August 7, 2025 • 42 mins
What if the secret to aging well lies hidden at the ends of your chromosomes? Dr. Bill Andrews, a pioneering scientist with a revolutionary discovery, takes us on a fascinating journey through the science of telomeres—those tiny "ride tickets" that determine how our cells age.
From a childhood challenge to "find a cure for aging" to leading the team that discovered human telomerase, Dr. Andrews shares the remarkable story behind his lifelong obsession. He reveals how telomeres shorten with each cell division, acting as a biological countdown clock that ultimately leads to aging and disease when they become critically short.
Perhaps most surprising is his explanation of the cancer-telomere connection. Rather than causing cancer as some feared, maintaining longer telomeres may actually protect against it by preventing the mutation-inducing effects of critically short telomeres. This groundbreaking understanding has led to the development of TeloVital, containing the five most potent telomerase-inducing plant extracts his team has discovered after testing over 20,000 compounds.
While Dr. Andrews acknowledges we haven't yet found something powerful enough to completely reverse aging, his work offers hope for slowing the aging process today. He shares personal experiences of improved athletic performance and vision after using telomere-supporting products, while emphasizing realistic expectations—you may not feel immediate effects unless you have critically short telomeres in specific tissues.
The conversation ventures beyond telomeres to touch on other promising health compounds and the ethics of the anti-aging industry. As Dr. Andrews continues his research—at the astounding cost of two million dollars monthly—he remains committed to the quest that began in his childhood: helping humans live longer, healthier lives by addressing aging at its cellular roots.
Curious about your telomeres? Visit our show notes for special offers on TeloVital and connect with Dr. Andrews directly with your questions about telomere science and aging.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy
Living Podcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine,and today we've got a very
special guest.
His name's Dr Bill Andrews andhe's a leading expert on
longevity research, a renownedscientist in anti-aging research
.
This guy's been around.
He's been featured in PopularScience, the Today Show and
(00:23):
numerous other publications.
He's got a PhD in molecular andpopulation genetics and in 1981
, spent much of his career inmedical research.
Dr Andrews is recognized forhis work on cancer research,
which is very interesting to meand was second place at the 1997
(00:46):
National Inventor of the Year.
Dr Bill, welcome.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Oh, pretty good, Lots of excitement going on today,
Just well whatever.
Yeah, I'm tongue-tied.
What do you know?
Okay so hopefully you'll editthat out.
I usually am not tongue-tiedlike that.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's all good.
Well, we gave you a pretty bigintro, so you've got some big
shoes to fill today.
So you know, longevity researchthat's a big passion of mine.
I consider myself a biohackerand you know I've gone through a
big transformation Before I gotdiagnosed with cancer and now
(01:26):
I've been beating the hell outof that and biohacking my way
through that as well.
So why don't?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
you tell us a little bit about how you got involved
with longevity, aside from, justlike the rest of us, getting
older.
Yeah Well, first let me justsay that cancer is an
aging-related disease.
Oh sure, cancer increases a lot.
So I consider that part of myresearch, and I do have a lot of
products on the market rightnow that have gone through
clinical studies for treatingcancer.
But I really got into thisobsession with anti-aging when I
(02:05):
was 10 years old.
I just know that my teachersfrom elementary school sent me
home with a note on my shirt.
My parents opened up the noteand it said your son is
remarkably interested in scienceand medicine.
You should nurture this Nice,and I'd already talked my
(02:26):
parents into giving me a reallybig, nice 8-inch reflector
telescope so that I could startlooking at Saturn and the rings
of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter,things like that.
And I remember one night I wasout on the front lawn and my
father came up to me and he saidfront lawn, and my father came
(02:48):
up to me and he said, bill, I'vebeen thinking when you grow up
you should become a doctor andfind a cure for aging.
Wow, and no kidding.
And then he said I don't knowwhy nobody's done that yet.
Okay, and it was like he mademe think that's easy, okay, it's
going to be easy to cure aging.
Okay, it's just, it's a diseaseme.
Think that's easy.
Okay, it's going to be easy tocure aging.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, it's just, it's a disease.
But you know what, when you'reyoung and you believe something
is easy, it can be easy.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
You're also very influential when you're young.
So I started, I became obsessedwith this, even I was still in
elementary school at the time.
But but you know, off and on Iget more and back.
Interested in.
My father was constant on on meto, you know, think about it,
things like that.
So in high school and college Iwas starting anti-aging clubs
and I had friends that would gettogether and just brainstorm
(03:39):
about what's causing aging andwe were all pretty smart guys,
in fact, one of about what'scausing aging and we were all
pretty smart guys.
In fact one of my friendsactually got the Nobel Prize in
medicine in 2011.
And even back then we weretalking about all the theories
and stuff like that and whataging is why we age, how we age,
all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So tell me a little bit about the points that you
guys were starting out.
Like you know, I like tounderstand the genesis of a
process, and what were you guyslooking at at that point in your
life?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, we were mostly looking at what is advertised.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You'd hear all these rumors because we weren't really
experts on it and they don'tteach anti-aging in high school
and college no, they don't.
But you know what is?
There's products like Gerovitalor something like that back.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Oh yeah, geritol or whatever, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And you know it's like we would think about okay,
so how is this working?
What's the mechanos action?
Why is it affecting aging?
And then we would brainstorm onthis and we'd conclude that it
doesn't make sense.
Okay, I mean, the term wealways use is all the twos, and
(05:04):
twos have to add up.
And if they don't all add up,then there's something wrong
with this particular theory.
And so I remember in collegelearning that a guy named
Leonard Hayflick had discoveredthat human cells can only divide
(05:24):
a limited number of times.
He would take cells from anewborn baby and divide them in
a Petri dish, and those cellscould divide 50 times.
Right, he would take cells froma 50-year-old, let them divide
in a Petri dish.
They could only divide 25 times.
He'd take cells from a 90 to100-year-old and they could
divide less than 10 times beforethey would stop and go into a
(05:46):
phase called senescence.
They call this the Hayflicklimit.
So what I remember in college,we started and this is like 10
years after Hayflick had madethis discovery because everybody
at first thought Hayflick wasnuts.
But we started my team group.
We started concluding that hisdata looks pretty good, his
publication looks.
You know, we started my teamgroup.
We started concluding that, youknow, his data looks pretty
good, his publication lookssolid.
(06:08):
And we started wondering boy,does this have something to do
with aging?
And so we started figuring outhow could started having a
discussion.
How could a cell, human cell,cell know how many times it has
divided and how many more timesit can divide?
(06:28):
And this was something thatplagued us.
I remember being in palmsprings one time playing pool
and I knocked a ball into thepocket and I reached out with my
cue stick and slid a woodenpellet on the wall from one side
to the other to mark the that Igot a ball.
Okay, oh, I wonder, could therebe a mechanism like that inside
of a cell?
We brainstormed on that.
(06:49):
We decided, no, that's toocomplicated.
Genetic abacus yeah, that wouldbe too complicated for what we
knew, because we were allbiochemists, studying
biochemistry.
401, 501, all these kinds ofweird things, all this kind of
stuff, and we knew that a cellcould not have a mechanism like
that.
But then, all of a sudden, wecame up with the idea of ride
(07:13):
tickets at an amusement park.
All right, okay, so could therebe something like that inside
of our cell so that every time acell divided, it would lose a
ticket Right, and the cellwouldn't know how many tickets
it's used.
It wouldn't know, it wouldn'tmatter.
Yeah, when it runs out, it runsout, it runs out.
And so we brainstormed on thatfor a long time and really
(07:35):
actually never came up withanything to explain it.
But then the big breakthroughwas in 1993.
In fact, my father is still veryinterested in anti-aging.
The more obsessed I got with it, the more obsessed he got with
it.
He was a television producerand he wanted to make a movie, a
(07:56):
documentary, on scientistscuring aging.
I was going to this conferenceon aging in Lake Tahoe and I
invited him to go with me and sowe went and I introduced him to
all the top leaders in theworld in anti-aging I'd already
become well-known because of myobsession.
(08:20):
And he was talking, we had adinner and we were talking about
making a documentary and stufflike that, and then one of the
guys that was there, a guy namedMichael Rose.
He and I started talking aboutlet's start a company to focus
on aging.
But we decided to do it on miceand just like breed longer
living mice and stuff like that,all right, and find out what
(08:43):
changed in their DNA when theylive longer.
But then the very next morningafter that we started a company.
We stayed up all night.
I was going to be the presidentof the company and things like
that.
We stayed up the next morning Iheard a guy named Calvin Harley
at Geron Corporation talk aboutthe fact that telomeres get
(09:06):
shorter every time a celldivides.
There you go, and I'm sittingthere and I'm thinking, oh my
God, here's the ride.
Here's the ticker, the ride.
It's a telomere.
So I actually now show picturesof chromosomes.
Nice, the chromosome is ridetickets.
Okay, so every time a celldivides, it doesn't lose a
ticket, it turns out.
It turns out when a single cellwants to replicate, it becomes
(09:31):
two daughter cells.
Everything inside that parentcell needs to be duplicated.
So the daughter cells areidentical to that parent cell,
and that includes the DNA whereall your genes are.
Those have to be duplicated.
So it goes through DNAreplication.
(09:54):
But it turns out that a humancell lacks the ability to be
able to replicate all the way tothe end.
So the telomere didn't getshorter.
The new DNA that gets made wasjust made shorter because it
couldn't go all the way to theend.
I use as an analogy when I talkat conferences.
I'll use bricklaying as anexample.
So you've got a bricklayer ontop of a brick wall, backing up
laying a brick, backing uplaying another brick, and when
(10:17):
it gets to the end of the wallit falls off before being able
to lay that last brick.
So the new brick, so every rollof brick is shorter, and
shorter, and shorter, and that'sa remarkable similarity to what
really is going on.
Yeah and so.
(10:37):
But that guy, before he couldeven get off the stage, I was at
the bottom of that podiumsaying has anybody figured out
how to re-lengthen them?
I mean, he did mention thattelomeres don't shorten in our
reproductive cells because ifthey did, our children would be
born with shorter telomeres thanwe have.
Their children are born withshorter telomeres than they have
.
Right, they would have beenextinct as a species millions of
years ago or 300,000 years ago.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
There's an exception in there that can be explored.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah.
So he said that they'd beenworking on it for years with
teams all over the world andnobody had figured it out.
And I just said let me come andwork with you, I will figure it
out in three months.
Nice, now I had already had ahistory of major successes in
biotech, accomplishing thingswhen nobody else could get them
(11:21):
done.
That includes, like humangrowth hormone, tissue
plasminogen activator,erythropoietin, beta-seron, on
and on a whole bunch of lots ofcancer drugs, things like that.
So it was a pretty short jobinterview.
He got me on board right awayand then, three months and 17
days later, my team discoveredthe enzyme human telomerase.
(11:45):
That was actually the one thatactually, actually actually
verified or said this is it nokidding?
I couldn't have done it withoutmy team and I had like three
quarters of all the employees atGeron Corporation reporting to
me at the time.
It was a big effort, but we wediscovered and then the 17 extra
days that it took me.
(12:06):
I blamed it on Geron forinterfering too much with trying
to redirect my effortselsewhere.
But we discovered the enzyme,we put it into normal skin cells
and we showed that theycompletely lost the hafleck
(12:26):
limit.
Wow, what was more important isthat their risk of becoming
cancer decreased immensely.
Interesting and the Because ofmy cancer background, I had some
theories about cancer.
There were a lot of people whostarted thinking at the time
(12:46):
that this enzyme, telomerase,that we discovered was actually
causing cancer.
Really I was saying no, it'sactually decreasing cancer.
And it turns out that in thecases of where.
So after we discovered theenzyme, we did find that a lot
of cancer cells are immortalbecause they suddenly are
producing telomerase.
(13:06):
Oh really, yeah, but it's not.
The telomerase didn't cause thecancer, the cancer caused the
telomerase.
Interesting, so now we know,years and years later, we know
that when a cell starts dividingrapidly, like a cancer, every
time it divides the telomeresget shorter and shorter and
(13:27):
shorter.
When telomeres get criticallyshort, the mutation rates
skyrocket.
Short telomeres induce so manymutations that you can see them
in the light microscope and sothese mutations are doing all
kinds of things rearranginggenes and stuff like that, and
then one or two of the cancercells end up putting telomerase
(13:52):
under control of some otherpromoter.
So the cancers start producingtelomerase and then the cancer
becomes immortal and that's whenit kills you If a cancer, if
you're over 30 years old and acancer gets bigger than a pimple
okay, small pimple, that cancerhas figured out a way to become
immortal.
Okay, otherwise it would die ofold age, okay.
(14:13):
And so, because of theskyrocketing mutation rates from
the short telomeres, there wasalways almost always a chance
that at least some of thosecancer cells would mutate to
start producing telomerase andtherefore become immortal.
So cancer caused telomerase andthe telomerase caused the
cancers to become immortal.
I just want to learn from that.
(14:34):
Let's make a non-cancer cellimmortal, right, exactly.
And it turns out that when wedo that, the incident the risk
of becoming cancer decreasesimmensely, and it's because of
one.
It's not only just inducing thecells that you're treated, but
it's inducing telomeres in yourimmune cells, which is
(14:55):
lengthening telomeres in yourimmune cells, which is giving
your immune systems a muchbetter chance of fighting a
cancer if you get cancer.
But, more importantly, it'spreventing your cells from
having the critically shorttelomeres that induce all the
mutations.
Makes sense.
So telomerase doesn't causecancer.
(15:15):
Telomerase decreases the riskof cancer and this has been
shown over and over again.
Dr Rhonda Pinnell, who is adoctor at Harvard, very famous
doctor at Harvard, who was very,very into cancer, he was
convinced that telomerase causescancer and I actually provided
him he and I were friends Iactually provided him with the
(15:36):
technology, the telomerase andeverything like that, so that he
could prove that telomerasecauses cancer.
Okay, because I'm just ascientist, that's good science,
though Try to prove that.
I'm not trying to make onesomething true, that's not true.
So I want to know the answerstoo.
Absolutely so.
To his disappointment, the micedid not get cancer and they
(16:00):
actually had what he called aremarkable reversal of the aging
process.
Wow, okay.
And he used engineered mice,because mice don't normally age
by telomere shortening they.
So he had to create a mousethat does.
And he there's a really greatvideo of of diane sawyer
interviewing dr ronda pennelshowing the pictures of the mice
and he was like stunned, youknow, he he was like a
(16:23):
remarkable reversal of the agingprocess.
He also ended up later doingmore studies and found the
telomeres were the kingpin ofaging.
Uh, he published papers showingthat even mitochondria, health
and everything like that wasaffected by telomere.
Like he keeps the telomereslong, nothing else happens, none
of the other aging markershappen.
So, and you can, he was doingit like I, we've even done these
(16:47):
experiments here but telomereshorten, relengthen them,
shorten or relengthen, and wefind that aging goes up and down
, up and down, just on telomeres, nothing else.
That doesn't mean that nothingelse causes aging.
Okay, I want to be clear.
But it does tell me that nomatter what else we do to try to
(17:07):
cure aging.
Aging will never be cured unlesswe also solve the telomere
shortening problem.
Right, maybe we'll find that itdoes solve all the problems of
aging, but I would be surprisedif it did, because I think you
can get aging just by by otherthings.
Even with long telomeres youcan still have aging.
So we have to solve thesethings.
(17:27):
And then there's diseases likemy favorite one I like to refer
to is alcoholism.
Okay, alcoholism has nothing todo with telomeres, okay and so,
but it does accelerate telomereshortening.
Okay, by killing liver cellsand things like that.
But so even after we do cureaging with telomeres, we still
(17:51):
have other things we have to do.
We've got plenty of ways to getold.
So I don't know, I'm kind oflong-winded.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
No, no, no, this is very interesting to me.
Oh, no, no, this is veryinteresting to me.
You know the whole idea oftelomeres.
I was introduced to, I don'tknow, probably about seven,
eight years ago, when I sort ofbegan my journey of it, and I
(18:21):
understand the importance oftrying to keep them long, and so
you've come up with some waysto do that.
Why don't you tell us a littlebit about that?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Well, yeah, first of all, we had to develop some
pretty sophisticated,high-throughput assays, ways of
testing for different ways oflengthening telomeres, because
there's a lot of claims ofthings that lengthen telomeres
and they actually don't, but, uh, but I wanted to really figure
out something that does, andit's actually a lot tougher than
(18:51):
you would ever imagine.
Um so, so we haven't found a uhlike a chemical or a
nutraceutical or anything likethat that actually is potent
enough to reverse aging, and,despite everything else you hear
in the marketing world, nothinghas ever been discovered that
(19:14):
does.
But we have found the mostpotent things so far, and so let
me, before I explain thattelomere shortening and
lengthening is like a tug of war, and in our reproductive cells
it's a tie.
Okay, we have people on one sidepulling to lengthen, one on the
other side pulling to shorten,and it's a tie.
(19:35):
So we don't.
We have they shorten and theylengthen, they shorten and they
lengthen.
It's a back and forth kind ofthing.
In all the other cells of ourbody we only have the shorteners
.
Okay, pulling to shorten, andthat's just going on.
Now we can decrease the numberof shorteners so we can slow
(19:56):
down the aging process by livinga healthy lifestyle, like
antioxidants don't smoke, don'tbe obese, things like that and
inclamatories.
But there's a basal level that,when I was talking about that
brick layer falling off the wall, we can't get below that.
Okay, that's called the basallevel telomere shortening what
sort of gravity always going on.
So we started this assay, thishigh-throughput robotic
screening, where we were testinglike 4,000 different
(20:19):
ingredients a day and lookingfor anything that would cause
the cells to start producingtelomerase, and we started
finding some.
First they were weak and thenwe found stronger.
Then we started doing medicinalchemistry to start redesigning
things.
We started getting smarter andsmarter from the results that we
got, learning from looking atstructures, and so we started
(20:41):
coming out better and better.
But the problem with thesethings is that most of the
things is that as soon as we didanything to engineer it or
redesign it, it became apharmaceutical.
And pharmaceuticals requirelike 20 years of FDA clinical
studies and billions of dollarsand things like that.
(21:04):
So we just took the approachthat you know let's find a
nutraceutical, yeah, and so westarted emphasizing
nutraceuticals and we found alot of nutraceuticals, but still
so we're putting people.
So we got the shortenerspulling to shorten.
I got my hands reversed thistime, but now we are putting
people on the other side, but wearen't tying the tug of war or
(21:27):
even winning the tug of war.
We are just slowing down thetug of war, right, so it's still
short, but that's a really goodthing.
Yeah, I can't tell you howoften people say you know you
don't reverse aging.
What good is your product?
You know it's like that'sbecause they believe that
everybody else has products thatreverse aging.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
As a point of reference.
You know, when you're goingthrough cancer treatment, they
talk about, you know, six monthsof life as this big gift, and
so if you're shortening yourtelomeres and you give yourself
any amount of extra time, it'sdefinitely a benefit.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, and it's not just life, it's health too.
I know you weren't saying that,but a lot of people say, well,
I don't want to live a long timeif I'm not healthy, right,
right, there's not a scientistin the field that I know of that
is thinking oh, I just want toextend people's lifespan, right,
exactly, it's quality of life,for sure.
So we've tested like 20,000different plant extracts
(22:31):
throughout the last 10 years andwe've continually found more
and more potent ones.
We did have some companieslicense some of them a while
back, years ago, and theydiscontinued them because of
profit margins weren't highenough, of course.
They were too focused onprofits and not enough on actual
(22:51):
health, right.
But then I got approached byTouchstone Essentials, which
blew me away because they seemlike they don't care a thing
about profits.
They just want people to behappier and healthier.
And, by the way, I never market.
I believe in when I promote aproduct, I promote it on its
(23:14):
benefits, not on the lack ofbenefits by other products that
come, right, you know.
So I, but, but the but I, I.
I did find that I really liketouchstone's attitude and so I
licensed our latestnutraceuticals yeah, our plant
extracts, now that we haddiscovered, and so the top five
(23:38):
plant extracts that we have everdiscovered, and we've tested
everything else that's out therethat's marketed to be able to
do that.
They don't do anything.
We licensed our top five what Icall telomerase-inducing plant
extracts, licensed them totouchstone essentials and they
put them together and createdtelovital.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I didn't create it, I just licensed them.
I'm the scientist.
I'm not going to market theproduct or anything like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
You can't put the ingredients to work with.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, and then they wanted to.
Also, I mentioned that you canreduce the number of shorteners
by antioxidants,anti-inflammatories, and so they
wanted to know some of thosetoo, but they wanted them to be
vegan and natural and organic.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And so.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I was able to provide them with a list of things, and
actually I'm going to confessmy business partner, a guy named
Christian Chase, who is in NewZealand.
He actually came up with a listof things that are organic,
natural and vegan.
All right, that actually woulddo that, and so those are
included in Tilo Vital also Nice.
(24:55):
So Tilo Vital is not onlydecreasing the number of
shorteners, it's actually addinglengtheners, so you're getting
the best of both worlds, butit's still not winning the tug
of war.
But slowing it down is good.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
You know, progress is progress, and, as we start
getting to the other side of ourhourglass, that any progress is
good progress.
The way I see it, you know,especially if the quality of
life is, uh, included with itall what increases your chances
of still being around when wecome up with something that does
(25:32):
reverse aging?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
because we're still working on this.
I mean, our, our researchliterally costs us two million
dollars a month.
Wow, okay, to run the robots,to have all the assays, to get
all the plant extracts andthings like that, to pay the
salaries.
It's two million dollars amonth to perform this essay, but
we're doing it okay and we'rewe're finding and like we it
(25:55):
says we tested like 20,000different plant extracts.
So far there's at least 3million out there.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I was going to say there's a lot more to go, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
And so you know, I'll confess some of the
nutraceuticals, some of theplant extracts.
I don't want to call themnutraceuticals because they're
not on the market, but someplant extracts are toxic, right.
And so I don't want to callthem nutraceuticals because
they're not on the market, butsome plant extracts are toxic
and so those get thrown awayright away.
But it turns out some of thoseended up being toxic against
cancer cells.
Okay, so they become useful too, in different ways, Absolutely.
(26:31):
So we're moving along, and I am, I got to say, I do something
that's called criticalmeta-analysis of peer-reviewed
studies.
I'm really good at looking atscientific studies and looking
at their experimental design andtheir data analysis and the
logic and statistical theoriesand things like that of papers
(26:51):
and being able to weed outwhat's right and what's wrong,
because you can find anythingyou wish to be true, in even the
scientific peer-reviewedliterature.
but so I did this kind of likedue diligence on the other
products that touchstone has andI was blown away.
Nice, they have products that II can't find the equivalent of
(27:12):
anywhere else, like theirglucocontrol, which is
converting sugar into fiber.
Fiber is good, sugar is bad,sugar tastes good.
What else?
Their zeolite is, I think, oneof the best things I've ever
seen for getting rid of toxins,heavy metals, things like that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
That's wild.
They use that in kitty litter.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, well, not as pure as this stuff is.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right, I would imagine, I would hope.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
What else?
The fulvic acid.
You know I've always been a fanof Shilajit, yeah, yeah, but
Shilajit has side effects andstuff like that.
Right Turns out fulvic acid isthe active ingredient in
Shilajit.
Now it costs more because youhave to purify the fulvic acid
from it.
You can't synthesize it oranything like that, because then
it wouldn't be organic.
But they provide fulvic acid,which is safe and does the same
(28:13):
thing as Shilajit without theside effect.
They're natokinase, okay, whichis a Okay.
So one of the products that Idiscovered a long time ago were,
like tissue plasminogenactivator or other plasminogen
(28:35):
activators that break down bloodclusters, inhibitors of those.
And then there's things thatinhibit those, the inhibitors.
Natokinase is one of those.
It's a protease Even though itsounds like a kinase, it's
actually not a kinase which isan enzyme that adds phosphates
to proteins.
It's a protease thatinactivates the inhibitor of
(29:02):
telomerase.
So what is this?
It's an inhibitor and itactivates the inhibitor of the
activator, okay.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
But it's a really, really great product for
preventing or decreasing theriskator.
Okay, so so it it.
But it's a really, really greatproduct for preventing or
decreasing the risk of heartdisease.
Okay and so, uh, touchstone hasthat too.
Okay and um, so it's like agreat company.
Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm blownaway with the ethics of this
company.
I'm, I'm.
That's why I say, when wedevelop new things in the future
(29:34):
, I'm not looking for anybodyelse to market these products.
I'm sticking with Touchstone.
Um, and I'm not a marketermyself.
I hear you I haven't spoken badabout any other companies as far
as I know, but I, I just uh, I,I'm, I like working with
Touchstone immensely.
Um, the uh, uh.
And then they have the otherproducts, they have their
(29:56):
proteins and they have thisgreen juice.
That's really, really good.
I take it every day and I payfor it.
I'm not getting a free productfrom them.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, you know we're running a little low on time and
I want to continue thisconversation, but I would love
to have you back to go deeperinto some of these things,
especially some of your work oncancer.
But I want to talk about theproducts a little bit.
Televital.
I was working with your guy.
I set up an account and they'resending me over some samples.
(30:29):
I'm curious and interested totry them out myself.
I, you know, I'm curious andinterested to try them out
myself.
I, you know, with this show Imeet a lot of people, a lot of
companies, try a lot of productsand all sorts of ideas,
concepts and all this stuff.
But one of the things that isimportant to me is, you know,
I'm going to try the product andI want to know, like, what am I
(30:51):
looking for to validate itsefficacy?
You know, I mean a lot ofthings.
You know you can feel energy,you can feel clarity, you can
feel all these different things,but what's going to tell me
that this is doing anything?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
okay, well, first of all, most products you are
especially an anti-aging you areare not going to feel anything
because you can't detect theslowing down of aging.
So a lot of the companies thatpromote products, they add
things that are called instantgratification stuff.
(31:28):
So when people take the productthey suddenly feel a buzz or
something like that.
That's just to make them thinkthat the product's doing
something, but in reality it'simpossible to measure the
slowing of aging.
Okay, now, that said, we doknow that when telomeres get
critically short, they're easierto lengthen.
(31:51):
So the shorter a telomere is,the easier it is to lengthen.
So even though we aren'twinning the tug-of-war in normal
cells, in the cells that havecritically short telomeres, we
are winning the tug-of-war weare lengthening.
And so if a person takingtelovital has critically short
(32:12):
telomeres in any of theirtissues or organs, they can
possibly see a reversal of thesymptoms.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
And so that's really the only thing that you can look
for.
But you know, I've mentionedstuff like instant
gratifications to Eddie Stone,who's the head of Touchstone,
and he said, no way, yeah,they're making products that
really work.
They're not trying to just makemoney cheating people.
So you really shouldn't.
(32:46):
I mean you will be slowing youraging down.
You have to kind of go on faithand people can do due diligence
on me and all my successes inthe past.
My track record is impeccable,uh, and they, they can find that
you know every and they canlisten to me talk at medical
conferences.
I never make false claims andthings like that.
(33:06):
Uh, they can find that thatwhat I say is pretty legit.
I've developed a goodreputation for being somebody
that you can trust.
So it is slowing down the rateof aging, okay, and you're not
going to be able to measure theslowing of aging.
You can do it if you want toput 1,000 mice in two different
(33:27):
groups and treat one and not theother.
You can measure a slowing ofaging there, but you can't
measure individual people.
Even if you had an identicaltwin, your identical twin going
to have left led a differentlife than you had, and so
exactly night.
By the way, I do have anidentical twin and oh wow, all
right, identical twin is ameasure of my success at slowing
down my aging uh, but uh the uh, because he's only recently
(33:50):
decided to start getting on mybandwagon and so getting on your
bandwagon, so you got a headstart on him.
Yeah, so the but yeah, you'renot going to.
You're not going to feelanything unless you do have
critically short telomeres, andthere are a lot of people that
have critically short telomereseven though they're young.
So things that people couldlook for are improved vision,
(34:12):
improved endurance, improvedlike hair coming back or hair
color coming back.
But that's only going to happenif the loss of the hair or the
change in color of the hair wasbecause of telomeres, got it.
And if your mother's father wasbald and he was bald because of
that.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
That's not going to happen with telomeres.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
But there are, even with the past, products that
were on the market and stuff ofthat.
That's not.
That's not what you do withtelomeres, okay so, but but
there are, even with the pastproducts that that were on the
market and stuff like that, Iwas stunned by people's hair
color coming back, people's haircoming back, uh, things, things
like endurance.
So I, I can tell you thatpersonal, and I don't believe in
anecdotal data, but I wassurprised, believe in anecdotal
(34:58):
data, but I, I was surprised.
I'm an ultra marathon runner,okay, so I never, ever, came
anywhere close to winning racesand stuff like that but after
finishing an ultra marathon,that's winning a race yeah well,
I always say it's like I hopeit never ends, because when you
run as often as I do and stufflike that, running is more fun,
it's adventure and stuff likethat Running is more fun, it's
adventure and stuff like that.
I love the races.
I'm not one of those runnersthat finish on their hands and
(35:18):
knees throwing up.
I usually can't.
I want the race to last forever.
After taking one of the productsthat I had invented a long time
ago I'm not going to mentionnames because the product's
really not available anymore Iwas running a race in salt lake
city and I was like stunned thatI was doing really well and I
(35:43):
ended up finishing in the top 10overall, winning my age group,
and I'm driving home and I'mthinking what happened?
How did that happen?
And all of a sudden it dawnedon me oh my God, it's this new
product.
Somehow, because of, I guess,maybe all the running, I had
some critically short telomeresthat was holding me back from my
(36:04):
endurance.
Endurance has been stayed upthere ever since then, and I
also my ophthalmologist.
I had to put my glasses on atthe beginning because you were
such a blur, but my visionstarted getting better three
ophthalmology appointments in arow and I actually took pictures
and I made a slide out of thedifferent things that show this.
(36:25):
And, you know, was it becauseof the telomere product?
I don't know, I can't think ofanything else different I was
doing.
Yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah, thetwo things that I had were the
endurance getting better and thevision getting better.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
But I was pretty convinced that some of the other
people, their hair was comingback and uh, well, I'm paying a
lot of attention to my bodyright now as I'm overcoming this
problem that I've got, and I'mlooking forward to trying the
product and I believe we've gota special for the listeners that
I'll be able to offer.
(37:01):
I'm going to put that into myshow notes, but why don't you
give us a little parting shotand how to get a hold of you or
how to find your information?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Okay, well, yeah, I'm actually pretty open.
People are welcome to email mewith questions and things like
that.
I won't mark it, but I willtalk about the science behind it
and my email address you canput it on your website is
basboyandrews at sierrascicom,and Sierra Sci is short for
(37:32):
Sierra Sciences, which'sS-I-E-R-R-A-S-C-Icom, and Sierra
Sci is short for SierraSciences, which is my company.
Yeah, I don't work forTouchstone, I just license the
ingredients to them.
But I'm feeling like I'mbecoming a follower.
I'm interacting with them somuch.
But, yeah, and that's the bestway, and then, if it gets crazy,
(37:56):
I can actually provide my phonenumbers to them after the email
discussions and we can talkeven more.
But yeah, I find I enjoy myfavorite part of ever giving a
presentation on stage is the Q&A.
I can answer any question and Ijust love doing Q&A.
I understand the science ofaging.
I can answer any question and Ijust love doing a Q and a.
I understand the science ofaging, not just telomeres.
(38:17):
I'm I'm into all aspects ofaging and and I understand
there's a series of talks that Ido.
One is like what is aging.
Another one is why do we age?
Another one is how do we age,and then the other one's how not
to age, okay, and so there'sthere's YouTube videos that
people can find and listen tothose, and they're going to find
(38:38):
that I understand the wholewhat and why and how better than
anybody in the world, the andI'm not trying to pat myself on
the back, but oh no no, myentire life studying, studying
this stuff, and my my thingsaren't theories anymore.
(39:00):
What I do is I focus onexplaining how everything we
know about life and stuff likethat causes us to age and
there's nothing we can do aboutit.
Yet, and we don't have tocreate theories to explain aging
.
I explain how lack of theory isjust everything that we know
does it all by itself.
And that doesn't mean thetheories also don't work.
(39:20):
But it turns out you're goingto still age even without the
theories, sure, and so I explainall that and then how we're
going to undo, how we're goingto prevent aging too, and nobody
ever comes back and says to meBill, you're wrong.
Everybody comes back to me andsay, wow, I've never heard it
presented that way and it makescomplete sense.
(39:42):
So that's the skills I have,okay, where I can do something
like that, and people, if theylisten to those videos,
definitely trust me a lot.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Well, you know, what I would like to do is I'd like
to have you come back on in thefuture and I would like to put
together a series of questionsfor you.
I've got a ton of them, as youmight imagine, and this
conversation could go on for along time, but the constraints
of the show keep that fromhappening.
So I would certainly like toinvite you back and just really
grateful.
This has been a greatconversation and you know this
(40:21):
is important to anybody who isconcerned about their health at
all, and aging is a thing thatyou know we're we're all
affected with one way or theother.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So I Sorry, I didn't give you enough time to talk.
I talked my head off duringthis.
No, no, no, I'm just obsessedwith the subject of aging.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, this is good conversation and again it opens
the door for further discussion.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
All right, well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
All right.
Well, thank you for joining us,and this has been another
edition of the Healthy LivingPodcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine.
I thank you for all yoursupport and we will see you next
time.
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy
Living Podcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine,and today we've got a very
special guest.
His name's Dr Bill Andrews andhe's a leading expert on
longevity research, a renownedscientist in anti-aging research
.
This guy's been around.
He's been featured in PopularScience, the Today Show and
(00:23):
numerous other publications.
He's got a PhD in molecular andpopulation genetics and in 1981
, spent much of his career inmedical research.
Dr Andrews is recognized forhis work on cancer research,
which is very interesting to meand was second place at the 1997
(00:46):
National Inventor of the Year.
Dr Bill, welcome.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Oh, pretty good, Lots of excitement going on today,
Just well whatever.
Yeah, I'm tongue-tied.
What do you know?
Okay so hopefully you'll editthat out.
I usually am not tongue-tiedlike that.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's all good.
Well, we gave you a pretty bigintro, so you've got some big
shoes to fill today.
So you know, longevity researchthat's a big passion of mine.
I consider myself a biohackerand you know I've gone through a
big transformation Before I gotdiagnosed with cancer and now
(01:26):
I've been beating the hell outof that and biohacking my way
through that as well.
So why don't?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
you tell us a little bit about how you got involved
with longevity, aside from, justlike the rest of us, getting
older.
Yeah Well, first let me justsay that cancer is an
aging-related disease.
Oh sure, cancer increases a lot.
So I consider that part of myresearch, and I do have a lot of
products on the market rightnow that have gone through
clinical studies for treatingcancer.
But I really got into thisobsession with anti-aging when I
(02:05):
was 10 years old.
I just know that my teachersfrom elementary school sent me
home with a note on my shirt.
My parents opened up the noteand it said your son is
remarkably interested in scienceand medicine.
You should nurture this Nice,and I'd already talked my
(02:26):
parents into giving me a reallybig, nice 8-inch reflector
telescope so that I could startlooking at Saturn and the rings
of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter,things like that.
And I remember one night I wasout on the front lawn and my
father came up to me and he saidfront lawn, and my father came
(02:48):
up to me and he said, bill, I'vebeen thinking when you grow up
you should become a doctor andfind a cure for aging.
Wow, and no kidding.
And then he said I don't knowwhy nobody's done that yet.
Okay, and it was like he mademe think that's easy, okay, it's
going to be easy to cure aging.
Okay, it's just, it's a diseaseme.
Think that's easy.
Okay, it's going to be easy tocure aging.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, it's just, it's a disease.
But you know what, when you'reyoung and you believe something
is easy, it can be easy.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
You're also very influential when you're young.
So I started, I became obsessedwith this, even I was still in
elementary school at the time.
But but you know, off and on Iget more and back.
Interested in.
My father was constant on on meto, you know, think about it,
things like that.
So in high school and college Iwas starting anti-aging clubs
and I had friends that would gettogether and just brainstorm
(03:39):
about what's causing aging andwe were all pretty smart guys,
in fact, one of about what'scausing aging and we were all
pretty smart guys.
In fact one of my friendsactually got the Nobel Prize in
medicine in 2011.
And even back then we weretalking about all the theories
and stuff like that and whataging is why we age, how we age,
all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So tell me a little bit about the points that you
guys were starting out.
Like you know, I like tounderstand the genesis of a
process, and what were you guyslooking at at that point in your
life?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, we were mostly looking at what is advertised.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You'd hear all these rumors because we weren't really
experts on it and they don'tteach anti-aging in high school
and college no, they don't.
But you know what is?
There's products like Gerovitalor something like that back.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Oh yeah, geritol or whatever, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
And you know it's like we would think about okay,
so how is this working?
What's the mechanos action?
Why is it affecting aging?
And then we would brainstorm onthis and we'd conclude that it
doesn't make sense.
Okay, I mean, the term wealways use is all the twos, and
(05:04):
twos have to add up.
And if they don't all add up,then there's something wrong
with this particular theory.
And so I remember in collegelearning that a guy named
Leonard Hayflick had discoveredthat human cells can only divide
(05:24):
a limited number of times.
He would take cells from anewborn baby and divide them in
a Petri dish, and those cellscould divide 50 times.
Right, he would take cells froma 50-year-old, let them divide
in a Petri dish.
They could only divide 25 times.
He'd take cells from a 90 to100-year-old and they could
divide less than 10 times beforethey would stop and go into a
(05:46):
phase called senescence.
They call this the Hayflicklimit.
So what I remember in college,we started and this is like 10
years after Hayflick had madethis discovery because everybody
at first thought Hayflick wasnuts.
But we started my team group.
We started concluding that hisdata looks pretty good, his
publication looks.
You know, we started my teamgroup.
We started concluding that, youknow, his data looks pretty
good, his publication lookssolid.
(06:08):
And we started wondering boy,does this have something to do
with aging?
And so we started figuring outhow could started having a
discussion.
How could a cell, human cell,cell know how many times it has
divided and how many more timesit can divide?
(06:28):
And this was something thatplagued us.
I remember being in palmsprings one time playing pool
and I knocked a ball into thepocket and I reached out with my
cue stick and slid a woodenpellet on the wall from one side
to the other to mark the that Igot a ball.
Okay, oh, I wonder, could therebe a mechanism like that inside
of a cell?
We brainstormed on that.
(06:49):
We decided, no, that's toocomplicated.
Genetic abacus yeah, that wouldbe too complicated for what we
knew, because we were allbiochemists, studying
biochemistry.
401, 501, all these kinds ofweird things, all this kind of
stuff, and we knew that a cellcould not have a mechanism like
that.
But then, all of a sudden, wecame up with the idea of ride
(07:13):
tickets at an amusement park.
All right, okay, so could therebe something like that inside
of our cell so that every time acell divided, it would lose a
ticket Right, and the cellwouldn't know how many tickets
it's used.
It wouldn't know, it wouldn'tmatter.
Yeah, when it runs out, it runsout, it runs out.
And so we brainstormed on thatfor a long time and really
(07:35):
actually never came up withanything to explain it.
But then the big breakthroughwas in 1993.
In fact, my father is still veryinterested in anti-aging.
The more obsessed I got with it, the more obsessed he got with
it.
He was a television producerand he wanted to make a movie, a
(07:56):
documentary, on scientistscuring aging.
I was going to this conferenceon aging in Lake Tahoe and I
invited him to go with me and sowe went and I introduced him to
all the top leaders in theworld in anti-aging I'd already
become well-known because of myobsession.
(08:20):
And he was talking, we had adinner and we were talking about
making a documentary and stufflike that, and then one of the
guys that was there, a guy namedMichael Rose.
He and I started talking aboutlet's start a company to focus
on aging.
But we decided to do it on miceand just like breed longer
living mice and stuff like that,all right, and find out what
(08:43):
changed in their DNA when theylive longer.
But then the very next morningafter that we started a company.
We stayed up all night.
I was going to be the presidentof the company and things like
that.
We stayed up the next morning Iheard a guy named Calvin Harley
at Geron Corporation talk aboutthe fact that telomeres get
(09:06):
shorter every time a celldivides.
There you go, and I'm sittingthere and I'm thinking, oh my
God, here's the ride.
Here's the ticker, the ride.
It's a telomere.
So I actually now show picturesof chromosomes.
Nice, the chromosome is ridetickets.
Okay, so every time a celldivides, it doesn't lose a
ticket, it turns out.
It turns out when a single cellwants to replicate, it becomes
(09:31):
two daughter cells.
Everything inside that parentcell needs to be duplicated.
So the daughter cells areidentical to that parent cell,
and that includes the DNA whereall your genes are.
Those have to be duplicated.
So it goes through DNAreplication.
(09:54):
But it turns out that a humancell lacks the ability to be
able to replicate all the way tothe end.
So the telomere didn't getshorter.
The new DNA that gets made wasjust made shorter because it
couldn't go all the way to theend.
I use as an analogy when I talkat conferences.
I'll use bricklaying as anexample.
So you've got a bricklayer ontop of a brick wall, backing up
laying a brick, backing uplaying another brick, and when
(10:17):
it gets to the end of the wallit falls off before being able
to lay that last brick.
So the new brick, so every rollof brick is shorter, and
shorter, and shorter, and that'sa remarkable similarity to what
really is going on.
Yeah and so.
(10:37):
But that guy, before he couldeven get off the stage, I was at
the bottom of that podiumsaying has anybody figured out
how to re-lengthen them?
I mean, he did mention thattelomeres don't shorten in our
reproductive cells because ifthey did, our children would be
born with shorter telomeres thanwe have.
Their children are born withshorter telomeres than they have
.
Right, they would have beenextinct as a species millions of
years ago or 300,000 years ago.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
There's an exception in there that can be explored.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah.
So he said that they'd beenworking on it for years with
teams all over the world andnobody had figured it out.
And I just said let me come andwork with you, I will figure it
out in three months.
Nice, now I had already had ahistory of major successes in
biotech, accomplishing thingswhen nobody else could get them
(11:21):
done.
That includes, like humangrowth hormone, tissue
plasminogen activator,erythropoietin, beta-seron, on
and on a whole bunch of lots ofcancer drugs, things like that.
So it was a pretty short jobinterview.
He got me on board right awayand then, three months and 17
days later, my team discoveredthe enzyme human telomerase.
(11:45):
That was actually the one thatactually, actually actually
verified or said this is it nokidding?
I couldn't have done it withoutmy team and I had like three
quarters of all the employees atGeron Corporation reporting to
me at the time.
It was a big effort, but we wediscovered and then the 17 extra
days that it took me.
(12:06):
I blamed it on Geron forinterfering too much with trying
to redirect my effortselsewhere.
But we discovered the enzyme,we put it into normal skin cells
and we showed that theycompletely lost the hafleck
(12:26):
limit.
Wow, what was more important isthat their risk of becoming
cancer decreased immensely.
Interesting and the Because ofmy cancer background, I had some
theories about cancer.
There were a lot of people whostarted thinking at the time
(12:46):
that this enzyme, telomerase,that we discovered was actually
causing cancer.
Really I was saying no, it'sactually decreasing cancer.
And it turns out that in thecases of where.
So after we discovered theenzyme, we did find that a lot
of cancer cells are immortalbecause they suddenly are
producing telomerase.
(13:06):
Oh really, yeah, but it's not.
The telomerase didn't cause thecancer, the cancer caused the
telomerase.
Interesting, so now we know,years and years later, we know
that when a cell starts dividingrapidly, like a cancer, every
time it divides the telomeresget shorter and shorter and
(13:27):
shorter.
When telomeres get criticallyshort, the mutation rates
skyrocket.
Short telomeres induce so manymutations that you can see them
in the light microscope and sothese mutations are doing all
kinds of things rearranginggenes and stuff like that, and
then one or two of the cancercells end up putting telomerase
(13:52):
under control of some otherpromoter.
So the cancers start producingtelomerase and then the cancer
becomes immortal and that's whenit kills you If a cancer, if
you're over 30 years old and acancer gets bigger than a pimple
okay, small pimple, that cancerhas figured out a way to become
immortal.
Okay, otherwise it would die ofold age, okay.
(14:13):
And so, because of theskyrocketing mutation rates from
the short telomeres, there wasalways almost always a chance
that at least some of thosecancer cells would mutate to
start producing telomerase andtherefore become immortal.
So cancer caused telomerase andthe telomerase caused the
cancers to become immortal.
I just want to learn from that.
(14:34):
Let's make a non-cancer cellimmortal, right, exactly.
And it turns out that when wedo that, the incident the risk
of becoming cancer decreasesimmensely, and it's because of
one.
It's not only just inducing thecells that you're treated, but
it's inducing telomeres in yourimmune cells, which is
(14:55):
lengthening telomeres in yourimmune cells, which is giving
your immune systems a muchbetter chance of fighting a
cancer if you get cancer.
But, more importantly, it'spreventing your cells from
having the critically shorttelomeres that induce all the
mutations.
Makes sense.
So telomerase doesn't causecancer.
(15:15):
Telomerase decreases the riskof cancer and this has been
shown over and over again.
Dr Rhonda Pinnell, who is adoctor at Harvard, very famous
doctor at Harvard, who was very,very into cancer, he was
convinced that telomerase causescancer and I actually provided
him he and I were friends Iactually provided him with the
(15:36):
technology, the telomerase andeverything like that, so that he
could prove that telomerasecauses cancer.
Okay, because I'm just ascientist, that's good science,
though Try to prove that.
I'm not trying to make onesomething true, that's not true.
So I want to know the answerstoo.
Absolutely so.
To his disappointment, the micedid not get cancer and they
(16:00):
actually had what he called aremarkable reversal of the aging
process.
Wow, okay.
And he used engineered mice,because mice don't normally age
by telomere shortening they.
So he had to create a mousethat does.
And he there's a really greatvideo of of diane sawyer
interviewing dr ronda pennelshowing the pictures of the mice
and he was like stunned, youknow, he he was like a
(16:23):
remarkable reversal of the agingprocess.
He also ended up later doingmore studies and found the
telomeres were the kingpin ofaging.
Uh, he published papers showingthat even mitochondria, health
and everything like that wasaffected by telomere.
Like he keeps the telomereslong, nothing else happens, none
of the other aging markershappen.
So, and you can, he was doingit like I, we've even done these
(16:47):
experiments here but telomereshorten, relengthen them,
shorten or relengthen, and wefind that aging goes up and down
, up and down, just on telomeres, nothing else.
That doesn't mean that nothingelse causes aging.
Okay, I want to be clear.
But it does tell me that nomatter what else we do to try to
(17:07):
cure aging.
Aging will never be cured unlesswe also solve the telomere
shortening problem.
Right, maybe we'll find that itdoes solve all the problems of
aging, but I would be surprisedif it did, because I think you
can get aging just by by otherthings.
Even with long telomeres youcan still have aging.
So we have to solve thesethings.
(17:27):
And then there's diseases likemy favorite one I like to refer
to is alcoholism.
Okay, alcoholism has nothing todo with telomeres, okay and so,
but it does accelerate telomereshortening.
Okay, by killing liver cellsand things like that.
But so even after we do cureaging with telomeres, we still
(17:51):
have other things we have to do.
We've got plenty of ways to getold.
So I don't know, I'm kind oflong-winded.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
No, no, no, this is very interesting to me.
Oh, no, no, this is veryinteresting to me.
You know the whole idea oftelomeres.
I was introduced to, I don'tknow, probably about seven,
eight years ago, when I sort ofbegan my journey of it, and I
(18:21):
understand the importance oftrying to keep them long, and so
you've come up with some waysto do that.
Why don't you tell us a littlebit about that?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Well, yeah, first of all, we had to develop some
pretty sophisticated,high-throughput assays, ways of
testing for different ways oflengthening telomeres, because
there's a lot of claims ofthings that lengthen telomeres
and they actually don't, but, uh, but I wanted to really figure
out something that does, andit's actually a lot tougher than
(18:51):
you would ever imagine.
Um so, so we haven't found a uhlike a chemical or a
nutraceutical or anything likethat that actually is potent
enough to reverse aging, and,despite everything else you hear
in the marketing world, nothinghas ever been discovered that
(19:14):
does.
But we have found the mostpotent things so far, and so let
me, before I explain thattelomere shortening and
lengthening is like a tug of war, and in our reproductive cells
it's a tie.
Okay, we have people on one sidepulling to lengthen, one on the
other side pulling to shorten,and it's a tie.
(19:35):
So we don't.
We have they shorten and theylengthen, they shorten and they
lengthen.
It's a back and forth kind ofthing.
In all the other cells of ourbody we only have the shorteners
.
Okay, pulling to shorten, andthat's just going on.
Now we can decrease the numberof shorteners so we can slow
(19:56):
down the aging process by livinga healthy lifestyle, like
antioxidants don't smoke, don'tbe obese, things like that and
inclamatories.
But there's a basal level that,when I was talking about that
brick layer falling off the wall, we can't get below that.
Okay, that's called the basallevel telomere shortening what
sort of gravity always going on.
So we started this assay, thishigh-throughput robotic
screening, where we were testinglike 4,000 different
(20:19):
ingredients a day and lookingfor anything that would cause
the cells to start producingtelomerase, and we started
finding some.
First they were weak and thenwe found stronger.
Then we started doing medicinalchemistry to start redesigning
things.
We started getting smarter andsmarter from the results that we
got, learning from looking atstructures, and so we started
(20:41):
coming out better and better.
But the problem with thesethings is that most of the
things is that as soon as we didanything to engineer it or
redesign it, it became apharmaceutical.
And pharmaceuticals requirelike 20 years of FDA clinical
studies and billions of dollarsand things like that.
(21:04):
So we just took the approachthat you know let's find a
nutraceutical, yeah, and so westarted emphasizing
nutraceuticals and we found alot of nutraceuticals, but still
so we're putting people.
So we got the shortenerspulling to shorten.
I got my hands reversed thistime, but now we are putting
people on the other side, but wearen't tying the tug of war or
(21:27):
even winning the tug of war.
We are just slowing down thetug of war, right, so it's still
short, but that's a really goodthing.
Yeah, I can't tell you howoften people say you know you
don't reverse aging.
What good is your product?
You know it's like that'sbecause they believe that
everybody else has products thatreverse aging.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
As a point of reference.
You know, when you're goingthrough cancer treatment, they
talk about, you know, six monthsof life as this big gift, and
so if you're shortening yourtelomeres and you give yourself
any amount of extra time, it'sdefinitely a benefit.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, and it's not just life, it's health too.
I know you weren't saying that,but a lot of people say, well,
I don't want to live a long timeif I'm not healthy, right,
right, there's not a scientistin the field that I know of that
is thinking oh, I just want toextend people's lifespan, right,
exactly, it's quality of life,for sure.
So we've tested like 20,000different plant extracts
(22:31):
throughout the last 10 years andwe've continually found more
and more potent ones.
We did have some companieslicense some of them a while
back, years ago, and theydiscontinued them because of
profit margins weren't highenough, of course.
They were too focused onprofits and not enough on actual
(22:51):
health, right.
But then I got approached byTouchstone Essentials, which
blew me away because they seemlike they don't care a thing
about profits.
They just want people to behappier and healthier.
And, by the way, I never market.
I believe in when I promote aproduct, I promote it on its
(23:14):
benefits, not on the lack ofbenefits by other products that
come, right, you know.
So I, but, but the but I, I.
I did find that I really liketouchstone's attitude and so I
licensed our latestnutraceuticals yeah, our plant
extracts, now that we haddiscovered, and so the top five
(23:38):
plant extracts that we have everdiscovered, and we've tested
everything else that's out therethat's marketed to be able to
do that.
They don't do anything.
We licensed our top five what Icall telomerase-inducing plant
extracts, licensed them totouchstone essentials and they
put them together and createdtelovital.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I didn't create it, I just licensed them.
I'm the scientist.
I'm not going to market theproduct or anything like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
You can't put the ingredients to work with.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, and then they wanted to.
Also, I mentioned that you canreduce the number of shorteners
by antioxidants,anti-inflammatories, and so they
wanted to know some of thosetoo, but they wanted them to be
vegan and natural and organic.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And so.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I was able to provide them with a list of things, and
actually I'm going to confessmy business partner, a guy named
Christian Chase, who is in NewZealand.
He actually came up with a listof things that are organic,
natural and vegan.
All right, that actually woulddo that, and so those are
included in Tilo Vital also Nice.
(24:55):
So Tilo Vital is not onlydecreasing the number of
shorteners, it's actually addinglengtheners, so you're getting
the best of both worlds, butit's still not winning the tug
of war.
But slowing it down is good.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
You know, progress is progress, and, as we start
getting to the other side of ourhourglass, that any progress is
good progress.
The way I see it, you know,especially if the quality of
life is, uh, included with itall what increases your chances
of still being around when wecome up with something that does
(25:32):
reverse aging?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
because we're still working on this.
I mean, our, our researchliterally costs us two million
dollars a month.
Wow, okay, to run the robots,to have all the assays, to get
all the plant extracts andthings like that, to pay the
salaries.
It's two million dollars amonth to perform this essay, but
we're doing it okay and we'rewe're finding and like we it
(25:55):
says we tested like 20,000different plant extracts.
So far there's at least 3million out there.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I was going to say there's a lot more to go, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
And so you know, I'll confess some of the
nutraceuticals, some of theplant extracts.
I don't want to call themnutraceuticals because they're
not on the market, but someplant extracts are toxic, right.
And so I don't want to callthem nutraceuticals because
they're not on the market, butsome plant extracts are toxic
and so those get thrown awayright away.
But it turns out some of thoseended up being toxic against
cancer cells.
Okay, so they become useful too, in different ways, Absolutely.
(26:31):
So we're moving along, and I am, I got to say, I do something
that's called criticalmeta-analysis of peer-reviewed
studies.
I'm really good at looking atscientific studies and looking
at their experimental design andtheir data analysis and the
logic and statistical theoriesand things like that of papers
(26:51):
and being able to weed outwhat's right and what's wrong,
because you can find anythingyou wish to be true, in even the
scientific peer-reviewedliterature.
but so I did this kind of likedue diligence on the other
products that touchstone has andI was blown away.
Nice, they have products that II can't find the equivalent of
(27:12):
anywhere else, like theirglucocontrol, which is
converting sugar into fiber.
Fiber is good, sugar is bad,sugar tastes good.
What else?
Their zeolite is, I think, oneof the best things I've ever
seen for getting rid of toxins,heavy metals, things like that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
That's wild.
They use that in kitty litter.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, well, not as pure as this stuff is.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Right, I would imagine, I would hope.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
What else?
The fulvic acid.
You know I've always been a fanof Shilajit, yeah, yeah, but
Shilajit has side effects andstuff like that.
Right Turns out fulvic acid isthe active ingredient in
Shilajit.
Now it costs more because youhave to purify the fulvic acid
from it.
You can't synthesize it oranything like that, because then
it wouldn't be organic.
But they provide fulvic acid,which is safe and does the same
(28:13):
thing as Shilajit without theside effect.
They're natokinase, okay, whichis a Okay.
So one of the products that Idiscovered a long time ago were,
like tissue plasminogenactivator or other plasminogen
(28:35):
activators that break down bloodclusters, inhibitors of those.
And then there's things thatinhibit those, the inhibitors.
Natokinase is one of those.
It's a protease Even though itsounds like a kinase, it's
actually not a kinase which isan enzyme that adds phosphates
to proteins.
It's a protease thatinactivates the inhibitor of
(29:02):
telomerase.
So what is this?
It's an inhibitor and itactivates the inhibitor of the
activator, okay.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
But it's a really, really great product for
preventing or decreasing theriskator.
Okay, so so it it.
But it's a really, really greatproduct for preventing or
decreasing the risk of heartdisease.
Okay and so, uh, touchstone hasthat too.
Okay and um, so it's like agreat company.
Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm blownaway with the ethics of this
company.
I'm, I'm.
That's why I say, when wedevelop new things in the future
(29:34):
, I'm not looking for anybodyelse to market these products.
I'm sticking with Touchstone.
Um, and I'm not a marketermyself.
I hear you I haven't spoken badabout any other companies as far
as I know, but I, I just uh, I,I'm, I like working with
Touchstone immensely.
Um, the uh, uh.
And then they have the otherproducts, they have their
(29:56):
proteins and they have thisgreen juice.
That's really, really good.
I take it every day and I payfor it.
I'm not getting a free productfrom them.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, you know we're running a little low on time and
I want to continue thisconversation, but I would love
to have you back to go deeperinto some of these things,
especially some of your work oncancer.
But I want to talk about theproducts a little bit.
Televital.
I was working with your guy.
I set up an account and they'resending me over some samples.
(30:29):
I'm curious and interested totry them out myself.
I, you know, I'm curious andinterested to try them out
myself.
I, you know, with this show Imeet a lot of people, a lot of
companies, try a lot of productsand all sorts of ideas,
concepts and all this stuff.
But one of the things that isimportant to me is, you know,
I'm going to try the product andI want to know, like, what am I
(30:51):
looking for to validate itsefficacy?
You know, I mean a lot ofthings.
You know you can feel energy,you can feel clarity, you can
feel all these different things,but what's going to tell me
that this is doing anything?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
okay, well, first of all, most products you are
especially an anti-aging you areare not going to feel anything
because you can't detect theslowing down of aging.
So a lot of the companies thatpromote products, they add
things that are called instantgratification stuff.
(31:28):
So when people take the productthey suddenly feel a buzz or
something like that.
That's just to make them thinkthat the product's doing
something, but in reality it'simpossible to measure the
slowing of aging.
Okay, now, that said, we doknow that when telomeres get
critically short, they're easierto lengthen.
(31:51):
So the shorter a telomere is,the easier it is to lengthen.
So even though we aren'twinning the tug-of-war in normal
cells, in the cells that havecritically short telomeres, we
are winning the tug-of-war weare lengthening.
And so if a person takingtelovital has critically short
(32:12):
telomeres in any of theirtissues or organs, they can
possibly see a reversal of thesymptoms.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
And so that's really the only thing that you can look
for.
But you know, I've mentionedstuff like instant
gratifications to Eddie Stone,who's the head of Touchstone,
and he said, no way, yeah,they're making products that
really work.
They're not trying to just makemoney cheating people.
So you really shouldn't.
(32:46):
I mean you will be slowing youraging down.
You have to kind of go on faithand people can do due diligence
on me and all my successes inthe past.
My track record is impeccable,uh, and they, they can find that
you know every and they canlisten to me talk at medical
conferences.
I never make false claims andthings like that.
(33:06):
Uh, they can find that thatwhat I say is pretty legit.
I've developed a goodreputation for being somebody
that you can trust.
So it is slowing down the rateof aging, okay, and you're not
going to be able to measure theslowing of aging.
You can do it if you want toput 1,000 mice in two different
(33:27):
groups and treat one and not theother.
You can measure a slowing ofaging there, but you can't
measure individual people.
Even if you had an identicaltwin, your identical twin going
to have left led a differentlife than you had, and so
exactly night.
By the way, I do have anidentical twin and oh wow, all
right, identical twin is ameasure of my success at slowing
down my aging uh, but uh the uh, because he's only recently
(33:50):
decided to start getting on mybandwagon and so getting on your
bandwagon, so you got a headstart on him.
Yeah, so the but yeah, you'renot going to.
You're not going to feelanything unless you do have
critically short telomeres, andthere are a lot of people that
have critically short telomereseven though they're young.
So things that people couldlook for are improved vision,
(34:12):
improved endurance, improvedlike hair coming back or hair
color coming back.
But that's only going to happenif the loss of the hair or the
change in color of the hair wasbecause of telomeres, got it.
And if your mother's father wasbald and he was bald because of
that.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
That's not going to happen with telomeres.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
But there are, even with the past, products that
were on the market and stuff ofthat.
That's not.
That's not what you do withtelomeres, okay so, but but
there are, even with the pastproducts that that were on the
market and stuff like that, Iwas stunned by people's hair
color coming back, people's haircoming back, uh, things, things
like endurance.
So I, I can tell you thatpersonal, and I don't believe in
anecdotal data, but I wassurprised, believe in anecdotal
(34:58):
data, but I, I was surprised.
I'm an ultra marathon runner,okay, so I never, ever, came
anywhere close to winning racesand stuff like that but after
finishing an ultra marathon,that's winning a race yeah well,
I always say it's like I hopeit never ends, because when you
run as often as I do and stufflike that, running is more fun,
it's adventure and stuff likethat Running is more fun, it's
adventure and stuff like that.
I love the races.
I'm not one of those runnersthat finish on their hands and
(35:18):
knees throwing up.
I usually can't.
I want the race to last forever.
After taking one of the productsthat I had invented a long time
ago I'm not going to mentionnames because the product's
really not available anymore Iwas running a race in salt lake
city and I was like stunned thatI was doing really well and I
(35:43):
ended up finishing in the top 10overall, winning my age group,
and I'm driving home and I'mthinking what happened?
How did that happen?
And all of a sudden it dawnedon me oh my God, it's this new
product.
Somehow, because of, I guess,maybe all the running, I had
some critically short telomeresthat was holding me back from my
(36:04):
endurance.
Endurance has been stayed upthere ever since then, and I
also my ophthalmologist.
I had to put my glasses on atthe beginning because you were
such a blur, but my visionstarted getting better three
ophthalmology appointments in arow and I actually took pictures
and I made a slide out of thedifferent things that show this.
(36:25):
And, you know, was it becauseof the telomere product?
I don't know, I can't think ofanything else different I was
doing.
Yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah, thetwo things that I had were the
endurance getting better and thevision getting better.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
But I was pretty convinced that some of the other
people, their hair was comingback and uh, well, I'm paying a
lot of attention to my bodyright now as I'm overcoming this
problem that I've got, and I'mlooking forward to trying the
product and I believe we've gota special for the listeners that
I'll be able to offer.
(37:01):
I'm going to put that into myshow notes, but why don't you
give us a little parting shotand how to get a hold of you or
how to find your information?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Okay, well, yeah, I'm actually pretty open.
People are welcome to email mewith questions and things like
that.
I won't mark it, but I willtalk about the science behind it
and my email address you canput it on your website is
basboyandrews at sierrascicom,and Sierra Sci is short for
(37:32):
Sierra Sciences, which'sS-I-E-R-R-A-S-C-Icom, and Sierra
Sci is short for SierraSciences, which is my company.
Yeah, I don't work forTouchstone, I just license the
ingredients to them.
But I'm feeling like I'mbecoming a follower.
I'm interacting with them somuch.
But, yeah, and that's the bestway, and then, if it gets crazy,
(37:56):
I can actually provide my phonenumbers to them after the email
discussions and we can talkeven more.
But yeah, I find I enjoy myfavorite part of ever giving a
presentation on stage is the Q&A.
I can answer any question and Ijust love doing Q&A.
I understand the science ofaging.
I can answer any question and Ijust love doing a Q and a.
I understand the science ofaging, not just telomeres.
(38:17):
I'm I'm into all aspects ofaging and and I understand
there's a series of talks that Ido.
One is like what is aging.
Another one is why do we age?
Another one is how do we age,and then the other one's how not
to age, okay, and so there'sthere's YouTube videos that
people can find and listen tothose, and they're going to find
(38:38):
that I understand the wholewhat and why and how better than
anybody in the world, the andI'm not trying to pat myself on
the back, but oh no no, myentire life studying, studying
this stuff, and my my thingsaren't theories anymore.
(39:00):
What I do is I focus onexplaining how everything we
know about life and stuff likethat causes us to age and
there's nothing we can do aboutit.
Yet, and we don't have tocreate theories to explain aging
.
I explain how lack of theory isjust everything that we know
does it all by itself.
And that doesn't mean thetheories also don't work.
(39:20):
But it turns out you're goingto still age even without the
theories, sure, and so I explainall that and then how we're
going to undo, how we're goingto prevent aging too, and nobody
ever comes back and says to meBill, you're wrong.
Everybody comes back to me andsay, wow, I've never heard it
presented that way and it makescomplete sense.
(39:42):
So that's the skills I have,okay, where I can do something
like that, and people, if theylisten to those videos,
definitely trust me a lot.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Well, you know, what I would like to do is I'd like
to have you come back on in thefuture and I would like to put
together a series of questionsfor you.
I've got a ton of them, as youmight imagine, and this
conversation could go on for along time, but the constraints
of the show keep that fromhappening.
So I would certainly like toinvite you back and just really
grateful.
This has been a greatconversation and you know this
(40:21):
is important to anybody who isconcerned about their health at
all, and aging is a thing thatyou know we're we're all
affected with one way or theother.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So I Sorry, I didn't give you enough time to talk.
I talked my head off duringthis.
No, no, no, I'm just obsessedwith the subject of aging.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, this is good conversation and again it opens
the door for further discussion.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
All right, well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
All right.
Well, thank you for joining us,and this has been another
edition of the Healthy LivingPodcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine.
I thank you for all yoursupport and we will see you next
time.
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