What if the reason I’d been successful so quickly was that I was destined to die young? Once I allowed myself to dwell on those irrational fears, my mind kept creating more of them.
we’ve been given all of this amazing equipment for free—which might explain why many people don’t take such good care of it!
to operate on the outer edge of what’s humanly possible.
I’m not telling you this to impress you. My point is to impress upon you just how critical it is for me to keep my body in absolute peak condition.
He refused to recommend another expert. As I’d learned from Ginny’s triumph over cancer, nobody has a monopoly on medical wisdom.
And I said, “The other doctor said I have to have surgery and now you’re telling me I have to have drugs.”
And this beautiful man said with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes, “Tony, you’re right. The butcher wants to butcher. The baker wants to bake. The surgeon wants to cut.
And I’m an endocrinologist, so I want to give you a drug. But here’s the thing: We’ll just have more certainty if you take the drug.” And I responded, “But we can’t be certain about all the side eects of this drug, either. There’s no sign of any current issues with my heart, and I’ve obviously had this condition since I was a teenager. What if I just did nothing?”
And the doctor said, “Well, if you get yourself tested regularly, I guess that’s an option.”
the doctor told me. “I know bodybuilders who’d have to spend $1,200 a month to get what you’re getting for free!”
Doctors can be sincere and sincerely wrong.
In 2017, Harvard Medical School reported that the half-life of medical knowledge was 18 to 24 months—and predicted it was headed for 73 days by the time you’re reading this!
pulse electronicmagnetic frequency (PEMF) technology. Numerous studies have conrmed that it can speed the healing of bones by up to 50 percent.
I was existing, but I wasn’t living.
Peter Diamandis. Growing up, Peter dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But his parents wanted him to be a doctor. So, after graduating from MIT with a dual degree in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering, he earned his MD from Harvard Medical School.
We’re excited to play a part in accelerating their efforts to save millions of lives.
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” —LAO TZU
some people are longevity-seekers, but they don’t just want to live longer. They want an extraordinary quality of life.
FDA’s intensive approval process, from Phase 1 (is it safe?) to Phase 2 (is it effective?) and Phase 3 (is it effective at scale and better than what’s already out there?).
basic building blocks for a person’s well-being: nutrition, fasting, sleep, and exercise.
1. Heart Disease
2. Stroke
3. Cancer
4. The chronic pain that comes with inammation and autoimmune disease
5. Obesity and diabetes
6. Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline
achieve more, and share more
All told, well over a million people have seen their lives transformed— or even rescued—by stem cells. This chapter is special to me because I am one of them.
U.S. mass market—to transform reactive sick care into proactive, precision healthcare.
stem cells are the body’s repair kit. They can repair or replace more specialized tissues in our skin, bone, muscle, blood, retinas, liver, heart, and brain.
out of a patient’s own adipose (fat) tissue or bone marrow. In a perfect world, Bob said, we’d be calling in the cavalry from the most abundant source of fresh stem cells: the placenta, after a healthy birth.
He knew of a clinic in Panama that had permission to treat patients with the next best thing to placental cells: high-quality stem cells from umbilical cords.
$10,000 up to $25,000. Knees or ankles or elbows could often be treated for as little as $5,000, but my rotator cuff was a lot more involved. Though I trusted Bob explicitly, I had a moment of sticker shock: “Up to twenty-ve thousand dollars, are you kidding me?”
Then I did what I do in these situations. I evaluate the risk-reward proposition.
Bob left Cornell and founded Lifebank USA, which used patented technology to harvest and test and preserve cord blood and placental stem cells in nitrogen-cooled freezers. The service was oered to new parents who wanted to “deposit” the stem cells of their newborn. Those stem cells may be used in the future to regrow organs or repair damage. Talk about a rainy-day account!
pluripotent stem cells. What does pluripotent mean? These are cells that can develop into almost any tissue or organ: skin or brain, heart or bones, lungs or pancreas or bladder. By contrast, cord blood stem cells— extracted from umbilical cord blood—can dierentiate only into dierent types of blood cells.
Bob took this information and built a startup called Anthrogenesis. Then he merged it with Celgene, the world’s largest biotechnology company. Over the next seven years, as Bob ran Celgene’s cellular therapeutics division, he uncovered more about cellular medicine’s potential to treat diabetes, Crohn’s disease, skin wounds and burns
After the second day’s treatment, I had what’s often called a “cytokine response.” I felt chills and shaking, but I wasn’t scared.
Besides, I’ve got a passion for hanging out with geniuses. In my experience, something rubs o when you’re around people this brilliant. Proximity is power!
The FDA is hamstrung by outmoded tools and guidelines. They’re also walking a knife’s edge between protecting the public and fostering innovation.
The treatment is not some magical one-o that lasts a lifetime. I’ve given myself the benet of regular tune-ups, a simple stem cell infusion once or twice a year.
Fountain Life, has set out to create an unassailable standard for healthspan optimization—from scratch. Our mission rests on three pillars:
• The first is diagnostics. By leveraging the latest technology, you’ll see what’s happening inside your body while any problem is still manageable, before it becomes a major challenge. (More on this in our next chapter.)
• The second pillar is all about performance. Whether you’re a professional athlete, an everyday workout end, or a weekend warrior, Fountain Life can guide you toward a practical plan to become your best self in body and mind, with maximum vitality!
• The third pillar is the latest in regenerative treatments, personalized to your diagnostics and performance goals and how they fit together. These include accessing stem cell therapies, NAD+ precursor supplementation, hormone treatments, placental exosomes, 11 and more.
IF YOU WANT TO FIND TREASURE, YOU NEED A MAP
In fact, according to Dr. Bob, experts say that it pays to begin stem cell treatments before a crisis strikes—say, by age 45 or 50. You want to kill the monster when it’s small, not wait until it grows into Godzilla.
These diagnostics can help you understand what’s going on inside your body with precision and alert you to any issues early enough so you can take quick and decisive action while the problem is small and easy to solve. You can think of these diagnostic tools as your check-engine light.
a 2003 report from the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., estimated that the time between discovery to adoption in clinical care can average seventeen years!
Consider that optimal testosterone levels for a male can range widely from 250 to around 1,000 ng/dl (nanograms per deciliter). Here’s the problem: No one will tell you to seek out hormone replacement if you’re slightly above the base level of 250, but some men feel tired, listless, and lose their drive unless their levels are between 700 and 900 or higher
But there are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to arm themselves with information and those who nd knowledge scary. I have to admit, I used to fall into the second category. What if they nd something small and overreact, making a mountain out of a medical molehill? Sticking your head in the sand isn’t the answer.
Ignoring a problem, or not even being aware of it in the first place, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Ask yourself: Would you rather know about an issue early on, when treatment is effective, easy, and cheap? Or much later on when you have few options for effective treatments?
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
If there’s a heart attack looming in your future three, five, ten years down the road, this new AI-guided approach to CCTA—coronary CT angiography—called Cleerly can detect the warning signs so that you can take action to prevent it.
You get more than 150 gigabytes of medical data analyzed by AI and interpreted by a doctor.
a real estate investor in his late fifties who appeared to be the picture of health.
Cleerly’s unequivocal results gave him a new lease on life.
While GRAIL can search for more than 50 different types of cancer with a simple blood test, like any test it isn’t perfect. It can’t detect every cancer type, especially brain or kidney cancer. But that’s where the use of full-body MRI comes in.
routine full-body MRI to detect cancer or other problems, such as aneurysms
That study has determined that there’s an 89 percent chance of survival for early stage detection compared to a 21 percent chance of survival with late-stage detection. Basically, the chances of a full recovery at Stage 1 are much, much better than they are at Stage 4.
Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp. These companies have developed low-cost and accurate means to analyze and report on over 50 different blood biomarkers to help you and your physician evaluate whether or not your body is operating within normal parameters. What are these blood tests analyzing? Everything from your vitamin nutrient levels, your insulin and glucose markers, and your cholesterol, to inammatory markers, hormone levels, and whether you have heavy metals in your system.
Dr. Hector Lopez, calls hormone optimization therapy (HOT)
The doctor told me, “A lot of people are misdiagnosed with dementia when really it’s mercury poisoning.”
it’s really important for you to get a toxic metals test. It’s no big deal—just a simple blood test. The company that detected my mercury poisoning is called Quicksilver Scientic.
One in two women today over 50 will fracture a bone due to osteoporosis.
dual X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) bone density + metabolic scan and is the most advanced test for measuring osteoporosis.
The newest breakthrough in mapping your microbiome, called GI-map microbial assay plus
When a mouse’s klotho gene was “knocked out,” its lifespan was shortened by 80 percent.
it’s where the rubber meets the road.
more than two of three deaths come from one or more of the Big Six: heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.
the 85-and-up demographic was 630 times more likely to die of COVID than people in their 20s
the 85-and-up demographic was 630 times more likely to die of COVID than people in their 20s. The older people had lethal underlying conditions like heart disease or diabetes, or what doctors call “comorbidities”
“What we’ve got here… is failure to communicate.” —CAPTAIN, the warden in Cool Hand Luke
The epigenetic joystick that controls how the genome functions is more powerful than the genetic code itself.
humanity will be liberated from age-related disease.
As blood flow diminishes, tissues and organs get less oxygen. Waste products build up. Wounds heal more slowly. We lose bone (osteoporosis) and most of all muscle mass. This helps to explain why physical performance peaks in most people in our twenties
MIB-626 is a proprietary, synthetically manufactured molecule that is similar to, but not identical to NMN. It’s being developed and tested by a company called Metrobiotech
Sinclair reports, mice given NMN (that NAD+ precursor) “don’t get heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, until sometimes 20 percent later in their life. When super-old mice finally do get struck down by chronic disease, they don’t linger on in misery. In a study of 700 people past their 100th birthday, he found an unexpected phenomenon: “At the end of their life, they are sick for a very short time.” A “longevity dividend” translates to fewer and shorter hospital stays and far smaller medical bills. If we could push back the typical onset of chronic disease—say from people’s 60s to their 90s—the U.S. alone would save billions of dollars a year.
the three stages of all truths? Here’s how it goes:
1. First they are ridiculed.
2. Then they are ferociously opposed.
3. And then finally they are accepted as self-evident.
“a perfect track record” in turning her visions into reality.
“The person who makes no mistakes is making the biggest mistake,” she says, “because they’re just standing still and doing nothing.”
50,000 people are managing the condition, the vast majority enjoying normal lives. If they can’t afford the price of the drug, United Therapeutics provides it for free.
XENOTRANSPLANTATION: OFF-THE-SHELF ORGANS the organs of an adult pig are close to the size and shape of their human equivalents. (Chimpanzees might be even closer, but they’re a protected species.) Americans eat about 130 million pigs a year. Just 1 percent of that total would more than meet the country’s entire demand for replacement organs. Why couldn’t genetic engineering delete the pig proteins that trigger rejection? Why not humanize the pig? She teamed up with Craig Venter, the master of genomic sequencing, and invested in research on editing pig genomes with CRISPR
“What most people thought was impossible, they’re now realizing is inevitable.”
“If you’re a maker, you’ve got to make it until you break it, and then you’ve got to make it till it’s better than that, until it’s flawless. And then you’re making millions of them.” —MARTINE ROTHBLATT
The human body contains around 600 lymph nodes, aka lymph glands. What is a lymph node? It’s a small organ that our immune system uses to manufacture T cells and fight o infections by trapping bacteria or viruses. That’s why your lymph nodes may swell when you have a cold. They need to get larger to manufacture more immune cells.
Ludwig nearly died post-procedure when his souped-up T cells broke down seven pounds of tumor in a matter of weeks! When dead cancer cells pile up faster than the kidneys can clear them, the result can be a life-threatening stew of potassium, phosphorus, and uric acid
Parkinson’s in the U.S. alone, and 60,000 more are diagnosed each year. It’s a brutal brain disease that primarily attacks the motor system. uncontrollable shakes and tremors. Parkinson’s is caused by the loss of neurons that manufacture dopamine, a natural chemical messenger that controls our muscles’ movements. Dopamine also helps to regulate our sleep patterns, our recall, our appetite, and our mood and self-control.
Peter Sisco, the bodybuilding pioneer behind static contraction. You see, the fastest and most efficient way to increase strength is to hold the maximum weight you can handle in a static position.
What most people don’t realize is that the strength of your bones determines how big your muscles can become. The bones are usually the limiting factor. What’s most addicting with OsteoStrong is that you only work out once every week or ten days, and you get to see the improvements continuously, if you don’t improve, you actually take more rest.
“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” —EUBIE BLAKE
I have 40 percent more volume of hair, and it’s thicker than it was! And all it takes is rubbing a few natural ingredients onto my scalp before bed each night and using Lars’s customized shampoo whenever I shower.
even though women live statistically longer than men, they spend more of their lives in poor health (thirty-four years on average) compared to men (twenty-six years).
Freenome will launch its test in 2022. It’s administered every three years and is expected to cost $500. If Freenome can provide an easy, aordable, laxative-free test for colorectal cancer, sign me up!
has even been shown to reduce breast cancer cells by up to 80 percent? 10 The lowly broccoli sprout is a superfood that contains sky-high levels of glucoraphanin, a precursor to the cancer-busting phytochemical sulforaphane. In fact, broccoli sprouts are up to fty times more potent than broccoli alone.
TREATING CROHN’S WITH BIOELECTRONICS —is based on electricity.
I got tested by an audiologist, Stacy O’Brien, who conrmed the issue. “It’s not the hearing loss alone that drives the link to developing dementia,” she told me. “It’s if the hearing loss is NOT treated.” It was easy to put my vanity aside when I found some hearing devices that are literally invisible and built with AI technology.
Data suggests that crossword puzzles and Sudoku don’t do much to ward off mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s, but learning a new language or practicing the piano, on the other hand, seems to confer real benefits.
longevity and regenerative medicine, venturing to Vatican City, piggybacking on a preexisting event called United to Cure, organized by Robin Smith, MD, and hosted by the Pope.
Humans evolved 300,000 years ago on the savannas of Africa in a world that was local and linear.
Take thirty linear steps, one… two… three… four… ve, etc., and you end up about thirty meters (just over ninety-eight feet) down the road. But if I ask you to take thirty exponential steps—where an exponential is a simple doubling… one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on— you’ll end up a billion meters away (about 621,000 miles)—put dierently, you’ll circumnavigate Earth twenty-six times! Predicting exponential growth is not intuitive.
• Double something ten times, you get a 1,000-fold increase
• Double something twenty times, you get a million-fold increase
• Double something thirty times, you get a billion-fold increase
when 4G mobile service rolled out its 2009 offering, it offered 100 Mbps speeds. A decade later in 2019, 5G began deployment offering speeds of 10 Gpbs (one hundred times faster).
Go has a game tree complexity of 10^360—it’s chess for superheroes.
AlphaFold got twenty-five of the potential forty-three protein-folding problems right. The second-place team managed a meagre three! How accurate was AlphaFold’s prediction? Incredibly accurate, within the width of an atom (or 0.1 of a nanometer)! it would open the door to an entire new avenue of low-cost and accurate drug development.
They’re also in the early stages of using AI to predict the outcomes of clinical trials in advance of the trial. If successful, this technique will enable researchers to strip a bundle of time and money out of the traditional testing process.
Dr. Sinclair answers, “I hope we’ll have proof of concept done in the next two to three years. And if that works, we’ll go as fast as the FDA allows.”
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —VIKTOR FRANKL
she was so intense that spit was flying out of her mouth as she shouted about what had happened. After a few minutes, I interrupted and said, “Ma’am, I see you’re angry, and I understand. But can I ask you this question?”
She said, “What is it?”
I said, “I’m just curious, I want to ask you, how often do you get angry?”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “Well, do you get angry once a month, once a week, or multiple times a day?”
And she glared at me and said, “What kind of question is that?”
I said, “The way you’re responding tells me you get angry more often than you might realize.”
And she said, “Well, I do get angry a lot. I can’t help myself.” I asked her what anger meant to her. And she looked at me and started speaking with intensity, and then a small smile crept in at the corner of her mouth