#297 How to Take NMN and Other Longevity Supplements - Alan Graves

Alan Graves (0:00)

Particularly, when we first started with the NMN, there was a lot of testing that we did of products that are available online. We found that like nine out of ten didn't have what they said they had, and many of them didn't have any NMN in whatsoever.

Siim Land (0:14)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast, I'm your host Siim Land, and today our guest is Alan Graves. Alan is the CEO of donotage.org that provides research-backed supplements for extending healthspan and longevity. DoNotAge offers the most cutting-edge longevity supplements for commercial use, such as NMN, Spermidine, Reservatrol and Calcium Alpha-Ketoglutarate. Their products are pure and third-party tested so you know exactly what you're getting and how much. Head over to donotage.org and use the code SIIM for a 10% discount.

Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan Graves (0:47)

Hi, Siim, thank you.

Siim Land (0:48)

It's good to have you on the podcast.

I feel that with your company, I don't know how long, maybe a year up to a year like now, I'm really enjoying the products. But maybe let's start with some of your background. How did you get into longevity and starting DoNotAge?

Alan Graves (1:08)

Yeah, so I think you can't really talk about health without talking about longevity. And health should be everyone's number one focus because that's all we really have.

And then in terms of DoNotAge, it started out of frustration and just developed from there. So there's a couple of different types of frustration. There's the researcher side. Researchers are always looking for more support, more funding. And then there's the consumer side. And they're looking for advice on what product to take, what lifestyle changes to make, as well as they're looking for a source of those ingredients that they can actually trust. You know, the product has what it says it has inside of it. And so that's basically where DoNotAge came from.

We fill that gap. So we create a consumer product. Consumer buys that product. We can then use those funds to help support research, which then advances the science of longevity and off the back of that research, we try and create a consumer product. And that kind of keeps it going until hopefully one day we solve aging.

Siim Land (2:28)

Yeah, well, that's a pretty hefty goal.

But you do also have a pretty good team of advisors and people who help you to do the research or gather the research. But how do you, let's say, decide which molecule to pursue or which supplement to pursue? Like what is the criteria for, let's say, starting to make a sperminate supplement or enema supplement, for example?

Alan Graves (2:52)

Yeah, so there's a few different facets that come into it.

Now that we have so many DoNotAge members, we obviously we make sure it's a two-way street. So we do listen to our audience as well. You know, if we start to get thousands of messages every month about a certain molecule, we might start a conversation at our end.

Obviously, we speak to the researchers. You mentioned our Board of Advisors. We have some great people on there, but we also have a much larger network that unofficially helping us. One of the good things about this arena is most of the scientists are very happy to discuss their work, very happy to help you, you know, give you an hour of their time on a call. So, yeah, we're very lucky in that regard. So, yeah, we'll look at the research. We'll speak to the advisors. And then, of course, it comes down to boiling it down, saying, right, we think this product might have XYZ effect. And then we put that into testing. And then once we're happy with it, that's when it becomes a consumer product.

Siim Land (4:05)

What was the like first, first of all, that was really like exciting or the ones that you developed?

Alan Graves (4:13)

So we started with Enamen, Resveratrol and Berberine. They were like the first three ingredients that we had.

It feels, I mean, it was two and a half years ago, but it feels about 20 years ago.

Siim Land (4:28)

And what was the reason like for that, why choosing those?

Alan Graves (4:33)

So originally, I think it was because, you know, there's quite a lot of hype about Metformin at the moment.

Or there was and obviously Metformin is a prescription drug, so we can't, we wouldn't be able to provide that. And there's a lot of people in a lot of countries that can't get hold of it. So Berberine seems like the next best thing. The natural alternative, and we find it works really, really well. As for NMN, I mean, just seeing what it did in the original trials back when they were just using mice was just incredible. And now we're in a position where we get to see that data transpiring into humans. So it's really exciting. It was definitely a good choice. I actually think people will look back on Dr. David Sinclair very fondly in the future.