2328 FBF: The Future of Longevity Science with Dr. John Rush & The Perils of High Frequency Trading with Michael Lewis Author of ‘Flash Boys’

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Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before. And a new slant on investing, fresh new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 370 and you know what that means. That means It's a 10th episode show. So we're going to talk about a topic of general interest, but before we do that, we're going to talk about a financial topic. I think you're going to be. Well, you may have heard about this actually, but I'll get to that in just a moment. So I've told many of you that I am launching a new show. I've been working on this for a few months and it is called the Longevity show and it'll be out soon. And I've been listening to other podcasts on the subject of health and longevity and just going along with that whole holistic idea that, you know, health, wealth and happiness. That's, that's what we're, we're all about here. And we talk extensively about financial freedom and about doing things that will allow us to have the freedom to do what we want to do, which is really what it's about. And not having to be stuck at a corporate job or stuck in a cubicle. And that's one thing that really amazed me. It amazes me in all, all of my live events. And by the way, if you haven't been to one of our live events, we don't have them as often as we used to because it's pretty hard work to put them on. But we're going to have another one here soon that we'll announce for you. If you want to meet our clients and talk to our clients and talk to people that have been investing with us for years, come to one of our live events and you can meet them, you can talk to them, you can ask them about their experiences, you can learn from their experiences. And that's one of the great benefits of live events. Technology has not completely done away with the good old face to face meeting and the live event. It's great to have the portability and convenience of asynchronous listening that you get from a podcast, meaning I can broadcast or record whenever I want and you can listen whenever you want. So it's a win win deal. It's convenient for both of us. And live events though are a great supplement to that. So don't miss our next live event, really. I know there are lots and lots and lots of you listening in 154 countries around the world, which I so much appreciate by the way. So thank you for listening and thank you for telling your friends about the show. But get out to one of our live events if you haven't been to one already. If you have been to one, of course we always welcome you back. And I just think that's a great, great supplement to kind of keep in touch, shake hands, talk in person once in a while. It's a great thing. Also, I want to mention to make sure you know that we are on Stitcher Radio as well as itunes. Of course, most of you list on itunes or just at the website@jasonhartman.com or through another podcast aggregator. But we are on Stitcher and I know that Stitcher is going into a lot of automobiles nowadays. They've been pretty ambitious about signing deals with automakers, I think gm, Ford, BMW, probably some more that I don't know have Stitcher Radio now as either an option or a standard feature in their cars. And you can listen to my podcast right on Stitcher Radio. So check that out. And a lot of Android listeners listen there as well and BlackBerry PC people. So that's another option for you. Just wanted you to know that. So the Longevity show. Health, wealth and happiness. Live long and prosper, as Mr. Spock would say. For a tenth show today, since we're going to go off topic, off the direct financial topic, we're going to talk with someone from Cenegenics. I believe his title is president or Founder. I can't remember I recorded this interview a little while ago. But you're going to hear about some of the latest and greatest things in increasing lifespan and health span. One of the things I talked about on a recent episode is all of the things that were less important than they've ever been in human history. And as a real estate investor, I'm always saying to kind of debunk the old concept of real estate. Location, location, location, which is certainly not unimportant. I'm just saying it's less important than it's ever been in human history because of technology. And that also allows us to invest remotely and invest where the, to go, where the getting is good, as the old saying goes. And so that's a great thing. And location is less important than it's ever been in human history in that way too. But another thing that I mentioned that's less important than it's ever been in human history is the age. Age ain't what it used to be. And you know what? I think that we all have to really watch our mindset on this and we have to intentionally try and cultivate a young mindset. It's, it just really saddens me sometimes when I talk to a person now and then. And my grandmother, my late grandmother was like this. You know, she was old before her time. She managed to live until she was 96 years old, which is pretty good. Not very healthily, unfortunately, but she did live a reasonably long lifespan. Of course, you know, if you're listening now, I'd say most of our clients are probably in the 40 year old range or 40s somewh. That's when a lot of people start to really wake up about their financial future and think, hey, you know, I've been working for 15, 20 years and the government is broke and they're not going to be there to take care of me. I better get with the program here. And that's when a lot of people really start to wake up and pay attention. So that's when they come to us to fix the mistakes that they've made on Wall street in the past. Wall street is a great way to get rich for the insiders. Doesn't seem to be a great way to do it for the public. It's not too hard to become a millionaire on Wall Street. You just have to start with 2 million and hopefully you'll have a million left over after they get through with you. But anyway, I digress. What was I saying here? Longevity. Yes, let's move back to the topic. There are some really incredible things going on in the world of longevity science and health science for not just living longer, but being healthy longer. And getting old before our time. So mindset is one of the very important factors on this. And there's a cool little website, I believe it's called realage.com that, you know, you can take a little quiz that it takes only five minutes or so and they will tell you with a computer algorithm what your real age is. You might want to check that out. I think it's realage.com but some amazing things going on here that not only have big implications and really great implications if we're good financial stewards and financial planners of our own financial future.

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday. Your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has handpicked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

But they have big societal implications as well. The longevity span and increasing lifespans going on around the world. Because humans, humans are consumers. They consume resources. And the more resources they consume, the more valuable those resources get. It's just the most fundamental rule of economics, supply and demand. They also place demands on entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, et cetera, et cetera. And that has big implications to us as investors because those cause a lot of inflationary pressure. So we've got to react to that. We've got to invest for that. So lots of, of stuff going on here with this. But before we talk about longevity with our guest today, I thought I would replay some, if not all, of the 60 minute segment that you may have seen where the famous author Michael Lewis, who wrote the Big Short and who's written just a whole bunch of great books, he's out with a new book called Flash Boys and he talks about how the stock market is basically rigged. And we've certainly talked about this a lot on past episodes. But it's really, really important to understand what goes on behind the scenes. You know, when you see the stock market on tv, that's not the stock market. That's just a, it ought to be called a television studio, really, because that's about all it is, okay? The real stock market takes place in server rooms and in quiet places with desks where guys have six and eight monitors on their desk and the trading is executed by computers. And we've talked about these high frequency traders before on prior EPOC episodes and it is mind boggling how they are front running and, you know, front running. I think that term really has two definitions. The definition that Michael Lewis explains here is the one we're talking about today. But it also has to do with that old pump and dump concept. I guess that's really what's happening here too. But it. I don't know, it has a little bit of a different meaning to me in this context. So look up the word front running if you're. If you don't fully understand that, because it's a pretty interesting term. I'm sure there's a Wikipedia entry on it. And just understand that when you execute a trade and the trade happens at the speed of light, you know, it goes through the wires and the fiber optic cable at 186,253 miles per second. But then other people know that trade is coming their way, and they trade first, and they basically mark up your trade and mark up your stock. And, you know, this happened to me yesterday, not on in stocks, because I don't invest in stocks. I've learned my lesson too many times. I just, I stay out of the stock market. But yesterday I was planning a tour, a private tour with one of our clients, and they want to go see Memphis. So they went on to the website, Jason hartman.com and they bought the private tour. You can do that as well. And I'll meet you in. In a market, and we'll go look at properties together, and we'll spend, you know, we'll spend a day and a half together and have some meals together, and I'll do some coaching with you, answer any questions you need, and. And then we'll actually go out and look at properties. And it's kind of fun to do this, but we're, you know, we're trying to sync up our airline tickets. And I was on the Internet and I was looking at the different times, like we all do, of the different flights and so forth, and I thought, gosh, there's one I like. And I clicked on it. And as soon as I clicked on it, it was already gone. And then the next thing didn't have as good a time, a time frame as I wanted. I didn't like the itinerary as much. But not only that, the ticket was like $50 more. So basically I just got it stolen out from under me. Right? And that did not make me very happy. Well, if that happens with your portfolio and your stocks, it can be devastating to you as an investor. So listen to this video and my snarky comments. Now, one thing I want to say, I know the sound quality will not be awesome, okay? And one of the reasons is, is because I want to be able to pause the video and I want to throw in some commentary, okay? Otherwise we would direct feed the video to the podc, but I'm not able to do that and make my snarky comments, which I know you always appreciate. So this is 60 Minutes and we're talking about Michael Lewis and his new book and High Frequency Trading and how Wall street is rigged. It's quite interesting.

Fifth anniversary of the current bull market on Wall street, making it one of the longest and strongest in history.

By the way, I just want to correct our, our great anchorman. I love 60 Minutes by the way. It's really one of the last bastions of high end investigative journalism. But as most people are in the media, they talk about the bull market without adjusting for inflation. And remember several months ago when the Dow hit a new high, and I believe that was around 15,800, I explained that there was no real dollar gain there and I did the math for you and went over it and now we're over that. But more time has passed and more inflation has occurred. So I really wonder if there has ever been any real bull market. If you listen to Peter Schiff, he says that since the Great Depression until just a couple of years ago, the only real returns in stocks were dividends. That's it. And I love the way he said it. He said all the rest is just an illusion created by inflation. Great way to put it, Peter. I'll give you some credit for that one. Anyway, here we go.

Yet US stock ownership is at a record low and less than half of Americans trust banks and financial services. In the last two weeks, the New York Attorney General and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Washington have both launched investigations into high frequency computerized stock trading that now controls more than half the market. The probes were announced just ahead of a much anticipated book on the subject by best selling author Michael Lewis called Flash Boys. In it, Lewis argues that the stock market is now rigged to benefit a group of insiders that have made tens of billions of dollars exploiting computerized trading. The story is told through an unlikely cast of characters who figured out what was going on and devised a plan to correct it. It could have a huge impact on Wall Street. Tonight, Michael Lewis talks about it for the first time.

So really, I mean, just really, really awesome. He goes into this and you just see how rigged this game is. And this is not the only way it's rigged. I mean, of course I'm talking about commandment number three all the time and that's thou shalt maintain control. So the first thing is you could be investing with a crook. The second thing is, you could be investing with an idiot. And the third thing is, if they're honest and if they're competent, they take a huge management fee off the top. But it's not even that. We haven't even gotten to the way stocks are marked up through investment bankers, through the fact that the board of directors is sucking the money out in huge bonuses for themselves and salaries and fees to their insider crony friends. How the CEO and all the other C level executives are skimming money off the top. And there's all these business expenses and there's just all these layers to this. This is just one layer we're talking about here.

What's the headline here?

Stock market's rigged. The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged.

By whom?

By a combination of the stock exchanges, the big Wall street banks, and high frequency traders.

Who are the victims?

Everybody who has an investment in the stock market.

Michael Lewis isn't talking about the stock market that you see on television every day. That ceased to be the center of U.S. financial activity years ago and exists today mostly as a photo op. This is the stock market that Lewis is talking about, the one where most of the trades take place now, inside hundreds of thousands of these black boxes located at more than 60 public and private exchanges where billions of dollars in stock change hands every day with little or no public documentation. Trades are being made by thousands of robot computers programmed to buy and sell every stock on the market at speeds a hundred times faster than you can blink an eye. A system so complex it's all but invisible.

If it wasn't complicated, it wouldn't be allowed to happen. The complexity disguises what is happening.

Isn't that something I say all the time? That complexity disguises the truth. It hides the truth. So try and keep it simple in your financial life. That's always a great advice right there.

If it's so complicated you can't understand it, then you can't question it.

And this is all being done by computers.

All being done by computers. It's too fast to be done by humans. Humans have been completely removed from the marketplace.

Fast is the operative word. Machines with secret programs are now trading stocks in tiny fractions of a second. Way too fast to be seen or recorded on a stock ticker or computer screen. Faster than the market itself. High frequency traders, big Wall street firms and stock exchanges have spent billions to gain an advantage of a millisecond for themselves and their customers. Just to get a peek at stock market prices and orders a flash before everyone else, along with the opportunity to act on it.

The insiders are able to move faster than you. They're able to see your order and play it against other orders in ways you don't understand. They're able to front run your order.

What do you mean?

Frontrunner means they're able to identify your desire to buy shares in Microsoft and buy them in front of you and sell them back to you at a higher price. It all happens in infinitesimally small periods of time. There's speed advantage that the faster traders have is milliseconds, sometimes fractions of milliseconds. But it's enough for them to identify what you're going to do and do it before you do it at your expense.

So it drives the price up.

So it drives the price up and in turn, you pay a higher price.

Michael Lewis is not the first person to allege the stock market is rigged or that high frequency traders are front running the market. But he was the first to find Brad Cock Katsuyama, who was the first to figure out how it was being done.

A very unlikely character. A trader at the Royal bank of Canada, a young Canadian man named Brad Katsuyama realized that the market that he thought he knew had changed. The market seemed to be willing to sell stock. But the minute he went to buy it, someone else bought it. The stock went up. It was as if someone knew what he was doing before he did it.

Back in 2008, Katsuyama was 30 years old and running the Royal bank of Canada's stock desk in New York with 25 traders working for it. Every time one of them tried to buy a large block of stock for a client, their order would only be partially filled and the price of the stock would go up. It kept happening over and over again.

The best analogy, I think, is that your family wants to go to a concert. You go into StubHub, there's four tickets all next to each other for 20 bucks each. You put in an order, buy four tickets, 20 bucks each, and it says you bought two tickets at 20 bucks each. And you go back and those same two seats that are sitting there have now gone up to $25.

What did you think the problem was?

I had no idea. I couldn't get answers at first.

Katsuyama thought it must be that the technology at RBC was slow until he went to Stamford, Connecticut, and paid a visit to one of the largest hedge funds in the world.

The same things that I was experiencing as a trader, one of the most sophisticated hedge funds in the world was also having the same problem. Then the light bulb goes off, you say, holy cow, this is a huge problem.

You were determined to get to the bottom of it.

Yeah.

Why?

Because it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel right that people who are investing on behalf of pension funds and retirement funds are getting bait and switched every single day in the market.

Katsuyama suspected that the problem had something to do with plumbing, the way the trades were routed through fiber optic cables from his trading desk in lower Manhattan to the 13 public exchanges in northern New Jersey. But no one would tell him exactly what happened to his orders once he hit the buy or sell button. So he put together a team of technical experts, traders, and most importantly, an Irish telecom guy named Ronan Ryan, who was an expert on high speed fiber optic networks.

I knew nothing about trading until my first day at RBC when I sat in a three hour meeting on algorithms. I called my wife afterwards and I'm like, holy crap, I have no idea what they just said.

Brian had done work for the high frequency traders. He knew what they were building and he knew about the colossal amounts of money they were prepared to spend. He told Brad about a company called, called Spread Networks that had laid a high speed fiber optic cable from the futures market in Chicago to the exchanges in New Jersey. They spent $300 million just to shave 3 milliseconds off the fastest route.

Did you hear that? $300 million. Okay. Almost a third of a billion dollars to shave. What did he say? 3 milliseconds off the time? I mean, this is the, this is what we're up against, folks. It's like trying to, it's, it's like the old saying, don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Okay? And this is way more radical than that. I, I don't know how it is that people actually can go invest in the stock market and think they can beat this game. I mean, there, there's just, there's just no way. They're just way too powerful, the insiders.

And we're leasing access to high frequency traders at $10 million a pop.

From Brad Katsuyama's point of view, when he heard they were willing to spend that kind of money for milliseconds, it told him that the sums involved are vast. That was one of the first questions he had. He said, all right, I'm getting ripped off, everybody's getting ripped off. But what does it add up to? I think when he heard the story of spread network. He realized, this is tens of billions of dollars we're talking about.

Roon and Ryan also knew where all the cable was buried and had detailed maps of the fastest routes from the financial district in Lower Manhattan to the various stock exchanges in New Jersey, all calculated down to the millisecond.

So I would sit there, roll out maps, and draw this data center as a box and a line going through it, and they had no idea what I was on about. And then I'd be like, hey, are you guys aware of where these data centers are located? Of course, you're arriving there at different time intervals.

For Pratt, the maps turned what had been an abstract idea into something he could actually see. The first place his orders were landing was the Batts Exchange across the river in Weehawken, N.J. and high frequency traders were lying there in wait.

I realized, oh, my God, that's how I'm being front run. I'm being front run because my signal gets to the BATS exchange first and they can beat me to all the other exchanges.

It only took a tiny fraction of a second for Brad's trade to reach the next exchanges on the network. But the high speed traders were able to jump in front of him, buy the same stock, and drive the price up before his order arrived, producing a small profit of just one or two pennies. But it was happening to everyone's trades millions of times a day.

That adds up.

You make it sound like a skin.

What else would you call it?

One hedge fund manager said, I was running a hedge fund that was $9 billion and that we figured that just our inability to make the trades the market said we should be able to make was costing us $300 million a year. That was $300 million a year in someone else's pocket.

Is this illegal?

No, that's the thing that's so shocking about all this.

You use the word front running. Front running is illegal.

This form of front running is legal. It's legalized frontrunning. It is crazy that it's legal for some people to get advanced news on prices and of what investors are doing. It's just nuts. Shouldn't happen.

And you know what it does happen? When you have an army of lobbyists to buy off the government to get what you want, and that's what the insiders have, and that's what the regular investor doesn't have.

Beat the high frequency traders was to take away their milliseconds advantage. That allowed them to sniff out slower trades and beat them to the exchange. He had an idea how to do.

It and he said you're probably better off trying to go slower. Which means send the order to the exchange located the farthest away first and send the order to the one that's located closest to you last. So stagger when you send them out. With the goal of arriving at all places as close to the same time.

As possible, Katsuyama and his team developed software that did just that. Allowing the orders of Royal bank of Canada's customers to reach all of the exchanges at the same time, cutting the high frequency traders out of the equation.

And essentially our fill rates went to 100%. We couldn't believe it when we actually figured it out.

So you beat speed by slowing it down.

Yeah, as crazy as that sounds.

Katsuyama and his team went out and began selling and explaining what they had discovered to the big mutual funds, pension funds and institutional investors. People who had had suspicions that they were being front run but didn't know how. And nobody had really bothered or tried to figure this out until Brad Katsuyama came along.

It was in nobody's interest too.

Correct.

I spoke to dozens of investors, big investors, famous investors, who said that when Brad Katsuyama came into my office and laid out to me how the market was rigged, my jaw hit the floor. I mean, I knew something was wrong. I didn't know. I just didn't know what it was. And no one had told.

Part of those meetings led us to believe, holy cow, this is really something. Because some of the most sophisticated, largest asset managers in the world, this is the first time they were hearing this story.

And some of the most famous names in the American stock market heard the pitch.

The Capital Group, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Vanguard, I mean, one after another, he was in their offices. They said, this man walked in, why is he going to know how the stock market operates? And at the end of an hour, they said, oh my God, he understands.

Hedge fund titan David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital is one of the believers. Was he able to show you how your orders were being front run?

Oh, yeah, they had a. They got the marker and the whiteboard.

And started drawing maps and boxes and wires and locations. And yeah, we went through it in some detail.

Did you find it interesting? It was, it was clients like Einhorn encouraged Brad and his team to do something bigger. That's when Katsuyama, a conformist even by Canadian standards, decided to do something radical. In 2012, he quit his high paying job as head trader at RBC and went off with some of his team to start their own exchange. You were making good money at Royal bank of Canada.

Millions of dollars.

I guess everyone knows that now, right?

Right. Yeah.

Why did you want to go off and walk away from that job and start a stock exchange?

Yeah.

Wasn't an easy conversation to have with my wife, that's for sure. It almost felt like a sense of obligation to say we found a problem. It's affecting millions and millions and millions of people. People are blindly losing money. They didn't, they don't even know they're entitled to. It's just, it's a hole in the.

Bottom of the bucket morality on Wall Street. Isn't that awesome? I love it.

To build an exchange funded exclusively by large traditional investors. They called it iex, the Investors Exchange and quietly launched it in October with the support of some of the biggest players on Wall Street. And it comes with built in speed bumps to eliminate the, the advantage of high speed predators.

And the way they did it was they coiled 60 kilometers of fiber optic cable between themselves and the high frequency traders computers. They call it the magic shoebox. It's a box and it looks like it's got a fishing line in it. But essentially a high frequency trader, if he tries to react on the IEX exchange, his trade goes for 60 kilometers until. So he's, he's an East Jesus.

So it gets there at the same.

Time it gets everybody else's.

Do you think that they can game you?

I think that they'll try to game us. I think the fact though that we've gone and met with the majority of the biggest high frequency firms to explain what the magic shoebox is doing and that people haven't said, oh, that's rubbish, that won't work. We've had many ask us for a back door to be honest. So that says something, that it'll work.

We're up to 38 and a half million shares.

The exchange is off to a strong start, although it is still very small with lots of powerful enemies that like the status quo and are trying to starve IEX by discouraging customers from using them. Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn is one of the investors. Do you think IEX will survive?

I think it's going to succeed. I think it's going to succeed in a very big way.

Just last week, IEX received a strong endorsement from Goldman Sachs whose top executive cited it as a model for a more stable and less complicated stock market.

We're selling trust, we're selling transparency. And to think that trust is Actually, a differentiator in a service business is kind of a crazy thought, right?

Why is this kid, why is he able to all of a sudden sit at the center of the American stock market? The answer is when someone walks in the door who is actually trustworthy, he has enormous power. And this is the story, story of trying to restore trust to the financial markets.

Wow, that's great. What an awesome piece. Congratulations to 60 Minutes and Michael Lewis for doing something awesome. That's really neat. I hope it succeeds, but remember, even if it does, that's only one little layer. You've still got all the graft and corruption of everybody else in the food chain. So it hardly solves the problem, but at least it's a interesting stuff there. All right, well, let's talk about longevity. Let's get off the financial topics and let's go to our guest, Dr. Rush, who's going to talk about living longer and increasing lifespan. And I think you'll be very interested in some of the science behind this. Here we go.

What's great about the shows you'll find on jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn how to finance your net next big real estate deal, there's a show for that. If you want to learn more about food storage and the best way to keep those onions from smelling up everything else, there's a show for that. If you honestly want to know more about business ethics, there's a show for that. And if you just want to get away from it all and need to know something about world travel, there's even a show for that. Yep, there's a show for just about anything. Only from jasonhartman.com or type in Jason Hartman in the itunes store.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. John Rush to the show. He is the COO of a company you may have heard of. They're at the forefront of the anti aging revolution. And that company is Senegenix Elite Health. And we will talk today about how you can take a very proactive approach to age management and experience more health, vitality and wellness throughout your life and hopefully extend your life a little bit as well. John, welcome. How are you?

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, it's good to have you. So tell us about Cenegenics. I'm fascinated by this. When was the company founded?

We just had our 15 year anniversary. So it was founded in 1997 by Dr. Alan Mint and John Adams. They were business partners. They had just sold a radiology company.

And so why Cenegenics? I mean, was there something that happened about 15 years ago in the world of science where it brought about this new form of medicine?

Yes. Dr. Mintz had been reading some articles generally focused around nursing homes. And nursing homes at that point in time were where people went to die. And the articles that came out were saying people were dying in nursing homes, not because they were bad places necessarily, but because people stopped moving. And there was an interesting study that said if you give men especially, but women as well, testosterone, you increase their muscle mass. So nursing home patients that were laying in beds got into wheelchairs. Those that were in wheelchairs got up and walked around. They actually increased their muscle mass. And that has all kinds of health benefits. So Alan postulated, hey, if it's good enough for there, let's see what happens when we do it for people younger than just the elderly.

So that was basically testosterone therapy then. Is that the correct way to correct. Okay. All right. Now, how many areas of the Cenegenics program are there? I mean, there's exercise, there's hormone supplementation, the telomere area, I guess, for lack of a better name, does that cover it or is there more than that?

It's more than that. The four areas that we really focus on are nutrition, nutraceutical supplementation, exercise, and hormone replacement when clinically indicated.

Okay, so which one? Let's just kind of go into those four different pillars of the program. And where should we start?

I love nutrition. It is a huge part of your health and it's a huge part of the problem in America with obesity, the epidemic of diabetes. We are just eating incorrectly as a nation. And what we tell our patients, if you want a very good snippet, is to eat what God made in its most natural state. As you know, when man gets his hands on something and processes it, the more he processes it, the worse it is for you. We stay away from soda, we stay away from bread, we love water. Drink as much water as you can. And again, eat what God made in its most natural state. When you go to the grocery store, stay around the outside of the grocery store. I always tell my patients, the devil lives on the inside. If it comes in a bag or a box, you better think twice about eating it.

Right, right. Yeah, very good point. Okay, so would that mean that you'd be in favor of raw food?

Absolutely. We want to make sure that there's, you know, it's bacteria free, etc. But there is no issues with raw food.

Alright. And anything else on the nutrition part. How about nutrition supplementation? Besides just eating unprocessed foods, of course. That's the other pillar.

So now we've gone from nutrition to nutraceutical supplementation. We believe that you should supplement what you eat based on blood tests. So we encourage our patients to get blood tests on a quarterly basis. We're talking about your most precious asset, your body. And it doesn't matter how much wealth you've accumulated over your lifetime if you're not around to enjoy it. So you check the oil on your car periodically. If you're a business person, you do your financial reviews on a quarterly basis. Here's your most precious asset. Let's review it on a quarterly basis. What are your vitamin levels, your vitamin D level, your vitamin B levels, your folate? How are you doing with inflammatory markers, cholesterol? What are your hormone levels? If we are going to do hormone replacement, if that is clinically indicated for you, where does it get to? Everybody reacts a little differently. So check on those things regularly to find out what is optimum for you.

Okay, good. So doing blood tests and your program is kind of interesting because you actually have the phlebotomist come to come to the person's home or business, right?

That is correct. When you sign up for the program that day, a phlebotomist calls you again. If it's late in the day, they'll call you the following business day and they'll make an appointment with you around your schedule. They'll come to your home, your office. We have international patients that are flying through. They'll go to an airport lounge and draw your blood. It only takes 10 to 15 minutes, but we make it as convenient for our patients because they're all very busy professionals.

So the blood testing and let's talk about. And we'll go into the other two areas too. But let's talk about how you start with this program. I mean, you come in for this health screening and there are other programs out there that are like these executive health screening programs or health evaluations at big, well known hospitals and so forth. How does the Cenegenics program differ?

We differ from those executive health evaluations at the Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins, et cetera, in that they're looking for disease. They are an early detection system. And if you don't have disease, they pat you on the back, they give you a very nice report, say everything is normal, come back and see us next year. We do not do that. We look at all of those areas of your health and say yes. While this may be in the normal range, it is certainly not optimum for you. Let's get this into the optimum range and that's when you start and feel so much better. What I tell people I do is I see very successful people who have had that success at the expense of their body and I help them get their body back.

Very interesting. So how does the program work? Talk to us about the specifics. You set an appointment, come in, it takes a day, right?

Right. When you call, you sign up for the program. As I said, the phlebotomist will call you that day or the next day, business day. They will make an appointment and draw your blood. We usually make the appointment for the elite health evaluation about two weeks after you sign up. At that time, we also send you an entire health history evaluation form. So we want to know your past medical history, your family medical history, any medications or supplements that you're on currently, how you exercise, what types of exercise exercise do you do, how often, what you eat, what do you eat on your best days, on your worst days, do you have any problems or issue foods. All of those things are very important so that we can get a sense of you before you come in. And then me and my team, which is an exercise physiologist, nutritionist and myself, review all of that before you even get here. So we have all of your blood results, all of your health history evaluation that you've sent us back. And you generally come into the office about 9am and you're done by about 3 to 4pm so it's about a six to seven hour process. The first two to three hours is with an exercise physiologist. We start with height and weight, of course. We do a DEXA scan for bone density and body fat analysis. We ask you to come dressed like you would if you were going to the gym because you you're going to be doing sit ups, push ups, grip strength and a VO2 max where you ride the bicycle with a mask on your face. I'm sure you've seen athletes do that. We also do a carotid intramomedial thickness ultrasound of your carotid artery, which is a very good predictor of cardiovascular problems and stroke down the road. Then you eat a healthy lunch with our nutritionist. You've ordered that when you first got here. We don't give our patients a diet or a meal plan, but teach them principles of a low glycemic index diet. And you start that program right when you're during your day of your elite health evaluation. And then after lunch, you're with me or the physician at Cenegenics, whatever location you go to, and we spend anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours with you. We through all of those labs that you've had, your past medical history, your family medical history, and really dive into those. What do they mean to you? How do we get those optimum for you? And at the end of that, we put you on a program that includes those four pillars that we already talked about, the nutrition, nutraceutical supplementation, exercise and hormone replacement if clinically indicated once a month. After that, you leave that day, then once a month, we send you anything that I've prescribed to you. You also have access to our exercise physiologists, our nutritionist. We have Cenegenics living online, which helps you with nutrition, shopping and exercise goals. We didn't talk about exercise, but we can we do blood tests again eight weeks after you come that initial time and then every quarter thereafter. And then we adjust your program based on those blood tests. So it's very highly individualized to you, Right?

Right, Absolutely. Okay, let's go to those other two pillars that's interesting to know about how the day works when you start the program and how many people have been through the program so far in the 15 years.

Over 25,000 now. And it's very interesting, interesting to note, Jason, that over 10% are physicians and their families. And that's how I started. I was a busy executive. I kind of left clinical practice for a while, went back to school, got an MBA and an mha, and I was working for a health insurance company and had rose to be the senior vice president of medical management. And with that had a lot of travel and wasn't exercising and was extremely out of shape. And I called Cenegenics just like any other interested patient, became a patient and just have loved it so much. It's become a passion of mine. I joined as a physician, I opened the Cenegenics Washington, D.C. office, and now I'm the chief operating officer.

So those offices are, I assume those are franchise operations, Right?

Right. Very similar, yes.

Oh, very similar, but not exact. I mean, they're not corporate, not exactly.

A franchise, but we do have our physician partners that run each of the Centers. We have 23 centers in the United States and Puerto Rico and 35 partners. We have partner track physicians. Those are physicians that have trained at Cenegenics and are building their Cenegenics practices as well. Over 56 of those now.

Okay, good. Now that we kind of understand that program, we've talked about a couple of the pillars. Let's go on. And where did we leave off on the different. Those four areas? Yeah, exercise. I mean, do we really even need to talk about this? It's so obvious, right?

Oh, my goodness. Jason, listen, this is what I tell every single patient sitting across the table from me. If you are not going to exercise, you are going to waste your time. And when people, people call about the program, I say, if you cannot exercise, if you will not exercise, you are going to waste your time and money to come here. Do not even come here. You must exercise. And we all know how important that is, but we are all busy professionals. And so we have made exercise into a science. And we divide exercise into two categories, cardiovascular and resistance training. So that cardiovascular we like to do in a high intensity interval training fashion that really helps with your cardiovascular fitness. And then resistance training is important for everyone to build muscle. Muscle is metabolically expensive. Everybody knows that it is difficult to obtain your muscle and you've got to work at it to keep it. And that muscle needs energy and it will take that energy from your fat stores as free fatty acids. Even the women who come in and initially say, you know what, I don't really want to look like a woman bodybuilder. I say, don't worry, that's up to you as to where you stop. But you do need more muscle mass and more muscle tone, and even the women love it.

Yeah, very interesting. Just out of curiosity, of those, I think you said 25,000 people so far. Yes, in the 15 years, what's the breakdown, gender wise? For some reason, I get the impression mostly men do this. I don't know why. Maybe testosterone.

You would be correct because our marketing is more geared to men and it's about a 60, 40 split of men. We have tried to market to women in the past. It's been very successful. As far as the response, women respond, but they don't sign up in the same rate that men do.

What do you attribute that to? Just out of curiosity, do you have any thoughts on that as to why that is?

This will be a personal thought, not necessarily speaking for the company, but I think that women are looking more for a quicker fix. And if you tell a woman that you have to eat right exercise and the hormone replacement and nutraceutical supplementation, and in three to six months, you look better, feel better, it's a harder sell, if you will, than to a Man. And I think men, especially successful business types, a lot of our professional men have had sports careers in their past, either in high school and college, some even pro. And then they. They've just kind of let that go and put that same passion into their business, but they're not doing the workouts. And so when you get back into the exercise, and this is Jason, I'll ask you this question. What gets worse in your life when you exercise?

Well, nothing. Everything's better. Unless I do it with an injury.

Exactly.

Good. Now, just out of curiosity, on the exercise, I mean, you mentioned cardio and resistance training. Where would, for example, yoga fall into that? Or Pilates or some of these types of exercises?

Extremely important. And thank you very much for pointing that out. I tell my patients to do it in between, but if you start with that as well. A flexible person is a sexual person. Flexibility is very important. So whether you do that after your warm ups or at the end of your exercise, it is extremely important. I always like to tell our patients to have one day a week of just dedicated to yoga or Pilates. That really, really helps.

Okay, fantastic. Okay, so let's go to the next pillar. I really want to get into some of this sort of cutting edge stuff that deals with the DNA and the telomeres and learn about that a bit. Tell our audience.

Okay. Telomeres are like the ends of your shoelaces, those little plastic things that keep them from unraveling. And telomeres do the same thing with DNA molecules. They keep them from unraveling when a DNA molecule divides. That is for cell division, telomeres tend to shorten. And again, on a personal note, I think this was God plan. There's no real genetic material in there because as those cells were dividing, you wouldn't want to lose any of the genetic information that tells the cell what to do once it's divided. However, when those telomeres shorten enough, the cell cannot divide anymore and it dies. So the theory behind TA65 or telomerase is to increase the length of your telomeres and or. Or at least stop the shortening of those telomeres, thus preserving the cell's ability to continue cell divisions.

And that's really what happens. I mean, it seems to me that the body is just one big copy machine. And when the copy machine stops, when it runs out of toner, I guess or something, that's when we die.

Right, Jason? I think I'm going to use that. And if you allow me, I'll put it in our marketing Material. That's great analogy.

Sounds good. Just give me credit.

Yes, sir.

But, yeah, you know, I mean, that's how it works. Right. So what do the telomeres do? They keep it from getting damaged somehow, right?

Correct. Correct. But every time the cell divides, they shorten a little bit, and so their ability to do that is degraded just a little bit each time. So if you can preserve that telomere length, those cells can continue to divide, and therefore the copier can keep running. You will have a longer life.

So when you treat the telomeres, you do this through this TA65 supplement, then?

Yes.

Okay. Is there any other way? Is there anything else you can do for them to make the.

Not that I'm aware of. Current research has not caught up to that. This is the only thing we have.

And so when you supplement for lengthening the telomeres, do you notice anything or feel anything different? Or is it just something that you do if you're 50 now, so hopefully you can live to be 120, for example? Or is there a noticeable difference in any way?

Yes, there is a noticeable difference. Now, I will also say, Jason, that we're doing a whole lot right. We're eating better, we're supplementing that nutrition, we're exercising, we've lost weight, we're sleeping better. We've replaced those hormones that needed to be replaced to get to an optimal level. So the TA65 on top of that. But our patients report better skin and hair and nails. They just, you know, those cells replicate a lot. So they see that in their hair is a little thicker, their skin is a little bit more elastic, a little bit more vital. They have better stamina. All of those things are helped by TA65.

Yeah. Very, very good. Yeah. Really interesting. I mean, any thoughts on how soon you notice this type of stuff? Is it. For some reason, I kind of get the feeling that it's a really long reward cycle on that, or do you notice it in a couple of weeks, 30 days?

So here's what I tell my patients to expect, and it holds very, very true. So you leave my office with a plan. Okay. We walk downstairs. Our patient care coordinator sets your order. You get that order, let's say two days after you leave the office and you start taking your supplements, you start eating better and exercising. And I'm going to get labs again in eight weeks. And it takes, let's say, a week to come back. Then I tell my patients, check in with me. Let me see you. A lot of patients lose 8 pounds, 10 pounds, but we put them back on the DEXA scanner. Let's say they've lost 10 pounds. They've lost 15 pounds of fat. Okay? They've lost 15, 15 pounds of fat and put on 5 pounds of muscle. So that's a net 10 pound loss. But they look so much better. That's the mirror test. I tell patients, don't even get on the scale anymore. Look in the mirror when you're trading fat for muscle. You just look and feel so much better. I always tell my patients, you give me three months and make a decision. You make a decision and they never leave, Jason. They are just so happy with the way they are progressing.

They always stay on the program. But here's the problem. You know, when you're doing all of this good stuff at the same time, it's hard to tell what really did the trick. I know everything does the trick. But for example, if you just want to keep your life the same and take some TA65, you know, I'm wondering if that'll work, because just exercising and eating right alone, you know, with nothing else, will help.

I always tell patients that, Jason, you know, you can eat right and go to the gym seven days a week if you want, but you're still not going to get the results that you see in our ads that you talk to our patients about. Why? Because one plus one equals three here when you're doing all of those. And let's just take men for an example. You know, men lose 1 to 3% of their testosterone production per year from the time they're in their late 20s or early 30s. Going to the gym all the time, while it will give you some improvement, is not going to build muscle for you to the extent that you need to, because you don't have the catalyst on board. And that catalyst is testosterone. And there's other areas as well. You hit the nail on the head when you said it's not just one thing, but it's all of them together. Oh, sure, that is what creates the virtuous cycle.

But what about side effects? I mean, whenever you start messing around with hormones, I just get really concerned about side effects like baldness, all the problems that steroids cause. Right. What's the difference? And what are some of the risks there are, if there are any.

Okay, we're going to talk about that in just a moment. But you threw out a word there that I have to correct you on, and that is steroids. We do not use steroids. We will not use steroids. Those are outside of our Purview and something that we don't go near. We only use bioidentical hormones, nutraceutical supplementation, exercise, as we talked about. So let's talk about side effects. And there are some you hear all the time on TV now, is it low T Go to your doctor. I have a lot of patients that came in, said they went to their doctor, they did the blood test, sometimes reluctantly, and they were normal. So they wouldn't give them testosterone, but they were getting a D. They were at the very low end of normal. What I told you earlier is we would like to see you at the optimum level. For you, it makes all of the difference. But there are side effects and measurable side effects that we pay attention to. And that's why we do bloods 8 weeks blood tests 8 weeks after you start, and then every quarter to monitor and make sure you're not having any side effects and to make adjustments to your program to mitigate or not have those side effects. So one of them is your blood could get too thick. That's called polycythemia. And that happens to about 2% of men. Doesn't seem to be an issue for women, not in the medical literature that I've read. But if that happens, we send you. There's two things. You can either reduce or stop the testosterone. Most of our patients are not going to do that anymore because they're feeling so good. But you can just go down to the Red Cross and donate a pint of blood. It helps. Most of our patients only have to do that once or twice, and then that is not really an issue. Some men convert that increased testosterone into estrogen. Well, men don't want estrogen around. A little bit is fine, but too much can be problematic. But all you would have to do is take Rimodex 1mg twice a week and that problem is alleviated. So it's really knowing what the potential side effects are and how to mitigate or stop them.

Yeah. I mean, is one of the concerns that if you supplement with testosterone, for example, that your own body will stop making it because it senses that you're introducing it from the outside or senses that there's enough already?

Well, it doesn't stop. It does reduce the amount that it makes and will also reduce the amount of sperm production. So that's why in men who want to have children, we give hcg, human chorionic gonadotropin, which stimulates your own production of testosterone and sperm. But after childbearing years, that's not Generally a concern.

Fantastic. Well, okay. What else should we know? I've taken you on a couple of tangents, so I. Excuse me for doing that.

It's okay. And this conversation, Jason, is pretty much like we have with patients who are looking to join or even when you come. I don't have a set script. I want to address your concerns. Another program that has been very successful with cenegenics is our heart disease and stroke prevention program. So we do genetic markers of cholesterol, breakdown of cholesterol. Over half of the people in the United States who have a heart attack have normal cholesterol profiles. So you really have to get underneath just a quote, unquote regular genetic, I'm sorry, cholesterol profile to see what your genetic makeup is, what are the size of each of those particles for the LDL, the low density lipoprotein, high density lipoprotein, etc. To find out exactly what type of cholesterol your body is producing and metabolizing and then treat that to prevent future heart attacks or strokes. That is extremely important and a program that we've had a lot of success with.

And so the standard medical establishment isn't doing that, are they?

No. And many of the insurance companies, who, by the way, do not work for you, are denying some of these tests and services. We do not have that issue.

The only thing I could say about the insurance companies is that they're working more for me than Obamacare will be, so.

Exactly. I will agree with that.

If you want to reduce the population, just add socialized health care to the mix.

There you go.

I could not agree more, that's for sure. It's amazing. I hurt my shoulder and I had to get an mri. So this was just last Friday and I was referred to an imaging clinic and I called them up and said, you know, when can I get in for an mri? And they asked me some questions about everything and about my shoulder. And they said, well, you can come in tonight if you like, at six o'. Clock. And I just couldn't believe it, how much I love capitalism. Because after hearing and reading and doing shows on these stories of healthcare in socialized countries, where you hear about waits from eight weeks to eight months for an mri. They said, ah, you can come in tonight.

It is amazing. I think there the statistic I read recently, there are more MRI machines in the greater Pittsburgh area than all of Canada.

Unbelievable. I don't know why we keep trying things that don't work, but we just got to learn our lesson. The hard Way, I guess.

Yeah.

But, you know, it raises an interesting question because you mentioned insurance, John. And what about insurance in the Cenegenics program? Does any of it qualify? Will participants be able to get some of this paid for by their insurance companies?

We do not participate with any insurance of any kind. However, we will give you a bill for our services that you've paid with your credit card. And a lot of our patients use that for their medical savings accounts or health savings account. They have a medical reimbursement account, et cetera. It will qualify for those tax deferred plans.

Okay, all right. But not for insurance. I mean, have you heard any stories about patients getting partial reimbursement or anything?

Yes, some of our patients ask especially for the labs and some of the insurances out there will reimburse the patients for portions of the lab that I order.

Okay, so back to the subject at hand. We gotta wrap up here, obviously, but did we talk about all four pillars?

Yes.

Okay, good. So we've covered that. What else would you like people to know? What else should I have asked?

The only thing that I want to emphasize to people is where you are in your life. You know, when you're not feeling right, when you. When you wish you had the body that you used to have. Come see us. Getting back to my own personal story. I was about 240 pounds. My waist was 38 and I was 36% body fat. That was when I was 47. So fast forward now. I'm 52. I'm almost 53. My waist is 31. I haven't been a 31 inch waist, Jason, since high school. I am 11% body fat and I weigh 195. It is amazing, the transformation. And remember when I asked you what gets worse in your life with exercise? Everything gets better. So sleep is better, my cognition is better. So I remember better. I remember patients names now all the time. Libido and sexual function is better. Energy level is better. So if you want that life back that you've worked so hard, hard for, come see us.

Fantastic. Good advice. Well, give out your website. Tell people where they can find you.

Www.cenegenics.com Fantastic.

Well, Dr. John Rush, thank you so much for joining us today. And to all the listeners, live long and prosper, as Mr. Spock would say.

Thank you very much, Jason.

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