Reverse Aging Now: The Latest Longevity Breakthroughs | Dr. Eric Verdin

What if aging wasn’t inevitable, but something you could slow—or even reverse? In this episode of “The Dr. Hyman Show,” Dr. Eric Verdin, the president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and I dive deep into the science of longevity. Discover how lifestyle choices, mitochondrial health, and cutting-edge research are transforming our understanding of aging. From fasting and nutrient sensing to emerging therapies like CD38 inhibitors, this episode reveals actionable insights to help you live a longer, healthier life. In this episode, we discuss: The Role of Mitochondria in Aging The Critical Role of NAD Levels and Aging Lifestyle Interventions for Longevity Gene Therapy The Importance of CD38 and Enzyme Inhibition View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, BIOptimizers, LMNT, and Fatty 15. Streamline your lab orders with Rupa Health. Access more than 3,500 specialty lab tests and register for a FREE live demo at RupaHealth.com. Don’t let stress take over your holidays. Try Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers. Head to Bioptimizers.com/Hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. LMNT is giving listeners a FREE eight-count sample pack of their vital electrolyte drink mix with any purchase. Just visit DrinkLMNT.com/Hyman today. Fatty15 contains pure, award-winning C15:0 in a bioavailable form. Get an exclusive 15% off a 90-day starter kit subscription. Just visit Fatty15.com and use code DRHYMAN10 to get started.

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  So aging is the accumulation of disorder. And that disorder is caused by a whole series of external forces over which we have essentially no control. Think about gravity, think about the gamma rays coming from, you know, interstellar radiation. Think about UV, think about oxygen stress. All of these forces are there and they're always going to be with us. And we know that they are the driving forces of the aging process.

• 0:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone via my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at this scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. If you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your routine, visit my website, Supplement Store, for a summary of my favorite and tested products.

• 1:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And today's conversation matters because it affects all of us. And it's about how we age and perhaps how we may be able to slow down that process. And we're talking with one of the world's experts on aging, Dr. Eric Burden, who's the president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, a pioneering biomedical research institute dedicated to aging and age-related disease. He's a native of Belgium. He received his MD degree there from the University of Liege and then completed his clinical research training at Harvard Medical School. And he's published over 280 scientific papers in aging and metabolism. He's the guy who knows more about aging than most people on the planet.

• 1:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He's worked on the molecular mechanisms of aging, mitochondrial function, inflammation, caloric restriction. He's a pioneer in so many ways and is a very interesting, great guy. We had a deep conversation today about some really key elements that you probably heard about in the news, like mitochondrial Or the role of our own healing and repair system and activating longevity pathways. We talked about how do we diagnose in a sense, the rate of aging? How do we look at our biological age as opposed to our chronological age? We talked about some of the exciting new developments in therapies from things like NMN NR, which help increase NAD in the body to some of the key molecules that are being researched

• 2:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  on reversing aging like Corsten and Pisetin. We get deep into so many topics. We literally could have talked for hours and hours and I had to cut it after a while. But I think we're going to have back for a round two of the podcast because we didn't get to cover all the things I want to cover. And you know, I'm very interested in this topic. So go ahead and fasten your seat belts. This is going to be a very interesting and deep conversation. You might have to look up a few things, but we're going to put everything in the show notes and let's dive right in. Well, Eric, it's been so long that I've wanted to have you on the Dr. Pharmacy Podcast. Your work has been an inspiration for me and the Buck Institute, which is basically the, one of the few places in the world that's dedicated to study aging is doing extraordinary work.

• 3:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you're the president CEO of that institute that now I think is leading the way in helping us understand the biology of aging, how to measure aging and to understand the underlying mechanisms that are driving us to age rapidly and that lead to chronic disease. So I'm so excited to have you on the podcast and to dive deep into the science around it. It might get a little geeky, everybody, but I want you to stay with us. We're going to explain everything as we go along and hopefully you'll leave understanding the whole science of aging in a much deeper way.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Mark. Delighted to be here with you and looking forward to the next hour.

• 3:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, me too. So, okay, so let's just start with, with high level. You know, the, there's, there's a lot of research on aging happening now, but it's not always been that way. Aging essentially was a neglected area of medicine. And in fact, you were ridiculed or dismissed if you even thought about studying aging because it was thought to be something that just happened that you couldn't do anything about. And now there's this whole field of longevity research and what called geroscience, like gerontology, looking at the science of how we age, even thinking about describing aging as a disease, or what we see as typical aging, which is, I think, abnormal aging as

• 4:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  a disease. And, and so the question is really, how do we need to think differently today, given the science that we have, particularly around the underlying causes of dysfunctions that happen as we age, the hallmarks of aging? How do we need to think differently about aging and disease going into the next decade or so?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That's a good question, actually. And the way, the way I think about it, and it's true, about 20, this is something that's relatively recent, about 25, 30 years ago, aging was considered sort of the backwaters of biology. This was an area that you did, you did not go there because it was considered too messy. And the way people

• 5:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It was bad for your career.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Bad for your career, exactly. Well, people used to think about aging as chaos. So think about, if you have a little bit of a background in physics, entropy. So aging is the accumulation of disorder. And that disorder is caused by a whole series of external forces over which we have essentially no control. Think about gravity, think about the gamma rays coming from, you know, interstellar radiation, think about UV, think about oxygen stress. All of these forces are there and they're always going to be with us. And, and we know that they are the driving forces of the aging process. What people had not

• 6:03Speaker 01

  appreciated is the degree to which we actually resist these forces. And this is where the potential is. So think about, you know, we're not going to change the fact that we're living in oxygen, or that there is gravity and gamma rays surrounding us. But what had not been appreciated is the degree to which we resist these forces. For example, if you're lacking DNA damage repair, which is one of the consequences of, of gamma irradiation or UV radiation, You're going to live to about twenty years old and you're going to show in those twenty years a very accelerated form of aging. And so what people had not appreciated again is this idea of all of these repair mechanisms

• 6:47Speaker 01

  and how we can actually activate them. So what happened about twenty, twenty-five, thirty years ago is the identification of a whole series of mutations that could actually increase lifespan. And so this ran counter to everything we had ever thought about biology. People thought about mutation that's typically deleterious. You get a mutation, you get a disease. And here were a number of mutations that were identified in animal models, in sea elegants, the little worm that we study, or in fruit flies, or in mice, they could actually double your life expectancy. So that really put the whole world of aging up on its head and highlighted the potential

• 7:30Speaker 01

  of identifying novel interventions, including lifestyle or drugs, that could actually significantly increase lifespan. And so initially, of course, these findings were met with a lot of resistance. People thought, well, this is an exception. This is only applying to sea elegants or to fruit flies or mice. But over the last twenty years, you know, the work has really shown that there are a large number of genes and proteins that you could target and interfere with that will result in an increase in lifespan and health span. And we are right now at a stage where this is slowly percolating into humans.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  And I predict the next ten to twenty years are going to be transformative in our ability to bring all of this basic knowledge on the biology of aging to humans.

• 8:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, that's pretty exciting. What you're saying, I just want to highlight something that I think is really important, is that historically, we just thought that, you know, the body degrades over time and that there's no mechanisms to actually stop it or reverse it. And what you're saying is that the discovery of some of these mutations has led to an understanding that we have these built in, what I call longevity switches, which is sort of a term that I kind of came up with, but built in repair, renewal, regenerative and healing mechanisms that we have neglected, that we can learn to activate through various

• 9:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  interventions from lifestyle to nutraceuticals, to phytochemicals, to prescription medications, pharmaceuticals, or maybe even hormetic interventions, stresses to the body like hot and cold therapy. There's all these ways in which the body can actually activate these processes. And there's very, there's very few of them, but they're, but they're influenced by so many things we do. So there's so many redundant mechanisms that actually can activate these longevity pathways that we're now discovering. And to me, it's one of the most exciting times in science because for the first time, we're not really looking just at the downstream

• 9:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  diseases that we typically look at in medicine based on diagnostic codes. We're looking at the upstream causes and the mechanisms. And the hallmarks of aging is sort of description that, that kind of tries to describe some of these underlying causes and mechanisms. But, but sometimes I don't think they go far enough because they, they only talk about, well, these are the things that go wrong, not what are the causes of the hallmarks. So the cause marks are the causes of aging on diseases. What are the causes of the hallmarks going awry? Right? So that's kind of an interesting inquiry. So I think this is such an exciting time. And we're going to get in during this podcast, we're going to get into discussion of some of the ways in which we can regulate these ancient preserved, conserved

• 10:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  pathways that exist across everything from worms to humans, right?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. You're completely wrong. This is, this is a really exciting time, you know, as a, as a physician, and I mean, by training, I went to medical school, even though I did most of my, my career in research, I've always, you know, once a physician, always a physician. So I've always been intrigued. By the relevance of what we're studying in these animal models to humans. And it is truly an exciting time. This idea that something that we've always thought was ineluctable and over which we had little control is becoming another tractable problem. And this is, you know, the excitement that you see in the field is a reflection of this.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  You know, one number that I I like to remind people of is when we think about our own longevity, we, many of us have a sort of a fatalistic approach to it. We think, you know, my, my parents didn't live very old and therefore, you know, I might as well have another cigarette, another glass of wine, enjoy life while it's there. But it turns out that, you know, about 93% of our longevity is determined by our lifestyle factors.

• 11:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Ninety three, that's a very specific number.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Well, that that's the result of a, of a great study by Calico. Looking at ancestry.com, they were able to sort of revise a number which used to be about 80%. People used to think about 80% of lifestyle was determining, was determining health span and lifespan. But the number they came up based on millions of people and records appears to be 93%

• 12:07Speaker 01

  lifestyle, 7% genetics. That's true, only if you, and the only exception to this is if you have an ancestor, someone in your first degree relative who has lived above 100, then there's some likely genetic factors and you're most likely protected and you can have another cigarette.

• 12:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I have an APO, I have APOE two as one of my.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Oh, fantastic.

• 12:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So I call that the jackpot gene.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  You're one of the, one of the lucky ones.

• 12:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, so I don't know what that means exactly, but I have APO two, three. So I think, I don't know how, how far I can go, how much ice cream can I actually eat before I get into trouble? That's kind of what I want to know.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Probably more than me.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  E three, E three, which is already good.

• 12:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's, that's average. That's good. Okay, so let's, let's get into the conversation around. Two, two aspects, which one is, um, what are these mechanisms and pathways? Let's, and then let's talk about how we, how we and the research at the Buck Institute is actually uncovering ways in which we regulate these. And, but before we do that, I want to go into a, sort of a conversation almost preceding that, which is how do we measure aging? How do we know if what we're doing is working? And this is the whole discussion around how do we measure biological age? And how do we look at our biological clocks? And there are so many out there. I think you were on a paper that I read that listed all of the different kind of clocks and the pros and cons of each one, which I was great.

• 13:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It was great because I, I was like, well, I don't know. This is very overwhelming, but it was really helpful for me to understand that. And, you know, personally, I did the true diagnostic DNA methylation test. I don't have any affiliation with them, but I just did it two years ago. Oh, and when I was 62. And then I implemented a whole bunch of interventions, including more aggressive lifestyle change, different nutraceuticals, analytic supplements, which we'll talk about, um, as well as, uh, different kinds of treatments like plasma phoresis and exosomes and stem cells. I just kind of went, I did it all. And then I also did rapamycin. And I was like, how far can I change this biomarker? And if I just throw the kitchen sink at it, which is not very scientific, I get, but I want, I'm going to end up one. So I thought it was, you know, we're trying.

• 14:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I went back, even though I got two years older and I'm 64, on the same test, I went to from 43, when I was 62, to 39, when I'm 64. So I bent back four years, even though I got two years older. And so how reliable are these clocks? You know, am I just falsely enthusiastic about my own results? And what are the things we should be looking at? Is it the need in the pace of aging? Is it the methylation, which, you know, what are the, what are the things that actually are worth looking at?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, the whole idea of biomarkers of aging is going to be critical. And, and here's the reason. We, uh, we go through life right now, sort of hoping, you know, that things are going to work out for the best. And, and traditional medicine essentially waits for you to, to get sick, to really start intervening. So there, there is a need, a crying need for, uh, what we call surrogate markers. Markers that will be able to predict, you know, how well are you aging? And when we talk about biological aging, uh, or biological age, this is in contrast to chronological age. So, I mean, just for your audience, you, you can be forty years old, but your, your body can be behaving more like

• 15:32Speaker 01

  the body of a typical thirty year old, or like the body of a typical fifty year old. That would be your biological age. And by the way, we, you know, we are also able to generate a, a, an estimate of biological age. If you've, if you've met someone who's seventy years old and you think that person looks younger, you have, you have, you have defined in your own head that this person is biologically younger. And, and this, by the way, this, these are true, uh, variables. There are actually algorithms that will predict your age simply based on facial recognition, just like we do. And, um, so there's been a lot of interest in the field, uh, of generating more precise and more predictive biomarkers of biological age.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  The reason being, not just to be able to, you know, to tell you where you are on your trajectory, but also to assess the efficacy of our interventions. And you, you just described, you know, your N of one, uh, which is critical, which is, okay, you start a whole series of interventions. How do you know you're actually helping yourself versus hurting yourself? And so this is where the, these clocks are coming into play. Now, we are right at the beginning of, of a whole field. So, uh, I did, you know, the same thing as you did. True Diagnostic, I, I don't have any affiliation with them. We collaborate with them. I think they are the best company right now in terms of, uh, providing a large number of, uh, assays.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  And I say, large numbers is, I think, is key. There are, right now, there's a proliferation of these clocks. Many of them are epigenetic clocks. They're measuring methylation in DNA. The reason is not that these clocks are better than others. It's just that historically, they were the first one. This is work pioneered by Steve Horvath and his colleagues. So I did the same thing as you did. I measured all my clocks. I'm sixty seven years old and my clocks came between twenty five and sixty seven. And of course, I, I look at the twenty, the twenty five year old clock and I say, that's a really good clock.

• 17:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's good. I'm jealous now.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And, and that's, that's glycan age, for whatever reason. Yeah, but the other clocks, you know, frankly, varied between forty two and, and sixty seven. So the question is, you know, uh, how do you, how, how do we sort through this? And

• 17:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, you just pick the best one, don't you?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Well, you pick the best one.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  So, uh, so, I mean, there's, obviously, there are some significant problem with this. These are not approved clinical tests, but I still think that they have value. And their value really comes back in, in repetitive measurement, just like you said. So you, you, you, you, first, you need probably to measure many of them. The paper that you're referring to is a paper in which we did plasma ferocis on a number of patients with a company called Circulate. And, and we found on, on a global scale that most of the clocks actually went back when these patients underwent plasma ferocis. So, but again, there was extreme variation between the different clocks. So I tell people, if you, if you want to use the clocks,

• 18:45Speaker 01

  companies like True Diagnostic will give you many numbers. They will be all over the place, but the true value comes in looking at how they change over time. Now, the, the prediction is that over time, we, we will not only have these epigenetic clocks, we will have proteomics clock, metabolomics clock, facial recognition clocks. You know, there, there's a proliferation of These clocks right now and they paint a pretty complex picture and I think they will allow us to do truly preventative medicine. Some of these recent clocks, for example, proteomic clock by Tony Wisker at Stanford, are able to measure organ specific aging, which is going to be really critical because of course,

• 19:26Speaker 01

  you know, a- as we age, we are always limited by the, what I call the rate limiting organ. It could be your liver that's going to fail first and you would want to know and do, you know, an intervention that favors your liver versus your brain versus your heart and so on. So I think we're right on the cusp of a revolution in diagnostics. And these epigenetic clocks is the first, the first symptoms going in this direction.

• 19:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So basically it's, it's all getting shaken out right now in the research.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like, and, and we're going to learn which are the best clocks and we'll learn more and get better. But in the meantime, what I hear you saying is stick to one assay and repeat it over time based on what you're doing. Cause if it's off, it's off by the same amount every time. And what you're looking at is a change from the baseline, either worse or better. So.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  But interestingly, another anecdote, for example, someone did an interesting experiment where they, they measured the clocks at different times of the day in the same person. And they found, they found over the 24 hour period, the clock would vary by five years.

• 20:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Cause I'm older at night. I know that I feel older at night. In the morning I'm good. I'm like 25 by the time night comes, I'm 70.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Me, meaning that, you know, if, if you're going to do this, do it every time at the same time of the day, because there's obviously a, there are no variation in there.

• 20:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Great. Okay. So, so now we have these clocks. Let's say we can measure these, these changes that happen as a result of interventions. Let's talk about some of the most exciting work at the Buck Institute, looking at. The sort of underlying things that that really regulate aging around we call cellular senescence, which is zombie cells and cells that kind of spew out inflammation throughout the body are looking at our metabolism and how our nutrient sensing pathways work, which I think I want to get into fairly deeply, stem cells, stem cell biology and protein, protein function. And then how do we sort of make sense of it all through bioinformatics and systems biology? And I know you've recently partnered with Leroy Hood, who's just a brilliant scientist. So I'm curious about like, how how you start to

• 21:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  think about where are the most leverage points that you're seeing in the data that you're looking at in the research you're doing at the Buck Institute about what's working in all these different areas?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  So maybe I'll just take it one step backwards and just to alert your audience to the fact that there are no, there will be no magic pill. Aging is an incredibly complex mechanism. And you alluded to earlier in our discussion to these hallmarks of aging, which is think about it as a catalog of all of these abnormalities that happen during aging. And that includes epigenetic dysregulation, senescent cells, fail nutrient sensing, defective stem cells, defect in mitochondrial biogenesis. There's all kinds of problems that happens

• 22:31Speaker 01

  during aging. By the way, they're all connected to each other. And when we think about aging and solving it, I think if you study it, you will realize how complicated a process is. And that, you know, we at the Buck Institute, we have about 300 people working on aging. We don't take sides in a way that I cannot predict what's going to be more important. So we study pretty much every one of the hallmarks of aging. We obviously have a big emphasis on senescence because it was mostly discovered through the work of G. D. Campisi at the Buck. So many of us are still working on senescence, but we have people working on mitochondria, we have people working on stem cells, we have people working on metabolism and so on. So I think

• 23:17Speaker 01

  One of the the things that is really emerging right now is is the complexity.

• 23:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think that's so important that you point that out.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  It's important. It's important because, you know, frankly, I I have I I I've sometimes been called the grumpy man of longevity research because I I I refuse the hype of work. I think there's a lot of really exciting things happening in aging research, but I'm not deluding myself. I I don't tell people I'm going to live to one hundred and fifty or one hundred and seventy like some of my colleagues do. I I think, you know, right now we are focusing on on things that are really tangible. For example, you might be surprised to to to hear that most of us could live to ninety five years old in good health. If only we would sort of deploy everything that we know.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  That's already a lot better than what we have today, where we most of us would live to sixty five in good health. So, you know, that's an extra thirty years of healthy life. And right now we are really focused on on two things at the back. On the basic biology of aging, again, we don't take sides. We study all of these processes and how they relate to each other. The the bigger aspect that is being grown at the Buck Institute is the whole human aspect, really taking all this basic knowledge and translating into actionable interventions that I can tell you and other people, this is what you should be doing if you want to live the longest possible.

• 24:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's so important what you just said around the the nature of nature, which is, you know, it sort of reminds me of a quote from John Muir, who was a naturalist in the eighteen hundreds, who said, when one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. And and essentially, what what I see happening often in research is the reductionism, even within the science of aging, where, oh, it's this hallmark, or I'm going to focus on mitochondria, or I'm going to focus on inflammation, or I'm going to focus on deregulated nutrient sensing, or I'm going to make something that's going to lengthen telomeres or kill zombie cells. And that's where things get into this reductionist mindset that doesn't understand that all these interact, they're all dynamic, it's a web of connections and interrelationships that all.

• 25:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Either positively reinforce each other or negatively reinforce each other. And so, and a lot of these ancient longevity pathways, and I think when I think of this, and I would love to hear your opinion about this, is that they, there's kind of a way to kind of influence a lot of it through the same kinds of interventions, obviously the lifestyle stuff. But when I think about, for example, the, the four deregulated nutrient sensing pathways that tend to go wrong, mTOR, insulin signaling, MPK and sirtuins, which I know is a lot of mumbo jumbo, we'll explain all that, I promise, but these are, these are what I call the longevity switches. And it seems that they, they, they're affected by what we eat, but they're also affected

• 26:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  by various kinds of other things like exercise, or various hormetic stresses, or other factors, and that they affect all these other hallmarks. So like mTOR, MPK, all these things affect mitochondria, they affect inflammation, they affect oxidative stress, they affect your epigenetic regulation, they affect DNA repair, they affect senescent cell. I mean, this is, when you sort of start to dig into it, it's like, it's, everything is affecting everything. So what's the highest leverage point? And, and, and again, I'm not a longevity researcher, I'm just sort of a doctor trying to make sense of all this, is, is the, it seems like the deregulated nutrient sensing is one of the most important, almost meta hallmarks, because when you address those

• 27:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  four pathways, it downstream benefits all the others. Am I, am I off, or does that make sense to you?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  I, I agree.

• 27:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, wow. Okay. Cause this, I made this up. I made this up. So.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  No, I, I, I do agree, although they are, you know, so when I think about the buckets of in which you should invest if you want to maximize your longevity, nutrition is clearly one of the top ones. And, but equally important is exercise. But by the way, exercise or physical activity affects all of the same pathways that we just discussed, you know? So it's, it, most of the time, I, I sort of reduce this to the fact that we're dealing with energy generation. And, and you know, so if think about exercise and nutrition have this in common, they are both profoundly dependent on your ability to generate a lot of energy.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  And, and so, and the proper energy. And there's one theory of aging that posits that one of the things that happens as we age is our ability to generate energy decreases. And since, you know, for example, the repair function that we were discussing earlier, our ability to repair DNA, to repair proteins and so on, is also incredibly dependent on energy. So as energy supplies dwindle, our ability to make sufficient energy becomes limiting, then, you know, if you have the choice between repairing your DNA or actually walking, your body is gonna, is gonna, is gonna favor the walking.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  And so, so there's, there's, there are lots of common threads between all of these variables. And I'm happy to dive into this.

• 28:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah. Let's dive into it because I think, I agree with you. I think the mitochondria are central. It's really about the, the, how we create and make energy as well as how we protect, preserve and improve the number and function of our mitochondria. And, and I always say the sort of the difference between a two-year-old who's, you know, running around like crazy and can't stop moving versus a 92-year-old who's just sitting in the chair, barely can move, is the health and function of their mitochondria. And, and a lot of your research has focused on, on mitochondrial function aging and particularly around the role of NAD and ketogenic diets, for example, and the role of, of, the role of sirtuins in regulating mitochondrial function as well.

• 29:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, and I, I think, I'd love to sort of dive into this whole topic with you a little bit more because you're such an expert in it. You know, what, what have you learned about how mitochondria are regulated and how they play a role in aging? And what are the most salient things we've learned about how to improve the number and function of mitochondria from lifestyle all down to nutraceuticals and even medication?

• 30:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why don't we dive into that? Because you're like the world's expert here.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Lots of drawers to open there. Yes, so when we think about energy, so let's backtrack. So, you know, our energy, we generate energy from essentially burning food in the presence of oxygen. Think about when you throw coals into a fire. If you blow air on it, you know, the fire will get more intense. So this is the same thing. We burn carbohydrates, lipids or fats and proteins in the presence of oxygen to generate energy. And this process takes place at many places in the cell, but predominantly in the mitochondria,

• 30:50Speaker 01

  which by the way are sort of commensal bacteria which have become incorporated into our cells. So this is something, a fusion that happens billions of years ago. Quite interesting biology. So these mitochondria are generating the ATP that we use as energy and also the NAD which we use as a, it's not, is a form, an intermediate form of energy. And we can come back to this later. Now it turns out that mitochondria numbers dwindle with aging and their ability to generate energy dwindles with aging. And there are multiple variables that are causing this.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Some are mutations in the DNA. So the mitochondria have their own DNA, which is an ancestral bacterial DNA. They accumulate mutations. Their numbers decrease. The NAD levels, which is this critical intermediate dwindles as well. All of these factors lead to a progressive and worsening energy deficit as we age. And so there's a lot of interest in trying to understand how do we reverse this? And how do we, how do we prevent this from occurring at the first place?

• 32:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So clearly the mitochondria are key. And the question then is, what can we do to help our mitochondria? Because if what you're saying is true, that they're central to aging, both healthy aging as well as unhealthy aging, then it seems like they're a major target for intervention. And there's a lot of stuff floating around there in this sort of literature and also in the sort of cultural zeitgeist around interventions that help to regulate mitochondria from fasting or ketogenic diets to things like rapamycin or other phytochemicals

• 32:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that may be able to regulate mitochondrial function like urolithin A. And I just wonder how you sort through all the massive data and information around all of this and where you start guiding people practically around how to make sense of the data.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so as I mentioned, so there's loss of mitochondrial number, there's loss of mitochondrial function, and there's loss of mitochondria key metabolites like NAD. And so I think when I think about what can you do, it ranges from lifestyle intervention all the way down to some of the drugs that we're actually working on. So the two ways in which I think you can maximize your mitochondrial function as you age is fasting. And fasting, as I mentioned earlier, activates a process called autophagy, which means self-eating. And the beauty of autophagy when you're fasting

• 33:51Speaker 01

  is that your body is able to sort through the garbage and the well-functioning mitochondria to discard the poorly functioning mitochondria and to keep the ones that are most efficient. So that process called mitophagy. So intermittent fasting, I think, is part of the ability that your body has to shift between feeding and fasting is a process that we call metabolic flexibility. And I think it is. Really an integral part of health. So I encourage people to, you know, to incorporate this into their daily routine. Another way in which you can.

• 34:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What you mean is just to what you're asking is to give people a break between dinner and breakfast. This is essentially what you're saying like.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Well, yes, that's one way to do it actually. And, you know, right now we're at the stage where there are a whole bunch of different fasting modalities have been explored and tested. And I don't think there's clear evidence that any of them is is is more beneficial than another. Some people will do, you know, a deep fast every three months. Some people will do some fasting every day. I think there are, we're still at the stage where these different modalities are being compared and and trying to decide what is the best way. But any of them is better than none. That would be the the rule that I would. And practically for me, I do, you know, I do a five day fast every three months.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And then I do, I do sort of what people call restricted time feeding, which meaning I I try not to eat for 12 to 16 hours every day. So that at least have a period of fasting. There are also a number of interesting supplements that are emerging that are supplements or drugs. You know, there's the interest in fasting came out of the realization that animals on calorie restriction. So who whose calorie intake was limited actually showed increased lifespan. That that's pretty much universal feature. So that led to study of fasting, but also led to the discovery of what we call these fasting mimicking or calorie restriction mnetics.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  So drugs that are feeding your body into thinking that you are under calorie restriction or fasting. And those drugs, you know, some of your.

• 36:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow, running around starving all the time.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So, you know, metformin, I'm sure you've heard about metformin or rapamycin are calorie restriction memetics. So they fool your body to think that you're fasting and they induce part or all of the protective response. And this is why some of these drugs are being explored for their potential anti-aging effect. There are also supplements that are emerging. There's a process called mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the process by which you are making new mitochondria. And we know, you know, we know the pathways, the biological pathways that lead to this. And, and some of them can be activated by drugs or supplements.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  A supplement, for example, that activates mitochondrial function would be the Urolithin A, I'm sure you've heard, a product sold by-

• 37:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I take it every day.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I take it every day too. And, you know, it's a supplement, so it's not going through the same process that an FDA-approved drug would be, but the company that, you know, commercializes this called Timeline has, has a very proactive approach to testing, you know, doing clinical trials and demonstrating the efficacy of what they are claiming. And we've collaborated with, with them, so I can, I can, I can attest to some of the results that we've published with them. So really interesting supplement. And the last one, I mean, that I, you know, physical activity, exercise, is certainly a very strong way to activate mitochondrial function in your muscle.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  And we know, you know, your muscle mass is a very strong predictor of your life expectancy, so anything that benefits your muscle, having strong mitochondria, bulk frankly, also of your muscle will, will lead to protective effect on your brain and other organs as well. So, obviously, you know, whenever we're talking about anything related to aging- Reductionist approach works for a while to try to simplify the models. But once you start thinking about anything, it's connected to everything else.

• 38:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right. And, and, you know, the thing around the mitochondria also that you've done research around is NAD and NAD plus. And there's a lot of, you know, controversy around this particular compound. You know, some say it's kind of, the data isn't there. Some say it's God's gift to mankind and we should be all taking it. What's your kind of, you know, sort of down and dirty on the science behind NAD? And taking NAD either as a, an M N product, NR product, or sub Q NAD or IV NAD? I mean, this is all these people are doing these things, including me. So I'm curious about what your perspective is, someone who's actually done the research.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, happy to talk about this because frankly, it's, it's, once you are involved in the research and you see some of the stuff that's being sold. It's like sometimes I shake, shake my head and just believe. But that being said, there's like in any story, there's always an element of, of truth to, to, to the whole NAD story. So just a word about NAD is a molecule that allows you to shuttle energy between different parts of the cell. So this is a purely intracellular molecule. So this is not something that lives in the blood. And so, you know, this will be important because there's a whole fad right now of intravenous NAD, which frankly does not make any sense to me biologically.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  But so NAD is an intracellular and it doesn't cross from the blood into your cells. So it just, it's, you know, it is an intracellular metabolite. Why is it important? Because it allows you to shuttle energy between different parts of the cells, from the mitochondria to the cytoplasm and so on.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Or different, different from different molecules within the cell, more correctly.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  So it's also known that NAD levels decrease during Aging and this is uh that's really well established in humans and in animal models. So out of this came the idea that maybe this is one of the reasons why we have this global energy deficit as we age, maybe we're not able to manipulate. So when I think about N A D, you think about Brinkman, you know, the trucks that carry uh money. Uh so think about if they all went on strike, all of a sudden, you know, the energy of the economy, which is money, uh would be stuck in in the supermarket and nothing moves anymore. So this is the same thing. And so I think about them as the the

• 41:01Speaker 01

  the the fund carriers. Uh so out of this came the idea, or maybe we can just reestablish N A D levels, uh and so people will see a benefit. And and in animal models, you can do this using uh uh what we call N A D precursors. Uh and there are two of them that are, you know, you're familiar with nicotinamide riboside, N R, or nicotinamide mononucleotide, and N M N. And both of them essentially do almost the same thing. Uh some colleagues will argue vociferously on whether one is is superior to the other. At the end, they both reestablish N A D levels. Uh they might have additional signaling properties in addition to this, but uh and

• 41:46Speaker 01

  in animal models, uh they do remarkable things. So I, you know, we've published, we and many other people in the field have published a number of papers showing that N A D supplementation in older animals um really alleviates some of the uh effects of aging. It does not increase lifespan, I should say, but it certainly alleviates many of the disease complications and so on. So out of this came came the interest, well, maybe you should bring this to humans. Uh now, and a number of companies are selling N R and N M N. The one significant issue is that the amounts that are being sold as supplements are much lower by a fact by a factor ten of what we used in the laboratory

• 42:30Speaker 01

  setting. So, you know,

• 42:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like the most bottles have like two hundred and fifty milligrams.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But you're saying you need more like

• 42:36Speaker 01

  We used two to three grams.

• 42:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Two point five grams.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Of the precursors.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yes, we used a lot more. And those of us who take N M N or N R typically take a lot more than the the two hundred milligrams uh a day.

• 42:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, would you say take two grams or one gram?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Well, that's I take a gram when I most of the time. Now, the obviously what we need is more clinical data in humans. And a lot of noise has been made about a couple of initial studies that failed. And, you know, and that's, you know, that's true. Peter T I is highly skeptical and and there are, you know, there are really good reasons to be skeptical about some of the claims that have been made for N M N and N R. But I think my argument is that's not throw the baby with the bathwater.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  And there is there, there is enough compelling evidence in in model systems that N M N and N R actually are having interesting effect that to pursue the studies and to conduct the clinical trials. Now, one, one of the biggest problems I have is why is asking the question and something my lab has been working on. Why are N A D levels decreasing during aging? And that really has not been studied by many people, except us and Eduardo Chini, who was at Mayo Clinic. And what we both found is that the reason why N M N N A D levels decrease during aging

• 44:10Speaker 01

  is because there's another molecule called C D thirty eight, which is activated during aging for reasons that are not entirely clear, but in part because of a senescent cell burden. So the C D thirty eight is itself as N A D hydrolytes. It shows up N A D. And so when you give an R.

• 44:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's an enzyme like Pac-Man that kind of eats up your N A D.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. So the think about your N A D pool like water in the sink. Uh, the problem that we're having is a leaky sink. So there's something that's chewing up the NAD. And when you give NMN or NR, you're essentially filling up more water in a leaky sink. And so, which is not a very satisfying way to solve a problem. So the, the way we are going about it, and a growing number of companies are doing this as well, is to actually identify small molecule inhibitors of CD38. And so I have a startup called Napa Therapeutics, which, you know, has a large number of these novel molecules. We're testing them.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Some of them, some of these inhibitors are not ours, but others have been shown to increase lifespan and to correct some of the aging-associated energy deficit much more sort of uh, efficiently than, than the precursors. So my prediction is that if you think about NAD defect in the future, in the long run, we probably will be looking for, you know, these CD38 inhibitors rather than filling up the tank with, with more water.

• 45:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Interesting. So it's essentially stopping the breakdown of NAD rather than just taking more precursors of NAD.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hole in the bucket, you can keep filling the bucket faster, but at some point it's kind of diminishing returns. Better to just put the hole in the bucket.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  You got it, you got it. And you know, one, one reason, you know, for doing this is, and, and this is, speaks also to the, the importance. A lot of people are taking a lot of supplements these days and they're not being followed appropriately by physician.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  As I was taking a lot of NMN, I was always concerned because we know that NMN, as it's being, if you take a large amount of it, will consume your, your one carbon, your methyl groups. And so I was, as I was doing this, I was always following my homocysteine levels. And, and actually I found it to, you know, to rise significantly in the presence of a large amount of NMN intake. And, and you know, and if I, if it goes too high, I stop my NMN for a while. So speaking to the fact that. All of these processes are connected and I I'm I'm somewhat worried about, you know,

• 47:01Speaker 01

  the proliferation of of supplements that are being touted and sold to some somewhat naive public hoping, you know, this is going to increase my lifespan. There are a lot of, you know, there are very few molecules that have absolutely no consequence. And and I think, you know, if you're gonna go down this route, do it with someone, you know, that knows understands the biochemistry and can follow you appropriately.

• 47:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's interesting. I mean, basically, just to summarize what you said is that the precursors NR and NMN, which are available, and we don't talk about which companies produce the best ones, but let's just assume you're getting this one, will actually lead to an increase in NAD levels. But if you do intravenous or subcutaneous NAD plus, it won't? And that you might be wasting your money?

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yes, you are, you know, a typical NAD infusion costs about $700. There are studies showing what happens when you inject NAD intravenously. It goes to your liver and it is cleaved into nicotinamide and ADP ribos. Now, the nicotinamide is essentially niacin, you know, you can buy this for, you know, 20 cents or whatever. So this $700 injection, I I really have no idea. Actually, no one has any idea what happens to it. Most of it is likely very quickly degraded.

• 48:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that's why you feel that kind of weird flushing feeling when you get?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, well, niacin, niacin, as you know, will activate these flushing receptors. This was one of the, you know, the limiting use of niacin as a as a drug. But a cholesterol lowering a few few decades ago, people had had some flushing issues. It's the same thing that you're feeling when you're taking intravenous nicotinamide.

• 48:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's an anecdote, and I don't know what to make of it, was I had a I did a retreat on longevity and one of the the local companies was in Turkey, offered NAD as part of this. And there was a woman who had Parkinson's, who was quite severely affected. And we know that Parkinson's is a mitochondrial disease. And her, her response was pretty remarkable, like her tremor stopped, her gait improved immediately. Like it was like an immediate shift, like someone taking Aldopa. And I was like, well, that's interesting.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I don't know. I don't, it's just an anecdote, but I, I, I imagine it's doing something.

• 49:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And yeah, it's a, it's not a fun way to take it, you know, intravenously, subcutaneously. You can also do it, same thing. It seems like it would lead to the same kind of result, but

• 49:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  this is fascinating data. So what you're saying about any of the, is it in the precursor essentially is it doesn't necessarily extend lifespan, but it improves quality of life and health span. Would that be accurate?

• 49:59Speaker 01

  That, that's the prediction and that's what we, although, you know,

• 50:04Speaker 01

  the, there's evidence that CD38 inhibition or deletion actually increases lifespan. So that might be one way to put back this whole pathway in the context of longevity.

• 50:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow. And that's what napa therapeutics is working on, right?

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, absolutely.

• 50:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Incredible. Amazing. Um, the, the, um, God, I mean, I, I feel like we need to go have another one of these podcasts. I might do this in two parts, cause

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Any, any, anytime. Happy to come back.

• 50:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I, I, I, there's so much more I want to get into on inflammation, around nutrition, around the microbiome and aging and many, many other topics, but I, I would love to kind of just finish up the last few minutes on two topics. One is what are the all-star molecules for longevity? And I, and I have a list that I want to sort of get your thumbs up, thumbs down on. And two, what do you do, not as a scientific kind of,

• 51:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  kind of clear scientific protocol, but as your own self-care, based on what you know, as someone who's an insider, like it's almost like insider stock trading.

• 51:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What are you doing? So the, the molecules that I, I think, you know, seem to me to be the most promising are around.

• 51:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The rapamycin molecule, which is a drug that we've talked about in the podcast before, essentially inhibits mTOR, which is one of these longevity switches that regulates everything from muscle protein synthesis to autophagy, to inflammation, to mitochondrial function, to DNA repair. That's one. Then the mitformin question, which I think is a little, probably a little longer than we have to get into, but I'm a little dubious about it. And I don't know if we're going to get to the TAME trial now, which is a randomized trial that's going to give us the answer, unfortunately. And then there's all the phytochemicals like quercetin, fysetin, curcumin, green tea extractor, epiglacto catecholate, berberine, and some of these molecules that seem to be sort of promising

• 52:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  as both, and your lithin A, which you mentioned, which is sort of a mitochondrial supporting phytochemical that can be derived from pomegranate. Among all these sort of players, you know, which are ready for prime time, which have sort of low risk, potential benefit, which should be careful with, like, how do we think about this?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  It's a tough one. I tell people, you know, if you want to-

• 52:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In five minutes or less.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Okay, so I'll start first. I think before taking any supplement, I think people should optimize the rest of their lifespan, because there's nothing, you know, if you have a wound that's infected with a bacteria, you don't put a Band-Aid on it. You start getting-

• 53:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Let's assume everybody's exercising, eating perfectly, sleeping great, managing stress, and removing toxins from their life. Okay, we've done all that. Now-

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Very, very, very few people do this. So the next step would be to have, once you've optimized all of this, the best you can. And I think about them as buckets, you know-

• 53:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I agree with you, by the way. I agree.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  You can make, because a lot of people, you know, will go to the supplements, they don't want to do any of the other things. And they're missing, you know, they're missing the really powerful stuff. This is where, you know, the reason I'm bringing, I'm making this point so strongly is that- That we do not have and will not have for the next 20 years an anti-aging medicine or supplement that is better than physical activity. And I, you know, mark my words for 20 years. In 20 years, we will still not have something that works as well as physical activity.

• 53:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a miracle drug.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It is the miracle drug. And so if you are sort of not paying attention to that one, well, you can sort of put a Band-Aid on some issues. They never to get to the core problems. Now, thinking about the rest, first for me is blood draw. You know, are you balanced in terms of vitamin D, vitamin B12? This would be the first, the first big ones. And I'm surprised how many people tell me, friends and colleagues, no, I don't know what my vitamin D is. So that's number one. Number two, there are some supplements.

• 54:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's why I started Function Health, which was to give people access to their own data, including all the things we talked about, inflammatory markers, the inflammation markers that we talked about, as well as vitamin D and methylmalonic acid and homocysteine, all the things that we want to know, right?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. You're also, you're, you know, I don't know if you're measuring this, but you're omega fatty acid.

• 54:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We're measuring omega three fats, 100% we're measuring omega three fats, insulin, lipid fractionation, all the things that you should be measuring to see what your metabolic health is and your mitochondrial health is.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Critical. So, you know, there are few supplements that have documented efficacy. One of them is omega fatty acids. And especially if you are like most people in the Western world and you are, you don't have access to enough of them. So omega fatty acid would be one of the top ones for me, for everyone to take every morning and every night. If you're exercising, you know, carnitine is really one of the well-recognized supplement that people take. Now, we talked about a whole variety of flavonoids, chrysanthemum, curcumin, fritsetin, all of those.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  The problem with many of those is bioavailability. So much of what has been shown about their efficacy. Is is based on studies where the the the chemicals are added directly to cell. The problem is, you know, before the chemicals get to your cells, they have to go through the gut and have to be absorbed and all this. Most of those have extremely low bioavailability. Now, some companies are trying to remedy this by making them into phytozoans and all this. But most of the time, the data is just not there that these things are getting absorbed to a significant level. So I I have, uh, you know, I have my doubts.

• 56:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Take the pill and then your blood levels don't reflect.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Don't change. Yeah, it just it just goes through. Uh, so, uh, there are, you know, for example, one thing you didn't talk about, which I think is really critical, is uh fiber and probiotic. Uh, that which I think for me, you know, I'm a firm believer in the whole gut health. Uh, uh, being a critical determinant of your health and brain function. And so optimizing your bacteria in your gut, not by eating the bacteria, but by eating the fibers that feed them. It is really a critical part. So I I I have a special concoction of prebiotics that I make myself.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  And I think that's to me is really one of the central components of having a healthy, healthy digestive system, which will determine your immune system and so on. Um, as I told you earlier, I I believe in uh, uh, Urolithin A. Uh, that's a one of the few well documented supplements that uh has been shown to have an increase, uh, uh, an effect on your VO2 max on on other immune function. We published on on the effect on immune function. Um, I don't know, any, any other ones that I I forgot the list of all the the compounds that you mentioned. One, one thing that I want to mention also is.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Is the whole concept of, as a physician, you know about polypharmacy. And the idea of polypharma... Well, people, you know, polypharmacy is the idea that once you start, you start with one compound, you have a series of positive effects, but you also have a series of side effects. The idea of polypharmacy is when you start adding things on top of each other, you generate responses that are unpredictable and not always beneficial. And I, I do worry about the tendency in the field of what people call stacks, you know, where you're taking five, 10, 20 supplements together and hoping that all of this magically is going to work together.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  I can tell you one experiment that some colleagues have done in the lab. So, in C. elegans, the little worm that we study, we can, we can identify readily small molecules that increase lifespan. So, this experiment was done, it generated to a whole series of molecules that increase lifespan. So, let's say we have 10 compounds that all increase lifespan. So, what they did then, okay, so they combined each of these 10 compounds pairwise. And what you find is they were actually able to identify a number of pairs that actually had synergistic effect, where the lifespan effect was bigger than the sum of the two drugs. So, that's very exciting.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  So, then they took these pairs and then screened again the whole library to see, okay, what can we add? And what they found is that when you actually... So, they had these pairs with two drugs that increases lifespan. Whenever they added another drug that also increased lifespan, all of the effects went away. So, and that's not good. Then, you know, I hear about Brian Johnson taking 120 supplements and I'm thinking, you know, it cannot be good what's happening at this mixture of all of these drugs, you know, all of this byproduct, I don't know, it just, it worries me in general. And I tell people, you know, so how do you solve this problem? One way would be to do sequencing.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  So, you would go, for example, for three months on this compound and then another three months on this other compound. So, I, I think we are right at the beginning of, of a, of a, of a new land that we do not understand.

• 1:00:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Do you think that the advent of our understanding of systems medicine biology with AI is going to help us sort through this?

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, the whole area that we are pursuing is the whole idea of phenomics. This is the idea of deploying to the clinic these tests that allows us to to measure tens of thousands of variables instead of a hundred. And so the back right now, you know, has a whole program with Lee Hood and Nathan Price called phenomics, which is really going to the next frontier in terms of measuring, you know, typical medicine, as you mentioned, relies on a hundred, two hundred.

• 1:00:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not even, not even.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Not even.

• 1:00:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your annual checkups like twenty or thirty biomarkers, your CBC, chem screen, cholesterol and a urinalysis.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. And if you take all of the tests that medicine can today conduct, maybe it's a hundred or two hundred. You know, in one of these samples, we can measure 5,000 proteins and we can measure 10,000 metabolites and we can measure, you know, 10,000 transcripts. So and and 20 million CPG sites. So really, the idea is now to use artificial intelligence and these deep even deep phenotyping assays that we and try to extract, you know, all of the information that we can get on, you know, how do these drugs work? What pathways are they activating? This is the next frontier. And I think, yeah, we're tremendously excited by this.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  You know, it's not not for direct consumption for the public, but it's important for people to know that this is where medicine is going. It's it's ramping up to a next stage of data gathering and processing.

• 1:02:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think that's really a good place to end, which is the future of medicine is something we can't even imagine right now. And the level of data we can get on each individual is, you know, orders of magnitude more than we've ever been able to get in in a way that we haven't been able to apply clinically. But now, given the advent of one, the capacity to measure omics at every level. I mean, there's 100,000 petabytes of data just in our microbiome.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:02:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But I don't even know what a petabyte is, to be honest with you, but it sounds like a lot of data. And that's just one part of a biology and the complexity of those interactions, the dynamic way they interact, how they actually are affected by various inputs from lifestyle, from nutraceuticals, from drugs. We're in the most, to me, the most exciting era. It's almost like we finally figured out like how to look at the stars and, you know, look at what's going on in the universe in a way we never could before. And I'm just so excited and I, you know, even though I'm like 65 almost, I'm going to be 65 this year. I just feel like a kid in a candy store and I just can't wait to see what's going to happen.

• 1:03:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'm going to try to keep myself alive long enough so I can actually take advantage of it all.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  That's the, you know, that's the whole philosophy that I tell people, you know, the reason why you should optimize your health plan today using everything that we know is that first there's 35 years of extra healthy life for you to be gathered using this. And 30 years from now, God knows, you know, where we will be in terms of our ability to, you know, to interfere in these pathways and to keep you healthy even longer. So the key is, you know, while we're working at gathering all of this data and defining what are the safest and most effective, you know, lifestyle changes

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  or drug and so on, just keep yourself healthy and you will reap the benefits now and in the future.

• 1:04:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, it's so exciting. Well, thank you for your work, for pioneering all this data and science. It's really tremendous. And, you know, there's not that many people working at the level you're working. And it's just to hear what you're saying, to understand the implications of it, to know that you, you've come to the same conclusions that someone in the clinic working with real patients has come to. It's just very heartening. So I'm very excited. And I'm definitely going to make it out to the Buck Institute. I promise I'll get there.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We'll see you around the next tour. And I'm going to have you back because I didn't get to ask like at least half of what I wanted to ask you. So we'll find another time to have part two.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Take care. Bye bye.

• 1:04:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at drhyman.com/marks picks. I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drhyman.com/marks picks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy.

• 1:05:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions, and neither myself nor the podcast endorse the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Now, if you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultra wellness center dot com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifm.org and search Find a Practitioner Database. It's important that you have someone in your

• 1:06:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  corner who is trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. Keeping this podcast free is part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to express gratitude to the sponsors that made today's podcast possible.

• 1:06:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest, and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity, and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity, or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, drhyman.com has the world's best selection of top-quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out drhyman.com, because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D-R-H-Y-M-A-N dot com.