Chris Burres on Carbon 60 (C60) Fullerene for Sleep Enhancement and Immune Health

This episode is brought to you by Nourish Me Organics, your Gut Health superstore. Today's episode is going to center around the magnificent benefits of C60 fullerene, which includes antiviral, antioxidant, anti aging. So, guys, if you're interested in checking out C60, do, head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code C60 for 10% off.

Hey, guys. Criben Govender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science, and today I have an absolutely intriguing and fascinating guest for you. I'm gonna totally mess up his name. He's just told me, but I've got a bad habit of stuffing up names.

So go for it.

Apologies, Chris Burez Burris.

Very close.

Bures. Damn it. Damn it. Chris Burrez. And firstly, Chris, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Cribben, so much for having me. I'm excited. We were doing a little chat before the podcast. I think we're gonna have a lot of chemistry and a lot of fun and a lot of learning in this podcast.

Amazing man. And what really intrigued me with Chris's story and journey is this particular compound called C60. And Chris is going to tell us all about it. It's going to break it down. I get this question asked all the time, C60 and olive oil on my Facebook groups or things like that. People are talking about this product and literally I have no idea when people ask me what this thing is, is it any good? It's typically touted as being some sort of longevity supplement. I don't have an idea, but we're going to learn all about it today. Chris. The first thing I like to do at the start of my podcasts is to get it from the horse's mouth. Who is Chris Perez?

Oh, that's a great, deep question. Who am I right now? A lot of the ways that I describe who I am is I use the phrase accidental supplement guy. And I know we can get into conversations and actually enjoy those conversations about who are you, Are you your job, are you, whatever? So if we want to get pull up a step back, I'm a dancer. I love to dance. I'm not professional or anything, but I'm a dancer. I absolutely love dancing and dances to as many types of music as often as I can. I'm a kind, gentle, caring person who motivates through believing in people. I actually had somebody recently asked me, was like, was I the Steve Jobs of Fullerenes? And I was like, well, if there's any parallels that you could draw. The one that you can't draw is my motivation style is not like Steve Jobs. So I motivate with. With nurturing and it's very interesting. That's fundamentally in my nature. And I'm an accidental supplement guy who has a supplement that seems to be helping a great many people. So yeah, I think that's reasonable on who I am.

That's amazing. And you know, it's really fascinating when you read about someone on the Internet and obviously I do a little bit of research on my guests and then you pull out this left field thing. I'm a dancer. Wow. That's just like, that's just like, that's amazing. And look. And not many people know this about myself, but I actually did a full year of acting training. Like, and as part of that training was the Meissner technique. We also did a lot of dance work, heaps of improv dance work. And I'll tell you, Chris, I can fully resonate to why you love dancing because it is one of the times when I feel totally free and out of my head. That's the biggest thing, like being a really analytical, sciencey type guy. It's the moments like that where I can just step into my body and get out of the thinking mind. The analytical mind. Yeah.

Have you ever done, I gotta ask, so having studied acting, have you ever. You've taken, I'm guessing, some improv courses?

Yeah, yeah, I do.

I did comedy improv here in Houston for about five years. And I'm with you. Along with dancing, I think even for me, comedy improv, even though you're on stage and you kind of have to be quick witted or whatever, you cannot be in your head when you're doing comedy improv. It's totally about being in that moment on the stage with that other actor and feeding and breathing and existing with them. And that's totally outside of your head and totally out of the science, geeky guy stuff that we're about to talk about.

Yeah, I totally agree, man. And improv comedy I haven't done dabbled into much. I've done a little bit in the acting training that I did, but it definitely, when you're in especially using something like the Meissner technique. And why, just on a side note, why these things really appeal to me and why I started doing it pretty much later in my life is because I struggled for most of my life with anxiety and depression. And one of the things as part of my journey was finding tools and Techniques to actually help me to manage my anxiety and depression. And I do an improv class. It is like medicine. Yeah, it's hard to start, but once, once you start it, like I'm a. I still go and do regular drop in classes just for the way it makes me feel. I can't just do a one day workshop. If something pops up on my Facebook feed and one of my mates is running an improv class or some sort of acting training, especially with the Meissner technique, I just jump at it and I'll just go and spend a day and just do it. And then it resets me for days afterwards and I feel the effects for months. It's amazing.

I'm right there. I haven't performed in a while and I certainly miss that theater. I'm hoping no Fault of My Own went under and so it's not available to perform at. And it was right up the street here, so it was, it was really convenient and an amazing part of my life. I'm very happy that my kids got a chance to see me on stage, you know, because public speaking is one of the greatest fears. And what your parents can do is usually the limitation of what you can do in your head until you fix it. Right. And so for them to see me on stage means that it should be very easy for them to be on stage. I'm very, very happy about that.

Yeah, totally. It's the same thing with my kids. And look, I highly encourage them. I've been quite fortunate enough as part of the acting training to get us like a few small little features here and there on tv. You know, whether it's like a, like a, like a TV ad. So I've popped up a couple of times and those I've been fortunate enough to be in a couple of US productions as well. Just as it's literally like a flash. But you're so right. When your children, when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone and then your kids look at dad or look at mum and look at what they can do, it just expands their whole realm of possibilities. So 100% with you, Chris.

I gotta throw one other kind of off ball. I actually have an IMDb listing.

Yeah, me too.

Cool Science your nerds Unite on IMDb. So I found it one day and it was really just like a graduate student's movie. And he submitted it and got everything in place. I'm like, wow. I didn't even know about it. It was kind of cool.

It's funny, I had this amazing scientist, his name is Dr. Laszlo Borosch. And I think he's from UCLA. And like when we started the, like the conversation like we had at the start, he was like, oh, you're an actor. I've seen your IMDb page. It's like that, that was a few years ago. It's a couple of years ago. But now I'm really focused on the science.

All right, now you have something for me to aspire to. Nobody's ever met me and going, I've seen your IMDb page. I need. That's a goal, that's a bucket list.

So I have to know like, get a feel for how did you discover because you like this very kind of multifaceted character with so many different interests. So how did you go from all the stuff that you're doing to discovering this molecule called C60?

So first you talked about you wanted to know where to learn about C60 and people are mentioning it to you. I like to share were the source. So I started a company in 1991. It's the first company that still exists. One, one company did beat us, Grr. But they didn't last for more than nine months. So we're the first company that still exists to deliver commercial quantities of carbon nanomaterials, of which C60 is one. I also like to make a demarcation because C60, like the context of our conversation, C60 is for industrial applications and there's peer reviewed research that shows if you process it improperly, it's actually harmful. ESS 60 is C60 that's been processed for safer human consumption. So there is a, you know, there's lots of room in the conversation to talk and we'll talk about the Nobel Prize and, and all of that stuff. So first I didn't actually discover the material. My business partner Robert was working. There's an organization inside of the University of Houston Go Cougs campus and he was working at the Texas center for superconductivity with a Dr. Paul Chew. Dr. Chu is really famous in the superconductivity realm and was doing research on fullerenes. And my business partner Robert Wong was there separating the fullerenes so that he could do kind of detailed scientific research on it. One day at that time, C60 was selling for $6,000 a gram, right? So just off the charts, crazy expensive. My business partner comes from an entrepreneurial background. Dr. Chu came into the lab one day, was like, this stuff is expensive. Like lots of researchers want it. Why don't you guys go start a business? And it probably didn't take 10 minutes for my business partner to go, okay, let me figure out how to make this stuff. And if I know how to make it, I know how to sell it for $6,000 a gram. We actually wrote our entire business plan based on what we were going to sell to the University of Houston. And just for entrepreneurs out there, no, we have never sold to the University of Houston. Business plan is the plan. It's not what's actually going to happen. It just shows that, you know, to make a plan and then move in a direction, and then, you know, you are going to pivot. So originally, Robert brought me into the project because I was studying mechanical engineering, and he needed help drawing the drawings and building out the equipment. And he actually did have another business partner who was working with him at the Texas center for Superconductivity. He kind of went off and did other things. And then Robert and I are still business partners all these years later. And what we do is we deliver commercial quantities of carbon nanomaterials to research institutions. I think it's important to point out, from 1991, really, until we have a supplement focus with the ESS 60 in 2018, we're selling to institutions who not only do they have the equipment, they have the knowledge. And when we sell it to them, the first thing they do is make sure that we sold them what we told them we were going to sell them. Right. And there's. There are competitors in this kind of C60, not ESS60, but C60 space. And they've never had to sell to any customer who has the equipment or the knowledge to test it. And so we're seeing a lot of fraud that's a little upsetting. And that's kind of why, if you look for ess60, you're dealing with a product that's safer for human consumption.

That's fascinating. Just a couple of different rabbit holes, and I'm really interested. Firstly, why are these universities interested in this product? What are they using it for?

Yeah, so the guys who discovered it, they actually discovered it at Rice University here in Houston, and they discovered it in 1985. And it's Dr. Smalley, Dr. Crowd and Dr. Curl, three scientists working together, discovered it in 85, and then by 96, they had won the Nobel Prize. And to give a little perspective, let me kind of tell two stories. So one is, in the early days of the company, I would share with friends and family, I make Buckyballs. And they were like, well, what are those for? And the ongoing joke was well, they're really good for funding, right? If you write a proposal and you turn it into a funding agency and you just wrote a proposal about a molecule that the discoverers just won the Nobel Prize for, you are very likely to get funding. In fact, in 1991, the year we started the company, there's a service that like every research paper references other research papers. Peer reviewed for sure. And every paper should always reference other papers. Right. And they keep track of what are the papers that are being referenced the most. In 1991, all 10 of the most referenced papers were about fullerenes. So the scientific community was just going nuts. And that's why in 96 they ultimately won that Nobel Prize. Now, what is a buckyball used for? So it's superconducting, it's harder than a diamond, It'll actually turn into a diamond if you compress it anisotropically. It's got six fold symmetry. So for, for those kind of tuning in, don't have a picture. It's actually a spherical molecule of 60 carbon atoms. And if you imagine the soccer ball, the lines on the soccer ball represent the bonds between the carbon atoms. I actually have one right here for those people who are looking in, I'm holding up. And really it's like a chemist, imagine a chemicals chemist chemistry student made a soccer ball with just little chemistry sticks and balls on the ends. And, and you've got 60 carbon atoms. Again, the lines on the soccer ball represent the bonds between the carbon atoms. So that's the molecule. There's actually a new symbol in chemistry because of this molecule. So the at symbol never existed in chemistry before. You know the at symbol from emails. So now if you have lanthanum at C60, what you're saying is lanthanum is trapped inside the cage, so, so not covalently or ionically bonded on the exterior, but physically trapped inside of it. And that's obviously the first molecule that we were able to discover that they understood could actually fit any atom on the periodic chart inside of it. So with all of these applications, that six fold symmetry that this molecule, that this shape has, it can hold a lot of electrons, it can release a lot of electrons. They kind of theorized that it would be a good antioxidant because that's really about electrons. Oxidative, electric, with charges, oxidation charges, getting held by the buckyball and then released. It actually is cost competitive with lithium. I've always said it performs as well or better than the current best material in almost every application. So like better Paint, better tires, better solar cells, and better batteries. We may have Bucky batteries in the future. And we're definitely working with, we've partnered with a company that is working on Bucky related organic solar cells. So I think that answers like it, it's just used in a lot of ways and kind of the original joke is really good for funding.

Fair enough. That's, that's how the science world works in many ways. So that makes perfect sense. Now I've got a burning question. Since it's been discovered A while, it's in 90s, right when these things started to emerge, now we're at 2020. Why haven't we seen more wider applications using this particular molecule? And why isn't it not more well known?

Yeah, I think the real short answer is cost. So in the original days it was $6,000 a gram. The production process is actually very slow and not very productive, ironically. So what ends up happening? The most prominent way to make fullerenes right now is you take two graphite rods and you take them in an inner chamber and you vaporize those graphite rods together. By the way, graphite is one of the hardest materials to vaporize. You're talking about extremely high temperatures. In fact, the arc that's between those two rods is the local temperature of the sun. We have a looking glass so we can see it. If we don't, one, you have to have a welder's mask to watch it. And if you have the welder's mask off, you can actually get a sunburn. Like that's how hot this is. So you got a lot of heat management. What comes out of that? The soot that comes off of that graphite as it's vaporized is only about 10% fullerenes. And then 90% are amorphous carbon. And we call it carbon crap because we're just trying to get it out of the way. Even that 10% of fullerenes is only about 80 to 85% carbon. 60. And then the remaining fullerenes, there's a whole gamut of molecules. C70, C84, C96. So there's a whole gamut of kind of bigger C70s, a little more rugby ball shaped, and then they get kind of spherical moving on up. So you've got to isolate it from that point. And so it's just an incredibly expensive material to make. Now we're invested in two other technologies. The next one, these are, they're a little premature. The volume of fullerene usage right now is still low enough to be sufficient for for the arc method. But as volume increases, then the other techniques become more in play. They make more financial sense. One of them is the flame synthesis technique, and then the other one is actually a plasma powder technique. And we're invested in working with two organizations, one on each of those kind of platforms for production. So we do see the price coming down. We actually do see the supplement industry driving up the demand to the point that bringing in these bigger technologies to manufacture on a mass scale start to make sense, and that'll actually bring down the price. And then we'll, you know, have our bucky batteries, have our solar cells, potentially have bucky and inks and paints and, you know, you know, things that I've been hoping for all the way back since the late. All over the 90s.

That's cool. That makes perfect sense. So there's some cost ceilings or cost restrictions that limit the use of this product on an industrial scale versus existing molecules on the market. So that makes perfect sense.

Yeah, even back in the 90s, and then it was more expensive. $6,000. A grammar. We had a very clear understanding that there were only two types of applications that were really going to carry it forward. One of them is where you just needed a little tiny amount of fullerenes. Right. So you were incrementally changing the cost. So if you just needed to put one tenth of a gram in, you know, 100 gallons of paint, and it increased the quality of the paint by 30%, like, that could be sustainable. Right. The other was more like places where money is no issue. Right. So we're in Houston, so you think NASA, if you can protect the astronauts, it almost doesn't matter what it costs. Money is no issue. Or in terms of darpa or defense, if you can make a plane invisible, then it almost doesn't matter how much it costs to make the plane invisible. Right. So we kind of knew that it would be one of those two. And it turns out that in this case of a supplement, you actually can't get that much of the ESS 60 to dissolve in the oil. So it really is a small amount. So it has a smaller cost. It's still expensive, but it's a manageable cost in terms of the supplement and what the supplement can potentially do.

Cool. And that's a perfect segue to talk about. How did it transition from an industrial product to being used as a potential food supplement?

So it all hinges on the 2012 Bati Rat Study. Before I go into that study, it's interesting. From the early stages, they figured that the buckyball would be very, very useful in medicine, Right? So some of the reasons that they got the Nobel Prize is one of the shapes on here is a hexagon. And the hexagon is actually the foundation of. It's actually pentagon. Excuse me. Pentagon is the foundation of benzene. Benzene is. You're a nutritionist. Like, benzene's everywhere. It's even not as a nutritionist, it's in plastic. So if you just look around, whatever room you're in, you say, imagine all the plastic gone because we don't have benzene. And then I imagine a lot of detergents and many, most medicines gone because we don't have benzene. Then you've got a kind of frame of reference of how important benzene is. Well, they kind of figured that this buckyball would be a 3D version of benzene. A lot of the chemistry that works on benzene actually works on the exterior of this ball. Again, kind of the reason that they won the Nobel Prize for the discovery. And. And so they figured it would have applications. They even in the early days, thought, hey, what if we could put inside of it a radioactive atom or collection of atoms, right? And then we could attach something to the exterior that, I don't know, might attach to cancer cells. And now you've got a radioactive payload that's sitting right with the cancer cells. And so those were theorized early on. There's also research. In fact, there's a patent with. With using the buckyball to inhibit the reproduction of the HIV virus. So it's an antiviral agent kind of on its own. So fast forward in 2012. As soon as you know it's going to be as ubiquitous as the benzene ring, then you got to have kind of safety studies. So they do this 2012 toxicity study. They assumed it would be toxic because benzene as. As prevalent as it is on our planet, you don't want benzene. You don't want it open in a container in your office. You don't want to be around it. It's a known carcinogen, and it's toxic. And so they did this toxicity study. And in this toxicity study, they gave rats water. So that's the control group, olive oil, and then olive oil with ESS 60. Again, ESS 60 is C60 processed for safer human consumption. Instead of it being toxic. Those rats actually lived 90% longer than the control group.

Wow.

Similar to like 6,000 being a crazy number. A 90% extension in life is the single longest longevity experiment on mammals ever. And it's peer reviewed, published research. So not only did they live 90% longer, there's actually they used Worcester rats in this particular study. And a Worcester rat is known to get tumors. So they typically live about 32 months. And the longer they live, the more tumors they have in their body. These rats, given the My Vital C formulation, which is the ESS 60 and olive oil, lived 62 months and none of them had any tumors. So the kind of cancer prevention kind of label can easily get added to this. Now, it's important, as soon as you start talking cancer, you know, FDA gets really nervous and they should. Right. Because it's something that people are terrified and can be used improperly for marketing. There's a big difference between cancer prevention and then cancer cure. Right. Once something's metastasized, that's a whole different game. And, and we know eating healthy and exercising and getting enough sleep are things that can mitigate cancer or help prevent cancer. So in this study, the implications certainly are fairly clear that this has the potential to be a cancer preventative. I wouldn't talk about being a cancer cure. I'll be honest. Given just so much that's come in from testimonials, if they said it did, I wouldn't be surprised. But there's no research to support that.

Sure, fair enough. And one thing that I don't think we covered was how is it made safe when it goes from C60 to ESS 60?

That's a great question. So interesting, when you take this carbon arc and you vaporize it, you, you end up with amorphous carbon, and that can have polyaromatic hydrocarbons in it, and you don't want those in your body. So the main way to separate these is you actually take a solvent, a solvent like hexane, and you dissolve it. And what happens is it works kind of like if you were separating sugar and sand, you could put the sugar and sand in water and then you filter it and the sand doesn't go into solution, stays on top of the filter, and then the sugar actually goes through the filter in solution to. You boil off the water, and now you have your pure sugar. So the same thing with fullerenes, you've got your amorphous carbon, it doesn't dissolve in the solvent and stays on top of the filter. And then the fullerenes actually do dissolve in the solvent and they go through, you boil off the solvent and you're left with Industrial Carbon 60. Now there are residual solvents left on Industrial Carbon 60 and I know any sort of process that ultimately ends up in our body, everybody should be nervous about solvents in that situation. Just know that most plants extracts are actually made with solvents, like they're isolated with solvents. So the industry is very learned on handling solvents and then making sure that the delivered product is actually safe. In our case, you take that industrial C60, you go through a vacuum oven baking process, a proprietary washing process, and now you've got ESS 60, which is safer for human consumption.

And what does the ES stand for?

So ESS is Elemental Carbon Safe Spheres. So it's really Elemental Safe spheres because again, there's been a lot of already a lot of fraud in this industry. And it pains me. So, like, how do I go out there and keep consumers safe? We're the ones who delivered the product to the original researchers, were the ones actually mentioned in that original research. I feel responsible for this industry and what can I do to keep consumers Safe? And really, ESS60 is that which has been processed for saferium consumption. If you're looking for that and it's on the label, then you can be pretty sure that you've got a safer product.

Yeah, I hear you, Chris. I mean, as soon as these things become buzzwords, there's a whole lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, potentially making products that could be dangerous for especially these solvents. I hear you.

Yeah. So we've got in our industry, there's a guy, and his website is c-60.com I took his product, I did a simple filtering process. So I described to you like fullerenes go through in solution. His product is in sunflower seed oil, which is, by the way, not a very good oil for human consumption in general, but it's in sunflower seed oil. And I filter it and all the black carbon junk stays on top of the filter and the sunflower seed oil comes through as a pristine sunflower seed oil. If you've got fullerenes in it, specifically if you've got buckyballs in it, it will come through as a purple solution. And I showed this, this, this is the simplest of simple tests, proves that there's no C60 in it. And he's still marketing that. He's got C60 in it. And that was really kind of what. In general, I don't want to do negative marketing about the industry because I think it's bad for the industry overall. This guy is not in my industry and is bilking people claiming that he's in the industry. And people are going to try it. I don't know. Like, the worst that could happen is, is he hurts some of his clients. The FDA comes in and says, well, nobody can sell C60. And that's not fair because he's not even selling C60. Like, that's just not the right way. I've also been on Amazon. There was one company that was selling capsules of C60, and I did a quick calculation based on their own projected concentration. By the way, a lot of people out there don't have the concentration in there. It's not as easy as people think think it is to get it to dissolve. But based on their own concentration and the volume of their pills, I'm like, you need 20 of these pills to take one serving size, what we would call one serving size. And their listed serving size was two pills, like so. So you could go out and you could say, hey, you guys got to look this up. And then you're like, well, I prefer pills over. So over taking olive oil. So let me try this. They try the two pills and then they run around and tell everyone that, yeah, I tried that C63 and it doesn't work. Well, yeah, you didn't actually give it a legitimate try and you didn't even know. I got today I just ordered a package. You know, those little, like, wafer thin mints that melt in your mouth like you can. Right. So they've infused C60 in this, which is certainly possible. But to sell it as C60 is, you're like, there's no C60 in that little wafer. I mean, there could be and there could be as much as possible and as much as possible that you could get in that thin wafer is nothing. It's not even close to a serving size. And so somebody's going to try those mints and go like, well, my breath smelled good, but I never really felt anything. I didn't report what other people are like, better sleep and less knee pain. I'm not getting any of those benefits. No, because you're not taking a dose. And it's just.

That's it. It's so frustrating. I hear you, Chris. Because in our industry, we're mainly in that kind of probiotic space. And it's absolutely correct what you're saying when you look at these studies, it's the dose that really, firstly, it's like for probiotics, it's the strains. So that specificity of the strain versus the dose that you're taking to elicit a purported health benefit. So with the ESS 60 story. It's all to do with going back to the original research and then looking at what that dose level was that elicited that benefit and then delivering that to the consumer. And I'm assuming it's going to be something like milligrams per kilogram weight or something like that.

Yeah, well, it's about five milliliters and we've got a calculator on the page. I actually did the allometric calculation. So when you're giving something to a rat, you can't go on a kilogram basis to a human because we have different metabolisms. And if you did that, you would be taking a full cup of olive oil a day. That's not sustainable for most people. And if you actually do, the allometric calculation is based, and this is super geeky, so I love it. It's actually based on the surface area of the animal. Right. So the surface area is something that correlates very well with its metabolism. So you take the surface area of a rat, you take the surface area of a human, and they do these calculations all the time when they're migrating from rat studies to human studies. And so I did that same calculation and we ended up with about five or about one teaspoon per serving.

Cool. So that makes sense. That gives people a feel for how much to actually take to elicit a health benefit. Now, when do we expect to see these ESS 60 molecules transitioning from the pre clinical world of rats to two human clinical trials?

Well, it, it looks like I'm going to be driving that. You know, the original study was 2012 and nothing's been happening, you know, nothing no one else is. You know, the scientific process is anecdotal observations. Right. So we're getting a lot of anecdotes. And I'm a scientist, so I struggle with anecdotes and do I share them? Do I not? Like, I struggle with that. But that's where the scientific process starts, with anecdotal stories and then a theory. And you do this test then. And they did this test they did in 2012 in Paris and it's peer reviewed and published. The next step is for another scientific organization to recreate that study. And nobody's done that since. So we're already in the process of getting set up to do that study again. Now it's a five plus year study. We're going to make a couple changes to the study that really makes sense, but it's going to take a while and we're doing the preliminary work We've already paid the invoice for the preliminary work already. Now I would love to see some sort of medical institution come in and say, hey, this is worth looking at, let's do some research on it. But it hasn't happened in these eight years. So I don't know if that's going to happen. And Big Pharma is not going to be interested in it because there's no proprietary information. They can't protect it and so they're just going to let it die. And so it's probably going to be up to us really, my business partner and I, to make those investments and to really have peer reviewed published double blind human trials that actually show results.

That seems to be the natural next step. And how do these compounds. I get it, you might not fully understand it yet, but what's your thoughts on being the expert in the world with the ess60 on how these actual molecules are eliciting a health benefit first.

From a supplement and how it works in the body? I'm trying my best to become an expert. I wouldn't say that I'm there yet. I read more papers than probably anyone other than my director of research about, about, you know, ess 60 in the body. What, what we do know is it's a great antioxidant and a great anti inflammatory and I mentioned antiviral because it's. There's actually patents to stopping the reproduction of the AIDS virus.

Wow.

Which interesting. Like in this current today coronavirus situation in Spain, there was actually some research where there was one particular coronavirus patient who was on a severe decline. He was like three days into severe decline and they gave him anti HIV drugs and the next day he was good. And my understanding is that they're treating patients in China with these anti HIV drugs. It's just, I think it's interesting, people are often asking me do I think there's value in ESS 60 in fighting the coronavirus. There's no research. Right. It is interesting that in the late 90s, early 2000s and there's this patent that C60 stops the production of the AIDS virus. They're both RNA viruses and so there is A plus B might equal C logic going on there. So yeah, it's an interesting world to navigate.

Yeah.

I don't know if I answered your.

Question though you touched on it, but I think.

Oh yes. Do we know the reason? Right. So current medical logic or theories, not just logic, but current medical theories about aging are, are that it's an oxidation and an inflammation process. Right. And so it's not surprising that this thing that extended the rats lives by 90% is a known antioxidant. And some reports say that it's 172 times more powerful than vitamin C and a known anti inflammatory. So that's not really surprising. Our most consistent. By the way, I haven't done a disclaimer, so I need to do a disclaimer. I'm talking, I've spoken already a little bit about some experiences people have had. The FDA has not evaluated the product. It's not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease. These anecdotes that I share, whether they're mine or if I'm sharing my customers, they're documented and stored and I can share them with you. And I filter out a whole lot of testimonials that I think don't have enough credibility to really share. So one of our most consistent testimonials is Better Sleep. And Better sleep is really interesting. There's a book called why We Sleep. I don't know if you've read the book, it's a great book by Michael Walker and he's got all. It's a really scary book. Like it's scary about, hey, when you don't sleep, this bad thing happens and this bad thing happens and this bad thing happens to you and it makes you. I think as a society we're all, yeah, we know we got to get sleep. It's great for our mental, physical and emotional well being. And you know, you got to get sleep, you know, unless you got something else to do and then you should, you know, do that and then get sleep later. Right? This whole sleep I'll sleep when I die mentality. And that book really breaks it down. And you might be dying sooner. That's the problem. That book really breaks down, you know, all the bad things that happen to your memory, your cardiac health, your ability to process sugar right. And insulin levels and how adversely they're impacted by sleep. So we get these testimonials about sleep. One of them is just interesting. I gave a couple bottles. There was a girl next to us in the next office over and she was talking about going through some oncology treatment, you know, fighting cancer. And I'm like, you know, here, like just take some bottles. Like, I don't know if it's gonna help. If you were my mom, I'd be giving them to you. Like, here, just take some bottles. And I went back to her. I don't know, it was probably seven days maybe 10 days after. And I was like, hey, so have you noticed anything? And she was kind of down. She's like, no, Chris, I haven't really noticed anything. I'm like, first off, it's a data point. Like I'm just collecting data. I don't expect this to work for everyone. But I asked her, I said, so how have you been sleeping? And her eyes just got huge. And she's like, oh, I've been posting on Facebook, I'm waking up at 5:30 every morning now without the alarm clock. Like there you go. Like that's impactful. So forgetting all these people reporting better sleep and we know that better sleep is good for your mental, physical and emotional well being, then like that can be what's causing all of the other or most of the other things. We got people talking about feeling less stress at work even though they have the same job and the same people, they're just feeling less stress at work. Well, if you get better sleep, that can significantly impact that.

Yeah. And if I could side note that that's so fascinating with the sleep connection. If I could postulate, put my science cap on, I would guess there's something going on with mitochondrial function potentially because you mentioned vitamin C having a high ability to be an antioxidant and this particular ESS 60 having even more potent antioxidant abilities. Maybe it's something to do with that. And then very recently a study came out and people, most people are not aware of this, that mitochondria actually produce melatonin. So your sleep hormone. So maybe there's some sort of connection happening. So it's not melatonin just being produced in the pineal gland, but it's also being produced in the mitochondria, which could potentially be leading to more efficient melatonin production. But that's just purely me speculating.

Let me add to that. So mitochondrias ATP processes, right?

Yeah.

The A in ATP is adenosine.

Yes.

Adenosine is when it, when that chemical builds up, it causes us to desire sleep. In fact, in that, in that book why We Sleep, they Talk about the $2 billion quote unquote sleep aid industry that actually just knocks you, knocks you out. Right. You don't get your, in REM sleep, you don't get your REM sleep, it just knocks you out and it relaxes the chemical pressure of adenosine. So you wake up not desiring sleep. Right. But you haven't got the healthful sleep that you need. And what's interesting about Our product is our customers actually take it in the morning. And most of them report they've got mental acuity and focus during the day, energy during the day, and then sleep better that night. Unlike the sleep aids, you got to take the. Those sleep aids you take right before you fall asleep. So, yeah, if ESS 60 is in there with the mitochondria and there's some research to support that, then you've got this free radical scavenger that's there. It's participating in the ATP process that's potentially working with the melatonin and the adenosine and then they're sleeping better that night. So I've never heard of any product that you take in the morning that helps you sleep at night. And I came, I thought the other day, the only thing that even comes close is if you exercise in the morning, you have the potential to sleep better that night. Right. So it's doing different things. It's also nano. So we do know it crosses the blood brain barrier. So it's able to be in places that we understand would be very impactful if was doing the right things. And it certainly seems to be doing the right things.

Yeah, spot on. The. Any other thing I'd add to that mix that could help you sleep better at night is early morning sunlight exposure. Yeah, that's just for circadian priming purely.

And then the blue blockers, when you're about to go to sleep. Yeah, like those are. Those are. Yeah. Fix things and you're right. Start the. Get the circadian rhythm started at the right time in the morning. That's something you can do in the morning that could impact your sleep at night for sure.

Yeah.

Now I got three.

And so I just want to understand this fully. So adenison. My understanding creates this concept of sleep pressure that makes you. So the buildup or desire, it's like this buildup of this adenosine through the ATP production process builds up and then eventually you have that desire to sleep. Now, how does this ESS 60 counter that or how does it impact that?

I think it just supports that. Right. So I find. Actually, I don't. I don't know if you can see this. I've got. This is an aura ring.

Yeah, absolutely.

Have an aura ring.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so here I'm going to tell you. I'm doing a study right now. It's underway. One guy's already gone through the study. The study is you've got oura ring sleep data already. I'm gonna send you a couple of Bottles and then you kind of document 10 days of pre my vital C data and then 10 days of on it, 10 days off of it and 10 days on it again. So I'm doing that. And when I was off of it was painful for me to go off of my product. In fact, I didn't want to go off. In fact, I didn't go off of my product. I got the Oura ring in December. I stayed on the product for January and February because I had, I was busy traveling to la, I was in Vegas, I had a conference in Nashville. And so I knew I was going to be late nights and lots of exhaustion. I wasn't going to be without my product that time I finally did the 10 days off. Two very interesting things happened during that. One of them is a little, I will say it's not objective. It's more objective, it's more subjective, not objective. Right. So I feel like I was more tired during the day. I know I drank more coffee during the day, but that could all be placebo. So let's throw that out the window. I did get a migraine in that 10 day period while I was off the product. And one of the things that people ask like, what are the benefits for you? I've been mapping my migraine since 2004. I get four or five migraines a year and I was trying to map them and figure out, okay, is it something I ate, did I exercise too much, did I have too much to drink? And really never had a pattern. In 2018 is when I really started taking the Myvital C formulation consistently. And when I did that, I didn't get a single migraine in all of 2018. I did get two in 2019, but that's a timeframe where I should have had eight to 10 and I had two. Couple that with my wife. She actually has a medicine, starts with an S, but it's a migraine medicine. They'll only prescribe nine per month and she was taking all of them every single month and then having more migraines even beyond the nine. And after she started the product, she's having one or two a month. Right. So there's something going on with migraines. Again, what about sleep? Like if sleep, if you just get better sleep, you're probably going to have less migraines. I think that's probably true. I'm not a migraine expert, but it seems logical, right?

Dr. 100% agree. I mean sleep is one of these meta processes that are fundamental for everything in your Life, you know, people are jumping up and down with COVID 19 at the moment and looking for supplements and whatnot. The number one supplement for your immune system is sleep. If there's any lifestyle practice or anything that can optimize sleep, man, I'm with you. Because sleep is everything. We need sleep and we live in a world now where there's constant distractions, there's mobile phones, there's stress and all these things that blue light toxicity at night. So all these things that impact our sleep. So assuming we get all those practices right, we can really next level it potentially with something like an ESS 60. So I love that. And we have to address the massive elephant in the room with the world going absolutely insane. Because you did mention loosely about the connection between ESS 60 and having some sort of antiviral properties which need a ton of research more to validate, I'm sure. Yep. But let's explore firstly what's happening. Firstly, is there anything, any people that this ess60 might be contraintegrated, what's the word for it? Indicative?

Yeah, yeah, I'm not aware of any. Right. So it's really still a pretty small market and so the number of people who are out there are probably in the tens of thousands across the globe who are taking any, whether it's C60 that's industrial or whether it's ESS 60 that's safer for human consumption. So I'm not aware. I know I did see on one Facebook wall in one of the forums that it asked the question, you know, is anybody, does anybody who's on a C60 derivative show, you know, does anybody have COVID 19 from that? So that would be just an interesting data point. Wouldn't prove things either way, but it would be an interesting data point. So I'm not aware of. There isn't any data to support that this is going to stop or inhibit or slow down or anything. COVID 19. Yeah, so that's the data that's out there is, hey, HIV drugs are working, seem to be working on COVID 19. That's clearly. This is way too early to be peer reviewed published research. Right. And we may never get peer reviewed published research on that, but it seems to be working. There's a Spanish report, there's reports coming out of China and you know, it's just interesting that the way back in the late 90s, early 2000s, C60 showed antiviral applications with HIV. Yeah. So just.

And Chris, to add to that, I mean, it is interesting and I mean to Add to that, everybody seems to be dosing up on bucket loads of vitamin C at the moment and that's really strong antioxidant.

Yep.

You're saying that ESS 60 is even stronger. So maybe there's some something in that. The one. Watch out. Sorry.

And it's an anti inflammatory. Right. And so that's like those are good thing. When you're talking about immune system support. You want like antibacterial check. That's true. Antiviral. I mean we at least have the HIV research. So yes, check. Antiviral. Antioxidant. Yes. Potentially 172 times more powerful than vitamin C like some research shows and then anti inflammation. So in terms of supporting your own immune system, let your body do the work. We're talking about a pretty powerful combination.

Now my microbiologist mind is firing and getting very interested. So what sort of. Because I'm all about microbiome modulation. So what's the impact of this ESS 60 on the different species of bacteria that it's having effects on? Do you have any data on that at all?

So we don't. And I was recently on the Dr. Gundry podcast and you know, he's all about gut biome and I don't even know what your stance is if you have one on lectins. And is that a reasonable path to go? I know that's certainly up for debate, but I asked him when I was on the podcast, like a lot of the testimonials that he presents about people on his diet mirror the testimonials that I get from my product. And I'm like, do you have any ideas there? Is there maybe, maybe there's a mechanism that you're, you know, if we, if we admit, if we accept that lectins are creating inflammation in the body, then really you've got olive oil which is a great anti inflammatory. You put that with ESS 60 and so is it, is it that simple that we're just addressing immediate inflammation from his mindset? Maybe. Maybe the ESS60 is doing binding with whatever lectins are there. Like if we want to go down that path, we know that olive oil is good for your gut biome. Right. Like, and you would like you're more a gut biome guy than I am. But I've read a couple things that show support that our product is actually, you can't get much ess60 in into olive oil. You can only get about 0.8 milligrams per milliliter. And so it's not that much. So you're really dealing with 99% olive oil and then as much of the ESS 60 as you can get in there. So you're kind of inherently helping the gut biome with the olive oil. In fact, even if you go back to the original toxicity study, remember, they gave rats water, one group of rats, they gave olive oil. Those rats live 30% longer. Right. So the takeaway from that is even if you're not taking ESS 60 in olive oil, whatever olive oil you're taking, you should probably double, triple, quadruple, whatever. You should be taking more. And then, of course, the ones given ESS 60 and olive oil live 90% longer with no tumors. So, no, the research isn't there, but there's like, bits and pieces that seem to support that it probably is positive on the gut biome.

And so when you mentioned the antibacterial element of ESS60, so how did you actually come up with that hypothesis or test it?

What we're resting on for that particular piece of data is the olive oil. Olive oil is a known antibacterial in some regards. Helicobacter, actually, there's some specific research on that. So that's what makes our. And that's 99% of our product. So you've got. It's almost like you've got all of these wonderful things that olive oil does. And then you've got this multiplier catalyst, however you want to describe it, of ESS 60, which took those original rats from a 30% increase in life to a 90% increase in life. That's kind of. We don't know.

Even if you're just getting the benefits of the olive oil because you've got a boost in the Akkermansia, mucinophilia and all the other good stuff, Lactobacillus. It's full of polyphenols, definitely worthwhile, for sure. Now we have to talk about COVID 19, because I'm really excited just to try the ESS 60 as a prophylactic. I mean, if it's. If it's safe, if it's going to have some sort of antioxidant impact, it's going to reduce inflammation. I'm all for it. And other things that I'd recommend people do. And we'll get to your recommendations in a sec as well. So what I recommend is just staying calm, staying calm, because stress alone will impact your immune system. So we've just got to stay calm. And then it's the CAD principle that I've developed, so vitamin C. So getting vitamin C from food, vitamin A is important for the immune system and barrier functions of the cell and the gut and the lungs and all that kind of stuff. And vitamin D. So certainly C and A, getting it as much from a food source as possible. So C would be berries, lemons, sauerkraut, some fermented foods and kiwi fruits, lots of that kind of stuff. Vitamin A and D, just cod liver oil, beef livers, awfuls, things like that. And D, very simply, just go out in the sun and get some suntime because there's antiviral effects of just going in sunlight. And lastly, just looking after your gut because 80% of your immune system is in your gut. So take care of your gut so your gut can do its job. So that's my top recommendations. Now about you, Chris.

Yeah, well, so I saw an article about, I think, the 1900 flu epidemic pandemic and that the patients, because they were so overloaded, they actually had patients outside in the sun on their cots, and they noted that the ones who are outside in the sun on the cots actually did better. Right. So they actually recovered faster. So you're absolutely right. Get some sun. I know the dermatologist is going to argue, put sunscreen and then we can have all sorts of debates about, you know, estrogen like compounds and sunscreen. But yeah, get a little bit of sun for sure.

Yeah.

And then really I'm, you know, people, people ask me, is it going to have any impact on Covid? And again, I say, I don't know. But I did send extra bottles to my mom to make sure that she's got it. And I'm continuing to take my dose. My typical dose is I add about a teaspoon of our mct. By the way, there's interesting, there's olive oil, there's avocado oil, and there's MCT oil. And I put that in orange order of maximum concentration. You can get about 0.8 milligrams per milliliter in olive oil, 0.65 in avocado, and only about 0.35 in MCT oil. There's some companies kind of made their business like on this purple oil that only has about 0.35. So if you're looking at ESS60 as the molecule of importance, and we think it is, then it's not an equivalent product at all. So oftentimes, if people make big orders of mct, we'll call our customers and say, hey, we just want to make sure MCT is what you want. It's got less than half of the ESS 60 in it. It's about the same price because. Listed same price. About the same cost for us because finding organic MCT oil derived from coconuts is an expensive endeavor. That's kind of another story. So I put MCT in my coffee. So I have kind of a bulletproof coffee experience in the morning. And then I take about a teaspoon and a half, so it's at least half a teaspoon more than the typical recommended serving size. And then I actually put the avocado version on my salad. So I'm getting kind of doses from all different places, different flavonoids and salad and everything. And other than that, I agree with you, son. And let's do some moderate exercise. You're stuck in the house. Let's do some push ups, let's do some sit ups. Let's keep that system going. Don't do any exhaustive exercise because that can reduce your immune system, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Over training, like, this is not the time to get buff. In three days, it feels like you can do it, but this is not the time to do that. Do some moderate exercise and hopefully, I mean, do it outside. I can tell you. I took my kids for a bike ride on Sunday. I usually call them these, like, marathon bike rides because we go for 21 miles and they're nine years old. And so they. They used to complain. Now they complain going into the bike ride. But then they have a great time. We have a great time. And there were more people on bikes than I've ever seen on. On the route that we went on. And so we go down the bayou here in Houston and. And yeah, there was. There are people everywhere. And so it's, I don't know, silver lining. Right? Great. Families and parents and their kids are out riding bikes because they've gone crazy indoors.

That's it. Absolutely.

Keep calm. Right. Like, you know the famous phrase, like, there's things you control and things you can't control. Identify them quickly and control the ones you can and understand that you can't control the others, so you gotta let them go.

Totally. And the one we discussed earlier was, get some sleep, get enough sleep. Go to bed early, wake up, watch the sunrise. It's all really important for circadian priming and optimizing your sleep.

Very true.

I'm really cognizant of your time. So I think that's probably a good time to start to wrap up now. So what we like to do at the end of our podcast is to ask the. We did touch on Covid, but we're a gut health focused podcast. So we want to know from you what's your best recommendations? What would be your top tips for gut health?

So I feel I'm not in a great position. I haven't been following my gut health. It's really in the last three months that through kind of Dr. Gundry's books that I've become aware of how important the gut biome is and whether, you know, whether he has the right prescription, if you will. I'm not sure what I can tell you is I feel like I needed a reset anyway. I just needed a dietary reset. I would go to eat with the family and then I would finish the kids nuggets and finish my son's pizza. And I was just overeating in general, so I needed any kind of reset. And so it almost. Whether it was Dr. Gundry's diet or anybody else's, I just needed some reset. But I can say that I feel, following his diet, I feel like, and he talks about this in his book, that when your gut biome gets right, you don't have the severe cravings for like, I can, I don't need, like somebody bought donuts today into the office and I don't, I can walk by the donuts. I'm like, yeah, I don't, I don't really want the donuts. And I'm eating stuff. I ate collard greens. I would have never eaten collard. I actually had them for breakfast today. And I've got, I definitely, I cannot say that's a craving yet, but I'm eating breakfast. Like it feels like once I made a shift and I think some intermittent fasting helps speed up the fist. The shift. Because actually as soon as we started the diet, I was in LA to record the Gundry podcast. And so I'm trying to do the diet in la. By the way, LA is an easy place to do it because they're very kind of green and healthy. And so every restaurant had, you know, stuff that we needed, but you end up situations like we were on a tour and I was starving. I'm like, well, I'm just going to stick on the diet. And that was like accidental intermittent fasting. Right? But I think that really did help. So I am very cognizant about doing intermittent fasting and you would know better than me what the impact on the gut biome is. And then it's just fascinating. That feels like I've gotten my gut biome either right or significantly more right and my cravings for things that are bad for me kind of disappeared.

Absolutely spot on. I think you touched on a very important, a couple of different important points there. Firstly, sugar. Sugar is extremely detriment. Excess amounts of sugar of course is extremely detrimental to immune function. So if you're worried about your immune system, definitely be cutting back on processed foods because they've got a lot of hidden sugars, a lot of chemicals and also just sugar in general. Fizzy drinks, sugar laden confectionaries just really cut back on the sugar because it smashes your immune system. So definitely cut back on that. Then your other point is increasing vegetable and fiber consumption. High wax of legumes and things like that are not right for everyone. But it's pretty, it's pretty universal that if you just increase your level of greens and just leafy green vegetables, it's not going to cause any bloating and it's going to be great for your body and for your gut as well. So you're on the right path, my friend.

Feels good.

Feels good. And of course intermittent fasting is super important. At least twice a week, 16 hours is the, is the recommended time. But huge amounts of benefits for mitochondrial function and for also the gut microbiome. So definitely, definitely worthwhile practices to install in your life. And now Chris, if people are loving this conversation, they want to reach out to Chris Burez on the Interwebs or wherever you're hanging out. How do people find you?

Well, so one, I want to do kind of two things. One, this conversation was awesome. We went down some great rabbit holes. I love what you're doing. So I'm going to put together an affiliate link so we'll share that. Basically if your audience is interested in trying it, they can go to myvitalc.com guthealthgurus and that's plural, right? Yeah, Gut Health Gurus. And then you'll get some credit for that. And then they can use a coupon code called Gut Health Gurus and that's good for 15% off when you go to that page. If you're interested in trying any one of our products, again, I recommend the olive oil, but if you've got a preference for avocado or mct, that's available. Also we do have pet products, so we've got a cat version and a dog version with appropriate flavoring on those. Go ahead and get on subscription. There's like a 25% bonus discount on subscription. We have a no questions asked policy. You can cancel that subscription at any time. So feel free to take advantage of that discount and then let us know down the road. We do get a lot of people. There was a long time where we actually didn't offer any discounts for subscriptions, and probably 10% of our customers were on subscription just to ensure that they got the product every month. So we have a lot of people getting a lot of really good results. So maybe you try and get the same. And then for you, Cribbin, I want to, you've got an Oura Ring. I want to, like, get a couple of bottles to you. And then if you're interested, I'll enroll you in that sleep study and introduce you to Benjamin. He's the scientist who's in contact with Oura Ring. And we can get you a couple bottles. And if it makes sense, maybe we schedule a podcast and come back and talk about the sleep study and the results that you personally experienced.

Sure. Happy to. Man, that's awesome. And so your social handles, is anybody?

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, the best, really, the best way to reach me is if you just go through myvitalc.com, you can call if you have questions about our products. We've got great staff that can help you. And if you want to escalate it to me, you can ask for me and if I'm available, I'll pick up the phone and we can have a conversation.

Awesome, man. Chris, thank you so much for your time. It's been such an interesting and timely conversation with the current world events. So really appreciative of your time. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Really loved it.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast with the amazing Chris Burez. Now, wasn't that such an interesting discussion on C60? Guys, nourish me Organics are the premier Gut Health brand in Australia when it comes to online. So do head to www.nourishment.

And use.

The code C60 for 10% off the amazing C60 in olive oil product. Guys, if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a kind review on Apple Podcasts, your favorite podcasting app. I'm also on Instagram at Health Guru, so please head over there. Follow me. I'm posting quite regular on all the science and lots of inspiration when it comes to Gut Health. Until next time.