Your Body Has An Anti-Aging Switch. Do This To Turn It On

We have 37 trillion cells in our body. Even though you might last 8, 9, 10, maybe even more decades, the cells are turning over. And when cells get worn out, they need to get replaced with functional tissue. So you might have a younger liver and an older heart. You might have a younger brain and older kidneys. I'm 51 now. There's like the visible signs that you see the wrinkles, the character lines. I don't recover the same way that I did when I was younger. When you're younger, when you have damage to cells, they get replaced and there is a net balance that is preserved.

And when we think about healing and regeneration, most people still picture something outside of themselves. Going for injections, going for therapies, going for expensive protocols or pills or whatever it is. Our body already has this incredible built in repair system.

We refer to this process as they're a fundamental part of the our repair system. So you could theoretically imagine somebody who was at 60 and gets reversed back down to age 40.

All right, my new friend, Dan Pardee, Chief health officer at Quali Life Sciences, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Thank you so much for having me on, Mona. It's a real delight to be here to meet you and to get to talk health, well being, helping people, all topics that I know you love, and I do too.

I'm already so happy talking to you. But before we dive in, I was sharing a little bit with you about my story. And I want you to know that this podcast really is about the feeling of supporting our listeners and becoming more rooted. And that's rooted in themselves, in their health and their happiness and their lifestyle. And what I believe we all have is this inner capacity to heal.

Yeah.

So I'd love to hear from you, you're such an expert in this field. What are two or three things that help you feel a lot more rooted in who you are?

Family number one that sometimes the health discussion forgets, leaves out really important subjects like relationships and friendships. And so we're much more prone to talk about things like exercise or diet or anything like that. And not things like learning how to be a better friend, how to process different friendships in your life, how to form tighter relationships. So that's another really key part of our health as well. And that's a big one for me. And then something I call the mundane but meaningful. All the little things that don't show up impressively in social media, like going for a walk or going to bed on time, but attending to them and having a sense of discipline with it. But Also joy, like, I go to bed on time, I go for walks because I know they make me feel really good. And that's a priority in my life. So those little things, the mundane but meaningful. So that's so family, that grouping, if you will, and then the sense of exploration. I love learning coming on and being somebody who has some expertise in health, just because I've dedicated time to it, I am learning every single day. And one of the reasons I chose this field, and then it could apply to other fields as well. But I have an endless fascination with how the body works, ways to improve its functioning, how to affect trajectories of your health and life, and also how to, of course, help other people. So I wake up every day, really, with a sense of service to not just learn this information for my own sake, but to do, hopefully, a very good job at communicating this information so that people can understand. And that's something that I thought about a lot. There are so many brilliant people out there that have dedicated their life to, let's say, a particular subject or the breadth of health. And sometimes there is this idea that the curse of knowledge, and this is where you understand the terminology so well and deeply that you. You use it because you're familiar with it. And yet somebody who is listening to learn is maybe gets overwhelmed. And so I. When I am talking about health, I like to use a lot of analogy. I like to talk a little bit about the science, because that's important too. So some of the details of the science. But my whole goal is to be of service to the listener. So can you come away with really helpful information or just a better understanding of the subject at hand? So. So those are some areas that motivate me.

What a gift. I can just hear how that translates into your purpose, which we also know is like, it's a really big pillar for health and wellness. And I love asking this question because, as you know, we live in a world that really over complicates health and wellness and healing and what it takes to be healthy. And yet every single person that answers these questions lists two or three modalities that are all free.

Right.

So on the flip side, with a journey that you've been on with understanding your physiology, do you know that there's certain practices that you have that cause you to feel uprooted? Do you notice when you drift?

I do. And it happens all the time.

Yeah. Life.

Right. That's an important message.

Yeah. What? You're not perfect.

I hate to break it to everybody. You might want to tune out now. And sometimes you, you see people advocating health and they, they put out a professional version of themselves, which seems perfect and admitting imperfection and vulnerability and the fact that you're. We're all on this health journey together in our own path, but moving in the same direction. That, that's real, that's authentic. And so yes, I do get off of my path at times and I have to bring it back. In fact, I think that is a part of being healthy. So if you, if failure, however small or large, the failure you're talking about is, is a part of, if it's, if you understand that that is a part of the process, then it maybe it's less destabilizing because sometimes people will feel like, oh gosh, I failed and I'm going to give up. And another way to view it is like, I failed. I'm human. Let's get back on, back on track and do the things that make me feel my very best.

Beautiful. Building resilience.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a very important part of resilience.

There's so much I want to dive into with you today. So I thought we would kick it off with some rapid fire questions to get a glimpse of your thought beliefs and the pattern that you educate you up for it.

Let's do it.

Yes, let's do it. All right. What is one early sign that your body's repair or regeneration system start slowing down?

Well, that can be noticed by what one can notice, can be different. It's what you're paying attention to. But for me, recovering more slowly from workouts was something that I did start to notice as I got older. I'm 51 now, and I don't recover the same way that I did when I was younger. But I certainly. So that, that's one thing. And, and then of course there's like the visible signs, you know, that you see the, the wrinkles, the, the character lines that we developed with, with age and you know, all that type of stuff can, you can notice. But people will notice different things in themselves. And some of that is because we are uni and we will age at different timescales in our own body. So you might have a younger liver and an older heart, you might have a younger brain and older kidneys. We now know that that is true. And you know, for example, for me, I was an athlete growing up. Nothing to, you know, that ESPN was going to comment on, but it was important in my life and it really motivated me. But then dealing with some injur from an early age was almost a gift because it got me into the field of health, because I started to pay attention to my body from a young age. And now, unfortunately, I do deal with some of the consequences of damage to the body. So parts of my lower extremities, like ankles and whatnot, where I turned them over playing sports, they are probably a little bit older than my knees, which never really had much trauma or damage. And so that is an illustration of how the way that we age is also personalized. And this your immediate phenotype. So who you are, the observable characteristics of who you are in this moment is a expression of all the accumulated experiences that you've had as a person. And so that is a key part of. Of this whole journey, is that we're all. We are all truly unique, even though we do share a lot of commonalities in being a human. And so that respecting both sides of that is really important.

Such a great perspective for personalization. That actually leads into the next question, which is, what's one of the most misunderstood aspects that people have about stem cells?

Oh, yeah, okay. Stem cells. What a great topic. Yeah. So today I know we're going to cover this, what they are, why they're so exciting, what happens when we age and then things that we can do that will make our relationship with stem cells one that where we're taking good care of them as we get older. So I would say that with a misunderstanding is that I think a lot of people understand themselves as if they've heard of them as a medical therapy, that you get stem cell treatment. And while that is true, and there's a lot of exciting parts of that space, in fact, I think that estimates for the market for stem cells in 2024, it's about a $15 billion global market, and that's going to grow to $30 billion just in the next couple of years. And that is a really good sign because what that indicates is that the science has gotten to a place where we're now able to create helpful therapies in a variety of ways, all the way from having stem cells be a part of previously incurable diseases and now through genetic engineering, having in. In stem cells being able to solve particular issues like sickle cell anemia, that's. That's at the forefront of medical technologies to what's more common, how people think about stem cells is getting them extracted from the body, putting it back into your body to try to heal a particular area. But that is a slice of the pie. And Stem cells are a, we could talk about what they are, but they're a fundamental part of our repair system. And we have 37 trillion cells in our body. And not all of those cells, those cells don't. Even though you might last 8, 9, 10, maybe even more decades, the cells are turning over. And when cells get worn out, they need to get replaced with functional tissue. And that's what stem cells are doing. And so what we're focused on at Qualia is how do we keep our stem cells healthy with a focus specifically on, on these particular cells. Because if you think about when you're younger, when you have damage to cells, they get replaced and there is a net balance that is preserved. And as you get older, due to a variety of reasons that associate with the aging process, the balance shifts. And so your regeneration process doesn't keep up with the damage process and you start to notice signs of where that look like visible signs of aging. And so all science looking into how do we take care of these stem cells, whether it's medical, whether it's just health and supportive, all very interesting to me. And that's why we're seeing more investment in this space. Overall.

I think it's a science that's becoming so much more tangible when we think about longevity for everyone as opposed to something that is just unaccessible or unattainable, attainable for the everyday person. So yes, we'll dive more into that. You do a lot of education. If you could teach everyone just one habit to keep theirselves youthful longer, what would it be?

Oh, that's a tough one.

There's so many.

I'm going to take a minute and think about it. I'm going to use a analogy that I've often used because it's a fun question. All right. What's the most important thing in our health? Is it diet? Is it nutrition? Is it sleep?

Yeah.

And the way that I like to get people to think about this is imagine a four legged chair. Which leg is more important right now in a particular individual? If one chair has some loose screws in the bottom and the, you know, the, the limb is a little bit weak, that might be the most important leg of the chair for that individual to focus on because it needs some love and attention. But when we're making a more global statement about what is more important? The body truly is holistic. It is all working together. When you sleep well, you're more likely to exercise. When you exercise, you have better appetite control. When you eat, A good diet for Weeks and weeks in a row, your appetite changes and all of a sudden you start to prefer healthier food over food of the modern environment. All of these things are interrel. And so I think how I'm going to answer your question is that maybe the best habit is continually educating yourself on the different determinants of health because you have a lifetime to take to learn new knowledge and exploit that for your benefit.

Such a great answer. Knowledge is power. All right. I'm curious, if you were to, if you were able to learn one thing about cellular repair or regeneration, but 20 years earlier, is there anything that you would, you'd want to know if I.

Had this knowledge 20 years ago? Let's see. Well, there are. I am all about using every source of motivation that you can harness to do the things that are good for you. And one of the magical aspects of learning more about the body is that you now have more specific children to take care of, if you will. Right. You're like, okay, my stem cells, I gotta keep them healthy and I know how they work and I know why they're important and I know the different things that are going to support their health. And so you can feel like. I'll give you an example. And it's not specifically about stem cells, but it's more about senescent cells, which is another product that, that we have at Qualia. It's a great field. Senescent cells are cells that the common analogy is they're like zombies. So they, they're partially dead, but they're, they're not functioning, but they're not dead. So they're alive and they're releasing a lot of substances into the surrounding. Well, doing high intensity interval training, HIIT training is a really good way, at least in muscles, to help clear out some of the senescent cells. So I find myself more often than not these days hopping on the bike and saying to myself, all right, I'm going to clear out some senescent cells today. When I do a 20 minute hit workout and go really hard.

I love that.

If I had. Yeah. So I don't know if I, I've always been into health and I've prided myself on trying to do a good job taking care of myself. Not to an excessive degree. Like, I think we can turn this into what feels like an endless list of homework versus a expression of, you know, of love for your body, which I, that's how I think about it. Like, have fun with it, enjoy it. Do, you know, take good care, be disciplined, but let's not get excessive with it. You know, also do things that maybe, you know, are not healthy all the time, but are also important. Right. Stay up a little bit later, go out, go out with some friends. So having that balanced perspective, I think is really key. But yeah, so when you. The more. As you learn more and more things, it just. All they do is serve to reinforce the good behaviors that you have and that you are doing and that you prioritized. So, yeah, I would say I would continue to get back on the bike 20 years ago and do high intensity training. Um, and I'd have another reason to do that.

Beautiful. It actually feels more motivating to do tit hop on to get. Get rid of your senescence cells. That inspires me. All right, last one. What emotion or lifestyle pattern do you think most interferes with your body's ability to heal?

Well, I think the overwhelm is something we're all dealing with, with the democratization of information in our world. That was a beautiful thing on one hand, and it created this sense of overwhelm. There's so much to learn. There's new things every day. And it can feel like a lot. It can feel like a lot. And I know that generally when you are feeling overwhelmed, it can cause paralysis. It makes you not know what to do. Sometimes having just a very simple plan, like you were saying earlier, like, we can keep it really simple. And truth be told, I go back and forth like, oh, health is so easy. And then on the other hand, I'm like, oh, gosh, health is so hard. It's both. Right? And so trying to maintain clarity even in the face of imperfect knowledge or information and a changing landscape, that's okay. Be kind to yourself and stick with what you know and listen to. Listen to yourself, listen to your body, what works. I was having a conversation yesterday and I was saying one gift of aging is that you become a more sensitive instrument to what is healthy. And you're young, you're protected in a lot of ways. You can go out and do silly things and you're going to bounce back the next day and be fine. But as you get older, when you do things that are, frankly, unhealthy, you feel it. But the good side of that is when you do things that are healthy, when you're eating the right food, getting sleep and exercising, you feel that really clearly. And so that that's a gift as well. So listen. Listen to your body and be a. Try to be like an objective observer, because we can also take our thoughts and what we think is going on and colorize the experience. But really, really pay attention to what works in your body and try to use that source of information to guide your own health practice as well.

Oh, that is a great tip. Ultimately, it's the feeling of wisdom. I'm so excited to be a student, a forever student, to constantly be learning about the science that's quickly evolving. And I catch myself in the trap of going down, trying everything, doing everything, a protocol that's extensive. And then I catch myself, ah, I did it again. Come back to the basics, lay down the foundation and what makes me feel good. And I think that's something that's so important for our listeners to use. And honestly Dan, I'm not going to lie. When I found Quali life, it's something that I admired most about the brand because you're using some of my favorite languaging around aligning with the body's natural intelligence to repair itself, to renew in the trust and the faith that we can have our bodies to thrive as opposed to constantly looking for things that were outside of ourselves. And when we think about healing and regeneration, these are obviously hot topics today, but I think that most people still picture something outside of themselves, going for injections, going for therapies, going for expensive protocols or pills or whatever it is. And your work really suggests that our body already has this incredible built in repair system. So in your mind, what do you think that we get wrong about our body's ability to heal itself? Do you think that most people still have to be convinced of this?

Luckily, this is something that we can feel even though with aging we notice that things are different, but it's also a slow process. So you don't wake up one day and you've accumulated 10 years of aging. Rather, it is this slow process where the peak of our current abilities might be less than they once were, but that's really just more in the physical body. And like I said, there are plenty of examples of people who are well into their 70s who have remarkable health and they attend to it. And what I'm really happy to see now is that we have a society that is prioritizing health more, not to say uniformly, but more people than ever. They care about it. We know that our medical system does incredibly important things, but it's not a complete solution for health. And we have our responsibility to take care of ourselves now. People have different sets of resources and time pressures. We're all on our own journey. And that's why I think it's so important the process of optimization is individual. So if you look at Brian Johnson, he's a close to a billionaire. He spends his days monitoring and testing and doing every conceivable therapy that's out there. Very expensive, very time consuming. Is that bad? Well, I've heard people say, oh, he's obsessed and this is unhealthy. I think for him it's a hobby and he's really motivated to figure this out. The most important point, however, is that if you're, let's say, watching his journey, you don't need to be like him. We all have to make, we all have to try to calibrate our health efforts into the real fabric of our life. Right. We have different time pressures, different goals, motivations, desires. And so, yeah, we do want to take good care of ourselves, but make it work for you. And health is a process goal. There's not a finish line. There's not a place where I, you know, I took that course or I finished this workout and now I'm done. So you have to make it enjoyable and you have to. And what's cool about it is that you're learning about yourself. When you're learning about health information, you're learning about yourself. And sometimes that can feel disconnected because it's very abstract information, or it sounds like it's, you know, highly medicalized and very technological. But every little aspect that is aiming to try to support health in any way, it is about you in a sense. So that there's a nature to this that is more direct and specific and personal than other health information or other types of information that's out there that might be interesting. But this, this can affect how you live. And, you know, health is not just the absence or presence of a disease, but really serves to support the energetic system beneath the 37 trillion, trillion cells that are trying to do their jobs. And it serves as this undercurrent that affects our moment to moment existence. And so it's not just there, it's not just observed or monitored in the presence of a disease or a blood marker. It's how you live your life. It's. It's how you feel every moment of your conscious day. So it's, you know, use that information and let it motivate you to keep learning.

Absolutely. And go with the motivation. You know, we were sharing a little bit about our stories. And looking back, it was such a gift for me to have gotten through what I had gone through, because I now understand that nothing matters if you don't have your health. And with the stats that we're seeing around chronic illness and chronic disease today, and God forbid anyone listening goes through anything like that. But it really gives you a different perspective. And when you talk about Brian Johnson, like, I have such admiration for him, just following his path and what excites him and sharing that education, it doesn't mean that it has to be the thing that works for you. And when we think about this vessel and this body, let's transition over to the stem cell talk right now. In my world, I remember in nutrition, we talked about the stem cells being the master cells of the body. And for listeners who aren't scientists or nutritionists, can you explain what they really do and why they're so central to long term vitality today?

Yeah. So let's talk about some of the fundamental characteristics of a stem cell. A stem cell fundamentally is something that can divide, making a clone of itself. And when it divides, it makes two different cells. One of them is a clone, another stem cell, and one of them is called a progenitor cell. That cell is now destined to go become a specific type of tissue in the body. So the way that I think of a good analogy is think of stem cells like a lump of wet clay. And you take that clay, you rip it in half, and that one part of it is going to stay a stem cell. The other part you're going to mold into a cup or a plate or a pitcher. And it goes through this elegant, beautiful process where it will finally become a tissue that is now functioning in your body to keep this whole system working. That is what stem cells do. And we can hear about these ideas of potency. So you might hear of a pluripotent stem cell or a multipotent stem cell. That just means different types of stem cells can become different things. And so a pluripotent stem cell can become just about any cell in the body. A multipotent stem cell can only become a certain, certain types, not everything. And so a fun analogy, I think it works, is imagine a stem cell in terms of potency is like a freshman in college, that's a pluripotent stem cell. It hasn't taken any courses, it hasn't declared a major. It can do anything. Right. It's got choices. But now you're. Now another cell is a junior. It's taken a lot of science courses. It thinks it might want to go into medicine or be do academic research. And it's taken prerequisites. It started to move down a lineage, right? That's what we Call it a lineage. And now it can become anything, but it can become certain things. And so that's a multipotent stem cell. Now, let's say a few more years of school and education, and now you have an oligopotent cell. It can become fewer things. And that's as it's moving down its journey. It is this potency journey. It can become, you know, there's, there's fewer and fewer things that it can become all the way down to a unipotent stem cell, which is, it can only become one thing. That's like a muscle satellite cell, which is a muscle stem cell. Those cells are only going to become muscle cells. So that is a good way to think about how they work. And they live in niches. We call it a stem cell niche. And those niches are in all over the body. And they will like important ones that we hear about are in the bone marrow, which is often where stem cells are harvested for medical procedures, or mesenchymal stem cells, which are harvested from fat tissue. And those can become different tissues related to like muscle cells and fat tissue and ligaments, things like that. So that's in general what a stem cell is. And you have also what are called resident progenitor cells. These are stem cells that they don't live in a particular stem cell niche, but they live in the tissues. They are ready to spring to action when some tissue gets damaged. And in the body, a cell can handle a certain amount of damage, but once the damage becomes too much, the cell doesn't try to fix it. It kills it through something called apoptosis, which is programmed cell death. There's other ways that a cell can die as well, but once that happens, it needs to be replaced. And so that's the process that we're talking about.

Your analogy works. I'm tracking it. Landed.

I'll keep here.

When we think about stem cells then, now, I think it's tied so closely to longevity and to our vitality as we age. And I think there's also a bit of fear around it. Right. I think the stats out there is just the how radically they decrease as we age. Is there, Is that true? Is it a radical reduction of stem cells within us as we age? Is it the byproduct of living in today's modern world? Why is it concerned as we. Yeah, yeah.

So things are going to. About to get weird.

So I'm here for it.

We, we tend to think of aging as this decline. Everything's going down, right. We're making Less proteins, we have, less stem cells, we have, less nad we have. It's not exactly the case. Function will often go down. So the ability for stem cells to do their job is now a fraction of what it used to be. And we refer to this process as stem cells and stem cell exhaustion, which has now been labeled as one of the hallmarks of aging. Hallmarks of aging are these. In 2013, the paper Cell 5 authors published a paper that really changed the space of geroscience. What they had done is they had taken previous theories of aging that were focused on biological consequences of getting older that you see across species and say, okay, we see these reliably when a person is, or a person or organism is getting older. This is now one of the hallmarks of aging. And it required. There was a couple of important characteristics to have it qualify as a hallmark. And the two I'll focus on is that if you worsen that particular hallmark, right. You make it happen sooner, you're going to. The organism is going to age faster. But it also can provide an opportunity for intervention, which is exciting. And so yeah, so stem cell exhaustion is one of the nine hallmarks of aging that was listed in that paper. Ten years later they came out with a follow up paper, they added three more hallmarks. And I also did some categorization of them, but it really changed the field. It's had like close to 20,000 reference that that particular paper, paper has been referenced over 20,000 times. One of the most impactful papers in the last 15 years. And yeah, so that's a little bit of, you know, when we say a hallmark of aging and stem cell exhaustion being them, that's what we mean. But yeah, let's talk. So what is, what does exhaustion of these stem cells look like? It is true that in some ways stem cell numbers will decline, but in other ways you see a radical increase in the amount of stem cell cells that are made, but they become much less functional. So you have increased production and less productivity. So the main ideas with the what's happening is there's like five different categories. But and just. And I'll tell you a little bit about them because you can see, okay, this is complex. What are we really after when we're trying to promote stem cell health? Are we just trying to boost numbers? So a very important part, and I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk a little bit about the life cycle of a stem cell so you can see what, what does it look like? Well, they start off in this quiescent state. Think of it as stem cell hibernation. The metabolism is really low. They're not making many proteins, which is actually really important for their longevity. And they're just waiting to do their job. Then from signals from the niche and outside, there's some damage. Okay, the mom comes into the bedroom and says stem cell wake up time to time to go to school. And when you get older, two things happen. One is that the sleep of the stem cells, the hibernation is so deep that normal signals can't wake them up. On the other side, the opposite is true, that some cells will manifest what's a arousability that is too shallow, they're too easy to wake up, which causes the stem cells to constantly being released, which exhausts them. In both cases you have reduced function, but you can see it's clearly not just, you know, making less. Yeah, the same is true for the next part. We talked about self renewal, which is them being able to make a version of themselves. And then now also another, a copy of a progenitor cell that becomes a specific, that was going to eventually become a specific tissue type that also experiences some issues as well. So some have a hard time self renewing and others will self renew too much, too aggressively, but they don't because they're doing that at a faster pace. They're not very healthy and they can't actually turn into those tissue types. So you can see that aging has this diversion off of that Goldilocks state. It's not one way or the other, there's examples of both. But health is really promoting that Goldilocks state where they can be their optimal function or they can do their optimal functioning. And then there's also some issues with whether or not a stem cell can differentiate into the particular type of tissues. One thing that we do see when we do get older is yes, okay, a stem cell was able to be woken up from its niche, get into circulation, find its way down to a particular tissue that needs to be replaced, but it doesn't become the right type of cell. And so you see this in muscle cells when a person gets older, that they will start to differentiate, which is the term we talk about when a stem cell starts to become that the lump of clay starts to differentiate into a bowl or a plate or something specific that's locked in. And in that case you start to see instead of making a muscle cell, you make more fibroblasts or scar tissue. So an older person, imagine a 90 year old person, very stiff, it's hard to move. Stem cells in that individual, in their muscles have created a lot of scar tissue and that's stiffer and harder to move around. So that's another consequence of the aging process in stem cell exhaustion. And they're also weaker. So like when they do try to divide, they, they're just not strong enough to make it through the whole process. And so they get halfway through and then they die because they're just, they don't have all of the cellular strength and resilience to. To do what they need to do. All of those things are what we talk about or what we think about as scientists when we think about stem cell exhaustion. And so those are, you can now see, okay, wow, not making enough. Making weird types not get, not self renewing, exhausting the pools. That's the real issue we talk about when it's not just like, hey, we got to pump more into circulation.

Got it. That was the most thorough breakdown. Thank you for connecting that to the hallmarks of aging. Also, because I'm funny, we're focusing on one area, DNA damage or inflammation, or we're not thinking about the interconnectedness of all of this. And the way that you broke that down, it really just gives us an understanding. It's not about just stem cell die off. Really understanding the mechanism of its communication within the body in order for your body to optimize and how personal that can be. So when we think about this through the lens, I can imagine that a lot of our listeners, when we think about stem cell optimization, I think that for years it probably felt like it was that cloning aspect or it felt like a luxury specific to elite. But the latest research that you tend to show, you're showing how we can naturally support our stem cell function through lifestyle, through nutrition. I'm also curious now, how do we improve the functionality of the stem cells within us through these modalities? So can we maybe start with some lifestyle practices and then move into some of the studies that you can talk to about stem cell regeneration?

Yeah, yep, happy to. Lifestyle is often dismissed or overlooked. We want to get to that really sexy science stuff that's, you know, the latest intervention.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll give you an example. So with exercise, when you exercise, the particularly if you do high intensity interval training like we talked about earlier, this is some research that showed that you will increase the release of stem cells 2 1/2 times immediately after that intense exercise. And those who work out regularly have a three to four fold increased pool of stem cells ready to Go when you compare them to a sedentary individual. So lifestyle is constantly shaping the health of these cells and making them ready to get out there and repair not just your muscles, but your whole body. So exercise really is. I don't like saying medicine, but you can certainly use that analogy that it's having a massive health effect on the body. And we know that. But there's a specific example of why that might get you onto the spin bike or your form, whatever you enjoy.

Yeah.

Sleep at night. We have this beautiful symphony of chemicals that are creating a unique environment within the body that are promoting repair, regeneration, melatonin release. And talking about modern society. Melatonin is not really a sleep hormone. It's more of a darkness hormone that is shaping that internal environment. It's the. It is this the internal way that the body is perceiving a dark environment with artificial light. We're spending less time in darkness.

Yeah, yeah, right.

We're getting a couple of hours less melatonin at least than our ancestors that were living before artificial light. That's a really big one. And those are all. Not only that, but you have a parasympathetic dominance obviously when you're sleeping. And that is allowing for unique aspects of your immune system or the enablement of your immune system to go and get pathogens. They're doing important things to keep the stem cells healthy. And so there's this beautiful ebb and flow between night and day of activity and then rest and repair at night. Now, the repair process done by stem cells is not locked into one particular phase, but each part of a 24 hour period. And the phases that we go through is doing something important for the overall effect that we want, which is stem cell function. Circadian rhythm is also very important, independent of the amount of sleep you're getting, the timing of your biology when you're eating, when you're sleeping, the exposure to light, all of that is critical in helping them do their job. Pretty much every cell in the body doesn't do its job as well when you are in a state of circadian misalignment, which is all too common today.

Yeah.

And then of course, diet. And so, for example, high phenols and high polyphenols from. From the diet. One of the major drivers of stem cell exhaustion is a increase in the inflammatory state in the body. So inflammaging the master regulator of inflammation is something called nuclear, nuclear factor Kappa beta. That is the master regulator. And so when polyphenols are consumed in the diet, like let's say from high polyphenol olive oil. Unfortunately, not a lot of olive oil has all the polyphenols. They're sensitive to light, heat and time. And so you get some good olive oil that's been protected. Like, for example, I have at home, I've got an olive oil that I cook with and then I have a more expensive one that has a signature of higher polyphenols. So they test for it and then I use that for dressing. But those, yeah, they will lock up that nuclear kappa factor beta in the cells, preventing it from getting into the nucleus and then causing transcription of inflammatory factors like TNF alpha or interleukin 1 beta or IL6. These markers that you can test on blood work, those are all controlled by this master switch. And our diet has profound impact on that. And some of the ingredients that we use in our qualia, stem cell products like ferulic acid and others, they are very rich, see buckthorn, very rich sources of phenolic and polyphenolic compounds. And that is one of the reasons that they're there, is that they are looking to control inflammation so that stem cells have a better time performing at a more youthful level. And, and I actually, I do want to say this is really important. I don't want to forget some very cool work has done by, been done by Irina Convoy at UC Berkeley.

Okay.

And what she, what she showed is that basically when you take an older mouse and you create a more internal environment, and the way they do this is a bit gruesome, but they, they're called parabiosis studies. So they sew an old and young mouse together. And I would never do this work, but it's been done. And, and what happened is the older mouse got younger. And the thought was that the younger mouse was processing the older chemicals that were being, you know, released as into the circulation and then creating a better environment for stem cell renewal. And that's exactly what they saw. There was a youth promoting effect of doing this. And now that is, they're looking to turn that into a therapy. So total plasma exchange is what, where you sit for three hours and you're. And this, the whole youngblood phenomenon that was mocked.

Yeah.

You know, in the media. But the idea is that you, you're clearing out a lot of the bad proteins that get in the way of the cells functioning and you see that the stem cells can perform beautifully then when you do that. So that's really exciting. And that is one of the reasons why part of this goal of ours which is how do we then support all of that through promoting stem cell health? Which is again, very different than medical stem cell therapy. Taking them out, injecting them back in. Also cool, but very different than what we do.

It's fascinating to hear through this lens because I think all of us now, we're aware that we're living longer, but we're not necessarily living well longer. And you're touching on basics, you know, sleep optimization and recovery, HIIT training, moving our body, moving away from the sedentary lifestyle that most of us have adopted, optimizing our diet. I can imagine fasting too. Does autophagy have anything to do with stem cells?

That is a very good question. One of the reasons why stem cells are called by some forever cells. So some stem cells, when they're taken out of the body, they can outlive their host. So the person that they came from dies and the stem cells stay alive. One of the fundamental characteristics of this is that hibernation state that I mentioned earlier. The stem cells are making protein. They are. Proteostasis is one of the hallmarks of aging, a loss of proteostasis. Proteostasis means the ability of the body or cells to maintain protein balance. And stem cells do an extraordinary job way, way better than any other cell in the body at maintaining proteostasis or protein balance. So one, they make proteins when they're in that quiescent state, less aggressively, so that metabolisms really slow down. They're saving themselves, right? They're not burning themselves out. They have very aggressive protein repair mechanisms. So these are one form of this is like heat shock proteins or chaperone proteins. So the way this is, these are special proteins within a cell that will find a protein that is out of shape. Now think of a protein, every protein being like a key that has to have a very specific shape to fit into a lock and do its job. And if that key gets nicked or something gets off, it will not fit into its, you know, the, the keyhole and it can't do its work. And so what chaperon proteins do is they will magnetically find the areas that, where the protein is off, out of balance, and they will either push them back into shape so they stay functional, or they, if it's too broken down, they will bring it into, they will help start the autophagy process. And so now stem cells prefer autophagy to other forms of protein degradation. So it's very, very important to maintain one of the reasons why they stay alive. So so long Fasting does promote autophagy and which means self eating, auto, self aging. And the way that it works is that you build up cellular junk just through the normal process of living and metabolism. And we have these repair processes that can go take, absorb these and eat essentially these different broken down proteins and then they release the individual amino acids and it's like they turn junk back into building materials that can now be used to build new functioning proteins. And we do have problems with autophagy as we get older. So one of the, one of the reasons that we do age, fasting does promote autophagy because it gives the cell in a way a break. If you're not getting nutrients in constantly. The cells are listening to very specific signals like MTOR activation which stands for mechanistic targeted rapamycin. That's going to prevent autophagy from occurring. You fast for a little bit of time, the cell says okay, I'm not getting any nutrients, I need to make my own. I'm going to, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to the garage and I'm going to clean it up and I'm going to make building blocks and make new proteins. Yeah. And the other important part of fasting too is stem cells do very well under the presence of beta hydroxybutyrate which is the primary ketone that is produced from fatty acids when you fast. And those are able to be, they have very interesting anti inflammatory effects. They can get into the central nervous system and help you think, well very you very interesting. And we might not be making as much ketones as we used to since we have three meals a day. Food scarcity is less of a concern up until recently. Yeah, yeah. But yes, that's, that is one of the problems of this luxury of modern living. It also causes a problem that we now need to counteract with intention. So I'm going to purposely not eat food that's available to me so that I can do these things that we know have downstream effects that are good for all parts of the body, including stem cells.

What a luxury it is. I think it's one that we take for granted often. And I'm amazed hearing you say speak. I can imagine. Are you just in awe of the body coming across these? Like my jaw is open just hearing you in wow factor to this. And I can't help but think that a lot of things that you are recommending that are proven now by science are things that our ancestors naturally practiced without having the data or the understanding about how our bodies worked at a cellular level. And that to me, is just fascinating. So, yeah, kudos to you. I wish I could have a day in your brain.

Mona. I'm just so in love with all this information. I cannot wait to read the next paper to learn something new because it is all so incredibly interesting to me and I think to many of us, I think self preservation is a fundamental key of the human experience. Right? We do take care of ourselves. That's how we survive. And survival is a key goal of evolution. And yeah, I have been a very big advocate and fan of looking at ancestral wisdom and our. What we can glean through studies on hunter gatherers and how well we think they reflect our ancestral community. But now, human evolution started way longer than the 2.8 million years ago that the genus Homo came into existence. Right? We really. The truth is, human evolution started when cells first started. We are made up of cells that have perfected different functions and then led to eventually us becoming a unique species. But, you know, that's why we share some of the same eukaryotic physiology in biology as a plant that is on your desk, right. That were made up of the same materials. We didn't reinvent the cell and humans came into existence. And so stem cells probably came into existence 6 to 800 million years ago when cells decided to be more social, come together and start to do great multicellular structures and say, okay, let's see what we can build together versus all acting individually. And in that time, that's when these fleets of cells said, hey, you know, we need to have a way to repair our tissues. And that's when. That's when stem cells first came into existence. But, yeah, I. When I think about what is going to be healthy for us in today's world, I consider the principles of an ancestral, you know, theory as first and foremost that then you look at modern science and you conflate the two and you see what kind of wisdom you can glean from that. But, yeah, that's a very rich source of information for us. And, you know, there's been cartoonish depictions of, like, the Paleo diet and lots of criticism. But I'll never quite understand when a modern scientist doesn't fully acknowledge that, like, a lot of what shapes our biology was the slow course of evolution over, you know, a couple million years at least, most recently.

Absolutely, yeah. All right, so when we're putting this through the lens of stem cells and supporting us as we age for our listeners, at what stage of life do you think that Supporting our stem cells becomes crucial. And I say this because often when, you know, I'm meeting with people for the first time, it's almost like they've waited until they got into crisis mode to start to think about these things. But is taking action earlier something that you guys recommend?

Always Prevention. Yeah. When we are so we are very different people every decade of life. We have different focuses and it is truly hard to focus on something that doesn't currently. It's not a squeaky, squeaky wheel. So, yeah, before you are experiencing signs of aging in any way, visible what you can feel in your body, somatic. Those processes are taking decades to. They're building up now. A lot of people will do a lot of the right things for the other reasons when they're, when they're younger, in their 20s and 30s. But I'm really excited to see how healthspan has taken the world by storm. Health is such a big topic that it can be overwhelming and almost a feckless term because it's like, what does it really mean? And it just doesn't have. We all care about it. But health span came along and it was a tweak to health. It's talking about an angle of health, which is how do I preserve my health now that I'm in a state where I'm older and I understand what's going to happen and I want to change my trajectory. And so what's practical is that people who are ahead of the curve will really start to think about healthspan oriented interventions probably in their 40s. Now could you take part in these earlier? You could, but scientists have modeled some interesting ways to think about this. There are what types of activities really only start to become effective once we start aging? Like in that aging window, that phase. And then others are, how do you like raise your level of health so that you're declining from a higher peak earlier in life? And not all interventions that are good for you later would be necessarily health promoting earlier on. I'll give you an example of metformin. Right. Metformin isn't a generally healthy intervention for all people at all ages. In fact, if you take a young healthy person and you put them on Metformin, you're going to be potentially interfering with their ability to add muscle. You're going to interfere with their training on promoting cardiovascular cardiorespiratory fitness. That's been shown now downstream, as the ravages of time have taken some effects. Some of these interventions start to become. They take on different qualities. They become helpful. So you have to. The. The core things of sleep and exercise and good diet are consistent and persistent throughout life. And then we have some unique types of interventions that become increasingly important once you get into a time where you're recognizing that health span is here. And you know what? You have to try to preserve the health that you have.

It's such a simple but profound concept. Right. First, remove the things that are dysfunctional, and then feed it what it needs to regenerate. Right. It's so simple, but I think it's often very, very overlooked. All right, I want to dive into now. I was just speaking with your team. I was so fascinated at the research that you guys have. The years of studying that have gone into designing a system or systems of supplements that work for pathways in the body holistically, synergistically, which I think is often something that's missing with a lot of supplement brands that are out there. Many supplements are taken daily, but your approach sometimes uses cyclical or pulse dosing within a few days a month. And let's tie in stem cell right now. All right.

Okay.

So this is six capsules. There's four servings that are designed to be taken in a row and repeated. So for first of all, I want to point out to listeners that knowing everything that you know about stem cells, right now, when I'm looking at the ingredients at the back, a lot of these are ingredients that I recognize from nature. Pretty much everything, actually, which for me, as a practitioner is a really big win. I feel so confident being able to recommend it to all of my clients. But can you talk to us about the science in terms of activation within this and the system of delivery that you chose on? Yeah.

So there are 15 different ingredients that were screened by the science team at Qualia Life. Go into the literature. Look at preclinical early human intervention, all the sources. Also looking at traditional Chinese medicine and what types of compounds have been used for millennia in some cases, and tying all of that together to first do it, the screen of, okay, what compounds do we see have an impact here in some aspect of stem cells? And then analyzing that research to say, okay, does this study really say what we think, what it says, what it says? It says sometimes not. And. And then this is where the art of supplement formulation comes in. But generally, this is something that I appreciate very much about Qualia, is that instead of trying to solve this very complex problem with a single nutrient that might have an impressive effect that is too simplistic, it is a overly facile approach that you would want in something that is so important to the. So, you know, a manifold system with lot going on. The general approach that Qualia takes is how do we support that system in doing what it's wanting to do? And that can be blocking and tackling and adding nutrient. It's all different ways in which we think about creating a formulation that has both additive and synergistic combinations that get you better results. Every product that we do, for the most part, that's what we. That's what we're after. We're always looking to create something that has extraordinary effects. And the process by which they do that is very. I mean, there's hundreds of pages of research from the research team that goes into this particular product. And, and it's hard to talk. If I were to go through the science and all 15 ingredients, it would. Eyes would glaze over. They're all really interesting. They all have interesting effects. But generally the way that you can think of it is how do we support. And then I'll get into the actual protocol, why four days. But we're looking to support mobilization. So that's when you're. When you're getting a stem cell up and out of its niche and getting it mobilized, you activate it, you promote proliferation, and you get it into circulation. There are multiple products like afanin plus and fucoidin, which is this mokozu seaweed from Japan, something called sea buckthorn, and sodium, copper, chloroflan. All of those are then supporting that part of the process. The other confusing part, by the way, is not like these things do one job, oftentimes you'll see one ingredient supporting three of the six parts of the stem cell cycle. Right. So that. That also adds more complexity. But then you want to help them become the actual functioning tissue. So through all sorts of cellular manipulation, whether it's affecting signaling pathways, transcription pathways, immune system regulation, and cytokine form generation, all different ways in which the ingredients are kind of supporting an important part of the process. And importantly, it's important to know this is how it's doing it. But then what are the actual effects of that particular ingredient on some sort of clinical parameter? Do we see an increase in stem cell function or increased regeneration? Is there better mobility in the animal? Right, you have to look at all of that. But that's generally the way that we approach formulation and how we try to do it. And in this case, we're doing exactly that. We're trying to support the entire life cycle. Now, why four Days. Why not take this all the time? Well, remember, one of the most important parts about these forever cells, the cells that live probably longer than any cell in the body, they have to be in a quiet state. They have to be hibernating. If you tried to make a bear be up all year long and it needed some hibernation, it's going to be pretty grumpy and it's not going to live as long. Right. Part of its life cycle. And so our idea is when we get older, the signals that are present are harder to hear from the stem cells. That's a good way to think of it. Think of it as somebody who's lost in hearing acuity. And we're raising the volume on those signals temporarily. We're doing in a couple of ways, sometimes raising the signal, sometimes reducing the noise or reducing inflammation. All of which is now supporting again, healthy stem cell function and getting this pulse of renewal generation and doing this once a month. And so the idea is you do it once a month in perpetuity. Again, it's not like, all right, I fixed it in one dose and that's it. But you continually take this. And that is something that for any health span intervention, for the most part, there are some things that are coming down the pike that might be, you do it once and then you wait 10 years, you do it again. But for the most part, if you're talking about just supporting health, you're looking to provide these good stimuli on a regular, semi, regular, cyclical, sometimes cyclical processes. So with all of our products, nad you take most days, our senolytic product, we take two days a month. Our stem cell product, you take, you know, we have a protocol that we're really excited about, which is you take the senolytic product two days a month, and then you wait a few days and you take the stem cell product. So you're removing a major source of inflammation in the body with these senescent cells by clearing them out. And then perfect time to pulse an increase in cellular rejuvenation. So we will see the future of health span will be multi product because these different hallmarks of aging will require their own specific way to address them. And that can maybe feel overwhelming. And there's more, more cool things that are coming on board. How many supplements am I supposed to take?

Yeah, yeah.

But trying to tie it together again, letting people calibrate to what they feel good about and then giving the science say, this is what we think is a really smart way to go.

Well, it just makes Sense. So you're kind of bringing in this intermittent activation which is followed by rest. And in turn that kind of upregulates the regeneration. Right. In order to really break it down.

Yeah.

You know what that makes me think of? We used the word resilience when we started this conversation. The lineage of yoga that I was brought up with, Hatha yoga, they don't practice this anywhere else, but it's a long yoga class where between every pose that we hold, we actually move into savasana for a solid one to two minutes. So we go through a period of stress and then we go into relaxation. And I think that the philosophy from this, although it's a 5,000 year old lineage of yoga, it was the understanding of resilience within the body to train the body how to function and move through this adaptability of stress or intensity to relaxation and optimization. So I actually think that that's a very brilliant protocol. Thank you for breaking it down that way. Can you share with us some of the studies on improvements that have come from this?

Yeah. So another really key motivation for me to join the company, because I'm newer to the company, is the fact that Qualia does research on all of the products and that is unique. Now the, it's, it's an interesting question and topic because in the pharmaceutical industry you see massive amounts of research that is done because those companies can acquire monopoly profits if they can get a patented protected drug that is targeted for a specific condition. Not a criticism of it, but they can pour in a billion dollars so that they can make billions of dollars if they get an FDA approval.

Right.

The supplement industry is different. And you see these compounds that have no testing at all. A lot of times they will have the individual testing, but then if a formulation is put together, is that tested? We believe as a company that it is very important to put our formulations to the test. And we do this in an unfolding way. What do I mean by that? Well, like with all research, you start with something that is more simple in terms of your research protocol design, like a survey and you collect user feedback, then you might move to do another study that looks at it as a single blind, more objective type of a study. And then with our Qualia Nad product, we've done two randomized placebo controlled double blind trials. And so we're, we're not just trying to find one study and then say, great, we got a positive result, we're not going to continue to research it, we're continuing. We want to have really good information about what we do, because we also see our products almost like a SaaS product and software, where the research field for all these different areas is constantly evolving. So while we love products that we release, we also want to upgrade them. And, and we've done that. Like, so, for example, with quality in mind. We're now on the third iteration of that product. And, and that is a philosophy. To study our products and to upgrade them in a continual manual manner is I think, part of the fabric of what makes qualia Qualia and so unique. But yes, and more specifically, we have done a pilot study that was looking at, for. For stem cell, and this just came out, the product itself, but it was 29 men and women age 40 to 70. And so what people did is they did a questionnaire on day zero. So prior to starting the product, then four days, because you take the product four days in a row, and then another questionnaire on day five, and then another one on day 11. And in that, we asked questions like symptoms of aging. So for both men and women, we saw people in the study have a, basically a decrease in symptoms of aging by about 30% in men and close to 50% in women, around 45%, which is really impressive after just a couple of days like that actually exceeded my expectations.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you would think that this might have. Take longer, right? You're. You're promoting your repair process. Maybe by month three, we'll start to see people starting to like, notice aches and pains are diminishing. Like, that's what I expected.

There could be so many variables. Right? Yeah, I could imagine it would take so much longer because of all the variables. Just, you know, in any type of human clinical trial, for that matter.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

And that. And, and that has some disadvantages. Right. When it takes something really meaningful, takes a couple of months to show benefit people that we talked about that squeaky wheel earlier that, that you're not paying attention to it anymore because it's no longer as squeaky. And, and you can. Your attention gets focused elsewhere and you forget where you were. And so being able to show objectively, you started here and now you're here, hopefully you can now prevent people who might give up on something that has actually had very positive impact in their life because they're like, oh, yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if it. If it was really working or not. When we're like, actually look, you've had a 35% improvement in your joint pain. Like, I would take that Any day of the week.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's just conceptual, but. But yeah. And then also there was like, if you looked at a subscale, so healing and well being, almost across the board, there was 30% improvements in, like, in well being, in joint and muscle function, mental clarity, your tissue rejuvenation and healing. So as perceived by the user, like, you know, how well am I recovering from things? All really, really positive signs. And honestly, not surprising if you are doing your job right, if the product is doing the job, because we know that we can have a. If we do change that neighborhood and make the neighborhood for these stem cells more healthy, that they can continue to perform.

In a world, you know, the perceived feedback, I think, is probably. It's very powerful. It's really teaching people how to tune into to their bodies, to understand them. In a world where we're obsessed with testing and blood labs and all the labs that are coming out, is there anything that you foresee coming out in terms of being able to test our stem cells?

Yes, a lot of these processes are hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, we don't have a great measurement for senescent cells that's commercial. So there are research techniques to evaluate that. But it's great. Like, if you have something where, like, oh, yeah, go get this test, see your baseline, take this for three months, see where you're at. That's a beautiful feedback cycle for people. Not everything that matters or that is having a positive impact has that. Right now, however, the field of metabolomics is exploding.

Yeah.

And metabolomics, transcriptomics, this is the field of looking at all sorts of metabolites in the blood or transcription factors and then being able to make associations with what you see at baseline and later to say, hey, we think we know these markers are associating with part of the process of, let's say, stem cell renewal or functioning. And we see them moving in this positive direction. And so that's really good. And we've done a study that has looked at metabolomics, and we saw some very positive signs there. That stuff is going on. And right now this is very cutting edge work. And so these are not standardized procedures because it takes a very long time for standardization in the medical community. But doctors recognize that too and are like, oh, gosh, you know, these. There's really great science happening at this company, and they're publishing and they're doing research with all these academic institutions. And then, you know, then it's up to the individual to see, all right, where am I comfortable with Working at, you know, in a place that's a little bit more, you know, forward thinking than like it's now been established for 30 years. But if you're looking for things that have been established for 30 years, you're also dealing with 30 year outdated information.

Exactly. It's happening so quickly. On that note, what, it's like, what excites you most about the future of stem cell research? It's especially, you know, it's becoming more democratized and accessible to everyone, not just the biohackers out there.

Well, I, I there, there are some really positive things. So for example, in Florida, Senate Bill 1768 was recently passed back in July. And that is going to make Florida a destination for medical tourism. So they have looser laws which allows, not willy nilly usage of medical stem cell therapy, but for specific uses that have not yet been FDA approved for things like pain and arthritis and things like that, where you can then go and get a stem cell procedure that's not legal where previously you had to leave the country to go do that. And people would go to Central America or you know, other parts around the world that have looser guidelines or restrictions on what can be done. That was a, I think a positive.

Absolutely, yeah.

Advancement. So that's exciting. And then there is, of course, we talked a little bit about earlier, the total plasma exchange, very expensive now, you know, six to $10,000 per session. Need to get six a year. But you're, you're, you're basically like clearing out, you know, your blood. It's like cleaning up the fish tank. Right. And then the fish can survive better because the water's healthier. So there's, there's that type of therapy. So I'd love to see costs come down there. And then the big one, the big, big one is what's called reprogramming, cellular reprogramming. And we've got. Okay, all right.

It's a five hour conversation to.

So in 2012, Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for identifying what are now called Yamanaka factors. And those Japanese scientists and what they showed is that you could actually reverse, you could take a cell that had gone, that had locked in a cell fate like a muscle cell, and you could reverse it back into a state of stem cell potency, which now, now it could become a different cell. Why is that cool? Well, yeah, that's really neat. Yeah. In these, in the future, you could just take a couple cells from your cheek and then you could create, you know, some cells that are Replacing an eyelid, like a, you know, some part of your eye. Like there's all sorts of things that you could do with it if you, if you know the right sequence of. It's like you now have the clay, right, that you can mold and you now have to have the program that helps it become something very specific. But there are organisms that do this, like the axolotl. These are regenerative superstars. They can lose not only a limb, and then what they do is they form this bud where the limb was and it regrows a perfect limb where all the digits are the right length, exactly as before. And so scientists are studying those processes and I think with AI, we're going to do more than we could before because the volume of information and individual players is so vast that you do need a post human level of computation that can be directed by humans to really understand things. But. But yeah. So this idea now with cellular reprogramming is that you would have basically two different ideas. You would put in Yamanaka factors into a human for a couple of weeks. Not long enough to cause real cellular issues. Right. Getting. Because there are risks to doing that. But it causes this. It's just there for a quick pulse again, going back to this pulse idea. And then it causes pretty dramatic rejuvenation. So you could theoretically imagine somebody who's at 60 and gets reversed back down to age 40. And that is being studied and looked at by multiple companies, including Altos Labs, which raised $3 billion in their first round, funded by Jeff Bezos and others. And they've brought in top level scientists, including Shinya, Yamanaka himself and others that are real notable names in the space. And so it's really cool what's going on.

Oh God. Let's use science for good. I'm just thinking of all the people who've been, you know, gone through physiological trauma or disease. God, the amount of people in this world who could so benefit from that. I hope it's. I hope it's something that becomes very accessible and that's exciting. Like, this gets me lights up, lit up. This is the part of science and what I wanted to bring to this podcast, which is it gives us something to really look forward to about the future. You are such a brilliant educator. Thank you so much for today. Honestly, for all of our. You're welcome. For all of our listeners, Please head to qualiolife.com Mona check out their stem cell products. They have so many incredible products. Qualia Mind, I think is probably the one supplement that I sell the most of because my clients love it so, so, so much. How do you like connecting with your audience? You're a great educator.

Thanks. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I. I think right now we're doing some really great work at Qualia on the blog. So.

Yeah.

Taking a deep dive into one of the ingredients and, you know, or. And covering different topics. So we cover topics related to our products, the therapeutic area that we're interested in, the. A particular ingredient, or a formulator's overview of all of it. So if you. If you want more information, the team's written hundreds of great articles, and we put a lot of time and effort into those. And then Ginny, in my department is really one of the main authors of that now and doing a great job. She's a fantastic communicator. She writes in a way where the story just unfolds. You want to just keep reading. You're like, what happens next? Like a mystery series that you're watching on Netflix. But, yeah, go there. And then, yeah, I'm gonna keep. Keep talking about stem cells and senolytics and NAD and a bunch of other topics. So you can search for my name in Beautiful in Apple podcast, I guess.

Well, thank you so much for your time today. I can't wait to meet you in person.

Likewise. Thank you for the time today and having me on your show, Mona.