10. Superhuman Mental and Physical Performance, Quantified Self and Extending Human Longevity

10. Superhuman Mental and Physical Performance, Quantified Self and Extending Human Longevity | Geoff Woo of HVMN

Geoffrey Woo (@geoffreywoo) is co-founder and CEO of HVMN, a research-driven company that provides nutrition to elite performers in sport and military. HVMN makes HVMN Ketone, the world’s first ketone ester drink based on technology developed in a DARPA program to enhance soldier performance. In early 2016, Geoffrey started experimenting with intermittent fasting to activate metabolic pathways associated with longevity and cognitive function. To make the science and physiology behind the benefits of fasting more accessible, Geoffrey started WeFast, one of the largest online intermittent fasting communities, and became a widely cited spokesperson for intermittent fasting in the media. Geoffrey is a serial entrepreneur. He previously was CEO and co-founder of Glassmap Inc., a software technology company backed by YCombinator, a top venture capital group, and acquired by Groupon ($GRPN). [spreaker type=player resource=”episode_id=18590685″ width=”100%” height=”200px” theme=”light” playlist=”false” playlist-continuous=”false” autoplay=”false” live-autoplay=”false” chapters-image=”true” episode-image-position=”right” hide-logo=”false” hide-likes=”false” hide-comments=”false” hide-sharing=”false” hide-download=”true”] Subscribe on Apple Podcast | Google Podcast | Android | Overcast | Spotify | Youtube You can listen right here on iTunes In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

How diet impacts mental and physical performance
The blood boy billionaires and methods of extending human life
Why fasting and intermittent fasting are fast becoming the rage in Silicon Valley
The ways top performers are enhancing themselves without resorting to harmful drugs
Why we may be headed towards different species of humans
The DARPA/US military science on superhuman performance
How health, happiness and sleep affect human performance and success
Why science often takes a long time to catch up to practice
The reason the healthcare system is so screwed up
Where we are headed with quantified-self movement
Why Geoff is very excited about IoT and it’s self-enhancement abilities

BTW HVMN is on Amazon!

Transcript

Producing this podcast and transcribing the episode takes tons of time and resources. If you support The Disruptors and the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. If you can’t afford to support us, we completely understand as well, but an iTunes review or share on Twitter can go a long way too! Geoff: So, one of the most interesting technologies that we’re working with today came from a 2003 DARPA program called Metabolic Dominance and a mandate for that program was to make sure that U.S. warfighters were the most metabolically efficient on the battlefield and that pathway that started problem was looking at a number of pathways, one of the most promising pathways was looking at [Inaudible] beta-hydroxybutyrate as a more efficient metabolic fuel for our brain and bodies. Matt: Billions of dollars have been made on optimization software and education. And yet it’s interesting that the operating system of all of us our bodies our nutrition is not something that typically sees the light of day at least not from a tech side of things. Today we’re changing that. Today we’re going superhuman so to speak and looking into the aspects of mental and physical enhancement where we can all get an edge and be the best of ourselves. Today we had Geoff Woo on the program. Geoff the co-founder and CEO of a human research-driven company that provides nutrition to elite performers in the sport and military arenas human makes the world’s first ketone ester drink based off of technology developed in DARPA’s program to enhance soldier performance. Goeff: The U.S. want their soldiers to be the biggest the baddest the fastest and the most efficient and this is the result just started experimenting with intermittent fasting to activate metabolic pathways associated with longevity and cognitive function. For someone who wants to live longer and be smarter this is incredibly prudent and I imagine for many of our listeners it’s much the same. Geoff has a strong background when it comes to fasting, the Quantified Self movement and looking into what it takes to optimize human performance is a serial entrepreneur with an exit in the past a Groupon and an incredibly interesting person on the program. Today in our conversation we cover [Inaudible] impact the mental and physical performance, the blood boy billionaires and the methods of extending human life. Why fasting and intermittent fasting are fast becoming the rage in Silicon Valley. The world’s top performers are enhancing themselves without resorting to harmful drugs. Why we may be headed towards different species of humans, the DARPA U.S. military science and superhuman performance how health happiness sleep and sex affect human performance and success. The reason the healthcare system so screwed why science takes so long to catch up to practice and where we’re headed in the quantified self-movement. Now without further ado, I give you Geoff woo Matt: So Geoff who is your favorite superhero growing up? Geoff: So I’m actually a really undergraduate freshmen essay about this actually. I like Batman and that’s because unlike all the other superheroes he’s very much homosapien normal human being without magical superpowers, not Superman. He’s not a magical ring. So that is very interesting that a human being albeit with a lot of resources and financial resources could train himself in and compete with some of them. You know as a magical magical folks that never were out there. Matt: Batman, Batman is the coolest. Let’s face it. Is that why is that what drove you into this business of human enhancement. Geoff: I mean I wouldn’t say so directly. I think one really got me interested in the Human Performance Space was you know I’m a computer scientist by training so it’s CS from Stanford and a couple of years into my career as a software company I had sold a company to Groupon in to late 2013 and I it’s really looking around that all my smartest friends at Stanford were sharing and how to make computers smarter making other than smarter [Inaudible] helping us click more ads and all that and those are all great careers and great career choices. But we’re all humans and I felt like we should apply more of a [Inaudible] speaking humans better. So we really got me interested in human performance was this feeling of blue sky opportunity. We have all of this technology the opportunity to really engineer different substrates or patterns of innovation. It’s not really superbly explored in a solid Rime substrate in a plane with the hardware that exists today that the make all can be I mean even was the podcast this podcast has been run on that platform. Just seem that the technology technology within biology nearing and the ubiquity of sensors actually track our markers mean it actually possible to innovate and build software if you will build technologies on top of the human platform. So it’s really kind of a timing and interest perspective. Why not mention human performance but definitely read a lot of science fiction and play games. I don’t know if you remember this video game called Deus Ex. It was about essentially implants and genetic engineering on this human and this this [Inaudible] future. So I think [Inaudible] always that this science fiction world would be very cool. I didn’t think I would ever have the opportunity to work and contribute to the field and it’s really been a pleasure and kind of a fantasy come true to be operating the space now. Matt: Yeah it’s incredible you guys are helping to transform humanity quite literally. There are a lot of different ways that we’re moving towards a species of enhancement. Can you break down why you got into what you did and what your thoughts are on some of the others? For instance drugs just enhancements the mechanical means of cyborg etc.. Geoff: Yeah. So I think progress in enhancement is inevitable if you just look at human history been really good at manipulating our environment and ourselves and developing technologies and I think that making our innate selves better and more efficient is this really the next frontier. So I think the interest has been I you can say that the interest is relatively new in the sense that there’s a term biohacking there’s terms of genetic engineering [Inaudible] innate desire. Why Wendy this is very fundamental of our species. We’ve always been improving ourselves and building technologies. Matt: Hey Matt here Geoff’s about to break down the different camps of human performance enhancement. Now I find this incredibly interesting that there are so many different ways to go about the same thing. We all want to live longer. We want to be smarter. We want to be more successful we want to be stronger faster. And it’s interesting that there are so many scientists and startups like jounce coming at it from different perspectives and to see where those energies lie. That was just a quick aside on my part. Now let’s get Geoff back. Geoff: I would classify the broad streams of work around a couple of different buckets. I would say they’re all related in the sense that are all plant engineering techniques that humans but I would say that there is a segment of people focused on genetic engineering can we manipulate our DNA to improve our performance improve our longevity. There would be a group of people looking you know I would say more in in our in our work out at human focused on nutritional interventions and tracking biomarkers in closing this closing the feedback loop in terms of improving longevity and human performance and there is were extreme people called the Grinder’s where you know you’re sort of referencing cyborgs people implanting devices directly into themselves and seeing what kind of new. Now that’s more of a performance art necessarily than perhaps actual enhancement or longevity improvements but art will turn into actual functional improvements soon. Matt: I’m out here speaking to functional improvements. If you haven’t listened to our episode with Zoltan Istvan. The guy who ran for president is now running for governor the libertarian transhumanist who’s looking to live forever and talked about the technology to do it then make sure you check that out. What is Zoltan Istvan search that on fringe dot FM and you’ll find something interesting? Geoff: Those will be the main three areas of function but I think we just actually look at high 14 people today military folks in the military and high-performance athletes are basically tooting themselves like machines. So in some sense, they enhance that of humans is already happening and it’s happening at the edge of our best athletes and our soldiers and Matt: we’re going into the Wolverine type mode. Talking to me about how nutrition actually impacts performance both mental and physical. Geoff: Nutrition is the most consistent input into our body and I think it can be overly hand wavy where this is [Inaudible] this is kind of fluffy. But if you actually think about it drugs in terms of pharmaceuticals or therapeutics are very potent right you can take a drug and you cure self of a viral infection right. But rethinking what the mechanism how that works you’re taking just some examples chemical in the form of an antiviral or antibiotic and it does something to your system being when nutrition is essentially the same thing you’re providing your body consistently with some lasagnas compounds and there’s it. So I would look at it in a couple of ways if you look at the eating patterns of the day and the demographics and the trends of trends of how our society is looking. Now obesity diabetes metabolic syndrome is up and the rate neurological conditions up to the rate and a lot of data showing why that is happening suggest that our nutrition a lot of processed foods and lot of high carbohydrate and high sugar and high fat load is contrary to that. So if you perhaps well when we put it simply if you’re racing a Ferrari car and you’re putting in really crappy crude oil the engine is going to mess up and blow up and it can take a lot of maintenance and fixing it to put that back in a top to top condition. I think folks are interested in cars or engine aircraft just know that the fuel fueling is so important. You just you can make something run super wild with really bad inputs and the same thing with the human body in the human body is a lot more complicated than an aircraft engine or a heart engine. It’s always the fuel that affects our mental and physical performance really dictates it. Matt: Talk to me on the mental side because it’s very easy to visualize this cycle. And while I have a pretty solid comprehension of the mental side a lot of people haven’t. So what briefly talk about how we can more generally speaking get a clearer straighter head and then after that a little bit on new topics and what your companies do. Geoff: Sure. So I think one thing about it is I think we’ve all had experience of eating a very heavy sugary lunch and you get that afternoon slump and physiologically what’s happening oftentimes is that you get this huge glucose spike a glucose spike a blood sugar spike and it requires it. It will be big like the insulin the shuttle all that glucose into your muscle into your fat cells. So then choose that’s crashing really quickly. So it is very undulating curve of high sugar low sugar high sugar low sugar and if you do this over time you get this sort of addicted to this glucose insulin I guess the pattern. And oftentimes people counteract with stimulants like caffeine like a cup of coffee an afternoon to basically buoy up their carby maybe pour nutritional choices. So a lot of people in our community and human you know a lot of people are. And I think since Silicon Valley interests and will generally look at interment fasting or eating low carbs diets to send us some of the downsides of being caught in this glucose insulin roller coaster. So that’s like a very tangible way to think about you know something that I think a lot of us can relate to. Matt: Just a quick terminology for those unfamiliar intermittent fasting on time-restricted eating is the process of optimizing the times of day your eating and eating out significantly shoulder intervals. Typically this is a 16 and a protocol or 16 hours a day you’re not eating eight hours you are eating. There have been studies and nutritional benefits associated with doing something similar. And I know I’ve seen results. Now back to Geoff. Geoff: It’s probably sneaking your brain your neurons require energy to function and if you’re not feeling down with the right precursors to build more neurons or or-or build more neurotransmitters or allow them to actually generate ATP and actually do their patrol they do their own processes. They don’t function as well. So in some sense again you know you need to fuel your engines with the right fuel. Matt: And this is this is the first step. Once people have nutrition in place they have fitness in place. That’s when the performance enhancers so to speak come on board. So things like nootropics and what your company is working on. Geoff: Yeah I think that’s an important frame to think about it. I would say that makes sure nutrition’s right. Make sure you’re doing some basic exercise tree sleep right now if you’re not. And those are the low hanging fruit. I think a lot of wear biohackers go wrong. And I think there’s legitimate criticism there is that people just don’t eat don’t exercise don’t sleep. Don’t treat them so don’t eat a healthy diet and then they just want the tropics to make them smarter. It’s like no. Afraid I’m going to try aerobics like maybe she’s actually put your life in order first. So neutral. Kind of a buzzword in the last few years and that’s something that our company and humans were brought onto the stage in the woods. Crabs claimed some credit in helping that become more of a term using common parlance. Others are still relatively [Inaudible] but in the tropics is really an umbrella term for compounds that enhance different attributes of cognition like memory learning resilience to stress enhancing abilities in a non-toxic way. Matt: So realistically if you look at the stats right now it’s something like 20 to 25 percent of college students take Ritalin or Adderall at some point. Why. Why is that becoming so common is it just a competition in the marketplace is that people are over saturated from shitty foods so that they’re not able to focus. What’s the deal? Geoff: I think it’s a combination of both. So I think from a competition perspective you are already seeing it there just seems to be an acceleration towards a credo style out a lot so all companies are the 20 outcomes meaning that if you are you know top 1 or 2 or feel you get 8 percent of the economic reward and everyone else gets to share that were the bottom 20 percent of the reward. So because we’re in a more globalized connected economy the competition set for all of us is basically the entire world. Whereas 200 years ago we were just basically competing with people in our village are competing with 7 billion people that are more and more connected and in learning quick and quicker. So I think there’s an edge towards competition. There’s more to gain in the end as things are accelerating. So that’s one aspect. So in that sense the reason that people want [Inaudible] of brains that to make sure that they have some sort of a competitive edge. And that’s again that’s happened in sports that’s happened in national athletics. And what I would like to think that you know software engineers are investment bankers or consultants investors are basically professional mental athletes right. But eight-year scoreboard is the amount of guys you economic you can create and it’s pretty Zero-Sum it’s pretty competitive. Matt: That’s why we saw Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street hitting lines of code and doing whatever possible to get advantages in Wall Street. It’s a it’s a dog eat dog or war the war game and you’ve got to be the best. So that’s what he was doing and you could see very similar attributes are very similar patterns in different industries is not healthy and Geoff’s team is trying to buy back on this but it is something that we all have to recognize. Geoff: Yeah I think that you know I mean this might be a live with a segue but you can make the argument that if Ukraine really did guy for the world not there are some you just adding insight into the city humanity. Matt: You’re not necessarily capturing it though like the guy who invented an assailant. Geoff: Right. Yeah, I think he was very altruistic in that story. He gave up IP rights from it. He just basically open-sourced penicillin which is very noble of him to do. I mean he saved millions of lives. And so I think there’s one site. So there is bigger and bigger outcomes because of this global connected markets and there’s a more and more of winner take all dynamic. That’s why you see it like Facebook. You know I wondered when our company and your MySpace you know you don’t exist anymore. And I think there’s an argument that was going on look more and more like the second part is that the tools for the Trump axis aren’t that great. Yes. Right. Anything. So Ritalin Adderall Vyvanse all these A.D.H.D therapeutics they’re essentially [Inaudible]. I mean they aren’t valid means they’re proprietary and include means which is the formal name for speed that is you know scheduled for future use. So these are pretty potent stimulants central nervous system stimulants but they have downside effects. It’s quite well understood that you build up a tolerance of these things and oftentimes anecdotally people just end up being addicted. And I would say they were always dependent on the use of a coffee. So I think caffeine is a very relatable one right. It’s I mean I’ve been cycling on and off and I’ve been cycling because it’s just like do you actually want to be dependent on exotic compounds. And there’s a lot of caution there. Matt: I’m proud to say I managed to carve out quite a bit of the caffeine intake that I had in my diet. I was probably doing four or five cups a day maybe a month or so ago and administer [Inaudible] sat that down to one to two cups it’s incredible what you can do when you decide. And just this lawlessness that I felt when I was drinking coffee was very clearly negatively impacting my performance by being dependent on caffeine. It’s interesting especially looking at what you put into your body as not only food but fuel Geoff: Yeah. I think part of our interest in nootropics and developing the and doing more research into spaces. Can you have cognitive enhancers that aren’t predictive and aren’t dependency building that actually can help you over the long term? Well, I think a lot of these stimulants are short-term acute boosts but have you long-term cost pay. Matt: Talk to me a little bit more about the science of human enhancement and also of longevity or life extension. Geoff: Yeah. So human enhancement history has been interesting in the sense that a retracing my history and a lot of [Inaudible] Hansen came from came from the militia or came from enhancing the soldier class to dominate other you know other tribes essentially you had this with no angina or ask where your tribe is chewing coca leaves before going into battle in a league of very different cultures you sort traditions that improve stamina and prove it. So one of the most interesting technologies that we’re working with today came from a 2003 DARPA program called Metabolic Dominance and the mandate for that program was to make sure that U.S. warfighters were the most metabolically efficient on the battlefield and the pathway that the starter program was looking at amongst a number of pathways one of the most promising pathways was looking at [Inaudible] beta-hydroxybutyrate as a more efficient metabolic fuel for our brain and bodies. Matt: Another definition ketones, ketones is what your body uses for energy when it’s depleted of carbohydrates. There’s two different sources of energy carbohydrates and fats. Protein is broken down into carbohydrates for fuel. Traditionally we’re not all glycolysis meaning we’re using carbohydrate or carbs based energy but if you get into the situation of either on fast or eating a largely fat and protein based diet with very little carbs you can get into what’s called ketosis. This is looked at in different ways by different people some purport to be a nirvana some purport has to be incredibly detrimental to your health. Geoff some on the positive side of this but I’ve seen a lot of a lot of positive studies and benefits from this. But it’s always hard to tell when people are talking about their nutrition and health. Geoff: So this is so there’s been a lot I would say you know looking at enhancement has been throughout history and it’s been especially interesting from military contracts. And it’s something that we’re actually commercializing as a company today. So after a number of clinical trials on humans and animals, the specifics ketone compound called ketone Esraa that we’re bringing to the market commercializing enhances the performance. So on elite British cyclists were able to improve time trial performance for meters further in a 30 minute time trial for example mice on this ketone ester were solving mazes 30 percent faster than control and they’re running 32 percent longer than control. So in and in might ask the natural question is how does it work. Is this crazy compound. Well if you actually get the metabolism of what how ketones are metabolized ketones are just more efficient than carbohydrate or glucose and oxygen. So if you can actually improve the energetics of the mitochondria which is the power plant of the of the cell as heart cells produce ATP and which is what fuels Oliver of life essentially you can sort of extrapolate [Inaudible] inching downstream effects. TIll that speaks with human performance. Again a lot of active research with the military with athletics that’s a I would say that within the last five to ten years sports science this fuel they’re looking at trending all about markers like heart rate variability blood glucose blood ketones inflammation markers like HSCRP, these are all things that might have been done in medicine as as as a therapeutic purposes or in a research lab and now as being done on a daily or weekly consistent basis to improve performance and longevity has been especially interesting topic again. People have wanted to live forever since our is right you know Chinese emperors drinking Mercury has backfired or you had you know the city of gold or the fountain of youth in Spanish and European tradition and then there’s been recent I would say perhaps tabloidy gossip news with people like Peter Teal in. you know using young blood to this technique called [Inaudible] Matt: What’s the science on that because the science actually seems to be pretty good. Geoff: The science is I would say is what I guess and what is your sense of pretty good. I would say it’s promising in the sense that when they transferred young rat lead to an older rat where they they like bind them together it was good for the older rat and so there’s others some signal there like I no doubt there hasn’t been any human studies that I’ve seen. I don’t know. Now it’s interesting to see if that would pass ethical review the mechanisms aren’t clear. I notice different groups looking at what is in Young Blood that doesn’t exist for example as one with it’s not the mechanism by them that was reasonable. You can be you know stem cells but then you say okay you know there would be so against stem cells with that. What would you have to make sure that there’s no rejection from some of us stem cells? If you can have your own stem cells purified with that mimic the effects of viruses for example. So I think there is open science what is happening that is seeming to work in the transfusion of young blood in rats into the older mice the eyelids. You know if you are a billionaire and wanna be a little bit speculative I don’t think it’s on. I think it’s the it could be something there but I would say a lot of the interest is oarsman looking at caloric restriction or [Inaudible] fasting. There’s not a lot of research there if you actually look at what has extended lifespan in [Inaudible] in rats and started to go into dogs and primates caloric restriction which is this notion of restricting the amount of calories one takes is consistently increasing lifespan. So that seems to be conserved across a number of species. Unfortunately, you can’t really do a human controlled human study or you could take a long time here to track corporation over 80 plus years but they’ve done some monkeys. There’s been two monkeys studies wanted to engage in what I believe in Wisconsin and looking at that and there’s been pretty interim results there about it but I zoom out a little bit I think [Inaudible] judging diet movement fasting all seem to be related and that seems to be a very interesting avenue of looking at longevity research and that’s something that we’re interested in as well. And that’s also related to our ketone ester technology because we actually look at caloric restriction airman fasting [Inaudible] diets one of the points of all those three different interventions is that it raises blood ketone levels well that’s exactly what the ketone ester we can raise your blood ketone levels equivalent to 10 days worth of fasting and 30 minutes which is pretty common. So we decided to look into the research and see cancer the longevity effects of caloric restriction be mimicked by having heat on esters. Matt: Let’s play devil’s advocate though from my point of view or how I would see that as less metabolic stress equals less aging. So but because they’re eating less or because they’re eating less time frames or because they’re eating less carbohydrates they’re generally less stressed or ultimately live longer. Geoff: Yeah I think there there’s something to that. So there is a very nuanced space I think that seems to be one of the main mechanisms of why caloric restriction works if you actually look into a little bit of mechanism why it works so slow metabolism is one was one end point of what we were told. Caloric restriction we’d actually look at ketone metabolism versus carbohydrate metabolism for example ketone metabolism reduces reactive oxygen species production and actually is a scavenger of reactive oxygen species. So, is [Inaudible] metabolism caloric restriction. The domino effect or is it because you’re burning ketones and ketones are reducing [Inaudible] seizure [Inaudible] creation and scavenging us are some of the downstream pathways of [Inaudible] touted like Foxhole theory is that is that from slowing metabolism which it doesn’t seem to be related to or is that from signaling from [Inaudible]. So again I think these are all interrelated. I think longevity is very very complicated. I think these all interplay together but hands where the research is exciting. [Inaudible] to or it’s okay you can actually tease apart. Now in research to test the ketones themselves separately from caloric restriction or [Inaudible] I totally like all these questions will be answered definitively Matt: And that’s how it works for the science that always takes time. So I want to I want to transition a little bit into the Quantified Self and IoT movements how those are how those are impacting human health and performance. And then what average listeners can do if they want to start taking taking their health and their own him so to speak. Geoff: Yeah I think measure you can you can you can optimize what we can measure and it’s a very engineers approach to thinking about health or any problem. And it’s interesting that no one I mean it’s an end in a pilot to help our own performance and I think that’s one of that and that’s what the quantified self movement and that’s what the biohacking movement as I see it is all about can we apply that same care and attention that we treat our phones in our cars in homes we have all these sensors and all these things we like basically know more about our you know the engine status that we know about our own bodies. So that’s what I mean I’ve been experimenting with a lot so for most of last year I was wearing continuous glucose monitor so I can track my blood sugar continuously just through through Bluetooth and that was very enlightening to just understand how my body is responding to different inputs and how it responds to exercise sort correlating that to different stressful events and maybe see Hey [Inaudible] pre-empt had a prophylactic towards something that I know would be stressful by managing my blood glucose that beforehand. So I think in the future we’ll have a real-time dashboard of all all relevant biomarkers. I think that will come sooner than later. I think it’s pretty silly that today most people get their biomarkers checked and these can you know like you know information markers insulin markers or [Inaudible] these are things that you would you know go through a doctor once a year to get your blood drawn. But most people don’t even do that. I don’t know one last time you had your blood drawn. Matt: I was more recent just because I wanted to do some tests and still I’m not into this movement but yeah your average actually Geoff: Yeah! I think there is a I’ve been doing this basically every month every quarter recently just like a real real understanding of how my biomarkers are bolted towards civil experiments writes I’ve been exploring with [Inaudible] diets and I know that the most the most will just don’t know what any other markers are until they’re sick and it’s too late and I think a big part of the value of quantified self is just understood your baseline in a quantified way and how this corpus of data that you and really just you have to be your own best advocate for your own health. And I think that a lot of people today in our culture somehow just push our responsibility to a doctor or just like not average thoughtful about their health until you actually sick and if you typed in I’ve talked to so many doctors and you know there’s you can say there’s a lot of challenges in the health care system and I really want to help people but go but I think any reasonable doctor would say there’s this weird incentive structures that are messed up with the health care system today and I would like to see a role where doctors are more like guides or coaches that help you get to your goals and don’t. And these doctors aren’t these ivory towers that you can’t you know have a real conversation with these people should be you know really good guides to direct to your health because oftentimes you know your body you care about your body and your health you’re the machine of your body more than anywhere else in the world and you should feel the responsibility to understand it and I think that this culture like they say abandoning responsibility is quite harmful. Matt: So this transitions nicely into something I wanted to bring up. It seems as if we’re moving towards an era where people that are informed and proactive are becoming more productive more successful economically physically etc. via both methods like this and methods which we will start to get into with engineering and potentially mechanic or IoT implants etc. are real words an era where we have different species of human. Geoff: Yeah I mean that’s a very touchy subjects but I I if I had answered blandly I think we’re heading in that direction. Absolutely and I don’t know if that’s good for society or for Civilization stability. Like I said I think it’s going admission it’s a good thing and you start you see this in terms I mean there’s been a popular Atlantic piece looking at the song selection of mating and marriage and building families with people on different economic groups right. So you have like people that are college educated or having you know high salary jobs are marrying other people and have high educations and high salary jobs. So this intermingling of different economic backgrounds coming together in marrying is booming where and error. So we already see a segmentation or segmentation with economic classes. And again I don’t know that’s a good or bad thing. Right like that just in the independent I care people making their own life choices I think you should let people marry whoever they want but there seems to be that soft election and it just seems that these things will accelerate like that. So I think it’s incumbent on that on on companies like ourselves or the community or regulators to make sure that these tools are accessible to everyone. Right. Like I think this really shows that if you know [Inaudible] or longevity things are only rich people can afford them and only than ever for them then I think that would celebrate the bifurcation of human society and human speciation. I think you’ve had sort of these horror stories told before with technology right. I mean there was this trope maybe 20 years ago that the computers and smartphones but would divide people because people with computers would have acted with computers and people without computers would be up in the stone ages. And that has not turned out to be the case right like there was 20 or Android phones are letting people in sub Saharan in Africa up like subliminal technology right there going from not even having landlines having wireless high fidelity you know all the connections. So can that can that same trend happens with Human Performance Technologies. I hope so. Matt: I’m really doubtful Geoff: very good. I mean I’m curious what you think you think that like words can be on the path of just the speciation. Matt: I think we’re I think we’re definitely on a path of speciation because technology starts out incredibly expensive. Only the rich can afford it. It’s one of the early guys to be able to use a mainframe computer and it turns out he started Microsoft. But if you look at these type of technologies there are even more radical because evolution and every thousand year every 100000 year type time horizon if it suddenly becomes something you can do in your lifetime or something that’s generational then there doesn’t seem any reason to suspect that you can catch up once you’re behind on a flywheel it’s like trying to start an e-commerce. Geoff: Yeah I mean I think it’s good. I think it’s a good argument. I mean I think I mean the altruistic and that’s altruism. But like I guess that all of humanity is a family side of me is like how do we enable people to we have to try them out behind the knee. I think it’s income into the stability of civilization to make sure that we give everyone the equal opportunity to have a chance to make it right. Like I don’t think so. It is beyond our pay grade as this you know individual contributors. I think this will be a dormant industry societal pact when all these colleges really start landing how we can disseminate these analogies I think. But I think you’re right. Like so yeah I mean I think with the iPhone it was interesting like I think with mobile phones we’ve seen that the technology has been able to McKnight’s relatively quickly with electric cars. I think it’s still the history is still to be written but it seems like they are fairly affordable electric cars now. Right. I speak to unbaptized relatively quickly. Is there something uniquely different with biological improvements. Matt: Maybe its ability with the access. Geoff: Yeah maybe in maybe they just you know if we don’t have this enhancement you just die out and it just ends up and you like it into such a short snap in that no time horizon where it doesn’t need it just gets solved in a generation but that doesn’t mean that it sets off like a really scary you know this topic future where like an assumption is the world is going to be left behind in other world other half of the world. This will go on as a client. You Topix were you know this is like the Elysium movie. This is like Mollie’s [Inaudible] movies that have explored these these these these ideas Matt: basically the question will be if you start tonight calling enhancing people are you able to make larger jumps than the previous ones have made. So if you have lots of little steps that they are super elites are using to enhance and enhance enhance one to 10 percent later on once that gets to even more efficient can you do a 10 percent enhancement for the same amount as a 1 percent Geoff: Right! This [Inaudible] It’s like the singularity just you just you just skyrocket away. Matt: Right yeah we’ll I will say it’s very interesting I want to transition a little bit now. So part of the purpose of this podcast is to get some of the smartest and most innovative people on to talk about their industries. And part of it is to explore the ones they’re not in but are interested in. So what are you interested in what other industries outside of your own do you find most fascinating. Geoff: I mean I guess if you define our industry fairly narrow slightly on edge. You know we are nutrition company that works with the lead athletes and elite operators folks in the military. And I think you use them a little bit. I’m interested in implants sided like these are the same future. Right like this brain-computer interfaces can we have these implants that make our cells or ?? our cells at this real-time data streams about our physiology and biology. So but that might be just overawed you might say they hate us into human form and so I mean in human form. And that is true. And you argue outside of human performance Rodley are my interested in other recent really interesting discussion with the new CTO of [Inaudible] base about can you start your own country and how would you build you know with the emergence of photographically secure ways to store like store ownership. Could you create a society from scratch with engineering principles or just like modern modern understanding of how to optimize society how to optimize geographic locations. Right. I think that’s kind of interesting. [Inaudible] talking about how our cities are built they’re really legacies of like there are initial tribes of human [Inaudible] to be near water sources and you kind of just build a village around this riverbank and then you build castles and then you build horse carriage pathways and he built like roads for cars. And I have some underground subway systems. But what if you just call a city from scratch with scooters no cars everything optimized for walkability and light my transit options. What if you structured you know how people lived in a way that made more geographic sense. And what I mean by that is that for me you know for for a lot of us we spend most of our time at work or at the gym or something. But those are pretty randomly distributed where you’ve got a system where right outside your house you hide your cash around like all the things that you did on a daily basis and a little bit further out from you were the things he did a weekly basis and then even further from you are things that you did on a monthly basis. So you think of this in a computer systems version of your CPU an L2 cache you know your rap you’re hard drive your interconnected you know tribe on a different computer on a different network. You get that same analogy towards human geographic locations. That’s an interesting area that I think would be funded think about and work on. Right. Like can we just redesign our cities redesign how we live? Matt: And that will be especially huge as we start to explore space. I think I think a system like that could become problematic because we have a fat ass American problem where no one goes anywhere. We all get that way. But Europe seems to have a better system in terms of having to move from a health perspective. But again if people are actually good about fitness I would be another story. Geoff: Yeah I mean I think that’s one thing that’s I is super passionate. For me personally, I mean I thing I never was like a super athlete or you know I and only the ride home about me being athletic but I think it’s doing a lot of time with military folks bring a lot of time with elite athletes. You know a couple of my colleagues in the office you know are competitive triathletes. So you know Brianna that’s a research we just qualified for the World Championships for the seventy points three Ironman off of our first Ironman. And she is like a two-time world champion before that and I don’t mean to brag for images like these people like you like they did run 20 miles before coming to work. And I was like What the hell. Like why are you doing? Like how you do. And like. And I think he spent so much time with these people he was that they’re not you know obviously there’s a difference in the amount of time spent maybe some difference of just talent of being a better athlete just from from your genetics but they’re also just human beings. And why was the gap? And it just like can you just be thoughtful about actually exercising and being put yourself in and build yourself up to be fit any any huge realize that so much of the limitations of all her physical abilities I think it’s just so suicidal constrained. You know our ancestors were just carrying our entire lives under back for like 30 miles a day. And like I was just like what they did. And I think now it’s like people are scared to walk for half a mile and just like why is it at such a big gap what our genetics have not changed that much in the last 10000 years. So I just want to encourage people to just like not just a little bit more thoughtful and get out there and react. It’s like the people that are after you watch on TV that are dumping on people and running 26 miles. Yeah, of course, they put a lot more hard work there or less like they’re not they’re not like unreachable Matt: Must be the genetic engineering gets more and the NFL will be quite something where where are the best places for people to learn a little bit more about not just you guys but the industry in general what’s happening. They want to enhance themselves they want to learn about quantified self. They want to learn about intermittent fasting or other sources. Geoff: Yeah. So I would say that there’s quite a bit of a community that we’ve helped foster human so we have a lot of guides that human dot com slash library or we have guides or Internet fasting guides or androgenic diets pretty big discussion groups actually on Facebook called Weafer assets. One of the largest online in human fasting groups and that’s just you know we get nothing like 50000 people there are now just like talking about their fasting routines and different biomarkers or tracking and encouraging each other to track include themselves. But beyond you know platforms or services that we have that like there’s a lot of great communities on which you look at you know Reddit nootropics or long Justina or which is the longevity forum is a pretty good resources as well as just people talking ideas sharing ideas. One area that I really like but this might be deeper than some of the casuals out there that might be listening. Just like at comment like just read white papers that are being published around longevity around kinetic diets. She told us from ketosis. And again I think I mean it’s like I don’t have a formal apology or medical training but you can learn like if you actually just talk to people in a little school there is reading books and learning. And they spend a lot of hours learning and why can’t you just learn the same stuff like books and apology out there. So I think part of it just get out there read and talk to people. Matt: And let’s be totally honest you probably know a lot more than they do because this stuff is not covered enough and the whole medical curriculum. It’s pretty much how do we fix acute problems. How do we run a terrible innovation healthcare system? Geoff: Well I would say it’s in very very narrow spaces of you know areas like ketone or Kito metabolism. I I would feel confident saying yes but of course like doctors I think you know they’re very broadly trained and in some ways it’s interesting we actually like boiled down into what they study and what they learn in a lot of ways dirt technicians on humans. I think that the most awful doctors really really crack the theory and the mechanisms by the doctors can sort of get away with just like the algorithm of the wheelhouse of like OK these domes means these potential ideologies and therefore like these tests. And like I prescribe these drugs I think that’s a basic the workflow of a doctor and try to do that in 15 minutes and then get their insurance codes you know build in and paid for Matt: May I be maybe coming for them. Geoff: Yeah Matt: that will be that will be very helpful. One thing we like to do towards the end is to have a challenge something to leave listeners with it can be something to check out something to try a business to start. What would you like to challenge listeners with? Geoff: One thing I think people should experiment with if you are interested in longevity in fasting try a 36 hour fast. That means don’t eat any food for 36 hours. Drink a lot of water. Oftentimes I do a 36-hour fasts on Tuesday so I had my last meal on Monday night dinner and I’ll stop being at 7:00 p.m. [Inaudible] all Tuesday and have breakfast at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday. And that’s a good primer to jump-start your body into ketosis degenerate ketones of carbs and is a commendable challenge. And I think when I first started fasting I thought I would have been insane you know like oh you can you cannot eat for that long. I’m glad I realize that most of our bodies are quite resilient and most of us have an overabundance of energy. I mean if you look at the crime that he’s facing today there are diseases of chronic overconsumption that are consumption luckily. You know in the first world there’s no famine right. The disease is overeating. So I mean that’s an interesting challenge. Check it out. Matt: Completely agree. That would be very valuable. And if that seems like too much I would recommend the guys just looking into intermittent fasting 16 and 16 and a protocol basic and Geoff: Yeah 16 aid and equate to Matt: yeah that’s what seems to work pretty well for me. Geoff: Yeah. Yeah so that’s what we basically do on a daily basis 16 8 or so 16 hours fasted it our eating window and it’s very very doable. Think about it. Eight hours to eat. So it sounds like you start eating at 10 a.m. So a couple of late breakfast and something at 6:00 p.m. That’s like 60 Minutes in the lake. Even that is as has been shown to be efficacious for insulin blood glucose control. I’m just remembering the study done at UCSD across from twenty-four hundred three thousand women. Women that were fasting for over 13 hours a day had reduced overall mortality rates and reduced recurrence of cancer. Matt: So it is strong there plus for the people that like that like the hot stuff so to speak it should help you gain muscle was that Geoff: yeah. Yeah. Matt: Geoff, where is the best for people to find you online when a little bit more? Geoff: you can find me at twitter at Geoff Woo Wu or find us at human HVMN, HVMN.com or twitter at HYMN. Yeah. And I’m friendly I like engaging with folks online so just give me a shout Matt: and we’ll throw links and everything in the show. One more big prediction 10 years out give me something that no one’s thinking. Geoff: I think in 10 years I mean there will be some breakthroughs in diseases like Alzheimer’s and diabetes perhaps relating to like caging diet and ketones at that pathway the closest pathway. And I’ve seen another wild prediction. I think you might have these e groups of people that negotiate directly with governments. So basically like you have Google and big markets big corporations they’re basically negotiating directly with sovereign governments. I can imagine within the next ten years you have groups of people that function as virtual sovereign entities have like these visualize groups of people together negotiating and in creating their own nation states. We will see our first virtual nation-state in the next 10 years. Matt: There’s actually there’s actually one now Central and that’s working on that. What about when lead to so many different conversation points let’s get this off air. Thanks for coming on Geoff. Geoff: I appreciate that. Matt: If you want more of fringe FM you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to French dot FM you’ll find tons of audio and video interviews with leaders in the fields of genetics cryptocurrency longevity AI space VR and much much more. And you can follow me on Twitter at itsmattward. If you enjoyed the show please leave a quick review on iTunes to help more people discover fringe fm.

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