The Ironman Advantage: Stop Sunburn Without Sunscreen, Increase Your Lifespan by 12%, & Perform at a Higher Level (Astaxanthin Guide)

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer obsessed with growth and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. Is astaxanthin the most powerful natural molecule to extend not only your life span, but also the quality of those years, also known as health span. In this episode of the Mindbody Peak Performance podcast, we explore topics such as what is astaxanthin, why is it so important, where does it come from naturally in the diet, the clinical benefits as well as the potentials that are conserved across different species from plants to animals to most likely humans. We go into how it works inside the body, the safety and or potential side effects, dosing, the great debate whether natural versus man made forms are best, the most common uses and outcomes people tend to report from using astaxanthin, and perhaps most importantly, what to look for in high quality products.

Nick Urban [00:01:34]:
Because when I did my own research and looked into the purity and potency of a lot of the options on the market, I was quite frankly disgusted that so many of the different products out there, the different supplements claim triple potency, triple strength, and they actually come back with less than 1 12th of that triple potency claim. If they advertise 12 milligrams and you get less than 1 milligram, it gives you a false sense of confidence, and you’re not actually getting the benefits of this substance. You can see my analysis of astaxanthin by typing in outlier, o u t l I y r, astaxanthin. You can put that into any search engine. And from there, there’ll be a link to each of the different products for your budget and different use cases. If you feel so compelled by the end of this conversation and wanna give our guests Astaxanthin product a shot, it’s the one I’m using. It’s called ax 3, and you can use the code urban to save 20% on your order. All of these will be in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber187.

Nick Urban [00:02:48]:
Joining us today is Dave Watamol. He has 25 years of experience working with astaxanthin, making him one of the more knowledgeable and experienced people in this field. Astaxanthin is a marine super nutrient with important health and, specifically, longevity benefits. Dave is the cofounder and CEO of a company called ax3life as well as the life sciences branch, which is called Cardax. If we lose you with some of the scientific details, don’t worry. I do my best to summarize the most important parts of it during the conversation. One of the questions we didn’t have time to discuss together is if you actually look into the research around astaxanthin, why are there conflicting results, especially when it comes to the role on athletic performance and recovery? From my own research, I discovered that’s because that some of the researchers who designed these studies didn’t use the right dosage, the right sample sizes, or the right duration of use to observe the expected outcomes. Of course, like every molecule, more research is needed.

Nick Urban [00:04:04]:
But what I love about it and why I’ve used this for many years now is because of the therapeutic potential to the safety and toxicity. This is one of those molecules that shows a lot of promise and at the same time appears pretty dang safe. Okay. With that out of the way, sit back, relax, and enjoy this conversation with Dave Waddemel. Dave, welcome to the podcast.

Dave Watumull [00:04:29]:
Hey. Thanks for having me.

Nick Urban [00:04:30]:
Today, we’re gonna be discussing a fascinating molecule that started to get a lot more attention of late. But a lot of us in the alternative health and supplementation world have been either using using or fascinated by this molecule for a very long time. Before we go into what that is exactly, what are the unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done so far today for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony?

Dave Watumull [00:04:59]:
Wow. Okay. Well, I got a good night of sleep, and, I found that getting a bowl of ice water is a great way to, you know, dunk my face in and and get refreshed and and, and wake up. I worked out, kind of a high intensity training, and that felt really good. Had a nice, protein creatine BCAA, recovery, drink, and lots of water, and then kinda got into it. So that’s been my morning so far. And, I’m here based in Hawaii, so it’s mid morning for me. So, that’s been my day so far, but that that’s a nice way to start the day, and and, I try to do that as often as possible.

Nick Urban [00:05:39]:
I like it. Have you taken any antioxidants yet today?

Dave Watumull [00:05:43]:
Let’s see. I have not. My antioxidants would be astaxanthin, like, we’re gonna be talking about, but I’ll be taking that with a meal. I haven’t eaten yet. And, I’ll also, you know, consume, other nutritional drinks, or green drinks that do have antioxidants and other great ingredients in them as well. And so that would probably come in the next few hours. So, yeah, hopefully coming soon. But, yeah, definitely throughout the day dosing up on on that.

Nick Urban [00:06:14]:
Well, I got you to say the word the magic word I wanted you to say, which is astaxanthin. Yeah. And that’s a bit of a tongue twister for people who’ve never heard of it. But what is it, and why are you fascinated by it?

Dave Watumull [00:06:24]:
Yeah. Astaxanthin, or ASTA for short, is a naturally occurring molecule. It’s commonly, found in the marine environment. And even though, like you said, it’s hard to pronounce, most people haven’t heard of it, I can guarantee that almost everyone has consumed it because it’s what makes salmon pink. And lobsters and crab, red and pink, shrimp. So so most people have have eaten this, throughout their lifetimes. It’s it’s been part of the human diet for 1000 of years, and it’s part of the carotenoid family, which is a really interesting, group of colorful, you know, pigments, molecules that you’ll find in vegetables, and fruits and plants. And, and so these these carotenoids co evolved with plants, you know, you know, 1000000 of years ago, to help plants, as they dealt with, with photosynthesis.

Dave Watumull [00:07:22]:
And as they were evolving photosynthesis, they needed to deal with the, damaging effects of the UV light from the sun. So they use the sunlight for photosynthesis, but there’s also negative effects that they need to counteract. And also there’s other aspects in terms of energy storage, that they utilize the the carotenoids, for. And and so the whole family of carotenoids evolved over time. One of the famous carotenoids is beta carotene that a lot of people would know of. Lycopene is another that is fairly common. And astaxanthin is a special part of a special subclass of carotenoids called xanthophyll carotenoids which are oxygenated, which from a molecular standpoint means that they have, like, an oxygen, hydroxyl group on the, ring, moieties, of the molecule, that gives it, key differences versus beta carotene and other carotenoids. And so as you look at the evolutionary tree of carotenoids, nature tinkered with the different forms and ultimately ended up with astaxanthin as the apex or the king of the carotenoids because it appears to work the best that we certainly believe.

Dave Watumull [00:08:30]:
And so this molecule that gives these, these species their their beautiful coloration actually is so much more than just pink. It is something that gives them really, you know, potent health and vitality benefits. And if you look at salmon, for example, we’re all familiar with their swim upstream to reproduce, which is a beautiful miracle of nature as they’re swimming upstream, going up the little, kind of waterfalls and, you know, battling off bears and trying to get to the ponds to reproduce. But if they didn’t have astaxanthin, not only would they be gray rather than pink, but they would be smaller, prone to infection, you know, have problems reproducing and be too weak to swim upstream. And so it’s really vital for their their their life and their reproduction to to have astaxanthin. And when salmon, we think of the flesh as being a beautiful pink or red color. But when they’re swimming upstream, their skin actually turns red. And that’s the astaxanthin transferring out from their flesh to their skin, which potentially might mean that they’re ready to spawn.

Dave Watumull [00:09:35]:
And then ultimately, when they do reproduce, the astaxanthin is transferred to the eggs. And so that’s why the salmon eggs are red and it helps with the, development, of the offspring and also the protection because they lay their eggs in the shallow waters, in those, in the springs there. And the sunlight hits the eggs and the astaxanthin helps to protect them from that. So it’s this really amazing molecule in nature. And about 25 years ago, I got into this space and we started to look at the benefits in terms of, well, how does it actually work? And that was kind of started this whole journey that we’ve been on ever since.

Nick Urban [00:10:13]:
Very nice. And it’s cool to look around and see the different ways a substance is used in nature, such as by plants to protect them from the UV light and then also from salmon and other fish and seafood to do the same thing. And then also looking at humans and some of their early interest in astaxanthin was around its ability to help protect against the damaging effects of UV. And since sun exposure is both getting more popular in terms of absolute exposure and total duration, And at the same time, it’s getting demonized more for its potential, in my opinion, overblown link to skin cancer, at least in moderate reasonable doses. And if you’ve built a solar catalyst and all that, it’s interesting to see how the effects in nature parallel the effects in humans.

Dave Watumull [00:11:02]:
Yeah. For sure. And I think, like, with everything, it’s all about balance and moderation. And so, you know, some sunlight exposure is great. Too much is not good. Too little is not good. And the data definitely supports that astaxanthin does protect, against the damaging effects of of UV light, against DNA damage. There’s even human studies showing benefits with, reductions of wrinkles, improvements in skin elasticity and moisture content.

Dave Watumull [00:11:27]:
And that’s both oral and topical administrations of Astaxanthin. So it’s definitely something that, can benefit skin health. And, but it’s not a replacement for sunscreen, which technically from the FDA is regulated as a drug, which has Xanthan as a supplement. So we can’t make those types of claims. And we certainly wouldn’t, you know, just because, you know, it’d be prudent to, have topical, you know, sun protection as well. And, but we think astaxanthin definitely is a great, you know, additional benefit for your skin. You know, you’ll find it in some cosmetics in very, very low concentrations. But just taking a nice dose orally does give you, because it’s distributed systemically throughout the body, body a great benefit for skin and other, vital organs.

Nick Urban [00:12:12]:
Yeah. About 8 or 9 years ago, I started experimenting it with it to help protect me when I was under the blazing hot sun playing rugby and other sports, often outside for 4 or 5 hours a day during the middle of the summer and different seasons. And I noticed that I was more protected against sunburn even though it’s not a drug, it’s not sunscreen, that I didn’t burn as fast. And that was also paired with a bunch of other things such as getting some of the the plant pigments, the I think they’re proanthocyanins, and then also the Shilajits of the world and using a bunch of different things combined with a low PUFA diet that I was able to not burn as fast.

Dave Watumull [00:12:51]:
Yeah. That’s great. And so you’ll find a lot of those types of, testimonials, you know, out in the community, with the users of of astaxanthin. For example, a lot of the triathletes in Kona, the Ironman triathletes, have have used astaxanthin for decades. And so that’s probably for a combination of benefits, ranging from, you know, the the skin support, but also the endurance and the recovery and all of that. Kinda like the same thing, like, with with the salmon swimming, you know, it helps them. It it helps the the triathletes as well.

Nick Urban [00:13:24]:
Yeah. The marketing around astaxanthin that I’ve read tends to focus on its antioxidant power, and it compares it’s often compared to other known antioxidants that people usually supplement. And I know it’s a lot more than just an anti antioxidant. We’ll talk about that in a second. But, Keith, rattle off some of the numbers about how it compares to other popular supplements?

Dave Watumull [00:13:45]:
Yeah. And so those are based on taking astaxanthin and taking other common antioxidants and comparing, you know, singlet oxygen quenching or other types of antioxidant, you know, capabilities. And, there’s various published literature on these things, and you’ll get various scores on on the, you know, the efficacy of, you know, of those studies. And astaxanthin was shown to be, I think like 6000 times stronger than vitamin c. And and, I’m not looking at the numbers, but it was, you know, 100 of times stronger than vitamin e, maybe 500 times stronger and like 40 times stronger than beta carotene. And you can check our website or other, published papers for for those numbers. And so but those are great from, like, a marketing standpoint. Just say, look how powerful this antioxidant is.

Dave Watumull [00:14:34]:
But, the more important thing, is that not all antioxidants are the same and it’s not just a matter of, well, how potent of an antioxidant are you. It’s really important to look at where does the antioxidant go in the body, and where does it go specifically in the cells? And then when it’s in the cells, what is it doing? How is it localizing? Vitamin c, you know, maybe, you know, not actually in the membranes, for example, being, you know, water soluble. Whereas if you have, say, like vitamin e or beta carotene, lipophilic, you’ll find those in the the cellular membranes, you know, which are comprised of lipids. And so with with astaxanthin, it gets into all your major organs distributed systemically, gets into the cells and importantly, gets into all of the cellular membranes, which is the outer membrane of the cell, the plasma membrane, but also the membranes around all the other cellular organelles. So the nucleus has a membrane. The mitochondria have membranes. The other important components of the cell have membranes. And so it gets into all these membranes.

Dave Watumull [00:15:43]:
And importantly, and we’ve done work with a collaborator of ours, who has a professor appointment professorship appointment at Harvard and also his own research company, that had this really cool, biological membrane model where they could look at a model of a membrane, incorporate different molecules like astaxanthin, and actually look at, if those molecules are disrupting the membrane at all based on the distribution of the electrons in that membrane. And with astaxanthin, because of if you recall, I mentioned it’s part of the xanthophyll carotenoid family and it’s oxygenated. That gives it these polar head groups, which allows it to span and anchor across the membrane with the polar heads of the, of the lipids in the membranes. And so if you look at a cellular membrane, comprised of the lipid bilayer, astaxanthin spans perfectly across the membrane and doesn’t disrupt, you know, the the phospholipids in in the membrane and keeps that nice ordering. And that’s something that’s really important because if you disrupt the membrane, that can have a whole host of negative effects. And if you look at beta carotene, which does not have those polar head groups, it gets into the membrane, but it is not spanning it and stabilizing it, and it disrupts the membrane. Same thing with vitamin E, which doesn’t have the 2, polar, head groups like astaxanthin does. And so with that, you have a stabilization of the membranes, in addition to its very potent, antioxidant, you know, capabilities.

Dave Watumull [00:17:17]:
But it’s also scavenging, free radicals, you know, functioning as an anti antioxidant both inside the membrane and outside the membrane because it’s basically perfectly spaying across, and so it’s there to to fight off free radicals with this, kind of conjugated polyene backbone of the molecule within the the membrane, and then the head groups of the molecule that are, you know, at kinda inner and outer edge of the membranes are also well situated to to trap free radicals. And with that, in that same study, in addition to not disrupting the membrane, it, had a nice reduction of lipid peroxidation, which is the oxidation of the lipids in the membrane. Whereas the others, like, say, like, you know, beta carotene could actually have a pro oxidant effect in that case where it was, you know, causing an actual increase in lipid peroxidation. And so that’s where a lot of people may paint antioxidants all, you know, with the same brush and think, looking back to old studies with beta carotene and saying, oh, it looks like, you know, beta carotene didn’t work, therefore, antioxidants don’t work. But that’s not necessarily the right, you know, conclusion, or extrapolation there because, again, astaxanthin functions, very differently.

Nick Urban [00:18:27]:
Interesting. Especially the lipid peroxidation part, the prevention of the fats

Dave Watumull [00:18:32]:
from

Nick Urban [00:18:32]:
breaking down because that’s one of the big reasons people supplement vitamin e, especially after eating certain highly rancid and oxidized seed oils. They’re so common at restaurants. So it’s cool to hear that astaxanthin can help protect against that. And overall, there’s a whole move towards cellular health as a core pillar of overall health. And if your cell loses its polarity, you can no longer maintain that same charge inside and outside of the cell, then none of the processes work as well. So if you start by fixing and improving the the contrast between from the the membrane and the barrier, then everything’s gonna work better.

Dave Watumull [00:19:12]:
Yeah. I mean, that has an impact on cellular health is the foundation of of everything where, you know, you know, all these different, cell signaling pathways, you know, are are all, you know, influenced by that overall cellular health. And then if things are out of balance or not functioning properly or or, unnaturally being inhibited or activated, and then you have different issues that manifest themselves over time, and it could be in one organ or another. It may look like a joint issue or a heart issue or a cognitive issue. And then with modern health care, you know, it’ll get attacked with, you know, a particular drug or, you know, a procedure, where you’re trying to kind of whack a mole and and fix this thing and then fix that thing, but you’re not actually fixing the underlying issue at the cellular level. And so it’s it’s, you know, bound to have, side effects or or other long term issues. And so it’s more about dealing with the root cause, you know, of, you know, of health issues and and trying to hopefully maintain health rather than trying to fix things after, you know, they they fail.

Nick Urban [00:20:19]:
Yeah. And anything that can improve the mitochondria, the energy production factories, even though I hate that term, of the cell, and then we have hundreds of thousands within each cell and reduce the amount of, like, metabolic waste, the reactive oxygen species, reactive nitrogen species, all that stuff that is produced is gonna benefit a lot of different organs and systems throughout the body. And it’s cool that we see that with astaxanthin. Yes. Yes. It helps all kinds of different things. What are some of the different organ systems that we see and overall benefits?

Dave Watumull [00:20:49]:
Yeah. So well, first of all, I’ll just touch on the mitochondria, just because you mentioned that. And so the fact that you can even that astaxanthin can get to the to the mitochondria is a big deal because that’s a privileged site. And astaxanthin gets to the mitochondria and helps to prevent, again, the, oxidative stress, lipoproxidation that can damage, the mitochondria, mitochondrial membranes. And, there’s been studies showing that astaxanthin has a positive influence on, the the number and size of, mitochondria, energy production in terms of, you know, the measurement of ATP, both in young and geriatric dogs, for example, as being increased, and benefits with mitophagy, which is autophagy or cellular cleanup of the mitochondria. And, so mitogenesis, like I said, in terms of additional mitochondrial, mitochondrial production. And so a lot of key benefits, to the mitochondria, which like you said, are responsible for the energy production. But as a byproduct of that, you know, you’ll you’ll have, reactive oxygen species, for example, that are created that can cause damage throughout the cell.

Dave Watumull [00:21:59]:
So astaxanthin definitely helps gets the mitochondria and helps them to to function, you know, in a much more healthy way or maintain that that, proper function rather than mitochondrial dysfunction, which is definitely a major issue. And then touching on the other question in terms of the other major organs and health applications, the fact that astaxanthin is absorbed into the liver, gets packaged, with lipoproteins, LDL, HDL, B LDL. It gets packaged into those. And so first off, in addition to accumulating in the liver, which provides liver health benefits, and we’ve done studies showing benefits there, it gets into, say, like LDL. And so when you look at oxidized LDL, which we’ve looked at in a human study, we saw reductions in oxidized LDL, which, is, you know, a really, probably the worst form of LDL, because it’s oxidized and that’s more prone to major cardiovascular issues. And so, so it hitches a ride on these lipoproteins and protects them, but it uses those as transport throughout the body. And so it’ll get to the heart, and it crosses the blood brain barrier, gets to the brain. And so you see benefits in all of these major areas.

Dave Watumull [00:23:12]:
And so there’s been, both preclinical and clinical studies in, you know, pretty much all these different areas. If you go to PubMed and search for astaxanthin and fill in the blank, you’re going to find a lot of really interesting research that’s done. Both preliminary, preclinical or, you know, you might find in vitro models in test tubes. You can find preclinical or nonclinical studies in animals, which is typically used for research because you can have experimental models that, you know, mimic diseases and give you good understandings for for human applications. And then there’s there’s probably a hun a 100 or so human studies with astaxanthin. And, for example, that that human study that I mentioned where we looked at oxidized LDL was in, cardiovascular subjects. So so everyday, people that had cardiovascular issues or risk factors, and they were already taking cardiovascular medications. And on top of that, we gave them our form of astaxanthin for 12 weeks at both a low and a high dose and a placebo.

Dave Watumull [00:24:14]:
And so this was a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled trial. And we showed reductions in oxides LDL, in, you know, total cholesterol, in just LDL cholesterol, blood pressure. And when we looked at, say, subgroups like a diabetic subgroup of the population, we saw reductions in, in hscRP and triglycerides. And so it really had some important benefits there. There have also been studies in cognitive health, for example. So looking at performance on cognitive tests where you are performing, you know, a maze or trying to do some type of memory or recall exercise, and you’ll, you’ll be graded on things like how many questions did you get right? Or how fast were you answering? What was your response time? So information recall, memory, information processing, all these things, there have been benefits that have been shown in those areas. There have been studies looking at liver enzymes reductions there. That is a good thing for liver health.

Dave Watumull [00:25:20]:
But like you said, I mean, there’s skin benefits, there’s eye benefits. There are other carotenoids that also are great for the eyes, lutein and zeaxanthin to actually get into the macula of the eye and are kind of like astaxanthin for the eye. But astaxanthin also has benefits for the eye, probably based on its more systemic reduction of, oxidative stress and inflammation. But yeah, so the the most common benefits are, you’ll find joint and muscle benefits. And in terms of the joint studies, there aren’t a whole lot of human studies specifically looking at joint outcomes, but there are biomarkers where you look at inflammatory cytokines like TNF alpha and you see reductions there. And that translates to improved, you know, joint benefits. And if you look at the testimonials from the user community of astaxanthin products on the market for the last 20 or so years, you’ll find a lot of joint health benefits. Muscles, there have been studies looking at, for example, sarcopenia, which is, as people age, their muscles are prone to decline or deterioration.

Dave Watumull [00:26:31]:
And, there was a study with astaxanthin, not our study, but another study, showing that there was an increase in muscle size and strength in that population, which sometimes there are questions about, oh, do antioxidants or does astaxanthin potentially have a negative effect on muscle growth? You know, if you’re working out and you have, you know, hypertrophy goals and, and, to my knowledge, I’m not aware of, human studies looking at that specifically, say in, you know, adults, you know, kind of in a normal age range or specifically looking at bodybuilding or other forms of exercise, but certainly in in an elderly population, there were benefits for the muscles. And if you look at the use in the user community from triathletes and others, I would believe that if there were a negative effect on on muscle growth, it wouldn’t be used so commonly in the athletic world. And then if you look at things like the salmon swimming upstream, you know, it really helps them there. And so, again, I I don’t think, it has a negative effect there, although I couldn’t speak conclusively to, like, a large scale human study, benefiting that. But, like, yeah, there’s there’s a whole bunch of areas that are really interesting. And if you look at benefits for kidneys, for example, you and you’ll find things there. And so it’s, but it makes sense because of the fact that astaxanthin gets distributed throughout the whole body, gets into the cells and all your major organs and works at that, you know, real foundational level to reduce the oxidative stress, which is its core functionality. If you look at the structure of the molecule, that’s what it does physically, you know, in, physically in the cell.

Dave Watumull [00:28:07]:
But then that has this whole, you know, cascade of benefits on inflammatory pathways and other cell signaling pathways and and functions. And so that’s where you see all of these benefits that stem from its its core antioxidant benefits.

Nick Urban [00:28:21]:
What I found cool about it, Dave, is that it’s one of very few things that can actually cross the blood brain barrier and make its way into the brain because the brain has a barrier there to prevent things that are dangerous or potentially unhealthy from entering such as toxins and pathogens and a lot of other stuff. Can you talk more about the how it gets into the brain and any, like, emerging research around what it’s doing in the brain aside from just helping quench some free radicals?

Dave Watumull [00:28:48]:
I think it crosses the blood brain barrier as, you know, as it’s hitching a ride with the lipoproteins. We’ve done studies looking at brain tissue in preclinical studies and confirmed that it reached the brain. Others have done the same. And, so I think, you know, empirically, it’s been proven that it does get there. And then in terms of exactly why it gets there, I mean, I think nature found a way, you know. And so it certainly gets there. And then if you look at cognitive, mental, brain health types of issues, oxidative stress, inflammation are implicated in virtually everything. And so if you think about this molecule getting into your brain cells and, you know, preventing the oxidative stress that can wreak havoc and also having benefits on inflammatory pathways, reductions of inflammation, you’re gonna have, you know, brain health benefits.

Dave Watumull [00:29:42]:
And then that can manifest itself with different types of biomarkers or things that you may look at for different types of areas. And there’s a lot of research. If you look at neurological applications of astaxanthin, there’s a lot of research in the various disease areas, which, again, as a supplement, we can’t claim that, oh, this could help with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, but all of those things are driven by oxidative stress and inflammation. And if you go to the literature, there’s very strong rationales that astaxanthin could potentially, have benefits in those areas. And that’s actually why, you know, for the last 25 years of working with astaxanthin, I’ve also worked on the pharmaceutical side looking at developing astaxanthin for prescription use, where you can have a doctor that could prescribe it to a patient for a particular area after it’s been approved by the FDA for a specific indication. And so it’s similar to omega threes where you have prescription forms and you have supplement forms. And and you might have, you know, some differences in the in the dosing or concentrations and the production, the quality and all of that. In our case, the production, we’re doing it kind of the same way, if you will, in terms of very highly pure, very consistent.

Dave Watumull [00:30:46]:
But if you were to do a pharmaceutical application, it would most likely be a pretty high dose, you know, which may be equivalent to taking, you know, 8 or 10 or 15 capsules a day, you know, of the product, which is not really, practical. And so you might have a higher dose that’s, more in a more concentrated form that, you know, is packaged into a tablet or capsule for that type of application. And so, but given that astaxanthin is a naturally occurring molecule, the whole international research community is very interested in astaxanthin. So there’s a lot of research worldwide, in Asia, in Europe, in, you know, North America, South America, everywhere, you’ll find researchers looking at astaxanthin. And a lot of them have interest in various labs that have an interest in a particular type of, area of health or disease. And so you’ll find a lot of preliminary research there that’s really intriguing and provides rationales for oh, how potentially have a benefit for, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or other, you know, forms of, cognitive, you know, health. And so you’ll find biomarker, you know, improvements or mechanistic studies. And so it’s really interesting to look at the potential potential benefits in those areas.

Dave Watumull [00:31:55]:
And then as a supplement, we speak to the cognitive health benefits and and kind of the if you look again at the community with testimonials or or the anecdotal evidence, you’ll find people talking about how they’re they feel clearer and, you know, kind of the mental clarity or the brain fog improvements in those areas, or I feel like I, you know, sharper as as I’m thinking or I feel more fresh. And and so those are certainly benefits that people have have reported, which are consistent with the data as well.

Nick Urban [00:32:21]:
One use I didn’t mention to you, Dave, is when I started taking it, I had a theory that this is gonna cross the blood brain barrier. And if I saturate my brain with astaxanthin, if I am playing rugby and I get a concussion or TBI, then I’ll have more of a protective effect. As far as I understand, there’s something called the microglial cells and they do something called microglial priming. And the analogy I’ve heard used to describe is they’re like they’re like chihuahuas with bazookas. And once they get activated, you can’t really calm them down. And I was thinking if you did certain things in advance such as using the right substances like astaxanthin, that perhaps you’d have better outcomes if you were to sustain a concussion. Have you read anything about that?

Dave Watumull [00:33:07]:
Certainly. Mechanistically, that rationale makes sense. And, we have thought about pursuing studies, looking at traumatic brain injury. And this could be in sporting applications, football, rugby, contact fighting sports. It also could be for, for the military, for the troops, you know, who experienced that as well. And so we’ve pursued, discussions in those areas, potentially looking at partnerships with, you know, with leagues or with teams or players. And because like you said, if you could have this on board, it’s much better, to provide, we we would hypothesize it would be better to reduce the potential, you know, for that injury. Because analogously, there’s been, you know, studies, you know, looking at other, you know, if you pre administer astaxanthin before a cardiovascular insult, like where you restrict blood flow to the heart tissue, and then restore blood flow, which reoxygenates the tissue, and there’s actually damage, ischemic reperfusion damage to the heart tissue.

Dave Watumull [00:34:17]:
If you can pre dose and load up with with acid prior, you can have a reduction in that ischemic reperfusion damage or increase in myocardial salvage. And so similarly for the brain tissue, if you can, pre dose over long periods of time, in addition to all the other benefits, if you’re playing sports or other things that it would hopefully provide, we would think that it could potentially help in that area. And so that would be a great thing that we think should be studied because, you know, it’s it’s so sad to see, you know, these things, you know, with, people that are playing sports that they grew up playing their whole lives and, and say even like you look at, Tua here from Hawaii who was an amazing quarterback at one of the local high schools, has played in the NFL, and has unfortunately sustained multiple concussions over the years and and, you know, a lot of speculation about, you know, should he continue playing or not and this and that. And it’s really unfortunate, you know, that these things happen. And it’s something that, you know, a combination of proper safety procedures and protective equipment, of course. But if there are things like this that could potentially help, I think that definitely warrants studying. And so we are pursuing, those things and would love to see research done in those areas.

Nick Urban [00:35:28]:
I also noticed, as we’ve been discussing this, that the areas it seems to disproportionately benefit tend also to be the highest in mitochondrial density, such as the muscles, the heart, the brain, the eyes, the skin, and on and on.

Dave Watumull [00:35:44]:
Mhmm. Well, again, makes sense because if it gets to the mitochondria and it’s improving those benefits, then you’re going to find those benefits there. I mean, so I mean, if it has more places that Astra can go and provide benefit, then in turn you’ll you’ll find more benefits manifested in those organs. So that definitely makes sense. And and so I think it’s the more you dig it, it’s more interesting that, yeah, it makes sense that that would have those key benefits.

Nick Urban [00:36:11]:
The most interesting part to me, I’ve left for last, though, and I wanna explore this a little more detail with you because it is probably what has the world most interested in in astaxanthin right now, and that is the ITP and the benefits on longevity.

Dave Watumull [00:36:28]:
Yeah. So we didn’t even talk about that yet. And so you have, and there’s more, right? So there’s longevity benefits. And so first off, you know, from a lifespan standpoint, you don’t want to just extend lifespan without increasing your health span. And so fortunately, with astaxanthin, like we talked about, has all these health benefits. And so now if we turn to speaking about the increase in lifespan, you can, you know, also kind of carry along with you that, oh, you also have the health improvements that would hopefully prolong that health span as well. And so looking at lifespan, from a preliminary standpoint, preliminary research, there are various model organisms that researchers use to look at all types of things, but in particular, also aging or longevity. And astaxanthin many years ago was shown to increase lifespan in C.

Dave Watumull [00:37:17]:
Elegans worms, which is a common, model organism. And it was demonstrated to extend lifespan in the worms. And also there was a mechanistic follow on studies that showed potentially how it was influencing lifespan through a particular gene, that has a human analog or ortholog. And in addition to that, there was studies showing increased lifespan in fruit flies, and also in yeast. And then you couple that with looks at the mechanisms of aging, so various cellular signaling pathways or cellular functions that have shown benefits. So you see reductions of, you know, oxidation on lipids and proteins and DNA. You see, like I mentioned before, increased autophagy or cellular cleanup. You see reduced cellular senescence or the the zombie cells, if you will.

Dave Watumull [00:38:11]:
You see reduced apoptosis or cellular death. And then you see, impacts on key, longevity pathways. So AMPK, which has an influence on mTOR, the target of rapamycin, the sirtuins, FOX 03, NERV 2, and others. And these all in turn are what, you know, lead to the benefits in terms of autophagy and mitophagy and mitogenesis and and all these, you know, benefits that are sometimes correlated with caloric restriction or other forms of, increasing lifespan. And going back to that worm model, they have a version of the FOXO3 gene that’s called something different in the worms. But when you genetically knocked out that gene, so they no longer had it, then the lifespan benefit went away. And so that gave us the indication that, okay, their version of FOXO3, when it goes away, you no longer have lifespan benefit. So it would appear that one of the key reasons that that you’re saying lifespan is via the FOXO3 gene or or, you know, pathway.

Dave Watumull [00:39:20]:
And so we collaborated with, researchers here at the University of Hawaii, that are world renowned, you know, geroscience researchers and were involved in the Honolulu Heart Program, which was a really amazing study, that perhaps you could you could cover some time in a separate podcast. But they followed Japanese American men, thousands of them for decades, and looked at, all their their, doctor’s visits and, the reasons they got sick, the reasons they died, tissue, plasma collections. And so it’s this amazing database, that a lot of key insights have come from, including the role of FOXO3 as an anti aging gene, which was shown in this study to have a really profound impact on longevity. And we all have the FOXO3 gene, but there’s different versions of it that are kind of basically more or less activated. And if you have the most activated version, if you will, you’re 3 times more likely to live to a 100 healthy. And so that really put FOXO3 on the map as an anti aging gene. And so this research team at the University of Hawaii had a model, looking at FOXO3 in, in rodents and and seeing if, if with astaxanthin administration, if you would increase the expression or the activation of of FOXO3. And we found that, it did in fact, that astaxanthin did increase FOXO3, specifically in the heart tissue.

Dave Watumull [00:40:46]:
And so that was really exciting to confirm it in a map in a mammalian, model. And then that led to the interventions testing program, selecting astaxanthin, that we supply for inclusion in in their program. And the ITP is an NIH, funded program, specifically within the National Institute on Aging, which is one of the institutes at the National Institutes of Health. And they’re specifically focused on aging and Alzheimer’s and longevity research. And so this program has been around for 20 years, the ITP, and it’s conducted at 3 independent research institutions, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, and Jackson Labs in Maine. And they have specifically bred mice that are genetically heterogeneous, which are more, likely to to have meaningful translation to humans versus the typical inbred laboratory strains of mice that are used for research, but, don’t necessarily translate well to to to real world human, life. And so they have these specific mice that are bred for the program, 1,000 each year. There’s a new cohort every year that they, that they start in the ITP and they’ll select 4, 5, 6, 7 agents that have promising longevity benefits based on preliminary research.

Dave Watumull [00:42:05]:
These could be drugs that are repurposed like rapamycin, metformin, which were tested in this program, could be supplements like astaxanthin or green tea or curcumin. It could be other things that are of interest, like NAD precursors, like NR. And so they’ll test various things. And they’ll look at these mice, and they’ll see, okay, if we give them this as part of their feed, they’ll have a control group, then they’ll have all the different test agent groups, and they’ll see how long they live. And they’ll compare the results. And they’ll do it in triplicate at all these three sites where everything is held exactly the same as to the extent possible, same, you know, amount of food, the same lighting, the same air, there’s everything, you know, the same handling conditions. And with astaxanthin, they started dosing when the mice were 12 months of age, which is the equivalent to around 40 years or so in humans, so middle age. And it turns out that astaxanthin extended lifespan, specifically in the males, by 12% with very high statistical significance.

Dave Watumull [00:43:08]:
The p value was like 0.00 something, you know, it’s very, you know, strong p value. So it means it’s very, likely that the results are true, and not by chance. And, and then in the females, there was a 3% increase in lifespan, although not statistically significant, but the females already lived about 9% longer. And so it almost allowed, you know, the males and females to live the same duration. It’s interesting to speculate, you know, why in the males versus the females. But the fact that it had a overall benefit in the group and specifically in the males allowed them to catch up with the females was a really, interesting finding. And it was in fact, the first supplement in the 20 year history of the ITP to extend lifespan by more than 10%. And the other things that have like rapamycin are repurposed drugs, essentially.

Dave Watumull [00:44:01]:
And these are things that, you know, have potential safety and tolerability issues. There’s a lot of interest in rapamycin, People are trying different dosing regimens and protocols and analogs called rapalogs. You know, just because it’s it does have a very profound impact on lifespan, more so than astaxanthin, most likely it appears based on the numbers. But again, with astaxanthin, you have the the excellent safety profile and tolerability profile that you could actually take this every day, and and, you know, it would be a good thing. And if you were to translate, you know, I mean, we wouldn’t know for sure until you did a human study, but a human study with lifespan would take decades, you know, to to do. And so it’s it’s not really practical, you know, in in any, you know, a reasonable period of time to get human data on true lifespan benefits other than potentially looking at end stage of life, you know, extension by, you know, a couple years. So if you’re looking at taking people that are, you know, young or middle age or, you know, starting to get into older age and then following them, that’s going to be years decades. And so that’s why they do the the mammalian rodent model.

Dave Watumull [00:45:03]:
But if you were to translate the benefits from this study to humans, it could potentially be like another decade of lifespan, which is very meaningful to live another decade. And given all the health benefits that we know about and the safety, that’s a really, really big deal and really exciting. And that’s why we were so excited when this study was completed and published, last December. And, and we were excited to be a part of that. Our researchers at Hawaii, at the University of Hawaii, proposed that the ITP select astaxanthin and based on their research and the other preliminary research that the ITP selected it. And then we worked with the ITP research team to, supply them with the with the astaxanthin and also help them figure out the right amount, to include in their feed for dosing and also the analytical methods to measure, so they could detect how much astaxanthin was being absorbed into the mice in a preliminary study before starting the main study. And then we ultimately helped them when the study was published, with, you know, some of the, discussion around astaxanthin in the, in the paper. So we’re co authors on that paper that was published in GeroScience last year.

Dave Watumull [00:46:07]:
So that was that was a really big deal. We’re really excited about it. I think it really confirms or validates that astaxanthin is in there in terms of a longevity, you know, molecule of interest. And so a lot there’s a lot of hype around rapamycin. There’s a lot of hype around other things like NAD precursors, although, like I said, NR was tested, did not work. Metformin was tested, did not work. Rapamycin was tested and did work multiple times. So that one definitely has, you know, some some very, you know, promising results.

Dave Watumull [00:46:37]:
There’s been other, agents that that have been tested that are other, like, diabetic types of drugs that that seem to have benefits. But, you know, fish oil was tested, didn’t have a life span benefit in this model. Curcumin, green tea, resveratrol, which is another very popular one, that goes kind of in and out of vogue, you know, but also didn’t, you know, extend lifespan in this model. And so it’s not to say that these other agents don’t have other potential health benefits or maybe have mechanisms of impacting longevity. But in terms of the ITP, which is by all means the most rigorous, probably gold standard mammalian model of lifespan, They they didn’t extend lifespan and and astaxanthin did. So I think astaxanthin should be when people are talking about what are the top, you know, agents, not even just supplements, but agents, you know, things that you could take potentially to, improve lifespan and health span, astaxanthin, I think, is definitely confirmed to be part of that discussion now.

Nick Urban [00:47:40]:
Yeah. I’m with you on that. And I was looking through the database earlier today, and, yeah, I noticed that a lot of the more popular things, substances, drugs, supplements, all of them, had no effect in the ITP trials. And astaxanthin is one of the few natural substances that’s not only safe enough that you could take dosages multiple times the daily recommended amount and be just fine versus if you took, say, rapamycin, you took 3 times, 4 times the recommended amount, you’re playing with fire at that point. That is pretty dangerous. And it also has a very long half life. So it’s like dosing that an immunosuppressive substance like that is that powerful. Then you have to figure out how to combine it with your workouts, and you have to figure out how to mitigate side effects and all other types of things.

Dave Watumull [00:48:31]:
Yeah. It’s very challenging. You’re taking a drug that’s used, you know, for, organ transplants to suppress the immune system so your body can hopefully, you know, take on the new organ and, and not, you know, fight it off. And, you know, and, and so, yeah, that’s that’s a very hardcore substance to be putting in your body and is probably not how your body was meant to function. And so with astaxanthin, we like to think of it as helping, you know, the to restore homeostasis or cellular balance, and kind of restore normal working order and function. So this isn’t like something that’s gonna turn you into a superhuman and allow you to live to a 180 or something, but this is more like, okay, let’s maximize the years that we could and should have, because a lot of us are doing everything, you know, to not do that in terms of lifestyle, you know, with diet and exercise and sleep and stress and environment, all these things negatively impact. And so you should take all those steps to improve all these other areas. But in addition, if you can have astaxanthin, then the research would support that it could help you improve your lifespan and health span in addition to just and it doesn’t just mean that as a longevity agent that, oh, this will help you when you’re old.

Dave Watumull [00:49:40]:
You know, this is something that, you know, aging is an ongoing thing. We’re all aging every second. And so, you know, if you can maintain, you know, your level or improve it, and, over time, that’s that’s a really great thing. You know, because a lot of people, like like you said, okay, I used to play rugby and I don’t know if you still do, but a lot of people, you know, obviously contact sport like that. You know, maybe people start, you know, maybe don’t play forever. But a lot of people, whatever it is, you know, they’ll stop playing the things or doing the things that they love to do. And, you know, that’s, that’s not great for your, physical, you know, manifestations for your mental faculty. I mean, you want to be doing things, you know, and not just, you know, sitting and being sedentary and watching things, you know, happen.

Dave Watumull [00:50:23]:
And so this is something that could allow you to continue to live your life, you know, in a way that hopefully allows for great fulfillment and and and overall health.

Nick Urban [00:50:32]:
And I wanna underscore what you were saying a second ago about the ITP. The reason that I find it so fascinating is that there’s a lot of really cool studies out there, a lot of cool headlines about this new supplement increases lifespan in fruit flies by 14%, yet no one actually can reproduce that study. They can’t get the same results. If you can’t get the same results, it’s not real science. It’s not actually showing an outcome because if it was, it should be repeatable. It’s that plus it’s the conditions are the same. It’s 3 labs verifying the findings. So it’s like if you pass that, there’s obviously something pretty significant there.

Dave Watumull [00:51:08]:
Oh, yeah. Because you you can look at the results from each lab and see that it had a benefit. Then you can look at the pooled results and see that you had a benefit. So that really gives you as as good of an idea as you can that you had an impact. And then that corroborates all the other prior studies in worms and fruit flies and yeast, that are conducted by different researchers, different labs. And so I think the preponderance of evidence shows that it does have a benefit. And just comes down to, you know, dosing. And one interesting thing that I’ll mention is I’ve seen various people online trying to translate, okay, this amount of astaxanthin was used in the ITP.

Dave Watumull [00:51:46]:
They’ll look at how much from a PPM, parts per million, you know, concentration were used in the of astaxanthin was used in the chow in the feed for the mice in the study and trying to translate that to humans and figure out, well, how much would I have to take to have the same benefit? Because sometimes that’s the other thing is you have a great study, but it’s not practical to take the amount, you know, that that the that was used in the study. It’s just if it’s animals or, you know, in cell culture and in test tubes. And so if you just try to translate, if you look at the amount that is in the chow, and do, like, a direct translation, it would be a lot to consume. But fortunately, humans absorb astaxanthin much better. Well, first of all, there’s there’s already a standard scaling from animals to humans that, that that is used for for agents in general. If you’re doing drug development, there’s a body surface area conversion that looks at, you know, rodents or canines or, you know, etcetera to humans. But there’s also an additional scaling factor because carotenoids are historically not as well absorbed in rodents compared to humans. And on top of that, what we have is actual blood level data in humans and from the ITP program.

Dave Watumull [00:52:58]:
The ITP didn’t measure blood levels, of astaxanthin in the main part of the study just because they couldn’t be collecting bloods. It it’s hard to take a lot of blood from from mice, especially on this long term type of study, But they they did a pilot feeding study, and and measured the blood levels there. And based on those blood levels that they, reported to us, I I don’t think those those blood levels were not reported in the publication because it was just a preliminary pilot study. But based on that unpublished data, the the plasma levels found in the mice, is in the range of what we saw when we did, say, 2 capsules of 12 milligrams of our formulation because we did a, a human pharmacokinetic or bioavailability study looking at our form of astaxanthin versus, the form of astaxanthin from microalgae, and we were trying to compare the blood levels. But in terms of the blood levels that we got in that study at one dose of of 2 12 milligram capsules, that was in a similar range of what you had, from the mice in the ITP pilot study, and maybe even a little bit more. So it it might be, you know, the best guess might be 1 to 2 12 milligram capsules of our form of astaxanthin would probably translate to the similar blood levels that you saw in the ITP. And then whereas if you look at, some of our other published research looking at various cardiovascular applications and things, those were higher doses and, and higher blood levels that we found and and translates to in our cardiovascular human study that we did, where I mentioned we had reductions of oxidized LDL, etcetera. We did a low dose of 2 capsules a day, but a high dose of 8 capsules or 96 milligrams a day.

Dave Watumull [00:54:42]:
And we had significantly higher blood levels, as you would imagine. And that probably translates more to the animal proof of concept studies that we did looking at various other areas. So it’s certainly there’s a range of doses you could take. And so I think from a basic maintenance level or or, you know, lot longevity, overall benefit, which you may or may not feel a benefit, you know, but you you hopefully would know that it’s working at the cellular level to increase, your your longevity hopefully or at least, you know, improve your cellular health. That’s probably a 1 to 2 capsule a day type of a a dose most likely based on the translation of plasma levels of astaxanthin. But then there’s the, the more hardcore applications where you wanna look at specific benefits to cardiovascular biomarkers or other, you know, athletic pursuits or endurance or recovery where, people have experimented with higher doses and found, improved benefits, both in the clinical setting, like the cardiovascular study that we did. But anecdotally, there’s a lot of people that, utilize different doses. And for example, on our website, you know, we have customer testimonials, and and we added the option where people can include their their dosage that they’re taking.

Dave Watumull [00:55:50]:
So people can search and filter by dose and see what people were were reporting. And so it’s a small sample size, you know, you you want to do an actual human study to to know these things, but it’s interesting, you know, to to see. So hopefully, that gives some context for those that actually wanna know, like, what could I actually do with the ITP results and and translate it to my life and kind of real world applications.

Nick Urban [00:56:13]:
Speaking of translating it to real world applications, Dave, how do you go about choosing a product? Because when I first started looking into this, I’m like, oh, just find the cheapest one. And then I realized it’s a little more complicated than that. And there are a lot of confusing words of wisdom posted online about the differences between natural and synthetic, the differences between microencapsulation and liposomal forms, the powders versus if it comes in a soft gel. What are the things you should look for in a quality product?

Dave Watumull [00:56:44]:
Yeah. So first off, I’ll say that we’re believers in astaxanthin. And so we think if if if anyone is taking a form of astaxanthin, that’s already a win. And so, you know, like, we’re happy for people to just know about astaxanthin and be taking it from any source, you know, that’s that’s credible and of high quality. But, for the most part, you know, we believe that astaxanthin is astaxanthin. The data from the various forms is, is relevant. Once you get astaxanthin to the cell, the molecule is the molecule. And, we can talk about, you know, some some subtleties in terms of the isomers, of of the molecule.

Dave Watumull [00:57:20]:
But for all intents and purposes, astaxanthin is astaxanthin, and when it gets to the cell, you have the the the important benefit. The key difference though is how you make it, how pure it is, and how well it’s absorbed to actually get to the body. But once it gets to your cell, and if you adjust for the same amount in, you know, the cell, it’s it’s gonna most likely have the same results. And so I’ve worked Dave,

Nick Urban [00:57:40]:
I wanna interrupt you really quickly because I know that is the case. If it’s astaxanthin, it’s astaxanthin. But there’s a third party report put out by now the supplement manufacturer, And they mentioned they did in house testing and they also used another third party lab to verify. I think it was Alchemy Labs to verify the results of, like, 20 or 22 brands popular brands sold on Amazon. And they came back with, like, 14 out of 22 of them had very low levels. And of the ones tested, like, 92% had less than 1 milligram of astaxanthin, I think it was. Yeah. When the when the therapeutic dose is generally considered to be, like, what, 6 to 12 milligrams.

Nick Urban [00:58:17]:
Mhmm.

Dave Watumull [00:58:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s what I’m saying. The front end. You know? So how you make it, how well it’s, you know, it’s absorbed and actually the the milligrams that you get in the capsule, that all matters. And those are differences. But if you were to take 12 capsules of the of the 1 milligram version, if you will, you know, and 1 12 milligram capsule, assuming it was formulated in the same way and, you know, absorb the same, you know, in principle, once all that astaxanthin got to the cell, it should have the same effect. But, yeah, you want to, in terms of picking a product, you want to have one that’s produced well and actually is, you know, what, consistent with what’s on the label.

Dave Watumull [00:58:54]:
And so, to back up, I’ve worked on kind of both sides of the arena in terms of, the micro algal production, you know, so the micro algae that produce astaxanthin, which we talked about the salmon and shrimp and crab, but, and and how the plants, you know, co evolved with carotenoids, but but microalgae, are, in nature, one of the the most, the best producers of astaxanthin. And so you’ll have a particular strain of algae that is a green type of algae that is called haematococcus bluebellis. And, it’s found in the wild, but people will farm it essentially either in open ponds or closed tubes. But I used to work at a company on the big island of Hawaii in Kona, where you have these big ponds dug into the lava fields, and you will grow the algae. And so it starts out life as green, and it’s a green form of algae. But when the sunlight hits the algae, the the algae will produce astaxanthin, to defend against the UV light, and then it turns bright red. So people think of it as a red algae, but it’s actually a green algae that produced astaxanthin and turned itself red. And so that is one of the best ways that you can essentially grow the astaxanthin, farm the astaxanthin.

Dave Watumull [01:00:16]:
And most of the supplements on the market are derived from extracting astaxanthin from microalgae. And so I used to work, in that space in the late 19 nineties, which for me was during high school as a summer job and then just after high school as well. So I started pretty early. And so the joke internally is always that I started from the pond up, you know, rather than the ground up. And so, so yeah, so I definitely have firsthand experience with that. And, it certainly works. You can produce astaxanthin, you can extract it. But it is prone to contamination because in in that case, it’s it’s open air, farmed astaxanthin.

Dave Watumull [01:00:53]:
And so you have, you know, you have the volcano nearby, you have the airport nearby, birds, everything. And so it’s just it’s it’s exposed to the elements, but also just the act of, growing the micro algae is hard. It’s like high-tech farming where you have PhDs that are doing the farming. It’s very hard and you may lose a batch and have to drain the whole pond and redo it. And so it’s not super consistent. It’s hard. It is prone to contamination and you can do entirely closed systems. And there are others like, for example, in Washington state, in the United States, as well as in Iceland, that have entirely closed systems that don’t use the open pond and that reduces the contamination risk.

Dave Watumull [01:01:33]:
But in any case, once you produce the algae, you have to extract out the astaxanthin, and you’re only going to get, 5 or 10 percent astaxanthin. And then the other 90, 95% is is other stuff from the algae, which is not bad necessarily, but it’s just it’s not giving you the benefit of the astaxanthin itself. And so that’s something that, is, is always gonna happen when you have the microalgal forms. And we actually, after several years working in that space, thought, you know, this, you know, is has really profound health benefits. At the time, there was there was less than 200 peer reviewed papers. There are now more than 3,000. So there’s been an explosion of research over the last 20 or so years, 25 years. But even at the time, it was very compelling in terms of its effects on, you know, oxidative stress and inflammation and some of the preliminary studies.

Dave Watumull [01:02:23]:
And so we want to develop it potentially, as a pharmaceutical because we thought that would be the best way to help as many people because, you know, if doctors if if FDA approves it and doctors prescribe it, you’ll get widespread use. Whereas as a supplement, it’s harder to market, you know, because you have people that can market, you know, crap, you know, just because they have money or or, you know, celebrities or other things. And and so, our initial approach was then just to pursue pharmaceutical development, but it’s very hard to take a plant extract through a drug process. And so we said, okay, let’s try to produce this in the lab so that it’s highly pure. It’s just the astaxanthin molecule. It’s not the other stuff from the algae. And that’s something that the FDA can get on board with as a consistent molecule and, it could follow their regulations for drug development manufacturing. So we did that for many years and, worked with, you know, manufacturers in Europe, for example, that have expertise with production of carotenoids at scale and, and pursued that pathway for many years.

Dave Watumull [01:03:25]:
And after a decade or so, we actually pivoted back to the consumer space, but brought the learnings of the pharmaceutical development and the very rigorous production to, to the consumer market. And so we, yeah, we have a form of astaxanthin that’s produced by natural product total synthesis, which is also by shorthand called synthetic, but you are synthesizing the exact natural form of astaxanthin, the exact same molecule. And like I mentioned earlier, there are different isomers, which if you think of the molecule, if you look at the structure online, if you Google it, it’s kind of has it’s like a pipe cleaner. It’s this long straight line, essentially, well, it’s a little spigot line with these rings at the end. And those rings could be thought of as like hands, you know, and and you can have like a left hand or a right hand, on either end of the molecule. You could have a left hand and a left hand or a right hand and a right hand or left hand, right hand. And so the form that’s in the algae is kind of like 2 left hands. The form that’s in some crustaceans, maybe 2 right hands or a mixture of a left and right hand.

Dave Watumull [01:04:27]:
So all the different forms are found in nature. If you look at other molecules, not astaxanthin, sometimes it really matters if you have the left hand or the right hand in terms of how it works or its safety. With astaxanthin, the the mixture of all the isomers, which is referred to as a racemic mixture, where you have kind of a balanced amount of left hands and right hands and mixture of the left and the right, kind of 1 to 1 to 1 to 1 of each. That actually was shown to be very safe in robust toxicity studies. You know, high dose long term toxicity studies show that the mixture of the isomers produced synthetically, what was extremely safe and had no issues of, clinical significance that were translatable to humans. And these are studies looking at overall toxicity, carcinogenicity, genotoxicity to the, like, the DNA, reproductive and developmental toxicity. It’s a very extensive battery of safety testing and was shown that the all the of the isomers are safe. From an antioxidant standpoint, we have done studies, for example, showing that each individual isomer or the mixture of isomers has the same antioxidant capabilities.

Dave Watumull [01:05:38]:
And and so we published that. And so it doesn’t seem to have an effect on the, the efficacy or the safety. There is one study that was commissioned by the head of marketing, a non scientist for a micro algal company about a decade ago that was in test tubes, that to my knowledge did not control for the same concentration of the natural versus the synthetic because how you introduce it into the test system can vary depending on how you extract it or produce it and how it’s formulated. But in that particular study, which we think of as probably a bogus study, if you look at it from a real kind of scientific standpoint, in that study, they show that the natural, the micro algal form, had superior antioxidant capacity or effect compared to synthetic. And so they started to propagate the idea that synthetic was inferior and didn’t work. But that’s not true because we’ve, like I said, done studies showing all the different isomers, whether it’s, you know, the left left version or the right or the mixture is is good. We’ve done animal studies. We’ve done human studies.

Dave Watumull [01:06:46]:
The the ITP, the NIH funded study with longevity, that was with the synthetic, with the mixture of isomers. So it, you know, it’s I think it’s proven that the synthetic works and is safe. And to my point earlier, we think of astaxanthin as astaxanthin. So the data, you know, I think if you take the microalgae form, that will help your longevity as well. And so I think the data is translatable, but again, it’s about how you produce it. And so in the case of the synthetic that we produce, it’s highly pure. It’s just the acetaminophen molecule that you’re getting. It’s consistent, and then we can formulate it more easily than an extract of the algae.

Dave Watumull [01:07:23]:
And so we we formulate it, in a way that allows for it to be really well absorbed. And so we we, use a starchy matrix to essentially take the crystalline astaxanthin that’s that’s produced, that when if you just made it in a lab and then just put it in a capsule and and try to take that, it wouldn’t be absorbed because it’s just it’s so densely packed together. It’s like a little brick that your body can’t really absorb. But if you can disperse the astaxanthin into, like, this cloudy, starchy matrix where we take a little bit of food starch, and, that allows that’s kind of the the substrate that kinda like the the cloud that the astaxanthin can stick to. And then a little bit of glucose syrup to kinda hold it all together and a little bit of cornstarch just to make sure the little particles of the formulation don’t actually clump and stick together. You get this really high really highly bioavailable form, and the amounts of the starch and and the glucose syrup and the sugar are so low, it’s negligible compared to what you would consume in the diet. Like, from a sugar standpoint, it’s less than a tenth of half a gram per serving, which is less than a tenth of the FDA’s threshold for something to be, quote, sugar free, less than you would have in a cup of spinach or broccoli or kale. You know? So it’s it’s virtually no sugar.

Dave Watumull [01:08:37]:
The starch amount is milligrams versus you would consume grams of starches if you’re actually eating them. So you will see those on the label, but that’s there for a reason. They’re because they provide the bioavailability benefits. And so we actually took the, leading micro algal astaxanthin form on the market that’s been around for 25 years, and got a group of human volunteers, gave them 2 12 milligram capsules of that micro algal astaxanthin, measure their blood levels, collected blood over 24 hours at multiple time points, sent it to the lab where we have highly precise analytical methods to quantify how much astaxanthin is in each plasma or blood sample, and then have them wash out for a week where they didn’t consume any astaxanthin foods or supplements, then gave them 2 12 milligram capsules of our, form of astaxanthin, the same people. So it’s not even a group of a different group of 5 people. It’s the same exact people, and then did the same blood collection over 24 hours. And when we measured the blood levels, we got 3 times the amount of astaxanthin absorbed into the body, both at the maximum concentration, which was at 6 hours, and then the total exposure, which was if you add up all the time points and do the area under that whole curve, that was, also 3 times the blood levels. And so like you talked about earlier, you want to make sure you’re actually dosing the correct amount.

Dave Watumull [01:09:56]:
So if you say it’s 12 milligrams, you want to make sure it’s 12 milligrams 12 milligrams and some, other manufacturers or brands don’t do that, which is a shame. In our case, we definitely include the 12 and we’ll include some overage just to make sure that there’s enough in the capsule. And and so the most reputable brands, you know, do the same, and and I’m confident that, you know, the top sellers on Amazon, like, the the top top couple brands are are probably, you know, providing the label, you know, meeting the label claim. But even if you actually get the 12 milligrams, like, to your point, a lot of other brands, you know, that are more obscure maybe don’t even have that. But if you actually get the 12 milligrams, in each capsule, which is the highest dose for the most part, there’s a couple, products that maybe have pushed the dose higher, but virtually all of the highest dose products are 12 milligrams per capsule. If you even have 12 milligrams and you compare head to head, in our case, we got 3 times the amount into the bloodstream. So just because you think you see a 12 milligram capsule, 12 milligram capsule, they’re not the same. And so if you look at, say, on Amazon, the top couple selling brands of of 12 milligram astaxanthin, you know, those products may be $25, $30 or so for 50 or 60 capsules.

Dave Watumull [01:11:07]:
Let’s just say it’s 60 capsules for $25. In our case, we we have 60 capsules and it’s $50. And so people may think, oh, wow. It’s double the price. You know, so expensive. But actually, if you have to take 3 times as many of the other form, you’d be you’d be paying $75, you know, for that versus the 50 for ours. So, so I think if you look at actually milligrams of astaxanthin, absorbed, it’s gonna you know, we are actually more cost effective, you know, than than the other, forms. And to your other point about there’s different formulations, you know, a lot of the the products you’ll find are suspended in various oils.

Dave Watumull [01:11:43]:
Historically, it was like safflower oil, was used, and then some of the more recently, others have used, like, coconut oil or or extra virgin olive oil, and that’s probably a much better selection. And, there’s been some, you know, other, like, liposomal formulations like you mentioned, and and I don’t I don’t know on that one. We haven’t tested against that product. I don’t know. They claimed that it works well, and and it might. But, what I do know is that in our particular formulation against the the most commonly used micro algal form in, you know, kind of a, probably a safflower oil, which I think was, historically was used in that brand, that we got 3 times the the blood levels. And so I think that knowing that, you know, our formulation was what was tested in ITP, and that it’s very rigorous from a purity and consistency standpoint is something that can give a lot of people comfort. And when we talk with doctors or other health care professionals, who might be, you know, a bit hesitant to recommend or try supplements, they are often very impressed with the rigor of our manufacturing and the data.

Dave Watumull [01:12:48]:
And so we’ve we’ve actually had really good success in that space. And so that’s something that I hope can translate, to health conscious consumers, which for the most part, you want natural, you want organic, you want as clean of a label as possible, etcetera, etcetera. But in this case, I think you have the best of both worlds where you have a natural molecule, but you’re producing it in the lab synthetically. But all that means is that you’re making it highly pure and and it’s rigorously tested, you know, so it doesn’t have heavy metals or residual solvents or anything like that. It’s, you know, everything is tested for it to confirm that it’s highly pure, and, you know, consistent every batch. And then you have the the special formulation to make it really well absorbed. And then ultimately, once you get in the body, like I said, astaxanthin is astaxanthin, but it’s much easier to take one of ours than 3 of another or even if if that might be not actually the 12 milligrams, like you said, you might have to take much more of the others to actually get the the proper result. Final thing I mentioned is that because ours is a powder in a capsule, if someone doesn’t want to swallow a pill, they can twist up in the capsule and put it in water.

Dave Watumull [01:13:51]:
It’s water dispersable. So they can put it into water or a shake, or, you know, other type of thing to mix it in. So that makes it, you know, kind of convenient to take in other forms. It also doesn’t have any aftertaste or smell, which some of the micro algal products, do have kind of that fish oil type of aftertaste or smell, which, is not the astaxanthin, it’s just the other extract from the algae, that’s there that must be carrying along some of that smell and taste that some people may experience with some of those other forms. So those are all benefits that you would get with our form. But again, you know, we just want people to take Astaxanthin. We think that’s, you know, the best of all worlds. And, you know, we’ll probably include microagliforms in the future as well, just because we want to be able to offer a platform of astaxanthin products.

Dave Watumull [01:14:41]:
Right now we have our flagship, you know, form as our product that we think is scientifically the best. But we just want, you know, the world to know about astaxanthin. And and, you know, in the future, we’ll probably offer multiple forms as well.

Nick Urban [01:14:52]:
Mhmm. Dave, I’m not sure if I showed you this, but I actually did a some deep dive research and round up of a lot of the popular products around that are a lot of the popular astaxanthin products. And I was surprised to see some of your fillers and potentially unhealthy oils and things in some of the number 1, number 2, number 3, just big sellers on Amazon. So what you’re speaking is true. And I also to me, what I care most about is getting something that actually works. And it’s hard to know which of the ones are doing it right, which ones are doing it wrong unless you actually shell out the money to have them all tested yourself. So to me, the 3rd party results such as ITP and others speak for themselves.

Dave Watumull [01:15:36]:
Agreed. Yeah. That way you don’t have to believe us or, you know, it’s just like, yeah, third party validation is is important. And yeah. And and again, just a note on fillers. Like like I said, we do use the starch, you know, components and the glucose syrup. And so some people may look at that and be like, oh, you have fillers. That’s actually there as as a key perp, you know, functional purpose for bioavailability.

Dave Watumull [01:16:00]:
And then for example, we have, you know, like, vegetable stearate, which helps to lubricate the formulation as it flows into the capsules, which when we first, developed the product we didn’t have. But then the the beadlet formulation of the astaxanthin would get stuck around the rim of the of the capsule, which comes in 2 pieces, then you fill it and you kind of snap it together. And when it was stuck around the rim because it wasn’t perfectly flowing in, you would have potential capsule breakage. Maybe not on the line, but may crack and then you put it into a bottle, and then ship it to a consumer. And then, you know, in transit, you might have a capsule that ultimately breaks and you have powder in a in a bottle or a pouch that, you know, is not in the capsules it should. And so there’s reasons why we have each ingredient. They’re not just, you know, there as a filler, for example. So, but that is one thing that, is important for people to understand that, you know, each ingredient has a reason.

Dave Watumull [01:16:54]:
We’re not just putting fillers in just to fill up, you know, just, to kind of reduce the amount of acetaminophen and fill it with something else, you know, like, which apparently others do. I mean, that’s that’s I’m surprised, but not surprised. You know, it’s it’s unfortunate. It’s disappointing. You know, hopefully, everyone just, you know, include the right amount and and, and hopefully build the overall market.

Nick Urban [01:17:12]:
I’m referring more to the food dyes that are completely unnecessary and just add visual appeal to make it red or caramel colored or different things like that. But Yeah.

Dave Watumull [01:17:20]:
Well, I mean, astaxanthin is is a dye, a color, you know, additive, if you will. I mean, in animal feed, astaxanthin, one side note, farm raised salmon, people think about that as being dyed pink. It is dyed pink, but it’s dyed pink with astaxanthin, you know, so they get it astaxanthin in the wild as part of their diet. But in the farm raised conditions, they’re fed a diet containing astaxanthin as well. And that’s the reason why that they’re why they’re pink, they may not get as much as they would get in the wild. And there may be other reasons why, you know, you know, farm raised, you know, there are pros and cons to wild versus farm raised. But in terms of why they’re pink, it’s still because of astaxanthin. But, yeah, I mean, you certainly want wanna have other artificial dyes in the product.

Nick Urban [01:18:05]:
That’s what I’m saying.

Dave Watumull [01:18:06]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Urban [01:18:07]:
Under the inactive ingredients, the other ingredients, if they it says red dye 40 or it says caramel color, things like that, it’s like you don’t need that.

Dave Watumull [01:18:14]:
You don’t need that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So

Nick Urban [01:18:17]:
Okay. Really quick. We gotta start winding this down. But I used to take krill oil because it naturally contains some astaxanthin. But when I did the math, it’s pretty low.

Dave Watumull [01:18:26]:
Yeah. It’s micrograms, which means less than a milligram of astaxanthin. So krill oil is great in terms of, you know, other health benefits and omegas. And it does have astaxanthin. So that’s fine. But that’s not gonna be sufficient for your astaxanthin needs. And so you can certainly take a krill oil supplement, but you should also take astaxanthin as well. And, you can get as much as possible from your diet by eating salmon or other, astaxanthin containing foods.

Dave Watumull [01:18:55]:
But again, it’s hard because with salmon, there’s different, milligram amounts per different types of salmon. But, you know, the appearance is a good cue. So the redder it is, the more astaxanthin it’ll have. And so, but even with that, you may have a few milligrams per, you know, a serving of salmon up to 6 or 8 milligrams or 10, depending on how big the piece of salmon is. But still that’s, you know, that’d be a lot of salmons to consume. And that’s just to approach what you might get from one capsule. So and and the results show that typically higher dosing is correlated with with, you know, improved health benefits. And so, I mean, I guess if you ate a lot of salmon every day, maybe, you know, you could be good.

Dave Watumull [01:19:40]:
But for the most part, I think, you know, a supplement would be great as an addition. And so, yeah, in addition to krill oil. Yeah. But, yeah, certainly is not enough, in the krill.

Nick Urban [01:19:50]:
And just the red and pink fish. You’re not gonna get it from tilapia another tuna plants I’ve had.

Dave Watumull [01:19:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the red and the pink. But salmon is the highest concentration, for sure. But you’ll also find it just as an interesting side note or tidbit that flamingos are pink because of astaxanthin in their diet from the little, shrimp, you know, things that they that they eat. And so if when they’re born, they’re gray or white, and, and then you’ll see that as they, you know, eat their diet, then they turn pink. So it’s another interesting, appearance of astaxanthin in the wild.

Nick Urban [01:20:28]:
Yeah. And then also really quickly, to get the most bang for your buck, you’re gonna wanna take it with fat. And also how long until you start seeing results? I’ve read different numbers online.

Dave Watumull [01:20:38]:
Yeah. So you definitely want to take it with a meal containing fats. And that’s because astaxanthin is lipophilic. It’s fat soluble. And so when your body is processing a meal containing fats, it, you know, has certain processes that allow the fats to be incorporated into the body. And astaxanthin, being fat soluble, can come along for the ride there, and so it helps promote the absorption of the astaxanthin when your body is kind of already, you know, in gear engine on to absorb those fats. So that’s why you wanna take it. Even though our formulation is a water dispersible formulation, so it’s a little bit counterintuitive to, like, water dispersible formulation, but you wanna have it with fats.

Dave Watumull [01:21:19]:
The reason is, the hypothesis here is that I mean, first of all, we tested it and it’s and it works. So we know that, but we would hypothesize that the water dispersibility of the formulation helps to, disperse the astaxanthin into the, gut fluid. So the the gastrointestinal fluid, which is, you know, aqueous, fluid. So if you can disperse the astaxanthin nicely throughout the gut fluid and then have as that fluid, you know, has the fats from your meal and that’s being incorporated, into your body, then astaxanthin can be nicely absorbed versus if it’s all, not nicely dispersed. It’s probably gonna be harder for your body to absorb it. So so that is the way that we believe it is best absorbed and certainly the the studies show that, you know, taking it with a meal and carotenoids in general, are best absorbed with a meal. And then in terms of how long until you experience results, that’s a hard one because it varies, for different people. It varies, first of all, based on what dose they’re taking.

Dave Watumull [01:22:20]:
It varies on, what type of health benefit they are looking to achieve, you know, how healthy they are. And so some people, have felt benefits within the 1st day or a few days in terms of joint, you know, relief or how their how their joints or back or is feeling. And, others, you know, don’t feel something for weeks or months. In terms of our, like, our clinical study looking at the cardiovascular biomarkers, that was a 12 week study. And so 3 months, was, you know, the the result. And most of the say when we looked at the, nonclinical or preclinical studies, you know, various animal models looking at different health benefits, those are often a 8 or 12 week studies and other human clinical studies are often 4, 8, 12 weeks. So I think the best thing is to give yourself 1 to 3 months, ideally 3 months, to gauge how it’s working. And and then you can actually not just binary make a decision worked or didn’t work, you can actually adjust your dose at that point as well and maybe go up or down and see if you you know, how the results are and then give yourself another 1 to 3 months, you know, and so that’s you can kind of titrate and find a dose that works best for you.

Dave Watumull [01:23:37]:
And so, but if someone is really healthy, they may not feel a benefit, but you could think of it as insurance or, you know, as something that is helping your cells function normally, hopefully, and over the long haul, that’s really important. And because aging happens over decades, and that chronic inflammation, oxidative stress that wreaks havoc throughout your body over decades is something that if you can mitigate that, that can hopefully have really profound benefits, over that long term. And so I think it’s something that, you know, whether you feel it or not, you should be taking. And if you do feel it, that’s just a cherry on top, which you may experience joint and muscle benefits, cognitive benefits, skin benefits. And so there’s things, energy levels or mental clarity. There are things that you can feel and try to assess on your own. Then there’s things you can measure. And so going getting your blood work done every 3 or 6 months or 12 months, then you can look at your various cardiovascular or inflammatory biomarkers, liver biomarkers, cognitive, etc.

Dave Watumull [01:24:38]:
And those are things that you could actually measure. So I think that’s the best way to approach it. Unfortunately, it’s not just like, oh, yeah. Wait one week and then you’re good. You know what I mean? That that would be great, but it’s just it varies, amongst individuals.

Nick Urban [01:24:49]:
Awesome. Well, Dave, if people wanna connect with you to give a x three a shot, how do they go about that?

Dave Watumull [01:24:56]:
Our website is ax3.life. Our Instagram is also ax3.life. And, they can they can check it out there. And, that’s the best way, you know, to to start off with with astaxanthin. And, and then they can learn a lot more. And so I think things like the conversation we’re having and other content, is a great way to learn about astaxanthin. And so I think the more you dig, you know, the more interesting it is. And and hopefully, people can try it themselves and and help to spread the word because this should be as well known as omega threes or or, you know, other, common supplements.

Dave Watumull [01:25:33]:
This should be, you know, something that everyone thinks of as a as a foundational supplement for health and longevity.

Nick Urban [01:25:38]:
Guys, if you wanna give us a shot, you can use my code, which Dave’s team set up. It’s urban, and that’ll save you 20% on your order. And I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well as the article I did on astaxanthin supplements. And, Dave, thank you so much for joining the podcast. It’s been a blast discussing all things astaxanthin and why this is a molecule that more people should know about.

Dave Watumull [01:26:01]:
Cool. Thanks for having me. It was great to discuss with you.

Nick Urban [01:26:04]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.com/andthenthenumberoftheepisodeside. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.