Episode 20
Beyond Supplements with Alan Graves on Funding Clinical Trials and Longevity Research
Daphna sat down with Alan Graves, founder of DoNotAge, for an in-depth conversation about what it takes to make longevity science more credible, more collaborative and more accessible.
After a serious health decline in his late twenties, Alan entered the longevity field after learning that ageing may be more malleable than he had once thought. He went on to build DoNotAge as a self-funded health research organisation, using consumer supplements to help fund ageing research, support external labs and emerging researchers, provide high-purity ingredients for independent studies, and translate complex science into language people can actually understand.
The conversation covers why longevity science is still difficult to access, why the supplement industry has a credibility problem, and how marketing, underdosing and weak “science-backed” claims have made it hard for consumers to know what to trust.
Alan also discusses the realities of clinical trials, why they are slow and expensive, and the studies DoNotAge is currently supporting or planning, including work around spermidine, NAD, Crohn’s disease, berberine and biological age clocks.
In striving to make longevity easier and more practical, Alan has also introduced a one-a-day sachet designed to simplify adherence. They also explore his focus on sirtuin 6 activation, DoNotAge’s free London conference, and the wider aim of making longevity more affordable, practical and collaborative.
DoNotAge.org is a health research organisation.
You can learn more at https://routine.donotage.org
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
02:52 Alan’s Unlikely Origin Story
04:34 From Self-Experiment to Do Not Age
06:45 Funding Gap and New Model
08:12 Democratising Longevity Science
09:48 Research Company Not Supplements
11:09 Why Clinical Trials Take Years
12:50 How Do Not Age Is Structured
15:09 Supporting Labs Worldwide
18:01 Supplement Industry Credibility Crisis
21:01 How Consumers Verify Claims
22:42 Stepping Down as CEO
25:11 Choosing Which Research to Fund
26:45 Upcoming Trials and What’s Next
28:10 Basics Before Supplements
31:43 Testing and Biological Age
33:24 The One-a-Day Sachet Idea
36:03 Clinical Trials Pipeline
36:55 Making Longevity Affordable
39:58 Pricing Ethics and Dosage
41:33 Hype vs Evidence in Longevity
44:51 Who Needs Supplements When
46:55 Free Unbiased Science Conference
53:02 What Excites Him Next
54:08 SIRT6 Activator Deep Dive
58:30 Why Healthcare Won’t Adopt It
01:01:44 Boxing, Balance, and Ageing Goals
01:04:41 Rapid Fire and Wrap Up
01:07:15 Host Takeaways and Conclusion
Transcript
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Speaker B:Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves. My guest today on Beyond Longevity is Alan Graves. And his route into longevity is certainly not the usual one.
He did not come into this field as a doctor. He was not a scientist, a clinician, or an academic researcher. In fact, he had no real longevity background at all.
His interest began only after his own health had seriously declined and he came across a simple but powerful Aging may not be fixed, it may be malleable. From that moment on, Alan became intensely focused on one question. If aging can be accelerated, can it also be slowed, repaired, or even reversed?
That question eventually led him to found DoNotAge, a health research company rather than a traditional supplement company.
Its consumer facing products help fund clinical trials, support emerging researchers, provide high quality ingredients for independent studies, and contribute to the wider science of aging.
Alan is also someone with a strong philanthropic side, and what is interesting is that he has brought that mindset into longevity, not just building another company in the space, but helping fund research, support the wider field, and make better science accessible to more people. And what makes this conversation interesting is not just the company itself, it is the bigger model behind it.
The idea that longevity should not be a field where everyone works in silos, guards information, or competes on marketing claims.
In a supplement industry where products are often underdosed over, marketed or built around weak claims, Allen argues for a different standard high quality ingredients, meaningful doses, proper testing, and a more collaborative, evidence led approach to aging and science.
In this conversation we talk about Allen's unlikely path into longevity, why the science of aging is still far too inaccessible, and why the supplement world has such a serious credibility problem.
We also discuss what clinically proven really means, why clinical trials are so slow and expensive, whether longevity is still mainly for the wealthy, and what it would take to build a longevity field that is more evidence led, more collaborative, and ultimately more useful to more people. Hi Alan, thank you so much for joining me on Beyond Longevity. Today. You and I actually have something interesting in common.
Both of us came to the longevity fields, the non traditional route, I would say. Neither of us are medics or clinicians, neither of us studied science and we're not academic researchers.
Speaker A:That's correct.
Speaker B:And yet both of us ended up in the longevity field. Tell us how you got here.
Speaker A:I was having a lot of health issues in my late 20s. I had basically accelerated my aging, which obviously is not a good thing.
But I then realized, thanks to some very smart researchers, that aging is malleable which does make sense. If you can accelerate aging, then you should probably be able to decelerate it as well. And so I started to look for ways to do that.
And I realized there was a huge gap in the market for both a consumer facing organization that consumers can go for information and products they trust, as well as an organization that can help researchers advance the science of aging.
Speaker B:Yeah, you've made a long story very, very short, but no shortcuts here.
Go into a little bit more detail as to why and how really you ended up in this field, and also a bit more where you came from, because I think that's really interesting and important, and I think that not only does it give you more credibility as to sort of why you are where you are, but it's also very insightful.
Speaker A:Okay. So essentially, as I was growing up in my teens and early twenties and mid twenties, I was not doing the right things for my health and for society.
A lot of fighting, alcohol, drugs, not living life in a good way. And as such, my health took a real nosedive mentally as well, feeling like I'm not doing the right thing for society.
So I went down the path once I realized that aging was malleable. And my initial cause was to try and buy NMN resveratrol.
Because I listened to Professor David Sinclair and he basically said on some podcasts, look, we've reversed aging in mice. And I was always brought up with the assumption that aging, there's nothing you can do about it. And so I thought, well, that doesn't sound right.
Let me read the study. And so I tried to then read the clinical trial, and I couldn't read it because it was in science speak.
And so, you know, words like ameliorate and all these things when, you know, it's a bit ridiculous, but that's what they do. So there was no AI back then. And so I had to take each word, put it into Google, Google definition, and basically translate it into layman's terms.
And once I'd done that, after many hours, I read it, and what he was saying is correct. He had reversed aging in mice using NMN resveratrol. And so I was like, well, I want to try that, because we suspect it might work in humans.
And so I went to buy some, and there was nowhere I could trust to buy it. There was some faceless Amazon sellers and which in the end, a few years later when we tested them, turned out to not be real.
So my, my red flag alert was right. And so I thought, well, I need to create something because I can't be the only person with this problem. And so do not. Age.org was born.
Obviously I'm not scientifically trained. And so I then said, well, I need researchers that know what they're doing.
And so I contacted them, including David and several others, one of which was Professor Vera Gorbanova.
She is responsible for a lot of what we know about high molecular weight hyaluronic acid, which is now not just even used in supplements, also used in like face creams and everything else and several others. And they were all very helpful. And Professor Gorbanova came on board. She's still our lead researcher to this day.
But the one thing I noticed across all the scientists was they had a problem also, which is they weren't getting enough funding. And when they were getting funding, it was from government grants.
And they didn't accept that aging was worth spending money on because they didn't see it as a disease.
And so they said, well, you can spend on cancer or you can spend on heart disease and it's like, well, aging is the major cofactor for all of those things, so why don't we just fix aging? And the governments didn't want to hear it.
So I said, well, why can't this new entity, do not age.org sit in the middle and consumers can come and have somewhere they can trust and then the money then goes back into the research for the researchers. We very quickly got to our capacity of what we can do research wise.
And so then we had to start working with other external researchers and laboratories. And that's now the vast majority of what we do is, you know, part of my job is deciding who gets the money and what we're working on next.
And so now we've done research on every habitable continent. We've done dozens and dozens of clinical trials that we've supported many, many labs across the globe.
And I'm very fortunate to be friends with a lot of smart people.
d that clinical trial back in:So we put it into layman's terms for people and then give that information out.
Speaker B:I want to ask you about something that you've mentioned right at the beginning. The fact that research is not accessible to all and the Language is very complicated. And that brings me straight up to a very fundamental question.
Do you find that this whole longevity field is a very unequal field and let's say, biased towards people with money, with knowledge, with the know how?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And. And if that is so, what can be done? What should be done to sort of counteract that?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think so. I think a lot of fields are like that, particularly at first.
And what we're trying to do is democratize that and make things more accessible, make them lower cost without cutting quality, and again, make the language more accessible to everyone.
Because not only do you have people that are not scientifically trained, which is most of us, you also then have people that maybe speak Spanish as their first language or German or whatever it may be, and they've got really no chance of understanding those clinical trials and the results of those. So yeah, what we're trying to do is democratize it by making the language simpler and keeping the costs as reasonable as possible.
Because our mission atdonotage.org is to extend healthy lifespan for as many people as possible.
And everybody listens to that and tends to focus on the extend healthy lifespan, which is why we do the research, is why we make things available to people. But the second half is equally as important for as many people as possible. And in order to do that, you have to democratize it.
Speaker B:And just to be very clear for people listening, yes, you do sell supplements, and that's sort of, let's say, the front facing business. But you are not a supplement company as such. You are a research company at heart that sort of funds its research through selling supplements.
Speaker A:Exactly right. So we're a health research organization and all of the profits go back into aging research. And some of that is internal.
And with Professor Gorbanova and trying to make our own breakthroughs. Like we made Cert 6 activator, the first ever natural activator of SIR 2 and 6.
And the vast majority of it goes to external laboratories and other scientists that we work with. And they come to us and say, hey, we've got this idea, maybe you want to part fund it. Maybe we fund the whole thing.
And actually the most common way that we work with laboratories now and scientists is they'll come to us and say, hey, we, we already have the funding. This is our methodology. We just want to use your ingredient.
Because when you're doing a clinical trial, the purity of the ingredient is extremely important. And so they come to us for the purest ingredients. We believe that the clinical trial will advance the science of aging.
And we say, yes, here's your 10 kg of spermidine or whatever it is.
Speaker B:Yeah, I've researched your work and I do know a bit about it. But I have to say you're being very humble when you speak about it.
And I just want you to really explain to, to the listeners what exactly you do, how you do the research, why you do the research, and really what's the ultimate goal, you know, you're trying to. To achieve?
Speaker A:So the ultimate goal is to try and find ways to reverse the aging process in humans.
And the only way we can prove that is through clinical trials, which is not great for shorts on social media, but that's the harsh, long slog of reality. An example I can give is mentioning spermidine. We have just completed a trial in Denmark called Aarhus University.
There's a professor there called Henrik Wiggers who's very well known for his work on both spermidine, metformin and the human heart. Heart attacks still the biggest killer in the world. The trial starts at four years ago. So it's.
You can imagine the investment there and the time it's taken. We took muscle biopsies, we took heart MRIs, muscle MRIs, measured the microbiome, multiple, multiple blood tests.
There's a hell of a lot gone into it across more than 200 participants. And all of those participants were older adults that had heart issues. And so that's now completed.
But then again, it takes another three or four months to organize the data and then have the results. So we don't know the results yet.
Obviously we're hopeful, but working with Professor Henrik Wiggers has been fantastic because obviously he's a leader in his field. And I think that just goes some way to show the complexity that's involved with all of these things.
Because some people might receive an email from us saying, hey, this trial is complete, here's what it showed. But behind that is four and a half years of hard work, many millions of dollars, and, you know, many real human patients.
Speaker B:Tell me more about the structure of do not age. Who do you approach to do your research and why? And who do you take on the ride with you?
And the reason why I really want you to explain that is because I think it's so different to any other structure that I've seen.
I just know either research companies, that's what they do, straight up, they do research and that's it, or you have the universities, the commercial side, you have the academia side, and I think you sort of sit in the middle a Little bit, yeah.
Speaker A:Well, I think the whole thing has been developed with sustainability in mind.
So because we're self funding, it means that we can take on research projects that are four years, 10 years, 20 years long, because we're not reliant on grants or tax money or raising money from investors or anything like that. We are self sustaining.
So we essentially help our members and our members therefore keep paying us for the supplements and information and things like that. And so it's self fulfilling prophecy, if you like, in terms of the structure of how we operate.
In the early days, once we had Vera on board and a few others, it was very easy because all the funds went there. And then once we had more profit than we could utilize in our own research, we then had to go out and look for lab partners.
But that's many years ago now. Now we have the reputation within the industry. It's inbound. So researchers will come to us.
I want to use your product, I want some, you know, funding, and it might just be $50,000 here for a small trial, or it might be $500,000 for a much larger trial and anywhere in between. So now a lot of it is inbound. We don't tend to go out looking for it anymore.
And if we do, then, you know, Professor Gorbanova is a good friend to have because obviously she has a very, very good reputation in the industry. We're just starting a new trial with Professor Steve Horvath, who basically invented the biological age clock.
And again, that introduction was made by Vera, which makes life a lot easier for me.
Speaker B:Either way. He was saying, go in and invent a new clock. Exactly, exactly 25 years ago, however many years ago he did that. Why is there nothing new on the market?
Speaker A:Exactly. And so we're using, with Bobby Brook, the Clock foundation clock, which Steve recommended.
So I assumed we'd use the Horvath clock and he said, no, we use this one instead. And so that's underway at the moment, now clinical trial, and that's using this product.
Speaker B:It's one thing doing research of your own that you fund with your own money, but I think it's the right thing to do to support other researchers.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You said the researchers come to you. How did they find you? How do they. Is there a way to apply and,.
Speaker A:You know, run us through the section on the website where they can apply, but sometimes it might be a LinkedIn message to me or via Veer or something like that. But I think over time we've developed the reputation within the industry. We've supported many people.
We support ARD last year and some travel grants for young PhDs as well as people at the top of the pyramid, as it were, with like Vera and Professor Horvath Andre.
So you are now as well Professor Andrea Meyer, who runs the NUS in Singapore, which is obviously a huge deal, doing a human trial with her as well at the moment. And so we deal with all levels. We've actually just funded the Basra, which is the British Society for Research on Aging.
Speaker B:Professor Weinkov was a guest on my podcast.
Speaker A:There you go. So, yeah, fantastic guy, Professor Weinkov. He's kindly invited me to the meeting in September, so I'll be there as well.
And we supported 27 different students and different trials there. So we're very proud of that. That's a brand new one from this year. And so, yeah, then there's, there's all over the world that we do it.
We've done it in New Zealand. We're. We supported a rapamycin study. So it's not all supplements. Rapamycin is obviously off label. Sirolimus.
The results have just come in for that actually. And interestingly, it did not have the positive effects that were expected or theorized, which is interesting.
And that's part of science, you know, the vast majority of time it's a failure. And you have to go, okay, that theory's not right. Back to the drawing board. Did we get the dose right?
Is it just that we shouldn't be suppressing our immune system? Who knows? I personally have never taken rapamycin and I don't think I plan to. I think so far it seems like a good decision.
But my point is that we helped to fund that study because if we think something will advance the science of aging, then we'll help to fund it.
Once I realized that basically the only thing stopping a faster progression of solving aging completely was money, I then spent a number of years trying to get supplement companies to change their model. So I don't know if people know, but the average supplement company spends more than 50% of revenue.
It's about 55% on marketing, which I think is insanity. But anyway. And the supplement industry is a hundred billion or something every year.
Now if we just get a slice of that into research, we'd be able to solve aging a lot faster. And so I tried to get other companies to change how they operated and they were not budging.
So then we realized, okay, we're not going to be able to do that.
Let's just educate the consumers Instead, and we're giving 100% of our profits to research and grow do not age so that it's helping more people and ultimately importantly, getting more money into the research so that we can solve aging.
Speaker B:What do you think is the biggest problem within the supplement field or within this whole field of. Of longevity? You know, there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of, as you said, marketing, and there's a lot of unfounded claims.
Speaker A:Yeah. So I think the biggest problem by far and away is that 99.9% of products on the market are not clinically proven.
They've grabbed this term science backed. Now, to the normal man or woman on the street, if you see science backed and you see clinically proven, you can kind of think they're the same thing.
It's not. They're not the same thing. I can say this is science back to do X when it's a very, very weak link.
But if something's clinically proven, that means they have to have done a real clinical trial in real humans and published that and everyone could see the results. That's the difference between clinically proven, science backed. So you'll see science backed, research led, all these terms that really mean nothing.
And so the wool is being pulled over the consumer's eyes, in my opinion. And so, yeah, I think the biggest problem is that most things are just not clinically proven. And so we just don't know if they work or not.
Speaker B:So what can the consumer do other than literally buy, do not age products?
Speaker A:Buy stuff that's clinically proven. You know, we're not the only supplement in the world that's been clinically proven, but we are one of them.
And so I would look out for that and just ask. Even if it says clinically proven, just ask to see the study. That's all. Because most of the time you'll see marketing fluff and language instead.
Just ask them to see the study. Say, how many people was it on? When did you do it? How long was it across? What did you measure? How did you measure it?
Speaker B:You know, okay, but realistically, very few people will do that.
Speaker A:They will, but unfortunately that's. That's the only full solution. Or just find good research organizations that.
Speaker B:You can trust so not to be negative about it. But really there is no answer to it. There's no way to stop it. And it's just the consumer has to be more educated.
Speaker A:Yeah, the only way to stop it is consumer education, which is why I do podcasts and things to try and just get people to understand. I mean, I think if people knew half of what I know about like the supplement industry, a whole, they would be horrified.
And I was when I first started in it, you know, seven odd years ago, things that they're allowed to put in, excipients, fillers, and that's just what they're allowed legally.
And then when you look at the fact that most of the ones we've tested don't contain even what they say they contain on the label and which is obviously not legal, but it happens more than 50% of the time and that includes the ones that are sold in your supermarket and all that.
And people have this kind of trust thing of oh yeah, but if I get it from Walmart or Tesco's or whatever it is, wherever you live, then it must be fine. That's not the case. What can we do about it? It's all consumer education, I'm afraid, which is the difficult long winded answer.
Because most people don't want to know. Most people are busy and they say, tell me what to take and I'll take it.
And so we're trying to do that at the moment is meet people where they're at and that's, that's what this product is. But we can, we can dive into that a bit later if you want.
Speaker B:So let's say I'm a consumer, I want to spend my money well, I want to do something for my health, I do want to find out about what research has been done and all that. I come to your website and how can I be sure that's what you're claiming is correct?
I know you're doing the research, but so many other websites too say they've done research. As a consumer who wants to find out, how can they be sure?
Speaker A:Again they have to ask to see the research because even the ones that are claiming they've done it, oftentimes what they'll also do is there's a gray area where they could say clinically proven because they did a survey and it's like that's not, that's not a real clinical measure. And so yeah, I think asking to see the research, which again, most people won't do, but they should, they definitely should, in my opinion.
And even if they can't understand it, they can't read it to say, look, how many people was it done on? What are the outcomes, what were the measurements you measured and how did you measure them? Because that's very important as well.
So for example, we've Just completed one on this, which is done on NAD levels. And that was led by a company called Life Lab over in Lithuania.
They took blood draws to measure the NAD levels in the plasma, took it at day zero, then again I think in the middle at day 15, then again at day 30. So it was a 30 day trial using this exact product to see what's the difference in NAD levels. They started here and they finished here.
Half of them took placebo. They didn't know they were taking placebo. And the researchers at Life Lab also didn't know who was on placebo and not, which is double blind.
And so those little pieces of education and knowledge for a consumer I think are really important just to understand the basics of how good clinical science is done.
Speaker B:You until very recently were CEO of Do Not Age.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker B:You've changed your position in the company a little bit. You are now clinical research advisor.
Speaker A:That's right, yeah. So very well done.
Speaker B:Is that so that you can really see where the money goes, that you invest in research or why did you pivot?
Speaker A:I think a couple of reasons. First of all, I wasn't the best CEO in the world.
I think I'm good at the research product side, but in terms of managing people, I wasn't my best strength. And I would just do 12 hour days and say, come on everyone with solving aging, this is not solved yet, let's go.
And sometimes people need a little bit of kindness that maybe I didn't have or always pushed to the side because I was too focused on solving aging. And so long story short, we got an experienced CEO and who can. And now everybody's very happy, which is great.
And it lets me focus on the bit that I actually care about, which is the research. And also at the same time the role kind of opened up because as we were doing more and more and more research, it needs someone there full time.
And so my main job really is to be the bridge between the scientists, the researchers that we work with all around the world and the consumers and the members.
Speaker B:And do you think you are actually so good at this is because you are not from within the field originally. You are consumer. You're asking the questions. You know any.
Speaker A:I think that gives me an edge. Yes. Because I say I remember that feeling. I remember trying to read the study and just feeling like an idiot.
And I also remember having a ton of questions and nobody to ask them to. And so now we have a whole team. We had a quick chat with my CEO before we came here. He has Just got off the call.
With three new PhDs we're taking on to just be on the phones all day. And so if people want to reach out and ask for a call, we'll ring them.
One of those guys will ring them and be able to answer any questions they've got. In the past, it was fully just focused on the research, and that's still my position.
But from the consumer side, we're now also trying to make the website a bit friendlier, trying to make sure we've got people on the phones that can answer your questions. And again, it's about meeting people where they're at.
Speaker B:I think it's very important because it's one thing you in house knowing what you're doing and what you're good at.
But I think part of giving more credibility to this whole longevity field is educating the public and sort of being open to it and answering questions and all that. How do you Decide if a PhD student calls you or research company calls you, what you take on when you hear it first?
I mean, obviously the credibility and the feasibility comes into it, but I'm sure you get lots of, lots of great ideas offered, which are the ones that you sort of get excited about.
Speaker A:Well, there's a mixture. The answer is a mixture of a lot of things. First of all, do we actually think it's going to move the field forward?
Are we going to learn anything from this study? Secondly, we do try and look at credibility. Like if they're very, very early, then it's difficult because they don't have any studies yet.
And so maybe we would consider those people, but with a lower budget. And then of course, there's always, I ask my network.
So the one cool thing about researchers in longevity is even the ones that can't work with us directly because they're busy or they have competing contracts or whatever, they'll still help on the side, you know, just drop your text and. And so sometimes, depending on whose field of expertise it's in, I'll message them.
If it's, you know, hyaluronic acid or sirtuins, then I'll speak to Vera. If it's nad, there's a few blogs you for that.
If it's biological age, we now, you know, it's all about having the network to speak to all these different people and ask for their advice, basically. And then obviously the final decision will, will come down to then budget.
Do we still have $3 million left this year to spend or do we only have 500,000? We can help A lot more researchers when we have the 3 million left and when we have the 500,000.
So there's a lot of things that go into it and I think, without meaning to give you a pun, it's more of an art than a science.
Speaker B:Give us some exciting things we can look forward to in the research world.
Speaker A:Okay, so I've brought some paper so I don't mess it up. We have a trial looking at the new do not age sachets, which is a one a day sachet on people with moderate Crohn's disease.
So we theorize that it can really help in terms of their quality of life. Again, of course, placebo randomized, controlled trial. And that one's going to be at the University of Hertfordshire.
This one might take a while because when you're dealing with a sort of small section of the public, it takes a long time to get people signed up. And you know, you can't just, if you're just doing it in healthy older adults, you can.
ct results for that one until:There is the effect of do not age dog pure berberine on cardio, metabolic and other health related outcomes. Again, very excited about this one. We're going to be looking at the heart.
This one is the University of Central Lancashire with Dr. Sinclair leading that one. Of course, they're all placebo controlled and double blind.
We're trying to make sure that we stick to the gold standard and we'll be looking at triglycerides, lipids, blood pressure, heart rate, all the standard stuff, body composition as well, and then also sleep and tracking their sleep and wellbeing on the side as well. So we try and make sure that everything we do is as comprehensive as it can be without breaking the budget unnecessarily.
Speaker B:Talking about not breaking the budget unnecessarily. I guess there are two types of consumers that come to you. One that are already aware of what it takes to be healthy.
They're already more or less well versed in the supplement field.
And then you have the consumer that doesn't know anything that just wakes up and says, oh my goodness, you know, I'm whatever, 40, 50, 60, you know, better do something for myself.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:How do you cater to these two different type of consumers? And also, and this again comes into a little bit the inequality maybe financially. Where do you think people should settle at financially?
As in, do you think they should spend most of their money on supplements or what do you suggest to people coming to you?
Speaker A:Well, I think it depends on the person. Right. And obviously you mentioned those kind of two buckets there, but in reality there's 50 sub buckets.
And I think what we try and do is give people the best general advice we can in terms of sleep is a huge one that we find is undervalued because I don't think people understand the way I see aging is an accumulation of damage. And the reason why we don't look 40 when we're 20 is because when you're 20, your body's actually very good at repairing the dam.
Because just by being alive and surviving and breathing and eating, you're damaging your body. But when you're young, your body can repair that damage very well. And as you get older, its ability to do that decreases.
And sleep is when your body does most of its repair work. So theoretically sleep is extremely important. I think the data shows that out as well.
And because we live looking at screens all day every day, I think that affects people's sleeping pattern. And again, I just think it's undervalued in terms of how much having a sleeping routine helps. And I'm guilty of this as well. Always traveling.
And I will sometimes use crutches like NMN to reset my circadian rhythm and things like that. But I think for most people that aren't traveling all the time, try and prioritize your sleep, Try and get into a sleep routine.
The way I try and do it, if I do have some time in one place is I'll set a time to go to bed. So it's not just an alarm to wake up, it's also an alarm to go to sleep. Say, right, this is bedtime. Whatever's happening, you can do it tomorrow.
And it's very difficult in the modern life to do that, but it is very important. And again, I think undervalued and to some degree it doesn't cost anything. So again, equality wise, it helps everybody.
Spending on food, it's easy to say to do it, but also sometimes difficult. And I think the best advice, there's lots of different diets you can do, but the best advice is just to stick to whole foods.
Whatever diet you prefer is fine, but just no processed foods. Not even they say ultra processed is bad, but I think any kind of processing is bad. And I think whole foods are the way to go in terms of diet.
And then we have water consumption, which again is relatively low cost. And then it comes to your supplements and moving your body exercise. So again, we're trying to meet people where they're at.
We can tell when somebody comes to us where they're at on this scale. And a lot of people are already optimized in lots of ways. And they're like, right, give me the best of the best of the supplements.
And some people come to us and they'll say, yeah, I don't sleep, I eat late. I mean, takeaways, you know, I've not been to the gym in five years.
And it's like, okay, so you've got some groundwork to do before you start trying to optimize.
Speaker B:And sometimes people don't know where they're at. Do you do any testing? Do you recommend testing?
Speaker A:No. So we used to. We used to do testing. And the problem is that the field moves fast, just as it does in. In all science.
And so how accurate are the biological age tests? We're always trying to use the most accurate one. And they're actually great for clinical trials because it's not really about the number.
That's like a headline for people to understand. I mean, my biological age was 44 when I was in my late 20s. It's now 26, and I'm almost 40. So that's good.
But the reality is, what's behind that number, which is biomarker readings? Most people don't want to say, okay, what's your HPA1C? What's your this? What's your this? They just.
They just see the number, and it's just an easier way to track it. And so not everybody wants to do testing. Everybody can afford testing because testing itself is way more expensive than the supplements.
This is why the clinical trials help, because they can say, well, I'm also a human that's between 30 and 50 years old, just like this was tested on over three months. So I can assume that I will also reverse my biological age, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker B:Okay, so that's interesting. So you think supplements can help anyone at any stage in their life?
Speaker A:Absolutely, absolutely. Especially the right supplements. So when you look at, like, the magnesium levels in our soil, yeah, it's down around 80% from 50, 60 years ago.
And so it's no wonder everybody's deficient.
And there's lots of macro ways of dealing with that, which I know I certainly don't have the power to change, but I think that what you do have the power to do is increase what you're putting into your body.
Speaker B:So I was going to ask you what is the best supplement to start with, but I think that question answered itself because you told me you have this new one a day sachet with various wonderful supplements all mixed in that's just come out. Why did you feel a need to put that on the market?
Speaker A:Well, there's multiple reasons. I've been using this for over a year now. It's been in production and trial and error and research for over two years.
reason we did it was back in:We knew that the products we were providing worked very, very well and were having amazing impact on millions of people around the world. Great stuff. But 30% of people that came and bought from us bought once and didn't buy again.
And so I'm being told by industry standards, that's very good. But in my head I'm saying, well, there's 30% of people that are doing it wrong. So what's going on?
And so we rang them individually painstakingly and said, hey, what's up? And the vast majority of them, more than two thirds, said, oh, yeah, that box of pills, yeah, I put it in my cupboard, I just didn't take it.
So obviously they're not going to keep buying and using. If they're not using it, we can make the best product in the world. If you don't use it, it's not going to do anything for you.
So we were like, wow, didn't even see that coming. So let's make something again, meet people where they're at. Let's make something that has adherence built in so that people don't forget to take it.
It's convenient because there's a few other people as well that said, oh, yeah, but I need to take like 10 different things. And that seems like a lot. And so psychologically, this is great because it's just one thing.
Even though it's got it all in it, psychologically it helps. And so, first of all, make sure it worked. Was there any contraindications? Is there anything we can't include?
So, for example, berberine, can't put that in there because it clashes with things, doesn't work. And the timing of the day when you take berberine is important. So it's got 15 different things in it.
This is the result of a hell of a lot of research and work. When you first receive it, you get a shaker with it, you get a box for life. So that's something that sits on your kitchen counter.
Looks very sleek, very nice. You've seen one earlier today.
And people can open up the pouch, put the sachets into the box for life, and then it reminds them every day, oh, yeah, I need to take that, pull the sachet into the, shake up a bit of water, shake it up, drink it less than a minute and you're done. So everyone's got time for that. So. So it's convenient and people won't forget to take it.
And the only way you see results is by being consistent with something. And so we've built consistency into this product.
And then in terms of clinical trials, we did a load of testing before to get the formula right and that we now have two clinical trials that are completed, which, again, people can read on the website if they wish. And there's four more currently underway, one of which is with Professor Steve Horber on the biological age.
We have the one I mentioned earlier, which is looking at Crohn's disease and basically digestive issues, and we also have one for perimenopause as well, because we believe that it's going to be really, really good for those in menopause or perimenopause. And, yeah, there's going to be a lot more trials ongoing. And some of these just take a lot longer.
You know, the biological age one, it's obviously over a longer period of time, and so the nature of time means that those ones aren't completed yet.
Speaker B:Your whole idea is to help society as a whole, to live longer, to live better. And all this, you fund research. Are you looking to support the consumer in taking the supplements?
Speaker A:So, yes. So essentially, if you buy all the ingredients of this separately, it comes to just over $600. This is on the market at $200. So it's a huge saving.
And we can do that for a number of reasons. One, because we believe it's going to reach many, many more people.
And two, because we don't use, like, fillers, excipients, things that supplement companies might use. So when we put something into a capsule, it's actually a very painstaking, expensive process for us because we don't make it easy for ourselves.
And so obviously, with this, there's no capsules, and so there's a huge savings to be made there, which we passed on to the consumer.
Not only is it only $200, but the nature of getting people on board and wanting to help more people means that we've made it so that if you share this with your friends. Once you get to three people, it's completely free forever. So we cannot make it any cheaper.
Speaker B:Than free in the future. You are looking to maybe support the people that, never mind not have $200, but maybe not have $20.
Speaker A:Absolutely. And that is, that is exactly what we're doing.
I also have personally, separate from, from do not aged Org, I have a foundation, the Alan Graves foundation, which I also run. And so, yeah, I'm all about giving back and helping people. It's the thing that makes me feel the best.
So again, we go back to my youth when I was doing a lot of selfish and silly things. Ultimately, the reason I changed was I just didn't feel good about myself.
And the way for me to feel good about myself is when I give back and when I do the things through my charity or do things that help the world's health with do not age, that's what makes me feel good about myself. And so that's always the focus for me.
So the short answer is, yes, we will be giving back, but we need to get this product to a certain size first so that it can pay for itself.
Speaker B:No, no, absolutely, I get that. But I do think it's very important to seeing that the product, you know, you produce actually works and has a direct benefit.
Speaker A:Exact, exactly.
Speaker B:I do think it's very important to get this product to the people I know, you know, through your foundation.
You know, the Alan Graves foundation, you know, you give back to communities and all that, but this is sort of a separate entity to actually helping people feel better physically, not just mentally, but physically. Because if you're not physically well and you can't get out of bed, you're whatever.
Speaker A:The two tend to be linked. What we find is when, when we get people back to their physical best, their mental health improves anyway because they feel better.
Does that make sense?
Speaker B:Absolutely. That's, that's what I was getting at. So, yes, I'm going to hold you to it. Then in a couple of years you.
Speaker A:Can, you can, you'll have to have me back on.
Speaker B:Oh, I will, I will check up on that.
But no, I, I, I think that's, that's a very important idea and strategy that, yes, you're funding research and yes, you're pushing the field forward from that aspect, but that's for the moment at least, not affordable to all people. And longevity still is for the rich.
Speaker A:Yeah, so I think so. And luckily, the price of everything comes down over time.
And so, you know, when you look at These gene therapies and some of the peptides and all these things. We've already seen the price start to come down. I mean we were very proud. Obviously NMN is very popular supplement, it's our second most popular.
You know, when we first came into the market, as it were, we reduce the price by more than half because again when we look at how to price things for the consumer, it's not what a traditional company would do, which is basically how much can we get away with selling this for. We go, here's our cost, here's the shipping and things like that. And then we need a bit for the research, here's how much it's going to be.
And so because of the nature of how much NMM was inflated price wise in the market, we just naturally cut it by more than half. So a lot of the supplement companies don't like us but that's just what we're going to do and we're always going to stick to it.
And on the flip side with Fissetin or Fisetin which is a strong senolytic, when we first entered the market with that product we were actually a lot more expensive than most others. And the reason is because we don't start with price, we end with price and we start with how much do we need in here?
What's the right dosage to be effective? And then from there it worked out that ours was 400 milligrams per capsule.
And the vast majority of supplement companies using 50mg just so they could say hey, we've got fissure in this but that's not actually going to do what you need it to do.
And so I think it's $65, something like that, which sounds expensive but when you compare it to something that's $40, that's got eight times less fissetin in it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker B:Sure. What do you think the longevity field, the longevity market as such gets wrong?
Speaker A:At the moment I still think there's too much hype.
There's a lot of the old school researchers which I have a lot of respect for and some of them are like my good friends, but they are used to, in order to get funding saying hyperbolic things and we're going to have everything sold within five years and all this kind of stuff. I won't name names but I think people in the, in the industry probably know who they are.
Whilst I think people like Brian Johnson are a net positive because he's bringing more education, knowledge to the fact that we can reverse aging. I also think that it's off putting for the normal person when they can get 95% of the results that he has by taking something like this.
And yet the headline is always $2 million a year is what he spends. That's true, but that's because he's. He has the money and he's just trying these things.
He's using himself as a guinea pig, which is fine, but it's just.
I wish that the media would tell the truth of the story, which is that most people can get a lot of benefits right now by optimizing their sleep, getting out of breath once a day, taking the right things.
Speaker B:So what do you think the longevity field is getting?
Speaker A:Right, I think.
And again, I don't know if this is because I'm in the position I'm in, but I believe that at least from a researcher perspective, we understand that we just need more money into research. That's the only way it gets solved. So I think we're getting that right.
It's just there's not enough money going into it, which is why we do what we do.
It might be a blurred vision because I'm involved in it every day, but I think most people in the longevity field understand that the only way that we solve aging is with more research. The only way we have more research is by funding it.
Speaker B:Do you think there's not more money in the longevity field because there are no quick results and it's not quite as sort of as sexy as saying, oh, you know, we'll cure cancer because we all live. Maybe it's a luxury to want to live longer. I don't see it as a luxury.
Speaker A:But if you go and speak to the average person on the street, they still very much look at you like you've got two heads if you tell them you can reverse aging. So, you know, most people are still way behind on this. And so, yeah, I think that's a big part of it as well.
Whereas if you say you can cure cancer, they'll go, yeah, we haven't found it yet. But there is a way to do it. And it's like, well, one causes the other.
Speaker B:So seeing that you've already lived a few different lives, you had a very. A wild youth, shall we say?
Speaker A:I did.
Speaker B:And then you've in your early 30s, decided to become a professional boxer.
Speaker A:I did.
Speaker B:Very successful one. And also now you are running a very successful research company. Seeing that you're going to live for a long, long, long time.
What else do you See ahead on your future.
Speaker A:I think I would like to continue helping people in whatever form that comes in. I'd love to be able to grow my foundation. That makes me feel the best, I think.
But I think where I've had the most impact is obviously with do not age.org and bringing so many more people into the affordability bracket for longevity, which I'm quite proud of. And so, yeah, I think maybe we'll solve aging within 10 years. Maybe it'll take 50 years. And so I'm in this until. Until that day, basically.
Speaker B:And you brought down the cost for the supplements and all that. When you work with it, do you feel that it's a product that is not for everyone yet? And how do you feel about that?
Speaker A:It just for me, it depends on age. And obviously how you're aging on the inside is slightly different. So for example, for me at 27, 28, I needed help because of how I treated my body.
But I think the average person, probably mid-30s, I would probably say, and everybody above that, just purely by being alive, you've caused yourself enough damage. We need to fix it. And I think as well, it's about getting over that thing in people's heads.
Like now we have, you know, people don't die from polio because we have a vaccine for it.
And so in the future we'll have the same with aging and everybody in that world will go, God, you guys just accepted getting old and decrepit and being in pain every day. So, yeah, I think it's going to be as normal as that.
Speaker B:But where do you find is the biggest bottleneck within the field? Is it government policy or are the researchers not, you know, enough out there in the real world?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think most of the best researchers I know wouldn't do well being public facing anyway. It tends to be a big connection between that.
The best researchers I know are certainly not, you know, made for camera and they don't want to be on camera, to be honest. But in terms of the government funding bottleneck, do I think that is the biggest unlock? Yes. Do I think that will happen? No. So I don't focus on it.
There was a meet recently, I think, where a lot of people in the longevity field around the world, in various different cities did some kind of protest to say, you know, fund aging research and that's great, it's better than doing nothing. But I also think it's futile. I can't see governments doing it, which is why we need to have organizations and companies doing it ourselves.
Because when was the last time the government did something that was positive for the people?
Speaker B:You're certainly very humble with what you do, how you do it, why you do it. You were telling me before we started recording, you're organizing a conference.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Tell us a bit more about that, who it's for and why.
Speaker A:And yeah, so we were with partners because we don't have, like a marketing team or arm.
And so in order to talk about the things that we do, we work with independent people who might have a blog or an Instagram channel or a YouTube channel or whatever it is.
And so the cool thing about that is we just say, look, we didn't give you the information, we give you the science, you say what you want about it, and we bring them all together once a year. And last year was in New York, this year's in London.
And all of the professors and researchers that we work with, the ones that are available, will fly in. We'll fly them in and basically talk through all of the research they've done that's been funded by Dune Age.
And sometimes that's using our ingredients, sometimes it's the rapamycin trial. And, you know, there's a blood plasma transfusion trial that we've funded in Brazil, which is pigs and rats.
And so there's lots of different exciting scientific breakthroughs that are discussed by the top minds in the longevity field. And so, yeah, it's a really, really cool couple of days. And obviously you get to spend it.
And then after the speeches are done, it's about mingling with those professors and scientists and asking them any questions you've got. So it's a really good thing.
I did the whole longevity conference circuit, if you like, you know, and every single one is like ticketed, and they're charging for it. They have sponsors, they have advertising, and that's fine, that's their model. But I found two things.
One, it's not very accessible, and two, I saw all the same people. And I'm like, I'm at this one in Madrid, I'm at this one in Boston, I'm at this one in Denmark, and it's all the same people at each one.
What's the point? And so we decided to do something different. Invite people that maybe aren't from the field and open Longevity up to new people. And completely free.
No sponsors, no, none of that. Just talk about the science.
And then after all of the researchers are done, I come on and give like a five minute layman's terms of what they've been Talking about, essentially. So, yeah.
Speaker B:And I think also these other longevity events, not all of them, of course, but you know, a number of them because they're being paid for by pharmaceutical companies or whatever. One doesn't know how credible they necessarily are. So going back to the conference that you organize, who is it for? Who can attend?
Speaker A:Yeah, so we have a partner team. It's for Do Not Age partners. And again, that's applied for through the website.
And so we have a whole team of guys and gals that will basically coach people and help them and give them as much help and advice as they want or don't. And some of them want their handhold in the hallway and some of them just say, no, give me the information, I'll sort it.
No problem either way for those guys. And so anyone that is a Do Not Age partner gets invited. And I'm sure I can get you an invite too.
Speaker B:That's what I was aiming for, but don't do it. But seriously, again, let me dig a bit further because I think you're being too humble about that. It is for free.
You get all the sort of unbiased information because that's, I guess, what Do Not Age is all about. It's sort of to give you the core facts of, you know, what work and what doesn't work.
Speaker A:Exactly. And even if we did want to be biased, good luck getting scientists and researchers to say anything that's not the exact right thing.
Like you'd have no chance if someone tried, they'd have no chance. Like real, genuine scientists that care about their reputation and the truth of the science.
They're going to stick to exactly what the science showed them, which is the right thing.
Speaker B:So this conference is really open to anybody within the longevity field, be it a researcher, be it, you know, somebody who might want to invest, be it a consumer.
Speaker A:Exactly. That's right. That's right. They just have to contact us to get on the list. It's completely free.
So yeah, do not age.org somewhere on there there'll be a. I'm not very good with the website stuff.
Speaker B:We'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker A:Yes. Yeah, there'll be link to everything.
Speaker B:But again, I think that's a real contribution to the longevity field. And I personally, I think that is the right way forward. You know, everybody has to make money or find the money to move forward.
But even the money within the research is often very limited because when you get money given from whoever, whether it's an organization, an institution or a private person, there's often some points attached to it. You know, stay within these lines. Don't tell us if this and this and this is not working or, you know, whatever there is.
Speaker A:Exactly. Right. And what we need is unbiased, which is why we created the conference and again make it accessible. That's why it's completely free.
And Professor Weinkove will also be talking at that conference.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think the longevity field definitely needs reputable events that it can rely on to distribute facts and not hype or fiction, which I think is a big problem within the longevity field. Also making the consumer feel very insecure about what they need or don't need.
Because what you very rightly said is the majority of longevity protocols are for free. It's, you know, sleeping, you know, eating right, moving all these things.
Speaker A:But people can't make money off of that. And so they just say essentially you just need this cream or whatever.
Speaker B:I mean, saying that, you know, supplements and paid for add ons do have their place, but it's very hard to sort of cut through the noise and see what is really beneficial and what is based on facts rather than.
Speaker A:Exactly. And this is, and this is why we prioritize clinical trials. Right.
Because then you can say, well, we took 50 people this age with this problem or, or without a problem, just healthy people. We gave them this. Here was before, here was after, here's the half the placebo. They didn't have any effect. The ones taking the real thing did.
That's why we need more clinical trials. And the problem with clinical trials, they're not sexy, they're very slow, very laborious, they're very expensive.
So nobody wants to do them, so we'll do them.
Speaker B:What excites you personally in the longevity feel at the moment, sort of in the short term and also in the, in the long term, 10, 20 years down the line.
Speaker A:I think in the short term I would probably have to be biased and say this, this is do not age, sashay. Bring so many more people into the affordability bracket and it's going to stop those 30% of people that just, oh, I forgot to take it.
Oh, I'm too busy. Oh, I don't want to. It's easy now. So very excited about that. And to see the health impact that has on, on millions of people around the world.
In terms of long term, I'm excited about epigenetic reprogramming using the Yamanaka factors. I think that has legs. I really think that has legs. And it looks like I was right about rapamycin maybe not having legs.
So hopefully I'm right about the Yamanaka factors. Reprogramming people epigenetically, I mean, that's the main reason why everybody should right now be trying to be as healthy as they can.
Because once that comes in, I believe, you know, you go to your doctor once a year and basically get a reset. I mean, that would be incredible. But just to be clear, we're very far away from that right now. It's just. It's very promising.
It's very, very promising.
Speaker B:Talking of reprogramming, I know you're very big on cert 6. Tell us a bit more about that.
Speaker A:I think the reason Certs X activator is the number one selling product at the moment is because of its power and how people feel it when they take it. But if we go a bit more into the science, thesatuan's family of proteins that do the repair work in your body, there's seven of them.
Cert 1, cert 2, all the way to cert 7. And cert 6 is the one most closely related to longevity. It's what we see when we tested centenarians and supercentenarians that were really healthy.
So in body and mind, the thing they had in common was high levels of Cert 6 activity. So then the theory is, cause that was mostly genetic.
How can we take people that don't have that high level of Cert 6 activity naturally and activate their Cert 6? And so that is what started the research. And I'm taking the credit for this. We just funded it.
Professor Gorbanova did all the hard work, obviously, and her team in the lab. And we had a few candidates, things like cyanidin and a few others that just didn't quite work.
And then we had a specific type of fucoiden, which again is very difficult because some fucoidans don't do anything. Most fucoidans don't do anything to SIRT 6, some inhibit cert 6 and then there are a few that actually activate SIRT 6.
And so that's why every batch has to be then tested.
Not just the normal third party testing and through everything gmp, but also sent to Professor Gorbanova's lab where they test for Cert 6 activity specifically. And that is how we create the batch of Cert 6 activator. And so yeah, again, just made such a huge impact on so many people's lives.
And it Certs Xactivator that we've done a few clinical trials on it Already. But there's a big one looking at human biological age, which is the one that Professor Andrea Meyer is doing and her team at NUS in Singapore.
So we're working closely with them with Professor Gorbanova. Certes activator in healthy older humans and l' Oreal have also joined us on that as well.
They're going to be doing, looking at people's faces to see about if there's any reduction in the wrinkles and things like that as well. So. And I think they're looking at hair health as well. So they basically said, can we join onto your trial?
It gives you extra results, it doesn't cost you anything. So we said, yeah, sure, no problem.
Speaker B:That's fantastic. Tell us a little bit more about how all these different fields converge within.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think from l' Oreal's perspective, obviously they want to commercialize a product which is fine, and they obviously see legs insert six activator. And we have a lot of people that have reported to us, oh, I feel my skin looks better, my hair looks better. We don't have any clinical data on it.
And so we're testing these people for biological age anyway. We're looking at the blood, the biomarkers. So if we can also test the how their skin looks and how that, how healthy their hair is, why not?
Again, it's one of those things that doesn't cost us anything, but it does give us extra end points.
And ultimately, if you get healthier on the inside, which is what our products do, then eventually you'll also get healthier on the outside and then look healthier and get rid of the wrinkles and all that jazz.
Speaker B:I love that because this is sort of the real world impact and I think that's really important.
It's one thing, you know, being the best researcher in your little lab and knowing the fantastic results, but I think it's very important to show real world.
Speaker A:Functionality and it will probably help when it comes to us talking about the trial as well, because you can then show an image and go, look, this person was at the start, this person's at the end. And you can see that the wrinkle depth has decreased or whatever it may be. And so, yeah, I think, I think it's a good part of the trial.
Speaker B:Wow, that's really exciting. I always knew that the Cert 6 is an important factor, but now that it becomes real world applicable is amazing.
Speaker A:I think one of the things that really lit me up was when I saw like Professor Eric or Benova does not get excited easily. She just goes, this is the data, this is. And when we first had the mouse data from using Cert 6 activator in the mice, and they all had.
I mean, the trial lasted so much longer than we thought it was going to, because the mice taken cert 6 would just live so long and they were so healthy and had less incidents of cancer and all sorts of cool things. And so Vera was so excited. She's like, we gotta get this in humans. And. And obviously we've now got hundreds of thousands of people taking it.
It's our most popular product. And so because of that, we can already see from the biological age data from those people that it works well.
But doing it in a natural clinical setting is what we're doing now in Singapore.
Speaker B:Talking of clinical settings, do you not think that it should become standard on the NHS or whatever local government healthcare system? You have to give those supplements to the general public.
Speaker A:You know, I do, but I'm also a realist, you know, I mean, the pharmaceutical companies wouldn't let that happen. For a start. If you look at America, the FDA's budget is about 75% of that comes from pharmaceutical donors.
So you're fighting a people that can lobby governments at 100x scale than you ever could. And so whilst it would be ideal in a perfect world, I can't see it's going to happen.
I prefer to be a realist and say, right, what can we control and what can we help? And that's why we have the research organization.
Speaker B:I thought you'd be more, you know, enthusiastic about that idea. You're too much of a realist here, unfortunately.
Speaker A:So. My father is involved in politics here in the uk, so I've known for many years how corrupt it all is.
They all hate him and they all give it because he, he sort of stands up for like the, the normal man, the normal person, and calls them out on their corruption. And so he often gets a lot of abuse. More importantly than all of that, nothing really ever gets done, nothing ever really changes meaningfully.
So that's why I choose to go this route.
Speaker B:But isn't that crazy? Because the whole point of the NHS or, you know, local health care is to help people stay healthy and it's also in their own interest.
You know, instead of dealing with diseases, preventative care would be so much easier and cheaper.
Speaker A:But the problem with the government is the people making the decisions are getting paid by taxpayer money. So it's not a business. I mean, if the government was a business, they'd go out of business every year. Right.
They just go into more and more debt and say, oh, we'll leave it for someone else in the future. And so all those MPs, or whoever it is, are getting paid by the taxpayer. They know they're going to get paid.
They also know, you know, you can't prove this, but I think there's some brown envelopes coming from the lobbyists that will. For example, pharmaceutical companies, they don't want people to be healthy, they want people to stay sick so they can still use all the things.
And so the MPs are also incentivized to look after those people because once they've finished being an mp, then they get the next job, which instead of a hundred grand a year, is a million a year. You know, whether that. It's not just health, it's also like oil and gas and all these other things as well. But, yeah, health is one of them.
And so, yeah, I don't want to be too negative, but I think it's completely futile to try and change it via the NHS or anything like that. I think we're a lot better to just band together as people and do it our damn selves.
Speaker B:No, I think you're being actually very realistic. That is how it is at the moment.
And you are already contributing greatly to making the whole field of longevity more open, more accessible and more grounded in facts rather than fiction, which I think is very important, especially at this stage where the field of longevity is exploding, which, you know, has positive sides and negative sides. I have to ask you one thing. Being a boxer is not the most conducive thing to health, extending sort of life expectancy and all that.
How do you combine, you know, these two? I just have to add, from a personal perspective, I think that makes you very relatable, because this is how most humans are.
You know, nobody's perfect. Everybody has their vice.
Speaker A:Exactly. And I, And I think, you know, at Christmas or in a celebratory time, I might have an alcoholic drink as well. You know, it's.
And we know now from the data that no amount of alcohol is good for you. We used to think maybe a glass of wine was good, but we now know that's not true.
There is also an element to life of doing what you love to a degree as well. Boxing is a sport that I love. I also, it was kind of proving a point because I knew I'd turn my health around. So when did I start boxing?
33, Three or four years ago. And I was like, well, I've always sat on the sofa watching boxing and I could do that. Well, there's now, Now's the time to prove it.
And so I started training, had my first professional fight, which is against like a journeyman, like someone who's not the best boxer in the world, but they're also a professional, and I managed to win that. And then I thought, okay, I'll do it again, I'll do it again.
And then here we are, seven fights later, I'm the WBA champion and, you know, I've won several titles and, yeah, I've had a lot of fun along the way. And so, yeah, I think I've probably proven my point now.
And there is, you know, there is an accumulation of damage in the brain if you do it for too long. So maybe I'll have one more, but if not, I may be already retired. I'm not sure yet. But it. I certainly won't do it forever.
You know, camp is very difficult. You have to be very restrictive on what you eat.
Training twice a day, trying to do that in amongst dealing with all the research and everything that's going on can be extremely difficult. But, yeah, it's just something that I loved and I'm very, very, very glad that I did it.
Speaker B:It shows you what can be done if you really want to do it and you really sink your teeth into it.
Speaker A:Exactly.
And like I say, it actually ended up being a great advert for what we do because I'm pushing 40 years old and I'm fighting guys in their early 20s and I'm fitter than them and I was someone that at 28 was in a really bad state. So you can turn it around.
Speaker B:You most definitely can. And the fact that you are such a great believer in what you do and what you tackle gives us hope for the future.
Because you want to live till a very ripe old age, right?
Speaker A:Exactly, exactly. Right. So calendar years, I'm definitely getting over 100, aiming for many more. Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, they say that children born now, naturally, without any interventions are going to live to a hundred.
Speaker A:So I think so. And I think it could be a lot further than that as well.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker A:I don't want to be hyperbolic, so, but I think if I get to 150 and I'm still healthy, I'd be happy with that. I think I can squeeze a lot into that.
Speaker B:I should think so. Listen, Alan, thank you so much for being on Beyond Longevity. It's been super interesting. I always ask my guest Five rapid fire questions.
So no, they're easy peasy ones. What's the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?
Speaker A:Start sooner. I didn't try and take life seriously until I was late 20s. I should have started sooner.
Speaker B:Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life.
Speaker A:Having a sleep routine.
Speaker B:If you weren't in the longevity science, what career would you have chosen?
Speaker A:Boxer.
Speaker B:Okay, I need to rephrase that for you. Other than longevity science, what career will you choose in the future?
Speaker A:Can I say philanthropist? Well, sure, yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:Although that's also cheating a little bit because you're a philanthropist right now. So.
Speaker A:No. Okay. Well that, that's, that's what gives me the most joy. What, what else would I do? Maybe work on space travel.
Speaker B:Yeah, just as a side note, I heard you wanting to go into space.
Speaker A: ah, I'm going. It's now early: Speaker B:You're excited?
Speaker A:Yeah, very excited. Looking forward to it.
Speaker B: Could be your next career.: Speaker A:Could be. So that's solve aging completely.
Speaker B:First, what microdose habits, five minute routine or small action yields outsized longevity benefits.
Speaker A:Perfect question. Taking the do not age one a day sachet takes less than 60 seconds and makes a huge difference.
Speaker B:What's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered and is there any truth to it?
Speaker A:Somebody once told me they were drinking their own urine for some kind of health benefit, something to do with stem cells. And I do not think there is any truth to it. I certainly hope not because I don't think that would taste very nice.
Speaker B:You're the second person now to have given me that answer.
Speaker A:No way.
Speaker B:I don't know where you've heard that.
Speaker A:From, but I had a friend from school that got relatively the well, not famous.
He used to do body popping and break dancing stuff and parkour, you know, they jump from thing to thing and yeah, he went through a period of like doing that stuff.
Speaker B:Okay, that is out there.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, it used to be trendy like years and years and years ago. I think it's come back now again. You know, it's one of those.
Speaker A:Yeah. Sometimes you just have to give stuff the smell test and go. That doesn't sound right. There's probably a reason my buddy's excited greeting this.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker B:That was my conversation with Alan Graves, founder of Do Not Age. What stood out to me in this conversation is how unusual his roots into longevity is. He did not come from medicine science or academia.
He came into the field as someone trying to understand his own health and then built a company around a much bigger question. If aging is malleable, how far can we push that idea? We also heard why Donotage is not simply a supplement company.
It is a research company using its consumer basing products to fund clinical trials, support emerging researchers, provide ingredients for independent studies, and help move the science of aging forward. And I think this raises a much bigger question for the whole longevity field. How do we separate real evidence from marketing?
How do we make the science more accessible? And how do we make sure the benefits of longevity do not stay limited to people who already have the money, knowledge and access?
This is exactly the kind of conversation we need more of as this field grows. If you've enjoyed this episode of Beyond Longevity, please leave us a review. Thank you.
