Episode 543: Dave Watumull: The One Algae Your Supplement Stack Has Always Been Missing

0:01Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Habits & Hustle. We have a very special guest today. We have Dave Watumull, who is the co-founder and CEO of AX3 Life. Now, you might be wondering what that is. And what that is, is it's an astaxanthin company. So Dave is on a mission to bring astaxanthin to the world. It's a marine super nutrient that supports your whole body's health and longevity. It has captured his imagination for more than 25 years of research, development, and commercialization. He is the co-founder and CEO of AX3 Life, a consumer health company dedicated to astaxanthin products, education, and community.

0:47Now, just for your information, I just said that. We typically don't even do, I don't usually read a bio, but I wanted to kind to get it out because I needed to practice the word astaxanthin. And I find that this is why I wanted to do this podcast is because I was saying to you off camera, that it's one of these things that are so unknown, but yet probably one of the most effective, most powerful antioxidant there is. And so when there's something that hasn't been totally just kind of just spoken about ad nauseam, I really want to deep dive because that to me is when it's really the most interesting, right?

1:21It's kind of like we all, we all hear vitamin C, we all hear of like, even like resveratrol, right? But not very many people, like even me, I was saying to you guys, I didn't even know what this was until like maybe two years ago, or maybe a year and a half ago, Max Lugavere was here. And he was talking about it to me. And I was like, wow, that's something I and so I did my own little deep dive. And then I started taking it. And now like I told you, I notice it much more because I'm aware of it. So with that little extra intro, tell me like what made you like who you are and why you started a company just on this particular thing.

2:00And kind of like give us a little bit of your origin story. Yeah. So I've been working with Azazanthin for virtually my whole life since high school. Initially as a summer job, I went to the big island of Hawaii, went to Kona. and there was a company there that had a group of scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, and they had a cool technology to grow a particular type of microalgae that happens to produce astaxanthin as a defense mechanism against UV light from the sun. And so when you're growing this algae, it starts off life green in these big ponds, and then when the sunlight hits it in the brutal heat in Kona where the Ironman train in the lava fields, they actually internally produce astaxanthin and turn bright red, and that is their defense mechanism.

2:43And it helps to absorb some of that light and protect them from oxidative stress and damage. And so this was going back to my high school years working in the production of PONs, and then thereafter pursuing various pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications of astaxanthin, just given that at the time there was very limited research. There was less than 200 peer-reviewed papers, no human clinical studies. And now over the last 25 years, there's now more than 4 ,000 peer-reviewed papers and like 100 human clinical studies conducted by not just us, but researchers internationally, just because it's such a molecule of interest throughout the world in the research community, although not really known in the consumer and mainstream community.

3:24That was what I find very interesting. Like, why is it that most people have heard of, like, give us some other examples of other antioxidants. There's like, or where, like, we've all heard of vitamin C, vitamin E, all these other beta carotene. But why has this particular thing, like I can say it again, astaxanthin. Astaxanthin. Thank you. Why is it so unknown? Yeah, it just hasn't. Well, first of all, it wasn't easy to make for a long time. It took some technology on the microalgal side to produce the algae to extract it. And then also if you want to do a laboratory method to make it highly pure and consistent and bioavailable, that also is not something easy to do.

4:06So both of those were kind of barriers to entry just as a product to be available to consumers. I was part of the team that brought one of the first astaxanthin supplements to the market back in the 99-2000 timeframe. There's been products on the market for now more than 25 years, but they've just been sold through traditional channels and supplement brands and stores. But there hasn't been a major push, you know, in terms of there was no celebrity backing or partnership or major, you know, consumer health company that was marketing it or no major like TV campaigns or social media campaigns. And so it's kind of just gone under the radar, just hasn't had its time in the spotlight yet.

4:48But the science has just been continuing to grow over all these years. And the more you dig, the more interesting it is. And so that's what really our mission now is to spread the word about astaxanthin because we spent the better part of a decade after that initial start looking at pharmaceutical applications of the molecule, thinking that maybe doctors could prescribe this for disease use for patients. and then ultimately came back to the supplement space with the learnings from the pharmaceutical research and manufacturing to bring a supplement that has that type of rigor around the manufacturing and kind of the knowledge behind how it works and the potential applications and bringing that to the consumer space.

5:24But for several years, we just worked on reaching out to doctors locally in Hawaii, selling in retail stores. But then with the pandemic, we figured we got to have a better way to reach people beyond just person to person, you know, with a doctor or with, you know, at a store. And that's why we formed AX3 in the last few years was really to create a community and kind of a digital outreach through podcasts and social media to kind of reach more people and educate them about astaxanthin. Tell people what oxidative stress is because people use that term. Yeah. And a lot of times people don't even know what it means.

5:55So let's talk to me like I'm like seven. Okay, so we breathe the oxygen, we consume nutrients, and we produce energy in our cells just to power everything, to move our muscles, to think. And oxygen is a big part of that process. As a byproduct of that energy production, some of the oxygen gets turned into reactive oxygen species, free radicals, that when you have too much of those, it becomes oxidative stress. Your body has endogenous antioxidant systems like glutathione, SOD, superoxide dismutase, that takes care of some of that free radical or reactive oxygen species, the oxidative stress. But it oftentimes gets overwhelmed and then you get oxidative stress, which is where you have more of these reactive oxygen species or free radicals than should be around.

6:46And then they are bad actors. So you're producing energy in your mitochondria, the little power plants of your cell. As a byproduct of that, think of like an energy production facility, there's pollution coming out of it. That pollution or byproduct can damage things and it can damage your cells, which can lead to health issues, aging, etc. And so that's oxidative stress. And at the same time, your immune system, when it's fighting off infections or, you know, wound healing, it can actually come in and create its own reactive oxygen species, which can be healthy for trying to kill like, you know, a virus or a pathogen.

7:21It does that internally, but then it's meant to kind of turn off and go away. The problem is when you have this happening on a constant basis and you have too much of these free radicals attacking portions of your cell and then damaging whether it's your membranes, your proteins, which carry out all the activity in your cells or your DNA, you know, that can become damaged from oxidative stress. So that's really something that over time can lead to all these health issues and aging. So we want to try to reduce oxidative stress, which is also tied in with inflammation. There are inflammatory pathways that are triggered by oxidative stress in the cell.

7:58So when they sense that there's oxidative stress, there's a change in that redox environment in the cell. It turns on these inflammatory pathways. And then now you recruit the troops, you recruit the fire department to the cell, and they're trying to fix things. But sometimes there's nothing to be fixed. And now it's actually causing damage because your immune system, rather than fighting off a parasite or an infection or bacteria or healing a wound from an injury, now it's just attacking your own tissues and you don't need that. And so it's really important to reduce oxidative stress and chronic inflammation for overall health and longevity.

8:33You said something, though. You mentioned glutathione because glutathione, I thought that was the most powerful antioxidant that your body has. And then the precursor is NAC, correct? So I've been taking that forever, for years. I think a lot of people, what they do is they think that they are deficient in something, so then they end up taking it for years on end without checking their blood work regularly. And so they don't even know how it changes over time, right? Can you tell us what are the main benefits of astaxanthin? And then let's get into more cephaloth after that. So like you said, it's an antioxidant, but it's different.

9:13Not all antioxidants are the same. Okay. There's how potent they are and what types of reactive oxygen species or free radicals that they're best at targeting. Okay. With astaxanthin, it's uniquely structured to be able to quench singlet oxygen, which is a particular type of oxygen that kind of has extra energy, say from UV light that hits it. And that energy can be damaging to other components in your cells like your lipids and your proteins and DNA. With acesanthin, it can interface with that and actually absorb the energy, and the molecule can vibrate and kind of dissipate the heat from that energy and then be back to normal and with no damage to the cell.

9:52And in that particular mechanism of targeting singlet oxygen, which is a reactive oxygen species, it's like thousands of times stronger than vitamin C and is similar compared to vitamin E and beta carotene. So in studies looking at its antioxidant ability, it was much more potent than all of the common antioxidants. In addition to that, there's other types of free radicals, which are reactive oxygen species that may be missing an electron. And oxygen loves electrons. And in particular, when they're free radicals, it's trying to steal an electron from the lipids or the proteins or the DNA, the components of your cells that build your cells and your tissues and the body that you are.

10:29And so astaxanthin can actually donate an electron to those free radicals to neutralize them effectively. And then astaxanthin itself doesn't become reactive because of its molecular structure where it can distribute that loss of the electron. And actually it partners well with vitamin C to kind of get an electron back and then get back to normal. and we've done studies with a collaborator at Harvard that has a model that models a membrane, inserts things like acizanthin or beta-carotene and sees if the membrane is disrupted and or oxidized and we found that with acizanthin, the membrane was completely undisturbed.

11:05It was just like perfectly situated in there. The membrane was super happy and there was no oxidation of the membrane whereas with other things, it disrupted the membrane and so the membrane wasn't happy. It's kind of like messing up the walls of your house and now you have structural issues. And so, yeah, other antioxidants like beta-carotene or vitamin E can even become pro-oxidant at certain levels. If they are fighting off free radicals, sometimes they can become reactive and damage things on their own. But astaxanthin is like a pure antioxidant that doesn't ever become pro-oxidant. It always remains an antioxidant, which is very unique.

11:41So it's much more potent than most anti-inflammatories. It spans the membrane in a very unique way that other antioxidants don't. It gets to all the membranes of the cell, not just the outer membrane, but the mitochondria nucleus. And it gets naturally distributed throughout your whole body. And so when you take it orally, it gets transported to your liver along with other fats that you're ingesting in that meal. And then it gets packaged into, if you've heard of like LDL and HDL, those lipoproteins, it gets packaged into those and prevents them from being oxidized while using them as a transport, like a bus throughout the body to go to the heart and to the brain.

12:16So that's what they use. That's what acizanthin uses to travel throughout the body. Then it gets to your heart, gets to your brain, gets to your other tissues and organs, and then gets into all the cells and the membranes within those cells. So it's basically distributed out your entire body, gets into all your membranes, and just kind of sits there and fights off free radicals, you know, that are kind of being generated and not being properly managed by your endogenous systems. but it's not chronically inhibiting or activating certain things. Like a lot of agents or drugs go in and just, oh, something's a little bit off.

12:48Let me just go in and completely take it out or completely turn something on, which is not meant to be how your body functions. It may fix that limited issue, but then now you have side effects down the road because that's not how nature intended your cells to function. Astonxanthin basically is helping to just maintain or restore that normal function of the cells. Just let's prevent the lipids and the proteins and the DNA, which are all the key components that are basically what make your cells and your tissues, just preventing them from being oxidized and damaged by inflammation just so they can just do their normal job and function normally.

13:18That's really what it does is just allow for homeostasis and normal cellular function. But in terms of say NR, that was tested in this longevity study that we were also a part of with the NIH called the Interventions Testing Program, which is probably the most rigorous mammalian assessment of lifespan in the world. What's it called? So it's the Interventions Testing Program, the ITP. And it's conducted at the National Institute on Aging, the NIA, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, the NIH. And so that's the U.S. government's institutes of science and medicine. And it funds a lot of biomedical research and conducts research as well.

14:00And so this program has been running for the last 20 years. It's conducted at three different institutions. So it's very robust because you're not just doing a study in one place. You're doing it at the University of Michigan, University of Texas, and a research group in Maine. And you have the same setup at each site. So you're running basically three studies, but in parallel, and hoping to get the same type of result at all three. And they perfected this model over decades. And they have, ideally you would test in humans, but it would take decades to actually look at lifespan. Right. And so mice are the best that we can get in terms of something that takes a few years to get an indication of, okay, this might be a viable longevity lifespan enhancing agent.

14:43And that's really the program that put rapamycin on the map as, oh, this actually, this old repurposed drug that used to be used for organ transplants now actually can extend your lifespan. It may give you kind of tolerability issues or side effect issues that, you know, are not optimal from a day-to-day dosage standpoint, but it looks like it would extend your lifespan numerically, although who knows about quality of life at that point. But that is, nevertheless, that is the program that really identified that rapamycin was a legitimate lifespan enhancing agent. And other things like NR have also been tested in that model and did not extend lifespan.

15:19And not to say that NR doesn't have utility or NAD doesn't have benefit for health and for aging, but in terms of direct lifespan enhancement in this model, which was meant to replicate aging to the best extent possible in these mice, a lot of things, green tea, resveratrol was tested, did not extend lifespan. So in a 20-year history, only 10 things have extended lifespan at all with statistical significance, and only five have actually extended lifespan more than 10%. And those five that have worked are things like rapamycin or other drugs. And we were invited to supply material to the program back in 2019 based on preliminary research where astaxanthin was demonstrated to extend lifespan in other model organisms like worms and fruit flies and yeast, which are basic research models to look at things like aging or disease.

16:08So we extended lifespan in those models. We also showed that at the cellular level, the pathways that rapamycin acts on like mTOR or the sirtuins that resveratrol acts on or AMPK that metformin acts on, all of these critical pathways, astaxanthin also has an impact on them. So mechanistically, it makes sense that astaxanthin would support aging and longevity. And so we supplied this material to the NIH program. And after several years of following the mice, it turns out that astaxanthin did extend the lifespan by 12%. And so that's up there in the range of some of their top performers. But with the key difference that it actually has exceptional safety and tolerability.

16:49Like in the case of resveratrol, there was research, you know, at this point, probably 20 plus years ago that came out of like David Sinclair's laboratory. and people were really excited about it. They formed the company Sirtris to create pharmaceutical versions of resveratrol. It was purchased by GSK for hundreds of millions of dollars. Six hundred million dollars. Yeah, and then after a few years of research, it was shelved because it didn't seem to really have the science to hold up. It was like there was no proof of anything. Yeah, I think the mechanism with the sirtuins, I mean, there is something there, but maybe resveratrol wasn't exactly the optimal candidate for that.

17:27So what happens? What happens to that$600 million purchase? Do they have to give the money back? Oh, no, no. I know, I'm joking. It doesn't work that way. It's like, oh, sorry. But I mean, that's how drug development works. I mean, companies will spend hundreds of millions or billions trying to develop things and not everything works. So NR never extended lifespan. NMN never extended. NMN wasn't tested in that model yet. It wasn't tested. Yeah. So we don't know about that. But NR at least didn't. Resveratrol didn't. Green tea didn't. omega-3s didn't. Green tea didn't either. No. Like for polyphenols and all that.

18:03Yeah. But again, all those may have other good health benefits, but maybe just wouldn't numerically extend your lifespan in a typical population based on this study.

18:17All right. I want to tell you about one of the most powerful science-backed supplements I've come across. It's called astaxanthin. It's a marine antioxidant supported by over 4 ,000 scientific papers and 100 human studies. Astaxanthin works at the cellular level, protecting your DNA, reducing inflammation, and supporting your brain, heart, muscle, skin, and energy. It's one of the very few supplements shown to impact multiple hallmarks of aging and improving your endurance, recovery, and your overall longevity. And that's why I've partnered with AX3 Life. Their BioPure astaxanthin has been clinically proven to be absorbed three times better than standard astaxanthin and was actually validated in the NIH's gold standard longevity program.

19:06I've also had their CEO on my podcast and the science is pretty compelling. Go to AX3.life and use promo code HUSTLE to get 20 % off your first order. That's A-X-3 dot life and use promo code HUSTLE for 20 % off your first order.

19:31So I'm curious if this is something that is such a powerful antioxidant, like a thousand times more powerful than vitamin C. and what I initially heard, what it's really great for your skin, nails, hair, there's a big beauty element to this, right? Why are there not any serums just like an, how do you say it again? Astaxanthin. Astaxanthin serums and creams. I mean, this is a massive market in the beauty world. Like it's a trillion dollar market. There's a bazillion vitamin C serums. There's a billion serums, pushing resveratrol because of the ability to fight free radicals. Meanwhile, it's come back that there's no real data that even supports that resveratrol is even effective.

20:24And yet it's a multi-billion dollar, it was a multi-billion dollar company brand. So why are more people not creating beauty products with this? There are a few, in particular in the Asian market. Is that a Korean? like the Korean skin care? Japanese, Korean. Yeah. Yeah. So there are products that utilize astaxanthin. You'll find some cosmetics. And so I think it will become more common just as more cosmetic brands are aware of the science and want to include it because there are studies showing that both oral and topical administration of astaxanthin do reduce fine lines and wrinkles and increase moisture content and elasticity, prevent some of the DNA damage to skin cells that happens from UV light also promotes eye health, both based on strain from looking at digital screens, but also based on the light that comes in from the sun.

21:15And so it really is important. And I think that the one challenge, though, is that it's such a bright red pigment. And so you can imagine if you mix it into lotion, which we've done kind of on our own kind of crude formulations of topical lotions and creams, it's bright red. And so if you have a high dose in it, It's like putting on war paint, like a red rouge. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you may have to have, you know, a low level to not have it be something that like colors the skin with, you know, with the application of the topical cream or lotion, but still is enough to be effective. Fortunately, though, astaxanthin, without needing to apply it topically, it naturally gets distributed throughout your whole body and gets to your skin cells.

21:58So it can be that internal protector of the skin just by taking it orally. I think it's a beauty. I think it's like the best kept secret that nobody talks about is that if you take this astaxanthin as a capsule, it will be a great thing for your skin, your nails, your hair. Everything grows faster, looks better. And like nobody's doing it. Nobody's talking about it. And like it's like the cheapest beauty hack you can do. Yeah, a lot of those cosmetic products are quite expensive. Very expensive. And I'm like, well, that's a big deal because I think that the truth of the matter is everything now is about longevity.

22:34That's like the new buzzword of the day, right? Everyone, longevity, longevity, longevity. And so the assumption is to live longer. So everyone's doing all these things, taking these injections, these peptides, all the things because they're expecting to live longer and live better. Yeah, because you want to not just live longer, but have health. And have health as well. Yeah. So if like a lot and like if most of this stuff, actually, almost all of it is a bunch of nonsense, you know, it's it's like that's the bottom line. It is mostly nonsense. I know it's nonsense because this is the thing, right?

23:08Like there's always certain things like there's always so much you can do to really move the needle. You can only like, you know, you have you can exercise, you can eat well, you can not smoke, drink less, all the things. Right. But then there's other things that move the needle like a little, little, little bit. And those things, I, like, from all my readings, all the experts, I talk to the top people in the world. And they say to me, like, you know, offline, like, nah, most of this stuff is not going to really, like, help you. The sauna can be a great thing. Cold plunge, nah, some people are saying yes, some people are saying no.

23:39That's mixed, yeah. There's only a few things that everyone's in agreement with, right? Like, so that's why this was very interesting to me because like, it's usually the ones that are the most unknown, undetected, like less popular that actually like actually work. Like nobody, like exercise is very unpopular, but it works better than anything else. You know what I mean? Like, unfortunately, that's the way it works. Like this thing here, it's a very, it's actually a very moderately, it's a very inexpensive supplement, acid xanthin. Like how much was a bottle of this stuff? So ours is 50. You can find cheaper ones on Amazon for 25, but they are, ours is absorbed three times better.

24:20And that's good to know. Yeah, you're paying half, but you're taking three times as much, you know, in that case. Well, that's good to know because you know why? When I went on Amazon, before I even met you and knew about your products and all this stuff and how rigorous you are with your testing and all the things, that's very important. You know, you've got to be so careful with Amazon because I went on Amazon two years ago after Max told me all about all this stuff. And I'm like, hmm, I'm going to find Acid Anthem. And this thing had like, this brand had like 20 ,000 reviews. And I'm like, oh, it must be good.

24:52Right? So I bought it. Meanwhile, it's garbage. And I didn't know, you know, because you've got to be careful. What are people supposed to look for? How do they know what works, what doesn't work? like what's the most potent version of astaxanthin, how much they should take, and in terms of just quality, basically. Yeah, so if you go to Amazon, and it's not to say that those other brands or products are garbage. Yes, they are. And they probably use such a little amount. There's like 1 % astaxanthin and the rest filler. Yeah, so there are those products. And you want to make sure you get, if you are getting one from Amazon, one from a reputable company that is either a direct manufacturer or from us.