Brett Benes: So you're saying about ⁓ PTSD being related to this.
Bill Andrews: Yeah, I mean, it's like there's lots of studies right now showing that people with PTSD have shorter telomeres and other people that don't. There are military personnel that don't. But same with things like ADHD, a lot of psychological things. So while I'm mentioning great doctors and stuff like that, there's a Lisa Epple, Dr. Lisa Epple, that's written a really great book on the psychology, how to control the psychology of aging and things like that. psychological effects that occur because of aging and how to treat those. I can't remember the name of her book, but yeah, Lisa Epple, E-P-E-L is her last name. People should check up on her because again, she seems very interested in prevention and that's why you publish a book actually. Most of the you tell people how to prevent these diseases themselves. Yeah, but there's so many things. used to show a list of diseases that have been connected to the length of your telomeres. And list has gotten so big, I can't even include them all now because the gets...
Brett Benes: Thanks for joining us today. Be sure to check out our next episode here and use the comments to any questions or suggest any future topics. was helpful to you and you want to support our mission to improve US healthcare and win the on complex illness, or the link in ⁓ the description.
Bill Andrews: to sneeze.
Brett Benes: Sorry.
Bill Andrews: Oh god, I we brought three or four more of those. always come to the loops at four or five. But yeah.
Brett Benes: like, share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. See you next time. No worries. So speaking of getting attention and getting funding for this, is this a good time to talk about the march that you're working on organizing? This podcast is brought to you by Venice companies, where we provide education, consulting, technology, and other resources to help and wellness professionals
Bill Andrews: Yeah, so I'm working with the Coalition for Radical Life Extension. had mentioned, and their website is rle.org.
Brett Benes: deliver better health outcomes for their clients.
Bill Andrews: gonna it, too. This is the last thing I see. Oh, RLE coalition. And I think it's dot com. But I'm on the board of directors for that. And they actually host a conference called the RadFest. And then Elizabeth Parrish, who runs a company called BioViva, who's also somebody very interested in making people happier and healthier and would be very willing to just, if all the discoveries get dropped from airplanes. She's got a company called BioViva. She's not a scientist, but she knows more about the science of aging than most scientists. She did her master's thesis on something called best choice medicine, which is a way of making it so that people are suffering from life-threatening diseases like Alzheimer's and things like that, are diseases that ⁓ make not worth living. people that are bound in beds and wheelchairs and can't do anything. It would allow them to be able to be treated by any drug they choose or therapy that they choose. And that's why it's called the patient's choice is the best choice. So it's best choice medicine. And she wrote her thesis on that. then afterwards, she and I co-authored a paper because she wasn't a scientist. get it published in a scientific journal. I believed in everything she did in her master's degrees. She and I co-authored a paper called Best Choice Medicine. both of us have talked at medical conferences about this. And it's gotten a lot of interest. But ⁓ now the for Radical Life Extension is organizing a march on Washington, DC. They've gotten the permits now and everything like that on the Lincoln Memorial. And I think
Brett Benes: Today I have a special treat for you. Our guest
Bill Andrews: later this year, September, I forget, either late September or early October, we're going to be doing a march to try to get this approved because the FDA is too many people die from their diseases because the FDA won't allow them to test the drug they think would cure their disease. I mean, there's nobody's going to stop them, but
Brett Benes: today is Dr. Bill Andrews. ⁓ He's a pioneer in the field of cellular aging molecular genetics.
Bill Andrews: They can't treat themselves without a doctor treating them. They can't get ahold of the treatment without a doctor providing it. And the doctors, they're restrained from being able to do this. So we're trying to make it so that best choice medicine becomes like a separate organization from the FDA. And if you are categorized as somebody that can't survive, you told you got six months to a year to live, you qualify to be able to be. by anything the Best Choice Medicine Organization recommends.
Brett Benes: After earning his PhD from the University of Georgia in 1981, he began his career studying cancer, heart disease, and inflammation with the lifelong goal of curing the ultimate ailment, aging. That's awesome. So if you are in the DC area or if you have the funds to get there and you believe in this cause, out for, look out for information regarding that march. And it's called, is it the best choice medicine march or do know what it's called?
Bill Andrews: We'll in a minute. you
Brett Benes: In the early 1990s, he led the team that discovered the human revolutionizing how we understand aging at the cellular level. In 1999, he founded Sierra Sciences to explore telomerase-based therapies for extending healthy lifespan. He holds over 50 patents and is a frequent media figure in popular science, the Today Show, and longevity documentaries such as The Immortals.
Bill Andrews: The name is, so there's gonna be three different things involved in the march. So it's not called the best choice medicine. Best choice medicine is just the lead, the main thing. it's pretty much trying to also get aging defined as a disease because aging was defined as a disease. It'd be a lot easier for organizations to get grant funding and stuff like that to work on trying to cure aging. But the FDA says aging is not a disease. ⁓
Brett Benes: Beyond his research, Dr. Andrews is also an ultramarathon runner known for his disciplined approach to both science and life.
Bill Andrews: In defense of the FDA, agree. Aging is not measurable. I mean, there are biomarkers of aging, but when you reverse those biomarkers, you don't reverse aging. You only reverse the biomarkers. So we don't really have a good marker. So in that line of discussion, would talk about my gauge of success. I reverse, when I come up something that reverses aging, I want to see people pass what I call the Betty White test. which is where when I show pictures and if you go to my videos that are on my website, you'll see, I'll talk about the Betty White test. I'll show pictures of Betty White when she was 25 and 85. And I'll say, does anybody here not know which photo Betty White was taken first? And it usually gets a laugh, but we don't know, we can't exactly identify why we know which photo was taken second when she was 85. There's wrinkles, there's fat in the face, there's hair.
Brett Benes: This was an amazing conversation and I absolutely loved it. I think you will too. Let's go.
Bill Andrews: and get rid of all those and people would still know which one. it's not a measurement of aging, but it's a qualitatively quantitative measure of aging, which we here at Sierra Sciences give QQ scores to. ⁓
Brett Benes: What does that mean qualitatively quantitative? welcome, Dr. Enders. Thank you so much for coming. Could you give the audience a little bit of an idea of who you are and what type of people you're helping, what type of research you're doing, and ⁓ why?
Bill Andrews: Which means you ⁓ look at a person and tell them how old they are. But you can say one person's older than another person. OK, so you can take a group of people and you can put them in line in order of their age and be pretty certain you it correctly. Because you can qualitatively quantitate their age. You can't it. I'm just somebody that's been obsessed my whole life with trying to cure the aging process. And I use that word cure because that's what my father used. My father was really interested in this. ⁓ fact, there's a documentary called The Immortalist where it actually interviews, ⁓ I'm the star of it, but it has a section in it where my father is included in, because he was the one who, when I was 10 years old, that was literally 60 plus years ago, But we all know that we can walk down the street and everybody we see, can approximate their age. We just can't. don't, we can't, there's no measurement where you can put a number on it. You can't quantitate it. And that's what makes it, that's why the FDA says the aging is a disease. But Betty White was a friend of the family's. My father was a TV producer. so she, she's been, was very supportive of everything I was doing. He that I was really interested in science and medicine in my schools, because for my teachers. And he came to me and said, Bill, when you grow up, you should become a doctor and find a cure for aging. I don't know why nobody's done that yet. And so I've been obsessed with it ever since. ⁓ through my life, I've been trying to learn all the tools that I need to be able to solve the aging process. biology major in college and until unfortunately she passed away. And I wanted her to be the one that walked out on stage and looked and felt and behaved like she was 25 again. And we wouldn't need any clinical studies to prove that we had cured aging. unfortunately she passed away. But she me the okay to use her photos in the Betty White test. Because taught ⁓ water ski. mean, she used to stay at our house for weeks when she was being on game shows. And even there I was upset that degrees don't really teach you how to be scientists. And so I also took experimental psychology to learn how to be a scientist, learned a lot of tools that most scientists don't have to able to cure diseases. But that's I also wanted understand why did we age? Or more importantly, why did we never evolve away not to age? that my father produced, et cetera. So I knew her pretty well. ⁓ was, we'll never have another Betty White. She is irreplaceable. And I think that's one of the saddest things about aging is that we lose these great people. And let me just mention, I say this all the time in my presentations about my vision. I living. I think is the greatest thing that ever happened to us. And if you can think of something better, let me know. And when I say age, I mean practically every disease on the planet, because almost everything is associated with aging, including cancer and heart disease and dementia and things like that. But if these things are so bad for us, why didn't we evolve away not to have them? And so my PhD was in experimental, it was in and population genetics. Population genetics means the study of it is and I hate the thought that can become any less lovable for any of us because of this dumb thing called aging and I'm just adamant about trying to solve that problem. why and how we evolve things, not just the what and when, you'd normally hear. And so it gave me an to learn exactly why and how we evolve aging, or why we never evolve the way not to age. And would take an hour to go through there, so people can go to my website and watch videos of me explaining that. But also how ⁓ and how was what molecular
Brett Benes: Wow. So if you could say, if you could share just one thing that is like the most important thing from this discussion, from your research, from if you could share just one thing with the public, what would that be?
Bill Andrews: Aging isn't inevitable. you listen to my videos about why we age, you'll see that we don't have to age. But we're not aging because the funding's not to the right places. So people call it a call to action. If you know any of these very discrete, ultra-high net worth individuals, reach out to them. Let them know. like our genetics was all about was, you know, how can we undo the things where evolution failed us? it's, that's been in my career. for a time, I ⁓ had to piece the parts, pieces together to explain why we age and how we age in order to figure out how not to age. And I, ⁓ that there are people out there that can cure all the diseases. just that regular investors don't want to spend their money on that. They want to get quick return on investments and for publications. And so we got to ⁓ these people involved and that's the only way we're going to get disease cured. I more than just one thing, but I said a lot of things. ⁓ concluded that every theory you'd ever heard of made no sense. I always say all the twos and twos have to add up and they did not. And I might get a chance to explain during this podcast a little bit about what the missing links were that made it impossible for me at first to get involved in the aging. But when I got my, in aging research, when I got my PhD, I went straight into biotech and was able to apply this arsenal of tools that I had developed to a lot of other diseases, which
Brett Benes: No, it's great. have someone I want to introduce you to, but we'll talk about that afterward. This has been an amazing conversation. ⁓ absolutely love it. I love the vision and I love the approach. ⁓ is not just pie in the sky thinking. This is actual like, no, we can prove this as ⁓ It's happening right now. Most people don't know about it.
Bill Andrews: Okay. made me have a track record that's exceeding anybody else you've ever heard of in finding treatments and cures for diseases. So while I was in biotech, I would say from 1981 to 1993, I was in the development invention of human growth hormone, tissue plasminogen activator, erythropoietin. ⁓
Brett Benes: And if more people knew about it with the right funding, this would absolutely happen much quicker. I love. Go ahead.
Bill Andrews: Can I just say one more thing? A lot of people will say all this telomere shortening is just a theory. This Hafelec limit I mentioned, the limited number of cell divisions is only just a theory. But single scientist that works in the lab with human cells and petri dishes trying to do research knows that when they go to a vendor to buy cells, the catalog will show how old was the donor beta-seron, osteo-inductive factor, several cancer drugs, including one that just got approved by the FDA called Ritellol. I became national inventor of the year in the United States for my cancer research. And this was around a whole bunch of other scientists that weren't accomplishing anything. so, And how many times have these cells divided since these cells were obtained from the donor? And the scientists will use those numbers to calculate how many more times these cells can divide before their experiment can't be done anymore. This is real. It's not a fact. It's a theory. Every scientist that works on human cells in a petri dish know that human cells can only divide a limited number of times and without a doubt, no matter what else we do to try to cure aging. but finally in 1990, oh, in 1990s, I learned the missing link. finally oh, in 1990s, learned the missing link. the main missing link that I needed for aging and Sierra Sciences, my company now, and I've been focusing ever since on trying to fix that problem. And let me just say that the problem isn't not knowing what to do. The problem is having enough funding to do it. And so I believe that we could have aging cured in three years from now if we had the appropriate amount of funding. But I've been saying that for 20 years and that I needed for aging and I've been focusing ever on trying to fix that problem. problem isn't not knowing what to do. problem is having enough funding to do it. And so I believe that we could have aging cured in three years from now if we had the appropriate amount of funding. aging will never get cured unless we solve limited cell division problem called the Hayflick limit and or the telomere shortening problem, which is what causes the Hayflick limit. So line, it's not a theory, it's a fact. We aren't just trying to do studies to prove that this would be the cause of aging, or cure for aging. It is the cure for aging. Excuse my there. is the obstacle, we know what to do and we're going to get there. But that's what I'm all about. I think I probably only answered one of your questions just now. if you could remind me what else you wanted me to talk about, can. ⁓
Brett Benes: That's amazing. thank you so much, Dr. Andrews. This has been an amazing conversation. I love it. I would love to have another one at some point, ⁓ this is just, this is amazing. ⁓ you for the work that you're doing. I know it's incredibly important. Obviously you don't need to hear that, but I want to say it. It's incredibly important and it ⁓ so many people. It will impact so many people. It's one of those things that... No, it's fascinating. And just from my own research and understanding your background, you over 50 different patents on I'm assuming health tech and I'm this and you ⁓ one the as well that came up is you're leading the team that discovered is it to Lama rays? Am I pronouncing that right? Okay. ⁓ people will look back in however long, be it a hundred years, few hundred years, whatever, people will look back and say, there was a before and after. And this type of research ⁓ of those things that's before and after in the human continuum. ⁓ thank you so much for what you're doing.
Bill Andrews: Every pronunciation is correct, but yes, I pronounce it right.
Brett Benes: So can you, because I know this is gonna be really important for the discussion, can you just break that down for someone who has no idea? I didn't know until this morning and I researched it, looked it up. What is this and what does it have to do with aging?
Bill Andrews: Thank you, thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell the world about this. Well, the key thing is, said, I don't know if we'll get into this, but we are now. The big dilemma that I had when I first got my PhD and had to go into biotech instead of working on aging like I wanted to was we knew that human cells can only divide a limited number of times. And I realized that that's we age. I decided it's called the Hayflick Limit because it was discovered by Leonard Hayflick. He published it in 1961 that human cells can only divide a certain number of times. And like when you're first conceived, you're a single cell embryo, your cell can only divide 100 times. And first of all, people will say that's not enough times to make a human being, but actually that's enough cell divisions to make a mass the size of Jupiter. So it is plenty of things, but that cell divides. Yeah, two, four, eight, 16 math.
Brett Benes: Understand exponential growth
Bill Andrews: that one cell when it divides to become two cells, each of those cells can divide 99 more times. And then when they divide 98 times. When you're, ⁓ so much cell division from going from a newborn, from a single cell embryo to a newborn baby that when you're born, you only have 50 cell divisions left. And then it gets, you have a lot of growing up, growing, cells growing, dividing to grow up and heal wounds, to fight infections, all these kinds of things. ⁓ lower and lower. And when you're like 90 years old, you typically have less than 10 cell divisions left. when when ⁓ divide, you die of old age. There's nothing you can do about it. And ⁓ at before my research, couldn't. So it's, the big dilemma was how can cells count? Cells don't have brains. did we... How do cells know how many times they have divided and how many more times they can divide? So that was the dilemma that I couldn't figure out. And what we did, ⁓ when I was still in college, I having anti-aging we did have discussions about that. we like, what kind of biochemical method mechanism could exist that would, a cell could use to count. And the only thing we came up with was it had to be, and this is gonna sound silly. something like ride tickets at an amusement park. So every time a cell divided, it lost a ticket. And what, again, it lost another ticket. were those tickets? so that was a big dilemma. But in early 1990s, was, was, even though was working in biotech on every other disease on the planet, I was still going to anti-aging conferences. And then in the early 1990s, I a guy talk about the fact that telomeres, the very tips of our chromosomes, get shorter as we age. And he had been studying this and he had found that every time a cell divided, got a little bit shorter by a very fixed unit and that he could measure the length of your telomeres and he could tell you how old you were and more importantly, how long it would be before you die of old age. ⁓
Brett Benes: So that is literally your biological clock.
Bill Andrews: Yes, these are called telomeres. They are the ride tickets that I've been looking for. I'm sitting in that audience and I am just stunned by the fact that, ⁓ my gosh, here they are. And so before that guy could even get off the stage, I was at the bottom of the podium saying, has anybody figured out how to add ride tickets back or re-lengthen? I didn't use the term ride tickets with him, but I asked him, has anybody figured out how to re-lengthen the telomeres? Because that would be the way to prove that this telomere shortening had something to do with aging. And he said, no, we've been working on it for years and no success whatsoever. And it sounded exactly like everything else I'd already done. People had told me, yeah, we've been working on human growth hormone for years and we can't figure out how to make it without causing immune responses. And same with every other thing I mentioned before. So I said, hey, let come and work with you and I'll have it figured out in three months he knew my track record. I was actually pretty well known at the, in the field for being the ace that came in and got things done for genotech and Amgen and things like that. he said, I, three months later, ⁓ I presented him the enzyme telomerase, which is, I started off realizing that telomeres shortened every time cells divided, then How is it our children are born with longer telomeres than we have? Because reproduction requires cell division. so we studied, ⁓ he put three quarters of his team reporting to me at ⁓ Corporation. And that was like 30 scientists. So our focus was to figure out why ⁓ is shortening not occurring in our reproductive cells? And. We ended up discovering this enzyme telomerase that's found only in our reproductive cells.
Brett Benes: so you're saying, you're not saying why do our children not age or like that's what I took it to mean at first. No, you're saying that if they can only lose, if the telomerase can only shorten, then our kids should live shorter lives than us.
Bill Andrews: They should be born with very short telomeres and shouldn't even live because they're already really short. Yeah. There had to be, well, it turns out not so much replenishment. It turns out that in our reproductive cells, that produce our sperm and our eggs, also called primordial germ cells, these cells have no telomere shortening whatsoever. they're as long as the parent.
Brett Benes: So there has to be a mechanism to replenish them. That's a good point.
Bill Andrews: We're talking about the parent now, not the child. The parent, even though they have telomeres shortening all the cells of their body, the telomeres are not shortening in their primordial germ cells, which are the cells that produce the sperm and the eggs. And so that's what we studied. We studied why aren't they shortening there? And we discovered this enzyme telomerase. Now, children, ⁓ an embryo, you're still aging. Telomeres are still getting shorter. But you're ⁓ from telomeres that are as long as your parents had when they were first conceived as a single-cell embryo. And which is in numbers is 15,000 bases. DNA made up of bases. ⁓ There's different bases called A, G, C, and T. And the telomeres are made up of three of those bases called TAA, Why am I going black on this? Okay, so it's a six base sequence and I've, I spent so long since I've had to say what those six bases are. I'm going blank on what they are, but it's the six bases are repeating unit. And it's almost like every, every six bases is a ride ticket, except it's actually every like 10 bases, 10 groups of six bases is a ride ticket. But that's what, yes.
Brett Benes: So is it 5 TTAGGG3? OK, I had to look it up. Thank you, Google. OK.
Bill Andrews: Yes. T2AG3 is the abbreviation for it. But the sequence hasn't really been that important for 30 years for me. But it's the fact that this telomerase can relengthen them. was the explanation as to why when children born or first conceived, they have long telomeres. And why they're born, they still have telomeres that give them 50 more cell divisions. So the problem was, the thing was that we just determined that, well, if our reproductive cells produce telomerase, that means that all the cells of our body produce telomerase or have the gene for telomerase. And the genes just shut off. I mean, it would take an hour to explain, but if people want to go listen to my video on why we age, it'll explain exactly why we evolved in mechanisms that shut the gene off, even though it's bad for us. It's good for the species. Let me make that story short. that's the survival of the species is what evolution is all about.
Brett Benes: It brings to mind an old adage that I'd heard that progress happens one funeral at a time.
Bill Andrews: Okay, good. So our focus was then on how to turn gene ⁓ on all of the other cells of our body to essentially stop kilomic shortening in all the cells of our body. And that's what I've been working on for the last 25 plus years. And it's not easy, it's to understand the mechanisms what turns the telomerase gene on and off is important. But what we did discover was that, I mean, this might get more scientific than you want, but telomeres have all the hallmarks of enhancer sequences, which are well known to be regulatory units in our chromosomes for regulating all genes. And scattered throughout our chromosomes. ⁓ telomeres are enhancer sequences and the difference between telomeres and other enhancer sequences is that they shorten every time a cell divides and as a result, that's why we see all the changes that we occur, we see in each other as we age. Okay, so it's not just putting a limit on a life-status, that's just, can go, your cells can divide until you run out of ride tickets. As you get less and less ride tickets, it's actually controlling the epigenetics, all the genes on the chromosomes. to make us all the changes that we see. And in experiments that we've done in human cells and petri dishes, human skin grown on the back of mice ⁓ and mice, and I say engineered because mice don't age like humans do, which makes them a really bad animal for studying human aging. But ⁓ Dr. Rhonda Pinto at Harvard was able to create a mouse that did age like humans. And when we applied ⁓ we used what's called telomerase gene therapy, but it was a different way, very expensive and risky way of introducing telomerase to cells. And we did that to these engineered mice and the human skin grown on the back of mice and human cells in the petri dish. We saw reversal of aging in every way imaginable. Diane Sawyer did a big ⁓ report on it. People can do. ⁓ Google searches of Diane Sawyer and Dr. Ron DePennell, and that's D-E-P-I-N-H-O. They can find that video where they actually show the mice. And it's the only, I want to say theory, though right now telomere shortening is not a theory. It's the only mechanism of aging that's ever been shown to actually reverse aging in every way imaginable. Unfortunately, the gene therapy is too risky and too expensive to be. treating humans with. So that's why I'm looking for ways of just turning it. So telomerase gene therapy is a way of delivering a new telomerase gene to cells. And the delivery is the risky part. The way you get it into the cells, not all cells survive the delivery. But it's a way of getting telomerase into the cells to lengthen telomeres or add ride tickets back. Whereas I'm looking for ways of just turning the gene on that we already have in ourselves by using a small molecule, especially like nutraceuticals, to turn the gene on and lengthen our telomeres that way. ⁓ Yes, I mean, ⁓ it's, I've, just what done, but what I've ⁓ seen in other ⁓ literature published from labs is that,
Brett Benes: So does this process reverse illnesses as well as aging?
Bill Andrews: practically every disease we've ever heard of now is associated with telomeres. And examples, like even AIDS. So HIV, when HIV infects us, it starts killing our immune cells. And ⁓ okay when we're young because we have other cells that still have sufficient number of ride tickets. We still have some cells that can divide to replace those killed cells. And so when you first get infected with you or... somebody else gets infected with HIV, you don't know it at first because you have no symptoms. You're constantly replacing the killed immune cells. But when the cells that divide to replace those immune cells run out of ride tickets, you can't do it anymore. And that's when you start seeing the symptoms of and you acquired immune deficiency. And ⁓ that's acquired immune deficiency syndrome is. So then you die old age. But I can say the same type of argument for macular degeneration for your eyes, muscular dystrophy, liver cirrhosis from drinking too much alcohol, which we know kills liver cells. You don't experience the symptoms when you're young. You don't experience the symptoms until you've run out of right jitters, which is later.
Brett Benes: So it seems the very fact that people are able to heal at all to point that this is possible. Like if your body was able or is able to heal in some cases, then should be able to continue healing and regenerating and all of that.
Bill Andrews: When I speak at medical conferences, I always say, okay, so why do we age if we can replace our killed cells? We're not like old trucks sitting in a field that expose the sun and wind and rain, show wear and tear. We do have wear and tear, but we can replace, we can repair our wear and tear all the time.
Brett Benes: So heard of this concept of replacing cells, but where I heard it, was much more kind of in the theoretical or spiritual mindfulness type of thing where you can overcome any illness because replacing cells and all that. What I had not heard, like, well, here's actually the mechanism and we can actually begin to turn it on ⁓ biomedically.
Bill Andrews: Yes, it's a dream come true as far as I'm concerned on figuring out how to cure not just aging, but almost every disease on the planet. I don't know if it's time to go into tangent, but the problem is that
Brett Benes: Feel free.
Bill Andrews: Every gauges of success, let's call it, academic labs, of are all based on the number of publications you get, because there's such a thing called publish or perish. And so ⁓ when a gets a grant, they spent that grant money on trying to get more publications so they can get another grant on and on on. So you get more publications out of a characterizing diseases, not curing or treating diseases because it takes a long time to figure out how to cure or treat a disease and then you only get one publication when you get that done. So most labs will spend all their time focusing on getting experiments done that they can publish. so that's a big problem. I call that one of the real problems why cancer is not cured, heart disease isn't cured, Alzheimer's is not cured. is because
Brett Benes: So is that why the medical industry in Western medicine is more focused on treating symptoms and managing symptoms and diagnoses than it is actually curing? I know science is kind of upstream from medicine. So is that one of the reasons why?
Bill Andrews: Part of it, mean, it's also, they make more money by treating the symptoms afterwards instead of working on prevention. But yeah, so I was only talking about the academic, but the commercial world is all based on quick return on investment, okay? And you don't get quick return on investment by waiting for a cure, okay?
Brett Benes: And just to be clear for the viewers, it's not saying that every provider, every medical person only worried about the bottom line, not trying to hear people. It's more about how the policies are designed, what success ⁓ in industrialized medical system.
Bill Andrews: I've never met a doctor that didn't want to help their patients prevent diseases, them, not just the symptoms, but they're all controlled by insurance companies. And there's rules and the FDA has regulations on what they can do and what they can't do and things like that. the system's okay? But, you know, Investors that invest into biotech companies and stuff like that They're only interested in or 90 percent of early interested in quick return on investments. They they invest in the person not the not not the disease, know, they're they They meet a smart scientist is trying to start a company they want to invest in that person because they think that person can make them a lot of money and as soon as they invest and have controlling ownership of that scientist company, they're that scientist to do other things instead of ⁓ were, instead trying to cure or treat a disease. And then when they complete doing all those other things, they say, so much value has been added to the company, let's sell it now for a profit. And that usually takes the scientist away from their dream of trying to cure the disease, because they usually have like uncompete clauses in their contracts and things. that and so this is where to get cured. Even there's the celebrity billionaires that starting all these companies. They're a little bit, they're hiring celebrity advisors, celebrity advisors are hiring celebrity scientists and nobody's looking at track records. I mean how many diseases have these scientists cured or treated? And it's usually none yet but they that they're big celebrities because they're all over the news talking. so even these big biotech companies started by these celebrity billionaires, they're not getting anything done. I don't know, it's just something that really affects me. I have been in biotech as long as biotech's been biotech. And if you can find another scientist like that, I would be really surprised because most scientists... they jump ship and become business people instead. And you never hear them again because they make lousy business people. I've stayed with the science. I work at the lab bench trying to cure diseases. ⁓ And the only thing I do different is try to find funding to do the research. ⁓
Brett Benes: So speaking of funding, you said that we could actually do this in three years if we had the funding for it. would to be funded and what type of actual, like what are the milestones that we would be able to meet in the next three years to make this happen?
Bill Andrews: Well, so in three years, I would have essentially a pill that somebody can swallow. Maybe might have to be injected, but it won't be like a gene therapy. But I'd have a pill that would get inside of our cells, turn the telomeres gene back on, and win the tug-of-war between telomere shortening and lengthening. in three years, I would have pill that somebody can swallow. that get inside of cells, turn the telomeres gene back on, and win the tug-of-war between telomere shortening and lengthening. That's from extrapolation from lots of work already. Because we have already tested over 500,000 different molecules. And we have found about 900 different molecules that do turn the gene back on. They don't turn the gene on enough to win this tug of war that I just mentioned. they slow it down. And there are products. Where is it? Like there is this one product called Telavitil that actually does contain nutraceuticals. It contains the five most potent nutraceuticals that we've ever discovered so far that get inside cells and turn on the telomeres gene. But they don't do it enough to win the tug of war, but they slow it down. And that's a really good thing. And it's so. ⁓ Well, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to continue the research to develop even more potent things. And believe me, this company called Touchstone Essentials has been a really great partner of ours because they're interested in all the same things you're interested in. They're the of the company. Its mission isn't to make money. It's to provide, make people happier and healthier. And so working with them. And when we develop, discover more potent, telomerase inducers, they're called, the molecules are called telomerase inducers. Only find more potent ones. This would be next generation telovitals. And so that's, I think that's the best thing people can do right now, short of gene therapy, which is, as I said, expensive and risky to lengthen their telomeres.
Brett Benes: So I'm assuming that product is available to the public. And where do they go for that?
Bill Andrews: Yes. the website for Touched on Essentials is And the website itself tells you a little bit about their nature.
Brett Benes: So I have a follow on question with that. So you said there are products, there are ways of turning these on, but that it doesn't, ⁓ not potent enough to turn it on enough in layman's terms. Is that, is that a problem of potency or is there, is there a way that you can, you have multiple different supplements, multiple different axes of approach to turn on multiple at once? ⁓
Bill Andrews: Well, kind of yes to lot of what you said. Now we believe that the telomerase gene is regulated so tightly, it's turned off so tightly that there's multiple mechanisms to shut it off. Okay. And so that's why we have a mixture of five different telomerase inducers in this product, Telavitil. because of the fact that they are operating on different mechanisms, but we're not attacking of them yet because we're only inducing fraction of the telomeres that we need to be able to stop telomere shortening. And my goal is to actually interfere with so many mechanisms, we end up lengthening telomeres. But yeah, is nothing else. Okay, so there are a lot of things that cause us to age, like mitochondria dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation, which is probably the number one cause of aging. But they all can be overcome by lengthening telomeres. If we had ingredients now that were potent enough to turn on enough telomerase to be able to win that tug of war, you wouldn't need anything else. That should be sufficient to do everything. There's some diseases I mentioned like sickle cell anemia and Alcoholism those those are only two diseases that come to mind right now that have nothing to do with telomeres everything else does So so there's going to be still a few things left for me to cure after we come up with something that does telomeres, but yeah, it's It's there's multiple things you can do now and I recommend like ⁓ urolithin NAD nicotinamide things that will slow down the rate aging because of the fact that we don't have a telomerase inducer yet that will lengthen telomeres.
Brett Benes: let's just go into that for a minute because I'm assuming ⁓ watching this who, are watching this who want to understand what they can do now before all of the research and all of the products are out. So like what are ⁓ top three that someone can do now to start affecting the system in their bodies? ⁓
Bill Andrews: Well, reducing toxins one. The is with toxins everywhere, breathing, drinking, eating. Everything is putting toxins in your body. the toxins are damaging everything and therefore increasing the rate of telomere shortening because the damage has to be repaired by cell division. They're inducing inflammation oxidative stress. So toxins is really good. What people can do about toxins is take zeolites. Zeolites are probably one of the best molecules on the planet for actually binding to heavy metals, which are toxins, and removing them from the body. And Touchstone has a product that does that. There's a few products they have that contain zeolites for doing that. Sugar. Sugar is one of them. worse things for accelerating aging. Sugar is extremely bad for you and people just can't resist it. Touchstone has a product that converts into fiber and fiber is good for you. ⁓ That is called ⁓ Glucocontrol ⁓ it's a very outstanding product. mean, there's a lot of companies that have some of products, but I've never seen a company like Touchstone essentially. I'm not a marketer, okay? And I don't get any compensation for saying this. I'm just a fan of this company, but I've never seen a company that has the larger array of such great products as Touchstone Essentials does. also, ⁓ I a lot of people take something called Shiela Jeet, which is a natural product that's actually dirt from Himalayas actually. Shilajit actually reduces inflammation and oxidative stress and actually is an adaptogen, which means it helps calm your body down too. But Shilajit has a lot of side effects. But it turns out the active ingredient in Shilajit is something called Fulvic, F-U-L-V-I-C. And that's in a product called Fulvic that touched on essential cells. I sometimes worry that Touchstone doesn't make enough money because these are expensive products to make, but they don't charge very much.
Brett Benes: Yeah, I'm looking at them now. think I've scrolled through 20 different products. I think I only saw one that was over $100, maybe two.
Bill Andrews: Yeah. And at Natal Clear, which a product they have. That contains an enzyme called Natal Kinase that actually inhibits a protein in our bodies called plasminogen activator inhibitor, PAI for short, PAI-1 for It inhibits that, it degrades that molecule. And that molecule, PAA1, inhibits one of the enzymes that I helped discover called tissue plasminogen activator, which every ambulance carries to inject into you if you have a heart attack. It breaks up blood clots. But the thing is that the enzyme I discovered, tissue plasminogen activator, is already produced in our body. It's just that we have this other thing that's inhibiting it. And people should understand why we would have such a stupid thing. People have to go listen to my video on why we age. But natokinase inhibits, so it inactivates the inhibitor, tissue plasmidase inactivator. And if people took natokinase or nato clear all the time, the incidence of heart attacks would decrease a lot. it's just, I constantly think how silly it is that we've evolved all these ways of. eliminating what I call the longer lived. you raised your young, there's no evolutionary advantage to living longer than it raises your young. You actually are interfering with the survival of the species by living longer. Therefore, any species that evolved in aging process had a better chance of surviving rapidly changing environments. I get going on that, it'll take an hour. ⁓ got very clear videos on my website, and I'm sure you'll put a link for that.
Brett Benes: ⁓ have to ask on applicability side, were talking about the products that are available and ⁓ things that can do to start ⁓ impacting this in a positive way. I'd like to ⁓ drill in little bit more to like what types of illnesses, what types patients and providers would most quickly benefit ⁓ knowing about this research and these products? what I know it kind of affects everyone or at least 90 something percent of all the illnesses, but are there a couple that are like, these are most highly impacted by these and people should know about these right now?
Bill Andrews: every disease that's associated with aging is going to be impacted by these diseases like fatigue. Fatigue is something that is caused by heavy metals, it's caused by sugar, it's caused by inflammation. ⁓ The one cause of every disease is inflammation and so reducing inflammation. Let me just say Touchtone doesn't sell this one but let me say that Something else that I'm very impressed with is a test called the LCAT test, A-L-C-A-T. And I think every person should get that test because it will tell you what foods you are sensitive to, meaning what foods induce inflammation in you. And when you find out, you just quit eating those foods. And if you quit eating for a year, suddenly find that you're not sensitive to them anymore. Okay. So. ⁓ Like I take the test every year. It's Cell Science Services, I think is the name of the company. But I don't understand why they don't have competition because this test is such an important test. But can Google LCAT, ⁓ A-L-C-A-T, and LCAT tests. Otherwise, you get Alcatraz. But you do LCAT and you'll find the company provides and they send you a kit, you get a phlebotomist, they'll actually have a phlebotomist come to your home or your office, draw blood, and then two weeks later, you get a list of all the foods that you're sensitive to. that's something that I think everybody could do, but at the time, you can be fighting an with fulvic and zeolite products. ⁓ Pure Body, it's called, and Pure Body Extra, I don't think I mentioned their names before, that's what Touchstone has. it's the place, place for everything is ⁓ Touchstone where people can go find on amazon.com or something like that, other companies that sell those kind of products, but they're never gonna find one company that has them all, like Touchstone Essentials does. ⁓ Again, sounding like a marketer, but. I'm excited about this company. like working with this company. I think it's one of the best team that I've ever worked with. But I just do research. I ⁓ sell anything. I don't market anything, ⁓ it might sound like it just in this podcast. I do the research because my ultimate goal is to cure the aging process, especially my own aging.
Brett Benes: There's two companies that this makes me think of. to do with that testing kit and ⁓ been on the podcast before so viewers can go check out Zachary Brooks ⁓ and Eugene is essentially working to, created a or he's building a company that takes. genomic medicine and makes it much more available to the masses and makes it through the processes. So you can stuff like that, get your blood for an understanding of ⁓ what sensitive to. But also one of the things that he really focuses on is ⁓ pharma, pharma I think that's the right term, but understanding how different medicines ⁓ you well. ⁓ how this is really important for understanding what you're sensitive to, being able to give that list to your doctors, or that they don't prescribe you anything. The other thing, it's more of a question for you. I met someone at a conference, a couple people at a conference months ago.
Bill Andrews: You need to send me that link. Send me the link because I'm not, I don't get any compensation from talking about Nalcat. I just mentioned it because I think it's good for the audience. But send me that link because if it's, I haven't heard of this, if they're doing something good, I want to add that to the list.
Brett Benes: Okay. Yeah, I think they're about five years into their build, but they are, already, I believe they're already accepting customers. They're already working with the public and all of that. But doing some pretty amazing things. And yeah, I'll send you that link absolutely. And, and again, it's, it's you genome with Zachary Brooks people who want to look that up online. ⁓ But the other is has to do ⁓ with ⁓ using to Essentially help regenerate mitochondria. I was wondering how much this relates to you that the company is called Blue Oak nutraceuticals ⁓ are Yeah, have developed an amazing product. I think using an extract of green tea ⁓ the existed Using an extract from cacao for years, but they were able to find the same the same molecule
Bill Andrews: Yeah. Easy. ⁓
Brett Benes: I'm not a biologist, same molecule in a green tea extract and they were able to that at a much more sustainable rate. So I'm wondering how much this regeneration of the mitochondria has to do with your research and your success as well. ⁓
Bill Andrews: Well, the green tea extract component is probably, you get the letters mixed up, it's EGCG or ECGC, something like that, which is an antioxidant. so damaged mitochondria produce a lot of free radicals. And so something like this TE green tea molecule will inactivate those reactive molecules called free radicals. That only scratches the surface. I mean, what happened, and if we could get telomeres longer, we wouldn't have to worry about any of stuff. But the things that you need to do that I think are most important besides taking antioxidants, and more than just green tea, take like four different, so I'm very interested in protecting my mitochondria. So I take four different antioxidants. I also take something called urolithin A, which is, induces your body to get rid of damaged mitochondria. And then that induces the formation of new mitochondria that requires long telomeres. But there's also NAD. NAD is a very important molecule for energy is involved with the mitochondria. And NAD plays a big role in other things in the body. And the best way to... ⁓ or NAD is through something called nicotinamide riboside. Again, I don't get any compensation for this, but Timeline is a company that sells Urolithin A. The True Niagen is a company that sells nicotinamide riboside. So does Life Extension Foundation. And I'm to think of some others, but those are ⁓ the main things I do to protect my mitochondria are... bunch of antioxidants, including the EGCG or whatever it is, and alpha lipoic acid. one of the important ones is, is N-acetylcysteine. Okay. Now a lot of people take glutathione as an antioxidant, but it's, it's actually kind of like, I think one of the biggest crooked things in the supplement field is that glutathione is a very expensive. Antioxidant to take your body already naturally produces it just doesn't produce enough of it. So they take it but it turns out that N-acetyl cysteine, which is a thousandfold cheaper than glutathione It gets gets converted into glutathione second. It gets into your cells and so N-acetyl cysteine is what I take instead of glutathione because I want to save money and but it works just as well as as blue time and then going blank on what the fourth one is that I take. my company developed a list, a fifth one we call the antioxidant quartet, which the best four antioxidants to take. And I can't remember.
Brett Benes: Is that listed somewhere on your website?
Bill Andrews: No, but I can send you that. I can send you that. was a point in my company where I hired a president to become head of the company so that could focus on science. And he decided that he wanted to start getting some products. And so he hired some that reported to me. But we developed this antioxidant quartet. then the
Brett Benes: Okay.
Bill Andrews: I ended up having to fire the president. And so that anti-accident quartet never actually got on the market we were getting distracted too much away from trying to cure aging and not relieve the symptoms. ⁓ So companies are working on trying to relieve the symptoms. I didn't want to compete with those. I wanted to find a cure. ⁓ But I send you an animated slide that was made for
Brett Benes: Go to the source.
Bill Andrews: promoting that antioxidant quartet. urolithin A, ⁓ urolithin A, and nicotinamide riboside are, I think, the most important things that people can be taking to protect their mitochondria.
Brett Benes: even just a list and I can put that in the description. So let's talk about the future here because I think this is amazing. I love the concept of, is it called the longevity escape ⁓ The idea ⁓ and first heard this by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I don't know where it came from or originated, but the idea that Aubrey deGray, okay. But the idea that we are ⁓
Bill Andrews: Aubrey DeGray, just give credit to Aubrey DeGray.
Brett Benes: essentially longevity breakthroughs in technology and medicine, all of that at a certain rates and that rate is speeding up. the way that I heard it anyway is when we get to the point where we are having a new breakthrough every year, we'll have reached the point where aging and longevity like start to cancel each other out. basically ⁓ outlived aging as a species. It doesn't mean everyone's going to stop dying, but it does mean people are going to start not dying.
Bill Andrews: Yes.
Brett Benes: at that point.
Bill Andrews: If we could solve the aging process, the average lifespan for 50 % of us would be a thousand years. There's actually several studies that have shown that, If we could solve the aging process, the average lifespan for 50 % of us would be a thousand years. There's actually several studies that have shown that, that aging is a number one, telomeres all by themselves limit our lifespan to 125 years maximum. But since we all live unperfect lifestyles and have unperfect diets and things like that, our telomeres shorting gets accelerated. So none of us actually live to be 125. telomeres all by themselves limit our lifespan to 125 years maximum. But since all unperfect lifestyles and have unperfect diets and things like that, our telomeres shorting gets accelerated. Yeah, but let's give credit. So Aubrey Gray is the longevity escape velocity. He's turned that. Before then, was, my God, I just said his name, Dr. Grossman. He ⁓ the live long enough to live forever. And that was first time that concept ever was introduced where, yes, we have cures coming up. And so people watch the documentary called The Immortalists, which I mentioned before that stars me. It also stars Aubrey DeGray Terry Grossman. Terry co-authored a book with Ray Kurzweil. And I the name of ⁓ of the but the second of the book was Live Long Enough to Live Forever, which was something Dr. Terry Grossman coined. But all three of us are in that documentary called The Immortalists. And my father, I before when I was talking about this. my father is and he passed away 2015 from Alzheimer's, which is unfortunate because if we could have gotten this research done faster, I could have cured his disease.
Brett Benes: I'm sorry. That is, that is an amazing thing. Like the picture of within our lifetime, ⁓ what your earlier statement was funding, like given funding pretty much and within our lifetime, we could start, we could defeat aging.
Bill Andrews: Yeah, the trip to doing that is we need to find those very discreet ultra high net worth individuals that are living on their million acre properties from the rest of the world that think that some of these news stories you hear from these celebrities that aren't real scientists, they're pretend scientists that are saying they're curing aging, they think these ⁓ these ultra high net worth individuals are thinking everything's getting done and there's nothing they can do to help it get done faster. But nothing's getting done because all these celebrities, all they're trying to do is find a way to get products on the market to make them money. And the are not coming yet. They're symptoms to make symptoms go away, but they aren't actually attacking the causes of these symptoms.
Brett Benes: symptoms.
Bill Andrews: And that's what I'm trying to do. I work with doctors and scientists and stuff that are very into prevention. I'd say, don't want, okay, so let just go with this. Okay, so I believe number one cardiovascular doctor in the world is Dr. Amy Doney, who is in Spokane, Washington. She is all about prevention. And so I send people all the time to her clinic and she works with patients online too, but she's written some books et cetera that ⁓ this subject, she's just so passionate about prevention. she totally just thumbs up all the nose, what a thumbs up to the, ⁓ what the word? ⁓ Thumbs nose, thumbs or nose to all the pharmacy. ⁓
Brett Benes: thumbs or nose.
Bill Andrews: Insurance companies and stuff like that to say you can't do that just wants people to be happier and healthier same with dr. Jason Williams in the cancer field Okay, I mean there's a guy somebody has cancer. He's the best doctor in the world. I think to see I Mean, I I know I I've invented a lot of cardiovascular drugs So I know the cardiovascular field really well and I've also was national vendor of the year for my cancer research in the United States So I know a lot about cancer. So when I when I recommend these people I'm not getting compensation or anything. These are the best people. then there's a Dr. Shelley Jordan, who's really tough dementia and brain disorders. And then I'm working with companies as volunteer scientific advisor because they have great cures like Synapfile, SYNAP. They have this thing for treating dementia and strokes and things like Then gut health. I mean, I'm working with a company called Appropriate that is got the world's best things that I think for treating Gut health but in all these cases these people need more funding and stuff like that because they're they're focused on just the treatments and cures and the preventions that's that's the most important they're all focused on the preventions and There's there's little way for return on investment minded investors to make a lot of money there and things like that. That's why these very discreet ultra high net worth individuals need to be told that the diseases that are even killing them and their loved ones are not being cured or treated because the funding is not going to the treatments and they need to come forward and they need to say, okay, I'll provide 0.001 % of my fortune to... give to a scientist or something like that that is actually focused on curing a disease or treating a disease. I'm not talking about just myself. I'm not trying to raise money from me. If I had a lot of money, I'd be supporting all the other people that I've mentioned. yeah, we to, I wanna, I develop cures, I wanna drop them from airplanes. I'll make a doing speaking tours afterwards. mean, it's ⁓ not driven by. much money I can make like a lot of people in my field.
Bill Andrews: Yeah, I mean, it's like there's lots of studies right now showing that people with PTSD have shorter telomeres and other people that don't. There are military personnel that don't. But same with things like ADHD, a lot of psychological things. So while I'm mentioning great doctors and stuff like that, there's a Lisa Epple, Dr. Lisa Epple, that's written a really great book on the psychology, how to control the psychology of aging and things like that. psychological effects that occur because of aging and how to treat those. I can't remember the name of her book, but yeah, Lisa Epple, E-P-E-L is her last name. People should check up on her because again, she seems very interested in prevention and that's why you publish a book actually. Most of the you tell people how to prevent these diseases themselves. Yeah, but there's so many things. used to show a list of diseases that have been connected to the length of your telomeres. And list has gotten so big, I can't even include them all now because the gets...
Brett Benes: Thanks for joining us today. Be sure to check out our next episode here and use the comments to any questions or suggest any future topics. was helpful to you and you want to support our mission to improve US healthcare and win the on complex illness, or the link in ⁓ the description.
Bill Andrews: to sneeze.
Brett Benes: Sorry.
Bill Andrews: Oh god, I we brought three or four more of those. always come to the loops at four or five. But yeah.
Brett Benes: like, share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. See you next time. No worries. So speaking of getting attention and getting funding for this, is this a good time to talk about the march that you're working on organizing? This podcast is brought to you by Venice companies, where we provide education, consulting, technology, and other resources to help and wellness professionals
Bill Andrews: Yeah, so I'm working with the Coalition for Radical Life Extension. had mentioned, and their website is rle.org.
Brett Benes: deliver better health outcomes for their clients.
Bill Andrews: gonna it, too. This is the last thing I see. Oh, RLE coalition. And I think it's dot com. But I'm on the board of directors for that. And they actually host a conference called the RadFest. And then Elizabeth Parrish, who runs a company called BioViva, who's also somebody very interested in making people happier and healthier and would be very willing to just, if all the discoveries get dropped from airplanes. She's got a company called BioViva. She's not a scientist, but she knows more about the science of aging than most scientists. She did her master's thesis on something called best choice medicine, which is a way of making it so that people are suffering from life-threatening diseases like Alzheimer's and things like that, are diseases that ⁓ make not worth living. people that are bound in beds and wheelchairs and can't do anything. It would allow them to be able to be treated by any drug they choose or therapy that they choose. And that's why it's called the patient's choice is the best choice. So it's best choice medicine. And she wrote her thesis on that. then afterwards, she and I co-authored a paper because she wasn't a scientist. get it published in a scientific journal. I believed in everything she did in her master's degrees. She and I co-authored a paper called Best Choice Medicine. both of us have talked at medical conferences about this. And it's gotten a lot of interest. But ⁓ now the for Radical Life Extension is organizing a march on Washington, DC. They've gotten the permits now and everything like that on the Lincoln Memorial. And I think
Brett Benes: Today I have a special treat for you. Our guest
Bill Andrews: later this year, September, I forget, either late September or early October, we're going to be doing a march to try to get this approved because the FDA is too many people die from their diseases because the FDA won't allow them to test the drug they think would cure their disease. I mean, there's nobody's going to stop them, but
Brett Benes: today is Dr. Bill Andrews. ⁓ He's a pioneer in the field of cellular aging molecular genetics.
Bill Andrews: They can't treat themselves without a doctor treating them. They can't get ahold of the treatment without a doctor providing it. And the doctors, they're restrained from being able to do this. So we're trying to make it so that best choice medicine becomes like a separate organization from the FDA. And if you are categorized as somebody that can't survive, you told you got six months to a year to live, you qualify to be able to be. by anything the Best Choice Medicine Organization recommends.
Brett Benes: After earning his PhD from the University of Georgia in 1981, he began his career studying cancer, heart disease, and inflammation with the lifelong goal of curing the ultimate ailment, aging. That's awesome. So if you are in the DC area or if you have the funds to get there and you believe in this cause, out for, look out for information regarding that march. And it's called, is it the best choice medicine march or do know what it's called?
Bill Andrews: We'll in a minute. you
Brett Benes: In the early 1990s, he led the team that discovered the human revolutionizing how we understand aging at the cellular level. In 1999, he founded Sierra Sciences to explore telomerase-based therapies for extending healthy lifespan. He holds over 50 patents and is a frequent media figure in popular science, the Today Show, and longevity documentaries such as The Immortals.
Bill Andrews: The name is, so there's gonna be three different things involved in the march. So it's not called the best choice medicine. Best choice medicine is just the lead, the main thing. it's pretty much trying to also get aging defined as a disease because aging was defined as a disease. It'd be a lot easier for organizations to get grant funding and stuff like that to work on trying to cure aging. But the FDA says aging is not a disease. ⁓
Brett Benes: Beyond his research, Dr. Andrews is also an ultramarathon runner known for his disciplined approach to both science and life.
Bill Andrews: In defense of the FDA, agree. Aging is not measurable. I mean, there are biomarkers of aging, but when you reverse those biomarkers, you don't reverse aging. You only reverse the biomarkers. So we don't really have a good marker. So in that line of discussion, would talk about my gauge of success. I reverse, when I come up something that reverses aging, I want to see people pass what I call the Betty White test. which is where when I show pictures and if you go to my videos that are on my website, you'll see, I'll talk about the Betty White test. I'll show pictures of Betty White when she was 25 and 85. And I'll say, does anybody here not know which photo Betty White was taken first? And it usually gets a laugh, but we don't know, we can't exactly identify why we know which photo was taken second when she was 85. There's wrinkles, there's fat in the face, there's hair.
Brett Benes: This was an amazing conversation and I absolutely loved it. I think you will too. Let's go.
Bill Andrews: and get rid of all those and people would still know which one. it's not a measurement of aging, but it's a qualitatively quantitative measure of aging, which we here at Sierra Sciences give QQ scores to. ⁓
Brett Benes: What does that mean qualitatively quantitative? welcome, Dr. Enders. Thank you so much for coming. Could you give the audience a little bit of an idea of who you are and what type of people you're helping, what type of research you're doing, and ⁓ why?
Bill Andrews: Which means you ⁓ look at a person and tell them how old they are. But you can say one person's older than another person. OK, so you can take a group of people and you can put them in line in order of their age and be pretty certain you it correctly. Because you can qualitatively quantitate their age. You can't it. I'm just somebody that's been obsessed my whole life with trying to cure the aging process. And I use that word cure because that's what my father used. My father was really interested in this. ⁓ fact, there's a documentary called The Immortalist where it actually interviews, ⁓ I'm the star of it, but it has a section in it where my father is included in, because he was the one who, when I was 10 years old, that was literally 60 plus years ago, But we all know that we can walk down the street and everybody we see, can approximate their age. We just can't. don't, we can't, there's no measurement where you can put a number on it. You can't quantitate it. And that's what makes it, that's why the FDA says the aging is a disease. But Betty White was a friend of the family's. My father was a TV producer. so she, she's been, was very supportive of everything I was doing. He that I was really interested in science and medicine in my schools, because for my teachers. And he came to me and said, Bill, when you grow up, you should become a doctor and find a cure for aging. I don't know why nobody's done that yet. And so I've been obsessed with it ever since. ⁓ through my life, I've been trying to learn all the tools that I need to be able to solve the aging process. biology major in college and until unfortunately she passed away. And I wanted her to be the one that walked out on stage and looked and felt and behaved like she was 25 again. And we wouldn't need any clinical studies to prove that we had cured aging. unfortunately she passed away. But she me the okay to use her photos in the Betty White test. Because taught ⁓ water ski. mean, she used to stay at our house for weeks when she was being on game shows. And even there I was upset that degrees don't really teach you how to be scientists. And so I also took experimental psychology to learn how to be a scientist, learned a lot of tools that most scientists don't have to able to cure diseases. But that's I also wanted understand why did we age? Or more importantly, why did we never evolve away not to age? that my father produced, et cetera. So I knew her pretty well. ⁓ was, we'll never have another Betty White. She is irreplaceable. And I think that's one of the saddest things about aging is that we lose these great people. And let me just mention, I say this all the time in my presentations about my vision. I living. I think is the greatest thing that ever happened to us. And if you can think of something better, let me know. And when I say age, I mean practically every disease on the planet, because almost everything is associated with aging, including cancer and heart disease and dementia and things like that. But if these things are so bad for us, why didn't we evolve away not to have them? And so my PhD was in experimental, it was in and population genetics. Population genetics means the study of it is and I hate the thought that can become any less lovable for any of us because of this dumb thing called aging and I'm just adamant about trying to solve that problem. why and how we evolve things, not just the what and when, you'd normally hear. And so it gave me an to learn exactly why and how we evolve aging, or why we never evolve the way not to age. And would take an hour to go through there, so people can go to my website and watch videos of me explaining that. But also how ⁓ and how was what molecular
Brett Benes: Wow. So if you could say, if you could share just one thing that is like the most important thing from this discussion, from your research, from if you could share just one thing with the public, what would that be?
Bill Andrews: Aging isn't inevitable. you listen to my videos about why we age, you'll see that we don't have to age. But we're not aging because the funding's not to the right places. So people call it a call to action. If you know any of these very discrete, ultra-high net worth individuals, reach out to them. Let them know. like our genetics was all about was, you know, how can we undo the things where evolution failed us? it's, that's been in my career. for a time, I ⁓ had to piece the parts, pieces together to explain why we age and how we age in order to figure out how not to age. And I, ⁓ that there are people out there that can cure all the diseases. just that regular investors don't want to spend their money on that. They want to get quick return on investments and for publications. And so we got to ⁓ these people involved and that's the only way we're going to get disease cured. I more than just one thing, but I said a lot of things. ⁓ concluded that every theory you'd ever heard of made no sense. I always say all the twos and twos have to add up and they did not. And I might get a chance to explain during this podcast a little bit about what the missing links were that made it impossible for me at first to get involved in the aging. But when I got my, in aging research, when I got my PhD, I went straight into biotech and was able to apply this arsenal of tools that I had developed to a lot of other diseases, which
Brett Benes: No, it's great. have someone I want to introduce you to, but we'll talk about that afterward. This has been an amazing conversation. ⁓ absolutely love it. I love the vision and I love the approach. ⁓ is not just pie in the sky thinking. This is actual like, no, we can prove this as ⁓ It's happening right now. Most people don't know about it.
Bill Andrews: Okay. made me have a track record that's exceeding anybody else you've ever heard of in finding treatments and cures for diseases. So while I was in biotech, I would say from 1981 to 1993, I was in the development invention of human growth hormone, tissue plasminogen activator, erythropoietin. ⁓
Brett Benes: And if more people knew about it with the right funding, this would absolutely happen much quicker. I love. Go ahead.
Bill Andrews: Can I just say one more thing? A lot of people will say all this telomere shortening is just a theory. This Hafelec limit I mentioned, the limited number of cell divisions is only just a theory. But single scientist that works in the lab with human cells and petri dishes trying to do research knows that when they go to a vendor to buy cells, the catalog will show how old was the donor beta-seron, osteo-inductive factor, several cancer drugs, including one that just got approved by the FDA called Ritellol. I became national inventor of the year in the United States for my cancer research. And this was around a whole bunch of other scientists that weren't accomplishing anything. so, And how many times have these cells divided since these cells were obtained from the donor? And the scientists will use those numbers to calculate how many more times these cells can divide before their experiment can't be done anymore. This is real. It's not a fact. It's a theory. Every scientist that works on human cells in a petri dish know that human cells can only divide a limited number of times and without a doubt, no matter what else we do to try to cure aging. but finally in 1990, oh, in 1990s, I learned the missing link. finally oh, in 1990s, learned the missing link. the main missing link that I needed for aging and Sierra Sciences, my company now, and I've been focusing ever since on trying to fix that problem. And let me just say that the problem isn't not knowing what to do. The problem is having enough funding to do it. And so I believe that we could have aging cured in three years from now if we had the appropriate amount of funding. But I've been saying that for 20 years and that I needed for aging and I've been focusing ever on trying to fix that problem. problem isn't not knowing what to do. problem is having enough funding to do it. And so I believe that we could have aging cured in three years from now if we had the appropriate amount of funding. aging will never get cured unless we solve limited cell division problem called the Hayflick limit and or the telomere shortening problem, which is what causes the Hayflick limit. So line, it's not a theory, it's a fact. We aren't just trying to do studies to prove that this would be the cause of aging, or cure for aging. It is the cure for aging. Excuse my there. is the obstacle, we know what to do and we're going to get there. But that's what I'm all about. I think I probably only answered one of your questions just now. if you could remind me what else you wanted me to talk about, can. ⁓
Brett Benes: That's amazing. thank you so much, Dr. Andrews. This has been an amazing conversation. I love it. I would love to have another one at some point, ⁓ this is just, this is amazing. ⁓ you for the work that you're doing. I know it's incredibly important. Obviously you don't need to hear that, but I want to say it. It's incredibly important and it ⁓ so many people. It will impact so many people. It's one of those things that... No, it's fascinating. And just from my own research and understanding your background, you over 50 different patents on I'm assuming health tech and I'm this and you ⁓ one the as well that came up is you're leading the team that discovered is it to Lama rays? Am I pronouncing that right? Okay. ⁓ people will look back in however long, be it a hundred years, few hundred years, whatever, people will look back and say, there was a before and after. And this type of research ⁓ of those things that's before and after in the human continuum. ⁓ thank you so much for what you're doing.
Bill Andrews: Every pronunciation is correct, but yes, I pronounce it right.
Brett Benes: So can you, because I know this is gonna be really important for the discussion, can you just break that down for someone who has no idea? I didn't know until this morning and I researched it, looked it up. What is this and what does it have to do with aging?
Bill Andrews: Thank you, thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell the world about this. Well, the key thing is, said, I don't know if we'll get into this, but we are now. The big dilemma that I had when I first got my PhD and had to go into biotech instead of working on aging like I wanted to was we knew that human cells can only divide a limited number of times. And I realized that that's we age. I decided it's called the Hayflick Limit because it was discovered by Leonard Hayflick. He published it in 1961 that human cells can only divide a certain number of times. And like when you're first conceived, you're a single cell embryo, your cell can only divide 100 times. And first of all, people will say that's not enough times to make a human being, but actually that's enough cell divisions to make a mass the size of Jupiter. So it is plenty of things, but that cell divides. Yeah, two, four, eight, 16 math.
Brett Benes: Understand exponential growth
Bill Andrews: that one cell when it divides to become two cells, each of those cells can divide 99 more times. And then when they divide 98 times. When you're, ⁓ so much cell division from going from a newborn, from a single cell embryo to a newborn baby that when you're born, you only have 50 cell divisions left. And then it gets, you have a lot of growing up, growing, cells growing, dividing to grow up and heal wounds, to fight infections, all these kinds of things. ⁓ lower and lower. And when you're like 90 years old, you typically have less than 10 cell divisions left. when when ⁓ divide, you die of old age. There's nothing you can do about it. And ⁓ at before my research, couldn't. So it's, the big dilemma was how can cells count? Cells don't have brains. did we... How do cells know how many times they have divided and how many more times they can divide? So that was the dilemma that I couldn't figure out. And what we did, ⁓ when I was still in college, I having anti-aging we did have discussions about that. we like, what kind of biochemical method mechanism could exist that would, a cell could use to count. And the only thing we came up with was it had to be, and this is gonna sound silly. something like ride tickets at an amusement park. So every time a cell divided, it lost a ticket. And what, again, it lost another ticket. were those tickets? so that was a big dilemma. But in early 1990s, was, was, even though was working in biotech on every other disease on the planet, I was still going to anti-aging conferences. And then in the early 1990s, I a guy talk about the fact that telomeres, the very tips of our chromosomes, get shorter as we age. And he had been studying this and he had found that every time a cell divided, got a little bit shorter by a very fixed unit and that he could measure the length of your telomeres and he could tell you how old you were and more importantly, how long it would be before you die of old age. ⁓
Brett Benes: So that is literally your biological clock.
Bill Andrews: Yes, these are called telomeres. They are the ride tickets that I've been looking for. I'm sitting in that audience and I am just stunned by the fact that, ⁓ my gosh, here they are. And so before that guy could even get off the stage, I was at the bottom of the podium saying, has anybody figured out how to add ride tickets back or re-lengthen? I didn't use the term ride tickets with him, but I asked him, has anybody figured out how to re-lengthen the telomeres? Because that would be the way to prove that this telomere shortening had something to do with aging. And he said, no, we've been working on it for years and no success whatsoever. And it sounded exactly like everything else I'd already done. People had told me, yeah, we've been working on human growth hormone for years and we can't figure out how to make it without causing immune responses. And same with every other thing I mentioned before. So I said, hey, let come and work with you and I'll have it figured out in three months he knew my track record. I was actually pretty well known at the, in the field for being the ace that came in and got things done for genotech and Amgen and things like that. he said, I, three months later, ⁓ I presented him the enzyme telomerase, which is, I started off realizing that telomeres shortened every time cells divided, then How is it our children are born with longer telomeres than we have? Because reproduction requires cell division. so we studied, ⁓ he put three quarters of his team reporting to me at ⁓ Corporation. And that was like 30 scientists. So our focus was to figure out why ⁓ is shortening not occurring in our reproductive cells? And. We ended up discovering this enzyme telomerase that's found only in our reproductive cells.
Brett Benes: so you're saying, you're not saying why do our children not age or like that's what I took it to mean at first. No, you're saying that if they can only lose, if the telomerase can only shorten, then our kids should live shorter lives than us.
Bill Andrews: They should be born with very short telomeres and shouldn't even live because they're already really short. Yeah. There had to be, well, it turns out not so much replenishment. It turns out that in our reproductive cells, that produce our sperm and our eggs, also called primordial germ cells, these cells have no telomere shortening whatsoever. they're as long as the parent.
Brett Benes: So there has to be a mechanism to replenish them. That's a good point.
Bill Andrews: We're talking about the parent now, not the child. The parent, even though they have telomeres shortening all the cells of their body, the telomeres are not shortening in their primordial germ cells, which are the cells that produce the sperm and the eggs. And so that's what we studied. We studied why aren't they shortening there? And we discovered this enzyme telomerase. Now, children, ⁓ an embryo, you're still aging. Telomeres are still getting shorter. But you're ⁓ from telomeres that are as long as your parents had when they were first conceived as a single-cell embryo. And which is in numbers is 15,000 bases. DNA made up of bases. ⁓ There's different bases called A, G, C, and T. And the telomeres are made up of three of those bases called TAA, Why am I going black on this? Okay, so it's a six base sequence and I've, I spent so long since I've had to say what those six bases are. I'm going blank on what they are, but it's the six bases are repeating unit. And it's almost like every, every six bases is a ride ticket, except it's actually every like 10 bases, 10 groups of six bases is a ride ticket. But that's what, yes.
Brett Benes: So is it 5 TTAGGG3? OK, I had to look it up. Thank you, Google. OK.
Bill Andrews: Yes. T2AG3 is the abbreviation for it. But the sequence hasn't really been that important for 30 years for me. But it's the fact that this telomerase can relengthen them. was the explanation as to why when children born or first conceived, they have long telomeres. And why they're born, they still have telomeres that give them 50 more cell divisions. So the problem was, the thing was that we just determined that, well, if our reproductive cells produce telomerase, that means that all the cells of our body produce telomerase or have the gene for telomerase. And the genes just shut off. I mean, it would take an hour to explain, but if people want to go listen to my video on why we age, it'll explain exactly why we evolved in mechanisms that shut the gene off, even though it's bad for us. It's good for the species. Let me make that story short. that's the survival of the species is what evolution is all about.
Brett Benes: It brings to mind an old adage that I'd heard that progress happens one funeral at a time.
Bill Andrews: Okay, good. So our focus was then on how to turn gene ⁓ on all of the other cells of our body to essentially stop kilomic shortening in all the cells of our body. And that's what I've been working on for the last 25 plus years. And it's not easy, it's to understand the mechanisms what turns the telomerase gene on and off is important. But what we did discover was that, I mean, this might get more scientific than you want, but telomeres have all the hallmarks of enhancer sequences, which are well known to be regulatory units in our chromosomes for regulating all genes. And scattered throughout our chromosomes. ⁓ telomeres are enhancer sequences and the difference between telomeres and other enhancer sequences is that they shorten every time a cell divides and as a result, that's why we see all the changes that we occur, we see in each other as we age. Okay, so it's not just putting a limit on a life-status, that's just, can go, your cells can divide until you run out of ride tickets. As you get less and less ride tickets, it's actually controlling the epigenetics, all the genes on the chromosomes. to make us all the changes that we see. And in experiments that we've done in human cells and petri dishes, human skin grown on the back of mice ⁓ and mice, and I say engineered because mice don't age like humans do, which makes them a really bad animal for studying human aging. But ⁓ Dr. Rhonda Pinto at Harvard was able to create a mouse that did age like humans. And when we applied ⁓ we used what's called telomerase gene therapy, but it was a different way, very expensive and risky way of introducing telomerase to cells. And we did that to these engineered mice and the human skin grown on the back of mice and human cells in the petri dish. We saw reversal of aging in every way imaginable. Diane Sawyer did a big ⁓ report on it. People can do. ⁓ Google searches of Diane Sawyer and Dr. Ron DePennell, and that's D-E-P-I-N-H-O. They can find that video where they actually show the mice. And it's the only, I want to say theory, though right now telomere shortening is not a theory. It's the only mechanism of aging that's ever been shown to actually reverse aging in every way imaginable. Unfortunately, the gene therapy is too risky and too expensive to be. treating humans with. So that's why I'm looking for ways of just turning it. So telomerase gene therapy is a way of delivering a new telomerase gene to cells. And the delivery is the risky part. The way you get it into the cells, not all cells survive the delivery. But it's a way of getting telomerase into the cells to lengthen telomeres or add ride tickets back. Whereas I'm looking for ways of just turning the gene on that we already have in ourselves by using a small molecule, especially like nutraceuticals, to turn the gene on and lengthen our telomeres that way. ⁓ Yes, I mean, ⁓ it's, I've, just what done, but what I've ⁓ seen in other ⁓ literature published from labs is that,
Brett Benes: So does this process reverse illnesses as well as aging?
Bill Andrews: practically every disease we've ever heard of now is associated with telomeres. And examples, like even AIDS. So HIV, when HIV infects us, it starts killing our immune cells. And ⁓ okay when we're young because we have other cells that still have sufficient number of ride tickets. We still have some cells that can divide to replace those killed cells. And so when you first get infected with you or... somebody else gets infected with HIV, you don't know it at first because you have no symptoms. You're constantly replacing the killed immune cells. But when the cells that divide to replace those immune cells run out of ride tickets, you can't do it anymore. And that's when you start seeing the symptoms of and you acquired immune deficiency. And ⁓ that's acquired immune deficiency syndrome is. So then you die old age. But I can say the same type of argument for macular degeneration for your eyes, muscular dystrophy, liver cirrhosis from drinking too much alcohol, which we know kills liver cells. You don't experience the symptoms when you're young. You don't experience the symptoms until you've run out of right jitters, which is later.
Brett Benes: So it seems the very fact that people are able to heal at all to point that this is possible. Like if your body was able or is able to heal in some cases, then should be able to continue healing and regenerating and all of that.
Bill Andrews: When I speak at medical conferences, I always say, okay, so why do we age if we can replace our killed cells? We're not like old trucks sitting in a field that expose the sun and wind and rain, show wear and tear. We do have wear and tear, but we can replace, we can repair our wear and tear all the time.
Brett Benes: So heard of this concept of replacing cells, but where I heard it, was much more kind of in the theoretical or spiritual mindfulness type of thing where you can overcome any illness because replacing cells and all that. What I had not heard, like, well, here's actually the mechanism and we can actually begin to turn it on ⁓ biomedically.
Bill Andrews: Yes, it's a dream come true as far as I'm concerned on figuring out how to cure not just aging, but almost every disease on the planet. I don't know if it's time to go into tangent, but the problem is that
Brett Benes: Feel free.
Bill Andrews: Every gauges of success, let's call it, academic labs, of are all based on the number of publications you get, because there's such a thing called publish or perish. And so ⁓ when a gets a grant, they spent that grant money on trying to get more publications so they can get another grant on and on on. So you get more publications out of a characterizing diseases, not curing or treating diseases because it takes a long time to figure out how to cure or treat a disease and then you only get one publication when you get that done. So most labs will spend all their time focusing on getting experiments done that they can publish. so that's a big problem. I call that one of the real problems why cancer is not cured, heart disease isn't cured, Alzheimer's is not cured. is because
Brett Benes: So is that why the medical industry in Western medicine is more focused on treating symptoms and managing symptoms and diagnoses than it is actually curing? I know science is kind of upstream from medicine. So is that one of the reasons why?
Bill Andrews: Part of it, mean, it's also, they make more money by treating the symptoms afterwards instead of working on prevention. But yeah, so I was only talking about the academic, but the commercial world is all based on quick return on investment, okay? And you don't get quick return on investment by waiting for a cure, okay?
Brett Benes: And just to be clear for the viewers, it's not saying that every provider, every medical person only worried about the bottom line, not trying to hear people. It's more about how the policies are designed, what success ⁓ in industrialized medical system.
Bill Andrews: I've never met a doctor that didn't want to help their patients prevent diseases, them, not just the symptoms, but they're all controlled by insurance companies. And there's rules and the FDA has regulations on what they can do and what they can't do and things like that. the system's okay? But, you know, Investors that invest into biotech companies and stuff like that They're only interested in or 90 percent of early interested in quick return on investments. They they invest in the person not the not not the disease, know, they're they They meet a smart scientist is trying to start a company they want to invest in that person because they think that person can make them a lot of money and as soon as they invest and have controlling ownership of that scientist company, they're that scientist to do other things instead of ⁓ were, instead trying to cure or treat a disease. And then when they complete doing all those other things, they say, so much value has been added to the company, let's sell it now for a profit. And that usually takes the scientist away from their dream of trying to cure the disease, because they usually have like uncompete clauses in their contracts and things. that and so this is where to get cured. Even there's the celebrity billionaires that starting all these companies. They're a little bit, they're hiring celebrity advisors, celebrity advisors are hiring celebrity scientists and nobody's looking at track records. I mean how many diseases have these scientists cured or treated? And it's usually none yet but they that they're big celebrities because they're all over the news talking. so even these big biotech companies started by these celebrity billionaires, they're not getting anything done. I don't know, it's just something that really affects me. I have been in biotech as long as biotech's been biotech. And if you can find another scientist like that, I would be really surprised because most scientists... they jump ship and become business people instead. And you never hear them again because they make lousy business people. I've stayed with the science. I work at the lab bench trying to cure diseases. ⁓ And the only thing I do different is try to find funding to do the research. ⁓
Brett Benes: So speaking of funding, you said that we could actually do this in three years if we had the funding for it. would to be funded and what type of actual, like what are the milestones that we would be able to meet in the next three years to make this happen?
Bill Andrews: Well, so in three years, I would have essentially a pill that somebody can swallow. Maybe might have to be injected, but it won't be like a gene therapy. But I'd have a pill that would get inside of our cells, turn the telomeres gene back on, and win the tug-of-war between telomere shortening and lengthening. in three years, I would have pill that somebody can swallow. that get inside of cells, turn the telomeres gene back on, and win the tug-of-war between telomere shortening and lengthening. That's from extrapolation from lots of work already. Because we have already tested over 500,000 different molecules. And we have found about 900 different molecules that do turn the gene back on. They don't turn the gene on enough to win this tug of war that I just mentioned. they slow it down. And there are products. Where is it? Like there is this one product called Telavitil that actually does contain nutraceuticals. It contains the five most potent nutraceuticals that we've ever discovered so far that get inside cells and turn on the telomeres gene. But they don't do it enough to win the tug of war, but they slow it down. And that's a really good thing. And it's so. ⁓ Well, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to continue the research to develop even more potent things. And believe me, this company called Touchstone Essentials has been a really great partner of ours because they're interested in all the same things you're interested in. They're the of the company. Its mission isn't to make money. It's to provide, make people happier and healthier. And so working with them. And when we develop, discover more potent, telomerase inducers, they're called, the molecules are called telomerase inducers. Only find more potent ones. This would be next generation telovitals. And so that's, I think that's the best thing people can do right now, short of gene therapy, which is, as I said, expensive and risky to lengthen their telomeres.
Brett Benes: So I'm assuming that product is available to the public. And where do they go for that?
Bill Andrews: Yes. the website for Touched on Essentials is And the website itself tells you a little bit about their nature.
Brett Benes: So I have a follow on question with that. So you said there are products, there are ways of turning these on, but that it doesn't, ⁓ not potent enough to turn it on enough in layman's terms. Is that, is that a problem of potency or is there, is there a way that you can, you have multiple different supplements, multiple different axes of approach to turn on multiple at once? ⁓
Bill Andrews: Well, kind of yes to lot of what you said. Now we believe that the telomerase gene is regulated so tightly, it's turned off so tightly that there's multiple mechanisms to shut it off. Okay. And so that's why we have a mixture of five different telomerase inducers in this product, Telavitil. because of the fact that they are operating on different mechanisms, but we're not attacking of them yet because we're only inducing fraction of the telomeres that we need to be able to stop telomere shortening. And my goal is to actually interfere with so many mechanisms, we end up lengthening telomeres. But yeah, is nothing else. Okay, so there are a lot of things that cause us to age, like mitochondria dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation, which is probably the number one cause of aging. But they all can be overcome by lengthening telomeres. If we had ingredients now that were potent enough to turn on enough telomerase to be able to win that tug of war, you wouldn't need anything else. That should be sufficient to do everything. There's some diseases I mentioned like sickle cell anemia and Alcoholism those those are only two diseases that come to mind right now that have nothing to do with telomeres everything else does So so there's going to be still a few things left for me to cure after we come up with something that does telomeres, but yeah, it's It's there's multiple things you can do now and I recommend like ⁓ urolithin NAD nicotinamide things that will slow down the rate aging because of the fact that we don't have a telomerase inducer yet that will lengthen telomeres.
Brett Benes: let's just go into that for a minute because I'm assuming ⁓ watching this who, are watching this who want to understand what they can do now before all of the research and all of the products are out. So like what are ⁓ top three that someone can do now to start affecting the system in their bodies? ⁓
Bill Andrews: Well, reducing toxins one. The is with toxins everywhere, breathing, drinking, eating. Everything is putting toxins in your body. the toxins are damaging everything and therefore increasing the rate of telomere shortening because the damage has to be repaired by cell division. They're inducing inflammation oxidative stress. So toxins is really good. What people can do about toxins is take zeolites. Zeolites are probably one of the best molecules on the planet for actually binding to heavy metals, which are toxins, and removing them from the body. And Touchstone has a product that does that. There's a few products they have that contain zeolites for doing that. Sugar. Sugar is one of them. worse things for accelerating aging. Sugar is extremely bad for you and people just can't resist it. Touchstone has a product that converts into fiber and fiber is good for you. ⁓ That is called ⁓ Glucocontrol ⁓ it's a very outstanding product. mean, there's a lot of companies that have some of products, but I've never seen a company like Touchstone essentially. I'm not a marketer, okay? And I don't get any compensation for saying this. I'm just a fan of this company, but I've never seen a company that has the larger array of such great products as Touchstone Essentials does. also, ⁓ I a lot of people take something called Shiela Jeet, which is a natural product that's actually dirt from Himalayas actually. Shilajit actually reduces inflammation and oxidative stress and actually is an adaptogen, which means it helps calm your body down too. But Shilajit has a lot of side effects. But it turns out the active ingredient in Shilajit is something called Fulvic, F-U-L-V-I-C. And that's in a product called Fulvic that touched on essential cells. I sometimes worry that Touchstone doesn't make enough money because these are expensive products to make, but they don't charge very much.
Brett Benes: Yeah, I'm looking at them now. think I've scrolled through 20 different products. I think I only saw one that was over $100, maybe two.
Bill Andrews: Yeah. And at Natal Clear, which a product they have. That contains an enzyme called Natal Kinase that actually inhibits a protein in our bodies called plasminogen activator inhibitor, PAI for short, PAI-1 for It inhibits that, it degrades that molecule. And that molecule, PAA1, inhibits one of the enzymes that I helped discover called tissue plasminogen activator, which every ambulance carries to inject into you if you have a heart attack. It breaks up blood clots. But the thing is that the enzyme I discovered, tissue plasminogen activator, is already produced in our body. It's just that we have this other thing that's inhibiting it. And people should understand why we would have such a stupid thing. People have to go listen to my video on why we age. But natokinase inhibits, so it inactivates the inhibitor, tissue plasmidase inactivator. And if people took natokinase or nato clear all the time, the incidence of heart attacks would decrease a lot. it's just, I constantly think how silly it is that we've evolved all these ways of. eliminating what I call the longer lived. you raised your young, there's no evolutionary advantage to living longer than it raises your young. You actually are interfering with the survival of the species by living longer. Therefore, any species that evolved in aging process had a better chance of surviving rapidly changing environments. I get going on that, it'll take an hour. ⁓ got very clear videos on my website, and I'm sure you'll put a link for that.
Brett Benes: ⁓ have to ask on applicability side, were talking about the products that are available and ⁓ things that can do to start ⁓ impacting this in a positive way. I'd like to ⁓ drill in little bit more to like what types of illnesses, what types patients and providers would most quickly benefit ⁓ knowing about this research and these products? what I know it kind of affects everyone or at least 90 something percent of all the illnesses, but are there a couple that are like, these are most highly impacted by these and people should know about these right now?
Bill Andrews: every disease that's associated with aging is going to be impacted by these diseases like fatigue. Fatigue is something that is caused by heavy metals, it's caused by sugar, it's caused by inflammation. ⁓ The one cause of every disease is inflammation and so reducing inflammation. Let me just say Touchtone doesn't sell this one but let me say that Something else that I'm very impressed with is a test called the LCAT test, A-L-C-A-T. And I think every person should get that test because it will tell you what foods you are sensitive to, meaning what foods induce inflammation in you. And when you find out, you just quit eating those foods. And if you quit eating for a year, suddenly find that you're not sensitive to them anymore. Okay. So. ⁓ Like I take the test every year. It's Cell Science Services, I think is the name of the company. But I don't understand why they don't have competition because this test is such an important test. But can Google LCAT, ⁓ A-L-C-A-T, and LCAT tests. Otherwise, you get Alcatraz. But you do LCAT and you'll find the company provides and they send you a kit, you get a phlebotomist, they'll actually have a phlebotomist come to your home or your office, draw blood, and then two weeks later, you get a list of all the foods that you're sensitive to. that's something that I think everybody could do, but at the time, you can be fighting an with fulvic and zeolite products. ⁓ Pure Body, it's called, and Pure Body Extra, I don't think I mentioned their names before, that's what Touchstone has. it's the place, place for everything is ⁓ Touchstone where people can go find on amazon.com or something like that, other companies that sell those kind of products, but they're never gonna find one company that has them all, like Touchstone Essentials does. ⁓ Again, sounding like a marketer, but. I'm excited about this company. like working with this company. I think it's one of the best team that I've ever worked with. But I just do research. I ⁓ sell anything. I don't market anything, ⁓ it might sound like it just in this podcast. I do the research because my ultimate goal is to cure the aging process, especially my own aging.
Brett Benes: There's two companies that this makes me think of. to do with that testing kit and ⁓ been on the podcast before so viewers can go check out Zachary Brooks ⁓ and Eugene is essentially working to, created a or he's building a company that takes. genomic medicine and makes it much more available to the masses and makes it through the processes. So you can stuff like that, get your blood for an understanding of ⁓ what sensitive to. But also one of the things that he really focuses on is ⁓ pharma, pharma I think that's the right term, but understanding how different medicines ⁓ you well. ⁓ how this is really important for understanding what you're sensitive to, being able to give that list to your doctors, or that they don't prescribe you anything. The other thing, it's more of a question for you. I met someone at a conference, a couple people at a conference months ago.
Bill Andrews: You need to send me that link. Send me the link because I'm not, I don't get any compensation from talking about Nalcat. I just mentioned it because I think it's good for the audience. But send me that link because if it's, I haven't heard of this, if they're doing something good, I want to add that to the list.
Brett Benes: Okay. Yeah, I think they're about five years into their build, but they are, already, I believe they're already accepting customers. They're already working with the public and all of that. But doing some pretty amazing things. And yeah, I'll send you that link absolutely. And, and again, it's, it's you genome with Zachary Brooks people who want to look that up online. ⁓ But the other is has to do ⁓ with ⁓ using to Essentially help regenerate mitochondria. I was wondering how much this relates to you that the company is called Blue Oak nutraceuticals ⁓ are Yeah, have developed an amazing product. I think using an extract of green tea ⁓ the existed Using an extract from cacao for years, but they were able to find the same the same molecule
Bill Andrews: Yeah. Easy. ⁓
Brett Benes: I'm not a biologist, same molecule in a green tea extract and they were able to that at a much more sustainable rate. So I'm wondering how much this regeneration of the mitochondria has to do with your research and your success as well. ⁓
Bill Andrews: Well, the green tea extract component is probably, you get the letters mixed up, it's EGCG or ECGC, something like that, which is an antioxidant. so damaged mitochondria produce a lot of free radicals. And so something like this TE green tea molecule will inactivate those reactive molecules called free radicals. That only scratches the surface. I mean, what happened, and if we could get telomeres longer, we wouldn't have to worry about any of stuff. But the things that you need to do that I think are most important besides taking antioxidants, and more than just green tea, take like four different, so I'm very interested in protecting my mitochondria. So I take four different antioxidants. I also take something called urolithin A, which is, induces your body to get rid of damaged mitochondria. And then that induces the formation of new mitochondria that requires long telomeres. But there's also NAD. NAD is a very important molecule for energy is involved with the mitochondria. And NAD plays a big role in other things in the body. And the best way to... ⁓ or NAD is through something called nicotinamide riboside. Again, I don't get any compensation for this, but Timeline is a company that sells Urolithin A. The True Niagen is a company that sells nicotinamide riboside. So does Life Extension Foundation. And I'm to think of some others, but those are ⁓ the main things I do to protect my mitochondria are... bunch of antioxidants, including the EGCG or whatever it is, and alpha lipoic acid. one of the important ones is, is N-acetylcysteine. Okay. Now a lot of people take glutathione as an antioxidant, but it's, it's actually kind of like, I think one of the biggest crooked things in the supplement field is that glutathione is a very expensive. Antioxidant to take your body already naturally produces it just doesn't produce enough of it. So they take it but it turns out that N-acetyl cysteine, which is a thousandfold cheaper than glutathione It gets gets converted into glutathione second. It gets into your cells and so N-acetyl cysteine is what I take instead of glutathione because I want to save money and but it works just as well as as blue time and then going blank on what the fourth one is that I take. my company developed a list, a fifth one we call the antioxidant quartet, which the best four antioxidants to take. And I can't remember.
Brett Benes: Is that listed somewhere on your website?
Bill Andrews: No, but I can send you that. I can send you that. was a point in my company where I hired a president to become head of the company so that could focus on science. And he decided that he wanted to start getting some products. And so he hired some that reported to me. But we developed this antioxidant quartet. then the
Brett Benes: Okay.
Bill Andrews: I ended up having to fire the president. And so that anti-accident quartet never actually got on the market we were getting distracted too much away from trying to cure aging and not relieve the symptoms. ⁓ So companies are working on trying to relieve the symptoms. I didn't want to compete with those. I wanted to find a cure. ⁓ But I send you an animated slide that was made for
Brett Benes: Go to the source.
Bill Andrews: promoting that antioxidant quartet. urolithin A, ⁓ urolithin A, and nicotinamide riboside are, I think, the most important things that people can be taking to protect their mitochondria.
Brett Benes: even just a list and I can put that in the description. So let's talk about the future here because I think this is amazing. I love the concept of, is it called the longevity escape ⁓ The idea ⁓ and first heard this by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I don't know where it came from or originated, but the idea that Aubrey deGray, okay. But the idea that we are ⁓
Bill Andrews: Aubrey DeGray, just give credit to Aubrey DeGray.
Brett Benes: essentially longevity breakthroughs in technology and medicine, all of that at a certain rates and that rate is speeding up. the way that I heard it anyway is when we get to the point where we are having a new breakthrough every year, we'll have reached the point where aging and longevity like start to cancel each other out. basically ⁓ outlived aging as a species. It doesn't mean everyone's going to stop dying, but it does mean people are going to start not dying.
Bill Andrews: Yes.
Brett Benes: at that point.
Bill Andrews: If we could solve the aging process, the average lifespan for 50 % of us would be a thousand years. There's actually several studies that have shown that, If we could solve the aging process, the average lifespan for 50 % of us would be a thousand years. There's actually several studies that have shown that, that aging is a number one, telomeres all by themselves limit our lifespan to 125 years maximum. But since we all live unperfect lifestyles and have unperfect diets and things like that, our telomeres shorting gets accelerated. So none of us actually live to be 125. telomeres all by themselves limit our lifespan to 125 years maximum. But since all unperfect lifestyles and have unperfect diets and things like that, our telomeres shorting gets accelerated. Yeah, but let's give credit. So Aubrey Gray is the longevity escape velocity. He's turned that. Before then, was, my God, I just said his name, Dr. Grossman. He ⁓ the live long enough to live forever. And that was first time that concept ever was introduced where, yes, we have cures coming up. And so people watch the documentary called The Immortalists, which I mentioned before that stars me. It also stars Aubrey DeGray Terry Grossman. Terry co-authored a book with Ray Kurzweil. And I the name of ⁓ of the but the second of the book was Live Long Enough to Live Forever, which was something Dr. Terry Grossman coined. But all three of us are in that documentary called The Immortalists. And my father, I before when I was talking about this. my father is and he passed away 2015 from Alzheimer's, which is unfortunate because if we could have gotten this research done faster, I could have cured his disease.
Brett Benes: I'm sorry. That is, that is an amazing thing. Like the picture of within our lifetime, ⁓ what your earlier statement was funding, like given funding pretty much and within our lifetime, we could start, we could defeat aging.
Bill Andrews: Yeah, the trip to doing that is we need to find those very discreet ultra high net worth individuals that are living on their million acre properties from the rest of the world that think that some of these news stories you hear from these celebrities that aren't real scientists, they're pretend scientists that are saying they're curing aging, they think these ⁓ these ultra high net worth individuals are thinking everything's getting done and there's nothing they can do to help it get done faster. But nothing's getting done because all these celebrities, all they're trying to do is find a way to get products on the market to make them money. And the are not coming yet. They're symptoms to make symptoms go away, but they aren't actually attacking the causes of these symptoms.
Brett Benes: symptoms.
Bill Andrews: And that's what I'm trying to do. I work with doctors and scientists and stuff that are very into prevention. I'd say, don't want, okay, so let just go with this. Okay, so I believe number one cardiovascular doctor in the world is Dr. Amy Doney, who is in Spokane, Washington. She is all about prevention. And so I send people all the time to her clinic and she works with patients online too, but she's written some books et cetera that ⁓ this subject, she's just so passionate about prevention. she totally just thumbs up all the nose, what a thumbs up to the, ⁓ what the word? ⁓ Thumbs nose, thumbs or nose to all the pharmacy. ⁓
Brett Benes: thumbs or nose.
Bill Andrews: Insurance companies and stuff like that to say you can't do that just wants people to be happier and healthier same with dr. Jason Williams in the cancer field Okay, I mean there's a guy somebody has cancer. He's the best doctor in the world. I think to see I Mean, I I know I I've invented a lot of cardiovascular drugs So I know the cardiovascular field really well and I've also was national vendor of the year for my cancer research in the United States So I know a lot about cancer. So when I when I recommend these people I'm not getting compensation or anything. These are the best people. then there's a Dr. Shelley Jordan, who's really tough dementia and brain disorders. And then I'm working with companies as volunteer scientific advisor because they have great cures like Synapfile, SYNAP. They have this thing for treating dementia and strokes and things like Then gut health. I mean, I'm working with a company called Appropriate that is got the world's best things that I think for treating Gut health but in all these cases these people need more funding and stuff like that because they're they're focused on just the treatments and cures and the preventions that's that's the most important they're all focused on the preventions and There's there's little way for return on investment minded investors to make a lot of money there and things like that. That's why these very discreet ultra high net worth individuals need to be told that the diseases that are even killing them and their loved ones are not being cured or treated because the funding is not going to the treatments and they need to come forward and they need to say, okay, I'll provide 0.001 % of my fortune to... give to a scientist or something like that that is actually focused on curing a disease or treating a disease. I'm not talking about just myself. I'm not trying to raise money from me. If I had a lot of money, I'd be supporting all the other people that I've mentioned. yeah, we to, I wanna, I develop cures, I wanna drop them from airplanes. I'll make a doing speaking tours afterwards. mean, it's ⁓ not driven by. much money I can make like a lot of people in my field.
