The Silent Inflammation Loop That's Making You Age Faster | Dave Watumull

What's the biggest longevity myth that you wish people would stop believing?

That there's a miracle cure, some type of hack or drug or supplement that's going to make you live to 200 or 150 or 120, whatever it may be. I think it's not sexy, it's not cool. It's all the basics like you, you know, alluded to. It's good sleep and it's eating well and being active and being socially connected and supplementing if you need based on, you know, deficiencies or things that can optimize your health. All of these things are the basics, They're not super cool, but it's hard to actually, you know, just develop and maintain the habit of that, which is what you need. But if you do all those things, then I think you can optimize your lifespan and healthspan.

Dave Watermill, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Oh, thank you. So nice to be here.

It was such a pleasant surprise finding you. And we're talking about our ethnic backgrounds. My mom, who's from Denmark, she's had rheumatoid arthritis for as long as I can remember. She's the one that introduced me to astaxanthin.

Oh wow.

Yeah, in her search of finding things from all parts of the world that could have been supportive for her. So I feel like this is dedicated to her, especially now that we know of our Indian and Danish backgrounds together.

Exactly. Wow, what a connection.

Yeah. So this podcast is all about becoming rooted in yourself, in your health and your happiness. And what I believe we're all catching on to and remembering is our body's inner intelligence to heal itself. And the fact that we can merge ancient wisdom with modern-day medicine together. It's that integration. So to kick things off, I'd love to, to know what are 2 or 3 things that help you feel really rooted in yourself every day?

I think, um, just waking up and taking a moment to breathe and, and, um, be mindful and trying not to become overwhelmed by, you know, being inundated by emails and texts and, and the world's, you know, hitting you. And, and so just trying to be present in where you are in that moment and then move forward throughout the day with intention and trying to be present in the moments so that you can be the most successful self throughout the day. And taking time to just reflect on time with your loved ones and family and pets and your love for them and your purpose in life and then just going forward like that. And then with that, not trying to get lost in everything, but staying active and making healthy decisions that ultimately are going to benefit you and allow you to feel better on an ongoing basis.

Love it. Connection, movement, time for yourself. The reason why I ask this question is I really just want to affirm to myself and everyone listening, everyone who sits in that chair, when we think about optimizing yourself, those 3 things are always free. I think maybe one or two people have mentioned some sort of biohack that might be expensive, but outside of that, it's like the core foundations that we need to feel our best, right? Yeah. On the flip side, having worked in this industry and this using this product to really understand kind of what happens on the flip side of feeling rooted, do you notice when you drift and you feel uprooted in your life? And what are the things that cause you to feel uprooted?

I'll say, yeah, say get up and happen to check the phone, there's a bunch of emails, and then rather than, you know, maybe hopping in the shower and, and, um, you know, maybe working out or going outside and, and, um, you know, uh, being mindful or, uh, just relaxing, you know, and then before getting into the day, uh, if you just start reacting to things and then get caught up and before you know it, it's midday and, and, you know, still sitting there and, and, you know, haven't really gotten ready for the day at all and haven't eaten and hadn't anything to drink and any water, any fluids. And then before you know it, you're, you have a headache and you're kind of anxious. And so, you can definitely drift like that. Or if maybe you have a daily routine of being active or taking supplements or other practices that are helpful for just going to bed at a good time and waking up, if those things just fall out of rhythm, you just stop going out to work out or go to the gym, or forget to take whatever key supplements that are part of your foundational routine or start drifting to bed later and then you just fall out of that rhythm. And then before you know it, you're wondering why you're dragging or, you know, not as fresh mentally or physically, or maybe you're getting more irritable or your wife tells you, oh, you know, like you're a little bit different right now, you know? And so, you know, it's, I think sometimes you don't even realize that, you know, that has a toll. And, but if you get back, in rhythm, then, then, um, you know, it goes much better.

I think I love that falling out of rhythm. It's almost like, um, and this is one of the best feedbacks that I get with my clients. They wish that I was there with them first thing in the morning. We all need someone first thing in the morning. Like, just like, don't go the other route you described. What happens looking at your screen is going to just bring a spiral effect of—

so tempting though, right? You're like, oh, let me just check real quick, make sure.

Yeah, it's the worst. Yeah, we need to be greater advocates. Does living in Hawaii help with that?

For sure. Yeah. I mean, looking out, we have a view of the ocean and love that. And so that sense of space, I'm just like you here with this beautiful view. I mean, that being part of nature and connected is a big deal. And I think that definitely helps to be present in the world and admire its beauty and all of that, for sure.

Couldn't agree more. All right. There's a lot that I want to talk to you about today, but let's hop into some rapid-fire questions quickly, and then we'll do a deeper dive. All right. So what's the biggest longevity myth that you wish people would stop believing?

That there's a miracle cure, you know, some type of hack or drug or supplement that's gonna make you live to 200 or 150 or 120, whatever it may be. I think it's, you know, it's not sexy, it's not cool, but it's all the basics like you, you know, alluded to. It's good sleep and it's, you know, eating well and being active and being socially connected. You know, supplementing if you need based on deficiencies or things that can optimize your health. All of these things are the basics. They're not super cool, but it's hard to actually, you know, just develop and maintain the habit of that, which is what you need. But if you do all those things, then I think you can optimize your lifespan and healthspan.

I love it. All the boring and non-sexy things will probably move the needle the most.

That's what's cool.

That's what's cool. We're going to make that cool. One thing that people can do today to support their cellular health that that costs nothing.

Everything we just said.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Getting a good night of sleep, I think, is a big thing. Allows you to make better decisions, go through the day, you know, eating well, being active. I think if you are well rested, then a lot of things follow from that.

Yeah, so be boring and not sexy. Yeah. What surprised you most when you discovered astaxanthin and the fact that it could extend your lifespan?

Yeah, so this goes back to the late '90s. I was in high school, and as a summer job, I started working at a company with a group of scientists that had a cool technology to grow a particular type of microalgae that turns out produces astaxanthin. And the ponds where the algae was grown would look green, you know, like, and with the algae, it's a green algae. But when the sunlight hit the algae, it would turn bright red because it was producing astaxanthin internally as a defense mechanism against the UV light. From the sun. And so that was just really cool to see, just the fact that it was being produced, you know, in nature to protect them. And so working there in the ponds on a daily basis in Kona, in the lava fields where the Ironman track athletes train, you know, that it was scorching hot and, but it was the perfect conditions to grow the algae. And then learning from the scientists there that, Okay, this is actually what makes salmon pink and lobsters, crab, shrimp, gives them their red, orange, pink coloration. But it's so much more than just the pigment. It actually is critical to their health and vitality. And at the time, there was less than 200 peer-reviewed papers, no human clinical studies, but there was intriguing hints at astaxanthin's antioxidant, anti-inflammatory activity. And so that was just really inspiring. And so that was kind of the start of the thread of, okay, let's pursue this. And understand further how it works and its potential applications and pharmaceutical and nutraceutical uses. And so that was really what opened our eyes to it.

Nature is fascinating. What a gift growing up with that. My gosh. Okay. We're going to deep dive into all of that. That's the purpose of today. A few more. Overrated or underrated? Antioxidant supplements for aging.

It depends because not all antioxidants are the same. A lot of people like to group them all as one in one bucket. But as we'll talk about today, they're very different. So with the right antioxidant, it is like we'll talk about with astaxanthin is definitely underrated, I think, and not as well known as it should be. But other antioxidants may be overrated or other compounds in the space may be overrated and have a lot of hype around them. So I think it's nuance, as is the case for many things.

Great answer. What's one health metric that people should track but Almost no one does.

Well, inflammation is something that is measured with, say, things like hs-CRP. It's not as prevalent, say, as lipids and other things that have been very common for many years. And so I think measuring inflammatory biomarkers, oxidative stress biomarkers, which are becoming more accessible, you know, would be really important to measure.

Brilliant. I'm going to add on, if you have a doctor that says, ah, you're young, you're healthy, it's fine, push to look for as much information as you can, right?

Yeah, because we're dealing with processes at the cellular level that are taking place over decades, and so you don't want to wait until something happens and you're trying to fix something. It's easier to maintain health and be proactive.

You got it. All right, if you could just take one supplement for longevity, what I'm smiling, I know. What would it be and why?

Well, it would be astaxanthin, given that it benefits lifespan in multiple models. It benefits healthspan. So you're not just living longer, but hopefully living better throughout those years. Exceptional safety. And really, as we're talking about, it really addresses the root causes of aging and health decline in terms of oxidative stress and inflammation. So Not to say that this is the miracle, you know, molecule or drug or supplement. There are many other things that are also important, but this is something that is a foundational nutrient molecule that, that, as we'll talk about, is just has so many benefits that I think it'd be hard to pass this one up.

Yeah, I'm with you. You know, just researching prior to having you on, and even, I kid you not, since I became a nutritionist over 15 years ago, astaxanthin is the one thing that my mother will send me the most information on or articles on, or, you know, whenever there's something written about it because she's just so excited to learn more.

Yeah.

So let's start with what you mentioned, inflammation, oxidative stress. These are concepts that most people are catching onto, but I don't think that people are really associating how that relates to the way that you're aging, waking up feeling foggy or achy, kind of just associating that with, oh, we're getting older. Yeah, this is what it is. Do you want to tell us maybe what oxidative stress is or what's happening at the cellular level when we age?

Yeah, so oxidative stress can be caused from a variety of sources. For instance, exposure to sunlight, the UV light penetrating the skin, you know, can sensitize certain molecules in your skin that absorb that energy and then react with oxygen and create a reactive oxygen species that can then damage other components of your cells, you know, lipids and proteins and DNA. Or that same UV light can go in and create other types of free radicals that can also be very damaging and again can help to break down those critical components of your cells. It's akin to, you know, your house is built of wood and metal and things like that, and if those things are attacked, you know, by fire or rain or other things, I mean, that's what's happening. They're getting broken down by exposure to, you know, the elements. Internally, we're producing energy constantly, you know, at the mitochondrial level. And that's a process that utilizes oxygen. And as a byproduct of that, almost like an energy, you know, factory producing energy, you're going to have some pollution, some byproducts. And so some of the oxygen associated with that process can become free radicals or reactive oxygen species that in turn damage cellular components. And so whether it's a byproduct of energy production or it's exposure to sunlight or the environment or based on your immune response. And so if you're fighting off an infection or a wound, your immune system will actually create reactive oxygen species or free radicals to go and help to kill off the invaders internally, you know, and then rebuild, you know, as needed. So there's a lot of sources for these reactive oxygen species or free radicals, which are scientifically— there's some slight differences, but all, you know, not good at the cellular level for the most part if they get out of control. But your body has endogenous systems, antioxidant systems that help to keep the reactive oxygen species in check. But over time, with aging or with lifestyle, you know, deficits, your ability to maintain that balance and that homeostasis in your cells declines. And then with that, you have damages to proteins which are critical for certain functions in your cells, or damages to the lipids in your membranes which, you know, protect, you know, or enclose the entire cell and kind of are critical in the whole cellular function of things passing in and out of the cells. The mitochondria where the energy is produced have it, has its own, you know, inner and outer membranes that are comprised of lipids. The nucleus which houses your DNA, which is so critical for everything, also has its own membrane and which is comprised of lipids. If those lipids become oxidized, the membrane integrity is compromised and the cell no longer functions as it should. Things get through that shouldn't or cascades of Pathways of cellular functions no longer work as they should. And so things like, people may have heard of autophagy or mitophagy, which is cleaning up of the old cellular waste products and junk, kind of cleaning house and recycling those things, that declines. Or other types, you start developing maybe senescent cells that are secreting inflammatory bad actors and are damaging, you know, other tissue, other cells and tissues. So oxidative stress is when those reactive oxygen species are no longer in check, your cells are no longer functioning properly, and it can trigger an inflammatory immune response on a chronic basis that is kind of like the fire department coming in. And if you have a fire, you put out the fire and maybe rebuild, but you don't want the fire department at your house all the time, always thinking there's a fire when there isn't a fire and still blasting with water or tearing down walls. And that's what's happening when you have a chronic inflammatory response and it's basically wreaking havoc on your cells and your tissues. And it just manifests itself in different ways, whether it's in your brain or your heart or your joints. And so you want to mitigate that. You want to slow that process down, which is happening, smoldering, you know, at our cellular level, whether we know it or not, for the most part, for decades. And if— but if we can minimize that, then we can help to offset some of the declines in health and aging because aging is really a breakdown of, you know, being able to produce energy efficiently at mitochondrial level. When that slows down, maybe your brain fog or mental clarity, you know, decline or increased brain fog and mental clarity declines when your energy in your brain cells is not functioning, you know, as well as it could, things like that. So that's why it's so important to, you know, try to safely address oxidative stress and inflammation on a regular basis.

So good, and those are really great analogies. Often when I end up working with someone, it's gotten to the point already of acute inflammation. So they're doing those labs where, you know, we see the inflammatory markers coming up elevated, and we're almost like trying to source back, trying to find whatever that root cause is. But for so many people, it gets harder and harder, right? And I say that to say, if you're listening to this and if you're suffering with any type of symptom that your body's been sending you for a while, your body's communicating with you, right? This is kind of like the instigation of inflammation within. And with that said, so understanding that, understanding we wanna get to the root cause, which obviously is something that's trending, I think a lot of it has to do with unlearning, like unlearning that this has to be our reality, unlearning that we get to a certain age and oxidative stress increases and mitochondrial function decreases, right? What if it was just a matter of energy that we could increase? And when we look at healing and health through a lens like that, well, then we look at the assaults of the modern-day world, right? And what around us in our environment is fueling the stress and inflammation, because then it's a different ballgame, right? Then we look at like the environment that we're living in or that our cells are living in instead of what the protocol is and everything that we need to add on.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because I feel like health and wellness today has become just so overcomplicated with the things that we need to be doing. But, you know, even our conversation up until now, it's really about the foundations that our body needs, right? And I think that the UV kind of free radical damage aspect with the light that's around us and the fact that you could witness nature providing its environment with something that was so protective, like, I think the intelligence is really there to show us already what we should be doing.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's so Astaxanthin is part of the carotenoid family, you know, which people may have heard of beta-carotene or lycopene or lutein or zeaxanthin. They're all in the same family. And this family of molecules or compounds was created, you know, as part of kind of co-evolved with photosynthesis to protect plants and algae, you know, from environmental stresses. And so the whole family of these carotenoids are pigments. They absorb light. And so in the case of astaxanthin, it absorbs absorbs the green light and reflects the red light. That's why it's a red pigment. Lutein and zeaxanthin are more orange color, but they absorb the blue light. And so they actually absorb in the macula of your eye and absorb the blue light that gets through that can damage the eye. So it's a really cool family of molecules that nature came up with. And in the case of astaxanthin, it's later in the evolutionary tree in terms of carotenoids. It was kind of like tinkered with in nature and kind of optimized and ultimately arrived at what is often referred to as the king of carotenoids with astaxanthin because of its molecular structure. It has certain features that to the untrained eye, you may look at beta-carotene and astaxanthin and they look very similar. They have a long backbone and some ring groups on the end of the molecule. But astaxanthin has some functional groups called hydroxyl and ketone groups that have oxygen in them. And that gives the molecule polarity, which means that when you're in the membranes of the cell, the membranes are comprised of phospholipids. And so you have a phosphate head and fatty acid lipid tails. The heads are hydrophilic, they love the water. The tails are hydrophobic, they fear the water. And so the cell is an aqueous environment internally and externally. And so they, the phospholipids orientate where the heads are on the inner and outer side against the kind of water area. And then the tails are kind of the fatty interior portion of the membrane. So you have this membrane that just naturally, you know, aligns like this. And so around every cell and around every mitochondria and around every nucleus, you have the mitochondria, you have the lipid bilayer membranes. And based on astaxanthin structure, it perfectly spans that membrane. And given its polar head groups on its rings, it locks into those phosphate heads of the phospholipids, and then the backbone perfectly integrates with the lipids of the membrane. So it perfectly spans and anchors across your cellular membranes, whereas like beta-carotene doesn't have those oxygenated groups. So it gets into the membrane because it's fat soluble, but just kind of bounces around the membrane can disrupt the lipids in your membrane, which those lipids are there for both the structure but also signaling of things, sensing insulin comes to your cell and sends a signal to your cell to process glucose. And if your membranes are not functioning properly, your cells aren't going to function properly. And so astaxanthin, based on nature kind of tinkering with it and evolving and optimizing, it perfectly spans that membrane and can both stabilize it but protect those lipids from being oxidized. Because if they are oxidized, again, to go back to analogy, if you had a forest with trees and those are the lipids in the membrane and fire is started by, you know, a free radical or reactive oxygen species, the fire just rips through that forest. And so basically these Free radicals are, say, oxygen molecules that are missing an electron, and oxygen loves electrons. It's like, you know, it wants to steal an electron. And so it's stealing an electron from a lipid in that membrane, you know, a tree in the forest. And then now that lipid or that tree is on fire and it's like, I need, I need an electron to pick up where, you know, what was stolen from me. And then it grabs it from its neighbor and it's this domino effect where all the lipids, you know, start becoming oxidized and basically your membranes are on fire or rusting, you know, kind of whatever analogy you'd like. Astaxanthin is kind of like a fire block that just gets in there, anchors within that forest and just stops it. It can donate an electron to, you know, a free radical and stop it in its tracks. And then astaxanthin can sit there and because of its big structure, it can absorb that without being reactive on its own. It can distribute that loss of charge across its molecule and then vitamin C can come across and give it an electron to get back to normal. Or in the case of another type of reactive oxygen species called singlet oxygen, which is where, what mentioned like with the UV light hitting say, you know, cells in your, in your skin, for example, you can have an oxygen that actually isn't missing an electron but has absorbed this energy and, and is vibrating, almost like turning up the volume too much and it's vibrating. That can damage other components of your cells. But astaxanthin can actually interact with that singlet oxygen, absorb the energy, and the astaxanthin molecule will actually vibrate and dissipate the heat safely. And then that free radical free radical has been quenched or that, that reactive oxygen species has been quenched and is no longer damaging. So astaxanthin can basically anchor across the membrane, handle these free radicals inside and outside the membrane, prevent the fire in its tracks, and then not become reactive on its own and kind of just sit there, wait to be recharged by vitamin C, or in the case of, you know, a particular type of reactive oxygen species, just kind of vibrate out the energy. And so it's this amazing, you know, feature of nature. Like, how do you come up with this and design this molecule that on top of that gets to not just the membrane of the outer layer of the cell but to the mitochondrial membrane, to the nuclear membrane, and is distributed throughout your whole body? You know, so it gets to your heart, gets to your brain, gets to your liver, gets to all these tissues and organs, gets past the blood-brain barrier, which is a hard thing to do for other molecules, and then gets into the cells in all these locations and does this critical task of preventing the wildfire from spreading, which when that happens can trigger all types of damage to the components of your cells and disrupt all the cellular functioning to just function normally, create energy, you know, from the food you eat and everything, clean up, you know, the cells. And so just the normal ordinary process of cellular function is something that it helps to maintain and kind of restore that balance. And nature came up with this. And if we went into a lab and we're like, okay, we're at a, you know, some pharma company, let's develop a drug to do this. I don't think you could come up with something that does this better. I mean, this is perfectly designed by nature to do this exact thing.

Incredible. And to really understand the intelligence behind biology, I think it's wild that, you know, it took me becoming a nutritionist even to take a course like that, right? Some of us took, what, grade 11? Yeah, chemistry and biology to understand this, but we really understand the mechanics behind it. And an additional layer that I want to bring up. So there's two parts of this. One, no oxygen being available from things like beta-carotene, stuff like that. Let's just say for the listener who feels like they're eating really, really well in today's world, would you state— I mean, something that you talk about is inflammation, right? Would you say that the result of our modern day living the way that we do, even having access to healthy diet, would prevent them from this oxygenation and putting out free radical damage within the body?

I think if someone had a perfectly optimized life in terms of if they live somewhere with zero pollution, they got perfect sleep, they had no stress, they had perfect social connections, they were active, they were blessed with the right genetics, you know, they had amazing diets and access to food, all of these things, you know, and they didn't have any kind of deficiencies in any nutrients or anything, any of these things, I think that they would certainly have the best chance to live a long, healthy life without needing any extra help. But just the body will ultimately break down over time, you know, and so oxidative stress and inflammation will occur. But again, even if you have an infection, you know, you have an immune response, or in the case of COVID people have long COVID, and so that People may, you know, kind of think about like the cytokine storm that was talked about during the COVID days where basically that's your inflammatory response is just, you know, kind of going into overdrive and trying to battle off, you know, the infection. But then maybe afterwards it doesn't turn off fully and then you have this ongoing inflammatory state. So again, you could be doing everything right, happen to be exposed to some type of pathogen, virus, bacteria, your body responds and then maybe doesn't fully, you know, resolve. Or you're injured, you have some type of wound, and again, you know, that kind of creates a cascade of events that, you know, doesn't fully resolve. So there's lots of things that could cause you to, you know, have developed some oxidative stress or chronic inflammation. And inflammation and aging are interrelated. Inflammation drives aging. When you have chronic inflammation, it degrades these systems that ultimately lead to, to aging in terms of, you know, all the critical, like cellular cleanup and energy production, all those things can decline and become less efficient if you have ongoing inflammation. Because again, you think about if you had fire crews here all day, every day, it's, it's going to drive you nuts because, you know, sirens are blaring and jackhammers, jackhammers, all these things. You're, you're not going to think as well and function as well. And so it disrupts normal processes. And if that's happening throughout life, it'll cause a decline, you know, in health and advanced aging. So, so again, I mean, I think in the perfect scenario, someone probably could get away with no supplementation or anything. But for the rest of us that live in the real world with some, you know, daily psychological stress or, you know, not always getting perfect sleep or not always having, you know, perfect exercise or diet, I mean, it's, it's, you know, something where most people, and especially if you measure your biomarkers, will find potentially some oxidative stress or inflammation as they age.

Yeah, thank you for answering that. I feel like if diet and movement and stress management were the greatest drivers for health, which they are, there's so much more. And I think we really have to pull back and take more of a global look at what's happening. The quality of your digestion, the environmental toxins that you are exposed to every single day since you arrived, right? The accumulation from all of that. Also like disruption from, circadian rhythm and being on our screens all the time and constantly being on the go depending on where you live and maybe not getting the best access to high-quality food, right? We know that the quality of our food from a nutrient standpoint is shifting.

Soils.

Soil, yeah, exactly. Everything is shifting so drastically. So I think that nature originally provided us with all of those things, but now we've just done so much. So all that to say, you might be doing a lot of really, really good things, but pull back even more to see what other sources sources within your life could be causing you inflammation. And the fact that, you know, I say this to a lot of the, the women that are listening, for many of us, we get to our mid-40s and we wake up and it feels like we have a completely different body, like overnight.

Yeah.

And, um, working as a practitioner, I, I look at that saying, well, what if I was doing more to balance my system up until now?

Yeah. And say with women that are aging and potentially starting or going through menopause and things like that, estrogen levels dropping and the antioxidant ability, estrogen can act as an antioxidant. If that is declining, then you can have increased oxidative stress and say in the brain and the hypothalamus, which is responsible for regulating body temperature. And so, hot flashes can be impacted by oxidative stress. In the hypothalamus. And so with astaxanthin getting to the brain, getting into the tissues, helping to reduce oxidative stress, potentially could see benefits there. But also for reproductive health, and, you know, the ovaries are very metabolically active and you have mitochondrial DNA in the eggs, and that's something that's important to protect. And again, looking to nature, in the case of salmon, you know, salmon swim upstream to reproduce, and as part of that journey, their muscles are wasting away, and astaxanthin is part of their flesh and helping to protect their muscles. But ultimately, when they lay their eggs, the astaxanthin is passed on to their eggs. And that's why salmon eggs are red is because of the astaxanthin. And it's protecting the eggs from the UV light in the shallow waters where the eggs are laid. And then also it helps in the development of the offspring. So it's something that helps with potentially reproductive health and then as women age as well, not to mention cognitive benefits, skin health benefits. So, you know, just like the algae use the astaxanthin to protect against damage from the sunlight, that's what we can also benefit from in terms of damage to the DNA in our skin cells. There's human studies showing increased moisture content, elasticity, reductions in fine lines and wrinkles with astaxanthin used either orally and/or topically. So it's something that could benefit, you know, women as well as men for all these types of variety of benefits. Heart health, number one killer, it gets into your heart and helps to maintain a healthy heart. There's all types of studies that we could dive into in terms of kind of non-clinical and clinical research that we've done and others have done that's really intriguing.

Incredible. Yeah. We'll keep getting into the science. And maybe let's use this as an opportunity to hover on the longevity piece. So what I'm hearing you say is we're optimizing the environment internally, but what media and a lot of practitioners are saying, well, let's throw things at the wall to optimize on the outside to see what takes, right? And I think intuitively you just know we wanna optimize from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. So when we think about this noise that exists in longevity space, peptides that are being prescribed, NAD, rapamycin, what else is there? Analytics as well. The market's getting really, really loud. Would you say that a lot of this is expensive hype from your lens and the science that you've looked at? Are you kind of pulling back and saying like, let's just hold on all of this, come back into the system?

Yeah.

What's your stance?

I think there's a lot of interesting research going on. There's lots of things that have promise. Say rapamycin, take that, it's demonstrated increases in lifespan in all types of studies. Including the gold standard NIH Interventions Testing Program that we were also part of with astaxanthin. So, so there is an example of an agent that definitely looks to be a potential lifespan-enhancing agent, but at the same time, it has tolerability issues, side effects, and it's not something that people would necessarily want to be taking every day. And that's why people are looking at analogs and derivatives of rapamycin or different dosing regimens. So Things like that where, you know, maybe it extends your lifespan, but is it something that really improves your life, you know, throughout? I mean, so it's not just living longer, it's also living better. And so healthspan is what's really important. And so other things may have hype around them based on other, you know, preclinical or nonclinical studies or test tube studies. But then ultimately, if they go to a mammalian lifespan model, they fail. And so again, in that NIH program that I referenced called the Interventions Testing Program, this is something that's conducted at the National Institute on Aging, which is one of the institutes at the NIH. And it's this program that's conducted by a few principal investigators at 3 different institutions, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, and a research institution in Maine. And they have been running this program for 20 years. And they have specially bred mice that are more relevant for studying human aging than your typical inbred laboratory mice that are used for lots of specific disease models that may work to look at a particular disease but don't replicate something more complicated like aging because aging is a much more complex process. And so, if you're trying to look at, do I have an impact on aging versus this very specific target related to a disease, you need to have a different type of model. And while you would want to look at lifespan in humans, it would take decades to actually do a real human lifespan study. And so while there are cohorts of populations that get followed for years and for various types of things, like in Hawaii, there was the Honolulu Heart Program where thousands of Japanese American men were followed from like the '50s or '60s for decades. And they looked at why did they come into the doctor's office? Why were they sick? Why did they die? And ultimately, they discovered that those that lived the longest, the healthiest, had a particular form of the FOXO3 gene, which is something that we showed that astaxanthin helps to increase the activation of. And so that was really cool. And so you have those types of studies, but if you want to look at interventions like rapamycin or astaxanthin or NAD or precursors to that, it would take decades. And so that's why the mice are used to give you an indication in a mammalian model is this something that actually extends lifespan? And so other agents like resveratrol or even NR, which is an NAD precursor, metformin, green tea, omega-3s, you know, were tested in this ITP program, the Interventions Testing Program at the NIH, did not extend lifespan. Only a handful of agents in the 20 years have extended— only 10 agents have extended lifespan. At all statistically significantly. Of those, only 5 had extended lifespan like more than 10%, and that includes rapamycin, but also includes astaxanthin, which we supplied to the program based on them selecting us based on our preliminary research in the area and others' research in the area with astaxanthin. And so that type of model helps to validate something that actually has utility in aging because it it shows a statistically significant extension of lifespan in this model where you're conducting research for several years, the whole lifespan of the mice at 3 different institutions. So you're basically running the study in parallel but in triplicate at 3 different places with virtually identical conditions. And it has to work at all the places with all the mice, you know, and, and it was proven to extend lifespan there. And with astaxanthin, we have exceptional safety. And benefits for cardiovascular and cognitive and skin and eye and joint and all these different areas of health. And that builds on prior research showing that astaxanthin extends lifespan in worms and fruit flies and yeast, which are model organisms for basic research. And so it's been replicated across different species, replicated at this very rigorous mammalian model. And on top of that, all the other benefits it in human and non-human studies makes, you know, for a very compelling story as a longevity agent. With that said, there are other molecules that are very interesting, but I don't think there's anything that has demonstrated the same type of rigor with NIH ITP-validated efficacy on top of everything else that we have. So that is what really sets this apart. Even though there's lots of other things that have interesting impacts on various, say, you know, there's pathways in your cells involved in aging. And so like rapamycin hits mTOR, the mammalian target of rapamycin. And, you know, there are other important pathways like the sirtuins and FOXO3, like I mentioned, and PGC-1 alpha, which is involved in like mitogenesis, like creating new mitochondria and all these longevity-related pathways, AMPK, which helps to— is involved with all of these as well. Astaxanthin and other molecules have impacts on these. So there are other agents that, you know, have potential, but in terms of the science that truly backs it up as a longevity agent from a lifespan and healthspan and safety standpoint, astaxanthin is very unique.

I so appreciate you sharing the studies, and I think that's important because right now, you know, in a world where there are a lot of dangling carrots, I really hope listeners, especially feel empowered to do the research themselves, you know, to become empowered enough to kind of be the CEO of their own health, as we say. Can you maybe help them understand, understand the power of an NIH government-funded test versus what else is out there?

Yeah, because you could have a private-funded study that you set up, and not to say that that's bad. I mean, that's how a lot of research is done, but in this In this particular study, you can't buy your way into it. You can't set up the study in a way that favors you to get the results you want. You have to be selected based on their peer review process. They look at your preliminary data and they, they say, okay, this looks promising. This deserves a spot in our cohort this year because they only test a few agents each year, like 5 different molecules each year. And then it takes several years and then the next year they start a new cohort and they select another few agents or maybe do a follow-up on something that had promise. So it's hard to get into the study. And then ultimately, they're conducting it. And then we supply the material and we give them guidance or advice on maybe you want to dose at this level and prepare the chow in this way with our material. But otherwise, they're in full control of it. And so it's independent. And ultimately, they tell us the results. And so this, again, it's been been running for 20 years. It's highly rigorous with the number of subjects or mice in the program. Like, if you just did a study in 5 mice versus hundreds or thousands of mice, it's very different in terms of the statistics. And so, you have the numbers to support strong stats, and then you have multiple sites, and then you have the independence of that. So, that is the benefits of that type of program. And then otherwise, a lot of academic research is either funded by government contracts or grants or private support or collaborations with industry or others. And so in our past, for example, we have done collaborations with various academic institutions where we work with an investigator there that has a particular model that investigates something related to liver or heart health or brain health. And we come up with a study together, we give them the material, and then they run it through their study, and then we publish the results together. So that's often how research is also conducted. But sometimes, say, in the pharma industry or others, people will conduct their own clinical trials. They'll go to a private laboratory. And again, not to say that that research is bad, it's just it could potentially be more biased where you're designing the study yourself and funding yourself and conducting it yourself. So there is that. And so, in those cases, you just have to look at the publication, look at the quality of the study. Was it designed well? Does it seem to have bias removed to the extent possible? And then you try to make a determination on if the study is valid and not cherry-pick one study when everything else says one thing because there can be people out there, people in the health and wellness space on podcasts or on social media that maybe, you know, talk about things that appear to be against the grain, but they're claiming that, oh, this is actually, you know, the way to be healthier, live longer. But they may cherry-pick something that is one study that is not consistent with the totality of the evidence, you know, and, or they're taking some nuance and spinning it in the wrong way. And so that's something that's important to keep in mind is like, try to look at more than one study, you know, look at, okay, is this consistent with other studies? In the area, what are other scientists and respected people in this space saying about it and try to get a sense of if this is— is there consensus or not, which, again, science can be wrong. And people used to think the world was flat. And so it's not to say that you have to just go with the consensus, but just try to weigh all that and take the time to go through the details and make an informed decision.

Absolutely. There's a lot of events. Therapies out there and modalities and products and treatments and stuff like that that could seem very appealing. And I'm so, again, like merging the two worlds on this podcast. Every founder that I have on speaking to a specific supplement is someone like you. I so appreciate sharing the data and the science behind it because it's transparency. That, that is transparency to me. Unfortunately, I think that the supplement market is becoming another form of CPG. People are understanding the fact that it's a trillion-dollar industry and everybody wants in. Right? So do your research and find people who are supporting the brand where the consensus is the same about the science from what we have until now. I'll always say if it's backed by nature, I think that gives you the greatest cue. So let's dive into a little bit more of the science around astaxanthin, the 25 years of research that you've got on this, the anti-age benefits that you claim. What would you say then is the kind of most unique molecular aspect to it and its structure for being able to support human physiology?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the, the most unique thing is its structure that allows it to function as an antioxidant, but different than all other antioxidants because not all antioxidants get to the same places in the cell. Or act in the same way when they get to those locations. So take for example vitamin E or beta-carotene, they're fat-soluble, they can get into the membranes of your cells, but they don't anchor across the membrane. They can just get into the membrane and disrupt the membrane and are not as stable as astaxanthin after reacting with a free radical or reactive oxygen species. Or vitamin C is water-soluble, so it doesn't get into membranes And so, astaxanthin, given that it perfectly spans the membrane and kind of hits the outside, you know, kind of edges of membrane plus runs through the entire core of the membrane, allows it to interface with the water environment, any radicals there, but also the lipid environment in the membrane. So, it can kind of deal with free radicals at any location inside or outside the membrane. And like I said, the fact that it gets to all of the membranes throughout the cell, so it gets to the mitochondria, which is a highly privileged location, the site of energy production, the source of a lot of the free radicals that can cause oxidative stress, gets to the nucleus and protects the DNA from potential oxidative damage, and again gets distributed throughout the entire body. That makes it very unique to have, you know, complete systemic distribution localization, all of your critical membranes, perfect orientation and spanning across the membranes, locking in, protecting the integrity and structure of the membranes, and preventing the oxidation of those membranes, which in turn reduces the cascades of inflammatory events and other, you know, functions and processes in the cells that, you know, need to function normally but can get out of whack. And so if we're looking at, you know, kind of like Eastern and Western, or, you know, traditional and modern medicine, a lot of current drugs or anti-inflammatories try to go in downstream. Like, doctor says, "Oh, okay, you have some inflammatory condition. Let me give you this drug which targets this downstream inflammatory bad actor." Say, like in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, TNF-alpha is a target of most rheumatoid arthritis drugs and are some of the biggest drugs in the world because they go after this one inflammatory bad actor. But you don't want to chronically inhibit something in the immune system because it's there for a reason. It's just getting— it's kind of misbehaving. But most drugs go in and just knock something out, you know, bind to something, target one thing, and it's, it's not functioning properly, so let's just take it out. And maybe now you feel better, your joints feel better, but now your immune system is compromised, and now you're more prone to infection. You're not going to heal as well. So Sometimes, you know, when people are on various anti-inflammatory medications, you can be, you know, at risk of deadly infections. So things like that, or in the case of like what people think of as safe anti-inflammatories, you know, NSAIDs like ibuprofen, aspirin, etc., they think, okay, these are kind of safe and I'll just take it. But, you know, those could have damaging effects on your heart and your liver and your stomach. And so again, they're not dealing with the root cause. They're dealing with the effect of the immune system being activated for the wrong reason, being activated pathologically rather than a healthy response to a wound or an infection. And so rather than just plugging the hole downstream, let's go back and figure out why is this activated in the first place, go back to the root cause of it and address why it's being activated. And that's where astaxanthin works, is upstream before the inflammatory pathways are activated in a disease state. But if you need your immune system to turn on to heal a wound, like for instance, we did studies where, you know, you can reduce clotting in the arteries, which can be driven by kind of an inflamed state in the arteries. And we in multiple models showed reductions of clots, but not by thinning the blood. We actually were still able to have normal wound healing, like if the tongue or tail in these animal models were kind of cut and were bleeding, they could heal, they could clot normally like a normal clotting wound healing response. That's still there. Or in nature, like with salmon or other animals, the risk of infection would be reduced if, you know, consuming astaxanthin versus the other way, which if they were on other, you know, traditional pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories, you know, their risk of infection would probably go up because their immune system would be compromised.

Absolutely. Talk to us a little bit about dosing then. The studies that you've done, we're talking about AX3. We haven't even said the name yet. I'll hold it up now just so people can see it. So in terms of dosing, can you tell us a little bit around why 12 milligrams 2 times a day is significant, as well as, let's just say listeners are hearing you talk about a lot of foods from, from nature, can we focus on a diet that's rich in astaxanthin?

Yeah, so salmon is probably the best dietary source of astaxanthin. You can get it in shrimp and lobster and crab. Even flamingos are pink because of astaxanthin. But salmon has the highest concentrations in terms of normal human diet. And wild sockeye salmon have the highest amounts of astaxanthin within the salmon family, but you'd have to eat close to a pound of sockeye salmon to get the same 12 milligrams from a capsule. And if you're eating Atlantic salmon, say farm salmon, you'd have to eat probably like 4 pounds of that to get 12 milligrams. And just by the way, farm-raised salmon, a lot of people think that they are dyed pink or red. Yeah, they are fed astaxanthin as part of their diet. So they are dyed pink or red, but again, by the natural pigment that makes them pink or red in the wild anyway.

Right.

Again, there's other reasons based on their living conditions and and all of that, that people may choose a wild versus farmed, et cetera. But they are pink for the same reason as they are in nature, but they don't have as much as, say, a sockeye salmon, which is bright deep red and has a lot of astaxanthin in there, but also has more of a fishier, gamier type of taste. And some people don't prefer that as much. So in any case, that's a lot of salmon to consume, which Salmon is very healthy, omega-3s as well as astaxanthin. So if people want to increase their intake of salmon, that's fantastic. But to get 12 milligrams is challenging. And to get even more than that, 24 milligrams or higher, is just not feasible at all.

So you have to worry about metals too, right? I don't want— I had a client last year eating 3 cans of wild salmon a week and her mercury just—

yeah. So you have to look at the source and does it have heavy metal content? And I think salmon has less than other types of fish. But yeah, I mean, you have to keep all that in mind. And, you know, wild salmon, while not being, you know, farm-raised, you know, can also have, you know, pathogens or other things. And so you have to make sure that, you know, it's clean and safe. So, you know, so the supplement does help you get a good dose of astaxanthin. And when we first launched, so I was part of a company back in the late '90s that launched one of the first two astaxanthin dietary supplements on the market. Back in the '99, 2000 timeframe. It was literally us and the company across the street from us, which both were growing microalgae like spirulina and Haematococcus pluvialis, which is the type of algae that produces astaxanthin. And we both had ponds with paddle wheels that push the water around and circulates the water so the algae can then be exposed to the sunlight. And so at that time, based on the manufacturing outputs and just not really knowing much, the doses were, say like 4 milligrams. But with advances in manufacturing, people realizing, oh, higher doses can have more benefits, the dosing worked its way up to 12 milligrams over the ensuing years. Over the next decade, we actually realized that growing the microalgae had challenges in terms of batch-to-batch consistency, exposure to the elements. Like there in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, you have the vog from the volcano nearby, you have the airplanes flying over with the airport nearby, birds and rodents, and so it's not as clean as something that's enclosed. And there are some groups like in Iceland and Washington State and other locations in the world that now have fully enclosed indoor facilities to grow the algae, which while not exposed to the beautiful Hawaiian sunlight and air, are not prone to the same contamination risks. So there's pros and cons, but nevertheless, you're still growing algae and trying to extract the astaxanthin from that and you're only getting 5, 10, you know, maybe even 15 or 20% astaxanthin in the extract at that point. You still have the other algal lipids and proteins and related carotenoids that are not the astaxanthin target active molecule. And so we were actually interested in, in taking this through the pharmaceutical pathway because we thought, okay, if doctors could prescribe this for disease indications, this could really have a large impact on human health. And rather than instead of aspirin being a typical anti-inflammatory drug that has side effects, this could be like a safe anti-inflammatory for cardiovascular disorders or cognitive or joint, etc. And so we pursued that for a decade and made a lot of progress on manufacturing in the laboratory, pharmaceutical-style manufacturing, but of this natural molecule, the exact structure.

Okay.

With high bioavailability and rigorous testing around its mechanism of action and its safety and its various benefits. And we actually ran into resistance from the pharma industry and from VCs that were interested in potentially funding because we were not traditional pharma. We were traditional in terms of traditional medicine, you know, kind of Eastern in that sense where we were targeting the root causes of some of these things, but we didn't have, say, one target like TNF-alpha, like a typical drug would have. And so that was something that made it harder to actually obtain the resources or partnerships to take it all the way through the drug process. Like, we almost got close to doing a deal with a major pharma company and then some internal politics at the company after months of diligence and studies, you know, kind of killed the deal. But if that had gone through, we would probably have an astaxanthin drug on the market a decade ago. And so it's a shame because so many people could have been benefited with that, with huge doctor acceptance, you know, hopefully. But therefore we said, okay, let's bring the learnings of the pharmaceutical-like manufacturing of the molecule the science that has advanced because over the years, only 200 peer-reviewed papers, no human studies when we started. Now, fast forward, there's 4,000 peer-reviewed papers, like 100 human clinical studies so that the science has really blown up and we've contributed to that but it's really been the whole international research community. So, with all that, we said, "Okay, if we can't bring it through as a pharmaceutical now, the world, you know, the pharma world isn't ready for us now, let's bring it through the supplement space." with the rigor and the purity and the manufacturing bioavailability. So, so that's why we brought that back to the market, um, in the mid-2010s, 2016, um, launched a predecessor to Age 3. It was more focused on doctor outreach and selling in retail, physical brick-and-mortar stores. But then with the pandemic, we decided, okay, let's try to reach people, uh, you know, digitally, um, you know, through podcasts and things to spread the word that way. And that was why H3 was born. But we've been doing it this whole time. And so with the dosing, it had gone up to 12 milligrams. And so that was kind of the standard dose and it kind of just stuck. There's no specific study that proved that 12 milligrams is the dose. That just kind of was an artifact of going from 4 milligrams to then people taking, oh, 3, 4 milligram capsules is good. And then, oh, now I can have one 12 milligram capsule. That's great. And ultimately, that's kind of what stuck in the industry of being the standard kind of higher-end dose in various astaxanthin products. But when we look at things like that NIH study for lifespan and we look at, if you just try to translate, okay, this amount of milligrams in the chow that the mice ate, okay, they're this big, if humans are this big, what would that be in terms of dosing for us? And then you have some scaling factors that you can apply. You come up with a dose that is much higher than you actually need in humans just because humans absorb carotenoids like astaxanthin much better than rodents or other animals. And so we're lucky in that case, 'cause otherwise we have to be eating spoonfuls of it. So based on our human studies that we've conducted with our product, we compared the blood levels of astaxanthin absorbed to what the mice had in their blood in terms of astaxanthin from the chow that they ate for the NIH longevity study. And the, the best extrapolation or, or kind of translation we get is in that range of 12 to 24 milligrams. So 1 to 2 capsules a day. And so that's why we recommend that dosing. And so that's what people would be getting in terms of, of a regular baseline dose. But we've also conducted a human clinical study in cardiovascular subjects. That were real-world patients that had either past cardiovascular events like heart attacks or strokes, or they had significant risk factors for heart disease. They were already on the standard of care, taking statins or blood pressure meds or whatever their normal doctor was giving them. And we just said, can we help you on top of that if we give you our supplement? And this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. So we had a placebo group. Where they had 8 placebo capsules. We had a low-dose group where they had 8 capsules, but 2 were active and 6 were basically, you know, non-active. And so that was 24 milligrams of active. Then we had the high-dose group with 8 all active capsules. And so we had 0, 24, and 96 milligrams. And that was 12 weeks of dosing. And these are people that probably, you know, don't have optimal diets and lifestyles and, you know, are on medications. Already have risk factors or prior events of cardiovascular disease. And we demonstrated reductions in LDL cholesterol, importantly in oxidized LDL. So we measured oxidized LDL, which is a special marker of the oxidation of your LDL, which are prone to oxidation, is much worse than just the LDL number itself. And so we saw reductions there, also reductions in blood pressure. And in a subgroup of the patients that had diabetes, we saw reductions in triglycerides and in hs-CRP, the measure of systemic inflammation.

Despite their lifestyle.

Despite their lifestyle. And, and that was on top of normal medications. You know, if they, if they were naive, we potentially could have had more benefits. And so, but this was already with their symptoms or their conditions managed to the extent possible with, you know, with normal pharmaceutical care. So, so that was a, a really, you know, cool study to conduct and see the results from. And but we got better results at the 96 milligrams than at the 24 milligrams.

Okay.

So this is to show that there is a range of dosing that can have benefits. 1 or 2 capsules a day is probably going to give you that baseline support for health and longevity consistent with the NIH study to the best of our ability to extrapolate from, from animals to humans. But based on our human data, we even saw increased benefits at 8 capsules a day, which is you know, higher than the recommended normal dose just because it's, it's a lot to take every day. Right. But it's to show that there are potentially increased benefits and people can actually kind of titrate their dose based on their unique condition. And so they could look at their biomarkers, they could look at endurance and recovery or energy levels, brain fog, you know, based on what is important to them or things that they're hoping to improve. They can look for those benefits. You want to give yourself, you know, at least 1 or 2 months, if not ideally 3 months, for, you know, tissue levels to saturate with the astaxanthin. Give your system time to respond to it and then adjust from there. And maybe say, oh, maybe I could go up or go down with my dose, and then, and then compare again after a bit of time, and then adjust and try to, you know, find your optimal dose for you. The fortunate thing is The safety of astaxanthin has been demonstrated in very rigorous, you know, studies in animals, in humans, with our dietary exposure for millennia. Although in terms of higher levels that we're getting in supplement form, that is supported by very robust studies, very high dose, very long term, the types of studies that one would typically need to do to even do like pharmaceutical human clinical trials, which you normally have a whole tox program where you you look at, you know, carcinogenicity and mutagenicity and all these types of things, astaxanthin was tested very rigorously and had no side effects of clinical significance to humans. So this is so unique that it has this safety profile where in the animals you basically could not create a side effect. You just, you were limited by how much you could just physically feed them or administer them. It wasn't like, oh, here's the dose that kills them, you know, which is the normal way. And so that's not what happened with astaxanthin. And again, I think it's because it helps to just promote normal function of your cells and restore homeostasis. It's not turning something on or off all the time. And so if something's in balance, it's in balance. And, and if you have more of it, it's just probably sitting there and not needing to do a whole lot. But you know, if something does start to trigger like oxidative stress, inflammation, then it can go into action. And so with that safety window, that gives you the flexibility to find a dose that works for you. And that's why we say, okay, pay attention to how you feel, you know, your cognition, you know, your memory, your information processing, your attention, your brain fog, your energy levels, your sleep, you know, your joint and muscle function. There's data there related to joint and muscle function, your biomarkers related to your lipids. You can look at your LDL, ideally your oxidized LDL if you can get that measured. Your hs-CRP, other measures of inflammation, oxidative stress, those are all important, you know, to, to measure and to keep track of.

Dave, you just mentioned like every issue that probably 90% of our listeners. Yeah.

And I'll just mention that, I know it's a lot, but like even just from like a performance standpoint, like endurance, you know, endurance is a matter of, you know, efficiently processing oxygen and creating energy and not, shifting over into producing lactic acid, you know, when, when you're working out. And there's data showing that, for instance, in young cyclists that are cycling at like 75% of their VO2 max, so a very intense cycling, they just cycle until they're exhausted. And in the placebo group, they were able to cycle for over an hour, like an hour and 12 minutes before they were just exhausted. And then in the group that were dosed with acid with astaxanthin and a dose that I think if I recall was maybe like 16 milligrams. So kind of in the range that we're talking about here, they were able to cycle like 120, like, like an hour and 25 minutes rather than an hour and 12 minutes. And so it was like a 10% increase, something like that, where you had a meaningful increase in output and in endurance. And they also measured things like damage to your muscle cells. And so your muscle cells, when they get damaged, can leak out things. And, and when you can then measure those in the blood, you, you, you can determine that there's been damage to your muscles. And in the astaxanthin group, they had reduced damage, less of the things that would leak out of the muscle cells that are involved in energy production. So, so there's even benefits there for athletic applications in addition to general health and, and longevity.

Well, life is feeling like an endurance marathon these days.

Yeah.

So I think for all of us, it applies. I'm curious, because you've been in this space for so long, what is the most consistent feedback that you get from a consumer and what they feel after being on AX3 for a while?

It would be the joint and muscle function and comfort. That's because that's really what people feel a lot of. And then energy levels and, You know, sleep, mental clarity, those things. But, you know, if someone has joint discomfort and they, they, they realize that, oh, I'm, I'm feeling better and, and I'm, you know, able to be more mobile and active, that, that's something that people really notice. Like a cardiovascular, you know, biomarker benefit, you probably don't feel even though you can measure it. So that, that's probably the, the most consistent thing. But again, it's a matter of finding the right dose that is, is suitable for that particular person.

Yeah, I think a lot of people, when they catch on to a good thing, they want to go for a hero dose, thinking that it's going to support them. I don't think the body responds that way. I think the body responds to things that are gradually taken over time that it can really accept.

Yeah.

Um, I would say for a lot of my clients, they often miss the afternoon dose. So could they take 2 capsules in the morning then?

Yeah, so, um, it's just whatever is most convenient, uh, for one's routine. Astaxanthin has a 24-hour half-life, which means that Every 24 hours, half of it would come out of your system. And when you're developing a drug from a pharmaceutical standpoint, something has a 24-hour half-life that supports once-daily dosing. And so that's sufficient. And if you're taking it on a regular basis, you start to develop kind of a saturation and kind of levels that are consistent. And so you're not just like losing all of it every day and then you have to dose back up, but you retain some, you know, half is still in your system, you dose again.

Right.

And then it kind of builds up to a nice steady state. So yeah, once daily dosing does work, it's just a matter of the most important thing is taking it with a meal that contains some healthy fats because it is a fat-soluble molecule. With that said, most astaxanthin products on the market are derived from the microalgae, which is where our roots are. And we initially grew the microalgae as well. Those are extracts from the algae that are suspended in some type of oil. In the past, it used to be things like safflower oil. And then now, you know, there are some products with like coconut oil or olive oil. So healthier oil options. But it's a, you know, a non-water-soluble, you know, formulation. And so in our case, we actually have the laboratory-produced highly pure version, but we have a special formulation that makes it water dispersible. And so in the aqueous fluid, of your gut, it helps to disperse the astaxanthin in your gut fluid. And then if you have the fats in from your meal, then astaxanthin hitches a ride with the, with those fats, basically gets processed along with the fats into your body. And then it goes to your liver and it gets packaged with your lipoproteins. So with LDL and HDL, it actually gets incorporated into them and protects them from oxidation. 'Cause they themselves, like LDL, can become oxidized and is really bad from a from a heart health standpoint, can lead to foam cells and plaque buildup and plaque rupture, which is going to lead to cardiovascular events. So it protects those lipoproteins as it uses them to transport throughout the body and get to your various tissues and organs. And so, but going back to the dosing, in our case, that's why the fats are so important is that astaxanthin is brought into body with the fats, even though we have a water dispersible formulation that kind of disperses it nicely in the gut. Then once dispersed, you want the fats in there to help bring it in, into the body.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I love that one of your claims is around the bioavailability of it, which I think is really, really key. Um, can you talk to us a little bit around digestion then also? Any studies on the power of digestion? You know, 100% of the people that I work with have digestive issues.

Yeah, so gut health definitely, you know, is subject to oxidative stress and inflammation, and astaxanthin can benefit that. So if the cellular lining of your gut is healthy, you know, you can properly absorb nutrients and not bring through things that shouldn't be, like in a leaky gut syndrome type of situation. Like, basically what's happening there is your, you know, your cells are you know, malfunctioning in your, in your guts. And, and so if you can have a reduction of the oxidative stress and inflammation in your gut, which astaxanthin, you know, would be present there as it's being absorbed, that, that can definitely help with your, with your gut health. So with that said, taking it with a meal, sometimes if someone takes on an empty stomach, it won't be absorbed as well. And so someone potentially could have stomach GI issues. I mean, we don't hear that very often, but potentially if someone is taking on empty stomach, I could foresee that you could have that. Or the real issue is the bioavailability would be decreased if you are not taking it with a fatty meal, and you may just pass it through your system, literally into the toilet, and color your stool red like, like you would with beets. So one would actually see like, oh, I did not absorb my dose. And so, but normally if you're taking it with a meal, you shouldn't have any stool discoloration. So it should help promote the, the absorption with the fatty meal and hopefully help your gut health along the way.

Beautiful. I can imagine they're liver protective as well when we're talking about oxidative stress.

Oh yeah. So it actually accumulates at a very high level in the liver. That's the first stop basically after it gets into the body. And the liver is very prone to oxidative stress and inflammation. And so whether you have like nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, which is NASH, or NAFLD, like fatty liver disease. You know, this is where your liver tissue is becoming oxidized and inflamed and fibrotic and no longer functioning as well as it should. And there's data with astaxanthin showing that it mitigates that liver damage. And we've done studies looking at, you know, things that can damage the liver and reducing that damage. So, so yeah, it definitely can help promote liver function as well as after it leaves the liver and goes to your heart and your brain, it can help those organs as well.

You know, big pharma, talking about missing out, God forbid we look at the body as this systemic system instead of fixing symptoms in their singular form, right? We've talked about pretty much every single aspect of the body, which I just think is, is profound. I do know we were talking a little bit before we started recording I am going to have one listener or one viewer talk to me about the ingredients.

Yes.

So can we go through just the starches and specifically the glucose syrup and the addition of those? Obviously, this ties into the bioavailability.

Yes. So the astaxanthin, if we were to not formulate it at all, it would not be absorbed at all. And we've done studies and, and measured in the blood nothing coming through. You know, if we then formulate it or in nature with the microalgae, astaxanthin is attached to some fatty acids that helps to give it some bioavailability. On the pharmaceutical side, we've actually attached amino acids to the molecule that makes the molecule water dispersible. And then in the body, those amino acids get clipped off and still delivers the natural astaxanthin molecule. But in the case of, of our supplement form here where we produce the natural astaxanthin molecule, not attached to any fatty acids or amino acids, but just the active ingredient itself, that is not bioavailable. And so this formulation we have is basically a starchy matrix, basically a little starchy cloud that uses some food starch that is kind of like an instant oats, kind of like easily water dispersible type of starch. And with that, you can imagine rather than the astaxanthin being densely packed like a, like a brick. It's dispersed in this nice cloud, and then the glucose syrup in there just holds it together, so it keeps it intact. It's like the glue that, that holds it together. And when it's dispersed in that starchy matrix, it's now water dispersible in the gut and then becomes really highly absorbed. And so those ingredients are highly critical for the absorption, and the amounts that are in there are milligram amounts that are negligible compared to dietary consumption. So if one was eating something that actually had, you know, food starch or sugar, you'd be consuming grams of, of that type of ingredient. In this case, for example, with the glucose syrup, we have less than a tenth of half a gram. And if you were, you know, buying a drink at the store and you saw something that had 1 gram of sugar, you'd be like, oh, that's actually pretty low compared to something that has, you know, 10 or 20 grams. Or if you saw something that actually had, you know, no sugar, because from an FDA standpoint, if you have something that is less than half a gram, you technically could say sugar-free because that's kind of the threshold from the FDA for even what's considered, you know, an amount of sugar to even, you know, report on a label. We have less than a tenth of that, you know, in this. And so this is something that would be sugar-free, but technically it uses a very small amount of glucose syrup just to hold the formulation together. And, and the starch that's used for the matrix is again milligram amounts. So fractions of a gram that would be negligible compared to if you were eating a bite of anything. So, so it's, it's more, there's the optics of the ingredients on the label, which for a health-conscious consumer, very rightly so, you'd say, why are these ingredients in here? But they are there for a reason. There's a very small amount of vitamin C and vitamin E also in the formulation. but those are there as sacrificial antioxidants so that in the capsule, when the oxygen is present, they will kind of be the first line defense to react versus the astaxanthin reacting. And so it kind of helps to maintain the astaxanthin to be an antioxidant in your body rather than on the shelf. So, so that's really the reason. And to further support the, the formulation, we actually took a leading form of astaxanthin astaxanthin from one of the companies that grows the microalgae and is a very reputable brand and took their product off the shelf, gave a group of human volunteers, just healthy normal individuals, a 24-milligram dose of 2 12-milligram capsules. And then we took their blood at, at multiple time points over 24 hours, sent that to the lab and measured how much astaxanthin was in the blood. We sent them home for a week And so that's 7 half-lives. And so if you imagine, okay, I have 100% of the material. Now I have 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 6%, 3%, you know, after 7 half-lives, you have an undetectable amount of astaxanthin in the body. Now we brought the same group of people back. So we're not even comparing different groups of people where you might have variability in absorption. We brought the exact same group of people back after the astaxanthin was washed out of their system. Gave them the same 2 12-milligram capsules, but now of our form of the product, measured their blood for the amount of astaxanthin, and we got 3 times the amount of astaxanthin absorbed into their bloodstream, both at the maximum concentration point and then the total exposure over 24 hours when you add up all of the time points. And so 3 times more from the same dosage. So, so that increase in bioavailability is really important.

It's an incredible claim to be able to make. Yeah, the fact that that was a human trial, I think, is, is huge. And I think it's important to— for listeners to remember, like, transparency around ingredients and transparency around claims around bioavailability are so key. Um, it's not uncommon for me to take people off a laundry list of things that they're pulling off the shelf or things that they hear about online without the data behind it. And In Ayurveda, what I love about this ancient practice is it'll always look at how an ingredient or a food or an herb works synergistically within the body. So any brand that goes above and beyond to ensure that it works synergistically so that it can be absorbed within the body is huge, right? It's really, really important. We have to not take that for granted, and I think it's important to really recognize that. Look at your products, look at the brands, look at where they come from, maybe take take a second to do your research on what's available online in terms of what they're willing to release scientifically, right?

Yeah. And I'll just add that. So if people are excited about astaxanthin and they go to Amazon, you know, they'll find other products, for example. Right. And they may even find some that are like half the price of ours. And it's like, oh, wow, I can get one much cheaper. But you have to keep in mind that, you know, wouldn't necessarily be absorbed as well. So maybe you're paying half the price, but you would have to take 3 times as much to actually get the same amount into your body. Yeah. You know, so, so there are those considerations also, the purity. And again, like if you want the material that was actually used in the NIH program, this exact formulation, you know, this exact material that we supply, you know, that's why you would get our product versus, you know, some other product that has the same active ingredient produced different way, formulated different way, maybe absorbed differently. That would be reasons why you might consider looking at our version as well. With that said, we are probably in the future going to launch, bring back the microalgae version as well, just because even though the laboratory-produced version scientifically is probably the best from a purity and bioavailability standpoint, philosophically, some people would prefer to have an algal version versus a man-made laboratory version, even though at the molecular level, if you you look at it, the molecule is the molecule. I mean, it's the chemistry of it is it's the same structure, the same molecule, but just, you know, how it's produced. You know, I think philosophically, you know, one would normally want a natural source, you know? And so we are probably gonna, you know, launch a version of that that has, you know, a nice high concentration of the extract in an olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, you know, vegan soft gel capsule. And, but again, that's a soft gel where in our case, we have a hard capsule, a vegan hard gel capsule that you can twist open and disperse the powder into a glass of water. It'll turn red, but it won't taste or smell like anything. And so if someone has trouble swallowing capsules or if they wanna just mix it in with whatever shake or drink that they have that day, or even into yogurt or some other soft food, that's an option. With ours as well.

Incredible. And I love that you brought up the Amazon piece. Don't cut corners. Once brands figure out, you know, what, what actually works again, Wild West, they're going to try to mimic it as much as possible. And I think it's important as a brand, the fact that you're so transparent, transparent about bringing out a product like that for the consumer says a lot about the brand and the intention behind it.

I mean, we just want people to know about and take astaxanthin if it's from us. Great, because then we know it's of high quality and we're able to provide the education around it. If you're getting it from another source, hopefully it's a good source. And I think if everyone in the world was getting astaxanthin either from their diet with salmon or other astaxanthin supplements or ours, I think it would be a much healthier place. And so that would be a win if just everyone knew about it and wanted it from any particular source. I mean, that would be, I think, our mission fulfilled.

Beautiful. And any interactions that you're aware of or any concerns like, you know, somebody who is on this, they're in it for the long haul, you know, is there a duration of time? Should we take a break and then go back on it?

Yeah, there's nothing to show that someone should cycle it. Sometimes people do just, you know, stop because they're going in for surgery and the doctor wants them to stop everything, even though this probably would be helpful, you know, both pre and post. And some doctors that are familiar with the science do, you know, utilize it that way. You know, people stop for whatever reason, they just forget, fall out of the habit or rhythm, and then they realize, oh wow, I don't feel as good, you know, maybe my energy or my joints, whatever it may be. So I think from that standpoint, you know, people sometimes cycle but unintentionally.

Yeah.

So, but in terms of, you know, side effects or interactions with other medications or supplements, it does seem to play well with a lot of things. It doesn't, you know, sometimes agents will look at the metabolism in your liver, like through the CYPs, where, you know, different drugs are processed in the liver. And if you impact a certain pathway there, then it can make other drugs more effective or less effective. And that's why certain things are contraindicated. And in our case, there's nothing in human studies to show that it would be contraindicated. There was some early, early human research from like 25 years ago with 2 people taking a dose at like 100 milligram dose, looking at some potential, you know, liver enzymes that might be involved in some, you know, kind of common drugs being, you know, processed metabolized as well. But that wasn't replicated in other studies. And so we haven't to date seen any interactions with other drugs. But again, if someone is on medications, or has medical conditions, then we of course always recommend that they work with their healthcare professional, you know, for proper guidance. And then of course just monitor, you know, things, or if someone's on blood thinners, you know, those— that typically needs to be monitored carefully. And so that's kind of the case for any supplement or medication. Um, so that, that's the, the general guidance. There's nothing specific that's known to, to avoid.

That was a hefty dose too.

That was a hefty dose. Yeah. Yeah. And 2 people. I mean, there's not, You know, like from a statistical standpoint, that's not really super relevant, but from an allergy standpoint, we get questions about, oh, if I am allergic to shellfish, can I take this? Thinking of the marine type sourcing, and this doesn't have any shellfish allergy risk. It doesn't come from shellfish and it doesn't contain what makes shellfish potentially, you know, allergic for some people. It doesn't have other common allergens like nuts or gluten or soy or anything. So there's none of the major allergens in the product as well. So for most people, it should be suitable. Also, people ask about like, is it safe for this or for that? You know, is it safe for children? Is it safe for pregnant women? And so again, all these things, you know, follow your appropriate guidance of your healthcare professional. But for instance, there are studies in children, you know, like school-aged children looking at digital eye strain. You know, from staring at screens and saw reductions in that in school-aged children. And again, it's like, would you feed your child salmon? Probably. You know, if you're pregnant, would you eat salmon? Probably. You know, so there's a lot of, you know, kind of those considerations where, you know, one can make a determination if they, you know, want to supplement with astaxanthin.

Great tips. And just want to reaffirm, vegan-friendly as well.

Vegan friendly. Yes, the capsules are vegan friendly. The product is vegan friendly. It's not sourced from animals.

Dave, tell us what the website is because everyone's going to go there now.

It is ax3.life. So rather than.com, we have.life. So just ax3.life for the website and also for Instagram.

Great. Listeners, you'll be able to get a discount by using code Mona as well. We're going to put all the links in the show notes below. I love this conversation. Like, you were I feel like you were so in tune answering every question that I had on paper. I didn't even have to use my page. So thank you for that.

Perfect. No, I enjoyed the conversation very much. I love your approach and I think it's really important to kind of look at East meeting West and kind of looking at the root causes of things because that's the way that we should be thinking about it, not just reacting to things and waiting to be sick.

In the way that you're also a little bit of a storyteller, I'm really excited and happy at the concept of going upstream. And what a beautiful analogy just for us in life. The fact that if we just believe, like we're meant to go upstream, it's okay to go upstream. We just need to equip ourselves to be able to go upstream. And the fact that nature provides us with what we need. I'm grateful for all the research that you shared today. Thank you so much. So just putting that scientific lens over just such an intelligent ingredient. If you can tell us, where do you like to communicate with people? And also, what excites you the most about the future of wellness?

Okay. Well, we communicate through our website and our Instagram. And so H3.life is a good place to follow. I'm also personally on Instagram as well. And if you want to see the face behind the brand. But, but yeah, that's basically it. And hopefully looking to do— I found and we found that podcasts are a great forum for sharing education and information about the product, because this is not something that, you know, you put out a 30-second TV commercial or a little, you know, Instagram or Facebook ad, uh, or put it on a shelf in a store and then it just, you know, kind of sells itself. I mean, this is something that people need to learn about and, um, understand. And, and, and that's why podcasts have been a great place. And so, um, you know, hopefully, uh, people can also tune in for other podcasts and maybe, um, for other aspects of the story, diving deeper on different things, people can hopefully find value in that. So yeah, and then in terms of looking forward, I think all the research in this space is really interesting. There's a lot of people with different approaches. There's also groups that are developing great diagnostics and kind of integrating all of your data from your past medical records and your biomarkers and your wearables. Helping to make sense of all that and give you guidance on, you know, diet and lifestyle and supplementation. And so it'll be interesting to see where that all goes and how artificial intelligence plays a role in that, hopefully in a beneficial way. And then, you know, I'm also just very interested to see hopefully the growth of astaxanthin as just being more of a household, you know, thing. Everyone knows about omega-3s and probiotics and multivitamins and this and that, but most people don't know about astaxanthin. And so I'm excited to see hopefully a world where that just is commonplace and people know about it and it's just part of their foundational regimen because it's something that could benefit virtually everyone.

I love that, especially with all the studies you've shared. Yeah, I've really simplified my supplement routine, but this is one supplement that I was really excited to add in. Yeah. Thanks for being here. I can't wait to have you back.

Thank you.