Can You Biohack Your Way to Immortality?

Silicon Valley is all about like, how do we do this as efficiency? Lean, you know, like AI, like reducing. It's all about like efficiency and that kind of crap. So I feel like this is a logical extension of that to your personal life.

Where you're just like, okay, I'm going to now do this because I can be the best possible human I can be. Start it up. Let's get it rolling. Big ideas, money folding.

Hustle smart. Dream so wild. Turn that ground into a joyride. Ha!

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Can we do it without the lyrics? Yeah, yeah, why? I see why.

Why? I would want to do it without the lyrics. They're doing it, and it's like... I'm just like, don't get it.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. Christopher Singenson, what are you doing? I haven't done one of these in a while. Remember in the early days, I would be like, welcome to the...

Yeah, you're a real dork. Not anymore, though, right? You're like a news anchor. Is that what you were trying to do?

I'm Ron Burgundy. He'll say anything on the prompter. Three, two, three, the scotch. I do seriously kind of want to do that one time.

I don't know why. It just feels hilarious. The program has gotten much more casual, I would say, over the years, right? Yeah.

Wow. It has been years. yeah i know all right anyways i'm gonna hit you up here all right dude i got a question for you nope do you own one of those like red light mask things yes that you wear to make my wife does your wife does you use it too though i have maybe to admit it well like occasionally okay so are you biohacking is that what you're doing with that thing i guess so because anything so do you know what it does oh i think you're gonna tell me uh yeah uh so it stimulates the mitochondria of your cells yeah the energy center of your cells and it's supposed to help that like rejuvenate the idea being that it can help with wrinkles does it actually i think very marginally i read about uh somebody so this is just the mask but i read about uh in the new york times there was uh it was like it was in wired or whatever uh one of the reviewers got like the full body one oh and it's like a whole even the nether regions i don't know if they're naked in it do i need hog rejuvenation i like this thing's a lot of wrinkles down there oh god man what is with you i don't know together like i said it's a much more casual show than it ever used to be we're talking about hogs anyway but uh anyway she said the the reviewer was like uh it did help like a lot a lot of people also say that it helps make your skin just look better and that it also helps with like zits and stuff if you have like all right i i guess i'm kind of like iffy on those i do think my skin looks a little bit better when i use it okay but i'm not sure how long it like lasts so is there any data behind this thing or is this i have to say i about it i i didn't just like i would never take the marketing at its word um i it seems kind of legit but it's a pretty nascent technology too why what's your point what's going on all right so uh there's kind of like this trend with the tech bros of kind of like you know you you started you start a tech company you sell it you get a lot of money and then you get you live forever yeah exactly yeah exactly yeah so like think of bezos think of uh uh have you heard of brian johnson uh yeah don't die yeah i know don't die all right so he looks terrifying but but he's so much older than what he looks like i know i know his like he a photo of him next to his like 18 year old son and they're like they're in the ballpark have you ever seen um did you see what he looked like before they kind of looked normal before like yeah normal like he had he looked 25 years older yeah when he was younger than what he looks like now yeah he's really ghosty looking though right now he's pale well because he doesn't go outside like he doesn't get like sunlight like this now this is like the class so he's made this point too he's like i know it'd be hilarious someday if i got like hit by a bus right because he's doing all these things so that he lives for a gajillion years or whatever.

But he's hardcore though. Like he's done like autoimmune therapy and stuff to like reverse aging in his cells. Like he's done crazy stuff. Okay.

So why I'm bringing this up is because he's treating aging as a disease, which I think is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's obviously a trend of people doing this.

Like I know we sold our company. I started going to the gym a lot and I don't know what it is, but like after you sell your company, for some reason you want to be like super healthy and you go to the gym a lot. You do all sorts of things to try and be healthy. Do you remember we actually did the Grail cancer screening blood test.

We did the DNA analysis. We did lots of blood work. There's like the enhanced blood work test where you basically test for all the major indicators for like various diseases and stuff. I have to do that again soon actually.

The full blood panel. Just so everybody knows. I took like no supplements or anything like that. And then, you know, we sold our company and then we're out.

And then all of a sudden I'm taking like, you know, way more like vitamins and things like that. I never would have. Like the whole homeopathic stuff, you know, like there's a real push to. I think everything I'm doing is very mainstream-ish.

Maybe like a few that are more fringe or like the DNA analysis that you wouldn't see typical people doing that kind of stuff. But most of the stuff that I'm doing is just, you know, vitamin D in the winter and things like that. It's nothing. It takes some iron because I'm vegetarian, things like that.

So nothing's super out there. I did not realize there's this whole other world of like going super deep on like people that want to live. The saunas, the cold plunges, the hyperbaric chambers. Yeah, there's a whole other category of all these different things.

Okay, so what is it with tech bros doing this? is this what is this um well yeah i don't know i think it's i think it's a function of i have a really good life i'm very very fortunate to have my life i'd like my life to go on for as long as possible yeah i think there the now canceled peter atia uh for being in the Epstein files which is too bad But that was pretty disappointing But anyway, but the whole idea of health span. Yeah. It's not just like how long you live, but living better during those years is more important.

And like, oh, basically having like a sudden death. Yeah. Is your, not like a heart attack, but like you just, I don't know, die in your sleep or something is like the best thing you could ever possibly hope for because we're all going to die. Right.

And so I think that's kind of interesting. Um, so in terms of the tech pros specifically, I think that it's also a function of optimization. So Silicon Valley is all about like, uh, how do we do this as efficiency lean, you know, like AI, like reducing that. It's all about like, uh, efficiency and that kind of crap.

So I feel like this is a logical extension of that to your personal life where you're just like, okay, I'm going to now do this because I can be the best possible human I can be. um last point i'll make on this and then we can conclude the episode is uh i think it's like a functional uh makes you better at work yeah yeah definitely okay what you eat and okay remember actually here's a good one remember in the early days of app armor yeah it was just you and me we'd go up to the sunset grill there on queen street and we'd get like the lumberjack slam and it came with the pancakes and and afterwards we're all mopey just like oh shut up man it's just like awful completely wrong it was on richmond street richmond and young but yes you're right anyway but then we started eating better at lunch and we didn't have that issue we didn't have the carb crash we were more efficient like there's definitely a function of like what you eat makes you um you know better your job yeah yeah you start every day with a monster energy drink as opposed to like a smoothie that has like spinach and like and uh powders like like protein powders and like full vitamin complete powders and creatine and all these other things that can help you perform i think it makes a huge difference on a day-to-day basis so when we were working i would not have breakfast i would have probably like five cups of coffee in the morning and then i would have lunch with you which five yeah probably probably yeah what yeah for sure for sure of what age what point like when we were going to the office when we were at you have five cups you always say to me at three now i do now i've toned it down to three wow i was definitely at like five easily if you had nothing else man you're so dehydrated yeah i know any water remember you used to make fun of me that i like a prune that's crazy and i would say there's water and coffee my favorite was when you'd you'd have a whole like this makes more sense you'd have a bunch of coffee and then you'd have a cup of water because basically the rest of the staff and i would guilt you and have a glass of water and then you'd be so pissed off like you had to pee in the middle of a meeting and you'd be saying something like damn it i gotta pee i just get up and leave my body was just like any water that got in just like like express trip right out because i was trying to get it everywhere that it needed it as quickly as possible anyway it's fine anyways but so like that that was me like i would have lunch with you and then i would have subway at dinner and like it was just like i would at least i was having some way robot you were just I was a working robot.

Yeah, yeah. So going back to my original question, like what is it about Tech Bros and, you know, having your company acquired and then leaving and all of a sudden going on the health kick? For me, it was like, oh my gosh, I actually have time to, you know, go to the gym. And it's like, oh, I have to like fix.

Like I knew I was treating my body like crap and I needed, and this is like my chance to fix all the problems that I knew I was creating. I still drink a lot of coffee, way too much coffee. coffee is great but at the same time though I'm doing way better on all the nutrition, health, exercise that kind of stuff so I think there is something going on there about like when you start a tech company you just bury yourself and it is all consuming and then there's almost like this guilt reaction when you come out of that on the other end to then try and make up for I think that's your case and I think that's the case of some founders too but i do think that a lot of tech founders that are still in the market that are still operating like they they're also looking to optimize too there's also still working yeah for sure like not all of them were chris lincolnson right you're the end of one there are a lot of people that were like you for sure and i'm sure they still exist but i think there's also a huge percentage of people that optimize as well and they get up really early and they work out and And they make sure they still work like from, you know, 630 to 630 every day, you know, at a minimum.

And, you know, they're really putting in the time, but they still find the ways to get the right meals to them. Like, you know, what's the diary of CEO name guy? What's Steve Bartlett? Bartlett, yeah.

He talks about this, right? Because he's pretty busy. He likes to be super busy. He's got a bunch of investments.

He's got his show. He's got things he's doing. He has like his food, like some bougie, like food service, like brought to him. that's like really, really healthy.

That's meant to like optimize, you know, like he makes, he works out every day, like, and he's busy as hell. So I think actually a function of it is just, it's about optimizing to be the best person you can, whether or not you've quit. I think the difference is a function of priorities. I think in the business we were in, in the, you know, funding level we had, the number of customers we had, that sort of stuff.

I just didn't even feel like that was in the realm of possibility okay couldn't afford to go and have like a meal service come to me bring me food couldn't find the time i think you could have but yeah i don't i don't think i could have i think both are possible so i that well okay yes for your lifestyle it would have required a sacrifice of at least an hour or two of work a day yeah which may or may not have been tenable right um i think you lived with a lot of fear yeah um you had a lot of crazy shit happen to you before I joined and you know, the 10 year age difference shows up.

Everyone saw this one of those moments where like, you just had so much crazy shit happen that you knew that if you kept working, everything would be fine. And so, um, almost as like it's a work addiction basically. Because it always felt like if I did try and do something like that, like go to the gym or whatever, that would be the morning that I'd get a phone call right in the middle of it. And somebody would be like, you know, super PO'd at us for something.

Um, and you know, yeah. So that's like my hangup probably. But for me, there was no way I was going to be able to do any sort of like a balanced lifestyle Before we move on to the next part of this because I can tell you thinking about it is I also just think though that this is a broader trend that I alluded to earlier which is treating aging as a disease as opposed to an inevitability And I think the idea of that is to both improve healthspan and lifespan. And like there's organizations, I don't know if they've been successful or not, but they're like companies, medical companies and whatnot that are trying to get aging classified as a disease.

so that it can be like have prescribed treatments for it and stuff like that rather than like you know like when we were kids they talked a lot more people dying of natural causes yeah which that doesn't make any sense like you always die of something right and yeah you can die of being old but dying of being old usually means something fails your heart fails your i don't know whatever you have a stroke okay um i think the idea is um and i'm interested in i think i just about everybody else is interested in too in improving human longevity which is going to require treating that as a disease yeah so one thing that's kind of interesting is do you know which country has the highest life expectancy in the world sweden south korea damn well it did start with an s yeah that's basically right right right uh how so different how often do you think the average person goes to the doctor in south korea four times a year 16 16 times a year wow four times that i said you know why why preventative how many doctors they have they must have a lot no shit they must have a lot how many people in korea like hundreds of millions i don't know lots but a lot but you know as a percentage it it's still pretty remarkable so they're really focused on the preventative are their costs lower be interesting to know per capita what their costs are because then you would know that this is the right way to do it which i think it's got to be yeah i'm not really sure again going back to the former disgraced doctor this is the the whole health care 3.

0 thing right like you can prevent the issue from happening it saves everybody time money and effort and misery yeah yeah and so i think you know when i think about a lot of these uh things that like the brian johnson's of the world are trying to do this seems all very reactive. He's trying to unspin his, his age. You know, he's trying to get himself to be lower age. Whereas like, is it, is it all just hocus pocus, you know, flashy stuff that does it really actually work?

Or is it better just to be like, kind of like South Korea and be like, Hey, let's just be really proactive and look at preventative things early on from a very early age. I definitely, I definitely think Brian Johnson is preventative. do you think so 100 he is taking all these actions to increase his metabolic or reduce his metabolic age yeah and like improve his overall health in an effort to prevent serious illness later as well okay and also live longer um uh so i think that's one thing i think south korea's approach is also the right way to do it i think doctors you cannot get a doctor's time unless you're dying yeah so i know here it's really tough to get a doctor i think it's the wrong way to do it i always hate the thought too when you call the doctor's office the receptionist will say like what do you want to talk to the doctor about yeah and you're kind of like can i talk to the doctor about that yeah you know who are you like what is your i think it would be cool because they're almost like filtering you out they are yeah you're trying to figure out oh you don't need that for this yeah you don't you don't need to come here and it's kind of like and then you know i know doctors probably just hate it that people are using ai models for health and things like that.

But what is the alternative? No, they need to. Right? You can't get in to see a doctor.

For sure. Like Canada needs like 10 times as many doctors as we have now. Yeah. Or like nurse practitioners have to, 10 times more nurse practitioners with more authority.

Or we need an AI model that is like government sanctioned and tested and vetted that people can actually go to. The real. Get some basic answers to the low-hanging fruit. Agreed.

I agree. I mean, that is ChadGBT. That is Claude. And I think people take their health into their own hands, particularly since the pandemic.

Yeah. I really think that we do that. But I am concerned for the generation before us for boomers because they definitely have an expectation that the doctor is like looking at their file and is thinking about them and is going to give them a call for their annual checkup and the reality is that's just not true yeah like that just doesn't happen anymore I'm 47 and I think I've there were definitely tests that have should have been done when I was like 40, 45, that sort of stuff that have not been done.

No, just not have it. Like you need to do it. Because I'm not a squeaky wheel, right? Like I'm not calling up.

But you become one because of this, right? Then you get an illness, then they didn't know and it's a little bit more progressed and then you're really sick and then they got to, you treat you. Yeah. I'm so on board for the idea of preventative medicine.

I think it starts with people taking ownership of their own medical state, getting, paying. I know like, I think it would be great if, so we're universal healthcare here. But I think it would be great if covered under universal healthcare with some sort of deeper blood test that identified all your markers. Like annual blood tests.

Annual blood tests. Life labs will be pumped. You know, like something like that. And then you go and you have that data and you say to the customer, here's a little note.

Go home. Start a project on your favorite AI tool. Put this information in and tell me what this means and what I should be thinking about and how I should live better. Yeah, yeah.

That's it. That honestly would save lives. You know what's crazy too is you can't just go to the blood lab and say, I'll pay the money for the test. You have to have a requisition.

Yeah. You know, and part of it is because they're worried about your analysis of the results. I'm sure they want a doctor to analyze the results. They're probably trying to like control demand too, because those places are already crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah.

Bottom line is I find that odd that you can't just go and pay for a blood test. I think it'd be an interesting, this probably exists. Is there a market for, like, I don't know. What is it?

I'm so not, neither are you. No, not bio, but like, what does it really mean to get a blood test? So they take my blood. Got that.

Okay. What's the next move? Does it go into a machine that does all this analysis? I think a bunch of different machines and a bunch of different procedures to, because I'm assuming they have to test in different ways to figure out.

Can you self-serve this? Could you take your machine stick your arm in it Could you take your own blood Okay Like maybe not Maybe that gross A lot of people can give themselves like a needle You know they just can get their head You know what I thinking though is like so the issue there a bottleneck around the Herbie here. Yeah. That's a reference to the book, The Goal, by the way.

It's a really, really good operations book. But the Herbie here is the doctors. That's the first Herbie. And then the second Herbie is those blood taking places.

Yeah. And their ability to do mass analysis. You know, I've heard there's an upstart startup. called Theranos that might have a solution.

Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, like there's things where you can like mail your blood and stuff like that. But I just, I don't know. I just know that here people would be more skeptical of that.

Yeah, I think part of it is cultural here. Also, we don't pay money for healthcare here. Like we don't, I think Canadians are always shocked when we have to pay something for healthcare stuff. Oh, yeah.

Because we're just not used to it. So it's actually, I think this is a terrible market. to have a healthcare startup? Yeah, to try and do a healthcare thing.

You're like, oh, you got to pay for this thing? So that's interesting because there are some private healthcare startups that are kind of masquerading as like gyms and stuff like that. MedCan. MedCan.

I was thinking of like, there's Cleveland Clinic Canada. Yeah, whatever. Some of those. There's a bunch of them.

There's also just longevity doctors now. Yeah. And so where do you land on that? Like if you were a tech bro and you just sold your company and you want to get like super healthy and all that sort of stuff and you went to those, is that the right thing to do in our society or is that the wrong thing to do it's the wrong thing to do but i think it's the wrong thing to do for society but the right thing to do for you so i think there are contexts where you can get your own blood work or whatever but i think that if we first off if we want to be fair across the society people need to have access to this and secondly the reality is if we want all of society to benefit from this everybody needs to be able to have access to preventative care.

Right. Like effective preventative care. Yeah. So it doesn't help that there's a med can.

And I'm sure that's a great business and I know it's doing really well. But I think like for the purposes of the average person, they have a right to healthcare. This is the thing that we believe in this country and we think is right. And also we'll save a shitload of money.

I'll be devil's advocate for a sec because I think I'm with you on this. But let me throw this at you. Okay. If somebody like you or me went to med can, And that's actually a benefit for society because then we are not taking up a spot in the public health care.

But the more money you put into private health care, the more powerful it becomes vis-a-vis public health care. And I think that is problematic. But it's going to happen. You know, the other thing, let's say MedCan didn't exist.

You just go to the United States. If you're a rich person. That's actually the... Or Europe or wherever you want to go.

Medical tourism. Go to... Health tourism is already a thing. You know, I went to Istanbul a couple of years ago and I thought it was the funniest thing.

I thought people were like getting into fights or something because everybody had a fucking broken nose. And I realized it's all these people getting nose jobs. Oh, no way. Really?

Objective was like people would go to Turkey to get their like hair. It's all medical tourism. There's tons of medical tourism. I'm not exactly sure why, but get your teeth done, get your hair done.

Like get whatever, like it's all, it's all there. Some people think LeBron went to Turkey because you know, by, by 2016, 2017, LeBron was losing his hair and now LeBron's got a great head of hair. Yeah, you look at the video. roll a video um anyway but um yeah i i just i think look um i i don't think there's much well there probably is debate but i i think it's pretty clear to me at least that preventative medicine save lives saves lives and saves money and makes everything more available actually like people who need the beds actually need the beds okay um and fewer people will need the beds because they've been treated before they had to get to the bed right right so they don't need to be in the hospital so then you're kind of like okay so this is a greater good for society thing so i think uh if i'm the federal government or i'm any provincial government it's like okay this is the way we're going to do this now this is a fundamental change yeah and if you can't they're so underwater right now just with reactive stuff that they can't even think you got i think you got to do both i think you got to do both i i look i feel like there's always fits and starts on this.

They're always like, we're going to do preventative. And then they kind of do it for a couple of years. Then it's like, oh, we're overwhelmed. We can't do preventative.

Just do reactive. Government has a few jobs. Defend the shores. Sort of deliver the mail.

Although I'm not really sure about that anymore. Maybe not in Canada. Not for long. And I think do excellent education.

And I think exceptional healthcare. And then after that, we're starting to get to a pretty long tail. Those are the things I think government should do really, really, really well. okay um so i actually also infrastructure to roads bridges gotcha okay but um trains you know all those things but that after that i i i think government should do more on all of those things and basically less of everything else yeah because those are the things that matter people the most that most people more most often at the some of the most important times of their lives Yeah, absolutely.

Easy peasy. Anyways, so if you're... Solved. Canadian government.

If you're a tech bro... Kearney, call me. You're going to want to get healthy when you sell for some reason. There's a trend there.

And then... Yeah. But if you're currently running a company, try and get proactive. Balance the life.

I think the really important takeaway I would give for anybody listening here is use this episode as an opportunity to reevaluate the way you live because I believe that it affects your productivity and your ability to be successful. So you're saying don't do what Chris did. Definitely don't IV coffee into your veins every morning and ignore water. I think that you want to optimize for the most mental clarity and like mental dexterity that you can have in order to be most effective in business or whatever you're doing.

Even if you're not in business, like you're going to feel better. And the better you feel, the better you're going to act. So how you going to act? Solved it.

Health. Yet another victory for Startup Dufferin. Anyway. All right, folks.

We'll catch you next week. Thanks so much. Bye.