Can You Repair Brain Damage? Brain Wave Analysis & Supplements with PJ Sorbo

Hey there, I'm Claudia von Boeselager, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur, longevity coach, biohacker, and mother of two. Once burnt out and overwhelmed with chronic health issues, I've transformed my life and helped thousands of people do the same. I've even reduced my biological age by 17 years. Yes, I'm 26 again. Now I'm here to share the tools, strategies, and inspiration to help you live healthier, happier, and longer. On this podcast, I interview world-leading experts in health, biohacking, mindset, and performance, and share personal stories and learnings to bring you the latest insights and tips. Think of this as your go-to space for real talk about all things health and optimizing your life. Ready to unlock your best self? Let's dive in. This is the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. My guest today is PJ Sorbo, a biochemistry expert, serial entrepreneur, and brain health advocate who's shaping the future of nutritional science and longevity. He's the co-founder and president of GoMix Technology, HotBox, together with Dr. Amy Killen, which are longevity supplements for women, which I love. And he's on the board of Wavy Medical, a cutting-edge company focused on brain health, regenerative wellness, and longevity, which we'll be digging into today. With a background in cellular and molecular biology, PJ merges science, business, and biohacking to push the boundaries of human optimization. He's also built and sold multiple businesses in the health space, helped thousands optimize their wellness, and is now leading the charge to make brain health assessments a routine part of preventative medicine. As many of you will know, my mother is suffering now with late-stage dementia, so brain health is an area that is very close to my heart. Today, we'll dive into the science of brain aging, cognitive performance, and the cutting-edge tech that could help us stay mentally sharp for life.

Please enjoy.

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Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, BJ. It's such a pleasure to have you with us today.

Why, thank you for having me, BJ.

We were just talking offline, and so for the benefit of my audience, because you do so many things, could you give a brief introduction to yourself and all the incredible things that you're doing?

Uh, yes, I can. Uh, Let's see, where do I start? PJ Sorbo. I would classify myself as a serial entrepreneur, which I hate that definition at its core, but it really is a true description. The way that I describe it to people most is that I am in the health and wellness industry. So I own a portfolio of supplement companies all centered around longevity and/or supplementation. That is where most of my career back started. But then I also do a number of things in the longevity and/or anti-aging industry. Particularly, I've been involved with Wavi Medical for the last 6 years. And from that, I've started making various strategic investments into other data analysis companies, longevity clinic companies, etc. So I have some passion projects out there on the outer, you know, rim of the entrepreneurship as well. But those are kind of the main, main time contributors to my life currently. And a father.

And a father. Very important. Exactly. Yes. Can't forget about that. Can't forget. I'm excited today for us taking a bit of a deep dive into brain health and aging. We might get distracted and talk about a few other things, but we'll try to stay focused and on point with that. PJ, where did your passion and interest in brain health and aging start from? Where did that stem from?

Oh, that's a great question, actually. I have— I'm going to go really far back, actually. You'll laugh at this. So when I was a terrible student, just, I was, I was the kid that had a star chart all the way up until like middle school, right? Own it. Own it.

Be like, I'm the cool kid that got the star chart.

I was the cool kid that got stars. And it was wonderful. So my parents really were trying to figure out why I just was not great at school all the way through elementary school. And I ended up going into this gifted and talented program. I took this IQ test and the ACT and all these things. And Got into this gifted and talented program. And ultimately, what I had found, or what they found, is that I was bored as all get out. I'm like, why am I applying myself to school? This is— I just don't understand the purpose. So I go through that, help my academic career. And then when I got into middle school, part of the gifted and talented program is I got to choose a little bit of my curriculum. So I took a biotech class. And it was like just all general overview biotech. And one of the areas we had to write a dissertation paper. And one of the areas that we had had is we had a stem cell researcher come in and speak to the class. And we're sitting there and one of the problems that still exists is that stem cells are really hard to, like, is A, they're hard to stay, keep pluripotent or multipotent in the body. And B, we can inject 10 million stem cells. We don't really have control over the type of of tissues that those are binding to or where they're going. We hope that they're healing the areas that we're shooting for, but we don't really have a great way of measuring or controlling that. And so that is what I wrote my first dissertation on in 7th grade, cuz I was like, oh, I think that what we should probably do is find some way where signaling proteins or glycans or sugar molecules on the outside of proteins with stem cells, the tissues that's damaged, is there a way that we can actually Track it, signal to the stem cells. So I wrote that huge passion and it was like I just, I lit up about it. I go through the next couple of years and I was a competitive snowboarder and I think I had, let's call it, 10+ concussions. And my last concussion was by far my most severe. And I was up at a resort called Winter Park. And I went off a jump, came down backwards, hit my head once, bounced off the knuckle, hit my head a second time, and the helmet ends up cracking down the back of it. And I had quite a few cognitive issues, you could say. Woke up, you know, a number of hours later, couldn't remember things, couldn't remember who I was, all of that kind of stuff. And so as I'm going through life and I get through entrepreneurship and I go up to college, I wanted to be a doctor, neurologist, orthopedic surgeon, plastic surgeon. Still fascinated with the human body. I was getting out of my first business, which was a series of retail stores, and I'm sitting there and I had made a little bit of capital from selling one of our companies, and I just had this chronic brain fog. Like just endless— A, endless lack of sleep. B, just not feeling myself. I was somebody that grew up with a photographic memory where I could read a textbook and I have it in my brain, right? Um, great problem to have. And when you don't feel that way anymore, yeah, it feels like something is missing. It feels like something is off, right? And so I had a life mentor of mine basically call me and be like, dude, you need to go get a Wavi scan. Like, what the hell is Wavi? What is this thing you're talking about? So I go get a Wavi scan. They're looking to kind of grow. This was early, early Wavi days. And I see the technology and I'm like, this will change medicine. This is really cool. You can literally do a full comprehensive brain scan in less than 4 minutes with setup. I thought I was going to be sitting in a hospital. I thought I was going to be doing all this. On top of that, I had lost my grandfather very early onset to type 2 frontal dementia. And knowing what I know now, it obviously makes a lot more sense. And understanding the kind of symptomology and just even the onset of his disease, it makes a ton of sense knowing the contributing factors that you know about nowadays, right? And all the research that we're doing. But after getting involved with that, it just was kind of this marriage between my love of medicine, my love of human optimization. I'm going to caveat really quick. I got really addicted to bodybuilding because of my love of the human body and performance. And I was like, I believe that bodybuilders were the first biohackers. Like, no ifs, ands, or buts. It's fun because when you're on all these longevity forums and you see people talking about peptides or growth hormone or anything, insulin or whatever else. I'm like, we've been doing that 20 years, people.

This ain't new. This ain't new.

Welcome to the world. And I still think some of the best research in science that's been out there is the bro science, quote unquote, um, because it was just a whole bunch of us that were like, excuse my language, but fuck it, I'll try it. Like, what's the worst that happens? Who knows? So anyways, so that kind of all compounded while we was looking to grow and then just through, you know, a different network of individuals while we really provided a foundation to kind of continue to grow into this longevity space and it's just been a blast. Amazing.

Well, thank you for sharing your story. And so let's have a deep dive into that as well. And I think for people listening, first of all, maybe even to start with, like, why is it so important to have a brain scan, like to have those assessments? Assessments done. I believe, you know, Wavi, maybe you can talk about what the actual assessment is and that it's only 4 minutes, because I think a lot of people think of like, you know, the full-on EEGs with all the like cables coming off, something out of like a futuristic film. So why is it important to do that? And I'm sure everyone has experienced some sort of head bump, head trauma, head concussion potentially even as well at some point, and even more reason to, you know, really pay attention to this. So can you walk us through that?

Yeah, let me— I'm going to start at the beginning. Number 1, the reason that Wavi was invented was that there's a core fundamental issue in measuring the brain. So on a genuine passion scale, I believe everyone in the world should have a Wavi brain scan year over year over year over year. Before Wavi or other technologies that are similar, which there's not a whole bunch, but there are more evolving technologies in this landscape, right? If you wanted to go get a comprehensive brain scan every single year, what were your options? MRI, which is really just an anatomical physical representation. It's not a whole bunch of data. Also, good luck getting scripted for one with your insurance to just do it on a year-over-year basis, right? Yeah. SPECT scan. Awesome. Can be cool. Does it really show us that much information? And obviously, Dr. Amen is doing a ton of research with this. But also who has $5,000 to spend every year plus the radioactive dye that we have to use? I don't know if that's really something that I would want to do every 6 months to a year, nor do I have— does most of the population have $5,000 to $10,000 to do it. You have PET scans, we have fMRIs, right? But none of this is overly accessible, nor is it affordable, right? You also have EEGs. Again, accessible, not affordable, not something that's comprehensively done. So the true need for Wavi came from the fact that we measure every other part of our body other than the one thing that controls all of it. Right. And it was primarily due to a lack of accessibility and affordability. That was the initial need. Right. So Wavi is an EEG device at its core. We are fully FDA cleared. Class II medical device as an EEG. But what Wavi really specializes in is something called an auditory evoked potential. And there's a clear distinction between the two. We use the EEG to measure an auditory evoked potential, right? When you're watching something like Grey's Anatomy, right? And they're doing a brain scan on somebody that potentially is either in a coma or it's been in a traumatic incident, right? They're looking at an EEG, but they're also normally looking at something called that evoked potential. Because what it's telling us is it's actually telling us if your brain is still processing sensory information. That is what that representation is. It's called P300, and it's an unbelievably, A, reliable, and B, super efficient biomarker for just overall cognitive function. How much energy does your brain have to process information with, as well as how quickly does that signal actually happen, right? And those two numbers together make up what we call a P300 wave. And none of this is new. It's not like this is something that Wavi has miraculously discovered. Both of these markers have been around, you know, EEG's been almost 100 years. And auditory evoked potentials have been 60, probably 50, 60 years. I mean, we're talking 1960s, 1970s, right?

But is it mainstream? I mean, it's still not mainstream.

And I think it's because of a lack of ability to measure it. Right? Yeah, there has never been an overly accessible platform to do it. And that's truly what Wavi wanted to change. And that's what I believe we have done is I can now take a full comprehensive brain scan. And Claudia comes into the clinic and she wants to do her year-over-year wellness assessment, it will take less than 12 minutes, the actual scan is only 4 minutes. It's extremely quick. It's extremely reliable. It's an unbelievable baseline marker for, or biomarker for the brain, just like we're tracking blood pressure or cardiovascular health or our blood panels. We can now do a true baseline biomarker on your brain, how well it's functioning. And now I can compare subsequent scans against it. I can do year-over-year wellness assessments. I can do pre-post protocol. I can do pre-post injury and things like concussion and return-to-play protocols. I can do post-injury rehab., right? So when I was going through my brain recovery kind of area, I would love to make this blanket statement that hyperbaric oxygen therapy, you know, chambers are unbelievable for every single person, right? Um, and I think that could be true. Um, but when we're talking about the brain specifically, Wavi at its core is in a very dumbed-down, layman version, um, or, or just street talk, it is a representation of the mitochondrial support for your cortex. Right? And so anything that improves or impairs the mitochondrial support for your brain, we will see either fluctuations in that P300 voltage, right? The energy that your brain is able to donate. And so when you have a traumatic brain injury or a concussion, the best concussion or best definition for a concussion that I've ever heard is a metabolic crisis of the cerebral cortex.. And when you break that down, metabolic referring to mitochondrial support, crisis, lack thereof, of the cerebral cortex of your brain, we see about a 40% drop on average post-concussion in P300 voltage, right? And the unique part about this is— yeah, minimum, like that's the baseline, right? And there's a true lack of mitochondrial support. For the brain. Right now, that could be due to chronic inflammatory complex. We could go down the rabbit hole of concussions for the next 2 hours. We won't do that. Um, but kind of my point is that there's a number of things that can lead to mitochondrial dysfunction, right? You can have a perfusion problem, you can have a methylation problem, you can have a blood flow problem, you could have a chronic inflammatory complex leading to both of those things, right? So in my case, I saw unbelievable results with hyperbarics. Yeah. Which then I could infer that I probably had some sort of a perfusion issue, right? Then leading to lack of mitochondrial support for the brain. And then we have to get into the lymphatic drainage, the chronic inflammatory complex. But in its simplicity, having a baseline objective, true objective marker that I can't fake, I can't go in this morning and say, I'm going to think 30% faster or I'm going to donate 30% more energy to my brain. Can't. Like, it is what it is at that point. Right? Yeah. And so I have a true baseline objective marker that's telling me what is working or what's not working. And put whatever therapy you want in there. It could be red light, it could be photobiomodulation, it could be high-powered laser, it could be lifestyle medication, it could be—

H-POT, anything.

The true power that I believe that Wavi is kind of bringing to not just the longevity side of things, but also just medicine as a whole, is the personalization of medicine specifically for the brain and the accessibility of really truly building out archetypes and brain data that allows us to get way more information than we've ever had on things that affect the brain.

Mm-hmm. And get granular and personalized as well, because one person will respond to HBOT in a certain way, somebody else will respond to red light in another way. So there's not this one-size-fits-all, and everyone's trauma, concussion, et cetera, might also be a bit different too. So that's what's really exciting with where we are, I believe, with personalized medicine and what we can do with it. For people listening, PJ, can you break down like what exactly does this 4-minute assessment look like? And, and then how frequently should or could, could or can people have that assessment if they want to test certain protocols?

Yeah, great question, actually. So number one, 4-minute scan, super quick, right? It is a clinical EEG, right? So we have our patented headset, put the sensors in, it's a saline-based sensor. You're not drowning your head in gel. And for anyone that's had a traditional EEG done, I'm so sorry, because it's awful, right? This is coming from someone that's had multiple Yeah. And that's really the thing that Wavi does change is it makes it so easy to do a true brain scan, right? With setup, we'll get it all set up. And then what we're doing is all we're doing is a 4-minute scan where you're listening to a series of basically high-pitched tones. You don't have to do anything. It is a conscious subconscious reaction that's happening in the brain. So what happens is I snap my fingers, your brain and my brain process that at a certain speed and a certain So it comes in through your ear, it travels to your thalamus, and once it gets to your thalamus, it travels to the different parts of your cortex. And that is a P300 wave. And that's— we're just tracking that through the entire brain. You cannot control this, right? You could sit there for the 4 minutes, eyes closed, and we're going to get all of the data. Doesn't matter if you do anything or not, right? I think that the best use case for that me personally, is at the very minimum, everyone should have a year-over-year brain scan, no questions asked. And the whole purpose behind that is that we track so many different things. I actually think that we're at a point of data fatigue when it gets into longevity and biohacking, but I won't go into that because there's a way for—

AI can be very useful, by the way, I think.

But anyway, yeah, I agree with you because right now, I mean, I wear certain things, but if you want to track something, you can track it. Yeah. There's all of it, right? And at what point is it meaningful data? We won't get into that conversation. But at the very minimum, let's have a year-over-year brain scan. Here's the reality of it. You do not catch dementia. You do not catch Alzheimer's. You do not catch Parkinson's. You do not catch any one of these neurodegenerative diseases.

Or ALS as well. Yeah.

Yeah. They develop. Over a series of years. Yeah, right. Typically, yeah, the lifestyle choices you make in your 20s— I just turned 31, so the lifestyle choices— happy birthday! Thank you. Uh, directly impact my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, right? If all of a sudden— this is the use case that I use on a regular basis, Claudia— if you come in every single year and then all of a sudden you come in next year for your brain scan and I see a 30% drop in your brain performance, happens, you and I can sit down and we can have a conversation. We can say, what the hell is going on? Yeah. Why are we— what is correlating to this? And I guarantee you that you will find something that's correlated. You gain some weight, your blood pressure is off, your metabolic health, as far as your cardiovascular health, is off. Inflammatory conflicts, trauma of some sort, whether physical or emotional. Right. And the thing that we've learned is that emotional trauma can be stored in the body substantially and can lead to physiological issues.

And that's so important for people to understand too. It's not just, oh, I wasn't feeling happy. No, this actually affects your health.

And you know, it's a real physiological thing. I mean, like PTSD, however you choose to define that, creates physiological issues in the brain. Right. And the body. Yeah. So, again, brain is super powerful, really cool thing. Also somewhat scary. We should probably take care of it. Yep. So I can sit down, I can say, Claudia, what's going on right now? Why are we seeing this? Right. And we can intervene at year 1 instead of those same lifestyle behaviors continuing for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. That's where we start to see neurodegeneration happen, is the chronic issues that develop that go unnoticed. The problem right now is that we only scan the brain. When there's already an issue. I'm already forgetting my keys. There's already been some acute trauma. There's already been some sort of issue. There is no preventative module behind it. To get a little more specific, yeah, that's single use case. Use case B or C or D, we are the— I don't know if I should say this— we are one of the best concussion devices ever developed because you can't fake it. I can do a pre-scan for every professional athlete or every collegiate athlete or every kid that's on a football field or soccer or whatever. And if there is a concussion, I can know exactly how the brain was affected, the exact area of the brain was affected, right? And then we can monitor the child or the athlete's recovery, and they don't go back to play until their brain has returned to baseline protocol. The problem is we did a 6-year concussion study with CU Boulder, which was phenomenal. The problem right now— it was a double-blind, so huge props to CU for obviously doing this study. The problem is that over 40% of the time, the athlete is cleared to go back to play before the brain has recovered back to baseline voltage. And it's because we're using subjective markers. If you really want to go down that rabbit hole, feel free to do research on the impact test and how it's being gamified and how it's taught. I mean, I was taught as a kid that if I do, you know, if I do, if I act slow on my first baseline impact test, I can go back to play faster, right? Because we don't care about it. We don't care about the longevity. Yeah, when we're 15, we're like, oh, from the brain. Yeah, exactly.

Fine.

Yeah, I bounce off things still at this point. Well, when you hit 30, you don't bounce quite as well. It's weird how that happens.

And then you hit 40 and 50, and then you're like, what happened?

I love this. So there's concussions, there's traumatic brain injuries. There's just interventionally, how do we personalize medicine? And if you want to find something that's working for your brain, you have to have a scale. And I think that's what Wavi provides is a personalized scale for cognition. So Every longevity center, in my opinion, should probably have some sort of device like this concierge medicine. I'd love to get into primary care eventually, but it just— there has to be some passion there. It's a little different. It's very affordable, but I really truly believe it's what eventually allows us to change the personalization of medicine, especially for brain care.

Yeah, no, I think it's so fundamental is establishing that baseline, as you're saying as well. Obviously, the sooner the better so that, you know, Ideally when you're still in a peak state and if something happens, but keeping an eye on that. So for people listening, PJ, they might be like, okay, well, what can I actually do? You know, can I really repair things? Can I really make it better? Or is it better just not to know? So obviously you were able to repair your brain as well. What are some of the different modalities that people listening, if they were to go and do the scan, could do to implement to maintain a peak performance in terms of brain health state.

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Where do I want to start with this one? We are a— here's the cool part about being involved with Wabi. Number one, neuroplasticity is real. No ifs, ands, or buts. The things that I have seen, right? Are unbelievable. I tell this story because it's what sold me on Wavi, actually. When I first got involved with Wavi, there's a center out here in Denver, Colorado, where I live that used to be called the Neuro Laser Foundation. And they specialize in very, very advanced traumatic brain injury cases. They have their proprietary method of doing rehab, et cetera. Some of that's cold laser, some of that's photobiomodulation. They use SPECT scans, they use Wavi, they overlay everything, right? And they're truly looking at impaired blood flow patterns. They're looking at impaired functionality of the cortex, and they're figuring out where they're targeting that treatment. I came into their office to do a baseline brain scan, and this was seriously like my first or second week thinking about joining the team of Wavi. And there's a patient there that was in a 120-mile-an-hour— she was the passenger. She survived. The driver did not. Her— their skulls hit. And so tons of brain damage across the left-hand side of her brain. So I do a Wabi scan. The whole left-hand side of her brain is like no voltage, zeros, right? Absolutely almost no cognitive functionality. For me to do the scan on her was very difficult in the sense that there was a lot of emotional dysregulation. She struggled with speech. She struggled with just becoming very overwhelmed very quickly. And this is where I go into the emotional side of things. Emotional trauma has physical manifestations. When you have a substantial lack of brainpower, for lack of a better term, due to a traumatic manager, you have less energy to donate towards emotional stimulus. And so it's not emotional and physical, it's just overall energy. We only have so much that we produce. Right. So I do the brain scan and then it's quite an expensive program, but they've seen very phenomenal results. And so they go through treatment for an entire week and I come back and I do another brain scan. And in all of the areas that they had been targeting, I saw a 30 to 60% increase in brain function. Wow.

In one week?

In one week. Wow. She's— we're in the room alone because having the family, the doctors in there was just emotionally overloading. Right. So I get her through the scan and I'm going through the initial data with her upfront and I just see tears coming down her face. Family comes in, she's crying. They're like, oh, is everything okay? I'm like, yeah, everything's Everything's great. We're seeing a ton of progress. Quite frankly, I'm flabbergasted. And the whole family's in tears. And I just asked the question. I was like, guys, what's— can I ask behind the emotional? She goes, the mom goes, we have spent just under $300,000 looking at therapies. Wow. And she goes, this is the first time that we have ever seen anything that gives hope to the fact that her brain can get better. And her results from that day forward skyrocketed. Absolutely insane. So I followed up with them all year. I went in about a month later. Somebody that couldn't walk was walking on a treadmill and moving through the paces and able to form cohesive sentences. And She's now back in nursing school. There's— it's a really cool story. My point—

getting goosebumps listening to it, PJ. It's really powerful.

Wow. There's two points behind that. Number one is it goes back to my point of if you can't measure, you can't personalize. There's a number of things, and I'm going to do one more case study that kind of highlights that. Number two the importance of belief and the power of the brain. And that's what I truly believe allowed her to compound her improvement. Yeah, that she believed that she could get better. And so you can see that. And most of that was high-powered laser, photobiomodulation, all that kind of stuff. But then everyone always wants— and you and I have talked about this before— everyone wants the sexy biohack. The one thing. Device. Like, what's that one thing that's going to do it for me? What's the one device? Is it the immortal bed or is it this? Like, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars do I need to spend? So we work with Senegenics, which is one of the concierge leaders kind of for preventative medical care. They've been around for years. We did a 4-year case study with them. And if you're not familiar with Senegenics or if you're not familiar with Dale Bredesen, Um, if you haven't read— anyone listening, if you haven't read The End of Alzheimer's, read the book.

Please do. Dale has been on twice as well. He's amazing.

Yeah. One of my idols. Yeah, right. Um, it's not a hard read, nor is it complicated. And the reality of the fact is that personalized lifestyle medication is the number one thing that will extend your lifespan, your healthspan, etc. It's a low glycemic, anti-inflammatory diet plan, and that's different for everyone, right? I'm not saying carnivore or blue zone or whatever. I'm just saying whatever works for you.

And slap on a CGM, just for people listening, continuous glucose monitor, for a month, even just 2 weeks, just to see how your individual body responds to food, different things that you drink, sleep, exercise, stress.

You're gonna learn—

super informative. Yeah, you will learn about yourself.

You can start by downloading MyFitnessPal and starting to learn about macronutrients, right? Like, just education, right? Number 2, exercise.

The most important thing in my opinion. 100%, right? Yeah. Number 1.

Yeah, yeah. Arguably just as important as exercise, quite frankly. It's the number 1 thing that I struggle with. Yeah, just our life.

Getting to sleep, that's the problem. Exactly. And, and women need 1 hour longer than men typically as well, and plan for an extra hour in bed to get the full 8 hours ideally of sleep. But I struggle too.

Sleep science is a whole different area that I clearly need help in. But, um, and then outside of that, it really is just— it's when you put those 3 things, eat, sleep, and exercise together, And then I truly believe hormone therapy is very important. Um, there's a natural time— I, I would love to pretend that our testosterone levels as men or women, uh, or like if you're looking at some of the recent glycan research, uh, that Lippmann and some of those other people are doing, I mean, you look at the glycan aging, estrogen is ridiculously important for the inflammatory complex.

Yeah, it's like a longevity hormone that people have not appreciated as much. And you see what happens when it disappears in menopause for women, like their biological age goes up on average by 8% in one year if they're not taking any HRT. It's, it's wild. So this is research by Lykon Age.

Yeah, yeah, it's really, really cool. So long story short, you do all of those things together, we are seeing, or we saw on our 4-year study with, uh, Semagenix, and one sticks out to me, but there's hundreds of patients that are like this. With a 75-year-old male that I did a baseline scan on, brain voltage was like a 3. And for those that aren't familiar, it's not great, in all honesty. Traditionally, I want to see 10, 11, 12, 18, 20, right? The higher the better. And then P300 is named P300 because your brain is supposed to process that signal around 300 milliseconds. His was 403. So a third slower than it should. I mean, we're talking basically early cognitive decline, basically somewhere with that. And physical manifestations as well, you know, forgetting his words, not overly mobile. Signs up with Cenegenics, does a year-long of personalized. I come in the next year, and I'm redoing brain scans. And I— not that I did all the brain scans, they did all of them, but it just so happened that it fell on the same day. That I was able to do his brain scan again. This is a different human. Wow. Night and day.

And he was 76, right?

76, right? Cracking jokes, in shape. And I have all of his blood and biomarkers, and then I have his brain performance. He went from a 3 microvolt brain to just under 15, and his P300 speed went from 403 milliseconds to 300 milliseconds. Neuroplasticity is real at every age.

I mean, that's super exciting. It just gave me another idea. I wanna discuss with you offline after. And the fact that that age too, I know my father's 86, so a challenge for you, PG, let's see, discuss separately. But I know obviously as aging happens, hearing loss declines. And so I wonder because of the auditory testing function of it, if the hairs in the ears are, gone or depleted, does that not impact the results even if—

1,000%. Yeah, it's actually why we're looking at some collaborations with some major hearing aid companies. I believe that not only just hearing, but I also believe olfactory. And not that I want to go down that rabbit hole of like post-COVID olfactory, the whole shebang, cognitive issues, but there is a true correlation there. But when you're not stimulating the brain and those neurological pathways, right? So hearing obviously stimulates a ton of neurological pathways. So as that becomes suppressed, it's very similar to a muscle when you don't use it, right? When those neurons are not vascularized or they're not used on a regular basis, they do become a little bit more degenerative. And the thing about neurons is that they are somewhat corrosive, for lack of a better term, when they become devascularized, trauma, like We can go down that rabbit hole later, but you also can revascularize neurons, which a lot of people thought you can't. Now, there's an inflammatory complex, but there's some really cool research. I don't know if you're familiar with shockwave, softwave TRT.

Not an expert in it, but you can—

if you share. Doing a ton of research and they're starting to look at the cognitive side of things as well. But, ironically, it started with a lot of chiropractors. Doctors. But the results that they have with neuropathy are out of this world. Stem cell recruitment, revascularization, chronic inflammatory clearing. It's unreal. Wow. And so if you can do that with nerves, what can we do to the brain? It begs the question, at least, right? Yeah. But to your point, I think hearing is ridiculously important. It's why there's a pride thing. I think especially my father, my grandfather, I don't want hearing aids. I'm like, wait, you don't want to hear the world? Not understanding that.

There's research though, it can affect up to 50% of cognitive function because of exactly what you're saying, that lack of stimulation. It's like the muscle you don't use, what you don't use, you lose, right? And so getting on top of hearing at any age, you know, people joke, oh, you know, I can't really hear that well. Oh, you know, spent too much time next to a boombox or in a nightclub or whatever. It needs to be addressed sooner than later.

It does. I think there's a point, and I hope that we have a shift here where it's like, for me, it just boils down to a quality of life. Why do I wear contacts? I wear contacts because I still like to see the world. If I couldn't smell, I would still enjoy smelling food. When I travel to Italy or I travel to other places, I enjoy smelling things. When my wife is having a conversation with me, I don't want to say what 47 times and not from selective hearing, right? Like, there's a pride point, but then there's just a point where I would ask people, like, what is the reason not to? What is the reason to not get a brain scan? What is the reason to not check your hearing? What is the reason not to do your blood panel on a year-over-year basis? Because the reality of the fact is, although that data can be scary, that data is also— it's the only thing that allows you to make a plan of attack.

Research. You need to have the data. Yeah, I mean, yeah, what you measure can be managed, right? So, um, I think it just establishing that baseline is so important and knowing that there are modalities that can improve it. So it's not just, here's your test, sorry, the results aren't great, good luck. No, there are actually modalities you can do. Now, that said, and this is, I think, is the challenge, PJ, that I also see as well with, you know, clients around the world. They're like, oh, you know, I discussed it with my doctor, but they don't know what to do with this, or they don't know about this research, or they haven't read. And I think that's where some people face a challenge is that they get, you know, blocked completely by their medical professional because typically they have, you know, on average, what is it, 6 minutes per patient. Some people obviously have the luxury of having, you know, a physician that has a bit more time for them, but they're not up to speed always on the latest research and what is possible, et cetera. So where can people find the practitioners or where would you send them to, get these scans to know that they're speaking with practitioners that can put them on protocols for improvement?

Two things. Number one, Wavi is now partnered with a ton of longevity concierge practice. You can Google it and there's a ton of places that we are starting to roll out more on the preventative side of things. So Senegenics, Humanaut, Restore, like all of those types of locations will have Wavi systems. Number two, and I like to make this point not as a point of being on a pedestal, but it's just the reality of the fact. If you are expecting anyone else to advocate for your health other than you, you're barking up the wrong tree. 100%. The reality of the fact is you are able and you should be able to ask questions. And as you come across things with your healthcare practitioner, hey, I was doing research on something called the Wabi scan or this type of blood panel or this glycan research. I'm really interested in it. Right. And if your doctor's not willing to have those conversations, it's probably not the right fit for you. Right. There are the landscape of longevity or just, just regenerative medical practitioners continuing to come out of the fold and start to what I would say, break the traditional model. Is happening in tropes. And so there are practitioners that are willing to learn and to research and to ask questions. I think it's finding someone that probably identifies with the same ethos that you have. But if you're expecting a different result from the same thing and you're going in and you're not getting the answers you want, nobody can change that but you.

100%. That's Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting expecting a different result. So it's definitely time to change it around as well. I want to touch on a point you mentioned before about mitochondrial function. I've had guests on who are specialists, for example, on research around urolithin A, mitophagy, clearing out the old mitochondria, essentially like the senescent mitochondria, to clear and make space for the new ones as well. Can you explain a little bit more about that process and how Wavi can help to better understand it? Because I know we're talking about processing speed, but how does that correlate with the mitochondria?

This is a— I don't want to go too down the rabbit hole, but I'm going to try and keep this as surface level and detailed as I can. So there's two components to a P300 wave. There's the voltage and the speed, as I've mentioned, right? Our voltage is more of a representation of that just initial mitochondrial support. So how much— if I have a bucket, there's only so much water in that bucket that my brain store, right? And when I start taking water out of that bucket, right, that's where cognitive resources are being donated. There's only so much water left, right? There's not more there. I can't create more energy. So it's that initial mitochondrial support. So in things like concussions and TBIs, in, in quick short-term changes of that mitochondrial support, we will see changes in that P300 voltage. P300 speed, or that processing speed, Traditionally, we don't see changes in it until there's been an acute or a chronic problem where you're actually impacting the neurological conductivity between neurons. And, that can be from chronic inflammatory complex, what you would refer to as cellular senescence and what is leading to that. If you look at the anatomy of a neuron, you have your axon, you have your dendrite, then you have that little, those little fatty myelin sheath that line that terminal. What happens or what we think happens is when those myelin sheaths become devascularized is when we really start to have neurological conductivity problems. And, for a long time with dementia, Alzheimer's, any sort of neurocognitive decline or neurological decline of any sort, we thought that that kind of amyloid plaque was the issue. It was the cause, the root cause of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Which has since been debunked.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. There are a bunch of research. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars looking at it and saying, oh, this is not actually what's happening. And, in my personal thought process, I truly believe that it's actually a byproduct. And, because neurons become necrotic, when they become devascularized or damaged, et cetera. What I believe, this is a belief, I don't have the scientific backing, is that that amyloid plaque is kind of the insulator. Yeah. Right. It's an acute inflammatory complex that turns chronic. And what happens is that we don't sleep overly well as a population. And I mean that as a global population. Great. The only time I'm going to back up. We have this massive lymphatic system, right? We're only sick every so often. And so why is our lymphatic system so robustly built out if we're only using it very, very seldomly when we're sick? Well, your lymphatic system is responsible for a heck of a lot more than just when you're sick. Yeah, right. It is our, it is our body's way of clearing out the trash. And what a lot of people just don't understand is that when you are exercising, there's always a byproduct, right? There's sweat, right? When your body is using and creating energy, there is a byproduct, and that's free radical damage. And that's all that mitochondria, especially up here. If you just sit here and you lay here all day, you don't do anything, roughly 70% of your base metabolic rate is designed to keep this thing functioning. It is a ridiculously energy consuming organ, right? It just requires a ton of metabolic support that also comes with a ton of free radicals and a ton of mitochondrial support, right? And so when we look at that and we're not sleeping appropriately, there's only one time that your body is really stimulating lymphatic drainage and clearing out that garbage, and it's when you're in deep and REM sleep. And so when we say one of the key fundamentals of longevity is sleep. It's not just, oh, it's important. It literally is one of the net most necessary things that you can do because our body has to clear out those senescent cells. It has to be able to bring that garbage down. And you have these massive lymphatic ducts right here that do cross right over here. I wonder why they're there. It's strange. It's like it's designed to help clear the garbage.

Nature knew what it was doing. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, essentially it's like the whole, you know, cleaning system of the brain that happens at night while you are asleep. And yeah, so cutting edges on sleep is affecting your brain health, your cognition, brain fog, but even things like your hormone levels, weight loss. Oh, they're like, I can't understand, I can't lose weight. And it's one's like, well, let's look at your stress levels and let's look at— are you sleeping? No, I'm not really sleeping.

Yeah. Everything, right? All of the chronic inflammatory complexes that we come across in everyday life. I don't care what your thoughts on, on, on EMF, whether you think it's real or not, there are inflammatory things happening in the body, right? Um, from our food, from our lack of exercise, from the amount of environmental and/or other stressors and toxins. And so if you don't have a way of cleaning that garbage out, what happens is your system becomes overloaded. And then we're not draining, we're not cleaning the brain out. And so I know that was really long-winded, but I do think it's a very important point to cover because when we look at the brain and we're looking at those two components, although they are a very, very oversimplified version of cognitive, you know, there's so much happened, so much more that happens with cognition. Right. But when we just look at those two components of a P300 wave, I do think that they tell us so much. There's so much information there that we're just scratching the surface of.

It's an exciting space. So yeah, thank you for going down that rabbit hole. Do you believe it's possible for someone to have perfect cognition at 80, 90, or 100?

I think in my core, this might be a, uh, I think that, uh, Dr. Dale Bredesen and I would probably agree on this. I think 90 to 95% of dementia, Alzheimer's, and cognitive decline is fully preventable.

Oh yeah. And even, uh, Promoto, Dr. David Promoto as well. Yep. Is, uh, yeah. I mean, they call it type 3 diabetes and it's a metabolic disease. And I think that understanding helps people realize diabetes is preventable. So type 3 diabetes, i.e., Alzheimer's, cognitive decline, et cetera, is largely preventable as well.

I was just at IHS this last 2 weeks ago, whatever it was, out in New York. And, um, I went down the rabbit hole as you did. Amy, good friend, business partner of mine. We're going through just a conversation at lunch and I probably have an oversimplified view of disease, but I truly believe that everything is a chronic inflammatory complex. It doesn't matter what disease it is. I mean, seriously, in my head,, right? You could have chronic— you might have fibromyalgia. It's an inflammatory complex, right? Lupus, inflammatory complex. Dementia, inflammatory complex that's been stimulated by blood sugar issues that's just so happened to manifest in the brain, right? If you look at corrosive issues of arthritis, it's an inflammatory complex just manifesting in the joints. Right? And so, yes, is it an oversimplification? Yes. But is it really that much of an oversimplification? Probably not. No. So, when acute inflammation is great, acute inflammation is super important. If I slice my arm and there's issues, I need acute inflammatory complex to send a whole bunch of white blood cells there. I need red blood cells, I need vascularization, I need anything that's going to fight any contamination that's going to be in that area. Right? That's super important. Yep. When that inflammatory complex transitions to a chronic standpoint where the body is unable to deal with it or clear it, what happens in a wound? Gangrene. You get, you know, sepsis. You get all of those things, right? I think that we've been naive in medicine to pretend that that same thing just doesn't happen internally. I think that we try to label everything as just this massive issue. Of all of these different pharmaceuticals needed. And I know that this is a very privileged view, by the way. I totally get that because it is an oversimplification. But at the same point, the reality of the fact is that it is just a chronic inflammatory complex. And at some point there was a root cause of whatever that inflammation was. And so if we can get to the root cause of what that inflammation was, and it could be blood sugar modulation for the brain, If you can keep your blood sugar like this, you are less likely to build inflammatory issues. And it's not just one thing. I mean, like, not that I want to talk about HOP, but like, HOP has an ingredient in it called dihydroberberine. Yeah.

Share for a moment.

So HOP is Human Optimization Project, which is the amazing company that Amy and I started. It's, in my opinion, it's the most clinically backed longevity/anti-aging supplement that's ever been produced. And the reason being is because it literally financially didn't make sense to put together. It's every ingredient, every clinical dose. It doesn't make a whole bunch of money because it was— it's— we sell $600+ worth of supplements to people for $154. And it's due— we want it to be an accessibility thing. I was talking yesterday to a very good friend of mine And I think the point of longevity is an interesting thing because I think everyone has a different definition of longevity. Yeah, right. I still don't think that we as a population know what that term means. And I think anti-aging as a whole is an oxymoron. The reality of the fact is that you are going to age. It's going to happen, right? And longevity is this intangible thing that all of us are chasing, like, oh, guys, I am the most longevity person in the world. What the hell does that mean? What is that like? There's just not a whole bunch there. Yeah, I think the reality of the fact is that the general population is just sitting there and you can oversimplify it and you can say, well, it's super easy to exercise, it's super easy to sleep, it's super easy to eat right. But the reality of the fact is that I think most of the population sits there and says, I just don't want to hurt in the morning. I just want to have the energy to play with my kids, or I want to have the energy to even contemplate going to the gym for the first time. And I think that's where we in the longevity industry tend to forget about the core issues. Yeah. That core issue—

to meet people where they are.

Yeah. We have to. And that is really why we started HOP is we just wanted to give people a solution that met them where they were at, that was simple, that was easy, that allowed them to just say, if I have enough energy today to maybe just go to the gym for the first time, that's a step in the right direction.

Or even out for a walk, right?

Out for a walk. Or I slept better. Like, if I can give your body the metabolic and cellular support to help combat inflammation and aging and the lack of energy production. If I can just do that, what is the actual symptomology that starts happening in your body? Or maybe you have the energy to cook dinner instead of going out for fast food. And I know it's really simple, but that's where people are at. Yeah. That's the real issue that we face.

Yeah.

Thank you for highlighting that. I think it's so important because, as you said as well, PJ, like so many people in longevity space, are focused on the science or the molecule or the pathway. And the majority of the population are sitting there saying, I don't even have the bandwidth, the energy, the ability to even contemplate what you're even talking about. So how do you help more people? Like, how do you reach the masses? And it's just giving people that energy back, that will to live, will to make a change, will to change that neural pathway that is so ingrained on doing those unhealthy habits and step into it. And one definition of longevity that I love to use is it's not about living to 100, 120, 200, whatever these numbers that are thrown around in our space, but actually it's about stepping into the highest version of yourself, energy, purpose, vitality, and living like that for as long as possible. That could be for 2 years, it could be for 100 years, doesn't matter. But if you are living a rockstar life that you love, thriving and doing things that you love, ideally for the greater good and not just for oneself, you're going to live an amazing life for however long that is. I like that. That's a definition that I prefer to use.

Yeah.

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I love that, and I do think that that's important. And it is— it's the small things, right? It isn't the data. And I know I talked about data fatigue, but like, it— yes, the data is super important, but really the tangible things is I just want to be on this earth as long as I can for as much as I can with my daughter. Yeah. Now what does that mean? There's a lot of things that go into that, but I think that's where it's just— we tend to get wrapped up And I'm going to close the loop on that conversation. When you talk about chronic inflammatory complex, there are simple things that you can do in life to combat that, right? Going on a walk is one of the things that can be unbelievable. Taking a supplement like dihydroberberine or something that is in like hop has been shown to outperform metformin substantially, which is a pharmaceutical, by the way.

Yeah. And dihydroberberine is not. It's a supplement. And I want to dive into that in a second, but I'll let you finish your your thought, and then we'll talk about dihydroberberine. It was just—

there's just really easy— there's really easy solutions. Yeah. It was— my point behind that is that I think people look for one pill, and the reason that we formulated HOP the way that we did— like, here's the analogy, and it's a terrible analogy, quite frankly, but it's the best one I found. So if you have a better solution, like, please let me know. I'll never think— like, someone asking, like, oh, what's the best diet for longevity, right? And like me putting a strawberry in front them. Like, here's what you need, right?

Strawberry.

I think that's where a lot of supplements are at right now. I think it's where a lot of longevity protocols are because everyone is just selling this one thing, right? And I think the thing that we tend to forget, like, oh, here's NR, it is going to boost all of your mitochondrial support. Well, the problem with that is that if you're not clearing any of the lymph fat, like the senescent cells, like there's only so effective that that's going to be, right? If you don't have the methylation donors that you need for like the methyl groups, you're not going to produce that mitochondrial support, regard— no matter how much NAD you pump into your system, it's not going to happen, right? And so the reason we formulated HOP the way that we did is because it combats all 13 downfalls of aging. Every singular cellular process is focused on— so it's not just blood sugar regulation, it's also the mitochondrial support, it's also the calcium channels that are allowing calcium to be sucked into the bones, that actually allows red blood cells to produced, right? Like, we went through very methodically to think about all of these cellular processes to truly combat aging at a cellular level.

Which is amazing. Can you just walk through what is actually in there for someone listening?

Yeah, great question. 19 different ingredients. So your, your key highlights are spermidine. It's NR, right? Clinical dose of both. You have astaxanthin, which is one of the best and/or most potent kind of antioxidants in the world, both topically and ingested. You have dihydroberberine, you have a pre/postbiotic which is tributrin, you have full vitamin D3K2 MK7 to make sure that it's the most bioavailable version of it. You have a full methyl group in there. So you have all of your essential B's which are very, very important. One of the things that people don't know is that your B vitamins specifically, you don't actually produce those naturally. The only way that they get into your body is through food or supplementation.

Yeah, and I have to extra supplement on it as well. Like, I really have struggled ingesting enough.

And so, like, what, what the biggest issue when we were formulating HOP was just how do we put all of this in one for a reasonable price point? Wasn't, you know, it's just basically we're going to take a loss until we get to an economy of scale, right? Charity. Yeah. Whoops. But B, it was really finding the most efficacious versions of these. And so, there's a number of different things and we've tried to build out as much education as we can. But, that's one of the things that we're continuing to learn is how do we meet people where they're at with the messaging because it is a complicated message. It's, hey, here's your all-in-one longevity support, right? It doesn't really mean anything to people. So, over the last couple of weeks, I've been really diving into like Gemini AI and chat and really trying to simplify this messaging, really figure out what the core foundation of a lot of these products are. But I think the thing about Hop is that we tried to make it fun. It's fun branding. It's fun. I love it. Individual little pieces. Yeah. Not that I want to sit here and sell Hop. That's not what it's about, but it is—

Well, for people interested, we'll put a discount code so you can check it out in the show notes. And at the moment, it's just available in the US. You are expanding into the UK, I believe.

Mm-hmm. We are working on it. Yeah. But right now, just the US.

Just the US for the moment as well. I wanna touch on dihydroberberine. We've had Shawn Wells, our mutual friend, um, on the podcast, uh, a couple times now, and I think it's one of the most exciting compounds that are out there. I mean, there are many, but I was fascinated when I discovered it. Can you share for my audience why dihydroberberine is so powerful, particularly around the metabolic disease pandemic that we're seeing?

Yeah, for sure. So, A, we are in a pandemic of metabolic issue, right? Like, let's just, let's cut right to the chase. Um, the U.S., I think obesity rates are above 72% as a whole. Like, and I'm talking morbidly obese, right? Like above 32% BMI. Fucking, yeah, we have a problem. I think childhood obesity is now above 50%, which just irks me.

Yeah, 50% of 15-year-olds are either obese or overweight. Yeah. Compared to 3% in Japan.

Yeah. And so those are causing cascading metabolic issues for the rest of their life. And not that we need to go into what adipose tissue does for endocrine levels or hormone levels or any of that kind of stuff, but there is a massive onslaught of problems with that. Right. Look at our— I mean, if you look at male testosterone levels as a whole, they've declined year over year over year over year. And you wonder why we're having fertility issues like what we're having. It's not just the hormones, but like PCOS, everything. Like, it just— there is a massive onslaught that happens with metabolic disease. And metabolic disease, if I go back to my previous point, is a chronic inflammatory complex, right? Like, you literally are creating chronic inflammation in the body nonstop, right, from improper metabolic health.

It's like the inside of you is burning. It's like a house is burning on the inside. Yeah, so people—

visual.

Yeah. So berberine is a natural compound, but there's a couple of problems with berberine at its core. Number one is it's somewhat— inflammatory is the wrong word, but it's not overly great for the gut. It can be really rough on the gut, right, in its natural form. So that's actually the first thing that dihydroberberine does is that it actually is way, way, way less disrupting to to the gut, um, compared to over, uh, the natural version of berberine. Number 2, dihydroberberine. What it does is it helps keep your metabolic or your blood sugar levels like this. There are studies that have been done where you take dihydroberberine, and, and it works better with other ingredients, by the way. It's not just this single individual thing, right? When you have other ingredients that support it, like tribulus and a pre-probiotic, like it does help with the efficiency of dihydro— you could eat a piece of carrot cake just for an example, right? And without something like dihydroberberine in your gut, your blood sugar is going to do this. It will spike through the roof and it will probably stay elevated for an extended period of time. When you ingest dihydroberberine and you eat that same piece of carrot cake, depending on your metabolic pathways, your metabolic flexibility, flexibility. This is a very personalized thing. Again, to your point, why you should— everyone, I think, should have a CGM at some point to understand these things. But you have that dihydroberberine in your system, you eat that carrot cake, what happens is you're still going to see a blood sugar spike, right? Hypothetically, we'll see a lower spike, and what we'll actually see is we'll see that blood sugar come back substantially quicker to a baseline level. Yeah, super, super important. Yeah, super important. And so that's why for HOP, we do a twice daily dose. It's not just one pill of dihydroberberine because there is a half-life, right? So it's one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and it's trying to keep that in your circulation for as long as you can. People complain about that 2:00 PM crash, and that's normally a blood sugar problem or a mitochondrial support problem, right? And it's because you have this big lunch and you spike your blood sugar and then it comes crashing down and you're like, oh my God. Well, if you don't have that massive spike where it's causing glycolysis and you're getting all the glycogen sucked outta your body, going to the muscles, et cetera, different places, that energy stays sustained throughout the day or it's supposed to.

Yeah. Thank you for the explanation, PJ. I'm just aware of time. And so I want to touch on a couple of points before we finish up today. For people wanting to really focus on their brain health, what would be your optimal protocol? Or maybe you can share what you do on a daily or weekly basis to keep your brain functioning in a peak performance state.

So I'm not perfect, and, uh, you well know that. Um, no one is. Uh, number 1A, uh, educate yourself. It's the most important thing that you can do. And I'm genuinely saying it's not a sales plug, but if you are interested in cognitive decline or neurological issues as a whole, read The End of Alzheimer's. It's like 100 and something pages. I think it's what, 130 pages?

It's not a lot. Very easy read. So just for people wondering, and we'll link it in the show notes, The End of Alzheimer's Program: How to Reverse Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer's at Any Age by Dr. Dale Bredesen. But we'll link it in the show notes. And also, he's one of my first podcast interviews.

So simple. It really is, right? You want to eat right. And that— and I'm not saying— I'm trying to be realistic about it, right? It doesn't have to be 100% organic. It doesn't have to be paleo. It doesn't have to be just grass-fed everything. The more that you can get into grass-fed, pasture-raised, high-quality nutrients, organic, the better that your body is going to to do, right? But start small. And I understand that people also have different budgets, right? So start where you can start. The higher quality input that you're going to put into your body, the higher quality output you're going to have, no questions asked, right? That starts with getting processed food out of your diet.

Just—

and sugar. Yep. Um, I have a unique— we'll talk about sugar at a different time because I have a unique spin on sugar.

Ooh, okay. Yeah, I am.

I think, yeah, I think it's been villainized a little bit.

100%. I think within doses, and we know fructose elevates uric acid levels as well. So fructose is also, especially liquid fructose. But yeah, I have friends that, that produce organic stevia that's cold-pressed. No Mo Su, I'll put a plug in here, is an amazing organic stevia chocolate brand. It's genuinely delicious as well. No Mo Su, highly recommend it. So definitely want to try as well.

So, uh, eat high-quality input, right? Try and get processed foods out of your diet, right? Seed oils, all that kind of stuff. They are inflammatory. Yeah, no questions asked. Be— exercise, just any form of exercise is so ridiculously important. I'm talking walking. Yeah, move, right?

And several times a day, by the way. I think some people are like, oh, I did my 10-minute walk this morning and I'm sitting the rest of the day. Think of your body made to move.

Walk after your meals, walk in the morning, walk at breakfast. Like, if you could do a 10-minute walk 4 times a day, you will be in a better spot. People always look at the UK or Europe or Italy and these blue zones. The reality of the fact is that people are walking to coffee, they're walking to meals, they're walking all over the place, and it's not heavy, heavy exercise. I do believe that weight-bearing exercise, especially for women, is one of the most important things that you can do for metabolic health and osteoporosis or bone density, you need it. But outside of that, move. Last but not least, sleep. And I know none of them are sexy. None of them are this magical miracle thing. I do really believe if I'm going to add a fourth layer onto that, I cannot stress enough your hormone health. And I'd actually probably start there, in all honesty, for everybody, because The reality of the fact is sometimes, like we talked about, we have to meet people where they're at. And when your hormones are ridiculously disrupted because of everything that happens in life, it's hard to say I have energy to eat right, or it's hard to sleep correctly, or it's hard to do something. And so I think sometimes we have to put the cart behind— before the horse. Sometimes we need to go get our blood panel done. I made a lot of poor choices as trying to be a bodybuilder, and I will be on TRT the rest of my life, right? I don't feel great not being on testosterone, right? It makes it much more difficult to go to the gym. And so, like, go get your blood panel done, educate yourself. Women in particular, estrogen, testosterone. Men also, estrogen and testosterone. Yeah, it's not just about your testosterone levels. You need estrogen. It's very important for a whole bunch of processes.

100%. And Dr. Amy Killen is a great one to follow on Instagram. We were talking about it before, a mutual friend, on explaining this too. There's so many myths around hormones, hormone replacement therapy. It is super, super essential. So women are like, testosterone, that's just for men. It's like, uh-uh, try and see the difference. Yeah. Yeah. So I definitely agree with you that looking at hormones is so important. As well. And many people just think it's something for post-50-year-olds. Your life will change if you have hormone dysfunction to sort it out sooner than later. And as you were saying as well, with all the microplastics, all these endocrine disruptors that we're lathering on ourselves for years that are in our systems, it is impacting our hormones, our hormonal levels, our ability to think straight, to function for bodily functions, to even work properly. And that's, I think, the important thing for people to understand. The body wants you to be well. It wants to heal. But if it's full of toxins, et cetera, we were talking about lymphatic drainways, et cetera. Like if everything is clogged, how can it? So how do you free yourself from it so that the processes that this beautiful body, right, can start functioning properly again? So love, love, love all of this, PJ. And I'm so glad that you have so many different solutions across the space. Expanding along the way. Do you have time for some long—

say that again. We're just having fun.

It's all we can do. Just having fun.

Exactly.

Do you have some time for some longevity rapid-fire questions? Yes, of course. Okay, 2 minutes. What's a surprising biohacker longevity tool that has the biggest impact on your health?

Great question. Um, now you're going to laugh at this. It's not a shameless sales plug. It's actually one of our mutual friends Amatai with Young Goose. Yep. The topical delivery of certain compounds have been fascinating for me in my life. Absolutely fascinating. It's really intriguing. And they're doing a really great job with clean skincare. And I do think that it has made a substantial difference in my life, not from just like an appearance perspective, but truly like just a vitality perspective. That has been something that I never believed in skincare in my entire life. It doesn't work, it's stupid, it's whatever, right? Then your best friend starts a company and you're like, well, I should probably support it. And then it makes a difference. It's been, it's been, it's been surprising.

Okay. Yeah, I was just speaking with Anastasia, the co-founder and wife of Amitay, last week. So yeah, they're great. Young Goose, highly recommended for people looking at skin longevity and and keeping beautiful skin for longer. So amazing. What's one health experiment or biohack that failed completely but taught you something incredibly valuable?

For me, stem cells, personally. So when I was on my brain journey to heal my brain, I found myself laying upside down on a pregnancy table, shoving stem cells up my nose as far as as I could.

Um, self-induced, or did someone do this for you?

Oh, someone did it for me. Okay. Um, this is where it's very important to understand, uh, just what is happening in the body and what's actually possible. Um, here's the reality of it: stem cells are too big to cross the blood-brain barrier, people. It's just— they're not gonna cross. Um, so just shoving stem cells up your nose is not really going to do anything. Anything, for the record. There was no— other than feeling like not great for the rest of the day, not a whole bunch of improvement. Exosomes, on the other hand. But it was the learning lesson is it is like there's a whole bunch of experts in this world, right? And all of these people that are like, I will solve all of your issues, right? Do some research first. Just do a little background. ChatGPT is an amazing thing. Do stem cells cross the blood brain barrier. What you— first answer that's going to come up is no. Save yourself some pain and hanging over a table, a little bit of cash, because it's also not overly affordable. So let's just, you know, just learn from my mistake, do a little research before you're just like, yeah.

PJ, you've been involved in science and entrepreneurship. What's the best system habit or productivity hack that's helped you juggle these roles so seamlessly?

I love that so much. You're going to know this answer for me. Her name is Casey. You know, here's the thing, as someone that's become— that is neurodivergent, right? Like, and not that we dove into this very much, but I don't necessarily believe in the term ADD and ADHD. I believe in the term free thinking versus focused. I also believe in passion-driven work that I am able to hyperfixate on. The reality of the fact is that I think people don't like to be uncomfortable, and I think that's just innately true of us as a species. We don't like discomfort. And the reality of the fact is that looking yourself in the mirror sometimes can be extremely uncomfortable.

Yeah.

I was blessed to have, or I am blessed to have, an amazing assistant who helps run my life, and I I don't think that I could survive without her nowadays. But that's a very luxurious answer. But the reality of the fact is that like sometimes it requires you to look yourself in the mirror and say, where am I falling short and how can I solve this problem? And I think a lot of people look for a hack. But the reality of the fact is that you need to have the conversation with yourself first on where are you falling short? Is it due to a lack of systems? Is it due from a lack of adherence to those systems? Is it due to what is the thing that is preventing you from being the version of yourself that you would like to become? It's a hard conversation to have, right? It's hard to look in the mirror. It's not easy, but it's extremely necessary because the only one stopping you is you. And I truly mean that. Like, and I know every entrepreneur, everyone says it, but it really is true. If you want to get 1% better today, it means you have to look in the mirror and say, what is the thing that's not allowing me to be 1% better, right? Everyone has a different system. I like to use— well, let me rephrase this. I love having an organizational system like Monday or Trello or whatever else it is, but I'm not good at using them, right? So that's why Casey exists in this world for me, like, and she's great at holding me accountable for those things. But like, you can start with a damn planner.

Yeah, piece of paper, a Post-it.

Yeah, multiple posted. Yeah. And then say, is this working? So like, for me, that has been the hack, is having a hard conversation. What am I not good at?

Yeah, I love that. And, and understanding your zone of genius and seeing all the other areas that might not be in your zone of genius. What's a book, podcast, or resource on brain health and longevity you'd gift to everyone listening to this show?

Um, Number 1, as we've mentioned, I think obviously we're going to link the End of Alzheimer's in the notes. I'm going to give you a different answer, actually, real quick. The thing that I want people to think about is that your whole body health is directly correlated to your brain health. And I think we tend to separate those two things. I think we think that our brain is this own individual entity. And what we forget about is that it's a whole body system, right? What you're doing to your cardiovascular health directly impacts your brain, your liver, your everything, your micronutrient processing. And so the answer, which is an indirect answer, is start to learn about the health of your entire body and you will improve your brain. No questions asked.

What has been your most exciting purchase in the last 6 months of something that's, say, $100 or $200 or less. And we love specifics, brand, model, where people can find it.

Specifically for longevity?

In general, it can be anything, PJ. Oh God. Most exciting that made you jump and get super excited.

I am a consumer at heart. Ooh, here's my most most exciting purchase. I bought a little Lego set, and there's a point behind— a good friend of mine yesterday— I think that we have gotten to a place in society where we're scared to be kids again, to play more. Yep. The reality of the fact is that when you're a child, the thing that drives your creativity, your fun, your inspiration is just what you want to do, the things that bring you life vitality, etc. That is a reason for living. And so I went out and I bought myself a Lego set. And I have to be honest, I was the kid literally sitting there waiting for it to come in the mailbox so that I could look at it, open it up. I was like, that is fun. I think, I think more people need that.

More people need play in their lives for sure. I think it is so important to find and make time and just play and have more fun. 100%. I think it's really, really important. And for listeners, listeners wanting to know more about Wavy Medical and what you're up to, where would you send them to? Websites? And we'll link everything obviously in the show notes.

Yeah, wavymedical.com, hotbox.life. My Instagram bio has everything, so @pjsorbo. I'm just reactivating my LinkedIn, so I should probably get that reactive. So yeah, you know.

All of those. We'll, we'll link it as well. Beautiful.

Amazing.

PJ, before we close, you have a final ask or takeaway or any parting thoughts or message for my audience today?

Be your own best health advocate. If you don't want it, nobody's going to want it more for you. So you have the ability to self-educate. You have the ability to ask for services that you are not getting. You have the ability to ask questions and don't be scared to ask questions. I think it's one of the most important things that we can do in life is continue to ask questions, question things, etc. And it starts with you taking control of your own health.

Mm-hmm. And being curious. I love it. Thank you so much, PJ, for coming on today, sharing your wealth of knowledge. It's been an absolute pleasure. And thank you so much to your audience for tuning in.

And until next time. Hi everyone, it's Claudia again. Before you take off, would you like to get a short email from me to you several times a month with top tips, insights, and strategies to help optimize your life, health, and business. This could be interesting posts or articles I've read on life and longevity optimization, cool biohacking or lifestyle products that I've discovered, and other fun things to help you be at your best. It's a very short piece of inspiration for you. So if you want to receive it, check it out by going to llinsider.com. That's llinsider.com and leave your email to get the next one.