Hacking Life Extension

Step into the extraordinary as Marek Piotrowski, once at the helm of corporate giants, now charts a course for uncharted territories of health and longevity. Alongside his son, Marek has traversed the globe, from the blue zones of Okinawa to cutting-edge labs in Shanghai, to unravel the secrets that could add years to your life and life to your years. In today's episode, we unpack their year-long journey, documented in a riveting film, where you'll learn how practical, everyday habits can significantly impact your longevity. Merrick's personal transformation, from a corporate leader to a longevity advocate, is not just inspiring—it offers a blueprint for anyone seeking to balance a fulfilling life with the pursuit of extended healthspan.

Embark with us as we continue to advocate for longevity through our social media platforms, inviting you to join the conversation and enrich our collective journey with your insights. Whether it's exploring the significance of the microbiome or planning meetups in locales famed for their health practices, we're just scratching the surface of what it means to live longer, healthier lives. So if you're ready to be a part of a community that's not only fascinated by longevity but also actively shaping its future, tune in, and let's explore this path together.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back to the Health Longevity Secret Show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin. This episode is about the fascinating story of a father and son's year-long global journey to unearth the best longevity solutions, engaging with industry luminaries and creating a movie to share their remarkable breakthroughs and ready-to-apply protocols ready-to-apply protocols, and today we're going to learn what secrets they've uncovered. Our guest, merrick Petrovsky, is a former CEO of not only a successful ad agency, but also a CMO in a robotics company. Now he has seamlessly transitioned his expertise from the business world to the realm of longevity. He's dedicating his life to demystifying breakthroughs in the field of longevity, offering practical advice and protocols to empower individuals to embrace longer, healthier and more active lives. And now please enjoy this conversation with Merrick Petrovsky. One of the things they've done is put all their findings together in a movie, and we'll take a look at the trailer for the movie right after the break and before we begin the conversation with them. All right, hey, merrick, welcome to the program.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Hi, Rob. It's great to see you, and I want to learn something from you too. It's not just me talking, OK.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Well, I'm so excited to get right into this. Let me ask a question to begin with. If there's one thing on your travels that you've learned with all these longevity experts, if I had to do one single thing today that I could start doing today to improve my longevity, what would that be that you'd recommend?

Speaker 2: 1:58

All right, I will go a little bit around, ok, if I may. So of course my top thing that I'm interested in is radical life extension, because for me just prolonging my life by five, 20 years is not enough. Like, I want to do so many things in my life. You know, I want to be a rock star, I want to be an astronaut, a doctor, a fireman, like name it. So for me I want a lot and I just love life.

Speaker 2: 2:29

But then, turning to your thing, we are just now in Japan and of course we also came here to visit Okinawa, which is known as a blue zone. So quite a lot of centenarians there. And for me the most striking thing was just realizing that. You know it's so easy to get five, 10, 20 years more just by doing simple stuff, and we all know it. Just, you know nutrition and not overeating this 80% full, and then you know taking care of our mindset and then sleep, and then just you know, adjusting lifestyle and living very social with people, and so on and so on. And you know it's just so easy and still most of us don't do it.

Speaker 2: 3:23

I meet with my friends. You know, actually some friends of mine came to Japan here, and you know most of them are overweight, they don't move a lot and I just want to shake them and tell them man, just wake up, woman, just wake up. Just please at least take care of yourself, take care of your vessel, so that you can live longer and we can be friends longer. And people just choose convenience over health and over longevity and that needs a lot of education and hence my movie. Of course we will not be just talking about them. You know the basic longevity on the movie we'll be talking about all the things in longevity. But if I can just shake up people and just tell them just to the basic basics, at least I would be happy already.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Well, I really want to get into it now and talk about the movie and talk about, kind of what motivated you to do all this. You know you were CEO and marketing, as we've mentioned before, and then CMO and robotics company. How did that happen? And then, what changed this journey with you and your son? So tell us a little about how you came to be involved in this.

Speaker 2: 4:40

OK, so I was always in marketing, so creating brands, you know, creating my own agencies. I was running agencies over 60, 80 people and working for top brands of the world like Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, BK and all the unhealthy stuff including alcohol. So it was not a very good mission, as I recall now. And then 80 years ago, I felt like I have to change something, you know, just to do something else in my life, and I spent a lot of time in California, when you are based, and in San Francisco I went to an amazing conference called Extreme Future Technologies and Forecasting and they were talking about, you know, technologies that are going to change the world for better within the next 10, 20, 30 years, and for me, that was like eye-opening. You know, like most of people think what's going to be in five years, Some people will live in the past and think what was 10 years ago. And just talking about the things that are going to happen in 30 years and change the world for better, they were like, wow, I want to be a part of that. And there, of course, they were talking about crazy stuff back then for me, like asteroid mining or solar plants on the orbit, but they were also talking a lot about cryonics and longevity, and that just sparked my attention and I just came back from there and said, OK, I want to change the world for better, Like, I want to do something meaningful, and at first I will take care of longevity.

Speaker 2: 6:17

So I make sure I'm going to live at least 200 years and of course my hunger is growing and then I can switch to space exploration you know when? I will be already sure I'm going to live long enough to get to another galaxy and not just to Mars. So so that was the beginning of my journey with with longevity. But then it took me some time. You know, I had to earn money and I went to robotics also to have my friend to make the company global. I succeeded and in March I just told him hey, it's time, Like now I can just be at the company one or two days a week just to help it grow, but the rest of it I dedicate to longevity. And now I just want to make longevity industry grow, Because when it grows there is more research, more breakthroughs and we're going to profit from all that. So you know, let's do it first and maybe robotics in 100 years We'll see.

Speaker 1: 7:23

And tell me how your son Alex, became involved with you in this project. Such a powerful story as a father and son team embarking on this journey.

Speaker 2: 7:36

Yeah, I must confess that so far, for me, the biggest highlight is us having this quest together, because we are learning so much from each other and, you know, just experiencing living 24 hours a day. It's not easy. We have the our ups and downs, but we're just getting more and more into flow with each other. So this is priceless and I wish that every parent could have this chance with their kids, because this is just mind-blowing. Anyway, coming back to your question, you know, at first I knew my son is finishing his high school, so I Told him hey, maybe let's do a gap here so that we can travel around the world and you can get to know my friends around the world and Getting inspired, what you want to do next in your life. And he said, yeah, let's, let's do it. You know his mother wasn't so happy about that, but somehow we convinced her and then I told him okay, and during this trip we're going to do this longevity quest, because this is something that is, you know, very important for my mission and for my purpose in this world. And he said, okay, no problem, let's do it. And then he went for holidays with his mom before our quest and he came back and three weeks before we embarked on the trip, I told him I like doing our, our quest. We're going to make a documentary so we can inspire more people about longevity and show them this Helicopter view on all the things that are available so they can choose from that.

Speaker 2: 9:18

And At first he said, no, dad, like I didn't sign up for that. Like, this is your thing, your vision, I can shoot some movies for, for the socials, but a documentary like no way. Like you are longevity advocate, not me. And Then I started asking him questions Alex, so do you take care of your body? Yes, I do. Do you take care of your Nutrition? Yes, I do. So I say, hey, you are a biohacker, am I? And I say, yeah, you are biohacker. So if you start, you know, teaching your friends about it and I share the message you becoming a longevity advocate too. And he said, hmm, you know.

Speaker 2: 10:01

And that got him thinking and getting there, but only when we arrived at longevity summit, dublin at the beginning of our trip and we were at this amazing conference and it was not me just. It was not just me Interviewing this top scientists from all over the world, but it was also him, like 20% of the time. I was just giving him a seat and telling these amazing scientists hey, now my 17 year old son is going to ask you some questions and they were okay. Okay, like you know, let's see what, what, what he's got there and it was so amazing to see him interviewing these beautiful people and After a couple of interviews, he was like that.

Speaker 2: 10:50

You know, I'm starting to feel that and I'm starting to feel how you know, longevity is important, not just for you and for people 40 plus or 30 plus. It's also for for us, like we, the young generation. We already have to start thinking about longevity. So Every week of our journey is learning more and more. He's changing his habits, he's changing his diet and, of course, we were all the time exercising a lot, but he's getting there and I think that he might be a much bigger longevity advocate at the end than me. So that's the story.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Well, before we get into details, maybe you could outline just. This was an international tour You're starting in Dublin. This, this longevity quest, this Creation of the beyond time movie that's coming out, what other, what other places did you hit, like? What were sort of the highlights of the locations?

Speaker 2: 11:55

so, as you said, we started in Ireland, in Dublin, and that was amazing because there were really top scientists from all over the world so we could get inspired from them. But we also made appointments with them so that we can meet them on our trip and get more into the world. So, for instance, we loved talking to Brian Kennedy, who is, you might say, one of the founding fathers of of longevity in the world, and Then he invited us to Singapore. So we came to Singapore to visit him at his lab, at his work, and that was completely different environment so we could talk more. But we also could get to know his professors, who were excited about talking with us and sharing her, sharing their research. And so we also did with other people, like at the conference.

Speaker 2: 12:52

We we got to know Michael Lim, who is working on stem cells, just boosting the stem cells that we have in our bodies so that they can be more active. And he also asked us Okay, come and visit me in Malaysia and I can do this treatment on you so you can really Feel how it's changing your health and how it's impacting your longevity. So that was an amazing start In Ireland, who just gave us some hints on where to go next, but Directly after Ireland we went to Bali, also because my son was pretty tired after working so hard at the conference in in Ireland and I wanted him to rest but also start living this longevity Lifestyle. And, of course, bali is an amazing place to be and there we also could learn from local healers, yoga masters, coaches, as I call them Everyday biohackers, because it's not just scientists that you know pave the way to longevity, but also this everyday biohackers who teach us this simple stuff that we can introduce into our lives.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Wow, that's such a fascinating experience to go around in all those different places. You mentioned before that your son, throughout the journey, found himself changing different things in his lifestyle. What did he change as far as his diet or his lifestyle?

Speaker 2: 14:44

He started eating much less carbs, because having a croissant and au hazel on the journey at the beginning was quite intense. He started doing fasting after 6pm, so this is a big change. At the beginning he stopped treating his body as a trash bin. He was just taking care of what he was eating and when he was eating. So that's a good start. The other things that are part of longevity, like a good sleep, I already taught him a year ago. Youngsters usually tend to sleep not so well. They just study a lot and wake up in the morning and go to school. But I told him, 7-8 hours is perfect for you, so he's really taking care of that, so that it's quiet and dark. So some of the habits he already had in his life.

Speaker 1: 15:49

It's so interesting that I'm sure you experienced this in your longevity travels. There are so many different approaches to longevity, whether it's gene therapy or exosomes, supplements, drug interventions and other lifestyle things. But with all the different approaches there appears to be some common themes that run through them. Like you said, the things like eating fewer carbohydrates Most people agree that's good for longevity or the fasting or the sleep. There seems to be growing consensus about certain things there and it's nice for all of us who are trying to adopt these things. At least there's some beginning consensus there.

Speaker 1: 16:43

I'm curious in talking and being able to, it's great that you were able to visit the labs of like Brian Kennedy and all these experts who were actually doing the work and everything, and kind of look under the hood and look in the back of what's going on. I wonder what kinds of things surprised you and changed your thoughts about longevity from the way you might have approached longevity and you sort of have certain expectations. I'm going to learn this, but what things kind of completely shocked you or completely upended your views of longevity that were unexpected on this tour, that you didn't see coming?

Speaker 2: 17:27

Okay. So the most unexpected thing was I thought that I know quite a lot about longevity and I even created a longevity map before we started the quest so that we can start filling in the blanks as we travel. I can show you I don't know if it's visible, but it's a longevity map when there is longevity basics and then longevity upgrades and radical life extension, and actually I can share this map with anyone who wants that. It's just enough to DM me on Instagram longevity advocate just DM map and you will get this map straight away. But anyway, I created the map and I thought that you know it's.

Speaker 2: 18:13

I know a lot, but when we started traveling and talking to all these amazing people, I just realized I've got so much to learn, you know so. There are so many new therapies coming in, so many interventions, so many breakthroughs, that I just realized, okay, one year of traveling is quite a lot for many people, but on the other hand, to get to the bottom of everything, I think you know traveling for 10 years would not be enough, especially that every year you know there will be more and more breakthroughs. So that was the biggest learning for me just realizing how much there is, and especially now, with AI helping us in this race for longevity, everything will speed up, and actually on our list is also visiting robotic AI lab in Shanghai. And just talk to the people who are involved in this. You know technology profoundly, so there is just a lot to learn.

Speaker 1: 19:24

What were they doing in the longevity AI robotics lab in Shanghai? It sounds fascinating.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Oh, actually we didn't visit them yet. It's in Silicon, so you know the company.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Oh, okay, sure, yeah, alex has been on our program. Yeah, alex Dabrowski.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Yeah, so we got invited to the lab and we just want to see it and film it and talk to other people, not just Alex, because it's not just these, you know, bright stars that are taking care of longevity so that it grows. It's all these professors that are underneath that you want to talk to and they have also the real passion and they want to show it all.

Speaker 1: 20:07

Well, you've had unique access and being able to take a year off and travel, and what would you recommend for regular people in our audience who, of course, will hopefully watch your movie and follow your social media and your website and everything? What would you recommend to those people who can't take a year off necessarily to experience everything like you've done? What are the shortcuts or how do people keep up with these things if they can't take a year off to follow everything?

Speaker 2: 20:45

What they can do with longevity or how to learn about it Long, jet well both.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Okay. So at first, what I'd like to say I think that almost everyone can go on a journey like that. You know, when I told my friends I'm going on a one year journey with my son, they were saying oh, you're crazy, nobody does things like that. I know I'm a little bit more rebel than the others, but then I said, you know, I'm just, I'm renting my apartment and my house, so I don't have the cost of the mortgages and actually when you travel it doesn't have to be more expensive than in your home country. Especially when you are in Asia, it's much cheaper than in Europe or in the US. So actually you can travel budget. So we don't take, you know, expensive hotels or expensive cars and taxis. We travel by buses, by trains, live in guest houses like the one that I'm now in Japan, so you don't need a lot of money to do this kind of thing. And you know all the things you learn these. They are just mind blowing and that's also good, for longevity is, you know, curiosity is just pushing us forward. So this is the first message Just don't think you can't, just think how to do it. So that's the first thing I'd like to say. And about longevity and you know what we can do. So a lot of friends asked me. So just tell me what do I have to do to live longer and better? And I usually show them the map where you have these three fields longevity basics, longevity upgrades and then radical life extension. And I just tell them you know, this is the map and just do whatever you can from that. And the important thing is just survive healthy another 20 years and in the meantime all these incredible scientists will come up with breakthroughs that will give us another 20 years, and then another 20 years, and so on and so on. So just don't think now how to live another 200 years or 500 years. Just think how to live healthy another 20 years. Just step by step. And you know, as you look at this map, you look at this longevity field from a helicopter view. It's so easy to start.

Speaker 2: 23:24

As I said at the beginning, you know the basics are first of all, don't die from something stupid Like this is the first most important role. A lot of people laugh about that, me too. But it's not just about not taking risks and not falling under the bars, but it's also about doing regular screening for, you know, any illnesses that might kill us. I was enlightened by the book Outlive of Peter Atia not about longevity hacks that he was speaking of, because there was not so much about this radical life, radical longevity that I'm interested in. But the most profound thing that I learned from the book was that all these big illnesses like diabetes, cancer, heart dysfunction, they all start 20, 30 years before and the most important thing is just to do regular checkups. And if we discover these illnesses in our bodies 20 years before, we are safe Like we can cure them or most of them. So just not doing screening is, you know, dying from something stupid.

Speaker 2: 24:47

So this is the first role, and then there is this whole part about lifestyle changes and that there is also something that everyone can do, like everyone you know taking care of their nutrition and exercising, being active, sleeping well, not drinking alcohol, smoking, cigarettes.

Speaker 2: 25:09

These are basics, but these basics add a lot of years to our lives.

Speaker 2: 25:14

Actually, I love statistics that one of the speakers showed at the conference in Portugal and he just said that being active every day, exercising, has a bigger impact on our lives than not being a smoker and not having a diabetes, and that just shows the magnitude of what we can do for our longevity, and these are just the basics.

Speaker 2: 25:50

And you know, I tell my friends just do that, like, do all of that. But then you also have this longevity, or by hacking, upgrades, as you might call them, which includes at least go to sauna and take a cold plunge, and this is, you know, having this hormesis effect on our bodies and just our body starts defending itself and just healing and giving us a lot of amazing energy to our lives. And then we can do I don't know micro needling on our face or our skin, and it's not so expensive and that helps our skin. And then we have red light therapy. Or we can go to longevity clinics. Okay, this is a bit more expensive at the moment, but it will be democratized, so it's not. You know, you can go to a hyperbaric chamber and I've seen a lot of research that it's doing so many great stuff on our health and our longevity. Or we can do some more advanced treatments like you know, activating our stem cells.

Speaker 2: 26:59

So all these things are available and we don't have to do all of them at once. We can just start going step by step and and just improve our lifestyle and improve our longevity. So sorry for a long monologue, but this is the main message just do whatever you can to take care of your health and just give the scientists a little bit more time and amazing advancements are coming, at least genetic therapies that you mentioned not so long ago.

Speaker 1: 27:35

Yeah, I love the incrementalism. Just to emphasize your point there on two aspects of it. One is we don't need to say we're going to live to age 200. You're going to say maybe you just want to live five more years, you just want five more healthy years, and do it incrementally, like that. And then, similarly, I love your approach to longevity incrementalism. You know rule number one do not die or something stupid. You know get a colonoscopy. You know wear seatbelts, don't base jump. You know some basic things like that and it all makes sense. And then back to your other point emphasize, like, what people can do.

Speaker 1: 28:21

The world we live in is, of course, wonderful. So many things that are accessible now that weren't before. Many of the conferences like Dublin or the Copenhagen aging conference are are actually available online through streaming, so that you know a lot of this information, even cutting edge information from these latest conferences, are available either live in real time or or, you know, through blogs and publications. I mean, it's just, it's amazing the amount of information that's that's present on the on the internet. Now it's wonderful. We mentioned a whole bunch of things. One thing that our audience frequently asked about and sounds like you've had experience with them is was it stem cells or exosomes that you had?

Speaker 2: 29:14

So actually it was not a stem cell therapy per se. Like I was not injected with stem cells, I was injected with proteins. At first they opened the cell doors so that that nutrients can go in, and then I got injections of proteins that could come to my inactive stem cells and make them active again, so that they can, you know, just growing numbers inside of my body. So this is not common. And my son was saying, oh that, are you sure you want to do it? You know it's least perish, talk to this guy. But is he vetted? And I said you know, son, like I like the guy, it makes sense what he's saying. But he is also going to be on camera, like we're going to show what he's doing with me and then we will show the results. So if he was not sure about the positive effects of what he's doing, he would be afraid to do that because then he will be burned If anything goes wrong.

Speaker 2: 30:24

So so I did it, a bit of a rebel for my, for my son, and I'm going to report in a couple of months and how it's going. According to Dr Michael Lim, my skin and my eyes will start to glow the more radiant and that I will have increased strength and, you know, just everything will just start working better. Just that's what stem cells are doing to our bodies. If they are active, you know, they are just repairing our, our body and everything that's going inside of me. So you know, let's connect in a couple of months and then I will, I will tell you and I will check all the biomarkers that we checked at the beginning and we'll see how we, how we doing.

Speaker 1: 31:12

Sounds, sounds great. I mean, that's one of the challenges, of course, of longevity work. Unlike back pain or even, you know, diabetes, there there are sort of markers that you can tell and immediately follow. So I wondered what? What biomarkers? Or what did you? Did you have any subjective senses as you, as you try these different therapies? What have you noticed or what have you objectively recorded for your longevity markers in this journey?

Speaker 2: 31:45

Oh, you know, we've just started the journey. It's only two and a half months. So so I noticed more things against my longevity because, you know, traveling is amazing. But when you travel it's really hard to keep up with your good habits. You know, like access, usually when me and my son we are at home, we we eat super healthy food and then we exercise one or even two hours a day just being active, and then we have amazing sleep and so on and so on.

Speaker 2: 32:16

When you travel it's not so easy. So at one point in Singapore we got so exhausted and also from AC, which was of course omnipresent there, that we got a little bit sick, and I was not sick for the last five years. So I was shocked like me sick, like longevity advocate, can't be sick. And but then we went to Malaysia, visit Dr Lim, and first he gave us a vitamin booster, so that you know it's just giving this positive boost to our bodies, and then he did this IV with proteins and injections on my face and one day later I felt. I felt great. So but in general, traveling it's not so great for longevity if it's too intense.

Speaker 1: 33:07

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Well you, you talked to various, various people, from the leading scientists to the people in the labs. Is there a particular story that really left a left an impression on you so far in this journey of anyone you've talked to?

Speaker 2: 33:24

Okay, so, oh, I could talk about it for hours because there are so many inspiring people on the way. I will just mention maybe two or three persons and I would try to be brief. First of all, me and my son, we love Liz Parish and she also said like she's like a mother to other people. So she's like a mother to us and, and you know, she is in these genetic therapies and she's one of the pioneers and she's testing everything on herself. So I'm a bit of rebel, rebel like her and I told her, whenever she needs a lab rabbit, then I'm here, I want to try everything she tried.

Speaker 2: 34:13

And then she said about these four therapies that she did, you know, with polystyrene gene, then clothotherapy, pgc, one alpha and and therapy lengthening telomeres, and they all worked. Okay, they didn't changed the world and they didn't rejuvenate her by 20 years. But the polysthatine therapy it stops muscle dystrophy, so it's a huge thing in itself. And then clothotherapy is stopping mind deterioration, which is a huge thing in aging, and it even added up, if I remember well, 15 points to her IQ. So wow. And then PGC1-alpha is activating the mitochondria, which are the power plants in our cells, so you can feel much younger per se. So for me that is amazing and it's like radical life extension at my doorstep and I know that it will take another 10 years so that they can check it on thousands of people and then it can be FDA approved and then people can start using it. But still, for me it's just showing that radical life extension and heart corongevity is here. You know it's not science fiction anymore. So that was Liz Parish is number one.

Speaker 2: 35:49

And then you know, just talking to master Ketut Arsana, who is a healer on Bali and he's healing people with yoga, with physiotherapy and also with some spiritual healing, and he was talking about the thing which I think is, you know, the most important thing in our lives and also for longevity, and this is our mindset.

Speaker 2: 36:21

So if we have the right mindset, then we can cherish the life that we have and we just want to live longer, and if we want to live longer, we will. You know it's. And then you know, part of the mindset is having the purpose in life. If you have a purpose, you wake up, there is something you really want to do and you want to share something with the world and you can make other people happy. That will make you live longer too. So I think that if someone asks me like, what is the most important thing for longevity, I would say it's the mindset, because then you have a will to live longer, to change your life for better, to introduce healthy habits like nutrition, exercise, and then it makes you curious of the world, and then you can start doing more and more things for your vessel that you live in.

Speaker 1: 37:22

I love that. That was one of my next questions about. You know we've talked about biohacking and you know nutrition and sleep and everything but the role of the mind, and you really hit on some important things and I agree with you. I think mindset is probably the number one longevity tool that we all have, one of the most powerful ones, and certainly people who don't have a longevity mindset or don't have the will to live even, you know, in healthcare we've seen that people they just die, you know, and, conversely, having a will to live can surmount many things. I guess question always becomes then what is the best way to develop that mindset, to develop that sense of purpose? You know, what should people cultivate for a longevity mindset?

Speaker 2: 38:27

There are so many things, but I would say that I would answer that in a second. I want to say that one of the biggest obstacles to longevity is, first, the media that are presenting the world, you know, in black, that we, the doomsday is coming, we're all going to die soon and they're not talking about all the positive things that can happen in our lives, about, you know, among everything, about, you know, these breakthroughs that are helping in our lives and in our health. So we have to change the media and what they are talking about. And that's also why me and my son we're making this movie just, you know, just to inspire people about great things that are there in the world, and not just about longevity, but also about adventure and what you can get from life. And the second obstacle is that there is so much depression among societies and among people and there are people with so many traumas from their childhood and they just don't have a will to live. I know a lot of friends of mine when I was telling them you know, I want to live at least 500 years. You know, less is too little, and they were saying oh, marek, like you know, for me 80 is enough, like 80 and I can die. And I was like shocked at the beginning where people started telling me that. But then I understood that they are just not happy with their lives. You know, they just they're just sad and a lot of them take antidepressants and they think it's okay. And it's not okay, like we should start healing ourselves. And for me, a big breakthrough and that will be the start of answering your question was five years ago, after I got inspired in California about these technologies that are going to change everything for better.

Speaker 2: 40:49

I was looking for people interested in longevity and in space exploration and a friend of mine told me you know, go to this retreat, a-fest, and there you will meet some amazing people and maybe you will do some business with them. So I went to A-Fest organized by Mindvalley and people were talking there about their emotions, they were talking about their childhood and I was shocked and I didn't want to listen to that. I was going out of every lecture and every workshop and I was thinking, oh, these people are crazy. You just don't speak about things like that. Like why do they speak about it? And then when they told me, marek, you have to start loving yourself, and I was, oh no, like this is the worst thing I can do, like this is so selfish, loving yourself. And. But somehow they convinced me. Like man, if you start loving yourself, you will start loving the world around you and the people around you and the life will just start being better. So somehow they convinced me and I made a promise to myself OK, I want to try at least to fall in love with myself the next year. And I just started changing my life, bit by bit. I went to do some studies in California on flow with Jamie Will and Stephen Kotler and that was amazing. Like flow is the state when you feel your best and you are super effective with what you do. So I didn't want to be a coach, because these were coach studies. I just wanted to learn from myself and you know, having a flow is part of having an amazing life and living longer.

Speaker 2: 42:48

And then during this course I realized that I have I still have deep trauma from my childhood and they were talking about this therapy that is the best for healing trauma and PTSD, which is MDMA induced therapy. And at first I was against because for me this was drugs. I didn't treat it as medicine back then and I didn't do drugs. And then I started to read a lot about that books and I read a lot of testimonials and, yeah, it convinced me that this is like number one therapy for PTSD. So I came to my friend who was a psychotherapist and said, ok, please do it with me. These are the books, these are the testimonials. I want to try to do it. And she agreed and the journey began.

Speaker 2: 43:42

It took me a couple of months and after three months of hard work, suddenly I woke up and I was happy, and I'm happy ever since. Of course, it took me a bit more than just three months. Three months was just the beginning of the journey. It took me a couple of years more, just learning every month something new about myself and healing my mind, my body, bit by bit. But I made it.

Speaker 2: 44:22

And before, for 40 years, I was sad every day of my life and I didn't know why. I know that I didn't have a beautiful childhood and there was a lot of violence, but still, during the MDMA therapy, you open the door to your subconsciousness and you just start remembering everything. And that's hard. That's really hard, because you usually start remembering, you know, the worst moments of your life, these traumatic experiences, and you remember everything, but then you can start healing it when you are with these psychotherapies next to you, just bit by bit, and you need to heal it to start loving yourself.

Speaker 2: 45:07

So, five year past, and you know, it's still funny to say that I love myself, but I think I do and you know, if you ask my friends or my son, I've changed completely and maybe that's why I'm so much engaged in longevity, because I have this tremendous will to live and to have more and more amazing days in my life. So, just to finish my monologue, one of the things I want to do, I want to write a long article or even record a video, or we can do an interview about that if you'd like. Just, you know, to share how I did it, step by step, all the protocols and how it's changed my life. So I just like to inspire people.

Speaker 1: 46:04

That's really beautiful and it underscores what you said about mindset and the will to live and purpose. It comes from loving life and loving yourself at some level and I know we've talked before on this podcast about the role of psychedelics in longevity, which, you know some people would think they have nothing to do with each other, you know, but you pointed out the importance of that. I'd love to do an interview, a session, with you about that MDMA experience and certainly you know, as our listeners may know, the FDA, the very conservative US regulatory agency, has identified MDMA and psilocybin as exceptional drugs in their fast track for major depression and PTSD and their results are really dramatic with those and some people are seeing, you know, similar things with ketamine even, which is slightly different drug, but it still has some of these same effects on our sense of self and our self love and our understanding of purpose. And there's some people in town here doing work in these various areas under DEA protocols and everything. But it's fascinating.

Speaker 1: 47:32

But I'm always, it's always interesting how longevity circles back with that and the powerful longevity drug, rappamycin, you know, which is probably arguably the single most powerful prescribed drug for longevity, by turning down MTOR. And we've had a lot of speakers and it's I like to speak about it too much sometimes. But the interesting thing about Rappamycin is when people combine it with psychedelics, specifically with ketamine, and when ketamine was used to treat major depression and they gave six milligrams of Rappamycin one hour before the ketamine dose and improve the response by almost 50% in the antidepressive effects and was completely unexpected. They were expecting Rappamycin, through its turning down proliferation, to turn down neuroplasticity and actually have have a converse effect, but it was completely unexpected and it's just one more of those. You know exciting, unknown, unexpected things about longevity and and psychedelics that we have so much to learn in that.

Speaker 2: 48:42

But yeah, now you may be even more excited about visiting visiting QASAP in California to talk about all that stuff because personally I hear from almost all scientists about amazing effects of Rappamycin, even Brian Kennedy. He is a big fan of Rappamycin and actually they are starting a clinical trials on that soon. They are waiting for the green light to start that. And what he said that? Because you know usually people say, oh, when you do clinical trials is like 10 years or something. And he actually said that now, as you have this, you try these biomarkers and you have these aging clocks, actually you don't need even a few years to test something. Sometimes you would just need six months and that's enough. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed and I want to try Rappamycin. I haven't tried it yet, but this is on my list, so maybe when I come to you to California, then I will start to do that.

Speaker 1: 49:48

Great. Yeah, there's an interesting connection between Brian Kennedy and Davidson Claire out of Boston, who's written a lot about sirtuins and resveratrol and partial epigenetic reprogramming, and then also Matt Kaber lined up in Washington.

Speaker 2: 50:03

State. Yeah, he was a big fan of Rappamycin.

Speaker 1: 50:07

Yeah, and they were all in Lenny Garanti's lab at MIT doing early, early longevity research in the beginning of the 21st century. It's funny how that.

Speaker 2: 50:20

Yeah, it's like when I was talking to Brian, I think three weeks ago, and I told him oh, brian, you are one of the founding fathers, and he said no, you know, like we were together, as you said, with David and Matt at Lenny's Cathedral, as we call it in Poland, and so he was the founding fathers. So you know, like it's new and new generations coming in, and the story about three of them is quite fascinating.

Speaker 1: 50:53

Yeah, what, what, what are you most looking forward to in the longevity space? What? What are you like looking down the line? What do you see coming? That's going to that? That gets you most excited.

Speaker 2: 51:08

Oh, um.

Speaker 1: 51:11

so when we talked, about partial epigenetic programming and Liz perishes gene therapy and you know step cells or.

Speaker 2: 51:21

In general, I'm looking forward to the first therapy that is going to add 20, 30 more healthy years to our lives. Whatever that will be, you know if it will be gene therapy or 3d bio printing, or epigenome reprogramming, reprogramming cells, reprogramming whatever it's just you know. Just being able to test it, touch it and leave it. That would be amazing. But also, when I was talking to, you know, these top minds of the industry, including Brian or over the gray, or least, they all realized that it's not going to be one intervention. You know you need to have a holistic view on that and it will be, I don't know, genetic therapies together with some protein injections or some small molecules and then some. You know basic things, like you know everyday biohacking and rapamycin, and when then, when you collect them all, then it will have a fact on I don't know, 12 hallmarks of aging and not just one. So yeah, that.

Speaker 1: 52:37

Yeah, that's such a good, important point. It certainly has struck me to in that, with with all this information about longevity and all these different approaches, there's one thing that people sort of agree on is that that, whatever it is, it's probably not going to be a single approach. In other words, there's there's probably not just going to be a pill or an injection. In other words, we need to change our lifestyle and our mindset and do do many different things if we want to maximize the effects, like even rapamycin there's. There are effects on lifestyle above and beyond just taking rapamycin that will have beneficial, beneficial effects on them, tour and the other things. So, you know, let's not forget about our diet and our sleep and our mindset and our mental health as well. Maybe that's a good, good place to wrap up. I know we want to be respectful of your time. We've covered so many interesting areas. It sounds like we need to schedule another episode, but for today, marek, maybe how can people find more about you on on on social media and reach you on your website?

Speaker 2: 53:51

Okay, so first of all, look forward to. Our movie is going to be called beyond time a father's request for longevity around the world, and I can't wait to watch it and I hope that people will will be just, you know, recommending that to everyone to watch it, and I think in two or three weeks we're going to make the trailer to our movie public and so that you can all get inspired by that and just wait for for the full movie. About social media, we just started with my son and we don't want to spend too much time on that, but you can follow us on Instagram. Just type in longevity advocate and you will find us. And especially, I recommend just on Instagram, dm me with map MAP and you will get this longevity map and you can follow that.

Speaker 2: 54:45

And if you have some suggestions on what we can add to our map, I will gladly talk about that and get into more details. I already see that in, you know, in this longevity upgrades, I didn't put microbiome, which I think is very important. I still don't know enough to talk about that, but I'm super, super excited to put that in and then to learn more about that. So I will send you the map and I'm looking forward to any, any suggestions and more knowledge around that. And one more thing you know, to people who are listening to our conversation, we still got almost eight more months of our travels to the mid August 2024. And we are now in Japan. So we go to Vietnam, thailand and then through Australia, new Zealand, pacific Islands, to South America and then North America and so on. So if you have something important to share about longevity and we hear so, just DM me on Instagram or on our webpage, longevity advocatecom, and I will gladly meet. And you know, just start with people.

Speaker 1: 56:10

Well, thanks. Thanks again, Marek, and thanks to Alex for both of you for well. Thanks to you for being on this podcast and thanks to both of you for the wonderful work you're doing, and we really look forward to the movie.

Speaker 2: 56:23

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much and I'm looking forward to meeting you in California. Or maybe you decide to come to Australia or Pacific Islands, which I heard that are beautiful and, yeah, I know I had. I can learn so much from you, so I'm looking forward to our conversations.