How to Decrease Biological Age with Nutraceuticals & Biohacks for Longevity #podcast

This episode is brought to you by Aerofit. How many of us develop bad breathing habits? I know I did. It wasn't until I tried the Aerofit device that I relearned how to breathe better. Even after a few 2 to 3 minute sessions, I could tell the difference when running. Aerofit is a smart respiratory muscle trainer that allows you to track, monitor, and improve the strength of the pulmonary muscles. You start by inputting your metrics and goals in the app, followed by a baseline lung test, and then start your individualized breath training sessions. This device can benefit everyone from high-performance athletes to breathwork practitioners to those who just want to breathe better. In as little as 5 to 10 minutes a day, you become more efficient at breathing, all while sitting on your couch. So if you're ready to take your lung strength and flexibility to the next level, as well as improving your neuromuscular pathways leading to better breathing biometrics, then Airofit is for you. And for you, dear audience, you can go to airofit.com, that's a-i-r-o-f-i-t.com, and use discount code Claudia15 to get 15% off. Welcome to another episode of the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast.

I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, here to bring you the groundbreaking strategies, tools, practices, and insights from the world's leading experts to help you live at your best and reach your fullest potential. If you haven't done so already, make sure to subscribe to the Longevity and Lifestyle newsletter by going to longevity-and-lifestyle.com. My guest today is Chris Mirabelli, co-founder and CEO of NOVOS, the first science-backed nutraceutical company and public benefit corporation. From an athletic 16-year-old to a brain tumor patient, Chris's journey has been to crack the code for optimal health and longevity. And we're going to dig into that today. Using biohacks and biometric tracking, Chris slowed the pace of his aging by 37% and has shaved 13.6 years from his biological age. So, we're going to dig into lots of exciting things today. Welcome, Chris, to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you on.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Chris, I'd love to start with your very compelling story how a trip to New York City went quite wrong. Can you share with my audience your—

Sure. So a little context prior to that, starting from when I was 12 years old, I started to get into exercise and eating healthy. I, I had picked up an issue of Men's Health magazine and been inspired by it and almost obsessive with my dedication to every single day exercising, doing pull-ups and push-ups and running and so on. So I would say that I was probably more fit than most of my classmates and took health that much more seriously. So it was that much of a surprise to me when I was on a school trip in New York City at the Federal Reserve Bank and listening to an economist speak when I suddenly felt very dizzy and nauseous. And next thing I knew, I woke up with blood all over my shirt. I had a seizure and severed my tongue. And I mentioned the Federal Reserve Bank because a quick funny story is that my teacher wanted to call 911 to get an ambulance and they wouldn't let him because they were afraid that this was some sort of ploy to steal all of the gold in the basement.

Wow. Shows their priorities. Oh my goodness.

PR story for them. Yeah. Eventually the ambulance did come and they discovered that it was a, as they put it, a large mass above my left ear. So it was a brain tumor larger than a golf ball on my left temporal lobe. And so within a few days they had to do emergency surgery at NYU Hospital in Midtown Manhattan. And that changed my life and my perspective on life permanently.

What did the journey look like thereafter?

Waking up, even getting that diagnosis, right? But then waking up after surgery, especially as a 16-year-old when you feel like your life is just beginning, can you share what that was like to be in that moment?

The literal moment The moment of waking up was an intensely emotional experience for me because I was barely conscious and I turned to my left and I see from the visiting room, from the glass, my parents, my brother, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, all crying, jumping up and down, hugging each other because I woke up and they weren't sure that I would.. And my immediate next thought was remove this catheter from me, cuz this is very painful. So very big difference in terms of thoughts from those first few moments of being saved. But I would say that my, my perspective on life changed dramatically in many different ways. So even my lifestyle, I went from playing on the football team and beginning to experience high school parties, weekend parties to instead staying in and writing poetry and thinking about my future and what I wanted to make of my future and how fortunate I was to still be alive. I experienced a lot of pain, pain, and even more frustration in the sense that I couldn't think like I once was able to. In other words, I was mentally slow, whether it was from the inflammation, from the trauma of the surgery, or from the anti-seizure medications. For at least a year, and this was SAT year, so it was that much more important to be on my A-game. I wasn't able to think like I was once able to. And it was, first of all, I grew an appreciation for even feeling that pain and feeling the frustration because I was alive to be able to experience it, and the alternative was death. And so for the first time in my life, I grew an appreciation for feeling pain. And it also, it shaped my thinking for what I wanted for my future. So I realized how fragile life was, which is not something that you typically do when you're a teenager. It takes you much longer to, oftentimes not until 30s or later before you realize that. And so I wanted to maximize my experience on this planet and the impact that I could make because I didn't know how long it would last. I also never wanted to wake up in a hospital bed contemplating mortality again if I could do anything about it. And that is part of what has fueled me and my deep interest in longevity and in health, and essentially has in one way or another, that was like the kernel that has blossomed into my founding of Novos about 18 years or so later.

So let's talk about that journey and some of the things that you've done and learned and what have been some of the most powerful tools and biohacks and insights that you've accumulated over this 18-year time span?

Yeah. So I began experimenting on the biohacking side of things in my late 20s. And so that included supplementation, diet plans, sleep hacks, different technologies, and so on. And some of them didn't really work out for me nearly as well as I had hoped. So I'll give you an example of that. The ketogenic diet, that was one thing that I spent years trying to perfect. Countless hours researching and reading books and listening to podcasts and added all of the electrolytes and the magnesium and the sodium and the potassium. I changed the meal composition. I made sure I was getting adequate calories. I mean everything. But ultimately what I would find was that in the first few days, even the first couple of weeks of going into a ketogenic diet and into ketosis by extension, I felt great. By great, I meant just very aware and I didn't have the hunger pangs and my energy levels were relatively stable. But then fast forward maybe 3 weeks in, a month in, I didn't notice how much it had impacted my, in a sense, personality and my preferences and my, my emo levels, presumably because my, my, and my focus. And everything was different and off. And I didn't feel like myself. I didn't feel as good. And it was like the frog in a boiling pot of water experiment, right? Where at first I didn't notice anything. And it was only when it got far enough and I looked back, I'm like, I'm not feeling like myself. And then I would add carbs back to my diet and I would feel like myself again. My motivation, my mood would be uplifted and so on. So that was one of those experiments that over the course of years it took me to really come to that realization. And now I use it strategically, that diet, not regularly. And instead, to your question of whether one of the hacks that I really like, it would be fasting. And so most of the benefits, in fact more of the benefits that you would get from a ketogenic diet, you can get from extended fasting. And I do that quite regularly. So I do time-restricted feeding every day. I only eat between typically 12:00 PM to around 6:00 PM. Okay. Once a week I'll do a 24-hour fast. That's typically Thursday into Friday. So I might have my last bite at 6 or 7:00 PM and then have my first bite on Friday at 6 or 7:00 PM. And then I will try, I'm not as disciplined with this as I used to be. Life with a girlfriend changes things, but every quarter I try to do a 3-day, 72-hour extended fast. And that just really reboots the system and you just feel so much better after going through that. It's difficult to do at first, but you get used to it and it's worth it in the end.

Oh, it's phenomenal as well. Do you have any special hacks? Obviously you fast regularly, so your body's used to— the metabolic flexibility is really there and flipping back and forth. But for somebody looking to start fasting more regularly, do you have any hacks, especially for a 3-day fast on how to get into ketosis faster?

Yeah. So this is an example of when I would use ketogenic diet strategically. So I would transition to the higher fat, low, very low carb, moderate protein diet, maybe at least 3 days before, ideally a week before or so. It makes it easier to transition into the fasted state. I would say also consider, um, maybe even adding ketone salts to your routine, because one of the biggest pitfalls and difficulties people have with a ketogenic diet in general, or fasting specifically, is inadequate electrolytes. And so oftentimes people say have bouillon, make soup out of this very high sodium bouillon, or take supplements, or just add salt to water and so on. But I like the hack of using the ketone salts because those are literally ketones that are giving you some energy. It's not breaking the fast and you're getting the salts. The thing is just, I make sure I get mixed ketone salts, ones that include a good ratio of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium in them. So you're getting all of the different salts that you need. And then each day, if you're really struggling, maybe have a half a serving to one serving of it a day to keep you going. That's, I would say, one, one of the best that I've found.

You mix it in water or how do you, how would you take it?

Yeah, just mix it in water. There are many brands that sell these ketone salts. You can find them on Amazon, but just again, make sure that you're getting the right ratio of all of the different minerals, essentially.

Yeah. Because I think that for people listening as well, just that regular, like once a quarter, ideally that 3-day fast and setting yourself up to win. So I really liked that you were saying that you do the strategic ketogenic diet going into it just so that the transition is just so much easier as well. I know people who've never done ever tried fasting, they're like, oh, it's starvation. And as soon as you learn of the benefits and actually know— because I think the food industry pounds into us, we should be eating all the time, and it's just so unhealthy. Just, um, so if you haven't tried it yet at this stage, dear audience, then do give it a try. And I think this is a great way to, to try it out as well. So you were saying that was one of the most powerful ways with the strategically using the ketogenic diet. What are some of the other ones, Chris?

Okay, so sleep. I would say sleep. I failed to realize for most of my life how important sleep is not only for health, but just for my subjective perception of life. In other words, if I'm enjoying myself and I'm happy and I'm in a good mood and my memory is sharp and cognition is great, or am I dragging along? And, and so sleep, I've over the past decade or so really prioritized that in my life. And so there are certain things that I do to improve my sleep. I used to really— yeah, so I used to always, focused on having like the blackout shades, but I travel a lot. So what I've gotten used to is just sleeping with a sleep mask, finding one that's very comfortable that doesn't let any light in. So I found one that works really well for me. The next—

you don't mind sharing? Cuz my audience loves specifics.

Sure, sure. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I can share it with you if you want to add it to your—

sure, we can add it in the show notes.

Perfect. Yeah. Next I would say is earplugs. First of all, The first time I was using earplugs, I wasn't putting them in my ears properly. And I've realized most people don't, they just squeeze it a little bit and push it and then they're sticking out of your, someone's ear. And it's, that's not in your ear if it's sticking out. If you can see it, it's not in your ear. There's a way you can watch YouTube videos, but you have to like lift the top of your ear and pull the bottom of your ear and then spin it so that it's very, very small, almost like a golf tee and then stick it in your ear as deep as you can go. And then let it expand. And then that is when you get a good seal. And the first couple of weeks sleeping with it, it was irritating. And in the middle of the night, I would like take it outta my ear, but eventually it became comfortable and it has been a game changer for me. I've been doing it for years now, especially when I lived in Manhattan where there's like noise outside, completely blunted that I didn't hear any noise outside. And now even not being in, in a busy city like New York, but having a girlfriend, having a dog, like when, if she's getting ready before me, I don't hear it. I sleep through it perfectly. And most people don't realize that there, there can be noises that are waking you up throughout the night that you are unaware of because you fall back into sleep. They're called microarousals, and microarousals will disrupt the quality of your sleep. And what's most important is the quality times the quantity, right? And so if you're not getting the good quality and You think you're getting good sleep because you're in bed for 8 hours does not necessarily mean that you are. I would say that is, is fantastic for me. Then dietary patterns, just making sure that I stop eating about at least 3 hours before bed, but that I've had adequate calories for the day. I exercise a lot and I found that if I'm too severely hypocaloric, like I worked out really hard and I didn't eat enough calories for the day, I'll wake up at 3:00 AM, 4:00 AM and have trouble falling back asleep. So I need to be mindful of that and make sure I've eaten enough food for the day. And then supplements, magnesium is the go-to for most people. But beyond that, I've experimented with practically every type of sleep-related supplement out there. California poppy and chamomile extract and so on. I find valerian to be a really nice balance. I take a half a dose of valerian extract and the NOW brand, very easy and inexpensive to find on Amazon. And I find that really helps me to fall asleep very quickly and stay asleep throughout the night.

That's super helpful. So yeah, sleep for sure and strategic dieting. Let's talk about genes and how you've gone down the path of learning more about your genes. What was the background to that? And what are some of the testing and insights that you've done around genetic testing genes as well?

Sure. So I first became interested in my genes because of what I went through with my brain tumor. And the neurologist had told me the chances of me getting another brain tumor were the same as anyone else. But as far as I knew, they didn't do any like genetic sequencing on me. Maybe they did, but you know, I was only 16 years old, so I didn't see all of the paperwork back then, but, but I don't believe that they did. And so I was curious and I got my genes sequenced and then I exported them into different tool sets like Genetic Genie and a couple of others, and I was able to go beyond what at the time I was just using 23andMe, which is a partial analysis of your genes. It's only a small percentage. It, it's like the most studied percentage of your genes, but not all of your genes. And, but even with that, I was able to see that there were 1 or 2 genes that increased the likelihood of me getting a, a brain tumor. Now it wasn't by an enormous amount. If the typical percentage is say 1 in 1,000 in the population, this may have increased it to 1 in 700 or something in, in that neighborhood. But to some degree, I found peace in knowing that because it gave me a somewhat of an answer, a partial answer, but an answer that I had a higher susceptibility to it. It wasn't just purely chance. There was some genetic component to it. There may have been other things too. As a kid, I loved sweets like no other, and all of the blood glucose I was having, maybe that had an impact on it. I don't know. It was probably a combination of a transmutation, higher likelihood because of my genetics, and then other things that just caused the cascade that led to the tumor. Since then, I, I've done more thorough analysis of my genetics and genetics have come a very long way since then. And so I've been able to look into things that have not impacted my health at this point, but just the awareness of the statistical probability or the possibility of it happening in the future it makes me that much more prepared and aware of how I should be handling my health looking forward so that I can mitigate that or reduce the risk of any of these things happening. But even more importantly, perhaps, is the epigenome, which is something that I've become particularly interested in because of my work with longevity and just understanding the power of the epigenome and how that can dictate health outcomes. Perhaps even more so than your genome.

We interrupt this episode for a short break from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by the Longevity and Lifestyle Insider. 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, articles I've read on life and longevity optimization, cool biohacking and lifestyle products that I've discovered, and other fun things to help you be at your best that I have found for you. It's a very short piece of inspiration, 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. Please enjoy. And now back to our show.

So for my audience members that may be unfamiliar with the difference between genetics and epigenetics, can you expand a little bit and explain more on the differences and the power of epigenetics and what can be done?

Sure. So your genetics are what you're born with. Everyone at this point knows what genes are, right? And they're hard-coded, but your epigenome is which genes are expressed and which genes are silenced or muted. And so one way of thinking of it is an analogy of a piano. Those keys would be your genes and the piano player would be the epigenome expressing different genes. And you can have Mozart playing on the piano or you can have a kid crashing down on the keys, right? And so those are the two extremes. Most of us are born with Mozart playing, but then with different lifestyle decisions, you have a misplaced key or you lose the rhythm a little bit. And as you get older and older, just as a consequence of aging, certain keys that should not be struck are, and certain keys that should be struck are not. And so there, there's been some scientific analysis of this and when it, when looking at longevity and so the two aspects of it, the lifespan and then also healthspan, they found that your genetics are probably influencing your health. Span in your lifespan by about 20 to 30%, but 70 to 80% of it is actually coming from your lifestyle. So this is nature versus nurture, and it's always this question. And most people say, oh, 50/50. No, it's actually significantly more lifestyle than your genetics. The exception would—

I mean, that, that's phenomenal. I think for people who haven't heard this before, that this is really exciting. You can do a lot.

So the exception to that might be people who are exceptionally long-lived, like supercentenarians, when people are living 100 years plus, then genetics plays a bigger role in their ability to live that long, but still greater than 50% lifestyle compared to genetics to be able to live that long as well.

And can you talk about some of the key epigenetic drivers that positively or negatively influence healthspan and longevity? Sure.

So there are a number of different lifestyle things that you can do to have either a positive or negative effect on your epigenome. So one, perhaps the most obvious is cigarette smoke. The cigarette smoke has been shown in multiple epigenetic clocks, and we can talk about what epigenetic clocks are if you'd like, but they've been found to accelerate aging by approximately 7 years when for chronic smokers. What also has an impact on your epigenome is alcohol intake, using toxins into your lifestyle. Even worse than cigarette smoke, believe it or not, is air pollution because that's like omnipresent. It's always around and it has that many more chemicals present in it. And those are some of the things that can have a negative effect on it. Positive effect can be your diet. For example, one of the most powerful diets for longevity is the Mediterranean diet. As much controversy as there is about newer diets like vegan or paleo or ketogenic and so on, the tried and true diet that the longest lived people in the world have used for thousands of years, arguably, is the Mediterranean diet. We at Novos have modified that. It's— you can find it at novoslabs.com/diet. So using the latest scientific insights, we've made some slight tweaks to that diet in terms of recommendations. But overall, that is the foundation, is the Mediterranean diet. Your meal timing can have an impact. So we talked a little bit before about when you eat your food and how often you go without eating food, and that can have an impact on your epigenome, a favorable one. Obviously, activity, physical activity. So at a minimum, walking 21 minutes per day will get you probably about 50% of the health benefits of physical activity, which many people like myself, that's not nearly enough. I want to maximize the benefits. But for a lot of people out there who don't like to exercise and so on, at least do the 21 minutes a day. And then ideally you're adding in things like weightlifting and high-intensity interval training, maybe a little bit of steady-state cardio like a bike ride or something like that. But I talk about all of these topics. I did a webinar a couple of months ago that you can find on YouTube. So if you search for Novo Longevity Lifestyle webinar, you'll come across that. And it's a presentation that talks through all of these topics and some of the research as well.

Amazing. Let's talk about epigenetic clocks and biological age testing. Chris, can you tell us about your journey there and what it's come to currently?

Sure, sure. Epigenetic clocks are looking at your epigenome and there are specific, there's specific genes that are turned on or off that are correlated with your age. Now, there are different generations of these clocks. The first generation of the clocks were trying to correlate the outcome to your chronological age. And this was, I believe, around 2011 or so. Since then, we've made a shift to focusing on the second generation clocks, which want to essentially find biological age. And what's biological age? It is your risk of morbidity and mortality. Right. We all know the mortality tables that insurers have, right? Life insurers have for depending on your chronological age, you have a different chance of passing away and it goes up exponentially as you get older. A 90-year-old has a far higher chance of dying tomorrow than a 20-year-old does. And so looking at that biologically though is quite different because you can have two people who are chronologically the same age. Let's say 45 years old, but biologically you can have someone in that cohort that looks like they're 60, and you can have someone in that cohort who looks like they're 35. And when you hold, when you put the photographs of the two of them side by side, you think they are two completely different ages, but they aren't by our standard definition of age. Biologically speaking, they are, they're quite different.. So that's the second generation clocks looking at the mortality risk. In fact, one of them is literally called GrimAge, right? The third generation clocks that are brand new, we're offering one of them at Novos called the DunedinPACE clock. The Novos product is called Novos Age and it consists of 3 different tests in it. But the main test is the DunedinPACE clock. And this was produced by researchers at Duke University and Columbia University. University. And this actually looks at the pace of aging. And they looked at, I believe, 18 different markers of aging. So they are monitoring grip strength, white matter in the brain, and cognition, and sit-stand test, and so on, blood markers as well. And they did this for over 1,000 people and over the span of more than 50 years. In New Zealand. And that's why it's called Dunedin because that's the university that did this in, or the town in New Zealand that this was recorded in. And so they were able to do a longitudinal analysis. In other words, over time for over 1,000 people, how they were aging with different circumstances, even things like somebody who grew up in a, in an abusive home as a child versus someone who didn't. It's found that they age more quickly.. And that's the psychological element of aging. And so this is considered to be the most powerful biological age clock ever created and the most accurate as well. And it is predictive of disease risk, predictive of mortality. And what we particularly like about it is that it tells you your biological pace or rate of aging at this point in time. So it's the most sensitive to change as well. As well. So an analogy I like to give is that if you're driving in a car and you've been driving for 50 years, it's hard to change the total distance that you've driven over 50 years. It'll take you a long time to be able to make an impact on those 50 years, right? Whereas to change your speed that you're driving in that car by pressing the gas or the brake, you can do almost instantly. Researchers have found that within 3 months or so, you can see a change in your pace of aging through this clock. And we recommend at Novos that you test once a year so that you can rule out confounding factors that might occur based on seasonality. Like in the winter, your lifestyle is completely different than it is in the summer. And those are confounding factors that you might try to minimize, but you can't get rid of all of them. So if you test at the same time every year, you can be sure that the interventions you've added to your lifestyle lifestyle are really effective.

How often would you recommend testing? Just once a year? Is that like a good marker or do you think more frequent if you're doing lifestyle changes and want to see the results? Yeah.

So if you want to be very precise with the results and be absolutely certain or close to certain that what you've done has made an impact once a year because of that seasonality effect, is what I would recommend. And if budget is an issue, then once a year is a healthy frequency for it. And believe me, this doesn't work for us commercially in the sense I'd love to say, yeah, buy it every month, right? Buy 12 kits a year. This is really just looking in the best interest of the customer. With that said, if money isn't an object and you are curious, then you could do it once every, say, 3 months, right? Once every season. But you need to be very mindful of the ways that things that you might not even be fully aware of, how they can impact your pace of aging. For example, in the winter to the summer, how much does your sun exposure change the vitamin D production through your skin and the hormonal effects that can have on your epigenome, your vacation, your stress levels, your alcohol consumption, your food and dietary intake, the amount of calories, the timing, and the types of foods you're eating. There's just so many things that can change from December 27th versus July 27th that we tend to recommend just normalize it and take the test ideally on the same day or the same week, or at least the same month that you took it last time.

That's really helpful. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about nutraceuticals and what a longevity nutraceutical is.

Can you expand on that? Sure. When I decided to found Novos, part of the reason for it was that I saw all of this exciting work being done in longevity science, but it was all on the biotech and pharmaceutical side of things. And so what that meant to me was it was something that I would not be able to integrate into my life anytime soon, if ever. It would require a doctor's prescription. It would probably be exorbitantly expensive. And that's just for me who is excited about this. What about my friends and family who would never go through the trouble to jump through all of those hoops to integrate this into their lives? And so the question was, what can I do now beyond what I'm already doing with my healthy diet and the supplements I'm already taking and so on? There was no clear answer of what I could do. There was nothing on the market that answer that question for me. There were partial solutions, but no one was really fully addressing longevity. And so I started to talk to scientists in the field, world-renowned experts, and asking them about sub— natural substances that I had been researching that were found to have positive effects on these different hallmarks or mechanisms of aging. And ultimately I've learned from them that there is a lot of promise, a lot of enthusiasm,. And unlike medical doctors who tend to have a negative perspective, not always, but oftentimes a negative perspective on supplements, they say, oh, just take the prescription drug, right? Wait until something breaks and then come see me and I'll give you a prescription rather than let's use these natural ways to, for preventative medicine and prevent having to come to see you for a problem. The scientists look at the scientific evidence and that is their truth. And there's a lot of very powerful substances found in nature. That to that point have even turned into prescription drugs like metformin, like rapamycin, like aspirin. You go down the list. Many things have been derived from nature. That's when I decided that there was something there that had held a lot of promise. And my approach was distinct from any other company or even scientific lab to that point, which was to try to create a formulation that addressed all 10 hallmarks of aging simultaneously. So what are the hallmarks of aging? They're essentially the biological causes of aging. Why do we get older? Things like genomic instability, which is DNA damage, cellular senescence, which is when cells turn into zombie type of state and they cause nearby cells to also turn into zombie-like state as well. And it goes up exponentially as you age and is one of the reasons our skin wrinkles, for example. Another reason our skin wrinkles is another hallmark of aging, which is cross-linking. That's when sugar molecules form bonds with fats or proteins in our cells and, and make them stiffer. So you can imagine what that does to your skin, but what about what it does to your blood vessels and your heart attack risk and so on, right? Mitochondrial dysfunction. These are the power plants of our cells and they convert the protein and the carbs and the fat into energy. So that we can think and our heart can beat and we can walk around and talk. But that becomes less powerful and you have fewer of them. They become dysfunctional as you age. So there's a total of 10 of these, and I wanted to address all of them simultaneously because in talking to the scientists, it was widely agreed that would be the best approach to make the largest impact on the aging process. Process, not by cherry picking one or two of them, which is what the biotech companies do, by the way. They just pick one or two and they specialize. We as an over-the-counter company had the flexibility to be able to address all 10 simultaneously and not have to create it for medical condition, which is what the FDA requires for the biotech or pharma approval process. So that gave us a special set of circumstances that enabled us to create a formulation that has never existed before. Nothing like this has ever existed. We've gotten, we filed for patents for this. We've run multiple different scientific studies on it, and it was co-formulated with a team of 6 scientific advisory board members from Harvard, MIT, and the Salk Institute who are all industry experts in longevity.

Can you talk about some of the products and formulations and also some of the results that you've seen clients or customers having from taking them?

Sure. So we have two products. We have NOVOS Core and NOVOS Boost. NOVOS Core is what we're most proud of. That contains 12 ingredients. That's what we filed for the patent protection on. And then NOVOS Boost contains one ingredient. It's a powerful ingredient called nicotinamide mononucleotide or NMN, which Dr. David Sinclair at Harvard who wrote the book Lifespan. He's done a lot of research on this ingredient and so have many other labs, but he's the most famous person in the field. He is a big proponent for this and he takes NMN daily himself. So we recommend that you take both of the products together. The reason we separated them was just to make the products more affordable for people. NMN is an expensive ingredient, and if we included it in NOVOS Core, it would've made it inaccessible for a lot of people, and it would've also made the NMN inaccessible for a lot of people. If you subscribe to NOVOS Boost or NOVOS Core and you commit to 12 months for either of them, it's $32 a month for Boost and $79 a month for NOVOS Core. Not exorbitantly expensive, and it's that much more affordable for people. The studies that we've run, one of which was at an academic lab at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. It was done by a very well-regarded scientist in the area of DNA damage and cellular senescence. And what that study found was that we were able to reduce cellular senescence or the size of senescent cells by more than 50%. And remember, senescent cells are the zombie-like cells and you want fewer of them. They do serve a purpose. They oftentimes, they are what the body does to arrest a cancer, a cancerous cell, but ultimately once they're created, there's little to no use for them. And you don't want them because they secrete inflammatory molecules that spread the damage. And so it was found that we were able to shrink the size of them by about 50% and prevent them from spreading. And what's particularly notable about this is that the effect size was comparable to the prescription drug rapamycin, which is the gold standard in longevity research that researchers always hold their research up to because that has been the most powerful longevity drug across species ever of all time. So that was one study. Another study was done to look at DNA damage and we irradiated human cells with either no NOVOS, with NOVOS, or human cell with no irradiation whatsoever.. And so we had two controls on this essentially, and it was found that NOVOS was able to reduce DNA damage from irradiation by as much as 77%. And on average across different dosages, I believe it was 68% reduction in DNA damage, which is off the charts. So the lab that ran this had done $7 million worth of studies with different compounds, pharmaceutical and natural. Prior to ours and including ingredients in our formula, but individual ingredients. And they were not able to see any notable results whatsoever. It is the synergistic nature of our combination of ingredients that led to these results. And they were so surprised they called their CEO to let them know about the results before they even called us. They were that excited about it. So that's another study. And then one that we haven't published yet, looked at the effects of chemotherapeutics on human cells and the damage that they cause and looked at DNA strand breaks. So either single-strand breaks or double-strand breaks. Double-strand breaks is almost— an analogy would be like slicing a car in half at the axle. So there's no way that this DNA can function and serve its purpose. And we were able to reduce DNA damage in this very powerful chemotherapeutic by a very substantial amount. I can't say exactly what yet until we publish the information. But it was very significant.

And again, it was in human cells. That's very exciting. Wow. Beautiful. What's your vision for Novos, Chris?

So I, I see Novos as being the foundation for consumer longevity. So we have 3 legs to the stool, so to speak, of what Novos is. So one leg is our formulations, and we put a lot of time and care and research and money behind our formulations. We're not like a typical supplement company that hears about an exciting research paper with ingredient X and then decides, let's sell ingredient X and throw a lot of marketing dollars behind it and get a podcast interview and say, this is the greatest thing ever. No, we're very careful about that. We won't be the first to market with each ingredient intentionally, because we want to make sure there's adequate research and we want to build that trust with our customer base. That we are doing the careful work with our scientific advisory board. We're agnostic to ingredients. We just want to provide you with the best ingredients that have very low to no side effect profile, no risk, and looking at the body of research holistically. And I can talk about incidents, even one right now where the internet and YouTube is really talking up a combination of ingredients as if this is the only study ever done on these ingredients and ignoring the negative effects that the ingredients can have. So that's formulations. The second leg of the stool is testing. So I mentioned Novos Age, that includes the Dunedin Pace Clock, but also a biological age clock and telomere length. And telomeres are one of the hallmarks of aging. They're the end caps of chromosomes that protect your DNA and they get shorter with time. But we also offer free testing. So if you go to novoslabs.com, and you go to the top right corner, there's a quiz that you can take in less than 10 minutes and see what your longevity score is based on your lifestyle. So how conducive to a long and healthy lifestyle life is your current lifestyle. And then we also have something called Face Age, which you can take a selfie and you can see based on AI and a dataset of more than 12 million people's faces, how old your face is. It looks at everything from skeletal structure to adipose or fat tissue, skin wrinkling, and so on. And it'll give you the, the age as well as skin health markers, and that's completely free. So that's novoslabs.com/faceage. And then finally, the third leg of the stool is knowledge. And so we're a public benefit corporation, and so we want to give as much away for free to help people to live longer, healthier lives. I think that education is is the most significant thing that we can do in that regard. So we have already more than 100 scientifically referenced articles written by MDs and PhDs for all topics related to longevity. And we're going to, as we grow, increase the amount of content in the forms of that content beyond just written content.

Excellent. How is your Face Age and your testing, Chris? How, how, where are you coming up at the moment?

What's your goal? So let's see, I have the numbers in front of me if I can pull them up here. So for Face age at 37.5, it came back as 28. For the biological age clock, it is 23.6. That's an epigenetic clock. So that's, that was minus almost 14 years. For the Dunedin Pace clock. So my pace of aging, and this is again, arguably the most accurate of all the clocks out there. This came back at 31% slower aging. Um, and so basically aging 0.69 years per, per year. And then perhaps the most interesting one is my telomere age. That came back as 7.8 years old. So telomeres of a 7-year-old essentially. So it goes to show that telomeres aren't as powerful of an indicator of your biological age as once thought, because clearly I'm not a 7-year-old. At least I hope I don't come across as one, but it, it telomeres, if they get too short, they can increase the likelihood of disease like digestive tract cancers and increase the risk of mortality. So you want longer, within reason, not too long, but longer telomeres is typically better.

Would you say it's beneficial to always test and look at the different home, the different tests as well at the same time? I know that some of them are obviously more impactful, but is it good to track the different ones, including the telomere one, even though it's not as accurate as well?

Yeah, I think so. So I think it's best to have a holistic look into your biological health and biological age, because there's no single measure that accounts for 100% of things. Now, the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock comes the closest to that in terms of how they, they put together the clock and the mathematics behind it and all of the different variables they looked at when assembling it. But I was having a conversation with one of our scientific advisors Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, who is very famous for his work with rapamycin and the Dog Aging Project, which was on the COVID of Time magazine. And when I was telling him my results, he said, those are great, Chris, but are there any real-world physiological markers or phenotypic markers that are similar, that are aligned with these results? And I said, it's funny you should ask, Matt, because I've actually been measuring other things like my pulse wave velocity, my VO2 max, my resting heart rate, the face age, as I mentioned, my visceral fat. So all of these other things also came in with, in the neighborhood of mid, mid to late 20s, which is aligned with what I was getting for the epigenetic clock. So this is further validation of that clock. So I would say yes, ideally, if you have the time and care, measure multiple things and make sure that the data points are aligned, because if there's something that is an outlier, like your heart is that of a— it's coming back as that of a 40-year-old, but your epigenetic age is coming back as a 28-year-old, you should look into that. Why is your heart not scoring as, as high from the physiological marker level? I actually tomorrow, so by the time this podcast is published, it'll be in the past, but tomorrow I'm doing a webinar specifically about longevity testing. And I talk about all of the different clocks, everything from epigenetic clocks to transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, microbiomic, uh, and so on. And then also talk about the things you can do at home, oftentimes for free, to test your likelihood of passing away within the next 7 or 8 years. That would be things like the sit-stand test. As well as things that are just indicative of the direction that your health will likely go if you continue in this way. For example, blood biomarkers are good for that. If your triglycerides are too high, it doesn't mean that you're gonna die in the next 3 or 4 years, but it is a warning sign of something that you might wanna take care of today so that you can fix that problem so it doesn't have a long-term impact on your lifespan.

It would be great if you can share the link when you have it after the recording, we can include it in the show notes. As well. So for anyone listening, they can go back and watch that as well. Of course. That's amazing. Chris, if someone came to you wanting to perform better as a human being, what would you say are the 3 most important pieces of advice you'd offer based on your own life experience?

The first one I mentioned before, I would say is sleep. Really important for mental performance, physical performance. It's oftentimes neglected. I would say sleep is number 1. I'd say number 2 is a little bit of a curveball. I would say being as self-aware as possible. So to, to really be as present as possible. Meditation is one method to start to practice that and then integrating it into your own life so that you're very self-aware, conscious, present, right? You're not like always caught in thoughts and unaware of what's happening around you. And then number 3, I guess, would be making sure that you don't have— you're not running any deficiencies in your life, in your diet, in your supplementation routine, and so on. Because you could have— let's just say there's 15 different vitamins and minerals and so on that you need as biological requirements simply for you to be healthy, right? And you can run a deficiency in even just one of them That can then cause a multitude of problems in your life. Take for example, the often forgotten vitamin choline. Call it the forgotten B vitamin. It was once considered to be a B vitamin and choline. If you don't get enough of it, which most people don't get enough of it, it can have an impact on your neurotransmitters first and foremost. So your acetylcholine levels, which impact your thinking, your conscious thinking, your muscle contractions, and so on. And so it can, that can impact your motivation, your ability to focus and so on, but it can also then lead to a fatty liver and you can get non-alcoholic fatty liver disease if you're choline deprived. There are many studies where they've shown this in the laboratory where people are given normal healthy diets. They're not obese, they're not consuming alcohol, and they are just deprived of choline and they develop a fatty liver. And so that's just one small example. There's many other things that can go wrong from a deficiency in choline, but that's an example of one single deficiency that the same thing is true of iron deficiency or just too much iron of B vitamins and the impact that has on methylation and on your neurotransmitter production and detoxification and so on. That's a long answer to your question, but I would say that making sure you have no deficiencies is very important.

Exactly. And I just would implore people looking at deficiencies. The challenge is that the, traditionally trained medical Western doctor is going to look at a biomarker range that is based on a white man in the '60s, 1960s, and a lot of people obviously don't fall into that category. And just look at it from a functional medicine perspective and look at ranges that are optimal for you and to who you are, your age, etc. So that's why, just to understand where the optimal ranges and deficiencies actually are, to be an optimal health and not just surviving. So just a little side note to that point as well. Chris, what trends and developments in the longevity space do you find most exciting?

I would say everything that's happening in the omics space, especially the epigenomic space. As we were talking before multiple times about the epigenome, there's a lot of exciting research research being done where you can reprogram the epigenome and then the cells essentially take on a younger, younger life, right? There are these proteins called Yamanaka factors. They're named after the person who discovered them, who got the Nobel Prize for it. And the Yamanaka factors, when administered, if administered haphazardly, you could take a cell, an old cell, and restore it back to like stem cell state. And I say haphazardly because you don't want to do that in a living organism because what then happens to, to that organism, right? Yeah. But if you do it in a very controlled way and in a sequence and pulsing the doses, you can actually reprogram the cells so that they are young again. And there was a, there is a professor at University of Lausanne in Switzerland who I actually went to visit. Last January. His name is Professor Ocampo. He did this, this seminal experiment where he was able to administer these Yamanaka factors in mice and essentially make the mice young again, especially their livers. They were these old mice at, at towards the end of their lifespans, and they were able to restore their livers to that of basically the equivalent of like teenagers. And so restored the function. You slice open the liver and it looks like a young, healthy liver again compared to the control animals that didn't have the Yamanaka factors administered. There's a lot of promise there and there's some studies being done now to take a similar approach for blindness. And they're starting with animals, of course, but the hope is to be able to then administer a therapy to humans who have gone blind and basically restore their vision.

It's really exciting what what's happening in the space. And I think also through the technology available, the pace at which I think developments are happening is increasing as well. So very exciting space to be in. Love what you guys are doing at Novos as well, Chris. Do you, where can people find more about what you are up to, be it on social media, website, where can people find you?

And I'll link it in the show notes. Sure. So website is novoslabs.com. And then you can find Novos Labs across social. So Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. I think even TikTok now. I'm a little bit too chronologically old to really know much about TikTok, not biologically, but chronologically. And then, and then personally, I launched a blog called Slow My Age, slowmyage.com, just a few months ago, which goes over my results. And then also my lifestyle, the things I do for exercise and diet and my my daily routines and so on. So hopefully people can get some tips from that and integrate it into their own lives and maybe outdo my scores. And so it's Slow My Age on Twitter and Instagram as well. Excellent.

Chris, do you have a final ask or recommendation or any parting thoughts or message for my audience?

Yeah, I would say the ask is to consider, to rethink what aging is. Most people think that this is an inevitable fact of life and that there's nothing that can be done about it. And we have shown in science that something can be done about it. You can literally reverse the aging process. You can make something that is old young again. In fact, we see it naturally in nature where there are species that are able to, once they're old, basically hit a reset switch and then become young again. And they have an infinite lifespan. And so not saying that we will have infinite lifespans as humans, or that we want to have infinite lifespans, but the point is that there's a lot we can do to extend healthy lifespan so that you can, in theory, be 120 years old, but the equivalent of a 50-year-old in terms of your cellular and physical fit and the way you think and the way you look and so on. This stuff is possible. And if any, anyone critiquing it or skeptics out there, just think back to before we had sewage systems or antibiotics, or you name, you go down the list, eyeglasses, like technology has really revolutionized what life is for us throughout history. It doesn't seem as notable because we're looking in hindsight, but if you fast forward 1,000 years from now and look in hindsight at what we're doing now, this won't seem notable either, but it is very possible that companies like Novos were making moves on it.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Chris, for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure.

Of course.

Thank you for having me. Hi everyone. This is Claudia again. Before you take off, would you like to get a short email from me with some short but sweet fun tips, tricks, and updates on all things longevity and lifestyle? This could be cool products that I've discovered, interesting posts or articles I've read, and other fun and helpful things around longevity and lifestyle I've found for you. It's a very short piece of inspiration for you a few times a month. So if you want to receive it, check it out by going to longevity-and-lifestyle.com. That's longevity-and-lifestyle.com. And leave your email to sign up for the next one.