Autophagy, Spermidine, and COVID-19 - Don Moxley

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level Five Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to levelfive mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone. And once again, welcome to the Future of Fitness. Oh, we're live. Don Moxley. Welcome back to the Future of Fitness.

Excited to be here, sitting here in beautiful central Ohio today. Last time I was talking to you, I think I was down in South Florida. Yeah, you were.

You were. And uh we were just chatting before the recording that we did back in April 2019, which was uh cannabis and intentional recovery, is the number two all time out of 200 and something episodes on the future of fitness. So uh let's make magic again. I need your I need your listeners.

I need your listeners to take this and share it because I don't do well with number two.

That's a that's a frustrating you're the no you're the first place loser.

I well, I yeah, the first loser, the whole NASCAR thing. I uh we got to put some energy into this.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, it's it's great to have you back. I think uh, you know, really good place to start is obviously people want to go back to that episode and and listen to it. Uh that would be a great place to start as well, but I don't want you to take you away from this episode. So let's give people some of your background, Don. You've gone from you know a lead athletics to uh you know a cannabis proponent for all the scientific reasons. And now you're on to something really cool, and I'm excited to talk about it.

Yeah, so my background, I'm an exercise physiologist by training. Uh, I've spent 25 of the last 35 years as either an adjunct or assistant professor and at some level of academic preparation at a university, but have always had one foot in the industry, uh, whether it's in a sales or marketing or education role, and uh or one foot in applied in the applied sciences, whether it's working with individuals or teams. So it's been a pretty cool combination. And uh, yep, I was uh through my my last my last gig in human performance was as a sports scientist with the Ohio State University working with the wrestling program. I was there 2015 through 18. Um, we can put a link in the show notes of a presentation we do that talks about that program. You know what? The coach at Ohio State wanted me there. The athletic department did not particularly care for my presence. Uh, I made them make decisions that they didn't want to make. And uh so I wound up having to exit. I had an offer to move into cannabis. Uh what was interesting about it, well, while I'm working in exercise science, particularly in the recovery space, um, we worked with a with a with something called heart rate variability and using heart rate variability to measure uh athlete readiness. And while we're doing this, I've got guys in the industry, pro guys in the industry, saying, Hey, what do you know about cannabis? And I'm I said, I don't know anything about it. My athletes are NCAA, we test for that. If they test positive, they're gone. So we can't mess with that. And they said, you got to pay attention to it. And I had some other uh from a previous gig I had out in New Mexico working in uh wearable technology, a friend of mine, we exited a company about the same time. He went into cannabis and was sending me information. And um, I'm looking at this saying, okay, there's something here that we need to understand. And you know, cannabis has been so stigmatized that it's hard to find good information from the outside. So because of the because of the pressure that I had with OSU and frankly a really good offer to move into cannabis, you know, I moved to South Florida and started selling weed. But at the same time, just starting an amazing education process, understanding a thing in our body called the endocannabinoid system, and we talked about this in the other podcast, how the endocannabinoid system is a function, you know, the anandemide, the endocannabinoid that you produce is produced with exercise. So it's really that it's it's what causes the euphoria of exercise. There's a huge value to it. And when we start looking at endocannabinoids and their role in wellness, it's significant. It's one of those molecules that has fallen victim to the change in our environment. We don't, we just don't move enough anymore. You know, we evolved to move, move quite a bit, not run marathons every day, but to get out and walk a lot. You know, that that hunter-gatherer nature of us. So this is one of the things that's missing from our environment that can be supplemented uh externally. Worked in that industry, still do. I still consult in that space, have some good friends out in Oregon with a company called Mendy, M-E-N-D-I, that I work with, Rachel uh Rapino and her team. But one of the guys that I worked with in Florida calls me one day and says, Hey, you know, what are you doing? And I said, I'm always looking for something new. And he had a connection with a classmate uh from Austria, and he said, We've got this product. It was developed in Austria, we're going to bring it to the States. We need someone to work with us from a branding and education standpoint. And I looked into it and I thought, holy mackerel, here we go again. You know, the education process starts starts over. So the company is called Longevity Labs. The product, the flagship product that we're launching is called Spermidine Life. That in every cell of your body is a little molecule called spermidine. It comes from a class of molecules that are called polyamines, which are derivatives from the amino acid arginine. But the polyamine spermidine tends to decrease with age. So you have a lot more as a child than you do as an adult, declines on every decade of life, but people who live to 90 seem to have similar uh spermidine levels to people who are 40. So it's a molecule that's been shown to have efficacy and longevity across the animal kingdom. I mean, it goes from yeast to flies to worms to mice, all the way up to primates. There's some really good data in humans for the value of spermidine supplementation. So yeah, that's my that's what I've been doing lately. It's been a really cool project, really interesting. Again, a great learning experience. And it's, you know, it's I I enjoy telling the story and helping introducing people to new stuff to make them better.

Awesome. Well, I'm I'm looking forward to learning about this right now. You know, it's it sounds similar to to cannabinoids, right? It's it's it's produced in the body. Most people don't think it is. So spermidine is also produced in the body. Give it tell me about that process. Where is it coming from?

So spermidine is produced, uh, is it so it works interior in the cell. So it's working in the cytosol of the cell. But uh levels, when you increase levels three ways, or levels are developed on demand in three ways. Uh, number one is it can be generated in the gut. So the microbiota will create spermidine, put it in the circulation for absorption of the cell. It can come straight from the diet, so it can cross over straight from the diet, with diff depending on the foods that you eat. And it can be generated intracellularly on demand too. So it is a very natural process, a very natural thing. But what we find is that the oral supplementation of spermidine definitely raises spermidine level intracellularly. So, with all the processing of food and so forth, you know, whether that's causing the drop in spermidine levels or you know, who knows any of the number of things that could be doing it, we do know that uh oral supplementation boosts its level. And it does it very effectively. It does it without uh a lot of uh health by you know byproducts, uh effects. Um that's uh that's one of the interesting parts about it.

And what does it actually do? So what is spermidine responsible for?

Well, the the the big thing that spermidine uh triggers is you have an intracellular process called autophagy. Um now this is a word that you see floating around the health and fitness community. Um it's typically associated, this word is associated around fasting and intermittent fasting. That it triggers autophagy, which it does. Um when we look at when we look at autophagy, when we look at what are experimental models for extending longevity, the one universal model is calorie restriction, that if you want to increase longevity across the board, calorie restriction is one of the key tools to doing that. But you know, your challenge is you know, you can't starve yourself to immortality, right? Um it's it's that middle ground. And if you think about, so autophagy winds up being this key process so that when there is a calorie restriction in your environment, your cells recognize this and they begin a process of intracellular cleaning. So that cell, that cell may have a protein that it produced that was misformed, that's that's no longer functional, but it's just sitting there gumming up the cell. Or there may be cellular components that are no longer valuable, whether they be mitochondria or some other part of the cell. But when you have the calorie restriction, the autophagy process is triggered and the cell begins to clean itself. And the byproducts of the cleaning then gets used for energy or get reused, but but at the same end of the day, it's it's cleaned up. And so this is one of the key elements with autophagy and calorie restriction. Now, one of the challenges is is that we live in an incredibly energy. Listen, I use the term energy toxic environment now. There's so much energy, we have a toxicity. And one of the things triggering the toxicity is the lack of autophagy. So, you know, the part of part of this has been interesting for me that that as you move across lifespan, you know, early lifespan, I think if if someone's in the fitness market and they're less than 50 years old, they're probably thinking about how do I get bigger, how do I get stronger, things like that. But when you start to move past the fifth decade or the sixth decade of life, the thought process starts to shift from how do I get bigger to how do I have quality of life? You know, how does my health span match my lifespan? How do I have good health until the very end? And when you do that, all of a sudden you you've got to start to take into consideration things like this autophagy process that in the cell, and I'm I'm gonna dive a little bit deeper here, so that when you are when you are consuming energy, particularly protein, the cell senses that, and your cell has a protein that's called mTOR, uh mechanistic uh target of rapamycin. And an mTOR is a calorie sensing protein, and it tells the cell, hey, we've got the energy we need here, start building. Okay. Now, when calorie restriction takes place, you see a down regulation of mTOR. With exercise, you see the upregulation. So when you exercise, exercise takes energy, and we supply energy in the body with a molecule called ATP, adenison triphosphate. And we harvest the end, so we harvest the little bits of energy from ATP, and it becomes ADP, adenison diphosphate, or AMP, adenison monophosphate. Well, there's another sensor in the cell that looks at the AMP, ATP ratio. And when that ratio starts to get out of whack, meaning the cell is saying, hey, you're running out of energy, it creates a kinase, a protein called AMP kinase. AMP kinase is an autophagy generating chemical protein, where mTOR is growth, AMP kinase is recovery, is breakdown. So, and so when we start to take a look at spermidine, spermidine, the the molecule works in that AMP kinase chain. So it's going ahead and saying, hey, we need, you know, let's get autophagy going. And it's working opposite of that mTOR process. It actually inhibits mTOR. So, you know, this is one of the important things is again, when you're working in fitness or when you're working in wellness, starting to think of, you know, it's one thing when you're a 20-year-old trying to grow, look good in the gym, yada, yada, yada. Well, you know what, Eric, I just had I just had the experience of my mother, my 85-year-old mother, um, I brought back from Florida in it was March or April, you know, the COVID thing was expand was exploding down there, and I said, let's get her out of here. And and she got back and she found out, and she had she she was a breast cancer survivor from 15 years ago. She got back and she had this bad cough, and we, you know, went through x-rays and the whole process. And bottom line is the the cancer was back. And and and my mother chose not to do treatment, she chose hospice. So I just spent about five months um helping my mother transition, you know, through the end of her life, which causes you to think very differently once you've had that experience. And so, you know, it's one thing to go in and work with a bunch of 20-year-old kids who are trying to win national titles and be big and strong and do everything. It's it's something completely different when you're helping someone move through the end of their life. And it's, you know, that I guess that kind of defines, you know, the spectrum that we work through. And when we start to look at things like supplements and how they work, well, this is one of the cool things about spermidine life and the product we work with, is that it's got this great trigger for a process that is uh cellularly necessary.

Yeah, man. So it's it's interesting because you know, I'm 44. I have distinctly shifted my mindset over the last four to five years from, you know, and it's funny because there are stages in life, right? 20s, wanted to perform well, look good, right? 30s, not a whole lot changed. Then I get to my upper 30s, start to get some injuries that wouldn't go away. And now my 40s, I'm like, you know, I'm statistically past the halfway point. And I've kind of I kind of found the things that I really enjoy doing from a physical, you know, or just everything in life, the things I really enjoy doing, that's a blessing. But now for me, it's just all about, well, how long can I enjoy them, you know, at the highest level possible? And then also, you know, I had a similar, my my father passed away last year, almost actually uh a year ago, tomorrow. And the last year of his life or more was rough. You know, it was in and out of hospitals with multiple procedures, catheters, all of it. It was just it was rough. And I remember him saying, Eric, he's like, you know, this I don't know who calls it the golden age, because there's nothing gold about it. And that's like it can be. It can be, you know, but so there's I I think when you start to see that the passing of maybe, you know, parents or people that you know who are older or close to you, you start to see that there's a lot of time left, but not that much. And so much of it is is dependent on on you know the quality of how you take care of yourself now moving forward. And it sounds like this is really tackling that particular area.

Certainly working in that space. You know, I I do a I have a talk that I do where we look at at lifespan and I divide lifespan into thirds. And the first third of your lifespan you spend learning, you know, growing, learning in school of some kind, you know, up to a certain point. And then the second third you spend in service to others, whether you're working or raising a family or you know, something like that. But you but you your responsibility is outside that of your own. And then that third third, you know, I'm I'm moving into my third third. My daughter graduated uh undergraduate last year. She's now in grad school. Now she just moved back in with my wife and I, which we're you know, we're really excited about, but I'm two years away from my daughter being out of the house. Okay, so we will solidly be in our third third in a year and a half. And it's that third third, that's the time for you, okay? That that it's it's you're not you're not in service to others, you're not learning, you're not I listen, you I think people like you and I are always going to be learning, but it's going to be by choice, not by force. So I was doing my wife teaches a class here at our house, and we we call it CrossFit for 70-year-olds. And she had this, she had this one gal in her class, Mary, who was just really grousing one day. We were I they were doing squats and and she was just barking. And I said, Mary, I said, damn it. And Mary had just retired from teaching for like 35 years. And I said, Mary, you're solidly in your third third. This is your time. And I said, you know what's going to define the end of your of the of the best part of the best part of your third third? I said, when you can no longer sit down, defecate, clean yourself, stand up, and move away. I said, when you can't do that, that's the end of your independence. And um, I said, that's why we squat. Okay, that's that's exactly the reason we squat, and it's the reason it'll always be part of our program. And she looked at me, kind of shook her head, and gave me an ugly look, and she did her squats. I think that this is this is the challenge. You know, I remember my mother, she uh my my mom and dad, before my dad passed away, they had purchased a place out in Arizona, Sun City, in the Phoenix area. And, you know, they were farmers, they were Midwestern farmers that had a condo in Phoenix. And and when my dad was still alive, and even early after he passed, I my mom was still very vigorous. My mom was one of the strongest women you ever met in your life. She was she was just a beast. And I remember flying out to Phoenix, I don't know, two or three years ago, and I started to see this woman that was starting to watch walk hunched back, was not picking up her feet, and I thought, holy mackerel, my mother is aging. So at this point, she's 79, 80, 81 years old. And I said, Mom, you've got to, you've got to get back in the weight room. You've got to lift, you've got to do these things. And she did. She re-engaged for a little bit, but I I I distinctly remember uh two years ago, and I said to my brothers, my wife about this I watched mom quit. She just, and I don't know if it's just the environment of having a bunch of other old people around you that have just kind of you know looking for the end. The observation I made is that you have to fight, you have to just keep fighting. And, you know, how you exit is I think I I hope it's a choice. You know, I hope I can fight enough that my health span and my lifespan end at the same time. You know, that that I'm able to carry whether I fall off the edge of the Grand Canyon or I step in front of a tour bus somewhere, you know, and and and and your exit is is managed that way. But um, you've got to keep fighting is the thing that I've I've learned through this.

Yeah, I uh I joke with my wife and my friends, and like, you'll know when I have a critical diagnosis because I'll start skydiving. Yeah. Like understand I have zero interest in skydiving right now. Yeah. That'll change if uh if there's a critical diagnosis. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a uh I used to joke too at the end of my when I was coaching CrossFit classes or just group classes in general. I I tell people, okay, you know, go take a cool down lap and contemplate your own mortality. And it would, you know, get a couple giggles, right? No, I'm like, I'm actually serious. Like, think about how long you have to live and what you want to do with those years and if you're on the right track, and then just go enjoy your cooldown, right? And uh it it's it's something that a lot of people maybe, you know, just don't really contemplate and until you have someone close to you reach those those you know golden years or that final third that you're talking about, and maybe it didn't turn out the way you want. It's hard. It's just hard, and you just don't want it for you know anybody you love or yourself. And and what what's cool about COVID, right, which I know people are like, what's he talking about? Is that people are starting to realize the importance of their health. And you know, it's it's it's clear as day. Like if you are focused on your health, you stay relatively fit, you're gonna have a much greater chance of getting a very mild case of COVID if you catch it. If you're on the other end, you haven't taken care of yourself in a very long time, you eat like shit, you're not sleeping well, uh, all those things, then you know you're you're not looking too you're not looking too good. It's it's uh it's not good. So I'm excited that now going into 2021, that people hopefully will come out of it. Hopefully they don't just revert back to old habits, but that you know, that's that's an important key in things is people are actually aware of how important their health is.

Well, interestingly, uh just to jump on top of that, we actually if when you start to look in spermidine and the research that's out there um in this process of autophagy, autophagy contributes to immunity dramatically. Um and we have a paper that's been ex that has been accepted and is in final edits for a world-renowned journal that shows that spermidine supplementation to human immune cells stops COVID transmission 85, 90, 92 percent of the time. Um yeah, when you start to take a look at immunity, is a is a big deal. And and again, dirty cells do not promote immunity. This is pretty strong. Straightforward and when we start to take a look at this, this process of autophagy and its relationship to immunity is significant. Again, I go back to energy toxic environment. You know, my brother and I were talking about this the other day, and um, and he said, you know, well, so many people uh are going to have to start to take a look at their metabolic health. And I and I thought, well, yeah, we I mean, how long have we been talking about that? Um and um and then, but when you start to look at it, um poverty, the the relationship of COVID to poverty is really, really high. You know, when you take a look at the populations that get ill and pass, you know what, they're very met very they're very heavy black and brown populations, inner city, uh they they are not they are not your crystal white classes from the suburb that are struggling with this. Although, although COVID does have its impact there, and certainly metabolic metabolic wellness can be a problem there too. Um but when you start to take a look at the processes, yes, that when you start to look at this autophagy process, when you look at mTOR, when you look at AMPK, when you look at a lot of these intracellular activators, it makes sense. And but you know what, Eric, it can be hard sometime. I've I've talked to many, many clients, customers of ours at of Spermidine Life, and a lot of them look at me and just say, listen, fasting's hard to do sometimes. And and I agree, you know, I have a situation where my wife works an afternoon shift. My wife, my wife goes to work at noon, usually gets home about a 7 o'clock, and she usually wants to have dinner or something about 7 o'clock. Now, now I am an insulin-resistant type 2 diabetic. And I manage, I until a recent illness that I'm I'm still having to deal with, um, I managed 100% of my wellness, whether it, whether it be blood pressure or or insulin levels or sugar levels, I managed it with exercise and diet. Was a religious intermittent faster, had my exercise thing down, was just cranking on that. You know, at some point in time, you got to discuss the value of zone two of the five-zone system, not the three-zone system. But, you know, spending time in zone two and cranking and feeding mitochondria are huge. It's a huge value proposition. But one of the things I note is that if I have my last meal before five or six o'clock, my blood sugars are incredibly better than if I have my last meal at seven or eight o'clock. And it and it can be the exact same calories, can be the exact same food, can be the exact length of fast, or even fat uh my fast may actually be longer with the later meal, but the timing of food consumption is the real deal that you have to pay attention to. And again, a lot of it goes back to these cellular activities that are taking place uh intracellularly.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Don, when you look at intermittent fasting, because I've I've actually been pretty adamant about it for at least three years now, I've noticed great benefits from my gut health to my sleep to my weight management, all those things. You know, it's been a really and it's super easy for me now. But when you look at it, is there any difference between, you know, uh you mentioned finishing your feeding window earlier in the evening? What about pushing it later in the morning? Is there a difference between those morning hours and those evening hours?

Listen, as I've reviewed the literature on this, and I am by no means a fasting expert. Okay, let me let me start off on that. Um I've been I've been reviewing a boatload of information. It looks like now, one of the things about fasting, so whether you're fasting for 16 hours or 18 hours or 24 hours, there's no doubt that moving from a non-fasting routine to a routine that can support intermittent fasting, there's no doubt there's the uptick of enzymes that support fat metabolism, that help you resist the carbohydrate consumption. I think that's one of the one of the first big values. And and and you probably recognize that that if if all of a sudden you go off on a carbohydrate binge, um, you know what? It takes a little bit of work to shift back to that fasting environment because I think it takes work to get those fat metabolizing enzymes cranked back up. You know, they tend to be a little bit lazy, and if the carbohydrates get out of control, those those enzymes get lazy and it just makes the process harder. But so the the first big benefit is getting those, you know, getting those fat metabolizing enzymes back up, getting to where you can produce beta-hydroxybutyrate relatively easily or relatively quickly. You know, the value of BHB, beta-hydroxybutyrate is is still unfolding. It is a very valuable byproduct of fat metabolism. And it's a trigger, it it does a lot of things intracellularly. So, you know, that's one of the values of being fasted or being in a ketogenic state. Now, so I use a continuous glucose monitor, um, which has been an incredibly insightful tool for me. And looking at blood sugars, so let me go back and answer your question. Using my blood sugar measurements and shifting my food consumption back to where instead of going, say, 12 to 6 or 12 to 7 in my food eating, I'm going from 10 to 5. My blood sugars are better. Okay. Using a continuous glucose monitor. So there's, you know, I have a I have some very objective feedback on that particular decision. Now, has it been double-blinded and all the other work done on it? I I don't think so. I don't know if that, you know, that what's that group in California? I'll blank, I'm blanking on it right now. But, you know, they've done a great job looking at ketogenic dieting and its role in eliminating type 2 diabetes as a disease process. Listen, the the data is pretty clear there. Using a continuous glucose monitor for me gives me the information I need. I know what exercises drops my sugars and helps me maintain them. It's it's very clear that if I get, if I spend too much time at the top of zone three, in zone four, which is kind of a which is kind of my comfort training place. It's that place that from I think from wrestling all those years, I call it that place where your face is on fire for a long time. You know, it's not zone five stuff. It's just it's it's that discomfort area. Well, that's just not a very good place to be. When I'm mixing a lot of zone two work, and this is on a zone, this is on a five zone, on a five-zone model. When I am getting probably 80% of zone two, and I'm throwing in workouts that touch zone five, come back down, intervals into zone five, and come back down, my metabolics look the best uh when I'm doing that. Now, if I want to ride my bike faster, I've got to train at the top of zone three. So, you know, that's where we're getting the oxygen utilization maxed out. That's where you're really getting the mitochondrial and the oxygen utilization. But there's a value that comes with just sitting down there in zone two and cranking, not flirting with, you know, creating lactate, not flirting with the cortisol that comes with the lactate, but sitting in that zone two and just cranking energy and again, building mitochondrial and mitochondrial activity, there's a for me, there's a huge value proposition there.

How do you do your zone two work, Donna? Are you on a bike? Are you jogging? What do you want a bike?

Yeah, listen, I so I, you know, I wrestled, I wrestled for 13 years. The last five were in college. I had five knee surgeries my last five years. I had knee surgery every year I wrestled. I had a sixth knee surgery 27 years ago to rebuild one of my knees. I tore an ACL skiing out west. So I spend an inordinate amount of time either on a bicycle outside or I have a I made an investment 20 years ago in a really good bicycle ergometer, uh thing called a Velatron, which is just a phenomenal training tool. So most of my zone two is on a bike, just cranking.

Yeah. It's it's a really interesting thing. I mean, I I'm reflecting on myself too. So I swam and played water polo, those are my primary sports, and then got into CrossFit later on. And uh like I it's really hard for me. And James Fitzgerald, who was my coach for a while, will probably say like to get me to do purely aerobic work was very challenging. Like, because I I want to feel the pain. And I swear, especially I swam the 200-free, which is like running the 800 meter, which is like it's just a prolonged sprint. It is a pain event. Suck. It's just suck. And uh, I always I gravitate towards that. I'm like, well, if I'm not feeling the suck, then I'm probably not working hard enough. So it's it's a tough transition. And you the only way to do it is to monitor it and start to you know get to know, which obviously your background in HRV and you know, heart rate work is is you know, it's it's second nature to you.

I cannot, I cannot listen. I love continuous HRV measurements. So I use an aura ring. I think we've probably talked about this. Um phenomenal tool for collecting continuous HRV at every night when I'm asleep, which is where the real valuable data comes from. The most valuable tool you can add to your exercise routine is a continuous heart rate monitor that starts to build a portfolio so that you can go back and look at what you did last month. So whether you're picking up a polar or a Garmin or a Mio or something like that, the device either stores the information and then downloads so that you can go back and review it or it downloads it in real time. You know, there's there are tons of phenomenal tools to do continuous heart rate monitoring very affordably. You know, you can pick up a polar transmitter now for like 50 bucks. It talks to your phone. Your phone, the the the Polar Beat app is a really good app. It's free. If you're if you're a fitness professional, Polar Beat offers a thing called Polar Coach that that your clients can get a beat account, can give you access so you can do remote coaching and the software is free. How you're in the fitness business and not doing this, I don't understand. I think you're kidding yourself, and and you're probably you're probably closer to exiting the business than you are to growing in it. And then, you know, I just you know, adding the continuous glucose monitoring. I think I think continuous glucose monitoring is going to become even more affordable, and it's going to wind up being as insightful as HRV and HR.

So yeah. It's it is interesting. I mean, we're just seeing so much tech getting poured into the fitness industry. I mean, at least a couple billion in 2020. Oh my gosh. Um, from wearables to you know, data, data management and analytics, all these things are happening really fast. And I think for a lot of fitness professionals, you know, some are excited, some are scared, some just don't care. They think it's just a thing that's gonna come and go. Uh it's here, it's gonna stay, and you gotta get to use it because either you embrace or you get run over by it. That's always my mantra.

If you don't it's if they think it's going to come and go, it's it's already here. And if you don't engage, you will be gone.

Yeah.

Simple as that.

Yeah, it's true. Uh I want to ask you before we, because now you are in, you've you know evolved through different fields and industries of, you know, but always been kind of in the health and fitness area. Now you're in the supplement business. What's uh, and you're probably drinking through a fire hose. What are you learning now being in the supplement business?

I don't think I'm in the supplement business. I don't think my business has changed. You know, I I did a lecture, there's there's a professor over at Ohio State that always has me talk to his classes. And um, you know, back in 2017, 18, when I was, you know, when the Ohio State State thing wasn't wasn't growing, wasn't, you know, I was doing I was doing some really, really cool stuff. And I thought, wow, you do cool stuff, people see it, and it, and it, and it, and, and that's what you get to do for the rest of your life. Well, that's not the case. And I was doing some really cool stuff, and I was absolutely running into brick walls. And I I personally believe the universe will send you signals, and you better have your radar up and listen to it. And I thought to myself, what is the signal? I mean, why is what am I supposed to be doing? And Eric, I at that point shifted from defining myself by what I had done in the past to kind of a mission-driven process. And I developed a personal mission that I want to help alleviate suffering and contribute to the betterment of well people. That was my personal mission. And so the company that I'm working for, the product that we represent, represents a nutritional supplement. I'm still an educator. I my job is to help people understand the value physiologically of this. Why is this important? What is the why? What is the how? And then and then they get to make the decision. Okay, simple as that. I'm I'm not forcing a purchase or anything like that. You make the decision. You know what? If if you learn about autophagy and you can do calorie restriction and you can do it through intermittent fasting, and you've got the discipline, good on you. Okay. I don't want to, I don't want to take that away for anything. But fasting's hard. The environment that we live in makes it really hard to do. And listen, you can get enough vitamin C from food sources. Okay, but you know what? All of a sudden you might not have enough of the citrus, you might not have enough of this, and and and all of a sudden there's a drop in that in that micronutrient. So you take a multivitamin. Well, this is this is the same thing. I see spermidine life. I spend more time talking about spermidine, the cells, the processes, than I do, hey, get this bottle for 99 bucks or 89 on subscription. I don't spend a lot of time talking about that. I spend a lot of time teaching, helping alleviate suffering, you know, because there's a lot of people that that struggle with disease. Autophagy is a process that when it upregulates, there's some the data that's coming out on autophagy and some of the neurological diseases, Parkinson's, things like that, is incredible. I mean, these many times these diseases are a function of proteins building up in the cells, uh, bad proteins building up in the cells. Uh autophagy eliminates that. Um, we've got a study uh coming out of uh Berlin, and it it shows that it's called the Smart Age study. They they started the study to look at the tolerability of the supplement in humans. Well, it turns out there was such a great psychological benefit that uh the University of Berlin and the Chartonnay Hospital University are sponsoring a three-year study. We're just finishing the data collection on this on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and these psychological diseases. Autophagy is something that contributes there. When we look at cardiovascular disease and things like that, mitophagy, so autophagy in the in the cells of the heart. The cells of your heart are some of the slowest turnovers, cells in your body. Nerves are the slowest, but the myocardial cells, because listen, you you know, heart doesn't exactly shut down, right? It doesn't have a quiet period for the most part. So those cells go go longer, and autophagy within those cells, well, when you have that going on, that those cells do better. So there's a lot of really cool information. We've actually put up a website, it's called longevitybioresearch.org. Longevitybioresearch.org, uh, where we put a lot of the studies related to this up there. Um so if someone wants to do a deep dive into this, it's there. You can probably find a lot of information at spermadynlife.us. But Eric, I spend most of my time teaching. And so whether I'm pitching the value of HRV and a device to measure it, or whether I'm pitching the value of cannabis and the products that you need to boost cannabinoids, or whether I'm pitching the value of autophagy, the value of intermittent fasting, you know, I don't I don't need to tell people how hard it is. Particularly, again, we live in an energy toxic environment. It's a fight, it's a fight all the time. Well, you know, spermodyne life is just a tool to help with the fight. Uh it it just it makes it a little bit easier for you. And but if you want to fight, knock yourself out.

What uh so with a product like spermadine, what can people expect? Is it something that you feel different? Does do you notice? What do you notice as you start to get into it? Because that's the big thing. People always want you know, supplements they want, yeah. They want something, right?

They want that B12 or that niacin response, right? Yeah, you want to cheat up or something like that. Well, you don't get that. This has been one of the interesting things about this supplement is that its effects are not predictable, meaning that listen, if you are already an intermittent faster and you already are an exerciser and you are already doing a lot of things, you know what? You may frankly, people tell us they notice the effect of not taking it after using it than when they start taking it. Now, a lot of people uh get back to us right away. Hey, I feel sharper mentally. Uh, one of the one of the early responses, man, my hair is in really good shape. Um, there's a lot of people that love it because of the effect of their hair. Um so this is, listen, from a marketing standpoint, this has been a challenge for us. You know, it'd be great to say, hey, you take this, you heat up, boom, you feel it, and someone, well, I took it, I heated up, and it must be working. Uh, we don't we don't have that kind of an effect. You know, this is a deep cellular process. We're boosting spermidine levels at a cellular level, and and frankly, you know, it's it's working a lot more like a vitamin, uh, a multivitamin than it is like than it is like um a niacin supplement. And that's you know, I wish, I wish I had a really, I wish I had a marker that I could hang on. I just we just don't have it. But what we know is that there is buku research supporting the concept of spermidine, spermidine's role in the cells. That when we take a look at all of the peer-reviewed stuff working across the animal kingdom, the the data is very clear. Increased spermidine levels uh result in increased longevity, increased immunity, decreased neurological problems. You know, these things, these things are all really clear. And you know, that's the real benefit there. Awesome.

Well, Don, we're we're bumping up time. I want to respect your your schedule. Uh it's always I could talk to you for hours, man. You know that. Where do people catch up with you now? Where do they go?

You can reach out to me. So I'm on LinkedIn's the easiest place to find me, Don Moxley on LinkedIn. And if you have questions, I personally have a webpage called trainrecoverwin.com, or you can go to the spermodyne, if you go to the spermidineelife.us, spermadinelife.us, we have a chat box there. If you have questions, um shoot a note in the chat box. And if if it's not me, someone will be get back to you right away. Awesome.

Well, Don, it's always it's always great catching up with you. Let's make sure that the next time we get you on, it's not 18 months later. That's good.

No, and and I need I need people to like and share this program because I need a number one, not a number two.

Think right on. Ladies and gentlemen, Don Moxley. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futurofitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off