Could This Molecule Be The Next Darling Of The Anti-Aging Industry? A Fascinating Geranylgeraniol (GG) Discussion With Dr. Barrie Tan.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness podcast, When the pot open. Remember, the plant never make things for human being. They make them to protect themselves. When the pot opens, they need the tocotrienol to protect the degradation of the color. That's a tocotrienol piece. And GG is not an amino acid, not a branch amino acid, for example. So what is it? GG is a spark plug for firing.

Muscle synthesis, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

So I'm down here in. In beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, at this play. What's this? The. The Biltmore, Jonathan.

Yeah, yeah, Hotel.

You've got this beautiful beau property at a nutrition conference. And I'm with Jonathan Lazotte from the company called Designs for Health. And we were outside walking around, and he told me that I would basically. You told me I'd be a fool not to talk about this on my podcast. I don't think you said fool, but you heavily encouraged me to talk about something on my podcast, which I'm gonna do. Actually. We hooked up with a scientist who's gonna, like, get deep into what it was that you were talk. But why is it that you were just like, so wanting me to interview this guy on the show?

Well, you know, I've been in this industry, blessed to be in this industry for over 30 years and to find something new, truly new and novel in this space in terms of a nutrient doesn't happen that often. And one of those ingredients now within last few years, has been brought to my attention. It's actually an endogenous nutrient. Endogenous, meaning it's produced by the body.

You actually make it already.

You make it already. And like some nutrients as we eat, age. I'm getting up there in years. I'm 57 now. Your body makes less of it. And oftentimes we want to supplement nutrients like that.

That would be something like nad, for example. You bet. Yup.

And so it's Geranolgernyl, so oftentimes called gg. And when I think of my own aging process, something that I want that is critically important in things like protein synthesis and testosterone synthesis, endogenous production of MK4, you know, real critical elements of a healthy immune system and maintaining proper skeleture.

Okay, so there's a. I mean, obviously with Barry, we're gonna get into all these. All these different mechanisms, but okay, so big picture, though is like, you're in the supplements industry. You're at these kind of conferences all the Time you probably kind of like me, have tried everything known to humankind. Absolutely. So if there was one like, supplement that if you were stuck on a desert island for a year that you would take, would it be this one?

It still would be Tocotrienol, I gotta tell you.

Okay, but I remember you saying something about tocotrienol. Did it change? So tocotrienol, which I talked with Barry about before, it's still top of the list. Would you say like, this is like up there?

Well, thankfully there are products available that have tocotrienol and GG combined in them.

Okay, we're gonna have to talk.

So that makes it easy. So. So I take the combined product.

Okay. All right, so you guys go to the. I'll talk to Jonathan after this. You guys go to the show Notes.

I'll.

I'll find out which ones have the tocatrinols and the gg so you can go to your own desert island and be as happy as Jonathan. We finished just in time. Here comes the garbage truck. Or the food delivery truck. Alright, you guys tune in. Gonna go chat with Barry Tan. Enjoy. Well, happy Halloween, Barry. I guess this is what two nerds like us do on Halloween as we walk around in Arizon about nutrition.

Yes. Well, this is as good as gonna get with nice sunshine. So we're looking forward to doing this one.

Yeah, we've got a beautiful walking path down here in Phoenix, Arizona, where. Where both you and I were attending this. This Casey comp. What's Casey even stand for? I don't even know.

Casey is clinical ca. Clinical application and scientific innovation.

Clinical application, scientific innovation. I'm glad one of us knows where we're at today. And so you know, all sorts of speakers from around the world were here. Experts in nutrition, physicians, dietitians, nutritionists. And company called Designs for Health was one of the. They're like the main sponsor of this event. And if you guys listen to the introduction to this show, you heard me chatting with Jonathan, who heads up Designs for Health, and we were talking about this real darling molecule that's kind of threatening to take the nutrition supplement world by storm. But not many people know about it yet, so as I love to do, I like to get in early on stuff and let you guys know about cool things I find when I'm traveling around. Now, Barry's been on my podcast before. You guys might be familiar with Barry's voice from a fantastic show we did about vitamin E a couple years ago. We talked about vitamin E. Took a deep dive into Annatto right Yes, it.

Was annatto from the Amazonian jungle.

Yeah. So fascinating story. And we won't spend a lot of time on that story because we just unpacked this whole new form of vitamin E in that podcast a couple of years ago. And during that show, Barry kind of like briefly alluded to this other molecule that he was kind of deep in the throes of researching and finding out more about. It's been a couple years since then. Now he's kind of unleashing this thing on the world in terms of the information about it. So I thought, let's go on a walk and actually talk about this. Barry, before we jump into what this stuff is and why it's so important, what does your day job actually look like? Are you just in a lab researching or reading papers? What is it that you actually do on a day to day basis?

I do a fair bit of reading and researching and as you know, learning is at the speed of Google, so I do that. And also sometime I go to the lab and work other lab chemists and otherwise where our facility is, is in the. In the away in the country. So I take walks and I talk to myself and make thoughts of how our body functions.

Now, you're. I was gonna say originally Chinese. That's not. You're. You're still. You're Chinese, right? Yes.

Okay. Yes, I am.

But did you grow up in China?

No, I grew up in Southeast Asia in the country of Malaysia.

Oh, okay. My tennis coach in college, Kai Fong, he was from Malaysia. And so now where do you live now?

I live in Massachusetts and have been there for almost 40 years.

Okay.

Do you go back to China much?

No, I've only been to it two times. Malaysia, numerous times. Probably once every two years, except during the pandemic time.

Okay, gotcha. So in terms of you saying that you'll go into the chemistry lab sometime, is your formal education in chemistry?

Yeah, my formal education is in biochemistry and chemistry.

Gotcha, dude. I took biochemistry in college. I know the implications of that for memorizing pathways. A lot of memorization. My trick was I just write things down on an 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper and then turn it over and write it down again, then turn it over and write it down again until I'd memorize that pathway and then move on to the next one. Just, just rote repetition and. And gosh, you know, you and I were on a panel yesterday, and I know that you've. I was comfortable taking you on a walk to talk about this. Stuff, because I can see that your. Your mind is like a steel trap when it comes to reciting some of this information, how it works, how. How old are you?

I'm 68 years old and I'm probably the standing person that I've taken Toco dry 30 years of my life.

You've taken the tocotrienol that we talked about in the last podcast. You've been taking that for 30 years.

Yes, yes.

Do you think that's. That's why you are. Well, people can't see you right now because it's an audio podcast, but you're remarkably put together for a 68 year old and you're keeping up with me on this walk. So is that kind of part of your core protocol for longevity? Do you do it for inflammation? Did you do it because you had a health condition?

No, I don't have that. I have much to thank to Japanese scientists. They were the first to show that when you take tocotrienol, it extends the life they study in worms. Extend the life of 30%. So I know it had to do with anti aging and extension of life.

Okay. Yeah, well, we unpacked that on the last show, but this new one seems like it could be possibly right up there. Right up there in terms of efficacy. Okay, so tell me the name of what it is that we're talking about today.

This is from the plant. When I was visiting South America, I discovered this plant is called the lipstick plant. You can Google. And then I found this gg. It stands for gyroneogyranol, that molecule. And this molecule is.

Let's spell that for people just real quick. So geranyl is G E R A N, Y, L. And then the second part of it is geranyl. G E R A N I O L. So geranyl, geraniol. Unfortunately, we can just call it gg, right?

Yes, we can quite simplify it to call it gg.

So you found this in. You know, I know that you discovered vitamin E when you were researching this annatto plant in the Amazon. Was this in a similar location that you found this lipstick plant?

Yeah. And you know, in life, many things are serendipitous. And this is one of those. I extract the vitamin E, which is a discovery by itself. I call it best in class. Then I found out something left behind. The left behind. When I analyzed it, I found out it was gg. And gg, to this day, it is first in class.

Okay, so it was in the same plant as you were finding this vitamin.

E in yeah, it is in the same plant. You know what? You know why? Because the plant used GG to make the vitamin E. Oh, so GG is.

Like a precursor to these tocotrienols?

Yes, 100%. Humans and animals cannot make this, but the plant kingdom can make this.

Oh, we don't make our own gg?

No, we make our own gg, but after we make our own gg, it's unable to make vitamin E tocotrienoline as the plants can.

Okay, I gotcha. That's what I was going to ask you, because I'm like, well, why would you even want to take or need to take the vitamin E that we talked about our last show if this stuff is a precursor for it? But you basically, the conversion doesn't take place within the human body to vitamin E. When you take the gg, the.

Conversion does not convert to vitamin E. It converts to many other things. Hopefully this podcast will elucidate that, but not to vitamin E. Okay, so what exactly is gg?

How would you class? Is it like a protein? Is it a phospholipid? Like, like, how would you actually describe it?

This is an excellent question, Ben, on this one here, the gg, let me describe it in a big perspective. It is the last common step between a plant and an animal. No such chemical exists. How so? In a plant, GG is referred to as terpene, like cbd, terpenoids. But in an animal, GG is referred to as an isoprene. Isoprenoid. Like that.

An isoprenoid. So what would the structure be closest to then? Like a carbohydrate or like a lipid? Like, what's it actually look like? And is it big or small?

It is small. But the best way to describe it is what does GG is used by the plant to make? I gave you two examples. And what is GG used by the animal to make? Because they are the last common step in the plant. It is used to make carotene. As you eat vegetable, you know, as well as chlorophyll, the green thing. So every time when you eat vegetable, you are seeing behind it what GG is a precursor for. In the animal, GG is used to make COQ10 and muscle. I give it the simplest form that you can imagine what GG is for. And this is such an underrated and underappreciated nutrient. Now we got it.

Okay, but you said that our body can make gg, right? Okay, so where does the body make its own gg?

The body make their own GG inside the cell. For example, inside the cell, when they make the gg, GG is what I refer to as a non terminal endogenous nutrient. So after it make GG, it had to use the GG to do something. Three short examples. CoQ10, muscle, testosterone.

Okay. CoQ10, muscle intestine. Most people want to know muscle and testosterone. But just a quick, quick aside, sorry to insult anybody's intelligence who's high up on the nutrition sector and already knows this, but CoQ10. Just quick explanation of that to people what CoQ10 is.

CoQ10 is used in a body. A Nobel prize was given for its discovery in 1978. It's simply used right inside the cell to make the currency of energy called ATP.

Yeah, it's basically crucial to the mitochondrial electron transport chain. A lot of people will supplement with it in the form of ubiquinol, also as CoQ10. I personally, Barry, I have a freezer full of all sorts of wild game meats and organ meats and do heart every week, which is actually a really good bioavailable food based source of CoQ10. But many people tend to be low on CoQ10, particularly if you're on like.

A statin, for example, or particularly if you're vegan.

Yeah, that'd be another example. But so yeah, the animal meats are going to be some source of CoQ10. So GG is acting as a precursor for CoQ10. It's acting for muscle protein synthesis, for testosterone. We'll talk about some of those pathways here momentarily. But you know, I asked you if the body makes its own because I'm kind of curious why we would really even need to care about this as a supplement if our bodies are making their own gg.

Actually, right before I do that, I wanted to segue on a very simple note. You said that you put in the refrigerator and freezer organ meat. There's something already teaching intuitively. These organ meat are usually dark and they are firing the mitochondria. That's why they have high CoQ10. And in these places are also where the GG is high, so that the GG is required for the synthesis of CoQ10 to produce energy to fire the heart so that they all work together. So if you eat organ meat or dark meat, you should expect to have high CoQ10.

Yeah, yeah. That's why Thanksgiving coming up here pretty soon. Thanksgiving's coming. Maybe at the time this podcast comes out, it'll be just about Thanksgiving. And I I usually go for the dark meat. Anybody who wants to optimize their mitochondrial function, the dark meat's going to be better just because you're getting a little bit more of the slower twitch muscle fibers and some of the aerobic enzymes that are present in those. But, you know, one thing that I learned is that during the Tour de France, a lot of the teams over there will eat horse meat, which is something that you can, you can find in France. And, and there might be a few Tour de France cyclists out there chuckling and saying, no, no, we don't do that, Ben. But I've been told by a couple of folks that that horse meat is included in the Tour de France cycling diet. And I myself actually hunted a wild horse once and the meat is incredibly dark, dark red, like some of the darkest. It's even darker than beef. It has this real reddish tinge to it, almost like heart. And those are, those are the type of meats that are really rich in, in Coq 10. So GG, you know, it's serving as a precursor to that. But again, the body makes it. So why would we need to take it?

Actually, the word on the back of your mind, just think of anti aging. About the age of 30, we do not probably need GG because our body makes it. And firing well, at about that time, the good nutrients our body make will begin to be on its decline and maintenance. So for that reason alone, we need to supplementation of GG. So the other downstream nutrients that we need, like CoQ10 will be maintained, light muscle containment will be contained or testosterone. All of these things drop with age, up on about the age of 30.

A lot of people are taking like NAD for that. Like, you know, the NAD levels seem to, even though your body can make NAD remarkably decline with age. And thus that's one of the darling molecules of the anti aging industry. So what you're saying is it would be kind of similar to that. Like it, like as you age, your levels decline. So from an anti aging standpoint, and related to testosterone, CoQ10 and muscle protein synthesis particularly, this would be something that would allow you to keep your levels topped off to optimize those departments as you age.

Yes. The difference, which is a nuance, is this the gg. Yes, it's anti aging, but that phrase could be trite. Where I wanted to simplify that is GG is not a terminal endogenous nutrient, which means that if you lack gg, everything downstream of GG will be inhibited, such as muscle, such as testosterone, such as CoQ10.

Okay, got it. So that's kind of like that. When I was talking yesterday, I was talking about the pregnenolone steel and the fact that if you've got a lot of cortisol being produced because you're living in a stressed out state, there's less pregnenolone available for say progesterone production. So what you're saying is you want to, you want to replenish gg so you got a lot of these upstream metabolites available for some of these functions that GG interacts with?

Yes, yes. If you like. I give you an example on the muscle part. How is, how is GG in the understanding of muscle building? Muscle gives traction, locomotion function and gait. Simple answer. And GG is not an amino acid, not a branch amino acid for example. So what is it? GG is a spark plug for firing muscle synthesis.

Okay, so let's dive into some of the specifics here. So muscle protein synthesis, how would GG actually assist with or how has it been shown to assist with staving off muscle loss, sarcopenia, muscle protein synthesis, muscle building, anything of the like.

Okay, here, let me give you a cartoon version. Nobody have actually talked about it. Most time people said you got to take protein, other things that strengthen the protein like branch amino acid, like that. But nobody actually say how proteins are actually made. If you eat protein, it's going to be digested in the gut. So they just go in as amino acids. So this is my simplified version of it. Just think of a hundred protein that have 100amino acids and then the permutation of making that and we have 21 essential amino acids. Make it simple. We have 20 essential amino acids and that protein is about 100 long. It would be 100 to the power of 22 is an unimaginable number to google. Therefore the making of specific protein is in the nucleus designed by the DNA. So how is it made? See all most molecules are small. Protein molecules are like an albatross. So when they, when the DNA is making, they stitch in one amino acid and then the next one very specific after they made about 50 of them. That thing is so large something have to hold on to that until the whole thing is finished and delivered to the site. Nobody talks like that. That thing that hooked as the protein is being synthesized is an underappreciated simple molecule. Non amino acid, that's gg. It's just holding it until the entire albatross is completed.

So GG is like a scaffolding for these amino acids that are being churned out to eventually build the proteins that would be involved in for example, skeletal muscle synthesis.

Yes. And skeletal all throughout the body. A normal human person will have 30%, probably Ben himself will probably have 40% or so of muscle. So which is a dramatic impact. So therefore a loss of this GG is unable to make the protein synthesis. So it's critical like that.

Now, have they actually ever done any studies on GG in either like weightlifting individuals or people with sarcopenia, or done any research into whether or not this actually results in upon supplementation, meaningful staving off of muscle loss or muscle building or anything like that?

Currently, all of this is done in animal. And then if you ask why is it not done in human being? This is my entry into this. For the first time 12 months ago, we are launching GG. So until then there simply is not this component available. However, in animal, what has it been shown when they gave animal young animal it increase the the muscle force dying of kick in the elderly rat, they're able to improve thrive. And that's connected to the testosterone. And for those who took statin, it would cause muscle damage. This will block the statin ability to develop muscle damage. So all of them are muscle.

That's not because with the statin issue that it's that it's serving as a precursor to CoQ10.

Yes, that is connected to the CoQ10. But statin also directly inhibit GG synthesis. And because it directly inhibit GG synthesis, that is the reason why when people take statin, they have muscle problem. Very simple, plain and simple. But the GG part is because. No, the CoQ10 part is because statin inhibit GG and there's not enough GG to make CoQ10 and CoQ10 also drop.

So arguably, if someone were on a statin, would it be a better strategy to take something like GG instead of CoQ10?

Yes, for the muscle damage. Absolutely. But if you want to have a win all a win win, then take a supplement that have GG and Coq 10 together.

Okay. Because basically the GG would be responsible for the muscle protein synthesis component of CoQ10. But then if you take additional CoQ10, you would be getting what you would need for like mitochondrial support, for example, 100%.

The mitochondrial support is absolute necessity to the muscle and to all other cell because we simply need the ATP for the currency of energy.

Now, related to this concept of muscle protein synthesis, obviously the endocrine system is a key component A couple of times yesterday you mentioned to me what you had seen regarding GG and testosterone or simply endocrine regulation as a whole. What's going on with the endocrine system in gg?

This is a discovery of Japanese scientists and it's only two years ago. They, as you know, as we all know, Japanese live the longest life. So they decided to give them gg and they found out that when they gave the animal gg, the testosterone increased and is able to increase the thrive of this old rat to walk. That's it. That was just a very simple finding and that prompted me to think, ah, this can be used for general utility of increasing testosterone for performance as well as for maintenance of thrive as we grow older.

Any impact on any other hormones?

Yes, progesterone for women.

Really?

Yes.

Interesting. Okay. Well, I mean, progesterone is something that is now being used in anxiety conditions in men as well. And also there's one practitioner, I forget his name, he wrote a book called the Adrenal Reset and he even uses it small amounts of transdermal progesterone. Children for ADD and adhd, like symptoms. Obviously I'm one of those guys who says test, test, test, you know, get like a Dutch test, like a dried urine test to make sure you're monitoring anything from progesterone to testosterone or anything like that when you're taking something that might alter those levels. But that, that's interesting that it has that effect on testosterone and progesterone. And, and it's, it's also interesting, I think that possibly a little bit of a rabbit hole here, especially considering how many, well, guys particularly, it seems, are just constantly diving into all the different things you could do to increase testosterone. Is the reason that more people don't know about this yet? Because most people, I, I tell, you know, I'll say, you know, geradinel, geranial, and you know, nutritionists, supplement manufacturers, physicians, they have no clue, never heard of it. Why is it that it. That it's so uncommon right now? Is it just that early in infancy in terms of the stages of research?

I take this question as how come people don't know about this if this is as hot as it is now that we know? Two simple reasons. One, the test, the GG to testosterone connection is only discovered two years ago. It was not known before. And two, I developed the GG right here in Massachusetts. So a year ago. So before that is simply not available. And why do I consider this so important? GG is not a steroid. Itself, it's an isoprenoid, but it stimulates the body to make testosterone naturally because this is how the body does it, is an endogenous nutrient. So I take it this is as good as this is going to get.

Have you been taking less GG yourself for like monitoring your own testosterone levels or anything like that?

No, I, I have not test my testosterone level. I take GG for the reason I have very high cholesterol and my doctor is giving me saftin. So by taking GG is able to mitigate my ability to have muscle problem. And for me, I'm 68 years old. I don't want muscle problem. And if I muscle problem, how am I going to get into my 70?

How are you going to go on walks with me to record podcasts?

That's right. You know, Ben is double my age. And then I'm keeping your leg length.

Yeah. No offense, but you're shorty compared to me, but you're keeping up. Okay, so we basically got muscle protein synthesis. We have endocrine system regulation, particularly relevant to testosterone and progesterone. We have CoQ10 modulation. And then another one that you had mentioned to me, you know, I get my talk yesterday was on bone density and, you know, osteoporosis, osteopenia and, and sarcopenia to a certain extent. And I'll try and make that talk available to people if I can in the show notes for this podcast, which you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com GG BenGreenfieldFitness.com GG is where you can go for the podcast show notes and I'll also link to my other podcast I did with Barry about vitamin E, which was equally fascinating. But then we've got another thing related to that and that is bone health. I think it has something to do with vitamin K. But can you explain what's going on with gg, bone health and vitamin K?

Yes. This is also another discovery of Japanese scientists about 10 years ago. And this is a dramatic finding. And the simple thing is when you take vegetable, you got vitamin K1 and the tail is kind of look like the vitamin K1 is like a sperm looking. Think of the tail and as soon as it get to the gut, the gut crops it off. Only takes a certain amount of Ka1 for clotting factor. And then when you get into the body, it's looking for a GG molecule to stitch on. Once it's stitched on is MK4 manoquinone 4. And then now how is that connected to bone manoquinone 4 or vitamin K2. It makes a protein. Only menaquinone can make it. It makes a protein. And as well as K1, the protein chaperones calcium to the bone, just like that. And therefore, if you lack GG, unable to make MK4, then osteoporosis and other things can be imagined. So that is the connection. Let me push this a tad further. The bone contain approximately 95% of calcium. The other 5% is in soft tissue. That is a.

The other 5% of calcium is in soft tissue.

In soft tissue, yes. So there's a fine balance. If you have 10%, what's going to happen? You're going to get calcium in the wrong place. Such as artery arteriosclerosis, such as in the gallbladder, gallstone. Such as in the kidney. Kidney stone. Very simple.

If someone were to take gg, because a lot of people will take kind of like, you know, like I was talking about yesterday, kind of like the holy trifecta for. For bone, you know, vitamin D, magnesium and calcium. There are others, but those are three big ones. If someone were taking gg, would it negate the need to supplement with like an MK4 version of vitamin K?

No, it doesn't do that because vitamin D also is a hormone to shadow the calcium to the bone as well. In fact, I think there is a product out there designed for health mix called Trik, where it's a combination of all these things that you mentioned to me, including GG.

So the other form of K you talked about, MK1 that we get from plants, that's been converted into MK4. And then MK7 is another form of vitamin K that's often used in nutrition supplements. Yeah.

Yes, that's one. Since you brought MK7 out, let me identify for you. MK7 is a nutritional supplement. Some work has been done on anti osteoporosis. So it's like that. However, in Japan, MK4 is a pharmaceutical drug for anti osteoporosis. American don't know this yet.

The difference, MK7 is that difference between MK4 and MK7.

That's right.

Okay.

And MK7, the tail is almost twice as long. So therefore it stick around in the blood longer. MK4 is shorter, so it gets into the cell. Now also another difference, people commonly said that in fermentation in the gut, you make all these MK stuff. MK 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, like that. However, a clear distinction. And this should grab you. The only menaquinone synthesized by the human body, all in 27 organs known to date is MK4. No other menoquinone is made. So therefore we should ask the question, why is the body making MK4? At least we know at least one, which is to shuttle calcium and chaperone calcium to the bone. At least we know that.

So if you're supplementing with vitamin K, you should arguably be using the mk4 version.

Yes, mk4 version. Fewer companies sell them and we don't, we just sell the gg, the primary one. And again I will emphasize the endogenous nutrient is non terminal. They make all these good other endogenous nutrients in the body.

Or you can just ferment plants with MK1 like Natto. I love to eat natto when I go to Asia, just because it's a great bioavailable form of vitamin K. And from what I understand, the fermentation process of the soybean allows for better conversion of the MK1 into the MK4. It might be the MK7. I'm actually not quite sure what the fermentation process is resulting in. But ultimately if you ferment some of these plants with MK1, it's, it's kind of a good way for like especially a plant based eater to get good bioavailable amounts of vitamin K because they can't eat too much. Lovely, lovely grass fed butter.

Yeah. I think that if you use a Natto, which is a Japanese thing on soybean, the bacteria produce mostly MK7 and hence MK7 was forward on this. The bacteria tend to make longer chain, but when it get inside the body, we make MK4 probably evolutionarily it is more efficient, it does the job and like that in your gut, if you have good gut, you'll make all of these good stuff. If you make, if you take fermented food like kefir, like kimchi, anything fermented, including cheese, you will find this kind of amanoquinone. So all this to say if you do, if you take them, fantastic. And we should. And if you wonder, well, besides fermented food, how else if you want to work it in the body sense, and the body sense is to have GG because GG makes MK4.

But GG appears to also, based on what I'm understanding here, while increasing the ability for calcium to be able to make its way into bone cell would inhibit calcification like excess calcium systemically.

Yes, inhibit calcium systemically outside the bone so that it would not form gallstone kidney stone just to. Or artery, we don't call it artery stone. There will be Calcification.

Arterial calcification.

Yes, arterial calcification. But those three are big enough. So actually if you take a step back and not talk about treatment, you will begin to get, or we will all begin to get an idea. Truly, GG is an anti aging nutrient. Underrated and underappreciated. They make all these other heroes that is needed in the body.

Yeah. If you look into the work of Dr. William Davis who has made the calcium scan score quite popular, a lot of people. I have a big podcast about this if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com hearthealth they're now keeping their finger on the pulse of calcification using this calcium scan score. I would be curious to see at some point some type of research into supplementation with GG and any impact that might have on calcium scan score which is kind of dear to my heart because just because of my history of competing in very difficult sports, particularly like high level endurance sports, I personally have a higher calculation calcification score then you know, that would be ideal. Granted it's kind of like very dense calcium that's less likely to result in heart issues based on the calcium scan that I got. But yet it's still something that I'm often asked about. How can you decrease this calcium scan score? It sounds like GG might be kind of like similar to magnesium one. That may assist with that.

Yeah. You know Ben, I did not preslot this and the audience should notice when you said that it sparked something on me. Last month, just last month, the Korean scientists published that in avid athletes they tend to have higher calcification score in their artery. I don't know what their theory is, but they are able to clearly document it. I have a guess because when you are very strong athlete, the GG has been spent on CoQ10, spent on making good muscle. So that there is isn't enough GG to make the lower, the lower, you know, the side kick. And if the side kick happened to be MK4, you and I don't think of it as side kick. So if you don't have enough GG to make MK4 because it's needed for something else, especially in the demand of an athlete, then possibly that would be a rationale why people may have calcification in the art.

Yeah, I suspected that you may be right. A higher turnover of GG in an active athlete. But that's paired with the fact that you've simply got more lactic acidosis occurring in cardiac tissue and that's ultimately going to result in some amount of calcium influx intracellularly, some amount of calcium buildup in the locations where that calcium is migrating to. And so any athlete is going to be at a higher risk just based on the increased amount of acidosis they're undergoing to calcium buildup in heart tissue. But then if they also don't have a way to distribute calcium efficiently throughout the body as GG would do, it could contribute and make it a bigger issue.

100%. Among all the minerals we take, calcium is clearly the most dominant mineral of all. So therefore, the trafficking and the working of calcium is critical and important to our health.

Yeah, yeah, I talked about that a lot yesterday in my talk. I want to talk a little bit about kind of like brass tacks here as far as GG goes. If someone were to supplement with it. Have you looked into timing and dosing? And we got time for you to unpack this for us. But basically, like, how much. When would you take it and how's it gonna be different, like, between like a guy or a girl or a kid or, you know, has any of that research been done?

No, the research enough is parts of it have been. And based on animal study we transposed to human being. This is 150 milligrams or 300 milligram per day. And they should be because it's oil soluble, fat soluble, it should be taken with a meal, preferably lunch or dinner. So that would be the dosage thing. I want to let you. We got all these drawings from things that are from the animal study. If it helps you at all, then it's. Well, there's no clinical study. We are planning to perform three clinical studies. We cannot do all of them at one time, but at least you can see where I'm moving my chips to do the thing I need. The first clinical study is to people with statin with confirmed myopathy and see how GG may help to reduce the muscle damage. 1. The second clinical study is we're going to study the improvement of testosterone and also on libido. There's a second study.

There's going to be human studies.

Human studies. These are all human. And the third one we plan to do is exercise sign. They are not taking statin. No, nothing. And they're just taking the gg and we will measure their muscle force and output. Just that. So those are three separate study we plan to do.

Yeah. I'll keep my fingers on the pulse of those as they come out because you and I keep in touch. So I'll put those out to the audience when they get released. Even though I, you know, based on the conversations we've had in the past couple of days and my conversations with Jonathan Lazad, I'm planning on beginning to implement GG in my own personal protocol. So the timing and the dosing thing is important for me to understand. So 150 to 300 milligrams with a meal because it's a fat soluble. And then what about anybody that you could think of who may not want to use this either because it'd be a waste of money and they don't need it because of their age or because it might increase any type of risk factors?

I would say that based on what I comment before, until a person is 20 years and older, at 20 years and younger, I would not currently see a reason why they should take it. And also for pregnant women, I don't know enough on that. But for the class of people, that absolutely would be good would be people who are about 7, 30 years and older, particularly 50 years and older. Absolutely needed for people who are 60 years and older.

Okay. Can it be combined, do you know? Or stacked with other supplements? Effectively. One of the reasons that I ask is because yesterday you guys had all this juice out called Myostim.

Yes.

And it's Myostim. You know, usually I use amino acids all day long to kind of keep my muscle protein synthesis humming along, but I didn't have any with me. I've been drinking this Myostim the past couple of days and it has like, you know, the usuals for staving off sarcopenia or building muscle like creatine, hmb, vitamin D, et cetera, et cetera. But I noticed GG is in there.

Yes, gg, because I told them what we are talking now. So they decided to put GG as part of the package. So in terms of combo, I can see gg, if you're talking about muscle, then put a combined with things that are muscle building that series. If you talk about muscle damage, such as from statin, then clearly that would be good with GG with CoQ10, depending on the way you go with it. If it is libido stimulation, there are several other products out there in terms of proving we have to do GG by itself. So that could be a good combo. And if it is vitamin K, then it would be bone health. Then we combo with other bone things. So different platform, but all of them legit because we have this in our hand.

Okay. A couple of days ago, we were actually on a Walk, you and I, and you had mentioned a form of GG that I think was just gg. And what the heck, toss in another G. Gyronyl geraniol. Glutathione, I think you said. And this was a newly discovered molecule related to the glutathione pathway. What's the impact of GG on glutathione? Or what's the importance of this new form of gg?

Okay, on this one here, let me take one step to place the audience. There are a lot of things with GG we don't know yet. What I told you is what I do know of two things. And Ben brought up ggg, gyranol, gyronol, glutathione, and all of us know the glutathione thing. And the other one is gynolgynoic acid. What are the benefits of these two? The gynylgyranyl glutathione. Remember, nobody knows about this and our cell is quietly making it. So they are making this to preserve the integrity of the mitochondria. Man. How good is that? That is in the holy of holies. Just that by itself. And that's the University of California discovery. The other one is GG makes now gylnoic acid. That is clearly a liver protection. They did this. They gave it to rats from zero age all the way to 24 months to 24 months. The rat is really old. They only gave the GG once at midlife, at 12 months. And they found that for those who didn't have it, they have liver cancer and liver malady. For those who were given once only in their lifetime of the rat, they did not have liver cancer. That is just an anti aging.

And that was a different form of the gerenal gerenial though, right?

No. Yeah, they gave them gerenile gerenile. But the body makes the gyno gynoic acid from the gynojournal and then he's able to protect the liver. And as it turned out, the Japanese scientists have published two papers in New England Journal of Medicine that if they give them ginoic acid, it help to treat people with liver cancer. So there you have it. This is what we know now. So in time to come, this GG may do other thing. If you know that GG is an endogenous nutrient, many more other stuff we will learn in time because it's not known. It's the kind of thing that not only is it useful to us, it's the kind of thing that Some guy or some group is going to get the Nobel Prize for it. Just hit it too unknown.

If you get the Nobel Prize, I want credit. The Nobel Prize. The people sitting around in suits in a boardroom who award the Nobel Prize if they hear this podcast. I want credit to get the Nobel Prize. Barrett. Now, Barry, what plants, you know, because you mentioned that you find this in like this, this lipstick. Is the lipstick plant the same as the annatto plant?

Yeah, the lipstick the Britishers call it. Probably because it's. A couple of hundred years ago, the convention was to make the lips of women red. They call it the lipstick plant. But it was found 150 years before by a guy called Francesco de Orellana during the Spanish conquistador time when they were in at the Amazonia. They started from Ecuador down all the way to Brazil and he found this plant. Now then, the scientific name for this plant is called Bixa B I X A Orellana named after the discoverer. So if you type Bixa orellana, annatto or the Spanish word achiote or the Portuguese word urucum, you'll find many culinary fare that uses for cooking.

Is annatto a dietary staple in the Amazon?

Yes, it's just eaten as a food. So if you use this for cooking, of course it's going to stain everything. Red color.

Oh, really?

Yeah, because of the red color. The red color is a cap.

I noticed the GG capsules are very dark, like dark orangish red.

Yeah, like that. So of course we remove the big sin largely, mostly all of it. And then, then we make one. One part as Toco tri ino, the other part at gg. And some people actually won the annatto, Toco tri Ino and GG together. And Design for Health has a product called annatto E G. Which is a combination of these two.

Oh, you can get both.

Both at once. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

All right, you got. I'll get the link from your team and put that in the show notes. If people just want to want to kill two birds with one stone. But back to the sonatso stuff. Have you ever like eaten it yourself? Like had it prepared as a meal?

Yeah, I look at some Filipino food and people are, why Filipino food? The Spanish that were in South America, I don't know if Americans in general know this. The Spanish were ruling Philippines for 400 years as long as they did in South America, which is why many of them look like me. But they have Spanish last name. So they have this culinary fare brought from South America to Philippines. And if you go online, just say cooking with Anais, you'll find that. And if you do that, you'll have a modicum, small amount of GG and toco triano in your food. If you don't mind that your food become reddish color, such as curry.

Yeah. Or like beets. Yeah. Do you know if there's any other plants in the plant kingdom that would be as concentrated or similar to something like annatto in terms of the nutritional benefit powerhouse for something like vitamin E and or gg?

Yes, for the gg. Yes. But unfortunately, that plant is not edible. That is a castor oil. We use this.

Oh, castor oil.

Yeah, we use it for the engine oil.

A lot of health enthusiasts will use castor oil transdermally, you know, like castor oil packs. I wonder if they're absorbing any gg.

Yeah, that is an interesting question. I know it has, but if I were to get it out from that, I don't know how to do it so that I have to prove to the FDA to remove all the castor oil. So we didn't do that. So we started with a food, a plant, which is annatto. Now, other than that, if you eat tomato, you eat spinach, this thing, you'll find small amount of them. And then if the audience want to know, what the heck? Why did this plant make it? Very simple. Lycopene from tomato comes from gg. Got it. So if you eat spinach, right, you see all the green chlorophyll. Chlorophyll comes from gg. So most of the time, the plant GG is well conserved, meaning that they only make enough GG to make what they need because they make other things. And annatto is just an exception. They make tocotrieno have extra. I believe I know the reason. When the pot open, remember the plant never make things for human being. They make them to protect themselves. When the pot opens, they need the tocotrienol to protect the degradation of the color. That's the tocotrienol piece. The GG day is to repel insect and repel other prey so that they will not get attacked because the plant can move around. So I'm just lucky this is your Venus flytrap. That's right. So I just got lucky that I stumbled ON There are 50 million chemicals on Earth. So then I happen to stumble. I'm not even a medicine man. I stumble on this. Can't speak a word of Spanish. So I'm really grateful. I think that this should be Broadcast as wide as possible for people to take the gg.

Yeah, we're definitely talking about it right now. It's interesting what you say about the lycopene. I'd be curious if there's any impact of GG on prostate health in men or whether there's potential for any studies on PSH levels with GG if it serves as a precursor lycopene in tomatoes. Because that's something that's been shown to be beneficial for psh.

Right. We have not done that for prostate cancer, but we have done this. We have used GG to test in combination with tocotrienol. It clearly does two things. It reduces inflammation and it also added to tocotrienol, which is a known anti cancer agent. Added to tocotrienol, GG potentiate the function of tocotrienol to kill the cancer cell better. That is have been shown.

All right, well I'm definitely if people go to the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com GG I'll get all the information from you about where people can get it and take it and I'll just get mine from the same source because I plan on beginning to take it and do some lab values and see what I notice. But of course the whole topic of this Casey conference that we're at is longevity. So I'd be remiss not to ask you. In addition to something like gg, which is a core part of your supplementation protocol and the talk of trienols which we talked about last time, which are a core part of your protocol, I assume still are. Are there any other things that you, especially as a researcher steeped in this industry, would consider to be staples in your own anti aging protocol particularly relevant to nutrition and supplementation?

Yeah, I would say that beside these two, I'm thinking of resveratrol and I'm sure many people already know that. And then a little after that would be quercetin. Those one. And if the anti aging is to reduce inflammation as we age, then I would ask curcumin.

But that's interesting because you and I haven't talked before the podcast about this, but Dr. Sandra Kaufman, who I've had on my podcast, she has a whole ranking system on her website that's pretty impressive of what you would rank different anti aging molecules in terms of their order of importance and actually near the top of it are indeed resveratrol and curcumin. I don't remember if Kersetin is high up on that one or not. But that's interesting. So your vitamin E, your gg, your resveratrol, your quercetin and curcumin, those are your biggies?

Yeah, those are the biggie because the chronic aging is a hit. So if you want to have lab measure, besides C reactive protein, I know that there's a lot of other stuff, keep it to C reactive protein and interleukin 6. These are classic proven measure of inflammation. And I'll give you all the study published in New England Journal of Medicine on them.

Yeah, I've got an article on my website actually about everything to track for longevity markers. And those are in there, you know, glycemic variability, the use of a continuous blood glucose monitor or at least tracking hemoglobin A1C. That's on there. There's a few other parameters on there, including estrogen levels in both men and women. Interesting data on that. And tracking that for longevity purposes. How about for nutrition? Oh, and I'll link to that article in the show notes, you guys, if you want to go read up on like what to test for longevity markers regarding nutrition, obviously it widely varies, it's very biochemically individualized. But for you, what does your diet look like?

Oh, my diet would be, I try to have more vegetable, I tend to have less. And then I do admit I would have loved to eat more red meat, but because my cholesterol is perennially high, so I manage to eat a lot of seafood. I'm Chinese, you know, and Chinese people love seafood. So it takes a lot of sea of all kinds and then I find that very satisfying. So those are. And then I eat a lot of ethnic food, meaning a curry that have a huge amount of phytonutrients in it. Yeah, like that. Essentially like that.

Okay, got it. So when you are, when you're consuming a lot of these like, like seafoods and things like that, are you, are you pretty careful with sourcing? Like do you pay attention to wild caught, you know, farm raised, that type of thing in terms of your dietary proteins particularly?

Yeah, as far as the food is concerned, I use, I simply just use wild caught. I stay with wild caught rather than farm. Now as far as additional fish oil, because I couldn't get enough Omega 3. So I suss out on the fish oil to make sure that they have a measure and they mark out how much mercury and how much pesticide because the, the kind of fish that you can get enough fish oil are usually the top tier one. So they start eating the smaller one. They will tend to accumulate this. So I'm wanting to be sure that is. And I buy them only for the one that have highest dha, EPA and have those things. Negative nutrient substance.

Yeah, my supplements company, Kion, we have an omegas and it's all, it's all really clean anchovies from the Peruvian coast. And then we put astaxanthin in there as a protectant with a little bit of vitamin E as well.

Well, you should let me know that. And, and by the way, on the vitamin E thing, we have done a study because Omega 3 is so unstable. So we did a study on the stability issue of omega 3 because we don't want to give people oxidized omega 3, not a good thing. So we, we have them alpha tocopherol and in another batch of softgel we make mix tocopherol and then in another batch we make tocotrienol. When we found that the tocotrienol batch of soft gel of fish oil, they have the lowest level of peroxide value. So that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. I also really like that, that mixed tocopherol, tocotrienol formula. Anytime that you've kind of like messed up from a dietary standpoint, like, I'm not a big drinker, but last night I had like, I had an old Fashioned, I had a big glass of wine. Right. For me, that's drinking a lot. I know people are laughing, but I'm a lightweight. And so I actually popped six of those vitamin E capsules when I got back to my room last night to go to bed after our fun little dance party out there. And it's one of those things that I'll use as kind of like part of the first aid kit for any time you've been consuming vegetable oil, oxidized compounds, etc. Sometimes the next day I'll chase that with a little activated charcoal. Now, do you do much from an exercise standpoint?

Yeah, I walk usually on average, I'm able to average about 15,000 steps a day. I'm unable to do like what you do.

That explains why you're not quite as breathless as some podcast guests I take out during a podcast walk.

Yeah, so that is. I just wanted to make a point to help the audience to appreciate the anti inflammation of vitamin E. Even though I know we're talking about gg, which cover the gg. This has been used for example, you will get the gist. They're used for postmenopausal women that have hot flashes. That's an inflammation at a point and the hot flashes subside. And during the COVID time they have muscle pain because of tenseness. Psychologically driven when they take they annatto eat the annatto tocotrienol and then the muscle problem goes, goes away. So it actually underscore the power of inflammation. So the combination of the annatto e tocotrienol and the annatto GG has a lot of good in it in terms.

Of anti aging from a post menopausal standpoint. Also the fact that you sometimes tend to see some estrogen excesses and progesterone deficiencies, possibly the addition of GG into that protocol may assist with that as well, I would imagine.

Yeah. Yes, I agree. Yes.

Okay. So you, what you doing strength training?

No, I, I wanted to do that because that would increase.

Yes, that's the second part of the, the, the. Well, it's not really a trifecta for exercise, but like you know, walking, strength training, a little bit of heat, a little bit of cold, a little bit of breath work, you know, that doesn't take much. But yeah, you definitely got a strength train, man. Thank you. You learned that yesterday my talk, right?

Yes. So I, I'm planning to do some resistive training exercise so that my upper body can match with my lower body in walking.

Yeah, most of the people who I coach who fall into closer to like the 50 to 70 year old age range, a lot of them, what I have them doing is just strength training twice a week. But they're using a program originally designed by Dr. Doug McGuff and detailed in his book Body by Science in which they're just doing five different exercises. I may actually do this later on at the gym today before I head out to the airport. Sometimes I like just to throw in a quick session because it only takes like 15 to 20 minutes. It's called super slow training. And you do the chest press, Use the machines in the gym, right? You do the chest press, you do the pull down, you do the overhead press, you do the seated row and you do the leg press. And you only do one set of each of them. Just one set of each of them. But for each of those one sets, what you do is like as slow as you can go, like 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down, super slow. So there's actually a cardiovascular component increasing some of your peripheral blood pressure and your heart rate actually increases. And you get a cardiovascular training effect as well incidentally, without an increase in central blood pressure. So it's okay on the heart of people who are maybe seniors who are just Getting into strength training and you go 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down, approximately 30 seconds, breathing really deeply and rhythmically throughout. And you just do as many repetitions as you can do. Most people get anywhere from four to six repetitions in of each exercise. So you just do one exercise and then stand up, move to the next, to the next, to the next. And then what I do is once they've done that for a few weeks, the only modification we make is when you finish that super slow set at the very end of the set, you do like at the very end range of motion, you kind of bounce a little bit and just explode as many extra reps as you can. So you get a little bit of fast switch muscle fiber activation. And I just swear, like the seniors who I work with who adopt that program and do it just twice a week, they're not only maintaining muscle, they're building muscle. And they're building muscle with two 20 minute strength training sessions. It's not. Wow.

I'm gonna definitely look into that, Ben. I will look into that.

Yeah. His book is called Body by Science. And then I don't know if I gave you my book Boundless or if you have it, but in the anti aging chapter of Boundless or actually it's in the exercise chapter, I lay out what like a perfect exercise program would be if you weren't like a pro athlete but you just wanted to kind of stay fit for life. And that program is in there. I lay it all out.

Thank you. I will look into that. I got the book. Yes. Size section. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. We, we sold books yesterday. The book sign. I think there's like 10 of them still hanging around here with the hotel somewhere. They're heavy. Mommy. Get your workout in. Well, this is just all so fascinating. And you know, when, when Jonathan told me I had to talk to you about this molecule, I was kind of and wasn't sure. I started to look into it. I read some of the papers on it and I'm just convinced that I personally want to take this. I would encourage anybody in the audience who does like self quantification tracking, anybody who's kind of like in the anti aging and longevity game, you should check this out. I think it's interesting. I don't have a lot of personal data on it in terms of my own quantification of anything from telomeres to DNA methylation or anything like that, but I'm going to start using it. I'll probably go like that. 300 milligrams a day type of range that you talked about and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna see what happens. So I'm looking forward to giving it a try and, and seeing how my body feels with this stuff. Good old gg.

Yeah thank you so much. So all power and thank you for listening. Hopefully we will continue to have best self help in things to come. Thank you.

All right folks, well I'm Ben Greenfield along with Barry Tan. I'll put all the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com GG you can leave your comments, your questions, your feedback there. Either myself or Barry or maybe one of the team members from Designs for Health who make this product now can pop in and answer your questions. And I always just love to hear what people experience after I find something cool and people start trying it. So keep me posted everybody on how you feel after you start taking this stuff and I will do the same. And in the meantime, Barry, thanks for coming on the show man.

Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening. Blessings.

Have an amazing week everybody.

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