Know Your Physio

Dr. Chris Rhodes: Mimicking Fasting, Enhancing Longevity, and Tapping Biology's Secrets

• Dr. Chris Rhodes • Season 1 • Episode 131

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In this thought-provoking episode, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Chris Rhodes, the CEO and Co-Founder of Mimio Health. A trailblazer in the field of biomimetics and regenerative health, Dr. Rhodes shares his groundbreaking research on fasting, longevity, and tapping into the body’s evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. With years of expertise and a passion for pushing the boundaries of human biology, he unveils how his work is redefining health optimization for the modern world.

Our conversation dives deep into the science behind fasting and the revolutionary approach of biomimetic supplementation. Dr. Rhodes explains how Mimio Health's innovative formulation recreates the benefits of a 36-hour fast, activating metabolic pathways to enhance cellular health, longevity, and resilience—all without caloric restriction. From understanding the role of key metabolites like spermidine and nicotinamide to exploring the intersections of fasting, exercise, and mental clarity, this episode offers a masterclass in harnessing the power of biology to thrive in today’s environment.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about unlocking their body’s innate potential for healing and renewal. Dr. Rhodes’ insights shed light on how fasting mimetics can improve everything from metabolic health to biological age, while also empowering listeners to take charge of their own well-being. Whether you’re new to fasting or looking to optimize your health with cutting-edge science, this conversation will leave you inspired to explore what’s possible when we align with the natural brilliance of our biology. Tune in and take the first step toward unlocking your full potential!

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Key Points From This Episode:

Evolutionarily preserved mechanisms [00:00:11]
Fasting and longevity research [00:08:06]
Hormetic stress and fasting benefits [00:12:00]
Psychological benefits of fasting [00:16:00]
Alternate day fasting benefits [00:21:23]
Fasting mimetic supplement Mimio [00:37:09]
Exercise and regenerative mechanisms [00:45:06]
Autophagy activation by spermidine [00:47:01]
Appetite suppression and metabolism [00:54:16]
Exogenous ketone esters in formulations [01:01:13]
Power of self-healing [01:09:08]

People

Dr. Chris Rhodes

Dave Petrino

Books and References

Elegans Research

Spermidine and Autophagy

Hormetic Stress Mechanisms

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Dr Chris Rhodes:
When you're fasting, you're getting a signal from your environment that's essentially saying there's not a lot of nutrients here, this is a resource-poor environment, so this would actually be a very bad place to have children, have the next generation, because by and large, they're probably not going to make it. Right? So, that tells your body, okay, instead of focusing on the next generation, the progeny, I need to make sure that I'm keeping this generation or, you know, as we would say, myself, alive and functional for as long as possible so that I can then find a new environment that is abundant in nutrients and resources where when I do have a a kid, it would be able to survive and thrive for that period of infancy where it's pretty much helpless. So what your body does in response to that is increase all of these metabolic efficiency pathways, turn on cellular recycling, make sure that we're breaking down dysfunctional proteins and organelles that aren't serving us. breaking them down into their constitutive parts and then turning them into new functional versions. We're also going to be turning on stress response elements to make sure that our cell stability is really high. We're going to be reducing the amount of waste and damage that we're producing from our mitochondria to make sure, again, we're creating these cellular protective effects. And all of these things stacked together create this what I like to call longevity bio program that is evolutionarily conserved throughout that.

Andres Preschel: All right, Chris, we're live. Welcome to the Know Your Physio podcast, man. It's great to have you here.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, great to be here. I'm really excited.

Andres Preschel: Lovely. Well, look, we have so many exciting topics you want to dig into regarding fasting, fasting mimicking diet, and everything that you and your company have to offer to help people tap into these evolutionarily preserved mechanisms that help them live longer, live better, feel clearer, prevent disease. But before we get into all that exciting stuff, man, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and why you do what you do?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, so I am Dr. Chris Rhodes. I am the CEO and co-founder of Mimeo Health, which is a biomimetic nutraceutical company. So essentially what that means is we are studying human biology in these interesting regenerative states of the body, whether that's fasting or exercise or sleep or meditation or cold exposure, things like that. And seeing what happens to the human body in those states, finding ways that we can potentially recreate the benefits of those states, but in on-demand ways by mimicking the natural, like we said, regenerative pathways of the body.

Andres Preschel: So it's like the benefits of fasting on demand.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, exactly.

Andres Preschel: That is our first great way to put it.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I've been the past, at this point, eight years of my life doing, you know, the foundational research to develop the technology, spinning out the company and actually bringing it to market and seeing it make an impact in people's lives. So it's been a wild ride, but I'm really happy to do it.

Andres Preschel: I love it. That's a very sexy approach, right? Because everyone knows that fasting has all these incredible benefits and people feel better and they lose weight and live longer. But let me ask something. Tell us why fasting isn't magic. How is it that fasting gets us in touch in the sense that we are able to tap into, as we just said, evolutionarily preserved mechanisms, right? So it's a way of life that is more consistent with our design. So so can you tell us through and take us through why it's not magic and why it makes sense to tap into these mechanisms and why we feel so good as a result?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thinking about fasting specifically, right, like that is very much an evolutionarily conserved mechanism. So when you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, when you're fasting, you're getting a signal from your environment that's essentially saying, there's not a lot of nutrients here, this is a resource poor environment. So this would actually be a very bad place to have children have the next generation, because by and large, they're probably not Going to make it right so that tells your body. Okay instead of focusing on the next generation the progeny I need to make sure that I'm keeping this generation or you know as we would say myself alive and functional for as long as possible so that I can then find a new environment and that is abundant in nutrients and resources where when I do have a kid, it would be able to survive and thrive for that period of infancy where it's pretty much helpless. So what your body does in response to that is increase all of these metabolic efficiency pathways, turn on cellular recycling, make sure that we're breaking down dysfunctional proteins and organelles that aren't serving us. breaking them down their constitutive parts and then turning them into new functional versions. We're also going to be turning on stress response elements to make sure that our cell stability is really high. We're going to be reducing the amount of waste and damage that we're producing from a mitochondria to make sure again, we're creating these cellular protective effects. And all of these things stacked together, create this what I like to call longevity bio program that is evolutionarily conserved throughout that. And that's basically what fasting is doing for you. It's tapping into these fundamentally conserved mechanisms from as simple an organism as a cell to as complicated an organism as us, that's essentially saying, all right, let's make sure that we're surviving and maintaining our cells for as long as possible so we can get to that new resource-rich environment.

Andres Preschel: And this is a relative in the sense that like we are relatively tapped out of those mechanisms in this modern environment, right? We have a limited access to food. Anytime we have a little bit of a craving or an impulse, it's there. And so by definition, we're just tapped out of these mechanisms and we get to take advantage of living by our bodies, you know, perfect and design that's been preserved. Our modern world evolves exponentially but our physiology evolves linearly and this gap is the reason why we have to look at missions and products and technology like what you guys have got to tap back into what makes us these incredible human beings and living beings. Can you tell us a little bit about why you started doing this? How did this make so much sense to you? Why did you start studying fasting?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, it's a great question. So I got my BS in biochemistry from Loyola Marymount University down in LA. But when I got out, like a lot of college kids, I just didn't really know what I wanted to do with that knowledge. I knew it wanted to be something in research, but I didn't really have a field that I was incredibly interested in at the time. So I took a two-year immunology fellowship at Stanford where I just kind of started pouring through all the research that I could get my hands on, going to all these seminars, learning all these great immunology cellular research techniques. And as I was doing that, I came across the field of healthy aging and longevity research, which I thought was really, really fascinating, right? Because it used to be something that was relegated to myth and legend, right? Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth and all of that. But it's now this really, really active area of scientific research and discovery. And when you're in that space, eventually you come across fasting because it's one of the only ways that we know of to reliably extend lifespan in model organisms. And then even beyond that, when you really dive into the research that's been done on it, there's thousands of papers. that show that fasting can also help to treat, prevent, or delay most major diseases, so really extending healthspan as well and not just lifespan. And the most fascinating part about that for me was that it does all of that without actually adding anything into the system, right? So it's not this superfood or this wonder drug that you're taking and it's, you know, turning on these things, but somehow fasting activates that, you know, dormant longevity bio program that we already have inside of us for, you know, maximum cellular health, which then leads to maximum organismal health. And when I figured that out, when that really clicked for me, I got mad about it. Because I was like, all right, great. So my body knows how to live to be 120 years old and in perfect health, but it's just not doing it, right? Because I don't have the right catalyst to make it happen. So that's really why fasting interested me and why I eventually did my PhD at UC Davis, trying to tease out, you know, what's happening in the body during a fast and is there a way that we can recreate it, activate that longevity bio program and get the benefits of fasting without having to fast?

Andres Preschel: Wow. Absolutely incredible. Thank you for sharing. And I really admire, you know, your noble mission and intentions there and also inspiring, you know, any college student tuning in to stay curious and how that curiosity can really help you solve some incredible problems and add to a field of research that is so promising, but obviously still has, you know, all these huge question marks, but those question marks are going to help you shine, right? Because your relative influence is so great and that keeps you motivated and helping and inspiring so many people, which is why it's such an honor, among other things, to have you on the show today. I wanted to ask you a little more about, you know, as it pertains to fasting and hormetic stress, I mean, the way that you described fasting earlier, as when I asked you for a, you know, somewhat of a definition, It's almost like it's a hormetic stressor, right? It's a form of eustress. And it's through that stress that we motivate the body to be better, more efficient, to be brighter. And is that what we're literally doing when we take a supplement like yours? Are we still listening to that same pathway that drives us to be the brightest, most motivated, and most efficient versions of ourselves? And how does that take place?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. So when you're taking a supplement, like when you're taking any bioactive, you know, something that you're taking into your body and it has an effect on your physiology, your cellular functionality, whatever it is, that is going to be operating very much like a hormetic stress to a certain degree. In Mimeo's case, it's a little bit different because we're using natural human molecules to do this, so it's not ohermetic stress in the same way that a foreign molecule like EGC from green tea would be, right? we are still kind of using that same principle, especially, you know, and fasting in and of itself is definitely a hormetic stressor, where you're giving the body a little bit of stress, which then triggers these cellular stress response elements and programs that provide you with higher levels of protection, regeneration, healing and maintenance than you would otherwise achieve. Because I think that the body operates very much off of a use it or lose it principle, right? We're kind of, in the same way that we're evolutionarily designed to have these adaptations to fasting, we're also evolutionarily designed to be very metabolically efficient and kind of lazy, right? Our body doesn't wanna be putting any energy towards things that it doesn't absolutely need. So if you're not activating these pathways, they're not gonna get turned on. otherwise, right? So that's kind of the principle behind MIMEO is that we take what the body would naturally produce during these prolonged periods of fasting and then give it back to people as a supplement. Therefore, we can activate these same beneficial pathways with those bioactive molecules, but just through simple, you know, daily pill supplementation rather than having to do a full 36-hour fast.

Andres Preschel: So it's more like you're stimulating, not provoking in a sense.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Right, exactly. And so we're kind of, if you think about the stream of events that would happen, ordinarily you would fast. Fasting would cause your body to produce these specific bioactive molecules, which then go on to activate these beneficial pathways that are associated with fasting and all those beneficial effects. What we're doing is kind of coming into that system one peg down, right? We're taking out the fasting and we're just giving people the things that their body would normally produce during a fast, which then go on to activate those same pathways.

Andres Preschel: So let's say that you're offering, like someone is taking the supplement that's helping them derive those specific benefits, but they're not tapping into the relative hormetic stress. Is there something, is there anything that they're missing out on as a result?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Sure, yeah. I mean, we still recommend that people do fast. I take Mimeo and still fast. I'm on a one-meal-a-day schedule. And that's because biology is very complex, right? So, when we actually did our clinical study where we had people come in and fast for 36 hours and looked at their before and after, we found that there were over 300 significant differences between a baseline state and a fasted state. And we were able to screen through about two dozen of those candidates looking for ones that already had some kind of, you know, literature result of having bioactivity, whether that was creating anti-inflammatory effects or antioxidant effects or autophagy, things like that. And we found this synergistic combination of four of those molecules that when we combine them together could recreate a lot of these cellular benefits of fasting and increase lifespan in model organisms by 96%. So really, you know, activating that lifespan extension longevity bio program. But that being said, right, we found this really powerful formula, but it's still just four metabolites out of the 300 that we identified. So there's still this big laundry list of things where, you know, we haven't been able to study them yet. They don't have known bioactivities, but are still all contributing to that grand metabolomic response that you get when you fast, that metabolic switch that we were talking about earlier. So, there's always ways that you can improve the formulation. And as you improve the formulation, as you approach more of that true biological complexity, then you'll get better and better effects that will more closely mimic the actual hormetic stress of fasting. So, you know, with anything that's a simplified version, even our, you know, biomimetic, even with all the great results that we've had in the research, you know, there's still more to do.

Andres Preschel: These are physiological benefits that we're describing, right? And that we're isolating and that we're supplementing with. But I would argue that there's also psychological benefits to fasting, right? And that can in a way also be like a hormonic stressor in its own in the sense of it can elicit neuroplasticity on the anterior metingular cortex because it's a difficult thing to do. Can you maybe elaborate on this and amplify the point that the benefits of fasting are beyond the physiological as well? Is there any research that you've looked at that supports this idea?

Dr Chris Rhodes: I can certainly say from my own personal experience that fasting has great psychological benefits, especially given the nutrition environment that we live in in the U.S. and in most of the Western world, right? We're kind of living our days. on a three meal a day plus snacks kind of schedule. Right. The idea of having any kind of pain from hunger is like that's a negative. We shouldn't have that. We've been told that that lie that if you are feeling hungry, it means that your stomach is eating itself. Right. And it's really painful experience that you shouldn't have to go through. It's also associated with poverty and poor economic status. And fasting kind of allows you to break out of those chains and realize how much we've been lied to and also how powerful you are as a person. So I remember the first time that I did even just like a one day fast, just going for an entire day without food, I was just like so surprised at tuning into what the circadian rhythms of my body were, really interrogating the hunger responses and seeing what happened to them. And, you know, the kind of just the conception of how we think about food, how we think about our meal timing. All that kind of ended up melting away a little bit because what I experienced was, yes, hunger would come, but then it would go, right? It's not like it was constantly there for 36 hours. It was like when my body was trained to expect food, when it would normally have its meals, that's when the hunger would really occur. And that's a very important part about circadian rhythm and circadian training that we don't often talk about is that we can really adapt to what our hunger responses are. based on our habits and when we would typically eat. So, you know, you get that hunger pain, it comes, but it sticks around for maybe about like a half an hour, and then after that it goes away, because your body's like, okay, cool, we got the timing done and it was fine. And so I was able to experience that, explore that, and then come to that realization that, all right, I can just train myself out of this. And that did eventually happen. I'm very much in control of all of my hunger responses now. From a psychological perspective, it's also very empowering to do because you kind of think like, oh, I can't even go, you know, one, a couple hours without eating and then to go to an entire day without eating and kind of recalibrates your own personal psychological setting around food. So what I found was after I did that first fast, I didn't really have as much problems with temptation or food obligation is kind of what I would call it. If you're at work, it's lunchtime, there's a pizza catering thing or a bunch of really greasy sandwiches that someone brings in and it's like, this is the office lunch for the day, go at it. you know, you can just choose to not actually have that, right? Otherwise, you might have been like, oh, I have to have this, like this is, it's being provided for me, it's lunch, I have to eat, right? So I might as well have this pizza. With fasting, you kind of get to that point of, oh, I don't have to eat this pizza. I don't have to, I don't have to eat anything that I don't want to eat, or that might derail me just out of the obligation for having food. So you're kind of,

Andres Preschel: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. You're mentally tougher in a way, but you're also more metabolically flexible. So you don't get as hungry because the second that you dip into a little bit of hypoglycemia, which would typically, well, triggers hunger and everyone, you can, you know, enable a ketogenic state more readily. And now you've stabilized blood glucose and you're focused and you're energized. You don't need food to feel good about yourself. This is probably an oversimplification, but I think, you know, Like that, that makes sense.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. And, and that's, that's very much what you see. You do, you do become more metabolically flexible. You can see it in, in your blood glucose responses for sure. You can definitely see it in even your, um, your hunger sensations, but also your hunger hormones as well. Right. And the insulin cortisol. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's all very tangible. It's all very palpable. And it's surprising how quickly you can kind of turn that around too. What I found was when I started doing it while I was at Stanford, I fell into an alternate day fasting regimen because that's in the scientific research where you see the best lifespan extension is that an alternate day fasting cadence.

Andres Preschel: What does that mean? What is an alternate day fasting cadence?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Sure, so alternate day fasting is essentially what it sounds like. One day you're fasting, no food, no caloric intake whatsoever, but water and non-caloric beverages are fine. Then the next day you would just eat normally. And typically how they do it in experimental studies is that you have what's called ad libitum feeding, which is basically like the animal can eat as many calories as it wants within that Yeah, within that one eating day. And then, you know, the next day, it's back to fasting, and there will be no caloric intake. And then you kind of rinse and repeat for that entire organism's life. And with alternate day fasting, you can kind of get anywhere between, you know, 20 to 50% lifespan extension, without actually having to reduce calories, which is really interesting. Well, but yeah, sorry, I think I went on a tangent there about, yeah, I was my benefit.

Andres Preschel: You were doing research at Stanford alternate day fasting.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, right, right, right. So I was doing alternate day fasting. And basically what I saw was that it took about two weeks to really get used to that structure from a biological perspective, from a psychological perspective. But once you're there, it becomes really easy to a certain extent. It's still a little disruptive, especially from a social aspect. And we can talk a bit more about that later. But from a physiological and a biological perspective, it becomes a way easier. A lot of people would tell me like, oh, but like, how can you not eat for a full day? And I'm like, well, you're not, you're not seeing. Well, so the animal is going to make up his calories tomorrow. Exactly. And that's the silver lining. Like you can think about it as alternate day fasting, but really it's like alternate day vacationing because on those feeding days, you're pretty much, you can go, we can deal with it.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. Very nice. Well, I have, I mean, I have a load of questions for you, man. I hope you're ready. I got a load of questions for you. So, you know, I, it seems to me like, and obviously we have, we're going to talk about the ingredients in your formula and we're going to dig into that in a second, but it seems to me so far, like, A lot of people who might be in a position where fasting is contraindicated could seriously benefit from something like this, right? Like let's say, I don't know, call it like pregnant women or, you know, people that are compromised metabolically in some way, shape or form or people, I don't know. Like there's so many different instances I can imagine where fasting is contraindicated Um, so do you, do you guys target those people? Is there any kind of special consideration there? Um, you know, what are some of your thoughts surrounding this, this topic?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, there are plenty of contraindications to fasting. And ironically, the people who are contraindicated from fasting are usually the ones who could get the most benefit from it. So people with metabolic disorders, but especially the elderly as well, who could really use that kind of, you know, longevity bioprogram activation, those regenerative functionalities, the autophagy, the recycling. all that great stuff, but they also have to contend with sarcopenia and muscle wasting and frailty. And that's usually the biggest and best indicator for longevity going into old age. The more muscle strength you have, the more muscle mass you have going into old age. Typically, the more protected you are from not only disease, but then the actual physical elements of aging as well, which are, you know, falls kind of lead to a lot of this downward spiraling into the American medical system, which is usually how people end up really experiencing what we think of conventionally as the perils of aging, the symptoms of aging.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, you know, that leads me to actually another question here, which is, you know, there's obviously a lot, like fasting is a hormetic stressor, right? And it can be overdone, like any hormetic stressor. You can overdo exercise, you can overdo cold exposure, you can overdo caloric restriction, you can overdo the sauna. And so you want to make sure that you have the minimum effective dose to harness the benefits without burning out and getting sick. Because, you know, these are acute immunosuppressants and they can compromise your physiology and even your psychology. So my question for you is, you know, when you offer something like this, this formula, which I want to transition into the ingredients in a second, when you take a formula like this, are you in some way, shape or form eliciting any harm that is consistent with the excess that fasting can have, uh, the effect that excess fasting can have on the human body? Can you increase sarcopenia? Can you increase pathways for gluconeogenesis and converting that muscle into sugar for the nervous system? Is that something that you guys consider in your formulation?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, definitely what we can say is that a lot of the negative effects of fasting are associated actually with the energy restriction portion of fasting, right? Like the immune suppression that happened or that can happen during fasting, it's actually more associated with chronic caloric restriction than it is with fasting. And there's a lot of nuances there. A lot of the negative effects that you would typically associate with fasting are because of the actual energy restriction itself and less about the specific metabolites and bioactives that are being upregulated to activate these specific protective regenerative metabolic efficiency and recycling pathways, right? So that's more or less what we're doing here, is that we're just taking those bioactives and giving back to them to activate these specific beneficial pathways rather than the potential… Without the caveats. Yeah, right, exactly. And, you know, we also recommend that people take Mimeo with food. We've been able to show in our pilot clinical studies that when you take Mimeo with food, you can produce these beneficial fasting-like effects even during a meal. So you're kind of removing the negative effects that can happen because of long-term energy restriction, which can, yes, very much be about sarcopenia and muscle wasting, like bone fragility, things like that.

Andres Preschel: Right. Well, I think this is a priceless distinction to make. I think we're really drawing a line in the sand here because there are two different things that tend to be interpreted as the same, but they are two different things. And the reason I say that they could be interpreted as the same thing is because, look, any time you apply any kind of restriction in a diet, whether it's fasting or you restrict the macronutrients or you're on a ketogenic diet, for example, That leads to weight loss, typically, because restriction, people tend to eat less. You know, if you restrict your feeding window, aka fasting, people tend to eat less calories. Now there's an energy deficit. If you go on keto, you're more mindful of carbohydrate, for example, you're eating less, right? So people start to lose weight. But that is a distinct process from the evolutionarily conserved mechanisms we tap into when we elicit the intermittent metabolic switch. Which, yes, fasting is the way that we naturally do this, but we technically should tap into that intermittent metabolic switch between meals, because we should have sufficient time between meals. So I want to make sure we're on the same page here. This is a distinction. One is the benefits of fasting and the other is the benefits, but also potentially the harm of excess energy restriction.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Right. Very, very correct. And it's really interesting to look at the distinct effects of fasting and long-term caloric restriction in and of itself. So there have been studies showing that while they do have some overlap, right, because there is a certain amount of energy restriction that happens during fasting, it's just very acute rather than chronic caloric restriction. They have very different end effects as well. And you can get a lot of the benefits of fasting from a lifespan extension and healthspan extension point of view without actually having to reduce total calories, right? So that's the really interesting thing, again, to me about fasting is that going into that acute state of energy restriction and deprivation, even though throughout an organism's lifetime it's going to eat the same amount of calories, you can still activate these beneficial pathways. And that's also very much why you see in alternate-day fasting, when you have that on-off cycle, you're taking advantage of that metabolic switch. you don't typically get immune suppression either, or at least you don't get immune suppression to pathogens, which is a really interesting thing. So they've done studies in mice basically showing that when you calorically restrict an organism, you have blanket immunosuppression, which can be good for longevity, right, but can be bad for you fighting off infections and parasites and things like that. Whereas with fasting, you tend to just get immunosuppression for deleterious things like the chronic inflammation that happens during aging. That's like shutting that down. You're increasing cancer, you know, surveillance and just general inflammatory responses while still maintaining very good responses to bacterial infections and maintaining your like T cells and your B cells that are part of the adaptive immune system.

Andres Preschel: Dude, I love this. The physiologist, the nerd in me, I'm having the time of my life discussing this with you, man, because it's really unbelievable the research that we've been able to tap into to help us draw these distinctions and tell people like yourself, harness the power of these mechanisms and offer them in a more convenient way so that anyone can take advantage of their power. It really is brilliant, man. It's incredible. It really is incredible. I'm curious about when it comes to layering things onto your lifestyle. Let's say you start doing the fasting because it has all these incredible benefits and you feel better, you live longer. Um, how do you personally, and how would you recommend that other people figure out how to, how to train, you know, according to their fasting schedule, like, you know, fitness, how do you program your fitness? What do you recommend? And what does the research have to say about that?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, that's a great question as well. So I think now is probably a great point to kind of dive into the distinctions between different timelines of fasting, right? Sure. So when we think about fasting, and this is something that always comes up in the research field as well, there's not a great universal definition about what is or isn't intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting can usually refer to anything as short as you know, 16, eight, you know, where you're just condensing your eating window all the way up to multiple days of fasting, but just, you know, on a quarterly schedule, something like a three day fast once a month or, you know, once every other month, something like that. Yeah, so I think I was right on 16.8 and that's kind of the easiest way to get into fasting just to start it out. Start by skipping your first meal, adapt to the lifestyle, find out what a reduced eating window can actually do for you on a self-control, caloric restriction basis. But in terms of fasting like benefits, you're not really going to get all that many and you're not going to get anything that's super distinct from typical caloric restriction and that's more or less what you see in the data as well. So you can get reduced lipid levels, reduced glucose and insulin levels, better glucose and blood sugar control there. But other than that, you're really not going to be entering into that metabolic switch that really defines fasting. And that's because it takes around 20 to 24 hours for your body to actually fully deplete its glycogen stores, so it's stored carbohydrates in the body. And until that happens, you're not going to actually activate that metabolic switch, get over to ketone body metabolism, fasting metabolism. So that one meal a day schedule is kind of your best shot at really starting to dip your toe into those beneficial fasting effects, but it's just going to be where it starts. Then moving on to something like alternate day fasting, typically what you experience with that is a 36-hour fast. And like we said, that in the literature is where you see the best lifespan extension data, where you really have autophagy being activated, where you really have the metabolic switch, the ketone body production, all of these interesting metabolites that we identified that are bioactive, activating these regenerative responses and protective responses within your cells. And then for the longer term fast, like the multi-day fast, those are really great for kind of doing a full body reset. So that's where you can really get the immune cell regeneration. That's where you're really going to go into the deep stages of autophagy where You're breaking down organelles and maybe even entire cell types, getting that anti-senescence activity, increasing your cancer immunosurveillance, but also increasing host resiliency and stress response genes as well. But obviously, you can't do three-day fasts super frequently. because then you're going to dip into more of that chronic caloric restriction problem, especially on a on a three day fast where you're really, really reducing calories, and you're going to be pulling a lot from endogenous resources like calcium from bones or protein from muscle to be able to sustain the body. So you got to do that a little bit infrequently. But those are kind of, you know, the big ones that we have studied that we've seen before. And that's kind of the problem. A lot of people who are doing these shorter term fasts think they're getting all those same benefits as they would achieve from the multi-day fast. But in reality, they're not really even approaching that yet. And that's partially where Mimeo comes in. We were designed to mimic the effects of a 36-hour fast. people can get these longer fasting benefits in a shorter fasting window while also helping to make fasting easier because of the effects that we have on cognition and energy levels and appetite suppression and things like that. But that's really the big distinction in the timelines between all the different types of fastings that we've really studied so far.

Andres Preschel: Wonderful. Thank you for taking us through that. And I think now might be a good time for us to finally talk about this product that you've formulated and all the ingredients that are in it. I think we've definitely built up the anticipation here quite a bit and taking people through all the mechanisms that this should understand even at least at a basic level before they just throw things at their body to elicit these benefits. I'm glad that we did the science and the research justice first. Now let's get into the the sexy stuff. Let's get into the actual product. So what exactly is your product and what are some of the ingredients that bring it together?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, so the product itself is called Mimeo, and it is a fasting mimetic supplement. We can't really get away from the scientific talk because Mimeo isn't really all science, and it was the science that I was doing for the past eight years of my career, right? So the way that Mimeo came about was through this overarching question that kind of defines my research, which is, what is going on in the body during a 36-hour fast, and is there a way that we can tap into that, recreate it, and get the benefits of fasting on demand? So to answer that question, we had 20 people come in, 10 men, 10 women, to avoid a gender bias, to find these universal things that happen within the body, and had them fast for 36 hours, looked at their before and after. And what we found was that In these already young, healthy people, fasting was able to take their plasma functionalities, the way that their cells operate, the way that their plasma operates, and really functionally enhance it. So we found that fasting made their plasma really anti-inflammatory, really antioxidant, much more cardioprotective, much more metabolically flexible, right? And that was really, really interesting. Again, to take already young healthy people and kind of turn them into super people with this one day intervention is something that you never see in nutrition research or really in any research. So we wanted to know, all right, what's the difference between one state and the other? And what we did was called comprehensive metabolomics, basically looking at all of the small molecule components of the plasma to see what the differences were. And we found that there were over 300 significant differences between the baseline state and the fasting state. And when we screened through those molecules, we were able to find this synergistic combination of four of them that when we put them together and put them on human cells, we could recreate these beneficial anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, cardioprotective metabolic effects of fasting just through supplementation. And then, because of course we were really interested in longevity as well, we did a lifespan extension analysis with C. elegans with all of the individual molecules, but then also all of them together. and found that we could synergistically extend the lifespan in C. elegans by 96%. So basically doubling their lifespan just through supplementation with this, you know, these four fasting metabolites. And that formulation is what ultimately became MIMEO. So basically what MIMEO is doing is taking what your body would naturally produce during a fast, but then just giving it back to you as a supplement so we can activate a lot of these beneficial fasting pathways, but just by essentially recreating fasting at the molecular level.

Andres Preschel: And to the same or very similar extent,

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, exactly. So, what's interesting is that when we compared the lifespan extension data that we got from the C. elegans to previous research that had been done on actual intermittent fasting, the intermittent fasting was able to extend lifespan in C. elegans by 56% and the MIMEO supplementation without any kind of energy restriction or any kind of fasting was able to extend it 96%. So, you know, we're creating a lot of these very similar fasting-like benefits and even enhancing the longevity that you can get out of the fast because, like we were talking about before, you're not going to have the deleterious effects that can go along with long-term energy restriction.

Andres Preschel: And for those who might not be familiar, C. elegans, as in roundworms,

Dr Chris Rhodes: Correct. Yeah, nematodes. So yeah, C. elegans are essentially, you know, the most prevalent and the kind of highest throughput way that we assess longevity interventions. You know, they share a surprisingly high degree of sequence homology with humans. They have their own immune system and circulatory system and digestive system and things like that. So, they're a very good model and they also typically only live about a month, right? But our C. elegans were, you know, living up until, you know, 58 days and they were also a lot more, they were a lot more active, right? And they had better, they had better fertility as well. So, really not only just extending the lifespan, but extending the health span as well.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, I believe C. elegans can account for a handful of Nobel Prizes.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Oh sure, absolutely. It's kind of where we make all of our longevity discoveries at first, right? And then this is kind of a big problem in the longevity space in general is that typically we make our discoveries in these lower organisms like Drosophila, fruit flies, or like C. elegans. and then kind of hope that they translate up into mice, and then after that, hope that they translate up into humans. But what we're doing is kind of just flipping that on its head. We're like, we're going to make our initial discovery in humans, see that it works in human cells, and then confirm the longevity in the lower organism. So we know that anything that we're doing already applies to human physiology because that's where we discovered it in the first place.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. Too many biohackers are treating themselves like Drosophila because they're out there, they're at the cutting edge. They're just doing what worked for a fruit fly. And, uh, they're hoping that it works, you know, in their physiology at a similar extent. So you guys are really going above and beyond. And I admire the way that you're approaching this, this research, uh, showing that it, that, that, that has a significant influence on human physiology, first and foremost.

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it's, you know, it's a weird little trap that we got ourselves into because of just the way that science works, how funding operates, right? But I think that if you're going to try and identify an intervention that works in humans, you should probably start by studying a human.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and let me ask you, man, I mean, what, what would you say is your overwhelming mission with this kind of research? Like, you know, in the next five to 10 years, you know, where do you want to be as, as an individual, but also as, as, as a company, as a, as a mission, you know, what are your most ambitious aspirations with this project?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, so our most ambitious aspirations are really to do more of this biomimetic research, right? To really tease out all of these regenerative mechanisms, all these longevity mechanisms, all of these, you know, self-healing mechanisms within the human body and find ways to recreate them on demand to better improve human health and longevity. And the pathway by which we're going to do that is by studying the human body in these interesting regenerative states. So fasting was the first one. And we identified this fasting mimetic. It works great. We kind of want to continue to build on that, right? Because we do still have these 250 other targets from the original fasting study data set of these interesting metabolites that are upregulated that aren't, that doesn't have enough data on them right now to know whether or not they are bioactive, whether or not they're functional, whether they're adding to the system or just kind of a neutral part of the metabolism that happens. So we want to continue doing research on those targets, continue to build out the fasting mimetic formulation to make it closer and closer to that true recreation of biological complexity. But in the same way that we ran this process with fasting, we also want to do it with exercise. We also want to do it with cold exposure. We also want to do it with sleep, right? And really tease out these underlying regenerative mechanisms of human biology and find ways to recreate them as well. Our overall mission is really that biomimetic approach and that biomimetic research of taking the power of human biology and putting it at our fingertips.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, I'm actually here on your website and I navigated over to the science section. I absolutely love this, man. It says, we have a confession. We didn't design our formulation. Thousands of years of biology did. Oh man, that deserves a chef's kiss right there. That's one really, really loose parable. I wrote that too, so I'll brush. I made you blush. Nice, man. And so you guys have spermidine in there. There's, let me see if I can pronounce this, oleolethanate. What is that?

Dr Chris Rhodes: It's a tough one, yeah. A few of ours are definitely tongue twisters. So that is oleoethanolamide. I'll do it one more time. Oleoethanolamide, or just OEA. OEA is the easiest. Then the second one, EAA. Yeah, PEA, palmitoylethanolamide.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. And then nicotinamide. Hey, in your, in your PhD classes, didn't they teach you that anything that someone can't pronounce shouldn't be consumed? Wasn't that like a necessity prerequisite to the PhD coursework?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah. I mean, we just need to go to a marketing and branding firm and be like, give me another name for this, please.

Andres Preschel: Oh man, that's hilarious. And can you take us through maybe some of the mechanisms of action behind each one of these specific ingredients?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. So I think usually the easiest one to start off with is nicotinamide. A lot of people know nicotinamide because of nicotinamide riboside or nicotinamide mononucleotide. So nicotinamide is basically the upstream precursor for all of those molecules, both NAD, NR, and NMN. So, it's basically behaving as a broad-spectrum precursor to that. Interesting thing, though, we're using it as a precursor for 1-methylnicotinamide, which is the metabolite that we identified was highly upregulated during fasting. But just because of a trick of the FDA regulatory network, we couldn't actually use 1-methylnicotinamide itself. So, we used nicotinamide and then confirmed that it actually does increase the circulating levels of 1-methylnicotinamide. Its major function is to also be an NAD precursor. And NAD is essentially the cellular mechanism to sense the energy state of the cell. So you have what's called the NAD-NADH ratio. And the more NAD you have as part of that ratio, It's basically telling your cells, all right, we don't have a lot of energy, so let's turn on some of these metabolic efficiency pathways. Let's activate sirtuins to modify our epigenetics, our transcription rates, things like that. And that's kind of the function that nicotinamide in the formulation is performing as well. helping to basically get the cell into an artificially fasted state, but without actually doing any of the energy restrictions. So you're basically just over-indexing on NAD+, to turn on more fasting-like mechanisms. And then it also helps to reduce the thresholds of the feedback loops from the fed pathways at the same time. so it just allows all the other ingredients to do their jobs even better. Spermidine is best known for its ability to activate autophagy. It does that by inhibiting an inhibitor of autophagy, so very much kind of like how rapamycin and Gremitor, which then helps promote, you know, autophagic activation. Spermidine is kind of doing the same thing. You know, it's been shown to help improve cognition and then increase lifespan in mice and rat models as well. My two favorite though are palmitoylethanolamide and oleoethanolamide, PEA and OEA. PEA is involved in endocannabinoid system where it stimulates CB1, CB2 receptors in the brain, has a really profound effect on reducing neuroinflammation, but then also through the activation of those CB1, CB2 receptors has this really well-documented effect on pain relief and is also an anti-inflammatory. by reducing TNF-alpha levels, by reducing NLRP3 activation, by reducing COX-1 and COX-2 activation. So kind of like your body is… Oh yeah, go ahead.

Andres Preschel: Sorry, real quick. Do you think that this could potentially reduce any of the acute beneficial inflammation from something like exercise that helps promote hypertrophy?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah. What a good question. I don't I don't think so. So we or at least we haven't seen that. We've actually kind of seen the opposite in that PEA has been used in exercise studies and has actually helped to increase exercise performance, especially in endurance, and then really helpful with recovery as well. So you get less, you know, delayed onset muscle soreness, you get less of the you know, probably out of control inflammation that you need, because that inflammation is always going to be there because it's arising from damage. Right. And the the damage is more or less the thing that you want that helps to increase muscle growth. Right. Because that's going to activate the whole like micro tears and micro all the end of all pathways to. Yeah, all the anabolic pathways. The inflammation is more or less the consequence of that damage that is not particularly beneficial. Like you do need a certain degree of immune response, right? Because you need to help clear the damage, right? And anything that happened from, you know, the exposure of like the free radicals that come out from the micro tears. But like we said before, fasting in and of itself is usually really, really good about selective immunosuppression, whereas caloric restriction is not. Perfect design of the human body, man. It's the perfect design. It's artwork. It's art. So this wouldn't, you know, a PEA isn't going to kill your gains any more than taking like an ibuprofen would, right? Dear Brony scientists, tuning in. Yeah, it's not going to do that, because it's just not… I don't want to say it's not powerful enough to do that, but it's not actually affecting the things that's giving you the gains. It's just helping your body recover from the damage that is required to get there. And then because of the CB1, CB2 stuff too, it also helps to reduce pain, reduce nerve pain specifically, reduce muscle soreness, also enhance cognition. There was a really interesting study that just came out about that where they looked at PEA supplementation in college kids and basically showed that even in the, again, these like young, healthy, like very high functional college kids, you can still enhance their cognition with PEA and their memory as well. So, PEA is definitely one of my favorites. Really, really cool. And then OEA is involved in the gut-brain axis. It's a PPAR-alpha stimulator, but then also has effects on neurons as well. And it's actually an appetite suppressant. So it's kind of your body's natural way of helping to suppress appetite during long-term fasting. And what's really interesting about that is that before our research came around, OEA was always associated with post-feeding. So when you ate, OEA would get upregulated, which would then send a satiety signal to your brain where it's like, oh, I'm getting full. I'm not going to be hungry anymore. And people only thought that it was really elevated during those periods of feeding. But we showed that it was even higher upregulated during fasting. And that's as an adaptation to these longer periods of fasting. Because when you think about it, it's not super beneficial to your body to constantly be in this painful level of hunger, especially when you need to be focusing on going out and finding other foods. You know, if you fast for these long periods of time, you will always have an appetite suppression effect. You just won't feel the hunger as acutely as you do, you know, in a more like postprandial feeding state. And that is because of this upregulation of OEA. So what OEO is doing for you is really creating those appetite suppression effects, but then also really helping to optimize your cellular metabolism and push it specifically towards lipid oxidation and fat breakdown because of the PPAR-alpha activation. And then that also helps with cell stability. It also helps with sleep. And it also helps with, really interestingly, reducing just cravings in general, not even appetite. Very similar to how the GLP-1 drugs can, yes, reduce appetite, but reduce addiction tendencies. And if it's like, you know, deleterious dopamine responses, OEA can do something similar. Wow.

Andres Preschel: Oh my gosh, that's fascinating. that really is fascinating. And do you guys have any specific, I mean, outside of pairing this with a fasting protocol, are there any specific dietary strategies that work synergistically with what you're offering?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Well, we haven't found any that work particularly synergistically, but we also haven't assessed it all that much. In our pilot clinical study, what we basically did was We had people come in, eat a standardized breakfast alongside a placebo control, and then looked at their plasma and cellular functionalities. Then we had those same people come back during a washout period, eat that same standardized breakfast, but then with supplementation with Mimeo. And what we found was that when people ate the meal with the placebo, there's this big loss of plasma and cellular functionality, which is really typical. It's part of the postprandial response, right? You have all these nutrients that are coming in, you have these foreign molecules that are coming in, setting off an immune response, throwing the system out of homeostasis. Your body has to focus on metabolism, digestion, and energy storage, rather than clean up, maintenance, and repair that it would be when you don't have all of this metabolic chaos being thrown into the mix. So you get a loss of cellular functionality, you get a loss of plasma functionality. What was really interesting was that when they had that meal, but with supplementation, with MIMEO, we were able to not only prevent all of that loss of function, but actually add gains of function on top of that, that mimicked what we saw during a fast. So instead of being pro-inflammatory, plasma became anti-inflammatory and antioxidant and cardioprotective and metabolically better, blood sugar control, better insulin control. So really, really, really, really fascinating stuff. So it's really like activating these beneficial fasting pathways in tandem, almost as like a balancer to the activation of the fed pathways that are going to come along with eating. Wow.

Andres Preschel: This is really, really, really fascinating research. And, you know, when did you guys launch this product and do you, you know, are you considering launching, you know, more formulations in the near future, maybe something that's more tailored to the individual?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, so we launched Mimeo in 2023 in June of 2023. So we've been around for about a year and a half at this point. Before that, though, there was those seven years of both the discovery studies, the pilot clinical studies, the confirmation studies to actually stack on top of that and then to actually get to market. And yeah, we've been selling for about a year and a half. So Mimeo as a company has existed since 2020, but the product hasn't been on the market since 2023. And then in terms of where we're kind of going with other formulations and other products, It's kind of a little bit like what we talked about before. We want to really double down on the memetic portion of it. So dive back into that research data set that we have to identify these new novel targets that could be complementary to the fasting formulation, help to build it out, better recreate that natural biological complexity, but then really just use it as a discovery platform for finding these, you know, natural human-derived health and longevity molecules that have this immediate context within human and clinical health because they're already naturally present in our body. So we know that they're going to perform a job in the human body that's, again, evolutionarily conserved. So we don't really have to focus or we don't have to worry as much about efficacy when we talk about natural human molecules, which is why I love them. You know, plant extracts have their place for sure. There's some interesting things that plants make that we don't that can be beneficial for human health. But I'm very much on the team of like human molecules for human health, because these are the things that were designed over thousands and thousands and thousands of years of evolution to do a specific thing in the human body. And then even beyond that, work and operate synergistically with all these other human molecules to perform even larger functions, kind of recreating these little bio programs. That's what we really want to do at Mimeo.

Andres Preschel: Great. And so to be specific here, I'm sure, I mean, this raises a question for me and I'm sure folks tuning in might be thinking the same thing or wondering the same thing. Do you guys create these molecules on your own or do you source them?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, great question. Yeah, we have actually had people who have, who've called in or, you know, emailed in and then like, where are you getting these human molecules from? Are you extracting them from babies? Or like, are you taking, do you have like blood boys in the background where you're taking all that from? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. The great thing about metabolites is that, yes, they are bioactive. Yes, they can be very physiologically powerful. But they are breakdown products of just natural metabolism, right? So for example, spermidine is a breakdown product of arginine, which is just an amino acid, a protein. Nicotinamide is a vitamin B3 derivative. PEA comes from palmitic acid. OEA comes from oleic acid. While they are naturally present and produced in the human body, they're also naturally present and produced in a lot of other places throughout the food stream. And you can take their precursor molecules, do enzymatic production with them in order to get to the end metabolite that you're looking for. So that's where the MIMEO ingredients in the actual capsules are coming from, just products of the food stream and natural sources.

Andres Preschel: I'm curious, I wanted to ask you, why haven't you guys, maybe you've considered this, why haven't you guys considered adding exogenous ketone esters to your formulation, for example?

Dr Chris Rhodes: Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the reasons why we decided not to use ketones in this formulation was because when we were screening through the initial list of, you know, the 300 molecules and then assessing which ones could recreate these benefits of fasting, we were actually goaling them against the efficacy of ketone bodies. So we were essentially comparing how well these novel molecules could stack up against the functionalities of ketones. And so each of the four that we identified in the MIMEO formulation were able to outperform ketones at anywhere between 100x to 100x lower, or sorry, 100,000x lower concentrations. My good ohm, these molecules are just way more potently bioactive at at lower dosages, which gave us, you know, a better form factor, right? Because we could take these really powerful biological molecules that you only needed, you know, certain amounts of, like, certain small amounts of to actually produce a physiological effect. And that was kind of the problem that we had with ketones, was that yes, they have these great anti-inflammatory effects, but you need, especially in order to recreate the levels that you're experiencing during fasting, you need grams and grams and grams of them. And they're expensive. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. To create a physiologically relevant dose of ketone bodies, it's kind of like that's the whole product, right? So, you know, in future iterations, we've definitely considered, you know, utilizing like a liquid format, doing, putting in ketones and a lot of these other fasting metabolites that we identified, kind of making like a clinical version or like a pro version that, you know, would be more expensive, but more robust.

Andres Preschel: You know, something that I think you'll appreciate is there's a few companies now that are making these exogenous ketone ester supplements. I believe the best in the world is Ketone Aid. I think it's the only one that doesn't convert to ethanol in the liver. Like most people don't know this, Ketone IQ will eventually convert to ethanol in the liver, which is no good. But Ketone Aid, they're the best. Yeah, I've had their CEO on my podcast. I've experimented with their supplements. I've had a lot of my high-performing clients, executives and athletes, use their ketones and they're great. But I would love to see what you guys are doing paired with ketones and maybe see some clinical outcomes. I think that'd be really interesting. I have a couple more questions here. I know that we're running short on time. Let's say that someone tuning in, or even myself, let's say that someone tuning in is interested in subscribing and taking this formula to enjoy the benefits of fasting. How often do they need to take this and how long would they need to take this for in order to elicit a clinically significant effect? And do they need to take it for the rest of their lives? If they stop taking it, do they miss out on it? Can you take us through what that looks like and how it works?

Dr Chris Rhodes: For sure. So with any longevity intervention, the earlier you start it and the more consistent you are about it, the longer amount of time that it's going to have to actually provide benefit and take effect, and the more benefit you will actually get out of it. That's just kind of the name of the game in longevity because You know, a lot of people think that longevity and healthy aging and anti-aging is all kind of about like, oh, renewal and regeneration and getting things, you know, back to a younger form. But in reality, it's actually kind of the opposite. anti-aging, healthy aging, it's longevity, it's all about maintaining the health and stability of your current cells, your current age for as long as possible. It's really all just a maintenance and prevention game. So the earlier you can start doing these beneficial things, these beneficial interventions, these beneficial supplements, drugs, whatever it is, and the more consistent you are about staying on it, that's where you're gonna get your best effect. And that's what we say for Mimeo as well. You know, when we did our lifespan extension analysis with the C. elegans, they were on Mimeo for their entire lives. And that's where we saw that doubling of lifespan, that healthspan increase. How long you have to be on it to actually see clinical benefit is another story. So we've actually done a case study analysis with the Dave Petrino lab at Mount Sinai, where we had eight weeks of supplementation with Mimeo. And we were looking at cardiovascular health markers, metabolic health markers, but then also biological age. And what we saw was that in that eight weeks of supplementation, we were able to improve HDL levels, decrease LDL levels, so improving the HDL-LDL ratio, which is really good for cardioprotection. We were able to reduce triglycerides. We were able to boost testosterone by 50%. We were able to reduce glucose levels. We were able to reduce HP1C levels. We were able to reduce insulin levels. And then we were also able to decrease biological age by two and a half years in just that eight weeks of supplementation. So yeah, we were super duper excited about that. So we're seeing this lifespan extension effects in C. elegans throughout their entire life, but even within eight weeks of supplementation with MIMEO, you can see this effect on human longevity and biological aging as well.

Andres Preschel: Wow, that's absolutely incredible. By the way, I must say, you guys have a gorgeous website. If anyone here is interested in these topics and wants to learn more, I would love for them to visit your website. It's just beautiful and it's full of good research, good science.

Dr Chris Rhodes: I'm sorry. And yeah, and I appreciate that because we, you know, we spend a lot of time making sure that the brand was good, that we were presenting the science in a clear and understandable way and, you know, simplifying things down. But then we also have, um, like more advanced scientific resources as well. So on our science page and other places throughout the site, you can enter what's called geek mode. So you just like flip a little switch and then it'll go from tying you more simplified inflammation to like really in depth Here's everything you need to know. Here's the pathways involved. Here's the clinical studies we're referencing, all that fun stuff.

Andres Preschel: Wow. So I have one more question here for you before we sign off, man. And, and really it's been an honor and pleasure to have you on the show and thank you for taking the time to, and to do the research justice. Really it's, it's, it's unbelievable what you guys are doing and I'm so happy to help, you know, push your mission and message forward. Um, if you could put a, a word, message or phrase on a billboard somewhere in the world, What would it say and where would you put it? Hmm, what a good question.

Dr Chris Rhodes: I think that… I think that I would want to put it maybe like in New York, maybe in Times Square or something like that, you know, just to get maximum exposure, right? I was going to say, like, maybe let's put it on top of Everest, but not a lot of people are going to see that billboard, right? Just the really intense people. So there, let's put it in Times Square, why not? And honestly, I would say that you have more power than you think, especially over your own biology, right? It sounds so stupid. The you you want is inside of you, right? But that is the whole idea behind Mimeo and the biomimetic approach, right? Is that the power that the human body has to heal itself, the power that it has to regenerate itself, it's all contained within us already. Our entire DNA, all of our coding, our entire bodies were built from a single cell, right? And then we created all of this and all of our intricate complexity. And, but all of that base information is still in there and our body knows how to do it. We just don't know how to get our body to do it again, but we can, and we'll eventually figure it out. And that's kind of what we're, what we're hoping for at Mimeo. That's the, that's the main goal is to just really tap into the power of you and, you know, give it back to you.

Andres Preschel: And your evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. Yes. And we're disconnected from this modern day. Yep. And there you go. Awesome. Well, Chris, man, it's been an absolute honor and pleasure. We can't thank you enough for joining us. And, uh, uh, we're excited to share this with the world, man. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was a blast. Awesome. So that's all for today's show. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For all of the show notes, including clickable links to anything and everything that we discussed today, everything from discount codes to videos, to research articles, books, tips, tricks, techniques, and of course, to learn more about the guest on today's episode, all you have to do is head to my website, AndresPreschel.com, that's A-N-D-R-P-R-E-S-CHEL. E-S-P-R-E-S-C-H-E-L.com and go to podcasts. You can also leave your feedback, questions, and suggestions for future episodes, future guests, so on and so forth. Thanks again for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one. Have a lovely rest of your day.