Living Better and Longer; New Longevity Summit: 79

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I am back today with somebody that I just thoroughly enjoy, Chris Furge. He was on episode, I think it was 45. I looked it up and I didn't retain it for some reason. Um, but anyway, he's here again with us today and, um, my gosh, we've been talking about all things geek prior to this and he has such a great new geeky project that I can't wait to share with you. So Chris, before we get started with all the wonderful new stuff you've got going on, I thought it would be great to just, um, briefly give your background. Obviously, I've read your bio, but, um, touch on the— this element that you described that is so awesome for longevity and great for mitochondrial health that we discussed in the first podcast. Maybe just like a little recap for people. Definitely go back and listen to the whole episode, but that way they'll kind of get where you're coming from and then why you are now doing the cool summit that you're doing. So anyway, that was a very long introduction, but thanks for being here.

Yeah, no, I, I like it. Cheryl, thank you so much for having me back. I'm I'm excited. In some regard, it's not surprising, not because of me, but because of the stuff that has been accomplished, which in a real way doesn't feel like it's because of me. It is, but you know how you just, you wake up on, I'll describe it this way, right? So let's go back. We'll talk about the molecule, right? And I'm holding up a molecule or a model of a molecule, obviously. And if you're listening, just imagine a soccer ball where the lines on the soccer ball represent the bonds between the carbon atoms. So it's a spherical molecule of 60 carbon atoms. I've been manufacturing that. It's a carbon nanomaterial. I've been a happy-go-lucky carbon nanomaterial scientist since 1991. That molecule was actually discovered in '85. The scientists who discovered it won the Nobel Prize for that discovery in '96. So a short 11 years from discovery to being awarded the Nobel Prize. Uh, the material's amazing in all sorts of industrial applications. And if you had asked me, let's just say, well, like even back in 2016, hey, Chris, you're going to be in the longevity space with a health supplement. I would have said, Cheryl, you're crazy. Like, there's no— in my mind, there's no route from me, for me, from here, carbon nanomaterial scientist, to there. And really what kind of changed that, and actually the publication had already happened. My business partner and I just weren't interested in getting into the supplement market. When you think about delivering commercial quantities of a soccer ball-shaped carbon nanomaterial, right, that sounds really complex and really sexy. Well, maybe not. Maybe that's not the right word. Maybe that's just me. It's like geeky. We'll just go with geeky, right? And then, you're selling them to these research institutions and they have the equipment to make sure that what you're selling them is what you're selling them or what you're claiming to sell them is what you're selling, all this stuff. And then you think about the supplement market and nobody tests anything. They take everybody's word for it. And when we first got in the industry, there were some challenges in the industry which were not surprising, which were why we tried not to get into the supplement industry to begin with. So, again, if you were back in 2016, said, hey, you're going to be in the longevity space, you're going to have a longevity supplement, No way that's going to happen. And then really at the latter part of 2017, we did have this product on the market and it wasn't for human consumption. It was not intended for human consumption. But one guy got on with a big YouTube following, started talking about all the benefits he was getting taking this molecule. By the way, we call it ESS 60, taking this molecule on a daily basis, all the benefits he was getting. And then our phone went from ringing like 2 times a week with people giving us amazing testimonials about this thing they weren't even supposed to be consuming, uh, to 10 times a day. We're getting 10 phone calls a day. And so, you know, my business partner and I were, we're happy-go-lucky carbon nanomaterial scientists and we're like, what do we do with this? Right? We've tried not to get into the health supplement market. Uh, we, we, we have a lab. We can do this better than anybody else. It's actually our material was used in the original study where the test subjects lived 90% longer than the control group. So, we're like the foundation of this industry. And that was kind of the beginning of 2018, we really started getting into the supplement market with our MyVitalC, which is ESS60 dissolved in olive oil. So, that's kind of beginning of 2018. And one of my first tasks, right, Robert ends up doing— that's my business partner for 34 years now, 33 years. It's the longest relationship I've ever had, actually. And we get along. We don't fight each other. We get along and then we just get back to work, right? Like, it's just like, great. I disagree with you. You disagree with me. It actually probably doesn't really matter. We're both moving in the same direction. And so it's been a really great business relationship. And so, so we're, we're finally get focused on the supplements. He takes care of operations and I'm kind of responsible for marketing. Chris, you're the marketing guy. Okay, I'll be the marketing guy. And the first thing is like, well, a 90% extension of life is, by the way, all of this is in my book, Live Longer and Better. And, and I'll talk a little bit about why I ended up publishing a book here in a second. But all these details are in here. It's a great book. It's got great lessons. I think it's got great business lessons. And it's an exciting journey about a Nobel Prize-winning molecule. So I'm responsible for marketing. The first thing is like, okay, a 90% extension of life. Like you intuitively know that's a lot, right? Like we just know that's a lot because you don't hear people talking about things that double the lifespan of living things, right? You just don't hear that. But, but how big is it? Like, is it actually big? And how big is it? So I'm, I'm starting to dig into that. By the way, the next best way to live longer is calorie restriction. If you reduce your calorie consumption by 30%, you're— it's well documented that you can extend your life by 30%. And, and I probably said this on the last show, I call that the starve yourself one-third to death diet. Nobody really signs up for the starve yourself one-third to death diet. They, they need a marketing guy better than me, obviously, because that's, that's what I would have called it. Um, and so it turns out it's a great, right? It's a, it's a great extension of life. And then I'm like, well, what are other things like what are other protocols, what are things you can do? What are these biohackers, these wacky biohackers? There's the ones who, when we weren't really selling it for human consumption, who were calling us and giving us testimonials about, you know, improved— I call it head-to-toe testimonials— improved hair growth, better, you know, fixing the nails. The one I like is, uh, one of, one of our contacts actually had a crab bite his big toe when he was 5 years old and split his big toenail. And from 5 to 65, that toenail was split. After we started our product, that toenail is no longer split. It actually grew together, right? So literally from head to toe, we've got these testimonials and, and they're, they're pretty, pretty amazing. And, and it's driven by these wacky biohackers. And I can say wacky because I am one now. And so I'm doing wacky biohacking thing. I'm doing. Cold plunges and red light sauna and intermittent fasting and all of this stuff. And so, it's been an incredible journey and I've been educating myself about this longevity. And I've always felt if you're going to educate yourself about longevity, one of the best ways to cement knowledge in your head is to share it, is to teach. And one is it's great to teach. It makes you feel really good. Other people are learning. And then two, you're cementing that information into your head. So that was, that was kind of the genesis of why I thought I wanted to write a book. And then that's a, that's kind of a different story altogether.

So Chris, you said the book was mostly about the molecule. Yes. My question was going to be, did you say that again? My question was going to be about the book. So you said it was kind of about the molecule, but did you include any of this kind of your personal journey that you've started going into with the longevity-based on, you know, what you learned from this molecule and the people that initially tested it on themselves? Absolutely.

So we were fortunate. I mean, the molecule was discovered— yeah, yeah, we, we're fortunate. We were just— the, the molecule was discovered here in Houston. That's where we're based. That's where our lab is based. And we had the opportunity to go visit Dr. Smalley's office, um, and, and, and kind of have conversations with his grad students and really kind of incorporate their concepts into our first production equipment way back in 1991. That's the first time we delivered commercial quantities of carbon nanomaterials was back in 1991. So yeah, I talk about that story. I talk about having conversations with his grad students. I talk about going to symposiums, right? Well, first off, so you're a young college kid, right? And you've got access to this crazy molecule. By the way, the reason we got into the business is my business partner Robert's idea is that at the time the molecule was selling for $6,000 a gram, right? So think in terms of, you know, a packet of sugar just to give kind of a reference point, $6,000 for that, right? So yes, this is something that we should be doing. But if you think about it today, right, if I had some molecule that had some study There's no, it's a no-brainer. You make a website and maybe, maybe you start doing social media because it's super sciencey and geeky and you don't expect, certainly you're doing LinkedIn and you have all these kinds of marketing strategies that come to mind. But back then there was no internet, like there was none. And so we actually had to use, there was a book, we bought it, Guerrilla Marketing Tactics, and, you know, cold calling all of the research institutions around at least the United States, that would potentially do research on a carbon nanomaterial. By the way, in the early days, people would ask us, hey, this is really cool, this soccer ball-shaped molecule. What do you do with it? Like, what's it good for? And our kind of running joke was, well, it's really good for funding, right? Because at the time, if you wrote a proposal about, right, about the molecule, about fullerenes, about nanotubes, you tended to get funded. And so, that was kind of the ongoing joke at that time. So, I think I got a little lost there.

In the book, did you add anything about your personal journey into biohacking based on learning this molecule?

Excellent. So, I can share with you. Like in the story, I kind of incorporate experiences in my life. So, unfortunately, I was actually present when my dad passed and he had a do not resuscitate. And that really is kind of conceptually associated with longevity, right? That situation obviously sucks. This is horrific. At the same point, my dad was diagnosed with ALS, And that's probably even more horrific than having to go through what I went through. And so, in some very real sense, fortunate that he didn't have this long protracted horrible experience of a decline. He ended up passing quickly. And I think that's the way most people would like to go. I did this Longevity Summit and I interviewed 55 experts in longevity. And I think the best example and actually carried it into the summit. No particular expert shared it with me. The best example of how people would really like to live and then move on past this earth, whatever you think happens next, is like a candle flame, right? So a candle and a candle flame just burns and it burns as bright as it's going to burn until a very short period of time where then it's out. And I think that's what a lot of people are looking for. I also think that's what people are looking for. And the opposite is not, it's not just what people expect, it's what's ingrained into our mentality, right? So, and, and, and again, outlined in the book, we, we talk about sharing this longevity story with people. And when we share that story, a lot of people were like, well, I don't, I don't want to live longer. Like, why would you want to live longer? Like, that sounds like horrible. And the reason is, is because currently we're unable to separate living a debilitated and decrepit life with aging. We can't separate those two. We understand our belief system is that as you get aged, things get— as you age, things get worse. And that's one of the things that I wanted to put the summit together for, because I think, I think it's very different. I think we can worst-case scenario, go out like a candle, right? Like, be a burning bright light that attracts the moths of excitement and joy. That's what we'll call it until the very end. And I think that's, that's the worst-case scenario. Things that are coming out, you look at Dr. David Sinclair's book Lifespan. I love the tagline, why we age and why we don't have to. That book talks about that we can probably live forever. In terms of natural causes, right? That there's some terminal velocity of aging that we're rapidly approaching where each day we live, the medical community figures out how to extend our life by more than a day, right? And that means that there will be at some point the last person to die of natural causes, right? Still, if you get hit by a bus, you fall into the Grand Canyon, whatever it is, like there's no coming back yet. But, you know, people are already talking about, hey, maybe we can upload our consciousness into a computer someday. And so there's even coming back from that at some point. But for now, let's just talk about natural causes. I believe at some point there's going to be the last person who dies of natural causes. And it would really suck to be that person. I guess they wouldn't know. At the end of the day, they wouldn't know that they're the last person. But you just don't want to— yeah, like you'd It'd be great to be the first person to not die of natural causes ever, right? Like to not die. And we do think that that's going to happen. And there's a lot of evidence in that. I talk about that in the book. I talk about one time how exciting it was when I was starting this business, this carbon nanomaterial business, to start a business. And I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I cover why I wanted to be an entrepreneur in the book, that the business was so exciting. I had overnight studying, right? So no sleep, went to an exam, and then on, on the drive from, uh, from the University of Houston to our lab, I actually fell asleep driving. Now, nothing happened, right? I woke up and realized the cars in front of me were a lot closer than they were just, you know, what I thought were seconds ago. I was asleep. Um, and very fortunately nothing happened, but one of the things just to describe how tired I was. The bolt of adrenaline that came out of that was just almost mind-numbing, right? So boom, I'm wide awake. This is never going to happen. And probably 15 seconds later, I was nodding again, right? Got to the office and I worked a full 8-hour shift just because it was so exciting at the time, right? Driving's boring. Working at a carbon nanomaterial manufacturing, working at a, well, a carbon nanomaterial manufacturing startup business is exciting. And that's how exciting things were back then. And you can tell how I am now. I'm actually under the weather. I've experienced wheezing in my chest, right? So I've got enough mucus in my lungs to be wheezing, which is, I don't know, unnerving to say the least. And then I've got a sinus cold, but I'm working through it. I think that a lot of that is actually the product. Our most consistent testimonial is focus and energy during the day, better sleep at night. But I'm able to work through those things. And some of it is I'm just excited. I'm excited to share these stories, excited to talk about the book now, and especially excited to talk about what the same way that I would say, hey, Chris, you're going to be a longevity expert and you're going to have a health supplement. No way, Cheryl, is that possible? Is the same way I would describe this summit that we're probably about to talk about.

Yeah, and that's, um, I was excited when your team reached out again because, you know, we had this, um, conversation before, and I always love hearing, because, you know, we talked about biohacking and kind of just being geeks generally before we hit record. And, um, you know, whenever I learned— part of my challenge in, in this space and in doing the things that I do and testing things on myself is that For example, when I was using my Vital C, I was doing other things at the same time. And, you know, like, I'm, I'm also using this, um, Kineon strap that's got red light therapy that I've been using on my knee. And it's like, well, I don't know if that's working, if time is working, or if I'd be that much worse off if I wasn't doing it. So it's just like all these hacks, it's kind of a challenge because you're like, was this thing really working or is it just a coincidence? So it's, it's always kind of interesting. But whenever I hear about a new thing, of course I immediately want to try it. So that was definitely the case with your molecule. After our interview, I was like immediately like, oh my gosh, I have to take this. It is fun to get excited about those things, isn't it?

And we'll— well, I'm happy to send you more. By the way, I have the same Kian thing. I've got a very, like, a very specific spot on the bottom interior of my right knee below the patella that just hurts. And it's probably some tightness here and there. So I'm doing actually some block therapy, which is something that I learned about on the summit. That was one of the great things, great and frustrating things. Like every talk that I orchestrated, I ended up with more homework. Like, so, you know, I've probably done, I don't know, 15 hours of block therapy, which was not on my radar. It's a little bit painful. Feels very natural, actually. I'm going to do a follow-up interview with her tomorrow. So tonight I'll be lying on a bamboo block, which, which is as bad as it sounds, but also a lot better than it sounds. So, yeah, I'm with you. I'm doing all sorts of different things, and I really am a biohacker. I last week started doing subcutaneous injections of BPC-157. And TB500. These are peptides that are known to have significant healing properties. And so, I'm with you though, right? If it heals over the course of 2 weeks, which may be the right timeframe, is that because I've had it for a year and now it's time for it to go away? Is that because I'm doing this block therapy, which is loosening up my fascia, which I didn't even know what fascia was, but it's actually the envelope that's around basically every nerve, every muscle, every organ, and it gets tight. And so you, you can imagine tight is not good. You actually want that to be nice and loose. Deep tissue massage can help, but not at the same level as, as this kind of what's called block therapy, which is amazing. Deanna is amazing. And so, yeah, I'm with you, but, you know, you try it, you just do try some protocol and then you wait a while and then you try another protocol and if it's a group of 3 things that you attribute it to, then you put that in your notebook and the next time that happens, you've got that tool. And again, this is all about making that candle flame burn, right? Because I want to solve— I actually skipped this year's half marathon. My wife and I typically run a half marathon every year because of that knee pain. And so I really want to solve that. I'm not that keen on running that. Like, I don't have to run the half marathon. I think it's just a fun thing to push myself to do. I'm not that interested in doing a full marathon. I think that's less fun, like twice as less fun. And so, but you want that candle flame to burn really brightly. And so, your body doesn't heal like it used to. So, this biohacking is about how do we make our body heal like it used to? What are What are these protocols that we can inject, in my case, that will actually help us?

Yeah. And I mean, I feel I love that analogy of the candle flame because so many experts now are talking more about, it's not just lifespan, but healthspan. You want to live the years that you're living to the fullest. And I think, you know, these tools that we're all using and that, you know, these books that are coming out, like I was reading Peter Attia's new book. I'm sure you have too. I forget the name of it, but, You know, just all these longevity experts.

I haven't read that one yet.

Yeah, it's well worth it. He's, you know, he's a very interesting dude. But yeah, all these things like the Oura Ring and all these things that we do to learn more about ourselves and how we can recover better. I'm sure knowing what little I know of you, I thought, what little I know of you, if you're not on video, we were both just holding up our Oura Rings. But just knowing what little I know of Chris, it didn't surprise me when his team said, hey, he's doing a longevity summit. And so, Can you explain to people, like, okay, you've, you've shown that you have this personal interest. You obviously, there was something in the marketplace that you're feeling like that was missing or that you weren't learning enough about personally. And I know, um, if you're like me, it's like, I, part of the thing I love about doing the podcast, I get to talk to a bunch of really smart people all the time and learn about new things I didn't know, like the injections you just mentioned. I'm totally going to have to follow up with you about that to learn about that. Cause I got to get my knee fixed. Too. So, um, what was it that made you decide, I've got to do this summit? What, what, what, like, put a burr up your bonnet for that?

Yeah, yeah, the, the, the actual bee. So I was actually at a marketing conference, uh, Affiliate Summit West, which was in Vegas, um, which is, which is always fun because everyone suffers, uh, when affiliate, uh, marketing people get together, they party, they party pretty hard. And I try to keep up, but I'm actually able to outperform because this actually works as a really good hangover recovery product. So, my wife and I are the ones who stayed out until 4:00 and are actually at the conference at 8:00. And I think in large part because of the ESS60 molecule. So, I'm at this conference and My wife is so much of a better networker than I. It's just not even funny. So usually what happens is she networks with somebody, she introduces me, I start a conversation. I met this representative of a company called Health Means. Now Health Means, what they do is they do health summits. And I'm like, hey, we got to talk because I like, our best marketing strategy is get on a podcast, share the story, and then people understand that I'm like, if I sell it, that's great. I'm not hawking some goods that don't have any science behind them. And in reality, I'm just sharing the research. That research is out there for people to go and discover. And so I arrange a call, get back to Houston. My first call is like, hey, there's 3 things that you can— well, there's 2 things that you can do with us. One is you can be a sponsor. And so a sponsor is, by the way, this event and my Uncovering the Secrets of Longevity: Live Beyond the Norms event is absolutely free. So, you'll go to the link. I think we put together a link, right, with Longevity Summit. Yes.

HealNourishGrow.com.

And at the end of your domain, what is that link?

HealNourishGrow.com/LongevitySummit.

Excellent. So, HealNourishGrow.com/LongevitySummit. And you can go for free. You just got to give your email and your first name. And as a sponsor, you'll get an offer, hey, do you want to get this free PDF file? And then that gives me potentially the sponsor. If that's of interest to you, that gives me your email and then I can follow up. And if you're interested in that free PDF or free video or whatever it is, then you actually can— I can follow up with you and there's more value that you could get. Like maybe it's peptides, maybe it's the ESS 60 molecule or whatever. So that's one way you could sponsor it. And then the other is you could speak on it. And I'm like, well, yes, like speaking, I like to do that. Let's, you know, get me speaking. And then one of the things that I've just always kind of known, whether it's from business coaches or conferences that I've gone to, is that if you're going to get involved in something, be at the front of the class, right? So be the person who's running the particular event. And I'm like, well, so what does it take to be a host? And they were like, well, there's an investment, right? And then you need to commit to interviewing 35 to 40 people. And I'm going to be 100% honest with you. I thought I'd get to about 25 and then figure out what happens after that. Maybe they're extremely disappointed and they want their money back, or I don't even know what was going to happen, but that's what I felt I could do. And in fact, if you had said 6 months ago, Chris, you're going to put on a longevity summit, you need to interview 55 experts in longevity. And of those 55 experts, 3 of them are going to be Dave Asprey, right, the father of biohacking and, right, the founder, the creator of Bulletproof Coffee. So a lot of people, you know, I'm trying to throw out the things that they might know of. Um, Dr. Gundry, who I was on his podcast quite a while ago, um, he's a former pediatric heart surgeon turned healer from the perspective of let's get your diet right. So, he has 4 New York Times bestselling books. And then, Ben Greenfield. Now, I think Ben Greenfield's a little lesser known, certainly well-known in the biohacking and longevity communities, but that guy is such a knowledge base. He's amazing. So, 3 well-respected people in the longevity and biohacking space. And then just throw in Sergey Young, right? Sergey Young wrote a book, The Science and Technology of Growing Young. And Sergey is the kind of guy who, who actually hangs out with Elon Musk, with Tony Robbins, with Peter Diamantis, the creator of XPRIZE. He's an investor in longevity. So it was really cool to get, hey, you invest in this technology. What are you investing in? Like, what's— where do you see the value? And then not only have you written this book, but you're What are you investing in? So if you told me that I was going to interview 55 people, including those 4 people and many others who are amazing, I literally would have said, Cheryl, I really like to set myself up for success, not for failure. I'm going to say no because I don't think I can do that. Like, I don't think that's something that I can do. Um, again, my mindset was I'll interview 25 people and, you know, we'll see what happens. And ultimately, that's exactly what I did. And this is leveraging relationships. This is, I had cursory relationships with Ben Greenfield, Dave Asprey, and Dr. Gundry. Sergey Young popped on because everybody I'm interviewing, I'm asking like, hey, who else would you know that would be a good fit for this longevity summit? And so, at the end of it now, I've got this amazing summit under my belt. It's coming out It comes out February 26th. Again, it's free. We release 7 to 8 videos every day for 7 days. If you are unavailable on a particular day, you may want access to that video. For $99, you get access to all the videos. So, like, you just get the folder and you have access to that kind of in perpetuity. And so it's really cost effective. And in fact, it's free if you if you have the time to actually participate dur— during the day. By the way, they're not released sequentially or anything. You just like, here's the batch of 7 or 8 videos for today, so go listen to the ones that you want to. And then here's the batch of 7 or 8 videos on the next day, go listen. And that's absolutely free. You just need to give your name and your email address.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing the amount of free content out there these days and the quality, because I've participated myself in a couple of these summits. In fact, I just recorded my presentation for the Keto Diet Summit. It's Court is sort of the same paradigm that you just described. It's like, literally, if you can just show up that day for free, you get access. And the people that you just named, my goodness, I mean, all those people are people that I've heard interviewed numerous times and just always come away with some new nugget of knowledge. So I'm really excited to— I'm gonna— I gotta set aside those 7 days for myself because I gotta see at least the ones you mentioned, but, you know, they're all really great in their own way. You never know, even if it's somebody that you— is not as well known, or maybe that you're just thinking like, oh, do I really want to hear about that topic? If you get into it, it's surprising sometimes the nuggets that you'll come away with. So on that—

yeah, I think there were nuggets from everyone.

Yeah. And that's why I say, on that note, what were some of the things that you took away from your interviews, or were there certain, um, kind of either lessons or tips or things that stood out in your mind that you kind of were like, oh, never, never thought of that before? Anything that you can share from that aspect?

Yeah, I think so. Again, I don't, I don't think too highly of myself. I think highly enough of myself, not so like, oh, I was genius and I did this. I did do something pretty smart, which was I asked each of the experts, how long do you intend to live? How long can humans live? Do you believe humans can live? And give us 2 to 3 mindsets, shortcuts to longevity or a long healthspan that you would share, right? And so, we aggregated all this data and that's all pretty amazing. I'll share some things that were surprising. So, one is you think about asking longevity experts, how long do you want to live? And how long can humans live? And then you end up on the, on the backside of this and across these 55 experts, only 3 gave the same age.

Right.

And, and, and this, I am sure I'm convinced is, uh, is related to the fact that people can't separate living infirmed, right. In a debilitated state from aging, even experts on longevity. Right. So if you think you can live, that humans can live to 120, right. And there's really good evidence for that with Jean Clement, the oldest living human, 122. If you think that, then, and you think you can do that like a candle, then really your target should be 122. But it really was only the case in 3 people. A lot of what people answered was, you know, I just want to be able to keep doing what I'm doing. Like the way I rephrase the question, you know, when I share that these test subjects live 90% longer, people are like, why would I live? Why would I want to live longer? If I change the question to, if you had the same mental capacity that you have today, or you had the same physical capacity, and you had the same, not or, and you had the same physical capacity that you have today, would you then be interested in living longer? And then a lot of people end up changing their mind. And so I think that's the, that's the, the, where their disconnect is between all of these experts saying, hey, I think we can live to 120, but I don't really want to get there. So I think that's pretty important. In fact, one of the stories from— and I don't remember which one this was. That's just a teaser. You got to watch them all now. One of the speakers shared, yeah, my uncle once who liked to drink bourbon and smoke cigars, his doctor pulled him aside and said, listen, you're, you know, if you keep doing this, you're going to cut 15 years off of your life. And the uncle was like, well, is that, is that going to be the last 15 years? The 15 years I'm not really interested in, right? And that's kind of the mindset. Like if I could just cut it a little bit shorter, you know, and have some fun on the way, maybe that's, that's a, that's a strategy. So, um, so I thought I found that incredibly interesting. The other thing is when I asked each of them to give 2 or 3 protocols and we kind of aggregated this information, and so about 33% mentioned sleep. No surprise there. About 50— well, a little surprise for me, and I'll talk about that. About 52% mentioned exercise, 52% mentioned diet, and 46% mentioned mindset. And when I first heard, okay, wait a minute, 33% mentioned sleep and 46% mentioned mindset. Maybe they have it wrong. Like, we know how good, how important, not just good for us, it's like important that sleep is good for our mental, physical, and emotional well-being. You should never, ever, ever go without 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep opportunity unless you're at an affiliate marketing conference. Uh, that's the only time that it's allowed. Um, Right? Like, so we know that you're supposed to get sleep. But then I started thinking, and actually I thought about a story that Dr. Gundry told in the interview. He had this guy, he's pretty high up in a social media company, and he had, you know, one thing Dr. Gundry said is that 100% of the patients he sees, by the way, he sees patients 6 days a week still, right? So he's seeing a lot of patients. 100% of them have antibodies to wheat proteins, right? So we really do need to understand what we're sensitive to. They may not be allergic to gluten or any of the other lectins or proteins in there, but they're sensitive to them and those are causing problems. So this, this particular, you know, social media guy, he's, you know, achy and Dr. Gundry kind of does the standard battery of tests to find out what he's sensitive to. And he's like, you are sensitive to eggs, a bunch of other stuff. Eggs. And so you need to stop eating eggs. And, and the guy was like, well, I can stop all the other stuff. I have to eat eggs. I eat an egg omelet every day. And Dr. Gunter was like, well, you're the one who's hurting. Like, you are technically right. You can keep eating eggs. And then I thought, you know, that is the mindset, right? It isn't just the nutrition, it, or diet, right? It's the fact that you've gotta be willing to make adjustments to your diet. For your own health. And that can be a struggle for some people, for a lot of people. And so I really think that, that mindset is even more important. It probably needs to be higher than exercise, diet, and sleep because there is some effort that needs to go into exercise. I also think, and we're going to go back, we haven't done it yet, but we're going to go back and split exercise into two pieces because I think exercise really should be movement and exercise, right? Because there's so many people who just, you know, if you say you need to go exercise, like, I'm not exercising. Like, I don't, I'm not exercising. But if you say you need to go walk, there's a, there's a difference in that communication and what you're actually saying. You need to just get up and clean your house, right? You need to get up and be active. That's incredibly important first, you know, more important than exercise. But then yeah, eventually you want to get to the point where you're exercising. I think something that was fascinating, by the way, I did about 1 hour of research for each of these interviews that ended up being, my goal was like 30 to 40 minutes and they rarely ended, you know, at under 55 minutes, right? I was really kind of wrapping these up and asking these kind of standard questions and, and really had a lot more to talk about, but I spent an hour on each for the people who had more content, right? So for, Dave Asprey, Ben Greenfield, Dr. Gundry, Sergey Young, and a number of others. They had a lot of content that was out there. So there was a lot more information. I spent 3+ hours and I'm learning so much. Like this is, you know, why one of the answers, kind of the shorter answer to why I did the summit is that it's quite selfishly, just like you said, I get to interview these people, right? I get to pack. But not only that, I actually have to prepare for it. And preparing is adding information into my head. And then I get to ask questions about the information that I now have in my head. And then I get homework after each talk, basically, about things that I need to go research. And so it really is about, you know, cramming it in my head, cramming information in my head. And then again, I just always believe in, in sharing content, in sharing whatever knowledge I can gain with, with people. Cuz you know, these guys have big voices, right? They have big audiences, but people are going to find me somehow that aren't going to find them. And when they find me, I want them to know about them and I want them to know about what they're saying, at least the parts that really agree with kind of with the way that I think. So when you think about exercise, I was preparing for Dave Asprey and I watched a video he did on Mindvalley. And he actually showed his six-pack and he was like, yeah, I got the six-pack with 15 minutes of exercise per week, right? Not 15 minutes a day, not 15 minutes twice a day, 15 minutes per week. So he has some really revolutionary concepts and really has been talking about VO2 max, how to increase your VO2 max. That concept has been out there for quite some time, which is, you know, run like a lion's chasing you. And then basically lay down. So get as comfortable as possible, get that heart rate down as quickly as possible. And you need to do that 4 or 5 times. And so you're talking about less than a 30-minute, you know, effort. You're not talking about, you know, 2 hours like it takes to run a half marathon. You're not talking about 2 hours. You're just talking about less than 30 minutes. And really the hard output, the hard work is, you know, in the range of 1 minute., right? The rest of the time you're just letting your heart rate go down. And then he also talks about equipment and proprioception, which is— so, so when you go to the gym, if you're grabbing any sort of weight, your body is aware that that weight, while it's under your control, will have movements and will create momentum, and you need to be able to manage that momentum. So you may be able to like pick up a 100-pound dumbbell for curls, let's say, but your, your brain will only let you pick up 75 because your brain knows that, that, that dumbbell is going to wiggle. And when it wiggles, you've got to be able to control it. And that, that momentum is over the 100-pound threshold that your brain knows you can do. So you end up lifting less lower weights. So there's equipment where when you push or pull on it, if you stop pushing, it doesn't push back., right? So your brain is not tricked. Your brain is aware that it's under no threat. So now instead of just being able to do the 75 because that's all you can pick up, you're actually able to do the 100 and well beyond it. And talks about deadlifters lifting significantly more on these pieces of equipment. And that's how he's able to get a six-pack in an extremely short amount of effort. And so I think there's a lot to be learned. His book is Smarter, Not Harder. And one of the things I asked him, because this is kind of— I'm on a soapbox right now about protein, is that in his original book, I don't remember which one it was, he talked about a protein intake of about 0.5 to 0.6 grams per pound of body weight. And now he's talking about 1 gram per pound of body weight, right? So a significant increase in the amount of protein consumption. And you mentioned Peter Attia. I was watching an interview that he was doing with, um, with a protein expert and really the same number, 1 gram per pound of body weight. And even the fact that you need to be consuming about 35 grams of protein in a specific instance so that your body will actually trigger protein synthesis. And they're saying, if, if you look at macros, people think of the macros, right? Protein, fat, and carbs. And they think of it as a percentage, right? Hey, 30, 30, 30, or whatever it is. Like if you're low carb, you'd change it. And they're saying, no, no, no, no, that's wrong. It's gotta be a fixed amount of protein and then you fill in the gaps with fat and carbs, right? So the protein is the key thing cuz when we're younger, our body is incredibly adept at taking our existing— by the way, every muscle cell in your body is replaced every 3 months, right? So 4 times a year. And we're aware, like our skin sloughs off and we're like, oh, our skin's getting replaced. But our muscle actual cells are replaced every 3 months. That alone takes like 200 grams a day. Like it's not a day, but it takes a lot of protein. When we're younger, our body's actually able to take the existing cells, break them apart, and reuse those amino acids. As we get older, that capability diminishes significantly. And so, that would put you on a path, a sarcopenia path. That's where you just muscle wasting as you get older, but you can overcome it by consuming a lot more protein. And so, yeah, that's— I'm literally right now, I'm full. I've had enough protein. This week, today, yesterday, whatever. But it's, you know, it's another one of these protocol experiments that I'm doing.

Yeah, that— I'm so glad you mentioned that. That's one of my favorite topics as well. And actually, the presentation I was just recording before talking to you, I'm talking everything that you just said. I should just like cut you out of there and put it on top because you said it more succinctly. But, you know, the protein thing is really— and, you know, that's what I love about this space is that they all kind of not that you want things to be an echo chamber, because you definitely want to start thinking of things differently. But it's like, it's very small group. We think everybody knows these things. But I say the same things that you mentioned, every opportunity I get, because I just, I turned 50 last year, I've been weight training, I'm doing everything I know that I've really, I guess I always knew muscle was important, but I never really synthesized that in the way that I have the last few years listening to these experts and listening why you need muscle as you age and how important it is not only to longevity, but the health— healthspan that we were talking about. So anyway, I love that you just gave that reminder to everyone. And it sounds like, you know, was there anybody in the summit that was also— was Dave talking about that? Were multiple people talking about— did you— did I read that you interviewed Dr. Lyon as well? She's the big protein person. Maybe that'll be your next summit if you haven't talked to her yet.

Gabrielle Lyon. Yeah, no, that sounds amazing. And actually, I'm in the process of starting a podcast, so I'll probably maybe reach out to Dr. Lyon. No, I didn't. And I'll be honest, other than kind of talking about protein consumption with a couple of the people in a very cursory fashion, it's been my homework after the summit that's kind of led me to the Peter Attia interview and really digging into this. And there's a little bit of irony here, right? I interviewed 55 experts in longevity, including Ben Greenfield, Dave Asprey, Dr. Henry. We don't need to belabor that. And after that event, I'm actually doing a diet that is discussed by Alex Hormozy. I don't know if you know Alex Hormozy. He's blowing up the internet. He built and sold a company called Gym Launch. He would actually help gym owners grow their businesses and grow their profit margins. He sold that company for $42 million and he did a video. And here's the reason I'm following him. One, I'm confirming and it all matches up, but here's the reason I'm following him. So he built and sold a $42 million company. So he's a busy man, right? He's had a six-pack for 20 years. I would like a six-pack for 20 years and he's eating cookies every day. So I feel like these are the 3 check things that, that I want. And his mindset, right? And in his video, he's like, look, if you want a healthy video, go watch something else. Here's what I do. I eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, and then I fill in— and then I, you know, calculate a calorie consumption amount if I want to add a little bit, if I want to maintain, or I want to lose a little bit. And then I stick to the protein just like we— like I just described, and then I fill in the rest. And I can fill it in I can fill it in with donuts or cookies or whatever. And they're like, well, what about health? Again, watch another video. Also, I just take a multivitamin. So, it's a little bit ironic that I had to interview— I interviewed 55 experts with longevity and I'm basically following an entrepreneur. Now, it was in the gym business, right? So, he's been in this kind of health and fitness space probably for 30 years. But yeah, that's, that's kind of my focus.

Oh, I love this cookie diet thing. Look this guy up. Well, Chris, I think we're probably— I want to be respectful of your time. We're kind of getting close to the end here. But let's see, we talked about the book. We talked about the summit. People are going to get in for free by going to healnourishgrow.com/LongevitySummit. These links will be in the show notes. I'll put the links to my Vital C in there. Any final thoughts or revelations that you had coming out of this summit? I mean, obviously, you're starting a podcast now, so you must have enjoyed yourself. Anything else that you got from these interviews, like takeaways or just a feeling that you were left with that you'd like to share?

Well, first, I want to share, there is a unique— if anybody's interested in trying the product, right, single longest longevity experimental result in history, the link is myvitalc.com/longevity. HNG, right? So, that's Heal, Nourish, Grow, HNG. And then, when you get there, you can find our product. We've got different oils. We always recommend the olive oil and we recommend it for two reasons. We're a science-based organization and all the research is on olive oil, right? The ESS60 molecule in olive oil. And then, second, the highest concentration of this soccer ball-shaped molecule ESS60 is in our olive oil product. So, that's the thing that if you want to just try it, that's what you want to try. We also have pet products and we've got some face serums and a skin redo kit that's absolutely amazing. I don't know if I sent it to you. If I haven't, I will. And, the other thing to share is on that page, again, myvitalc.com/hng, is there's a 25% discount on subscription. Yes, you can cancel at any time. Yes, take advantage of that discount. Our customer service team has like 850 5-star reviews on Google. They are not trained to talk you out of it. Just take advantage of that discount. And that discount is also HNG. For the book, I want to share something I'm pretty proud of. When you go to the HNG, myvitalc.com/hng, you'll find a link to the book. The book is $20. It's also available on Amazon if you want to get it. I'm working on the audiobook. That'll be out soon. But if you buy it from our website, you can get a signed copy. The signed copy is an extra $10, and that entire $10 goes to an organization called OUR, O-U-R, Operation Underground Railroad. You may remember there was a movie very recently called The Sound of Freedom. About child sex trafficking. And Operation Underground Railroad is actually the organization created by the guy represented in that movie who's actually out there solving this horrific problem. Right. So 100% of the signature fee, the $10 or $15 if you want my coauthor, that's a whole nother story we didn't even get into. My coauthor is a two-time New York's number one bestseller. Right. It's amazing to be a New York Times bestseller, but to be a number one bestseller, that's just a next level. So proud to be working with Dr. Jerome Corsi. But if you want both of those signatures, it's $15. Again, the $10 for one signature or $15 for both signatures, all of it goes to Operation Underground Railroad. And I'm really proud about that. And then we mentioned the link, right? Heal, Nourish, Grow. Uh, .com/longevitysummit. The, um, I guess the takeaway is, um, I think so, so when people ask me, hey, the two questions that I asked all the experts, how long do you want to live and how long can humans live? And I really do think that this is, needs to be broken up into multiple parts. And I think that's, you know, I didn't really leave room for the, for the experts to do this. One of them, I've always had as a target 125. I don't need to change that yet. I've got plenty of time to change that yet. I'm 54. So I've got lots of room between here and 125 to say, yeah, I think it's going to be longer. So that's just my current target. And I fit with the other experts where my answer is different. I think current technology as we are today, it's about 120. Right? So I'm pushing the envelope with the 125, but I think you look at what's available, you look at how quickly information is changing inside the medical community, and that number is going to dramatically change here very shortly. And to give you an example, in 1950, medical information doubled every 50 years, 5-0 years. Today, medical information doubles every 73 days.

Hmm.

Right? So less than 3 months, we're quadrupling our medical information every year instead of taking 50 years to double it. And think about this. That's a fairly recent stat. I don't even remember where it came from. Sounds believable. I probably should do some more research in it. Um, but that doesn't count AI. Right? Because AI is extremely recent, you know, where, where it's actually starting to get applied to, to things like medical and it is, it's getting applied to, to things like medical technology and, you know, medical outcomes and, and gene therapies, like all of these amazing things. So I, I, ironically, I used AI to calculate in 10 years based on this kind of obviously it has to be asymptotic, uh, uh, relationship. And in 10 years, it should be about 15 minutes. Like every 15 minutes will be doubling. Our medical information. And so, you know, if there is a path for us to live significantly longer and forever, like we're, we're, we're at the finish line. Like we just don't realize it. We're at the finish line. We just don't know it yet. Right. Because information is, is, is doubling so fast, is increasing so fast. And so I think it's really exciting. I think, um, you know what David Sinclair did, the book I'm listening to right now is Mark Hyman's book. I don't remember the title. Growing Young, maybe. And it's talking, it's kind of parroting what Dr. David Sinclair said about, hey, we need to get the medical community to understand that aging is a disease and get funding for the disease of aging. Because the reality, the classic diseases of aging, which, you know, cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease. If we solve any one of those, we actually only extend our life by 5 to 7 years because the next one is right behind it, ready to take over. And so the concept of funding these individually is spreading the funds that are available. And if we had just applied them to aging, we'd be in a much better place for all of those diseases. And so, you know, that's another thing that I want to make sure is a message that gets out there. Hey, Aging needs to be looked at as a disease. It is something that we can solve. And if you want any proof of that, just to kind of wrap things up, we can take any cell of your body, right? And from that cell, we can take the DNA and create a clone of you. That's a baby you. So all the information necessary to create a younger you is in fact in every cell in your body. And so we just got to figure out the right levers to pull and manipulate to make you younger. And I think we're going to be able to do that.

I know it sounds like a sci-fi book, what you just described, but it's— I've been thinking for 20 years, like, why can't they just regrow me some cartilage for my knees? I was thinking they'd have that figured out by now, but they still don't. Unfortunately, it sounds like you could use that too, Chris. But yes, in any case, it has been amazing talking to you as always. I appreciate so much you coming back to share this. I'm really excited for everyone to go Go visit the summit. I'll probably have to do a podcast just about my takeaways from it after it goes on because the people that you mentioned, I can't wait to listen. So again, Chris, it has been wonderful catching up and I wish you all the success and the best with your many new endeavors that you mentioned here today. And yeah, I'll talk to you again soon, hopefully.

Thank you so much, Cheryl.