Why Traditional Aging Tests Don’t Work (And What’s Better) | Alina Su

So your testing can actually tell if a person is sick?

Yeah, and that's actually why clinicians are being very interested into this test because we are working with a lot of VIP super clients and their doctors. So they really need to establish the confidence in front of their clients. There was one day a doctor has been calling us saying that, hey, I just got back the result of my client, but how did you guys know that she has this problem? So we were telling her that we don't know what exactly is happening to her liver, but we know that there's a lot of noise going on there. So if you want to do anything, you should start from the liver.

Welcome Back to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. You know I'm here to enhance your health and wellness and today I'm inviting onto my podcast Alina Su, who is an extraordinary young lady. And Alina, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. Very excited.

Oh sure. I'm very excited because we're going to talk about how to test a person's biological age. And I want to introduce you a little bit to the audience because you are a visionary CEO and co founder of Generation Lab, which is a biotech company specializing in aging science. But by establishing the golden measurement of system age and you've developed a next generation longevity therapeutics as well. And you co founded this company with Dr. Irena Kongboy who is an inventor of the rejuvenative plasma exchange which was based on 20 years of scientific research. Alina, let's talk about what you are getting yourself into these days.

Yeah, I mean, who doesn't want to live younger for longer, right? When we're talking about longevity, everyone is thinking about, oh actually I don't want to live forever. But the reason why they're saying it is because subconsciously they're thinking, when I'm growing old, I don't want to live like on the bed like in hospital forever. But it's actually scientifically very hard to keep you alive that way. When we say about longevity and keep you young, that means similar to like you are going to be look like yourself after 50 years old or 100 years old. Basically what we are doing is we are stopping time and stopping exactly where you're at at your peak level. And we shouldn't be just stopping this in lab. I was doing research in Harvard with George Church in his lab. There's so many cool stuff that we are doing in lab from Irena, which is my co founder. She invented plasma exchange 20 years ago where Brian Johnson and A lot of people are changing blood with like young blood boys. This is not as supposed to be done. Like science has already proven that the reason why it's working is not because of young blood. So let's push this a little bit further actually into your hand and make it more accessible so people can actually use that technology instead of just publishing paper or IPs. So, so that is my vision and why I got into myself into longevity. Like let's push this into your head so you have this epic tech that can actually stop aging.

So okay, so you're talking about first of all the plasma exchange. You're saying getting a person's young plasma is not really why plasma exchange is so helpful. I understand there are two ways of doing it. One is just replacing your blood volume with some albumin. The other one is actually to infuse another person, younger person. And like Brian Johnson's case, I think he got plasma from his 18 year old son. Correct?

Yes.

Yeah. So tell us what's the, what's the scientific basis for your statement?

Yeah, so the science really begins starting from 2002 where Irina Convoy and Mike Convoy discovered that parabiosis between young mice and old mice, like literally searching them together, making them blood exchange is able to be reversing old mouse biological age. So the old mouse is starting to be gaining more muscle, lower inflammation, they're running faster. They're having like from gray hair turning back to black. That is amazing. Right? And that's when starting to people are realizing that oh, is that because of the young blood that the old, old mouse is getting? But actually it's not the case. So in 2020, 2020, we published a paper that's a clinical trial called old plasma dilution reduce human biological age. Which means instead of searching two, two mouse together, we actually did a study that if you are not giving in any of the young plasma, just purely diluting the old blood with saline plus 5% of albumin, the can you still see the similar results? Because there's two ways of interpreting this result. One is dilution of the old blood is able to make you young. And another thing is young blood can make you live longer and turns out to be it's having a similar effect of the plasma exchange. Which means the core mechanism why it's working is actually the dilution of the old plasma which is able to be reducing all of the inflammatory factors like io4, io6, io8 in your body. The that's always chronically inflammating your body and you're never able to be getting it out. That's why it's suppressing all of the good stem cells in your body or good cells from regenerating, so lowering inflammatory factors and cell cytokines and also boosting the rejuvenation that is the impact of the plasma dilution. So that's when we realize that oh, it's not the young blood, it's working. It's actually the dilution of the old plasma. And there's a lot of things like this. As you see, science is having a very big gap between clinical application. Like therapeutic plasma exchange has already been approved for 20 years in treating disease. Like for example, after organ transplant, if you're having a immunorejection with other people's organ, TPE is the way how you remove all of the rejections and also all of the inflammation that's happening in your body. So similar to that after chemotherapy, if you're having cancer tpe, therapeutic plasma exchange is also a way to get rid of all of the cytokines that has accumulated in your body that you cannot getting rid of. But now we are seeing this study and this science is being even more further away. Like Brian Johnson is starting to be doing plasma exchange by holding his big bag of the plasma that he is removing out from his body. So here is a exciting moment that we are seeing. Science is being forefront of everyone else and there's innovators like these billionaires, they're willing to try and this is a safest way that we have been seeing. FDA has been approved to treating disease, but now can extend into longevity or even reversing biological age.

Hmm. Wow. So, so there's no. They didn't see any extra benefit by bringing in a young plasma.

So there is some of that, but it's not significant. So think about if you're having a very big junk in your body and you're throwing new fruits like fresh fruits into those junk does that making that a lot of junk. Being healthier or being more alive? No, it's actually making that fruit is like becoming rotten and odor faster. So it's not about what you're adding into it. You have to get rid of the, that stuff first so that your body is clean enough to able to be regenerating.

That's a great analogy. I have to use that. Yeah, like a, a pile of rotten fruit and you're throwing really nice, young plump fruit into it. Yeah. What's going to happen? Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you initial interest was in this form of therapy. Correct.

And.

And then somehow you got into testing to find out whether or not the therapy worked. Is that right?

Yes. And that's when we discovered that there's a lot of aging clocks. We are so excited because longevity treatment is having a very big hurdle that people doesn't feel a lot of change. Like, after people are doing plasma exchange, stem cell therapy, or eating supplements, when you ask them, how do you feel? Like, do you feel a lot of changes? Most of the people say, I don't feel anything. And is it working for me or is it not? Like, there's a lot of confusions and a lot of these snake oils around that people could not tell what's working and what's not. And we were very excited about the biological clocks that was out there back then. So we were like, okay, great, let's use biological clock in the lab to test what's working and what's not. Like, before versus after plasma exchange, can we actually see the changes? And on blood biomarkers, like what I've mentioned, the different inflammation markers or T cell, B cell ratio, we can see clearly there is a distinction. But when we're using clocks, we either don't see any difference or we actually see the opposite effect. So that's starting from when Irina actually reached out to a lot of her collaborator, who published a paper of the methylation clocks, which is using a linear model. She was asking them, saying that, hey, why is this not working? Like, we're seeing this literally on cellular level that things are changing, but why is this not, like, actually showing on the biological age clock? And they told her back, saying that, oh, you have to tell us which one is young and which one is old and how old are they so we can tell you what is their biological age.

Oh, my goodness.

And we started to think, wait a minute, why do we have to tell you how old is this person? For you to give me a result of how old is this person? Like, if you actually have a biological clock, like, Asian clock is supposed to be like a scale or a glucose monitor. Like, after I push it on, I should be able to see what is her glucose level directly by measuring what is my biological age or my biological noise. And what they are saying is, no, you have to tell us who is young and who is old. And we have to put that in a linear model to train, which is, first of all, aging itself is not linear. If you think about that, you're not getting one gray hair per day. So if you're using a mathematical model, to assume that aging is linear. Like young is this old is this. That process doesn't even exist. And that's when we published a paper on the front cover of Aging stating that first aging is not linear. When you're starting to aging for first acceleration happens at 25 years old and then you get into a plateau where you don't feel a lot of aging. And the second acceleration happens between 40 to 50, which is about mid fifth, mid 40, you're having another acceleration and then you're getting into another plateau. After you reach to mid 50, you're having another acceleration. So after this paper that has been published on the COVID of aging and then Stanford replicated our study saying that yes, all other than DNA methylation proteins is using the similar way that's showing that aging is not linear. So that's starting from like back in 2023, we realized that any of the clock that's out there is actually not able to tell you a very accurate way of how your body is changing. Like the biological age concept exists, but the technology was never there. Like they were giving you a prediction of the model based on a mathematical prediction instead of a what's happening in your body in a biological way. So it's a prediction model rather than a measurement model. Like you don't, you don't predict your glucose level or your weight. You just stand on your weight scale and it tells you a number. That's what a biological age should be telling you. But they were not able to be doing it. So we basically failed test every single clock that's out there stating that they're able to be tell your biological age.

Okay, so are you talking about all of the biological taste tests out there? So some of the more well known ones would be true age. From true diagnostic, there's dn, DNA, DNA age and then I think these are the two biggest right. For biological age testing.

I will use a quote from a doctor because we work with 100 different clinics right now in United States and we are the test that the doctor trust after they have been using different methylation tests like true diagnostic or different tests. The quote from a doctor is these are the tests that I've been using to before comparing like before versus after. But I'm seeing 10 to 20 years of the change just in a month. And this is apparently not correct because I know what's happening in biology, which is I do have the blood work of this patient and I'm doing side by side comparison. I don't understand why is this the result So I have to tell my patients that sorry, your results is not out yet or they ship, ship the sample to somewhere else. Sorry, we don't have your results because it doesn't make sense to them. And that's when they started to be struggling a lot and saying that. But this is the only test who is in the town right now. What else can we use to actually do things? So after we published this paper, a lot of clinicians starting to be reaching out to us, including researchers who is testing before versus after to test out efficacy of these rejuvenation. Either it's stem cell peptides, it's supplements, plasma exchange, you name it. So they were suffering before by using all of the clocks out there, but now they're using our test to, to having a very confident level of what is working and what is not and how much is it changing organ by organ.

So I've heard, I didn't do the test, but I've heard people who have done the test who actually, I mean these tests are not cheap. So there's somebody that was doing one in the morning and one in the evening and from the same person, right. And sent a sample to the lab and got drastically different biological ages. So to me that is the biggest blow to the test. You, you can't expect a person's biological age to change in a day. That made me really kind of stop recommending the test because not in my good conscience I can say, well, yeah, if you do this test and that can give you, you know, a fair estimate, then I, you know, then what is it? I can't, I can't really, I don't want to do it myself because I don't know what I'm getting. So why would a test like that able to create drastic results in a day?

So if you think about how they're creating a mathematical linear regression model, that basically means that you have to drop everything that's not a linear site. So it's about how they're picking the markers that everything has to be very alignment on a like literally one slope. Anything that's not on that slope is going to be dropped. And a lot of that is actually biological marker that's going to be fluctuate a lot, which is we're referring to as biological noise. So if we're purely using a mathematical model to predict based on your, based on your age, there's a lot of fluctuation that can happen because what you are doing is not directly impacting what is. The result is that it's Kind of similar to predicting the weather. The same model that you are using to predict in the weather can also predict what is your biological age if you are using a mathematical linear regression model. So that model can be used on a lot of different things. And if people are truly interested, should definitely check out our paper that's literally called failed test of DNA methylation clocks and development of a biological noise measurement based on epigenetic pressure. So instead of doing a prediction, which is having a lot of noise and a lot of arrows, you should really hone into measurement, like what's exactly happening and what is the exact concrete number of the noise, which is we are referring to as the entropy of aging, because as we are aging, remember, we are not aging in a linear way. It's accelerating plateau, accelerating plateau. And each different parts of the body is having a different acceleration rate as well. Like starting from 25, it's your skin, like your collagen starting, starting to be slowing down. Starting from 30, your muscle starts to lose. Starting from 35, it's your heart. 40, it's brain, and it's starting from your ovary. 45, it's eyes, liver, hormone, immune system, it's breaking down organ by organ. Instead of you are just having one single numbers that's representing what's your biological age. So it's really important for us to actually dig deep into what's currently causing you age rather than just say you're 35. So the question that's more important here that we need to ask is why are you 35 instead of 25? So that's why honing in into top aging factors, like what's causing you aging right now, is more important than just a number than, oh, I'm 18 or I'm 35. That doesn't really matter. What's really mattering is what's causing you aging, and what can you do about that? The next step is the more important part. And if your measurement is not correct, then your next step is not going to be correct. So this is the reason why we really want to hone into what is the truth and what is the true evidence that you can see according to what's causing you aging, and what is the next step that you can take according to this?

Hmm. Okay. So you're saying these biological noises, you think that's affecting the results that these other age companies are testing are, you know, how they're calculating.

So it's not the noise that they're using, it's the model that they're using. It's having a lot of fluctuation. So when you're using a linear model, even if you're having a slight adjustment, that's having a lot of huge changes on the output of the prediction. So compared to what they are doing, what we decided to do is we're not going to be looking at the linear regression model because first of all, it's not biology, it's false. What we are doing is we see what is the expression noise level. So what we discovered is that aging is very similar to entropy, which means in a younger state, you have a very tightly controlled gene expression, which is the noise is very low. Like when I say A, it outputs A. But as we are aging, the fluctuation of the noise, which is the randomness of the expression, starts to be expressing even more. Which means when I'm telling you A, the gene starts to express B or C or D, it's not getting the right code. So it's starting to be having bugs in your, in your gene expression. So that's what we are referring to as the biological noise. We test what is the noise level in your body and we also hone.

In your genes are starting to just shoot out random numbers, just not, not listening anymore.

That's called epigenetic noise. And it's quite different from what 23andMe is testing because what they're testing is what is your color, of your eyes, of your skin, where are you from? These are the code for yourself. It's the hardware that's never changing. Like this is you. It's never changing. The epigenetic is how your genes are expressing, which is, it's kind of like the software that's always changing according to what you are doing to yourself. What is your lifestyle, what are you taking as a supplements, what medicine are you taking? So all of these is going to be changing the expression of it. And that's what we are testing. That's why people are overall retesting two to four times per year to see how they're changing before and after and how their biological noise level is being fluctuated.

Okay, so if you can reduce the biological noise, then you're reducing kind of the, the, the, the side effects of aging.

Yeah, the arrows. Basically that's in your body.

Then you're allowing yourself to functioning at a higher level at a younger state.

Yes. Yes.

Okay, that's very interesting. So when was this discovered as a way of measure aging and this biological noise?

It was published on 2023 in September. And that was when we literally published that paper on the front cover, aging, saying that everyone else is not doing the right job because we basically fail test every single paper. And after that paper, there's another paper that we published on geoscience saying that this model, like the linear regression model, which is we are referring to as a clock model, they cannot differentiate human people who is having disease versus healthy. This is a very important point. Like if your biological age cannot tell you if you're sick or not sick, then what is the point of testing it? Like what is it actually showing? So that was when we realized that current biological clocks model cannot even tell you for people who have arthritis versus who does not have arthritis, they have exact same biological age. But that's supposed to be not be the case. Right. If you really have a way to tell who is healthy and who is not, what is the age of your body, there's supposed to be difference in disease versus non disease. And our test, which is the biological noise measurement, to see how arrow, like how many arrows are they expressing in your epigenetic. That is the only test that has been passed the double blinded trial, which is you don't have to tell us who is having disease and who is not. We can tell you who is having arthritis and who is not, who is having Alzheimer's disease and who is not, who is smoking and who is not. Like just don't tell us anything and we can tell you back.

Really? So your testing can actually tell if a person is sick?

Yeah, and that's actually why clinicians are being very interested into this test. Because we are working with a lot of VIP super clients and their doctors. So they really need to establish the confidence in like in front of their clients. Right. And some, there's. There was one day a doctor has been calling us saying that, hey, I just got back the result of my client. But how did you guys know that she has this problem? So we were telling her that we don't know what exactly is happening to her liver, but we know that there's a lot of noise going on there. So if you want to do anything, you should start from the liver. And she literally did another biopsy on like in the liver, another deeper test and they actually found something in there similar to that. Another doctor in Boulder was calling us saying that, hey, I'm quite sure I'm super young and I'm doing exercise every day, I'm a biohacker. But your test is saying that my gut is very old, but I'm pretty sure that like I'm doing a Very well. Like wellness treatments. I'm doing a lot of things on myself. I'm treating clients too. I start from myself. I'm pretty sure your test is wrong. And we're like, just do another test to dig deeper into what's happening in your gut. Like, do a specimen test, do anything about your gut specifically. And after a week, she was calling us saying that, oh my God, you don't know what I found out. Like, there, there is something actually going on in my gut. And starting from then, she started to posting us on Instagram saying that, hey, you guys should listen. Like, this is the one and really one that you should actually use because they can actually tell you what's happening in your body before the disease is happening.

So is that in your report? How. What the level of the noise is and whether or not it's an alarming state that you should look into?

Yeah. We divide the noise level into four levels. So one is reverse. Reverse means you're very good, like you're very young right now compared to where you're at. Second is good. Good means like you're at the good stage. Third is normal, which is you're currently at the like normal aging curve, which means, like, you don't have to worry about. The fourth is alarmed, which is more accelerated. If you see anything red on your report, you. You should really start from the red part of the body, because that's able to be telling you which part of your body is breaking down even faster compared to other parts, and that will be causing you aging even more. It's kind of like the dashboard of the car. If you're driving a car and you hear weird noise in your car, that doesn't mean your car is breaking. Like, you don't stop. You can still drive. But the dashboard is going to be lighting up saying that, hey, maybe you should check your engine or maybe you should check your brake or your tire. That is the function of this test to test all of the 460 markers in your body, like, as a portal and to tell you, hey, you should look into these part of the body if you really want to take care of your health.

Okay, so it does test all these different organs.

It does.

And how do we do that?

So that's a very good question. Right. Think about when we started out this test. We discovered that aging first is not linear, and second, each different systems of the body is aging in different ways. So when we talk about brain aging, then that is related to more APOE 4 things like Alzheimer's disease. Neurodegenerative disease. So all of these is related to the brain function. So all of these 460 markers, they're actually having subgroups of representation for each different functions in your body. Like these 15s are representing how your brain is aging. And, and one of them is the marker of APOE 4. And we are seeing how is that is being expressed. Like what is the noise level, is it being expressed? So that's how we can look into each different organ's function instead of just telling you that hey, you're certified as a general message. And according to that, we will give you an actionable item based on our current algorithm, based on all of the PubMed and data. Because we are really science based. So we want everything to be based on science. We actually have a score of each intervention, like vitamin C, omega 3, stem cell, are they actually going to be working for you or not? So how we scoring them is divided into two. Part one is what is the confidence score? Like how confident are we? How many clinical trials are they? How many people has been testing it? How strong is the causation effect that eating vitamin D is able to be improving your bone age? Another score is what is the side effect potentially like how many people have been seeing there is a side effect doing this treatment and seeing the result. So the final score is a combination of these two. And we will tell you if you're choosing supplement, you should choose vitamin D over Omega 3, you should choose NMN over vitamin D. Or if you're choosing treatments, you should choose stem cell over plasma exchange. Like if your inflammation is high, you should definitely choose plasma exchange. Or if you're doing exercise, you should choose yoga over weight training. Because what's causing you aging is your inflammation, not your muscle loss. So things like this, we actually give you an actionable item based on your aging profile. So that is the most important next step that we want to use this data to guide you what's next.

How do you know the side effects from a particular treatment?

We don't. So everything is aggregated from PubMed and the clinical trial that has been already published. So they will say what is the side effect of these treatments? And we just aggregate all of those data fit into our model and our model is generating a scoring system according to that.

Okay, so you're saying that you can recommend certain medications over others based on the testing results you get from for this person and, and then utilizing that combining with what's published.

So what is published is the core of how we are doing recommendation so everything that we are outputting is according to what has already been published out there. And of course you are going to be talking to a longevity coach or a longevity clinician to have medication recommendation. We don't directly recommend medication to you. Your longevity coach is going to be mapped with you to actually go through your report together. And they are the one who is deciding which medicine should you take. So that is on longevity clinician side. So that's why a lot of clinicians are working with us. There's more than 100 plus clinics that's currently using this test. And we actually send these clients who is taking the test to them saying, hey, you guys should, you guys should talk. Because we found there's a lot of people who wants to get into the space, who wants to start their longevity journey, but they don't know where to find good doctors. And we happen to work with a lot of doctors. So we're like, okay, why don't we just match them together? Because doctors are looking for patients and patients want good doctors. And you guys are already a warm lead. Like you are interested in health and you want to help more people. So let's just match you guys together and go through this report and start your actionable items and get started your longevity journey. So it's really more than a test, but actually a starting point of your longevity journey. You are going to have your own personal coach.

I see, so your company provides that?

Yeah, we do provide that.

Okay.

For matching of the clinician as well.

I see. Okay. So you're measuring the age of, or, or the, the noise level of different organs and then you kind of congregate, aggregate those into different systems. Right. So you have multiple systems. How many do you have now that you're measuring?

19. So starting from your brain, liver, muscle, reproductive health, heart, you name it, inflammation, tissue regeneration, metabolism. So it's different parts of your body that's actually controlling how you're aging. So we test all of the 19 functions and, and according to this, we will tell you which of these 19 organs are speeding faster than it normally does. And then we can give you a guidance of these are your top five aging factor. Like these are your early risk detection that you should really action on. That doesn't mean you have disease though. That means you're aging faster than you're supposed to be. And then we'll give you a personalized action plan to match you with a doctor to go through that together to evaluate what's working, what's not. And this is able to Be kick you started to get into longevity treatments. So before it was all sick care, like when you're going to the doctor, you want to cure disease. But now we are talking about health care, which means you want to be the owner of your health and you want to be taken control of extending your health span as much as possible. So that's when we're shifting from disease diagnostic to health risk diagnostic. So it's a completely two different version of what Grail is testing as cancer like pre detection versus what we are detecting as aging acceleration, aging speed detection. It's already two different category of the test that we are seeing being differently used by doctors.

Yeah. So. And as far as the different ages you gave, you provide a speed of aging and have you seen with your measure the recommended measures for people to take, have you seen great results as far as slowing down the aging pace?

Yeah, that's, that's a very, very important data point because a lot of longevity doctors use this to actually test before versus after. For example, we have been seeing stem cell clinic using this and there is a people who have done before versus after injecting stem cell. And we have been seeing 5.5 years of the reversal in his heart, in the urinary system and tissue regeneration. And also the speed of aging has been reversed as well. Similar to that for therapeutic plasma exchange. We have been seeing about eight years of the reversal also in each different organ systems of the body. That's why this is a very powerful tool to actually visualize the effect you don't feel anymore. You can actually visualize what has been changed in my body organ by organ and what is the speed of the aging that is changing as well. And this is very different than Function Health. So what function health is doing is they aggregate different tests together. That's clinical based lab tests. So you can get their tests in Quad Quest Diagnostic or LabCorp. It's exactly what correct Quest or LabCorp is doing, which is your blood markers of HbA1c or what's your B cell T cell level, what's your immune system or what is your vitamin D level? All of these is already clinically available. This is what we call it as sick care, which is a sick test. If anything is wrong with these, you really want to see your doctor like already. But if you're proactive about your health, our test is not in any of the Quest diagnostic or any of the lab that you are seeing out there. We have our own customized chip with Illumina with our own proprietary algorithm how to Analyze the aging speed organ by organ. And according to that we give you actionable item to tell you what is the best treatment supplement longevity intervention you should take according to your aging profile. So it's a very two different categories of the test that people always got get confused or mixed up. I just want to do a clarification.

Okay, yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah. When something. That's why when I was. I remember working in the ER for quite a number of years and we always check all these labs.

Yeah, exactly.

And I call it, what's it called CYA labs cover your ass. So because part it's meaningless unless I I told my patients, unless you're dying, unless something's really horribly wrong, it's not going to show me anything because nothing is going to show up there.

Exactly.

Yeah. But if something does show up, boy are you in trouble. So. So we want to prevent that 1 in 1,000, you know, chance that maybe something terrible is going wrong. But really most of the time it means nothing because it doesn't do anything for you. It does something for us. It protects us.

Exactly. That's 100% true. Like if anything shows up in these clinical based lab tests, that means like you are already at the border. Like dude, you should, you should really get our job.

Right? Yeah. So that's where medicine is moving to. Is that how can we get ahead of the game?

Yes.

Is that chasing our tails?

Yeah. So it's very exciting. Right. Because what we are seeing is almost 50% of the longevity clinics. They used to be aesthetic clinic. Like Kim Kardashian. She used to inject Botox on their face but now she's starting to be getting NAD plus stem cells. So a lot of things that we are changing or we are seeing as a trend of the industry is that people doesn't want to just look younger. They actually want to be younger and feel younger. They want to freeze their time off their body, not just their face. So this is what we are seeing. There's a huge trend and huge power that's overwhelming people that especially after Covid people realize that oh, health is the most important thing. I have to live on this earth and I really only have 30,000 day to being like living on this earth. Then what are you going to do? The best thing like what motivates me every day when I'm waking up is that okay, now I'm literally calculating my day like every single day. Now I have about 15,230 days because I'm excluding all of the sleeping time and possibility of getting sick. It's really getting me down to debt number. And I'm seeing that number every day saying that, okay, what can I do to leave something for this earth, like for this world before I'm actually like dying before I'm leaving. And the most thing that I think is important for me at least is health. Like I want more life to be healthier and able to be having the power, when they're deciding between life and death, they have the power to actually change something. So that is my why of doing the longevity and also that's my why of why I'm like waking up and just doing 20 hours per work. 20 hours work every day. Because I think this is important and I want more people to be healthier for a longer time.

Well, this is funny because you are very young. You're. Yeah, you're. You're 24 years old.

Yes, yes, yes, I am 24 years old.

Right. Very, very young person to be getting the game, which is remarkable. That, that, that's actually something that's important to you. Like what, what actually made this a mission for you?

Yeah. So it's interesting because I came from a entrepreneur family. My grandpa was an entrepreneur, my dad was entrepreneur. So I'm a third generation entrepreneur that's starting like creating something for the world. And my grandpa passed away very early around when he was 50 years old as a very successful entrepreneur by that time. And I've never seen my grandpa like never ever. Like he passed away before I came to the earth. But I still hear a lot of people talk about him to me saying that, oh, your grandpa was a great person, he helped so many people and he donate a lot of money to actually build the road for the village. And I'm like, that's, that's very nice. And in a very early days I recognized two things. One is that you don't live forever. Like every day is a countdown and you have a very short life. At least I have a very short life if I'm living only to 102nd is how people are going to be remembering you is how much impact are you able to be making on this world. It's not about yourself, it's not about how many money you're generating. It's really about how many people you've actually helped and how much impact have you been generated. And for me, the most important impact is I want people, every single life to be living a healthier and better life. Not suffering from disease, but actually able to be happy and healthy every day for a little bit longer of time. Not till 50s.

Wow, that's very interesting. Well, that's wonderful. Well, that's the legacy your grandfather left, you guess. He gave an example of how it's not forever.

It's not forever for sure. And it's interesting. I've been asking people what are they going to do if you have like 150 years of the life. I've been recently doing a lot of interview, asking people around and there's usually three categories of the questions and the audience might be fitting into one of these. The first category is after people are having children, they really want to have a longer time to be able to spend with their children or their family, to, to be able actually see them growing up, see them getting married and also seeing them just being with them like family time and being with their family, the people that they love together for a longer time is usually number one. And number two is people want to explore the boundary of humanity. Like my co founder Michael. His last company is a billion dollar unicorn company and his goal is do not die. Because he, he haven't ever, like, he haven't even left Earth. He wants to go to see the deepest universe, to see the black hole, to see what's outside of the Earth, like what's outside of the universe. He's like, there's so many things I really want to do that I didn't have time and I can't get enough of that. And the third is more like my co founder Irina Convoy. She is like, I just want enough time to accomplish my work, to finish up my work so I have enough time to leave something for this, for this world, for this Earth. She was like, I, I leave, I at least need 60 years of the time to accomplish what's happening in aging and how to solve this for entire humanity. So it's usually these three types. What type are you? Joy?

I'm probably the third type. I'm just, I just feel like I came onto this Earth to do things. Yeah, yeah. I, I just need to get, I need to get things done.

Yeah, that's me too.

That's you too?

Oh, I think that's, that's the motto.

I see a lot of similarities. We're talking about that. It's funny that we both, we both sense that. So I, I came, you came to this country early as well. I mean what you said when you were 15, right? I came to the country when I was 20 years old. So you know, having basically experience both cultures and, but having A very strong drive. So for me I had to like, like break, break my forehead to get to, to this country. I think for you maybe, maybe a little easier, but for me, yeah, it's still the same.

Yeah.

Once you get here. Yeah. You have to fight your way through. Yeah. So definitely. I, you know, I think human health, know, just human life, just life itself is so miraculous. I, I love animals as well. You know, I would love to do something in the animal space, but just life is such a miracle. And how can we just live a better life and suffer less? Because I always say there's plenty of sufferings to go around and there's no need to prolong it. Right. There's no need to, to allow it to fester if we have a way of helping it. Yeah. So, so don't worry about having suffering. It's, it just is, it's going to be there. But if we can do something to bring a little bit more joy and a little bit more enjoyment and to make people have more time to share with our loved ones. Right. To, to contribute. I mean, that's amazing. I always give the example of, of a good old doctor, you know, an 80 year old doctor that everybody loves, you know, that's, you know, puddling around and still seeing patients and everybody trusts him and wants him around, but knowing that he's not going to be around very much and maybe he's losing sharpness of his mind, but he's a great man. What if we can get that person to live another 20 or even 15 years longer, to have sharp mind, able body and be with his grandchildren and seeing his great grandchildren and really giving more of his wisdom, his love to the world. I mean that, that elevates all of us.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the point of longevity. It's not about how long you're living, it's about how long can you healthily live. We're not talking about living to 150 years old, we're talking about living to 120 years old or 50 years old. Well, you can play golf, you can swim, you can run, you can do whatever you want still as the body that you are having right now, or even younger, like in your 20s, 30s, just keep that body as long as possible is what we mean by longevity and biohacking.

Yeah. Amazing. So you developed this tool to measure progress or measure issues to be alarmed about so people can actually really take care of problems before it gets bad. And. But your goal sounds like it's quite ambitious that you want to. Yes, you Want to do something that is on large scale that can help reverse aging in some way. And you've developed a tool to help you measure that and to be able to demonstrate to the world, correct?

Yes. Because if you can't measure it, you can solve it. So you have to start from measurement. That's why it's the first product that we have launched. But the more exciting thing, what Generation Lab is doing is that we believe this is the generation that will never age. And how we are solving that is by developing aging therapeutics that can literally froze your aging. Like, just freeze. You're not going to age unless you choose to. And that therapeutics needs a lot of data and a lot of evidence to actually discover what is going to be that drug. Led. There is a very strong lead that's already in our pipeline, but we can't even develop that if we cannot measure aging. So this is a fundamental. If we want to really pursue the entire industry to the forefront. And Dr. Irina Komboy and Michael literally is in Congress today talking about how can we push the longevity industry forward by pushing the regulation. Because aging is not a disease. You can't ask a aging medicine to actually solve a disease which is already being generated. So it's two different concepts from sick care versus health care. So they're literally meeting with the Congress and Congresswomen talking about what is the best way to regulate this industry and how can we push this longevity medicine to be quicker, faster to market? So everyone can just inject similar to like, GLP1. But now GLP1 is curing your, like, weight loss or prevent diabetes from happening. But at the end of the day, what we are aiming, like, in two to three years is we're going to be having a medicine that you can inject and that can stop your time.

Mm. Wow. Yeah, I love that. Finally, now I'm understanding why your lab is called Generation Lab. Because it's a little bit strange. It was like Generations Labs. Generation. What do you mean, generation? So now it all makes sense. So I saw you guys at a360 conference, and of course, there's a lot of movers and shakers there. So you guys obviously are, you know, are providing a very, very interesting perspective for all the members there. Yeah. And for me to see an alternative to something that I've gotten a little frustrated with and have stopped recommending to my patients, it's really. Yeah, really wonderful. And now knowing just a greater vision that you guys have is not just you want to offer a better, better aging test no. Is that you're aiming. Yeah. Your eyes are on much, much bigger goals and that's really awesome. That makes me really happy that I'm in this generation.

The accuracy is very important for us. Like if we're just selling tests, if it's a business company that's only selling tests, I wouldn't be caring about what is the accuracy, what is the science behind it and how repeatable it is. The test. It is. But because that we are using this test to collect the data that we need to develop for therapeutics and that's why we have very high standard in accuracy, repeatability, sensitivity. What is the F1 score and what is the confidence level that this test actually works?

Yeah. That's amazing. So do people have to go to a doctor to get this test or can they just get it from your laboratory?

Yeah, they can directly order it through online. So it's very simple. And Dr. Joy does have a promo code for you guys and you can just directly order it. It's a very cool technology that you can collect the blood literally at your home and Dr. Joy can share more about the experience. How pain free and ease of use is the collection.

Right at the conference. So I did get it tested. Right. So you guys have a blood collection mechanism which is very easy or you can go to a doctor's office and they can just draw the blood for you. So either way you get a small amount of blood and. And then. Yeah, and then you get your result back. Understand you have two versions of the interpretation. Right. And why is it that you have two versions? One for the doctor, one for the patient?

Yeah, for the doctors it's more comprehensive because we will include the recommendation for the drugs as well that you can consider. But for the patients, we don't want them to see before they're meeting with a doctor. So we really want the doctor still be the final line of saying yes to everything. So that is giving like the doctors more decision making process to actually having the ability to recommend things that's more based on medicine instead of supplements. And yeah, it's a very easy to use test that you can literally use that device kind of similar to CGM attached to your arm, but it's way pain free compared to cgm. And click pressing the red button and it's starting to automatically drawing pain free. Three minutes and that's it. And you just ship out the blood.

Okay. So the patient. So I'll put in the show note where to get it and then the promo code. Dr. Joy. So people when People get the lab test done. If they want to get a doctor's version. What. What should they do?

They will just meet with you.

Okay, that's one way. Okay, so look for a doctor that's. That's connected with you. That's.

That have match the clinicians.

Okay. Yeah. Amazing. Looking forward to following some of the recommendations that you guys have suggested. So the, I mean, it looks pretty simple. I mean, it's not like extravagant, exotic things that you guys were recommending. Is a pretty. Yeah, it's fairly. Yeah.

Very actionable place.

But. Yes, but, but then people, you're. You're seeing that when people implement these, like, for example, mine, simple Omega 3. Right. It was like, okay, everybody, you know, there should be some form omega 3. Probably I'm not taking enough. But when you have people follow your items, action items, and they actually see an improvement.

Yeah. They choose to do. At the end of the day, like, we can recommend millions of things to you, like according to your aging profile, but you might choose only one to two according to that. For example, if you're taking 20 supplements at once, and we recommend these three as the priority, then you might shift from 20 into those three. Like only take these three tablets if it's really working for you. So that is some of the example of using data to guide your action instead of just fully, just randomly doing things that you think it's actually able to be helping you because Instagram ads tell you to do so.

Yeah. Okay. The last question I have to ask you is because you mentioned that you want to make it easy for people to freeze their age. One therapy you talked about is the plasmapheresis, which, which is. It sounds, you know, I've seen the science and it sounds pretty incredible. I'm definitely looking into bringing that into my clinic. The other ones, what you mentioned, well, you've seen some things work very well, like stem cells, but you, you guys are also trying to develop something, right, to reverse age. Like what. What is it? Are you willing to disclose?

I can disclose very minimally. We are turning what used to be therapeutic plasma exchange, which is plasmapheresis, into a shot so you don't have to go through the entire way of sitting there for an hour and a half getting your blood being drawn out, being excited.

Maybe I shouldn't bother bringing that into the clinic. Just wait for your shot.

Going through clinical trial by the end of June. So it's going to be going through clinical trial.

Interesting. So you're saying that you have something that can go into the body and Just get rid of all those rotten fruit.

Yes. And it's proprietary, so I would just stop.

Okay. All right. Very suspenseful. Okay. All right. Alina, this has been really fun. Very, very interesting. You're doing phenomenal work and what a great story. I'm sure it's giving a lot of people a lot of hope. And also people who are frustrated with not being able to not feeling they could trust the aging test. Now they have something that they can really measure what is going on their body. So thank you for the work and good luck with that secret sauce that you're making.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Joy. It's always a pleasure to speaking with you and excited to see how is the future of this generation is going to be stopping aging.

I know, Alina, you know, you and I are just going to be chatting for the next 100, 200 years looking the same.

Oh, yeah.

All right. Well, I hope that this is the same for everybody. You know, like I always say, I'm beginning to see that aging is a choice. So whether or not you age is not like, oh, you know, in the old times, yes, everybody ages, but not anymore. So you can make that decision whether or not you want to go with the older crowd or the new way of living a life. So. Well, thank you everybody for listening. Thank you so much, Alina. You are a delight to have on this show.

Thank you, Dr. Joy, and thanks for everyone listening.

Okay, bye, everybody.

Bye.