Is Aging Inevitable? Dr. Joe Chang on Gene Expression & Longevity

Thank you. Hi Sarah. Hello. Hello. Let me see if Scott's got us broadcasting yet. I think we'll give it just a second.

Well, yeah, Sarah, it's a great question, right? First of all, hi everybody who's just joined the call and so on. I hope to sort of maybe explain and describe what I've done in this new book. And really, I've written many books in my life, but many of them are very technical. They're really only meant for scientists or fellow scientists who read and the language is so arcane. There's so much jargon in it and so on and so forth. And it's sort of, well, until I came into Nu Skin and so on and in Pharmanex, I realized, you know, science is something that can be explained if it can be done correctly and that's what led me, one thing led to another and finally I put the original book together for The Aging Myth and it was based on a discovery or an insight more than anything else among our scientists and what we have done in Nu Skin and that is asking a very simple question and that is, you know, is aging inevitable? And it's sort of like up to that point back in, oh, I would imagine 2003, 2004, it's sort of to us, you know, we kept on asking and persistent and asking the question and finally we say it isn't because something is happening at some basic fundamental level in the body. Okay, that is changing and is changing because of lifestyle. Okay, now when we took that particular insight into our thinking, we sort of think, well, if lifestyle can actually affect something fundamental in the body, I would imagine we ought to be able to change it back in a way, right? And because lifestyle is just an external factor. So, that started our thinking and finally, I mean, this fundamental level that we discovered or actually in collaboration with some other professors at University of Wisconsin was at the genetic level. And it became clear and it was not just us focusing on aging but other folks, other scientists were focusing at the genetic level to discover other things, you know, diseases and so on and so forth. So, it did converge our thinking and finally I say, well, that's where we have to go and that is really the beginning of our journey, if you will, at the genetic level. And this is where we have to really, one of the major reasons, again, in this particular sort of a discussion that we have is because I wrote the book because it became clear to me, everybody, but most people, you know, if you're not a scientist, I guess, it immediately when you mention genes, it's almost like the reaction is you cannot change genes, you know, they're immutable. It's fixed. You're born with the genes, you know, and there's nothing you can do about it kind of thinking. And it's a very black and white reaction. And I can totally appreciate why that is so. And that led me to say, well, there's something that's happening at a genetic level that is actually changeable, and that is its activity. It's a subtle but very profound difference between changing or mutating a gene. That's why most people refer to when you try to say, well, we're going to change your genes. They will say, oh, you're going to mutate my genes. I'm going to become Frankenstein. Yeah. Yeah. And all that. But I'm really not referring to that. I'm really referring to gene activity and more correctly that it's called gene expression. All right, it's activity because there's only one thing that genes do and that is to make a protein eventually. Yeah. There's nothing else. It doesn't do anything else but make proteins. And each gene that makes a protein, that protein behaves differently. It can either behave as an enzyme, it can behave as a structural component of your cell, your skin and so on and so forth. Okay, so it's key. So it's gene expression we're going after and that's what spurred me to say I think I better write a book on this a little bit to explain more clearly what we're doing. And we call this whole approach that we have in Nu Skin AgeLOC. Yeah. And it's really referring to gene expression. That's how we started, Sarah, on this whole deal on the first book. So it's all about gene expression. And the example I used was really based on the fact on my parents, one died with a very, this is something also you should remember is the fact that it's quality of life that is way more important than how long you live. Because both my parents lived up to about the same age but the challenge was my dad never had a good quality of life during his last five years of his life, is more or less spent in a wheelchair. Yeah. So whereas my mom, it's miraculous to me. I mean she essentially just closed her eyes one day and never opened them again. But up to that point, she was healthy. And the reason why I know she's healthy is because she's always walking about. Yeah. She's always, you know, has a snide remark to make about me thinking I'm still a nine-year-old and say, why are you not doing this? I said, Mom, I think I've grown up. I got to say, you're still a nine-year-old as far as I'm concerned. So that's the challenge and that was a good metric for me. It was a scanner in a way for me to detect, well, mom is still okay. You know, she still thinks I'm a nine-year-old and has this incredible mental ability to tell me what to do. So, that's the difference and that's what one thing led to another and gave me confidence the age approach that we had which we described in the original edition will lead to something meaningful, functionally meaningful in the body.

No, it's interesting, Sarah, because over the last 10 years, obviously, like you mentioned, science has progressed a whole bunch, very significant. We're taking leaps and bounds in terms of understanding how the body functions and so on. Yeah. And we learn more about gene expression and so on and so forth. But still, a worry sort of gnaws at me in terms of especially for folks in the field, in the world of Nu Skin, and said, yeah, really, come on, you know, face it. I was talking to myself. I'm going mad and sort of say, why else do you think gene expression is so important to you? Because your knowledge base is very different from the rest of the field. Don't you think you need to maybe up the ante a little bit and explain or translate what gene expression means? You can't just leave it as it affects everything and what is everything? You know, perhaps you might even be more powerful if you can do a translation. All right? And I say, okay, maybe it's time after 10 years, I think we have developed the ability to translate genetic activity changes or gene expression changes into something we call functional or physiological. In other words, your lungs work better, okay? Or your metabolism is way better. Yeah. Or you can sleep better. Those things everybody understands and everybody can relate to that. Okay. I don't have to really convert everybody into a scientist. Well, your gene cluster, that was a term that we used to describe gene expression changes. Yeah, it sounds really nice and appealing and maybe even compelling, but what does it really mean to that individual, you know, and that's the translation. I really analogy. It's about, you know, if all of you one day would go over and visit the pyramids, you would imagine in Egypt all those pyramids have hieroglyphics on it. You may not realize the hieroglyphics were never translated until about 150 years ago or slightly more than that. Okay, Napoleon conquered Egypt and one of his sort of archaeologists or whatever dug up this slab of stone and on this slab of stone, it had three languages. The top was hieroglyphics. The middle was an ancient kind of a Demotic language they call it. And finally the third one was ancient Greek which every archaeologist was able to read working in Egypt because until the discovery of this stone right with the three languages, all of us thought that hieroglyphics were just cartoons that the Egyptians 5,000 years ago would just love drawing on their pyramids. They were nothing but was actually a language. And that's how we learn how Egyptians 5,000 years ago, what was their life and what was their culture and so on. That slab of stones, in case you ever go to London British Museum, is called the Rosetta Stone. Okay. So I think what we have and I'm trying to say, The Aging Myth, this new edition is sort of a form of a Rosetta Stone. It translates what we've been talking about regarding gene expression and links them to metabolism, links them to how these ingredients that you mentioned, nutrigenomics, how certain food ingredients and natural products can actually influence it and what does it translate to? Changes in your metabolism, changes in your nutritional deficiency. In fact, it even translates to a positive impact on your mind.

I love it. And that when you and I talked about it before it launched and you said, Sarah, stop talking about just antioxidants. It's nutritional health, comprehensive nutritional wellness. I went, I get it. I get it. How cool that that many different scans that we had done previously with AI and your brain have put together this device that can show everybody a key into what's going on, our Rosetta Stone. I love it.

Yeah. And that's the one and there's a fairly significant section on the Prism.

And when I mentioned to you, Sarah, don't think about it as just an antioxidant. We have actually translated that measurement of the antioxidant into a measurement of nutritional health.

That's really, I'm hoping people will get out of it because it is not just an upgrade of the BioPhotonic Scanner that we have. Many of you have played with a scanner and it's still difficult. I knew it as soon as we launched this Prism that many of you all right are going to say, 'Oh yeah, it's an antioxidant.' And if you're successful in sort of giving out that narrative, you'll continue with that. It's okay. But do remember it took you more than 20 years. I've been talking about antioxidants for 20 years to get all of you, you know, sort of legacy leaders or whatever you call the old leaders to finally get it. We don't have 20 years to go through nutritional health. That is the one that I think you might be able to get people to react to that particular question much more readily. So that's why we translate it. So there's a whole chapter, a whole section on it in the new book too. And obviously on the beauty side we also have become the number one, you know, beauty device systems company in the world and that is obviously due to all the efforts through all of you and I think we'll continue to be that when you can really truly understand how we came about those devices and why they are there, you know. Yeah, that makes sense. And just in a couple days here, we're launching the LifePak tablets.

Well, remember previously we had it in capsules, right? Yeah. And it took us a long time to be able to figure out a tablet formulation that is actually will do as well or to be absorbed as effectively as a capsule that we have achieved. That was what drove us to say finally we can get into a tablet and tableting technology, you know, allows us to compress the ingredients into a much smaller... okay. You've seen the tablets, have you? Fairly small. Capsules you can't because the capsule when you look at a capsule it is the size it is what it is and it's as big and when you have, you know, I don't know four to five up to seven capsules. That's a lot. Yeah, you're, I can see you agreeing. So, and I think the tablet, at least on the compliance side, folks will find it way more, I'll use, no pun intended, you find it way more palatable to take these tablets. Okay. Yeah, don't worry. I think you might detect a little bit of a smell because now it's not totally enclosed in a capsule. Okay. Yeah. So, you smell but that's your typical medicinal smell or the natural odor of all the ingredients that we use. Okay. It's not that oh gosh, what is this? It's because of the active ingredients, they do have a particular odor to them in that sense but absorption is as good. And oh, one of the things, a couple of ingredients we also had to change and that was the folic acid.

Yeah. The folic acid, we use the sort of the original form, if you will. And what happened is that most of us, 90% and up, it's likely to be able to convert that original form to what we call a methylated form, another modified form that the body uses. Yeah. Okay. Well, we thought we're going to skip that step and might as well cover 100% of the people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we also, so no more, it's there. And there are a couple of other things also we modify in a way so that it can be absorbed without needing the body to convert it, you know, and so on.

Yeah. Now that obviously this is LifePak, regular LifePak. LifePak Nano still stays as it is because some of the capsules, some of the ingredients in that one, it has marine omega, that's an oil. Yeah. You cannot compress oil.