The Anti-Aging Answer: How to Activate Telomerase to Stop Telomere Loss

In essence, we're making this cell, you know, act like a younger cell. It can replicate more. I mean, the Hayflick limit is basically 50 replications and then it goes through either apoptosis or becomes senescent. We've had in the Petri dish in vitro have been able to have a cell continue to replicate ongoing. It doesn't, it doesn't see a Hayflick limit.

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Hello, it's Dr. Kenton Holtorf with another episode of the Peptide Summit. This is now 2.0, and today I'll be interviewing Eric MacDonald of TA Sciences. We're talking about activation of telomerase to stop telomere loss. Thank you so much, Eric, for being on. And telomeres are really in the, you know, really hot in terms of regenerative medicine, but you guys have been at this for quite a while.

Yeah.

And normally everyone's, you know, the cutting edge, but you were cutting edge, cutting edge a long time ago. Yeah. Give me, tell me a little history. How'd you get into this?

How I got into it? I started the company 7 years, you know, 7 years ago. I just started with them and the company itself was incorporated in 2002. It was founded by Noel Patton, who's our founder and chairman. And he acquired the molecule from a biotech company in California called Geron. And Geron is still in existence in this day, but they were looking to try to produce a molecule as a drug. So they were looking for it to be a pharmaceutical agent. And when they realized that the FDA was not, you know, ready for an anti-aging product. They did a stage left with this thing. They did a ton of studies in the '90s on this product. They knew they had something that was good. It's just that, you know, it would never get approved at that time. And still here we are, 2021, and the FDA is still blocking, you know, aging products. Yeah.

I mean, it's a great molecule to go over and, you know, as a supplement, than as a drug because yeah, God forbid you do something to prevent aging, you know, it's like better not cure cancer. Bro, too many people are gonna lose their livelihood.

That's true.

So from 2002 to 2007, we did additional testing on the product and then we eventually marketed the product and launched it in 2007. So you've heard the phrase, timing is everything. 2 years later, you know, we got a really strong foothold into the tumor biology, you know, world when the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak for identifying this enzyme telomerase that actually, actually once activated, you know, that it adds these nucleotide bases to the telomere. So we were at the right place at the right time. And I mean, the curves on the product sales was just—

I mean, because I imagine you trying to explain it to someone, you know, this is what it does. And they're like, like, 3 heads, like, what, I want that?

True.

And all this stuff becomes common knowledge, you know?

Yep. It's taken a while, but, you know, I was really quite surprised at how the layperson, you know, knew about telomeres. So it got a lot of press. It was on 60 Minutes, you know, like I'm thinking in 2010. And then we just took off. And then we had two other studies that were published in Rejuvenation Research in 2011 and 2013. And that again, just added fuel to the fire. And we just took off exponentially. And So here we are, 2021, and we still are the only clinically proven telomerase activating product on the market.

I was gonna say, I don't know of any other studies that, you know, people say, oh, this may do it, this may do it theoretically.

Right. So what happens, you'll get a lot of companies that will have, you know, these little knockoff companies or physicians that come up with some formulation. And they'll say clinically proven to activate telomerase. And it's because they have like astragalus as an active ingredient. They don't do any of those studies. They basically cite all of our studies. And it's, it's not the same because yeah, we extract a single molecule out of the root. I mean, you start with astragalus, but this is a given species of astragalus, and then we extract the molecule out of that.

So it's, Now, you guys have a patent because a lot of people, they don't do that because you do a patent, you kind of give away the secret sauce, right?

We have a patent on the extraction process because you can't have a patent on a naturally occurring substance.

And so, but it's, it's sophisticated so someone can do it. They do do it, then you can go after them. Have you had to go after anyone?

On several occasions, yes. And it's, it just gets to the point where, you know, or probably sometimes just making claims. It is just threatening them, you're, you know, you're going back and forth. They don't have their studies. They claim they can do this and there's only so much you can do, you know, and it's, if you're gonna waste your money in court, you know, to do what? I mean, they have to prove that their product works. They have to have the studies and, you know, studies for a very small company are very expensive. I mean, oh yeah.

And it's interesting, our patent defense, it's one of our patients had a patent on all mobile searches. So he's trying to sue Google and it was just, of course, did not go well.

No, I can't imagine.

Yeah. And that's tough, but yeah, studies are very expensive. That's why you don't typically see them with, with with supplements, you know, and they seem to be getting more and more expensive, you know, as time goes on to do a, a decent study. And you guys have what, 10?

We have 10 peer-reviewed trials to date. Yes. Wow.

Wow.

We've been spending a little bit more than $1 million per year on clinical trials and we've been going since like 2005 with studies. And then we found that, you know, I came in, I came from the pharmaceutical industry. I launched Lipitor, and Cognex, the first drug for Alzheimer's disease. Yes, yes, yeah, I know, I, when I came into this field, it was like, you know, Jupiter. Yeah, but that was an exciting time in my life. And I worked for Parke-Davis and we, we had a product called Lopid, which was a lipid regulator. And its claim to fame was HDL increasing. And doctors would be like, what's HDL? So there's a real kind of interesting bookends to my career, starting off with Lopid in like the early '80s, and now here where you got two products that are basically ahead of their time.

Yeah. Nice, nice. I remember Lopid. What happened to that?

That went generic. Gymfi Brazil is the generic name, and Pfizer acquired Parc Davis, which was a division of Warner Lambert, back in 2001.

And, uh, I was on last, this whole week conversations with the whole COVID thing and what's true, what's not. And you know how some of these huge pharma companies have so much money, you know, they can predetermine their studies by manipulating just the way that, you know, data is done.

But that's awesome. Yeah.

Well, there's two, two, two major studies that were published here in the last couple of months. You had, uh, Maria Blasco out of Spain. She's a big tumor biology cancer expert. She heads up the Cancer Institute out of Madrid, and she's been a telomere person for probably as long as Elizabeth Blackburn. And when she heard that the initial problems that people were seeing with COVID-19 that were lung-related, you know, like pulmonary fibrosis, she said, you know what? And it's infecting the elderly. She's like, what, what happens to the elderly? Their telomeres are shorter. And what happens in people with pulmonary fibrosis at any age? Their telomeres are shorter.

And even like diabetics and hypertension.

Yep. You can look at any study where you have twin studies. They did the, the astronauts of the, you know, the one that went up and it was up in space and this, you know, the International Space Station for like up to a year. And he came back, his telomeres were drastically shorter than his brother. But that was just going up and coming down. They did a baseline and it came back, but after about 6 to 9 months, his telomeres bounced back and they were the same as his. Yeah.

Well, you, it's, they should be a few seconds younger, but you would think, yeah. As of, you know, going the speed of light unless, you know, whatever. But I was watching a thing like if you have a baby on a space shuttle like that, the kid is gonna be so different. But one, you can't even get pregnant. You know, the sperm don't even know where to go. And basically you have no bones and like, you know, we'd be aliens if we basically had generations in space, we would come back as aliens.

How about that?

Yeah. And come back, you couldn't walk, you couldn't, you know.

So all those, all those, you know, sci-fi movies are real.

It is. You come back green, a little head. Awesome. But yeah, I love that you guys put, I mean, the companies don't do that.

I mean, they just typically don't put so much money back into research and, you know, just what's, what's fascinating though is that all the studies that we've done, it's kind of like this, this molecule has like a Midas touch. It, it's always showing some result that is generally favorable. And if you think about it, you got a product that's impacting the DNA. You know, the end caps of the DNA, the telomeres, and we're lengthening telomeres. So in essence, we're making this cell, you know, act like a younger cell. It can replicate more. I mean, the Hayflick limit is basically 50 replications and then it goes through either apoptosis or becomes senescent. We've had in a Petri dish in vitro have been able to have a cell continue to replicate Ongoing. It doesn't, it doesn't see a Hayflick limit.

Yeah.

I used to think I'd like to live forever. Now I don't know with all this crap going on.

The most important thing is, hey, like, please live healthy.

I live very, very sick and you certainly don't want to live. No, rather not, you know, so this, that prevents that.

Well, that's what David, David's been, David Sinclair out of Harvard. He's the one that is basically, he said, hey, I don't think in my lifetime, and I think right now he's like about 50 years old. He said, I don't think in my lifetime I'm going to be able to take the mean age and have people live longer in his lifetime. He said, but I know for a fact I'm going to be able to make those last 2 decades of your life a much healthier 2 decades of your life. And you know, we do, we do have it so backwards, you know, we really do. I mean, you work all your life, say you retire at 65 and you live to 85. Those are your two worst decades of your life from a health point of view.

Oh yeah. Like, hey, you're alive. You're in nursing home.

Oh yeah.

You had a stroke. You got heart failure, diabetes. You got, and if you look at all the money put in as well to keep someone alive for a year, It's just the resources, you know, and I don't want to live in a wheelchair and, you know, basically without my mental capacity and I'm kind of living like that now, but it's a different live better longer, you know, and then let me go, you know, but yeah, it is interesting. It's like, well, put, you know, grandma in the home and we'll visit her for 20 years. Like who wants that?

My next door neighbor, my next door neighbor is 72 years old. His mother is still alive. She's 105. And when I first moved here like 13 years ago, she would come and visit and she would walk upright and, you know, walk down the street and you're like, she turned like 98? You know, he goes, yeah. I go, wow. She's got a posture like a 60-year-old or a 50-year-old. And, but she's miserable, especially during this pandemic. She's 104 years old and her husband died when he was 98. And she wants no part of being here anymore, which is sad.

What's the use?

I mean, I'd say from that old, I'd love it. You get the right to say whatever you want to anyone you want. And I have this theory too, like in nursing homes, you people demented and lose that frontal lobe and lose that inhibition and whatever their inner person comes out, that's what they really are. It's kind of like a, you know, me drunk or you got the guy who's just, chasing the women, right? Just nice as can be. And, you know, so I think it's interesting, but yeah, you take advantage of those golden years and retire, you know, working and live. And that's what you guys are, are helping people do.

So you asked me about different, you know, criteria that we looked at in our, in our studies. So our most significant study to date was, I call it our Spain trial. It was conducted in Spain The telomere testing was done by Life Length with which most people, if you're familiar with telomere testing, they're like the gold standard.

They're based on— yeah, I had a couple questions regarding that too.

And so we did a study, 117 subjects, double-blind placebo-controlled. We had them on doses of our starting dose, which is 250 units per day. And then we had another arm taking 4 capsules a day or 1,000. Units, of which at that time we had a, a number of people, you know, the typical American way, you know, one's good, two's better mentality. And when people have deep pockets, they figure, hey, you know, I'm 70 years old, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take more that might help me. And lo and behold, what we found out is that the sweet spot in this particular study, which the inclusion criteria, everyone had to be CMV positive. So, CMV, cytomegalovirus. Yes.

Herp—

Really interesting.

Herp—

Herp— Herpes number 5. And the reason why is because the science was already out there. If you're CMV positive, you're basically a senescent T-cell factory.

Yeah. You have your immune system shot and you're probably going to get cancer and you probably feel like crap. And yeah, you probably have multiple medical problems.

So ironically, I mean, the seropositivity rate is pretty stunning in the United States. At the age of 10, 30% of the population at 10 is positive and it goes 1% per year. So by the age of 30, it's a coin toss as to whether you're CMV positive or not. And it's an asymptomatic condition generally. But if they do get symptoms, from what I've been told, it's like lupus-like symptoms.

Yeah.

And that happens generally later in life. But my word, if you know that you're CMV positive and knock on wood, I'm CMV negative. And I mean, I've had chickenpox, I've had, you know, you know, cold sores, the, you name it. So I've had a number of the herpes strains, but I, I'm not CMV positive. And my, my ACT spoke, I was low.

And it's all about the immune system.

You know, so, and I think too, younger and younger people were finding because of, you know, pesticides, toxins, you know, Roundup, it's like, and everything just suppressing one's immune system. So it was low. It's kind of like when you get the chickenpox, you think, oh, I'm over the chickenpox. No, not really. It's still there. Sure. It comes back out of the shingles when your immune system drops. So it shows that all these people are getting low immunity and getting studies on EMFs, like it's a problem.

Like, I just got my second vaccine on the shingles last Friday.

Oh, don't do it.

Okay, well, yeah, I did because that's the last thing I want.

Yeah, but, uh, now no one should be getting shingles.

They, you know, they need to fix your— I mean, they're—

you know, I didn't need it.

You got enough, uh, uh, you know, my dad had it pretty bad at like the age of 75, and he said it was one of the most miserable things he's ever experienced. And he's done kidney stones, and you name it. So, yeah, yeah.

No, no, that is true.

And sometimes I had a coworker that had it in his mouth. Yeah.

But yeah, more and more people are getting it because their immune system— we become immune modulator clinic because it's just the cause of all these illnesses. And as you get older, the more sickness you get, the worse the immune system. So now you get reactivating infection, let's see, the shingles. And everything's a vicious cycle. And you fix the immune system, and which the immune system replicates fast. And so is the gut with the gut-brain axis. So you need to be able to have those cells keep up.

That's right. That's right.

And so they need to be able to replicate, which requires telomere length.

Yep. And they're also noticing that the T cells in COVID-19 patients are being drastically impacted. The CD4 and CD8 T cells are— I mean, you can— we, we offer a UCLA immunology test that looks at about 10 different biomarkers of immunology. Every clinical study to date, we've used the UCLA test to identify, you know, how people are reacting. We have a, what they call the CD8 to CD28 negative, which is a marker for senescent T cells. So really, I wanna, yep, I gotta check that out cuz that's huge. Mm-hmm.

Cuz there's really no great, like through standard tests, through Quest, LabCorp, like great ways of looking at the immune system. We're a mean monitor clinic, but we gotta make a lot of compromises, you know?

Right. So the 4 biomarkers that UCLA offers in this test are unique and custom. So you're not gonna find those at LabCorp or Quest or any other.

Yeah.

Can, can you name those again? 'Cause this is for doctors.

CD8, CD— it's kind of like CD8/CD28 negative. And then you have one that measures naive T cells. And of course you want naive is good, it's young. That's a CD8, CD95.

So both of those positive.

Those are two biomarkers that are great to know. You know, you wanna make sure that you have a good amount of, or optimal amount of CD95s, which are naive T cells, because—

And you need some reserve.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so does the telomere length correlate with these?

CMV correlates with the CD28 negatives. You can almost look at this UCLA test. And be able to identify someone that's CMV positive, but you can't definitively say that. You gotta do an IgG titer to rule out CMV, but you can look at the numbers and you can say, if you look at enough of these, Dr. Joseph Raphael has got it all broken down. You know, what's optimal, what's okay, what's normal.

And, and, uh, yeah. Do you find these change taking the product?

For our two, our two studies that were published in '11 and '13, look, use that test, and there was a statistically significant improvement in senescent T-cell reduction.

Interesting.

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Well, how long of a period does that take?

Well, the study was 1 year in length. So typically you're gonna see immune response 3 to 6 months.

3 to 6 months.

Yep.

Okay. And then also you hear, you know, like a lot of different telomere tests and you hear, well, it's not the average, it's the number percent of short telomeres. Can you comment on that?

The most important thing is the methodology that's used. So you get a lot of these finger stick ones that are out there. Those are all PCR. And PCR is just gonna give you a mean or average telomere length, and that is amplified. They're not actually measuring the telomere. So you want to use, you know, what they call— see, it's been a while. I was telling you beginning, but, uh, there's Life Length, which is outta Spain. And then you got Repeat Diagnostics, which is out of, uh, Vancouver, Canada.

Is it, uh, Repeat?

Repeat.

Yep.

Repeat Diagnostics. And both of those two companies use fluorescent in situ hybridization. So they're actually fluorescing the telomere and measuring the individual telomere in the sample. So it's a more exact measurement of what your telomeres are. And Repeat Diagnostics looks at granulocytes and lymphocytes. So your granulocytes are what they call your God-given telomere legs. It's coming outta your bone marrow. They do not replicate. It's kind of like an amp—

They do not?

Yeah, they don't because they die in 24 hours. So, and they only come out like an ambulance when you really need it. So they pop out, they do their work, and you know, it's kind of like, you know, certain insects that come out for, you know, one day and hopefully find their mate and be on their way. So then you got the lymphocytes which can circulate in your blood for a decade and they do replicate.

So you'll typically, I learned that's a decade.

I, yep, yep. And you'll find, you'll find that those two cell types are generally a kilobase different. Yeah. On average. So say as a 50-year-old man, your lymphocyte will be 6.5, which is 6,500 base pairs. And then your, uh, granulocyte should be about 7.5.

Okay.

So basically what it's saying is the best you're gonna get at that point in time in your life is 7.5 if you do nothing, cuz that's what your body is able to produce.

Yes.

But over time, yes, it'll degrade. And basically a full kilobase pair per decade. So if you're starting off at, you probably heard 10,000 base pairs at birth, and then usually as you get into your 70s and 80s, you're roughly around 3,000 base pairs. So now we're talking 7 decades of life and you've lost 7,000 base pairs.

Now, is that for cells on average or for new cells produced?

That's just on average.

On average.

Yeah.

And so let's say, and we've been wanting to do this for a while, is, you know, do a longevity program.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So we use TA65, we check their telomere length.

And also about, well, I would do, I would do their CMV status.

I think that's very important.

You could do, do you think the percent of short telomeres is important measure as well?

Oh, very, is very important. It tells you So if you get like the average, it'd be like saying, all right, you took a class in college and you got a 3.0 or you got a B in that class. Okay, but how did you get that B? Were all of your tests a 3.0 or did you have a couple of 2.0s, a couple of 4.0s, and you averaged 3? So that's where that short telomere comes into play. It kind of tells you really how bad you are or how good you are. So if you have a low percentage of short telomeres, that means that your mean telomere length is pretty rock solid, like you got a lot of good grades, okay? But if you have a high percentage of short telomeres, that means that you're really kind of dipole with your telomere length. You got quite a few that are short and quite a few that are long. To give you this average.

So, so when you find someone who, let's say it's kind of like, seems like a big spread versus they're more same.

Yeah.

Let's say they're the same number.

Uh-huh.

What's the difference between the two people?

The difference is, is that the ones that have a higher percentage of short telomeres, um, it'll end up catching up to them.

So they got some stress on those particular cell types. Right.

And every telomere, I mean, we got 23 pairs of chromosomes. Okay. So you got 4 telomeres on every pair. So you got 92 telomeres in your body and only takes one to get critically short and the cell stops replicating.

And then which then causes all that inflammation.

Yep.

Cause you have energy to die.

The cell becomes senescent, becomes cytotoxic. I use the analogy like when you have like a bunch of grapes and you got 'em sitting out on the table and one starts to frost up, right? Starts to, starts to go bad. Well, what's the next grape to go bad? Is it on the other side of the bunch? No, it's the one that's adjacent to the one that's cytotoxic. So the same thing happens with senescent T cells is that that cell become, it, it's, it's rotting. And it becomes cytotoxic and it basically poisons the other cells that are in.

So do you wanna do like a senolytic program and get rid of those cells before starting TA-65?

Dr. Cleaver is a big advocate of the senolytic approach, and I think that it's ideal for someone that's CMV positive that has a Senescent.

And it's, it's not hard. I mean, you can do, you know, a number of peptides and even flavonoids, you know, and other things. So maybe do a couple weeks or a month of that and then start. And then when would you recheck the telomere status?

I would not do it but annually because, you know, the accuracy of the test, you know, is one in which if you were to do it like 3 months from now or 6 months from now, yeah, you're going to get, as Joe Raphael says, you got to look at your telomere testing like a 401k. You do it every year and you just monitor your portfolio because you're going to, they call it the oscillating hypothesis where you'll get this, you know, almost like a sine wave. It's going down. You draw the line and telomere's going down, but you can't get too excited because, you know, maybe your baseline test, life was good. You had no stress, you had nothing happen. And then a year later, you know, you had, you know, the death of a child or something tragic or this pandemic we're living through. I bet you every, well, not even the US, the world population, I bet has lost telomeres quite a bit.

So, what do you think is the biggest influence on shortening of telomere stress?

You name it. Everything we know that's bad for you impacts your telomeres: smoking, obesity, stress, you know, X-rays, living in the city versus living in the country.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna search because then I did, I just did a, a presentation on EMFs and how peptides protect you from EMFs.

And I couldn't believe the studies on EMFs. I'm gonna see if they shorten telomeres. I, I've, I've bet you they do.

Possibly. I, I, I, I don't recall. I mean, there was a big study that came out about hypobaric chambers. I think it was in London and they showed lengthening, pretty significant lengthening in telomeres. But it's kind of like Dean Ornish's Mediterranean diet showing telemere improvement. It's gotta do what I see. It's got, but it's gotta be realistic. For example, this hyperbaric chamber, they had to be in it for 90 minutes every day for like 3 months. Well, I'm sorry, the average American does not have that capability of being— Yeah.

Only Michael Jackson. Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So it's great to know, but not necessarily ideal. And even Dean Ornish's study, I mean, when you really kind of dig into it, yes, the Mediterranean diet is favorable. But man, I mean, the way that they had to live on that diet was—

Yeah. I always say you don't live long, it just feels like it. Just drag the hot house. But yeah, that's— I'm more like have fun and take peptide, you know. But you know what I have— I've seen, I want to ask you is, so these people like elite athletes and they're doing triathlons and they're in the best shape and you check their telomeres and they're terrible.

Yep. Or do their like glycan age or their DNA methylation and it's awful. It's awful. It's oxidative stress.

Yeah. I'm like, and these guys are the epitome of health. And it's like, dude, sorry, you know? So that's why, I mean, I work out religiously every 4 months for 8 minutes, you know? I don't care rain or shine, I'm doing it, you know? So, uh, yeah, but, uh, that, that was very interesting when I, when I saw that. It's consistent too. Let's talk about your cream.

Oh, TA65 for skin. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm a big fan. We have to lock it up at the office because all the staff takes it. I think I mentioned I have to hide it from my girlfriend because she tries to bathe in it.

Well, the takeaway is what a lot of people don't realize, like you say, she bathes in it and a little bit goes a long way. It really does. The 4-ounce tube, which I think is more than gracious. I mean, it's It'll last, it should last at least 4 months. Again, unless you're bathing in it. But if you really, you, I mean, it's an emollient, what I call a triceramide base. There's 3 different ceramides in this vehicle and it spreads really nicely. And ideally, especially on your face, just a thin coat because what you'll find is that if you put too much on, it doesn't absorb, it only absorbs a small amount of it and then it just sits there. And then you have this kind of like almost like, you know, sticky mess.

If you—

hey, I'm gonna have her watch this part of this.

There you go.

But you know when stuff works when you have to lock it up at the office, right? Yes.

Now most, most people that use it really do enjoy it and they like it. We get about a, just about a 20% reduction in fine lines and wrinkles of the crow's feet. You got about 10% pigmentation, you know, like a redness reduction. The real takeaway is we have an 89% increase in skin firmness.

Oh, that's interesting because most things don't claim that or do that. And any hair growth?

We were gonna be doing this study in hair, but—

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can tell it, it's not, it's not working for me, but, you know, again, I don't use it every day. I should. I get the product.

Oh, it's, it's like, you know, the cobbler's children, uh, children have no shoes. It's like, like I finally have all this stuff like right here and I don't do it, but I'll go do it when I'm out of state.

Right. Right.

But yeah.

And then we had a 2 to 3-fold reduction in inflammatory cytokines and proteases. So like IL-6, TNF-alpha, MMP-4.

Yeah.

So. So what is that mechanism?

And that's another anti-aging, of course.

We see that both in the skin cream as well as the oral. The skin cream, you know, if you're measuring, you know, the impact on the skin, yes, the skin cream has got a bigger impact on the skin, but orally, those inflammatory cytokine improvements on the oral is probably— I always, people, when people say, should I start on the skin, the skin product, or should I start with the oral? I said, well, the oral systemic, I mean, plus depends if, yeah, if you're in LA, you do the skin cream. Yeah. Then the skin cream, right.

Doesn't matter how you feel, it's how you look.

That's right. But a lot of people are using the combination of the oral as well as the skin cream.

So that's interesting. I was kind of thinking back with the, you know, with the COVID and when that was her first thought. And, but also, you know, of course everything is, you know, lowering that inflammatory cytokine storm with that. Have you done any studies or anything with COVID or?

No. And I know that our federal government, you know, got their antenna out there loud and clear, you know, with people that are trying to claim.

I know. I'm their product.

I didn't say COVID. I said Mo'bid.

Don't touch it with a 10-foot pole. But a lot of, like I was telling you, like that Maria Blasco and Dr. Aviv out of Rutgers, he did a study and I mean the hypothesis makes perfect sense. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is not impacting younger generation. It's impacting the elderly. What's the difference between those two? Telomere length, you know, and when it's impacting the lungs, pulmonary fibrosis, as I mentioned to you, you, you do telomere lengths on pulmonary fibrosis, and God forbid you have a husband and a wife that both are, you know, IPF, they then generate another type of disease. It's the name is like this long. And those kids don't live to be but maybe 3 years old. But you look at their test results, they're awful, awful. Pulmonary fibrosis, you're in like the 1 percentile for telomere length.

Yeah.

And the nice thing that, you know, with peptides is the TB4 frag, huge studies on fibrosis, especially cardiac, diabetic nephropathy and fibrosis and breaking down that fibrotic tissue, uh, is really interesting. And just another interesting thing I was reading is that a pathologist found that when he checked the lungs of the COVID patients, they had no thyroid in their lungs. And so it was a, you know, one-person trial and I won, but was totally sick. Didn't know what else to do. Gave a big dose of T3, boom, just totally reversed it. So interesting stuff.

I think when, when this virus eventually, you know, says bye-bye and the data that we will be able to acquire, I mean, hopefully we don't have this issue of this magnitude ever again in our lifetime. You know, But it is phenomenal.

Yeah.

When you think about a virus that impacted the whole globe, I mean, you think about national or natural tragedies that occur, hurricanes, volcanoes, all, it's so defined into the area. This is impacting the whole world, especially where you're at right now. You're pretty much a hotspot still, right?

It's closing down, but it's like, No one should be dying from COVID I think if someone dies in hospital, I think it should be a big lawsuit. There's so many medications. I mean, I gave a talk on peptides and stem cells for COVID-19 ARDS, you know, basically, you know, respiratory failure. A dramatic improvement, right? Who's getting that? Just giving glutathione, you know, of course, even that people on respirators getting vitamin D and 5%, okay, 5% mortality on the vitamin D, 50% when they didn't get it. Like, okay, cost 8 cents, right? You know, and these hospitals are refusing to do it. I think there should be liability there, but it's like, hey, we need the vaccine, we need the vaccine.

Here's something fascinating. African Americans have longer telomeres than Caucasians from Europe. But when you look at COVID, they have a higher death rate to COVID than European Caucasians. And it's kinda like, okay, well then maybe it's not a telomere thing. Well, when you think about African Americans in general, you think about hypertension, their hypertension numbers are off the chart. So now we're looking at the angiotensin receptor. And that's basically the pathway for COVID is, you know, they used to— Yeah, it's the bus driver, you know? So it's fascinating. And I think the results that we're going to hear when they put the data all together, hopefully—

Yeah, if they do it honestly, I don't know. I can't get started. It's like—

Oh, I hear you. I hear you. And then it's hopeful that the human race will be able to find ways to be able to, you know, yeah. And I got a funny, I got a funny feeling this is going to be like flu vaccine or the flu. We're going to have that.

It's funny. There's no flu anymore.

No colds.

Yeah.

Everyone's COVID and show me a study that masks help or lockdowns help. You know, I thought we follow the science.

I also, I also want to see—

Anyway, black helicopters are coming down already.

But I would also like to see the results of the rate of typical mortality, like heart attacks, lung cancer, all the things, the top 4. Did they miraculously—

They've gone down. Yes. No one's hit by a bus anymore. It's COVID.

Well, that's true. Yeah.

It's crazy. And yeah, and it gets so political and basically, people are just—

that's not going away apparently from what we're seeing.

So yeah, that's true. But yeah, back to the good stuff. Yeah, the product, you guys have been around, tried and true and proven and scientifically based, and you know, put your money where your mouth is. And you know, I don't know any supplement that's done 10, you know, well-done studies. Where do people purchase this? And do you have advice on how to implement it to a doctor's practice?

Yeah, we have a whole like marketing, you know, package that we send to our new physician licensees that join us. The obligation to sell it in your practice is just to buy a 1-year supply for 1 person. We provide you all of the, you know, patient brochures, doctor brochures. And then I, I even offer my services for like open houses that practices will do where they'll have like a wine and cheese evening. They bring what they feel are the ideal TU-65 patients. And let's face it, we know that from this price point that we have, we'd love to say that everyone can afford it, but you know, we know that not everyone can, but at least, at least 5 to 10% of an average practice And in this peptide world, you know, these practices, I would say probably more than 50%, if not more of your practice, could be candidates for TA65.

Yeah.

I think people are finally realizing it's like we have patients that like, "Oh, I don't want it if my insurance doesn't cover it." I mean, if you want to do insurance, you're going to get the most minimal care. Okay, if you break your arm or something, Great, you know, but anything other than that, you better be an educated health consumer, find a doctor that's, that's cutting edge. And I'll just say a quick story, you know, I had terrible Lyme and I had no immune system and I had sepsis and I was in ICU and I'm asking the doctors about, you know, IV vitamin C. There's only thing shown to reduce mortality in sepsis in the last 40 years, right?

And they never heard of it. And I'm like, what? It's been in every journal, let alone every ICU journal, you know, a critical care journal. And then so like the nurses were kind of passive, and then I finally got this one nurse who was fight— she was, I'll, I'll tell them, you know. And okay, she comes back, big smile, and says, he's gonna do it, he's gonna do it.

They wouldn't even look at the papers.

I printed the papers out for them, and, uh It's just going to do it. I'm like, okay, that's good. And then about 5 hours later, she comes, a big smile, a little cup with 500 milligrams of vitamin C. I'm like, I go to 7-Eleven and get, you know, 2,000.

Just give me 2 oranges, will ya?

Yeah. So it's scary, but you know, I used to get really mad at the doctors, but they're also in a system that if they were to say I would do IV vitamin C, the hospital would eventually be like, no, we don't do that.

That's not what we do, you know.

And I have other instances where I had a blown pupil, you know, at dinner, and one of my girlfriend's kids like, "Your eye is so cool." I'm like, "What? What are you talking about?" And I go look in the bathroom, like, that is not good. My whole eye is the pupil, which either stroke, you know, basically. So I go in and they're like, "Okay, what's your family history?" I'm like, okay, give me I need these peptides, give me progesterone. And they're like, oh, that's interesting. We'll take the studies and then you'll do it with the studies. Like, well, we'll look at the studies. I give them the studies. They're like, I didn't say we'd do it. And so I'm calling people like, get down here, I gotta save my brain, you know? And turns out they do MRI, CT, nothing. It was a Herxheimer from Lyme. And growing up, one pupil was always bigger than the other because I had Lyme since I was a kid. But, uh, it's—

where'd you, where'd you grow up?

Uh, Huntington Beach.

Okay.

Yeah. So, uh, whether of course no Lyme, of course, but yeah. Okay. No, but you know, I mean, the prevalence is obviously pretty low out there. I would find it is so high. In fact, we had another person right next door, Fountain Valley, a CEO who we diagnosed with Lyme, just very sick. And the same guy who had the patent actually. And doing better. And then, but his doctor, what does doctor say? There's no Lyme. This is quackery. And he calls just panic saying, my doctor, there's no way. So the diagnosis is so wrong. I try to explain to him. And then about 2 weeks later, his dog gets totally sick and they bring the dog in. The vet goes, his dog's got Lyme.

So I'm like, so you started going to the vet?

Yeah. Yeah. Got here like the Seinfeld Kramer. But yeah, so I think this is just, you guys have been ahead of your time and quality evidence-based, well-researched.

It all comes down to awareness. So, when I'm at any given show and I have the opportunity to spend the time, not this much time, but let's just say 10 minutes with a physician, the close rate is astronomical. Yeah. It's, it's just, they hear what I have to share with them and they buy the product. Yeah. And they have to, we have so many people that every year, you know, I'm ready for my year supply. You got any specials going on?

Well, I found is that also I forget to take it and I'm like, damn, I could feel my telomeres shrinking.

It's like, yeah, that, I mean, that's the, that's like the number one question that people ask is, you know, to their doctor, what am I gonna feel when I'm on this product? And I, and I kind of say, well, I really wish I knew what it felt like when my telomeres are growing.

Yeah.

It's, people have to put it in perspective that that's really what this product does. It does impact your biomarkers of immunology. And we'll have a 500-patient study published this year looking at all of our dosage strengths. Some in a BID regimen or versus QD. We wanna find out where the sweet spot is for, you know, we saw that in the Spain trial. We wanna see if that replicates in the United States, but we're also not looking at telomeres in this study. We're looking at the biomarkers of immunology.

Oh, interesting.

Interesting.

Yeah. They made me think too, not feeling anything. It's kinda like also you don't feel your arteries are, are becoming clogged, right?

Like blood pressure medication. Most people don't know You know, and they'll just make a decision to stop taking the blood pressure medication. I think blood pressure medication is one of the lowest compliant drugs that people take. They fall off because they just, they're like, ah, that's not gonna work, you know. And lo and behold, you know, they're coming in the doctor with, you know, 180 over 120, you know.

Yeah. And so I mentioned that cardiovascular disease Highly associated with telomere length.

Yep. Cardiac tissue. Yeah. And people, people will say, oh, well, I have an average telomere length, but I have severe cardiovascular disease. You know, well, what does that mean? I said, well, unless we're doing a biopsy of your cardiac tissue, I mean, what that tells me is that if you're average and you have terrible, you know, cardiac tissue, then you have other parts of your body systemically that's doing much better than it normally would. Yeah. The only reason you're gonna be able to do it is a biopsy.

I don't know if you can answer this, but does it selectively increase the lower telomeres or, yeah. Or let's say when you take it, do you see a change in the percent of short telomeres versus the average first? Or what do you typically see?

Yes. I mean, it's fascinating how the human body works. When telomerase is introduced to somatic tissue or somatic cells, it goes where it should. It goes where it should. Yep. So I use the analogy, it's like a mother that has, you know, a single mother that has 5 kids and one of 'em's sick. You know, she's gonna tend to that sick child and think of that sick child as being the one with short telomeres.

Yeah.

It's fast.

I don't know.

Now I'm thinking of everyone I know, they're short-term or they're not. But I think that is awesome. I mean, that right there, I think that's a great closing piece of information because that's key.

Yes.

It's not making the longer ones longer. It's making the shorter ones longer.

So, and I'll tell you, it's companies like LifeLinc that were able to identify that for us. Because they do measure not only the mean telomere length, but they also do the critically short or the short percentile.

Cool, cool. LifeLinc, and they're out of Spain.

So you can reach them at lifelinc.com.

And so again, 'cause the doctors, do they set up an account and then ship it?

Yep. They ship 'em kits, you know, and then I, I'm not sure exactly. So Some companies have it to where you pay 10% for the kit and then when you send it in, that's when you get charged for it. Life Length, I'm not sure if they're on that.

Uh, gotcha. No problem right now, Coach.

No, actually what they do is they ship it to a, uh, a location just outside of Philadelphia and then it's flash frozen. And then every, like every Tuesday, they, they send the batch to Spain. And then they'll try to— I mean, generally you get the results in 2 or 3 weeks. And that particular blood work and the analysis that's done and how they provide you, it's not just like one sheet, this is what your telomere length is. I mean, it's a whole booklet and it tells you, you know, ways in which to improve, you know, if your results are not that good.

I have the test though in my, in my bathroom, which I'm planning to do along with all these other tests.

But I will tell you and everyone that's listening, If you're doing telomere tests annually, you do not want to do a telomere test if something really is tragic going on in your life.

I'll never be able to do it.

Or if you're sick and another thing too, right? And now you also want to make sure because your workout schedule is core rule.

I got it.

Do your workout.

I don't want to overexercise.

But again, people, people that do strenuous exercise, they need to take a day off and then do their telomere test.

A day. See, if you're gonna do a day, you might as well, you know, do better.

Hey, well, I'd also like to, uh, you know, offer anyone that's listening to this that wants to purchase the product, they can call our main office and the office number is 212- 5508, and they can put the passcode summit, and we'll provide them a special discount for being listeners of this program. If anyone has any questions or wants information, you can either go to info@tasciences.com, or they can come and email me directly. And my name is Eric, E-R-I-C. @tasciences.com.

And we'll, we'll try to get that up in writing. Um, and so with the summit discount, was it 80% off?

I think it would typically be our conference specials that we, that we give to physicians that come to our conferences, which unfortunately has been kind of dry this last year.

It's just been tough, but that's, I've taken advantage of you guys at the conferences all the time.

Well, awesome.

Hey, it was fun. Educational, impressive. So thank you so much. And you are one of our wonderful sponsors, and suggest you go to the website and take advantage of all the information and do something I think is great for your patients. So absolutely.

Thank you very much.

So great.

Thanks for joining us on the Peptides and Longevity Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review. It helps us reach more listeners passionate about optimizing their health. For more insights, resources, and updates, visit our website at www.holtorfmed.com. Together, let's embrace a future of health and vitality. Until next time, stay inspired and keep thriving.