Reversing Age with Science: Ryan Smith on Epigenetics, Peptides, and the Future of Longevity

In this powerful return episode, Michele Hughes welcomes back Ryan Smith, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of TruDiagnostic. Formerly the CEO of Tailor Made Compounding, Ryan transitioned his focus from peptides to epigenetic science, becoming a leading force in the field of biological aging. This episode is a deep-dive tutorial on biological age testing, DNA methylation, and how epigenetics can give us control over the aging process.

Ryan explains the difference between chronological and biological age, the power of DNA methylation data, and the cutting-edge technology behind TruDiagnostic’s comprehensive testing. Listeners will also learn about telomeres, organ-specific age reports, and the groundbreaking “Rejuvenation Olympics.” Michele shares her own test results and explores how these tools offer insight into one’s aging trajectory and risk factors for chronic disease.

Whether you’re new to biohacking or a longevity enthusiast, this episode offers a front-row seat to the future of preventative health.

🧬 Topics Covered:

• Ryan’s journey from medical school dropout to peptide pioneer and scientific director
• What peptides and peptide bioregulators really are
• Understanding epigenetic clocks and why biological age matters more than chronological
• The science of DNA methylation and how it measures gene expression
• Differences between traditional DNA tests and epigenetic testing
• Why telomere testing is outdated and less predictive
• What TruDiagnostic’s tests reveal—from organ system age to personalized healthspan insights
• Data-driven interventions for slowing and reversing aging
• How TruDiagnostic’s “TrueHealth” report may soon replace traditional blood tests
• Clinical trials, FDA approval pathways, and the future of aging diagnostics

🔗 Learn More & Order a Test:

Visit www.trudiagnostic.com and use code AGELESS20 for 20% off.
Connect with Ryan Smith on LinkedIn for more insights and research updates.

Medical Disclaimer – Ageless and Timeless PodcastAgeless and Timeless (the “Show”), along with its host and guests, shares insights and discussions on health, wellness, and longevity for informational and educational purposes only. The Show does not provide medical advice, diagnoses, treatments, cures, or preventative recommendations for any disease or health condition. The content shared should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.While we strive to feature reputable sources and knowledgeable guests, neither Ageless and Timeless nor its host or affiliates assume responsibility for errors, omissions, or misinterpretations in the information provided. Listeners are encouraged to use their own discretion and consult with a licensed medical professional before making any health-related decisions. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge that any actions you take based on the information presented are at your own risk, and Ageless and Timeless, its host, guests, and affiliates are not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from the use of this content.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Good morning everyone. This is Michelle Hughes from Ageless and Timeless.
Today I have Ryan Smith, the founder and now the
scientific director. I thought Ryan, when you were on last time,
there was a different title, but we're going with what
I see on the internet now as chief Scientific Director.

(00:29):
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah? Absolutely. You know, I was working sort of as
a CEO prior, but now with all the science and
developments going on, I've sort of transitioned full time to
research and development and so excited to share that and
some of the updates we have today.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yeah, and you were on I think two years at
twenty twenty three, I think is when we first had
you on. So there's so much that's happened. I mean, honestly,
you've taken warp speed. I've never seen a company do
as much in two years as True Diagnostics has done.
So we're going to hear all about that today. And

(01:03):
the other exciting news is that I did take my
second test with Ryan for the True Diagnostics and again
I just got the results this morning, and everybody, you
will be so blown away by how comprehensive this test is.
And it takes a while actually to just go through

(01:24):
it and to try to digest, and of course you
need some guidance from someone like Ryan, who are your
medical professional who you'd be taking it through to understand
all that the implications suggest to you. But there's so
much that you can derive from this that it will
really reduce the amount of time you have to spend

(01:45):
running around to a bunch of specialists if you just
take this test. So we're going to go through that today.
We're going to make this like a tutorial, very different
than my normal podcast. But why don't we start off
Ryan by just giving us a little background about your journey.
Ken Coletorf was on the other day and he, you know, which,
started chatting about Taylor Made. And Taylor Made was the

(02:08):
first company that Ryan actually founded right out of medical school.
So give us a little bit of a history of
how this all happens so people know who you are.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, certainly, it's it's been a crazy journey for myself,
but you know, as you mentioned, surely out of medical
school I started Tailor Made compounding, and my background previously
and even medical school, I'd been in peptide and protein synthesis,
so sort of making peptides from the ground up, and
so in really in two thousand and sixteen, which is

(02:40):
the first year, we had an idea to start tailor
made compounding, to really offer innovative peptides through compounding pharmacy.
So we brought a lot of the peptides you might
be familiar with to market, things like the BPC one
five seven. We own the patent for the pre milantide pte.
We brought to the market. You know, we brought even
you know timis and beta, thymus and alpha, if you

(03:02):
name it peptid. We were really one of the first
to commercialize it. And as most people know, the peptides
are really really popular. But we sort of built that market,
but we grew at a really rapid speed, and so
we were the fourth fastest growing company in healthcare. We
went from sort of me as the first employee to
two hundred and fifty within a little over two and
a half years. So it was sort of incredible growth,

(03:24):
mainly because these peptides were so exciting. But we also
knew that one of the limitations there would be the
FDA and some of the lack of data on a
lot of these products, and so in the back of
our of my mind, specifically I was always looking for
ways to try and see how these things were helping,
but we didn't have time for you know, twenty or
forty year pacebo control trials, and so one of the

(03:46):
tools to measure this that really caught my eye during
that Tailorman compounding experience was these epigenetic clocks. So these
clocks which are reading not your DNA, but your gene
expression patterns how your genes are turned on and off
to tell you about how you're aging. And so these
clocks have been going on a while, really since twenty
thirteen was their first appearance, but really in twenty eighteen,

(04:10):
for the first time, they had the first ever interventional
data where they were looking at things like met foreman
growth hormone and DHA to see if they could actually
reverse the aging process. And because aging is the biggest
respector for every chronic disease and death, it became a
clock that I was really really interested in. So unfortunately,
finally the FDA came knocking at our door and we

(04:32):
really had to stop doing a lot of the peptides.
But I used that as an opportunity to sort of
sell an exit the business to create true diagnostic which
really focused on DNA methylation, particularly the DNA methylation age
clocks to sort of quantify aging. And so that started
in twenty twenty and then here we are now five
years later, actually to the month actually, and a lot

(04:54):
has happened. DNA mefilation clocks have come a long way.
But the other things that we can do with the inflation,
and we'll talk about today, I think are equally is exciting.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Well, this is so good. And you know, I know,
out of adversity comes opportunity. And in your case, look
what happened. You know, yes, you left medical school because
you were disenchanted. That's an adversity at that time. And
look what happened with Taylor Made. Then Taylor Made looked
like an adversity as the outcome of that company. And

(05:24):
now look what happened with True Diagnostics. So you're you're
like a poster child for creating opportunity out of adversity.
And this is certainly something that we all as entrepreneurs,
you know, and people that are looking for answers to
health issues, we always look to people like you and

(05:44):
hopefully you know others many of the others that have
been on my podcasts who have had similar situations, including
myself that you know, we have something that occurs that
looks like it's a terrible event, and then somehow we
look back and we say, look what that event did
and how it turned my life around. So exactly who knows?

(06:07):
To you, Ryan, So let's just do a few definitions
for people who are tuning in for the first time,
didn't see your last podcast, and many who might not
understand these terms. So let's start with peptide. What is
a peptide?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, so a peptide is just a short chain of
amino acids. Usually the definition is under forty in length.
So if you're familiar with the amino acids, they make up
peptides and proteins of the body, sort of what we
call the infrastructure of the body. But peptides in particular
can be signaling molecules acting like hormones or you know,

(06:43):
drugs in and of themselves. But they're just short chains
of amino acids.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Right, And how do you differentiate between a peptide and
a peptide bioregulator which you and I how we met
actually was through doctor Bill Lawrence, who was a disciple
of doctor Cavinson from Saint Petersburg, Gerontology. Unfortunately he's passed
away last year or two years ago. Again are a

(07:09):
lot of last year, and but you know the work
he's done lives on, and so distinguish those two.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, well, so the bioregulators are still peptides. So for instance,
you think about things like the epitalon or the thimulin,
those are still short chain amino acids. You know, usually
the bioregulators are anywhere from eight. Amino acids are less,
and they're they're meant to come from natural sources uh
and and work on you know, individual products. But but
peptides generally can be you know, we have a lot

(07:39):
of amino acids uh and and you know we can
have multiple combinations as those peptide chains get larger and
uh and and so how those peptides are designed really
ultimately influence how they're going to peck the body. But
but both are are the same chain of amino acids,
just technically different, uh you know, subdivisions of that category.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
And and the other justinction is that the pep type
bioregulators do attach themselves to specific organs, kind of like
the pluripotent stem cells. So like you could take a
pep type bioregulator specifically for your heart, or for your lungs,
or for your bone marrow or your thymus or whatever.

(08:21):
So that's a little different, don't you think than the
generalized general generic peptides.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well, you know, one of the things about the bioregulators
is the you know, outside of a few like thymulan
or epitalent, they don't have a lot of published data
and so so you know, those are certainly claims. But
but but I don't know that I've seen anything that
would back that up. You know, generally the peptides are
hitting extracellular receptors and and and so generally they might

(08:51):
be optimized for certain organ or another, like for instance,
the epitalent or the penlon or for the peneal gland
or mimicking products that come from that organ, and so sore,
they're certainly I would say, different categories, but really every
peptide is unique and different.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Okay, all right, well, good, that's good to know. Okay,
Now let's talk about the difference between chronological aging and
biological aging. That's some like an ABC of understanding you're
what you're doing at true diagnostics exactly.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
It's fundamental, you know, aging, no matter if we're talking
about chronological or biological. It's the biggest risk factor for
every disease. But the problem with chronological age is that
it's not really as informative as we want it to be.
You know, we all probably know people in their seventies
who look like they're fifty and vice versa, and so
it's not really informing us about the biology of how

(09:45):
healthy someone actually is. And so biological age is sort
of a calculation to tell us more about how someone
is aging on a molecular or physical process level, and
it's much much more informative. It's much more predictive of
outcomes than just your chronological age.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Today, this podcast is brought to you by g Genics.
From stem cell therapy to lifestyle coaching, Gigenics is the
perfect place to go for all your health and wellness needs.
This health clinic is amazing at getting you personalized medicine
and wellness that is unique to you. Use the code

(10:19):
ageless and you'll get twenty percent off your first service
with them. Go to www dot g Genics qi ge
nix dot com to find out more information about these
powerful methods. So the chronologically, just to simplify, is the
number of years you've been you've gone around the sun,

(10:43):
and it's just a number. This is why people say
aging is just a number or age is just a number.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
I mean're not aging. That's not correct. Age is just
a number, But biological age is really aging is really
telling you how old are your organs or how old
are you systemically metabolically. So that's a huge difference, and
I think more and more people are starting to differentiate

(11:09):
in you know, their discussions about aging between the biological
and the chronological. So I agree with you that chronological
age can just be put aside when you're looking at
you know, how long are we going to live? It's
really your biological age is going to determine your lifespan,
So then talk about lifespan and health span.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, definitely. You know, obviously when people think about aging,
they think about both, right, how long they will live,
but they also think about some of the negative type
of events that happen with aging. Right. We we generally
might have our cognitive function decrease, or we might be
less mobile and have trouble moving as much. You know,
we might have you know, a difficulty even sustaining attention sometimes,

(11:53):
or we might have facial aging. All of these things
are biological driven processes and so so that's really what
we're trying to quantify is all of that. But the
good news is that health span and lifespan are both
pretty linked. You know, generally, the more that you're improving
your health span, the more you're improving your lifespan, and
vice versa. There are different they're giving us some different signals,

(12:15):
even moleculy when we're trying to predict both. They're slightly different,
but ultimately they're very, very correlated, and generally, if you're
improving one, you're improving the other.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
And so what about epigenetics. How is you know, so
many people are taking DNA tests today and there's so
many companies offering although my favorite is the DNA Company,
And as you know, we've talked about Kushief Khan and
Tracy Wood and I've done their test twice now, just
like I've done your test twice. So I have really
good feelings about the depth of their testing. But the

(12:47):
key thing for people to understand about the DNA company
is it's an epigenetic test and it's not like twenty
three and meis, which is of course now defunct, but
were and and DNA company never sells your data. So
let's talk about the you know, the key differences of
all these different DNA tests that are out there. But

(13:11):
how do you differentiate from your perspective?

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, definitely. So the the you know DNA, right is
it tests like you would do for twenty three, I
mean it never changes. You take that test once in
a lifetime exactly, And and but epigenetics is slightly different.
What we're basically measuring is how turned on and turned
off certain genes are. And and unfortunately, these these gene
sort of activity levels are highly correlated with health and disease.

(13:38):
You know, originally these clocks started by predicting just someone's
chronological age, but this data set on epigenetics can now
do a lot more than even just your chronological or
biological age. We can tell your risk of certain diseases.
We can tell you what you're eating in life, we
can tell you what ZIP code you've lived in based
on pollution markers in your DNA. So really, the way

(14:00):
that I like to describe epigenetics as sort of a
log of everything that's going on in your life. It's
sort of all of your behaviors, it's even close psychological relationships.
Your gene expression is constantly adapting to try and give
you the most optimal health, you know, so that if
you encounter some type of illness, you can adapt, or
if you have a metabologicysfunction, you can adapt. And so

(14:22):
there are over twenty nine million epigenetic regions that we
would measure in every cell. We call these sort of CPGs.
That's where these methylation groups are attached, and so we're
sort of measuring the off switch. And so really we
measure millions of different locations and every single site we
get a number of zero to one. The closer it

(14:45):
is to one, the more turned off that gene is.
And the closer it is to zero, the more turned
on that gene is. And that's not necessarily a good
or a bad thing, but we can read those patterns.
We sort of always try and joke and say that
we're creating the Rosetta stone of unders standing that data set.
So what we're trying to do is to use really
artificial intelligence with lots of data like that numbers between

(15:07):
zero and one, and then also outcome data so we
can try and predict the things that we're trying to predict.
So it's a biological age. We might try and predict
that to time until death, So how long do you
have to live to create a biolo o'clock. We might
though do it to do when do people start developing
Alzheimer's disease or do people have Alzheimer's disease? Or how

(15:28):
much weight might you lose if you take a gop one.
So this data set is a really really robust data
set that can do a lot of things. But we're
really just measuring your gene expression, how turned on or
turned off different genes are.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
And in those the term epigenetic really does mean lifestyle.
So it means really that you're not given a death
sentence by your gene what comes out of your DNA test,
Because if your genes, like you're just saying, if your
genes are towards the turnoff side, but it's a negative
gene like the APO four or Alzheim gene, but you're

(16:03):
not you know, it's not actively being inspired, let's say,
in your body, because you're doing a lot of lifestyle
things to prevent that. So I think that's a key
thing for people not to look at their DNA results
as a life and death sentence and then you know,
give up because oh I'm going to get all times
because I have the APO for alile. That's not true.

(16:27):
You may never see an activation of that gene even
though your parents gave it to you.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, exactly, I'm an April week three four, so so
you know that's particularly relevant to me. But but yeah,
I think that you know, we've done what we call
heritability analysis for things like longevity, and we see that
the good majority, probably about seventy percent is still based
on behaviors versus you know, thirty percent that might be
inherited genetically, and so that's still the large majority, which

(16:54):
I hope makes everyone feel a little bit more empowered
to take care of their own health. But that is
the good point is that you know, with the DNA tests,
you generally your DNA won't change across a lifetime. However,
genetics it's changeable, and so it sort of allows us
to take a baseline see where we're at and then
ultimately help improve our health by by you know, giving

(17:16):
interventions and then trying to measure it again to see
which direction we're going.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Okay, so let's talk about telomeres. I noticed that the
telomeres that you did in the first test with me
in twenty twenty three, I didn't see in this test.
Is that a conscious decision that you made not to
include telomere length.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
So we still have telomere length, but to be honest
with you, we don't love it. And the reason is
it's not very predictive of health outcomes. And so a
recent study was done by Ricardo Marioni out of University
of Edinburgh and they really telamere link effects right around
two point eight percent of the phenotypes of aging and

(17:56):
is really really tiny. Even the earliest epigenetic flox explain
over twenty eight percent variants in aging, and the newest
epigenetic clocks are more like sixty percent apigenetic aging process.
And so tilameres are a certain part of aging biology,
but they're not always the most predictive of outcomes. And
that's really what we're using these tests to do, is
to tell us where are we going, what is our

(18:18):
trajectory for health? And so even though we do estimate
tela our link, we don't prioritize it nearly as much
as some of those biological clocks.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Oh okay, I didn't know that, because doctor Lawrence still
requires that as a baseline for the clinical trials for
getting into his clock trials for the peptid bioregulators. That
as you know, he's got about one hundred medical professionals
and some even consumers in his clinical trials. But the

(18:45):
first thing he does is it makes them take your test.
And I can say this from firsthand experience because I
am in his trial. But I think I told you that.
But then the second one is the spectro cell test,
which he made I took twice. But he says he's
not so keen on the results of the spectra cell test.

(19:08):
He's not so sure about the efficacy. So he may
be on the same path as you that maybe that
isn't the most important baseline. But what else would he
substitute if he didn't do your test? And or does
he just need to do your test now because it's
so comprehensive.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, Well, you know, at the end of the day,
there are a million different measurements for aging, right, and
that's because so many different things changes we age. You know,
some people like to just use grip strength right o
reduced as we age, and so ultimately that whenever we're
talking about the testing that we want to use, there's
really only two things that are important. I. You know,

(19:45):
with all the complication that's out there, I always try
and just drill down to two important things. The first
is what is the most predictive because ultimately, again that's
what we're trying to do, is we're trying to use
the test which gives us the most confidence about ar trajectory,
right if we're aging orally we want to change that.
So you need a test that's been validated to be
predictive of outcomes, right, And so generally what that means

(20:08):
is you have to take basically data from biobanks. So
biobanks have taken samples for years. So we work a
lot with Harvard's biobank, which has taken samples for over
fifty years, and so we can actually pull samples from
fifty years ago, do their epigenetics, and then see if
our algorithms are predictive of outcomes. And so you know,

(20:29):
our clock's perform very very well. Here. We actually can
predict death within a five year time period with a
ninety two percent accuracy. So generally all of our algorithms
are published, they're well validated. Some of our algorithms have
been published over now two hundred and fifty different studies
showing all these outcomes with some of the best researchers
in the world at your institutions like Harvard, Yale, Duke,

(20:50):
you know, Stanford, Columbia, and so there's really really good
data to show that these are the most predictive of outcomes,
and that's really ultimately why we're using But the second
thing that we also want to know is, you know,
just getting an idea of where you're at is helpful,
but it's not helpful if you don't know how to
change it. The other part is is the how what

(21:11):
do we know about changing these markers? And that's been
someplace that has been hard to do over the past
few years, but now has grown exponentially. We can now
offer a lot of different recommendations, and we do that
through things like our system's age score, where we don't
just now give you an age, we actually give you
an age of your different organ systems, so we can
tell you the age of your you know, your liver

(21:33):
versus your brain versus your heart gives us the ability
to actually take personalized interventions.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
So when the test that you're going out, do you
actually tell people that when they're going to die within
five years? So? Or is that something too too negative
to put into a test.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, we we don't put it into the test. You know,
the moral implications of that are a little scary, exactly,
but we do show that. So the clock that we
did to do that is when we created with Harvard.
It's called our only Age clock, and it is very
very very predictive of lifespan. And so instead of reporting
on death, we give you just a biological age, So

(22:12):
we tell you how it relates to your chronological age,
and ideally your biological age should be lower than your
chronological age. That's what we want to achieve for.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
So what's the average that you see in the tests?

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, so it depends on what group we're looking at, right.
You know, in our commercial cohort, the people who take
our tests commercially, a lot of them do really well
on aging. And that's because you know, they're they're most
of the people who buyer test are health conscious, right,
already self selected to be very interested. But if we
look at like biobank cohorts. You know, the general population generally,

(22:48):
you know, chronological age is about average, right, chronological and
biological age. So what we really want, though, is for
everyone to be lower, and so we're trying to get
everyone to be as low as possible for as long
as we possible.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
So okay, so on that first category, what would be
average be how much younger uh, the biological age cohort
than the chronological.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, are our commercial cohort, the one that is probably
healthier than any other group out there, is on average
about three years younger ch biologically than chronologically, which doesn't
sound like a lot, but it actually is. It's a
it's a you know, it's a big difference. We're talking
about reductions in relative risk that are significant in terms
of uh, you know, time until death and a lot

(23:31):
of others. And you know, we even have a website
called the Rejuvenation Olympics that we created with Brian Johnson,
which is sort of a competitive leader board for all
the best agers in the world. And so so that
that would give you sort of even the top ten agers,
who's aging the best in the entire world out of
anyone who's taking this.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Oh, that's cool. So what what what that website be?

Speaker 2 (23:53):
So yeah, it's called the Rejuvenation Olympics. I might even
just share my screen really quickly. Yeah, sure, show it
to you. But this is the one we create with Brian.
You know, Brian started the leaderboard but has fell off
a couple times and now it's back on top. So
his we do this do need and Pace, which was
created with Duke. It is your instantaneous pace of aging.

(24:13):
And so really Brian got his as the lowest I've
ever seen to basically point five. So for every one year,
he's only aging half a year in his pace, which
is super impressive. We had a couple other celebrities and
people on this at one point in time. Another very
popular podcaster or YouTuber is sim Land as well. But

(24:35):
there's a lot of people on here that are aging
very very well. And so this is our leader board.
Anyone who takes our tests is able to add their
results here and see if they can make it. We
do require three tests though, to make this leaderboard.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Oh cool, can you shend me as a link to that?

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, certainly I want to put.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
That in the show notes, so yeah, send me that link.
That's really cool for people to shave. Well, well, I
feel good then because I didn't get to do it
really in depth of my result, but it did say
ten years. Yeah, difference between biological So that's that's a
really good result. Then.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Huh oh, that's an incredible result. That's something to be
proud of.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
And I wasn't even that cool about it. I thought,
oh no, because at a four am I did a
test that told me I was twenty years. So I
was a little disappointed. But now after talking to you
this morning, I'm feeling much better about that.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Well, I promised that we would make this into a tutorial.
Oh one other question before we get into that DNA methylation.
A lot of people don't understand what that is. Can
you elaborate?

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah, So, basically, if people are familiar with DNA, they
know we have four base pairs of DNA and one
of those base pairs is called the cytosine, and at
certain parts in our DNA, those cytazines can become methylated.
So we basically just attach a carbon group to them,
and that's what DNA methylation is, sort of a marker

(26:00):
on a cytosine. And again, when that marker is attached. Generally,
that gene is less transcribed into RNA, so it's just
less active, it's less expressed. And so that's what we're
reading actually, is we're looking at your cyitazines in your
DNA and seeing how often or not they are actually
methylated with that carbon group or not. And the more methilated, again,
the less active they are. And so that's really the

(26:22):
raw data that we're reading is we're looking at gene
locations and we're saying, on a scale of you know,
zero to one, what percentage of those citazines are methylated,
and how do.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
You improve that ratio or that that score.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Well, then that's the important thing is that that sometimes
you want that methylation to be very high. Sometimes you
want it to be low. So we're talking about a
tumor suppressor gene, we really want that DNA methylation to
be really low, right, because then you're actively suppressing tumors.
But if we're talking about an oncogene, a gene that
might cause cancer, we might want that to be more methylated.

(26:55):
And so so it's not necessarily that one is good
or bad. It's it's that we want to basically be
able to read the pattern instill optimal health outcome. And
that's really what we're doing is by training these algorithms
to be predictive of things like disease or death, we
know what is bad and we know what is good,
and then we can tell you where you're at on
that spectrum.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
So just personal question to you for a moment, when
you did your chest how did you change your results?
What were some of the lifestyle things that you did
that you can now see have made a difference. Oh.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, we've done a little bit of everything. Actually, So
at this point in time, we've done now over one
hundred and twenty interventional trials, So we've done we've done
trials and everything from stem cells to exosomes to hyperbaric
oxygen to you know, retroviral inhibitors to GLP ones and
weight loss medications. So we've got data on all of these. Personally,
I try a lot as well, on sort of my

(27:47):
own guinea pig, and I think that, you know, we
have different things that work for everyone. I tend to
be a really big fan of the tried and true methods,
and I know that this is not exciting for anyone,
but things like exercise, things like stress production, things like
plant based diets with you know, are very particularly green,
Mediterranean diets or excellent. But we've now even published with

(28:08):
Yale on over fifty one different age interventions and rank
them all together. And so some of the more exotic
things that I really like are things like hyperbaric. Hyperbaric
is one of the biggest signals that we've seen in
healthy populations. I also am a very big fan of
things of like the s g l T two inhibitors
sort of like your canagula flows in or impagala flows

(28:31):
and that make your kidneys permeable to glucose, so you
sort of pee out your glucose. I'm a really big
fan of those as well. So, but we've got now
a lot of data, and that's really the idea is
that we can start to benchmark what are the best
interventions for every single person.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Oh, that's so amazing. It's just getting more and more finite.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, it is, and that makes people can.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Make better choices, because you know, it is daunting for
a patient to look at these results and say, well,
where to start and how do you know, if I'm
already living a very healthy lifestyle, how do I get
to that more finite level that's going to make the
difference in these results. So this is really important Ryan,

(29:12):
what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Oh, and that's sort of the vision is that we
think that from an aging perspective, we can start to
look at all of these aging interventions with the same
measuring stick, right, and then then be able to say, again,
the tool that's the most predictive of outcomes is the
most reversed by different diet types or different different interventions.
And so that's really the idea is at the end
of the day, that's really what we want to do

(29:35):
is give people actionable information to reverse or slow their
aging process, which is the biggest respector for every disease.
And so it's a really really science driven endeavor. You know,
we're doing a lot of publications, a lot of collaborations,
but ultimately we want to take the guesswork out of it.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
And are you doing any clinical trials like Harvard ged
and you can show I know you're doing joint bens
with them, but are you as true diagnostics are you
taking people in like myself if I wanted to join
a trial? Oh?

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Absolutely, we do this all the time. We've done you know,
studies on a variety of different things right now. Actually,
we're submitting we just submitted a grant. Were selected as
one of the final three applications to get an actual
FDA approved test for aging by the government, and so
we're building an interventional trial of over twelve hundred people

(30:28):
that should go in about a year and hopefully we'll
have the first ever FDA approved test for aging.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Can you put me on that list?

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah, certainly. It's gonna be a fun one and we
feel very very good about it.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
I would love to do that. Yeah, I think, you know,
being right in the heart of the science when you're
looking at all these lifestyle issues. I mean, for example,
people like you have on the Brian Johnson website, there
are people who are already devoted to improving their health.
Maybe not as extreme as Brian Johnson with two million

(31:02):
dollars budget a year and eating his last meal at
eleven am. I mean, that's you know, for most people,
that's pretty outrageous and extreme. However, the normal, you know,
average person that is still showing up on that list
is already committed to having a healthy lifestyle. Yet they

(31:23):
could still get tests like I did today that show
a lot of areas of improvement. And then you look
at the tests and you say, but I'm already doing that.
I'm already taking D two and K three, I'm already
doing vitamin B complex, and yet the test comes out
with some scores that are questionable. So then the question
for the consumer or the patient is what do I do?

(31:45):
How do I do the next step to improve what
I am already thinking I'm doing that should have produced
a better result. So what do you say to those people?

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, you know, so I think maybe now a good
time to even go into what you get. Maybe, yeah,
if you actually see some of our results, because.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, I want that was my That was going to
be the next segue, but I just thought it would
be good for people to understand that again, like the
genetics testing, don't don't look at this as a death sentence.
And just because your result is lower, it doesn't mean
that that you can't there's still not room for improvement
even though you're already doing Like I take a thousand

(32:26):
milligrams of D three and then I take whatever four hundred,
five hundred K two, and they're in a combination of
I think it's thorn or pure encapsulation so they're a
good company. And yet still you know, the test result
may have come out a bit lower than what I
would have expected, given that I'm already supplementing. So those
kinds of things and what I want you to cover

(32:47):
when you go over these results that just keep in
mind people don't want to get discouraged.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yeah, certainly, certainly, And and you know they're they're for
our tests. There are really only two tests that we do.
The first test is are a bio logical age tester,
which we'll be talking a lot about today. So this
is the first one to go over because again, you know,
biological age is the biggest risk for every chronic disease,
and so we say there's one thing that you want
to prioritize. It's your biggest risk factor, right hey, And

(33:14):
so ultimately this this you know, we have three big
aging algorithms that we use here on this one this
is our only age. Again, we tell you where your
chronological ages versus calendar age. We tell you where you're
at within our population, and we can even track those
results over time.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Okay, okay, let me let me let you take over
the podcast. This is your your opportunity now to have
people understand exactly what they're going to get in this
amazing test, which is not something that most people are
used to. You know, they go and do a blood
work test maybe once a year, and you know, maybe

(33:51):
some specialty test, but never ever is there a test
that that I know of that is this comprehensive that
will tell you so much. So let me let it
be your game right now to tell everybody what this
is all about.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
So go ahead, thanks of y'all, try and make it
as quick as possible just so everyone can get an
overview and then we can talk about how you use
it right and the fun part. But yeah, this only
age is one of our algorithms. Again, we can even
tell you how your age is increasing your risk of
every other disease because again we have these outcomes. We've
actually measured this in people who have gone on thirty
years or forty years, and we actually know what their

(34:26):
risk of developing these diseases were, And then we can
actually even tell you what's high or low. So we
can actually tell you, you know, what's driving your aging process.
So is it glucose, maybe your insulin resistance, or is
it your lipids, or is it inflammation we can actually
start to point out to what's out of range here
and then even make some specific recommendations. So that's what
we call our own gauge we develop with Harvard. We

(34:47):
also have our Symphony Age. This is one we develop
with the researchers at Yale that actually gives you the
age of each organ system, so your lung versus metabolic
versus muscular, skeletal, and again this helps us give more
precise recommendations. You know, someone who's a smoker, for instance,
might have really high inflammation where they might have really
high lung age, but someone who's maybe overweight might have
metabolic aging, and so we can actually now start to

(35:10):
differentiate for individual system recommendations. And so this was a
big step forward and we just had this now we've
only had it for about a year on the platform.
And then you know, we also have probably everyone's favorite,
which is the duned and pace and so that's that
rate of aging we had on the Rejuvenation Olympics website
that tells you how fast you're aging right at this moment.
The reason that people like this one the most is

(35:31):
because it's one of the most well validated, but it's
also the most correlated to health span related metrics. So
a lot of people think, you know, I don't want
to live, you know, till I'm one hundred and twenty
and just have a really poor quality of life. And
so if you really want to maximize things like your
IQ and mental processing speeds, even your facial aging, it's
really tied to this metric. And so for people they

(35:52):
really like this, it's also more responsive to change. And
so again we want this to be as low as possible.
Well again, Brian's is the lowest we've ever seen in
a point five, but you know, as long as you're
below one, that's really what we want to see there.
And so those are some of the biggest aging metrics,
but we do a lot of other things on this
report too. We can tell you all about your immune subsets,
you know, to see if you have any immune deficiencies.

(36:14):
We do tell you your telomere length here as well,
and we can even do things like telling you how
much you smoke or drink across a lifetime based on
these markers. And so so that's really what our true
age report looks like, and it's really meant to quantify
that aging process. And and again There are a lot
of different age tests out there, but these.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
Biological clocks are all validated, they're all published, They've been
compared to interventional trials, so you know what changes them,
and they provide a lot of really science based sort
of feedback for you on the aging process.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
I apologize I didn't see the killing mirror length and
myke kesh, so I did say that I didn't see
it this time, but I guess it is there, so
I'll go back and look at that for the one.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
And yeah, but you know, the next thing I want
to introduce is actually something a little bit different. It's
our other report. We actually call our true Health Report.
You don't mind, I'd love to explain this a little
bit more because this is one of the biggest surprises
that we had at our company. You know, whenever we
wanted to create the omic age, we noticed one big thing,
which is if we wanted to create the best aging

(37:18):
clock available, we really needed the most data available and
so we really wanted to measure everything we could possibly
measure in this cohort, and so in order to do that,
we have this classification system we call the multi home
and it really starts with genomics right, what is that
DNA sequence. Then it goes to epigenomics and that is
again what DNA's expressed, what's turned on and turned off.

(37:40):
That then creates RNA, which is transcriptomics. That RNA then
goes to the ribosomes to create peptides and create proteins.
That's what we call proteomics. That really creates the infrastructure
of the body and then creates metabolites. And so we're
talking about hormones, we're talking about neurotransmitters, we're talking about
all of the different chemical exposures you might have your environment,

(38:00):
like pfoss chemicals or even microplastics, and then ultimately you
have the outcome what ended up happening to the person.
And so we took all of this data that we
possibly could and measure this in our Harvard cohort. The
problem is it's really expensive to measure all of these
different things and so and you also need plasma, you
need phlebotomy, and so we basically asked the question, can

(38:22):
we just with methylation predict all of these other values?
So can we predict your hormone levels? Can we predict
your neurotransmitters and cortisol? Can we predict your clinical function
measurements like your VO two max or your HbA one C,
and the answer was yes, we actually could. We can
actually do this with seventeen hundred different bio markers just
from DNA methylation. And one of the coolest things about

(38:45):
this is that they actually tend to be more predictive
of outcomes than even your classical biomarkers. And so this
is when we created this report we're calling True Health,
and we actually think that in the next few years
this will replace all of your clinic blood testing. There's
reason you'll need to go to a lab core request
to get your bloods drawn because we can actually report

(39:06):
on all of these different things that you would see here.
And so you know, in terms of categories, we do
a lot. We do all of your vitamins, so all
of your B vitamins, your ad E K vitamins. We
would do all of your amino acids like your you know,
taurine or or gathionine, which we know is a great
longevity specific amino acid. You know. In addition to that,

(39:27):
we can do all of your antioxidants like your carotenoids.
We can do your fats and cellular membranes like your
Omega three ratios, your Mega six ratios. We can even
tell you about, you know, your NAD bio markers, your
lipid particle sizes. You know, we can get so much
information now from just a single drop of blood and
running all of these different algorithms on it, and again

(39:49):
they are more predictive sixty two percent of the time.
They're more predictive of the classical bio markers. So for instance,
you know, if we're trying to put a cardivascuar disease,
a lot of people look at blood pressure, but our
prediction of blood pressure through epigenetics is actually better than
even the measured blood pressure that you get in clinic
in terms of predicting cardiovascu disease. Yeah. So one of

(40:10):
the reasons we think that this is the case is
I always like to use a Steve Horbath quote. Which
is another potential benefit of using DNA methylation based bio
markers is they represent a longer average concentration. So the
best similar example is HbA, W and C and fast
and glucose. Right, our fast and glucose can vary all
throughout the day, and if we get it at a

(40:30):
single point in time, it might not be indicative of
our overall health. Right, we might have just had a
you know, a big glucose meal, right, And ours is
super high doesn't mean we have diabetes. It just means
that our glucose is high at that moment. HbA, W
and C is a three month running average of our
glucose levels, and so it gives us a much better
idea of what our overall glucose is. And so if

(40:51):
the same is true with these DNA methylation bio markers,
is that we're getting a longer average and therefore it's
more predictive of outcomes than even just a single point
in time measure. And so yeah, again we published with
you know a lot of really good data here I
can show, but we publish with Harvard that again sixty
two percent of the time our bio markers are better

(41:12):
than the classical measures. But again, we don't have to
get a whole blood. We don't have to, so we
don't have to go to for bottomus. We don't have
We get over seventeen hundred of these bio markers from
a single drop of blood, and so the scale and
inaccuracy and predictability of these things is sort of incredible,
and that goes into this report where we actually tell
you again where you're at, what your what your if

(41:33):
your HDL particle size is high, if it's low, and
then we try and give you recommendations on how to
improve that. Some of the things we can do here
are pretty incredible. You know. We can tell you even
what you're eating based on these different metabolites and then
even suggests ways to improve that. I always so I'll
show you maybe one more example if you don't mind,
one of my favorites, which is that we can actually,

(41:56):
you know, again look at what you're eating based on
the metabolites and your blood. So you know, we did
this by taking self reported food behaviors and linking them
to metabolites, and then we can do a network analysis
where we can actually tell you what metabolites are linked
to what foods, and so we can actually tell you
what you're eating now based on this testing, and then
we can actually apply it. So this is our only

(42:16):
gauge algorithm. The things on here that you see on
the left are the foods which are at best for
this aging versus the foods on the right which are
worse and so we see things like fish, you know,
eggs and mushrooms being really good for the aging process,
and on those side we see things like sweet and
foods and beverages, cereals and processed foods being really bad,
which again is pretty intuitive, but we can actually read

(42:37):
this all through your DNA methylation profiles, and so it's
really incredible the amount of information we can get from this.
There are multiple case use examples, but again, just from
a single drop of blood, we can tell you all
of this information.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Oh so, Ryan, was all that in the chest that
you set me today?

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Not yet. So the food and diet things will be
on our future tests. And again we're even adding the
ability to predict disease, so we'll be able to tell
you your five and ten year risk for things like
Alzheimer's or Cardivasker disease or diabetes. Right now, it's not commercialized.
It needs a little bit more research and development before
we roll it out.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
And what about hormones. I don't see like I know
that you're going to be focusing on hormones at some point.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, you know, hormones are obviously super important as we
talk about aging. Unfortunately, hormones tend to be one of
our big weaknesses at the moment. You know, people who
take exogenous hormones uh sometimes mess up our readings. And
so right now, hormones are not on our list of things.
We can predict some hormones like thybroid, some like cortisol
and cortizone, but we can't do sex hormones right now,

(43:43):
like disaster and estro dial.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I saw that. I was disappointed, but I say, hey,
they've done so much else. But I did you know
it was a question. It is a question because the
hormones are the super highway of your of your body,
of your health. So but you do you do folks
us on mitochondrial function. And I noticed though that you're

(44:05):
kind of dodged the issue of met forman and some
of these that you talked about earlier that you did
at Taylor made is there is there a reason for
that if you're not giving recommendations for the pharmaceutical side
for aging for anti aging.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, you know, so we we're building those data sets
right now. You know, a lot of people like to
recommend met form and for aging. We're not as certain,
you know, the data that we've seen doesn't look as
overall compelling. I think, you know, we've done actually met
form in an HIV population and it was phenomenal. We
had anti aging reductions across the board. But in normal

(44:44):
individuals who are who don't have any blood sugar related issues,
we don't see the biggest change with met format. Even
with the GLP ones. Uh you know, if you're already
pretty healthy and you don't have metabolic issues, we don't
see a big change with the GLP ones. But if
you are metabal luckily unhealthy, we see massive aging reductions
in the GLP ones. And so you know, we've booked

(45:05):
at everything from rapamyasin to uh you know, med foreman
to we just publish a study on statins even and
so we're again we're getting all of this data, but
right now we're hesitant to recommend, you know, drugs for
aging that have been improved in other areas.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
And what about the peptide? So you know, I noticed
in the test that I you know, this morning just
reviewing it, and you've made some recommendations of supplements to take,
But I don't see anything with the area that you're
the most familiar with, which is peptide. So is there
a deliberate reason for that.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, it's all based on data. So we will not
we will not recommend anything that doesn't have a clear
i would say data publication relationship. And unfortunately with the peptides,
you know, I'm a huge fan of the peptides. I
couldn't say enough positive things about them, but unfortunately they
don't have very much studies or data. And a lot
of that is because these things are oftentimes their patents

(46:01):
have expired, so there's no reason for people to invest
in this research. And that's really sad. You know, I've
seen you know, most people know even products like you
know CJC or ipamorland Is, these growth fromone products. But
you know, impen moreland Is has been bought by you know,
glax of Smith Klein and and really left and abandoned
right on a development pipeline, and so so unfortunately there's

(46:24):
not a lot of economic incentive to have these things studied,
and so so unfortunately at the moment, there's not a
lot of data and therefore we don't make those recommendations
without very clear data.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yeah, so this is what's happening then, just similar to
what happened with Apple and Google and the others where
they would acquire their competitors and then just put them
out of business. Basically, is that is that really what's
happening now with more from Marellen and soci Smith Clin
owns them now.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, so so you know, they're they're all owned by
a variety of pharmaceuticals. You know, s S thirty one
is owned by Stealth Biopharma. You've got you know, the
imus and alpha or zaxin that's owned by Cyclone Therapeutics. Again,
and they've really all stopped their development and spending. And
so even though they're great products, they you know, it

(47:11):
takes two point three billion dollars to go to the
FDA and get an approval of a drug. That's a
lot of money and very very very few companies throughout
the world would have that amount of money. And so
just because I think there's a different threshold, But unfortunately
we don't have data for those things. You know, we're
always trying to get some of that data from our
commercial cohort people who are already using them. We can

(47:34):
do cross sectional analysis, but we can't do a pacebal
control trial because you know, it's really not sponsored or
approved in the typical formats.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Is this a shame for the chemi glue tides.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Sema glue tide is different. You know that that is
a you know, owned by nober Nordisk. It goes off
patent in twenty twenty seven. And we've actually published two
studies on the seama glue tide, one in a healthy
population and then one in an HIV population. But we
have even created an aborigeneity predicture of weight loss response,
so we can actually tell you if you would be
a good candidate to lose subcutaneous tissue with that different intervention.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Is that a test that you have to take separately
to get that info or is that not it's not
available yet.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
It's not available yet. We haven't commercialized it, but we
have published on it.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Okay, And you're saying that there is going to be
a test that you can take to tell you whether
a semi glue tide is going to be beneficial for
you or not.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah. Even beyond that, we'll be able to tell you
if you're going to lose muscle or visceral atipus tissue
or subcutaneous and we'll tell you if you have side
effects like GI side effects or nausea. So so it'll
be almost like a companion diagnostic to be able to
use to recommend which GLP one you might want to
be on.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Wow, that's that's just absolutely amazing, given how widespread and
how abused this is, this semi gluetide. The GLP ones
have become because people have just you know, one, there's
so much obesity in this country, that and diabetes that
people just want to find anything that will make a change,
and sometimes they don't do the research. The doctor isn't

(49:10):
as thorough, which just gives them a new prescription and say,
you know, come back when you've lost your first ten pounds,
and forgetting about the fact that scycopenia is one of
the biggest side effects. Not only that, but there are
many people reporting other serious side effects like you know,
gastro intestinal and nausea and all that. So this is

(49:31):
going to be amazing. I mean, so when what's the timeline?

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, so, so you know, I think probably just in
six months or so we'll be able to have it
and to be honest, we might be able at it
for free on all of our reports.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Oh my goodness, Oh lord.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Yeah, what is the cost?

Speaker 1 (49:48):
What is the cost of the test as it is today?

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Yeah, so, so generally I think we do each of
our reports for around four ninety nine direct for the consumer. However,
I think, you know, we always try and give some
disc on that, and I think that if anyone's watching this,
they can use the coach Ageless twenty for twenty percent
off that it would.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Be five hundred let's say for each test, so one
thousand dollars, so they could get it for eight hundred.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Yeah. Well, and actually the combo is, will you offer
for a ninety nine again, if you get out twenty
percent off, that it'll be even cheaper.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
So it'll be about seven hundred. Yeah. Wow, everybody listening,
I hope and watching today, this is like amazing. It'll
be one of the best seven hundred dollars you've ever
spent for managing your health. I can say that with
all and I'm not even an affiliate with you or
you know, there's no financial considerations here. I say this

(50:40):
only because I'm a believer and because I want I
want to help people, and really I just I'm going
to send us test to my doctor you know who
my doctor is, and say why am I taking my
lab Core tests in August my annual blood work. When
you've got this test, do I really even need to go?

(51:03):
Is there anything missing on this test? It isn't on
the normal, the typical blood work.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
You know, outside of hormones. Not really, you know, that
is at the end of the day, the one thing
we're trying to add to make it a comprehensive test.
And again even when we compare them head to head,
we know that these are actually better than even your
classical blood work.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Have you had any repercussions from lab Core A quest
about the fact.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
That, Yeah, not yet. We just published the pre print
in December, and so this is still very very new.
But we're really excited to, you know, to get this
more widely used and validated. I think that in the
next three months we should have six or seven validation
studies coming out showing just how good and predictive these are.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
So if people just go and do their hormone test,
that would be all they would need. Just because I
last time I did my blood work, they took twenty
vials of blood and she does really comprehensive lab work.
So uh well, I guess we'll do it this year
just to compare the lab results with your results to

(52:05):
see where there's a discrepancy that might be an interesting
Well do you think there will be discrepancies?

Speaker 2 (52:12):
You know, uh, well probably, but but you know, again,
the only thing that's that really matters again is how
predictive it is of outcomes.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
And so again, if you were going to compare your
your glucose en ra HbA one C, they wouldn't be
highly correlated because one is a point in time, the
other one's an average. Ours is that average? Right? And
so there might be some discrepancies. But again that's why
we we publish, That's why we have this data to
show that that our markers are effective and validated, and.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Just to everybody to know, all you have to do
is get a prick of your blood on your finger
and they put it on a you put it on
a card and you fill in the little circle of
the card. Do you have a picture of that anywhere?

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Unfortunately I don't have one readily available, but I have it.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
In my I have it in my photo gallery because
I took a pic when I was at the lab
and she, yeah, there it is, you have it right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
This is just you know, a small fingerstick circle right there, which.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Is it's unbelievable. I mean, compare that to twenty vials
of blood. How you feel afterwards? You know, well, Ryan,
how did people reach you to get the test? That?
That's really important?

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, so true Diagnostic dot com is the best place,
you know, you can order the test directly. You know,
we do oftentimes recommend taking it to your provider to
help analyze and interpret. And you need help with the
recommendation of provider, feel free to reach out to us
and we're happy to do it. You can also find
me on LinkedIn and you know, really the only place
that I'm active, but feel free to reach out if
anyone has any questions or needs to be connected to

(53:45):
a provider.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
And not only that, but Ryan has very graciously done
a number of podcasts. I was watching you this morning
on Sam to Hatta and Joy you know doctor Joy Kong.
I think a cong is her name anyway, those are
the too that I just came up. But if you
google your name under our YouTube, you you're very generous

(54:06):
with your time and really helping people to understand more
about the not only the science, but the you know,
just the efficacy of these results that can save people
so much time.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
So a huge believer in preventative help, and I think
this is really true preventative help.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Yeah. So, well, before we close, Ryan, what's next, you know,
other than what you've already talked about. I know all
these incredible advances that you're making, but what else do
you have in mind for two diagnostics?

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Well, I'll tell you at the end of the day.
My vision is to have one diagnostic you do twice
per year that can report on your risk of every disease,
report on your risk of lifestyle things that might be
a problem. And I think ultimately we're going to get there.
One of the ways we're getting there is creating the
biggest combination of multiomic biological data, and ultimately we're going
to start to get a lot of FDA approved tests

(54:59):
across a lot of So I really do think that
with one drop of blood, you know, we can start
to do some really great, low cost, highly accessible healthcare.
That's the indivision how we go there. We'll start with
aging and then expand to other disease.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
And then you were saying in the letter that I
got this morning, that could do it three do it
every three months. So you're saying now twice a year,
but that's a goal, but you're for now is it
still four times a year?

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah? You know, you can take it at really whatever
interval you'd like. We've even seen changes as little as
three weeks with things like our hyperbaric studies. You know,
I think that my goal is to get insurance reimbursed
twice a year by Medicaid, medicare as well as any insurance.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
And is it now available for insurance not?

Speaker 2 (55:47):
And we're working on that right now. Unfortunately, the FDA
doesn't have a recognized aging as a disease, but that's
really what we're going to change.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
No, I had Eric Burdon from the Buck Institute, the CEO,
and you know, we got into that discussion about is
anything the disease and or you know, how do you
define aging? And so he said no, his contemporary say,
it's not a disease. I think he's coming more from
that allopathic model for that, even though the Buck Institute
is becoming much more of a functional medicine. But anyway,

(56:18):
he said, no, it is not a disease. So what
is it then? If it isn't a disease?

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah, this progressive deterioration. You know it it goes back
to the definition of a disease. But I think ultimately
it doesn't matter how we call it a disease or not.
If the if the FDA can prioritize the usefulness of
a diagnostic, that's all we care about it. And they
are in that grain I mentioned they're applying for. It's
called something a little bit different. It's not called aging,
it's called intrinsic capacity, but it's the same principle.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Well, hopefully with Robert F. Kennedy and the change of
the direction, that you're going to have a lot more
support for what you're doing, don't you think.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
I hope, So, you know, fingers crossed the You know,
unfortunately a lot of our research laborators are starting to
lose funding in this environment, which is not something I
love to see. But I'm hoping the nih can still
get to keep their funding, and it's so important for
everything that we do.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
No. I know that Eric was saying the exact same thing,
that about fifty percent of their funding is NURH and
that's being curtailed. So yeah, we've got to find a
balance because I mean, obviously RFK recognizes that being in
the eightieth percentile of the you know, the nations in

(57:31):
the world, and particularly the progressive nations like the United States,
it should be we should be number one for the
amount that we spend in healthcare. And look at our
track record, it's it's really quite deplorable.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
It is we need improvements and again, but if this
systematic framework is a way to do it, so I'm
hoping that we'll see some change. But ultimately, if there's
one takeaway for anyone listening, it's it's treat aging as
something you can change and modify.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
The epigenetics side, Ryan, I have to try before we close.
You are one of my big heroes. And you know,
as I got into this world, I mean I've been
passionate about functional medicine for many, many years, but when
I really put my two feet in with six years
ago with the podcast and now I write an article

(58:19):
for Top Doctor magazine monthly, and so this is you know,
why are you my hero? Well, because I see someone
really young who you know, just took a risk and truly,
I mean this was a risk. You left medical school,
you gave up the traditional financial model, and you took

(58:41):
this risk and look where we are today for all
of your work, and yet you're so young, so we
have so much more to anticipate with all your incredible
energy and your wonderful spirit and positive attitude. So thank
you so much for doing all you can for all
of us.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Likewise, Michelle, you know, I get my head buried in
these papers and books, and sometimes it's hard to explain
all the work we're doing in the vision that we have,
and so I thank you for having me on and
letting me tell the story.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Well, you're you're you know you've done this for many
other podcasts, but I take great honor that you have
been on ours twice. So all right, Ryan, Well you
have a wonderful fourth of July, and thank you again,
and I'll see you probably in December at a four
a M.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Let's do it. Thank you so much, Michelle,