New and Emerging Protocols and Therapies to Increase Your Lifespan

Now it’s true that the first five or six of the podcasts, the first five or six of the steps were all about the blocking and tackling of health and longevity. Get enough sleep, eat a balanced diet, further eat a diet optimized for a healthy gut microbiome, take the appropriate supplements, and then take a look at all of your important biomarkers, like blood pressure as an example, and keep them in the optimum range. There’s no question unless we’ve got those basics right, we’re not going to live a very long life any longer than we kind of normally would on average.

We want to live long enough so that when new and emerging protocols and therapies that can greatly extend life come out, we’re still alive and we can use them to live even a lot longer. And if you remember our discussion on the podcast about the various tests that go on, there are tests that try out new things. First, they’re tried out on fruit flies, then they’re typically tried out on worms, then on mice, and then on dogs. That’s just a typical sequence. And the reason they’re tried out in that sequence is they have a longer and longer life. A fruit fly only lasts a couple of days. You try out something new on it, you can see right away whether it’s going to work or not. So that works. Then you try it on worms who live a little bit longer. See if that works.

All four of these organisms have genomes similar to humans. That’s why they’re chosen. And then of course, if that looks good, they try it out on mice. And they don’t live too long, maybe 18 months. And then if that works, try it out on dogs. And then if that works, they consider trying it out on small groups of humans and then maybe larger groups of humans. And one of the fundamental things we want to do is don’t wait. Don’t wait until there’s some clinical trial, because there probably never will be. Don’t wait until there’s a big trial of humans because you have to make that trial go over many, many years to see the effect on longevity. We really need, if we’re going to live a long time to be an early adopter of some of these new techniques.

And there’s a real interesting curve called the diffusion of innovation theory. And that is when anything new comes out, 2.5% are innovators. 13% are early adopters, 34% are the early majority of them, the late majority, and then the laggards. We don’t want to be a laggard. We’ll be dead by the time if we’re a laggard, by the time we something new. We have to consider trying to measure all the risks and the rewards when something new comes out, whether we’re going to be an early adopter or not. To give you a quick example, I mentioned in step seven, taking rapamycin, and rapamycin has been shown in Canadian studies of dogs living 25% longer. The real question is, do you want to take Rapamycin based on that amount of evidence? In other words, proven in fruit flies, worms, mice, and dogs. Well, if you’re an early adopter, you’re going to take rapamycin. That’s me. I’m taking it.

If you’re a late majority or lagger, you will never take rapamycin. You got to stay abreast of all the new stuff. And then if it looks pretty good, it’s been through those four organisms that are similar to the human organism, then think about being an early adopter. There are four of them that are emerging now and are pretty much in widespread use. One is bioelectronic medicine, another is cancer immunotherapy, the third uses peptides to lengthen telomeres. And then the fourth transfusion of young blood plasma. Blood plasma is the blood without the white or red blood cells in it, from young people to older people. Let’s take a quick look at these four.

The first is bioelectric medicine, and that is essentially putting electrical pulses to treat some chronic diseases. And you position these electrodes on your body with tapes so it stays in place. And you can either dial down on what nerve stimulation or stimulate nerve stimulation. And you can regulate the body’s immune and metabolic responses. And it’s currently used to treat such conditions as migraines, depression, sinus pain, and of course that old, bugaboo, chronic inflammation, also being tested recently for lowering blood pressure, helping arthritis, helping with diabetes and dementia. And one of the devices called the Tens device, T-E-N-S is one of the ones currently available commercially and both my wife and her mother have one. And anytime my wife has this pain that goes across the back of her shoulders, this bioelectric medicine solves it in five minutes.

Next is immunotherapy. That’s been in use now for quite some time. And what it’s all about is enlisting our immune system to turn around and fight cancer. And there have been great techniques in some cancers, for example, melanoma. Immunotherapy is great against melanoma. Whereas previous attempts with radiation and chemotherapy just really didn’t work very well. There are other current applications, for example, for bladder cancer, immunotherapy works much better than chemotherapy. Then there are also some other cancers where chemotherapy is a better choice than immunotherapy. Immunotherapy now is pretty much mainstream, but we have to be careful where we’re using it. Use it where it does better than chemotherapy. And then of course you use chemotherapy when it’s better than immunotherapy.

The next is taking peptides, which are long proteins, complicated proteins to help us live longer by length the telomeres. And they’re the caps on the end of all of our chromosomes, that kind of shorten, like a shoelace which would fray, the end of a shoelace would fray if you lost that cap. That’s the way to think about a telomere, and there are mobile studies that show if your telomeres are shortening faster, then you have a much higher risk of death. That is the people with the shortest have a 20% higher risk of death. And numerous studies on humans, especially in Russia, show that taking these peptides can lengthen the telomeres and extend life. And just to mention this Russian study, a 12-year study started in 2003. It provided an increase in human lifespan of 12 years. And you might think, well, who can trust the Russians? And maybe not, but this is a 12-year study, peer-reviewed, so worth considering.

Then there’s been a trial in the US called the telomere activation protocol, the TAP trial. And a preliminary result suggests a 16-year increase in longevity with no negative side effects from using these peptides. And there’s an FDA-approved clinical trial starting this year. There again are you going to wait till that clinical trial is over three years from now, before trying these peptides or try them now? I’m trying them.

There is a young blood plasma study where mice have been hooked up together, and you transfer the blood from the young mouse to the old mouse and vice versa, of course. And the young mouse gets older, and the older mouse gets younger. It’s like, wow. Now there’s also a number of other studies and technologies being evaluated that aren’t quite in widespread use like immunotherapy, the peptides. And these are the ones we should be watching very carefully to see when it’s time for us to consider trying them. Now, many of you may have heard of CRISPR proteins. And CRISPR proteins are like a wild west sign inside of your warning sign inside of your body that tells bacteria, this is a new virus.

And if it’s an old virus that’s been around like last year’s flu virus, then the most warning sign comes up. The bacteria know exactly how to kill it, and they kill it immediately. The trouble with COVID 19 is it’s a novel virus, meaning a new virus. Then the CRISPR proteins are not so good against this. What happens is using CRISPR technology, you can go in with think of a pair of scissors going in and causing breaks in the DNA strands at very precise locations. And then the CRISPR technology can insert new DNA in any location. And edit out of our cells, the cures or cancers for which there’s no cure today. And it’s not like this is way out. Crisper technology has been using it. It’ll help apples, not ever turn brown when they’re cut. There are bruise-resistant potatoes now in supermarkets that have the CRISPR technology in use. A certain strain of papayas has been edited to avoid the rainbow virus. Wheat, now with higher fiber and lower gluten content has been using CRISPR technologies.

And the FDA issued an emergency order to evaluate CRISPR technology for use of new saliva testing for COVID 19. CRISPR technology on the way to help us all in a lot of areas. And another technology of great interest is that the thymus gland that controls our immune system right in the middle of our chest is dead and shriveled up by age 70. And again explains why flu, pneumonia, and COVID 19 are so dangerous for elderly people. And there’s been a recent small trial in humans that has demonstrated how to use a combination of DHEA a supplement, that form in a drug, and a certain human growth hormone. Those used together actually will help regenerate the thymus gland. And this was the four-year trial in humans that ended in 2019. And all of their ages were reversed by two and a half years. And there’s a second trial, just again, starting this year. So luckily for me, I’m taking all three of those already for different reasons.

Another one is a new trial and just starting in fruit flies. And it’s all about, again, about longevity. And this is a combination of lithium, a supplement, rapamycin, a prescription drug, the one that causes dogs and cats to live 25% longer, and Metformin. And Metformin is that diabetes drug that also has a longevity benefit. And what has been shown so far is that it helps increase fruit flies to live 48% longer. And then the next study is going to be done in worms and then mice. This is another one where I’m taking all three of those already. I’m getting the benefit of that trial, whatever it’s going to be, but just because I’m taking them for other reasons.

And then finally there is a NAH study that just like the human genome study was funded by NIH, and now gives us this great insight into what diseases we’re most susceptible to. Then there’s a new one funded by the FDA with 500 investigators and a hundred institutions involved in creating the research and the acronym for is BRAIN. BRAIN research to advance innovative neurotechnologies. And the whole purpose of this study is to get great insight into these related diseases. Many those you are familiar with autism, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, stroke, some of the broad traumatic brain injuries like the NFL football players, and Alzheimer’s.

One of the things I want to end with is one of the reasons this longevity research is going so fast is that there are six exponential growth areas that are feeding into longevity. So in other words, six areas where the growth is exponential. And as I read these out to you, you’ll recognize them. Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, biotechnology, genetics, and nanotechnology. Each one of those six is growing exponentially. And when you think about six exponential growing technologies all feeding into longevity research, this is a mega revolutionary technology tidal wave supporting longevity research, and all the more reason to say abreast of what’s happening because it’s changing so fast. And the whole research and the whole institutions in the whole world are learning so much. We can’t just sit around and wait, we got to stay abreast of this.