🎙 ENDURANCE CAPITAL | The Engine Room for Endurance

Welcome to Endurance Capital.

In today's episode, you might be surprised.

We will be talking about what super centenarians teach us about going long in sport and startup investments.

But before we start, let's take a quick moment of honesty.

Who wants to live longer?

Not forever, just longer.

Long enough to actually enjoy what you're building or to still be running up hills when your friends are complaining about stairs.

If you are an endurance athlete, a founder or an investor.

You are already playing a long game.

Whether you admit it or not, you're asking your body and your brain to carry a heavy load for a long time.

Today we are asking a simple question.

Can we learn anything useful about the long game from the world's oldest people?

My first guest, Natalie Coles, has spent the last 17 years working with one of the rarest human groups on earth, Supercentenarians.

These are people over 110 years old.

She continued the work of her late husband, an obstetrician, gynecologist, who moved into gerontology and became a leading expert on these extreme outliers.

Natalie's work is very down to earth.

She sits with these people and their families, listens to their stories, and draws their plot so scientists can see what's going on under the hood of a human who has already beaten the odds by decades.

One of those people, was Maria Branias, at one point the world's oldest living person.

Natalie was part of the team that collected and interpreted Maria's blood data and life history as part of a landmark study of her biology.

With us is also Will Harbour, founder and general partner of Long Game Ventures.

Will's job is to find and back the companies that might actually move the needle on lifespan.

How long will it?

Not just healthspan.

He spends his at the intersection of biology and computer science, trying to spot the patterns that could add genuine use to human life.

None of us here are pretending to be scientists.

My job is to keep this human.

Walt's job is to think about what this means for startups and investments.

And Natalie's job is to keep us honest about what we can actually know from super centenarians and what we actually don't.

Thanks to our sponsor, Stride Hub.

But more about them later.

Today, we are building a biological awareness system you can actually use.

How to understand your internal signals, measure what matters, intervene early, and extend performance over decades.

We will ask, if a human can stay biologically younger, deep into their hundred and teens, what would biological youth look like for an endurance athlete?

do today based on what we've learned from these people to move the needle on our own aging.

I'm Ignacio Garcia, global early stage investor and endurance triathlete and this is Endurance Capital.

Let's head into the conversation.

Co-author on a full multiomics paper of the world's oldest verified living person looking at her genome, metabolome, proteome, microbiome and epigenome.

This is the aging study of Maria Brañas from in Spain.

That work showed something remarkable.

You can have all the usual signs of extreme age on paper and still avoid the big age-related diseases and stay functional much longer than most people.

This woman survived several wars, epidemics, and maintained a relatively good health until she died.

With her is Will Harbourn, founder and general partner of Long Game Ventures, a self-made entrepreneur, investor in longevity, and in particular, in bold bets about lifespan.

Today, we will ask, if a human can stay biologically young into their 110s, what would biologically youth look like in an endurance athlete?

And how could anyone, not just pros, use this kind of biological information to extend their own endurance in training, racing, work, and daily life?

s for many years tell us a in: 2014

And since then, I've decided to take on the research, which was a promise I made before he passed away.

And so now currently, I am back to it.

And what I do is I study the world's oldest people.

They're called super centenarians.

So they're people who live to be 110 or older.

Anything below that is 100 years old to 105 is considered a centenarian. and 105 to 110 is a semi-supercentenarian.

And anything past 110 is what we call supercentenarians.

Great to have you, Natalie, again.

Most of us would see a supercentenarian once in our lifetime, but you have been working with them over 17 years.

That's amazing.

I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

How did you end up in this world?

And in simple terms, what exactly have you been doing with supercentenarians all these years?

So I just got back into this world because I have a friend who was working on another company and he knew that I had been doing work on super centenarians for many years and that the research pretty much stopped around right before COVID and then, you know, until the world kind of opened up again, we didn't get this opportunity to start sampling.

And so that's what kind of brought me back in.

The second time, he basically called me up and asked me to work for him.

And we decided we were going to attempt bravely to start sampling when things were opening up after COVID.

And so, you know, some of the things, some of the findings that we've been working on or not necessarily working on, but what we've noticed is that I thought that we were going to lose all the super centenarians during COVID and that the research would be completely over.

We would have to wait a minimum of 10 to 15 years just to see one super centenarian.

But ironically, that wasn't true.

All the super centenarians that I've now sampled in the past two years pretty much all had COVID and some not just once or twice, but, you know, multiple times and didn't get hospitalized.

So, you know, we're still finding out a lot of different things which we can go into deeper in the podcast.

But yeah, it's a very interesting cohort to study.

So you're traveling around the world meeting these super centenarians.

So really data collection is happening at a very human place, no?

With a very close contact between you and the elderly person.

Someone in the kitchen table, maybe you're really close.

So your insights are actually quite interesting and valuable.

For anyone listening who is into performance, for example, That's an important point.

The big graphs we talk about later are built on real lives, not just on numbers or data.

So, Natalie, back to you.

Before we go anywhere near the lab, when you sit in a room with someone over 110, what feels different about them?

What differences can you see from a regular person that you meet, your friends on a daily basis?

Well, you know, it's an interesting question.

But I think that for me, one thing I notice whenever I meet a super centenarian is it's very rare that during my visit, they're alone.

I feel that they are oftentimes revered by family members and friends.

They have a very sort of stress-free mentality.

And they kind of always have somewhat of a network or a team around them.

And I always feel that the minute I even enter the room, that I'm already entering into their space, a place that they have a safe space, protection, support.

And I just always find that to be a bit interesting about them.

But I've noticed that it's a very unique aspect to their lifestyle.

Sure.

So for anyone listening to this podcast, there's already a pattern.

You know, there is less drama.

Less, more connections with their loved ones, more rhythm.

And for athletes and founders listening, that's almost the opposite.

It's always on the urgent side, always on fire, you know, traveling around, cortisol levels really high.

So yeah, here is a pattern that we can already start collecting and as a lesson, no?

So Will, over to you now.

From your side, you are not the one drawing blood. you're actually wiring checks to companies you're investing in longevity companies and your focus is on life span so adding actual years to human life why do you care what's happening in the blood of these super centenarians 110 year old people is this something relevant to you is this giving any signals i think it's it's a it's a really interesting area of research and you know fundamentally these super centenarians first of all just show us that this is biologically possible in humans.

It shows that aging isn't fixed, that there's different variants that depend on many factors.

And one of the most consistent things you see is this kind of exceptional resilience.

So the supercentenarians maintain mitochondrial functions, stable proteostasis, low inflammation, efficient DNA repair for longer than most of us do.

Of course, there's some sort of lifestyle factors.

But when we kind of look at this as an investor, you're really looking at supercentenarians and their blood and their data and their biometrics as evidence of how aging is working and the kinds of interventions that could help the rest of us to actually extend our own healthy lifespan.

If we can draw inspiration from certain things that are different in these populations, whether that's certain genetics or microbiome or other things, then you could potentially create interventions.

And the companies that we invest in typically might then be looking to, for example, create something to help keep mitochondria healthy for longer in other people so that the mitochondria are more similar to those of a supercentenarian as they get older.

And so it's sort of a source of inspiration.

And one of the most difficult things to find often in the development of new types of therapeutics or drugs is human evidence.

And here we have a great source also of basically exceptional resilience and lifespan in human beings.

So let's see if I'm reading this correctly.

These extreme cases are like the edge of the map for you.

So they don't really tell you exactly what to build, but they tell you in which direction you might go in terms of investing, even worth walking.

Is this?

I think that's sort of right.

And they can basically be pointers to tell you that, you know, there is something exceptional going on with this population of people. certain genes, for example.

And so therefore, if we can create some sort of therapeutic that targets that gene or, you know, that variant of the gene, we're likely to be able to get some of those benefits.

So it's kind of pointers in these kind of extreme cases that could then inform targeted drug discovery to try and find some way to get that benefit for the rest of us.

You see similar things also, for example, in extreme animals.

So you have certain animals that are that live much longer or which have interesting properties like hibernating for example where there are again insights you could draw which help inform drug discovery and the creation of new types of therapeutics and you know ultimately as an investor our goal is we want everyone on the planet to be able to have access to some of these you know healthy benefits and so wherever we can learn and get insights as to what actually is driving the aging process how it works and why some people might you know age much better.

Those are things we can use to help inform where money gets sent and which kind of companies are on the right track.

Awesome, I got it.

Natalie, over to you now.

Let's talk a little bit about Maria.

I'm really intrigued to understand a little bit more how she was as a person.

I mean, we all saw the headlines, a 117-year-old lady from Spain, she ate three yogurts, so on and so forth.

But for you, who was she as a real person?

And also, as a valuable data point.

Can you give us a little bit of that perspective?

Well, you know, I got to meet her very briefly because I fly in and I only spend about a day.

So the certain things that we look at with personality oftentimes is, are they able to understand what we're asking?

Do they even remember some of the answers?

And how they respond to new environments and stress.

And I think that with Maria, That was one thing I really noticed about her.

She was very welcoming.

She was very open to participating.

She could still understand the questions being asked by her daughter, which we used to translate.

But another thing I really noticed was how stress-free she was.

She was very happy to see us have visitors.

But when it came time to do the blood draw on all the tests, because we did more testing than we normally do on a super centenarian.

She was very cooperative.

She was totally stress-free.

She wasn't nervous.

She really was just a pleasure to be around.

And so I think that that is another thing we notice is just how stress-free they are.

They're able to adapt to these situations very quickly.

And they don't get overwhelmed by them like so many other people do.

That alone is a factor simply because we know that stress in itself causes high cortisol, causes inflammation.

And so when you look at that throughout 110, Maria Bronis at the time was actually 116.

So if you think about how much that might impact, even if it's on a micro level, for 116 years, finding a way to maintain that sort of adaptability and flow is really important. problems themselves or really being stress-free, let's put it this way.

So, but let's demystify one thing, which I found really interesting and everybody was focusing on that, which is the yogurt.

That's all over, you know, when you see the videos on YouTube and the news about her.

One of the things that really, really surprised me is that even her doctor actually made a statement that he started taking a yogurt as well.

So guess what?

I decided to start having a yogurt per day also.

Okay.

For those that don't speak microbiome, let's not get a bit more serious.

And people might, a lot of our audience might not have even heard about the word microbiome and microbiota.

What did her gut look like in simple terms?

And why does that matter for people who care about endurance and aging?

With Maria Brañas, it was an interesting finding because she had a very high level of a certain bacteria that is associated with this particular yogurt as well.

And it is important because we're noticing or we're finding out that the microbiome has a big impact on other aspects of the body.

It's even being associated with mood, brain health, and other things.

So this is, you know, and it's a very important system that helps detox and cleanse you.

And so this is, you know, this is really important.

And it's something we haven't studied in other super centenarians.

And I think that the reason that this is important is because pretty much always, my whole 17 years of doing this, we've, and we still think that a big, big aspect is genetics for super centenarians, that there's really not a lot you can do. to become a super centenarian, maybe a centenarian, but not a super.

Now, with that said, everything that we found previously was it seems something that was out of grasp that you couldn't get, that wasn't just accessible to the public.

And this is a finding that kind of changes that a little bit.

It doesn't necessarily mean that by, you know, eating the yogurt, you're going to live to 116.

But, you know, you might be able to do things that help your system. that can provide properties that are normally associated with longevity.

And this yogurt becomes something that, you know, an athlete can eat or drink and have access to this kind of bacteria that maybe you can, that might help the microbiome a little bit better than if you weren't.

And I want to say one thing because I really, this yogurt actually became a really big deal.

And I knew about her diet way before it got published.

But I don't know if that's considered insider trading if you invest.

But you know, the yogurt is a particular yogurt.

It's not a yogurt, just any yogurt.

That's what else is interesting about this particular yogurt.

This particular yogurt that she bought is actually known to be high in this particular bacteria that they found in her microbiome.

And the other thing is it's from a particular area in Spain.

And it's just a family-owned business.

It's not, from my understanding, it wasn't even accessible to people outside of that area because they just weren't big enough to get it.

So now they're getting a lot of hype because of this particular, you know, recipe that they have.

And so, I mean, it will be interesting to see what happens to that company and if they're able to scale that.

But yogurt in general is still positive.

And in fact, I have my yogurt here.

So that's one clear takeaway from what you're saying.

Let's talk about another characteristic of Maria Brañas, the stress, the rhythm, and the community, which we actually have, we will be talking about in another episode, which is the support group.

The importance that some people underestimate the importance of the support group.

For an athlete, they are not lonely players. and even when you are at home or when you are in the office.

So let's talk about that stress rhythm and community.

You say about super centenarians having a bird's eye view, right?

Of stress.

They see the storms, but they don't seem to camp inside the storm.

They let it go.

That's a very difficult thing to do, in my opinion.

I think it takes a lot of practice in a way.

From your long experience in those 17 years, how do these people tend to handle stress?

Daily rhythm, community differently from the rest of us.

Any takeaways from that?

Well, yeah.

I mean, it comes kind of back to the environment that we were talking about because they're pretty much, they go their whole lives as, you know, regular individuals until they actually start reaching, you know, past life expectancy.

And when they do that, you know, there's a switch in roles oftentimes.

And like as we were discussing, I guess the best way to use that as an analogy in sports would be like they go from being the athletes to then being the coaches.

If you pay attention, and blue zones are mostly associated with centenarians, not super centenarians, but nevertheless, these are two cohorts of extreme longevity.

And it's above normal.

It's not, you know, it's not average.

It's exceptional.

So what we've noticed in this, if you pay attention to sort of like these blue zones or these areas, environments that super centenarians are in, they're always surrounded by a team.

They always have a support system.

And oftentimes, you know, it's rare that they're in a nursing home.

There are times where they are, but even then they have family that live across the street or they show up every single day.

Some have relatives that work in that nursing home.

So yeah, another thing is that when you have a team surrounding you, I think it helps them with the stress because what we have noticed is they tend to not stress.

They tend to just project the stress onto that team.

So what they do is if they're stressing out about something or they need something or they have a question, instead of, you know, raising their voice or panicking, they just basically let the person next to them, their child, know, go do this.

And a lot of times, most of the time, they actually live with the family.

And they take on the role of raising the grandchildren and being there throughout the day.

So they start to be the leader of the family.

And everyone works to just support them.

And they do it not just, they don't just support them, they love them when they do it.

So they're cheering them on, they're supporting them, they're always giving them motivation, they're always reinforcing. how they believe in each other, you know, because I feel like a lot of times they want the super centenarian to sort of maintain a level of independence, whether it's just mentally or not.

So they kind of encourage them to like give orders or pass this thing on.

They don't want to stress the super centenarian out, but it's always been, I think, a trait that we've seen with supers.

And I think when you live your life like that for 116 years, When regular stressful people are stressed, their goal is to become a little stress-free.

But when supers do this and they do it throughout their lives, suddenly, you know, being exceptional becomes your baseline.

And it's easy to just maintain that over a period of time.

Very interesting reflection, Natalie.

Who doesn't want to live healthy in a way until 117?

I mean, I won't.

And what you're saying is very insightful because the difficulty is to make people click at early age.

Let's say teens, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s.

If we could understand the deep impact on our longevity, on our healthy aging of approaching stress and community, social relationships in a way, in a different way, I mean, we would all be probably aging more healthily.

And the difficulty, I think, is to assimilate, to interiorize that and live with that purpose in a way.

That's the difficulty.

It sounds like if you treat your nervous system like a war zone for decades, perhaps you can sustain that into your 20s, your 30s, your 50s, but you're going to pay back for it.

You very unlikely are going to make it, or your 110s are not going to look very amazing, right?

So yeah, really important things to be conscious about and to ground yourself when things happen and look after your support group.

So really interesting, Natalie.

Thanks for your insights.

Will, over to you now.

Hearing this picture from Natalie, calmer stress cycle, steady routines, strong relationships, healthy gut, When you hear that as a lifespan investor, what do you think about?

One thing to kind of frame from at least the biotech and investing in lifespan side is it's easy to maybe romanticize some of the lifestyle elements, right?

You know, two people can have the exact same diet, the exact same lifestyle and have totally different aging trajectories.

There's obviously some biology underneath that really matters genetically.

But equally, it is still clear that the takeaway is if overall you're having better sleep, having better social life, managing stress, eating healthily, you are going to age better.

And that sort of tracks across populations.

I think when we're then sort of looking at how can you sort of make this sort of really useful for the rest of the population, at the end of the day, you know, actually, you know, you could take an example. as mitochondria so having healthy mitochondria super important both for like peak performance and longevity and longevity and healthspan there are lots of things that you can do today to kind of maintain healthy mitochondria including many of those lifestyle elements and actually you know with high performance athletes you're kind of forced to build and maintain robust mitochondria if you're competing in an Ironman with weak metabolic machinery you're just unlikely to do very well if you can even finish and longevity relies on that same machinery And so we know some of the ways of maintaining that.

It's exercise, lots of other elements of lifestyle, but not everyone in the general population is ever going to be able to do huge training loads and have the discipline to maintain mitochondria in that way.

So that's where we would then look at something like that, where we know that machinery is important and think, how can we use the latest in biotech to enhance and maintain mitochondrial health?

at scale for everyone even those who can't do huge endurance training loads for example and so yeah then we drill down into that and go okay you know we what are the ways that we can get stronger mitophagy the kind of recycling of mitochondria and improve mitochondrial function in all sorts of other ways we know that it's a central pathway in aging it helps they help in all sorts of different ways so can we help find the company that are actually able to create pills or therapies that can trigger that mycophagy in the most efficient way and help people to maintain that without necessarily doing as much of the hard work and i think all of this stuff would always be alongside lifestyle and you know it's always going to be more beneficial to still live as healthily as you can but not everyone is going to be lucky to have you know the right genetics to give them the best advantage so we then turn to these other tools yeah so do you think There is a misconception about what can be done for healthy aging.

In other words, there is a lot of stuff that we can do before we get to spend $100,000 on anti-aging therapies, right?

Absolutely.

I mean, the basics of what you can do for longevity today is all still lifestyle stuff.

If you're not already doing, you know, a basic amount of exercise, even if that's walking or whatever you're able to do, and you know eating the healthiest food and managing your stress and sleeping well you might as well forget probably about all these advanced stem cell therapies or therapeutics that are in the future going to be coming on the market because you need to get that right first but once you do get it right you know depending on your genetics it's probably going to give you a maximum of seven seven or eight years of extra healthy life now of course that's a huge improvement and we should all be going for that but if you want to go beyond that I just want to clarify just in case anyone has a misconception.

So one thing I want to say is that what we do know is that you can't live to be a supercentenarian by osmosis.

So you can't be around supercentenarians and think that, well, because I studied them, I'm going to live to be 116.

I mean, we know that's not true.

So mainly I think what's important for these athletes to take away from this is what, we're discussing today and what we're really trying to focus on with these lifestyles of super centenarians and why it's still important for longevity is because we believe that with super centenarians you know they do probably have certain things genetically and there's a lot of things uh within us that um just even like repair regeneration that we can optimize and i think that that's what we want to focus on here is how does the average person that may not have these within them.

They may not have family members that live to 110 or older.

How can someone regular that really cares about their longevity optimize what we have so that we can do all of these, just assist and help all of these systems work to their absolute best, right?

And that's what we want to focus on.

But I also want to emphasize that what Will is talking about and what what Will is pursuing is really, really important for everyone.

Because the truth is, supercentenarians are not just important for the data that they give us.

But now we're at a place where 17 years ago, this technology didn't exist.

You know, the amount of biomarkers we have access to, just reprogramming, cloning, things like that.

And so when you look at that from a perspective of That means the oldest cells in the world and reset them back to zero.

And when you start talking about how can you apply this, you can start using this to make organs, to test therapies, or even if you consider the ability to do organ transplants.

You're probably going to want an organ that we know has the ability to regenerate and last longer than any normal organ that you might get from a random donor.

And so when you start thinking about these new applications, it's extremely important to know the difference between the two.

But that's where LEV comes into play, which is longevity escape velocity.

If you can optimize what you have, and at least make it to like the actual peak of what the average life expectancy is, imagine how much technology we'll have in the next 30 to 40 years, even 10 to 15.

And when we can start applying that extra little bit of longevity, our own lives and then making it onto whatever new technology becomes available in that small gap of years.

We may actually start to see that 117 might be our new baseline.

And that's what the goal is here with longevity.

It's not just being a good athlete or a good citizen that lives, you know, average, not that being good or bad would matter.

But it's about optimizing all of those, not just our health, but our opportunities to get to the next level.

And the good news is that today it's very accessible to get results or analyze the impact of whatever interventions we might do.

If we sleep more, if we stop smoking, we will see it.

So methylation tests, we can track dozens of biomarkers through our blood, genetics tests, microbiome tests.

I mean, for our audience that are listening, these are all very accessible.

Just a click on our computer, like for example, on GetStride.com, who is one of the nice sponsors of this episode.

So we will talk about that a little bit later.

But thanks, Natalie, for that insight as well.

This is a quick reminder that you are listening to Endurance Capital with me, Ignacio Garcia.

We will be right back after a short word from the partners who helped make this series possible.

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Let's get to concrete levers for normal people now.

Let's think about our audience and let's get a little bit practical.

If an endurance athlete or a startup founder came to you and said, I don't need 117, you know, just give me my best shot at being strong and fairly sharp into my 70s or 80s.

Based on your years of studies with super centenarians and their What are the three or four practical advices or lessons that you can highlight for these people?

So one would be to find a way to sort of keep a clear mind or say stress-free.

So one of the things that you and I had discussed was also adaptability.

So they tend to take a bird's eye view, which turns a blizzard into a breeze.

So something that someone would really stress out about normally, they find a way to adapt and flow with it.

And we find that to be important.

Another thing is community.

Community is important because you have someone that you can lean on, you know, if you need something, if you're scared, if you're stressed, you always have someone that you trust near you, which also allows a level of being stress-free.

If you don't trust the people around you, that's kind of behind you. to have that kind of support.

You might feel vulnerable instead of feeling empowered.

And so community is also important.

Another thing we found is just consistency.

And that becomes really important with diet.

We've noticed the same thing that usually it's a lot of them also eat basically two meals.

Very rare do I have super centenarians that eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And it tends to be breakfast and lunch.

And this becomes important way later in life.

Because with the super centenarian, when you get to be 116, 117, you become very frail.

And so what happens is if anything happens to these super centenarians, if they get sick and they decide to sleep all day, that's one day they go without eating and drinking.

And with this cohort, if they go a day, two days without eating or drinking, I always have the family immediately notify me.

And sadly, the reason I do that is because I start to prepare for autopsy if they have agreed to that.

But the first thing is also making sure that they can get good support to encourage them to eat and drink so we can prevent this stuff.

But the reason that's important is because a lot of times you will see supercentenarians that if they feel sick but they are awake, they understand how important it is to maintain their schedule mentally and physically.

And so they will often make themselves eat on their own.

I've seen many of these super centenarians are still able to pick up the spoon and put it in their mouth themselves.

And so things like this, adaptability, stress-free consistency, and a good network of individuals that you trust in order to maintain this kind of lifestyle that provides comfort and stability.

Not just for your brain, but your body.

You've probably seen quite a lot of blood tests, right?

Hundreds?

Thousands?

I don't know.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Yes, I've seen quite a few.

So for someone who is thinking, I suppose the average person takes a blood test when the doctor says they have to take a blood test, right?

Right.

That's what, 99% of people maybe?

So let's say someone comes to you and say, okay, I'm going to do some testing, right?

testing in a healthy, useful way without obsessing too much over every small change.

Well, I want to mention something twofold.

So one thing is that when you work at, when I worked at the lab, you can't get a blood test unless you have a doctor's order.

And so the phlebotomist goes by what was ordered.

And that's very limiting because it goes based on the specialist that you saw what they want to test for.

So that is a big thing to mention because that's kind of changed.

Now that you can measure biomarkers, you can get these at-home kits where you don't need a doctor's order to find out aspects of your own biology.

And the other thing you can do is you can start doing longitudinal studies on yourself.

And that's important because a lot of people are looking to attain or comparing themselves with other people.

And we know that everybody is different.

Everybody responds differently to different interventions.

And so one thing you can do is start just measuring your own data and having your own baseline and then doing whatever changes that you might get or that might be recommended to you and then doing these blood tests again in six months.

And if you keep that up consistently, you'll start to have your own stats, your own baseline, and you'll be able to see where you're improving and where you need to improve.

And this is where exercise, stress, environment, community, when you start the yogurt, when you start to implement that, you'll be able to see how is my body responding to this.

And you can then do more or less of whatever it is that you think is best for you.

Yes, it's like, I guess it's like training.

So one bad session doesn't mean you are doomed, but a long slide is a signal, right?

So you take blood work, let's say, to help you. guide you, adjust, not to make you miserable and, you know, start crying behind the curtains, right?

Yes.

I understand what you're saying.

Will, let's move over to you.

Staying now very grounded for a moment.

You see a lot of tools and platforms in the longevity space.

If you are advising a serious age group athlete, let's just put the hat of a coach, for example, or a founder who, on what's actually useful today.

What would you point them towards?

I don't mean brand names or just types of things that are worth their money and time.

I think, you know, the truth is today still most of what would be recommended is probably what, it's probably mostly lifestyle stuff.

But I think there's a few, there's sort of two areas that at least we, from what we've seen, and that they've seen in a lot of the latest companies and elements would keep coming back to.

And those would be in mitochondrial performance and in immune function.

So you wouldn't necessarily tie those, or at least immune function necessarily, always so much to high performance in terms of athletes as well.

But I think for both, let's say, physical athletes and mental athletes when you're an entrepreneur working under high pressure, actually, They're both very important.

So I'll talk about the immune function first.

Actually, you know, it's something where when you're under stress, whether physical or mental, you have these high inflammation loads that can accelerate biological aging, raises your injury risk, all sorts of other things.

You also, you know, need to be getting good sleep, other things.

And what's very clear from the kind of science is that aging is very linked to inflammation. scientific evidence.

We would say always that there are better things coming over the next 10 years that I think will be even better validated and probably would recommend.

But for now, there's quite a bit on the market as well.

Cool.

Let's zoom out a little bit to your day job for a moment, Will.

You focus on lifespan, so not just making the existing years nicer, but potentially adding more years to the end of the human story.

Thinking about the kinds of companies long game has already packed.

What sort of startups and technologies are you most excited about?

And those that you think could realistically move the needle on how we age.

Give us a few hints.

Well, I'll talk about one area, which I think is really interesting.

And as we've already said during this conversation, a lot of aging is genetic. or at least like how well you're going to age is genetic how likely you are to become a supercentenarian very strongly genetically linked and so if we really want to be able to tackle the underlying aging process we need to consider gene therapies so this is an amazing you know breakthrough over the last few decades we actually now have the ability to deliver these gene therapies and actually edit our genes in various ways and many people on the planet have had a form of gene therapy through the COVID vaccine already.

So this technology is kind of scaling up and there are better and better ways of delivering edits essentially into your body.

Today most of the ones on the market are for rare diseases for example.

That's how it's first being sort of rolled out.

But in the future we may get gene therapies that could directly be for longevity.

We've invested in a company that is working on longevity gene therapies and the specific first therapy they're going for is for actually building muscle so this would be a gene therapy that would help you essentially build muscle faster and particularly you could imagine the use case for someone who um that says over 70 finds it much harder to build muscle no matter how much exercise you're doing it becomes harder and harder as you age and so if you were to have this gene therapy that would reduce cruelty improve um gains from even very limited exercise and allow you to stay and age more healthily and extend lifespan.

So that's the sort of technology which we think is extremely promising.

In that company, for example, we kind of invested in that from a longevity perspective, but there are other investors who look at that from a performance perspective and in terms of building muscle and also from an aesthetic perspective.

So these technologies are really interesting. for the market as well.

And sort of another area is in stem cell therapies.

So again, that's something which we've invested in a lot.

Stem cell therapies are already out there.

You can fly, for example, to Panama and Costa Rica and get these stem cell therapies.

And many elite athletes, for example, in American football have been and had these done to improve their joint health and various other things.

But the cost is still very high, actually. and these things haven't been optimised.

So typically when we're investing in that area, it's in ways of bringing the cost of the technologies down and improving the benefits of them.

And for longevity, they've got immense potential in all sorts of different ways.

One of the ones that we like the most would be eventually replacing the stem cells in your bone marrow that produce all of your blood and therefore all of your immune cells.

And if you could essentially rejuvenate or put young versions of your own bone marrow stem cells back into your bone marrow that would mean that you had young blood that was keeping you younger and healthier well into old age.

So these are kind of some of these almost sound sci-fi but these are technologies which are basically very close to being on the market and the kind of things that we invest into.

Are you suggesting that these therapies would be let's say the gene therapy to increase muscle mass would be as accessible as therapies to reduce fat today, for example.

Literally, not over the counter, but prescribed by a doctor.

That would be quite accessible, actually.

Yeah, I think, you know, that the goal would definitely be that these, you know, at least initially would become prescribed by a doctor and, you know, end state might be, you know, the indication that they're prescribed for would be frailty, which is, you know, quite a large indication affecting many people.

The pathway that we would see for these kind of muscle building therapies, whether it's gene therapies or other things, of which there are, you know, many being worked on, would be similar to the Xempics of the world.

So that's become now relatively easy to access for losing weight.

But even more important is building muscle.

And so we need the kind of equivalent therapies to become mainstream that people can, whether they're losing weight or not, be able to actually help themselves build muscle more easily.

Because again, most people are not able to put the hours that you would like for strength training.

So does that mean, Will, that I will not need to go five times to the gym if I want to build my quads or my chest or my biceps?

I will just need to go once or twice?

Is that in practice what it will mean?

I mean, I think that's part of what it will mean.

I think there's always going to be benefits to going to the gym.

There's a big difference between functional muscle and muscle mass.

So some of the therapies that people are working on that actually do help you build muscle may not give you functional muscle and real strength. which would not have the same level of benefit but yeah the idea probably is that most people on the planet don't manage to go five days a week to the gym anyway so you know they'd get more benefit from the amount that they do manage to do so so let me get it right so the next big lifespan shifts may come from gene therapy possibly to increase muscle mass and from stem cell therapy is that correct those are definitely yeah two two very big areas that Okay, that's clear.

That's massive for our audience that might be listening, you know, for endurance athletes that might not have considered that they just based their training work on hours and hours and hours.

You know, I've heard Ironman athletes going out for 400-kilometer rides or 15,000-meter daily swim training session or 30K daily training session, things like that.

And that, you're not contributing to your longevity in that way.

You are creating more pain, more damage to your system, to your bones, to your cells, to everything.

So it looks like, well, I mean, it looks like we might even be on the verge of having more people potentially do a marathon under two hours.

For example, you know, today is only, who has managed to do that with help in a way, in a way, in a control environment, let's say.

But, you know, I think we can push the boundaries of performance in a way with these therapies that you are suggesting, not only for the elderly, but also for younger generations.

Yeah.

Would you agree to that?

I think there's a certainty that, you know, I mean, well, there's a, there's a, and longevity.

Both of them are types of human enhancement.

The same tools are going to give us the ability to enhance whatever we want.

Now, one caveat to that is enhancing to do the fastest marathon under two hours is not necessarily going to overlap with what makes you live the longest, healthiest life.

So people may end up optimizing for different things.

And I think probably if you are using the same sorts of tools like gene therapies and other things to maximize your performance on this thing, it may have a negative impact on your lifespan.

I think we should be aware of that.

Not everything is always perfectly aligned.

But yeah, I definitely think that's likely to be possible with some of these tools.

Natalie, over to you.

Let's get realistic now.

We don't want to create false expectations on our audience. that we can take.

When you look at everything we've discussed, your 17 years with super centenarians, the blood work, Maria's story, what would you be most keen to explain to people so that they don't over-claim or misunderstand about living longer?

You know, I think that it is important to recognize that we are going to need technologies to really get a lot further than where we are now.

I think that what makes supercentenarians interesting is that they have arrived there by their own genome.

They've not done any of the genetic.

So we know it's within our capability, normal. within our genetics to push lifespan to that extreme.

We know that.

And I think that to expect for us to get anything past that or even near that when we don't naturally have those genetics is not really realistic without the technology.

And I think that for many of us to really, a better idea of where longevity can lead us.

We have to really be cognizant that this is research that is ongoing and that without the proper funding, we're probably not going to get there as soon as we'd like.

I think there's a lot of people that think that, you know, well, I'm just going to step back and see where the science goes.

And we don't have that time.

I mean, this isn't a race for just athletes. is that so many people think that, you know, that inheritance is the most important thing you can leave your child.

And the truth is that the most important thing you can leave your children is your data.

Because what we, we might have this misconception that we have nothing that we can do.

And so therefore we don't have the genes, let's not do anything.

But that's not true.

We now have access to data.

We have access to getting that data at our fingertips, ordering it online, and getting your biomarkers done.

And then giving that allows them to not only have a better landscape of what they're going to face in the future, what that course looks like if you're looking from an athletic point of view, is study where are you going?

What does the path look like?

And what challenges do I have to mentally and physically prepare for?

And that gives your child an advantage where they can start to preemptively sort of push these things away, whether it be diabetes, whether it be obesity, whether it be Alzheimer's and dementia.

So I think that's a really important thing to consider is that there's two spectrums.

If you want to, we want, if we all want to live a lot longer, we really need to invest in this data.

We really need to invest in this research and we really, we're not just helping ourselves, we're helping future generations.

But it's also not out of your hands.

And by doing this, by doing biomarkers, by getting the data, you're also helping improve the whole collective amount of data that we have.

And that starts to help calibrate what we're seeing because there's so many things that we don't know yet.

And the more that people participate, the more that we find a synergy amongst researchers and the regular population, we're going to be able to learn more about ourselves.

And we'll be able to move this forward as a collective, you know, as a team.

So I think that's really important.

And that's what's going to give longevity.

That's what's going to give this movement a big push.

And I think that if we all work together, we can do this.

And so, you know, we all have a responsibility to do what we can, whether that's sharing our data, whether that's making it available, whether that's giving it to our children.

We all have something to contribute.

And that's where I'd like to leave that.

Thank you, Natalie.

That's very insightful.

Thank you.

Now, quick fire to finish.

Short answers from both of you guys.

Let's start with Will.

One thing you wish more people understood about aging.

I think I wish more people understood that we are very close to, I think, a big shift in our understanding of aging and in actually being able to do something about it.

That's massive.

And Natalie, how about you?

I think that it's important to realize that this is in our grasp and that this is happening in our lifetime and we're going to be a big impact on that and like I said everyone can contribute so I think that you know it's just the future and it's inevitable that we're going to find ways to enhance ourselves not just optimize our genetics but optimize our genes and the human genome.

I love it Anthony.

Well one myth about longevity you would love to kill.

Yeah so the one myth I'd want to kill would be that aging is just inevitable and there's nothing we can do about it.

I think we have good enough evidence across a range of different things that actually we can change the way that aging happens in humans and we should.

Yeah it's actually it makes me very sad when I see people in their 50s or in their 60s or in their 70s, having a mindset in their 90s because they feel old.

And these are probably people that haven't really taken a proactive approach to aging.

They just pass through life.

So, yeah, I think that's a very, very, very good answer.

I really like it.

There's a lot you can do.

The myth that I want to kill is that death gives meaning to life.

That is such a terrible thing to say.

It's such an easy cop-out, you know, and it leads to what you say, you know, it allows people to have an excuse for not trying and that's not the way we want to live, you know.

We want everybody to know that age is just a number.

You can be biologically younger than that.

And, you know, every day is a new day.

And every day is an opportunity to change and improve yourself.

I love that one.

Every day is an opportunity to grow higher.

Yes.

In fact, I have a motto.

This is just for us.

I have a motto.

When I injured myself last year, four times in three months, one of the injuries was broken femur.

So it was surgery and serious.

I built a blog for myself. called Rising Above Your Summits.

And these are things that came to my mind when I was going through recovery from the very moment I was in the ambulance and then until I ran my half Ironman six months after, after having the four injuries.

So yeah, I think that mindset is if you're able to nail it, like rise above your summits, then you're strong.

You're mentally strong.

Last one, Will.

So finish the sentence, Will.

You live longer when...

You live longer when you know more about yourself.

And I'm referring to data.

Short, sharply, slightly uncomfortable truths. which not everybody is ready to take on, which usually means they're worth sitting with.

So I hope that we all listen to these cues and put them into practice and we all live longer.

So thank you guys for joining us on episode four of Endurance Capital.

Will, where can we find more about you and the work Long Game Ventures is doing?

Hit up our website longgame.vc.

Awesome.

And Natalie, Where can we find more of what you're doing?

You can find more of what I'm doing on LinkedIn or you can also email me at nkoles, so n-c-o-l-e-s-a-t-g-c at gmail.com.

We also have a GRG website, so Natalie Cole's GRG album, and that'll come up with some of the work I've done with the Supercentenarians.

Thank you for joining us, guys, on our episode four of Endurance Capital. today is this.

Endurance in sports and in startups is not a mystery.

It's a pattern that you have to work on.

From Natalie's world, we've seen that some people genuinely reach extreme ages without the usual list of illnesses.

Inside their bodies, things look quieter, less chronic inflammation, more stable metabolism, healthier guts.

And from the outside, their lives look simple.

Rhythm, connection with friends, with family, with loved ones, and a lighter grip on stress.

From Will's world, we've seen that.

Investors are starting to use those clues to decide which levels to pull.

We are getting closer to living longer and aging healthier.

The most interesting lifespan companies sit where gene editing and stem cell therapies meet.

And the founders who matter most think in decades, not just in cycles.

For you, whether you're raising, founding, or investing, the invitation is know your engine, measure a few important things, and get the basics boringly right for a long time.

Then, if the next generation of lifespan tech arrives, you'll actually be in good enough shape to benefit from them. and signals from the oldest people on earth.

And Will, thank you so much for showing us how those stories might turn into the next wave of lifespan startups.

And maybe for some of us, a bit more time.

Before we wrap today's conversation, open something for you about pacing, about understanding your limits, or listening to your own biology, take a moment to look at GetStride.com.

See you on the next episode.

Today reminded us that endurance isn't just mental.

It's biological as well.

Understanding what's happening inside your body gives you leverage to intervene earlier, to make better decisions, and extend how long you can perform at a high level.

Whether you are an athlete, a founder, or simply someone who wants to stay sharp, this is where the long game really begins.

Thank you, Natalie and Will, for joining us today.

Next time on Endurance Capital, we sit down with someone who has chased number one for nearly two decades.

And she paid the price to stay there.

Swiss Ironman world champion Daniela Riff.

We will talk about drive, risk, respect, and the high cost of being the best.

And how to build something that lasts without breaking yourself along the way.

We will do it from where Daniela reserves, at altitude, from the Gornegat Glacier, at 3,100 meters above sea level, on the foothills of the Matterhorn Intermatt in the Swiss House, Daniela's country of birth, Switzerland.

Hit subscribe to be notified when it's available.

This ride helps you make sense of your data, see how your body actually adapts, and bring more intention to your life and to your sessions.

As a listener, You can use code TRAMPOLINE for 100 pounds off, stride one, and 30% off any other individual stride tests or supplements.

If you're exploring what's possible, stride gives you a clearer map.

Visit GetStride.com and keep moving with purpose.

Endurance Capital is brought to you by Trampoline Venture Partners.

Special thanks to our guests, the champions, the founders, and coaches who share their stories so openly. and to the growing Endurance Capital community around the world.

This series is made possible through production by One Fine Play and the support of our sponsor, Stride Health.

If you found this episode useful, you can follow and share Endurance Capital wherever you get your podcasts.

And learn more about Trampoline and the Trampoline Zermatt Summit on LinkedIn.

The link is in the show description.

I'm your host, Ignacio Garcia, and this is Endurance Capital.