Beyond Human: How Cutting-Edge Science Is Extending Our Lives.

Oh, hello, ladies and germs. Who came up with that? Calling the guys germs. But the ladies are ladies. I don't even understand. It confuses me. But what does not confuse me is cutting edge science, and I love it. I'm talking to somebody who is a wealth of knowledge on cutting edge science. I just like to throw on that word, cutting edge. No. She wrote a great book on longevity. Awesome book. Her name is Eve Harold. This podcast is going to blow your mind in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

And then they could enter every cell in your body and do a diagnostic and decide whether those cells are actually expressing the DNA as it's supposed to be expressed. When they're not, they can break down faulty DNA and then rebuild, reassemble. And those cells not only live and thrive and divide, they actually network themselves into the ne. Very quickly, we'll start communicating back and forth with other neurons.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I am holding in my hand right now this book called Beyond Human. I think I found this when I was lurking around on the Vice website reading a bunch of articles on longevity and anti aging, as I'm prone to do when I'm either A, bored or B, curious. And I found an anecdote about this book and I picked it up and it's actually, it's very intriguing if you're into longevity or anti aging and also how that ties into a lot of the radical medical technologies that are emerging today. This book is a must read for you. This podcast is probably a must listen for you because I was able to wrangle the author to come on the show. The author of this book, Eve Harold. And the book is called the Beyond Human How Cutting Edge Science is Extending Our Lives. And it goes into microelectronics, engineering, nanotechnology, cellular and gene therapies, robotics, artificial intelligence. It's very intriguing and extremely thought provoking. So, Eve, first of all, nice job on this book. And second, thanks for coming on the show.

Oh, thanks for having me. Ben?

Yeah. And I'm just curious before we dive into this book and also how you got interested in this whole anti aging phenomenon in the first place, are you, are you one of those folks who falls into the category of someone who plans on living to the ripe old age of 160 or 180 or 200? Are you one of those people?

Well, it all depends on how well my brain does, you know, because if as long as my brain is functional and my memory is good and I have clear thinking, I can't really foresee when I would want to wind down. I mean, I think 80 years is too little to accomplish a lot of the things that I would like to do in my life. So I would like to live. If assuming again that my brain holds out, I would be happy to live to be 140 or 150.

Yeah. Well, you actually talk about, I think you call it a brain pacemaker in the book. Would that fall into the category of something that would allow your brain to work better as you age?

Well, it would. And most of the research using brain pacemakers that's going on today is aimed at restoring memory. So this is something that the US Military is on the cutting edge of with a new project they call RAM Restoring Active Memory. And they're using that targeted mostly at soldiers who have traumatic brain injuries and are having trouble with their memories of just trying to remember things like how to tie their shoes, how to get dressed. These are some of the common problems with traumatic brain injury. And so they're working on an implant that would actually stimulate memory, would be completely self enclosed in the brain, and seems to be working well in rats and monkeys. So what it does is it just boosts the memory in general, and it helps people to remember all kinds of things that hopefully would return them to a normal life. So this is something that could become available in 2018 if everything goes well with the military. But there's their projection as far as when to make it available to our soldiers. Should be sometime this year.

So they're essentially like stimulating. I guess what I understood from your book is they're stimulating areas of the brain that are responsible for, like, alertness and attention and focus and decision making. Like the executive function of the brain. Exactly in the same way that you'd stimulate the heart via a heart pacemaker to fire when it's supposed to fire. They're doing the same thing, but to the brain, to these circuitry areas in the brain.

That's exactly right. And they can target it so finely, you can even target some of these implants to individual neurons. So this is proceeding apace as long as doctors are also learning advanced imaging techniques on the brain. So some of the most recent research in imaging techniques has allowed doctors to focus in on individual neurons and actually elucidate what those neurons do. So once you decide, once you do a map of the brain and you understand which neurons are used and recruited in different activities and different functions, then you can directly stimulate those neurons and have a whole range of effects, anything from helping you to stay awake for a very long time to remembering certain things, to blocking emotions. So, you know, these are. Some of. These are scary things, and there. There are, you know, people who have a lot of reservations about them. But in terms of the technology moving ahead, it's moving ahead very rapidly.

Yeah, I mean, I use some of these devices that stimulate the brain myself. I. Granted, I've not yet. I've not yet pulled the plug and gotten holes drilled into my skull to have, like, a brain pacemaker installed. Even though some of the science you talk about in the book sounds fascinating, especially with regards to being able to target certain neurons. But, like, I'll use. You're probably familiar with tdcs, right, where you can just. Oh, yeah, stimulate. Well, essentially, I use a device called the halo before workouts, and you can stimulate motor neurons. You can amplify the activity of motor neurons prior to a workout or prior to skill acquisition. Right. Like motor learning, like, let's say, playing the ukulele or shooting a basketball. There's another one called the Circadia, made by a company called Fisher, Wallace and I. I'll slap that on sometimes before naps. And it targets areas of the brain responsible for decreasing cortisol and increasing serotonin and dopamine. And that one also, I guess, is a form of brain stimulation. And then there's. There's one also based on this concept of photobiomodulation, where you're actually. You're targeting the brain with light. It's like a device that goes in your head, and then there's a probe, more or less, that goes in your nose. And they've used this in Alzheimer's and in dementia patients to improve firing and to increase nitric oxide and to increase. Well, it's acting on part of the mitochondria called the cytochrome C oxidase complex. So it's activating increased activity in the mitochondria. So, yeah, there's all sorts of external devices. But I thought it was fascinating in your book how you go into the fact that we're kind of on the cusp of these internal devices instead. That would allow us to, as you've alluded, to target very specific areas of the brain to keep it functioning well into age. So it's very interesting.

Yeah. And it's interesting, too, that some of those external techniques actually do seem to work. And once you get into an internal implant, you're directly accessing the brain. You're not going through the skull or the skin or any kind of obstruction. These types of stimulation devices could prove to be much more effective than the external ones.

Yeah. And in the book, you talk a little bit about this transcranial magnetic stimulation as, you know, as one of these cognition enhancing technologies, but I didn't realize how big of an industry it is. It's like over a billion dollars a year that people are spending on, like, smart drugs and brain training games and brain enhancing.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And can you blame them? I mean, I personally am interested in anything that would enhance my brain that's legal and ethical and that isn't dangerous, you know. So, yeah, it's a huge business, and I think the market is there. Once these implants actually come into the market, and they'll come to us as medical treatments, that will be the entry point into our lives. As people who have the beginning stages of dementia or PTSD or memory loss from some other cause, they're going to be the first people to have access to these types of technologies. But it's hard to say, once you have, say, 10% of the population getting some type of brain implant, there's going to be some kind of, you know, keeping up with the Joneses kind of social pressure on people. And I think that in the long run, brain enhancement is really going to be a thing. It's going to be very widespread, and it'll start out through medicine, But I think we're very quickly going to get comfortable with things that actually enhance our ability to learn and remember and think clearly.

Now, I noticed that you wrote a book before this one about stem cells, stem cell wars. And you also, you're the public education manager for the Stem Cell Research Foundation. And so a question that I have for you related to this idea of neural enhancement would be that topic of stem cells. You know, when it comes to regenerating the brain or neurogenesis or anything along those lines, you know, is there proof that stem cells could potentially regenerate the brain or, let's say, make an old brain young?

Well, as a matter of fact, there's really good animal research in this area that shows that you can implant brand new neural cells into the brains of animals. And those cells not only live and thrive and divide, they actually network themselves into the neural net and very quickly will start communicating back and forth with other neurons. So I think that's one of the most promising areas for stem cell science is that. Well, because in Alzheimer's disease, for example, ultimately what happens is there is a massive dying off of brain cells. But say if you could just continuously regenerate your brain cells, you might be able to do that through stem cells for a very long time and stave off Alzheimer's disease either completely or until the very end of life. So brain cells are very, very promising when it comes to stem cell, Possible stem cell treatments. I'm not aware of any treatments going on in humans right now, but like I said, the animal research has been very encouraging.

Now, when it comes to just the practical aspects of this, how would you actually deliver stem cells to a brain? Could you go through the cerebrospinal fluid, for example?

I don't think you could do that and rely on the cells to be distributed into the areas where you want them to be. So probably what you would do is, and this obviously has to be done by a highly scaled. Is that you would target the actual areas of damage in the brain. You can do that through electrodes. And we're actually pretty good at targeting very specific areas of the brain through things like deep electronic stimulation for Parkinson's patients. We can do that. We can find the areas that are diseased or have degenerated or in distress, and then use these electrodes to guide the way in and actually apply new neurons. The problem is that right now, we don't really know exactly what areas to go of the brain in a typical Alzheimer's patient are atrophying faster than others. But again, I become very optimistic when I look at the state of medical imaging and, and how detailed we're becoming at being able to read the brain, map the brain, diagnose the brain through things like functional magnetic resonance imaging. And I think there's a great future there for people with conditions like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's as far as getting new brain cells. It's also interesting too. A story that just came out recently is that there's a family of stem cells that are generated by the brain that are seen to have almost an orchestrating effect on the whole aging process. And these cells actually go down as we get older. Animals have them, we have them they tend to be kind of like a master cell that controls aging in the body and in the whole body. So these cells are, they exist in the hypothalamus and it's possible to isolate from neural stem cells and to transplant them into the hypothalamus. And theoretically that could possibly have a dramatic effect on a person's aging process.

Wow, that's fascinating. Have you yourself, personally, based on some of the research and the writing that you've done, as well as being on the, on the education board for this stem cell foundation, banked your own stem cells?

No, I haven't banked my stem cells because I'm at an age where I need newer stem cells. I mean, there is a such thing as, you know, bodily, you know, neural stem cells, stem cells for other parts of the body that get created throughout life. But I'm 60 years old, so I would really want to get younger stem cells. Now if someone could take something like say my fat cells and reliably return them to a pluripotent state, which means that they could give rise to any cell type of the human body. Now if someone could do that, which theoretically that's possible, then I would be interested. But as of now, I don't really have a reason to bank my own stem cells.

Yeah, I've personally banked my fat stem cells through the US Stem cell clinic and also my bone stem cells through a company called Forever Labs. I wasn't aware that they could actually induce those fat cells to potentially become pluripotent. That's pretty cool actually. So, you know, right now I've got my. Well, technically it's my 34 year old stem cells kind of saved away for the rest of my life from bone and fat. And for bone, from what I understand, it's a little bit more favorable for longevity and for anti aging. Like to do a yearly re injection of the 35 year old me when I'm 70 or when I'm 60 or 50 or whenever. And then from what I understand right now, fat stem cells are better for re injection into joints or into areas where there might be chronic inflammation or the need for enhanced repair. So I've kind of done both.

I think it's great that you've done that and you know, you should be covered if you ever get, you know, a lot of different age related conditions that would need new cells. And it's one of the commonalities of age related conditions that there's a loss of young cells and there's a kind of a winding down of the creation of adult cells, stem cells. So this process has to be somehow stimulated. It's also possible that somebody could find interventions in the body itself and say, give you an injection that makes your brain create more neural stem cells kind of globally within your brain. That's not something that we have yet, but I think that's also an exciting area of research.

Yeah, I'm certainly interested in how these stem cells, for example, that I've personally bank used for the brain. If anyone is listening in and you're kind of, you know much about brain stem cell injections or anything like that, I'm gonna put Eve's book and also the shownotes for this entire episode. And also a place where you can go and comment and leave questions and feedback over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com BeyondHuman that's BenGreenfieldFitness.comBeyondHuman, which is the name of Eve's book. And you can go over there and find pipe in if you've got your own take on these things. So, Eve, I'm curious before we delve into a few of these other fascinating strategies that you have in the book, in terms of your own typical day, are there specific techniques that you use? I mean, anything from green tea and sirtuin rich foods like blueberries to fringe supplements or anything that that you kind of weave into your own day that you've learned in your own writing and research and found to be efficacious for yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big believer in the basics, Ben. You know, getting plenty of sleep I think is really important because your body repairs itself while you're sleeping. You know, making sure that I've got all the antioxidant vitamins on board and eating a not just taking supplements, but the best and the most effective way for your body to utilize vitamins and minerals is through food. So I tend to keep a very healthy diet. Lots of vegetables and fruits. And then the other thing is exercise, which again, I mean, we've known about it forever. Exercising actually restores your body to a more useful state metabolically and helps to fight a lot of the problems of aging. So I don't really do anything that's all that special in terms of everything that we know about in terms of cutting edge science. But I'm a big believer in those things. And I also rely on genetics because both of my parents are very old and function very well and have lived healthy lives. So I think I'm probably a little bit lucky in the Genetics department. But just the basics. Making sure you have the basics in place, I think can make a big difference in a person's lifestyle, especially after the age of 40.

Yeah, but that's not sexy, Eve. I mean, come on, Sleep, exercise, eating real food. Come on, seriously. Those kind of things do need to be emphasized in this era where we tend to get caught up with biohacking and fancy devices. And then I think once you've got those bases covered, some of these other things can put the icing on the cake. Or take you from, you know, 100 to maybe a little bit more.

Absolutely. Because then you, and you want to keep a healthy baseline to your body. So, you know, some of these treatments will be, you know, not global treatments for aging. Like for example, if I have a heart attack and part of my heart muscle needs to be restored, it could be restored through stem cells. But I don't want a 20 year old heart in the body of a biologically 90 year old person. I want a biologically young body so that I can then focus on different forms of regeneration and refreshment that will all work together and give me the kind of vitality and vigor that I want to maintain for the rest of my life as possible, or at least as long as possible until the very end of life.

Now, speaking of organ transplants, though, you do have a chapter where you talk about kidney and lung and liver disease and the current state of organ transplantation. It's actually, it's come along a little bit farther than what I was aware of. So, for example, I mean, you talk about artificial kidneys, for example, and how they're actually able to produce membranes, I believe, that are very similar to what our kidneys themselves actually have in them. Can you talk a little bit about the current state of organ transplantation and some of the fascinating things that you discovered?

So I'm very excited that we have a lot of research now into artificial organs. And that's because, as you've probably heard, the waiting list for organs are very long. There's a severe shortage of biological organs. And then another thing that I learned in doing the book is that no biological organ transplant is permanent. So the organ being transplanted will eventually be rejected by your body. So the best case scenario is that you can suppress the immune system long enough to get a good maybe 15 years out of a transplanted heart or lung. So this is really not the best solution considering that few people donate their organs. We just don't have enough. We never seem to get on top of the list. So a lot of doctors in different areas around the world have started to create artificial organs. I'll give you an example. The total artificial heart is made by a company called Syncardia. And that's a total heart. That's not a defibrillator with a pacemaker. That's a total heart. They take out the actual human heart. They've implanted over 1300 of these artificial hearts. They work amazingly well. People can live normal lives with them. The only thing that's abnormal about their life to date is that they have to carry a certain contraption on their back in a backpack that connects through a hose to their actual heart. That's a problem that's being rapidly worked out. And I think we're within five years of having a completely, totally enclosed artificial heart that can allow people literally to run marathons. And that can last. We don't know how long they can last. So far the longest they've been used as a bridge to transplant up until now. So what happens is that you have someone with a failing heart who needs a biological heart and there isn't one available. And so the technique is to give them this artificial heart while they wait for a biological organ to become available. But we already have patients who are saying things like when the biological heart became available, I had deeply mixed feelings because I knew that my biological heart would eventually be rejected sooner or later. And the artificial heart works so well. It's so reliable that people actually have mixed feelings about getting a biological organ. And I think that this is going to happen with kidneys, with livers, with lungs.

Yeah, I mean, like the title of that chapter I think that you have is it's better than the heart I was born with, I think is a quote from, from one of the patients, which is crazy.

What was told to me by the woman that I interviewed who had a total artificial heart, and she really did have mixed feelings when the biological heart came available. And the artificial hearts, because they tend to be made of polymers and metals, they're non rejectable.

So you don't have to be on anti rejection immune suppression drugs like you.

Do with a regular heart transplant, which are very dangerous. I mean, living with immunosuppressant drugs is not a good solution in the long run because you put yourself in risk of having all kinds of deadly infections and it doesn't work very well. It has a major health impact on you. So yeah, I mean, I think that this is something that has a huge advantage as far as not being rejectable.

That's crazy. And I could totally see like the Chinese Olympic team eventually stepping up to the, the Olympic marathon. Each of them with a brand new, extremely high cardiac output based artificial heart. Totally see something like that happening. Hopefully the Chinese Olympic Committee doesn't listen to this podcast and get offended by what I've just said. Now, what about when it comes to the kidneys, the lungs, the liver, anything interesting going on on those fronts? I mean, all the same things like are we creating brand new artificial organs that can be transplanted similarly, or is there an uphill battle when it comes to these other organs?

So there's a very interesting artificial kidney that's in the works and it should be in clinical trials this year. It's called the Kidney, being spearheaded by some scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. And this is a totally enclosed contraption that fits into your body. There's no open incision or any other external devices you have to wear on a belt or carry around in your hand. And it's worked very, very well in animals. It creates urine, it's driven by the body's blood pressure. So there isn't like a battery or some other component that has to be replaced periodically. Your body, it just interfaces with your body and your blood pressure takes over and does all the work for it. The only thing that's a little bit dicey about it is that it does use actual. It uses a combination of artificial ingredients and actual human kidney cells. But there shouldn't be a problem with rejection because those cells are isolated from the patient's blood. So you have a new type of device which isn't quite human and isn't quite machine. It's a combination of both. But it's being explored as a destination technology. If you actually have one of these implants, you will then have a permanent implant. That's the hope that you will not have to be on the waiting list for a kidney and you'll have absolutely healthy level kidney function for hopefully a very long time. And then assuming that the device has a life, you could replace the device with a new model, say in 10 or 15 years that incorporates new innovations and new advances in the technology. So it's very exciting. It hasn't come on the market yet, but it's in human trials. It's worked very well in animals. And I think it's a very, it's definitely a great sense of hope for people who have kidney disease.

It's crazy. I'm actually going to start drinking more based on this chapter because I figured within like a decade, you're gonna be able to replace everything. So I wanna have my cake and eat it too. Two Moscow mules for me every night.

Now, as I noted in my book, there's never been a shortage of people who were willing to experiment on their own brains and bodies. So we should harness that somehow. Unfortunately, we don't have a way to harness it.

Yeah, I probably fall into that self experimentation category. By the way, speaking of drinking and drugs specifically, you also get into the US Military and I find a lot of what they do fascinating. Right. Like the, the latest sexy thing on the streets right now, getting marketed to a lot of athletes and a lot of people kind of like in the, in the biohacking sector are these exogenous ketones that you consume to go for very long periods of time without much food. That a great deal of the funding for that was led by, by darpa. You know, another device that I know that recently came to light is a, is a blood extraction technology that allows you to very easily, you know, get blood out of your system via microtubule for laboratory analysis and not have to like drive to a lab to give a bunch of tubes of blood. But then you also, you have a few interesting things that you go into. Tell me about the sleep deprivation drug. This drug that allows soldiers to stay away. I mean, it's like modafinil on steroids. I think it's like 160 plus hours you get into in the book.

Yeah. So there's a drug that the military is testing on soldiers that would help them stay awake and alert for approximately 168 hours. The reason this is so important to the military is because it would completely change what they call operational tempo. So when they have a military operation, say, to flush out some terrorists from a village, there's only so many hours that soldiers can be expected to engage in a maximal state of alertness and energy and focus before those soldiers get tired. And then a lot of battles are fought and lost or won based on operational tempo. Because if you can outlast the enemy, you've got a huge advantage point right there. So that's one of the things that the military is working on. It's a little bit concerning to me though, when I think about it, because if these drugs, for example, like other military innovations, make their way into the civilian market, then you may have, you know, you may have people using them as a competitive advantage. And school or in business, once that happens.

School, business, and in sports too.

Right, and in sports. Exactly. And those would create plateaus that Other people would then need to compete with and you know, I don't know if we're ever going to get into this kind of, you know, drug related arms race to stay awake and stay alert for you know, 168 hours. So maybe 250 hours and then the bar gets even higher than that and you know, we don't know what the actual long term health effects are of staying awake for a very long time. I can only assume this is totally unprofessional. I just assume that there's a reason why we sleep and there's a reason why we have circadian rhythms and if we really, really mess with those things things then there could be unintended consequences.

So I'm a little concerned about that's foolishness. We all know how much money some of these Silicon Valley execs are making on Modafinil and microdosing with lsd. I'm sure there's absolutely no biological side effect. I think we're probably going to see some amazing new companies emerge. Right?

Well you may be right and I think it would be fantastic.

High functioning CEOs dropping dead by the time they're 50. But yeah, it's interesting, it is a catch 22. But I mean, you know, when it comes to our country's defense or some of the research DARPA is doing, I totally see this, this stuff being efficacious for soldiers. And there's been times when I've done some crazy long endurance competitions where I wish I'd had something like that on my own person. But in the meantime I was just primarily using no dose caffeine tablets, honestly.

Yeah.

What about this, this other active area of research by DARPA on brain to machine interfaces? Because it seems like some out of Minority Report or maybe even more than that, right? Where without typing or without actually touching a machine like a computer, we can somehow interact with it.

That's a very active area of research and it's being kind of first stage of using brain to machine interfaces is with people who are paralyzed or who have als who can't move their muscles. Now we have implants into the brain that communicate with external machinery so that people who are paralyzed can actually move robotic arms and, and other devices to feed them or bring a cup to their lips or whatever else they want to do. This in principle works, it's out there, it's available. So I think just in terms of the way the technology is developing, I think that in the military there's going to be a huge need for brain implants and soldiers who can actually operate heavy equipment and carry huge loads of things that their bodies couldn't normally do. In other words, they might be able to activate robotic bodies or other types of devices that do things as kind of like an extension of their body.

Like Iron Man.

That's where it's going. Yes, exactly.

That's crazy. That's, that's very cool. I interviewed somebody, I would imagine that interview will have come out by the time I release this interview with you. But Dr. Ken Ford, they're working on a full body suit like that. I forget the name of his company, I'm blanking on. But Dr. Ken Ford, he's also got a podcast, it's a, a fantastic podcast on emerging technologies and some of these same kind of anti aging concepts. And he goes into a similar, like Iron man suit that they're building that can be controlled by a human to do something like let's say a super heavy squat or I guess, you know, you could lift a car off a child or you know, go to battle wearing one of these suits. So it's fascinating.

Yeah. Now what about it is, it's amazing.

What about, you know, speaking of robots, this idea of the tiny ones or like the nanobots, because you start to talk about those in the book a little bit and you specifically go into how nanobots could potentially be used to extend life. How would that actually work?

So nanobots to me, if this happens in my lifetime, I'll be one of the first people to line up for them.

Because you've not read Hugh Howey's book Silo, have you?

No, I haven't. Is it, is it a dystopian nightmare type of thing with nanotechnology?

You got it.

Okay. No. Nanobots for reversing aging is, it's, it's really very simple in concept. So nanobots obviously are little, tiny, I mean extremely tiny sub, you know, sub molecule sized bots that can be programmed, that can be directed to different areas of the body. But the thing in aging, the theory is that you could take nanobots that were programmed with a perfect copy of our DNA. So you, you know, all of your body cells obviously have, you know, a copy of your DNA. You would isolate perfect copies of your DNA that work just by perfectly and then you would inject these nanobots into the body. So what the nanobot does, because it's so tiny, it can enter any part of the body, it can go inside cells, it can go between cells, it can go anywhere because it's so tiny Those little bots will have that little blueprint of how your DNA is supposed to look. And then they could enter every cell in your body and do a diagnostic and decide whether those cells are actually expressing the DNA as it's supposed to be expressed. When they're not, they can break down faulty DNA and then rebuild, reassemble perfectly working fresh, spanking new DNA in every cell of the body. And then this obviously would, you know, it would go from the cell to the tissue to the organ to the system to your entire body. The possibility is there theoretically, to keep you young for a very, very long time. As long as you have a healthy source of your own DNA, you could potentially stay young for hundreds of years.

That's correct.

Now, obviously no one's done this yet, but nanotechnology is something that was very exciting and big in the 80s. We thought we were going to have a quick turnaround and there was going to be widespread nanotechnology. It hasn't developed quite as quickly as some of the techno optimists would have liked, but just incrementally we have been finding proof of principle that nanotechnology works here and there. And overall, I think the trajectory is very positive. I think nanotechnology eventually is going to be. It's going to replace a lot of the technologies that we talked about today.

Well, that's one of.

You won't need an artificial organ if all of your heart cells are in perfect condition genetically.

Yeah. I interviewed Aubrey De Grey a few years ago.

Oh yeah, I know Aubrey.

His seven different causes of aging and one of them is cross linked proteins. And this direct repair of internal proteins by nanobots would actually address that major cause of aging that he gets into that right now we really can't fix. Right. We just can't repair cross linked proteins internally.

Right. No, I think it's incredibly promising. It the question is when will it become available? And that is an open question and I don't have an answer for that. But like I said, I hope it's in my lifetime because I will be one of the people. I would be a guinea pig for that technology.

Yeah, well, like I mentioned, you may want to read Hugh Howey's Silo series because you know, nanobots can be controlled just like any other machine, right?

Well, they can be, but the thing is, nanobots don't have to build up in your body. That' where a lot of the concern is that somebody would be able to hack into these nanobots as they're circulating throughout your body, but they can be created by self dissolving polymers, similar to the kind of material they use in self dissolving sutures. So that's what scientists are working on now. I think the first application of nanotechnology is going to be nanobots that actually are kind of loaded with anti cancer drugs that will be injected into the body that will then home into tumors. Wherever they are in the body, even if there's metastatic development they can find, they're very good at homing in on specific types of cells. And then they attach to those cells, they release the cancer drug, and then they simply dissolve and get excreted through the urine. So there's no hangover of nanobots in your body. Once they've done their job, then they just go away. So I think that's the key to overcoming one of the problems, which would be too much buildup of nanobots in your body. And you don't know how that's going to happen. If you get an injection once a year, say for rejuvenation purposes, you don't want a bunch of nanobots building up in your body year after year after year, because we don't know what effect that would have.

Right, right. That makes sense. Now a lot of people are obviously not going to go get stem cells injected into their brain or their kidney replaced or even do something like a brain pacemaker anytime soon. But supplements are obviously something people just like they break down the doors to get their hands on the latest anti aging supplement. And you talk about a lot of them in the book. One of the ones that you hear talked about a lot is this one that's being developed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, which is the isolate of the bacterium from beneath one of the statues on Easter island called rapamycin. And I've interviewed folks like, you know, Tim Ferriss has talked about that on my show and Peter Attia and a lot of these guys will do things like, you know, rapamycin or calorie restriction mimicking type of drugs, things like that. When you wrote this book, you obviously talked to a lot of people about supplements. What did you find as anything that you would say would be like an anti aging pill that based off of what you found right in the book, like you would take or you think is an especially compelling anti aging supplement?

Well, the supplement that I find interesting is nad, you know, just because there is some scientific evidence to support the fact or the idea that it could be protecting brain cells from the effects of aging. But rather than, you know, the problem with the supplements Is that a lot of the research is not really reported in mainstream medical journals. And it's kind of. There's a certain amount of secrecy involved in the formulations and there isn't a lot of control. So I'm more interested in when are we going to have these anti aging drugs hit the market and how will I go about getting them. Because I think there's a lot of promise in resveratrol. I think rapamycin is very promising. Metformin is already doing pretty amazing things. I believe that's a diabetes drug that people are already getting. That just doctors started to observe that they were having better bone density and better heart ejection fractions. And you know, things were they were having an anti aging effect. So then they started to look at it actually scientifically. Now there's also work being done on a class of drugs called senolytic drugs. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but what, they go throughout the body? Yeah, yeah. So the idea is to get rid of senescent cells. So senescent cells are cells that are aging that are on their way out and they start sending out a lot of distress signals and kind of unhealthy chemicals come out of them that affect other cells. So the cells around them will start to degenerate and die. And senolytics, the idea is to actually go in and eliminate all these senescent cells so that they can't create a toxic environment for healthy cells. So there's a number of drugs that are in development that seem to have a lot of promise in terms of anti aging. Not all of them target every single sign of aging. They might target just the bone density or the muscle mass, but you could easily in the next 20 years be on a cocktail of these drugs that could pretty dramatically retard aging.

Yeah, that's what I personally do is I use some calorie restriction mimicking agents. Probably one of the ones that I use that acts most similarly to the diabetic drug Metformin is bitter melon extract, which from what I understand is something that's used quite frequently is like a pre meal digestif in places like Okinawa. But I've done some research on these calorie restriction mimickers and it turns out that metformin can cause some pretty serious vitamin B12 deficiencies and also has some issues when it comes to generating larger amounts of lactic acid, leading to the potential for lactic acidosis and a little bit of hepatotoxicity as well. So I looked into metformin for a while and decided it just wasn't for me based on a lot of the potential side effects. It still shocks me how many people take it. I mean, if I had diabetes I might consider it. But yeah, I use bitter melon and then I eat a lot of these sirtuin rich foods. Like I do a lot of dark chocolate and blueberries and resveratrol. And then you talked about nad. And I have actually I've interviewed the folks from San Diego who do these NAD injections and I've gone down there myself for, for an eight hour long NAD injection where you're just, you're hooked up to an NAD IV and you feel like Superman for several weeks afterwards. But each day I actually consume. Have you heard of Beta lapishone before?

No, I haven't.

Okay, so Beta lapishon actually increases your NAD to nadh ratio. And it turns out that there's a type of tea called Pau d' Arco bark tea. And I order this on Amazon for like pennies on the dollar. And I make myself Paul dark or bark tea every day. And it allows me to kind of get all the benefits of NAD without taking a lot of expensive supplements. So I basically do that in bitter melon extract and then a lot of sirtuin rich foods to kind of tap into some of these supplementation categories. But your book is quite interesting in terms of getting into, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these drugs and supplements that people are working on. And then of course, even, you know, as you've alluded to this concept of nanomedicine. So it is fascinating. You know, I just, I question, you know, and I suppose, you know, actually I'd love to hear you comment on this. I question like the effect on telomere length and how significant it is compared to something like, let's say a stem cell injection. Have you ever had your telomeres measured, Eve?

No, I never have. I'm almost afraid to know how long they are.

Yeah, I was too. I actually measured at 36 years old when I was 34 years old. So most likely due to my 10 years of Ironman triathlon and extreme Spartan racing, they were a little bit longer than what I would have liked. But there's this company called Telo Years that does a white blood cell analysis of telomere length. And so I'm just kind of repeating that every quarter or so to see what's working and what's not. So for those of you listening in, I'll of course, be sure to continue to update folks on my own anti aging protocols. But Eve, another question that I have for you is in terms of writing this book and all the things that you learned while writing it, if you could choose any handful of the top techniques that you would consider or that you might even advise, like a young person to do, or perhaps someone who is aging and becoming senescent, are there anything we haven't talked about that you think is quite compelling that you discovered while writing this book?

Well, I don't really think so. I don't think there is another compelling route that I'm aware of. And I know that most of the research in aging, as far as the most reliable way to retard aging that tends to work all the time is calorie restriction. But I don't really consider that a realistic alternative. I mean, we live in a super size me society and I don't think we're. I think if there's anything that a person should do or can do, however, is not to become obese. Because once you become obese, then you set a whole cascade of functions into motion that advance aging, that contribute to age related diseases and conditions. If you can maintain a healthy body weight, I think that's just really, really important. And it also is important in how you look and feel.

Well, I guess playing devil's advocate, though, there is this concept of an obesity paradox which holds that obesity and high cholesterol also, to a certain extent, could counterintuitively be protected and associated with greater survival in certain groups of people, like elderly folks who might be predisposed to muscle wasting or chronic disease. And so I think it's almost like a sweet spot when it comes to the amount of fat that you have. And it's interesting how certain types of fat, fat almost appear to be protective. You know, it's kind of like a sweet spot between not being too overweight and not having so much fat that you're churning out constant inflammation, but also not being like frail and cold, I guess, your whole life.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, obviously there's that you need to pursue. But I will say that a lot of the research on fat, there has been some preliminary research that says that people with a certain amount of fat actually live longer than other people. But there's a very long, very huge body of research that says beyond your healthy body mass index, more fat means more disease and more decline. So I tend to be a little skeptical. I go with the big mass of research and, you know, I mean, it's just there. I mean, the relationship between obesity and diabetes, heart disease, cancer, all kinds of conditions is convincing enough that I feel like one of the best things you can possibly do for yourself, especially as you get older, is maintain a healthy body weight.

Interesting. Are you doing anything specifically when it comes to fasting protocols yourself? Like do you follow like an alternate day fast or intermittent fasting or anything like that?

Well, I don't do it because I have hypoglycemia. So when I don't eat I tend to get like blood sugar crashes. So it's hard for me to do that. When I was younger I did do periodic fasting and it was great. I loved the way it made me feel. I felt like it was a real detox kind of thing to do. And so I think there is a good reason if you can fast, to periodically do that. Especially if you can go off of all of your toxin producing type of things like caffeine and sugar and the things that really kind of are toxic to your metabolism. I think that's a good thing to do. I personally just don't do it. I just try to maintain, you know, the right ratio of activity to calories. So a lot of the food that I eat, because I am a bit of a stickler about getting all those vitamins and minerals through food, is obviously a low fat diet. But you know, also keeping the activity level up so that you're. You've got the right equilibrium between fat, between calories in and calories out, I think is just. It sounds so simple, but it's not an easy thing to do. And if you can ever get into, you know, kind of an equilibrium on that level, then you're doing better than most of us.

Yeah, I agree with everything you just said, except the part about the low fat diet. I think unless you have familial hypercholesteremia or some kind of like a PPAR gene issue or something else that causes fat to be inflammatory or to cause a very high particle count that a high fat intake could be, could be actually cardio protective and offer some neuroprotective properties as well. But that might be a whole discussion for another day. I'm on the same page as you are, however, when it comes to specifically caloric restriction and periods of fasting. I just got done with a 24 hour fast, which I do once a week now from Saturday night until Sunday night. And then I fast 12 to 16 hours each day, which allows me as an athlete to not have to do these three to five day long draining fasts, but still get some of the benefits of fasting. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna link to your book in the show notes over@bengreenfieldfitness.com BeyondHuman BenGreenfieldFitness.com BeyondHuman so if you're listening in right now, you can go there to leave your own comments, leave your own feedback. Check out Eve's book Beyond Human, along with her other book, stem Cell Wars. And you're also writing a book called correct me if I'm wrong here, Eve, robots and the Women who Love Them.

Yes.

I'll have to have you back on the show once that one comes out. It sounds fascinating.

Oh, I'd love to.

All right, cool. Well, again, folks, I'll also put links to everything that Eve and I talked about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Beyond Human, my previous interview with Aubrey de Grey, my podcast on nad, my Pau Dioco bark tea recipe, Telo Years website for measuring your telomere length, where I got my own bone marrow and fat marrow stem cells extracted and plenty more. And also read this book, so grab it all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com BeyondHuman and Eve, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing all this with us.

Thanks so much for having me, Ben. It's been really interesting.

Awesome. All right. I'll take that as a compliment, I guess. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Eve Harold signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice. It.