Can One Tiny Molecule Support Hair Growth, Address Allergies, Fight Inflammation & Increase Longevity? The Truth About C60 With Ken Swartz & Jessica MacNaughton.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, running, bicycling, motorcycle riding, things like that.

Yeah, that's where C60 does the thing. What they do is they'll put like a little bit of MCT oil in the water, and the water is hydrogen gas water, and the MCT oil, then they'll take that and it gives you like just a boost of energy, a boost of antioxidant activity. Like the gym rats and stuff, they use it. Those, those take C60, now they can lift longer, do more reps, and they can outcompete the guys that they know in the gym. They say What are you doing? You know, because now they've gone beyond anything that they've been able to do before.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Ben Greenfield: So, I have a confession to make. Last night, I got up and I had a midnight snack. I've got this almost near addiction to gummies. I'll eat CBD gummies and shilajit gummies and my own homemade aminos gummies. At the top of the totem pole though are these little purple things called C60 gummies. This gal named Jessica walked up to me at this health conference and gave me a couple of these gummies. It was before dinner and I was kind of hungry, so I ate them to satiate my appetite before dinner came out. They were fantastic. And, I already knew about C60 a little bit at that point, come up a few times in the podcast before as a pretty potent longevity molecule. And, Jessica and I got to talking later on. It turns out that she makes all sorts of different oils and gummies and different products using this C60. She's on the show, by the way. I'll let her partner in crime fill you in a little bit on what C60 is. So anyways, Jessica has this company C60 Power and she has her own story that she can tell you about how she came to use and appreciate C60. But, she's also brought on a scientist, Ken, the scientist, Ken Swartz. And, Ken is the chief science officer of C60 Power. So, he is a Master of Science and runs or has run several research science laboratories over the course of his career and also has done quite a bit of research into C60 and what it can do. And, he has his own interesting story about he got interested in C60 as well. So, my only interest in C60 is that I like to eat these darn gummies, but Jessica and Ken, I know that you guys have your own story. So, I'll start with you, Jessica. How did you get interested in C60? And I don't mind you explaining what it is as you go along if you want to.

Sure, absolutely. Well, my introduction to C60 was quite frankly accidental and it was this guy's fault, Ken Swartz. We met through a mutual friend some years ago and Ken was just getting started with C60 Power. And he said, "You know what? You need to try it." But I didn't know why, I didn't know what it was, and I was just a little bit skeptical. But after some months of pestering, I finally got on the bandwagon and started to incorporate C60 into my morning routine. And what I found, Ben, over a period of time was quite phenomenal for me. I had always struggled with really painful PMS symptoms. This is a little bit of TMI, but where I could, you know, a day a month, if I had the luxury of not working, I would just not work because I would be doubled over in pain. Also, in my 20s and 30s, I had a really short bob haircut because I couldn't get my hair to grow. Additionally, I was really suffering from allergy symptoms. We both live in Colorado. And I like to hike and bike and ski and I'm always outside, but I'm allergic to most of the trees and grasses here in Colorado. So for me, within about 6 months of incorporating C60 into my daily routine, what I noticed was my intense painful PMS symptoms just went away. For me, my allergy, I used to walk around with a Kleenex under my nose pretty much anytime I would eat or take a drink of anything, my nose would start running. That just went away. And my hair started to grow. So, within about 6 months of daily use, I was a believer. I also had noticed an increase in what I would describe as expanded bandwidth in terms of my ability to deal with stress, process information, and problem solve. I've always been a very analytical person, but C60 just helped me. It felt like my synapses were firing appropriately. I was just able to deal with stress better and to get through situations faster. But, the most interesting story I think is Ken's story.

Yeah, I want to hear about Ken's story. And, I'm sure a lot of people's spidey sense, skeptic sense is kind of going off because anytime you hear, "Oh, there's some magical molecule that does a bunch of stuff," typically we have to move at some point into mechanism of action, how it could be doing some of these things. I know Ken, you can speak to the science and I'd love for you to do so, but how did you kind of get familiar with C60 or get interested in the first place, Ken?

Well, it was— I was basically, well, after Fukushima and stuff, where I was looking for a new energy source and I had known about some suppressed technologies. And so, I was going to— so, I got together with some people and we were going to do work on what we call today the MOXY fusion reactor. And unfortunately, with the MOXY fusion reactor work, there was a lot of lath professors and dead PhDs associated with it.

Wait, what's a MOXIE fusion reactor?

It's a metal oxygen fusion reactor, and it's, I think it's the only world's over-unity reactor. We were successful in the research, by the way.

Well, it's like a nuclear reactor?

Yeah, exactly. You can take oxygen and a metal, fuse it together, and make new metals, but you can also release a bit of energy. On the one that we did and boil water or run a steam turbine and you have electricity.

So, he's trying to prove a more efficient form of nuclear fusion. That was Ken's introduction into needing to protect himself from radiation and he'd heard about C60.

Yeah. There's just too many late professors and dead doctors associated with that. We figured it out. Well, we figured out what was going on. But anyway, I went out looking for radiation protection for myself, my crew because I'm responsible. And so, I discovered this stuff called Carbon-60. Most people call it C60 as its nickname. Its science name is buckminsterfullerene. And basically, they had science research where they gave one set of rats C60, the control group of course didn't get it in, and then they exposed them to a fatal dose of radiation. The C60 rats lived where of course the control group died. And so, when I learned about that, I got a couple sources of C60 and we took it during the experimentation which was successful. And by the way, we're all still alive, so it worked for that.

Just a few extra limbs.

Arms and maybe a glowing eye coming out your head.

Yeah. But, the thing is I kept taking C60 afterwards because I had better mental clarity, more energy, and the afternoon blah you get after you eat lunch kind of went away. And yeah, I used to eat more carbs than I do now back then. And also, another thing I noticed is about 7 months after I started using C60, I went to my annual optometrist meeting and he discovered that my Druze, or dry macular degeneration had completely disappeared. Now, I've had it for years and it was slowly progressing, but it just completely disappeared. And he was kind of astonished at that because he'd never seen that happen. And that was a good thing because my electrical engineer, Gary Rodriguez, on the project, by then he had developed severe wet macular degeneration. He had it for years too, and it was getting so bad he could hardly see. So he'd have to give up his career as an engineer. So I made a a C60 preparation for him in MCT coconut oil because as some of your listeners may know and the others don't, medium-chain triglycerides, that's what an MCT means, it can be turned into ketones by your liver very quickly. So, if you've got some glucose processing issues like type 2 diabetes, having MCT in your diet is really important. So, he took a tablespoon of C60 and MCT oil for a little over a year and his severe wet macular degeneration completely disappeared and his type 2 diabetes went subclinical.

Huh. What do you think though? What if he'd taken just MCT oil? Is there some kind of mechanism of action of C60 that induces insulin sensitivity or better blood glucose control?

Yeah. The key about C60, C60 is what's characterized as an SOD, superoxide dismutase catalase mimic. And so, as we get older, superoxide dismutase and catalase levels drop within our cells. And, those are endogenous antioxidants. The cell has to make them themselves. You can't really supplement for them. Well, C60 is a mimic on those two. So, when you take that, it'll restart your mitochondria. And of course, we know mitochondria make ATP, the power molecule for 90% of your metabolism. And, that's what's really important. And, the retinas in your eye, which of course you have macular degeneration, are actually part of your brain. They're nerve cells. And, nerve cells are like 50% mitochondria. So, if you can restart your mitochondria back to a much higher level of efficiency, well, then the problems associated with that just go away.

Ben Greenfield: And, when you say restart your mitochondria, are you specifically referring to the ability to be able to take the reactive oxygen species generated by electron transfer and and give it something to actually attach those free electrons to reduce reactive oxygen species buildup or something like that?

Yes, that's exactly what it is. C60 actually neutralizes superoxide, which is the main oxidative radical produced by the mitochondria and the most damaging one in the body. And, it neutralizes it back into a regular oxygen in one step. Now, normally in our eyes, there's a— or normally in our cells, the mitochondria, there's a thing, superoxide dismutase, turns superoxide into a hydrogen peroxide, then catalase turns hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. But, C60 molecule just basically steals the electron off superoxide and then gives it to a hydrogen ion. C60 is kind of unique. It's shaped like a little tiny soccer ball. You can kind of see behind us what it looks like. And, it actually is the only thing in nature that actually gets a positive charge by pulling hydrogen ions from the environment and then storing inside of its cage-like structure. So, in the mitochondria, it goes to the outer membrane, which is positively charged, fills up with hydrogen ions that makes it positively charged. So, it kicks off from the outer membrane heading toward the inner membrane, which is negatively charged. And along the way, it encounters like superoxides, just takes the electron off, transfers it to one of the hydrogen ions, turning it into hydrogen gas, and then, of course, releases the oxygen to go back into the Krebs cycle. And then, eventually, it'll use up those hydrogen ions and some superoxides or hydroxyl ions will stick to it, makes it negatively charged, it goes back to the outer membrane where it neutralizes them, refills. And so, you can have hundreds of thousands of little C60 molecules bouncing back and forth between the membranes in your mitochondria reducing the oxidative burden and improving the performance of your body, your cells.

That's a lot of soccer balls. How do you actually make it? Is this one of those things you derive from plants or is it synthesized in a laboratory or where does it actually come from?

Well, it's made in nature. Originally in the Earth, meteoritic impacts make a lot of it. You can find it in the K-T boundary that wiped out. So, C60 was probably geologic deposits of it in the early Earth. It's hydrophobic, so it floats, but it's fat-lipid, so fats and amino acids are attracted to it. In fact, in a really cold environment, C60 would fit exactly in the groove of the RNA molecule and the side groove of the DNA molecule. And, it's hypothesized it was the original antioxidant of life because it has no toxicity virtually at any level and it neutralizes only two oxidative radicals, the superoxide and the hydroxyl ion, which the body does not use as signaling molecules. And, it does the job for both of those in one shot, whereas the body has to have 2 antioxidants to neutralize it. So, that's why they think it may be the original antioxidant of life. And so, when you take it, it's an SOD catalase mimic, it restores your mitochondria function. So now, your mitochondria are making ATP. They also make pregnenolone, which is the precursor molecule for all the hormones. And the second, or perhaps even the first type of second tissue type in the body that has a lot of mitochondria is the cells, the endocrine system. So, when you take C60, it'll restart the endocrine system in the thing. And, oh, by the way, how we make it is basically it's made in the same way it's made in the atmospheres of giant red stars. I should probably just do the whole story about C60.

Yeah, that might be helpful because when you're throwing around meteorite sites and giant red stars, people might be a little confused here. So, yeah, tell the story.

I think we need to go back just a minute.

Okay. Yeah. Well, there was a guy, Yuri Kroto, And he's one of the discoverers of it. And he figured there was a thing, a mystery in astronomy. There was something between the stars absorbing infrared light. And he figured it was one of these spherical molecules, a fullerene, but then he had to prove it. And so, he, the— to Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl basically proved the existence of C60 and it was doing this stuff in the— in outer space in 1985, but they got a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 because of C60's unique structure and its unique chemical actions. But, there wasn't a lot around. The way they make C60 now is kind of like in the atmospheres of red stars. I mean, the burnt wick of your candle has 0.25% C60 in it. But, if we want to get it to 99.99% is what you need for for your— that's the best, highest quality. Basically, we have 2 carbon rods in a light helium atmosphere, like the outer atmosphere of a giant red star, and they run electricity through it and it turns the carbon into ashes. And then, if you do it right, you get about 10% of those ashes turn into C60. And this is something also important that needs to come in is it's really important where you get your C60. We get ours from sublimated C60.

You said sublimated?

Yeah. That's like evaporation. It's purified through a process like evaporation where a solid turns to a gas then back to a solid. And so, that's really important because that C60 has never been exposed to solvents. There's other C60s out there in the market that they use methylbenzene to separate them.

Would the concern there be lower purity or potency or the introduction of things like benzene as far as a contaminant? Yeah. Methylbenzene is known carcinogens.

You don't want that in your C60. They just let us know we have sublimated C60, it's perfect. It's never been exposed to solvents. And so, you put it in the sublimator and it evaporates or sublimates and floats to the other side of the sublimator where it condenses. And then, it's taken off the plates and that's how you get 99.99% purity for the C60.

Bottom line, it's recreating the atmosphere of a large red star in a lab.

What's a large red star?

Oh, it's a— what it is, is our star will eventually turn into a giant red star. Right now, our star is burning hydrogen into helium, and it's like the yellow star we see. But what's going to happen eventually, the core is going to run out of hydrogen. And at that point, there's only helium left, so the core will shrink and get a lot hotter. And eventually, it'll start turning helium into carbon. And so now it's burning helium to carbon, so like reds, giant red stars are just really carbon-rich. And, because they're so hot, a lot of their atmosphere evaporates into outer space and maybe 0.1% of the carbon in the atmosphere evaporating in the outer space turns into carbon-60.

Okay, that makes sense. I think the first time I heard of C60, somebody was talking about it. And, I don't remember if it was yeast or fruit fly or rodent or human or what, but about it in a longevity or an age reversal context. Is that accurate? Has it actually been studied for that?

Yes, it has. And, that was perhaps the original study. The one that's really famous is the Bhatry study. So, they named it after Tarek Bhatry. He was the chief scientist on it. And, it's called the Prolongation of the Lifespan of Rats by Repeated Oral Administration of C60 Fullerenes, carbon-60. And, what they did is they basically They basically gave C60 to Wistar rats and they were looking for toxicity basically. But instead of finding toxicity, they found it increased the lifespan of Wistar rats by 90%.

What's a Wistar rat for people who aren't familiar?

Wistar rat is a particular type of rat that characterizes human aging. They usually die of cancers or cognitive decline or some diseases associated with human aging. But, these Wistar rats had no cancers, had no cognitive decline, had no diseases whatsoever. And so, they just basically lived to a really, really super old lifespan before they hit their genetic expiration date.

Ben Greenfield: Gee, how much of that do you think could be extrapolated into humans or have they done human research since then?

Well, they did it. What they did is because one of the things is the rats lived for 5.5 years and it's rumored that the last couple of C60 rats had had a terrible accident so they could publish the study. But so people learned a little bit from that. So they had another one where they, they used wild-type mice, and, uh, which mice have a much shorter lifespan than rats.

What's a, what's a wild-type mouse?

It's just, it's kind of like the mice that run around in the fields, but so they're pretty tough. They're like, they're, they're, they're wild, like. And they found, in that case, they found it completely prevented cognitive decline in the mice and it increased their lifespan by 11%. So, that would be more characteristic of what it would do for a person, 11% increase in lifespan. And, of course, you don't have the cognitive decline because one of the things you think about, what's good to getting old if you're going to be decrepit? C60 just doesn't increase lifespan, increases healthspan. So, with the Wistar rats and the mice, they stayed healthy, no cancers, no cognitive decline, problems at all until they hit that expiration date. And so, C60 just doesn't increase the lifespan, it increases the healthspan.

So, Ben, I think right now might be a good time for me to throw in a little disclaimer here because I think we're going into some territory with these stories. So, first of all, I want to be really clear, C60 does not prevent, cure, mitigate, or diagnose or treat any disease. What it does is it works at the cellular level to lift the oxidative burden. Like Ken said, it helps to neutralize the oxidative stress and the free radicals and turns it back into water. You can basically think about it as a fire extinguisher for your cells. It's going to blow out the inflammation and the oxidative stress and basically help create an environment at the cellular level where your body can do what it was intended to do and heal itself naturally. So, the reason why, you know, people are having different experiences with it, like Ken's story regarding his vision issue and my story with allergies and painful PMS symptoms and my hair not growing, that inflammation manifests itself in every human body differently. And so, what C60 does is it really helps to address that chronic inflammation and get it balanced. It helps to balance the inflammation, helps to promote immune support. And the best thing is at the end of the day that most people notice a marked increase in energy and mental clarity within about 30 days of daily use once they get used to it. Once they start taking it long-term, then other benefits show up that are unique to that individual based on however inflammation is manifesting in their body. So, the reality is as a manufacturer of this, these animal studies are interesting, but they were done on animals. There's a tremendous amount of research that's been done in human studies.

Yeah. And that's actually what I wanted to ask you. Besides these farm-strong mice and the Wistar rats, But, what have we actually seen in human beings with C60?

Okay. First human study, they put it in a cream for Japanese women and they found that it reduced lines and wrinkles in Japanese women. That's the very first one. They've also found that rubbed on the scalp, it'll increase hair growth, especially for people like Apasia. But, it slows down hair loss for men with male pattern baldness, but because that's a genetic thing. It's not going to really get rid of that. Also, they did other studies that— a lot of the other studies, of course, there's some studies you can't do with humans because it's unethical. So, they do cell studies. And so, one of the cell studies, they put human nerve cells in the test tube in vitro and then they gave one set of the nerve cells got C60, the other didn't, and they exposed them to a variety of neurotoxins. And the cells that have the C60, Nerve cells that had the C60 resisted the toxic damage, whereas controls, of course, were seriously damaged. They also found— they did that with human skin cells. They found that the human skin cells that had C60 were resistant to UV damage, whereas the other ones were damaged by ultraviolet light. And so, those are a couple. There's also some cell lines there. Well, we don't talk about the C word.

I don't care. You can talk about the C word. Now, I'm curious about this. There's obviously a lot of antioxidants out there, right? Pterostilbene or PQQ or glutathione or vitamin C or tocotrienols. Is there something in terms of the mechanism of action with the Buckminster Fullerene soccer ball that's making it act differently or more powerfully? If I were to rub vitamin C into my hair, would I still get hair growth or is there something going on specifically with C60?

Ben Greenfield: Well, there is something going on specifically with C60. There's basically the 4 really important antioxidants, especially with cellular metabolism. And one, of course, is CoQ10. You can supplement for that. The next, of course, is glutathione. There is some supplementation. And C60 actually does the job of glutathione in dealing with the hydroxyl ion, but that's only one of a dozen jobs that glutathione does. So, C60 will do that part of the job for glutathione. So, what glutathione you have, you can do the other jobs. And, you can always supplement for glutathione. But, there's two antioxidants that there is no supplementation for because they're endogenous, and that is superoxide dismutase and catalase. And, they work together taking care of the superoxide ion, which is the most damaging oxidative radical in the body. And, what C60 is a mimic that does the job of both. So, especially people that have mitochondria, low mitochondria function, especially as we get older, SOD catalase levels go down just naturally with aging and there's nothing you can do. There's some people that have certain genetic alleles which that SOD production or catalase production drops even faster. And so, for people that take C60, it acts as a mimic. Passes the gut barrier, passes the blood-brain barrier, is taken into the cells by endocytosis, and then into the mitochondria by endocytosis where the mitochondria seem to know how to use it and it takes the place of the missing SOD catalase. So now, your mitochondria can step up. And here's something— oh, by the way, I do need to do a counter-indication on this. Things that you'll notice if you're on a blood thinner, because C60 restarts the cells, not just of your nerve cells, but the cells of the endocrine system, And, the mitochondria in the endocrine system, the mitochondria make pregnenolone, which is the precursor molecule for all the hormones. So, your adrenals will kick back into action when you take C60. And, one of the things that adrenals make is mineralocorticoids, which are the important hormone for regulating blood thickness. So, if you're on a blood thinner, you need to you need to consult with your doctor and get more testing before you do that. And, another thing is there's a huge increase in libido for people that take C60.

You mean in studies or anecdotally?

Yes. Yes. This is just what we found with customers. And, part of that is the— well, actually we've had many cases that anecdotal testing. Actually from testing that we've had with that.

Ben Greenfield: I'm curious about this radiation piece because I fly a lot on airplanes and I tend to travel with iodine just because it's one of the few compounds I could find that actually has good clinical research behind it for combating some of the oxidative effects of radiation. When it comes to C60, you obviously had success with it for nuclear-based radiation, but have you ever thought about any type of mechanism of action or benefit that might come from using it for airline travel besides the fact that I just packed for a trip to Cabo last night? I always put 2 of those gummies in my backpack because I eat them on the plane. It's my little snack. But, I hadn't actually dug into the radiation protective properties or thought about it until you brought it up a few minutes ago. So, do you think there's a case to be made for using it in conjunction with airline travel?

Oh, absolutely, because what it is is one of the things that we're 70% water. And, the main oxidative radical that radiation produces is the hydroxyl ion. And, the hydroxyl ion is just a water molecule where the proton's been kicked out. And then, it goes out and causes oxidative damage. Well, when C60 neutralizes the hydroxyl ion, and then the second oxidative radical you're going to be running into from radiation is the superoxide ion where that loose electron gets on the oxygen. So, that's why C60 is— actually, C60 is the foremost radiation protector. That you can take.

That's actually really good to know. Okay. Now, it's my understanding, I think based on the way that you described it, this is technically a pretty water-soluble compound, the buckminsterfullerene. Is that why you tend to see it mixed in with MCT, coconut, olive oil? I think most of the products you guys have sent me actually, they're almost all oil-based carrier.

Yeah. Actually, C60 doesn't have really much solubility in water because it's nonpolar. So, we have to dissolve it in oil. Inside your cells, it's in the cytoplasm, so it operates there. But, yeah, so it has to be dissolved in an oil. And, we picked the best oils. Now, originally, everybody had it in olive oil because that's the original testing because olive oil is well-characterized and easy.

And, it's easy to get in Europe and it's cheap and affordable and they can use it for testing.

Yeah, but it's a little strong. And it would go right through me. So, I started, I was the first one, I put it in avocado oil. And avocado oil is perhaps the easiest oil for human digestion. And so, I find I like that because if I took an ounce of olive oil, I might have to visit the bathroom. But, with avocado oil, I don't have a problem. And then, of course, as I mentioned— Yeah, I mentioned before I put it in MCT oil for those people that have glucose processing issues. And, our gummies which you talk about, Those are in 100% whole coconut oil. So, all of our oils are all organic and those are the good oils that they have the right balance of omega-3s and 6s. We don't want to put C60 in seed oils which are inflammatory.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah. It's a component now of my super antioxidant-rich smoothie I have in the mornings. My kick right now is I do a scoop of the vanilla protein, the Kion vanilla protein, a couple scoops of the colostrum, And then, I do a heaping scoop of this phycocyanin, this blue phycocyanin. If you go to wellness juice bar, a lot of times they have those bright blue overpriced drinks. Well, I keep the freeze-dried blue in my freezer, put a couple scoops of that in, and then I use coconut water as the base and blend it with ice. It's like this creamy blue texture. And then, I actually keep the C60 gummies in my freezer. I take out a steak knife, I cut it into little bits, and then I drop that into the smoothie. With some cacao nibs and some coconut flakes. It's so good. I mean, I'm certain it's very high in antioxidant capacity. It's probably so rich in antioxidants, I'm drinking it too close to my morning workout. As you guys know, you don't want to take super-duper high-potency antioxidants right after workout as they can sometimes blunt the hormetic response. But nonetheless, it's a great smoothie. And, I wanted to ask you guys, not about the smoothie uses but about this hair growth thing. And again, I'd heard this before, the hair growth. What would the protocol be? Could I literally take your oral C60 compounds and do, I don't know, derma rolling and rub them into my scalp? And I even have this red light helmet in my office, maybe put some red light on there. Would that be a protocol?

You can rub it on topically, but you can also just consume it and it will help promote hair growth by just consuming it.

Is that because endogenous superoxide dismutase can accelerate hair loss?

Yeah. And also, one of the things that people notice that comes here, if you got totally white hair, it'll come back salt and pepper because C60 works as an SOD catalase. And not having enough catalase is the reason why your hair gets white. So, people come back salt and pepper. But, the main thing is it just gets in there and as we're getting older, there's just not enough or there's just the mitochondria action in our cells is just dropping. Because the cells aren't getting enough SOD catalase. And so, when you take that, it restarts the energy ATP production in your hair follicles and it just appears to cause the hair to grow fast. Anybody takes it also, you'll notice your nails will grow much faster.

Oh, that explains it. My nails have been sprouting since I met with you at that conference, Jessica. I probably average 2 gummies a day since then.

Yeah, hair, nails, Skin, the same way the skin.

Yeah, one of the things they discovered is C60 also increases stem cell production. And this was discovered accidentally. They did a study where they were— C60 is an antioxidant and it's known to suppress arthritis. So, they were doing a study where they gave these rabbits arthritis and then they injected C60 into their joints. And of course, inflammation in those rabbits went way down. Which was expected. But when they, you know, sacrificed the rabbits and looked at the joints, they found that the cartilage had regrown, which was unexpected. And then from there, they found out— one of the things is there's a lot of cells in our body, senescent cells, and you probably talked about it in your other talks. And senescent cells are like zombie cells. There's usually the DNA damage, maybe the telomeres are too short, and they go into this fermentation mode. Where they stop doing the oxygen process, the Krebs cycle, and they do fermentation. And part of that, they stop making SOD catalase, glutathione, and other things that the mitochondria use. So, the mitochondria are forced to go into the fermentation mode where they're burning sugar. As you know, fermentation mode, those cells are going to be producing alcohols which poison the cells around them and inflammatory cytokines. So, when you take C60, C60 goes into the mitochondria of senescent cells. It goes right in, restarts those mitochondria, and they will send messages to the nuclear DNA of the senescent cell and they will not get the right message back. And, that causes the mitochondria will then blow themselves up and initiate apoptosis, which is programmed cell death. So, when you take C60, it just wipes out senescent cells all over your body. Now, your body or tissue doesn't have enough cells because the senescent cells are gone. So, it stimulates stem cell production. I mean, we have a guy here, he had like 70 years old. It's best when they take out the apotrophic, the fat tissue for stem cells. And, he went in and they took the tissue out and then the doctors come running out and say, "What are you doing?" He had something like— he had 73 million stem cells, which is something like a teenager would have. And, that's because he was taking C60. So, a lot of doctors really like people to take C60 before surgery, and that's also the reason why—

After surgery.

Yeah, except of course you got to be cautious with the blood thinning component, right?

Yeah, exactly, for that.

And, that's also why—

that's the reason why they finally discovered is why the skin got better with the Japanese women on the facial cream because if you have more stem cells, then you have quicker and thicker renewal of your skin. And, that also applies to the gut. People that take C60 say that their— all sorts of digestive issues, whether it's leaky gut or other inflammatory issues in their gut go way down. And so, that's why a lot of people take C60 is for those things.

Okay. Probably a more advanced 2.0 use case question, but based on what you said about arthritis, Do you guys know of any regenerative medicine physicians who might be using this as a form of prolotherapy like direct injection of C60 into joints, for example, the same as you would do with PRP or a dextrose solution or something like that?

I don't know about injecting it directly, but we have a tremendous amount of doctors that utilize C60 in their protocol. In fact—

You mean orally?

Yes, orally. I don't know about any that are injecting it per se, but I want to say one thing here regarding the arthritis. Again, disclaimer, C60 is not going to cure anything. But people, we find very commonly across the board that it provides some form of relief in terms of, you know, the cracking, the popping, the aching that you experience with, you know, knees, shoulders, backs. Yeah. So it's, it's quite popular with anybody that is helping people with nerve spine, joint issues. We have a tremendous amount of doctors using it specifically to provide relief on those inflammatory conditions.

Have any studies been done on C60 and cancer?

Well, that's a— yeah, we don't want to touch the third rail here, but yes, they have been successful in animal studies. I can tell you anecdotal for humans, but we probably shouldn't go there. And, just because of this. It's a hot topic. That's the third rail. Probably shouldn't touch. Yes, that's the third rail.

Now, you've got several different kind of types of C60. You got the avocado oil. I believe you have an olive oil, MCT, and these gummies. Why do you have so many different types of oils? Why not just stick with one?

Really, it's about choice, Ben. It's what people prefer as a consumer. The avocado oil is great for people who are new to consuming healthy oils on a daily basis. It's easy to digest. You can use it, you know, as a— if you want to make homemade salad dressing, it's great for that. The MCT is phenomenal in coffee. It's great in smoothies. And the olive oil is great for folks that are intermittent fasting. When they break their fast, if they want to drizzle the olive oil on a salad or veggies or put it in a soup, they can do that. But it boils down to just personal preference and choice. The avocado oil and the olive oil hold more C60 due to the structure of the oil. The MCT holds a little bit less. So typically, the folks that will use the MCT will typically take a tablespoon. With the olive oil and the avocado oil, they can just take a teaspoon. But nonetheless, it's all powerful and it just boils down to what do you prefer, how do you prefer to consume it. And you're the first person I've ever heard, and I love that you do this, that you freeze the gummies and that you put it in your smoothie because we really encourage people to incorporate it into their lifestyle as they see best. However it works for you to get it into your system in your morning routine, that's ideal. And, I think the way that you're doing it is perfect.

Oh, don't forget we also have C60 for pets.

You mean for the skin or the hair or something like that?

Oh, no, for usually internally. I mean, we have actually some up on our C60 Purple Power as our YouTube website. And there's some— yeah, see, there's no, there's no, uh, when you give it to pets, they just do really great because there's no placebo effect with pets.

And so folks that have concerns about their aging pets with mobility, with energy levels, with cognitive function, um, you know, a lot of, a lot of our customers give it to, you know, puppies or newer animals. But the folks that provide the most amount of feedback are individuals who have aging pets who are struggling with some kind of age-related inflammatory issue. And, C60 tends to provide relief in the energy, mobility, and just the, I would say, the spunkiness of a pet.

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When you look at some of these studies on longevity, they'll combine, for example, like a growth hormone with metformin and DHEA to combat some of the potential for insulin surges from the growth hormone. You'll see other stacks of peptides like BPC-157 and TB-500 to hit joint pain from a couple of different angles. When it comes to C60, whether via studies or reports from your customers, is there anything that it stacks well with as far as something that could enhance the effects or mitigate any downstream effects or anything like that?

Well, actually, we found that using hydrogen water, C60 and hydrogen gas therapy work together like chocolate and peanut butter.

Why is that?

Well, C60 is kind of like a hydrogen sponge and hydrogen gas is also an antioxidant. And, it's all part of the process that C60 works out. We've had people go from mid-pack to champions in their field athletically. We can't name names. Oh, by the way, C60 is not banned by any athletic organization. And so, we have just many, many athletes use the C60, especially with the MCT coconut oil because as you know, MCTs could give you that extra boost. So, we've had some champions in the field.

Ben Greenfield: Well, what do you mean from mid-pack to champions in the field? That's a pretty big play. Yeah.

That means they went from 3rd, 4th place, 5th place to 1st place.

In endurance sports, so am I running or strength training or—

Running, bicycling, motorcycle riding, things like that. Yeah. That's where C60 does the thing. What they do is they'll put a little bit of MCT oil in the water where they'll have their people as they're doing the laps, they'll put a little bit of MCT oil with the water. And, the water is hydrogen gas water and the MCT oil, then they'll take that and it gives you just a boost of energy, a boost of antioxidant activity, Because people that take C60, like the gym rats and stuff that use it, I mean, they can all— those take C60, now they can lift longer, do more reps, and they can outcompete the guys that they know in the gym. They say, "What are you doing?" because now they've gone beyond anything that they've been able to do before.

Ben Greenfield: It's kind of funny you bring this up too because my airplane bag is the gummies, then hydrogen tablets, ketone esters, and magnesium. That's kind of my antioxidative airline travel stack?

Well, to your question about stacking, one of our doctors that works with a— he's not our doctor, he's just a doctor that utilizes C60 in his practice, but he works with quite a significant amount of professional and retired athletes, some of them who have traumatic brain injury. And in terms of stacking, What he shared with us is that he's got a mitochondrial supplement that he's created, but he does the ketone esters along with the C60. And, that is his morning routine with his coffee. And, he's an athlete himself and he's like, "I'm performing better, thinking better than I have in my entire life." Ben Greenfield: And, are there new products that you guys have your eyes on developing that use C60 besides taking my smoothie recipe and Yeah, so we've been creating a topical line and we're going to have additional products coming out here in the next year. But, you know, Ken's comment about the human studies with Japanese women, we've created a C60 Youth Renewal Eye Cream, which is phenomenal for the delicate skin around your eyes. We have a C60 Anti-Gravity Serum, which is specifically designed to help lift and improve the quality and youthfulness of the skin. We also have C60 Sexy, which is an edible massage oil.

Oh, it's edible. I didn't realize that. You sent me some. I forgot the edible part. That's good to know.

It works wonders both for men and for women, especially if there are any dryness issues. This is safe anywhere.

Yeah. And, that's the other one of the big side effects of C60 is a significant increase in libido in both men than women.

Why do you think that would happen? I mean, usually an antioxidant doesn't have a direct impact on libido.

Well, what it does is C60 restarts the mitochondria, especially in your adrenals, and the mitochondria make pregnenolone. So, you're now got huge increase in androgens. And so, people get better sleep because you're going to get more melatonin, more HCL and other things in your hypothalamus and the stuff in your pituitary. And also, your adrenals, of course, make the androgens which then are turned into testosterone, estrogen, And so, that's another thing that people notice is bodylifters, when they take C60, they can add extra muscle mass, especially for older bodylifters. And also, for instance, as example, typical, we had a guy, 70 years old, he goes to his doctor, he's got 350, right, in testosterone levels, which are pretty low. The doctor puts him on creams, he's low 700s. Then, he takes C60, a couple months later, he goes into his doctor, his testosterone levels are 1,200. So, the doctor backs them off on the creams a little bit.

I want to kind of just weigh in here on this because it sounds a little bit too good to be true. The reality is it helps to balance out hormones by activating pregnenolone. So, you can see a gradual lift. Again, it's not a drug. So, this is not a miracle end-all be-all. This is a very powerful antioxidant that, again, helps to neutralize the free radicals and the oxidative stress. It just helps to create that environment where your body can do what it's supposed to do naturally. But that being said, Ben, it's not for everyone. It's really well-intended for— it's best for people that are on the healthy lifestyle choice bandwagon because it works well with that. For the folks, people are drinking alcohol every single day and eating fast food, C60 might not be the thing for you. It's very expensive. It's expensive to manufacture and it works best when you're already on your path of you know, being considerate about your quality of sleep, your, your daily movement, exercise, you know, staying hydrated. And it works great with other supplements. So if you already are on a protocol or if you've plateaued and you're not experiencing, you know, great results on your existing protocol, if you incorporate C60 and it can kind of help boost it and get you back on the right track.

Ben Greenfield: That surprises me you describe it like that because I would expect a lifestyle and diet pattern that creates more oxidative stress to be in a population that would benefit more from C60 and that people who are already healthy arguably creating more endogenous antioxidants and getting more of them from food-based sources like polyphenols and flavonols might be people for whom C60 is like the icing on the cake. Whereas people with a very stressful oxidative lifestyle would really benefit from it.

Well, the thing is that oftentimes we found that the folks that aren't embracing those healthy lifestyle choices, they're expecting a reaction like a drug and that's not what C60 is. They tend to get very frustrated if they don't have immediate response. And, those individuals we found typically aren't dialed in to subtle energies or shifts in their body. And so, they're quick to quick. They're also quick to not incorporate it and follow a 30-day test about what's going to happen with those shifts. And so, I think it's not that it wouldn't or couldn't benefit them, but they might just not be successful using it because they're going to expect something, like some kind of reaction they would get from a drug. And, that's not what C60 is. Like I said, it's a powerful antioxidant and it takes time. It took a long time for your body to develop any issues related to chronic inflammation and it's going to take time to work those issues out. And it's a process. The healing journey is a process. And so, we think it's best suited for folks that are committed to that and they're doing a lot of different things to support their body and they want to have quality of life at every stage and phase of life.

Okay, that makes sense. And is it naturally— this is a weird question, but I've always wondered this. Is it naturally purplish blue or do you have some kind of tomfoolery trickery you're doing in your labs to make it purple?

Yeah. Actually, I don't know how well it comes. Yeah, it's actually purple. If you dissolve it in MCT oil, it turns it a purple color and that's why the company's name was originally Purple Power because it kind of turns it a purple color. And, that's just the color of C60. C60 dissolved in oil turns it purple. So, MCT, it's purple. And, Avocado or olive oil, it turns it like a dark amber. And so, it should be clear. So, you can actually tell the purity and quality of your C60 by just looking at the oil color.

Okay, got it. Is it heat stable? Obviously, I keep the gummies in the freezer just because I like the texture, but I'm curious if these oils should be kept cool.

Just like with any oil, they should be taken care of. Best to keep it out of the sun and also don't heat it up. But, C60 actually extends the lifespan of oils. For rancidity, but it's just respected as a regular oil. But, we have about 2-year lifespan on the avocado olive oil. The MCT oil, it's still good after 5 years.

But, Ben, to answer your question, you don't want to cook with it. It's not intended as a cooking oil, so you do not want to heat it up. You can add it to coffee or to tea or to smoothies or salads or soups afterwards, But don't, it's not a cooking oil.

How competitive is the market in C60? Because obviously, I've seen it becoming more popular. You guys are one company where we just kind of got lucky and connected at that health conference, the Consumer Health Summit, Jessica, and I've been a fan ever since. So, I really haven't looked into the marketplace, but is it a pretty saturated marketplace with C60?

You know what, there's about 38 different companies that have popped up over the last 5 years doing what we do. And there's a handful I would say I can identify about 3 or 4 companies outside of ours that are doing a good job. But the reality has been most of them, most of the other competitors are getting their supply from one single source that is using that—

that benzene extraction.

Yeah. And they're all getting it from that company. And then they've— that company has created some special unique names for C60 as kind of like a marketing gimmick to pretend like it's better other than being a solvent-based C60. So, the bottom line is that quality matters. You want 99.99% pure C60 sublimated or sublimed if you can get it. And, you really want to be conscious of the oils that they're using. Some companies are selling C60, for example, in sunflower oil. You don't want to be consuming sunflower oil. That causes inflammation.

Well, it depends. I mean, if it's cold-pressed, cold-extracted, it's very difficult to find. Andreas Seed Oils up in Canada, they do a pretty decent sunflower extract, but you still got to be pretty careful with sunflower.

Yeah. So, the other thing is we third-party test every single manufacturing run for quality, for safety, for bioavailability, and for purity. So, that information is available on all of our products. We have a QR code that you can scan on everything and see that.

And it should be important. There's some people out there more than a few that have no C60 in their product.

It's like an activated charcoal.

Yes, low-quality C60, low concentrations of C60. But, we send it to third-party testing and you can get the actual C60 concentration and no microbiologic contamination. So, your product is safe and effective. And so, I believe we're the only company that actually does that that has the QR code.

And, do you guys think you're going to make anything else besides the oil products and the gummies?

Yeah. I mean, I think going down this path with the skincare, we're going to continue to roll out different products with C60 that are great for the human body, clean products for the human body.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Could you do meal replacement shakes, bars, things like that with this? It seems like it'd be kind of low-hanging fruit to do what you do with the gummies but do that as a bar-based food product or something like that.

And let's just say things are in also maybe perhaps even beverages type of stuff. But, that's future products that are under development and we don't want to talk too much about that.

Okay.

But, there will be more things like that coming out, absolutely.

Well, these are really cool products. I recommend if people want to try anything, if you're like me, try the gummies. If you don't like gummies, I would say like Jessica and Ken said, maybe start with the olive oil so you got some kind of palatable or even the avocado oil. The MCT oil can be an acquired taste. Don't overdo it if you don't want so-called disaster pants. But, the MCT is a flavor enhancer as well. So, it works really great just sprinkled on the food or spread on the food. So anyways, I'll link to your website. I know you guys have a discount code for us and all that good stuff. So, I'll put that at BenGreenfieldLife.com/PurplePowerPodcast. Anything else you guys wanted to share while I have you on? Yeah.

I think you'd asked about the human studies, and I think it's important to mention just— and Ken could dive in here a little bit deeper, but the C60 in human studies has been proven to promote a balanced immune response and also a balanced allergic response. And that's part of the reason why my seasonal allergies, why I've been able to experience some relief, is specifically because it can keep that overreaction in your body at bay, basically keep a cytokine storm from freaking out. The other thing is I want to mention to Ben, because I know we talked about this in passing, that over the last couple years with the pandemic flu, we haven't talked much about that at all intentionally, but the reality is folks that have suffered from long haulers, oftentimes they're dealing with chronic fatigue and just the inability for their brain to function appropriately. And so, we have anecdotally gotten a tremendous amount of feedback from people who've said, "I've tried a tremendous amount of different supplements or things that they think could help and C60 has been the thing that's moved the needle for them specifically because of supporting the mitochondrial function and addressing the oxidative stress and the free radicals." Yeah, we get reports of that all the time.

It's like the only thing that's ever worked is for us.

So, if I can say one thing about C60, if people are struggling with one issue, because we've covered a variety of things today and to your point in the beginning, maybe your spidey senses are going off, it really helps support energy and mental clarity. And that's the bottom line. And over the age of 40, our bodies are producing less antioxidants naturally. And so, C60 is helping to just support and balance that. And that's what it does. It's, again, not a cure, not going to treat anything or mitigate a disease or prevent any diseases, but over the age of 40 when your body is producing less antioxidants, it's just a supportive powerful antioxidant to help address that inflammation. And, being in the flu and cold season right now in the middle of winter, it's a great time to try it if you're just curious.

Ben Greenfield: Excellent. Okay, cool. This gives us a lot of use cases. And again, I'm biased but I recommend freezing some gummies and drop them into your smoothie. But however you guys listening in, want to use it, I recommend you try this stuff. It's actually pretty cool. And, if you do dig into the research, there is some solid research. This isn't just all hype and anecdotes. Yeah.

There's a site called whatisc60.org. It's like a 501. And so, you can go there to learn about all the studies.

Yeah. I like some of those third-party independent websites like the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation for hydrogen research where they're not selling you stuff, they're just showing you the actual the actual data on it. So, that's useful. Now, what was the name of that website again, Ken?

It's whatisc60.org for the animal studies and just for overall comprehensive studies. And then, if you want to go to the human studies specifically, you can go to shopc60.com/research.

Okay, cool. I'll link to those in the shownotes as well, bengreenfieldlife.com/purplepowerpodcast. Jessica and Ken, thank you so much. I've been excited to talk ever since I met you at the conference, Jessica, and became a user. So, I appreciate you guys filling us in.

Thanks so much, Ben. It was an honor, pleasure.

Alright, folks. I'm Ben Greenfield along with Jessica and Ken from C60 Power signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an amazing week.

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