Episode 34
Can a Supplement Actually Slow Ageing? NOVOS Founder Chris Mirabile on Tackling All 12 Hallmarks
At 16, Chris Mirabile was lying in a hospital bed the night before brain surgery, wondering whether he would wake up the next morning. Years later, as he was building NOVOS, he lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. Those two experiences reshaped the way he thought about health and ageing, and eventually led him to found a longevity company built around a simple but demanding question: can we actually prove that what we are doing to slow ageing works?
In this conversation, Chris Mirabile, Founder and CEO of NOVOS, takes us through the science of the 12 hallmarks of ageing and explains why NOVOS is trying to tackle all 12 at once rather than focusing on a single pathway. We also get into a less obvious problem: ingredients that look promising individually do not necessarily behave the same way when combined. It is one of the reasons Chris believes longevity products should be tested as complete formulations, rather than relying only on evidence for their individual components.
We then look at the animal and human research behind NOVOS Core, including its cardiovascular study in healthy adults. We also discuss the science — and marketing — behind Face Age, and Chris’s take on some of the biggest claims, controversies and myths currently circulating in the longevity space.
Guest information
Chris Mirabile — Founder and CEO, NOVOS
Chris survived a brain tumour diagnosis and surgery at 16, went on to study finance, accounting and international business at NYU Stern, and won NYU Stern’s Business Plan Competition before co-founding Hotlist, an early social planning network that reached more than 220 million social plans.
He later founded NOVOS, a longevity company structured as a Public Benefit Corporation, donating a portion of its profits and equity to nonprofit organisations supporting ageing research. NOVOS assembled a scientific advisory board that includes Harvard Medical School professor George Church. Its Head of R&D, Dr Diogo Barardo, created DrugAge, one of the world’s largest databases of compounds studied for their effects on lifespan in model organisms.
Links & References
* NOVOS: https://novoslabs.com/
* The Science Behind NOVOS Core: https://learn.novoslabs.com/
* NOVOS Core Cardiovascular Research: https://learn.novoslabs.com/cardiovascular
* University of Surrey NOVOS Core Study — SSRN Preprint: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6241278
* NOVOS Core: https://novoslabs.com/product/novos-core/
* Chris Mirabile on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slowmyage
Chapters
00:00 Podcast introduction and guest
02:11 The experiences that changed how Chris thinks about health
02:52 A brain tumour at 16
06:50 From finance to startup founder
09:51 What does longevity actually mean?
12:40 Going upstream — the 12 hallmarks of ageing
17:34 Self-experimentation, data and discovering PubMed
21:18 Why Chris believed NOVOS needed to exist
23:17 Bringing leading scientists on board
29:09 Why target all 12 hallmarks at once?
33:35 Choosing the ingredients for NOVOS Core
36:47 Why the complete formula needs to be tested
40:25 NOVOS Core and lifespan in aged mice
41:04 Moving into human trials
42:00 What the cardiovascular study measured
43:47 Why start with heart and blood vessel health?
45:21 What happened after a single dose?
46:25 The results after six months
49:19 Can you make an already healthy person healthier?
51:58 FaceAge — science, marketing and biological age
56:28 NOVOS Life, wearables and AI
58:07 What longevity advice are people getting wrong?
01:03:04 Sleep, cholesterol and Chris’s CAC scan
01:08:48 Rapid fire
01:12:30 The longevity myth Chris does not believe
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves.
Speaker A:At 16 years old, Chris Mirabile was lying in a hospital bed the night before brain surgery, wondering whether he would wake up the next morning.
Speaker A:Years later, just as he was beginning to build Novos, a longevity company developing supplements and digital tools aimed at healthier aging, he lost his mother to pancreatic cancer.
Speaker A:Those two experiences changed the way he thought about health.
Speaker A:What had started as an interest became something deeply personal.
Speaker A:Today, Chris is trying to answer one of the biggest questions in longevity.
Speaker A:Can we actually slow the aging process itself?
Speaker A:And perhaps more importantly, can we prove that what we are doing really works?
Speaker A:Because longevity is now full of big promises.
Speaker A:Supplements are sold as longevity tools.
Speaker A:Biological age tests claim to tell us how well we are aging.
Speaker A:Peptides are promoted online, and some people even claim they're aging more slowly than anyone else in the world.
Speaker A:Chris has very strong views on where the science ends and the hype begins.
Speaker A:In this conversation, we look at the idea that aging may need to be tackled on several biological fronts at once.
Speaker A:We talked about what happened when Novos moved beyond studying individual ingredients and started testing the complete formulation.
Speaker A:We also get into biological age.
Speaker A:Can your face reveal something about how we are aging?
Speaker A:And what does Chris believe actually matters if you want more healthy years?
Speaker A:And towards the end, he takes aim at one of the biggest claims in longevity today.
Speaker A:Thank you, Chris, for joining me today on Beyond Longevity.
Speaker A:Before we get into longevity and everything related to it, when I look at your life before Novos, I think there were several moments that seem to have pushed you towards thinking very differently about health and eventually aging.
Speaker A:So take us back a little bit.
Speaker A:How did you get from the life you were living then to eventually creating Novos?
Speaker B:Great question.
Speaker B:And yes, there were definitely some significant events that my life was punctuated by that led to me eventually having a passion for the field of longevity and wanting to found Novos.
Speaker B:And it actually started much earlier in my life than one might think.
Speaker B:So it started when I was 16 years old.
Speaker B:I was already interested in health.
Speaker B:I was exercising and eating a healthy diet and reading men's health magazines.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I just naturally had this interest in health as it was.
Speaker B:But despite living as healthy of a life that I, I was living it, it came as a surprise to everyone in my life that I would, of all people, be the one who suddenly had a seizure and was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Speaker B:And we discovered this suddenly while I was on a School trip.
Speaker B:And my life changed at that moment.
Speaker B:And I fortunately went through the treatment and resection of the tumor, et cetera, and my life was spared.
Speaker B:And I didn't have any long term side effects from it.
Speaker B:I had about a year of side effects.
Speaker B:But after that, I like to think that I'm reaching the potential that I always had.
Speaker B:And so no real disability has come from that event.
Speaker B:But if anything, I would say a lot of abilities have come from it in the sense of perspective on life and what I want to derive from this life and how fragile it really is and how it can be cut short without any prior notice.
Speaker B:Just at a moment's notice, it can be cut short.
Speaker B:So having that experience made me from an early age interested in longevity.
Speaker B:I just didn't know it by the buzzword back then.
Speaker B:Back then it was really, how do I prevent myself from ever being in this position ever again?
Speaker B:Where I was sitting on my hospital bed the night before the surgery, wondering if I would be alive after the surgery and if this was my last day going to sleep.
Speaker B:It's a very scary thought to have as a teenager and I never wanted to have it again.
Speaker B:So my perspective transformed from one that, admittedly, when I thought of health, it was really the superficial side of health.
Speaker B:I just wanted to be in good shape and be attractive to the girls in school, like what you would expect a high school student to be thinking, right to actually avoidance of disease and optimization of my biology.
Speaker B:And over the years, that was always in the back of my mind.
Speaker B:Whenever people would give health guidance, I would always ask myself this question.
Speaker B:All right, in the short term, I agree with perhaps what this person is saying, but what are the long term effects of following that specific recommendation?
Speaker B:And most of the time, people didn't have any commentary on long term effects.
Speaker B:Even to this day, most people are not thinking long term effects.
Speaker B:And so that, I would say, is the early experience with longevity.
Speaker B:There were other health events over the years, but I'd say that that was the most significant.
Speaker B:Combined with just as I was starting with the concept of Novos before I launched the business, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Speaker B:And unfortunately we lost her in, in less than a year.
Speaker B:And I was extremely close to my mother, more so than anyone else to this day in my life.
Speaker B:And so it, it really emphasized, reminded me what I was doing it for.
Speaker B:It, it made it very real and visceral.
Speaker B:And I am building this business to reduce the suffering in this world that comes from disease for both the patient, the person who's going through the disease.
Speaker B:But also this was the first time I was experiencing it where a loved one had the disease and the suffering and pain that that brings to everyone who cares about you.
Speaker B:And so ultimately, that's why I founded Novos.
Speaker B:Of course, we can talk about all of the short term benefits that come from longevity, lifestyle and health and so on, and why in a positive way, we want to do this.
Speaker B:But on the more negative side, if you will, it's this idea of trying to reduce suffering that can come from disease.
Speaker A:Wow, quite a story.
Speaker A:And it's quite incredible that you've come out of your personal illness so incredibly well.
Speaker A:So that's really an incredible blessing, I guess.
Speaker A:But before you founded Novos, I believe you went into private equity and entrepreneurship, built Hotlist, which was, I think, a social planning tech company.
Speaker A:What was your life like during those years?
Speaker A:Because that was, I believe, before your mother got ill, but after you were ill.
Speaker A:So after you've recovered, but your mother wasn't yet ill.
Speaker A:So what was that period like for you?
Speaker B:All right, so you've done your research, clearly.
Speaker B:I've been on more than a hundred podcasts, and I think this might be the first time someone's asking me about the private equity and Hotlist and so on.
Speaker B:So after the brain tumor experience, I ended up graduating high school and going to NYU Stern for undergrad, business school and studied finance, economics, international business, and decided to go into either investment banking or private equity.
Speaker B:But in the back of my mind, I was an entrepreneur at heart.
Speaker B:I had already gotten experience as a programmer for a startup in New York City when I was in high school.
Speaker B:And so I was already primed to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker B:But I was kind of being at Stern, everyone went into finance.
Speaker B:It was kind of like following the prescription for studying finance there.
Speaker B:So I went into private equity and I was restless.
Speaker B:Like within one year, within six months, I worked on a business plan.
Speaker B:And within one year, I, I quit.
Speaker B:And I had quit because I won NYU Stern's business plan competition.
Speaker B:I. I was fortunately the youngest winner of that competition.
Speaker B:And me and my co founder went on to start this company called Hotlist that you mentioned.
Speaker B:It's a social network.
Speaker B:This is in the earlier days of social networking.
Speaker B:This is right around when Facebook went from a college exclusive social network to opening up to the world.
Speaker B:And we saw this as an opportunity to bring the exclusivity back to the college network and then focus more on the real world.
Speaker B:So we felt like, in retrospect, it was actually Very perceptive that social networking was taking people away from the real world and making them kind of ironically antisocial by being on social networks.
Speaker B:And we wanted to bring the socialization back.
Speaker B:So the idea behind the network was a digital platform to show you what's happening in the real world at different venues, different events, and for you to be able to find what suits you and your interests and your personality and, and your friend group and so on best wherever you are in the world.
Speaker B:We had over 220 million people social plans.
Speaker B:So you could be in Milan or London or New York or suburbia and you can find out like, what are the hottest spots to go to.
Speaker B:And you can see pictures of the expected crowd and different events taking place there and so on.
Speaker B: ump into the Startup World at: Speaker A:Wow, you've had your finger on the pulse ever since.
Speaker A:Now it's longevity.
Speaker A:You know, I wonder what's going to come next.
Speaker A:One has to just follow you to see where the trends are going.
Speaker A:But let's talk a little bit about longevity.
Speaker A:And before we get into the biology of it all, I just want to ask you something sort of quite fundamental because longevity has become one of those words that means very different things to different people.
Speaker A:What does longevity mean to you?
Speaker B:I'll start with what, what it means to others in the sense of depending on the context.
Speaker B:Like for example, if you were to ask a gero scientist.
Speaker B:These are the scientists who are literally on the cutting edge of longevity, understanding the aging process at its fundamental biological root causes and then reversing aspects of it all in an attempt to either slow down aging or in some cases even rejuvenate our cells and organs to become young again.
Speaker B:Typically, at least when they're looking at longevity in the most strict definitional term, they're looking at extending lifespan, ideally healthy lifespan, but extending lifespan.
Speaker B:And so they're looking at, for example, let's just say they do a mouse study, an animal study, they're looking at the typical median lifespan and then they're seeing, can we extend that median lifespan by 20, 40, 50%?
Speaker B:That would be considered an exceptional result for a mouse lifespan study with the thought that perhaps we can apply these lessons to humans.
Speaker B:To take the oldest known human lifespan of 123 years of Jean Calment from France to 140 years, 150 years.
Speaker B:Is that possible?
Speaker B:And of course, then the question is, can we do it while maintaining good health, optimal health?
Speaker B:And so that brings into this concept known as health span.
Speaker B:So the Period in which you are without a chronic illness, or at least, I think people have softened that definition a little bit to say, even if you have a chronic illness, it is not in any way debilitating or interfering with your ability to live a satisfying, independent life without requiring significant assistance from others and so on.
Speaker B:And so I would say for me, the definition of longevity is essentially that to increase your health span by as much as possible with the hope that lifespan follows.
Speaker B:In other words, instead of getting sick at 70 and dying at 80, or getting sick at 60, really, and get.
Speaker B:And dying at 80, it is maybe getting sick at 85 and dying at 90.
Speaker B:So you've extended health span and.
Speaker B:And you've extended lifespan in that case, as opposed to letting lifespan lead.
Speaker B:And then healthspan is what follows.
Speaker B:I think healthspan should lead, and lifespan is what follows.
Speaker A:I absolutely agree with you.
Speaker A:So in your life, at some point after you were a teenager and you were interested in eating well and exercising and trying to stay healthy, you became interested in a much bigger idea, that rather than only treating the diseases that we get as we get older, perhaps you could intervene further upstream.
Speaker A:What did you discover about the aging process that made you think, oh, this is the thing we should actually be going after?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So when we think of diseases, when you look at the scientific establishment, you look at the medical establishment, we really look at them and treat them in isolation.
Speaker B:We study them in isolation.
Speaker B:It sort of makes sense when you think of how the scientific process is designed.
Speaker B:It is a very reductionistic field.
Speaker B:So you want to keep things as simple as possible so that you can minimize any confounding factors.
Speaker B:And then you can run experiments to then try to better understand something, understand a process, understand a disease.
Speaker B:And from there, your knowledge base builds upon itself, and then it expands out and you start to learn more, more and more about the phenomenon of cancer, let's say, or of heart disease and so on.
Speaker B:We've done this for a long time, and we've kind of been at a crawl in terms of preventing or slowing down the development of these diseases and extending lifespan and health span.
Speaker B:At least over the course of the last, say, a hundred or so years, we've made some steps forward, especially on cardiovascular disease and so on.
Speaker B:But like, when it comes to cancer, how much have we really improved health span and lifespan, especially for certain cancers, like what my mom had with pancreatic cancer?
Speaker B:Practically no improvements, though there are some drugs on.
Speaker B:On the cutting edge right now that might help a lot.
Speaker B:With that said, the question then Changes to are there common denominators across all of these diseases?
Speaker B:And so, as you put it, going upstream, the downstream effect being the disease itself going upstream.
Speaker B:What are these common denominators out of biological level?
Speaker B:The answer to that question is there are a number of commonalities across these diseases, whether we're looking at dementia and Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, so these neurodegenerative disorders, if we're looking at cardiovascular disease, if we're looking at heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and so on, there's a lot of commonalities across these different diseases.
Speaker B:And what scientists have identified in the field of geroscience is this concept known as the 12 hallmarks of aging.
Speaker B:So these are the 12 root biological causes that, that we've identified so far as common denominators to the aging process.
Speaker B:They also happen to be common denominators of these diseases that I'm talking about.
Speaker B:And what's interesting about them is that in order to be defined as a hallmark of aging, they have to have been shown in scientific studies that when you, you mitigate them or you, you reduce their prevalence or, or intensity, you extend lifespan in animal studies and health span.
Speaker B:And the counter is also true.
Speaker B:If you accelerate their development, you then shorten lifespan and health span.
Speaker B:And so that's a requirement to be defined as a hallmark of aging.
Speaker B:So it shows that these are fundamentally involved in how quickly we get a disease and how soon we pass away.
Speaker B:And what's interesting is that they all interact with each other in one way or another.
Speaker B:So when one starts to develop over time, let's just say genomic instability, so our genes not as, as stable.
Speaker B:So in other words, DNA damage, to put it simply, we see other things start to go awry as well.
Speaker B:For example, we might find that there's deregulated nutrient sensing that's in another mechanism or hallmark of aging, where the body is not sensing nutrients properly to know whether it should go into growth mode or cleanup and protection mode.
Speaker B:As an example, which is something associated with a process called mtor, which your audience may have heard of before.
Speaker A:I want to come back to all these hallmarks of aging because I know they're very important for Novos, But I just sort of want to take a small step back and just find out what exactly made you want to create a company like Novos.
Speaker A:I know you, you know, experimented a lot on yourself or, you know, experiment sounds very sort of ominous.
Speaker A:But I'm just saying you tried out a lot of things on yourself and what made you wake up one day and say the world needs a company like Novos or, you know, I can really contribute to the field of longevity in a positive and sensible way.
Speaker B:Yeah, so yeah, I was experimenting on myself, you know, as opposed to some of my classmates who may have been experimenting with drugs of the traditional sort.
Speaker B:I was experimenting with supplements and diets and exercise and so on.
Speaker B:So a little bit different than it's typically interpreted the word experimentation, but I was certainly experimenting a lot.
Speaker B:And I was one of the earlier quantified self enthusiasts, some people call those biohackers nowadays, but essentially trying to track data.
Speaker B:And I'm very fortunate to have done that and saved that data because I was always expecting AI to come.
Speaker B:And now that we've got it, I've got about 20 years almost of blood labs and step counts and of exercise and running data and so on, which has been very helpful to see how my health has changed in the trajectory, et cetera, of ocean over the years.
Speaker B:So with that said, yes, I was experimenting a lot.
Speaker B:And so I was very familiar with all of the supplements in the field, even with prescription drugs that were being experimented with for the sake of longevity.
Speaker B:And I familiar with scientists and biological research in the field partly because I discovered something called PubMed.
Speaker B:PubMed is like the public database that the US government maintains of medical and biology relevant studies.
Speaker B:And I came familiar with it because I had this nagging question in my late 20s, so about 15 years ago now, living in New York City, which is a, I would argue an alcohol addicted city.
Speaker B:It's definitely an alcoholic city.
Speaker B:Like that's how people socialize.
Speaker B:You go out, you know, you have, you have a glass of wine, two glasses, three, before you know it, you finish the bottle.
Speaker B:You know, it's one of those cities.
Speaker B:And as much as I was into health, I was not immune to that.
Speaker B:I did find myself, you know, going out and drinking with friends at dinner and so on.
Speaker B:And I had this nagging question that occurred to me.
Speaker B:I was wondering, is alcohol associated with cancer?
Speaker B:Can drinking alcohol increase the risk of cancer?
Speaker B:And because of my brain tumor, something I was, I was more sensitive to.
Speaker B:So I did some research on Google, didn't really find very much, to be honest.
Speaker B:Like now you hear a lot more about that.
Speaker B:But back then didn't really hear too much.
Speaker B:But then I, I stumbled upon PubMed and I came across some studies that were showing that there were associations of alcohol consumption with different forms of cancer.
Speaker B:And I was amazed by this database that this existed in the first place.
Speaker B:And I ended up using that to learn a lot more about biology.
Speaker B:At first it was all kind of over my head.
Speaker B:Most of the words I didn't understand.
Speaker B:But over the years I started to learn more and more and started to be able to comprehend what these papers were saying.
Speaker B:And I went through these papers and I came across different researchers studying different aspects of aging.
Speaker B:And I actually came across at NYU Hospital, which is where my brain tumor was removed.
Speaker B:I was volunteering with the pediatric department there, which is where I was treated to give back to essentially the hospital that saved my life.
Speaker B:I wanted to give back.
Speaker B:And I came across a poster on the wall called the Mitochondrial Summit.
Speaker B:And I saw some of the researchers names and I recognized them from some of the papers I was reading on PubMed.
Speaker B:And I attended it and I was probably the only non scientist in that room or non MD in that room.
Speaker B:And I started to talk to the scientists after they would present and ask them a whole bunch of questions and they would answer them.
Speaker B:And then eventually I think after the first like five minutes or so, they realized I wasn't a scientist.
Speaker B:And they asked, wait, who are you?
Speaker B:I was like, oh, I'm just someone very interested in the field.
Speaker B:And, and now back to your question, bringing it all together.
Speaker B:Why did I start it?
Speaker B:I noticed that everything that was happening in the supplementation space and everything that was happening in the biotech space were worlds apart.
Speaker B:There was no communication, there was no true science being like deep true science, not like high level flimsy science, but deep true science being applied to the supplement space.
Speaker B:It was only being done on the pharma side of things.
Speaker B:And I understood why economically why that would be the case.
Speaker B:Like if you can't patent a natural molecule, why are you going to invest the resources to do the studies that a pharma would do when they can patent a novel molecule?
Speaker B:I understood that, but I had this, this curiosity.
Speaker B:Is there a way to be able to borrow methods and processes from biotech and apply them to supplements in a more affordable way to bring the science to a whole other level while using natural substances, which consumers are just naturally more drawn to than prescriptions, as you would expect, and to apply the latest discoveries and insights in this field of longevity specifically to the supplement space, which nobody was doing.
Speaker B:There was nobody really going into longevity, at least from this perspective of the hallmarks of aging, which was fundamental.
Speaker B:So that's when I decided that there is an opportunity here.
Speaker B:I selfishly wanted the product for myself and for my family and my Loved ones.
Speaker B:That's why I started the business, because I wanted to take it.
Speaker B:It didn't exist.
Speaker B:And when they told my friends and family about it, they're like, oh, I would take that.
Speaker B:So that was enough to get me started.
Speaker B:And then realized that there were a lot more enthusiasts out there who wanted the product as well.
Speaker A:So, first of all, well done that it took the scientists five minutes to work out that you weren't one of them.
Speaker A:That's a pretty great achievement.
Speaker B:Now it takes them six minutes.
Speaker B:I got a little bit further along.
Speaker A:We take any improvement here.
Speaker A:As long as we're not going backwards, we're good.
Speaker A:It's one thing, let's say, an interested entrepreneur speaking to scientists.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:It's like me, I'm not in the medical field, so, you know, when I speak to people that are super knowledgeable and researchers and all that, they sort of have pity with me and they, you know, indulge me and speak to me, which is very kind.
Speaker A:But it's very different to having a quick chat or, you know, a longer conversation and to actually want to have serious scientists come and work in your company, come and work with you.
Speaker A:How receptive were these scientists initially to an entrepreneur arriving with the ideas that you had?
Speaker B:I was very fortunate.
Speaker B:At the same time, I took a very careful approach to trying to get scientists involved from the start.
Speaker B:What I mean by that is there were scientists I wanted to talk to, for example, at Harvard Medical School and get them involved.
Speaker B:People like David Sinclair or.
Speaker B:Or George Church.
Speaker B:And they have thousands of people reaching out to them, trying to set up meetings and phone calls with them, like, literally thousands of people doing this.
Speaker B:And those people get rejected unless there is a very clear reason to meet with that person where it could potentially be beneficial to.
Speaker B:To the scientist or to, like, science at large.
Speaker B:And so I. I recognize this from the start.
Speaker B:I'm not going to get meetings face to face with these people if I just, like, send a cold email.
Speaker B:So I did some research, and I found that these scientists were advisors to a nonprofit in the field of longevity that also happened to be based in New York like I was.
Speaker B:And I reached out to that nonprofit and I started to meet with its founders and organizers and attend its events and network with the community and so on.
Speaker B:And I then had this idea to start Novos as a public benefit corporation.
Speaker B:It was a combination of talking with these nonprofits, but also the experience with losing my mother.
Speaker B:I wanted to make the business do more than just focus exclusively on profit.
Speaker B:Of course we're going to focus on profit.
Speaker B:We're a business and we need to be self sustaining.
Speaker B:But I wanted to be able to do a little bit more for the public interest than a typical corporation would.
Speaker B:So I, I founded Novos as a public benefit corporation and I donated a sizable amount of equity.
Speaker B:We're talking double digit equity, which is incredibly rare.
Speaker B:I donated it to the nonprofit and I, I also donated a small percentage of revenue to that nonprofit as well.
Speaker B:So this is like, forget about when people say well do you give 1% to.
Speaker B:It's like, no, we give a lot more than 1%.
Speaker B:So anyway, I established this very firm, real genuine relationship with this nonprofit in exchange for them making warm intros into these scientists.
Speaker B:And that nonprofit had scientists on the founding team.
Speaker B:So I had talked with them for a while about the idea and kind of refined it first.
Speaker B:So they were able to genuinely recommend me to these scientists and say what Chris is working on we think is special and we're affiliated.
Speaker B:Can you take this call or this meeting?
Speaker B:And that's how I got in the door.
Speaker B:I literally went to the labs of David Sinclair and George Church and others up in Boston and asked them, would you be open to advising?
Speaker B:And not everyone accepted, but most I would say did.
Speaker B:And we established a six member scientific advisory board to start.
Speaker B:And my co founder of the company, Dr. Christopher Berg, was a medical doctor, researcher and author in the field of longevity as well as.
Speaker B:And together the eight of us created our very first formulation which is Novos core.
Speaker B:And ever since then we have attracted more scientists.
Speaker B:For example, we have a head of R and D now, his name is Dr. Diogo Berardo.
Speaker B:We recruited him from National University of Singapore under Brian Kennedy's lab.
Speaker B:Brian Kennedy is also a whale in the field of longevity.
Speaker B:And how did we attract him?
Speaker B:It's because he had seen our work, he was aware of our business, he was aware of how scientific we were about things and that we were, were running real scientific studies.
Speaker B:We weren't just talking about it and saying we're scientific, which every supplement company now says they're scientific.
Speaker B:We were actually creating new science.
Speaker B:We were discovering things with real scientific research which very, very few supplement or consumer brands can actually see.
Speaker B:So we actually like walked the walk.
Speaker B:We didn't just talk the talk.
Speaker B:And that was enough to get these scientists excited about us.
Speaker B:And it has all built upon itself.
Speaker A:Well, listen, it's an incredible story and I'm so happy that you shared that bit because I think there are a lot of Obviously, crooks in the longevity field, we're not talking about those, but there are really a few diamonds that are not even in the rough, but they don't know how to come out and enter the market.
Speaker A:And obviously you've studied at nyu, you've been an entrepreneur, so you tackled it the way every business needs to be tackled, which is serious, with a business plan.
Speaker A:And the fact that you gave a percentage to a charity is brilliant.
Speaker A:Absolutely amazing.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:And you see, it's a win win.
Speaker A:You weren't taking advantage of anyone or anything.
Speaker A:And it was just brilliant, brilliant stroke.
Speaker A:And I hope other people that are serious learned from this, because it is so important to be accredited by people in the field.
Speaker A:And as you said, you could have given all the money in the world.
Speaker A:Those people would have not come on board if they wouldn't have seen potential in the company.
Speaker A:So amazing.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:But now you've mentioned Novos core.
Speaker A:Let's talk about that.
Speaker A:Because the approach that Novus takes, which is very different to anyone else that I've come across, is you're trying to influence all 12 of the hallmarks, rather than placing just one big bet on a single pathway.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker B:So I alluded to this earlier, but I'll make it more concrete.
Speaker B:You've got these 12 hallmarks, and they are all interconnected in one way or another.
Speaker B:So what you're saying is true.
Speaker B:A lot of brands, they will produce a product and they will talk about one hallmark of aging, and they will make it sound as if this is the hallmark to focus on.
Speaker B:This is responsible for your energy issues and your fatigue and your aging and your gray hair and everything, right?
Speaker B:Combined.
Speaker B:And I'll give you an example of that.
Speaker B:That's, say, mitochondrial dysfunction.
Speaker B:How often have we heard that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root of all evil?
Speaker B:When it comes to our health issues, mitochondria are incredibly important, and they are fundamental to our health.
Speaker B:We wouldn't be alive without mitochondria, right?
Speaker B:But arguably, we wouldn't be alive without DNA.
Speaker B:We wouldn't be alive without stem cells.
Speaker B:We wouldn't be alive without cells and their communication, right?
Speaker B:So just because it is required for life doesn't mean that it is the number one and only hallmark of aging or mechanism of biology that we should be focused on.
Speaker B:And so, while we focus on mitochondria, we also focus on 11 other hallmarks or mechanisms, because they all are critical and fundamental.
Speaker B:And the perspective that I had when I first came up with the concept for Novos was Well, first of all, I think it's a pretty obvious question to be asking when I'm meeting with these scientists.
Speaker B:And they are specialists.
Speaker B:You know, like George Church specializes in genetics.
Speaker B:So when it comes to the genome and the epigenome, for example, and then some downstream effects of that, like the proteome and so on, but like, that is really his wheelhouse.
Speaker B:He understands all of biology.
Speaker B:He's really a genius, the man.
Speaker B:But that is where he, he specializes with his research.
Speaker B:Same thing with David Sinclair.
Speaker B:If we look at another biologist, they might specialize in mitochondria.
Speaker B:And I saw that these, these scientists are all siloed, just like disease research is siloed.
Speaker B:Even within the field of geroscience and aging, the research is siloed.
Speaker B:You've got people who are endocrinologists, and they just focus on the hormones associated with aging and how those change as we age and so on.
Speaker B:It's kind of like that carpenter analogy, something like, when you're a carpenter, every problem looks like a nail to you or something to that effect.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So it, it's similar where anytime you ask a geroscientist who specializes in a specific area, like what do you think causes aging?
Speaker B:It is obviously their area, right?
Speaker B:So I'm coming in as this naive consumer with an interest in the field, and I'm looking at all of them, and I can't tell which one of these brilliant scientists is actually more likely to be correct, only for me to realize they're probably all correct and all wrong at the same time.
Speaker B:And that is all of this, you know, happening, conspiring together.
Speaker B:And so I asked them point blank, why is it that nobody is creating formulas and doing research on addressing all of the hallmarks simultaneously?
Speaker B:And their answer was, well, in academia, we need to specialize in order to get a grant.
Speaker B:You won't get a grant if you're not a subject matter expert.
Speaker B:And then outside of academia in biology, the answer is they need to focus on a specific disease to get FDA or EFSA approval.
Speaker B:And so they're not going to be looking at all of the hallmarks at once.
Speaker B:They're just trying to get their drug approved.
Speaker B:I saw this as a big opportunity on the health side of using natural substances, also on the business side as well.
Speaker B:And, and it made perfect sense to me that we should be trying to address all of these at once.
Speaker B:And, and all of the.
Speaker B:It was unanimous agreement across all of the researchers that addressing them all at once would.
Speaker B:I believe it may have been George Church who had said this to me, it's been seven, eight years now.
Speaker B:But he had said something to the effect of if you address all of the hallmarks of aging simultaneously, you are most likely to be able to put a significant dent in the aging process than if you only address one or two at a time.
Speaker A:The idea is very clear, but here comes the much harder practical part because there are different approaches and different supplements and different ingredients that target these hallmarks individually, but there's only suffinite number that can actually go into a formulation.
Speaker A:How did you get from all the science that's available and all the research to the ingredients that actually became Novos core?
Speaker B:So we have a explanation for this on our website.
Speaker B:If you go to novoslabs.com approach we've got different foundational requirements or filters that we would put ingredients through before even considering them.
Speaker B:One of them was, for example, it had to impact at least one, but ideally multiple of the hallmarks of aging and been shown through multiple scientific studies to be capable of this.
Speaker B:So it was replicated across studies.
Speaker B:Another requirement is that the ingredients needed to show extension of lifespan in at least one animal species, ideally multiple animal species.
Speaker B:Because if it shows lifespan extension in multiple animal species, that hints at something called evolutionary conservation, which is that the processes or the biology that we are impacting with that molecule is such an important biological process that evolution kept it intact from a, let's just say a C. Elegan worm to a mouse, so a mammalian species.
Speaker B:The fact that it's increasing both of their lifespans means that evolution decided that whatever it's targeting is so important that we need to keep it.
Speaker B:Which means therefore that it is most likely also conserved in human biology and is is worthy of us considering the possibility of, of addressing that specific part of the biology with this molecule in humans to also be capable of possibly extending health span and lifespan in humans.
Speaker B:So those are some of the requirements that we went through.
Speaker B:Ironically, one of the other things that we were using at the time, the tool, a tool that we were using to identify these molecules was something called Drugage.
Speaker B:Drugage is the world's largest database of lifespan extending compounds across every animal species ever studied.
Speaker B:So every compound ever studied in a scientific paper that was shown to extend lifespan in an animal is in this database.
Speaker B:Well, guess who created this database?
Speaker B:Dr. Diogo Berardo, our now head of R and D. I didn't know him at the time.
Speaker B:It just that happened to be that one of our advisors introduced us to him years later and it was a Great connection and he was a perfect fit with our business and with our team, so we brought him on.
Speaker B:But it was just ironic that his work was foundation to the core formula.
Speaker B:So even though he did not help co formulate it, personally, I would say that he did in the form of the work that he had created through drug age was a major contribution to the core formula.
Speaker A:So you mentioned testing in animal species.
Speaker A:At least one, hopefully more.
Speaker A:But at some point you have to move into people.
Speaker A:And you did a stamina study at University of Surrey.
Speaker A:I think it was six months randomized and had just under a hundred adults over forty or something like that.
Speaker A:Correct me on all these facts if I'm wrong, but, you know, and if I remember correctly, you were looking particularly at sort of vascular function and other cardiovascular measures.
Speaker A:And that trial included measurements right after the first dose as well as after long term supplementation.
Speaker A:Explain it to our listeners in better terms than I ever can.
Speaker A:What actually you were testing in stamina and why you chose blood vessel health as a place to start.
Speaker B:So if I can first just take a small step back and, and just set the context for this study and for Novos overall.
Speaker B:So most supplements never run a single scientific study.
Speaker B:What they do is they point to scientific studies of an ingredient that they're using and they say that this is a scientific formula because this ingredient has been studied before.
Speaker B:Our perspective at Novos is that we should be whenever possible and when I say possible by financial constraints, because we are startup, whenever we can financially justify running scientific studies on the complete formula, we're going to do so.
Speaker B:Because research has shown, for example, Dr. Ocampo at university of Lausanne has done scientific research showing that when you combine longevity ingredients together, more often than not they cancel each other out and either neutralize their effects or even shorten lifespan.
Speaker B:So you would think add one longevity ingredient to another longevity ingredient and you have a greater effect.
Speaker B:That is what people naturally think and that's what people do when they build their own stacks.
Speaker B:Unfortunately, biological research has proven otherwise.
Speaker B:It is more likely to neutralize, so it would be as powerful as one of the two ingredients or less powerful and even shortening lifespan.
Speaker B:So that meant to us we needed to do scientific research of the complete Novos core formula.
Speaker B:So we started with in vitro studies looking at specific mechanisms of aging, like DNA damage and cellular senescence and cellular inflammation and so on.
Speaker B:We have really incredibly powerful positive results on those, like some of the largest effect sizes that the labs had ever seen for those specific hallmarks of aging.
Speaker B:And so that then led us to doing animal study.
Speaker B:And this is again in the United Kingdom, this is at Newcastle University.
Speaker B:And we started with looking at cellular senescence, but then we moved on to mice and we showed that we were able to extend healthy mouse lifespan by nearly 20%.
Speaker B:And we not only had a negative control, as you would expect in this study, but we had a positive control.
Speaker B:What that means is we had three groups.
Speaker B:The control mice didn't get any supplement, the Novos mice.
Speaker B:And then a group of mice that were getting injected with a senolytic that had already proven itself in other studies to extend lifespan.
Speaker B:So we could see in that same study is how does novos compare to something that is prescription strength injected, known to extend lifespan?
Speaker B:Well, guess what?
Speaker B:Novos improved lifespan just as much as that injection.
Speaker B:In fact, I believe it, it outperformed it very slightly, but statistically it was essentially the same.
Speaker B:So that was amazing for us.
Speaker B:We realized, okay, back to the very beginning of this discussion.
Speaker B:What is longevity?
Speaker B:It is extension of lifespan is the scientific definition for meningero scientists.
Speaker B:We did that in this study.
Speaker B:Find me other supplements that have done this type of research.
Speaker B:Very, very few and far between and I don't know of any that have had an extension to the degree that we have when it comes to extending aged mouse lifespan.
Speaker B:And I say aged importantly because we administered it at the human equivalent of 60 years old in the mice.
Speaker B:So it's not like we did it from their birth, we did it from older age and showed that we were able to extend lifespan, which means that there's a fraction of their life and it still extended their lifespan by about 20%.
Speaker B:That's important.
Speaker B:So now to your question about stamina.
Speaker B:We decided obviously, like the gold standard is not only doing human study, but to have it randomized placebo controlled.
Speaker B:In other words, we've got a placebo that the, the user has no idea is a placebo.
Speaker B:And the researchers, it's double blinded.
Speaker B:So the researchers themselves don't even know who is getting the placebo versus Novos.
Speaker B:And the study lasted six months.
Speaker B:61 Participants started the study and we had a measurement before taking anything and there were a number of different endpoints that I'll, I'll share in a moment.
Speaker B:We then measured again at one hour post ingestion and then we measured again at six months.
Speaker B:So we wanted to see if there are any immediate acute effects of its cold and then we wanted to see what the chronic administration effects would be on these biological endpoints.
Speaker B:All right, so looking at these Biological endpoints, what were they?
Speaker B:First was endothelial function.
Speaker B:This is measured by something called flow mediated dilation.
Speaker B:Think of, for example, blocking the blood flow in your arm and at the same time measuring how much blood is flowing through your veins in your arm, let's say, and then taking the tourniquet off and allowing the blood to flow again.
Speaker B:How fast and to what degree do the blood vessels expand to let that blood flow?
Speaker B:Because we know that the cells are starved and they need that blood to flow.
Speaker B:So it should be like very rapid and large, ideally.
Speaker B:And this is a very powerful measurement of blood vessel health and blood vessel function.
Speaker B:So that was the first.
Speaker B:Second is blood vessel flexibility.
Speaker B:So as we get older, our blood vessels become less and less flexible, plaque can develop and so on.
Speaker B:And it, it doesn't allow the blood vessels to flex the way that they should.
Speaker B:So we measured this through something called pulse wave velocity.
Speaker B:Some people who have, for example, OURA rings might be familiar with their, I would say, attempt at measuring pulse wave velocity.
Speaker B:It's not as the same medical grade level as the study used, but it's their, their way of trying to measure something very close.
Speaker B:And then blood pressure we measured because blood pressure is like one of the most important tests that you can possibly run for everything from cardiovascular health and cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, neurological disorders like neurodegeneration can come from high blood pressure and so on.
Speaker B:So overall it's incredibly important.
Speaker B:But when it comes to longevity, blood pressure just naturally rises as we age.
Speaker B:So we know the direction that all of these go.
Speaker B:As we age, they get worse and worse.
Speaker B:So we wanted to see if we can improve these.
Speaker B:You asked why blood vessels and cardiovascular function at large.
Speaker B:The answer is that, number one, the top cause of age related death is cardiovascular disease.
Speaker B:It outstrips cancer, for example.
Speaker B:Most people don't realize this, but globally, cardiovascular disease is, I believe, as much as 2x more prevalent in global population.
Speaker B:And even in countries like the US where there's high prevalence of cancer relative to other countries, heart disease still kills more people.
Speaker B:And that includes women too.
Speaker B:A lot of people think it's, it's only men, no women.
Speaker B:Number one cause of age related death and chronic illness in general is heart disease.
Speaker B:Okay, that's the first thing.
Speaker B:If we're studying longevity and we want to extend health span and lifespan, well, let's start at the most likely cause of death for people.
Speaker B:That leads to a shorter lifespan.
Speaker B:The second reason is that cardiovascular function is required for everything else to function.
Speaker B:Your brain is not gonna function if it doesn't have adequate blood.
Speaker B:Your cells and every single organ in your body needs the nutrients that your blood is providing them.
Speaker B:If your heart is not pumping right and it's not delivering the nutrients in the ways that it should be, and your organs are not getting those nutrients, they're not going to function at their prime.
Speaker B:So, so this is kind of like the foundation where it all starts.
Speaker B:This idea that we said before going upstream you could argue your heart health and cardiovascular function is upstream of every other organ's function.
Speaker B:So those were the reasons we started with cardiovascular function.
Speaker B:Now to the results.
Speaker B:So at one hour post ingestion of novos core or the placebo endothelial function.
Speaker B:So the flow mediated dilation, the first one I talked about did not change for placebo and it improved for novo's core significantly.
Speaker B:We're talking, I believe it was around 2.9%, 3% right in that range.
Speaker B:And that is very significant.
Speaker B:1% Improvement is considered significant for medical related outcomes.
Speaker B:So imagine we were approximately 3x what is considered to be significant for medical related outcomes.
Speaker B:Now of course I gotta just set the disclaimer.
Speaker B:I'm not making any disease claims.
Speaker B:This is not about preventing disease or treating disease and so on.
Speaker B:This is about maintaining health in a healthy population.
Speaker B:These were not diseased populations.
Speaker B:All right, moving on.
Speaker B:Pulse wave velocity or the blood blood vessel flexibility and blood pressure did not change after one hour of using novos core.
Speaker B:Only the endothelial function did.
Speaker B:Placebo also didn't move any of those.
Speaker B:Fast forward to six months.
Speaker B:At the six month point people were fasted for 24 hours, which is important because that one hour mark shows that when you ingest it within one hour you're getting these favorable responses.
Speaker B:But what happens at 2 hours or 5 hours or 12 hours or 18 hours?
Speaker B:The question is, do these benefits last at least the span of a day until you take the next dosage?
Speaker B:All right, so.
Speaker B:So people go into this third time point now fasted and we looked at the placebo across all of these.
Speaker B:There's I believe it was only systolic blood pressure that was slightly improved.
Speaker B:But we're talking like you know, within the margin of error what you would expect in normal variance.
Speaker B:Like maybe it was 1 millimeter of mercury difference.
Speaker B:Novos core versus placebo.
Speaker B:So for all of these we are talking about the effect size of core on top of the effect size that the placebo had for endothelial function.
Speaker B:It was a 2.9% improvement on top of what the placebo found for Pulse wave velocity, it's 1.2 meters per second improvement.
Speaker B:What does that mean?
Speaker B:Well, every decade, your pulse wave velocity speeds up by about 1 meter per second.
Speaker B:Every 10 years, we slowed it down, which is the good thing, by 1.2 meters per second.
Speaker B:So it's beyond what you would expect in about a decade of aging.
Speaker B:And then for blood pressure, we reduced systolic blood pressure by 6.1 millimeters of mercury for people that were already within the healthy range of blood pressure.
Speaker B:Again, these are not people with, with any sort of cardiovascular disease or, or high blood pressure.
Speaker B:So lower blood pressure when, even when you're within the healthy range is associated with improved health outcomes over the long term.
Speaker B:Because our arteries and our heart, they degrade over time just from the sheer stress, like they are dealing with blood pumping through them.
Speaker B:And every time blood's pumping through, as you can imagine, when you're driving your car on the road, eventually that road starts to degrade and break down and you can only repair it so much.
Speaker B:And so this happens in our blood vessels.
Speaker B:The more blood pressure is almost like having more cars driving on the road.
Speaker B:And so you want that to be lower, if possible.
Speaker B:So we outperformed the placebo by 6.1 millimeters of mercury, which is also extremely significant.
Speaker B:So we compared all of these results to every supplement, study and lifestyle intervention in healthy populations.
Speaker B:And I'll pause here, but if you'd like to hear more about how we compare these results to other supplements and lifestyle interventions, it's actually quite remarkable what our results were.
Speaker A:Listen, your results are incredible as they are because I think the really important thing to highlight is you took healthy people and not 80 or 90 year olds.
Speaker A:You took healthy people that were, you know, above the age of 40, 40, which normally, even with supplements or treatments, the result is often minimal because they are healthy as such.
Speaker A:So the results are absolutely mind blowing, no doubt about it.
Speaker A:And I'm just wondering, are you planning on doing studies on people that have cardiovascular issues?
Speaker A:I mean, it'd be so interesting to see by how much they'll improve.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for appreciating that, because I think it's lost on a lot of people.
Speaker B:But this idea of making someone who's already healthy healthier is far more difficult than making someone who's diseased healthier.
Speaker B:If someone has 150 millimeter mercury systolic to improve that to from 150 to 144, so reducing by 6 millimeters is much easier than to take someone who's at 128 and bring them down to 122, that same 6 millimeters.
Speaker B:It's much more difficult to do that.
Speaker B:And it's important for us because we are into medicine.
Speaker B:We are not saying, hey, if you have a disease, take our product.
Speaker B:We are saying to healthy people, if you want to preserve your health and maintain it for longer, this is a product that can help you to achieve that.
Speaker B:And we've shown it.
Speaker B:We've shown it in scientific research.
Speaker A:And I just want to say it's not to preserve even your health, but you're going further.
Speaker A:You are actually improving the health.
Speaker A:So that's quite significant.
Speaker B:You know, you did ask one question, though.
Speaker B:I didn't answer it.
Speaker B:It was if we're going to study this in the disease population.
Speaker B:And what I would say is, if there are hospitals and labs that want to study our product in the disease population, which we have been approached about this for a disease, not cardiovascular disease, but for another disease, we'd be happy to work together and donate product and find a way to make that happen.
Speaker B:In terms of us allocating our funds towards it, probably not.
Speaker B:The sole reason being that we are not legally allowed to make medical claims.
Speaker B:And so if we were to have positive results from that, we wouldn't be able to say anything about improving diseased population health, which is just because of how the law is set up.
Speaker B:If not for that, then, yeah, of course we would do it in a diseased population.
Speaker A:And look, I have to be honest with you, that would just be, you know, an ego boost, because, like you said, the hard thing is to make healthy people healthier.
Speaker A:So I'm sure you can live without that, you know, testing it in people with cardiovascular diseases.
Speaker A:But the thing I personally think is amazing with Novos is not just the scientific rigor and all that, that I think anybody that comes on my podcast, you know, that sort of.
Speaker A:I don't want to say basic criteria, but that it's obviously very important.
Speaker A:But the other thing that I'm really impressed with with Novos is how much charitable work you've been doing.
Speaker A:Well, even before you.
Speaker A:You founded Novos, and on your website, there's actually, like, I think, quite a funny.
Speaker A:I don't know what you call it, a gadget or an app or whatever it is, you've taken the idea of measuring aging in a completely different direction, and it's for free.
Speaker A:And it's on the Nova's website, it's called Face Age.
Speaker A:And you upload a picture of yourself and the AI estimates how old your face and I think particular around the eyes, how old you are or how old you look.
Speaker A:Beyond the fun of discovering whether AI thinks you look older or younger than you actually are, is there a meaningful health information hidden in your face?
Speaker B:I'll be completely transparent about face age.
Speaker B:So face age has a very real scientific justification.
Speaker B:It also has a marketing justification.
Speaker B:It's a combination.
Speaker B:So by putting it out there for free and people using it, the bargain that we make with the consumer is by using it, we're allowed to email you, unless of course, you unsubscribe.
Speaker B:It's a lead gen.
Speaker B:It gets people into the ecosystem and then we can educate them about longevity and take it from there.
Speaker B:At the same time, there is legitimate science behind it and relevance.
Speaker B:And the Wall Street Journal did a piece about facial aging algorithms.
Speaker B:They featured novos, but they also featured other facial algorithms that are being done at universities to look into different diseases, for example, that you might be able to detect just from a photograph of somebody's face.
Speaker B:So there, there's a lot of really exciting research being done in this field, I would say, specifically for how we use it.
Speaker B:There's two main outputs.
Speaker B:One is overall facial age estimation, and the other is, as you mentioned, eye age, which can also be distinct.
Speaker B:It's just one component of the facial age.
Speaker B:And as you can expect, our overall aging and our superficial aging is correlated to our internal biological aging as well.
Speaker B:Now, not perfectly, because, for example, you could be very healthy internally, but spend your whole day outdoors in the sun without sunblock, et cetera, and have more pronounced facial aging than the average person would.
Speaker B:So that is possible.
Speaker B:But for the most part, for most of us, the algorithm is going to be able to determine, let's just say you are 30 years old and it comes back and says that you look like you're 35.
Speaker B:Well, maybe you haven't been living the healthiest life overall versus someone who's 30 and comes back with the results of 27.
Speaker B:We have a paper coming out about this algorithm very soon.
Speaker B:We have really accurate results and we outperform many different comparisons that we put this through.
Speaker B:We did build this internally.
Speaker B:So this was machine learning project that our scientists and AI and PhD developed for us.
Speaker B:And it is one of multiple ways to measure your age.
Speaker B:I mean, I don't think we have the time to go into it, but this idea of biological age is something that a lot of people talk about, like, oh, I'm biologically much younger than, than I am.
Speaker B:I think the KARDASHIANS had an episode about this once.
Speaker B:Like, that's how mainstream it's become.
Speaker B:There's different ways to measure biological age.
Speaker B:And we've got organ specific aging, we've got superficial facial aging, we've got epigenetic aging, we've got proteomic aging, metabolomic aging.
Speaker B:I mean, all these big words.
Speaker B:The point is, there's many different ways to look at the aging process, and science is becoming increasingly sophisticated about it.
Speaker B:The way we look at it at Novos is to give people the tools that they need.
Speaker B:Ideally, when possible, make them free for you to be able to measure the different aspects of your aging process so you know where to focus more.
Speaker B:For example, if.
Speaker B:If your heart is aging faster than your brain, maybe you want to do certain things like cardiovascular exercise or maybe Novos core and so on other things that might be able to help that more so than focusing on your brain necessarily.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Although I argue focus on it all.
Speaker B:But, yeah, you might want to focus a little bit more on one than the other.
Speaker B:So with all of that said, Novos Face Age, you can find it@novoslabs.com face age.
Speaker B:But I think a more powerful experience is on our mobile app called Novos Life.
Speaker B:Novos Life is a free app.
Speaker B:We will have some premium features coming out soon with a subscription plan, but what we've got right now is everything is free, so sign up.
Speaker B:While it's all free.
Speaker B:And it has a free biological age clock that's based on a survey, and it is more accurate than the first generation of epigenetic biological age clocks like the Horvath clock, just from a survey that takes you five minutes to complete.
Speaker B:It's got personalized recommendations based on your lifestyle for how you can be slowing down your rate of aging.
Speaker B:It connects to your wearables like Aura and Apple Watch and Samsung and Apple Health Kit and so on.
Speaker B:So it'll track your wearables.
Speaker B:And it's got an AI LLM built in that's trained on longevity research.
Speaker B:So it actually gives you different answers through the lens of longevity that you would get from OpenAI or from Claude or from Gemini or from X.
Speaker B:You're getting different results from the Novos Life app that are very specific to health span and lifespan and the field of gerosciences that you would be getting from these other LLMs.
Speaker A:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker A:I have so many more questions.
Speaker A:We've only just scratched the surface.
Speaker A:I'm telling you, just you have to come back because like I said, I have hundreds of More questions.
Speaker A:Because you just do so many interesting things and even, you know, you as a person too, how you got to where you are now is just so fascinating.
Speaker A:But before we sort of come to the end, I just wanted to ask you, seeing that you're in the middle between what scientists are working on and what ordinary people are doing these days, what do you think people who are really interested and want to benefit and even help the longevity field moving along, what do you think they're getting most wrong at the moment?
Speaker B:I'd say what they're getting the most wrong at the moment is following social media and general YouTubers for their health and wellness advice and guidance.
Speaker B:There are YouTubers who I watch myself, which on other content, other forms of content, I love their guests.
Speaker B:But then when it comes to health related content, one is actually a British podcaster, very well known, but he brings on these help guests who say crazy things like, for example, that high cholesterol and LDL is good for you because it's associated long lived people have higher ldl, but that's just a very simplistic comprehension of what the data is actually telling us.
Speaker B:And it's that not to go into it, but ultimately high LDL is associated with cardiovascular disease very strongly and low LDL is associated with much lower rates of cardiovascular disease and longer lifespans.
Speaker B:So there are these podcasters, YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers who talk about health as if they're authoritative or they bring on guests who seem like authorities who actually are not, and they say controversial things so they get a lot of attention and they buck the trend.
Speaker B:So people are curious, don't get your advice from that.
Speaker B:I mean, you want to get your advice from really strong, well respected scientists, researchers, doctors in the field who are typically not on social media.
Speaker B:Maybe occasionally they're interviewed on a technical type of podcast, but someone like George Church, who I mentioned before, for example, he's not the type who's, who's traditionally on podcasts.
Speaker B:He's not like an entertainer.
Speaker B:He's a true hardcore scientist.
Speaker B:And the things he has to say about longevity and about genetics and about health and so on, I would trust his guidance ahead of anyone that I'm seeing on social media nowadays.
Speaker B:And so when people are saying inject these gray market peptides that have no long term human safety studies, forget about even efficacy, but even human safety studies and have only been studied in mice, let's say, like, should you really be taking these for longevity now?
Speaker B:If you want to take it for your own personal reasons and you have a doctor or whatever, so be it.
Speaker B:But don't confuse that for longevity.
Speaker B:Don't say that this is a longevity substance when it hasn't even been studied.
Speaker B:Forget about extending lifespan.
Speaker B:It hasn't even been studied to show that it's safe in humans in the long term.
Speaker B:So it's not even approved for human use.
Speaker B:But everyone on social is saying inject peptides that you get from a gray market source.
Speaker B:And I just don't agree with that.
Speaker A:I know the podcaster you are talking about and I fully agree.
Speaker A:But I think like you said, that's just, you know, for clickbait.
Speaker A:The only problem is he does have a huge audience and a lot of people really only get their information from him or people like him.
Speaker A:So I agree with you, that's pretty detrimental to the longevity field or for that matter, anything else he talks about.
Speaker B:But yeah, it's detrimental to the longevity field.
Speaker B:But I would argue that as you become increasingly powerful, you have that much greater of a responsibility to have higher standards and to protect the public interest.
Speaker B:And by bringing on people who are saying controversial things, but there's no solid science behind it and nobody in their right mind who's an authority in the field would approve of the things that the person's saying.
Speaker B:If you're going to bring that person on, fine, but then have these disclaimers saying like, you know, fact check at the bottom of the screen when they're saying the things.
Speaker B:Or tell them like this is actually controversial and the scientific establishment does not agree with this because of X, Y and Z, then at least you're giving people perspective.
Speaker B:Let them have a voice, but give that perspective.
Speaker B:But when you're not doing that, you're risking people's health and literally death.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That can come to somebody.
Speaker B:If they live their life ignoring ldl, they have high cholesterol, high plaque and they can have a heart attack from that.
Speaker B:So you just have to be more careful is my thinking.
Speaker A:I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker A:Tell me now something.
Speaker A:Over the years you've tried so many things on yourself.
Speaker A:What do you think has made the biggest difference to your health?
Speaker A:And you know, I know you can't really recommend or whatever, but if I were to put you on the spot and say you have to recommend something sort of to everyone you know, that can help everyone, what would that be?
Speaker B:I'll give two recommendations.
Speaker B:One that is definitely general for everyone and it's kind of a little bit generic advice.
Speaker B:The other is very specialty but significant Number of people should consider it.
Speaker B:So the first is simple.
Speaker B:It's sleep.
Speaker B:I would say that improving your sleep is the most important thing to get right first, because by sleeping better, not only is your biology better, and you can reduce the risk of things like neurodegenerative disorders and heart disease and cancer, which research is proving out over the years that better sleep can reduce the risk of those things.
Speaker B:I would say that also the other fundamentals of longevity, like diet and activity, improve with good sleep.
Speaker B:There are studies that find that if you are sleep deprived, you're more likely to eat unhealthy foods and to eat the junk food in the cupboard and so on.
Speaker B:And we all know that if you're sleep deprived, you're not going to exercise or you're not going to exercise as much or as intensely or as long and, and so on.
Speaker B:So getting great sleep not only is biologically fundamental to avoidance of disease in and of itself, but the effects of that good sleep make you better with your diet, better with your activity, better with your psychology and ability or resilience to stress, better mood.
Speaker B:So you're going to communicate more with people and be more communal and spend time, which is also associated with longevity.
Speaker B:So I feel like that's the common denominator across everything else in longevity that you also have to get right.
Speaker B:It just makes it that much easier to get it right when you sleep well.
Speaker B:So I'd say focus on your sleep.
Speaker B:And there's so many different things you can do.
Speaker B:That's many episodes in and of itself just to focus on sleep.
Speaker B:The second thing I would say that's a little bit more specialty, but I'll, I'll give a quick, quick personal anecdote here.
Speaker B:I've been watching my health since, since I'm a kid, since I'm 12 years old, eating healthy, exercising.
Speaker B:I haven't gone more than a week without exercising except for during my brain tumor recovery in my life since I was 12.
Speaker B:I'm 42 now, so 30 years.
Speaker B:I haven't gone more than a week without exercising.
Speaker B:That's how intense I am about this.
Speaker B:I only say that because it was a surprise when I got a coronary artery calcium scan back when I was 40 years old and found that my score was greater than zero.
Speaker B:When you're in your 40s, only 25% of people have a score greater than zero.
Speaker B:It basically means you have some plaque that is, is accumulating in your coronary artery.
Speaker B:It's recommended that everyone get the scan done at 40 years old.
Speaker B:For women, you can wait a few more years, but say between 40 and 45 years old, get your baseline.
Speaker B:My score was.
Speaker B:Was low, low, but it was above zero.
Speaker B:It was seven.
Speaker B:And that was a shock to me and, and to the doctor.
Speaker B:Long story short, I dug into my genetics.
Speaker B:I got full genome sequencing done many years ago, but I, I then played with it on Claude, and I dug in and I found that I have two specific genes that increase the likelihood that I will have some accumulation of plaque.
Speaker B:I brought all of this information to my doctor and we agreed that I should go on a cholesterol medication.
Speaker B:I went on a PCSK9 inhibitor.
Speaker B:They used to be injectable, only now Merck came out with an oral form.
Speaker B:And between that combined with a common cholesterol lowering medication called Ezetimibe, very few side effects, except some people might have stomach discomfort, but very few side effects.
Speaker B:Between the two of those, I was able to get my LDL cholesterol down to a very, very low level.
Speaker B:And my apob, which is also arguably even more important to look at than your LDL in terms of projecting risk, also went down to the level that is considered the absolute lowest risk tier that I can possibly get to.
Speaker B:I say all of this because, as we just mentioned, social media will tell you ignore what doctors have said for decades.
Speaker B:And all of the research shows to that lower ldl, especially if you have any sort of plaque, is associated with better health outcomes and cardiovascular disease reduction, et cetera, possibly even lower risk of cancer and neurodegeneration associated with lower levels of LDL cholesterol and so on.
Speaker B:That's earlier research, but it is something that's developing right now despite all of what social media is saying.
Speaker B:Listen to your doctor on this.
Speaker B:Get your CAT scan.
Speaker B:If you have high apob, if you have high ldl, if you have any cac, then take your doctor's recommendations or prescription seriously.
Speaker B:Monitor side effects.
Speaker B:If you don't have them, stay on them.
Speaker B:Because as we talked about before, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer.
Speaker B:And you should take the medical guidance very, very seriously.
Speaker B:And don't play into the conspiracy theories about ldl.
Speaker B:It's very real.
Speaker A:You know the, the person that discovered the Ezetimibe drug, Dr. Sandeep Duga, he was on my podcast.
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:Oh, very cool.
Speaker A:You should listen to it.
Speaker A:He's a really impressive guy and, you know, just sort of as an add on.
Speaker A:He's also now moved into the supplement world because, you know.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:And it's amazing what he does.
Speaker B:I'll look into him.
Speaker B:Yeah, I'm not familiar with him.
Speaker A:He's an incredible guy.
Speaker A:Yeah, he's a Blue Oaks, I think is his company.
Speaker B:Hope that's okay.
Speaker B:I'll take a look.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:And he's taking part in the XPRIZE and all that.
Speaker B:So we are as well.
Speaker B:At Novos.
Speaker B:We were one of the Hunter Company selective for.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, he's one of the last 40 now or whatever.
Speaker B:Oh, fantastic.
Speaker A:Anyway, just a little side note on that one.
Speaker A:Listen, Chris, like I said, I have another hundred questions to ask you.
Speaker A:So you have to promise please to come back and share some more of your experience, exciting progress with Novos and everything else.
Speaker B:Of course.
Speaker A:Before I let you go.
Speaker A:Oh, thank you.
Speaker A:That was quiet.
Speaker A:But it's on record.
Speaker A:So yes, before I let you go, I just have five rapid fire questions that I ask all my guests.
Speaker A:So what's the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?
Speaker B:I would say it's not a sprint, it's a, it's a journey.
Speaker B:And so it's not about doing more immediately, it's about looking at the long term and pacing myself.
Speaker A:Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life.
Speaker B:Kind of what I said before is like, get to bed on time, improve your sleep hygiene, do everything you can to improve the quality and duration of your sleep.
Speaker A:And the next question doesn't really apply to you because you've lived so many lives, but if you weren't in longevity signs, what career would you have chosen?
Speaker B:Well, I mean, it would definitely be something in, in the field of health.
Speaker B:I, I would say that my earlier career, I was always doing things, but in the back of my mind thinking, like, how can I go into the health world and do something in the health world?
Speaker B:So I, I think that if you ask the younger Chris, it would have been to say to go into health and longevity.
Speaker B:And the fact that I am now in it, I've, I've essentially achieved that goal.
Speaker A:What microdose habit sort of five minute routine or small daily action yields outsized longevity benefits?
Speaker B:I don't necessarily do it myself.
Speaker B:I, I take more time to do this.
Speaker B:But if someone wanted a very quick five minute routine, doing high intensity interval training, types of physical activity, five minutes, like five minute sprints, five minute burpees, whatever it is, like as intensely as you can, you're gonna get the benefits of like 30, 40 minutes of steady state cardio in those five minutes.
Speaker B:So try to integrate that if you're not already Integrating a lot of training into your days.
Speaker A:And the last one, you've already given me an example, but see if you can come up with a different one.
Speaker A:What's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered and is there any truth to it?
Speaker B:We can speak about a person in the field who has said that they're the slowest aging person in the world, they've said that they are the healthiest person in the world, and so on, and all of that is not correct.
Speaker B:None of that is true.
Speaker B:And is there any truth to it?
Speaker B:Absolutely not.
Speaker B:I mean, I would say, like, in terms of, has he significantly improved his help and is he a lot healthier than he would otherwise be and in the top percentiles of people?
Speaker B:Yes, I will give him that.
Speaker B:In terms of these fantastical claims of being the best, there are many, many people far healthier than him, and they're not going to the extremes that he is, and they're not spending millions of dollars a year to do it.
Speaker B:In fact, we have a customer who outperformed him, spending a hundred dollars a month that the press celebrated a lot, named Julie Gibson Clark.
Speaker B:You can find her Instagram.
Speaker B:She spent a hundred dollars a month and outperformed him.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And she's older than him as well and still outperformed him, I think, like five years or so older.
Speaker B:So I would say that that's.
Speaker B:That's a.
Speaker B:A myth.
Speaker B:The only bit of truth is that he has improved his health a lot, but doesn't compare to some.
Speaker B:Some other people out there.
Speaker A:Well, amazing.
Speaker A:Chris, thank you so much for joining me today on Beyond Longevity.
Speaker A:It was what a conversation and well done to you.
Speaker A:I think you're doing everything right.
Speaker A:So just continue and share all your achievements and scientific breakthroughs and everything with everyone else.
Speaker A:You'll make the world a better place, I think.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:That's the goal.
Speaker B:Leave it better than we found it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So I appreciate the time.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Longevity is moving incredibly quickly.
Speaker A:And as more products, tests, and interventions enter the field, one quick question becomes increasingly important.
Speaker A:What evidence do we actually have that any of these things work?
Speaker A:That came up again and again in this conversation.
Speaker A:And one point I found particularly interesting was Chris's warning about combining different longevity ingredients.
Speaker A:Just because each one looks promising on its own does not mean they will work better together.
Speaker A:Together, the combination itself has to be tested.
Speaker A:He was equally clear about the other side of longevity.
Speaker A:Mouse studies are not human proof.
Speaker A:Popularity on social media is not evidence.
Speaker A:And when it comes to interventions such as gray market peptides excitement should not get ahead of long term safety.
Speaker A:At the same time, Novos has gone further than simply pointing to research on individual ingredients.
Speaker A:Its core formulation has been tested in the lab, in aged mice and in double blind placebo controlled human studies.
Speaker A:There is still a great deal to learn, but that is exactly why following the evidence matters.
Speaker A:A big thank you to Chris for such an open and fascinating conversation.
Speaker A:We barely scratched the surface, so I'm definitely holding him to that promise to come back.
Speaker A:If you enjoyed this episode, please follow beyond longevity, rate the show and share it with someone you think would enjoy the conversation.
Speaker A:Until next week, thank you for listening.
Speaker A:Sa.
