The Longevity Loop Podcast

Exploring Age Reversal and Longevity with Jason C Mercurio: From Science to Lifestyle Optimization

• Brent Wallace from Longevity Clinic Marketing

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Brent Wallace:

All right, here we are, live. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Longevity Loop Podcast, where it's a podcast mostly for longevity folks in the industry. We'll cover what we're doing longevity-wise with our guests. My guest today is Jason C Mercurio from the company Ageless Partners, so we're going to go over a little bit of longevity techniques today so you can get an insight to what other people are doing in the longevity industry. Come away with some really good, actionable information that Jason will be providing for us and we're just going to have a really great conversation. I've known Jason for what? Six months, Jason? Maybe eight months, almost a year.

Jason C Mercurio:

At least yes.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, so just recently most seen you at the Healthspan Summit in Los Angeles and I guess that was November. So last time I saw you in person there and really the first part is understanding ageless partners and age reversal. But really the first part is understanding what ageless partners does and the age reversal process that you go in there. So what I'd like to know from you like just share with me and the audience you know, what does ageless partners do and what is your age reversal as a service concept all about?

Jason C Mercurio:

Sure Thanks, brent, I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, so age reversal is first thinking about, like what, what aging is, and a lot of people have confusion on that element. They oftentimes think of chronological aging or something else. So you know, first thinking about what aging actually is, you have chronological aging or something else. So you know, first thinking about what aging actually is, you have chronological aging, you have developmental aging and you have biological aging, the last one being the thing that we don't want.

Jason C Mercurio:

And so our core mission of Ageless Partners is to accelerate progress towards defeating biological aging and biological aging being the thing that really accelerates you towards age-related diseases, so cancer, alzheimer's, dementia and so on. And so I coined the term age reversal as a service, because what I started to realize as I went through my own journey of improving my health, that it wasn't easy and having some guidance could have helped a lot. And so for me you know, as I've tested different things on myself, whether it's supplements or whether it's improving my sleep and so on you know, I quickly realized that it's not as easy as it looks and a lot of the time the information may even be available, but the implementation and the execution of that information is where people are going to fumble, and so that's kind of a high level on our core mission to accelerate progress towards defeating biological aging, as well as slowing down the aging process for everyone who is alive today and beginning to bring them back in time.

Brent Wallace:

Awesome. Yeah, that's a good point. You just said about the information's out there that you're aware of the problem but a lot of times the steps or the solutions aren't there. Kind of reminds me I just watched recently the Longevity Hackers movie and it was a really great movie. But yeah, it just goes over kind of high level stuff and everyone talking about just the various problems of aging and they'll talk about like rapamycin or metformin and all these things, but not exactly and I understand why they don't from a liability standpoint. But that's just great that you're able to take that information and then give people some actionable advice and tips into it. So you touched on just a little bit like what first interested you in it. You know, obviously, self that you're you're doing it for yourself, but was that just kind of it? You're just curiosity or what really got you into your focus of just really getting into slowing down and reversing aging?

Jason C Mercurio:

sure, so for I?

Brent Wallace:

I guess it's like was there a life event that you're like, oh man, my grandma, or something like that, or or was it just? Uh, what? What kind of sparked that interest in you to start down this path?

Jason C Mercurio:

Definitely, and you'll hear a lot of people in the longevity industry has some story, like you're alluding to. And so all my grandparents are gone, and in particular my grandfather on my dad's side, really, when he was declining very quickly in the end stages of the aging process, I thought to myself well, this may be inevitable, but if it's not inevitable, we should do something to avoid this. And so I kind of went into it with an open mind and I started asking people well, what is aging? Why do we age? How do we age? Can it be stopped and or reversed? And I came to the conclusion that it could be stopped and effectively defeated.

Jason C Mercurio:

But we don't know when we'll have all the tools and technologies to do that and we don't know if we'll be alive to see that day. And so our core mission, as I say at the beginning, to accelerate progress to defeat biological aging. And I take it a step further to say that our society actually has a moral obligation to pursue these technologies. You know you say that because you know people might think oh well, we should embrace aging is what people might say. Well, should we embrace cancer, should we embrace diabetes, should we embrace Alzheimer's? And people will quickly shift their perspective on that right?

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, that's a good point.

Jason C Mercurio:

Yeah, so that's kind of very, very high level. What inspired me? And ever since that, you know, ever since I saw that and came to the conclusion that it could be defeated but we might not be allowed to see it, we've been pushing to move it faster every day.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, it actually reminds me a little bit. Touching on that reminds me of, like the Brian Johnson, the slogan don't die, right? He's like just keep on living, try to preserve life as long as possible, and then these technology will slowly roll out. And again, referring to that, longevity hackers I forget what the exact term is, but is it Ray Kurzweil or one of those guys talks about, like the aging escape velocity, right? So for every day we are alive, they're able to add a day plus to the end of our lives. So, yeah, it's just a really important thing to hold on to what health and vitality you have now, just because there are going to be so many technologies in the future. So, with your ageless coaching.

Jason C Mercurio:

I was going to comment on that one actually real quick. Sure, I am familiar and it's called longevity escape velocity and I believe it was coined by Aubrey de Grey.

Jason C Mercurio:

And it says that for you know when one year passes, just like you described, one year passes, your remaining life expectancy or remaining health span increases over a year, and so at that point you have this runaway effect where you know you were going to live to 90 based on the current tools and technologies and your lifestyle and everything. One year passes, well, now you're going to live to 91. Another year passes, well, now it's 92. And suddenly you have this runaway effect. And so that is sort of the goal, tying it into the coaching we want to give people two longevity escape velocity. So they're alive and they're well and they're mentally sharp for that day. And I can expand a little bit more, but I'll let you finish your question.

Brent Wallace:

No, that's great, I mean. That just leads us into the next question I wanted to know about is the ageist coaching part of Ageless Partners and how that really differs from like normal, say, traditional fitness coaching or traditional nutritional coaching that you'd get from, say you know anyone else out there, you know Right right.

Jason C Mercurio:

So it's definitely different and it encaps maximally slow down the aging process but also increase your capability and performance now, which I think goes hand in hand. And you know a lot of people they might think, well, what is what I'm doing, working right, like, am I slowing down my aging? And so, you know, is increasing performance slowing down aging? So I think as you increase your performance, which is a big element of the coaching service, you can in turn slow down your aging even more. I mean, I see them actually going hand in hand.

Jason C Mercurio:

Now think about, let's you know, we have the performance of an individual right, how their sleep performance or their ability to work out in the gym, or their mental acuity and so on. But let's take it even a level lower of the performance of an organ system, performance of your circulatory system or the performance of your skeletal system, and so there's all these levels of aging and performance, and you can map it down to our biology, right? So you can even think what is the performance of my heart? How is my heart beating? What is the structure and function of that heart? How does that compare to that of a 20-year-old or an 85-year-old right? And so our coaching service really is about increasing performance and maximally slowing down the aging process and dramatically increasing our health span. We're not looking for like a small gain where it's like, okay, we can live one year longer. We're really looking for something more significant than you know in terms of the amount of time we want to live in good health from the current protocol essentially.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So someone listening to this right now, or even me, what are some of the key components of this coaching program that someone could implement into their daily lives today? Or say, if they you know I mean I'm sure there's the hardware side of things, right Like a whoop strap or a ring HRV equipment like that, and there's probably, I imagine, some ones that are free techniques that people can also implement what would you say to someone listening that they could take home some actionable steps or advice to implement something today?

Jason C Mercurio:

Sure. So you know, interestingly, a lot of the most powerful things are free. Sometimes they can be hard to implement, like I was mentioning at the beginning. A bunch of things come to mind and you know, having the foundations, or at least attempting to improve the foundations every day, you know, in terms of sleep, exercise and nutrition, which might seem easy for some people might think, oh well, I just go to sleep, but you could literally be optimizing your sleep for months and months and still not be getting the results you're looking for. And with exercise, you might think, well, I'm, I'm, I'm going to the gym or I'm going out for walks, but when you actually dig into it I mean people could spend their entire career to become an exercise scientist and there's a lot of things that go into the specific functional movements, the recovery and so on. So I would say, starting with the foundations, you know, attempting to start to improve your sleep, exercise and nutrition, and then adding on things that are free that can have what I call an outsized impact on your health. You know, making sure you do get some sun you know a little bit of sun in the morning, but it can. You know sun is one of those things can be a double-edged sword, right. If you get, if you're in this sun and high UV middle of the day, no sunscreen, well, your skin aging is going to accelerate. But if you get a little in the morning, well, okay. Well, now your hormones are optimized, right. So there's going to be little things like that that are actionable, that you can do.

Jason C Mercurio:

Another easy and free one I like is called grounding. A lot of people probably heard of this. You know, you go out to the beach, you walk on the earth barefoot and there's something about it that you just feel really. You know they call it grounded, but you feel great. Now the question is how much is something like that slowing down your aging? Well, we don't know.

Jason C Mercurio:

And the thing is, too, when we look at all the aging tests of today take, we're talking about epigenetic age tests, or you know one of these other tests that you can go on the open market and buy. Well, the question is what are they actually measuring? Right, and we can, we can go, go through this. Is that actually reflective of your aging, in what drives aging? And you know, what you start to realize is that there's a lot of things that are on the market today that are measuring biological aging, aging that they are measuring something, but aging being what it is and being a bit more obscure and complex, you start to realize that they may not even be as accurate or as robust as you might think, because, in the end, what you want to do is quantify and measure biological age across all 75, 78 plus organs, and to do that, I think it's out of the scope of what is currently on the market, which is interesting.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, I've seen those epigenetic age tests or whatever you call them, and I know that I think it's called the rejuvenation Olympics, that kind of leaderboard of people that submit those tests, and there's a few people on there that you know, like Dave Pascoe and Brian Johnson, and you know you kind of see them always competing on that and I do wonder how accurate those are. I've never taken one myself, but I probably will at some point, just because of curiosity more than the accuracy of it. But it is something interesting. Those tests do you think that they'll get better in the future or there'll be a different modality that will be offered? That kind of gives the same results, right? So you kind of know where you're at in your biological aging and, and I think those tests what they kind of like seven major systems or something you know. So it's like, or maybe more than that, but you know, I know that they're like how old are your lungs? How old is your brain? How old is just whatever things that they can measure is what they're doing.

Jason C Mercurio:

At least that's my understanding In statistics, if you take a point estimate and someone says, hey, like I've estimated your biological age, you know branch to be, to be this, whatever it is, they say, ok, you're, you're 30. I will A lot of times what. What people don't tell you in statistics is well, what is the error bounds if you're going to, hey, you're 30,. Well, do you really mean, based on your measurement, that I'm between 20 and 40? Or do you mean that I'm between 29 and 31? Right, so it's like, how accurate, because it is an estimate, right? If they say, hey, you're the biological age. Even take a single organ your kidney is 35. Okay, well, what is the error on that estimate? Because it is an estimate and over time, what I think is will happen is is, as people do give those error bounds, you'll see over time, the idea is to get those smaller and smaller, right, and eventually to say, look like we've looked at your heart, for example, and we can say with very, very high confidence and high conviction and low error that your heart is a 75-year-old heart. Now you know you could say, well, okay. Well, is it a 75-year-old healthy heart? Is it a 75-year-old unhealthy heart? Well, by definition, if you're measuring biological age and it is a high number. Well, you would kind of make some kind of inference and say, you know, that's not a good heart if you're, say, chronologically, 40.

Jason C Mercurio:

So it can get complicated and I think it's good that they're promoting these tests and building those tests out to be able to create more of a community and not only that, but expand on the science. But for me I would prefer to look at. Functional tests is going to be probably number one, like how are my pushups doing, how are my pull-ups doing, and so on. And number two would probably to be to use more of a proteomic approach. So, looking at the distributions of proteins in my blood, those will likely be more reflective of my true age than taking an epigenetic test. But some of that is still in development and some people might even say, well, epigenetic is the standard right, and you know a lot of it is. It might be, but it's still. It's still in the research phase, even though there's a lot of companies and you know it could get to that point where it's like, well, like you know, they're trying to make money, they're trying to sell these tests.

Brent Wallace:

So yeah, of course, there's always the money aspect of it there.

Brent Wallace:

So it sounds like, basically, you know, at the end of the day it sounds like they're not a bad idea. But maybe pairing those with some other empirical data, such as blood tests or something to that extent, would be like kind of the trifecta. Or you're doing a triage of sorts. You know, you got this here, you got this here, you got this over here, and you're kind of triangulating. What is that? So if you're way off on one aspect but then the other two things are saying now you're within range might not be as something as important to look at, whereas like if all three are kind of screaming, hey, you've got some heart issues or kidney issues and it's like, okay, maybe it's time to take action on some of those things.

Brent Wallace:

But so one thing that you generously shared with me was your ageless guide, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it was, what is it? 80 pages long, something along those. It's like 30, maybe 30. Okay, okay, but I just liked that. It was really high level and really gave some great actionable advice on just an overall longevity protocol that one could implement. Can you share any insights from that guide to our listeners that they might find useful? And this might be a little overlap with my previous question as far as what people can implement from your coaching as well. I'm sure there will be, but is there anything in particular that you'd like to share from that guide that someone could really find useful? Yeah, yeah, no problem.

Jason C Mercurio:

Yes, absolutely so. The guide we have all these topics in there. We have sleep, nutrition, fasting, detoxification supplements, hormones, skin care, dental, you know, wearables, breathing, stress reduction, environmental toxins, and then the actual ageless workout important and what you'll notice within the guide. It's all centered around really two fundamental goals, which is one, slowing down your current pace of aging and two, beginning to reverse age-related effects or age-related damage. And so take environmental toxins just as an example. You know we're constantly bombarded with poor air quality, poor quality of water, toxins in our food, chemicals in our food, glyphosate on our farms, right. And so people might think, oh well, this is a little, you know, environmental, it's a little hokey, it's been around for decades. Well, when we look at the actual US population population and we see how much disease there is, you really have to ask yourself, well, what is driving that? And I believe it's not one particular thing. Rather, it is an environment that we've created both. You know the, the environment that we have out. You know, in our public area, right, you go to the supermarket without environment, the mass majority is junk food in that store, right. And so you know there's going to be toxins in those foods. You know, if you've ever like.

Jason C Mercurio:

I did this actually the other few weeks ago I was testing some strawberries and I had some really good ones from the farmer's market and I ate them and they were the most delicious strawberries I've ever had in my entire life. And at the event I was at, I was at a friend's party and I tested out one of the strawberries they had, just a normal one from the store. It probably wasn't even organic and I was like, well, let me just try this, and it tasted so bad that I didn't want to eat it. Actually, it was literally the worst thing I've eaten in my entire life. And so from there, you know, you have to think about, like, what was on that strawberry? That probably wasn't even food.

Jason C Mercurio:

That's where the ageless guide comes in. It kind of helps you with clear and concise actual insights to take now, not at some distant point in the future, not when some new technology exists, you know, some nanotechnology that hasn't been invented, right, that'll be around in five years. The Ageless Guide is about seeing that on the horizon, but also taking action today with slowing down your aging, whether that's looking into how do you take care of your skin, or how do you optimize your hair or how do you get better sleep? What are the actual exercises you should be doing at the gym to increase your capability and function, things like that. So that's very high level, but that's the idea.

Brent Wallace:

Nice, yeah, that's some great. And just touching back, yeah, I've been to so many events and parties that you're just questionable produce. You're like, oh, I'll just go for the strawberries or the celery sticks because that's the healthy option. And then you're like kind of double check. I'm like, well, maybe I'll go for something else there, but yeah, I definitely get that. I wanted to touch on wearables too. What, if any ways, do you integrate wearable technology and data into your approach on longevity?

Jason C Mercurio:

Yes, sure, it's very important. So I do wear a whoop and the whoop tracks my sleep very closely and I look at it every morning and that helps me see. You know, what was my recovery, what was my resting heart rate, what was my heart rate variability and what was my sleep performance it, what was my heart rate variability and what was my sleep performance. Those are kind of the four main things I look at on the Whoop and so what that tells me and none of it's perfect, right, you know, just for the audience, like you could wear a Whoop, you could wear Aura and you could wear another device, and you know you're going to have some variation, and so you know that there's, like I was talking about, there's some air on these wearables, so you have to use it as a guide rather than something like hey, this, you know, this is the end.

Jason C Mercurio:

All this is some perfect measurement device which doesn't yet exist, right, but I do like wearing the whoop. It does give me a benefit to, you know, be like OK, well, what time am I going to go to sleep tonight? And certain things that you know are accurate are going to be things like well, how long did I sleep? Well, if I click the button on my phone at one time and then I click, wake up, you know in the morning, well, okay, well, those times are going to be fairly accurate, and then you can start to see your trend over a multi-month period, right, you'd be like well, how long was I sleeping in the month of January or in the month of February?

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, so you could kind of get those macro indicators just to see like long-term trends versus like, oh man, what you know if it's just a versus a one night or whatever, I also have a whoop and I switched to a whoop from an aura ring.

Brent Wallace:

From switching from a Garmin watch, I went from a Garmin watch to an aura to a whoop. From an Aura ring, from switching from a Garmin watch, I went from a Garmin watch to an Aura to a whoop. And yeah, it's funny to see how just the different ones are just slightly different readings of themselves and then, as they improve. So now I think, when my whoop subscription ends, I think I'm going to go try Garmin because I'm sure, like in the five years that my last Garmin that I had, their technology has improved. So but yeah, I I love the data that wearables give me. Even though it is perfect, it still gives a feeling of perfect imperfection, if you will, you know. So it's always off, just a little bit like a scale. You kind of know the general direction. You know, like if you have an inaccurate scale, you can get on it and even if it's five pounds off, it should tell you if you're gaining or losing weight or maintaining. Uh, even though that might not be, even though the reading might not be accurate.

Brent Wallace:

And that's kind of how I view wearables as well. You know they're not super accurate but they're great for macro, um, macro trends, and especially over just the last holiday season, you know, my numbers were all over the place. I'm like, okay, yeah, it's definitely telling me something, but yeah, the accuracy has to be taken with a grain of salt, I believe there. So I've got a question about supplements. Supplements are, I think they're, generally well accepted within the longevity industry, but really when we talk about supplements, a lot of people think that like, ah, they're garbage or they're not proven or whatever. What role do supplements play in your approach? The age reversal strategy?

Jason C Mercurio:

Right. So I know what you mean, and so there is a supplement element to my strategy. I would rank it lower than the top three, though Kind of like you alluded to right. I mean, if you have really good sleep, really good exercise and really good nutrition, I would say you're going to get probably more bang for your buck optimizing those versus attempting to take some supplement. I'll just preface it with that. That being said, what I go for is anything that has high efficacy, low risk, right, and so that's kind of like the mindset you want to go into it.

Jason C Mercurio:

Now there's two different categories we can break down, right. One is if you're supplementing something because you're not getting it from your diet or you're not getting enough. And then the other is something where it's like, well, this wouldn't be in a diet at all, like it doesn't if it's a natural compound, some herbs, some plant or some medication, right. And so if you're not getting it from your diet, well, first you should attempt to get it from your diet, right. Take, let's take something simple like vitamin C. Well, the bioavailability of vitamin C in food is going to be better than the bioavailability and the efficiency of vitamin C in a synthetic version in a pill, right? When you actually look at the chemical like structure of each and your body's ability to use that vitamin C, it's going to be better. So if you can get it from your food, always go with that. That's my first comment.

Jason C Mercurio:

If you're like well, how do I get enough iron? Say someone's a vegan, just as an example, how do they get enough iron? Or how do they get enough collagen? Or how do they get enough B12? And you know they may be like well, like they could eat a bunch of things, but as a vegan it may be hard to get hit those particular metrics. So in that case it does make sense to take a supplement to enhance or augment or augment your diet.

Jason C Mercurio:

Basically, right Now, if you're getting the mass majority of those compounds from your diet, then you can think about maybe you're not getting enough of certain ones. That's always good to supplement. But then we take the other category, which is really stuff that you wouldn't traditionally get from a diet or like it's not in food, right, and those are going to be your herbs or your natural compounds, certain plants, or it could be synthetic compounds and medications and things like that. For me I'm more about natural compounds, because the fact is is that, oh, there may be less research on certain, um certain supplements that are natural, because it's harder to profit from them, and so like rose hips.

Jason C Mercurio:

Well, rose hips, you know it's, it's a cheap, affordable product. No one's going to patent rose hips, right? Big pharma can't make billions of dollars like they do from a statin on rose hips, right? So you know there's going to be a certain element of suppression of the evidence in terms of efficacy and safety of something. I'm using rose hips as an example, but there's hundreds, if not thousands, of these, right? And so you know, if there's, let's just say, hypothetically, rose hips has a huge effect and you could cure all kinds of ailments with it, which I'm not saying that statement holds. But, as an example, there might not be as much evidence to show that, because there could be an element of suppression and there could be also the elements that it might not be profitable to do a study to show the efficacy of that.

Jason C Mercurio:

But when you start to dig in into these natural compounds, whether it's different types of ginseng, as an example, which there's over six different types, you start to realize that, wow, like, some of these are more powerful than you originally might have thought.

Jason C Mercurio:

And so some people might say oh well, like, are they proven? Well, if I take something and I can subjectively feel the effect, well, that's one thing. Now if I take something and I feel nothing, that's another. That's a different case, right? Or if I take something and I can measure the effect, you know, that's another case right. And so you can think of all these cases almost in like a four by four square, right. And the question is where does your compound exist in that and what are the ones that are going to have the most effect with the lowest risk? And sometimes that could potentially be a medication. But from what I've seen, from all the research I've done, it's more than likely going to be a natural compound where someone is not actually profiting from it, because when there's money involved, you have to follow the money.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And it was funny. I was just having that conversation with my longevity doctor about taking a Sear Lemus or Repamycin and is like man, I don't feel anything from this, but then I can take some magnesium and it's just like wow, that really helps my sleep. You know, that's like something. That's like it's very obvious the effects that it has on me. So, yeah, there's definitely a scale there of taking something. How does it affect your body? Can you feel it? Can you not feel it? And then you know, obviously there's biomarkers and stuff that can go from there.

Brent Wallace:

Moving on to a couple of real popular subjects within just kind of all people, one is hair and the other one is eyes. Do you have any recommendations? I know you have something to say about a hair protocol, for sure. And then just right before, when you were talking, right before we started hitting record, I was asking about eyes, because one thing I noticed is that my eyes are starting to degrade and you know I've been taking a few supplements, you know, like lutein, things like that, but I don't know how much good is coming from that. And again, like we're talking about, like waiting for those proper protocols and stuff to come down the line.

Brent Wallace:

You know I remember hearing David Sinclair the there's some sort of injectables that they might be able to put into your eye. You know some sort of, I think, a virus and then it kills the virus or something to that, so it switches on and switches off. That might have something. What are your thoughts? And you know techniques or tools or ways of dealing with. You know hair and eyes. I know those are kind of two separate things but you can address them. You know as you as you.

Brent Wallace:

Sure.

Jason C Mercurio:

No, it makes sense. I mean, there are two very important parts of the body, so, starting with eyes, let's just say one thing that I use is it's called the eye tier 100. Use is it's called the eye tier 100. This right here, you take it and it stimulates this nerve. It can be on either side, but it's right under this bone, and what it does is it vibrates with this tip, five different levels, and it stimulates natural tear production, so I'm sure everyone's familiar with eye drops, which can be useful for dry eyes and different conditions. This will produce more natural tears. Now, everyone's going to respond slightly differently, and it's not cheap, and you have to go through their website and, I think, get a medication even, or get a prescription, and so what you do, though, is you just put it just like that and use it for like 30 seconds. Sometimes people will react differently, like they'll sneeze or something, and put it on the other side, or start crying, start crying.

Jason C Mercurio:

You got to be sure not to hit that bone too, like so it's, you know, but that's sort of the idea. Um, that'll help to maintain that your, that your your eye to your production, right. The second thing I would emphasize is protecting your eyes from different. Obviously there's debris that could get in them Like you're walking. The other day we had some fires here in LA and some ash actually got into my eyes.

Jason C Mercurio:

Oh, wow, I always thought to myself, wow, I mean I was wearing a mask and I just thought to myself, wow, I mean, I'd been wearing, I was wearing a mask and I just thought to myself, well, why didn't I wear anything? And I was only outside for a little bit and I was quite the experience, anyway, so, wearing something like these, like some blue light blockers especially, you have a lot of screens, especially at night. I actually find, even though these aren't prescription based, I can see my screens and I can see better for some reason, which is something a little counterintuitive. So think of the eyes. You know they're taking in light, right, and so if you ever looked at your eyes right after you opened them, right, you go, you look in the mirror and you'll notice, your pupils will be kind of big and they'll shrink real quick, like they'll kind of come into focus and you know, thinking about how do they work? Well, they're interacting with light, right. So having less light at night when you're sleeping, whether you're wearing eye mask, having it really dark, you know you're going to help your eyes take a break. The other part is, like, during the day, getting a little bit of that sunlight indirectly into your eyes. There's also light machines. So for me, I use a white light machine and I also use a red light machine, and so both of these, you know, I kind of get a little bit into my eyes, like not like I'm staring in it, but I may get some from the side. I may get some a little indirectly or, if I'm going to do it directly, I might close them or slightly cover them or decrease the intensity, depending on which one I'm doing. So there's a lot that goes into optimizing your eyes, and think about even the muscle underneath your eyelid, right. So, like one thing is, if you want to have, you know good, well, your whole face has muscle in it, right? So there's facial exercises you can do to actually people think that, oh, these eye bags you have are from, you know, x or y or z, right? They think there's some reason to those oh well, they didn't sleep good but it turns out that there's weakness that occurs and you can actually strengthen under the eye and that'll decrease your eye bags. So there's a lot you can do to maintain those.

Jason C Mercurio:

Going into hair, so there's also many things in hair and these are all very high level, right? The eye protocol is more extensive, as well as the ageless hair protocol. Our core flagship on the hair is called System K11. Our core flagship on the hair is called System K11. And this is a supplement product that we offer through our affiliate page and we'll share a link with that for that. Great yeah, I'll definitely share that.

Jason C Mercurio:

And so with hair it's, you know, taking the supplement, it has three different longevity enhancing compounds, right.

Jason C Mercurio:

So it has sulforaphane, ergothionine and dihydroberberine, and so all three of these have been proven more or less to have some kind of effect in the body, and so we can kind of go through those one by one if you like, but I'll give maybe more info on the hair protocol first. So the supplements there's microneedling, there's different compounds you're putting onto your actual skull, like if it's minoxidil and so on, scalp massage right, just actually physically stimulating more blood flow. And so those in combination are going to help you to maintain and slow down the aging process of the hair, and I 100% believe that more tools and technologies are going to come online to dramatically increase the quality of our hair. But with the three natural compounds in System K11 all being shown to increase the number of hair follicles in terms of surface area, the size and strength of the hair follicles. A product was developed by some scientists out of London and it's a very, very high quality product. So I would start there and then also incorporate some of the you know, the basic things I mentioned.

Brent Wallace:

Nice, that sounds awesome. Remember, what do you think? Not that I would recommend this for anyone, or you probably wouldn't either, but remember when my wife was pregnant, the prenatal pills her hair was growing so much and her nails and everything from the production of. Obviously you've grown a human inside of you. It makes your body do all kinds of things. But also I've heard prenatal pills really help your hair grow and I don't know if there's something to. You know that probably doesn't help hair loss, but you know I've heard that those types of things do help your hair grow thicker and stronger, but I don't know what do you think about those? Or have you even thought about that or heard about that?

Jason C Mercurio:

I haven't heard about the prenatal, prenatal pills helping, but I do know that it's a massive market for hair and skin and it is hard to pierce through some of the noise and figure out what. What works. Um, and you know, I have no idea if prenatal pills work and I've never looked into it, but I have seen other um people selling certain supplements that I really question if they do work, because when you look, you know, you look at it and you start to realize like, wait, like, like there's this guy at um, this conference, at one of the RadFest events, and he had this before and after picture and he was selling a supplement. And I was like, well, wait, this guy's hair is brown and this guy's hair is blonde. And he was like, well, he was trying to make the case. He was like, well, I was like, wait, like, well, like, look at their nose, like there's eyes, the eyes, the eyes color.

Jason C Mercurio:

Like one had blue eyes, one had brown eyes and I'm like and he was like, not letting it go, and he was trying to make the case that these were the same people and I was like, look, that guy is Latino and that guy is white. I mean, they're not the same people, right? So it's really, you know, piercing through the noise and figuring out what is snake oil is hard because it's a huge market. It's flooded with all kinds of products and services, and that is also part of the coaching service as well, to help people to figure out. Well, like, is this evidence based or is this potentially you know not real?

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. The snake oil there. Speaking of snake oil, let's get into marketing here. You know, as you know, and maybe the audience knows that you know, I run a marketing agency for longevity clinics specifically. Marketing is an interesting thing in the longevity industry, like you said, there's so much snake oil and it's like, hey, we're going to do this for you and whatever, breaking through that noise if you have a legitimate product or a legitimate clinic, or if you're a doctor and you're really trying to help people live longer lives, healthier lives, increasing health spans.

Brent Wallace:

It's a tough market out there, especially when there's hundreds of thousands and millions and probably billions of dollars being made on stuff that just doesn't work. And so you know we've had a lot of questions about marketing in the past. You know, between me and you, but you know, successfully marketing your product what has been some of the biggest wins of you getting your product out there and getting people to find it and and like we talked before we we can turn this question on me and what I would recommend. And you know, depending on you know what kind of products you have and stuff, but what have been some of the bigger wins for you with getting clients or marketing your product, getting the word out for their from a marketing standpoint or business standpoint. You know something that's really helped that.

Jason C Mercurio:

Sure, thanks, I appreciate it. So for me and for ageless partners, I see our marketing really at the beginning stages. A lot of the time I've spent was developing my protocol and knowledge base and network to not only build expertise on how to slow down and reverse aging but also have the tools, resources and network to do it. And so I've slowly built the marketing element over probably the past four years, but I've taken kind of a slower approach, knowing that it's really a long-term endeavor. But everything from having a website to social media, to podcasts, to going to conferences, marketing in person, I've done all of them and I would say the most traction I believe I'm starting to get is through social media, through Instagram in particular.

Jason C Mercurio:

My organization and myself we recently joined an accelerator to significantly accelerate our marketing and sales and I think that's going to be the biggest win from my perspective and I think Instagram probably is going to be the main platform. But we're on all of them. You know TikTok, linkedin, these other platforms as well but people are, they're on their phones. They're on all of them TikTok, linkedin, these other platforms as well but people are on their phones. They're on Instagram a lot. Of course, facebook as well, but yeah, I guess to flip it on you, which platform or which technique do you think is the most effective, from SEO marketing, which we've done as well, to having a website or Instagram, and so on?

Brent Wallace:

Well, a big part of it is finding where your people are right. Who are you marketing to specifically? So that really boils down to having a really clear customer avatar, so really knowing who you're marketing to and where that audience lives. So a lot of the things that I work with with clinics is a lot of times people are looking for just medical services online through Google, also on their phones, but not necessarily through the social media aspect of it. So I find, with the brick and mortars, having a presence on Google works really, really well because people might be looking for like, hey, I'm going to go get a presidential medical exam right, this is where they go over everything you know, it's what they give the president you know for to seeing if they're fit, you know, and making sure, like all these blood tests and everything. So there's a really, really complete thing. And then I stumbled kind of onto the longevity industry from there as kind of being the first portal into it. So a lot of times if a company is looking for patients or a clinic, that's one thing, whereas with you you're looking for clients for coaching. You'd like to get that ageless guide into people's hands, stuff like that, and social media is a great way to do that, you know, especially like when you're taking multiple clips and regularly posting from that. So you know, guide, you know you could go through just kind of section by section and just do a little bit blurb on each little thing, like, oh hey, here's the tip of the day for hair growth, here's the tip of the day for eye care, or just even just what we've been talking about, you know, and turning those into clips that could go on youtube reels, shorts, tiktok. Even I'm sure a section of this podcast will end up on social media as little clips of little highlights that we'll be talking about. So that is a very, very effective strategy. The biggest thing differentiator, I would say is if you have a brick and mortar business, where you need really that Google my Business, google Maps and really need the ratings and the reviews coming in, whereas if you have more of an e-product or something that's a more digital thing, that's a whole different ball of wax and that's really again getting found on Google. But also putting your products on Google Merchant Center, things like that, and then your products on Google Merchant Center, things like that, and then, like I said, really finding where your audience is at and then marketing to where they're at. So whether that's Facebook, instagram, linkedin, which seems to be a little bit more professional, so a little bit less organization focused and a little more individual focused but you can really find out a lot of good information there on who your target audience might be or how to build out an avatar on LinkedIn. So I think there's no bad marketing channels. It's just really finding the one or two that really work for your niche and then really doubling down on those.

Brent Wallace:

I think the worst thing that a company can do unless you have endless resources, which most don't is try to be all places everywhere all at once, instead of just finding one program or outlet and just focusing on that and really putting all your effort into that.

Brent Wallace:

Whether that's a podcast, whether that is an Instagram, a Facebook, you know whatever that might be, but just really picking one or two modalities and then just really doubling down on those and really focusing on those 100%, totally makes sense.

Brent Wallace:

So the other thing, you know and I guess this question would have been more appropriate after we're talking about this snake oil thing but how do you balancing the message between like the scientific evidence and being a scientifically legitimate thing between that and then marketable messaging.

Brent Wallace:

Obviously there's so much clickbait and like hype around, so many things where you know, as a marketer you know I'm constantly working with clients that are like I don't want it to be clickbaity, I want it to be that, I just want it to be just the message. Working with clients that are like I don't want it to be clickbaity, I want it to be that, I just want it to be just the message. But coming from a marketing standpoint, you do have to be a little bit excited or different or stand out a little bit, because then it's really easy to get buried in all the noise and so I don't know if you've kind of crossed that bridge, but that's a tricky one that I get work with a lot of my clients is, you know, there's this marketable message and then there's the scientific research and like kind of blending those in without too much hype, obviously not lying or telling anything that's untruthful, but also trying to maximize the upsides to these messaging.

Jason C Mercurio:

It's a good question and I mean it's definitely a balancing act. Like you said. It's a good question and I mean it's definitely a balancing act. Like you said, if you have a product that you believe in, you have to ask yourself and your organization well, how much evidence in terms of scientific evidence does this product or service have?

Jason C Mercurio:

Now, some things could be hard to quantify and measure. If we're thinking about a service, as an example, say, someone is a coach for something like a relationship coach, right, and so in that case, it's not like you could do a blood test and say, hey, my relationships are going great, you know, uh, so you know. That way, when you're marketing something like that, they're able to really say, like these are the metrics or parameters or results that you can expect. Now, is that scientifically proven? Well, not exactly, you know. But when it comes down to like modulating a specific biomarker, like if you're like, hey, this compound can lower my LDL cholesterol and it's something like niacin, for example, well, you know, that might be. Someone has a product that has a lot of niacin, right, and so well, at that point, like, you could look at the literature, you could look at the scientific evidence behind it and you could come to some kind of conclusion. But something interesting you might find as you start to dig in with anything whether it's a compound to modulate a biomarker, increase performance, enhance healthspan you could give 10 different people the same question about the same product and same biomarker and same biological pathway and you'll get 10 different answers. Not only will you get 10 different answers from 10 different experts, but those experts will contradict each other. See this online too. You'll see on Twitter or other areas where you'll have people more or less you know you can call it arguing or discussing, you know, but at the end of the day they're going back and forth to make their case and something like you know this compound, resveratrol, which Dr David Sinclair has advocated for and other people have said online oh, they don't think it's the great. You know this great thing and so there might be scientific evidence. But the lens that you view that scientific evidence is critical Because you know, if you could have a product, you could be marketing that and they could say well, look, there's these five papers that all prove that my product is, has high efficient efficacy and very, very low risk. Now you could find other papers that might contradict that.

Jason C Mercurio:

So it's always good to be evidence-based. It's always good to know a little bit of both two sides to the coin, right, two stories that you might hear about something, especially when it's a particular compound, and really having a sense of humility that we don't understand all parts of the body and that there are not only unknowns that we know about, but there's also unknown unknowns. Take rapamycin, just as an example. We don't have the data to show the long-term effects of someone taking rapamycin in a particular dose that a lot of these biohackers might be taking. And so someone might think, oh well, like, well, like you know, there's some evidence, evidence. Well, some evidence might show it's not good, some evidence might show it is good, and so you really want to have a personalized approach to your own biohacking or health enhancement and so on.

Jason C Mercurio:

And I think when people are marketing their, their products, they should be transparent and they should say, look like we all understand that they're going to emphasize the evidence that shows it's good.

Jason C Mercurio:

And you know there's going to be people who are going to say, look like, I looked at that evidence and, as robust as that is, well, let's think about this other, let's think about this another way and eventually there'll be more and more data on every single compound and product.

Jason C Mercurio:

But you know, you think about System K11. I'm like, well, I've looked into it, I've looked into the research, and that's why we market it as not only a hair product but also a longevity product. The mass majority of those compounds point to the direction of it being positive, right, but I'm sure someone could look into it and find something in the scientific literature that could show there's this risk. So it's all about like that balance of how much risk versus how much benefit, right? And so if I take something, I'm basically making a statement to myself that I think it has a low risk, high benefit. Now, I think a lot of people have been marketed compounds that may have been misled, unfortunately, and they may have been misled in terms of the safety and efficacy of those, and I think that it's disappointing to see that, in my mind, people are harming their health because of the way these particular things have been marketed. So that's kind of my thoughts on that.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, no, those are some really good points. I mean there's a lot of damage that can be done from misleading claims on that. So, looking forward, the future of longevity and life extension I know you're involved in accelerating anti-aging research and development. What do you envision for the future of developments in the longevity industry with personalized anti-aging treatments? The field is wide open, right? I mean there's so much exciting stuff coming on there. What's your take on what the future of the longevity and anti-aging medicine is?

Jason C Mercurio:

Sure, so there's a lot happening in the space. However, the entire anti-aging industry is still incredibly small in compared to what is actually needed to defeat biological aging. And I take something like the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, which we can all drop a link for, and that is something that is going to help bring more scientists in and more people to attempt to solve the aging problem, because, although we've seen a dramatic shift in perspective and shift in the technological capability and our understanding of aging, we shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of the problem, because it's very complicated, and so I do see an expansion of the science, I do see an expansion of various products, I do see an expansion of various products and services, and more and more clinics, like you were mentioning, being opened all around the globe that can begin to start to target this term everyone calls healthspan will be the primary thing, and the idea being to have more years of good health rather than years of poor health, which is what we're currently seeing. So, when we think about the future, the future of longevity, what are going to be the tools, technologies and techniques that can help us actually extend our health span dramatically? Well, there's really three overlapping fields nanotechnology, ai and genetics that are all starting to come together to give our ability to alter biology, increase our ability to alter our own biology, right, and so these are all intertwined in some way, and I think what we really need and what we may see is the scale change over time.

Jason C Mercurio:

So, for example, recently we saw a group through the new presidency, openai, sam Altman. They're launching this AI supercomputer infrastructure where they're going to put in $500 billion Apparently this is what they're saying in the news to create this infrastructure for artificial intelligence, and there was some speculation that those tools can be used to create a vaccine or some kind of gene therapy for cancer. Now, cancer being an age-related disease, it does take a lot of lives. My hope and my belief is that we can use those same tools to target aging directly, which is really the cause, versus cancer being more of the effect of aging right, and so I think we can do it. I think these AI systems are going to be the number one accelerator for anti-aging research within the longevity field, and there's going to be other accelerators, but they're going to give researchers and scientists and marketers and anyone more tools to move faster and accomplish their goals quicker, and I think that is going to be critical.

Jason C Mercurio:

Second to that is going to be more development in bioengineering, our ability to replace things. So replacing small parts of the body right If you're replacing, you know, a cell or bigger parts, like an organ, like a heart or a hand or an eye, right. So eventually we'll be able to replace nearly every part of the body. And so I think bioengineering, replacement AI are all going to have a dramatic impact as well.

Jason C Mercurio:

As you know, nanotechnology in general should be significant. You know some of it's been researched for years and years. Other fields like quantum computing, which is starting to have a little bit more hype but a little bit more traction, and that's going to be really good to do simulations in material science for different biologically compatible materials that we can use in longevity to, say, replace something of the body or to enhance some function of the body, and so on. So that's really like where I see it going and I think, beyond the technology and the science, I think the social element is critical. So like, and this is where what brian johnson doing is doing, I think, is so important, because you know he's getting people to really question and think like wait, like are we in this moment where we could potentially not die and potentially live much longer right and reach longevity escape velocity. So I think the shift in social and the social belief is going to be a dramatic accelerator for the longevity industry as well.

Brent Wallace:

Yeah, yeah, I'm super excited about it all. I think, with the advent of like, you're touching on AI and really the future of being able to run those simulations of just like, hey, what is this going to look like, hey, what you know? Instead of having human trials, it can be like the quantum computing and the AI can really go through and map out everything and really get a more accurate understanding of what could happen with the results, instead of us having to wait for years and trial and error like there. So I'm really excited for the future of all of this with the longevity and, yeah, just erasing dying and disease or aging as a disease. So, yeah, I'm super excited for that.

Brent Wallace:

Well, jason, thanks for joining me today. It's been a great conversation. We've been all over the place. It's been really cool. I'm excited to actually go back and listen to all this again so I can soak it in a little bit more. How can people get a hold of you or where would you like them to go in order to check you and or ageless partners out in more depth?

Jason C Mercurio:

Sure, so people can follow me on Instagram at Jason C Mercurio no spaces, no.

Brent Wallace:

And how do you spell your last name? Just so people.

Jason C Mercurio:

Yeah, so Jason C, and then Mercurio M-E-R-C-U-R-I-O. Okay, great, or still can find that, and you can also find us at agelesspartnerscom as well. Awesome.

Jason C Mercurio:

Well thanks for joining me today and we will be talking soon. Thanks, brent, I really appreciate it. And I'll just also one last word for the viewers as a call to action to take action against aging and to get involved, because you know we sometimes we may have an optimistic view seeing what's happening in the industry, but without people like you to take action and bring the ideas and the methods to fruition, you know we won't see the growth that we need. So I hope your viewers can take the level of seriousness we need for the longevity industry and bring it to a whole new level. So really, appreciate it.

Brent Wallace:

I agree. All right, take care all. Thanks for listening. Thanks, brent, you too. This is the Longevity Loop Podcast.

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