Fueling the Future: ESS60, Mitochondria & Mission Longevity with Chris Burres | Ep 156

Hi everyone, welcome to The Holistic Inner Balance. I'm Dr. Nicole and I am here with

Hadlee.

And we are going to give you a brain inflammation masterclass, and this is going to be relevant for you especially if you feel like your body is under a lot of stress. And this could be because of medical issues that you've encountered. Maybe you're a really hardworking athlete, or maybe you've struggled with sleep, or maybe you just feel like you've been through a lot with your health. And so this is going to be great. You are going to learn all about the powerhouse of the cell, the mitochondria, and we're going to get all sorts of really cool information from a nanoscientist. And so this person He specializes in carbon nanomaterial science and health, and we are gonna learn about the substance that's behind the longest longevity study that we have seen in, in clinical trials. And you're gonna learn about why this matters for you, if this is a good fit for you, and if so, what are your next steps? And I really wanna throw in the disclaimer that Hadlee and I don't typically do specific product placement, but I've actually been personally experimenting on myself, my husband, my dog, my father-in-law, and other favored people in my life, and the results are just absolutely outstanding. I have a patient who's in a clinical trial, and I'm really excited to see the results, and I thought you guys needed to know all about it. So, um, Hadley is going to introduce you to our expert, and then we're gonna dive in.

Yes. So Chris Burrus is a research engineer and scientist whose primary mission is to help people live longer, healthier, pain-free lives. And he has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston, also a minor in computer science and math. He's like genius level here, people. Yeah. He's a co-inventor of The most efficient fullerene manufacturing equipment in use since 1991. Now, you're going to learn what that actually means in this episode. And he's the co-owner of MyVitalC, which is a company that manufactures this, this unique product. And this, this specific product won a Nobel Prize. This molecule won a Nobel Prize back in the '90s, I think. And it's been shown to extend the lifespan of test subjects by 90%. You guys, that's crazy. So without further ado, let's get into this episode.

So I kind of would love to sort of hear about your why. Why are you spending your life doing this work and why this work in particular? Can you share that with us?

Absolutely. Um, so again, thank you guys so much for having me. Thank you for— I, I now I got to put my podcast voice on because yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me. And, and, and I'm so glad that we've, we've connected on so many levels. You know, my story, I, I kind of wish my story was more altruistic, right? I tend to be altruistic when I think about other people, but we're going to go back to way back. So, I've got my book, Live Longer and Better. And this story is, I talk about this story in there and I'll do the kind of punchline. The reason I do what I do today is because of a Lamborghini Countach. So this is not the altruistic— This is not the altruistic answer that I would even really like to be giving, but it does fold into that. So when I was 14 years old, I had a picture of a Lamborghini Countach on my wall, and it was the red Lamborghini. The doors were, you know, the gullwing doors were open, and I could smell the leather, and I knew I wanted one of those things as a 14-year-old boy. And I happened to find an article. Like today, you would go to the internet and you would be like, how do you own a supercar? And then there would be a bunch of sleazy people who are leaning against rented supercars, right? Telling you how to get a supercar. But I actually did this in preparation for the book, and the answer is still kind of the same. And the answer that I found, probably in like a Motor Trend magazine or something, was if you want one Lamborghini, you become a neurosurgeon. If you want more than one Lamborghini, you become an entrepreneur. So, the 14-year-old is like, I would like more than one Lamborghini. So, I am officially going to be an entrepreneur. Like, that was just decided in that article. Didn't really know, like, how hard it would be. Like, just there was zero, you know, often you make these decisions with absolutely no, you know, background information. So, I made that decision. And then, as I was going into college, my dad was in the Air Force. So, we moved every 2 years. The last place that we were stationed was in Ohio, right? Patterson Air Force Base is the largest Air Force base, I think, on the planet. And he got his second civilian job in Houston as I was finishing from high school. So, in my family, we knew you were going to college, but we did none of this prep, right? Like you, 2 lovely ladies, probably knew where you were going to college or if you were going to college like your junior year. I graduated from high school and no, like, no application had been filed there, you know, nothing. So, he got his second civilian job in Houston. We flew down the summer before college was supposed to start. I applied to Houston. Now, here's the question, like, if you unequivocally are gonna be an entrepreneur, right? Because that was, that was in stone now, in red and leather stone, we can call it. If you're gonna be an entrepreneur, what do you study? And today, you might think of entrepreneurship, and I actually had a really cool experience about 2 weeks ago. I got to go to a mentor lunch with an entrepreneur at the University of Houston. But even today, I don't think I would go down that path. And certainly, it wasn't even an option when I was starting college. When I did the research for the book, I found out that I think there was like 1 to 4 entrepreneurship classes, not courses of study, but classes in total. And so, my thought process was, How do I get the college degree that gets me the highest salary as quickly as possible so that I could then have money to invest in this company? And so, I was always good in math. I'm always good in science, right? And so, engineering is the way to go, right? Like, ostensibly, in 4 short years, in my case, it was 6 short years. You get your engineering degree. you have a relatively high salary, and now I would have the money. Now, 2 things went wrong with that. One, I already mentioned, it took me 6 years. It did not take me 4 years. I did get a minor in math and computer science, so I could have pushed it. But the other thing is, is I ended up starting a business while I was still in college. So, the story behind that is really this molecule, and then I'll come back. So, I'm holding up a model of a molecule, and if you're listening to the podcast, Just imagine a soccer ball where the lines on the soccer ball represent the bonds between the carbon atoms. So you have a spherical molecule of 60 carbon atoms, again, in the shape of that soccer ball. This molecule was discovered in 1985, actually here in Houston at Rice University. And the 3 scientists who discovered the molecule won a Nobel Prize for its discovery in 1996. So a short 11 years from discovery to being awarded the Nobel Prize. And so this molecule, in fact, in 1991, all 10 of the 10 most referenced scientific papers, right? So there is an organization and it's much easier now with the internet. But there was an organization back then when there was no internet that's looking at every paper, scientific paper references other papers and then accumulating that information to understand which papers got the most references. All 10 of the 10 most referenced papers were related to this molecule, right? So, it was a viral discovery, viral scientific, like probably even before it means what it means now, right? Viral on social media. And so, my business partner, who I met in physics class, Robert Wong, was working on the University of Houston campus at an organization called the Texas Center for Superconductivity. And, there's a very famous professor, Professor Paul Chu. He's famous in super— I know you haven't heard of him, but he's famous in superconductivity world. And, there's a building, we used to call it Chu's Castle on the University of Houston campus because it was his fame that really created that building. So, my business partner was working for Dr. Paul Chu separating this molecule. So, when you manufacture this molecule, it comes in a collection of what are called fullerenes. There are 60 atoms in this one. The next one is 70 atoms, 74, 84. So, they all come together and then you have to isolate them down to their individual kind of molecules. Again, just to share, we call this ESS-60. And so, he's in the chromatography lab separating this, isolating this material because it has superconductivity properties. And, one day, Dr. Paul Chu came in and said, hey, Robert and Diego, who's still a good friend of ours, You're young kids. This molecule is selling for $6,000 a gram. You should go make this. And my business partner, Robert, is from an entrepreneurial background. And I kind of joke he did a back-of-the-napkin calculation, which I think looked exactly like $6,000 per gram. And then now the calculation is over and he's off and running to build the company. And I'm studying mechanical engineering. In order to manufacture this molecule, you actually have to vaporize graphite at the temperature of the sun. Graphite's one of the hardest materials on the planet to vaporize. And so, like, we have a sight glass to watch this reaction occur. If you don't have welder's goggles, you will burn out your retina. And if that light shines on your skin, you will get a sunburn. Like, this is local temperatures of the sun. So they brought me in to do drawings and help with the engineering. Technically, I was supposed to go away and it was gonna be Robert and Diego's company, but Diego had a lot more fun college stuff that he wanted to do. So, he went off and did that. And Robert and I kind of rolled up our sleeves and started delivering this material in 1991. And I'm gonna point out, this is kind of cool. That's 5 years before they won the Nobel Prize, right? So, discovered in '85, we're manufacturing and sending it to research institutions around the world in '91. They win the Nobel Prize in '95. It's— excuse me, they won it in '96, '85 to '96. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the fact we were delivering macroscopic quantities to researchers around the, around the world really gave them the understanding of how valuable this molecule is and drove some of the reason that they got the Nobel Prize. So, we've been here at the very beginning, and then it eventually became a health supplement, which they kind of knew, had some theories about some health stuff in the beginning. Certainly, at that time, it was the peak of the AIDS epidemic, and it's known that this ESS-60 molecule sits in one of the protein pockets of the AIDS virus, preventing it from replicating. So, there are patents that had been applied for. for this. So it's, you know, has some antiviral capabilities, has some antibacterial capabilities, is certainly antioxidant. We'll talk about that. Anti-inflammatory, we got to be really careful, but there are things that we can say about that. And that's, that's, that's my kind of story. Now, I can, I can clean it up a little bit. And this is in the book where I've always been kind of the go-to person in my circle of friends, right? Which is probably why Nicole and I connected really quickly, uh, of when people were looking for like advice and help and what should they do in relationships and whatever. I was the go-to person. Um, and, and I kind of did some soul searching. I think it's— it was a lot of it is driven— I just really care about people. And, and I, and I do a lot of kind of introspection, and that puts you in a unique position to really help a lot of people. My, my joy today, right? Every day I get to wake up, share all that geeky science that I shared with you, and then reap the benefit of these amazing testimonials that people are sharing with us as we get this product into more people's hands. So, I couldn't be in a happier, better place, all because of a Lamborghini, which I don't have yet. I don't have the Lamborghini yet. Well, I've changed vehicles, but like, it's, you know, it's a supercar. It's still on my radar.

I was gonna ask if you got the Lamborghini. What's the next supercar?

So, it's, uh, it doesn't even exist. Uh, it's a— so, my wife and I have Teslas. I love Teslas. Like, they're amazing vehicles. Um, and they drive, they actually drive themselves, which people like— you tell that to people and then I give them a ride and they're like, oh my God, it drives itself. And it's like, I just said that. Like, I said that before we got in the car, but it's such a profound difference from what people think it can do to what it can do. So I like the car and then his Roadster. So they started on the Roadster. They're supposed to have some new one. It's been in the works for 5 years now. It doesn't even exist yet, but that would be very nice to get that Roadster.

So that motivates you to keep going, which is good for the rest of us because you got to get that Roadster.

It will be red. Yeah.

Good. Fire engine red or like, like Jessica Rabbit red? What are we talking?

Yeah, I, I don't know. I, I guess it's Tesla Red. Like, whatever they provide.

Nice. So, when you and I were talking, you were telling me this story about how it wasn't being used for health. And, in fact, it was kind of believed that this substance could be toxic. And so, there were studies that were done to look at it. Is it appropriate for human consumption? Is it toxic for human consumption? These biohackers are calling you and asking, if I was to give it to like an elephant or something. I don't remember what you said, but kind of tell us about bridging that gap from going to— you're like Frankensteining these fullerenes into these individual separate materials, and you know, you're looking away from the face of the sun that's in your machinery. Yeah. And then we're connecting the dots to now this being something that you're spreading the word about health on. So tell me more.

Yeah, so that's a pretty long journey. You know, when people kind of, I first start talking about the molecule, people are like, what is it? What does it do? Way back in the early days, you know, I mentioned like all 10 of the most referenced papers were about this molecule or kind of sister molecules. So we, in the early days, we would joke, well, what it's really good for is funding. If you write a proposal about this molecule, you're basically guaranteed to get funding. So that was kind of initial joke. But the part of the reason they won the Nobel Prize for it is because the molecule is absolutely amazing. It performs as well or better than the current best material in almost every application. It makes better inks, better batteries, better tires, better photocells. And this is often when people are like, wait, this is— you said it was a health supplement. And I didn't wake up and look at my car and think, what component of my battery should I be consuming on a daily— well, unless you're a biohacker. Yeah. What component of my battery should I be consuming on a daily basis? And because on the exterior there's 20 of these benzene rings on the exterior of the soccer ball-shaped molecule. Now, benzene is ubiquitous in our society. We don't have modern society without it. As evidence, just imagine everything that you're looking at that's plastic gone because benzene ring— the benzene ring is the foundation of plastics. It's the foundation of a lot of medications, including aspirin, a lot of detergents. So, we don't have benzene— I mean, we don't have modern society without benzene. It's also known that if benzene is on its own, it's toxic and carcinogenic. So, you've got 20 of these benzene rings on the exterior of this ESS60 molecule. They're like, that's got to be toxic, right? That's got to be. And, it wasn't really from the health perspective. They were thinking if it's good in inks, batteries, tires, and photocells, man will be working with this in some sort of production capacity at some point. What is the toxicity level? So they threw it in a toxicity study and it was out of the University of Paris. In that study with Wistar rats, they gave one group water, which was the control group, one group olive oil, which was the semi-control group, and then one, one group olive oil with the ESS-60 molecule. And instead of being toxic, the test subjects given the ESS-60 molecule, really the MyVitalC formula, lived 90% longer than the control group. So, this is the quantum shift, if you will, for Robert and I being happy-go-lucky carbon nanomaterial scientists— it's a thing— into getting into the health space. And, it started off in mid-2000s. So, that publication came out in mid-2012. Mid-2013, we started getting phone calls from this crazy, wacky group of people called biohackers. And I can say that now because I am a biohacker. And they were like, hey, how much of this stuff should I be consuming? And what Robert and I, with our conservative nanomaterial hats, were hearing is how much of this stuff that you sell to research institutions around the world to put into ink, batteries, tires, and photocells, how much of that stuff should we consume? And Robert and I, like, we think approximately zero. We actually added not for human consumption to our labeling in mid-2013. So, think about that, from 1991 all the way to mid-2013, we don't have not for human consumption on the labeling. We add it then and we're still getting 2 to 3 phone calls a week, which was a little crazy because it sounded like this. Hey, Chris, I'm taking your product, my knee pain is gone. And, I'm going, Whatever, Bob, it says not for human consumption on the labeling. So you're talking about your rat, right? Your rat no longer has knee pain. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, if my rat weighs 275 pounds and does HIIT training on Tuesdays and Thursdays, how much should my rat be taking? So we kind of know what's going on. And by the way, when we added not for human consumption to the labeling, the literature was clear. This molecule is safe. We were just being ultra-conservative carbon nanomaterial scientists, right? So, we're kind of okay with these calls, but we're also, again, just super conservative. So, my business partner, Robert, and I were getting together every quarter to look at, do we want to get into the supplement industry? You guys are in the space. It's generous to say that the supplement industry is challenged. That's a little bit challenged. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, we'll go with challenge because we want to— don't want to get brutal. Um, and, and in fact, in this time period, I found a peer-reviewed published research paper that showed that 50% of the supplements on the market that they had tested, just purchased off the market, didn't have in them what they said they had in them, right? So this is, this is not the industry that we're interested in getting into. And so quarter after quarter, In the conference room right here, my business partner and I are like, "No, we don't want to get into the supplement space. It's a challenge space. You know, we deliver exacting materials to research institutions around the world where they you know take it, take what we ship them, and they put them in an HPLC and confirm that that we shipped them what we promised. And that is not the supplement industry." And then finally, at the latter part of two thousand seventeen, a guy with a big YouTube following started sharing all the benefits he was getting taking it on a daily basis, and our phone went. from ringing 2 to 3 times a week to 10 times a day. So now, you know, one thing, I'm not going to lie, that Lamborghini flashed in front of me, right? Like, we're getting 10 calls a day. It's like, this is, this is a path to it. And so, at that quarterly meeting, we're like, do we want to get into this industry? And, and I actually brought up that research paper where 50% of the supplements don't have in them what they say they have in them. And I'm like, that's going to happen in this industry. And, we're uniquely positioned to deliver a high-quality product. We're the company that's been working with this molecule the longest. We've got the HPLC, we've got the technical acumen, we've been delivering exacting quantities to people. So, we asked our— we kind of wrapped up with 2 questions. And, the first one is a moral question, are we comfortable selling this product? I take it, my wife takes it, everybody on our team takes it. By the way, it's not a requirement to work here. You don't have to take the product.

Voluntary.

Yep. As they're walking in, like, clock in and take your, take your shot. Like, that's it. That's how it goes. But, they, they have access to the science and they see the testimonials. And so, yeah, everyone here takes it. And then, the other one is really the legal side of things, the FTC and the FDA. You gotta, you know, dot the T's, cross the I's. So, we're doing that. And so, we really started bringing this to market in 2018. And, I'll just share, Our most consistent testimonial is people take it in the morning, they report mental focus and energy during the day, and then better sleep that night.

That's incredible.

And I saw on your website that some— so that there are versions of ESS-60 that when they're not processed properly, they can be harmful.

Yeah. And, and what that is, is really C60 or carbon-60, right? There's 60 atoms in this. We think of that as for industrial applications. And yeah, there's peer-reviewed published research that if you improperly process it, it's harmful, where ESS-60 is that industrial molecule that's been processed for people and pets.

Okay. And then you said, and I also saw on your website that you use olive oil together with the molecule, and what's the reason for that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it should not surprise you that this carbon molecule, if you had a pile of it in your hand, it actually would be crystalline, kind of like how sugar and salt— sand, not sand, salt— sugar and salt would be crystalline. I guess sand might be also, but it would be crystalline. If it's ESS-60, again, kind of safe for people and pets, you can consume it, but it's not water soluble, right? So it's— the bioavailability is extremely limited. You would just excrete most of it out. Mm-hmm. By dissolving it in olive oil, you actually get down to the point where individual ESS-60 molecules are floating around in the olive oil. So, compared to a crystalline surface area kind of bioavailability situation, it's basically infinitely more available. And, that's why it's dissolved in olive oil. Now, here's a fun thing, right? Because I'm holding up this big molecule, you're thinking about a soccer ball, but one drop of our olive oil product. We sell it in a couple other oils. We'll probably talk about that at some point, but the highest concentration is in olive oil. One drop of our olive oil product has more than 400 times as many of these molecules as you have cells in your body. 400 times as many of these molecules as cells in your body. So, it's a super small molecule. And, a typical serving is about 1 teaspoon.

So, let's talk about how we think it works. And this gets into New Orleans, right?

Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have a biology analogy of New Orleans. If you'll indulge me, I want to talk about kind of my progression in understanding how this might work, right?

Yes.

The study— we decide to bring this to market. My goal is like, let's figure out a bunch of stuff about the science. First, is a 90% extension of life a big deal? Not surprisingly, it is a big deal. Like, the next best way to live longer is calorie restriction. If you reduce your calories by 30%, you can extend your life by 30%. I call that the starve yourself 1/3 to death diet. Uh, nobody— when I stand out with a clipboard, nobody wants to sign up for the starve yourself 1/3 to death diet, even if you give a sweater, because they're going to be cold. Um, because they're not getting enough calories. Uh, they just need better marketing. But that's a, that's a 30% extension of life. This is talking about a 90%. Of course, it's in Wistar rats, but a 90%, and, and they're just consuming, in our case, a standard is 1 teaspoon of olive oil with the ESS-60 molecule. So yes, it's a big deal. Next, how does the medical community tend to think about longevity? They don't all agree, but they tend to say that it's an oxidation and an inflammation process, right? We even have a word called inflammaging. So I'm in Texas, so I like to put big old checkmarks on things. So in terms of antioxidants, there's an ad hoc study out on the web showing us to be 172 times more powerful than vitamin C. There's peer-reviewed published research that shows us to be 125 times more powerful than vitamin C. So, that's a big old checkmark. In terms of anti-inflammatory, you have to be really careful with the FDA. And, I think the FDA is— this is the right decision, but you do have to be careful because the FDA equates conversations of inflammation with the diseases of inflammation, which are also the diseases of aging. So, that's arthritis, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, cancers. So, if I say, hey, we help solve chronic inflammation, the FDA hears me claiming we cure cancer and Alzheimer's and arthritis, which we are not doing. We are not making that claim. There's so much research that would need to go into that. And by the way, I might as well throw out, because we'll get into some anecdotes and testimonials, that the FDA has not evaluated our product. It is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease. What the FDA does allow us to say is we address inflammation, at least as it's related to exercise-induced inflammation. So, we've all had that tough workout or maybe just walked longer than we normally do, farther than we normally do, and felt that inflammation in our body. We can absolutely say that our product addresses that kind of acute inflammation. And, I'll come back to inflammation because there are some really amazing things related to hs-CRP, and we've already talked about that kind of offline. So, we'll come back to that. But inflammation, we'll put, we'll put a, you know, a good-sized checkmark on that because the FDA restricts what we can say about it. And that kind of leads me to the next theory. And I'm going to get a little geeky and then we're going to have fun with Mardi Gras. So, the current theory is called the BOSS theory, Buffering Oxidative Stress System. So, we know from peer-reviewed published research that this ESS-60 molecule Gets into the mitochondria. We also know from way back in the '90s when this was discovered that it can hold up to 6 negatively charged particles on the exterior of the cage and how that kind of manifests into this BOSS theory. So, we'll roll back, we'll do an ever-so-brief— the mitochondria is the powerhouse of every cell. There's between 50 and 5,000 mitochondria in every cell in your body except for blood cells, which have zero. And brain and neurons, which have 2 million, right? That's how much energy our nervous system— that's what you guys are dealing with all the time. That's how much energy our nervous system uses relative to our other systems. A mitochondria, just like every power source, has a negative byproduct, right? You think about your car going down the road has exhaust. You think about a power plant has a smokestack. In the case of mitochondria, it's reactive oxygen species. And the way I like to describe reactive oxygen species, they're little bumper cars running around inside your body if they're not managed properly, and they're rusting everything they slam into. They're causing oxidative stress and oxidative damage. Internal to the mitochondria, you actually have 2 key antioxidants, glutathione and melatonin. And I like to pause here for just a second because melatonin, the sleep hormone, One of our most consistent testimonials is better sleep, so we have some nice parallels there. So the melatonin and the glutathione manage those reactive oxygen species so that they don't do any damage in an unstressed mitochondria. But what happens when you stress a mitochondria, right? First off, how do you stress a mitochondria? You can have a tough workout. That long walk would have done it. You can be in an airplane and have exposure to EMF. You can have a tough email, right? You can have a tough conversation with a loved one, and that, that can stress you and, and stress out your mitochondria. That's when normally those reactive oxygen species would run around and do damage. And that's where we believe the ESS-60 molecule, which again, we know from peer-reviewed published research is in the mitochondria, we believe it holds on to those reactive oxygen species so that they can't do any damage. And then when that mitochondria gets back to homeostasis and replenishes the glutathione and melatonin, then it can manage those reactive oxygen species appropriately. And so here's my, my fun analogy. And honestly, I think all biological analogies should start with Mardi Gras. I mean, a lot

of

happens at Mardi Gras. Like, that's, that's a thing. So it's the end of Mardi Gras and you have these drunk reactive oxygen species running around on Bourbon Street. slamming into things, causing oxidative, you know, painting cars, smashing windows. And the New Orleans Police Department, the glutathione and the melatonin come in and handcuff themselves to those reactive oxygen species and get them off of Bourbon Street. But what does the New Orleans Police Department do when they're stressed or overwhelmed? They take those reactive oxygen species and they put them in a paddy wagon. They attach them to the exterior of this ESS-60 molecule so they can't run around and do the damage. And then, when they can replenish the glutathione and melatonin, they can handcuff themselves to those reactive oxygen species and get them off of Bourbon Street. And, that's why we say that the ESS60 molecule is the boss, a buffering oxidative stress system. I've got one more analogy, but I'll open it to you guys because I've been talking for a while.

I'm curious if, and I think maybe you answered this in an email for me, but I imagine other people may wonder is So, because it has negative charged particles, it's able to bind the reactive oxygen species. And so then, are the reactive oxygen species that are bound to this carbon molecule, are they then able to continue binding the glutathione and the melatonin?

Yeah, that is our belief. That's what is— the theory is this doesn't replace glutathione or melatonin, that it just acts as that paddy wagon and holds on to them until that melatonin and glutathione can get to homeostasis. I think I've got— so my next analogy, which is not nearly as fun and doesn't start with Mardi Gras, but is, you know, the reality is stress is good. If we don't have stress, we will just wither away and die. And a great example of that is if you think about astronauts in space, they don't even have to go up there for very long. But when they come back, they're dumpster fires, right? Their bone density is reduced. Their immune system is compromised. That's because they don't have the stress of gravity. Um, so I like to picture kind of our physiology as a, as a beautiful prairie, like a field with prairie flowers and grasses. And the stress, the gentle rain is the right amount of stress to keep that in homeostasis, right? To keep that optimized, right? So you, that stress, you gotta keep working out. You do have to do those things like, you know, exercise your brain, all that good stuff. But what happens if you have one dark ominous cloud in the middle of the prairie? pouring a stream like a waterfall onto the prairie, it's going to do damage to the middle, right? It's going to impinge on that soil. You're going to start making a hole, a mud pit. And, that's where we think the ESS-60 molecule comes in acting. I kind of like to picture it like a sponge where it's holding that stream of water so that it doesn't impinge on the prairie. Now, there's an important thing to note here. If you don't manage the stress, Eventually, the sponge will fill up and it'll start pouring onto the prairie again and continuing to do that damage. So, this is great for those spikes in stress, for managing them. Again, the buffering. And then, when you manage that cloud, you can then just kind of gently squeeze that sponge across the prairie, and now you've gotten through the stress without the negative impact of the stress. So, the way I like to describe it is We're reducing the negative impact of stressed mitochondria. And, if you reduce the negative impact of stressed mitochondria, you should have head-to-toe testimonials. And, in fact, we actually have head-to-toe testimonials.

Okay. So, the reactive oxygen species, once the stress has gone, those do get released back into the cell?

Well, we believe that. So now, They're— because it's less stressed, the resident glutathione and melatonin don't have to manage it anymore. So then they come in and they take them off of that ESS60 molecule, right? So we don't— we think it less of the ESS60 molecule releasing them and more of they're getting removed off of the exterior of the, of the cage.

Got it. Okay. Okay. And then, and then the danger is gone, so they're not— yeah. Okay.

I mean, as an example, right, to kind of maybe further cement with a testimonial, we have a guy, his name is Anthony Kunkel. He's a 2-time U.S. ultra running champion. So, he won a championship at 50 miles and at 50K, which is 62 miles. And, my conversation, my first conversation with him was kind of fantastic because he's like, hey, Chris, I was taking 1 serving of your product. I didn't really notice anything. I joke, Like a good biohacker, he tripled the servings. By the way, don't triple everything. There are things that if you're trying, don't triple it. Rapamycin is the first thing that always comes to mind for me. Be, you know, be kind. But in his case, he tripled it and he said, I was like, wow, when I started taking triple servings. I believe that your product could be the difference between somebody having running as a hobby and running as a career. That was the impact that it had. And the way he went to describe it, he said, On, on— I don't actually believe your product speeds recovery. I believe it prevents damage in the first place. And the reason he said that is he, he said on the last 5 miles of a 50-mile run, which is a phrase I've only heard from one person, and that's Anthony, and I imagine I'll never hear that phrase again— on the last 5 miles of a 50-mile run where strength and stability used to be a problem, they're no longer a problem. And if you think about, you know, Anthony's dark ominous cloud while he's training and running 30 miles in a day, like he doesn't do that every day, but from time to time, like that's a big dark stress like dumping down. And if you can just make sure the prairie isn't getting damaged, I remember he sent me on Instagram, we're good friends now, and he sent me a note saying, hey, I did 30 miles today. When I went to bed, I was wrecked, right? Just— but, but, and it's not sore wrecked, it's wrecked like, I'm, you know, all— I've given all I have to it. Um, woke up in the middle of the night to pee, I felt less wrecked but still wrecked. And by the time he got in the— up in the morning, he was ready to train. So it really fits that model of we're reducing the negative impact of stressed mitochondria.

It's brilliant.

I love it. I'm, I'm so curious, so So, although we love the ultra runners, most of our audience is not ultra runners. Correct. What's the application for this for people who are experiencing lots of stress, maybe insomnia? You mentioned sleep. Just your average person who's maybe who's not a biohacker or doesn't consider themselves one, although We know that.

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so I, I tend to lean back on what is our most consistent testimonial, right? And, and there's some fascinating stuff here. So one is you take it in the morning, you got mental focus and energy during the day. By the way, it's not coffee energy, right? It's not jittery energy. It's just people like, I, I, it's— and, and it can be subtle. Some people are like, I don't even really notice. I'll, I'll tell a testimony. Well, throw that in right now. So, there was a girl in the office next to ours. I dropped off a couple of bottles to her. I went back like 10 days later and I was like, hey, have you noticed anything? And, she, you know, kind of people do this. She's kind of depressed that she didn't notice anything, right? Like, I didn't really notice anything with your product. And, I don't— like, I didn't make this product to do this. Everything is a data point for me. So, I don't— like, I don't— there's nothing personal in that. And, But I said, so, how's your sleep? And her eyes got like Bambi big. And she's like, oh, yeah, I've been waking up at 5:30 every morning. She's former military, so that's the appropriate time for her, not me. Not me. But the appropriate time for her. And so, if you just suddenly start waking up when you're supposed to, or if you're positively impacting sleep, I mean, we all, other than Bryan Johnson, we all get one more hour of sleep or one less hour of sleep kind of each day throughout the week or whatever. And so, if all of a sudden you're getting one less but you're not as tired and you're taking this thing in the morning. So, we get a lot of people who don't really— so, they'll get a couple of months in, they're like, yeah, I'm not sure I really noticed anything, just kind of like the girl in the office next door. And then, you start asking questions or then they go off the product and they notice. Now, one thing I want to point out because I imagine you guys are familiar, if you haven't read Matthew— Dr. Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Oh my God. So my description of this book is it's the scariest book about sleep you will ever read. I call it the Freddy Krueger of sleep books. Remember Freddy Krueger? But Freddy Krueger would scare you out of your dreams and then go with you. Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen it, then, you know, too late. In this case, it will scare you to sleep. Like, the negative things that happen to us physiologically— so mental makes sense, we're groggy, we're maybe a little irritable, whatever, we're like, we're all kind of— but every year we do a multi-billion person, uh, experiment, actually twice a year with sleep. And you're like, multi— you can't do a billion person study. You can if you've done something like daylight savings time. Like, that is a multi-billion person uh, study, and heart attacks on the, on the, on the part of the year where we lose 1 hour of sleep, heart attacks go up by like 21%. Hmm. And when we gain that hour of sleep, heart attacks go down by 21%. So we don't often think that sleep has this dramatic and direct physiological impact. And one thing that he made a point of, which is, which is I think really important, Most of the quote-unquote sleep aids that are out there, you take at night, right? You take right before you go to sleep. Ambien is the one that I think, the prescription medicines. And he's like, these are not good. What they do is they actually— so there's a chemical, it's actually the A in ATP, the energy source that mitochondria create or produce. That A is adenosine. And adenosine builds up in your body throughout the day, and that actually causes you to desire sleep. It's one of the things you actually want your adenosine adenosine to be in line with your circadian rhythm, really powerful. And, what these sleep, quote-unquote, sleep aids do is they relax the chemical pressure of adenosine. So, if you wake up one day and you don't have the desire for sleep because it's relaxed that chemical pressure and the previous, I don't know, month you wake up and you just want sleep, then it would feel amazing, right? Because you're, oh my God, I must have got a good night's sleep. Dr. Matthew Walker points out, it's not letting you— it's a depressant, and it's not letting you get the REM and the NREM, the healing and restorative sleep that you need. I wish I had gotten my father off of them before he passed. You know, that's not the specific thing that caused it, but it certainly would've had benefits. And I bring that up because of the direct contrast of those you take right before you sleep. Ours you take in the morning and positively impact sleep. So something more— this is kind of further support of this BOSS theory— something more found foundational is happening to positively impact your sleep. In fact, I, I may have asked you this before, what, what can you take in the morning to positively impact sleep? Somebody once mentioned to me ashwagandha, but then I've mentioned to other people like, no, no, you got to take that at night, right? You take it in the morning and at night and it does different purposes, right? Ours you take in the morning. And certainly if you exercise in the morning, right, that'll positively impact sleep. If you get exposure to the sun, get that circadian rhythm in line with the rising and falling of the sun, that'll help your sleep. Um, but to take something in the morning and positively impact your sleep is, is very different. And it also makes it a tougher kind of marketing thing, because when I tell people, hey, this helps you focus and energy and sleep, you're like, again, you know, it's got oil in it, it's probably snake oil. And that's just not what our testimonials are saying.

So do we think that, that the reason for this is because it blocks that like damage and inflammation and stuff throughout the day. So then your sleep is able to do more healing.

Yep.

At night.

That is, that is the focus. That, I mean, that is the kind of current theory. Um, I, I picture it, and, and this may have some flaws in it, but I kind of picture it as there's a sleep checklist, right? And one of 'em is probably clean out your mitochondria. And if that's already done, then you can move on to the next task.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I'm not sure that's a fair description of sleep, but that's just how I picture it.

So, with respect to that, do people need to take more and more and more? So, if their mitochondria are just a super hot mess, that dark cloud has been just destroying their beautiful prairie, they take that, it's like, oh, now my body is doing so much better. Will they develop a tolerance?

Yeah. So, that's a great question. I think the answer is no. We don't really have anybody who's coming and saying, I've been taking it consistently from 2018 and I don't need more. When I have busy days, if I'm doing back-to-back, you guys know how tiring podcasts can be. You guys make it look amazing and easy, but it's a lot of work, right? And, you're using all your brainpower. I actually probably need to look up this number, but the calories burned by chess players They're not moving around. I don't know if you've watched a chess player, right? They're just using their brain. So, so I noticed that when I'm busier, I'll take more, and, and that seems to help me with that focus and energy. But it is not— I'm still taking basically— and I'll share my routine. By the way, in 2018, when we started bringing this to market and I really started taking it on a more regular basis, I could get to the afternoon and realize that I wanted a nap or I needed a second cup of coffee or something, and I could always look back in the morning and realize I hadn't taken it. It wasn't part of my routine yet. It's so important. I've got a protocol from an amazing functional medical practitioner, and I'm probably 2 months in, and I'm just now starting to follow the protocol. It's just hard to get these things incorporated into your life. My routine, so we do have 3 oils, right? We've got olive oil, avocado oil, and MCT oil. I'll talk to you about the benefits and kind of drawbacks of those. But, I do kind of a Bulletproof Coffee thing. I get rid of the ghee. I don't want all those calories. I actually don't like the flavor of the ghee in my coffee that much. So, I do about a teaspoon and a half of our MCT product in my coffee. And, that's oil and water. So, while that's mixing, I'm taking about a teaspoon and a half of our olive oil product. And, like I said, on busy days, I'll take more. We're just coming off of Dave Asprey's biohacking conference. So, we have a booth there. These are literally 17-hour days, like 8 o'clock in the morning at the booth, and then we're usually networking. I don't drink as much as this sounds, but we're in the bar until 1:00 or 1:30 kind of networking and having a drink, but not You know, lots of drinks. Not anymore anyway.

You're not bourboning it. Yeah.

So, on those days, you know, I'm doing shot after shot. And so, I'll have up to 10 shots in a day. I'm not particularly trying to address like how tired I am. I just know that one is probably not enough on those days.

So, on days where— so, I take it in the morning and then some days I'm like pretty good, but then other days I'm just dragging. And so, doing a boost Might be helpful.

Yes. Yeah, I would add that.

Okay, so you can do it later in the day too.

Yes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add one caveat to this. I can do it anytime. I mean, we have about 3 to 5% of our customers who will say if they take it too late in the day, it'll keep them up. And I think there's a couple things going on here. We're, at least the 3 of us who are actually in the middle of this, are probably the type who, when we go to bed, our brain's racing about what I could have done today, what I didn't do today, what I can do tomorrow. Like, it's racing, but we've just kind of trained ourselves to put our head on the pillow and eventually fall asleep. That's, I think, even more true when you're taking this product, right? Your brain, that focus and energy is active. So, I think what's happening with these people is they're just not as good at saying, okay, yes, my brain is active, But try and go to sleep. When your head hits the pillow, you go to sleep. So, we tend to say take it in the morning. I can take it anytime, but I'm also not a normal case per se. I can have a cup of coffee before I go to sleep. And I know I have an Oura Ring, it's not good, and my sleep is not great, quality of sleep is not great, but I don't have any problem falling asleep. So, I'm kind of not a good example there. I can tell you this, if you're tired, Or if you're even going to have one drink, you can take an extra shot. We actually have kind of one marketing box that says party recovery because people have given us amazing testimonials about, you know, overimbibing and not being in the pain that they were expecting.

So what I'm thinking about is phosphatidylserine because one of the ways that it works is to reduce cortisol stress hormone. And oftentimes when we're a little bit less stressed, there's a little bit less inflammatory issues. And so some people, they get sleepy, other people it makes their brains go, and so they have to take it in the morning. So I'm wondering just about the process of detoxification that may be happening and, um, what levels of inflammation are doing and how they're responding to that. I'm thinking about histamine too, because histamine can cause insomnia, it can cause— Anxiety and adrenaline. So there might be a really neat way to combine this with other things to push towards the benefit that you want. Like, it might be cool to do a clinical trial down the road of if I combined ESS-60 at night with ashwagandha, what would that look like? Or ESS-60 with melatonin at night, because then you're giving it the buckyball plus you're giving it the antioxidant. So I love that.

No, I There's a lot of stuff. And, you kind of brought up a clinical trial. We're excited. You know, one of the things that I would critique a lot of supplement companies for is that they don't continue to do research. Yeah. And, they even more specifically don't publish the research. We actually did just publish a paper in May of last year. I'm kind of proud because it was with the lead researcher in the original study where the rats lived 90% longer. His name is Dr. Fathi Moussa. So, we're in contact with him. We actually just got notification of the second publication with him that's going live. We've got another study that's done. We just spent a whopping $150,000 on another study that will also get published. So, we're doing what a lot of supplement companies don't do, which is continuing to do the research and then continuing to publish, which we're really excited about. One of the things that we have undergoing is currently an ad hoc hs-CRP study. So hs-CRP is high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. It's a really great way to understand your, your current inflammation state, like how inflamed are you. They tend to use hs-CRP to address cardiovascular health, and it's also an indicator of cancer, and I'll talk about that in a second. So why we're driving this forward is we had a Dr. Lane Young came to us at the A4M Longevity Fest. So, A4M is American Academy of Anti-Aging. And, I had had a conversation with him at Dave Asprey's previous biohacking conference. And, he came up to me and he said this, and then I was like, you got to say this again while I record you. So, I actually have a recording of this because you'll hear how profound it is. He said, Chris, I don't care if you're male, female, pre-surgery, post-surgery, cardiovascular disease, If anybody has elevated hs-CRP, your product will bring it into normal ranges in 4 to 8 weeks. And then, he went on to say that in terms of HRV, so heart rate variability and sleep, they're seeing improvements of 20% to 60%. And, the particular case that he shared with me, he had a client whose hs-CRP was at 9 and he wasn't able to move it with his protocols. Again, 4 to 8 weeks on our product got it to 0.9. Wow. I had a conversation with an oncologist after that kind of experience, and they're like, oh, 9? 9 for us means you have cancer until we prove otherwise. Right? So, this is a very serious case that needs to be addressed and bringing it into normal ranges. So, we're in the middle of first an ad hoc study. And, Dr. Kane, I think you already have somebody who's in it. So, that's super exciting. Um, and once that's done, we're going to be throwing that into a peer-reviewed published, uh, research paper on, you know, double-blind placebo control, all the fun stuff, uh, for hs-CRP, uh, management with, with the ESS-60 molecule. And I'm going to share right now because this, I think this is very relevant. At the— at— this is kind of cool— at the Health Optimization Summit, the booth next to me was— is actually a former Apple employee, an engineer. And not employee, engineer, because that's Different, I think. He was an actual engineer and he looked like an engineer. You're like, you're an Apple engineer, aren't you? And he's like, yes. So, he built a device that looks at ESR. So, that's erythrocyte sedimentation rate. And, what that is is if you take a drop of blood and put it in a capillary tube and you put it, expose it to gravity, so you put it vertically to expose it to gravity, the rate at which the red blood cells separate from the plasma is an indication of your, in your inflammatory status. So,

that's incredible.

By the way, I was the best salesperson for him the whole time because the device is $300 and the test, the little capillary things, are $10 a pop. So, imagine kind of having an understanding of your inflammatory status for $10 in 30 minutes. Like, this is pretty spectacular. So, I was— everybody who came to our booth was like, and you need to visit this guy, he's amazing. So, he gave me a free test. And, a part of his result was kind of a biological piece. And, that test had my biological age at 25+ years younger than my chronological age. The next one is GlycanAge. I don't know if you guys are familiar with GlycanAge. It's looking at glycans and how they attach to particular molecules in your blood. And, as with so many things, there's a very specific direction as you age. It's a really good indication of inflammatory status, again. So, when I took that test, it had me at 30, I think it was 34 years younger than my biological age. So, it had me at age 21, which I'm excited about. I don't know if I want to be younger. Can you still drink if you're biological? I don't know.

Absolutely.

Of course. Absolutely. And then, the final one I have, I don't— the results I'm not that happy with, but I am happy with the direction. So, this was My DN Age. I took it when I was 51. It actually had me at 59. I was a little sad. I was like, I'm doing a lot of stuff. I'm doing, you know, not all the things, but a whole lot of the things. And then, I took it 3 years later. So, when I was 54, it had me at 58. So, in the course of 3 years, I had regressed 1 year. Wow. biologically. Um, so, you know, I don't like the— that it's a higher number, but it is moving in the right direction. So, um, that kind of is just to share my, you know, absolutely N-of-1 kind of anecdote and where I sit.

Oh my goodness, I feel like I could talk to you for hours, and this is just so exciting. I've taken 2 pages of notes even after talking with you already. And so every time I talk to you, I learn something new. And so, before we wrap up here, can you tell our listeners how they can learn more about you and connect with you?

Absolutely. So, I would love to make a URL for your audience that they could go to. Do you have a preferred ending?

Usually, we use D.R. Cain and then whatever that would be.

So, myvitalc.com/drkain, is that what you want or would you like— Yeah. Okay, perfect.

That would be great. Yeah.

Okay, so go to myvitalc, C as in carbon, .com/drkane. And on that page you will find our 3 oils, right? We've got olive oil, avocado oil, and MCT oil. People ask, which one should I take? And we actually always recommend the olive oil for 2 reasons. The first is we're a science-based organization and most of the research is on olive oil with the ESS-60 molecule. And the second is you actually get a higher concentration of the ESS-60 molecule in olive oil, right? So, you get about 0.8 milligrams per milliliter in olive oil, 0.6 in avocado oil, and 0.3 in MCT oil. So, that's kind of— Yeah. Why we say olive oil. I also share you get a 25% discount if you go on subscription. You can— don't worry, you can cancel it at any time. Also, our customer service team has like 1,000 5-star reviews on Google. They're not trained to talk you out of canceling your subscription. They are there to help you and they do an amazing job. But even if you just want to try the product once, go ahead and take advantage of that discount. Most people actually stay on, but please take advantage of that discount. A lot of the story, all of the story— no, not all of it, because there's new stuff. A lot of the story is in my book, Live Longer and Better. The byline is your journey to living longer and better has never been more achievable than today. It's available on Amazon for $20. You can find it on our website. So, it's not on— oh, I didn't mention, there's a coupon code on the URL that we just gave. So, myvitac.com/DrCain, there's a $15 off your initial order coupon code on that page. Go there, grab the coupon code if you just want the book. Go to the menu structure, find the book. I'm doing a charity piece that I'm really proud of. So, on our website, the book is also $20, For 10 extra dollars, I'll sign the book for you, and 100% of that signature fee goes to Operation Underground Railroad. I don't know if you remember the movie The Sound of Freedom, an amazing movie about a horrific subject— childhood sex trafficking. I happened to see him speak the week that that movie came out. It was very moving talk. It was a very moving movie. And so 100% of the signature fees go to Operation Underground Railroad.

That's incredible. I love that. I believe in it, and I love your book. I'm gonna go get another copy because I think that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Chris, for being here. This has been one of my favorite conversations we've had on this podcast. Everybody go get his book. I definitely love and endorse the product, but of course, talk with your doctors first to make sure that it's okay and safe for you. And we'll include all of the links in the show notes. So thank you so much. We appreciate you. Thank you.

Dr. Kane, thank you so much for having me. Great questions. Uh, it was, it was a great time.

Oh, so good.