In this segment of the Human Upgrade podcast, Dave Asprey talks with Ian Mitchell about the practical use of C60, a carbon‑60 fullerene, for enhancing mitochondrial power, muscle performance, and brain health. Mitchell explains his approach of coupling C60 with specific lipids (lipofluoranes) to target different physiological pathways—oleic acid for sirtuin activation, caprylic acid/MCT for brain delivery, etc. He describes how, once inside the mitochondrial membrane, C60 can shortcut electron transport to increase ATP production, providing excess energy that the body can allocate to processes like DNA repair, which may underlie observed lifespan extensions in rodents. A major focus is the bioavailability problem: many commercial C60 products are poorly absorbed because the molecule is hydrophobic and tends to aggregate. Mitchell’s company, Wizard Sciences, revamped the production process by using centrifugation and controlled lipolysis to ensure true adduction of C60 to carrier lipids, distinguishing their product from others that merely appear “lipolyzed.” He emphasizes that this method can be verified experimentally (centrifuge separation, amylase digestion). The conversation then shifts to safety and dosing. Mitchell warns that high doses (e.g., a bottle a day) can overly potentiate sarcomeric activation, leading to muscle over‑recruitment, tendon and ligament strain, and injuries such as hamstring tears. He recommends a dose‑dependent curve: most users should stay at two teaspoons per day (or a tablespoon only for extreme challenges) to reap benefits without risking musculoskeletal damage. The tone is conversational and supportive, with a mix of enthusiasm for the technology and caution regarding dosage.
Chapters
You're listening to the Human upgrade with Dave Asprey. Some of what you're working on here with C60 can help a lot of people.
We're these multivariate complicated creatures that need things that address multiple components. That's actually why I like the lipofluoranes, is because you couple it with different lipids to activate different components in your body. Right. So if you want to get, you know, some sirtuin activation, you bind it with, you know, oleic acid or olive oil as base. If you want to get something to your brain, you bind it with caprylic acid or just a straight mct. You let the body do the heavy lifting. You just provide it with the tools it needs and all the different components, and then kind of the inherent intelligence of the body does the rest.
That is, it's so important. You just have to power it and get stuff out of the way. And I look at C60 as something that kind of short circuits parts of the power generation in the mitochondrial membrane. So it just makes power more easily.
Yes.
And when that happens and there's excess energy left over after you didn't get eaten by a tiger, after you dealt with things, and after you handled the highest level of biological priorities, then you get into, oh, I guess I could repair my DNA because it didn't really matter right now, but since I had extra capacity, I could do it. And I think that's why you see such a long rat life extension. But one of the big questions here is what happens with, oh, what happens with bioavailability? Because the issue has always been with this stuff that it's not very stable and you can't get into the body. So what are you doing at Wizard Sciences that's different than, I mean, there's 25 brands of C60.
Yeah, there are.
Well, so varying quality and whatnot.
It's very true. Well, you know, my thing has always been trying to figure out, like you how to hack systems to upregulate things. And so it's truly, I always joke, it's, you know, like having, you don't need 16 pounds of grape jelly. You don't, you know, if food is outside of your reach, it's not going to benefit you. And the same thing, I've tested a bunch of the different C 60s and you see that when people lipolyze these, it has the appearance of having a high bioavailability because you think it's actually adducted and bound, but it's not. And the way you can really Test for that is, you know, you pop the thing in a centrifuge and you see what really is going on. And so we shifted the entire process here. I had been doing it the same way for the past seven years and then I completely flip flopped it because when I started doing the studies to see, you know, what happens, how much is actually here and what difference you can tell, you know, like in terms of how much is actually there that is available for you because it's, you know, it's hydrophobic. So unless it's lipolyzed, it's not happening, you're not getting it in. And unfortunately it very easily has the appearance of being lithalized. And you don't actually know that you haven't attained that until you start doing things like centrifugation and actually trying to forcibly break it down and looking at amylases to see what can separate things. And after you do that, it's not that hard to go back and figure out, okay, where in this part of the process did I go awry? What was I not counting? And that's exactly what I did when I started this. I thought, okay, what I did, I thought was the best at the time. And it arguably, hopefully was because I think a lot of people have derived a lot of benefit from it, which is why I do this stuff. But now it's just upregulated. And I don't necessarily want to disclose exactly how I revamp the whole system to do that, but it's very easy. If you took my stuff and you took the stuff that I had been doing and you looked at them side by side and you simply ran it through a centrifuge, you would see a market difference almost instantly.
I 100% believe you there. You're a trustworthy guy. From my experience, you don't BS about the science. You never have.
No, because truth is truth, man, it's so easy to show.
How would one using your C60 avoid having muscles so large that they pull off the bones? I'm serious. I did not like it when.
I know you are, because I jerked my hamstring twice. It was, I had a ginormous bruise where I tore the thing and then I pulled the muscles in my lower back apart. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a very legitimate question. Follow the dosage recommendations. Do not do what I did because I was, I did that stuff when I was doing, you know, kind of a high dose regimen to see what the threshold was. And because it follows, you know, that paper that I sent you, it's a dose dependent curve, right? So the higher the dosing, the more sarcomeric activation you get, the more your muscles are going to fire and the higher the propensity for them to cause damage to the tendons and ligaments. So you just got to, you got to dial it down. Just use it as a benefit for your body, don't use it as something to supplement. I mean, there are actually, there are a couple of times where I think it would be good to do that. But generally speaking, unless you're some high end performance athlete, follow the recommendations, do two teaspoons a day max, enjoy the benefits, you'll feel like a champion. You just won't hurt yourself because if you go too far, you really do. The moment your, your muscles potentiate and you get the signal to fire. If you have a total recruitment, that generally doesn't happen unless you're having a fight or flight response where your brain overrides the capacity for your body to down regulate it. Because normally you only potentiate 25 to 30% of your muscles when they fire, right? Your recruitment is about 25 to 30%. And if you're in fight or flight, you can go at 80 to 100%. This will bypass that on a dose dependent curve. So the dose response curve, if you suck that stuff into your system, like I was doing like a bottle a day, don't do that thing, you know, it's just, it's too extreme. Just follow the dosing recommendations, cap it at 2 teaspoons. If you got something super, super difficult that you've got to do, do a tablespoon. Otherwise just call it good and rock on.
