← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Chris Mirabile: Why One Ingredient Will Never Stop You From Aging (And What Actually Does)
00:53:46
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Foreign.
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Welcome to another episode of Biohacking Beauty Podcast. I'm Amitay Eshel.
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I'm Anastasia Hojaiva.
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Co founders, co hosts, CEOs, co parents. Yeah, co parents. Just a bunch of cos. Just two cos cozying around. And today we have a great guest. A person that is here for the second time. The incredible Chris Mirable. First time Anastasia is co interviewing him.
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C
Yes. I really loved this talk and I think you guys will love it too.
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B
We cover the 12 hallmarks of aging, how they affect the skin, how can we look at them in different ways to where we can really apply them to strategies that we're doing that are past and their supplementation, etc. And some philosophical ideas.
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C
Well, yeah, I mean I really loved how we talked about longevity, space, longevity science. I think it was just a really nice. Some contrarian takes some. Yeah, I think it was a great conversation. I think there's a lot of value in it. But without further before we dive in, we wanted to read one listener review. And just so you guys know, every time we read a review, the person who wrote it get a gift from Yungoo. First of all, we love seeing your reactions when you receive the gifts. We love your notes via email or Instagram. So thank you for showing us your excitement about receiving the product. And then we also understand that taking a moment and writing a review in this our busy lives is not easy. So it's a reward well earned. Okay, so the review that we're reading today, I did a ton of research on skincare lines and had a few I wanted to try out, including Yungoos. I received the cleanser in bioretinol, tried it out and loved it. I honestly didn't end up trying any other brands and just ordered more Yungoos products because it's honestly the first time I have noticed visible change in my skin. I'm 44 years old and I just love the entire line. I hope you stay true to your clean ingredients and don't sell to a big corp. I also hope you get your vitamin C serum back in stock because I love that product. Keep it up. You all are the best. Nicole Veznicki So for the record, I
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see a practice saying y' all are the best.
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C
Yes, I'm really bad with the southern accent, let alone my usual accent.
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B
You're actually great at your usual accent.
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No, I think it's all downhill basically with accents. And what did I want to say about the vitamin C? Just a quick note. I highly recommend, Nicole, that you try Vampire Exosomes, because we created that product as an upgrade to the Procare, which was referenced here. And I think you'll love it even more. I hope you trust me on this.
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B
Yeah. Okay. Without further ado, let's welcome the wonderful Chris Mirabli. It's not often as we get on for the second time in the podcast.
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C
Yes, yes.
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Live in person.
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Live in person. Yeah.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, Chris. So let's jump right into it. I think what you guys have been doing recently, and obviously we talk a lot off air in between sets at the gym, so there are a lot of things that you say offhand remarks and things like that that I think could be great podcast discussions. But maybe we start with. I think what we have in common, and that's a discussion that we had pretty recently, is that we both are on the There is no one molecule that will solve aging type. In the camp of no silver bullet molecule exists. And the combination is what the stacking of molecules or pathways is what, what, what kind of determines the efficacy of a product. So maybe we start there. Like, what is your opinion of the lay of the land right now? We see, you know, Nestle, you know, acquiring a company because of a single ingredient. We see many other brands. We've seen it in skincare for forever, where a brand is attaching their identity to the single molecule and they're saying, hey, this is why we're. You should overhaul your entire vanity because this single molecule is going to be the best thing that ever happened to your skin. When you hear that or when you see it in the industry, what is, what is, what is your kind of viewpoint on that?
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A
Yeah, I think it's the difference between branding, marketing and commercialization of a product versus what science and evidence actually indicates. So to your point, there, there are products out there that really focus on the single molecule, whether that be for topical skin care or even oral ingestibles. And they say, like, this is that miracle molecule. It might be a lipid, it might be an antioxidant. And what I've said to people before is that there are countless super powerful ingredients that are not new and novel, they're not patentable, or at least the production or extraction process is not patentable. So there's no IP surrounding it and they're already on the market. I mean, take something like creatine monohydrate, which is so popular right now. It is a fantastic molecule. Imagine if that was something that was new and novel. People would say that this is like the next big thing, Right. But the fact that it's not and everyone can use it and add it to their formulations means that a big corporation, you mentioned Nestle, is not going to invest in that company simply because of that. They're using an ingredient like that. But my point is that there are many, many incredibly powerful ingredients that are arguably more powerful than these new novel ingredients that brands are building themselves off of. But they don't get the celebration because there's not as much money for a company to invest in it and there isn't IP protection. So it's really more, in my opinion, a commercial story rather than the science. And the consumer is none the wiser. Like the consum is going to see all of this clever marketing and hear, oh, this ingredient is great for mitochondrial function, okay, but so is coenzyme Q10, so is PQQ, so is pterostilbene. I mean, there's so many other molecules out there great for mitochondria. It doesn't mean that this is actually the best and arguably it's not the best. So I tend to believe that stacking different molecules together is going to have a greater impact. That's the foundation that we started Novos with, Novos core. But then I also believe, and we can talk about this later, that it then requires actual testing on humans because things can go in a completely wrong direction if you stack things together that might over activate a pathway or they might counteract pathways, or have pathways that counteract each other and then nullify the effects. So ultimately, at the end of the day, it really comes down to testing, studying, and ideally human studies to make sure that the intervention is having a favorable effect.
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C
Yeah, I mean, that really makes sense because in biological systems everything works together. And as we are aging or our health decelerates and worsens. Nothing is worse than isolation. Like there is not this one molecule that the root cause of everything. So you have to stock up on this one lipid, on this one antioxidant, whatever. And I do think, I agree with you that the consumers, I think, are catching up to that, that understanding that you have to look at multiple, you know, causes to your health and aging. And with that, I also feel like now finally that 12 hallmarks of aging are becoming mainstream too. Like something that, you know, started out as nine hallmarks of aging back in 2013 and it was like only people
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in the, you know, that's how I fell in love with novels to begin with.
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I didn't know you were in love, but thank you.
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I sent you A ring? No, but I remember looking at the website for the first time. I think probably, you know, as a person that was trying to figure out like how we tell our story, probably the algorithm, you know, the pre iPhone 14 also algorithm really liked like the Novos ad algorithm really liked me. Right. Because I was the one that's interested in all of that. And I remember how that. I don't you. I don't know if you remember me telling you I really liked the original website.
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I do remember.
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And the original website was brave. Of course. You know, when you get bigger, you just have to serve the population. You know, you just, you need to make sure people understand why they should take a product. So you can't be as niche as website 1.0. I agree with that. I get it. But to me the niche person website 1.0, where it was going is like, okay, let me tell you about this specific hallmark and what links to it and what ingredients and kind of how they cross inter cross interact with that. That was to me so brave, so fresh. So to your point, you know, that's something that Chris and Novos have been talking about since. Yeah, since before longevity was cool.
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And now.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And now in 2026 we have Dior writing an article about 12 Hallmarks of Aging and adding some to that and creating their skin longevity compass. And there is other big mainstream companies that also start marketing, you know, around those terms. So I'm curious to hear, what do you think, like how do you draw connection between those hallmarks of aging and skin? I know you're not skin expert, but you know, that's mostly what our listeners are curious about. Do you think there is just like a couple of hallmarks that show up or any one that you want to highlight?
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Yeah, yeah, I think, I think certain hallmarks are going to be more impactful on specific organs. And so when it comes to skin, with our skin exposed to the environment, one of the of those is definitely DNA damage, for example. Right. And we know this and whenever people are talking in the industry and by the way, I do advise for example, ROC Skincare. So I do talk.
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So are you I skin expert?
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No, I'm not a skin expert, but I do talk to them about the hallmarks and about the research and different approaches. So I'm somewhat familiar. One of the things that I oftentimes say is that skincare industry already has a fantastic longevity product. That's sunscreen, it's commoditized, everyone has it. But arguably that's the best thing you can do when it comes to skin aging is to protect against UV damage. Right. Photo aging, as it's called. Of course, there's other things too, like even air pollution can have a negative effect on the skin and so on. But I think DNA damage is where it all kind of starts. But I would say it even goes beyond that, because ultraviolet rays can damage more than just the DNA. It can break down the actual extracellular matrix and the collagen. It can cause inflammation, which then relates to inflammaging, one of the hallmarks of aging. So the ultraviolet rays themselves are really starting that process off and accelerating that aging process.
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Yeah, totally.
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Another one, I would say is maybe mitochondrial damage. So the mitochondria are essentially producing the energy for each of the cells. And so we've got keratinocytes, we've got fibroblasts. Right. And fibroblasts are then producing collagen and hyaluronic acid and elastin. And so if you don't have the proper energy for the mitochondria, they're not going to be able to produce these molecules that are essential for our skin health in the first place. And back to that. UV damage. UV damage can cause mitochondrial DNA damage as well. So that's going to like, interrupt process. And then the third one, I would say is. Because you did ask for three. So I'd say the third one I would say is cellular senescence. And so senescence, these aggregate over time. So it's not really that much of a concern when you're young, but as you're getting older, it's going up exponentially as most of these hallmarks are progressing exponentially. And these are like, as they're oftentimes called the zombie cells that accumulate in the skin. And they can lead to stiffening of the skin, but they're also releasing inflammatory molecules. They're even releasing enzymes that can then break down the collagen. It's called a S.A.S.P, a secretory associated senescence. Senescence associated secretory phenotype. And so that's going to then cause further inflammation, stiffening more DNA damage. And it's this circular process. So I would say that there are others that are impacting skin aging, But I would say that those are the first three that come to mind.
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B
I think you're correct. And I think you're also correct. When we kind of zero, you know, kind of kind of decrease the aperture we were talking about recently. When we decrease the aperture of, you know, the processes we're looking at, we can Actually kind of learn more about the intersection between, the intersectionality of hallmarks, because a lot of the way we start to talk about UV or the interaction of the environment and the skin is through the. Through what we're known for. And people kind of have a sort of openness to listen as far as, like, what Yungoos is talking about, which is after one serious UV exposure event, we can have 90% of our NAD depleted in the skin. And that's what most people. It would resonate with most people. And I think a lot of the people in this. In this wellness strata really have some innate rejection of uv. Right. You know, you know, we're not gonna. I'm not gonna get into whether Sun Callous is real. It isn't. But, like, I'm not gonna get into, like, their belief system, but the belief system saying, I don't need SPF clashes with, for example, something like NAD depletion. And through that, what we see is the effect of. On everything that you're just saying anything from, you know, UV DNA damage or the ability to control the layer above, which is epigenetics, whether it is mitochondrial function that relies on nad, or, by the way, the cascade that would. Would lead to more senescence. And obviously, I think we could even look at any one of those 12 hallmarks of aging and saying, hey, this is how there is a cascade that leads to a decline there. That's. That's, I think, an important thing to understand that they're not siloed. You know, again, sometimes, most of the time, people are looking for some. Right now, people are looking for what website number one was for Novus, which is like, okay, tell me the molecule and, like, tell me the hallmark. And I don't want to hear about, like, multiple hallmarks. I want to hear, like, how, you know, fisetine is going to. Fisetine is going to connect to senescent. Don't start telling me about mitochondria. No, I want 12, at least 12 ingredients because we have 12 hallmarks. And I think it's a conversation that, again, leading past that, swimming up current, no pun intended, as far as, like, trying to educate the consumer is going to be a conversation about multiple hallmarks and intersection interaction of ingredients. I think that's the next conversation because the zeitgeist now is like the silver bullet has become like this one ingredient and this one hallmark. Choose your. Choose your poison. You know, each company chooses their hallmark and kind of tries to, you know, explain. Explain everything through that hallmark. And I think your company Our company. That's the. That's the challenge now try to educate on.
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And I love that you said that. It's really all about then testing the final product and seeing how that affects people. Like on a personal story, I remember we traveled to one of the conferences where we did biological age testing.
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And you know, Anastasia was 15.
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I was.
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Wow.
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Yes. I was 34 at the time.
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What does that say about you chronologically?
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That is. That is. There are probably in the future it will be illegal, you know, but.
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But I might have been even 10. But there was one thing wrong, like in my chart, like, things I had to pay attention to. And I liked that test that they do, like the deep dive. And they were like, it seems like you're taking too much resveratrol. Because. And I didn't tell them I take resveratrol, but they're like, this pathway is over activated. Like, any chance you're taking too much resveratrol? And I was supplementing resveratrol as part of energy boosting, but she was drinking
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a thousand glasses of wine a day.
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No, no. And what's interesting is that like, for example, I didn't show up in his test. And we both have similar supplementation. So that's where like, personalization, you know, takes place. And also like, yeah, making sure you don't go overboard. You don't. You're like, yeah. Anyway, you have to have supplements that they're doing their testing and their work. And then you also do your own lab work and match that as well.
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Right. Well, and the nice thing about, at least for. For you guys, not so much for me, but topical formulas, you can test much more easily. And you can also see like individual responses to product. Like, for example, immediately you can see if it's causing redness and irritation instantly. And then within a few days you can see if like small wrinkles are improving, whereas something that is internal. While you can ask for subjective effects, there is, first of all, placebo effect that's more likely for perception than there is for topical. And then ultimately that then means that you need to run like a clinical trial, which then becomes much more expensive and it takes a lot longer to execute and so on. So in that sense, I think the topical world has an advantage.
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I think. I think topical, by the way, has a much easier. I think it. Actually, I don't know about much easier, but I'll tell you that most topical companies to this day and also tomorrow are going to design questions that leave the. That it could be that the Questions are going to be kind of leading to the results they want in studies. And it, and it is at least very easy in skincare, since that's the world. I know I'm not going to talk about how easy it is with supplementation, but it's like extremely easy in skincare. Give you a few examples. But basically, like, have you felt any irritation for the last, like, X amount of time that you've been taking this product? And the result would be like 100% of consumers or 90% of consumers reported calm skin using this product. So, like, you know, have you felt, you know, severe dryness or something like that? And it's going to be correlated with hydration. Like, it's the saying, it's a very easy way. It's very easy to skew results within skincare. Something cool that we found. And we're, we're really pivoting the way that we're, we're, we're testing our products. And that actually has delayed a lot of the studies that we're doing, which was a proteomics test, like in front of the, the ways protein express themselves in the skin, which would correlate to gene expression in the skin. And what we're planning on doing and rolling in the last, like in the next year or two is like, each product is gonna have a roadmap of how on average, obviously, it changes epigenetics in the skin rather than, you know, some correlation to how you felt when you woke up in the morning after you applied product at night.
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What I like about that is that, and for the listeners who aren't fully aware of the omics, and you've got epigenetics and you've got transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and there's a lot of hype around epigenetics. But what I like about proteomics is that our DNA can be expressing something seen in the epigenome, but it might not make its way to actually say, producing that protein.
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Correct.
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The protein is what's actually having the impact on, on the phenotype and on the cellular biology and in this case, on your skin. So simply because there's a signal in the DNA doesn't mean that it's making its way downstream into that molecule, that protein that's going to have the effect. So it's great that you guys are looking at proteomics because that's the tip of the spear. That's what's actually impacting the cellular environment. And it's not always reflected accurately in the Okay.
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B
I would actually say that I would prefer. So we've just launched only for practitioners, a metabolomics test which is like, what do your cells do with the proteins? Basically, I wish we could have done that. I believe more as far as skin is concerned about like a metabolomics test. The issue with metabolomics is the cost. Like it's so cost prohibitive to do at scale. It's time, it requires a needle and blood. Right. Like I wish we could, maybe we'll do that. I mean we're, we're actually looking at doing it for Vampirexosome at a certain scale. But in order to. It would be also a little bit more complicated to then communicate kind of, kind of science to consumer. But as far as practitioners and empowering practitioners, like, hey, what product do you recommend or intervention or supplement or even like what, what you should feel about recommending more invasive treatments for a person. Like my science or my omics of choice is actually metabolomics. But I do want to say something that's actually connected to what you just said about, hey, you can do whatever you want. You know, you could basically like read all the papers you want and you could take all the products you want. But at the end of the day, when you go ahead and research something in humans in a cohort, some, some things jump off the page that are very surprising. And to me you've recently, I think a month ago. Again, my timeline is off because you've been talking with me about it for about three or four months. But about a month ago you guys published a new study, am I correct? Yes, we did. And to me, what was like a, like an aha moment of everything that we've spoken about until right now was the vascularization or arterial stiffness, which was the best product within the interventions that you guys tested. Right. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
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A
Yeah, yeah. So I'll clarify a couple of points with it as well. So we ran a double blind, randomized placebo controlled clinical study at University of Surrey with a very well known, respected cardiology professor and researcher. He's on more than 200 peer reviewed studies. We wanted to go to the best or among one of the best for this. We didn't want to hire a CRO, a contract research organization. We wanted to go to academia where their reputation is their life and they're really going to do true science. And we wanted to look at cardiovascular health because this is one of the first systems that declines as we age. Right? Our cardiovascular system, our heart Health, our vasculature, that starts to decline. And it's something that declines over years and decades. Right. The American Heart association said this year that you should start looking at your heart health and tracking it in your 30s. It used to be in your 40s, but we're realizing that you should actually start younger.
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And so, so you have a better baseline.
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A better baseline. And, and people are actually getting plaques building up and stiffening earlier in their 30s. So we need to start looking at this at a, at a younger age. So when it comes to longevity, there's no greater cause of age related death than cardiovascular health. Right. So there's one and a half to two times more death coming from heart attacks and cardiovascular disease than cancer. And people always think about cancer because of how extreme and sudden it is and how terrible it is. I mean, I lost my mother to cancer and I had a brain tumor myself. But the cardiovascular disease is something that is actually impacting more of us. So that was one reason to study it, because of how impactful it is and the fact that it is something that progresses over time. The second reason to study it is because our circulation is the foundation of our health. Right. Like you need to get the right nutrients into your brain and into your liver, but also to the point of skin, you have all of this microvasculature that you need to deliver lipids and proteins and amino acids and hormones and immune factors. All of that needs to make its way into your skin. Oxygen. Exactly. So this is obviously an incredibly critical system. And whenever people are talking about longevity nowadays in this commercial sense, it's very abstract. People are just like, take this for longevity. We wanted to actually look at it as what is really going to maximally impact your longevity. And arguably the cardiovascular system is where we should start. So we ran this study and it was, I believe, 61 participants, roughly half and half placebo versus the experiment. Males and females aged 40 to, I think late 70s or maybe even 80. And there were three time points. One was before the intervention. So we measured everyone's baseline one hour after the intervention, whether it's our product or the placebo, and then at six months. So we wanted to see if there are any acute effects and then we wanted to see if there are lasting long term effects. At the one hour mark we measured. The primary endpoint for the study is called flow mediated dilation. So this is a measurement of endothelial function. So the ability for the blood vessels to dilate and for blood to flow, essentially a measurement of circulation which declines as we get older. At the one hour mark, we had a very significant improvement in flow mediated dilation. This is what people oftentimes take supplements for, like for example, nitric oxide, nitric oxide boosters, beetroot, things like that. Or even if you think of in the prescription world, people might be taking Cialis and things like that for blood flow, right?
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Even like baby aspirin to dilute the blood so it flows more.
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Right. For the circulation. So we saw improvements within the first hour. Then the other two biomarkers that we were really focusing on. One was pulse wave velocity. So this is the speed at which the pulse wave travels through the body. The faster it is, the worse it is because that indicates that things are harder, right? If you think of water, very flexible, it's a slow wave. If you think of steel, it's very fast wave, right? So you want it to be slow and slower indicates more flexibility in the blood vessels and the arteries. And then the third was blood pressure. So at the one hour mark, we didn't see changes for the blood vessel flexibility or for the blood pressure. But at the six month mark, we saw improvements for all three, the endothelial function, the flexibility and the blood pressure to that point compared to placebo. So this wasn't the net effect. This was versus placebo. We improved systolic blood pressure for people already within the normal range by 6.1 millimeters of mercury. Put that in context. Improving it by 2 millimeters of mercury is considered significant in a clinical context. And then for the pulse wave velocity, we. I don't recall the exact number, I think. No, actually I do. It was 1.18 meters per second that we improved it. By comparison, we accelerate or the pulse wave velocity speeds up by about 1 meter per second per decade. So that gives you a rough idea of the significance of 1.2 meters per second,
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B
12 years of that specific measurement
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A
in terms of the equivalency. Yes. And so to your question about all of the other interventions, so to be clear, we didn't run other interventions within our study. We didn't have the budget to run many other things. But when we look at other studies that were placebo controlled and in a generally healthy population, so not a diseased population, we couldn't find interventions that outperformed us in any of these three different biomarkers. So that includes even, quote, unquote longevity supplements or general health supplements. That includes the beetroot and then the nitric oxide boosters. It includes even lifestyle interventions. So we were in the upper end of the range for things like high intensity interval training, aerobic exercise, significant weight loss, Mediterranean diet, the-heart health diet. Like if you go to our website, learn.novoslabs.com cardiovascular, you'll see all of these comparisons and we are at the top of the charts for all of these things, which was honestly a surprise to us. We were hopeful that we might move the needle on one of them. But when you move the needle on all three of them in the same study, it's incredibly rare in science and it shows that you're actually having real effects. And it was really interesting to see that we didn't improve the flexibility or the blood pressure at the one hour mark, but after six months of continuous usage you saw that improvement. And by the way, that test was done at the six month mark after people were fasted for 24 hours, which goes to show that the effects were durable, they lasted over time. And it wasn't that it was an acute effect. Like you could argue that after one hour, maybe at the two hour mark, the effects have disappeared. But no, they were fasted and a whole day later they still had these really significant effects.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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C
And that really also, you know, shows that it's about consistency and compounding effects. Like if people will stick with, be it the supplement or like, you know, all the, hopefully all of the other things you mentioned that improve cardiovascular health, then long term they will have improvements.
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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C
And I also wanted to say that like I'm sorry for your loss, for your mom and I lost mine to cancer as well. And I also had a tumor. And I feel like stories like ours are quite common actually in our world and it just makes us really aware of like how fragile life is and that you have to look out, you have to look out for yourself, for your health, for your relatives because yeah, things can happen and we have to optimize and we have to think long term. And that also kind of.
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B
And you gotta sneak and pour some novels in there in your loved ones drinks.
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C
I will say I will give credit. Amitai really makes sure that I take my supplements and that doesn't come from
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B
me, but I even sacrifice and take the passion fruit one even though I like the orange one much better.
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A
So you were pouring the extra resveratrol into her drink when she allegedly.
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B
Allegedly until that study, yes.
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But you know, knowing that the founder has that understanding about life and about loss and designs, you know, the, the ethos in the company and the products around that, I think it adds, I don't know, for Me it adds more value and trust in the product as well.
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B
And. But I do want to still man the argument around the cardiovascular disease being a more median like a more bigger targets to aim at when you, when, when you are looking at so much easier as far as like communicating with the fda when you talk about what you want to measure when about supplements. But not only that I think cancer or NAFLD and natural like, like fatty liver disease, which is getting to anesthesia's old stomping grounds. I think these are end points as far as like the effects of on someone's health. It's either you have it or not and hopefully you survive and you move on and you might be, you know, you might call it on remission, you might have a different lifestyle according to that. But it's. I think the problem with heart disease is that the way that science goes, goes now it's almost, Almost like what?
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C
Almost inevitable to a certain extent.
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B
That actually is a different, it's a different brush to paint. What I'm, what I want to say which is it lives in the neighborhood of health span much more where someone can have like your mother can have cancer in her 30s and we're talking about people starting to get diagnosed for heart disease in their 30s or for cardiovascular changes in their 30s. As far as what we're correlating to consistent micro decisions in our life, it's a much more controllable, much more cumulative outcome. And that's why I think it's a very.
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C
And by the way, which allows for more preventative steps.
- [36:19]
B
Exactly. Even if you talk about skin health because you know, when we started looking at skin to give you some background because most of the people listen to the podcast know is we're looking at, we were looking at nad systemically before we decided to innovate and be like the first company that had skincare. Right. And back then, you know, 2015, 2016, it was when a lot, not a lot, but there were doctors who got their license take revoked or they actually got sent to prison because they were prescribing heart medications, vasodilators, dilators, et cetera as skin health products because more blood to the skin means a lot as far as skin health. So it's a much more correlatable skin longevity or skin health marker when you're trying to, when you're trying to cover a lot of bases even to the extent if you want like an end scenario like the reason we just had the podcast with Dr. Bauman, who's a hair doctor hair restoration. Dr. One of the major things that you do for hair health is red light therapy. The only reason it's good for hair health, well, it could be good because of mitochondrial function, but it's really more blood to the hair follicle and that, you know, we could look about at the same thing when we talk about skin health, et cetera, and the ability of your blood vessels to contract and expand and how it expresses itself in rosacea or skin sensitivity, like a real marker. It's a real driver of skin aging, age, like health, skin healthspan, frailty or resilience, and how the skin looks currently, how the skin rebuilds its protective barrier and everything. So it's.
- [38:07]
A
And what I would add to that is, you know, we're focused on skin, but what about just facial aging overall? Right. So skin is, is a vital component of it, but there's also adipose tissue or the bone, bone, etc. And there was a study, I think it was done in 2021, where it was a study of older Caucasian women, and they looked at people who were perceived to be younger than their actual age and those who were perceived to be older, and then they looked at the microvasculature and essentially the circulation in the forearm, and they found that those who had better circulation were perceived to look younger than those who had worse. And so that's one area where, you know, science has kind of connected the dots with circulation. And then another study has looked at, I think it was done in Japan where they looked at exercise, both cardiovascular exercise and weightlifting, and found that those who exercised had better, for example, skin elasticity. And then specifically for weightlifting, it found thicker, like, greater dermal thickness.
- [39:13]
B
Yeah.
- [39:13]
A
So think it was if they lifted
- [39:15]
B
weights twice a week or something. Right.
- [39:17]
C
I think Dr. Vonda Wright on our podcast about that. Yeah. She shared that study as well.
- [39:23]
A
Right. And so, so part of that is likely coming from the improvement in circulation and the nutrient delivery that comes from higher circulation. Right. So, yeah.
- [39:34]
C
But also muscle mass and bone density, like, all of this is better if you exercise, especially if you lift weights. Yeah, exactly.
- [39:42]
B
And testosterone, by the way, is very important for skin thickness as well. And you obviously have a, you know, there is evidence for higher testosterone if you lift weight, so.
- [39:50]
C
Yeah, yeah. And on the note of, like, skin aging, biological aging, there's also kind of like, becomes a mainstream talk, like, basically, you know, biological testing. Your biological age, you know, has been something biohackers, longevity enthusiasts have been doing, and now there is better and better tests available. But also There are different tests now that you can test your skin age. And are you familiar with any of that and how it correlates? Like, do you guys.
- [40:24]
A
Not directly. We have experimented before with like skin tape strips where you can actually then get skin DNA and looked at the epigenome. But I imagine it's something different that you're talking about.
- [40:35]
C
Well, what they're finding out now that exactly what we talked about before now with better omics, better different, you know, windows that we can look at either at metabolites or at proteins expressed methylation patterns, you can now actually assess not just your whole body age, but specifically age of your dermal tissue. And then what's interesting, that sometimes it's not only different from your chronological age, but also from your biological age. And the good thing is that you can actually affect that with the right both topicals and supplementation. So that's.
- [41:15]
B
And even what's interesting to me is that Novos, as a company trying to find multiple touch points on showing progression. You guys decide, you guys decided. And then also innovated is the last call. I don't know how much of it is kind of available to the public, but you innovated facial aging analysis to infer biological aging, right? Yeah, yeah.
- [41:39]
A
So we launched something called face age, which has been covered by the Wall Street Journal. Now more than a half a million people have used it. We have actually done some internal machine learning to build this algorithm. And we've compared it to academic algorithms out there and even commercial algorithms, and we're extremely accurate. I believe we're more accurate, at least in the comparisons we did than than the other solutions out there. Because the reason we launched it is because facial aging is part of that aging process. And it's kind of you can infer
- [42:13]
C
like your overall health from it.
- [42:15]
A
Right, Right. Yeah. So not perfectly, and I'll explain why not perfectly. But overall, yes, we all know people who are aging well. They tend to look younger for their age. And those who are not aging so well look older for their age. And this is really illustrated very well in the Dunedin PACE study. If you look at that initial study, you can see that they applied their algorithm. This is an epigenetic clock algorithm to measure biological rate of aging. And they took the 10 slowest aging males and females, the 10 average aging, and the 10 fastest aging. And they used computer software to merge the faces of these 10 people, male and female, for these three different cohorts. And when you look at the comparison, they're all 45 years old. But when you look at the comparison, and I've done a lot of public speaking where I'll show this and I'll ask the audience, how old do you think these people are? And so for the slowest aging, people are usually saying about 36 years old. And then for the average aging, people are usually saying like 47 or so. And then for the fastest aging, people are saying like 56, 57.
- [43:19]
B
So we're talking about call an ambulance, but not for me.
- [43:23]
A
Yeah, so it's like a 20 age, a 20 year age gap simply based on the pace at which they're aging. So it's definitely reflected superficially. Now, the exception where I say that it's not perfect is because you can be aging slower, but for example, not using sunblock, and you're in the sun all day long and your skin starts to look like leather when you're 60. And you might be incredibly healthy inside and you might actually have less degradation than an unhealthy person would who smoke cigarettes and so on. But compared to someone who might not be quite as healthy as you, who use sunblock all the time, that person who used the sunblock might look a little bit younger than you. So it's not perfect. But overall, you'll get a good feel for how well someone is aging biologically as well as if they've protected their skin from the photo aging side of things.
- [44:20]
C
And of course, I'm sure if we could study the cohort and remove all the cosmetic alterations, because sometimes it can be a pretty looking person, you know, because of all the Botox, filters, whatever, other interventions, but they're not like, you look at their cardiovascular health and it's like, oh, my God, you're like in danger. You need intervention now.
- [44:42]
B
But they look good.
- [44:43]
C
Yeah.
- [44:44]
B
Might have fillers.
- [44:45]
C
Yeah.
- [44:46]
B
By the way, fillers are very bad for, for, for blood supply, vascularization. Like they kind of, I can imagine, block that.
- [44:54]
A
Sometimes it's the opposite. Where young people are using, are getting these, these fillers and so on, and they end up looking older. Yeah, they're 22 and they look like they're 32.
- [45:05]
B
They might, they might, they might not, though. Like, the problem is that one of the. So, you know, Copenhagen, I think it was 2022. I mean, 2023 is when there were additions to hallmarks of aging. But one of the big discussion, 2022 was mechanical alterations. And should that be a hallmark? Physical mechanics. So if you're, you know, your knees are in bad shape, your hips, whatever, but you're, you know, but for that example, by the way, but your DNA methylation doesn't show it. What does it mean? Are you older? Yes. By the way, if you broke it, by the way, if you broke your hip, you can't move as much, you're going to die sooner. So it's a type of a hallmark. And in skin, many, many, many of the of the interventions create mechanical alterations which are negative, more fibrotic tissue, for example, in the skin. That was the first bone we picked with Brian Johnson. When Brian Johnson was talking about how he reverses his skin's age, 99%, I'm being gracious and saying 99% of the intervention that he was purveying were interventions that were only to apply piece the measuring devices, the measuring techniques that were used which were visual Visia scans or things like that. Because you know what, you know, because they developed in tandem, they evolved in tandem the machinery to measure and the machinery to affect it. Yeah, but longevity wise, it's horrible.
- [46:37]
A
Brian Johnson has, has really focused on hitting certain metrics so that he can market himself. He did the same thing with the biological rate of aging and so on, but he loses the story. The bigger picture, it's really about hitting the metric and then being able to say on social or in marketing messaging like I have the best this or the best that, which oftentimes is actually not even true, but he'll push that story. But to your point, if you're really focused on longevity, you're actually going to not be hyper focused on a specific metric like that. You're going to look at the bigger picture and you're going to take a significantly different approach than than what he's taken. So what you're saying for skin, we've had similar opinions on the things that he's done with for example, combination of genetic modification, which he's done hormones, both on the androgen side with testosterone, but then also on the estrogen side with 17 alpha estradiol prescription drugs, supplements and then saying achieve my results simply by taking this powder which like there's a big, you know, valley between. There's a huge disconnect between all of that.
- [47:52]
B
So I think in general, and that's just like not about Brian Johnson specifically, but it's about people. Brian Johnson really I think revolutionized one thing saying hey, I'm spending this amount of money, so you better listen to me. And any, any research facility in this plaza where we're at is spending more than $2 million a year at research. So the monetary amount followed by then you should listen to me. Breaks down when the added factor is trying to appease specific data. Because the reason you need a lot of money for science is because a lot of the time your hypotheses are not correct. A lot of the time. I mean, you need to, you know, the way that science works is you hypothesize something and if it's, you know, it might, most of the time it's either more study needs to be done or hey, that hypothesis was wrong and here's what I learned from it and here's how we're going to adjust it, or some combination of some. There is a reason discoveries are so revolutionary. They don't happen all the time, they take a lot of years. So there is something to say, there is a breakdown in the matrix when you're trying to start with the money that you spent and end up with a powder. Right?
- [49:05]
C
Totally right.
- [49:06]
A
Or to your point, saying simply because I'm spending a lot of money, you should therefore do what I'm doing because most of the time things are going to fail and you're not actually getting the right answer. I hate to say it, but in private conversations I've had with scientists who are geroscientists, they're the world renowned experts in the field of longevity. Their biggest concern has been that he or someone like him might accidentally die from their intervention by combining things that they don't understand the effects of and how negative that would be obviously for that lost life. But also to the industry as a whole, where people will then start questioning longevity. So I think people, you know, people should just be careful with trusting social media posts about doing like when you're taking rapamycin and modifying your genetics and taking testosterone, growth hormone and 17 alpha estradiol and plasmaphoresis and plasma, you are doing things that has never ever been done before by a human and combine the same, stacking them on top of each other, not just one thing, but the complexity of it. You gotta be very, very careful.
- [50:15]
C
Yeah, yeah. And I think since we're actually at time, these are great closing thoughts. I just have the one like kind of final question that relates to that. So since you are obviously looking into the future, planning for the future, really deep into longevity, where do you see kind of skin longevity heading the next five years? Do you have any prediction, any thoughts on that?
- [50:40]
A
I think you guys have already touched upon it, which is actually doing patient specific testing that might be through omics, it might be through AI and like what we're doing with face age. And it's going to be some sort of combination of these and then being able to give people more prescriptive approaches for their specific skin at the specific stage of their life, or even the specific scenario they're in where maybe it's a summer and they were in central pay and they got, you know, a lot of inflammation from the sun. And so now you have to treat their skin differently for the next 60 days than you would normally. Right. So I think it's really going to be about that customization all through the lens of these hallmarks of aging. Because these hallmarks of aging are not simply about the aging process. Of course they are, but they're also about your health and the optimization of your health today. And so if you optimize them today, you're not only on a better trajectory for the long term, but you're actually in a better place right now. And if I have just 1 minute to share this.
- [51:45]
C
Go ahead.
- [51:45]
A
Part of the realization I had to then eventually go into longevity and start novos was back in my 20s, I was doing biohacking where I was experimenting with different diets, keto, paleo, et cetera, different supplements, dozens and dozens of them, different sleep routines, like doing all of this stuff. And I had different goals. For example, improve my focus at work or improve my athletic performance, or, you know, you go down the list of all of these different goals. And then when I learned about longevity and these hallmarks of aging, I came to realize that these are the common denominators for all of these short term goals that I was looking for and my long term goal of never having another brain tumor again or a chronic illness again. So when I realized that if I can target these hallmarks of aging and have better sleep, better energy, better athletic performance, better skin, better focus, better mood, like all of these things, and also reduce the chances I'm going to have a disease of aging as time progresses. That, to me, was the epiphany moment. Like, this is what I should be focusing on. And forget about the downstream specifics, Work upstream with these hallmarks, and that's where I'm going to end up in the best place. And I think it applies to skin health as well.
- [53:00]
C
Yeah, totally. And that's how we look at it as well.
- [53:02]
B
Yeah. Where do you sign? Yeah, I agree. That's what we're trying to do.
- [53:06]
C
Yeah, yeah, that's what we're doing.
- [53:08]
B
No, trying to do it for the industry.
- [53:10]
C
Yeah.
- [53:12]
B
Anyway, thank you, Chris. It's obviously a pleasure.
- [53:15]
C
Thank you. Thank you.
- [53:17]
B
One of our conversations recorded.
- [53:20]
A
That's right. That's right. And doing it for a second time.
- [53:22]
B
Yeah.
- [53:24]
A
Thank you, Sam.