A few months ago, I decided to make the first video of each month
about the latest news in the field of longevity science.
But this time, I’ve decided to make the news video about RAADFest, which was last month.
So stay tuned for a review of the highlights of RAADFest.
RAADFest, which is the Festival for the Revolution Against Aging & Death,
happened last month and ran from Oct. 2 - Oct. 4.
It was organized by the Coalition for Radical Life Extensions,
which is an outgrowth of People Unlimited of Scottsdale, Arizona.
And this year, it was a virtual event…like almost everything else.
Over the course of 3 days,
it had presentations by many of the luminaries in the longevity movement.
People like Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Dr. Greg Fahy, Dave Asprey, George Hamilton,
Liz Parrish, Bill Faloon, Dr. Sandra Kauman,
James Strole & Bernadeane, Dr. Bill Andrews, and Dr. Natasha Vita-More.
With over 45 presenters and almost 20 hours of content on the Main Stage alone,
RAADFest was too big to take a look at every presentation.
So this is just the highlights of just the things that were of interest to me
or that I thought were memorable.
Friday, October 2nd was day one, and, as you might expect,
some of the first few presentations were about COVID-19 and immunity…
something that’s on everyone’s mind.
Dave Asprey, the biohacker and founder of the Bulletproof Coffee and Bulletproof Diet,
came on a talked about things that everyone can do right now to boost our immune systems,
things like ozone therapy, taking andrographis, stephania root, vitamin C,
zinc, quercitin, & undergoing ketosis.
Then Dr. Greg Fahy came on and he talked about a new TRIMM study that he’s doing.
This one is going to be more inclusive
and I believe that it’s going to be taking place for a longer period of time.
He gave a link to submit an application to join the study.
I applied and if you want to apply, I’ve included that link in the description.
Then they had a panel on sexual function as we age,
and that panel included Dave Asprey again
and he talked about therapies like red light therapy, shock wave therapy
and lasers, and microdoses of electricity.
Then Dr. Amy Killen talked about a 4-pronged approach to sexual longevity.
This approach “Minds the Mind”,
“Supports the Structures”,
“Boosts Blood Flow”
and “Optimizes Hormones.”
Next, Dr. Theirry Hertoghe
wrapped things up with a discussion of how to boost hormones like thyroid, oxytocin,
melanocyte-stimulating hormone, the sex hormones,
DHEA and human growth hormone.
Finally, David Schmidt of LifeWave
closed out the day with a talk about a patch that his company produces called X39.
As I understand it, this patch is a form of phototherapy.
The patch is actually a light that’s activated by body heat,
and it turns up your stem cell activity by elevating a peptide.
It improves wound healing, alleviates pain, improves the skin,
helps you sleep better, and maintains a healthy inflammatory response.
On day two, Bill Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation
came on and talked about some of the latest research in longevity,
and he covered too many exciting studies to go into here.
But I’ve put a link in the description
that’ll take you to the slides for his powerpoint presentation.
You should definitely take a look at that.
Then they had an interview with Chip Walter, who has written a book called Immortality, Inc.
and that ’s about the investments of the silicon valley in the longevity movement.
Dr. Joe Cleaver gave a presentation on senolytics,
and talked about peptides and telomerase.
Then Raymond Palmer gave a talk about engineering metabolic pathways,
and describe a potential drug
that could induce your body to respond as though it were responding to a strenuous workout.
Taking a pill instead of working out, and getting the same result.
Now I have to admit that I’m a little skeptical about that.
Then Dr. Sandra Kaufman interviewed George Hamilton,
and they talked about his own personal longevity regime.
Dr. Kaufman is the author of the Kaufman Protocol,
and apparently George came to her for a personalized program.
Now although I didn’t really learn anything new about longevity from George and Sandra,
he told some really interesting stories.
After that, they had a panel on pet longevity.
This included Drs. Kat Cotter, Bill Andrews and Oscar Guadarrama.
This was pretty interesting, and they had a similar panel at last year’s RAADFest.
They talked about strategies to extend your pet’s lifespan as well as your own.
One of the things that I found interesting
was that while it can take a long time to determine if anything is working on yourself,
because of the long human lifespan,
you can tell pretty quickly if any of the strategies that you try are working on your pets.
After each day, they would have a happy hour,
where they’d take a few participants
and allow them to join in a Zoom call that everyone could watch.
They had about 1,800 people attending RAADFest,
and only about a dozen people got to participate in the Zoom call,
so I felt pretty fortunate that I was chosen to be one of them.
Sunday was the last day, and it started off with a presentation by Dr. Natasha Vita-More.
She talked about how time is the ultimate biomarker
and about the conundrum between the desire to speed time up
so that we’ll all arrive at a point where enough discoveries have been made
to defeat and reverse the effects of aging;
and slowing time down so that we don’t age as fast.
And she presented the concept of a longevity portfolio.
The idea is how you invest your time and effort
and it’s the opposite of an investment portfolio.
You invest conservatively when you’re young and have lots of time,
and you invest aggressively when you’re old and time is running out.
Then James Strole and Bernadeane came on
an talked about the whole longevity movement and about People Unlimited,
which is the organization behind RAADFest.
It’s located in Scottsdale, Arizona and it’s a great bunch of people.
I went to Scottsdale last year just before the pandemic struck
and hung out with them for a long weekend.
Had a great time and I would’ve been back if not for COVID-19.
Rudi Hoffman gave a talk
and he’s an insurance agent who provides policies
that allow people to set up a cryonics exit strategy
in case they move on before science can deliver them from the ravages of aging.
Then Liz Parrish from BioViva
gave a presentation about what her company is doing.
BioViva is involved in gene therapy
and Liz is known as patient zero in the longevity community…
because of her willingness to try those therapies out on herself.
BioViva is working with 4 molecules,
telomerase to lengthen telomeres,
follistatin to increase muscle mass,
klotho to improve brain function
and PGC-1alpha to boost mitochondrial function.
BioViva also offers their own test to measure biological age
called the Timekeeper Methylation Test.
They also offer a program that can keep all of your test results,
both theirs and test results that you get elsewhere,
in a single information “Vault” that can track your data anonymously to aid in longevity research.
RAADFest wrapped up with a presentation from Dr. Aubrey de Grey,
and his talks are always a treat.
He talked about the future outlook on research and investments in longevity
and whether or not there was a silver lining for longevity research in the COVID pandemic
And he seems to feel there is.
He also talked briefly about something that I’ve been interested in for a long time,
which is the Foresight Institute.
It was created by the founder of nanotechnology, Eric Drexler
and his partner, Chris Peterson.
It’s got a new president
named Allison Duettmann and she has apparently revitalized Forsesight.
And she’s particularly interested in longevity and aging,
so it’ll be interesting to watch and see what comes of that.
Aubrey concluded his presentation by talking about the XPRIZE.
As you may know, the XPRIZE was created by Peter Diamondis,
and was instrumental in getting the private sector to become involved in space exploration.
They’ve created other XPRIZEs
and Aubrey has been working for years with Peter
to get an XPRIZE for aging and rejuvenation established,
and he announce that it appears to be on the horizon, finally.
I subscribe to Peter’s newsletter and recently it has been focusing on that very topic,
so I’m hopeful that we’ll see that come to fruition in the not-too-distant future.
Now, in addition to the main stage presentations,
another aspect of RAADFest has always been RAADCity,
which is where players in the longevity space have an opportunity to hawk their wares.
And RAADCity has also always had it’s own stage,
where these vendors can give presentations about their company and products.
This has always been as interesting as the main stage, and this year was no different.
In addition to the main stage presentation,
there are an additional 19 presentations from the RAADCity stage.
Now, I haven’t really had time to comb through all of these presentations,
but a lot of them look really interesting,
with titles like “Therapeutic Angiogenesis for Disease Reversal “,
“Bioregenerative Therapies for Neurodegenerative Diseases”,
“Activating Key Longevity Pathways with Nutrition”,
“Full Spectrum Infrared Light”
& “Full Body Stem Cell Makeover”, too name but a few.
If you missed RAADFest, but you’re interested in watching it, or any of the presentations,
you can purchase a rental contract from Vimeo.
It cost $197, it lasts for a year,
and the link to the RAADFest content is in the description.
OK, that it for me.
If you’re interested in learning more about RAADFest,
you might want to watch these videos that I made after attending last year’s RAADFest.
Catch ya next week, I’m outta here.