¶ Current Applications of Longevity
Welcome back to the Path of Longevity Show , and I'm your host , dr Robert Lufkin , for today's program . I'm excited to share with you some of the energy and great information from the RadFest Longevity Conference that I had the pleasure of attending in Anaheim , california , last week .
Radfest has consistently good programs that I always look forward to being part of that conference .
With permission , for today's show , I've included a piece of my presentation on M-Tor and rapamycin , as well as a selection from a panel of experts that include Diane Ginsburg talking about plasma infusions , nathan Bryan speaking about nitric oxide , neon Patell about the benefits of glutathione and Joseph Perida about hypoxia therapy .
This way , you can get a sample of some of the discussions of current applications of longevity that we can do today . Fortunately , videos of the entire program are also available at the radfestcom site that's r-a-a-d-f-e-s-tcom site . I'm already looking forward to next year's meeting , which will be back in Anaheim , california , in September 2024 .
Thanks to Jim Stroll and the Coalition for Radical Life Extension and this photography is produced by Ashley Productions One of the most common questions I get asked are which blood tests that I rely on most heavily for myself . Now , that's really a whole separate discussion and I'm definitely going to be covering that in future programs .
But basically there are about 17 or so biomarkers that I check on a regular basis . Now that's really only practical using a special approach that I use . Otherwise it's a lot of blood .
The way I do it is to collect the sample literally from the convenience of my home , and I do it with a simple finger stick like this , and you don't need to be a doctor to do it . They're very simple instructions , and then I just mail it in and wait for the results .
It costs about $10 or so per marker and I get the results right away with instructions on what to do if those values are too high or too low .
Now , if you want to try this for yourself , you can order this test from my website , robertlufkinmdcom , under the Secrets tab and , even better , if you use the code SAVE10 , that's SAVE and the number 10 , you can take $10 off to try it .
So let me know how it goes and if you like it , if you are enjoying this program , please hit that subscribe button or , even better , leave a review . Your support makes it possible for us to create the quality programming that we're continually striving for .
Also , let us know if there is a certain topic that you would like to see covered , or a particular guest that you would like to hear from . And now please enjoy today's program .
So our next panelist he had . This is a type A overachiever . I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a stopwatch timing me right now . Check this out . He's served and is currently serving as full professor at both UCLA and the USC School of Medicine , with an academic focus on the applied science of longevity .
In addition to being a practicing physician , he's author of over 200 peer reviewed scientific papers and 14 books that are available in six languages . Robert has given invited lectures , keynotes around the world and was named one of the 100 most creative people in Los Angeles by Buzz Magazine . Come on out here .
Thanks a lot , greta . It's great to be here today . What a wonderful time to be interested in longevity . I mean , I love this session today where we really learn about credible approaches that we can do to ourselves for increasing our longevity , fighting aging , and it's just really remarkable .
What I'm gonna focus on today is what I believe to be arguably the single most powerful one of these of all , and it's a system that's been used in . It's been applied to animals all the way from yeast up to mammals , and every single animal system that's applied to it dramatically increases the lifespan .
And there are some remarkable effects on humans that I'm going to talk about as well in the next few minutes , and in the end we'll talk about strategies on how we can use this system ourselves and what we have to do through lifestyle or drugs and what the trade-offs are for each of those . But you can do lifestyle . I highly recommend lifestyle .
You can do rapamycin . Personally , I think the best way to do it is do both and hedge my bets . Check back in 20 years , but that's what I'm doing at least , and we all all of us out here get to make our own decisions and our own choices . So there's dramatic things . So this is the link for the slides .
If anybody wants them , you can copy them there , download them there . But this is a dramatic time in longevity . There are things that are happening that have never happened before , like a 81-year-old supermodel on the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine swimsuit issue no less Martha Stewart . But dramatic things are happening .
I think even more things are going to be happening in the short term and hopefully the best is yet to come . Thank you so much for your attention . Love you all .
So , guys , we got some great cute questions coming in . We can dig deep into some of these action items as soon as we get the stage set up . Ok , dr Patel , I'm going to . Since you're my victim of the night , I'm going to ask you a question .
We had talked about the fact that glutathione's been around for 120 years , but in what time frame have you launched your six patents ? Is it in the past 10 years in the past ? What's the story on that ?
So the story on that we first stabilized the molecule 14 years ago , Okay , and so I started working on it 14 years ago and it took me about four to five years to really figure things out before I filed for patent application .
And since it was the first of its kind , it took them literally until 2019 to approve my first patent , and after that it's like a domino effect .
Okay , great , thank you . So Q&A , here we go .
¶ Plasma Exchange in Aging and Health
Is plasma exchange safe for someone with breast cancer ? So , plasma , I'm assuming that's for me . So just jump in and grab it if it isn't .
Okay . So plasma exchange remember you were taking out your blood , you were replacing your blood factors . It's the yellow part that comes out , which is the plasma . Well , when you replace the volume , you can replace it with albumin , which a lot of people do . That's plasma exchange . Or you can add young plasma .
So plasma exchange with albumin is basically like a detox . I don't think it's going to affect , I mean , breast cancer , non-breast cancer , any kind of cancer . I don't think it's a problem . The big question is can you put young plasma with growth factors in with any kind of malignancy ? Will the growth factors affect anything ?
And we were actually just talking about that . There were one or two studies that looked at advanced colon cancer and intraoperative transfusion of plasma and they said they might have seen a slight increase percentage in recurrence .
So I don't know that I would give somebody plasma , young plasma , with growth factors with somebody who had cancer a month ago or six months ago . But if you've got a five-year clearance and you're got your gut in line , especially with breast cancer , look up , the microbiome of women with breast cancer is very different than women without .
So if you've done all the right things to get your body back in line again , I think in once your five-year cleared , I think the growth factors will only help you be healthy .
Beautiful . So let's do two quickies here . Following on that how often does infusion of young plasma need to be repeated and the cost , and should I wait until I have a problem to start young plasma or start healthy ?
So those are really good questions and I think because everybody was using the rats and the mice forever and that we've really only started to see it more on patients more recently we're still in a learning curve . I don't know that we have the perfect answer for that .
I think what we do think initially is that you use probably two to three liters when you first start because you want to get the system rejuvenated . So you use that and I don't know that we know . Do you need to do another one in six months ? Do you need to do another liter in a year ? Number two it also depends on your particular situation .
If you have a weaker heart or weaker kidneys , you don't want to dump three liters in or two liters one day or so . You can spread it over time . So the plasma comes basically in 200 cc aliquots . When Stanford did the study , they did 200 cc's every week for eight weeks and they saw great results with Parkinson's . So I don't think it's .
I think we're all in a learning curve , but for the most part we're talking about probably two liters , at least to start . The cost is about $1,000 per 200 cc , so it's about $5,000 a liter .
Beautiful thank you . It's about an average cost . We're going to move into nitric oxide , Dr Bryan . I'm going to assume this is your domain . Do you almost always see high blood pressure with low ? No ?
Yeah , I mean blood pressure regulation is really an exquisite process . There are a number of vasodilators , there are a number of vasoconstrictors , so hypertension is an imbalance in the number of vasodilatory versus vasoconstrictor molecules .
Nitric oxide is the primary vasodilator , so if you lose the ability to make nitric oxide , then the vasoconstrictor molecules basically out-compete the vasodilatory molecules . So usually always there's a hierarchy of low nitric oxide .
It usually always starts with loss of regulation of blood flow , sexual dysfunction If not corrected , then it goes to an increase in blood pressure . But yeah , typically if you have low nitric oxide and endothelial dysfunction , if not corrected , it's eventually going to manifest as hypertension .
Great Thank you , dr Perida . Can you get enough intermittent hypoxia with breath holds throughout the day , and what protocol can offer optimal benefits ?
You can probably do it if you stay up all 24 hours , it's not going to work , OK , the bottom line is remember I said you have to basically be below a PO2 of 90 . So you're not going to be able to get it by holding your breath . Sorry about that , but it's not going to work .
OK , this is kind of a global for the stage here question . Can these agents be combined , started at the same time ? What's the best implementation protocol ? Who wants to jump ?
in on that . I can do it . I have an office at about 12,000 square feet . We have everything you can think of there . We combine protocols all the time and it really works . I mean , when I do hyperbaric oxygen , I give basically nitric oxide to the patient ahead of time because I know that's going to help , and things like that , guys , great .
Yeah , we had a great . We had a Dr Patel and I had a great conversation yesterday . So there is no silver bullet , right , there is no single magic pill that's going to fix everything wrong with you . So what we have to do is , as Joe said , as a clinician you have to combine the best .
So you need glutathione to make nitric oxide , you need glutathione to extend the biological half-life of nitric oxide from one millisecond out to tens of minutes and hours . You need nitric oxide for these signaling molecules to work , for the induction of PGC1 alpha . So we think , well , we believe , we know , in fact , that nitric oxide is foundational .
So when you fix that now , you can start doing the intermittent hypoxia , you can do the plasma pharesis , you can do the rapamycin and combine all those and the glutathione . So again , there's no silver bullet .
But when you understand what's going wrong in an individual patient , then you institute these principles of personalized medicine and fix that individual patient .
And it's probably going to be a key . A key will be integrating all of these , because the MTOR pathways work with ampicinase and nitric oxide and glutathione , and the challenge is going to be figure out how these all work together to come up with a unified plan for people .
I was actually going to ask you , dr Lufkin , to chime in on this idea . The question is there such a thing as too late to start with these interventions ?
Well , as we saw in the longevity experiments with the mice , you could start them at age 70 or 80 equivalent 60 or 70 human equivalent years . The results with the cancer and these other things are not in , but with the phenotypes of aging , like periodontal disease , you actually see reversal of existing disease that happens .
Or with the Alzheimer's mouse model , you see the cognitive impairment improve . So it's a key point . It's not just slowing down the aging but it's actually reversing these findings . And that's probably true with all of these agents .
Yeah , when we put the plasma , and I mean , like my slides , I put it in my folks who were 80 . So 79 , 80 . And you saw those major reversals , the Parkinson's and that lady who was 81 that was then 31 . So , no , I don't ever think you're too late to start . They told us that about hormones too . Right , oh , you don't start early enough .
Yes , so there's all kinds of literature that shows you give somebody hormones , even no matter when you start them , and they're ready to start .
Great . Is there an advantage to taking I'm going to assume this is for Dr Patel is there an advantage to taking glutathione over anacetylcysteine ?
Only for people that cannot use anacetylcysteine to convert it to glutathione . There's very small , small subset of patients that have gene mutations that they are not able to take the cysteine or the amino acids to make glutathione out of it , and that's the reason .
Otherwise , anacetylcysteine is actually approved by FDA to use to improve glutathione levels back in the 60s and still available as of today , and most of the patients are able to use that to make glutathione as we ate . Sometimes the enzymes levels reduces and the conversion is not very effective and the needs are higher than what you want it can produce .
That's when sometimes the glutathione may be more beneficial to use instead of NAC .
Great Thank you , dr Bryant . Is there any genetic or epigenetic mechanism related to the production of nitric oxide ?
Yeah , there is . In fact , this science is probably seven or eight years old and , I think , 2015, .
I co-edited a book with Joe Loscauzo , who's Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Cardiology at the Brigham , and in our last edition of our medical textbook we had an entire chapter on the regulation of epigenetic modification histine modification that really controls the epigenetic regulation of aging and a lot of these anti-aging mechanisms .
So certainly there's a correlation . Is the exact science and mechanism fully elucidated ? Probably not , but what's clear is if you low in nitric oxide , then all of these advanced aging mechanisms put in place , nitric oxide seems to reverse it and there's a number of different mechanisms .
Question is IV glutathione vitamin C not recommended ?
As a combination , probably not as a separately . You can do both separately . So IV vitamin C is commonly used and low dose is an antioxidant and the high dose becomes a pro-oxidant because at low doses it actually stimulates the production of glutathione .
Having glutathione in the IV bag afterwards as a push sometimes is not necessary because the half life is so short . But then some of the glutathione gets committed into cysteine and so there's an uptake of cysteine about a day later and then you see a spike in the glutathione levels a day later .
Overall , there's a better ways to improve glutathione levels than to do cost-effective wise to do an IV therapy Great .
Robert , you said you're taking rapamycin . Just curious do you combine it with metformin or acrobos ?
Yeah , I take rapamycin and metformin . Acarbos I also take , but the way acarbos works is it as I was saying ? It blocks the GI uptake of carbohydrates , so you don't take it on a daily basis . Usually you take it when you eat a carbohydrate meal . So if you're on a low-carb diet you really don't need it , unless you happen to consume carbohydrates .
Great . Any tips for hearing loss .
We saw so much improvement with the eyes , with macular degeneration , that I would say same thing Right , it's under the hood , that's just nonspecific what's going on that's affecting the system . So I can't imagine putting young extracellular matrix into the system , to the cochlear system and up-regulating the blood vessels that you wouldn't see improvement there .
So I think the plasma would absolutely help that .
How is and I may pronounce this wrong enco-calix . Enco-calix affected by taking exogenous nitrous oxide .
Well , it's the endo-calix or the glyc , it's actually the glycocalix . So the glycocalix is different than our endothelial cells . So the glycocalix is what coats the endothelial cells in the lining of the blood vessel and it protects damage from the endothelial cells from sheer stress and high blood pressure . So they're two completely different systems .
The glycocalix protects the endothelial cells but nitric oxide is probably not going to affect the glycocalix as such . The glycocalix is not going to restore the nitric oxide production in the endothelial cells . So you have to . They work in combination .
If you don't have a good glycocalix , then you're probably going to lead to disruption of endothelial function and damage of the endothelial cells , which will eventually disrupt nitric oxide production . Two separate systems . You've got to address both .
Thank you , dr Perida . What about hypoxia from sleep apnea causing atherosclerosis ?
Okay , the key word here is it's chronic hypoxia . Big difference . Chronic hypoxia , atherosclerosis , all sorts of medical problems , no question about it .
Yeah , I'll just address this too , because you need so the conversion of arginine to nitric oxide by the enzyme nitric oxide synthase . You need eight different cofactors and substrates . One of those is oxygen , one's glutathione , heme , iron , a number of different substrates .
So if you have sleep apnea and you're depriving your body of oxygen , the lining of your blood muscles cannot make nitric oxide . And so , as I showed you there , if you can't make nitric oxide , you get inflammation , oxidative stress and immune dysfunction that leads to plaque deposition , rapid onset and progression of atherosclerosis .
So there's a direct correlation there . We have to oxygenate , we've got to be able to make nitric oxide , which is also responsible for the delivery of oxygen and the delivery of oxygen oxygenation of tissue by hemoglobin and red blood cells . So you need oxygen to make nitric oxide , you need nitric oxide to deliver oxygen .
Great . So , we have 55 seconds . I don't see a question on the screen . Does somebody have a quickie question that we , yes , please , great question now the .
So the question is about arginine for nitric oxide . Arginine is what's considered a semi-essential amino acid . As I showed you , it's produced in every cell through the urea cycle . You get it from the breakdown of proteins , whether it's plant proteins or animal proteins .
The amount of L arginine you need to theoretically saturate the binding site of the NOS enzyme it's five micromolar . In the sickest of sickest patients , they have 200 to 100 , 100 , 200 micromolar Arginine . Arginine is never limiting in the production of nitric oxide . It's never the rate limiting step . So you never have to supplement with arginine .
So save your money . The other thing is it's not safe . There's two clinical trials , a JAMA study published in 2006 , where they gave high dose arginine to post-infarct patients and the arginine group had increased mortality and morbidity .
So if you give arginine to a patient with an uncoupled nitric oxide synthase enzyme , you generate superoxide , increase oxidative stress and exacerbate the condition . Same thing happened in 2011 in patients with peripheral arginine disease . You give arginine to try to stimulate nitric oxide production . They get worse .
Intermittent claudication got worse and their symptoms get worse . So arginine Biochemically . I've never understood why companies out there selling arginine . It's never rate limiting and it causes more harm than it does good . Thank you , that's it .
We're out of time , guys , so go home , take action . Thank you , panelists . Really good stuff . Appreciate it .
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