← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Nick Engerer: Your Skincare Routine Won’t Fix THIS Aging Problem
01:00:25
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- [00:08]
A
Welcome to Biohacking Beauty, the podcast that bridges cutting edge science and real world strategies to help you achieve vibrant, youthful skin from the inside out and from the outside in. I'm your host, Amitai Eshel. And here we break down the latest biohacking techniques, skin skincare innovations and longevity science to help you look and feel your best. Today we are joined by an incredible guest, Nick Engerer, which is who he is. A biohacker who has mastered the art of optimizing health for beauty. We're diving into the intersection of biohacking and skincare, covering everything from red light therapy and cold exposure to personalized nutrition and advanced wellness and technology. Nick will share his anything from like his daily regimens go to Biohacks and his approach for enhancing overall health and skin health, energy and vitality. Plus, we'll bust common myths and explore what the future holds for biohacking your beauty. If you're curious about how to harness your body's natural potential for radiant skin, stronger hair and a more vibrant body as a whole, this episode is packed with game changing insights. So let's get it started. All right, Nick, welcome to the Biohacking Beauty podcast. As I told you off air, I've been following you for, for a long time and I really love what you are doing and it's a real pleasure having you on and having this conversation.
- [01:56]
B
Thanks for the warm welcome. Amit. I. I think we've been wanting to have a discussion like this for some time and you and I share an interest in looking after our skin and that being a core part of longevity, full stop.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I want to ask you something to begin with, something that kind of is on my mind just recently. Do you still use the word biohacking? Do you like the word? I gotta admit, I like the word and. But I feel like the world is moving away from it. So I wonder, like, what's your take?
- [02:31]
B
Yeah, I love the word biohacking. Cause I think it's, I think it's fun, I think it's cool. I think it gets people excited and grabs some attention to get people thinking about what it actually means. And the way I love to approach this conversation is that biohacking really is for everyone and it's something that is becoming more possible. Thank you to the advent and continued adoption of what I call longevity technologies. And that the definition of biohacking in my view is quite a wide one. It's really anyone who's going to measure their biology, make a change and then measure again and see what did that change do? And we are doing that all the time now with our wearables. If you have a wearable and you simply observe your sleep and then you notice that you have had some drinks, some alcohol and you didn't sleep as well and you realize, oh, wow, that alcohol really impacts my sleep. You've already done the core essence of biohacking. You may or may not want to refer to yourself as a biohacker and ultimately that's just an identity piece. I think the core essence of biohacking is measure, test, measure again, learn about your biology and then ultimately through doing that, you're optimizing your health and your long term future can be strongly influenced in a positive way by doing that consistently over time. So make your health a habit, make biohacking a habit. Something that you're continually trying out and doing so that you keep learning about yourself. And ultimately I see that as being part of a, a longevity mindset.
- [04:11]
A
Yeah, I mean, I love it. And I joke normally, like if I'm talking to someone who is like an OG biohacker, my joke is that I was a biohacker before Dave Asprey told me I'm one, because he really coined the term. And to your point, it used to be called self quantification. I mean, that was the same, the same community, the same people, everyone that people are seeing now online or whatever. I remember, you know, sitting 40 people in the bar, you know, in a bar which with all the big people that now are familiar faces. And back then it used to be called. Yeah, self quantification.
- [04:50]
B
Self quantification. I mean that, that is a less sexy term arguably than biohacker, but it is very similar. And look, I think anything in this space, there's going to be trends, there's going to be things that are cool and then they become less cool. And really that's just part of how the whole health movement goes. But to come full circle, I think it's a great term and I'd like your grandma and your neighbor and anyone else who you wouldn't think of as a biohacker to be able to call themselves a biohacker. I think that wide of a definition is better for all of our health.
- [05:22]
A
What do you think it is? Not like, what do you think are misconceptions? Obviously we can talk about the people who think it's like editing your genome or whatever, but what do you think are some misconceptions about what biohacking is at the moment?
- [05:36]
B
Yeah, I think that biohacking gets boiled down to doing things that you see other people doing in your mind that have been labeled as biohacking. There's been a significant interest, growth in interest in ice plunges, ice baths, sauna, for example, as well. Even sensory deprivation, tanks and things you can go into the clinic, hyperbaric, oxygen, red light therapy. These are all things that you very well could be doing because you think you're biohacking. But if you don't do the measuring part, if you can't back it up and say, this is what this activity does for me and this is how I know, then it's not biohacking. Yes, it's just some things you do that you enjoy doing, you might enjoy doing with your friends or you think it's making you healthier. And in fact, it could, it may well not be. And if you don't actually know definitively if it's helping you or not, then I would argue that it's not biohacking because you haven't measured before and after.
- [06:32]
A
I couldn't agree more. It's funny because I just had a conversation with. I'm sure some people know and some people don't, and I'm sure you do that. L'Oreal invested like $66 million in Mitopure or what they're called now, like timeline longevity or whatever they're called now. And I actually had a conversation last weekend when we went to New York to attend the Don't Die summit, the summit by Brian Johnson. I met with those people and we were talking about the fact that we're not, you know, they were. They're always interested in what we're doing, mainly to copy us, but they're interested in what we're doing. And I was telling them that we are planning a metabolomics test, a blood test that measures some skin parameters and to make sure that our products are effective on a level that is not only the appearance, but really what's going on, like, as far as skin health. And they were. They could not understand why we're doing that. And that is exactly the decision tree that we follow, is a decision tree of a biohacking mentality. Right. Like, let's make sure we change the biology and we can measure it over time. Right. And not only provide whatever you want to say other companies are doing. I'm not going to, absolutely not going to talk badly about anyone trying to make it, but that is our decision tree. Right. Like measure what we're doing and being able. Be able to provide it to the end user.
- [08:00]
B
Yeah, that. That's exactly the right ethos because in particularly in the skin care space, measuring is difficult and it's become quite commonplace to take before and after images. And to some extent that is useful. We can observe things from images, providing that the hydration of the skin and the lighting and the camera angles and the time of day are all managed well and controlled so that you can look before and after and compare. But there is a lack of good ways to measure skin health before and after. And so any sort of blood assay, that's an advantage. There's. There's another company that I like working with called One Skin. They looked at making a biological age clock for the skin, developed it in the lab, but that hasn't come as a commercial offering to my awareness. Now that's another promising area and I think the effort to be able to quantify skin health before and after so we know if things are helping our skin or not, is very important. And in fact, that is exactly what I like to show how to do on a longer life. My website, because we have this unit called a Visia scanner that can image your face in high resolution. It also uses a UV flash and a UV imager to see sun damage in your face. It can look at bacterial load on your face, the smoothness of your face, the wrinkles, the brown spots, the red spots, and it can give you quantification of those in terms of units or percentage.
- [09:31]
A
Yeah.
- [09:32]
B
And you can very clearly see before and after improvements from skincare products. And of course, one of the reasons we're having a chat today is that I am trying out Young Goose in this way and look forward to sharing the results with my audience.
- [09:47]
A
Yeah. So I'll tell you a few cool things. So first of all, when we were looking at tetrahexapeptide 52, which is the peptide that, you know, I think like three years after we were looking at it like one Skin through, through their own journey, kind of decided to, to go ahead and focus on that. And by the way, we know the people behind them and they are sweet, sweet team. Not only the founders, like, they built a very. Just very nice people, good people. Shout out to them. Yeah, yes. What we. Back then, and I'm talking about, you know, about 10 years ago, even more, what we had a problem with, to your point, is like, how do we then go ahead and measure effectiveness? And I think what they are doing is very, very interesting. I think it is measuring. And we've done a study measuring senescent Cells, which is kind of what they are focusing on, doing it at scale. We can't do it. So if they can do it, great. The way we did the study is do punch biopsies which does not scale. Basically it's like taking skin samples. Like it's, it hurts, it's uncomfortable, there are legal complications and some, some stuff like that. So I'm hoping that they have a better way and I'm hoping that it will also help them get over the hurdle of testing lab samples and getting over to human studies, which is obviously something we're all, we're all looking at doing and doing again at scale, being able to then have the third party test set, et cetera. So I wish them good luck and I wish to see them continue to grow. They got a big funding right now. They got $7 million. So I hope that will help.
- [11:35]
B
Yeah, it's great. It's great to see companies, you know, I focus on working with brands that have clear values, a strong team, a real clear mission to help people's health and to advance the longevity future. And that's precisely why I'm working with One Skin and went to their lab and love talking about them. Exactly why I'm having this conversation with you today and also why I haven't chosen to work with some other brands that approach me and I get approached all the time actually. And we're looking for. One of the things we're looking for is that clear differentiation. Is there some real clear differentiation in the science and how you're approaching this challenge of keeping our skin youthful? Because most of what's out there, the vast majority of what, what's out there is a remix of the same technology we've had for the last 20 years. It's retinoids, it's hyaluronic acid, it's some simple peptides with copper. You know, it's. There's nothing really innovative happening in that space outside of the businesses that, that are doing what I just mentioned.
- [12:45]
A
I would even argue that it is not good business acumen to try and do something different like what we are doing. Or again, I think you work with two companies for now. Right. Like one skin and another company that I'm blanket, like 818, something like that.
- [12:59]
B
Yeah. One truth. 818 is another one I've tried. Yes.
- [13:02]
A
So I would argue it's bad business to do what we're doing because you are not talking to the masses in a language that is very common. And you're missing most people like you're missing nine out of 10 people. And that's putting it very mildly. And we see it right now. So we're researching like a couple things, but we're very, very, very, very heavily researched, like to the point that if it doesn't work out, this, this is not going to last very long, which is the topic of Exosomes. And we realized, and that's, by the way, like, a lot of what we're doing is like, hey, what other products are good out there? And kind of trying to understand why they're good and make sure that we can make processes shorter for us if they're available. And within Exosomes, I think most people don't realize that Exosome is the vehicle. It's not what's in the thing, it's not the solution. It's like saying like, Pozomo or like saying whatever carriers like saying, you know, you are not the car you drive in, even though some people would argue otherwise. But. So no company in the world right now tells you what the, what, you know, the ratio of like, growth factors or whatever, what's in the exosomes that they provide. No one company. And that's kind of bananas. So, for example, in the Exosome discussion, it's very. I would say it's kind of going over people's heads if you start talking about this conversation. But you are like one fish swimming against the flow of juggernauts and whoever is swimming the other way. So, yeah, I mean, that was kind of a side discussion to what I was. I meant to speak with you about. But it is, I think for now we need to be proud of the fact that we're serving enthusiasts and serving people who are kind of. Yeah. Like maybe like early adopters and we should just, you know, I was speaking as an investor rather than as a founder. Right. At a conference that is for actually about psychedelics. I wasn't talking about psychedelics. I was talking about the investment in the longevity field. But I said, you know, if you want to invest in longevity, don't look for unicorns, look for cockroaches. Look for companies that can survive long enough to become, you know, a household name or that the discussion around that, that that field becomes a household name, which we start. We're starting to see. We see it with NAD, which we started, I don't know, like 15 years ago. And. But yeah, I mean, you're an investor too, so I wonder what, what your thoughts are on that.
- [15:44]
B
Yeah, I love thinking of it from this perspective because there's two ways that I can think of that one is as a businessman and one is as an investor. And you've made some really important points about how innovation is not necessarily a profitable space off the bat. And even if you are successful in innovating, particularly with a skincare product, being able to market that effectively so that people understand the differentiators and why, what your value proposition is and the positive impacts that that value proposition can have for them if they decide to buy your product. And then you also probably come into the market with a higher price point because it wasn't cheap to get there. And that needs to be backed up by performance. It needs to be backed up by testimonial. It needs to be backed up by that data you're looking for with that blood test, or I'm looking for with the Visea scanner to be able to truly demonstrate, look, this is not simply just hydrating my face better. And that's why my, my wrinkles are not as deep, but in fact, my collagen synthesis is better. My UV damage is being repaired more effectively, and that's why I have less wrinkles than I did before. And I actually have less wrinkles than I did before. Being able to communicate that concept, quantify it, that's. We're on the forefront of that. We're just getting to what's possible. However, what the skincare industry and the cosmetic surgery industry has been able to do to date is already incredibly impressive. I mean, the fact that you can look at somebody like Nicole Kidman or Jennifer Lopez or Reese Witherspoon or these other actresses who are in their 40s, 50s, pushing into their 60s, and to see the health and vibrancy of their skin, yes, it doesn't necessarily look quite right all the time, but, you know, it doesn't. It's, it's amazing what we're, what we're able to do. And that's more or less an earlier generation than what you're talking about developing. So I do have faith that in the long term these are going to be more widely adopted strategies, particularly once they're able to be understood and that quantification is there. Because I'll tell you, when I show someone a Visioscan before and after using a product, and that's the only change I made, and it creates significant improvement in the health of the skin that they can see, that's the credibility they're looking for to take a leap of faith on a product that they haven't heard of or an ingredient they haven't heard of before, but they are willing to make that investment because. Well, in my opinion, they are demonstrating one of the core elements of a longevity mindset in that they expect to be here for quite a long time and they want to look good while they do it.
- [18:22]
A
I would say I forgot to say something earlier and that is for female listeners and Vizia scans or by the way, Vizia is an incredible brand of, of an imaging facial imaging software and a device. Now they can do it in cameras too, but they have their own device. They should look to do it on the same phase of their menstrual cycle if they are menstruating because of, of semi obvious things. If people have listened to this podcast before, you know, during the menstrual, menstrual cycle, the different hormone levels, namely obviously progesterone, estrogen and testosterone change how the skin looks and especially things like hydration, actually like everything that the visioscan measures. So that's just like a small anecdote because they can get either, you know, either like, you know, better results than they should be getting or worse, which is arguably worse. Like you might be doing something very well, but you've, you've kind of messed up when you're measuring it.
- [19:29]
B
Very important. And for a woman, nearly everything orchestrates around that monthly cycle and understanding where they are with that. For blood testing, for athletic performance, for sleep, for obviously for mood. That's an easy one. Everybody thinks that's all that it is, but it's so much more nuanced than that. I recently invested in an AI focused company on women's health and I've started a women's health company focused on coaching women through menopause when they're in business positions of leadership. And so I know this well and to keep that in mind and remind your listeners of that's important. And I'll make sure I put that in the next post talking about Vizio scanners. Thank you.
- [20:11]
A
Absolutely. So you did mention something interesting when you were talking about cold pledges, et cetera. And immediately what jumped to my mind is how right now there is kind of a trade off between the entire field of like longevity study and one of the markers of, of, of or many markers of those studies looking at improvements in skin health, whether it is, you know, we are heavily invested in spermidine, whether it is research around spermidine and hair, by the way, like whether it is, you know, gut microbiome, different testing. So from, from like your vantage point, are you seeing that like the skin and hair being A marker of overall health improvement or, you know, interaction with one's biological age.
- [21:05]
B
I, I absolutely love that question. I'm so excited to talk about it. There's not many people who, who can have that conversation with me, so thank you first and foremost. And yes, your skin is the front line of aging. It's the front line of aging. And, and I, I, I think it's so important to look after it and be observing it and care for it. And yet it is. Wow, do I ever just see, just because I'm paying attention now in life, I just see people's skin and I can see decades of neglect and, and sun damage, particularly here in Australia. And that has a cascade of effects throughout the rest of your biology that are really important to understand. And so I think it's really, first thing that I like to say is I like to celebrate when people take care of their skin and that gets a bad rap. There's a negative stigma that's probably out of envy really toward people who can afford a lot of skin care or cosmetic enhancements. And some of those things chase aesthetics that I don't necessarily appreciate. I'm not big on lip fillers. I don't find that particularly attractive. I think that Botox may have a place for some people in, in focused ways, but you can easily overdo that. And there is definitely an avenue of vanity that you chase that's a bit self worshipy, that's unhealthy.
- [22:28]
A
Right.
- [22:28]
B
But to, to come back and, and come back to something grounded and say, I want to look after my appearance because I see it as an asset in my life. When I look good, good things happen for me and that's how society works. And I, I don't, I like, I really like feeling into people's heart and like what's genuine and authentic and I think that's more important. But your skin and your appearance is an asset and your hair fits right into that as well. Looking good, looking youthful, looking strong, just socially is of incredible benefit to you. And it's, therefore, it is an asset for your life. You're, it's something worth investing in and that flows on to your physical appearance and fitness as well. But that's just the beginning. That's just the beginning. The more important part in terms of the biological question is that we have to think about what the aging process is and how it's happening and have some understanding of that to really appreciate this. But I can give you a really basic one for the listener and that is that you have Your DNA, you have your genome that is organized by and expressed by your epigenome. And that information is really important to keep organized over time through replication of your cells, through the continual turnover of your skin, which is turning over very, very quickly. And this information needs to flow on and be passed on without error, without mistakes, so that your skin keeps doing what it's supposed to be doing in UV radiation. Now this is coming from a solar radiation scientist. This is a very unique perspective to be a longevity focused person who's moved in this field and come from a background in studying solar radiation. Okay. And I don't care what wellness enthusiast tells you, the tan is great for you. You need your vitamin D, et cetera. All that is true. A certain amount of damage in your skin is hormetic. Get a tan, increase your melanin. There are positive benefits in that. But the ability to measure the dose is so beyond us. We don't have any real effective way of understanding how much UV exposure we've received. And we don't know when we've crossed that line of like, too much damage. And to err on the side of caution, you really need to be thinking that the UV radiation coming from the sun at its essence is it's trying to kill you. Right? Yeah. We don't have life on Mars because it doesn't have a magnetosphere. And the atmosphere got blown away because the sun is really, really intense. It's the gamma waves alone are trying to get in where the magnetosphere is keeping them out. Thank goodness we've got a stratosphere. It's blocking a lot of the EV radiation. It's one of the reasons life can thrive here. But a good amount of it makes it through. And that radiation is not good for you. It damages your DNA. And there's, there's UVA and UVB radiation. Some of that damage is happening without even getting a sunburn. You don't even know that it's happening. And it's accumulating over time. And it is one of the main drivers for disease, full stop. When your skin's getting damaged and inflamed, because that's your first line of defense, that's the first layer of your DNA that's losing that organizational information by being damaged. And it is causing a cascade of inflammation throughout the rest of your body. When those things happening particular with that, particularly with the cellular senescence, which is.
- [25:45]
A
Accelerated damage, I can ask you, are you referring to the. I actually talk about these couple studies often to bypass the vanity argument, which are the studies out of, out of Portugal showing that increased senescent cells in the skin hijacks the skin brain axis and inflames the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which is, yeah, it's super, super cool couple studies, but they show how senescent cells, which obviously the reason they're called zombie cells. I think people don't know actually why they're called zombie cells, but it's because they infect other cells. It's not because they have like, you know, I don't know, I don't know what people think, to be honest. But like the reason is, is that propagation, right? So they don't only infect their neighboring cells in the skin, they infect anything from immune cells to the center of stress. Interpretation in our brain, which obviously then cascades to the rest of the body.
- [26:52]
B
Wow, I was not aware of that effect. And it's just another piece of evidence of how systemic that impact is when the skin is damaged and, and primarily the skin is being damaged. I mean it, it is the layer of defense between us and our environment. It is what is separating us from our environment. And interestingly enough, there's a lot of similarities between our skin and the lining of our gut, which is also separating us from the environment. And inflammation in these tissues is, is a huge driver of aging, full stop. It's inflammating is the process. It's referring in part to what you're describing with the cellular senescence, the flow on, of inflammation, cellular senescence in one area, making more cellular senescence occur. And I do think the term zombie cells is a bit, it's a bit out there and it's not quite right. But it makes people understand that these cells, they refuse to die and they're poisoning their nearby environment. So, so at that level, I'm okay with it.
- [27:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I do. It's interesting because I think senescence is, I would rank it like, maybe like number two or three. As far as the longevity pathways or you know, whatever we want to call the hallmarks of aging. I think a couple things are even more stark, especially when we talk about the skin skin. One of them is obviously mitochondrial dysfunction, which is I believe like the, the core tenant of, of skin aging. But I, I, I will tell you that before that we gotta get you to try our new serum. It's called Ladder, which is light activated DNA repair. And it specifically harnesses red light to activate enzymes that repair primadine dimers, which are the damaged parts of, of the DNA due to UV damage. So fantastic. Sign me up.
- [28:43]
B
That sounds like exactly like something I'd like to try.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We literally soft launched, launched it on the website. We couldn't wait. But no one knows about it yet. It's just there, laying dormant. No one knows why it's there. So we'll definitely get you one. So do you think. Here's my thoughts about what you said about the barrier. The skin is a barrier and the skin is a communication organ from the environment kind of inwards.
- [29:13]
B
Absolutely. That's probably the most important part. Yeah.
- [29:16]
A
Yes. I think that what happens with the time, and we can market it however we want and we can be as politically correct as we want, but at the end, what happens is this. Our skin requires copious amount of bodily, the energy needed to maintain our skin is ridiculously large. Whether we're measuring nad, mitochondrial function, blood supply, whatever we're going to measure. And there is a direct correlation between our ability to reproduce or reproduce very effectively, our peak reproductive state and the appearance of our skin. And we know by the way that the, the drops in, in skin appearance are, are correlated with, you know, perimenopause and menopause. And how do you experience, how do you explain, do you explain. And how do you explain the relationship between optimized hormonal balance and hormonal makeup and the ability of our skin to still maintain its youthful state? Do you touch on that? Is it something that when you instruct women on maintaining or interacting with their menstrual cycle, do you correlate the two?
- [30:44]
B
Well, they certainly are very closely related, as you've pointed out, and it's, it's quite nuanced. And I think in order to answer that question, I'd have to zoom out a little bit and just remind our listeners that the entire point of your biology and of all biology is to reproduce, is to reproduce, that is, you know, be fruitful and multiply. Right. Like this is what's programmed into all of biology. And we are sending a signal to our, a very powerful signal to our epigenome when we are attempting to get pregnant or to create a pregnancy, when we're having sexual activity, when we become pregnant and when a woman has a baby and has a child, these have profound impacts, as they should in biology because we're accomplishing our purpose biologically. And in fact, there's some relatively recent evidence that I think makes a lot of sense in that women tend to go into menopause later the later they have their last pregnancy. And I Think that makes perfect sense in that you are signaling to your biology. I'm still fertile. I can still reproduce. Therefore, keep that ability that very, as you mentioned earlier, expensive. It's very expensive for a woman's body to be managing this orchestra of hormones. And so we need to be telling our body what is important to keep. Because as we're aging, we're coming under increasing pressure for all these systems with less resource. More pressure, less resource. So the body needs to be told what is important. It's not dissimilar from exercise, fitness. I say fitness is really important because you will keep what you train. If you want to be able to keep doing something, keep doing it. Don't stop doing it. Tell your body it's important. A woman getting pregnant in her late 30s, early 40s is telling her body, this is important. And we see that the body is then listening to that. So when we are wanting to think of our biology at its most essence level, like, what is it here to do? It's to reproduce. And I think a characteristic of youthfulness is to be behaving like we are trying to reproduce. We might not necessarily do that in the modern age because we've got lots of ways to control that, right? Birth control, et cetera. But even just having the mindset that of having to have another child or I'm staying youthful, I'm staying sexually active with my partner, I'm making sure to prioritize that this is all sending signals back to the body that function is important and to stay youthful. And I think the skin will follow that from a first principle's point of view.
- [33:35]
A
Yes, I agree. It's funny that you're saying that because I had on an incredible person who is, I would say, as kind of avant garde as far as, like, they inject, like, stem cells to ovaries and stuff like that to try to, like, you know, reignite the menstrual cycle. They really are on the cutting edge of that interaction between our ability to reproduce and kind of overall health. And by the way, there is a lot of applications that they're doing for skin health. But we've had one person, like, very adamant. They. They basically, to make a long story short, they're like, hey, you should be talking about, like, hey, people who are having menopause or are going through menopause or don't have a menstrual cycle anymore, like, don't make me feel bad or something like that. You shouldn't be talking about trying to extend your menstrual cycle. To which it was a hard. It was a hard thing to tell her. Obviously we should provide kind of guidelines wherever a person is. But we needed to kind of explain, hey, what we're talking about at the end of the day is like optimal, best case scenario. Were trying to explain like how you get your best skin at the end of the day, right? Like, not so. It was a difficult thing to convey. Hey there.
- [35:04]
C
This is Amitai, co founder and CEO of Young Goose and host of the Biohacking Beauty podcast. I wanted to take a brief moment to share something really special with you, our dedicated listeners. At Young Goose. We've always been about more than just skin care. We are about cellular care. We believe in not just addressing the signs, but truly diving into the very source of skin aging. The reality is, as time goes on, our skin undergoes damage and this damage accumulates gradually, leading to those signs of aging we all see and know very well. But what if we could hit the rewind button? What if we could delve deep in not into the layers of the skin, but into the life sustaining mechanisms of our skin cells? That's exactly what we're doing. At Young Gooks. We're pioneering a renaissance in skincare by employing principles from regenerative medicine. By rejuvenating and restoring the skin cellular functions, our products aim to rewind time, gifting your skin a youthful, vibrant glow. And for our Biohacking Beauty listeners, we have a special treat. Head over to Yongoos.com right now and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off your first purchase. Discover the magic of truly transformative skincare. And hey, because we value our returning customers just as much, use podcast five on your subsequent purchases to get 5% off. And the best part, that this discount can be combined with subscriptions in our already discounted systems. So why wait? Dive deep into the realm of regenerative skincare with Yungoos and let your skin. Thank you. Remember, it's not just skin care, it's cellular care. And now back to our conversation.
- [37:10]
A
I do want to ask you about you mentioned exercise because I can really nerd out with you all day about like every sentence you're saying. So I'm trying to like, stay somewhat focused. Let's talk about foundational habits as they relate at the end of the day to whether it is longevity or skin longevity. More precisely, what do you define as you know, your core tenants and again, health in general and skin health.
- [37:40]
B
Great, so I'll just quickly tick off the skin health box and just. And say that I Am adamant about skin protection when I'm out in the UV index is high, which is almost always high or very high. Here in Australia I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt. I'm wearing like a Rashi sun guard type of shirt or a long sleeve shirt with UV protection in it. I'm wearing a hat of various choices. I'm using a high quality sunscreen. I'm making sure not to forget about the back of my neck which gets a lot of sun. It's probably the spot in you that's aging the fastest that we don't pay attention to because we can't see it in the mirror back of the hands. And I make sure to just think, hey, you know, the sun is trying to kill me. You know, it's what it's trying to do, you know, passively. It's not, it doesn't mean any harm. It doesn't mean anything evil by that. It's not anything wrong with it. It's just the true. It's just literally just tearing your DNA apart with UV radiation. And again, solar radiation. Scientists saying that.
- [38:37]
A
Yes.
- [38:38]
B
So moving from that into the core tenants, this is, this is what I spend my day doing. I would say this is what I've built a framework for at a longer life.
- [38:47]
A
Yeah.
- [38:47]
B
If you go to my website nickengerer.org e n g e r e r.org or you can sometimes you can just go to a longerlife.com and that works. Or you find us on socials. What we're always talking about is this framework that I've built, a four part framework for longevity. Because look, longevity is not a destination, it's not something you achieve. Longevity is a mindset. Longevity is a mindset. It's something you are living and continuing to live and implementing in your life in that way. And that's where I start this four part framework. It's with mindset. We do, we, we adopt a longevity mindset. We build number two, we build a strategy. So we're not just throwing our money at things but we're doing what's most effective for us.
- [39:32]
A
Yes.
- [39:33]
B
Then we are modifying our lifestyle factors which there's 4 to 5 of those that I introduced and we'll spend a bit of time chatting through those and then we engage with the exciting world of longevity technology like young Goose or red light therapy or biological age testing. Whole bunch of really exciting things out there. Supplements that we could talk about for days and days and days.
- [39:53]
A
Yeah.
- [39:53]
B
And we still wouldn't get through them all. But you can't get all the way to the end with the fun longevity technology stuff unless you've started all the way back at the beginning with mindset. So I am actually right now in the process of releasing my free longevity mindset course. So it's on my website under Mindset, and I'm guiding people through the basic tenets of what a longevity mindset is and the things that they need to realize. And, and I guide them up to realizing these two. Two key things. One is that you don't have to get weak and sick when you get old. You don't. You don't have to. It's. It's completely in your power to do otherwise. Yet we're subconsciously programmed to believe I'm going to get old, weak, sick, not be able to do the things I love. That's not true. The second thing is that the longer you stick around, the more technology is here to help you stay healthy. And that is accelerating. It is. We are in such an exciting time because of how quickly this is moving and how much is becoming possible. And so when you have those two realizations and you really bring them in, and when I say realization, I mean, like, you've seen reality differently, then you will start to think, oh, you know what? I have a lot of agency over my health future. I can make decisions now that are going to give me 5 to 10 years healthy life based on the technology we have right now. And what then do I do? Well, I need to think about a strategy. And where do I start with my strategy? In step number two, I need to think, all right, what am I most likely to die from? Or what diseases am I most likely to develop? And that's where you should start your proactive measures. That's where you should start taking your first supplement. You should be knowing, hey, you know what? In my family, it's type 2 diabetes. We have a family health questionnaire. You can answer, look at your family history. That's your first point of information. You can pull in a bit of genetic information, too, if you'd like, assess your risk. You know, for myself, I've had very clear signals both in my genome and in my family history, that my retinal health is really important. So what do I do? I take a supplement that helps improve the health of my retina. And interestingly enough, one of the ingredients in there is zeaxanthin. Another one that's great is astaxanthin. These are carotenoids that we also know are really fantastic for the skin and in Fact, reduce the incidence and intensity of sunburn as well as your skin. Be healthy. So we can pick these things that we want to start doing in our strategy and choose them well with a long term mindset. Because again, if I start taking a supplement now in my 30s, and I'm doing it for my longevity strategy, with a longevity mindset, I can start doing the math, okay, how many decades am I going to take that supplement? How much is that going to cost me? I want to know that this stuff's worth my money. And again, that's why I do all this self experimenting and show people how to do it with the Vizio scanners like we were talking about before. There's ways to do that with supplements that, that I share with my audience. And after you've got some of those basics down in your strategy and you might pick a few supplements that are really targeted towards your risk, like lycopene for prostate cancer. That's a great one. Then we're gonna work on lifestyle. Then we're gonna work on those lifestyle changes because that's where you're gonna get your five to 10 years of healthier life. And longevity technology is gonna make that number go up, I guarantee it. There's a lot of stuff coming that's very exciting. But right now, if you adopt a longevity lifestyle, you can live five to ten more healthy years. And that's, that's a significant dividend because not only are you living longer, but you're doing that healthfully and you're not developing these diseases of aging which are miserable and expensive and reduce your quality of life and take away the things you love to do. You don't have to do that. If you are good at optimizing nutrition, fitness, sleep, mental health and your environment, which are those five factors that sit under the longevity lifestyle. You know, most of the changes to make in that space are free or very low cost to begin with and have incredible benefits long term. And then after you've identified some of those things you want to tweak there, then I give you permission to go spend your money on fancy longevity things. But too many of us are starting all the way at the end on the longevity technology stuff and just throwing stuff, throwing money at things, thinking, oh, that'll fix it, or oh, I wonder what that'll do without even doing it in a controlled way to know if it's helping them. And that's what I want to help people get grounded out of and stop doing. Yes, because when you really stop and think about it, if you really have a longevity mindset. All these things that you're trying to do right now are things you need to have be grounded based on something clear and solid because it's long term decisions you're making. And that means that energy, time, finances, those are really something you're investing over time. You want to know you're doing a really solid job at that. And so that's the framework that I approach to answer that question. And it's something that we're continually refining over time. And again, the place people can start is go check out that free mindset course. I would love people to try it out and give me their feedback.
- [44:59]
A
We'll do, I'll do it.
- [45:01]
B
Awesome.
- [45:02]
A
This is like super, super cool. And I think I agree with everything you said, especially because what I see in the entire, I would say like pursuit of health mega field is decision fatigue. I think the main reason we are experiencing a surge of a specific problem within the attempt to get people healthier is when things are just unclear, that the paradigm is unclear, the steps are unclear and people need to figure to decide on a kind of a mode of action each time. They don't know what they're measuring exactly. They don't know what they should be feeling or seeing. They don't know, you know, even the why or like the source of why decisions are being made. And that just causes. That just takes. You see it with food a lot, right? You see it with, with any, any type of like new, let's take keto for example or Paleo or whatever is like long enough that, you know, sellers at Costco are trying to like usurp in order to kind of circumvent your decision making ability. Right. Like you will now have on everything under the sun, Keto friendly or paleo or whatever that is. And that is just that pent up stress tension of decision fatigue and then someone just relieving that stress. And that is because you have no framework like the one that you described to follow in order to have a very, you know, a very legible way of not only amassing information but also amassing habits obviously which start everything, et cetera.
- [47:00]
B
Yeah, it's decision fatigue and it's overwhelm and that's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, overwhelm. So when I got really excited about the longevity field, it was back in about 2017, I was really deep diving on proactive healthcare and came across the whole movement to increase health span and eventually lifespan. And it resonated with me so much because it came at a time in my life where I'd just gone through a big cancer journey with my. My ex wife who's now, she's still well today. But it's a very formative thing I talk about in the mindset course. It's why I'm here doing what I'm doing. And I. My excitement about everything that was happening quickly turned into overwhelm because I didn't know where do I start? What do I do? I'm excited about this longevity thing, but how do I even get started? What am I supposed to do first? And you can look at something just as simple as nutrition, which I refer to in the longevity lifestyle section as nutrition very specifically because that's what we're trying to figure out is how to get the right nutrition to your body. But that gets boiled down into diet. And then diet becomes tribalistic in this versus that they versus them. It becomes this space where we then are becoming emotional about what we're eating and defending what we're eating and why. And that's entirely missing the point. And the point here was to give yourself adequate nutrition to support your body's cellular function. And just even that space alone is overwhelming for people. And that's only been increasing in the last eight years that I've been in this space because we now have. The brilliance of the algorithms behind targeting us with advertisements must be commended because they are so good now, right? Like you just, you're in your living room and having you mentioned that you're, you know, you're a little bit tired of the couch and you'd like a new couch, all of a sudden you get advertised a new couch. You know, they are that good and they're doing that.
- [49:11]
A
You get advertised a new couch. A new couch. And the fact that you said that you're tired, so you're also. Also advertise some energy drink or something.
- [49:20]
B
Exactly, exactly.
- [49:21]
A
They're so good at.
- [49:22]
B
And you will, you will be overwhelmed with advertising dollars trying to get you to purchase a product to solve those problems for you. And as soon as you get into the wellness and longevity space, that happens to you and you don't you again, like, what do I spend my money on and what can I trust? And the person who's willing to bid highest on the ad for you to see isn't necessarily the company with the best values that can back up what they're doing with science. So yeah, I place myself in my brand and helping people be guided through this process to take them out of overwhelm and give them clarity on where to start, where to go next, and how to navigate this entire space of proliferating offerings that promise to help you live healthier for longer and figure out which ones of those are actually backed with some solid science and a good team with clear values and a mission to help human health. And again, that's why I'm here having this conversation with you and your brand and testing out your product because you guys tick all those boxes, which is, I mean, it's commendable.
- [50:28]
A
Yeah, I appreciate it and I agree with you. And obviously it's something I say often to people here, here, because we invite people we're interested in. I mean, we, the product we made, we made them for people like you. Right. We made them for people who are, who are interested, who are fellow journeymen. I would say very, maybe very quickly, before we kind of run out of time, what is your like? I would say like the most important thing for you as far as like a morning routine and an evening routine for you as an individual?
- [51:01]
B
Yeah, I love routine. I thrive on it. It's not necessarily the same for everyone, but for those of us who thrive on routine, I'm one of you. And I like to do more or less a similar sort of things when I wake up. And the first thing I like to do when I wake up and put my feet on the floor is recite a Bible verse that I've memorized, just one of many. Because I want to start my day beyond myself. Because I am so easily sucked into me, my world, the things I need to accomplish, the worries, concerns, fears I have. I want to start there. I want to start remembering that this is a bigger picture than just myself. And that is a journey forward in the day of humility. That's important. That's where I start. And then I stumble, sleepy eyed out into my. My kitchen and I make up my first drink for the day, which is some branch chain amino acids, some creatine and some nmn. I'm currently experimenting with that in some water with a few supplements that I use to kick off my day. And then I sit that and head outside to the grass, get my feet in the grass, look toward where the sun's going to come up and just stretch out my body, move, breathe a little bit, get grounded, Just really feel my feet on the earth and just my presence and being where I am and not try to rush off and all the things I've got to do. Because for me that's the biggest thing I can do for my nervous system is to Just take that backward step and just be like, okay, it's all right, Nick. Whew. We're just going to be here for a minute. And then I go inside and do a bit of mobility, do some push ups, pull ups, some work on my rings, a few little physio exercises I'm doing to get my legs strong in particular places so I can keep going with my athletic endeavors. And then I'm generally off to make a healthy breakfast. And if I have time before that, I might have some coffee and read the Bible a little bit, say a prayer. And then I usually write into making the boys breakfast and getting them off to school and all the rest. So that's what my morning looks like before I go. Then work on either investment stuff or work at a longer life or have fun conversations on podcasts like this one.
- [53:15]
A
Nice. Very nice. What about evening routine? Is there a specific evening evening routine you have?
- [53:21]
B
Yeah, you know what I. My phone, like it is in my office here in the desk, charging by 7:30pm and screens are off by 8. And that's huge. Like that's been so good for my nervous system and sleep. In fact, last night I had a strange thing happen where I accidentally had to check my computer. I saw an email that like threw me and then I didn't sleep well because I was thinking like this business stuff all night and I was like, man, Nick, like, you know that and you didn't even try to do that. But here's more evidence that like disconnect from the world, calm down. In the evening, I bring the lights down. I got amber globes in my house or a red light. I don't leave those bright lights on. And then I'm going into so a bit of reflective time if I have that and reading. Usually I do a little bit of like growth development work. I'm currently in the process to join a course to study psychotherapy. So like mindset, enhance that mindset side of things for myself. And so I'm reading some of those books about the history of psychotherapy and techniques and all the rest until, until I start to feel a little bit sleepy. Then I whip out my sci fi book and that usually puts me right to sleep. If I'm having a little bit of, if I need a little bit extra support, I'll sometimes I'll use my pulsetto, which is a vagus nerve stimulator, put it on sleep mode. That tends to help me calm down, get to sleep. And another one I really enjoyed in the evening and I don't have it anymore and I want it back as I was actually using a sound lounge, which is like a bed you can lay on with headphones on that plays this meditative music. And it's actually vibrating your body with all the frequency frequencies of the sound. And it's just so good for the nervous system to just bring you down into rest and digest. And I was doing that quite often for a while. And I may yet have to go buy one of those because I really miss it.
- [55:13]
A
Nice. Yeah. It's becoming extremely popular here in the state. That's beautiful. Yeah. I have the same thing as far as like outside world and business stimuli. For me, I even take it as step further as far as like the information because I am super associative. So if I do work on like self help, self improvement type things in the evening, normally I go back to thinking about the business or some effort I have. So for me, I'm a big history buff and I don't even want to engage myself in the present. I'm thinking now about not even about myself, about history, whether it is now Alexander the Great or whatever that may be. Yeah. So I completely see what you're doing there and I love it. So you are using a kind of ambiance type light, like amber or red, instead of like wearing kind of blue blocking glasses at night. That's. That's kind of. Yeah.
- [56:26]
B
In my home. Because in my home I have control of the light environment. Right. So if I'm at somebody else's home or if I'm traveling, I'm 100% of the blue light blockers. I have a pair of the. I've tried a lot of blue light blockers and the ones I like the most are the onyx from On Charge because they are a complete wraparound glass glasses. The lenses are really clear, good quality. And there's. You can't get any light even and around the sides. And that makes such a big difference when I travel, particularly in environments where there's lots of really bright light in the evenings. And if I am with people and they're asking me, hey, what are these things? I say, look, just take them, put them on for a minute and then take them off. And feel what happens to your eyes.
- [57:07]
A
Yeah.
- [57:08]
B
And it's that immediate, very strong relaxation signal of almost like, oh, I. Oh, I can relax a little bit with these on. And they take them back off and they almost squint a little bit at how bright the light is in their environment. And that is case in point, like Often the only lesson they need to understand how important the light environment control is. In fact, the last time I did that, I was away for a weekend with some of my triathlete buddies for a triathlon race. And after I let people try it on, they're like, oh, let's turn these lights off. And we just hung out after dinner in the dark with just kind of like the stove light around the corner on and kept. And kept conversing. So it's also a great conversation starter for sure.
- [57:51]
A
So the best I've tried, and again, yeah, I agree with that completely. The best I've tried are actually contact lenses by Nike.
- [58:01]
B
Oh, cool.
- [58:01]
A
So Nike made contact lenses? They made them and now they're apparently, like illegal and Nike might, like, discontinue them. They made them for athletes like, to see the ball better, I guess. Like monochromatic and like amber slash red are better for like some kind of ball hand eye coordination type things. And I have a professional, you know, very high level athlete friend, now retired Olympic hall of Famer, and he gave me one, like a pack. They were the best. Because you want to talk about, like, you know, complete immersion in that color that's, you know, incredible.
- [58:44]
B
I want to try that. Yeah.
- [58:46]
A
Yes. Yeah, you should try it. I don't know if they're going to discontinue it or not, but definitely. Okay, Nick, listen. We try to keep it less than an hour. I'm making my best effort, even though I think we should have another podcast, talk about things a little bit more in depth. But I truly appreciate the time that you gave us here. You are definitely, as I said, you definitely embody what this podcast is about and what we're trying to do as a company.
- [59:16]
B
Thank you. That's high praise and it's a privilege to speak with everyone who's listening. I always really appreciate the listener because I'm a listener on podcasts. Right. And I hope that this has been valuable to you. And once again, I would really love if you went and checked out that free mindset course on my website, nickangerer.org e n g e R E R. And let us know what you think because it's new, there's nothing else out there that's like it. And we're just so keen to see what people think.
- [59:47]
A
Absolutely. And we will have all those links in our podcast description. And I, again, there is a reason you're on. So I highly recommend everyone go check that out. Thank you very much, Nick.
- [60:00]
B
A pleasure. Thank you.
- [60:01]
A
All right, bye, everyone.