Mission to extend healthy lifespan

Transcribed using Sonix AI. Please check against audio recording for absolute accuracy.

Alan Graves: [00:00:00] Imagine if aging wasn’t a thing, and then tomorrow a virus swept around the world, a virus of aging that hit certain people of a certain age and gave them all these frailties and diseases and sickness, we would react in a very extreme way, wouldn’t we?

Peter Bowes: [00:00:21] Hello again. A very warm welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast. I’m Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind human longevity. Now, supplementation comes in many forms supplements to top up the vital ingredients that go into a healthy lifestyle – vitamins or minerals that perhaps were not getting from diet alone or exposure to enough sunlight, for example. The use of supplements is, for many, an insurance policy knowing that none of us is perfect, especially in terms of what we eat or what we don’t eat. We’re all individual complex beings, and if we are striving to live the best life possible in pursuit of a good healthspan that’s the number of years that we enjoy the best of health, supplements have their place in maximizing our potential. At least that’s my view. And there are some increasingly popular dietary interventions that focus on cellular health, mitochondrial health. We’ve talked a lot about that on this podcast supplements that boost our metabolism, and the overriding question is always What do I need to take, if anything, to optimize my health and well-being? And can I afford it? There is no easy and quick answer, and it is true that for many people, the barrier is financial. Let’s talk about all of that with Alan Graves. Alan is the CEO of Do Not Age, a start up company based in Derby in the UK, with the mission of extending healthy lifespan for as many people as possible. Alan, welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast.

Alan Graves: [00:01:57] Hi, Peter, thanks for having me.

Peter Bowes: [00:01:58] Great to talk to you. And I guess when you talk about healthy lifespan in terms of your aspirations, it’s much the same as saying healthspan. It really amounts to the same thing.

Alan Graves: [00:02:09] Yeah, I think the terms are interchangeable, but there are still some people that don’t know what healthspan means. So that’s why we chose to use healthy lifespan just so that everybody could understand it.

Peter Bowes: [00:02:20] And that’s just I’ve talked about this so many times, but let’s just recap it again, healthspan. It’s the the aspiration to live as many healthy years to be fully physically healthy as far as possible, to be mentally engaged, to be socially engaged and to live your life, maybe into your 70s, 80s, 90s, as you did when you were much younger.

Alan Graves: [00:02:41] Yes, exactly. And I think it’s about being content and overall feeling of well-being, isn’t it? A lifespan can be one hundred and twenty years, but if you’ve had chronic illness for the last 40, then that’s not going to be much fun, whereas I think most people would choose one hundred years, but all of them as healthy.

Peter Bowes: [00:02:58] Exactly. So let’s dive into that a little bit further and talk about your company. But before we do that? How did you get into this? You’re not a scientist by training, are you?

Alan Graves: [00:03:09] No, definitely not. I’m not nowhere near smart enough for that. I think I kind of fell into it, really. I was interested in it. I started following originally two professors in the longevity space one’s called Dr David Sinclair. Hopefully, most of your listeners will have heard of him. He’s done a fantastic book called Lifespan. If anybody’s interested in health and longevity and they haven’t read Lifespan, I would urge them to do so. I think it’s one of the best books in the industry, and the other person is Professor Vera Gorbunova, who is equally capable but a little bit less vocal. So, so she might be a little bit less known to some people, but again, her work on the sirtuins is absolutely fantastic. So I started following their work, originally looked to purchase some NMN and resveratrol, it was back then in 2019 for myself, and there was nothing out there that I could trust. Unfortunately, in the world of Amazon and eBay and all these platforms where anybody can set up and sell anything, there’s no quality controls. And then any companies that were that were trustworthy were just far too expensive. You’re talking thousands of dollars per month. So I began networking, speaking to some doctors, researchers, one of which was Professor Gorbunova over herself, got the pleasure of working with her these days, so that’s a dream come true. And yeah, Do Not Age was born, so we basically became the wedge between the researchers and the consumers. So the researchers are looking for funding and support, and the consumers are looking for a trustworthy company that they know that what’s on the label is actually going to be inside the product. And they know that the only products that they’re going to be, they’re going to be able to purchase from us are ones that will actually have the desired effect.

Peter Bowes: [00:05:01] And I think that’s an interesting point you just touched on there in terms of the money and the profits that your company makes and your philosophy towards using that money and investing in research. I’ll get into that as well in a second. I’m just curious. Bigger picture when you started following the work of the scientists that you mentioned. What was it in particular that really struck a chord with you that struck a nerve with you as as a young guy? You’re still in your early 30s, aren’t you? Now what was it that struck a chord about longevity?

Alan Graves: [00:05:33] I think I don’t think you can really talk about health without talking about longevity. I think the two are inextricably linked. And what really got me was how far along we are with the research already, there are so many things that we can do now already that will extend our healthy lifespan, and not many people are talking about them, not enough people are talking about them, they’re not readily available enough. They’re not in the mainstream shops. And I think that’s pretty disgraceful. So that was really where it came from.

Peter Bowes: [00:06:06] And do you have a vision as a younger person? And generally it’s older people that maybe in their late 40s and their 50s and they see their parents aging, they see what’s happening to their grandparents and they see, I suppose, it in real time and very close to them. What happens as you age? I through talking to a lot of people about this of different ages, younger people. It isn’t something that they think about as it relates to themselves, or it’s going to be like to get very old.

Alan Graves: [00:06:35] I lived a bit of a rock star lifestyle in my younger years, so the effects of aging caught up with me sooner than they will with most people. But as a young person in my late teens, early twenties, I was like, most people, you just assume you’re invincible because that’s how you feel most of the time, and you don’t really have too many aches and pains for the majority of us. But once I started feeling that it makes you wake up a little bit and think about it, I also saw, and I think everybody sees or most people see their older family members going through certain things you’ve got. My grandfather died because of dementia. And you know, we know that these things like dementia, heart disease, they take countless number of lives. You know, we’re going through a pandemic at the moment, and dementia and heart disease, even individually are so much more prevalent. The deaths attributed to those are so much more prevalent than those attributed to COVID. And yet the world goes crazy for the virus, but doesn’t seem to care about these things. And we know that they’re preventable. We know that they’re preventable now. And again, it’s not being talked about enough. We kind of just accept it. Oh, when you get old, you know, eventually you’ll get dementia. When you get old, oh, he’s got heart disease in his family, that’s going to happen. That’s not the case. You know, 20 percent of our longevity is genetic, but 80 percent is epigenetic or in a roundabout way, as we like to say. You can do something about it. So that’s four fifths. That’s a good chunk.

Peter Bowes: [00:08:04] Yeah. I’ve long been hoping that the effect of the pandemic and the virus and the fact that the virus isn’t over and that there will be more viruses in the future, that it will be to some extent, a wake up call to many people in terms of their everyday health, their immune system, their hopefully lack of underlying conditions. And we all know because we’ve heard that term so many times in the last couple of years that it is one of the huge risk factors to do very badly if you’re unfortunate enough to catch this virus.

Alan Graves: [00:08:33] Yeah, no, definitely. And obesity is another one as well, isn’t it? I mean, that is one that really, I would imagine most of your listeners wouldn’t be suffering from obesity, but that is one of the things that’s been linked very heavily with adverse effects of COVID.

Peter Bowes: [00:08:49] So let’s talk more about Do Not Age. And we touched on it just then, but it’d be interesting just to get a kind of a framework of how the organization the company works, and especially your relationship with the scientists that you mentioned and your really strong belief clearly in research and the fact that things don’t just end and you don’t create a product and things don’t change, clearly, you have a vision that looks to the future and that involves working closely with researchers.

Alan Graves: [00:09:17] Yeah. And I think it has to – that that was another thing that was was noticeable straight away before before do not age came about was there was a huge disconnect between what at the time was researchers who are generally trying to do the right thing and supplement sellers who are generally just trying to make as much profit as they can. And that’s why you see these brands with thousands and thousands of SKUs and various different products because they’ll just sell what people will buy. And I think the key difference with us is we only want to provide what works because if if you if you based it on the science and provided all the supplements that made a slight positive change on human health, you would have ten thousand products. So what we look for are the ones that really move the needle and make a big difference because people, you know, there’s no reason why people wouldn’t take 20 supplements a day, but people don’t want to take two hundred. What it boils down to is it’s about providing what works. And in order to do that, you need to work closely with the researchers because without them, we wouldn’t have anything.

Peter Bowes: [00:10:23] And that is the dilemma. Do I take dozens and dozens of different individual supplements or do I focus? And as I mentioned earlier, very often the defining issue is what’s it going to cost? Can I afford to pay for X, Y and Z in terms of supplements? And then the decision has to be, well, how do I decide which ones are best for me?

Alan Graves: [00:10:45] Yeah. So I know you mentioned it in the introduction. Our mission is to extend healthy lifespan for as many people as possible. And I think when you first hear that most people focus on the first half of it to extend healthy lifespan, and that’s what we were talking about with the researchers and re-investing, et cetera. But the second half for us is equally as important for as many people as possible. If you price those products too high, it’s going to create a socioeconomic barrier. And that’s not what we want. So what we’re trying to do is sort of democratize health and make it available to everybody. So I mean, if those of your listeners that are already using our products, they’ll probably know us for our MNN. That’s what we became known for because it was our most popular product and still is to this day. And when we first entered the market, we both increased the quality of NMN and decrease the price. So usually you can do one or the other if you’re a good company. But we managed to do both, which is a bit of a unicorn, and that’s why we became known as the world’s number one and a NMN supplier. Obviously, we do do a lot more than just that, but it’s a good example of what we do. We dropped the price quite dramatically, and the great knock on effect of that is because of the effects of competition in the marketplace, others were forced to drop their prices and just make, you know, there’s a difference between making a living and making a killing. And I think particularly when it comes to health and something that’s so important you should just make a living and not make a killing on people. And that’s what we’ve forced some other companies to do, which is great because now those people that aren’t in our audience, that don’t have exposure to our products and our messages that they’re still benefiting from a lower price.

Peter Bowes: [00:12:23] And something else that I know you feel strongly about is the fact that to cover every aspect of health, we don’t necessarily need supplementation, that there are other things that we can do that are free.

Alan Graves: [00:12:34] Oh yeah.

Peter Bowes: [00:12:35] And you’ve touched on exercise. Clearly, diet is important there. Sleep is crucially important. It’s a it’s a complex equation, but it doesn’t necessarily involve spending tons of money.

Alan Graves: [00:12:46] No. And whilst I think that certain supplementation could help all people, I would recommend that people I always say start with the free stuff, because if you’re not exercising correctly or dieting correctly and by dieting correctly, I don’t so much mean the types of foods. I’m more mean the timing of your eating, giving your body that time to rest. It’s quite clear now that three meals a day and some people have even more than that, but three square meals a day, which is what I was brought up on, and I think most people were isn’t particularly healthy for us because our body doesn’t have long enough time. Or it’s constantly digesting food, so all the energy from your body is going into digesting that food, so you need to give your body a break, and that is free. But that’s another reason why I think the message hasn’t been put out there because it’s free to do. So that means nobody’s going to profit from it. So then why would anybody try and portray that message? So tdhat’s again, what we’re trying to change. And so we always say that we give most of what we give out is free because it’s about information. A lot of it. You know, there are a lot of people that still don’t know these things, so we’re trying to spread that message. Exercise is the same. So there are some people who go, Yeah, I go for a walk every day and it’s like, That’s great and it really is great, but you need to start incorporating resistance training. The science looks like resistance training is the best from a longevity perspective.

Peter Bowes: [00:14:07] I actually often say to people, you know, we could finish and stop all of the research now, all of the scientific research, and just apply what we know about diet and exercise and supplementation. And you could increase. I don’t know what the number is, but you could increase the average healthspan lifespan of global populations quite significantly. If only we listened to what we know already and then save a tremendous amount of money on health care and especially late in life, health care on those conditions that could be prevented.

Alan Graves: [00:14:39] Yes, definitely. And I think I think the data shows at the minute it’s around about the 14 year mark, which I don’t think is to be sniffed at. You know, 14 years, if the average lifespan at the moment is around 80, an extra 14 years is quite a quite a big percentage. And as we mentioned, most of that is completely free. Not to mention the other benefits you know, the benefits you get from a dopamine perspective when you exercise, for example, or anyone out there that has tried fasting when you get it right. Sometimes it can be tough. Obviously you get hungry, etc. But that’s a good thing. But when you, for example, one of the things I like to do is fast for 12 hours or maybe a little bit longer if I can, and then do some really heavy exercise, which a lot of people in the past would go, Oh no, you’ve got to, you’ve got to fuel up and all this kind of stuff. But I feel great when I do that and I feel like I can go harder and longer.

Peter Bowes: [00:15:28] It’s interesting. Have you tried different types of fasting regimes? It’s certainly something…

Alan Graves: [00:15:33] Yes I have.

Peter Bowes: [00:15:33] …that I’ve looked in to a lot from, whether it’s a 16:8 or I haven’t done a 23:1 with some people, you know, fasting for 23 hours. That sounds a little extreme to me, but I’ve fasted for several days on a fasting mimicking diet. And like you, I’m becoming more and more interested in time restricted. 

Alan Graves: [00:15:50] Yeah, I think I think that’s where it’s at. Look, I should make it clear for anybody listening. If you’re just starting out, then please don’t do a twenty three one off the bat. You know, you should always make sure you’re you’re safe. I know people that have tried it and fainted and things like that, so you do have to be very careful. However, for me, I really struggled with the extended fasting. So once your body goes into a state of autophagy, which is like basically self eating very good for you tends to be around the 48 hour mark, I believe. So 48 hours of no food and just water, or maybe coffee and tea, but I really struggle with that. I really struggle with that. Whereas if I do like a twenty four, so twenty hours and not eating and and then get my calories in those four hours, I can manage that most of the time pretty well and it works well for me. But then if I try the the 48 hours, I know there’s extra benefits to that. But you know, I have a global organization to run and I’ve got, you know, family and things like that. So it’s, you know, some sometimes it’s not suitable, so you do have to be careful. I would like to be better at it, but I’ll stick with my 20 for half an hour.

Peter Bowes: [00:16:56] Yeah, the social implications of fasting, especially when you’re the only one, can be quite problematic, can’t they?

Alan Graves: [00:17:03] Yeah. And that’s that’s the general consensus still out there is oh, it’s not good. Can’t can’t be good for you, not eating, you know, I mean, my parents are still like that to this day. Get a good meal down yer. Get a good meal down yer, and it’s obviously it’s coming from a great place. But you know, the science says it’s that’s not always the right thing to do.

Peter Bowes: [00:17:21] Yeah, exactly. And just to reinforce what you said, I wouldn’t recommend. I don’t recommend anything. I like people to listen to the arguments and make it their own decisions. But crucially on this, I’d say speak to your doctor before you even consider any form of fasting. Because again, as I mentioned earlier, we’re all individual, very different human beings. We operate in different ways, and going without food for a significant period of time can be very dangerous for some people. So yeah, the advice is always get professional advice. I want to delve a little bit deeper into NMN because it’s something that you refer to as your flagship product that’s received a tremendous amount of attention over the last few years. We’ve talked about it before on the podcast, but I think it is worth going back to the basics and talking about what it is and how potentially it can be beneficial.

Alan Graves: [00:18:10] Yeah. So again, this is something we do try and do when we when we send out our emails is, you know, it’s about trying to translate the science to make it as easily digestible as possible because the majority of people aren’t scientists and researchers. So the two acronyms I think people should remember for this are NAD and NMN. So NMN is the ingredient and the product and the thing that you ingest and NAD is the molecule in the body that we’re trying to boost. In its simplest terms, NMN is the direct precursor to NAD. So just think about it this way, ingest NMN, the body turns it into more NAD. So as we age our natural levels of NAD decline, and that is we believe that’s associated with the increase in age related diseases. And they’ve done a lot of studies. We have some in humans now, there’s more ongoing. The vast majority of the studies have been done in mice, but obviously we share circa 98 percent of our DNA with them. So they’re good, they’re good models. And in fact, I believe it was a Professor Sinclair study where they gave them NMN in their drinking water at first for one cohort of mice. The other cohort had a placebo and the mice with the NMN ran 50 percent longer and… for 50 percent longer. So they had more endurance on the treadmill. And in fact, I believe one of the mice broke the treadmill because it hadn’t been programed to go that long because a mouse had never run that far before. And that’s obviously just one side of it. The endurance side. NAD is responsible for over four hundred different processes inside your cell, so people often refer to it as the fuel for the cells.

Peter Bowes: [00:19:53] That’s exactly what my next question was going to be in terms of specifically what it can help us as a human being to to do and to achieve and broadly speaking, its metabolism related and our ability to function, physically function, mentally function as well at a high level.

Alan Graves: [00:20:09] Yeah. So there’s been there’s been lots. I mean, it’s when you’re dealing with such an upstream angle, it really does have a lot of downstream beneficial effects when you boost your NAD using NMN. So I believe that it’s difficult for me to say with certainty because we don’t have the human clinical studies. But what I can say is that we have more than twenty thousand members taking this every single day, and some of the reported effects are absolutely incredible. Anything from the simple stuff which is more energy, better sleep through to better endurance, being able to lift heavier, being able to recover faster, that’s a really common one. And then right? The way through to people that have recovered from some pretty bad situations, like people losing their sight and things like that, now again, I will say these are not human clinical studies. This is reports from Do Not Age members. So all I’m doing is reporting about what people have said.

Peter Bowes: [00:21:06] Is it wise for people to make decisions based on reports that are not clinical trials? If someone wants to look into the minutia of this, could that make them a little skeptical that…

Alan Graves: [00:21:19] Yeah…

[00:21:20] …here’s the CEO of a company that sells these products, suggesting that there’s anecdotal evidence, but maybe not scientific evidence in humans?

Alan Graves: [00:21:28] Yeah, and I think everybody should make their own decision. We have a science page on the website for a reason with all the links to all the studies, and you can see some of them are human. Some of them aren’t. And that’s where every product, not just NMN. I think it’s up to everybody to make their own decision. I certainly don’t think anybody should make a decision purely based on anecdotal evidence. Everybody is an individual. There are some people that wouldn’t like to do that. You know, obviously, I’m a big proponent for this ingredient. But there are still people in my close family circle that choose not to take it. There are also some that do, and they feel the benefits. But there’s also some that say, Nope, I won’t do it until my local GP tells me to do it. And that’s, you know, that’s completely fine. I completely understand that.

Peter Bowes: [00:22:11] And for anyone who has delved into this science, there is another way of boosting NAD and that is with NR, and perhaps that is older science and perhaps better known. Can you explain or distinguish between NR and NMN?

Alan Graves: [00:22:28] Again, I don’t want to confuse or bore people too much, but NMN is nicotinamide mono nucleotide, so we see that as the direct precursor to NAD, whereas NA is nicotinamide riboside, which is another precursor to NAD. But the way that we and both taking both will increase your energy levels, let’s just, you know, let’s just make that clear which one is superior is still, still hangs in the balance. You know, there are people on both sides of the fence. I prefer to sit on that fence. I mean, the one thing I will say is I take NMN myself personally, so that’s the one I choose. But you know, there are lots of people taking it all with having positive, you know, benefits from it. But the key is, like I say, that both of them do raise NAD. And one of the things that we do is, as I said earlier, we only want to provide things at work. So we’ve now got an NAD test kit so anyone can test their NAD levels from home. And it’s a simple, a simple pinprick on your finger. Drop the blood onto a piece of paper. We then provide a liquid. You put that liquid on, it preserves the blood sample, but it’s it’s just a little it’s a tiny sliver so that it classes is just a piece of paper. When you send it in the mail, send it in to the laboratory laboratory, the laboratory then uses some more liquid to be able to read the NAD level of your blood and then you get a certificate. Then what tends to happen is you’ll then take some NMN or NR or whatever it is you choose, and then you can test again and see where your energy levels at. Because and I think that’s the future as well is personalized health care.

Peter Bowes: [00:24:00] And are there widely accepted levels, normal levels for NAD that people can use us as a reference? And I guess those in quotes, normal levels change according to age, so people can essentially cross-reference the results that they get from a test like yours and what scientists around the world believe is normal.

Alan Graves: [00:24:23] There are, but we choose not to give them out. One thing we do do on the test is we have a kind of a red area where we say you should really be boosting and a green area where we say, if you’re in here, you’re generally going to be OK NAD-wise. But the green area is quite… So I’m at… Me personally, I’m at the very top end of that because that’s where I choose to be and where I feel the best and where I believe my energy’s optimized. 

Peter Bowes: [00:24:47] Well out of interest. Where did you start? Did you take a test before you started using the product?

Alan Graves: [00:24:52] Yes, I did, and I believe it’s online somewhere. It was, I think it was around 20 nanomoles. Again, I don’t want to get too much into the science, but and now it’s around the hundred nanomoles mark. So it’s quite a large improvement, as you can see. But I want to clarify as well. It wasn’t just taking any NMN. There was also a couple of lifestyle changes I did. You can boost your NAD in a smaller fashion by things like when you eat, sleep, cetera, things like that, because NAD and circadian rhythm are again very closely linked.

Peter Bowes: [00:25:25] So when people get the results of your test, it’s in a range as opposed to a number?

Alan Graves: [00:25:31] No. So they do get an exact number, but the range of what is we would deem as worrying and the range of what we would deem as acceptable is relatively large. And I think that the key thing and this is what we say to everybody that takes an NAD test is you should measure yourself against yourself. So rather than going, well, how am I for a fifty eight year old man or woman or whatever it may be, you should say I was at this level. Now I would like to get to higher than that level.

Peter Bowes: [00:26:03] And you mentioned your own personal experience. How has it changed, how you feel and over what period of time?

Alan Graves: [00:26:10] So I’m going from memory here. So I think it was about a six or six week period or eight week period, something like that that I sort of made the changes. But before I started it, I stopped taking the NMN so that I would kind of get a natural baseline if that makes sense. But I don’t actually recommend people do that, but I just did it for so that I could show people what the what the NAD test kit is for. And I think some of the things I noticed were again sleep. I was really struggling with sleep and when I wasn’t taking it. And so the sleep has improved. Energy. And I think again, I mentioned it earlier on. It’s that overall sense of well-being. It’s feeling like your best self for want of a better phrase.

Peter Bowes: [00:26:56] Let me just dig into the sleep issue a little bit. What aspect of sleep did you struggle with? Was it getting to sleep or was it staying asleep? Was it getting deep sleep or enough REM?

Alan Graves: [00:27:07] For me, it was getting to sleep. I never had an issue staying asleep, but it was always getting to sleep a little bit of insomnia. And as I was growing up, I was kind of told, Oh, you’re just a night owl. But we see now. Although it’s preferable to sleep in the same patterns as the sun, when the sun goes down and wake when it arises, it’s not as important. What’s more important is consistency and getting into a pattern so that you’re going sleep at roughly the same time, waking up at roughly the same time, getting enough sleep and getting deep sleep. Matt Walker, the guru of Sleep, @SleepDiplomat on Twitter. If anyone’s on Twitter, he’s recently shared a study that showed how closely linked sleepers to DNA repair. And I mean, a lot of people say aging basically is just DNA damage, so that shows you how important sleep is. So. And that’s certainly something that people should optimize.

Peter Bowes: [00:28:00] So I often instinctively skeptical about these things, and I think that’s a good way to be when you’re talking about lifestyle interventions or pharmaceutical interventions or supplemental interventions in terms of your diet, you’re going to send me an NAD test kit and I am intrigued to go through the process. It’s something I haven’t looked in. It looked into many things, but not NAD. Take the test, look at the results, take the supplementation and then maybe you and I talk again in what, three to six months time. And then I can answer the questions that I’ve just been asking you.

Alan Graves: [00:28:37] Yeah. And I think that’s the proof is in the pudding. And I think what the great thing is going to be is we’re going to do the NAD testing and that’s where the focus is going to be. But by the time we come to talk again, what you’ll want to talk about is how you’re feeling. And I think that’s the great thing about it. Yeah,

Peter Bowes: [00:28:52] Yeah. Because for the vast majority of people, clearly it is how you’re feeling now and clearly there’s a longevity component to all of this. But ultimately it is about the here and now and how we’re living and enjoying our lives in the present moment. And clearly it’s important how we’re going to be in five or 10 years time, but it’s the here and now. So I’m curious to see how that works out.

Alan Graves: [00:29:15] I’m looking forward to it.

Peter Bowes: [00:29:16] I’m interested and it will be a fascinating experiment for me. Let’s talk more generally about what you do. I’m very interested in your vision. This is still a relatively new company and relatively new in terms of a venture for you just a few years. What is your vision? Five, 10, 20 years ahead, not only personally, but for the company and for the science.

Alan Graves: [00:29:40] So I think we we start to focus more on morbidity now. So the number of years that you’re living with sort of chronic illnesses, because what I’d like to see maybe 10 years is a little bit steep, but definitely within 20 years I’d like to see morbidity almost completely eradicated so that nobody’s having to live for extended periods of time in pain or be around, be around when they don’t want to be around because there are a lot of people in that kind of state and it’s it’s really sad to see what one of the most beneficial things one of the best parts of my job satisfaction is hearing the feedback from people that have had either chronic illnesses or pains or, you know, somebody that’s maybe in their seventies that says, now I feel like I did when I was in my forties. And thank you so much and all that kind of stuff, because it’s just that for me makes it all worthwhile. I think it’s it’s absolutely brilliant and that’s what I want. Basically, that’s what I originally we were focused a little bit on lifespan, and I think we should now just focus on making people’s years on Earth healthy. And then I believe it’s my belief that lifespan will extend as a result of that anyway.

Peter Bowes: [00:30:54] This is compressed morbidity that you’re talking about a term that’s that’s often used in science. And I think it’s a it’s a great term because it very vividly describes, you know, compression getting smaller. That’s small a period of time as opposed to a decade. I think so many of us can relate to having seen people that we know that a much older in their lives, but end with sickness for the final few years, whether that’s at home or in a in a nursing home. And the idea is that that is compressed to maybe a period of a few days, who knows ultimately of ill health. I mean, clearly things are going to decline at some point and then you die 

Alan Graves: [00:31:32] To link it back to the sort of analogy I gave with the pandemic earlier. Imagine if aging wasn’t a thing. And then tomorrow a virus swept around the world, a virus of aging that hit certain people of a certain age and gave them all these frailties and diseases and sickness. Imagine how we would react to that, we would react in a very extreme way, wouldn’t we? But because it’s always been around, it’s just kind of been accepted. And I think it’s it looks to be quite clear now that aging can be reversed, the biological clock can be reversed and it’s just a matter of finessing that and doing it safely in humans. And that will come whether it’s 20 years or 40 years. But in the meantime, we use what Do Not Age’s job is, is to use what is available to us now to extend people’s healthy lifespan until we have these kind of, you know, gene editing or whatever it may be that gets us to fully wind the clock back.

Peter Bowes: [00:32:31] You made an important distinction there between aging, reversing aging and the biological clock reversing. And I think it’s always – I always like to try to talk about aging in a positive sense that we’re all moving forward will all be a year older in 12 months time, and that is the aging process. But biologically, we don’t have to be what is commonly accepted. And if you look across populations, the average health of someone who is 40 or 50 years old that it is biologically possible to have a body that is decades, sometimes younger than your chronological age.

Alan Graves: [00:33:07] Yes, exactly. And like we said, there’s a myriad of ways that people can do that right now available to you today. Most of them are free, some of them cost a little bit of money. But in my opinion, none of them cost as much as the cost of aging.

Peter Bowes: [00:33:21] One thing I haven’t asked you about is regulation of these kinds of products and safety issues and specifically talking about NAD, you’re sending me an NAD testing kit. This isn’t something that I would go into if I thought that there were acknowledged and recognized dangers involved. As a company, as a CEO selling these kinds of products, what kinds of regulations do you have to abide by in terms of safety?

Alan Graves: [00:33:48] Well, unfortunately, as I mentioned before we entered the market, it was literally like the Wild West. It’s, you know, we’ve we’ve pulled everybody socks up and there are some slightly better companies now, but there is also still a lot of bad products out there. So in answer to your question, the regulation is very, very loose. And that’s why we have such stringent internal standards because our standards will always be higher than whatever we get, wherever we were set by any government anyway, because it’s people’s health at risk. All of our products are tested in humans before they’re put on the market – every single one. And obviously, we’re registered with GMP, which is something called Good Manufacturing Practices. It’s just kind of a certification that lets people know that you’re following the right procedures. But again, even that is a, you know, our internal standards are more stringent anyway.

Peter Bowes: [00:34:41] And just as a closing question, what are your own personal longevity aspirations? Knowing what you know about the science and acknowledging that you’re not a scientist by training, but clearly you’ve looked into this in tremendous amount of detail. Do you have a longevity goal for yourself and do you live your maybe you could give us an idea of how you live, how you live your life accordingly to try to reach that goal?

Alan Graves: [00:35:06] Yeah. So I do what I can, but I’m not. I’ll never be militant about it. You know, if there’s a meal with a few too many calories in or if one day I want to have breakfast as well, then I will do it as long as you’re doing the right things most of the time. I think I think you’ll be fine. Obviously, I take a raft of supplements because I know what’s gone into them. I know the science behind them and I know the benefits. Exercise is something that I’m very big on. I let it slip over Christmas, so I’ll be I’ll be getting back on it shortly. But yeah, I think for me, my long term goal is to live a full life. And I would rather live to eighty five and not have any morbidity than live to a hundred and ten and suffer quite a lot. So I think that’s my main goal is to stave that off. And I don’t know where the science is going to be because it’s getting we know more and more each year, so it’s getting more and more exciting. We are relatively near to that tipping point now, which is a very exciting place to be. But I say, like I said, I’d rather live a full life till I’m eighty five. But then again, if you ask me eighty four, I might have a different answer.

Peter Bowes: [00:36:24] Alan Graves, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. We will, as I just mentioned, we will talk again. I think it’s fairly obvious you and I share this passion for following the science and a little bit of self experimentation as well. And as we move forward, we’re going to be hearing on this podcast, the name of your company quite a bit. Do Not Age as an affiliate partner. It’s the kind of relationship that is really the life blood of many podcasts in terms of funding, and hopefully it’s a beneficial relationship for everyone with LLAMA as a discount code for some of your products, maybe you could explain just for our listeners how that would work.

Alan Graves: [00:37:03] Yeah, so people can have a look at the website. Peruse, find out a bit more about us. Look at our science page. I definitely recommend people start at the science page, then look through the products. If you would like to purchase anything, the discount code LLAMA L L A M A will give a 10 percent discount to your listeners, so it’s added value that way. And then off the back of that Do Not Age will be supporting Peter’s podcast and I think, like I say, it becomes a win win win. And one thing I’d like to say is that if anybody has any questions about anything, Do Not Age is doing, any of the research, any of the product and ingredients. Just email [email protected] and you will always get a response.

Peter Bowes: [00:37:45] Excellent. And I will put all of those details into the show notes for this episode, you’ll find them at the Live Long and Master Aging podcast. That’s LLAMApodcast.com and you can contact me. Social media DMs are always open. I’m @PeterBowes Allan once again. Thank you so much. We’ll talk again and thank you for listening.

Alan Graves: [00:38:06] Thanks, Peter. Appreciate it.

The Live Long and Master Aging podcast, a HealthSpan Media LLC production, shares ideas but does not offer medical advice.  If you have health concerns of any kind, or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should consult your doctor.