Health, Longevity & Functional Medicine to Naturally Enhance Immune System with Dr. Jeffrey Bland

Longevity and good health is within our grasp. Our human culture right now is undergoing a lot of stress. It's a lot of turmoil, and we need to turn the goodness of human beings, which is in our nature, into the dominant theme for our future. And that starts with us being healthy.

This episode is brought to you by LiLa Quantum Tech. In the past two centuries, our understanding of longevity has revolutionized. From a mere 30 years average lifespan in 1800, to nearly 80 years today, we've made incredible strides. Now it's time to embrace the future of aging with Lila Quantum Tech. Lila Quantum Tech brings you products charged with quantum energy, designed to restore balance and vitality. These products can help in managing stress, improving sleep quality, and promoting mental clarity, contributing to a younger biological age. Our modern lifestyles can accelerate aging, and EMF radiation is everywhere. With Leela Quantum Tech, you can combat this trend and focus on utilizing the balancing effects of quantum energy to maintain your youthfulness and shield yourself and your loved ones' well-being. To bring balance to your everyday life, boost your health and vitality, visit leelaq.com, that's L-E-E-L-A-Q dot com, and embark on a journey to a longer, healthier life. And for you, dear audience, get a 10% discount on Lila Quantum Tech products with code LONGEVITY10. That's L-O-N-G-E-V-I-T-Y-1-0 at checkout today.

My guest today is Dr. Jeffrey Bland. Dr. Bland is world-renowned nutritional medicine expert and hailed often as the father of functional medicine, such an important area. So I'm really excited for today's conversation. He is highly respected leader in his field who has spent more than 4 decades focused on the improvement of human health. He's the founder of Big Bold Health, a company on a mission to transform the way people think about one of nature's greatest innovations, the immune system. Dr. Bland is an advocate of immunorejuvenation globally. He's actively established a network of farms committed to regenerative agriculture and planetary health. Also such an important topic. And he's the author of The Disease Delusion and numerous other books and research papers. It's such an honor, Jeff, to have you on the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast today. Welcome on.

Well, Claudia, it's my honor. I, I feel very privileged to be able to visit with you, but also to talk about this, uh, topic that's on everybody's minds, that how to, how to live a long, healthy life.

So exactly, I'm so excited. Yes, let's begin. I know, and I'd love start with your journey and passion for functional medicine, and maybe we can even start with, you know, what is functional medicine? I know I get that question, and they're like, what is this functional medicine thing? What are people talking about? So could you expand on, for my audience, what that exactly is?

Yeah, so this actually all arose out of a collaborative discussion among colleagues that I had had in my inner sanctum kind of for years. I've had the privilege over my life of traveling more than 6 million miles. I know it sounds crazy, In fact, it kind of is crazy when I think about it, but that over 40-some years traveling around the world to visit with people that are innovators and thought leaders, I've kind of assembled together as a mosaic, a lot of these ideas. And so my wife said, this was back in 1989, she said, why don't we invite some of your key friends from around the world to sit down with us for a few days and and have a whiteboard discussion about what healthcare might be if it was to be optimized. And let's take away the things about licensure and reimbursement. Let's just talk about what, what it would look like in, in the optimal state. So we did that. We had about 45 people in Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. It was such a successful 3 days that we decided we'd do it again the next year, 1990. And it was in that year that I kind of had this, this dream state. You know how these things happen when our minds are busy at night. And I thought, you know, we've been speaking really about what are the precedents before a person really gets diseased? If what, what precedes a person having a diagnosed disease or being in the hospital or in a, in a tertiary medical care center? And I landed on the thought that we were, we've been talking all these days about really function and we could break function down into really 4 different aspects of human function. That would be their physical function. Muscles and bones and so forth and movement. And then there is their metabolic function, all these physiological things that go on. And then there was their cognitive function, how they thought and their mind worked. And then there was a behavioral function, which had to do with things like spiritual life, psychology of living, behavior, and so forth. And I said, if you were to be able to measure all of those 4 things and to come to an understanding of how that person was performing and, and roll them together, that would probably be a description of their health. Because now you're really describing not just the absence of disease, but the presence of a vitality, which is really what health is. And so I came back and I talked to the, to the group about that and I said, so I, I'm proposing that maybe we would call this, this idea that we're coming up with, we would call it functional medicine. And you know, there's a, a significant pushback at that point because people said, well, you know, in the medical world, functional medicine already has some connotations. It either means geriatric medicine with rehabilitation in older age individuals, or it means psychosomatic medicine. It's all in your mind. That's a functional problem. And I said, well, that is true. That's historically the way it's been conceived in medicine. But, you know, I'm looking at the literature now. I follow the literature fairly closely. And, and now we're seeing functional radiology, functional cardiology, functional endocrinology. So maybe it's going to be redefined in the years to come to be a more vital term. And so eventually we landed on an agreement. We would call this functional medicine. We set up an institute. My wife then kind of got started on that. We went out to then get continuing medical education approved credit to do category 1 courses for physicians. And away we went. And now some 30, what is it, going on 34 years. Hard to believe to even say that.

Congratulations.

Wow. It's actually scary to even say it, but I guess I I shouldn't be scared when I look at my grandchildren. They're all now adults. But anyway, we now have over a quarter million physicians that have gone through our programs globally. And the concept is really to understand the root cause of what is associated with the downstream things that we call disease or illness. We're really good at diagnosing and putting a name on it. But we're not so good at being able to understand where it came from. But fortunately, and I say, I say this very fortunately, over the last now 34 years since we started this discussion, the science underlying the origin of chronic illness has really evolved tremendously. Much different than when I went to school. And so we were lucky because we had the groundswell of all this new science and new information, new understanding coming available, and we were right at the cornerstone of applying that in clinical practice to really let's treat the cause and not just the effect. So we, we think functional medicine is kind of an early warning system for understanding why people have chronic illness, fatigue, headaches, muscle pain, digestive problems, behavior issues, foggy brain or cognitive dysfunction. All these things that we see, low energy kind of symptoms that are post-viral in nature, even now, long COVID. We don't have a good medical understanding of how to treat them as a cause or as a disease, but we should move upstream and understand where they came from and manage their cause. And that, that's really what functional medicine is all about.

Well, what a visionary, Jeff, that you are, you know, putting that together and sitting with it. And obviously it reflects for me a bit. I spent some time living in Shanghai years ago, and the traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine is also about like getting to that root cause. And you might have a headache for 3 days, which in Western society we don't really want to have, right? We want a quick fix, but it's getting to that root cause. And I'm curious of the collaborators that you had come together. Were there many from Asian cultures that were embedded in this more Eastern medicine?

Yes, actually, I'm really glad you brought that up. One of the groups that we were very interested in, we'd have spent quite a bit of time with them, actually. Actually, we lived in Hong Kong for 6 months. Was, was a group of Hong Kong and Chinese national physicians that were very, very experienced. One of them is a woman who actually has built probably the most prominent hospital for reproductive medicine in China using lifestyle to help women who had problems with pregnancy to be successful. And in China at the time, it was one child per family. So this was a really big deal. To make sure that women could be successful and carry to term. And so we found over the course of our discussion with our Asian colleagues that what we were doing in the discussion about functional medicine was, as you just mentioned, Claudia, very close to what had been going on for thousands of years with traditional Chinese medicine. So to finish the story, they arranged a tour which I was invited to to lead of the research stations in China to go from research station to research station. I would give a seminar, I would interact with the medical scientists there. We'd have a conversation. Obviously I don't speak Mandarin, so through a translator. Translator. And we ultimately ended up in Beijing and we were very fortunate to have counsel with the chief of staff of, I think, arguably the largest and most prominent hospital in China, the Beijing University Medical Center. The hospital that diplomats would go to if they were ill. And so we had this wonderful meeting with the chief of staff and he said, well, I think you should have a little lecture with our senior staff, which was quite an amazing thing. So I went in there and I had a 3-hour lecture, obviously translated, with their senior medical staff. So after it was over, we went back to, it was a big gala thing with the media was there and he gave me a gift. Actually, I gave him a gift first, and I gave a little speech. Then he gave me a gift. And as he gave it to me, he was holding it, and I was holding it. And then he started speaking, and he went on and on and on and on for a very long time. And of course, I don't speak Mandarin, so I'm wondering, I'm looking over at my translator, he's looking at me, I'm looking at him. And eventually he finishes this long soliloquy and gives me the gift. And so I look over at my translator, I say, so what did he say? He said, well, basically he said you're the first American he's ever met that seems to understand traditional Chinese medicine. So I thought that was a pretty good endorsement for what we were doing with functional medicine.

Exactly. Wow. Thank you for sharing that as well. Yeah. Cause I remember hearing it and I'm like, this kind of reminds me of, you know, the Eastern medicine practices as well. And how, what an honor, right? To be able to share with the TCM practicing doctors, you know, that you shared the same philosophy and mentality as well. And it makes sense when we think about it, you know, want to get to upstream, like what is the underlying cause, what is causing this, um, and not just the diagnosis prescription models, which isn't serving people as we clearly know in our sick care system, right? Um, so Jeff, I'd love to dig into the concept of, um, immunity and how would you define being, you know, immune and what is contributing to having that balanced immune system and, and what happens when we're off and, and what can we be done about it?

Well, thank you. That's another part of my learning over the years. You know, I've been in this field long enough. Obviously, I'm having my 78th birthday next month. So, it's—

Happy birthday.

Yeah. Beautiful. Pretty amazing, actually, even to say that is once again like, whoa, how did that happen? But—

Well, you look 60, if anything. So, maybe 55. So, clearly, what you're doing is working well. So, well done.

Well, thank you. Thank you. So, what— What I've come to recognize over the years as I've assembled all these experiences and conversations and the research we've done and so forth is that the gateway to many people's health problems is really through two different doors, but those doors are interconnected. So maybe it's just one super door. And these are the first lines of how our body responds to outside information and how it prepares the body for being able to fight off or to defend itself against things. And that is the nervous system and the immune system. And so those are the gateways into messages that our body receives that ultimately become part of our process that leads to pain, energy deficits, all sorts of symptoms that are associated with chronic illness. So when I looked at those two, I thought, well, the immune system is kind of an interesting thing. So it's a black box. It's so complex. It's like all the stars in the universe. It seems to have all these personalities. But there is something about the immune system that if we knew more about, we could own the function of our immune system rather than become a victim of our immune system, that maybe we could turn back the clock functionally on all these issues that are associated with immune dysfunction, not just infectious disease, but chronic pain and brain fog and digestive problems and skin problems. And I mean, it goes on and on. Virtually every chronic illness is associated with an immune dysfunction. And so when I started thinking about the immune system in that light, then I said, well, hold on just a minute. The immune system is really very dynamic. The cells in our body today that are immune cells will be different than the cells we have in our body 4 months from now. Our immune system turns over about every 4 to 5 months. So that means that if we have a different set of cells that are in our body 5 months from now, are they as good as the one we have today? Are they worse or better? And then when you ask that question, you find, well, hold it, there are processes in the, in our body that can allow those cells that will come in months to come will be better, more, more able than the cells we have. We, we need to get rid of the clinker cells. We need to get rid of the ones that carry bad memories. And we need to replace them with rejuvenated cells that have better opportunity to make their own decisions about our health. And that just, which sounds maybe a little bit far-fetched or like sci-fi, over the last few years has become more and more well-recognized in immunology that our immune system is a two-way street. It can be injured, but it can also be repaired. So I said, maybe this is a missing link in our whole health program. Maybe someone needs to focus on this concept of what we call immune rejuvenation. Well, one of my colleagues has worked with me for now 28 years. She's, she's obviously very tolerant for working with me for that number of years. But she said, this is Trish Eri, she said, Jeff, you know, I've been with you all these years and this idea you're coming up with, you keep talking about, you know, you're a big guy in stature. It's, it seems like a bold idea. Maybe you need to, to form a company that really focuses on this and call it Big Bold Health. So that became our Big Bold Health about 3 years ago that was really focused on being able to harness our understanding of the immune system in ways that people could start to own their immune system, could rejuvenate their immune system. And it has taken us on a journey that has truly been unbelievable because it just happened. We started this actually before SARS-CoV-2. And, you know, we didn't know that suddenly immunity was gonna become the topic of everyone. So it's been a very interesting run. And I think we've made some great discoveries. And and found things that, uh, really do help a person to rejuvenate their immune system.

Can you share, so thank you. And, and so it's exciting and I'm, would love to hear more in, in depth and details and what you're seeing. Um, and also how the role of like senolytics play, right? So the cellular senescence as well, which I find really fascinating when I've been looking at. And, um, I know some companies have products that will support that cellular senescence process as well, but can you share what you've been discovering and, and what you're most excited about?

Yeah, thank you. So let's start with senolytics here. I think that's a good place to start. Start this discussion about immune rejuvenation. So, one of the most significant steps forward in the development of this senolytic concept, meaning agents that will prevent senescence or aging, was a discovery at Mayo and University of Minnesota that a combination of two agents, when given to animals, seemed to turn back their aging. Made them stronger, made them more fit, made them more vital, improved their blood sugar. I mean, it had all these metabolic beneficial effects. And those two things were kind of an old chemotherapeutic drug called Inosivim, which had been used in cancer therapy for a long period of time. It was what's called an antimyotic. It causes injured cells to die, basically. And And then the other agent which strengthened and works synergistically with denosumib was a substance called quercetin. Now quercetin is a member of the bioflavonoid, the polyphenol family. It's a member of diets that are plant-based that have high levels of these nutrients in them. And so people said, well, this is really kind of interesting. I mean, this is this denosumib working with quercetin has this ability to roll back the age clock in animals. And so tremendous amount of research has gone on since that discovery. Now, to that end, people started to say, and this is where my interest really starts, what role did this quercetin have in this? We may be able to understand a little bit of the, the Nacivib, because it was found to influence what are called the Yamanaka factors. These are the genes that regulate aging to some extent that won a Nobel Prize for Professor Yamanaka. And so we, we have a little bit of an understanding as to how the, the chemotherapeutic drug works, but how about the quercetin? What does it do? And so in studying it, it turns out that if we look at other members of the, of the bioflavonoid family in nutrients that are in plant foods, one of which is fisetin or fisetin, which is a close relative of quercetin, we find out that they share personalities that are similar in helping to rejuvenate cells. And they do so through an epigenetic signal that causes cells to undergo apoptosis that are injured and to be removed and replaced by new naive cells, friendly cells. And so this was a whole kind of discovery in the nutrition world because, nutritionists historically have not really taken these flavonoids or these polyphenols very highly or important. They just consider them kind of, they come along for the ride with vegetables, but they're not that important. Now suddenly people were saying, well, hold on just a minute, maybe there's a lot more to this polyphenol flavonoid story than we knew before. Now that's where we got introduced, 'cause I had an opportunity to meet the original investigators in the Santa Monica area where we We kind of put our thinking caps on, and now a serendipity happened for me. And I'm sure you find this in your life as well. What we call serendipitous, you know, by chance, really probably is not chance because we tend to hang out with certain people and we're more likely to have certain observations. So within a 2-month period, I got 3 events that probably changed— well, not probably, it did change my life. Event number 1 was I ran into an investigator at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Tennessee in the States, who had been working on a new way of treating high blood pressure using a molecule that they had discovered that influenced the immune system to speak to the blood vessels in a way that would relax the blood vessels. So the immune system was part of high blood pressure. I never had thought about that before. Wow. And so if you can make a more friendly immune system, you make a more friendly blood wall, blood vessels, and that relaxes it and you lower your blood pressure. That was the concept. And this molecule that he had discovered was called 2-hydroxybenzylamine. And it turns out, it's all this abbreviated 2-HOBA, H-O-B-A. It turns out that that molecule is found in only one food that could be identified. And that food was something I had never heard about before, which is called tartary buckwheat. Tartary comes from the Tartan region of China. So it's an ancient food. It's 4,000 years old. It's one of the two oldest cultivated foods, the other being millet in the world. And there's a rich history in Chinese medicine of the use of what is called Himalayan tartary buckwheat, which is one of the varieties of it for healing. And so I thought, wow, that's kind of interesting. So then I, as I was lea— I happened to be invited to speak in Harbin, China to about 10,000 Chinese medical doctors about functional medicine. So I was gonna be leaving to this trip and I, I said to my colleague Trish, I said, Trish, you know, I'm kind of interested in this concept of tartary buckwheat. Do you think there's anyone growing it in the United States? She said, well, Jeff, while you're gone, I'll, I'll do some research, see if I can find out who's growing it. So when I was in, in China, turned out Harbin is the northernmost big city up between Korea, North Korea and Russia, about 28 million people, by the way, not a small city.

Small town.

Yes, exactly. And so my host was a Shanghai medical doctor, but he also had a PhD in the United States, you know, spoke very good English. And so when we were to come back to Shanghai from Harbin, there was a typhoon. And so the planes were grounded. And he said, so Jeff, we do have an option rather than just to wait, we could get on the bullet train and we could travel to Shanghai. And I thought, wow, that would be cool because that's like 2,200 miles right across the center of China going at nearly 200 miles an hour on this train. It's silent. It's vibration-free. I thought, that's like a kaleidoscope of seeing China. So yeah, he and I got on the train. So we had a lot of hours to talk to one another. So about halfway across China, as we're going through all these agricultural fields, I said to him, so I have kind of a question that might seem a little strange, but I wonder if you ever have ever heard of Himalayan tartary buckwheat. And it was as if the train had stopped and we were in freeze time. And he looked at me and he goes, I can't believe you're asking me that question. And I said, well, why is that? And he says, my research group is the largest research group in China on Himalayan tartary buckwheat. We've been exploring it and we've been trying to find someone in the United States that we could partner up with that knows enough about chemistry and nutrition. And so we, I, when I got back, Trish then had been doing her homework and she said, I can only find one grower of tartary buckwheat in the United States. And that's a gentleman by the name of Sam Beer. He is a former research professor of agriculture at Cornell University, very well-known research facility at the university. And he retired and he and his nurse wife have a hobby farm in Angelica, New York, in which they're growing a small amount of this Himalayan Tartary buckwheat. So to make a long story kind of complete here, I then put together a cooperative group between the beeries. We now actually own the Angelica Mills. And because he was retiring and they were gonna sell their farm, so he became a consultant to our company. And between the Vanderbilt University people and between my colleague in China, we formed a cooperative that became Big Bold Health to study the immune effects of this extraordinary plant that is associated with kind of nutrients that you see in people who live in blue zones. You probably know Dan Buettner's work and the blue zones. And it turns out one of the features of the blue zone diets across whether they live in Costa Rica or Vilcabamba or, in, even in Loma Linda, California, one of the blue zones, is that these people have diets that are very high in these flavonoids like quercetin and rutin and diosmin and hesperidin and so forth and so on, which are extraordinarily high in Himalayan tartary buckwheat. In fact, it's the richest food of all in those immune-strengthening nutrients. So that was how my sinalytic kind of interest converted over now becoming an organic farmer in upstate New York, growing Himalayan tartare buckwheat on regenerative agriculture.

I absolutely love that. Must swing by at some point. I'd be so curious to see it. Absolutely amazing. But tell us, what is your protocol, Geoff? How have you adapted all these amazing learnings into your life? I guess for people listening, they're like, this is so phenomenal, but how does one actually go about adapting? So maybe you can share a little bit with my audience, things that you do that you know really move the needle.

Yeah. Well, again, I'm always hesitant to say what I do is necessarily going to move other people's needle, but I think there are some general principles that we've learned. We've done quite a bit of research. We've published many papers over the years. So I think I'm speaking more broadly than just myself. So, but there are some things that I think are universally beneficial for everyone in rolling back the age clock. So let's start with number 1. Number one has to do with regulation of your blood sugar. If your blood sugar is going up and down like the Andes Mountains, that, that's not a good thing. And the way that the traditional standard American diet has been applied causes our blood sugar to go up and down, principally because of all the refined carbohydrate and simple carbohydrate sugar. So, you know, my colleagues all are kind of very controlled on carbohydrates, simple carbohydrate, refined carbohydrate, sugar intake. And in America, the average intake of sugar per capita is something over 100 pounds a year. So, you know, that's, if you think of that, that's like a third of a pound of sugar a day. And so that definitely— It's hidden everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that comes back again to eating foods that are minimally processed, that don't appear in package or come out of grease soaked bags and, you know, look like they once were alive and lived in the ground. That's kind of Michael Pollan's concept, right? Exactly.

Stay on the outside of the perimeter of the supermarket and you're already doing quite well, right?

So blood sugar control. Second, and as you control blood sugar by eating the right kind of diet, then you're also going to do, probably be doing another thing, which is I think really important. And that's increasing dietary fiber, which is both soluble and insoluble dietary fibers. And this is one of the values we found with Himalayan tartary buckwheat is that it's extraordinarily high in these beneficial prebiotic fibers. And when I say prebiotic, what I mean is they help to nourish a healthy microbiome, the intestinal bacteria that are our friends that live in our gut. And so the consumption of foods regularly that are high on fiber, and obviously fiber is found in vegetable foods. So you've gotta increase your vegetable food intake. It's not just and not just, you know, one type of vegetables. It can be beans, it can be legumes, it can be also non-gluten grains for people who have gluten sensitivity. That's another one of the advantages of tartary buckwheat. It's a gluten-free, I don't know why it has the name wheat. It's not related to wheat at all.

Confusing, exactly.

It has no gluten in it. So it's a gluten-free seed actually. And so increasing our fiber to something like 30 to 40 grams a day, and that sounds like a lot, but actually it's very easy to get that amount if you're eating, you know, every meal some vegetable-related products, minimally processed. I'm not talking about potato chips or french fries.

Exactly.

And then the third rule is, and I think this is a fairly easy one to apply, and that is eat the rainbow. One of my long-term colleagues, a person I dearly love, is Dr. Deanna Minich, who with me for many years. And she's kind of really been the champion for this concept of eat the rainbow. And the reason that eating the rainbow is a very practical way of judging our diet is that if you, and when I say the rainbow, I'm talking about natural colors in foods, not synthetic dyes.

Not colorants.

Yeah. And the natural colored foods are basically vegetable, fruits and vegetables. And those colors are really a consequence of the presence of these polyphenols and flavonoids that I've talked about. So the way to actually judge if you're getting these age-combating nutrients is to make sure you get colored foods in vegetable and fruit products in your diet, minimally processed. And so if, if, if you do that and you eat minimally processed foods and you have your plate that's balanced with vegetable and animal products, stay away from processed meat products. That's, you know, more and more being seen, these processed meats. I know there's a big, huge love now for bacon and cured meats, but quite honestly, that it's not really good for you.

So, everything in it as well.

Yeah, exactly. So, if you, if you stay with, we, we would say, organic meats and free-range animal products and organic vegetable and fruit products and minimally processed. You try to encourage as much of that in your diet as possible. And I'm kind of a guy who has flexibility in rules. So it's not that I'm so disciplined that I never have a dessert or I never have a fast food meal, or I try to just make sure that the majority of my eating experience follows those rules. And when you do that, if you do a nutritional analysis of what you consume, you're gonna end up on the anti-aging diet program. You're gonna end up with the research that we've been doing that demonstrates that you can roll back the age of the immune system. In fact, we just finished a clinical trial. This was a clintrial.gov approved trial with 50 humans in which we asked them to consume a concentrate of Himalayan Tarwee buckwheat that was very rich in, in fiber and very rich in the polyphenols that I talked about. And they, they consumed it for 90 days. And so it was, it was very easy to put into their daily regime because we had concentrated it and put it into a capsule form so that they got, making it easier to consume.

Yeah.

They didn't have to go to the kitchen and bake stuff or make foods. And in so doing, we measured their age of their immune system before they started, and then the age of their immune system after 3 months. Now, we were told by a lot of people in the field that that was too short a time. We probably would never see any difference. But I chose 3 months because that's about the time that it takes the immune system to turn over. So I thought, well, maybe one turnover would be good enough to incorporate this new information into the health of the immune system. So we, the way we measured the age of their immune system was using some new technology that I'm very excited about. We had developed a gene chip at a company called Illumina that on that chip were 850,000 gene sites that were related to the epigenetic regulation of our genetic code. This sounds pretty geeky.

Like, no, what this is, I love it.

Bring it on. Yeah. So we had these 80, 80, 850,000 sites embedded on this chip. And then we would put the person's blood on the chip that had their immune cells. And we would see then what of these sites were being occupied or activated by the immune cells. And so we were able to kind of measure the epigenetic age of their immune system using this tool, this analytical tool.

Amazing.

So we did it on baseline and were able to get each person's signature of how their immune system was being epigenetically, how it looked. Then we did the 90 days of where they were taking the Himalayan tartare buckwheat concentrate. And then we measured using the same tool. And we were blown away. We proved a lot of my doubting Thomas friends wrong that we were able to demonstrate that in people who started off with aged immune systems in which their immune system was older than their age and birthday, that after 90 days they had a significant, about a 35% reduction in the age of their immune system. We made it— Wow. Wow.

And this, as far as we— All things the same. They, the diet remained the same. Yes. They were relatively healthy. No other factors were changed. No increase in exercise. Purely taking—

That's exactly right. Yes. Wow. There were, it was an ad-lib program. And this so-called N-of-1 study where the N-of-1, meaning each person was judged against themselves. So where they started and then where they ended up. And, you know, obviously I wanna emphasize this is a pilot study. It was only 50 people and it was only 3 months, but it's very, very encouraging that we could actually show a signal coming from food because food is information, right? It's talking to our genes. And in this case, we were able to show that the flavonoids and concentrates in Himalayan tartary buckwheat talk to the genes of the immune system in such a way to make them younger.

So that's— This is amazing. Where can I find these capsules, Jeff?

Well, they're, we actually, it's part of Big Bold Health. It's called HDB Rejuvenate is the name of the product. And you can actually find it on the Big Bold Health website. And we've had a lot of extraordinary, you know, responses. We've had this product now for the last couple of years. And I think we're excited when people are taking it. We have a lot of reviews of people saying, wow, it had all these positive effects on energy. I'm thinking more clearly. I'm sleeping better. All the things that we think are related to a younger immune system.

Of course. Yeah. Because I've tested my biological age with GlycanAge. Oh, yeah. That's a good one.

Yeah.

And I'm 26 again. Wow. I'm trying to get down to it. But if I can lose 30% and drop 30% in 90 days, I'm all over this as well.

So— Well, we'll send you some HTB Rejuvenate after we get off, you know, know if we have an address to send you some, we'll send you some and see what you think.

Thanks, Jeff. I'd love to, exactly. I mean, I'm all about figuring it out. And I think that that's the exciting part, that these tools, these modalities are out there, they're available. And that I hope, you know, people listening and watching us today can really get excited that there are modalities to do. That said, and this is one of my other podcast guests, it's like, it doesn't mean that you can go out and eat McDonald's the whole time and take this tablet and feel better. So let's, you know, keep to the outside of the supermarket and focus on the stuff that is good for us. But this can help to repair the immune system. And as you're saying as well, I mean, even the blood vessels. I find that so fascinating.

You said something else that I want to just quickly respond to because I think it's, it's in the topics of today. And we have these two drugs that have received all this attention, Ozempic and Wegovy, that are being used for weight loss that are really antidiabetic drugs that now are being redeployed for weight loss. And, and the way they work is that they are what are called GLP-1 stimulators. GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide. Now we've been studying glucagon-like peptide for 12 years. And so I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable about this topic. And it turns out that this Himalayan tartary buckwheat is a GLP-1 stimulant. Really? So it's an, and you know, people forget about the fact that these things that the drug companies can exploit, like GLP-1, are actually things that have been in our bodies. They're not just waiting for drugs. They are working in our body every day to do work. Now, the problem is, if you eat a really bad diet, and a bad diet is the SAD diet, the Standard American SAD. It's very sad. That what that does is it blunts a lot of your GLP-1 natural ability to control blood sugar and to control appetite. So if you eat a diet that's rich in foods that are natural GLP-1 agonists, meaning they stimulate GLP-1 naturally, it controls appetite, it lowers body fat deposition, and it's related to slimming. And now, can, that's an explanation why people who eat the diets that are rich in these substances that activate GLP-1 don't have the same problem of weight gain as people who don't eat those kind of diets. So we're, we're learning all sorts of lessons as we get into deeper understanding of the, the magic and, and, uh, wizardry that's in nature that, uh, surrounds eating a whole foods diet.

Jeff, we could talk for hours. I find this so exciting, but I know that, um, you have to go on to your next appointment. So before we finish up, up, I'd love to hear from you. What is your big vision and excitement for the future of medicine and longevity? What, what's exciting you the most at the moment?

Well, I really think we're on the threshold of having the tools available for people to live 10 decades with, with healthy living, and to, you know, maybe, maybe be able to have 2 or 3 careers in a life and, and be active into their hundreds. And I think the technology and the science is there. It's now the changing people's perception of how they want to live. What decisions will they make? And these are the, maybe the most difficult and challenging things because we're so heavily marketed to do things that are not necessarily in our best interest. I would call them a kind of anti-good health. And as a consequence, we become candidates or victims of some of these very, very skillful marketing programs to sell us products that are not in our best interest in terms of achieving that 100-year healthy life outcome. I think that's all going to change. I think there's a whole movement about wellness that is occurring now. I think that it is more than just a bunch of kind of fringe people, biohackers. I think we're starting to see it spread to many people who really would like to live to be grandparents and beyond that are having the chance to get out with their grandkids and do all sorts of things. And so I, I think we're on the threshold of a, of a revolution in which this market, I, I'll call it the wellness market, will be a, a, a very, very remarkable new part of our business structure. And it will give health coaches and all the health ancillary devices, wearable devices, things that are monitoring our health that allow us to have a lot more information about how to live healthily available. And it'll, it'll transform culture and make us think better, sleep better, act better, more energy. Look better, and enjoy life. That's my big dream.

Hear, hear. Sounds amazing. We're working on it. So let's see what we can do. It's been such a pleasure to have you on. And where can people follow what you're up to? And yeah, which website would you like to send them to? Maybe social media?

Yeah, thank you. Really, two places. BigBoldHealth.com. That's BigBoldHealth.com. And the other, you can find all my geekism at JeffreyBland.com. So that's J-E-F-F-R-E-Y-B-L-A-N-D.com. Those are places to— you'll find more of me than you probably ever want to. But I respect that. That's what you think.

Others might disagree with you. Jeff, do you have any final ask or message or parting thoughts for my audience today?

Well, I think my parting thought is really to carry the spirit that is what— is why you have such a remarkable podcast. And that is longevity and good health is within our grasp. And right now, we need to find some safe harbors as a culture. Our human culture right now is undergoing a lot of stress. It's a lot of turmoil. It's a lot of stuff that we wish we didn't have to deal with. And we need to turn the goodness of human beings, which is in our nature, into the dominant theme for our future. And that starts with us being healthy. If you're not healthy, then you have all sorts of things that don't give you the fullest opportunity to express your joy and magic of being alive. And so I think that's, that's where we are as a culture. We need to make a decision as to how we want us to be seen, how we want to interact with one another, and how that relates to our both personal and population health.

Beautiful, Jeff. Thank you so much for taking the time to coming on today and sharing your wisdom and amazing experiences. Such a pleasure.

My great pleasure. Thank you, Claudia, and the best to you and all of your listeners.

Thanks so much.

We'll be in touch.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.