The Longevity Loop Podcast
Hey, I'm Brent Wallace, and it's exciting to share my podcast, The Longevity Loop, with folks who are interested in the topic of anti-aging and longevity science who, at the same time, are dedicated to growing their longevity-focused business, whether that be a brick and mortar clinic or an eCommerce endeavor. I'm 100% all in on helping people who run clinics and businesses that focus on helping folks live longer and healthier lives. It's my mission to help spread the word about living longer and helping others live healthier lives.
In each episode, I chat with bright people who know a ton about living longer and staying young while also knowing how to operate a profitable business.
We talk about health spans and the technologies behind them while also digging into how they get more customers for their businesses and what tricks have worked best for them.
I hope that you, the listener, love listening to all the valuable knowledge of what others are doing in today's longevity economy, hearing about what's working for these experts, and where they might need a little help. It's like getting the inside scoop on running a successful anti-aging business while learning some excellent tips for living a longer, healthier life.
If you're into staying young and healthy, or if you've got a business that helps people do that, you'll love this podcast. We keep things simple and fun, so you don't need to be a scientist to understand what we're talking about.
Join us and learn how to live longer and grow your business simultaneously!
The Longevity Loop Podcast
Beyond the Bacteria - Rewiring the Gut-Brain Connection for Longevity
Can the secret to slowing biological time be found in your gut? Nicholas Tubach, founder of Propion, believes the answer is yes – but not in the way most people think about gut health.
Welcome to this week's episode - "Beyond the Bacteria - Rewiring the Gut-Brain Connection for Longevity"
Unlike traditional approaches focusing on probiotics or prebiotics, Tubach's revolutionary perspective centers on post-biotics – the metabolites produced by gut bacteria that directly interact with our cellular processes. "I don't think the bacteria in our gut are important at all," he provocatively states before clarifying, "what's important about the bacteria is the post-biotics they make."
Propion Blend, the company's flagship product, works through a fascinating mechanism: it diverts the metabolism of tryptophan (yes, that Thanksgiving turkey amino acid) away from inflammatory host pathways toward bacterial pathways that generate potent anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective compounds. According to Tubach's co-founder Dr. Daniel Weiner, these "Propion molecules" show more promise for transforming human health than any other compounds except semaglutide – a bold claim from a scientist not known for marketing hyperbole.
Propion's approach truly stands out in the crowded longevity market because of its scientific foundation and refreshingly pragmatic philosophy. Rather than demanding puritanical lifestyle changes, Tubach envisions longevity technologies that accommodate real life. "Propion, one of the goals of our product... will be to minimize the negative effects of inevitable unhealthy and sometimes desirable unhealthy practices in your life," he explains, acknowledging that most people want to live longer while still enjoying simple pleasures.
Beyond his own venture, Tubach shares valuable insights about the broader longevity landscape, including his enthusiasm for longevity clinics, the potential of gene therapies, and practical tips anyone can implement today – from air filtration to making longevity a social activity shared with friends. Discover how cutting-edge science is making the dream of extended healthspan increasingly accessible to everyone, not just those willing to dedicate their entire lives to the pursuit.
Think you're ready to revolutionize your clinic's first impression?
Let's chat about some strategy!
Visit https://longevityclinicmarketing.com for a friendly, no-pressure talk about boosting your clinic's marketing and reputation.
We're here to help you shine from the moment patients reach out!
Do you want your longevity business to crush it this year? You are in the right place. Every week, we're diving deep into cutting-edge longevity science and profitable business strategies. You'll discover what's working right now for top clinics and get practical ideas to boost your own business. I'm your host, brett Wallace, and this is the Longevity Loop Podcast. This is the Longevity Loop Podcast. We're live here with Nicholas Tubach, a recent resident to Austin. So welcome to Austin, nicholas, thank you. We met over LinkedIn and then for coffee here in Austin, and we're planning a pizza party what we were just talking about right before the show started rolling, so yeah, so what's really cool about Nicholas? He's got a company called Propion and it's really an interesting company from a longevity perspective. Nicholas does focus on longevity science, but this really deals with the gut biome, so we're going to talk a lot about that today Nicholas's background and just basically how to live a long, awesome life. So, with that said, welcome, nicholas, thanks. Can you just tell me a little bit about your background?
Speaker 1:You know your schooling Sure why, You've got some really cool stuff going on in neuroscience, so yeah, let's go from there.
Speaker 2:So I grew up in the Bay Area, so recent transplants to Austin and then also ended up going to UC Berkeley. So I grew up in Berkeley and then went to school right down the street from where I grew up and studied cell biology, entrepreneurship and public health, with sort of an emphasis on neurobiology. And it was interesting because as a I was not a science person. You know, like 11th grade, biology was my least favorite subject that year, as much more so humanities, english and history person. And so it just it came as a surprise to me even to find myself so enamored with cell biology as a subject, because it's just very, very different from a lot of other sciences that you study. It's very different from the biology that you study as a K-12 student.
Speaker 2:And so I got interested in it, sort of from a hobbyist perspective, initially just wanting to understand my own brain and my own body, down to the cellular level, and then realized I have to go to school for this. So I ended up switching, mostly emphasizing my studies on neuroscience, because I'm very, very interested in cognitive enhancement as well as treating neurodegenerative diseases. And then, while at school, I founded my first company, called Molecular Medicine. The idea was to develop a slew of pharmaceutical drug programs to treat neurodegenerative diseases and brain damage, and then that sort of morphed into a couple of different ventures which I spun out with various advisors to that initial venture, and one of these companies is Propion, which I now head out, so I'll pause there for now.
Speaker 1:Awesome. No, that's a great little intro there. So my question is there, I guess is like your experience as a serial biotech entrepreneur, how does that shape your current approach to longevity science?
Speaker 2:So for me, it's all about like how does the market interact with our objectives, or the other way around? How do the market interact with our objectives? Or rather the other way around, how do our objectives interact with the market? And so it's all well and good to understand the biology of longevity, but the fact is that a lot of this stuff costs a lot of money, and I'm not just talking from a consumer perspective, I mean the R&D. And when you're investing in R&D, of course you have to think about that. Most of the time, the money isn't yours, and so you have to be able to go out and convince people. Either they're going to make a return on their investment financially or they're going to make a return on their investment mission mission wise, and hopefully both. And it's the both where that entrepreneurship and longevity interest intersect, because we as entrepreneurs have to figure out OK, we're idealists, but we have to come back down to earth and figure out like where does that meet the bottom line?
Speaker 1:basically, OK, that makes sense. And so you're just talking a second ago and you alluded to this and we'll get into it. But the brain-gut connection there that we've all heard about so much, I know that has a lot to do with propion, Propion, yeah, Propion, sorry about that. And so you've got the tagline how to slow time. What does that represent when it comes to Propion? And I guess that's a tagline, right, or is it part of the?
Speaker 2:actual. Thing.
Speaker 1:But how does that?
Speaker 2:all tie in. We have intentionally called our company Propion, aka how to Slow Time, incorporated because we call our technology Propion and therefore Propion is can also be known as how we slow time. So we're interested in gut microbiome metabolites that we call Propion 1 and Propion 2. These metabolites have I mean it's kind of astounding, honestly. So my co-founder, dr Daniel Weiner. His opinion you know we can't say we treat any disease or anything like that in official advertising but his opinion on these molecules is that there are no other molecules with such convincing evidence on how they could radically change the face of society other than semaglutide. Like that's a pretty bold statement for and that's a pretty bold statement for someone like him to be making because he's not a marketing guy, like he's not out there trying to sell himself or sell his. He's honestly pretty bad at it sometimes. Sorry, dan, if you're watching this, but that's great because that gives me all the confidence. I need to really put that stamp on our company Propion. Our technology is how to slow time.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, yeah. So slowing biological time? Obviously so, yeah, and that's a crazy bold statement as far as that is so effective and of course we're not suggesting that I'm not a doctor.
Speaker 2:You're not a doctor.
Speaker 1:But it's super cool to know that compounds and molecules exist out there we all know they do, and so talking about a product that utilizes these type of things is a really cool thing to know about and to try to try for yourself to see how effective it is, so you don't even have to rely on medical claims. It's like if someone tries something like that and sees the results, then you know that's a great thing.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, I will just backpedal a little bit and say, if it doesn't end up that way, you know, no, no, there are no Right, like we're going to look at the data and it's just what we've seen so far and so we're really excited. I mean, that's why we actually started the company is to use our own technology personal and so we're very excited to be doing this honestly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the other thing is, like you mentioned your business partner. There you have a really impressive team of experts on the Propion side of things and they've got a really wide ranging array of diverse backgrounds. So how does that contribute to Propion side of things? And they've got a really wide-ranging array of diverse backgrounds, so how does that contribute to Propion's goals?
Speaker 2:I would say that that is synonymous with Propion's goals. So I graduated from UC Berkeley. I like to consider myself relatively intelligent, but I don't have, you know, three PhDs. I haven't invented blockbuster drugs before. I don't have 40 years in the laboratory of experience.
Speaker 2:I had a vision and an idea of how, realistically, we could change the world, and so, to me, what that has to be validated by is experts. Right, we don't want to be people just selling snake oil at all. Right, my entire goal was to create something that has this sort of level of institutional credibility, because that is what we should be looking to, to help guide our own decisions. And so, propion, that level of credibility is what we should be looking for. And so, in building Propion, one of my main sort of MOs has been to, at every step along the way, involve the experts.
Speaker 2:So my co-founder, dr Daniel Weiner he's best known for his research on how immune cells in the gut microbiome drive type 2 diabetes Won all sorts of awards for that. He's you know, he's a reviewer on 10 journals works with NASA studying how immune cells work differently in space. One of our board members yeah right, super cool. One of the members, dr Bill Andrews, was a co-inventor of recombinant human growth hormone, which was Genentech's first drug. Wow Built Genentech Tissue plasmagen activator, which has saved tens of millions of lives for people who are suffering from a stroke. And his team was the team that discovered the human phalomerase enzyme, which is arguably the most fundamental discovery of human longevity from the 20th century.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 2:These are the people who I'm building Propion with, and that, to me, is putting those people on is part of the goal.
Speaker 1:That's huge. So this all resulted in your main product and I think it's your only product, right? The Propion Blend. It's our only product so far. Yeah, yeah, so if you could break that down, explain what the Propion Blend does and how it works to promote longevity? You've alluded to it, but let's just hear it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Propion Blend is what we would call a nutritional technology. It is a combination of nutritional ingredients that work differently when added together than if they were to be given one at a time. And so what? So a synergistic effect is what you're talking about, Exactly, Exactly. And so what they work synergistically to do is divert the metabolism of one of the amino acids in there, which is tryptophan, towards bacterial metabolic pathways, as opposed to host metabolic pathways. So dietary tryptophan I'll back up a little bit.
Speaker 2:Tryptophan, very recently, has been linked to, I'll just say, longevity. I won't go into every little bullet point, but the way the body metabolizes tryptophan and the byproducts of tryptophan have very recently been strongly, strongly linked to longevity and the absence of disease. Tryptophan you know what people talk about yeah, 5-AHTB turns into melatonin eventually, but that's sort of. It's not really the mechanism that we're trying to target with the propion blend. So tryptophan gets metabolized by the body into a ton of different other molecules, right Like the molecule you're just mentioning that makes us sleepy. It gets metabolized into melatonin eventually.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, many of these metabolites are inflammatory and as we get older or in various disease states, the amount of tryptophan that gets metabolized by the host, which metabolizes humans, which metabolize it into inflammatory molecules, goes up, and the amount that gets metabolized by bacteria which metabolizes tryptophan into highly anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective regenerative molecules goes down. And so what we are doing with Propion Blend and you can read this on our website propioncom is figuring out a way to get the tryptophan to the bacteria in the gut so that it gets metabolized into these incredibly beneficial what we call gut metabolites. And again, those gut metabolites are strongly linked to longevity and the absence of disease.
Speaker 1:So right now, you're talking about how the gut microbiome really plays a huge part of a long healthy life, or AKA longevity, and you're really touching on why it's so crucial, right? So you're talking about how your body takes this tryptophan through your guys' mechanism of getting it delivered to the system through the gut microbiome and then really turning it into something that's useful for the body, exactly.
Speaker 2:So like we do not want to I know tryptophan was a big supplement for a very long time we do not want to supplement with tryptophan alone. And what the other ingredients in the Propion blend do and we go into very extensive detail in the website is it prevents tryptophan metabolism, not wholly, but it greatly reduces tryptophan metabolism by the host, the human, and shunts the tryptophan towards the gut bacteria which then turn it into very, very beneficial postbiotics. Nice, nice, and I almost want to.
Speaker 1:Sorry, go ahead, I was going to let you go there, but I was just going to say Nice, nice, focusing on longevity nowadays, especially in the last few years, and a lot of people do have other supplements that claim longevity and helping with that, so how is yours different?
Speaker 2:So I will start by saying I mean there's so much to say here. I'll start by saying that we're the first company to be targeting these pathways specifically, so we're the first to be focusing on what we call the propion molecules, and there's very new evidence linking these propion molecules to longevity that I and others have decided are much more compelling than a lot of what else is out there. So one thing that I, one issue that I take with the longevity supplement market is I found a lot of it is either rebranding generic ingredients and positioning them as longevity promoting molecules. You know, cell, you know we'll have a longevity supplement and it'll have just like, it'll just have vitamin c in it, right, and and I was like, okay, you know, you could have just gone out and gotten vitamin c as well, or just just eaten an orange I would say what we're doing is we're not replenishing basic elements of biology, like a lot of these molecules are, or we're not replenishing basic elements of diet.
Speaker 2:What we are doing is actually creating a technology that is not just shoving ingredients into the body.
Speaker 2:The whole idea is to access something that would not be accessible if we were just say, giving things to you that are healthy, right, and so a lot of what's out there in the longevity world is just trying to get you to put things in your body that are healthy right, that these people are saying are healthy for you, and I'm not saying they either are or aren't.
Speaker 2:Some of them are saying are healthy for you and I'm not saying they either are or aren't. Some of them are better than others. But what we're doing that's different is we're actually technologically hacking your metabolism in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible if we didn't invent this specific technology to do so. That's sort of that's what's different about Propion Blend, and so also I will say you know, propion Blend is not going to be the end, all be all of Propion. We have other ideas for what we're going to do as a company, and this is sort of our first product that we're launching, and we plan to get sort of more and more into the science of these Propion molecules that we describe on our website and build off of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it sounds like such a great base product to begin with. Like the gut biome, like we were talking about earlier, is such an important part of humans thriving and most people have really broken gut biomes in general just from the foods we eat and antibiotics and those types of things. So really it sounds like such a great way to focus on that, other than just taking a probiotic, say, which is kind of the state of that. And then it seems like the more the trends now is a little bit more like the prebiotics right, you know it's like those things are the things that people focus on. So this is really cool that you're approaching this gut, this solution to a healthy gut biome, in a little bit different way. That sounds amazing, like I mean, this is a really, really neat product that y'all have come up with, so I have something super controversial to say honestly Good I love it Is.
Speaker 2:I don't think the bacteria in our gut are important at all, and that comes with a huge caveat. I think what's important about the bacteria is the postbiotics that they make. So it's true that we need the bacteria in order to make these beneficial molecules, but the bacteria themselves are not. They don't have function in our body. They have function to create things that act functionally within our body. So the postbiotic molecules are the molecules that human biology has developed receptors for right. The postbiotics are, say, serotonin. I'll just use serotonin as an example. We've developed serotonin receptors, so serotonin is a ligand for serotonin receptors. Gut bacteria are not ligands for anything. They neither activate nor inactivate any process in our body. It's all about what the bacteria produce, and so we are focusing on putting stuff into the bacteria to get them to produce these functional postbiotics or gut microbiome metabolites. Almost the probiotic aspect of it is ends up being the. It ends up being the key intermediary, but it itself is not the type of product that we need to be focusing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that totally makes sense, right, and it seems like the industry does focus on that versus not the after effects of it all. So this longevity market we's movies about it. Now I just watched one called longevity hackers on netflix, I think. Or the brian johnson just has a documentary on netflix. So what unique challenges and opportunities do you really see in the longevity industry?
Speaker 2:I mean, we, we talked about like snake oil, right there.
Speaker 1:There's so much like or repurposing old I mean not old, but you know compounds that are commonly available, like vitamin C, like you're saying but then there's also the element of like the snake oil stuff is like oh yeah, this is going to like, this little compound that we have a corner on is going to change your life, and all these type of things.
Speaker 2:And not to say that all these type of things and not to say that I don't even necessarily think the snake, I don't even think the snake oil. I think actually we can sort of do away with the whole like prejudice or image of supplements as snake oil. I I think there's just too much like science out there now. Like nobody is selling snake oil anymore, basically that's except for like a very, very, very small segment of the market.
Speaker 2:Um, I think it's more just that people are overhyping or are like like I remember I used to get Instagram ads for, like for NAD or NMN, and the quote that would be in the Instagram ad total clickbait was scientists are asking is this molecule the fountain of youth? And they're pulling that quote from an article in which the it's so ridiculous, in which the concluding remark is scientists are asking is this molecule the fountain of youth? The answer is no. That is the next sentence in that article, and yet they're pulling the clickbait sentence to promote it as the fountain of youth to me, and so that is what I don't like a lot about the current longevity industry. But that's not to say that those molecules aren't at least putatively good for you. It's just that there is that yeah right, like overselling it, like this oil is going to cure you of everything overselling it, like this oil is going to cure you of everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what I find with products it's always this is the product that's going to change your life or something to that extent, and it's just a piece of the larger puzzle. So, like you're saying about the vitamin C thing, yeah, vitamin C is a great, great, great supplement, very important to our vitality, health. But if you just took vitamin c and nothing else, you aren't going to live a healthy life necessarily. It's all part of you know, obviously, healthy nutrition, healthy sleep. You know, taking the right supplementation at the right times based on what your body needs, you know.
Speaker 1:So, having a genetic profile and then just seeing how it works for you too, because, like nmn, you and NAD, plus all those things, I was super into those and I was like dumbfounded how expensive it is. But he's like, okay, I'll take these and just check it out. And I spent a lot of money, took them for a long amount of time and then when I stopped taking them, I'm like huh, I didn't really notice that much difference. And then I started taking them again, you know, and really trying to figure out. Like I've got my whoop strap, I can really really track these things if it's doing anything, and I didn't notice any difference personally and so maybe I wasn't taking enough, maybe other things were off.
Speaker 2:I think the idea is that it would affect you over the course of your whole life and that is one of the challenges with some of the longevity supplements out there including ours, it's a challenge we're going to have to face is we're promoting a better end result and a better day-to-day experience over the course of your entire life, which you might not notice on a day-to-day basis. It might only be apparent to you 10 years down the line, and it won't be because you won't have right, right like you won't have experienced what your life would have been like without it, and so, therefore, you don't know how it positive right. There's a lot of this science that that is just acting on such a cellular level in such a subtle way, but a very profound way that it's. It can be hard for people to buy into. It's not like popping a Tylenol and your headache goes away.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I really feel is a big part of this equation here we're selling a lot of things that are going to have effects down the road, right, like in 10 years your telomeres will be longer, or these type of things. But I think there's a lot of opportunity as well in the testing space really getting better tests to see how these things are working. I'm not aware of that. There's a telomerase test, but there might be, but it's not super common if it's out there. And the tests like the Pace, the paste dunham test, you know, your, your real age versus your biological age or something like that, and those tests are really rudimentary. At this point they do tell you a little bit about what you're going on, but it's really the future of longevity, in my opinion, is really about testing and be able to really test these products and really see a little bit more real-time results in them. And just saying, like you know, we're just talking about the NMN.
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 1:helping me right now, like I would like to get a test in three months. It's like, hey, this is helping you. You might not feel it, but it is helping and it's the testing that's really going to get better over time, as well as the supplementation and things like that. So you know, and I'm a marketer, right, and I work exclusively in the longevity space, and so I love hearing you talk about the challenges of coming up with a marketing strategy that does talk about these things that aren't necessarily apparent right away. You know you're selling something in the future and it's a hard sell, as you know a salesperson or marketer as any company doing that. So how do you approach educating consumers about these pretty complex scientific concepts?
Speaker 2:Well, the first step is being a person that they want to listen to, because that makes the rest of it much easier, and I think that's what we have a huge advantage of with Propion is. You know, my co-founder, dr Weiner, is one of the gut microbiome experts in North America, and so, right off the bat, like people these days are just much more interested in the gut microbiome than they were 15 years ago. So there's a much higher percentage of people who are going to be immediately receptive to sticking through the educational component, even though some parts of it might be boring. Right, it's not boring for them because they're already interested in it. And then I think testing is also extremely important for marketing, not just for results, but actually for marketing, but actually for marketing.
Speaker 2:And I think that the more companies which use testing as a form of marketing, the more that people will begin to buy into longevity. Because you know, we as humans are programmed to like data, actually Like we like to track things and find patterns and change things and see how that affects patterns, and so if you can almost gamify longevity in a way, then I think a lot more people will, uh, become interested in it, at least in a casual way that doesn't take over their whole life, right? So you're talking about brian johnson and I totally respect what he's doing. It's just, I think that it in in some ways, it makes longevity appear inaccessible to, even though, if even if that's not the message he's promoting, the surface level appearance is that longevity is only for people who are willing to dedicate 24 hours a day to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what you see in the media, right, the you know the $2 million a year that he spends and just everything that he does every second of the day has to do with this thing. But then, when you really listen to his message, he just talks about the foundations first that are free and then going on to it. But yeah, the message that you hear from you know everyone is like, oh my God, this is crazy, I can't believe that I could never do that, or it's like that's really not the point of it.
Speaker 1:So really it sounds like there's a balance between the scientific integrity of something and then effective marketing and messaging for that.
Speaker 2:You know you've got a yin and yang there. Going off of the marketing aspect, I think what the industry needs to do better and what we're trying to accomplish with Propion is understand the average person. And so you know I mentioned at the very beginning of the show growing up, I was a humanities person, and humanities is really the study of psychology through either history or literature, like that's what it boils down to. Even plot, like plot lines, at the end of the day, are psychology, and so I apply a lot of my understanding there to Propion.
Speaker 2:Because it may be that XYZ person doesn't want to live forever or doesn't want to spend a thousand dollars a month on supplements or doesn't read all of the scientific journals right, they might, really, they might work two jobs, have three kids. They might not have time for that, and so what we're trying to do with Propion in a way as well as like position it to relate to your goals as maybe just a normal person. So let me explain what I mean by that a little bit. You might eat, you might really like hamburgers, or you might not have the time to cook a super healthy meal all the time. Should you be punished for that? I don't know. Probably not, in my opinion, and so I hope not, because I really love hamburgers, yeah, exactly right, like I had.
Speaker 2:I had a. I had a top ramen for lunch, just because I needed to put something in the mic. I try not to do that a lot, but like I just needed to put something in the microwave, like I hadn't eaten all day and I was like I need something that I can make in 60 seconds that will literally just get calories so I can get through the next two hours. My call it probably should have been a protein bar, but even those, a lot of the times aren't great for you, right, and so, propion, one of the goals of our product our existing product and future products will be to like, minimize the negative effects of inevitable unhealthy and sometimes desirable unhealthy practices in your life. It could lower the negative cholesterol impact of eating a high-fat hamburger, or it could reduce the blood sugar spike of enjoying a chocolate milkshake or whatever, because, at the end of the day, I don't like I'm not a puritan like and I think that a lot of people feel the same right. They would love to be able to live longer, healthier lives, but they're not willing to sacrifice a lot of the things, the like, simple pleasures that make them happy, whether it's food habits, lifestyle, whatever, or even just absence of. Maybe you're not super into exercising and you try, but it's not something that you've mastered.
Speaker 2:And so, as far as marketing goes, there is the like, there is the in your face messaging of diehard longevity. We're going to change our entire lifestyles. We're going to live forever. Everything is about maximizing, optimizing, but also, I think, what we could and should be doing a little bit more, as an industry is saying, here's how we could minimize the negative impacts of some of the things you like to do. Obviously, let's all try and be healthy, but there are inevitably things. There are going to be things in your life, even outside of your control External, like if you live in a construction zone or something like near a construction zone. That's not in your control a lot of the times, and so positioning things that way, I think, is going to lead to much more, much higher adoption, much greater conversion rate from that type of marketing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. So that leads me to my next question. So what emerging trends and technologies in the longevity industry are you most excited about? Like you mentioned Propion, coming up with some new products, what's on the horizon with you all, as well as just the space in general, because there's so much coming down the line what is some of the things that you're most excited about?
Speaker 2:So I'm really excited about our pharmaceutical track as well. We're developing a small molecule treatment for lupus as well. We're developing a small molecule treatment for lupus and there's currently no effective disease-modifying therapy that isn't immunosuppressive for lupus. I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong or anybody out there correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. Really excited about that.
Speaker 2:There are a couple of other things that I can't necessarily discuss that are coming down the line as far as consumer products right now for Propion, and we're raising funding to do all of that. That's honestly been one of our biggest challenges is getting the money in the door to advance our research. But what am I excited about? As far as the longevity industry? I am really excited about longevity clinics. Honestly, I love longevity clinics. Honestly, I love longevity clinics. I think that they are such a boon to their communities because it is almost exactly what I was talking about Like there's somebody there that knows a lot more than you do, and so if you were to just listen to them, chances are you will live a like healthier, longer life by at least like 10, 15 percent, could be 20, could be 25. And so love longevity clinics.
Speaker 2:I'm excited about gene therapies as well. It's a mixed bag as far as gene therapies go. Obviously, the market entry point for gene therapies is very different than I think a lot of the people in the industry would like to see. Right, because we have to cater to the fda and make it so that, and also make it so that we can force insurance companies to pay three million dollars to give investors a return on their investment. You know what I mean. So there's like it really is a mixed bag. So you know, but there's, it's honestly, it's science fiction, it's science fiction come to life, and so that, to me, is really exciting as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's super cool. It's really cool that you brought up longevity clinics. That's one of my favorite things about it too and why I chose to almost exclusively work with longevity clinics, because that's the end point of the consumer can get into this technology and then it's up to these clinicians to really know even about products like the Propion. Just knowing these things and knowing the modalities about therapies like red light therapy or ketamine or peptides I mean there's just a litany of so many things to know about and that's such a cool way to get it out to the consumer. And really getting those longevity clinics out there is part of my really big job and mission. Just because people don't know that VA exists, they still think go into their primary care physician hey, I heard about metformin or whatever and then your average PCP is not going to really know or probably prescribe metformin or whatever or a peptide, and they're really looking for a doctor that can really help their performance, their longevity their sleep.
Speaker 2:All these things, as well as feeling better on a day-to-day basis and, I think, going back to the challenge that a lot of these interventions, as well as supplements, face, are like is this going to be effective 10 years down the line, or will I actually feel it today or tomorrow? I think it's critical to blend those together right, so that you're doing things that do make you feel better immediately or in the very short term, but then you also know that, as a part of your routine, you're building something into your daily routine that will help 10, 15 years down the line.
Speaker 1:So I've got a question for you. Are there any misconceptions out there about longevity science or the longevity industry that you'd like to address? That is a loaded question, right, and we can skip it. You know that we don't have to get into it, but I feel like there's so many misconceptions in general about what longevity science is and you know, like we just talked about earlier with Brian Johnson blueprint, like one of the misconceptions is like you have to live it and breathe it every single second of every single day. Huge misconception, and I was just thinking if you knew of anything off the top of your head. That is a misconception that really doesn't benefit people because they're like, oh, this is too hard I mean, that's probably the biggest one, right. Like longevity is hard, it's expensive and people just avoid it because what's the point?
Speaker 2:Right. I think we need to separate out the like living forever goal and the being healthy goal, mm-hmm. So longevity, I think, as a lot of people talk about it, is what I believe all primary care physicians will be trained to accomplish 50 years from now. Like what we think of, as like we have to go on podcasts to talk about it because we have to be catered to our like niche or whatever. Like it's just going to be what the medical system is 50 years from now. I don't know whether that's a misconception or not necessarily, but I, I think you know, moving away from longevity as this, as like almost a philosophy that you have to adopt, like you don't have to adopt a philosophy, or like adopt a lifestyle to just listen to your doctor, right, like that's something that Americans have been doing for decades Ideally, I don't know. Also, we really need to get away from I'm very critical of my peers, frankly we need to get away from promoting longevity as something that is something we're striving towards and we are these champions and we've made this incremental breakthrough and we're doing these amazing things. Now we have ai I'm not, I know I'm not describing this very well, but I, I promise you, I literally promise you, we know how to make people live to 200 right now. We know how to do it.
Speaker 2:Today we, like as an industry, we're sort of promoting it as this like valiant struggle against the over funding, who want to feel that power of having their own startup and launching a successful company and whatever. And so there is, unfortunately, this overwhelming bias towards funding startups, which is funny because I run a startup, right, but there's this. There's this bias towards, like, funding startups because they claim they're the next big thing, when in reality, a lot of these startups are doing the same exact thing as each other. And it's it's become this game of trying to convince those people who have money who don't know what they're talking about to give the money to the people who only sort of know what they're talking about at the end of the day, instead of, like the people with the money actually knowing what they're talking about, so that they don't have to give it to anybody else. They can just run and do it. So that's what I'm very frustrated about with this industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's a super valid point. So kind of getting probably to one of our last questions here. So people listening to this, you know we have a mix of providers, clinicians, people interested in longevity but what would you say to a listener who's really interested in optimizing their longevity? What is a practical step or two that they can take, starting today? I mean, one thing I want to start trying to immediately is the propion blend.
Speaker 2:Propion, yeah, Propion blend. I'll definitely. I'll bring a bottle to our pizza party for you, right?
Speaker 1:Perfect, Perfect. That sounds like a deal. Pizza for longevity. You know someone listening to this like what's a step they can, you know, and we could say something like sleep. Obviously, sleep is a huge foundational thing, but maybe something that is maybe a little overlooked, that someone can incorporate in their daily habits. That would really push that forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, take Propion Blend. That's one thing. I take it daily, my co-founder takes it daily, our advisors take it daily. My co-founder takes it daily, our advisors take it daily. You know we'd love to have you in our decentralized study that we're running. If you're already interested in getting like biological readouts, if you use a whoop, if you use an Apple Watch to track your sleep, we're interested in collecting data on how it could either positively or potentially negatively we don't know impact sleep to help decide when in the day that the product should be taken, take a multivitamin, just take a multivitamin. If you don't do anything else, just take a multivitamin. Also, I'm a firm believer in air filtration. I think if you live in a highly polluted area or just a highly urban area near a construction site in a country with higher pollution, definitely invest in an air purifier, because air quality can be something that can take 20 years off of your life or give it back to you if you breathe healthy air.
Speaker 1:For the most part, yeah, I mean that's a fantastic point. I remember reading a study a few years back If you live within a mile of a freeway, your life expectancy goes down. I forget exactly what it was, but it was like five to 10 years or something. So, yeah, I mean air filters, if you can afford it, that's a huge, huge thing. Even the other thing that I tell people most people have forced air systems. So really, if you can't afford a dedicated air filter, make sure you can get the highest MERV rating, the M-E-R-V rating, for your HVAC system, and that also really helps to I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like a for lack of a better term a poor man's hack where Right?
Speaker 2:it's setting the air up A little bit better.
Speaker 1:Yep, it just gets a little bit better. That I think from the research I've done. It's ME. The MERV 11 or higher really does help filtrate and I think you can even get HEPA filters for your HVAC system. So if you can't afford a standalone, a high quality standalone unit that can really really get the cubic foot you know really going to cover your house, because I know in our house we have four, you know, one for each room and then one big one for the living room, and that's a big investment, especially when you have to rechange the filters.
Speaker 1:But if you have a forced air system, you can go you know any retailer that you can buy the filters and just make sure that your MERV is as high as you can afford. You know, obviously they get more expensive the higher the MERV rating, but I find that that's a really a less expensive hack, if you will, to really purify your air without getting that. But that's a great point. I mean, just like air pollution, it's huge, especially if you live in a city. Yeah, so where can our audience find out more about their Propion blend purchasing, that, find out more about you? Where should people go?
Speaker 2:Find me on LinkedIn, nicholas Stubach and Propioncom. I mean, there's a lot of information about what we're doing. That's P-R-O-P-I-O-Ncom A lot of information about what we're doing on there. Also, I encourage you to go check out the profile of my co-founder, dr Daniel Weiner. You can just look him up. He's a professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He's also affiliated with the University of Toronto and University of Southern California.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to add one more thing, though, about you know what could I just recommend to anybody out there listening. I would say, like, make longevity something that you do with your friends too. Like, whatever it is, it is very hard to build habits on your own. Um, it can also feel, uh, somewhat isolating to have, like this thing be your goal, and like. I've spoken to people about this where, where they just feel alienated because they're like, oh, I cut hamburgers out of my life, or I don't eat breakfast before 12 pm, or I don't eat before 12 pm, regardless of whether or not that's effective. It's just like you know different changes, and so you can find people to like to just build, even like whether it's going to the gym with going to the gym with somebody practicing a diet, with somebody taking the same product as somebody and just checking in like hey, have you been taking this? Like how are you liking it Do?
Speaker 1:you not like it? Do you like it? How do you feel that can really make a big difference. I would say, yeah, that's huge. And yeah, and part of it, what's so beautiful about online? You can find all these people there, like in your city, even how we connected, like LinkedIn is such a great way to figure it out. Like you know, just putting into terms longevity, and then whatever city you're in, and then see what comes up. And then obviously you have to take the first step to reach out and what to do. You can create a friendship. I mean, just like what we have.
Speaker 1:It's, it's perfect. I mean it's so great like we met each other online. Yeah, met in real life, since we both live in austin, and it's a new friendship and it's it's really cool to, you know, learn about hey, what are you doing nicholas, and hey, what are you doing brent? And it's this back and forth. And then all of a sudden is like I'll go for a run. Hey, nicholas, you want to come for a run, I'm going downtown, you know, or whatever. And it's just those habits of it's like the warren buffett thing. I think it's warren buffett or someone of that, but you're the. Maybe it's gary keller. But anyway, you're the average of the five people you hang out with, so it's like you know if you constantly hang out with those people who are healthy.
Speaker 1:You're likely to be a healthier people that you hang out with most, and it's just it's super important to have a good, solid community around you. So, on that, let's wrap this up, nicholas, but thanks for joining today and I'll see you soon at the pizza party. Yeah, yeah, looking forward to it. This is the Longevity Loop Podcast.
