How To Replace Exercise, Heat, Cold & Fasting With Pharmaceuticals (WARNING: Proceed At Your Own Risk!) With Dr. Sandra Kaufmann

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pharmaceutical biohacks

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Reading time: 8 minutes

What I Discuss with Dr. Sandra Kaufmann:

  • Using pharmaceuticals as time-saving alternatives to traditional biohacks like sauna sessions and exercise routines…02:48
  • The cellular mechanisms behind popular pharmaceutical alternatives, including autophagy enhancement – boosting the body’s natural cellular “clean-up” system – using metformin and pioglitazone…05:03
  • Benefits of pioglitazone, and its efficacy in lowering glucose levels, mobilizing visceral fat, and enhancing mitochondrial function…08:36
  • Selbex, an FDA-approved medication in Japan, effectively upregulates heat shock proteins, mimicking the therapeutic benefits of sauna sessions without the heat…13:39
  • Hydralazine‘s dual benefits as a potent free radical scavenger and a trans-glycosylating agent, transferring sugar groups between molecules, along with the challenges it poses, such as carefully managing dosages to avoid adverse effects…19:57
  • The Flozin family of drugs, which operate as sodium-glucose reuptake inhibitors, effectively lead to the excretion of excess glucose and offer a potent method to manage glucose metabolism…24:14
  • Importance of safety when sourcing pharmaceuticals from international websites, including ensuring the authenticity and safety of medications before consumption..26:09
  • Pentoxifylline's for improving microvascular circulation, reducing blood viscosity, and enhancing mitochondrial health…27:45
  • Genetic variations in enzyme activity that influence an individual's response to pharmaceuticals and the practical “cheat tests” to infer genetic sensitivities…30:21
  • Lithium and its broader applications beyond treating bipolar disorder, from improving telomere length to providing emotional stability and safeguarding cognitive health…31:03
  • The importance of magnesium supplementation, particularly forms that can cross the blood-brain barrier, for overall neuronal health…37:29
  • Dihydromyricetin (DHM), a supplement known for upregulating mitochondrial activity and aiding as a hangover remedy, highlighting its potential in enhancing overall liver and mitochondrial health…41:19
  • The critical role of NAD in circadian rhythms and its optimal timing for supplementation to boost sirtuin activity—proteins that regulate aging, metabolism, and cellular repair processes in the body…43:46
  • Efficacy of pharmaceuticals and peptides like MOTS-C and epitalon in supporting mitochondrial health and overall cellular function, considering age-related cellular changes…45:56
  • Use of exosomes in Dr. Kaufmann's longevity pyramid, detailing their applications—through injections or IVs—and the regenerative benefits they offer…47:24
  • Updates on the Kaufmann Protocol, including upcoming seminars, streamlined supplements based on the “Seven Tenets of Aging,” and the collaborative Club Exosome, offering new avenues for longevity…49:51

In today’s episode, you’ll get to explore the cutting-edge world of anti-aging and longevity with Dr. Sandra Kaufmann, a leader in cellular optimization. Dr. Kaufmann guides you through affordable ways to understand your genetic traits, dives into the brain-boosting benefits of lithium beyond mood stabilization, and shares essential insights for optimizing liver health. You’ll uncover the ideal timing for NAD supplements, learn about powerful mitochondrial-supporting peptides, and discover the game-changing promise of exosome therapies. With Dr. Kaufmann’s balanced approach to pharmaceuticals and biohacking, this episode is packed with strategies to elevate your longevity journey!

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann, who first joined me in the popular podcast episode all about key anti-aging nutrients and research (which you can listen to here) is someone I first discovered when I read her fantastic book The Kaufmann Protocolwhich I still turn to today as an invaluable resource for the best, rank-prioritized nutrients to enhance longevity.

Recently, I was with Sandra at a conference, and she mentioned that, as a physician, anesthesiologist, and relentless biohacker, she’s developed unique pharmaceutical solutions for many things people work hard to incorporate daily—like sauna therapy, cold thermogenesis, cardio, strength training, and fasting. I found this concept so fascinating that I knew I had to explore it further with her on a podcast.

She began her academic career in the field of cellular biology, earning a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut in tropical ecology and plant physiology. Turning to medicine, she received her medical degree at the University of Maryland and completed a residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Presently, she is the National Transitional Pediatric Anesthesia Medical Director for Envision Healthcare.

In the realm of longevity, she is the author and creator of the Kaufmann Protocol, a systematic explanation of why humans age on a cellular basis, coupled with an organized system to delay the aging process. This theory was introduced in her book The Kaufmann Protocol: Why We Age and How to Stop It, which has been recognized by many longevity leaders as the go-to tome for understanding the aging process. She has more recently published The Kaufmann Protocol: Aging Solutions with an updated and expanded dive into longevity science.

In addition, she has developed the Kaufmann Rating system, a numerical tool that evaluates molecular agents based on available scientific evidence. This process, the only one of its kind, allows longevity seekers a scientifically-based methodology to determine which longevity protocol best fits their lifestyle and health issues.

Dr. Kaufmann is well-respected in the longevity community for presenting viable and scientifically based aging solutions that are available to everyone. She appears on weekly podcasts around the world, sits on longevity boards, and has spoken at innumerable health and biohacking seminars.

Stay tuned for an information-packed episode that promises to expand your understanding of the latest in anti-aging science and practical health hacks!

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Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:00:03]: If you are getting older and your visceral fat is building up, that's actually extremely bad for you. It's a bad sign of near death. So what pioglitazone does is it mobilizes your visceral fat and moves it into subcutaneous compartments where, number one, you look more youthful, but in fact, you're reducing cause of death. So pioglitazone is just an amazing, amazing drug.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:24]: Is it a new drug? Do a lot of people know about this?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:00:26]: No, it's not a new drug at all.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:29]: Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:42]: It has been five years since I've interviewed today's podcast guest, and I'm very surprised I took this long to get her back on because the first show that we did was epic. She broke my podcast Internet, talking about her book, the Kaufmann Protocol. It's Sandy Kaufmannn. And she is not just a physician and an anesthesiologist, but as you'll learn if you heard our first interview or today's interview, she's kind of like this relentless, you know, almost like biohacker who comes up with unique pharmaceutical solutions for solving different problems and kind of blends medicine with natural living and also is a real expert in anti aging and longevity. She has a master's degree from UConn, and then she got her medical degree at University of Maryland. She did a residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins. And I run into Sandy here and there at different places across the globe, including some fantastic conferences.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:50]: And she's always somebody who people listen to because she's got some really unique takes on a lot of the stuff that we love to talk about on this show. So, by the way, her book is called The Kaufmannn Protocol. It is fully updated. I'll link to it in the show notes. And the show notes are going to be at bengreenfieldlife.com/pharmahacks. Pharma hacks. Sandy, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:02:14]: Great to be here. This is going to be fun.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:17]: I know. Remember we were at that conference in the mountains, nosebleed country somewhere? Where were we? I forget.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:02:24]: Where were we?

Ben Greenfield [00:02:26]: Utah. Colorado.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:02:27]: Sundance.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:27]: Oh, yeah, Sundance. Sundance. We were at this, like, private longevity conference, and you and I were sitting at dinner, and we were talking about exercise and sauna and cold and red light therapy and all these things that people do. And you said well, I travel a lot, and I've got a hack for a lot of that stuff that saves me a lot of time. And you basically think the way you phrase it was, you said something like, there's a drug for just about everything that people do to optimize health with those type of methods these days.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:03:02]: I think that's exactly what I said. Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:05]: And then I think what I said, not to rehash our entire conversation, was, we should do a podcast about that.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:03:14]: And here we are.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:16]: Yeah, here we are. Okay, so what actually got you thinking about this in the first place? Was it just, hey, I'm busy. I don't have time to sit for 40 minutes in a sauna or go to the gym for an hour or, I hate cold plunges or. What actually got you down this path of pharmaceutical alternatives to popular biohacks?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:03:33]: Well, as you said in the intro, I'm a physician. I'm an anesthesiologist. So what I do mostly all day is deal with pharmaceuticals. And pharmaceuticals are very clean molecules. We know who made them, we know exactly what they do. And so when you start studying these molecules, you figure out what they actually do for your cells. So, if you trace everything back to cellular optimization, you'll find that the behaviors of these molecules trigger the exact same things that a lot of these very popular activities do. So, whereas I'm not against sitting in a sauna, it feels great. When you boil it down, it's the same mechanism. So if you're busy, it's just easier.

Ben Greenfield [00:04:16]: Yeah, and I know you have kind of a whole list of things that you do. But before we even dive into that, I just know a lot of people, right off the bat, are thinking, well, wait, there's a difference between climbing Mount Everest and getting dropped off by a helicopter on the top of Mount Everest. And if you're going to tell me some drug simulates me focusing and meditating and breathing my way and counting my way through a sauna session, surely I'm going to miss out on some of the character development.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:04:48]: Well, in no way can I develop anyone's character. If you have poor character, that I can't help you. What I can do is recommend systems to, again, cellular optimization.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:02]: Are you saying that there is a substitute for hard work, that there's a shortcut, or that there is a time and a place when you could use something to simulate what you might be getting through the hard work?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:05:13]: Blood, sweat, and tears, I think they're just very complimentary. Sometimes you have time for these things, and sometimes you don't, and there has to be a way to sort of replicate things. I love exercise. I'm a junkie just like probably most of your followers. I run, I lift, I swim, I rock climb, but I travel a ton, so I just can't always get to those things. And I'm certainly not gonna pull a sauna out of my suitcase in a hotel room. So, you know, I think they're gonna work hand in hand, especially for people that are on the road a bit or just, you know, it's just easier sometimes. People have busy jobs, busy lives.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:05:54]: It's just going to augment what people are doing already.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:58]: Okay, got it. And then, by the way, I'm going to buy the website suitcasesona.com. You just give me a great business idea. The other thing, just to get a lot of these precursors out of the way, is I know you're going to describe a lot of these pharmaceuticals and drugs, and I also know that people are likely going to wonder, well, my doctor's never going to prescribe me this stuff. My doctor is not going to give me whatever pioglitazone or whatever that one is for autophagy and prescribe that to me just because I can't get in the sauna or exercise or something like that.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:06:36]: That is true. It depends on the physician to which you are going. Typical primary care folks are going to look at this stuff and go, yeah, that's ridiculous. It's unclear, unverted, whatever. However, there are some physicians that will do it. For example, I do, and I see patients in Hollywood, Florida, and I will prescribe it as well. There are ways to get it on the Internet, and I don't want to be seen as suggesting that people do things illegally, but there are absolute ways to get medications easily, safely, as long as people do it in a safe way. And some of the drugs I talk about are completely and utterly safe.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:07:17]: And some of the other ones need a little bit of guidance.

Ben Greenfield [00:07:20]: Right? Right. No, I've never bought laboratory research chemicals not safe for human consumption off Sigma Aldrich, but people do that, I hear. So when we're talking about, let's say, autophagy, one common thing that people do to enhance autophagy is fast. It modulates the MK and the mTOR pathways, and it's one of the ways that we see potential increases in longevity in yeast, fruit fly, other organisms. Some would argue that a big part of it is the calorie restriction, not the compressed feeding window. But nonetheless, there's some autophagy that takes place via that. And some of these other things that people do that are hormetic stressors. What would you use as some type of agonist for something like that?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:08:13]: That's actually really funny. I thought we were going to do it the other way around. From top to bottom. You're starting at the bottom. In order to activate autophagy, you need to tell your body that you have fewer calories available. You need to activate AMP kinase or deactivate mToR. There are several medications that do this. The most infamous, of course, is metformin.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:08:35]: A lot of longevity folks are on metformin. That's an easy one to start with. But several other ones do it too. Pioglitazone does it, lithium does it. So autophagy is actually a pretty easy category to hit.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:48]: What was that? Pioglitazone. Describe that one to me.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:08:51]: So pioglitazone is a really interesting drug. It is sold as a diabetic drug. What it is is a PPAR-gamma activator. What is that, we ask? So it basically controls glucose metabolism, but it also has some alpha activity. And what it does is several things. So number one, it lowers your glucose levels. Number two, in your mitochondria, it activates your PCG, one alpha, which is really quite useful. One of the most important things I think that it does is it actually mobilizes your visceral fat.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:09:28]: So if you are getting older and your visceral fat is building up, that's actually extremely bad for you. It's a bad sign of near death. So what pioglitazone does is it mobilizes your visceral fat and moves it into subcutaneous compartments where, number one, you look more youthful, but in fact you're reducing cause of death. So pioglitazone is just an amazing, amazing drug.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:49]: Would you say that pioglitazone would trump metformin when it comes to a lot of these autophagy and mTOR modulating mechanisms?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:09:56]: I would actually, yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:09:59]: Is it a new drug? Do a lot of people know about this?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:10:02]: No, it's not a new drug at all. Some people don't like it because it will put an extra pound on you. So if you're fat, you get a whiff fatter. But if you are thin, it doesn't really do that. It has a few other cool things up its sleeve. For example, it activates Klotho. Very few things do that. And that's a cool thing that it does.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:10:23]: And one of the other things is because it reduces glucose, it actually also inhibits AGE formation. So advanced glycation end production. So it hits many, many reasons or categories of aging.

Ben Greenfield [00:10:37]: What's the mechanism of action via which you would gain fat?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:10:41]: Because it's sort of mucking around you through your PPAR-alpha activity. So basically, your body has a choice, am I going to use fats, or am I going to use glucose?

Ben Greenfield [00:10:54]: Oh, I see. So you're burning more glucose, and thus you're dipping into less of your fat stores.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:11:00]: That is correct. But what it does do to the fat is it redistributes it.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:04]: Okay. You also mentioned that with pioglitazone, it can upregulate the Klotho pathways. I've talked about Klotho a little bit on the show, but can you explain why that would be beneficial?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:11:17]: So, to be perfectly honest, we don't exactly know what Klotho does, but it's demonstrated that, at least in kidney cells, if you have a plethora of it around your cells, you do significantly better. A lot of people are trying to figure out exactly why that is. Everyone's trying to upregulate your Klotho, but in terms of actual specific cellular mechanisms, we don't really know yet.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:38]: It has an effect on cognition too, doesn't it?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:11:40]: It does. It has positive effects everywhere. The highest levels are in your kidney, but it does. It gets everywhere. And there's an absolute correlation between higher levels and just cellular health. But again, in terms of absolute specific mechanisms of action, we don't know.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:57]: Yeah. When I interviewed Dr. Adeel Khan a few months ago, he was even looking into gene therapy, I think, by the company Minicircle for Klotho, that I don't know if it's been approved or even released yet, but apparently that's one of the gene therapy targets that should be rolling out, I would imagine, in the next year for Klotho. What do you think about that whole realm of gene therapy?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:12:18]: I have to say I'm a little skeptical. I like the idea that we can titrate medications or titrate the input of things because we don't actually know if sometimes too much of a good thing is not necessarily good. And once you put something in your genetic makeup, there's no taking it back.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:38]: Yeah. Unless you use the reversible antibiotic, which apparently can do it.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:12:46]: Well, so they say. Right. But, you know, Liz Parrish is very much into gene therapy, and I think it does have a lot of good things about it. As for myself and as for patients that I speak with, I think we're not quite ready for that yet, which is why I look, pharmaceuticals, we're known, they're trusted. We know what the half life is. You can either give it or not give it, titrate accordingly. I think it's a little bit safer.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:09]: Right. The difficulty of the approval process automatically introduces a bit of a gating and vetting mechanism with a pharmaceutical, that's for sure. Okay, so your sauna in a suitcase. You can't pack your sauna in a suitcase. You get to a hotel or you're traveling and you want to get the benefits of, let's say, the heat shock proteins and the other things that sauna does for you. What's your drug of choice?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:13:33]: Oh, so this is a great one. I love this one. So this is a drug called Selbex. S-e-l-b-e-x. And has been FDA approved in Japan for drug induced gastritis. And oddly enough, it upregulates heat shock proteins. And that's pretty much all it does. So it's really remarkable, because there have been some studies in early Alzheimer's demonstrating that if you are on Selbex, you just do significantly better, because Alzheimer's is a disease of misfolding of proteins, and if you can refold them symptomatically, can't speak today, are you just going to do significantly better? Therefore, on top of not getting drug induced gastritis from all the drugs that I'm on, I am readily upregulating all of my heat shock proteins.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:25]: Oh, so these other drug. Well, explain what drug induced gastritis is, because you make a good point. If you're using all these things, there might be effects on your gastrointestinal system that you want to avoid.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:14:36]: No, correct. So anyone that takes a variety of medications knows that sometimes people say, oh, it just doesn't sit in my stomach well, right? Because it does. It goes to a stomach, sits on the lining where it has to sort of have these drugs absorbed. And sometimes that causes a bit of inflammation, which we call gastritis, right because it's in the gastric area, and that just can be extremely annoying.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:14:57]: You know, people perceive it as heartburn, abdominal pain, etcetera. So this drug is specifically for drug-induced gastritis, which I find horribly ironic. Right. So I get to pop it into my pill stack, and it helps me in two regards.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:12]: So is the mechanism of action by which it would inhibit gastritis based on the actual production of heat shock proteins, or is that just kind of a bonus side effect that gives you the sauna without a sauna?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:15:24]: It's the same effect based in two different tissues. So a heat shock protein is going to help with protein creation and prediostasis, which is basically getting destroyed by the inflammatory process of drugs sitting in your stomach. So it's the same process in a different organ system.

Ben Greenfield [00:15:43]: So when you see these studies out of Finland that show that regular use of asana four to five times a week results in, particularly in men who are studied, their remarkable decrease in risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. Is that via this same heat shock protein like effect that Selbex's assimilating?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:16:03]: Absolutely, absolutely. Because Alzheimer's is, as I said, it's a protein misfolding disease. That's what amyloid is. And if you can refold these proteins, then you don't get as much cell dysfunction, and therefore the dementia is less pronounced or even reversed.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:20]: So if you had a high genetic risk for something like Alzheimer's or dementia, maybe you didn't have access to a sauna. You couldn't afford a sauna. You're traveling and can't use a sauna, or you're even intolerant to a sauna, maybe you're claustrophobic or you freak out or you can't stand the heat or whatever, the Selbex could be a good choice.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:16:37]: Oh, it absolutely is. And there are zero side effects, zero snare defects. It is an incredible medication, and I would even say use it in addition to the sauna, because there's no ramification of over upregulating your heat shock proteins.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:54]: Have you ever used it? And because of the upregulation of these heat shock proteins, found that a sauna becomes more intense or uncomfortable, or does it not cause anything like that?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:17:04]: No, you would never know because it's not affecting the temperature of your body at all. I mean, obviously, heat shock proteins are being upregulated because you are in an area that is hot. Right. By definition, that's what happens. Why does that happen? Because if you think about the molecular basis of proteins, when you heat them up, they lose their three dimensional structure, they fall apart, and then a chaperone has to come and put the molecule back together so that the protein does what it's supposed to do. But it's based on the stress of temperature, right? Selbex isn't based on the stress of temperature. There's no temperature elevation whatsoever. It just upregulates the chaperones.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:17:43]: So you're not going to see any interaction between the two systems physically, you're only going to see it on a molecular basis.

Ben Greenfield [00:17:51]: And arguably, if you had upregulated heat shock protein density due to Selbex use, you would be able to withstand heat a little bit better. Like if your friends had challenged you to see who can lasts the longest time in a sweat lodge. That might be your illegal performance enhancing drug of choice.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:18:09]: I don't know if that's true. Feel free to try it, because I don't think that you.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:13]: Proceed at your own risk.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:18:15]: I don't know. I don't think you can perceive that your proteins are unfolding.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:20]: Well, I was more referring to the fact that I believe one effect of higher number of heat shock proteins would be increased ability to be able to withstand temperature stress.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:18:34]: I don't know why people get up and leave the sauna. Is it dehydration? Is it electrolyte deficiency? Is it just an elevated temperature that's causing an inflammatory process? I actually don't know what causes people to get up and leave. I don't think that you can actually physically sense your proteins unfolding because that would be pretty damn impressive.

Ben Greenfield [00:18:55]: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. You also have some Jedi skills.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:19:00]: Do it. You know, put an IV in, be hydrated, drink a lot of electrolytes, take an anti-inflammatory, and then I bet you can do it.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:07]: Yeah, yeah. I bet one of the reasons people get out of the sauna is very similar to the so called central governor mechanism that causes people in, say an Ironman triathlon or a marathon to bonk. Even when adequate carbohydrates are present, the body kind of, or the brain kind of shuts down the body because it perceives stress that could in some way become pretty deleterious. Right? Like you've been going for 8 hours now, you better just stop and you get central nervous system fatigue due to that central governor, Tim Noakes, I think, has done some writing on this. So I think probably that's one of the reasons people tap out in the sauna. But anyway, so Selbex, that's an interesting one. You just mentioned inflammation.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:52]: I know there's a lot of anti-inflammatories out there. There's also a lot of protocols that people do to lower inflammation, such as cold therapy or red light therapy or something like that. What would you say from a recovery or an anti-inflammatory or even like an oxidative stress reduction type of strategy would be pharmaceutical?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:20:15]: Oh, that's a good question. So the best one is going to be one that no one's ever going to take. Well, I take it. So, hydralazine.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:26]: Hydrolazine, okay.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:20:28]: You're going to love this. One. So, hydralazine is a medication that people would give you if you walked into the emergency room with very elevated blood pressure. Okay? So it is an arterial vasodilator. So basically it will emergently drop your blood pressure. Therefore, it takes a while to build up into your system to actually be able to take it safely. A lot of people are.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:55]: So are we talking about more powerful than something like Viagra or sildenafil?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:20:59]: So that is a completely different drug class and we can get to those. But the interesting thing about hydralazine is the hydrazine molecule aspect of it. The reason, I take it, is several fold. Number one, it is a very potent free radical scavenger in terms of free radicalized oxygen, but it is also one of the most potent reactive nitrogen scavengers. And by blocking those pathways, you're going to block basically a lot of the inflammatory processes. That's really cool. The other thing the hydralazine or the hydrazine molecule does, it's one of the most powerful trans glycosylating agents. So if you eat glucose, and I'm sure you don't, but I'm a junk food junkie, when you eat glucose, it is attracted to very specific amino acids and nucleic acids.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:21:53]: And when it sits on it, it becomes something called an AGE, which is an advanced glycation end product. So the glucose sits there, and it's like six non-enzymatic steps. The first three are reversible and the last three are not. The idea is during the period that it's reversible, if you put a molecule that's more attractive to the glucose, it'll jump ship. And then you just rescued your tissues. So the hydrazine molecule is extremely attractive to a glucose molecule. So it falls under the trans glycosylating sort of category. And it's been demonstrated that if you take hydralazine and you load up with glucose, the hydralazine molecule bonds to the glucose and you can trace it out of your urine, and you just sort of avoided a whole glucose load.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:43]: So why'd you say nobody's ever going to take it?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:22:46]: Because it takes a long time to build a tolerance up without killing your blood pressure.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:51]: Oh, so you're going to get dizzy. All the things that would happen if you kind of open up the fire hoses too much.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:22:57]: So it's a bit like being able to build up toxins in your body, sort of. So when I first started, I took five milligrams and thought I was going to die. My blood pressure was 60 over 40. And I thought, oh, this is the dumbest thing.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:12]: Oh, my gosh.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:23:13]: So then I went down to two and a half milligrams built up, and over the course of three years, I can now take 100 milligrams with no effect.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:21]: Wow.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:23:21]: So when I down 100 milligrams of hydralazine, and I take it now with meals, it's a fantastic trans glycosylating agent and reduces inflammatory processes.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:32]: You would take it with any meal that contains an appreciable amount of glucose?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:23:36]: Yep.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:37]: Okay, interesting. Is there, like, a brand name for hydralazine?

Ben Greenfield [00:23:42]: Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:23:44]: That's the generic name. It is so old and so dirt cheap. I'm sure there are a million names for it.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:53]: Okay. Okay, got it. So that's super interesting, because a lot of people talk about the buildup of advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, as a primary contributor to the aging process to skin, hair, nail degradation, etc. And this is something that could potentially, especially for someone eating glucose and carbohydrates, put the brakes on.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:24:14]: Oh, 100%. In fact, I have a six to seven step methodology for blocking the effects of glucose. I mean, you can block the absorption, you can block gluconeogenesis, you can block the formation of sorbitol, you can block AGE production. You can sponge up extra AGEs. You can pee out extra glucose. In fact, that's probably a good time to talk about the Flozin category. These are.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:24:51]: Flozin.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:24:52]: Flozins. So there's a group of drug, I call them the Flozin family. And it's canagliflozin, dapagliflozin, empagliflozin. There's a bunch of them, and they are sodium glucose reuptake inhibitors. And the way this works is that your body, your kidneys, filter out most of the glucose floating around in your vasculature. Right? I mean, it works backwards than what you would think. So the body takes the glucose out, it sits in your kidneys, and you reuptake it back into your vasculature. Right. So, in effect, you're not usually dumping a whole lot of glucose, but if you block those receptors, you just pee out a ton of glucose.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:26]: I was gonna say, if you did want to get insurance or wanted to get screened for something, some of these drugs would potentially raise an eyebrow. Someone might think you were prediabetic or diabetic with that amount of glucose in your urine.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:25:38]: Well, I will tell you that, yeah, if you're going to take any lab studies for real, you got to be off all of this stuff, because it just. Yeah, it'll look pretty damn funny. The other thing is, I don't get any of these drugs from the United States, because if anyone saw what I was on, they would think I was 100-year-old, diabetic, hypertensive, someone dying of cancer. These are serious drugs.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:00]: Yeah. Is that safe to order these drugs? Generic overseas versions? Do you have some kind of a vetting mechanism that you use or something like that?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:26:10]: So. I do, I do. There's a particular website. I went through a variety of websites to test. And what you do is you see sort of what brands are on this particular website. You check for their authenticity, safety, who makes them who, you know. Yeah. There's a whole series of sort of things that I look at to determine what's valid and what's not valid.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:26:31]: I think in the United States we become very centric such that we think that only things made here are reasonable. And, in fact, there's a whole globe out there of people taking medications, and they are perfectly safe if you check them accordingly.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:47]: Yeah. Well, obviously, since you're a licensed medical physician in the US, I don't know if you're able to share or not. But you said there's a website. Are you able to share the website or is that not allowed?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:26:57]: We can, but we have to have the warning that if people order this stuff and they use it, you know, I'm not their physician, so I don't want to be responsible for anyone killing themselves by accident, because, honestly, these are real guns. And someone that knows something should be keeping a watch out for these people.

Ben Greenfield [00:27:15]: Okay. All right. I'll put it in the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/pharmahacks. Sandy will email me this hidden secret website where you can get your hands on this kind of stuff. You mentioned when we were talking about, not hydralazine. Actually, I think it was hydralazine, the one that drops your blood pressure and can cause some vasodilation that acts differently than a phosphodiesterase inhibitor like sildenafil. What did you mean when you were talking about that? Is there something else that you would use in that category that would be beneficial for something beyond, say, erectile dysfunction?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:27:54]: So the answer is yes, those are phosphodiesterase inhibitors. That's the class of medication that you're looking at. And I take something called pentoxifylene.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:05]: Pentoxifylane.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:28:07]: Pentoxifylene.

Ben Greenfield [00:28:08]: Okay.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:28:09]: The question, therefore, is, well, why? Why would you do this? And I do it for several reasons. So the first reason is that it increases microvasculature. Right. Blood flow to microvasculature. So it decreases the viscosity of your blood. It makes blood cells themselves more deformable. So as you get older and you get capillary death in sort of like the distal aspects of your vascular tree, which is why people have dysfunction in various areas, this increases oxygenation to the tissues. So that's incredibly useful as well.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:28:48]: It inhibits glycation. This is yet another AGE inhibitor that's quite useful. It's also really good for your mitochondria. It's a PCG-1a activator, and it's an Nrf2 activator, good for microvasculature rate, for your mitochondria, and decreases glycation issues. As far as I'm concerned, that's a win win.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:11]: Now, if you're co consuming a phosphodiesterase inhibitor with something like hydralazine, I would imagine you'd be even more careful because you're going to have two different pathways for dropping blood pressure.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:29:23]: That is correct.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:25]: Okay, so you worked your way up with both.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:29:27]: So what I do is, if you look at the recommended dose for any of these medications, it's based on people with pathology. Right. As an example, this one will say 400 milligrams three times a day. Well, I don't actually have any pathology, so I'll take 400 milligrams once a day, spaced out from the hydralazine, because the indications and the dose are just entirely different for pathology versus longevity.

Ben Greenfield [00:29:57]: And how much do you think pharmacogenetics plays a role in this as well? Because I know that now, it's pretty easy to get a pharmacogenetic profile. It's often included with many of these DNA tests. But do you think there's a pretty high variation from person to person in terms of the CYP activity or anything else that would determine how hard something like this or soft it might hit someone?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:30:20]: So you can either. I mean, yes, those tests are extremely useful. On the other hand, you can do what we call the cheat test. As an example, if you ask someone if they consumed alcohol and they go, oh, I can't do that. I don't metabolize it very well, or I get hungover really easily. Clearly, you know what their genetics are, right?

Ben Greenfield [00:30:41]: Or coffee makes me jittery. Yeah.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:30:44]: So all of these enzymes and genetic pathways that you're talking about, we used to metabolize everything else as well. So you can sort of guess if you don't want to get the genetic testing, on the other hand, it's sort of fun and it's interesting to use, but I will tell you that most people, 90-some percent of the people, are all the same.

Ben Greenfield [00:31:02]: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I actually want to talk about the brain here for a second, because if you look at a lot of these popular nootropics out there, you'll find lithium in many of them, anywhere from, I noticed, about 5 to a maximum of 25 milligrams of lithium in some of these compounds for the research that's been done on lithium as far as brain optimization, delaying cognitive, aging, etcetera. And I remember you brought up lithium when I was sitting with you at that conference one day, and you mentioned doses of, like, I think, 75 to 150 milligrams, which is at least four times what you'll find in the highest dose of any of these popular nootropics out there. So what's the deal with lithium, and in particular, using a higher dose via a pharmaceutical versus these almost like fairy dusted doses you'll find in many nootropic.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:31:55]: Excellent question. Excellent question. So, lithium is extremely interesting, and it came to my attention because I was looking at telomeres and all the enzymes around telomeres, so telomerase and tert and tera and all of those things. And it turns out. So most people that think about lithium, think about people that are bipolar, right? And if you are bipolar and you are put on lithium, that's what most of the studies are. But let me back up. If you are bipolar, your telomeres are statistically significantly shorter than a standard person's telomeres, as are. If someone has been on lithium for greater than two years with bipolar disease, their telomeres are significantly longer than an average person.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:32:40]: You say to yourself, well, what's going on here? Right? Unfortunately, we don't have any studies of normal people on significant doses of lithium because why would they? So we don't really know what the effects are. However, what we can know is that people in areas where there's higher lithium, in foods or in water, et cetera, there's a decrease in all cause morbidity and mortality. All cause. It just demonstrates that it's a useful ion, and it turns out that it's considered essential now at 1 day, which is pretty pathetic, it's very, very low. What does lithium do? Well, it turns out it competes with the magnesium receptors. They replace it. So if you had super high doses, 600 to 900 milligrams, you start seeing pathological issues, usually at 300, you don't. So that's a fairly safe dose.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:33:35]: Right. So the idea is, if you want to maximize your lithium with decreasing side effects, I decided on 75 to 150 just based on sort of pharmacodynamics. That's what a person can handle. They are emotionally stable with no side effect profile.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:55]: Do you think that if you were emotionally unstable or you dealt with anxiety, even if you weren't bipolar issues with maybe OCD or ADAD tendencies, etc., that a higher dose of lithium would be noticeable in terms of modulating some of that?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:34:12]: Oh, 100%. 100%, in fact. I mean, this sounds terrible, but I have two teenage daughters, one's 18 and one's 20, and they were going a bit of stress, going to college, all sorts of family stresses, and they were really having challenges. I'm like, what the hell? So I gave them 75 milligrams of lithium a day. And I have to tell you, they each told me that it takes your stress and turns it down by, like, 25%. Right. With no cognitive change, just calmer, no rash decisions. Very stable.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:34:49]: And I will tell you that I tend to be a very calm person myself, but I've had a lot of very sort of horrible things happen in my life over the last year, and I think that I have managed them better just being on a bit of lithium.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:05]: Lithium in the lunchbox for the teenage college students, you know, after you recommend. Lithium is the only thing of these pharmaceuticals we've discussed that I actually implemented. After talking with you, I was actually waiting to kind of experiment as a little bit of a relentless biohacker myself with some of these others, until after I'd picked your brain a bit more. We talked enough about lithium at that conference to where I actually ordered it from the source you recommended and started on 75 to 150. Actually upped my dosage about two weeks ago. Now, I noticed nothing, I think. And I also have a very low stress life. Very low stress.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:48]: Right. I'm in charge of my own schedule. I work from home. I live out in the forest. I've got access to nature. I got a wonderful family. I have an amazing team around me. Maybe if I were more stressed.

Ben Greenfield [00:35:59]: And I also haven't had a hefty travel bout or anything like that, during which I could potentially try it in a more stressful scenario. But I did try it, not only due to the potential for stress modulation, and again, I just didn't notice much, but also because it just seems to have a lot of other benefits for just long term cognitive health?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:36:20]: Oh, absolutely. And just briefly. Right. So other little side things that it does, which I think is really cool. So, in your mitochondria, it actually controls your mitochondrial permeability transition pore. So for people that don't know what that is, there's little pores in your mitochondria. They go from the outside of the mitochondria all the way to the inside. And this pore flickers when you are young, like a little pop off valve.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:36:44]: And when you are older, it opens more regularly. And toxic items from your mitochondria, especially cytochrome c, go out into the cell, and it actually sort of precipitates cell death. And lithium is one of the things that controls that pore. So that's really amazing. It's also extremely good for autophagy, which we know and love. And the last thing is we've found that it's extremely good for stem cell health as well as osteoblastic health. So better bones, better stem cells all over, especially neurogenesis. Nerves love it and gets to the blood brain barrier, obviously, which is why it's sort of a nootropic.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:37:24]: So a lot of positive aspects without a whole lot of negative stuff.

Ben Greenfield [00:37:29]: I'm actually going to mention that to my wife because I actually have a crap ton of lithium. My assistant, who I had at order, seemed to think I needed to store it in a bunker for a while, but my wife actually has a high risk for osteoporosis. So I may talk with my wife later on about the osteoblastic activity and see if she wants to try it. Now, you mentioned that it might interfere with magnesium in some manner. I think you said it might block receptors. Would you make a case for increasing magnesium consumption if you were on lithium?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:37:57]: Well, you don't want a full war, right? So basically, you would think that if you look at the molecules themselves, you're like, they're not going to compete. That's ridiculous. But they actually do. So this is why higher doses of lithium will cause issues, right? Because then you have a magnesium deficiency. That being said, is most people are magnesium deficient to start with, which is why the magnesium supplement companies are doing so well. What I would recommend, however, is if you are low in magnesium and you want to supplement, go with something that crosses the blood brain barrier so that your neurons and such will not become magnesium deficient. Plus magnesium threonate has demonstrated increased plasticity of your hippocampus. So theoretically, it'll make you smarter and give you better memories.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:46]: Right. So magnesium 3 and 8 would be the choice. I use this stuff by BIOptimizers. The Magnesium Breakthrough, it's like seven different forms, including 3 and 8. So that's a good one, I think. Good brand if you want to cover your bases with magnesium. So we mentioned 1-2-3-4-5-6 different pharmaceuticals at this point. And I will take notes for everybody who's trying to furiously write and figure out how to spell these things.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:10]: I'll put it all at bengreenfieldlife.com/pharmahacks. But it also begs the question, Sandy, what about the liver processing all this stuff? We talked about the gastrointestinal system and some of the things that could help with gastritis. But what about just like overall hepatotoxicity, increased liver enzymes, fibrosis, any of these issues that you might see when consuming a high number of pharmaceuticals?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:39:37]: So excellent question. So again, this goes back to see your doctor. If you have normal liver enzymes, normal liver activity, you should be absolutely fine. If you do not, then that's another question.

Ben Greenfield [00:39:50]: And then, by the way, see your doctor after you've had about 48 hours of non difficult exercise, because exercise will fabricate high liver enzymes on a lab test. So you want to kind of have a washout period from exercise, particularly eccentric, muscle damaging exercise, before that test, right?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:40:08]: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The other thing is that, I mean, I've tested mine over and over and everything is always absolutely fine. But this also goes back to dose. If you are on a full therapeutic dose of all of these things, you may take a libr hit, which again, is why I used decreased doses and then a very timed out schedule of when do I want to take what, how much? But again, see, this falls into the how I'm an anesthesiologist and what I do for a living. So, you know, just recommending these as a blanket suggestion for folks is a little bit dangerous. You know, a true medical person needs to actually help plan what someone's going to take when and why and how much.

Ben Greenfield [00:40:54]: Right? Big fat warning label on this podcast. A lot of people, and this is even a popular ingredient now. And plenty of hangover remedies, will say that something called DHM, dihydromaricetin, can help to lower liver enzymes and assist with liver health, especially when taking pharmaceuticals, drinking alcohol, etc. Is that one that you've ever heard of? It's not a pharmaceutical. It's just like an over the counter supplement.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:41:19]: I love dihydromaricetin. Oh, it's one of my favorites. So I went through this whole, like, how to activate each of the sirtuins independently. And we all take sirtuin 1 activators. And so I was on this kick to find the threes. And of course, the two that are decent are honokiol and dihydromaricetin. Dihydromaricetin works because it, so it basically, it's SIRT3 only.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:41:44]: But what that does is it upregulates all of your mitochondrial activities. So especially if you. It's sold as a hangover remedy, essentially. So alcohol will destroy your liver mitochondria, and by upregulating them more quickly or having them be in a healthier state, you're just going to do better. So I'm a huge fan of dihydromaricetin. The caveat being, of course, is that all sirtuin activators need enough NAD to be efficient. Cause it's a necessary cofactor.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:13]: Yeah. Because of the number of supplements that I take, the amount of exercise that I do, the fact that I do have a glass of wine or a cocktail, usually about five days a week. And now I'm using pharmaceuticals like lithium. I actually take a little bit of DHM every morning. I take about three DHM capsules from LVLUP Health. And then based on what you described about the sirtuins, I actually use a lot of NAD too. I'm usually NAD or NR IV once a month. NAD patch once a week.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:42:48]: Let me stop you there.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:53]: Okay.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:42:54]: I went on this huge circadian rhythm binge. And what I discovered was absolutely astounding, because everyone, every time you get a lecture on sleep, it's, you know, avoid external stresses, light food, exercise, etc. before you go to sleep. But as it turns out, there are two proteins that put you to sleep, there are two proteins that wake you up, and there are two proteins that increase the oscillation of those cycles. Right. And NAD and SIRT1, they sort of rule over all of your circadian rhythms, all of these. So NAD, because it's circadian, has a very short half life. So it controls your circadian rhythms, and it's created in a circadian rhythm. So it's extremely important for circadian rhythms. If you do a giant IV Bolus dose, you are going to screw up your circadian rhythms for several days.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:45]: That is interesting.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:43:46]: The other interesting thing about it is if you take your NAD supplement at the wrong time, you can decrease the efficacy of your SIRT1 supplement. So the best time to take it is actually mid afternoon, halfway between your light and dark cycle.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:00]: To take NAD midafternoon, halfway between your light and dark cycle, and then take your sirtuin at a separate time?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:44:08]: No, you can take those together. But there was a study that demonstrated, like sirtuins, you know, the half life is a little bit longer, but to activate them usually takes about an hour or so. But if you're going to do an NAD, either an IV, which I don't like because the dose is too big, I like the IM, actually, and then the orals are going to take half an hour or so to take effect. But if you want to sort of optimize both. Midafternoon, midlight. Midlight cycle.

Ben Greenfield [00:44:35]: Yeah. It's never actually disrupted my sleep. I mean, I've done NAD IV's like an hour before bed before, but I also tend to, and I don't know if you could comment on this, maybe it's a CYP thing. I process stuff pretty quickly. Like, even though I don't, I could drink five cups of coffee and be fine. For me to even feel something like psilocybin, I usually have to take two and a half to three grams to actually, for it to really, kick in at all with noticeable effects, I seemed like I need a mega dose of just about anything I use.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:45:07]: Well, I think that you've upregulated all of your metabolic enzymes is, you know, pretty high and that, then that's why.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:15]: Yeah, maybe all those pre workout stimulants I mainline to back in the bodybuilding days 24/7.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:45:22]: You never know. Well, the other thing you do is you can come off of everything for like a week, and then you can deregulate all of those enzymes, because everything is on a feedback loop. Doses are any difference.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:31]: Yeah, that's true. For me, that's called camping or hunting. So the pharmaceuticals we've discussed so far, would you say those are kind of like the biggies? That's the core range of items that you would use to simulate a lot of these things people are doing for cold, heat, exercise, fasting, etc?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:45:50]: Yeah, I mean, there's a few other things you can do, but those are the biggies.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:54]: Okay, I have a question about, you talked about, for example, mitochondrial proliferation or mitochondrial health. People often use peptides, like, let's say, MOTS-c or epitalon as cycles throughout the year to assist with something like that. How equivocal would pharmaceuticals like this be to peptides? More powerful, less powerful, similar.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:46:19]: So I think that depends on several things. So, peptides, I'm sure your listeners are extremely educated, but I'll just put in my two cents worth here. Peptides work by sending messages to your DNA specifically to turn on the production of certain molecules. It's like asking for factory. I would like size x of this particular shoe. It's very specific. The problem is that the older you get, the cell may not be able to do that.

Ben Greenfield [00:46:50]: Less building blocks for the factory.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:46:53]: Exactly. So if you have a very good factory, if you're young, peptides are amazing. If you're old and you're not on the cellular optimization program, they are less effective because basically, you're trying to get an old factory to make something that it just can't make. Right. So peptides, I think, are a fantastic add on once your cells have been optimized. So, again, so it just depends. So when you add a pharmaceutical to that, pharmaceuticals will work. Come hell or high water, peptides will only work under certain conditions.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:23]: Are you still pretty into exosomes, too? You gave me an exosome injection. No, you gave me an exosome IV at that conference. I always feel amazing when I get those.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:47:31]: I love exosomes. I have what I call my longevity pyramid. There are things I do every day, things I do every week, and I inject exosomes every month, come hell or high water.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:40]: You do inject or IV?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:47:44]: Both.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:45]: Okay. I didn't realize you could inject some. Is that like intramuscular?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:47:50]: You could put them anywhere you want. They're gonna regenerate wherever you stick them. So I, you know, if I have an injury, I'll stick it there. If I have extra, I'll put it my face. I've got some arthritic changes in my fingers. So I stab my fingers all the time, and otherwise I'll just do a big dump into my vein.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:06]: That's what you get for rock climbing. Have you ever tried intranasally? Most I've ever felt out of exosomes, like, head clear as a bell, for like, two weeks was. I did intranasal, a full vial over the course of a day, and I slept well. It wasn't like I was jittery, but every morning I woke up with just a head as clear as a bell.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:48:25]: So, yeah. So the key to intranasal is that you just can't have a cold or have extra goo or use a vasoconstrictor because you want to just make sure the mucus membrane is nice and clear and empty. You want to get it as far back as possible so it gets to the criboform plate and through the mucous membrane into the vasculature. So it absolutely works. It just doesn't work for everybody because some people have sinus issues, you know, what have you, extra blah, blah, blah.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:53]: But yeah, it's no vasoconsearch, no nicotine gum when you're doing your exosome spray.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:48:57]: Exactly.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:58]: What do you think about nicotine, by the way?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:49:00]: Oh my gosh. So I'm not a huge fan. I've tried it several times and I have vomited my guts out. It is damn ugly.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:10]: Yeah, I think your tolerance builds up pretty quickly, but that's usually the reaction for most people who try it for the first time or try it for not having used it for a while. So, yeah, and definitely vasoconstrictive, which can be concerning for people if they've got things like high blood pressure or erectile dysfunction, for sure. You obviously have been doing a lot since our last podcast. I interviewed you about your book, the Kaufmannn Protocol. I think you rewrote or updated or revised it even in the past five years since our podcast. But what's going on right now with the whole Kaufmannn protocol website or a new book on all the pharmaceuticals with the big red warning sign on them or anything like that?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:49:51]: So you're right. Book one came out about five years ago. Book two came out about a year and a half ago. Two years. And it's called Aging Solutions. And it was the next 28 over-the-counter agents with updates in terms of cellular processes. Hopefully it's equally as entertaining because it has a lot of bad jokes in it.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:11]: Yeah, thanks for not sending it to me, by the way. Geez.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:50:15]: I promise I will mail you one. It's quite. I think it's entertaining, but the idea is science, humor, information, good for everyone. I shied away from pharmaceuticals, and I continue to, only that I'm really concerned that someone's not going to understand that this stuff is really powerful. So there will be no book on pharmaceuticals. What I am going to be doing, however, starting this year, is there will be Kaufmannn Protocol seminars to teach physicians and honestly, anyone who wants to truly understand how the protocol works and then to be able to put it into clinics or into our own private use. We are working on protocol supplements based on the Seven Tenets of Aging such that it's easier to target and people don't have to take 25, 30 different pills. Hopefully, it'll just be sort of what I think is important, based in or sort of built into easy building blocks for people I've now built something called Club Exosome with Steve McCain, where people can fly to Vegas quarterly and get exosome therapies.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:16]: Which is a place where you often might need exosomes.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:51:22]: Yeah, it's true. Well, we did it there because he's an ex-Olympic athlete and he had a lot of friends, sort of, that were beat up athletes. And then another good friend of ours is ex Circus Soleil, and he's a big performer and he does a lot of breath work. He actually leads, can hold his breath underwater for like 23 minutes or something. Ungodly.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:41]: Jeez, what's his name?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:51:44]: Brandon Berkow. Birkin. Yeah.

Ben Greenfield [00:51:47]: Interesting. Might be a good interview for the podcast.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:51:51]: He's really remarkable. I can send you his information. Anyway, so they're based out of Vegas, and we figure that people would love to come to Vegas 'cause it's an entertaining place to be. And so we do this thing quarterly, and people fly in from around the globe, see a show, get their infusion, and then off they go. And so this coming weekend is actually yet another club meeting. Because it's a club, it's not an intervention. I'm no one's physician.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:52:16]: This is because that's the way it sort of works, since it's not FDA approved exactly. Or edible. So that's an interesting ongoing thing. And then you have a variety of side projects, so lots of stuff is going on.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:28]: Yeah. Okay. Million dollar question. The last time I interviewed you, I remember, I'm pretty sure that you said astaxanthin was your tippy top best choice for the anti aging supplement in your book that had the highest efficacy banks based on your ranking system, if I remember correctly. Would you still say astaxanthin is pretty high up there, or has it been beaten out by something else?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:52:50]: In terms of numbers, it's been beaten out, but in terms of how much I love it, it's still high up there. I couldn't live without it. I really couldn't.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:59]: What? Beat it out?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:53:01]: A few things. Fisetin is extremely amazing. Spermidine is up there. Oh, gosh, there's so many of them now.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:12]: Are they all still kind of like listed and updated at the Kaufmannn Protocol website?

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:53:16]: Yes, they are. Everything is on there. So it's Kaufmannnprotocol.com. There's a master chart with all the numbers. And the other thing that we did is I had had an app once upon a time, and it didn't work because I picked the wrong developers and they sort of screwed up the coding. So what my brilliant daughter did, it's been recoded and updated. And so for the low cost of 299, my algorithm, after you answer a few basic questions, we'll tell you what supplements you should be on.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:45]: That's what happens when you give your kids lithium, folks.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:53:48]: It's impressive. And now she's in college, being whatever she is being. But she spent all summer creating merch, upgrading the website, doing the app. It's just been remarkable.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:00]: Incredible. Wow. Wow. Well, I'm going to link to our first podcast, which was equally as intriguing. If you're listening, go to bengreenfieldlife.com/pharmahacks. I'll link to all of the weird ways to spell all of these different hacks that Sandy mentioned. Proceed at your own risk. Medical disclaimer neither Sandy or I are giving out medical advice or prescriptive advice.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:26]: This is all simply for informational purposes, so proceed at your own risk or benefit. So, Sandy, thank you so much for coming on. It's always just super interesting chatting with you.

Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [00:54:39]: Oh, it's fun. I can't tell you how much I enjoy this.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:43]: Awesome. All right, folks, bengreenfieldlife.com/pharmapacks. Check it out. I'm Ben, along with Sandy Kaufmannn, signing out from bengreenfieldlife.com. Have an incredible week.

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7 thoughts on “How To Replace Exercise, Heat, Cold & Fasting With Pharmaceuticals (WARNING: Proceed At Your Own Risk!) With Dr. Sandra Kaufmann

  1. Thanks! I like your podcast about it

  2. Larry says:

    Maybe I’m overlooking something but I cannot seem to find the name of the app that Dr. Kauffman mentioned.

    1. Kyle says:

      It took me a while to find it too. Scroll up just a bit from the comments section and look under “other resources”. Then select “hydralazine”, it will take you to the source website.

      1. Larry says:

        I was actually looking for the $2.99 app mentioned by Dr Kauffman – she talked about her daughter fixing it. Still, the website you pointed out will be good for me to have because that was challenging to find. Thanks!!

  3. Fauci says:

    Your podcasts which were always vehicles for you to slap affiliate links on and sell crap have gotten worse. What a genius move Bring in a pharmaceutical proponent As the world can’t stand big pharma after covid and RFK Jr. is about to make America healthy again. No thank you! And man Those teeth are way too big.

  4. Ruth says:

    Ben- FYI Bioptimizers Magnesium Breakthru does NOT include Magnesium L-Threonate

    1. Martin says:

      Ha! Ruth, you beat me to it! Yes, I’ve been using Magnesium Breakthrough for several years, but I have to get my L-Threonate from LiveMomentous. So: Magnesium Breakthrough with first meal of the day, L-Threonate as well as Carolyn Dean’s ReMag (from RnaReset.com) at night for sleep….as well as glycine, L-theanine, ashwaganda, apigenin, Just Calm from JustThrive, with a little Flax Seed Oil from Andreas Seed Oils and some Quinton Isotonic to top it all off! :-) Zzzzzz…..

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