple ones like there’s always a cure outside of McDonald’s. Those people are probably the same people that will eat four or five times a day, which is not recommended but we can go into that in a while. Smoking cigarettes is up there with the daftest things you can do from a health perspective.
Stu
(07:17)
Yeah. That’s a wild one.
Alan
(07:19)
After that, I would say the people that rely on pharmaceuticals as well. I even have close family members that still do this to this day despite my position and my advice. They go to the hospital and just because the hospital says, “This is what you should take. This is how many you should take” and, don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-science, quite the opposite, we’re a health research organization but Big Pharma seem to have taken over and the current system is failing, in my opinion.
(07:49)
It relies too much on Big Pharma to show good character and to be honest and if the past has proven anything, it’s that they’re not honest. They don’t have good character. They don’t have your health at the forefront of their actions I guess is what I’m trying to say.
Alan
(08:06)
I think this is also why DoNotAge.org has been so successful because we put our members health outcomes first before anything. We only provide what works and we ensure there’s no side effects, which obviously, as we all know, from pharmaceuticals, there can be a lot of bad side effects, “Take this and it will stop X, Y, Z disease returning or getting worse” and then you end up with a whole bunch of side effects that make your life a misery. We believe in fixing the upstream causes of aging and then the downstream symptoms of all those different age-related diseases are less likely to happen.
Stu
(08:45)
Yeah. I’m fascinated because there are so many age old practices I think that can be so powerful where our health is concerned. Simple things like sleep and nutrition, exercise, heat, cold, all of those types of things.
(09:07)
In terms of the best bang for buck from these simple practices that we just outlined, which of those do you think we should be focusing on the most?
Alan
(09:21)
That’s a difficult question to answer. Fasting is probably the best bang for the buck because not only is it free but you also don’t have to spend money on food. You’re kind of saving money by eating less. It’s not so much eating less. It’s eating less often.
Stu
(09:41)
Right.
Alan
(09:42)
It’s about the time that we give our body to recover. The body basically has two states in terms of the growth stage, when it’s digesting things and we can grow, this is a time of plentifulness because there’s food. Then when we fast and don’t eat, the body is like, “Right. There’s no food. We should probably do some repair work now.” That’s it in basic terms.
(10:07)
If we’re eating constantly and we’re awake, the only time we don’t eat is eight hours when we sleep, the body doesn’t get a chance to recover properly and do that repair work. I would say fasting is probably the best bang for your buck.
Stu
(10:21)
Okay. With that, I’m just thinking then about perhaps the type of foods that we would eat, because, again, huge confusion out there, lots of financial incentive as well from the companies that produce the foods for any particular type of diet and I’m talking along the lines of everything from veganism to carnivore and all of the different iterations in-between. Very confusing.
(10:49)
We’ve got many people that are almost religious in advocating plant-based diet and then on the other end of the scale, there’s an argument to do the complete opposite. I’m just wondering where you sit in terms of the types of food, the types of diet that you think through research, again, offers that best bang for buck.
Alan
(11:14)
This is what I was kind of alluding to earlier when I said we’re still not sure about everything about aging. There isn’t yet an agreed upon perfect diet. It’s my opinion that there never will be because of everyone is slightly different and everyone’s body is different. It’s about getting people to learn to listen to their bodies and then try different things out, which I know is a wishy washy answer but it’s unfortunately the truth. Sometimes not everything is black and white.
(11:48)
For me, I just try and make sure I get plenty of really rich colored vegetables in my diet. I think that’s always a good sign, because it shows that they’ve been basically either stressed just before they were picked or they were stressed as they were picked and, therefore, they send out signals to try and save themselves and those signals are the same or similar to what our body does in times of need as well. We then get the benefit from eating those stressed plants, if that makes sense.
Stu
(12:22)
Okay. Tell me then a little bit more about your strategies from a dietary perspective. You mentioned eat the rainbow. Now how do you back that up with, say, animal-based foods and also what is your timing for eating look like?
Alan
(12:43)
Yeah. I mean, it completely depends. I’m fortunate in a way, because I get to travel the world, I change timezone, at least, once every few weeks. I’m always on the move, so having a … Aside from getting a personal chef, sometimes I deal with what’s there and just try and do the best that I can.
Alan
(13:03)
I do tend to focus on the when I eat side and so I try and make sure … I mean, I do. I make sure there’s at least a 12 hour window every 24 hours where there’s nothing consumed and potentially increase that as well. I tend to find I feel the best when I do it for about 16 or 17. Obviously, you get the hunger pangs but the focus you get and the way your body feels afterwards is … Your body does thank you for it if you can get into a routine.
Stu
(13:36)
Yeah. It’s fascinating that you said it because I like to track things. I track sleep and health metrics with an aura ring. Two nights ago, I shortchanged myself with dinner and didn’t make enough and was hungry and thought … I like to eat reasonably early. I like to get dinner out of the way by about 5:30. I went to bed hungry. I thought I’m not going to eat anything. I’m just going to go with it. All of the metrics were improved, HRV came up, resting heart rate was lower, more deep sleep, more REM sleep. I just like the idea of seeing tangible results when we put ourselves in different states that we perhaps wouldn’t have been aware of.
Alan
(14:25)
No. Definitely. I completely agree. Like I said, that’s what do [inaudible 00:14:28] or try and always do is try and back it up with tangible results. A lot of our ingredients they’re going to give you more energy. It’s going to be obvious but we still want to get the tangible results, whether it’s through a biological age test, an NAD test kit, and some of the other things that we offer but because it’s about … Our mission is to extend healthy lifespan for as many people as possible and, obviously, people in the bio hack world, people that are really keen on staying healthy, they’re already aware of us and aware of the work we’re doing and the research and the fact that these things work but in order to hit the mass market, which is what we’re trying to do, we want everyone that wants to be healthy, to be healthy.
(15:09)
There’s still a lot of people out there that don’t even believe you can change how long you live and how healthy you are by your lifestyle. The tangibility of the results helps us to convince those people, “Hey, guys. If you don’t believe us, do it for two months. Take one of these tests and see and you can be the judge.” If it gives them that tangible result, then they might be more convinced to continue because one of the things with our supplements, in particular, is the results compound over time. People have been doing it for over two years and their results are on average way better than people that have been doing it for two months.
Stu
(15:49)
Yeah. Absolutely. I’m keen then to understand a little bit more about the supplements because this particular space at the moment, at least, in Australia, I’m seeing more and more companies popping up, offering NAD, NMN, and a lot of other fancy supplements that I’ve heard about through listening to other longevity experts and specialists who were talking about similar things that you are right now.
(16:16)
Tell us a little bit about … You mentioned NAD, which I’m super keen to understand a little bit more about.
Alan
(16:25)
Sure. It’s a co-enzyme. It’s in every single cell of your body. If you didn’t have it, you’d be dead within seconds. It’s extremely important. The direct precursor to it is called NMN. The problem with NAD, the molecule, which is the one we want, we want to keep it nice and high is it’s very bulky. If you take NAD as a supplement, even if it’s in some form or some enteric capsule, whatever these companies try and purport, your body will absorb about 5% of it.
Stu
(16:56)
Right.
Alan
(16:56)
It’s a big waste.
Stu
(16:57)
Yeah.
Alan
(16:57)
NMN is the direct precursor to NAD, which means if you take NMN it’s a little bit of a smaller molecule. It can be absorbed perfectly well and then your body then turns it into that NAD that we need.
Stu
(17:09)
Right.
Alan
(17:09)
That’s how we provide NMN. Yeah. As for NAD, it’s extremely high when you’re young. When you’re a child, I’m sure we all know children that have injured themselves or something’s gone wrong and then they just recover like that. They break a bone and straight away and that is all linked to high NAD levels.
(17:31)
As we age, it starts going down in your twenties. It’s not good news. By the time you hit 50, you’ve only got half of what you had in your twenties and it just gets worse after that. I mean, I’m in my early thirties and I take two grams of NMN every single day, because I know the power of it, not just now through the science but also through personal experience. Yeah. That’s one of our most popular ingredients.
Stu
(18:03)
In terms of supporting NAD through NMN, are there environmental things that we can do? Things like exercise, sunshine, you mentioned fasting before as well. Do any of those things support NAD levels?
Alan
(18:22)
Yeah. They all do. What we’ll tend to find with these … I’m going to say longevity. I know some people refer to it as anti-aging but that has a link with anti-wrinkle and just looks and, obviously, that’s not what we’re interested in. I’m going to refer to it as longevity. The longevity world, most things that we come across, will be affected by getting the right diet, not being too stressed, getting good sleep, fasting, exercising, will usually all have a small part to play on it.
Alan
(19:00)
What we’re doing, as well as encouraging people to do all of those things and emailing out free advice on those things, is we’re super charging it. If all those free things or low cost things worked to keep our NAD at the same level as when we’re 18 forever, we’d already have people live until, god knows how long, because there are those healthy people out there that never touch a drink or a drug and always look after themselves.
(19:29)
What we’re doing is we’re now really focusing in on what’s the next stage? You know? We’re doing quite well with human longevity. Our average death age is in the seventies. It’s a lot better than it was 50 years ago and a lot better than it was 50 years before that. In order to take it to the next level and super charge it and make sure that people can stay healthy until they’re 150 years old, that’s why we have these interventions.
Stu
(19:57)
Fascinating. Yeah. I must try some. I’m intrigued.
Alan
(20:03)
Yeah. Sure.
Stu
(20:04)
Would you expect to feel any different if you were supplementing with an NMN perhaps during the first month, say?
Alan
(20:11)
Yeah. Most people do but, obviously, again, everybody is different. I remember when I first started, I started on one gram a day. I was taking it. Straight away, I felt the increase in focus, in energy. I go to the gym and the recovery was a lot faster. I could get back in the gym quicker because muscle soreness, et cetera. That was interesting.
(20:39)
Then interestingly, when I went up from one to one and a half, I, again, felt … I think what happens is you end up getting used to it. Your body is still working better than it was but once you’re used to it, it becomes the new normal, doesn’t it?
Stu
(20:57)
It does. Absolutely.
Alan
(20:59)
A lot of people tend to feel that spike at first and then it plateaus, even though, it’s still doing the good work inside the body. It depends. Some people take it and say they didn’t feel anything in the three months before they started feeling the benefits.
Stu
(21:11)
Yeah.
Alan
(21:13)
It depends what you’re looking for as well. Some people are looking to feel less fatigued. Some people want more energy. Some people want the joint ache to go away. There’s hundreds of different symptoms, if you will, that people are looking for and each one affects everybody differently in terms of how it manifests itself downstream. Like I was talking about earlier, this is the downstream stuff, what we’re doing is we’re fixing it upstream. Really, you probably get benefits in lots of different ways.
Stu
(21:40)
Yeah. Interesting. Sirtuins, am I saying that right? Again, it’s a phrase that I’ve heard a lot about in the longevity space. [inaudible 00:21:55] supplements that have come off the back of that as well. I’m keen just to understand a little bit more about what this phrase actually means and how important it is in terms of this longevity timeline.
Alan
(22:10)
Extremely important. Sirtuins are proteins that in your body, they do a lot of repair work. We have seven of them in total. The most important one is sirtuin six, which is known as SIRT6 for short. The problem with sirtuins it’s the same as, again, a lot of things in aging. We spoke about NAD starts high, it gets low. There are some things we need low and they get high.
(22:36)
With sirtuins, they’re very active. When you’re younger, they’re going around doing their repair work and hectically, at a frantic speed. Then as you age, the activity declines. They start being a little bit slower. That then leads to the decline that we call aging.
(22:59)
Our lead researcher, Professor Vera Gorbunova, also one of our board members at DoNotAge.org, we partnered with her. She’s been studying aging and sirtuins for many decades. We worked together to create the world’s first verified sirtuin six activator, aptly named, SIRT6 activator.
(23:18)
We’ve got a lot of high profile people taking it as well in the industry, which is great and, obviously, we have tens of thousands of our members taking it as well. That’s one of the ones where people take it and go, “Yeah, I can really feel the boost.”
(23:33)
Yeah. SIRT6 activator is one of our most popular ingredients and has great tangible benefits as well.
Stu
(23:41)
Tell me then about your supplements stack. Obviously, you’re … I won’t say a kid in a candy store but you have access to all of these great things.
Alan
(23:49)
I do.
Stu
(23:50)
What is it that you do? How and when just in terms of timing would you take these supplements?
Alan
(23:58)
Yeah. I mean, it’s probably better I don’t go into the whole stack now. I don’t know how long we’ve got. There is a lot that I do take. Obviously, the majority come from DoNotAge.org. You’d be surprised, the amount of times I do run out of things, though, considering the access I have, because I’m always on the move and stuff like that. You know, you run out when you’re in another country and they have to send it across and by then I’ve moved.
(24:22)
Yeah. Basically, I take everything that we offer except Short Sleep. Short Sleep is for people that struggle with sleep rather than … Most of the other ingredients are recommended for anybody that’s aging whereas Short Sleep, if you’re already getting good quality sleep, you probably don’t need to take Short Sleep. Although, I do struggle with sleep sometimes, it’s not because of any underlying issue. It’s because I’m always in different timezones and things like that. I use NMN to my great advantage to get over the jet lag and things like that as well.
(24:58)
NMN is … The NAD levels are heavily linked to your circadian rhythm, so if you take the NMN in the morning time, your normal wake-up time in the place you’re going to land, that helps your body, jolts your body into, “Okay, this is now where the NAD goes high” and it gets you into that circadian rhythm so that by the time you’re in the destination, your body is ready to go to sleep when it’s supposed to go to sleep.
Stu
(25:23)
Right. Fascinating. I was going to ask because, obviously, sleep or poor sleep would play a very large part in the way that you feel and in the way that you age. We look at sleep as the most important pillar out of all of the health pillars. Is there anything else that you do outside of that then to support that, given that you’re kind of … It’s a tricky one, because when you’re constantly traveling in and out of time zones, you’re going to be struggling to support your circadian rhythm. Is there anything in terms of exercise, sunlight, meal timings when you’re traveling that you would do?
Alan
(26:02)
Yeah. From a circadian rhythm perspective, sunlight is super important as well. If I can, if it’s achievable, then also I’ll go get a lot of sunlight at the time that I’m taking the NMN, the time my body thinks it’s morning, because, again … For those people that aren’t always on the move, the advice is definitely try and get some sunshine as early as you can in the day.
(26:28)
Not only will it help your circadian rhythm, which then, in turn, obviously, is very important to sleep and repair but also it’ll make you feel better throughout the day. Just go out … Even if you just go out and have a walk, you don’t have to do anything too impactful. Just get out in the sun if you can, because it makes a big difference to your day and it’s free. Why not?
Stu
(26:51)
Exactly right. Yeah. It’s all there. It’s all there for the taking. Exercise. Now you mentioned that you go to the gym and, again, so many different trains of thought and lots of different types of exercise and classes that you can take. Obviously, resistance training with lifting weights, all the way through to CrossFit, yoga, Pilates, all that kind of stuff.
(27:15)
From a longevity perspective, what are your thoughts on … Again, I use this phrase, the best bang for buck but I want the minimum effective dose. Which one should I choose?
Alan
(27:28)
You said you want my opinion on it, so resistance training without a doubt. No question. There’s still some scientific argument, as I think there always will be, because science is theory, right?
Stu
(27:44)
Yeah.
Alan
(27:44)
Yeah. I mean, for me, it’s very, very obviously resistance training. Not only does it help in so many different ways in terms of NAD, sirtuins and all the other things we spoke about but it also helps to stave off sarcopenia.
Stu
(27:57)
Yeah.
Alan
(27:58)
Yeah. Again, over the age of 50, muscle waste is just a couple percent a year, something along those lines. 1% to 2% a year. It doesn’t take long doing that for you to soon lose everything.
Alan
(28:11)
Then what we tend to see is once that sarcopenia sets in, we’re getting weaker, weaker muscles, that then leads eventually to a fall, where somebody might break their fall with their hand and break their wrist. They might break their hip. I know I surely know a lot of older people that have done that and as soon as that happens, it reduces their mobility. They don’t want to exercise. They don’t want to do a lot of other things that are healthy for them and their decline is like this and the aging decline and suddenly they break their hip and boom. You know?
Alan
(28:47)
From my perspective, keeping yourself supple and healthy is extremely important, extremely important.
Stu
(28:54)
Yeah. I have heard exactly that. It’s generally when you break a bone in your senior years that things go south, unfortunately.
Alan
(29:02)
That’s what the data shows. It makes sense when you think about it I suppose.
Stu
(29:06)
Yeah. I guess we want to be vital and strong and resilient. I mean, if we are living into our seventies and our eighties and hopefully our nineties, I’d like to be doing the stuff that I’m doing right now.
Alan
(29:22)
Oh, exactly. That’s why the mission is to extend healthy lifespan for as many people as possible.
Stu
(29:28)
Yes.
Alan
(29:29)
If you’re just to extend lifespan, I think it was Dr. David Sinclair that did a talk at Google where he said who here wants to live to 120? There was hundreds of people there and only two of them put their hand up. Then he said, “Okay. Let’s try again. If you could feel how you feel now, who wants to live to 120?” Then the whole room put their hands up. Again, it’s about what I was talking about earlier [inaudible 00:29:53] education piece, people imagine what 120 years old looks like and they go, “I don’t want that.” That’s because they haven’t seen what it can look like, which is basically you feeling as you are, your body still working fine, maybe a couple more wrinkles.
Stu
(30:11)
That’s it. Y’all are absolutely right. I want to be vibrant and swimming and surfing and free diving and doing whatever else I do. I don’t really want to look like Homer Simpson’s father dribbling in a chair, which is on the cards.
(30:31)
In terms of technology then, you mentioned that we only know a fraction of what I think we need to know about aging to fully understand it. Much like the microbiome, it’s so complex. Yeah. I’m intrigued to learn more.
(30:48)
In terms of Do Not Age, where are we sitting right now in terms of cutting edge stuff? What are you finding out now perhaps that you didn’t know five years ago? What does the future look like for aging where top technology is concerned?
Alan
(31:06)
It’s really speeding up at the moment. The good news is there’s plenty of funding coming in. Obviously, you’ve got research organizations like ours funding a lot of things. You’ve got governments have started doing it. We have private companies start to do it a lot more as well.
(31:25)
Jeff Bezos, one is called Altos Labs. He’s put a billion in. Google started one called Calico. They’ve put a billion in. There’s all these brilliant minds working on aging, so you can imagine how fast we’re finding out new things now and it’s fantastic.
(31:44)
Where we’re headed, in my opinion, is … I mean, it’s a colloquial way to say it but it’s going to be basically aging is going to be a choice. You’re going to have to … Let me put it a better way, because somebody will probably clip that bit and it doesn’t sound great.
(32:04)
At the moment, for every year you’re on the planet, you get another three months onto the end of your life just because of advances in science. The point is fast approaching when for every year you stay on the planet, you get another year of life because of how fast the science and technology is advancing. When we get to that stage, that’s when it gets really interesting.
(32:30)
Aging may not be a choice but aging … Your health declining will become a choice. That’s probably a better way to say it.
Stu
(32:39)
Yeah. Yeah. A few years ago, I read a section in the National Geographic and they essentially said that aging is just a technology problem and we’re not that far away from solving that problem.
Alan
(32:54)
Oh, definitely. Like I say, we’ve obviously already got products that can slow and stop the … Really, really slow down the aging process. We’re seeing it, 100,000 members, all having fantastic results. We can see it in the health outcomes, which is what we’re interested in.
(33:13)
There was a study released I think at the start of this year, it might have been the end of last year, you’ll have to forgive me, where they reversed the aging of a mouse’s eye. They chose the eye for a few reasons but one of the reasons was because it’s quite complex and tricky. An eye, it’s not like a bone, you snap it and you put it back together. The eye is very complex and difficult to work with.
(33:41)
Essentially, they crushed the nerve, so the optic nerve, the eye to the brain, they completely crushed it and then treated the mice with these revolutionary technology and within a couple of months, the vision was back and, obviously, they did all the scans and the testing and that optic nerve was fully formed again.
Alan
(34:06)
When you see things like that, you start to think that’s a big deal. Obviously, I think with most of these breakthroughs, the first applications will be probably on disabled people to make their lives easier. Then eventually, it’s going to come on to be available for everybody.
Stu
(34:27)
Fascinating. There’s so much going on in terms of what you guys are doing and stem cell technology. Then, obviously, the bio hacking world has got a whole heap of different strategies and interventions as well.
Alan
(34:41)
Yeah.
Stu
(34:42)
Just on that in terms of bio hacking and unconventional things that we may be able to do, I’m keen to understand if you could just outline from your perspective, say, the perfect day to really support your health … Let’s just say that you’re not traveling, you’re at home, you have everything at your disposal. From the time that you get up, what unusual things might you do? It might just be I get up and I don’t eat until three o’clock. Things like that.
Alan
(35:18)
The first thing I do when I get up is I take Do Not Age’s pure NMN. That is the first thing I do. I’m normally not out of the bed by the time that happens, so straight into water that’s on the side, get it down me. Next on the agenda is to try and get a pint of water inside me. Sometimes I don’t always feel like glugging a pint of water but, again, it’s one of those things that once you’ve done it, you’ll always feel better afterwards.
(35:42)
I like to exercise in the morning. That’s my time for getting the exercise out of the way and, obviously, not only does it have all those other benefits but it makes you feel so much better for the rest of the day. It gives you more energy, which seems like it should be the other way around, the energy to do it, but whenever I miss a day or if I have a meeting early in the morning and I can’t make it or I’m on a flight or whatever it may be, the rest of that day, I’m more lethargic than I would otherwise have been.
Stu
(36:10)
Right.
Alan
(36:12)
Yeah. I guess Do Not Aging. Then exercise, positive mindset, and always keep an unimpeachable character. That’s a good way to get through life.
Stu
(36:24)
I like it. No, I like it. That’s excellent. We’re creeping up on time. Just keen to understand that a little bit more about Do Not Age. What’s in the pipeline? What have you got coming up over the next 12 months or so?
Alan
(36:44)
The SIRT6 activator ingredient that we mentioned earlier. That’s had such positive results in the clinical trials that Professor Gorbunova rang me actually and she was extremely excited and said these results are incredible, after just a few months of taking it. She has suggested that we give the ingredient to chemotherapy patients and the belief is that it will prevent recurrence of tumors, which, obviously, if that is the case, then, I mean, wow. It’s really, really … It’s going to be big news, which is great. Yeah. That trial is starting soon.
(37:27)
We’re always looking at lots of different ingredients, lots of different products just to try and find … If we provided every ingredient that had a small effect on human health, we’d have 10,000 SKUs. We’re looking for the heavy hitters. We’re looking for the ones that make a real big difference to each person’s health and longevity.
(37:52)
Yeah. We’re currently in trials. Obviously, most of the trials don’t go anywhere because we’ll do it [inaudible 00:37:57] more positive effect but it’s not big enough. We want to make sure we bring something out. Whenever we do bring something out, there’s a lot of science behind it and we’ll only bring something out if we can either better what’s on the market or if there’s already an ingredient on the market that’s the best, we’ll match that and then we’ll beat it on price.
(38:17)
The important thing as well is to remember our mission is to extend healthy lifespan for as many people as possible. The second half of that is just as important as the first. For as many people as possible, if the prices are too high, then it creates a socioeconomic barrier and the rich people can stay young and then the people that are less well off are going to struggle. We’re always trying to bring prices down. In fact, we just dropped the price of our Spermidine product. That’s another important one.
(38:47)
Yeah. I mean, if anybody is unsure and doesn’t know where to start, because I know it can be a lot at first, first of all, we’re available at Hello@DoNotAge.org. They can email us any questions.
Stu
(38:58)
Okay.
Alan
(38:58)
If they leave their phone number, one of the specialists will call them back and answer any questions they’ve got. For those that just want to dig in and get started, we’ve created a starter pack that’s available on the website. It’s just a good little base of products to get you going and get you started. Then, obviously, we can build on that in the future.
Stu
(39:17)
Wonderful. For everybody that wants to find out more, and really dig into everything that we’ve spoken about this morning and check out the supplements, it’s DoNotAge.org?
Alan
(39:30)
Yeah. That’s right. DoNotAge.org. I mean, there’s a science page on there. Please feel free to read through, look at the references. Obviously, we’ve got all the product pages. There’s lots of information on the website.
(39:41)
The best way to be kept up to date is scroll all the way to the bottom, there’s a little box that says put your email in or something like that, pop your email in, hit send, hit subscribe and then you’ll get … We send probably two emails a week now just updating people on what’s happening with longevity and if there’s any new studies and things that are going on in this space.
Alan
(40:04)
Then it’s not just about here’s the news, here’s something that happened. It’s then how can you then use that information to improve your health because that’s what it’s all about, the health outcome.
Stu
(40:15)
Absolutely. Right. No. That’s fantastic. Alan, I’ve really appreciated your time and fascinated by what you have to say and want to find out more. Once again, thank you again for your time. Hopefully, at some stage, we will touch base in the future.
Alan
(40:31)
Perfect. Thanks for having me on, Stu. I really appreciate it.
Stu
(40:33)
Thank you, mate. Bye-bye.
