Invisible, turning into something where the future begins to white. A scientist, a storyteller through the unknown.
Well, thank you. I know, but really, you want to listen to more science. You already heard the three most famous scientists, and you'll skip talking to all of you. Um.
You should be happy. But it's really interesting. These scientists, they represent more than what we are talking about, right? Because I'm going to try and explain, or at least all that I've heard, and put them together in a story for all of you. And essentially, science is something that we have to do. There's a lot of talk all around the world, especially in our industry, but it's very few companies that are willing to do what they say. So what we have here is essentially telling you what we have done, and not just picking things up as we go.
The 12,000 of us here, sitting here in this room, and every single one of us right now is aging. It really doesn't matter what your age is. You are aging. You've heard that for all of human history. That was simply the deal. Aging was fixed.
And Chang, Dr. Chang, so you, by the way, Dr. Chang, that's a clever one. Okay. And he's not related to me. It remains a mystery, something you have to somewhat endure, never something that you can actually change or move.
Tonight you're sitting here. We're going to change that deal because we have discovered some fundamental truths through our scientific research. And one of them is, we found a clock. We found an aging clock. Okay, that's the difference. That's why we do the science, and that's why we do the research.
That's not a metaphor. It's not a marketing line. It's a real, measurable clock running inside every cell in our body. And for the first time, all of us with Nu Skin will be the ones to be able to read it. And when we can read it, we can slowly wind the clock down. It's actionable. In other words, it's not abstract.
So for the next 20 minutes, let me tell you this story of how we discovered this. At Nu Skin, we have spent four decades asking simply one question: How do we help people, as you heard earlier this afternoon, to look better, to feel better, to live better? Today, I'm going to show you the discovery that has actually been able to answer the question, and the answer can only be found here in Nu Skin.
So let's start with the question on this particular screen: How old are you? I'll wait for the translation. Maybe you don't even need the translation because immediately you have already answered it. You did a subtraction in your mind the instant I asked that question. This year. Oh, my microphone's spare.
Okay. The technology didn't work too well, huh? [laughter] Okay. All right. So you take your one year every year and you add it to your birthday or you subtract it, right? And that's your number. That number is fixed. There's nothing you can do about it. You celebrate it.
Every one of us celebrates our birthday. It doesn't care actually what you eat. It doesn't change. It doesn't care how you sleep or how well you sleep. It doesn't care how hard you live your life. Indeed, it is the single most democratic number in the world, in your life.
Ah, but here's the twist, and you may have missed it because Anne did talk about it, and that is that age, that chronological age, is really not that interesting. It's the least interesting thing about your health. I think the question is better asked here: Not how old are you, but how old is your body? That's what we're going to ask for the next 20 minutes because we can see it now. And that is important. This is what it's going to be.
So, I think we did, I showed you. Can I go back a little bit? Ah, okay. I'll have you see. You saw Paul, right? And he talked about the Ogimi village study and the research. Ignore Paul. You know, you don't want to see Paul anymore. Look at the woman. Focus on the woman.
How goes your aging? She's telling Paul her whole life story, but she's full of energy. I don't really know what her birth is or how old she is. What I do see, and this is the most important thing, and you can see it too, almost instantly. It isn't a number. It's the vitality. It's the wellness in her. It's the happiness. When she's talking to Paul, she's old in years, but she has the picture of health. And in her village that Paul has visited, it has the highest concentration of centenarians on earth. She's not the exception. She is in fact the rule. Don't you think we all want to be like her?
We can now, because science now lets us look inside our own bodies down to our genes and measure for the first time not just what's happening to those genes, as you have just heard, but how they are being regulated. What I've just said, I can stop right now because that's really the entire talk in one sentence. But let me continue a bit. Let me show you how we actually got here. How we got to the era of what we are now calling the ARMS revolution.
Four decades in the history of Nu Skin, we have been chasing aging for 40 years. This timeline is pretty critical for all of us because this is where I'm translating the science, and it sits one on top of the other. 1984. When you think about what we did in Nu Skin back in the inception of the company, we summarized all of it into one simple phrase. It's almost a defiant premise: all of the good, none of the bad. Think about it. Simple in essence, profound in its meaning.
1998. We brought out the 6S process, once again about generating and creating proof, not promises. Every product scientifically designed to be what? To be safe and effective. We do what we say. We don't just say. That's three. It's a commitment, a tangible commitment in scientific research.
2008, we created this sort of HAP scientific approach. It was almost aspirational when we came out with it in 2008, but it actually turned out to be prophetic because we were locking in your age at the genetic source. We're not just masking the damage on the surface. We went after where aging actually began, at the genetic level.
2017, we became, as Ryan mentioned early on, we became the number one skin treatment device systems company on earth. Not an easy accomplishment. [applause] Thank you. Four decades, four chapters, but not one of them replaced the last. Each one, in fact, stood on the one before it. And now, here comes another chapter, very actionable, that's going to change everything, and that's the ARMS revolution.
Because you have heard and you may have missed the message from the scientists before when they were talking during the panel. Something shifted. Something profoundly has changed, and only we in Nu Skin are beginning to realize the importance of this particular discovery.
You know, for most of human history, we have been searching for this so-called fountain of youth, but unfortunately they were looking in the wrong place. They were looking outside the body. If you think about it, every culture, it doesn't matter, you have a fountain of youth story. In Nu Skin, we look elsewhere. Because of the science that we've been doing, because of all the research that we've been conducting over the last four decades, we knew they were looking in the wrong place. We have to look inside. It's actually the so-called fountain of youth is inside your body, not out there. It's in all of us.
Science now has given it a name because it's tangible now. It's based on scientific evidence. We are not hoping in the dark. We have enough data and scientific evidence to prove what? To prove indeed there is a wellness aging clock that regulates every cell, every tissue in our body. It's almost like an hourglass, if you will. Those sands of time can either run fast or they can run slow, and you can actually influence it. One trajectory, three possible outcomes, all governed by that one clock.
This discovery is about to change how the world thinks about getting old. We are the first company to recognize what that means. You can be old, but you don't need to be old. That's the difference. Here's a single idea.
When you walk out of this room tonight, there are two ages, and you've heard this a few minutes ago, living in our body. But they're not the same number. That's your chronological aging. That's your birthday. It's fixed. There's nothing you can do about it. 12 months from now, you're going to be a year older. Every one of us goes through that same, what I would call, the rate of aging. Whether you like it or not, you're going to be a year older.
However, on the other side, which is way more meaningful for all of us because it's very much related to quality of life, is your biological age. How old are your cells? How old are your tissues? How old are your organs? That controls and determines the biological age. That number can change. Fixed versus modifiable. Remember that distinction because from now on that's what I'm going to focus on.
So what actually moves this biological number, or something to do with this wellness clock? I would always consider the clock to be the orchestra of age. It doesn't just track your age, it sets the pace of it. And that pace depends entirely on how you live. On the back side of the ledger, you would have things like tobacco smoke, air pollution, poor nutrition, oxidative stress, all these technical concepts you've heard from us and from many, many competitors as well, right? Every one of those will speed up the clock. Number one, but it's not the only thing. Our body has never been about a single thing, no matter how much we wish it to be.
On the other side we have the other good guys: the antioxidant-rich nutrition, the mitochondria support, active cellular repair, sleep, stress management. Every one of those will slow your clock down. And this is a good thing. When your clock slows down, your biological age gets younger, as a Stanford study showed.
So, what's new? Ellen talked about three separate things, but they're not really separate. She talked about the lifestyle factors. She talked about some epigenetics. And she talked about this clock. I didn't talk about this clock. They're all inextricably linked together because the clocks that I'm talking about here are all being controlled by epigenetic changes. That is the fundamental breakthrough in aging science. We have a clock that is so well validated. There are no more ifs and buts. It is the way that we should evaluate aging.
Every time when there is a story about a singular or a single mechanism, they're barking up the wrong tree. In fact, it's not even a tree they would be barking up on. Love it.
So, what really is epigenetics? Another science lesson, right? For all you 12,000 people. Oh gosh, it's so hard. However, let me try. Look upon your epigenetics as sticky notes. Think of your DNA as a cookbook. Every recipe in the cookbook that will help your body to run optimally or not so well is all written in this cookbook, i.e., we call it DNA. Epigenetics is a stack of sticky notes on top of the cookbook.
Notes that either say turn on this gene, turn off this gene, turn this on, turn it off, and so on. They decide in a way which recipes get cooked. Another way of looking at it, epigenetics, if you will, would be a wall of light switches. Same wiring, i.e., your DNA, but it's a different pattern of turning all these switches either on and off, and it depends on what sequence.
And that's what matters to all of us. Think about it. It's an actionable thing that's happening in the body. It's not fixed. It's not a physical mutation of a gene. It's something that has been introduced on top of the gene by external factors, by your lifestyle, for example. They move with what you eat, how you sleep, how much stress you carry. Which means right now, those switches are not really a record of your birthdays. It's a record of how you have lived them.
And Nu Skin is now researching ways to reach those switches directly. And in order for us to reach that aging response modulator, a new category or a new concept called ARMS, that would be aging response modulators. As Ryan alluded to early on, say it again: aging response modulator, aging response modulator. You are in an ARMS race.
Now when you walk out of this conference, that's what you've got to remember, that you are coming out from a conference that has given you a new insight that is actionable, if you will, that no company has been able to do, because these ARMS will be driving everything forward for us. This is how we intend to create this category, and no one else is even in the race yet.
So let me say it simply one more time what an ARM is. It is an intervention that changes biological aging, that shifts the epigenetic switches on the wellness clock, and keeps the body young. That is not a promise I'm making here. I'm not hoping that it's going to happen. It is simply right now the most effective tool we have ever, ever created against aging.
And here is what makes this real, not theoretical. Look at this. For the first time, we have shown from the Stanford study, and once again the clever Chang alluded to that, we have shown that aging clock, or wellness clock, that we talked about is correlated with your nutritional health. And you can measure this not with a needle, not bleeding you to death, not waiting for a lab to deliver the results, not within at a minimum a few weeks to get those results. No waiting. And what is it called? It's called the carotenoid score.
It is now known to give you the insights, again together in collaboration with Dr. Chang, to give you the insights into the wellness clock which previously had been difficult to assess and discern except by our scientists. Now with the help of the carotenoid score, you can easily see the clock just as much as you can measure your weight or measure your blood pressure.
One scan. 15 seconds. 15 seconds. No guessing. No waiting. Almost instantaneous. Right. You look at your carotenoid score and you're looking at your nutritional health, a measure that can be correlated with the wellness clock, your biological aging, in real time. Forwards, making the invisible visible. That power is in your hands, not just in the hands of a scientist. And this is what the Stanford study is.
These are four words that came out from that study. Look at the carotenoid score of over 100 people and compare those scores to various aging clocks. And what do you see? We saw a very compelling and consistent pattern. People with higher carotenoids tend to show a slower pace of aging. Never been done before. You had to wait a long time to be able to see that, and in 15 seconds you saw that when it brought nice and therefore, you know, a younger biological age across multiple epigenetic aging measures.
One of the most striking findings, if you will, in my opinion, from this epigenetic clock study is that we looked at over 11 biological systems, or physiological organs, tissues, or biochemical pathways, and each and every one of them, on average, gave us a score of four years younger when you have a higher carotenoid score.
That's not a claim that one score causes all of that, but it's an association that is so consistent, replicated across nearly every major organ system in the body. Surely that cannot be random. So for the first time in the history of aging science, we have a number that shows us a clear link between antioxidant status, nutritional health, and the pace of biological aging. Nobody, once again, guys, has been able to do that.
And that's not all. We took it one step further. Not just a number. I know I can say it's a great number, but I want to see whether it can be clinically demonstrated. And these are some of the individuals in a study where a higher carotenoid score gave a way more useful look. Four people, four scores, four chronological ages listed right beside them, and the pattern goes exactly the way the data predicts. Higher score, younger face every time. What more can I ask from a scientific study?
This is the moment, I think, you know, even for me, it stops being an abstract concept or notion. You know, it became real. Yeah, you're looking at somebody's actual face, and that number that we had correlating to that actual face, that's how the face got there.
So why does it matter so much? Because it lets you see the correlation once again between nutrition and healthy aging. Yes, you heard whether you're aging optimally or aging faster than you should, early enough to still be able to do something about it. Think of it this way. What does a fire alarm do? A fire alarm tells you the house is already burning. The fire is almost getting out of control. But what about a smoke detector? A smoke detector gives you time to act. The carotenoid score is your smoke detector.
Well, let me tell you a rather, to me it is a rather popular parable, and I think it's up there really good. Oh yeah. So one day somebody said, okay, a group of people, blindfold them and ask them to describe the elephant. One of the blindfolded persons touches the tail and says it looks like a snake. Another one holds the leg and swears it's a column, and it's the truth.
That's what our competition is doing. They're looking at aging almost blindfolded, and they're unable to see the whole picture. Each one staring through a rather narrow window, each one convinced they found the whole truth and nothing but the truth about aging.
No one but us has taken this complete picture, every source of aging and how it is regulated, in one system. We're not holding a trunk. We're not describing an elephant that looks like a trunk nor a leg. We see the whole elephant. We can measure it. We can influence it. We can track it over time. In our world, that's not an advantage. It's game over.
So really, when you look at what I'm talking about, is what this means for all of you, all 12,000 people in this room. You're holding right now in your hands a complete aging system that lets you see, act, and track, a complete solution to change lives. No, no, let me change that. A complete solution to save lives.
Seeing is believing, right? And for the first time, nobody has to take your word for it. You can watch the aging process happen and do something about it in real time.
Picture this graph as your own life. 50 years running left to right along the bottom. Three lines. Every one of us could be on one of them. Red line, premature aging, climbing steeper than it has to because of your lifestyle or external factors. Gray line, normal aging, not terribly exciting, average path, nothing special. Well, nothing too terribly happening. Okay. Blue line is the optimal aging.
The same 50 years, but a measurably gentler slope. Same calendar, same 50 years ticking at the same fixed rate chronologically for all of us, but three completely different outcomes that you can actually influence and make a difference. Nu Skin science that you have just heard is about moving you off the red line, off the gray line, and onto the blue line, and proving it to you with a number. Not asking you to hope, showing you. That's another difference.
You can take charge of this now. Starting here, raise your arm or hand right now. If you're ready, go and do it. Go get your score. See how your nutritional health can get better optimized to support your own wellness clock. It's a number that can change your life.
But really, I didn't come here just to talk to all of you about your health, your score, or even your clock. I came here to talk about the person that you are going to help who isn't here in this room tonight. You've got to think of those folks right now. And you know who they are. The friend who keeps saying, 'I'm old. I can't do things.' No, you can say to that individual. You can talk to your neighbor who just got a scary number from their doctor, or you can talk to your sibling who's been looking for something, anything that gives them energy again and not just going through life.
For four decades, we've been building the proof. Tonight, you finally have the complete proof. Not a story, not a feeling, a number, a scan, a Stanford professor's study, a face that tells the truth. You're no longer asking anyone to believe you. You can show them.
This is an offering that is actually creating a mission, isn't it? And not just changing lives, like I say, but saving lives. So here's my ask. This week, not someday, this week, find that someone. Sit with them. Show them how their nutritional health connects to their invisible clock that is made visible by a carotenoid score.
And then invite them not just to try a product, but to build something with you, to become part of this, to carry this discovery, this fundamentally important, pivotal scientific discovery, to the next person and the next. Because, as I mentioned, it's not about the 12,000 sitting in this room. It's every human being who has ever asked a question: how do I get more time? That is practically every person on earth, isn't it?
This company, Nu Skin, didn't spend the last four decades chasing the fountain of youth so only a handful of us can keep the secret. We chased it so every one of you would have something worth building a life around and worth inviting someone else to join.
It's your move. See it, share it, build it. That's really the whole talk in three words. Go find one person. Thank you.
