Scott: Talking about anti-aging medicine, how important is it to know our own gene expression? Is that important?
Dr. Hans J. Kugler, PhD: Oh, definitely. No question about it. But it was always believed, for example if an older person asks their doctor should I do exercise or do this and their doctor would probably say oh, well, no, you know at your age you may hurt yourself. It's all in your genes. There's nothing you can do about it.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Hans J. Kugler, PhD: Totally, absolutely wrong. 25 years ago we did a longevity study actually showing that the genes are important but that bottom line a good, no a bad set of genes treated correctly can outperform a good set of genes treated badly.
Like in our case we used albino cancer prone mice. We subjected them to cigarette smoke. Naturally they get cancer faster. If you use antioxidants you will slow that down. But if you use antioxidants on these cancer prone mice even without any subjection to cigarette smoke they live even longer, right? Those are the animals we used in our studies.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
in our studies. One of the basic studies that we use.
Dr. Hans J. Kugler, PhD: I mean, one of the basic studies that we use. That goes into the cell, into the stem cell field, too. We normally have controls in animal studies and treated animals. Then we measure the difference, the improvements that we get, for example, by feeding them. Very recently at a Canadian university they did a compliment of different vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and showed that animasl lived longer and had less cancer, right?
Well, when you apply this in a more detailed basis, you will also want to know what happens if you subject these animals to the wrong health practices, right? That's what we did. We had controls, we had treated animals, then we had animals that we subjected to a high fat diet, a high sugar diet, cigarette smoke. There's machines that you can actually, for a longevity study you stick a cigarette in there and it constantly sucks cigarette smoke through the cages.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Hans J. Kugler, PhD: They were not made to do any exercise. The treated animals had a better environment. They were made to do exercise in a rotating drum. We had a diet that consisted of antioxidant, quality supplements. Right? Little stress.
The difference was 100% in average lifespans. That is absolutely magnificent, right? As a matter of fact that is one the basis of our program, the program in my book where I then lead into the different health practices well defined and now also described as of how to, what we can do. Now that's the basis. Going beyond that, that's when we go into stem cells.