Brian (0s):
Coming up on the Getline e Klean podcast,
Chris (4s):
Number seven is telomere shortening. So telomeres are the endcaps of your chromosomes, and they protect your d n a. And so every single time your cell divides, your telomeres get a little bit shorter, and when they get too short, your risk of disease, especially cancers of the digestive tract, they go up significantly. So it is somewhat related to our biological and chronological age. So the older we are chronologically, the shorter our telomeres tend to get, but it's not that strong of a correlation. In other words, someone who's 30 years old might have the same length as someone who's 70 years old. So it's not a perfect one for one correlation, but they do get shorter as you age.
Chris (45s):
And there are certain things you can do to lengthen your telomeres or to slow down the shortening of your telomeres.
Brian (54s):
Hello and welcome to the Get Lean ean podcast. I'm Brian Grn, and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was, five, 10, even 15 years ago. Each week, I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed Chris Morrali, the c e O of Novos, a human longevity company. We discussed the 12 hallmarks of aging, how to reverse your biological age, how to increase metabolism, energy, and cognition with nmn lifestyle changes to feel younger and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
Brian (1m 36s):
Really enjoyed my interview with Chris. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Lean ean podcast. My name is Brian grn and I have Chris Morian. Welcome to the show.
Chris (1m 50s):
Thank you Brian. Great to be here.
Brian (1m 52s):
Yeah, great to have you on My first anti-aging expert on the show, so welcome.
Chris (1m 59s):
Thank you. Though I would say longevity because anti-aging doesn't necessarily have the, the best reputation, but we can dig into why, why that's the case.
Brian (2m 9s):
Okay, for sure. And the name of your company's Novos Labs, correct?
Chris (2m 14s):
Correct.
Brian (2m 15s):
And we were just talking offline. You started four years ago and you started distributing products, what, two years ago?
Chris (2m 23s):
That's correct. Yeah. So the four years ago was really planning the business, the vision, networking with the top scientists in the field, validating the concepts and putting together prototypes and testing those prototypes and so on. And then two years ago is when we launched our first product.
Brian (2m 40s):
Excellent. And maybe let the audience know maybe a little bit about Novos and, and and what the vision of the company is and, and the mission.
Chris (2m 48s):
Sure. So we focus, as I mentioned, on human longevity, which is a little bit different than anti-aging. When we hear anti-aging, we usually think of things like skin creams or drinks that are full of antioxidants, but have no proof that they can extend healthspan or lifespan whatsoever. Whereas longevity is this entire movement in the scientific community where it's attracting some of the top scientists in the world to address disease aging related disease and to address lifespan from the perspective of longevity or in other words, the perspective of aging and what goes wrong during aging from a biological perspective.
Chris (3m 33s):
So over the last five years or so, we've learned more about the processes of aging and why we get older than we had known for probably the combination of a thousand years combined prior. And so with this information, I started Novos to be the first consumer focused company as opposed to biotech pharma or academic lab where we are focused on bringing over-the-counter formulations with natural safe ingredients that are found to favorably impact what's known as the hallmarks of aging or these biological causes of aging, to also offer consumers testing so that they can tr track their progress for aging.
Chris (4m 17s):
Similar to a scale for weight loss, we wanna do the same for aging and then content knowledge. So we're a public benefit corporation, and part of that is to provide as much free information knowledge as possible. So even if people don't purchase our products, they're still in a much better place to be able to slow down their aging.
Brian (4m 39s):
Excellent. Wow, that quite the company. I was checking you out online, and I think you have, you have about four or five different products offerings, is that right? Well,
Chris (4m 48s):
So in, in terms of the formulations, yeah, we've got two formulations. We've got one biological age test that you can purchase, and then we've got a couple of other free biological age tests. So happy to to share with you details about each of those.
Brian (5m 4s):
Yeah, for sure. And maybe before we get into that, what are some of the main culprits when it comes to aging that you know, will, will sort of help? I don't know. I don't, you know, I know, and we're all aging, right? But like, what, what are the things that maybe slow us down even more?
Chris (5m 20s):
Well, so there, there's a couple of ways I can answer that. One is through the lens of the hallmarks of aging and what is literally on a microscopic level causing us to age. And then I can also address it from say, the lifestyle perspective, which is what are the things in our lives that lead to us aging more rapidly or more slowly than our peers? Is there one angle you prefer to start with?
Brian (5m 45s):
Yeah, let's do, let's do both. So start with either one you'd like. I think they're both interesting. So let's start with, let's do, let's do both of them.
Chris (5m 54s):
All right. Let's start micro with why we're aging and then we can talk about the things to do to reverse course. So there are 10 hallmarks of aging, although recently there was a paper published just about a month ago that identified a couple of additional hallmarks of aging as well. So we're at a total of 12 hallmarks of aging now. Okay. And so I'll start with the, the foundational hallmarks of aging, which are number one, mitochondrial dysfunction. These are the power plants of the cells. And as you age, there are fewer of them and they are less capable of generating power than they once were. The second is cellular senescence.
Chris (6m 37s):
So this is when cells turn into a zombie-like state, and they're no longer performing their function. They're not living, but they're also not dead and they're not removed by the immune system. So they exist and they su they secrete a, a, a inflammatory set of molecules that can then hit nearby cells and infect them, quote unquote, not literally, but figuratively in the sense of a zombie causing other cells nearby to also become zombified or senescent. Next is loss of proteostasis. So this is basically protein cleanup. So we have all of these proteins that are signaling molecules and building blocks.
Chris (7m 19s):
And as we get older, if you think of the analogy of, of garbage, you, if you don't take the trash out of your home, you can't access the different features in your home. You can't use the home the way it's intended. The same goes if you leave the garbage outside and the garbage person doesn't come to collect it, you can't access your home anymore, and the streets get full of trash. So that happens inside of cells and outside of cells. And that process becomes less capable as we get older. Number four is altered intercellular communication. So all cells are communicating with one another. These vast networks, they cells have their own identities, if you will, for based on tissue type and organs, and they're sending out molecules to communicate to each other, and partly as a result of loss of proteostasis where there's so much garbage in front of the cell that they can't, you can't really get to the receptor sites and be able to communicate the way that you normally would.
Chris (8m 16s):
So there's the, the communication is in disarray and the cells don't function the way that they should or they don't receive the signals to behave in a certain way that they otherwise would. Number five is genomic instability. So this is essentially d n a damage, which we're all familiar with, things like smoking or too much UV exposure and so on causes genomic instability or d n a damage, right,
Brian (8m 42s):
Like burning, like if you burn your skin or something like that.
Chris (8m 45s):
Exactly. Right, exactly. Even if you don't burn your skin, you're still causing d n a damage. But the question is what's the dosage? How impactful is it? If you're out in the sun for an hour and the sun's raised, the UV isn't very high, you'll be fine, but, but there is still nonetheless damage that's taking place during that, that process. Number six is epigenetic alterations. So the epigenome is essentially the layer that sits on top of your genes. And so now your genes are what we're all born with, but your epigenome is something that you have much more of an impact on than one might think. This is essentially which jeans are turned on or off.
Chris (9m 26s):
Hmm. So if your genes are like the piano, your epigenome is like the player of that piano. And this plays a lot into what we'll talk about with lifestyle, right, in terms of the way that you can then impact your epigenome to then have certain genes turn on that are good for you and certain genes turn off that are bad for you. Number seven is telomere shortening. So telomeres are the end caps of your chromosomes and they protect your d n a. And so every single time your cell divides, your telomeres get a little bit shorter, and when they get too short, your risk of disease, especially cancers of the digestive tract, they go up significantly. So it is somewhat related to our biological and chronological age.
Chris (10m 10s):
So the older we are chronologically, the shorter our telomeres tend to get, but it's not that strong of a correlation. In other words, someone who's 30 years old might have the same length as someone who's 70 years old. So it's not a perfect one for one correlation, but they do get shorter as you age. And there are certain things you can do to lengthen your telomeres or to slow down the shortening of your telomeres. Number eight is deregulated nutrient sensing. So this is more related to your metabolism and being able to sense that you have adequate sugar, adequate cholesterol, adequate triglycerides and so on, and to be able to then shuttle those molecules where they're supposed to go.
Chris (10m 54s):
And as you get older, as I'm sure you know, your blood glucose levels tends tend to rise. And that's part of the, the reason for it is the de deregulated nutrient sensing and for example, less insulin sensitivity to be able to move the glucose into the muscle tissue and into the fat tissue than it ordinarily would. Number nine is stem cell exhaustion. So most people are familiar with stem cells, which are essentially the cells that then produce exact replicas of, of our cells so that we can, we can maintain our, our organs and our tissues. And as we get older, these stem cells, they either become dysfunctional or they die off.
Chris (11m 37s):
And so our tissues, they, they become less replenished than less maintained than they otherwise would be. And then finally number 10 is cross-linking. So cross-linking are these sugar derived bonds that form between proteins in other tissues, and so they actually stiffen the tissue. And part of the reason we get wrinkles in our face or that arteries stiffen, is because of these crosslinks where the sugar is attaching and, and, and making the tissue less or the cells and tissues less flexible than they would otherwise be. The new hallmarks, which I won't go into since we've already spent a lot of time on this, is, is, is the microbiome a process known as autophagy, which is essentially cleanup of the, of, of the protein waste products and, and, and cells and and so on.
Chris (12m 33s):
Those are new additional hallmarks.
Brian (12m 37s):
Okay. And yeah, I know autophagy get gets talked about quite a bit, especially when you hear when, as far as fasting or working out can help turn on autophagy. So what type of lifestyle, I guess, changes could individuals make to help maybe, you know, slow down or, or reverse some of these hallmarks of aging?
Chris (13m 2s):
Great question. So a lot of the stuff is going to be somewhat obvious and then some of the other stuff won't be as obvious. So, you know, healthy diet, right? Sure. You know, we all, we all say healthy diet, what does that really mean? And there's a lot of controversy across different types of diets, whether it be the types of foods you eat and don't eat, or the macronutrient ratios and so on, like a ketogenic diet versus a high carb diet and so on. What I would say is that research has demonstrated that the healthiest diet of all for the sake of longevity, not necessarily for the sake of a short-term goal like body building or for, you know, animal, animal safety and rights and so on.
Chris (13m 45s):
But for longevity, it is, for, it is in the form of the Mediterranean diet. So the Mediterranean diet, which is composed of a large amount of vegetables, beans, some healthy unrefined unprocessed grains, a modest amount of protein in the form largely of seafood, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids includes mushrooms, basically things coming straight from the earth, not processed or minimally processed and, and full of nutrients. That is the best across so many, many studies for, for longevity purposes.
Chris (14m 27s):
And, and it requires the least amount of supplementation compared to say, a vegan diet where you have to supplement new nutrients that you can't get without consuming animal products.
Brian (14m 38s):
Yeah, I mean you have a lot of differing thoughts on that as far as like what's the ideal diet, but I think the one thing we can all agree upon is, you know, cut out those processed foods and yeah, you, you that'll go a long, long way If you're coming from the standard American diet, whatever you go, whatever diet you go on, or if you wanna call it diet or lifestyle choice, you, you choose, just avoid the processed
Chris (15m 0s):
Foods 100%. I mean that, that will probably get you 95% of the way there, right from a longevity perspective. And the extra 5% might come down to diet, but for most people that won't even matter.
Brian (15m 13s):
Okay. What else? I'm assuming you're gonna say work, exercise.
Chris (15m 17s):
Well, so on the topic of diet, let's stick with timing of, of your, your food intake and fasting as well. So time restricted feeding is the idea of eating within a narrow window of a few hours each day. So at the least it should be within an a window of 12 hours. So 12 hours fasting essentially while you sleep. For example, you know, 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM and then you eat between 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM Now, that's not the best, but that's the minimum of what you should do. Absolute minimum. Ideally you're closer to something like what's known as a 16 eight or an 18 six, which would be 16 hours fasting with the 16 eight and then eight hours of eating.
Chris (16m 4s):
So for that, that might be 12:00 PM you start your first meal, 8:00 PM you finish your last bite, and then you fast overnight and then you start again. So studies have found that time restricted feeding people have better metabolic outcomes, including when it comes to their body weight, their metabolic markers like blood glucose levels and so on, eating identical foods, identical foods and calories. It's just that when they, when they narrow down those hours that that eating window, they have better metabolic results. And to that point earlier is better. I'm not, I'm not good with that. I tend to prefer not eating breakfast and starting at lunchtime and then finishing later up later on in the evening.
Chris (16m 48s):
But if you wanna be really good with it, you would eat breakfast, you would eat lunch, and then have a very early dinner and then go the rest of the day without food. And because you're more insulin sensitive early on in the day and there are better outcomes from studies from eating earlier as opposed to later. Then the second thing I mentioned was fastening. So ideally you every so often, of course this depends on your health status and your body fat levels and your body weight and so on. So check with your doctor first, but ideally you're able to do at least a 24 hour fast every so often as much as a 72 hour fast, not at nearly as often, but once in a while.
Chris (17m 30s):
And when you, when you fast for these extended periods of time, a number of the genes that are associated with longevity are activated and these bio bio pathways turn on that or turn off that are associated with longer lifespans. For example, the mTOR pathway is down regulated, the mTOR pathway being one that leads to growth. And we're constantly stimulating this with all of the food and carbs and especially proteins that we are eating in our diets. We're in this constantly fed modern world that we live in. We are always growing and throughout evolution we had periods of famine as well, which we've lost.
Chris (18m 15s):
And so as a result, we increased the risk of diseases including cancer. In fact, there is an interesting study where they looked at people in the Middle East who, who faceted during Ramadan and they found that as unhealthy as their diet was and com comparable to other western unhealthy diets as it was, they had significantly lower levels of cancer. They were still overweight, they still had negative heart markers and so on, but their cancer rates were significantly lower. And it's theorized it's because of the fasting during Ramadan that they, they have as part of their culture. So it goes a long way to be able to integrate these at least 24 hour fasts.
Chris (18m 58s):
And if you go as long as 72 hours, that's when you're really hyper reactivating things like autophagy. And that's the most ideal, but it is the most difficult to achieve, of course.
Brian (19m 8s):
Yeah, I mean I always say like even just the, the, the act of cutting off your eating at a certain time and giving yourself, you know, three, maybe four hours before bed can go a long way and just, you know, first thing help digestion, help with quality of sleep and things like that. And I think that's a good place to start. And even just the, the, the act of just not snacking and having just good nutrient dense meals is a good place to start as well.
Chris (19m 36s):
Yes, definitely. And, and I would also say that the 24 hour fast as, as intimidating as it might seem to people, it is not as hard as it may seem at first, especially if you prepare for it. So for example, I find that although I don't regularly have a ketogenic diet going into a fast, I intentionally move more towards a ketogenic diet, higher fat, lower carbs, lower protein, and at that point my metabolism shifts to one that is, is based on fats and ketones. And so to be able to remove all of the carbs from, from my diet and essentially the calories overall from my diet becomes far, far easier to do.
Chris (20m 17s):
And as long as you keep yourself busy for the day, you don't wanna be sitting around on your couch. That's the hardest way to, to successfully fast. But if you go, if you have a full day planned where you're going out, you're walking around, you're, you know, you're doing things, you're active, the 24 hours can pass before you know it. Especially like it's evening to evening, you know, 6:00 PM to 6:00 PM let's say, or or 3:00 PM to 3:00 PM you can, you can get pretty far with that.
Brian (20m 45s):
Now I was looking on your website, it looks like some of the results that you've gotten from you, you have that novos core you talk about like, you know, reversing biological age. Maybe touch a little bit on that and, and some of the, the studies and results that have come out of that.
Chris (21m 3s):
Sure. So Novos core is the first formulation that we put together. So a little bit of context nobos. We have a scientific advisory board of six scientists out of Harvard Medical School, m i t and the Salk Institute. Some very big names in the field of biology and genetics. For example, Dr. George Church who invented the first direction genome sequencing method in 1984. And they, along with our internal team, helped to formulate Novos core, which is patent pending. And we have done a number of tests with, with novos core, and we have a number that are currently underway as well.
Chris (21m 44s):
The tests that have been completed include in vitro tests of human cells, so in vitro being cellular tests as opposed to a clinical in, in human studies. So we start with that. We did one test with human cells where we found that we reduced D n a damage from irradiation by about 50% at, at a level significantly higher than the lab that had done about 7 million worth of trials with prescription drugs and natural substances prior to us, our, our levels were off of the charts in terms of the reduction in D n A damage. We did another D n a damage study, which we have not officially published yet because we're doing additional follow-ups with that same lab.
Chris (22m 29s):
This was in academic lab, they administered chemotherapeutics to human cells and they treated with novos and without novos and found that with the chemotherapeutics is including with a very intense one that doesn't simply cause oxidation to the D N A, it literally causes double strand breaks. So the difference would be in the first study it rate oxidation is almost like if your car started rusting, we prevented that rusting damage. Double strand brakes would be like cutting the car in half, twice at the axle, right? Like just completely demolishing the, the D N A.
Chris (23m 9s):
And we reduced that by a very significant margin. I can't report to the results yet, but it was a very impressive amount that that is from chemotherapeutics. A third study we did was to look at cellular senescence, which I mentioned before as the zombie cells. And our results were compared to a gold standard prescription longevity drug known as rapamycin, which is what has been set as the standard for all longevity interventions to compare themselves to because it extends lifespan in, in every species it's been tested in. And our impact on cellular senescence was practically the same as rapamycin impact on cellular senescence as well.
Chris (23m 51s):
Now mind you, all of our ingredients are natural ingredients found in nature or in the human body and they decline over time. They're safe ingredients at dosages far higher than our dosages. We include the ideal dosage, we exploit synergies, and we're the very first company ever to address all of the hallmarks of aging that I mentioned before. Simultaneously, the typical pharmaceutical and biotech approach is to address one of them at a time. But our philosophy is when you address all of them simultaneously, it will have the most significant compound effect. Almost like if you have a f you know, an old car, rather than just fixing the flat tires, you're fixing everything and bringing it back to new again.
Chris (24m 36s):
That's the analogy with what we're doing with with Novo's core. The last thing I think worth mentioning there is, although we're we're doing human clinical trials, it will take some time before we have those results. In the meantime we've done a case study, 12 participants, six males, six female, 39 to I believe 72 years old. So middle age and older. One person dropped out, one male because they weren't, they weren't taking the, the product, so lack of compliance. The remaining 11 people, eight of those 11 had a reduction in their biological pace of aging. So in other words, the speed at which they are aging, if the value one is your aging at the average rate for someone, if you are less than one, you are aging more slowly than the average person.
Chris (25m 27s):
And we were able to reduce the rate of aging for eight of those 11 people, which is about 75% of them. And then of the three that we did not reduce the rate of aging, none of them increased their pace of aging. They all stayed basically at zero, no change. Which is really important because these people in theory could have sped up their aging if they had big stressors in their life, if they were drinking excess alcohol, if they're negative factors in their lives, which if you have a random population, there's going to be some people that have negative things happening in their lives that can accelerate aging. None of them did. So that might speak to Novos having a favorable impact even in those people that had negative influences.
Chris (26m 13s):
So, and all of this was statistically significant at a p value for the geeks out there of 0.001, which basically means that the chances of it being coincidence is 50 times lower than what scientists usually require to consider something statistically significant and not coincidental, which would be a 0.05. And we were 0.001. So we're really encouraged and excited about all of these results. And this is all of the studies we've run. It's not like we've run some with negative results and we haven't shared them. No. This is everything that we've tested so far and we're excited about what the future results will show us.
Brian (26m 50s):
Okay. In the, in the 11 participants in that study were from 39 to 76, I'm just taking a look right now.
Chris (26m 55s):
76, yes,
Brian (26m 56s):
Thank you. Yeah. On your website. And, and this was over six months and they just, they lived their normal life, like, and they just took the products just along whatever they else they were doing pretty much,
Chris (27m 9s):
Yes, novos core Novos boost and living their normal lives, but just those two ingredients or two products, we asked them to take deli and we encourage them not to, not to make any dramatic changes to their lives. Right? Because then it wouldn't be a fair test. So we wanted them to be more or less the same in just adding those products.
Brian (27m 31s):
Interesting. And so they improved their biological aging. And how is that measured?
Chris (27m 36s):
So this is a, a whole category where it could be an entire podcast episode alone, but I'll try to keep it simple. There's, I mentioned before something known as epigenetic aging or epigenetic dysregulation, which is the layer on top of the genome, the piano player, as I said. So within that epigenome, you have different genes that are turned on as you get older that shouldn't turn on, and certain genes that turn off that shouldn't turn off. And there are patterns to this. And scientists have been able to create algorithms that detect these patterns and then put together what's known as a biological age, which is different than your chronological age.
Chris (28m 18s):
Chronological age is obvious times you've gone around, the sun is in your birthdays, is how old you are Chronologically. Biologically is essentially your risk of disease, your risk of mortality, and by extension your, your cellular fitness. So how physically capable, how mentally capable are you? And as we know, as we get older, all of that declines. So yuan as low of a biological age as possible. And there have been multiple generations of these tests. The, the most famous person in the space is named Steve Horvath. He started with his first generation test probably eight years ago or so. And since then we've had two new generations.
Chris (29m 0s):
That first generation focused on an algorithm that detected chronological age. They were trying to be as close to chronological age as possible, but then researchers realized that biological age was more important. And that's where the second generation tests and third generation tests come into play. Now, the third generation test is known as doin pace, which is the tests we offer at Novos in a product called Novos Age, which also measures telomere lent and biological age. But doin pace is actually measuring as opposed to biological age. Your pace of aging or your rate of aging, like I mentioned before, of being below one or above one. And this experts in the field and ourselves included feel, is the best type of measurement you can get for a number of reasons.
Chris (29m 50s):
One is it is the most accurate of all of the clocks. There are papers that prove that it is more accurate than any other clock out there. It was created by researchers at Columbia University and Duke University that followed more than a thousand people in New Zealand for their entire lifespans. And, and more recently have been looking at different bio, different biological markers of aging. Everything from blood changes to sit stand tests, to grip strength to what their faces look like and how old their perceived ages are, their brain white, white brain matter, and so on. All of this is aggregated and then advanced computation methods used and then essentially an algorithm is created that correlates with the epigenome.
Chris (30m 37s):
So I know it's all very complex, but the simple answer to all of this is that the Dunedin pace clock is the most accurate, it's the most actionable because it changes the most rapidly. So your pace of aging changes faster than your biological age, which if you think of the analogy, I keep going back to cars, but if you think of driving a car and changing your speed, you can do that with the gas or the brake immediately. But to change your total distance travel takes time to be able to change, right? And so it's the same analogy with your pace of aging versus your biological age. So if you wanna see if your interventions are working, you really wanna look at the pace of aging, which is what you need in pace provides.
Chris (31m 21s):
And that's what we used in this case study.
Brian (31m 24s):
Okay. And then this is something that individuals can do take on, on their own well through your company as well, b, before they could take it, obviously before they start taking the products and then maybe measure it, you know, six months later.
Chris (31m 37s):
Yeah, that's what we recommend. Yeah, in fact, we recommend 12 months later just because that's the best way to minimize any confounding factors. There's the seasonality issue where different seasons you have different lifestyles and stressors and so on. So if you do it at the same time, the same day, the same week, the same month of the year, 12 months later, you're most likely to get as accurate of, of a result as you can expect in your, you know, in your, your scientific lab of your home.
Brian (32m 6s):
Got it. Okay. Interesting. So I'm assuming you've done these tests on yourself?
Chris (32m 12s):
Yes, yes I have.
Brian (32m 14s):
And how, how old are you and what was your, what was your, your pace, your compared to your chronological?
Chris (32m 21s):
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm almost, almost 40. I can't believe it. I'll be 39 in in May. And my pace of aging is 0.69. So 31% slower than, you know, average aging. There are other biological age algorithms that we also ran just to get a full idea of what all of the different scientists test outputs would be. And for those, my, my biological age is 23, 23, 23 0.6.
Chris (33m 1s):
For, for, yeah, for, for one of the more powerful algorithms out there and 25.6 average across many, many, many algorithms. And then also, this is the most interesting one, I think, but the least relevance to be honest, is telomere age. So the length of my telomeres, they correlate with that of a seven year old. Wow. Now, I'm obviously not seven years old, I hope I don't come across as a seven year old. But it, it's, it's, I say it's the least relevant because as I mentioned before, like you can be 70 or 30 and have the same telomere length, but having a longer telomere within reason is, is better.
Chris (33m 42s):
And so, so it's worth seeing, it's worth being aware of and we offer it in the Novos age kit, but it's not something to rely to heavily on unless your telomeres are very short. That's when you should be a little bit concerned and maybe talk to your doctor.
Brian (33m 59s):
And as far as the ingredients within the, within the products, I notice you have obviously the core product in the Boost, right? And a, a product that comes up a lot in the sort of anti-aging spaces. Is it N N N M M maybe
Chris (34m 16s):
Nmn? Yep. Yeah,
Brian (34m 18s):
Yeah. Nmn, it shouldn't be that hard to say, but, and this increases levels of what's called N A D plus, perhaps maybe, and this is something that gets thrown around and maybe explain that a little bit.
Chris (34m 32s):
Sure, sure. So Nmn, don't worry, a lot of people call it mnn or m and ms. Yeah, exactly.
Brian (34m 40s):
You're not taking m and ms, although, yeah, lemme go ahead.
Chris (34m 44s):
It's a product idea, right? Yeah. Is NMN stands for nicotinamide mono nucleotide, and N M N increases levels of N A D plus, as you mentioned, N A D plus is relevant for a number of things, but when it comes to aging, one of the more relevant points about it is that N A D plus is needed for proper D n A repair and to maintain the epigenome. So,
Brian (35m 15s):
And is that the only ingredient in the Boost?
Chris (35m 19s):
Yes. So, so Novo's Boost, we, we consider that to be like a booster to Novo's core. Okay. And so we encourage people to consider taking Novos core as their foundational primary supplement. If they could only get one thing get core, but ideally you are able to afford to take Novos core and Novos Boost, and that's what people in the, in the case study took was both Core and Boost.
Brian (35m 46s):
Okay. Yeah, cuz Nmn, it's, it's obviously fairly expensive I would imagine to source that. Yes. Where, where do you source your products?
Chris (35m 57s):
So we, we work with US manufacturers who source the, the ingredients on our behalf. But then we do additional testing separate from the manufacturer with our own selected labs that then make sure that we're getting what we're, what we're assuring our customers that they're receiving and what we're paying for essentially. So testing for everything from microbiology like yeast or bacteria, heavy metals, and then also the purity of, of the ingredient and that the ingredient is what we say it is.
Brian (36m 33s):
Okay. And I'm assuming like these studies that are being run, so these studies, I know you did it on the 11 participants or some of the studies you mentioned are just done on like human cells, is that correct? Like in the lab?
Chris (36m 45s):
Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yes, so, so, you know, working with human cells is, is more feasible and affordable for a startup company, but it also starts to prove out the hypothesis. So to be able to show that we're reducing d n a damage, which is a hallmark of aging cellular senescence, which is a hallmark of aging, have, have favorable outcomes with the epigenome, so on and so forth. Those are all proving out the hypothesis. And then as we scale as a business, which we have been doing, then we can afford clinical trials, which we, one is underway and another one will kick off soon. So, so it's really just working our way up to that.
Chris (37m 25s):
But with all of that said, our formulation was based on more than 190 scientific studies prior to us putting it together. We weren't just guessing there, there's a lot of science behind the ingredient selection in the first place as well as which ingredients we eliminated from consideration. And if you go to our website, if you go to the science section, there's two different pages. One is approach, the other one is, I believe it's called Evidence and Approach, talks about the filters that we put ingredients through for us to consider, including it in the formula, things related to safety, related to efficacy related to extending lifespan and multiple animal species and so on.
Chris (38m 8s):
And then the evidence page is the studies I've mentioned, there's another one I didn't mention, which relates to skin health and how we improve skin health in a small set of, of, of people that was a human study. So, and that's where we'll continually add additional researches, that evidence page.
Brian (38m 27s):
And what, I know this is sort of going back, but what, what sort of got you interested in this, this market and, and was there something that sort of spurred you on with, with doing, getting into this?
Chris (38m 39s):
Yes. This, this is definitely going back, this is going back to when I was a teenager, well, even before that. So when I was 12 years old, I became interested in health. I picked up an issue of Men's Health magazine and I was inspired by, by the people in that magazine. I wanted to start exercising and weightlifting and eating healthy and so on. So I did that for a few years. And then when I was 16 years old, I was on a school trip in New York City and I suddenly had a seizure and it turned out it was caused from a brain tumor, which was perplexing to me because I was so healthy for the four years prior to that, I couldn't understand why I would've gotten the brain tumor. And so that, that spurred curiosity, it also changed my perspective on life.
Chris (39m 22s):
It, it made me not want to ever be laying in a hospital bed again, contemplating mortality at least until the very end of a very long live life. And so anything I could do to try to prevent myself from being in that position again, I did. And at the time, the, the field of longevity medicine didn't exist. There was gerontology just studying old people, but it was completely different than what the longevity field is. And so it took a while up until my early thirties or about when I was about 30 years old, for me to come across the seminal paper, published in the journal cell about the nine hallmarks of aging.
Chris (40m 2s):
Then I came across the work of a scientist named Aubrey De Gray at the Sends Research Institute, who is literally researching this from a biotech perspective. And that's when I started networking with these people, meeting with Aubrey, meeting with many other scientists from different universities and learning from them and also challenging them with questions, at which point I eventually realized that there is a need for a company like Novos in the marketplace. No one's doing it, no one, others are trying to do it, but they're not doing it the right way in my estimation. And that's when I decided I wanted to start the company.
Brian (40m 39s):
Yeah. Awesome. And what would you say one of the things that you've learned through the last, like just say four years of going through this process?
Chris (40m 49s):
I don't know where to begin. Yeah. I've learned a, a, a ton of stuff. Everything from, you know, on, on the business side to the, the product side and, and longevity. I would say overall the amount that I've learned about longevity beyond what, what you can learn from researching on your own. In other words, by having this network of scientists, both the scientific advisory board that is public on our website as well as more than a dozen other scientists that we consistently talk to and work with that are not on our website. All of these longevity experts and different perspectives, even within the field, I've learned a lot of what you cannot derive from reading research papers.
Chris (41m 30s):
There's a lot of subtleties about the, the research basically. I mean, you can understand this in any field that you work in, that when you're in the day-to-day grind of that field, you learn a lot of tacit fit knowledge, a lot of things that you don't necessarily highlight in a scientific paper or when you write about it. And a lot of that I've, I've been able to kind of soak up like a sponge from all of these different scientists and it's fun to sometimes see how they disagree with each other and have, have very different fundamental perspectives within this small field of longevity. There's still disagreement in there and, and trying to get to the truth is ultimately what we're trying to do as a company.
Chris (42m 12s):
Yeah.
Brian (42m 14s):
And yeah, like you said, there's not a lot of other companies doing what you're doing. I know there's a company and they might have different formulations do not age. I've heard of them. I dunno if you've heard of that company. I have. But, but again, you know, I, I think that's a good thing that some of these companies are popping up alongside your company as well.
Chris (42m 36s):
Yeah, yeah. I would say that there's fundamental differences between us and do not age where they are just selling individual ingredients and as opposed to us creating synergistic formulations, investing a lot of money towards r and d, I don't believe they do any r and d. And then of course, like offering the testing as we do and all of the content and knowledge and so on. So we see ourselves as more of a longevity platform where we wanna make it simple and easy for people to connect with us on nobos and then have everything kind of laid out for them and simplified, whereas do not age, I think is more for maybe a hobbyist that wants to mix up their own concoction and experiment on them on themselves.
Brian (43m 18s):
Yeah. And I, I asked this question to everyone that's comes on my podcast. What, what tip, one tip would you give someone that's maybe looking to get their body back to what it once was, maybe 10, 15, you know, even 20 years ago. What, what tip would you give that individual?
Chris (43m 36s):
Well, there, there's a few ways I can address this. What, what I would say, probably just for the theme of the conversation is to really look into longevity medicine because the perspective of longevity is to get these biological processes that were once at their prime and are no longer back to as close to their prime as you possibly can. That includes, you know, the aspects like your metabolism, your mitochondria, and the amount of power that they can produce and so on. And when you consider things like the fasting, the diet, the activity and so on, all of which we cover on our blog@novoslabs.com slash blog, that's where I think you can actually really make some significant headway to getting back to not, not only looking, but also feeling like you were younger again.
Brian (44m 26s):
Excellent. And, and I would imagine, you know, obviously you have some great formulations, but if someone's not getting good sleep, it's probably not gonna make much of a difference with that individual who, where we all know how important, you know, optimal sleep is.
Chris (44m 42s):
Yes and no. What, what I would say is, so yes, 100% you need to, you need to sleep well. And I, I emphasize that a lot. It's, it's actually one of the most important things in my daily routine. But Novos contains ingredients that are shown to significantly improve sleep. And we find anecdotally, many, many customers report improved sleep. That's everything from altheine to magnesium, malley, rhodiola, rose glycine, which is found to improve sleep to even microdose. Lithium is in our formula, which is an ingredient that a lot of people are like, why would you have lithium in your formula?
Chris (45m 23s):
That's, that's for, for people in psychiatric settings. And that is true, but that's at dosages more than a hundred times higher than our dose. Our dose is the level that you would naturally get if you were drinking spring water and you're eating salmon and natural fresh foods. Lithium is in our food supply, but with filtered water and with with processed foods, we're not getting it anymore. And lithium has been shown to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia of suicidal ideation of murder, of rape. I mean, there's so many different things that when lithium is in the food supply at these low levels, that it has positive outcomes.
Chris (46m 4s):
Four among those is also improve sleep. So all of these ingredients can potentially help with sleep.
Brian (46m 11s):
Awesome. And well how would, what's the best place for, I mean your novos labs.com and I'll put links in the show notes and is that the best place for people just to learn about, you know, your products and what, what would you tell someone that they wanna learn more and, and, and, and sort of maybe get started and, and even take like a biological age test or do something like that?
Chris (46m 31s):
Yeah, so I would say go to novos labs.com, check out the homepage, the science tab, learn more about the scientific team, about us, and people should feel very comfortable and confident in what we're doing before they consider purchasing. Go to our blog, novos labs.com/blog. There are some foundational articles that we keep at the top, which, which give you like the, you know, initial steps and high level understanding of, of aging. I would start there for the, the more geeky people out there that really want, are like hobbyists and, and are, are really get in depth about their health.
Chris (47m 13s):
They might wanna check out my own personal blog, which is slow my age.com and slow my age.com has my personal results for biological age tests for different physiological markers. Some things about what I do in my own routine. And I'm also on Instagram and Twitter as slow my age.
Brian (47m 32s):
Yeah, okay. Excellent. Well this was great sort of a, a fast course on a, on, well I shouldn't say aging on anti, but on, on expanding and, and healthspan right, is I would say that's probably the biggest thing. Health span and
Chris (47m 46s):
Lifespan.
Brian (47m 47s):
Yep. Yeah. And I and your both and your lo and your sort of message is younger for longer. I see right behind you. I like that. Exactly. I like that. Alright Chris, well I appreciate all this and yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing all the, all your knowledge around around Novos. Of
Chris (48m 6s):
Course. Thank you for having me.
Brian (48m 9s):
Thanks for listening to the Get Lean EAN podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
