Aging doesn’t have to mean decline — in fact, what if you could slow it down or even reverse it? In this episode, Chris Mirabile, founder of NOVOS, breaks down the 12 Hallmarks of Aging and how understanding them can help you live a longer, healthier life. From mitochondria to telomeres, Chris shares the science behind why we age, the lifestyle changes that make the biggest impact, and how NOVOS created the first formula targeting all 12 aging mechanisms. He also shares his personal story of overcoming a brain tumor at 16, what inspired his passion for longevity, and why he now has a biological age 14 years younger than his chronological age. If you’ve ever wondered what’s possible when science meets self-care, this conversation will change the way you think about aging and your future health.

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The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

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Reverse Aging? The Science Of Longevity With Chris Mirabile, NOVOS CEO And Founder

I’m excited for our guests and for our episode that’s ahead. We have the Founder and CEO of NOVOS Labs, Chris Mirabile, with us. He is an amazing human who has done amazing research and has launched a company that is addressing what’s called the 12 Hallmarks of Aging. We’re going to dive into those and what they are, and then there’s a simple solution. What I’m most excited about is that you could research for hours and hours and try to find solutions to each of these individually, but they’ve put it all together and one simple easy-to-use solution that can slow down and even reverse your aging.

He is someone who is practicing what he preaches. He’s living the lifestyle and using these supplements as well to slow down aging at the cellular level. He has reversed his aging by almost fourteen years. His biological age is below his chronological age. He’s doing it. He’s practicing it. We’re going to dive into the science behind it and how it all works. Let’s get into our episode with Chris Mirabile, CEO and Founder of NOVOS Labs.

Chris, welcome to the show. We’re so excited to have you and to learn about NOVOS Labs and the amazing work that you’re doing. It’s privileged in honor. Thank you for being on the show.

Thank you, Zach. It’s great to be here.

You guys have come up with a system or a solution if you will to combat and slow down and even reverse the 12 Hallmarks of Aging. Can you dive into that a little bit? Break it down for us. Tell us a little bit about the 12 Hallmarks of Aging, and then how NOVOS was formulated to help with that.

Understanding The 12 Hallmarks Of Aging

To set the stage, the 12th Hallmarks of Aging are the 12 biological root causes of the aging process. If we think on the microscopic scale, we’re looking at a cellular or subcellular, even in some cases, molecular level within our bodies. Why do we even age in the first place? It’s not inevitable. There are animal species that don’t age, or when they do age, they can reset themselves and become young again. The question scientists have is what can we do to try to slow down the aging process or even reverse aspects of aging so that we can live longer and healthier lives?

These twelve mechanisms of aging have been identified by the scientific community, the biogerontologist people who study the aging process. They were originally elucidated over a decade ago and there were nine at the time and then there were three new ones added over a year ago. This is an evolving process. This is something we’re learning about and I’m sure there will be more than just these twelve.

These twelve encapsulate the largest factors that we know of that are leading to the aging process. For it to be considered a mechanism of aging, it has to be something that if you ameliorate it or you reduce that mechanism, you put it in a better place. In animal studies, the animal needs to live a longer life. That’s how we know it’s directly relevant to longevity. Any one of these, if you improve them, they are going to lead to a longer lifespan in animal studies. It stands to reason that if you’re improving all of them or many of them, you’re going to have that much bigger of an effect. That’s the context of what these hallmarks, mechanisms, or causes are. I’ll use those terms interchangeably.

Some of the words are going to be somewhat familiar probably to your audience and many of them will be new words, but I’ll try to keep it simple and brief. You’ve got mitochondrial dysfunctions. Mitochondria are the power plants of our cells. As we age, we have fewer of these mitochondria and the ones that we do have are less efficient or capable of generating energy from the food that we eat.

If a cell isn’t receiving the energy it needs, it can’t perform its function. It’s not as simple as us feeling energized. It’s also the cells themselves doing their job. For example, your liver cells remove toxins from your body. All of our cells have a specific purpose and if they aren’t energized well enough, they won’t do their job. That starts to decline as we age.

The second mechanism is cellular senescence. Senescent cells are also referred to commonly as zombie cells. They’re called zombie cells because they are cells that are half dead, half alive. They shouldn’t exist. Our bodies should be removing them. Sometimes they’re the result of us having a cancerous cell. The body has this innate intelligence to be able to turn it senescent so that it doesn’t spread. At the same time, we want to now remove the cell and we can’t.

It flies under the radar of our immune system and it starts to secrete the inflammatory molecule that causes nearby cells to become damaged and more likely to turn senescent as well. It’s a process that increases exponentially as we age. It’s one of the reasons why our skin starts to wrinkle. There are other reasons as well, but it is a common reason for skin wrinkling. It’s the reason why our arteries can become more stiff and brittle. That’s cellular senescence. We want to reduce the number of senescent cells that we can.

Number three is loss of proteostasis. Proteo has “protein” in the word, and stasis is the stability of the proteins. Keep in mind, that our DNA is an instruction set for assembling proteins. These proteins that are being produced by our DNA need to be folded in a certain way. If they’re not folded properly, they’re not going to be able to dock on our cells and do their job properly.

These proteins are oftentimes signaling molecules. They’re sending a signal to a cell to behave in a certain way. If that protein isn’t unfolded well, it’s not going to be received. It’s not going to dock. Those proteins are then going to linger on the outside of cells and the inside of cells. It causes a little bit of a mess if you will, but does not do its job. This is something that increases in frequency as we get older.

Number four is altered intracellular communication. It makes sense that if you’re not able to make the proteins fold properly and communicate properly, the result of that is going to be the communication between the cells is not going to be as ideal as it should be. Our bodies are these vast information networks.

There’s this intelligence within our bodies where all cells are communicating with each other, organs or communicating with each other, and they’re doing so largely through these protein processes. Imagine a cell screaming out for help and so it’s sending out these molecules, but they’re not being received, then that cell is not going to get the help that it needs. This happens with increasing frequency as we age.

Number five is genomic instability. This is a very common one. Your audience will know this one. It’s DNA damage. DNA damage, we hear about this from sun exposure or UV exposure. Every time we’re out in the sun, it’s damaging our DNA. That’s why doctors recommend sunblock. Now, there’s a little bit of controversy over that because a little bit of sun is good for you. It’s accessible levels of sun that can cause excess DNA damage. Our bodies aren’t equipped to repair all of that.

We do have tools in our immune system to be able to repair DNA. Protein molecules called sirtuins are an example of that. These can repair the DNA, but if you’re getting too much of it, the DNA gets damaged. We know what can happen when you have damaged DNA. It can turn malignant. It can turn into a cancer cell, or the cell doesn’t function the way it should, and the body tries to remove it or turns back to the second hallmark. It turns senescence. These are all contributing to each other. We want to try to reduce the genomic instability or the DNA damage that’s taking place in our bodies.

We do have tools in our immune system to be able to repair DNA. Share on X

Number six is epigenetic alterations. Epi is a layer on top of your genetics. Think of your genetics as a piano. You’ve got piano keys, that’s your genetics. Your epigenome is the piano player that’s playing a tune on that piano. Your jeans are fixed. They’re not changing, but your epigenome, which keys are being played, does change. You have the same DNA across all of your cells in your whole body. Why does your eye cell behave differently than your hair cell? It’s because your epigenome is playing a different tune if you will on that part of your DNA.

As we age, certain mistakes are made in terms of the music that’s being played. In other words, your epigenome is being expressed in an improper way. For example, a gene that should be turned on to reduce inflammation as you age might be muted. It might be turned off, and then the result is you’re going to have excess inflammation taking place. We want to make sure the epigenome reflects the youngest version of ourselves as possible. There are different nutrients in our diet or supplements like the B vitamins, choline, and so on that can improve the epigenetic function.

I love that metaphor of the piano player. That makes it simple to understand.

Thank you. I’ll give you another metaphor, which will hopefully be similarly relatable. Number seven is telomere shortening. Telomeres are like the end caps of your shoelaces. If you think of your shoelace, it’s several threads woven together. The end cap is what keeps it all in place and it protects the shoelace. As we all know, when you step on your shoelace enough times and that end cap gets destroyed, the lace starts to fray. The same thing happens in our bodies with our DNA.

Every single time there’s a cellular division, in other words, a cell has DNA damage, and so it no longer works properly. The body needs to remove it and now you need to make a replicate of that cell. You’re going to be shortening the telomere each time that happens. Eventually, you hit something known as the Hayflick limit. That’s the maximum number of times that a cell can divide. There’s a limit to this.

How many is it, like seven times?

I believe so, but when you consider the number of replicates of replicates and so on, that’s exponential. As it’s getting shorter and shorter, you’re increasing the risk of certain types of diseases. For example, gastrointestinal cancer risk goes up when your telomeres are getting shorter. As you can imagine, if you have a lot of damage in your body and you’re constantly replacing cells, you’re telomeres are going to shorten prematurely. Also, as you age, your telomeres are inevitably going to be shorter than they were when you were younger. The good news is there are certain types of lifestyles and even foods that could potentially help to protect those telomeres and slow down the rate at which they shorten. 

Number eight is deregulated nutrient sensing. Our bodies have ways to sense the types of nutrients we have so that the body knows whether it needs more of something or less of something, and what mode to essentially turn into. For example, if you have a lot of protein and carbohydrates, the body senses that you have adequate food and it goes into growth mode. A certain biological pathway known as mTOR turns on.

Our bodies have ways to sense the types of nutrients we have. The body knows whether it needs more of something or less of something. Share on X

When mTOR is on too much, which for modern Americans or Westerners, or I would say the whole world at this point, work in a constantly fed state, so mTOR is always on. What we found is that when mTOR is on all the time, it shortens our lifespan. To have periods where mTOR is dialed down, it’s never 100% off, but dial down significantly, which can come from things like fasting, for example, it extends our lifespan in practically every study that has ever investigated this.

Another pathway is known as AMP kinase or AMPK. That’s a cellular starvation signal. That’s when, for example, you exercise intensely and your cells don’t have enough energy. They are signaling, “We need more energy,” but that’s now associated with longer lifespans as well. AMPK also goes up when you fast. When you exercise and when you fast, these pathways are changing compared to when we’re lazy sitting on the couch and eating a lot of food. That’s how we’re breaking down why things like fasting or exercise can potentially lead to longer and healthier lives.

Number nine is the final one from the first version of the paper that came out a decade ago. It’s the stem cell exhaustion. Everyone is hearing about stem cells, stem cell transplants, injections, and so on. Not everyone understands what stem cells are. Stem cells are cells that create copies of our cells for us. As we age, we have fewer of these stem cells. Those that we do have make imperfect copies of themselves. 

If you think of a photocopy of a photocopy, eventually, when you keep doing that a number of times, you’re going to have lower resolution and lower quality. You have a higher chance of a DNA error in the new cell that was created. If there’s a DNA error in the new cell that’s created, the body has to destroy it and start from scratch again. That’s going to shorten the telomeres faster, and so on and so forth. That’s number nine.

For the three new ones, the first is inflammaging. That’s a play on words, inflammation plus aging. The reason for this is that there’s this systemic inflammation that takes place as we get older that is not an acute inflammatory state. An acute inflammatory state would be, for example, when you exercise or you go outside in the sun for a little bit too long, you have a little bit of skin redness and inflammation, but the body resolves it.

A lot of people are chronically inflamed because they’re living very unhealthy lifestyles. That’s another category of inflammation, but inflammaging is different than both of those because it happens inevitably as part of the aging process. All of these other mechanisms are falling apart as we’re describing them, and it’s naturally leading to higher levels of inflammation.

When you’re a child, you have no inflammation. When you’re in your 20s and entering your 30s, maybe it’s like a quiet whisper. When you’re heading in your 40s and 50s, now it sounds like a hum. Now that you’re in your 60s, 70s, and 80s, now it’s this loud obnoxious noise. We want to do everything we can to try to silence that as much as possible.

Number eleven is disabled autophagy. Autophagy is this process in which our body, using the immune system largely, identifies old cells that are not behaving the way that they should and recycles the pieces of it. It’s almost like cannibalism within our bodies. We’re eating our own cells. We’re taking the amino acids, which build proteins.

We’re taking the lipids, which are fats, and we’re recycling the pieces to be able to use that to create new cells. It’s the way that we’re able to create new cells when we’re fasting. If you’re not eating food, how is your body able to remove a cell and then create a new one? It’s because of autophagy. We’re recycling the piece.

The problem is as we age, we’re not as capable of doing this. We’re missing some cells that should be removed. That one might turn to senescent as I mentioned before. That’s another process that starts to fall apart as we get older. Finally, the twelfth and final one is dysbiosis. This is the idea of our microbiomes.

Our microbiomes exist all over. It’s even on their skin. The microbiome that is largely referred to in this context is the gut microbiome. The gut has eight gut-organ axes. Our gut has a connection to our brain, skin, liver, kidneys, muscles, and so on. When our gut is impacted and the trillions of bacteria in our gut get disrupted and they’re not as diverse and you don’t have as many of them, and the ones you do have are the more pathogenic or negative bacterial strains, then you’re going to have negative effects overall not just on your gut health but on your other organs as well. This is something that also starts to decline as we get older.

NOVOS Labs: Targeting Multiple Hallmarks For Comprehensive Aging Solutions

That’s a lot. There are a lot of things that we want to stop, slow down, or even reverse. What you guys have done at NOVOS is come up with a one-stop solution for all of these things.

You’re right. It is a lot. As a founder and entrepreneur, I want to do things the right way in terms of researching the latest cutting-edge science, digging into it, and discovering by consulting with the top scientists and working together with them on what is the best way to be able to address this problem of aging. Aging is the number one risk factor for disease. It’s something very important for all of us, but then I want to simplify it. I want to make it something that your audience and others don’t need to think about. They just know.

I want to educate them and make them aware of this. This isn’t like every other product out there. It’s a very unique product. You have that contact, but then forget about that and then focus on the simpler solution, which is what we bring to market. I started networking with the top scientists in the field. At this point, it’s been about seven years ago now, the scientists at Harvard Medical School, MIT, the Salk Institute in California, and so on.

I want to understand why there was nothing natural over the counter being done with this latest research. Everything that was being done was either academic or it was advanced biotech. In other words, inventing pharmaceutical drugs or DNA modification with CRISPR technology. These are things that are out into the future, and either more invasive or more risky with a novel molecule like the prescription approach..

The answer was that nobody in the natural product world was familiar with this or sophisticated enough to work with it. I saw that as an opportunity selfishly for me to improve my health. I wanted to do everything I could for myself, my loved ones, my family, and my friends. The fact that there was such a desire by me, my family, and friends when they told them about this to have a product like this told me that maybe there would be others interested in this as well. That’s when I decided to pursue this.

We created the very first formula in the world that addresses all of these twelve mechanisms of aging, uses all-natural ingredients that are either found in human biology, but the client with time, or it’s found in food or even throughout evolution. For hundreds of years, in some cases, thousands of years, we’ve been consuming these molecules and they’re associated with longer life spans across different animal species. They have very low side effect profiles if any at all. They’re considered very safe. They also have short-term benefits, like improvements to skin health, improvements in sleep, improvements in mood, and improvements in energy and cognition as well. 

It’s a daily drink mix. You tear it open, you put it into your water. You have it with a meal ideally so that you can absorb it better, but it’s not pills because otherwise, it would take about fifteen pills. It’s a full stack. Imagine buying twelve different vitamins on Amazon and taking all of those pills every single day. We wanted to simplify it into one convenient packet that you can throw in a purse or a gene pocket, and then take with your lunch or breakfast.

Measuring Biological Age: The Key To Understanding Longevity

That’s amazing. The 12 Hallmarks of Aging, I’ve seen a lot like this with Dr. Sinclair’s work and thought about how to source NAD booster. Now, I have to get a prescription for metformin and then how am I getting resveratrol, and all of the stack, but you’ve made it all in one. I can just buy the NOVOS Core pack and take one little stack, one little mix a day, and have all of these things covered and see the benefits in terms of how I feel, how I look, and how I sleep. It’s very reasonable. Was it $78 a month or something? 

Depending on what you subscribe to. If you do a one-time box, it’s $109. If you subscribe to a program for one year, for example, it goes down to $79 per box, but then it’s also Health Savings Account or HSA eligible. With the tax savings as well, it goes down to about $55 a month. That’s less than $2 a day, which is less than a cup of coffee. It’s very affordable.

You mentioned David Sinclair. As I said before, I met with scientists at Harvard and so on. David was one of the scientists that I met with when I was trying to get feedback from the top minds in the field about the concepts. In his lab, he gave me a positive confirmation that I was on the right track with the formula, the approach, and so on. We brought on a number of other scientists on our scientific advisory board, people like Dr. George Church who invented the first direct genome sequencing method in 1984. He’s considered a genius in the field of genetics. He’ll probably get The Nobel Prize for his work.

You’ve seen this work. You’re personally using your products. You’ve seen your age now is about fourteen years younger than your chronological age. Do you credit that mostly to the NOVOS Labs at the cellular level? There are a lot of lifestyle things that are factors too, but break that down for us a little bit. How much is the supplement versus lifestyle?

I am a very transparent and honest person. I would not claim that our supplement has had that large effect to lead to those results. If I was simply taking the supplements and then not living the healthy lifestyle that I am, my results would be better than you would otherwise be. We have evidence to point to that, which we can talk about with other people, but I would not have as good results as I have. 

Everything from the exercise to the diet and foods that I eat, the time that I don’t eat, the extended periods that I go without food, my sleep and the quality of my sleep, and being relatively strict with it, my stress management, my relationships, and all of these things and some more all come together and lead to a reduction in your biological age and your biological rate of aging.

What does that even mean? A lot of people are like, “What is biological age?” There are a lot of people throwing the term around casually and carelessly, and using it for measures that I would say are not scientifically validated at all and saying, “I’m biologically ten years younger.” When you look at how they measured that, it’s not anything that has been shown to be accurate whatsoever. Let me first say, what is biological age? The best way to think about biological age if it’s measured properly is what is your disease risk, your mortality risk, and your quality of life relative to the average person of a certain age. 

For example, I’m 40 years old chronologically. My biological age, measured in a certain way that we’ll talk about in a moment, says that I’m about fourteen years or so younger than I am. Let’s say mid to late 20s. What that tells us is that my risk of aging or chronic disease, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc, is that of somebody in their mid-to-late 20s. My risk of death is also that of somebody in their mid to late 20s. My quality of life in terms of my athletic performance, physical abilities, cognition, and so on is associated with somebody in their mid to late 20s.

That’s very relevant because every 7 to 8 years, our risk of death approximately doubles. If I am fourteen years younger biologically than I am chronological, that means that I have approximately one-quarter of the risk of disease or death as the average 40-year-old does. That’s how to think about the significance and relevance of biological age.

There are different ways to try to measure biological age. It’s a rapidly changing world, and scientists are investing in this process, but the most cutting-edge way to do it is by looking at your epigenome, which I mentioned before. That was the piano player on the piano keys. I said that the genes that are being played are turned on and off. It changes as we age.

There are patterns to this and scientists have taken very large sets of data from many people and used machine learning, the form of AI technology, to be able to find these patterns that emerge as we get older, as we have diseases, or are healthy, as we pass away, and those who are staying strong through the years. Based on these patterns, we can then essentially determine how well someone is aging, how healthy they are, and in other words, what their biological age is.

Even within epigenetic testing, there are different quality standards because there are old tests that came out more than a decade ago. Those are first-generation tests, and then there are new tests that have come out in the past 2 to 3 years that are second and third-generation tests. We are selling the most accurate biological age tests that are peer-reviewed. They’re produced out of labs at Columbia University, Duke University, and Yale University. The rights are licensed from them to use their algorithms.

We’re focused very much on accuracy and precision. These are the latest generation clocks. We can tell you not only how old you are biologically but also your current rate of aging, what your trajectory is based on your current lifestyle, and then also your organ-specific age. Maybe your heart is aging faster than your kidneys and your brain. Maybe you want to focus more on your heart health. That comes down to the foods you eat, your activity levels, and your stress management. It gives you a little bit of an Insight into what you should pay closer attention to.

You guys sell that through NOVOS as well, this test. How much does that test cost? How long does it take? How difficult is it?

It’s a simple finger prick that you can do at home. You smear about a nickel-sized amount of blood on an index card. You send it to our lab, and it costs $349 for one test. If you buy two or more, it’s $299 per test. You get your results after about a month or so. Maybe that’s a good segue to explain what we offer at NOVOS. I mentioned our supplement NOVOS Core. That’s a flagship product that we’ve done scientific studies on.

We show, for example, that we reduce DNA damage in human cellular studies. We reduce cellular inflammation, we reduce cellular senescence. These are all in vitro studies, and then we’ve done animal studies, in mice for example, we extended age a mouse’s lifespan more than any supplement that had ever been studied before us. That’s NOVOS Core. That’s the drink mix. We have two other products, Vital, which is specifically for organ health. These are chewable gummies that have loads of supplements packed into them, about seven times more supplements than typical juice will have. It targets the brain, eyes, heart, liver, kidneys, muscles, and gut.

We have NOVOS Boost, which is an NMN. We mentioned Dr. David Sinclair before. He introduced to the general public this molecule known as NMN, but it’s in our bodies. It’s a healthy substance in our bodies that declines with time. It is a precursor for something known as NAD+, which a lot of people talk about now and they get IV for NAD+. Without going into too much detail, it’s good for energy production and DNA protection. Those are two simple tiny pills that we sell as well.

It’s Core, Vital, and Boost, and then we offer the biological age testing which is NOVOS Age. We have a free app that will give you all of the lifestyle guidance you need. Ninety-nine percent of the things on that app aren’t going to cost you a cent. It’s things that you should change in your lifestyle. We ask you about ten minutes worth of survey questions. Based on that, we can give you very personalized recommendations for the things that you should be doing to slow down your rate of aging. You don’t have to purchase anything from us to access that app. It’s part of our commitment as a public benefit corporation, where we want to do more for the public interest than a typical company would.

Frequency Of Biological Age Testing: A Guide To Tracking Progress

To be clear though, the Core does have a solution for all 12 Hallmarks, or do you have to take the Core plus the Boost plus the Vital?

It’s just the Core on its own. It’s called Core because it’s the core formula on its own. If you’re only going to take one product, take NOVOS Core. If you have the budget to be able to take more, then consider adding Vital and Boost on top of that. Core on its own is the most important.

Back to the genetic testing or the biological age testing through the epigenetic test, how often do you test your age? How often do you recommend testing your biological age to see if progress is being made or not made?

We suggest to people that at a minimum, you do it once a year. If you do it once a year, try to do it in the same month or even week of the year because your lifestyle changes a lot over the course of the year. Your lifestyle around Christmas time is probably very different than it is during the July 4th weekend in terms of your time outdoors, your UV exposure, your vitamin D levels, your exercise and activity, and your alcohol intake. All of these things change a lot. That is a good way to see if you’re improving things based on the other factors you’re changing in your life. That’s more of a scientific way to do it. Keep it at the same time of the year.

If you want to be more proactive about this, we suggest up to once a quarter. It will take at least a quarter to start seeing changes in your biological rate of aging when measured through your epigenome for you to see those changes. It takes about six months to fully see those changes. For example, if you go from an unhealthy diet to a Mediterranean diet, after three months, you’ll start to see some changes. After six months, you’ll probably see the full effect of those changes.

If you have the budget, once a quarter is the most aggressive. I think a moderate amount would be once every six months, as long as you’re going to be making lifestyle changes and you want to test it, then once a year is the minimum, as long as you’re making lifestyle changes. Otherwise, what’s the point of testing if you’re not improving your health?

I’ve heard that before. It takes six months for a full epigenetic shift to happen. If you’re going to try something new, do it for at least six months, and then you can see how it affects your epigenome.

You can sometimes start to see some signals after three months, but it’s not as reliable. We did a case study with people taking NOVOS Core and Boost for six months. Those people were aged 39, I believe 77 or 78, and half male, half female. We ran an epigenetic test before they started our products, after three months, after six months, and beyond. After three months, we didn’t see any changes. There was not any real signal yet, but after six months, that’s when we saw a pronounced change.

In nearly three-quarters of the participants, we saw a reduction in their rate of aging by the equivalent of one month per year. The way we like to think of it is it’s almost like getting a free month of life per year simply from taking a tasty drink mix and two tiny pills. Those who didn’t slow down their pace of aging also didn’t speed up, which is important because you would expect some of the people would have lived slightly less healthy lifestyles in that period of six months. The fact that nobody had a worse score indicates to us the possibility that they were having some protective effects. We’re taking this to the next level and doing clinical trials to try to study this in a more strict scientific setting with a placebo.

You can slow that down. There are so many different things we could probably talk about. I’d love to hear what’s on the horizon in terms of breakthroughs or longevity science. What are you most excited about that’s coming? What’s on the horizon for NOVOS?

The Future Of Longevity: Exciting Breakthroughs On The Horizon

For the industry as a whole, there are a lot of exciting things happening. One is everyone is talking about AI. How does AI play a role in this? AI is being used by scientists to put together hypotheses to challenging questions. There is something that was tweeted yesterday from scientists talking about how it took them three years to come up with hypotheses and figure something out. They ran it through this AI algorithm without the information being public yet, and the AI algorithm figured it out in a few minutes which took them three years.

AI is also being used to detect or design novel molecules that could exert certain positive effects on our biology. Share on X

We’re going to have a much more rapid progression on high-quality hypotheses and experiments that are going to yield favorable outcomes. It’s not overly complicated. You hear about these “biohackers” that use all of these different types of devices and they measure every single ounce of food that they eat and so on. That’s taking things way too far. You don’t want to sacrifice quality of life for the sake of quantity of life. I think it’s a balance.

You don't want to sacrifice quality of life for the sake of quantity of life. Share on X

I start my day very simply. I wake up and I have a very large glass of water filled to the top. I put some salt in it. Specifically, I use Lite salts. Morton’s makes it. What I like about it is it’s half sodium salt and half potassium salt. Most people are not getting enough potassium in their diets. This is a good way to balance it. You need electrolytes in water to be able to adequately absorb and hold onto that water. I start with that. I have the black double espresso coffee. Yes, it is good for you. We have scientifically referenced articles about the research around coffee and its long-term health effects if you search for coffee on the NOVOSLabs.com website.

I’d have NOVOS Boost, the NMN supplements to start my day, and then I’d go outside for a 2-mile walk. At this time, I might be taking a phone call for work or catching up on something related to work. I go to the gym. It’s typically about 50 minutes to an hour of weightlifting four days a week. On days that I’m not weightlifting, typically, I’m doing cardio, either running or bicycling.

In terms of my meals, lots of vegetables, a good amount of fish for protein, and then I’m getting a good amount of non-animal protein sources as well, like beans and vegetarian protein sources. I do eat meat but there is research that indicates that some amino acids in animal proteins, like methane and tryptophan, shorten lifespan. I also make sure I’m always you-caloric. Meaning, I eat as many calories as I’m burning and I’m approximating that. You can tell from your hunger largely, or I’m hypocaloric. I’m eating a little bit less than my hunger. There’s recovery and sleep. There’s a whole bunch of other things we can go into if we have the time.

When you fast like intermittently, that’s when that autophagy kicks in. After a certain period of time of fasting, your body is not digesting food. It’s cleansing itself, essentially. Are you doing that on a daily basis or once a week? What does that look like?

A lot of people talk about intermittent fasting. They’re technically using the wrong term. What I think they mean is time-restricted feeding. Time-restricted feeding is when you set certain hours during the day that you eat, and when you don’t eat. The only way it’s technically an intermittent fast is if you’re eating less food than you normally would during that period. If you’re doing it every single day, you’re not eating less food, you’re eating the same amount every day.

In time-restricted feeding, it is important that you don’t want to eat beyond a twelve-hour eating window. I shortened it even more to sixteen hours, and so I’m eating only eight hours during the day. Between about 11:00 AM to 7:00 AM is when I’m eating food. In terms of actual fasting, so not eating food and having significantly fewer calories, I’ll do a 24-hour fast. I used to do it once a week, and it was too much. Again, quality of life versus quantity. Now I do it once every 2, 3, 4 weeks, or something in that range. I’ve done three-day fasts, like 72 hours fast. I used to do that once a quarter. Now, I do it maybe once every six months.

Something for your audience to keep in mind is that as you age, what becomes increasingly important is maintaining your muscle mass. If you’re fasting prolonged fast, you can lose muscle mass. What I suggest is you consider not doing the prolonged fast and increasing your protein intake. If anything, maybe you do the time-restricted feeding as I said, or maybe a 24-hour fast, but these prolonged fast, unless you’re very overweight or have a lot of muscle, generally speaking, you’re probably better off focusing on that protein because you want to maintain your muscle mass, especially in your legs.

As you age, what becomes increasingly important is maintaining your muscle mass. Share on X

The last thing you want to do is the fall. If you don’t get very injured from the fall or pass away from the fall, unfortunately, during that recovery period, that’s when people’s health rapidly declines when they’re sitting in a wheelchair or laying in bed all day long and so on. You want to avoid that at all costs. Having strong stability in your legs is very important for that.

Where To Find NOVOS And Reach Chris

This has been amazingly helpful. I know we’re out of time. We’d love to have you back again, but so everybody can find you and find the information we discussed, just NOVOSLabs.com.

NOVOSLabs.com is our website. NOVOS Life is on the App Store for Android and iOS. You can search on Google NOVOS Face Age. I have a blog and I’m on social. SlowMyAge.com is my blog. On Instagram and TikTok, @SlowMyAge.

Thank you so much for the great work that you’re doing and for devoting yourself to this. I hope that many people are going to take advantage of the work that you’re doing at NOVOS Labs and see some improvements as well. We’re excited for what’s ahead.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for being with us, Chris.

Thank you for having me.

We’ll see you again.

—

What an amazing conversation with Chris, Founder and CEO of NOVOS Labs. I hope that you took away as much as I did from this episode and those 12 Hallmarks of Aging. You can go back and listen to this again. I might go back and listen to it myself. I love the analogies that he used to make those simple and easy to understand. If you want, they are on the website. You can go to NOVOSLabs.com. They’re spelled out at the bottom of the website there in simple terms so we can understand those and how we come back to each of those thing.

NOVOS Labs Core supplement helps do that. That’s a simple process. Take it once a day and you’re covered, but more than that, it’s the lifestyle choices that we’re making. The longevity diet that is spelled out on the NOVOS Labs website, as well as on their app, makes that simple. Here are good foods to eat, and a good diet to follow. 

Hopefully, this is making it a little bit easier to understand. We can take our longevity into our own hands and we can extend our lifespan. We can slow down the aging process and even reverse it as Chris has done. He’s about fourteen years younger than his chronological age. If he can do it, we can all do it or at least make some progress towards that. I’m excited to try this out. I’m a huge fan and I hope that many of you are now too. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, we’ll see you back on the show, where we are unlocking the secrets to your healthier, happier, and longer life. Have a great day.

Important Links

• NOVOS Labs
• Chris Mirabile on LinkedIn
• David Sinclair
• Dr. George Church
• Slow My Age
• Facial Age Test
• Slow My Age on Instagram
• Slow My Age on TikTok

About Chris Mirabile

Founder & CEO of NOVOS, the first human longevity company to simultaneously address the 12 Mechanisms of Aging (biological causes of aging) through its scientifically-validated, patent pending, over-the-counter formulations; best-in-class biological age tests; and free AI tools.

NOVOS is a Public Benefit Corporation that strives to make human longevity accessible and achievable for all.

NOVOS is composed of Scientific & Medical Advisory Boards and an R&D team of world renowned scientists and MDs who study aging from Harvard, MIT, and other esteemed institutions, such as the inventor of the first gene sequencing method, Dr. George Church, longevity scientist Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, and more. Learn more at novoslabs.com.