goldfish which are reported to only have a 3-second memory actually can remember things

up to five months which is why you might want to take care of your own memory. Today's guest

is Alan Cash. Alan's never been on Bulletproof Radio. He's the CEO of Terra Biological and

the clinical trial supervisor and medical researcher for Upgraded Aging, which is why

I was talking about goldfish memory before because if you can do upgraded aging on your

memory, you're going to like what happens as you get older, protecting those neurons

is something that I do every single day. You, if you were at least the Bulletproof

conference, would have already heard Alan Cash talking about Oxaloacetic, the active

ingredient in Upgrade Aging. At the Bulletproof conference, I asked the Bulletproof team to

interview Alan Cash while I was on stage presenting so I could get this content out to you. Alan

is an amazing, amazing researcher and I'm really excited with how podcast turned out.

Enjoy the interview. I came up with the questions myself. Alan and I have met and talked many,

many times. I just couldn't be there in person to get this info out to you on video. This

is an amazing podcast. Speaker: Alan, thank you so much for being

here with us today. Can you tell us what you're speaking about at the 2014 Bulletproof Bio

Hacking conference? Alan Cash: Absolutely. Thanks for inviting

me. I'm going over some recent research on Oxaloacetic which is part of the Krebs cycle.

It's up here in the upper left hand corner. This way goes to citrate, this way goes to

malate. When we give Oxaloacetic to animals, we wanted to see what happened to their brain.

We saw some really exciting things. One, we saw an increase in mitochondrial density.

Those are the little power plants that make your cells work. It gives you energy. By increasing

the amount of that mitochondrial mass, we're seeing an improvement in brain functioning.

Second thing we saw is that glucose uptake is improved. Here's a way, as we age, we lose

the ability to bring glucose into our cells. It just starts circulating in our bloodstream

and the levels go up and up and up. This way, it's being brought into the cells where it

can be used by those little mitochondrial power plants. That's exciting too. Then we

saw a decrease in brain inflammation which is always a good thing because that's another

thing the aging brain tends to do, is be saddled with inflammation problems.

The last thing we saw which is just incredibly exciting is an increase in the number of neurons

that are produced by the hippocampus. Now, it used to be thought as we age, the brain

was static. If you lost those brain cells in college, you'll never get them back again.

I know you know what I'm talking about. What really is happening is there's a place in

the brain called the hippocampus which is constantly producing new cells to replace

the cells in our brain. But as we age, that ability declines and declines and declines

and declines. here is a method that we found that's able

to turn the body's natural process of producing those cells back on and produce them in a

much, much higher rate. We're replacing those cells that were damaged in the brain. Very

exciting stuff. Speaker: I knew we're going to dive more into

that in a minute. Can we start with you just telling us what Terra Biological is?

Alan Cash: Terra Biological started off as a research company. I was doing post graduate

work at University of California down in San Diego. My partner was working at UCLA. We

looked at aging, specifically why does calorie restriction increase lifespan? I mean, it

does this throughout the animal kingdom from the single celled animal all the way up to

primates. We have 30-year tests in monkeys now, and possibly in humans. We see a lot

of good things in humans with people who calorie restrict. Why does this work though?

It was discovered in the 1930's, in 80 years, you think we'd be able to figure out what's

going on. Some of that work in the molecular basis of calorie restriction started mid-1990's

and continued on, well, through today. One of the things we found is an increase in the

NAD to NADH ratio seems to be the start of the whole process. That then activates this

chain of molecules that turn on genes and turn off genes that improve our overall health

and condition. Very exciting stuff. We started off as a research into this back

in 2004. It started getting more and more exciting as we gave this one compound, Oxaloacetate,

which again, part of the Krebs cycle. It's a human metabolite. It's in every cell of

your body. When we gave these to animals in excess to what they normally have in their

diet, they started to live longer, by a lot, 25 to 50% longer. We started in very simple

animals like worms and then we went to more complex animals, flies and then mice. We kept

seeing this increase in lifespan just as we did in calorie restriction.

We thought, "Well, I wonder if anyone's ever given this to human beings." We started looking

through the literature, scientific literature. What we found is a clinical trial that was

done back in the 1960's in Japan. They were looking at Oxaloacetic for diabetics because

a mountain plant traditional Japanese and Chinese herb, [Unomius Salatis Sieb 06:37]

was the Latin name, was found to help with diabetics. They looked at all the components

of this plant and that Oxaloacetate was the thing of interest. They did a clinical trial

with it. They took 25 people. They all had reductions in their fasting glucose levels

without side effects. I thought, "This is pretty exciting stuff."

I mean here, a human metabolite, a natural compound, we're seeing reductions in fasting

glucose levels in diabetics on average of 25% which is huge, where's the follow on work?

I'm searching through the literature and searching through the literature, I couldn't find any

follow on work. I flew to Japan and I interviewed the department where this all took place.

The conversation went something like this. I said, "Are you familiar with this paper?",

"Yes. We wrote that paper." I said, "Oh great," I said, "Were there any issues with the Oxaloacetate

or the test?" , "No, it worked quite well." I said, "Where's the follow on work?" They

said, "No follow on work." I said, "Wait, you've got a natural compound, a human compound

that reduces fasting glucose levels in diabetics and you're not following up with it? Why not?"

They said, "Well, it's a natural compound." I said, "Yes, yes, yes." They said, "No patents."

That was the end of the conversation. Although it's not perhaps being able to patent it for

diabetic use, for anti-aging, it's certainly very exciting.

Speaker: Well, that brings us to the Bulletproof Upgraded Aging formula. Can you tell us what

that is? Alan Cash: Well, Bulletproof Upgraded Aging

is a combination of 100 milligrams of Oxaloacetate and 150 milligrams of vitamin C. We combine

the two together because they work a little bit synergistically and they also help to

preserve the Oxaloacetate. When we first started working with the Oxaloacetate, it degraded

almost daily. We had so much trouble. We had to learn how to synthesize it and stabilize

it, thermally stabilize it so that we can have a two-year shelf life so that we could

use it as a nutritional supplement which is probably why you don't see it anywhere else

in the marketplace. After we learned how to stabilize it, we found

that adding vitamin C to it helped with that stability. That's what it is. It's very simple

compound. There aren't any excipients. There aren't any preservatives. It's in a veggie

shell of a capsule. We had to actually pay more to take out all that stuff and just have

a pure product. I think that's what Bulletproof is all about.

Speaker: What does it taste like? Alan Cash: It's a cross between an orange

and a lemon, excuse me, an orange and a lime. Because it's in the citric acid cycle, it

has that characteristic citric taste but it's a little different. I actually liked the taste.

I open up some of the capsules and I'll put two or three in a glass of ice water and stir

it up and with a little bit of honey and I drink straight.

Speaker: Bio hackers strive to achieve better cognitive function daily. Can you share with

us some new research in cognitive functioning and how it can be achieved?

Alan Cash: There was just a paper published in the journal human molecular genetics in

July of 2014. I mean, this is hot off the press. Where they took Oxaloacetate and they

fed it to mice. They wanted to see what was happening with their brains. The reason they

wanted to do this is this was some pre-clinical work. They were looking at perhaps using this

compound for Alzheimer's disease. I'm not suggesting that you use this for any disease.

It's a nutritional supplement. They looked at giving Oxaloacetate to mice and what they

found is an increase in mitochondrial density in the brain, the little power plants that

power your brain, that power your thoughts. They also found the brain was able to uptake

glucose at a much higher level. Not only are we building more power plants, we're providing

more fuel into the cells to power the brain. Then we saw a decrease in the inflammation

in the brain which is always a good thing. The last thing they saw in the paper was an

increase in the number of neurons that were produced in the hippocampus. Not just the

number but the length of the connecting dendrites, I think that's the word, that connect the

neurons. These little fibers are longer to allow them to interact a little bit better.

Pretty exciting stuff. Speaker: You brought up mitochondria. What

are mitochondria and how do they feed the brain?

Alan Cash: Mitochondria are, there's debate on what they are. A lot of people feel that

they're a foreign organism that were brought into a cell and they got along so good together

that they stayed that way. They have their own DNA which is interesting. Not very many

genes, I think 13, but they work together with the nucleus. One of the things that the

mitochondria do is they provide ATP which is our energy currency, our bitcoin of how

to run the cell. It does that through a chemical reaction taking glucose in and breaking it

down and producing much more ATP than other other processes.

One of the things about mitochondria is they've been tied to many disease states lately. It

just seems like every chronic disease that's out there is tied to misfunctioning mitochondria.

One of the things we should aim for in any kind of nutritional supplement is keeping

your mitochondria healthy. Speaker: What are the steps to take today

to build more mitochondrial mass? Alan Cash: We've learned a couple of interesting

things about how to build more mitochondrial mass. One is calorie restriction, eat less,

a lot less, like 25% all your life. Put down that spoon of ice cream and a lot of other

things. It's kind of funny, I tried calorie restriction for 30 days because I study it.

I know you'll find this amazing but my wife suggested that I was irritable. I know, it's

a rumor. But it's hard to calorie restrict that well. I mean, there are people who do

it and my hat's off to them. I think they're incredible but food is such part of our life

and you want to be able to enjoy that part but you also want to be able to increase your

mitochondrial mass. How do we do that? Well, one of the ways is through Oxaloacetate

supplementation. Another way you can do it is through chronic exercise, run several marathons

every week. But that also takes a toll on your body too. we're thinking that the Oxaloacetate

might be your have your cake and eat it too supplement.

Speaker: How is aging a major threat to cognitive functioning?

Alan Cash: How is aging a major threat to cognitive functioning? Well, there's several

issues there. One, we see a decrease in mitochondrial density. That's a little, the power plants

that power your brain and your thoughts. As those decrease, the brain fails in its ability

to get the job done. Another thing we see is glucose which is circulating through our

bodies, from the food we eat, the brain has difficulty in taking that up. If you can't

get that glucose into the cells, it doesn't do you much good.

As a matter of fact, it does you a lot of harm because that glucose can then react with

other proteins that are floating around and cause these advanced glycation end points

or age points which are the acronym says it all. They're age related molecules. Then lastly,

we see that the hippocampus which generates new cells in the brain to replace the cells

that die off lose its ability to do that as we age. Your ability of your brain to repair

itself, for a while, we thought that the brain couldn't repair itself. Now we know that it

can. That's very exciting. How do we stimulate it to not only repair

itself but to keep it very top shelf. That's some of the things that we worry about with

the aging brain. Speaker 1: The idea of brain inflammation

might scare people but in reality, it actually happens to all of us, right?

Alan Cash: Well, as we age, yes. There's a lot of other causes of inflammation in the

brain other than just again. One is like a bacterial infection or a fungal infection,

mold, chlorinated pesticides has been shown to increase inflammation in the brain, head

injury. There are a lot of different causes for brain inflammation but certainly aging

is one of them and hopefully that happens to all of us.

Speaker: What can we do to lessen brain damaging inflammation?

Alan Cash: Well, it's kind of interesting. Oxaloacetate is being used in Europe now in

clinical trial. They're looking at closed head injury for instance in football or car

accidents or whatnot. What they've seen in animal models anyway, is that when you get

hit in the head, the actual damage to the brain is only about 20%. 80% of the damage

to the brain is caused by something called a glutamate. It's when your neurons excrete

all this glutamate and that excites the neurons so much that it kills them. We call it excito-toxicity.

It's too much of a good thing. If they can reduce that glutamate level, they,

at least in animal models, they've been able to show 80% less brain damage from closed

head injury. That's exciting. That's one of the things that they're looking at very closely

in Europe with Oxaloacetate because what happens with the Oxaloacetate is once it goes into

the bloodstream, it reacts with the enzyme glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase which