Episode 543: Dave Watumull: The One Algae Your Supplement Stack Has Always Been Missing

Did you know that the molecule behind the pink color of salmon and the red of flamingos is also one of the most potent antioxidants ever studied? It has 4,000 peer reviewed papers behind it. Based on studies, it extended lifespan by 12% in the most rigorous government funded study ever conducted. But almost nobody has heard of it. Astaxanthin is not a trend or a buzzword but a potent natural antioxidant waiting to be discovered by many. It is a marine-derived substance that is thousands of times more potent than vitamin C, crosses the blood brain barrier, and does what no other antioxidant on the market can. Dave Watumull has been working with astaxanthin since high school, watching microalgae turn bright red in the Hawaiian sun as a defense mechanism against UV light. He has spent 25 years figuring out how to bring it to the rest of us. In this episode of Habits and Hustle, Dave breaks down why your supplement stack is missing the one foundational ingredient that makes everything else work better and why it stayed hidden for so long. The most powerful antioxidant in the world was never hidden. It just never had a celebrity behind it. Let's dive in! What's Discussed: (1:43) The marine super nutrient most people have never heard of. (4:04) How microalgae in Hawaii sparked 25 years of research. (5:46) Why something this powerful stayed under the radar. (8:14) What makes it thousands of times stronger than vitamin C. (13:18) The supplement mistake most people are silently making. (20:54) The cheapest beauty hack nobody is talking about. (26:16) The Harvard study that proved no other antioxidant compares. (41:39) NR, resveratrol, green tea, omega-3s on extending lifespan. (42:06) Why most longevity supplements are mostly nonsense. (46:35) Why AX3® absorbs three times more than leading competitors. (1:02:42) Dave's father late 70s case study, tennis in the Hawaiian sun, still going. (1:17:24) What astaxanthin cannot do and the boring truth about longevity. Thank you to our sponsors! AX3®: Visit www. AX3.life http://www.ax3.life to get a 20% discount on your first order with promo code HUSTLE at checkout. Air Doctor: Head to www. AirDoctorPro.com http://www.airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE to get UP TO $300 off today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee plus a 3-year warranty, an $84 value FREE! Find more from Jen: Website: https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Dave: Website: www.ax3.life http://www.ax3.life AX3® Instagram: @ax3.life http://www.instagram.com/ax3.life/ YouTube: @ax3life https://www.youtube.com/@ax3life Dave's Instagram: @davewatumull http://www.instagram.com/davewatumull/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Jen Cohen?

  Hi, everybody. Welcome to Habits and Hustle. We have a very special guest today. We have Dave Wadhamal, who is the co-founder and CEO of AX3 Life. Now, you might be wondering what that is. And what that is, is it's an astaxanthin company. So Dave is on a mission to bring astaxanthin to the world. It's a marine super nutrient that supports your whole body's health and longevity. It has captured his imagination for more than 25 years of research, development, and commercialization. He is the co-founder and CEO of AX3 Life, a consumer health company dedicated to astaxanthin products, education, and community. Now, just for you, your information,

• 0:49Jen Cohen?

  I just said that. We typically don't even do, I don't usually read a bio, but I wanted to kind of get it out because I needed to practice the word astaxanthin.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 0:57Jen Cohen?

  And I find, this is why I wanted to do this podcast, is because I was saying to you off-camera, that it's one of these things that are so unknown, but yet probably one of the most effective, most powerful antioxidant there is. And so when there's something that hasn't been totally just, kind of just spoken about at nauseam, I really want to deep dive, because that to me is when it's really the most interesting, right? It's kind of like, we all, we all hear vitamin C, we all hear of like, even like, resveratrol, right? But not very many people, like even me, I was saying to you guys, I didn't even know what this was until like, maybe two years ago, or maybe a year and a half ago, Max Lugavere was here. And he was talking about it

• 1:39Jen Cohen?

  to me. And I was like, wow, that's something I, and so I did my own little deep dive, and then I started taking it. And now, like I told you, I notice it much more because I'm aware of it. So with that little extra intro, tell me like, what made you, like, who you are, and why you started a company just on this particular thing? And kind of like, give us a little bit of your origin story.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I've been working with astaxanthin for virtually my whole life, since high school. Initially as a summer job, I went to the big island of Hawaii, went to Kona. And there was a company there that had a group of scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. And they had a cool technology to grow a particular type of microalgae that happens to produce astaxanthin as a defense mechanism against UV light from the sun. And so when you're growing this algae, it starts off life green in these big ponds. And then when the sunlight hits it in the brutal heat in Kona, where the Iron Man train and lava fields, they actually internally produce astaxanthin and turn bright red. And that is their defense mechanism.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  And it helps to absorb some of that light and protect them from oxidative stress and damage. And so this was going back to my high school years, working in the production of ponds. And then thereafter, pursuing various pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications of astaxanthin. Just given that at the time, there was very limited research. There was less than 200 peer reviewed papers, no human clinical studies. And now, over the last 25 years, there's now more than 4,000 peer reviewed papers and like 100 human clinical studies conducted by not just us, but researchers internationally, just because it's such a molecule of interest throughout the world in the research community, although not really known in the consumer and mainstream community.

• 3:24Jen Cohen?

  That was what I find very interesting. Like, why is it that most people have heard of, like, give us some other examples of other antioxidants? There's like, or where, like, we've all heard of vitamin C, vitamin E, all these other

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Beta carotene.

• 3:37Jen Cohen?

  Beta carotene. But why has this particular thing, like, I can say it again, astaxanthin. Astaxanthin, thank you. Why is it so unknown?

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just hasn't, well, first of all, it wasn't easy to make for a long time. It took some technology on the microalgal side to produce the algae, to extract it. And then also, if you want to do a laboratory method to make it highly pure and consistent and bioavailable, that also is not something easy to do. So both of those were kind of barriers to entry, just as a product to be available to consumers. I was part of the Team that brought one of the first asusanthin supplements to the market back in the 99, 2000 timeframe.

• 4:19Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  There's been products on the market for now more than 25 years, but they've just been, you know, sold through traditional channels and, you know, supplement, you know, brands and stores. But there hasn't been a major push, you know, in terms of there was no celebrity backing or partnership or major, you know, um, consumer health company that was marketing it or, you know, major like TV campaigns or, you know, social media campaigns. And so it's kind of just gone under the radar. It just hasn't had its, you know, time, you know, in the spotlight yet. But the science has just been continuing to, to grow over all these years. And the more you dig, the more interesting it is. Um, and so that's what really our mission now is to spread the word about asusanthin. Because we spent, you know, the better part of a decade after that initial start,

• 5:03Speaker 02

  looking at pharmaceutical applications of the molecule, thinking that maybe doctors could prescribe this for disease use for, for patients. And then ultimately came back to the supplement space with the learnings from, from the pharmaceutical research and manufacturing to bring a supplement that has that type of rigor around the manufacturing and kind of the knowledge behind how it works and the potential applications and bringing that to the consumer space. But for several years, we just worked on reaching out to doctors locally in Hawaii, selling in retail stores. But then with the pandemic, we figured we gotta have a better way to, to reach people beyond just person to person, you know, with a doctor or with a, you know, at a store. And that's why we formed AX3 in the last few years was really to create, um, you know, a community and, and kind of a digital outreach through podcasts and social media to kind of reach more people

• 5:47Speaker 02

  and educate them about asusanthin.

• 5:50Jen Cohen?

  Tell people what oxidative stress is, because people use that term.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:53Jen Cohen?

  And a lot of times people don't even know what it means. So let's talk to me like I'm like seven.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Okay. So, so we breathe the oxygen, we consume nutrients.

• 6:02Jen Cohen?

  Yep.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  And, and we produce energy in our cells to just to power everything, to move our muscles, to think. And oxygen is a big part of that process. As a byproduct of that energy production, some of the oxygen gets turned into reactive oxygen species, free radicals, that when you have too much of those, it becomes oxygen. Oxidative stress. Your body has endogenous antioxidant systems like glutathione, SOD, superoxide dismutase that takes care of some of that free radical or reactive oxygen species, the oxidative stress. But it oftentimes gets overwhelmed and then you get oxidative stress, which is where you have more of these reactive oxygen species or free radicals than should be around. And then they are bad actors.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  So you're producing energy in your mitochondria, the little power plants of your cell. As a byproduct of that, think of like an energy production facility. There's pollution coming out of it. That pollution or byproduct can damage things and it can damage your cells, which can lead to health issues, aging, et cetera. And so that's oxidative stress. And at the same time, your immune system, when it's fighting off infections or wound healing, it can actually come in and create its own reactive oxygen species, which can be healthy for trying to kill like a virus or a pathogen. It does that internally, but then it's meant to kind of turn off and go away. The problem is when you have this happening on a constant basis and you have too much of these free radicals attacking portions of your cell

• 7:33Speaker 02

  and then damaging, whether it's your membranes, your proteins, which carry out all the activity in your cells or your DNA. That can become damaged from oxidative stress. So that's really something that over time can lead to all these health issues and aging. So we want to try to reduce oxidative stress, which is also tied in with inflammation. There are inflammatory pathways that are triggered by oxidative stress in the cell. So when they sense that there's oxidative stress, there's a change in that redox environment in the cell. It turns on these inflammatory pathways. And then now you recruit the troops, you recruit the fire department to the cell and they're trying to fix things, but sometimes there's nothing to be fixed. And now it's actually causing damage because your immune system,

• 8:16Speaker 02

  rather than fighting off a parasite or an infection, a bacteria or healing a wound from an injury, now it's just attacking your own tissues. Right. And you don't need that. And so it's really important to reduce oxidative stress and chronic inflammation for overall health and lung

• 8:33Jen Cohen?

  You said something, though, you mentioned glutathione because glutathione, I was under, I thought that was the most powerful antioxidant antioxidant that there is that your body has. And then like the precursors NAC, correct? So I've been taking that forever for years. Like, you know, I think a lot of people, what they do is they think that they are deficient in something. So then they end up taking it for years on end without checking their blood work regularly. And so they don't even know what they're like, how it changes over time. Right? Can you tell us what are the main benefits of azazanthin? And then let's get into more stuff after that.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  So like you said, it's an antioxidant, but it's different. Not all antioxidants are the same.

• 9:15Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  There's how potent they are and what types of reactive oxygen species or free radicals that they're best at targeting.

• 9:21Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  With azazanthin, it's uniquely structured to be able to quench singlet oxygen, which is a particular type of oxygen that's, you know, has kind of has extra energy, say from UV light that that hits it. And that energy can be damaging to other components in your cells, like your lipids and your proteins and DNA. With azazanthin, it can interface with that and actually absorb the energy. And the molecule can vibrate and kind of dissipate the heat from that energy and then be back to normal and with no damage to the cell. And in that particular mechanism of targeting singlet oxygen, which is a reactive oxygen species, it's like thousands of times stronger than vitamin C and is similar compared to vitamin E and beta carotene.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  So in studies looking at its antioxidant ability, it was much more potent than all of the common antioxidants. In addition to that, there's other types of free radicals, which are reactive oxygen species that may be missing an electron. And oxygen loves electrons and in particular, when they're free radicals, it's trying to steal an electron from the lipids or the proteins or the DNA, the components of your cells that that build your cells and your tissues and the body that you are. And so azazanthin can actually donate an electron to those free radicals to neutralize them effectively. And then azazanthin itself doesn't become reactive because of its molecular structure where it can distribute that that loss of. The electron and actually it partners well with vitamin C to kind of get an electron back and then get back to normal.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And we've done studies with a collaborator at Harvard that has a model that models a membrane, inserts things like asesanthin or beta carotene and sees if the membrane is disrupted and or oxidized. And we found that with asesanthin, the membrane was completely undisturbed. It was just like perfectly situated in there. The membrane was super happy and there was uh no oxidation of the membrane. Whereas with other things, it disrupted the membrane and so the membrane wasn't happy. It's kind of like messing up the walls of your house and now you have structural issues. Wow. And so, yeah, other antioxidants like beta carotene or vitamin E can even become pro-oxidant at certain levels. If, if, um, you know, if they are fighting off free radicals, sometimes they can become reactive and, and damage things on their own.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  But asesanthin is like a pure antioxidant that doesn't ever become pro-oxidant. It always remains an antioxidant, which is very unique. So it's much more potent than most entomoclimatatories. It spans the membrane in a very unique way that other antioxidants don't. It gets to all the membranes of the cell, not just the outer membrane, but the mitochondria and nucleus. And it gets naturally distributed throughout your whole body. And so when you take it orally, it gets transported to your liver along with other fats that you're ingesting in that meal. And then it gets packaged into, if you've heard of like LDL and HDL, those lipoproteins. It gets packaged into those and prevents them from being oxidized while using them as a transport, like a bus throughout the body to go to the heart and to the brain.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  So that's what they use, that's what asesanthin uses to travel throughout the body. Then it gets to your heart, gets to your brain, gets to your other tissues and organs, and then gets into all the cells and the membranes within those cells. So it's basically distributed throughout your entire body, gets into all your membranes and just kind of sits there and fights off free radicals, you know, that are kind of being generated and not being properly managed by your endogenous systems. But it's not chronically inhibiting or activating certain things. Like a lot of agents or drugs go in and just, oh, something's a little bit off. Let me just go in and completely take it out or completely turn something on, which is not meant to be how your body functions. It may fix that limited issue, but then now you have side effects down the road.

• 12:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Because that's not how nature intended your cells to function. Asusanthin basically is helping to just maintain or restore that normal function of the cells. Just let's prevent the lipids and the proteins and the DNA, which are all the key components that are basically what make your cells, your cells and your tissues, just preventing them from being oxidized and damaged by inflammation and just so they can just do their normal job and function normally. That's really what it does is just, you know, allow for homeostasis and normal cellular function. But in terms of say NR, that was tested in this longevity study that we were also a part of with the NIH called the Interventions Testing Program, which is probably the most rigorous mammalian assessment of lifespan in the world.

• 13:37Jen Cohen?

  What'd you call the test? It's called, what's it called?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  So it's the Interventions Testing Program, the ITP. And it's conducted at the National Institute on Aging.

• 13:46Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  The NIA, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, the NIH. And so that's the, you know, the US government.

• 13:53Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  You know, institutes of science and medicine, and it funds a lot of biomedical research and conducts research as well. And so this program has been running for the last 20 years. It's conducted at three different institutions. So it's, it's very robust because you're not just doing a study in one place. You're doing it at the University of Michigan, University of Texas, and a research group in Maine. And you have the same setup at each site. So you're running basically three studies, but in parallel and hoping to get, you know, the same type of result at all three. And they perfected this model over, you know, decades and they have, ideally you would test in humans, but it would take decades to actually look at lifespan. And so, so mice are the best that we can get in terms of something that takes a few

• 14:37Speaker 02

  years to get, you know, an indication of, okay, this might be a viable longevity lifespan enhancing agent. And that's really the program that put rapamycin on the map as, oh, this actually, this old repurposed drug that used to be used for organ transplants now actually can extend your lifespan. It may give you kind of tolerability issues or side effect issues that, you know, are not optimal from a day-to-day dosage standpoint, but it looks like it would extend your lifespan numerically all. Though who knows about quality of life at that point.

• 15:05Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  But that is nevertheless, that is the program that really identified that rapamycin was a legitimate lifespan enhancing agent. And other things like NR have also been tested in that model and did not extend lifespan. And not to say that NR doesn't have utility or NAD doesn't have benefit for health and for aging. But in terms of direct lifespan enhancement in this model, which was meant to replicate aging to the best extent possible in these mice. A lot of things, green tea, resveratrol was tested, did not extend lifespan. So in a 20 year history, only 10 things have extended lifespan at all with statistical significance. And only five have actually extended lifespan more than 10%. And those five that have worked are things like rapamycin or other drugs.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  And we were invited to supply material to the program back in 2019. Based on preliminary research where asusanthin was demonstrated to extend lifespan in other model organisms like worms and fruit flies and yeast, which are basic research models to look at things like aging or disease. So we extended lifespan in those models. We also showed that at the cellular level, the pathways that rapamycin acts on like mTOR or the sirtuins that resveratrol acts on or AMPK that metformin acts on, all of these critical pathways. Asusanthin also has an impact on them. So mechanistically, it makes sense that asusanthin would support aging and longevity. And so we supplied this material to the NIH program.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  And after several years of following the mice, it turns out that asusanthin did extend the lifespan by 12%. And so that's up there in the range of some of their top performers. But with the key difference that it actually has exceptional safety and tolerability. Or like in the case of resveratrol, there was research in, at this point, probably 20 plus years ago that came out of like David Sinclair's laboratory and people were really excited about it. They formed the company Certress to create pharmaceutical versions of resveratrol. It was purchased by GSK for hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 17:09Jen Cohen?

  Six hundred million dollars.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then after a few years of research, it was. It was shelved because it didn't seem to really, you know, have the science.

• 17:16Jen Cohen?

  It was bunk. It was like there was no proof of anything.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the mechanism with the sirtuins, I mean, there is something there, but maybe risveratrol wasn't exactly, you know, the optimal candidate for that. And so.

• 17:27Jen Cohen?

  Well, so what happens is you have to give us, what happens to that $600 million purchase? Do they have to give the money back or?

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no.

• 17:35Jen Cohen?

  I know, I'm joking. It doesn't work that way. It's like, oh, sorry.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  But I mean, that's how drug development works. I mean, companies will spend hundreds of millions or billions trying to develop things and not everything works.

• 17:45Jen Cohen?

  So NR never extended lifespan, NMN never extended.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  NMN wasn't tested in that model.

• 17:51Jen Cohen?

  It wasn't tested.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we don't know about that, but NR at least didn't. Risveratrol didn't, green tea didn't, omega threes didn't. Yeah.

• 17:59Jen Cohen?

  Green tea didn't either.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:01Jen Cohen?

  Like for polyphenols and all that.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  But again, all those may have other good health benefits, but maybe just wouldn't numerically extend your lifespan in a typical population based on this study.

• 18:17Jen Cohen?

  All right, I want to tell you about one of the most powerful science-backed supplements I've come across. It's called astaxanthin. It's a marine antioxidant supported by over 4,000 scientific papers and 100 human studies. Astaxanthin works at the cellular level, protecting your DNA, reducing inflammation and supporting your brain, heart, muscle, skin and energy. It's one of the very few supplements shown to impact multiple hallmarks of aging and improving your endurance, recovery and your overall longevity. And that's why I've partnered with AX3 Life. Their BioPure Astaxanthin has been clinically proven to be absorbed three times better

• 18:59Jen Cohen?

  than standard astaxanthin and was actually validated in the NIH's Gold Standard Longevity Program. I've also had their CEO on my podcast and the science is pretty compelling. Go to AX3.life and use promo code HUSTLE to get 20% off your first order. That's AX3.life and use promo code HUSTLE for 20% off your first order.

• 19:32Jen Cohen?

  So I'm curious if this is something that it's such a powerful antioxidant, like a thousand times more powerful than vitamin C. And what I initially heard was it's really great for your skin, nails, hair. There's a big beauty element to this, right? Why are there not any serums, just like an, how do you say it again?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Astaxanthin.

• 19:58Jen Cohen?

  Astaxanthin serums and creams. I mean, this is a massive market in the beauty world. Like it's a trillion dollar market. There's a bazillion vitamin C serums. There's a billion serums, you know, pushing resveratrol, you know, because of the ability to fight free radicals. Meanwhile, you know, it's come back that there's no real data that even supports that resveratrol is even effective. And yet it's a multi-billion dollar, it was a multi-billion dollar company brand. So why are more people not creating beauty, beauty products with this?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  There are a few, in particular in the Asian market.

• 20:38Jen Cohen?

  Is that like Korean, like the Korean skincare?

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Japanese, Korean, yeah, yeah. So there are products that utilize astaxanthin. You'll find some cosmetics. And so I think it will become more common just as more cosmetic brands are aware of the science and want to include it because there are studies showing that both oral and topical administration of astaxanthin do reduce fine lines and wrinkles and increase moisture content and elasticity, prevent some of the DNA damage to skin cells that happens from UV light, also promotes eye health, both based on strain from looking at digital screens, but also based on the light that comes in, you know, from the, you know, from the sun. And so it really is important. And I think that the one challenge though, is that it's such a bright red pigment. And so you can imagine if you mix it into lotion, which we've done kind of on our own

• 21:25Speaker 02

  kind of crude formulations of topical, you know, lotions and creams, it's bright red. And you know, and so if you have a high dose in it, it's like putting on war paint, like a red.

• 21:34Jen Cohen?

  Right, right, right, rouge.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you may have to have. You know, a low level to not have it be something that like colors the skin with, you know, with the application of the topical cream or lotion, but still is enough to be effective. Fortunately, though, Acesanthem, without needing to apply it topically, it naturally gets distributed throughout your whole body and even and gets to your skin cells. So it can it can be that internal, you know, protector of the skin just by taking it orally.

• 22:03Jen Cohen?

  I think it's a beauty hack. I think it's like the best kept secret that nobody talks about is that if you take this Acesanthem as a as a capsule, it will be a great thing for your skin, your nails, your hair. Everything grows faster, looks better. And like, nobody's doing it, nobody's talking about it. And like, it's it's like the cheapest, the cheapest beauty hack you can do.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of those cosmetic products are quite expensive, right?

• 22:28Jen Cohen?

  Very expensive. And like, well, that's a big deal because I think that the truth of the matter is, everything now is about longevity. That's like the new buzzword of the day, right? Everyone, longevity, longevity, longevity. And so the assumption is to live longer. So everyone's doing all these things, taking these injections, these peptides, all the things, because they're expecting to live longer and live better.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you want to not just live longer, but but have health.

• 22:53Jen Cohen?

  And have health as well.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:55Jen Cohen?

  So if like a lot and like if most of this stuff, actually, almost all of it, is a bunch of nonsense, you know, it's it's like, that's the bottom line. It is mostly nonsense. I know it's nonsense because this is the thing, right? Like, there's always certain things, like, there's always so much you can do to really move the needle. You can only like, you know, you have, you can exercise, you can eat well, you can not smoke, drink less, all the things, right? But then there's other things that move the needle, like a little, little, little bit. And those things I like, from all of my readings, all the experts that I talk to, the top people in the world, and like, they say to me, like, off, you know, offline, like, nah, that most like, most of this stuff is not going to really like help you. The sauna can be a great thing. Cold plunge, nah, some people are saying yes, some people are saying no.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  It's mixed, yeah.

• 23:40Jen Cohen?

  There's only a few things that everyone's in agreement with, right? Like, so that's why this was very interesting to me because like, it's Usually the ones that are the most unknown, undetected, like less popular that actually like actually work. Like nobody, like exercise is very unpopular, but it works better than anything else. You know what I mean? Like unfortunately, that's the way it works. Like this thing here, it's a very, it's actually a very moderately, it's a very inexpensive supplement, Acesanthin. Like how much is a bottle of this stuff?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  So ours is 50. You can find cheaper ones on Amazon for 25, but they are, ours is absorbed three times better.

• 24:20Jen Cohen?

  So that's good to know.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're paying half, but you're, you're taking three times as much, uh, you know, in that case, so.

• 24:24Jen Cohen?

  Well, that's good to know because you know why? When I went on Amazon, before I even met you and knew about your products and all this stuff and how, how rigorous you are with your testing and all the things. That's very important. You know, the, you've got to be so careful with Amazon because I went on Amazon two years ago, after Max told me all about all this stuff and I'm like, hmm, I'm going to find Acesanthin. And this thing had like, this brand had like 20,000 reviews. And I'm like, oh, it must be good, right? So I bought it. Meanwhile, it's garbage and I didn't know, you know, because you've got to be careful. What are people supposed to look for? How do they know what works, what doesn't work? Like what's the most potent version of Acesanthin, how much they should take?

• 25:07Jen Cohen?

  And in terms of like, just like quality, basically.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if you go to Amazon, and it's, and it's not to say that those other brands or products are garbage. You know, they, um, there might be some.

• 25:21Jen Cohen?

  And it probably used like such a little amount of, there's like 1% Acesanthin and the rest filler.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there are those products. Um, and, and, um, you want to make sure you get, if you are getting one from Amazon, one from a reputable company that is either a direct manufacturer.

• 25:37Jen Cohen?

  Or your company. Tell us why, yeah. Tell us why yours is like, how, why yours is actually special.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  So we, having started in growing the microalgae, we noticed that that is prone to batch-to-batch variability, prone to contamination, because you basically are growing algae in these big ponds. And you have the volcano nearby, you have the airport nearby. So airplane jet fuel vapor. You're doing it in Hawaii? We used to. It was 25-plus years ago. We were growing the microalgae in the open ponds in Kona. And, but you are exposed to the elements. And so, yes, you have the Hawaiian sunlight and air, but you also have vog from the volcano and the airport nearby and birds and rodents. And so, it's outdoors. Yeah. It's not as controlled. There are some groups, like a group in Iceland and a group in Washington State, that do it entirely in enclosed indoor tubes.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  So it's not prone to the contamination risks, but it's still an extract of the algae, which is only 5% or 10%, or maybe even 15% or 20% if you're really doing like a high-concentrated form. But most products on the market may be like, say, 5% or 10% assazanthin. And the rest is other stuff from the algae, which is related molecules or algal lipids or proteins that are not going to harm you, but they're just not the active component that you want. And in our case, we, with a decade of pharmaceutical research, we decided to kind of produce it like a pharmaceutical in terms of in the laboratory, like highly pure, none of the other stuff, but just the active molecule that you find in nature with none of the other stuff. So it's 100% pure? It's 100% pure, but then we have to formulate it to make it absorb.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Because if we just take it off the end of the line, not formulated, you won't absorb it, unfortunately. And so, we have to formulate it to make it so well-absorbed. But when we took our 12-milligram capsule, or two of those, 24-milligrams total, versus potentially like the product you bought, which was like, yeah, very highly reviewed on Amazon, long-term, you know, brand on the market, same 12-milligram, two capsules of theirs. We got a group of human volunteers, healthy individuals, gave them the dose of the two 12-milligram capsules of the algal form of the product, took their blood at multiple time points over 24 hours, sent the blood to the lab where we have methods to measure how much assazanthin is in the blood. Then we sent them home for a week to let- The acisanthin washed out of their system.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  And at that point, bring them back. You can't, you don't measure any acisanthin in their system anymore. So it's out of them completely. Then give them the same dose of ours, two 12 milligram capsules. Take their blood, measure it. And we got three times the amount of acisanthin at the highest concentration, but also the total exposure over 24 hours. If you add up all the concentrations at each time point, we had three times as much absorbed. So in the other case, you were passing some of it through into the toilet. You weren't actually absorbing it into your body. And so we have a much more effective formulation. And this was in the same group of people. So it's not just like, oh, it could have been a different group of people. It absorbed differently. It's literally the same people, one week apart, just and same dosage.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  And also the variability between each person was less in ours. And so you had a more consistent absorption.

• 28:43Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  So in addition to three times as much. And our product is much more pure and consistent because we do it in the laboratory. And so it's, it's highly controlled and, and like pharmaceutical style manufacturing.

• 28:55Jen Cohen?

  So it's basically a pharmaceutical grade product.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  That would be, yeah, how you would describe it. It's still a natural, it's called like natural product total synthesis. So you're basically taking a natural product, making in the laboratory, but the exact molecular structure that you would find in nature.

• 29:08Jen Cohen?

  So, okay, so then, because, because the color of salmon, it's, sorry, salmon is pink because of acisanthin. So what happens if we just, can't we just eat more salmon?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  You could, but you'd have to eat about a pound of sockeye salmon to get 12 milligrams or like four pounds of Atlantic salmon to get the same. So, I mean, you can, that's a lot, right?

• 29:31Jen Cohen?

  Four pounds, what, a day?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, for one capsule.

• 29:34Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 29:34Speaker 02

  And a lot of people take, you know, two capsules a day or four or even eight or more. And so in that case, it would be just not possible.

• 29:42Jen Cohen?

  Eating like 27 salmons.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just, it's not really possible to eat that much salmon reliably. I mean, I think adding more salmon to your diet is great because you have omega threes. You have acisanthin, you know, but it's just hard to eat that much.

• 29:57Jen Cohen?

  That'd be hard to eat that more salmon.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:59Jen Cohen?

  So for best use, I've been taking one capsule. Should I be taking more, two, three?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, the most studies show increasing like dose dependent effects. And say in that human study we did for cardiovascular health, we found better results at eight capsules a day even versus two. If you want just basic health and longevity support, one or two should be fine. But given that it's exceptionally safe, we and others have done safety studies showing that at high doses, long durations, there aren't side effects of anything of clinical significance. And so you have room to kind of find a dose that works best for you. And so you may want to measure biomarkers, like measures of oxidative stress or inflammation in your blood tests. And if something is elevated, maybe you can see if that could come down and you could adjust your dose based on that.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Or you could do based on how you feel, like your joints or your muscles or your cognition, like, you know, brain fog. You can kind of subjectively see how you're feeling and then adjust your dose accordingly.

• 30:55Jen Cohen?

  And have you been taking this for like 20, like how long have you been taking it? 25 years? Like do you cycle on and off?

• 31:02Speaker 02

  No, I've been taking it for most of my adult life. Yeah, my father also has been taking it for decades and he is a power user because so he's in his mid to late 70s. And he plays hardcore singles tennis in the Hawaiian sun multiple times a week. And so he and his buddies that are in that age range.

• 31:21Jen Cohen?

  Love it.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  They all take, they take 12 or 16 capsules a day and they've found, you know, it really benefits their mobility. So they are kind of on the frontiers of the, you know, the high dosing and have found benefits there. So that's not our recommended dose, but just to know that people have experimented with with higher doses and found utility. So, but I think for a general health and longevity, one or two a day is probably sufficient.

• 31:46Jen Cohen?

  What does asazanthin not do?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, well, it won't make you live forever. I mean, that's one thing. A lot of people like are trying to do hacks that make you live to 150 or 200. I think this is something that allows your body to just hopefully function optimally and normally and live kind of a natural, you know, but hopefully, you know, as long of a natural life as you can with as much health as you can. But it's not something that's gonna change biology. Yeah, to somehow reverse aging, you know, or something like that. I mean, I know a lot of people are working on those things. But I think the problem is, you know, a lot of people just, you know, assume that aging is happening and it's just the way it is. But I think there's a lot of things you can do. And the other thing is, of course, it's not to replace the basics, which are not, you know, sexy, but like a good night of sleep,

• 32:33Speaker 02

  you know, a good diet, exercise, mindfulness, social connections. You know, all these things really play a vital role in your health. And a lot of people would rather hack their way around them with other things rather than just fixing their lifestyle. And so if you can do that, plus supplement intelligently with science-backed products like Asazanthin, that probably is gonna give you the best chance to live a longer, healthier life.

• 32:55Jen Cohen?

  I think you just said it perfectly there. I think that that's 100% true. People are looking for a quick fix and looking for something that's sexy and like trendy. And the things that, the things that work the best through time are the things that have no sex appeal, boring as hell.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:12Jen Cohen?

  But they work, right? Like exercising, sleeping, you know, probably like all the things I said earlier, supplementing properly, right? That's a big one. Yeah, it doesn't sound so hot, but actually, if you wanna be hot, those are the things you kind of have to do.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:28Jen Cohen?

  You know, unfortunately, it's the truth. David, thank you for being on Habits and Hustle. Thank you for coming and talking to me.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure. Thank you.

• 33:35Jen Cohen?

  No, this was a pleasure. Where do people find more information on you or more on your product? Which is, if you guys are gonna go and try Asazanthin, make sure you're trying David's product, because it really, it's definitely, it's definitely a quality product.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. Yeah. So ax3.life is our website and also our handle on Instagram. I'm also on Instagram at Dave Watermel. So any of those sources are a good place to learn more.

• 34:04Jen Cohen?

  Amazing. Thank you so much.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Thank you.