Agents for Longevity Interview with Dr. Sandra Kaufmann [Podcast]

In this episode, Jim speaks with Dr. Sandra Kaufmann. Dr. Kaufmann received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University and is the Chief of Pediatric Anesthesia at the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida. 

She is also the creator and bestselling author of The Kaufmann Protocol: Why We Age and How to Stop It. During this fascinating conversation, Dr. Kaufmann reveals the Seven Tenets of Aging, the biggest myths about anti-aging and longevity, scientific ways to decelerate aging, and how to use science-based “agents of longevity” 

You can learn more about The Kaufmann Protocol at www.KaufmannProtocol.com. And for more tips on healthy aging, be sure to follow Dr. Kaufmann on Instagram @kaufmannantiaging

Transcript

Jim Donovan:

Hey there. Welcome to the show. My name is Jim Donovan and I am so glad that you’re here. Today, I am delighted to meet and have on the podcast, author, medical doctor, and creator of The Kaufmann Protocol, Dr. Sandra Kaufmann. Dr. Kaufmann received her medical degree from Johns Hopkins and is currently chief of pediatric anesthesia at the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida. She’s here today to talk with us about anti-aging longevity and her work that helps people live their best lives.

Jim Donovan:

This episode is packed with some excellent information. I can’t wait for you to meet Dr. Kaufmann and let’s get started. Coming to the show. I am so glad to have you here. Thanks for taking the time. I know that you just came out of the OR, is that right?

Dr. Kaufmann:

That is right. I’m an anesthesiologist by trade and longevity is a crazy hobby.

Jim Donovan:

Oh my God. Thanks for taking the time. Before we started the recording, we were just talking about, I was in the hospital last year. I had five rounds of anesthesia for some pretty tough health problems. So on behalf of a patient that has been with anesthesiologist, I so appreciate the work that you do, and I get the busy-ness of that. Thanks for taking the time for us. I was reading through a lot of your material. There’s this one testimonial that I read that really sticks out to me. It’s from this guy, Dr. Viola.

Jim Donovan:

He says that Dr. Kaufmann’s recipe, isn’t a magic potion or random mixture of herbs. It’s a logical application of science. And I was wondering, can you tell me about that? Why is this, the protocol that you have different than some of the things that are out there?

Dr. Kaufmann:

This was much different to be perfectly honest, because when I started down this path of longevity, I was looking for answers for myself. I openly admit, and I’ve done it many times that I have done this completely because I don’t want to get older. I started looking up all of these people’s thoughts and concerns and suggestions, and it seemed like a whole lot of hokey stuff, no one had any nailed down science. It was all reminiscent of the 1800s and the snake oil and all that garbage.

Dr. Kaufmann:

What I set out to do is to turn this into real science. I really wanted to know why cells did age, why our organs age, why our bodies age, and I wanted to create a program that made sense. And that’s, I think what I did. I decided that your cells age in very specific categories, and we can talk about those to some extent. And the program that I recommend to most people as a starter program is something called the panacea which, maybe it does sound a little bit like snake oil, but it actually represents the five easiest things and more straightforward things to do for anyone that’s aging.

Dr. Kaufmann:

It is magical, but it’s not mystical magical. It’s all based in science.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah, and the fact that you’re working, putting people under every day in a hospital tells me that you have a much deeper understanding than some of the people that you were talking about a moment ago with regards to how the body actually works. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, some of your fields of study so that people can get a sense of where you’re coming from with all this?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Sure. I call it the eclectic background of biology. I, at one point was a tropical ecologist. I’ve been in jungles chasing bats in hacking my way out of forest problems. I was a self-physiologist. I spent a ton of time looking at cells under microscopes. My love for the smaller, the better, it stuck with me. Cells didn’t pay bills, so my dad sent me to med school, which, it is what it is. I spent a few years doing surgery, I spent a year doing neurosurgery and decided that I loved anesthesia and I do pediatric anesthesia.

Dr. Kaufmann:

What’s cool about all this is you understand the body from a numeral whole different perspective. I get it from the organ level. I get it from the cell level, from every different perspective and doing pediatrics means everything has to be thought about in terms of dosage. Like how a drug reacts in the body and how the body reacts to a drug and how much you need and how long it’s there. And there’s a whole lot of dynamics going on in terms of trying to figure out what the best thing to do in any particular circumstance is.

Dr. Kaufmann:

If you bundle all of those pieces of science together, you end up with me trying to do the right thing.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah. It’s such a refreshing thing to hear that there’s this level of care and thought and education behind things that are talking about longevity, because you’re right. There are so many things out there that are basically just trying to get you on a subscription for a supplement that people just send you every month just to make money and who knows what’s actually in the capsule, because that stuff is just not regulated.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Well, my favorite thing about the capsules and people send this to me all the time is there’ll be the miracle capsule with 30,000 things packed into one and they go, “Aren’t these things fantastic?” And the answer is they might be in isolation, but by the time you add it to everything else, you’re not getting very much of any one thing. It seems a bit preposterous that actually could anything. But you’re right. There are people out there trying to do that and my goal is to make it scientific, understandable, and easy.

Jim Donovan:

Beautiful. What are some of the scientific ways that we can talk about that decelerate aging?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Okay. Well, I can try to simplify these things and this is where people just get foggy and stop listening to me. I have narrowed it down to seven basic categories. There are other experts that have different numbers of categories and essentially it’s the same stuff, just reorganized. But for anyone that knows anything about business or learning seven is far easier than nine or 12 or 15. Seven it is. And I sat here in my office with a whole lot of post-it notes and kept rearranging them until they fit into seven. People may laugh, but seven it is.

Dr. Kaufmann:

The first thing is what I call DNA alterations. For people that are less sciency, I like to think of that as just the informational system. As you know, in the book, I have a factory analogy. In my factory analogy, that’s just whatever information or written information is necessary to have a company. In us for cells, it’s basically your DNA and what happens to your DNA over time. Many things can happen, but the two big ones are telomere loss. Over the course of time, your telomeres get shorter.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Then the second thing is epigenetic modification. As you get older, your DNA gets coated with what we can consider garbage. It’s really methylation and phosphates in those little groups and that sort of thing, but it gets methylated and that changes the way your body ages. Those are the two big things in category one. Category two is if you were thinking of a factory, it’s energy, we all need energy. And in your cells, it’s mitochondria, and I don’t want to get people back into the fifth grade science group, but everyone knows that mitochondria or the “powerhouse” of the cell, and they fail for very specific reasons.

Dr. Kaufmann:

The two big concerns in this category of course, are nicotinamide deficiency. Most people are nicotinamide deficient by the time they are 40. Then free radicals. Because the mitochondria use oxygen to make energy, one to 5% of that becomes what we call radicalized, has little electrons stuck on there. Then it acts like a little bomb and it blows things up. We need to put out those little bombs. In the mitochondria category, we use nicotinamide and free radical scavengers. This is where people start getting glassy-eyed. That’s two.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Three is pathways. There are aging pathways that we can turn on and turn off. There are 70 million sirtuins that turn off by the age of 40, and we need to get those activated. There’s the AMP kinase pathway, which basically tells your body that you’re starving or not starving. And people tend to activate that by going on these caloric restriction diets. The good news is, because I like to eat and I’m really bad at starving myself is that you can take different agents that mock not eating.

Jim Donovan:

When you say agent you mean a supplement?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Yeah, absolutely or some drugs. I don’t like to use the word supplement because supplement suggests that you already have something in your body and you’re supplementing it. And things that you don’t already have are [inaudible 00:09:29] and then there’s actual vitamins and actual minerals, and then there’s just drugs.

Jim Donovan:

Got it.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I like to just think of them all as molecular agents, because they work on a molecular scale. Let’s see, there’s the AMP ki… I can’t speak. You can edit that one out. AMP kinase pathway and then of course there’s the mTOR pathway. By manipulating these pathways, you can manipulate aging.

Jim Donovan:

Got it.

Dr. Kaufmann:

That’s category three. Then we get into what I call quality control. If you have a factory, someone has to check the widgets to make sure they’re working and to fix them when they’re not. This is basically protein and DNA repair mechanisms, and people always ask, “Well, that’s ridiculous. My DNA is just fine.” And the answer is no, it’s not. You have 10 to the fifth. It’s a big ass number, DNA errors per cell per day. And if you don’t fix them, you’re getting cancer or the cell’s going to die. It’s not a good place to be.

Dr. Kaufmann:

You have very specific DNA repair mechanisms that of course go down with age and the cool thing is that we can jumpstart that using other molecular agents. These actually are really cool. They come from plants. One is called polypodium and another one’s called AC-11 and it comes from an Amazonian vine. I just think that’s super cool.

Jim Donovan:

Nice.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Let’s see. Category number five is what I call the security system. In my factory analogy, it’s like the old security guard sitting by the door, chunky, been eating donuts, but trying to help you nonetheless. Your body becomes inflamed over time because your inflammatory system gets turned up and your immune system of course gets turned down, which is why all of these people are getting COVID and not doing so well. Well that and other reasons. Good news is we can reverse that as well. Let’s see. That’s five.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Six, I call individual cell requirements because all cells are different and we want to talk about stem cells here and senolytic cells and then just knowing that a red cell is different than a liver cell, which is different than a bone cell. And there are specific agents that can help all of those things, which is cool. Last category is waste management because in a factory you have to take out the trash. Otherwise, your factory gets backed up. For your cell that’s basically one of two things. Number one is glycation. We all know that glucose is bad for you.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I tell people that if it’s sticky on the outside it’s sticky on the inside. It sticks to things. It sticks to your proteins, sticks to your lipids, sticks to your DNA and it causes problems. It makes those things not function well and it just reeks chaos on your body. When it sticks to collagen, for example, you get congestive heart failure. If it sticks to the histones on your DNA, it triggers lupus. It does a whole lot of really bad things. Then the last thing in that category is the accumulation of something called labor fusion.

Dr. Kaufmann:

When little organelles in your cells get recycled, there’s always this little glob that gets leftover. The cell doesn’t know what to do with it, squishes it in the back, accumulates and then it causes the cell not to be able to function. In a ridiculously large nutshell, those are the seven reasons that you age.

Jim Donovan:

You call these, on your website I saw, these are the seven tenets of aging.

Dr. Kaufmann:

That is correct.

Jim Donovan:

These are things that are the core of the things that you teach in your book and on your app too, is that right?

Dr. Kaufmann:

That is absolutely correct. And you can look at aging at different levels. I chose to look at aging from a cellular level because I was a cellular biologist. Other people like to look at cell products. For example, a lot of people are into hormone replacement. When the cells can’t make hormones, they get jacked up with either growth hormone or testosterone or one of those things. And people always say, “Well, why is that not part of your book?” And the answer is, if you can make your own cells function properly, you may not need that.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Step one is get your cells optimized and if you still can’t make those things, then we work on augmenting them. But I consider that a step two and not a step one. You’ll find a lot of people disagreeing with that strategy.

Jim Donovan:

I heard you say something in your description of these tenets about inflammation. I’m just wondering if I’m imagining this or that it’s something real. I’m 52. I remember being around in the ’70s and ’80s and it seemed like, and maybe this is just my memory that people weren’t as obese then and there weren’t these levels of people looking swollen. I see this in so many people that I know I’m like, “Is this just my imagination or is this actually something that is recently happening more and more?”

Dr. Kaufmann:

No. Obesity, as we all know is a huge problem. People love to eat far too much and exercise not enough, of course, discluding people that are watching or listening to your show because they’re probably health nerds and it doesn’t apply to them. That being said, even in the pediatric population, the obesity epidemic is outrageous. The issue with that is many things and one it’s hard on your body, it’s hard on your heart, your blood vessels, everything. But in terms of inflammation, adipose tissue releases more inflammatory factors than any other tissue. It’s just a hotbed of it.

Dr. Kaufmann:

The more overweight you are, the more inflamed you are, which, in this COVID crisis, people are amazed that being obese is a huge risk factor and the answer is it’s a huge risk factor because when you get a little inflammation that precipitates the COVID, it just precipitates this huge release of systemic cytokinins from your adipose tissue. It’s just this negative cycle and you’re going to get worse and worse and worse. I really think that the health crisis in this country, especially from the COVID is secondary to the obesity epidemic.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Other countries are doing much better because they tend to not be as fat as we are.

Jim Donovan:

What’s changed? Has the food changed? Is it all just sedentary? I’m noticing. I have two daughters with food allergies and then knowing that the incidence of food allergies has gone up since the very late ’90s, and then all these obesity rates have gone up. You have an insight on what’s changed between then and now?

Dr. Kaufmann:

I have no idea. I’m the same as you. I’m 52. My parents kicked me outside to exercise when I was young, eat reasonably normally, and granted I’m a junk food junkie, so I’m probably not the best person to hold up as an example. But we’ve always been busy. I think we were trained to be busy. I think video games don’t help. I think all the junk food doesn’t help. I think that people being trapped inside doesn’t help. I don’t think in today’s world, you throw your kids outside and like, “Go entertain yourself for a few hours. Come back when we scream for you.”

Dr. Kaufmann:

I don’t think that happens. I think they’re on Netflix. How this precipitates obesity in the adult world, I’m not exactly sure. I just think it becomes extraordinarily bad habits. The other thing, and I probably shouldn’t say this, I’m sure someone will yell at me is obesity has become a social issue instead of a health issue. And we’re not allowed to say someone is overweight, etc., because it’s body shaming. From a physician point of view, it is just so bad for you that it’s inexcusable.

Jim Donovan:

It’s the thing, there’s a balance to be struck between calling things out for a person’s betterment and then being a jerk about it, right?

Dr. Kaufmann:

A hundred percent. Being obese takes 10 years off your life, it shortens your telomeres dramatically, it increases your risk of cancer, increases your risk of heart failure. Then people are shocked when these things happen to them when they’re 400 pounds and they just need to know that it’s not helpful.

Jim Donovan:

Exactly. It’s easy to say it and for folks that are in that space, it can be challenging to manage it. The thing I’m always talking about is try to reduce the problem down to what is the first step that you can take? Like today, what’s one thing, get it down there and start to progress from that point, rather than trying to manage something that seems impossible. I know that as a musician if I’m trying to learn a really difficult piece, or I’m trying to get my guitar doing something and then my voice doing something else, I can’t do it right away.

Jim Donovan:

I have to reduce it to what’s this movement and what’s that movement? Okay. Now, how do I do the first phrase? And then build it out from there So that makes sense to me.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Well, you will laugh. My daughter is a musician, she’s a bass player. She plays standup bass and she also plays electric bass and she also sings. And they asked her to do the two things together at one point and it was really funny because she had the chords written on one forearm and the lyrics written on the other. Quite entertaining.

Jim Donovan:

I love that. There’s been this push towards health tech. There’s these companies like Headspace and Calm, and I know that you have an app as well. What got you into that space? Why did you decide to put all this into app form?

Dr. Kaufmann:

All right. Well, there’s one small caveat. The app at the moment is down because my developers are terrible, so we are rebuilding it and it will be rereleased. No one jump into it quite yet, but the reason that there is an app is because I’m an anesthesiologist. I do not have a longevity clinic. If people want to call and talk to me or send me emails, I answer everything all the time. At the same time, I just ran out of time. I wanted to put my algorithms someplace that people could follow it and gain the benefit without actually having to talk to me.

Dr. Kaufmann:

For some minimal amount, which paid for the app to be developed, I don’t know, three, four bucks, if you put all of your personal information in that, I found relevant to determining what they should just best be on. It just spits out an answer for them.

Jim Donovan:

I see.

Dr. Kaufmann:

And I wanted to make that available just because I thought it was good information and I tried to make it so that people could figure it out all by themselves on the website and in the book and I think I just created a state of chaos and panic. I thought if I give them actual directions, it might be easier. That’s why there’s an app.

Jim Donovan:

Great. What will be new about the one that’s coming next?

Dr. Kaufmann:

More information, more options, hopefully better usability. I don’t have a tech bone in my body, to be honest with you. I can save you if you’re dying, but don’t ask me to log onto computers or write software or whatever it is. When we did it the first time, I was relying on people to help me out and there were just a bunch of bumps. We are now trying to make those bumps go away because I want people to have a better user experience.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah. So it’s a way of spreading your gift out to more people, empowering them to do this for themselves and then that way you can keep doing the higher level teaching through your books, through your talks, through podcasts, all that stuff then. It makes good sense.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Yeah.

Jim Donovan:

What are some of the big myths out there about longevity and anti-aging? I know, like we talked about at the beginning, there’s a lot of shysters out there that manipulate people who are afraid about getting older or who maybe have some sort of a condition that they’re fearful about. Can you help us burst some of the things that just are not true? Some of the big myths.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Well, we’ll start with the easy one. The easiest one is that people don’t think that longevity is real. And I think it’s because there have been so many shysters. People actually look at me and they’re like, “Oh my God, what are you trying to sell me?” And I try to tell people, “I’m not trying to sell you anything. I don’t have a line. I don’t have a brand; no one pays me to do anything. I don’t recommend things that I don’t think are real.” The idea, number one, is that yes, longevity is real.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I can’t make you age backwards, but I can help you get over a lot of major medical issues and slow down aging. That’s one. The other thing is that no one product or group of products is going to be perfect for everybody, which is why, again, there was an app and an algorithm. For example, if you are diabetic, your glucose is going to be high, so your glycation is going to be high. When it’s time to figure out what would serve you best, we lean toward agents that do incredibly well in the waste management category.

Dr. Kaufmann:

What I have done at the moment, on the book, there’s 15 agents, on my web there’s 30, I believe. And I think I’m up to 40 because I’m working on a second book and it just takes forever. I apologize for the… People are like, “You keep saying this.” And the answer is, yes, I am going to keep writing it. I’m busy. The idea is you pick agents that are apropos to your medical issues Diabetes is the easiest example, but for example, if you have a family history of cancer, you either have bad genes or you need to either increase your telomeres, change your epigenetics, or increase your DNA repair mechanisms.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Again, I can’t guarantee that someone’s not going to get cancer, but we can minimize risk, essentially.

Jim Donovan:

Make it less likely.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Right. And if someone already had cancer, for example, or they have areas of pathology, it means they’ve huge collections of senolytic cells. For them, we aim at getting rid of those cells, because once you get rid of those cells, you do significantly better. It’s personalized based on medical issues.

Jim Donovan:

I noticed that that was something that really stuck out as I was looking through your material is that you have a whole section on your website. It’s kaufmannprotocol.com and Kaufmann has two Ns. I noticed that whole list of what you’re calling agents, which are these different substances, but they’re not in a labeled bottle with your name on it. Dr. Kaufmann’s agents for longevity. That’s not what it is. What I saw, and you can tell me if I’m wrong is that these are just things that you use, that you checked out that you think are good. Is that accurate?

Dr. Kaufmann:

A hundred percent. That’s exactly right. I have thought about having a line, but number one, I don’t want to be seen as one of these shysters and there are fantastic products out there, you just have to know which ones are reasonable and which ones are not reasonable. For example, things with low bioavailability they’re best put in some sort of nanotechnology, and those are out there. I’m not going to make that. It’s out there. Some things are fine if they’re generic.

Dr. Kaufmann:

For example, I tell people to take carnosine, it’s a fantastic dipeptide, helps with muscle, and it’s a transglycosylating agent. It strips glucose off. But it’s just a dipeptide. Anyone can make a dipeptide, so it doesn’t matter what brand you get. On the other hand, like nicotinamide, there’s only two real types and I tend to recommend Niagen because it’s a riboside and it’s the gold standard. There are cheaper versions, but I just don’t think that they are as good.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Having weeded through all of this over the course of the last decade, it’s clear that some things are better than others and I don’t make a dime out of any of this. I just want people to get good products.

Jim Donovan:

That’s so helpful. I’m so glad that we’re getting to talk about this because it’s not always the case that the person that’s trying to help doesn’t have this ulterior line of products. That’s a pretty unique thing. I know you do have a book, your app is coming out again, but those are informational. Can you get those on Amazon? The book, especially on Amazon?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Yeah. The book is absolutely on Amazon. It’s a paperback as well as eBook. There’s some small percentage of Kindles or something that it doesn’t work on and the only reason I know this is everyone sends me hate mail about the 1% that they can’t get it. Then I apologize profusely. I don’t make a ton of money doing this. I make $4 a book and probably 30 cents an app. This is clearly a hobby and it’s clearly a labor of love. If anyone thinks I’m out there being a shyster, I can tell you that it’s not true and I’m working in the OR every day to make a living.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah. It’s fantastic. The book’s called The Kaufmann Protocol: Why We Age and How to Stop it. Just so when you’re searching on this and I’m going to make sure that I put all these links into the show notes so that everybody can access that stuff easily. I’m wondering, you’re talking about how you’ve been unpacking some of these things for over a decade. Do you have a story that you could tell us about someone that you’ve worked with who’s used some of the ideas that you talk about and what’s happened?

Dr. Kaufmann:

I wish I had one. I have thousands.

Jim Donovan:

Cool.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I love opening my email every day, because I get emails from around the globe. It is really amazing. People say they read the book or Joe Shmoe gave them the book, changed their life, that they feel amazing. It happens on a daily basis. It’s really, really amazing. Probably the one that I’m closest to is one of my best friends who’s my rock climbing buddy. I’m 52, he must be 60, 61. I have known him for 20 years and I’ve watched him have two hip replacements. At first, he thought I was absolutely full of crap and I was taking all of these things and he was laughing his ass off at me.

Dr. Kaufmann:

And finally he relented one day and said, “All right, fine. What are you doing?” I put him on a program, gave him the schpiel. His second hip went significantly better than his first because he was on my protocol and I can tell you, he’s a competitive rock climber at the age of 61 and he just tells everyone about the protocol, because without it, he would not be doing anything close to what he’s doing.

Jim Donovan:

That’s incredible. That is so incredible. How long did it take him to come back around?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Energy comes back very quickly. Energy comes back in 10 days. Healing comes back in probably two weeks to three weeks. Then there’s just a sense of being good. There’s no high there’s no anything. It’s just a matter of having energy and being able to do what you want to do.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah. This is something I noticed from my own healing process. All my surgeries were in beginning of 2019 and just this long process of healing. I had some GI surgeries and I can tell, I did the things that they talked about at the hospital. You need to get out and walk, you need to eat your protein and you need to sleep, all those things. I’m vigilant with that, but even a year and a half later, I still feel the brain effects. I still feel the little gaps in memory and the fatigue. It’s still around.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I can help you with that.

Jim Donovan:

this is very interesting. I’m really interested in talking about-

Dr. Kaufmann:

Well, what was interesting about the wound healing, probably two, two and a half years ago I had bilateral foot surgery and they put a ton of metal in there. I think I was asleep for six, seven hours. It was pretty impressive.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah. Wow.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I had both feet done, so I never used crutches because I thought, “What is that going to do?” For a week, I rode around my house on a skateboard, wheeling around, keeping my feet up. Then at two weeks, I put my sneakers on and I went back to my post-op follow-up and the lady was like, “Why are you here?” And I said, “Well, I just had surgery.” And she was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Like, “No.” She made me take my shoes off and demonstrate that I had bandages still on. The orthopedic surgeon just absolutely lit into me for wearing sneakers and walking, but I was fine.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Then he’s like, “You have to wear these really stupid looking orthopedic shoes.” And I said, “Well, how am I going to drive home in those?” Then he was even more livid. He’s like, “You drove here?” Like, “Well, how else was I supposed to get here?” Two weeks after that, I did a sprint triathlon and then three weeks after that, I went to Base Camp Everest. I healed incredibly quickly.

Jim Donovan:

Wow. This is because you’ve got knowledge of how your cells work.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I like to think so. Either that, or I’m just crazy. Yes.

Jim Donovan:

To do that, you knew the specific pieces to put into place so that you could get your body to do what you wanted it to do in short order?

Dr. Kaufmann:

I did. I had already optimized all of my cells since I’ve been on my own protocol for a while. To make bones heal faster, you use certain osteoblastic activators, and you can decelerate osteoclastic cells. You make them work faster and better. You lower inflammatory rates because when you have obviously big injuries, you precipitate inflammation and that makes healing slow down. There are innumerable ways to make your body do better based on whatever it is that you were trying to recover from.

Jim Donovan:

Wow. That is fascinating and I’m definitely interested in talking about that.

Dr. Kaufmann:

A hundred percent. I’m more than happy to help.

Jim Donovan:

Yes. I’m wondering do you do a daily maintenance program for yourself or is it just like every so often, you take agents? How does it work, exactly?

Dr. Kaufmann:

I take agents every day and I am a human guinea pig because I probably take 40 some agents. The reason I do that is number one, I read through all of the literature and I go, “Well, wow. Why would I not do that?” The other thing is, before I recommend anything to anyone I want to know, are there any side effects? Does it make you burp? Does it give you gas? Do you feel like crap? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want to know, and then over the course of time, you just keep seeing fantastic agent after fantastic agent, and then it begets itself and you just do it.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Because of this, I actually created my own containers and I meant to sell them online and I never got around to it because people carry around these little old lady drug containers, not to knock over little old ladies, but they’re silly. I got my special containers. They fit everything over the course of a day. I just nibble them as the day goes by. It’s just what it is. Then I do other goofy things. Recently I’ve been into red and infrared light because it actually increases mitochondrial activity.

Dr. Kaufmann:

If you sit in front of it at a certain distance for so many minutes, you can actually regenerate tissue, you can sleep better, lose weight, increase muscle mass, a whole lot of amazing things that you can do with that. When it’s time to do a little downtime or a little meditation time, I sit in front of red lights.

Jim Donovan:

Wow. Is it the frequency of the light wave that causes those changes?

Dr. Kaufmann:

There are very specific frequencies in the red light and the infrared light. It’s a very narrow wavelength. There’s two of them. A red light is a little bit more…. Actually we’ll flip that. The infrared goes a little bit deeper. The red light is a little bit more superficial. If you’re working on skin, it’s red, if you want bone or muscle it’s infrared. I used to use both. That’s something I do every day just because it’s fun and just relaxing. Then I just exercise a ton because it’s fun.

Jim Donovan:

Right. In the music world, in the sound world, obviously you’re aware of using ultrasound as a tool for healing. I’ve read some of the research about how it can help with bones, and then I’ve seen some conflicting research that, well, maybe it’s not good for bone healing. Do you have any information about that or knowledge about ultrasound and bone healing?

Dr. Kaufmann:

I really don’t and I’m sorry to say that. I should learn that sort of thing. I could make something up, but I really have no idea.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah. It made me think about how light has a certain frequency to it and it’s got a certain wave form as does sound. They’re really close to each other and I just wondered if there was-

Dr. Kaufmann:

We use ultrasound daily to look into people. I’m sure there’s some evidence that it helps with something somewhere. I just am unaware of it at the moment.

Jim Donovan:

With the infrared light or even with the different agents that you’re talking about, what can you tell me about how they affect telomeres and maybe for folks who haven’t heard that word before, could you maybe just give us an overview of what the heck a telomere even is?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Sure. Everyone knows that we have DNA. There are strands, if you look at them under a microscope… Actually that’s a lie. You’d never see them under the microscope. They’re too small. But if we remember from the fifth grade, they are ladders that are spherical… Spirally. Sorry, not spherical. They’re spiral things and you have a zillion of them. You probably have, I don’t know, a bazillion base pairs and that encodes all of your DNA. There’s all the information your cell needs to do, pretty much everything.

Dr. Kaufmann:

At the end of the DNA, there are sequences that code for absolutely nothing. Once upon a time, they were called non-sense DNA. Now we know that they’re very specific, it’s six letters that fit together and it’s repeated over and over and over and over again. What it is, it’s where the replication devices of the DNA attach to so that you can make a new cell because whenever you make a new cell, you need to have an exact replication. The problem is every time a cell divides, it just cuts off a little piece of this.

Dr. Kaufmann:

You lose about 50 to 60 base pairs per cell per year. Just over the creeping course of time, they get a little shorter and a little shorter and a little shorter as well, stress and a variety of other things can make them shorter. Once they get too short, the cell can no longer divide and it’s called replicative senescence. The cell just gives up and dies. In order to keep your telomeres longer, there are very few things that actually can make it longer. We’re working on gene therapy now to do it, but that’s a little bit in the future.

Dr. Kaufmann:

There’s astragalus that’s supposed to help a little bit and then concentrations of that are TA 65 and the 818. We don’t know exactly how well they do, but certainly better than nothing.

Jim Donovan:

Yeah.

Dr. Kaufmann:

The best thing to do is lower stress and lower the necessity of your cells to have to turn over. That will save your telomeres.

Jim Donovan:

That’s so helpful. Are there specific things for somebody like me, who’s gone through traumatic surgery and super tough stuff? I’m imagining that I’ve taken on some damage from all the different CT scans and body scans and anesthesias. Can you get any of that back or am I pretty much sunk for the rest of my life with that?

Dr. Kaufmann:

That’s a good question. It just depends. You might be able to get some of it back. The key, however, is slowing it down. For example, if we were to put you on a longevity protocol now, we could probably significantly reduce any decline going forward and that’s the important thing. And if your body has been under a ton of stress, it’s probably the best thing you can possibly do, because if you are trying to regrow tissue and heal and all of those sorts of things, you’re probably micronutrient deficient.

Dr. Kaufmann:

You probably used up a lot of the baseline necessities around your body that we really need to put back. Telomeres at this point, it’s on the list, but it’s on the lower end of the list of things we can do to help you.

Jim Donovan:

Got it. Very helpful. What can you tell us about your book? I’m going to be sending people to check out the book, what can they expect in terms of how it can help them improve life generally speaking?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Okay. The book is many caveats, actually. The book is written in two halves. The first half is a little challenging to read. The second half is way easier to read. The reason the first half is hard is because it goes through a lot of cell biology as to why cells age. I had to do this for several reasons. The biggest thing is that when I started doing this, no one in the field of longevity had any idea who I was and I needed to demonstrate that this knowledge was real and I wasn’t just some crazy human. It’s there to demonstrate that yes, science is real, etc.

Dr. Kaufmann:

As people are going through that, there’s… It’s written for three types of people, because again, I had no idea if anyone would read this, it turns out a whole lot of people have. The pros in the middle is middle of the road. It can be tough to get through, but it’s certainly doable. For scientists that wanted more information, there are quotes in italics that are definitely more specific and science oriented. And for those people that are just trying to get through it, but they’re not doing so great, there’s a whole lot of really bad jokes in the margins.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Some people just go from joke to joke, and I’m totally cool with that. The other thing is if you just want to skip to the beginning of each chapter and read the first two pages, you’ll get the gist without being totally overwhelmed. And if you are totally overwhelmed, skip to the second half, and it’s far easier to read because that’s when you get to the top 15 agents and there’s entertaining stories about where they came from and what they do and what you need to do and that sort of thing, but it’ll never be a national bestseller because it’s challenging.

Jim Donovan:

Well, it makes sense though, because you have to establish yourself as real for a lack of a better way to say it and then you’re serving a couple of different audiences. You’re serving the people that are going to scrutinize and then serving the people that are just looking for information from a trusted source. I like that kind of a package. I think that’s fascinating.

Dr. Kaufmann:

What’s really quite funny is people send me emails, again, my email box is always very entertaining. Some people hate the jokes. Some people love the jokes. Some people hate the italics. Other people are like, “Why isn’t everything in italics?” You can’t please all the people all the time.

Jim Donovan:

I tell my kids, there’s a lot of people in the world.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Yes, there are, and the other thing that I have done is the dose range of any one given agent is huge and everyone is angry about that. I did that for a reason as well, because I don’t know who’s reading this book. It could be a 90-pound woman, or it could be a 400-pound dude. I have no idea. Someone could be in liver failure or kidney failure, they may be very sensitive to drugs or they may not be and I don’t know. The other issue is that there’s no given dose for any of these things. We’re not treating a disease; we’re trying to block aging.

Dr. Kaufmann:

There isn’t a dose and people don’t seem to understand that. We’re in this experimental program of, “Well, let’s see what happens. What’s going to work for you?” I get a lot of hate mail about doses. Tell your folks not to send me hate mail about doses.

Jim Donovan:

Don’t do it, people.

Dr. Kaufmann:

There you go.

Jim Donovan:

Take it from me, no hate’s going to help. If someone is starting a program, they’ve read your book, they’re going, and they’re looking at the different list of agents that they can get online. I know this is a big question and there’s probably lots of different possibilities, but how long does it typically take for someone to start experiencing something new in a positive way from a protocol that they might start with you?

Dr. Kaufmann:

It depends on where you’re starting. I get 30 year olds, I get 50 year olds, I get 90 year olds. The worse off you are, the faster you see a difference.

Jim Donovan:

Okay.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Right? For example, just take nicotinamide, for example. I love 30 year olds, they decide they’re going to take it and the answer is they don’t need it because they have plenty already. They’re not going to feel a darn thing. 50 year olds, it usually takes about 10 days, 90 year olds, I tell you, five, six days they are jumping up and down.

Jim Donovan:

Wow.

Dr. Kaufmann:

It just depends. The other thing I always ask people is, what their aging goals are or what their concerns are. If someone has specific aches and pains, I can get rid of those in five or six days. If they just have no complaints and they just want to not age, you may not notice a whole lot of anything because there’s nothing specific to look at. It’s very person dependent.

Jim Donovan:

Does it go the other way? Those folks that are selling the smart drugs and the nootropics that, “I like how I am, but I want some super powers. I want some mental super power.” Or whatever that [inaudible 00:45:26].

Dr. Kaufmann:

Right. The answer is, yeah. You can rev up your brain, absolutely. Nootropics come in various types of them. I actually take something called emoxypine. It’s a nootropic, but it’s also an AGE blocker, which is why I do it. I know it makes me a little bit smarter, I know I can multitask a little bit better. The other thing that I like to take is something called magnesium Threonate and many people are on magnesium because it helps with muscle and a variety of other things, but the only one that actually gets into your brain because it has to cross the blood-brain barrier is the composition with Threonate.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Over the course of time, you can actually increase your normal plasticity if you take that. Between those two things, I think people significantly have better brain power.

Jim Donovan:

That is tremendous. I’m going to take that tonight, if I can.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I take it every morning and when I don’t take it, I think that I feel a difference. It could be placebo effect. It’s really hard to say. Placebo effect is generally 30%, but I truly believe that at least I feel better when I do it.

Jim Donovan:

That’s so helpful. I want to give you the last word here and then after we get off, if you could just stay on the call for a second and we can chat for a moment.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Sure.

Jim Donovan:

Is there anything else that you can tell our listeners out there in addition to some of these agents that you’re talking about in reading your book, that would just be a good idea to pay attention to with regards to really increasing the likelihood that you have more healthier years?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Well, just general health information. You don’t have to take all of these agents, obviously. Everything is a choice at this point, but the worst things you can do for you are quite obvious. Smoking will kill you by at least eight or nine years, plus it makes your skin look terrible and everything else. Being obese is absolutely horrible. Getting COVID, isn’t going to be all that helpful either. Just generally eat better. The darker the vegetable, the more anthocyanins that tend to be good for you. Stay out of the sun, don’t kill yourself.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Just normal things that everyone knows. The other thing is if you’re going to start anything at all, start Metformin, it’s the easiest thing to do. Millions and millions and millions of people are already on it and have very few issues with it other than a little bit of GI upset sometimes. But it’s one of the strongest things that we have. Most primary care physicians can dole it out like candy, and it’s known to decrease morbidity and mortality in older people.

Jim Donovan:

Metformin, that’s the name of it? Got it. I didn’t lie, but I have one more question.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Bring it on.

Jim Donovan:

I can see that you’re an exercise person. Do you integrate any music into anything, any of your routines that you do?

Dr. Kaufmann:

I can’t swim without music. How’s that?

Jim Donovan:

Wow. Awesome.

Dr. Kaufmann:

I love swimming. I have a water pod and I have a variety of bits of music on there, a little slow warm up, and then I kill myself to something with a better beat. Then I warm down. Absolutely. You can’t climb with music really because it’s more focus oriented and running these days is boring, plus it’s really hot. I got to tell you, I swim every day with music. How about that?

Jim Donovan:

Fantastic. You got waterproof headphones and all that stuff?

Dr. Kaufmann:

Yeah. There’s a company called Underwater something, something, something, and they make these fantastic little things. You can either download music onto it or you can use Pandora or Spotify or any of the apps and you just stream it into your headphones and you swim away. It’s fantastic.

Jim Donovan:

Wow. This has been such a great conversation. I’m so grateful that you’ve taken the time out of the OR to sit down and talk with me. This is great. I know my listeners really appreciate this, and I think they’re going to really be excited to read your book, check out your information. Just one more time, can you just tell us the URL of your website?

Dr. Kaufmann:

The website is super easy. It is www.kaufmannprotocol.com. I’m not very clever. Everything is Kaufmann Protocol. The caveat, it has to be K-A-U-F-MA-N-N, two Ns. Everything is super simple. My Instagram is @kaufmannantiaging. Facebook is Sandra Kaufmann, and I will tell you that my email KAUFMANNAII… AAA… I don’t remember. It’s on the website and I personally answer everyone’s questions. Takes me a little bit of time, but I promise I get to people. Every time I do a podcast, I get the blitzkrieg and I enjoy the blitzkrieg. People just have to have a whiff of patience.

Jim Donovan:

Yes, and even that is just amazing that you take the time to do that given all the different things that you’re doing. We were talking at the beginning of the podcast that we’re alive now let’s have a big life, let’s have something that we can feel good about every day and when we have tools like you’re sharing here, just makes it easier. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

Dr. Kaufmann:

You’re welcome, and if I could have the last word only because it’s fun.

Jim Donovan:

Do it.

Dr. Kaufmann:

Some people, their biggest complaint is that they don’t want to live longer necessarily because they envision themselves sitting in a wheelchair with oxygen and being miserable. I like to stress that it is not necessary your lifespan that we’re improving, but your health span. The idea is to be able to do everything that you want to do, be it scaling mountains, playing music, whatever, as long as possible so that you can enjoy life as much as possible. That’s the goal here.

Jim Donovan:

That’s so good. Sandra, thank you so much. Hang on the call for a second and listeners out there, thank you for tuning in.

Well, that’s it for today. I appreciate you tuning in. Remember to come see us on our social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Just search Jim Donovan Sound Health.