The Man Who Is Beating Bryan Johnson In The Rejuvenation Olympics For Pennies On The Dollar. Unlocking the Secrets to Longevity with Dave Pascoe. EP 015

 Stephen McCain: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Stephen McCain podcast, where I bring you people making world-class decisions. In the field of human optimization and performance, this week's guest is Dave Pascoe. He is right up at the top on the rejuvenation Olympics, leaderboard. What that means is he is slowing down his rate of aging. And in this podcast, we discuss all the ways in which he's doing that. And you'd be surprised. 

A lot of these are just fundamentally simple habits that he continues to do. Which in this world where we're all looking for a magic bullet. It is a nice reminder. That sleep and diet. And exercise and gratitude. Really can have an impact on our rate of aging. And this guy's 62 years old. 

I've met him in person. He's in great shape. He looks phenomenal. So let's dig in and let's really, learn from this guy. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Let's do this.

Dave Pascoe, welcome to the Stephen McCain podcast.

Dave Pascoe: Hey, Stephen, thank you so much for having me.

Stephen McCain: It's my pleasure. We met at the club exosome recently in Vegas and I knew about you. I was fascinated by your approach and, , we're very similar in terms of, , a lot of us that are, Going after this, um, health thing. I don't know how you really want to define it and maybe we'll do that on this podcast, but, uh, it was a really cool meeting you.

, and just so everyone knows, like you were in really great shape and, we're going to talk about your exercise routine, but, did you notice anything from the exosomes?

Dave Pascoe: Yeah, actually, I was surprised, um, because I've been having trouble sleeping on this shoulder. I mean, this is the shoulder that I got the injection in, uh, because I was having rotator cuff issues. But that night, I was able to sleep on my side just fine. I never expected anything that quick.

Stephen McCain: Wow. Yeah, there is

Dave Pascoe: that was impressive.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. And just so that everyone knows club exosome is a. Joint venture between me and Dr. Sandra Kaufmann, and we just trying to democratize access to some of these really cool modalities. And we have a lot of fun with it. It's pretty casual. We do it quarterly in Vegas. And, uh, you know, Yeah, it was really, the conversations are phenomenal.

And I look at it as a networking event and here we are. I met you there, you came out to it and you're on the podcast and just a bunch of really cool, like minded people. And I've, I've been using exomes for about a year and a half, pretty consistently, I do them quarterly. And I tell you, I had a shoulder issue from COVID using that X3 bar.

I wasn't fully warmed up. And I'm like, it's just something it's not 100, you know, it's not right and after about three treatments of a pretty low dose I it fixed it. I forgot which side it was and So it's it's those things are amazing Yeah

Dave Pascoe: up screwing up my shoulder again shortly afterwards because I was feeling so great that when I came home, I have a pair of like Olympic rings in my backyard and I

Stephen McCain: Yeah

Dave Pascoe: of his. I still do his P 90 X workouts. And I watched something that he did on Instagram.

Where he was doing this really cool flip thing. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to give that a try. Yeah, well, I should have warmed up a little bit first. I also should have given this a few more weeks to heal up, but, uh, you know, I did some of the flips with it. I felt like, Oh, this pull. So now I'm a little sore here, but you know, it is what it

Stephen McCain: Yeah. I always tell people, I have a lot of friends that are into fitness and they're like, Oh, rings. You've got to show me stuff on rings. And I said, listen, tread lightly. That is the easiest way to jack your shoulders. Like a hundred percent. Trust me, those things are dangerous.

They are

Dave Pascoe: were you when I needed you?

Stephen McCain: But yeah,

Dave Pascoe: You could have talked me out of doing that.

Stephen McCain: yeah, maybe I should do like a little ring routine, small course or something, how to safely navigate rings, 

Dave Pascoe: I would definitely watch that. Yeah,

Stephen McCain: you're an interesting guy right now. You are a head of Brian Johnson. Who's gotten a lot of press in the rejuvenation Olympics, which is essentially a leaderboard for people that are doing this methylation biological age tests and whoever is aging at the slowest rate is highest on the leaderboard.

And you're number six, which is probably, you must be getting a lot of attention for this, I imagine.

Dave Pascoe: surprisingly. So, yeah, I didn't expect the amount of attention that I would get from that because I'm just, it's just me living my life. You know, I didn't think that was a big deal until people were like, but you're beating a billionaire who's spending 2 million a year. That that's something.

Stephen McCain: Yeah.

Dave Pascoe: Okay. I guess that makes sense.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, , it's noteworthy, say the least. I mean, you look at everything you're doing on your website and it's, it's, it's an impressive array of, of, uh, you know, it's a discipline, but there must, there must be some Genesis to all this. What happened? Did you have a, did you have a moment?

Do you have a dark moment? Did you have something that really spurred this? Or is, are you just always this way?

Dave Pascoe: Wow. Yeah, I've kind of always been this way, but it's been, uh, it's been in an iteration over time where I just keep adding and adding and adding. I was always a weird kid. Um, I used to like really look into how adults around me behaved, like what made them successful, right? In anything, whether it's finances, relationships.

health and wellness. Um, what, what is it? Why do some people do really great at some things and other people just seem to suck at it? Um, and so, I could get off on a whole tangent about my parents and growing up with my father, but that I don't, I don't know if I really want to go there. I've done that on a few other podcasts.

So people, if people hear multiple podcasts, they'll be sick of hearing that. But, um, yeah, so as far as health and wellness went. Well, I mean, I could say like, I could see some people were very wealthy while other people, you know, struggled a little bit more. My family wasn't, you know, real well off, but I didn't know any better because that's the way my neighborhood was.

That's the way all my friends were, but I would see couples, you know, I would see couples like that got along like best friends and, and others that fought like cats and dogs. And I wanted to know, what was it about these relationships that made them work? the way they were or not work the way they were.

So the same with health and fitness. I noticed that people that did certain habits always had great success and people who didn't do those habits or had other worse bad habits always seem to get the same results too. So I noticed that people would get really really old looking if they drank a lot and smoked a lot and uh, that was sort of an experiment that I did going through high school where I, you know, watched friends who I knew were really hard partiers Because I, I had the strongest suspicion that they weren't going to look so good later on in life.

And, um, sad to say, that's so true. Uh, some of these, the friends that I graduated with, I, I look at them and I go, Oh my gosh, these people are so old. I, I can't identify with them anymore. It's like they're of a whole different generation than me.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. It sounds like you, you've had a high level of curiosity, and perspective on just

Dave Pascoe: did have a scare.

Stephen McCain: you did have a way.

Dave Pascoe: I did have a scare. I mean, everybody seems to have some sort of

Stephen McCain: Yeah. That, that, that's what I'm looking for. What was the scare?

Dave Pascoe: mine was minimal. I mean, compared to a lot of, a lot of folks. Um, cause I always tried to eat right, you know, based on whatever the, you know, the understanding of what eating right was of the day. I can't say I always did that.

I mean, growing up as a kid, I ate a lot of sugar and crap. But, um,

all right, I've lost my train of thought. I hate when that happens.

Stephen McCain: were going to talk about your scare, your scare.

Dave Pascoe: Thank you. All right. So it was about the time I was turning 50. I was training for my first marathon. I was doing P90X. I was taking care of both of my parents who were down pretty hard with cancer at the same time. And I just thought I was Joe Cool.

You know, I thought I was just, I had it all together. It was Mr. Fitness. I was in great shape. I mean, here I was at 50, much better healthier, stronger, faster than I ever was in my thirties and looking better. Um, all because of changing my lifestyle, diet, exercise. But then I heard or read, I can't remember which, about a test for telomeres.

You know, telomeres being those, like, imagine them as the little end caps on the end of your shoelaces to keep your shoe from unraveling. They're the, um, they're the markers on DNA. I mean, I know you know this. I'm just saying this for whoever might be listening. Um, it's, they're kind of like a, a separator between, uh, snips of DNA, uh, separate genes.

And I'm probably butchering that explanation. But anyway, um, the idea is that as time goes by and cells replicate, these, uh, telomeres tend to get shorter. And the shorter they get, basically the, the older, you know, biologically you are. And so I thought, yeah, I'll go get this test. I, you know, let's see how I'm doing.

I'm sure it's going to come back and say, I've got the telomeres of a 20 year old, right? Oh no, it was completely the opposite. It told me I had the telomeres of a 68 year old at age 50. And I thought, whoa, uh, yeah, that's, that's not good. I'm obviously missing something really huge here. What is it?

Thankfully, the company that, that offered it, well, they're not around anymore, but they offered a, um, a consultation along with the test. And so I got on the phone with, uh, their staff physician and the very first thing he started asking me was things about my lifestyle, right? Really at the time, it wasn't very well known that lifestyle could trump genetics or that lifestyle really even mattered.

Well, I guess if it was known, it wasn't known by me, let's put it that way. So I just thought these were really strange questions that he was asking me. But through the course of the conversation, I mean, I'm explaining that, yeah, I'm the sole caretaker for both of my parents who have cancer. I'm doing the P90X, which I thought was excellent, doing marathon training.

I've got an incredibly stressful job. And the guy stops me right there and says, Whoa, okay. He says, we have seen this in endurance athletes having much shorter telomeres because of the stress that they put themselves under. We've also seen it in caretakers. We've seen it in people who, you know, have incredibly stressful jobs for a living and you've got the trifecta, you're, you're basically, you're killing yourself with stress.

Stephen McCain: Yeah.

Dave Pascoe: And that was a huge eye opener for me. And so they suggested things like, you know, yoga, meditation, and I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, yeah, I used to do yoga and meditation. Uh, how did I ever forget about those? I guess just through the course of life and everything that was happening, those things got pushed, you know, into the background.

Totally forgot about them. So, yeah, I had to pull those back out of my back pocket and start, start again.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. The fear of God can be a powerful motivation. I have found that most people who are really dialed in in this industry or have really committed to it, they had a moment at some moment that really was a, a light for them. Basically. Where they were confronted with their mortality, their, their life.

And so, thank you for sharing that story. And what's interesting about yours is you have, cancer and your family gene, lineage and shortening of telomeres is, is a cancer risk, right? Because now these DNA are left to mutate because there's no end of the, the.

cap, like the shoelace cap at the end of them. And so what have you done for your telomeres? I'm sure you've had them tested and I'm sure you've have, you've activated some telomerase. You've probably done some epitalon, some TA 65. You've lowered your stress levels. You've probably quite a

Dave Pascoe: of you. Oh yeah. Uh, Tam 818. Yeah. I mean, at the time I was searching everywhere, there really wasn't anything available. It took, it took quite a while for things to become available that could increase. Telomeres, uh, telomeres with like telomerase. I don't think that was even known back in, what was that, 2012.

Uh, I think it was a few years later that it, it, it became widely known through cancer research that they saw that cancer cells produce their own telomerase. And so it was like, wow, cool. So as soon as products became available, I started taking those.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, have you considered, I know it's really expensive, but Liz Parrish's, telomerase gene therapy at all?

Dave Pascoe: No, no, I'm not even familiar with it.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, so I, I always know my first podcast guest, Paul Tozour, I always say this almost because he's jumped on the bandwagon to a lot of these things, but it's basically a gene therapy where just makes your body produce telomerase, which will increase your telomeres. And he's, had it done.

It's very expensive. That's the only problem for now. For now, it's very expensive and I'm sure it will come down in price over time, but, that's maybe the holy grail of telomerase, telomere treatment. It's interesting that that stuff is, is out there, but, look, it's not about doing the most expensive treatment.

I mean, there's lots of behavioral modifications you can do. Like, Limit limiting your stress. I mean, the goal isn't to live a stressful life and then find some sort of magic bullet that's going to just fix it, right? I mean, the goal is to, to try to do things in the most holistic, organic, simple way. And then if you're really still in a state of emergence, add some of these high level hacks or whatever you want to call them to, um, move the needle on, on this issue.

But, uh, that's, it's very interesting that, uh, that you had that experience and it's, it's on par with a lot of my guests and stuff. I'm always curious, like, what, what, what is it? What happened to this person? Yeah,

Dave Pascoe: know, and I've always been amazed that people have to wait to become a cancer patient to start doing the interventions that you would do as a cancer patient. I'm like, why wouldn't we start eating healthy beforehand? Why do we just clean up our diet, you know, in result of a diagnosis? Why not be preventative,

Stephen McCain: Yeah, I completely agree. , I have my own longevity framework, um, optimal framework. I still kind of have to figure out what, what the name is for it. But the very first thing, which I consider the longevity part of it is managing your bottlenecks. And so that refers to something in your genetic lineage.

You should know this. What did your ancestors die from? What is your blood markers? What is your DNA testing? It's all pointing that you have a propensity for a specific disease. Usually one of the four big killers, right? For me, it's heart disease. So I, my first step in my entire protocol is disease mitigation.

I have to have a plan. There is no law. All longevity means is the absence of disease to me. Right. I mean, yeah, not dying in a car crash or falling and breaking your hip, but it really, at the end of the day, you, the whole blue zones documentary, all that stuff, these are just people that don't get disease, you know?

 And so, for you, I imagine, you potentially have this cancer in your, um, family. Are you doing any sort of advanced screening for that? Because it seems like cancer is all about early detection and screening.

Dave Pascoe: Yeah. Um, got all kinds of things in my family. Um, gosh, my dad had COPD. He was, um, borderline diabetic, which I mean, when they say borderline, if you're borderline, you're basically diabetic. I mean, I don't think there really is any borderline. You're, you're there. You just need to start doing something about it.

Stephen McCain: The only reason why they say borderline is because you need to cross a threshold for the insurance company to allow

Dave Pascoe: bingo.

Stephen McCain: use your insurance to pay for it. So they're like, no, you don't have it yet You don't have it yet. Now you have diabetes now you can get some

Dave Pascoe: That teeter totter tip. And now you're really screwed. Okay. Yeah.

Stephen McCain: Yeah Yeah,

Dave Pascoe: So, I mean, I, I had all my, I've had my genetics run, um, several different times, but then I finally did my entire genome. And I, I guess I wasn't surprised to see that I have three genetic markers for the same, um, macular degeneration that my dad suffered from both wet and dry.

Um, so part of my supplementation is, you know, addressing eye health, but, um, yeah, there was heart issues. I know my, my father's mother had. Um, Angina. Um, There were other. There were so many health issues in my family, so I'm pretty much trying to combat all of them.

Stephen McCain: yeah. Wow good

Dave Pascoe: yeah, I regularly go see like a cardiologist.

In fact, next, uh, gosh, what is it next week? I think I've got an appointment with, uh, America's healthy heart doc, Dr. Joel Kahn. He's got his own podcast too. Great

Stephen McCain: Nice nice. He's gonna have you on

Dave Pascoe: I don't know. I don't think so. We've never talked about it, but he usually does solo-sodes. So that usually doesn't usually have guests.

Stephen McCain: Well listen, I mean I There's so many I would love to talk about your eye protocol, you know what? Let's do it What are you doing for your eye protocol? Because I that's the only thing I've noticed. I'm 50 now It's the only real thing I've noticed in terms of aging and so far distance You No problem.

Like a hawk. But up close reading, I'm getting a little bit blurry, and I have these low the lowest prescription readers. I hate it. I HATE

Dave Pascoe: the opposite problem then. Because I, I can't see very good from far, but close up, I'm, I'm fine,

Stephen McCain: Interesting.

Dave Pascoe: because, you know, as a network security architect and engineer, I always had my face in a laptop, so I needed to be able to see close up and I never had an issue with that, but, um, I need, usually need a wingman like you when I'm out to be able to tell if the girls look good from far away and then I can tell you where they look good from close up or not.

So,

Stephen McCain: That's great. Well, that's great. It's at almost 62 years of age. Your hormone profile sounds like it's good. If you're talking about, the female and wanting to figure out, you know, they look good. Uh, but what are you

Dave Pascoe: no issues there.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, that's great.

That's great. I mean, that's a, there's a, there's an epidemic going on with that. You know, men's testosterone is Jesus. I mean, I've basically come to this conclusion that every man on the face of the earth is practically going to have to be on hormone replacement at some point in their life.

Dave Pascoe: almost all of my friends, it seems like everybody I know is, is on testosterone replacement therapy. It's like,

Stephen McCain: Yeah, and other people shy away from beyond steroids. It's like, look, it's not about redlining your body. It's not about like overdriving this and being some like, you know, it just put your levels in an optimal range top 25 percent quartile, the problem is the reference ranges are just dropping.

So it used to be that 900 was the average and then it just kept coming down now. I don't even know what it is, but it's something that. Really is well below.

Dave Pascoe: think it's

Stephen McCain: Oh my God. I can't even imagine, you know, uh, I can't tell you how many guys call me and they're around that 35 plus somewhere between 35 and low forties.

And they know something's happening. They're like, something is not right. I can feel

Dave Pascoe: you're talking total, right? Not free. You're talking total testosterone.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, I'm talking total. Yeah. So yeah, total. Yeah. I usually speak in total, but I know the, it's a lot of it. Most of us bound up and you're free. Testosterone is the only active, usable portion of it. But in general, typically, if you have 300 compared to 900, you're probably going to have a commensurately less testosterone.

 You're going to notice it, it's a huge, it's a huge thing. And then there's a lot of these clinics that, you know, they're, they're not really up to speed on fully how to do hormone optimization. And I always tell people, that's one of those things you need to, you need to learn from a doctor first, like go get, go get a really good doctor that is really good at hormones.

Learn the ropes for a few years and then you can do it by yourself, but you really need to work with a professional. You've got to look under the hood. You've got to know these values and you need to know. what moves a needle and what to look for in a blood lab, so that if you want to manage it yourself, I mean, I I've been managing my, hormone stuff.

I might take a predilect pregnenolone and DHEA and I take some HCG and, uh, but I've been managing that for a while. But I learned from a really great doctor and I spent years paying a lot of money to learn that system, so if you need it, all the men listening out there, their testosterone is.

It's vital. It's not just about, building muscle. There's a whole host of necessities for testosterone. And for you being 60, almost 62, um, clearly the way you look, I saw you, you know, you're in good shape. You've, somehow bulletproofed yourself.

And I'm sure a lot of that is your diet and your personal care products and you're, you know, Probably very protective, I imagine, of yourself.

Dave Pascoe: Oh, and of my sleep too. I mean, you, you gave me a great offer to go out that night and I'm like, Oh, I really need my sleep. I was still on Detroit time. So I was like three hours, you know, later. So,

Stephen McCain: hooked up from my club exosome team. This, I have a friend of mine, he's the head of entertainment for MGM. And so he is a lot of connections. And we did this dinner performance dinner thing where it's all like music and all this stuff. Really cool. It was called Mayfair at Bellagio.

And then we walked over to Pinky Ring, which is Bruno Mars. It's like a, it's supposed to be, I thought it was a jazz bar, but it's kind of a club with a really, really good band, but it's got this, it's a cool vibe and he came and sat right behind us. This guy, he, he hooked us up so we could be right with Bruno Mars and he gets on stage and he's belting it out and, and it was, it was fun.

But I mean, I couldn't last past one. As soon as 1030 comes around, I'm bobbing and weaving. I'm like, I can barely keep my eyes open because I've been so regular with my sleep for so long. Sometime I love it, but at the same time, there's sometimes I'm like, God, can't you just stay awake till one year at this thing?

And all I can think of is I'm screwing my circadian rhythm up right now. I'm, I'm barely can keep an eye open, but the people I invited to this, we're really having a good time. I wanted to be there for them. And some of them were like huge fans of Bruno. And, uh, but when you said you texted me and you said a little past my bedtime, I can't do it.

I had So much respect for you. I really did. I thought, this is why this guy's on the leaderboard. Really?

Dave Pascoe: and here I was thinking you were going to say, Oh my gosh, this guy is old.

Stephen McCain: No,

Dave Pascoe: what was going through my mind. I'm going to

Stephen McCain: Yeah, quite.

Dave Pascoe: graded on my age, you know,

Stephen McCain: Yeah,

Dave Pascoe: starting at 930, that was 1230 for me. I, like I said, I was still in Detroit time and that was just going to be way too late to get started.

So

Stephen McCain: yeah. That that's even adding it more insult. Yeah, but I, I really respected it. And, and I, like I was an Olympic athlete. Had to live that way for a long time where I had to put my force fields up around everybody. Even as a kid, when I first started gymnastics, I had friends that after school would be playing and they're like, can you just, can't you just not go to gymnastics today?

Can't you just skip it? And I said, no, I can't do it. I can't, that this is what I

Dave Pascoe: a little, a little devil on the shoulder always.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I really respected it, but I look, I want to circle back around to this. I think, what are you doing for your eyes? Because maybe you're doing something I haven't heard of.

Dave Pascoe: I'm glad you went back there because I was going to, I was going to try to circle back to that too. So, um, yeah, a lot of like Astaxanthin, Zeaxanthin, Lutein, Um, you know, eating lots of, uh, food that's, you know, red and orange and, and yellow, you know, getting a lot of the carotenoids and stuff in the diet, um, just really focusing on that.

And, of course, not smoking. Uh, like I said, my dad was a really big smoker, big drinker. Those, that didn't help his eyesight any. And then, of course, he also had got shingles, which, uh, took out one of his eyes completely from that,

Stephen McCain: Oh, really? Interesting.

Dave Pascoe: so I did bite the bullet. I got the shingles vaccine and I know a lot of people are very adverse to vaccinations, but honestly I've been vaccinated for everything under the sun because I traveled to Africa in 2019.

So I needed a bunch of vaccinations for travel for that. So, um, yeah, but it hasn't seemed to impact my longevity at all.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, well, I mean, again, when you're doing all these other things, it's It's not that one vaccine, you know, vaccination, maybe for a very unhealthy person with massive metabolic disorders and things like that. I mean, I'm sure it, there's a, there's a gasoline and fire sort of scenario for a lot of these comorbidities, but, uh, with the, I, the, I stuff, I big fan of astaxanthin.

I don't think I've missed a dose of astaxanthin in the last 14 years, maybe, uh, love it. Lutein's

Dave Pascoe: in general. So it's

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Mitochondria, inflammation. I mean, it's one of those ones that, uh, it's, it, I know it's Sandra Kaufmann's favorite and, and I agree with, I'm like, yeah, it's, yeah. And it's a natural sunscreen too. So for someone that's really fair like me, it offers a natural sunscreen and I've seen this work.

I've been in places where I normally would have been fried someone with the same sort of skin tone as me. And, uh, it, it really works. And, but you know, I have that vitamin A snip that doesn't, um, I don't convert, carotenoids into vitamin A very efficiently. So I think what I'm going to do now is I've noticed that this really is a light issue for me.

If I'm at a restaurant and it's really dark, if I just shine my torch light from my phone on the menu, I can read it. I don't need glasses. So I'm thinking I might, might have ventured into a vitamin A deficiency because of this inability to convert carotenoids into vitamin A and also supplemented vitamin D religiously for a long time.

D with K2. But you really need to have A in there with D. Like I've been doing a lot of research on this and I've noticed a few little skin things that show up for what would be people that have low vitamin A. So I'm going to have that properly tested and I'm going to, get that level dialed in and see what it does.

But I've tried the NAC eye drops, which are really good. I've tried the, uh, Yeah, the, have you tried the peptide ones? The, um, uh, Vizomittan?

Dave Pascoe: Hmm, no. Oh, wait. Oh, um, bioregulator.

Stephen McCain: Yeah.

Dave Pascoe: Yeah, the visalutin or whatever it's, it looks like it's Russian. But yeah, I have, I have

Stephen McCain: It, it is Russian. I've actually bought it in Moscow before, from a, the equivalent of a CVS in 2019, and I put it in my eyes, and by the end of the week I thought they upgraded my iPhone. I, I was like, what are they? What are they? And I'm like, oh my God, those eyedrops. The problem is you can get them here.

They don't seem to work as well. The lady in the pharmacy said, keep it cold. So I think by the time they ship all the way over here, they're really not as effective. And I, cause I was trying them here for a while and I'm like, yeah, what helps? But it doesn't have the same punch they did when I was in Moscow.

So somebody needs to make that product here. The other thing I done. is taken because I'm in the exosome business is whatever, like anything that's left over in the vial at all. And usually we do a good job of clearing it. Absolutely. But I will, for my own, I'll take the exosomes and I'll just use them as eye drops.

And I have noticed that that has had an

Dave Pascoe: brilliant. How cool.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, they're so small. They're very less than 150 nanometers. I believe they're, they absorb through the skin through the, so they can get into the eye. And I would like to do a more regular protocol of those where I'm hitting it more consistently.

The problem is, is that as soon as you thaw out an exosome, you have to use it. So how do you thaw out only You know, a few drops worth and then use those. So I'll figure it out, but I'm, I'm really starting to take a stronger, um, uh, I even have the, I even had bought that program years ago, the eye gym, where you do all these exercises for your eyes and you, you know, cause some people will say, Oh, you're just not.

Able to, the muscles are atrophying in the eye, so you can't focus as well. So I have that. I think I'm going to at some point here, take like a strong, approach to it because it's the only thing I noticed and I do everything else pretty well, but the eye thing, I just, I kind of feel like I've started to accept it.

And we've had this conversation now and now I'm not going to accept it.

Dave Pascoe: Fight it. Fight it the whole way. Kicking

Stephen McCain: Fight it the whole way. Don't let the old man in. I talked to this guy, uh, yeah, this, uh, famous sculptor and , he's in his, mid 70s and I was like, man, you're really active for your age. I mean, what do you do? And he's like, I don't let the old man in. And I thought,

Dave Pascoe: there's a country song by that name that somebody was just telling me about the other day.

Stephen McCain: Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, maybe we should

Dave Pascoe: people that are watching are going, It's so and so, you idiots! But we don't know who that is, so

Stephen McCain: exactly. Well, I'll dig it up. I'll put a link to it. Yeah, I'll put the podcast or the Spotify link to it. But look, let's, let's dig in a little bit to your protocol because something's working and I'm interested. Obviously, we don't have time to really go through all of what you're doing, but I would like to hit. Your major sections and maybe what you think were the biggest movers for you, because I guess to frame this, have you noticed, like, I did my, my, methylation test and then I'd made some tweaks and then I did it again and it improved, have you pinned down certain things in your protocol that you feel are, you know, Obligatory to your protocol and that they had the biggest swing effect.

Dave Pascoe: Yeah, well, I'm sure you've heard it said a million times that you can't supplement your way out of a bad diet.

Stephen McCain: Yeah,

Dave Pascoe: And for the longest time, I guess I was trying to do that. Um, I noticed that Alright, so To figure out how I'm doing with any of my protocol, I, you know, I always do like a monthly blood test and look at what my blood markers are and then doing true diagnostic.

When I learned of them, that was, um, you know, and, and the telomere testing, those were indicators of other measures that I wanted to look at to make sure that I was on the right track with my protocol because I want to make sure that by taking all these supplements, I'm not injuring myself in some way.

You know, like maybe there's some weird interaction between these or you always hear people say, Oh, you can't take that many supplements. You're gonna ruin your liver or your kidneys or whatever.

Stephen McCain: yeah.

Dave Pascoe: to be able to verify whether that's true or not, I have to do all these testing. And thankfully, No, many of the things that I take are actually good for my liver and my kidneys.

So, um, it's, it's not a concern and my markers are pretty good. So, um, but getting back to your question, what's the biggest mover? I, I, when I found True Diagnostic and began, I took my first, uh, took my first test. I can't remember. I think my score was like 0. 72 maybe. And then my next test, I think I was up to 0.

8. And then my third test, I was at 0. 66, and that was coincidentally my qualifying score for the Rejuvenation Olympics. Um, the only thing that really changed between the, you know, the 0. 8 and the 0. 66 was my diet.

Stephen McCain: Was what?

Dave Pascoe: my diet.

Stephen McCain: Oh, okay.

Dave Pascoe: The foods that I was eating. Um, I was eating pretty clean, but this was right about the time that, um, my, both of my parents had finally passed.

And I was doing a whole house renovation and I wasn't always able to food prep and eat clean. So I was doing some cheating, you know, I would, I would buy two large pizzas and I would package those up and I would eat like a couple of slices for lunch and a couple of slices for dinner, you know, in, in between working on the house.

So, you know, the diet kind of slacked off a little bit, but once that was through and I began, you know, I got back to eating nothing but, you know, clean, healthy stuff, um, Yeah, that's when I got the 0. 66 for my pace of aging.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. You know, what's interesting is I did that test not that long ago and I'm in the 0. 6 something. I forget what it is. I should just put my name in there. I don't know why I haven't done that. I think cause

Dave Pascoe: You should.

Stephen McCain: I really should. I kind of almost, I'm afraid a little bit to ping that competitive nature in me cause I, I wasn't an Olympian and I'm a little bit, look, I almost lost two separate girlfriends to.

Family games of monopoly over the holidays. Like that's how competitive I can get, I refuse to lose. And I'm just a little bit like, uh, I'm a, I'm a slightly concerned to go there because then I'll be like, okay, I'm going to do the, to go about this like a professional athlete. I'm going to be like a race car driver with all the sponsors.

I'm going to be reaching out. I use your product to get, you know, to be the number one guy. And I'm going to, uh, you know, my brain will go in that direction. But regardless of that, I, the food cannot be under appreciated. I can't, a lot of clients and people that I work with, I asked them, how often are you eating out?

I just worked with an actor when it took, he wanted, he's losing roles because he took off his shirt and he's going to have the physique that somebody else did. And he's like, I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of losing to these guys that have a better physique. And I said, well, how many times are you eating out?

He said almost every meal. And he had some gut issues. He wasn't digesting, his food very well, it is really hard to have a six pack. If you have digestion issues, like your digestion is how you expel things and how you absorb things. And you've got to have at least one good bowel movement a day.

 But. I got him and just said, you need to start cooking. Just simplify, get yourself a steamer, if you eat meat, get some responsible meat, get some, organic vegetables and a nice array, use some healthy fats, use your starch around your workouts because that's when you'll absorb a lot of that glucose.

 And it worked. It started, he was like, man, I feel so much better. I realized just eating from home and controlling my meals has had such a difference. But when I look at your website. You're doing it to, not only that, but you're doing it to the next level. I mean, you're growing some of your own food.

Tell me about that.

Dave Pascoe: Yes. Before I go there, I wanted to, you actually touched on several different things I wanted to make

Stephen McCain: Okay. Yeah.

Dave Pascoe: Um, so when you look at somebody like Julie Gibson Clark, who is on the rejuvenation Olympics, and I think she's in, um, on, on the, There's two different leaderboards. There's an absolute and then there's a regular leaderboard.

Um, on the regular leaderboard, she's right behind Brian, but her pace of aging is even better. Hers is better than mine and his, and she doesn't do a whole bunch of supplements. She doesn't do a lot of crazy stuff. She nails all the basics. I mean, she's, she's out rucking. So she's very physically active all the time.

Um, she does do Novo's Novo's core as a supplementation. Um, but it's not like You know, that's great for autophagy and cellular cleanup, but that's, we're not talking spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on supplements. She just nails all the, all the good stuff, all the basics. She's got the sleep diet and exercise down.

And to me, I think those are the biggest movers. Seriously. The supplementation is just like you said, is icing on the cake. It's hitting another layer. So when, when you look at things like True Diagnostic, they will admit that when they developed their test. It's specifically designed such that a disease state.

Will not affect the reading that they get for your epigenetic age because originally it was designed to be able to age a cadaver or to tell like if You had somebody that comes over from this country from another country does not have paperwork You'll be able to tell basically how old they are, but it had to be independent of heart disease of Diabetes high blood pressure all these major systemic, you know issues So when I look at Pace of aging and epigenetic age.

To me, the biggest movers of those are the sleep exercise and diet, but my supplements I take to address more organ systems, like a higher, higher level or higher layer of a complexity up. If that makes sense.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, I completely agree with you and I didn't know that about that methylation test that it is independent of disease states and even more back to my, framework because, like I said, the beginning is longevity and that really is like shoring up any sort of disease mitigation because like people get very cute with these tests and they say, Oh, I reduced my biological age by 10 years.

And I say, did you reduce the plaque in your arteries by 10 years? So you can't put the cart before the horse, you need to, to have some strategy to manage that disease state. That's some, it's in you. It's, it's in your part of your, your, your lineage, right? And then you move into what I call the health span.

 That's your sleep. That's your nutrition. That's your exercise. That's your stress and management, your relationships. Overcoming past traumas, things like that. And that to me is that behavioral, those behavioral changes that really, you know, how well can I live these years that I have on this planet?

And I couldn't agree with you more. And you've got to be, you've got to have some discipline or good habits. I don't think habits free you from discipline because discipline kind of implies. I really don't want to do this, , but I, I should. Whereas, habits are, I don't even have to have any cognitive expanse whatsoever.

I just do this without even thinking about it. Like brushing your teeth, right? You know, none of us go like, do I really have to brush my teeth again today? No, you just accept it. You do it. And I think if you can put those four movers, the nutrition, the sleep, the diet, and the exercise all in that, that, bucket and build these habits, now you can start stacking 500 habits, right?

Right now, without any cognitive expense, that's how someone goes, Jesus, how do you manage all of this? It's like, I, it's habit. I

Dave Pascoe: even think about it. Right.

Stephen McCain: even have to think about it, but it's interesting that, people get caught up and coming at this and, and wanting , to do the bottom step.

And the bottom of my framework is really. the regenerative part. That is the cellular, the pathways that is the hallmarks of aging. And that's where you can use all these medications and supplements and compounds and novel molecules and all these things to address all those pathways of aging. But a lot of people, when they want to get fancy, they want to come down to that bottom level because that's the kind of rage right now.

But yet, they haven't done the pre work. They don't have the habits. They haven't mitigated their disease. And so, it's an interesting sort of state that the environment is in because people are kind of grasping at straws a lot of times instead of just, having a solid framework. And you, You have a damn solid framework.

 I do want to ask you what are you growing or doing to control your food?

Dave Pascoe: Yeah, that's an interesting question. I would love to grow more if I had the space and if I, if I had the know how on actually how to prepare some things. Um, right now I'm growing sweet potatoes again in my yard. I grew those, uh, I've been growing them now for a couple years, and I keep learning a little more and more each time, making my soil a little more sandy each time, because it's helping the potatoes to grow larger.

Originally they were like tiny little things, like string potatoes. I couldn't do a whole lot with them, but the more sand I'm adding to the soil, the better and larger they're getting. So I've got lots of those going. I'm growing turnips. Oh gosh, I'm trying to think of all the things I planted. I planted onions.

Um, uh, parsnips, I've got carrots, um, tomatoes, of course, uh, green peppers, yellow peppers, red peppers, uh, swiss chard, um, like lots of herbs. So I've got basil growing, I've got, uh, oregano, rosemary, um, gosh. And I've got, uh, I've had those, lots of herbs growing in my basement under grow lamps throughout the winter, but I've got more outside now, which is nice.

Um, so just about everything I can think of, I try to grow.

Stephen McCain: That is impressive. And how did you get into that? Is it a massive ordeal? Because I've done the herbs before. I've never planted food and, and I'm highly curious, especially after seeing your site. And, and I know that, oh, this would be so nice and I mean, if you think about it, you can put seeds in soil and you can grow food for free, basically.

Yes, it takes time out of your day to nurture it and all that, but, like, you can forget that, you know? I mean, food's gotten pretty damn expensive.

Dave Pascoe: Yeah, it has. I, you know, I used to do it the hard way. My, my dad used to have a garden. And, uh, we used to rent a rototiller. You know, me being the young guy, he would always have me working the rototiller out there in the back. And if you've ever seen a rototiller, it's just this giant machine with blades and it just tills up the soil and just tears everything up, uh, getting everything ready for planting.

It's a lot of work. I don't do that anymore.

Stephen McCain: Yeah.

Dave Pascoe: my dad started getting older, like in his late seventies, early eighties, I came up with this idea for him that he could continue his garden. Without having to bend over without having to bend down. I bought a bunch of these things called earth boxes. It's a coincidentally back when I was 10, I came up with the design for earth boxes on my own.

Stephen McCain: Really?

Dave Pascoe: here, all these decades later, somebody made a product out of it. And I'm just kicking myself that I ever let my dad talk me out of it. Cause he told me it was a stupid idea back when I was 10. So,

Stephen McCain: Oh, really?

Dave Pascoe: yeah, I'm like, I had, it's all

Stephen McCain: on the

Dave Pascoe: out. It's like. Right.

Stephen McCain: Don't sleep on the next idea. Yeah. That's great.

Dave Pascoe: uh, yeah, it's so it's basically is this box, plastic box.

It's got a, um, a reservoir in the bottom with a, with a spout that you can pour water into. It fills the reservoir. So the plants roots will grow down into the reservoir and drink as much as they want. So, and it also has a plastic cover that goes around the plants. So it's, it's Water's not evaporating.

You only use a little bit of water, so it's not like just seeping into the ground and going away. Um, so it's very water conservative. That part I absolutely love. I have, for him, I put them up on stands. So, all he had to do was just walk right up to them and be able to pick and do his pruning and everything else.

He never had to bend down. It also kept the animals out of them. Because we have lots of bunnies, and squirrels, and possums, and skunks, and all kinds of things around here. So, um, yeah, so it was just a great idea all the way around. And he loved it. And I still continue that to this day. Of course, I've got better stands now.

All of my stuff is in earth boxes, and it's up about waist high. And, uh, yeah, I love it. It's all along the south side of my house, so it's in sun all day long. But the great thing about that is I also set up, uh, Yeah. Earthbox. com. I'm not, I'm not sponsored by them. Hopefully they'll get lots of business from this.

Um, cause it's a really, it's just a great thing for a, uh, a suburban gardener. If you don't want to have to dig up your property at all and you can move them around anywhere you want. Cause they're not that heavy. You put them in sun, put them in shade, whatever, whatever works best in your yard. Um, Yeah, I also set up a watering system, so, and I put some of this on my website.

I need to flesh out that page a little better now, uh, now that I have time. Um, I have a watering system that takes care of everything. So, really, I planted them, and I forget about them. I go out every so often just to pick some stuff to eat, but I don't have to weed, because no weeds grow in them, because I've got the plastic covers on them.

I don't have to water them, because they water themselves every morning. It's just a timer comes on and runs for one minute. Cause that's all it takes just to make, fill up that reservoir and there's a hole in the side. So it can't over, can't overfill and drown the plants. Water will drain out the hole, you know, which is halfway up the, the pot.

So, it's, it's set it and forget it. You know, I was able to go away for 30 days in Italy and not have to worry about my plants. I, I went away for the weekend in Vegas. I went away for the weekend in Dallas for the biohacking conference. Didn't have to worry about my plants dying while I was gone cause it was all just automatic.

So,

Stephen McCain: That's, that's phenomenal. You're making it very enticing. I certainly am gonna, I'll include links in the show notes to all this stuff, earthbox. com and you can find that at Stephenmccain. com backslash pascoe. How do you spell your last name, Dave? P A S

Dave Pascoe: P A S C O E. Yep.

Stephen McCain: Got it. Okay. But you are definitely making this very enticing.

 Because I would imagine in my mind, I've built it up to be something where I'm like, Oh man, I don't want to be tending to a garden all day long. But it sounds like what you've developed is makes it pretty simple.

Dave Pascoe: A way to work smarter, not harder. Yeah.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Especially when it comes to gardening,

Dave Pascoe: Yeah. My, my neighbors have a garden on the ground and uh, you know, they're a little bummed because their, their tomatoes are getting eaten by the animals. What are you going to do?

Stephen McCain: Well, that, that's great. I'm gonna look into all of that and, I might even reach out to you if I have some questions, because this is sort of the next iteration for me, in terms of food control. I sometimes worry about all the stuff that's being sprayed on our food, even if it's organic.

, I used to live in, I used to live in la there's this grocery store called Erewhon. And my God, you could get biodynamic food there. And for people don't know, biodynamic farming is essentially where they've prioritized the soil health. So everything is about the soil health.

Stephen McCain: Nothing is sprayed on anything. Obviously glyphosate is in the rainwater, so you cannot get away from it, but there's nothing, that they do to the food it's the most organic really you can get. And, uh, what are you doing for your meat? Cause you, you're not a vegetarian. You're not plant based, right?

Dave Pascoe: I'm probably more plant based than not, but yeah, I do eat meat. I, uh, I order from Butcher Box, um, if you're familiar with them. They have,

Stephen McCain: Yeah, yeah, I've used

Dave Pascoe: fed, grass finished beef. Yeah, um, free range chicken, uh, wild Alaskan salmon. Um, yeah,

Stephen McCain: How

Dave Pascoe: so I really like their stuff.

Stephen McCain: How often are you eating meat?

Dave Pascoe: Um, so I'm, I'm eating meat, uh, almost every dinner. Almost, not quite, but usually very small. I like mine. My meat is like condiment size. I mean, mostly it's vegetables, large salad, you know, so the meat is just, it's a garnish almost.

Stephen McCain: Got it. Got it. Okay.

Dave Pascoe: And I do eat eggs. I eat eggs on the weekends.

Stephen McCain: Okay, and, and fish is in that same category, 

Dave Pascoe: I eat fish a lot, um, just because it's so easy to make. Um, the salmon is just wonderful. I can put it on my, um, Um,

Stephen McCain: Your plate?

Dave Pascoe: it's an infrared cooker and I can't even think of the name of it. Oh my

Stephen McCain: Oh, really? You have an infrared

Dave Pascoe: is the first thing that goes,

Stephen McCain: Is it a ninja or something like that? No, my idea.

Dave Pascoe: I mean, cause I, I call it by its name all the time, but right now, because I'm on a podcast, I'm totally

Stephen McCain: It'll, it'll come. It'll come back to you.

Dave Pascoe: yeah, it's a new wave. It's a new wave oven.

Stephen McCain: new wave oven.

Dave Pascoe: new way of oven and so I can, um, I can take a piece of salmon out of the freezer. I can, you know, put it in a little container like warm water and thaw it out within a matter of minutes.

You know, cut the plastic, put it on the grill, cook it for six minutes each side. It's done. It's wonderful. Delicious.

Stephen McCain: Yeah,

Dave Pascoe: And so I'm doing that often because it's so easy.

Stephen McCain: And that's the thing is I think a lot of times when you try to tell people, look, you need to eat from home, they start going, oh, I'm not a, I'm not a great cook. Or, I, , it's so much work and it's all about, again, working smarter, not harder. And, and there's so many kitchen tools these days.

Oh my God, there are so many ways to make things easy. Do you do any sort of smoothies at all?

Dave Pascoe: I was, I need to get back to it again. Um, I do, um, I do a drink in the morning, but it's like mostly almond milk and then a whole bunch of powders. So I wouldn't really call it a smoothie.

Stephen McCain: Hmm.

Dave Pascoe: got my protein powders in it. Um, it's got my green powders in it cause I do like three different types of green powders.

Um, again, cause I got lazy. I was doing fresh greens and I got away from that. during the winter time. And now I need to transition back into doing real greens again. Now that they're plentiful.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Yeah. I have my smoothie here right now I like a morning smoothie, especially because I usually drink it before I go work out. So , it's pre digested. I don't want to eat something big before I work out. I just use a scoop away, a scoop of collagen and put some blueberries in there, some almond butter.

And then not almond butter. I use walnuts actually. And then some supplement powders, AKG and, and then I was putting a lot more of powders, but now I've got all these drinks. I've got this big, I'm using this stuff called I cell water. Have you heard of this supplement? So it's, so hydration is, it's almost like an operating system upgrade when you, you know, increase the volume of the cells and you get them hydrated, the receptors all work better and everything, but they're realizing now that you can control the osmolarity of the cell through amino acids. So it's got five grams of creatine. It's got some glycine. It's got some glutamine. It's got some leucine. It's got a couple of these, proteins that, and you're just supposed to sip on it all day long.

And it's great because I live in the desert. I live in Vegas, which is hot and dry right now. So this iCell water, I just sip on it all day long and it's allowed me to. basically consolidate four supplements into one supplement. It's really good, uh, seed scientific, research and, , performance.

Dr. Bill sees his whole faculty have done the research on this. And then one of the faculty members, created a line of supplements called nuBioAge. And they were originally sort of designed for people that use peptides. So this is really good for people that are on the GLP 1 agonist, maintain their hydration.

 But they have a really good supplement line. I also use their calcium alpha ketoglutarate, and they do it in a really good dose. And the only other dose I have found that is commensurate with Was on Amazon and it was some anonymous brand and I just don't buy I don't I don't buy cheap supplements

Dave Pascoe: Do not

Stephen McCain: Oh, they do Oh, okay Yeah, but it's not a powder.

It's pills, right?

Dave Pascoe: it's pills. Yeah,

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Yeah, i've used i've used some of their stuff. i'm a fan of their stuff I still don't what do I use of theirs? I don't know if I'm using anything actively right now, but I I would like to go into your supplement protocol, but I feel like that is a can of worms.

That is going to be,

Dave Pascoe: it really is. There's so much, I mean, needless to say, I pretty much do everything.

Stephen McCain: All the stuff listed on your website, are you actively taking that? Or is that kind of more a snapshot of everything you have taken?

Dave Pascoe: Um, no, that's pretty much things that I'm actively taking. Yeah. I mean, there is a section where I say, um, Took, took it one time, may take again. I mean, that's, those are things that are completely separate. But everything I'm listing are, yeah, they're the things that I'm doing right now.

Stephen McCain: It's a pretty, pretty robust, supplement, protocol you have there. That is, it's a pretty, pretty complete, I would like to dive into it, but I think there's so many people talking about supplements these days, and that's a, quite a bit of a rabbit hole. Has there been any supplement that has had a profound effect for you 

Dave Pascoe: Yeah, there, there is one that I noticed right away, which surprised the heck out of me, because I'm a skeptic about everything. When I, when I try something, I try it with the idea that I'm gonna prove that it doesn't work. That's usually my mindset. Um, but, Doing P90X, I've been doing that now since 2008, I started noticing, um, somewhere around the age of maybe 55 that it was starting to take me more than an hour to get through an hour workout.

And I just thought, yeah, I'm getting older, you know, it's probably normal. Um, I hated that answer, but that's what I assumed to be the case. Well, then I heard a podcast where they were talking about, um, uh, a supplement to. Increase your NAD levels, and it was a supplement called Truniagen. It was nicotinamide riboside, or NR.

And I thought, you know what, I'm going to order this, because I'm sure it's bullshit, but I'm going to try it. And, uh, I tried it, and, uh, I was surprised, because I didn't feel anything right away. Like, in my day to day, just walking around, I felt nothing. But, two days later, when I Did my next P90X workout. I was shocked.

I got through the hour workout in that hour, and I had so much energy left over. I did another one. And I'm like, gosh, I haven't done, I haven't felt like this in years. And so it was a huge game changer for me. I didn't realize how low my NAD levels must have been, but it was definitely the rate limiting factor of my energy.

And so once I began supplementing that, it was a total game changer. I was back to my young self all over again.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, well, it's sort of like, the supplement that works the best is the one you're most deficient and that process you're most deficient and right. So for people don't know, NAD is very important for cellular energy production. It's very important for DNA repair. I mean, it's everyone knows about NAD.

Now, have you heard of 1-MNA?

Dave Pascoe: N M A.

Stephen McCain: So this is like version three of, I've talked about this quite a bit, of the NAD. Like in the beginning it was, excuse me, these, NAD massive infusions. And then we realized, your body can't even absorb that much NAD at once. And it's probably too big to get into the cell. And not only that, but you can exacerbate senescence cells.

And so then we got into the precursors, the NR, the NMN, and then now version three, I actually talked about this in my last podcast with Dr. Yurth. She's, she's one that pioneered this whole movement with one 1-MNA. And instead what it does is it inhibits this NNMT, nicotinamide in methyl transferase pathway.

That's basically stealing your NAD, so it preserves your NAD. And so you can take this and you can also, so five, five amino one. MQ was doing that in the past. You'll see that on a lot of, like peptide.

Dave Pascoe: also helps with that.

Stephen McCain: Well, Apogen is the other one. That is the, the other pathway, 

Dave Pascoe: It inhibits the CD38, I think,

Stephen McCain: CD 38.

Yeah. Yeah, but that pathway is not as, it's not deleterious, like the other one you actually want to inhibit. And so you can take this one 1-MNA to slow down the NAD from being stolen from you. And then you can also do it with your precursors too, so that could be a nice addition if you've had a profound effect from NAD that maybe audition that one in your stack.

And so Yeah, I'll put a link to that in the show notes too. That's also offered by nuBioAge, in their protocol. I've been using it and I like the science behind it and the people that are, that came up with this approach or some of the people I highly respect the most, you know, like people like Dr.

Yurth and Bill Seeds, 

Dave Pascoe: deal.

Stephen McCain: Jesus, that guy is, he's a juggernaut of, he's like a savant with these molecular pathways, which is a whole thing into itself. I strive to continue to learn biochemistry And it's an endeavor because there's so many pathways.

And, but always something to look forward to. Let's talk about your workout real quick. Cause we're getting to the end of this. And I would be remiss if I didn't speak about exercise, because to me, that's my favorite tool in the toolbox to really, change the way you look, feel, and perform.

And it hits every pathway of aging in a positive way. And the more you exercise, the more you can pit those pathways.

Dave Pascoe: So, you know, I bought a Carroll bike back in November and I loved it. I love it. It kicks my butt. Um, I know that I, I needed to do more hits. I used to do HIIT. I used to do HIIT before I did marathon training. I used to run around with a 50 pound weight vest and do sprints. Um, and I think, I think all that ended up doing is just training my heart rate to go super high whenever I tried to work out.

Stephen McCain: yeah.

Dave Pascoe: it might have actually worked against me. But once I started marathon training, um, Yeah, I was more into zone two and then just keeping everything steady. Um, but I, I've, I've actually found that I've got a whole nother gear there in zone five that I've really not explored enough, or at least I've been told that I haven't explored it.

Um, cause I'm a terribly slow runner, but anyway, I have the, the Carroll bike that I do, uh, every other day. Um, P90X for, and for people that aren't familiar with P90X, cause it's sort of an old school workout.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, I love p90x. Yeah, I

Dave Pascoe: know a lot of people that have tried it and like said, Oh my gosh. Yeah, I can't, I'm not doing that.

That's too much. Uh, cause it is crazy extreme, but I always tell people that if you stick with it through the first two weeks of all the soreness that you're going to feel, the soreness goes away. And then you're golden. You just keep building from there, but it really takes two weeks to, to get past all the pain and torture of it all.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, I did it for a few years, and I loved it. I like P90. Years ago, 2010, 11, 12? Around that era.

Dave Pascoe: yeah, I, I found it in 2008, and I think it was out even two years before that. Again, that was another one that I thought, eh, this is, this is BS. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it exactly the way they say it, and I'm certain it's not gonna make any difference. Wow, was I wrong. I was so pleased with the way I started to look after 30 days, and 60 days, and 90 days.

People noticed and I never felt more confident in my appearance ever. And I, I owe it all to that. Cause I was, I was a gym guy before that, you know, I was the geek that walked around with a clipboard, you know, going to all the different machines, writing down, you know, the weight that I did, the number of reps that I did, making sure that I had some improvement the next week, you know, and I would even graph this out so I could see my progress or lack

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Pascoe: but I never saw me.

I never saw any physical changes like I did doing P90X, but, um, so like I was starting to say it's, you know, every other day it's a different weight bearing type exercise. It might be like, um, oh gosh, chest and back one day, uh, shoulders and arms another day. Um, Backs, back and biceps another day, um, it's, it's 14 day routine, so there's something different every day for 14 days.

And in between those, they'll have cardio days. So you might do Kempo Karate one day. You might do extreme yoga another day. You might do plyometrics another day. I mean, it's just always something different. You're, you're hitting every muscle group. And that's why people usually feel like absolute crap that first two weeks, because you're feeling muscles you never knew you had before.

But it's

Stephen McCain: that's how, you know, it's working. Yeah, that's great. It is a comprehensive, program. I like it. And the fact that you actually do the off day stuff too, is I think really rounds it out. Have you had your VO two max tested?

Dave Pascoe: Um, I have, I have, uh, haven't done it in a while, but the last time I had it tested was like two years ago. Um, and then my Garmin pretty much tells me an assessment too, and they're, they were both in agreement. I think that my VO2x was like 42. I think it was.

Stephen McCain: Okay. Yeah, I've taken a pretty deep dive on VO2max. We opened up a clinic called Place AI, Prime Life Artificial Intelligence Solutions in Houston. Amazing team. I love this team. And we went really hard on, on metabolic conditioning because the studies on VO2max and survival is pretty impressive.

 So we we got this metabolic expert. He's like one of the best in the world and it has been on just a journey down this rabbit hole with this guy. He is all about you're measuring your lungs. How much are you using of your lungs? How many breaths do you do in each zone? He's given me a protocol.

I've started really doing it. I mean, I was low fifties, which is not, it's still considered excellent. But I saw, yeah, for a 50 year old, not bad for someone who didn't do a lot of, endurance and VO two max stuff. I mean, I've always been a, like a gymnast is kind of a power type person and strength training.

I love, I love strength training, but I watched him when we went to Houston, we were in the hotel, the gym and the hotel, they had a treadmill and he's down there, he's like, I'm just going to test this PNOE out real quick. He's 50 as well. I watched him put up a 70. 4. I that's like Tour de France, type of guy.

I mean, it's world class. Yeah. So he's running all of our people. You can, we can get, you can get tested by him. You can get a protocol. He has shirts that will. That you wear, he can see exactly how you breathe during all the training sessions. It's really well thought out. I'm just so impressed with his protocols.

And so I said, I'm in, I'm doing this a hundred percent cause I want to start challenging. I want to get up to that 70, you know, which is going to be a lot of work, but I'm excited to actually do this part of my, The exercise part of my protocol with a lot more sophistication. And, I know that this Carol bike you mentioned is an interesting way to raise your VO two max.

They call it, it's like a re hit is, isn't that what the term they use?

Dave Pascoe: Yep.

Stephen McCain: And so they've just, it's like a really compressed high intensity interval training. Right.

Dave Pascoe: Very. Yeah. And I usually do the intense workout, which I think is like two, 20 seconds sprints, which doesn't seem like very long, but Oh my gosh, when you're doing it, it's like, is this ever going to end?

Stephen McCain: and compared to doing nothing, I mean, there's some people that haven't gone into zone five and years. If you think about it, you know, it

Dave Pascoe: Well, that's me. I need, I really need to work on my zone five big time.

Stephen McCain: Yeah, well, I'd be curious to see, hopefully you'll post on your website what the carol bike actually does for you in terms of, you know, if you think the Garmin is giving you a good reading and, and whatever. But, um, yeah, I,

Dave Pascoe: from marathon training, I watched myself go up from 36 to 42, which, you know, that was, that was pretty good movement. And I know I've got, I've got lots of room to grow still. So, yeah. I'll be curious to see how that goes, but I'd love to hear more about, you know, what you're doing and you know, whatever you can share.

I, uh, I'd love to learn from it.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. I mean, we have it down. Like when it comes to metabolic conditioning, that's it. With our guy and all the, we bought the Pano, we, we, we bought like every testing device out there. We're kind of like a think tank, our CEO is awesome. He, this guy, Michael Bleyzer he will just look at everything and we'll just put everything on the table.

And then, I found this metabolic guy from my friend, Jesse Carroll. As soon as Michael, our CEO chatted with him one time, he's like, uh, is he interested in being part of the team? And so we brought him in. And so we have really cracked the code on this VO2 maxing. If you do this guy's protocol.

Guaranteed it will increase your VO2 max and he walks the walk. And so I'm sold. And if you look at the science on VO2 max, I mean, look, on average, you lose about 10 percent every decade. And so you can kind of back into where you're going to be disabled. Cause around, I think it's, I don't know, somewhere between 15 and 17 is when, if your VO2 max is around there.

Then, that's basically what it requires for you to get up, get dressed, go to the grocery store, buy groceries. carry them back home and do the most basic fundamental things in life. And so, you can say, well, I'm this age and I'm this VO two max, and I'm going to start losing 10 percent a decade.

You can start to see where you're going to get into a danger zone. And I have no intention of being an older person with no energy. Like that would be. The greatest does that would be a huge disaster. Like I have so many things I want to do in life. And energy is the currency. And so I, don't want to be frail and I love strength training.

I don't have to put any more wood on that fire that's burning, but I always am like, I don't like cardio and now I'm doing it with a renewed passion. So really cool stuff. I'll keep you informed and I'll send you. If you're ever interested in getting tested by him or anything, I can connect you guys and I'll put links to him as well in our metabolic accelerator package and all that stuff.

If anyone wants to say, Hey, I want this. It was important for me to create something that was, You know, I've always wanted a clinic, but at the same time I've been an online guy. And so now I'm starting to put these pieces in place where people can go and get real, real results, not just some paint by numbers sort of thing where it's like, Oh, just do your four by four and do some, your age minus this heart rate.

And you'll be in zone two. It's like, no, no, I want precision. I want to know that every pedal stroke that I do on that bike is exactly where I need to be in the heart rate. 

Dave Pascoe: Yeah. You know, my lungs, my lungs are something I've had some major concern about because when I was in college, I, I used to work in the dorms. We would, uh, we used to work maintenance and security, but doing maintenance, we used to strip the wax off of floors with rum ammonia. We would just, Uh, pour like gallons and gallons of ammonia on the floor and we would be in there inhaling that while we're working a buffer machine and stripping all the wax off.

I did this for like a full summers, multiple years through college. So I know I didn't do my lungs any favors from that, probably did a lot of damage. Um, and I think that's partially why I do have so much trouble with, uh, with the running. So yeah, I've got a lot of room to grow.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Well, I mean, look, you're, yeah, you're disciplined. I mean, I kind of feel like if someone just shows you something and they show you that it works, you'll be like, all right, I'm doing it. I, you're that kind of guy. I mean, you, you came to club exosome and you probably saw some videos, saw Sandra talking about it and said, you've got a fricking airplane and you flew out to, to come to this event.

And so I immediately. Was like, this is my kind of guy. He's exactly like the reminds me of me. And, and then I saw the way you looked and in shape you were, and I thought, Jesus, how this is what I wanna be like when I'm 62. I feel like, we're cut from the same cloth.

So I have, again, I have a lot of respect for your approach to this. And, and I, you know, I, we're getting to the end of this and I'm, I still feel like I have questions about. Uh, you know, your sleep and all that, but we all know from earlier that you clearly safeguard and keep your sleep sacred.

Are there anything like, let's say someone who's watching this and says, wow, I really like what these guys are talking about. And I wanted to start making some positive changes and doing some of these things that. Stephen and Dave are talking about what would be your recommendation for maybe somebody who's a little bit earlier in their journey and they're just starting out with this stuff.

Yeah,

Dave Pascoe: about sleep, I was really amazed at what a big difference getting blackout curtains made to my sleep scores and wearing a sleep mask. I just didn't think those were even going to be an issue. But once I addressed those, Oh, my sleep score is just shot right up. So don't underestimate the amount of junk light you might have coming in through your windows, you know, whether it might be from a street lamp or even a full moon or, uh, just all the electronics that you've got in your house with the little LEDs that are burning, um, those things seem to matter.

I never thought it was real, but it is.

Stephen McCain: yeah, yeah.

Dave Pascoe: one.

Stephen McCain: Yeah. Sleep is so paramountly important. 

It's unbelievable. I'll tell you what's been working for me. 

The moment I get into bed, I empty my mind. No thinking about the to do list, no thinking about the day, no tasks, no nothing. 

If I, if I'm going to think about anything, I'm going to think about how I feel.

How does it feel? 

I try to put myself into my senses. I get myself out of my head. And I have found that I will go to sleep fast and I also get better sleep in the night because if you had go to sleep with your brain chewing on something, you will chew on it all night long. You know, all night. That's exactly how you, like, before you go to bed, you say, gosh, I have to wake up at this time tomorrow.

I have to, and somehow you wake up five minutes before the alarm because you put that in your brain and your brain is going to Tick tock, tick tock, tick all night waiting for that thing and it knows. And I have found that once you have the dark and you have good architecture and you're going to sleep at the right times and all, just empty your brain.

Do not go to bed with anything. And then I just feel like the brain just goes, and it lets you have sleep. At least that's working for me now. Have you noticed anything like that?

Dave Pascoe: I do something similar. As I go to bed, I start reviewing all of my blessings and, and there's so many things that we just take for granted that are absolute blessings. Like when I went to Africa and I watched how people live in Africa, they don't have running water. They don't have sewage systems, you know, they, uh, so many kids die before the age of five every day.

They from lack of hygiene and sanitation there. Um, that's another reason why I'm involved with Team World Vision because we raised money to build wells in Africa for that. But I'm just the people there. They wake up every morning and they sing. They sing for their life because they're so grateful that they woke up to see another sunrise.

Whereas our day is totally ruined if they short us a hot sauce going through the drive through. So I count my blessings like just for having running water, for having a sewage system that I can flush a toilet and have things go away, you know, simple things like that. But I mean, obviously there's even bigger things, just be able to have a roof over my head, you know, a car that doesn't break down on me, um, good friends, family.

Um, you know, people I care about. There's just so many things that you can think about to be grateful for. And I think about all those as I drift off to sleep and it's just such a great, peaceful sleep.

Stephen McCain: That's beautiful. I really think that that has to have a Massive impact on your whole holistic, health you know, I've, I've been to China and Russia, like in the nineties, I've been there multiple times. These countries and in China, I, first time I went to China, I came back and I said, I'm rich.

Either when I turned the hot water faucet on. I don't worry if hot water is coming out. I'm rich, there's toilet paper and every bathroom you go to in America, everyone in Russia, you literally had to at one point bring your own toilet paper. I think that the gratitude portion cannot be underestimated enough, and I appreciate you sharing that.

And I think that's a, that's a really nice takeaway. I think that's a nice thing to, to end on and to just to remind people. The power of gratitude and really appreciate, especially in this. I want, I want, I want environment, that there's nothing wrong with wanting stuff, but at the same time, I think of having some gratitude and some blessing for what you have in life is, is just a beautiful thing in itself.

It, it only can promote good thoughts.

Dave Pascoe: totally agree.

Stephen McCain: one. Yeah. It's a good one to leave us. I really appreciate that. Awesome. I think we covered, I think we got it. I didn't, we didn't get to stretching. I know you do some stretching in the morning. I, to me, stretching is

Dave Pascoe: So many things we could cover. Maybe we'll do another one of these sometime.

Stephen McCain: Absolutely. You have a automatic anytime you want, recurring, guest spot on the show.

 We'll be staying in contact and I want to check in and see what you're up to, and see what's come down the pipe. And now I'll be checking out your website. If people want to follow you and they want to get to know you, they want to reach out to you. What should they do?

Dave Pascoe: Oh, my website is DavePascoe. net and I'm on Instagram as Dave. Pascoe. Those are the two biggest places you can find me.

Stephen McCain: Perfect. And I will include links to everything we talked about. We had a good one. And what was the name of the, um, the, uh, planting things, the plant, the

Dave Pascoe: Oh, Earthboxes.

Stephen McCain: or the earth boxes. Yeah. Yeah. I'll put links to everything in the show notes. Stephen with a PH. McCain. com backslash Pasco. That's P A S C O E.

I appreciate you, Dave, for coming on. It's been a pleasure meeting you. I look forward to seeing your growth in this industry. I'm sure you're going to be continue to be a bigger and bigger name in it. Thank you for coming on the podcast, really appreciate it. Feel free to reach out to me any single time.

And for all of you that have been listening, hope you enjoyed it and check out the show notes and we will see you on the next episode of the Stephen McCain podcast. Stay healthy, everyone. Cheers.