Supplement Secrets for a Longer Lifespan with Sandra Kaufman MD

Unlock the secrets of longevity with Dr. Sandra Kaufman, who introduces us to the fascinating world of cellular aging. On our show, we unravel the mysteries of why and how our cells decline with age, with a specific look at post-reproductive evolution's impact on this process. Dr. Kaufman, with her unique blend of expertise in cell biology and anesthesiology, outlines the seven tenets of aging and shares her personal journey that led her to create the Kaufman Protocol, a personalized strategy promising to slow down the hands of time.

Ever wondered how to tailor your approach to staving off the signs of aging? We dive into a distinctive rating system that evaluates longevity agents across the seven categories of aging, providing a blueprint for a personalized health regime. Dr. Kaufman discusses the importance of sleep, cellular proteins, and sirtuins, and gives us the lowdown on recent FDA rulings affecting popular supplements like NMN. This episode is your guidebook to designing a longevity strategy that's as unique as your DNA.

In our final segment, I open up about my supplement regimen and discuss cutting-edge therapies that are forging new paths in the quest for extended healthspan. From the antioxidant powerhouses that I swear by to monthly exosome injections and senescent cell therapies, discover the pyramid approach to longevity that could reshape your golden years. As we explore off-label drugs and stem cell therapies, we emphasize the importance of consulting healthcare providers, ensuring you're equipped with the knowledge to make informed decisions about your health journey.

ReverseAgingRevolution Summit June 20-22, 2024 https://robertlufkinmdcom.ontralink.com/t?orid=49&opid=2

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back to the Health and Kevody Secret Show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin. Today we discover the fountain of youth within our very cells as Dr Sandra Kaufman, creator of the Kaufman Protocol, joins us to unravel the mysteries of aging, listen closely as she sears her personal journey from cell biology to the forefront of anti-aging medicine. Revealing how athletic pursuits fueled her quest for longevity. Dr Kaufman demystifies the complex relationships between post-reproductive evolution and cellular decline. Diving into the seven tenets of cellular aging, from DNA alterations to the critical shortening of telomeres and epigenetic changes, we're peeling back the layers of what it really means to grow old. We get to step into the realm of longevity interventions, where the promise of NAD precursors meets the reality of FDA regulations. Dr Kaufman candidly discusses her own regimen involving senolytics, prescription drugs and the therapeutic use of infrared light. She also examines the available methods for assessing biological age, sharing insights into how these tests often flatter us and the need for a holistic approach For those eager to embrace these anti-aging strategies. Dr Kaufman invites us all to connect and learn more about staying vibrant through the years.

Speaker 1: 1:39

This episode is brought to you by L Nutra, maker of the prolonged fasting-mimicking diet. If you'd like to try it. Use the link in the show notes for 20% off. You can support this podcast by checking out their website and taking a look at all their other innovative products. And now please enjoy this week's episode. Sandra, thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 2: 2:05

Oh, it is my absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Tell us a little bit more about your background and how you came to be interested in this fascinating area.

Speaker 2: 2:16

So I started out my life in the sciences as a cell biologist. I was actually a tropical ecologist and plant physiologist, fell absolutely in love with cells and cell mechanisms, but per my father he recommended med school so I could actually afford to live. So as a consequence, many years later I turned out to be a pediatric anesthesiologist, and people always ask how longevity is related to anesthesia and it is, but it's not. So what I do now is I look at various agents through the lens of a physician as well as through the lens of a cell biologist. But to be more specific, how did I get into longevity?

Speaker 2: 2:56

I'm a bit of an athlete, I'm a rock climber, I'm an adventurer, and it dawned on me in my mid 40s that unless I sort of figured out how not to age, my hobbies were not going to last very long. So I went on this ridiculous quest at the age of 45 to unravel longevity and I decided that your cells age, because that's the basis of who you are, plus as a cell biologist. And then by manipulating cellular pathways via molecules, which is what we do in anesthesia, you can actually decelerate the process of aging. And now this has sort of become my absolutely obsessed hobby and hopefully someday my real future. But for the moment it's just a crazy hobby.

Speaker 1: 3:42

That's great. You can't, before we get into, to dive into the protocol and the work you've done in that area. Maybe you could take a moment. We ask all our experts this kind of what is your theory of longevity and aging? Why do, why do we age? Is it just a matter of wear and tear, or there are quasi programs at work? What's going on? How do you, how do you conceive of it?

Speaker 2: 4:08

Oh, excellent question. So I was also an environmental or an evolutionary biologist at some point in my life and I think that you age because after you reproduce and raise kids, there's nothing forcing your body to live any longer is not genetically programmed. So as a consequence of that, cells default and they start aging. And if you look at the different categories of aging, which we will get into momentarily, there's different reasons for things. There's nutritional deficiencies, there's pathway failures, there's a myriad of issues that go on, and I think it's all driven by failure of evolution to need us after we raise our children.

Speaker 1: 4:52

So yeah, sort of. And then is it that programs go on that that, like like salmon, I guess the famous example they they swim up the river to spawn and then, within 2448 hours after that, they immediately die through some sort of program process. Is that what's going on with us, or is it? Is it a combination of wear and tear, or what's happening beyond our reproductive years? I guess that that results in our our dying.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I think it's a combination of things, depending on how you sort of look at it.

Speaker 2: 5:33

For, as one example, as you get older most of your proteins around your cell get like isolated as an example, where they get oxidized and we have some mechanisms to alter that, but not enough. So if you look at your proteins, over the course of time they become more and more disabled. Therefore your cell can't function the way it's supposed to. Therefore, if you take all of the proteins and sort of throw them in the same I'm falling apart category, your cell just can't function. Over the course of time your DNA falls apart, everything sort of falls apart, and so there's just no impetus for it not to fall apart. You know, as an example, you've got for DNA repair mechanisms and when you're young they they're very, very active and as you get older they just aren't because of themselves are proteins, and proteins get destroyed over time. So I mean it's a multifactorial problem just based on I guess you could all you could narrow it down to wear and tear, but I think it's more complex than that.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Yeah, certainly yeah, and, and some cells in our body don't experience wear and tear like the germline cells and and all and and so, yeah, it's fascinating. What are, what are those repair processes or what? How does that work? Well, we can skip to that if you want, I mean if I'll say let's take it in the order that you'd like I, before we get in the repair processes. You want to talk about the, the seven tenants of cellular aging. Is that a good launching off point or we can build up to that?

Speaker 2: 7:08

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense and I can sort of breeze through this reasonably quickly. But I think it gives people an idea of exactly why, why cells age and how you certain group things together and and there's many ways of looking at this. Everyone knows, you know people can think of talk about the nine hallmarks of aging. You know someone has a list of 13 of them. I think seven is just an easier number to remember and it's all about sort of like putting them in different categories. So again seven, seven tenants of aging.

Speaker 2: 7:35

I start with 10 at one, which is DNA alterations. So things go wrong in your DNA. So we all know telomeres get shorter as cells reproduce, so that's a problem. And we've got epigenetic modification that happens over the course of time, which is problem. We also have DNA structural failure that occurs. So all of those things negatively affect your DNA and I would cluster them in in 10 at one.

Speaker 2: 7:58

Tenant two is mitochondrial failure. Every organism has to have energy. Energy comes from the mitochondria, as we know, and mitochondrial fail for very specific reasons. The big one, of course, after the age of 40, usually as an NAD deficiency. So there's a whole market, of course, with that and that's a lot of things that's blowing up right now. But there's all sorts of things in the mitochondria. For example, the mitochondrial transition poor fails over the course of time and that causes cell damage. Of course, free radical scavengers or that I can't speak today free radical scavengers are a big deal and your endogenous system to defeat those fail over the course of time. So in your mitochondria alone there's probably six or seven different reasons that they fail.

Speaker 2: 8:44

The first one is the three is pathways. There are innumerable pathways that affect aging in the body. I like to think about the big three as you start with the certuans. There's seven million sort to ends that control cellular homeostasis. 13 and six are specifically associated with longevity and we know that as you get older the genes don't make the proteins which then can't affect cellular change, and and and keeping them in the same way. Everyone knows about cert one right, that's why we're on Rosveratrol or Pterostilbine. But cert three is actually a huge deal and because it runs your mitochondria and by the time you are 30, cert three starts failing and by the time you're 60 it's abysmal. So these are the things that are very, very important to sort of control as you get older and the first or two ends. The second big pathway is the ampikinase pathway. This of course measures how much energy you have and it switches your metabolism on and off to sort of control things. And then of course there's the notorious m tour pathway, and I know you're a big backer, so that that's a whole nother discussion.

Speaker 2: 9:47

But that that all falls into 10 at three, 10 at four is what I call quality control, and this is basically checking your widgets as if your cell is a factory. So, as I mentioned before, there are four DNA repair mechanisms. There's two for single strand and two for double strand, and then there's mismatch repair and over the course of time your body is less able to repair DNA, unfortunately. And in every cell every day you have up to 10 to the fourth errors. So if you don't fix them, you're more likely to have bad cells, either cancerous cells, senescent cells, all sorts of cellular problems, but unfortunately our ability to fix them fails every time. There's also protein repair issues, right? This is leads to the conversation about chaperones and the ups system and how we recycle proteins that have gone awry. And then of course, all topology falls into this category, because anytime your DNA or your proteins are not going so well, you recycle them so that you can make new ones. So that's category four.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Category five is what I call the security or your inflammatory system. So when you are young your immune system keeps you nice and healthy, keeps, you know, foreign bodies away and it keeps your bad cells sort of under control. But as you get older it fails. So you have more SNES themselves, you have more cancer risk, you're unable to fight infection and you become horribly inflamed over time, which of course is inflamaging, which of course is why you guys are having this conference.

Speaker 2: 11:13

Category six I call individual cell requirements. It's the recognition that all cells are not equal. A red cell obviously has different needs in a liver cell or a brain cell. So it's the idea that we need to get rid of SNES and cells and we need to sort of keep track and care of our some cells. And then category seven is what I call waste management and this is basically glycation issues. It's horribly bad for you and all the sugars are in general, and it destroys your tissues over the course of time and it's something we need to control. And then there's the accumulation of lipophusion, which is garbage within your cell, and log of the cells that you really just can't get rid of in your brain, or brain cells because you basically don't know what to do with humiliates over time and causes brain issues, anyway, so in a very large nutshell, those are the seven tenants of aging.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Yeah, there's. There's so many there to deal with. What is the relative you mentioned in inflammation, in flimaging? What is the relative role of inflammation? Is it one, seventh or how do these interact? It seems like so many different, completely different processes.

Speaker 2: 12:27

Oh, the excellent point? No, I think it's. It's huge, which is why we have to organize it and in in some way to sort of get an idea. I think it depends on the individual. I think that for some people in flimaging is absolutely priority number one. On the other hand, if you have a huge family history of cancer or diabetes or some other concomitant medical issue, other other categories are going to be more important. So I think it's just very individualized and when you create your personal protocol, this is something that you have to identify. So individual longevity programs are sort of built the identification of what is the worst category for you.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So there are basically all these, all these different factors that has reproductive age begin to start failing different mechanisms, repair mechanisms and other things, and then the damage and other factors accumulate over time and eventually lead to lead to our aging. Then, and what? What age do you think it really starts? I mean, how is it like at the end of reproductive age or what? When do people start aging?

Speaker 2: 13:40

When you start aging the moment you're born, to be perfectly honest. But physiologic age, on average I think, is about 35. However, different systems fail earlier versus later. So, for example, your kidney function, your GFR, starts going down by the time you're 18. So that that's incredible. Right levels, as I said before, cert three starts dropping by the time you're 30. That's huge. But the real things that people seem to notice, symptomatically, of course, of women and menopause, that's a huge sign of aging right, and it generally happens roughly in the same period of time for people, and I think that's sort of like the big canary in the coal mine my mitochondria aren't good enough, my ovaries aren't good enough. It's the first full system to fail. So people don't notice age until they have low energy levels or back pain or they're squinting in dark restaurants to read, you know, very small writing on menus. But I think aging gets noticed at different ages by different people. But I actually think that it really starts between pie 32 and 35.

Speaker 1: 14:48

So it seems like all these, all these things then build up over time the failure of these repair mechanisms, as you so beautifully explained. One question I always get is these, the, this damage accumulates over time and everything starts wearing out. You know, in our bodies we're all familiar with the phenotypes of aging, yet the, the events that determine our longevity are specific. You know, number one causes heart attack and a stroke, and cancer and Alzheimer's disease. So it's it's almost like aging causes this gradual, generalized failure assistance throughout our body. Yet longevity is determined by these. You know, three to five diseases that you know don't necessarily come as a result of of failure repair mechanisms, or maybe they do. What's your take on that?

Speaker 2: 15:51

So I think that's the difference between longevity and health span, right? So health span is how long can you live without a disease? Right, longevity is how long you're going to live in total, and I think people are afraid of longevity because who wants to be 104, you know, trach in a wheelchair? That just sounds absolutely miserable. And the diseases that you mentioned are the end product of cellular failure. Right, we know that cardiovascular disease it's a combination of lipid accumulation, inflammatory issues, failure to clear it.

Speaker 2: 16:25

I mean there's many, many contributions for cell failure that ultimately lead to these diseases, like all the neurologic diseases. Of course, your brain has a, you know it uses more glucose than any other organs, so it has huge glycation issues. It uses more oxygen, right, so it has issues there and it has very little ability to actually repair itself. So if you have a family history of neurologic disease, you know we just need to address those specific tenants. In addition, most of the neurologic diseases actually have failure of protein repair mechanisms and it, you know, theoretically, if you increase the ability to repair proteins, you know, you know relative risk goes down in terms of neurologic disease. So there's many things you can do, because I think it's not random. I think it's just all. Development is the end stage of cell failure.

Speaker 1: 17:18

And all these factors happen in aging, then as we get older, what, what one? One emphasis of this course, the summit is on the role that the mind plays in longevity. What, what do you think the role of stress and the mind plays in in this area, if at all?

Speaker 2: 17:42

It has a huge event. So, number one people have to adopt the idea that they're not old. Saying that you're old and acting like you're old makes you old, right? If you feel young and you're planning on living a full, healthy life, I think people just do bad better. In general, having a fantastic outlook also forces you to do things like exercise, as an example, is hugely important to longevity. I'm actually engaging right now I'm writing a third book on exercise physiology with an ex Olympic athlete on the effect of exercise for longevity and health, because it's so absolutely crucial. But if you've decided that you're old and decrepit, you're not going to go exercise and therefore it sort of begets itself, right, I mean. Additionally, it's just a positive attitude will absolutely be helpful. Can you positive attitude your way out of diabetes? Probably not, but you can certainly mitigate it, perhaps by being more functional and therefore, you know, delude, using up more glucose and blah, blah, blah, blah blah and helping your, your cells sort of functionally.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Before you talked about the idea of all these different hallmarks of aging. It's complex, there's so many different things. And then you alluded to the value of a personalized program and how that can really make a difference in anti-aging. Could you speak to that?

Speaker 2: 19:11

Sure. So when I was sort of trying to figure all of this out and I rearranged the categories of aging, I found it extraordinarily frustrating that okay, now we know what's wrong, how do we fix it. And as I was sort of waiting through millions of articles, it would talk about a specific molecular agent and how well it did in any one specific category. So it started out as just a big chart with like pluses and minuses and then it became a rating system. So now what I do is any agent that we talk about in terms of longevity I put it through the rigors of every scientific article I can possibly find and does Agent X help in all of the different categories? And if it does absolutely nothing for example, in Tenant 1, for your DNA, it would get a zero.

Speaker 2: 20:01

If there was evidence that it did something in theory or in culture or in a test tube, it would get a one. If it was evidence to be beneficial in some sort of model that wasn't a human you know, a rodent, a dog, et cetera it would get a two, and if there was evidence for humans, it would get a three. So now what I do is every agent and I think I'm up to 48 of them comes with a seven digit rating number that tells you exactly what it does in each tenant of aging and how efficacious it is. So you can build number grids to determine how well you're combating aging in each of the seven tenants. And if someone is completely healthy, I would argue that all of the points at the bottom, when you add them up, should be roughly equivalent. And if you have a disease propensity where one category is going to be more significant, you put more points in that category. So that's how you sort of individualize your protocol.

Speaker 1: 20:54

Yeah, I love the way that you add the scoring system to the various interventions across one axis. And then I didn't understand, I didn't follow. How then do you, or what tests do you use to assess the individual? Basically for the metrics of the individual, where they are in, their biological age or their disease states, in order to you know which supplements to apply? How is that done?

Speaker 2: 21:23

So if there's a laboratory test for any of the agents, obviously we're going to do that. Category seven is the easiest right Because it's glycation. So we're looking at hemoglobin A1c, we're looking at family history of diabetes, we're looking at glycation scores, all of that sort of thing. So if you have a high requirement in that category then we need to max out points in that particular category. Some of these categories have no specific measurements. It just becomes sort of family history and personal history. So, for example, in your mitochondria we don't have a whole lot of tests to tell us how great your mitochondria are. I mean we could do cell biopsies but I don't think anyone really wants us to do that. But if you take someone's history and they have very low energy and that's basically a complaint that I get from any woman over the age of 40, I can't keep up with my kids, I'm exhausted it's a mitochondrial failure. So we add points in the mitochondrial category. So a lot of it's a lot of it's history and some of it's lab studies. So it's just it's multifactorial.

Speaker 1: 22:27

Yeah, and, and so you've mentioned before the role that exercise can play in in in longevity and helping out. In addition to supplementation, you mentioned, we mentioned stress. What about sleep? Is that important factor also?

Speaker 2: 22:45

Oh, sleep is incredibly important and it's sort of it's a it's a negative cycle. So what happens is, as you get older, people complain that they can't sleep, and there's there's many reasons that people can't sleep. But, from a cellular perspective, sirtuins control your circadian rhythms and your sirtuins go down over the course of time and, of course, sirtuins are NAD dependent. So unless you augment your protocol with NADs and some sort of a sirtuin activator, you're not going to sleep Right. The problem with not sleeping is that 30% of your proteins are actually made while you are sleeping. So if you don't sleep, you're not going to make the proteins and therefore we're going to sleep even less, and it's it's just this negative cycle. But if you can get yourself to sleep, either naturally or via supplementation, then you can make the proteins and then it's a positive spiral. So sleep is absolutely crucial.

Speaker 1: 23:36

Yeah, you mentioned. Since we're talking about sirtuins and NAD precursors, you you alluded to the recent FDA ruling that came out a couple of days ago about NAD supplements and how that's going to affect that. Could you maybe just tell, tell our audience, what the ruling was and how? How do you think it's going to affect the NMN and NR space?

Speaker 2: 24:01

Well, from what I could gather, they've just directed it at NMN and decided that it's not going to be a supplement. Theoretically it should be a medication. They did not talk about NR, as far as I can tell, so I don't know how long it's going to take for that to filter down into reality. But I will tell you that I just bought a boatload of NMN just to have it on hand until the whole thing gets sorted out, and I also bought more stock in Chromadex just in case. I really don't know how the whole thing is going to play out. It is so important for people not to be deficient in NAD that something will work out that we all have. It'll be available to us in some form. It's hard to hard to guess at this point.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, just for our audience. These are NAD supplements or precursors, nmn, nicotine amide mononucleotide and our nicotine ribonucleotide, I believe.

Speaker 2: 25:02

Riboside yeah riboside.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Yeah, and the FDA ruling was just that they would be classified as a drug rather than a supplement. So, as you say, presumably NMN, which is the only one the FDA mentioned, would still be available, but maybe through prescription or some type of FDA regulation, which will certainly drive up the cost. I got a question here what is the evidence that NAD or NMN supplements support mitochondrial health? Or what's the most compelling study we can quote for people?

Speaker 2: 25:46

In terms of a specific study it's kind of hard to say, but I can tell you that NAD does four things in your cells that are absolutely crucial. So number one it's part of the electron transport chain, it's part of complex one and it shuttles protons. So if you are NAD deficient you're by default not going to make that much energy. Number two it is a cofactor for sirtuin activation. So without it your sirtuins don't get activated and all of your cellular homeostasis is sort of in a disarray. Number three you actually use it in DNA repair mechanisms. It's part of the PARP nucleotide repair system. So if you don't have NAD on hand, you're not going to repair your DNA and your risk of cancer or senescent cells escalates. And NAD is also used as a communication device in your cell between your nucleus and your mitochondria that tells your nucleus about how much energy levels you have. So essentially, if you are NAD deficient, your entire cellular mechanisms are going to fail. I don't know if that's in one particular study, but you can look at individual studies and identify that.

Speaker 1: 26:53

And I guess the challenge is I've heard people who do NAD testing talk about that there's a challenge in finding out and determining what are normal levels and bioavailability, and because you've got to get it in the cell, you've got to get it in the cells. It's not a matter of necessarily just taking the pill and all. But the challenge really is are we delivering it and is it helped? I don't think there's any doubt that NAD is important in our bodies. It's sort of like phospholipids are important, but I can't take a phospholipid pill and I mean it won't get to. You know, it won't be delivered and be bioavailable. But yeah, that's a whole conversation, I guess, with NAD and precursors, and the best we can do is just take the supplements because it's not necessarily going to hurt anything and hopefully more evidence will come in in the future.

Speaker 2: 27:55

Well, let me add one thing there is an article that's going to be released about the risk of increasing cancer, and I think that's going to scare people and it's going to be very important. I think the important thing to note here is that we're talking about cellular optimization with all of these agents and your body isn't smart enough to say, well, I'm going to optimize this good cell over here and not this cancerous cell over there. So if you have a history of cancer or there's any chance you could have cancer, taking any of the agents that we talk about can't increase the risk of true cancer. So whenever I have a private client, we want to make absolutely sure that they've been screened for everything that we can screen for, so that we don't make things worse rather than better.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Yeah, yeah, if the article I think you're referencing, just dropped today, actually is for nicotinamide riboside and its association with cancer, it just it just came out and I guess that's a challenge with with any any supplementation we're taking, certainly, you know, with with rapamycin. The question was your, your, is that going to increase cancer? With rapamycin, it actually lowers the risk for cancer. But for any of these drugs, which ones I mean across the board if someone's cancer survivor and, let's face it, a large percentage of people today, whether it's skin cancer or other types of cancers, are cancer survivors which supplements should they be cautious about taking?

Speaker 2: 29:29

Well, I think cancer survivors too big of a phrase. Cancer survivor 20 years ago is significantly different than one from six months ago, right you? Just the risk of metastasis is what we're worried about and, honestly, anything that optimizes a cell all of the agents that we generally speak of may optimize a theoretical cancer cell. So it is an absolute risk with any of the things that we take. I just think that the NAD precursors are so potent and I think they're one of the huge things that most people should be on Because it, because it's so potent, it's going to activate cancer cells as well. But I think any of the things that we talk about can theoretically make cancer worse. But you're absolutely right. If you don't have cancer, we are optimizing all of the cells that can reduce cancer risk. A lot of these things increase the efficacy of natural killer cells, which, of course, decreases cancer risk, right? So it's a double edged sword, depending on how many pre cancerous cells you may or may not have.

Speaker 1: 30:32

Yeah, and then there's the school of thought that we all have cancer at, you know, at a microscopic level, and that our immune system maintains it and everything. But that's a whole. Hold another discussion there, yeah, but some of the supplements I think I've seen, like folate in particular, as the studies shown that you should really not take it in a recent post-cancer patients, and also it's basically a great thing to make people aware of and keep in mind. Let's talk about one last lifestyle factor, the elephant in the room. What about nutrition? I've heard you talk and say some provocative things about your views on diet and supplements. What about that?

Speaker 2: 31:30

So I should probably go on record is saying a good diet and appropriate supplementation is absolutely the way to go. But you are absolutely right, I tend to be a little bit off the beaten track and I am a certified junk food junkie. I eat a lot of things with glucose. I don't recommend that anyone follow in my footsteps by any means. That being said, if you do follow in my footsteps, there are many ways to skin a cat.

Speaker 2: 31:57

I take 72 different agents a day and a lot of them are aimed at glycation. I think that you can block glycation in seven different ways and, as a consequence, I block each and every one of the possible pathways that I can block to make up for my bad dietary choices. So, yes, it's not a good idea for most people to do it this way, but it's possible. And the reason I tell people this is because I think a lot of folks look at longevity people as if they're. You know these lifestyles are impossible to achieve. You know you're supposed to exercise every day, eat everything incredibly well, starve yourself for 18 hours a day, do everything right, and in reality, that's just not doable for most people. So by publicly saying that I eat donuts every day, people think well, if she does it, then I don't have to be perfect either. And the answer is as much as you can do, that's great. That's fantastic Because doing a little bit is better than doing nothing at all.

Speaker 1: 33:00

Yeah, no, absolutely. One of my patients with a calcium score. When he saw the calcium in his coronary arteries, he cut back from four packs a day to three packs a day of cigarettes and that was what he felt he could do and it was. You know, it's better than nothing and that that works for him, you know. And the future, maybe he can, maybe he can do more.

Speaker 2: 33:21

But and I will tell you, it's like every puff of smoke is like a billion free radicals, so that man, on top of other problems, needs a ton of free radicals scavengers if that's what he's going to do, right. But you find a problem and you try to defeat it.

Speaker 1: 33:42

So all the discussion about supplements? One question our audience is probably asking is there? There's so many supplements out there on the market. You go to Amazon. I let's see. I need an NAD precursor, but there are 30 different companies and it evaluates supplement manufacturers for quality, because the FDA is minimally or not involved at all. So what? What are your guidelines when you choose a supplement that you know you're getting quality and it's worth the money?

Speaker 2: 34:14

That is an excellent question and it's sometimes it's incredibly hard to tell. I tend to go to the smaller companies that specialize in the special formulations. I love the micro soma formulations because the bioavailability is higher and I think that to have the mechanisms to create that they get heavily tested, it's heavily certified and it's more trustworthy. So that that's one way. I think it just depends on which supplement you're looking at as well. So, as an example, if you're just going to take an amino acid, it doesn't matter who makes that amino acid. It's really hard to screw up an amino acid. If you're going to take something specialized like spermamine or acid is an, then then the manufacturer is extremely important. And then, as to the end thing comes from algae and I love the company, is that grow it outside, where it's natural. So I love the companies from Hawaii or Iceland. I mean, are there? Are there companies in other places? Absolutely, but I think it's just very dependent on which agent you're looking at.

Speaker 1: 35:19

And for free radical scavengers. What are your favorite agents, your go-to agents for that particular function?

Speaker 2: 35:27

So I think that you should have a fat soluble and a water soluble. So I use Astaxanthin as my fat soluble and I use Delfinidin from the Macai berry for my water soluble. If people are more worried about brain disease, I'll go with Andrographyloid. It tastes terrible but it's more likely to get through the blood-brain barrier to combat neurologic disease and it's water soluble. So if you don't have neurologic disease, I go with Delfinidin, otherwise it's Andrographyloid.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Well, there's so many things you're working on in the longevity space with these supplements and other things. I'm curious, what? And so many things are happening in longevity. What are you? What are things in the longevity space that you're not working on? Are you most excited about that? Other things that you've seen in longevity that are exciting for you?

Speaker 2: 36:24

Well. So I like to focus on how supplements affect cells, because I'm good at this. I'm an anesthesiologist, I like drug doses, you know pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, I know that and that's my space. I think what's really amazingly cool are exosomes and the stem cell world. The idea of plasmapheresis is intriguing, but I'm not totally sold on it yet. I think there's a lot of big science out there that it's just phenomenal. It's not my space, but I'm very excited to sort of see what they develop and I've become a huge user of exosomes. I inject now once a month. I can tell you I feel like a million bucks when I do it. It's just outstanding.

Speaker 1: 37:11

Wow, wow. So, in addition to your protocol for, obviously, the many, many supplements that you take and the exosomes, what other things do you do for longevity for yourself, if I can ask?

Speaker 2: 37:25

You know, sure. So when I sort of think about longevity in terms of I call it the longevity pyramid, right, there's things at the bottom of the pyramid that you can do every day Lungs, diet. I am a huge exerciser, I climb mountains, I'm a rock climber, I swim every day. I'm like nuts. So that right on the daily list. I also I love red light, infrared therapy, so I actually sit in front of my light box every day, so that's kind of fun. And then I do things like less frequently, like once every month or every two months, which are exosomes. I take my senescent therapy every month or so. I guess that's funny. I'm sorry, Go ahead.

Speaker 1: 38:08

I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 38:10

No, no, no. I'm trying to think of there's anything else that I do on a regular basis, and I don't think there is. I think that's about it.

Speaker 1: 38:17

So the senescent therapy? Is that the satinib, the drug that you use for that?

Speaker 2: 38:22

Yes, I use that. I do high dose quercetin, I alternate that with high dose fisetin, and I also. There are a few antibiotics you can use in high dose that work as well, and so I've been sort of experimenting with various ones in that genre.

Speaker 1: 38:37

Okay, and, and and. Then, as far as the other, longevity off label drugs, rapamycin, metformin.

Speaker 2: 38:45

So metformin is just part of my normal strategy I take I take five to six actual real drugs a day, but I just consider that part of my daily supplementation because I don't actually differentiate molecules If you're a molecule, you're a molecule. I don't care if you're a prescription molecule or if you're an over the counter molecule. So I take metformin. I take a ton of hydrolyzine, I take Pia Glitazone, which is one of my absolute new favorites. I take a statin for fun. I take many, many things, but Pia Glitazone is, I think, insanely cool because, on top of being a diabetic drug, it actually redistributes your fat, so it takes it out of your viscera and it puts it in your subcut tissues, which is incredibly amazing. And it's also one of the strongest PCG1 alpha mitochondrial activators. So it just has so many good things going for it. Like, how could you not?

Speaker 1: 39:36

Oh, that's, that's fascinating. Yeah, the the one I'm excited about I've just heard about is the PDE5 inhibitors. The Viagra Cialis are now shown to be longevity drugs and actually there's an Alzheimer's trial for them. There's a cancer trial. It's basically similar to the other longevity drugs but it makes sense. If you're going to increase nitric oxide in in one vessel or one organ, you might as well do it in all the organs. It makes sense.

Speaker 2: 40:06

No, and I love the. I love using the medications for secondary purposes Like that. That's a fantastic example, right? I also I love the pagliflosen, right, why? Why not all of us use it? I mean, like you know, I get diabetics, need to get rid of extra glucose. But if we can get rid of our extra glucose, too, without significant harm, then why the heck not, right? There's so many ways that we can use the present medications for longevity that I think they're just underutilized at this point.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Yeah, and it's amazing, so many of the the diabetic drugs are longevity drugs, but it's only the diabetic drugs that lower glucose and lower insulin. The ones that raise insulin, like insulin, actually shorten lifespan. Yes, yes. And then the glucose, metformin. You know it's fascinating. Back to exosomes. That's such a fascinating topic. We could talk for an hour on that. But how readily available are they? I mean, can regular people get those, or what is their availability?

Speaker 2: 41:07

That's an excellent question, and that's actually a question that you should answer yourself as a physician. It's quite simple you can call the company and they mail them to you. As an actual non-physician, I actually don't know. I would assume that you would need to get to a longevity specialist and have them order them for you or have some sort of treatment protocol. You know, as a physician we sort of get away with a lot of things and I have them in my freezer at home next to my ice cube tray, which isn't exactly FDA regulated, but you know who's going to know?

Speaker 1: 41:39

Hey, that's where Rapamycin was for 10 years after it was discovered, before it was in that guy's freezer. Right with that old story. You mentioned infrared lights. Do you use infrared saunas actually, for you know where you're heating up, or is it more just infrared light exposure?

Speaker 2: 41:59

No, I just go with the light exposure. The saunas are fantastic. I don't have one in my home. I have a lot of panels, but I'm just I used to think that it was kind of nuts, but I spent a lot of time reading the research and it's really interesting because what the frequency does is it causes the ATPase enzyme to go in a circle faster. Right, that's how you make ATP. So for the same amount of energy going into a mitochondria, you're producing more ATP, so it revs up the cell. It's interesting Seven or eight minutes in front of a light panel can actually increase your metabolism by six to seven hours, depending on what it's sort of aimed at. And because I've gotten a little bit nuts about this, I actually got a tiny little portable one and it's in my car and I aim infrared at myself while I'm driving, which you know, if I had the red one on.

Speaker 2: 42:52

It looks a little spooky in the car, but the infrared. You know it's going to see it, but the benefits are just amazing and it's such simple technology.

Speaker 1: 43:02

That's fascinating. What's the best way that people can find out? Oh, one last thing have you assessed your biological age? There's so many biological clocks out there. Have you subjected patients in your protocol or yourself to any of the biological clocks that are out there?

Speaker 2: 43:22

I've not subjected myself to all of them. The ones that I have tested, I appear to be much younger than I actually am, so that's useful and, in terms of clients out there, which is really interesting, people like the ones that give them the best numbers. Right, you can test your chlamyres. You can test your epigenetics, you can test your glycation score, you can test anything. Right, People always pick the one like my poop score with my bugs are the best, someone called me yesterday and said I am 19 years old, I'm like good for you, good but good.

Speaker 2: 43:52

But so in reality it's a balance of all of the tests and my theory is I max out on every possible therapy I can. So you know, is testing worthwhile? Am I going to change my therapies? I can't, because I've already sort of maxed out. So I don't really do it to myself anymore, but obviously my clients do and they seem to be doing quite well.

Speaker 1: 44:15

Yeah, well, how can people find out more about what you're doing? How can they follow you on social media or reach you at your website?

Speaker 2: 44:24

So my website is very easy it's Kauffmanprotocolcom. I'm not very creative in this area, so everything is like Kauffman Protocol. It's very simple. So if you go to Kauffmanprotocolcom, it's the website. My email is on the bottom of that. I answer every email myself. I don't have a secretarial staff, so it may take me a while, but I do answer every question. In addition, on Instagram it is Kauffman Anti-Aging and I don't put a ton of stuff on there, but if I'm speaking or at a conference or have something just I'm dying to tell someone about, then it's going to be on that platform.

Speaker 1: 45:00

Great. Well, thank you so much for talking with us today and spending an hour with us in this episode, and thank you also for the great work you're doing with the Kauffman Protocol.

Speaker 2: 45:14

Thank you, it's my absolute pleasure, and thank you for everything that you do.

Speaker 1: 45:20

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Speaker 3: 45:42

Can I start? Is it recording?

Speaker 1: 45:43

It's already recording.

Speaker 3: 45:46

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Speaker 1: 46:33

You should say that no, that's good. It's for you to say I think that's better. If you like it, you want to do it one more time or take it. I think that was good. All right, you need to say it through recording All right, thank you.