Inflammaging, Environment and Microplastics with Dr. David Furman, PhD

Today I am speaking with Dr. David Furman, a distinguished immunologist who discusses the intersection of immunology and aging, exploring how our immune system changes as we age and the implications for disease prevention and treatment. We delve into his research on inflammation and its role in chronic diseases associated with aging.

Dr. David Furman is a renowned immunologist with a deep focus on understanding how the immune system's function declines with age, leading to increased susceptibility to disease. He holds a Ph.D. in Immunology and serves as a leading researcher at a prominent institute where he explores the mechanisms of aging and chronic inflammation. Dr. Furman's work has been pivotal in identifying biomarkers of aging and developing interventions that aim to reduce age-related decline in immune function. His research not only sheds light on the fundamental processes of aging but also offers potential pathways for therapeutic strategies to improve health span. Through his publications and speaking engagements, Dr. Furman continues to contribute valuable insights into how modifying immune system behavior can help mitigate the effects of aging, thereby enhancing quality of life for the elderly.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Inflammation and Longevity

03:06 Understanding Inflammation and Aging

05:52 The Role of Environment in Inflammation

09:14 Ancestral Lifestyle Experiment

12:04 The Importance of Movement and Daily Activity

14:54 Nutrition and Its Impact on Health

18:14 The Future of Aging Research and AI

21:02 The Threat of Microplastics

23:53 Conclusion and Future Directions

Transcript

[00:00:00.280] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Welcome to the Longevity Optimization podcast, where we discuss longevity, optimal health, nutrition, peak performance, cognitive excellence, and so much more.

[00:00:10.880] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Dr. Furman, it's a pleasure to have you here today.

[00:00:13.510] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to discuss with you.

[00:00:16.630] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. So we're at the Longevity Investors Conference, and you just did an incredible presentation. Thank you. Of course. You're known for inflammation, right? Inflammation, which we know is the cause of most chronic disease, I think at least. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But what are you working on that you're most excited about related to inflammation or really anything that's exciting you the most about longevity?

[00:00:45.510] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Right. I've been working on understanding this social and lifestyle determinants of inflammation. We call this type of inflammation, inflammation. Because it rises with age in most individuals, modules, almost linearly. One is to identify the causes, the triggers, and a different bucket is to really understand what are the biomarkers, what are the measurements that we can have to identify this type of silent inflammation that happens through the body. But you're absolutely right. It's the major determinant of almost every hallmark of aging. We published this in last year. We got the cover of molecular metabolism in the journal, and it also caused a lot of burden in the economy when it comes to chronic diseases.

[00:01:45.140] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. I know it's just it's tragic, the levels of chronic disease, specifically in the US. I'm more familiar with those stats. But so you mentioned you're identifying the biomarkers for inflammation or inflammation. What are those looking like? You and I were chatting earlier, and some of the ones that we might be looking at on a blood work panel might not be the most accurate. Yeah.

[00:02:08.400] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

So let me just go back to early 2000, where this idea that inflammation participates in age-related diseases was for the first time identified. We know that inflammation is very important for an immune response to infections. And there we have very good biomarkers that you can identify in blood or in different tissues that are inflamed in response to an infection or trauma. And those are called cytokines that they're circulating blood. Some of them are called interleukins or tumor necrosis factor, stuff like that. Crp is another example of an acute phase reactant to an infection. Now, when we're talking about inflammation, those markers are not very accurate at predicting diseases of aging or aging itself. So we took an unbiased approach. And we started a long and very expensive project at Stanford. It's called the 1,000 Immunums Project. And in that project, we recruited 1,000 healthy individuals, and we We follow them over the years with around 70 million in funding from NIH. Wonderful. And we collected a lot of different data types. And one of those data types were proteins from blood. We tried to extract the relevant contributors to age-related diseases, morbidity, frailty, cardiovascular aging, for example.

[00:03:57.520] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Those were different proteins. They're not the interleukin, they're not the CRP. These are different proteins. We built with machine learning and AI model a new clock for inflammation.

[00:04:13.120] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Wonderful. In terms of We know that there's... Are there 9 or 12 hallmarks of aging now?

[00:04:18.610] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, there's 12. Okay, 12.

[00:04:19.930] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

So it keeps increasing.

[00:04:20.580] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It keeps growing. As we study more on biology of aging, we discover new mechanisms and new hallmarks.

[00:04:28.310] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Which is great because ideally long long term, we'll have more targeted solutions for each one of those hallmarks, ideally. What would you say inflammation, how big of that role in comparison to the other 12 that we have?

[00:04:44.000] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It's hard to say. We've done a few analysis to evaluate the contribution of each of the hallmarks to age-related disease by using large language models cells, and inflammation comes down first. Second, cellular senescence. Third, genomic instability, and then the list goes on. But the most important part is not which of these hallmarks of aging is the most important contributor, but rather how they are interconnected. If you target one, chances are you're targeting other ones. That's really interesting. We've done some of research to try and identify networks of hallmarks of aging, and inflammation is in the middle. So this is a hub for the different hallmarks of aging. And that's the paper that I mentioned that was published in 2023 in molecular metabolism and got the cover of the journal.

[00:05:48.960] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. I mean, you've done such amazing work. And the test will be available somewhat soon, right? Will consumers be able to purchase the test on their own or how will we think about that?

[00:06:01.050] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

At first, we're rolling this out through clinics and health care providers. The test requires an interpretation and some holding hands with the medical doctor or health care provider that will administer the test. It's a very straightforward blood extraction with a device that you stick in your arm, you get some blood out of that and send it to our labs, we report back. Wonderful. And then moving on, we're planning to roll this out as a direct-to-consumer product.

[00:06:35.640] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Love it. Well, obviously, you can count my clinic in as being one of the first clinics, so people in California and Ohio can order it there. Well, that's so exciting. If you need to test subject in the meantime, please let me know because I always want to keep a pulse on my immune system. When it comes to factors that really impact aging, they're causing inflammation, I I love what we talked about this morning. We were talking about our environment and maybe ancestral components and the environments we're in now. What do you think is causing so much inflammation in our current population?

[00:07:12.660] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, that is a conversation that could last forever. It's a long list of things. I always like to give the example that any species that is moved to a new environment will develop inflammation. It's a natural response to something new. And so we definitely did not evolve in this environment with electrical light, with being sitting in chairs and being exposed to pollution and plastics and dairy products and wheat and things that we were able to develop over time after the agricultural revolution. We are definitely not in our evolutionary niche, right? So we develop inflammation. This is what we call What's called the exposome, the collection of physical chemical entities in the environment that we're exposed to throughout life. And that's what triggers inflammation, circadian rhythm, disruption, It's a long list. Electromagnetic fields. We discussed that this morning. It's a biggie, although not a lot of people talk about it. Plastics that are endocrine disruptors and they cause inflammation. Pesticides in foods, hyperglycemic foods, ultra-processed. I know. We call it foods, but...

[00:08:43.810] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

This is not food.

[00:08:45.120] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

This is probably not food. We shouldn't call it food. Food like substance. Yeah, exactly. Then also, which is very important, the microbiome. Microbiome, we are, most of us, deficient in diversity of microbiome. When we compare ourselves to hunter and gatherers and other more pre-agriculture civilizations, the difference between them and us is about 300 fold in the diversity of the microbiome. Why is it the case? Because we are consuming things that wipe out our microbiome, like drugs, ibuprofen, Tylenol, and also different substances in foods, like polysorbit 80, carboxymethylcellulose. Those are added to ice cream and cosmetics and every single food out there that cause an emulsifier. It's an emulsifier. It's surfactant emulsifier. They wipe out your microbiome. So we don't get as We don't feed our microbiome. Again, the list goes on and on, and we can talk about this forever.

[00:10:07.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

No, I love this. I mean, it's so important. There's so many different points, too, talking about... I feel like I was, and other people, of course, are, too, but I've been posting about EMFs and these AirPods that people are wearing all the time. To me, I obviously don't have a PhD, but to me, it feels like common sense to not put something that's Bluetooth communicating through your brain. But I made a post about that on social media, and it went crazy. People are like, No, it's not harmful. It's non-ionizing radiation. And to the best of my understanding, okay, maybe if you did non-ionizing radiation once, but when you have these in your ears all day long, it's this accumulation. Radiation can cause an acute damage to the cell, basically, like ripping them apart. But this accumulation of all of these things from microplastics to... I mean, children. I feel like children these days wear the AirPod headphones just all day long, sometimes sleeping. And it feels like it should just be common sense. And also it's weird to me that these products are even allowed, but that's like a whole other, a a lot of their situation.

[00:11:16.170] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

So the short answer is I don't think we're well-posed to claim strongly that these different devices are causing harm. There's not enough evidence, unfortunately. We know that the molecular cellular level, that's true. That's what's happening. But we don't see, for example, a long term studies associating any of these things with diseases. And so the regulatory framework in which these are approved is very low bar. And we're not talking about long term effects. So unfortunately, although we see studies in mice that have increased cancer rates, where you put just a cell phone next to them for hours and hours. And so the data is there. Unfortunately, not so much in humans.

[00:12:20.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. Well, that's why I think it's so important. I always tell people, you have to take control of your own health because the idea would be, you go to the store and anything that you pick up off the shelf would be non-harmful to your health. But unfortunately, from the food to our clothes and microplastics. That's not the case. It's not the case. So if you want to be healthy these days, you just have to do things so differently. Can you talk a little bit about your experiment when you were living an ancestral lifestyle?

[00:12:51.140] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yes. So I studied many determinants of inflammation for years, and I I was suffering from migraines. I was doing my postdoc at Stanford. It was very challenging. Postdoc salary is very low and two kids. It was very challenging and complicated. And so I decided to do an experiment and completely changed my lifestyle. And I moved to the countryside. This little valley called the San Gregorio is very close to Stanford campus, but it's just gorgeous, beautiful and off the grid, right? In a cabin. And I changed everything from the use of containers in my life where all the plastics were to the garbage. And I started to buy glass containers and stainless steel containers, and I changed completely my diet. So no more wheat-derived products. So no more bread, no more pasta. All the carbs went down to the very, very bottom. Organic, everything organic. I wouldn't touch anything that's not organic. Lots of salmon. I would go to the pier and buy off the boat my 15 pounder wild Alaskan salmon. And so slice it and freeze it down and have mainly as a diet, as a base diet, wild salmon and berries, organic berries.

[00:14:40.900] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It changed dramatically. And it was absolutely amazing. We got rid of chairs. We didn't have any chairs. After 8:00, 7:30 PM, no more electrical light. Just candles. The only source of heat was my wood burning stove. It was really a big, big change as you see in the city.

[00:15:06.020] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Your sleep was probably amazing, though, because sleeping in such cold temperatures, I found unbelievable. Yes.

[00:15:11.510] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

So sleeping was great. No more headaches ever again. Wow. I love that. That was a huge change in my quality of life, in my mood. I was very enthusiastic and very energetic much more than ever. And we've known that some ketogenic diets, for example, have this effect, have increased energy and stuff like that. So a lot of different changes with great results, moving around much more than before. And yeah, the list is long.

[00:15:50.120] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Hi. We're taking a short break from the podcast to discuss a new community that I have launched. I want to preface this by saying that I will continue to post content on my social platforms and conduct interviews on this podcast that are both free and applicable to both sexes. But as a woman, I have unique insights and perspectives on female health. I recently launched my first ever paid offering, and this is a female-only health optimization and longevity community. If you are a male, you can skip this portion of the podcast or you can forward this information to a female that you think would be interested. I set out to create the most valuable longevity optimization community for women. I have spent over the last decade dedicating my life to human optimization and have dived deep into the female-specific optimization and protocols. This is a place I want you to learn everything you need to know about optimizing your health, longevity, and mindset. I made this a community only for women because I wanted us to be able to be open, which I didn't feel could be done in the comment section of my Instagram. I also love the idea of women sharing protocols of what's working best and everybody within the community can offer valuable insights to each other and support.

[00:17:04.840] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Members get weekly and bi weekly Ask Me Any Things, exclusive content and protocols like articles, videos, and a whole host of courses, and you'll receive up to date female longevity science. You'll also get community in connection with like-minded women, access to virtual and in-person events with me, and your membership will help support female human studies in the very near future. You can learn more about this membership on my website, kailabarns. Com.

[00:17:34.200] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

You were doing a workout routine that was only five minutes in the morning, right? That's right, yes. But you were in the best shape of your life. Yes.

[00:17:41.250] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

I was around 40 years old and rejuvenating. That's what I would feel. I love that. Largely rejuvenating. I didn't show you a photo, so I was buffed in my six-pack, which is great. And it didn't take too much effort. My routine My daily routines, morning routines were five minutes count, and very specific things like handstands and push-ups and pull-ups. And that's it. Although I changed this idea of... When we study biology, we know that all the species tend to do the minimum effort. That's a minimum effort law, right? I was going to complete the opposite. When I go to grocery shopping, for example, I would park my car further away to carry my bags and avoid to go to the gym. I don't need to go to the gym. And so constant challenges as far as my exercise goes, were, I think, largely beneficial. So I believe in the maximal effort law, not the minimum.

[00:18:59.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I love that. It's funny because on the way here, which we were on the flight, we were on the train. Basically, we hit every form of transportation, an exact boat on the way here. Yeah, exactly. But it was amazing to me because I always take the stairs going down. I have my bags, we take the stairs. But every single person is on the escalator. I'm like, Is this a herd behavior? Like one does it, so everybody does it?

[00:19:28.240] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

I think it's lack of information. Those small, very small changes add up.

[00:19:38.930] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

They do.

[00:19:39.670] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah. And so I think your podcast and With people like you, spread the word out there of these minimal changes that you can have in your life that add up largely. You can prevent diseases. The effective mass is massive. You can reduce inflammation, you can push a health span and have a long life and that it's a healthy life.

[00:20:05.790] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. I mean, it is. It's really... Because even this concept of sitting all day long and then working out for 30 minutes to 1 hour, which most people are not doing anyway. Going from the couch, the refrigerator is most certainly not a workout. So you have to... I love, though, the idea of moving just throughout the day. And I completely understand that not a lot of people have the ability to do I'm working from home now, but anytime that you can, any meeting that I have a phone call, I go outside, I live in the hills. It's good zone to cardio, but just trying to be moving as much as possible instead of just... I don't If you, I know this might not be your niche, but I've seen some studies about sitting all day and then the one hour workout. It's obviously far better to be moving throughout the day and intermixing workouts. Is that more beneficial for health?

[00:20:57.890] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

There was a science paper published around 10 years ago showing almost a perfect correlation between the time you're sitting in a chair and mortality.

[00:21:07.220] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:21:08.260] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

As simple as that. And the reason is we haven't evolved being sitting in chairs. It causes inflammation. We know that. I think you're absolutely right. I think the fact that both of us are advocates of moving around much more than the average person and avoiding being sitting and avoiding sedentarism in a way. And it doesn't have to be a very extenuous workout. It doesn't have to be. It could be if you want to really be super in tune with your body, definitely. But it doesn't have to be. With these minimal changes, you can be really super healthy and avoid diseases.

[00:21:58.720] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. I mean, they say, what's the saying? Eighty % of apps are made in the kitchen, right? I think a lot of the factors are just the ecosystem that you have inside of your body and around your body and your gut microbiome. All that stuff influences weight because I don't work out now as nearly as hard as I used to, and I've still maintained a very good physique. I mean, I used to be in the gym, and I had an eight-pack at that time. I don't necessarily have that now, but you can still maintain really good health overall, just environment, lifestyle, and moving around. So I love that.

[00:22:33.880] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Just on that front, I implemented those learnings. Now I live in San Francisco in the outer sunset by the beach, and it's a city, and you get more temptations, and pollution, and noise from cars and stuff like that. Exactly. And so it's not the same, but I try to implement those learnings from those all days into my daily routine today. And so it's doable.

[00:22:59.660] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I I think you mentioned last night at the dinner that you like surfing. Yeah. I mean, that's an amazing grounding, too, right? Like you're getting all these healing frequencies. Yes.

[00:23:11.240] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

I enjoy, but much more than enjoying is I need it. It's grounding is just relieving all this stress, not just stress as in social stress, but also you're thinking we We think a lot. We have this a lot of intellectual activity throughout the day. As a scientist, we're thinking so many different aspects of the biology of aging and how to apply these things and biomarkers and interventions and wellness and For me, it's a bit of a challenge. So it can be daunting. And being in the water with the waves, nobody out there, maybe a few people. Ocean Beach is pretty laid back, and it's mostly for experienced surfers. It's not a whole lot of people there. It's fun. It's great. I really need it. It's super helpful.

[00:24:07.330] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. Any other tips on inflammation for people before we move on to your older twin?

[00:24:15.930] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Well, taking a holistic approach, as we mentioned, is critical. And most of the times, I think the elephant in the room is exactly that, is how do we promote lifestyle and decisions. That's difficult. It's a challenge for most people, but also the lack of information on these minimal changes that you can implement every day of your life.

[00:24:45.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I always say the best exercise movement is the one that you'll do, right? Start with two minutes and work up every day. I think when people make extremely audacious goals, like they're going to change everything overnight, the science says that that doesn't work. Yeah, long term. So just these small things. Pick one or two small things. You're going to walk for 15 minutes more during the day and just start there.

[00:25:08.700] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, there's a lot of data on walking and jogging, preventing mortality by eight years, by five years. It's really crazy.

[00:25:21.870] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Well, the important question, because we've all heard different amounts of steps, right? I mean, I get at least 15,000 steps a day. I'm walking all time. But what is the minimum threshold in terms of steps?

[00:25:35.350] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It varies depending on the study. Some studies have shown half an hour, which corresponds to certain steps. The Stanford study showed that even 10 minutes can extend health span significantly. It depends on the study and the population.

[00:25:53.990] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

What do you try to get, personally?

[00:25:56.540] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

That's an interesting question. I used to be very focused on measurements. I'm no longer that person. I have the feeling that that causes a level of stress that I prefer to avoid. So I don't count steps.

[00:26:18.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

No counting steps? All right. Well, I still count mine. But it doesn't... All these things, a lot of people ask me, does this whole routine and this whole lifestyle cause you stress? They truly doesn't. I love it so much, and I get that not everyone is going to, but it's my mentality, right? I feel so blessed to be able to move my body, to walk, to be in sun, to be in nature. I mean, that is like, I'm so lucky to be able to do that and enjoy it.

[00:26:47.050] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Many people cannot do it, unfortunately, but I guess minimal changes. I used to wear a Whoop device and my minimum strain, I wanted to be like 12, 15 and up, but I prefer not to wear anything. I don't know. It's a personal decision.

[00:27:06.080] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I totally get it. Probably one day, well, whenever I move off the grid and have this biological home, I probably won't have any technology over there. Real quick before we move on, because I've had some interesting comments around my sleep setup, which I explained to you, like organic bed with the mattress and then the EMF, but you're sleeping on a wool mattress. So what's your rationale behind that?

[00:27:29.140] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Evolution medicine. The firmer, the better. Wool is a natural product. Organic linen covers the wool. We have a provider that comes from Bulgaria. It's just amazing. They do really high-quality stuff. All my furniture at home comes from the same vendor. So it's all natural, organic products and cotton or linen. And so I really enjoy the mattress. There is a bit of a challenge that you have to flip it every 10 days or so to avoid it.

[00:28:08.330] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

How heavy is it? I didn't ask you that.

[00:28:09.920] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

They're a little bit heavy on the heavy side, but that's good.

[00:28:13.140] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, it's good. You need to be taking heavy stuff off. Exactly.

[00:28:15.980] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

You don't need to go to the gym. I love that. Some people won't. Anyway.

[00:28:20.520] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Okay, so let's talk about this older twin. What are you doing with this AI, older twin, and gravity? What's going on?

[00:28:30.830] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, so many people have heard of this digital twin, which is basically using a lot of your data to produce a simulation of a person on that computational space. What we're doing is something slightly different. We're taking cells from individuals. We're exposing them to simulated microgravity, and we're accelerating the aging of those cells by about 5-7 years. What that means is that we can have a window for how that person will age and which mechanisms will affect that person in the next five years. And so we can prevent them. We can develop countermeasures. This whole idea started with a collaboration with NASA. Four years ago, we started a program after NASA reached out to us and They asked about collaboration. Susie Sanello used to be at the Human Research Program in Houston. And she reached out and said, David, your research in the immunome and aging are so applicable to the stuff we're doing and trying to develop countermeasures for this accelerated aging in astronauts to protect our astronauts from accelerated aging. That blew my mind.

[00:29:56.980] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

That's amazing. They are accelerating their aging when they're in space, Exactly.

[00:30:00.860] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

So when they're in space, there's about 15 to 30-fold increase in age acceleration for the brain, for the heart, muscles, immune system, every single organ in the body. And so that really created an opportunity for me to go and study accelerated aging, and we envision a way to do this in the lab. And that's where the simulated microgravity comes in. We We purchased some equipment that was engineered by NASA, and we put the cells in microgravity, in dissimulated microgravity in the lab, and we can have that window for how you will age in the next five years, and we test different compounds. And then we can give you a very exact approximation of what you should take that may be very different from what I need to prevent my aging. I love that.

[00:30:57.250] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Well, that is incredibly exciting. What are some of the compounds that you might be testing? Let's say maybe you identify that genomic instability because that seems like a difficult one. Obviously, lifestyle can be. But what might you then test to see if it would work?

[00:31:12.760] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

We don't have a a defined list. We do this very unbiasedly. We use machine learning and AI that we've developed over the past four years, approximately, in the lab to go from these all-mix technologies with gene expression and so on to compound identification. We build what's called the interactome. These are genes and chemical entities that are interacting that we know from public domain databases. If there is a change in expression of certain genes, we can pull the compounds in silico, using a computer, that will normalize that gene expression. There's literally thousands of compounds that are analyzed, and the algorithm will spit out a list of the top 20. And then based on that, I can give you recommendations. We can also test some of those on your edge cells to see how strong they can reverse or prevent those signatures from happening.

[00:32:19.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Well, I need to do this one, too. Yeah. That would be so exciting.

[00:32:24.150] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, it'll be fun to see which exactly compounds you. You are predicted to work, but also they can work on your eight cells in vitro in the lab in the dish, right? We tested a few already in a paper that was published this year, alongside with other four papers that came all together in the nature package in June of this year. One of the compounds that we selected based on this unbiased approach was quercetine. Quercetine was able to reduce 70 80% of the aging signatures in the blood cells that we tested in microgari.

[00:33:07.160] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Very powerful. Do you take quercetine?

[00:33:10.160] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

I don't. Again, I don't measure myself. I don't do much supplements. Typically, I think that if you have a very complete nutritional guidance and you can Very, very diverse fruits and vegetables, lots of salmon and herring and sardines. You get your omega-3s, you get your vitamins, you get your coenzymes, you get your minerals. You may not need to supplement. That's my take. Everybody has a different opinion in the field, and some people are measuring the levels of vitamins and mineral from blood and supplementing. I've done that, yeah. Yeah. So I've gone through those processes and having the whip and the aura and counting steps. I'm no longer that type of profile. I prefer to take it as I have built a natural lifestyle that I can control, and I don't get out of that nutritional guidance. I'm finalizing a book that uses evolutionary medicine to combat inflammation and diseases, and that's my guideline.

[00:34:38.190] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. When's the book coming out?

[00:34:41.480] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It's been finalized. We still need to negotiate with the publisher and everything else, but I can send you my outline.

[00:34:48.310] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I would love that. When it becomes available, let me know. I can let everyone know it's available to purchase. That's pointful. No, I agree. The strategy I'm employing is I'll I'll do the test of the nutrient status like a Nutribell, and then I'll supplement or do an IV or something to get the levels where they should be. But then in my brain, I'm like, Okay, I need to add more vitamin C into my diet. The hardest thing for me is, and that's why growing your own food would be ideal, because our soil is so depleted of nutrients. I'm not sure if you agree with this, but it's a little bit difficult to try to... I'm now going to the farmer's market only. I actually have this amazing subscription. I'll tell you it's in It's great. So it's all regenerative farms, and they're all packed up and then shipped. But it's picked because the other problem is when the food is picked and then it travels so far and it's losing nutrients as it goes. So it's a whole thing, the nutrients.

[00:35:43.170] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, it's a long conversation, but I agree with you. Monoculture and the entire food system is completely broken. I'm buying also half of the farmer's market, local, organic. But yes, Most of the soils around the world, especially in the US, are completely depleted. It's a growing concern. I'm trying to counteract this reality by just buying local and from sources that I know. Ideally, you want to grow your own veggies, but that's Oftentimes, it's not possible.

[00:36:31.710] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. I'm going to work on it.

[00:36:32.780] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It requires a lot of space, right?

[00:36:35.910] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yes, space, time, effort, all that. Well, one quick question about the fish, just because I really value your opinion. So what do you think will happen with the future of fish? Because I love eating these wild caught fish, but now with the levels of heavy metals in them sometimes, is that a concern at all to you?

[00:36:58.230] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

It is. It is. So heavy metals is one concern, especially for the long-lived fish.

[00:37:05.330] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Like tuna?

[00:37:06.460] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Tuna, yeah. That's one that is very dangerous, I would say. Small fish are always preferred. So sardines, herring, and also salmon is not too bad as far as the heavy metal content goes. But one big concern is plastics. They're everywhere. They're probably the third largest existential thread that there is for humans. And we breathe them. They're in the waters, in the ocean. And we're exposed to them. There are certain tests that are now being developed. We have one at the Buckeye Institute that we're working on to detect micro-nanoplastics from blood, and there's some solutions as to how to countermeasure of those effects, not something that is ready for prime time.

[00:38:06.050] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. Can you just repeat what you said? You said that microplastics are the third most existential threat to human life.

[00:38:16.560] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Is that what you said? Yeah, exactly. It's the third existential threat to humanity after the Second World War and the climate change. We're finalizing our paper that will probably come out in science talking about this issue, how impactful it is, negatively impactful, how even the most pristine areas on the planet are packed with plastics. The Tibet, the Arctic, and the Antarctica, it's just everywhere. It's in the air, it's in the soils, it's in the water sources, it's everywhere. But again, we're working hard on developing diagnostics and solutions for it. And ultimately, what we need is really advance the conversations with policymakers and government and stop plastic production entirely. There is a negotiation committee in the United Unions happening. The fourth one was in Ottawa in April of this year. It's going to be another one coming Coming pretty soon. And they're trying to sign a treaty that by 2040, we will stop plastic production entirely in the whole planet. There's a lot of pushback from oil companies, especially. And you can see that from the last conference in Ottawa, there were 290 lobbyists and only 50 delegates from different countries. There's a lot of push from the oil industry in general.

[00:40:10.000] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

But that's a long time. We need to figure out a way to get rid of the plastics now, at least to be able to detox them from our bodies, right? We talked about a couple of potential solutions.

[00:40:21.580] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, but I mean, stop plastic production completely in the world It will require a massive shift in the entire industry that touches every single aspect of human life, from consumer products, services, cars, phones, everything.

[00:40:50.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Wow, that will be a very different world. It'll be amazing.

[00:40:55.020] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Yeah, a very nice and beautiful world to live in.

[00:40:59.210] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I know. Well, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:41:03.470] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Thank you so much for inviting me here.

[00:41:05.970] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Of course. We'll have to do a longer one back in LA.

[00:41:09.240] - DR. DAVID FURMAN

Happy to. All right.

[00:41:10.620] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Well, thank you. Thanks.

[00:41:11.830] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

This podcast is for informational purposes only, and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Kyla Barnes, does not accept responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of the information contained herein. Opinions of their guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical issue, consult a licensed physician.