Full Transcript
Grace: Welcome everyone! My name is Grace De Leon associate brand manager at NOVOS. I’ll be your host for today. As we all enter, I would really love to know where everyone is coming from. Feel free to type in the chat box where you are in the world. We’ve got a global audience today, Denmark, England, and Phoenix, Arizona. I myself am located in New York City.
Grace: All right, thank you all for joining us. Before I get started, I want to go over a quick few housekeeping items. I want to thank those of you who have already submitted questions. During the event, you can submit more questions in the Q&A box, which is located at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you see a question you like, you can upvote it. We’ll do our best to address them as they come in. After the event has ended, we will be giving away one bottle of NOVOS Boost to one lucky attendee. The winner will be announced via email. Okay, everyone, let’s buckle in as I introduce you to our founders.
Grace: Starting off with CEO, Chris Mirabile, a serial entrepreneur, brain tumor survivor, and the youngest winner of NYU Stern Business Plan Competition. Chris Mirabile is known for beating the odds. Early success and failure has shaped his business principles but has also taught him the value of living well. Determined to crack the code to longevity, Chris became a self-proclaimed citizen scientist, experimenting with supplements, diet, and exercise research that has led him to create NOVOS and achieve a biological age, 11 years younger than his chronological age. Co-founder and CSO, Dr. Verburgh, is a longevity biotechnology specialist and pioneer of nutrigerontology. Dr. Verburgh ponders questions about aging, evolution, and the nature of humanity on a regular basis. As a medical doctor, author of four books, Singularity University faculty member, and partner at 100 Million Longevity Vision Fund, Dr. Verburgh has invested his life in looking for answers to improve health and slow down aging. Together, Chris and Dr. Verburgh created NOVOS, a nutraceutical company with some of the world’s top longevity, scientists and medical doctors that help people take control of their health spans and lifespans.
Grace: Thank you so much for joining us today. We are going to get started with some of our questions that have been submitted beforehand. Feel free to start using the Q&A to submit your own questions as well.
Grace: So a commonly asked question is, what is your daily routine? And we’ll give that one to CEO, Chris.
Chris: All right. Thank you. So, as you mentioned earlier, Grace, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to reduce my biological age according to multiple different clocks. So everything from a true age clock, I’m 11 years younger, a telomere age clock, I’m 13 years younger. And, other clocks clock bring me at, aging at the rate of basically 75% per year. And, with that said, how have I done it? Well, I’ve been doing this for many years. I’ve been experimenting with different diets, lifestyles, and supplements. Obviously, I take every day, both NOVOS Core and NOVOS Boost when it comes to my diet. I have a relatively, as you would say, clean diet. So it’s very high in vegetables and mushrooms, healthy fats like extra virgin olive oil, and lots of herbs, and spices. I have fish things like salmon and sardines and occasional, white meat chicken in my diet. I have a little bit of fruit and slightly higher carbs on the weekends, like sweet potatoes, quinoa, oatmeal, and things like that. And on a daily basis, I work out, and on my workout days, I make a custom smoothie, which can consist of collagen protein, vegetarian protein powder, typically hemp-based, spirulina, chlorella, and a mixture of mushroom powders. In terms of supplementation, as I mentioned, I take Core and Boost, but in addition to that, I take a B complex. I take iron twice a week because I head slightly low iron levels from not getting much red meat in my diet. I take creatine monohydrate every day and chamomile extract towards the end of the day. I get a lot of potassium in my diet, and if I’m not getting, adequate amounts, I’ll even take potassium ketone salts because the ketones can be signaling molecules and have a lot of longevity, promoting effects, iodine, so on, and so forth. So there are, a lot of things on the list. I can actually, in the coming weeks, upload this to our website. We’ll be able to show the day in the life. And this goes into other things like bio, trackers, different devices I use the Oura Ring or others, different tests I get done, from epigenetic clocks to different blood tests and so on. So we’ll be pretty comprehensive with it and get more information up on our blog.
Dr. Verburgh: Yeah, perhaps too quickly add, if that sounds like a lot to you, don’t worry. We already have on our website a longevity regimen, and we posted it very recently due to popular demand. A lot of questions were asking, what supplement should I take? What foods should I eat for longevity? Which, devices can I acquire to sleep better, improve relaxation, and so on? So we just posted on our blog on novoslabs.com, what we call our longevity regimen, and there you can find a whole list of supplements, foods, and devices you can use and consume to live a longer, healthier life. And, we will continuously update at least with, novel insights and, yeah, so that’s the goal of our company: is to be a platform enabling people to live longer, healthier lives and to disseminate as much as information about that as is possible. And also, perhaps, yeah, we get often the question. Chris told us, he is much younger biologically, so he is like chronologically 37 years old, but he’s like in his twenties or so. and some people also ask how old I am. I’m 36, by the way. Yeah, we really try to reduce our biological age as much as possible and use the best tests to assess our biological age. And, we will also offer soon some of those best tests, to assess your biological age on our website, which you, can order to have a much better picture of your, biological and, age rate of aging.
Grace: Thanks for sharing, Dr. Verburgh. Speaking of other longevity supplements and routines, we have one question from a NOVOS, member of our community.
Grace: He says, “Hi, I’m 50 years old, a follower of your work, and a happy customer taking both Core and Boost supplements. I have found it very difficult to figure out what other supplements I should take and where to get them from. I understand NOVOS does not provide them. And I have read all the different articles you have published on this subject, but it’s still very hard to compress all that info into a list of recommended ones. Thank you for your recommendations.
Dr. Verburgh: Yeah, that’s a great question. So actually, we differentiate between longevity supplements and health supplements. So health supplements are classical supplements, often consisting of micronutrients like vitamins, minerals, and omega−3 fatty acids, and so on. And these health supplements are very important, of course, for health. But if you take extra of them, you are not really going to extend your lifespan. So we, we don’t really see for other vitamins, the minerals, if you take extra of them, we don’t see an increase in lifespan, unfortunately. But if you are deficient in them, as a lot of people are in the West, we do see a shortening of lifespan or acceleration, acceleration of aging. And almost 75% of people are deficient in magnesium. A lot of people are deficient in vitamin D, Iodine deficiency, also a big problem. Despite having normal blood tests, a lot of people are unfortunately deficient. so it’s very important to take health supplements, and we have written extensively about that on our website. And also, it’s important to take longevity supplements. So longevity supplements are different from health supplements in the sense that they can extend lifespan, including maximum lifespan. and these are things that are less common. These are substances you find much less, in normal supplements. So these are things like microdose lithium, alpha-ketoglutarate but in the calcium form, which is very important, things like glucose sulfate and so on. So these are not just your average vitamins and minerals. But to come back to that great question, yes, it’s definitely important to make sure you have enough magnesium, vitamin D, iodine, choline, zinc, phosphatidylcholine, omega−3 fatty acid, and then, the right forms like triglycerides. So we have written an extensive blog post on our website too, about omega−3 fatty acid and the best triglycerides form and the phospholipid form, and even forms that you cannot find in supplements. So it’s complicated, as like by consuming fish, which has specific forms of phospholipid-based omega−3, which are very good at entering the brain. So it’s, I agree with, that question, supplementation is very complex and doctors are not really trained in it, or at least most doctors and the ones that are trained don’t approach it from longevity. But to make a long story short, as I mentioned just before, on our website, we just posted the longevity regimen and there you find all information. You find which supplements to take, how to take them. And especially for multivitamins, we also have written an extra blog post how to take the best multivitamin and in the best way. And, there we also explain the shortcomings of multivitamins and, and why you still can take them, but you have to make sure you take extra amounts of specific substances that you often don’t find enough in high enough doses in multivitamins like calcium, magnesium, potassium, and so on. And like Chris alluded to, during just the previous question, Chris mentioned something very important, and I just want to emphasize that’s potassium. So Chris said he uses, potassium chloride salt which is a great way to tremendously increase your intake of potassium. So you have you have plain regular salt, which is sodium chloride, but you also have potassium chloride, and that’s another kind of salt and ideally you buy. So instead of using normal salt, you use a salt that consists of two-thirds potassium chloride, and about one-third, sodium chloride, classical salt. And, and that’s a great way, for example, to increase potassium levels, which is very important for blood vessel health. And we’ve seen studies that, for each gram of potassium, you will take extra, you substantially reduce your risk of a stroke, and so on. So these are small things, but that can have big impacts in the long term, for your health and for longevity. But we all, yeah, summarize that on our blog.
Grace: Thanks for sharing Dr. Verburgh. And we are currently linking any blogs that we’re referencing right now in the answering of these questions in the chat. So if you’d like to learn more about that, you can go to the chat and click the links to the blogs.
Grace: Chris, would you be able to touch on if there’s an age where it’s too late to start taking NOVOS or other longevity, solutions?
Chris: Sure. Happy to. the quick answer is no, it’s, never too late to start. it’s also not too early to start for most people, at least when they’re in their teens. So the way I like to frame it is when it comes to things like exercise or eating healthy, would you ever tell somebody at any point in their lives that they should stop eating healthy or that it wouldn’t pay to start eating healthy? Same thing with activity, you’re always telling people that they should be physically active, to at the least go out outdoors and walk if they’re able to. So I would say the same thing applies to taking NOVOS. the earlier that you can take it, the younger you are, the more substantial the benefits are going to be. If you wait longer in your life, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to experience benefits. In fact, you might see more profound benefits, in the short term if you’re older taking, Core and Boost. Because, the, analogy of, a, of an older car, you will see more benefits if you get that car repaired than if you take a brand new car to the lot, or to the garage to be repaired. Yeah, the answer is that it’s never too late to start taking it. It can always have its benefits and you’ll know this more of them, the older you are, but you can also start from an early age if you want those, benefits to accumulate over a long period of time.
Grace: Great. Thanks for sharing. Dr. Verburgh. We have a question about ingredients in NOVOS and what the most interesting ones are. Would you be able to touch on that?
Dr. Verburgh: That was a great question. So in Core we have 12 of what we believe are some of the most interesting and at least most science based ingredients to target aging. but yeah, all of them, have a lot of science behind them in the sense that they can extend lifespan in multiple species, have been associated with reduced mortality in humans, in some cases, or improved health, biomarkers in humans, and that act on aging hallmarks and so on. So yeah, it’s difficult to select which ones are the best, but, a few of them that come to mind is for example, calcium alpha-ketoglutarate. there have been a lot of great studies in, multiple species that it extends lifespan. We have some great mice studies that is mice live longer, but also their health span is significantly improved. So these old mice are much younger and healthier. AKGs used already for decades in humans. athletes use it to improve stamina, stamina and endurance. it’s a naturally occurring, substance in our body. That’s, it’s a, it’s often found, for example, it’s mainly found in mitochondria, mitochondria use it as natural, fuel to, to enable the energy production in our, power plants of our cells called mitochondria. So there’s a lot of great science behind AKG. another interesting substance is microdose lithium. we have seen in a lot of studies that in areas where, people lived and where there’s a lot of lithium in the drinking water, there, this, those people seem to live longer. There is less suicide due to perhaps some mood stabilization aspects of microdose lithium even. and, there is less neurodegenerative diseases. There have been done clinical trials in humans with lithium, microdose lithium, to treat, neurodegenerative diseases. So it’s a very, if you give it to mice they live longer and, and, so, so on. so that’s a great substance too. Glucosamine, is also a great one. a lot of people know about glucosamine as a mean, as a means to, treat joint disorders, that’s what it’s mainly been sold for. But little people know that glucosamine has also been associated with increased lifespan, and there have been large studies in Europe and U.S. that looked at many different supplements and at mortality risks. And as expected, they didn’t find a lot of supplements that were associated with reduced mortality. Because as I said, most supplements don’t really extend lifespan and so on. Some antioxidants can even shorten lifespan. but there are very few substances or supplements that have been associated with reduced mortality where glucosamine. And also if you give glucosamine to mice, they live longer. And there are have also been studies looking, at associations between glucosamine and reduced cardiovascular risk. So there was a study in the British Medical Journal that found that people who consume glucosamine have less risk of a heart attack and so on. Very interesting substance. so it’s not just for joint health. it has many other effects on the body. It can improve mitochondrial function and mitochondrial biogenesis, which means it can improve, the, let’s say the genesis of mitochondria, so more mitochondria are made. It reduces inflammation and so on. That’s also in a very interesting substance. But we have many more, in our, in NOVOS Core, and we also have NOVOS Boost, we have NMN. we were agnostic as to which NAD Booster we would use, but we, settled on NMN also in discussion with our scientific advisory board, as being superior to NR, which is often still, touted everywhere or on the internet for many reasons. But, we also have an extensive blog article about NMN versus, NR. but we believe, for example, NMN is also a very interesting, longevity molecule. And we have many more, and perhaps we can discuss them in another AMA or, during another, let’s say lecture that we are planning to give in the next weeks and months ahead.
Grace: Thank you for sharing Dr. Verburgh. Speaking of NMN, Chris, we have a question about our purity of NMN, and the question is how to know which NMN product, including yours, contains the advertised amount of NMN and the quality of the product is good. Do you have evidence of the purity in your NMN?
Chris: Sure. Another great question. when it comes to purity, there are a number of different tests that you can run on substances. And so I’ll speak about NMN, but I’ll also zoom out and talk about NOVOS products in general. we are currently working with 13 ingredients across both Core and Boost. Every one of those ingredients when we receive them, they undergo testing for, first of all, something called a COA, a certificate of analysis, which is looking into the purity of, that compound. So if it says that it’s NMN, the laboratory confirms that it is indeed NMN, and to what percentage is it actually NMN. Additional tests include heavy metal tests. So making sure that none of the ingredients have heavy metals in them, or I shouldn’t say don’t have any, because it is always possible that there are tiny, bits of it, especially when it comes to herbal products that are derived from the earth, So they’re in the dirt, there’s a chance that there’s a tiny amount of heavy metal. But it is way, below what the FDA considers to be safe. And we, adhere to those standards. So heavy metal would be next. And then, biological testing. So making sure that there’s no, yeast, bacteria or viruses, and so on, in the sample. So we do that for every one of the 13 ingredients. We also do additional testing on top of that for the finished product. So for example, once NOVOS Core is completed, we will run these tests again to make sure that the finished product has the appropriate ratios and that we include everything we say that we include. And oftentimes, we actually have a little bit more of the ingredients in the formula than what we, than what we promised to you. The idea in the industry is called overage. So we always allocate a little bit of overage. So we put a little bit more like maybe 5% or so, more of an ingredient, into the mix just to ensure, that we’re going to be, at least at or above the expectations that our customers have. for NMN specifically, we do everything that I mentioned. We also use state of the art version of NMN. It’s more of a crystalline, microcrystalline structure. So it’s not like the more old-fashioned forms of NMN that you may have heard people like Dr. David Sinclair talk about where they’re very delicate molecules that are susceptible to heat and humidity and can break down quickly and easily. They’re also, those versions that are very fluffy powder and difficult to encapsulate. The version we use is more resistant to heat, more resistant to humidity, and, is more of a fine powder. It’s more dense. And, this offers benefits, mainly, the improved stability. So leaving it out on your countertop, if it’s, 90 degrees summer day, I wouldn’t say that you necessarily wanna do that. but if it is, it’s not going to break down the product, anytime soon.
Dr. Verburgh: Yeah, and to quickly add to that, we, so the, we posted also on our website, if you go to our blog and you, type in best NMN, we, highlight what are some important requirements for high-quality NMN. And on that page, we also uploaded two independent analyses of labs, two independent labs that analyze, our NMN. And that’s quite unique because there is a lot of adulterated NMN online available. And, even the companies that, really want to offer pure NMN, they just post one certificate of analysis or one lab, independent lab test, but we have, we have tested it twice by two independent, labs based in the U.S., showing, demonstrating the very high purity, of our NMN. So that’s quite unique, you can look, look up, the, the certificates there and, and also read up why it’s so important to have, high-quality NMN and about crystalline NMN. A lot of interesting patterns have been written and research is currently going on, even in these more crystalline forms of NMN. it’s very interesting, research.
Chris: Just for everybody who’s participating, to know, in case you haven’t noticed in the chat, Nicholas on our team is putting a lot of hyperlinks to the things we’re talking about. So for example, the certificates of analysis, he, links to an article where we posted some of those. other topics we’ve covered there, there are links for, so keep an eye on that as we speak.
Grace: Thank you both for sharing. While we’re on the topic of NMN, we have a question in the Q&A, from Gerald. And he asked, “Do you take NMN on days of vigorous exercise? I recall David Sinclair recommending against it. Thanks, Jerry.”
Chris: So I, personally do take NMN on days of vigorous exercise. I’m, not aware of David Sinclair recommending against it for NMN, although I haven’t heard every word, out of his mouth. So I, can’t claim to be correct with this. But, I do recall him saying that, he doesn’t take, Metformin on days of vigorous exercise. And so perhaps there’s a confusion there. When it comes to Metformin, which is a very popular longevity substance it’s been found in some research studies to blunt the effects of exercise, similar to what in say, vitamin C or vitamin E. If you have large doses of vitamin C or vitamin E, in close proximity to your exercise, the antioxidant capacities of these substances can intercept some of the free radicals that are produced through the exercise process. And those free radicals are actually healthy free radicals that are signaling to the body that the body should come back and repair you to be stronger. the process of hormesis essentially. And so vitamin C and E have been shown in many multiple research studies to blunt the effects of exercise. Metformin has been found to do, very similar. NMN, I would be surprised unless there’s research I’m not aware of, or maybe Dr. Verburgh can interject. But, NMN can actually help to fuel, your muscles. And so you should have more energy, from the NMN. And I’ve taken NMN every day since we’ve released the product, as well as NOVOS Core. And I haven’t noticed any, decrements in my exercise ability, not, to, show off, but I’ll, show off a little bit. I, I, do run a lot. I, do six miles. I bicycle a lot. I, deadlift triple my body weight. bench press is almost, 300 pounds and I weigh only 170. So I’m, very much into exercise and, I do keep a close eye on it. And I’ve, only found performance improvements from taking, Core, and Boost. I haven’t seen any detriments from it.
Dr. Verburgh: It, is a great question. I think indeed, that David Sinclair said that he doesn’t take Metformin on days he exercises because Metformin inhibits mitochondrial function a little bit, which actually, weaponizes or up- upgrades the mitochondria, later on, it’s called mitohormesis. But it’s a very interesting question, about exercise and, things like NMN and so on. NMN indeed normally should give you actually more energy to exercise. and, the fact that some studies showed that Metformin, blunts the effects of exercise. We have to take that a little bit with the grain of healthy potassium salt because the way this is measured is also in a very blunt way. if you look more in-depth, you actually see, okay, there, some studies show a little bit less of muscle gain or muscle mass increase if you take Metformin when exercising. But you will see that the muscles are healthier, in general. And perhaps, one reason why there is 5% less muscle mass gain, is because given met Metformin inhibits muscular function, you actually exercise a little bit less because you feel, a bit more tired, faster. But again, we see in the long term Metformin makes the muscles healthier. Same for vitamin C, these studies showing that it blunts the effects of exercise. yes and no. vitamin C has, is an antioxidant, which is not always good. Actually, that, a lot of antioxidants do not slow down aging as I mentioned before. But in the long term, vitamin C can be very healthy because it’s, as it’s an epigenetic regulate, for example. it also improves mitochondrial health. And, it works very well by the way, logistically with, alpha-ketoglutarate, which is a longevity substance we just discussed because vitamin C and AKG are both substrates, for, the same, epigenetic enzyme, for example. So to make long story short, the study says, some substances blunt the effect, we have to be very critical and see, yeah, how is this exactly measured, and what, are the wrong term effects on muscle health and muscle stem cell health and so on. But to make, to answer your question, do believe you can take NMN, during exercise. And actually, it’s best just to take NMN in the morning, because a lot of people, if they take it in the late afternoon or evening because it gives more energy, they have more difficulty falling asleep. even David Sinclair, I noticed it myself. Um, when I take NMN in the afternoon, I am much more awake. So I take it just in the morning and, yeah, I exercised during the day or during the evening.
Grace: Thank you for sharing. We have a question in the Q&A, from Michael, he asked, “As a NOVOS customer, what services and products can I expect in the future?”
Chris: That’s a good question. there’s only so much that we can say until we are further along in the process and ready to release products. what I can say from a high level is that, first and foremost, as, we alluded to earlier, we will have a biological age test, in, the coming months, that you can do from the comfort of your home. And we’ll give you a measuring stick of sorts to see how you’re doing with your bi- your biological age. we will also have additional formulations in the future. We can’t say too much about that, but what I would say is that we do listen to you, and your feedback, in addition to all of the research that we do on our end to find out what the most promising substances are that will have the most dramatic impact on, your ability to, age more slowly or ideally backward. And we’re, listening to what you have to say and all of your feedback and combining that with research and our scientific advisors, and, we’re hoping that within, 2022, you’ll see, additional products from us.
Grace: We have, an additional question on that said, that asks what biomarkers will the test go over?
Dr. Verburgh: That’s a great question. So we will look, into epigenetic clocks, and we are on the lookout, and we are in the process of trying to offer the best epigenetic clock possible for our customers at the best price. So we find it very important to empower people to live longer healthier lives and to do it as much as possible from home. I think one of the next revolutions in the medical field is that all of healthcare will move from the hospital to the living room. And we really want to be at the forefront there and help, people to test their, aging and biological age and their health from the convenience of their home. Using tests that are in many ways better than when you would go to the hospital or to the medical doctor, who’s still using outdated blood tests and just, measures your blood pressure and, your body weight and that’s it and says, everything is okay, you’re healthy according to your blood tests, but then you’re deficient in so many things. And you’re epigenetically much older and you have all these vague complaints and, your blood tests say, oh, everything is okay, which is, absolutely not the case. And actually, we also wrote a blog article about the best blood test, values to look at, and, also, to be skeptical of blood tests in many ways, because they’re very difficult in tracking, between deficiencies, for example. But so regarding blood, regarding biomarkers, epigenetic blocks, we will offer soon, in the next months we will launch that hopefully even sooner. also, we will also offer the best blood tests and, other biomarkers. We are following the close, the field very closely of the best biomarkers for aging. It’s a fast-evolving and a quite new field ’cause as it’s very difficult to measure aging. but, yeah, with the epigenetic clocks and, better blood-based clocks. And also we see the advent of, transcriptome clocks, microbiome clocks, proteomic clocks, ribosomal clocks, and so on. We do foresee a very interesting next few years and decades, where we will be finally as medical doctors will be able to offer much better tests to actually really assess how healthy people are. To give you an example of the problem, so a lot of people, they do, cholesterol testing, for example, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and so on. But up to 70% of people who end up in the hospital, on the intensive care unit with a heart attack, they have normal cholesterol limits. So our blood tests are so let’s say crude and, primitive that definitely, we need much, better biomarkers in that regard. And, we will offer those soon for, our customers.
Grace: Thank you for sharing, Dr. Verburgh. Chris, we have a question about recommended electronic devices to track things like sleep. And the question is, you recommend using various electronic devices to track sleep, et cetera. Do you have any concerns about radiation EMFs given by such devices?
Chris: Yeah, so the question EMF for everyone, who’s not aware stands for electromagnetic force. and, the- these, are waves that can be emitted from electronic devices, some far more so than others. For example, microwaves have very, high EMFs typically, compared to, say my, microphone or my laptop. Generally speaking, no, I, don’t have particular, concerns about that. for one, I, use the Oura Ring. The Oura Ring, has very, low EMF. And in fact, when they created the ring, they were cognizant of that. the sensors have, such low wattage that there’s, really no concern on my part for it. If you are super concerned about that, you can actually turn off Bluetooth from, the ring and only turn it on when you put it on the charge and cradle every day, for example. and in my bedroom, I don’t really have, any things that are, electronic and are, emitting any EMFs other than, this ring, like I said, which I’m not particularly concerned about.
Dr. Verburgh: Yeah, and to quickly add to that, regarding EMF, the jury is still out there. we are very science-based and very skeptical and, critical. we always want to see the scientific evidence. but I… so we, we, have some, let’s say, reservations about, these things. But, the, we have to look further in, into, we hope there will be further studies conducted in that matter that can further, corroborate or, yeah EMF on and the effects on health, but it’s definitely an interesting field. I do have to say that a lot of people are sensitive to EMF. Often there are other reasons why they are so sensitive or have these health problems. often just simple deficiencies in a lot of micronutrients can make people sensitive to a lot of different things. And, EMF or food intolerances or stress or sounds, or, a lot of things that… so just that our health is so bad that it becomes susceptible to a lot of, different, things that would normal, healthy people not really affect. So instead of focusing yeah, on EMF or on a specific, food intolerance, we need to look at the upstream causes and the underlying causes, which are often simple nutrient deficiencies. So a lot of people are deficient in magnesium, in iodine, in vitamin D, in calcium, in iron, choline, and so on. And if you’re deficient in those, you just have very bad health and you feel you, you can have a lot of sense, susceptibilities, food intolerances, and, yeah, brain fog and sleep problems and muscle aches. So often, yeah, we need to look more at the cause, the root cause of why people can be sensitive to those things, which are actually, not the things itself. Because a lot of people don’t have any problems with or, sound or, specific foods. so probably often it’s because of an underlying, more deeply, rooted cause. and that’s again, why we find so important to really help people, to take their health into their own hands in that regard and why we just uploaded that, longevity regimen containing all micronutrients, to take, which formats, which doses, and hopefully that can, can help you.
Grace: Thanks for sharing. So speaking of these longevity technology devices and supplements, we have a question and comment from Gilbert. He says, “All the recommendations can get rather costly. Can someone please speak to how to prioritize what to take to help those with budget restrictions?”
Chris: I think Dr. Verburgh, can, comment on this. What, I would say from my own personal experience is that there are certain supplements that have gone a very, long way in my health and then others that are not necessarily as, as important in my estimation. So for example, B complex, the B vitamins, getting, my daily dose of that has had a, tremendous impact on my energy levels. And, even my, brain function, my cognition and so on. I think largely because of the fact that, genetically I’ve, looked into my genes, I, have a polymorphism, called the MTHFR C677T snip that, I’m homozygous for, which makes it more difficult for me to, to, meth- methylate and to use B vitamins essentially. And, so by purchasing, that product it’s gone a long way for my energy levels. Vitamin D is, a critical, hormone/vitamin that most people, even in the summer, aren’t getting enough of, through natural sunlight and UV radiation, which has its own, downfalls as well. So vitamin D is probably something that most people wanna supplement with. Iodine, potentially iodine has gone a long way for me. most people don’t realize iodized salt, the iodine actually precipitates out of the container. So if, you’ve got an open container of salt for an extended period of time, it has much less iodine than originally expected. The other thing I would add to that is that, I lost my train of thought on, on the other thing I would add to that. so iodine, what else would I add to that? vitamin-like vitamin E and vitamin C, I, I wouldn’t necessarily, recommend as highly just because you, do tend to get plenty of vitamin C and E in, in multiple different, food products that are fortified. I do remember what I was gonna say about iodine, the, second point, which is that a lot of people who are health conscious are taking, sea salt, like maybe pink Himalayan sea salts, and these sea salts aren’t fortified with, iodine. So unless you’re eating a lot of seaweed, which most of us aren’t, you’re not getting much iodine in your diet. And I was one of those people. I also supplemented with iron and especially for women, premenopausal women, I think it’s extremely important for them. And then even for some men, I was donating blood. And I, even though the, blood lab told me I had adequate iron levels, they didn’t do really comprehensive testing. It was a quick spot check and I was actually, borderline anemic. And I felt the effects of that. as I mentioned earlier, I don’t eat foods that are high in iron. Like I’m not eating much red meat at all. and I get some iron-like, plant-based iron, from spinach and so on, but the heme form of iron is much more bio available. And that’s what you get from foods like red meat. So a couple of times a week, I’m now maintaining with a, an iron pill. so, I know I’m not perfectly answering your question in terms of a budget, but if, you, consider that there are just a handful of, ingredients that are more, important than others, maybe emphasize those. You could also look for higher quality, multivitamins. We ha- we can critique all of them and, and we have our own vision for what an ideal multivitamin should contain, but there are some decent ones out there by like life Accentrate brand or Thorne makes some pretty decent multivitamins that you can also consider at least in the interim, until there’s a better solution available.
Dr. Verburgh: That’s a great question, actually. And I think Chris, you gave a great reply there. You really highlighted a lot of substances a lot of people are deficient in. regarding the iodine. we’ve also written an extensive blog post on how to best take iodine. It’s very complicated actually. Often the doses that governments recommend 150 microgram. that’s barely the minimum you really need to, yeah, not suffer from problems are quite soon, but it’s probably not enough. Has a lot of, recommendations governments, make. They are, just enough to not become sick, quite quickly measured also via very crude biomarkers, but actually, often need much higher doses. so that is one example for iodine. But what I would add, what I often see people are very often deficient in is something very straightforward is calcium. ideally I don’t recommend to, drink milk, animal milk because it accelerates aging for, there are many reasons why milk very likely accelerate aging. It contains galactose, not lactose, galactose, which is a very strong crosslink and, induces inflammation. It contains, all kinds of substances that activate aging pathways and so on. So I can talk for hours about milk and aging, but I’m not going to do that. But I don’t drink milk and I would not recommend drinking milk, contrary to most governments, to, for, longevity, because very likely it accelerates aging. but if you don’t drink milk, where to get calcium? And so people say, yeah, you can find it in vegetables like broccoli and then in some nuts and so on, yeah. But even then, it’s very difficult to get enough calcium. So ideally you just take two times 500 milligrams of calcium per day away from your iron, which as Chris rightfully pointed out, a lot of people are also deficient in, especially women. But, yeah, calcium is another example. I think magnesium is also something 70 plus percent of people are deficient in. and magnesium taking it as a supplement, most supplements are too low dosed. So ideally you take it as a powder, like magnesium malate powder and you take about two grams of the magnesium malate powder per day, which contains about 300 milligrams of pure magnesium because you’re speaking about the powder magnesium malate. you also have the malate molecule, which is actually very healthy and also in some studies extends lifespan. So we would recommend, I would add to what Chris said, calcium, magnesium. And then another, one I think is important, is choline. There are a lot of… It’s very complex choline can increase, perhaps a subset that can increase the risk of, heart disease, but choline is also very important for epigenetic health and so on. If you don’t want to take choline, you can take phosphatidylcholine, which is, also very good for brain health. So these are a few examples I think are often very interesting and are yeah, are very cheap. You can buy calcium or iron or, or, even phosphatidylcholine quite cheaply, in, a lot of stores.
Chris: Would just very quickly add to that. If you do take NOVOS Core, it does contain magnesium and calcium, and a hundred milligrams of vitamin C. So a hundred milligrams of vitamin C is 111% of the recommended daily intake. then magnesium, it has 304 milligrams, which is 72% of the recommended, daily intake. And if you combine that with a healthy diet, you’re definitely exceeding a hundred percent in that case. And then calcium, this contains 18% of, your daily need for calcium as well. So you can hit a few, birds with the stone of, NOVOS Core.
Dr. Verburgh: To quickly add one thing, because it’s such an important question. A lot of huge, very significant deficiency is vitamin E and it’s found in a lot of supplements, but the vitamin E in a lot of supplements has a lot of shortcomings. It’s synthetic, it’s just one form. And sometimes in a lot of supplements, it’s actually, it’s alpha-tocopherol oxinate, and it’s actually a pro-oxidant. So anyway, so very bad vitamin E in a lot of supplements. So the best way to get vitamin E is not through supplements but through food. And even if you eat high vitamin E foods, there is not that much vitamin E in them. So a lot of people are deficient in it, probably 90% even having normal blood levels. So what I do to mitigate is, I don’t take vitamin E through supplements. I just eat, foods that are very high in vitamin E, but even then you need to eat quite a lot of them. I also eat two kinds of nuts, almonds, and hazelnuts, which are very high in vitamin E, and, sunflower seeds, about really three handfuls per day, because that’s what you really need to get enough vitamin E. And most people almost never eat almonds and not that much. And that’s one of the reasons why, we see a lot of vitamin E deficiency, not if you measure it in the blood, but if you calculate the vitamin E intake, normally that average Americans or Europeans would have, it’s often very, too low. So vitamin E is also something missed a lot. And, yeah, if you take a supplement, you are not getting the right, form of vitamin E, and then so on.
Grace: Thanks for sharing. Dr. Verburgh, would you be able to touch upon how diet plays a factor into longevity and how important that is?
Dr. Verburgh: Whew. Yeah. I will try to keep it very, short. I’ve written a book about that’s called Longevity Code. But anyway, so yeah, the currently the best technology we have to live longer is our diet, is the food we eat, and the things we drink. So it can substantially slow down the rate of aging and reduce the risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Osteoporosis, and so on. So food is terribly important. What’s a healthy longevity diet? again, we, have written an extensive article on our blog about that. You can even download the post we created, for free, of course. So it’s like a disc. And in that disc, you see everything that’s unhealthy and you can replace it with healthier foods. So anyway, so check out the long- NOVOS longevity diet blog post, and, download a poster, and put it on your refrigerator, because I think it’s a great tool to immediately see what’s healthy foods. But, to summarize it very briefly, three important things to live longer, nutrition-wise, so less, fast carbs. So this not just means, fewer sugars or sugary foods like cookies and cake and, soda, but also less starchy foods. So consume less bread, potatoes, pasta, and rice, because these foods are mainly made of starch, and starch is also composed of long chains of glucose. So if you eat potatoes, you have a very high sugar peak in your blood. If you eat, pasta, it’s a lower sugar peak, but also a very protracted sugar peak because you dump huge amounts of, glucose into your bloodstream from the starch. So I would eat less bread, potatoes, pasta, and rice. And that’s a big problem because often see patients be like, “Oh, I want to lose weight. And I have stopped eating sugary foods. And I started to exercise and doctor, I’m still not losing weight. How is that possible?” And then if you look at their diet, they still eat a lot of bread in the morning or cereals, cereals, the pasta and so on. So of course you need to substantially cut back on those and replace bread, potatoes, pasta, and rice with three alternatives, with legumes, with extra vegetables, and with mushrooms and even quinoa, for example. So instead of potato mash, just eat broccoli mash, instead of rice, eat lentils, for example, and so on. Second thing, less animal protein. if you do eat animal protein, replace red meat more with white meat, like poultry and replace it also more with fatty fish, and try to consume also more plant-based protein, from, nuts and legumes and mushrooms and so on. And thirdly, very important to consume more healthy fats. In the West, we have this fatphobia and lots of people are deficient in healthy fats. So including fatty acids and phosphatidylcholine and, all, kinds of other healthy fats, so consume more avocado.I eat every morning avocado. We have a recipe also on our website, and I think on our Instagram account, what I eat for breakfast. But it’s like over, snippets of deep freezed avocado, I thaw the evening before with blueberries and, nuts and so on, and some quinoa flakes with vegetable milk. But that’s a great way to consume more, avocado, consume more olives, nuts like walnuts, seeds like chi seeds are very high in omega−3. flax seed also very high in omega−3. So these are a few examples of increasing, to increase your intake of fat. Very short, less fast carbs, including starches, more healthy fat, and, more, let’s say, plant-based protein. And if you do it protein, more white meat, and fatty fish. And then of course, all, kinds of longevity foods. Again, we posted, the best longevity foods on our website, so we can just Google on our blog. But some interesting longevity foods are blueberries. they contain a lot of very interesting substances like anthocyanin that are DNA protective and so on. walnuts, great longevity foods, salmon, kale, or let’s say crucifers, vegetables like kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, spinach, olive oil, olive, dark chocolates. So these are great longevity foods. So they don’t have to be, let’s say very, specific foods like goji berries or, and so on. A lot of longevity foods, you just can find around, the corner in your supermarket.
Grace: Great. Thank you for sharing. We have a question from Adriana. She asks, or she states, please address lithium bone density for someone with osteopenia and safety of lithium.
Dr. Verburgh: That, that’s an interesting question. the dose of lithium we use is very low. It’s micro dose lithium, and actually, we see a lot of protective effects of, that kind of lithium. So in, in very, high doses as gi- as are given in psychiatric settings, there could be problems with lithium for, for our kidney health and so on. But we use doses that are hundreds of times lower. And at that dose, we actually see a lot of psycho protective effects. So the microdose lithium due to its epigenetic effects, for example, has cell-protective effects. So it can protect kidney cells and, and bone cells and stem cells, and so on. So actually microdose lithium, is, very interesting for, also, let’s say, general health, including bone health and so on. we, again have written a very extensive article on how to improve bone health on our website. And there you find a lot of other specific substances that can improve bone health and osteopenia. And these are things like even AKG, so alpha-ketoglutarate is shown in studies in humans to improve, bone health and reduce, osteoporosis. NMN has also shown to improve stem cells, in the bone, and, glucosamine and so on. It’s not just good for joints, but apparently also for joint, for the bone. And also for bone health it’s important of course to take the classical, recommendations like vitamin K combined with vitamin D and calcium. And I, interestingly we also see a lot of studies demonstrating the importance of quite unexpected ingredient for bone health, which is omega−3. So omega−3 fatty acids also have shown to improve bone health. so what I always recommend to people, if they’re struggling with bone health is, to take, omega−3 fatty acids, high quality, low TOTOX. It’s very important. We also have written about that on our blog post, which are the best omega−3s. And, combine that with vitamin D, vitamin K, magnesium, because magnesium works together with calcium, for bone health, and then take longevity substances like, calcium AKG, so alpha-ketoglutarate and NMN and, and glucosamine and so on, to, yeah, further improve bone health and, general health, especially stem cell health in that regard.
Grace: Thank you for sharing. Chris, we have a question about taking NOVOS from Dr. Lieberman. He asked how often after beginning NOVOS regimen should you test?
Chris: That’s a good question. It depends on what he means by test. if we’re talking about epigenetic tests like we were referring to earlier, the verdict is still out. We don’t have a definitive answer to that question. it’s, such a new scientific discipline that we are all learning in real-time. What I would say is that an epigenetic test, or, changes to your epigenome is more like steering the Titanic, when you consider something else like weight loss that might be more like steering a boat, right? So it’s, much more gradual and requires a lot more time to see noticeable improvements in an epigenetic age, or rate of aging. another thing to keep in mind is that these tests have a, margin of error in them as well. And so you can take the same test today and again tomorrow, and it can give you two different ages. And it’s, because again there’s this margin of error that’s incorporated into the algorithm, in, into the mathematics behind that formula. the, it’s a long answer I’m giving, but the, shorter answer is that you need to give it adequate time. Our best guess at this point would be at least six months, possibly 12 months. And we don’t know definitively yet, to what degree you’re going to see, changes in, in that time span. There are additional tests that are also possible, like looking at, inflammatory markers and, so on that, Dr. Verburgh either now, or another time can, go over. But it’s important for, people to be aware of the strengths and the limitations of these tests, especially in this earlier stage of their development.
Dr. Verburgh: I definitely agree with what Chris just said. So about epigenetic tests, we looked in, we looked at almost every epigenetic test under the sum and the new ones in development. but as Chris said, are very good to determine your biological age, but to de- to use them to determine or assess an intervention, that’s much more difficult. Most of them are not accurate enough for that yet. so if you are like 50 years old and you do an epigenetic test, to determine whether you’re like 58 years old biologically, because you live unhealthy, that’s great. Epigenetic tests already great for that to have a general overview are you many years older or many years younger, and that is indicative of yeah, your health, your global health. And that’s, for that epigenetic test are already much better than blood tests and so on. But to use an epigenetic test, to test an intervention, you take a supplement and then, you, you test first, and then take a supplement for six months and then retest hoping that the epigenetic is reversed. Tests are not accurate for that yet. They are being fine-tuned, but, there are some clinical trials that do show that intensive lifestyle intervention programs can reverse the epigenetic age, but that was done on group level. And so on an individual level, it’s very difficult, because then the epigenetic tests have to be even more accurate. So if you use dozens of people, some epigenetic tests could see on a group level, a difference after an intervention, but on an individual level, much, much more difficult. And even those studies, they receive some flack like, okay, is it like really reversed, is… didn’t you torture the data statistically and so on. But anyway, and just saying, there was recently a, study published, the calorie trial, that used epigenetic clocks to assess the, one of the most powerful interventions we know to slow down aging in humans and that’s calorie restriction. 200 people, that’s the total, amount of people in that study. So it’s a large group, they were subjected, so one, placebo one subjected, or under, or let’s say study was done with two other people and then intervention was caloric restriction. So they had to eat less and actually they didn’t find the reversal of, of epigenetic age most cases. So, it’s, it stems to think that even such a powerful intervention cannot yet be read out by epigenetic clocks, but that will soon change undoubtedly. But epigenetic tests are already great to really assess okay, every year or so, am I younger or older biologically speaking, to just have a general overview. Other interesting tests you can do, for NOVOS, for example, yeah, we do know that a lot of substances in NOVOS, reduce inflammation like glucosamine, and, even glycine improve, blood sugar levels and, so on. So you could test for inflammation, but that’s also not that easy. You need, for example, high sensitive CRP, and even that’s not very accurate, but still, you could test for triglycerides, glycan and, LDL triglycerides and so on in general, to see whether an intervention or supplement has improved that. But again, on an individual level, it’s always not, it’s not easy to really reverse specific conclusions, ideally tested in much larger groups, because there are so many compounding factors that can increase cholesterol levels or inflammation, what you eat, stress, how much sleep you had the night before. So ideally it’s tested in larger groups. But we do definitely recommend testing yourself often, to just have a global view of your health in that regard.
Grace: All right. Thank you both for sharing. We are running out of time for today. So I want to thank Chris and Dr. Verburgh for speaking with us today, and we want to thank everyone for joining with us. If you could give us a follow on Instagram, or if you’d like to subscribe to our email list, that is where you can stay up to date with everything NOVOS longevity and much more. And don’t forget, we’ll be announcing the winner of the giveaway very soon. Thank you all.
Dr. Verburgh: Great. Thank you.
Chris: Thank you guys.
