#97 - Paul Pagnato: Inside the Longevity Revolution

0:05Welcome to the Insightful Investor Podcast, a weekly series that seeks to share industry investment and market insights. We define insights as concepts that are counterintuitive, widely misunderstood, or underappreciated. In other words, unique ideas that you probably won't hear elsewhere. I'm Alex Shahidi, the host of the podcast and co-CIO of Evoke Advisors, a leading investment advisory firm. Learn more about our show at insightfulinvestor.org.

0:38Today's guest is Paul Pagnotto. Paul is an advisory board member at the Stanford Center on Longevity, founder of Human Not Health, which focuses on health optimization. And he's also the founder of Transparency Global, which is dedicated to driving greater corporate transparency. In this episode, we're going to cover a topic that we have not addressed yet in prior episodes of this podcast as we explore Paul's pioneering work on longevity, as well as his mission to make transparency a catalyst for positive change in business and beyond. Paul, welcome. My honor to be here, Alex. Thank you so much.

1:18Let's start, go back a few years, and let's start from some time ago. You spent five years as a scientist and even worked with NASA before pivoting to a 30-year career as a financial advisor. And now you focus on longevity and health optimization. How do you think your scientific training and research background informed your approach as an advisor and does it still shape the way you work and think about longevity today? Yeah, thank you. Awesome question. I mean, I was right out of college. I had this degree in microbiology and I'm like, do I enter the business world or do I use degree? And I was fortunate to have this position working on a project to find life in outer space with NASA.

2:04Like how amazing, right? Right out of college. So I did it for five years. Never found it. Did you find anything? No, I didn't find anything. I think we're still looking. Okay. So one of the, you know, being a scientist, you run like literally hundreds of experiments every day. And so you learn to fail, you learn to fail fast, and you learn that success is failure turned inside out. So in the scientific world, when you're experimenting, that's just part of the deal. And that, you know, is very analogous with life and very analogous with health optimization, life optimization. So every day we're learning, you know, our body is so sensitive to our environment, everything that's going on around us, everything we consume, we breathe, we see the stresses.

2:57And so it's a journey. And, you know, when we're 21 versus when we're 41 versus 61 versus 81, what our body and mind and soul needs is different. So we have to be constantly experimenting and evolving. And that's helped me throughout my entire life. So when you look back, do you see any significant inflection points in your personal and professional journey? Yeah, there were definitely a few. One of them, I think most people that were in the advisory business, I know you were, Alex, back in 08-09 when the Great Recession hit. I mean, it was horrible. Millions of businesses went under, millions of people lost their homes, a lot of failure, right?

3:46And the company I was working with at the time, they were essentially bankrupt, never dreamed that that would happen. And from that, I just got exposed to a lack of transparency throughout the entire financial system. And that led me to be an entrepreneur and to do something about it. And so I departed and launched my own business and in five years became the number one multifamily office. Never would have dreamed that. So that was an inflection point for me, that great recession. And it gets back to being a scientist and just knowing that that's part of the journey. That is just taking a negative and turning it into a positive.

4:30Well, longevity has become one of your central passions. How do you define true longevity? And why do you think this idea remains widely misunderstood? I love that question because so many of us have different life experiences and we process what longevity means. Some of us may think that's, you know, living in a nursing home and not being able to walk around and being in pain. And others process. It's something very, very different. So for me, I view true longevity more of a health span and a lifespan, living a long quality life. Today, there is over 900 ,000 people over the age of 100. And these individuals, I've met them from all over the world.

5:23These individuals are playing cards. They're going on walks. They're playing not just with their children and grandchildren, but great-grandchildren. And they're active, they're spry, they're laughing. So to me, that's true longevity, enjoying life, you know, in your 80s, 90s, 100s. And what do you think are the biggest misperceptions that people have about when you talk about healthspan versus lifespan? So of like our ability to get there, our ability, one's ability and mindset to actually accomplish that. In 1880, the average life expectancy was only 38. So most people think of maybe their grandparents that didn't live so long and just don't have that mindset that we can.

6:12Again, over 900 ,000 people can do it, can make it. And that number is exponentially increasing every single year. So the perception that we can't or the perception that it's going to fall off is just not the case with Stanford. The last three years, I'm fortunate to know Dr. Laura Cardison there. She founded the Center on Longevity and have done some profound work. And the biggest project has been the new map of life. and the new map of life is individuals living to 100 plus and being able to constantly reinvent ourself being able to go back to school learn a new career path a profession and do that and then go do it again and again and again so there's this this new map of life that we're all all needing to live and it's it's a change of a mindset obviously the improvements in science and technology have helped.

7:12But I think the question on everybody's mind is, what can they do? What strategies can they implement to promote both healthspan and longevity? I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions. We hear about these very wealthy billionaires that are spending an absorbent amount of money to biohack, to live longer, to hit escape velocity and live forever. The reality is 90 % of it are things that are free and that everyone can do in the world. So, you know, there are some foundational pillars to living a long quality life. And whether it's Stanford University Center on Longevity, whether it's, you know, the work by Dan Buettner in the Blue Zones to other major universities like Harvard, there's a consensus this theme that like a cognitive, our ability not to stress is like one of the most important pillars.

8:16And that doesn't cost money not to stress. In fact, just the opposite tends to happen when you have a lot of money, you stress out over a lot of things. Secondly is sleep. doesn't cost anything to go to bed, to get a good night's rest. Third is movement, like to go for a walk outside. And whether it's 5 ,000 steps or 8 ,000 steps or 10 ,000 steps, no one's going to charge you to go for a walk, right? So some of the most important pillars that the centenarians have lived and lived their life by are free. They don't cost any money. And all of us can do that. You know, what's interesting about what you just said is, in some ways, a lot of it involves this notion of balance.

9:09Meaning, let's say you don't have the resources to have the basic necessities of life. That can be challenging. That can be stressful. That can cause other issues. If you have a lot of wealth, maybe you got there because you worked so hard and you didn't do all those other things. And it's almost like if you can find that right balance where once you meet the the basic needs of life. And then you really start focusing on all those things that you just said that anybody can do, but you make them a high priority. That's something that I think is oftentimes misunderstood. So well said. I mean, I've been to all the blue zones.

9:43These are areas where there's an exponential increase in centenarians. I've been to where Jean Clement lived. I've met people who knew her, the oldest human to ever live. And when you go there, your blood pressure just drops and you can just see everyone there, they're not stressed. And they're really focused on the things that are really important to us, right? Some of the most important things, most valuable things to all of us as humans, they're free. They're free. You can't put a price tag on it. And so, yeah, it's actually refreshing. Economically, other than Singapore, which was not very prosperous, Plus, you know, the other blue zones, they're not, you know, these centenarians, they're not millionaires, okay?

10:33These aren't very wealthy individuals. These are modest individuals. And they tend to have a lot more balance in their life. Yeah, there's also this area called longevity consulting. And one of your thoughts is you want to make that affordable and accessible. And obviously, a lot of these things you don't need money for. But the consulting and the education is probably very valuable. Absolutely. All of us have our own personal health journey. So for myself, I served on a board of a prominent hospital for five years. And I had the top concierge doctor. He gave me a physical every year. Five stars, no issues.

11:12And I went to the Mayo Clinic, wonderful organization. And same thing, did their executive physical, five stars, no issues. I went to multiple others. And I said to myself, you know, I'm just going to go hire a longevity doctor. So I found one of the top longevity doctors in Austin, Texas and hired him. And I had like all these issues were unveiled. It took me about 18 months, a year and a half to address them all, which I did. And it was life changing, but it was$150 ,000 a year. And I said to myself, this has got to change. We have to demonetize this. we have to get the cost down so the average American in our society can have access to it, which led me to found Human Not Health.

12:00So the good news is the price is coming down substantially every single year. And what cost me$150 ,000, now individuals can have access to for$3 ,000 a month. And there's companies coming out to even get it down lower. So Like we're making progress. It's coming. And I'm curious, the items that were uncovered, are those uncovered there as opposed to with the best doctors in the world because they haven't exhibited any symptoms yet and these are kind of precursors or how would you describe that? Yeah, these were issues that I've had for unfortunately quite some time. So examples are my mercury levels were so high.

12:46They were literally off the chart. I had to create a new chart. And it was just the level of detail. So they drew 30 vials of blood, right? So I had so many more biomarkers tested. My baseline was just so much more comprehensive. That's the fundamental reason why they picked these up. So, you know, six months, you know, five days a week in an infrared sauna, not eating anything from the water, my mercury level, all my mercury got purged out of myself. Another example is discovered only at night when I would sleep, my heart would be irregularly. Big deal, right? So did an echocardiogram, did all these different tests, and my heart was just coming up good, coming up great.

13:35This was a while ago. This was five years ago. And it turned out, I was monitoring my sleep at night with an Apple Watch. Well, the older version of Apple Watches, I have one on now. I love it. The older versions threw off a lot of EMFs, electromagnetic frequencies. And when I would sleep, I would sleep with my hand up here by my chest and literally the watch was throwing off my heartbeat, the electrical signals being processed in the heart. So that was an easy fix. But today the EMFs of Apple Watch are almost non-existent. I had something called a leaky gut and I had to like restore my gut health.

14:14So it was things like that, that, uh, that were missed that, that we were able to pick up and address. And, uh, yeah, that's amazing. The body is so complex, uh, that, uh, I guess even some of the best doctors are focused on the items that are most present that they see as opposed to going, you know, multiple levels deeper. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So when we think about longevity, what do you think are the most deeply misinformed guidelines that people need to unlearn? One is, I would say 95 % of the time, you go to a doctor, you go to a nutritionist, um a health professional fitness person they're going to suggest for you to take supplements and i think it's really important to always first go about it naturally you know i'm in the space i'm in the industry i haven't taken a supplement in nine months so if you do the proper blood test and there's a lot of firms that do this, I suggest every quarter, have all your biomarkers tested.

15:30And if you're not deficient in something, you don't need to take the supplement. Most supplements come in a form of plastic pills. You're putting toxins in your body. So here's an interesting fact for you. 85 % of supplements, the actual label does not match what's inside the supplement. 85%. So more times than not, what you think you're taking, you're not even taking. So I would say that's one kind of misnomer. The other is everything is personalized. Like, you're different than me, different than you, different from all 8 billion people on the planet. And we're also a moment in time. Where we're at today is different than six months ago, different than a year ago and what our needs were were different.

16:22And the same thing six months from now and a year from now. That's why I think it's important every quarter to do a baseline and assessment. There'll be a lot of practitioners that will say you should take in one gram per body weight of protein or 1.2 times the amount. It's personalized. I mean, I've done it. I literally get brain fog. I cannot think as well. I cannot like process as well. If I take in one gram per body weight or let alone 1.2 grams. So for me, that's not the right thing, but for somebody else, it may be the perfect solution. So the other thing is it's, it's all about you and the personalization is super important.

17:07Right. And obviously these are the things that add cost, right? If everybody was the same, there could be one playbook that everybody follows. Otherwise, you know, it doesn't work as well when it's personalized, like you just described. Exactly. So each individual, this needs to become a priority. This needs to become a focus. Like time is our most valuable asset to be able to add, you know, 15, 20, 25 years of healthy quality life is priceless. It's one of the most valuable things, but the individual, you know, you got to want it, right? So if you want it, you can, it's there for you. It is definitely there for you.

17:49You mentioned the growing number of centenarians, 900 ,000 and counting. What are the most overlooked financial or non-financial risks associated with living longer lives. So, you know, we'll start with financially. I think there's also a misnomer as to how much capital you need if you live a long life. The reality is, you know, once you start to hit 80, 85, most people tend to slow down a little bit. So, you know, you may not be taking as many trips around the world or exotic places. So you may not be going to as many shows and do as many things. So people tend to live a little more modest lifestyle as they get older.

18:42So I would say that's one. And I guess if you take care of yourself, then maybe your healthcare costs don't grow exponentially as well. Exactly. Your investment that you make in yourself now will pay huge dividends going forward, huge dividends. And are there any non-financial that you think about? Yeah. So not financially related misnomers is, the biggest one would probably be happiness. You know, um, again, I've been all over the world and I meet with these individuals and they'll just say some like such basic things that are so true. You know, I was, I was in I Korea, Greece, a blue zone. And I was speaking to, to one of these centenarians.

19:35And he said to me, he goes, you know, cause I always ask, what's your secret? What's your secret to make it into a hundred. And he said, well, I never take anything personally. Like, wow, like that's so easy to say, but that's so deep, right? To never take anything personally. The human being who lived the longest, Jean-Marie Clomet, this was in Arles, France. That's where Van Gogh did his best work, Starry Night, the famous painting. How old was she? she was 121 years old and passed away in the mid-1990s. And I've been there twice, actually, her home where she grew up. And I spoke to people that knew her.

20:21And everyone will say the same thing. They'll say that she was immune to stress. She just wouldn't let things bother her. And she was known, I'm not advocating for this, but she was known to actually smoke and drink until she was 100 years old. So I think it's an example of how important, you know, not stressing, getting the right sleep. She rode her bike into her hundreds and just having movement. Those are like so, so, so important. So you've been working with the Stanford Center on Longevity. Is there anything with respect to your work there that has challenged or even changed any of your earlier views about aging or longevity planning?

21:09Yeah, there are numerous things. One is the mindset, the mindset that we've entered this longevity era, and there's going to be an abundance, an exponential increase in people that are living to 100, and our ability to continuously grow and grow. I mean, look at myself, you know, I'm 61 years old and I've had a career as a scientist, a career as a financial advisor. I was a professional bass fisherman for 10 years, an entrepreneur, launched a, you know, a health optimization company. And, you know, I'm going to be doing another company next year. So having the mindset that we're going to continuously grow and continuously reinvent ourself, this new map of life was just profound to me.

22:04And then also just knowing that the majority of the fundamentals to live a long quality of life are free and to have the mindset to go at it naturally, organically. I'm good friends with John Mackey. He's the founder of Whole Foods. There's probably nobody better talking about organic and natural needs and processes. But if you just hang out with John, you go to his house and his ecosystem, his environment, he embodies just doing things naturally. The individuals that are centenarians today, they didn't have the modern conveniences and things that we have. So they lived a very, very, very different life.

22:56So I think it's important to take that into account. You know, what's interesting, something that just occurred to me is that one of the main inputs that you have described as stress, and you wonder, We live in a world of unbelievable technological innovation and all these advances, but we also are living in a more stressful environment. And so I would think better technology is a plus, but more stress is a negative. And I'm curious how you think about, are we better off today than we were 30 years ago? I know technologically we are, but maybe people are just more stressed in general. We've entered the exponential era.

23:41Ray Kurzweil has done the most profound work on this, and him and a few others launched Singulari University. So in this exponential era, the data is software is increasing 10x per year. That's a thousand percent increase. Hardware is increasing 10x per year. And AI, artificial intelligence, is increasing a thousand percent growth, 10x per year. And our brains are linear, linear brains. So it's hard for us to even understand what exponential means. So if you or I take 30 linear steps, we're going to go 30 yards. If we take 30 exponential steps, that's 30 times 30 times 30, 30 times, that's 10 trillion steps.

24:32Hard for our brain to process that. And this is the period of time that we're in. This is how fast things are compounding and growing, which Alex, to your point, provides a lot of cognitive stress. So it is so important to have the discipline to stick to some of the basic things. I mean, it'd be easy just to be caught up on social media. We can be on social media 12 hours a day. And we know that it's highly addictive. And we know that it's stimulating neurons the way that they're coded and they're colored and the noises and the notifications, et cetera, et cetera. So by consciously being aware of that, having some discipline, like it's advisable by the top neurologist, your first hour when you wake up and you're out and about to lay off the digital devices.

25:24and the last hour before you go to sleep, lay off the digital devices. It's really going to help. Our cerebral cortex is really going to help our brain. So, you know, we are in this exponential era. It's abundance of it. It's more information that our brain is capable of managing and handling. And that's okay. Like, it's okay. And it's important to take that into account for us to have good sleep, for us to have good rest, to have good personal relationships and community with others. You talked about the blue zones earlier, and you gave us a little snippet about what they reveal about longevity.

26:06Is there any more that you can share? Absolutely. So there are some common denominators, some common traits. One of them is they tend to be slightly elevated. They tend to be five to 800 feet up. And when you go there, you see the results of that is they're very mountainous, hilly. And people are climbing. I have literally seen, I don't know how old they were, but they looked older, with a walker, like climbing up a hill. This is what they've done their whole life, and they're going to continue to do it. so being able to have some elevation and if you live on the water that's okay there's a stair stepper right there's there's there's there's things you can do to to have that so that's one common denominator amongst all of them the second is they tend to follow the normal circadian rhythm the cycle of the sun rising in the sun setting that's how our bodies have been programmed for thousands of years.

27:14So, you know, we are used to going to bed when the sun goes down and getting up when the sun comes up. But, you know, Thomas Edison and others introduced these blue lights, these light bulbs that we have, which is artificial. And our body to this day has not synced up with that. Our circadian rhythm is such that when our eyes see the sunlight, That's when our circadian rhythm turns on, which by the way, is one of the best hacks for when you're traveling and to new time zones. So the best way to sync up your circadian rhythm is in the morning, wherever you land, when that sun comes up, go outside, go for a 10, 20 minute walk and just get exposed to that sun.

28:00That's going to reset your circadian rhythm. So you'll find in these blue zones, they tend to follow the natural process. Next is the natural eats. they're just not consuming processed goods. They're living off of the land. They're living off of natural goods. You know, they don't need bottled water there, right? So in all France, you know, the water right from the Rhone River there is super, super clean. And that's just table water, you know, it's like mineral water. So they tend to be really eating unprocessed foods. And that means, you know, minimal amount of sugar. So there's a few examples of themes amongst all the blue zones that I've traveled to.

28:47You mentioned Human Not Health that you launched. Would you just tell us about the organization's mission? You bet. So the mission is to democratize longevity, to help as many people, millions of people live a long quality health span. the actual things that we're talking about. And the company has done a great job of creating a wonderful baseline assessment to help individuals know exactly where they are, and then a whole range of services from personalized one-on-one coaching to virtual options. But that's the mission of Humanon. You talked about the main pillars of longevity. I want to repeat them because I think they're so critical.

29:34You mentioned movement, nutrition, sleep. Are there are there others that people should focus on? Yeah. Um, social engagement. So being social is super important. We're tribal, tribal creatures and, um, you know, the digital world can have us, you know, captive. If there's anything we learned from COVID, we learned that the isolationism did more damage than actual disease, the actual virus itself. So, uh, having access to community and being social is absolutely vital. Nutrition is another one. So again, doing a quarterly blood test and the costs have come down substantially for that. So you just know, do you have all the nutrients that are coming into you?

30:25Those are some other ones that I would mention that are just foundational. Well, what do you see as the outer limits of human longevity? What's possible and what's probable. Yeah. So let's look at the outer limits. The outer limits is escape velocity. So let me explain what escape velocity is for all the listeners. So every year we have a birthday and another chronological year clips. So that's our chronological age. But then we also have a biological age. And we have a pace of aging each year. In 1880, the average human aged 25 months per year. That resulted in a life expectancy of 38. Today, the optimal healthy human being can age at a pace of eight months per year, which would put them, you know, they're definitely a centenarian okay so that's today um if you look at some of the amazing uh scientists and leaders in the field aubre degray uh the top uh top top scientist at harvard university ray kurtzwell right one of the chief ai scientist at google they all believe that we're going to hit escape velocity, which essentially means that we are aging will go to zero.

31:55We will stop aging. That's physically possible? Yes. Yeah. These are very, very bright people that have scientifically used algorithms mapping out from what happened in 1880 to what happens today, our aging process, and how fast We're in this exponential error, how fast things are evolving. And so predictions are within the next seven years, we'll hit escape velocity. So I would say that's the outer edge. That is the outer edge of what's happening. I would say in the strike zone, the median is being a centenarian. and not just being a centenarian, but living a long quality health span. Again, there's over 900 ,000 people in the world.

32:48That number is increasing exponentially. So I think that's very, very reasonable expectations, which is amazing compared to what most people's mindsets are. When I've taught this, you know, I speak at a university and I'm talking to the students and I talk about new map of life and I talk about living to 100 plus, like they're not thinking that. They weren't even aware that that's a possibility. So that's a whole change in mindset. And for most of us should really relax us and not have so much anxiety over this immediate task that we need to do that's sitting on our desk, knowing that we have a very long quality, healthy life ahead of us.