323. Secret Way To Spot Health Issues BEFORE They Arise Using SystemAge Testing
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The information provided in this podcast episode is for entertainment purposes and is not medical advice. If you have any questions about your health, contact a medical professional. This content is strictly the opinions of Lucas Owen and is for informational and entertainment purposes only.

The references, claims and scientific information linked to any products are only applicable to those listeners who are based in the US. If you are outside the US, this information does not apply to you. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult with their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions.

Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Today I'm super excited because we'll be exploring and understanding the rate at which our organs are aging and so I'm joined in the studio with two out of the three co-founders at Generation Lab. We have Michael Susswell and Alina Liu. Welcome to the podcast. Hello, thank you. Thanks for having us. Awesome, awesome. So maybe

Let's get into the details about this particular technology. First of all, my audience is very interested in understanding the rate at which they're aging. So first of all, do you want to sort of start out by mentioning a little bit about this term epigenetics and sort of break that down for my audience? Totally. So think of what 23andMe is testing is the heart rate of the company. We call that as DNA. That's the representation of what is the color of your skin, of your

eyes, that's never changing is the hardware of the body. But the software of the body is always changing. That's how your genes are being expressed. So your lifestyle, you're having chronic stress, you're traveling a lot, all of these are gonna like exchange, actually making expression of their DNA itself being changed. And that is called epigenetic, like how your genes are being expressed.

the things of your body that change with your habits, with your lifestyle, as opposed to the things that will never change. And so for the things that we care about, it's, it's very, uh, worth time to check it every so often to see how you're performing. And whenever Alina and I decide to do something to ourselves, like a do a sauna or she's taking some new supplement, we like to do a before and after. And this way we can see how our, uh,

DNA is reacting and how our bodies are aging due to the new behaviors that we're doing. And 80% of how you're aging is dependent on epigenetic rather than your DNA itself. So it's very important to get your epigenetic being tested.

Yeah, and also I would say this is another step beyond just your regular blood testing. So a lot of my audience is probably already doing blood testing maybe every three to six months. And they're also doing different interventions. They're trying to track whether or not, you know, their gym training is affecting their testosterone or if they're, you know, so this is, you guys have basically built out and they're exploring one step further looking at how it's affecting our, you know, genetic expression.

Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And we're, you know, I like to think two steps, but we'll go with one step for the, for the purpose of this. There's really, there's really a value in understanding how quickly your different organs are aging and getting a warning sign before something happens. So, you know, we've had a lot of examples, but before we get to those, just, just in general, it's kind of like the experience of driving a car.

And you have a, your brake light will pop on and you don't know why exactly, but it, you know, it could be the brake pads or the brake drums or your electrical system. It could be any number of things, but we know go to the mechanic and get your brakes checked.

And that's essentially what we're able to do is to see across the body 19 different systems, how they're performing and what is the thing that you should be most concerned about and working on the most for improvement. There's no sense of trying to improve your liver if your liver is not as relatively healthy as compared to your brain. And so it's really about unlocking knowledge about your own body and then doing something about it.

In terms of how it compares to some of the other, I mean, there's quite a few genetic tests on the market. You mentioned the labs, for example. And I think Function Health is a really cool company. They have a really cool product. They make it much easier and cheaper for you to do traditional lab work at home or in your local community. And I think that's extremely valuable. But what we're doing is quite different.

Alina is really the biologist though. So maybe I'll let her talk a little bit about it and then I'll try to add some color. Yes. It's very different. So compared to what LabCorp or other diagnostic company that's doing for blood work, that's for sick care. What it means that if anything, that's showing up that you're bad, that means you're really bad.

bad, like you're already entering into disease stage because for sick care, we're detecting if you're having disease or not. And if all of those biomarker, like your glucose level is out of range, that means you're having diabetes.

Now you're done. But now we are talking about health tests, which means we can actually detect signals before they're turning into disease. We can actually detect the early signals of accelerating of the aging down to each different organs in your body, your brain, your muscle, your liver, your heart, your reproductive system, inflammation before they're turning into disease. So it's not, it's not early detection. What we've created is pre-detection before there's a problem,

can we see some signal before something develops? And as Alina was saying, the FDA says you don't have diabetes until you hit a certain threshold. So you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, and then, oh shit, you got diabetes. So we really don't think that's a good way of going about managing our own health. So this is really what this does, is it allows us to know

What's going on before there's a real accident about to happen? Yeah. And it actually took us 20 years to understand how aging is happening in your body down to each different organs. And most importantly, you're not doing the test because for us to tell you that you're old, you're doing the test because you want to know what's next and what is the best way for you to reversing it. So that's a very important next step that we will guide you hand by hand by telling you that, Hey, rather than eating reprimiscent,

NAD+ is good enough for you. Rather than doing stem cells, you might consider plasma exchange because there's a lot of inflammation in our body that will actually inhibit stem cells from regenerating. So there's a lot of side-by-side, very detailed action plan that we will guide you and also match you with a longevity clinic to guide you what is your longevity supposed to be looking like.

Yeah. So, you know, as you take a report, you can expect to see things like, Hey, we, you know, you might try this, you might try that as recommendations, but, but then you also get connected with a real physician who will say, okay,

Here's your results. Here's what I understand. Tell me about your life. They'll be able to go a little bit more into your family history, a little bit more into your daily activities, and then really come up with an action plan for you in which you'll have your own dashboard and all of the things you and your doctor talk about will be there for you to access anytime. So that's essentially what we've built. And it's really, at least from my side, I really want to see a center of truth for all the things that are out there.

And this is one of my biggest passions with this diagnostic is, you know, I don't know if some people call me a biohacker, some people don't. But whatever you call me, I really sometimes am confused about what is working with people and what is not. And there seems to be a study for everything. And I think part of it is different people react to different therapies differently.

And so something that works for me is not necessarily gonna work for Alina. And I think we've seen that in many cases. Some people have really rich diets of fruits and vegetables

And taking a supplement, I'm not sure if I should say names here or not, but maybe that supplement isn't particularly good for you because you're getting all those nutrients already. Whereas someone who just eats birthday cake every day, I'm talking to her, maybe that supplement would be healthy. So it really, it is a personal thing. And this is one of the passionate sides of this product that we have is it allows you to get into the details of your life and what you need.

What's really exciting about it, Michael, is the fact that it's like, I mean, the future of medicine was always going to go down the route of more personalized, more precision. And what you guys have basically built out here is the ability for people to see in real time changes in their quality of life and also analyze the effectiveness of certain interventions. Because as you said,

Like going into a sauna three times a week for Alina may be more beneficial, you know, for her versus yourself. Or maybe somebody might benefit from, you know, intermittent fasting. How does that affect your, you know, gene expression? It depends upon the individual. Yeah, it really does change. And, you know, so it's kind of hard. I'm guilty of it myself. I'll say, oh, this doesn't work or that doesn't or that does work.

But really what I'm saying is I found that works for me or doesn't work for me. And we kind of live in this whole world of statistical medicine where even clinicians will say, you know, 90% of the people in your demographic

see good results from this drug or this therapy or this exercise, but maybe you're in the 10%. And how long are you going to do that for before you figure that out? Who knows? So this is something that I think kind of puts medicine in the hands of people again, to see how they're performing given their doctor interventions or what they read online. And let's be real, like that's where I get, like I go to the doctor, but I do, I watch a lot of YouTube. I, you know, I watch,

I watch your channel, I watch all these other channels and I want to know what's working for people, what other people are trying. And now I have a way of seeing before and after of what's working for me. Yeah, I would put it in a single slogan of it's just a BS detector because there are so many things out there that say that it's working, but you really have no way to actually see whether things are working or not.

There's a lot of YouTube videos saying that this supplement works, that medicine works. This is the holy grail of longevity, but

After people are trying it, if you ask them, do you know if it's actually working or not? Most of the people are saying no, like 99% of the people. Well, I don't know. They're like, oh, I didn't even think you'd ask that question. Well, you could even use, like the slogan could also be ruling out placebo. Yeah, that's a good one too. We've been really jumping on just asking people, does it work? Like gut milk, but does it work?

So we'll work on that a little bit. I think we have some more refining to do. What have you both sort of found in terms of personal experimentations and interventions? Like I'm actually really curious to know about what has actually moved the needle in terms of, you know, different interventions. I have two stories. Do you want to go first or should I go first?

Well, I can share some case studies that we have been seeing because we are working with more than 125 clinics and every single clinic is doing different longevity therapies or like stem cells, different things. So we actually see different things works differently. And I'd love to share some like realistic data to you. But yes, please share some personal story. I'll share one personal story and then we can talk about some of the case studies because I'm obviously very biased.

So I think the one I like the most is a discovery that I had where my respiratory system, which is normally very good, started going up. And then on the subsequent test, it was the worst system in my body. It just really skyrocketed and it was really spiking.

And I don't smoke. So I was like, where is that coming from all of a sudden? And I realized I was spending an abnormal amount of time in my wood shop. It was a holiday season. I had a little bit more time off. And I was doing woodworking in a closed garage with no air filter. And I was like, maybe that's the reason. And then I got an air filter. I opened up the doors, spent a little less time in the shop.

And over the next two tests, it came back. And actually my last test I took, it was all the way back down to my best performing system. So there is like, I felt no symptoms, which is key to this story. It just, I saw something happening in the results. I knew what it was because I, it's just kind of logical. I addressed it and I fixed it before it really became a major problem for me. And, you know, there is lots of studies that show wood dust causes cancer.

So I was quite glad to be able to catch that. So with that score, just sort of break that down. Cause my audience is probably wondering like with the exact test, right? It's a cheek swab test. So it's an, yeah. So it used to be, so we first developed it with a cheek swab test, but we've really moved more into the blood side. And it's more, it's just an easier signal to get. It's a little bit more rich information. Yeah.

We'll try to relaunch the cheek swab in the future. But what we're really measuring is the body's, we're measuring entropy and the body's ability to fight entropy and maintain homeostasis. So in particular, my respiratory system, we have like cell cytokines and senescent cells, all of these things bombarding our body, causing excretions out of tissues.

and it makes it harder and harder for our body to counterbalance that. And when we're young, we're very good. And we see this little oscillation, entropy, homeostasis, entropy, homeostasis. But as we get older, we lose the ability to come back to homeostasis quickly.

And so this oscillation gets noisier and noisier. And that's what we mean by biological noise. And in my case, I had more inflammatory factors, more things causing the biological, the entropy to speed up. And so by trying to get the air filters, staying out of the shop a little bit, I had less factors causing biological noise. And so my body was more easily able to

Bring me back to homeostasis more rapidly. Yeah. And the way how we are seeing the speed of aging is by looking at more than half a 1Million of the sample size ranging from people who is 25 years old to 80 years. So. Healthy aging.

Aging is not a disease. So we really have to differentiate who is aging versus who is diseased. So we found out 460 specific sites that tightly control how you're aging. And this is very proprietary to us. We have a custom chip that we apply for patents with Illumina together. And that's how we're analyzing all of the how noise is impacting our body and where is that noise is coming from.

Is it from your brain, your respiratory system, from your muscle? Which part of your body is the noisiest? And how can you hone in into that to solve it? With the exact scores, is it sort of giving you like a percentage score, like out of 100? Or like, how is it represented? Yeah. It actually gives you two different scores. One is what is your biological age? And that age means age.

Not exactly how old you are biologically, but you are currently aging at the speed of 39 years old. It's not saying that, bro, you're 39 years old, like you're done. No, that's not what it means. It means that, hey, this system's in our body right now is aging similar at the speed, the pace of aging of 39 years old. So you should really take care of that because there is an ability that for you to reversing it back to the younger stages.

So this leading to example of we're seeing like thousands of samples for doing case studies on stem cell or plasma exchange. And we are seeing in stem cells after people are doing before versus after just within three to six months that they're- What type of, yeah, which types of stem cells? There's many different types of stem cells. Like there is mesenchymal stem cell, there is mu cells, there's stem cell exosomes. So people are doing different types of stem cell, but we are seeing-

kind of all of them is able to be repairing tissue regeneration very well so net net positive across the board and i gotta be honest i didn't expect that i i was me too i've been very skeptical of stem cell therapies but we're getting the data back and it's pretty consistent where we've had like five or six patients uh go through stem cell therapies and they've all come back with

very improved results with a good period of time in between. Is it across like multiple organ systems? Multiple clinics, multiple systems. So it's through, for example, inflammation aging is reversed by 13.6 years old.

the brain aging group reversed by 6.6 years old. Reproductive system is reversed by 4.5 years old. And this is a real data from a normalized patient. - A particular person, yeah. - Similar to that, we are seeing plasma exchange is really helping inflammation age reduction because that's getting rid of all of the microplastic that has been accumulated in your body.

Would you say that that intervention, plasma exchange, is more accessible than stem cell therapy right now in the world? I would say it really depends because it's an FDA-approved way to actually treat a disease. So you can actually get that as off-label, similar to how Brian Johnson did it. So now we're seeing more and more biohackers like Mark Hyman, Peter Diamantis, Brian Johnson, they all are switching places.

into getting therapeutic plasma exchange. It's not like blood boys, like actually getting blood from the younger guys. No, that's not the case. Thank you. And that's very important because Dr. Irina Kamboy, which is our third co-founder, she invented that and she discovered that aging is reversible by diluting your old plasma. That's the very famous parabiosis, which is the young mice and old mice plasma exchange experiment starting from 2005 on the nature.

Yeah. So in terms of frequency, like, um, do you have data on that? Like in terms of, should they do it two, three times a year or. Yeah. Most clinicians are offering it like three or four times a year. Um,

But the data would suggest maintaining efficacy would require more frequency than that. Yeah. What we're seeing depends on where are you along the journey. You might require a different frequency for sure. And then for people, it's the same therapy that's used for people with blood diseases, diabetes.

overdose on a drug or immunorejection. Yeah, organ transplantation. After that, if you are having immunorejection or if you're having chronic inflammations in your body or after chemotherapy, you want to boost your immune system back. This is all of the way of using therapeutic plasma exchange. If you do it too frequently, it's probably not good. It's kind of like changing the water for your fish is good. But if you change the water in your fish tank every day, they're going to die.

So it's something like that. It's a good analogy. In terms of other interventions, I'm just sort of thinking outside the box now, like, you know, rapamycin is popular, fecal transplants, I mean, like microbial interventions. What else have you guys sort of seen move the needle? You know, I'd say the stem cells and the exosomes and the TPE, I think, stick out the most. Yeah.

I think there have been a lot of changes from patients with their doctors that maybe were specified for a particular function. And we see that, but it's not as impressive as these broad-based therapies. Yeah. Whenever people are entering into biohacking world, we always say, consider the basement, the fundamentals first, because we do see that

Even fasting for a week is able to be changing our biological age dramatically. And we are seeing people who went through fasting is reducing their inflammation age a lot. But at the same time, their whole body's age is going down, but the muscle age is coming up because they're losing muscles at the same time.

So we're seeing this interesting signals that a lot of things are actually not purely good or purely bad. They have some of the pros and cons at the same time. You just have to know what is the best for you. Yeah, we actually had one user who's a health coach.

Decide to stop doing cold plunges because of our test. Now, obviously, cold plunges have lots of great data about them. There's some there's some negative data about muscle recovery, but mostly it's pretty positive. But she stopped doing it because she found through our test that she actually had a high score on her heart. I had a feeling. Yeah. She was worried about, you know, causing too much stress to to overreact.

work her heart. So she changed the way she approached her therapies to get similar effects. But I do think this is a really good point Alina's making. Mostly, things are usually not all good or all bad. It's usually somewhere in between. That's why we need data. Data is the power to make the decisions.

Yeah, no, I really, really think that's, it's exactly what my audience needs because everyone in like, they're always undergoing new experiments, trialing different things. Like a lot of my people listening to the podcast, they're, you know, trialing a new supplement. They're trialing a new sleep routine or a new, you know, wearing, what happens when you wear blue blocking glasses at nighttime? Does it actually impact your health? You know? Yes, I love it. I love, and this is like, this is why I have always experimented on myself.

It's just kind of fun. You're the OG biohacker. Well, I don't know. I won't go that far. But I'm definitely old. I'll give you that. Alina was saying 39 was old a second ago, and I was like, I wish.

Michael is at least doing like more than 12 times for the test. Yeah, 15 I think now. 15 times and similar to me more than 10 times. So both of us is using ourselves to test out whether things are working or not. I thought one of the supplements that I was drinking, which is a green drink, I thought it's working and tested out it's not working. Can I guess what that was? You can guess. I don't know if Alina will tell you or not. I think I already know. Yeah, I think you got it.

And a lot of things that I thought is going to work, it's not working. But a lot of things that I thought not going to work, like Sana, it's actually helping a lot. So it's surprising to actually see what's true and what's moving the needle or not, purely by the data rather than the advertisements. Yeah, and actually on the Sana one, last story, or actually I have so many, but I won't promise it's the last story.

But I'd been doing the sauna for one month and I had hoped to see a very large change. I did see a change, but it wasn't as large as I had expected. I did it six times a week for a month or six times a week for a month. So I missed one day a week, 20 minutes at a shot at around 170 degrees. And I everything across the board improved a little bit.

So maybe I need to do it longer or, you know, maybe maybe test again after three months. But it's this kind of it's this kind of data that is really helping me to see, oh, this supplement has a big effect. This is I have no idea what it's doing. And in those cases, I stop the supplement because I care about my liver and I worry about that, too.

Yeah, I'm just thinking about it now from like, if we had to sort of explain what you guys are pioneering and sort of exploring is you're trying to gauge the effect size and the impact, the degree of impact of these different interventions, how they have on your objective markers, not subjective. This is objectivity. So therefore, like this is data that can't be

fabricated. I really love that you bring this up, Lucas, because there is a comparison I'd like to make. I would always encourage your audience to be skeptical of the data and how it's processed. I would agree with your assessment of our data, which is maybe something equivalent to saying you go to a carnival and you see someone there who's guessing people's weight. A lot of tests are that guy.

counterpoint is we're the bathroom scale. You stand on it, that's the number. That's it. There is no other interpretation. But we see with the Dunedin pace clock, the Horvath clock,

These were all used by Irina in our lab to try to test the efficacy of therapeutics. But we found that they were not able to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy populations. And they manipulate data in something called elastic net, which is like this linear regression model.

that adds weights and biases to different readings, uh, inconsistently each time you take the test. And so we, we really moved away from that completely because it's making predictions, uh,

And there is a lot of data there that's manipulated. And so I like the distinction you drew there and I'm happy for the chance to highlight the difference. Yeah, and if your users are curious about that result, we actually published that on the cover of Aging in 2023 September called Failed Test of DNA Methylation Clocks and Development of a Noise Barometer, which is the method how we are using. We measure and we quantify what are them we're predicting. Because biology, think of...

or glucose level, your blood pressure, you are measuring rather than predicting. Predicting will never actually get it correct. You need to measure very, very accurately. And that's how we are doing it. That's a good, that's a good amount.

I took a screenshot of that study and I've put it into the video, the YouTube video. So my audience will get more information about that soon. That's a great paper. Jumping into that is fantastic. Yeah. I was just thinking about, because I know Brian Johnson recently has sort of shared one of the most powerful interventions that he's sort of implemented and trialed. And it's actually something that I got my hands on, which is a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

I'm really curious. I don't know if you've heard from clinics or from case studies, if anyone's actually seen any improvements. - You know, we'll be able to better answer that in a few short weeks, I think. - But anyone, if in your user base is already doing that, please do our test. Like we want to see- - Yeah, before and after. - Yeah, before and after. - Yes, we need to see it.

We have one clinic that I know that is offering that as a therapy, but I haven't looked at the specific data yet if that's working for them. But the clinic is a very well-known clinic. It's an excellent clinic called Extension Health in New York.

And they're very, very sophisticated, very offering all the latest tech. So I would expect if they have it and they're using it, it's probably there's probably some efficacy there. And they're using our tests very, I don't know, like 80 tests a month or something over there. So we're quite keen to see how that data rolls out. But if they're using it and using our tests, I would imagine they're having good results.

Yeah, my predictions would be, I mean, in terms of improvements, I'd say cardiovascular wise, I'd say potentially some improvements if it's helping to reverse. Cardiovascular, oxidative stress, inflammation. Respiratory probably. These might be the most impactful. Yeah, inflammation definitely. Inflammation is like the worst thing. So reducing that is pretty good.

So the test itself is a system age. So that's the name of the test that falls on the Generation Lab? Yes. Generation Lab is a biotech company and our diagnostic is system age test. And this system age test right now, you guys are the only ones who basically...

using it, right? There's no other brands that are using it. That's right. That's right, Luke. It's our IP. We created it. And that paper that Alina mentioned, DNA methylation fail tests. We wrote it too. It's our paper. And that was the original...

impetus for this test. And so it's our IP through and through. It literally took us nine months to actually translate what we published in paper into the product that you're seeing, like an in-home blood test that you can collect the blood, the entire user experience, and you can ship it back to the lab. And you are placing the sample on

the chips that we have designed with Illumina, all of this 460 CPG sites, data analysis, our patented Oregon-based analysis and mapping that into your personalized action plan. All of that will be created. So yeah, so 20 years to do the research and then nine years

And nine months is, you know, in the biotech world is extremely fast. Most companies would have taken three to five years. But because Irina left Berkeley on a sabbatical, she just threw her entire weight into this. And, you know, there's a big difference between lab science and commercial science, which is something that as a non-biologist,

biologists and non-scientists, the only one of the group that's a non-scientist. I didn't know that before. And to see the speed at which the data science team moved and with Irina's help, it would have taken us five years without her help. So it's incredible. Very, very important. Yeah.

In terms of customer base right now, so majority of your users would be based in the US, I'd imagine? Majority are in the US, but we also have users in the UK, Germany, Germany.

UAE, Cabo, Mexico. So I think in Canada. So that's where we're at right now. We'll be in the whole world soon, but give us a few more weeks. Yeah. And we're seeing, interestingly, our user space are usually founders, CEOs, executives, or biohackers who are investing in their own health, or whoever is using Woof, RR Ring, that's already tracking and investing in their own health.

So these are our user base, which is totally like very aligning with who is listening to our podcast already. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I'm just sort of thinking about like,

Because they reach a point where, let's say, they've maybe exited one or two different companies. And like they're throughout a point in their life where they just want to preserve the quality of their life for as long as they can, right? Yes, yes. I mean, that's exactly where I came into this with my journey. So it was exactly that. Well, you can share to my listeners. I mean, you've got an absolutely epic background, man. And yourself as well, Alina. But yeah, just...

Like, how did you find yourself, like, emerge into this sort of space? Yeah, I'll try to make my story short. I'm usually long winded. But I mean, really, my whole life, I've had an interest in living a super long time. And then, like, maybe about 15 years ago, I just was like, you know what, I think this is real. And I'm going to try to live forever.

But I was still, you know, I had a job and I was, you know, I had some other companies with some distribution companies that I had started. I started a video game company and then I was working for the US government, designing software to detect fraud in the markets. And someone walked up to me and was like, let's go to Silicon Valley and start another company. So I went there and I was doing AI for seven or eight years. And then it was just time at a certain point for me to exit.

I did okay for myself. It was a billion-dollar company. He is really playing down, but I need to tell you guys. She hates it. She doesn't want me to get away with it. It's a billion-dollar unicorn company that partially got exited to DoorDash. It's not just an AI company. It's a real deal. Okay, so that. And then I was volunteering at an accelerator called Techstars.

And I was just helping some companies out there. And I unfortunately joined that too late to be part of the healthcare group. But Alina had a company, a different company at the time, a medical device company. She was pitching there. And long story short, we had a chat and she's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I don't really have an answer to that. I just exited my other company. I was doing this Techstars thing, which ends today.

But the thing I'm trying to really get into and what I want to build is I want to live forever. And then she's like, come over here. And then like, fuck this company. Let's start a new company. Let's do it. And like a week later, we had this company. So yeah.

That was the short version of the story, but that's how I got involved. And, you know, I had been traveling and meeting scientists and investors about, you know, what's real in biology right now. What should I be trying to build around me? But Alina already had a great vision. She already had a great relationship with Irina Convoy. She was her undergrad student before she went to Harvard. And so, yeah, it was, she's like,

you got to meet irena and i met with them together and they're like listen michael everyone is guessing no one really understands the root causes of what makes you age and if you don't understand that then you're guessing on any therapy you come up with uh and i found it very convincing and she was like what we're going to do first is perfect this measurement tool so we can measure the causes of aging and then we can do something about it and i thought that was very pragmatic

And it was very convincing to me. And I was like, all right, I don't need to start it by myself. I'm going to join you guys and let's go. So we've been going a million miles an hour. That was two years ago. That's crazy. That's crazy. How much you've achieved in two years is wild. Like you said, any other company would take like three years just to process the process.

Yeah. Part of it is definitely like a lot of credits to Irina's 20 years of the science that she actually did research on aging. And this is really our first product. Like there's more exciting product that's coming out. That's actually able to be reversing aging, but we will hold that for the next episode. Yeah.

Well, in terms of interventions, are you more thinking down the route of health tech devices or more so like supplements and therapeutics? Like drugs. We actually invented a new molecule like three weeks ago. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. That was a fun day. That's it. We'll hold it because major press will be coming.

Well, this is something I haven't really shared to my audience, but I mean, just a little bit about my background. My father's a pharmacist, right? And I had the choice of going down the route of becoming a pharmacist.

But I chose not to, and I was more so interested in like naturopathy, you know, natural holistic healing. But deep down inside me, I feel like one of my legacy missions and goals is to discover a molecule or an ingredient or a supplement that changes the world. So it sounds like you've already done that. We can find another one. Yeah.

Well, man, I hope so. You know, things are really exciting on that front. But, you know, it's easy to get excited about the future stuff. And we seriously are. But really, you know, we get phone calls every week right now with people calling us and saying, essentially, you saved my life in so many words. And, man, I got to say, like, I didn't expect the test to be have this much success and this much capability this early.

And it's just really motivational for the whole company to say, wow, these people are calling. You found calcification issues in my vascular system. You found an issue with my heart. You found an issue with my gut health. We had a doctor call us. She's like, Michael, your test is broken. I'm like, well, tell me more. And she's like, well, my readings are as expected. Where it's high, it should be high. Where it's low, it should be low. Except...

I have the perfect gut. Like I preach it. I work on it. I help so many people with their gut health. It's kind of my thing. You're telling me I have gut issues.

And she went back to her credit and did some traditional diagnostics, some additional research and testing. And she did uncover several issues with her gut health that she then addressed. And so it's really exciting when people are happy with you, but it's even more exciting when they're angry at you for telling them that they're old. And then they actually go and do the research and they're like, oh, yeah, actually, I'm finding a problem now.

It's really, you know, one of the biggest compliments we get on a weekly basis is please just keep telling the truth. And that to me is extremely rewarding, especially for what I said earlier is wanting to have a center of truth of what is real and what is not.

What does the cutting edge research say and what does it not say? And exposing that to both patients and doctors. So it's almost like our dream is coming through on that test and our promise to the world. That's incredible. So basically what you're saying is like she prioritizes, she actually specializes in gut health optimization or that particular area. And then she found out through the test that there was a lagging

organ system. She was asymptomatic, had no symptoms. She was not going to look for anything. But because of our tests, she looked.

And she found issues. So it basically prompted further diagnostics, right? Yes.

But they know where to look now. It would be very impractical to go and get, you know, 10,000 tests done at the doctor and test everything. So this is kind of like a great way to get a dashboard of your health. Yeah. And that's the power of pre-diagnostic, which is detecting early signals before things are actually falling apart. So you actually have the power to reverse the fact. You don't have cancer yet. There's still a chance. Yeah. That you can reverse it before it actually happens.

And in terms of the dashboard itself, how did you come about arranging that in a way from a user experience point of view, not making it too overwhelming for the customer? What did the iterations look like in terms of presenting that? We make the actionable items super clear for you and also tell you why do you need to work on that is because one of your top aging factor is reproductive health, is your immune system and also inflammatory health. So we give you

a very precise reason why do you need to do this therapy, medicine or longevity intervention. So the next step is very clear that after seeing the report, you're not knowing that, oh, I'm young. So I'm happy or I'm old. I'm sad. It's we're telling you that what do you need to do next step? Like we're guiding you holding our hand that this is your longevity journey. And we are telling you where is the map that you need to go for the next step to actually work on that.

And when you look at the first page, Lucas, you know, you see that we highlight the top five. And it's because it's a little bit overwhelming to see a readout of every system in your body. It's like, where do I start?

So we really just want you can always be doing things. You know, you get to basics and then there's like always things to do beyond the basics. So, you know, let's focus on the things that are causing you to age the most. Let's start there. And when you connect with the doctor, that's generally where they're going to start to. What are the things that are causing you to age the most in your body? Let's tackle that and then we'll move on as we go. So that's some of the thought between that.

by behind the report itself. But as Alina said, getting action plans early and explaining to you what's going on, connecting you with a physician to build your dashboard. These are kind of like taking you through the steps of the process. As you as you first get the test, we kind of release these things to you as you go, because we don't want it to be overwhelming. But we do want you to go talk to a doctor.

And so that is part of the cost of the test. It's not an additional cost. We may launch a VIP service to have like an hour long consultation in the future. But everyone should be able to get a few minutes with the doctor, explain my results to me and what exactly should I be doing? And it's just a great chance for us then to say,

what doctors are having the best performance and then trying to help people. Eventually we'll be able to help people pick things based on their biology without talking to a doctor. But that's far in the future. We still like the doctors. They're really, really important for interpretation, getting family history,

digging into other factors that we're not looking at, comparing that to your glucose monitor, comparing that to your HRT levels or whatever else it is you're testing.

So it's an important part of the picture, but it's not the whole picture. And with that being said, if any of your viewers want to talk to one of the top VIP doctors who serves Tony Robbins, Zac Efron, Chris Hemsworth, and all of the NFL players, or even Dr. Mark Hyman, we have all of those doctors. They're already using our text exclusively for their VIP clients. And their VIP clients are...

And these celebrities are literally emailing us and calling us saying, hey, I want to get the test. Like, get me tested. And you mentioned Adil. So he's also one of our doctors. Yes. Yeah, he's been on the podcast as well. Oh, really? Yeah, he's an incredible, incredible mind, incredible brain. And I just love his...

We're doing 7.30 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day right now. He's doing laps around us. That guy moves. He is using our test on every single one of them.

Oh, every patient that comes through here. Every patient that comes through his clinic. Eternal health. That's amazing. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. Well, that's what I was thinking before is like when it comes to actionable steps, when people want to actually make change and behavioral change, when they have the data points that they can actually look at and see firsthand, like this is where I'm lagging. Okay. Therefore I need to do X. It's like they're more likely to create changes

to facilitate behavioral change. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you'll try something like I started taking a vitamin D because I thought I needed it. The last two reports are showing no change and I'm not feeling different. I have a workmate who takes vitamin D every day and like his results are much better because of it. So it really like

So-and-so is having a great response doesn't mean it's working for me. And that's like the big takeaway that I'm starting to learn. Not just because it's not working for me doesn't mean it's bullshit.

But it might be bullshit for me. So I should, you know, really take this test and try it out. And I always go to my results now because I have so many tests to look from. But is it working is a really powerful test for yourself and ask yourself, like, do you feel different? Can you see a difference?

And oftentimes you can't, and you just keep doing it anyway, because you bought these vitamins and they were expensive. Yeah. So in a summary is that if you can't measure it, you can't change it because it's not visible. And when I was dropping out of Harvard through my PhD in my med school, George Church actually giving us a quote because of what we are creating as a system age test saying that

The power of epigenetic is that you can actually foreseeing before the symptom is actually happening. And by seeing how your data is being refluxuating and changing based on epigenetic, that's the power of when you can change. And that's on our website. So you can literally quote him on that.

Wow. Incredible. Well, I'm looking forward to, cause I'm heading to Dubai in August when I arrive is I'm super excited to take the test myself. Like I can't wait. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's such an exciting space to be in. I mean, what, what, what's your, what's your like five to 10 year plan? Like what, what do you want to be known for? I'll let Alina answer that. Yeah. Yeah.

We are making aging an option, which means we do believe like in 10 years that we will be having the power to reverse and stop aging. And the reason why we are called Generation Lab is because we believe that this generation, whoever is alive right now, will be the generation that's making aging an option and have the power to reverse aging back to a younger stage. We'll all be ancients. We'll be the oldest humans alive. Yeah.

Yes. That's incredible. That's incredible. Well, was there anything else you wanted to mention to my audience in terms of, you know, I mean, future directions, you sort of mentioned that in terms of the iterations, you've evolved the product, you're planning on continuously improving the product.

Yeah, I think there's one last thing is, you know, we're always in development on the product. You know, we have 19 systems that we report on right now, but we actually have another four in development and two of them are in validation now. And the first one is skin and women's reproductive health.

So those two will be coming out real soon. And then we have two more in the works, which have a little bit of work to do, but it seems we have a strong enough signal to create a report on it. Yeah. So based on these data, we'll be having more and more precise way. For example, we've discovered that

if you're founders or CEOs or executives, you're aging 1.5 X faster than normal people. Don't tell me that I'm going to have to retire. You're traveling a lot because you're lacking of sleep. You're fasting. Like you're aging way faster than normal people does. And usually that speed is 1.5 X. So,

Usually. Brian Johnson is doing a little bit better. You have a shot, Lucas. Don't give up. Don't scare me. I won't book a flight ever again.

So if you see yourself lining in 1.3, like within founders, you're already doing great. But within normal people, you need to do a little bit more extra work. They need to install hyperbaric oxygen chambers on the plane. There you go. Now you're talking. That would actually be very useful. Yeah. It really would be. Look at the x-rays. It really would be. Yeah. That's the best place. That would be like super first class.

That's an interesting thing. As we're collecting more data, we are seeing that, for example, women in their 50s to 55 is actually accelerating a lot of aging. The first acceleration is when they're pregnant and delivering the baby. And the next acceleration is starting from 50 to 55. It's whole body aging faster because of the menopause. And men and women are aging very differently as well. And another thing that's fun to share is that because we always ask a lot of

to our users and we ask them, if you're having 20 more years of life, what are you going to do? Ooh, let's ask Lucas. Yes, what are you going to do, Lucas? I had to think about this because I actually was discussing it the other day. And if I had an extra 20 years with good quality, not just an extra frail... Hiking up mountains. Like healthy life. Honestly, I would probably...

Well, I think I pivot careers and I do something completely different to the health space. And I probably, I don't know, maybe start a business for, I don't know, some sort of mentorship, mentoring program for like younger kids. I mean, don't tell your audience that, man. They'll lose you.

We do find that usually when we're asking these questions, people are having three types of answers. And that actually represents three of us somehow, like in GenerationLab as founders. Michael represents four people who want to explore the furthest of the universe. What is the extreme of humanity? The boundaries of unknown.

I want to actually live up for the purpose that why I'm here on the earth is to protect more lives and making them live a longer and healthier life. So I need to achieve that before I'm dying. And similar to Irina is she needs more time to complete her work. She is like, I need to solve aging and I really need more time to actually make this solvable.

So three of us is having kind of similar but different perspective of aging. And some of people will say that, especially when they are having children or babies, they'll like, I want to spend more time with my children and I want them to see them growing up, getting married. I want to see my grandchildren. I want to play golf with them. I want to go hiking with them.

it really is time is the only limiting factor for humanity and if we're able to be giving more life a healthier and longer time that's invaluable i also think it's valuable if i may that um just think about the decisions we would make as people individuals differently if we knew we were going to be around for say i don't know make up a number 300 years

You're going to be around during climate change issues. You're going to care a little bit more about it. Sustainability. You're going to care a little bit more about building your house in a good place. You're going to care more about the development of your community and the water quality because you might only be 100 years old, but you're going to be there for another 200 years. So I really believe it changes the mindset of us as humans and how we govern ourselves.

to be able to be healthy and live really long lives and all of us to be part of a single generation, I think is just fundamentally changing the world and how we think. That's what I believe. And Alina is a little bit more benevolent than me. I just want to travel the universe and learn everything and try everything. Alina really does want to help people. So maybe we can speak to both sides of your audience.

Yeah, no, for sure. I think the idea of like wanting to explore and just constantly stretch the boundaries of what it means to be human. And like the idea of even like colonizing another planet to me is also quite exciting. Like I just, I'm open to that personally. I know some people are like, what are you talking about? We'll have to build a rocket ship together.

Yeah, well, we'll have time. That's the point. We can do that. Yeah. We'll make that happen. It's incredible. Well, I'll just mention for those listening in, if you do want to actually check out this incredible technology health tech kit, I will leave that linked in the podcast show notes. If anyone wants to actually order a kit,

or make sure to leave that link in the show notes. But otherwise, if anyone else wants to check it out, they can go to, at the moment, it's generationlab.com. That URL is active and live. But otherwise, Alina and Michael, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. Oh, we had a blast. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. It was a good time.