Automated Voice (00:00):
Welcome to the Dr Gundry podcast. The weekly podcast where Dr G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Gundry (00:14):
Hey everybody, it’s Dr Gundry here and I’ve got some very exciting news. Right now you can sign up for Dr Gundry’s newsletter. As a subscriber you’ll get updates about new episodes of the Dr Gundry podcast where we talk about all things health. Trust me, you won’t want to miss out. I’ll also keep you in the loop of all the things I’m up to from news to events to special appearances, visit www.doctorgundry.com to sign up.
Dr. Gundry (00:46):
Welcome to the Dr Gundry podcast. Okay, everybody’s been asking, could a single supplement significantly increase your lifespan? My guest thinks it’s entirely possible and you are about to learn why. In just a moment I’ll speak with Chris Burres. Chris is the owner of SES research, the first company to deliver My Vital C, the world’s first nano-antioxidant to the public. When Chris learned a Nobel prize winning chemical tested by NASA had been proven to almost double the lifespan in mammals, he made it his mission to get it into the hands of people around the world. Today we’ll talk about that chemical, ESS60 and how it can help you. One dose at a time. Welcome Chris. Thanks for coming on.
Chris (01:41):
Thank you Dr Gundry for having me here. I’m actually so excited to be here. I’ve watched a number of your podcasts, listened to two of your books, it’s actually really an honor to be here.
Dr. Gundry (01:51):
My gosh. All right, that’s enough [inaudible 00:01:53]. That’s it for the Dr. Gundry podcast. Tune in next week… No, no, no. Don’t go away. This is going to be too good to miss. Your background is fascinating. You have experience in mechanical engineering.
Chris (02:06):
Yep.
Dr. Gundry (02:06):
Comedy improv.
Chris (02:07):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (02:08):
That’s where you got that pitch from just now. Oil and gas explosives.
Chris (02:13):
Yes. Things that go boom.
Dr. Gundry (02:15):
Podcasting.
Chris (02:16):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (02:16):
And competitive soccer.
Chris (02:18):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (02:20):
Boy that is a mix.
Chris (02:22):
They don’t go… That doesn’t seem natural? No?
Dr. Gundry (02:23):
That doesn’t seem to mesh very well. You’re a real Renaissance guy?
Chris (02:29):
I always, as I was growing up, it’s interesting that you mentioned that as I was growing up, I always thought that it’s the right thing to be a Renaissance man to have experiences in a lot of different areas and now I somehow ended up here.
Dr. Gundry (02:44):
All right. Now you’ve got carbon nanomaterials.
Chris (02:47):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (02:48):
All right. Can you explain to me and my five year old granddaughter what a carbon nanomaterial is and how you got into this industry?
Chris (02:59):
Yeah. Carbon nanomaterials, they were really discovered in 1985 by a scientist, Dr. Richard Smalley and Harold Kroto and Robert Curl at Rice university which is in Houston and it’s the third form of carbon. We’re all familiar with diamond, we’re familiar with graphite and now there’s a whole gamut of molecules, the most abundant of which is looks like this. This is a model of the buckyball and if you imagine a soccer ball, the lines on the soccer ball represent the bonds between the carbon atoms so you have this spherical molecule of 60 carbon atoms. They won the Nobel prize for this discovery. In fact, they won it in a short 11 years in the way I got involved with it, at the time, my business partner, Robert Wong was working at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the university of Houston, Gokus and his professor Dr. Paul Chou, is actually pretty famous in the superconductivity world, one day came in at the time this material, so this-
Dr. Gundry (04:00):
You’re holding up literally what appears to be a soccer ball that doesn’t have any leather on it, is just the framework of a soccer ball.
Chris (04:09):
Yeah. A soccer ball created by a chemistry student.
Dr. Gundry (04:14):
Okay.
Chris (04:15):
With the chemistry pieces.
Dr. Gundry (04:16):
But this is a naturally occurring molecule or do we have to make it?
Chris (04:20):
It is naturally occurring. In fact, if you collect the soot off of a candle, you can get some parts per million parts per billion-
Dr. Gundry (04:26):
Thank you for saying that.
Chris (04:28):
… of buckyballs, right. And it’s really, yeah, it’s important to know that. It’s not naturally occurring in large quantities, right. When my business partner was separating this material, this material was selling for $6,000 per gram. That’s a nice price point for a product that you might sell-
Dr. Gundry (04:49):
And Chimney Sweeps get this for free.
Chris (04:53):
When you’re in the presence of oxygen it’s actually very hard to make large quantities so yes, then the Chimney Sweeps would have to know the HPLC processes in order to separate it but yeah, it is naturally occurring and… So my professor Chou came in and asked my business partner, you guys are young guys, this is obviously a hot topic, really sexy material, why don’t you go start a company? And my business partner is from an entrepreneurial background and so this was selling for $6,000 a gram so he started, I was studying mechanical engineering at the University of Houston and they brought me on board, he had another business partner, they brought me on board to help them design the equipment. And it turns out that equipment is actually the most efficient equipment for producing fullerenes. We’ve traveled the world, visited with other people who manufacture and it’s the most, currently the most efficient. We’re actually invested in other technologies to make it even a mass production process. It’s currently a batch process.
Dr. Gundry (05:54):
Now let me stop you there because you’ve mentioned buckyball and you mentioned fullerenes, where does that come from?
Chris (06:03):
When Dr. Richard Smalley and Harold Kroto and Robert Curl discovered it they leaned on Buckminster Fuller-
Dr. Gundry (06:13):
Thank you.
Chris (06:13):
Right? Who is a famous architect. He actually put to the forefront the geodesic dome and this actually has the shape, and I’m holding it up again, of a geodesic dome and so they wanted to pay homage to Fuller and so they called them the gamut of molecules. There’s C60 which is like a soccer ball shape, C70 is more of a rugby ball shape and then C76 and a lot of even numbers going up and those get more round as they get larger. I mean this is-
Dr. Gundry (06:44):
Pretty round.
Chris (06:45):
Yes. C60 is pretty round. C70 gets the oblong. They wanted to pay homage to Fuller and so the gamut of molecules, it’s called fullerenes and then the most abundant is affectionately called the buckyball.
Dr. Gundry (07:00):
Okay. Sorry to interrupt but-
Chris (07:01):
No.
Dr. Gundry (07:01):
… it’s too good a story for where these names come from.
Chris (07:04):
Yeah. I mean, the story I’m actually currently going back and rereading. There’s a book called The Miracle Molecule, no, The Most Beautiful Molecule is what it’s called and it talks about the story of the discovery of buckyball, how Curl and Kroto and Dr. Smalley, what their grad students did instead of what they did and how they collectively came up with the concept that this soccer ball shape was the right shape for carbon 60 because they had this peak on a chart that said carbon 60-
Dr. Gundry (07:36):
What the heck is that.
Chris (07:36):
Yeah. It didn’t make sense in that context. That story is an amazing story and yeah, it’s really amazing how this was discovered. Some incredible things about the buckyball, it’s harder than a diamond. It’ll actually turn into a diamond. One of the ways I describe it, it’s actually got six fold symmetry so it’s one of the most symmetrical molecules that enables it to hold a whole lot of electrons and release a whole lot of electrons. Lithium in battery cells, like in your cell phone, over time that lithium tends to… The battery starts not performing as well. That’s because of degradation of the lithium. This molecule is actually so symmetric and so strong you won’t have that degradation. We may see buckyball batteries at some point in the future.
Dr. Gundry (08:22):
And you’re probably invested in that.
Chris (08:24):
Not yet. I mean we’re the largest manufacturer and distributor so we’re have our fingers in everything, our hands in everything but we don’t have any specific investments. The next best technology is actually solar cells. Organic solar cells, obviously really valuable, they’re flexible and you can just lay them out on things. And there’s a company in Boston that we have a partnership with to bring to the forefront another production process for fullerenes and then to help support their efforts in solar cell technology.
Dr. Gundry (08:58):
Okay. This is a very expensive molecule. And so you said, gee, I like expensive molecules because there’s profit here. So what it’s an expensive molecule? I mean, I don’t chew diamonds to-
Chris (09:15):
They’re also expensive, yeah.
Dr. Gundry (09:16):
… Exactly, to extend my lifespan. Maybe I should.
Chris (09:19):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (09:21):
Why this molecule?
Chris (09:23):
They won the Nobel prize in 11 years, right? And the reason they won it so quickly is the scientific community knew that it was going to be very important. In fact, a lot of the community hearkened it to a 3D version of benzene. You know how important benzene is, right? It’s in most medicines, it’s the foundation of most medicines, certainly the foundation of plastics. We really don’t have modern society without a benzene ring. And now you take a 3D version of benzene pretty quickly, everyone’s like, well this is going to be really important. Thus the Nobel prize. Also if it’s really important, we’re going to use it in a lot of places, we need to know if it’s toxic. Benzene is in fact toxic, right, until you add stuff to it. They assumed it would be toxic. They did a toxicity study in 2012 at the University of Paris.
Chris (10:10):
They gave rats water, rats olive oil and then I start to make a distinction between C60 and ESS60 at this point because C60 is for industrial applications and when you improperly process it, is known to be harmful. ESS60 is C60 that’s been processed for safe for human consumption and so they gave those rats water, olive oil and then olive oil with ESS60 in it and instead of being toxic, the rats lived 90% longer than the control group.
Dr. Gundry (10:41):
That’s not bad.
Chris (10:43):
The current, well, the current best research process, and I know you’re into intermittent fasting, straight up calorie restriction, which most people aren’t signing up for-
Dr. Gundry (10:54):
No.
Chris (10:54):
… gets you a 30% extension in life. We’re talking a threefold increase over the previous best way to extend your life. It’s pretty amazing. Not only was their life extended 90%, it was done on Wistar rats, they tend to die at about 32 months. The rat’s given ESS60 and olive oil, they live to 62 months. All the rats given water had tumors because that’s typical of a Wistar rat. The ones given ESS60 and olive oil, none of them had tumors. I think that’s a pretty important piece of this research because typically the amount of tumors a Wistar rat has increases over time so they live twice as long and had no tumors. I know that people start thinking right away anticancer, you got to be really careful. There’s a big difference between being able to turn a cancer around and doing preventative things so that you don’t get cancer but the implications are pretty profound.
Dr. Gundry (11:49):
In my area of work back when I was a transplant surgeon and a transplant immunologist, same thing with transplant drugs, they are toxic and we always had to find the toxic level so when rapamycin came out, these tests are done in rats and lo and behold, rather than kill the rats, the rats who were given rapamycin live significantly longer and obviously we eventually found, I didn’t, smarter people than me, found the mammalian target of rapamycin, which we now know exists in all animals, including worms. We know how rapamycin worked and it was mammalian target rapamycin TOR, mTOR is an energy sensor so, okay, so the rats lived longer. How does this stuff work?
Chris (12:45):
That’s a great question and smarter people than me will probably figure that out and so far we don’t know exactly. What we do know is that this formulation is a great antioxidant. There’s some research that says it’s 172 times more powerful than vitamin C and it’s an anti-inflammatory and a lot of current aging process with thought is that aging is a function of oxidation and inflammation and so it’s, at least in this kind of mindset, it’s not surprising that something that helped mammals, rats live 90% longer is both an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.
Chris (13:21):
Beyond that, we don’t know. We do understand that the buckyballs carbon 60 will get in the mitochondria and participate in the ATP processes in there and so that obviously has some significant ramifications. I mean, if you fill a room full of mitochondria experts and you say, hey, if you had a free radical sponge, right, that can absorb these oxidative species right there in the mitochondria, would that be a good thing? And most would probably agree, yes, that’d be a really good thing. Well, maybe that’s the mechanism that’s going on. We also know that it crosses the blood brain barrier and so that is both nerve wracking, right, typically and pretty exciting. Our customers and we’ll probably talk about testimonials here in a little bit are reporting very interesting things as they take the product.
Dr. Gundry (14:14):
Now, earlier you mentioned that it’s a great electron donor or it carries bunches of electrons.
Chris (14:21):
It can, yes, it can absorb and release many without degradation of the molecule.
Dr. Gundry (14:26):
To my way of thinking, many people believe that life exists only to move electrons from one level of charge to another, which is pretty humbling but it may be that that’s true.
Chris (14:40):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (14:40):
I think if you had something that carried and could donate a lot of electrons and even absorb other electrons, that might be a fun thing to look at or to have.
Chris (14:51):
Yeah. Well, and then you just talk about how free radicals are just charged elements or charged molecules and boom it can contain those or interact with those and it’s clearly interacting, well, it seems to be clearly interacting in a positive way. Certainly in this 2012 study which is interesting so it’s a peer reviewed, published study, that’s what you always look for in quality research and our company provided the carbon 60 in that study and we’re actually referenced in that paper so we’re pretty proud of being out there and supporting the carbon nanomaterial environment from again, the beginning 1991 is when we started.
Dr. Gundry (15:30):
Wow. Okay. Why did you put it in olive oil?
Chris (15:34):
I’d like to say that I was smart enough to be the one to put it in the olive oil. It was actually in that original study in Paris that they decided to put it in the olive oil. And it turns out, so this is interesting. I know you have… I watched a video of yours about olive oil. You have scoured the earth and found a really high quality polyphenol rich olive oil and that’s important, right?
Dr. Gundry (15:56):
Yeah.
Chris (15:58):
What happened in this original study is they gave the rats again, water, olive oil and then olive oil with ESS60. The ones they gave olive oil to lived 30% longer.
Dr. Gundry (16:09):
I love it.
Chris (16:10):
Right?
Dr. Gundry (16:11):
Yeah.
Chris (16:11):
Whatever olive oil you’re taking, you should take more. I love your… Food purpose is to get olive oil into your mouth, into your body-
Dr. Gundry (16:18):
Very true.
Chris (16:19):
… and I’m constantly adding more. It may have been just serendipitous that he chose olive oil or maybe he’s French and he ate olive oil all the time and thought, well this is what I would want if I were a rat.
Dr. Gundry (16:32):
Maybe rats like olive oil.
Chris (16:35):
We do have products that are in MCT. In fact, my morning routine is to take our MCT product, add that to a little coffee to have a little a bulletproof coffee experience. And then I’ll have my dose. My typical dose is about a tablespoon. What we have in our packaging is one teaspoon but I up it because-
Dr. Gundry (16:57):
Because you can.
Chris (16:58):
… I can and get more olive oil. A really think even prior to listening to your books that olive oil is a really important thing to be consuming on a regular basis.
Dr. Gundry (17:08):
Right.
Chris (17:09):
I don’t know that there’s a specific reason that they chose olive oil. It is the product that we promote so one thing a lot of people… There are some MCT carbon 60 products and again, I would recommend that you look for ESS60, safer for human consumption. What you got to know about MCT or carbon 60 and even ESS60 and MCT is it’s significantly lower concentration, right? You can get about .8 milligrams per milliliter in olive oil and you can get about .35 milligrams per milliliter less than half and MCT. If you want the same raw ingredient value from the raw ingredient, you’ve got to take more than double the dose. It’s something to be aware of.
Dr. Gundry (17:52):
Okay. When something’s done in rats, how do you know how much a human needs to take? I’m sure you get that all the time.
Chris (18:03):
Yes. If you just did based on the experiment… Actually this is really, really interesting. In that original experiment, they didn’t give the rats any doses until they were 10 months old, it’s about a third of their life. And then they only gave them doses for seven months. And then the rats, even after that, no more doses, lived 90% longer. We’re currently working on the first parts of a trial to recreate the experiment, that’s the scientific process, right? Get a result, recreate the result. We are not going to stop giving the doses at month 17 so it would be interesting what kind of extension we have from that point. If you looked at the dosage that the rats actually got in the study and you just did a per kilogram basis, we would be taking a cup of olive oil per dose or a cup of ESS60 and olive oil per dose. You and I would like that-
Dr. Gundry (19:01):
We’d do that.
Chris (19:01):
… fundamentally but most people are not comfortable with a cup. What you really need to do is what’s called an allometric calculation. There’s a way to take in, obviously the metabolism of a rat is very different than the metabolism of a human and this is super geeky. The way you equate them is by surface area. It feels very engineering to say if you take the surface area of a rat and you compare it to the surface area of a human, you actually use those numbers to figure out what the right dosage is. Right because this happens all the time. First experiments happen in rats and then they go to human trials. We did an elementary calculation and ended up right at about .5, excuse me, five milliliters, which is a teaspoon, right at a teaspoon for a single dose. Yeah. That’s how we ended up at that nomenclature or that value.
Dr. Gundry (19:56):
Could you overdose?
Chris (19:59):
I have seen YouTube videos of people taking bottles of this. A hundred mills at a time. Not the full cup but a hundred, 120 mills.
Dr. Gundry (20:08):
This are very rich people.
Chris (20:09):
These are very, very rich people, yes. They have access. Good thing it’s not $5,000 a gram anymore.
Dr. Gundry (20:16):
No. But-
Chris (20:17):
But still very rich people. I know that the very first guy to go to market with a C60 in olive oil and he purchased a C60 from us, he said before he was going to sell this the night before he went online, he downed two bottles which had a little effect on his system but he had 200 milliliters in one single dose. Really it doesn’t have a known toxicity level. I think it would might equate to what’s the toxicity level of olive oil and once we figure that out, it’s probably the same.
Dr. Gundry (20:52):
So far nobody’s gotten that much in.
Chris (20:54):
Yeah. Exactly. The Mediterranean diet isn’t just chug it until you pass out.
Dr. Gundry (21:00):
Correct. Until you pass out. Or throw up. I do actually have some patients who really push olive oil early on in their experience and do notice that their bowel movements change sometimes quite loosely but once you become acclimated to it… And Dave Asprey talks about this with MCT oil. A lot of people think they ought to start with a tablespoon or two tablespoons and often regret that.
Chris (21:29):
Yes. Yeah I have about a teaspoon in it. It has an impact. It definitely has an impact.
Dr. Gundry (21:33):
Yeah. And certainly my patients, women are more sensitive to MCT oil for instance in terms of diarrhea. Okay.
Chris (21:40):
It’s interesting you mentioned Dave Asprey because when he was on your podcast last time it was exciting for me. I watched that podcast and he talked about having a secret formula that extends rats and in his case he mentioned lives by 95%, he wasn’t able to share it. Well, I mean I’m holding up the buckyball, that’s the material that he was talking about, which is pretty exciting for me and the direction the industry is going to go.
Dr. Gundry (22:04):
Yeah and actually I was just on Dave’s, it’s a secret podcast for subscribers for him and so we got into the nitty gritty and he’s so impressed with C60 that he is invested in, apparently not your company but there are other companies but they probably get the product from you.
Chris (22:25):
They probably do, yes. I would argue if they’re getting safe products they probably get it from us, yeah.
Dr. Gundry (22:30):
How do you know a safe product from a not so safe product? Because there’s a lot of them out there.
Chris (22:40):
Yes. Yeah. Well, and there’s two levels of safe product versus not safe product. The first is if you’re just interested in getting the powder and some people are interested in getting the powder and mixing it themselves and we’ve always kept smaller quantities available for end users because it can get expensive and so that’s a way to mitigate that cost. Then the other is, once you get the ESS60 or C60 in oil, whatever type of oil, how do you remain safe? And there’s challenges here. I can tell you in the process of separating and purifying pure C60, you need to use solvents. Solvents such as toluene or hexane, things that in general we don’t want to be around.
Dr. Gundry (23:24):
Don’t scare us like that.
Chris (23:25):
Well and remember, hexane is using a lot of plant extract so the food and supplement industry knows how to work with these but you got to work with them the right way. And the buckyball is a little bit different in how it interacts with these solvents. It’s very important that you get these solvents out, right? And for us, that’s called ESS60. Make sure the solvents are out, they’re baked out, they’re washed out and then now you’ve got a product that’s safer for human consumption and that’s really important. You want to make sure that that’s also what’s in the oil.
Chris (23:59):
It’s interesting because my story is, started as a carbon nanomaterial scientist. And then in 2012 this study comes out and in mid 2013, we start getting some phone calls about how much in a dose? And if you think about me with my carbon nanomaterial scientist hat on, no, this goes in tires and batteries and solar cells, you don’t put this in your body. We actually added to our labeling, not for human consumption for the first time in company history in the mid 2013. The data was clear, right? C60 improperly processed, harmful, C60 properly processed, which we call ESS60 was beneficial and not harmful. They injected it subcutaneously in rats. They made them inhale it. And then obviously we have this rat study which turned out not to be a toxicity study but they live 90% longer.
Chris (24:51):
Fast forward to 2017, a guy with a really big YouTube following started talking about the benefits that he was getting from taking the product and the industry sold out. Except for us because we’re the largest manufacturer and distributor of the raw ingredient. So really we entered 2018, we had to ask ourselves two questions and the first one’s a moral question. I take it, my wife takes it, everybody on my team takes it. I’m comfortable selling it to you. I think that’s the first and most important thing. Then of course FDA, FTC, you have supplements so you’re aware of the challenges that you may have there, you need to stay on the right side of those organizations also.
Chris (25:27):
It was really in 2018 that we decided to move forward with the supplement. And I think I’m an interesting supplement guy. I think there’s usually two paths. A lot of people were like, hey, I’m going to get really wealthy so let me be a supplement guy. I have no problem with people being wealthy, that’s just not how I got here. And the other is maybe they have their own physical challenges and they find solutions for their challenges and then they want to save the world. I have no problems with people saving the world but that’s not how I ended up here. I ended up here because I manufacture a material, right, since 1991, they do a toxicity study, the rats live 90% longer and now people want it. And so I’m sharing it and going out there and getting the word out there about the material. I’m a little different in terms of a supplement guy.
Dr. Gundry (26:17):
Okay. You’ve been manufacturing this stuff forever.
Chris (26:21):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (26:22):
And so the rat study comes out and so you say, that’s pretty cool. I’m going to start trying this on myself and my wife, did try it on your wife first?
Chris (26:35):
Of course. It took me a while to convince my wife actually to try it. I took a couple of doses back in 2013 and I didn’t take much and I didn’t really-
Dr. Gundry (26:49):
You didn’t notice [inaudible 00:26:51]?
Chris (26:50):
Didn’t really notice anything. Then in 2018, right when really the internet starts clamoring for the product, that’s when I started taking it in earnest and some of the…. What I noticed very specific things. And it’s often very subtle. I don’t know if this happens when you get people off lectins, do you have to quiz them to say, are you noticing you’re sleeping better or your bowel movements are better? Sometimes you have to query people in order to get the right information. For me, I used to get migraines and I actually have a spreadsheet. It was only four or five migraines a year with… Migraines really suck and I had a spreadsheet so I was trying to figure out what was triggering?
Dr. Gundry (27:30):
What was it, yeah.
Chris (27:32):
I didn’t get any migraines in 2018, which is the year I started taking them consistently. Then in 2019 I actually got two migraines so I should have had eight to 10, now I’ve had two. That’s a pretty, when we talk about it, crossing the blood brain barrier, it’s got the opportunity to do things that in the brain that other things that can’t cross that barrier do. I can tell you, my wife, she was getting about nine migraines. There’s some medication that she couldn’t take and they only prescribed nine because it’s strong and now she’s down to one or two per month. So it definitely has, at least with us, those types of implications.
Dr. Gundry (28:08):
Well as my listeners or viewers know, I used to have lots of migraines. I did baby heart transplants with migraines which I don’t recommend.
Chris (28:14):
Wow.
Dr. Gundry (28:17):
One of the things that I’ve noted, many of my patients know is when they avoid lectins, their migraines go away. There’s lots of ways to skin a cat. One of the things that you experimented on yourself and whenever I’m looking at a new supplement or one of my patients says, what do you think about this supplement? And I don’t know about it or I’m not tried it, I’ll say, okay, I’m going to try this on myself-
Chris (28:44):
Research yourself.
Dr. Gundry (28:45):
Right.
Chris (28:45):
Research it first.
Dr. Gundry (28:46):
And before I’m going to let you know. I’ve done that with actually everything I’ve done. Sometimes you see something. But one of the things… So we’re going to talk about what people have noticed but I’m going to bring up an interesting placebo effect. A few years now, Nicotinamide Riboside came out as a NADH enhancer and NAD positive and a lot of hype, tons of hype and there clearly [inaudible 00:29:22], some human studies that this does increase NAD to a small amount. But a friend of mine who has a very nice supplement company, when she started promoting it and she… Her first commercial was, I can’t tell you the immediate buzz energy I get after swallowing this. It is so remarkable that 10 minutes after I swallow this-
Chris (29:49):
You know it.
Dr. Gundry (29:49):
… I know it. And she’s friend of mine and I go, well, actually that’s impossible. It’s not how it works. You could have a joule of caffeine and I can tell you feel it.
Chris (30:04):
You feel it.
Dr. Gundry (30:05):
But that’s not how that drug works and so you’ve had some amazing anecdotal reports so why don’t you share that with me, but listeners should know that anecdotes are that. You’re rat study is not an anecdote.
Chris (30:24):
Right. That’s pre-reviewed published research and that’s nice and solid. Actually speaking about this, maybe I can get your input and maybe you’ve got… I’m on two quests. One quest is, is there another study peer reviewed published on mammals that has a longer result, right? I don’t know if anybody in your audience or you are aware of it, if you ever are, send it my direction because I want to be aware of it because I’m out here saying it’s the longest result. I believe it is but if there’s another one I’d like to know. The other is, this is a really, I don’t know, nerdy really important question I think. And I think there’s a number we may never be able to know the number, but what percentage of stuff that happens in or doesn’t happen in a rat does or doesn’t happen in a human? We all know we do rat trials first and then they go to human trials. And I don’t know what percentage, like we saw this effect in a rat, what happens in humans? And I actually asked a professor from DePaul university, he does rat studies and carries them into human trials and asked that question and he gave a really interesting story.
Chris (31:29):
He said, here’s what scientists will hold up and say, you can’t believe what happens in a rat will happen in a human. Basically it was a morning sickness drug and they gave it to the rats and there was… You’re maybe familiar with this one, right? The rats were fine and then they started doing human trials and unfortunately the fetuses were coming out to deformed.
Dr. Gundry (31:48):
Correct.
Chris (31:49):
This is what a lot of scientists will say, look, this is the evidence, you can’t take what happens in a rat and apply it to humans and then this DePaul university professor, he came back and said, the problem was, is they never looked at the fetuses of the rats. Had they looked at the fetuses of the rats, they were deformed. And so when this professor who has a lot more experience with rat studies going to human studies than I do says this is the pinnacle and it’s wrong, it implies that there’s a lot of applicability. A lot of people don’t know that we’re closer genetically to rats than rats are to mice. Right so genetically our intuition isn’t accurate as with a lot of things but yeah, that’s another quest. If anybody has some ideas about what is the applicability of what happens in a rat that happens to a human, I’d love to understand that better.
Dr. Gundry (32:41):
We have more in common with rats than dogs unfortunately. Genetically.
Chris (32:45):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (32:45):
My wife reminds me of that all the time. Rat. You dirty rat. Okay. All right. All right. How many people do you have trying this stuff?
Chris (33:00):
We have thousands of customers. We actually sell the powder into other organizations. They’ve got thousands of customers. It’s a pretty small market so there’s probably 15 to 20,000 people who are taking this on a regular basis. It’s new and still significant, right? It’s nothing compared to CBD. CBD is going crazy and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a CBD store or somebody selling it. And I believe it has bigger implications than CBD.
Dr. Gundry (33:29):
Wow. That’s a-
Chris (33:31):
Bold statement?
Dr. Gundry (33:32):
That’s a bold statement.
Chris (33:33):
I’ve got some, in fact, some of my employees their family members were taking CBD and we give a generous discount to our employees and now they’re discounted material goes to their family members who are no longer taking CBD. Right. My understanding of the research behind CBD is that if you’re… The really strong research is, if you’re a child with a very specific form of epilepsy, the FDA says this is really good. Other than that, there’s a lot of anecdotal type things related to CBD as well.
Dr. Gundry (34:05):
True.
Chris (34:06):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (34:07):
The placebo effect is strong.
Chris (34:09):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (34:10):
Yeah. I see, just as an aside, I see about a 50% response rate in my patients to CBD for whatever they’re looking for. Whether it’s sleep, whether it’s pain relief, it’s-
Chris (34:23):
Isn’t placebo about 48 [inaudible 00:34:25]?
Dr. Gundry (34:25):
Exactly. Yeah so I think-
Chris (34:25):
Interesting.
Dr. Gundry (34:27):
Yeah its… Okay. What are people reporting?
Chris (34:31):
The most, and by the way, I’m going to talk a little bit about benefit so I definitely have to say the FDA hasn’t evaluated our product. It’s not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease.
Dr. Gundry (34:40):
Is it GRAS?
Chris (34:41):
It is not GRAS. We’re working on the process of GRAS.
Dr. Gundry (34:44):
GRAS is not… We’re not talking about marijuana. We’re talking about generally regarded as safe, GRAS.
Chris (34:51):
Which is a FDA nomenclature for something that’s generally regarded as safe. Yeah, we’re certainly have a GRAS consultant that’s helping us and we’re working to navigate those waters. The most consistent testimonial that we get is better sleep. I noticed you have an Oura ring, I’ve got an Oura ring. I’m actually doing a study with a scientist at Oura and they’ve of course have lots of data of people who haven’t tried my product and so we’re going to send the product and see data afterwards. I can tell you already that my own data, some of my own data doesn’t match the data that, his name is Benjamin, with Oura has shared with me and it’s interesting. It’s alcohol. When you have drinks at night, your resting heart rate takes longer to get to the low point.
Dr. Gundry (35:35):
True.
Chris (35:35):
Mine doesn’t.
Dr. Gundry (35:36):
What you’re saying this allows you to drink more?
Chris (35:40):
Yes. I can say-
Dr. Gundry (35:42):
You didn’t hear that.
Chris (35:45):
I can say that we have-
Dr. Gundry (35:46):
What a great drug.
Chris (35:48):
… we have a number of testimonials and myself included and I actually feel, my wife and I feel when we travel, we get less experience with jet lag.
Dr. Gundry (35:58):
Jet lag.
Chris (35:59):
Yeah. I woke up today at 6:20 California time and Houston it was 8:20 given when I went to sleep, it’s the right time actually for me to wake up and weird things happen. One testimonial. I was given the product to my office mate, in the office next door and I came and visited her I was like, how’s your experience? She was like Chris, I don’t want to disappoint you but I’m not experiencing anything and I said, well, how’s your sleep? And her eyes just got huge. And she was like, well, I’ve been facebooking saying I’m waking up at 5:30 in the morning now, well rested and so sleep is the most consistent. I’ve got a business coach, he said for 50 years I needed an alarm clock to wake up, since I tried this formulation, I’m waking up without the alarm clock. And we all know that sleep is really, really important. Current sleep aids knock you out.
Dr. Gundry (36:51):
Correct.
Chris (36:51):
Right? They release the chemical pressure to desire sleep so when you wake up you don’t feel like you need sleep but they don’t let you get, your in REM and your REM sleep. Our product, our customers typically take it in the morning, our customers typically report mental focus and energy during the day and then better sleep at night so something more fundamental is going on. It’s going to be exciting as we learn what that is.
Dr. Gundry (37:14):
All right. Besides sleep, what are people seeing?
Chris (37:18):
Well, a lot of people are talking about arthritis pain relief.
Dr. Gundry (37:22):
Okay.
Chris (37:23):
I mentioned better sleep which helps everything. I’ve got testimonials of a lady with her child who was actually going to the hospital for mental illness issues, in 2019 she didn’t take him at all and he was on the product so again, maybe crossing the [inaudible 00:37:39], brain barrier, maybe better sleep. We have people growing back hair which… I’m a scientist and I’m concerned about the testimonials we’re getting but one lady was like, I’m growing back hair and it’s not coming in gray, it’s coming in blonde so that’s pretty impressive.
Dr. Gundry (37:56):
Even though she was a brunette?
Chris (38:01):
No. No more hair dyes. It’s awesome. We also have people who talk about better eyesight, right? So that their eyesight has improved, which is again, makes me uncomfortable. I’m just sharing what our customers are sharing with us.
Dr. Gundry (38:16):
Let me just say I’ve been fiddling with stuff now for well over a year. I don’t use your product, which is-
Chris (38:23):
Yet.
Dr. Gundry (38:24):
…Yet. Probably your product is in what I take.
Chris (38:27):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (38:30):
I think this is reason I wanted you on. I think that we should all particularly in the longevity paradox. We’re looking at finding things that we can take that don’t hurt us and that have the potential to make us healthy long into the future.
Chris (38:47):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (38:47):
Okay.
Chris (38:49):
Hopefully 90% longer.
Dr. Gundry (38:50):
Yeah. Hopefully 90. Okay. Where can my listeners find out about you?
Chris (38:56):
They can go to my website. It’s myvitalc.com. If you scroll down the page and we can actually put together a coupon for your audience, if that makes sense.
Dr. Gundry (39:04):
That would be wonderful.
Chris (39:06):
Use the coupon code Gundry and that’ll get you an additional 15% off.
Dr. Gundry (39:11):
Okay.
Chris (39:11):
You might want to look for this one which is this single dose and we’ve got a 30, this is a sample, but we’ve got a 30 pack so you have exactly 30 days of five mils per day. And that product is about 129 and you get it discounted to under a hundred dollars if you get on subscription. Again, you can cancel that at any time.
Dr. Gundry (39:30):
When everybody swallows… Geez, a hundred dollars a month? What are you spending at Starbucks these days everyday folks? Years ago I started taking a product, and I won’t mention it, a longevity product and I was talking to a very good friend and an advisor and I said, this stuff is a dollar a day. Now this was 20 years ago-
Chris (39:53):
It’s a lot 20 years ago.
Dr. Gundry (39:55):
I said, that’s a lot of money. And he says, “Wait a minute.” He says, “You’re telling me that this stuff you believe it works?” I said, yeah, the research is very solid. He said, and you wouldn’t spend a dollar a day for something you believe is going to affect your lifespan and your health? I said, yeah, good point.
Chris (40:15):
Yeah. I think sometimes people lose tracks of spend a dollar and make sure you’re getting the right quality product, especially if you’re putting it in your body.
Dr. Gundry (40:23):
All right. Well that’s great. Okay, so we’re going to take an audience question. One of my favorite questions. Mark Jordan Isoball on YouTube asks, how can one heal from severe eczema? Cortisone, steroids, anti-bacterial remedies and anti-histamines are only working temporarily. That’s a great question and it’s actually one of the reasons I wrote the Dr. Gundry family cookbook which just came out just a month ago and I see a lot of kids in my practice and young adults with eczema and quite frankly, eczema is a sign of leaky gut. Once you heal your leaky gut, your eczema will go away, period. That’s actually one of the reasons I started working with kids because this is a solvable problem. Just remember that your gut is your skin turned inside out and what happens on the surface of your gut is reflected on your skin and that’s just showing you that you got a really raw red, irritated gut wall and you can fix it and one of the ways to fix it is to get lectins out of your diet, which are really good at making leaky gut. Thanks for your question.
Dr. Gundry (41:42):
All right, one more, review of the week. Jeff Beach One on YouTube wrote, I am ever so grateful to this extraordinary doctor, me? For having discovered and done the research in relation to lectins. It has truly changed my life and it’s a blessing to be able to finally explore a diet that actually heals. Well, thanks so much. That’s actually why I do this. That’s why I still see patients every day and I wouldn’t stop for the world because every day I get to see what I would have called a miracle and now it’s routine so thank you for saying that. Appreciate it very much. That’s why I do it.
Dr. Gundry (42:19):
All right. That’s all for the Dr Gundry podcast. We will see you next week and thanks again Chris for coming on.
Chris (42:27):
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Gundry (42:28):
Appreciate.
Dr. Gundry (42:31):
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the doctor Gundry podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to watch each episode of the Dr Gundry podcast, you could always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/drGundry. Because I’m doctor Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
