Episode 137: Longevity, Ketosis and Nootropics with Geoffrey Woo

Geoffrey started off as a computer scientist after graduating from Stanford but after creating a successful start-up that sold to Groupon, a public company he decided to change the trajectory of career and used his incredible intellect to learn more about optimising human performance at first concentrating on enhancing cognitive performance through Nootropic stacks and then delving deep into the science behind the keto diet, intermittent fasting, metabolism, ketone esters and supplements.

He is the founder of the company H.V.N.M (Health via modern nutrition) that licenses the world's most advanced keto ester developed in conjunction Professor Kieran Clarke of the University of Oxford to develop H.V.M.N. Ketone Ester, the world's first ketone ester drink, based on Prof. Clarke and Dr. Richard Veech's (NIH) seminal work on ketone esters and exogenous ketones. Geoffrey is a serial entrepreneur. He previously was CEO and co-founder of Glassmap Inc., a software technology company backed by YCombinator, a top venture capital group In this conversation, Lisa and Geoffrey discuss the power of intermittent fasting, the keto diet, exogenous ketones, the future of biotech and the development of biomarker tracking devices along with a host of other biohacking topics of discussion. Learn more about living longer, healthier lives. You can find out more about Geoffrey Woo at https://hvmn.com/team/geoffrey-woo and his supplement line at https://hvmn.com/ He is also active on instagram @Geoffreywoo You can also subscribe to Geoffreys podcast "HVNM" which Lisa highly recommends. We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: www.vielight.com Makers of Photobiomodulation devices that stimulate the brains mitocondria, the power houses of your brains energy, through infrared light to optimise your brain function. To get 10% off your order use the code: TAMATI at www.vielight.com For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runningpage/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body. 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For Lisa's free weekly Podcast "Pushing the Limits" subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or visit the website https://www.lisatamati.com/page/podcast/ Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:12) Hi Everybody Lisa Tmati here and welcome back to this week's edition of pushing the limits, elevating human performance and helping you optimize your health and sporting performance. This week I have a very interesting man on the show by the name of Geoffrey woo. Now Jeffrey is in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He was a computer scientist who graduated out of Stanford who then made a startup company that he sold to a public company way back when he was just 23 years old. And then he decided to change tech after having such so much success in that area. He turned his considerable intelligence towards bio hacking and approving and optimizing cognitive performance and now physical performance as well. He has a company now that is called HV him in and he concentrates in the area of keto, the keto diet ketosis ketone esters which is a really interesting area to be involved in. Speaker 2: (01:20) He's also very interested in biomarkers and continuous tracking of biomarkers and net technology. And he's really at the cutting edge of what is happening out there in the biohacking world and optimizing performance. So our conversation goes in all sorts of directions. It's a really, really interesting deep dive into what's coming around the corner. What's happening now. We also dive deep into the subject of the keto diet and ketone esters versus keto salts exogenous ketosis versus doing the keto diet it's uses for changing your metabolism and becoming a fed adapted and you know, real deep dive into all those good top topics. So I hope you enjoy the show. And before we get underway, just a reminder, hop on over to our website at lisatamati.com check out our flagship programs. We've got our online run training Academy running hot where you can optimize your running, get faster, get stronger without burnout and injuries and have my 25 years of knowledge to help you get there. Speaker 2: (02:30) Along with my business partner, Neil Wagstaff, who's been my coach for over a decade and who absolutely saved my bacon. So check that out. If you want to improve your running, whether you're doing your very first five fiveK or whether you're doing your hundreds 100 miler,uwe can help you. And we also have our epigenetics testing program, which we are super excited about. This is a program that we've been running now for the last two years with our clients and it is absolutely next level and giving you personalized about your health and uhow to optimize your abilities,uinsights that we've never before head. The last program we have is the mindset you, which is our mental toughness and mindset Academy,uwhich is an online course and how to develop all the resilience and mental toughness skulls that we'll see you right in life and help you in all aspects. Speaker 2: (03:22) Now I also have my book relentless coming out in March the 11th. It's available now for preorder. This is my third book and it's been one hell of a mission to get it out. So I'm very glad that this baby is nearly born. This is the story of bringing my mum back after her major aneurysm four years ago, and all the protocols, the, the therapies that I use, but most importantly, the mindset and the approach that I talked to this huge, huge challenge of bringing her back from the brink of death. So make sure you head on over to Lisatamati.com Hit the shop button and preorder that now, right over to the show with Jeffrey. Woo. Speaker 3: (04:01) Well, how everybody needs to tell me the here now. I am sitting with Jeffrey. Woo Jeffrey. Good morning. How are you? Speaker 4: (04:09) Good morning. I know you're dialing from New Zealand and it's still morning in San Francisco, California. So a proper good morning. Speaker 3: (04:16) It does, but you are living in the past. So you're a vet. We need something else behind us or anyone else behind us. So I always find that quite weird, but very, very cool that technology allows us to connect Cindy. Now Jeffrey is an amazing man. Oh, you listeners out there who don't know Jeffrey, you assume. Well do. Mmm. He's a, I'd love you to go into a little bit of your background. You're free. You've had an incredible stat life. You were a Stanford computer scientists, but he's gone in a completely different direction, but you've also had a startup company that you've sold on to a public company. I believe ahm what really interested me, I'd love to know a little bit about your background and how the heck you go from computer science to doing what you threw out because that's really a big leap fish, shall we say. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, Speaker 4: (05:11) Thank you for the very kind introduction there. I think it may look like a large leap from a academic perspective, but really the way I think about my career and my, you know, my life's work at this point is really looking at systems thinking and engineering thinking and applying that approach towards different domains. So obviously you can use engineering techniques to look at computing as a way to solve competing problems. And about five, six years ago I started becoming more and more interested in how do you apply some of that same systems thinking that systems training towards the human system. Right. And I think that in one way you can look at health and wellness and the performance medical sports physiology space as obviously quite quantitative. But I wouldn't say that it's relatively bottoms or maybe like tops down in terms of trying to find an approach. Speaker 4: (06:19) And I think from an engineering perspective, how do we really develop a first principles approach to really understand the quantitative approach, how to optimize, optimize these, these outcomes. So to me, Mmm, a little bit about like the sort of the personal insurances that I realized that a lot of my smartest friends in Silicon Valley where we're applying their big brains to making robots better, making AI better, essentially. That might be a nice way to put it. But most people in Silicon Valley are helping people click, right? Like they are essentially optimizing and targeting people based on their previous experiences. How do I drive traffic and $5 and I was in that industry. And how to mobile app companies so that coming into Groupon, Mmm. And that gave me a little bit of a perhaps a luxury to just think about what I really want to think about and work on. And I thought that human performance was just the next frontier. And that got me down the rabbit hole of being very plugged into the biohacking community. So very much self experimenting and learning just glucose ladders but measures two now starting and running a company called HVM N which stands for health BMR nutrition. Where are we create products and technologies that support a human performance. And you probably have heard of our ketone Ester drink, which a very interesting piece of technology. Speaker 3: (07:45) Yeah, I was really excited to hear about that and we'll get into that later because you are a very big expert on ketosis and Keto and everything. Can you tell me basically and I just found it really fascinating. Was there a personal health process or someone in the family or anything that you decided you wanted to go into the spice? So it was just purely I want to optimize my moments in the performance of people. In general. Speaker 4: (08:10) Yeah. Actually the ladder. And I know that many people in the community of what I've talked to, literally thousands of people in the broader community. I feel like most people make very drastic life changes when there is a crisis. There's a health, and I have to admit, I was just fortunately in a very different space where I was just healthy and I was wondering can I even be any better? So is very much very focused on the optimization perspective. But now in retrospect, I think it's very much the same problem. Yeah. We're all on the spectrum of being sick or being a deficient state and we all want to move into other directions to be better. And our starting location on this section can be a little bit different, right? We can some healthier than others. Some are more deficient than others, but we all want to move in that same factor of being better. Speaker 4: (09:01) Mmm. So to me, my initial interests started off in cognitive performance. And now it's just essentially based on this notion that humanity has become more and more focused on cognitive output as a way to create our likelihood. It's whereas 2000 years ago our physical output was our primary mode to play to Libby. And my interest there was that especially in this new economy, there's a very much interesting sort of winner take all dynamic. If you can pick out a few more percent of cognitive performance kid creativity that has a disproportionate leverage in terms of the outcome that you get well economically as well as amongst competition. So my initial interest was focused on cognitive performance and as I started more and more new tropics, Mmm. It became kind of this rabbit hole diving deeply into metabolism. Mmm. The entry point of nootropics led to fasting and I was, I would say one of the, you know, early are people on the wave of fasting about four or five years ago or started experiment fasting. Speaker 4: (10:17) And then that really became a trend in Silicon Valley in the larger work. Now, intermittent fasting is like a very common parlance term that of people talk about. It was very interesting that you know, four or five years ago, if you Google fast people that I live in, maybe not drastically, but it was just like, Oh, [inaudible] for few days, that seems kind of insane. Is that even possible? Intermittent fasting led to kitchen diets and w it was became like, because as you look at the mechanism of why fasting works, fasting basically the pleats are glycogen into glucose reserves and it forces your body to convert fat into ketosis in the kitchen. That was a very interesting way to also in Dutch produce ketosis. And there was a very interesting, again, relatively early in the phase of I would say the influx of publication research going on in the QJ today at the time, you know, more of a nascent field. Speaker 4: (11:22) And then as I'm looking at the ketogenic diet, like, I mean, interested in things like ketone masters or any of the other enzymes just keeps on how can you [inaudible] induce a very rapid details ketosis in some sense. It was just like a very crazy journey from being a Stanford computer scientist and a software entrepreneur to now being the human performance space. But if you just look at the five, six year journey of looking at the problems of that I was interested in, and then just pursuing and digging and researching and going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, it kind of all makes sense in retrospect. And I think that's kind of the fun journey of life. I don't know if you thought that you would have a podcast five years ago. Right. And just like, same with me, I didn't know no conversations with people around the world about health, you know, world champion athletes. But that's really, you know, when I have a bit of time to reflect and just really the beauty of life, enjoy the journey. Speaker 3: (12:20) Oh absolutely. And I think, I mean I'm the same. I've gone from being an athlete to now, you know, specializing in brain rehabilitation and writing books and doing podcasts. And I don't think we should limit ourselves to, because we learned something at university or at school and it set for us for life. I think that's the beauty of the time that we live on that we can go like this for richer, you know experience, you know, and, and and you bring a completely different lanes too. The health side of it. That, and I don't have, you know, that you're [inaudible] amazing brain that you've bought too, you know, from being in computer science and then applying that sort of modeling [inaudible] to the human body. And and I've heard a few people obviously along these lines site. There's so much similarities and I think there are, it's exciting to think of it in that, in that way. Speaker 3: (13:16) So you go into the ketosis in the, in the keto diet because this is that's something that's very, very interesting for many of my lessons for sure. So I come from, you know, an extreme endurance background where you're doing like mega long races. And when I started out, it was all you had to be having calories and carbs all the time. And you know, the high points of my career are you eating up to 10,000 calories a day? Two, yeah. Move, got fuel yourself. And if you didn't get those calories and you've hit the wall and now, you know, there were quite a few Phanatic for the athletes. What's your take on, you know, like with extreme endurance, like doing ultra marathons and so on? What are the, what are those bandages and disadvantages that you would say? I mean, I know that you, you've done a half marathon yourself or, or a couple I think. Yup. You get Running sort of analogy. What is your take on, on, okay. The use of oxygen per year per unit. I, I, and the stain is much, much higher when you're on keto, but I've never actually tried it when I was competing. So I'm really interested to see what you want. Well, it's our own map. Speaker 4: (14:29) Yeah. I think it's nuance and I would say I don't think it needs to be overly complicated. So the way I think about it is that there's perhaps I would say two categories of athletes. There's, I would say the category athletes are looking to the world championship caliber level and looking to optimize performance perhaps at the detriment of longevity and lifespan and health. And there's a second category of athletes that are more lifestyle. They want to, let me just, let me just put, excuse me. Yeah. And the second category of athletes that are more lifestyle and amateur, right? So I think even at that level there's different recommendations and I would even slice up the categorization in another way. There are training periods and the competition periods. Right? And I think for endurance athletes, that's, and again, athletes are more serious. That's like a very, it's a known a practice, right? You guys are training your psych, your training towards, no, even with that there's like literally before different subsets of talking about the same thing. Right. And I think within the broader common discussion, it's very easy to say, Oh, you should have carbo. And it's like, well, are you voting for training? Are you trying to win the marathon? Are you trying to like have a good day? Speaker 4: (16:04) I think simplification, you already missed my little subtleties in those four quadrants that we already subsets segmenting out. Mmm. And then if we just know specifically for ultra endurance or highly anaerobic activities that is a very different performance profile or it's power lifting, etc. Yeah. Mmm. So a traditional best practices is the assumption of art, bloating and there is good reason why one wants to have a lot of carbohydrate reserves and then you constantly supplement sugar or gurus or, yeah. Let me think as you, as you compete. Mmm. Now the ketogenic diets and being more fat adapted is becoming theoretically and the research perspective has always been interesting and I think within the last few years there are now a world champion ship world record breaking results that are being created using fat adapted athletes. Again, there's like the randomized controlled trial world which are done on serious athletes, not necessarily like you are the best person in the world, right? Speaker 4: (17:17) Like there's a difference there and Zach bitter is an interesting case study of work. He just recently the world record for the a hundred mile Ryan, very, very ultra endurance. I think he also broke the world record for the 24 hour distance cupboard and Mmm. The whole notion [inaudible] and he's a sort of a fat adapted athlete. So what, what so, so I think like, so even so, so the basically would say that the study research is based on serious athletes and there is good results or decent evidence that being fully keto adapted is comparable to being a carb driven athlete. Now the question is if you want a world record and performing performance, how would you protocol against that? And if you actually talked to Zach better, he will take carbs for the actual performance. But in the training blocks you will train fat, adaptive or fasted. That's an interesting subtlety that I don't think it's covered really well. So when we talk to athletes and when we work with athletes people really understand that you guys, your training blocks your physical activity alters over time. And I think what will be the emerging trend is that you will cycle, you knew your nutrition along with the training blocks to optimize the peak for a certain performance. I think that is implement at the very, very top levels and I think that will be translate at two lower. Yeah. Speaker 3: (18:58) The next one very interesting point. That cyclical nature of ketosis or you know, I like to be in ketosis constantly can be, can present its own issues. Context. Speaker 4: (19:08) Okay. Yeah. I mean there's no reason to think that it is necessarily bad, but there has been an interesting research coming out of the buck Institute showing that a cyclical ketogenic diet has similar health span impact then on permanent kitchen and dining on an animal, on a mouse model and a rat or rodent model. So this is really, I was at the cusp of cutting edge science. I think some of these answers are still going to be unpacked. And I think just from a public perspective, if I were to Kim like guidance and I just want to make it like a punchy resolution. So like just kind of like just mentioned one of the nuances that if I were looking at endurance performance, I would consider doing fat adapted training fasted or using fat as a fuel in early parts of my aerobic training block. Speaker 4: (20:07) And then as you get closer and closer to performance day, I will start reintroducing carbohydrate and then on performance day I would have a blend of both. Like he's like exotic, just keep telling me like ketone Ester and on race day itself. So basically on race that you want to fuel as much substrate as possible and in the preparation to that performance day, you train and maximize the metabolic flexibility of your body. You want your ketone metabolism to be high, you want your fat oxidation to be high and you also want to be able to use carbohydrates. Speaker 3: (20:41) Okay, so you need a ball flexibility. Can you explain to the listeners a little bit, what is that like so how hard is it become fat adapted and what is the power with your ketone? Is that your company producers compete to an MCT oil Im sorry as a two part question, but or you know, your normal sort of exogenous ketosis, you know, compete to the level of the ketone ISTA yeah, yeah, Speaker 4: (21:09) Yeah. So I'll answer the first part around metabolic flexibly. I think that's definitely one of the buzz words being thrown around in the community at this point. And it's really a simple concept in the sense that it's your body's ability to metabolize, which means like use as energy the different macronutrients or substrates that exist. So what are, what are macronutrients? There's simply just food stuffs that have calories, right? Like carbs have some calorie count that has some calorie value and putting out some calorie value. Something like or caffeine there like micronutrients. They don't have calorie sources, but they support metabolism or, you know, caffeine is not really my patients. It's, you know, blocks and things that you feel less tired. Right. But it's like, you know, people talk about that as like an energy. It's not necessarily an actual calorie substance. It's just like, yeah. Tricks your brain into feeling less tired. Speaker 3: (22:06) Yeah. Speaker 4: (22:07) Mmm. Speaker 4: (22:08) So what is it about flexibility? Well, when, especially in a standard Western diet context, we eat a lot of carbs. So that essentially trains your body to be really good at carbs as a feel substrate. So all the enzymes that relate to glucose metabolism are upregulated and your body isn't really using the metabolic pathways to process fat or ketosis. And it's dotted. Those pathways are done regulated. So if you actually look at like fat oxidation Bates, you can actually measure this in people. Mmm. People that are less metabolically flexible will burn less fat as thesis versus someone that is more math, metabolically flexible. Speaker 3: (22:54) Wow. Another reason too, you know, trial, the cycling that links into ketosis, Speaker 4: (23:00) Right? So you can, you know, so you can do what's called like respiratory quotient test, so you can breathe. Mmm. You know, you breathe in and out and then you measure the ratio of CO2 and OTU as you ramp up intensity. And people that are quite metabolically efficient can inflect quite fit and burn fat to a very, very high level. Whereas people that are less Mmm. Metabolically flexible and not very fit, they instantly turn into using anaerobic or glucose as energy as opposed to being able to use that. Yeah. So so when we say metabolic flexibility, it's the ability for your body to use and burn all these substrates at the same time. Mmm. And and I think I think that touches upon like so much other sort of cascading into like in talk about insulin resistance. Yeah. It's really just touches this whole span of how metabolism works. I think just in the cons of this specific topic, it's just essentially the notion that you can switch fuel sources relatively efficiently. Speaker 3: (24:11) So if, if you know, I'm going to go on a keto diet, a lot of people have, you know, the keto flu and then they give up because it's pretty hard. Horrible. Mmm Hmm. Does something like keto Ester that the product you have or even exogenous ketosis of any form speed you up to get you into ketosis? And does it help you avoid the KIDO flow or not? Speaker 4: (24:34) Yeah, so this is actually a good bridge. I didn't answer your question. It's like what is the difference between other and goddess ketosis? I think that's like a nice segue or transition. So when people go through the keto flu, that's essentially a sign of metabolic flexibility. So why is that? Well, when you suddenly cut off your carbohydrates, again, your body is used to using carbohydrates as a fuel substrate. So when your body runs out of carbs, it's like it's in an energy deficit. It's like, Oh, I'm really hungry. Like we're not getting enough fuel. What's happening there is that your body isn't as efficient at converting fats and oxides and fat and mobilizing fat and mobilizing and turning that find the ketosis. So there's this deficit period for it. You have low carbohydrate, low glucose, Speaker 3: (25:24) Okay, Speaker 4: (25:25) Any of low ketosis at the same time, you have low energy substrate available in your system so you feel tight. Thank you. Mmm. So the idea is if you are metabolically flexible, so like you know, I've done a lot of fascinate. I eat fairly low carb and I'll do cyclical blocks of Hito aye can generate ketosis relatively quickly, so I don't really get it. Yeah, I like the adaptation for period for me it's like quite quick. And now the question is, can you use exotic as ketosis to help bridge that energy gap? Well, essentially that's been one of the popular use cases of his audience. Ketosis, right? Mmm. I would say the nuances that it doesn't increase the ability for your body to produce its own ketones. Actually nice gap where you have low glucose, your body is still trying to ramp up ketone production. Speaker 4: (26:27) Let me just give you some support of having like a source of energy. It's not carbohydrate in the interim that makes that transition period a little bit smoother. That would be the application of massages. ketosis. Now let's answer the initial question. What are ketosis? What are the types? What's interesting about ketone Ester? Mmm, let's define what ketosis are in the first place. Well, ketosis or what I consider a fourth micronutrient interesting thesis there is that, well, you have fat putting carbohydrate. They have calories and their metabolic substrate, well, ketosis have the same exact both fallen, they match the definition, it has calories and it is a fuel for metabolism. Mmm. But you can't really, it's not fun and really in huddle, almost a normal food. So people have been trying to synthesize Exxon, just ketosis that you can consume each directly. So you can kind of really get new food group here. Speaker 4: (27:32) You actually MCT oils, what are they? MCT, medium chain triglycerides are fatty acids that readily convert into ketosis. So the fact, but it's a relatively efficient fat that converts into through your liver, through ketogenesis into ketosis. Caprylic acid or ch is the most efficient a fatty acids that converts that into beta. Hydroxybutyrate. you can, it's eight carbon eight carbon linked chain. And then if you look at PHP, it's four carbon. So it's like a very nice size fatty acid that readily converts with a pH. D ahm so what does the HV well, what does ketosis will? He, one's a scribe. This fourth macronutrient and the main form of a key talent is this specific molecule called BHB or beta hydroxybutyrate. I just think they may be HP. So it's not quite a mouthful. Mmm. Now if you can take a BHB is the end ketone that you want, can you deliver that in the food form? Speaker 4: (28:40) And that's where you have things like you don't ask sitters or ketone salts that you might've seen. So these are just different formulations or different ways that liver beta hydroxy be [inaudible] in a consumable form. The very cool thing about ketone esters, however, is that it's a very highly efficient way to deliver a lot of ketones without any GI issues typically associate with ketones salts. So if you actually look at, Mmm. The space, I would say like, there's like things like MCT oils. Okay. You know, that has its place. It's valuable, right? It's like a nice form of fat that can refer in the ketones, but it's not an, it's just keep telling, right. It's not eating beta hydroxybutyrate directly. And then we look at Exondys ketones. There's primarily, he don't insults and then ketone esters. And what he consults are essentially hydroxybutyrate bound to minerals like sodium, potassium. I'll see the, so we oftentimes Speaker 5: (29:42) You look at a label of a ketone salt, it's like a ton of minerals. It's like a hundred percent of your life recommend daily allowance salt. Yeah. Small drink. You know, so you know, there's arguments whether it, you know, people need more salt anyways, I think that's a different rabbit hole. But regardless, I think from a performance perspective, there's often GI issues. We have so much salts and that is a real concern from a performance perspective. A ketone esters its bound to ketone precursors. So it's just a lot more sure way to deliver ketones and yeah, without the salts [inaudible] I can imagine if you've got a lot of salts and minerals and the ketone salt as an athlete, for example. Good. Cool. It's traveling and endurance. Yeah. example Okay. Okay. So that's that six dodginess keto. And so can you tie, so the one that you have at your company that's been developed over like I think 20 years from a time of all the basement money going into this, that the race H money is this much more powerful than, so, you know, just for the lay person then then buying an MCT oil, it's your rate pay times rather than a precarious or or having to go through the liver to be turn that into hopefully ketones. Speaker 5: (31:13) Yes. Yeah. So yeah, this is measurable and you can like do this like with your own finger and if you actually measure ketones, do a finger stick, typically like an MCT oil will bump your beta hydroxy Peter your D levels to maybe 0.5 bump. And with the [inaudible] or we can, you'll typically see up to 5.0 millimoles. So literally 10 times wow. More ketones delivered. That's in a consumable form. Mmm. Does that negate the need to be on a keto diet when you have ketosis? Can you get away with eating carbs? That would be the optimal. Yeah. So that's like an interesting area of discussion. And research some people. So some would say yes, I think it's nuance. So basically it's like what do you want on a kitchen? I think there is some value of carbohydrate restriction, carbohydrate restriction, but a lot of the benefits of a kitchen dining is having ketones present to be metabolized both as a metabolic substrate and as well as a signaling molecule. [inaudible]. So the question is how much of the benefit of a kid doing diet is from the carbohydrate restriction alone and how much of a benefit is from the ketones and both of substrate and a signaling molecule. And that's really an area of research. Speaker 4: (32:40) My you know none I have no data to support either direction. Is that Mmm. There's some subset of the value that's delivered by fastener kitchen guys that comes to record themselves. Yeah. So can you get some, most of the benefit of a kitchen guide or facet? It's not just ketone. I think so. Speaker 3: (33:05) That would be the. Speaker 3: (33:07) So that will be interesting to see how that research unfolds in the next year. You were telling me right. That would be, you know, cause obviously the keto diet is quite a difficult diet for many people to adhere to. Especially the all team. And what about the whole triglycerides problem? When people are on a keto diet, what's your take on, on the negative sides of, of keto? Speaker 4: (33:33) Mmm, usually you, yeah, so the lipid like the basically is your blood lipid panels is something that people tend to look at when you're looking at, you know, high fat diets, right. So you know, people look at triglycerides as you mentioned, but also LDL, low density lipoprotein cholesterol and HDL high density. Mmm. So the typical concern is that if you eat such a high fat diet and audio thats well lot and that could be a reasonable concern. So there's some interesting data that that perhaps suggests that if you look at LDL alone, it's not really a great predictor of cardiovascular disease risk. You should really look at the trial of LDL, HDL, triglycerides all together. So typically in a well formulated huge diet, you may see an elevation of LDL, but you see high HDL have low triglycerides. And then the question is, and again, I don't want to be giving medical advice, I'm not a medical doctor, but there is an interesting stream of research going on now where if you look at a cohort of people with high LDL, which maybe bad, you know, high HDL and low triglycerides the association with cardiovascular disease risk disappears. Speaker 3: (34:58) Yup. Speaker 4: (35:00) The question is then, is LDL alone a great predictor of cardiovascular disease risks? I think that's again, an open area of research. I think again, just again from a systems thinking perspective you need to look at the whole system. It's kind of arbitrary to just choose one thing and be like, okay, you have one thing that's going to give you a disease. So it's like, yes, that might be correlated but me to understand the full system. Yep. And that's where I think there's a lot of interesting research. Speaker 3: (35:32) Yeah. And it would make sense to me that, you know, you do need to look at the ratios of things. Like I, it's, it's looking at Speaker 5: (35:38) The whole system of things and you know the old way of thinking that cholesterol was bad for you, period as, as really not, not correct. I think, you know, now we've moved on from that sort of idea that that isn't the way. Yeah. They just like complicated and like very nuanced I think. I think people want that headline. I mean, how many times have you seen eggs are good? Yeah. It seems like it's literally like it flip flops every single day. Yes. And I think that just shows you that nutrition is very complicated. People have different genetic baselines. People respond to food differently. Yes. Yeah. To me, I don't want to be overly prescriptive on everyone should eat like, again for me, engineer and meet us. Okay. Like self-experimentation you should really measure the response is yourself. When I see my own glucose numbers and I see my own blood lipid profile, when I do these different types of diets, I know what works for me. Supply. And that ultimately is what matters. Like it doesn't matter what the randomized controlled trial says for a population of like men that are age 25 through 30 in a U S college, the people that are being studied, right? Like there's a reasonable critique on the selection sample [inaudible] what all the science is done on, right? Most clinical trials are not unwomen no, no. Well done. Speaker 5: (37:16) Okay. It's really hard to run science. I understand why people want to like reduce the very variables. I think it's like [inaudible] the, again, the mechanisms that you can derive from the literature and then confirm it with yourself. That's ultimately, I think the general literature. And then how does it actually apply to you as N equals one. And this is, this guy's nice segue into your stance as an advocate for smart regulation, for human enhancements and in our ability to take control of our own. You know, like a lot of biohackers now around the planet. And I include myself in this, that we believe that we have the right to control their own bodies and we, Oh, I'm not prepared to give up my control what I have in my own house. [inaudible] The local doctor. [inaudible] No, and I think it's, it's important that we start to take some responsibility because we've also had, you know, in our culture, in an SSO, I'd say the opinion, the doctor knows everything and I don't have it. Speaker 5: (38:26) Right. Question to experiments to understand. And you know, I, I mentioned to you before the journey I've been on with my mum and I've, you know, peer shape. Did we say from those experiences, I, I now want to be [inaudible] in control as I possibly can be. Obviously I don't have access to everything. I would love to have access to. Mmm. But I want to, I want to have the right to be able to try things on my own body and to be able to experiment and to understand, set people, understand that it's the responsibility, their own health into their own to do your own research. We live in a time that we differ with we, we've got access to two minds like yours and experiences like yours and the cutting edge science and the latest, we don't have the sizzle one person's opinion from a local who tried to 25 years ago. Yeah. [inaudible] Speaker 5: (39:37) Aye. 100% agree with everything you just stated there. I think you put it quite nicely. But do you want to just, I guess make Cognits I don't think healthcare system or the specific, the individual clinician is the enemy that they're trying to do their best. And those are, I would say like, I don't think anyone is excited about the healthcare system. Well, I think the underlying point. And so I think I've talked a lot of doctors and I think there's, I think everyone is trying to do their best. I don't think anyone is individually. No, but I think the point that it really is an underlying point is that people should be self-empowered take agency of their own health and happiness. I think that's a really the most important point because you care about your own health more than anyone else. Yeah. I mean it's just like, yeah, you're a doctor like cares about you, but he has his own problem. Speaker 5: (40:38) She might have a, you know, family issues with her husband and a hundred other patients to worry about. Yeah, that's fine. But you, you are living with your body. You are living with your own health and just like you wouldn't absolutely do business deal or buy a house or buy a car without research. How, why would you not take that same level of research? Important medical procedures or lifestyle choices, spiritual and health. So to me it's just not even like challenging that healthcare system. Just like hello. You care about your health the most. You have the biggest stake in your own health. Yeah. Oftentimes we're just asked to just be passive in our own health. And that seems so backwards given that you spent like 20 hours online searching the latest launch of a computer and gadget. Yeah. Change your change or nutrition change, take medication and you're just like, Mmm. Speaker 5: (41:38) Hiking up. Yeah. Just pass it again, I think, and I think basically my sense of the future is that information is being more and more decentralized. I think successful doctors will have a much more collaborative relationship. Mmm. And ultimately we are the buyer. We are the customer in this relationship. I think there will be a world where it becomes much more collaborative. Like these are my specific concerns. Can you address, these are my goals, this my science position. I want to understand and take a little bit of a self-responsibility here. Rather than do annual checkup, he'd see me for 15 minutes and I'm on my way with a couple little pills. Right? Like I don't think that's going to work anymore. No, it can't work anymore. Speaker 5: (42:33) Well, you're also on the cutting edge. You're in Silicon Valley. You see a lot of the biotech stuff that's coming in the future. I listened to a speech that you did on [inaudible] the feature of five tickets and where you see this going, expanding Cuban capabilities. And I was just like, wow, really? Mmm. [inaudible] What is coming down the road? Can you give us a little bit of a sense of what you think is coming as far as what and the size? What else? Yeah, it does some exciting and some scary things in the future. Yeah, I think my framework here is that again, just sort of the engineering hat on. If you can't measure it, you can't optimize it. I think that we will get much more are available biomarker data on our overall system. So I think as I mentioned, if you have a continuous glucose monitor, no, there is a very nice device too. Speaker 5: (43:38) Again, track your blood sugar continuously over time. No, I know there's, you know, I love to attract much more biomarkers, right? I need a big companies looking at it, looking at the space. So I think phase one or step one is that we'll have Oh, passive data stream across all the important ball markers readily at our fingertips. Like what could you have, not just a continuous glucose level? Well, why not have continuous ketone levels but not have confused insulin levels? Want to track your LDL HDL and triglycerides over time. I think this is one thing, you know, with a strong quantitative mathematics background, I think biology is the built on snapshots, one blue draw, and that's what we base everything on. But we're literally dynamic systems with flux with flow. Speaker 4: (44:32) These things change a lot. And I think Speaker 3: (44:36) [Inaudible] Speaker 4: (44:36) Literally, if I eat a ton of fat that day before a blood draw or I fast the day before a blood trail, Speaker 3: (44:44) Yeah, you've got to be completely different. Speaker 4: (44:47) We need to understand the actual flux and slopes of all these changes rather than just like do science on snapshots. Right? So I think it's like physics. It's like you're taking, you're doing physics with looking at a planet move every year versus, okay, what if we can attract telescopes, the movement of the plants, we can actually model this much better. So I think from step one, like we're going to have much more available real street, real time streams of data. Mmm. I think once we have that real time passive data stream, we'll be able to have a much more personalized recommendations and protocols for people. Speaker 3: (45:26) Mmm. I think we all do. We notice. Yeah. Yep. Speaker 4: (45:30) I like you like certain things differently than other people and you respond to things differently. Other people, there was a big metabolism paper publish it. Probably not true three years ago. Banana to me, my response. But you might be able to tolerate it. Yeah. And it totally makes sense, right? If like my ancestors ate bananas and your answer says made apples, like there's going to be an verbalize world and we're just eating a bunch of like fake bananas and fig apples. It sends a reason. It will have different responses to that kind of input. Mmm. So, given that we have the data streams, we can actually now and build time instantly adjust our diet or nutrition or protocol or exercise or sleep to match actually. Speaker 3: (46:18) Okay. Is optimal for our four ad thing. Yeah. I mean we, we do an ad company AP genetic testing and we look at the genetics. Yeah. Mike half of people and have the personalized recommendations. Oh. Based on the work of a Dr. Albert, you're rolling from Italy. I'm looking at for being different on different science disciplines and distilling it into some Mmm. Reports that we can take and then have an insight as coaches and as health coaches to be able to personalize to, to at agree at this stage. It'll get better and better as time goes on. What times of the day, you know, you chronobiology what your genetic, your ancestry is to how you going to, how you develop them in the womb, you know. Mmm. And there are all these different layers that is giving us as coaches an insight into our athletes and our clients that we knew made before forehead. And this is only going to grow, you know, and I'm excited about that. Firstly is that is a coach because we're seeing much better results now. Yeah. You know, you're trying to, two athletes are the same. No, I had in the same training and one will get massive Speaker 5: (47:30) Results and the other one doesn't. And you're like, why you lying to us? You're not doing the stuff, you know, that's actually, no, they just, I'm really excited about all the tracking stuff. I'd love to get a constant glucose monitor. I think you're exactly right. I feel like oftentimes we talk to doctors, they'd like don't believe their patients. Yes. Like literally trying to pull up. That's right. Establish the doctor patient relationship a little bit. I mean, again, it's not to say doctors are not trying to do their best. I think it's like, I would say I would say let's just empower ourselves and learn more so we can have a productive conversation with primary practitioner. And then they're just like, kind of like, you know, I see coming around the corner is that like, you'll have more and more interesting technologies that are drive inputs into human performance. Speaker 5: (48:35) She don't ask her other, other exonerees ketones are very interesting. It's a new way to deliver soap fit into our bodies and signal different things. Mmm. Interesting. Compounds tap into longevity pathways. Right? And I think we're understanding the systems biology of humans much, much better. No, it gives us an ability to, maybe we can push certain inputs in a way that maps to a performance profile that we want. And again, like, and that can be different for different people, right? Like maybe if I'm obsessed with health span, I could be different from, I want to win an Olympic gold medal next year. Definitely coming from an F, you know, lytic background where, you know, push my mind to the limits. It wasn't about longevity at that stage, you know you can do a lot of damages and ask that you can be fit and unhealthy. Speaker 5: (49:32) Which is which is also a [inaudible]. But if you're an athlete, you've got to be healthy. Well, actually, no, you can be quite unhealthy, but yeah. And now as an, you know, getting, getting older and getting a little bit wiser and looking at longevity and wanting to have health span over a longer period of time, I've changed my whole approach to the way I try and in the way. And I think that that's a healthy progression too, to move in. So you said that, know I'm looking at being able to do what I want to at 19. Oh, I've [inaudible] 105 I believe. Yeah. Be completely broken and burnt out. Yeah. Which I've down in the past and which I see a lot of athletes [inaudible] okay. And, and having this information provides, gosh, when I started doing ultra marathons 25 something years ago, we didn't even about electrolytes for crying out loud, you know. Speaker 5: (50:30) And, and now of course, we bought whole lot more things at our fingertips and we can, we can see the improvements in performance over the last few years with extreme endurance athletes. Like, thanks. Mmm. It's only gonna [inaudible] yeah. The limits of human performance aren't even breached. Yes. You know, and that's without tapping into the whole mind side of it. Yeah. Oh, so another fascinating side. Mmm. I just wanted to pivot and then I know we're going to wrap up, but Mmm. You've also gone a pretty deep dive into Nutro nootropics. Hi Brian. Enhancing supplements in a smart drugs and things like that. Having some of the family with a massive brain, Brian and Dre, I'm very interested, eight year old take on what some of the great nootropics for people who Mmm. Maybe him brain injuries, maybe hitting towards dementia, Alzheimer's that sort of thing. Speaker 5: (51:30) I know you're not a medical doctor, but what is your title and some of the exciting compounds or even the ketones for, for things like to meet turnouts farmers. What is your take on that? Yeah, I think it's a very based in the sense that there's a lot of things that are preferred to have any Tropin benefits, but you really need to look and drill down into specific compounds and then judge the evidence of each specific compound on your specific use case. Right. So you know, when we developed our nootropic supplements, we looked at specific compounds that have randomized controlled trials on healthy humans and showing no benefits cause it's going to get benefit for those use cases. But oftentimes things that can improve on performance in healthy human, this monkeys are an improved performance. People that are efficient. So when you extend the scope a little bit evidence pool, it gets a little bit even better. Speaker 5: (52:34) And when you're looking at eventually, hopefully hoping people that have my own cognitive impairment and trying to prevent decline and move that more towards awesome. The direction. So obviously, you know, you know, the products that we sell, you know, we think are very, very high quality and how the robust evidence, so we have rise with the Copa which has, you know, solid book amount of evidence around randomized controlled trials on specific doses, boosting longterm memory, et cetera. So that's pretty exciting. If you actually talk to the principal investigator who's actually a professor concert, I believe he's at the university of Swinburne. No excited about that class of compounds and I believe it's still do not research in that area. Mmm. No, I think ketones are also like an interesting area of research in terms of driving cognitive a benefit. Mmm. The mechanism of action there is that glucose costs the blood brain barrier, but also the ketones. Speaker 5: (53:43) And you might've heard of Alzheimer's nickname type three diabetes. Yeah. And the thesis there is that part of the problem with Alzheimer's is that there's a glucose uptake disfunction where it's for whatever reason, well, it's insulin resistance efficiency. All right. The brain cells aren't able to process glucose. Well, ketones are uptake and metabolism, a completely different pathway. Can you rescued energy deficit that, that defect substrate. So it's been pretty early data around ketogenic diets being helpful as well as exotic as being helpful for those use cases as well. So I just had a Dr. Kabran Chapek on the show last week. He's written about concussion rescue. You're looking at a traumatic brain injury, Al Thomas. And there's a, when you have a brain injury for example, there's a metabolic no problem. What's that glucose getting in it? Where The good coach is not getting put in. Speaker 5: (54:53) And they did a at trial where they put and IB glucose and people with brain injuries and they suppressed the ketones. The body was producing this morning. It was actually feeding the brain and actually made them work. Yeah. And this is like, Oh my God, that's what they did. My mum when she was in ICU, they put in, you know, and I'm like, I had no idea at the time glucose was not, it would be logical to think cause you Brian needs you a lot of glucose. Well, when there's a metabolic disruption caused by the brain injury, it would have been far better to give her pay times and, and you know, ketone Ester or something or even fish oils so on to feed the brain then then glucose and suppressing what little ketones you would have had, you know. No, that's exactly right. Speaker 5: (55:42) The mechanism that you're describing is exactly right. This kind of Columbian released a blood glucose uptake. Yes. Yeah. It's again, that's where you have to understand the mechanisms too. Have a solution. Yeah. Again, I don't want to like, I think, you know, we don't want to over-hype anything. I think that's another area of interesting research. I think it's an interesting and hopefully we'll be able to see published results. Yeah. From that hypothesis. That's exactly right. You know, the mechanism of action we would be targeting looking ketones or concussion and TBI. That's absolutely, yeah. Yeah, definitely. You should click with or listen to my last episode cause that was a really, you he'd be great to get on your show. So I know we have to wrap up. You Mmm. Some of your products, you've got your new tropics, you've got your, the one, you've got a sleep aid, you've got a focus, memory aid the other two, you hit another two there. Speaker 5: (56:51) Omega-3 DHA focused like a brain DHA supplements called keto. And then we have chronic longterm cognitive performance will rise. And then we have sprint, which is but cute a caffeine off. He needs that. All right. So if anyone wants to check them out. So you have a podcast. Yeah, the ice, we mean podcasts. So everybody go and check out different words on the podcast. HB in him. Yep. I always get the name. I must be slightly dyslexic around their own way. When people reach out to you and connect with you and the work that you doing. Mmm. Can I get the ketone esters by your website? So I understand you're out of stock at the moment. Yeah, I was checking on the website and that will be the most up to date place to get updates at hvmn.com. Yeah, it's always interesting in the beginning of the year because a lot of the institutional sports teams kind of stock up for the season so I can add on the shelves. Yes. Speaker 5: (58:04) You know, it's sort of like first come first serve, right. It's, you know, I guess there's been a lot of media coverage on tour de France teams for example, using our product. So that's coming up later this summer. Right. Awesome. A lot of the salient volume goes, goes there. Yeah. I mean you find us on each PMN very easily searchable, but also personally at Geoffrey Woo, G E O F F R E R Y W O O primarily on Twitter and Instagram. Happy to engage there as well. Awesome. I will put all those links Geoffrey in the, in the show notes and thank you so much. We appreciate your time today. I really appreciate the work you're doing. I love listening to your podcast. I, I do feel at the end of it quite challenged intellectually often. But it's at the cutting edge of what's happening out there. So it's really, really exciting. So thanks very much for your time today. I really much enjoyed the conversation. It's super fun. Thanks for having me. Speaker 6: (59:05) If your brain is not functioning, edit space and check out what the team at the light dotcom do now being like producers, photo biomodulation devices, your brain function depends largely on the health of the energy sources of the brain cells. In other words, the mitochondria and research has shown that stimulating your brain with near infrared light revitalizes mitochondria. I use these devices daily for both my own optimal brain function and also for other age-related decline issues and also for my mom's brain rehabilitation after her aneurism and stroke. So check out what the team do at vielight.com. That's V I E L I G H T.com and use the code T A M A T I it chick out to get 10% off any of the devices. Speaker 1: (59:55) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com. The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.